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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1, by Samuel Johnson
+
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+Title: Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1
+
+Author: Samuel Johnson
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9823]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 21, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE POETS, VOL. 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jayam Subramanian
+and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+DR. JOHNSON'S WORKS.
+
+LIVES OF THE POETS.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+THE
+
+WORKS
+
+OF
+
+SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
+
+IN NINE VOLUMES.
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE SEVENTH.
+
+
+MDCCCXXV.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF THE SEVENTH VOLUME.
+
+THE LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS.
+
+
+Cowley
+Denham
+Milton
+Butler
+Rochester
+Roscommon
+Otway
+Waller
+Pomfret
+Dorset
+Stepney
+J. Philips
+Walsh
+Dryden
+Smith
+Duke
+King
+Sprat
+Halifax
+Parnell
+Garth
+Rowe
+Addison
+Hughes
+Sheffield, duke of Buckinghamshire
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTICE
+
+TO
+
+THE LIVES OF THE POETS.
+
+
+Such was the simple and unpretending advertisement that announced the
+Lives of the English Poets; a work that gave to the British nation a new
+style of biography. Johnson's decided taste for this species of writing,
+and his familiarity with the works of those whose lives he has recorded,
+peculiarly fitted him for the task; but it has been denounced by some as
+dogmatical, and even morose; minute critics have detected inaccuracies;
+the admirers of particular authors have complained of an insufficiency
+of praise to the objects of their fond and exclusive regard; and the
+political zealot has affected to decry the staunch and unbending
+champion of regal and ecclesiastical rights. Those, again, of high and
+imaginative minds, who "lift themselves up to look to the sky of poetry,
+and far removed from the dull-making cataract of Nilus, listen to the
+planet-like music of poetry;" these accuse Johnson of a heavy and
+insensible soul, because he avowed that nature's "world was brazen, and
+that the poets only delivered a golden[1]."
+
+But in spite of the censures of political opponents, private friends,
+and angry critics, it will be acknowledged, by the impartial, and
+by every lover of virtue and of truth, that Johnson's honest heart,
+penetrating mind, and powerful intellect, has given to the world
+memoirs fraught with what is infinitely more valuable than mere verbal
+criticism, or imaginative speculation; he has presented, in his Lives of
+the English Poets, the fruits of his long and careful examination of men
+and manners, and repeated in his age, with the authoritative voice of
+experience, the same dignified lessons of morality, with which he
+had instructed his readers in his earlier years. And if these lives
+contained few merits of their own, they confessedly amended the
+criticism of the nation, and opened the path to a more enlarged and
+liberal style of biography than had, before their publication, appeared.
+
+The bold manner in which Johnson delivered what he believed to be the
+truth, naturally provoked hostile attack, and we are not prepared to
+say, that, in many instances, the strictures passed upon him might not
+be just. We will call the attention of our readers to some few of the
+charges brought against the work now before us, and then leave it to
+their candid and unbiased judgment to decide, whether the deficiencies
+pointed out are but as dust in the balance, when brought to weigh
+against the sterling excellence with which this last and greatest
+production of our Moralist abounds.
+
+He has been accused of indulging a spirit of political animosity, of an
+illiberal and captious method of criticism, of frequent inaccuracies,
+and of a general haughtiness of manner, indicative of a feeling of
+superiority over the subjects of his memorial.
+
+In the life of Milton his political prejudices are most apparent. It is
+not our duty, neither our inclination, in this place, to discuss the
+accuracy of Johnson's political wisdom. We cannot, however, but respect
+the integrity with which he clung to the instructions of his youth,
+amidst poverty, and all those inconveniencies which usually drive men to
+a discontent with things as they are.
+
+Those who censure him without qualification or reserve, are as bad, or
+worse, on the opposite side.
+
+They accuse him of narrow-minded prejudice, and of bigoted attachment to
+powers that be with a rancour little befitting the liberality of which
+they make such vaunting professions. Johnson had a really benevolent
+heart, but despised and detested the affectation of a sentimental and
+universal philanthropy, which neglects the practical charities of
+home and kindred, in its wild and excursive flights after distant and
+romantic objects. He was no tyrant, even in theory, but he dreaded, and,
+therefore, sought to expose, the lurking designs of those who opposed
+constituted authorities, because they hated subjection; and who, when
+they gained power themselves, proved the well-grounded nature of the
+fears entertained respecting their sincerity. Johnson was a firm
+English character, and his surly expressions were often philanthropy in
+disguise. They have little studied his real disposition, who impute his
+occasional austerity of manner to misanthropy at heart. The man who is
+smooth to all alike, is frequently the friend of none, and those who
+entertain no aversions, have, perhaps, few of the warmer emotions of
+friendship.
+
+In dwelling thus long on a part of Johnson's character, on which we have
+elsewhere[2] avowed that we could not speak with perfect pleasure, we
+are not attempting to vindicate him in all his violent reproaches of
+those whom he politically disliked. We would, however, wish to deprecate
+unmitigated condemnation, and also to ask, whether the conduct of those
+whom he denounced, was not, in its turn, so harsh and arbitrary, as
+almost to justify the utmost severity of censure. Were they not men who
+would "scarcely believe in the substance of their liberty, if they did
+not see it cast a shadow of slavery over others."
+
+With respect to Johnson's powers as a critic, we confess that he had but
+little natural taste for poetry, as such; for that poetry of emotion
+which produces in its cultivators and admirers an intensity of
+excitement, to which language can scarcely afford an utterance, to which
+art can give no body, and which spreads a dream and a glory around us.
+All this Johnson felt not, and, therefore, understood not; for he wanted
+that deep feeling which is the only sure and unerring test of poetic
+excellence. He sought the didactic in poetry, and wished for reasoning
+in numbers. Hence his undivided admiration of Pope and the French
+school, who cultivated exclusively the poetry of idea, where each moral
+problem is worked out with detailed, and often tedious, analysis; where
+all intense emotion is frittered away by a ratiocinative process.
+Johnson, we repeat, had no natural perception nor relish for the high
+and excursive range of poetic fancy, and the age at which he composed
+his criticisms on the English poets, was far advanced beyond that when
+purely imaginative poetry usually affords delight. Hence, no doubt,
+proceeded his capricious strictures on the odes of Gray to which
+we, with painful candour, advert. In criticism and in poetry, for
+indignation only poured forth the torrent of his song, he kept steadily
+in view the interests of morality and virtue: these he would not
+compromise for the glitter of genius, and for their maintenance of
+these, the main objects of his own life and labour, he praised many an
+author whom other more courtly critics have thought it not cruelty to
+ridicule. He sums up his eulogium on a poet with the reflection, that he
+left
+
+  No line which, dying, he could wish to blot.
+
+Johnson has also not escaped animadversion for entitling his collection
+The Lives of the English Poets, when he has taken so confined a range.
+It must be remembered, that he only professed, in the first instance,
+to prefix lives to the works which the booksellers chose to publish; he
+was, therefore, confined to a task, at which he more than once expressed
+his repugnance to Boswell. It should also, in fairness to his memory,
+be borne in mind, that he wrote, as he confesses in his preface, from
+scanty materials, and on various authors. It was very easy, therefore,
+for each successive biographer, who devoted his time to the collection
+of memoirs for some single individual, to point out inaccuracies in
+Johnson's general statements; and very natural, also for one who had
+contracted an affection for the subject of his labours, by continually
+having him present in his thoughts, to carp at all those who were not as
+alive to the merits, and as blind to the defects of his idol as himself.
+But Johnson, feeling a manly consciousness of ability, which he affected
+not to hide, was not dazzled by the lustre of brilliant talents, and was
+far too honest to veil from public view the faults and failings of the
+sons of genius. This he did not from a sour delight in detecting and
+exposing the frailties of his fellow men, but from a belief that, in so
+doing, he was promoting the good of mankind. "It is particularly the
+duty," says he, "of those who consign illustrious names to posterity,
+to take care lest their readers be misled by ambiguous examples. That
+writer may justly be condemned as an enemy to goodness, who suffers
+fondness or interest to confound right with wrong, or to shelter the
+faults, which even the wisest and the best have committed, from that
+ignominy which guilt ought always to suffer, and with which it should be
+more deeply stigmatized, when dignified by its neighbourhood to uncommon
+worth: since we shall be in danger of beholding it without abhorrence,
+unless its turpitude be laid open, and the eye secured from the
+deception of surrounding splendour[3]." "If nothing but the bright side
+of characters should be shown," he once remarked to Malone, "we should
+sit down in despondency, and think it utterly impossible to imitate them
+in any thing[4]." It was this conscientious freedom, we believe, that
+has, more than any other cause, subjected the Lives of the Poets to
+severe censure. We readily avow this our belief, since we are persuaded
+that it is now generally admitted by all, but those who are influenced
+by an irreligious or a party spirit. We might diffuse these remarks to
+a wide extent, by allusions to the opinions of different authors on the
+Lives, and by critiques on the separate memoirs themselves; but we will
+not longer occupy our readers, since the literary history of the Lives
+has been elsewhere so fully detailed, and is now so almost universally
+known[5].
+
+What we have already advanced, has chiefly been with a view to invite to
+the perusal of a work, which, for sound criticism, instructive memoir,
+pleasing diction, and pure morality, must constitute the most lasting
+monument of Johnson's fame.
+
+[Footnote 1: See sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry.]
+
+[Footnote 2: See vol. vi. 153.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Rambler, 164.]
+
+[Footnote 4: See Malone's letter, in Boswell, iv. 55.]
+
+[Footnote 5: See Boswell; Dr. Drake's Literary Life of Johnson; and,
+since we dread not examination, Potter's Inquiry into some Passages in
+Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets; Graves's Recollections of Shenstone;
+Mitford's preface to Gray's works; Roscoe's preface to Pope's works, &c.]
+
+
+
+
+COWLEY
+
+The life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography, has
+been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of imagination
+and elegance of language have deservedly set him high in the ranks of
+literature; but his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has
+produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the
+character, not the life, of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail,
+that scarcely any thing is distinctly known, but all is shown confused
+and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.
+
+Abraham Cowley was born in the year one thousand six hundred and
+eighteen. His father was a grocer, whose condition Dr. Sprat conceals
+under the general appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably not
+have been less carefully suppressed, the omission of his name in the
+register of St. Dunstan's parish gives reason to suspect that his father
+was a sectary. Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his son, and,
+consequently, left him to the care of his mother; whom Wood represents
+as struggling earnestly to procure him a literary education, and who, as
+she lived to the age of eighty, had her solicitude rewarded, by seeing
+her son eminent, and, I hope, by seeing him fortunate, and partaking
+his prosperity. We know, at least, from Sprat's account, that he always
+acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues of filial gratitude.
+
+In the window of his mother's apartment lay Spenser's Fairy Queen; in
+which he very early took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms
+of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are
+the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and, perhaps, sometimes
+forgotten, produce that particular designation of mind, and propensity
+for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called
+genius. The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally
+determined to some particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great
+painter of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited
+by the perusal of Richardson's treatise.
+
+By his mother's solicitation he was admitted into Westminster school,
+where he was soon distinguished. He was wont, says Sprat, to relate,
+"that he had this defect in his memory at that time, that his teachers
+never could bring it to retain the ordinary rules of grammar."
+
+This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder.
+It is, surely, very difficult to tell any thing as it was heard, when
+Sprat could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though
+the book to which he prefixed his narrative, contained its confutation.
+A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual
+digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks,
+had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision
+made by nature for literary politeness. But, in the author's own honest
+relation, the marvel vanishes: he was, he says, such "an enemy to all
+constraint, that his master never could prevail on him to learn the
+rules without book." He does not tell, that he could not learn the
+rules; but that, being able to perform his exercises without them, and
+being an "enemy to constraint," he spared himself the labour.
+
+Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope, might be said "to
+lisp in numbers;" and have given such early proofs, not only of powers
+of language, but of comprehension of things, as, to more tardy minds,
+seems scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there
+is no doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only written, but
+printed, in his thirteenth year[6]; containing, with other poetical
+compositions, the Tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe, written when
+he was ten years old; and Constantia and Philetus, written two years
+after.
+
+While he was yet at school, he produced a comedy, called, Love's Riddle,
+though it was not published, till he had been some time at Cambridge.
+This comedy is of the pastoral kind, which requires no acquaintance with
+the living world, and, therefore, the time at which it was composed adds
+little to the wonders of Cowley's minority.
+
+In 1636, he was removed to Cambridge[7], where he continued his studies
+with great intenseness; for he is said to have written, while he was yet
+a young student, the greater part of his Davideis; a work of which the
+materials could not have been collected without the study of many years,
+but by a mind of the greatest vigour and activity.
+
+Two years after his settlement at Cambridge he published Love's Riddle,
+with a poetical dedication to sir Kenelm Digby, of whose acquaintance
+all his contemporaries seem to have been ambitious; and Naufragium
+Joculare, a comedy, written in Latin, but without due attention to
+the ancient models; for it is not loose verse, but mere prose. It
+was printed with a dedication in verse, to Dr. Comber, master of the
+college; but, having neither the facility of a popular, nor the accuracy
+of a learned work, it seems to be now universally neglected.
+
+At the beginning of the civil war, as the prince passed through
+Cambridge, in his way to York, he was entertained with a representation
+of the Guardian, a comedy, which, Cowley says, was neither written nor
+acted, but rough-drawn by him, and repeated by the scholars. That this
+comedy was printed during his absence from his country, he appears to
+have considered as injurious to his reputation; though, during the
+suppression of the theatres, it was sometimes privately acted with
+sufficient approbation.
+
+In 1643, being now master of arts, he was, by the prevalence of the
+parliament, ejected from Cambridge, and sheltered himself at St. John's
+college, in Oxford; where, as is said by Wood, he published a satire,
+called the Puritan and Papist, which was only inserted in the last
+collection of his works[8]; and so distinguished himself by the warmth
+of his loyalty and the elegance of his conversation, that he gained the
+kindness and confidence of those who attended the king, and, amongst
+others, of lord Falkland, whose notice cast a lustre on all to whom it
+was extended.
+
+About the time when Oxford was surrendered to the parliament, he
+followed the queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the lord
+Jermyn, afterwards earl of St. Alban's, and was employed in such
+correspondence as the royal cause required, and particularly in
+ciphering and deciphering the letters that passed between the king and
+queen; an employment of the highest confidence and honour. So wide was
+his province of intelligence, that, for several years, it filled all his
+days and two or three nights in the week.
+
+In the year 1647, his Mistress was published; for he imagined, as
+he declared in his preface to a subsequent edition, that "poets are
+scarcely thought freemen of their company without paying some duties, or
+obliging themselves to be true to love."
+
+This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to the
+fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful
+homage to his Laura, refined the manners of the lettered world, and
+filled Europe with love and poetry. But the basis of all excellence is
+truth: he that professes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a
+real lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness. Of Cowley, we
+are told by Barnes, who had means enough of information, that, whatever
+he may talk of his own inflammability, and the variety of characters by
+which his heart was divided, he, in reality, was in love but once, and
+then never had resolution to tell his passion.
+
+This consideration cannot but, abate, in some measure, the reader's
+esteem for the work and the author. To love excellence is natural; it
+is natural, likewise, for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an
+elaborate display of his own qualifications. The desire of pleasing has,
+in different men, produced actions of heroism, and effusions of wit; but
+it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet of an "airy
+nothing," and to quarrel as to write for what Cowley might have learned
+from his master Pindar, to call "the dream of a shadow."
+
+It is surely not difficult, in the solitude of a college, or in the
+bustle of the world, to find useful studies and serious employment. No
+man needs to be so burdened with life, as to squander it in voluntary
+dreams of fictitious occurrences. The man that sits down to suppose
+himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an
+elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never
+within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of
+his folly from him who praises beauty which he never saw; complains of
+jealousy which he never felt; supposes himself sometimes invited, and
+sometimes forsaken; fatigues his fancy, and ransacks his memory, for
+images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope, or the gloominess of
+despair; and dresses his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis, sometimes in
+flowers fading as her beauty, and sometimes in gems lasting as her
+virtues.
+
+At Paris, as secretary to lord Jermyn, he was engaged in transacting
+things of real importance with real men and real women, and, at that
+time, did not much employ his thoughts upon phantoms of gallantry. Some
+of his letters to Mr. Bennet, afterwards earl of Arlington, from April
+to December, in 1650, are preserved in Miscellanea Aulica, a collection
+of papers, published by Brown. These letters, being written, like those
+of other men, whose minds are more on things than words, contribute no
+otherwise to his reputation, than as they show him to have been above
+the affectation of unseasonable elegance, and to have known, that the
+business of a statesman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetorick.
+One passage, however, seems not unworthy of some notice. Speaking of the
+Scotch treaty, then in agitation: "The Scotch treaty," says he, "is the
+only thing now in which we are vitally concerned; I am one of the last
+hopers, and yet cannot now abstain from believing that an agreement will
+be made; all people upon the place incline to that of union. The Scotch
+will moderate something of the rigour of their demands; the mutual
+necessity of an accord is visible, the king is persuaded of it. And, to
+tell you the truth, which I take to be an argument above all the rest,
+Virgil has told the same thing to that purpose."
+
+This expression from a secretary of the present time would be considered
+as merely ludicrous, or, at most, as an ostentatious display of
+scholarship; but the manners of that time were so tinged with
+superstition, that I cannot but suspect Cowley of having consulted,
+on this great occasion, the Virgilian lots[9], and to have given some
+credit to the answer of his oracle.
+
+Some years afterwards, "business," says Sprat, "passed of course into
+other hands;" and Cowley, being no longer useful at Paris, was, in 1656,
+sent back into England, that, "under pretence of privacy and retirement,
+he might take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this
+nation."
+
+Soon after his return to London, he was seized by some messengers of the
+usurping powers, who were sent out in quest of another man; and, being
+examined, was put into confinement, from which he was not dismissed
+without the security of a thousand pounds, given by Dr. Scarborough.
+
+This year he published his poems, with a preface, in which he seems to
+have inserted something suppressed in subsequent editions, which was
+interpreted to denote some relaxation of his loyalty. In this preface he
+declares, that "his desire had been for some days past, and did still
+very vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of the American
+plantations, and to forsake this world for ever."
+
+From the obloquy which the appearance of submission to the usurpers
+brought upon him, his biographer has been very diligent to clear him,
+and, indeed, it does not seem to have lessened his reputation. His wish
+for retirement we can easily believe to be undissembled; a man harassed
+in one kingdom, and persecuted in another, who, after a course of
+business that employed all his days, and half his nights, in ciphering
+and deciphering, comes to his own country, and steps into a prison, will
+be willing enough to retire to some place of quiet and of safety. Yet
+let neither our reverence for a genius, nor our pity for a sufferer,
+dispose us to forget, that, if his activity was virtue, his retreat was
+cowardice[10].
+
+He then took upon himself the character of physician, still, according
+to Sprat, with intention "to dissemble the main design of his coming
+over;" and, as Mr. Wood relates, "complying with the men then in power,
+which was much taken notice of by the royal party, he obtained an order
+to be created doctor of physick; which being done to his mind, whereby
+he gained the ill will of some of his friends, he went into France
+again, having made a copy of verses on Oliver's death."
+
+This is no favourable representation, yet even in this not much wrong
+can be discovered. How far he complied with the men in power, is to be
+inquired before he can be blamed. It is not said, that he told them any
+secrets, or assisted them by intelligence or any other act. If he only
+promised to be quiet, that they in whose hands he was might free him
+from confinement, he did what no law of society prohibits.
+
+The man whose miscarriage in a just cause has put him in the power
+of his enemy may, without any violation of his integrity, regain his
+liberty, or preserve his life, by a promise of neutrality; for, the
+stipulation gives the enemy nothing which he had not before: the
+neutrality of a captive may be always secured by his imprisonment or
+death. He that is at the disposal of another may not promise to aid him
+in any injurious act, because no power can compel active obedience. He
+may engage to do nothing, but not to do ill.
+
+There is reason to think that Cowley promised little. It does not appear
+that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be trusted without
+security, for the bond of his bail was never cancelled; nor that it made
+him think himself secure, for, at that dissolution of government which
+followed the death of Oliver, he returned into France, where he resumed
+his former station, and staid till the restoration[11].
+
+"He continued," says his biographer, "under these bonds, till the
+general deliverance;" it is, therefore, to be supposed, that he did not
+go to France, and act again for the king, without the consent of his
+bondsman; that he did not show his loyalty at the hazard of his friend,
+but by his friend's permission.
+
+Of the verses on Oliver's death, in which Wood's narrative seems to
+imply something encomiastick, there has been no appearance. There is a
+discourse concerning his government, indeed, with verses intermixed, but
+such as certainly gained its author no friends among the abettors of
+usurpation.
+
+A doctor of physick, however, he was made at Oxford, in December, 1657;
+and, in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an account
+has been given by Dr. Birch, he appears busy among the experimental
+philosophers, with the title of Dr. Cowley.
+
+There is no reason for supposing that he ever attempted practice: but
+his preparatory studies have contributed something to the honour of his
+country. Considering botany as necessary to a physician, he retired into
+Kent to gather plants; and as the predominance of a favourite study
+affects all subordinate operations of the intellect, botany, in the mind
+of Cowley, turned into poetry. He composed, in Latin, several books on
+plants, of which the first and second display the qualities of herbs, in
+elegiac verse; the third and fourth, the beauties of flowers, in various
+measures; and the fifth and sixth, the uses of trees, in heroick
+numbers.
+
+At the same time were produced, from the same university, the two great
+poets, Cowley and Milton, of dissimilar genius, of opposite principles;
+but concurring in the cultivation of Latin poetry, in which the English,
+till their works and May's poem appeared[12], seemed unable to contest
+the palm with any other of the lettered nations.
+
+If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared, (for May I
+hold to be superiour to both,) the advantage seems to lie on the side
+of Cowley. Milton is generally content to express the thoughts of the
+ancients in their language; Cowley, without much loss of purity or
+elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.
+
+At the restoration, after all the diligence of his long service, and
+with consciousness not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity
+of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and, that
+he might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a song of triumph. But
+this was a time of such general hope, that great numbers were inevitably
+disappointed; and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed. He had
+been promised, by both Charles the first and second, the mastership of
+the Savoy, "but he lost it," says Wood, "by certain persons, enemies to
+the muses."
+
+The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having by such
+alteration, as he thought proper, fitted his old comedy of the Guardian
+for the stage, he produced it[13], under the title of the Cutter of
+Coleman street[14]. It was treated on the stage with great severity, and
+was afterwards censured as a satire on the king's party.
+
+Mr. Dryden, who went with Mr. Sprat to the first exhibition, related
+to Mr. Dennis, "that, when they told Cowley how little favour had been
+shown him, he received the news of his ill success, not with so much
+firmness as might have been expected from so great a man."
+
+What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley discovered, cannot
+be known. He that misses his end will never be as much pleased as he
+that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure to
+himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man, perhaps,
+has a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparison, to throw
+the whole blame upon his judges, and totally to exclude diffidence and
+shame by a haughty consciousness of his own excellence.
+
+For the rejection of this play, it is difficult now to find the reason:
+it certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention
+and exciting merriment. From the charge of disaffection he exculpates
+himself, in his preface, by observing, how unlikely it is, that, having
+followed the royal family through all their distresses, "he should
+choose the time of their restoration to begin a quarrel with them." It
+appears, however, from the Theatrical Register of Downes, the prompter,
+to have been popularly considered as a satire on the royalists.
+
+That he might shorten this tedious suspense, he published his
+pretensions and his discontent, in an ode called the Complaint; in which
+he styles himself the _melancholy_ Cowley. This met with the usual
+fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than
+pity.
+
+These unlucky incidents are brought, maliciously enough, together in
+some stanzas, written about that time on the choice of a laureate; a
+mode of satire, by which, since it was first introduced by Suckling,
+perhaps, every generation of poets has been teased.
+
+  Savoy-missing Cowley came into the court,
+  Making apologies for his bad play;
+  Every one gave him so good a report,
+  That Apollo gave heed to all he could say:
+  Nor would he have had, 'tis thought, a rebuke,
+  Unless he had done some notable folly;
+  Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,
+  Or printed his pitiful Melancholy.
+
+His vehement desire of retirement now came again upon him. "Not
+finding," says the morose Wood, "that preferment conferred upon him
+which he expected, while others for their money carried away most
+places, he retired discontented into Surrey."
+
+"He was now," says the courtly Sprat, "weary of the vexations and
+formalities of an active condition. He had been perplexed with a long
+compliance to foreign manners. He was satiated with the arts of a court;
+which sort of life, though his virtue made it innocent to him, yet
+nothing could make it quiet. Those were the reasons that moved him to
+follow the violent inclination of his own mind, which, in the greatest
+throng of his former business, had still called upon him, and
+represented to him the true delights of solitary studies, of temperate
+pleasures, and a moderate revenue below the malice and flatteries of
+fortune."
+
+So differently are things seen! and so differently are they shown!
+But actions are visible, though motives are secret. Cowley certainly
+retired; first to Barn-elms, and afterwards to Chertsey, in Surrey. He
+seems, however, to have lost part of his dread of the "hum of men[15]."
+He thought himself now safe enough from intrusion, without the defence of
+mountains and oceans; and, instead of seeking shelter in America, wisely
+went only so far from the bustle of life as that he might easily find
+his way back, when solitude should grow tedious. His retreat was, at
+first, but slenderly accommodated; yet he soon obtained, by the interest
+of the earl of St. Alban's and the duke of Buckingham, such a lease of
+the queen's lands, as afforded him an ample income[16].
+
+By the lovers of virtue and of wit it will be solicitously asked, if
+he now was happy. Let them peruse one of his letters, accidentally
+preserved by Peck, which I recommend to the consideration of all that
+may, hereafter, pant for solitude.
+
+"TO DR. THOMAS SPRAT.
+
+"Chertsey, May 21, 1665.
+
+"The first night that I came hither I caught so great a cold, with a
+defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days. And, two after,
+had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet unable to move
+or turn myself in my bed. This is my personal fortune here to begin
+with. And, besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and have my
+meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in by my neighbours. What
+this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it
+can end in nothing less than hanging. Another misfortune has been, and
+stranger than all the rest, that you have broke your word with me, and
+failed to come, even though you told Mr. Bois that you would. This is
+what they call 'Monstri simile.' I do hope to recover my late hurt so
+farre within five or six days, (though it be uncertain yet whether I
+shall ever recover it,) as to walk about again. And then, methinks, you
+and I and 'the dean' might be very merry upon St. Ann's hill. You might
+very conveniently come hither the way of Hampton Town, lying there one
+night. I write this in pain, and can say no more: 'Verbum sapienti.'"
+
+He did not long enjoy the pleasure, or suffer the uneasiness, of
+solitude; for he died at the Porch-house[17] in Chertsey, in 1667, in
+the forty-ninth year of his age.
+
+He was buried, with great pomp, near Chaucer and Spenser; and king
+Charles pronounced, "that Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better
+man in England." He is represented, by Dr. Sprat, as the most amiable of
+mankind; and this posthumous praise may safely be credited, as it has
+never been contradicted by envy or by faction.
+
+Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to the
+narrative of Dr. Sprat; who, writing when the feuds of the civil war
+were yet recent, and the minds of either party were easily irritated,
+was obliged to pass over many transactions in general expressions, and
+to leave curiosity often unsatisfied. What he did not tell, cannot,
+however, now be known; I must, therefore, recommend the perusal of
+his work, to which my narration can be considered only as a slender
+supplement.
+
+Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and,
+instead of tracing intellectual pleasures in the minds of men, paid
+their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much
+praised, and too much neglected at another.
+
+Wit, like all other things, subject by their nature to the choice of
+man, has its changes and fashions, and, at different times, takes
+different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century,
+appeared a race of writers, that may be termed the metaphysical poets;
+of whom in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to
+give some account.
+
+The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and, to show their learning
+was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme,
+instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and, very often, such
+verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the
+modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by
+counting the syllables.
+
+If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry, 'technae
+mimaetikhae', an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong,
+lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have
+imitated any thing; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted
+the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect.
+
+Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden
+confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne
+in wit; but maintains, that they surpass him in poetry.
+
+If wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has been often
+thought, but was never before so well expressed," they certainly never
+attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular in
+their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account
+of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural
+dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of
+language.
+
+If, by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered as
+wit which is, at once, natural and new, that which, though not obvious,
+is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that,
+which he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind
+the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new,
+but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just;
+and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more
+frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found.
+
+But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more
+rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of "discordia
+concors;" a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult
+resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they
+have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by
+violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations,
+comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty
+surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought,
+and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
+
+From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred,
+that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections.
+As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising,
+they had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment which enables us to
+conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they
+never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done; but
+wrote rather as beholders, than partakers of human nature; as beings
+looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as epicurean
+deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of
+life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of
+fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say
+what they hoped had never been said before.
+
+Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetick; for they
+never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which, at
+once, fills the whole mind, and of which, the first effect is sudden
+astonishment, and the second, rational admiration. Sublimity is produced
+by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always
+general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in
+descriptions not descending to minuteness. It is with great propriety
+that subtilty, which, in its original import, means exility of
+particles, is taken, in its metaphorical meaning, for nicety of
+distinction. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have
+little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former
+observation. Their attempts were always analytick; they broke every
+image into fragments; and could no more represent, by their slender
+conceits, and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature, or the
+scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit
+the wide effulgence of a summer noon.
+
+What they wanted, however, of the sublime, they endeavoured to supply by
+hyperbole; their amplification had no limits; they left not only
+reason but fancy behind them; and produced combinations of confused
+magnificence, that not only could not be credited, but could not be
+imagined.
+
+Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost;
+if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they,
+likewise, sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were
+far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan
+it was, at least, necessary to read and think. No man could be born a
+metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions
+copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by
+traditional imagery, and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme, and
+volubility of syllables[18].
+
+In perusing the works of this race of authors, the mind is exercised
+either by recollection or inquiry; either something already learned is
+to be retrieved, or something new is to be examined. If their greatness
+seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination is
+not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison
+are employed; and, in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity
+has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes
+found buried, perhaps, in grossness of expression, but useful to
+those who know their value; and such as, when they are expanded to
+perspicuity, and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which
+have more propriety, though less copiousness of sentiment.
+
+This kind of writing, which was, I believe, borrowed from Marino and his
+followers, had been recommended by the example of Donne, a man of very
+extensive and various knowledge; and by Jonson, whose manner resembled
+that of Donne more in the ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of
+his sentiments.
+
+When their reputation was high, they had, undoubtedly, more imitators
+than time has left behind. Their immediate successours, of whom any
+remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, Denham,
+Cowley, Cleiveland, and Milton. Denham and Waller sought another way
+to fame, by improving the harmony of our numbers. Milton tried the
+metaphysick style only in his lines upon Hobson, the carrier. Cowley
+adopted it, and excelled his predecessors, having as much sentiment, and
+more musick. Suckling neither improved versification, nor abounded in
+conceits. The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling
+could not reach it, and Milton disdained it.
+
+Critical remarks are not easily understood without examples; and I have,
+therefore, collected instances of the modes of writing by which this
+species of poets, for poets they were called by themselves and their
+admirers, was eminently distinguished.
+
+As the authors of this race were, perhaps, more desirous of being
+admired than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits from
+recesses of learning, not very much frequented by common readers of
+poetry. Thus Cowley, on knowledge:
+
+  The sacred tree 'midst the fair orchard grew;
+  The phoenix, truth, did on it rest,
+  And built his perfum'd nest:
+  That right Porphyrian tree which did true logic shew;
+  Each leaf did learned notions give,
+  And th' apples were demonstrative;
+  So clear their colour and divine,
+  The very shade they cast did other lights outshine.
+
+On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age:
+
+  Love was with thy life entwin'd,
+  Close as heat with fire is join'd;
+  A powerful brand prescrib'd the date
+  Of thine, like Meleager's fate
+
+  Th' antiperistasis of age
+  More enflam'd thy amorous rage.
+
+In the following verses we have an allusion to a rabbinical opinion
+concerning manna:
+
+  Variety I ask not: give me one
+  To live perpetually upon.
+  The person love does to us fit,
+  Like manna, has the taste of all in it.
+
+Thus Donne shows his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastick verses:
+
+  In every thing there naturally grows
+  A balsamum to keep it fresh and new,
+  If 'twere not injur'd by extrinsique blows;
+  Your youth and beauty are this balm in you.
+  But you, of learning and religion,
+  And virtue and such ingredients, have made
+  A mithridate, whose operation
+  Keeps off, or cures what can be done or said.
+
+Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, have
+something in them too scholastick, they are not inelegant:
+
+  This twilight of two years, not past nor next,
+  Some emblem is of me, or I of this,
+  Who, meteor-like, of stuff and form perplext,
+  Whose what and where in disputation is,
+  If I should call me any thing, should miss.
+  I sum the years and me, and find me not
+  Debtor to th' old, nor creditor to th' new.
+  That cannot say, my thanks I have forgot;
+  Nor trust I this with hopes; and yet scarce true
+  This bravery is, since these times shew'd me you.
+
+Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne's reflection upon man as a
+microcosm:
+
+  If men be worlds, there is in every one
+  Something to answer in some proportion
+  All the world's riches: and in good men, this
+  Virtue, our form's form, and our soul's soul, is.
+
+Of thoughts so far-fetched, as to be not only unexpected, but unnatural,
+all their books are full.
+
+To a lady, who wrote poesies for rings:
+
+  They, who above do various circles find,
+  Say, like a ring, th' equator heaven does bind.
+  When heaven shall be adorn'd by thee,
+  (Which then more heaven than 'tis will be,)
+  'Tis thou must write the poesy there,
+  For it wanteth one as yet,
+  Then the sun pass through 't twice a year,
+  The sun, which is esteem'd the god of wit.     COWLEY.
+
+The difficulties which have been raised about identity in philosophy,
+are, by Cowley, with still more perplexity applied to love:
+
+  Five years ago (says story) I lov'd you,
+  For which you call me most inconstant now;
+  Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man;
+  For I am not the same that I was then:
+  No flesh is now the same 'twas then in me;
+  And that my mind is chang'd yourself may see.
+  The same thoughts to retain still, and intents,
+  Were more inconstant far; for accidents
+  Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove,
+  If from one subject they t' another move;
+  My members, then, the father members were,
+  From whence these take their birth which now are here.
+  If then this body love what th' other did,
+  'Twere incest, which by nature is forbid.
+
+The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, compared to
+travels through different countries:
+
+  Hast thou not found each woman's breast
+  (The land where thou hast travelled)
+  Either by savages possest,
+  Or wild, and uninhabited?
+  What joy could'st take, or what repose,
+  In countries so unciviliz'd as those?
+
+  Lust, the scorching dogstar, here
+  Rages with immoderate heat;
+  Whilst pride, the rugged northern bear,
+  In others makes the cold too great.
+  And where these are temperate known,
+  The soil's all barren sand, or rocky stone.      COWLEY.
+
+A lover, burnt up by his affection, is compared to Egypt:
+
+  The fate of Egypt I sustain,
+  And never feel the dew of rain
+  From clouds which in the head appear;
+  But all my too much moisture owe
+  To overflowings of the heart below.              COWLEY.
+
+The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury,
+and rites of sacrifice:
+
+  And yet this death of mine, I fear,
+  Will ominous to her appear:
+  When sound in every other part,
+  Her sacrifice is found without an heart.
+  For the last tempest of my death
+  Shall sigh out that too, with my breath.
+
+That the chaos was harmonized, has been recited of old; but whence the
+different sounds arose remained for a modern to discover:
+
+  Th' ungovern'd parts no correspondence knew;
+  An artless war from thwarting motions grew;
+  Till they to number and fixt rules were brought.
+  Water and air he for the tenor chose;
+  Earth made the base; the treble,
+  flame arose.                                    COWLEY.
+
+The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account; but Donne has
+extended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily understood, they
+may be read again:
+
+  On a round ball
+  A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
+  An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
+  And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.
+
+  So doth each tear,
+  Which thee doth wear,
+  A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
+  Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflow
+  This world, by waters sent from thee my heaven dissolved so.
+
+On reading the following lines, the reader may, perhaps, cry out,
+"Confusion worse confounded:"
+
+  Here lies a she-sun, and a he-moon here,
+  She gives the best light to his sphere,
+  Or each is both, and all, and so
+  They unto one another nothing owe.                DONNE.
+
+Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a telescope?
+
+  Though God be our true glass, through which we see
+  All, since the being of all things is he,
+  Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive
+  Things in proportion fit, by perspective
+  Deeds of good men; for by their living here,
+  Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.
+
+Who would imagine it possible, that in a very few lines so many remote
+ideas could be brought together?
+
+  Since 'tis my doom, love's undershrieve,
+  Why this reprieve?
+  Why doth my she-advowson fly
+  Incumbency?
+  To sell thyself dost thou intend
+  By candle's end,
+  And hold the contrast thus in doubt,
+  Life's taper out?
+  Think but how soon the market fails,
+  Your sex lives faster than the males;
+  And if, to measure age's span,
+  The sober Julian were th' account of man,
+  Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.           CLEIVELAND.
+
+Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples:
+
+  By every wind that comes this way,
+  Send me, at least, a sigh or two,
+  Such and so many I'll repay
+  As shall themselves make winds to get to you.     COWLEY.
+
+  In tears I'll waste these eyes,
+  By love so vainly fed;
+  So lust of old the deluge punished.               COWLEY.
+
+  All arm'd in brass, the richest dress of war,
+  (A dismal glorious sight!) he shone afar.
+  The sun himself started with sudden fright,
+  To see his beams return so dismal bright.         COWLEY.
+
+An universal consternation:
+
+  His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws
+  Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about,
+  Lashing his angry tail, and roaring out.
+  Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;
+  Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;
+  Silence and horror fill the place around;
+  Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound.        COWLEY.
+
+Their fictions were often violent and unnatural.
+
+Of his mistress bathing:
+
+  The fish around her crowded, as they do
+  To the false light that treacherous fishers shew,
+  And all with as much ease might taken be,
+  As she at first took me;
+  For ne'er did light so clear
+  Among the waves appear,
+  Though every night the sun himself set there.     COWLEY.
+
+The poetical effect of a lover's name upon glass:
+
+  My name engrav'd herein
+  Doth contribute my firmness to this glass;
+  Which, ever since that charm, hath been
+  As hard as that which grav'd it was.              DONNE.
+
+Their conceits were sentiments slight and trifling. On an inconstant
+woman:
+
+  He enjoys the calmy sunshine now,
+  And no breath stirring hears;
+  In the clear heaven of thy brow,
+  No smallest cloud appears.
+  He sees thee gentle, fair and gay,
+  And trusts the faithless April of thy May.        COWLEY
+
+Upon a paper, written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire:
+
+  Nothing yet in thee is seen,
+  But when a genial heat warms thee within,
+  A new-born wood of various lines there grows:
+  Here buds an L, and there a B;
+  Here sprouts a V, and there a T;
+  And all the flourishing letters stand in rows.      COWLEY.
+
+As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire, whether
+their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether
+they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.
+
+Physick and chirurgery for a lover:
+
+  Gently, ah gently, madam, touch
+  The wound, which you yourself have made;
+  That pain must needs be very much,
+  Which makes me of your hand afraid,
+  Cordials of pity give me now,
+  For I too weak for purgings grow.                   COWLEY.
+
+The world and a clock:
+
+  Mahol th' inferior world's fantastic face
+  Thro' all the turns of matter's maze did trace;
+  Great nature's well-set clock in pieces took;
+  On all the springs and smallest wheels did look
+  Of life and motion, and with equal art
+  Made up the whole again of every part.             COWLEY.
+
+A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not want its
+due honour, Cleiveland has paralleled it with the sun:
+
+  The moderate value of our guiltless ore
+  Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore;
+  Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine
+  Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
+  These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,
+  Than a few embers, for a deity.
+  Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
+  No sun, but warm 's devotion at our fire:
+  He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
+  Our profound Vulcan 'bove that wagoner.
+  For wants he heat, or light? or would have store
+  Of both? 'tis here: and what can suns give more?
+  Nay, what's the sun, but in a different name,
+  A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame!
+  Then let this truth reciprocally run,
+  The sun's heaven's coalery, and coals our sun.
+
+Death, a voyage:
+
+  No family
+  E'er rigg'd a soul for heaven's discovery,
+  With whom more venturers might boldly dare
+  Venture their stakes, with him in joy to share.        DONNE.
+
+Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such
+as no figures or license can reconcile to the understanding.
+
+A lover neither dead nor alive:
+
+  Then down I laid my head,
+  Down on cold earth; and for awhile was dead,
+  And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled;
+  Ah, sottish soul, said I,
+  When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
+  Fool to resume her broken chain,
+  And row her galley here again!
+  Fool, to that body to return
+  Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn!
+  Once dead, how can it be,
+  Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
+  That thou should'st come to live it o'er again in me?   COWLEY.
+
+A lover's heart, a hand grenado:
+
+  Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come
+  Into the self-same room;
+  'Twill tear and blow up all within,
+  Like a grenado shot into a magazin.
+  Then shall love keep the ashes and torn parts,
+  Of both our broken hearts;
+  Shall out of both one new one make;
+  From hers th' allay, from mine the metal take.         COWLEY.
+
+To poetical propagation of light;
+
+  The prince's favour is diffus'd o'er all,
+  From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall:
+  Then from those wombs of stars, the bride's bright eyes,
+  At every glance a constellation flies,
+  And sowes the court with stars, and doth prevent,
+  In light and power, the all-ey'd firmament:
+  First her eye kindles other ladies' eyes,
+  Then from their beams their jewels' lustres rise:
+  And from their jewels torches do take fire,
+  And all is warmth, and light, and good desire.        DONNE.
+
+They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance of
+dress, and, therefore, miss the notice and the praise which are often
+gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their
+thoughts.
+
+That a mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality, is, by
+Cowley, thus expressed:
+
+  Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand,
+  Than woman can be plac'd by nature's hand;
+  And I must needs, I'm sure, a loser be,
+  To change thee, as thou'rt there, for very thee.
+
+That prayer and labour should cooperate, are thus taught by Donne:
+
+  In none but us are such mix'd engines found,
+  As hands of double office: for the ground
+  We till with them; and them to heaven we raise:
+  Who prayerless labours, or, without this, prays,
+  Doth but one half, that's none.
+
+By the same author, a common topick, the danger of procrastination, is
+thus illustrated:
+
+  That which I should have begun
+  In my youth's morning, now late must be done;
+  And I, as giddy travellers must do,
+  Which stray or sleep all day, and, having lost
+  Light and strength, dark and tir'd must then ride post.
+
+All that man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity is
+comprehended by Donne in the following lines:
+
+  Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie;
+  After enabled but to suck and cry.
+  Think, when 'twas grown to most, 'twas a poor inn,
+  A province pack'd up in two yards of skin,
+  And that usurp'd, or threaten'd with a rage
+  Of sicknesses, or their true mother, age.
+  But think that death hath now enfranchis'd thee;
+  Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty;
+  Think, that a rusty piece discharg'd is flown
+  In pieces, and the bullet is his own,
+  And freely flies: this to thy soul allow,
+  Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatch'd but now.
+
+They were sometimes indelicate and disgusting. Cowley thus apostrophises
+beauty:
+
+  Thou tyrant, which leav'st no man free!
+  Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be!
+  Thou murderer, which hast kill'd; and devil, which would'st damn me!
+
+Thus he addresses his mistress:
+
+  Thou who, in many a propriety,
+  So truly art the sun to me,
+  Add one more likeness, which I'm sure you can,
+  And let me and my sun beget a man.
+
+Thus he represents the meditations of a lover:
+
+  Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracks have been
+  So much as of original sin,
+
+  Such charms thy beauty wears, as might
+  Desires in dying confest saints excite.
+  Thou with strange adultery
+  Dost in each breast a brothel keep;
+  Awake, all men do lust for thee,
+  And some enjoy thee when they sleep.
+
+The true taste of tears:
+
+  Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come,
+  And take my tears, which are love's wine,
+  And try your mistress' tears at home;
+  For all are false, that taste not just like mine. DONNE.
+
+This is yet more indelicate:
+
+  As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,
+  As that which from chaf'd musk-cat's pores doth trill,
+  As the almighty balm of th' early east;
+  Such are the sweet drops of my mistress' breast.
+  And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
+  They seem no sweat-drops, but pearl coronets:
+  Rank, sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles.    DONNE.
+
+Their expressions sometimes raise horrour, when they intend, perhaps, to
+be pathetick:
+
+  As men in hell are from diseases free,
+  So from all other ills am I,
+  Free from their known formality:
+  But all pains eminently lie in thee.              COWLEY.
+
+They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which
+they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were
+popular. Bacon remarks, that some falsehoods are continued by tradition,
+because they supply commodious allusions.
+
+  It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke:
+  In vain it something would have spoke;
+  The love within too strong for't was,
+  Like poison put into a Venice-glass.              COWLEY.
+
+In forming descriptions, they looked out, not for images, but for
+conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to
+adorn. Dryden's Night is well known; Donne's is as follows:
+
+  Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest:
+  Time's dead low-water; when all minds divest
+  To-morrow's business; when the labourers have
+  Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,
+  Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
+  Now when the client, whose last hearing is
+  To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
+  Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them then
+  Again by death, although sad watch he keep,
+  Doth practise dying by a little sleep;
+  Thou at this midnight seest me.
+
+It must be, however, confessed of these writers, that if they are upon
+common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtile; yet, where
+scholastick speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and
+acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon hope shows
+an unequalled fertility of invention:
+
+  Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is,
+  Alike if it succeed and if it miss;
+  Whom good or ill does equally confound,
+  And both the horns of fate's dilemma wound;
+  Vain shadow! which dost vanish quite,
+  Both at full noon and perfect night!
+  The stars have not a possibility
+  Of blessing thee;
+  If things then from their end we happy call,
+  'Tis hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
+  Hope, thou bold taster of delight,
+  Who, whilst thou should'st but taste, devour'st it quite!
+  Thou bring'st us an estate, yet leav'st us poor,
+  By clogging it with legacies before!
+  The joys which we entire should wed,
+  Come deflower'd virgins to our bed;
+  Good fortunes without gain imported be,
+  Such mighty custom's paid to thee;
+  For joy, like wine, kept close, does better taste;
+  If it take air before its spirits waste.
+
+To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that
+stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether
+absurdity or ingenuity has better claim:
+
+  Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
+  Though I must go, endure not yet
+  A breach, but an expansion,
+  Like gold to airy thinness beat.
+  If they be two, they are two so
+  As stiff twin compasses are two;
+  Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
+  To move, but doth if th' other do.
+  And though it in the centre sit,
+  Yet, when the other far doth roam,
+  It leans, and hearkens after it,
+  And grows erect, as that comes home.
+  Such wilt thou be to me, who must
+  Like th' other foot obliquely run,
+  Thy firmness makes my circle just,
+  And makes me end where I begun.              DONNE[19].
+
+In all these examples it is apparent, that whatever is improper or
+vitious is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature, in pursuit of
+something new and strange; and that the writers fail to give delight by
+their desire of exciting admiration.
+
+Having thus endeavoured to exhibit a general representation of the style
+and sentiments of the metaphysical poets, it is now proper to examine,
+particularly, the works of Cowley, who was almost the last of that race,
+and undoubtedly the best.
+
+His miscellanies contain a collection of short compositions, written
+some as they were dictated by a mind at leisure, and some as they were
+called forth by different occasions; with great variety of style and
+sentiment, from burlesque levity to awful grandeur. Such an assemblage
+of diversified excellence no other poet has hitherto afforded. To choose
+the best, among many good, is one of the most hazardous attempts of
+criticism. I know not whether Scaliger himself has persuaded many
+readers to join with him in his preference of the two favourite odes,
+which he estimates, in his raptures, at the value of a kingdom. I will,
+however, venture to recommend Cowley's first piece, which ought to be
+inscribed, To my Muse, for want of which the second couplet is without
+reference. When the title is added, there will still remain a defect;
+for every piece ought to contain, in itself, whatever is necessary to
+make it intelligible. Pope has some epitaphs without names; which are,
+therefore, epitaphs to be let, occupied, indeed, for the present, but
+hardly appropriated.
+
+The ode on wit is almost without a rival. It was about the time of
+Cowley, that _wit_, which had been, till then, used for _intellection_,
+in contradistinction to _will_, took the meaning, whatever it be, which
+it now bears.
+
+Of all the passages in which poets have exemplified their own precepts,
+none will easily be found of greater excellence than that in which
+Cowley condemns exuberance of wit:
+
+  Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part,
+  That shews more cost than art.
+  Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear;
+  Rather than all things wit, let none be there.
+  Several lights will not be seen,
+  If there be nothing else between.
+  Men doubt, because they stand so thick i'th' sky,
+  If those be stars which paint the galaxy.
+
+In his verses to lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to
+praise, there are, as there must be in all Cowley's compositions, some
+striking thoughts, but they are not well wrought. His elegy on sir
+Henry Wotton is vigorous and happy; the series of thoughts is easy and
+natural; and the conclusion, though a little weakened by the intrusion
+of Alexander, is elegant and forcible.
+
+It may be remarked, that in this elegy, and in most of his
+encomiastick poems, he has forgotten or neglected to name his heroes.
+
+In his poem on the death of Hervey, there is much praise, but little
+passion; a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious
+privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet
+called forth to action can display. He knew how to distinguish, and how
+to commend, the qualities of his companion; but, when he wishes to make
+us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining
+how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It
+is the odd fate of this thought to be the worse for being true. The
+bay-leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as, therefore, this property
+was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at
+ease that could attend to such minuteness of physiology. But the power
+of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the
+understanding.
+
+The Chronicle is a composition unrivalled and alone: such gaiety of
+fancy, such facility of expression, such varied similitude, such a
+succession of images, and such a dance of words, it is in vain to
+expect, except from Cowley. His strength always appears in his agility;
+his volatility is not the flutter of a light, but the bound of an
+elastick mind. His levity never leaves his learning behind it; the
+moralist, the politician, and the critick, mingle their influence even
+in this airy frolick of genius. To such a performance Suckling could
+have brought the gaiety, but not the knowledge; Dryden could have
+supplied the knowledge, but not the gaiety.
+
+The verses to Davenant, which are vigorously begun and happily
+concluded, contain some hints of criticism very justly conceived
+and happily expressed. Cowley's critical abilities have not been
+sufficiently observed: the few decisions and remarks, which his prefaces
+and his notes on the Davideis supply, were, at that time, accessions
+to English literature, and show such skill as raises our wish for more
+examples.
+
+The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing specimen of the
+familiar descending to the burlesque.
+
+His two metrical disquisitions _for_ and _against_ reason are no mean
+specimens of metaphysical poetry. The stanzas against knowledge produce
+little conviction. In those which are intended to exalt the human
+faculties, reason has its proper task assigned it; that of judging, not
+of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation. In the verses for
+reason, is a passage which Bentley, in the only English verses which
+he is known to have written, seems to have copied, though with the
+inferiority of an imitator.
+
+  The holy book like the eighth sphere doth shine
+  With thousand lights of truth divine,
+  So numberless the stars, that to our eye
+  It makes all but one galaxy.
+  Yet reason must assist too; for, in seas
+  So vast and dangerous as these,
+  Our course by stars above we cannot know
+  Without the compass too below.
+
+After this, says Bentley[20]:
+
+  Who travels in religious jars,
+  Truth mix'd with error, shade with rays,
+  Like Whiston wanting pyx or stars,
+  In ocean wide or sinks or strays.
+
+Cowley seems to have had what Milton is believed to have wanted, the
+skill to rate his own performances by their just value, and has,
+therefore, closed his miscellanies with the verses upon Crashaw, which
+apparently excel all that have gone before them, and in which there are
+beauties which common authors may justly think not only above their
+attainment, but above their ambition.
+
+To the miscellanies succeed the Anacreontiques, or paraphrastical
+translations of some little poems, which pass, however justly, under
+the name of Anacreon. Of these songs dedicated to festivity and gaiety,
+in which even the morality is voluptuous, and which teach nothing but
+the enjoyment of the present day, he has given rather a pleasing, than
+a faithful representation, having retained their sprightliness, but
+lost their simplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope,
+has admitted the decoration of some modern graces, by which he is
+undoubtedly more amiable to common readers, and, perhaps, if they would
+honestly declare their own perceptions, to far the greater part of those
+whom courtesy and ignorance are content to style the learned.
+
+These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than any
+other of Cowley's works. The diction shows nothing of the mould of time,
+and the sentiments are at no great distance from our present habitudes
+of thought. Real mirth must be always natural, and nature is uniform.
+Men have been wise in very different modes; but they have always laughed
+the same way.
+
+Levity of thought naturally produced familiarity of language, and the
+familiar part of language continues long the same; the dialogue of
+comedy, when it is transcribed from popular manners, and real life, is
+read, from age to age, with equal pleasure. The artifices of inversion,
+by which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by
+which new words, or meanings of words, are introduced, is practised,
+not by those who talk to be understood, but by those who write to be
+admired.
+
+The Anacreontiques, therefore, of Cowley, give now all the pleasure
+which they ever gave. If he was formed by nature for one kind of writing
+more than for another, his power seems to have been greatest in the
+familiar and the festive.
+
+The next class of his poems is called the Mistress, of which it is not
+necessary to select any particular pieces for praise or censure.
+They have all the same beauties and faults, and nearly in the same
+proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with
+copiousness of learning; and it is truly asserted by Sprat, that the
+plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, so that the
+reader is commonly surprised into some improvement. But, considered as
+the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend
+them. They are neither courtly nor pathetick, have neither gallantry nor
+fondness. His praises are too far-sought, and too hyperbolical, either
+to express love, or to excite it; every stanza is crowded with darts
+and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled souls, and with broken
+hearts.
+
+The principal artifice by which the Mistress is filled with conceits,
+is very copiously displayed by Addison. Love is by Cowley, as by other
+poets, expressed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is
+true of real fire is said of love, or figurative fire, the same word in
+the same sentence retaining both significations. Thus, "observing the
+cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and, at the same time, their power
+of producing love in him, he considers them as burning-glasses made of
+ice. Finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love,
+he concludes the torrid zone to be habitable. Upon the dying of a tree
+on which he had cut his loves, he observes that his flames had burnt up
+and withered the tree."
+
+These conceits Addison calls mixed wit; that is, wit which consists of
+thoughts true in one sense of the expression, and false in the other.
+Addison's representation is sufficiently indulgent: that confusion of
+images may entertain for a moment; but, being unnatural, it soon grows
+wearisome. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented it;
+but, not to mention the ancients, he might have found it full-blown in
+modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro:
+
+  Aspice quam variis distringar, Lesbia, curis!
+  Uror, et heu! nostro manat ab igne liquor:
+  Sum Nilus, sumque Aetna simul; restringite flammas
+  O lacrimae, aut lacrimas ebibe, flamma, meas.
+
+One of the severe theologians of that time censured him, as having
+published "a book of profane and lascivious verses." From the charge of
+profaneness, the constant tenour of his life, which seems to have been
+eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions, which
+discover no irreverence of religion, must defend him; but that the
+accusation of lasciviousness is unjust, the perusal of his work will
+sufficiently evince.
+
+Cowley's Mistress has no power of seduction: she "plays round the head,
+but reaches not the heart." Her beauty and absence, her kindness and
+cruelty, her disdain and inconstancy, produce no correspondence of
+emotion. His poetical account of the virtues of plants, and colours of
+flowers, is not perused with more sluggish frigidity. The compositions
+are such as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire
+by a philosophical rhymer, who had only heard of another sex; for they
+turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman
+but as the subject for his task, we sometimes esteem as learned, and
+sometimes despise as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always
+condemn as unnatural.
+
+The Pindarique odes are now to be considered; a species of composition,
+which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in "his list of the
+lost inventions of antiquity," and which he has made a bold and vigorous
+attempt to recover.
+
+The purpose with which he has paraphrased an Olympick and Nemaean ode,
+is, by himself, sufficiently explained. His endeavour was, not to show
+"precisely what Pindar spoke, but his manner of speaking." He was,
+therefore, not at all restrained to his expressions, nor much to his
+sentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar
+would not have written.
+
+Of the Olympick ode, the beginning is, I think, above the original in
+elegance, and the conclusion below it in strength. The connexion is
+supplied with great perspicuity; and the thoughts, which, to a reader of
+less skill, seem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any
+abruption. Though the English ode cannot be called a translation, it may
+be very properly consulted as a commentary.
+
+The spirit of Pindar is, indeed, not every where equally preserved. The
+following pretty lines are not such as his _deep mouth_ was used to
+pour:
+
+  Great Rhea's son,
+  If in Olympus' top, where thou
+  Sitt'st to behold thy sacred show,
+  If in Alpheus' silver flight,
+  If in my verse thou take delight,
+  My verse, great Rhea's son, which is
+  Lofty as that, and smooth as this.
+
+In the Nemaean ode the reader must, in mere justice to Pindar, observe,
+that whatever is said of "the original new moon, her tender forehead,
+and her horns," is super-added by his paraphrast, who has many other
+plays of words and fancy unsuitable to the original, as
+
+  The table, free for ev'ry guest,
+  No doubt will thee admit,
+  And feast more upon thee, than thou on it.
+
+He sometimes extends his author's thoughts without improving them. In
+the Olympionick an oath is mentioned in a single word, and Cowley spends
+three lines in swearing by the Castalian stream. We are told of Theron's
+bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in
+rhyming prose:
+
+  But in this thankless world the giver
+  Is envied even by the receiver;
+  'Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion
+  Rather to hide than own the obligation:
+  Nay, 'tis much worse than so;
+  It now an artifice does grow
+  Wrongs and injuries to do,
+  Lest men should think we owe.
+
+It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit,
+when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble diction,
+could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.
+
+In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own subjects, he
+sometimes rises to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if some deficiencies of
+language be forgiven, his strains are such as those of the Theban bard
+were to his contemporaries:
+
+  Begin the song, and strike the living lyre:
+  Lo, how the years to come, a numerous and well-fitted quire,
+  All hand in hand do decently advance.
+  And to my song with smooth and equal measure dance;
+  While the dance lasts, how long soe'er it be,
+  My musick's voice shall bear it company;
+  Till all gentle notes be drown'd
+  In the last trumpet's dreadful sound.
+
+After such enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude
+with lines like these:
+
+  But stop, my muse--
+  Hold thy Pindarick Pegasus closely in,
+  Which does to rage begin
+  --'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse--
+  'Twill no unskilful touch endure,
+  But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.
+
+The fault of Cowley, and, perhaps, of all the writers of the
+metaphysical race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to the last
+ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality; for of the
+greatest things the parts are little; what is little can be but pretty,
+and, by claiming dignity, becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of
+description is destroyed by a scrupulous enumeration, and the force of
+metaphors is lost, when the mind, by the mention of particulars, is
+turned more upon the original than the secondary sense, more upon that
+from which the illustration is drawn, than that to which it is applied.
+
+Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode entitled the Muse, who
+goes to "take the air" in an intellectual chariot, to which he harnesses
+fancy and judgment, wit and eloquence, memory and invention: how he
+distinguished wit from fancy, or how memory could properly contribute to
+motion, he has not explained; we are, however, content to suppose that
+he could have justified his own fiction, and wish to see the muse begin
+her career; but there is yet more to be done:
+
+  Let the _postillion_, nature, mount, and let
+  The _coachman_ art be set;
+  And let the airy _footmen_, running all beside,
+  Make a long row of goodly pride;
+  Figures, conceits, raptures, and sentences,
+  In a well-worded dress,
+  And innocent loves, and pleasant truths, and useful lies,
+  In all their gaudy _liveries_.
+
+Every mind is now disgusted with this cumber of magnificence; yet I
+cannot refuse myself the four next lines:
+
+  Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne,
+  And bid it to put on;
+  For long, though cheerful, is the way,
+  And life, alas! allows but one ill winter's day.
+
+In the same ode, celebrating the power of the muse, he gives her
+prescience, or, in poetical language, the foresight of events hatching
+in futurity; but, having once an egg in his mind, he cannot forbear to
+show us that he knows what an egg contains:
+
+  Thou into the close nests of time dost peep,
+  And there with piercing eye
+  Through the firm shell and the thick white dost spy
+  Years to come a-forming lie,
+  Close in their sacred fecundine asleep.
+
+The same thought is more generally, and, therefore, more poetically
+expressed by Casimir, a writer who has many of the beauties and faults
+of Cowley:
+
+  Omnibus mundi dominator horis
+  Aptat urgendas per inane pennas,
+  Pars adhuc nido latet, et futuros
+  Crescit in annos.
+
+Cowley, whatever was his subject, seems to have been carried, by a kind
+of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require
+still more ignoble epithets. A slaughter in the Red sea "new dies the
+water's name;" and England, during the civil war, was "Albion no more,
+nor to be named from white." It is, surely, by some fascination not
+easily surmounted, that a writer professing to revive "the noblest and
+highest writing in verse," makes this address to the new year:
+
+  Nay, if thou lov'st me, gentle year,
+  Let not so much as love be there,
+  Vain, fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,
+  Although I fear
+  There's of this caution little need,
+  Yet, gentle year, take heed
+  How thou dost make
+  Such a mistake;
+  Such love I mean alone
+  As by thy cruel predecessors has been shewn:
+  For, though I have too much cause to doubt it,
+  I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.
+
+The reader of this will be inclined to cry out, with Prior,
+
+  Ye criticks, say,
+  How poor to this was Pindar's style!
+
+Even those who cannot, perhaps, find in the Isthmian or Nemaean songs
+what antiquity has disposed them to expect, will, at least, see that
+they are ill represented by such puny poetry; and all will determine,
+that if this be the old Theban strain, it is not worthy of revival.
+
+To the disproportion and incongruity of Cowley's sentiments, must be
+added the uncertainty and looseness of his measures. He takes the
+liberty of using, in any place, a verse of any length, from two
+syllables to twelve. The verses of Pindar have, as he observes, very
+little harmony to a modern ear; yet, by examining the syllables, we
+perceive them to be regular, and have reason enough for supposing that
+the ancient audiences were delighted with the sound. The imitator ought,
+therefore, to have adopted what he found, and to have added what was
+wanting; to have preserved a constant return of the same numbers, and to
+have supplied smoothness of transition and continuity of thought.
+
+It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the "irregularity of numbers is the very
+thing" which makes "that kind of poesy fit for all manner of subjects."
+But he should have remembered, that what is fit for every thing can fit
+nothing well. The great pleasure of verse arises from the known measure
+of the lines, and uniform structure of the stanzas, by which the voice
+is regulated, and the memory relieved.
+
+If the Pindarick style be, what Cowley thinks it, "the highest and
+noblest kind of writing in verse," it can be adapted only to high and
+noble subjects; and it will not be easy to reconcile the poet with the
+critick, or to conceive how that can be the highest kind of writing in
+verse, which, according to Sprat, is "chiefly to be preferred for its
+near affinity to prose."
+
+This lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of
+the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately
+overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the
+pleasing fashion, and they that could do nothing else could write like
+Pindar. The rights of antiquity were invaded, and disorder tried to
+break into the Latin: a poem[21] on the Sheldonian theatre, in which all
+kinds of verse are shaken together, is unhappily inserted in the Musae
+Anglicanae. Pindarism prevailed about half a century; but, at last, died
+gradually away, and other imitations supply its place.
+
+The Pindarick odes have so long enjoyed the highest degree of poetical
+reputation, that I am not willing to dismiss them with unabated censure;
+and, surely, though the mode of their composition be erroneous, yet many
+parts deserve, at least, that admiration which is due to great
+comprehension of knowledge, and great fertility of fancy. The thoughts
+are often new, and often striking; but the greatness of one part is
+disgraced by the littleness of another; and total negligence of language
+gives the noblest conceptions the appearance of a fabrick, august in
+the plan, but mean in the materials. Yet, surely, those verses are not
+without a just claim to praise; of which it may be said with truth, that
+no man but Cowley could have written them.
+
+The Davideis now remains to be considered; a poem which the author
+designed to have extended to twelve books, merely, as he makes no
+scruple of declaring, because the Aeneid had that number; but he had
+leisure or perseverance only to write the third part. Epick poems have
+been left unfinished by Virgil, Statius, Spenser, and Cowley. That we
+have not the whole Davideis, is, however, not much to be regretted; for
+in this undertaking Cowley is, tacitly, at least, confessed to have
+miscarried. There are not many examples of so great a work, produced by
+an author generally read, and generally praised, that has crept through
+a century with so little regard. Whatever is said of Cowley, is meant of
+his other works. Of the Davideis no mention is made; it never appears in
+books, nor emerges in conversation. By the Spectator it has been once
+quoted; by Rymer it has once been praised; and by Dryden, in Mac
+Flecknoe, it has once been imitated; nor do I recollect much other
+notice from its publication till now, in the whole succession of English
+literature.
+
+Of this silence and neglect, if the reason be inquired, it will be found
+partly in the choice of the subject, and partly in the performance of
+the work.
+
+Sacred history has been always read with submissive reverence, and
+an imagination overawed and controlled. We have been accustomed to
+acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentick narrative,
+and to repose on its veracity with such humble confidence as suppresses
+curiosity. We go with the historian as he goes, and stop with him when
+he stops. All amplification is frivolous and vain; all addition to that
+which is already sufficient for the purposes of religion seems not only
+useless, but, in some degree, profane.
+
+Such events as were produced by the visible interposition of divine
+power are above the power of human genius to dignify. The miracle of
+creation, however it may teem with images, is best described with little
+diffusion of language: "He spake the word, and they were made."
+
+We are told, that Saul "was troubled with an evil spirit;" from this
+Cowley takes an opportunity of describing hell, and telling the history
+of Lucifer, who was, he says,
+
+  Once gen'ral of a gilded host of sprites,
+  Like Hesper leading forth the spangled nights;
+  But down, like lightning which him struck, he came,
+  And roar'd at his first plunge into the flame.
+
+Lucifer makes a speech to the inferiour agents of mischief, in which
+there is something of heathenism, and, therefore, of impropriety; and,
+to give efficacy to his words, concludes by lashing "his breast with
+his long tail." Envy, after a pause, steps out, and, among other
+declarations of her zeal, utters these lines:
+
+  Do thou but threat, loud storms shall make reply,
+  And thunder echo to the trembling sky:
+  Whilst raging seas swell to so bold an height,
+  As shall the fire's proud element affright.
+  Th' old drudging sun, from his long-beaten way,
+  Shall, at thy voice, start, and misguide the day.
+  The jocund orbs shall break their measur'd pace,
+  And stubborn poles change their allotted place,
+  Heaven's gilded troops shall flutter here and there,
+  Leaving their boasting songs tun'd to a sphere.
+
+Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an
+allegorical being.
+
+It is not only when the events are confessedly miraculous, that fancy
+and fiction lose their effect: the whole system of life, while the
+theocracy was yet visible, has an appearance so different from all other
+scenes of human action, that the reader of the sacred volume habitually
+considers it as the peculiar mode of existence of a distinct species of
+mankind, that lived and acted with manners uncommunicable; so that it is
+difficult, even for imagination, to place us in the state of them whose
+story is related, and, by consequence, their joys and griefs are not
+easily adopted, nor can the attention be often interested in any thing
+that befalls them.
+
+To the subject thus originally indisposed to the reception of poetical
+embellishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile
+impatience, or attract curiosity. Nothing can be more disgusting than a
+narrative spangled with conceits; and conceits are all that the Davideis
+supplies.
+
+One of the great sources of poetical delight, is description, or the
+power of presenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences
+instead of images, and shows not what may be supposed to have been seen,
+but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil describes
+the stone which Turnus lifted against Aeneas, he fixes the attention on
+its bulk and weight:
+
+  Saxum circumspicit ingens,
+  Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat,
+  Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.
+
+Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother,
+
+  I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant
+  At once his murther and his monument.
+
+Of the sword taken from Goliah, he says,
+
+  A sword so great, that it was only fit,
+  To cut off his great head that came with it.
+
+Other poets describe death by some of its common appearances. Cowley
+says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps, real or fabulous,
+
+  'Twixt his right ribs deep pierc'd the furious blade,
+  And open'd wide those secret vessels where
+  Life's light goes out, when first they let in air.
+
+But he has allusions vulgar, as well as learned. In a visionary
+succession of kings:
+
+  Joas at first does bright and glorious shew,
+  In life's fresh morn his fame does early crow.
+
+Describing an undisciplined army, after having said with elegance,
+
+  His forces seem'd no army, but a crowd
+  Heartless, unarm'd, disorderly, and loud,
+
+he gives them a fit of the ague.
+
+The allusions, however, are not always to vulgar things; he offends by
+exaggeration, as much as by diminution:
+
+  The king was plac'd alone, and o'er his head
+  A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread.
+
+Whatever he writes is always polluted with some conceit:
+
+  Where the sun's fruitful beams give metals birth,
+  Where he the growth of fatal gold doth see,
+  Gold, which alone more influence has than he.
+
+In one passage he starts a sudden question, to the confusion of
+philosophy:
+
+  Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace,
+  Why does that twining plant the oak embrace;
+  The oak, for courtship most of all unfit,
+  And rough as are the winds that fight with it?
+
+His expressions have, sometimes, a degree of meanness that surpasses
+expectation:
+
+  Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you're in,
+  The story of your gallant friend begin.
+
+In a simile descriptive of the morning:
+
+  As glimm'ring stars just at th' approach of day,
+  Cashier'd by troops, at last drop all away.
+
+The dress of Gabriel deserves attention:
+
+  He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
+  That e'er the mid-day sun pierc'd through with light;
+  Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
+  Wash'd from the morning beauties' deepest red;
+  An harmless flatt'ring meteor shone for hair,
+  And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;
+  He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
+  Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes;
+  This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,
+  Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall;
+  Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade,
+  The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made.
+
+This is a just specimen of Cowley's imagery: what might, in general
+expressions, be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous
+by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invested with the
+softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, and
+been dismissed to improve the idea in our different proportions of
+conception; but Cowley could not let us go, till he had related where
+Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then
+his scarf, and related it in the terms of the mercer and tailor.
+
+Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with his
+natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued
+till it is tedious.
+
+  I' th' library a few choice authors stood,
+  Yet 'twas well stor'd, for that small store was good;
+  Writing, man's spiritual physick, was not then
+  Itself, as now, grown a disease of men.
+  Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew;
+  The common prostitute she lately grew,
+  And with the spurious brood loads now the press;
+  Laborious effects of idleness.
+
+As the Davideis affords only four books, though intended to consist
+of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticism as epick poems
+commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is very imperfectly shown by
+the third part. The duration of an unfinished action cannot be known. Of
+characters, either not yet introduced, or shown but upon few occasions,
+the full extent and the nice discriminations cannot be ascertained. The
+fable is plainly implex, formed rather from the Odyssey than the Iliad;
+and many artifices of diversification are employed, with the skill of a
+man acquainted with the best models. The past is recalled by narration,
+and the future anticipated by vision: but he has been so lavish of his
+poetical art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could fill eight
+books more without practising again the same modes of disposing his
+matter; and, perhaps, the perception of this growing incumbrance
+inclined him to stop. By this abruption posterity lost more instruction
+than delight. If the continuation of the Davideis can be missed, it is
+for the learning that had been diffused over it, and the notes in which
+it had been explained.
+
+Had not his characters been depraved, like every other part, by improper
+decorations, they would have deserved uncommon praise. He gives Saul
+both the body and mind of a hero:
+
+  His way once chose, he forward thrust outright,
+  Nor turn'd aside for danger or delight.
+
+And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michol, are
+very justly conceived and strongly painted.
+
+Rymer has declared the Davideis superiour to the Jerusalem of Tasso;
+"which," says he, "the poet, with all his care, has not totally purged
+from pedantry." If by pedantry is meant that minute knowledge which
+is derived from particular sciences and studies, in opposition to the
+general notions supplied by a wide survey of life and nature, Cowley
+certainly errs, by introducing pedantry far more frequently than Tasso.
+I know not, indeed, why they should be compared; for the resemblance of
+Cowley's work to Tasso's is only that they both exhibit the agency of
+celestial and infernal spirits, in which, however, they differ
+widely; for Cowley supposes them commonly to operate upon the mind by
+suggestion; Tasso represents them as promoting or obstructing events by
+external agency.
+
+Of particular passages that can be properly compared, I remember only
+the description of heaven, in which the different manner of the two
+writers is sufficiently discernible. Cowley's is scarcely description,
+unless it be possible to describe by negatives: for he tells us
+only what there is not in heaven. Tasso endeavours to represent the
+splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness. Tasso affords
+images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, that Tasso's
+description affords some reason for Rymer's censure. He says of the
+supreme being,
+
+  Ha sotto i piedi e fato e la natura,
+  Ministri umili, e'l moto, e chi'l misura.
+
+The second line has in it more of pedantry than, perhaps, can be found
+in any other stanza of the poem.
+
+In the perusal of the Davideis, as of all Cowley's works, we find wit
+and learning unprofitably squandered. Attention has no relief; the
+affections are never moved: we are sometimes surprised, but never
+delighted; and find much to admire, but little to approve. Still,
+however, it is the work of Cowley; of a mind capacious by nature, and
+replenished by study.
+
+In the general review of Cowley's poetry it will be found, that he wrote
+with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful selection; with much
+thought, but with little imagery; that he is never pathetick, and
+rarely sublime; but always either ingenious or learned, either acute or
+profound.
+
+It is said by Denham, in his elegy,
+
+  To him no author was unknown,
+  Yet what he writ was all his own.
+
+This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of
+Cowley, than, perhaps, of any other poet.--He read much, and yet
+borrowed little.
+
+His character of writing was, indeed, not his own: he unhappily adopted
+that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and,
+not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to
+delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself
+with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure, in its spring, was bright
+and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.
+
+He was, in his own time, considered as of unrivalled excellence.
+Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went
+before him; and Milton is said to have declared, that the three greatest
+English poets were Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cowley.
+
+His manner he had in common with others; but his sentiments were his
+own. Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his
+copiousness of knowledge, that something at once remote and applicable
+rushed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a
+commodious idea merely because another had used it: his known wealth was
+so great, that he might have borrowed without loss of credit.
+
+In his elegy on sir Henry Wotton, the last lines have such resemblance
+to the noble epigram of Grotius on the death of Scaliger, that I cannot
+but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no servile
+hand.
+
+One passage in his Mistress is so apparently borrowed from Donne, that
+he probably would not have written it, had it not mingled with his own
+thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking it from another:
+
+  Although I think thou never found wilt be,
+  Yet I'm resolv'd to search for thee:
+  The search itself rewards the pains.
+  So, though the chymic his great secret miss
+  (For neither it in art or nature is,)
+  Yet things well worth his toil he gains;
+
+
+  And does his charge and labour pay
+  With good unsought experiments by the way. COWLEY.
+
+  Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I,
+  Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:
+  I have lov'd, and got, and told;
+  But should I love, get, tell, till I were old;
+  I should not find that hidden mystery;
+  Oh, 'tis imposture all!
+  And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,
+  But glorifies his pregnant pot,
+  If by the way to him befall
+  Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,
+  So lovers dream a rich and long delight,
+  But get a winter-seeming summer's night.  DONNE.
+
+Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, were then in the highest esteem.
+
+It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledges his
+obligation to the learning and industry of Jonson; but I have found no
+traces of Jonson in his works: to emulate Donne appears to have been
+his purpose; and from Donne he may have learned that familiarity with
+religious images, and that light allusion to sacred things, by which
+readers far short of sanctity are frequently offended; and which would
+not be borne, in the present age, when devotion, perhaps, not more
+fervent, is more delicate.
+
+Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will
+recompense him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him.
+He says of Goliah:
+
+  His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree,
+  Which nature meant some tall ship's mast should be.
+
+Milton of Satan:
+
+  His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
+  Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
+  Of some great admiral, were but a wand,
+  He walked with.
+
+His diction was, in his own time, censured as negligent. He seems not to
+have known, or not to have considered, that words, being arbitrary, must
+owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that only,
+which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought: and,
+as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded and
+obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or
+mechanicks; so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy, and
+the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by
+words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar
+mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.
+
+Truth, indeed, is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have
+an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual
+gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser
+matter, that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in
+unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can distinguish
+it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost of
+their extraction.
+
+The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to
+the intellectual eye; and, if the first appearance offends, a further
+knowledge is not often sought. Whatever professes to benefit by
+pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something
+sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. What
+is perceived by slow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness of
+improvement, but will never strike with the sense of pleasure.
+
+Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without
+care. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase:
+he has no elegancies, either lucky or elaborate: as his endeavours were
+rather to impress sentences upon the understanding than images on
+the fancy, he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar
+propriety or nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the necessity of
+the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his
+heroick poem is less familiar than that of his slightest writings. He
+has given not the same numbers, but the same diction, to the gentle
+Anacreon and the tempestuous Pindar.
+
+His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and, if
+what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they
+are ill read, the art of reading them is at present lost; for they are
+commonly harsh to modern ears. He has, indeed, many noble lines, such as
+the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts
+sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but
+his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he sinks willingly
+down to his general carelessness, and avoids, with very little care,
+either meanness or asperity.
+
+His contractions are often rugged and harsh:
+
+  One flings a mountain, and its rivers too
+  Torn up with 't.
+
+His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the like
+unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of
+the line.
+
+His combination of different measures is, sometimes, dissonant and
+unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide
+easily into the latter.
+
+The words _do_ and _did_, which so much degrade, in present estimation,
+the line that admits them, were, in the time of Cowley, little censured
+or avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least
+to our ears, will appear by a passage, in which every reader will lament
+to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance
+of language:
+
+  Where honour or where conscience _does_ not bind,
+  No other law shall shackle me;
+  Slave to myself I ne'er will be;
+  Nor shall my future actions be confin'd
+  By my own present mind.
+
+  Who by resolves and vows engag'd _does_ stand
+  For days, that yet belong to fate,
+  _Does_, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate,
+  Before it falls into his hand;
+  The bondman of the cloister so,
+  All that he _does_ receive _does_ always owe:
+  And still, as time comes in, it goes away,
+  Not to enjoy, but debts to pay!
+  Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell,
+  Which his hour's work, as well as hours, _does_ tell!
+  Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.
+
+His heroick lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are
+sometimes sweet and sonorous.
+
+He says of the Messiah:
+
+  Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound,
+  _And reach to worlds that must not yet be found_.
+
+In another place, of David:
+
+  Yet bid him go securely, when he sends;
+  _'Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends.
+  The man who has his God, no aid can lack;
+  And we who bid him go, will bring him back._
+
+Yet, amidst his negligence, he sometimes attempted an improved and
+scientifick versification; of which it will be best to give his own
+account subjoined to this line:
+
+  Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless space.
+
+"I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of readers,
+that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose, long, and,
+as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature of the thing
+which it describes, which I would have observed in divers other places
+of this poem, that else will pass for very careless verses: as before,
+
+  And overruns the neighb'ring fields with violent course.
+
+"In the second book,
+
+  Down a precipice deep, down he casts them all.
+
+"And,
+
+  And fell a-down his shoulders with loose care
+
+"In the third,
+
+  Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o'er
+  His breast a thick plate of strong brass he wore.
+
+"In the fourth,
+
+  Like some fair pine o'erlooking all th' ignobler wood.
+
+"And,
+
+  Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong.
+
+"And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. The thing is,
+that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, as that,
+out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may be
+represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind themselves
+to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught I can find.
+The Latins (qui musas colunt severiores) sometimes did it; and their
+prince, Virgil, always, in whom the examples are innumerable, and taken
+notice of by all judicious men, so that it is superfluous to collect
+them."
+
+I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the
+representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only
+sound and motion. A _boundless_ verse, a _headlong_ verse, and a verse
+of _brass_, or of _strong brass_, seem to comprise very incongruous
+and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line
+expressing _loose care_, I cannot discover; nor why the _pine_ is
+_taller_ in an alexandrine than in ten syllables.
+
+But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of
+representative versification, which, perhaps, no other English line can
+equal:
+
+  Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:
+  He, who defers this work from day to day,
+  Does on a river's bank expecting stay
+  Till the whole stream that stopp'd him shall be gone,
+  _Which runs, and, as it runs, for ever shall run on_.
+
+Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled alexandrines, at
+pleasure, with the common heroick of ten syllables; and from him Dryden
+borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered
+the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestick, and has,
+therefore, deviated into that measure, when he supposes the voice heard
+of the supreme being.
+
+The author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for having written it
+in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for
+an heroick poem; but this seems to have been known before by May and
+Sandys, the translators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses.
+
+In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect by the
+author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended
+to complete them: that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably
+concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman
+poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of
+recitation; because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all
+that can be done by a broken verse, a line intersected by a _caesura_
+and a full stop, will equally effect.
+
+Of triplets, in his Davideis, he makes no use, and, perhaps, did not, at
+first, think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed
+his mind, for, in the verses on the government of Cromwell, he inserts
+them liberally with great happiness.
+
+After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them
+must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that
+no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may
+be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his
+prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural,
+and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet
+obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hard-laboured;
+but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.
+
+It has been observed by Felton, in his essay on the Classicks, that
+Cowley was beloved by every muse that he courted; and that he has
+rivalled the ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.
+
+It may be affirmed, without any encomiastick fervour, that he brought to
+his poetick labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are
+embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was
+the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater
+ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for
+sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who
+freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author
+at a distance, walked by his side; and that if he left versification
+yet improvable, he left likewise, from time to time, such specimens of
+excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The insertion of Cowley's epitaph may be interesting to our readers.
+
+  Epitaphium
+  Autoris
+  In Ecclesia D. Petri apud Westmonasterienses
+  Sepulti.
+  Abrahamus Cowleius,
+  Anglorum Pindarus, Flaccus, Maro,
+  Deliciae, Decus, Desiderium, Aevi sui,
+  Hic juxta situs est.
+
+  Aurea dum volitant late tua scripta per orbem,
+  Et fama aeternum vivis, divine poeta,
+  Hic placida jaceas requie: custodiat urnam
+  Cana fides, vigilentque perenni lampade musae
+  Sit sacer iste locus; nee quis temerarius ausit
+  Sacrilega turbare manu venerabile bustum.
+  Intacti maneant; maneant per saecula dulces
+  Cowleii cineres, serventque immobile saxum.
+
+  Sic vovatque
+  Votumque suum apud posteros sacratum esse voluit
+  Qui viro incomparabili posult sepulchrale marmor,
+  Georgius Dux Buckinghamiae.
+  Excessit e vita Anno Aetatis suae 49 deg. et honorifica pompa elatus
+                                                        ex Aedibus
+  Buckinghamianis, viris illustribus omnium ordinum exequias
+                                                     celebrantibus,
+  sepultus est die 3 deg. M. Augusti, Anno Domini 1667.
+
+[Footnote 6: This volume was not published before 1633, when Cowley was
+fifteeyears old. Dr. Johnson, as well as former biographers, seems to
+have been misled by the portrait of Cowley being, by mistake, marked with
+the age of thirteen years. R.]
+
+[Footnote 7: He was a candidate this year at Westminster school for
+election to Trinity college, but proved unsuccessful.]
+
+[Footnote 8: In the first edition of this life, Dr. Johnson wrote, "which
+was never inserted in any collection of his works;" but he altered the
+expression when the Lives were collected into volumes. The satire was
+added to Cowley's works by the particular direction of Dr. Johnson. N.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Consulting the Virgilian lots, Sortes Virgilianae, is a
+method of divination by the opening of Virgil, and applying to the
+circumstances of the peruser the first passage in either of the two pages
+that he accidentally fixes his eye on. It is said, that king Charles
+the first, and lord Falkland, being in the Bodleian library, made this
+experiment of their future fortunes, and met with passages equally
+ominous to each.
+
+That of the king was the following:
+
+  At bello audacis populi vexatus et armis,
+  Finibus extorris, complexu avulsus luli,
+  Auxilium imploret, videatque indigna suorum
+  Funera, nec, cum se sub leges pacis iniquae
+  Tradiderit, regno aut optata luce fruatur:
+  Sed cadat ante diem, mediaque inhumatus arena. Aeneid. iv. 615.
+
+  Yet let a race untam'd, and haughty foes,
+  His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose,
+  Oppress'd with numbers in th' unequal field,
+  His men discourag'd and himself expell'd:
+  Let him for succour sue from place to place,
+  Torn from his subjects and his son's embrace.
+  First let him see his friends in battle slain,
+  And their untimely fate lament in vain:
+  And when, at length, the cruel war shall cease,
+  On hard conditions may he buy his peace;
+  Nor let him then enjoy supreme command.
+  But fall untimely by some hostile hand,
+  And lie unburied on the barren sand.        DRYDEN.
+
+Lord Falkland's:
+
+  Non haec, O Palla, dederas promissa parenti,
+  Cautius ut saevo velles te credere Marti.
+  Haud ignarus eram, quantum nova gloria in armis,
+  Et praedulce decus primo certamine posset.
+  Primitiae juvenis miserae, bellique propinqui
+  Dura rudimenta, et nulli exaudita deorum,
+  Vota precesque meae!                            Aeneid. xi. 152.
+
+  O Pallas, thou hast fail'd thy plighted word,
+  To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword;
+  I warn'd thee, but in vain, for well I knew
+  What perils youthful ardour would pursue,
+  That boiling blood would carry thee too far,
+  Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war.
+  O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom,
+  Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come!
+  Hard elements of unauspicious war,
+  Vain vows to heaven, and unavailing care!       DRYDEN
+
+Hoffman, in his Lexicon, gives a very satisfactory account of this
+practice of seeking fates in books: and says, that it was used by the
+pagans, the jewish rabbins, and even the early Christians; the latter
+taking the New Testament for their oracle.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Johnson has exhibited here us little feeling for the
+neglected servant of the thankless house of Stewart, as he displayed in
+the cold contempt of his sixth Rambler. An unmeaning compliment from a
+worthless king was Cowley's only recompense for years of faithful and
+painful services. A heart loyal and affectionate, like his, may well be
+excused the utterance of its pains, when wounded by those for whom it
+would so cheerfully have poured forth its blood. We repeat, that Cowley's
+misfortune was his devotion to a family, who invariably forgot, in their
+prosperity, those who had defended them in the day of adversity. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 11: See Campbell's Poets, iv. 75.]
+
+[Footnote 12: By May's poem, we are here to understand a continuation
+of Lucan's Pharsalia, to the death of Julius Caesar, by Thomas May, an
+eminent poet and historian, who flourished in the reigns of James
+and Charles the first, and of whom a life is given in the Biographia
+Britannica. The merit of Cowley's Latin poems is well examined in Censura
+Literatia, vol. viii. See also Warton's Preface to Milton's Juvenile
+Poems. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 13: 1663.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Here is an error in the designation of this comedy, which
+our author copied from the title page of the latter editions of Cowley's
+works: the title of the play itself is without the article, "Cutter of
+Coleman street," and that, because a merry sharking fellow about the
+town, named Cutter, is a principal character in it.]
+
+[Footnote 15: L'Allegro of Milton. Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 16: About three hundred pounds per annum. See Campbell's Poets,
+iv.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Now in the possession of Mr. Clark, alderman of London.
+Dr. J.--Mr. Clark was, in 1798, elected to the important office of
+chamberlain of London; and has every year since been unanimously
+reelected. N.]
+
+[Footnote 18: For metaphysical poets, see Brydges' Restituta, vol. iv.]
+
+[Footnote 19: It is but justice to the memory of Cowley, to quote here an
+exquisite stanza which Johnson has inserted in the Idler, No. 77, where
+he says; "Cowley seems to have possessed the power of writing easily
+beyond any other of our poets; yet his pursuit of remote thought led him
+often into harshness of expression." The stanza is to a lady elaborately
+dressed:
+
+  Th' adorning thee with so much art
+  Is but a barb'rous skill,
+  'Tis like the pois'ning of a dart
+  Too apt before to kill.    ED.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Dodsley's Collection of Poems, vol. v. R.]
+
+[Footnote 21: First published in quarto, 1669, under the title of Carmen
+Pindaricum in Theatrum Sheldonianum in solennibus magnifici operis
+encaeniis. Recitatum Julii die 9, anno 1669, a Corbetto Owen, A. B. Aed.
+Chr. Alumno, authore. R.]
+
+
+
+
+DENHAM
+
+Of sir John Denham very little is known but what is related of him by
+Wood, or by himself.
+
+He was born at Dublin, 1615[22]; the only son of sir John Denham, of
+Little Horsley, in Essex, then chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland,
+and of Eleanor, daughter of sir Garret More, baron of Mellefont.
+
+Two years afterwards, his father, being made one of the barons of the
+exchequer in England, brought him away from his native country, and
+educated him in London.
+
+In 1631 he was sent to Oxford, where he was considered "as a dreaming
+young man, given more to dice and cards than study:" and, therefore,
+gave no prognosticks of his future eminence; nor was suspected to
+conceal, under sluggishness and laxity, a genius born to improve the
+literature of his country.
+
+When he was, three years afterwards, removed to Lincoln's inn, he
+prosecuted the common law with sufficient appearance of application;
+yet did not lose his propensity to cards and dice; but was very often
+plundered by gamesters.
+
+Being severely reproved for this folly, he professed, and, perhaps,
+believed, himself reclaimed; and, to testify the sincerity of his
+repentance, wrote and published an Essay upon Gaming.
+
+He seems to have divided his studies between law and poetry; for, in
+1636, he translated the second book of the Aeneid. Two years after, his
+father died; and then, notwithstanding his resolutions and professions,
+he returned again to the vice of gaming, and lost several thousand
+pounds that had been left him.
+
+In 1641, he published the Sophy. This seems to have given him his first
+hold of the publick attention; for Waller remarked, "that he broke out
+like the Irish rebellion, three score thousand strong, when nobody was
+aware, or in the least suspected it;" an observation which could have
+had no propriety had his poetical abilities been known before.
+
+He was after that pricked for sheriff of Surrey, and made governour
+of Farnham castle for the king; but he soon resigned that charge, and
+retreated to Oxford, where, in 1643, he published Cooper's Hill.
+
+This poem had such reputation as to excite the common artifice by which
+envy degrades excellence. A report was spread, that the performance was
+not his own, but that he had bought it of a vicar for forty pounds. The
+same attempt was made to rob Addison of his Cato, and Pope of his Essay
+on Criticism.
+
+In 1647, the distresses of the royal family required him to engage in
+more dangerous employments. He was intrusted, by the queen, with a
+message to the king; and, by whatever means, so far softened the
+ferocity of Hugh Peters, that, by his intercession, admission was
+procured. Of the king's condescension he has given an account in the
+dedication of his works.
+
+He was, afterwards, employed in carrying on the king's correspondence;
+and, as he says, discharged this office with great safety to the
+royalists: and, being accidentally discovered by the adverse party's
+knowledge of Mr. Cowley's hand, he escaped happily both for himself and
+his friends.
+
+He was yet engaged in a greater undertaking. In April, 1648, he conveyed
+James, the duke of York, from London into France, and delivered him
+there to the queen and prince of Wales. This year he published his
+translation of Cato Major. He now resided in France, as one of the
+followers of the exiled king; and, to divert the melancholy of their
+condition, was sometimes enjoined by his master to write occasional
+verses; one of which amusements was probably his ode, or song, upon the
+Embassy to Poland, by which he and lord Crofts procured a contribution
+of ten thousand pounds from the Scotch, that wandered over the kingdom.
+Poland was, at that time, very much frequented by itinerant traders,
+who, in a country of very little commerce and of great extent, where
+every man resided on his own estate, contributed very much to the
+accommodation of life, by bringing to every man's house those little
+necessaries which it was very inconvenient to want, and very troublesome
+to fetch. I have formerly read, without much reflection, of the
+multitude of Scotchmen that travelled with their wares in Poland; and
+that their numbers were not small, the success of this negotiation gives
+sufficient evidence.
+
+About this time, what estate the war and the gamesters had left him was
+sold, by order of the parliament; and when, in 1652, he returned to
+England, he was entertained by the earl of Pembroke.
+
+Of the next years of his life there is no account. At the restoration he
+obtained that which many missed, the reward of his loyalty; being made
+surveyor of the king's buildings, and dignified with the order of the
+Bath. He seems now to have learned some attention to money; for Wood
+says, that he got by this place seven thousand pounds.
+
+After the restoration, he wrote the poem on Prudence and Justice, and,
+perhaps, some of his other pieces; and as he appears, whenever any
+serious question comes before him, to have been a man of piety, he
+consecrated his poetical powers to religion, and made a metrical version
+of the psalms of David. In this attempt he has failed; but in sacred
+poetry who has succeeded?
+
+It might be hoped that the favour of his master, and esteem of the
+publick, would now make him happy. But human felicity is short and
+uncertain; a second marriage brought upon him so much disquiet, as, for
+a time, disordered his understanding; and Butler lampooned him for his
+lunacy. I know not whether the malignant lines were then made publick,
+nor what provocation incited Butler to do that which no provocation can
+excuse.
+
+His phrensy lasted not long[23]; and he seems to have regained his full
+force of mind; for he wrote afterwards his excellent poem upon the death
+of Cowley, whom he was not long to survive; for, on the 19th of March,
+1668, he was buried by his side.
+
+Denham is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry.
+"Denham and Waller," says Prior, "improved our versification, and
+Dryden perfected it." He has given specimens of various compositions,
+descriptive, ludicrous, didactick, and sublime.
+
+He appears to have had, in common with almost all mankind, the ambition
+of being, upon proper occasions, _a merry fellow_, and, in common with
+most of them, to have been by nature, or by early habits, debarred from
+it. Nothing is less exhilarating than the ludicrousness of Denham; he
+does not fail for want of efforts; he is familiar, he is gross; but he
+is never merry, unless the Speech against Peace in the close Committee
+be excepted. For grave burlesque, however, his imitation of Davenant
+shows him to have been well qualified.
+
+Of his more elevated occasional poems, there is, perhaps, none that does
+not deserve commendation. In the verses to Fletcher, we have an image
+that has since been often adopted[24]:
+
+  But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise
+  Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
+  Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
+  Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt
+
+  Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
+  Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred, slain.
+
+After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues,
+
+  Poets are sultans, if they had their will;
+  For ev'ry author would his brother kill.
+
+And Pope,
+
+  Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
+  Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne.
+
+But this is not the best of his little pieces: it is excelled by his
+poem to Fanshaw, and his elegy on Cowley.
+
+His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini contains a very sprightly and
+judicious character of a good translator:
+
+  That servile path thou nobly dost decline,
+  Of tracing word by word and line by line.
+  Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,
+  Not the effect of poetry but pains;
+  Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
+  No flight for thoughts, but poorly stick at words,
+  A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
+  To make translations and translators too,
+  They but preserve the ashes; thou the flame,
+  True to his sense, but truer to his fame.
+
+The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they
+contain was not, at that time, generally known.
+
+His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, and, among his shorter
+works, his best performance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts
+are just.
+
+Cooper's Hill is the work that confers upon him the rank and dignity of
+an original author. He seems to have been, at least among us, the author
+of a species of composition that may be denominated _local poetry_,
+of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be
+poetically described with the addition of such embellishments as may be
+supplied by historical retrospection, or incidental meditation.
+
+To trace a new scheme of poetry, has, in itself, a very high claim to
+praise, and its praise is yet more, when it is apparently copied by
+Garth and Pope[25]; after whose names little will be gained by an
+enumeration of smaller poets, that have left scarcely a corner of the
+island not dignified either by rhyme or blank verse.
+
+Cooper's Hill, if it be maliciously inspected, will not be found without
+its faults. The digressions are too long, the morality too frequent, and
+the sentiments, sometimes, such as will not bear a rigorous inquiry.
+
+The four verses, which, since Dryden has commended them, almost every
+writer for a century past has imitated, are generally known:
+
+  O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
+  My great example, as it is my theme!
+  Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
+  Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
+
+The lines, are, in themselves, not perfect; for most of the words,
+thus artfully opposed, are to be understood simply on one side of the
+comparison, and metaphorically on the other; and, if there be any
+language which does not express intellectual operations by material
+images, into that language they cannot be translated. But so much
+meaning is comprised in so few words; the particulars of resemblance are
+so perspicaciously collected, and every mode of excellence separated
+from its adjacent fault by so nice a line of limitation; the different
+parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted; and the flow of
+the last couplet is so smooth and sweet; that the passage, however
+celebrated, has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar
+to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be
+produced at will by wit and labour, but must rise unexpectedly in some
+hour propitious to poetry.
+
+He appears to have been one of the first that understood the necessity
+of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines, and
+interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the
+clearest, and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors,
+may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them
+are the works of men well qualified, not only by critical knowledge,
+but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness,
+degraded, at once, their originals and themselves.
+
+Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success.
+His versions of Virgil are not pleasing; but they taught Dryden to
+please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on Old Age has neither
+the clearness of prose, nor the sprightliness of poetry.
+
+The "strength of Denham," which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to
+be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few
+words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk.
+
+
+On the Thames.
+
+  Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
+  Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold;
+  His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
+  Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.
+
+
+On Strafford.
+
+  His wisdom such, at once, it did appear
+  Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear.
+  While single he stood forth, and seem'd, although
+  Each had an army, as an equal foe;
+  Such was his force of eloquence to make
+  The hearers more concern'd than he that spake:
+  Each seem'd to act that part he came to see,
+  And none was more a looker-on than he;
+  So did he move our passions, some were known
+  To wish, for the defence, the crime their own.
+  Now private pity strove with public hate,
+  Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate.
+
+On Cowley.
+
+  To him no author was unknown,
+  Yet what he wrote was all his own;
+  Horace's wit, and Virgil's state,
+  He did not steal, but emulate!
+  And, when he would like them appear,
+  Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear.
+
+As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises
+from his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to
+be considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from the
+observation of a man of judgment naturally right, forsaking bad copies
+by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more
+confidence in himself.
+
+In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one
+years old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the sense
+ungracefully from verse to verse:
+
+  Then all those
+  Who in the dark our fury did escape,
+  Returning, know our borrow'd arms, and shape,
+  And differing dialect; then their numbers swell
+  And grow upon us; first Choroebus fell
+  Before Minerva's altar; next did bleed
+  Just Ripheus, whom no Trojan did exceed
+  In virtue, yet the gods his fate decreed.
+  Then Hypanis and Dymas, wounded by
+  Their friends; nor thee, Pantheus, thy piety,
+  Nor consecrated mitre, from the same
+  Ill fate could save; my country's funeral flame
+  And Troy's cold ashes I attest, and call
+  To witness for myself, that in their fall
+  No foes, no death, nor danger, I declin'd,
+  Did, and deserv'd no less, my fate to find.
+
+From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught
+his followers the art of concluding their sense in couplets; which has,
+perhaps, been with rather too much constancy pursued.
+
+This passage exhibits one of those triplets which are not unfrequent in
+this first essay, but which it is to be supposed his maturer judgment
+disapproved, since, in his latter works, he has totally forborne them.
+
+His rhymes are such as seem found without difficulty, by following the
+sense; and are, for the most part, as exact, at least, as those of other
+poets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he can
+get:
+
+  O how _transform'd!_
+  How much unlike that Hector, who _return'd_
+  Clad in Achilles' spoils!
+
+And again:
+
+  From thence a thousand lesser poets _sprung_
+  Like petty princes from the fall of _Rome_.
+
+Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain
+it:
+
+  Troy confounded falls
+  From all her glories: if it might have stood
+  By any power, by this right hand it _shou'd_.
+
+  --And though my outward state misfortune _hath_
+  Deprest thus low, it cannot reach my faith.
+
+  --Thus, by his fraud and our own faith o'ercome,
+  A feigned tear destroys us, against _whom_
+  Tydides nor Achilles could prevail,
+  Nor ten years' conflict, nor a thousand sail.
+
+He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses; in one passage
+the word _die_ rhymes three couplets in six.
+
+Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he was
+less skilful, or, at least, less dexterous in the use of words; and
+though they had been more frequent, they could only have lessened the
+grace, not the strength of his composition. He is one of the writers
+that improved our taste, and advanced our language, and whom we ought,
+therefore, to read with gratitude, though, having done much, he left
+much to do.
+
+[Footnote 22: In Hamilton's memoirs of count Grammont, sir John Denham
+is said to have been seventy-nine, when he married Miss Brook, about the
+year 1664; according to which statement he was born in 1585. But Dr.
+Johnson, who has followed Wood, is right. He entered Trinity college,
+Oxford, at the age of sixteen, in 1631, as appears by the following
+entry, which I copied from the matriculation book.
+
+Trin. Coll.
+
+"1631. Nov. 18. Johannes Denham, Essex. filius J. Denham de Horsley-parva
+in com. praedict. militis, annos natus 16. MALONE".]
+
+[Footnote 23: In the ninth and tenth chapters of the Memoires de
+Grammont, in Andrew Marvell's works, and in Aubrey's letters, ii. 319,
+many scandalous anecdotes respecting Denham, are reported. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 24: It is remarkable that Johnson should not have recollected,
+that this image is to be found in Bacon. Aristoteles, more otthomannorum,
+regnare se haud tuto posse putabat, nisi fratres suos omnes
+contrucidasset. De Augment. Scient. lib. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 25: By Garth, in his poem on Claremont: and by Pope, in his
+Windsor Forest.]
+
+
+
+
+MILTON.
+
+The life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with
+such minute inquiry, that I might, perhaps, more properly have contented
+myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton's elegant
+Abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the
+uniformity of this edition.
+
+John Milton was, by birth, a gentleman, descended from the proprietors
+of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate
+in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know not; his
+descendant inherited no veneration for the _white rose._
+
+His grandfather, John, was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous
+papist, who disinherited his son, because he had forsaken the religion
+of his ancestors.
+
+His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse, for his
+support, to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his
+skill in musick, many of his compositions being still to be found;
+and his reputation in his profession was such, that he grew rich, and
+retired to an estate. He had, probably, more than common literature,
+as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. He
+married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he
+had two sons, John, the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law, and
+adhered, as the law taught him, to the king's party, for which he was
+awhile persecuted, but having, by his brother's interest, obtained
+permission to live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by
+chamber practice, that, soon after the accession of king James, he was
+knighted, and made a judge; but, his constitution being too weak
+for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became
+necessary.
+
+He had, likewise, a daughter, Anne, whom he married with a considerable
+fortune, to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the
+crown office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and Edward,
+who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only
+authentick account of his domestick manners.
+
+John, the poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread-eagle, in
+Bread street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His
+father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he
+was instructed, at first, by private tuition, under the care of Thomas
+Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh,
+and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered
+him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.
+
+He was then sent to St. Paul's school, under the care of Mr. Gill; and
+removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ's college in
+Cambridge, where he entered a sizar[26], Feb. 12,1624.
+
+He was, at this time, eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he
+himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of
+which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend
+the earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity. But
+the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and
+particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of the mind it is
+difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled Milton in their first
+essays, who never rose to works like Paradise Lost.
+
+At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated
+or versified two psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the
+publick eye; but they raise no great expectations: they would, in any
+numerous school, have obtained praise, but not excited wonder.
+
+Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year,
+by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very
+nice discernment. I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius,
+remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who,
+after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classick elegance.
+If any exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the
+pride of Elizabeth's reign, however they have succeeded in prose, no
+sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision. If we produced any
+thing worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was, perhaps,
+Alabaster's Roxana[27].
+
+Of the exercises which the rules of the university required, some
+were published by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly
+applauded; for they were such as few can perform; yet there is reason to
+suspect that he was regarded in his college with no great fondness. That
+he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he
+was treated, was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate what I fear
+is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either university,
+that suffered the publick indignity of corporal correction[28].
+
+It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him,
+that he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not
+true; but it seems plain, from his own verses to Diodati, that he had
+incurred rustication, a temporary dismission into the country, with,
+perhaps, the loss of a term:
+
+  Me tenet urbs, reflua quam Thamesis alluit unda,
+  Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.
+  Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,
+  Nec dudum _vetiti_ me _laris_ angit amor.
+  Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri,
+  Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
+  Si sit hoc _exilium_ patrios adiise penates,
+  Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi,
+
+  Non ego vel _profugi_ nomen sortemve recuso,
+  Laetus et _exilii_ conditione fruor.
+
+I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence
+can give to the term "vetiti laris," a habitation from which he is
+excluded; or how _exile_ can be otherwise interpreted. He declares yet
+more, that he is weary of enduring "the threats of a rigorous master,
+and something else, which a temper like his cannot undergo." What was
+more than threat was probably punishment. This poem, which mentions his
+exile, proves, likewise, that it was not perpetual; for it concludes
+with a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge. And it may be
+conjectured, from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the
+memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame.
+
+He took both the usual degrees; that of Bachelor in 1628, and that of
+master in 1632; but he left the university with no kindness for its
+institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his
+governours, or his own captious perverseness. The cause cannot now be
+known, but the effect appears in his writings. His scheme of education,
+inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being
+intended to comprise the whole time which men usually spend in
+literature, from their entrance upon grammar, "till they proceed, as it
+is called, masters of arts." And in his discourse on the likeliest way
+to remove Hirelings out of the Church, he ingeniously proposes, that
+"the profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses
+should be applied to such academies all over the land, where languages
+and arts may be taught together; so that youth may be, at once, brought
+up to a competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means such
+of them as had the gift, being enabled to support themselves, without
+tithes, by the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy
+preachers."
+
+One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted,
+is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act
+plays, "writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antick and
+dishonest gestures of Trincalos[29], buffoons, and bawds, prostituting
+the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the
+eyes of courtiers and court ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles."
+
+This is sufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile
+from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which
+the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were, therefore, only
+criminal when they were acted by academicks.
+
+He went to the university with a design of entering into the church,
+but in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever became a
+clergyman must "subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless
+he took with a conscience that could retch, he must straight perjure
+himself. He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence, before the
+office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing."
+
+These expressions are, I find, applied to the subscription of the
+articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical
+obedience. I know not any of the articles which seem to thwart his
+opinions; but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil,
+raised his indignation.
+
+His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to
+a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his
+friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he
+seems to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastick luxury
+of various knowledge. To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in
+which he endeavours to persuade him, that the delay proceeds not from
+the delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more
+fitness for his task; and that he goes on, "not taking thought of being
+late, so it gives advantage to be more fit."
+
+When he left the university he returned to his father, then residing at
+Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years; in which
+time he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what
+limitations this universality is to be understood, who shall inform us?
+
+It might be supposed, that he who read so much should have done nothing
+else; but Milton found time to write the Masque of Comus, which was
+presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the lord president of Wales,
+in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the earl of Bridgewater's
+sons and daughter. The fiction is derived from Homer's Circe[30]; but we
+never can refuse to any modern the liberty of borrowing from Homer:
+
+  --"a quo ceu fonte perenni
+  Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis."
+
+His next production was Lycidas, an elegy, written in 1637, on the death
+of Mr. King, the son of sir John King, secretary for Ireland in the
+time of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. King was much a favourite at
+Cambridge, and many of the wits joined to do honour to his memory.
+Milton's acquaintance with the Italian writers may be discovered by a
+mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to the rules of Tuscan
+poetry, and his malignity to the church by some lines which are
+interpreted as threatening its extermination.
+
+He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; for, while
+he lived at Horton, he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few
+days, which he spent at Harefield, the house of the countess dowager of
+Derby, where the Arcades made part of a dramatick entertainment.
+
+He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of
+taking chambers in the inns of court, when the death of his mother set
+him at liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father's consent,
+and sir Henry Wotton's directions; with the celebrated precept of
+prudence, "i pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto;" thoughts close, and
+looks loose.
+
+In 1638 he left England, and went first to Paris; where, by the favour
+of lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius, then
+residing at the French court, as ambassadour from Christina of Sweden.
+From Paris he hasted into Italy, of which he had, with particular
+diligence, studied the language and literature; and, though he seems
+to have intended a very quick perambulation of the country, staid two
+months at Florence; where he found his way into the academies, and
+produced his compositions with such applause, as appears to have exalted
+him in his own opinion, and confirmed him in the hope, that, "by labour
+and intense study, which," says he, "I take to be my portion in this
+life, joined with a strong propensity of nature," he might "leave
+something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it
+die." It appears, in all his writings, that he had the usual concomitant
+of great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps
+not without some contempt of others; for scarcely any man ever wrote so
+much, and praised so few. Of his praise he was very frugal; as he set
+its value high, and considered his mention of a name, as a security
+against the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion.
+
+At Florence he could not, indeed, complain that his merit wanted
+distinction: Carlo Dati presented him with an encomiastick inscription,
+in the tumid lapidary style; and Francini wrote him an ode, of which the
+first stanza is only empty noise; the rest are, perhaps, too diffuse on
+common topicks; but the last is natural and beautiful.
+
+From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was
+again received with kindness by the learned and the great. Holstenius,
+the keeper of the Vatican library, who had resided three years at
+Oxford, introduced him to cardinal Barberini; and he, at a musical
+entertainment, waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into
+the assembly. Here Selvaggi praised him in a distich, and Salsilli in a
+tetrastick; neither of them of much value. The Italians were gainers
+by this literary commerce; for the encomiums with which Milton repaid
+Salsilli, though not secure against a stern grammarian, turn the balance
+indisputably in Milton's favour.
+
+Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud enough to
+publish them before his poems; though he says, he cannot be suspected
+but to have known that they were said, "non tam de se, quam supra se."
+
+At Rome, as at Florence, he staid only two months; a time, indeed,
+sufficient, if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its
+antiquities, or to view palaces and count pictures; but certainly too
+short for the contemplation of learning, policy, or manners.
+
+From Rome he passed on to Naples in company of a hermit, a companion
+from whom little could be expected; yet to him Milton owed his
+introduction to Manso, marquis of Villa, who had been before the patron
+of Tasso. Manso was enough delighted with his accomplishments to honour
+him with a sorry distich, in which he commends him for every thing but
+his religion: and Milton, in return, addressed him in a Latin poem,
+which must have raised an high opinion of English elegance and
+literature.
+
+His purpose was now to have visited Sicily and Greece; but, hearing of
+the differences between the king and parliament, he thought it proper to
+hasten home, rather than pass his life in foreign amusements, while his
+countrymen were contending for their rights. He, therefore, came back to
+Rome, though the merchants informed him of plots laid against him by the
+jesuits, for the liberty of his conversations on religion. He had sense
+enough to judge that there was no danger, and, therefore, kept on his
+way, and acted as before, neither obtruding nor shunning controversy. He
+had, perhaps, given some offence by visiting Galileo, then a prisoner in
+the inquisition for philosophical heresy; and at Naples he was told by
+Manso, that, by his declarations on religious questions, he had excluded
+himself from some distinctions which he should otherwise have paid him.
+But such conduct, though it did not please, was yet sufficiently safe;
+and Milton staid two months more at Rome, and went on to Florence
+without molestation.
+
+From Florence he visited Lucca. He afterwards went to Venice; and,
+having sent away a collection of musick and other books, travelled to
+Geneva, which he, probably, considered as the metropolis of orthodoxy.
+
+Here he reposed, as in a congenial element, and became acquainted with
+John Diodati and Frederick Spanheim, two learned professors of divinity.
+From Geneva he passed through France; and came home, after an absence of
+a year and three months.
+
+At his return he heard of the death of his friend Charles Diodati; a
+man, whom it is reasonable to suppose, of great merit, since he was
+thought, by Milton, worthy of a poem, entitled Epitaphium Damonis,
+written with the common, but childish, imitation of pastoral life.
+
+He now hired a lodging at the house of one Russet, a tailor, in St.
+Bride's church-yard, and undertook the education of John and Edward
+Philips, his sister's sons. Finding his rooms too little, he took a
+house and garden in Aldersgate street[31], which was not then so much
+out of the world as it is now; and chose his dwelling at the upper end
+of a passage, that he might avoid the noise of the street. Here he
+received more boys, to be boarded and instructed.
+
+Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree
+of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who
+hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty,
+and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in
+a private boarding-school. This is the period of his life from which all
+his biographers seem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton
+should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but, since it cannot be denied
+that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and
+another, that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning
+and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to
+excuse an act which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful.
+His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its
+deficiencies by an honest and useful employment.
+
+It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a
+formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read
+in Aldersgate street, by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years
+of age. Those who tell or receive these stories should consider, that
+nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman
+must be limited by the power of the horse. Every man, that has ever
+undertaken to instruct others, can tell what slow advances he has been
+able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant
+inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd
+misapprehension.
+
+The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more solid
+than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that
+treat of physical subjects; such as the georgick, and astronomical
+treatises of the ancients. This was a scheme of improvement which seems
+to have busied many literary projectors of that age. Cowley, who had
+more means than Milton of knowing what was wanting to the embellishments
+of life, formed the same plan of education in his imaginary college.
+
+But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the
+sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or
+the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action
+or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first
+requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the
+next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those
+examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove, by events,
+the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues
+and excellencies of all times and of all places; we are perpetually
+moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse
+with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter
+are voluntary, and at leisure. Physiological learning is of such rare
+emergence, that one may know another half his life, without being able
+to estimate his skill in hydrostaticks or astronomy; but his moral and
+prudential character immediately appears.
+
+Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most
+axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials
+for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators,
+and historians. Let me not be censured for this digression, as pedantick
+or paradoxical; for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my
+side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from the study of nature to
+speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off
+attention from life to nature. They seem to think, that we are placed
+here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the stars.
+Socrates was rather of opinion, that what we had to learn was, how to do
+good, and avoid evil:
+
+  'Oti toi en megaroisi kakon t agathon te tetukta']
+
+Of institutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-working
+academy, I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent
+for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small history
+of poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of which, perhaps,
+none of my readers has ever heard[32].
+
+That in his school, as in every thing else which he undertook, he
+laboured with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting. One part
+of his method deserves general imitation. He was careful to instruct his
+scholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology; of which
+he dictated a short system, gathered from the writers that were then
+fashionable in the Dutch universities.
+
+He set his pupils an example of hard study and spare diet; only now and
+then he allowed himself to pass a day of festivity and indulgence with
+some gay gentlemen of Gray's inn.
+
+He now began to engage in the controversies of the times, and lent
+his breath to blow the flames of contention. In 1641, he published a
+treatise of Reformation, in two books, against the established church;
+being willing to help the puritans, who were, he says, "inferior to the
+prelates in learning."
+
+Hall, bishop of Norwich, had published an Humble Remonstrance, in
+defence of episcopacy; to which, in 1641, five ministers[33], of whose
+names the first letters made the celebrated word Smectymnuus, gave their
+answer. Of this answer a confutation was attempted by the learned Usher;
+and to the confutation Milton published a reply, entitled, of Prelatical
+Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the Apostolical Times, by
+virtue of those testimonies which are alleged to that purpose in some
+late treatises, one whereof goes under the name of James, lord bishop of
+Armagh.
+
+I have transcribed this title to show, by his contemptuous mention of
+Usher, that he had now adopted the puritanical savageness of manners.
+His next work was, the Reason of Church Government urged against
+Prelacy, by Mr. John Milton, 1642. In this book he discovers, not with
+ostentatious exultation, but with calm confidence, his high opinion of
+his own powers; and promises to undertake something, he yet knows not
+what, that may be of use and honour to his country. "This," says he, "is
+not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit that 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; till which in some measure be compast, I refuse not to sustain
+this expectation." From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and
+rational, might be expected the Paradise Lost.
+
+He published, the same year, two more pamphlets, upon the same question.
+To one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was "vomited out of the
+university," he answers, in general terms: "The fellows of the college,
+wherein I spent some years, at my parting, after I had taken two
+degrees, as the manner is, signified, many times, how much better it
+would content them that I should stay. As for the common approbation or
+dislike of that place, as now it is, that I should esteem or disesteem
+myself the more for that, too simple is the answerer, if he think to
+obtain with me. Of small practice were the physician who could not
+judge, by what she and her sister have of long time vomited, that the
+worser stuff she strongly keeps in her stomach, but the better she is
+ever kecking at, and is queasy; she vomits now out of sickness; but,
+before it will be well with her, she must vomit by strong physick. The
+university, in the time of her better health, and my younger judgment, I
+never greatly admired, but now much less."
+
+This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been
+injured. He proceeds to describe the course of his conduct, and
+the train of his thoughts; and, because he has been suspected of
+incontinence, gives an account of his own purity: "That if I be justly
+charged," says he, "with this crime, it may come upon me with tenfold
+shame."
+
+The style of his piece is rough, and such, perhaps, was that of his
+antagonist. This roughness he justifies, by great examples, in a long
+digression. Sometimes he tries to be humorous: "Lest I should take him
+for some chaplain in hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one
+who serves not at the altar only, but at the court-cupboard, he will
+bestow on us a pretty model of himself; and sets me out half a dozen
+ptisical mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of
+convulsion fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped
+narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of
+thumb-ring poesies. And thus ends this section, or rather dissection,
+of himself." Such is the controversial merriment of Milton; his gloomy
+seriousness is yet more offensive. Such is his malignity, "that hell
+grows darker at his frown." His father, after Reading was taken by
+Essex, came to reside in his house; and his school increased. At
+Whitsuntide, in his thirty-fifth year, he married Mary, the daughter of
+Mr. Powel, a justice of the peace in Oxfordshire. He brought her to town
+with him, and expected all the advantages of a conjugal life. The lady,
+however, seems not much to have delighted in the pleasures of spare
+diet and hard study; for, as Philips relates, "having for a month led a
+philosophick life, after having been used at home to a great house, and
+much company and joviality, her friends, possibly by her own desire,
+made earnest suit to have her company the remaining part of the summer;
+which was granted, upon a promise of her return at Michaelmas."
+
+Milton was too busy to much miss his wife: he pursued his studies; and
+now and then visited the lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has mentioned in
+one of his sonnets. At last Michaelmas arrived; but the lady had no
+inclination to return to the sullen gloom of her husband's habitation,
+and, therefore, very willingly forgot her promise. He sent her a letter,
+but had no answer: he sent more with the same success. It could be
+alleged that letters miscarry; he, therefore, despatched a messenger,
+being by this time too angry to go himself. His messenger was sent back
+with some contempt. The family of the lady were cavaliers.
+
+In a man whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton's, less
+provocation than this might have raised violent resentment. Milton soon
+determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and, being one of those
+who could easily find arguments to justify inclination, published, in
+1644, the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; which was followed by the
+Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce; and the next year, his
+Tetrachordon, expositions upon the four chief places of scripture which
+treat of marriage.
+
+This innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy, who,
+then holding their famous assembly at Westminster, procured that the
+author should be called before the lords; but "that house," says Wood,
+"whether approving the doctrine, or not favouring his accusers, did soon
+dismiss him."
+
+There seems not to have been much written against him, nor any thing by
+any writer of eminence[34]. The antagonist that appeared, is styled by
+him "a serving man turned solicitor." Howell, in his Letters, mentions
+the new doctrine with contempt[35]: and it was, I suppose, thought more
+worthy of derision than of confutation. He complains of this neglect
+in two sonnets, of which the first is contemptible and the second not
+excellent.
+
+From this time it is observed, that he became an enemy to the
+presbyterians, whom he had favoured before. He that changes his party
+by his humour, is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his
+interest: he loves himself rather than truth.
+
+His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an unresisting
+sufferer of injuries; and, perceiving that he had begun to put
+his doctrine in practice, by courting a young woman of great
+accomplishments, the daughter of one doctor Davis, who was, however, not
+ready to comply, they resolved to endeavour a reunion. He went sometimes
+to the house of one Blackborough, his relation, in the lane of St.
+Martin-le-grand, and at one of his usual visits was surprised to see his
+wife come from another room, and implore forgiveness on her knees. He
+resisted her entreaties for awhile; "but partly," says Philips, "his own
+generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance
+in anger or revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on
+both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion and a firm league of
+peace." It were injurious to omit, that Milton afterwards received her
+father and her brothers in his own house, when they were distressed,
+with other royalists.
+
+He published, about the same time, his Areopagitica, a speech of Mr.
+John Milton, for the liberty of unlicensed printing. The danger of
+such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a
+problem in the science of government, which human understanding seems,
+hitherto, unable to solve. If nothing may be published but what civil
+authority shall have previously approved, power must always be the
+standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his
+projects, there can be no settlement; if every murmurer at government
+may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every skeptick in
+theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy
+against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed
+that every society may punish, though not prevent, the publication of
+opinions which that society shall think pernicious; but this punishment,
+though it may crush the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more
+reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers
+may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors
+unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.
+
+But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestick, poetry was never
+long out of his thoughts. About this time (1645) a collection of his
+Latin and English poems appeared, in which the Allegro and Penseroso,
+with some others, were first published.
+
+He had taken a large house in Barbican, for the reception of scholars;
+but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted
+refuge for awhile, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they went away;
+"and the house again," says Philips, "now looked like a house of the
+muses only, though the accession of scholars was not great. Possibly
+his having proceeded so far in the education of youth may have been the
+occasion of his adversaries calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster;
+whereas, it is well known he never set up for a publick school, to
+teach all the young fry of a parish; but only was willing to impart his
+learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of gentlemen who
+were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings, nor his way of
+teaching, ever savoured in the least of pedantry."
+
+Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and
+what might be confessed without disgrace. Milton was not a man who could
+become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmest friends
+seem not to have found; they, therefore, shift and palliate. He did
+not sell literature to all comers, at an open shop; he was a chamber
+milliner, and measured his commodities only to his friends.
+
+Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of
+degradation, tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his
+character again, has a mind to invest him with military splendour: "He
+is much mistaken," he says, "if there was not, about this time, a design
+of making him an adjutant-general in sir William Waller's army. But the
+new modelling of the army proved an obstruction to the design." An
+event cannot be set at a much greater distance than by having been only
+"designed about some time," if a man "be not much mistaken." Milton
+shall be a pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips be not much mistaken,
+somebody at some time designed him for a soldier.
+
+About the time that the army was new-modelled, (1645,) he removed to
+a smaller house in Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln's inn
+fields. He is not known to have published any thing afterwards, till
+the king's death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the
+presbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it, and "to compose the
+minds of the people."
+
+He made some Remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the
+Irish Rebels. While he contented himself to write, he, perhaps, did only
+what his conscience dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly watch
+the influence of his own passions, and the gradual prevalence of
+opinions, first willingly admitted, and then habitually indulged; if
+objections, by being overlooked, were forgotten, and desire superinduced
+conviction; he yet shared only the common weakness of mankind, and might
+be no less sincere than his opponents. But, as faction seldom leaves a
+man honest, however it might find him, Milton is suspected of having
+interpolated the book called Icon Basilike, which the council of state,
+to whom he was now made Latin secretary, employed him to censure, by
+inserting a prayer taken from Sidney's Arcadia, and imputing it to the
+king; whom he charges, in his Iconoclastes, with the use of this prayer,
+as with a heavy crime, in the indecent language with which prosperity
+had emboldened the advocates for rebellion to insult all that is
+venerable or great: "Who would have imagined so little fear in him of
+the true all-seeing deity, as, immediately before his death, to pop into
+the hands of the grave bishop that attended him, as a special relique of
+his saintly exercises, a prayer, stolen word for word, from the mouth of
+a heathen woman, praying to a heathen god?"
+
+The papers which the king gave to Dr. Juxon, on the scaffold, the
+regicides took away, so that they were, at least, the publishers of this
+prayer; and Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great care,
+was inclined to think them the forgers. The use of it, by adaptation,
+was innocent; and they who could so noisily censure it, with a
+little extension of their malice, could contrive what they wanted to
+accuse[36].
+
+King Charles the second, being now sheltered in Holland, employed
+Salmasius, professor of polite learning at Leyden, to write a defence of
+his father and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry, gave him, as
+was reported, a hundred Jacobuses. Salmasius was a man of skill in
+languages, knowledge of antiquity, and sagacity of emendatory criticism,
+almost exceeding all hope of human attainment; and having, by excessive
+praises, been confirmed in great confidence of himself, though he
+probably had not much considered the principles of society, or the
+rights of government, undertook the employment without distrust of his
+own qualifications; and, as his expedition in writing was wonderful, in
+1649, published Defensio Regis.
+
+To this Milton was required to write a sufficient answer; which he
+performed (1651) in such a manner, that Hobbes declared himself unable
+to decide whose language was best, or whose arguments were worst. In my
+opinion, Milton's periods are smoother, neater, and more pointed; but he
+delights himself with teasing his adversary, as much as with confuting
+him. He makes a foolish allusion of Salmasius, whose doctrine he
+considers as servile and unmanly, to the stream of Salmacis, which,
+whoever entered, left half his virility behind him. Salmasius was a
+Frenchman, and was unhappily married to a scold: "Tu es Gallus," says
+Milton, "et, ut aiunt, minium gallinaceus." But his supreme pleasure is
+to tax his adversary, so renowned for criticism, with vitious Latin. He
+opens his book with telling that he has used _persona_, which, according
+to Milton, signifies only a _mask_, in a sense not known to the Romans,
+by applying it as we apply _person_. But, as Nemesis is always on the
+watch, it is memorable that he has enforced the charge of a solecism by
+an expression in itself grossly solecistical, when, for one of those
+supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, and, I think, some one before him,
+has remarked, "propino te grammatistis tuis _vapulandum_[37]." From
+_vapulo_, which has a passive sense, _vapulandus_ can never be derived.
+No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations, and of kings,
+sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them.
+
+Milton, when he undertook this answer, was weak of body and dim of
+sight; but his will was forward, and what was wanting of health was
+supplied by zeal. He was rewarded with a thousand pounds, and his book
+was much read; for paradox, recommended by spirit and elegance, easily
+gains attention; and he, who told every man that he was equal to his
+king, could hardly want an audience.
+
+That the performance of Salmasius was not dispersed with equal rapidity,
+or read with equal eagerness, is very credible. He taught only the stale
+doctrine of authority, and the unpleasing duty of submission; and he had
+been so long not only the monarch, but the tyrant, of literature, that
+almost all mankind were delighted to find him defied and insulted by a
+new name, not yet considered as any one's rival. If Christina, as is
+said, commended the Defence of the People, her purpose must be to
+torment Salmasius, who was then at court; for neither her civil station,
+nor her natural character, could dispose her to favour the doctrine, who
+was by birth a queen, and by temper despotick.
+
+That Salmasius was, from the appearance of Milton's book, treated with
+neglect, there is not much proof; but to a man, so long accustomed to
+admiration, a little praise of his antagonist would be sufficiently
+offensive, and might incline him to leave Sweden, from which, however,
+he was dismissed, not with any mark of contempt, but with a train of
+attendance scarcely less than regal.
+
+He prepared a reply, which, left as it was imperfect, was published by
+his son in the year of the restoration. In the beginning, being probably
+most in pain for his Latinity, he endeavours to defend his use of the
+word _persona_; but, if I remember right, he misses a better authority
+than any that he has found, that of Juvenal in his fourth satire:
+
+  Quid agas, cum dira et foedior omni
+  Crimine _persona_ est?
+
+As Salmasius reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the quarrel,
+Milton delighted himself with the belief that he had shortened
+Salmasius's life, and both, perhaps, with more malignity than reason.
+Salmasius died at the spa, Sept. 3, 1653; and, as controvertists are
+commonly said to be killed by their last dispute, Milton was flattered
+with the credit of destroying him.
+
+Cromwell had now dismissed the parliament by the authority of which he
+had destroyed monarchy, and commenced monarch himself, under the title
+of protector, but with kingly, and more than kingly, power. That his
+authority was lawful, never was pretended: he himself founded his right
+only in necessity; but Milton, having now tasted the honey of publick
+employment, would not return to hunger and philosophy, but, continuing
+to exercise his office, under a manifest usurpation, betrayed to his
+power that liberty which he had defended. Nothing can be more just than
+that rebellion should end in slavery; that he, who had justified the
+murder of his king, for some acts which seemed to him unlawful, should
+now sell his services, and his flatteries, to a tyrant, of whom it was
+evident that he could do nothing lawful.
+
+He had now been blind for some years; but his vigour of intellect
+was such, that he was not disabled to discharge his office of Latin
+secretary, or continue his controversies. His mind was too eager to be
+diverted, and too strong to be subdued.
+
+About this time his first wife died in childbed, having left him three
+daughters. As he probably did not much love her, he did not long
+continue the appearance of lamenting her; but, after a short time,
+married Catharine, the daughter of one captain Woodcock, of Hackney; a
+woman, doubtless, educated in opinions like his own. She died, within a
+year, of childbirth, or some distemper that followed it; and her husband
+honoured her memory with a poor sonnet.
+
+The first reply to Milton's Defensio Populi was published in 1651,
+called Apologia pro Rege et Populo Anglicano, contra Johannis
+Polypragmatici, alias Miltoni, Defensionem destructivam Regis et Populi.
+Of this the author was not known; but Milton and his nephew, Philips,
+under whose name he published an answer, so much corrected by him that
+it might be called his own, imputed it to Bramhal; and, knowing him no
+friend to regicides, thought themselves at liberty to treat him as if
+they had known what they only suspected.
+
+Next year appeared Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum. Of this the author
+was Peter du Moulin, who was afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; but
+Morus, or More, a French minister, having the care of its publication,
+was treated as the writer by Milton in his Defensio Secunda, and
+overwhelmed by such violence of invective, that he began to shrink under
+the tempest, and gave his persecutors the means of knowing the true
+author. Du Moulin was now in great danger; but Milton's pride operated
+against his malignity; and both he and his friends were more willing
+that Du Moulin should escape than that he should be convicted of
+mistake.
+
+In this second defence he shows that his eloquence is not merely
+satirical; the rudeness of his invective is equalled by the grossness
+of his flattery. "Deserimur, Cromuelle, tu solus superes, ad te summa
+nostrarum rerum rediit, in te solo consistit, insuperabili tuae virtuti
+cedimus cuncti, nemine vel obloquente, nisi qui aequales inaequalis ipse
+honores sibi quaerit, aut digniori concessos invidet, aut non intelligit
+nihil esse in societate hominum magis vel Deo gratum, vel rationi
+consentaneum, esse in civitate nihil aequius, nihil utilius, quam potiri
+rerum dignissimum. Eum te agnoscunt omnes, Cromuelle, ea tu civis
+maximus et gloriosissimus[38], dux publici consilii, exercituum
+fortissimorum imperator, pater patriae gessisti. Sic tu spontanea
+bonorum omnium, et animitus missa voce salutaris."
+
+Caesar, when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not more servile
+or more elegant flattery. A translation may show its servility; but
+its elegance is less attainable. Having exposed the unskilfulness or
+selfishness of the former government, "We were left," says Milton,
+"to ourselves: the whole national interest fell into your hands, and
+subsists only in your abilities. To your virtue, overpowering and
+resistless, every man gives way, except some who, without equal
+qualifications, aspire to equal honours, who envy the distinctions of
+merit, greater than their own, or who have yet to learn, that, in the
+coalition of human society, nothing is more pleasing to God, or more
+agreeable to reason, than that the highest mind should have the
+sovereign power. Such, sir, are you by general confession; such are the
+things achieved by you, the greatest and most glorious of our countrymen,
+the director of our publick councils, the leader of unconquered armies,
+the father of your country; for by that title does every good man hail
+you with sincere and voluntary praise."
+
+Next year, having defended all that wanted defence, he found leisure to
+defend himself. He undertook his own vindication against More, whom he
+declares, in his title, to be justly called the author of the Regii
+Sanguinis Clamor. In this there is no want of vehemence or eloquence,
+nor does he forget his wonted wit: "Morus est? an Momus? an uterque idem
+est?" He then remembers that Morus is Latin for a mulberry-tree, and
+hints at the known transformation:
+
+  "Poma alba ferebat
+  Quae post nigra tulit Morus."
+
+With this piece ended his controversies; and he, from this time, gave
+himself up to his private studies and his civil employment.
+
+As secretary to the protector, he is supposed to have written the
+declaration of the reasons for a war with Spain. His agency was
+considered as of great importance; for, when a treaty with Sweden was
+artfully suspended, the delay was publickly imputed to Mr. Milton's
+indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to express his wonder,
+that only one man in England could write Latin, and that man blind.
+
+Being now forty-seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered
+from external interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former
+purposes, and to have resumed three great works, which he had planned
+for his future employment; an epick poem, the history of his country,
+and a dictionary of the Latin tongue.
+
+To collect a dictionary, seems a work of all others least practicable
+in a state of blindness, because it depends upon perpetual and minute
+inspection and collation. Nor would Milton probably have begun it, after
+he had lost his eyes; but, having had it always before him, he continued
+it, says Philips, "almost to his dying-day; but the papers were so
+discomposed and deficient, that they could not be fitted for the press."
+The compilers of the Latin dictionary, printed at Cambridge, had the use
+of those collections in three folios; but what was their fate afterwards
+is not known[39].
+
+To compile a history from various authors, when they can only be
+consulted by other eyes, is not easy, nor possible, but with more
+skilful and attentive help than can be commonly obtained; and it was
+probably the difficulty of consulting and comparing that stopped
+Milton's narrative at the conquest; a period at which affairs were not
+yet very intricate, nor authors very numerous.
+
+For the subject of his epick poem, after much deliberation, long
+choosing, and beginning late, he fixed upon Paradise Lost; a design so
+comprehensive, that it could be justified only by success. He had once
+designed to celebrate king Arthur, as he hints in his verses to Mansus;
+but "Arthur was reserved," says Fenton, "to another destiny[40]."
+
+It appears, by some sketches of poetical projects left in manuscript,
+and to be seen in a library[41] at Cambridge, that he had digested his
+thoughts on this subject into one of those wild dramas which were
+anciently called Mysteries[42]; and Philips had seen what he terms part
+of a tragedy, beginning with the first ten lines of Satan's address to
+the sun. These mysteries consist of allegorical persons; such as
+Justice, Mercy, Faith. Of the tragedy or mystery of Paradise Lost,
+there are two plans:
+
+The Persons.
+
+  Michael.
+  Chorus of Angels.
+  Heavenly Love.
+  Lucifer.
+  Adam,  }
+  Eve,   } with the Serpent.
+  Conscience.
+  Death.
+  Labour,      }
+  Sickness,    }
+  Discontent,  } Mutes.
+  Ignorance,   }
+  with others; }
+  Faith.
+  Hope.
+  Charity.
+
+The Persons.
+
+  Moses.
+  Divine Justice, Wisdom, Heavenly Love.
+  The Evening Star, Hesperus.
+  Chorus of Angels.
+  Lucifer.
+  Adam.
+
+  Eve.
+  Conscience.
+  Labour,      }
+  Sickness,    }
+  Discontent,  }  Mutes.
+  Ignorance,   }
+  Fear,        }
+  Death,       }
+  Faith.
+  Hope.
+  Charity.
+
+PARADISE LOST.
+
+The Persons.
+
+Moses [Greek: prologizei], recounting how he assumed his true body; that
+it corrupts not, because it is with God in the mount: declares the like
+of Enoch and Elijah; besides the purity of the place, that certain pure
+winds, dews, and clouds, preserve it from corruption; whence exhorts to
+the sight of God; tells they cannot see Adam in the state of innocence,
+by reason of their sin.
+
+  Justice, } debating what should become of man, if he fall.
+  Mercy,   }
+  Wisdom,  }
+
+Chorus of angels singing a hymn of the creation.
+
+ACT II.
+
+Heavenly Love.
+
+Evening Star.
+
+Chorus sings the marriage song, and describes Paradise.
+
+ACT III.
+
+Lucifer contriving Adam's ruin.
+
+Chorus fears for Adam, and relates Lucifer's rebellion and fall.
+
+ACT IV.
+
+  Adam,  } fallen.
+  Eve,   }
+
+Conscience cites them to God's examination.
+
+Chorus bewails, and tells the good Adam has lost.
+
+ACT V.
+
+  Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise.
+  ------presented by an angel with
+  Labour, Grief, Hatred, Envy, War, Famine,    }
+  Pestilence, Sickness, Discontent, Ignorance, } Mutes.
+  Fear, Death,                                 }
+  To whom he gives their names. Likewise Winter, Heat,
+  Tempest, &c.
+  Faith,    }
+  Hope,     }comfort him, and instruct him.
+  Charity,  }
+  Chorus briefly concludes.
+
+Such was his first design, which could have produced only an allegory,
+or mystery. The following sketch seems to have attained more maturity.
+
+Adam unparadised:
+
+The angel Gabriel, either descending or entering; showing, since
+this globe was created, his frequency as much on earth as in heaven;
+describes Paradise. Next, the chorus, showing the reason of his coming
+to keep his watch in Paradise, after Lucifer's rebellion, by command
+from God; and withal expressing his desire to see and know more
+concerning this excellent new creature, man. The angel Gabriel, as by
+his name signifying a prince of power, tracing Paradise with, a more
+free office, passes by the station of the chorus, and, desired by them,
+relates what he knew of man; as the creation of Eve, with their love
+and marriage. After this, Lucifer appears; after his overthrow, bemoans
+himself, seeks revenge on man. The chorus prepares resistance at his
+first approach. At last, after discourse of enmity on either side, he
+departs: whereat the chorus sings of the battle and victory in heaven,
+against him and his accomplices: as before, after the first act, was
+sung a hymn of the creation. Here again may appear Lucifer, relating and
+exulting in what he had done to the destruction of man. Man next, and
+Eve, having by this time been seduced by the serpent, appears confusedly
+covered with leaves. Conscience, in a shape, accuses him; justice cites
+him to the place whither Jehovah called for him. In the mean while, the
+chorus entertains the stage, and is informed by some angel the manner of
+the fall. Here the chorus bewails Adam's fall; Adam then and Eve return;
+accuse one another; but especially Adam lays the blame to his wife; is
+stubborn in his offence. Justice appears, reasons with him, convinces
+him. The chorus admonisheth Adam, and bids him beware Lucifer's example
+of impenitence. The angel is sent to banish them out of Paradise; but
+before, causes to pass before his eyes, in shapes, a mask of all the
+evils of this life and world. He is humbled, relents, despairs; at last
+appears Mercy, comforts him, promises the Messiah; then calls in Faith,
+Hope, and Charity; instructs him; he repents, gives God the glory,
+submits to his penalty. The chorus briefly concludes. Compare this with
+the former draught.
+
+These are very imperfect rudiments of Paradise Lost; but it is pleasant
+to see great works in their seminal state, pregnant with latent
+possibilities of excellence; nor could there be any more delightful
+entertainment than to trace their gradual growth and expansion, and to
+observe how they are sometimes suddenly advanced by accidental hints,
+and sometimes slowly improved by steady meditation.
+
+Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot
+obstruct, and, therefore, he naturally solaced his solitude by the
+indulgence of his fancy, and the melody of his numbers. He had done what
+he knew to be necessary previous to poetical excellence; he had made
+himself acquainted with "seemly arts and affairs;" his comprehension was
+extended by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual
+treasures. He was skilful in many languages, and had, by reading and
+composition, attained the full mastery of his own. He would have wanted
+little help from books, had he retained the power of perusing them.
+
+But while his greater designs were advancing, having now, like many
+other authors, caught the love of publication, he amused himself, as he
+could, with little productions. He sent to the press, 1658, a manuscript
+of Raleigh, called, the Cabinet Council; and next year gratified
+his malevolence to the clergy, by a Treatise of Civil Power in
+Ecclesiastical Cases, and the Means of removing Hirelings out of the
+Church.
+
+Oliver was now dead; Richard was constrained to resign: the system of
+extemporary government, which had been held together only by force,
+naturally fell into fragments, when that force was taken away; and
+Milton saw himself and his cause in equal danger. But he had still hope
+of doing something. He wrote letters, which Toland has published, to
+such men as he thought friends to the new commonwealth; and, even in the
+year of the restoration, he "bated no jot of heart or hope," but was
+fantastical enough to think that the nation, agitated as it was, might
+be settled by a pamphlet, called, a ready and easy Way to establish a
+free Commonwealth: which was, however, enough considered to be both
+seriously and ludicrously answered.
+
+The obstinate enthusiasm of the commonwealth-men was very remarkable.
+When the king was apparently returning, Harrington, with a few
+associates as fanatical as himself, used to meet, with all the gravity
+of political importance, to settle an equal government by rotation; and
+Milton, kicking when he could strike no longer, was foolish enough
+to publish, a few weeks before the restoration, notes upon a sermon
+preached by one Griffiths, entitled, the Fear of God and the King.
+To these notes an answer was written by L'Estrange, in a pamphlet,
+petulantly called, No Blind Guides.
+
+But whatever Milton could write, or men of greater activity could do,
+the king was now about to be restored with the irresistible approbation
+of the people. He was, therefore, no longer secretary, and was,
+consequently, obliged to quit the house which he held by his office;
+and, proportioning his sense of danger to his opinion of the importance
+of his writings, thought it convenient to seek some shelter, and hid
+himself, for a time, in Bartholomew close, by West Smithfield.
+
+I cannot but remark a kind of respect, perhaps unconsciously, paid to
+this great man by his biographers: every house in which he resided is
+historically mentioned, as if it were an injury to neglect naming any
+place that he honoured by his presence.
+
+The king, with lenity of which the world has had, perhaps, no other
+example, declined to be the judge or avenger of his own or his father's
+wrongs; and promised to admit into the act of oblivion all, except those
+whom the parliament should except; and the parliament doomed none to
+capital punishment, but the wretches who had immediately cooperated in
+the murder of the king. Milton was certainly not one of them; he had
+only justified what they had done.
+
+This justification was, indeed, sufficiently offensive; and, June 16, an
+order was issued to seize Milton's Defence, and Goodwin's Obstructers of
+Justice, another book of the same tendency, and burn them by the common
+hangman. The attorney-general was ordered to prosecute the authors; but
+Milton was not seized, nor, perhaps, very diligently pursued.
+
+Not long after, August 19, the flutter of innumerable bosoms was stilled
+by an act, which the king, that his mercy might want no recommendation
+of elegance, rather called an act of oblivion, than of grace. Goodwin
+was named, with nineteen more, as incapacitated for any publick trust;
+but of Milton there was no exception[43].
+
+Of this tenderness shown to Milton, the curiosity of mankind has not
+forborne to inquire the reason. Burnet thinks he was forgotten; but this
+is another instance which may confirm Dalrymple's observation, who
+says, "that whenever Burnet's narrations are examined, he appears to be
+mistaken."
+
+Forgotten he was not; for his prosecution was ordered; it must be,
+therefore, by design that he was included in the general oblivion. He is
+said to have had friends in the house, such as Marvel, Morrice, and
+sir Thomas Clarges: and, undoubtedly, a man like him must have
+had influence. A very particular story of his escape is told by
+Richardson[44] in his Memoirs, which he received from Pope, as delivered
+by Betterton, who might have heard it from Davenant. In the war between
+the king and parliament, Davenant was made prisoner and condemned to
+die; but was spared at the request of Milton. When the turn of success
+brought Milton into the like danger, Davenant repayed the benefit by
+appearing in his favour. Here is a reciprocation of generosity and
+gratitude so pleasing, that the tale makes its own way to credit. But,
+if help were wanted, I know not where to find it. The danger of Davenant
+is certain, from his own relation; but of his escape there is no
+account[45]. Betterton's narration can be traced no higher; it is
+not known that he had it from Davenant. We are told that the benefit
+exchanged was life for life; but it seems not certain that Milton's life
+ever was in danger. Goodwin, who had committed the same kind of crime,
+escaped with incapacitation; and, as exclusion from publick trust is a
+punishment which the power of government can commonly inflict, without
+the help of a particular law, it required no great interest to exempt
+Milton from a censure little more than verbal. Something may be
+reasonably ascribed to veneration and compassion; to veneration of his
+abilities, and compassion for his distresses, which made it fit to
+forgive his malice for his learning. He was now poor and blind; and who
+would pursue with violence an illustrious enemy, depressed by fortune,
+and disarmed by nature[46]?
+
+The publication of the act of oblivion put him in the same condition
+with his fellow subjects. He was, however, upon some pretence, not now
+known, in the custody of the serjeant, in December; and when he was
+released, upon his refusal of the fees demanded, he and the serjeant
+were called before the house. He was now safe within the shade of
+oblivion, and knew himself to be as much out of the power of a griping
+officer, as any other man. How the question was determined is not known.
+Milton would hardly have contended, but that he knew himself to have
+right on his side.
+
+He then removed to Jewin street, near Aldersgate street; and being
+blind, and by no means wealthy, wanted a domestick companion and
+attendant; and, therefore, by the recommendation of Dr. Paget, married
+Elizabeth Minshul, of a gentleman's family in Cheshire, probably without
+a fortune. All his wives were virgins; for he has declared that he
+thought it gross and indelicate to be a second husband: upon what
+other principles his choice was made cannot now be known; but marriage
+afforded not much of his happiness. The first wife left him in disgust,
+and was brought back only by terrour; the second, indeed, seems to have
+been more a favourite, but her life was short. The third, as Philips
+relates, oppressed his children in his lifetime, and cheated them at his
+death.
+
+Soon after his marriage, according to an obscure story, he was offered
+the continuance of his employment, and, being pressed by his wife to
+accept it, answered: "You, like other women, want to ride in your coach;
+my wish is to live and die an honest man." If he considered the Latin
+secretary as exercising any of the powers of government, he that had
+shared authority, either with the parliament or Cromwell, might have
+forborne to talk very loudly of his honesty; and, if he thought the
+office purely ministerial, he certainly might have honestly retained
+it under the king. But this tale has too little evidence to deserve a
+disquisition; large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most
+common topicks of falsehood.
+
+He had so much either of prudence or gratitude, that he forbore to
+disturb the new settlement with any of his political or ecclesiastical
+opinions, and, from this time, devoted himself to poetry and literature.
+Of his zeal for learning, in all its parts, he gave a proof by
+publishing, the next year, 1661, Accidence commenced Grammar; a little
+book, which has nothing remarkable, but that its author, who had been
+lately defending the supreme powers of his country, and was then writing
+Paradise Lost, could descend from his elevation to rescue children from
+the perplexity of grammatical confusion, and the trouble of lessons
+unnecessarily repeated[47].
+
+About this time Elwood, the quaker, being recommended to him, as one who
+would read Latin to him for the advantage of his conversation, attended
+him every afternoon, except on Sundays. Milton, who, in his letter to
+Hartlib, had declared, that "to read Latin with an English mouth is as
+ill a hearing as law French," required that Elwood should learn and
+practise the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, was necessary, if he
+would talk with foreigners. This seems to have been a task troublesome
+without use. There is little reason for preferring the Italian
+pronunciation to our own, except that it is more general; and to teach
+it to an Englishman is only to make him a foreigner at home. He who
+travels, if he speaks Latin, may so soon learn the sounds which every
+native gives it, that he need make no provision before his journey; and
+if strangers visit us, it is their business to practise such conformity
+to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries. Elwood
+complied with the directions, and improved himself by his attendance;
+for he relates, that Milton, having a curious ear, knew, by his voice,
+when he read what he did not understand, and would stop him, and "open
+the most difficult passages."
+
+In a short time he took a house in the Artillery walk, leading to
+Bunhill fields; the mention of which concludes the register of Milton's
+removals and habitations. He lived longer in this place than in any
+other.
+
+He was now busied by Paradise Lost. Whence he drew the original design
+has been variously conjectured, by men who cannot bear to think
+themselves ignorant of that which, at last, neither diligence nor
+sagacity can discover. Some find the hint in an Italian tragedy.
+Voltaire tells a wild and unauthorized story of a farce seen by Milton,
+in Italy, which opened thus: "Let the rainbow be the fiddlestick of
+the fiddle of heaven[48]." It has been already shown, that the first
+conception was of a tragedy or mystery, not of a narrative, but a
+dramatick work, which he is supposed to have begun to reduce to its
+present form about the time (1655) when he finished his dispute with the
+defenders of the king.
+
+He, long before, had promised to adorn his native country by some great
+performance, while he had yet, perhaps, no settled design, and was
+stimulated only by such expectations as naturally arose from the survey
+of his attainments, and the consciousness of his powers. What he should
+undertake, it was difficult to determine. He was "long choosing, and
+began late."
+
+While he was obliged to divide his time between his private studies and
+affairs of state, his poetical labour must have been often interrupted;
+and, perhaps, he did little more in that busy time than construct the
+narrative, adjust the episodes, proportion the parts, accumulate images
+and sentiments, and treasure in his memory, or preserve in writing, such
+hints as books or meditation would supply. Nothing particular is known
+of his intellectual operations while he was a statesman; for, having
+every help and accommodation at hand, he had no need of uncommon
+expedients.
+
+Being driven from all publick stations, he is yet too great not to be
+traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found, by Mr.
+Richardson, the fondest of his admirers, sitting "before his door in a
+grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh
+air; and so, as well as in his own room, receiving the visits of the
+people of distinguished parts, as well as quality." His visiters of
+high quality must now be imagined to be few; but men of parts might
+reasonably court the conversation of a man so generally illustrious,
+that foreigners are reported, by Wood, to have visited the house in
+Bread street, where he was born.
+
+According to another account, he was seen in a small house, "neatly
+enough dressed in black clothes, sitting in a room hung with rusty
+green; pale but not cadaverous, with chalkstones in his hand. He said,
+that, if it were not for the gout, his blindness would be tolerable."
+
+In the intervals of his pain, being made unable to use the common
+exercises, he used to swing in a chair, and sometimes played upon an
+organ.
+
+He was now confessedly and visibly employed upon his poem, of which the
+progress might be noted by those with whom he was familiar; for he
+was obliged, when he had composed as many lines as his memory would
+conveniently retain, to employ some friend in writing them, having, at
+least for part of the time, no regular attendant. This gave opportunity
+to observations and reports.
+
+Mr. Philips observes, that there was a very remarkable circumstance in
+the composure of Paradise Lost, "which I have a particular reason," says
+he, "to remember; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very
+beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in
+parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time, which, being written
+by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction, as to the
+orthography and pointing; having, as the summer came on, not been showed
+any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was
+answered, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal
+equinox to the vernal; and that whatever he attempted at other times was
+never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so
+that, in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have
+spent half his time therein."
+
+Upon this relation Toland remarks, that in his opinion, Philips has
+mistaken the time of the year; for Milton, in his elegies, declares,
+that with the advance of the spring he feels the increase of his
+poetical force, "redeunt in carmina vires." To this it is answered, that
+Philips could hardly mistake time so well marked; and it may be added,
+that Milton might find different times of the year favourable to
+different parts of life. Mr. Richardson conceives it impossible that
+"such a work should be suspended for six months, or for one. It may
+go on faster or slower, but it must go on." By what necessity it must
+continually go on, or why it might not be laid aside and resumed, it is
+not easy to discover.
+
+This dependance of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and
+periodical ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be
+derided, as the fumes of vain imagination: "Sapiens dominabitur astris."
+The author that thinks himself weather-bound will find, with a little
+help from hellebore, that he is only idle or exhausted. But while this
+notion has possession of the head, it produces the inability which it
+supposes. Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes: "possunt
+quia posse videutur." When success seems attainable, diligence is
+enforced; but when it is admitted that the faculties are suppressed by a
+cross wind, or a cloudy sky, the day is given up without resistance; for
+who can contend with the course of nature?
+
+From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free. There
+prevailed, in his time, an opinion, that the world was in its decay, and
+that we have had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of
+nature. It was suspected, that the whole creation languished, that
+neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors,
+and that every thing was daily sinking by gradual diminution[49]. Milton
+appears to suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and is
+not without some fear that his book is to be written in "an age too
+late" for heroick poesy[50].
+
+Another opinion wanders about the world, and sometimes finds reception
+among wise men; an opinion that restrains the operations of the mind to
+particular regions, and supposes that a luckless mortal may be born in a
+degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit. From this
+fancy, wild as it is, he had not wholly cleared his head, when he
+feared lest the climate of his country might be too cold for flights of
+imagination.
+
+Into a mind already occupied by such fancies, another not more
+reasonable might easily find its way. He that could fear lest his
+genius had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate, might
+consistently magnify to himself the influence of the seasons, and
+believe his faculties to be vigorous only half the year.
+
+His submission to the seasons was, at least, more reasonable than his
+dread of decaying nature, or a frigid zone; for general causes must
+operate uniformly in a general abatement of mental power; if less could
+be performed by the writer, less, likewise, would content the judges of
+his work. Among this lagging race of frosty grovellers he might still
+have risen into eminence, by producing something, which "they should not
+willingly let die." However inferiour to the heroes who were born in
+better ages, he might still be great among his contemporaries, with the
+hope of growing every day greater in the dwindle of posterity. He
+might still be a giant among the pygmies, the one-eyed monarch of the
+blind[51].
+
+Of his artifices of study, or particular hours of composition, we have
+little account, and there was, perhaps, little to be told. Richardson,
+who seems to have been very diligent in his inquiries, but discovers
+always a wish to find Milton discriminated from other men, relates, that
+"he would sometimes lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could he
+make; and on a sudden his poetical faculty would rush upon him with an
+impetus or oestrum, and his daughter was immediately called to secure
+what came. At other times he would dictate, perhaps, forty lines in a
+breath, and then reduce them to half the number."
+
+These bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these transient
+and involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having some
+appearance of deviation from the common train of nature, are eagerly
+caught by the lovers of a wonder. Yet something of this inequality
+happens to every man in every mode of exertion, manual or mental. The
+mechanick cannot handle his hammer and his file at all times with equal
+dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why, when "his hand is out."
+By Mr. Richardson's relation, casually conveyed, much regard cannot be
+claimed. That, in his intellectual hour, Milton called for his daughter
+to "secure what came," may be questioned; for unluckily it happens to be
+known, that his daughters were never taught to write; nor would he have
+been obliged, as is universally confessed, to have employed any casual
+visitor in disburdening his memory, if his daughter could have performed
+the office.
+
+The story of reducing his exuberance has been told of other authors,
+and, though, doubtless, true of every fertile and copious mind, seems
+to have been gratuitously transferred to Milton.
+
+What he has told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed
+much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose, before his mind
+was disturbed with common business; and that he poured out, with great
+fluency, his "unpremeditated verse." Versification, free, like his, from
+the distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and
+habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, the words would
+come at his command.
+
+At what particular times of his life the parts of his work were written,
+cannot often be known. The beginning of the third book shows that he had
+lost his sight; and the introduction to the seventh, that the return of
+the king had clouded him with discountenance: and that he was offended
+by the licentious festivity of the restoration. There are no other
+internal notes of time. Milton, being now cleared from all effects of
+his disloyalty, had nothing required from him but the common duty of
+living in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right of protection;
+but this, which, when he skulked from the approach of his king, was,
+perhaps, more than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for, no
+sooner is he safe, than he finds himself in danger: "fallen on evil days
+and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compass'd round."
+This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly
+deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger was ungrateful
+and unjust. He was fallen, indeed, on "evil days;" the time was come in
+which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness. But of "evil
+tongues" for Milton to complain, required impudence, at least, equal to
+his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he
+never spared any asperity of reproach, or brutality of insolence.
+
+But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to
+recollect any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous,
+through the whole remaining part of his life. He pursued his studies, or
+his amusements, without persecution, molestation, or insult. Such is
+the reverence paid to great abilities, however misused: they who
+contemplated in Milton the scholar and the wit, were contented to forget
+the reviler of his king.
+
+When the plague, 1665, raged in London, Milton took refuge at Chalfont,
+in Bucks; where Elwood, who had taken the house for him, first saw a
+complete copy of Paradise Lost, and, having perused it, said to him:
+"Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say
+upon Paradise Found?"
+
+Next year, when the danger of infection had ceased, he returned to
+Bunhill fields, and designed the publication of his poem. A license was
+necessary, and he could expect no great kindness from a chaplain of the
+archbishop of Canterbury. He seems, however, to have been treated with
+tenderness; for though objections were made to particular passages, and
+among them to the simile of the sun, eclipsed in the first book, yet the
+license was granted; and he sold his copy, April 27, 1667, to Samuel
+Simmons, for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to
+receive five pounds more, when thirteen hundred should be sold of the
+first edition; and again, five pounds after the sale of the same number
+of the second edition; and another five pounds after the same sale of
+the third. None of the three editions were to be extended beyond fifteen
+hundred copies.
+
+The first edition was of ten books, in a small quarto. The titles were
+varied from year to year; and an advertisement and the arguments of the
+books were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others.
+
+The sale gave him, in two years, a right to his second payment, for
+which the receipt was signed April, 26, 1669. The second edition was not
+given till 1674; it was printed in small octavo; and the number of books
+was increased to twelve, by a division of the seventh and twelfth; and
+some other small improvements were made. The third edition was published
+in 1678; and the widow, to whom the copy was then to devolve, sold all
+her claims to Simmons for eight pounds, according to her receipt given
+December 21, 1680. Simmons had already agreed to transfer the whole
+right to Brabazon Aylmer, for twenty-five pounds; and Aylmer sold to
+Jacob Tonson half, August 17, 1683, and half, March 24, 1690, at a price
+considerably enlarged. In the history of Paradise Lost, a deduction thus
+minute will rather gratify than fatigue.
+
+The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have been always
+mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of
+literary fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered,
+about the causes of its long obscurity and late reception. But has the
+case been truly stated? Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on
+an evil that was never felt?
+
+That in the reigns of Charles and James the Paradise Lost received no
+publick acclamations, is readily confessed. Wit and literature were on
+the side of the court; and who, that solicited favour or fashion would
+venture to praise the defender of the regicides? All that he himself
+could think his due, from "evil tongues" in "evil days," was that
+reverential silence which was generously preserved. But it cannot be
+inferred, that his poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly,
+admired.
+
+The sale, if it be considered, will justify the publick. Those who have
+no power to judge of past times, but by their own, should always doubt
+their conclusions. The call for books was not in Milton's age what it
+is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither
+traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.
+The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house
+supplied with a closet of knowledge. Those, indeed, who professed
+learning, were not less learned than at any other time; but of that
+middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, and
+who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was
+then comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it may be
+sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to
+1664, that is, forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of
+Shakespeare, which, probably, did not together make one thousand copies.
+
+The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so
+much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all, and
+disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius.
+The demand did not immediately increase; for many more readers than were
+supplied at first the nation did not afford. Only three thousand were
+sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance; its
+admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities
+now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; the
+means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by
+that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its
+ranks.
+
+But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the
+revolution put an end to the secrecy of love, and Paradise Lost broke
+into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.
+
+Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed
+the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its
+way in a kind of subterraneous current, through fear and silence. I
+cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at
+all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and
+waiting, without impatience, the vicissitudes of opinion, and the
+impartiality of a future generation.
+
+In the mean time he continued his studies, and supplied the want of
+sight by a very odd expedient, of which Philips gives the following
+account:
+
+Mr. Philips tells us, "that though our author had daily about him one or
+other to read, some persons of man's estate, who, of their own accord,
+greedily catched at the opportunity of bring his readers, that they
+might as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as oblige him
+by the benefit of their reading; and others of younger years were sent
+by their parents to the same end; yet excusing only the eldest daughter
+by reason of her bodily infirmity, and difficult utterance of speech,
+(which, to say truth, I doubt was the principal cause of excusing her,)
+the other two were condemned to the performance of reading, and exactly
+pronouncing of all the languages of whatever book he should, at one
+time or other, think fit to peruse, viz. the Hebrew, (and I think the
+Syriac,) the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French. All
+which sorts of books to be confined to read, without understanding one
+word, must needs be a trial of patience almost beyond endurance. Yet
+it was endured by both for a long time, though the irksomeness of this
+employment could not be always concealed, but broke out more and more
+into expressions of uneasiness; so that, at length, they were all, even
+the eldest also, sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts
+of manufacture, that are proper for women to learn, particularly
+embroideries in gold or silver."
+
+In the scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labour sets
+before our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the
+father are most to be lamented. A language not understood can never be
+so read as to give pleasure, and, very seldom, so as to convey
+meaning. If few men would have had resolution to write books with such
+embarrassments, few, likewise, would have wanted ability to find some
+better expedient.
+
+Three years after his Paradise Lost, 1667, he published his History
+of England, comprising the whole fable of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and
+continued to the Norman invasion. Why he should have given the first
+part, which he seems not to believe, and which is universally rejected,
+it is difficult to conjecture. The style is harsh; but it has something
+of rough vigour, which, perhaps, may often strike, though it cannot
+please.
+
+On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and, before he would
+transmit it to the press, tore out several parts. Some censures of the
+Saxon monks were taken away, lest they should be applied to the modern
+clergy; and a character of the long parliament, and assembly of divines,
+was excluded; of which the author gave a copy to the earl of Anglesea,
+and which, being afterwards published, has been since inserted in its
+proper place.
+
+The same year were printed Paradise Regained; and Sampson Agonistes, a
+tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and never designed by
+the author for the stage. As these poems were published by another
+bookseller, it has been asked, whether Simmons was discouraged from
+receiving them by the slow sale of the former? Why a writer changed
+his bookseller a hundred years ago, I am far from hoping to discover.
+Certainly, he who in two years sells thirteen hundred copies of a volume
+in quarto, bought for two payments of five pounds each, has no reason to
+repent his purchase.
+
+When Milton showed Paradise Regained to Elwood, "this," said he, "is
+owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question you put to me at
+Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of."
+
+His last poetical offspring was his favourite. He could not, as Elwood
+relates, endure to hear Paradise Lost preferred to Paradise Regained.
+Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgment of his own works. On that
+which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is
+unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain; what has been
+produced without toilsome efforts, is considered with delight, as a
+proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work,
+whatever it be, has, necessarily, most of the grace of novelty. Milton,
+however it happened, had this prejudice, and had it to himself.
+
+To that multiplicity of attainments, and extent of comprehension, that
+entitled this great author to our veneration, may be added a kind
+of humble dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to
+literature. The epick poet, the controvertist, the politician, having
+already descended to accommodate children with a book of rudiments,
+now, in the last years of his life, composed a book of logick, for the
+initiation of students in philosophy; and published, 1672, Artis Logicae
+plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata; that is, a new
+scheme of logick, according to the method of Ramus. I know not whether,
+even in this book, he did not intend an act of hostility against the
+universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppugners of the old
+philosophy, who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the schools.
+
+His polemical disposition again revived. He had now been safe so long,
+that he forgot his fears, and published a Treatise of true Religion,
+Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the best means to prevent the growth of
+Popery.
+
+But this little tract is modestly written, with respectful mention of
+the church of England, and an appeal to the thirty-nine articles.
+His principle of toleration is, agreement in the sufficiency of the
+scriptures; and he extends it to all who, whatever their opinions are,
+profess to derive them from the sacred books. The papists appeal to
+other testimonies, and are, therefore, in his opinion, not to be
+permitted the liberty of either publick or private worship; for, though
+they plead conscience, "we have no warrant," he says, "to regard
+conscience, which is not grounded in scripture."
+
+Those who are not convinced by his reasons, may be, perhaps, delighted
+with his wit. The term "Roman catholick is," he says, "one of the pope's
+bulls; it is particular universal, or catholick schismatick."
+
+He has, however, something better. As the best preservative against
+popery, he recommends the diligent perusal of the scriptures, a duty,
+from which he warns the busy part of mankind not to think themselves
+excused.
+
+He now reprinted his juvenile poems, with some additions.
+
+In the last year of his life he sent to the press, seeming to take
+delight in publication, a collection of Familiar Epistles in Latin;
+to which, being too few to make a volume, he added some academical
+exercises, which, perhaps, he perused with pleasure, as they recalled to
+his memory the days of youth, but for which nothing but veneration for
+his name could now procure a reader.
+
+When he had attained his sixty-sixth year, the gout, with which he had
+been long tormented, prevailed over the enfeebled powers of nature. He
+died by a quiet and silent expiration, about the tenth of November,
+1674, at his house in Bunhill fields; and was buried next his father in
+the chancel of St. Giles at Cripplegate. His funeral was very splendidly
+and numerously attended.
+
+Upon his grave there is supposed to have been no memorial; but in our
+time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey "to the author of
+Paradise Lost," by Mr. Benson, who has, in the inscription, bestowed
+more words upon himself than upon Milton.
+
+When the inscription for the monument of Philips, in which he was said
+to be "soli Miltono secundus," was exhibited to Dr. Sprat, then dean
+of Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name of Milton was, in his
+opinion, too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated
+to devotion. Atterbury, who succeeded him, being author of the
+inscription, permitted its reception. "And such has been the change of
+publick opinion," said Dr. Gregory, from whom I heard this account,
+"that I have seen erected in the church a statue of that man, whose name
+I once knew considered as a pollution of its walls."
+
+Milton has the reputation of having been, in his youth, eminently
+beautiful, so as to have been called the lady of his college. His hair,
+which was of a light brown, parted at the foretop, and hung down upon
+his shoulders, according to the picture which he has given of Adam. He
+was, however, not of the heroick stature, but rather below the middle
+size[52], according to Mr. Richardson, who mentions him as having
+narrowly escaped from being "short and thick." He was vigorous and
+active, and delighted in the exercise of the sword, in which he is
+related to have been eminently skilful. His weapon was, I believe, not
+the rapier, but the backsword, of which he recommends the use in his
+book on education.
+
+His eyes are said never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous
+fencer, they must have been once quick.
+
+His domestick habits, so far as they are known, were those of a severe
+student. He drank little strong drink of any kind, and fed without
+excess in quantity, and, in his earlier years, without delicacy of
+choice. In his youth he studied late at night; but afterwards changed
+his hours, and rested in bed from nine to four in the summer, and five
+in the winter. The course of his day was best known after he was blind.
+When he first rose, he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then
+studied till twelve; then took some exercise for an hour; then dined,
+then played on the organ, and sang, or heard another sing; then studied
+to six; then entertained his visiters till eight; then supped, and,
+after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed.
+
+So is his life described: but this even tenour appears attainable only
+in colleges. He that lives in the world will, sometimes, have the
+succession of his practice broken and confused. Visiters, of whom
+Milton is represented to have had great numbers, will come and stay
+unseasonably; business, of which every man has some, must be done when
+others will do it.
+
+When he did not care to rise early, he had something read to him by his
+bedside; perhaps, at this time, his daughters were employed. He composed
+much in the morning, and dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an
+elbowchair, with his leg thrown over the arm.
+
+Fortune appears not to have had much of his care. In the civil wars he
+lent his personal estate to the parliament; but when, after the contest
+was decided, he solicited repayment, he met not only with neglect, but
+"sharp rebuke;" and, having tired both himself and his friends, was
+given up to poverty and hopeless indignation, till he showed how able he
+was to do greater service. He was then made Latin secretary, with two
+hundred pounds a year; and had a thousand pounds for his Defence of
+the People. His widow, who, after his death, retired to Namptwich, in
+Cheshire, and died about 1729, is said to have reported, that he lost
+two thousand pounds by intrusting it to a scrivener; and that, in the
+general depredation upon the church, he had grasped an estate of about
+sixty pounds a year belonging to Westminster Abbey, which, like other
+sharers of the plunder of rebellion, he was afterwards obliged to
+return. Two thousand pounds, which he had placed in the excise-office,
+were also lost. There is yet no reason to believe that he was ever
+reduced to indigence. His wants, being few, were competently supplied.
+He sold his library before his death, and left his family fifteen
+hundred pounds, on which his widow laid hold, and only gave one hundred
+to each of his daughters.
+
+His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the languages
+which are considered either as learned or polite: Hebrew, with its two
+dialects, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. In Latin his skill
+was such as places him in the first rank of writers and criticks; and he
+appears to have cultivated Italian with uncommon diligence. The books
+in which his daughter, who used to read to him, represented him as most
+delighting, after Homer, which he could almost repeat, were Ovid's
+Metamorphoses and Euripides. His Euripides is, by Mr. Cradock's
+kindness, now in my hands: the margin is sometimes noted; but I have
+found nothing remarkable.
+
+Of the English poets, he set most value upon Spenser, Shakespeare, and
+Cowley. Spenser was apparently his favourite; Shakespeare he may easily
+be supposed to like, with every other skilful reader; but I should not
+have expected that Cowley, whose ideas of excellence were so different
+from his own, would have had much of his approbation. His character of
+Dryden, who sometimes visited him, was, that he was a good rhymist,
+but no poet. His theological opinions are said to have been first
+Calvinistical; and afterwards, perhaps, when he began to hate the
+presbyterians, to have tended towards Arminianism. In the mixed
+questions of theology and government, he never thinks that he can recede
+far enough from popery, or prelacy; but what Bandius says of Erasmus
+seems applicable to him, "magis habuit quod fugeret, quam quod
+sequeretur." He had determined rather what to condemn, than what
+to approve. He has not associated himself with any denomination of
+protestants; we know rather what he was not, than what he was. He was
+not of the church of Rome; he was not of the church of England.
+
+To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are
+distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by
+degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by
+external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary
+influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had full conviction of
+the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the holy scriptures with
+the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical
+peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the
+immediate and occasional agency of providence, yet grew old without any
+visible worship. In the distribution of his hours, there was no hour of
+prayer, either solitary or with his household; omitting publick prayers,
+he omitted all.
+
+Of this omission the reason has been sought upon a supposition, which
+ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and
+justify their conduct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not thought
+superfluous by him, who represents our first parents as praying
+acceptably in the state of innocence, and efficaciously after their
+fall. That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his studies
+and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family
+was, probably, a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he
+intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, intercepted
+his reformation. His political notions were those of an acrimonious and
+surly republican, for which it is not known that he gave any better
+reason than that "a popular government was the most frugal; for the
+trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth." It is
+surely very shallow policy that supposes money to be the chief good; and
+even this, without considering that the support and expense of a court
+is, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffick, by which
+money is circulated, without any national impoverishment.
+
+Milton's republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of
+greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient
+of control, and pride disdainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in
+the state, and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was
+required to obey. It is to be suspected, that his predominant desire was
+to destroy, rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love
+of liberty, as repugnance to authority.
+
+It has been observed, that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do
+not most liberally grant it. What we know of Milton's character, in
+domestick relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary. His family
+consisted of women; and there appears in his books something like a
+Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferiour beings. That
+his own daughters might not break the ranks, he suffered them to be
+depressed by a mean and penurious education. He thought women made only
+for obedience, and man only for rebellion.
+
+Of his family some account may be expected. His sister, first married to
+Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her first husband,
+who succeeded him in the crown-office. She had, by her first husband,
+Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; and, by her
+second, two daughters.
+
+His brother, sir Christopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catharine[53];
+and a son, Thomas, who succeeded Agar in the crown-office, and left a
+daughter living, in 1749, in Grosvenor street.
+
+Milton had children only by his first wife; Anne, Mary, and Deborah.
+Anne, though deformed, married a master-builder, and died of her first
+child. Mary died single. Deborah married Abraham Clark, a weaver in
+Spital fields, and lived seventy-six years, to August, 1727. This is the
+daughter of whom publick mention has been made. She could repeat the
+first lines of Homer, the Metamorphoses, and some of Euripides, by
+having often read them. Yet here incredulity is ready to make a
+stand. Many repetitions are necessary to fix in the memory lines not
+understood; and why should Milton wish or want to hear them so often?
+These lines were at the beginning of the poems. Of a book written in a
+language not understood, the beginning raises no more attention than the
+end; and as those that understand it know commonly the beginning best,
+its rehearsal will seldom be necessary. It is not likely that Milton
+required any passage to be so much repeated, as that his daughter could
+learn it; nor likely that he desired the initial lines to be read at
+all; nor that the daughter, weary of the drudgery of pronouncing unideal
+sounds, would voluntarily commit them to memory.
+
+To this gentlewoman Addison made a present, and promised some
+establishment, but died soon after. Queen Caroline sent her fifty
+guineas. She had seven sons and three daughters; but none of them had
+any children, except her son Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth. Caleb
+went to Fort St. George, in the East Indies, and had two sons, of whom
+nothing is now known. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in
+Spital fields; and had seven children, who all died. She kept a petty
+grocer's or chandler's shop, first at Holloway, and afterwards in Cock
+lane, near Shoreditch church. She knew little of her grandfather, and
+that little was not good. She told of his harshness to his daughters,
+and his refusal to have them taught to write; and, in opposition to
+other accounts, represented him as delicate, though temperate, in his
+diet.
+
+In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had so little
+acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was
+intended, when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were
+only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton brought a large
+contribution; and twenty pounds were given by Tonson, a man who is to
+be praised as often as he is named. Of this sum one hundred pounds were
+placed in the stocks, after some debate between her and her husband, in
+whose name it should be entered; and the rest augmented their little
+stock, with which they removed to Islington. This was the greatest
+benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author's descendants;
+and to this he, who has now attempted to relate his life, had the honour
+of contributing a prologue[54].
+
+In the examination of Milton's poetical works, I shall pay so much
+regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his early
+pieces he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable; what
+he has once written he resolves to preserve, and gives to the publick an
+unfinished poem, which he broke off, because he was "nothing satisfied
+with what he had done," supposing his readers less nice than himself.
+These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English.
+Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critick; but I have heard
+them commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit. The Latin
+pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is
+rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity
+of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of
+invention, or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value; the
+elegies excel the odes; and some of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason
+might have been spared.
+
+The English poems, though they make no promises of Paradise Lost[55],
+have this evidence of genius, that they have a cast original and
+unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ from
+the verses of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often
+distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combinations of words are
+new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be
+laboriously sought, and violently applied.
+
+That, in the early part of his life, he wrote with much care appears
+from his manuscripts, happily preserved at Cambridge, in which many
+of his smaller works are found, as they were first written, with the
+subsequent corrections. Such relicks show how excellence is acquired;
+what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with
+diligence.
+
+Those who admire the beauties of this great poet sometimes force their
+own judgment into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail
+upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular. All that
+short compositions can commonly attain, is neatness and elegance. Milton
+never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked
+the milder excellence of suavity and softness: he was a lion, that had
+no skill "in dandling the kid."
+
+One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is Lycidas;
+of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers
+unpleasing. What beauty there is, we must, therefore, seek in the
+sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of
+real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure
+opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls
+upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough "satyrs and fauns with
+cloven heel." Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.
+
+In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art,
+for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral: easy, vulgar,
+and, therefore, disgusting; whatever images it can supply are long ago
+exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction
+on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey, that they studied together, it
+is easy to suppose how much he must miss the companion of his labours,
+and the partner of his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be
+excited by these lines?
+
+  We drove afield, and both together heard,
+  What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn,
+  Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.
+
+We know that they never drove afield, and that they had no flocks
+to batten; and, though it be allowed that the representation may be
+allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is
+never sought, because it cannot be known when it is found.
+
+Among the flocks, and copses, and flowers, appear the heathen deities;
+Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Aeolus, with a long train of mythological
+imagery, such as a college easily supplies. Nothing can less display
+knowledge, or less exercise invention, than to tell how a shepherd has
+lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any
+judge of his skill in piping; and how one god asks another god what is
+become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves
+will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour.
+
+This poem has yet a grosser fault. With these trifling fictions are
+mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be
+polluted with such irreverend combinations. The shepherd, likewise,
+is now a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor, a
+superintendent of a Christian flock. Such equivocations are always
+unskilful; but here they are indecent, and, at least, approach to
+impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been
+conscious. Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its
+blaze drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could
+have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known the
+author.
+
+Of the two pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, I believe, opinion is
+uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure. The
+author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to show
+how objects derive their colours from the mind, by representing the
+operation of the same things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or
+upon the same man, as he is differently disposed; but rather how, among
+the successive variety of appearances, every disposition of mind takes
+hold on those by which it may be gratified.
+
+The cheerful man hears the lark in the morning; the pensive man hears
+the nightingale in the evening. The cheerful man sees the cock strut,
+and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks, "not
+unseen," to observe the glory of the rising sun, or listen to the
+singing milkmaid, and view the labours of the ploughman and the mower:
+then casts his eyes about him over scenes of smiling plenty, and looks
+up to the distant tower, the residence of some fair inhabitant; thus he
+pursues rural gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights
+himself at night with the fanciful narratives of superstitious
+ignorance.
+
+The pensive man, at one time, walks "unseen" to muse at midnight; and,
+at another, hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home, he
+sits in a room lighted only by "glowing embers;" or, by a lonely lamp,
+outwatches the north star, to discover the habitation of separate souls,
+and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or
+pathetick scenes of tragick or epick poetry. When the morning comes, a
+morning gloomy with rain and wind, he walks into the dark, trackless
+woods[56], falls asleep by some murmuring water, and with melancholy
+enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, or some musick played
+by aerial performers.
+
+Both mirth and melancholy are solitary, silent inhabitants of the
+breast, that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention is,
+therefore, made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion. The
+seriousness does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the
+gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle.
+
+The man of cheerfulness, having exhausted the country, tries what
+"towered cities" will afford, and mingles with scenes of splendour, gay
+assemblies, and nuptial festivities; but he mingles a mere spectator,
+as, when the learned comedies of Jonson, or the wild dramas of
+Shakespeare, are exhibited, he attends the theatre.
+
+The pensive man never loses himself in crowds, but walks the cloister,
+or frequents the cathedral. Milton probably had not yet forsaken the
+church.
+
+Both his characters delight in musick; but he seems to think, that
+cheerful notes would have obtained, from Pluto, a complete dismission of
+Eurydice, of whom solemn sounds only procured a conditional release.
+
+For the old age of cheerfulness he makes no provision; but melancholy he
+conducts with great dignity to the close of life. His cheerfulness is
+without levity, and his pensiveness without asperity.
+
+Through these two poems the images are properly selected, and nicely
+distinguished; but the colours of the diction seem not sufficiently
+discriminated. I know not whether the characters are kept sufficiently
+apart. No mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I am afraid
+that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth. They are two noble
+efforts of imagination[57].
+
+The greatest of his juvenile performances is the Masque of Comus, in
+which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise
+Lost. Milton appears to have formed very early that system of diction,
+and mode of verse, which his maturer judgment approved, and from which
+he never endeavoured nor desired to deviate.
+
+Nor does Comus afford only a specimen of his language; it exhibits,
+likewise, his power of description and his vigour of sentiment, employed
+in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truly poetical is
+rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive epithets, embellish
+almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines,
+therefore, it may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with
+which the votaries have received it.
+
+As a drama it is deficient. The action is not probable. A mask, in those
+parts where supernatural intervention is admitted, must, indeed, be
+given up to all the freaks of imagination; but, so far as the action is
+merely human, it ought to be reasonable, which can hardly be said of the
+conduct of the two brothers; who, when their sister sinks with fatigue
+in a pathless wilderness, wander both away together, in search of
+berries, too far to find their way back, and leave a helpless lady to
+all the sadness and danger of solitude. This, however, is a defect
+overbalanced by its convenience.
+
+What deserves more reprehension is, that the prologue spoken in the wild
+wood, by the attendant spirit, is addressed to the audience; a mode of
+communication so contrary to the nature of dramatick representation,
+that no precedents can support it[58].
+
+The discourse of the spirit is too long; an objection that may be made
+to almost all the following speeches; they have not the sprightliness
+of a dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but seem rather
+declamations deliberately composed, and formally repeated, on a moral
+question. The auditor, therefore, listens as to a lecture, without
+passion, without anxiety.
+
+The song of Comus has airiness and jollity; but, what may recommend
+Milton's morals, as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure are
+so general, that they excite no distinct images of corrupt enjoyment,
+and take no dangerous hold on the fancy.
+
+The following soliloquies of Comus and the Lady are elegant, but
+tedious. The song must owe much to the voice, if it ever can delight. At
+last, the brothers enter with too much tranquillity; and, when they have
+feared, lest their sister should be in danger, and hoped that she is
+not in danger, the elder makes a speech in praise of chastity, and the
+younger finds how fine it is to be a philosopher.
+
+Then descends the spirit, in form of a shepherd; and the brother,
+instead of being in haste to ask his help, praises his singing, and
+inquires his business in that place. It is remarkable, that, at this
+interview, the brother, is taken with a short fit of rhyming. The spirit
+relates that the lady is in the power of Comus; the brother moralizes
+again; and the spirit makes a long narration, of no use, because it is
+false, and, therefore, unsuitable to a good being.
+
+In all these parts the language is poetical, and the sentiments are
+generous; but there is something wanting to allure attention.
+
+The dispute between the lady and Comus is the most animated and
+affecting scene of the drama, and wants nothing but a brisker
+reciprocation of objections and replies to invite attention and detain
+it.
+
+The songs are vigorous and full of imagery; but they are harsh in their
+diction, and not very musical in their numbers.
+
+Throughout the whole the figures are too bold, and the language too
+luxuriant, for dialogue. It is a drama in the epick style, inelegantly
+splendid, and tediously instructive.
+
+The sonnets were written in different parts of Milton's life, upon
+different occasions. They deserve not any particular criticism; for of
+the best it can only be said, that they are not bad; and, perhaps, only
+the eighth and the twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender
+commendation. The fabrick of a sonnet, however adapted to the Italian
+language, has never succeeded in ours, which, having greater variety of
+termination, requires the rhymes to be often changed.
+
+Those little pieces may be despatched without much anxiety; a greater
+work calls for greater care. I am now to examine Paradise Lost, a poem,
+which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and
+with respect to performance the second, among the productions of the
+human mind.
+
+By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due
+to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the
+powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions. Poetry is the
+art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help
+of reason. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by
+the most pleasing precepts, and, therefore, relates some great event
+in the most affecting manner. History must supply the writer with the
+rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art,
+must animate by dramatick energy, and diversify by retrospection and
+anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds, and different
+shades, of vice and virtue; from policy and the practice of life, he
+has to learn the discriminations of character, and the tendency of the
+passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him with
+illustrations and images. To put these materials to poetical use, is
+required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing
+fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension
+of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the
+colours of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all
+the varieties of metrical modulation.
+
+Bossu is of opinion, that the poet's first work is to find a moral,
+which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish. This seems
+to have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other poems
+is incidental and consequent; in Milton's only it is essential and
+intrinsick. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous:
+"to vindicate the ways of God to man;" to show the reasonableness of
+religion, and the necessity of obedience to the divine law.
+
+To convey this moral, there must be a fable, a narration artfully
+constructed, so as to excite curiosity, and surprise expectation. In
+this part of his work, Milton must be confessed to have equalled every
+other poet. He has involved, in his account of the fall of man, the
+events which preceded, and those that were to follow it; he has
+interwoven the whole system of theology with such propriety, that every
+part appears to be necessary; and scarcely any recital is wished shorter
+for the sake of quickening the progress of the main action.
+
+The subject of an epick poem is naturally an event of great importance.
+That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a
+colony, or the foundation of an empire. His subject is the fate of
+worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against
+the supreme king, raised by the highest order of created beings; the
+overthrow of their host, and the punishment of their crime; the creation
+of a new race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and
+innocence, their forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to
+hope and peace.
+
+Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated
+dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton's poem, all other
+greatness shrinks away. The weakest of his agents are the highest and
+noblest of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with whose
+actions the elements consented; on whose rectitude, or deviation of
+will, depended the state of terrestrial nature, and the condition of all
+the future inhabitants of the globe. Of the other agents in the poem,
+the chief are such as it is irreverence to name on slight occasions. The
+rest were lower powers;
+
+  ----of which the least could wield
+  Those elements, and arm him with the force
+  Of all their regions;
+
+powers, which only the control of omnipotence restrains from laying
+creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and
+confusion. To display the motives and actions of beings thus superiour,
+so far as human reason can examine them, or human imagination represent
+them, is the task which this mighty poet has undertaken and performed.
+
+In the examination of epick poems much speculation is commonly employed
+upon the characters. The characters in the Paradise Lost, which admit of
+examination, are those of angels and of man; of angels good and evil; of
+man in his innocent and sinful state.
+
+Among the angels, the virtue of Raphael is mild and placid, of easy
+condescension and free communication; that of Michael is regal and
+lofty, and, as may seem, attentive to the dignity of his own nature.
+Abdiel and Gabriel appear occasionally, and act as every incident
+requires; the solitary fidelity of Abdiel is very amiably painted.
+
+Of the evil angels the characters are more diversified. To Satan, as
+Addison observes, such sentiments are given as suit "the most exalted
+and most depraved being." Milton has been censured by Clarke[59], for
+the impiety which, sometimes, breaks from Satan's mouth; for there are
+thoughts, as he justly remarks, which no observation of character can
+justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass,
+however transiently, through his own mind. To make Satan speak as
+a rebel, without any such expressions as might taint the reader's
+imagination, was, indeed, one of the great difficulties in Milton's
+undertaking; and I cannot but think that he has extricated himself with
+great happiness. There is in Satan's speeches little that can give pain
+to a pious ear. The language of rebellion cannot be the same with that
+of obedience. The malignity of Satan foams in haughtiness and obstinacy;
+but his expressions are commonly general, and no otherwise offensive
+than as they are wicked.
+
+The other chiefs of the celestial rebellion are very judiciously
+discriminated in the first and second books; and the ferocious character
+of Moloch appears, both in the battle and the council, with exact
+consistency.
+
+To Adam and to Eve are given, during their innocence, such sentiments
+as innocence can generate and utter. Their love is pure benevolence and
+mutual veneration; their repasts are without luxury, and their diligence
+without toil. Their addresses to their maker have little more than the
+voice of admiration and gratitude. Fruition left them nothing to ask;
+and innocence left them nothing to fear.
+
+But with guilt enter distrust and discord, mutual accusation, and
+stubborn self-defence; they regard each other with alienated minds, and
+dread their creator as the avenger of their transgression. At last
+they seek shelter in his mercy, soften to repentance, and melt in
+supplication. Both before and after the fall, the superiority of Adam is
+diligently sustained.
+
+Of the probable and the marvellous, two parts of a vulgar epick poem,
+which immerge the critick in deep consideration, the Paradise Lost
+requires little to be said. It contains the history of a miracle, of
+creation and redemption; it displays the power and the mercy of
+the supreme being; the probable, therefore, is marvellous, and the
+marvellous is probable. The substance of the narrative is truth; and, as
+truth allows no choice, it is, like necessity, superiour to rule. To the
+accidental or adventitious parts, as to every thing human, some slight
+exceptions may be made; but the main fabrick is immovably supported. It
+is justly remarked by Addison, that this poem has, by the nature of its
+subject, the advantage above all others, that it is universally and
+perpetually interesting. All mankind will, through all ages, bear the
+same relation to Adam and to Eve, and must partake of that good and evil
+which extend to themselves.
+
+Of the machinery, so called from 'theos apo maechanaes', by which
+is meant the occasional interposition of supernatural power, another
+fertile topick of critical remarks, here is no room to speak, because
+every thing is done under the immediate and visible direction of heaven;
+but the rule is so far observed, that no part of the action could have
+been accomplished by any other means.
+
+Of episodes, I think, there are only two, contained in Raphael's
+relation of the war in heaven, and Michael's prophetick account of the
+changes to happen in this world. Both are closely connected with the
+great action; one was necessary to Adam, as a warning, the other, as a
+consolation.
+
+To the completeness or integrity of the design, nothing can be objected;
+it has, distinctly and clearly, what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a
+middle, and an end. There is, perhaps, no poem, of the same length, from
+which so little can be taken without apparent mutilation. Here are no
+funeral games, nor is there any long description of a shield. The short
+digressions at the beginning of the third, seventh, and ninth books,
+might, doubtless, be spared; but superfluities so beautiful, who would
+take away? or who does not wish that the author of the Iliad had
+gratified succeeding ages with a little knowledge of himself? Perhaps
+no passages are more frequently or more attentively read, than those
+extrinsick paragraphs; and, since the end of poetry is pleasure, that
+cannot be unpoetical with which all are pleased.
+
+The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly one, whether
+the poem can be properly termed heroick, and who is the hero, are raised
+by such readers as draw their principles of judgment rather from books
+than from reason. Milton, though he entitled Paradise Lost only a poem,
+yet calls it himself heroick song. Dryden petulantly and indecently
+denies the heroism of Adam, because he was overcome; but there is no
+reason why the hero should not be unfortunate, except established
+practice, since success and virtue do not go necessarily together. Cato
+is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan's authority will not be suffered by
+Quintilian to decide. However, if success be necessary, Adam's deceiver
+was at last crushed; Adam was restored to his maker's favour, and,
+therefore, may securely resume his human rank.
+
+After the scheme and fabrick of the poem, must be considered its
+component parts, the sentiments and the diction.
+
+The sentiments, as expressive of manners, or appropriated to characters,
+are, for the greater part, unexceptionably just.
+
+Splendid passages, containing lessons of morality, or precepts of
+prudence, occur seldom. Such is the original formation of this poem,
+that, as it admits no human manners, till the fall, it can give little
+assistance to human conduct. Its end is to raise the thoughts above
+sublunary cares or pleasures. Yet the praise of that fortitude, with
+which Abdiel maintained his singularity of virtue against the scorn of
+multitudes, may be accommodated to all times; and Raphael's reproof of
+Adam's curiosity after the planetary motions, with the answer returned
+by Adam, may be confidently opposed to any rule of life which any poet
+has delivered.
+
+The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress, are
+such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree
+fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study
+and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind may be said to
+sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of
+science, unmingled with its grosser parts.
+
+He had considered creation, in its whole extent, and his descriptions
+are, therefore, learned. He had accustomed his imagination to
+unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions, therefore, were extensive.
+The characteristick quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes
+descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can
+occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is
+gigantick loftiness[60]. He can please, when pleasure is required; but
+it is his peculiar power to astonish.
+
+He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know
+what it was that nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon
+others; the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid,
+enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful;
+he, therefore, chose a subject on which too much could not be said, on
+which he might tire his fancy, without the censure of extravagance.
+
+The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate
+his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are requires a minute
+attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's
+delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a
+scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery,
+into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form
+new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superiour
+beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of
+heaven.
+
+But he could not be always in other worlds; he must sometimes revisit
+earth, and tell of things visible and known. When he cannot raise wonder
+by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.
+
+Whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the imagination. But his
+images and descriptions of the scenes, or operations of nature, do not
+seem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness,
+raciness, and energy of immediate observation. He saw nature, as Dryden
+expresses it, "through the spectacles of books;" and, on most occasions,
+calls learning to his assistance. The garden of Eden brings to his mind
+the vale of Enna, where Proserpine was gathering flowers. Satan makes
+his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean
+rocks, or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned
+Charybdis on the "larboard." The mythological allusions have been justly
+censured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they
+contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise
+of the memory and the fancy.
+
+His similes are less numerous, and more various, than those of his
+predecessors. But he does not confine himself within the limits of
+rigorous comparison; his great excellence is amplitude; and he expands
+the adventitious image beyond the dimensions which the occasion
+required. Thus comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the moon, he
+crowds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope, and all the
+wonders which the telescope discovers.
+
+Of his moral sentiments it is hardly praise to affirm that they excel
+those of all other poets; for this superiority he was indebted to his
+acquaintance with the sacred writings. The ancient epick poets, wanting
+the light of revelation, were very unskilful teachers of virtue: their
+principal characters may be great, but they are not amiable. The reader
+may rise from their works with a greater degree of active or passive
+fortitude, and sometimes of prudence; but he will be able to carry away
+few precepts of justice, and none of mercy.
+
+From the Italian writers it appears, that the advantages of even
+Christian knowledge may be possessed in vain. Ariosto's pravity is
+generally known; and, though the Deliverance of Jerusalem may be
+considered as a sacred subject, the poet has been very sparing of moral
+instruction.
+
+In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity
+of manners, except when the train of the narration requires the
+introduction of the rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled
+to acknowledge their subjection to God, in such a manner as excites
+reverence, and confirms piety.
+
+Of human beings there are but two; but those two are the parents of
+mankind, venerable before their fall for dignity and innocence, and
+amiable after it for repentance and submission. In the first state,
+their affection is tender without weakness, and their piety sublime
+without presumption. When they have sinned, they show how discord begins
+in mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbearance; how
+confidence of the divine favour is forfeited by sin; and how hope of
+pardon may be obtained by penitence and prayer. A state of innocence we
+can only conceive, if, indeed, in our present misery, it be possible
+to conceive it; but the sentiments and worship proper to a fallen and
+offending being, we have all to learn, as we have all to practise.
+
+The poet, whatever be done, is always great. Our progenitors, in their
+first state, conversed with angels; even when folly and sin had degraded
+them, they had not, in their humiliation, "the port of mean suitors;"
+and they rise again to reverential regard, when we find that their
+prayers were heard.
+
+As human passions did not enter the world, before the fall, there is, in
+the Paradise Lost, little opportunity for the pathetick; but what little
+there is has not been lost. That passion which is peculiar to rational
+nature, the anguish arising from the consciousness of transgression, and
+the horrours attending the sense of the divine displeasure, are very
+justly described and forcibly impressed. But the passions are moved only
+on one occasion; sublimity is the general and prevailing quality of this
+poem; sublimity variously modified, sometimes descriptive, sometimes
+argumentative.
+
+The defects and faults of Paradise Lost, for faults and defects every
+work of man must have, it is the business of impartial criticism to
+discover. As, in displaying the excellence of Milton, I have not made
+long quotations, because of selecting beauties there had been no end, I
+shall, in the same general manner, mention that which seems to deserve
+censure; for what Englishman can take delight in transcribing passages,
+which, if they lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish, in some
+degree, the honour of our country?
+
+The generality of my scheme does not admit the frequent notice of verbal
+inaccuracies; which Bentley, perhaps, better skilled in grammar than in
+poetry, has often found, though he sometimes made them, and which he
+imputed to the obtrusions of a reviser, whom the author's blindness
+obliged him to employ; a supposition rash and groundless, if he thought
+it true; and vile and pernicious, if, as is said, he, in private,
+allowed it to be false.
+
+The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience, that it comprises
+neither human actions nor human manners[61]. The man and woman who act
+and suffer are in a state which no other man or woman can ever know.
+The reader finds no transaction in which he can be engaged; beholds no
+condition in which he can, by any effort of imagination, place himself;
+he has, therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy.
+
+We all, indeed, feel the effect of Adam's disobedience; we all sin, like
+Adam, and, like him, must all bewail our offences; we have restless and
+insidious enemies in the fallen angels; and in the blessed spirits we
+have guardians and friends; in the redemption of mankind we hope to be
+included; and in the description of heaven and hell we are, surely,
+interested, as we are all to reside, hereafter, either in the regions of
+horrour or of bliss.
+
+But these truths are too important to be new; they have been taught to
+our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar
+conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the whole texture of
+life. Being, therefore, not new, they raise no unaccustomed emotion in
+the mind; what we knew before, we cannot learn; what is not unexpected,
+cannot surprise.
+
+Of the ideas suggested by these awful scenes, from some we recede with
+reverence, except when stated hours require their association; and
+from others we shrink with horrour, or admit them only as salutary
+inflictions, as counterpoizes to our interests and passions. Such images
+rather obstruct the career of fancy than incite it.
+
+Pleasure and terrour are, indeed, the genuine sources of poetry; but
+poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can, at least,
+conceive; and poetical terrour, such as human strength and fortitude may
+combat. The good and evil of eternity are too ponderous for the wings of
+wit; the mind sinks under them, in passive helplessness, content with
+calm belief and humble adoration.
+
+Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and be conveyed
+to the mind by a new train of intermediate images. This Milton has
+undertaken, and performed with pregnancy and vigour of mind peculiar
+to himself. Whoever considers the few radical positions which the
+scriptures afforded him, will wonder by what energetick operation he
+expanded them to such extent, and ramified them to so much variety,
+restrained, as he was, by religious reverence from licentiousness of
+fiction.
+
+Here is a full display of the united force of study and genius; of a
+great accumulation of materials, with judgment to digest, and fancy to
+combine them: Milton was able to select from nature or from story, from
+ancient fable or from modern science, whatever could illustrate or
+adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind,
+fermented by study, and exalted by imagination.
+
+It has been, therefore, said, without an indecent hyperbole, by one
+of his encomiasts, that in reading Paradise Lost, we read a book of
+universal knowledge.
+
+But original deficience cannot be supplied. The want of human interest
+is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader
+admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it
+longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read
+Milton for instruction, retire harassed and over-burdened, and look
+elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions.
+Another inconvenience of Milton's design is, that it requires the
+description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits. He saw
+that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could not show angels
+acting but by instruments of action; he, therefore, invested them with
+form and matter. This, being necessary, was, therefore, defensible;
+and he should have secured the consistency of his system, by keeping
+immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from
+his thoughts. But he has, unhappily, perplexed his poetry with his
+philosophy. His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit,
+and sometimes animated body. When Satan walks with his lance upon the
+"burning marl," he has a body; when, in his passage between hell and the
+new world, he is in danger of sinking in the vacuity, and is supported
+by a gust of rising vapours, he has a body; when he animates the toad,
+he seems to be mere spirit, that can penetrate matter at pleasure; when
+he starts "up in his own shape," he has, at least, a determined form;
+and, when he is brought before Gabriel, he has "a spear and a shield,"
+which he had the power of hiding in the toad, though the arms of the
+contending angels are evidently material.
+
+The vulgar inhabitants of Pandaemonium, being "incorporeal spirits,"
+are "at large, though without number," in a limited space: yet, in the
+battle, when they were overwhelmed by mountains, their armour hurt them,
+"crushed in upon their substance, now grown gross by sinning." This,
+likewise, happened to the uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown the
+"sooner for their arms, for unarmed they might easily, as spirits,
+have evaded by contraction or remove." Even as spirits they are hardly
+spiritual; for "contraction" and "remove" are images of matter; but if
+they could have escaped without their armour, they might have escaped
+from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he
+rides on a sunbeam, is material; Satan is material when he is afraid of
+the prowess of Adam.
+
+The confusion of spirit and matter, which pervades the whole narration
+of the war of heaven, fills it with incongruity; and the book in which
+it is related is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually
+neglected, as knowledge is increased.
+
+After the operation of immaterial agents which cannot be explained, may
+be considered that of allegorical persons, which have no real existence.
+To exalt causes into agents, to invest abstract ideas with form, and
+animate them with activity, has always been the right of poetry. But
+such airy beings are, for the most part, suffered only to do their
+natural office, and retire. Thus fame tells a tale, and victory hovers
+over a general, or perches on a standard; but fame and victory can do no
+more. To give them any real employment, or ascribe to them any material
+agency, is to make them allegorical no longer, but to shock the mind by
+ascribing effects to nonentity. In the Prometheus of Aeschylus, we see
+violence and strength, and in the Alcestis of Euripides, we see death
+brought upon the stage, all as active persons of the drama; but no
+precedents can justify absurdity.
+
+Milton's allegory of sin and death is, undoubtedly, faulty. Sin is,
+indeed, the mother of death, and may be allowed to be the portress of
+hell; but when they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as
+real, and when death offers him battle, the allegory is broken. That sin
+and death should have shown the way to hell, might have been allowed;
+but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, because the
+difficulty of Satan's passage is described as real and sensible, and the
+bridge ought to be only figurative. The hell assigned to the rebellious
+spirits is described as not less local than the residence of man. It
+is placed in some distant part of space, separated from the regions of
+harmony and order by a chaotick waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but
+sin and death worked up "a mole of aggravated soil," cemented with
+"asphaltus;" a work too bulky for ideal architects.
+
+This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the
+poem; and to this there was no temptation but the author's opinion of
+its beauty.
+
+To the conduct of the narrative some objections may be made. Satan is,
+with great expectation, brought before Gabriel in Paradise, and is
+suffered to go away unmolested. The creation of man is represented as the
+consequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulsion of the rebels;
+yet Satan mentions it as a report "rife in heaven" before his departure.
+
+To find sentiments for the state of innocence was very difficult; and
+something of anticipation, perhaps, is now and then discovered. Adam's
+discourse of dreams seems not to be the speculation of a new-created
+being. I know not whether his answer to the angel's reproof for curiosity
+does not want something of propriety; it is the speech of a man
+acquainted with many other men. Some philosophical notions, especially
+when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted. The
+angel, in a comparison, speaks of "timorous deer," before deer were yet
+timorous, and before Adam could understand the comparison.
+
+Dryden remarks, that Milton has some flats among his elevations. This is
+only to say, that all the parts are not equal. In every work, one part
+must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; a poem must
+have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be
+blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work
+there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the
+world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in
+the sky, may be allowed, sometimes, to revisit earth; for what other
+author ever soared so high, or sustained his flight so long?
+
+Milton, being well versed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed
+often from them; and, as every man catches something from his companions,
+his desire of imitating Ariosto's levity has disgraced his work with
+the Paradise of Fools; a fiction not, in itself, ill imagined, but too
+ludicrous for its place.
+
+His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations,
+which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his
+unnecessary and ungraceful use of terms of art; it is not necessary to
+mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally censured; and,
+at last, bear so little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely
+deserve the attention of a critick.
+
+Such are the faults of that wonderful performance, Paradise Lost; which
+he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered not as
+nice but as dull; as less to be censured for want of candour, than pitied
+for want of sensibility.
+
+Of Paradise Regained, the general judgment seems now to be right, that it
+is, in many parts, elegant, and everywhere instructive. It was not to be
+supposed that the writer of Paradise Lost could ever write without great
+effusions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The basis of Paradise
+Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please, like an
+union of the narrative and dramatick powers. Had this poem been written
+not by Milton, but by some imitator, it would have claimed and received
+universal praise.
+
+If Paradise Regained has been too much depreciated, Sampson Agonistes
+has, in requital, been too much admired. It could only be by long
+prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the
+ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions
+of the French and English stages; and it is only by a blind confidence
+in the reputation of Milton, that a drama can be praised, in which the
+intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hasten nor
+retard the catastrophe.
+
+In this tragedy are, however, many particular beauties, many just
+sentiments and striking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the
+attention, which a well-connected plan produces.
+
+Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew human nature
+only in the gross, and had never studied the shades of character, nor the
+combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending passions. He
+had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little
+in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must
+confer.
+
+Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of
+diction, a mode and cast of expression which bears little resemblance to
+that of any former writer; and which is so far removed from common use,
+that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, finds himself
+surprised by a new language.
+
+This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong in Milton,
+imputed to his laborious endeavours after words suitable to the grandeur
+of his ideas. "Our language," says Addison, "sunk under him." But the
+truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a
+perverse and pedantick principle. He was desirous to use English words
+with a foreign idiom. This in all his prose is discovered and condemned;
+for there judgment operates freely, neither softened by the beauty, nor
+awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but such is the power of his poetry,
+that his call is obeyed without resistance, the reader feels himself
+in captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticism sinks in
+admiration.
+
+Milton's style was not modified by his subject; what is shown with
+greater extent in Paradise Lost may be found in Comus. One source of his
+peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets; the disposition of
+his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps, sometimes, combined
+with other tongues.
+
+Of him, at last, may be said what Jonson says of Spenser, that "he wrote
+no language," but has formed what Butler calls a "Babylonish dialect,"
+in itself harsh and barbarous, but made by exalted genius and extensive
+learning the vehicle of so much instruction, and so much pleasure, that,
+like other lovers, we find grace in its deformity.
+
+Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of
+copiousness and variety; he was master of his language in its full
+extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, that
+from his book alone the art of English poetry might be learned.
+
+After his diction, something must be said of his versification. The
+"measure," he says, "is the English heroick verse without rhyme." Of
+this mode he had many examples among the Italians, and some in his own
+country. The earl of Surrey is said to have translated one of Virgil's
+books without rhyme[62]; and, beside our tragedies, a few short poems had
+appeared in blank verse, particularly one tending to reconcile the nation
+to Raleigh's wild attempt upon Guiana, and probably written by Raleigh
+himself. These petty performances cannot be supposed to have much
+influenced Milton, who, more probably took his hint from Trissino's
+Italia Liberata; and, finding blank verse easier than rhyme, was desirous
+of persuading himself that it is better.
+
+"Rhyme," he says, and says truly, "is no necessary adjunct of true
+poetry." But, perhaps, of poetry, as a mental operation, metre or musick
+is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, by the musick of metre that
+poetry has been discriminated in all languages; and, in languages
+melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and short
+syllables, metre is sufficient. But one language cannot communicate its
+rules to another; where metre is scanty and imperfect, some help is
+necessary. The musick of the English heroick lines strikes the ear so
+faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every
+line cooperate together; this cooperation can be only obtained by the
+preservation of every verse unmingled with another, as a distinct system
+of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the
+artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers
+of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods
+of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of
+Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or
+begin. "Blank verse," said an ingenious critick, "seems to be verse only
+to the eye." Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will
+not often please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared, but where the
+subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to
+that which is called the lapidary style; has neither the easiness
+of prose, nor the melody of numbers, and, therefore, tires by long
+continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as
+precedents, not one is popular; what reason could urge in its defence,
+has been confuted by the ear.
+
+But, whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to
+wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be
+other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than
+imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank
+verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.
+
+The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be said
+to have contrived the structure of an epick poem, and, therefore, owes
+reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations
+must be indebted for the, art of poetical narration, for the texture of
+the fable, the variation of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and
+all the stratagems that surprise and enchain attention. But, of all the
+borrowers from Homer, Milton is, perhaps, the least indebted. He was
+naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and
+disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to the
+thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek them. From
+his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is
+in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be
+gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation of
+support. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in
+blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for
+whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems,
+only because it is not the first.
+
+[Footnote 26: In this assertion Dr. Johnson was mistaken. Milton was
+admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar, as will appear by the following
+extract from the college register: "Johannes Milton, Londinensis, filius
+Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum elementis sub Mag'ro Gill Gymnasii
+Paulini praefecto, admissus est _Pensionarius Minor_, Feb. 12 deg., 1624, sub
+M'ro Chappell, solvitq. pro Ingr. 0l. 10s. 0d." R.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Published 1632. R.]
+
+[Footnote 28: On this subject, see Dr. Symons's Life of Milton, 71, 72.
+ED.]
+
+[Footnote 29: By the mention of this name, he evidently refers to
+Albumazar, acted at Cambridge, in 1614. Ignoramus, and other plays were
+performed at the same time. The practice was then very frequent. The
+last dramatick performance at either university, was the Grateful Fair,
+written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pembroke college,
+Cambridge, about 1747. R.]
+
+[Footnote 30: It has, nevertheless, its foundation in reality. The earl
+of Bridgewater, being president of Wales, in the year 1634, had his
+residence at Ludlow castle, in Shropshire, at which time lord Brackly
+and Mr. Egerton, his sons, and lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing
+through a place called the Haywood forest, or Haywood, in Herefordshire,
+were benighted, and the lady for a short time lost: this accident, being
+related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the
+request of his friend, Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote
+this masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night:
+the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part
+in the representation.
+
+The lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the earl of Carbury,
+who, at his seat called Golden grove, in Caermarthenshire, harboured Dr.
+Jeremy Taylor in the time of the usurpation. Among the doctor's sermons
+is one on her death, in which her character is finely portrayed. Her
+sister, lady Mary, was given in marriage to lord Herbert, of Cherbury.
+
+Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's assertion, that the fiction is derived from
+Homer's Circe, it may be conjectured, that it was rather taken from the
+Comus of Erycius Puteanus, in which, under the fiction of a dream, the
+characters of Comus and his attendants are delineated, and the delights
+of sensualists exposed and reprobated. This little tract was published
+at Louvain, in 1611, and afterwards at Oxford, in 1634, the very year in
+which Milton's Comus was written. H. Milton evidently was indebted to the
+Old Wives' Tale of George Peele for the plan of Comus. R.]
+
+[Footnote 31: This is inaccurately expressed: Philips, and Dr. Newton,
+after him, say a garden-house, i.e. a house situated in a garden, and of
+which there were, especially in the north suburbs of London, very many,
+if not few else. The term is technical, and frequently occurs in the
+Athen. and Fast. Oxon. The meaning thereof may be collected from the
+article, Thomas Farnaby, the famous schoolmaster, of whom the author
+says, that he taught in Goldsmith's rents, in Cripplegate parish, behind
+Redcross street, where were large gardens and handsome houses. Milton's
+house in Jewin street was also a garden-house, as were, indeed, most of
+his dwellings after his settlement in London. H.]
+
+[Footnote 32: Johnson did not here allude to Philips's Theatrum Poetarum,
+as has been ignorantly supposed, but, as he himself informed Mr. Malone,
+to another work by the same author, entitled, Tractatulus de carmine
+dramatico poetarum veterum praesertim in choris tragicis et veteris
+comoediae. Cui subjungitur compendiosa enumeratio poetarum (saltern
+quorum fama maxima enituit) qui a tempore Dantis Aligerii usque ad hanc
+aetatem claruerunt, etc. J. B.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew
+Newcomen, William Spurstow. R.]
+
+[Footnote 34: It was animadverted upon, but without any mention of
+Milton's name, by bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience, Decade 4, Case
+2. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 35: He terms the author of it a shallow-brained puppy; and thus
+refers to it in his index: "Of a noddy who wrote a book about wiving."
+J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 36: This charge, as far as regards Milton, is examined by Dr.
+Symons with more moderation than usually characterizes his high-sounding
+and wordy panegyrics. See Life of Milton. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 37: The work here referred to is Selectarum de Lingua Latina
+Observationum Libri duo. Ductu et cura Joannis Ker, 1719. Ker observes,
+that vapulandum is pinguis solaecismus. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 38: It may be doubted whether _gloriosissimus_ be here used
+with Milton's boasted purity. _Res gloriosa_ is an _illustrious thing_;
+but _vir gloriosus_ is _commonly_ a _braggart_, as in _miles gloriosus_.
+Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 39: The Cambridge dictionary, published in 4to. 1693, is
+no other than a copy, with some small additions, of that of Dr. Adam
+Littleton in 1686, by sundry persons, of whom though their names are
+concealed, there is great reason to conjecture that Milton's nephew,
+Edward Philips, is one: for it is expressly said by Wood, Fasti, vol. i.
+p. 266, that Milton's Thesaurus came to his hands; and it is asserted in
+the preface thereto, that the editors thereof had the use of three large
+folios in manuscript, collected and digested into alphabetical order by
+Mr. John Milton. It has been remarked, that the additions, together
+with the preface above mentioned, and a large part of the title of
+the Cambridge dictionary, have been incorporated and printed with the
+subsequent editions of Littleton's dictionary, till that of 1735. Vid.
+Biogr. Brit. 2985, in not. So that, for aught that appears to the
+contrary, Philips was the last possessor of Milton's manuscripts. H.]
+
+[Footnote 40: _Id est_, to be the subject of an heroick poem, written by
+sir Richard Blackmore. H.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Trinity college. R.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The dramas in which Justice, Mercy, Faith, &c. were
+introduced, were moralities, not mysteries. MALONE.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Philips says expressly, that Milton was excepted and
+disqualified from bearing any office; but Toland says he was not excepted
+at all, and consequently included in the general pardon, or act of
+indemnity, passed the 29th of August, 1660. Toland is right, for I find
+Goodwin and Ph. Nye, the minister, excepted in the act, but Milton not
+named. However, he obtained a special pardon in December, 1660, which
+passed the privy seal, but not the great seal. MALONE.]
+
+[Footnote 44: It was told before by A. Wood in Ath. Oxon. vol. ii. p.
+412. second edition.]
+
+[Footnote 45: That Milton saved Davenant, is attested by Aubrey, and by
+Wood, from him; but none of them say that Davenant saved Milton: this is
+Richardson's assertion merely. MALONE.]
+
+[Footnote 46: A different account of the means by which Milton secured
+himself, is given by an historian lately brought to light: "Milton,
+Latin secretary to Cromwell, distinguished by his writings in favour of
+the rights and liberties of the people, pretended to be dead, and had a
+publick funeral procession. The king applauded his policy in escaping
+the punishment of death, by a seasonable show of dying." Cunningham's
+History of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 14. R.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Gildon, in his continuation of Langbaine's account of the
+dramatick poets, 8vo. 1693, says, that he had been told that Milton,
+after the restoration, kept a school at or near Greenwich. The
+publication of an Accidence at that period gives some countenance to this
+tradition. MALONE]
+
+[Footnote 48: It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader, that this
+relation of Voltaire's was perfectly true, as far as relates to the
+existence of the play which he speaks of, namely, the Adamo of Andreini;
+but it is still a question whether Milton ever saw it. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 49: This opinion is, with great learning and ingenuity,
+refuted in a book now very little known, an Apology or Declaration of
+the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World, by Dr.
+George Hakewill, London, folio, 1635. The first who ventured to propagate
+it in this country was Dr. Gabriel Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, a man
+of a versatile temper, and the author of a book entitled, the Fall of Man,
+or the Corruption of Nature proved by Natural Reason. Lond. 1616, and
+1624. quarto. He was plundered in the usurpation, turned Roman catholick,
+and died in obscurity. See Athen, Oxon. vol. i. p. 727. H.]
+
+[Footnote 50:
+             --Unless _an age too late_, or cold
+             Climate, or years damp my intended wing.
+                            Par. Lost. b. ix. l. 44.]
+
+[Footnote 51: Johnson has, in many places of
+his Rambler and Idler, ridiculed the notion of a dependance of our mental
+powers on the variations of atmosphere. In Boswell's life, however,
+there are some recorded instances of his own subjection to this
+common infirmity. We cannot refrain from denouncing, as unfeeling and
+ungenerous, Johnson's sarcasms at Milton's distempered imagination, when
+old age, disease, and darkness had come upon him. Dr. Symons runs into
+the diametrically opposite extreme. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 52: "Statura fateor non sum procera: seel quae mediocri tamen
+quam parvae propior sit: sed quid si parva, qua et summi saepe tum pace
+tum bello viri fuere, quanquam parva cur dicitur, quae ad virtutem satis
+magna est." Defensio Secunda. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Both these persons were living at Holloway, about the year
+1734, and, at that time, possessed such a degree of health and strength,
+as enabled them, on Sundays and prayer-days, to walk a mile up a steep
+hill to Highgate chapel. One of them was ninety-two at the time of her
+death. Their parentage was known to few, and their names were corrupted
+into Melton. By the crown-office, mentioned in the two last paragraphs,
+we are to understand the crown-office of the court of Chancery. H.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Printed in the first volume of this collection.]
+
+[Footnote 55: With the exception of Comus, in which, Dr. J. afterwards
+says, may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise
+Lost. C.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Here, as Warton justly observes, "Johnson has confounded
+two descriptions!"
+
+  The melancholy man does not go
+  out while it rains, but waits, till----the sun begins to fling
+  His flaring beams.     J. B.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Mr. Warton intimates, and there can be little doubt of the
+truth of his conjecture, that Milton borrowed many of the images in these
+two fine poems from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, a book published
+in 1621, and, at sundry times since, abounding in learning, curious
+information, and pleasantry. Mr. Warton says, that Milton appears to have
+been an attentive reader thereof; and to this assertion I add, of my own
+knowledge, that it was a book that Dr. Johnson frequently resorted to,
+as many others have done, for amusement after the fatigue of study.
+H.--Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Johnson said, was the only book
+that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.
+Boswell's Life, ii. 120.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Surely there are precedents enough for the practice,
+though pessimi exempli, in Milton's favourite tragedian Euripides. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Author of the Essay on Study.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Algarotti terms it, "gigantesca sublimita Miltoniana."
+Dr.J.]
+
+[Footnote 61: But, says Dr. Warton, it has, throughout, a reference to
+human life and actions. C.]
+
+[Footnote 62: The earl of Surrey translated two books of Virgil without
+rhyme; the second and the fourth. J.B.]
+
+
+
+
+BUTLER.
+
+Of the great author of Hudibras there is a life prefixed to the later
+editions of his poem, by an unknown writer, and, therefore, of disputable
+authority; and some account is incidentally given by Wood, who confesses
+the uncertainty of his own narrative; more, however, than they knew
+cannot now be learned, and nothing remains but to compare and copy them.
+
+Samuel Butler was born in the parish of Strensham, in Worcestershire,
+according to his biographer, in 1612. This account Dr. Nash finds
+confirmed by the register. He was christened Feb. 14.
+
+His father's condition is variously represented: Wood mentions him as
+competently wealthy; but Mr. Longneville, the son of Butler's principal
+friend, says he was an honest farmer, with some small estate, who made a
+shift to educate his son at the grammar school of Worcester, under Mr.
+Henry Bright[63], from whose care he removed, for a short time, to
+Cambridge; but, for want of money, was never made a member of any college.
+Wood leaves us rather doubtful whether he went to Cambridge or Oxford;
+but, at last, makes him pass six or seven years at Cambridge, without
+knowing in what hall or college; yet it can hardly be imagined that he
+lived so long in either university but as belonging to one house or
+another; and it is still less likely that he could have so long inhabited
+a place of learning with so little distinction as to leave his residence
+uncertain. Dr. Nash has discovered that his father was owner of a house
+and a little land, worth about eight pounds a year, still called Butler's
+tenement.
+
+Wood has his information from his brother, whose narrative placed him at
+Cambridge, in opposition to that of his neighbours, which sent him to
+Oxford. The brother's seems the best authority, till, by confessing his
+inability to tell his hall or college, he gives reason to suspect that he
+was resolved to bestow on him an academical education; but durst not name
+a college, for fear of detection.
+
+He was, for some time, according to the author of his life, clerk to Mr.
+Jefferys, of Earl's Croomb, in Worcestershire, an eminent justice of
+the peace. In his service he had not only leisure for study, but for
+recreation: his amusements were musick and painting; and the reward of
+his pencil was the friendship of the celebrated Cooper. Some pictures,
+said to be his, were shown to Dr. Nash, at Earl's Croomb; but, when he
+inquired for them some years afterwards, he found them destroyed, to stop
+windows, and owns that they hardly deserved a better fate.
+
+He was afterwards admitted into the family of the countess of Kent, where
+he had the use of a library; and so much recommended himself to Selden,
+that he was often employed by him in literary business. Selden, as is
+well known, was steward to the countess, and is supposed to have gained
+much of his wealth by managing her estate.
+
+In what character Butler was admitted into that lady's service, how long
+he continued in it, and why he left it, is, like the other incidents of
+his life, utterly unknown. The vicissitudes of his condition placed him
+afterwards in the family of sir Samuel Luke, one of Cromwell's officers.
+Here he observed so much of the character of the sectaries, that he is
+said to have written or begun his poem at this time; and it is likely
+that such a design would be formed in a place where he saw the principles
+and practices of the rebels, audacious and undisguised in the confidence
+of success.
+
+At length the king returned, and the time came in which loyalty hoped
+for its reward. Butler, however, was only made secretary to the earl of
+Carbury, president of the principality of Wales; who conferred on him the
+stewardship of Ludlow castle, when the court of the marches was revived.
+
+In this part of his life, he married Mrs. Herbert, a gentlewoman of a
+good family; and lived, says Wood, upon her fortune, having studied
+the common law, but never practised it. A fortune she had, says his
+biographer, but it was lost by bad securities.
+
+In 1663 was published the first part, containing three cantos, of the
+poem of Hudibras, which, as Prior relates, was made known at court by
+the taste and influence of the earl of Dorset. When it was known, it was
+necessarily admired: the king quoted, the courtiers studied, and the
+whole party of the royalists applauded it. Every eye watched for the
+golden shower which was to fall upon the author, who certainly was not
+without his part in the general expectation.
+
+In 1664 the second part appeared; the curiosity of the nation was
+rekindled, and the writer was again praised and elated. But praise was
+his whole reward. Clarendon, says Wood, gave him reason to hope for
+"places and employments of value and credit;" but no such advantages did
+he ever obtain. It is reported that the king once gave him three hundred
+guineas; but of this temporary bounty I find no proof.
+
+Wood relates that he was secretary to Villiers, duke of Buckingham, when
+he was chancellor of Cambridge: this is doubted by the other writer, who
+yet allows the duke to have been his frequent benefactor. That both these
+accounts are false there is reason to suspect, from a story told by
+Packe, in his account of the life of Wycherley; and from some verses
+which Mr. Thyer has published in the author's Remains.
+
+"Mr. Wycherley," says Packe, "had always laid hold of an opportunity
+which offered of representing to the duke of Buckingham how well Mr.
+Butler had deserved of the royal family, by writing his inimitable
+Hudibras; and that it was a reproach to the court, that a person of his
+loyalty and wit should suffer in obscurity, and under the wants he did.
+The duke always seemed to hearken to him with attention enough; and,
+after some time, undertook to recommend his pretensions to his majesty.
+Mr. Wycherley, in hopes to keep him steady to his word, obtained of his
+grace to name a day, when he might introduce that modest and unfortunate
+poet to his new patron. At last an appointment was made, and the place of
+meeting was agreed to be the Roebuck. Mr. Butler and his friend attended
+accordingly; the duke joined them; but, as the d--l would have it, the
+door of the room where they sat was open, and his grace, who had seated
+himself near it, observing a pimp of his acquaintance (the creature too
+was a knight) trip by with a brace of ladies, immediately quitted his
+engagement to follow another kind of business, at which he was more ready
+than in doing good offices to men of desert, though no one was better
+qualified than he, both in regard to his fortune and understanding, to
+protect them; and, from that time to the day of his death, poor Butler
+never found the least effect of his promise!"
+
+Such is the story. The verses are written with a degree of acrimony, such
+as neglect and disappointment might naturally excite; and such as it
+would be hard to imagine Butler capable of expressing against a man who
+had any claim to his gratitude.
+
+Notwithstanding this discouragement and neglect, he still prosecuted his
+design; and, in 1678, published the third part, which still leaves the
+poem imperfect and abrupt. How much more he originally intended, or with
+what events the action was to be concluded, it is vain to conjecture. Nor
+can it be thought strange that he should stop here, however unexpectedly.
+To write without reward is sufficiently unpleasing. He had now arrived
+at an age when he might think it proper to be in jest no longer, and,
+perhaps, his health might now begin to fail.
+
+He died in 1680; and Mr. Longueville, having unsuccessfully solicited a
+subscription for his interment in Westminster Abbey, buried him, at his
+own cost, in the church-yard of Covent garden[64]. Dr. Simon Patrick read
+the service.
+
+Granger was informed by Dr. Pearce, who named for his authority Mr.
+Lowndes, of the treasury, that Butler had a yearly pension of an hundred
+pounds. This is contradicted by all tradition, by the complaints of
+Oldham, and by the reproaches of Dryden; and, I am afraid, will never be
+confirmed.
+
+About sixty years afterwards, Mr. Barber, a printer, mayor of London,
+and a friend to Butler's principles, bestowed on him a monument in
+Westminster Abbey, thus inscribed:
+
+  M. S.
+  SAMUELIS BUTLERI,
+
+  Qui Strenshamiae in agro Vigorn. nat. 1612,
+  obijt Lond. 1680.
+  Vir doctus imprimis, acer, integer;
+  Operibus ingenii, non item praemiis, foelix:
+  Satyrici apud nos carminis artifex egregius;
+  Quo simulatae religionis larvam detraxit,
+  Et perduellium scelera liberrime exagitavit;
+  Scriptorum in suo genere, primus et postremus.
+  Ne, cui vivo deerant fere omnia,
+  Deesset etiam mortuo tumulus,
+  Hoc tandem posito marmore, curavit
+  JOHANNES BARBER, Civis Londinensis, 1721.
+
+After his death were published three small volumes of his posthumous
+works; I know not by whom collected, or by what authority
+ascertained[65]; and, lately, two volumes more have been printed by Mr.
+Thyer, of Manchester, indubitably genuine. From none of these pieces can
+his life be traced, or his character discovered. Some verses, in the
+last collection, show him to have been among those who ridiculed the
+institution of the Royal Society, of which the enemies were, for some
+time, very numerous and very acrimonious; for what reason it is hard to
+conceive, since the philosophers professed not to advance doctrines, but
+to produce facts: and the most zealous enemy of innovation must admit
+the gradual progress of experience, however he may oppose hypothetical
+temerity.
+
+In this mist of obscurity passed the life of Butler, a man whose name can
+only perish with his language. The mode and place of his education are
+unknown; the events of his life are variously related; and all that can
+be told with certainty is, that he was poor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poem of Hudibras is one of those compositions of which a nation
+may justly boast; as the images which it exhibits are domestick, the
+sentiments unborrowed and unexpected, and the strain of diction original
+and peculiar. We must not, however, suffer the pride, which we assume
+as the countrymen of Butler, to make any encroachment upon justice, nor
+appropriate those honours which others have a right to share. The poem of
+Hudibras is not wholly English; the original idea is to be found in the
+history of Don Quixote; a book to which a mind of the greatest powers may
+be indebted without disgrace.
+
+Cervantes shows a man, who having, by the incessant perusal of incredible
+tales, subjected his understanding to his imagination, and familiarized
+his mind by pertinacious meditation to trains of incredible events, and
+scenes of impossible existence; goes out, in the pride of knighthood, to
+redress wrongs, and defend virgins, to rescue captive princesses, and
+tumble usurpers from their thrones; attended by a squire, whose cunning,
+too low for the suspicion of a generous mind, enables him often to cheat
+his master.
+
+The hero of Butler is a presbyterian justice, who, in the confidence of
+legal authority and the rage of zealous ignorance, ranges the country to
+repress superstition, and correct abuses, accompanied by an independent
+clerk, disputatious and obstinate, with whom he often debates, but never
+conquers him.
+
+Cervantes had so much kindness for Don Quixote, that, however he
+embarrasses him with absurd distresses, he gives him so much sense and
+virtue as may preserve our esteem; wherever he is, or whatever he does,
+he is made, by matchless dexterity, commonly ridiculous, but never
+contemptible.
+
+But for poor Hudibras, his poet had no tenderness; he chooses not that
+any pity should be shown, or respect paid him; he gives him up at once to
+laughter and contempt, without any quality that can dignify or protect
+him.
+
+In forming the character of Hudibras, and describing his person and
+habiliments, the author seems to labour with a tumultuous confusion of
+dissimilar ideas. He had read the history of the mock knights-errant; he
+knew the notions and manners of a presbyterian magistrate, and tried to
+unite the absurdities of both, however distant, in one personage. Thus he
+gives him that pedantick ostentation of knowledge which has no relation
+to chivalry, and loads him with martial encumbrances that can add nothing
+to his civil dignity. He sends him out a "colonelling," and yet never
+brings him within sight of war.
+
+If Hudibras be considered as the representative of the presbyterians, it
+is not easy to say why his weapons should be represented as ridiculous or
+useless; for, whatever judgment might be passed upon their knowledge or
+their arguments, experience had sufficiently shown that their swords were
+not to be despised. The hero, thus compounded of swaggerer and pedant, of
+knight and justice, is led forth to action, with his squire Ralpho, an
+independent enthusiast.
+
+Of the contexture of events planned by the author, which is called the
+action of the poem, since it is left imperfect, no judgment can he
+made. It is probable, that the hero was to be led through many luckless
+adventures, which would give occasion, like his attack upon the "bear
+and fiddle," to expose the ridiculous rigour of the sectaries; like his
+encounter with Sidrophel and Whacum, to make superstition and credulity
+contemptible; or, like his recourse to the low retailer of the law,
+discover the fraudulent practices of different professions.
+
+What series of events he would have formed, or in what manner he would
+have rewarded or punished his hero, it is now vain to conjecture. His
+work must have had, as it seems, the defect which Dryden imputes to
+Spenser; the action could not have been one; there could only have been
+a succession of incidents, each of which might have happened without the
+rest, and which could not all cooperate to any single conclusion.
+
+The discontinuity of the action might, however, have been easily
+forgiven, if there had been action enough; but, I believe, every reader
+regrets the paucity of events, and complains that, in the poem of
+Hudibras, as in the history of Thucydides, there is more said than done.
+The scenes are too seldom changed, and the attention is tired with long
+conversation.
+
+It is, indeed, much more easy to form dialogues than to contrive
+adventures. Every position makes way for an argument, and every objection
+dictates an answer. When two disputants are engaged upon a complicated
+and extensive question, the difficulty is not to continue, but to end
+the controversy. But whether it be that we comprehend but few of the
+possibilities of life, or that life itself affords little variety, every
+man, who has tried, knows how much labour it will cost to form such a
+combination of circumstances as shall have, at once, the grace of novelty
+and credibility, and delight fancy without violence to reason.
+
+Perhaps the dialogue of this poem is not perfect. Some power of engaging
+the attention might have been added to it by quicker reciprocation, by
+seasonable interruptions, by sudden questions, and by a nearer approach
+to dramatick sprightliness; without which, fictitious speeches will
+always tire, however sparkling with sentences, and however variegated
+with allusions.
+
+The great source of pleasure is variety. Uniformity must tire at last,
+though it be uniformity of excellence. We love to expect; and, when
+expectation is disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
+For this impatience of the present, whoever would please must make
+provision. The skilful writer "irritat, mulcet," makes a due distribution
+of the still and animated parts. It is for want of this artful
+intertexture, and those necessary changes, that the whole of a book may
+be tedious, though all the parts are praised.
+
+If inexhaustible wit could give perpetual pleasure, no eye would ever
+leave half-read the work of Butler; for what poet has ever brought so
+many remote images so happily together? It is scarcely possible to peruse
+a page without finding some association of images that was never found
+before. By the first paragraph the reader is amused, by the next he is
+delighted, and by a few more strained to astonishment; but astonishment
+is a toilsome pleasure; he is soon weary of wondering, and longs to be
+diverted:
+
+  "Omnia vult belle Matho dicere, dic aliquando
+  Et bene, die neutrum, dic aliquando male."
+
+Imagination is useless without knowledge: nature gives in vain the power
+of combination, unless study and observation supply materials to be
+combined. Butler's treasures of knowledge appear proportioned to his
+expense: whatever topick employs his mind, he shows himself qualified to
+expand and illustrate it with all the accessories that books can furnish:
+he is found not only to have travelled the beaten road, but the by-paths
+of literature; not only to have taken general surveys, but to have
+examined particulars with minute inspection.
+
+If the French boast the learning of Rabelais, we need not be afraid of
+confronting them with Butler.
+
+But the most valuable parts of his performance are those which retired
+study and native wit cannot supply. He that merely makes a book from
+books may be useful, but can scarcely be great. Butler had not suffered
+life to glide beside him unseen or unobserved. He had watched, with great
+diligence, the operations of human nature, and traced the effects of
+opinion, humour, interest, and passion. From such remarks proceeded
+that great number of sententious distichs, which have passed into
+conversation, and are added as proverbial axioms to the general stock of
+practical knowledge.
+
+When any work has been viewed and admired, the first question of
+intelligent curiosity is, how was it performed? Hudibras was not a hasty
+effusion; it was not produced by a sudden tumult of imagination, or a
+short paroxysm of violent labour. To accumulate such a mass of sentiments
+at the call of accidental desire, or of sudden necessity, is beyond the
+reach and power of the most active and comprehensive mind. I am informed
+by Mr. Thyer, of Manchester, the excellent editor of this author's
+relicks, that he could show something like Hudibras in prose. He has in
+his possession the commonplace-book, in which Butler reposited, not
+such events or precepts as are gathered by reading, but such remarks,
+similitudes, allusions, assemblages, or inferences, as occasion prompted,
+or meditation produced; those thoughts that were generated in his own
+mind, and might be usefully applied to some future purpose. Such is the
+labour of those who write for immortality.
+
+But human works are not easily found without a perishable part. Of the
+ancient poets every reader feels the mythology tedious and oppressive.
+Of Hudibras, the manners, being founded on opinions, are temporary and
+local, and, therefore, become every day less intelligible, and less
+striking. What Cicero says of philosophy is true, likewise, of wit and
+humour, that "time effaces the fictions of opinion, and confirms the
+determinations of nature." Such manners as depend upon standing relations
+and general passions are coextended with the race of man; but those
+modifications of life, and peculiarities of practice, which are the
+progeny of errour and perverseness, or, at best, of some accidental
+influence or transient persuasion, must perish with their parents.
+
+Much, therefore, of that humour which transported the last century[66]
+with merriment, is lost to us, who do not know the sour solemnity, the
+sullen superstition, the gloomy moroseness, and the stubborn scruples of
+the ancient puritans; or, if we know them, derive our information only
+from books, or from tradition, have never had them before our eyes, and
+cannot, but by recollection and study, understand the lines in which they
+are satirized. Our grandfathers knew the picture from the life; we judge
+of the life by contemplating the picture.
+
+It is scarcely possible, in the regularity and composure of the present
+time, to image the tumult of absurdity, and clamour of contradiction,
+which perplexed doctrine, disordered practice, and disturbed both publick
+and private quiet, in that age when subordination was broken, and awe was
+hissed away; when any unsettled innovator, who could hatch a half-formed
+notion, produced it to the publick; when every man might become a
+preacher, and almost every preacher could collect a congregation.
+
+The wisdom of the nation is very reasonably supposed to reside in the
+parliament. What can be concluded of the lower classes of the people,
+when in one of the parliaments, summoned by Cromwell, it was seriously
+proposed, that all the records in the Tower should be burnt, that all
+memory of things past should be effaced, and that the whole system of
+life should commence anew?
+
+We have never been witnesses of animosities excited by the use of minced
+pies and plumporridge; nor seen with what abhorrence those, who could eat
+them at all other times of the year, would shrink from them in December.
+An old puritan who was alive in my childhood, being, at one of the feasts
+of the church, invited by a neighbour to partake his cheer, told him,
+that if he would treat him at an alehouse with beer brewed for all times
+and seasons he should accept his kindness, but would have none of his
+superstitious meats or drinks.
+
+One of the puritanical tenets was the illegality of all games of chance;
+and he that reads Gataker upon Lots, may see how much learning and reason
+one of the first scholars of his age thought necessary to prove, that it
+was no crime to throw a die, or play at cards, or to hide a shilling for
+the reckoning.
+
+Astrology, however, against which so much of the satire is directed, was
+not more the folly of the puritans than of others. It had, in that time,
+a very extensive dominion. Its predictions raised hopes and fears in
+minds, which ought to have rejected it with contempt. In hazardous
+undertakings, care was taken to begin under the influence of a propitious
+planet; and, when the king was prisoner in Carisbrook castle, an
+astrologer was consulted what hour would be found most favourable to an
+escape.
+
+What effect this poem had upon the publick, whether it shamed imposture,
+or reclaimed credulity, is not easily determined. Cheats can seldom
+stand long against laughter. It is certain, that the credit of planetary
+intelligence wore fast away; though some men of knowledge, and Dryden
+among them, continued to believe that conjunctions and oppositions had a
+great part in the distribution of good or evil, and in the government of
+sublunary things.
+
+Poetical action ought to be probable upon certain suppositions, and such
+probability as burlesque requires is here violated only by one incident.
+Nothing can show more plainly the necessity of doing something, and the
+difficulty of finding something to do, than that Butler was reduced to
+transfer to his hero, the flagellation of Sancho, not the most agreeable
+fiction of Cervantes; very suitable, indeed, to the manners of that age
+and nation, which ascribed wonderful efficacy to voluntary penances; but
+so remote from the practice and opinions of the Hudibrastick time, that
+judgment and imagination are alike offended.
+
+The diction of this poem is grossly familiar, and the numbers purposely
+neglected, except in a few places where the thoughts, by their native
+excellence, secure themselves from violation, being such as mean language
+cannot express. The mode of versification has been blamed by Dryden, who
+regrets that the heroick measure was not rather chosen. To the critical
+sentence of Dryden, the highest reverence would be due, were not his
+decisions often precipitate, and his opinions immature. When he wished to
+change the measure, he probably would have been willing to change more.
+If he intended that, when the numbers were heroick, the diction should
+still remain vulgar, he planned a very heterogeneous and unnatural
+composition. If he preferred a general stateliness both of sound and
+words, he can be only understood to wish that Butler had undertaken a
+different work.
+
+The measure is quick, sprightly, and colloquial, suitable to the
+vulgarity of the words, and the levity of the sentiments. But such
+numbers and such diction can gain regard, only when they are used by a
+writer, whose vigour of fancy and copiousness of knowledge, entitle him
+to contempt of ornaments, and who, in confidence of the novelty and
+justness of his conceptions, can afford to throw metaphors and epithets
+away. To another that conveys common thoughts in careless versification,
+it will only be said, "Pauper videri Cinna vult, et est pauper." The
+meaning and diction will be worthy of each other, and criticism may
+justly doom them to perish together.
+
+Nor even though another Butler should arise, would another Hudibras
+obtain the same regard. Burlesque consists in a disproportion between the
+style and the sentiments, or between the adventitious sentiments and
+the fundamental subject. It, therefore, like all bodies compounded of
+heterogeneous parts, contains in it a principle of corruption. All
+disproportion is unnatural; and from what is unnatural, we can derive
+only the pleasure which novelty produces. We admire it awhile as a
+strange thing; but, when it is no longer strange, we perceive its
+deformity. It is a kind of artifice, which by frequent repetition detects
+itself; and the reader, learning in time what he is to expect, lays down
+his book, as the spectator turns away from a second exhibition of those
+tricks, of which the only use is to show that they can be played.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We extract from the second volume of Aubrey's Letters, p. 263, the
+following lines, entitled
+
+  _Hudibras imprinted._
+
+  No jesuite ever took in hand,
+  To plant a church in barren land;
+  Or ever thought it worth his while
+  A Swede or Russe to reconcile.
+  For where there is not store of wealth,
+  Souls are not worth the chardge of health.
+  Spain and America had designes
+  To sell their gospell for their wines,
+  For had the Mexicans been poore,
+  No Spaniard twice had landed on their shore.
+  'Twas gold the catholick religion planted,
+  Which, had they wanted gold, they still had wanted. ED.
+
+[Footnote 63: These are the words of the author of the short account of
+Butler, prefixed to Hudibras, which Dr. Johnson, notwithstanding what he
+says above, seems to have supposed was written by Mv. Longneville, the
+father; but the contrary is to be inferred from a subsequent passage,
+wherein the author laments that he had neither such an acquaintance nor
+interest with Mr. Longneville, as to procure from him the golden remains
+of Butler there mentioned. He was, probably, led into the mistake by
+a note in the Biog. Brit. p. 1077, signifying, that the son of
+this gentleman was living in 1736.
+
+Of this friend and generous patron of Butler, Mr. William Longneville, I
+find an account, written by a person who was well acquainted with him, to
+this effect, viz. that he was a conveyancing lawyer, and a bencher of the
+inner temple, and had raised himself from a low beginning, to very
+great eminence in that profession; that he was eloquent and learned, of
+spotless integrity; that he supported an aged father, who had ruined his
+fortunes by extravagance, and by his industry and application, reedified
+a ruined family; that he supported Butler, who, but for him, must
+literally have starved; and received from him, as a recompense, the
+papers called his Remains. Life of the lord-keeper Guildford, p. 289.
+These have since been given to the public by Mr. Thyer, of Manchester:
+and the originals are now in the hands of the Rev. Dr. Farmer, master of
+Emanuel college, Cambridge. H.]
+[Footnote 64: In a note in the Biographia Britannica, p. 1075, he is
+said, on the authority of the younger Mr. Longueville, to have lived for
+some years in Rose street, Covent garden, and also that he died there;
+the latter of these particulars is rendered highly probable, by his being
+interred in the cemetery of that parish.]
+
+[Footnote 65: They were collected into one, and published in 12mo. 1732.
+H.]
+
+[Footnote 66: The seventeenth. N.]
+
+
+
+
+ROCHESTER.
+
+John Wilmot, afterwards earl of Rochester, the son of Henry, earl of
+Rochester, better known by the title of lord Wilmot, so often mentioned
+in Clarendon's History, was born April 10, 1647, at Ditchley, in
+Oxfordshire. After a grammatical education at the school of Burford, he
+entered a nobleman into Wadham college in 1659, only twelve years old;
+and, in 1661, at fourteen, was, with some other persons of high rank,
+made master of arts by lord Clarendon in person.
+
+He travelled afterwards into France and Italy; and, at his return,
+devoted himself to the court. In 1665 he went to sea with Sandwich, and
+distinguished himself at Bergen by uncommon intrepidity; and the next
+summer served again on board sir Edward Spragge, who, in the heat of the
+engagement, having a message of reproof to send to one of his captains,
+could find no man ready to carry it but Wilmot, who, in an open boat,
+went and returned amidst the storm of shot.
+
+But his reputation for bravery was not lasting: he was reproached with
+slinking away in street quarrels, and leaving his companions to shift, as
+they could, without him; and Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, has left a
+story of his refusal to fight him.
+
+He had very early an inclination to intemperance, which he totally
+subdued in his travels; but, when he became a courtier, he unhappily
+addicted himself to dissolute and vitious company, by which his
+principles were corrupted, and his manners depraved. He lost all sense
+of religious restraint; and, finding it not convenient to admit the
+authority of laws, which he was resolved not to obey, sheltered his
+wickedness behind infidelity.
+
+As he excelled in that noisy and licentious merriment which wine incites,
+his companions eagerly encouraged him in excess, and he willingly
+indulged it; till, as he confessed to Dr. Burnet, he was for five years
+together continually drunk, or so much inflamed by frequent ebriety, as
+in no interval to be master of himself.
+
+In this state he played many frolicks, which it is not for his honour
+that we should remember, and which are not now distinctly known. He
+often pursued low amours in mean disguises, and always acted with great
+exactness and dexterity the characters which he assumed.
+
+He once erected a stage on Tower hill, and harangued the populace as a
+mountebank; and, having made physick part of his study, is said to have
+practised it successfully.
+
+He was so much in favour with king Charles, that he was made one of the
+gentlemen of the bedchamber, and comptroller of Woodstock park.
+
+Having an active and inquisitive mind, he never, except in his paroxysms
+of intemperance, was wholly negligent of study: he read what is
+considered as polite learning so much, that he is mentioned by Wood as
+the greatest scholar of all the nobility. Sometimes he retired into the
+country, and amused himself with writing libels, in which he did not
+pretend to confine himself to truth.
+
+His favourite author in French was Boileau, and in English Cowley.
+
+Thus in a course of drunken gaiety, and gross sensuality, with intervals
+of study, perhaps, yet more criminal, with an avowed contempt of all
+decency and order, a total disregard of every moral, and a resolute
+denial of every religious obligation, he lived worthless and useless, and
+blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness, till, at
+the age of one-and-thirty, he had exhausted the fund of life, and reduced
+himself to a state of weakness and decay.
+
+At this time he was led to an acquaintance with Dr. Burnet, to whom he
+laid open, with great freedom, the tenour of his opinions, and the
+course of his life, and from whom he received such conviction of the
+reasonableness of moral duty, and the truth of Christianity, as produced
+a total change both of his manners and opinions. The account of those
+salutary conferences is given by Burnet in a book entitled, Some Passages
+of the Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester, which the critick ought
+to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the
+saint for its piety. It were an injury to the reader to offer him an
+abridgment.
+
+He died July 26, 1680, before he had completed his thirty-fourth year;
+and was so worn away by a long illness, that life went out without a
+struggle.
+
+Lord Rochester was eminent for the vigour of his colloquial wit, and
+remarkable for many wild pranks and sallies of extravagance. The glare of
+his general character diffused itself upon his writings; the compositions
+of a man whose name was heard so often, were certain of attention, and
+from many readers certain of applause. This blaze of reputation is not
+yet quite extinguished; and his poetry still retains some splendour
+beyond that which genius has bestowed.
+
+Wood and Burnet give us reason to believe, that much was imputed to him
+which he did not write. I know not by whom the original collection was
+made, or by what authority its genuineness was ascertained. The
+first edition was published in the year of his death, with an air of
+concealment, professing, in the titlepage, to be printed at Antwerp.
+
+Of some of the pieces, however, there is no doubt: the Imitation of
+Horace's Satire, the Verses to lord Mulgrave, Satire against Man, the
+Verses upon Nothing, and, perhaps, some others, are, I believe, genuine;
+and, perhaps, most of those which the late collection exhibits[67].
+
+As he cannot be supposed to have found leisure for any course of
+continued study, his pieces are commonly short, such as one fit of
+resolution would produce.
+
+His songs have no particular character; they tell, like other songs,
+in smooth and easy language, of scorn and kindness, dismission and
+desertion, absence and inconstancy, with the commonplaces of artificial
+courtship. They are commonly smooth and easy; but have little nature, and
+little sentiment.
+
+His Imitation of Horace on Lucilius is not inelegant or unhappy. In the
+reign of Charles the second began that adaptation, which has since been
+very frequent, of ancient poetry to present times; and, perhaps, few will
+be found where the parallelism is better preserved than in this. The
+versification is, indeed, sometimes careless, but it is sometimes
+vigorous and weighty.
+
+The strongest effort of his muse is his poem upon Nothing. He is not the
+first who has chosen this barren topick for the boast of his fertility.
+There is a poem called Nihil in Latin, by Passerat, a poet and critick of
+the sixteenth century, in France; who, in his own epitaph, expresses his
+zeal for good poetry thus:
+
+  Molliter ossa quiescent
+  Sint modo carminibus non onerata malis.
+
+His works are not common, and, therefore, I shall subjoin his verses.
+
+In examining this performance, Nothing must be considered as having not
+only a negative, but a kind of positive signification; as I need not fear
+thieves, I have _nothing_, and _nothing_ is a very powerful protector. In
+the first part of the sentence it is taken negatively; in the second it
+is taken positively, as an agent. In one of Boileau's lines it was a
+question, whether he should use "a rien faire," or "a ne rien faire;"
+and the first was preferred, because it gave "rien" a sense in some sort
+positive. _Nothing_ can be a subject only in its positive sense, and such
+a sense is given it in the first line:
+
+  _Nothing_, thou elder brother ev'n to shade.
+
+In this line, I know not whether he does not allude to a curious book, De
+Umbra, by Wowerus, which, having told the qualities of _shade_, concludes
+with a poem, in which are these lines:
+
+  Jam primum terram validis circumspice claustris
+  Suspensam totam, decus admirabile mundi,
+  Terrasque, tractusque maris, camposque liquentes
+  Aeris, et vasti laqueata palatia coeli----
+  Omnibus UMBRA prior.
+
+The positive sense is generally preserved, with great skill, through
+the whole poem; though, sometimes, in a subordinate sense, the negative
+_nothing_ is injudiciously mingled. Passerat confounds the two senses.
+
+Another of his most vigorous pieces is his lampoon on sir Car Scroop,
+who, in a poem called the Praise of Satire, had some lines like
+these[68]:
+
+  He who can push into a midnight fray
+  His brave companion, and then run away,
+  Leaving him to be murder'd in the street,
+  Then put it off with some buffoon conceit;
+  Him, thus dishonour'd, for a wit you own,
+  And court him as top fiddler of the town.
+
+This was meant of Rochester, whose "buffoon conceit" was, I suppose, a
+saying often mentioned, that "every man would be a coward, if he durst;"
+and drew from him those furious verses; to which Scroop made, in reply,
+an epigram, ending with these lines:
+
+  Thou canst hurt no man's fame with thy ill word;
+  Thy pen is full as harmless as thy sword.
+
+Of the Satire against Man, Rochester can only claim what remains, when
+all Boileau's part is taken away.
+
+In all his works there is sprightliness and vigour, and every where may
+be found tokens of a mind, which study might have carried to excellence.
+What more can be expected from a life spent in ostentatious contempt of
+regularity, and ended, before the abilities of many other men began to be
+displayed[69]?
+
+  Poema Cl. V. JOANNIS PASSERATII,
+
+  Regii in Academia Parisiensi Professoris.
+
+  Ad ornatissimum virum ERRICUM MEMMIUM.
+
+  Janus adest, festae poscunt sua dona kalendae,
+  Munus abest festis quod possim offerre kalendis:
+  Siccine Castalius nobis exaruit humor?
+  Usque adeo ingenii nostri est exhausta facultas,
+  Immunem ut videat redeuntis janitor anni?
+  Quod nusquam est, potius nova per vestigia quaeram.
+  Ecce autem, partes dum sese versat in omnes,
+  Invenit mea musa NIHIL; ne despice munus:
+  Nam NIHIL est gemmis, NIHIL est pretiosius auro.
+  Hue animum, hue, igitur, vultus adverte benignos:
+  Res nova narratur quae nulli audita priorum;
+  Ausonii et Graii dixerunt caetera vates,
+  Ausoniae indictum NIHIL est, graecaeque, Camoenae,
+  E coelo quacunque Ceres sua prospicit arva,
+  Aut genitor liquidis orbem complectitur ulnis
+  Oceanus, NIHIL interitus et originis expers.
+  Immortale NIHIL, NIHIL omni parte beatum.
+  Quod si hinc majestas et vis divina probatur,
+  Num quid honore deum, num quid dignabimur aris?
+  Conspectu lucis NIHIL est jucundius almae,
+  Vere NIHIL, NIHIL irriguo formosius horto,
+  Floridius pratis, Zephyri clementius aura;
+  In bello sanctum NIHIL est, Martisque tumultu:
+  Justum in pace NIHIL, NIHIL est in foedere tutum.
+  Felix cui NIHIL est, (fuerant haec vota Tibullo)
+  Non timet insidias; fures, incendia temnit;
+  Sollicitas sequitur nullo sub judice lites.
+  Ille ipse invictis qui subjicit omnia fatis,
+  Zenonis sapiens, NIHIL admiratur et optat.
+  Socraticique gregis fuit ista scientia quondam,
+
+  Scire NIHIL, studio cui nunc incumbitur uni.
+  Nec quicquam in ludo mavult didicisse juventus,
+  Ad magnas quia ducit opes, et culmen honorum.
+  Nosce NIHIL, nosces fertur quod Pythagoreae
+  Grano haerere fabae, cui vox adjuncta negantis.
+  Multi, Mercurio freti duce, viscera terrae
+  Pura liquefaciunt simul, et patrimonia miscent,
+  Arcano instantes operi, et carbonibus atris,
+  Qui tandem exhausti damnis, fractique labore,
+  Inveniunt, atque inventum NIHIL usque requirunt.
+  Hoc dimetiri non ulla decempeda possit:
+  Nec numeret Libycae numerum qui callet arenae.
+  Et Phoebo ignotum NIHIL est, NIHIL altius astris:
+  Tuque, tibi licet eximium sit mentis acumen,
+  Omnem in naturam penetrans, et in abdita rerum,
+  Pace tua, Memmi, NIHIL ignorare videris.
+  Sole tamen NIHIL est, et puro clarius igne.
+  Tange NIHIL, dicesque NIHIL sine corpore tangi.
+  Cerne NIHIL, cerni dices NIHIL absque colore.
+  Surdum audit loquiturque NIHIL sine voce, volatque
+  Absque ope pennarum, et graditur sine cruribus ullis.
+  Absque loco motuque NIHIL per inane vagatur.
+  Humano generi utilius NIHIL arte medendi;
+  Ne rhombos igitur, neu Thessala murmura tentet
+  Idalia vacuum trajectus arundine pectus,
+  Neu legat Idaeo Dictaeum in vertice gramen.
+  Vulneribus saevi NIHIL auxiliatur amoris.
+  Vexerit et quemvis trans moestas portitor undas,
+  Ad superos imo NIHIL hunc revocabit ab orco.
+  Inferni NIHIL inflectit praecordia regis,
+  Parcarumque colos, et inexorabile pensum.
+  Obruta Phlegraeis campis Titania pubes
+  Fulmineo sensit NIHIL esse potentius ictu.
+  Porrigitur magni NIHIL extra moenia mundi.
+  Diique NIHIL metuunt. Quid longo carmine plura
+  Commemorem? Virtute NIHIL praestantius ipsa,
+  Splendidius NIHIL est. NIHIL est Jove denique majus.
+  Sed tempus finem argutis imponere nugis:
+  Ne tibi si multa laudem mea carmina charta,
+  De NIHILO NIHILI pariant fastidia versus.
+
+[Footnote 67: Dr. Johnson has made no mention of Valentinian, altered
+from Beaumont and Fletcher, which was published after his death by a
+friend, who describes him in the preface, not only as being one of the
+greatest geniuses, but one of the most virtuous men that ever existed.
+J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 68: I quote from memory. Dr. J.] [Footnote 69: The late George
+Steevens, esq. made the selection of Rochester's poems which appears in
+Dr. Johnson's edition; but Mr. Malone observes, that the same task had
+been performed, in the early part of the last century, by Jacob Tonson.
+C.]
+
+
+
+
+ROSCOMMON
+
+Wentworth Dillon, earl of Roscommon, was the son of James Dillon and
+Elizabeth Wentworth, sister to the earl of Strafford. He was born in
+Ireland[70], during the lieutenancy of Strafford, who, being both his
+uncle and his godfather, gave him his own surname. His father, the
+third earl of Roscommon, had been converted by Usher to the protestant
+religion[71]; and when the popish rebellion broke out, Strafford,
+thinking the family in great danger from the fury of the Irish, sent for
+his godson, and placed him at his own seat in Yorkshire, where he was
+instructed in Latin; which he learned so as to write it with purity and
+elegance, though he was never able to retain the rules of grammar.
+
+Such is the account given by Mr. Fenton, from whose notes on Waller most
+of this account must be borrowed, though I know not whether all that he
+relates is certain. The instructer whom he assigns to Roscommon is one
+Dr. Hall, by whom he cannot mean the famous Hall, then an old man and a
+bishop.
+
+When the storm broke out upon Strafford, his house was a shelter no
+longer; and Dillon, by the advice of Usher, was sent to Caen, where the
+protestants had then an university, and continued his studies under
+Bochart.
+
+Young Dillon, who was sent to study under Bochart, and who is represented
+as having already made great proficiency in literature, could not be more
+than nine years old. Strafford went to govern Ireland in 1633, and
+was put to death eight years afterwards. That he was sent to Caen, is
+certain: that he was a great scholar, may be doubted. At Caen he is said
+to have had some preternatural intelligence of his father's death.
+
+"The lord Roscommon, being a boy of ten years of age, at Caen in
+Normandy, one day was, as it were, madly extravagant in playing, leaping,
+getting over the tables, boards, &c. He was wont to be sober enough;
+they said, God grant this bodes no ill luck to him! In the heat of this
+extravagant fit, he cries out, 'My father is dead.' A fortnight after,
+news came from Ireland that his father was dead. This account I had from
+Mr. Knolles, who was his governour, and then with him,--since secretary
+to the earl of Strafford; and I have heard his lordship's relations
+confirm the same." Aubrey's Miscellany.
+
+The present age is very little inclined to favour any accounts of this
+kind, nor will the name of Aubrey much recommend it to credit: it ought
+not, however, to be omitted, because better evidence of a fact cannot
+easily be found, than is here offered; and it must be by preserving such
+relations that we may, at last, judge how much they are to be regarded.
+If we stay to examine this account, we shall see difficulties on both
+sides: here is the relation of a fact given by a man who had no interest
+to deceive, and who could not be deceived himself; and here is, on the
+other hand, a miracle which produces no effect; the order of nature is
+interrupted to discover not a future, but only a distant event, the
+knowledge of which is of no use to him to whom it is revealed. Between
+these difficulties, what way shall be found? Is reason or testimony to be
+rejected? I believe, what Osborne says of an appearance of sanctity may
+be applied to such impulses or anticipations as this: "Do not wholly
+slight them, because they may be true; but do not easily trust them,
+because they may be false."
+
+The state both of England and Ireland was, at this time, such, that he
+who was absent from either country had very little temptation to return;
+and, therefore, Roscommon, when he left Caen, travelled into Italy, and
+amused himself with its antiquities, and, particularly, with medals, in
+which he acquired uncommon skill. At the restoration, with the other
+friends of monarchy, he came to England, was made captain of the band of
+pensioners, and learned so much of the dissoluteness of the court, that
+he addicted himself immoderately to gaming, by which he was engaged in
+frequent quarrels, and which, undoubtedly, brought upon him its usual
+concomitants, extravagance and distress.
+
+After some time, a dispute about part of his estate forced him into
+Ireland, where he was made, by the duke of Ormond, captain of the guards,
+and met with an adventure thus related by Fenton:
+
+"He was at Dublin, as much as ever, distempered with the same fatal
+affection for play, which engaged him in one adventure, that well
+deserves to be related. As he returned to his lodgings from a
+gaming-table, he was attacked, in the dark, by three ruffians, who were
+employed to assassinate him. The earl defended himself with so much
+resolution, that he despatched one of the aggressors; whilst a gentleman,
+accidentally passing that way, interposed, and disarmed another; the
+third secured himself by flight. This generous assistant was a disbanded
+officer, of a good family and fair reputation; who, by what we call the
+partiality of fortune, to avoid censuring the iniquities of the times,
+wanted even a plain suit of clothes to make a decent appearance at the
+castle. But his lordship, on this occasion, presenting him to the duke of
+Ormond, with great importunity prevailed with his grace, that he might
+resign his post of captain of the guards to his friend; which, for
+about three years, the gentleman enjoyed, and, upon his death, the duke
+returned the commission to his generous benefactor."
+
+When he had finished his business, he returned to London; was made master
+of the horse to the dutchess of York; and married the lady Frances,
+daughter of the earl of Burlington, and widow of colonel Courteney[72].
+
+He now busied his mind with literary projects, and formed the plan of a
+society for refining our language and fixing its standard;
+"in imitation," says Fenton, "of those learned and polite societies with
+which he had been acquainted abroad." In this design his friend Dryden is
+said to have assisted him.
+
+The same design, it is well known, was revived by Dr. Swift, in the
+ministry of Oxford; but it has never since been publickly mentioned,
+though, at that time, great expectations were formed, by some, of its
+establishment and its effects. Such a society might, perhaps, without
+much difficulty, be collected; but that it would produce what is expected
+from it, may be doubted.
+
+The Italian academy seems to have obtained its end. The language was
+refined, and so fixed that it has changed but little. The French academy
+thought they had refined their language, and, doubtless, thought rightly;
+but the event has not shown that they fixed it; for the French of the
+present time is very different from that of the last century.
+
+In this country an academy could be expected to do but little. If an
+academician's place were profitable, it would be given by interest; if
+attendance were gratuitous, it would be rarely paid, and no man would
+endure the least disgust. Unanimity is impossible, and debate would
+separate the assembly.
+
+But suppose the philological decree made and promulgated, what would be
+its authority? In absolute governments, there is, sometimes, a general
+reverence paid to all that has the sanction of power, and the countenance
+of greatness. How little this is the state of our country needs not to be
+told. We live in an age in which it is a kind of publick sport to refuse
+all respect that cannot be enforced. The edicts of an English academy
+would, probably, be read by many, only that they might be sure to disobey
+them.
+
+That our language is in perpetual danger of corruption cannot be denied;
+but what prevention can be found? The present manners of the nation would
+deride authority; and, therefore, nothing is left but that every writer
+should criticise himself. All hopes of new literary institutions were
+quickly suppressed by the contentious turbulence of king James's reign;
+and Roscommon, foreseeing that some violent concussion of the state was
+at hand, purposed to retire to Rome, alleging, that "it was best to sit
+near the chimney when the chamber smoked;" a sentence, of which the
+application seems not very clear.
+
+His departure was delayed by the gout; and he was so impatient either of
+hinderance or of pain, that he submitted himself to a French empirick,
+who is said to have repelled the disease into his bowels.
+
+At the moment in which he expired, he uttered, with an energy of voice,
+that expressed the most fervent devotion, two lines of his own version of
+Dies Irae:
+
+  My God, my father, and my friend,
+  Do not forsake me in my end.
+
+He died in 1684; and was buried, with great pomp, in Westminster Abbey.
+
+His poetical character is given by Mr. Fenton:
+
+"In his writings," says Fenton, "we view the image of a mind which was
+naturally serious and solid; richly furnished and adorned with all the
+ornaments of learning, unaffectedly disposed in the most regular and
+elegant order. His imagination might have probably been more fruitful
+and sprightly, if his judgment had been less severe. But that severity,
+delivered in a masculine, clear, succinct style, contributed to make
+him so eminent in the didactical manner, that no man, with justice, can
+affirm, he was ever equalled by any of our nation, without confessing,
+at the same time, that he is inferiour to none. In some other kinds of
+writing his genius seems to have wanted fire to attain the point of
+perfection; but who can attain it?"
+
+From this account of the riches of his mind, who would not imagine that
+they had been displayed in large volumes and numerous performances? Who
+would not, after the perusal of this character, be surprised to find
+that all the proofs of this genius, and knowledge, and judgment, are
+not sufficient to form a single book, or to appear otherwise than in
+conjunction with the works of some other writer of the same petty
+size[73]? But thus it is that characters are written: we know somewhat,
+and we imagine the rest. The observation, that his imagination would,
+probably, have been more fruitful and sprightly, if his judgment had been
+less severe, may be answered, by a remarker somewhat inclined to cavil,
+by a contrary supposition, that his judgment would, probably, have been
+less severe, if his imagination had been more fruitful. It is ridiculous
+to oppose judgment to imagination; for it does not appear that men have
+necessarily less of one, as they have more of the other.
+
+We must allow of Roscommon, what Fenton has not mentioned so distinctly
+as he ought, and what is yet very much to his honour, that he is,
+perhaps, the only correct writer in verse, before Addison; and that, if
+there are not so many or so great beauties in his compositions as in
+those of some contemporaries, there are, at least, fewer faults. Nor is
+this his highest praise; for Mr. Pope has celebrated him, as the only
+moral writer of king Charles's reign:
+
+  Unhappy Dryden! in all Charles's days,
+  Roscommon only boasts unspotted lays.
+
+His great work is his Essay on Translated Verse; of which Dryden writes
+thus, in the preface to his Miscellanies:
+
+"It was my lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse," says Dryden,
+"which made me uneasy, till I tried whether or no I was capable of
+following his rules, and of reducing the speculation into practice. For
+many a fair precept in poetry is like a seeming demonstration in
+mathematicks, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanick
+operation. I think I have generally observed his instructions: I am sure
+my reason is sufficiently convinced both of their truth and usefulness;
+which, in other words, is to confess no less a vanity than to pretend
+that I have, at least, in some places, made examples to his rules."
+
+This declaration of Dryden will, I am afraid, be found little more than
+one of those cursory civilities which one author pays to another; for
+when the sum of lord Roscommon's precepts is collected, it will not
+be easy to discover how they can qualify their reader for a better
+performance of translation than might have been attained by his own
+reflections.
+
+He that can abstract his mind from the elegance of the poetry, and
+confine it to the sense of the precepts, will find no other direction
+than that the author should be suitable to the translator's genius; that
+he should be such as may deserve a translation; that he who intends to
+translate him should endeavour to understand him; that perspicuity should
+be studied, and unusual and uncouth names sparingly inserted; and
+that the style of the original should be copied in its elevation and
+depression. These are the rules that are celebrated as so definite and
+important; and for the delivery of which to mankind so much honour has
+been paid. Roscommon has, indeed, deserved his praises, had they been
+given with discernment, and bestowed not on the rules themselves, but the
+art with which they are introduced, and the decorations with which they
+are adorned.
+
+The essay, though generally excellent, is not without its faults. The
+story of the quack, borrowed from Boileau, was not worth the importation;
+he has confounded the British and Saxon mythology:
+
+  I grant that from some mossy idol oak,
+  In double rhymes, our Thor and Woden spoke.
+
+The oak, as, I think, Gildon has observed, belonged to the British
+druids, and Thor and Woden were Saxon deities. Of the "double rhymes,"
+which he so liberally supposes, he certainly had no knowledge.
+
+His interposition of a long paragraph of blank verses is unwarrantably
+licentious. Latin poets might as well have introduced a series of
+iambicks among their heroicks.
+
+His next work is the translation of the Art of Poetry; which has
+received, in my opinion, not less praise than it deserves. Blank verse,
+left merely to its numbers, has little operation either on the ear or
+mind: it can hardly support itself without bold figures and striking
+images. A poem, frigidly didactick, without rhyme, is so near to prose,
+that the reader only scorns it for pretending to be verse.
+
+Having disentangled himself from the difficulties of rhyme, he may justly
+be expected to give the sense of Horace with great exactness, and to
+suppress no subtilty of sentiment, for the difficulty of expressing it.
+This demand, however, his translation will not satisfy; what he found
+obscure, I do not know that he has ever cleared.
+
+Among his smaller works, the eclogue of Virgil and the Dies Irae are
+well translated; though the best line in the Dies Irae is borrowed from
+Dryden. In return, succeeding poets have borrowed from Roscommon.
+
+In the verses on the Lap-dog, the pronouns _thou_ and _you_ are
+offensively confounded; and the turn at the end is from Waller.
+
+His versions of the two odes of Horace are made with great liberty, which
+is not recompensed by much elegance or vigour.
+
+His political verses are sprightly, and, when they were written, must
+have been very popular.
+
+Of the scene of Guarini, and the prologue to Pompey, Mrs. Phillips, in
+her letters to sir Charles Cotterel, has given the history.
+
+"Lord Roscommon," says she, "is certainly one of the most promising young
+noblemen in Ireland. He has paraphrased a psalm admirably; and a scene
+of Pastor Fido, very finely, in some places much better than sir Richard
+Fanshaw. This was undertaken merely in compliment to me, who happened to
+say, that it was the best scene in Italian, and the worst in English. He
+was only two hours about it." It begins thus:
+
+  Dear happy groves, and you, the dark retreat
+  Of silent horrour, Rest's eternal seat.
+
+From these lines, which are since somewhat mended, it appears that he did
+not think a work of two hours fit to endure the eye of criticism, without
+revisal.
+
+When Mrs. Phillips was in Ireland, some ladies that had seen her
+translation of Pompey, resolved to bring it on the stage at Dublin; and,
+to promote their design, lord Roscommon gave them a prologue, and
+sir Edward Deering, an epilogue; "which," says she, "are the best
+performances of those kinds I ever saw." If this is not criticism, it
+is, at least, gratitude. The thought of bringing Caesar and Pompey into
+Ireland, the only country over which Caesar never had any power, is
+lucky.
+
+Of Roscommon's works, the judgment of the publick seems to be right. He
+is elegant, but not great; he never labours after exquisite beauties,
+and he seldom falls into gross faults. His versification is smooth, but
+rarely vigorous; and his rhymes are remarkably exact. He improved
+taste, if he did not enlarge knowledge, and may be numbered among the
+benefactors to English literature[74].
+
+[Footnote 70: The Biographia Britannica says, probably about the year
+1632; but this is inconsistent with the date of Stratford's viceroyalty
+in the following page. C.]
+
+[Footnote 71: It was his grandfather, sir Robert Dillon, second earl of
+Roscommon, who was converted from popery; and his conversion is recited
+in the patent of sir James, the first earl of Roscommon, as one of the
+grounds of his creation. M.]
+
+[Footnote 72: He was married to lady Frances  Boyle in April, 1662. By
+this lady he had no issue. He married secondly, 10th November, 1674,
+Isabella, daughter of Matthew Boynton, of Barmston, in Yorkshire. M.]
+
+[Footnote 73: They were published, together with those of Duke, in an
+octavo volume, in 1717. The editor, whoever he was, professes to have
+taken great care to procure and insert all of his lordship's poems that
+are truly genuine. The truth of this assertion is flatly denied by the
+author of an account of Mr. John Pomfret, prefixed to his Remains; who
+asserts, that the Prospect of Death was written by that person, many
+years after lord Roscommon's decease; as also, that the paraphrase of the
+Prayer of Jeremy was written by a gentleman of the name of Southcourt,
+living in the year 1724. H.]
+
+[Footnote 74: This life was originally written by Dr. Johnson, in the
+Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1748. It then had notes, which are now
+incorporated with the text. C.]
+
+
+
+
+OTWAY.
+
+Of Thomas Otway, one of the first names in the English drama, little is
+known; nor is there any part of that little which his biographer can take
+pleasure in relating.
+
+He was born at Trottin, in Sussex, March 3, 1651, the son of Mr. Humphry
+Otway, rector of Woolbeding. From Winchester school, where he was
+educated, he was entered, in 1669, a commoner of Christ church; but left
+the university without a degree, whether for want of money, or from
+impatience of academical restraint, or mere eagerness to mingle with the
+world, is not known.
+
+It seems likely that he was in hope of being busy and conspicuous; for he
+went to London, and commenced player; but found himself unable to gain
+any reputation on the stage[75].
+
+This kind of inability he shared with Shakespeare and Jonson, as he
+shared likewise some of their excellencies. It seems reasonable to expect
+that a great dramatick poet should, without difficulty, become a great
+actor; that he who can feel, should express; that he who can excite
+passion, should exhibit, with great readiness, its external modes: but
+since experience has fully proved, that of those powers, whatever be
+their affinity, one may be possessed in a great degree by him who has
+very little of the other; it must be allowed that they depend upon
+different faculties, or on different use of the same faculty; that the
+actor must have a pliancy of mien, a flexibility of countenance, and a
+variety of tones, which the poet may be easily supposed to want; or that
+the attention of the poet and the player has been differently employed;
+the one has been considering thought, and the other action; one has
+watched the heart, and the other contemplated the face.
+
+Though he could not gain much notice as a player, he felt in himself
+such powers as might qualify for a dramatick author; and, in 1675, his
+twenty-fifth year, produced Alcibiades, a tragedy; whether from the
+Alcibiade of Palaprat, I have not means to inquire. Langbaine, the great
+detecter of plagiarism, is silent.
+
+In 1677, he published Titus and Berenice, translated from Rapin, with the
+Cheats of Scapin, from Moliere; and, in 1678, Friendship in Fashion,
+a comedy, which, whatever might be its first reception, was, upon its
+revival at Drury lane, in 1749, hissed off the stage for immorality and
+obscenity.
+
+Want of morals, or of decency, did not, in those days, exclude any man
+from the company of the wealthy and the gay, if he brought with him any
+powers of entertainment; and Otway is said to have been, at this time,
+a favourite companion of the dissolute wits. But, as he who desires no
+virtue in his companion, has no virtue in himself, those whom Otway
+frequented had no purpose of doing more for him than to pay his
+reckoning. They desired only to drink and laugh: their fondness was
+without benevolence, and their familiarity without friendship. "Men of
+wit," says one of Otway's biographers, "received, at that time, no favour
+from the great, but to share their riots; from which they were dismissed
+again to their own narrow circumstances. Thus they languished in poverty,
+without the support of eminence."
+
+Some exception, however, must be made. The earl of Plymouth, one of king
+Charles's natural sons, procured for him a cornet's commission in some
+troops then sent into Flanders. But Otway did not prosper in his military
+character; for he soon left his commission behind him, whatever was the
+reason, and came back to London in extreme indigence, which Rochester
+mentions with merciless insolence, in the Session of the Poets:
+
+  Tom Otway came next, Tom Shadwell's dear zany,
+  And swears for heroicks he writes best of any;
+  Don Carlos his pockets so amply had fill'd,
+  That his mange was quite cur'd, and his lice were all kill'd:
+  But Apollo had seen his face on the stage,
+  And prudently did not think fit to engage
+  The scum of a playhouse, for the prop of an age.
+
+Don Carlos, from which he is represented as having received so much
+benefit, was played in 1675. It appears, by the lampoon, to have had
+great success, and is said to have been played thirty nights together.
+This, however, it is reasonable to doubt[76], as so long a continuance
+of one play upon the stage is a very wide deviation from the practice
+of that time; when the ardour for theatrical entertainments was not yet
+diffused through the whole people, and the audience, consisting nearly of
+the same persons, could be drawn together only by variety.
+
+The Orphan was exhibited in 1680. This is one of the few plays that keep
+possession of the stage, and has pleased for almost a century, through
+all the vicissitudes of dramatick fashion. Of this play nothing new can
+easily be said. It is a domestick tragedy drawn from middle life. Its
+whole power is upon the affections; for it is not written with much
+comprehension of thought, or elegance of expression. But if the heart is
+interested, many other beauties may be wanting, yet not be missed.
+
+The same year produced the History and Fall of Caius Marius; much of
+which is borrowed from the Romeo and Juliet of Shakespeare.
+
+In 1683[77] was published the first, and next year[78] the second, parts
+of the Soldier's Fortune, two comedies now forgotten; and, in 1685[79]
+his last and greatest dramatick work, Venice Preserved, a tragedy,
+which still continues to be one of the favourites of the publick,
+notwithstanding the want of morality in the original design, and the
+despicable scenes of vile comedy with which he has diversified his
+tragick action[80]. By comparing this with his Orphan, it will appear
+that his images were by time become stronger, and his language more
+energetick. The striking passages are in every mouth; and the publick
+seems to judge rightly of the faults and excellencies of this play, that
+it is the work of a man not attentive to decency, nor zealous for virtue;
+but of one who conceived forcibly, and drew originally, by consulting
+nature in his own breast.
+
+Together with those plays he wrote the poems which are in the present
+collection, and translated from the French the History of the
+Triumvirate.
+
+All this was performed before he was thirty-four years old; for he died
+April 14, 1685, in a manner which I am unwilling to mention. Having
+been compelled by his necessities to contract debts, and hunted, as is
+supposed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a publick house on
+Tower hill, where he is said to have died of want; or, as it is related
+by one of his biographers, by swallowing, after a long fast, a piece of
+bread which charity had supplied. He went out, as is reported, almost
+naked, in the rage of hunger, and, finding a gentleman in a neighbouring
+coffee-house, asked him for a shilling. The gentleman gave him a guinea;
+and Otway, going away, bought a roll, and was choked with the first
+mouthful. All this, I hope, is not true; and there is this ground of
+better hope, that Pope, who lived near enough to be well informed,
+relates in Spence's Memorials, that he died of a fever, caught by
+violent pursuit of a thief that had robbed one of his friends. But that
+indigence, and its concomitants, sorrow and despondency, pressed hard
+upon him, has never been denied, whatever immediate cause might bring him
+to the grave.
+
+Of the poems which the present collection admits, the longest is the
+Poet's Complaint of his Muse, part of which I do not understand; and in
+that which is less obscure, I find little to commend. The language is
+often gross, and the numbers are harsh. Otway had not much cultivated
+versification, nor much replenished his mind with general knowledge. His
+principal power was in moving the passions, to which Dryden[81], in his
+latter years, left an illustrious testimony. He appears, by some of his
+verses, to have been a zealous royalist, and had what was in those times
+the common reward of loyalty; he lived and died neglected.
+
+[Footnote 75: In Roscius Anglicanus, by Downes, the prompter, p. 34,
+we learn, that it was the character of the king in Mrs. Behn's Forced
+Marriage, or the Jealous Bridegroom, which Mr. Otway attempted to
+perform, and failed in. This event appears to have happened in the year
+1672. R.]
+
+[Footnote 76: This doubt is, indeed, very reasonable. I know not where it
+is said that Don Carlos was acted thirty nights together. Wherever it is
+said, it is untrue. Downes, who is perfectly good authority on this point,
+informs us, that it was performed ten days successively. M.]
+
+[Footnote 77: 1681.]
+
+[Footnote 78: 1684.]
+
+[Footnote 79: 1682.]
+
+[Footnote 80: The "despicable scenes of vile comedy" can be no bar
+to its being a favourite of the publick, as they are always omitted in
+the representation. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 81: In his preface to Fresnoy's Art of Painting. Dr.J.]
+
+
+
+
+WALLER
+
+Edmund Waller was born on the third of March, 1605, at Coleshill in
+Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, esq. of Agmondesham, in
+Buckinghamshire, whose family was originally a branch of the Kentish
+Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden in
+the same county, and sister to Hampden, the zealot of rebellion.
+
+His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him a yearly income
+of three thousand five hundred pounds; which, rating together the value
+of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than equivalent to
+ten thousand at the present time.
+
+He was educated, by the care of his mother, at Eton; and removed
+afterwards to King's college, in Cambridge. He was sent to parliament in
+his eighteenth, if not in his sixteenth year, and frequented the court of
+James the first, where he heard a very remarkable conversation, which the
+writer of the life prefixed to his works, who seems to have been well
+informed of facts, though he may sometimes err in chronology, has
+delivered as indubitably certain:
+
+"He found Dr. Andrews, bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neale, bishop of
+Durham, standing behind his majesty's chair; and there happened something
+extraordinary," continues this writer, "in the conversation those
+prelates had with the king, on which Mr. Waller did often reflect. His
+majesty asked the bishops: 'My lords, cannot I take my subjects' money,
+when I want it, without all this formality of parliament?' The bishop of
+Durham readily answered, 'God forbid, sir, but you should: you are the
+breath of our nostrils.' Whereupon the king turned and said to the bishop
+of Winchester, 'Well, my lord, what say you?' 'Sir,' replied the bishop,
+'I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases.' The king answered, 'No
+put-offs, my lord; answer me presently.' 'Then, sir,' said he, 'think it
+is lawful for you to take my brother Neale's money; for he offers it.'
+Mr. Waller said, the company was pleased with this answer, and the wit of
+it seemed to affect the king; for, a certain lord coming in soon after,
+his majesty cried out, 'Oh, my lord, they say you lig with my lady.' 'No,
+sir,' says his lordship, in confusion;' but I like her company, because
+she has so much wit.' 'Why then,' says the king, 'do you not lig with my
+lord of Winchester there?'"
+
+Waller's political and poetical life began nearly together. In his
+eighteenth year he wrote the poem that appears first in his works, on the
+Prince's Escape at St. Andero; a piece which justifies the observation,
+made by one of his editors, that he attained, by a felicity like
+instinct, a style which, perhaps, will never be obsolete; and that, "were
+we to judge only by the wording, we could not know what was wrote at
+twenty, and what at fourscore." His versification was, in his first
+essay, such as it appears in his last performance. By the perusal of
+Fairfax's translation of Tasso, to which, as Dryden relates[82], he
+confessed himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, and by
+his own nicety of observation, he had already formed such a system
+of metrical harmony, as he never afterwards much needed, or much
+endeavoured, to improve. Denham corrected his numbers by experience, and
+gained ground gradually upon the ruggedness of his age; but what was
+acquired by Denham was inherited by Waller.
+
+The next poem, of which the subject seems to fix the time, is supposed,
+by Mr. Fenton, to be the Address to the Queen, which he considers as
+congratulating her arrival, in Waller's twentieth year. He is apparently
+mistaken; for the mention of the nation's obligations to her frequent
+pregnancy, proves that it was written, when she had brought many
+children. We have, therefore, no date of any other poetical production
+before that which the murder of the duke of Buckingham occasioned: the
+steadiness with which the king received the news in the chapel, deserved,
+indeed, to be rescued from oblivion.
+
+Neither of these pieces, that seem to carry their own dates, could have
+been the sudden effusion of fancy. In the verses on the prince's escape,
+the prediction of his marriage with the princess of France must have
+been written after the event; in the other, the promises of the king's
+kindness to the descendants of Buckingham, which could not be properly
+praised, till it had appeared by its effects, show that time was taken
+for revision and improvement. It is not known that they were published
+till they appeared, long afterwards, with other poems.
+
+Waller was not one of those idolaters of praise who cultivate their minds
+at the expense of their fortunes. Rich as he was by inheritance, he took
+care early to grow richer, by marrying Mrs. Banks, a great heiress in
+the city, whom the interest of the court was employed to obtain for Mr.
+Crofts. Having brought him a son, who died young, and a daughter, who was
+afterwards married to Mr. Dormer, of Oxfordshire, she died in childbed,
+and left him a widower of about five-and-twenty, gay and wealthy, to
+please himself with another marriage.
+
+Being too young to resist beauty, and probably too vain to think himself
+resistible, he fixed his heart, perhaps half fondly and half ambitiously,
+upon the lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the earl of Leicester,
+whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated; the
+name is derived from the Latin appellation of sugar, and implies, if it
+means any thing, a spiritless mildness, and dull good-nature, such as
+excites rather tenderness than esteem, and such as, though always treated
+with kindness, is never honoured or admired.
+
+Yet he describes Sacharissa as a sublime predominating beauty, of lofty
+charms, and imperious influence, on whom he looks with amazement rather
+than fondness, whose chains he wishes, though in vain, to break, and
+whose presence is "wine that inflames to madness." His acquaintance with
+this high-born dame gave wit no opportunity of boasting its influence;
+she was not to be subdued by the powers of verse, but rejected his
+addresses, it is said, with disdain, and drove him away to solace his
+disappointment with Amoret or Phillis. She married, in 1639, the earl of
+Sunderland, who died at Newbury, in the king's cause; and, in her old
+age, meeting somewhere with Waller, asked him, when he would again write
+such verses upon her; "when you are as young, madam," said he, "and as
+handsome, as you were then."
+
+In this part of his life it was that he was known to Clarendon, among the
+rest of the men who were eminent in that age for genius and literature;
+but known so little to his advantage, that they who read his character
+will not much condemn Sacharissa, that she did not descend from her rank
+to his embraces, nor think every excellence comprised in wit.
+
+The lady was, indeed, inexorable; but his uncommon qualifications,
+though they had no power upon her, recommended him to the scholars and
+statesmen; and, undoubtedly, many beauties of that time, however they
+might receive his love, were proud of his praises. Who they were, whom he
+dignifies with poetical names, cannot now be known. Amoret, according to
+Mr. Fenton, was the lady Sophia Murray. Perhaps, by traditions, preserved
+in families, more may be discovered.
+
+From the verses written at Penshurst, it has been collected that he
+diverted his disappointment by a voyage; and his biographers, from his
+poem on the Whales, think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas;
+but it seems much more likely, that he should amuse himself with forming
+an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to
+America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability.
+
+From his twenty-eighth to his thirty-fifth year, he wrote his pieces on
+the reduction of Sallee; on the reparation of St. Paul's; to the King on
+his Navy; the panegyrick on the Queen Mother; the two poems to the earl
+of Northumberland; and perhaps others, of which the time cannot be
+discovered.
+
+When he had lost all hopes of Sacharissa, he looked round him for an
+easier conquest, and gained a lady of the family of Bresse, or Breaux.
+The time of his marriage is not exactly known. It has not been discovered
+that this wife was won by his poetry; nor is any thing told of her, but
+that she brought him many children. He, doubtless, praised some whom he
+would have been afraid to marry, and, perhaps, married one whom he would
+have been ashamed to praise. Many qualities contribute to domestick
+happiness, upon which poetry has no colours to bestow; and many airs and
+sallies may delight imagination, which he who flatters them never can
+approve. There are charms made only for distant admiration. No spectacle
+is nobler than a blaze.
+
+Of this wife, his biographers have recorded that she gave him five sons
+and eight daughters.
+
+During the long interval of parliament, he is represented as living among
+those with whom it was most honourable to converse, and enjoying an
+exuberant fortune with that independence and liberty of speech and
+conduct which wealth ought always to produce. He was, however, considered
+as the kinsman of Hampden, and was, therefore, supposed by the courtiers
+not to favour them.
+
+When the parliament was called in 1640, it appeared that Waller's
+political character had not been mistaken. The king's demand of a supply
+produced one of those noisy speeches which disaffection and discontent
+regularly dictate; a speech filled with hyperbolical complaints of
+imaginary grievances: "They," says he, "who think themselves already
+undone, can never apprehend themselves in danger; and they who have
+nothing left can never give freely." Political truth is equally in danger
+from the praises of courtiers, and the exclamations of patriots.
+
+He then proceeds to rail at the clergy, being sure, at that time, of a
+favourable audience. His topick is such as will always serve its purpose;
+an accusation of acting and preaching only for preferment; and he exhorts
+the commons "carefully to provide _for their_ protection against pulpit
+law."
+
+It always gratifies curiosity to trace a sentiment. Waller has, in this
+speech, quoted Hooker in one passage; and in another has copied him,
+without quoting. "Religion," says Waller, "ought to be the first thing in
+our purpose and desires; but that which is first in dignity is not always
+to precede in order of time; for well-being supposes a being; and the
+first impediment which men naturally endeavour to remove, is the want of
+those things without which they cannot subsist. God first assigned
+unto Adam maintenance of life, and gave him a title to the rest of the
+creatures, before he appointed a law to observe."
+
+"God first assigned Adam," says Hooker, "maintenance of life, and then
+appointed him a law to observe. True it is, that the kingdom of God
+must be the first thing in our purpose and desires; but, inasmuch as a
+righteous life presupposeth life, inasmuch as to live virtuously it
+is impossible, except we live; therefore the first impediment which
+naturally we endeavour to remove is penury, and want of things without
+which we cannot live." Book i. Sect. 9.
+
+The speech is vehement; but the great position, that grievances ought to
+be redressed, before supplies are granted, is agreeable enough to law and
+reason: nor was Waller, if his biographer may be credited, such an enemy
+to the king, as not to wish his distresses lightened; for he relates,
+"that the king sent particularly to Waller, to second his demand of some
+subsidies to pay off the army; and sir Henry Vane objecting against first
+voting a supply, because the king would not accept, unless it came up
+to his proportion, Mr. Waller spoke earnestly to sir Thomas Jermyn,
+comptroller of the household, to save his master from the effects of so
+bold a falsity; 'for' he said, 'I am but a country gentleman, and cannot
+pretend to know the king's mind:' but sir Thomas durst not contradict
+the secretary; and his son, the earl of St. Alban's, afterwards told Mr.
+Waller, that his father's cowardice ruined the king."
+
+In the long parliament, which, unhappily for the nation, met Nov. 3,
+1640, Waller represented Agmondesham the third time; and was considered,
+by the discontented party, as a man sufficiently trusty and acrimonious
+to be employed in managing the prosecution of judge Crawley, for his
+opinion in favour of ship-money; and his speech shows that he did not
+disappoint their expectations. He was, probably, the more ardent, as his
+uncle Hampden had been particularly engaged in the dispute, and, by
+a sentence, which seems generally to be thought unconstitutional,
+particularly injured.
+
+He was not, however, a bigot to his party, nor adopted all their
+opinions. When the great question, whether episcopacy ought to be
+abolished, was debated, he spoke against the innovation so coolly, so
+reasonably, and so firmly, that it is not without great injury to his
+name that his speech, which was as follows, has been hitherto omitted in
+his works[83]:
+
+"There is no doubt but the sense of what this nation hath suffered from
+the present bishops hath produced these complaints; and the apprehensions
+men have of suffering the like, in time to come, make so many desire the
+taking away of episcopacy: but I conceive it is possible that we may not,
+now, take a right measure of the minds of the people by their petitions;
+for, when they subscribed them, the bishops were armed with a dangerous
+commission of making new canons, imposing new oaths, and the like; but
+now we have disarmed them of that power. These petitioners lately did
+look upon episcopacy, as a beast armed with horns and claws; but now that
+we have cut and pared them (and may, if we see cause, yet reduce it into
+narrower bounds,) it may, perhaps, be more agreeable. Howsoever, if they
+be still in passion, it becomes us soberly to consider the right use and
+antiquity thereof; and not to comply further with a general desire, than
+may stand with a general good.
+
+"We have already showed, that episcopacy, and the evils thereof, are
+mingled like water and oil; we have also, in part, severed them; but, I
+believe, you will find, that our laws and the present government of
+the church are mingled like wine and water; so inseparable, that the
+abrogation of, at least, a hundred of our laws is desired in these
+petitions. I have often heard a noble answer of the lords, commended in
+this house, to a proposition of like nature, but of less consequence;
+they gave no other reason of their refusal but this, 'Nolumus mutare
+leges Angliae:' it was the bishops who so answered then; and it would
+become the dignity and wisdom of this house to answer the people now with
+a 'Nolumus mutare.'
+
+"I see some are moved with a number of hands against the bishops;
+which, I confess, rather inclines me to their defence; for I look upon
+episcopacy as a counterscarp, or outwork; which, if it be taken by this
+assault of the people, and, withal, this mystery once revealed, 'That we
+must deny them nothing, when they ask it thus in troops,' we may, in the
+next place, have as hard a task to defend our property, as we have lately
+had to recover it from the prerogative. If, by multiplying hands and
+petitions, they prevail for an equality in things ecclesiastical, the
+next demand, perhaps, may be 'Lex Agraria,' the like equality in things
+temporal.
+
+"The Roman story tells us, that when the people began to flock about the
+senate, and were more curious to direct and know what was done, than to
+obey, that commonwealth soon came to ruin; their 'Legem rogare' grew
+quickly to be a 'Legem ferre;' and after, when their legions had found
+that they could make a dictator, they never suffered the senate to have a
+voice any more in such election.
+
+"If these great innovations proceed, I shall expect a flat and level in
+learning too, as well as in church-preferments: 'Honos alit artes.' And
+though it be true, that grave and pious men do study for learning-sake,
+and embrace virtue for itself; yet it is as true that youth, which is the
+season when learning is gotten, is not without ambition, nor will
+ever take pains to excel in any thing, when there is not some hope of
+excelling others in reward and dignity.
+
+"There are two reasons chiefly alleged against our church-government.
+
+"First, Scripture, which, as some men think, points out another form.
+
+"Second, The abuses of the present superiours.
+
+"For scripture, I will not dispute it in this place; but I am confident
+that, whenever an equal division of lands and goods shall be desired,
+there will be as many places in scripture found out, which seem to favour
+that, as there are now alleged against the prelacy or preferment in the
+church. And, as for abuses, where you are now in the remonstrance told
+what this and that poor man hath suffered by the bishops, you may be
+presented with a thousand instances of poor men that have received hard
+measure from their landlords; and of worldly goods abused, to the injury
+of others, and disadvantage of the owners.
+
+"And, therefore, Mr. Speaker, my humble motion is, that we may settle
+men's minds herein; and, by a question, declare our resolution, 'to
+reform,' that is, 'not to abolish, episcopacy.'"
+
+It cannot but be wished that he, who could speak in this manner, had been
+able to act with spirit and uniformity.
+
+When the commons began to set the royal authority at open defiance,
+Waller is said to have withdrawn from the house, and to have returned
+with the king's permission; and, when the king set up his standard, he
+sent him a thousand broad-pieces. He continued, however, to sit in
+the rebellious conventicle; but "spoke," says Clarendon, "with great
+sharpness and freedom, which, now there was no danger of being outvoted,
+was not restrained; and, therefore, used as an argument against those who
+were gone, upon pretence that they were not suffered to deliver their
+opinion freely in the house, which could not be believed, when all men
+knew what liberty Mr. Waller took, and spoke every day with impunity
+against the sense and proceedings of the house."
+
+Waller, as he continued to sit, was one of the commissioners nominated
+by the parliament to treat with the king at Oxford; and, when they were
+presented, the king said to him, "Though you are the last, you are not
+the lowest, nor the least in my favour." Whitlock, who, being another of
+the commissioners, was witness of this kindness, imputes it to the king's
+knowledge of the plot, in which Waller appeared afterwards to have been
+engaged against the parliament. Fenton, with equal probability, believes
+that his attempt to promote the royal cause arose from his sensibility of
+the king's tenderness. Whitlock says nothing of his behaviour at Oxford:
+he was sent with several others to add pomp to the commission, but was
+not one of those to whom the trust of treating was imparted.
+
+The engagement, known by the name of Waller's plot, was soon afterwards
+discovered. Waller had a brother-in-law, Tomkyns, who was clerk of the
+queen's council, and, at the same time, had a very numerous acquaintance,
+and great influence, in the city. Waller and he, conversing with great
+confidence, told both their own secrets and those of their friends; and,
+surveying the wide extent of their conversation, imagined that they
+found, in the majority of all ranks, great disapprobation of the violence
+of the commons, and unwillingness to continue the war. They knew that
+many favoured the king, whose fear concealed their loyalty; and many
+desired peace, though they durst not oppose the clamour for war; and they
+imagined that, if those who had these good intentions could be informed
+of their own strength, and enabled by intelligence to act together, they
+might overpower the fury of sedition, by refusing to comply with the
+ordinance for the twentieth part, and the other taxes levied for the
+support of the rebel army, and by uniting great numbers in a petition for
+peace. They proceeded with great caution. Three only met in one place,
+and no man was allowed to impart the plot to more than two others; so
+that, if any should be suspected or seized, more than three could not be
+endangered.
+
+Lord Conway joined in the design, and, Clarendon imagines, incidentally
+mingled, as he was a soldier, some martial hopes or projects, which,
+however, were only mentioned, the main design being to bring the loyal
+inhabitants to the knowledge of each other; for which purpose there was
+to be appointed one in every district, to distinguish the friends of the
+king, the adherents to the parliament, and the neutrals. How far
+they proceeded does not appear; the result of their inquiry, as Pym
+declared[84], was, that within the walls, for one that was for the
+royalists, there were three against them; but that without the walls, for
+one that was against them, there were five for them. Whether this was
+said from knowledge or guess, was, perhaps, never inquired.
+
+It is the opinion of Clarendon, that in Waller's plan no violence or
+sanguinary resistance was comprised; that he intended only to abate the
+confidence of the rebels by publick declarations, and to weaken their
+powers by an opposition to new supplies. This, in calmer times, and
+more than this, is done without fear; but such was the acrimony of the
+commons, that no method of obstructing them was safe.
+
+About this time, another design was formed by sir Nicholas Crispe, a man
+of loyalty that deserves perpetual remembrance: when he was a merchant
+in the city, he gave and procured the king, in his exigencies, a hundred
+thousand pounds; and, when he was driven from the exchange, raised a
+regiment, and commanded it.
+
+Sir Nicholas flattered himself with an opinion, that some provocation
+would so much exasperate, or some opportunity so much encourage, the
+king's friends in the city, that they would break out in open resistance,
+and then would want only a lawful standard, and an authorized commander;
+and extorted from the king, whose judgment too frequently yielded to
+importunity, a commission of array, directed to such as he thought proper
+to nominate, which was sent to London by the lady Aubigney. She knew not
+what she carried, but was to deliver it on the communication of a certain
+token, which sir Nicholas imparted.
+
+This commission could be only intended to lie ready, till the time should
+require it. To have attempted to raise any forces, would have been
+certain destruction; it could be of use only when the forces should
+appear. This was, however, an act preparatory to martial hostility.
+Crispe would, undoubtedly, have put an end to the session of parliament,
+had his strength been equal to his zeal: and out of the design of Crispe,
+which involved very little danger, and that of Waller, which was an act
+purely civil, they compounded a horrid and dreadful plot.
+
+The discovery of Waller's design is variously related. In Clarendon's
+History, it is told, that a servant of Tomkyns, lurking behind the
+hangings, when his master was in conference with Waller, heard enough
+to qualify him for an informer, and carried his intelligence to Pym. A
+manuscript, quoted in the Life of Waller, relates, that "he was betrayed
+by his sister Price, and her presbyterian chaplain, Mr. Goode, who stole
+some of his papers; and, if he had not strangely dreamed the night
+before, that his sister had betrayed him, and, thereupon, burnt the rest
+of his papers, by the fire that was in his chimney, he had certainly lost
+his life by it." The question cannot be decided. It is not unreasonable
+to believe, that the men in power, receiving intelligence from the
+sister, would employ the servant of Tomkyns to listen at the conference,
+that they might avoid an act so offensive as that of destroying the
+brother by the sister's testimony.
+
+The plot was published in the most terrifick manner. On the 31st of
+May, 1643, at a solemn fast, when they were listening to the sermon, a
+messenger entered the church, and communicated his errand to Pym, who
+whispered it to others that were placed near him, and then went with them
+out of the church, leaving the rest in solicitude and amazement. They
+immediately sent guards to proper places, and, that night, apprehended
+Tomkyns and Waller; having yet traced nothing but that letters had been
+intercepted, from which it appeared that the parliament and the city were
+soon to be delivered into the hands of the cavaliers.
+
+They, perhaps, yet knew little themselves, beyond some general and
+indistinct notices. "But Waller," says Clarendon, "was so confounded with
+fear, that he confessed whatever he had heard, said, thought, or seen;
+all that he knew of himself, and all that he suspected of others, without
+concealing any person of what degree or quality soever, or any discourse
+which he had ever upon any occasion entertained with them; what such and
+such ladies of great honour, to whom, upon the credit of his wit and
+great reputation, he had been admitted, had spoke to him in their
+chambers upon the proceedings in the houses, and how they had encouraged
+him to oppose them; what correspondence and intercourse they had with
+some ministers of state at Oxford, and how they had conveyed all
+intelligence thither." He accused the earl of Portland, and lord Conway,
+as cooperating in the transaction; and testified, that the earl of
+Northumberland had declared himself disposed in favour of any attempt,
+that might check the violence of the parliament, and reconcile them to
+the king.
+
+He, undoubtedly, confessed much which they could never have discovered,
+and, perhaps, somewhat which they would wish to have been suppressed;
+for it is inconvenient, in the conflict of factions, to have that
+disaffection known which cannot safely be punished.
+
+Tomkyns was seized on the same night with Waller, and appears, likewise,
+to have partaken of his cowardice; for he gave notice of Crispe's
+commission of array, of which Clarendon never knew how it was discovered.
+Tomkyns had been sent with the token appointed, to demand it from lady
+Aubigney, and had buried it in his garden, where, by his direction, it
+was dug up; and thus the rebels obtained, what Clarendon confesses them
+to have had, the original copy.
+
+It can raise no wonder that they formed one plot out of these two
+designs, however remote from each other, when they saw the same agent
+employed in both, and found the commission of array in the hands of him,
+who was employed in collecting the opinions and affections of the people.
+
+Of the plot, thus combined, they took care to make the most. They sent
+Pym among the citizens, to tell them of their imminent danger, and happy
+escape; and inform them, that the design was, "to seize the lord mayor,
+and all the committee of militia, and would not spare one of them." They
+drew up a vow and covenant, to be taken by every member of either house,
+by which he declared his detestation of all conspiracies against the
+parliament, and his resolution to detect and oppose them. They then
+appointed a day of thanksgiving for this wonderful delivery; which
+shut out, says Clarendon, all doubts whether there had been such a
+deliverance, and whether the plot was real or fictitious.
+
+On June 11, the earl of Portland and lord Conway were committed, one to
+the custody of the mayor, and the other of the sheriff; but their lands
+and goods were not seized.
+
+Waller was still to immerse himself deeper in ignominy. The earl of
+Portland and lord Conway denied the charge; and there was no evidence
+against them but the confession of Waller, of which, undoubtedly, many
+would be inclined to question the veracity. With these doubts he was so
+much terrified, that he endeavoured to persuade Portland to a declaration
+like his own, by a letter extant in Fenton's edition. "But for me," says
+he, "you had never known any thing of this business, which was prepared
+for another; and, therefore, I cannot imagine why you should hide it
+so far as to contract your own ruin by concealing it, and persisting
+unreasonably to hide that truth, which without you already is, and will
+every day be made more manifest. Can you imagine yourself bound in honour
+to keep that secret, which is already revealed by another? or possible it
+should still be a secret, which is known to one of the other sex? If you
+persist to be cruel to yourself, for their sakes who deserve it not,
+it will, nevertheless, be made appear, ere long, I fear, to your ruin.
+Surely, if I had the happiness to wait on you, I could move you to
+compassionate both yourself and me, who, desperate as my case is, am
+desirous to die with the honour of being known to have declared
+the truth. You have no reason to contend to hide what is already
+revealed--inconsiderately to throw away yourself, for the interest of
+others, to whom you are less obliged than you are aware of."
+
+This persuasion seems to have had little effect. Portland sent, June
+29, a letter to the lords, to tell them, that he "is in custody, as
+he conceives, without any charge; and that, by what Mr. Waller hath
+threatened him with, since he was imprisoned, he doth apprehend a very
+cruel, long, and ruinous restraint:--He, therefore, prays, that he
+may not find the effects of Mr. Waller's threats, by a long and close
+imprisonment; but may be speedily brought to a legal trial, and then he
+is confident the vanity and falsehood of those informations which have
+been given against him will appear."
+
+In consequence of this letter, the lords ordered Portland and Waller
+to be confronted; when the one repeated his charge, and the other his
+denial. The examination of the plot being continued, July 1, Thinn, usher
+of the house of lords, deposed, that Mr. Waller having had a conference
+with the lord Portland in an upper room, lord Portland said, when he came
+down, "do me the favour to tell my lord Northumberland, that Mr. Waller
+has extremely pressed me to save my own life and his, by throwing the
+blame upon the lord Conway and the earl of Northumberland."
+
+Waller, in his letter to Portland, tells him of the reasons which he
+could urge with resistless efficacy in a personal conference; but he
+overrated his own oratory; his vehemence, whether of persuasion or
+entreaty, was returned with contempt.
+
+One of his arguments with Portland is, that the plot is already known
+to a woman. This woman was, doubtless, lady Aubigney, who, upon this
+occasion, was committed to custody; but who, in reality, when she
+delivered the commission, knew not what it was.
+
+The parliament then proceeded against the conspirators, and committed
+their trial to a council of war. Tomkyns and Chaloner were hanged near
+their own doors. Tomkyns, when he came to die, said it was a "foolish
+business;" and, indeed, there seems to have been no hope that it should
+escape discovery; for, though never more than three met at a time, yet
+a design so extensive must, by necessity, be communicated to many, who
+could not be expected to be all faithful, and all prudent. Chaloner was
+attended at his execution by Hugh Peters. His crime was, that he had
+commission to raise money for the king; but it appears not that the money
+was to be expended upon the advancement of either Crispe's or Waller's
+plot.
+
+The earl of Northumberland, being too great for prosecution, was only
+once examined before the lords. The earl of Portland and lord Conway,
+persisting to deny the charge, and no testimony, but Waller's, yet
+appearing against them, were, after a long imprisonment, admitted to
+bail. Hassel, the king's messenger, who carried the letters to Oxford,
+died the night before his trial. Hampden escaped death, perhaps, by the
+interest of his family; but was kept in prison to the end of his life.
+They, whose names were inserted in the commission of array, were not
+capitally punished, as it could not be proved that they had consented to
+their own nomination; but they were considered as malignants, and their
+estates were seized.
+
+"Waller, though confessedly," says Clarendon, "the most guilty, with
+incredible dissimulation, affected such a remorse of conscience, that his
+trial was put off, out of christian compassion, till he might recover his
+understanding." What use he made of this interval, with what liberality
+and success he distributed flattery and money, and how, when he was
+brought, July 4, before the house, he confessed and lamented, and
+submitted and implored, may be read in the History of the Rebellion, (b.
+vii.) The speech, to which Clarendon ascribes the preservation of his
+"dear-bought life," is inserted in his works. The great historian,
+however, seems to have been mistaken in relating that "he prevailed" in
+the principal part of his supplication, "not to be tried by a council of
+war;" for, according to Whitlock, he was, by expulsion from the house,
+abandoned to the tribunal which he so much dreaded, and, being tried and
+condemned, was reprieved by Essex; but, after a year's imprisonment,
+in which time resentment grew less acrimonious, paying a fine of ten
+thousand pounds, he was permitted to "recollect himself in another
+country."
+
+Of his behaviour in this part of his life, it is not necessary to
+direct the reader's opinion. "Let us not," says his last ingenious
+biographer[85], "condemn him with untempered severity, because he was
+not a prodigy which the world hath seldom seen, because his character
+included not the poet, the orator, and the hero."
+
+For the place of his exile he chose France, and stayed some time at Roan,
+where his daughter Margaret was born, who was afterwards his favourite,
+and his amanuensis. He then removed to Paris, where he lived with great
+splendour and hospitality; and, from time to time, amused himself with
+poetry, in which he sometimes speaks of the rebels, and their usurpation,
+in the natural language of an honest man.
+
+At last, it became necessary, for his support, to sell his wife's jewels;
+and being reduced, as he said, at last "to the rump-jewel," he solicited,
+from Cromwell, permission to return, and obtained it by the interest of
+colonel Scroop, to whom his sister was married. Upon the remains of a
+fortune which the danger of his life had very much diminished, he lived
+at Hall Barn, a house built by himself very near to Beaconsfield, where
+his mother resided. His mother, though related to Cromwell and Hampden,
+was zealous for the royal cause, and, when Cromwell visited her, used
+to reproach him; he, in return, would throw a napkin at her, and say he
+would not dispute with his aunt; but finding, in time, that she acted for
+the king, as well as talked, he made her a prisoner to her own daughter,
+in her own house. If he would do any thing, he could not do less.
+
+Cromwell, now protector, received Waller, as his kinsman, to familiar
+conversation. Waller, as he used to relate, found him sufficiently versed
+in ancient history; and when any of his enthusiastick friends came to
+advise or consult him, could, sometimes, overhear him discoursing in the
+cant of the times; but, when he returned, he would say: "Cousin Waller, I
+must talk to these men in their own way;" and resumed the common style of
+conversation.
+
+He repaid the protector for his favours (1654) by the famous Panegyrick,
+which has been always considered as the first of his poetical
+productions. His choice of encomiastick topicks is very judicious; for he
+considers Cromwell in his exaltation, without inquiring how he attained
+it; there is, consequently, no mention of the rebel or the regicide. All
+the former part of his hero's life is veiled with shades; and nothing is
+brought to view but the chief, the governour, the defender of England's
+honour, and the enlarger of her dominion. The act of violence, by
+which he obtained the supreme power, is lightly treated, and decently
+justified. It was, certainly, to be desired, that the detestable band
+should be dissolved, which had destroyed the church, murdered the king,
+and filled the nation with tumult and oppression; yet Cromwell had not
+the right of dissolving them, for all that he had before done could be
+justified only by supposing them invested with lawful authority. But
+combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage
+which licentious principles afford, did not those, who have long
+practised perfidy, grow faithless to each other.
+
+In the poem on the war with Spain are some passages, at least, equal
+to the best parts of the Panegyrick; and, in the conclusion, the poet
+ventures yet a higher flight of flattery, by recommending royalty to
+Cromwell and the nation. Cromwell was very desirous, as appears from his
+conversation, related by Whitlock, of adding the title to the power of
+monarchy, and is supposed to have been withheld from it partly by fear of
+the army, and partly by fear of the laws, which, when he should govern by
+the name of king, would have restrained his authority. When, therefore, a
+deputation was solemnly sent to invite him to the crown, he, after a long
+conference, refused it; but is said to have fainted in his coach, when he
+parted from them.
+
+The poem on the death of the protector seems to have been dictated by
+real veneration for his memory. Dryden and Sprat wrote on the same
+occasion; but they were young men, struggling into notice, and hoping for
+some favour from the ruling party. Waller had little to expect; he had
+received nothing but his pardon from Cromwell, and was not likely to ask
+any thing from those who should succeed him.
+
+Soon afterwards, the restoration supplied him with another subject; and
+he exerted his imagination, his elegance, and his melody, with equal
+alacrity, for Charles the second. It is not possible to read, without
+some contempt and indignation, poems of the same author, ascribing
+the highest degree of "power and piety" to Charles the first, then
+transferring the same "power and piety" to Oliver Cromwell; now inviting
+Oliver to take the crown, and then congratulating Charles the second
+on his recovered right. Neither Cromwell nor Charles could value his
+testimony, as the effect of conviction, or receive his praises, as
+effusions of reverence; they could consider them but as the labour of
+invention, and the tribute of dependence.
+
+Poets, indeed, profess fiction; but the legitimate end of fiction is the
+conveyance of truth; and he that has flattery ready for all whom the
+vicissitudes of the world happen to exalt, must be scorned, as a
+prostituted mind, that may retain the glitter of wit, but has lost the
+dignity of virtue.
+
+The Congratulation was considered as inferiour in poetical merit to the
+Panegyrick; and it is reported, that, when the king told Waller of the
+disparity, he answered, "poets, sir, succeed better in fiction than in
+truth."
+
+The Congratulation is, indeed, not inferiour to the Panegyrick, either by
+decay of genius, or for want of diligence; but because Cromwell had done
+much, and Charles had done little. Cromwell wanted nothing to raise him
+to heroick excellence but virtue; and virtue his poet thought himself at
+liberty to supply. Charles had yet only the merit of struggling without
+success, and suffering without despair. A life of escapes and indigence
+could supply poetry with no splendid images.
+
+In the first parliament, summoned by Charles the second, March 8, 1661,
+Waller sat for Hastings, in Sussex, and served for different places in
+all the parliaments of that reign. In a time when fancy and gaiety were
+the most powerful recommendations to regard, it is not likely that Waller
+was forgotten. He passed his time in the company that was highest both in
+rank and wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety did not exclude
+him. Though he drank water, he was enabled, by his fertility of mind, to
+heighten the mirth of Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr. Saville said, that
+"no man in England should keep him company without drinking, but Ned
+Waller."
+
+The praise given him by St. Evremond is a proof of his reputation; for it
+was only by his reputation that he could be known, as a writer, to a man
+who, though he lived a great part of a long life upon an English pension,
+never condescended to understand the language of the nation that
+maintained him.
+
+In parliament, "he was," says Burnet, "the delight of the house, and,
+though old, said the liveliest things of any among them." This, however,
+is said in his account of the year seventy-five, when Waller was only
+seventy. His name, as a speaker, occurs often in Grey's Collections; but
+I have found no extracts that can be more quoted, as exhibiting sallies
+of gaiety than cogency of argument.
+
+He was of such consideration, that his remarks were circulated and
+recorded. When the duke of York's influence was high, both in Scotland
+and England, it drew, says Burnet, a lively reflection from Waller, the
+celebrated wit. He said "the house of commons had resolved that the duke
+should not reign after the king's death; but the king, in opposition to
+them, had resolved that he should reign, even in his life." If there
+appear no extraordinary liveliness in this remark, yet its reception
+proves the speaker to have been a celebrated wit, to have had a name
+which the men of wit were proud of mentioning.
+
+He did not suffer his reputation to die gradually away, which may easily
+happen in a long life, but renewed his claim to poetical distinction,
+from time to time, as occasions were offered, either by publick events
+or private incidents; and, contenting himself with the influence of his
+muse, or loving quiet better than influence, he never accepted any office
+of magistracy.
+
+He was not, however, without some attention to his fortune; for he asked
+from the king, in 1665, the provostship of Eton college, and obtained
+it; but Clarendon refused to put the seal to the grant, alleging that
+it could be held only by a clergyman. It is known that sir Henry Wotton
+qualified himself for it by deacon's orders.
+
+To this opposition the Biographia imputes the violence and acrimony with
+which Waller joined Buckingham's faction in the prosecution of Clarendon.
+The motive was illiberal and dishonest, and showed that more than sixty
+years had not been able to teach him morality. His accusation is such as
+conscience can hardly be supposed to dictate, without the help of malice:
+"We were to be governed by janizaries, instead of parliaments, and are in
+danger from a worse plot than that of the fifth of November; then, if the
+lords and commons had been destroyed, there had been a succession; but
+here both had been destroyed for ever." This is the language of a man
+who is glad of an opportunity to rail, and ready to sacrifice truth to
+interest, at one time, and to anger, at another.
+
+A year after the chancellor's banishment, another vacancy gave him
+encouragement for another petition, which the king referred to the
+council, who, after hearing the question argued by lawyers for three
+days, determined that the office could be held only by a clergyman,
+according to the act of uniformity, since the provosts had always
+received institution, as for a parsonage, from the bishops of Lincoln.
+The king then said, he could not break the law which he had made; and Dr.
+Zachary Cradock, famous for a single sermon, at most, for two sermons,
+was chosen by the fellows.
+
+That he asked any thing else is not known; it is certain that he obtained
+nothing, though he continued obsequious to the court through the rest of
+Charles's reign.
+
+At the accession of king James, in 1685, he was chosen for parliament,
+being then fourscore, at Saltash, in Cornwall; and wrote a Presage of the
+Downfal of the Turkish Empire, which he presented to the king, on his
+birthday. It is remarked, by his commentator, Fenton, that, in reading
+Tasso, he had early imbibed a veneration for the heroes of the holy war,
+and a zealous enmity to the Turks, which never left him. James, however,
+having soon after begun what he thought a holy war at home, made haste to
+put all molestation of the Turks out of his power.
+
+James treated him with kindness and familiarity, of which instances are
+given by the writer of his life. One day, taking him into the closet, the
+king asked him how he liked one of the pictures: "My eyes," said Waller,
+"are dim, and I do not know it." The king said it was the princess of
+Orange. "She is," said Waller, "like the greatest woman in the world."
+The king asked who was that; and was answered, queen Elizabeth. "I
+wonder," said the king, "you should think so; but I must confess she
+had a wise council." "And, sir," said Waller, "did you ever know a fool
+choose a wise one?" Such is the story, which I once heard of some other
+man. Pointed axioms, and acute replies, fly loose about the world, and
+are assigned, successively, to those whom it may be the fashion to
+celebrate.
+
+When the king knew that he was about to marry his daughter to Dr. Birch,
+a clergyman, he ordered a French gentleman to tell him, that "the king
+wondered he could think of marrying his daughter to a falling church."
+"The king," said Waller, "does me great honour, in taking notice of my
+domestick affairs; but I have lived long enough to observe that this
+falling church has got a trick of rising again."
+
+He took notice to his friends of the king's conduct; and said that "he
+would be left like a whale upon the strand." Whether he was privy to any
+of the transactions which ended in the revolution, is not known. His heir
+joined the prince of Orange.
+
+Having now attained an age beyond which the laws of nature seldom suffer
+life to be extended, otherwise than by a future state, he seems to have
+turned his mind upon preparation for the decisive hour, and, therefore,
+consecrated his poetry to devotion. It is pleasing to discover that
+his piety was without weakness; that his intellectual powers continued
+vigorous; and that the lines which he composed when "he, for age, could
+neither read nor write," are not inferiour to the effusions of his youth.
+
+Towards the decline of life, he bought a small house, with a little land,
+at Coleshill; and said, "he should be glad to die, like the stag,
+where he was roused." This, however, did not happen. When he was at
+Beaconsfield, he found his legs grow tumid; he went to Windsor, where sir
+Charles Scarborough then attended the king, and requested him, as both a
+friend and a physician, to tell him, "What that swelling meant." "Sir,"
+answered Scarborough, "your blood will run no longer." Waller repeated
+some lines of Virgil, and went home to die.
+
+As the disease increased upon him, he composed himself for his departure;
+and, calling upon Dr. Birch to give him the holy sacrament, he desired
+his children to take it with him, and made an earnest declaration of his
+faith in christianity. It now appeared what part of his conversation
+with the great could be remembered with delight. He related, that being
+present when the duke of Buckingham talked profanely before king Charles,
+he said to him, "My lord, I am a great deal older than your grace, and
+have, I believe, heard more arguments for atheism than ever your grace
+did; but I have lived long enough to see there is nothing in them; and
+so, I hope, your grace will."
+
+He died October 21, 1687, and was buried at Beaconsfield, with a monument
+erected by his son's executors, for which Rymer wrote the inscription,
+and which, I hope, is now rescued from dilapidation.
+
+He left several children by his second wife; of whom, his daughter was
+married to Dr. Birch. Benjamin, the eldest son, was disinherited, and
+sent to New Jersey, as wanting common understanding. Edmund, the second
+son, inherited the estate, and represented Agmondesham in parliament,
+but, at last, turned quaker. William, the third son, was a merchant in
+London. Stephen, the fourth, was an eminent doctor of laws, and one of
+the commissioners for the union. There is said to have been a fifth, of
+whom no account has descended.
+
+The character of Waller, both moral and intellectual, has been drawn by
+Clarendon, to whom he was familiarly known, with nicety, which certainly
+none to whom he was not known can presume to emulate. It is, therefore,
+inserted here, with such remarks as others have supplied; after which,
+nothing remains but a critical examination of his poetry.
+
+"Edmund Waller," says Clarendon, "was born to a very fair estate, by the
+parsimony, or frugality, of a wise father and mother: and he thought it
+so commendable an advantage, that he resolved to improve it with his
+utmost care, upon which, in his nature, he was too much intent; and, in
+order to that, he was so much reserved and retired, that he was scarce
+ever heard of, till, by his address and dexterity, he had gotten a very
+rich wife in the city, against all the recommendation and countenance and
+authority of the court, which was thoroughly engaged on the behalf of
+Mr. Crofts, and which used to be successful, in that age, against any
+opposition. He had the good fortune to have an alliance and friendship
+with Dr. Morley, who had assisted and instructed him in the reading many
+good books, to which his natural parts and promptitude inclined him,
+especially the poets; and, at the age when other men used to give over
+writing verses, (for he was near thirty years when he first engaged
+himself in that exercise, at least that he was known to do so,) he
+surprised the town with two or three pieces of that kind; as if a tenth
+muse had been newly born to cherish drooping poetry. The doctor, at that
+time, brought him into that company which was most celebrated for good
+conversation; where he was received and esteemed with great applause and
+respect. He was a very pleasant discourser, in earnest and in jest, and,
+therefore, very grateful to all kind of company, where he was not the
+less esteemed for being very rich.
+
+"He had been even nursed in parliaments, where he sat when he was very
+young; and so, when they were resumed again, (after a long intermission,)
+he appeared in those assemblies with great advantage; having a graceful
+way of speaking, and by thinking much on several arguments, (which his
+temper and complexion, that had much of melancholick, inclined him to,)
+he seemed often to speak upon the sudden, when the occasion had only
+administered the opportunity of saying what he had thoroughly considered,
+which gave a great lustre to all he said; which yet was rather of delight
+than weight. There needs no more be said to extol the excellence and
+power of his wit, and pleasantness of his conversation, than that it was
+of magnitude enough to cover a world of very great faults; that is, so to
+cover them, that they were not taken notice of to his reproach; viz. a
+narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree; an abjectness and want of
+courage to support him in any virtuous undertaking; an insinuation and
+servile flattery to the height, the vainest and most imperious nature
+could be contented with; that it preserved and won his life from those
+who were most resolved to take it, and in an occasion in which he ought
+to have been ambitious to have lost it; and then preserved him again from
+the reproach and contempt that was due to him for so preserving it, and
+for vindicating it at such a price; that it had power to reconcile him to
+those whom he had most offended and provoked; and continued to his age
+with that rare felicity, that his company was acceptable where his spirit
+was odious; and he was, at least, pitied where he was most detested."
+
+Such is the account of Clarendon; on which it may not be improper to make
+some remarks.
+
+"He was very little known till he had obtained a rich wife in the city."
+
+He obtained a rich wife about the age of three-and-twenty; an age before
+which few men are conspicuous much to their advantage. He was known,
+however, in parliament and at court; and, if he spent part of his time
+in privacy, it is not unreasonable to suppose, that he endeavoured the
+improvement of his mind, as well as of his fortune.
+
+That Clarendon might misjudge the motive of his retirement is the more
+probable, because he has evidently mistaken the commencement of his
+poetry, which he supposes him not to have attempted before thirty. As
+his first pieces were, perhaps, not printed, the succession of his
+compositions was not known; and Clarendon, who cannot be imagined to
+have been very studious of poetry, did not rectify his first opinion by
+consulting Waller's book.
+
+Clarendon observes, that he was introduced to the wits of the age by Dr.
+Morley; but the writer of his life relates that he was already among
+them, when, hearing a noise in the street, and inquiring the cause, they
+found a son of Ben Jonson under an arrest. This was Morley, whom Waller
+set free, at the expense of one hundred pounds, took him into the country
+as director of his studies, and then procured him admission into the
+company of the friends of literature. Of this fact Clarendon had a nearer
+knowledge than the biographer, and is, therefore, more to be credited.
+
+The account of Waller's parliamentary eloquence is seconded by Burnet,
+who, though he calls him "the delight of the house," adds, that "he was
+only concerned to say that which should make him be applauded; he never
+laid the business of the house to heart, being a vain and empty, though a
+witty man."
+
+Of his insinuation and flattery it is not unreasonable to believe that
+the truth is told. Ascham, in his elegant description of those whom, in
+modern language, we term wits, says, that they are "open flatterers, and
+privy mockers." Waller showed a little of both, when, upon sight of the
+dutchess of Newcastle's verses on the Death of a Stag, he declared that
+he would give all his own compositions to have written them; and, being
+charged with the exorbitance of his adulation, answered, that "nothing
+was too much to be given, that a lady might be saved from the disgrace of
+such a vile performance." This, however, was no very mischievous or very
+unusual deviation from truth: had his hypocrisy been confined to such
+transactions, he might have been forgiven, though not praised; for who
+forbears to flatter an author or a lady.
+
+Of the laxity of his political principles, and the weakness of his
+resolution, he experienced the natural effect, by losing the esteem of
+every party. From Cromwell he had only his recall; and from Charles the
+second, who delighted in his company, he obtained only the pardon of his
+relation Hampden, and the safety of Hampden's son.
+
+As far as conjecture can be made from the whole of his writing, and his
+conduct, he was habitually and deliberately a friend to monarchy. His
+deviation towards democracy proceeded from his connexion with Hampden,
+for whose sake he prosecuted Crawley with great bitterness; and the
+invective which he pronounced on that occasion was so popular, that
+twenty thousand copies are said, by his biographer, to have been sold in
+one day.
+
+It is confessed that his faults still left him many friends, at least
+many companions. His convivial power of pleasing is universally
+acknowledged; but those who conversed with him intimately, found him not
+only passionate, especially in his old age, but resentful; so that the
+interposition of friends was sometimes necessary.
+
+His wit and his poetry naturally connected him with the polite writers
+of his time: he was joined with lord Buckhurst in the translation of
+Corneille's Pompey; and is said to have added his help to that of Cowley
+in the original draught of the Rehearsal.
+
+The care of his fortune, which Clarendon imputes to him, in a degree
+little less than criminal, was either not constant or not successful;
+for, having inherited a patrimony of three thousand five hundred pounds a
+year in the time of James the first, and augmented it, at least, by one
+wealthy marriage, he left, about the time of the revolution, an income of
+not more than twelve or thirteen hundred; which, when the different value
+of money is reckoned, will be found, perhaps, not more than a fourth part
+of what he once possessed.
+
+Of this diminution, part was the consequence of the gifts which he was
+forced to scatter, and the fine which he was condemned to pay at the
+detection of his plot; and if his estate, as is related in his life, was
+sequestered, he had probably contracted debts when he lived in exile;
+for we are told, that at Paris he lived in splendour, and was the only
+Englishman, except the lord St. Albans, that kept a table.
+
+His unlucky plot compelled him to sell a thousand a year; of the waste
+of the rest there is no account, except that he is confessed, by his
+biographer, to have been a bad economist. He seems to have deviated from
+the common practice; to have been a hoarder in his first years, and a
+squanderer in his last.
+
+Of his course of studies, or choice of books, nothing is known more than
+that he professed himself unable to read Chapman's translation of Homer,
+without rapture. His opinion concerning the duty of a poet is contained
+in his declaration, that "he would blot from his works any line that did
+not contain some motive to virtue."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+The characters, by which Waller intended to distinguish his writings, are
+sprightliness and dignity; in his smaller pieces, he endeavours to be
+gay; in the larger, to be great. Of his airy and light productions, the
+chief source is gallantry, that attentive reverence of female excellence
+which has descended to us from the Gothick ages. As his poems are
+commonly occasional, and his addresses personal, he was not so liberally
+supplied with grand as with soft images; for beauty is more easily found
+than magnanimity.
+
+The delicacy which he cultivated, restrains him to a certain nicety
+and caution, even when he writes upon the slightest matter. He has,
+therefore, in his whole volume, nothing burlesque, and seldom any thing
+ludicrous or familiar. He seems always to do his best; though his
+subjects are often unworthy of his care. It is not easy to think without
+some contempt on an author who is growing illustrious in his own opinion
+by verses, at one time, to a Lady who can do any thing but sleep when she
+pleases; at another, to a Lady who can sleep when she pleases; now, to a
+Lady on her passing through a crowd of people; then, on a Braid of divers
+colours, woven by four fair Ladies; on a tree cut in paper; or, to a
+Lady, from whom he received the copy of verses on the paper tree, which
+for many years had been missing.
+
+Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of
+Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself
+with a performance, which owes nothing to the subject. But compositions
+merely pretty have the fate of other pretty things, and are quitted in
+time for something useful: they are flowers fragrant and fair, but of
+short duration; or they are blossoms to be valued only as they foretell
+fruits. Among Waller's little poems are some which their excellency ought
+to secure from oblivion; as, to Amoret, comparing the different modes
+of regard, with which he looks on her and Sacharissa; and the verses on
+Love, that begin, "Anger in hasty words or blows."
+
+In others he is not equally successful; sometimes his thoughts are
+deficient, and sometimes his expression.
+
+The numbers are not always musical; as,
+
+  Fair Venus, in thy soft arms
+  The god of rage confine:
+  For thy whispers are the charms
+  Which only can divert his fierce design.
+  What though he frown, and to tumult do incline;
+  Thou the flame
+  Kindled in his breast canst tame
+  With that snow which unmelted lies on thine.
+
+He seldom, indeed, fetches an amorous sentiment from the depths of
+science; his thoughts are, for the most part, easily understood, and his
+images such as the superficies of nature readily supplies; he has a just
+claim to popularity, because he writes to common degrees of knowledge;
+and is free, at least, from philosophical pedantry, unless, perhaps,
+the end of a song to the sun may be excepted, in which he is too much a
+Copernican. To which may be added, the simile of the palm in the verses,
+on her passing through a crowd; and a line in a more serious poem on the
+Restoration, about vipers and treacle, which can only be understood by
+those who happen to know the composition of the Theriaca.
+
+His thoughts are sometimes hyperbolical, and his images unnatural:
+
+  The plants admire,
+  No less than those of old did Orpheus' lyre:
+  If she sit down, with tops all tow'rds her bow'd,
+  They round about her into arbours crowd:
+  Or if she walks, in even ranks they stand,
+  Like some well-marshall'd and obsequious band.
+
+In another place:
+
+  While in the park I sing, the listening deer
+  Attend my passion, and forget to fear:
+  When to the beeches I report my flame,
+  They bow their heads, as if they felt the same:
+  To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers,
+  With loud complaints they answer me in showers.
+  To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,
+  More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven!
+
+On the head of a stag:
+
+  O fertile head! which every year
+  Could such a crop of wonder bear!
+  The teeming earth did never bring,
+  So soon so hard, so huge a thing:
+  Which might it never have been cast,
+  Each year's growth added to the last,
+  These lofty branches had supply'd
+  The earth's bold sons' prodigious pride:
+  Heaven with these engines had been scal'd,
+  When mountains heap'd on mountains fail'd.
+
+Sometimes, having succeeded in the first part, he makes a feeble
+conclusion. In the song of Sacharissa's and Amoret's Friendship, the two
+last stanzas ought to have been omitted.
+
+His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate:
+
+  Then shall my love this doubt displace.
+  And gain such trust, that I may come
+  And banquet sometimes on thy face,
+  But make my constant meals at home.
+
+Some applications may be thought too remote and unconsequential; as in
+the verses on the Lady Dancing:
+
+  The sun in figures such as these
+  Joys with the moon to play:
+  To the sweet strains they advance,
+  Which do result from their own spheres;
+  As this nymph's dance
+  Moves with the numbers which she hears.
+
+Sometimes a thought, which might, perhaps, fill a distich, is expanded
+and attenuated, till it grows weak and almost evanescent:
+
+  Chloris! since first our calm of peace
+  Was frighted hence, this good we find,
+  Your favours with your fears increase,
+  And growing mischiefs make you kind.
+  So the fair tree, which still preserves
+  Her fruit, and state, while no wind blows,
+  In storms from that uprightness swerves;
+  And the glad earth about her strows
+  With treasure from her yielding boughs.
+
+His images are not always distinct; as, in the following passage, he
+confounds love, as a person, with love, as a passion:
+
+  Some other nymphs, with colours faint,
+  And pencil slow, may Cupid paint,
+  And a weak heart, in time, destroy;
+  She has a stamp, and prints the boy:
+  Can, with a single look, inflame
+  The coldest breast, the rudest tame.
+
+His sallies of casual flattery are sometimes elegant and happy, as that
+in Return for the Silver Pen; and sometimes empty and trifling, as that
+upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few Lines written in the
+Dutchess's Tasso, which he is said, by Fenton, to have kept a summer
+under correction. It happened to Waller, as to others, that his success
+was not always in proportion to his labour.
+
+Of these petty compositions, neither the beauties nor the faults deserve
+much attention. The amorous verses have this to recommend them, that
+they are less hyperbolical than those of some other poets. Waller is not
+always at the last gasp; he does not die of a frown, nor live upon a
+smile. There is, however, too much love, and too many trifles. Little
+things are made too important; and the empire of beauty is represented as
+exerting its influence further than can be allowed by the multiplicity of
+human passions, and the variety of human wants. Such books, therefore,
+may be considered, as showing the world under a false appearance, and, so
+far as they obtain credit from the young and unexperienced, as misleading
+expectation, and misguiding practice.
+
+Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is
+panegyrical: for of praise he was very lavish, as is observed by his
+imitator, lord Lansdowne:
+
+  No satyr stalks within the hallow'd ground,
+  But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound;
+  Glory and arms and love are all the sound.
+
+In the first poem, on the danger of the Prince on the coast of Spain,
+there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion, at the beginning; and
+the last paragraph, on the Cable, is, in part, ridiculously mean, and in
+part, ridiculously tumid. The poem, however, is such as may be justly
+praised, without much allowance for the state of our poetry and language
+at that time.
+
+The two next poems are upon the king's behaviour at the death of
+Buckingham, and upon his navy.
+
+He has, in the first, used the pagan deities with great propriety:
+
+  'Twas want of such a precedent as this,
+  Made the old heathen frame their gods amiss.
+
+In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble, which suppose the
+king's power secure against a second deluge; so noble, that it were
+almost criminal to remark the mistake of _centre_ for _surface_, or to
+say that the empire of the sea would be worth little, if it were not that
+the waters terminate in land.
+
+The poem upon Sallee has forcible sentiments; but the conclusion is
+feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul's has something vulgar and
+obvious; such as the mention of Amphion; and something violent and harsh;
+as,
+
+  So all our minds with his conspire to grace
+  The Gentiles' great apostle, and deface
+  Those state-obscuring sheds, that, like a chain,
+  Seem'd to confine, and fetter him again:
+
+  Which the glad saint shakes off at his command,
+  As once the viper from his sacred hand.
+  So joys the aged oak, when we divide
+  The creeping ivy from his injur'd side.
+
+Of the two last couplets, the first is extravagant, and the second mean.
+
+His praise of the queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought, that
+she "saves lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes are cured by lopping
+the limb," presents nothing to the mind but disgust and horrour.
+
+Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it seems not easy to say whether it
+is intended to raise terrour or merriment. The beginning is too splendid
+for jest, and the conclusion too light for seriousness. The versification
+is studied, the scenes are diligently displayed, and the images artfully
+amplified; but, as it ends neither in joy nor sorrow, it will scarcely be
+read a second time.
+
+The Panegyrick upon Cromwell has obtained from the publick a very liberal
+dividend of praise, which, however, cannot be said to have been unjustly
+lavished; for such a series of verses had rarely appeared before in the
+English language. Of the lines some are grand, some are graceful, and all
+are musical. There is now and then a feeble verse, or a trifling thought;
+but its great fault is the choice of its hero.
+
+The poem of the War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and
+striking than Waller is accustomed to produce. The succeeding parts
+are variegated with better passages and worse. There is something too
+far-fetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the English on,
+by saluting St. Lucar with cannon, "to lambs awakening the lion by
+bleating." The fate of the marquis and his lady, who were burnt in their
+ship, would have moved more, had the poet not made him die like the
+Phoenix, because he had spices about him, nor expressed their affection
+and their end, by a conceit, at once, false and vulgar:
+
+  Alive, in equal flames of love they burn'd,
+  And now together are to ashes turn'd.
+
+The verses to Charles on his Return were doubtless intended to
+counterbalance the Panegyrick on Cromwell. If it has been thought
+inferiour to that with which it is naturally compared, the cause of its
+deficience has been already remarked.
+
+The remaining pieces it is not necessary to examine singly. They must be
+supposed to have faults and beauties of the same kind with the rest. The
+Sacred Poems, however, deserve particular regard; they were the work of
+Waller's declining life, of those hours in which he looked upon the
+fame and the folly of the time past with the sentiments which his great
+predecessor, Petrarch, bequeathed to posterity, upon his review of that
+love and poetry which have given him immortality.
+
+That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much
+excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that the
+mind grows old with the body; and that he, whom we are now forced to
+confess superiour, is hastening daily to a level with ourselves. By
+delighting to think this of the living, we learn to think it of the dead;
+and Fenton, with all his kindness for Waller, has the luck to mark the
+exact time when his genius passed the zenith, which he places at his
+fifty-fifth year. This is to allot the mind but a small portion.
+Intellectual decay is, doubtless, not uncommon; but it seems not to
+be universal. Newton was, in his eighty-fifth year, improving his
+chronology, a few days before his death; and Waller appears not, in my
+opinion, to have lost, at eighty-two, any part of his poetical power.
+
+His Sacred Poems do not please like some of his other works; but before
+the fatal fifty-five, had he written on the same subjects, his success
+would hardly have been better.
+
+It has been the frequent lamentation of good men, that verse has been too
+little applied to the purposes of worship, and many attempts have been
+made to animate devotion by pious poetry. That they have very seldom
+attained their end, is sufficiently known, and it may not be improper
+to inquire, why they have miscarried. Let no pious ear be offended if I
+advance, in opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot
+often please. The doctrines of religion may, indeed, be defended in a
+didactick poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will
+not lose it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty
+and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the spring, and the harvests
+of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide, and the revolutions of the sky,
+and praise the maker for his works, in lines which no reader shall lay
+aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to
+piety; that of the description is not God, but the works of God.
+
+Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul,
+cannot be poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his creator,
+and plead the merits of his redeemer, is already in a higher state than
+poetry can confer.
+
+The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing
+something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topicks of devotion are
+few, and, being few, are universally known; but, few as they are, they
+can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment,
+and very little from novelty of expression.
+
+Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than
+things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display of those
+parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those which repel
+the imagination: but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and
+addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already.
+
+From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always
+obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy;
+but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion.
+Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name
+of the supreme being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; infinity cannot
+be amplified; perfection cannot be improved. The employments of pious
+meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith,
+invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations.
+Thanksgiving, the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a
+being without passions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt
+rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the
+judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication of
+man to man may diffuse itself through many topicks of persuasion; but
+supplication to God can only cry for mercy.
+
+Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple
+expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power,
+because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than
+itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory, and delight
+the ear, and, for these purposes, it may be very useful; but it supplies
+nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for
+eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestick for ornament; to
+recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify, by a concave mirror,
+the sidereal hemisphere.
+
+As much of Waller's reputation was owing to the softness and smoothness
+of his numbers, it is proper to consider those minute particulars to
+which a versifier must attend.
+
+He certainly very much excelled in smoothness most of the writers who
+were living when his poetry commenced. The poets of Elizabeth had
+attained an art of modulation, which was afterwards neglected or
+forgotten. Fairfax was acknowledged by him as his model; and he might
+have studied with advantage the poem of Davies[m86], which, though merely
+philosophical, yet seldom leaves the ear ungratified.
+
+But he was rather smooth than strong; of "the full resounding line,"
+which Pope attributes to Dryden, he has given very few examples. The
+critical decision has given the praise of strength to Denham, and of
+sweetness to Waller.
+
+His excellence of versification has some abatements. He uses the
+expletive _do_ very frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost,
+universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last
+compositions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and
+finding the world satisfied, he satisfied himself.
+
+His rhymes are sometimes weak words: _so_ is found to make the rhyme
+twice in ten lines, and occurs often as a rhyme through his book.
+
+His double rhymes, in heroick verse, have been censured by Mrs. Phillips,
+who was his rival in the translation of Corneille's Pompey; and more
+faults might be found, were not the inquiry below attention.
+
+He sometimes uses the obsolete termination of verbs, as _waxeth,
+affecteth_; and sometimes retains the final syllable of the preterite,
+as _amazed, supposed_, of which I know not whether it is not to the
+detriment of our language that we have totally rejected them.
+
+Of triplets he is sparing; but he did not wholly forbear them: of an
+alexandrine he has given no example.
+
+The general character of his poetry is elegance and gaiety. He is never
+pathetick, and very rarely sublime. He seems neither to have had a mind
+much elevated by nature, nor amplified by learning. His thoughts are such
+as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance with life would easily
+supply. They had, however, then, perhaps, that grace of novelty which
+they are now often supposed to want by those who, having already found
+them in later books, do not know or inquire who produced them first. This
+treatment is unjust. Let not the original author lose by his imitators.
+
+Praise, however, should be due before it is given. The author of Waller's
+life ascribes to him the first practice of what Erythraeus and some
+late criticks call alliteration, of using in the same verse many words
+beginning with the same letter. But this knack, whatever be its value,
+was so frequent among early writers, that Gascoigne, a writer of
+the sixteenth century, warns the young poet against affecting it;
+Shakespeare, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, is supposed to ridicule it;
+and, in another play, the sonnet of Holofernes fully displays it.
+
+He borrows too many of his sentiments and illustrations from the old
+mythology, for which it is vain to plead the example of ancient poets;
+the deities which they introduced so frequently, were considered as
+realities, so far as to be received by the imagination, whatever sober
+reason might even then determine. But of these images time has tarnished
+the splendour. A fiction, not only detected but despised, can never
+afford a solid basis to any position, though sometimes it may furnish a
+transient allusion, or slight illustration. No modern monarch can be much
+exalted by hearing that, as Hercules had his club, he has his navy.
+
+But of the praise of Waller, though much may be taken away, much will
+remain; for it cannot be denied that he added something to our elegance
+of diction, and something to our propriety of thought; and to him may be
+applied what Tasso said, with equal spirit and justice, of himself and
+Guarini, when, having perused the Pastor Fido, he cried out "if he had
+not read Aminta, he had never excelled it."
+
+As Waller professed himself to have learned the art of versification from
+Fairfax, it has been thought proper to subjoin a specimen of his work,
+which, after Mr. Hoole's translation, will, perhaps, not be soon
+reprinted. By knowing the state in which Waller found our poetry, the
+reader may judge how much he improved it.
+
+  1.
+
+  Erminia's steed (this while) his mistresse bore
+  Through forrests thicke among the shadie treene,
+  Her feeble hand the bridle reines forlore,
+  Halfe in a swoune she was for feare, I weene;
+  But her flit courser spared nere the more,
+  To beare her through the desart woods unseene
+  Of her strong foes, that chas'd her through the plaine,
+  And still pursu'd, but still pursu'd in vaine.
+
+  2.
+
+  Like as the wearie hounds at last retire,
+  Windlesse, displeased, from the fruitlesse chace,
+  When the slie beast Tapisht in bush and brire,
+  No art nor paines can rowse out of his place:
+  The christian knights so full of shame and ire
+  Returned backe, with faint and wearie pace!
+  Yet still the fearfull dame fled, swift as winde,
+  Nor ever staid, nor ever lookt behinde.
+
+  3.
+
+  Through thicke and thinne, all night, all day, she drived,
+  Withouten comfort, companie, or guide,
+  Her plaints and teares with every thought revived,
+  She heard and saw her greefes, but nought beside.
+  But when the sunne his burning chariot dived
+  In Thetis wave, and wearie teame untide,
+  On Jordans sandie bankes her course she staid,
+  At last, there downe she light, and downe she laid.
+
+  4.
+
+  Her teares, her drinke; her food, her sorrowings,
+  This was her diet that unhappie night:
+  But sleepe (that sweet repose and quiet brings)
+  To ease the greefes of discontented wight,
+  Spred foorth his tender, soft, and nimble wings,
+  In his dull armes foulding the virgin bright;
+  And love, his mother, and the graces kept
+  Strong watch and warde, while this faire ladie slept.
+
+  5.
+
+  The birds awakte her with their morning song,
+  Their warbling musicke pearst her tender eare,
+  The murmuring brookes and whistling windes among
+  The ratling boughes, and leaves, their parts did beare;
+  Her eies unclos'd beheld the groves along
+  Of swaines and shepherd groomes, that dwellings weare:
+  And that sweet noise, birds, winds, and waters sent,
+  Provokte againe the virgin to lament.
+
+  6.
+
+  Her plaints were interrupted with a sound
+  That seem'd from thickest bushes to proceed,
+  Some iolly shepheard sung a lustie round,
+  And to his voice had tun'd his oaten reed;
+  Thither she went, an old man there she found,
+  (At whose right hand his little flock did feed)
+  Sat making baskets, his three sonnes among,
+  That learn'd their father's art, and learn'd his song.
+
+  7.
+
+  Beholding one in shining armes appeare,
+  The seelie man and his were sore dismaid;
+  But sweet Erminia comforted their feare,
+  Her ventall vp, her visage open laid.
+  You happie folke, of heau'n beloued deare,
+  Work on (quoth she) vpon your harmlesse traid,
+  These dreadfull armes, I beare, no warfare bring
+  To your sweet toile, nor those sweet tunes you sing.
+
+  8.
+
+  But father, since this land, these townes and towres,
+  Destroied are with sword, with fire and spoile,
+  How may it be, unhurt, that you and yours
+  In safetie thus, applie your harmlesse toile?
+  My sonne (quoth he) this pore estate of ours
+  Is euer safe from storme of warlike broile;
+  This wildernesse doth vs in safetie keepe,
+  No thundring drum, no trumpet breakes our sleepe.
+
+  9.
+
+  Haply iust heau'n's defence and shield of right,
+  Doth loue the innocence of simple swaines,
+  The thunderbolts on highest mountains light,
+  And seld or neuer strike the lower plaines:
+  So kings haue cause to feare Bellonaes might,
+  Not they whose sweat and toile their dinner gaines,
+  Nor ever greedie soldier was entised
+  By pouertie, neglected and despised.
+
+  10.
+
+  O pouertie, chefe of the heau'nly brood,
+  Dearer to me than wealth or kingly crowne!
+  No wish for honour, thirst of other's good,
+  Can moue my hart, contented with my owne:
+  We quench our thirst with water of this flood,
+  Nor fear we poison should therein be throwne:
+  These little flocks of sheepe and tender goates
+  Giue milke for food, and wooll to make us coates.
+
+  11.
+
+  We little wish, we need but little wealth,
+  From cold and hunger vs to cloath and feed;
+  These are my sonnes, their care preserues from stealth
+  Their father's flocks, nor servants moe I need:
+  Amid these groues I walke oft for my health,
+  And to the fishes, birds, and beastes giue heed,
+  How they are fed, in forrest, spring and lake,
+  And their contentment for ensample take.
+
+  12.
+
+  Time was (for each one hath his doting time,
+  These siluer locks were golden tresses than)
+  That countrie life I hated as a crime,
+  And from the forrests sweet contentment ran,
+  To Memphis stately pallace would I clime,
+  And there became the mightie Caliphes man,
+  And though I but a simple gardner weare,
+  Yet could I marke abuses, see and heare.
+
+  13.
+
+  Entised on with hope of future gaine,
+  I suffred long what did my soule displease;
+  But when my youth was spent, my hope was vaine,
+  I felt my native strength at last decrease;
+  I gan my losse of lustie yeeres complaine,
+  And wisht I had enjoy'd the countries peace;
+  I bod the court farewell, and with content
+  My later age here have I quiet spent.
+
+  14.
+
+  While thus he spake, Erminia husht and still
+  His wise discourses heard, with great attention,
+  His speeches graue those idle fancies kill,
+  Which in her troubled soule bred such dissention;
+  After much thought reformed was her will,
+  Within those woods to dwell was her intention,
+  Till fortune should occasion new afford,
+  To turne her home to her desired lord.
+
+  15.
+
+  She said, therefore, O shepherd fortunate!
+  That troubles some didst whilom feele and proue,
+  Yet liuest now in this contented state,
+  Let my mishap thy thoughts to pitie moue,
+  To entertaine me, as a willing mate
+  In shepherd's life, which I admire and loue;
+  Within these pleasant groues, perchance, my hart
+  Of her discomforts may vnload some part.
+
+  16.
+
+  If gold or wealth, of most esteemed deare,
+  If iewells rich, thou diddest hold in prise,
+  Such store thereof, such plentie have I seen,
+  As to a greedie minde might well suffice:
+  With that downe trickled many a siluer teare,
+  Two christall streams fell from her watrie eies;
+  Part of her sad misfortunes than she told,
+  And wept, and with her wept that shepherd old.
+
+  17.
+
+  With speeches kinde, he gan the virgin deare
+  Towards his cottage gently home to guide;
+  His aged wife there made her homely cheare,
+  Yet welcomde her, and plast her by her side.
+  The princesse dond a poore pastoraes geare,
+  A kerchiefe course vpon her head she tide;
+  But yet her gestures and her lookes (I gesse)
+  Were such as ill beseem'd a shepherdesse.
+
+  18.
+
+  Not those rude garments could obscure, and hide
+  The heau'nly beautie of her angel's face,
+  Nor was her princely ofspring damnifide,
+  Or ought disparag'de, by those labours bace;
+  Her little flocks to pasture would she guide,
+  And milke her goates, and in their folds them place,
+  Both cheese and butter could she make, and frame
+  Her selfe to please the shepherd and his dame.
+
+[Footnote 82: Preface to his Fables. Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 83: This speech has been retrieved, from a paper printed at
+that time, by the writers of the Parliamentary History. Dr.J.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Parliamentary History, vol. xii. Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Life of Waller prefixed to an edition of his works,
+published in 1773, by Percival Stockdale. C.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Sir John Davies, entitled, Nosce Teipsum. This oracle
+expounded in two elegies; 1. Of Humane Knowledge: 2. Of the Soule of Man
+and the Immortalitie thereof, 1599. R.]
+
+[Footnote 87: It has been conjectured that our poet was either son or
+grandson of Charles, third son of sir John Stepney, the first baronet of
+that family. See Granger's History, vol. ii. p. 396. Edit. 8vo. 1775. Mr.
+Cole says, the poet's father was a grocer. Cole's manuscripts, in Brit.
+Mus. C.]
+
+
+
+
+POMFRET.
+
+Of Mr. John Pomfret nothing is known but from a slight and confused
+account, prefixed to his poems by a nameless friend; who relates, that he
+was the son of the Rev. Mr. Pomfret, rector of Luton, in Bedfordshire;
+that he was bred at Cambridge[87], entered into orders, and was rector of
+Malden, in Bedfordshire, and might have risen in the church; but that,
+when he applied to Dr. Compton, bishop of London, for institution to a
+living of considerable value, to which he had been presented, he found
+a troublesome obstruction raised by a malicious interpretation of some
+passage in his Choice; from which it was inferred, that he considered
+happiness as more likely to be found in the company of a mistress than of
+a wife.
+
+This reproach was easily obliterated; for it had happened to Pomfret, as
+to almost all other men who plan schemes of life; he had departed from
+his purpose, and was then married.
+
+The malice of his enemies had, however, a very fatal consequence: the
+delay constrained his attendance in London, where he caught the smallpox,
+and died in 1703, in the thirty-sixth year of his age.
+
+He published his poems in 1699; and has been always the favourite of that
+class of readers, who, without vanity or criticism, seek only their own
+amusement.
+
+His Choice exhibits a system of life adapted to common notions, and equal
+to common expectations; such a state as affords plenty and tranquillity,
+without exclusion of intellectual pleasures. Perhaps no composition in
+our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's Choice.
+
+In his other poems there is an easy volubility; the pleasure of smooth
+metre is afforded to the ear, and the mind is not oppressed with
+ponderous, or entangled with intricate, sentiment. He pleases many; and
+he who pleases many must have some species of merit.
+
+[Footnote 87: He was of Queen's college there, and, by the University
+Register, took his bachelor's degree in 1684, and master's in 1698. His
+father was of Trinity.]
+
+
+
+
+DORSET.
+
+Of the earl of Dorset the character has been drawn so largely and so
+elegantly by Prior, to whom he was familiarly known, that nothing can be
+added by a casual hand; and, as its author is so generally read, it would
+be useless officiousness to transcribe it.
+
+Charles Sackville was born January 24, 1637. Having been educated under a
+private tutor, he travelled into Italy, and returned a little before the
+restoration. He was chosen into the first parliament that was called, for
+East Grimstead, in Sussex, and soon became a favourite of Charles the
+second; but undertook no publick employment, being too eager of the
+riotous and licentious pleasures, which young men of high rank, who
+aspired to be thought wits, at that time imagined themselves entitled to
+indulge.
+
+One of these frolicks has, by the industry of Wood, come down to
+posterity. Sackville, who was then lord Buckhurst, with sir Charles
+Sedley and sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock in Bow street, by
+Covent garden, and, going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the
+populace in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley
+stood forth naked and harangued the populace in such profane language,
+that the publick indignation was awakened: the crowd attempted to force
+the door, and, being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and
+broke the windows of the house.
+
+For this misdemeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined five
+hundred pounds: what was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley
+employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission from the king;
+but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for
+themselves, and exacted it to the last groat. In 1665, lord Buckhurst
+attended the duke of York, as a volunteer in the Dutch war; and was
+in the battle of June 3, when eighteen great Dutch ships were taken,
+fourteen others were destroyed, and Opdam, the admiral, who engaged the
+duke, was blown up beside him, with all his crew.
+
+On the day before the battle, he is said to have composed the celebrated
+song, "To all you ladies now at land," with equal tranquillity of mind
+and promptitude of wit. Seldom any splendid story is wholly true. I
+have heard from the late earl of Orrery, who was likely to have good
+hereditary intelligence, that lord Buckhurst had been a week employed
+upon it, and only retouched or finished it on the memorable evening. But
+even this, whatever it may subtract from his facility, leaves him his
+courage.
+
+He was soon after made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and sent on short
+embassies to France.
+
+In 1674, the estate of his uncle, James Cranfield, earl of Middlesex,
+came to him by its owner's death, and the title was conferred on him
+the year after. In 1677, he became, by the death of his father, earl of
+Dorset, and inherited the estate of his family.
+
+In 1684, having buried his first wife, of the family of Bagot, who
+left him no child, he married a daughter of the earl of Northampton,
+celebrated both for beauty and understanding.
+
+He received some favourable notice from king James; but soon found it
+necessary to oppose the violence of his innovations, and with some other
+lords appeared in Westminster hall to countenance the bishops at their
+trial.
+
+As enormities grew every day less supportable, he found it necessary to
+concur in the revolution. He was one of those lords who sat every day in
+council to preserve the publick peace, after the king's departure; and,
+what is not the most illustrious action of his life, was employed to
+conduct the princess Anne to Nottingham with a guard, such as might alarm
+the populace, as they passed, with false apprehensions of her danger.
+Whatever end may be designed, there is always something despicable in a
+trick.
+
+He became, as may be easily supposed, a favourite of king William, who,
+the day after his accession, made him lord chamberlain of the household,
+and gave him afterwards the garter. He happened to be among those that
+were tossed with the king in an open boat sixteen hours, in very rough
+and cold weather, on the coast of Holland. His health afterwards
+declined; and, on Jan. 19, 1705-6, he died at Bath.
+
+He was a man whose elegance and judgment were universally confessed,
+and whose bounty to the learned and witty was generally known. To the
+indulgent affection of the publick, lord Rochester bore ample testimony
+in this remark: "I know not how it is, but lord Buckhurst may do what he
+will, yet is never in the wrong."
+
+If such a man attempted poetry, we cannot wonder that his works were
+praised. Dryden, whom, if Prior tells truth, he distinguished by his
+beneficence, and who lavished his blandishments on those who are not
+known to have so well deserved them, undertaking to produce authors of
+our own country superiour to those of antiquity, says, "I would instance
+your lordship in satire, and Shakespeare in tragedy." Would it be
+imagined that, of this rival to antiquity, all the satires were little
+personal invectives, and that his longest composition was a song of
+eleven stanzas?
+
+The blame, however, of this exaggerated praise falls on the encomiast,
+not upon the author; whose performances are, what they pretend to be, the
+effusions of a man of wit; gay, vigorous, and airy. His verses to Howard
+show great fertility of mind; and his Dorinda has been imitated by Pope.
+
+
+STEPNEY.
+
+
+George Stepney, descended from the Stepneys of Pendegrast, in
+Pembrokeshire, was born at Westminster, in 1663. Of his father's
+condition or fortune I have no account[88]. Having received the first
+part of his education at Westminster, where he passed six years in the
+college, he went, at nineteen, to Cambridge[p], where he continued a
+friendship begun at school with Mr. Montague, afterwards earl of Halifax.
+They came to London together, and are said to have been invited into
+publick life by the duke of Dorset[89].
+
+His qualifications recommended him to many foreign employments, so that
+his time seems to have been spent in negotiations. In 1692, he was sent
+envoy to the elector of Brandenburgh; in 1693, to the imperial court; in
+1694, to the elector of Saxony; in 1696, to the electors of Mentz and
+Cologne, and the congress at Frankfort; in 1698, a second time to
+Brandenburgh; in 1699, to the king of Poland; in 1701, again to the
+emperour; and, in 1706, to the States General. In 1697, he was made one
+of the commissioners of trade. His life was busy and not long. He died in
+1707, and is buried in Westminster Abbey, with this epitaph, which Jacob
+transcribed:
+
+  H. S. E.
+  GEORGIUS STEPNEIUS, armiger,
+  Vir,
+  Ob ingenii acumen,
+  Literarum scientiam,
+  Morum suavitatem,
+  Rerum usum,
+
+  Virorum amplissimorum consuetudinem,
+  Linguae, styli, ac vitae elegantiam,
+  Praeclara officia cum Britanniae tum Europae praestita,
+  Sua aetate multum celebratus,
+  Apud posteros semper celebrandus;
+  Plurimas legationes obijt
+  Ea fide, diligentia, ac felicitate,
+  Ut augustissimorum principum
+  Gulielmi et Annae
+  Spem in illo repositam
+  Numquam fefellerit,
+  Haud raro superaverit.
+  Post longum honorum cursum
+  Brevi temporis spatio confectum,
+  Cum naturae parum, famae satis vixerat,
+  Animam ad altiora aspirantem placide efflavit.
+
+On the left hand,
+
+  G. S.
+  Ex equestri familia Stepneiorum,
+  De Pendegrast, in comitatu
+  Pembrochiensi oriundus,
+  Westmonasterii natus est, A. D. 1663,
+  Electus in collegium
+  Sancti Petri Westmonast. A. 1676,
+  Sancti Trinitatis Cantab. 1682.
+  Consiliariorum quibus Commercii
+  Cura commissa est 1697.
+  Chelseiae mortuus, et, comitante
+  Magna procerum
+  Frequentia, hue elatus, 1707.
+
+It is reported that the juvenile compositions of Stepney "made grey
+authors blush." I know not whether his poems will appear such wonders to
+the present age. One cannot always easily find the reason for which the
+world has sometimes conspired to squander praise. It is not very unlikely
+that he wrote very early as well as he ever wrote; and the performances
+of youth have many favourers, because the authors yet lay no claim to
+publick honours, and are, therefore, not considered as rivals by the
+distributors of fame.
+
+He apparently professed himself a poet, and added his name to those of
+the other wits in the version of Juvenal; but he is a very licentious
+translator, and does not recompense his neglect of the author by beauties
+of his own. In his original poems, now and then, a happy line may,
+perhaps, be found, and, now and then, a short composition may give
+pleasure. But there is, in the whole, little either of the grace of wit,
+or the vigour of nature.
+
+[Footnote 88: He was entered of Trinity college, and took his master's
+degree in 1689. H.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Earl of Dorset.]
+
+
+
+
+J. PHILIPS.
+
+John Philips was born on the 30th of December, 1676, at Bampton, in
+Oxfordshire; of which place his father, Dr. Stephen Philips, archdeacon
+of Salop, was minister. The first part of his education was domestick;
+after which he was sent to Winchester, where, as we are told by Dr.
+Sewel, his biographer, he was soon distinguished by the superiority of
+his exercises; and, what is less easily to be credited, so much endeared
+himself to his schoolfellows, by his civility and good nature, that
+they, without murmur or ill will, saw him indulged by the master with
+particular immunities. It is related, that, when he was at school, he
+seldom mingled in play with the other boys, but retired to his chamber;
+where his sovereign pleasure was to sit, hour after hour, while his hair
+was combed by somebody, whose service he found means to procure.[90]
+
+At school he became acquainted with the poets, ancient and modern, and
+fixed his attention particularly on Milton.
+
+In 1694, he entered himself at Christ church; a college, at that time, in
+the highest reputation, by the transmission of Busby's scholars to the
+care first of Fell, and afterwards of Aldrich. Here he was distinguished
+as a genius eminent among the eminent, and for friendship particularly
+intimate with Mr. Smith, the author of Phaedra and Hippolytus. The
+profession which he intended to follow was that of physick; and he took
+much delight in natural history, of which botany was his favourite part.
+
+His reputation was confined to his friends and to the university; till,
+about 1703, he extended it to a wider circle by the Splendid Shilling,
+which struck the publick attention with a mode of writing new and
+unexpected.
+
+This performance raised him so high, that, when Europe resounded with
+the victory of Blenheim, he was, probably, with an occult opposition to
+Addison, employed to deliver the acclamation of the tories. It is said
+that he would willingly have declined the task, but that his friends
+urged it upon him. It appears that he wrote this poem at the house of Mr.
+St. John.
+
+Blenheim was published in 1705. The next year produced his greatest work,
+the poem upon Cider, in two books; which was received with loud praises,
+and continued long to be read, as an imitation of Virgil's Georgicks,
+which needed not shun the presence of the original.
+
+He then grew probably more confident of his own abilities, and began to
+meditate a poem on the Last Day; a subject on which no mind can hope to
+equal expectation.
+
+This work he did not live to finish; his diseases, a slow consumption
+and an asthma, put a stop to his studies, and on Feb. 15, 1708, at the
+beginning of his thirty-third year, put an end to his life.
+
+He was buried in the cathedral of Hereford; and sir Simon Harcourt,
+afterwards lord chancellor, gave him a monument in Westminster Abbey.
+The inscription at Westminster was written, as I have heard, by Dr.
+Atterbury, though commonly given to Dr. Freind.
+
+
+His epitaph at Hereford:
+
+  JOHANNES PHILIPS
+
+  Obijt 15 die Feb. Anno Dom. 1708., Aetat suae 32.
+
+  Cujus
+  Ossa si requiras, hanc urnam inspice:
+  Si ingenium nescias, ipsius opera consule;
+
+  Si tumulum desideras,
+  Templum adi Westmonasteriense:
+  Qualis quantusque vir fuerit,
+  Dicat elegans illa et praeclara,
+  Quae cenotaphium ibi decorat,
+  Inscriptio.
+  Quam interim erga cognatos pius et officiosus,
+  Testetur hoc saxum
+  A MARIA PHILIPS matre ipsius pientissima
+  Dilecti filii memoriae non sine lacrymis dicatum.
+
+His epitaph at Westminster:
+
+  Herefordiae conduntur ossa,
+  Hoc in delubro statuitur imago,
+  Britanniam omnem pervagatur fama,
+  JOHANNIS PHILIPS:
+  Qui viris bonis doctisque juxta charus,
+  Immortale suum ingenium,
+  Eruditione multiplici excultum,
+  Miro animi candore,
+  Eximia morum simplicitate,
+  Honestavit.
+  Litterarum amoeniorum sitim,
+  Quam Wintoniae puer sentire coeperat,
+  Inter Aedis Christi alumnos jugiter explevit.
+  In illo musarum domicilio
+  Praeclaris aemulorum studiis excitatus,
+  Optimis scribendi magistris semper intentus,
+  Carmina sermone patrio composuit
+  A Graecis Latinisque fontibus feliciter deducta,
+  Atticis Romanisque auribus omnino digna,
+  Versuum quippe harmoniam
+  Rythmo didicerat,
+  Antiquo illo, libero, multiformi,
+  Ad res ipsas apto prorsus, et attemperato,
+  Non numeris in eundem fere orbem redeuntibus,
+  Non clausularum similiter cadentium sono
+  Metiri:
+  Uni in hoc landis genere Miltono secundus,
+  Primoque poene par.
+
+  Res seu tenues, seu grandes, sen mediocres
+  Ornandas sumserat,
+  Nusquam, non quod decuit,
+  Et vidit, et assecutus est,
+  Egregius, quocunque stylum verteret,
+  Fandi author, et modorum artifex.
+  Fas sit huic,
+  Auso licet a tua metrorum lege discedere,
+  O poesis Anglicanae pater, atque conditor, Chaucere,
+  Alterum tibi latus claudere,
+  Vatum certe cineres tuos undique stipantium
+  Non dedecebit chorum.
+  SIMON HAHCOUKT, miles,
+  Viri bene de se, de litteris meriti,
+  Quoad viveret fautor,
+  Post obitum pie memor,
+  Hoc illi saxum poni voluit.
+  J. PHILIPS, STEPHANI, S. T. P. Archidiaconi
+  Salop. filius, natus est Bamptoniae
+  In agro Oxon. Dec. 30, 1676.
+  Obijt Herefordiae, Feb. 15, 1708.
+
+Philips has been always praised, without contradiction, as a man modest,
+blameless, and pious; who bore narrowness of fortune without discontent,
+and tedious and painful maladies without impatience; beloved by those
+that knew him, but not ambitious to be known. He was probably not formed
+for a wide circle. His conversation is commended for its innocent gaiety,
+which seems to have flowed only among his intimates; for I have been
+told, that he was in company silent and barren, and employed only upon
+the pleasures of his pipe. His addiction to tobacco is mentioned by
+one of his biographers, who remarks, that in all his writings, except
+Blenheim, he has found an opportunity of celebrating the fragrant fume.
+In common life he was probably one of those who please by not offending,
+and whose person was loved because his writings were admired. He died
+honoured and lamented, before any part of his reputation had withered,
+and before his patron St. John had disgraced him. His works are few. The
+Splendid Shilling has the uncommon merit of an original design, unless it
+may be thought precluded by the ancient Centos. To degrade the sounding
+words and stately construction of Milton, by an application to the lowest
+and most trivial things, gratifies the mind with a momentary triumph over
+that grandeur, which hitherto held its captives in admiration; the words
+and things are presented with a new appearance, and novelty is always
+grateful where it gives no pain.
+
+But the merit of such performances begins and ends with the first author.
+He that should again adapt Milton's phrase to the gross incidents
+of common life, and even adapt it with more art, which would not be
+difficult, must yet expect but a small part of the praise which Philips
+has obtained; he can only hope to be considered as the repeater of a
+jest.
+
+"The parody on Milton," says Gildon, "is the only tolerable production of
+its author." This is a censure too dogmatical and violent. The poem of
+Blenheim was never denied to be tolerable, even by those who do not
+allow its supreme excellence. It is, indeed, the poem of a scholar, "all
+inexpert of war;" of a man who writes books from books, and studies the
+world in a college. He seems to have formed his ideas of the field of
+Blenheim from the battles of the heroick ages, or the tales of chivalry,
+with very little comprehension of the qualities necessary to the
+composition of a modern hero, which Addison has displayed with so much
+propriety. He makes Marlborough behold at a distance the slaughter made
+by Tallard, then haste to encounter and restrain him, and mow his way
+through ranks made headless by his sword.
+
+He imitates Milton's numbers indeed, but imitates them very
+injudiciously. Deformity is easily copied; and whatever there is in
+Milton which the reader wishes away, all that is obsolete, peculiar, or
+licentious, is accumulated with great care by Philips. Milton's verse was
+harmonious, in proportion to the general state of our metre in Milton's
+age; and, if he had written after the improvements made by Dryden, it
+is reasonable to believe that he would have admitted a more pleasing
+modulation of numbers into his work; but Philips sits down with a
+resolution to make no more musick than he found; to want all that his
+master wanted, though he is very far from having what his master had.
+Those asperities, therefore, that are venerable in the Paradise Lost, are
+contemptible in the Blenheim.
+
+There is a Latin ode written to his patron St. John, in return for a
+present of wine and tobacco, which cannot be passed without notice. It is
+gay and elegant, and exhibits several artful accommodations of classick
+expressions to new purposes. It seems better turned than the odes of
+Hannes[91].
+
+To the poem on Cider, written in imitation of the Georgicks, may be given
+this peculiar praise, that it is grounded in truth; that the precepts
+which it contains are exact and just; and that it is, therefore, at once,
+a book of entertainment and of science. This I was told by Miller, the
+great gardener and botanist, whose expression was, that "there were many
+books written on the same subject in prose, which do not contain so much
+truth as that poem."
+
+In the disposition of his matter, so as to intersperse precepts relating
+to the culture of trees with sentiments more generally alluring, and in
+easy and graceful transitions from one subject to another, he has very
+diligently imitated his master; but he, unhappily, pleased himself with
+blank verse, and supposed that the numbers of Milton, which impress the
+mind with veneration, combined as they are with subjects of inconceivable
+grandeur, could be sustained by images which, at most, can rise only to
+elegance.
+
+Contending angels may shake the regions of heaven in blank verse; but the
+flow of equal measures, and the embellishment of rhyme, must recommend
+to our attention the art of engrafting, and decide the merit of the
+redstreak and pearmain.
+
+What study could confer, Philips had obtained; but natural deficience
+cannot be supplied. He seems not born to greatness and elevation. He is
+never lofty, nor does he often surprise with unexpected excellence: but,
+perhaps, to his last poem may be applied what Tully said of the work of
+Lucretius, that "it is written with much art, though with few blazes of
+genius."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following fragment, written by Edmund Smith, upon the works of
+Philips, has been transcribed from the Bodleian manuscripts.
+
+"A Prefatory Discourse to the Poem on Mr. Philips, with a character of
+his writings.
+
+"It is altogether as equitable some account should be given of those who
+have distinguished themselves by their writings, as of those who are
+renowned for great actions. It is but reasonable they, who contribute
+so much to the immortality of others, should have some share in it
+themselves; and since their genius only is discovered by their works, it
+is just that their virtues should be recorded by their friends. For no
+modest men (as the person I write of was in perfection) will write
+their own panegyricks; and it is very hard that they should go without
+reputation, only because they the more deserve it. The end of writing
+Lives is for the imitation of the readers. It will be in the power of
+very few to imitate the duke of Marlborough: we must be content with
+admiring his great qualities and actions, without hopes of following
+them. The private and social virtues are more easily transcribed. The
+life of Cowley is more instructive, as well as more fine, than any we
+have in our language. And it is to be wished, since Mr. Philips had so
+many of the good qualities of that poet, that I had some of the abilities
+of his historian. The Grecian philosophers have had their lives written,
+their morals commended, and their sayings recorded. Mr. Philips had
+all the virtues to which most of them only pretended, and all their
+integrity, without any of their affectation.
+
+"The French are very just to eminent men in this point; not a learned
+man nor a poet can die, but all Europe must be acquainted with his
+accomplishments. They give praise and expect it in their turns: they
+commend their Patrus and Molieres, as well as their Condes and Turennes;
+their Pellisons and Racines have their elogies, as well as the prince
+whom they celebrate; and their poems, their mercuries, and orations, nay,
+their very gazettes are filled with the praises of the learned.
+
+"I am satisfied, had they a Philips among them, and known how to value
+him; had they one of his learning, his temper, but above all of that
+particular turn of humour, that altogether new genius, he had been an
+example to their poets, and a subject of their panegyricks, and, perhaps,
+set in competition with the ancients, to whom only he ought to submit.
+
+"I shall, therefore, endeavour to do justice to his memory, since nobody
+else undertakes it. And, indeed, I can assign no cause why so many of his
+acquaintance, that are as willing and more able than myself to give an
+account of him, should forbear to celebrate the memory of one so dear to
+them, but only that they look upon it as a work entirely belonging to me.
+
+"I shall content myself with giving only a character of the person and
+his writings, without meddling with the transactions of his life, which
+was altogether private: I shall only make this known observation of his
+family, that there was scarce so many extraordinary men in any one. I
+have been acquainted with five of his brothers, of which three are still
+living, all men of fine parts, yet all of a very unlike temper and
+genius. So that their fruitful mother, like the mother of the gods, seems
+to have produced a numerous offspring, all of different, though uncommon
+faculties. Of the living, neither their modesty, nor the humour of the
+present age, permits me to speak; of the dead, I may say something.
+
+"One of them had made the greatest progress in the study of the law of
+nature and nations, of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, and
+even improved, the notions of Grotius, and the more refined ones of
+Puffendorf. He could refute Hobbes with as much solidity as some of
+greater name, and expose him with as much wit as Echard. That noble
+study, which requires the greatest reach of reason and nicety of
+distinction, was not at all difficult to him. 'Twas a national loss to be
+deprived of one who understood a science so necessary, and yet so unknown
+in England. I shall add only, he had the same honesty and sincerity as
+the person I write of, but more heat: the former was more inclined to
+argue, the latter to divert: one employed his reason more; the other his
+imagination: the former had been well qualified for those posts, which
+the modesty of the latter made him refuse. His other dead brother would
+have been an ornament to the college of which he was a member. He had a
+genius either for poetry or oratory; and, though very young, composed
+several very agreeable pieces. In all probability he would have wrote as
+finely, as his brother did nobly. He might have been the Waller, as the
+other was the Milton of his time. The one might celebrate Marlborough,
+the other his beautiful offspring. This had not been so fit to describe
+the actions of heroes, as the virtues of private men. In a word, he had
+been fitter for my place; and, while his brother was writing upon the
+greatest men that any age ever produced, in a style equal to them, he
+might have served as a panegyrist on him.
+
+"This is all I think necessary to say of his family. I shall proceed to
+himself and his writings; which I shall first treat of, because I know
+they are censured by some out of envy, and more out of ignorance.
+
+"The Splendid Shilling, which is far the least considerable, has the more
+general reputation, and, perhaps, hinders the character of the rest. The
+style agreed so well with the burlesque, that the ignorant thought it
+could become nothing else. Every body is pleased with that work. But to
+judge rightly of the other, requires a perfect mastery of poetry and
+criticism, a just contempt of the little turns and witticisms now in
+vogue, and, above all, a perfect understanding of poetical diction and
+description.
+
+"All that have any taste of poetry will agree, that the great burlesque
+is much to be preferred to the low. It is much easier to make a great
+thing appear little, than a little one great: Cotton and others of a very
+low genius have done the former; but Philips, Garth, and Boileau, only
+the latter.
+
+"A picture in miniature is every painter's talent; but a piece for a
+cupola, where all the figures are enlarged, yet proportioned to the eye,
+requires a master's hand.
+
+"It must still be more acceptable than the low burlesque, because the
+images of the latter are mean and filthy, and the language itself
+entirely unknown to all men of good breeding. The style of Billingsgate
+would not make a very agreeable figure at St. James's. A gentleman would
+take but little pleasure in language, which he would think it hard to be
+accosted in, or in reading words which he could not pronounce without
+blushing. The lofty burlesque is the more to be admired, because, to
+write it, the author must be master of two of the most different talents
+in nature. A talent to find out and expose what is ridiculous, is very
+different from that which is to raise and elevate. We must read Virgil
+and Milton for the one, and Horace and Hudibras for the other. We know
+that the authors of excellent comedies have often failed in the grave
+style, and the tragedian as often in comedy. Admiration and laughter
+are of such opposite natures, that they are seldom created by the same
+person. The man of mirth is always observing the follies and weaknesses,
+the serious writer the virtues or crimes, of mankind; one is pleased with
+contemplating a beau, the other a hero: even from the same object they
+would draw different ideas: Achilles would appear in very different
+lights to Thersites and Alexander. The one would admire the courage and
+greatness of his soul; the other would ridicule the vanity and rashness
+of his temper. As the satirist says to Hannibal:
+
+  "I, curre per Alpes,
+  Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio fias.
+
+"The contrariety of style to the subject pleases the more strongly,
+because it is more surprising; the expectation of the reader is
+pleasantly deceived, who expects an humble style from the subject, or a
+great subject from the style. It pleases the more universally, because
+it is agreeable to the taste both of the grave and the merry; but more
+particularly so to those who have a relish of the best writers, and the
+noblest sort of poetry. I shall produce only one passage out of this
+poet, which is the misfortune of his galligaskins:
+
+  "My galligaskins, which have long withstood
+  The winter's fury and encroaching frosts,
+  By time subdued (what will not time subdue!)
+
+"This is admirably pathetical, and shows very well the vicissitudes of
+sublunary things. The rest goes on to a prodigious height; and a man in
+Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetick and terrible complaint.
+Is it not surprising that the subject should be so mean, and the verse so
+pompous; that the least things in his poetry, as in a microscope, should
+grow great and formidable to the eye? especially considering that, not
+understanding French, he had no model for his style? that he should have
+no writer to imitate, and himself be inimitable? that he should do all
+this before he was twenty? at an age which is usually pleased with a
+glare of false thoughts, little turns, and unnatural fustian? at an
+age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost said Virgil, were
+inconsiderable? So soon was his imagination at its full strength, his
+judgment ripe, and his humour complete.
+
+"This poem was written for his own diversion, without any design of
+publication. It was communicated but to me; but soon spread, and fell
+into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely mangled, by Ben.
+Bragge; and impudently said to be corrected by the author. This grievance
+is now grown more epidemical; and no man now has a right to his own
+thoughts, or a title to his own writings. Xenophon answered the Persian,
+who demanded his arms: 'We have nothing now left but our arms and our
+valour: if we surrender the one, how shall we make use of the other?'
+Poets have nothing but their wits and their writings; and if they are
+plundered of the latter, I don't see what good the former can do them.
+To pirate, and publickly own it, to prefix their names to the works they
+steal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never yet heard of but
+in England. It will sound oddly to posterity, that, in a polite nation,
+in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wise, most
+learned, and most generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the
+property of a mechanick should be better secured than that of a scholar!
+that the poorest manual operations should be more valued than the noblest
+products of the brain! that it should be felony to rob a cobbler of a
+pair of shoes, and no crime to deprive the best author of his whole
+subsistence! that nothing should make a man a sure title to his own
+writings but the stupidity of them! that the works of Dryden should meet
+with less encouragement than those of his own Flecknoe, or Blackmore!
+that Tillotson and St. George, Tom Thumb and Temple, should be set on
+an equal foot! This is the reason why this very paper has been so long
+delayed; and, while the most impudent and scandalous libels are publickly
+vended by the pirates, this innocent work is forced to steal abroad as if
+it were a libel.
+
+"Our present writers are by these wretches reduced to the same condition
+Virgil was, when the centurion seized on his estate. But I don't doubt
+but I can fix upon the Maecenas of the present age, that will retrieve
+them from it. But, whatever effect this piracy may have upon us, it
+contributed very much to the advantage of Mr. Philips: it helped him to
+a reputation which he neither desired nor expected, and to the honour of
+being put upon a work of which he did not think himself capable; but the
+event showed his modesty. And it was reasonable to hope, that he, who
+could raise mean subjects so high, should still be more elevated on
+greater themes; that he that could draw such noble ideas from a shilling,
+could not fail upon such a subject as the duke of Marlborough, "which
+is capable of heightening even the most low and trifling genius." And,
+indeed, most of the great works which have been produced in the world
+have been owing less to the poet than the patron. Men of the greatest
+genius are sometimes lazy, and want a spur; often modest, and dare not
+venture in publick: they certainly know their faults in the worst things;
+and even their best things they are not fond of, because the idea of what
+they ought to be is far above what they are. This induced me to believe
+that Virgil desired his works might be burnt, had not the same Augustus
+that desired him to write them, preserved them from destruction. A
+scribbling beau may imagine a poet _may_ be induced to write, by the
+very pleasure he finds in writing; but that is seldom, when people are
+necessitated to it. I have known men row, and use very hard labour, for
+diversion, which, if they had been tied to, they would have thought
+themselves very unhappy.
+
+"But to return to Blenheim, that work so much admired by some, and
+censured by others. I have often wished he had wrote it in Latin, that he
+might be out of the reach of the empty criticks, who could have as little
+understood his meaning in that language as they do his beauties in his
+own.
+
+"False criticks have been the plague of all ages; Milton himself, in a
+very polite court, has been compared to the rumbling of a wheelbarrow: he
+had been on the wrong side, and, therefore, could not be a good poet. And
+this, perhaps, may be Mr. Philips's case.
+
+"But I take, generally, the ignorance of his readers to be the occasion
+of their dislike. People that have formed their taste upon the French
+writers can have no relish for Philips: they admire points and turns,
+and, consequently, have no judgment of what is great and majestick; he
+must look little in their eyes, when he soars so high as to be almost out
+of their view. I cannot, therefore, allow any admirer of the French to be
+a judge of Blenheim, nor any who takes Bouhours for a complete critick.
+He generally judges of the ancients by the moderns, and not the moderns
+by the ancients; he takes those passages of their own authors to be
+really sublime which come the nearest to it; he often calls that a noble
+and a great thought which is only a pretty and a fine one; and has more
+instances of the sublime out of Ovid de Tristibus, than he has out of all
+Virgil.
+
+"I shall allow, therefore, only those to be judges of Philips, who make
+the ancients, and particularly Virgil, their standard.
+
+"But, before I enter on this subject, I shall consider what is particular
+in the style of Philips, and examine what ought to be the style of
+heroick poetry; and next inquire how far he is come up to that style.
+
+"His style is particular, because he lays aside rhyme, and writes in
+blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently postpones the adjective
+to the substantive, and the substantive to the verb; and leaves out
+little particles, _a_, and _the_; _her_, and _his_; and uses frequent
+appositions. Now let us examine, whether these alterations of style be
+conformable to the true sublime."
+
+[Footnote 90: Isaac Vossius relates, that he also delighted in having
+his hair combed when he could have it done by barbers or other persons
+skilled in the rules of prosody. Of the passage that contains this
+ridiculous fancy, the following is a translation: "Many people take
+delight in the rubbing of their limbs, and the combing of their hair; but
+these exercises would delight much more, if the servants at the baths,
+and of the barbers, were so skilful in this art, that they could express
+any measures with their fingers. I remember that more than once I have
+fallen into the hands of men of this sort, who could imitate any
+measure of songs in combing the hair, so as sometimes to express very
+intelligibly iambics, trochees, dactyls, &c. from whence there arose
+to me no small delight." See his treatise de Poematum Cantu et Viribus
+Rythmi. Oxon. 1673. p. 62. II.]
+
+[Footnote 91: This ode I am willing to mention, because there seems to be
+an errour in all the printed copies, which is, I find, retained in the
+last. They all read;
+
+  Quam Gratiarum cura decentium
+  O! O! labellis cui Venus insidet.
+
+The author probably wrote,
+
+  Quam Gratiarum cura decentium
+  Ornat; labellis cui Venus insidet. Dr. J.
+
+Hannes was professor of chemistry at Oxford, and wrote one or two poems
+in the Musae Anglicanae. J.B.]
+
+
+
+
+WALSH.
+
+William Walsh, the son of Joseph Walsh, esq. of Abberley, in
+Worcestershire, was born in 1663, as appears from the account of Wood,
+who relates, that at the age of fifteen he became, in 1678, a gentleman
+commoner of Wadham college.
+
+He left the university without a degree, and pursued his studies in
+London and at home; that he studied, in whatever place, is apparent from
+the effect, for he became, in Mr. Dryden's opinion, "the best critick in
+the nation."
+
+He was not, however, merely a critick or a scholar, but a man of fashion,
+and, as Dennis remarks, ostentatiously splendid in his dress. He was,
+likewise, a member of parliament and a courtier, knight of the shire for
+his native county in several parliaments; in another the representative
+of Richmond in Yorkshire; and gentleman of the horse to queen Anne, under
+the duke of Somerset.
+
+Some of his verses show him to have been a zealous friend to the
+revolution; but his political ardour did not abate his reverence
+or kindness for Dryden, to whom he gave a Dissertation on Virgil's
+Pastorals, in which, however studied, he discovers some ignorance of the
+laws of French versification.
+
+In 1705, he began to correspond with Mr. Pope, in whom he discovered very
+early the power of poetry. Their letters are written upon the pastoral
+comedy of the Italians, and those pastorals which Pope was then preparing
+to publish.
+
+The kindnesses which are first experienced are seldom forgotten. Pope
+always retained a grateful memory of Walsh's notice, and mentioned him,
+in one of his latter pieces, among those that had encouraged his juvenile
+studies:
+
+  Granville the polite,
+  And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.
+
+In his Essay on Criticism he had given him more splendid praise; and,
+in the opinion of his learned commentator, sacrificed a little of his
+judgment to his gratitude.
+
+The time of his death I have not learned. It must have happened between
+1707, when he wrote to Pope, and 1711, when Pope praised him in his
+Essay. The epitaph makes him forty-six years old: if Wood's account be
+right, he died in 1709.
+
+He is known more by his familiarity with greater men, than by any thing
+done or written by himself.
+
+His works are not numerous. In prose he wrote Eugenia, a Defence of
+Women; which Dryden honoured with a preface.
+
+Esculapius, or the Hospital of Fools, published after his death.
+
+A Collection of Letters and Poems, amorous and gallant, was published in
+the volumes called Dryden's Miscellany, and some other occasional pieces.
+
+To his poems and letters is prefixed a very judicious preface upon
+epistolary composition and amorous poetry.
+
+In his Golden Age Restored, there was something of humour, while the
+facts were recent; but it now strikes no longer. In his imitation of
+Horace, the first stanzas are happily turned; and, in all his writings,
+there are pleasing passages. He has, however, more elegance than vigour,
+and seldom rises higher than to be pretty.
+
+
+
+
+DRYDEN[92].
+
+
+Of the great poet whose life I am about to delineate, the curiosity which
+his reputation must excite, will require a display more ample than can
+now be given. His contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius,
+left his life unwritten; and nothing, therefore, can be known beyond what
+casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied.
+
+John Dryden was born August 9, 1631[93], at Aldwinkle, near Oundle,
+the son of Erasmus Dryden, of Titchmersh; who was the third son of
+sir Erasmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Ashby. All these places are in
+Northamptonshire; but the original stock of the family was in the county
+of Huntingdon[94].
+
+He is reported by his last biographer, Derrick, to have inherited, from
+his father, an estate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as
+was said, an anabaptist. For either of these particulars no authority is
+given[95]. Such a fortune ought to have secured him from that poverty
+which seems always to have oppressed him; or, if he had wasted it, to
+have made him ashamed of publishing his necessities. But, though he
+had many enemies, who, undoubtedly, examined his life with a scrutiny
+sufficiently malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with
+waste of his patrimony. He was, indeed, sometimes reproached for his
+first religion. I am, therefore, inclined to believe that Derrick's
+intelligence was partly true and partly erroneous[96].
+
+From Westminster school, where he was instructed, as one of the king's
+scholars, by Dr. Busby, whom he long after continued to reverence,
+he was, in 1650, elected to one of the Westminster scholarships at
+Cambridge[97].
+
+Of his school performances has appeared only a poem on the death of
+lord Hastings, composed with great ambition of such conceits as,
+notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example
+of Cowley still kept in reputation. Lord Hastings died of the smallpox;
+and his poet has made of the pustules first rosebuds, and then gems; at
+last exalts them into stars; and says,
+
+  No comet need foretell his change drew on,
+  Whose corpse might seem a constellation.
+
+At the university he does not appear to have been eager of poetical
+distinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious
+subjects, or publick occasions. He probably considered, that he, who
+proposed to be an author, ought first to be a student. He obtained,
+whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the college. Why he was
+excluded cannot now be known, and it is vain to guess; had he thought
+himself injured, he knew how to complain. In the life of Plutarch he
+mentions his education in the college with gratitude; but, in a prologue
+at Oxford, he has these lines:
+
+  Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
+  Than his own mother-university:
+  Thebes did his rude, unknowing youth engage;
+  He chooses Athens in his riper age.
+
+It was not till the death of Cromwell, in 1658, that he became a publick
+candidate for fame, by publishing Heroick Stanzas on the late Lord
+Protector[98]; which, compared with the verses of Sprat and Waller, on
+the same occasion, were sufficient to raise great expectations of the
+rising poet.
+
+When the king was restored, Dryden, like the other panegyrists of
+usurpation, changed his opinion, or his profession, and published Astrea
+Redux; a poem on the happy Restoration and Return of his most sacred
+Majesty King Charles the second.
+
+The reproach of inconstancy was, on this occasion, shared with such
+numbers, that it produced neither hatred nor disgrace! if he changed, he
+changed with the nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his
+reputation raised him enemies.
+
+The same year he praised the new king in a second poem on his
+restoration. In the Astrea was the line,
+
+  An horrid _stillness_ first _invades_ the _ear_,
+  And in that silence we a tempest fear--
+
+for which he was persecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps with
+more than was deserved. _Silence_ is, indeed, mere privation; and, so
+considered, cannot _invade_; but privation, likewise, certainly is
+_darkness_, and probably _cold_; yet poetry has never been refused the
+right of ascribing effects or agency to them as to positive powers. No
+man scruples to say that _darkness_ hinders him from his work; or that
+_cold_ has killed the plants. Death is also privation; yet who has made
+any difficulty of assigning to death a dart, and the power of striking?
+
+In settling the order of his works there is some difficulty; for, even
+when they are important enough to be formally offered to a patron, he
+does not commonly date his dedication; the time of writing and publishing
+is not always the same; nor can the first editions be easily found, if
+even from them could be obtained the necessary information[99].
+
+The time at which his first play was exhibited is not certainly known,
+because it was not printed till it was, some years afterwards, altered
+and revived; but since the plays are said to be printed in the order in
+which they were written, from the dates of some, those of others may
+be inferred; and thus it may be collected, that in 1663, in the
+thirty-second year of his life, he commenced a writer for the stage;
+compelled, undoubtedly, by necessity, for he appears never to have loved
+that exercise of his genius, or to have much pleased himself with his own
+dramas.
+
+Of the stage, when he had once invaded it, he kept possession for many
+years; not, indeed, without the competition of rivals who sometimes
+prevailed, or the censure of criticks, which was often poignant, and
+often just; but with such a degree of reputation as made him, at least,
+secure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the
+publick.
+
+His first piece was a comedy called the Wild Gallant[100]. He began with
+no happy auguries; for his performance was so much disapproved, that he
+was compelled to recall it, and change it from its imperfect state to the
+form in which it now appears, and which is yet sufficiently defective to
+vindicate the criticks.
+
+I wish that there were no necessity of following the progress of his
+theatrical fame, or tracing the meanders of his mind through the whole
+series of his dramatick performances; it will be fit, however,
+to enumerate them, and to take especial notice of those that are
+distinguished by any peculiarity, intrinsick or concomitant; for the
+composition and fate of eight-and-twenty dramas, include too much of a
+poetical life to be omitted.
+
+In 1664, he published the Rival Ladies, which he dedicated to the earl of
+Orrery, a man of high reputation both as a writer, and a statesman. In
+this play he made his essay of dramatick rhyme, which he defends in his
+dedication, with sufficient certainty of a favourable hearing; for Orrery
+was himself a writer of rhyming tragedies.
+
+He then joined with sir Robert Howard in the Indian Queen, a tragedy in
+rhyme. The parts which either of them wrote are not distinguished.
+
+The Indian Emperor was published in 1667. It is a tragedy in rhyme,
+intended for a sequel to Howard's Indian Queen. Of this connexion notice
+was given to the audience by printed bills, distributed at the door; an
+expedient supposed to be ridiculed in the Rehearsal, where Bayes
+tells how many reams he has printed, to instil into the audience some
+conception of his plot.
+
+In this play is the description of night, which Rymer has made famous by
+preferring it to those of all other poets.
+
+The practice of making tragedies in rhyme was introduced soon after the
+restoration, as it seems, by the earl of Orrery, in compliance with the
+opinion of Charles the second, who had formed his taste by the French
+theatre; and Dryden, who wrote, and made no difficulty of declaring that
+he wrote, only to please, and who, perhaps, knew that by his dexterity of
+versification he was more likely to excel others in rhyme than without
+it, very readily adopted his master's preference. He, therefore, made
+rhyming tragedies, till, by the prevalence of manifest propriety, he
+seems to have grown ashamed of making them any longer.
+
+To this play is prefixed a very vehement defence of dramatick rhyme, in
+confutation of the preface to the Duke of Lerma, in which sir Robert
+Howard had censured it.
+
+In 1667, he published Annus Mirabilis, the Year of Wonders, which may be
+esteemed one of his most elaborate works.
+
+It is addressed to sir Robert Howard by a letter, which is not properly
+a dedication; and, writing to a poet, he has interspersed many critical
+observations, of which some are common, and some, perhaps, ventured
+without much consideration. He began, even now, to exercise the
+domination of conscious genius, by recommending his own performance:
+"I am satisfied that as the prince and general [Rupert and Monk] are
+incomparably the best subjects I ever had, so what I have written on
+them is much better than what I have performed on any other. As I have
+endeavoured to adorn my poem with noble thoughts, so much more to express
+those thoughts with elocution."
+
+It is written in quatrains, or heroick stanzas of four lines; a measure
+which he had learned from the Gondibert of Davenant, and which he then
+thought the most majestick that the English language affords. Of this
+stanza he mentions the incumbrances, increased as they were by the
+exactness which the age required. It was, throughout his life, very much
+his custom to recommend his works, by representation of the difficulties
+that he had encountered, without appearing to have sufficiently
+considered, that where there is no difficulty there is no praise.
+
+There seems to be, in the conduct of sir Robert Howard and Dryden towards
+each other, something that is not now easily to be explained[101].
+Dryden, in his dedication to the earl of Orrery, had defended dramatick
+rhyme; and Howard, in the preface to a collection of plays, had censured
+his opinion. Dryden vindicated himself in his Dialogue on Dramatick
+Poetry: Howard, in his preface to the Duke of Lerma, animadverted on the
+vindication; and Dryden, in a preface to the Indian Emperor, replied to
+the animadversions with great asperity, and almost with contumely. The
+dedication to this play is dated the year in which the Annus Mirabilis
+was published. Here appears a strange inconsistency; but Langbaine
+affords some help, by relating that the answer to Howard was not
+published in the first edition of the play, but was added when it was
+afterwards reprinted; and, as the Duke of Lerma did not appear till 1668,
+the same year in which the dialogue was published, there was time enough
+for enmity to grow up between authors, who, writing both for the theatre,
+were naturally rivals.
+
+He was now so much distinguished, that, in 1668[102], he succeeded sir
+William Davenant as poet laureate. The salary of the laureate had been
+raised in favour of Jonson, by Charles the first, from a hundred marks
+to one hundred pounds a year, and a tierce of wine; a revenue, in those
+days, not inadequate to the conveniencies of life.
+
+The same year he published his Essay on Dramatick Poetry, an elegant and
+instructive dialogue; in which we are told, by Prior, that the principal
+character is meant to represent the duke of Dorset. This work seems to
+have given Addison a model for his Dialogues upon Medals.
+
+Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen, 1668, is a tragicomedy. In the preface
+he discusses a curious question, whether a poet can judge well of his
+own productions? and determines very justly, that, of the plan and
+disposition, and all that can be reduced to principles of science, the
+author may depend upon his own opinion; but that, in those parts where
+fancy predominates, self-love may easily deceive. He might have observed,
+that what is good only because it pleases, cannot be pronounced good till
+it has been found to please.
+
+Sir Martin Mar-all, 1668, is a comedy published without preface or
+dedication, and at first without the name of the author. Langbaine
+charges it, like most of the rest, with plagiarism; and observes, that
+the song is translated from Voiture, allowing, however, that both the
+sense and measure are exactly observed.
+
+The Tempest, 1670, is an alteration of Shakespeare's play, made by Dryden
+in conjunction with Davenant; "whom," says he, "I found of so quick a
+fancy, that nothing was proposed to him in which he could not suddenly
+produce a thought extremely pleasant and surprising; and those first
+thoughts of his, contrary to the Latin proverb, were not always the least
+happy; and as his fancy was quick, so, likewise, were the products of it
+remote and new. He borrowed not of any other; and his imaginations were
+such as could not easily enter into any other man."
+
+The effect produced by the conjunction of these two powerful minds was,
+that to Shakespeare's monster, Caliban, is added a sister monster,
+Sycorax; and a woman, who, in the original play, had never seen a man,
+is, in this, brought acquainted with a man that had never seen a woman.
+
+About this time, in 1673, Dryden seems to have had his quiet much
+disturbed by the success of the Emperess of Morocco, a tragedy written
+in rhyme, by Elkanah Settle; which was so much applauded, as to make him
+think his supremacy of reputation in some danger. Settle had not only
+been prosperous on the stage, but, in the confidence of success, had
+published his play, with sculptures and a preface of defiance. Here was
+one offence added to another; and, for the last blast of inflammation, it
+was acted at Whitehall by the court ladies.
+
+Dryden could not now repress those emotions, which he called indignation,
+and others jealousy; but wrote upon the play and the dedication such
+criticism as malignant impatience could pour out in haste.
+
+Of Settle he gives this character: "He's an animal of a most deplored
+understanding, without reading and conversation. His being is in a
+twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought, which he can never
+fashion into wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough-hewn,
+his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and
+ill-sounding. The little talent which he has, is fancy. He sometimes
+labours with a thought; but, with the pudder he makes to bring it into
+the world, 'tis commonly stillborn; so that, for want of learning and
+elocution, he will never be able to express any thing either naturally or
+justly."
+
+This is not very decent; yet this is one of the pages in which criticism
+prevails most over brutal fury.
+
+He proceeds: "He has a heavy hand at fools, and a great felicity in
+writing nonsense for them. Fools they will be, in spite of him. His king,
+his two emperesses, his villain, and his sub-villain, nay, his hero, have
+all a certain natural cast of the father--their folly was born and bred
+in them, and something of the Elkanah will be visible."
+
+This is Dryden's general declamation; I will not withhold from the reader
+a particular remark. Having gone through the first act, he says: "To
+conclude this act with the most rumbling piece of nonsense spoken yet:
+
+  "To flatt'ring lightning our feign'd smiles conform,
+  Which, back'd with thunder, do but gild a storm.
+
+"_Conform a smile to lightning_, make a _smile_ imitate _lightning_, and
+_flattering lightning_: lightning, sure, is a threatening thing. And
+this lightning must _gild a storm_. Now, if I must conform my smiles to
+lightning, then my smiles must gild a storm too: to _gild_ with _smiles_,
+is a new invention of gilding. And gild a storm by being _backed with
+thunder_. Thunder is part of the storm; so one part of the storm must
+help to _gild_ another part, and help by _backing_; as if a man would
+gild a thing the better for being backed, or having a load upon his back.
+So that here is _gilding_ by _conforming, smiling, lightning, backing_,
+and _thundering_. The whole is as if I should say thus: I will make my
+counterfeit smiles look like a flattering stonehorse, which, being backed
+with a trooper, does but gild the battle. I am mistaken, if nonsense is
+not here pretty thick sown. Sure the poet writ these two lines aboard
+some smack in a storm, and, being sea-sick, spewed up a good lump of
+clotted nonsense at once."
+
+Here is, perhaps, a sufficient specimen; but as the pamphlet, though
+Dryden's, has never been thought worthy of republication, and is not
+easily to be found, it may gratify curiosity to quote it more largely:
+
+  "Whene'er she bleeds,
+  He no severer a damnation needs,
+  That dares pronounce the sentence of her death,
+  Than the infection that attends that breath.
+
+"_That attends that breath_. The poet is at _breath_ again; _breath_
+can never scape him; and here he brings in a _breath_ that must be
+_infectious_ with _pronouncing_ a sentence; and this sentence is not to
+be pronounced till the condemned party _bleeds_; that is, she must be
+executed first, and sentenced after; and the _pronouncing_ of this
+_sentence_ will be infectious; that is, others will catch the disease of
+that sentence, and this infecting of others will torment a man's self.
+The whole is thus: when she bleeds, thou needest no greater hell or
+torment to thyself, than infecting of others by pronouncing a sentence
+upon her. What hodge-podge does he make here! Never was Dutch grout such
+clogging, thick, indigestible stuff. But this is but a taste to stay the
+stomach; we shall have a more plentiful mess presently.
+
+"Now to dish up the poet's broth, that I promised:
+
+  "For when we're dead, and our freed souls enlarg'd,
+  Of nature's grosser burden we're discharg'd,
+  Then gently, as a happy lover's sigh,
+  Like wand'ring meteors through the air we'll fly,
+  And in our airy walk, as subtle guests,
+  We'll steal into our cruel fathers' breasts,
+  There read their souls, and track each passion's sphere:
+  See how revenge moves there, ambition here!
+  And in their orbs view the dark characters
+  Of sieges, ruins, murders, blood, and wars.
+  We'll blot out all those hideous draughts, and write
+  Pure and white forms; then with a radiant light
+  Their breasts encircle, till their passions be
+  Gentle as nature in its infancy;
+  Till, soften'd by our charms, their furies cease,
+  And their revenge resolves into a peace.
+  Thus by our death their quarrel ends,
+  Whom living we made foes, dead we'll make friends.
+
+"If this be not a very liberal mess, I will refer myself to the stomach
+of any moderate guest. And a rare mess it is, far excelling any
+Westminster white-broth. It is a kind of giblet porridge, made of the
+giblets of a couple of young geese, stodged full of meteors, orbs,
+spheres, track, hideous draughts, dark characters, white forms, and
+radiant lights; designed not only to please appetite, and indulge luxury,
+but it is also physical, being an approved medicine to purge choler: for
+it is propounded by Morena, as a receipt to cure their fathers of their
+cholerick humours; and, were it written in characters as barbarous as
+the words, might very well pass for a doctor's bill. To conclude: it is
+porridge, 'tis a receipt, 'tis a pig with a pudding in the belly, 'tis
+I know not what: for, certainly, never any one that pretended to write
+sense, had the impudence before to put such stuff as this into the mouths
+of those that were to speak it before an audience, whom he did not take
+to be all fools; and, after that, to print it too, and expose it to the
+examination of the world. But let us see what we can make of this stuff:
+
+  "For when we're dead, and our freed souls enlarg'd--
+
+"Here he tells us what it is to be _dead_; it is to have _our freed souls
+set free_. Now, if to have a soul set free, is to be dead; then to have a
+_freed soul_ set free, is to have a dead man die.
+
+  "Then gentle, as a happy lover's sigh--
+
+"They two like one _sigh_, and that one _sigh_ like two wandering
+meteors,
+
+  "Shall fly through the air--
+
+"That is, they shall mount above like falling stars, or else they shall
+skip like two Jacks with lanterns, or Will with a wisp, and Madge with a
+candle.
+
+"_And in their airy walk steal into their cruel fathers' breasts, like
+subtle guests_. So that their _fathers' breasts_ must be in an _airy
+walk_, an airy _walk_ of a _flier. And there they will read their souls,
+and track the spheres of their passions_. That is, these walking fliers,
+Jack with a lantern, &c. will put on his spectacles, and fall a _reading
+souls_, and put on his pumps and fall a _tracking of spheres_; so that he
+will read and run, walk and fly, at the same time! Oh! Nimble Jack! _Then
+he will see, how revenge here, how ambition there_--The birds will hop
+about. _And then view the dark characters of sieges, ruins, murders,
+blood, and wars, in their orbs: track the characters_ to their forms! Oh!
+rare sport for Jack! Never was place so full of game as these breasts!
+You cannot stir, but flush a sphere, start a character, or unkennel an
+orb!"
+
+Settle's is said to have been the first play embellished with sculptures;
+those ornaments seem to have given poor Dryden great disturbance. He
+tries, however, to ease his pain by venting his malice in a parody:
+
+"The poet has not only been so impudent to expose all this stuff, but so
+arrogant to defend it with an epistle; like a saucy booth-keeper, that,
+when he had put a cheat upon the people, would wrangle and fight with
+any that would not like it, or would offer to discover it; for which
+arrogance our poet receives this correction; and, to jerk him a little
+the sharper, I will not transpose his verse, but by the help of his own
+words transnonsense sense, that, by my stuff, people may judge the better
+what his is:
+
+  "Great boy, thy tragedy and sculptures done,
+  From press and plates, in fleets do homeward come;
+  And in ridiculous and humble pride,
+  Their course in ballad-singers' baskets guide,
+  Whose greasy twigs do all new beauties take,
+  From the gay shows thy dainty sculptures make.
+  Thy lines a mess of rhyming nonsense yield,
+  A senseless tale, with flattering fustian fill'd.
+  No grain of sense does in one line appear,
+  Thy words big bulks of boist'rous bombast bear,
+  With noise they move, and from play'rs' mouths rebound,
+  When their tongues dance to thy words' empty sound.
+  By thee inspir'd the rumbling verses roll,
+  As if that rhyme and bombast lent a soul:
+  And with that soul they seem taught duty too;
+  To huffing words does humble nonsense bow,
+  As if it would thy worthless worth enhance,
+  To th' lowest rank of fops thy praise advance,
+  To whom, by instinct, all thy stuff is dear:
+  Their loud claps echo to the theatre:
+  From breaths of fools thy commendation spreads,
+  Fame sings thy praise with mouths of loggerheads.
+  With noise and laughing each thy fustian greets,
+  'Tis clapt by choirs of empty-headed cits,
+  Who have their tribute sent, and homage given,
+  As men in whispers send loud noise to heaven.
+
+"Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle: and now we are come from
+aboard his dancing, masking, rebounding, breathing fleet; and, as if we
+had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but fools and nonsense."
+
+Such was the criticism to which the genius of Dryden could be reduced,
+between rage and terrour; rage with little provocation, and terrour with
+little danger. To see the highest minds thus levelled with the meanest,
+may produce some solace to the consciousness of weakness, and some
+mortification to the pride of wisdom. But let it be remembered, that
+minds are not levelled in their powers but when they are first levelled
+in their desires. Dryden and Settle had both placed their happiness in
+the claps of multitudes.
+
+An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer, a comedy, 1671, is dedicated
+to the illustrious duke of Newcastle, whom he courts by adding to his
+praises those of his lady, not only as a lover but a partner of his
+studies. It is unpleasing to think how many names, once celebrated,
+are since forgotten. Of Newcastle's works nothing is now known but his
+Treatise on Horsemanship.
+
+The preface seems very elaborately written, and contains many just
+remarks on the fathers of English drama. Shakespeare's plots, he says,
+are in the hundred novels of Cinthio; those of Beaumont and Fletcher in
+Spanish Stories; Jonson only made them for himself. His criticisms upon
+tragedy, comedy, and farce, are judicious and profound. He endeavours to
+defend the immorality of some of his comedies by the example of former
+writers; which is only to say, that he was not the first, nor, perhaps,
+the greatest offender. Against those that accused him of plagiarism he
+alleges a favourable expression of the king: "He only desired that they,
+who accuse me of thefts, would steal him plays like mine;" and then
+relates how much labour he spends in fitting for the English stage what
+he borrows from others.
+
+Tyrannick Love, or the Virgin Martyr, 1672, was another tragedy in rhyme,
+conspicuous for many passages of strength and elegance, and many of empty
+noise and ridiculous turbulence. The rants of Maximin have been always
+the sport of criticism; and were, at length, if his own confession may be
+trusted, the shame of the writer.
+
+Of this play he takes care to let the reader know, that it was contrived
+and written in seven weeks. Want of time was often his excuse, or,
+perhaps, shortness of time was his private boast, in the form of an
+apology.
+
+It was written before the Conquest of Granada, but published after it.
+The design is to recommend piety: "I considered that pleasure was not the
+only end of poesy; and that even the instructions of morality were not
+so wholly the business of a poet, as that precepts and examples of piety
+were to be omitted; for to leave that employment altogether to the clergy,
+were to forget that religion was first taught in verse, which the laziness
+or dulness of succeeding priesthood turned afterwards into prose." Thus
+foolishly could Dryden write, rather than not show his malice to the
+parsons.
+
+The two parts of the Conquest of Granada, 1672, are written with a
+seeming determination to glut the publick with dramatick wonders; to
+exhibit, in its highest elevation, a theatrical meteor of incredible love
+and impossible valour, and to leave no room for a wilder flight to the
+extravagance of posterity. All the rays of romantick heat, whether
+amorous or warlike, glow in Almanzor, by a kind of concentration. He is
+above all laws; he is exempt from all restraints; he ranges the world at
+will, and governs wherever he appears. He fights without inquiring the
+cause, and loves, in spite of the obligations of justice, of rejection by
+his mistress, and of prohibition from the dead. Yet the scenes are, for
+the most part, delightful; they exhibit a kind of illustrious depravity,
+and majestick madness; such as, if it is sometimes despised, is often
+reverenced, and in which the ridiculous is mingled with the astonishing.
+
+In the epilogue to the second part of the Conquest of Granada, Dryden
+indulges his favourite pleasure of discrediting his predecessors; and
+this epilogue he has defended by a long postscript. He had promised a
+second dialogue, in which he should more fully treat of the virtues and
+faults of the English poets, who have written in the dramatick, epick, or
+lyrick way. This promise was never formally performed; but, with respect
+to the dramatick writers, he has given us in his prefaces, and in this
+postscript, something equivalent; but his purpose being to exalt
+himself by the comparison, he shows faults distinctly, and only praises
+excellence in general terms.
+
+A play thus written, in professed defiance of probability, naturally drew
+down upon itself the vultures of the theatre. One of the criticks that
+attacked it was Martin Clifford, to whom Sprat addressed the Life of
+Cowley, with such veneration of his critical powers as might naturally
+excite great expectations of instruction from his remarks. But let honest
+credulity beware of receiving characters from contemporary writers.
+Clifford's remarks, by the favour of Dr. Percy, were, at last, obtained;
+and that no man may ever want them more, I will extract enough to satisfy
+all reasonable desire.
+
+In the first letter his observation is only general: "You do live," says
+he, "in as much ignorance and darkness as you did in the womb: your
+writings are like a Jack-of-all-trades' shop; they have a variety, but
+nothing of value; and if thou art not the dullest plant-animal that ever
+the earth produced, all that I have conversed with are strangely mistaken
+in thee."
+
+In the second, he tells him that Almanzor is not more copied from
+Achilles than from Ancient Pistol: "But I am," says he, "strangely
+mistaken if I have not seen this very Almanzor of yours in some disguise
+about this town, and passing under another name. Pr'ythee tell me true,
+was not this Huffcap once the Indian Emperor? and, at another time, did
+he not call himself Maximin? Was riot Lyndaraxa once called Almeira?
+I mean under Montezuma the Indian Emperor. I protest and vow they are
+either the same, or so alike that I cannot, for my heart, distinguish one
+from the other. You are, therefore, a strange unconscionable thief; thou
+art not content to steal from others, but dost rob thy poor wretched self
+too."
+
+Now was Settle's time to take his revenge. He wrote a vindication of his
+own lines; and, if he is forced to yield any thing, makes reprisals upon
+his enemy. To say that his answer is equal to the censure, is no high
+commendation. To expose Dryden's method of analyzing his expressions, he
+tries the same experiment upon the description of the ships in the Indian
+Emperor, of which, however, he does not deny the excellence; but intends
+to show, that, by studied misconstruction, every thing may be
+equally represented as ridiculous. After so much of Dryden's elegant
+animadversions, justice requires that something of Settle's should be
+exhibited. The following observations are, therefore, extracted from a
+quarto pamphlet of ninety-five pages:
+
+  "Fate after him below with pain did move,
+  And victory could scarce keep pace above.
+
+"These two lines, if he can show me any sense or thought in, or any
+thing but bombast and noise, he shall make me believe every word in his
+observations on Morocco sense.
+
+"In the Empress of Morocco were these lines:
+
+  "I'll travel then to some remoter sphere,
+  Till I find out new worlds, and crown you there.
+
+"On which Dryden made this remark:
+
+"'I believe our learned author takes a sphere for a country: the sphere
+of Morocco; as if Morocco were the globe of earth and water; but a globe
+is no sphere neither, by his leave,' &c. So _sphere_ must not be sense,
+unless it relate to a circular motion about a globe, in which sense the
+astronomers use it. I would desire him to expound those lines in Granada:
+
+  "I'll to the turrets of the palace go,
+  And add new fire to those that fight below.
+  Thence, hero-like, with torches by my side,
+  (Far be the omen though) my love I'll guide.
+  No, like his better fortune I'll appear,
+  With open arms, loose veil, and flowing hair.
+  Just flying forward from my rowling sphere.
+
+"I wonder, if he be so strict, how he dares make so bold with _sphere_
+himself, and be so critical in other men's writings. Fortune is fancied
+standing on a globe, not on a _sphere_, as he told us in the first act.
+
+"Because 'Elkanah's similes are the most unlike things to what they are
+compared in the world,' I'll venture to start a simile in his Annus
+Mirabilis: he gives this poetical description of the ship called the
+London:
+
+  "The goodly London in her gallant trim,
+  The phoenix-daughter of the vanquisht old,
+  Like a rich bride does on the ocean swim,
+  And on her shadow rides in floating gold.
+  Her flag aloft spread ruffling in the wind,
+  And sanguine streamers seem'd the flood to fire:
+  The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd,
+  Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire.
+  With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,
+  Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,
+  Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,
+  She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.
+
+"What a wonderful pother is here, to make all these poetical
+beautifications of a ship! that is a _phoenix_ in the first stanza, and
+but a _wasp_ in the last: nay, to make his humble comparison of a _wasp_
+more ridiculous, he does not say it flies upon the waves as nimbly as a
+wasp, or the like, but it seemed a _wasp_. But our author at the writing
+of this was not in his altitudes, to compare ships to floating palaces: a
+comparison to the purpose, was a perfection he did not arrive to till his
+Indian Emperor's days. But, perhaps, his similitude has more in it than
+we imagine; this ship had a great many guns in her, and they, put all
+together, made the sting in the wasp's tail; for this is all the reason I
+can guess, why it seem'd a _wasp_. But, because we will allow him all we
+can to help out, let it be a _phoenix sea-wasp_, and the rarity of such
+an animal may do much towards heightening the fancy.
+
+"It had been much more to his purpose, if he had designed to render the
+senseless play little, to have searched for some such pedantry as this:
+
+  "Two ifs scarce make one possibility.
+  If justice will take all and nothing give,
+  Justice, methinks, is not distributive.
+  To die or kill you, is the alternative.
+  Rather than take your life, I will not live.
+
+"Observe how prettily our author chops logick in heroick verse. Three
+such fustian canting words as _distributive, alternative_, and _two ifs_,
+no man but himself would have come within the noise of. But he's a man of
+general learning, and all comes into his play.
+
+"'Twould have done well too if he could have met with a rant or two,
+worth the observation; such as,
+
+  "Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace,
+  Leave months and weeks behind thee in thy race.
+
+"But surely the sun, whether he flies a lover's or not a lover's pace,
+leaves weeks and months, nay, years too, behind him in his race.
+
+"Poor Robin, or any other of the philo-mathematicks, would have given him
+satisfaction in the point:
+
+  "If I could kill thee now, thy fate's so low,
+  That I must stoop, ere I can give the blow.
+  But mine is fixt so far above thy crown,
+  That all thy men,
+  Piled on thy back, can never pull it down.
+
+"Now where that is, Almanzor's fate is fixt, I cannot guess; but,
+wherever it is, I believe Almanzor, and think that all Abdalla's
+subjects, piled upon one another, might not pull down his fate so well as
+without piling: besides, I think Abdalla so wise a man, that, if Almanzor
+had told him piling his men upon his back might do the feat, he would
+scarce bear such a weight, for the pleasure of the exploit; but it is a
+huff, and let Abdalla do it if he dare.
+
+  "The people like a headlong torrent go,
+  And ev'ry dam they break or overflow.
+  But, unoppos'd, they either lose their force,
+  Or wind in volumes to their former course.
+
+"A very pretty allusion, contrary to all sense or reason. Torrents, I
+take it, let them wind never so much, can never return to their former
+course, unless he can suppose that fountains can go upwards, which is
+impossible; nay, more, in the foregoing page he tells us so too; a trick
+of a very unfaithful memory:
+
+  "But can no more than fountains upward flow;
+
+"which of a _torrent_, which signifies a rapid stream, is much more
+impossible. Besides, if he goes to quibble, and say that it is possible
+by art water may be made return, and the same water run twice in one and
+the same channel: then he quite confutes what he says; for it is by being
+opposed, that it runs into its former course; for all engines that make
+water so return, do it by compulsion and opposition. Or, if he means a
+headlong torrent for a tide, which would be ridiculous, yet they do riot
+wind in volumes, but come foreright back, (if their upright lies straight
+to their former course,) and that by opposition of the sea-water, that
+drives them back again.
+
+"And for fancy, when he lights of any thing like it, 'tis a wonder if it
+be not borrowed. As here, for example of, I find this fanciful thought in
+his Ann. Mirab.
+
+  "Old father Thames rais'd up his rev'rend head;
+  But fear'd the fate of Simoeis would return:
+  Deep in his ooze he sought his sedgy bed;
+  And shrunk his waters back into his urn.
+
+"This is stolen from Cowley's Davideis, p. 9.
+
+  "Swift Jordan started, and strait backward fled,
+  Hiding amongst thick reeds his aged head.
+  And when the Spaniards their assault begin,
+  At once beat those without and those within.
+
+"This Almanzor speaks of himself; and, sure, for one man to conquer an
+army within the city, and another without the city, at once, is something
+difficult; but this flight is pardonable to some we meet with in Granada:
+Osmin, speaking of Almanzor,
+
+  "Who, like a tempest that outrides the wind,
+  Made a just battle, ere the bodies join'd.
+
+"Pray, what does this honourable person mean by a 'tempest that outrides
+the wind?' a tempest that outrides itself. To suppose a tempest without
+wind, is as bad as supposing a man to walk without feet; for if he
+supposes the tempest to be something distinct from the wind, yet, as
+being the effect of wind only, to come before the cause is a little
+preposterous; so that, if he takes it one way, or if he takes it the
+other, those two _ifs_ will scarce make one _possibility_." Enough of
+Settle.
+
+Marriage a-la-mode, 1673, is a comedy dedicated to the earl of Rochester;
+whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry, but the
+promoter of his fortune. Langbaine places this play in 1673. The earl of
+Rochester, therefore, was the famous Wilmot, whom yet tradition always
+represents as an enemy to Dryden, and who is mentioned by him with some
+disrespect in the preface to Juvenal.
+
+The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, a comedy, 1673, was driven off the
+stage, "against the opinion," as the author says, "of the best judges."
+It is dedicated, in a very elegant address, to sir Charles Sedley; in
+which he finds an opportunity for his usual complaint of hard treatment
+and unreasonable censure.
+
+Amboyna, 1673, is a tissue of mingled dialogue in verse and prose, and
+was, perhaps, written in less time than the Virgin Martyr; though the
+author thought not fit, either ostentatiously or mournfully, to tell how
+little labour it cost him, or at how short a warning he produced it. It
+was a temporary performance, written in the time of the Dutch war,
+to inflame the nation against their enemies; to whom he hopes, as he
+declares in his epilogue, to make his poetry not less destructive than
+that by which Tyrtaeus of old animated the Spartans. This play was
+written in the second Dutch war, in 1673.
+
+Troilus and Cressida, 1679, is a play altered from Shakespeare; but so
+altered, that, even in Langbaine's opinion, "the last scene in the third
+act is a masterpiece." It is introduced by a discourse on the grounds
+of criticism in tragedy, to which I suspect that Rymer's book had given
+occasion.
+
+The Spanish Fryar, 1681, is a tragicomedy, eminent for the happy
+coincidence and coalition of the two plots. As it was written against the
+papists, it would naturally, at that time, have friends and enemies; and
+partly by the popularity which it obtained at first, and partly by the
+real power both of the serious and risible part, it continued long a
+favourite of the publick.
+
+It was Dryden's opinion, at least for some time, and he maintains it in
+the dedication of this play, that the drama required an alternation of
+comick and tragick scenes; and that it is necessary to mitigate, by
+alleviations of merriment, the pressure of ponderous events, and the
+fatigue of toilsome passions. "Whoever," says he, "cannot perform both
+parts, is but half a writer for the stage."
+
+The Duke of Guise, a tragedy, 1683, written in conjunction with Lee, as
+Oedipus had been before, seems to deserve notice only for the offence
+which it gave to the remnant of the covenanters, and in general to the
+enemies of the court, who attacked him with great violence, and were
+answered by him; though, at last, he seems to withdraw from the conflict,
+by transferring the greater part of the blame or merit to his partner. It
+happened that a contract had been made between them, by which they were
+to join in writing a play; and "he happened," says Dryden, "to claim the
+promise just upon the finishing of a poem, when I would have been glad of
+a little respite. _Two_-thirds of it belonged to him; and to me only the
+first scene of the play, the whole fourth act, and the first half, or
+somewhat more, of the fifth."
+
+This was a play written professedly for the party of the duke of York,
+whose succession was then opposed. A parallel is intended between the
+leaguers of France, and the covenanters of England: and this intention
+produced the controversy.
+
+Albion and Albanius, 1685, is a musical drama or opera, written, like
+the Duke of Guise, against the republicans. With what success it was
+performed, I have not found[103].
+
+The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, 1675, is termed, by him, an
+opera: it is rather a tragedy in heroick rhyme, but of which the
+personages are such as cannot decently be exhibited on the stage. Some
+such production was foreseen by Marvel, who writes thus to Milton:
+
+  Or if a work so infinite be spann'd,
+  Jealous I was, lest some less skilful hand
+  (Such as disquiet always what is well,
+  And by ill-imitating would excel,)
+  Might hence presume the whole creation's day
+  To change in scenes, and show it in a play.
+
+It is another of his hasty productions; for the heat of his imagination
+raised it in a month.
+
+This composition is addressed to the princess of Modena, then dutchess of
+York, in a strain of flattery which disgraces genius, and which it was
+wonderful that any man, that knew the meaning of his own words, could use
+without self-detestation. It is an attempt to mingle earth and heaven, by
+praising human excellence in the language of religion.
+
+The preface contains an apology for heroick verse and poetick license; by
+which is meant not any liberty taken in contracting or extending words,
+but the use of bold fictions and ambitious figures.
+
+The reason which he gives for printing what was never acted, cannot be
+overpassed: "I was induced to it in my own defence, many hundred copies
+of it being dispersed abroad without my knowledge or consent, and every
+one gathering new faults, it became, at length, a libel against me."
+These copies, as they gathered faults, were apparently manuscript; and
+he lived in an age very unlike ours, if many hundred copies of fourteen
+hundred lines were likely to be transcribed. An author has a right to
+print his own works, and needs not seek an apology in falsehood; but he
+that could bear to write the dedication, felt no pain in writing the
+preface.
+
+Aureng Zebe, 1676, is a tragedy founded on the actions of a great prince
+then reigning, but over nations not likely to employ their criticks upon
+the transactions of the English stage. If he had known and disliked
+his own character, our trade was not in those times secure from his
+resentment. His country is at such a distance, that the manners might be
+safely falsified, and the incidents feigned; for remoteness of place is
+remarked, by Racine, to afford the same conveniencies to a poet as length
+of time.
+
+This play is written in rhyme; and has the appearance of being the
+most elaborate of all the dramas. The personages are imperial; but the
+dialogue is often domestick, and, therefore, susceptible of sentiments
+accommodated to familiar incidents. The complaint of life is celebrated;
+and there are many other passages that may be read with pleasure.
+
+This play is addressed to the earl of Mulgrave, afterwards duke of
+Buckingham, himself, if not a poet, yet a writer of verses, and a
+critick. In this address Dryden gave the first hints of his intention to
+write an epick poem. He mentions his design in terms so obscure, that he
+seems afraid lest his plan should be purloined, as, he says, happened to
+him when he told it more plainly in his preface to Juvenal. "The design,"
+says he, "you know is great, the story English, and neither too near the
+present times, nor too distant from them."
+
+All for Love, or the World well Lost, 1678, a tragedy, founded upon the
+story of Antony and Cleopatra, he tells us, "is the only play which
+he wrote for himself:" the rest were given to the people. It is, by
+universal consent, accounted the work in which he has admitted the fewest
+improprieties of style or character; but it has one fault equal to many,
+though rather moral than critical, that, by admitting the romantick
+omnipotence of love, he has recommended as laudable, and worthy of
+imitation, that conduct which, through all ages, the good have censured
+as vitious, and the bad despised as foolish.
+
+Of this play the prologue and the epilogue, though written upon the
+common topicks of malicious and ignorant criticism, and without any
+particular relation to the characters or incidents of the drama, are
+deservedly celebrated for their elegance and sprightliness.
+
+Limberham, or the kind Keeper, 1680, is a comedy, which, after the third
+night, was prohibited as too indecent for the stage. What gave offence,
+was in the printing, as the author says, altered or omitted. Dryden
+confesses that its indecency was objected to; but Langbaine, who yet
+seldom favours him, imputes its expulsion to resentment, because it "so
+much exposed the keeping part of the town."
+
+Oedipus, 1679, is a tragedy formed by Dryden and Lee, in conjunction,
+from the works of Sophocles, Seneca, and Corneille. Dryden planned the
+scenes, and composed the first and third acts.
+
+Don Sebastian, 1690, is commonly esteemed either the first or second of
+his dramatick performances. It is too long to be all acted, and has many
+characters and many incidents; and though it is not without sallies
+of frantick dignity, and more noise than meaning, yet, as it makes
+approaches to the possibilities of real life, and has some sentiments
+which leave a strong impression, it continued long to attract attention.
+Amidst the distresses of princes, and the vicissitudes of empire, are
+inserted several scenes which the writer intended for comick; but which,
+I suppose, that age did not much commend, and this would not endure.
+There are, however, passages of excellence universally acknowledged; the
+dispute and the reconciliation of Dorax and Sebastian has always been
+admired.
+
+This play was first acted in 1690, after Dryden had for some years
+discontinued dramatick poetry.
+
+Amphitryon is a comedy derived from Plautus and Moliere. The dedication
+is dated Oct. 1690. This play seems to have succeeded at its first
+appearance; and was, I think, long considered as a very diverting
+entertainment.
+
+Cleomenes, 1692, is a tragedy, only remarkable as it occasioned an
+incident related in the Guardian, and allusively mentioned by Dryden in
+his preface. As he came out from the representation, he was accosted thus
+by some airy stripling: "Had I been left alone with a young beauty, I
+would not have spent my time like your Spartan." "That sir," said Dryden,
+"perhaps, is true; but give me leave to tell you, that you are no hero."
+
+King Arthur, 1691, is another opera. It was the last work that Dryden
+performed for king Charles, who did not live to see it exhibited; and
+it does not seem to have been ever brought upon the stage[104]. In the
+dedication to the marquis of Halifax, there is a very elegant character
+of Charles, and a pleasing account of his latter life. When this was
+first brought upon the stage, news that the duke of Monmouth had landed
+was told in the theatre; upon which the company departed, and Arthur was
+exhibited no more.
+
+His last drama was Love Triumphant, a tragicomedy. In his dedication to
+the earl of Salisbury he mentions "the lowness of fortune to which he
+has voluntarily reduced himself, and of which he has no reason to be
+ashamed."
+
+This play appeared in 1694. It is said to have been unsuccessful. The
+catastrophe, proceeding merely from a change of mind, is confessed by the
+author to be defective. Thus he began and ended his dramatick labours
+with ill success.
+
+From such a number of theatrical pieces, it will be supposed, by most
+readers, that he must have improved his fortune; at least, that such
+diligence, with such abilities, must have set penury at defiance. But
+in Dryden's time the drama was very far from that universal approbation
+which it has now obtained. The playhouse was abhorred by the puritans,
+and avoided by those who desired the character of seriousness or decency.
+A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a young trader would
+have impaired his credit, by appearing in those mansions of dissolute
+licentiousness. The profits of the theatre, when so many classes of the
+people were deducted from the audience, were not great; and the poet had,
+for a long time, but a single night. The first that had two nights was
+Southern; and the first that had three was Howe. There were, however, in
+those days, arts of improving a poet's profit, which Dryden forbore to
+practise; and a play, therefore, seldom produced him more than a hundred
+pounds, by the accumulated gain of the third night, the dedication, and
+the copy.
+
+Almost every piece had a dedication, written with such elegance and
+luxuriance of praise, as neither haughtiness nor avarice could be
+imagined able to resist. But he seems to have made flattery too cheap.
+That praise is worth nothing of which the price is known.
+
+To increase the value of his copies, he often accompanied his work with a
+preface of criticism; a kind of learning then almost new in the English
+language, and which he, who had considered, with great accuracy, the
+principles of writing, was able to distribute copiously as occasions
+arose. By these dissertations the publick judgment must have been much
+improved; and Swift, who conversed with Dryden, relates that he regretted
+the success of his own instructions, and found his readers made suddenly
+too skilful to be easily satisfied.
+
+His prologues had such reputation, that for some time a play was
+considered as less likely to be well received, if some of his verses did
+not introduce it. The price of a prologue was two guineas, till, being
+asked to write one for Mr. Southern, he demanded three: "Not," said he,
+"young man, out of disrespect to you; but the players have had my goods
+too cheap[105]."
+
+Though he declares, that in his own opinion, his genius was not
+dramatick, he had great confidence in his own fertility; for he is said
+to have engaged, by contract, to furnish four plays a year.
+
+It is certain, that in one year, 1678[106], he published All for Love,
+Assignation, two parts of the Conquest of Granada, sir Martin Mar-all,
+and the State of Innocence, six complete plays; with a celerity of
+performance, which, though all Langbaine's charges of plagiarism should
+be allowed, shows such facility of composition, such readiness of
+language, and such copiousness of sentiment, as, since the time of Lopez
+de Vega, perhaps no other author has possessed.
+
+He did not enjoy his reputation, however great, nor his profits, however
+small, without molestation. He had criticks to endure, and rivals to
+oppose. The two most distinguished wits of the nobility, the duke of
+Buckingham and earl of Rochester, declared themselves his enemies.
+
+Buckingham characterized him, in 1671, by the name of Bayes, in the
+Rehearsal; a farce which he is said to have written with the assistance
+of Butler, the author of Hudibras; Martin Clifford, of the Charter-house;
+and Dr. Sprat, the friend of Cowley, then his chaplain. Dryden and his
+friends laughed at the length of time, and the number of hands, employed
+upon this performance; in which, though by some artifice of action it yet
+keeps possession of the stage, it is not possible now to find any thing
+that might not have been written without so long delay, or a confederacy
+so numerous.
+
+To adjust the minute events of literary history, is tedious and
+troublesome; it requires, indeed, no great force of understanding, but
+often depends upon inquiries which there is no opportunity of making, or
+is to be fetched from books and pamphlets not always at hand.
+
+The Rehearsal was played in 1671[107], and yet is represented as
+ridiculing passages in the Conquest of Granada and Assignation, which
+were not published till 1678; in Marriage a-la-mode, published in 1673;
+and in Tyrannick Love, in 1677. These contradictions show how rashly
+satire is applied[108].
+
+It is said that this farce was originally intended against Davenant, who,
+in the first draught, was characterized by the name of Bilboa. Davenant
+had been a soldier and an adventurer.
+
+There is one passage in the Rehearsal still remaining, which seems to
+have related originally to Davenant. Bayes hurts his nose, and comes in
+with brown paper applied to the bruise; how this affected Dryden, does
+not appear. Davenant's nose had suffered such diminution by mishaps among
+the women, that a patch upon that part evidently denoted him.
+
+It is said, likewise, that sir Robert Howard was once meant. The design
+was, probably, to ridicule the reigning poet, whoever he might be.
+
+Much of the personal satire, to which it might owe its first reception,
+is now lost or obscured. Bayes, probably, imitated the dress, and
+mimicked the manner, of Dryden: the cant words which are so often in
+his mouth may be supposed to have been Dryden's habitual phrases, or
+customary exclamations. Bayes, when he is to write, is blooded and
+purged: this, as Lamotte relates himself to have heard, was the real
+practice of the poet.
+
+There were other strokes in the Rehearsal by which malice was gratified:
+the debate between love and honour, which keeps prince Volscius in a
+single boot, is said to have alluded to the misconduct of the duke
+of Ormond, who lost Dublin to the rebels, while he was toying with a
+mistress.
+
+The earl of Rochester, to suppress the reputation of Dryden, took Settle
+into his protection, and endeavoured to persuade the publick that its
+approbation had been to that time misplaced. Settle was awhile in high
+reputation: his Empress of Morocco, having first delighted the town, was
+carried in triumph to Whitehall, and played by the ladies of the court.
+Now was the poetical meteor at the highest; the next moment began its
+fall. Rochester withdrew his patronage; seeming resolved, says one of his
+biographers, "to have a judgment contrary to that of the town;" perhaps
+being unable to endure any reputation beyond a certain height, even when
+he had himself contributed to raise it.
+
+Neither criticks nor rivals did Dryden much mischief, unless they gained
+from his own temper the power of vexing him, which his frequent bursts of
+resentment give reason to suspect. He is always angry at some past, or
+afraid of some future censure; but he lessens the smart of his wounds by
+the balm of his own approbation, and endeavours to repel the shafts of
+criticism by opposing a shield of adamantine confidence.
+
+The perpetual accusation produced against him, was that of plagiarism,
+against which he never attempted any vigorous defence; for, though he
+was, perhaps, sometimes injuriously censured, he would, by denying part
+of the charge, have confessed the rest; and, as his adversaries had the
+proof in their own hands, he, who knew that wit had little power against
+facts, wisely left in that perplexity which generality produces a
+question which it was his interest to suppress, and which, unless
+provoked by vindication, few were likely to examine.
+
+Though the life of a writer, from about thirty-five to sixty-three,
+may be supposed to have been sufficiently busied by the composition of
+eight-and-twenty pieces for the stage, Dryden found room in the same
+space for many other undertakings. But, how much soever he wrote, he was
+at least once suspected of writing more; for, in 1679, a paper of verses,
+called an Essay on Satire, was shown about in manuscript; by which the
+earl of Rochester, the dutchess of Portsmouth, and others, were so much
+provoked, that, as was supposed, (for the actors were never discovered,)
+they procured Dryden, whom they suspected as the author, to be
+way-laid and beaten. This incident is mentioned by the duke of
+Buckinghamshire[109], the true writer, in his Art of Poetry; where he
+says of Dryden:
+
+  Though prais'd and beaten for another's rhymes,
+  His own deserve as great applause sometimes.
+
+His reputation in time was such, that his name was thought necessary to
+the success of every poetical or literary performance, and, therefore,
+he was engaged to contribute something, whatever it might be, to many
+publications. He prefixed the Life of Polybius to the translation of sir
+Henry Sheers; and those of Lucian and Plutarch, to versions of their
+works by different hands. Of the English Tacitus he translated the first
+book; and, if Gordon be credited, translated it from the French. Such a
+charge can hardly be mentioned without some degree of indignation; but
+it is not, I suppose, so much to be inferred, that Dryden wanted the
+literature necessary to the perusal of Tacitus, as that, considering
+himself as hidden in a crowd, he had no awe of the publick; and, writing
+merely for money, was contented to get it by the nearest way.
+
+In 1680, the Epistles of Ovid being translated by the poets of the time,
+among which one was the work of Dryden[110], and another of Dryden and
+lord Mulgrave, it was necessary to introduce them by a preface; and
+Dryden, who on such occasions was regularly summoned, prefixed a
+discourse upon translation, which was then struggling for the liberty
+that it now enjoys. Why it should find any difficulty in breaking the
+shackles of verbal interpretation, which must for ever debar it from
+elegance, it would be difficult to conjecture, were not the power of
+prejudice every day observed. The authority of Jonson, Sandys, and
+Holiday, had fixed the judgment of the nation; and it was not easily
+believed that a better way could be found than they had taken, though
+Fanshaw, Denham, Waller, and Cowley, had tried to give examples of a
+different practice.
+
+In 1681 Dryden became yet more conspicuous by uniting politicks with
+poetry, in the memorable satire, called Absalom and Achitophel, written
+against the faction which, by lord Shaftesbury's incitement, set the duke
+of Monmouth at its head.
+
+Of this poem, in which personal satire was applied to the support of
+publick principles, and in which, therefore, every mind was interested,
+the reception was eager, and the sale so large, that my father, an old
+bookseller, told me, he had not known it equalled but by Sacheverell's
+Trial.
+
+The reason of this general perusal Addison has attempted to derive from
+the delight which the mind feels in the investigation of secrets; and
+thinks that curiosity to decipher the names, procured readers to the
+poem. There is no need to inquire why those verses were read, which, to
+all the attractions of wit, elegance, and harmony, added the cooperation
+of all the factious passions, and filled every mind with triumph or
+resentment.
+
+It could not be supposed that all the provocation given by Dryden, would
+be endured without resistance or reply. Both his person and his party
+were exposed, in their turns, to the shafts of satire, which, though
+neither so well pointed, nor, perhaps, so well aimed, undoubtedly drew
+blood.
+
+One of these poems is called, Dryden's Satire on his Muse; ascribed,
+though, as Pope says, falsely, to Somers, who was afterwards chancellor.
+The poem, whosesoever it was, has much virulence, and some sprightliness.
+The writer tells all the ill that he can collect both of Dryden and his
+friends.
+
+The poem of Absalom and Achitophel had two answers, now both forgotten;
+one called Azaria and Hushai; the other, Absalom senior. Of these hostile
+compositions, Dryden apparently imputes Absalom senior to Settle, by
+quoting in his verses against him the second line. Azaria and Hushai was,
+as Wood says, imputed to him, though it is somewhat unlikely that he
+should write twice on the same occasion. This is a difficulty which
+I cannot remove, for want of a minuter knowledge of poetical
+transactions[111].
+
+The same year he published The Medal, of which the subject is a
+medal struck on lord Shaftesbury's escape from a prosecution, by the
+_ignoramus_ of a grand jury of Londoners.
+
+In both poems he maintains the same principles, and saw them both
+attacked by the same antagonist. Elkanah Settle, who had answered
+Absalom, appeared with equal courage in opposition to The Medal, and
+published an answer called, The Medal Reversed, with so much success
+in both encounters, that he left the palm doubtful, and divided the
+suffrages of the nation. Such are the revolutions of fame, or such is
+the prevalence of fashion, that the man, whose works have not yet been
+thought to deserve the care of collecting them, who died forgotten in
+an hospital, and whose latter years were spent in contriving shows for
+fairs, and carrying an elegy or epithalamium, of which the beginning and
+end were occasionally varied, but the intermediate parts were always the
+same, to every house where there was a funeral or a wedding, might with
+truth have had inscribed upon his stone:
+
+  Here lies the rival and antagonist of Dryden.
+
+Settle was, for this rebellion, severely chastised by Dryden, under the
+name of Doeg, in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel; and was,
+perhaps, for his factious audacity, made the city poet, whose annual
+office was to describe the glories of the mayor's day. Of these bards he
+was the last, and seems not much to have deserved even this degree of
+regard, if it was paid to his political opinions; for he afterwards wrote
+a panegyrick on the virtues of judge Jefferies; and what more could have
+been done by the meanest zealot for prerogative?
+
+Of translated fragments, or occasional poems, to enumerate the titles, or
+settle the dates, would be tedious, with little use. It may be observed,
+that, as Dryden's genius was commonly excited by some personal regard, he
+rarely writes upon a general topick.
+
+Soon after the accession of king James, when the design of reconciling
+the nation to the church of Rome became apparent, and the religion of the
+court gave the only efficacious title to its favours, Dryden declared
+himself a convert to popery. This, at any other time, might have passed
+with little censure. Sir Kenelm Digby embraced popery; the two Reynolds's
+reciprocally converted one another[112]; and Chillingworth himself was
+awhile so entangled in the wilds of controversy, as to retire for quiet
+to an infallible church. If men of argument and study can find such
+difficulties, or such motives, as may either unite them to the church of
+Rome, or detain them in uncertainty, there can be no wonder that a man,
+who, perhaps, never inquired why he was a protestant, should, by an
+artful and experienced disputant, be made a papist, overborne by the
+sudden violence of new and unexpected arguments, or deceived by a
+representation which shows only the doubts on one part, and only the
+evidence on the other.
+
+That conversion will always be suspected that apparently concurs with
+interest. He that never finds his errour till it hinders his progress
+towards wealth or honour, will not be thought to love truth only for
+herself.
+
+Yet it may easily happen that information may come at a commodious time;
+and, as truth and interest are not by any fatal necessity at variance,
+that one may by accident introduce the other. When opinions are
+struggling into popularity, the arguments by which they are opposed or
+defended become more known; and he that changes his profession would,
+perhaps, have changed it before, with the like opportunities of
+instruction. This was then the state of popery; every artifice was used
+to show it in its fairest form; and it must be owned to be a religion of
+external appearance sufficiently attractive.
+
+It is natural to hope that a comprehensive is, likewise, an elevated
+soul, and that whoever is wise is also honest. I am willing to believe
+that Dryden, having employed his mind, active as it was, upon different
+studies, and filled it, capacious as it was, with other materials, came
+unprovided to the controversy, and wanted rather skill to discover the
+right, than virtue to maintain it. But inquiries into the heart are not
+for man; we must now leave him to his judge.
+
+The priests, having strengthened their cause by so powerful an adherent,
+were not long before they brought him into action. They engaged him to
+defend the controversial papers found in the strong box of Charles the
+second; and, what yet was harder, to defend them against Stillingfleet.
+
+With hopes of promoting popery, he was employed to translate Maimbourg's
+History of the League; which he published with a large introduction. His
+name is, likewise, prefixed to the English Life of Francis Xavier; but I
+know not that he ever owned himself the translator. Perhaps the use of
+his name was a pious fraud, which, however, seems not to have had much
+effect; for neither of the books, I believe, was ever popular.
+
+The version of Xavier's Life is commended by Brown, in a pamphlet not
+written to flatter; and the occasion of it is said to have been, that the
+queen, when she solicited a son, made vows to him as her tutelary saint.
+He was supposed to have undertaken to translate Varillas's History of
+Heresies; and, when Burnet published remarks upon it, to have written an
+answer[113]; upon which Burnet makes the following observation:
+
+"I have been informed from England, that a gentleman, who is famous
+both for poetry and several other things, had spent three months in
+translating M. Varillas's History; but that, as soon as my Reflections
+appeared, he discontinued his labour, finding the credit of his author
+was gone. Now, if he thinks it is recovered by his answer, he will,
+perhaps, go on with his translation; and this may be, for aught I know,
+as good an entertainment for him as the conversation that he had set on
+between the Hinds and Panthers, and all the rest of animals, for whom M.
+Varillas may serve well enough as an author: and this history, and that
+poem, are such extraordinary things of their kind, that it will be but
+suitable to see the author of the worst poem become, likewise, the
+translator of the worst history that the age has produced. If his grace
+and his wit improve both proportionably, he will hardly find that he has
+gained much by the change he has made, from having no religion, to choose
+one of the worst. It is true, he had somewhat to sink from in matter of
+wit; but, as for his morals, it is scarce possible for him to grow
+a worse man than he was. He has lately wreaked his malice on me for
+spoiling his three months' labour; but in it he has done me all the
+honour that any man can receive from him, which is to be railed at by
+him. If I had ill-nature enough to prompt me to wish a very bad wish for
+him, it should be, that he would go on and finish his translation. By
+that it will appear, whether the English nation, which is the most
+competent judge in this matter, has, upon the seeing our debate,
+pronounced in M. Varillas's favour, or in mine. It is true, Mr. D. will
+suffer a little by it; but, at least, it will serve to keep him in from
+other extravagancies; and if he gains little honour by this work, yet he
+cannot lose so much by it as he has done by his last employment."
+
+Having, probably, felt his own inferiority in theological controversy, he
+was desirous of trying whether, by bringing poetry to aid his arguments,
+he might be'come a more efficacious defender of his new profession. To
+reason in verse was, indeed, one of his powers; but subtilty and harmony,
+united, are still feeble, when opposed to truth.
+
+Actuated, therefore, by zeal for Rome, or hope of fame, he published The
+Hind and Panther, a poem in which the church of Rome, figured by the
+_milk-white hind_, defends her tenets against the church of England,
+represented by the _panther_, a beast beautiful, but spotted.
+
+A fable which exhibits two beasts talking theology, appears, at once,
+full of absurdity; and it was accordingly ridiculed in the City Mouse and
+Country Mouse, a parody, written by Montague, afterwards earl of Halifax,
+and Prior, who then gave the first specimen of his abilities.
+
+The conversion of such a man, at such a time, was not likely to pass
+uneensured. Three dialogues were published by the facetious Thomas Brown,
+of which the two first were called Reasons of Mr. Bayes's changing his
+Religion; and the third, The Reasons of Mr. Hains the Player's Conversion
+and Reconversion. The first was printed in 1688, the second not till
+1690, the third in 1691. The clamour seems to have been long continued,
+and the subject to have strongly fixed the publick attention.
+
+In the two first dialogues Bayes is brought into the company of Crites
+and Eugenius, with whom he had formerly debated on dramatick poetry. The
+two talkers in the third are Mr. Bayes and Mr. Hains.
+
+Brown was a man not deficient in literature, nor destitute of fancy; but
+he seems to have thought it the pinnacle of excellence to be a _merry
+fellow_; and, therefore, laid out his powers upon small jests or gross
+buffoonery; so that his performances have little intrinsick value, and
+were read only while they were recommended by the novelty of the event
+that occasioned them. These dialogues are like his other works: what
+sense or knowledge they contain is disgraced by the garb in which it is
+exhibited. One great source of pleasure is to call Dryden "little Bayes."
+Ajax, who happens to be mentioned, is "he that wore as many cow-hides
+upon his shield as would have furnished half the king's army with
+shoe-leather."
+
+Being asked whether he had seen the Hind and Panther, Crites answers:
+"Seen it! Mr. Bayes, why I can stir nowhere but it pursues me; it haunts
+me worse than a pewter-buttoned serjeant does a decayed cit. Sometimes I
+meet it in a bandbox, when my laundress brings home my linen; sometimes,
+whether I will or no, it lights my pipe at a coffee-house; sometimes it
+surprises me in a trunkmaker's shop; and sometimes it refreshes my memory
+for me on the backside of a Chancery lane parcel. For your comfort too,
+Mr. Bayes, I have not only seen it, as you may perceive, but have read it
+too, and can quote it as freely upon occasion as a frugal tradesman
+can quote that noble treatise The Worth of a Penny, to his extravagant
+'prentice, that revels in stewed apples and penny custards."
+
+The whole animation of these compositions arises from a profusion of
+ludicrous and affected comparisons. "To secure one's chastity," says
+Bayes, "little more is necessary than to leave off a correspondence with
+the other sex, which, to a wise man, is no greater a punishment than it
+would be to a fanatick parson to be forbid seeing The Cheats and The
+Committee; or for my lord mayor and aldermen to be interdicted the sight
+of The London Cuckold." This is the general strain, and, therefore, I
+shall be easily excused the labour of more transcription.
+
+Brown does not wholly forget past transactions: "You began," says Crites
+to Bayes, "with a very indifferent religion, and have not mended the
+matter in your last choice. It was but reason that your muse, which
+appeared first in a tyrant's quarrel, should employ her last efforts to
+justify the usurpations of the hind." Next year the nation was summoned
+to celebrate the birth of the prince. Now was the time for Dryden to
+rouse his imagination, and strain his voice. Happy days were at hand,
+and he was willing to enjoy and diffuse the anticipated blessings. He
+published a poem, filled with predictions of greatness and prosperity;
+predictions of which it is not necessary to tell how they have been
+verified.
+
+A few months passed after these joyful notes, and every blossom of popish
+hope was blasted for ever by the revolution. A papist now could be no
+longer laureate. The revenue, which he had enjoyed with so much pride and
+praise, was transferred to Shadwell, an old enemy, whom he had formerly
+stigmatised by the name of Og. Dryden could not decently complain that he
+was deposed; but seemed very angry that Shadwell succeeded him, and has,
+therefore, celebrated the intruder's inauguration in a poem exquisitely
+satirical, called Mac Flecknoe[114]; of which the Dunciad, as Pope
+himself declares, is an imitation, though more extended in its plan, and
+more diversified in its incidents.
+
+It is related by Prior, that lord Dorset, when, as chamberlain, he was
+constrained to eject Dryden from his office, gave him, from his own
+purse, an allowance equal to the salary. This is no romantick or
+incredible act of generosity; a hundred a year is often enough given to
+claims less cogent, by men less famed for liberality. Yet Dryden always
+represented himself as suffering under a publick infliction; and once
+particularly demands respect for the patience with which he endured the
+loss of his little fortune. His patron might, indeed, enjoin him to
+suppress his bounty; but, if he suffered nothing, he should not have
+complained.
+
+During the short reign of king James, he had written nothing for
+the stage[115], being, in his opinion, more profitably employed in
+controversy and flattery. Of praise he might, perhaps, have been less
+lavish without inconvenience, for James was never said to have much
+regard for poetry: he was to be flattered only by adopting his religion.
+
+Times were now changed: Dryden was no longer the court-poet, and was to
+look back for support to his former trade; and having waited about two
+years, either considering himself as discountenanced by the publick,
+perhaps expecting a second revolution, he produced Don Sebastian in 1690;
+and in the next four years four dramas more.
+
+In 1693 appeared a new version of Juvenal and Persius. Of Juvenal, he
+translated the first, third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires; and of
+Persius, the whole work. On this occasion, he introduced his two sons to
+the publick, as nurslings of the muses. The fourteenth of Juvenal was the
+work of John, and the seventh of Charles Dryden. He prefixed a very ample
+preface, in the form of a dedication to lord Dorset; and there gives an
+account of the design which he had once formed to write an epick poem on
+the actions either of Arthur or the Black Prince. He considered the
+epick as necessarily including some kind of supernatural agency, and had
+imagined a new kind of contest between the guardian angels of kingdoms,
+of whom he conceived that each might be represented zealous for his
+charge, without any intended opposition to the purposes of the supreme
+being, of which all created minds must in part be ignorant.
+
+This is the most reasonable scheme of celestial interposition that ever
+was formed. The surprises and terrours of enchantments, which have
+succeeded to the intrigues and oppositions of pagan deities, afford very
+striking scenes, and open a vast extent to the imagination; but, as
+Boileau observes, (and Boileau will be seldom found mistaken,) with this
+incurable defect, that, in a contest between heaven and hell, we know at
+the beginning which is to prevail; for this reason we follow Rinaldo to
+the enchanted wood with more curiosity than terrour.
+
+In the scheme of Dryden there is one great difficulty, which yet he
+would, perhaps, have had address enough to surmount. In a war, justice
+can be but on one side; and, to entitle the hero to the protection of
+angels, he must fight in the defence of indubitable right. Yet some
+of the celestial beings, thus opposed to each other, must have been
+represented as defending guilt.
+
+That this poem was never written, is reasonably to be lamented. It would,
+doubtless, have improved our numbers, and enlarged our language; and
+might, perhaps, have contributed, by pleasing instruction, to rectify our
+opinions, and purify our manners.
+
+What he required as the indispensable condition of such an undertaking, a
+publick stipend, was not likely, in those times, to be obtained. Riches
+were not become familiar to us; nor had the nation yet learned to be
+liberal.
+
+This plan he charged Blackmore with stealing; "only," says he, "the
+guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to
+manage."
+
+In 1694, he began the most laborious and difficult of all his works, the
+translation of Virgil; from which he borrowed two months, that he might
+turn Fresnoy's Art of Painting into English prose. The preface, which he
+boasts to have written in twelve mornings, exhibits a parallel of poetry
+and painting, with a miscellaneous collection of critical remarks, such
+as cost a mind, stored like his, no labour to produce them.
+
+In 1697, he published his version of the works of Virgil; and, that no
+opportunity of profit might be lost, dedicated the Pastorals to the lord
+Clifford, the Georgicks to the earl of Chesterfield, and the Aeneid to the
+earl of Mulgrave. This economy of flattery, at once lavish and discreet,
+did not pass without observation.
+
+This translation was censured by Milbourne, a clergyman, styled, by Pope,
+"the fairest of criticks," because he exhibited his own version to be
+compared with that which he condemned.
+
+His last work was his Fables, published in 1699, in consequence, as is
+supposed, of a contract now in the hands of Mr. Tonson; by which he
+obliged himself, in considerationof three hundred pounds, to finish for
+the press ten thousand verses.
+
+In this volume is comprised the well-known ode on St. Cecilia's day,
+which, as appeared by a letter communicated to Dr. Birch, he spent a
+fortnight in composing and correcting. But what is this to the patience
+and diligence of Boileau, whose Equivoque, a poem of only three hundred
+and forty-six lines, took from his life eleven months to write it, and
+three years to revise it?
+
+Part of this book of Fables is the first Iliad in English, intended as a
+specimen of a version of the whole. Considering into what hands Homer was
+to fall, the reader cannot but rejoice that this project went no further.
+
+The time was now at hand which was to put an end to all his schemes and
+labours. On the first of May, 1701, having been some time, as he tells
+us, a cripple in his limbs, he died, in Gerard street, of a mortification
+in his leg.
+
+There is extant a wild story relating to some vexatious events that
+happened at his funeral, which, at the end of Congreve's Life, by a
+writer of I know not what credit, are thus related, as I find the account
+transferred to a biographical dictionary[116].
+
+"Mr. Dryden dying on the Wednesday morning, Dr. Thomas Sprat, then bishop
+of Rochester and dean of Westminster, sent the next day to the lady
+Elizabeth Howard, Mr. Dryden's widow, that he would make a present of the
+ground, which was forty pounds, with all the other abbey fees. The lord
+Halifax, likewise, sent to the lady Elizabeth, and Mr. Charles Dryden
+her son, that, if they would give him leave to bury Mr. Dryden, he would
+inter him with a gentleman's private funeral, and afterwards bestow five
+hundred pounds on a monument in the abbey; which, as they had no reason
+to refuse, they accepted. On the Saturday following the company came:
+the corpse was put into a velvet hearse; and eighteen mourning coaches,
+filled with company, attended. When they were just ready to move, the
+lord Jefferies, son of the lord chancellor Jefferies, with some of his
+rakish companions, coming by, asked whose funeral it was; and, being
+told Mr. Dryden's, he said, 'What, shall Dryden, the greatest honour
+and ornament of the nation, be buried after this private manner! No,
+gentlemen, let all that loved Mr. Dryden, and honour his memory, alight
+and join with me in gaining my lady's consent to let me have the honour
+of his interment, which shall be after another manner than this; and I
+will bestow a thousand pounds on a monument in the abbey for him.' The
+gentlemen in the coaches, not knowing of the bishop of Rochester's
+favour, nor of the lord Halifax's generous design, (they both having, out
+of respect to the family, enjoined the lady Elizabeth and her son to
+keep their favour concealed to the world, and let it pass for their own
+expense,) readily came out of the coaches, and attended lord Jefferies up
+to the lady's bedside, who was then sick. He repeated the purport of what
+he had before said; but she absolutely refusing, he fell on his knees,
+vowing never to rise till his request was granted. The rest of the
+company, by his desire, kneeled also; and the lady, being under a sudden
+surprise, fainted away. As soon as she recovered her speech, she cried,
+'No, no.' 'Enough, gentlemen,' replied he; 'my lady is very good; she
+says, Go, go.' She repeated her former words with all her strength, but
+in vain, for her feeble voice was lost in their acclamations of joy;
+and the lord Jefferies ordered the horsemen to carry the corpse to Mr.
+Russel's, an undertaker in Cheapside, and leave it there till he should
+send orders for the embalment, which, he added, should be after the royal
+manner. His directions were obeyed, the company dispersed, and lady
+Elizabeth and her son remained inconsolable. The next day Mr. Charles
+Dryden waited on the lord Halifax and the bishop, to excuse his mother
+and himself, by relating the real truth. But neither his lordship nor the
+bishop would admit of any plea; especially the latter, who had the abbey
+lighted, the ground opened, the choir attending, an anthem ready set,
+and himself waiting, for some time, without any corpse to bury. The
+undertaker, after three days' expectance of orders for embalment without
+receiving any, waited on the lord Jefferies; who, pretending ignorance of
+the matter, turned it off with an ill-natured jest, saying, that those
+who observed the orders of a drunken frolick deserved no better; that he
+remembered nothing at all of it; and that he might do what he pleased
+with the corpse. Upon this, the undertaker waited upon the lady Elizabeth
+and her son, and threatened to bring the corpse home, and set it before
+the door. They desired a day's respite, which was granted. Mr. Charles
+Dryden wrote a handsome letter to the lord Jefferies, who returned it
+with this cool answer: 'that he knew nothing of the matter, and would be
+troubled no more about it.' He then addressed the lord Halifax and the
+bishop of Rochester, who absolutely refused to do any thing in it. In
+this distress Dr. Garth sent for the corpse to the College of Physicians,
+and proposed a funeral by subscription, to which himself set a most noble
+example. At last, a day, about three weeks after Mr. Dryden's decease,
+was appointed for the interment. Dr. Garth pronounced a fine Latin
+oration, at the college, over the corpse; which was attended to the abbey
+by a numerous train of coaches. When the funeral was over, Mr. Charles
+Dryden sent a challenge to the lord Jefferies, who refusing to answer it,
+he sent several others, and went often himself; but could neither get a
+letter delivered, nor admittance to speak to him: which so incensed
+him, that he resolved, since his lordship refused to answer him like a
+gentleman, that he would watch an opportunity to meet and fight off-hand,
+though with all the rules of honour; which his lordship hearing, left the
+town; and Mr. Charles Dryden could never have the satisfaction of meeting
+him, though he sought it till his death with the utmost application."
+
+This story I once intended to omit, as it appears with no great evidence;
+nor have I met with any confirmation, but in a letter of Farquhar; and he
+only relates that the funeral of Dryden was tumultuary and confused.[117]
+
+Supposing the story true, we may remark, that the gradual change of
+manners, though imperceptible in the process, appears great, when
+different times, and those not very distant, are compared. If, at this
+time, a young drunken lord should interrupt the pompous regularity of a
+magnificent funeral, what would be the event, but that he would be
+justled out of the way, and compelled to be quiet? If he should thrust
+himself into a house, he would be sent roughly away; and, what is yet
+more to the honour of the present time, I believe that those who had
+subscribed to the funeral of a man like Dryden, would not, for such an
+accident, have withdrawn their contributions[118].
+
+He was buried among the poets in Westminster Abbey, where, though the
+duke of Newcastle had, in a general dedication prefixed by Congreve to
+his dramatick works, accepted thanks for his intention of erecting him
+a monument, he lay long without distinction, till the duke of
+Buckinghamshire gave him a tablet, inscribed only with the name of
+DRYDEN.
+
+He married the lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the earl of Berkshire,
+with circumstances, according to the satire imputed to lord Somers, not
+very honourable to either party: by her he had three sons, Charles, John,
+and Henry. Charles was usher of the palace to pope Clement the eleventh;
+and, visiting England in 1704, was drowned in an attempt to swim across
+the Thames at Windsor.
+
+John was author of a comedy called The Husband his own Cuckold. He is
+said to have died at Rome. Henry entered into some religious order. It is
+some proof of Dryden's sincerity in his second religion, that he taught
+it to his sons. A man conscious of hypocritical profession in himself, is
+not likely to convert others; and, as his sons were qualified, in 1693,
+to appear among the translators of Juvenal, they must have been taught
+some religion before their father's change.
+
+Of the person of Dryden I know not any account; of his mind, the portrait
+which has been left by Congreve, who knew him with great familiarity, is
+such as adds our love of his manners to our admiration of his genius. "He
+was," we are told, "of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate,
+ready to forgive injuries, and capable of a sincere reconciliation with
+those who had offended him. His friendship, where he professed it, went
+beyond his professions. He was of a very easy, of very pleasing, access;
+but somewhat slow, and, as it were, diffident in his advances to others:
+he had that in his nature which abhorred intrusion into any society
+whatever. He was, therefore, less known, and consequently his character
+became more liable to misapprehensions and misrepresentations: he was
+very modest, and very easily to be discountenanced in his approaches to
+his equals or superiours. As his reading had been very extensive, so was
+he very happy in a memory tenacious of every thing that he had read. He
+was not more possessed of knowledge than he was communicative of it; but
+then his communication was by no means pedantick, or imposed upon the
+conversation, but just such, and went so far as, by the natural turn of
+the conversation in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted
+or required. He was extremely ready and gentle in his correction of the
+errours of any writer who thought fit to consult him, and full as ready
+and patient to admit of the reprehensions of others, in respect of his
+own over-sights or mistakes."
+
+To this account of Congreve nothing can be objected but the fondness of
+friendship; and to have excited that fondness in such a mind is no small
+degree of praise. The disposition of Dryden, however, is shown in this
+character rather as it exhibited itself in cursory conversation, than as
+it operated on the more important parts of life. His placability and his
+friendship, indeed, were solid virtues; but courtesy and good humour are
+often found with little real worth. Since Congreve, who knew him well,
+has told us no more, the rest must be collected, as it can, from other
+testimonies, and particularly from those notices which Dryden has very
+liberally given us of himself.
+
+The modesty which made him so slow to advance, and so easy to
+be repulsed, was certainly no suspicion of deficient merit, or
+unconsciousness of his own value: he appears to have known, in its whole
+extent, the dignity of his character, and to have set a very high value
+on his own powers and performances. He probably did not offer his
+conversation, because he expected it to be solicited; and he retired from
+a cold reception, not submissive but indignant, with such reverence
+of his own greatness as made him unwilling to expose it to neglect or
+violation.
+
+His modesty was by no means inconsistent with ostentatiousness: he is
+diligent enough to remind the world of his merit, and expresses, with
+very little scruple, his high opinion of his own powers; but his
+self-commendations are read without scorn or indignation; we allow his
+claims, and love his frankness.
+
+Tradition, however, has not allowed that his confidence in himself
+exempted him from jealousy of others. He is accused of envy and
+insidiousness; and is particularly charged with inciting Creech to
+translate Horace, that he might lose the reputation which Lucretius had
+given him.
+
+Of this charge we immediately discover that it is merely conjectural;
+the purpose was such as no man would confess; and a crime that admits no
+proof, why should we believe?
+
+He has been described as magisterially presiding over the younger
+writers, and assuming the distribution of poetical fame; but he who
+excels has a right to teach, and he whose judgment is incontestable, may,
+without usurpation, examine and decide.
+
+Congreve represents him as ready to advise and instruct; but there
+is reason to believe that his communication was rather useful than
+entertaining. He declares of himself that he was saturnine, and not
+one of those whose sprightly sayings diverted company; and one of his
+censurers makes him say:
+
+  Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay;
+  To writing bred, I knew not what to say[119].
+
+There are men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and
+whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment
+confuses, and objection disconcerts; whose bashfulness restrains their
+exertion, and suffers them not to speak till the time of speaking is
+past; or whose attention to their own character makes them unwilling to
+utter at hazard what has not been considered, and cannot be recalled.
+
+Of Dryden's sluggishness in conversation it is vain to search or to guess
+the cause. He certainly wanted neither sentiments nor language; his
+intellectual treasures were great, though they were locked up from his
+own use. "His thoughts," when he wrote, "flowed in upon him so fast, that
+his only care was which to choose, and which to reject." Such rapidity of
+composition naturally promises a flow of talk; yet we must be content to
+believe what an enemy says of him, when he, likewise, says it of himself.
+But, whatever was his character as a companion, it appears that he lived
+in familiarity with the highest persons of his time. It is related by
+Carte of the duke of Ormond, that he used often to pass a night with
+Dryden, and those with whom Dryden consorted: who they were Carte has
+not told; but certainly the convivial table at which Ormond sat was not
+surrounded with a plebeian society. He was, indeed, reproached with
+boasting of his familiarity with the great; and Horace will support him
+in the opinion, that to please superiours is not the lowest kind of
+merit.
+
+The merit of pleasing must, however, be estimated by the means. Favour
+is not always gained by good actions or laudable qualities. Caresses and
+preferments are often bestowed on the auxiliaries of vice, the procurers
+of pleasure, or the flatterers of vanity. Dryden has never been charged
+with any personal agency unworthy of a good character: he abetted vice
+and vanity only with his pen. One of his enemies has accused him of
+lewdness in his conversation; but, if accusation without proof be
+credited, who shall be innocent?
+
+His works afford too many examples of dissolute licentiousness and abject
+adulation; but they were, probably, like his merriment, artificial and
+constrained; the effects of study and meditation, and his trade rather
+than his pleasure.
+
+Of the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute
+itself with ideal wickedness, for the sake of spreading the contagion in
+society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation
+of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be
+contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had,
+Dryden has afforded, by living to repent, and to testify his repentance.
+
+Of dramatick immorality he did not want examples among his predecessors,
+or companions among his contemporaries; but, in the meanness and
+servility of hyperbolical adulation, I know not whether, since the days
+in which the Roman emperours were deified, he has been ever equalled,
+except by Afra Behn, in an address to Eleanor Gwyn. When once he has
+undertaken the task of praise, he no longer retains shame in himself, nor
+supposes it in his patron. As many odoriferous bodies are observed to
+diffuse perfumes, from year to year, without sensible diminution of bulk
+or weight, he appears never to have impoverished his mint of flattery
+by his expenses, however lavish. He had all the forms of excellence,
+intellectual and moral, combined in his mind, with endless variation;
+and, when he had scattered on the hero of the day the golden shower of
+wit and virtue, he had ready for him whom he wished to court on the
+morrow, new wit and virtue with another stamp. Of this kind of meanness
+he never seems to decline the practice, or lament the necessity: he
+considers the great as entitled to encomiastick homage, and brings praise
+rather as a tribute than a gift, more delighted with the fertility of his
+invention, than mortified by the prostitution of his judgment. It is,
+indeed, not certain, that on these occasions his judgment much rebelled
+against his interest. There are minds which easily sink into submission,
+that look on grandeur with undistinguishing reverence, and discover no
+defect where there is elevation of rank and affluence of riches.
+
+With his praises of others, and of himself, is always intermingled a
+strain of discontent and lamentation, a sullen growl of resentment, or
+a querulous murmur of distress. His works are undervalued, his merit is
+unrewarded, and "he has few thanks to pay his stars that he was born
+among Englishmen." To his criticks he is sometimes contemptuous,
+sometimes resentful, and sometimes submissive. The writer who thinks his
+works formed for duration, mistakes his interest when he mentions his
+enemies. He degrades his own dignity by showing that he was affected by
+their censures, and gives lasting importance to names, which, left to
+themselves, would vanish from remembrance. From this principle Dryden did
+not often depart; his complaints are, for the greater part, general; he
+seldom pollutes his page with an adverse name. He condescended, indeed,
+to a controversy with Settle, in which he, perhaps, may be considered
+rather as assaulting than repelling; and since Settle is sunk into
+oblivion, his libel remains injurious only to himself.
+
+Among answers to criticks, no poetical attacks, or altercations, are to
+be included; they are, like other poems, effusions of genius, produced as
+much to obtain praise as to obviate censure. These Dryden practised, and
+in these he excelled.
+
+Of Collier, Blackmore, and Milbourne, he has made mention in the preface
+to his Fables. To the censure of Collier, whose remarks may be rather
+termed admonitions than criticisms, he makes little reply; being, at
+the age of sixty-eight, attentive to better things than the claps of a
+playhouse. He complains of Collier's rudeness, and the "horseplay of his
+raillery;" and asserts, that "in many places he has perverted by his
+glosses the meaning" of what he censures; but in other things he
+confesses that he is justly taxed; and says, with great calmness and
+candour, "I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts or expressions of mine
+that can be truly accused of obscenity, immorality, or profaneness, and
+retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend,
+he will be glad of my repentance." Yet, as our best dispositions are
+imperfect, he left standing in the same book a reflection on Collier of
+great asperity, and, indeed, of more asperity than wit.
+
+Blackmore he represents as made his enemy by the poem of Absalom and
+Achitophel, which "he thinks a little hard upon his fanatick patrons;"
+and charges him with borrowing the plan of his Arthur from the preface to
+Juvenal, "though he had," says he, "the baseness not to acknowledge his
+benefactor, but instead of it to traduce me in a libel."
+
+The libel in which Blackmore traduced him, was a Satire upon Wit; in
+which, having lamented the exuberance of false wit, and the deficiency of
+true, he proposes that all wit should be recoined before it is current,
+and appoints masters of assay who shall reject all that is light or
+debased:
+
+  'Tis true, that, when the coarse and worthless dross
+  Is purg'd away, there will be mighty loss:
+  E'en Congreve, Southern, manly Wycherley,
+  When thus refin'd, will grievous sufferers be;
+  Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes,
+  What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!
+  How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay,
+  And wicked mixture, shall be purg'd away!
+
+Thus stands the passage in the last edition; but in the original there
+was an abatement of the censure, beginning thus:
+
+  But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear
+  Th' examination of the most severe.
+
+Blackmore, finding the censure resented, and the civility disregarded,
+ungenerously omitted the softer part. Such variations discover a writer
+who consults his passions more than his virtue; and it may be reasonably
+supposed that Dryden imputes his enmity to its true cause.
+
+Of Milbourne he wrote only in general terms, such as are always ready
+at the call of anger, whether just or not: a short extract will be
+sufficient. "He pretends a quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul upon
+priesthood; if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and
+am afraid his share of the reparation will come to little. Let him be
+satisfied that he shall never be able to force himself upon me for an
+adversary; I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him.
+
+"As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such
+scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them.
+Blackmore and Milbourne are only distinguished from the crowd by being
+remembered to their infamy."
+
+Dryden, indeed, discovered, in many of his writings, an affected and
+absurd malignity to priests and priesthood, which naturally raised him
+many enemies, and which was sometimes as unseasonably resented as it was
+exerted. Trapp is angry that he calls the sacrificer in the Georgicks
+"the holy butcher:" the translation is, indeed, ridiculous; but Trapp's
+anger arises from his zeal, not for the author, but the priest; as if any
+reproach of the follies of paganism could be extended to the preachers of
+truth.
+
+Dryden's dislike of the priesthood is imputed by Langbaine, and, I think,
+by Brown, to a repulse which he suffered when he solicited ordination;
+but he denies, in the preface to his Fables, that he ever designed to
+enter into the church; and such a denial he would not have hazarded, if
+he could have been convicted of falsehood.
+
+Malevolence to the clergy is seldom at a great distance from irreverence
+of religion, and Dryden affords no exception to this observation. His
+writings exhibit many passages, which, with all the allowance that can
+be made for characters and occasions, are such as piety would not have
+admitted, and such as may vitiate light and unprincipled minds. But there
+is no reason for supposing that he disbelieved the religion which he
+disobeyed. He forgot his duty rather than disowned it. His tendency to
+profaneness is the effect of levity, negligence, and loose conversation,
+with a desire of accommodating himself to the corruption of the times, by
+venturing to be wicked as far as he durst. When he professed himself a
+convert to popery, he did not pretend to have received any new conviction
+of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.
+
+The persecution of criticks was not the worst of his vexations; he was
+much more disturbed by the importunities of want. His complaints of
+poverty are so frequently repeated, either with the dejection of weakness
+sinking in helpless misery, or the indignation of merit claiming its
+tribute from mankind, that it is impossible not to detest the age which
+could impose on such a man the necessity of such solicitations, or not to
+despise the man who could submit to such solicitations without necessity.
+
+Whether by the world's neglect, or his own imprudence, I am afraid that
+the greatest part of his life was passed in exigencies. Such outcries
+were, surely, never uttered but in severe pain. Of his supplies or his
+expenses no probable estimate can now be made. Except the salary of
+the laureate, to which king James added the office of historiographer,
+perhaps with some additional emoluments, his whole revenue seems to have
+been casual; and it is well known that he seldom lives frugally who lives
+by chance. Hope is always liberal; and they that trust her promises make
+little scruple of revelling to-day on the profits of the morrow.
+
+Of his plays the profit was not great; and of the produce of his other
+works very little intelligence can be had. By discoursing with the
+late amiable Mr. Tonson, I could not find that any memorials of the
+transactions between his predecessor and Dryden had been preserved,
+except the following papers:
+
+"I do hereby promise to pay John Dryden, esq. or order, on the 25th of
+March, 1699, the sum of two hundred and fifty guineas, in consideration
+of ten thousand verses, which the said John Dryden, esq. is to deliver
+to me, Jacob Tonson, when finished, whereof seven thousand five hundred
+verses, more or less, are already in the said Jacob Tonson's possession.
+And I do hereby further promise and engage myself, to make up the said
+sum of two hundred and fifty guineas three hundred pounds sterling to the
+said John Dryden, esq. his executors, administrators, or assigns, at the
+beginning of the second impression of the said ten thousand verses.
+
+"In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this 20th day
+of March, 1698-9.
+
+"JACOB TONSON.
+
+  "Sealed and delivered, being
+  first duly stampt, pursuant
+  to the acts of parliament for
+  that purpose, in the presence
+  of
+  "BEN. PORTLOCK,
+  "WILL. CONGREVE."
+
+  "March 24, 1698.
+
+"Received then of Mr. Jacob Tonson the sum of two hundred sixty-eight
+pounds fifteen shillings, in pursuance of an agreement for ten thousand
+verses, to be delivered by me to the said Jacob Tonson, whereof I have
+already delivered to him about seven thousand five hundred, more or less;
+he, the said Jacob Tonson, being obliged to make up the foresaid sum of
+two hundred sixty-eight pounds fifteen shillings three hundred pounds,
+at the beginning of the second impression of the foresaid ten thousand
+verses;
+
+"I say, received by me,
+
+"JOHN DRYDEN.
+
+"Witness, CHARLES DRYDEN."
+
+Two hundred and fifty guineas, at 1_l_, 1_s_. 6_d_. is 268_l_. 15_s_.
+
+It is manifest, from the dates of this contract, that it relates to the
+volume of Fables, which contains about twelve thousand verses, and for
+which, therefore, the payment must have been afterwards enlarged.
+
+I have been told of another letter yet remaining, in which he desires
+Tonson to bring him money, to pay for a watch which he had ordered for
+his son, and which the maker would not leave without the price.
+
+The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence. Dryden had probably
+no recourse in his exigencies but to his bookseller. The particular
+character of Tonson I do not know; but the general conduct of traders
+was much less liberal in those times than in our own; their views were
+narrower, and their manners grosser. To the mercantile ruggedness of that
+race, the delicacy of the poet was sometimes exposed. Lord Bolingbroke,
+who in his youth had cultivated poetry, related to Dr. King, of
+Oxford, that one day, when he visited Dryden, they heard, as they were
+conversing, another person entering the house. "This," said Dryden, "is
+Tonson. You will take care not to depart before he goes away; for I
+have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and if you leave me
+unprotected, I must suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can
+prompt his tongue."
+
+What rewards he obtained for his poems, besides the payment of the
+bookseller, cannot be known. Mr. Derrick, who consulted some of his
+relations, was informed that his Fables obtained five hundred pounds from
+the dutchess of Ormond; a present not unsuitable to the magnificence of
+that splendid family; and he quotes Moyle, as relating that forty pounds
+were paid by a musical society for the use of Alexander's Feast.
+
+In those days the economy of government was yet unsettled, and the
+payments of the exchequer were dilatory and uncertain: of this disorder
+there is reason to believe that the laureate sometimes felt the effects;
+for, in one of his prefaces he complains of those, who, being intrusted
+with the distribution of the prince's bounty, suffer those that depend
+upon it to languish in penury.
+
+Of his petty habits or slight amusements, tradition has retained little.
+Of the only two men, whom I have found, to whom he was personally known,
+one told me, that at the house which he frequented, called Will's
+Coffee-house, the appeal upon any literary dispute was made to him;
+and the other related, that his armed chair, which in the winter had a
+settled and prescriptive place by the fire, was in the summer placed in
+the balcony, and that he called the two places his winter and his summer
+seat. This is all the intelligence which his two survivers afforded me.
+
+One of his opinions will do him no honour in the present age, though in
+his own time, at least in the beginning of it, he was far from having it
+confined to himself. He put great confidence in the prognostications
+of judicial astrology. In the appendix to the Life of Congreve is a
+narrative of some of his predictions wonderfully fulfilled; but I know
+not the writer's means of information, or character of veracity. That he
+had the configurations of the horoscope in his mind, and considered them
+as influencing the affairs of men, he does not forbear to hint:
+
+  The utmost malice of the stars is past.
+  Now frequent _trines_ the happier lights among,
+  And _high-rais'd Jove_, from his dark prison freed,
+  Those weights took off that on his planet hung,
+  Will gloriously the new-laid works succeed.
+
+He has, elsewhere, shown his attention to the planetary powers; and,
+in the preface to his Fables, has endeavoured obliquely to justify his
+superstition, by attributing the same to some of the ancients. The
+letter, added to this narrative, leaves no doubt of his notions or
+practice.
+
+So slight and so scanty is the knowledge which I have been able to
+collect concerning the private life and domestick manners of a man whom
+every English generation must mention with reverence as a critick and a
+poet.
+
+Dryden may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as
+the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of
+composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without
+rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled,
+and rarely deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of
+propriety had neglected to teach them.
+
+Two Arts of English Poetry were written in the days of Elizabeth by Webb
+and Puttenham, from which something might be learned, and a few hints had
+been given by Jonson and Cowley; but Dryden's Essay on Dramatick Poetry
+was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing.
+
+He who, having formed his opinions in the present age of English
+literature, turns back to peruse this dialogue, will not, perhaps, find
+much increase of knowledge, or much novelty of instruction; but he is to
+remember that critical principles were then in the hands of a few, who
+had gathered them partly from the ancients, and partly from the Italians
+and French. The structure of dramatick poems was not then generally
+understood. Audiences applauded by instinct, and poets, perhaps, often
+pleased by chance.
+
+A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre.
+Of an opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence ceases to
+be examined. Of an art universally practised, the first teacher is
+forgotten. Learning once made popular is no longer learning; it has the
+appearance of something which we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew
+appears to rise from the field which it refreshes.
+
+To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time,
+and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his
+means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at
+another. Dryden at least imported his science, and gave his country
+what it wanted before; or rather, he imported only the materials and
+manufactured them by his own skill.
+
+The Dialogue on the Drama was one of his first essays of criticism,
+written when he was yet a timorous candidate for reputation, and,
+therefore, laboured with that diligence which he might allow himself
+somewhat to remit, when his name gave sanction to his positions, and his
+awe of the publick was abated, partly by custom, and partly by success.
+It will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a
+treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of
+opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imagery, so brightened with
+illustrations. His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with
+great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakespeare may stand as a
+perpetual model of encomiastick criticism; exact without minuteness,
+and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus, on the
+attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes, fades away before
+it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, so extensive in its
+comprehension, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be
+added, diminished, or reformed; nor can the editors and admirers of
+Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, boast of much more than
+of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence, of having
+changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value though of greater
+bulk.
+
+In this, and in all his other essays on the same subject, the criticism
+of Dryden is the criticism of a poet; not a dull collection of theorems,
+nor a rude detection of faults, which, perhaps, the censor was not able
+to have committed; but a gay and vigorous dissertation, where delight
+is mingled with instruction, and where the author proves his right of
+judgment by his power of performance.
+
+The different manner and effect with which critical knowledge may be
+conveyed, was, perhaps, never more clearly exemplified than in the
+performances of Rymer and Dryden. It was said of a dispute between two
+mathematicians, "malim cum Scaligero errare, quam cum Clavio recte
+sapere;" that "it was more eligible to go wrong with one, than right
+with the other." A tendency of the same kind every mind must feel at the
+perusal of Dryden's prefaces and Rymer's discourses. With Dryden we are
+wandering in quest of truth; whom we find, if we find her at all, drest
+in the graces of elegance; and, if we miss her, the labour of the pursuit
+rewards itself; we are led only through fragrance and flowers. Rymer,
+without taking a nearer, takes a rougher way; every step is to be made
+through thorns and brambles; and truth, if we meet her, appears repulsive
+by her mien, and ungraceful by her habit. Dryden's criticism has the
+majesty of a queen; Rymer's has the ferocity of a tyrant.
+
+As he had studied with great diligence the art of poetry, and enlarged or
+rectified his notions, by experience perpetually increasing, he had his
+mind stored with principles and observations; he poured out his knowledge
+with little labour; for of labour, notwithstanding the multiplicity of
+his productions, there is sufficient reason to suspect that he was not
+a lover. To write _con amore_, with fondness for the employment, with
+perpetual touches and retouches, with unwillingness to take leave of his
+own idea, and an unwearied pursuit of unattainable perfection, was, I
+think, no part of his character.
+
+His criticism may be considered as general or occasional. In his general
+precepts, which depend upon the nature of things, and the structure
+of the human mind, he may, doubtless, be safely recommended to the
+confidence of the reader; but his occasional and particular positions
+were sometimes interested, sometimes negligent, and sometimes capricious.
+It is not without reason that Trapp, speaking of the praises which he
+bestows on Palamon and Arcite, says, "Novimus judicium Drydeni de poemate
+quodam Chauceri, pulchro sane illo, et admodum laudando, nimirum quod non
+modo vere epicum sit, sed Iliada etiam atque Aeneada aequet, imo superet.
+Sed novimus eodem tempore viri illius maximi non semper accuratissimas
+esse censuras, nec ad severissimam critices normam exactas: illo judice
+id plerumque optimum est, quod nunc prae manibus habet, et in quo nunc
+occupatur."
+
+He is, therefore, by no means constant to himself. His defence and
+desertion of dramatick rhyme is generally known. Spence, in his remarks
+on Pope's Odyssey, produces what he thinks an unconquerable quotation
+from Dryden's preface to the Aeneid, in favour of translating an epick
+poem into blank verse; but he forgets that when his author attempted the
+Iliad, some years afterwards, he departed from his own decision, and
+translated into rhyme.
+
+When he has any objection to obviate, or any license to defend, he is not
+very scrupulous about what he asserts, nor very cautious, if the present
+purpose be served, not to entangle himself in his own sophistries. But,
+when all arts are exhausted, like other hunted animals, he sometimes
+stands at bay; when he cannot disown the grossness of one of his plays,
+he declares that he knows not any law that prescribes morality to a
+comick poet.
+
+His remarks on ancient or modern writers are not always to be trusted.
+His parallel of the versification of Ovid with that of Claudian has been
+very justly censured by Sewel[120]. His comparison of the first line of
+Virgil with the first of Statius is not happier. Virgil, he says, is
+soft and gentle, and would have thought Statius mad, if he had heard him
+thundering out:
+
+  Quae superimposito moles geminata colosso.
+
+Statius, perhaps, heats himself, as he proceeds, to exaggerations
+somewhat hyperbolical; but undoubtedly Virgil would have been too hasty,
+if he had condemned him to straw for one sounding line. Dryden wanted an
+instance, and the first that occurred was imprest into the service.
+
+What he wishes to say, he says at hazard; he cited Gorbuduc, which he
+had never seen; gives a false account of Chapman's versification; and
+discovers, in the preface to his Fables, that he translated the first
+book of the Iliad without knowing what was in the second.
+
+It will be difficult to prove that Dryden ever made any great advances
+in literature. As, having distinguished himself at Westminster under the
+tuition of Busby, who advanced his scholars to a height of knowledge very
+rarely attained in grammar-schools, he resided afterwards at Cambridge,
+it is not to be supposed, that his skill in the ancient languages was
+deficient, compared with that of common students; but his scholastick
+acquisitions seem not proportionate to his opportunities and abilities.
+He could not, like Milton or Cowley, have made his name illustrious
+merely by his learning. He mentions but few books, and those such as lie
+in the beaten track of regular study; from which, if ever he departs, he
+is in danger of losing himself in unknown regions.
+
+In his Dialogue on the Drama, he pronounces, with great confidence, that
+the Latin tragedy of Medea is not Ovid's, because it is not sufficiently
+interesting and pathetick. He might have determined the question upon
+surer evidence; for it is quoted by Quintilian as the work of Seneca; and
+the only line which remains of Ovid's play, for one line is left us, is
+not there to be found. There was, therefore, no need of the gravity of
+conjecture, or the discussion of plot or sentiment, to find what was
+already known upon higher authority than such discussions can ever reach.
+
+His literature, though not always free from ostentation, will be commonly
+found either obvious, and made his own by the art of dressing it; or
+superficial, which, by what he gives, shows what he wanted; or erroneous,
+hastily collected, and negligently scattered.
+
+Yet it cannot be said that his genius is ever unprovided of matter, or
+that his fancy languishes in penury of ideas. His works abound with
+knowledge, and sparkle with illustrations. There is scarcely any science
+or faculty that does not supply him with occasional images and lucky
+similitudes; every page discovers a mind very widely acquainted both with
+art and nature, and in full possession of great stores of intellectual
+wealth. Of him that knows much, it is natural to suppose that he has read
+with diligence; yet I rather believe that the knowledge of Dryden was
+gleaned from accidental intelligence and various conversation, by a quick
+apprehension, a judicious selection, and a happy memory, a keen appetite
+of knowledge, and a powerful digestion; by vigilance that permitted
+nothing to pass without notice, and a habit of reflection that suffered
+nothing useful to be lost. A mind like Dryden's, always curious, always
+active, to which every understanding was proud to be associated, and of
+which every one solicited the regard, by an ambitious display of himself,
+had a more pleasant, perhaps a nearer way to knowledge than by the silent
+progress of solitary reading. I do not suppose that he despised books,
+or intentionally neglected them; but that he was carried out, by the
+impetuosity of his genius, to more vivid and speedy instructors; and
+that his studies were rather desultory and fortuitous than constant and
+systematical.
+
+It must be confessed, that he scarcely ever appears to want
+book-learning, but when he mentions books; and to him may be transferred
+the praise which he gives his master Charles:
+
+  His conversation, wit, and parts,
+  His knowledge in the noblest useful arts,
+  Were such, dead authors could not give,
+  But habitudes of those that live,
+  Who, lighting him, did greater lights receive:
+  He drained from all, and all they knew,
+  His apprehensions quick, his judgment true:
+  That the most learn'd with shame confess,
+  His knowledge more, his reading only less.
+
+Of all this, however, if the proof be demanded, I will not undertake to
+give it; the atoms of probability, of which my opinion has been formed,
+lie scattered over all his works; and by him who thinks the question
+worth his notice, his works must be perused with very close attention.
+
+Criticism, either didactick or defensive, occupies almost all his prose,
+except those pages which he has devoted to his patrons; but none of his
+prefaces were ever thought tedious. They have not the formality of a
+settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other.
+The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word
+seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing
+is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is
+little, is gay; what fe great, is splendid. He may be thought to mention
+himself too frequently; but, while he forces himself upon our esteem, we
+cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. Every thing is excused by the
+play of images, and the sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy,
+nothing is feeble; though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and
+though since his earlier works more than a century has passed, they have
+nothing yet uncouth or obsolete.
+
+He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of
+particular modes as may be easily noted. Dryden is always "another and
+the same;" he does not exhibit a second time the same elegancies in the
+same form, nor appears to have any art other than that of expressing
+with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His style could not easily be
+imitated, either seriously or ludicrously; for, being always equable and
+always varied, it has no prominent or discriminative characters. The
+beauty who is totally free from disproportion of parts and features,
+cannot be ridiculed by an overcharged resemblance.
+
+From his prose, however, Dryden derives only his accidental and secondary
+praise; the veneration with which his name is pronounced by every
+cultivator of English literature, is paid to him as he refined the
+language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English
+poetry.
+
+After about half a century of forced thoughts, and rugged metre, some
+advances towards nature and harmony had been already made by Waller and
+Denham; they had shown that long discourses in rhyme grew more pleasing
+when they were broken into couplets, and that verse consisted not only in
+the number but the arrangement of syllables.
+
+But though they did much, who can deny that they left much to do? Their
+works were not many, nor were their minds of very ample comprehension.
+More examples of more modes of composition were necessary for the
+establishment of regularity, and the introduction of propriety in word
+and thought.
+
+Every language of a learned nation necessarily divides itself into
+diction scholastick and popular, grave and familiar, elegant and gross:
+and from a nice distinction of these different parts arises a great part
+of the beauty of style. But if we except a few minds, the favourites of
+nature, to whom their own original rectitude was in the place of rules,
+this delicacy of selection was little known to our authors; our speech
+lay before them in a heap of confusion, and every man took for every
+purpose, what chance might offer him.
+
+There was, therefore, before the time of Dryden no poetical diction, no
+system of words at once refined from the grossness of domestick use, and
+free from the harshness of terms appropriated to particular arts. Words
+too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those
+sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily
+receive strong impressions, or delightful images; and words to which
+we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on
+themselves which they should transmit to things.
+
+Those happy combinations of words which distinguish poetry from prose had
+been rarely attempted; we had few elegancies or flowers of speech; the
+roses had not yet been plucked from the bramble; or different colours had
+not been joined to enliven one another.
+
+It may be doubted whether Waller and Denham could have overborne the
+prejudices which had long prevailed, fend which even then were sheltered
+by the protection of Cowley. The new versification, as it was called, may
+be considered as owing its establishment to Dryden; from whose time it is
+apparent that English poetry has had no tendency to relapse to its former
+savageness.
+
+The affluence and comprehension of our language is very illustriously
+displayed in our poetical translations of ancient writers; a work which
+the French seem to relinquish in despair, and which we were long unable
+to perform with dexterity. Ben Jonson thought it necessary to copy Horace
+almost word by word; Feltham, his contemporary and adversary, considers
+it as indispensably requisite in a translation to give line for line. It
+is said that Sandys, whom Dryden calls the best versifier of the
+last age, has struggled hard to comprise every book of his English
+Metamorphoses in the same number of verses with the original. Holyday had
+nothing in view but to show that he understood his author, with so little
+regard to the grandeur of his diction, or the volubility of his numbers,
+that his metres can hardly be called verses; they cannot be read without
+reluctance, nor will the labour always be rewarded by understanding
+them. Cowley saw that such copyers were a servile race; he asserted his
+liberty, and spread his wings so boldly that he left his authors. It was
+reserved for Dryden to fix the limits of poetical liberty, and give us
+just rules and examples of translation.
+
+When languages are formed upon different principles, it is impossible
+that the same modes of expression should always be elegant in both. While
+they run on together, the closest translation may be considered as the
+best; but when they divaricate, each must take its natural course. Where
+correspondence cannot be obtained, it is necessary to be content with
+something equivalent. "Translation, therefore," says Dryden, "is not so
+loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase."
+
+All polished languages have different styles; the concise, the diffuse,
+the lofty, and the humble. In the proper choice of style consists the
+resemblance which Dryden principally exacts from the translator. He is to
+exhibit his author's thoughts in such a dress of diction as the author
+would have given them, had his language been English; rugged magnificence
+is not to be softened; hyperbolical ostentation is not to be repressed;
+nor sententious affectation to have its point blunted. A translator is to
+be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.
+
+The reasonableness of these rules seems sufficient for their vindication;
+and the effects produced by observing them were so happy, that I know not
+whether they were ever opposed, but by sir Edward Sherburne, a man whose
+learning was greater than his powers of poetry, and who, being better
+qualified to give the meaning than the spirit of Seneca, has introduced
+his version of three tragedies by a defence of close translation. The
+authority of Horace, which the new translators cited in defence of their
+practice, he has, by a judicious explanation, taken fairly from them; but
+reason wants not Horace to support it.
+
+It seldom happens that all the necessary causes concur to any great
+effect: will is wanting to power, or power to will, or both are impeded
+by external obstructions. The exigencies in which Dryden was condemned
+to pass his life, are reasonably supposed to have blasted his genius,
+to have driven out his works in a state of immaturity, and to have
+intercepted the full-blown elegance, which longer growth would have
+supplied.
+
+Poverty, like other rigid powers, is sometimes too hastily accused. If
+the excellence of Dryden's works was lessened by his indigence, their
+number was increased; and I know not how it will be proved, that if he
+had written less he would have written better; or that, indeed, he would
+have undergone the toil of an author, if he had not been solicited by
+something more pressing than the love of praise.
+
+But, as is said by his Sebastian,
+
+  What had been is unknown; what is, appears.
+
+We know that Dryden's several productions were so many successive
+expedients for his support; his plays were, therefore, often borrowed;
+and his poems were almost all occasional.
+
+In an occasional performance no height of excellence can be expected
+from any mind, however fertile in itself, and however stored with
+acquisitions. He whose work is general and arbitrary has the choice of
+his matter, and takes that which his inclination and his studies have
+best qualified him to display and decorate. He is at liberty to delay his
+publication till he has satisfied his friends and himself, till he has
+reformed his first thoughts by subsequent examination, and polished away
+those faults which the precipitance of ardent composition is likely to
+leave behind it. Virgil is related to have poured out a great number of
+lines in the morning, and to have passed the day in reducing them to
+fewer.
+
+The occasional poet is circumscribed by the narrowness of his subject.
+Whatever can happen to man has happened so often, that little remains
+for fancy or invention. We have been all born; we have most of us been
+married; and so many have died before us, that our deaths can supply
+but few materials for a poet. In the fate of princes the publick has an
+interest; and what happens to them of good or evil, the poets have always
+considered as business for the muse. But after so many inauguratory
+gratulations, nuptial hymns, and funeral dirges, he must be highly
+favoured by nature, or by fortune, who says any thing not said before.
+Even war and conquest, however splendid, suggest no new images; the
+triumphal chariot of a victorious monarch can be decked only with those
+ornaments that have graced his predecessors.
+
+Not only matter but time is wanting. The poem must not be delayed till
+the occasion is forgotten. The lucky moments of animated imagination
+cannot be attended; elegancies and illustrations cannot be multiplied
+by gradual accumulation; the composition must be despatched, while
+conversation is yet busy, and admiration fresh; and haste is to be
+made, lest some other event should lay hold upon mankind. Occasional
+compositions may, however, secure to a writer the praise both of learning
+and facility; for they cannot be the effect of long study, and must be
+furnished immediately from the treasures of the mind.
+
+The death of Cromwell was the first publick event which called forth
+Dryden's poetical powers. His heroick stanzas have beauties and defects;
+the thoughts are vigorous, and, though not always proper, show a mind
+replete with ideas; the numbers are smooth; and the diction, if not
+altogether correct, is elegant and easy.
+
+Davenant was, perhaps, at this time, his favourite author, though
+Gondibert never appears to have been popular; and from Davenant he
+learned to please his ear with the stanza of four lines alternately
+rhymed.
+
+Dryden very early formed his versification; there are in this early
+production no traces of Donne's or Jonson's ruggedness; but he did not so
+soon free his mind from the ambition of forced conceits. In his verses on
+the restoration, he says of the king's exile:
+
+  He, toss'd by fate,
+  Could taste no sweets of youth's desir'd age,
+  But found his life too true a pilgrimage.
+
+And afterwards, to show how virtue and wisdom are increased by adversity,
+he makes this remark:
+
+  Well might the ancient poets then confer
+  On night the honour'd name of counsellor:
+  Since, struck with rays of prosperous fortune blind,
+  We light alone in dark afflictions find.
+
+His praise of Monk's dexterity comprises such a cluster of thoughts
+unallied to one another, as will not elsewhere be easily found:
+
+  'Twas Monk, whom providence design'd to loose
+  Those real bonds false freedom did impose.
+  The blessed saints that watch'd this turning scene
+  Did from their stars with joyful wonder lean,
+  To see small clues draw vastest weights along,
+  Not in their bulk, but in their order strong.
+
+  Thus pencils can by one slight touch restore
+  Smiles to that changed face that wept before.
+  With ease such fond chimeras we pursue.
+  As fancy frames for fancy to subdue;
+  But, when ourselves to action we betake,
+  It shuns the mint like gold that chymists make:
+  How hard was then his task, at once to be
+  What in the body natural we see!
+  Man's architect distinctly did ordain
+  The charge of muscles, nerves, and of the brain,
+  Through viewless conduits spirits to dispense
+  The springs of motion from the seat of sense:
+  'Twas not the hasty product of a day,
+  But the well-ripen'd fruit of wise delay.
+  He, like a patient angler, ere he strook,
+  Would let them play awhile upon the hook.
+  Our healthful food the stomach labours thus,
+  At first embracing what it straight doth crush.
+  Wise leeches will not vain receipts obtrude,
+  While growing pains pronounce the humours crude;
+  Deaf to complaints, they wait upon the ill,
+  Till some safe crisis authorize their skill.
+
+He had not yet learned, indeed he never learned well, to forbear the
+improper use of mythology. After having rewarded the heathen deities for
+their care,
+
+  With Alga who the sacred altar strows?
+  To all the seagods Charles an offering owes;
+  A bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain;
+  A ram to you, ye tempests of the main.
+
+He tells us, in the language of religion,
+
+  Pray'r storm'd the skies, and ravish'd Charles from thence,
+  As heav'n itself is took by violence.
+
+And afterwards mentions one of the most awful passages of sacred history.
+
+Other conceits there are, too curious to be quite omitted; as,
+
+  For by example most we sinn'd before,
+  And, glass-like, clearness mix'd with frailty bore.
+How far he was yet from thinking it necessary to found his sentiments on
+nature, appears from the extravagance of his fictions and hyperboles:
+
+  The winds, that never moderation knew,
+  Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew;
+  Or, out of breath with joy, could not enlarge
+  Their straiten'd lungs.
+
+  It is no longer motion cheats your view;
+  As you meet it, the land approacheth you;
+  The land returns, and in the white it wears
+  The marks of penitence and sorrow bears.
+
+I know not whether this fancy, however little be its value, was not
+borrowed. A French poet read to Malherbe some verses, in which he
+represents France as moving out of its place to receive the king: "Though
+this," said Malherbe, "was in my time, I do not remember it."
+
+His poem on the Coronation has a more even tenour of thought. Some lines
+deserve to be quoted:
+
+  You have already quench'd sedition's brand;
+  And zeal, that burnt it, only warms the land;
+  The jealous sects that durst not trust their cause
+  So far from their own will as to the laws,
+  Him for their umpire and their synod take,
+  And their appeal alone to Caesar make.
+
+Here may be found one particle of that old versification, of which, I
+believe, in all his works, there is not another:
+
+  Nor is it duty, or our hope alone,
+  Creates that joy, but full _fruition_.
+
+In the verses to the lord chancellor Clarendon, two years afterwards, is
+a conceit so hopeless at the first view, that few would have attempted
+it; and so successfully laboured, that though, at last, it gives the
+reader more perplexity than pleasure, and seems hardly worth the study
+that it costs, yet it must be valued as a proof of a mind at once subtile
+and comprehensive:
+
+  In open prospect nothing bounds our eye,
+  Until the earth seems join'd unto the sky;
+  So in this hemisphere our utmost view
+  Is only bounded by our king and you:
+  Our sight is limited where you are join'd,
+  And beyond that no farther heaven can find.
+  So well your virtues do with his agree,
+  That, though your orbs of different greatness be,
+  Yet both are for each other's use dispos'd,
+  His to enclose, and yours to be enclos'd.
+  Nor could another in your room have been,
+  Except an emptiness had come between.
+
+The comparison of the chancellor to the Indies leaves all resemblance too
+far behind it:
+
+  And as the Indies were not found before
+  Those rich perfumes which from the happy shore
+  The winds upon their balmy wings convey'd,
+  Whose guilty sweetness first their world betray'd;
+  So by your counsels we are brought to view
+  A new and undiscover'd world in you.
+
+There is another comparison, for there is little else in the poem, of
+which, though, perhaps, it cannot be explained into plain prosaick
+meaning, the mind perceives enough to be delighted, and readily forgives
+its obscurity, for its magnificence:
+
+  How strangely active are the arts of peace,
+  Whose restless motions less than wars do cease:
+  Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise;
+  And war more force, but not more pains employs.
+  Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,
+  That, like the earth's, it leaves our sense behind,
+  While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere,
+  That rapid motion does but rest appear.
+  For as in nature's swiftness, with the throng
+  Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,
+  All seems at rest to the deluded eye,
+  Mov'd by the soul of the same harmony:
+  So, carry'd on by your unwearied care,
+  We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.
+
+To this succeed four lines, which, perhaps, afford Dryden's first attempt
+at those penetrating remarks on human nature, for which he seems to have
+been peculiarly formed:
+
+  Let envy then those crimes within you see,
+  From which the happy never must be free;
+  Envy that does with misery reside,
+  The joy and the revenge of ruin'd pride.
+
+Into this poem he seems to have collected all his powers; and after this
+he did not often bring upon his anvil such stubborn and unmalleable
+thoughts; but, as a specimen of his abilities to unite the most
+unsociable matter, he has concluded with lines, of which I think not
+myself obliged to tell the meaning:
+
+  Yet unimpair'd with labours, or with time,
+  Your age but seems to a new youth to climb.
+  Thus heav'nly bodies do our time beget,
+  And measure change, but share no part of it:
+  And still it shall without a weight increase,
+  Like this new year, whose motions never cease.
+  For since the glorious course you have begun
+  Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun,
+  It must both weightless and immortal prove,
+  Because the centre of it is above.
+
+In the Annus Mirabilis he returned to the quatrain, which from that time
+he totally quitted, perhaps from experience of its inconvenience, for he
+complains of its difficulty. This is one of his greatest attempts. He
+had subjects equal to his abilities, a great naval war, and the fire
+of London. Battles have always been described in heroick poetry; but a
+seafight and artillery had yet something of novelty. New arts are long in
+the world before poets describe them; for they borrow every thing from
+their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature, or from
+life. Boileau was the first French writer that had ever hazarded in verse
+the mention of modern war, or the effects of gunpowder. We, who are less
+afraid of novelty, had already possession of those dreadful images:
+Waller had described a seafight. Milton had not yet transferred the
+invention of firearms to the rebellious angels.
+
+This poem is written with great diligence, yet does not fully answer the
+expectation raised by such subjects and such a writer. With the stanza
+of Davenant, he has sometimes his vein of parenthesis, and incidental
+disquisition, and stops his narrative for a wise remark.
+
+The general fault is, that he affords more sentiment than description,
+and does not so much impress scenes upon the fancy, as deduce
+consequences and make comparisons.
+
+The initial stanzas have rather too much resemblance to the first lines
+of Waller's poem on the War with Spain; perhaps such a beginning is
+natural, and could not be avoided without affectation. Both Waller and
+Dryden might take their hint from the poem on the civil war of Rome:
+"Orbem jam totum," &c.
+
+Of the king collecting his navy, he says,
+
+  It seems, as ev'ry ship their sov'reign knows,
+  His awful summons they so soon obey:
+  So hear the scaly herds when Proteus blows,
+  And so to pasture follow through the sea.
+
+It would not be hard to believe that Dryden had written the two first
+lines seriously, and that some wag had added the two latter in burlesque.
+Who would expect the lines that immediately follow, which are, indeed,
+perhaps indecently hyperbolical, but certainly in a mode totally
+different:
+
+  To see this fleet upon the ocean move,
+  Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies;
+  And heav'n, as if there wanted lights above,
+  For tapers made two glaring comets rise.
+
+The description of the attempt at Bergen will afford a very complete
+specimen of the descriptions in this poem:
+
+  And now approach'd their fleet from India, fraught
+  With all the riches of the rising sun:
+  And precious sand from southern climates brought,
+  The fatal regions where the war begun.
+
+  Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,
+  Their waylaid wealth to Norway's coast they bring:
+  Then first the north's cold bosom spices bore,
+  And winter brooded on the eastern spring.
+
+  By the rich scent we found our perfum'd prey,
+  Which, flank'd with rocks, did close in covert lie;
+  And round about their murd'ring cannon lay,
+  At once to threaten and invite the eye.
+
+  Fiercer than cannon, and than rocks more hard,
+  The English undertake th' unequal war;
+  Sev'n ships alone, by which the port is barr'd,
+  Besiege the Indies, and all Denmark dare.
+
+  These fight like husbands, but like lovers those;
+  These fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy;
+  And to such height their frantick passion grows,
+  That what both love, both hazard to destroy:
+
+  Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,
+  And now their odours arm'd against them fly:
+  Some preciously by shatter'd porc'lain fall,
+  And some by aromatick splinters die.
+
+  And though by tempests of the prize bereft,
+  In heav'n's inclemency some ease we find;
+  Our foes we vanquish'd by our valour left,
+  And only yielded to the seas and wind.
+
+In this manner is the sublime too often mingled with the ridiculous.
+The Dutch seek a shelter for a wealthy fleet: this, surely, needed no
+illustration; yet they must fly, not like all the rest of mankind on the
+same occasion, but "like hunted castors;" and they might with strict
+propriety be hunted; for we winded them by our noses--their _perfumes_
+betrayed them. The _husband_ and the _lover_, though of more dignity than
+the castor, are images too domestick to mingle properly with the horrours
+of war. The two quatrains that follow are worthy of the author. The
+account of the different sensations with which the two fleets retired,
+when the night parted them, is one of the fairest flowers of English
+poetry:
+
+  The night comes on, we eager to pursue
+  The combat still, and they asham'd to leave:
+  Till the last streaks of dying day withdrew,
+  And doubtful moonlight did our rage deceive.
+
+  In th' English fleet each ship resounds with joy,
+  And loud applause of their great leader's fame:
+  In fiery dreams the Dutch they still destroy,
+  And, slumb'ring, smile at the imagin'd flame.
+
+  Not so the Holland fleet, who, tir'd and done,
+  Stretch'd on their decks like weary oxen lie;
+  Faint sweats all down their mighty members run,
+  (Vast bulks, which little souls but ill supply.)
+
+  In dreams they fearful precipices tread,
+  Or, shipwreck'd, labour to some distant shore;
+  Or, in dark churches, walk among the dead:
+  They wake with horrour, and dare sleep no more.
+
+It is a general rule in poetry, that all appropriated terms of art should
+be sunk in general expressions, because poetry is to speak an universal
+language. This rule is still stronger with regard to arts not liberal, or
+confined to few, and, therefore, far removed from common knowledge; and
+of this kind, certainly, is technical navigation. Yet Dryden was of
+opinion, that a seafight ought to be described in the nautical language;
+"and certainly," says he, "as those, who in a logical disputation keep to
+general terms, would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical
+description would veil their ignorance."
+
+Let us then appeal to experience; for by experience, at last, we learn as
+well what will please as what will profit. In the battle, his terms seem
+to have been blown away; but he deals them liberally in the dock:
+
+  So here some pick out bullets from the side,
+  Some drive old _okum_ through each _seam_ and rift;
+  Their left hand does the _calking-iron_ guide,
+  The rattling _mallet_ with the right they lift.
+
+  With boiling pitch another near at hand
+  (From friendly Sweden brought) the _seams in-slops_:
+  Which, well-laid o'er, the salt sea-waves withstand,
+  And shake them from the rising beak in drops.
+
+  Some the _gall'd_ ropes with dauby _marling_ bind,
+  Or sear-cloth masts with strong _tarpawling_ coats;
+  To try new _shrouds_ one mounts into the wind,
+  And one below, their ease or stiffness notes.
+
+I suppose there is not one term which every reader does not wish
+away[121].
+
+His digression to the original and progress of navigation, with his
+prospect of the advancement which it shall receive from the Royal
+Society, then newly instituted, may be considered as an example seldom
+equalled of seasonable excursion and artful return.
+
+One line, however, leaves me discontented; he says, that, by the help of
+the philosophers,
+
+  Instructed ships shall sail to quick commerce,
+  By which remotest regions are allied.
+
+Which he is constrained to explain in a note "by a more exact measure of
+longitude." It had better become Dryden's learning and genius to have
+laboured science into poetry, and have shown, by explaining longitude,
+that verse did not refuse the ideas of philosophy.
+
+His description of the Fire is painted by resolute meditation, out of a
+mind better formed to reason than to feel. The conflagration of a city,
+with all its tumults of concomitant distress, is one of the most dreadful
+spectacles which this world can offer to human eyes; yet it seems to
+raise little emotion in the breast of the poet; he watches the flame
+coolly from street to street, with now a reflection, and now a simile,
+till at last he meets the king, for whom he makes a speech, rather
+tedious in a time so busy; and then follows again the progress of the
+fire.
+
+There are, however, in this part some passages that deserve attention; as
+in the beginning:
+
+  The diligence of trades and noiseful gain,
+  And luxury, more late, asleep were laid;
+  All was the night's, and in her silent reign
+  No sound the rest of nature did invade
+  In this deep quiet----
+
+The expression, "all was the night's," is taken from Seneca, who remarks
+on Virgil's line,
+
+  Omnia noctis erant, placida composta quiete,
+
+that he might have concluded better,
+
+  Omnia noctis erant.
+
+The following quatrain is vigorous and animated:
+
+  The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,
+  With hold fanatick spectres to rejoice;
+  About the fire into a dance they bend,
+  And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice.
+
+His prediction of the improvements which shall be made in the new city is
+elegant and poetical, and, with an event which poets cannot always boast,
+has been happily verified. The poem concludes with a simile that might
+have better been omitted.
+
+Dryden, when he wrote this poem, seems not yet fully to have formed his
+versification, or settled his system of propriety.
+
+From this time he addicted himself almost wholly to the stage, "to
+which," says he, "my genius never much inclined me," merely as the most
+profitable market for poetry. By writing tragedies in rhyme, he continued
+to improve his diction and his numbers. According to the opinion of
+Harte, who had studied his works with great attention, he settled his
+principles of versification in 1676, when he produced the play of Aureng
+Zebe; and, according to his own account of the short time in which he
+wrote Tyrannick Love, and the State of Innocence, he soon obtained the
+full effect of diligence, and added facility to exactness.
+
+Rhyme has been so long banished from the theatre, that we know not its
+effect upon the passions of an audience; but it has this convenience,
+that sentences stand more independent on each other, and striking
+passages are, therefore, easily selected and retained. Thus the
+description of night in the Indian Emperor, and the rise and fall of
+empire in the Conquest of Granada, are more frequently repeated than any
+lines in All for Love, or Don Sebastian.
+
+To search his plays for vigorous sallies and sententious elegancies, or
+to fix the dates of any little pieces which he wrote by chance, or by
+solicitation, were labour too tedious and minute.
+
+His dramatick labours did not so wholly absorb his thoughts, but that he
+promulgated the laws of translation in a preface to the English Epistles
+of Ovid; one of which he translated himself, and another in conjunction
+with the earl of Mulgrave.
+
+Absalom and Achitophel is a work so well known, that particular
+criticism is superfluous. If it be considered as a poem political and
+controversial, it will be found to comprise all the excellencies of which
+the subject is susceptible; acrimony of censure, elegance of praise,
+artful delineation of characters, variety and vigour of sentiment, happy
+turns of language, and pleasing harmony of numbers; and all these
+raised to such a height as can scarcely be found in any other English
+composition.
+
+It is not, however, without faults; some lines are inelegant or improper,
+and too many are irreligiously licentious. The original structure of the
+poem was defective; allegories drawn to great length will always break;
+Charles could not run continually parallel with David.
+
+The subject had likewise another inconvenience; it admitted little
+imagery or description; and a long poem of mere sentiments easily becomes
+tedious; though all the parts are forcible, and every line kindles new
+rapture, the reader, if not relieved by the interposition of something
+that sooths the fancy, grows weary of admiration, and defers the rest.
+
+As an approach to historical truth was necessary, the action and
+catastrophe were not in the poet's power; there is, therefore, an
+unpleasing disproportion between the beginning and the end. We are
+alarmed by a faction formed out of many sects various in their
+principles, but agreeing in their purpose of mischief, formidable for
+their numbers, and strong by their supports, while the king's friends are
+few and weak. The chiefs on either part are set forth to view; but when
+expectation is at the height, the king makes a speech, and
+
+  Henceforth a series of new times began.
+
+Who can forbear to think of an enchanted castle, with a wide moat and
+lofty battlements, walls of marble and gates of brass, which vanishes at
+once into air, when the destined knight blows his horn before it?
+
+In the second part, written by Tate, there is a long insertion, which,
+for poignancy of satire, exceeds any part of the former. Personal
+resentment, though no laudable motive to satire, can add great force to
+general principles. Self-love is a busy prompter.
+
+The Medal, written upon the same principles with Absalom and Achitophel,
+but upon a narrower plan, gives less pleasure, though it discovers equal
+abilities in the writer. The superstructure cannot extend beyond the
+foundation; a single character or incident cannot furnish as many ideas,
+as a series of events, or multiplicity of agents. This poem, therefore,
+since time has left it to itself, is not much read, nor, perhaps,
+generally understood; yet it abounds with touches both of humorous and
+serious satire. The picture of a man whose propensions to mischief are
+such, that his best actions are but inability of wickedness, is very
+skilfully delineated and strongly coloured:
+
+  Power was his aim; but, thrown from that pretence,
+  The wretch turn'd loyal in his own defence,
+  And malice reconcil'd him to his prince.
+  Him, in the anguish of his soul, he serv'd;
+  Rewarded faster still than he deserv'd:
+  Behold him now exalted into trust;
+  His counsels oft convenient, seldom just.
+  Ev'n in the most sincere advice he gave,
+  He had a grudging still to be a knave.
+  The frauds he learnt in his fanatick years,
+  Made him uneasy in his lawful gears:
+  At least as little honest as he could;
+  And, like white witches, mischievously good.
+  To this first bias, longingly he leans;
+  And rather would be great by wicked means.
+
+The Threnodia, which, by a term I am afraid neither authorized nor
+analogical, he calls Augustalis, is not among his happiest productions.
+Its first and obvious defect is the irregularity of its metre, to which
+the ears of that age, however, were accustomed. What is worse, it has
+neither tenderness nor dignity; it is neither magnificent nor pathetick.
+He seems to look round him for images which he cannot find, and what
+he has he distorts by endeavouring to enlarge them. "He is," he says,
+"petrified with grief;" but the marble sometimes relents, and trickles in
+a joke:
+
+  The sons of art all med'cines try'd,
+  And ev'ry noble remedy apply'd:
+
+  With emulation each essay'd
+  His utmost skill; _nay, more, they prayd;_
+  Was never losing game with better conduct play'd.
+
+He had been a little inclined to merriment before upon the prayers of
+a nation for their dying sovereign; nor was he serious enough to keep
+heathen fables out of his religion:
+
+  With him th' innumerable crowd of armed prayers
+  Knock'd at the gates of heav'n, and knock'd aloud;
+  _The first well-meaning rude petitioners_
+  All for his life assail'd the throne;
+  All would have brib'd the skies by off'ring up their own.
+  So great a throng not heav'n itself could bar;
+  'Twas almost borne by force, _as in the giants' war._
+  The pray'rs, at least, for his reprieve were heard:
+  His death, like Hezekiah's, was deferr'd.
+
+There is, throughout the composition, a desire of splendour without
+wealth. In the conclusion he seems too much pleased with the prospect of
+the new reign to have lamented his old master with much sincerity.
+
+He did not miscarry in this attempt for want of skill either in lyrick or
+elegiack poetry. His poem on the death of Mrs. Killigrew is, undoubtedly,
+the noblest ode that our language ever has produced. The first part flows
+with a torrent of enthusiasm: "Fervet immensusque ruit." All the stanzas,
+indeed, are not equal. An imperial crown cannot be one continued diamond;
+the gems must be held together by some less valuable matter.
+
+In his first ode for Cecilia's day, which is lost in the splendour of the
+second, there are passages which would have dignified any other poet. The
+first stanza is vigorous and elegant, though the word _diapason_ is too
+technical, and the rhymes are too remote from one another:
+
+  From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
+  This universal frame began:
+  When nature underneath a heap of jarring atoms lay,
+  And could not heave her head,
+  The tuneful voice was heard from high.
+  Arise, ye more than dead.
+
+  Then cold and hot, and moist and dry,
+  In order to their stations leap,
+  And musick's power obey.
+  From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
+  This universal frame began;
+  From harmony to harmony
+  Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
+  The diapason closing full in man.
+
+The conclusion is likewise striking; but it includes an image so awful in
+itself, that it can owe little to poetry; and I could wish the antithesis
+of _musick untuning_ had found some other place:
+
+  As from the power of sacred lays
+  The spheres began to move.
+  And sung the great creator's praise
+  To all the bless'd above:
+
+  So, when the last and dreadful hour
+  This crumbling pageant shall devour,
+  The trumpet shall be heard on high,
+  The dead shall live, the living die,
+  And musick shall untune the sky.
+
+Of his skill in elegy he has given a specimen in his Eleonora, of which
+the following lines discover their author:
+
+  Though all these rare endowments of the mind
+  Were in a narrow space of life confin'd,
+  The figure was with full perfection crown'd;
+  Though not so large an orb, as truly round:
+  As when in glory, through the publick place,
+  The spoils of conquer'd nations were to pass,
+  And but one day for triumph was allow'd,
+  The consul was constrain'd his pomp to crowd;
+  And so the swift procession hurry'd on,
+  That all, tho' not distinctly, might be shown;
+  So, in the straiten'd bounds of life confin'd,
+  She gave but glimpses of her glorious mind:
+  And multitudes of virtues pass'd along;
+  Each pressing foremost in the mighty throng,
+  Ambitious to be seen, and then make room
+  For greater multitudes that were to come.
+
+  Yet unemployed no minute slipp'd away;
+  Moments were precious in so short a stay.
+  The haste of heaven to have her was so great,
+  That some were single acts, though each complete;
+  And ev'ry act stood ready to repeat.
+
+This piece, however, is not without its faults; there is so much likeness
+in the initial comparison, that there is no illustration. As a king would
+be lamented, Eleonora was lamented:
+
+  As, when some great and gracious monarch dies,
+  Soft whispers, first, and mournful murmurs rise
+  Among the sad attendants; then the sound
+  Soon gathers voice, and spreads the news around,
+  Through town and country, till the dreadful blast
+  Is blown to distant colonies at last;
+  Who then, perhaps, were off'ring vows in vain,
+  For his long life, and for his happy reign:
+  So slowly, by degrees, unwilling fame
+  Did matchless Eleonora's fate proclaim,
+  Till publick as the loss the news became.
+
+This is little better than to say in praise of a shrub, that it is as
+green as a tree; or of a brook, that it waters a garden, as a river
+waters a country.
+
+Dryden confesses that he did not know the lady whom he celebrates: the
+praise being, therefore, inevitably general, fixes no impression upon the
+reader, nor excites any tendency to love, nor much desire of imitation.
+Knowledge of the subject is to the poet what durable materials are to the
+architect.
+
+The Religio Laici, which borrows its title from the Religio Medici of
+Browne, is almost the only work of Dryden which can be considered as a
+voluntary effusion; in this, therefore, it might be hoped, that the full
+effulgence of his genius would be found. But, unhappily, the subject
+is rather argumentative than poetical; he intended only a specimen of
+metrical disputation:
+
+  And this unpolish'd rugged verse I chose
+  As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.
+
+This, however, is a composition of great excellence in its kind, in which
+the familiar is very properly diversified with the solemn, and the grave
+with the humorous; in which metre has neither weakened the force, nor
+clouded the perspicuity of argument; nor will it be easy to find another
+example equally happy of this middle kind of writing, which, though
+prosaick in some parts, rises to high poetry in others, and neither
+towers to the skies, nor creeps along the ground.
+
+Of the same kind, or not far distant from it, is the Hind and Panther,
+the longest of all Dryden's original poems; an allegory intended to
+comprise and to decide the controversy between the Romanists and
+protestants. The scheme of the work is injudicious and incommodious; for
+what can be more absurd, than that one beast should counsel another to
+rest her faith upon a pope and council? He seems well enough skilled in
+the usual topicks of argument, endeavours to show the necessity of an
+infallible judge, and reproaches the reformers with want of unity; but
+is weak enough to ask, why, since we see without knowing how, we may not
+have an infallible judge without knowing where?
+
+The hind, at one time, is afraid to drink at the common brook, because
+she may be worried; but, walking home with the panther, talks by the way
+of the Nicene fathers, and at last declares herself to be the catholick
+church.
+
+This absurdity was very properly ridiculed in the City Mouse and Country
+Mouse of Montague and Prior; and, in the detection and censure of
+the incongruity of the fiction, chiefly consists the value of their
+performance, which, whatever reputation it might obtain by the help of
+temporary passions, seems, to readers almost a century distant, not very
+forcible or animated.
+
+Pope, whose judgment was, perhaps, a little bribed by the subject,
+used to mention this poem as the most correct specimen of Dryden's
+versification. It was, indeed, written when he had completely formed
+his manner, and may be supposed to exhibit, negligence excepted, his
+deliberate and ultimate scheme of metre. We may, therefore, reasonably
+infer, that he did not approve the perpetual uniformity which confines
+the sense to couplets, since he has broken his lines in the initial
+paragraph:
+
+  A milk-white hind, immortal and unchang'd.
+  Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang'd:
+  Without unspotted, innocent within,
+  She fear'd no danger, for she knew no sin.
+  Yet had she oft been chas'd with horns and hounds,
+  And Scythian shafts, and many winged wounds
+  Aim'd at her heart; was often forc'd to fly,
+  And doom'd to death, though fated not to die.
+
+These lines are lofty, elegant, and musical, notwithstanding the
+interruption of the pause, of which the effect is rather increase of
+pleasure by variety, than offence by ruggedness.
+
+To the first part it was his intention, he says, "to give the majestick
+turn of heroick poesy;" and, perhaps, he might have executed his design
+not unsuccessfully, had not an opportunity of satire, which he cannot
+forbear, fallen sometimes in his way. The character of a presbyterian,
+whose emblem is the wolf, is not very heroically majestick:
+
+  More haughty than the rest, the wolfish race
+  Appear with belly gaunt and famish'd face:
+  Never was so deform'd a beast of grace.
+  His ragged tail betwixt his legs he wears,
+  Close clapp'd for shame; but his rough crest he rears,
+  And pricks up his predestinating ears.
+
+His general character of the other sorts of beasts that never go to
+church, though sprightly and keen, has, however, not much of heroick
+poesy:
+
+  These are the chief; to number o'er the rest,
+  And stand like Adam naming ev'ry beast,
+  Were weary work; nor will the muse describe
+  A slimy-born, and sun-begotten tribe,
+
+  Who, far from steeples and their sacred sound,
+  In fields their sullen conventicles found.
+  These gross, half-animated lumps I leave;
+  Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive;
+  But, if they think at all, 'tis sure no higher
+  Than matter, put in motion, may aspire;
+  Souls that can scarce ferment their mass of clay,
+  So drossy, so divisible are they,
+  As would but serve pure bodies for allay:
+  Such souls as shards produce, such beetle things
+  As only buzz to heaven with evening wings;
+  Strike in the dark, offending but by chance;
+  Such are the blindfold blows of ignorance.
+  They know no being, and but hate a name;
+  To them the hind and panther are the same.
+
+One more instance, and that taken from the narrative part, where style
+was more in his choice, will show how steadily he kept his resolution of
+heroick dignity:
+
+  For when the herd, suffic'd, did late repair
+  To ferny heaths and to their forest lair,
+  She made a mannerly excuse to stay,
+  Proff'ring the hind to wait her half the way;
+  That, since the sky was clear, an hour of talk
+  Might help her to beguile the tedious walk.
+  With much good-will the motion was embrac'd,
+  To chat awhile on their adventures past:
+  Nor had the grateful hind so soon forgot
+  Her friend and fellow-suff'rer in the plot.
+  Yet, wond'ring how of late she grew estrang'd,
+  Her forehead cloudy and her count'nance chang'd,
+  She thought this hour th' occasion would present
+  To learn her secret cause of discontent,
+  Which well she hop'd might be with ease redress'd,
+  Consid'ring her a well-bred civil beast.
+  And more a gentlewoman than the rest.
+  After some common talk what rumours ran,
+  The lady of the spotted muff began.
+
+The second and third parts he professes to have reduced to diction more
+familiar and more suitable to dispute and conversation; the difference is
+not, however, very easily perceived; the first has familiar, and the two
+others have sonorous, lines. The original incongruity runs through the
+whole: the king is now Caesar, and now the Lion; and the name Pan is
+given to the supreme being.
+
+But when this constitutional absurdity is forgiven, the poem must be
+confessed to be written with great smoothness of metre, a wide extent of
+knowledge, and an abundant multiplicity of images; the controversy is
+embellished with pointed sentences, diversified by illustrations, and
+enlivened by sallies of invective. Some of the facts to which allusions
+are made are now become obscure, and, perhaps, there may be many
+satirical passages little understood.
+
+As it was by its nature a work of defiance, a composition which would
+naturally be examined with the utmost acrimony of criticism, it was
+probably laboured with uncommon attention; and there are, indeed, few
+negligencies in the subordinate parts. The original impropriety, and the
+subsequent unpopularity of the subject, added to the ridiculousness of
+its first elements, has sunk it into neglect; but it may be usefully
+studied, as an example of poetical ratiocination, in which the argument
+suffers little from the metre.
+
+In the poem on the Birth of the Prince of Wales, nothing is very
+remarkable but the exorbitant adulation, and that insensibility of
+the precipice on which the king was then standing, which the laureate
+apparently shared with the rest of the courtiers. A few months cured him
+of controversy, dismissed him from court, and made him again a playwright
+and translator.
+
+Of Juvenal there had been a translation by Stapylton, and another by
+Holiday; neither of them is very poetical. Stapylton is more smooth; and
+Holiday's is more esteemed for the learning of his notes. A new version
+was proposed to the poets of that time, and undertaken by them in
+conjunction. The main design was conducted by Dryden, whose reputation
+was such that no man was unwilling to serve the muses under him.
+
+The general character of this translation will be given when it is
+said to preserve the wit, but to want the dignity of the original. The
+peculiarity of Juvenal is a mixture of gaiety and stateliness, of pointed
+sentences and declamatory grandeur. His points have not been neglected;
+but his grandeur none of the band seemed to consider as necessary to be
+imitated, except Creech, who undertook the thirteenth satire. It is,
+therefore, perhaps, possible to give a better representation of that
+great satirist, even in those parts which Dryden himself has translated,
+some passages excepted, which will never be excelled.
+
+With Juvenal was published Persius, translated wholly by Dryden. This
+work, though like all the other productions of Dryden it may have shining
+parts, seems to have been written merely for wages, in an uniform
+mediocrity without any eager endeavour after excellence, or laborious
+effort of the mind.
+
+There wanders an opinion among the readers of poetry that one of
+these satires is an exercise of the school. Dryden says, that he once
+translated it at school; but not that he preserved or published the
+juvenile performance.
+
+Not long afterwards he undertook, perhaps, the most arduous work of its
+kind, a translation of Virgil, for which he had shown how well he was
+qualified, by his version of the Pollio, and two episodes, one of Nisus
+and Euryalus, the other of Mezentius and Lausus.
+
+In the comparison of Homer and Virgil, the discriminative excellence of
+Homer is elevation and comprehension of thought, and that of Virgil is
+grace and splendour of diction. The beauties of Homer are, therefore,
+difficult to be lost, and those of Virgil difficult to be retained. The
+massy trunk of sentiment is safe by its solidity, but the blossoms of
+elocution easily drop away. The author, having the choice of his own
+images, selects those which he can best adorn; the translator must, at
+all hazards, follow his original, and express thoughts which, perhaps,
+he would not have chosen. When to this primary difficulty is added the
+inconvenience of a language so much inferiour in harmony to the Latin, it
+cannot be expected that they who read the Georgicks and the Aeneid should
+be much delighted with any version.
+
+All these obstacles Dryden saw, and all these he determined to encounter.
+The expectation of his work was undoubtedly great; the nation considered
+its honour as interested in the event. One gave him the different
+editions of his author, and another helped him in the subordinate parts.
+The arguments of the several books were given him by Addison.
+
+The hopes of the publick were riot disappointed. He produced, says Pope,
+"the most noble and spirited translation that I know in any language." It
+certainly excelled whatever had appeared in English, and appears to have
+satisfied his friends, and, for the most part, to have silenced his
+enemies. Milbourne, indeed, a clergyman, attacked it; but his outrages
+seem to be the ebullitions of a mind agitated by stronger resentment than
+bad poetry can excite, and previously resolved not to be pleased.
+
+His criticism extends only to the Preface, Pastorals, and Georgicks; and,
+as he professes to give his antagonist an opportunity of reprisal, he has
+added his own version of the first and fourth Pastorals, and the first
+Georgick. The world has forgotten his book; but, since his attempt has
+given him a place in literary history, I will preserve a specimen of his
+criticism, by inserting his remarks on the invocation before the first
+Georgick, and of his poetry, by annexing his own version.
+
+Ver. 1.
+
+  "What makes a plenteous harvest, when to turn
+  The fruitful soil, and when to sow the corn.
+
+"It's _unlucky_, they say, _to stumble at the threshold_: but what has
+a _plenteous harvest_ to do here? Virgil would not pretend to prescribe
+_rules_ for _that_ which depends not on the _husbandman's_ care, but the
+_disposition of heaven_ altogether. Indeed, the _plenteous crop_ depends
+somewhat on the _good method of tillage_; and where the _land'_s
+ill-manur'd, the _corn_, without a miracle, can be but _indifferent_; but
+the _harvest_ may be _good_, which is its _properest_ epithet, tho' the
+_husbandman's skill_ were never so _indifferent_. The next _sentence_
+is _too literal_: and _when to plough_ had been _Virgil's_ meaning, and
+intelligible to every body; and _when to sow the corn_, is a needless
+_addition_.
+
+Ver. 3.
+
+  "The care of sheep, of oxen, and of kine,
+  And when to geld the lambs, and shear the swine,
+
+"would as well have fallen under the _cura boum, qui cultus habendo sit
+pecori_, as Mr. D.'s _deduction_ of particulars.
+
+  Ver. 5
+
+  "The birth and genius of the frugal bee
+  I sing, Maecenas, and I sing to thee.
+
+"But where did _experientia_ ever signify _birth andgenius_? or what
+ground was there for such a _figure_ in this place? How much more manly
+is Mr. Ogylby's version?
+
+  "What makes rich grounds, in what celestial signs
+  'Tis good to plough, and marry elms with vines:
+  What best fits cattle, what with sheep agrees,
+  And several arts improving frugal bees;
+  I sing, Maecenas.
+
+"Which four lines, though faulty enough, are yet much more to the purpose
+than Mr. D.'s six.
+
+Ver. 22.
+
+  "From fields and mountains to my song repair.
+
+"For _patrium linquens nemus, saltusque Lycaei_--Very well explained!
+
+Ver. 23, 24.
+
+  "Inventor Pallas, of the fatt'ning oil,
+  Thou founder of the plough, and ploughman's toil!
+
+"Written as if _these_ had been _Pallas's invention_. The _ploughman's
+toil's_ impertinent.
+
+Ver. 25.
+
+  "The shroud-like cypress----
+
+"Why _shroud-like_? Is a _cypress_ pulled up by the _roots_, which the
+_sculpture_ in the _last Eclogue_ fills _Silvanus's_ hand with, so very
+like a _shroud_? Or did not Mr. D. think of that kind of _cypress_ used
+often for _scarves and hatbands_, at funerals formerly, or for _widows'
+veils_, &c. ? If so, 'twas a _deep, good thought_.
+
+Ver. 26.
+
+  "That wear
+  The royal honours, and increase the year.
+
+"What's meant by _increasing the year_? Did the _gods_ or _goddesses_
+add more _months_, or _days_, or _hours_, to it? Or how can _arva tueri_
+signify to _wear rural honours_? Is this to _translate_, or _abuse_ an
+_author_? The next _couplet_ is borrowed from Ogylby, I suppose, because
+_less to the purpose_ than ordinary.
+
+Ver. 33.
+
+  "The patron of the world, and Rome's peculiar guard.
+
+"_Idle_, and none of Virgil's, no more than the sense of the _precedent
+couplet_; so again, _he interpolates Virgil_ with that and _the round
+circle of the year to guide powerful of blessings, which thou strew'st
+around_; a ridiculous _Latinism_, and an _impertinent addition_; indeed
+the whole _period_ is but one piece of _absurdity_ and _nonsense_, as
+those who lay it with the _original_ must find.
+
+Ver. 42, 43.
+
+  "And Neptune shall resign the fasces of the sea.
+
+"Was he _consul_ or _dictator_ there?
+
+  "And wat'ry virgins for thy bed shall strive.
+
+"Both absurd _interpolations_."
+
+Ver. 47, 48.
+
+  "Where in the void of heaven a place is free.
+
+  "_Ah, happy_ D----n, _were_ that place for _thee_!
+
+"But where is _that void_? Or, what does our _translator_ mean by it? He
+knows what Ovid says God did to prevent such a void in heaven; perhaps
+this was then forgotten: but Virgil talks more sensibly.
+
+Ver. 49.
+
+  "The scorpion ready to receive thy laws.
+
+"No, he would not then have _gotten out of his way_ so fast.
+
+Ver. 56.
+
+  "Though Proserpine affects her silent seat.
+
+"What made her then so _angry_ with _Ascalaphus_, for preventing her
+return? She was now mus'd to _Patience_ under the _determinations of
+Fate_, rather than _fond_ of her _residence_,
+
+Ver. 61, 62, 63.
+
+  "Pity the poet's and the ploughman's cares,
+  Interest thy greatness in our mean affairs,
+  And use thyself betimes to hear our prayers.
+
+"Which is such a wretched _perversion_ of Virgil's _noble thought_ as
+Vicars would have blushed at; but Mr. Ogylby makes us some amends, by his
+better lines:
+
+  "O, wheresoe'er thou art, from thence incline,
+  And grant assistance to my bold design!
+  Pity, with me, poor husbandmen's affairs,
+  And now, as if translated, hear our prayers.
+
+"This is _sense_, and _to the purpose_: the other, poor _mistaken
+stuff_."
+
+Such were the strictures of Milbourne, who found few abetters, and of
+whom it may be reasonably imagined, that many who favoured his design
+were ashamed of his insolence.
+
+When admiration had subsided, the translation was more coolly examined,
+and found, like all others, to be sometimes erroneous, and sometimes
+licentious. Those who could find faults, thought they could avoid them;
+and Dr. Brady attempted, in blank verse, a translation of the Aeneid,
+which, when dragged into the world, did not live long enough to cry,
+I have never seen it; but that such a version there is, or has been,
+perhaps some old catalogue informed me.
+
+With not much better success, Trapp, when his Tragedy and his Prelections
+had given him reputation, attempted another blank version of the Aeneid;
+to which, notwithstanding the slight regard with which it was treated, he
+had afterwards perseverance enough to add the Eclogues and Georgicks. His
+book may continue its existence as long as it is the clandestine refuge
+of schoolboys.
+
+Since the English ear has been accustomed to the mellifluence of Pope's
+numbers, and the diction of poetry has become more splendid, new attempts
+have been made to translate Virgil; and all his works have been attempted
+by men better qualified to contend with Dryden. I will not engage myself
+in an invidious comparison by opposing one passage to another; a work of
+which there would be no end, and which might be often offensive without
+use.
+
+It is not by comparing line with line, that the merit of great works is
+to be estimated, but by their general effects and ultimate result. It is
+easy to note a weak line, and write one more vigorous in its place; to
+find a happiness of expression in the original, and transplant it by
+force into the version: but what is given to the parts may be subducted
+from the whole, and the reader may be weary, though the critick may
+commend. Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by
+their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good
+in vain, which the reader throws away. He only is the master, who keeps
+the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness,
+and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion
+is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon
+departing day [122].
+
+By his proportion of this predomination I will consent that Dryden should
+be tried; of this, which, in opposition to reason, makes Ariosto the
+darling and the pride of Italy; of this, which, in defiance of criticism,
+continues Shakespeare the sovereign of the drama.
+
+His last work was his Fables, in which he gave us the first example of a
+mode of writing, which the Italians call _refaccimento_, a renovation
+of ancient writers, by modernizing their language. Thus the old poem
+of Boiardo has been new dressed by Domenichi and Berni. The works of
+Chaucer, upon which this kind of rejuvenescence has been bestowed by
+Dryden, require little criticism. The tale of the Cock seems hardly
+worth revival; and the story of Palamon and Arcite, containing an action
+unsuitable to the times in which it is placed, can hardly be suffered to
+pass without censure of the hyperbolical commendation which Dryden has
+given it in the general preface, and in a poetical dedication, a piece
+where his original fondness of remote conceits seems to have revived.
+
+Of the three pieces borrowed from Boccace, Sigismunda may be defended by
+the celebrity of the story. Theodore and Honoria, though it contains not
+much moral, yet afforded opportunities of striking description. And Cymon
+was formerly a tale of such reputation, that, at the revival of letters,
+it was translated into Latin by one of the Beroalds.
+
+Whatever subjects employed his pen, he was still improving our measures
+and embellishing our language.
+
+In this volume are interspersed some short original poems, which, with
+his prologues, epilogues, and songs, may be comprised in Congreve's
+remark, that even those, if he had written nothing else, would have
+entitled him to the praise of excellence in his kind.
+
+One composition must, however, be distinguished. The ode for St.
+Cecilia's Day, perhaps the last effort of his poetry, has been always
+considered as exhibiting the highest flight of fancy, and the exactest
+nicety of art. This is allowed to stand without a rival. If, indeed,
+there is any excellence beyond it, in some other of Dryden's works, that
+excellence must be found. Compared with the ode on Killigrew, it may be
+pronounced, perhaps, superiour in the whole; but without any single part
+equal to the first stanza of the other.
+
+It is said to have cost Dryden a fortnight's labour; but it does not want
+its negligences: some of the lines are without correspondent rhymes; a
+defect, which I never detected, but after an acquaintance of many years,
+and which the enthusiasm of the writer might hinder him from perceiving.
+
+His last stanza has less emotion than the former; but it is not less
+elegant in the diction. The conclusion is vitious; the musick of
+Timotheus, which "raised a mortal to the skies," had only a metaphorical
+power; that of Cecilia, which "drew an angel down," had a real effect:
+the crown, therefore, could not reasonably be divided.
+
+In a general survey of Dryden's labours, he appears to have a mind very
+comprehensive by nature, and much enriched with acquired knowledge. His
+compositions are the effects of a vigorous genius operating upon large
+materials.
+
+The power that predominated in his intellectual operations, was rather
+strong reason than quick sensibility. Upon all occasions that were
+presented, he studied rather than felt, and produced sentiments not
+such as nature enforces, but meditation supplies. With the simple and
+elemental passions, as they spring separate in the mind, he seems not
+much acquainted; and seldom describes them but as they are complicated
+by the various relations of society, and confused in the tumults and
+agitations of life.
+
+What he says of love may contribute to the explanation of his character:
+
+  Love various minds does variously inspire;
+  It stirs in gentle bosoms gentle fire,
+  Like that of incense on the altar laid;
+  But raging flames tempestuous souls invade:
+
+  A fire which ev'ry windy passion blows,
+  With pride it mounts, or with revenge it glows.
+
+Dryden's was not one of the "gentle bosoms:" love, as it subsists in
+itself, with no tendency but to the person loved, and wishing only for
+correspondent kindness; such love as shuts out all other interest; the
+love of the golden age, was too soft and subtile to put his faculties in
+motion. He hardly conceived it but in its turbulent effervescence with
+some other desires; when it was inflamed by rivalry, or obstructed by
+difficulties: when it invigorated ambition, or exasperated revenge.
+
+He is, therefore, with all his variety of excellence, not often
+pathetick; and had so little sensibility of the power of effusions purely
+natural, that he did not esteem them in others. Simplicity gave him no
+pleasure; and, for the first part of his life, he looked on Otway with
+contempt, though, at last, indeed very late, he confessed that in his
+play "there was nature, which is the chief beauty."
+
+We do not always know our own motives. I am not certain whether it was
+not rather the difficulty which he found in exhibiting the genuine
+operations of the heart, than a servile submission to an injudicious
+audience, that filled his plays with false magnificence. It was necessary
+to fix attention; and the mind can be captivated only by recollection,
+or by curiosity; by reviving natural sentiments, or impressing new
+appearances of things. Sentences were readier at his call than images; he
+could more easily fill the ear with some splendid novelty, than awaken
+those ideas that slumber in the heart.
+
+The favourite exercise of his mind was ratiocination; and, that argument
+might not be too soon at an end, he delighted to talk of liberty and
+necessity, destiny and contingence; these he discusses in the language of
+the school with so much profundity, that the terms which he uses are not
+always understood. It is, indeed, learning, but learning out of place.
+
+When once he had engaged himself in disputation, thoughts flowed in on
+either side: he was now no longer at a loss; he had always objections and
+solutions at command; "verbaque provisam rem"--give him matter for his
+verse, and he finds, without difficulty, verse for his matter.
+
+In comedy, for which he professes himself not naturally qualified, the
+mirth which he excites will, perhaps, not be found so much to arise from
+any original humour, or peculiarity of character nicely distinguished and
+diligently pursued, as from incidents and circumstances, artifices and
+surprises; from jests of action rather than of sentiment. What he had of
+humorous or passionate, he seems to have had not from nature, but from
+other poets; if not always as a plagiary, at least as an imitator.
+
+Next to argument, his delight was in wild and daring sallies of
+sentiment, in the irregular and eccentrick violence of wit. He delighted
+to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to
+mingle; to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss
+of unideal vacancy. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which
+he knew; as,
+
+  Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace,
+  Leave weeks and months behind thee in thy race.
+  Amamel flies
+  To guard thee from the demons of the air;
+  My flaming sword above them to display,
+  All keen, and ground upon the edge of day.
+
+And sometimes it issued in absurdities, of which, perhaps, he was not
+conscious:
+
+  Then we upon our orb's last verge shall go,
+  And see the ocean leaning on the sky;
+  From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
+  And on the lunar world securely pry.
+
+These lines have no meaning; but may we not say, in imitation of Cowley
+on another book,
+
+  'Tis so like _sense_ 'twill serve the turn as well?
+
+This endeavour after the grand and the new, produced sentiments either
+great or bulky, and many images either just or splendid:
+
+  I am as free as nature first made man,
+  Ere the base laws of servitude began,
+  When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
+
+  --'Tis but because the living death ne'er knew,
+  They fear to prove it, as a thing that's new:
+  Let me th' experiment before you try,
+  I'll show you first how easy 'tis to die.
+
+  --There with a forest of their darts he strove,
+  And stood like Capaneus defying Jove,
+  With his broad sword the boldest beating down,
+  While fate grew pale, lest he should win the town,
+  And turn'd the iron leaves of his dark book
+  To make new dooms, or mend what it mistook.
+
+  --I beg no pity for this mouldering clay;
+  For if you give it burial, there it takes
+  Possession of your earth;
+  If burnt, and scatter'd in the air, the winds
+  That strew my dust diffuse my royalty,
+  And spread me o'er your clime; for where one atom
+  Of mine shall light, know there Sebastian reigns.
+
+Of these quotations the two first may be allowed to be great, the two
+latter only tumid.
+
+Of such selection there is no end. I will add only a few more passages;
+of which the first, though it may, perhaps, not be quite clear in prose,
+is not too obscure for poetry, as the meaning that it has is noble[123]:
+
+  No, there is a necessity in fate,
+  Why still the brave bold man is fortunate;
+
+
+  He keeps his object ever full in sight;
+  And that assurance holds him firm and right;
+  True, 'tis a narrow way that leads to bliss,
+  But right before there is no precipice;
+  Fear makes men look aside, and so their footing miss.
+
+Of the images which the two following citations afford, the first is
+elegant, the second magnificent; whether either be just, let the reader
+judge:
+
+  What precious drops are these,
+  Which silently each other's track pursue,
+  Bright as young diamonds in their infant dew?
+
+  Resign your castle----
+
+  --Enter, brave sir; for, when you speak the word,
+  The gates shall open of their own accord;
+  The genius of the place its lord shall meet,
+  And bow its tow'ry forehead at your feet.
+
+These bursts of extravagance, Dryden calls the "Dalilahs" of the theatre;
+and owns that many noisy lines of Maximin and Almanzor call out for
+vengeance upon him: "but I knew," says he, "that they were bad enough to
+please, even when I wrote them." There is, surely, reason to suspect that
+he pleased himself, as well as his audience; and that these, like the
+harlots of other men, had his love, though not his approbation.
+
+He had, sometimes, faults of a less generous and splendid kind. He
+makes, like almost all other poets, very frequent use of mythology, and
+sometimes connects religion and fable too closely without distinction.
+
+He descends to display his knowledge with pedantick ostentation; as
+when, in translating Virgil, he says, "tack to the larboard,"--and "veer
+starboard;" and talks, in another work, of "virtue spooning before the
+wind."--His vanity now and then betrays his ignorance:
+
+  They nature's king through nature's opticks view'd;
+  Revers'd, they view'd him lessen'd to their eyes.
+
+He had heard of reversing a telescope, and unluckily reverses the object.
+He is, sometimes, unexpectedly mean. When he describes the supreme being
+as moved by prayer to stop the fire of London, what is his expression?
+
+  A hollow crystal pyramid he takes,
+  In firmamental waters dipp'd above,
+  Of this a broad _extinguisher_ he makes,
+  And _hoods_ the flames that to their quarry strove.
+
+When he describes the last day, and the decisive tribunal, he
+intermingles this image:
+
+  When rattling bones together fly,
+  From the four quarters of the sky.
+
+It was, indeed, never in his power to resist the temptation of a jest. In
+his elegy on Cromwell:
+
+  No sooner was the Frenchman's cause embrac'd,
+  Than the _light monsieur_ the _grave don_ outweigh'd;
+  His fortune turn'd the scale----
+
+He had a vanity, unworthy of his abilities, to show, as may be suspected,
+the rank of the company with whom he lived, by the use of French
+words, which had then crept into conversation; such as _fraicheur_ for
+_coolness, fougue_ for _turbulence_, and a few more, none of which the
+language has incorporated or retained. They continue only where they
+stood first, perpetual warnings to future innovators.
+
+These are his faults of affectation; his faults of negligence are beyond
+recital. Such is the unevenness of his compositions, that ten lines are
+seldom found together without something of which the reader is ashamed.
+Dryden was no rigid judge of his own pages; he seldom struggled after
+supreme excellence, but snatched in haste what was within his reach; and
+when he could content others, was himself contented. He did not keep
+present to his mind an idea of pure perfection; nor compare his works,
+such as they were, with what they might be made. He knew to whom he
+should be opposed. He had more musick than Waller, more vigour than
+Donham, and more nature than Cowley; and from his contemporaries he was
+in no danger. Standing, therefore, in the highest place, he had no care
+to rise by contending with himself; but while there was no name above his
+own, was willing to enjoy fame on the easiest terms.
+
+He was no lover of labour. What he thought sufficient, he did not stop
+to make better; and allowed himself to leave many parts unfinished, in
+confidence that the good lines would overbalance the bad. What he had
+once written, he dismissed from his thoughts; and, I believe, there is no
+example to be found of any correction or improvement made by him after
+publication. The hastiness of his productions might be the effect of
+necessity; but his subsequent neglect could hardly have any other cause
+than impatience of study.
+
+What can be said of his versification, will be little more than a
+dilatation of the praise given it by Pope:
+
+  Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
+  The varying verse, the full resounding line,
+  The long majestick march, and energy divine.
+
+Some improvements had been already made in English numbers; but the full
+force of our language was not yet felt; the verse that was smooth was
+commonly feeble. If Cowley had sometimes a finished line, he had it by
+chance. Dryden knew how to choose the flowing and the sonorous words; to
+vary the pauses, and adjust the accents; to diversify the cadence, and
+yet preserve the smoothness of his metre.
+
+Of triplets and alexandrines, though he did not introduce the use, he
+established it. The triplet has long subsisted among us. Dryden seems not
+to have traced it higher than to Chapman's Homer; but it is to be found
+in Phaer's Virgil, written in the reign of Mary; and in Hall's Satires,
+published five years before the death of Elizabeth.
+
+The alexandrine was, I believe, first used by Spenser, for the sake
+of closing his stanza with a fuller sound. We had a longer measure of
+fourteen syllables, into which the Aeneid was translated by Phaer, and
+other works of the ancients by other writers; of which Chapman's Iliad
+was, I believe, the last.
+
+The two first lines of Phaer's third Aeneid will exemplify this measure:
+
+  When Asia's state was overthrown, and Priam's kingdom stout,
+  All guiltless, by the power of gods above was rooted out.
+
+As these lines had their break, or caesura, always at the eighth syllable,
+it was thought, in time, commodious to divide them: and quatrains of
+lines, alternately, consisting of eight and six syllables, make the most
+soft and pleasing of our lyrick measures; as,
+
+  Relentless time, destroying pow'r,
+  Which stone and brass obey,
+  Who giv'st to ev'ry flying hour
+  To work some new decay.
+
+In the alexandrine, when its power was once felt, some poems, as
+Drayton's Polyolbion, were wholly written; and sometimes the measures of
+twelve and fourteen syllables were interchanged with one another. Cowley
+was the first that inserted the alexandrine at pleasure among the heroick
+lines of ten syllables, and from him Dryden professes to have adopted
+it[124].
+
+The triplet and alexandrine are not universally approved. Swift always
+censured them, and wrote some lines to ridicule them. In examining
+their propriety, it is to be considered that the essence of verse is
+regularity, and its ornament is variety. To write verse, is to dispose
+syllables and sounds harmonically by some known and settled rule; a rule,
+however, lax enough to substitute similitude for identity, to admit
+change without breach of order, and to relieve the ear without
+disappointing it. Thus a Latin hexameter is formed from dactyls and
+spondees, differently combined; the English heroick admits of acute or
+grave syllables, variously disposed. The Latin never deviates into seven
+feet, or exceeds the number of seventeen syllables; but the English
+alexandrine breaks the lawful bounds, and surprises the reader with two
+syllables more than he expected.
+
+The effect of the triplet is the same: the ear has been accustomed to
+expect a new rhyme in every couplet; but is on a sudden surprised with
+three rhymes together, to which the reader could not accommodate his
+voice, did he not obtain notice of the change from the braces of the
+margins. Surely there is something unskilful in the necessity of such
+mechanical direction.
+
+Considering the metrical art simply as a science, and, consequently,
+excluding all casualty, we must allow that triplets and alexandrines,
+inserted by caprice, are interruptions of that constancy to which science
+aspires. And though the variety which they produce may very justly be
+desired, yet, to make our poetry exact, there ought to be some stated
+mode of admitting them.
+
+But till some such regulation can be formed, I wish them still to be
+retained in their present state. They are sometimes grateful to the
+reader, and sometimes convenient to the poet. Fenton was of opinion, that
+Dryden was too liberal, and Pope too sparing, in their use.
+
+The rhymes of Dryden are commonly just, and he valued himself for his
+readiness in finding them; but he is sometimes open to objection.
+
+It is the common practice of our poets to end the second line with a weak
+or grave syllable:
+
+  Together o'er the Alps methinks we fly,
+  Fill'd with ideas of fair Italy.
+
+Dryden sometimes puts the weak rhyme in the first:
+
+  Laugh all the powers that favour _tyranny_,
+  And all the standing army of the sky.
+
+Sometimes he concludes a period or paragraph with the first line of a
+couplet, which, though the French seem to do it without irregularity,
+always displeases in English poetry.
+
+The alexandrine, though much his favourite, is not always very diligently
+fabricated by him. It invariably requires a break at the sixth syllable;
+a rule which the modern French poets never violate, but which Dryden
+sometimes neglected:
+
+  And with paternal thunder vindicates his throne.
+
+Of Dryden's works it was said by Pope, that he "could select from them
+better specimens of every mode of poetry than any other English writer
+could supply." Perhaps no nation ever produced a writer that enriched
+his language with such variety of models. To him we owe the improvement,
+perhaps the completion, of our metre, the refinement of our language, and
+much of the correctness of our sentiments. By him we are taught "sapere
+et fari," to think naturally and express forcibly. Though Davies has
+reasoned in rhyme before him, it may be, perhaps, maintained that he was
+the first who joined argument with poetry. He showed us the true bounds
+of a translator's liberty. What was said of Rome, adorned by Augustus,
+may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry, embellished by
+Dryden, "lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit." He found it brick, and
+he left it marble.
+
+The invocation before the Georgicks is here inserted from Mr. Milbourne's
+version, that, according to his own proposal, his verses may be compared
+with those which he censures:
+
+  What makes the richest _tilth_, beneath what signs
+  To _plough_, and when to match your _elms and vines_;
+
+  What care with _flocks_, and what with _herds_ agrees,
+  And all the management of frugal _bees_;
+  I sing, Maecenas! Ye immensely clear,
+  Vast orbs of light, which guide the rolling year;
+  Bacchus, and mother Ceres, if by you
+  We fatt'ning _corn_ for hungry _mast_ pursue,
+  If, taught by you, we first the _cluster_ prest,
+  And _thin cold streams_ with _sprightly juice_ refresht;
+  Ye _fawns_, the present _numens_ of the field,
+  _Wood nymphs_ and _fawns_, your kind assistance yield;
+  Your gifts I sing! And thou, at whose fear'd stroke
+  From rending earth the fiery _courser_ broke,
+  Great Neptune, O assist my artful song!
+  And thou to whom the woods and groves belong,
+  Whose snowy heifers on her flow'ry plains
+  In mighty herds the Caean isle maintains!
+  Pan, happy shepherd, if thy cares divine
+  E'er to improve thy Maenalas incline,
+  Leave thy _Lycaean wood_ and _native grove_,
+  And with thy lucky smiles our work approve!
+  Be Pallas too, sweet oil's inventor, kind;
+  And he who first the crooked _plough_ design'd!
+  Sylvanus, god of all the woods, appear,
+  Whose hands a new-drawn tender _cypress_ bear!
+  Ye _gods_ and _goddesses_, who e'er with love
+  Would guard our pastures and our fields improve!
+  You, who new plants from unknown lands supply,
+  And with condensing clouds obscure the sky,
+  And drop 'em softly thence in fruitful show'rs;
+  Assist my enterprise, ye gentler pow'rs!
+
+  And thou, great Caesar! though we know not yet
+  Among what gods thou'lt fix thy lofty seat;
+  Whether thou'lt be the kind _tutelar_ god
+  Of thy own Rome; or with thy awful nod
+  Guide the vast world, while thy great hand shall bear
+  The fruits and seasons of the turning year,
+  And thy bright brows thy mother's myrtles wear;
+  Whether thou'lt all the boundless ocean sway,
+  And seamen only to thyself shall pray,
+  Thule, the farthest island, kneel to thee,
+  And, that thou may'st her son by marriage be,
+
+  Tethys will for the happy purchase yield
+  To make a _dowry_ of her wat'ry field;
+  Whether thou'lt add to heaven a _brighter sign_,
+  And o'er the _summer months_ serenely shine;
+  Where between Cancer and Erigone,
+  There yet remains a spacious _room_ for thee;
+  Where the hot _Scorpion_ too his arms declines,
+  And more to thee than half his _arch_ resigns;
+  Whate'er thou'lt be; for sure the realms below
+  No just pretence to thy command can show:
+  No such ambition sways thy vast desires,
+  Though Greece her own _Elysian fields_ admires.
+  And now, at last, contented Proserpine
+  Can all her mother's earnest pray'rs decline.
+  Whate'er thou'lt be, O guide our gentle course;
+  And with thy smiles our bold attempts enforce;
+  With me th' unknowing _rustics_' wants relieve,
+  And, though on earth, our sacred vows receive!
+
+Mr. Dryden, having received from Rymer his Remarks on the Tragedies of
+the last Age, wrote observations on the blank leaves; which, having been
+in the possession of Mr. Garrick, are, by his favour, communicated to the
+publick, that no particle of Dryden may be lost:
+
+"That we may the less wonder why pity and terrour are not now the only
+springs on which our tragedies move, and that Shakespeare may be more
+excused, Rapin confesses that the French tragedies, now all run on the
+_tendre_; and gives the reason, because love is the passion which most
+predominates in our souls, and that, therefore, the passions represented
+become insipid, unless they are conformable to the thoughts of the
+audience. But it is to be concluded, that this passion works not now
+amongst the French so strongly as the other two did amongst the ancients.
+Amongst us, who have a stronger genius for writing, the operations from
+the writing are much stronger; for the raising of Shakespeare's passions
+is more from the excellency of the words and thoughts, than the justness
+of the occasion; and if he has been able to pick single occasions, he
+has never founded the whole reasonably: yet, by the genius of poetry in
+writing, he has succeeded.
+
+"Rapin attributes more to the _dictio_, that is, to the words and
+discourse of a tragedy, than Aristotle has done, who places them in the
+last rank of beauties; perhaps, only last in order, because they are the
+last product of the design, of the disposition or connexion of its
+parts; of the characters, of the manners of those characters, and of the
+thoughts proceeding from those manners. Rapin's words are remarkable:
+'Tis not the admirable intrigue, the surprising events, and extraordinary
+incidents, that make the beauty of a tragedy; 'tis the discourses, when
+they are natural and passionate: so are Shakespeare's.
+
+"The parts of a poem, tragick or heroick, are,
+
+"1. The fable itself.
+
+"2. The order or manner of its contrivance, in relation of the parts to
+the whole.
+
+"3. The manners, or decency, of the characters, in speaking or acting
+what is proper for them, and proper to be shown by the poet.
+
+"4. The thoughts which express the manners.
+
+"5. The words which express those thoughts.
+
+"In the last of these Homer excels Virgil; Virgil all other ancient
+poets; and Shakespeare all modern poets.
+
+"For the second of these, the order: the meaning is, that a fable ought
+to have a beginning, middle, and an end, all just and natural; so that
+that part, e.g. which is the middle, could not naturally be the beginning
+or end, and so of the rest: all depend on one another, like the links of
+a curious chain. If terrour and pity are only to be raised, certainly
+this author follows Aristotle's rules, and Sophocles' and Euripides'
+example: but joy may be raised too, and that doubly, either by seeing
+a wicked man punished, or a good man at last fortunate; or, perhaps,
+indignation, to see wickedness prosperous, and goodness depressed: both
+these may be profitable to the end of tragedy, reformation of manners;
+but the last improperly, only as it begets pity in the audience: though
+Aristotle, I confess, places tragedies of this kind in the second form.
+
+"He who undertakes to answer this excellent critique of Mr. Rymer, in
+behalf of our English poets against the Greek, ought to do it in this
+manner: either by yielding to him the greatest part of what he contends
+for, which consists in this, that the 'mithos', i. e. the design
+and conduct of it, is more conducing in the Greeks to those ends of
+tragedy, which Aristotle and he propose, namely, to cause terrour and
+pity; yet the granting this does not set the Greeks above the English
+poets.
+
+"But the answerer ought to prove two things: first, that the fable is not
+the greatest masterpiece of a tragedy, though it be the foundation of it.
+
+"Secondly, that other ends, as suitable to the nature of tragedy, may be
+found in the English, which were not in the Greek.
+
+"Aristotle places the fable first; not 'quoad dignitatem, sed quoad
+fundamentum:' for a fable, never so movingly contrived to those ends of
+his, pity and terrour, will operate nothing on our affections, except the
+characters, manners, thoughts, and words, are suitable.
+
+"So that it remains for Mr. Rymer to prove, that in all those, or the
+greatest part of them, we are inferiour to Sophocles and Euripides: and
+this he has offered at, in some measure; but, I think, a little partially
+to the ancients.
+
+"For the fable itself, 'tis in the English more adorned with episodes,
+and larger than in the Greek poets; consequently more diverting. For, if
+the action be but one, and that plain, without any counterturn of design
+or episode, i.e. underplot, how can it be so pleasing as the English,
+which have both underplot and a turned design, which keeps the audience
+in expectation of the catastrophe? whereas in the Greek poets we see
+through the whole design at first.
+
+"For the characters, they are neither so many nor so various in Sophocles
+and Euripides, as in Shakespeare and Fletcher; only they are more adapted
+to those ends of tragedy which Aristotle commends to us, pity and
+terrour.
+
+"The manners flow from the characters, and, consequently, must partake of
+their advantages and disadvantages.
+
+"The thoughts and words, which are the fourth and fifth beauties of
+tragedy, are certainly more noble and more poetical in the English than
+in the Greek, which must be proved by comparing them somewhat more
+equitably than Mr. Rymer has done.
+
+"After all, we need not yield, that the English way is less conducing to
+move pity and terrour, because they often show virtue oppressed and vice
+punished; where they do not both, or either, they are not to be defended.
+
+"And if we should grant that the Greeks performed this better, perhaps it
+may admit of dispute, whether pity and terrour are either the prime, or,
+at least, the only ends of tragedy.
+
+"'Tis not enough that Aristotle has said so; for Aristotle drew his
+models of tragedy from Sophocles and Euripides; and, if he had seen ours,
+might have changed his mind. And chiefly we have to say (what I hinted on
+pity and terrour, in the last paragraph save one,) that the punishment of
+vice and reward of virtue are the most adequate ends of tragedy, because
+most conducing to good example of life. Now, pity is not so easily raised
+for a criminal (and the ancient tragedy always represents its chief
+person such) as it is for an innocent man; and the suffering of innocence
+and punishment of the offender is of the nature of English tragedy:
+contrarily, in the Greek, innocence is unhappy often, and the offender
+escapes. Then we are not touched with the sufferings of any sort of men
+so much as of lovers; and this was almost unknown to the ancients; so
+that they neither administered poetical justice, of which Mr. Rymer
+boasts, so well as we; neither knew they the best commonplace of pity,
+which is love.
+
+"He, therefore, unjustly blames us for not building on what the ancients
+left us; for it seems, upon consideration of the premises, that we have
+wholly finished what they began.
+
+"My judgment on this piece is this: that it is extremely learned, but
+that the author of it is better read in the Greek than in the English
+poets; that all writers ought to study this critique, as the best account
+I have ever seen of the ancients; that the model of tragedy he has here
+given is excellent, and extremely correct; but that it is not the only
+model of all tragedy, because it is too much circumscribed in plot,
+characters, &c.; and, lastly, that we may be taught here justly to admire
+and imitate the ancients, without giving them the preference with this
+author, in prejudice to our own country.
+
+"Want of method in this excellent treatise makes the thoughts of the
+author sometimes obscure.
+
+"His meaning, that pity and terrour are to be moved, is, that they are
+to be moved, as the means conducing to the ends of tragedy, which are
+pleasure and instruction.
+
+"And these two ends may be thus distinguished. The chief end of the poet
+is to please; for his immediate reputation depends on it.
+
+"The great end of the poem is to instruct, which is performed by making
+pleasure the vehicle of that instruction; for poesy is an art, and all
+arts are made to profit. _Rapin_.
+
+"The pity, which the poet is to labour for, is for the criminal, not for
+those or him whom he has murdered, or who have been the occasion of the
+tragedy. The terrour is likewise in the punishment of the same criminal;
+who, if he be represented too great an offender, will not be pitied: if
+altogether innocent, his punishment will be unjust.
+
+"Another obscurity is, where he says, Sophocles perfected tragedy by
+introducing the third actor; that is, he meant, three kinds of action;
+one company singing, or speaking; another playing on the musick; a third
+dancing.
+
+"To make a true judgment in this competition betwixt the Greek poets and
+the English, in tragedy:
+
+"Consider, first, how Aristotle has defined a tragedy. Secondly, what he
+assigns the end of it to be. Thirdly, what he thinks the beauties of it.
+Fourthly, the means to attain the end proposed.
+
+"Compare the Greek and English tragick poets justly, and without
+partiality, according to those rules.
+
+"Then, secondly, consider whether Aristotle has made a just definition of
+tragedy; of its parts, of its ends, and of its beauties; and whether he,
+having not seen any others but those of Sophocles, Euripides, &c. had
+or truly could determine what all the excellencies of tragedy are, and
+wherein they consist.
+
+"Next, show in what ancient tragedy was deficient: for example, in the
+narrowness of its plots, and fewness of persons; and try whether that
+be not a fault in the Greek poets; and whether their excellency was so
+great, when the variety was visibly so little; or whether what they did
+was not very easy to do.
+
+"Then make a judgment on what the English have added to their beauties:
+as, for example, not only more plot, but also new passions; as, namely,
+that of love, scarcely touched on by the ancients, except in this one
+example of Phaedra, cited by Mr. Rymer; and in that how short they were
+of Fletcher!
+
+"Prove also that love, being an heroick passion, is fit for tragedy,
+which cannot be denied, because of the example alleged of Phaedra; and
+how far Shakespeare has outdone them in friendship, &c.
+
+"To return to the beginning of this inquiry; consider if pity and terrour
+be enough for tragedy to move: and I believe, upon a true definition of
+tragedy, it will be found that its work extends farther, and that it is
+to reform manners, by a delightful representation of human life in great
+persons, by way of dialogue. If this be true, then not only pity and
+terrour are to be moved, as the only means to bring us to virtue, but
+generally love to virtue, and hatred to vice; by showing the rewards of
+one, and punishments of the other; at least, by rendering virtue always
+amiable, though it be shown unfortunate; and vice detestable, though it
+be shown triumphant.
+
+"If, then, the encouragement of virtue and discouragement of vice be the
+proper ends of poetry in tragedy, pity and terrour, though good means,
+are not the only. For all the passions, in their turns, are to be set
+in a ferment: as joy, anger, love, fear, are to be used as the poet's
+commonplaces; and a general concernment for the principal actors is to be
+raised, by making them appear such in their characters, their words, and
+actions, as will interest the audience in their fortunes.
+
+"And if, after all, in a larger sense, pity comprehends this concernment
+for the good, and terrour includes detestation for the bad, then let us
+consider whether the English have not answered this end of tragedy as
+well as the ancients, or perhaps better.
+
+"And here Mr. Rymer's objections against these plays are to be
+impartially weighed, that we may see whether they are of weight enough to
+turn the balance against our countrymen.
+
+"'Tis evident those plays, which he arraigns, have moved both those
+passions in a high degree upon the stage.
+
+"To give the glory of this away from the poet, and to place it upon the
+actors, seems unjust.
+
+"One reason is, because whatever actors they have found, the event has
+been the same; that is, the same passions have been always moved:
+which shows, that there is something of force and merit in the plays
+themselves, conducing to the design of raising these two passions: and
+suppose them ever to have been excellently acted, yet action only adds
+grace, vigour, and more life, upon the stage; but cannot give it wholly
+where it is not first. But, secondly, I dare appeal to those who have
+never seen them acted, if they have not found these two passions moved
+within them: and if the general voice will carry it, Mr. Rymer's
+prejudice will take off his single testimony.
+
+"This, being matter of fact, is reasonably to be established by this
+appeal; as, if one man says it is night, when the rest of the world
+conclude it to be day, there needs no farther argument against him, that
+it is so.
+
+"If he urge, that the general taste is depraved, his arguments to prove
+this can, at best, but evince that our poets took not the best way to
+raise those passions; but experience proves against him, that those
+means, which they have used, have been successful, and have produced
+them.
+
+"And one reason of that success is, in my opinion, this: that Shakespeare
+and Fletcher have written to the genius of the age and nation in which
+they lived; for though nature, as he objects, is the same in all places,
+and reason too the same; yet the climate, the age, the disposition of the
+people, to whom a poet writes, may be so different, that what pleased the
+Greeks would not satisfy an English audience.
+
+"And if they proceeded upon a foundation of truer reason to please the
+Athenians, than Shakespeare and Fletcher to please the English, it only
+shows that the Athenians were a more judicious people; but the poet's
+business is certainly to please the audience.
+
+"Whether our English audience have been pleased, hitherto, with acorns,
+as he calls it, or with bread, is the next question; that is, whether the
+means which Shakespeare and Fletcher have used, in their plays, to raise
+those passions before named, be better applied to the ends by the Greek
+poets than by them. And, perhaps, we shall not grant him this wholly: let
+it be granted, that a writer is not to run down with the stream, or to
+please the people by their usual methods, but rather to reform their
+judgments, it still remains to prove that our theatre needs this total
+reformation.
+
+"The faults, which he has found in their designs, are rather wittily
+aggravated in many places than reasonably urged; and as much may be
+returned on the Greeks, by one who were as witty as himself.
+
+"They destroy not, if they are granted, the foundation of the fabrick:
+only take away from the beauty of the symmetry: for example, the faults
+in the character of the king, in King and No King, are not, as he makes
+them, such as render him detestable, but only imperfections which
+accompany human nature, and are, for the most part, excused by the
+violence of his love; so that they destroy not our pity or concernment
+for him: this answer may be applied to most of his objections of that
+kind.
+
+"And Rollo committing many murders, when he is answerable but for one,
+is too severely arraigned by him; for, it adds to our horrour and
+detestation of the criminal; and poetick justice is not neglected
+neither; for we stab him in our minds for every offence which he commits;
+and the point, which the poet is to gain on the audience, is not so much
+in the death of an offender as the raising an horrour of his crimes.
+
+"That the criminal should neither be wholly guilty, nor wholly innocent,
+but so participating of both as to move both pity and terrour, is
+certainly a good rule, but not perpetually to be observed; for that were
+to make all tragedies too much alike; which objection he foresaw, but has
+not fully answered.
+
+"To conclude, therefore; if the plays of the ancients are more correctly
+plotted, ours are more beautifully written. And, if we can raise passions
+as high on worse foundations, it shows our genius in tragedy is greater;
+for in all other parts of it the English have manifestly excelled them."
+
+The original of the following letter is preserved in the library at
+Lambeth, and was kindly imparted to the publick by the reverend Dr. Vyse.
+
+  Copy of an original letter from John Dryden, esq. to
+  his sons in Italy, from a MS. in the Lambeth library,
+  marked N deg.. 933, p. 56.
+
+  (_Superscribed_)
+
+  "All' illustrissimo Sig're
+  Carlo Dryden, Camariere
+  d'Honore a S.S.
+
+  "In Roma.
+
+  "Franca per Mantoua.
+
+  "DEAR SONS,
+
+  "Sept. the 3d, our style.
+
+  "Being now at sir William Bowyer's in the country, I
+  cannot write at large, because I find myself somewhat indisposed
+  with a cold, and am thick of hearing, rather worse
+  than I was in town. I am glad to find, by your letter of
+  July 26th, your style, that you are both in health; but
+  wonder you should think me so negligent as to forget to
+  give you an account of the ship in which your parcel is to
+  come. I have written to you two or three letters concerning
+  it, which I have sent by safe hands, as I told you, and
+  doubt not but you have them before this can arrive to you.
+  Being out of town, I have forgotten the ship's name, which
+  your mother will inquire, and put it into her letter, which
+  is joined with mine. But the master's name I remember:
+  he is called Mr. Ralph Thorp; the ship is bound to Leghorn,
+  consigned to Mr. Peter and Mr. Thomas Ball, merchants.
+  I am of your opinion, that by Tonson's means
+  almost all our letters have miscarried for this last year.
+  But, however, he has missed of his design in the dedication,
+  though he had prepared the book for it; for in every
+  figure of Aeneas he has caused him to be drawn like king
+  William, with a hooked nose. After my return to town,
+  I intend to alter a play of sir Robert Howard's, written
+  long since, and lately put by him into my hands; 'tis called
+  the Conquest of China by the Tartars. It will cost me
+  six weeks' study, with the probable benefit of a hundred
+  pounds. In the mean time, I am writing a song for St.
+  Cecilia's Feast, who, you know, is the patroness of musick.
+  This is troublesome, and no way beneficial; but I could
+  not deny the stewards of the feast, who came in a body to
+  me to desire that kindness, one of them being Mr. Bridgman,
+  whose parents are your mother's friends.  I hope to
+  send you thirty guineas between Michaelmas and Christmas,
+  of which I will give you an account when I come to
+  town. I remember the counsel you give me in your letter;
+  but dissembling, though lawful in some cases, is not my
+  talent; yet, for your sake, I will struggle with the plain
+  openness of my nature, and keep in my just resentments
+  against that degenerate order. In the mean time I flatter
+  not myself with any manner of hopes, but do my duty, and
+  suffer for God's sake; being assured, beforehand, never
+  to be rewarded, though the times should alter. Towards
+  the latter end of this month, September, Charles will begin
+  to recover his perfect health, according to his nativity,
+  which, casting it myself, I am sure is true, and all things
+  hitherto have happened accordingly to the very time that
+  I predicted them: I hope, at the same time, to recover
+  more health, according to my age. Remember me to poor
+  Harry, whose prayers I earnestly desire. My Virgil succeeds
+  in the world beyond its desert or my expectation.
+  You know the profits might have been more; but neither
+  my conscience nor my honour would suffer me to take
+  them: but I never can repent of my constancy, since I
+  am thoroughly persuaded of the justice of the cause for
+  which I suffer. It has pleased God to raise up many
+  friends to me amongst my enemies, though they who
+  ought to have been my friends are negligent of me. I am
+  called to dinner, and cannot go on with this letter, which
+  I desire you to excuse; and am
+
+  "Your most affectionate father,
+
+  "JOHN DRYDEN."
+
+[Footnote 92: The life of Dryden is written with more than Johnson's
+usual copiousness of biography, and with peculiar vigour and justness of
+criticism. "None, perhaps, of the Lives of the Poets," says the Edinburgh
+Review, for October, 1808, "is entitled to so high a rank. No prejudice
+interfered with his judgment; he approved his politics; he could feel no
+envy of such established fame; he had a mind precisely formed to relish
+the excellencies of Dryden--more vigorous than refined; more reasoning
+than impassioned." Edinburgh Review, xxv. p. 117. Many dates, however,
+and little facts have been rectified by Mr. Malone, in his most minute
+Account of the Life and Writings of John Dryden; and sir Walter Scott, in
+the life prefixed to his edition of Dryden's works, has been still more
+industrious in the collection of incidents and contemporary writings,
+that can only interest the antiquary. Those to whom Johnson's life seems
+not sufficiently ample, we refer to the above works. For an eulogy
+on Dryden's powers, as a satirist, see the notes on the Pursuits of
+Literature. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Mr. Malone has lately proved, that there is no satisfactory
+evidence for this date. The inscription on Dryden's monument says only
+"natus 1632." See Malone's Life of Dryden, prefixed to his Critical and
+Miscellaneous Prose Works, p. 5. note. C.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Of Cumberland. Ibid. p. 10. C.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Mr. Malone has furnished us with a detailed account of
+our poet's circumstances, from which it appears, that although he was
+possessed of a sufficient income, in the early part of his life, he was
+considerably embarrassed at its close. See Malone's Life, p. 440.]
+
+[Footnote 96: Mr. Derrick's Life of Dryden was prefixed to a very
+beautiful and correct edition of Dryden's Miscellanies, published by
+the Tonsons, in 1760,4 vols. 8vo. Derrick's part, however, was poorly
+executed, and the edition never became popular. C.]
+
+[Footnote 97: He went off to Trinity college, and was admitted to a
+bachelor's degree in Jan. 1653-4, and in 1657 was made M.A.]
+
+[Footnote 98: This is a mistake; his poem on the death of lord Hastings
+appeared in a volume entitled Tears of the Muses on the death of Henry
+Lord Hastings. 8vo. 1649. M.]
+
+[Footnote 99: The order of his plays has been accurately ascertained by
+Mr. Malone. C.]
+
+[Footnote 100: The duke of Guise was his first attempt in the drama, but
+laid aside, and afterwards new modelled. See Malone, p. 51.]
+
+[Footnote 101: See Malone, p. 91.]
+
+[Footnote 102: He did not obtain the laurel till Aug. 18, 1670, but Mr.
+Malone informs us, the patent had a retrospect, and the salary commenced
+from the Midsummer after Davenant's death. C.]
+
+[Footnote 103: Downes says it was performed on a very unlucky day, viz.
+that on which the duke of Monmouth landed in the west; and he intimates,
+that the consternation into which the kingdom was thrown by this event,
+was a reason why it was performed but six times, and was in general ill
+received. H.]
+
+[Footnote 104: This is a mistake. It was set to musick by Purcell, and
+well received, and is yet a favourite entertainment. H.]
+
+[Footnote 105: Johnson has here quoted from memory. Warburton is the
+original relater of this anecdote, who says he had it from Southern
+himself. According to him, Dryden's usual price had been _four guineas_,
+and he made Southern pay _six_. In the edition of Southern's plays, 1774,
+we have a different deviation from the truth, _five_ and _ten_ guineas.
+M.]
+
+[Footnote 106: Dr. Johnson, in this assertion, was misled by Langbaine.
+Only one of these plays appeared in 1678. Nor were there more than three
+in any one year. The dates are now added from the original editions. R.]
+
+[Footnote 107: It was published in 1672. R.]
+
+[Footnote 108: This remark, as Mr. Malone observes, is founded upon
+the erroneous dates with which Johnson was supplied by Langbaine. The
+Rehearsal was played in 1671, but not published till the next year; The
+Wild Gallant was printed in 1669, The Maiden Queen in 1668, Tyrannick
+Love in 1670; the two parts of Granada were performed in 1669 and 1670,
+though not printed till 1672. Additions were afterwards made to The
+Rehearsal, and among these are the parodies on Assignation, which are not
+to be found in Buckingham's play as it originally appeared. Mr. Malone
+denies that there is any allusion to Marriage a-la-mode. See Malone, p.
+100. J. B.]
+
+[Footnote 109: It is mentioned by A. Wood, Athen, Oxon. vol. ii. p. 804.
+2nd ed. C.]
+
+[Footnote 110: Dryden translated two entire epistles, Canace to Macareus,
+and Dido to Aeneas. Helen to Paris was translated by him and lord
+Mulgrave. Malone, J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Azaria and Hushai was written by Samuel Pordage, a
+dramatick writer of that time.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Dr. John Reynolds, who lived temp. Jac. I. was at first a
+zealous papist, and his brother William as earnest a protestant; but by
+mutual disputation each converted the other. See Fuller's Church History,
+p. 47. book x. II.]
+
+[Footnote 113: This is a mistake. See Malone, p. 194, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 114: All Dryden's biographers have misdated this poem, which
+Mr. Malone's more accurate researches prove to have been published on the
+4th of Oct. 1682.]
+
+[Footnote 115: Albion and Albanius must, however, be excepted. R.]
+
+[Footnote 116: This story has been traced to its source, and clearly
+proved to be a fabrication, by Mr. Malone. See Malone's Life, 347.]
+
+[Footnote 117: An earlier account of Dryden's funeral than that above
+cited, though without the circumstances that preceded it, is given by
+Edward Ward, who, in his London Spy, published in 1706, relates, that on
+the occasion there was a performance of solemn musick at the college,
+and that at the procession, which himself saw, standing at the end
+of Chancery lane, Fleet street, there was a concert of hautboys and
+trumpets. The day of Dryden's interment, he says, was Monday, the 13th of
+May, which, according to Johnson, was twelve days after his decease,
+and shows how long his funeral was in suspense. Ward knew not that
+the expense of it was defrayed by subscription; but compliments lord
+Jefferies for so pious an undertaking. He also says, that the cause of
+Dryden's death was an inflammation in his toe, occasioned by the flesh
+growing over the nail, which, being neglected, produced a mortification
+in his leg. H.]
+
+[Footnote 118: In the register of the College of Physicians, is the
+following entry: "May 3, 1700. Comitiis Censoriis ordinariis. At the
+request of several persons of quality, that Mr. Dryden might be carried
+from the College of Physicians to be interred at Westminster, it was
+unanimously granted by the president and censors."
+
+This entry is not calculated to afford any credit to the narrative
+concerning lord Jefferies. R.]
+
+[Footnote 119: See what is said on this head with regard to Cowley and
+Addison, in their respective lives.]
+
+[Footnote 120: Preface to Ovid's Metamorphoses. Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 121: We are not about to attempt a justification of Dryden's
+strange use, in the above stanzas, of nautical phrases, but we must
+remark, that Johnson's antipathy to ships, and every thing connected
+with them, made him unusually sensitive of any thing like naval
+technicalities. And yet surely the occasional and judicious use of them
+in description is quite as allowable as the introduction of allusions to
+the printing office or bookseller's shop, with which Johnson happened to
+be familiar, and, therefore, did not disapprove. St. Paul did not disdain
+to adopt naval phraseology in his exquisite narrative of his own perils
+by sea. ED.]
+
+[Footnoteb 122: A heart-sinking and painful depression has been
+experienced by most of us on concluding a favourite author; but the
+sensation has never been more vividly portrayed in language, than in the
+above passage. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 123: I cannot see why Johnson has thought there was any want of
+clearness in this passage even in prose. Addison has given us almost the
+very same thought in very good prose: "If we look forward to him [the
+deity] for help, we shall never be in danger of falling down those
+precipices which our imagination is apt to create. Like those who walk
+upon a line, if we keep our eye fixed upon one point, we may step forward
+securely; whereas an imprudent or cowardly glance on either side will
+infallibly destroy us." Spectator, No. 615. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 124: This is an error. The alexandrine inserted among heroick
+lines of ten syllables is found in many of the writers of queen
+Elizabeth's reign. It will be sufficient to mention Hall, who has already
+been quoted for the use of the triplet:
+
+  As tho' the staring world hang'd on his sleeve.
+  Whenever he smiles to laugh, and when he sighs to grieve.
+
+Hall's Sat. book i. sat. 7.
+
+Take another instance:
+
+  For shame! or better write or Labeo write none.
+
+Hall's Sat. book ii. sat 1. J.B.]
+
+
+
+
+SMITH
+
+Edmund Smith is one of those lucky writers who have, without much labour,
+attained high reputation, and who are mentioned with reverence, rather
+for the possession, than the exertion of uncommon abilities.
+
+Of his life little is known; and that little claims no praise but what
+can be given to intellectual excellence, seldom employed to any virtuous
+purpose. His character, as given by Mr. Oldisworth, with all the
+partiality of friendship, which is said, by Dr. Burton, to show "what
+fine things one man of parts can say of another," and which, however,
+comprises great part of what can be known of Mr. Smith, it is better to
+transcribe, at once, than to take by pieces. I shall subjoin such little
+memorials as accident has enabled me to collect.
+
+Mr. Edmund Smith was the only son of an eminent merchant, one Mr. Neale,
+by a daughter of the famous baron Lechmere. Some misfortunes of his
+father, which were soon followed by his death, were the occasion of the
+son's being left very young in the hands of a near relation, (one who
+married Mr. Neale's sister,) whose name was Smith.
+
+This gentleman and his lady treated him as their own child, and put him
+to Westminster school, under the care of Dr. Busby; whence, after the
+loss of his faithful and generous guardian, (whose name he assumed and
+retained,) he was removed to Christ church, in Oxford, and there, by his
+aunt, handsomely maintained till her death; after which he continued a
+member of that learned and ingenious society, till within five years of
+his own; though, some time before his leaving Christ church, he was
+sent for by his mother to Worcester, and owned and acknowledged as
+her legitimate son; which had not been mentioned, but to wipe off the
+aspersions that were ignorantly cast by some on his birth. It is to be
+remembered, for our author's honour, that, when at Westminster election
+he stood a candidate for one of the universities, he so signally
+distinguished himself by his conspicuous performances, that there arose
+no small contention, between the representative electors of Trinity
+college, in Cambridge, and Christ church, in Oxon, which of those two
+royal societies should adopt him as their own. But the electors of
+Trinity college having the preference of choice that year, they
+resolutely elected him; who yet, being invited, at the same time, to
+Christ church, chose to accept of a studentship there. Mr. Smith's
+perfections, as well natural as acquired, seem to have been formed upon
+Horace's plan, who says, in his Art of Poetry:
+
+  Ego nec studium sine divite vena,
+  Nec rude quid prosit video ingenium; alterius sic
+  Altera poscit opem res, et conjurat amice.
+
+He was endowed by nature with all those excellent and necessary
+qualifications which are previous to the accomplishment of a great man.
+His memory was large and tenacious, yet, by a _curious felicity, chiefly_
+susceptible of the finest impressions it received from the best authors
+he read, which it always preserved in their primitive strength and
+amiable order.
+
+He had a quickness of apprehension, and vivacity of understanding, which
+easily took in and surmounted the most subtile and knotty parts of
+mathematicks and metaphysicks. His wit was prompt and flowing, yet
+solid and piercing; his taste delicate, his head clear, and his way of
+expressing his thoughts perspicuous and engaging. I shall say nothing of
+his person, which yet was so well _turned_, that no neglect of himself in
+his dress could render it disagreeable; insomuch, that the fair sex, who
+observed and esteemed him, at once commended and reproved him by the name
+of the _handsome_ sloven. An eager but generous and noble emulation grew
+up with him; which (as it were a rational sort of instinct) pushed him
+upon striving to excel in every art and science that could make him a
+credit to his college, and that college the ornament of the most
+learned and polite university; and it was his happiness to have several
+contemporaries and fellow-students who exercised and excited this virtue
+in themselves and others, thereby becoming so deservedly in favour with
+this age, and so good a proof of its nice discernment. His judgment,
+naturally good, soon ripened into an exquisite fineness and
+distinguishing sagacity, which as it was active and busy, so it
+was vigorous and manly, keeping even paces with a rich and strong
+imagination, always upon the wing, and never tired with aspiring. Hence
+it was, that, though he writ as young as Cowley, he had no puerilities;
+and his earliest productions were so far from having any thing in them
+mean and trifling, that, like the junior compositions of Mr. Stepney,
+they may make grey authors blush. There are many of his first essays in
+oratory, in epigram, elegy, and epick, still handed about the university
+in manuscript, which show a masterly hand; and, though maimed and injured
+by frequent transcribing, make their way into our most celebrated
+miscellanies, where they shine with uncommon lustre. Besides those verses
+in the Oxford books, which he could not help setting his name to, several
+of his compositions came abroad under other names, which his own singular
+modesty, and faithful silence, strove in vain to conceal. The Encaenia
+and publick collections of the university upon state subjects, were
+never in such esteem, either for elegy or congratulation, as when he
+contributed most largely to them; and it was natural for those who knew
+his peculiar way of writing, to turn to his share in the work, as by
+far the most relishing part of the entertainment. As his parts were
+extraordinary, so he well knew how to improve them; and not only to
+polish the diamond, but enchase it in the most solid and durable metal.
+Though he was an academick the greatest part of his life, yet he
+contracted no sourness of temper, no spice of pedantry, no itch of
+disputation, or obstinate contention for the old or new philosophy, no
+assuming way of dictating to others, which are faults (though excusable)
+which some are insensibly led into, who are constrained to dwell long
+within the walls of a private college. His conversation was pleasant and
+instructive, and what Horace said of Plotius, Varius, and Virgil, might
+justly be applied to him:
+
+  Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico. Sat. v. l. 1.
+
+As correct a writer as he was in his most elaborate pieces, he read the
+works of others with candour, and reserved his greatest severity for his
+own compositions; being readier to cherish and advance, than damp or
+depress a rising genius, and as patient of being excelled himself (if any
+could excel him) as industrious to excel others.
+
+'Twere to be wished he had confined himself to a particular profession,
+who was capable of surpassing in any; but, in this, his want of
+application was, in a great measure, owing to his want of due
+encouragement.
+
+He passed through the exercises of the college and university with
+unusual applause; and though he often suffered his friends to call him
+off from his retirements, and to lengthen out those jovial avocations,
+yet his return to his studies was so much the more passionate, and
+his intention upon those refined pleasures of reading and thinking
+so vehement, (to which his facetious and unbended intervals bore no
+proportion,) that the habit grew upon him; and the series of meditation
+and reflection being kept up whole weeks together, he could better sort
+his ideas, and take in the sundry parts of a science at one view, without
+interruption or confusion. Some, indeed, of his acquaintance, who were
+pleased to distinguish between the wit and the scholar, extolled him
+altogether on the account of the first of these titles; but others, who
+knew him better, could not forbear doing him justice as a prodigy in both
+kinds. He had signalized himself, in the schools, as a philosopher and
+polemick of extensive knowledge and deep penetration; and went through
+all the courses with a wise regard to the dignity and importance of each
+science.
+
+I remember him in the Divinity school responding and disputing with a
+perspicuous energy, a ready exactness, and commanding force of argument,
+when Dr. Jane worthily presided in the chair; whose condescending and
+disinterested commendation of him gave him such a reputation, as
+silenced the envious malice of his enemies, who durst not contradict
+the approbation of so profound a master in theology. None of those
+self-sufficient creatures, who have either trifled with philosophy, by
+attempting to ridicule it, or have encumbered it with novel terms and
+burdensome explanations, understood its real weight and purity half so
+well as Mr. Smith. He was too discerning to allow of the character of
+unprofitable, rugged, and abstruse, which some superficial sciolists, (so
+very smooth and polite, as to admit of no impression,) either out of an
+unthinking indolence, or an ill-grounded prejudice, had affixed to this
+sort of studies. He knew the thorny terms of philosophy served well to
+fence in the true doctrines of religion; and looked upon school-divinity
+as upon a rough but well-wrought armour, which might at once adorn and
+defend the christian hero, and equip him for the combat.
+
+Mr. Smith had a long and perfect intimacy with all the Greek and Latin
+classicks; with whom he had carefully compared whatever was worth
+perusing in the French, Spanish, and Italian, (to which languages he was
+no stranger,) and in all the celebrated writers of his own country.
+But then, according to the curious observation of the late earl of
+Shaftesbury, he kept the poet in awe by regular criticism; and, as it
+were, married the two arts for their mutual support and improvement.
+There was not a tract of credit, upon that subject, which he had not
+diligently examined, from Aristotle down to Hedelin and Bossu; so that,
+having each rule constantly before him, he could carry the art through
+every poem, and at once point out the graces and deformities. By this
+means he seemed to read with a design to correct, as well as imitate.
+
+Being thus prepared, he could not but taste every little delicacy that
+was set before him; though it was impossible for him, at the same time,
+to be fed and nourished with any thing but what was substantial and
+lasting. He considered the ancients and moderns not as parties or rivals
+for fame, but as architects upon one and the same plan, the art of
+poetry; according to which he judged, approved, and blamed, without
+flattery or detraction. If he did not always commend the compositions of
+others, it was not ill-nature, (which was not in his temper,) but strict
+justice, that would not let him call a few flowers set in ranks, a glib
+measure, and so many couplets, by the name of poetry: he was of Ben
+Jonson's opinion, who could not admire
+
+  Verses as smooth and soft as cream,
+  In which there was neither depth nor stream.
+
+And, therefore, though his want of complaisance for some men's
+overbearing vanity made him enemies, yet the better part of mankind were
+obliged by the freedom of his reflections.
+
+His Bodleian Speech, though taken from a remote and imperfect copy, hath
+shown the world how great a master he was of the Ciceronian eloquence,
+mixed with the conciseness and force of Demosthenes, the elegant and
+moving turns of Pliny, and the acute and wise reflections of Tacitus.
+
+Since Temple and Roscommon, no man understood Horace better, especially
+as to his happy diction, rolling numbers, beautiful imagery, and
+alternate mixture of the soft and the sublime. This endeared Dr. Hannes's
+odes to him, the finest genius for Latin lyrick since the Augustan age.
+His friend Mr. Philips's ode to Mr. St. John, (late lord Bolingbroke,)
+after the manner of Horace's Lusory or Amatorian Odes, is certainly a
+masterpiece; but Mr. Smith's Pocockius is of the sublimer kind, though,
+like Waller's writings upon Oliver Cromwell, it wants not the most
+delicate and surprising turns peculiar to the person praised. I do not
+remember to have seen any thing like it in Dr. Bathurst[125], who had
+made some attempts this way with applause. He was an excellent judge of
+humanity; and so good an historian, that in familiar discourse he would
+talk over the most memorable facts in antiquity, the lives, actions, and
+characters of celebrated men, with amazing facility and accuracy. As he
+had thoroughly read and digested Thuanus's works, so he was able to copy
+after him; and his talent in this kind was so well known and allowed,
+that he had been singled out, by some great men, to write a history,
+which it was for their interest to have done with the utmost art and
+dexterity. I shall not mention for what reasons this design was dropped,
+though they are very much to Mr. Smith's honour. The truth is, and I
+speak it before living witnesses, whilst an agreeable company could
+fix him upon a subject of useful literature, nobody shone to greater
+advantage; he seemed to be that Memmius whom Lucretius speaks of:
+
+  Quem tu, dea, tempore in omni
+  Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus.
+
+His works are not many, and those scattered up and down in miscellanies
+and collections, being wrested from him by his friends with great
+difficulty and reluctance. All of them together make but a small part of
+that much greater body which lies dispersed in the possession of numerous
+acquaintance; and cannot, perhaps, be made entire without great injustice
+to him, because few of them had his last hand, and the transcriber was
+often obliged to take the liberties of a friend. His condolence for the
+death of Mr. Philips is full of the noblest beauties, and hath done
+justice to the ashes of that second Milton, whose writings will last as
+long as the English language, generosity, and valour. For him Mr. Smith
+had contracted a perfect friendship; a passion he was most susceptible
+of, and whose laws he looked upon as sacred and inviolable.
+
+Every subject that passed under his pen had all the life, proportion,
+and embellishments bestowed on it, which an exquisite skill, a warm
+imagination, and a cool judgment, possibly could bestow on it. The epick,
+lyrick, elegiack, every sort of poetry he touched upon, (and he had
+touched upon a great variety,) was raised to its proper height, and the
+differences between each of them observed with a judicious accuracy. We
+saw the old rules and new beauties placed in admirable order by each
+other; and there was a predominant fancy and spirit of his own infused,
+superiour to what some draw off from the ancients, or from poesies here
+and there culled out of the moderns, by a painful industry and servile
+imitation. His contrivances were adroit and magnificent; his images
+lively and adequate; his sentiments charming and majestick; his
+expressions natural and bold; his numbers various and sounding; and
+that enamelled mixture of classical wit, which, without redundance and
+affectation, sparkled through his writings, and was no less pertinent and
+agreeable.
+
+His Phaedra is a consummate tragedy, and the success of it was as great
+as the most sanguine expectations of his friends could promise or
+foresee. The number of nights, and the common method of filling the
+house, are not always the surest marks of judging what encouragement a
+play meets with; but the generosity of all the persons of a refined taste
+about town was remarkable on this occasion; and it must not be forgotten
+how zealously Mr. Addison espoused his interest, with all the elegant
+judgment and diffusive good-nature for which that accomplished gentleman
+and author is so justly valued by mankind. But as to Phaedra, she has
+certainly made a finer figure under Mr. Smith's conduct, upon the English
+stage, than either in Rome or Athens; and if she excels the Greek and
+Latin Phaedra, I need not say she surpasses the French one, though
+embellished with whatever regular beauties and moving softness Racine
+himself could give her.
+
+No man had a juster notion of the difficulty of composing than Mr. Smith;
+and he sometimes would create greater difficulties than he had reason
+to apprehend. Writing with ease, what (as Mr. Wycherley speaks) may
+be easily written, moved his indignation. When he was writing upon a
+subject, he would seriously consider what Demosthenes, Homer, Virgil,
+or Horace, if alive, would say upon that occasion, which whetted him to
+exceed himself, as well as others. Nevertheless, he could not, or would
+not, finish several subjects he undertook; which may be imputed either
+to the briskness of his fancy, still hunting after new matter, or to an
+occasional indolence, which spleen and lassitude brought upon him, which,
+of all his foibles, the world was least inclined to forgive. That this
+was not owing to conceit and vanity, or a fulness of himself, (a frailty
+which has been imputed to no less men than Shakespeare and Jonson,) is
+clear from hence; because he left his works to the entire disposal of
+his friends, whose most rigorous censures he even courted and solicited,
+submitting to their animadversions, and the freedom they took with them,
+with an unreserved and prudent resignation.
+
+I have seen sketches and rough draughts of some poems he designed, set
+out analytically; wherein the fable, structure, and connexion, the
+images, incidents, moral episodes, and a great variety of ornaments, were
+so finely laid out, so well fitted to the rules of art, and squared so
+exactly to the precedents of the ancients, that I have often looked on
+these poetical elements with the same concern with which curious men are
+affected at the sight of the most entertaining remains and ruins of an
+antique figure or building. Those fragments of the learned, which
+some men have been so proud of their pains in collecting, are useless
+rarities, without form and without life, when compared with these
+embryos, which wanted not spirit enough to preserve them; so that I
+cannot help thinking, that, if some of them were to come abroad, they
+would be as highly valued by the poets, as the sketches of Julio and
+Titian are by the painters; though there is nothing in them but a few
+outlines, as to the design and proportion.
+
+It must be confessed, that Mr. Smith had some defects in his conduct,
+which those are most apt to remember who could imitate him in nothing
+else. His freedom with himself drew severer acknowledgments from him than
+all the malice he ever provoked was capable of advancing, and he did not
+scruple to give even his misfortunes the hard name of faults; but, if the
+world had half his good-nature, all the shady parts would be entirely
+struck out of his character.
+
+A man, who under poverty, calamities, and disappointments, could make so
+many friends, and those so truly valuable, must have just and noble ideas
+of the passion of friendship, in the success of which consisted the
+greatest, if not the only, happiness of his life. He knew very well what
+was due to his birth, though fortune threw him short of it in every other
+circumstance of life. He avoided making any, though perhaps reasonable,
+complaints of her dispensations, under which he had honour enough to be
+easy, without touching the favours she flung in his way when offered to
+him at the price of a more durable reputation. He took care to have no
+dealings with mankind in which he could not be just; and he desired to
+be at no other expense in his pretensions than that of intrinsick merit,
+which was the only burden and reproach he ever brought upon his friends.
+He could say, as Horace did of himself, what I never yet saw translated:
+
+  Meo sum pauper in aere.
+
+At his coming to town, no man was more surrounded by all those who really
+had or pretended to wit, or more courted by the great men, who had then a
+power and opportunity of encouraging arts and sciences, and gave proofs
+of their fondness for the name of patron in many instances, which will
+ever be remembered to their glory. Mr. Smith's character grew upon his
+friends by intimacy, and outwent the strongest prepossessions which had
+been conceived in his favour. Whatever quarrel a few sour creatures,
+whose obscurity is their happiness, may possibly have to the age; yet,
+amidst a studied neglect, and total disuse of all those ceremonial
+attendances, fashionable equipments, and external recommendations,
+which are thought necessary introductions into the _grand monde_, this
+gentleman was so happy as still to please; and whilst the rich, the gay,
+the noble, and honourable, saw how much he excelled in wit and learning,
+they easily forgave him all other differences. Hence it was that both his
+acquaintance and retirements were his own free choice. What Mr. Prior
+observes upon a very great character was true of him, "that most of his
+faults brought their excuse with them."
+
+Those who blamed him most, understood him least, it being the custom of
+the vulgar to charge an excess upon the most complaisant, and to form a
+character by the morals of a few, who have sometimes spoiled an hour or
+two in good company. Where only fortune is wanting to make a great name,
+that single exception can never pass upon the best judges and most
+equitable observers of mankind; and when the time comes for the world to
+spare their pity, we may justly enlarge our demands upon them for their
+admiration.
+
+Some few years before his death, he had engaged himself in several
+considerable undertakings; in all which he had prepared the world to
+expect mighty things from him. I have seen about ten sheets of his
+English Pindar, which exceeded any thing of that kind I could ever hope
+for in our own language. He had drawn out the plan of a tragedy of the
+Lady Jane Grey, and had gone through several scenes of it. But he could
+not well have bequeathed that work to better hands than where, I hear, it
+is at present lodged; and the bare mention of two such names may justify
+the largest expectations, and is sufficient to make the town an agreeable
+invitation.
+
+His greatest and noblest undertaking was Longinus. He had finished an
+entire translation of the Sublime, which he sent to the reverend Mr.
+Richard Parker, a friend of his, late of Merton college, an exact critick
+in the Greek tongue, from whom it came to my hands. The French version of
+monsieur Boileau, though truly valuable, was far short of it. He proposed
+a large addition to this work, of notes and observations of his own, with
+an entire system of the art of poetry, in three books, under the titles
+of Thought, Diction, and Figure. I saw the last of these perfect, and
+in a fair copy, in which he showed prodigious judgment and reading; and
+particularly had reformed the art of rhetorick, by reducing that vast
+and confused heap of terms, with which a long succession of pedants had
+encumbered the world, to a very narrow compass, comprehending all that
+was useful and ornamental in poetry. Under each head and chapter, he
+intended to make remarks upon all the ancients and moderns, the Greek,
+Latin, English, French, Spanish, and Italian poets, and to note their
+several beauties and defects.
+
+What remains of his works is left, as I am informed, in the hands of men
+of worth and judgment, who loved him. It cannot be supposed they would
+suppress any thing that was his, but out of respect to his memory, and
+for want of proper hands to finish what so great a genius had begun.
+
+Such is the declamation of Oldisworth, written while his admiration was
+yet fresh, and his kindness warm; and, therefore, such as, without any
+criminal purpose of deceiving, shows a strong desire to make the most of
+all favourable truth. I cannot much commend the performance. The praise
+is often indistinct, and the sentences are loaded with words of more pomp
+than use. There is little, however, that can be contradicted, even when a
+plainer tale comes to be told.
+
+Edmund Neale, known by the name of Smith, was born at Handley, the
+seat of the Lechmeres, in Worcestershire. The year of his birth is
+uncertain[126].
+
+He was educated at Westminster. It is known to have been the practice of
+Dr. Busby to detain those youths long at school, of whom he had formed
+the highest expectations. Smith took his master's degree on the 8th of
+July, 1696; he, therefore, was probably admitted into the university in
+1689[127], when we may suppose him twenty years old.
+
+His reputation for literature in his college was such as has been told;
+but the indecency and licentiousness of his behaviour drew upon him, Dec.
+24, 1694, while he was yet only bachelor, a publick admonition, entered
+upon record, in order to his expulsion. Of this reproof the effect is not
+known. He was probably less notorious. At Oxford, as we all know,
+much will be forgiven to literary merit; and of that he had exhibited
+sufficient evidence by his excellent ode on the death of the great
+orientalist, Dr. Pocock, who died in 1691, and whose praise must
+have been written by Smith when he had been yet but two years in the
+university.
+
+This ode, which closed the second volume of the Musse Anglicanae, though,
+perhaps, some objections may be made to its Latinity, is by far the best
+lyrick composition in that collection; nor do I know where to find it
+equalled among the modern writers. It expresses, with great felicity,
+images not classical in classical diction: its digressions and returns
+have been deservedly recommended by Trapp, as models for imitation.
+
+He has several imitations of Cowley:
+
+  Vestitur hinc tot sermo coloribus
+  Quot tu, Pococki, dissimilis tui
+  Orator effers, quot vicissim
+  Te memores celebrare gaudent.
+
+I will not commend the figure which makes the orator _pronounce colours_,
+or give to _colours memory_ and _delight_. I quote it, however, as an
+imitation of these lines:
+
+  So many languages he had in store,
+  That only fame shall speak of him in more[128].
+
+The simile, by which an old man, retaining the fire of his youth, is
+compared to Aetna flaming through the snow, which Smith has used with
+great pomp, is stolen from Cowley, however little worth the labour of
+conveyance.
+
+He proceeded to take his degree of master of arts, July 8, 1696. Of
+the exercises which he performed on that occasion, I have not heard
+any thing memorable.
+
+As his years advanced, he advanced in reputation; for he continued to
+cultivate his mind, though he did not amend his irregularities, by which
+he gave so much offence, that, April 24, 1700, the dean and chapter
+declared "the place of Mr. Smith void, he having been convicted of
+riotous misbehaviour in the house of Mr. Cole, an apothecary; but it was
+referred to the dean when, and upon what occasion, the sentence should be
+put in execution."
+
+Thus tenderly was he treated: the governours of his college could hardly
+keep him, and yet wished that he would not force them to drive him away.
+
+Some time afterwards he assumed an appearance of decency: in his own
+phrase, he _whitened_ himself, having a desire to obtain the censorship,
+an office of honour and some profit in the college; but, when the
+election came, the preference was given to Mr. Foulkes, his junior:
+the same, I suppose, that joined with Freind in an edition of part of
+Demosthenes. The censor is a tutor; and it was not thought proper to
+trust the superintendence of others to a man who took so little care of
+himself.
+
+From this time Smith employed his malice and his wit against the dean,
+Dr. Aldrich, whom he considered as the opponent of his claim. Of his
+lampoon upon him, I once heard a single line, too gross to be repeated.
+
+But he was still a genius and a scholar, and Oxford was unwilling to lose
+him: he was endured, with all his pranks and his vices, two years longer;
+but, on Dec. 20, 1705, at the instance of all the canons, the sentence,
+declared five years before, was put in execution.
+
+The execution was, I believe, silent and tender; for one of his friends,
+from whom I learned much of his life, appeared not to know it.
+
+He was now driven to London, where he associated himself with the whigs;
+whether because they were in power, or because the tories had expelled
+him, or because he was a whig by principle, may, perhaps, be doubted. He
+was, however, caressed by men of great abilities, whatever were their
+party, and was supported by the liberality of those who delighted in his
+conversation.
+
+There was once a design, hinted at by Oldisworth, to have made him
+useful. One evening, as he was sitting with a friend at a tavern, he was
+called down by the waiter; and, having staid some time below, came up
+thoughtful. After a pause, said he to his friend: "He that wanted me
+below was Addison, whose business was to tell me that a History of the
+Revolution was intended, and to propose that I should undertake it.
+I said, 'What shall I do with the character of lord Sunderland?' and
+Addison immediately returned, 'When, Rag, were you drunk last?' and went
+away."
+
+Captain _Rag_ was a name which he got at Oxford, by his negligence of
+dress.
+
+This story I heard from the late Mr. Clark, of Lincoln's Inn, to whom it
+was told by the friend of Smith.
+
+Such scruples might debar him from some profitable employments; but,
+as they could not deprive him of any real esteem, they left him many
+friends; and no man was ever better introduced to the theatre than he,
+who, in that violent conflict of parties, had a prologue and epilogue
+from the first wits on either side.
+
+But learning and nature will now and then take different courses. His
+play pleased the criticks, and the criticks only. It was, as Addison
+has recorded, hardly heard the third night. Smith had, indeed, trusted
+entirely to his merit, had ensured no band of applauders, nor used any
+artifice to force success, and found that naked excellence was not
+sufficient for its own support.
+
+The play, however, was bought by Lintot, who advanced the price from
+fifty guineas, the current rate, to sixty; and Halifax, the general
+patron, accepted the dedication. Smith's indolence kept him from writing
+the dedication, till Lintot, after fruitless importunity, gave notice
+that he would publish the play without it. Now, therefore, it was
+written; and Halifax expected the author with his book, and had prepared
+to reward him with a place of three hundred pounds a year. Smith, by
+pride, or caprice, or indolence, or bashfulness, neglected to attend him,
+though doubtless warned and pressed by his friends, and, at last, missed
+his reward by not going to solicit it.
+
+Addison has, in the Spectator, mentioned the neglect of Smith's tragedy
+as disgraceful to the nation, and imputes it to the fondness for operas,
+then prevailing. The authority of Addison is great; yet the voice of the
+people, when to please the people is the purpose, deserves regard. In
+this question, I cannot but think the people in the right. The fable is
+mythological, a story which we are accustomed to reject as false; and the
+manners are so distant from our own, that we know them not from sympathy,
+but by study: the ignorant do not understand the action; the learned
+reject it as a schoolboy's tale; "incredulus odi;" what I cannot for a
+moment believe, I cannot for a moment behold with interest or anxiety.
+The sentiments thus remote from life are removed yet further by the
+diction, which is too luxuriant and splendid for dialogue, and envelopes
+the thoughts rather than displays them. It is a scholar's play, such as
+may please the reader rather than the spectator; the work of a vigorous
+and elegant mind, accustomed to please itself with its own conceptions,
+but of little acquaintance with the course of life.
+
+Dennis tells us, in one of his pieces, that he had once a design to have
+written the tragedy of Phaedra; but was convinced that the action was too
+mythological.
+
+In 1709, a year after the exhibition of Phaedra, died John Philips, the
+friend and fellow-collegian of Smith, who, on that occasion, wrote a
+poem, which justice must place among the best elegies which our language
+can show, an elegant mixture of fondness and admiration, of dignity
+and softness. There are some passages too ludicrous; but every human
+performance has its faults.
+
+This elegy it was the mode among his friends to purchase for a guinea;
+and, as his acquaintance was numerous, it was a very profitable poem.
+
+Of his Pindar, mentioned by Oldisworth, I have never otherwise heard.
+His Longinus he intended to accompany with some illustrations, and had
+selected his instances of the false sublime from the works of Blackmore.
+
+He resolved to try again the fortune of the stage, with the story of Lady
+Jane Grey. It is not unlikely, that his experience of the inefficacy and
+incredibility of a mythological tale might determine him to choose an
+action from English history, at no great distance from our own times,
+which was to end in a real event, produced by the operation of known
+characters.
+
+A subject will not easily occur that can give more opportunities
+of informing the understanding, for which Smith was unquestionably
+qualified, or for moving the passions, in which I suspect him to have had
+less power.
+
+Having formed his plan, and collected materials, he declared, that a few
+months would complete his design; and, that he might pursue his work with
+less frequent avocations, he was, in June 1710, invited, by Mr. George
+Ducket to his house, at Gartham, in Wiltshire. Here he found such
+opportunities of indulgence as did not much forward his studies, and
+particularly some strong ale, too delicious to be resisted. He ate and
+drank till he found himself plethorick; and then, resolving to ease
+himself by evacuation, he wrote to an apothecary in the neighbourhood a
+prescription of a purge so forcible, that the apothecary thought it his
+duty to delay it, till he had given notice of its danger. Smith, not
+pleased with the contradiction of a shopman, and boastful of his own
+knowledge, treated the notice with rude contempt, and swallowed his own
+medicine, which, in July, 1710, brought him to the grave. He was buried
+at Gartham.
+
+Many years afterwards, Ducket communicated to Oldmixon, the historian,
+an account, pretended to have been received from Smith, that Clarendon's
+History was, in its publication, corrupted by Aldrich, Smalridge,
+and Atterbury; and that Smith was employed to forge and insert the
+alterations.
+
+This story was published triumphantly by Oldmixon, and may be supposed
+to have been eagerly received; but its progress was soon checked; for,
+finding its way into the Journal of Trevoux, it fell under the eye of
+Atterbury, then an exile in France, who immediately denied the charge,
+with this remarkable particular, that he never, in his whole life, had
+once spoken to Smith[129]; his company being, as must be inferred, not
+accepted by those who attended to their characters.
+
+The charge was afterwards very diligently refuted, by Dr. Burton, of
+Eton, a man eminent for literature, and, though not of the same party
+with Aldrich and Atterbury, too studious of truth to leave them burdened
+with a false charge. The testimonies which he has collected have
+convinced mankind, that either Smith or Ducket was guilty of wilful and
+malicious falsehood.
+
+This controversy brought into view those parts of Smith's life, which,
+with more honour to his name, might have been concealed.
+
+Of Smith I can yet say a little more. He was a man of such estimation
+among his companions, that the casual censures or praises, which he
+dropped in conversation, were considered, like those of Scaliger, as
+worthy of preservation.
+
+He had great readiness and exactness of criticism, and, by a cursory
+glance over a new composition, would exactly tell all its faults and
+beauties.
+
+He was remarkable for the power of reading with great rapidity, and of
+retaining, with great fidelity, what he so easily collected.
+
+He, therefore, always knew what the present question required; and, when
+his friends expressed their wonder at his acquisitions, made in a state
+of apparent negligence and drunkenness, he never discovered his hours of
+reading, or method of study, but involved himself in affected silence,
+and fed his own vanity with their admiration and conjectures.
+
+One practice he had, which was easily observed: if any thought or image
+was presented to his mind, that he could use or improve, he did not
+suffer it to be lost; but, amidst the jollity of a tavern, or in the
+warmth of conversation, very diligently committed it to paper.
+
+Thus it was that he had gathered two quires of hints for his new tragedy;
+of which Howe, when they were put into his hands, could make, as he says,
+very little use, but which the collector considered as a valuable stock
+of materials.
+
+When he came to London, his way of life connected him with the licentious
+and dissolute; and he affected the airs and gaiety of a man of pleasure;
+but his dress was always deficient; scholastick cloudiness still hung
+about him; and his merriment was sure to produce the scorn of his
+companions.
+
+With all his carelessness and all his vices, he was one of the murmurers
+at fortune; and wondered why he was suffered to be poor, when Addison was
+caressed and preferred; nor would a very little have contented him; for
+he estimated his wants at six hundred pounds a year.
+
+In his course of reading it was particular, that he had diligently
+perused, and accurately remembered, the old romances of knight-errantry.
+
+He had a high opinion of his own merit, and was something contemptuous in
+his treatment of those whom he considered as not qualified to oppose or
+contradict him. He had many frailties; yet it cannot but be supposed that
+he had great merit, who could obtain to the same play a prologue from
+Addison, and an epilogue from Prior; and who could have at once the
+patronage of Halifax, and the praise of Oldisworth.
+
+For the power of communicating these minute memorials, I am indebted
+to my conversation with Gilbert Walmsley[130], late registrar of the
+ecclesiastical court of Lichfield, who was acquainted both with Smith and
+Ducket; and declared, that, if the tale concerning Clarendon were forged,
+he should suspect Ducket of the falsehood, "for _Rag_ was a man of great
+veracity."
+
+Of Gilbert Walmsley, thus presented to my mind, let me indulge myself in
+the remembrance. I knew him very early: he was one of the first friends
+that literature procured me, and I hope that, at least, my gratitude made
+me worthy of his notice.
+
+He was of an advanced age, and I was only not a boy; yet he never
+received my notions with contempt. He was a whig, with all the virulence
+and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us
+apart. I honoured him, and he endured me.
+
+He had mingled with the gay world, without exemption from its vices or
+its follies, but had never neglected the cultivation of his mind; his
+belief of revelation was unshaken; his learning preserved his principles;
+he grew first regular, and then pious.
+
+His studies had been so various, that I am not able to name a man of
+equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great: and what he did
+not immediately know, he could, at least, tell where to find. Such was
+his amplitude of learning, and such his copiousness of communication,
+that it may be doubted whether a day now passes in which I have not some
+advantage from his friendship.
+
+At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours, with
+companions such as are not often found; with one who has lengthened, and
+one who has gladdened life; with Dr. James, whose skill in physick
+will be long remembered; and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have
+gratified with this character of our common friend; but what are the
+hopes of man! I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has
+eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the publick stock of
+harmless pleasure.
+
+In the library at Oxford is the following ludicrous analysis of
+Pocockius:
+
+
+EX AUTOGRAPHO.
+
+[Sent by the author to Mr. Urry.]
+
+Opusculum hoc, Halberdarie amplissime, in lucem proferre hactenus
+distuli, judicii tui acumen subveritus magis quam bipennis. Tandem
+aliquando oden hanc ad te mitto sublimem, teneram, flebilem, suavem,
+qualem demum divinus (si musis vacaret) scripsisset Gastrellus: adeo
+scilicet sublimem ut inter legendum dormire, adeo flebilem ut ridere
+velis. Cujus elegantiam ut melius inspicias, versuum ordinem et materiam
+breviter referam. 1mus versus de duobus praeliis decantatis. 2dus et 3us
+de Lotharingio, cuniculis subterraneis, saxis, ponto, hostibus, et
+Asia. 4tus et 5tus de catenis, sudibus, uncis, draconibus, tigribus et
+crocodilis. 6us, 7us, 8us, 9us de Gomorrha, de Babylone, Babele, et
+quodam domi suae peregrine. 10us, aliquid de quodam Pocockio. 11us, 12us,
+de Syria, Solyma. 13us, 14us, de Hosea, et quercu, et de juvene quodam
+valde sene. 15us, 16us, de Aetna, et quomodo Aetna Pocockio sit valde
+similis. 17us, 18us, de tuba, astro, umbra, flammis, rotis, Pocockio non
+neglecto. Caetera, de Christianis, Ottomanis, Babyloniis, Arabibus, et
+gravissima agrorum melancholia; de Caesare, _Flacco_[131], Nestore,
+et miserando juvenis cujusdam florentissimi fato, anno aetatis suae
+centesimo praemature abrepti. Quae omnia cum accurate expenderis, necesse
+est ut oden hanc meam admiranda plane varietate constare fatearis.
+Subito ad Batavos proficiscor, lauro ab illis donandus. Prius vero
+Pembrochienses voco ad certamen poeticum. Vale.
+
+Illustrissima tua deosculor crura.
+
+E. SMITH.
+
+[Footnote 125: Dr. Ralph Bathurst, whose Life and Literary Remains were
+published in 1761, by Mr. Thomas Warton. C.]
+
+[Footnote 126: By his epitaph he appears to have been forty-two years old
+when he died. He was, consequently, born in the year 1668. R.
+
+He was born in 1662, as appears from the register of matriculations among
+the archives of the university of Oxford.]
+
+[Footnote 127: He was elected to Cambridge, 1688; but, as has been before
+stated, went to Oxford. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 128: Cowley on sir R. Wotton. L. B.]
+
+[Footnote 129: See bishop Atterbury's Epistolary Correspondence, 1799,
+vol. iii. pp. 126, 133. In the same work, vol. i. p. 325, it appears that
+Smith was at one time suspected, by Atterbury, to have been the author of
+the Tale of a Tub. N. See Idler, No. 65.]
+
+[Footnote 130: See prefatory remarks to Irene, vol. i. p. 25.]
+
+[Footnote 131: Pro _Flacco_, animo paulo attentiore, scripsissem
+_Marone_.]
+
+
+
+
+DUKE
+
+Of Mr. Richard Duke I can find few memorials. He was bred at
+Westminster[132] and Cambridge; and Jacob relates, that he was some time
+tutor to the duke of Richmond.
+
+He appears, from his writings, to have been not ill qualified for
+poetical compositions; and being conscious of his powers, when he left
+the university, he enlisted himself among the wits[133]. He was the
+familiar friend of Otway; and was engaged, among other popular names, in
+the translations of Ovid and Juvenal. In his Review, though unfinished,
+are some vigorous lines. His poems are not below mediocrity; nor have I
+found much in them to be praised[134].
+
+With the wit he seems to have shared the dissoluteness of the times;
+for some of his compositions are such as he must have reviewed with
+detestation in his later days, when he published those sermons which
+Felton has commended.
+
+Perhaps, like some other foolish young men, he rather talked than lived
+vitiously, in an age when he that would be thought a wit was afraid to
+say his prayers; and whatever might have been bad in the first part of
+his life, was surely condemned and reformed by his better judgment.
+
+In 1683, being then master of arts and fellow of Trinity college in
+Cambridge, he wrote a poem, on the marriage of the lady Anne with George,
+prince of Denmark. He took orders[135]; and, being made prebendary of
+Gloucester, became a proctor in convocation for that church, and chaplain
+to queen Anne.
+
+In 1710, he was presented, by the bishop of Winchester, to the wealthy
+living of Witney, in Oxfordshire, which he enjoyed but a few months. On
+February 10, 1710-11, having returned from an entertainment, he was found
+dead the next morning. His death is mentioned in Swift's Journal.
+
+[Footnote 132: He was admitted there in 1670; was elected to Trinity
+college, Cambridge, in 1675; and took his master's degree in 1682. N.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Floriana, a pastoral, on the death of the dutchess of
+Southampton, published anonymously in folio, May 17, 1681, was written by
+Richard Duke. M.]
+
+[Footnote 134: They make a part of a volume published by Tonson in 8vo.
+1717, containing the poems of the earl of Roscommon, and the duke of
+Buckingham's Essay on Poetry; but were first published in Dryden's
+Miscellany, as were most, if not all, of the poems in that collection.
+H.]
+
+[Footnote 135: He was presented to the rectory of Blaby, in
+Leicestershire, in 1687-8; and obtained a prebend at Gloucester in 1688.
+N.]
+
+
+
+
+KING
+
+William King was born in London in 1663; the son of Ezekiel King, a
+gentleman. He was allied to the family of Clarendon.
+
+From Westminster school, where he was a scholar on the foundation, under
+the care of Dr. Busby, he was, at eighteen, elected to Christ church,
+in 1681; where he is said to have prosecuted his studies with so much
+intenseness and activity, that before he was eight years standing he had
+read over, and made remarks upon, twenty-two thousand odd hundred books
+and manuscripts[136]. The books were certainly not very long, the
+manuscripts not very difficult, nor the remarks very large; for the
+calculator will find that he despatched seven a day for every day of his
+eight years, with a remnant that more than satisfies most other students.
+He took his degree in the most expensive manner, as a grand compounder;
+whence it is inferred that he inherited a considerable fortune.
+
+In 1688, the same year in which he was made master of arts, he published
+a confutation of Varillas's account of Wickliffe; and, engaging in the
+study of the civil law, became doctor in 1692, and was admitted advocate
+at Doctors' Commons.
+
+He had already made some translations from the French, and written some
+humorous and satirical pieces; when, in 1694, Molesworth published his
+Account of Denmark, in which he treats the Danes and their monarch with
+great contempt; and takes the opportunity of insinuating those wild
+principles, by which he supposes liberty to be established, and by
+which his adversaries suspect that all subordination and government is
+endangered.
+
+This book offended prince George; and the Danish minister presented a
+memorial against it. The principles of its author did not please Dr.
+King; and, therefore, he undertook to confute part, and laugh at the
+rest. The controversy is now forgotten; and books of this kind seldom
+live long, when interest and resentment have ceased.
+
+In 1697, he mingled in the controversy between Boyle and Bentley; and was
+one of those who tried what wit could perform in opposition to learning;
+on a question which learning only could decide.
+
+In 1699, was published by him, a Journey to London, after the method of
+Dr. Martin Lister, who had published a Journey to Paris. And, in 1700, he
+satirized the Royal Society, at least sir Hans Sloane, their president,
+in two dialogues, entitled The Transactioneer.
+
+Though he was a regular advocate in the courts of civil and canon law,
+he did not love his profession, nor, indeed, any kind of business which
+interrupted his voluptuary dreams, or forced him to rouse from that
+indulgence in which only he could find delight. His reputation, as a
+civilian, was yet maintained by his judgments in the courts of delegates,
+and raised very high by the address and knowledge which he discovered in
+1700, when he defended the earl of Anglesea against his lady, afterwards
+dutchess of Buckinghamshire, who sued for a divorce, and obtained it.
+
+The expense of his pleasures, and neglect of business, had now lessened
+his revenues; and he was willing to accept of a settlement in Ireland,
+where, about 1702, he was made judge of the admiralty, commissioner
+of the prizes, keeper of the records in Birmingham's tower, and
+vicar-general to Dr. Marsh, the primate.
+
+But it is vain to put wealth within the reach of him who will not
+stretch out his hand to take it. King soon found a friend, as idle and
+thoughtless as himself, in Upton, one of the judges, who had a pleasant
+house called Mountown, near Dublin, to which King frequently retired;
+delighting to neglect his interest, forget his cares, and desert his
+duty.
+
+Here he wrote Mully of Mountown, a poem; by which, though fanciful
+readers, in the pride of sagacity, have given it a political
+interpretation, was meant originally no more than it expressed, as it was
+dictated only by the author's delight in the quiet of Mountown.
+
+In 1708, when lord Wharton was sent to govern Ireland, King returned to
+London, with his poverty, his idleness, and his wit; and published some
+essays, called Useful Transactions. His Voyage to the Island of Cajamai
+is particularly commended. He then wrote the Art of Love, a poem
+remarkable, notwithstanding its title, for purity of sentiment; and, in
+1709, imitated Horace in an Art of Cookery, which he published, with some
+letters to Dr. Lister.
+
+In 1710, he appeared as a lover of the church, on the side of
+Sacheverell; and was supposed to have concurred, at least, in the
+projection of The Examiner. His eyes were open to all the operations of
+whiggism; and he bestowed some strictures upon Dr. Kennett's adulatory
+sermon at the funeral of the duke of Devonshire.
+
+The History of the Heathen Gods, a book composed for schools, was written
+by him in 1710. The work is useful; but might have been produced without
+the powers of King. The same year he published Rufinus, an historical
+essay; and a poem, intended to dispose the nation to think as he thought
+of the duke of Marlborough and his adherents.
+
+In 1711, competence, if not plenty, was again put into his power. He was,
+without the trouble of attendance, or the mortification of a request,
+made gazetteer. Swift, Freind, Prior, and other men of the same party,
+brought him the key of the gazetteer's office. He was now again placed
+in a profitable employment, and again threw the benefit away. An act of
+insolvency made his business, at that time, particularly troublesome;
+and he would not wait till hurry should be at an end, but impatiently
+resigned it, and returned to his wonted indigence and amusements.
+
+One of his amusements at Lambeth, where he resided, was to mortify Dr.
+Tenison, the archbishop, by a publick festivity, on the surrender of
+Dunkirk to Hill; an event with which Tenison's political bigotry did
+not suffer him to be delighted. King was resolved to counteract his
+sullenness, and, at the expense of a few barrels of ale, filled the
+neighbourhood with honest merriment.
+
+In the autumn of 1712, his health declined; he grew weaker by degrees,
+and died on Christmas day. Though his life had not been without
+irregularity, his principles were pure and orthodox, and his death was
+pious.
+
+After this relation it will be naturally supposed that his poems were
+rather the amusements of idleness than efforts of study; that he
+endeavoured rather to divert than astonish; that his thoughts seldom
+aspired to sublimity; and that, if his verse was easy and his images
+familiar, he attained what he desired. His purpose is to be merry; but,
+perhaps, to enjoy his mirth, it may be sometimes necessary to think well
+of his opinions[137].
+
+[Footnote 137: Dr. Johnson appears to have made but little use of the
+life of Dr. King, prefixed to his works, in three vols. 1776; to which it
+may not be impertinent to refer the reader. His talent for humour ought
+to be praised in the highest terms. In that, at least, he yielded to none
+of his contemporaries.]
+
+
+
+
+SPRAT
+
+Thomas Sprat was born in 1636, at Tallaton in Devonshire, the son of
+a clergyman; and having been educated, as he tells of himself, not at
+Westminster or Eton, but at a little school by the church-yard side,
+became a commoner of Wadham college, in Oxford, in 1651; and, being
+chosen scholar next year, proceeded through the usual academical course,
+and, in 1657, became master of arts. He obtained a fellowship, and
+commenced poet.
+
+In 1659, his poem on the death of Oliver was published, with those of
+Dryden and Waller. In his dedication to Dr. Wilkins, he appears a very
+willing and liberal encomiast, both of the living and the dead. He
+implores his patron's excuse of his verses, both as falling "so
+infinitely below the full and sublime genius of that excellent poet who
+made this way of writing free of our nation," and being "so little equal
+and proportioned to the renown of the prince on whom they were written;
+such great actions and lives deserving to be the subject of the noblest
+pens and most divine phansies." He proceeds: "Having so long experienced
+your care and indulgence, and been formed, as it were, by your own hands,
+not to entitle you to any thing which my meanness produces, would be not
+only injustice, but sacrilege."
+
+He published, the same year, a poem on the Plague of Athens; a subject of
+which it is not easy to say what could recommend it. To these he added,
+afterwards, a poem on Mr. Cowley's death.
+
+After the restoration he took orders, and by Cowley's recommendation was
+made chaplain to the duke of Buckingham, whom he is said to have helped
+in writing the Rehearsal. He was likewise chaplain to the king.
+
+As he was the favourite of Wilkins, at whose house began those
+philosophical conferences and inquiries, which in time produced the Royal
+Society, he was consequently engaged in the same studies, and became one
+of the fellows; and when, after their incorporation, something seemed
+necessary to reconcile the publick to the new institution, he undertook
+to write its history, which he published in 1667. This is one of the few
+books which selection of sentiment and elegance of diction have been
+able to preserve, though written upon a subject flux and transitory. The
+History of the Royal Society is now read, not with the wish to know what
+they were then doing, but how their transactions are exhibited by Sprat.
+
+In the next year he published Observations on Sorbiere's Voyage into
+England, in a letter to Mr. Wren. This is a work not ill-performed; but,
+perhaps, rewarded with at least its full proportion of praise.
+
+In 1668, he published Cowley's Latin poems, and prefixed, in Latin, the
+life of the author; which he afterwards amplified, and placed before
+Cowley's English works, which were by will committed to his care.
+
+Ecclesiastical benefices now fell fast upon him. In 1668, he became a
+prebendary of Westminster, and had afterwards the church of St. Margaret,
+adjoining to the abbey. He was, in 1680, made canon of Windsor; in 1683,
+dean of Westminster; and, in 1684, bishop of Rochester.
+
+The court having thus a claim to his diligence and gratitude, he was
+required to write the History of the Rye-house Plot; and, in 1685,
+published a true Account and Declaration of the horrid Conspiracy against
+the late King, his present Majesty, and the present Government; a
+performance which he thought convenient, after the revolution, to
+extenuate and excuse.
+
+The same year, being clerk of the closet to the king, he was made dean of
+the chapel royal; and, the year afterwards, received the last proof of
+his master's confidence, by being appointed one of the commissioners
+for ecclesiastical affairs. On the critical day, when the declaration
+distinguished the true sons of the church of England, he stood neuter,
+and permitted it to be read at Westminster; but pressed none to violate
+his conscience; and, when the bishop of London was brought before them,
+gave his voice in his favour.
+
+Thus far he suffered interest or obedience to carry him; but further
+he refused to go. When he found that the powers of the ecclesiastical
+commission were to be exercised against those who had refused the
+declaration, he wrote to the lords, and other commissioners, a formal
+profession of his unwillingness to exercise that authority any longer,
+and withdrew himself from them. After they had read his letter, they
+adjourned for six months, and scarcely ever met afterwards.
+
+When king James was frighted away, and a new government was to be
+settled, Sprat was one of those who considered, in a conference, the
+great question, Whether the crown was vacant, and manfully spoke in
+favour of his old master.
+
+He complied, however, with the new establishment, and was left
+unmolested; but, in 1692, a strange attack was made upon him by one
+Robert Young and Stephen Blackhead, both men convicted of infamous
+crimes, and both, when the scheme was laid, prisoners in Newgate. These
+men drew up an association, in which they whose names were subscribed,
+declared their resolution to restore king James, to seize the princess of
+Orange, dead or alive, and to be ready with thirty thousand men to meet
+king James when he should land. To this they put the names of Sancroft,
+Sprat, Marlborough, Salisbury, and others. The copy of Dr. Sprat's name
+was obtained by a fictitious request, to which an answer in his own hand
+was desired. His hand was copied so well, that he confessed it might have
+deceived himself. Blackhead, who had carried the letter, being sent
+again with a plausible message, was very curious to see the house, and
+particularly importunate to be let into the study; where, as is supposed,
+he designed to leave the association. This, however, was denied him;
+and he dropped it in a flower-pot in the parlour. Young now laid an
+information before the privy council; and May 7, 1692, the bishop was
+arrested, and kept at a messenger's, under a strict guard, eleven days.
+His house was searched, and directions were given that the flower-pots
+should be inspected. The messengers, however, missed the room in which
+the paper was left. Blackhead went, therefore, a third time; and finding
+his paper where he had left it, brought it away.
+
+The bishop having been enlarged, was, on June the 10th and 13th, examined
+again before the privy council, and confronted with his accusers. Young
+persisted, with the most obdurate impudence, against the strongest
+evidence; but the resolution of Blackhead, by degrees, gave way. There
+remained at last no doubt of the bishop's innocence, who, with great
+prudence and diligence, traced the progress, and detected the characters
+of the two informers, and published an account of his own examination and
+deliverance; which made such an impression upon him, that he commemorated
+it through life by a yearly day of thanksgiving.
+
+With what hope or what interest, the villains had contrived an accusation
+which they must know themselves utterly unable to prove, was never
+discovered.
+
+After this he passed his days in the quiet exercise of his function.
+When the cause of Sacheverell put the publick in commotion, he honestly
+appeared among the friends of the church. He lived to his seventy-ninth
+year, and died May 20, 1713.
+
+Burnet is not very favourable to his memory; but he and Burnet were old
+rivals. On some publick occasion they both preached before the house of
+commons. There prevailed, in those days, an indecent custom: when the
+preacher touched any favourite topick, in a manner that delighted his
+audience, their approbation was expressed by a loud _hum_, continued in
+proportion to their zeal or pleasure. When Burnet preached, part of his
+congregation _hummed_ so loudly and so long, that he, sat down to enjoy
+it, and rubbed his face with his handkerchief. When Sprat preached, he
+likewise was honoured with the like animating _hum_; but he stretched
+out his hand to the congregation, and cried, "Peace, peace, I pray you,
+peace."
+
+This I was told in my youth by my father, an old man, who had been no
+careless observer of the passages of those times.
+
+Burnet's sermon, says Salmon, was remarkable for sedition, and Sprat's
+for loyalty. Burnet had the thanks of the house; Sprat had no thanks, but
+a good living from the king, which, he said, was of as much value as the
+thanks of the commons.
+
+The works of Sprat, besides his few poems, are, the History of the Royal
+Society, the Life of Cowley, the Answer to Sorbiere, the History of the
+Rye-house Plot, the Relation of his own Examination, and a volume of
+sermons. I have heard it observed, with great justness, that every
+book is of a different kind, and that each has its distinct and
+characteristical excellence[138].
+
+My business is only with his poems. He considered Cowley as a model; and
+supposed that, as he was imitated, perfection was approached. Nothing,
+therefore, but Pindarick liberty was to be expected. There is in his few
+productions no want of such conceits as he thought excellent; and of
+those our judgment may be settled by the first that appears in his praise
+of Cromwell, where he says, that Cromwell's "fame, like man, will grow
+white as it grows old."
+
+[Footnote 138: This observation was made to Dr. Johnson by the right hon.
+Wm. Gerard Hamilton, as he told me, at Tunbridge, August, 1792. M.]
+
+
+
+
+HALIFAX
+
+The life of the earl of Halifax was properly that of an artful and active
+statesman, employed in balancing parties, contriving expedients, and
+combating opposition, and exposed to the vicissitudes of advancement and
+degradation; but, in this collection, poetical merit is the claim to
+attention; and the account which is here to be expected may properly be
+proportioned not to his influence in the state, but to his rank among the
+writers of verse.
+
+Charles Montague was born April 16, 1661, at Horton, in Northamptonshire,
+the son of Mr. George Montague, a younger son of the earl of Manchester.
+He was educated first in the country, and then removed to Westminster,
+where, in 1677, he was chosen a king's scholar, and recommended himself
+to Busby by his felicity in extemporary epigrams. He contracted a very
+intimate friendship with Mr. Stepney; and, in 1682, when Stepney was
+elected to Cambridge, the election of Montague being not to proceed till
+the year following, he was afraid lest, by being placed at Oxford, he
+might be separated from his companion, and, therefore, solicited to be
+removed to Cambridge, without waiting for the advantages of another year.
+
+It seems, indeed, time to wish for a removal; for he was already a
+schoolboy of one-and-twenty.
+
+His relation, Dr. Montague, was then master of the college in which he
+was placed a fellow-commoner, and took him under his particular care.
+Here he commenced an acquaintance with the great Newton, which continued
+through his life, and was at last attested by a legacy[139].
+
+In 1685, his verses on the death of king Charles made such an impression
+on the earl of Dorset, that he was invited to town, and introduced by
+that universal patron to the other wits. In 1687, he joined with Prior
+in the City Mouse and Country Mouse, a burlesque of Dryden's Hind and
+Panther. He signed the invitation to the prince of Orange, and sat in
+the convention. He, about the same time, married the countess dowager of
+Manchester, and intended to have taken orders; but afterwards altering
+his purpose, he purchased, for 1500_l_. the place of one of the clerks of
+the council.
+
+After he had written his epistle on the victory of the Boyne, his patron
+Dorset introduced him to king William, with this expression: "Sir, I have
+brought a _mouse_ to wait on your majesty." To which the king is said
+to have replied, "You do well to put me in the way of making a _man_
+of him;" and ordered him a pension of five hundred pounds. This story,
+however current, seems to have been made after the event. The king's
+answer implies a greater acquaintance with our proverbial and familiar
+diction than king William could possibly have attained.
+
+In 1691, being member of the house of commons, he argued warmly in favour
+of a law to grant the assistance of counsel in trials for high treason;
+and, in the midst of his speech falling into some confusion, was for
+awhile silent; but, recovering himself, observed, "how reasonable it was
+to allow counsel to men called as criminals before a court of justice,
+when it appeared how much the presence of that assembly could disconcert
+one of their own body[140]."
+
+After this he rose fast into honours and employments, being made one of
+the commissioners of the treasury, and called to the privy council. In
+1694, he became chancellor of the exchequer; and the next year engaged
+in the great attempt of the recoinage, which was in two years happily
+completed. In 1696, he projected the _general fund_ and raised the
+credit of the exchequer; and, after inquiry concerning a grant of Irish
+crown-lands, it was determined, by a vote of the commons, that Charles
+Montague, esquire, "had deserved his majesty's favour." In 1698, being
+advanced to the first commission of the treasury, he was appointed one of
+the regency in the king's absence; the next year he was made auditor of
+the exchequer, and the year after created baron Halifax. He was, however,
+impeached by the commons; but the articles were dismissed by the lords.
+
+At the accession of queen Anne he was dismissed from the council; and in
+the first parliament of her reign was again attacked by the commons, and
+again escaped by the protection of the lords. In 1704, he wrote an answer
+to Bromley's speech against occasional conformity. He headed the inquiry
+into the danger of the church. In 1706, he proposed and negotiated the
+union with Scotland; and when the elector of Hanover received the garter,
+after the act had passed for securing the protestant succession, he was
+appointed to carry the ensigns of the order to the electoral court. He
+sat as one of the judges of Sacheverell; but voted for a mild sentence.
+Being now no longer in favour, he contrived to obtain a writ for
+summoning the electoral prince to parliament, as duke of Cambridge.
+
+At the queen's death he was appointed one of the regents; and at the
+accession of George the first was made earl of Halifax, knight of the
+garter, and first commissioner of the treasury, with a grant to his
+nephew of the reversion of the auditorship of the exchequer. More was not
+to be had, and this he kept but a little while; for, on the 19th of May,
+1715, he died of an inflammation of his lungs.
+
+Of him, who from a poet became a patron of poets, it will be readily
+believed that the works would not miss of celebration. Addison began
+to praise him early, and was followed or accompanied by other poets;
+perhaps, by almost all, except Swift and Pope, who forbore to flatter him
+in his life, and after his death spoke of him, Swift with slight censure,
+and Pope, in the character of Bufo, with acrimonious contempt[141].
+
+He was, as Pope says, "fed with dedications;" for Tickell affirms that no
+dedicator was unrewarded. To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt
+of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the
+falsehoods of his assertions, is, surely, to discover great ignorance of
+human nature and human life. In determinations depending not on rules,
+but on experience and comparison, judgment is always, in some degree,
+subject to affection. Very near to admiration is the wish to admire.
+
+Every man willingly gives value to the praise which he receives,
+and considers the sentence passed in his favour as the sentence of
+discernment. We admire, in a friend, that understanding that selected us
+for confidence; we admire more, in a patron, that judgment which, instead
+of scattering bounty indiscriminately, directed it to us; and, if the
+patron be an author, those performances which gratitude forbids us to
+blame, affection will easily dispose us to exalt.
+
+To these prejudices, hardly culpable, interest adds a power always
+operating, though not always, because not willingly, perceived. The
+modesty of praise wears gradually away; and, perhaps, the pride of
+patronage may be in time so increased, that modest praise will no longer
+please.
+
+Many a blandishment was practised upon Halifax, which he would never have
+known, had he no other attractions than those of his poetry, of which a
+short time has withered the beauties. It would now be esteemed no honour,
+by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verses, to be told, that, in
+strains either familiar or solemn, he sings like Montague.
+
+[Footnote 139: He left sir Isaac Newton 200/. M.]
+
+[Footnote 140: Mr. Reed observes, that this anecdote is related by Mr.
+Walpole, in his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, of the earl of
+Shaftesbury, author of the Characteristicks, but it appears to me to be
+a mistake, if we are to understand that the words were spoken by
+Shaftesbury at this time, when he had no seat in the house of commons;
+nor did the bill pass at this time, being thrown out by the house of
+lords. It became a law in the seventh of William, when Halifax and
+Shaftesbury both had seats. The editors of the Biog. Brit. adopt Mr.
+Walpole's story, but they are not speaking of this period. The story
+first appeared in the life of lord Halifax, published in 1715.]
+
+[Footnote 141: Mr. Roscoe denies that Pope's character of Bufo, in the
+prologue to the Satires, was intended for Halifax. In evidence of his
+assertion he quotes several passages from Pope's poems, and the preface
+to the Iliad, all published after that nobleman's death, when the poet
+could hope for no return for his praises, when flattery could not sooth
+"the dull cold ear of death." Twenty years after Halifax's decease, he is
+thus commemorated:
+
+  "But does the court one worthy man remove,
+  That moment I declare he has my love:
+  I shun their zenith, court their mild decline;
+  Thus SOMERS once, and HALIFAX were mine."
+
+See Roscoe's Pope, vol. i. p. 138. ED.]
+
+
+
+
+PARNELL
+
+The life of Dr. Parnell is a task which I should very willingly decline,
+since it has been lately written by Goldsmith, a man of such variety of
+powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do
+best that which he was doing; a man who had the art of being minute
+without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was
+copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without
+weakness.
+
+What such an author has told, who would tell again? I have made an
+abstract from his larger narrative; and have this gratification from my
+attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the
+memory of Goldsmith:
+
+
+  'Tho geras esti thanonton'
+
+Thomas Parnell was the son of a commonwealthsman of the same name, who,
+at the restoration, left Congleton, in Cheshire, where the family had
+been established for several centuries, and, settling in Ireland,
+purchased an estate, which, with his lands in Cheshire, descended to the
+poet, who was born at Dublin, in 1679; and, after the usual education at
+a grammar-school, was, at the age of thirteen, admitted into the college,
+where, in 1700, he became master of arts; and was the same year ordained
+a deacon, though under the canonical age, by a dispensation from the
+bishop of Derry.
+
+About three years afterwards he was made a priest; and, in 1705, Dr.
+Ashe, the bishop of Clogher, conferred upon him the archdeaconry of
+Clogher. About the same time he married Mrs. Anne Minchin, an amiable
+lady, by whom he had two sons, who died young, and a daughter who long
+survived him.
+
+At the ejection of the whigs, in the end of queen Anne's reign, Parnell
+was persuaded to change his party, not without much censure from those
+whom he forsook, and was received by the new ministry as a valuable
+reinforcement. When the earl of Oxford was told that Dr. Parnell waited
+among the crowd in the outer room, he went, by the persuasion of Swift,
+with his treasurer's staff in his hand, to inquire for him, and to bid
+him welcome; and, as may be inferred from Pope's dedication, admitted him
+as a favourite companion to his convivial hours, but, as it seems often
+to have happened in those times to the favourites of the great, without
+attention to his fortune, which, however, was in no great need of
+improvement.
+
+Parnell, who did not want ambition or vanity, was desirous to make
+himself conspicuous, and to show how worthy he was of high preferment. As
+he thought himself qualified to become a popular preacher, he displayed
+his elocution with great success in the pulpits of London; but the
+queen's death putting an end to his expectations, abated his diligence;
+and Pope represents him as falling from that time into intemperance of
+wine. That in his latter life he was too much a lover of the bottle, is
+not denied; but I have heard it imputed to a cause more likely to obtain
+forgiveness from mankind, the untimely death of a darling son; or, as
+others tell, the loss of his wife, who died, 1712, in the midst of his
+expectations.
+
+He was now to derive every future addition to his preferments from
+his personal interest with his private friends, and he was not long
+unregarded. He was warmly recommended by Swift to archbishop King, who
+gave him a prebend in 1713; and in May, 1716, presented him to the
+vicarage of Finglass, in the diocese of Dublin, worth four hundred pounds
+a year. Such notice from such a man inclines me to believe, that the vice
+of which he has been accused was not gross, or not notorious.
+
+But his prosperity did not last long. His end, whatever was its cause,
+was now approaching. He enjoyed his preferment little more than a year;
+for in July, 1717, in his thirty-eighth year, he died at Chester, on his
+way to Ireland.
+
+He seems to have been one of those poets who take delight in writing. He
+contributed to the papers of that time, and probably published more than
+he owned. He left many compositions behind him, of which Pope selected
+those which he thought best, and dedicated them to the earl of Oxford. Of
+these Goldsmith has given an opinion, and his criticism it is seldom safe
+to contradict. He bestows just praise upon the Rise of Woman, the Fairy
+Tale, and the Pervigilium Veneris; but has very properly remarked, that
+in the Battle of Mice and Frogs, the Greek names have not in English
+their original effect.
+
+He tells us, that the Bookworm is borrowed from Beza; but he should have
+added, with modern applications; and, when he discovers that Gay Bacchus
+is translated from Augurellus, he ought to have remarked, that the latter
+part is purely Parnell's. Another poem, when Spring comes on, is, he
+says, taken from the French. I would add, that the description of
+Barrenness, in his verses to Pope, was borrowed from Secundus; but lately
+searching for the passage, which I had formerly read, I could not find
+it. The Night-piece on Death is indirectly preferred by Goldsmith to
+Gray's Church-yard; but, in my opinion, Gray has the advantage in
+dignity, variety, and originality of sentiment. He observes, that the
+story of the Hermit is in More's Dialogues and Howell's Letters, and
+supposes it to have been originally Arabian.
+
+Goldsmith has not taken any notice of the Elegy to the old Beauty, which
+is, perhaps, the meanest; nor of the Allegory on Man, the happiest of
+Parnell's performances. The hint of the Hymn to Contentment[142] I
+suspect to have been borrowed from Cleiveland.
+
+The general character of Parnell is not great extent of comprehension, or
+fertility of mind. Of the little that appears, still less is his own. His
+praise must be derived from the easy sweetness of his diction: in his
+verses there is more happiness than pains; he is sprightly without
+effort, and always delights, though he never ravishes; every thing is
+proper, yet every thing seems casual. If there is some appearance of
+elaboration in The Hermit, the narrative, as it is less airy, is less
+pleasing[143]. Of his other compositions it is impossible to say whether
+they are the productions of nature, so excellent as not to want the help
+of art, or of art so refined as to resemble nature.
+
+This criticism relates only to the pieces published by Pope. Of the large
+appendages, which I find in the last edition, I can only say, that I know
+not whence they came, nor have ever inquired whither they are going. They
+stand upon the faith of the compilers.
+
+[Footnote 142: Parnell's "exquisite Hymn to Contentment, is manifestly
+formed on the Divine _Psalmodia_ of cardinal Bona--this imitation has
+escaped the notice of Dr. Johnson, and, it is believed, of all other
+critics and commentators." Dr. Jebb's Sermons, second edition, p. 94.]
+
+[Footnote 143: Dr. Warton asks, "Less than what?"]
+
+
+
+
+GARTH
+
+Samuel Garth was of a good family in Yorkshire, and, from some school in
+his own country, became a student at Peter-house, in Cambridge, where he
+resided till he became doctor of physick, on July the 7th, 1691. He was
+examined before the college at London, on March the 12th, 1691-2, and
+admitted fellow, July 26th, 1693. He was soon so much distinguished
+by his conversation and accomplishments, as to obtain very extensive
+practice; and, if a pamphlet of those times may be credited, had the
+favour and confidence of one party, as Radcliffe had of the other.
+
+He is always mentioned as a man of benevolence; and it is just to
+suppose, that his desire of helping the helpless disposed him to so much
+zeal for the dispensary; an undertaking of which some account, however
+short, is proper to be given.
+
+Whether what Temple says be true, that physicians have had more learning
+than the other faculties, I will not stay to inquire; but, I believe,
+every man has found in physicians great liberality and dignity of
+sentiment, very prompt effusion of beneficence, and willingness to exert
+a lucrative art where there is no hope of lucre. Agreeably to this
+character, the College of Physicians, in July, 1687, published an
+edict, requiring all the fellows, candidates, and licentiates, to give
+gratuitous advice to the neighbouring poor.
+
+This edict was sent to the court of aldermen; and, a question being made
+to whom the appellation of the _poor_ should be extended, the college
+answered, that it should be sufficient to bring a testimonial from the
+clergyman officiating in the parish where the patient resided.
+
+After a year's experience, the physicians found their charity frustrated
+by some malignant opposition, and made, to a great degree, vain by the
+high price of physick; they, therefore, voted, in August, 1688, that the
+laboratory of the college should be accommodated to the preparation of
+medicines, and another room prepared for their reception; and that the
+contributors to the expense should manage the charity.
+
+It was now expected, that the apothecaries would have undertaken the care
+of providing medicines; but they took another course. Thinking the whole
+design pernicious to their interest, they endeavoured to raise a faction
+against it in the college, and found some physicians mean enough to
+solicit their patronage, by betraying to them the counsels of the
+college. The greater part, however, enforced by a new edict, in 1694,
+the former order of 1687, and sent it to the mayor and aldermen, who
+appointed a committee to treat with the college, and settle the mode of
+administering the charity.
+
+It was desired by the aldermen, that the testimonials of churchwardens
+and overseers should be admitted; and that all hired servants, and all
+apprentices to handicrafts-men, should be considered as poor. This,
+likewise, was granted by the college.
+
+It was then considered who should distribute the medicines, and who
+should settle their prices. The physicians procured some apothecaries to
+undertake the dispensation, and offered that the warden and company of
+the apothecaries should adjust the price. This offer was rejected; and
+the apothecaries who had engaged to assist the charity were considered as
+traitors to the company, threatened with the imposition of troublesome
+offices, and deterred from the performance of their engagements. The
+apothecaries ventured upon publick opposition, and presented a kind of
+remonstrance against the design to the committee of the city, which the
+physicians condescended to confute; and, at last, the traders seem to
+have prevailed among the sons of trade; for the proposal of the college
+having been considered, a paper of approbation was drawn up, but
+postponed and forgotten.
+
+The physicians still persisted; and, in 1696, a subscription was raised
+by themselves, according to an agreement prefixed to The Dispensary. The
+poor were, for a time, supplied with medicines; for how long a time, I
+know not. The medicinal charity, like others, began with ardour, but soon
+remitted, and, at last, died gradually away.
+
+About the time of the subscription begins the action of The Dispensary.
+The poem, as its subject was present and popular, cooperated with
+passions and prejudices then prevalent, and, with such auxiliaries to its
+intrinsick merit, was universally and liberally applauded. It was on
+the side of charity against the intrigues of interest, and of regular
+learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority; and was,
+therefore, naturally favoured by those who read and can judge of poetry.
+
+In 1697, Garth spoke that which is now called the Harveian oration; which
+the authors of the Biographia mention with more praise than the passage
+quoted in their notes will fully justify. Garth, speaking of the
+mischiefs done by quacks, has these expressions: "Non tamen telis
+vulnerat ista agyrtarum colluvies, sed theriaca quadam magis perniciosa;
+non pyrio, sed pulvere nescio quo exotico certat; non globulis plumbeis,
+sed pilulis aeque lethalibus interficit." This was certainly thought fine
+by the author, and is still admired by his biographer. In October, 1702,
+he became one of the censors of the college.
+
+Garth, being an active and zealous whig, was a member of the Kit-cat
+club, and, by consequence, familiarly known to all the great men of that
+denomination. In 1710, when the government fell into other hands, he writ
+to lord Godolphin, on his dismission, a short poem, which was criticised
+in The Examiner, and so successfully either defended or excused by Mr.
+Addison, that, for the sake of the vindication, it ought to be preserved.
+
+At the accession of the present family his merits were acknowledged and
+rewarded. He was knighted with the sword of his hero, Marlborough; and
+was made physician in ordinary to the king, and physician general to the
+army. He then undertook an edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated
+by several hands; which he recommended by a preface, written with more
+ostentation than ability; his notions are half-formed, and his materials
+immethodically confused. This was his last work. He died Jan. 18,
+1717-18, and was buried at Harrow-on-the-Hill.
+
+His personal character seems to have been social and liberal. He
+communicated himself through a very wide extent of acquaintance; and
+though firm in a party, at a time when firmness included virulence, yet
+he imparted his kindness to those who were not supposed to favour his
+principles. He was an early encourager of Pope, and was, at once, the
+friend of Addison and of Granville. He is accused of voluptuousness and
+irreligion; and Pope, who says, that "if ever there was a good Christian,
+without knowing himself to be so, it was Dr. Garth," seems not able to
+deny what he is angry to hear, and loath to confess.
+
+Pope afterwards declared himself convinced, that Garth died in the
+communion of the church of Rome, having been privately reconciled. It is
+observed by Lowth, that there is less distance than is thought between
+skepticism and popery; and that a mind, wearied with perpetual doubt,
+willingly seeks repose in the bosom of an infallible church.
+
+His poetry has been praised, at least, equally to its merit. In The
+Dispensary there is a strain of smooth and free versification; but few
+lines are eminently elegant. No passages fall below mediocrity, and few
+rise much above it. The plan seems formed without just proportion to the
+subject; the means and end have no necessary connexion. Resnel, in his
+Preface to Pope's Essay, remarks, that Garth exhibits no discrimination
+of characters; and that what any one says might, with equal propriety,
+have been said by another. The general design is, perhaps, open to
+criticism; but the composition can seldom be charged with inaccuracy or
+negligence. The author never slumbers in self-indulgence; his full vigour
+is always exerted; scarcely a line is left unfinished; nor is it easy
+to find an expression used by constraint, or a thought imperfectly
+expressed. It was remarked by Pope, that The Dispensary had been
+corrected in every edition, and that every change was an improvement. It
+appears, however, to want something of poetical ardour, and something
+of general delectation; and, therefore, since it has been no longer
+supported by accidental and extrinsick popularity, it has been scarcely
+able to support itself.
+
+
+
+ROWE
+
+
+Nicholas Rowe was born at Little Beckford, in Bedfordshire, in 1673. His
+family had long possessed a considerable estate, with a good house, at
+Lambertoun, in Devonshire[144]. The ancestor from whom he descended, in a
+direct line, received the arms borne by his descendants for his bravery
+in the holy war. His father, John Rowe, who was the first that quitted
+his paternal acres to practise any art of profit, professed the law, and
+published Benlow's and Dallison's Reports, in the reign of James the
+second, when in opposition to the notions, then diligently propagated,
+of dispensing power, he ventured to remark how low his authors rated the
+prerogative. He was made a sergeant, and died April 30, 1692. He was
+buried in the Temple church.
+
+Nicholas was first sent to a private school at Highgate; and, being
+afterwards removed to Westminster, was, at twelve years[145], chosen one
+of the king's scholars. His master was Busby, who suffered none of his
+scholars to let their powers lie useless; and his exercises in several
+languages are said to have been written with uncommon degrees of
+excellence, and yet to have cost him very little labour.
+
+At sixteen he had, in his father's opinion, made advances in learning
+sufficient to qualify him for the study of law, and was entered a student
+of the Middle Temple, where, for some time, he read statutes and reports
+with proficiency proportionate to the force of his mind, which was
+already such that he endeavoured to comprehend law, not as a series
+of precedents, or collection of positive precepts, but as a system of
+rational government, and impartial justice.
+
+When he was nineteen, he was, by the death of his father, left more to
+his own direction, and, probably, from that time suffered law gradually
+to give way to poetry[146]. At twenty-five he produced the Ambitious
+Step-Mother, which was received with so much favour, that he devoted
+himself, from that time, wholly to elegant literature.
+
+His next tragedy, 1702, was Tamerlane, in which, under the name of
+Tamerlane, he intended to characterize king William, and Lewis the
+fourteenth under that of Bajazet. The virtues of Tamerlane seem to have
+been arbitrarily assigned him by his poet, for I know not that history
+gives any other qualities than those which make a conqueror. The fashion,
+however, of the time was, to accumulate upon Lewis all that can raise
+horrour and detestation; and whatever good was withheld from him, that it
+might not be thrown away, was bestowed upon king William.
+
+This was the tragedy which Rowe valued most, and that which, probably by
+the help of political auxiliaries, excited most applause; but occasional
+poetry must often content itself with occasional praise. Tamerlane has
+for a long time been acted only once a year, on the night when king
+William landed. Our quarrel with Lewis has been long over; and it now
+gratifies neither zeal nor malice to see him painted with aggravated
+features, like a Saracen upon a sign.
+
+The Fair Penitent, his next production, 1703, is one of the most pleasing
+tragedies on the stage, where it still keeps its turns of appearing, and
+probably will long keep them, for there is scarcely any work of any poet,
+at once, so interesting by the fable and so delightful by the language.
+The story is domestick, and, therefore, easily received by the
+imagination, and assimilated to common life; the diction is exquisitely
+harmonious, and soft or sprightly as occasion requires.
+
+The character of Lothario seems to have been expanded by Richardson into
+Lovelace; but he has excelled his original in the moral effect of the
+fiction. Lothario, with gaiety which cannot be hated, and bravery which
+cannot be despised, retains too much of the spectator's kindness. It
+was in the power of Richardson alone to teach us, at once, esteem and
+detestation; to make virtuous resentment overpower all the benevolence
+which wit, elegance, and courage, naturally excite; and to lose, at last,
+the hero in the villain.
+
+The fifth act is not equal to the former; the events of the drama are
+exhausted, and little remains but to talk of what is past. It has been
+observed that the title of the play does not sufficiently correspond
+with the behaviour of Calista, who, at last, shows no evident signs
+of repentance, but may be reasonably suspected of feeling pain from
+detection rather than from guilt, and expresses more shame than sorrow,
+and more rage than shame.
+
+His next, 1706, was Ulysses; which, with the common fate of mythological
+stories, is now generally neglected. We have been too early acquainted
+with the poetical heroes, to expect any pleasure from their revival; to
+show them as they have already been shown, is to disgust by repetition;
+to give them new qualities, or new adventures, is to offend by violating
+received notions.
+
+The Royal Convert, 1708, seems to have a better claim to longevity. The
+fable is drawn from an obscure and barbarous age, to which fictions are
+most easily and properly adapted; for when objects are imperfectly
+seen, they easily take forms from imagination. The scene lies among
+our ancestors in our own country, and, therefore, very easily catches
+attention. Rodogune is a personage truly tragical, of high spirit, and
+violent passions, great with tempestuous dignity, and wicked with a soul
+that would have been heroick if it had been virtuous. The motto seems to
+tell that this play was not successful.
+
+Rowe does not always remember what his characters require. In Tamerlane
+there is some ridiculous mention of the god of love; and Rodogune, a
+savage Saxon, talks of Venus, and the eagle that bears the thunder of
+Jupiter.
+
+This play discovers its own date, by a prediction of the union, in
+imitation of Cranmer's prophetick promises to Henry the eighth. The
+anticipated blessings of union are not very naturally introduced, nor
+very happily expressed.
+
+He once, 1706, tried to change his hand. He ventured on a comedy, and
+produced The Biter; with which, though it was unfavourably treated by the
+audience, he was himself delighted; for he is said to have sat in the
+house laughing with great vehemence, whenever he had, in his own opinion,
+produced a jest. But, finding that he and the publick had no sympathy of
+mirth, he tried at lighter scenes no more.
+
+After the Royal Convert, 1714, appeared Jane Shore, written, as its
+author professes, "in imitation of Shakespeare's style." In what he
+thought himself an imitator of Shakespeare, it is not easy to conceive.
+The numbers, the diction, the sentiments, and the conduct, every thing in
+which imitation can consist, are remote, in the utmost degree, from the
+manner of Shakespeare; whose dramas it resembles only as it is an English
+story, and as some of the persons have their names in history. This play,
+consisting chiefly of domestick scenes and private distress, lays hold
+upon the heart. The wife is forgiven, because she repents, and the
+husband is honoured, because he forgives. This, therefore, is one of
+those pieces which we still welcome on the stage.
+
+His last tragedy, 1715, was Lady Jane Grey. This subject had been chosen
+by Mr. Smith, whose papers were put into Rowe's hands, such as he
+describes them in his preface. This play has, likewise, sunk into
+oblivion. From this time he gave nothing more to the stage.
+
+Being, by a competent fortune, exempted from any necessity of combating
+his inclination, he never wrote in distress, and, therefore, does not
+appear to have ever written in haste. His works were finished to his own
+approbation, and bear few marks of negligence or hurry. It is remarkable,
+that his prologues and epilogues are all his own, though he sometimes
+supplied others; he afforded help, but did not solicit it. As his studies
+necessarily made him acquainted with Shakespeare, and acquaintance
+produced veneration, he undertook, 1709, an edition of his works, from
+which he neither received much praise, nor seems to have expected it;
+yet, I believe, those who compare it with former copies will find, that
+he has done more than he promised; and that, without the pomp of notes,
+or boasts of criticism, many passages are happily restored. He prefixed
+a life of the author, such as tradition, then almost expiring, could
+supply, and a preface[147], which cannot be said to discover much
+profundity or penetration. He, at least, contributed to the popularity of
+his author.
+
+He was willing enough to improve his fortune by other arts than poetry.
+He was under-secretary, for three years, when the duke of Queensberry was
+secretary of state, and afterwards applied to the earl of Oxford for some
+publick employment[148]. Oxford enjoined him to study Spanish; and when,
+some time afterwards, he came again, and said that he had mastered it,
+dismissed him, with this congratulation: "Then, sir, I envy you the
+pleasure of reading Don Quixote in the original."
+
+This story is sufficiently attested; but why Oxford, who desired to
+be thought a favourer of literature, should thus insult a man of
+acknowledged merit; or how Rowe, who was so keen a whig[148], that he
+did not willingly converse with men of the opposite party, could ask
+preferment from Oxford, it is not now possible to discover. Pope, who
+told the story, did not say on what occasion the advice was given; and,
+though he owned Rowe's disappointment, doubted whether any injury was
+intended him, but thought it rather lord Oxford's _odd way_.
+
+It is likely that he lived on discontented through the rest of queen
+Anne's reign; but the time came, at last, when he found kinder friends.
+At the accession of king George he was made poet-laureate; I am afraid,
+by the ejection of poor Nahum Tate, who, 1716, died in the Mint, where
+he was forced to seek shelter by extreme poverty[150]. He was made,
+likewise, one of the land-surveyors of the customs of the port of
+London. The prince of Wales chose him clerk of his council; and the lord
+chancellor Parker, as soon as he received the seals, appointed him,
+unasked, secretary of the presentations. Such an accumulation of
+employments undoubtedly produced a very considerable revenue.
+
+Having already translated some parts of Lucan's Pharsalia, which had been
+published in the Miscellanies, and doubtless received many praises, he
+undertook a version of the whole work, which he lived to finish, but not
+to publish. It seems to have been printed under the care of Dr. Welwood,
+who prefixed the author's life, in which is contained the following
+character:
+
+"As to his person, it was graceful and well made; his face regular, and
+of a manly beauty. As his soul was well lodged, so its rational and
+animal faculties excelled in a high degree. He had a quick and fruitful
+invention, a deep penetration, and a large compass of thought, with
+singular dexterity and easiness in making his thoughts to be understood.
+He was master of most parts of polite learning, especially the classical
+authors, both Greek and Latin; understood the French, Italian, and
+Spanish languages; and spoke the first fluently, and the other two
+tolerably well.
+
+"He had likewise read most of the Greek and Roman histories in their
+original languages, and most that are wrote in English, French, Italian,
+and Spanish. He had a good taste in philosophy; and, having a firm
+impression of religion upon his mind, he took great delight in divinity
+and ecclesiastical history, in both which he made great advances in the
+times he retired into the country, which were frequent. He expressed, on
+all occasions, his full persuasion of the truth of revealed religion; and
+being a sincere member of the established church himself, he pitied, but
+condemned not, those that dissented from it. He abhorred the principles
+of persecuting men upon the account of their opinions in religion; and,
+being strict in his own, he took it not upon him to censure those of
+another persuasion. His conversation was pleasant, witty, and learned,
+without the least tincture of affectation or pedantry; and his inimitable
+manner of diverting and enlivening the company made it impossible for any
+one to be out of humour when he was in it. Envy and detraction seemed to
+be entirely foreign to his constitution; and whatever provocations he
+met with at any time, he passed them over without the least thought of
+resentment or revenge. As Homer had a Zoilus, so Mr. Rowe had sometimes
+his; for there were not wanting malevolent people, and pretenders to
+poetry too, that would now and then bark at his best performances; but
+he was conscious of his own genius, and had so much good-nature as to
+forgive them; nor could he ever be tempted to return them an answer.
+
+"The love of learning and poetry made him not the less fit for business,
+and nobody applied himself closer to it, when it required his attendance.
+The late duke of Queensberry, when he was secretary of state, made him
+his secretary for publick affairs; and when that truly great man came
+to know him well, he was never so pleased as when Mr. Rowe was in
+his company. After the duke's death, all avenues were stopped to his
+preferment; and, during the rest of that reign, he passed his time with
+the muses and his books, and sometimes the conversation of his friends.
+
+"When he had just got to be easy in his fortune, and was in a fair way to
+make it better, death swept him away, and in him deprived the world of
+one of the best men, as well as one of the best geniuses of the age. He
+died like a christian and a philosopher, in charity with all mankind,
+and with an absolute resignation to the will of God. He kept up his
+good-humour to the last; and took leave of his wife and friends
+immediately before his last agony, with the same tranquillity of mind,
+and the same indifference for life, as though he had been upon taking
+but a short journey. He was twice married; first to a daughter of Mr.
+Parsons, one of the auditors of the revenue; and afterwards to a daughter
+of Mr. Devenish, of a good family in Dorsetshire[151]. By the first he
+had a son; and by the second a daughter, married afterwards to Mr. Fane.
+He died the sixth of December, 1718, in the forty-fifth year of his age;
+and was buried the nineteenth of the same month in Westminster Abbey,
+in the aisle where many of our English poets are interred, over against
+Chaucer, his body being attended by a select number of his friends, and
+the dean and choir officiating at the funeral."
+
+To this character, which is apparently given with the fondness of a
+friend, may be added the testimony of Pope, who says, in a letter to
+Blount: "Mr. Rowe accompanied me, and passed a week in the forest. I
+need not tell you how much a man of his turn entertained me; but I must
+acquaint you, there is a vivacity and gaiety of disposition, almost
+peculiar to him, which makes it impossible to part from him without that
+uneasiness which generally succeeds all our pleasure."
+
+Pope has left behind him another mention of his companion, less
+advantageous, which is thus reported by Dr. Warburton.
+
+"Rowe, in Mr. Pope's opinion, maintained a decent character, but had no
+heart. Mr. Addison was justly offended with some behaviour which arose
+from that want, and estranged himself from him; which Rowe felt
+very severely. Mr. Pope, their common friend, knowing this, took an
+opportunity, at some juncture of Mr. Addison's advancement, to tell him
+how poor Rowe was grieved at his displeasure, and what satisfaction he
+expressed at Mr. Addison's good fortune, which he expressed so naturally,
+that he (Mr. Pope) could not but think him sincere. Mr. Addison replied,
+'I do not suspect that he feigned; but the levity of his heart is such,
+that he is struck with any new adventure; and it would affect him just in
+the same manner, if he heard I was going to be hanged.' Mr. Pope said he
+could not deny but Mr. Addison understood Rowe well[152]."
+
+This censure time has not left us the power of confirming or refuting;
+but observation daily shows, that much stress is not to be laid on
+hyperbolical accusations, and pointed sentences, which even he that
+utters them desires to be applauded rather than credited. Addison can
+hardly be supposed to have meant all that he said. Few characters can
+bear the microscopick scrutiny of wit quickened by anger; and, perhaps,
+the best advice to authors would be, that they should keep out of the way
+of one another.
+
+Rowe is chiefly to be considered as a tragick writer and a translator. In
+his attempt at comedy he failed so ignominiously, that his Biter is not
+inserted in his works; and his occasional poems and short compositions
+are rarely worthy of either praise or censure; for they seem the casual
+sports of a mind seeking rather to amuse its leisure than to exercise its
+powers.
+
+In the construction of his dramas, there is not much art; he is not a
+nice observer of the unities. He extends time and varies place as his
+convenience requires. To vary the place is not, in my opinion, any
+violation of nature, if the change be made between the acts; for it is no
+less easy for the spectator to suppose himself at Athens in the second
+act, than at Thebes in the first; but to change the scene, as is done by
+Rowe, in the middle of an act, is to add more acts to the play, since an
+act is so much of the business as is transacted without interruption.
+Rowe, by this license, easily extricates himself from difficulties; as,
+in Jane Grey, when we have been terrified with all the dreadful pomp of
+publick execution, and are wondering how the heroine or the poet will
+proceed, no sooner has Jane pronounced some prophetick rhymes, than--pass
+and be gone--the scene closes, and Pembroke and Gardiner are turned out
+upon the stage.
+
+I know not that there can be found in his plays any deep search into
+nature, any accurate discriminations of kindred qualities, or nice
+display of passion in its progress; all is general and undefined. Nor
+does he much interest or affect the auditor, except in Jane Shore, who is
+always seen and heard with pity. Alicia is a character of empty noise,
+with no resemblance to real sorrow, or to natural madness.
+
+Whence, then, has Rowe his reputation? From the reasonableness and
+propriety of some of his scenes, from the elegance of his diction, and
+the suavity of his verse. He seldom moves either pity or terrour, but
+he often elevates the sentiments; he seldom pierces the breast, but he
+always delights the ear, and often improves the understanding.
+
+His translation of the Golden Verses, and of the first book of Quillet's
+poem, have nothing in them remarkable. The Golden Verses are tedious.
+
+The version of Lucan is one of the greatest productions of English
+poetry; for there is, perhaps, none that so completely exhibits the
+genius and spirit of the original. Lucan is distinguished by a kind of
+dictatorial or philosophick dignity, rather, as Quintilian observes,
+declamatory than poetical; full of ambitious morality and pointed
+sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines. This character Rowe
+has very diligently and successfully preserved. His versification,
+which is such as his contemporaries practised, without any attempt at
+innovation or improvement, seldom wants either melody or force. His
+author's sense is sometimes a little diluted by additional infusions,
+and sometimes weakened by too much expansion. But such faults are to
+be expected in all translations, from the constraint of measures and
+dissimilitude of languages. The Pharsalia of Rowe deserves more notice
+than it obtains, and, as it is more read, will be more esteemed[153].
+
+[Footnote 144: In the Villare, _Lamerton_. Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 145: He was not elected till 1688. N.]
+
+[Footnote 146: Sewell, in a life of Rowe, says, that he was called to the
+bar and kept chambers in one of the inns of court, till he had produced
+two plays; that is till 1702, at which time he was twenty-nine. M.]
+
+
+[Footnote 147: Mr. Rowe's preface, however, is not distinct, as it might
+be supposed from this passage, from the life. R.]
+
+[Footnote 148: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 149: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 150: Jacob, who wrote only four years afterwards, says, that
+Tate had to write the first birthday ode after the accession of king
+George, (Lives of the Poets, 11. 232.) so that he was probably not
+ejected to make room for Rowe, but made a vacancy by his death, in 1716.
+M.]
+
+[Footnote 151: Mrs. Anne Deanes Devenish, of a very good family in
+Dorsetshire, was first married to Mr. Rowe the poet, by whom she was left
+in not abounding circumstances, was afterwards married to colonel Deanes,
+by whom also she was left a widow; and upon the family estate, which was
+a good one, coming to her by the death of a near relation, she resumed
+the family name of Devenish. She was a clever, sensible, agreeable woman,
+had seen a great deal of the world, had kept much good company, and was
+distinguished by a happy mixture of elegance and sense in every thing she
+said or did. Bishop Newton's Life by himself, p. 32.
+
+About the year 1738, he, by her desire, collected and published Mr.
+Rowe's works, with a dedication to Frederick prince of Wales. Mrs.
+Devenish, I believe, died about the year 1758. She was, I think, the
+person meant by Pope in the line,
+
+  Each widow asks it for her own good man. M.]
+
+[Footnote 152: Sewell, who was acquainted with Howe, speaks very highly
+of him: "I dare not venture to give you his character, either as a
+companion, a friend, or a poet. It may be enough to say, that all good
+and learned men loved him; that his conversation either struck out mirth,
+or promoted learning or honour whereever he went; that the openness of a
+gentleman, the unstudied eloquence of a scholar, and the perfect freedom
+of an Englishman, attended him in all his actions." Life of Rowe prefixed
+to his poems. M.
+
+That the author of Jane Shore should have no heart; that Addison should
+assert this, whilst he admitted, in the same breath, that Rowe was
+grieved at his displeasure; and that Pope should coincide in such an
+opinion, and yet should have stated in his epitaph on Rowe,
+
+'That never heart felt passion more sincere,'
+
+are circumstances that cannot be admitted, without sacrificing to the
+veracity of an anecdote, the character and consistency of all the persons
+introduced. Roscoe's Life of Pope, prefixed to his works, vol. i. p.
+250.]
+
+[Footnote 153: Rowe's Lucan, however, has not escaped without censure.
+Bentley has criticised it with great severity in his Philoleutheros
+Lipsiensis. J.B.
+
+The life of Rowe is a very remarkable instance of the uncommon strength
+of Dr. Johnson's memory. When I received from him the MS. he complacently
+observed, "that the criticism was tolerably well done, considering that
+he had not read one of Rowe's plays for thirty years!" N.]
+
+
+
+
+ADDISON
+
+Joseph Addison was born on the 1st of May, 1672, at Milston, of which
+his father, Launcelot Addison, was then rector, near Ambrosebury, in
+Wiltshire, and appearing weak and unlikely to live, he was christened
+the same day[154]. After the usual domestick education, which, from the
+character of his father, may be reasonably supposed to have given him
+strong impressions of piety, he was committed to the care of Mr. Naish,
+at Ambrosebury, and afterwards of Mr. Taylor, at Salisbury.
+
+Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for literature,
+is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously
+diminished: I would, therefore, trace him through the whole process of
+his education. In 1683, in the beginning of his twelfth year, his father,
+being made dean of Lichfield, naturally carried his family to his new
+residence, and, I believe, placed him, for some time, probably not long,
+under Mr. Shaw, then master of the school at Lichfield, father of the
+late Dr. Peter Shaw. Of this interval his biographers have given no
+account, and I know it only from a story of a barring-out, told me, when
+I was a boy, by Andrew Corbet, of Shropshire, who had heard it from Mr.
+Pigot his uncle.
+
+The practice of barring-out was a savage license, practised in many
+schools to the end of the last century, by which the boys, when the
+periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at the approach of
+liberty, some days before the time of regular recess, took possession
+of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade their master
+defiance from the windows. It is not easy to suppose that on such
+occasions the master would do more than laugh; yet, if tradition may be
+credited, he often struggled hard to force or surprise the garrison. The
+master, when Pigot was a schoolboy, was barred-out at Lichfield; and the
+whole operation, as he said, was planned and conducted by Addison.
+
+To judge better of the probability of this story, I have inquired when he
+was sent to the Chartreux; but, as he was not one of those who enjoyed
+the founder's benefaction, there is no account preserved of his
+admission. At the school of the Chartreux, to which he was removed either
+from that of Salisbury or Lichfield, he pursued his juvenile studies
+under the care of Dr. Ellis, and contracted that intimacy with
+sir Richard Steele, which their joint labours have so effectually
+recorded[155].
+
+Of this memorable friendship the greater praise must be given to Steele.
+It is not hard to love those from whom nothing can be feared; and Addison
+never considered Steele as a rival; but Steele lived, as he confesses,
+under an habitual subjection to the predominating genius of Addison, whom
+he always mentioned with reverence, and treated with obsequiousness.
+
+Addison[156], who knew his own dignity, could not always forbear to show
+it, by playing a little upon his admirer; but he was in no danger of
+retort: his jests were endured without resistance or resentment.
+
+But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst. Steele, whose imprudence
+of generosity, or vanity of profusion, kept him always incurably
+necessitous, upon some pressing exigence, in an evil hour, borrowed a
+hundred pounds of his friend, probably without much purpose of repayment;
+but Addison, who seems to have had other notions of a hundred pounds,
+grew impatient of delay, and reclaimed his loan by an execution. Steele
+felt, with great sensibility, the obduracy of his creditor, but with
+emotions of sorrow rather than of anger[157].
+
+In 1687 he was entered into Queen's college in Oxford, where, in 1689,
+the accidental perusal of some Latin verses gained him the patronage
+of Dr. Lancaster, afterwards provost of Queen's college; by whose
+recommendation he was elected into Magdalen college as a demy, a term by
+which that society denominates those which are elsewhere called scholars;
+young men, who partake of the founder's benefaction, and succeed in their
+order to vacant fellowships[158]. Here he continued to cultivate poetry
+and criticism, and grew first eminent by his Latin compositions, which
+are, indeed, entitled to particular praise. He has not confined himself
+to the imitation of any ancient author, but has formed his style from
+the general language, such as a diligent perusal of the productions of
+different ages happened to supply.
+
+His Latin compositions seem to have had much of his fondness, for he
+collected a second volume of the Musae Anglicanae, perhaps, for a
+convenient receptacle, in which all his Latin pieces are inserted, and
+where his poem on the Peace has the first place. He afterwards presented
+the collection to Boileau, who, from that time, "conceived," says
+Tickell, "an opinion of the English genius for poetry." Nothing is better
+known of Boileau, than that he had an injudicious and peevish contempt of
+modern Latin, and, therefore, his profession of regard was, probably, the
+effect of his civility rather than approbation.
+
+Three of his Latin poems are upon subjects on which, perhaps, he would
+not have ventured to have written in his own language. The Battle of the
+Pygmies and Cranes; the Barometer; and a Bowling-green. When the matter
+is low or scanty, a dead language, in which nothing is mean because
+nothing is familiar, affords great conveniencies; and, by the sonorous
+magnificence of Roman syllables, the writer conceals penury of thought
+and want of novelty, often from the reader, and often from himself.
+
+In his twenty-second year he first showed his power of English poetry
+by some verses addressed to Dryden; and soon afterwards published a
+translation of the greater part of the fourth Georgick upon bees; after
+which, says Dryden, "my latter swarm is hardly worth the hiving."
+
+About the same time he composed the arguments prefixed to the several
+books of Dryden's Virgil; and produced an Essay on the Georgicks,
+juvenile, superficial, and uninstructive, without much either of the
+scholar's learning or the critick's penetration.
+
+His next paper of verses contained a character of the principal English
+poets, inscribed to Henry Sacheverell, who was then, if not a poet, a
+writer of verses[159]; as is shown by his version of a small part of
+Virgil's Georgicks, published in the Miscellanies; and a Latin Encomium
+on queen Mary, in the Musae Anglicanae. These verses exhibit all the
+fondness of friendship; but, on one side or the other, friendship was
+afterwards too weak for the malignity of faction.
+
+In this poem is a very confident and discriminative character of Spenser,
+whose work he had then never read[160]. So little, sometimes, is
+criticism the effect of judgment. It is necessary to inform the reader,
+that about this time he was introduced by Congreve to Montague, then
+chancellor of the exchequer[161]: Addison was then learning the trade of
+a courtier, and subjoined Montague, as a poetical name to those of Cowley
+and Dryden.
+
+By the influence of Mr. Montague, concurring, according to Tickell, with
+his natural modesty, he was diverted from his original design of entering
+into holy orders. Montague alleged the corruption of men who engaged in
+civil employments without liberal education; and declared, that, though
+he was represented as an enemy to the church, he would never do it any
+injury but by withholding Addison from it.
+
+Soon after, in 1695, he wrote a poem to king William, with a rhyming
+introduction, addressed to lord Somers[162]. King William had no regard
+to elegance or literature; his study was only war; yet by a choice
+of ministers, whose disposition was very different from his own, he
+procured, without intention, a very liberal patronage to poetry. Addison
+was caressed both by Somers and Montague.
+
+In 1697 appeared his Latin verses on the Peace of Ryswick, which he
+dedicated to Montague, and which was afterwards called, by Smith, "the
+best Latin poem since the Aeneid." Praise must not be too rigorously
+examined; but the performance cannot be denied to be vigorous and
+elegant.
+
+Having yet no publick employment, he obtained, in 1699, a pension of
+three hundred pounds a year, that he might be enabled to travel. He staid
+a year at Blois[163], probably to learn the French language; and then
+proceeded in his journey to Italy, which he surveyed with the eyes of a
+poet.
+
+While he was travelling at leisure, he was far from being idle; for he
+not only collected his observations on the country, but found time to
+write his Dialogues on Medals, and four acts of Cato. Such, at least, is
+the relation of Tickell. Perhaps he only collected his materials, and
+formed his plan.
+
+Whatever were his other employments in Italy, he there wrote the letter
+to lord Halifax, which is justly considered as the most elegant, if not
+the most sublime, of his poetical productions[164]. But in about two
+years he found it necessary to hasten home; being, as Swift informs
+us, distressed by indigence, and compelled to become the tutor of a
+travelling squire, because his pension was not remitted[165].
+
+At his return he published his travels, with a dedication to lord Somers.
+As his stay in foreign countries was short[166], his observations are
+such as might be supplied by a hasty view, and consist chiefly in
+comparisons of the present face of the country with the descriptions left
+us by the Roman poets, from whom he made preparatory collections, though
+he might have spared the trouble, had he known that such collections had
+been made twice before by Italian authors.
+
+The most amusing passage of his book is his account of the minute
+republick of San Marino: of many parts it is not a very severe censure to
+say, that they might have been written at home. His elegance of language,
+and variegation of prose and verse, however, gains upon the reader; and
+the book, though awhile neglected, became, in time, so much the favourite
+of the publick, that before it was reprinted it rose to five times its
+price.
+
+When he returned to England, in 1702, with a meanness of appearance which
+gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found
+his old patrons out of power, and was, therefore, for a time, at full
+leisure for the cultivation of his mind; and a mind so cultivated gives
+reason to believe that little time was lost[167].
+
+But he remained not long neglected or useless. The victory at Blenheim,
+1704, spread triumph and confidence over the nation; and lord Godolphin,
+lamenting to lord Halifax, that it had not been celebrated in a manner
+equal to the subject, desired him to propose it to some better poet.
+Halifax told him, that there was no encouragement for genius; that
+worthless men were unprofitably enriched with publick money, without any
+care to find or employ those whose appearance might do honour to their
+country. To this Godolphin replied, that such abuses should, in time, be
+rectified; and that, if a man could be found capable of the task then
+proposed, he should not want an ample recompense. Halifax then named
+Addison; but required that the treasurer should apply to him in his
+own person. Godolphin sent the message by Mr. Boyle, afterwards lord
+Carleton; and Addison, having undertaken the work, communicated it to the
+treasurer, while it was yet advanced no farther than the simile of the
+angel, and was immediately rewarded by succeeding Mr. Locke in the place
+of commissioner of appeals.
+
+In the following year he was at Hanover with lord Halifax: and the year
+after was made under-secretary of state, first to sir Charles Hedges, and
+in a few months more to the earl of Sunderland.
+
+About this time the prevalent taste for Italian operas inclined him to
+try what would be the effect of a musical drama in our own language. He,
+therefore, wrote the opera of Rosamond, which, when exhibited on the
+stage, was either hissed or neglected[168]; but, trusting that the
+readers would do him more justice, he published it, with an inscription
+to the dutchess of Marlborough; a woman without skill, or pretensions
+to skill, in poetry or literature. His dedication was, therefore, an
+instance of servile absurdity, to be exceeded only by Joshua Barnes's
+dedication of a Greek Anacreon to the duke.
+
+His reputation had been somewhat advanced by the Tender Husband, a comedy
+which Steele dedicated to him, with a confession, that he owed to him
+several of the most successful scenes. To this play Addison supplied a
+prologue.
+
+When the marquis of Wharton was appointed lord lieutenant of
+Ireland[169], Addison attended him as his secretary; and was made keeper
+of the records in Birmingham's tower, with a salary of three hundred
+pounds a year. The office was little more than nominal, and the salary
+was augmented for his accommodation.
+
+Interest and faction allow little to the operation of particular
+dispositions, or private opinions. Two men of personal characters more
+opposite than those of Wharton and Addison could not easily be brought
+together. Wharton was impious, profligate, and shameless, without regard,
+or appearance of regard, to right and wrong: whatever is contrary to this
+may be said of Addison; but, as agents of a party, they were connected,
+and how they adjusted their other sentiments we cannot know.
+
+Addison, must, however, not be too hastily condemned. It is not necessary
+to refuse benefits from a bad man, when the acceptance implies no
+approbation of his crimes; nor has the subordinate officer any obligation
+to examine the opinions or conduct of those under whom he acts, except
+that he may not be made the instrument of wickedness. It is reasonable to
+suppose, that Addison counteracted, as far as he was able, the malignant
+and blasting influence of the lieutenant; and that, at least, by his
+intervention some good was done, and some mischief prevented.
+
+When he was in office, he made a law to himself, as Swift has recorded,
+never to remit his regular fees in civility to his friends: "for," said
+he, "I may have a hundred friends; and, if my fee be two guineas, I
+shall, by relinquishing my right, lose two hundred guineas, and no friend
+gain more than two; there is, therefore, no proportion between the good
+imparted and the evil suffered." He was in Ireland when Steele, without
+any communication of his design, began the publication of the Tatler; but
+he was not long concealed: by inserting a remark on Virgil, which Addison
+had given him, he discovered himself. It is, indeed, not easy for any man
+to write upon literature, or common life, so as not to make himself known
+to those with whom he familiarly converses, and who are acquainted with
+his track of study, his favourite topicks, his peculiar notions, and his
+habitual phrases.
+
+If Steele desired to write in secret, he was not lucky; a single month
+detected him. His first Tatler was published April 12, 1709; and
+Addison's contribution appeared May 26. Tickell observes, that the Tatler
+began, and was concluded without his concurrence. This is, doubtless,
+literally true; but the work did not suffer much by his unconsciousness
+of its commencement, or his absence at its cessation; for he continued
+his assistance to December 23, and the paper stopped on January 2,
+1710-11. He did not distinguish his pieces by any signature; and I know
+not whether his name was not kept secret till the papers were collected
+into volumes.
+
+To the Tatler, in about two months, succeeded the Spectator[170]; a
+series of essays of the same kind, but written with less levity, upon a
+more regular plan, and published daily. Such an undertaking showed the
+writers not to distrust their own copiousness of materials or facility
+of composition, and their performance justified their confidence. They
+found, however, in their progress, many auxiliaries. To attempt a single
+paper was no terrifying labour; many pieces were offered, and many were
+received.
+
+Addison had enough of the zeal of party; but Steele had, at that time,
+almost nothing else. The Spectator, in one of the first papers, showed
+the political tenets of its authors; but a resolution was soon taken, of
+courting general approbation by general topicks, and subjects on which
+faction had produced no diversity of sentiments; such as literature,
+morality, and familiar life. To this practice they adhered with few
+deviations. The ardour of Steele once broke out in praise of Marlborough;
+and when Dr. Fleetwood prefixed to some sermons a preface, overflowing
+with whiggish opinions, that it might be read by the queen[171], it was
+reprinted in the Spectator.
+
+To teach the minuter decencies and inferiour duties, to regulate the
+practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are
+rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if
+they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first
+attempted by Casa in his book of Manners, and Castiglione in his
+Courtier; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance, and
+which, if they are now less read, are neglected only because they have
+effected that reformation which their authors intended, and their
+precepts now are no longer wanted. Their usefulness to the age in which
+they were written is sufficiently attested by the translations which
+almost all the nations of Europe were in haste to obtain.
+
+This species of instruction was continued, and perhaps advanced, by the
+French; among whom la Bruyere's Manners of the Age, though, as Boileau
+remarked, it is written without connexion, certainly deserves great
+praise, for liveliness of description, and justness of observation.
+
+Before the Tatler and Spectator, if the writers for the theatre are
+excepted, England had no masters of common life. No writers had
+yet undertaken to reform either the savageness of neglect, or the
+impertinence of civility; to show when to speak, or to be silent; how
+to refuse, or how to comply. We had many books to teach us our more
+important duties, and to settle opinions in philosophy or politicks;
+but an Arbiter Elegantiarum, a judge of propriety, was yet wanting, who
+should survey the track of daily conversation, and free it from thorns
+and prickles, which tease the passer, though they do not wound him.
+
+For this purpose nothing is so proper as the frequent publication of
+short papers, which we read not as study but amusement. If the subject be
+slight, the treatise, likewise, is short. The busy may find time, and the
+idle may find patience.
+
+This mode of conveying cheap and easy knowledge began among us in the
+civil war[172], when it was much the interest of either party to raise
+and fix the prejudices of the people. At that time appeared Mercurius
+Aulicus, Mercurius Rusticus, and Mercurius Civicus. It is said, that when
+any title grew popular, it was stolen by the antagonist, who, by this
+stratagem, conveyed his notions to those who would not have received him,
+had he not worn the appearance of a friend. The tumult of those
+unhappy days left scarcely any man leisure to treasure up occasional
+compositions; and so much were they neglected, that a complete collection
+is nowhere to be found.
+
+These Mercuries were succeeded by l'Estrange's Observator; and that by
+Lesley's Rehearsal, and, perhaps, by others; but hitherto nothing had
+been conveyed to the people, in this commodious manner, but controversy
+relating to the church or state; of which they taught many to talk, whom
+they could not teach to judge.
+
+It has been suggested that the Royal Society was instituted soon after
+the restoration, to divert the attention of the people from publick
+discontent. The Tatler and Spectator had the same tendency; they were
+published at a time when two parties, loud, restless, and violent, each
+with plausible declarations, and each, perhaps, without any distinct
+termination of its views, were agitating the nation; to minds heated with
+political contest they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections;
+and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent work, that they had a
+perceptible influence upon the conversation of that time, and taught the
+frolick and the gay to unite merriment with decency; an effect which they
+can never wholly lose, while they continue to be among the first books by
+which both sexes are initiated in the elegancies of knowledge.
+
+The Tatler and Spectator adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice of
+daily intercourse by propriety and politeness; and, like la Bruyere,
+exhibited the characters and manners of the age. The personages
+introduced in these papers were not merely ideal; they were then known
+and conspicuous in various stations. Of the Tatler this is told by Steele
+in his last paper; and of the Spectator by Budgel, in the preface to
+Theophrastus, a book which Addison has recommended, and which he was
+suspected to have revised, if he did not write it. Of those portraits,
+which may be supposed to be sometimes embellished, and sometimes
+aggravated, the originals are now partly known and partly forgotten.
+
+But to say that they united the plans of two or three eminent writers,
+is to give them but a small part of their due praise; they superadded
+literature and criticism, and sometimes towered far above their
+predecessors; and taught, with great justness of argument and dignity of
+language, the most important duties and sublime truths.
+
+All these topicks were happily varied with elegant fictions and refined
+allegories, and illuminated with different changes of style and
+felicities of invention.
+
+It is recorded by Budgel, that, of the characters feigned or exhibited
+in the Spectator, the favourite of Addison was sir Roger de Coverley, of
+whom he had formed a very delicate and discriminated idea[173], which he
+would not suffer to be violated; and, therefore, when Steele had shown
+him innocently picking up a girl in the temple, and taking her to a
+tavern, he drew upon himself so much of his friend's indignation, that he
+was forced to appease him by a promise of forbearing sir Roger for the
+time to come.
+
+The reason which induced Cervantes to bring his hero to the grave, "para
+mi solo nacio don Quixote, y yo para el," made Addison declare, with an
+undue vehemence of expression, that he would kill sir Roger; being of
+opinion that they were born for one another, and that any other hand
+would do him wrong.
+
+It may be doubted whether Addison ever filled up his original
+delineation. He describes his knight as having his imagination somewhat
+warped; but of this perversion he has made very little use. The
+irregularities in sir Roger's conduct seem not so much the effects of a
+mind deviating from the beaten track of life, by the perpetual pressure
+of some overwhelming idea, as of habitual rusticity, and that negligence
+which solitary grandeur naturally generates.
+
+The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient
+madness, which, from time to time, cloud reason, without eclipsing it,
+it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been
+deterred from prosecuting his own design.
+
+To sir Roger, who, as a country gentleman, appears to be a tory, or, as
+it is gently expressed, an adherent to the landed interest, is opposed
+sir Andrew Freeport, a new man, a wealthy merchant, zealous for the
+moneyed interest, and a whig. Of this contrariety of opinions, it is
+probable more consequences were at first intended, than could be produced
+when the resolution was taken to exclude party from the paper. Sir Andrew
+does but little, and that little seems not to have pleased Addison, who,
+when he dismissed him from the club, changed his opinions. Steele had
+made him, in the true spirit of unfeeling commerce, declare that he
+"would not build an hospital for idle people;" but at last he buys land,
+settles in the country, and builds not a manufactory, but an hospital
+for twelve old husbandmen, for men with whom a merchant has little
+acquaintance, and whom he commonly considers with little kindness.
+
+Of essays thus elegant, thus instructive, and thus commodiously
+distributed, it is natural to suppose the approbation general, and the
+sale numerous. I once heard it observed, that the sale may be calculated
+by the product of the tax, related in the last number to produce more
+than twenty pounds a week, and, therefore, stated at one-and-twenty
+pounds, or three pounds ten shillings a day: this, at a half-penny a
+paper, will give sixteen hundred and eighty[174] for the daily number.
+
+This sale is not great; yet this, if Swift be credited, was likely to
+grow less; for he declares that the Spectator, whom he ridicules for his
+endless mention of the _fair sex,_ had, before his recess, wearied his
+readers. The next year, 1713, in which Cato came upon the stage, was the
+grand climacterick of Addison's reputation. Upon the death of Cato, he
+had, as is said, planned a tragedy in the time of his travels[175], and
+had, for several years, the first four acts finished, which were shown to
+such as were likely to spread their admiration. They were seen by Pope,
+and by Cibber, who relates that Steele, when he took back the copy, told
+him, in the despicable cant of literary modesty, that, whatever spirit
+his friend had shown in the composition, he doubted whether he would have
+courage sufficient to expose it to the censure of a British audience.
+
+The time, however, was now come, when those, who affected to think
+liberty in danger, affected, likewise, to think that a stage-play might
+preserve it; and Addison was importuned, in the name of the tutelary
+deities of Britain, to show his courage and his zeal by finishing his
+design.
+
+To resume his work he seemed perversely and unaccountably unwilling; and
+by a request, which, perhaps, he wished to be denied, desired Mr. Hughes
+to add a fifth act[176]. Hughes supposed him serious; and, undertaking
+the supplement, brought, in a few days, some scenes for his examination;
+but he had, in the mean time, gone to work himself, and produced half
+an act, which he afterwards completed, but with brevity irregularly
+disproportionate to the foregoing parts, like a task performed with
+reluctance, and hurried to its conclusion.
+
+It may yet be doubted whether Cato was made publick by any change of the
+author's purpose; for Dennis charged him with raising prejudices in
+his own favour by false positions of preparatory criticism, and with
+"poisoning the town" by contradicting, in the Spectator, the established
+rule of poetical justice, because his own hero, with all his virtues, was
+to fall before a tyrant. The fact is certain; the motives we must guess.
+
+Addison was, I believe, sufficiently disposed to bar all avenues against
+all danger. When Pope brought him the prologue, which is properly
+accommodated to the play, there were these words, "Britons, arise, be
+worth like this approved;" meaning nothing more than, Britons, erect
+and exalt yourselves to the approbation of publick virtue. Addison was
+frighted lest he should be thought a promoter of insurrection, and the
+line was liquidated to "Britons, attend."
+
+Now "heavily in clouds came on the day, the great, the important day,"
+when Addison was to stand the hazard of the theatre. That there might,
+however, be left as little hazard as was possible, on the first night
+Steele, as himself relates, undertook to pack an audience. This, says
+Pope[177], had been tried, for the first time, in favour of the Distrest
+Mother; and was now, with more efficacy, practised for Cato.
+
+The danger was soon over. The whole nation was, at that time, on fire
+with faction. The whigs applauded every line in which liberty was
+mentioned, as a satire on the tories; and the tories echoed every clap,
+to show that the satire was unfelt. The story of Bolingbroke is well
+known. He called Booth to his box, and gave him fifty guineas for
+defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator[178].
+The whigs, says Pope, design a second present, when they can accompany it
+with as good a sentence.
+
+The play, supported thus by the emulation of factious praise, was acted,
+night after night for a longer time than, I believe, the publick had
+allowed to any drama before; and the author, as Mrs. Porter long
+afterwards related, wandered through the whole exhibition behind the
+scenes with restless and unappeasable solicitude.
+
+When it was printed, notice was given that the queen would be pleased
+if it was dedicated to her; "but, as he had designed that compliment
+elsewhere, he found himself obliged," says Tickell, "by his duty on the
+one hand, and his honour on the other, to send it into the world without
+any dedication."
+
+Human happiness has always its abatements; the brightest sunshine of
+success is not without a cloud. No sooner was Cato offered to the reader,
+than it was attacked by the acute malignity of Dennis, with all the
+violence of angry criticism. Dennis, though equally zealous, and probably
+by his temper more furious, than Addison, for what they called liberty,
+and though a flatterer of the whig ministry, could not sit quiet at a
+successful play; but was eager to tell friends and enemies, that they had
+misplaced their admirations. The world was too stubborn for instruction;
+with the fate of the censurer of Corneille's Cid, his animadversions
+showed his anger without effect, and Cato continued to be praised.
+
+Pope had now an opportunity of courting the friendship of Addison, by
+vilifying his old enemy, and could give resentment its full play, without
+appearing to revenge himself. He, therefore, published a Narrative of the
+Madness of John Dennis; a performance which left the objections to the
+play in their full force, and, therefore, discovered more desire of
+vexing the critick than of defending the poet.
+
+Addison, who was no stranger to the world, probably saw the selfishness
+of Pope's friendship; and, resolving that he should have the consequences
+of his officiousness to himself, informed Dennis, by Steele, that he was
+sorry for the insult; and that, whenever he should think fit to answer
+his remarks, he would do it in a manner to which nothing could be
+objected.
+
+The greatest weakness of the play is in the scenes of love, which are
+said, by Pope[179], to have been added to the original plan upon a
+subsequent review, in compliance with the popular practice of the stage.
+Such an authority it is hard to reject; yet the love is so intimately
+mingled with the whole action, that it cannot easily be thought
+extrinsick and adventitious; for, if it were taken away, what would be
+left? or how were the four acts filled in the first draught?
+
+At the publication the wits seemed proud to pay their attendance with
+encomiastick verses. The best are from an unknown hand, which will,
+perhaps, lose somewhat of their praise when the author is known to be
+Jeffreys.
+
+Cato had yet other honours. It was censured as a party-play by a scholar
+of Oxford; and defended in a favourable examination by Dr. Sewel. It was
+translated by Salvini into Italian, and acted at Florence; and by the
+Jesuits of St. Omer's into Latin, and played by their pupils. Of this
+version a copy was sent to Mr. Addison: it is to be wished that it could
+be found, for the sake of comparing their version of the soliloquy with
+that of Bland.
+
+A tragedy was written on the same subject by Deschamps, a French poet,
+which was translated with a criticism on the English play. But the
+translator and the critick are now forgotten.
+
+Dennis lived on unanswered, and, therefore, little read. Addison knew the
+policy of literature too well to make his enemy important by drawing
+the attention of the publick upon a criticism, which, though sometimes
+intemperate, was often irrefragable.
+
+While Cato was upon the stage, another daily paper, called the Guardian,
+was published by Steele[180]. To this Addison gave great assistance,
+whether occasionally, or by previous engagement, is not known.
+
+The character of guardian was too narrow and too serious: it might
+properly enough admit both the duties and the decencies of life, but
+seemed not to include literary speculations, and was, in some degree,
+violated by merriment and burlesque. What had the guardian of the Lizards
+to do with clubs of tall or of little men, with nests of ants, or with
+Strada's prolusions?
+
+Of this paper nothing is necessary to be said, but that it found many
+contributors, and that it was a continuation of the Spectator, with the
+same elegance, and the same variety, till some unlucky sparkle, from a
+tory paper, set Steele's politicks on fire, and wit at once blazed
+into faction. He was soon too hot for neutral topicks, and quitted the
+Guardian to write the Englishman.
+
+The papers of Addison are marked in the Spectator by one of the letters
+in the name of Clio, and in the Guardian by a hand; whether it was, as
+Tickell pretends to think, that he was unwilling to usurp the praise of
+others, or, as Steele, with far greater likelihood, insinuates, that he
+could not, without discontent, impart to others any of his own. I have
+heard that his avidity did not satisfy itself with the air of renown, but
+that with great eagerness he laid hold on his proportion of the profits.
+
+Many of these papers were written with powers truly comick, with nice
+discrimination of characters, and accurate observation of natural or
+accidental deviations from propriety; but it was not supposed that he had
+tried a comedy on the stage, till Steele, after his death, declared him
+the author of the Drummer. This, however, Steele did not know to be true
+by any direct testimony; for, when Addison put the play into his hands,
+he only told him, it was the work of a "gentleman in the company;" and
+when it was received, as is confessed, with cold disapprobation, he was
+probably less willing to claim it. Tickell omitted it in his collection;
+but the testimony of Steele, and the total silence of any other claimant,
+has determined the publick to assign it to Addison, and it is now printed
+with his other poetry. Steele carried the Drummer to the playhouse, and
+afterwards to the press, and sold the copy for fifty guineas.
+
+To the opinion of Steele may be added the proof supplied by the
+play itself, of which the characters are such as Addison would have
+delineated, and the tendency such as Addison would have promoted. That it
+should have been ill received would raise wonder, did we not daily see
+the capricious distribution of theatrical praise.
+
+He was not all this time an indifferent spectator of publick affairs. He
+wrote, as different exigencies required, in 1707, the present State of
+the War, and the Necessity of an Augmentation; which, however judicious,
+being written on temporary topicks, and exhibiting no peculiar powers,
+laid hold on no attention, and has naturally sunk by its own weight
+into neglect. This cannot be said of the few papers entitled the Whig
+Examiner, in which is employed all the force of gay malevolence and
+humorous satire. Of this paper, which just appeared and expired, Swift
+remarks, with exultation, that "it is now down among the dead men[181]."
+He might well rejoice at the death of that which he could not have
+killed. Every reader of every party, since personal malice is past, and
+the papers which once inflamed the nation are read only as effusions of
+wit, must wish for more of the Whig Examiners; for on no occasion was
+the genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and on none did the
+superiority of his powers more evidently appear. His Trial of Count
+Tariff, written to expose the treaty of commerce with France, lived no
+longer than the question that produced it.
+
+Not long afterwards, an attempt was made to revive the Spectator, at a
+time, indeed, by no means favourable to literature, when the succession
+of a new family to the throne filled the nation with anxiety, discord,
+and confusion; and either the turbulence of the times, or the satiety of
+the readers, put a stop to the publication, after an experiment of eighty
+numbers, which were afterwards collected into an eighth volume, perhaps
+more valuable than any of those that went before it. Addison produced
+more than a fourth part[182]; and the other contributors are, by no
+means, unworthy of appearing as his associates. The time that had passed
+during the suspension of the Spectator, though it had not lessened his
+power of humour, seems to have increased his disposition to seriousness:
+the proportion of his religious, to his comick papers, is greater than in
+the former series.
+
+The Spectator, from its recommencement, was published only three times a
+week; and no discriminative marks were added to the papers. To Addison
+Tickell has ascribed twenty-three.
+
+The Spectator had many contributors; and Steele, whose negligence kept
+him always in a hurry, when it was his turn to furnish a paper, called
+loudly for the letters, of which Addison, whose materials were more, made
+little use; having recourse to sketches and hints, the product of his
+former studies, which he now reviewed and completed: among these are
+named by Tickell, the essays on Wit, those on the Pleasures of the
+Imagination, and the Criticism on Milton.
+
+When the house of Hanover took possession of the throne, it was
+reasonable to expect that the zeal of Addison would be suitably rewarded.
+Before the arrival of king George, he was made secretary to the regency,
+and was required, by his office, to send notice to Hanover that the queen
+was dead, and that the throne was vacant. To do this would not have
+been difficult to any man but Addison, who was so overwhelmed with the
+greatness of the event, and so distracted by choice of expression, that
+the lords, who could not wait for the niceties of criticism, called Mr.
+Southwell, a clerk in the house, and ordered him to despatch the message.
+Southwell readily told what was necessary in the common style of
+business, and valued himself upon having done what was too hard for
+Addison[183].
+
+He was better qualified for the Freeholder, a paper which he published
+twice a week, from Dec. 23, 1715, to the middle of the next year. This
+was undertaken in defence of the established government, sometimes with
+argument, and sometimes with mirth. In argument he had many equals; but
+his humour was singular and matchless. Bigotry itself must be delighted
+with the Tory Fox-hunter.
+
+There are, however, some strokes less elegant, and less decent; such as
+the Pretender's Journal, in which one topick of ridicule is his poverty.
+This mode of abuse had been employed by Milton against king Charles the
+second.
+
+  _Jacobaei_
+  Centum, exulantis viscera marsupii regis.
+
+And Oldmixon delights to tell of some alderman of London, that he had
+more money than the exiled princes; but that which might be expected from
+Milton's savageness, or Oldmixon's meanness, was not suitable to the
+delicacy of Addison.
+
+Steele thought the humour of the Freeholder too nice and gentle for such
+noisy times; and is reported to have said, that the ministry made use of
+a lute, when they should have called for a trumpet.
+
+This year, 1716[184], he married the countess dowager of Warwick, whom
+he had solicited by a very long and anxious courtship, perhaps with
+behaviour not very unlike that of sir Roger to his disdainful widow; and
+who, I am afraid, diverted herself often by playing with his passion. He
+is said to have first known her by becoming tutor to her son [185]. "He
+formed," said Tonson, "the design of getting that lady from the time when
+he was first recommended into the family." In what part of his life he
+obtained the recommendation, or how long and in what manner he lived
+in the family, I know not. His advances, at first, were certainly
+timorous[186], but grew bolder as his reputation and influence increased;
+till, at last, the lady was persuaded to marry him, on terms much like
+those on which a Turkish princess is espoused, to whom the sultan is
+reported to pronounce, "Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave."
+The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition
+to his happiness; it neither found them nor made them equal. She always
+remembered her own rank, and thought herself entitled to treat with very
+little ceremony the tutor of her son. Howe's ballad of the Despairing
+Shepherd, is said to have been written, either before or after marriage,
+upon this memorable pair; and it is certain that Addison has left behind
+him no encouragement for ambitious love.
+
+The year after, 1717, he rose to his highest elevation, being made
+secretary of state. For this employment he might justly be supposed
+qualified by long practice of business, and by his regular ascent through
+other offices; but expectation is often disappointed; it is universally
+confessed that he was unequal to the duties of his place. In the house of
+commons he could not speak, and, therefore, was useless to the defence
+of the government. In the office, says Pope,[187] he could not issue
+an order without losing his time in quest of fine expressions. What he
+gained in rank he lost in credit; and, finding by experience his own
+inability, was forced to solicit his dismission, with a pension of
+fifteen hundred pounds a year. His friends palliated this relinquishment,
+of which both friends and enemies knew the true reason, with an account
+of declining health, and the necessity of recess and quiet.
+
+He now returned to his vocation, and began to plan literary occupations
+for his future life. He purposed a tragedy on the death of Socrates; a
+story of which, as Tickell remarks, the basis is narrow, and to which I
+know not how love could have been appended. There would, however, have
+been no want either of virtue in the sentiments, or elegance in the
+language.
+
+He engaged in a nobler work, a defence of the Christian religion, of
+which part was published after his death; and he designed to have made a
+new poetical version of the psalms.
+
+These pious compositions Pope imputed[188] to a selfish motive, upon the
+credit, as he owns, of Tonson[189], who, having quarrelled with Addison,
+and not loving him, said, that when he laid down the secretary's office,
+he intended to take orders, and obtain a bishoprick; "For," said he, "I
+always thought him a priest in his heart."
+
+That Pope should have thought this conjecture of Tonson worth
+remembrance, is a proof, but, indeed, so far as I have found, the only
+proof, that he retained some malignity from their ancient rivalry. Tonson
+pretended but to guess it; no other mortal ever suspected it; and Pope
+might have reflected, that a man, who had been secretary of state in
+the ministry of Sunderland, knew a nearer way to a bishoprick than by
+defending religion, or translating the psalms.
+
+It is related, that he had once a design to make an English dictionary,
+and that he considered Dr. Tillotson as the writer of highest authority.
+There was formerly sent to me by Mr. Locker, clerk of the leathersellers'
+company, who, was eminent for curiosity and literature, a collection of
+examples selected from Tillotson's works, as Locker said, by Addison. It
+came too late to be of use, so I inspected it but slightly, and remember
+it indistinctly. I thought the passages too short.
+
+Addison, however, did not conclude his life in peaceful studies; but
+relapsed, when he was near his end, to a political dispute.
+
+It so happened that, 1718-19, a controversy was agitated, with great
+vehemence, between those friends of long continuance, Addison and Steele.
+It may be asked, in the language of Homer, what power or what cause
+could set them at variance. The subject of their dispute was of great
+importance. The earl of Sunderland proposed an act, called the Peerage
+Bill; by which the number of peers should be fixed, and the king
+restrained from any new creation of nobility, unless when an old family
+should be extinct. To this the lords would naturally agree; and the king,
+who was yet little acquainted with his own prerogative, and, as is now
+well known, almost indifferent to the possessions of the crown, had been
+persuaded to consent. The only difficulty was found among the commons,
+who were not likely to approve the perpetual exclusion of themselves and
+their posterity. The bill, therefore, was eagerly opposed, and, among
+others, by sir Robert Walpole, whose speech was published.
+
+The lords might think their dignity diminished by improper advancements,
+and particularly by the introduction of twelve new peers at once, to
+produce a majority of tories in the last reign; an act of authority
+violent enough, yet certainly legal, and by no means to be compared with
+that contempt of national right with which, some time afterwards, by the
+instigation of whiggism, the commons, chosen by the people for three
+years, chose themselves for seven. But, whatever might be the disposition
+of the lords, the people had no wish to increase their power. The
+tendency of the bill, as Steele observed in a letter to the earl of
+Oxford, was to introduce an aristocracy; for a majority in the house of
+lords, so limited, would have been despotick and irresistible.
+
+To prevent this subversion of the ancient establishment, Steele, whose
+pen readily seconded his political passions, endeavoured to alarm the
+nation by a pamphlet called the Plebeian. To this an answer was published
+by Addison, under the title of the Old Whig, in which it is not
+discovered that Steele was then known to be the advocate for the commons.
+Steele replied by a second Plebeian; and, whether by ignorance or by
+courtesy, confined himself to his question, without any personal notice
+of his opponent.
+
+Nothing, hitherto, was committed against the laws of friendship, or
+proprieties of decency; but controvertists cannot long retain their
+kindness for each other. The Old Whig answered the Plebeian, and could
+not forbear some contempt of "little Dicky, whose trade it was to write
+pamphlets." Dicky, however, did not lose his settled veneration for his
+friend; but contented himself with quoting some lines of Cato, which
+were at once detection and reproof. The bill was laid aside during that
+session; and Addison died before the next, in which its commitment was
+rejected by two hundred and sixty-five to one hundred and seventy-seven.
+
+Every reader surely must regret that these two illustrious friends, after
+so many years passed in confidence and endearment, in unity of interest,
+conformity of opinion, and fellowship of study, should finally part
+in acrimonious opposition. Such a controversy was "Bellum plusquam
+_civile_," as Lucan expresses it. Why could not faction find other
+advocates? But, among the uncertainties of the human state, we are doomed
+to number the instability of friendship.
+
+Of this dispute I have little knowledge but from the Biographica
+Britannica. The Old Whig is not inserted in Addison's works; nor is it
+mentioned by Tickell in his life; why it was omitted, the biographers,
+doubtless, give the true reason; the fact was too recent, and those who
+had been heated in the contention were not yet cool.
+
+The necessity of complying with times, and of sparing persons, is the
+great impediment of biography. History may be formed from permanent
+monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal
+knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost
+for ever. What is known can seldom be immediately told; and when it might
+be told, it is no longer known. The delicate features of the mind, the
+nice discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of
+conduct, are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice,
+obstinacy, frolick, and folly, however they might delight in the
+description, should be silently forgotten, than that, by wanton merriment
+and unseasonable detection, a pang should be given to a widow, a
+daughter, a brother, or a friend. As the process of these narratives is
+now bringing me among my contemporaries, I begin to feel myself "walking
+upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished," and coming to the
+time of which it will be proper rather to say "nothing that is false,
+than all that is true."
+
+The end of this useful life was now approaching. Addison had, for some
+time, been oppressed by shortness of breath, which was now aggravated
+by a dropsy; and, finding his danger pressing, he prepared to die
+conformably to his own precepts and professions.
+
+During this lingering decay, he sent, as Pope relates[190], a message by
+the earl of Warwick to Mr. Gay, desiring to see him. Gay, who had not
+visited him for some time before, obeyed the summons, and found himself
+received with great kindness. The purpose for which the interview had
+been solicited was then discovered. Addison told him, that he had injured
+him; but that, if he recovered, he would recompense him. What the injury
+was, he did not explain, nor did Gay ever know, but supposed that
+some preferment designed for him had, by Addison's intervention, been
+withheld.
+
+Lord Warwick was a young man of very irregular life, and, perhaps, of
+loose opinions[191]. Addison, for whom he did not want respect, had
+very diligently endeavoured to reclaim him; but his arguments and
+expostulations had no effect. One experiment, however, remained to be
+tried: when he found his life near its end, he directed the young lord to
+be called; and when he desired, with great tenderness, to hear his last
+injunctions, told him: "I have sent for you, that you may see how a
+Christian can die." What effect this awful scene had on the earl, I know
+not: he, likewise, died himself in a short time, In Tickell's excellent
+elegy on his friend are these lines:
+
+  He taught us how to live; and, oh! too high
+  The price of knowledge, taught us how to die.
+
+In which he alludes, as he told Dr. Young, to this moving interview.
+
+Having given directions to Mr. Tickell for the publication of his works,
+and dedicated them on his deathbed to his friend Mr. Craggs, he died June
+17, 1719, at Holland-house, leaving no child but a daughter[192].
+
+Of his virtue it is a sufficient testimony, that the resentment of party
+has transmitted no charge of any crime. He was not one of those who are
+praised only after death; for his merit was so generally acknowledged,
+that Swift, having observed that his election passed without a contest,
+adds, that, if he had proposed himself for king, he would hardly have
+been refused.
+
+His zeal for his party did not extinguish his kindness for the merit of
+his opponents: when he was secretary in Ireland, he refused to intermit
+his acquaintance with Swift.
+
+Of his habits, or external manners, nothing is so often mentioned as that
+timorous or sullen taciturnity, which his friends called modesty, by too
+mild a name. Steele mentions, with great tenderness, "that remarkable
+bashfulness, which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit;" and tells
+us, "that his abilities were covered only by modesty, which doubles the
+beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to all that are
+concealed." Chesterfield affirms, that "Addison was the most timorous
+and awkward man that he ever saw." And Addison, speaking of his own
+deficiency in conversation, used to say of himself, that, with respect to
+intellectual wealth, "he could draw bills for a thousand pounds, though
+he had not a guinea in his pocket."
+
+That he wanted current coin for ready payment, and, by that want, was
+often obstructed and distressed; that he was oppressed by an improper and
+ungraceful timidity; every testimony concurs to prove; but Chesterfield's
+representation is, doubtless, hyperbolical. That man cannot be supposed
+very unexpert in the arts of conversation and practice of life, who,
+without fortune or alliance, by his usefulness and dexterity, became
+secretary of state; and who died at forty-seven, after having not only
+stood long in the highest rank of wit and literature, but filled one of
+the most important offices of state.
+
+The time in which he lived had reason to lament his obstinacy of silence;
+"or he was," says Steele, "above all men in that talent called humour,
+and enjoyed it in such perfection, that I have often reflected, after
+a night spent with him apart from all the world, that I had had the
+pleasure of conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and
+Catullus, who had all their wit and nature, heightened with humour more
+exquisite and delightful than any other man ever possessed." This is the
+fondness of a friend; let us hear what is told us by a rival: "Addison's
+conversation[193]," says Pope, "had something in it more charming than
+I have found in any other man. But this was only when familiar; before
+strangers, or, perhaps, a single stranger, he preserved his dignity by a
+stiff silence."
+
+This modesty was by no means inconsistent with a very high opinion of
+his own merit. He demanded to be the first name in modern wit; and, with
+Steele to echo him, used to depreciate Dryden, whom Pope and Congreve
+defended against them[194]. There is no reason to doubt, that he suffered
+too much pain from the prevalence of Pope's poetical reputation; nor is
+it without strong reason suspected, that by some disingenuous acts he
+endeavoured to obstruct it; Pope was not the only man whom he insidiously
+injured, though the only man of whom he could be afraid.
+
+His own powers were such as might have satisfied him with conscious
+excellence. Of very extensive learning he has, indeed, given no proofs.
+He seems to have had small acquaintance with the sciences, and to have
+read little except Latin and French; but, of the Latin poets, his
+Dialogues on Medals show that, he had perused the works with great
+diligence and skill. The abundance of his own mind left him little
+need of adventitious sentiments; his wit always could suggest what the
+occasion demanded. He had read, with critical eyes, the important volume
+of human life, and knew the heart of man from the depths of stratagem to
+the surface of affectation.
+
+What he knew he could easily communicate. "This," says Steele, "was
+particular in this writer, that, when he had taken his resolution, or
+made his plan for what he designed to write, he would walk about a room,
+and dictate it into language, with as much freedom and ease as any one
+could write it down, and attend to the coherence and grammar of what he
+dictated."
+
+Pope[195], who can be less suspected of favouring his memory, declares
+that he wrote very fluently, but was slow and scrupulous in correcting;
+that many of his Spectators were written very fast, and sent immediately
+to the press; and that it seemed to be for his advantage not to have time
+for much revisal.
+
+"He would alter," says Pope, "any thing to please his friends, before
+publication; but would not retouch his pieces afterwards: and, I believe,
+not one word in Cato, to which I made an objection, was suffered to
+stand."
+
+The last line of Cato is Pope's, having been originally written,
+
+  And, oh! 'twas this that ended Cato's life.
+
+Pope might have made more objections to the six concluding lines. In the
+first couplet the words, "from hence," are improper; and the second line
+is taken from Dryden's Virgil. Of the next couplet, the first verse being
+included in the second, is, therefore, useless; and in the third, discord
+is made to produce strife.
+
+Of the course of Addison's familiar day[196], before his marriage, Pope
+has given a detail. He had in the house with him Budgell, and, perhaps,
+Philips. His chief companions were Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey,
+Davenant, and colonel Brett. With one or other of these he always
+breakfasted. He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went
+afterwards to Button's.
+
+Button had been a servant in the countess of Warwick's family; who, under
+the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side of Russel
+street, about two doors from Covent garden. Here it was that the wits of
+that time used to assemble. It is said, that when Addison had suffered
+any vexation from the countess, he withdrew the company from Button's
+house.
+
+From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late,
+and drank too much wine. In the bottle, discontent seeks for comfort,
+cowardice for courage, and bashfulness tot confidence. It is not unlikely
+that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission which he
+obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours. He that feels
+oppression from the presence of those to whom he knows himself superiour,
+will desire to set loose his powers of conversation; and who, that ever
+asked succours from Bacchus, was able to preserve himself from being
+enslaved by his auxiliary?
+
+Among those friends it was that Addison displayed the elegance of his
+colloquial accomplishments, which may easily be supposed such as Pope
+represents them. The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an
+evening in his company, declared that he was a parson in a tie-wig, can
+detract little from his character; he was always reserved to strangers,
+and was not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like that of
+Mandeville.
+
+From any minute knowledge of his familiar manners, the intervention of
+sixty years has now debarred us. Steele once promised Congreve and the
+publick a complete description of his character; but the promises of
+authors are like the vows of lovers. Steele thought no more on his
+design, or thought on it with anxiety that at last disgusted him, and
+left his friend in the hands of Tickell.
+
+One slight lineament of his character Swift has preserved. It was his
+practice, when he found any man invincibly wrong, to flatter his opinions
+by acquiescence, and sink him yet deeper in absurdity. This artifice
+of mischief was admired by Stella; and Swift seems to approve her
+admiration.
+
+His works will supply some information. It appears, from his various
+pictures of the world, that, with all his bashfulness, he had conversed
+with many distinct classes of men, had surveyed their ways with very
+diligent observation, and marked, with great acuteness, the effects
+of different modes of life. He was a man in whose presence nothing
+reprehensible was out of danger; quick in discerning whatever was wrong
+or ridiculous, and not unwilling to expose it. "There are," says Steele,
+"in his writings many oblique strokes upon some of the wittiest paen of
+the age." His delight was more to excite merriment than detestation; and
+he detects follies rather than crimes.
+
+If any judgment be made, from his books, of his moral character, nothing
+will be found but purity and excellence. Knowledge of mankind, indeed,
+less extensive than that of Addison, will show, that to write, and to
+live, are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise
+it. Yet it is reasonable to believe that Addison's professions and
+practice were at no great variance, since, amidst that storm of faction
+in which most of his life was passed, though his station made him
+conspicuous, and his activity made him formidable, the character given
+him by his friends was never contradicted by his enemies: of those, with
+whom interest or opinion united him, he had not only the esteem, but the
+kindness; and of others, whom the violence of opposition drove against
+him, though he might lose the love, he retained the reverence.
+
+It is justly observed by Tickell, that he employed wit on the side of
+virtue and religion. He not only made the proper use of wit himself, but
+taught it to others; and from his time it has been generally subservient
+to the cause of reason and of truth. He has dissipated the prejudice that
+had long connected gaiety with vice, and easiness of manners with
+laxity of principles. He has restored virtue to its dignity, and taught
+innocence not to be ashamed. This is an elevation of literary character,
+"above all Greek, above all Roman fame." No greater felicity can genius
+attain, than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated
+mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness; of having taught
+a succession of writers to bring elegance and gaiety to the aid of
+goodness; and, if I may use expressions yet more awful, of having "turned
+many to righteousness."
+
+Addison, in his life, and for some time afterwards, was considered, by
+the greater part of readers, as supremely excelling both in poetry
+and criticism. Part of his reputation may be probably ascribed to
+the advancement of his fortune: when, as Swift observes, he became a
+statesman, and saw poets waiting at his levee, it is no wonder that
+praise was accumulated upon him. Much, likewise, may be more honourably
+ascribed to his personal character: he who, if he had claimed it, might
+have obtained the diadem, was not likely to be denied the laurel.
+
+But time quickly puts an end to artificial and accidental fame; and
+Addison is to pass through futurity protected only by his genius. Every
+name, which kindness or interest once raised too high, is in danger, lest
+the next age should, by the vengeance of criticism, sink it in the same
+proportion. A great writer has lately styled him "an indifferent poet,
+and a worse critick."
+
+His poetry is first to be considered; of which it must be confessed,
+that it has not often those felicities of diction which give lustre to
+sentiments, or that vigour of sentiment that animates diction; there
+is little of ardour, vehemence, or transport; there is very rarely the
+awfulness of grandeur, and not very often the splendour of elegance. He
+thinks justly; but he thinks faintly. This is his general character; to
+which, doubtless, many single passages will furnish exceptions.
+
+Yet, if he seldom reaches supreme excellence, he rarely sinks into
+dulness, and is still more rarely entangled in absurdity. He did not
+trust his powers enough to be negligent. There is, in most of his
+compositions, a calmness and equability, deliberate and cautious,
+sometimes with little that delights, but seldom with any thing that
+offends.
+
+Of this kind seem to be his poems to Dryden, to Somers, and to the king.
+His ode on St. Cecilia has been imitated by Pope, and has something in it
+of Dryden's vigour. Of his account of the English poets, he used to speak
+as a "poor thing[197];" but it is not worse than his usual strain. He has
+said, not very judiciously, in his character of Waller,
+
+  Thy verse could show ev'n Cromwell's innocence,
+  And compliment the storms that bore him hence.
+  O! had thy muse not come an age too soon,
+  But seen great Nassau on the British throne,
+  How had his triumph glitter'd in thy page!
+
+What is this but to say, that he who could compliment Cromwell had been
+the proper poet for king William; Addison, however, never printed the
+piece.
+
+The letter from Italy has been always praised, but has never been praised
+beyond its merit. It is more correct, with less appearance of labour,
+and more elegant, with less ambition of ornament, than any other of
+his poems. There is, however, one broken metaphor, of which notice may
+properly be taken:
+
+  Fir'd with that name--
+  I bridle in my struggling muse with pain,
+  That longs to launch into a nobler strain.
+
+To _bridle a goddess_ is no very delicate idea; but why must she be
+_bridled_? because she _longs to launch_; an act which was never hindered
+by a _bridle_: and whither will she _launch_? into a _nobler strain_. She
+is in the first line a _horse_, in the second a _boat_; and the care of
+the poet is to keep his _horse_ or his _boat_ from _singing_.
+
+The next composition is the far-famed Campaign, which Dr. Warton has
+termed a "Gazette in rhyme," with harshness not often used by the
+good-nature of his criticism. Before a censure so severe is admitted, let
+us consider that war is a frequent subject of poetry, and then inquire
+who has described it with more justness and force. Many of our own
+writers tried their powers upon this year of victory; yet Addison's is
+confessedly the best performance: his poem is the work of a man not
+blinded by the dust of learning; his images are not borrowed merely from
+books. The superiority which he confers upon his hero is not personal
+prowess, and "mighty bone," but deliberate intrepidity, a calm command of
+his passions, and the power of consulting his own mind in the midst of
+danger. The rejection and contempt of fiction is rational and manly.
+
+It may be observed that the last line is imitated by Pope:
+
+  Marlb'rough's exploits appear divinely bright--
+  Rais'd of themselves, their genuine charms they boast,
+  And those that paint them truest, praise them most.
+
+This Pope had in his thoughts: but, not knowing how to use what was not
+his own, he spoiled the thought when he had borrowed it:
+
+  The well-sung woes shall sooth my pensive ghost;
+  He best can paint[198]them who shall feel them most.
+
+Martial exploits may be _painted_; perhaps _woes_ may be _painted_; but
+they are surely not _painted_ by being _well-sung_: it is not easy to
+paint in song, or to sing in colours.
+
+No passage in the Campaign has been more often mentioned than the simile
+of the angel, which is said, in the Tatler, to be "one of the noblest
+thoughts that ever entered into the heart of man," and is, therefore,
+worthy of attentive consideration. Let it be first inquired whether it
+be a simile. A poetical simile is the discovery of likeness between two
+actions, in their general nature dissimilar, or of causes terminating by
+different operations in some resemblance of effect. But the mention of
+another like consequence from a like cause, or of a like performance by a
+like agency, is not a simile, but an exemplification. It is not a simile
+to say that the Thames waters fields, as the Po waters fields; or that as
+Hecla vomits flames in Iceland, so Aetna vomits flames in Sicily. When
+Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse,
+as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that
+his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders
+to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is
+impressed with the resemblance of things generally unlike, as unlike as
+intellect and body. But if Pindar had been described as writing with the
+copiousness and grandeur of Homer; or Horace had told that he reviewed
+and finished his own poetry with the same care as Isocrates polished his
+orations, instead of similitude he would have exhibited almost identity;
+he would have given the same portraits with different names. In the poem
+now examined, when the English are represented as gaining a fortified
+pass, by repetition of attack and perseverance of resolution; their
+obstinacy of courage, and vigour of onset, is well illustrated by the
+sea that breaks, with incessant battery, the dikes of Holland. This is a
+simile; but when Addison, having celebrated the beauty of Marlborough's
+person, tells us, that "Achilles thus was form'd with ev'ry grace," here
+is no simile, but a mere exemplification. A simile may be compared to
+lines converging at a point, and is more excellent as the lines approach
+from greater distance; an exemplification may be considered as two
+parallel lines, which run on together without approximation, never far
+separated, and never joined. Marlborough is so like the angel in the
+poem, that the action of both is almost the same, and performed by both
+in the same manner. Marlborough "teaches the battle to rage;" the angel
+"directs the storm:" Marlborough is "unmoved in peaceful thought;" the
+angel is "calm and serene:" Marlborough stands "unmoved amidst the
+shock of hosts;" the angel rides "calm in the whirlwind." The lines on
+Marlborough are just and noble; but the simile gives almost the same
+images a second time.
+
+But, perhaps, this thought, though hardly a simile, was remote from
+vulgar conceptions, and required great labour of research, or dexterity
+of application. Of this, Dr. Madden, a name which Ireland ought to
+honour, once gave me his opinion. "If I had set," said he, "ten
+schoolboys to write on the battle of Blenheim, and eight had brought me
+the angel, I should not have been surprised."
+
+The opera of Rosamond, though it is seldom mentioned, is one of the first
+of Addison's compositions. The subject is well chosen, the fiction is
+pleasing, and the praise of Marlborough, for which the scene gives an
+opportunity, is, what perhaps every human excellence must be, the product
+of good luck, improved by genius. The thoughts are sometimes great, and
+sometimes tender; the versification is easy and gay. There is, doubtless,
+some advantage in the shortness of the lines, which there is little
+temptation to load with expletive epithets. The dialogue seems commonly
+better than the songs. The two comick characters of sir Trusty
+and Grideline, though of no great value, are yet such as the poet
+intended[199]. Sir Trusty's account of the death of Rosamond is, I think,
+too grossly absurd. The whole drama is airy and elegant; engaging in its
+process, and pleasing in its conclusion. If Addison had cultivated the
+lighter parts of poetry, he would, probably, have excelled.
+
+The tragedy of Cato, which, contrary to the rule observed in selecting
+the works of other poets, has, by the weight of its character, forced its
+way into the late collection, is unquestionably the noblest production
+of Addison's genius. Of a work so much read, it is difficult to say any
+thing new. About things on which the publick thinks long, it commonly
+attains to think right; and of Cato it has been not unjustly determined,
+that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession
+of just sentiments in elegant language, than a representation of natural
+affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing
+here "excites or assuages emotion:" here is "no magical power of raising
+phantastick terrour or wild anxiety." The events are expected without
+solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we
+have no care: we consider not what they are doing, or what they are
+suffering; we wish only to know what they have to say. Cato is a being
+above our solicitude; a man of whom the gods take care, and whom we leave
+to their care with heedless confidence. To the rest, neither gods nor men
+can have much attention; for there is not one amongst them that strongly
+attracts either affection or esteem. But they are made the vehicles of
+such sentiments and such expression, that there is scarcely a scene in
+the play which the reader does not wish to impress upon his memory.
+
+When Cato was shown to Pope[200], he advised the author to print it,
+without any theatrical exhibition; supposing that it would be read more
+favourably than heard. Addison declared himself of the same opinion; but
+urged the importunity of his friends for its appearance on the stage.
+The emulation of parties made it successful beyond expectation; and its
+success has introduced or confirmed among us the use of dialogue too
+declamatory, of unaffecting elegance, and chill philosophy.
+
+The universality of applause, however it might quell the censure of
+common mortals, had no other effect than to harden Dennis in fixed
+dislike; but his dislike was not merely capricious. He found and showed
+many faults: he showed them, indeed, with anger, but he found them with
+acuteness, such as ought to rescue his criticism from oblivion; though,
+at last, it will have no other life than it derives from the work which
+it endeavours to oppress.
+
+Why he pays no regard to the opinion of the audience, he gives his
+reason, by remarking, that,
+
+"A deference is to be paid to a general applause, when it appears that
+that applause is natural and spontaneous; but that little regard is to
+be had to it, when it is affected and artificial. Of all the tragedies
+which, in his memory, have had vast and violent runs, not one has been
+excellent; few have been tolerable; most have been scandalous. When a
+poet writes a tragedy, who knows he has judgment, and who feels he has
+genius, that poet presumes upon his own merit, and scorns to make a
+cabal. That people come coolly to the representation of such a tragedy,
+without any violent expectation, or delusive imagination, or invincible
+prepossession; that such an audience is liable to receive the impressions
+which the poem shall naturally make on them, and to judge by their own
+reason, and their own judgments, and that reason and judgment are calm
+and serene, not formed by nature to make proselytes, and to control and
+lord it over the imaginations of others. But that when an author writes a
+tragedy, who knows he has neither genius nor judgment, he has recourse
+to the making a party, and he endeavours to make up in industry what
+is wanting in talent, and to supply by poetical craft the absence of
+poetical art; that such an author is humbly contented to raise men's
+passions by a plot without doors, since he despairs of doing it by
+that which he brings upon the stage. That party and passion, and
+prepossession, are clamorous and tumultuous things, and so much the
+more clamorous and tumultuous by how much the more erroneous: that
+they domineer and tyrannise over the imaginations of persons who want
+judgment, and sometimes too of those who have it; and, like a fierce
+and outrageous torrent, bear down all opposition before them." He then
+condemns the neglect of poetical justice; which is always one of his
+favourite principles.
+
+"'Tis certainly the duty of every tragick poet, by the exact distribution
+of poetical justice, to imitate the divine dispensation, and to inculcate
+a particular providence. 'Tis true, indeed, upon the stage of the world,
+the wicked sometimes prosper, and the guiltless suffer. But that is
+permitted by the governor of the world, to show, from the attribute of
+his infinite justice, that there is a compensation in futurity, to prove
+the immortality of the human soul, and the certainty of future rewards
+and punishments. But the poetical persons in tragedy exist no longer than
+the reading, or the representation; the whole extent of their entity
+is circumscribed by those; and, therefore, during that reading or
+representation, according to their merits or demerits, they must be
+punished or rewarded. If this is not done, there is no impartial
+distribution of poetical justice, no instructive lecture of a particular
+providence, and no imitation of the divine dispensation. And yet the
+author of this tragedy does not only run counter to this, in the fate of
+his principal character; but every where, throughout it, makes virtue
+suffer, and vice triumph: for not only Cato is vanquished by Caesar,
+but the treachery and perfidiousness of Syphax prevail over the
+honest simplicity and the credulity of Juba; and the sly subtlety and
+dissimulation of Portius over the generous frankness and open-heartedness
+of Marcus."
+
+Whatever pleasure there may be in seeing crimes punished and virtue
+rewarded, yet, since wickedness often prospers in real life, the poet is
+certainly at liberty to give it prosperity on the stage. For if poetry
+has an imitation of reality, how are its laws broken by exhibiting the
+world in its true form? The stage may sometimes gratify our wishes; but,
+if it be truly the "mirror of life," it ought to show us sometimes what
+we are to expect.
+
+Dennis objects to the characters, that they are not natural, or
+reasonable; but as heroes and heroines are not beings that are seen every
+day, it is hard to find upon what principles their conduct shall be
+tried. It is, however, not useless to consider what he says of the manner
+in which Cato receives the account of his son's death.
+
+"Nor is the grief of Cato, in the fourth act, one jot more in nature than
+that of his son and Lucia in the third. Cato receives the news of his
+son's death not only with dry eyes, but with a sort of satisfaction; and,
+in the same page, sheds tears for the calamity of his country, and does
+the same thing in the next page upon the bare apprehension of the danger
+of his friends. Now, since the love of one's country is the love of one's
+countrymen, as I have shown upon another occasion, I desire to ask these
+questions: Of all our countrymen, which do we love most, those whom we
+know, or those whom we know not? And of those whom we know, which do we
+cherish most, our friends or our enemies? And of our friends, which are
+the dearest to us, those who are related to us, or those who are not? And
+of all our relations, for which have we most tenderness, for those who
+are near to us, or for those who are remote? And of our near relations,
+which are the nearest, and, consequently, the dearest to us, our
+offspring, or others? Our offspring most certainly; as nature, or, in
+other words, providence, has wisely contrived for the preservation of
+mankind. Now, does it not follow, from what has been said, that for a man
+to receive the news of his son's death with dry eyes, and to weep at the
+same time for the calamities of his country, is a wretched affectation,
+and a miserable inconsistency? Is not that, in plain English, to receive
+with dry eyes the news of the deaths of those for whose sake our country
+is a name so dear to us, and, at the same time, to shed tears for those
+for whose sake our country is not a name so dear to us?"
+
+But this formidable assailant is least resistible when he attacks the
+probability of the action, and the reasonableness of the plan. Every
+critical reader must remark, that Addison has, with a scrupulosity almost
+unexampled on the English stage, confined himself in time to a single
+day, and in place to rigorous unity. The scene never changes, and the
+whole action of the play passes in the great hall of Cato's house at
+Utica. Much, therefore, is done in the hall, for which any other place
+had been more fit; and this impropriety affords Dennis many hints of
+merriment, and opportunities of triumph. The passage is long; but as such
+disquisitions are not common, and the objections are skilfully formed
+and vigorously urged, those who delight in critical controversy will not
+think it tedious.
+
+"Upon the departure of Portius, Sempronius makes but one soliloquy, and
+immediately in comes Syphax, and then the two politicians are at it
+immediately. They lay their heads together, with their snuffboxes in
+their hands, as Mr. Bayes has it, and league it away. But in the midst of
+that wise scene, Syphax seems to give a seasonable caution to Sempronius:
+
+'_Syph_.
+
+  But is it true, Sempronius, that your senate
+  Is call'd together? Gods! thou must be cautious;
+  Cato has piercing eyes.'
+
+"There is a great deal of caution shown indeed, in meeting in a
+governor's own hall to carry on their plot against him. Whatever opinion
+they have of his eyes, I suppose they had none of his ears, or they would
+never have talked at this foolish rate so near:
+
+  'Gods! thou must be cautious.'
+
+Oh! yes, very cautious, for if Cato should overhear you, and turn you off
+for politicians, Caesar would never take you; no, Caesar would never take
+you.
+
+"When Cato, act the second, turns the senators out of the hall, upon
+pretence of acquainting Juba with the result of their debates, he appears
+to me to do a thing which is neither reasonable nor civil. Juba might
+certainly have better been made acquainted with the result of that debate
+in some private apartment of the palace. But the poet was driven upon
+this absurdity to make way for another; and that is, to give Juba an
+opportunity to demand Marcia of her father. But the quarrel and rage of
+Juba and Syphax, in the same act; the invectives of Syphax against the
+Romans and Cato; the advice that he gives Juba, in her father's hall, to
+bear away Marcia by force; and his brutal and clamorous rage upon his
+refusal, and at a time when Cato was scarcely out of sight, and, perhaps,
+not out of hearing, at least some of his guards or domesticks must
+necessarily be supposed to be within hearing; is a thing that is so far
+from being probable, that it is hardly possible.
+
+"Sempronius, in the second act, comes back once more in the same morning
+to the governor's hall, to carry on the conspiracy with Syphax against
+the governor, his country, and his family; which is so stupid, that it is
+below the wisdom of the O--'s, the Mac's, and the Teague's; even Eustace
+Cummins himself would never have gone to Justice-hall to have conspired
+against the government. If officers at Portsmouth should lay their heads
+together, in order to the carrying off[201] J---- G----'s niece or
+daughter, would they meet in J--- G---'s hall, to carry on that
+conspiracy? There would be no necessity for their meeting there, at least
+till they came to the execution of their plot, because there would be
+other places to meet in. There would be no probability that they
+should meet there, because there would be places more private and more
+commodious. Now there ought to be nothing in a tragical action but what
+is necessary or probable.
+
+"But treason is not the only thing that is carried on in this hall; that,
+and love, and philosophy, take their turns in it, without any manner
+of necessity or probability occasioned by the action, as duly and as
+regularly, without interrupting one another, as if there were a triple
+league between them, and a mutual agreement that each should give place
+to, and make way for the other, in a due and orderly succession.
+
+"We now come to the third act. Sempronius, in this act, comes into the
+governor's hall, with the leaders of the mutiny; but, as soon as Cato
+is gone, Sempronius, who but just before had acted like an unparalleled
+knave, discovers himself, like an egregious fool, to be an accomplice in
+the conspiracy.
+
+'_Semp_.
+
+  Know, villains, when such paltry slaves presume
+  To mix in treason, if the plot succeeds,
+  They're thrown neglected by; but, if it fails,
+  They're sure to die like dogs, as you shall do.
+  Here, take these factious monsters, drag them forth
+  To sudden death.'--
+
+"'Tis true, indeed, the second leader says, there are none there but
+friends; but is that possible at such a juncture? Can a parcel of rogues
+attempt to assassinate the governor of a town of war, in his own house,
+in mid-day, and, after they are discovered, and defeated, can there
+be none near them but friends? Is it not plain, from these words of
+Sempronius,
+
+  'Here, take these factious monsters, drag them forth
+  To sudden death'--
+
+and from the entrance of the guards upon the word of command, that
+those guards were within ear-shot? Behold Sempronius, then, palpably
+discovered. How comes it to pass, then, that instead of being hanged
+up with the rest, he remains secure in the governor's hall, and there
+carries on his conspiracy against the government, the third time in the
+same day, with his old comrade Syphax, who enters at the same time that
+the guards are carrying away the leaders, big with the news of the defeat
+of Sempronius; though where he had his intelligence so soon is difficult
+to imagine? And now the reader may expect a very extraordinary scene:
+there is not abundance of spirit indeed, nor a great deal of passion, but
+there is wisdom more than enough to supply all defects.
+
+'_Syph_.
+
+  Still there remains an after-game to play:
+
+  My troops are mounted, their Numidian steeds
+  Snuff up the winds, and long to scour the desert.
+  Let but Sempronius lead us in our flight,
+  We'll force the gate, where Marcus keeps his guard,
+  And hew down all that would oppose our passage;
+  A day will bring us into Caesar's camp.
+
+  '_Semp_. Confusion! I have fail'd of half my purpose;
+  Marcia, the charming Marcia's left behind.'
+
+"Well! but though he tells us the half-purpose that he has failed of, he
+does not tell us the half that he has carried. But what does he mean by,
+
+  'Marcia, the charming Marcia's left behind?'
+
+He is now in her own house; and we have neither seen her, nor heard of
+her, any where else since the play began. But now let us hear Syphax:
+
+  'What hinders then, but that thou find her out,
+  And hurry her away by manly force?'
+
+But what does old Syphax mean by finding her out? They talk as if she
+were as hard to be found as a hare in a frosty morning.
+
+  '_Semp_. But how to gain admission?'
+
+Oh! she is found out then, it seems--
+
+  But how to gain admission! for access
+  Is giv'n to none, but Juba and her brothers.'
+
+But, raillery apart, why access to Juba? For he was owned and received
+as a lover neither by the father nor by the daughter. Well! but let
+that pass. Syphax puts Sempronius out of pain immediately; and, being
+a Numidian, abounding in wiles, supplies him with a stratagem for
+admission, that, I believe, is a non-pareille.
+
+  '_Syph_. Thou shalt have Juba's dress, and Juba's guards;
+  The doors will open when Numidia's prince
+  Seems to appear before them.'
+
+"Sempronius is, it seems, to pass for Juba in full day at Cato's house,
+where they were both so very well known, by having Juba's dress and his
+guards: as if one of the marshals of France could pass for the duke of
+Bavaria, at noonday, at Versailles, by having his dress and liveries. But
+how does Syphax pretend to help Sempronius to young Juba's dress? Does he
+serve him in a double capacity, as general and master of his wardrobe?
+But why Juba's guards? For the devil of any guards has Juba appeared with
+yet. Well! though this is a mighty politick invention, yet, methinks,
+they might have done without it: for, since the advice that Syphax gave
+to Sempronius was,
+
+  'To hurry her away by manly force,'
+
+in my opinion, the shortest and likeliest way of coming at the lady
+was by demolishing, instead of putting on an impertinent disguise to
+circumvent two or three slaves. But Sempronius, it seems, is of another
+opinion. He extols to the skies the invention of old Syphax:
+
+  '_Semp_. Heav'us! what a thought was there!'
+
+"Now I appeal to the reader, if I have not been as good as my word. Did I
+not tell him, that I would lay before him a very wise scene?
+
+"But now let us lay before the reader that part of the scenery of the
+fourth act, which may show the absurdities which the author has run
+into, through the indiscreet observance of the unity of place. I do not
+remember that Aristotle has said any thing expressly concerning the unity
+of place. 'Tis true, implicitly he has said enough in the rules which he
+has laid down for the chorus. For, by making the chorus an essential part
+of tragedy, and by bringing it on the stage immediately after the opening
+of the scene, and retaining it there till the very catastrophe, he has so
+determined and fixed the place of action, that it was impossible for an
+author on the Grecian stage to break through that unity. I am of opinion,
+that if a modern tragick poet can preserve the unity of place, without
+destroying the probability of the incidents, 'tis always best for him
+to do it; because, by the preservation of that unity, as we have taken
+notice above, he adds grace, and clearness, and comeliness, to the
+representation. But since there are no express rules about it, and we are
+under no compulsion to keep it, since we have no chorus, as the Grecian
+poet had; if it cannot be preserved, without rendering the greater
+part of the incidents unreasonable and absurd, and, perhaps, sometimes
+monstrous, 'tis certainly better to break it.
+
+"Now comes bully Sempronius, comically accoutred and equipped with his
+Numidian dress and his Numidian guards. Let the reader attend to him with
+all his ears; for the words of the wise are precious:
+
+  '_Semp_. The deer is lodg'd, I've track'd her to her covert.'
+
+"Now I would fain know why this deer is said to be lodged, since we have
+not heard one word, since the play began, of her being at all out of
+harbour; and if we consider the discourse with which she and Lucia begin
+the act, we have reason to believe that they had hardly been talking
+of such matters in the street. However, to pleasure Sempronius, let us
+suppose, for once, that the deer is lodged:
+
+  'The deer is lodg'd, I've track'd her to her covert.'
+
+"If he had seen her in the open field, what occasion had he to track her,
+when he had so many Numidian dogs at his heels, which, with one halloo,
+he might have set upon her haunches? If he did not see her in the open
+field, how could he possibly track her? If he had seen her in the street,
+why did he not set upon her in the street, since through the street she
+must be carried at last? Now here, instead of having his thoughts upon
+his business, and upon the present danger; instead of meditating and
+contriving how he shall pass with his mistress through the southern gate,
+where her brother Marcus is upon the guard, and where she would certainly
+prove an impediment to him, which is the Roman word for the baggage;
+instead of doing this, Sempronius is entertaining himself with whimseys:
+
+  '_Semp_. How will the young Numidian rave to see
+  His mistress lost! If aught could glad my soul,
+  Beyond th' enjoyment of so bright a prize,
+  'Twould be to torture that young gay barbarian.
+  But hark! what noise? Death to my hopes! 'tis he,
+  'Tis Juba's self! There is but one way left!
+  He must be murder'd, and a passage cut
+  Through those his guards.'
+
+"Pray, what are 'those his guards?' I thought, at present, that Juba's
+guards had been Sempronius's tools, and had been dangling after his
+heels.
+
+"But now let us sum up all these absurdities together. Sempronius goes at
+noonday, in Juba's clothes, and with Juba's guards, to Cato's palace,
+in order to pass for Juba, in a place where they were both so very well
+known: he meets Juba there, and resolves to murder him with his own
+guards. Upon the guards appearing a little bashful, he threatens them:
+
+  'Hah! dastards, do you tremble!
+  Or act like men; or, by yon azure heav'n!'--
+
+But the guards still remaining restive, Sempronius himself attacks Juba,
+while each of the guards is representing Mr. Spectator's sign of the
+Gaper, awed, it seems, and terrified by Sempronius's threats. Juba kills
+Sempronius, and takes his own army prisoners, and carries them in triumph
+away to Cato. Now, I would fain know, if any part of Mr. Bayes's tragedy
+is so full of absurdity as this?
+
+"Upon hearing the clash of swords, Lucia and Marcia come in. The question
+is, why no men come in upon hearing the noise of swords in the governor's
+hall? Where was the governor himself? Where were his guards? Where were
+his servants? Such an attempt as this, so near the person of a governor
+of a place of war, was enough to alarm the whole garrison: and yet, for
+almost half an hour after Sempronius was killed, we find none of those
+appear, who were the likeliest in the world to be alarmed; and the noise
+of swords is made to draw only two poor women thither, who were most
+certain to run away from it. Upon Lucia and Marcia's coming in, Lucia
+appears in all the symptoms of an hysterical gentlewoman:
+
+  '_Luc_. Sure 'twas the clash of swords! my troubl'd heart
+  Is so cast down, and sunk amidst its sorrows,
+  It throbs with fear, and aches at ev'ry sound!'
+
+And immediately her old whimsey returns upon her:
+
+  'O Marcia, should thy brothers, for my sake--
+  die away with horrour at the thought.'
+
+She fancies that there can be no cutting of throats, but it must be for
+her. If this is tragical, I would fain know what is comical. Well! upon
+this they spy the body of Sempronius; and Marcia, deluded by the habit,
+it seems, takes him for Juba; for says she,
+
+  'The face is muffl'd up within the garment.'
+
+"Now, how a man could fight, and fall with his face muffled up in his
+garment, is, I think, a little hard to conceive! Besides, Juba, before he
+killed him, knew him to be Sempronius. It was not by his garment that he
+knew this; it was by his face then; his face, therefore, was not muffled.
+Upon seeing this man with the muffled face, Marcia falls a raving; and,
+owning her passion for the supposed defunct, begins to make his funeral
+oration. Upon which Juba enters listening, I suppose on tiptoe; for I
+cannot imagine how any one can enter listening in any other posture. I
+would fain know how it came to pass, that during all this time he had
+sent nobody, no, not so much as a candle-snuffer, to take away the dead
+body of Sempronius. Well! but let us regard him listening. Having left
+his apprehension behind him, he, at first, applies what Marcia says to
+Sempronius. But finding at last, with much ado, that he himself is the
+happy man, he quits his eve-dropping, and discovers himself just time
+enough to prevent his being cuckolded by a dead man, of whom the moment
+before he had appeared so jealous; and greedily intercepts the bliss
+which was fondly designed for one who could not be the better for it. But
+here I must ask a question: how comes Juba to listen here, who had not
+listened before throughout the play? Or how comes he to be the only
+person of this tragedy who listens, when love and treason were so often
+talked in so publick a place as a hall? I am afraid the author was driven
+upon all these absurdities only to introduce this miserable mistake of
+Marcia; which, after all, is much below the dignity of tragedy, as any
+thing is which is the effect or result of trick.
+
+"But let us come to the scenery of the fifth act, Cato appears first upon
+the scene, sitting in a thoughtful posture; in his hand Plato's treatise
+on the Immortality of the Soul, a drawn sword on the table by him. Now
+let us consider the place in which this sight is presented to us. The
+place, forsooth, is a long hall. Let us suppose, that any one should
+place himself in this posture, in the midst of one of our halls in
+London; that he should appear solus, in a sullen posture, a drawn sword
+on the table by him; in his hand Plato's treatise on the Immortality of
+the Soul, translated lately by Bernard Lintot: I desire the reader to
+consider, whether such a person as this would pass, with them who beheld
+him, for a great patriot, a great philosopher, or a general, or for some
+whimsical person who fancied himself all these? and whether the people,
+who belonged to the family, would think that such a person had a design
+upon their midriffs or his own?
+
+"In short, that Cato should sit long enough, in the aforesaid posture,
+in the midst of this large hall, to read over Plato's treatise on the
+Immortality of the Soul, which is a lecture of two long hours; that he
+should propose to himself to be private there upon that occasion; that he
+should be angry with his son for intruding there; then, that he should
+leave this hall upon the pretence of sleep, give himself the mortal wound
+in his bedchamber, and then be brought back into that hall to expire,
+purely to show his good-breeding, and save his friends the trouble of
+coming up to his bedchamber; all this appears to me to be improbable,
+incredible, impossible."
+
+Such is the censure of Dennis. There is, as Dryden expresses it, perhaps
+"too much horseplay in his raillery;" but if his jests are coarse, his
+arguments are strong. Yet, as we love better to be pleased than to be
+taught, Cato is read, and the critick is neglected.
+
+Flushed with consciousness of these detections of absurdity in the
+conduct, he afterwards attacked the sentiments of Cato; but he then
+amused himself with petty cavils, and minute objections.
+
+Of Addison's smaller poems, no particular mention is necessary; they have
+little that can employ or require a critick. The parallel of the princes
+and gods, in his verses to Kneller, is often happy, but is too well known
+to be quoted.
+
+His translations, so far as I have compared them, want the exactness of
+a scholar. That he understood his authors cannot be doubted; but his
+versions will not teach others to understand them, being too licentiously
+paraphrastical. They are, however, for the most part, smooth and easy;
+and, what is the first excellence of a translator, such as may be read
+with pleasure by those who do not know the originals.
+
+His poetry is polished and pure; the product of a mind too judicious to
+commit faults, but not sufficiently vigorous to attain excellence. He has
+sometimes a striking line, or a shining paragraph; but, in the whole, he
+is warm rather than fervid, and shows more dexterity than strength. He
+was, however, one of our earliest examples of correctness.
+
+The versification which he had learned from Dryden, he debased rather
+than refined. His rhymes are often dissonant; in his Georgick he admits
+broken lines. He uses both triplets and alexandrines, but triplets more
+frequently in his translations than his other works. The mere structure
+of verses seems never to have engaged much of his care. But his lines are
+very smooth in Rosamond, and, too smooth in Cato.
+
+Addison is now to be considered as a critick; a name which the present
+generation is scarcely willing to allow him. His criticism is condemned
+as tentative or experimental, rather than scientifick; and he is
+considered as deciding by taste[202] rather than by principles.
+
+It is not uncommon, for those who have grown wise by the labour of
+others, to add a little of their own, and overlook their masters. Addison
+is now despised by some who, perhaps, would never have seen his defects,
+but by the lights which he afforded them. That he always wrote as
+he would think it necessary to write now, cannot be affirmed; his
+instructions were such as the character of his readers made propers That
+general knowledge which now circulates in common talk, was in his time
+rarely to be found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of
+ignorance; and, in the female world, any acquaintance with books was
+distinguished only to be censured. His purpose was to infuse literary
+curiosity, by gentle and unsuspected conveyance, into the gay, the idle,
+and the wealthy; he, therefore, presented knowledge in the most alluring
+form, not lofty and austere, but accessible and familiar. When he showed
+them their defects, he showed them, likewise, that they might be easily
+supplied. His, attempt succeeded; inquiry was awakened, and comprehension
+expanded. An emulation of intellectual elegance was excited, and, from
+his time to our own, life has been gradually exalted, and conversation
+purified and enlarged.
+
+Dryden had, not many years before, scattered criticism, over his prefaces
+with very little parsimony; but, though he sometimes condescended to be
+somewhat familiar, his manner was in general too scholastick for those
+who had yet their rudiments to learn, and found it not easy to understand
+their master. His observations were framed rather for those that were
+learning to write, than for those that read only to talk.
+
+An instructer like Addison was now wanting, whose remarks being
+superficial, might be easily understood, and being just, might prepare
+the mind for more attainments.
+
+Had he presented Paradise Lost to the publick with all the pomp of system
+and severity of science, the criticism would, perhaps, have been admired,
+and the poem still have been neglected; but, by the blandishments of
+gentleness and facility, he has made Milton an universal favourite, with
+whom readers of every class think it necessary to be pleased.
+
+He descended, now and then, to lower disquisitions; and, by a serious
+display of the beauties of Chevy-Chase, exposed himself to the ridicule
+of Wagstaffe, who bestowed a like pompous character on Tom Thumb; and to
+the contempt of Dennis, who, considering the fundamental position of his
+criticism, that Chevy-Chase pleases, and ought to please, because it is
+natural, observes, "that there is a way of deviating from nature, by
+bombast or tumour, which soars above nature, and enlarges images beyond
+their real bulk; by affectation, which forsakes nature in quest of
+something unsuitable; and by imbecility, which degrades nature by
+faintness and diminution, by obscuring its appearances, and weakening
+its effects." In Chevy-Chase there is not much of either bombast or
+affectation; but there is chill and lifeless imbecility. The story cannot
+possibly be told in a manner that shall make less impression on the mind.
+
+Before the profound observers of the present race repose too securely on
+the consciousness of their superiority to Addison, let them consider
+his Remarks on Ovid, in which may be found specimens of criticism
+sufficiently subtile and refined: let them peruse, likewise, his essays
+on Wit, and on the Pleasures of Imagination, in which he founds art
+on the base of nature, and draws the principles of invention from
+dispositions inherent in the mind of man with skill and elegance[203],
+such as his contemners will not easily attain. As a describer of life and
+manners, he must be allowed to stand, perhaps, the first of the first
+rank. His humour, which, as Steele observes, is peculiar to himself, is
+so happily diffused as to give the grace of novelty to domestick scenes
+and daily occurrences. He never "outsteps the modesty of nature," nor
+raises merriment or wonder by the violation of truth. His figures neither
+divert by distortion, nor amaze by aggravation. He copies life with so
+much fidelity, that he can be hardly said to invent; yet his exhibitions
+have an air so much original, that it is difficult to suppose them not
+merely the product of imagination.
+
+As a teacher of wisdom, he may be confidently followed. His religion has
+nothing in it enthusiastick or superstitious: he appears neither weakly
+credulous, nor wantonly skeptical; his morality is neither dangerously
+lax, nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy, and all the
+cogency of argument, are employed to recommend to the reader his real
+interest, the care of pleasing the author of his being. Truth is shown
+sometimes as the phantom of a vision; sometimes appears half-veiled in an
+allegory; sometimes attracts regard in the robes of fancy, and sometimes
+steps forth in the confidence of reason. She wears a thousand dresses,
+and in all is pleasing.
+
+  "Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet."
+
+His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal,
+on light occasions not grovelling, pure without scrupulosity, and exact
+without apparent elaboration; always equable, and always easy, without
+glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never deviates from his
+track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no
+hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in
+unexpected splendour.
+
+It was, apparently, his principal endeavour to avoid all harshness
+and severity of diction; he is, therefore, sometimes verbose in his
+transitions and connexions, and sometimes descends too much to the
+language of conversation; yet if his language had been less idiomatical,
+it might have lost somewhat of its genuine Anglicism. What he
+attempted, he performed; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be
+energetick[204]; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. His sentences
+have neither studied amplitude, nor affected brevity: his periods, though
+not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an
+English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious,
+must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
+
+[Footnote 154: Mr. Tyers says, he was actually laid out for dead, as soon
+as he was born. Addisoniana, ii. 218.
+
+A writer, who signs himself T.J. informed Dr. Birch, (Gen. Dict. i. 62.)
+that Mr. Addison's mother was Jane Gulstone, a circumstance that should
+not have been omitted. Dr. Launcelot Addison had by his wife six
+children: 1. Jane, born April 23,1671. 2. Joseph, 1st May, 1672. 3.
+Gulstone, in April, 1673. 4. Dorothy, in May, 1674. 5. Anne, in April,
+1676; and 6. Launcelot, in 1680. Both Gulstone and Launcelot, who was a
+fellow of Magdalen college, Oxford, were reputed to be very well skilled
+in the classicks, and in polite literature. Dr. Addison's living at
+Milston was 120_l_. per annum; and after his death his son Joseph was
+sued for dilapidations by the next incumbent. The writer abovementioned
+informed Dr. Birch, that "there was a tradition at Milston, that when at
+school in the country, (probably at Ambrosebury,) having committed some
+slight fault, he was so afraid of being corrected for it, that he ran
+away from his father's house, and fled into the fields, where he lived
+upon fruits, and took up his lodging in a hollow tree, till, upon the
+publication of a reward to whoever should find him, he was discovered and
+restored to his parents." M.]
+
+[Footnote 155: "At the Charter-house (says Oldmixon, who was personally
+acquainted with Addison, and as a zealous whig, probably encouraged by
+him) he made acquaintance with two persons, for whom he had ever after an
+entire friendship, Stephen Clay, esq. of the Inner Temple, author of the
+epistle in verse, from the elector of Bavaria to the French king after
+the battle of Ramilies; and sir Richard Steele, whom he served both with
+his pen and purse." Hist. of England, xi. 632. M.]
+
+[Footnote 156: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 157: This fact was communicated to Johnson, in my hearing, by a
+person of unquestionable veracity, but whose name I am not at liberty to
+mention. He had it, as he told us, from lady Primrose, to whom Steele
+related it with tears in his eyes. The late Dr. Stinton confirmed it to
+me, by saying, that he had heard it from Mr. Hooke, author of the Roman
+History; and he, from Mr. Pope. H.
+
+See in Steele's Epistolary Correspondence, 1809, vol. i. pp. 208, 356,
+this transaction somewhat differently related. N.
+
+The compiler of Addisoniana is of opinion, that Addison's conduct on
+this occasion was dictated by the kindest motives; and that the step
+apparently so severe, was designed to awaken him, if possible, to a sense
+of the impropriety of his mode and habits of life. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 158: He took the degree of M.A. Feb. 14, 1693. N.]
+
+[Footnote 159: A letter which I found among Dr. Johnson's papers, dated
+in January, 1784, from a lady in Wiltshire, contains a discovery of some
+importance in literary history, viz. that by the initials H.S. prefixed
+to the poem, we are not to understand the famous Dr. Henry Sacheverell,
+whose trial is the most remarkable incident in his life. The information
+thus communicated is, that the verses in question were not an address to
+the famous Dr. Sacheverell, but to a very ingenious gentleman of the same
+name, who died young, supposed to be a Manksman, for that he wrote the
+history of the Isle of Man. That this person left his papers to Mr.
+Addison, and had formed a plan of a tragedy upon the death of Socrates,
+The lady says, she had this information from a Mr. Stephens, who was a
+fellow of Merton college, a contemporary and intimate with Mr. Addison in
+Oxford, who died near fifty years ago, a prebendary of Winchester. H.]
+
+[Footnote 160: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 161: A writer already mentioned, J.P. (Gen. Dict, _ut supra_,)
+asserts that his acquaintance with Montague commenced at Oxford: but for
+this there is no foundation. Mr. Montague was bred at Trinity college,
+Cambridge.]
+
+[Footnote 162: Lord Somers, on this poem being presented to him,
+according to Tickell, sent to Addison to desire his acquaintance.
+According to Oldmixon, he was introduced to him by Tonson. M.]
+
+[Footnote 163: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 164: See Swift's libel on Dr. Delany. Addison's distress for
+money commenced with the death of king William, which happened in March,
+1702. In June, 1703, he was at Rotterdam, and seems then to have done
+with his _squire_: for in that month the duke of Somerset wrote a letter
+to old Jacob Tonson, (of which I have a copy,) proposing that Addison
+should be tutor to his son, (who was then going abroad.) "Neither
+lodging, diet, or travelling," says the duke, "shall cost him sixpence:
+and over and above that, my son shall present him, at the year's end,
+with a hundred guineas, as long as he is pleased to continue in that
+service." Mr. Addison declined this _magnificent_ offer in these words,
+as appears from another letter of the duke's to Tonson: "As for the
+recompence that is proposed to me, I must confess I can by no means see
+my account in it." M.]
+
+[Footnote 165: In this letter he uses the phrase _classick ground_, which
+has since become so common, but never had been employed before: it was
+ridiculed by some of his contemporary writers (I forget which) as very
+quaint and affected. M.]
+
+[Footnote 166: It is incorrect that Addison's stay in foreign countries
+was but short. He went to travel in 1700, and did not return till the
+latter end of 1703; so that he was abroad near four years. M.]
+
+[Footnote 167: Addison's father, who was then dean of Lichfield, died in
+April, 1703; a circumstance which should have been mentioned on his tomb
+at Lichfield: he is said to have been seventy-one.]
+
+[Footnote 168: Rosamond was first exhibited, March 4th, 1707, and, after
+three representations, was laid aside. M.]
+
+[Footnote 169: Thomas _earl_ of Wharton was constituted lord lieutenant
+of Ireland Dec. 4, 1708, and went there in April, 1709. He was not made a
+_marquis_ till Dec. 1714. M.]
+
+[Footnote 170: The first number of the Tatler was published April 12,
+1709. The last (271) Jan. 2, 1710-11. The first number of the Spectator
+appeared March 1, 1710-11, and N deg.. 555, which is the last of the seventh
+volume, was published Dec. 6, 1712. The paper was then discontinued, and
+was recommenced, June 18, 1714, when N deg.. 556 appeared. From thence, to
+N deg.. 635 inclusive, forms the eighth volume. M.]
+
+[Footnote 171: This particular number of the Spectator, it is said, was
+not published till twelve o'clock, that it might come out precisely at
+the hour of her majesty's breakfast, and that no time might be left
+for deliberating about serving it up with that meal, as usual. See the
+edition of the Tatler with notes, vol. vi. No. 271, note; p. 462, Sec. N.]
+
+[Footnote 172: Newspapers appear to have had an earlier date than here
+assigned. Cleiveland, in his Character of a London Diurnal, says, "the
+original sinner of this kind was Dutch; Gallo-belgicus the Protoplast,
+and the Modern Mercuries but Hans en kelders." Some intelligence given by
+Mercurius Gallo-belgicus is mentioned in Carew's Survey of Cornwall, p.
+126, originally published in 1602. These vehicles of information are
+often mentioned in the plays of James and Charles the first. R.
+
+See Idler, N. 7, and note; and Idler, N. 40, and note. Ed.]
+
+[Footnote 173: The errors in this account are explained at considerable
+length in the preface to the Spectator, prefixed to the edition in the
+British Essayists. The original delineation of sir Roger undoubtedly
+belongs to Steele.
+
+See, however, Addisoniana, vol. i.]
+
+[Footnote 174: That this calculation is not exaggerated, that it is even
+much below the real number, see the notes on the Taller, edit. 1786, vol.
+vi. 452. N--See likewise prefatory notice to the Rambler, vol. ii. p.
+viii. of the present edition. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 175: Tickell says, "he took up a design of writing a play upon
+this subject when he was at the university, and even attempted something
+in it then, though not a line as it now stands. The work was performed by
+him in his travels, and retouched in England, without any formed design
+of bringing it on the stage." Cibber (Apol. 377.) says, that in 1704 he
+had the pleasure of reading the first four acts of Cato (which were all
+that were then written) privately with sir Richard Steele; and Steele
+told him they were written in Italy. M.]
+
+[Footnote 176: The story about Hughes was first told by Oldmixon, in his
+Art of Criticism, 1728. M.]
+
+[Footnote 177: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 178: Alluding to the duke of Marlborough, at that time
+suspected of an ambitious aim to obtain the post of general in chief for
+life. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 179: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 180: The Guardian was published in the interval between the
+Spectator's being laid down and taken up again. The first number was
+published March 12, 1713; and the last appeared October 1st, 1713. M.]
+
+[Footnote 181: From a tory song in vogue at the time, the burden whereof
+is,
+
+  And he, that will this health deny,
+  Down among the dead men let him lie.
+
+H.]
+
+[Footnote 182: Addison wrote twenty-three papers out of forty-five, viz.
+Numbs. 556, 557, 558, 559, 561, 562. 565. 567, 568, 569. 571. 574, 575.
+579, 580. 582,583, 584, 585. 590. 592. 598. 600; so that he produced more
+than one half.]
+
+[Footnote 183: When lord Sunderland was appointed lord lieutenant of
+Ireland, in 1714, Addison was appointed his secretary. Johnson has
+omitted another step in his promotions. He was, in 1715, made a lord of
+trade. M.]
+
+[Footnote 184: August 2.]
+
+[Footnote 185: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 186: It has been said, that Addison first discovered his
+addresses to the countess of Warwick would not be unacceptable, from the
+manner of her receiving such an article in the newspapers, of his own
+inserting, at which, when he read it to her, he affected to be much
+astonished. Many anecdotes are on record of Addison's tavern resorts when
+Holland-house was rendered disagreeable by the haughty caprices of his
+aristocratic bride. When he had suffered any vexation from her, he would
+propose to withdraw the club from Button's, who had been a servant in the
+countess's family. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 187: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 188: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 189: This is inaccurately stated. Pope does not mention the
+conjecture of Tonson at all. Spence himself has mentioned it from
+Tonson's own information; for he has subscribed the name of Tonson to the
+paragraph in question, according to his constant practice of stating the
+name of his informer. M.]
+
+[Footnote 190: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 191: This account of Addison's death is from Dr. Young, who
+calls lord Warwick a youth finely accomplished; and does not give the
+least ground for the representation in the text, that he was of irregular
+life, and that this was a last effort of Addison's to reclaim him.
+M.--Dr. Young was far too much of a courtier to see the vices of a
+peer, but even his guarded statement does give ground for Dr. Johnson's
+conclusion. His words are, "finely accomplished, but not above being the
+better for good impressions from a dying friend." ED.]
+
+[Footnote 192: Who died at Bilton, in Warwickshire, at a very advanced
+age, in 1797. See Gent. Mag. vol. lxvii. p. 256. 385. N.]
+
+[Footnote 193: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 194: Tonson and Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 195: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 196: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 197: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 198: "Paint means," says Dr. Warton, "express, or describe
+them."]
+
+[Footnote 199: But, according to Dr. Warton, "ought not to have
+intended."]
+
+[Footnote 200: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 201: The person meant by the initials, J.G. is sir John Gibson,
+lieutenant-governor of Portsmouth in the year 1710, and afterwards. He
+was much beloved in the army, and by the common soldiers called Johnny
+Gibson. H.]
+
+[Footnote 202: Taste must decide. WARTON.]
+
+[Footnote 203: Far, in Dr. Warton's opinion, beyond Dryden.]
+
+[Footnote 204: But, says Dr. Warton, he sometimes is so; and, in another
+manuscript note, he adds, often so.]
+
+
+
+
+HUGHES
+
+John Hughes, the son of a citizen of London, and of Anne Burgess, of an
+ancient family in Wiltshire, was born at Marlborough, July 29, 1677. He
+was educated at a private school; and though his advances in literature
+are in the Biographia very ostentatiously displayed, the name of his
+master is somewhat ungratefully concealed[205].
+
+At nineteen he drew the plan of a tragedy; and paraphrased, rather too
+diffusely, the ode of Horace which begins "Integer vitas." To poetry
+he added the science of musick, in which he seems to have attained
+considerable skill, together with the practice of design, or rudiments of
+painting.
+
+His studies did not withdraw him wholly from business, nor did business
+hinder him from study. He had a place in the office of ordnance; and was
+secretary to several commissions for purchasing lands necessary to secure
+the royal docks at Chatham and Portsmouth; yet found time to acquaint
+himself with modern languages.
+
+In 1697 he published a poem on the Peace of Ryswick: and, in 1699,
+another piece, called the Court of Neptune, on the return of king
+William, which he addressed to Mr. Montague, the general patron of the
+followers of the muses. The same year he produced a song on the duke of
+Gloucester's birthday.
+
+He did not confine himself to poetry, but cultivated other kinds of
+writing with great success; and about this time showed his knowledge of
+human nature by an essay on the Pleasure of being deceived. In 1702, he
+published, on the death of king William, a Pindarick ode, called the
+House of Nassau; and wrote another paraphrase on the "Otium Divos" of
+Horace.
+
+In 1703, his ode on Musick was performed at Stationers' hall; and he
+wrote afterwards six cantatas, which were set to musick by the greatest
+master of that time, and seem intended to oppose or exclude the Italian
+opera, an exotick and irrational entertainment, which has been always
+combated, and always has prevailed.
+
+His reputation was now so far advanced, that the publick began to pay
+reverence to his name; and he was solicited to prefix a preface to the
+translation of Boccalini, a writer whose satirical vein cost him his life
+in Italy, but who never, I believe, found many readers in this country,
+even though introduced by such powerful recommendation.
+
+He translated Fontenelle's Dialogues of the Dead; and his version was,
+perhaps, read at that time, but is now neglected; for by a book not
+necessary, and owing its reputation wholly to its turn of diction, little
+notice can be gained but from those who can enjoy the graces of the
+original. To the dialogues of Fontenelle he added two composed by
+himself; and, though not only an honest but a pious man, dedicated his
+work to the earl of Wharton. He judged skilfully enough of his own
+interest; for Wharton, when he went lord lieutenant to Ireland, offered
+to take Hughes with him, and establish him; but Hughes, having hopes or
+promises from another man in power, of some provision more suitable to
+his inclination, declined Wharton's offer, and obtained nothing from the
+other.
+
+He translated the Miser of Moliere, which he never offered to the stage;
+and occasionally amused himself with making versions of favourite scenes
+in other plays.
+
+Being now received as a wit among the wits, he paid his contributions
+to literary undertakings, and assisted both the Tatler, Spectator, and
+Guardian. In 1712, he translated Vertot's History of the Revolution of
+Portugal; produced an Ode to the Creator of the World, from the Fragments
+of Orpheus; and brought upon the stage an opera, called Calypso and
+Telemachus, intended to show that the English language might be very
+happily adapted to musick. This was impudently opposed by those who
+were employed in the Italian opera; and, what cannot be told without
+indignation, the intruders had such interest with the duke of Shrewsbury,
+then lord chamberlain, who had married an Italian, as to obtain an
+obstruction of the profits, though not an inhibition of the performance.
+
+There was, at this time, a project formed by Tonson for a translation of
+the Pharsalia by several hands; and Hughes englished the tenth book.
+But this design, as must often happen where the concurrence of many
+is necessary, fell to the ground; and the whole work was afterwards
+performed by Rowe.
+
+His acquaintance with the great writers of his time appears to have been
+very general; but of his intimacy with Addison there is a remarkable
+proof. It is told, on good authority, that Cato was finished and played
+by his persuasion. It had long wanted the last act, which he was desired
+by Addison to supply. If the request was sincere, it proceeded from an
+opinion, whatever it was, that did not last long; for when Hughes came
+in a week to show him his first attempt, he found half an act written by
+Addison himself.
+
+He afterwards published the works of Spenser, with his life, a glossary,
+and a discourse on allegorical poetry; a work for which he was well
+qualified as a judge of the beauties of writing, but, perhaps, wanted an
+antiquary's knowledge of the obsolete words. He did not much revive
+the curiosity of the publick; for near thirty years elapsed before his
+edition was reprinted. The same year produced his Apollo and Daphne, of
+which the success was very earnestly promoted by Steele, who, when the
+rage of party did not misguide him, seems to have been a man of boundless
+benevolence.
+
+Hughes had hitherto suffered the mortifications of a narrow fortune;
+but, in 1717, the lord chancellor Cowper set him at ease, by making him
+secretary to the commissions of the peace; in which he afterwards, by a
+particular request, desired his successor, lord Parker, to continue him.
+He had now affluence; but such is human life, that he had it when his
+declining health could neither allow him long possession, nor quick
+enjoyment.
+
+His last work was his tragedy, the Siege of Damascus, after which, a
+Siege became a popular title. This play, which still continues on the
+stage, and of which it is unnecessary to add a private voice to such
+continuance of approbation, is not acted or printed according to the
+author's original draught, or his settled intention. He had made Phocyas
+apostatize from his religion; after which the abhorrence of Eudocia would
+have been reasonable, his misery would have been just, and the horrours
+of his repentance exemplary. The players, however, required, that the
+guilt of Phocyas should terminate in desertion to the enemy; and Hughes,
+unwilling that his relations should lose the benefit of his work,
+complied with the alteration.
+
+He was now weak with a lingering consumption, and not able to attend
+the rehearsal; yet was so vigorous in his faculties, that only ten days
+before his death he wrote the dedication to his patron lord Cowper. On
+February 17, 1719-20, the play was represented, and the author died.
+He lived to hear that it was well received; but paid no regard to
+the intelligence, being then wholly employed in the meditations of a
+departing Christian.
+
+A man of his character was, undoubtedly, regretted; and Steele devoted
+an essay, in the paper called the Theatre, to the memory of his virtues.
+His life is written in the Biographia with some degree of favourable
+partiality; and an account of him is prefixed to his works by his
+relation, the late Mr. Buncombe, a man whose blameless elegance deserved
+the same respect.
+
+The character of his genius I shall transcribe from the correspondence of
+Swift and Pope.
+
+"A month ago," says Swift, "were sent me over, by a friend of mine, the
+works of John Hughes, esquire. They are in prose and verse. I never heard
+of the man in my life, yet I find your name as a subscriber. He is too
+grave a poet for me; and I think among the mediocrists, in prose as well
+as verse."
+
+To this Pope returns: "To answer your question as to Mr. Hughes; what he
+wanted in genius, he made up as an honest man; but he was of the class
+you think him[206]."
+
+In Spence's Collections Pope is made to speak of him with still less
+respect, as having no claim to poetical reputation but from his tragedy.
+
+[Footnote 205: He was educated in a dissenting academy, of which the
+reverend Mr. Thomas Rowe was tutor; and was a fellow-student there with
+Dr. Isaac Watts, Mr. Samuel Say, and other persons of eminence. In the
+Hora Lyricae of Dr. Watts, is a poem to the memory of Mr. Rowe. H.]
+
+[Footnote 206: This, Dr. Warton asserts, is very unjust censure; and in a
+note in his late edition of Pope's works, asks if "the author of such a
+tragedy as the Siege of Damascus was one of the _mediocribus_? Swift and
+Pope seem not to recollect the value and rank of an author who could
+write such a tragedy."]
+
+
+
+
+SHEFFIELD
+DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
+
+John Sheffield, descended from a long series of illustrious ancestors,
+was born in 1649, the son of Edmund, earl of Mulgrave, who died in
+1658[207]. The young lord was put into the hands of a tutor, with whom he
+was so little satisfied, that he got rid of him in a short time, and, at
+an age not exceeding twelve years, resolved to educate himself. Such a
+purpose, formed at such an age, and successfully prosecuted, delights as
+it is strange, and instructs as it is real.
+
+His literary acquisitions are more wonderful, as those years in which
+they are commonly made were spent by him in the tumult of a military
+life, or the gaiety of a court. When war was declared against the Dutch,
+he went, at seventeen, on board the ship in which prince Rupert and
+the duke of Albemarle sailed, with the command of the fleet; but, by
+contrariety of winds, they were restrained from action. His zeal for the
+king's service was recompensed by the command of one of the independent'
+troops of horse, then raised to protect the coast.
+
+Next year he received a summons to parliament, which, as he was then
+but eighteen years old, the earl of Northumberland censured as at least
+indecent, and his objection was allowed. He had a quarrel with the earl
+of Rochester, which he has, perhaps, too ostentatiously related, as
+Rochester's surviving sister, the lady Sandwich, is said to have told him
+with very sharp reproaches.
+
+When another Dutch war, 1672, broke out, he went again a volunteer in the
+ship which the celebrated lord Ossory commanded; and there made, as he
+relates, two curious remarks.
+
+
+"I have observed two things, which I dare affirm, though not generally
+believed. One was, that the wind of a cannon bullet, though flying never
+so near, is incapable of doing the least harm; and, indeed, were it
+otherwise, no man above deck would escape. The other was, that a great
+shot may be sometimes avoided, even as it flies, by changing one's ground
+a little; for, when the wind sometimes blew away the smoke, it was so
+clear a sunshiny day, that we could easily perceive the bullets, that
+were half-spent, fall into the water, and from thence bound up again
+among us, which gives sufficient time for making a step or two on any
+side; though, in so swift a motion, 'tis hard to judge well in what line
+the bullet comes, which, if mistaken, may, by removing, cost a man his
+life, instead of saving it."
+
+His behaviour was so favourably represented by lord Ossory, that he was
+advanced to the command of the Catharine, the best second-rate ship in
+the navy.
+
+He afterwards raised a regiment of foot, and commanded it as colonel. The
+land-forces were sent ashore by prince Rupert; and he lived in the camp
+very familiarly with Schomberg. He was then appointed colonel of the old
+Holland regiment, together with his own; and had the promise of a garter,
+which he obtained in his twenty-fifth year. He was, likewise, made
+gentleman of the bedchamber. He afterwards went into the French service,
+to learn the art of war under Turenne, but staid only a short time.
+Being, by the duke of Monmouth, opposed in his pretensions to the first
+troop of horse-guards, he, in return, made Monmouth suspected by the
+duke of York. He was not long after, when the unlucky Monmouth fell
+into disgrace, recompensed with the lieutenancy of Yorkshire and the
+government of Hull.
+
+Thus rapidly did he make his way both to military and civil honours and
+employments; yet, busy as he was, he did not neglect his studies, but, at
+least, cultivated poetry; in which he must have been early considered as
+uncommonly skilful, if it be true which is reported, that, when he was
+yet not twenty years old, his recommendation advanced Dryden to the
+laurel.
+
+The Moors having besieged Tangier, he was sent, 1680, with two thousand
+men to its relief. A strange story is told of danger to which he was
+intentionally exposed in a leaky ship, to gratify some resentful jealousy
+of the king, whose health he, therefore, would never permit at his
+table, till he saw himself in a safer place. His voyage was prosperously
+performed in three weeks; and the Moors, without a contest, retired
+before him.
+
+In this voyage he composed the Vision; a licentious poem, such as was
+fashionable in those times, with little power of invention or propriety
+of sentiment.
+
+At his return he found the king kind, who, perhaps, had never been angry;
+and he continued a wit and a courtier, as before.
+
+At the succession of king James, to whom he was intimately known, and by
+whom he thought himself beloved, he naturally expected still brighter
+sunshine; but all know how soon that reign began to gather clouds. His
+expectations were not disappointed; he was immediately admitted into the
+privy council, and made lord chamberlain. He accepted a place in the high
+commission, without knowledge, as he declared after the revolution, of
+its illegality. Having few religious scruples, he attended the king to
+mass, and kneeled with the rest, but had no disposition to receive
+the Romish faith, or to force it upon others; for when the priests,
+encouraged by his appearances of compliance, attempted to convert him,
+he told them, as Burnet has recorded, that he was willing to receive
+instruction, and that he had taken much pains to believe in God, who made
+the world and all men in it; but that he should not be easily persuaded
+"that man was quits, and made God again."
+
+A pointed sentence is bestowed by successive transmission on the last
+whom it will fit: this censure of transubstantiation, whatever be its
+value, was uttered long ago by Anne Askew, one of the first sufferers
+for the protestant religion, who, in the time of Henry the eighth, was
+tortured in the Tower; concerning which there is reason to wonder that it
+was not known to the historian of the reformation.
+
+In the revolution he acquiesced, though he did not promote it. There
+was once a design of associating him in the invitation of the prince of
+Orange; but the earl of Shrewsbury discouraged the attempt, by declaring
+that Mulgrave would never concur. This king William afterwards told him;
+and asked what he would have done if the proposal had been made? "Sir,"
+said he, "I would have discovered it to the king whom I then served." To
+which king William replied, "I cannot blame you."
+
+Finding king James irremediably excluded, he voted for the conjunctive
+sovereignty, upon this principle, that he thought the titles of the
+prince and his consort equal, and it would please the prince, their
+protector, to have a share in the sovereignty. This vote gratified king
+William; yet, either by the king's distrust or his own discontent,
+he lived some years without employment. He looked on the king with
+malevolence, and, if his verses or his prose may be credited, with
+contempt. He was, notwithstanding this aversion or indifference, made
+marquis of Normanby, 1694; but still opposed the court on some important
+questions; yet, at last, he was received into the cabinet council, with a
+pension of three thousand pounds.
+
+At the accession of queen Anne, whom he is said to have courted when they
+were both young, he was highly favoured. Before her coronation. 1702, she
+made him lord privy seal, and, soon after, lord lieutenant of the north
+Riding of Yorkshire. He was then named commissioner for treating with the
+Scots about the union; and was made, next year, first, duke of Normanby,
+and then of Buckinghamshire, there being suspected to be somewhere a
+latent claim to the title of Buckingham[208].
+
+Soon after, becoming jealous of the duke of Marlborough, he resigned the
+privy seal, and joined the discontented tories in a motion, extremely
+offensive to the queen, for inviting the princess Sophia to England.
+The queen courted him back with an offer no less than that of the
+chancellorship; which he refused. He now retired from business, and built
+that house in the Park, which is now the queen's, upon ground granted by
+the crown.
+
+When the ministry was changed, 1710, he was made lord chamberlain of the
+household, and concurred in all transactions of that time, except that he
+endeavoured to protect the Catalans. After the queen's death, he became
+a constant opponent of the court; and, having no publick business, is
+supposed to have amused himself by writing his two tragedies. He died
+February 24, 1720-21.
+
+He was thrice married; by his first two wives he had no children; by his
+third, who was the daughter of king James, by the countess of Dorchester,
+and the widow of the earl of Anglesey, he had, besides other children
+that died early, a son born in 1716, who died in 1735, and put an end to
+the line of Sheffield. It is observable, that the duke's three wives were
+all widows. The dutchess died in 1742.
+
+His character is not to be proposed as worthy of imitation. His religion
+he may be supposed to have learned from Hobbes; and his morality was such
+as naturally proceeds from loose opinions. His sentiments with respect to
+women he picked up in the court of Charles; and his principles concerning
+property were such as a gaming-table supplies. He was censured as
+covetous, and has been defended by an instance of inattention to his
+affairs; as if a man might not at once be corrupted by avarice and
+idleness. He is said, however, to have had much tenderness, and to have
+been very ready to apologize for his violences of passion.
+
+He is introduced into this collection only as a poet; and, if we credit
+the testimony of his contemporaries, he was a poet of no vulgar rank. But
+favour and flattery are now at an end; criticism is no longer softened by
+his bounties, or awed by his splendour; and, being able to take a more
+steady view, discovers him to be a writer that sometimes glimmers, but
+rarely shines; feebly laborious, and, at best, but pretty. His songs are
+upon common topicks; he hopes, and grieves, and repents, and despairs,
+and rejoices, like any other maker of little stanzas: to be great, he
+hardly tries; to be gay, is hardly in his power[209].
+
+In the Essay on Satire he was always supposed to have had the help of
+Dryden. His Essay on Poetry is the great work for which he was praised by
+Roscommon, Dryden, and Pope; and, doubtless, by many more, whose eulogies
+have perished.
+
+Upon this piece he appears to have set a high value; for he was all his
+life improving it by successive revisals, so that there is scarcely any
+poem to be found of which the last edition differs more from the first.
+Amongst other changes, mention is made of some compositions of Dryden,
+which were written after the first appearance of the essay.
+
+At the time when this work first appeared, Milton's fame was not yet
+fully established, and, therefore, Tasso and Spenser were set before him.
+The two last lines were these. The epick poet, says he,
+
+  Must above Milton's lofty flights prevail,
+  Succeed where great Torquato, and where greater Spenser, fail.
+
+The last line in succeeding editions was shortened, and the order of
+names continued; but now Milton is at last advanced to the highest place,
+and the passage thus adjusted:
+
+  Must above Tasso's lofty flights prevail,
+  Succeed where Spenser, and ev'n Milton, fail.
+
+Amendments are seldom made without some token of a rent: _lofty_ does not
+suit Tasso so well as Milton.
+
+One celebrated line seems to be borrowed. The essay calls a perfect
+character,
+
+  A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw.
+
+Scaliger, in his poems, terms Virgil "sine labe monstrum." Sheffield can
+scarcely be supposed to have read Scaliger's poetry; perhaps he found the
+words in a quotation.
+
+Of this essay, which Dryden has exalted so highly, it may be justly
+said, that the precepts are judicious, sometimes new, and often happily
+expressed; but there are, after all the emendations, many weak lines, and
+some strange appearances of negligence; as, when he gives the laws of
+elegy, he insists upon connexion and coherence; without which, says he,
+
+  'Tis epigram, 'tis point, 'tis what you will;
+  But not an elegy, nor writ with skill,
+  No Panegyrick, nor a Cooper's Hill.
+
+Who would not suppose that Waller's Panegyrick and Denham's Cooper's Hill
+were elegies?
+
+His verses are often insipid; but his memoirs are lively and agreeable;
+he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and
+fancy of a poet.
+
+[Footnote 207: His mother was Elizabeth, one of the daughters of Lionel
+Cranfield, earl of Middlesex. M.]
+
+[Footnote 208: In the earliest editions of the duke's works he is styled
+duke of Buckingham; and Walpole, in his Catalogue of Noble Authors,
+mentions a wish, cherished by Sheffield, to be confounded with his
+predecessor in the title; "but he would more easily," remarks Walpole,
+sarcastically, "have been mistaken with the other Buckingham, if he had
+not written at all." Burnet also, and other authorities, speak of him
+under the title of duke of Buckingham. His epitaph, being in Latin, will
+not settle the point. It is to be regretted, therefore, that Johnson
+adduced no better evidence for his doubt than his own unsupported
+assertion. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 209: "The life of this peer takes up fourteen pages and a half
+in folio, in the General Dictionary, where it has little pretensions to
+occupy a couple: but his pious relict was always purchasing places for
+him, herself, and their son, in every suburb of the temple of fame; a
+tenure, against which, of all others, quo-warrantos are sure to take
+place. The author of the article in the dictionary calls the duke one of
+the most beautiful prose writers, and greatest poets, of his age: which
+is also, he says, proved by the finest writers, his contemporaries;
+certificates that have little weight, where the merit is not proved by
+the author's own works. It is certain, that his grace's compositions in
+prose have nothing extraordinary in them; his poetry is most indifferent,
+and the greatest part of both is already fallen into total neglect."
+Walpole's Noble Authors, vol. i. p. 436 of his works.]
+
+
+END OF VOL. VII.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1, by Samuel Johnson
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1, by Samuel Johnson
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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+
+Title: Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1
+
+Author: Samuel Johnson
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9823]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 21, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE POETS, VOL. 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jayam Subramanian
+and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+DR. JOHNSON'S WORKS.
+
+LIVES OF THE POETS.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+THE
+
+WORKS
+
+OF
+
+SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
+
+IN NINE VOLUMES.
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE SEVENTH.
+
+
+MDCCCXXV.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF THE SEVENTH VOLUME.
+
+THE LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS.
+
+
+Cowley
+Denham
+Milton
+Butler
+Rochester
+Roscommon
+Otway
+Waller
+Pomfret
+Dorset
+Stepney
+J. Philips
+Walsh
+Dryden
+Smith
+Duke
+King
+Sprat
+Halifax
+Parnell
+Garth
+Rowe
+Addison
+Hughes
+Sheffield, duke of Buckinghamshire
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTICE
+
+TO
+
+THE LIVES OF THE POETS.
+
+
+Such was the simple and unpretending advertisement that announced the
+Lives of the English Poets; a work that gave to the British nation a new
+style of biography. Johnson's decided taste for this species of writing,
+and his familiarity with the works of those whose lives he has recorded,
+peculiarly fitted him for the task; but it has been denounced by some as
+dogmatical, and even morose; minute critics have detected inaccuracies;
+the admirers of particular authors have complained of an insufficiency
+of praise to the objects of their fond and exclusive regard; and the
+political zealot has affected to decry the staunch and unbending
+champion of regal and ecclesiastical rights. Those, again, of high and
+imaginative minds, who "lift themselves up to look to the sky of poetry,
+and far removed from the dull-making cataract of Nilus, listen to the
+planet-like music of poetry;" these accuse Johnson of a heavy and
+insensible soul, because he avowed that nature's "world was brazen, and
+that the poets only delivered a golden[1]."
+
+But in spite of the censures of political opponents, private friends,
+and angry critics, it will be acknowledged, by the impartial, and
+by every lover of virtue and of truth, that Johnson's honest heart,
+penetrating mind, and powerful intellect, has given to the world
+memoirs fraught with what is infinitely more valuable than mere verbal
+criticism, or imaginative speculation; he has presented, in his Lives of
+the English Poets, the fruits of his long and careful examination of men
+and manners, and repeated in his age, with the authoritative voice of
+experience, the same dignified lessons of morality, with which he
+had instructed his readers in his earlier years. And if these lives
+contained few merits of their own, they confessedly amended the
+criticism of the nation, and opened the path to a more enlarged and
+liberal style of biography than had, before their publication, appeared.
+
+The bold manner in which Johnson delivered what he believed to be the
+truth, naturally provoked hostile attack, and we are not prepared to
+say, that, in many instances, the strictures passed upon him might not
+be just. We will call the attention of our readers to some few of the
+charges brought against the work now before us, and then leave it to
+their candid and unbiased judgment to decide, whether the deficiencies
+pointed out are but as dust in the balance, when brought to weigh
+against the sterling excellence with which this last and greatest
+production of our Moralist abounds.
+
+He has been accused of indulging a spirit of political animosity, of an
+illiberal and captious method of criticism, of frequent inaccuracies,
+and of a general haughtiness of manner, indicative of a feeling of
+superiority over the subjects of his memorial.
+
+In the life of Milton his political prejudices are most apparent. It is
+not our duty, neither our inclination, in this place, to discuss the
+accuracy of Johnson's political wisdom. We cannot, however, but respect
+the integrity with which he clung to the instructions of his youth,
+amidst poverty, and all those inconveniencies which usually drive men to
+a discontent with things as they are.
+
+Those who censure him without qualification or reserve, are as bad, or
+worse, on the opposite side.
+
+They accuse him of narrow-minded prejudice, and of bigoted attachment to
+powers that be with a rancour little befitting the liberality of which
+they make such vaunting professions. Johnson had a really benevolent
+heart, but despised and detested the affectation of a sentimental and
+universal philanthropy, which neglects the practical charities of
+home and kindred, in its wild and excursive flights after distant and
+romantic objects. He was no tyrant, even in theory, but he dreaded, and,
+therefore, sought to expose, the lurking designs of those who opposed
+constituted authorities, because they hated subjection; and who, when
+they gained power themselves, proved the well-grounded nature of the
+fears entertained respecting their sincerity. Johnson was a firm
+English character, and his surly expressions were often philanthropy in
+disguise. They have little studied his real disposition, who impute his
+occasional austerity of manner to misanthropy at heart. The man who is
+smooth to all alike, is frequently the friend of none, and those who
+entertain no aversions, have, perhaps, few of the warmer emotions of
+friendship.
+
+In dwelling thus long on a part of Johnson's character, on which we have
+elsewhere[2] avowed that we could not speak with perfect pleasure, we
+are not attempting to vindicate him in all his violent reproaches of
+those whom he politically disliked. We would, however, wish to deprecate
+unmitigated condemnation, and also to ask, whether the conduct of those
+whom he denounced, was not, in its turn, so harsh and arbitrary, as
+almost to justify the utmost severity of censure. Were they not men who
+would "scarcely believe in the substance of their liberty, if they did
+not see it cast a shadow of slavery over others."
+
+With respect to Johnson's powers as a critic, we confess that he had but
+little natural taste for poetry, as such; for that poetry of emotion
+which produces in its cultivators and admirers an intensity of
+excitement, to which language can scarcely afford an utterance, to which
+art can give no body, and which spreads a dream and a glory around us.
+All this Johnson felt not, and, therefore, understood not; for he wanted
+that deep feeling which is the only sure and unerring test of poetic
+excellence. He sought the didactic in poetry, and wished for reasoning
+in numbers. Hence his undivided admiration of Pope and the French
+school, who cultivated exclusively the poetry of idea, where each moral
+problem is worked out with detailed, and often tedious, analysis; where
+all intense emotion is frittered away by a ratiocinative process.
+Johnson, we repeat, had no natural perception nor relish for the high
+and excursive range of poetic fancy, and the age at which he composed
+his criticisms on the English poets, was far advanced beyond that when
+purely imaginative poetry usually affords delight. Hence, no doubt,
+proceeded his capricious strictures on the odes of Gray to which
+we, with painful candour, advert. In criticism and in poetry, for
+indignation only poured forth the torrent of his song, he kept steadily
+in view the interests of morality and virtue: these he would not
+compromise for the glitter of genius, and for their maintenance of
+these, the main objects of his own life and labour, he praised many an
+author whom other more courtly critics have thought it not cruelty to
+ridicule. He sums up his eulogium on a poet with the reflection, that he
+left
+
+  No line which, dying, he could wish to blot.
+
+Johnson has also not escaped animadversion for entitling his collection
+The Lives of the English Poets, when he has taken so confined a range.
+It must be remembered, that he only professed, in the first instance,
+to prefix lives to the works which the booksellers chose to publish; he
+was, therefore, confined to a task, at which he more than once expressed
+his repugnance to Boswell. It should also, in fairness to his memory,
+be borne in mind, that he wrote, as he confesses in his preface, from
+scanty materials, and on various authors. It was very easy, therefore,
+for each successive biographer, who devoted his time to the collection
+of memoirs for some single individual, to point out inaccuracies in
+Johnson's general statements; and very natural, also for one who had
+contracted an affection for the subject of his labours, by continually
+having him present in his thoughts, to carp at all those who were not as
+alive to the merits, and as blind to the defects of his idol as himself.
+But Johnson, feeling a manly consciousness of ability, which he affected
+not to hide, was not dazzled by the lustre of brilliant talents, and was
+far too honest to veil from public view the faults and failings of the
+sons of genius. This he did not from a sour delight in detecting and
+exposing the frailties of his fellow men, but from a belief that, in so
+doing, he was promoting the good of mankind. "It is particularly the
+duty," says he, "of those who consign illustrious names to posterity,
+to take care lest their readers be misled by ambiguous examples. That
+writer may justly be condemned as an enemy to goodness, who suffers
+fondness or interest to confound right with wrong, or to shelter the
+faults, which even the wisest and the best have committed, from that
+ignominy which guilt ought always to suffer, and with which it should be
+more deeply stigmatized, when dignified by its neighbourhood to uncommon
+worth: since we shall be in danger of beholding it without abhorrence,
+unless its turpitude be laid open, and the eye secured from the
+deception of surrounding splendour[3]." "If nothing but the bright side
+of characters should be shown," he once remarked to Malone, "we should
+sit down in despondency, and think it utterly impossible to imitate them
+in any thing[4]." It was this conscientious freedom, we believe, that
+has, more than any other cause, subjected the Lives of the Poets to
+severe censure. We readily avow this our belief, since we are persuaded
+that it is now generally admitted by all, but those who are influenced
+by an irreligious or a party spirit. We might diffuse these remarks to
+a wide extent, by allusions to the opinions of different authors on the
+Lives, and by critiques on the separate memoirs themselves; but we will
+not longer occupy our readers, since the literary history of the Lives
+has been elsewhere so fully detailed, and is now so almost universally
+known[5].
+
+What we have already advanced, has chiefly been with a view to invite to
+the perusal of a work, which, for sound criticism, instructive memoir,
+pleasing diction, and pure morality, must constitute the most lasting
+monument of Johnson's fame.
+
+[Footnote 1: See sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry.]
+
+[Footnote 2: See vol. vi. 153.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Rambler, 164.]
+
+[Footnote 4: See Malone's letter, in Boswell, iv. 55.]
+
+[Footnote 5: See Boswell; Dr. Drake's Literary Life of Johnson; and,
+since we dread not examination, Potter's Inquiry into some Passages in
+Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets; Graves's Recollections of Shenstone;
+Mitford's preface to Gray's works; Roscoe's preface to Pope's works, &c.]
+
+
+
+
+COWLEY
+
+The life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography, has
+been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of imagination
+and elegance of language have deservedly set him high in the ranks of
+literature; but his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has
+produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the
+character, not the life, of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail,
+that scarcely any thing is distinctly known, but all is shown confused
+and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.
+
+Abraham Cowley was born in the year one thousand six hundred and
+eighteen. His father was a grocer, whose condition Dr. Sprat conceals
+under the general appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably not
+have been less carefully suppressed, the omission of his name in the
+register of St. Dunstan's parish gives reason to suspect that his father
+was a sectary. Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his son, and,
+consequently, left him to the care of his mother; whom Wood represents
+as struggling earnestly to procure him a literary education, and who, as
+she lived to the age of eighty, had her solicitude rewarded, by seeing
+her son eminent, and, I hope, by seeing him fortunate, and partaking
+his prosperity. We know, at least, from Sprat's account, that he always
+acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues of filial gratitude.
+
+In the window of his mother's apartment lay Spenser's Fairy Queen; in
+which he very early took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms
+of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are
+the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and, perhaps, sometimes
+forgotten, produce that particular designation of mind, and propensity
+for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called
+genius. The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally
+determined to some particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great
+painter of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited
+by the perusal of Richardson's treatise.
+
+By his mother's solicitation he was admitted into Westminster school,
+where he was soon distinguished. He was wont, says Sprat, to relate,
+"that he had this defect in his memory at that time, that his teachers
+never could bring it to retain the ordinary rules of grammar."
+
+This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder.
+It is, surely, very difficult to tell any thing as it was heard, when
+Sprat could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though
+the book to which he prefixed his narrative, contained its confutation.
+A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual
+digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks,
+had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision
+made by nature for literary politeness. But, in the author's own honest
+relation, the marvel vanishes: he was, he says, such "an enemy to all
+constraint, that his master never could prevail on him to learn the
+rules without book." He does not tell, that he could not learn the
+rules; but that, being able to perform his exercises without them, and
+being an "enemy to constraint," he spared himself the labour.
+
+Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope, might be said "to
+lisp in numbers;" and have given such early proofs, not only of powers
+of language, but of comprehension of things, as, to more tardy minds,
+seems scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there
+is no doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only written, but
+printed, in his thirteenth year[6]; containing, with other poetical
+compositions, the Tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe, written when
+he was ten years old; and Constantia and Philetus, written two years
+after.
+
+While he was yet at school, he produced a comedy, called, Love's Riddle,
+though it was not published, till he had been some time at Cambridge.
+This comedy is of the pastoral kind, which requires no acquaintance with
+the living world, and, therefore, the time at which it was composed adds
+little to the wonders of Cowley's minority.
+
+In 1636, he was removed to Cambridge[7], where he continued his studies
+with great intenseness; for he is said to have written, while he was yet
+a young student, the greater part of his Davideis; a work of which the
+materials could not have been collected without the study of many years,
+but by a mind of the greatest vigour and activity.
+
+Two years after his settlement at Cambridge he published Love's Riddle,
+with a poetical dedication to sir Kenelm Digby, of whose acquaintance
+all his contemporaries seem to have been ambitious; and Naufragium
+Joculare, a comedy, written in Latin, but without due attention to
+the ancient models; for it is not loose verse, but mere prose. It
+was printed with a dedication in verse, to Dr. Comber, master of the
+college; but, having neither the facility of a popular, nor the accuracy
+of a learned work, it seems to be now universally neglected.
+
+At the beginning of the civil war, as the prince passed through
+Cambridge, in his way to York, he was entertained with a representation
+of the Guardian, a comedy, which, Cowley says, was neither written nor
+acted, but rough-drawn by him, and repeated by the scholars. That this
+comedy was printed during his absence from his country, he appears to
+have considered as injurious to his reputation; though, during the
+suppression of the theatres, it was sometimes privately acted with
+sufficient approbation.
+
+In 1643, being now master of arts, he was, by the prevalence of the
+parliament, ejected from Cambridge, and sheltered himself at St. John's
+college, in Oxford; where, as is said by Wood, he published a satire,
+called the Puritan and Papist, which was only inserted in the last
+collection of his works[8]; and so distinguished himself by the warmth
+of his loyalty and the elegance of his conversation, that he gained the
+kindness and confidence of those who attended the king, and, amongst
+others, of lord Falkland, whose notice cast a lustre on all to whom it
+was extended.
+
+About the time when Oxford was surrendered to the parliament, he
+followed the queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the lord
+Jermyn, afterwards earl of St. Alban's, and was employed in such
+correspondence as the royal cause required, and particularly in
+ciphering and deciphering the letters that passed between the king and
+queen; an employment of the highest confidence and honour. So wide was
+his province of intelligence, that, for several years, it filled all his
+days and two or three nights in the week.
+
+In the year 1647, his Mistress was published; for he imagined, as
+he declared in his preface to a subsequent edition, that "poets are
+scarcely thought freemen of their company without paying some duties, or
+obliging themselves to be true to love."
+
+This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to the
+fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful
+homage to his Laura, refined the manners of the lettered world, and
+filled Europe with love and poetry. But the basis of all excellence is
+truth: he that professes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a
+real lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness. Of Cowley, we
+are told by Barnes, who had means enough of information, that, whatever
+he may talk of his own inflammability, and the variety of characters by
+which his heart was divided, he, in reality, was in love but once, and
+then never had resolution to tell his passion.
+
+This consideration cannot but, abate, in some measure, the reader's
+esteem for the work and the author. To love excellence is natural; it
+is natural, likewise, for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an
+elaborate display of his own qualifications. The desire of pleasing has,
+in different men, produced actions of heroism, and effusions of wit; but
+it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet of an "airy
+nothing," and to quarrel as to write for what Cowley might have learned
+from his master Pindar, to call "the dream of a shadow."
+
+It is surely not difficult, in the solitude of a college, or in the
+bustle of the world, to find useful studies and serious employment. No
+man needs to be so burdened with life, as to squander it in voluntary
+dreams of fictitious occurrences. The man that sits down to suppose
+himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an
+elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never
+within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of
+his folly from him who praises beauty which he never saw; complains of
+jealousy which he never felt; supposes himself sometimes invited, and
+sometimes forsaken; fatigues his fancy, and ransacks his memory, for
+images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope, or the gloominess of
+despair; and dresses his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis, sometimes in
+flowers fading as her beauty, and sometimes in gems lasting as her
+virtues.
+
+At Paris, as secretary to lord Jermyn, he was engaged in transacting
+things of real importance with real men and real women, and, at that
+time, did not much employ his thoughts upon phantoms of gallantry. Some
+of his letters to Mr. Bennet, afterwards earl of Arlington, from April
+to December, in 1650, are preserved in Miscellanea Aulica, a collection
+of papers, published by Brown. These letters, being written, like those
+of other men, whose minds are more on things than words, contribute no
+otherwise to his reputation, than as they show him to have been above
+the affectation of unseasonable elegance, and to have known, that the
+business of a statesman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetorick.
+One passage, however, seems not unworthy of some notice. Speaking of the
+Scotch treaty, then in agitation: "The Scotch treaty," says he, "is the
+only thing now in which we are vitally concerned; I am one of the last
+hopers, and yet cannot now abstain from believing that an agreement will
+be made; all people upon the place incline to that of union. The Scotch
+will moderate something of the rigour of their demands; the mutual
+necessity of an accord is visible, the king is persuaded of it. And, to
+tell you the truth, which I take to be an argument above all the rest,
+Virgil has told the same thing to that purpose."
+
+This expression from a secretary of the present time would be considered
+as merely ludicrous, or, at most, as an ostentatious display of
+scholarship; but the manners of that time were so tinged with
+superstition, that I cannot but suspect Cowley of having consulted,
+on this great occasion, the Virgilian lots[9], and to have given some
+credit to the answer of his oracle.
+
+Some years afterwards, "business," says Sprat, "passed of course into
+other hands;" and Cowley, being no longer useful at Paris, was, in 1656,
+sent back into England, that, "under pretence of privacy and retirement,
+he might take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this
+nation."
+
+Soon after his return to London, he was seized by some messengers of the
+usurping powers, who were sent out in quest of another man; and, being
+examined, was put into confinement, from which he was not dismissed
+without the security of a thousand pounds, given by Dr. Scarborough.
+
+This year he published his poems, with a preface, in which he seems to
+have inserted something suppressed in subsequent editions, which was
+interpreted to denote some relaxation of his loyalty. In this preface he
+declares, that "his desire had been for some days past, and did still
+very vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of the American
+plantations, and to forsake this world for ever."
+
+From the obloquy which the appearance of submission to the usurpers
+brought upon him, his biographer has been very diligent to clear him,
+and, indeed, it does not seem to have lessened his reputation. His wish
+for retirement we can easily believe to be undissembled; a man harassed
+in one kingdom, and persecuted in another, who, after a course of
+business that employed all his days, and half his nights, in ciphering
+and deciphering, comes to his own country, and steps into a prison, will
+be willing enough to retire to some place of quiet and of safety. Yet
+let neither our reverence for a genius, nor our pity for a sufferer,
+dispose us to forget, that, if his activity was virtue, his retreat was
+cowardice[10].
+
+He then took upon himself the character of physician, still, according
+to Sprat, with intention "to dissemble the main design of his coming
+over;" and, as Mr. Wood relates, "complying with the men then in power,
+which was much taken notice of by the royal party, he obtained an order
+to be created doctor of physick; which being done to his mind, whereby
+he gained the ill will of some of his friends, he went into France
+again, having made a copy of verses on Oliver's death."
+
+This is no favourable representation, yet even in this not much wrong
+can be discovered. How far he complied with the men in power, is to be
+inquired before he can be blamed. It is not said, that he told them any
+secrets, or assisted them by intelligence or any other act. If he only
+promised to be quiet, that they in whose hands he was might free him
+from confinement, he did what no law of society prohibits.
+
+The man whose miscarriage in a just cause has put him in the power
+of his enemy may, without any violation of his integrity, regain his
+liberty, or preserve his life, by a promise of neutrality; for, the
+stipulation gives the enemy nothing which he had not before: the
+neutrality of a captive may be always secured by his imprisonment or
+death. He that is at the disposal of another may not promise to aid him
+in any injurious act, because no power can compel active obedience. He
+may engage to do nothing, but not to do ill.
+
+There is reason to think that Cowley promised little. It does not appear
+that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be trusted without
+security, for the bond of his bail was never cancelled; nor that it made
+him think himself secure, for, at that dissolution of government which
+followed the death of Oliver, he returned into France, where he resumed
+his former station, and staid till the restoration[11].
+
+"He continued," says his biographer, "under these bonds, till the
+general deliverance;" it is, therefore, to be supposed, that he did not
+go to France, and act again for the king, without the consent of his
+bondsman; that he did not show his loyalty at the hazard of his friend,
+but by his friend's permission.
+
+Of the verses on Oliver's death, in which Wood's narrative seems to
+imply something encomiastick, there has been no appearance. There is a
+discourse concerning his government, indeed, with verses intermixed, but
+such as certainly gained its author no friends among the abettors of
+usurpation.
+
+A doctor of physick, however, he was made at Oxford, in December, 1657;
+and, in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an account
+has been given by Dr. Birch, he appears busy among the experimental
+philosophers, with the title of Dr. Cowley.
+
+There is no reason for supposing that he ever attempted practice: but
+his preparatory studies have contributed something to the honour of his
+country. Considering botany as necessary to a physician, he retired into
+Kent to gather plants; and as the predominance of a favourite study
+affects all subordinate operations of the intellect, botany, in the mind
+of Cowley, turned into poetry. He composed, in Latin, several books on
+plants, of which the first and second display the qualities of herbs, in
+elegiac verse; the third and fourth, the beauties of flowers, in various
+measures; and the fifth and sixth, the uses of trees, in heroick
+numbers.
+
+At the same time were produced, from the same university, the two great
+poets, Cowley and Milton, of dissimilar genius, of opposite principles;
+but concurring in the cultivation of Latin poetry, in which the English,
+till their works and May's poem appeared[12], seemed unable to contest
+the palm with any other of the lettered nations.
+
+If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared, (for May I
+hold to be superiour to both,) the advantage seems to lie on the side
+of Cowley. Milton is generally content to express the thoughts of the
+ancients in their language; Cowley, without much loss of purity or
+elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.
+
+At the restoration, after all the diligence of his long service, and
+with consciousness not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity
+of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and, that
+he might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a song of triumph. But
+this was a time of such general hope, that great numbers were inevitably
+disappointed; and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed. He had
+been promised, by both Charles the first and second, the mastership of
+the Savoy, "but he lost it," says Wood, "by certain persons, enemies to
+the muses."
+
+The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having by such
+alteration, as he thought proper, fitted his old comedy of the Guardian
+for the stage, he produced it[13], under the title of the Cutter of
+Coleman street[14]. It was treated on the stage with great severity, and
+was afterwards censured as a satire on the king's party.
+
+Mr. Dryden, who went with Mr. Sprat to the first exhibition, related
+to Mr. Dennis, "that, when they told Cowley how little favour had been
+shown him, he received the news of his ill success, not with so much
+firmness as might have been expected from so great a man."
+
+What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley discovered, cannot
+be known. He that misses his end will never be as much pleased as he
+that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure to
+himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man, perhaps,
+has a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparison, to throw
+the whole blame upon his judges, and totally to exclude diffidence and
+shame by a haughty consciousness of his own excellence.
+
+For the rejection of this play, it is difficult now to find the reason:
+it certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention
+and exciting merriment. From the charge of disaffection he exculpates
+himself, in his preface, by observing, how unlikely it is, that, having
+followed the royal family through all their distresses, "he should
+choose the time of their restoration to begin a quarrel with them." It
+appears, however, from the Theatrical Register of Downes, the prompter,
+to have been popularly considered as a satire on the royalists.
+
+That he might shorten this tedious suspense, he published his
+pretensions and his discontent, in an ode called the Complaint; in which
+he styles himself the _melancholy_ Cowley. This met with the usual
+fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than
+pity.
+
+These unlucky incidents are brought, maliciously enough, together in
+some stanzas, written about that time on the choice of a laureate; a
+mode of satire, by which, since it was first introduced by Suckling,
+perhaps, every generation of poets has been teased.
+
+  Savoy-missing Cowley came into the court,
+  Making apologies for his bad play;
+  Every one gave him so good a report,
+  That Apollo gave heed to all he could say:
+  Nor would he have had, 'tis thought, a rebuke,
+  Unless he had done some notable folly;
+  Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,
+  Or printed his pitiful Melancholy.
+
+His vehement desire of retirement now came again upon him. "Not
+finding," says the morose Wood, "that preferment conferred upon him
+which he expected, while others for their money carried away most
+places, he retired discontented into Surrey."
+
+"He was now," says the courtly Sprat, "weary of the vexations and
+formalities of an active condition. He had been perplexed with a long
+compliance to foreign manners. He was satiated with the arts of a court;
+which sort of life, though his virtue made it innocent to him, yet
+nothing could make it quiet. Those were the reasons that moved him to
+follow the violent inclination of his own mind, which, in the greatest
+throng of his former business, had still called upon him, and
+represented to him the true delights of solitary studies, of temperate
+pleasures, and a moderate revenue below the malice and flatteries of
+fortune."
+
+So differently are things seen! and so differently are they shown!
+But actions are visible, though motives are secret. Cowley certainly
+retired; first to Barn-elms, and afterwards to Chertsey, in Surrey. He
+seems, however, to have lost part of his dread of the "hum of men[15]."
+He thought himself now safe enough from intrusion, without the defence of
+mountains and oceans; and, instead of seeking shelter in America, wisely
+went only so far from the bustle of life as that he might easily find
+his way back, when solitude should grow tedious. His retreat was, at
+first, but slenderly accommodated; yet he soon obtained, by the interest
+of the earl of St. Alban's and the duke of Buckingham, such a lease of
+the queen's lands, as afforded him an ample income[16].
+
+By the lovers of virtue and of wit it will be solicitously asked, if
+he now was happy. Let them peruse one of his letters, accidentally
+preserved by Peck, which I recommend to the consideration of all that
+may, hereafter, pant for solitude.
+
+"TO DR. THOMAS SPRAT.
+
+"Chertsey, May 21, 1665.
+
+"The first night that I came hither I caught so great a cold, with a
+defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days. And, two after,
+had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet unable to move
+or turn myself in my bed. This is my personal fortune here to begin
+with. And, besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and have my
+meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in by my neighbours. What
+this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it
+can end in nothing less than hanging. Another misfortune has been, and
+stranger than all the rest, that you have broke your word with me, and
+failed to come, even though you told Mr. Bois that you would. This is
+what they call 'Monstri simile.' I do hope to recover my late hurt so
+farre within five or six days, (though it be uncertain yet whether I
+shall ever recover it,) as to walk about again. And then, methinks, you
+and I and 'the dean' might be very merry upon St. Ann's hill. You might
+very conveniently come hither the way of Hampton Town, lying there one
+night. I write this in pain, and can say no more: 'Verbum sapienti.'"
+
+He did not long enjoy the pleasure, or suffer the uneasiness, of
+solitude; for he died at the Porch-house[17] in Chertsey, in 1667, in
+the forty-ninth year of his age.
+
+He was buried, with great pomp, near Chaucer and Spenser; and king
+Charles pronounced, "that Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better
+man in England." He is represented, by Dr. Sprat, as the most amiable of
+mankind; and this posthumous praise may safely be credited, as it has
+never been contradicted by envy or by faction.
+
+Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to the
+narrative of Dr. Sprat; who, writing when the feuds of the civil war
+were yet recent, and the minds of either party were easily irritated,
+was obliged to pass over many transactions in general expressions, and
+to leave curiosity often unsatisfied. What he did not tell, cannot,
+however, now be known; I must, therefore, recommend the perusal of
+his work, to which my narration can be considered only as a slender
+supplement.
+
+Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and,
+instead of tracing intellectual pleasures in the minds of men, paid
+their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much
+praised, and too much neglected at another.
+
+Wit, like all other things, subject by their nature to the choice of
+man, has its changes and fashions, and, at different times, takes
+different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century,
+appeared a race of writers, that may be termed the metaphysical poets;
+of whom in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to
+give some account.
+
+The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and, to show their learning
+was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme,
+instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and, very often, such
+verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the
+modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by
+counting the syllables.
+
+If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry, 'technae
+mimaetikhae', an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong,
+lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have
+imitated any thing; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted
+the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect.
+
+Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden
+confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne
+in wit; but maintains, that they surpass him in poetry.
+
+If wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has been often
+thought, but was never before so well expressed," they certainly never
+attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular in
+their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account
+of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural
+dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of
+language.
+
+If, by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered as
+wit which is, at once, natural and new, that which, though not obvious,
+is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that,
+which he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind
+the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new,
+but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just;
+and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more
+frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found.
+
+But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more
+rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of "discordia
+concors;" a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult
+resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they
+have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by
+violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations,
+comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty
+surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought,
+and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
+
+From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred,
+that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections.
+As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising,
+they had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment which enables us to
+conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they
+never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done; but
+wrote rather as beholders, than partakers of human nature; as beings
+looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as epicurean
+deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of
+life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of
+fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say
+what they hoped had never been said before.
+
+Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetick; for they
+never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which, at
+once, fills the whole mind, and of which, the first effect is sudden
+astonishment, and the second, rational admiration. Sublimity is produced
+by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always
+general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in
+descriptions not descending to minuteness. It is with great propriety
+that subtilty, which, in its original import, means exility of
+particles, is taken, in its metaphorical meaning, for nicety of
+distinction. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have
+little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former
+observation. Their attempts were always analytick; they broke every
+image into fragments; and could no more represent, by their slender
+conceits, and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature, or the
+scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit
+the wide effulgence of a summer noon.
+
+What they wanted, however, of the sublime, they endeavoured to supply by
+hyperbole; their amplification had no limits; they left not only
+reason but fancy behind them; and produced combinations of confused
+magnificence, that not only could not be credited, but could not be
+imagined.
+
+Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost;
+if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they,
+likewise, sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were
+far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan
+it was, at least, necessary to read and think. No man could be born a
+metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions
+copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by
+traditional imagery, and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme, and
+volubility of syllables[18].
+
+In perusing the works of this race of authors, the mind is exercised
+either by recollection or inquiry; either something already learned is
+to be retrieved, or something new is to be examined. If their greatness
+seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination is
+not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison
+are employed; and, in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity
+has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes
+found buried, perhaps, in grossness of expression, but useful to
+those who know their value; and such as, when they are expanded to
+perspicuity, and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which
+have more propriety, though less copiousness of sentiment.
+
+This kind of writing, which was, I believe, borrowed from Marino and his
+followers, had been recommended by the example of Donne, a man of very
+extensive and various knowledge; and by Jonson, whose manner resembled
+that of Donne more in the ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of
+his sentiments.
+
+When their reputation was high, they had, undoubtedly, more imitators
+than time has left behind. Their immediate successours, of whom any
+remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, Denham,
+Cowley, Cleiveland, and Milton. Denham and Waller sought another way
+to fame, by improving the harmony of our numbers. Milton tried the
+metaphysick style only in his lines upon Hobson, the carrier. Cowley
+adopted it, and excelled his predecessors, having as much sentiment, and
+more musick. Suckling neither improved versification, nor abounded in
+conceits. The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling
+could not reach it, and Milton disdained it.
+
+Critical remarks are not easily understood without examples; and I have,
+therefore, collected instances of the modes of writing by which this
+species of poets, for poets they were called by themselves and their
+admirers, was eminently distinguished.
+
+As the authors of this race were, perhaps, more desirous of being
+admired than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits from
+recesses of learning, not very much frequented by common readers of
+poetry. Thus Cowley, on knowledge:
+
+  The sacred tree 'midst the fair orchard grew;
+  The phoenix, truth, did on it rest,
+  And built his perfum'd nest:
+  That right Porphyrian tree which did true logic shew;
+  Each leaf did learned notions give,
+  And th' apples were demonstrative;
+  So clear their colour and divine,
+  The very shade they cast did other lights outshine.
+
+On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age:
+
+  Love was with thy life entwin'd,
+  Close as heat with fire is join'd;
+  A powerful brand prescrib'd the date
+  Of thine, like Meleager's fate
+
+  Th' antiperistasis of age
+  More enflam'd thy amorous rage.
+
+In the following verses we have an allusion to a rabbinical opinion
+concerning manna:
+
+  Variety I ask not: give me one
+  To live perpetually upon.
+  The person love does to us fit,
+  Like manna, has the taste of all in it.
+
+Thus Donne shows his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastick verses:
+
+  In every thing there naturally grows
+  A balsamum to keep it fresh and new,
+  If 'twere not injur'd by extrinsique blows;
+  Your youth and beauty are this balm in you.
+  But you, of learning and religion,
+  And virtue and such ingredients, have made
+  A mithridate, whose operation
+  Keeps off, or cures what can be done or said.
+
+Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, have
+something in them too scholastick, they are not inelegant:
+
+  This twilight of two years, not past nor next,
+  Some emblem is of me, or I of this,
+  Who, meteor-like, of stuff and form perplext,
+  Whose what and where in disputation is,
+  If I should call me any thing, should miss.
+  I sum the years and me, and find me not
+  Debtor to th' old, nor creditor to th' new.
+  That cannot say, my thanks I have forgot;
+  Nor trust I this with hopes; and yet scarce true
+  This bravery is, since these times shew'd me you.
+
+Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne's reflection upon man as a
+microcosm:
+
+  If men be worlds, there is in every one
+  Something to answer in some proportion
+  All the world's riches: and in good men, this
+  Virtue, our form's form, and our soul's soul, is.
+
+Of thoughts so far-fetched, as to be not only unexpected, but unnatural,
+all their books are full.
+
+To a lady, who wrote poesies for rings:
+
+  They, who above do various circles find,
+  Say, like a ring, th' equator heaven does bind.
+  When heaven shall be adorn'd by thee,
+  (Which then more heaven than 'tis will be,)
+  'Tis thou must write the poesy there,
+  For it wanteth one as yet,
+  Then the sun pass through 't twice a year,
+  The sun, which is esteem'd the god of wit.     COWLEY.
+
+The difficulties which have been raised about identity in philosophy,
+are, by Cowley, with still more perplexity applied to love:
+
+  Five years ago (says story) I lov'd you,
+  For which you call me most inconstant now;
+  Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man;
+  For I am not the same that I was then:
+  No flesh is now the same 'twas then in me;
+  And that my mind is chang'd yourself may see.
+  The same thoughts to retain still, and intents,
+  Were more inconstant far; for accidents
+  Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove,
+  If from one subject they t' another move;
+  My members, then, the father members were,
+  From whence these take their birth which now are here.
+  If then this body love what th' other did,
+  'Twere incest, which by nature is forbid.
+
+The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, compared to
+travels through different countries:
+
+  Hast thou not found each woman's breast
+  (The land where thou hast travelled)
+  Either by savages possest,
+  Or wild, and uninhabited?
+  What joy could'st take, or what repose,
+  In countries so unciviliz'd as those?
+
+  Lust, the scorching dogstar, here
+  Rages with immoderate heat;
+  Whilst pride, the rugged northern bear,
+  In others makes the cold too great.
+  And where these are temperate known,
+  The soil's all barren sand, or rocky stone.      COWLEY.
+
+A lover, burnt up by his affection, is compared to Egypt:
+
+  The fate of Egypt I sustain,
+  And never feel the dew of rain
+  From clouds which in the head appear;
+  But all my too much moisture owe
+  To overflowings of the heart below.              COWLEY.
+
+The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury,
+and rites of sacrifice:
+
+  And yet this death of mine, I fear,
+  Will ominous to her appear:
+  When sound in every other part,
+  Her sacrifice is found without an heart.
+  For the last tempest of my death
+  Shall sigh out that too, with my breath.
+
+That the chaos was harmonized, has been recited of old; but whence the
+different sounds arose remained for a modern to discover:
+
+  Th' ungovern'd parts no correspondence knew;
+  An artless war from thwarting motions grew;
+  Till they to number and fixt rules were brought.
+  Water and air he for the tenor chose;
+  Earth made the base; the treble,
+  flame arose.                                    COWLEY.
+
+The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account; but Donne has
+extended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily understood, they
+may be read again:
+
+  On a round ball
+  A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
+  An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
+  And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.
+
+  So doth each tear,
+  Which thee doth wear,
+  A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
+  Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflow
+  This world, by waters sent from thee my heaven dissolved so.
+
+On reading the following lines, the reader may, perhaps, cry out,
+"Confusion worse confounded:"
+
+  Here lies a she-sun, and a he-moon here,
+  She gives the best light to his sphere,
+  Or each is both, and all, and so
+  They unto one another nothing owe.                DONNE.
+
+Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a telescope?
+
+  Though God be our true glass, through which we see
+  All, since the being of all things is he,
+  Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive
+  Things in proportion fit, by perspective
+  Deeds of good men; for by their living here,
+  Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.
+
+Who would imagine it possible, that in a very few lines so many remote
+ideas could be brought together?
+
+  Since 'tis my doom, love's undershrieve,
+  Why this reprieve?
+  Why doth my she-advowson fly
+  Incumbency?
+  To sell thyself dost thou intend
+  By candle's end,
+  And hold the contrast thus in doubt,
+  Life's taper out?
+  Think but how soon the market fails,
+  Your sex lives faster than the males;
+  And if, to measure age's span,
+  The sober Julian were th' account of man,
+  Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.           CLEIVELAND.
+
+Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples:
+
+  By every wind that comes this way,
+  Send me, at least, a sigh or two,
+  Such and so many I'll repay
+  As shall themselves make winds to get to you.     COWLEY.
+
+  In tears I'll waste these eyes,
+  By love so vainly fed;
+  So lust of old the deluge punished.               COWLEY.
+
+  All arm'd in brass, the richest dress of war,
+  (A dismal glorious sight!) he shone afar.
+  The sun himself started with sudden fright,
+  To see his beams return so dismal bright.         COWLEY.
+
+An universal consternation:
+
+  His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws
+  Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about,
+  Lashing his angry tail, and roaring out.
+  Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;
+  Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;
+  Silence and horror fill the place around;
+  Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound.        COWLEY.
+
+Their fictions were often violent and unnatural.
+
+Of his mistress bathing:
+
+  The fish around her crowded, as they do
+  To the false light that treacherous fishers shew,
+  And all with as much ease might taken be,
+  As she at first took me;
+  For ne'er did light so clear
+  Among the waves appear,
+  Though every night the sun himself set there.     COWLEY.
+
+The poetical effect of a lover's name upon glass:
+
+  My name engrav'd herein
+  Doth contribute my firmness to this glass;
+  Which, ever since that charm, hath been
+  As hard as that which grav'd it was.              DONNE.
+
+Their conceits were sentiments slight and trifling. On an inconstant
+woman:
+
+  He enjoys the calmy sunshine now,
+  And no breath stirring hears;
+  In the clear heaven of thy brow,
+  No smallest cloud appears.
+  He sees thee gentle, fair and gay,
+  And trusts the faithless April of thy May.        COWLEY
+
+Upon a paper, written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire:
+
+  Nothing yet in thee is seen,
+  But when a genial heat warms thee within,
+  A new-born wood of various lines there grows:
+  Here buds an L, and there a B;
+  Here sprouts a V, and there a T;
+  And all the flourishing letters stand in rows.      COWLEY.
+
+As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire, whether
+their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether
+they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.
+
+Physick and chirurgery for a lover:
+
+  Gently, ah gently, madam, touch
+  The wound, which you yourself have made;
+  That pain must needs be very much,
+  Which makes me of your hand afraid,
+  Cordials of pity give me now,
+  For I too weak for purgings grow.                   COWLEY.
+
+The world and a clock:
+
+  Mahol th' inferior world's fantastic face
+  Thro' all the turns of matter's maze did trace;
+  Great nature's well-set clock in pieces took;
+  On all the springs and smallest wheels did look
+  Of life and motion, and with equal art
+  Made up the whole again of every part.             COWLEY.
+
+A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not want its
+due honour, Cleiveland has paralleled it with the sun:
+
+  The moderate value of our guiltless ore
+  Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore;
+  Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine
+  Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
+  These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,
+  Than a few embers, for a deity.
+  Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
+  No sun, but warm 's devotion at our fire:
+  He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
+  Our profound Vulcan 'bove that wagoner.
+  For wants he heat, or light? or would have store
+  Of both? 'tis here: and what can suns give more?
+  Nay, what's the sun, but in a different name,
+  A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame!
+  Then let this truth reciprocally run,
+  The sun's heaven's coalery, and coals our sun.
+
+Death, a voyage:
+
+  No family
+  E'er rigg'd a soul for heaven's discovery,
+  With whom more venturers might boldly dare
+  Venture their stakes, with him in joy to share.        DONNE.
+
+Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such
+as no figures or license can reconcile to the understanding.
+
+A lover neither dead nor alive:
+
+  Then down I laid my head,
+  Down on cold earth; and for awhile was dead,
+  And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled;
+  Ah, sottish soul, said I,
+  When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
+  Fool to resume her broken chain,
+  And row her galley here again!
+  Fool, to that body to return
+  Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn!
+  Once dead, how can it be,
+  Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
+  That thou should'st come to live it o'er again in me?   COWLEY.
+
+A lover's heart, a hand grenado:
+
+  Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come
+  Into the self-same room;
+  'Twill tear and blow up all within,
+  Like a grenado shot into a magazin.
+  Then shall love keep the ashes and torn parts,
+  Of both our broken hearts;
+  Shall out of both one new one make;
+  From hers th' allay, from mine the metal take.         COWLEY.
+
+To poetical propagation of light;
+
+  The prince's favour is diffus'd o'er all,
+  From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall:
+  Then from those wombs of stars, the bride's bright eyes,
+  At every glance a constellation flies,
+  And sowes the court with stars, and doth prevent,
+  In light and power, the all-ey'd firmament:
+  First her eye kindles other ladies' eyes,
+  Then from their beams their jewels' lustres rise:
+  And from their jewels torches do take fire,
+  And all is warmth, and light, and good desire.        DONNE.
+
+They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance of
+dress, and, therefore, miss the notice and the praise which are often
+gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their
+thoughts.
+
+That a mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality, is, by
+Cowley, thus expressed:
+
+  Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand,
+  Than woman can be plac'd by nature's hand;
+  And I must needs, I'm sure, a loser be,
+  To change thee, as thou'rt there, for very thee.
+
+That prayer and labour should cooperate, are thus taught by Donne:
+
+  In none but us are such mix'd engines found,
+  As hands of double office: for the ground
+  We till with them; and them to heaven we raise:
+  Who prayerless labours, or, without this, prays,
+  Doth but one half, that's none.
+
+By the same author, a common topick, the danger of procrastination, is
+thus illustrated:
+
+  That which I should have begun
+  In my youth's morning, now late must be done;
+  And I, as giddy travellers must do,
+  Which stray or sleep all day, and, having lost
+  Light and strength, dark and tir'd must then ride post.
+
+All that man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity is
+comprehended by Donne in the following lines:
+
+  Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie;
+  After enabled but to suck and cry.
+  Think, when 'twas grown to most, 'twas a poor inn,
+  A province pack'd up in two yards of skin,
+  And that usurp'd, or threaten'd with a rage
+  Of sicknesses, or their true mother, age.
+  But think that death hath now enfranchis'd thee;
+  Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty;
+  Think, that a rusty piece discharg'd is flown
+  In pieces, and the bullet is his own,
+  And freely flies: this to thy soul allow,
+  Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatch'd but now.
+
+They were sometimes indelicate and disgusting. Cowley thus apostrophises
+beauty:
+
+  Thou tyrant, which leav'st no man free!
+  Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be!
+  Thou murderer, which hast kill'd; and devil, which would'st damn me!
+
+Thus he addresses his mistress:
+
+  Thou who, in many a propriety,
+  So truly art the sun to me,
+  Add one more likeness, which I'm sure you can,
+  And let me and my sun beget a man.
+
+Thus he represents the meditations of a lover:
+
+  Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracks have been
+  So much as of original sin,
+
+  Such charms thy beauty wears, as might
+  Desires in dying confest saints excite.
+  Thou with strange adultery
+  Dost in each breast a brothel keep;
+  Awake, all men do lust for thee,
+  And some enjoy thee when they sleep.
+
+The true taste of tears:
+
+  Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come,
+  And take my tears, which are love's wine,
+  And try your mistress' tears at home;
+  For all are false, that taste not just like mine. DONNE.
+
+This is yet more indelicate:
+
+  As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,
+  As that which from chaf'd musk-cat's pores doth trill,
+  As the almighty balm of th' early east;
+  Such are the sweet drops of my mistress' breast.
+  And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
+  They seem no sweat-drops, but pearl coronets:
+  Rank, sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles.    DONNE.
+
+Their expressions sometimes raise horrour, when they intend, perhaps, to
+be pathetick:
+
+  As men in hell are from diseases free,
+  So from all other ills am I,
+  Free from their known formality:
+  But all pains eminently lie in thee.              COWLEY.
+
+They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which
+they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were
+popular. Bacon remarks, that some falsehoods are continued by tradition,
+because they supply commodious allusions.
+
+  It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke:
+  In vain it something would have spoke;
+  The love within too strong for't was,
+  Like poison put into a Venice-glass.              COWLEY.
+
+In forming descriptions, they looked out, not for images, but for
+conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to
+adorn. Dryden's Night is well known; Donne's is as follows:
+
+  Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest:
+  Time's dead low-water; when all minds divest
+  To-morrow's business; when the labourers have
+  Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,
+  Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
+  Now when the client, whose last hearing is
+  To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
+  Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them then
+  Again by death, although sad watch he keep,
+  Doth practise dying by a little sleep;
+  Thou at this midnight seest me.
+
+It must be, however, confessed of these writers, that if they are upon
+common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtile; yet, where
+scholastick speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and
+acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon hope shows
+an unequalled fertility of invention:
+
+  Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is,
+  Alike if it succeed and if it miss;
+  Whom good or ill does equally confound,
+  And both the horns of fate's dilemma wound;
+  Vain shadow! which dost vanish quite,
+  Both at full noon and perfect night!
+  The stars have not a possibility
+  Of blessing thee;
+  If things then from their end we happy call,
+  'Tis hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
+  Hope, thou bold taster of delight,
+  Who, whilst thou should'st but taste, devour'st it quite!
+  Thou bring'st us an estate, yet leav'st us poor,
+  By clogging it with legacies before!
+  The joys which we entire should wed,
+  Come deflower'd virgins to our bed;
+  Good fortunes without gain imported be,
+  Such mighty custom's paid to thee;
+  For joy, like wine, kept close, does better taste;
+  If it take air before its spirits waste.
+
+To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that
+stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether
+absurdity or ingenuity has better claim:
+
+  Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
+  Though I must go, endure not yet
+  A breach, but an expansion,
+  Like gold to airy thinness beat.
+  If they be two, they are two so
+  As stiff twin compasses are two;
+  Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
+  To move, but doth if th' other do.
+  And though it in the centre sit,
+  Yet, when the other far doth roam,
+  It leans, and hearkens after it,
+  And grows erect, as that comes home.
+  Such wilt thou be to me, who must
+  Like th' other foot obliquely run,
+  Thy firmness makes my circle just,
+  And makes me end where I begun.              DONNE[19].
+
+In all these examples it is apparent, that whatever is improper or
+vitious is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature, in pursuit of
+something new and strange; and that the writers fail to give delight by
+their desire of exciting admiration.
+
+Having thus endeavoured to exhibit a general representation of the style
+and sentiments of the metaphysical poets, it is now proper to examine,
+particularly, the works of Cowley, who was almost the last of that race,
+and undoubtedly the best.
+
+His miscellanies contain a collection of short compositions, written
+some as they were dictated by a mind at leisure, and some as they were
+called forth by different occasions; with great variety of style and
+sentiment, from burlesque levity to awful grandeur. Such an assemblage
+of diversified excellence no other poet has hitherto afforded. To choose
+the best, among many good, is one of the most hazardous attempts of
+criticism. I know not whether Scaliger himself has persuaded many
+readers to join with him in his preference of the two favourite odes,
+which he estimates, in his raptures, at the value of a kingdom. I will,
+however, venture to recommend Cowley's first piece, which ought to be
+inscribed, To my Muse, for want of which the second couplet is without
+reference. When the title is added, there will still remain a defect;
+for every piece ought to contain, in itself, whatever is necessary to
+make it intelligible. Pope has some epitaphs without names; which are,
+therefore, epitaphs to be let, occupied, indeed, for the present, but
+hardly appropriated.
+
+The ode on wit is almost without a rival. It was about the time of
+Cowley, that _wit_, which had been, till then, used for _intellection_,
+in contradistinction to _will_, took the meaning, whatever it be, which
+it now bears.
+
+Of all the passages in which poets have exemplified their own precepts,
+none will easily be found of greater excellence than that in which
+Cowley condemns exuberance of wit:
+
+  Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part,
+  That shews more cost than art.
+  Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear;
+  Rather than all things wit, let none be there.
+  Several lights will not be seen,
+  If there be nothing else between.
+  Men doubt, because they stand so thick i'th' sky,
+  If those be stars which paint the galaxy.
+
+In his verses to lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to
+praise, there are, as there must be in all Cowley's compositions, some
+striking thoughts, but they are not well wrought. His elegy on sir
+Henry Wotton is vigorous and happy; the series of thoughts is easy and
+natural; and the conclusion, though a little weakened by the intrusion
+of Alexander, is elegant and forcible.
+
+It may be remarked, that in this elegy, and in most of his
+encomiastick poems, he has forgotten or neglected to name his heroes.
+
+In his poem on the death of Hervey, there is much praise, but little
+passion; a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious
+privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet
+called forth to action can display. He knew how to distinguish, and how
+to commend, the qualities of his companion; but, when he wishes to make
+us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining
+how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It
+is the odd fate of this thought to be the worse for being true. The
+bay-leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as, therefore, this property
+was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at
+ease that could attend to such minuteness of physiology. But the power
+of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the
+understanding.
+
+The Chronicle is a composition unrivalled and alone: such gaiety of
+fancy, such facility of expression, such varied similitude, such a
+succession of images, and such a dance of words, it is in vain to
+expect, except from Cowley. His strength always appears in his agility;
+his volatility is not the flutter of a light, but the bound of an
+elastick mind. His levity never leaves his learning behind it; the
+moralist, the politician, and the critick, mingle their influence even
+in this airy frolick of genius. To such a performance Suckling could
+have brought the gaiety, but not the knowledge; Dryden could have
+supplied the knowledge, but not the gaiety.
+
+The verses to Davenant, which are vigorously begun and happily
+concluded, contain some hints of criticism very justly conceived
+and happily expressed. Cowley's critical abilities have not been
+sufficiently observed: the few decisions and remarks, which his prefaces
+and his notes on the Davideis supply, were, at that time, accessions
+to English literature, and show such skill as raises our wish for more
+examples.
+
+The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing specimen of the
+familiar descending to the burlesque.
+
+His two metrical disquisitions _for_ and _against_ reason are no mean
+specimens of metaphysical poetry. The stanzas against knowledge produce
+little conviction. In those which are intended to exalt the human
+faculties, reason has its proper task assigned it; that of judging, not
+of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation. In the verses for
+reason, is a passage which Bentley, in the only English verses which
+he is known to have written, seems to have copied, though with the
+inferiority of an imitator.
+
+  The holy book like the eighth sphere doth shine
+  With thousand lights of truth divine,
+  So numberless the stars, that to our eye
+  It makes all but one galaxy.
+  Yet reason must assist too; for, in seas
+  So vast and dangerous as these,
+  Our course by stars above we cannot know
+  Without the compass too below.
+
+After this, says Bentley[20]:
+
+  Who travels in religious jars,
+  Truth mix'd with error, shade with rays,
+  Like Whiston wanting pyx or stars,
+  In ocean wide or sinks or strays.
+
+Cowley seems to have had what Milton is believed to have wanted, the
+skill to rate his own performances by their just value, and has,
+therefore, closed his miscellanies with the verses upon Crashaw, which
+apparently excel all that have gone before them, and in which there are
+beauties which common authors may justly think not only above their
+attainment, but above their ambition.
+
+To the miscellanies succeed the Anacreontiques, or paraphrastical
+translations of some little poems, which pass, however justly, under
+the name of Anacreon. Of these songs dedicated to festivity and gaiety,
+in which even the morality is voluptuous, and which teach nothing but
+the enjoyment of the present day, he has given rather a pleasing, than
+a faithful representation, having retained their sprightliness, but
+lost their simplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope,
+has admitted the decoration of some modern graces, by which he is
+undoubtedly more amiable to common readers, and, perhaps, if they would
+honestly declare their own perceptions, to far the greater part of those
+whom courtesy and ignorance are content to style the learned.
+
+These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than any
+other of Cowley's works. The diction shows nothing of the mould of time,
+and the sentiments are at no great distance from our present habitudes
+of thought. Real mirth must be always natural, and nature is uniform.
+Men have been wise in very different modes; but they have always laughed
+the same way.
+
+Levity of thought naturally produced familiarity of language, and the
+familiar part of language continues long the same; the dialogue of
+comedy, when it is transcribed from popular manners, and real life, is
+read, from age to age, with equal pleasure. The artifices of inversion,
+by which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by
+which new words, or meanings of words, are introduced, is practised,
+not by those who talk to be understood, but by those who write to be
+admired.
+
+The Anacreontiques, therefore, of Cowley, give now all the pleasure
+which they ever gave. If he was formed by nature for one kind of writing
+more than for another, his power seems to have been greatest in the
+familiar and the festive.
+
+The next class of his poems is called the Mistress, of which it is not
+necessary to select any particular pieces for praise or censure.
+They have all the same beauties and faults, and nearly in the same
+proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with
+copiousness of learning; and it is truly asserted by Sprat, that the
+plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, so that the
+reader is commonly surprised into some improvement. But, considered as
+the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend
+them. They are neither courtly nor pathetick, have neither gallantry nor
+fondness. His praises are too far-sought, and too hyperbolical, either
+to express love, or to excite it; every stanza is crowded with darts
+and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled souls, and with broken
+hearts.
+
+The principal artifice by which the Mistress is filled with conceits,
+is very copiously displayed by Addison. Love is by Cowley, as by other
+poets, expressed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is
+true of real fire is said of love, or figurative fire, the same word in
+the same sentence retaining both significations. Thus, "observing the
+cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and, at the same time, their power
+of producing love in him, he considers them as burning-glasses made of
+ice. Finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love,
+he concludes the torrid zone to be habitable. Upon the dying of a tree
+on which he had cut his loves, he observes that his flames had burnt up
+and withered the tree."
+
+These conceits Addison calls mixed wit; that is, wit which consists of
+thoughts true in one sense of the expression, and false in the other.
+Addison's representation is sufficiently indulgent: that confusion of
+images may entertain for a moment; but, being unnatural, it soon grows
+wearisome. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented it;
+but, not to mention the ancients, he might have found it full-blown in
+modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro:
+
+  Aspice quam variis distringar, Lesbia, curis!
+  Uror, et heu! nostro manat ab igne liquor:
+  Sum Nilus, sumque Aetna simul; restringite flammas
+  O lacrimae, aut lacrimas ebibe, flamma, meas.
+
+One of the severe theologians of that time censured him, as having
+published "a book of profane and lascivious verses." From the charge of
+profaneness, the constant tenour of his life, which seems to have been
+eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions, which
+discover no irreverence of religion, must defend him; but that the
+accusation of lasciviousness is unjust, the perusal of his work will
+sufficiently evince.
+
+Cowley's Mistress has no power of seduction: she "plays round the head,
+but reaches not the heart." Her beauty and absence, her kindness and
+cruelty, her disdain and inconstancy, produce no correspondence of
+emotion. His poetical account of the virtues of plants, and colours of
+flowers, is not perused with more sluggish frigidity. The compositions
+are such as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire
+by a philosophical rhymer, who had only heard of another sex; for they
+turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman
+but as the subject for his task, we sometimes esteem as learned, and
+sometimes despise as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always
+condemn as unnatural.
+
+The Pindarique odes are now to be considered; a species of composition,
+which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in "his list of the
+lost inventions of antiquity," and which he has made a bold and vigorous
+attempt to recover.
+
+The purpose with which he has paraphrased an Olympick and Nemaean ode,
+is, by himself, sufficiently explained. His endeavour was, not to show
+"precisely what Pindar spoke, but his manner of speaking." He was,
+therefore, not at all restrained to his expressions, nor much to his
+sentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar
+would not have written.
+
+Of the Olympick ode, the beginning is, I think, above the original in
+elegance, and the conclusion below it in strength. The connexion is
+supplied with great perspicuity; and the thoughts, which, to a reader of
+less skill, seem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any
+abruption. Though the English ode cannot be called a translation, it may
+be very properly consulted as a commentary.
+
+The spirit of Pindar is, indeed, not every where equally preserved. The
+following pretty lines are not such as his _deep mouth_ was used to
+pour:
+
+  Great Rhea's son,
+  If in Olympus' top, where thou
+  Sitt'st to behold thy sacred show,
+  If in Alpheus' silver flight,
+  If in my verse thou take delight,
+  My verse, great Rhea's son, which is
+  Lofty as that, and smooth as this.
+
+In the Nemaean ode the reader must, in mere justice to Pindar, observe,
+that whatever is said of "the original new moon, her tender forehead,
+and her horns," is super-added by his paraphrast, who has many other
+plays of words and fancy unsuitable to the original, as
+
+  The table, free for ev'ry guest,
+  No doubt will thee admit,
+  And feast more upon thee, than thou on it.
+
+He sometimes extends his author's thoughts without improving them. In
+the Olympionick an oath is mentioned in a single word, and Cowley spends
+three lines in swearing by the Castalian stream. We are told of Theron's
+bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in
+rhyming prose:
+
+  But in this thankless world the giver
+  Is envied even by the receiver;
+  'Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion
+  Rather to hide than own the obligation:
+  Nay, 'tis much worse than so;
+  It now an artifice does grow
+  Wrongs and injuries to do,
+  Lest men should think we owe.
+
+It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit,
+when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble diction,
+could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.
+
+In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own subjects, he
+sometimes rises to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if some deficiencies of
+language be forgiven, his strains are such as those of the Theban bard
+were to his contemporaries:
+
+  Begin the song, and strike the living lyre:
+  Lo, how the years to come, a numerous and well-fitted quire,
+  All hand in hand do decently advance.
+  And to my song with smooth and equal measure dance;
+  While the dance lasts, how long soe'er it be,
+  My musick's voice shall bear it company;
+  Till all gentle notes be drown'd
+  In the last trumpet's dreadful sound.
+
+After such enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude
+with lines like these:
+
+  But stop, my muse--
+  Hold thy Pindarick Pegasus closely in,
+  Which does to rage begin
+  --'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse--
+  'Twill no unskilful touch endure,
+  But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.
+
+The fault of Cowley, and, perhaps, of all the writers of the
+metaphysical race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to the last
+ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality; for of the
+greatest things the parts are little; what is little can be but pretty,
+and, by claiming dignity, becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of
+description is destroyed by a scrupulous enumeration, and the force of
+metaphors is lost, when the mind, by the mention of particulars, is
+turned more upon the original than the secondary sense, more upon that
+from which the illustration is drawn, than that to which it is applied.
+
+Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode entitled the Muse, who
+goes to "take the air" in an intellectual chariot, to which he harnesses
+fancy and judgment, wit and eloquence, memory and invention: how he
+distinguished wit from fancy, or how memory could properly contribute to
+motion, he has not explained; we are, however, content to suppose that
+he could have justified his own fiction, and wish to see the muse begin
+her career; but there is yet more to be done:
+
+  Let the _postillion_, nature, mount, and let
+  The _coachman_ art be set;
+  And let the airy _footmen_, running all beside,
+  Make a long row of goodly pride;
+  Figures, conceits, raptures, and sentences,
+  In a well-worded dress,
+  And innocent loves, and pleasant truths, and useful lies,
+  In all their gaudy _liveries_.
+
+Every mind is now disgusted with this cumber of magnificence; yet I
+cannot refuse myself the four next lines:
+
+  Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne,
+  And bid it to put on;
+  For long, though cheerful, is the way,
+  And life, alas! allows but one ill winter's day.
+
+In the same ode, celebrating the power of the muse, he gives her
+prescience, or, in poetical language, the foresight of events hatching
+in futurity; but, having once an egg in his mind, he cannot forbear to
+show us that he knows what an egg contains:
+
+  Thou into the close nests of time dost peep,
+  And there with piercing eye
+  Through the firm shell and the thick white dost spy
+  Years to come a-forming lie,
+  Close in their sacred fecundine asleep.
+
+The same thought is more generally, and, therefore, more poetically
+expressed by Casimir, a writer who has many of the beauties and faults
+of Cowley:
+
+  Omnibus mundi dominator horis
+  Aptat urgendas per inane pennas,
+  Pars adhuc nido latet, et futuros
+  Crescit in annos.
+
+Cowley, whatever was his subject, seems to have been carried, by a kind
+of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require
+still more ignoble epithets. A slaughter in the Red sea "new dies the
+water's name;" and England, during the civil war, was "Albion no more,
+nor to be named from white." It is, surely, by some fascination not
+easily surmounted, that a writer professing to revive "the noblest and
+highest writing in verse," makes this address to the new year:
+
+  Nay, if thou lov'st me, gentle year,
+  Let not so much as love be there,
+  Vain, fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,
+  Although I fear
+  There's of this caution little need,
+  Yet, gentle year, take heed
+  How thou dost make
+  Such a mistake;
+  Such love I mean alone
+  As by thy cruel predecessors has been shewn:
+  For, though I have too much cause to doubt it,
+  I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.
+
+The reader of this will be inclined to cry out, with Prior,
+
+  Ye criticks, say,
+  How poor to this was Pindar's style!
+
+Even those who cannot, perhaps, find in the Isthmian or Nemaean songs
+what antiquity has disposed them to expect, will, at least, see that
+they are ill represented by such puny poetry; and all will determine,
+that if this be the old Theban strain, it is not worthy of revival.
+
+To the disproportion and incongruity of Cowley's sentiments, must be
+added the uncertainty and looseness of his measures. He takes the
+liberty of using, in any place, a verse of any length, from two
+syllables to twelve. The verses of Pindar have, as he observes, very
+little harmony to a modern ear; yet, by examining the syllables, we
+perceive them to be regular, and have reason enough for supposing that
+the ancient audiences were delighted with the sound. The imitator ought,
+therefore, to have adopted what he found, and to have added what was
+wanting; to have preserved a constant return of the same numbers, and to
+have supplied smoothness of transition and continuity of thought.
+
+It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the "irregularity of numbers is the very
+thing" which makes "that kind of poesy fit for all manner of subjects."
+But he should have remembered, that what is fit for every thing can fit
+nothing well. The great pleasure of verse arises from the known measure
+of the lines, and uniform structure of the stanzas, by which the voice
+is regulated, and the memory relieved.
+
+If the Pindarick style be, what Cowley thinks it, "the highest and
+noblest kind of writing in verse," it can be adapted only to high and
+noble subjects; and it will not be easy to reconcile the poet with the
+critick, or to conceive how that can be the highest kind of writing in
+verse, which, according to Sprat, is "chiefly to be preferred for its
+near affinity to prose."
+
+This lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of
+the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately
+overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the
+pleasing fashion, and they that could do nothing else could write like
+Pindar. The rights of antiquity were invaded, and disorder tried to
+break into the Latin: a poem[21] on the Sheldonian theatre, in which all
+kinds of verse are shaken together, is unhappily inserted in the Musae
+Anglicanae. Pindarism prevailed about half a century; but, at last, died
+gradually away, and other imitations supply its place.
+
+The Pindarick odes have so long enjoyed the highest degree of poetical
+reputation, that I am not willing to dismiss them with unabated censure;
+and, surely, though the mode of their composition be erroneous, yet many
+parts deserve, at least, that admiration which is due to great
+comprehension of knowledge, and great fertility of fancy. The thoughts
+are often new, and often striking; but the greatness of one part is
+disgraced by the littleness of another; and total negligence of language
+gives the noblest conceptions the appearance of a fabrick, august in
+the plan, but mean in the materials. Yet, surely, those verses are not
+without a just claim to praise; of which it may be said with truth, that
+no man but Cowley could have written them.
+
+The Davideis now remains to be considered; a poem which the author
+designed to have extended to twelve books, merely, as he makes no
+scruple of declaring, because the Aeneid had that number; but he had
+leisure or perseverance only to write the third part. Epick poems have
+been left unfinished by Virgil, Statius, Spenser, and Cowley. That we
+have not the whole Davideis, is, however, not much to be regretted; for
+in this undertaking Cowley is, tacitly, at least, confessed to have
+miscarried. There are not many examples of so great a work, produced by
+an author generally read, and generally praised, that has crept through
+a century with so little regard. Whatever is said of Cowley, is meant of
+his other works. Of the Davideis no mention is made; it never appears in
+books, nor emerges in conversation. By the Spectator it has been once
+quoted; by Rymer it has once been praised; and by Dryden, in Mac
+Flecknoe, it has once been imitated; nor do I recollect much other
+notice from its publication till now, in the whole succession of English
+literature.
+
+Of this silence and neglect, if the reason be inquired, it will be found
+partly in the choice of the subject, and partly in the performance of
+the work.
+
+Sacred history has been always read with submissive reverence, and
+an imagination overawed and controlled. We have been accustomed to
+acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentick narrative,
+and to repose on its veracity with such humble confidence as suppresses
+curiosity. We go with the historian as he goes, and stop with him when
+he stops. All amplification is frivolous and vain; all addition to that
+which is already sufficient for the purposes of religion seems not only
+useless, but, in some degree, profane.
+
+Such events as were produced by the visible interposition of divine
+power are above the power of human genius to dignify. The miracle of
+creation, however it may teem with images, is best described with little
+diffusion of language: "He spake the word, and they were made."
+
+We are told, that Saul "was troubled with an evil spirit;" from this
+Cowley takes an opportunity of describing hell, and telling the history
+of Lucifer, who was, he says,
+
+  Once gen'ral of a gilded host of sprites,
+  Like Hesper leading forth the spangled nights;
+  But down, like lightning which him struck, he came,
+  And roar'd at his first plunge into the flame.
+
+Lucifer makes a speech to the inferiour agents of mischief, in which
+there is something of heathenism, and, therefore, of impropriety; and,
+to give efficacy to his words, concludes by lashing "his breast with
+his long tail." Envy, after a pause, steps out, and, among other
+declarations of her zeal, utters these lines:
+
+  Do thou but threat, loud storms shall make reply,
+  And thunder echo to the trembling sky:
+  Whilst raging seas swell to so bold an height,
+  As shall the fire's proud element affright.
+  Th' old drudging sun, from his long-beaten way,
+  Shall, at thy voice, start, and misguide the day.
+  The jocund orbs shall break their measur'd pace,
+  And stubborn poles change their allotted place,
+  Heaven's gilded troops shall flutter here and there,
+  Leaving their boasting songs tun'd to a sphere.
+
+Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an
+allegorical being.
+
+It is not only when the events are confessedly miraculous, that fancy
+and fiction lose their effect: the whole system of life, while the
+theocracy was yet visible, has an appearance so different from all other
+scenes of human action, that the reader of the sacred volume habitually
+considers it as the peculiar mode of existence of a distinct species of
+mankind, that lived and acted with manners uncommunicable; so that it is
+difficult, even for imagination, to place us in the state of them whose
+story is related, and, by consequence, their joys and griefs are not
+easily adopted, nor can the attention be often interested in any thing
+that befalls them.
+
+To the subject thus originally indisposed to the reception of poetical
+embellishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile
+impatience, or attract curiosity. Nothing can be more disgusting than a
+narrative spangled with conceits; and conceits are all that the Davideis
+supplies.
+
+One of the great sources of poetical delight, is description, or the
+power of presenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences
+instead of images, and shows not what may be supposed to have been seen,
+but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil describes
+the stone which Turnus lifted against Aeneas, he fixes the attention on
+its bulk and weight:
+
+  Saxum circumspicit ingens,
+  Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat,
+  Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.
+
+Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother,
+
+  I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant
+  At once his murther and his monument.
+
+Of the sword taken from Goliah, he says,
+
+  A sword so great, that it was only fit,
+  To cut off his great head that came with it.
+
+Other poets describe death by some of its common appearances. Cowley
+says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps, real or fabulous,
+
+  'Twixt his right ribs deep pierc'd the furious blade,
+  And open'd wide those secret vessels where
+  Life's light goes out, when first they let in air.
+
+But he has allusions vulgar, as well as learned. In a visionary
+succession of kings:
+
+  Joas at first does bright and glorious shew,
+  In life's fresh morn his fame does early crow.
+
+Describing an undisciplined army, after having said with elegance,
+
+  His forces seem'd no army, but a crowd
+  Heartless, unarm'd, disorderly, and loud,
+
+he gives them a fit of the ague.
+
+The allusions, however, are not always to vulgar things; he offends by
+exaggeration, as much as by diminution:
+
+  The king was plac'd alone, and o'er his head
+  A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread.
+
+Whatever he writes is always polluted with some conceit:
+
+  Where the sun's fruitful beams give metals birth,
+  Where he the growth of fatal gold doth see,
+  Gold, which alone more influence has than he.
+
+In one passage he starts a sudden question, to the confusion of
+philosophy:
+
+  Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace,
+  Why does that twining plant the oak embrace;
+  The oak, for courtship most of all unfit,
+  And rough as are the winds that fight with it?
+
+His expressions have, sometimes, a degree of meanness that surpasses
+expectation:
+
+  Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you're in,
+  The story of your gallant friend begin.
+
+In a simile descriptive of the morning:
+
+  As glimm'ring stars just at th' approach of day,
+  Cashier'd by troops, at last drop all away.
+
+The dress of Gabriel deserves attention:
+
+  He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
+  That e'er the mid-day sun pierc'd through with light;
+  Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
+  Wash'd from the morning beauties' deepest red;
+  An harmless flatt'ring meteor shone for hair,
+  And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;
+  He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
+  Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes;
+  This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,
+  Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall;
+  Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade,
+  The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made.
+
+This is a just specimen of Cowley's imagery: what might, in general
+expressions, be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous
+by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invested with the
+softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, and
+been dismissed to improve the idea in our different proportions of
+conception; but Cowley could not let us go, till he had related where
+Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then
+his scarf, and related it in the terms of the mercer and tailor.
+
+Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with his
+natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued
+till it is tedious.
+
+  I' th' library a few choice authors stood,
+  Yet 'twas well stor'd, for that small store was good;
+  Writing, man's spiritual physick, was not then
+  Itself, as now, grown a disease of men.
+  Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew;
+  The common prostitute she lately grew,
+  And with the spurious brood loads now the press;
+  Laborious effects of idleness.
+
+As the Davideis affords only four books, though intended to consist
+of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticism as epick poems
+commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is very imperfectly shown by
+the third part. The duration of an unfinished action cannot be known. Of
+characters, either not yet introduced, or shown but upon few occasions,
+the full extent and the nice discriminations cannot be ascertained. The
+fable is plainly implex, formed rather from the Odyssey than the Iliad;
+and many artifices of diversification are employed, with the skill of a
+man acquainted with the best models. The past is recalled by narration,
+and the future anticipated by vision: but he has been so lavish of his
+poetical art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could fill eight
+books more without practising again the same modes of disposing his
+matter; and, perhaps, the perception of this growing incumbrance
+inclined him to stop. By this abruption posterity lost more instruction
+than delight. If the continuation of the Davideis can be missed, it is
+for the learning that had been diffused over it, and the notes in which
+it had been explained.
+
+Had not his characters been depraved, like every other part, by improper
+decorations, they would have deserved uncommon praise. He gives Saul
+both the body and mind of a hero:
+
+  His way once chose, he forward thrust outright,
+  Nor turn'd aside for danger or delight.
+
+And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michol, are
+very justly conceived and strongly painted.
+
+Rymer has declared the Davideis superiour to the Jerusalem of Tasso;
+"which," says he, "the poet, with all his care, has not totally purged
+from pedantry." If by pedantry is meant that minute knowledge which
+is derived from particular sciences and studies, in opposition to the
+general notions supplied by a wide survey of life and nature, Cowley
+certainly errs, by introducing pedantry far more frequently than Tasso.
+I know not, indeed, why they should be compared; for the resemblance of
+Cowley's work to Tasso's is only that they both exhibit the agency of
+celestial and infernal spirits, in which, however, they differ
+widely; for Cowley supposes them commonly to operate upon the mind by
+suggestion; Tasso represents them as promoting or obstructing events by
+external agency.
+
+Of particular passages that can be properly compared, I remember only
+the description of heaven, in which the different manner of the two
+writers is sufficiently discernible. Cowley's is scarcely description,
+unless it be possible to describe by negatives: for he tells us
+only what there is not in heaven. Tasso endeavours to represent the
+splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness. Tasso affords
+images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, that Tasso's
+description affords some reason for Rymer's censure. He says of the
+supreme being,
+
+  Ha sotto i piedi e fato e la natura,
+  Ministri umili, e'l moto, e chi'l misura.
+
+The second line has in it more of pedantry than, perhaps, can be found
+in any other stanza of the poem.
+
+In the perusal of the Davideis, as of all Cowley's works, we find wit
+and learning unprofitably squandered. Attention has no relief; the
+affections are never moved: we are sometimes surprised, but never
+delighted; and find much to admire, but little to approve. Still,
+however, it is the work of Cowley; of a mind capacious by nature, and
+replenished by study.
+
+In the general review of Cowley's poetry it will be found, that he wrote
+with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful selection; with much
+thought, but with little imagery; that he is never pathetick, and
+rarely sublime; but always either ingenious or learned, either acute or
+profound.
+
+It is said by Denham, in his elegy,
+
+  To him no author was unknown,
+  Yet what he writ was all his own.
+
+This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of
+Cowley, than, perhaps, of any other poet.--He read much, and yet
+borrowed little.
+
+His character of writing was, indeed, not his own: he unhappily adopted
+that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and,
+not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to
+delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself
+with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure, in its spring, was bright
+and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.
+
+He was, in his own time, considered as of unrivalled excellence.
+Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went
+before him; and Milton is said to have declared, that the three greatest
+English poets were Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cowley.
+
+His manner he had in common with others; but his sentiments were his
+own. Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his
+copiousness of knowledge, that something at once remote and applicable
+rushed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a
+commodious idea merely because another had used it: his known wealth was
+so great, that he might have borrowed without loss of credit.
+
+In his elegy on sir Henry Wotton, the last lines have such resemblance
+to the noble epigram of Grotius on the death of Scaliger, that I cannot
+but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no servile
+hand.
+
+One passage in his Mistress is so apparently borrowed from Donne, that
+he probably would not have written it, had it not mingled with his own
+thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking it from another:
+
+  Although I think thou never found wilt be,
+  Yet I'm resolv'd to search for thee:
+  The search itself rewards the pains.
+  So, though the chymic his great secret miss
+  (For neither it in art or nature is,)
+  Yet things well worth his toil he gains;
+
+
+  And does his charge and labour pay
+  With good unsought experiments by the way. COWLEY.
+
+  Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I,
+  Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:
+  I have lov'd, and got, and told;
+  But should I love, get, tell, till I were old;
+  I should not find that hidden mystery;
+  Oh, 'tis imposture all!
+  And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,
+  But glorifies his pregnant pot,
+  If by the way to him befall
+  Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,
+  So lovers dream a rich and long delight,
+  But get a winter-seeming summer's night.  DONNE.
+
+Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, were then in the highest esteem.
+
+It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledges his
+obligation to the learning and industry of Jonson; but I have found no
+traces of Jonson in his works: to emulate Donne appears to have been
+his purpose; and from Donne he may have learned that familiarity with
+religious images, and that light allusion to sacred things, by which
+readers far short of sanctity are frequently offended; and which would
+not be borne, in the present age, when devotion, perhaps, not more
+fervent, is more delicate.
+
+Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will
+recompense him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him.
+He says of Goliah:
+
+  His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree,
+  Which nature meant some tall ship's mast should be.
+
+Milton of Satan:
+
+  His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
+  Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
+  Of some great admiral, were but a wand,
+  He walked with.
+
+His diction was, in his own time, censured as negligent. He seems not to
+have known, or not to have considered, that words, being arbitrary, must
+owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that only,
+which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought: and,
+as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded and
+obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or
+mechanicks; so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy, and
+the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by
+words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar
+mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.
+
+Truth, indeed, is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have
+an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual
+gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser
+matter, that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in
+unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can distinguish
+it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost of
+their extraction.
+
+The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to
+the intellectual eye; and, if the first appearance offends, a further
+knowledge is not often sought. Whatever professes to benefit by
+pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something
+sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. What
+is perceived by slow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness of
+improvement, but will never strike with the sense of pleasure.
+
+Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without
+care. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase:
+he has no elegancies, either lucky or elaborate: as his endeavours were
+rather to impress sentences upon the understanding than images on
+the fancy, he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar
+propriety or nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the necessity of
+the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his
+heroick poem is less familiar than that of his slightest writings. He
+has given not the same numbers, but the same diction, to the gentle
+Anacreon and the tempestuous Pindar.
+
+His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and, if
+what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they
+are ill read, the art of reading them is at present lost; for they are
+commonly harsh to modern ears. He has, indeed, many noble lines, such as
+the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts
+sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but
+his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he sinks willingly
+down to his general carelessness, and avoids, with very little care,
+either meanness or asperity.
+
+His contractions are often rugged and harsh:
+
+  One flings a mountain, and its rivers too
+  Torn up with 't.
+
+His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the like
+unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of
+the line.
+
+His combination of different measures is, sometimes, dissonant and
+unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide
+easily into the latter.
+
+The words _do_ and _did_, which so much degrade, in present estimation,
+the line that admits them, were, in the time of Cowley, little censured
+or avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least
+to our ears, will appear by a passage, in which every reader will lament
+to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance
+of language:
+
+  Where honour or where conscience _does_ not bind,
+  No other law shall shackle me;
+  Slave to myself I ne'er will be;
+  Nor shall my future actions be confin'd
+  By my own present mind.
+
+  Who by resolves and vows engag'd _does_ stand
+  For days, that yet belong to fate,
+  _Does_, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate,
+  Before it falls into his hand;
+  The bondman of the cloister so,
+  All that he _does_ receive _does_ always owe:
+  And still, as time comes in, it goes away,
+  Not to enjoy, but debts to pay!
+  Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell,
+  Which his hour's work, as well as hours, _does_ tell!
+  Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.
+
+His heroick lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are
+sometimes sweet and sonorous.
+
+He says of the Messiah:
+
+  Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound,
+  _And reach to worlds that must not yet be found_.
+
+In another place, of David:
+
+  Yet bid him go securely, when he sends;
+  _'Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends.
+  The man who has his God, no aid can lack;
+  And we who bid him go, will bring him back._
+
+Yet, amidst his negligence, he sometimes attempted an improved and
+scientifick versification; of which it will be best to give his own
+account subjoined to this line:
+
+  Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless space.
+
+"I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of readers,
+that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose, long, and,
+as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature of the thing
+which it describes, which I would have observed in divers other places
+of this poem, that else will pass for very careless verses: as before,
+
+  And overruns the neighb'ring fields with violent course.
+
+"In the second book,
+
+  Down a precipice deep, down he casts them all.
+
+"And,
+
+  And fell a-down his shoulders with loose care
+
+"In the third,
+
+  Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o'er
+  His breast a thick plate of strong brass he wore.
+
+"In the fourth,
+
+  Like some fair pine o'erlooking all th' ignobler wood.
+
+"And,
+
+  Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong.
+
+"And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. The thing is,
+that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, as that,
+out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may be
+represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind themselves
+to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught I can find.
+The Latins (qui musas colunt severiores) sometimes did it; and their
+prince, Virgil, always, in whom the examples are innumerable, and taken
+notice of by all judicious men, so that it is superfluous to collect
+them."
+
+I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the
+representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only
+sound and motion. A _boundless_ verse, a _headlong_ verse, and a verse
+of _brass_, or of _strong brass_, seem to comprise very incongruous
+and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line
+expressing _loose care_, I cannot discover; nor why the _pine_ is
+_taller_ in an alexandrine than in ten syllables.
+
+But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of
+representative versification, which, perhaps, no other English line can
+equal:
+
+  Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:
+  He, who defers this work from day to day,
+  Does on a river's bank expecting stay
+  Till the whole stream that stopp'd him shall be gone,
+  _Which runs, and, as it runs, for ever shall run on_.
+
+Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled alexandrines, at
+pleasure, with the common heroick of ten syllables; and from him Dryden
+borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered
+the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestick, and has,
+therefore, deviated into that measure, when he supposes the voice heard
+of the supreme being.
+
+The author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for having written it
+in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for
+an heroick poem; but this seems to have been known before by May and
+Sandys, the translators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses.
+
+In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect by the
+author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended
+to complete them: that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably
+concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman
+poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of
+recitation; because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all
+that can be done by a broken verse, a line intersected by a _caesura_
+and a full stop, will equally effect.
+
+Of triplets, in his Davideis, he makes no use, and, perhaps, did not, at
+first, think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed
+his mind, for, in the verses on the government of Cromwell, he inserts
+them liberally with great happiness.
+
+After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them
+must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that
+no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may
+be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his
+prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural,
+and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet
+obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hard-laboured;
+but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.
+
+It has been observed by Felton, in his essay on the Classicks, that
+Cowley was beloved by every muse that he courted; and that he has
+rivalled the ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.
+
+It may be affirmed, without any encomiastick fervour, that he brought to
+his poetick labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are
+embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was
+the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater
+ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for
+sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who
+freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author
+at a distance, walked by his side; and that if he left versification
+yet improvable, he left likewise, from time to time, such specimens of
+excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The insertion of Cowley's epitaph may be interesting to our readers.
+
+  Epitaphium
+  Autoris
+  In Ecclesia D. Petri apud Westmonasterienses
+  Sepulti.
+  Abrahamus Cowleius,
+  Anglorum Pindarus, Flaccus, Maro,
+  Deliciae, Decus, Desiderium, Aevi sui,
+  Hic juxta situs est.
+
+  Aurea dum volitant late tua scripta per orbem,
+  Et fama aeternum vivis, divine poeta,
+  Hic placida jaceas requie: custodiat urnam
+  Cana fides, vigilentque perenni lampade musae
+  Sit sacer iste locus; nee quis temerarius ausit
+  Sacrilega turbare manu venerabile bustum.
+  Intacti maneant; maneant per saecula dulces
+  Cowleii cineres, serventque immobile saxum.
+
+  Sic vovatque
+  Votumque suum apud posteros sacratum esse voluit
+  Qui viro incomparabili posult sepulchrale marmor,
+  Georgius Dux Buckinghamiae.
+  Excessit e vita Anno Aetatis suae 49° et honorifica pompa elatus
+                                                        ex Aedibus
+  Buckinghamianis, viris illustribus omnium ordinum exequias
+                                                     celebrantibus,
+  sepultus est die 3° M. Augusti, Anno Domini 1667.
+
+[Footnote 6: This volume was not published before 1633, when Cowley was
+fifteeyears old. Dr. Johnson, as well as former biographers, seems to
+have been misled by the portrait of Cowley being, by mistake, marked with
+the age of thirteen years. R.]
+
+[Footnote 7: He was a candidate this year at Westminster school for
+election to Trinity college, but proved unsuccessful.]
+
+[Footnote 8: In the first edition of this life, Dr. Johnson wrote, "which
+was never inserted in any collection of his works;" but he altered the
+expression when the Lives were collected into volumes. The satire was
+added to Cowley's works by the particular direction of Dr. Johnson. N.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Consulting the Virgilian lots, Sortes Virgilianae, is a
+method of divination by the opening of Virgil, and applying to the
+circumstances of the peruser the first passage in either of the two pages
+that he accidentally fixes his eye on. It is said, that king Charles
+the first, and lord Falkland, being in the Bodleian library, made this
+experiment of their future fortunes, and met with passages equally
+ominous to each.
+
+That of the king was the following:
+
+  At bello audacis populi vexatus et armis,
+  Finibus extorris, complexu avulsus luli,
+  Auxilium imploret, videatque indigna suorum
+  Funera, nec, cum se sub leges pacis iniquae
+  Tradiderit, regno aut optata luce fruatur:
+  Sed cadat ante diem, mediaque inhumatus arena. Aeneid. iv. 615.
+
+  Yet let a race untam'd, and haughty foes,
+  His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose,
+  Oppress'd with numbers in th' unequal field,
+  His men discourag'd and himself expell'd:
+  Let him for succour sue from place to place,
+  Torn from his subjects and his son's embrace.
+  First let him see his friends in battle slain,
+  And their untimely fate lament in vain:
+  And when, at length, the cruel war shall cease,
+  On hard conditions may he buy his peace;
+  Nor let him then enjoy supreme command.
+  But fall untimely by some hostile hand,
+  And lie unburied on the barren sand.        DRYDEN.
+
+Lord Falkland's:
+
+  Non haec, O Palla, dederas promissa parenti,
+  Cautius ut saevo velles te credere Marti.
+  Haud ignarus eram, quantum nova gloria in armis,
+  Et praedulce decus primo certamine posset.
+  Primitiae juvenis miserae, bellique propinqui
+  Dura rudimenta, et nulli exaudita deorum,
+  Vota precesque meae!                            Aeneid. xi. 152.
+
+  O Pallas, thou hast fail'd thy plighted word,
+  To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword;
+  I warn'd thee, but in vain, for well I knew
+  What perils youthful ardour would pursue,
+  That boiling blood would carry thee too far,
+  Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war.
+  O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom,
+  Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come!
+  Hard elements of unauspicious war,
+  Vain vows to heaven, and unavailing care!       DRYDEN
+
+Hoffman, in his Lexicon, gives a very satisfactory account of this
+practice of seeking fates in books: and says, that it was used by the
+pagans, the jewish rabbins, and even the early Christians; the latter
+taking the New Testament for their oracle.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Johnson has exhibited here us little feeling for the
+neglected servant of the thankless house of Stewart, as he displayed in
+the cold contempt of his sixth Rambler. An unmeaning compliment from a
+worthless king was Cowley's only recompense for years of faithful and
+painful services. A heart loyal and affectionate, like his, may well be
+excused the utterance of its pains, when wounded by those for whom it
+would so cheerfully have poured forth its blood. We repeat, that Cowley's
+misfortune was his devotion to a family, who invariably forgot, in their
+prosperity, those who had defended them in the day of adversity. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 11: See Campbell's Poets, iv. 75.]
+
+[Footnote 12: By May's poem, we are here to understand a continuation
+of Lucan's Pharsalia, to the death of Julius Caesar, by Thomas May, an
+eminent poet and historian, who flourished in the reigns of James
+and Charles the first, and of whom a life is given in the Biographia
+Britannica. The merit of Cowley's Latin poems is well examined in Censura
+Literatia, vol. viii. See also Warton's Preface to Milton's Juvenile
+Poems. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 13: 1663.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Here is an error in the designation of this comedy, which
+our author copied from the title page of the latter editions of Cowley's
+works: the title of the play itself is without the article, "Cutter of
+Coleman street," and that, because a merry sharking fellow about the
+town, named Cutter, is a principal character in it.]
+
+[Footnote 15: L'Allegro of Milton. Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 16: About three hundred pounds per annum. See Campbell's Poets,
+iv.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Now in the possession of Mr. Clark, alderman of London.
+Dr. J.--Mr. Clark was, in 1798, elected to the important office of
+chamberlain of London; and has every year since been unanimously
+reelected. N.]
+
+[Footnote 18: For metaphysical poets, see Brydges' Restituta, vol. iv.]
+
+[Footnote 19: It is but justice to the memory of Cowley, to quote here an
+exquisite stanza which Johnson has inserted in the Idler, No. 77, where
+he says; "Cowley seems to have possessed the power of writing easily
+beyond any other of our poets; yet his pursuit of remote thought led him
+often into harshness of expression." The stanza is to a lady elaborately
+dressed:
+
+  Th' adorning thee with so much art
+  Is but a barb'rous skill,
+  'Tis like the pois'ning of a dart
+  Too apt before to kill.    ED.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Dodsley's Collection of Poems, vol. v. R.]
+
+[Footnote 21: First published in quarto, 1669, under the title of Carmen
+Pindaricum in Theatrum Sheldonianum in solennibus magnifici operis
+encaeniis. Recitatum Julii die 9, anno 1669, a Corbetto Owen, A. B. Aed.
+Chr. Alumno, authore. R.]
+
+
+
+
+DENHAM
+
+Of sir John Denham very little is known but what is related of him by
+Wood, or by himself.
+
+He was born at Dublin, 1615[22]; the only son of sir John Denham, of
+Little Horsley, in Essex, then chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland,
+and of Eleanor, daughter of sir Garret More, baron of Mellefont.
+
+Two years afterwards, his father, being made one of the barons of the
+exchequer in England, brought him away from his native country, and
+educated him in London.
+
+In 1631 he was sent to Oxford, where he was considered "as a dreaming
+young man, given more to dice and cards than study:" and, therefore,
+gave no prognosticks of his future eminence; nor was suspected to
+conceal, under sluggishness and laxity, a genius born to improve the
+literature of his country.
+
+When he was, three years afterwards, removed to Lincoln's inn, he
+prosecuted the common law with sufficient appearance of application;
+yet did not lose his propensity to cards and dice; but was very often
+plundered by gamesters.
+
+Being severely reproved for this folly, he professed, and, perhaps,
+believed, himself reclaimed; and, to testify the sincerity of his
+repentance, wrote and published an Essay upon Gaming.
+
+He seems to have divided his studies between law and poetry; for, in
+1636, he translated the second book of the Aeneid. Two years after, his
+father died; and then, notwithstanding his resolutions and professions,
+he returned again to the vice of gaming, and lost several thousand
+pounds that had been left him.
+
+In 1641, he published the Sophy. This seems to have given him his first
+hold of the publick attention; for Waller remarked, "that he broke out
+like the Irish rebellion, three score thousand strong, when nobody was
+aware, or in the least suspected it;" an observation which could have
+had no propriety had his poetical abilities been known before.
+
+He was after that pricked for sheriff of Surrey, and made governour
+of Farnham castle for the king; but he soon resigned that charge, and
+retreated to Oxford, where, in 1643, he published Cooper's Hill.
+
+This poem had such reputation as to excite the common artifice by which
+envy degrades excellence. A report was spread, that the performance was
+not his own, but that he had bought it of a vicar for forty pounds. The
+same attempt was made to rob Addison of his Cato, and Pope of his Essay
+on Criticism.
+
+In 1647, the distresses of the royal family required him to engage in
+more dangerous employments. He was intrusted, by the queen, with a
+message to the king; and, by whatever means, so far softened the
+ferocity of Hugh Peters, that, by his intercession, admission was
+procured. Of the king's condescension he has given an account in the
+dedication of his works.
+
+He was, afterwards, employed in carrying on the king's correspondence;
+and, as he says, discharged this office with great safety to the
+royalists: and, being accidentally discovered by the adverse party's
+knowledge of Mr. Cowley's hand, he escaped happily both for himself and
+his friends.
+
+He was yet engaged in a greater undertaking. In April, 1648, he conveyed
+James, the duke of York, from London into France, and delivered him
+there to the queen and prince of Wales. This year he published his
+translation of Cato Major. He now resided in France, as one of the
+followers of the exiled king; and, to divert the melancholy of their
+condition, was sometimes enjoined by his master to write occasional
+verses; one of which amusements was probably his ode, or song, upon the
+Embassy to Poland, by which he and lord Crofts procured a contribution
+of ten thousand pounds from the Scotch, that wandered over the kingdom.
+Poland was, at that time, very much frequented by itinerant traders,
+who, in a country of very little commerce and of great extent, where
+every man resided on his own estate, contributed very much to the
+accommodation of life, by bringing to every man's house those little
+necessaries which it was very inconvenient to want, and very troublesome
+to fetch. I have formerly read, without much reflection, of the
+multitude of Scotchmen that travelled with their wares in Poland; and
+that their numbers were not small, the success of this negotiation gives
+sufficient evidence.
+
+About this time, what estate the war and the gamesters had left him was
+sold, by order of the parliament; and when, in 1652, he returned to
+England, he was entertained by the earl of Pembroke.
+
+Of the next years of his life there is no account. At the restoration he
+obtained that which many missed, the reward of his loyalty; being made
+surveyor of the king's buildings, and dignified with the order of the
+Bath. He seems now to have learned some attention to money; for Wood
+says, that he got by this place seven thousand pounds.
+
+After the restoration, he wrote the poem on Prudence and Justice, and,
+perhaps, some of his other pieces; and as he appears, whenever any
+serious question comes before him, to have been a man of piety, he
+consecrated his poetical powers to religion, and made a metrical version
+of the psalms of David. In this attempt he has failed; but in sacred
+poetry who has succeeded?
+
+It might be hoped that the favour of his master, and esteem of the
+publick, would now make him happy. But human felicity is short and
+uncertain; a second marriage brought upon him so much disquiet, as, for
+a time, disordered his understanding; and Butler lampooned him for his
+lunacy. I know not whether the malignant lines were then made publick,
+nor what provocation incited Butler to do that which no provocation can
+excuse.
+
+His phrensy lasted not long[23]; and he seems to have regained his full
+force of mind; for he wrote afterwards his excellent poem upon the death
+of Cowley, whom he was not long to survive; for, on the 19th of March,
+1668, he was buried by his side.
+
+Denham is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry.
+"Denham and Waller," says Prior, "improved our versification, and
+Dryden perfected it." He has given specimens of various compositions,
+descriptive, ludicrous, didactick, and sublime.
+
+He appears to have had, in common with almost all mankind, the ambition
+of being, upon proper occasions, _a merry fellow_, and, in common with
+most of them, to have been by nature, or by early habits, debarred from
+it. Nothing is less exhilarating than the ludicrousness of Denham; he
+does not fail for want of efforts; he is familiar, he is gross; but he
+is never merry, unless the Speech against Peace in the close Committee
+be excepted. For grave burlesque, however, his imitation of Davenant
+shows him to have been well qualified.
+
+Of his more elevated occasional poems, there is, perhaps, none that does
+not deserve commendation. In the verses to Fletcher, we have an image
+that has since been often adopted[24]:
+
+  But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise
+  Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
+  Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
+  Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt
+
+  Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
+  Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred, slain.
+
+After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues,
+
+  Poets are sultans, if they had their will;
+  For ev'ry author would his brother kill.
+
+And Pope,
+
+  Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
+  Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne.
+
+But this is not the best of his little pieces: it is excelled by his
+poem to Fanshaw, and his elegy on Cowley.
+
+His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini contains a very sprightly and
+judicious character of a good translator:
+
+  That servile path thou nobly dost decline,
+  Of tracing word by word and line by line.
+  Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,
+  Not the effect of poetry but pains;
+  Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
+  No flight for thoughts, but poorly stick at words,
+  A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
+  To make translations and translators too,
+  They but preserve the ashes; thou the flame,
+  True to his sense, but truer to his fame.
+
+The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they
+contain was not, at that time, generally known.
+
+His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, and, among his shorter
+works, his best performance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts
+are just.
+
+Cooper's Hill is the work that confers upon him the rank and dignity of
+an original author. He seems to have been, at least among us, the author
+of a species of composition that may be denominated _local poetry_,
+of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be
+poetically described with the addition of such embellishments as may be
+supplied by historical retrospection, or incidental meditation.
+
+To trace a new scheme of poetry, has, in itself, a very high claim to
+praise, and its praise is yet more, when it is apparently copied by
+Garth and Pope[25]; after whose names little will be gained by an
+enumeration of smaller poets, that have left scarcely a corner of the
+island not dignified either by rhyme or blank verse.
+
+Cooper's Hill, if it be maliciously inspected, will not be found without
+its faults. The digressions are too long, the morality too frequent, and
+the sentiments, sometimes, such as will not bear a rigorous inquiry.
+
+The four verses, which, since Dryden has commended them, almost every
+writer for a century past has imitated, are generally known:
+
+  O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
+  My great example, as it is my theme!
+  Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
+  Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
+
+The lines, are, in themselves, not perfect; for most of the words,
+thus artfully opposed, are to be understood simply on one side of the
+comparison, and metaphorically on the other; and, if there be any
+language which does not express intellectual operations by material
+images, into that language they cannot be translated. But so much
+meaning is comprised in so few words; the particulars of resemblance are
+so perspicaciously collected, and every mode of excellence separated
+from its adjacent fault by so nice a line of limitation; the different
+parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted; and the flow of
+the last couplet is so smooth and sweet; that the passage, however
+celebrated, has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar
+to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be
+produced at will by wit and labour, but must rise unexpectedly in some
+hour propitious to poetry.
+
+He appears to have been one of the first that understood the necessity
+of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines, and
+interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the
+clearest, and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors,
+may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them
+are the works of men well qualified, not only by critical knowledge,
+but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness,
+degraded, at once, their originals and themselves.
+
+Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success.
+His versions of Virgil are not pleasing; but they taught Dryden to
+please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on Old Age has neither
+the clearness of prose, nor the sprightliness of poetry.
+
+The "strength of Denham," which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to
+be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few
+words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk.
+
+
+On the Thames.
+
+  Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
+  Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold;
+  His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
+  Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.
+
+
+On Strafford.
+
+  His wisdom such, at once, it did appear
+  Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear.
+  While single he stood forth, and seem'd, although
+  Each had an army, as an equal foe;
+  Such was his force of eloquence to make
+  The hearers more concern'd than he that spake:
+  Each seem'd to act that part he came to see,
+  And none was more a looker-on than he;
+  So did he move our passions, some were known
+  To wish, for the defence, the crime their own.
+  Now private pity strove with public hate,
+  Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate.
+
+On Cowley.
+
+  To him no author was unknown,
+  Yet what he wrote was all his own;
+  Horace's wit, and Virgil's state,
+  He did not steal, but emulate!
+  And, when he would like them appear,
+  Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear.
+
+As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises
+from his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to
+be considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from the
+observation of a man of judgment naturally right, forsaking bad copies
+by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more
+confidence in himself.
+
+In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one
+years old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the sense
+ungracefully from verse to verse:
+
+  Then all those
+  Who in the dark our fury did escape,
+  Returning, know our borrow'd arms, and shape,
+  And differing dialect; then their numbers swell
+  And grow upon us; first Choroebus fell
+  Before Minerva's altar; next did bleed
+  Just Ripheus, whom no Trojan did exceed
+  In virtue, yet the gods his fate decreed.
+  Then Hypanis and Dymas, wounded by
+  Their friends; nor thee, Pantheus, thy piety,
+  Nor consecrated mitre, from the same
+  Ill fate could save; my country's funeral flame
+  And Troy's cold ashes I attest, and call
+  To witness for myself, that in their fall
+  No foes, no death, nor danger, I declin'd,
+  Did, and deserv'd no less, my fate to find.
+
+From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught
+his followers the art of concluding their sense in couplets; which has,
+perhaps, been with rather too much constancy pursued.
+
+This passage exhibits one of those triplets which are not unfrequent in
+this first essay, but which it is to be supposed his maturer judgment
+disapproved, since, in his latter works, he has totally forborne them.
+
+His rhymes are such as seem found without difficulty, by following the
+sense; and are, for the most part, as exact, at least, as those of other
+poets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he can
+get:
+
+  O how _transform'd!_
+  How much unlike that Hector, who _return'd_
+  Clad in Achilles' spoils!
+
+And again:
+
+  From thence a thousand lesser poets _sprung_
+  Like petty princes from the fall of _Rome_.
+
+Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain
+it:
+
+  Troy confounded falls
+  From all her glories: if it might have stood
+  By any power, by this right hand it _shou'd_.
+
+  --And though my outward state misfortune _hath_
+  Deprest thus low, it cannot reach my faith.
+
+  --Thus, by his fraud and our own faith o'ercome,
+  A feigned tear destroys us, against _whom_
+  Tydides nor Achilles could prevail,
+  Nor ten years' conflict, nor a thousand sail.
+
+He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses; in one passage
+the word _die_ rhymes three couplets in six.
+
+Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he was
+less skilful, or, at least, less dexterous in the use of words; and
+though they had been more frequent, they could only have lessened the
+grace, not the strength of his composition. He is one of the writers
+that improved our taste, and advanced our language, and whom we ought,
+therefore, to read with gratitude, though, having done much, he left
+much to do.
+
+[Footnote 22: In Hamilton's memoirs of count Grammont, sir John Denham
+is said to have been seventy-nine, when he married Miss Brook, about the
+year 1664; according to which statement he was born in 1585. But Dr.
+Johnson, who has followed Wood, is right. He entered Trinity college,
+Oxford, at the age of sixteen, in 1631, as appears by the following
+entry, which I copied from the matriculation book.
+
+Trin. Coll.
+
+"1631. Nov. 18. Johannes Denham, Essex. filius J. Denham de Horsley-parva
+in com. praedict. militis, annos natus 16. MALONE".]
+
+[Footnote 23: In the ninth and tenth chapters of the Mémoires de
+Grammont, in Andrew Marvell's works, and in Aubrey's letters, ii. 319,
+many scandalous anecdotes respecting Denham, are reported. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 24: It is remarkable that Johnson should not have recollected,
+that this image is to be found in Bacon. Aristoteles, more otthomannorum,
+regnare se haud tuto posse putabat, nisi fratres suos omnes
+contrucidasset. De Augment. Scient. lib. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 25: By Garth, in his poem on Claremont: and by Pope, in his
+Windsor Forest.]
+
+
+
+
+MILTON.
+
+The life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with
+such minute inquiry, that I might, perhaps, more properly have contented
+myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton's elegant
+Abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the
+uniformity of this edition.
+
+John Milton was, by birth, a gentleman, descended from the proprietors
+of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate
+in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know not; his
+descendant inherited no veneration for the _white rose._
+
+His grandfather, John, was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous
+papist, who disinherited his son, because he had forsaken the religion
+of his ancestors.
+
+His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse, for his
+support, to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his
+skill in musick, many of his compositions being still to be found;
+and his reputation in his profession was such, that he grew rich, and
+retired to an estate. He had, probably, more than common literature,
+as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. He
+married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he
+had two sons, John, the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law, and
+adhered, as the law taught him, to the king's party, for which he was
+awhile persecuted, but having, by his brother's interest, obtained
+permission to live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by
+chamber practice, that, soon after the accession of king James, he was
+knighted, and made a judge; but, his constitution being too weak
+for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became
+necessary.
+
+He had, likewise, a daughter, Anne, whom he married with a considerable
+fortune, to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the
+crown office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and Edward,
+who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only
+authentick account of his domestick manners.
+
+John, the poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread-eagle, in
+Bread street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His
+father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he
+was instructed, at first, by private tuition, under the care of Thomas
+Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh,
+and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered
+him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.
+
+He was then sent to St. Paul's school, under the care of Mr. Gill; and
+removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ's college in
+Cambridge, where he entered a sizar[26], Feb. 12,1624.
+
+He was, at this time, eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he
+himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of
+which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend
+the earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity. But
+the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and
+particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of the mind it is
+difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled Milton in their first
+essays, who never rose to works like Paradise Lost.
+
+At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated
+or versified two psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the
+publick eye; but they raise no great expectations: they would, in any
+numerous school, have obtained praise, but not excited wonder.
+
+Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year,
+by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very
+nice discernment. I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius,
+remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who,
+after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classick elegance.
+If any exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the
+pride of Elizabeth's reign, however they have succeeded in prose, no
+sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision. If we produced any
+thing worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was, perhaps,
+Alabaster's Roxana[27].
+
+Of the exercises which the rules of the university required, some
+were published by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly
+applauded; for they were such as few can perform; yet there is reason to
+suspect that he was regarded in his college with no great fondness. That
+he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he
+was treated, was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate what I fear
+is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either university,
+that suffered the publick indignity of corporal correction[28].
+
+It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him,
+that he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not
+true; but it seems plain, from his own verses to Diodati, that he had
+incurred rustication, a temporary dismission into the country, with,
+perhaps, the loss of a term:
+
+  Me tenet urbs, reflua quam Thamesis alluit unda,
+  Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.
+  Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,
+  Nec dudum _vetiti_ me _laris_ angit amor.
+  Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri,
+  Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
+  Si sit hoc _exilium_ patrios adiise penates,
+  Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi,
+
+  Non ego vel _profugi_ nomen sortemve recuso,
+  Laetus et _exilii_ conditione fruor.
+
+I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence
+can give to the term "vetiti laris," a habitation from which he is
+excluded; or how _exile_ can be otherwise interpreted. He declares yet
+more, that he is weary of enduring "the threats of a rigorous master,
+and something else, which a temper like his cannot undergo." What was
+more than threat was probably punishment. This poem, which mentions his
+exile, proves, likewise, that it was not perpetual; for it concludes
+with a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge. And it may be
+conjectured, from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the
+memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame.
+
+He took both the usual degrees; that of Bachelor in 1628, and that of
+master in 1632; but he left the university with no kindness for its
+institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his
+governours, or his own captious perverseness. The cause cannot now be
+known, but the effect appears in his writings. His scheme of education,
+inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being
+intended to comprise the whole time which men usually spend in
+literature, from their entrance upon grammar, "till they proceed, as it
+is called, masters of arts." And in his discourse on the likeliest way
+to remove Hirelings out of the Church, he ingeniously proposes, that
+"the profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses
+should be applied to such academies all over the land, where languages
+and arts may be taught together; so that youth may be, at once, brought
+up to a competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means such
+of them as had the gift, being enabled to support themselves, without
+tithes, by the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy
+preachers."
+
+One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted,
+is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act
+plays, "writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antick and
+dishonest gestures of Trincalos[29], buffoons, and bawds, prostituting
+the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the
+eyes of courtiers and court ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles."
+
+This is sufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile
+from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which
+the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were, therefore, only
+criminal when they were acted by academicks.
+
+He went to the university with a design of entering into the church,
+but in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever became a
+clergyman must "subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless
+he took with a conscience that could retch, he must straight perjure
+himself. He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence, before the
+office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing."
+
+These expressions are, I find, applied to the subscription of the
+articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical
+obedience. I know not any of the articles which seem to thwart his
+opinions; but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil,
+raised his indignation.
+
+His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to
+a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his
+friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he
+seems to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastick luxury
+of various knowledge. To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in
+which he endeavours to persuade him, that the delay proceeds not from
+the delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more
+fitness for his task; and that he goes on, "not taking thought of being
+late, so it gives advantage to be more fit."
+
+When he left the university he returned to his father, then residing at
+Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years; in which
+time he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what
+limitations this universality is to be understood, who shall inform us?
+
+It might be supposed, that he who read so much should have done nothing
+else; but Milton found time to write the Masque of Comus, which was
+presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the lord president of Wales,
+in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the earl of Bridgewater's
+sons and daughter. The fiction is derived from Homer's Circe[30]; but we
+never can refuse to any modern the liberty of borrowing from Homer:
+
+  --"a quo ceu fonte perenni
+  Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis."
+
+His next production was Lycidas, an elegy, written in 1637, on the death
+of Mr. King, the son of sir John King, secretary for Ireland in the
+time of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. King was much a favourite at
+Cambridge, and many of the wits joined to do honour to his memory.
+Milton's acquaintance with the Italian writers may be discovered by a
+mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to the rules of Tuscan
+poetry, and his malignity to the church by some lines which are
+interpreted as threatening its extermination.
+
+He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; for, while
+he lived at Horton, he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few
+days, which he spent at Harefield, the house of the countess dowager of
+Derby, where the Arcades made part of a dramatick entertainment.
+
+He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of
+taking chambers in the inns of court, when the death of his mother set
+him at liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father's consent,
+and sir Henry Wotton's directions; with the celebrated precept of
+prudence, "i pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto;" thoughts close, and
+looks loose.
+
+In 1638 he left England, and went first to Paris; where, by the favour
+of lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius, then
+residing at the French court, as ambassadour from Christina of Sweden.
+From Paris he hasted into Italy, of which he had, with particular
+diligence, studied the language and literature; and, though he seems
+to have intended a very quick perambulation of the country, staid two
+months at Florence; where he found his way into the academies, and
+produced his compositions with such applause, as appears to have exalted
+him in his own opinion, and confirmed him in the hope, that, "by labour
+and intense study, which," says he, "I take to be my portion in this
+life, joined with a strong propensity of nature," he might "leave
+something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it
+die." It appears, in all his writings, that he had the usual concomitant
+of great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps
+not without some contempt of others; for scarcely any man ever wrote so
+much, and praised so few. Of his praise he was very frugal; as he set
+its value high, and considered his mention of a name, as a security
+against the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion.
+
+At Florence he could not, indeed, complain that his merit wanted
+distinction: Carlo Dati presented him with an encomiastick inscription,
+in the tumid lapidary style; and Francini wrote him an ode, of which the
+first stanza is only empty noise; the rest are, perhaps, too diffuse on
+common topicks; but the last is natural and beautiful.
+
+From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was
+again received with kindness by the learned and the great. Holstenius,
+the keeper of the Vatican library, who had resided three years at
+Oxford, introduced him to cardinal Barberini; and he, at a musical
+entertainment, waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into
+the assembly. Here Selvaggi praised him in a distich, and Salsilli in a
+tetrastick; neither of them of much value. The Italians were gainers
+by this literary commerce; for the encomiums with which Milton repaid
+Salsilli, though not secure against a stern grammarian, turn the balance
+indisputably in Milton's favour.
+
+Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud enough to
+publish them before his poems; though he says, he cannot be suspected
+but to have known that they were said, "non tam de se, quam supra se."
+
+At Rome, as at Florence, he staid only two months; a time, indeed,
+sufficient, if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its
+antiquities, or to view palaces and count pictures; but certainly too
+short for the contemplation of learning, policy, or manners.
+
+From Rome he passed on to Naples in company of a hermit, a companion
+from whom little could be expected; yet to him Milton owed his
+introduction to Manso, marquis of Villa, who had been before the patron
+of Tasso. Manso was enough delighted with his accomplishments to honour
+him with a sorry distich, in which he commends him for every thing but
+his religion: and Milton, in return, addressed him in a Latin poem,
+which must have raised an high opinion of English elegance and
+literature.
+
+His purpose was now to have visited Sicily and Greece; but, hearing of
+the differences between the king and parliament, he thought it proper to
+hasten home, rather than pass his life in foreign amusements, while his
+countrymen were contending for their rights. He, therefore, came back to
+Rome, though the merchants informed him of plots laid against him by the
+jesuits, for the liberty of his conversations on religion. He had sense
+enough to judge that there was no danger, and, therefore, kept on his
+way, and acted as before, neither obtruding nor shunning controversy. He
+had, perhaps, given some offence by visiting Galileo, then a prisoner in
+the inquisition for philosophical heresy; and at Naples he was told by
+Manso, that, by his declarations on religious questions, he had excluded
+himself from some distinctions which he should otherwise have paid him.
+But such conduct, though it did not please, was yet sufficiently safe;
+and Milton staid two months more at Rome, and went on to Florence
+without molestation.
+
+From Florence he visited Lucca. He afterwards went to Venice; and,
+having sent away a collection of musick and other books, travelled to
+Geneva, which he, probably, considered as the metropolis of orthodoxy.
+
+Here he reposed, as in a congenial element, and became acquainted with
+John Diodati and Frederick Spanheim, two learned professors of divinity.
+From Geneva he passed through France; and came home, after an absence of
+a year and three months.
+
+At his return he heard of the death of his friend Charles Diodati; a
+man, whom it is reasonable to suppose, of great merit, since he was
+thought, by Milton, worthy of a poem, entitled Epitaphium Damonis,
+written with the common, but childish, imitation of pastoral life.
+
+He now hired a lodging at the house of one Russet, a tailor, in St.
+Bride's church-yard, and undertook the education of John and Edward
+Philips, his sister's sons. Finding his rooms too little, he took a
+house and garden in Aldersgate street[31], which was not then so much
+out of the world as it is now; and chose his dwelling at the upper end
+of a passage, that he might avoid the noise of the street. Here he
+received more boys, to be boarded and instructed.
+
+Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree
+of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who
+hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty,
+and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in
+a private boarding-school. This is the period of his life from which all
+his biographers seem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton
+should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but, since it cannot be denied
+that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and
+another, that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning
+and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to
+excuse an act which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful.
+His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its
+deficiencies by an honest and useful employment.
+
+It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a
+formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read
+in Aldersgate street, by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years
+of age. Those who tell or receive these stories should consider, that
+nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman
+must be limited by the power of the horse. Every man, that has ever
+undertaken to instruct others, can tell what slow advances he has been
+able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant
+inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd
+misapprehension.
+
+The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more solid
+than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that
+treat of physical subjects; such as the georgick, and astronomical
+treatises of the ancients. This was a scheme of improvement which seems
+to have busied many literary projectors of that age. Cowley, who had
+more means than Milton of knowing what was wanting to the embellishments
+of life, formed the same plan of education in his imaginary college.
+
+But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the
+sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or
+the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action
+or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first
+requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the
+next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those
+examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove, by events,
+the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues
+and excellencies of all times and of all places; we are perpetually
+moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse
+with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter
+are voluntary, and at leisure. Physiological learning is of such rare
+emergence, that one may know another half his life, without being able
+to estimate his skill in hydrostaticks or astronomy; but his moral and
+prudential character immediately appears.
+
+Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most
+axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials
+for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators,
+and historians. Let me not be censured for this digression, as pedantick
+or paradoxical; for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my
+side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from the study of nature to
+speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off
+attention from life to nature. They seem to think, that we are placed
+here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the stars.
+Socrates was rather of opinion, that what we had to learn was, how to do
+good, and avoid evil:
+
+  'Oti toi en megaroisi kakon t agathon te tetukta']
+
+Of institutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-working
+academy, I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent
+for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small history
+of poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of which, perhaps,
+none of my readers has ever heard[32].
+
+That in his school, as in every thing else which he undertook, he
+laboured with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting. One part
+of his method deserves general imitation. He was careful to instruct his
+scholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology; of which
+he dictated a short system, gathered from the writers that were then
+fashionable in the Dutch universities.
+
+He set his pupils an example of hard study and spare diet; only now and
+then he allowed himself to pass a day of festivity and indulgence with
+some gay gentlemen of Gray's inn.
+
+He now began to engage in the controversies of the times, and lent
+his breath to blow the flames of contention. In 1641, he published a
+treatise of Reformation, in two books, against the established church;
+being willing to help the puritans, who were, he says, "inferior to the
+prelates in learning."
+
+Hall, bishop of Norwich, had published an Humble Remonstrance, in
+defence of episcopacy; to which, in 1641, five ministers[33], of whose
+names the first letters made the celebrated word Smectymnuus, gave their
+answer. Of this answer a confutation was attempted by the learned Usher;
+and to the confutation Milton published a reply, entitled, of Prelatical
+Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the Apostolical Times, by
+virtue of those testimonies which are alleged to that purpose in some
+late treatises, one whereof goes under the name of James, lord bishop of
+Armagh.
+
+I have transcribed this title to show, by his contemptuous mention of
+Usher, that he had now adopted the puritanical savageness of manners.
+His next work was, the Reason of Church Government urged against
+Prelacy, by Mr. John Milton, 1642. In this book he discovers, not with
+ostentatious exultation, but with calm confidence, his high opinion of
+his own powers; and promises to undertake something, he yet knows not
+what, that may be of use and honour to his country. "This," says he, "is
+not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit that 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; till which in some measure be compast, I refuse not to sustain
+this expectation." From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and
+rational, might be expected the Paradise Lost.
+
+He published, the same year, two more pamphlets, upon the same question.
+To one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was "vomited out of the
+university," he answers, in general terms: "The fellows of the college,
+wherein I spent some years, at my parting, after I had taken two
+degrees, as the manner is, signified, many times, how much better it
+would content them that I should stay. As for the common approbation or
+dislike of that place, as now it is, that I should esteem or disesteem
+myself the more for that, too simple is the answerer, if he think to
+obtain with me. Of small practice were the physician who could not
+judge, by what she and her sister have of long time vomited, that the
+worser stuff she strongly keeps in her stomach, but the better she is
+ever kecking at, and is queasy; she vomits now out of sickness; but,
+before it will be well with her, she must vomit by strong physick. The
+university, in the time of her better health, and my younger judgment, I
+never greatly admired, but now much less."
+
+This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been
+injured. He proceeds to describe the course of his conduct, and
+the train of his thoughts; and, because he has been suspected of
+incontinence, gives an account of his own purity: "That if I be justly
+charged," says he, "with this crime, it may come upon me with tenfold
+shame."
+
+The style of his piece is rough, and such, perhaps, was that of his
+antagonist. This roughness he justifies, by great examples, in a long
+digression. Sometimes he tries to be humorous: "Lest I should take him
+for some chaplain in hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one
+who serves not at the altar only, but at the court-cupboard, he will
+bestow on us a pretty model of himself; and sets me out half a dozen
+ptisical mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of
+convulsion fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped
+narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of
+thumb-ring poesies. And thus ends this section, or rather dissection,
+of himself." Such is the controversial merriment of Milton; his gloomy
+seriousness is yet more offensive. Such is his malignity, "that hell
+grows darker at his frown." His father, after Reading was taken by
+Essex, came to reside in his house; and his school increased. At
+Whitsuntide, in his thirty-fifth year, he married Mary, the daughter of
+Mr. Powel, a justice of the peace in Oxfordshire. He brought her to town
+with him, and expected all the advantages of a conjugal life. The lady,
+however, seems not much to have delighted in the pleasures of spare
+diet and hard study; for, as Philips relates, "having for a month led a
+philosophick life, after having been used at home to a great house, and
+much company and joviality, her friends, possibly by her own desire,
+made earnest suit to have her company the remaining part of the summer;
+which was granted, upon a promise of her return at Michaelmas."
+
+Milton was too busy to much miss his wife: he pursued his studies; and
+now and then visited the lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has mentioned in
+one of his sonnets. At last Michaelmas arrived; but the lady had no
+inclination to return to the sullen gloom of her husband's habitation,
+and, therefore, very willingly forgot her promise. He sent her a letter,
+but had no answer: he sent more with the same success. It could be
+alleged that letters miscarry; he, therefore, despatched a messenger,
+being by this time too angry to go himself. His messenger was sent back
+with some contempt. The family of the lady were cavaliers.
+
+In a man whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton's, less
+provocation than this might have raised violent resentment. Milton soon
+determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and, being one of those
+who could easily find arguments to justify inclination, published, in
+1644, the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; which was followed by the
+Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce; and the next year, his
+Tetrachordon, expositions upon the four chief places of scripture which
+treat of marriage.
+
+This innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy, who,
+then holding their famous assembly at Westminster, procured that the
+author should be called before the lords; but "that house," says Wood,
+"whether approving the doctrine, or not favouring his accusers, did soon
+dismiss him."
+
+There seems not to have been much written against him, nor any thing by
+any writer of eminence[34]. The antagonist that appeared, is styled by
+him "a serving man turned solicitor." Howell, in his Letters, mentions
+the new doctrine with contempt[35]: and it was, I suppose, thought more
+worthy of derision than of confutation. He complains of this neglect
+in two sonnets, of which the first is contemptible and the second not
+excellent.
+
+From this time it is observed, that he became an enemy to the
+presbyterians, whom he had favoured before. He that changes his party
+by his humour, is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his
+interest: he loves himself rather than truth.
+
+His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an unresisting
+sufferer of injuries; and, perceiving that he had begun to put
+his doctrine in practice, by courting a young woman of great
+accomplishments, the daughter of one doctor Davis, who was, however, not
+ready to comply, they resolved to endeavour a reunion. He went sometimes
+to the house of one Blackborough, his relation, in the lane of St.
+Martin-le-grand, and at one of his usual visits was surprised to see his
+wife come from another room, and implore forgiveness on her knees. He
+resisted her entreaties for awhile; "but partly," says Philips, "his own
+generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance
+in anger or revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on
+both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion and a firm league of
+peace." It were injurious to omit, that Milton afterwards received her
+father and her brothers in his own house, when they were distressed,
+with other royalists.
+
+He published, about the same time, his Areopagitica, a speech of Mr.
+John Milton, for the liberty of unlicensed printing. The danger of
+such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a
+problem in the science of government, which human understanding seems,
+hitherto, unable to solve. If nothing may be published but what civil
+authority shall have previously approved, power must always be the
+standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his
+projects, there can be no settlement; if every murmurer at government
+may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every skeptick in
+theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy
+against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed
+that every society may punish, though not prevent, the publication of
+opinions which that society shall think pernicious; but this punishment,
+though it may crush the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more
+reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers
+may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors
+unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.
+
+But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestick, poetry was never
+long out of his thoughts. About this time (1645) a collection of his
+Latin and English poems appeared, in which the Allegro and Penseroso,
+with some others, were first published.
+
+He had taken a large house in Barbican, for the reception of scholars;
+but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted
+refuge for awhile, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they went away;
+"and the house again," says Philips, "now looked like a house of the
+muses only, though the accession of scholars was not great. Possibly
+his having proceeded so far in the education of youth may have been the
+occasion of his adversaries calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster;
+whereas, it is well known he never set up for a publick school, to
+teach all the young fry of a parish; but only was willing to impart his
+learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of gentlemen who
+were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings, nor his way of
+teaching, ever savoured in the least of pedantry."
+
+Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and
+what might be confessed without disgrace. Milton was not a man who could
+become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmest friends
+seem not to have found; they, therefore, shift and palliate. He did
+not sell literature to all comers, at an open shop; he was a chamber
+milliner, and measured his commodities only to his friends.
+
+Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of
+degradation, tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his
+character again, has a mind to invest him with military splendour: "He
+is much mistaken," he says, "if there was not, about this time, a design
+of making him an adjutant-general in sir William Waller's army. But the
+new modelling of the army proved an obstruction to the design." An
+event cannot be set at a much greater distance than by having been only
+"designed about some time," if a man "be not much mistaken." Milton
+shall be a pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips be not much mistaken,
+somebody at some time designed him for a soldier.
+
+About the time that the army was new-modelled, (1645,) he removed to
+a smaller house in Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln's inn
+fields. He is not known to have published any thing afterwards, till
+the king's death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the
+presbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it, and "to compose the
+minds of the people."
+
+He made some Remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the
+Irish Rebels. While he contented himself to write, he, perhaps, did only
+what his conscience dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly watch
+the influence of his own passions, and the gradual prevalence of
+opinions, first willingly admitted, and then habitually indulged; if
+objections, by being overlooked, were forgotten, and desire superinduced
+conviction; he yet shared only the common weakness of mankind, and might
+be no less sincere than his opponents. But, as faction seldom leaves a
+man honest, however it might find him, Milton is suspected of having
+interpolated the book called Icon Basilike, which the council of state,
+to whom he was now made Latin secretary, employed him to censure, by
+inserting a prayer taken from Sidney's Arcadia, and imputing it to the
+king; whom he charges, in his Iconoclastes, with the use of this prayer,
+as with a heavy crime, in the indecent language with which prosperity
+had emboldened the advocates for rebellion to insult all that is
+venerable or great: "Who would have imagined so little fear in him of
+the true all-seeing deity, as, immediately before his death, to pop into
+the hands of the grave bishop that attended him, as a special relique of
+his saintly exercises, a prayer, stolen word for word, from the mouth of
+a heathen woman, praying to a heathen god?"
+
+The papers which the king gave to Dr. Juxon, on the scaffold, the
+regicides took away, so that they were, at least, the publishers of this
+prayer; and Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great care,
+was inclined to think them the forgers. The use of it, by adaptation,
+was innocent; and they who could so noisily censure it, with a
+little extension of their malice, could contrive what they wanted to
+accuse[36].
+
+King Charles the second, being now sheltered in Holland, employed
+Salmasius, professor of polite learning at Leyden, to write a defence of
+his father and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry, gave him, as
+was reported, a hundred Jacobuses. Salmasius was a man of skill in
+languages, knowledge of antiquity, and sagacity of emendatory criticism,
+almost exceeding all hope of human attainment; and having, by excessive
+praises, been confirmed in great confidence of himself, though he
+probably had not much considered the principles of society, or the
+rights of government, undertook the employment without distrust of his
+own qualifications; and, as his expedition in writing was wonderful, in
+1649, published Defensio Regis.
+
+To this Milton was required to write a sufficient answer; which he
+performed (1651) in such a manner, that Hobbes declared himself unable
+to decide whose language was best, or whose arguments were worst. In my
+opinion, Milton's periods are smoother, neater, and more pointed; but he
+delights himself with teasing his adversary, as much as with confuting
+him. He makes a foolish allusion of Salmasius, whose doctrine he
+considers as servile and unmanly, to the stream of Salmacis, which,
+whoever entered, left half his virility behind him. Salmasius was a
+Frenchman, and was unhappily married to a scold: "Tu es Gallus," says
+Milton, "et, ut aiunt, minium gallinaceus." But his supreme pleasure is
+to tax his adversary, so renowned for criticism, with vitious Latin. He
+opens his book with telling that he has used _persona_, which, according
+to Milton, signifies only a _mask_, in a sense not known to the Romans,
+by applying it as we apply _person_. But, as Nemesis is always on the
+watch, it is memorable that he has enforced the charge of a solecism by
+an expression in itself grossly solecistical, when, for one of those
+supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, and, I think, some one before him,
+has remarked, "propino te grammatistis tuis _vapulandum_[37]." From
+_vapulo_, which has a passive sense, _vapulandus_ can never be derived.
+No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations, and of kings,
+sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them.
+
+Milton, when he undertook this answer, was weak of body and dim of
+sight; but his will was forward, and what was wanting of health was
+supplied by zeal. He was rewarded with a thousand pounds, and his book
+was much read; for paradox, recommended by spirit and elegance, easily
+gains attention; and he, who told every man that he was equal to his
+king, could hardly want an audience.
+
+That the performance of Salmasius was not dispersed with equal rapidity,
+or read with equal eagerness, is very credible. He taught only the stale
+doctrine of authority, and the unpleasing duty of submission; and he had
+been so long not only the monarch, but the tyrant, of literature, that
+almost all mankind were delighted to find him defied and insulted by a
+new name, not yet considered as any one's rival. If Christina, as is
+said, commended the Defence of the People, her purpose must be to
+torment Salmasius, who was then at court; for neither her civil station,
+nor her natural character, could dispose her to favour the doctrine, who
+was by birth a queen, and by temper despotick.
+
+That Salmasius was, from the appearance of Milton's book, treated with
+neglect, there is not much proof; but to a man, so long accustomed to
+admiration, a little praise of his antagonist would be sufficiently
+offensive, and might incline him to leave Sweden, from which, however,
+he was dismissed, not with any mark of contempt, but with a train of
+attendance scarcely less than regal.
+
+He prepared a reply, which, left as it was imperfect, was published by
+his son in the year of the restoration. In the beginning, being probably
+most in pain for his Latinity, he endeavours to defend his use of the
+word _persona_; but, if I remember right, he misses a better authority
+than any that he has found, that of Juvenal in his fourth satire:
+
+  Quid agas, cum dira et foedior omni
+  Crimine _persona_ est?
+
+As Salmasius reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the quarrel,
+Milton delighted himself with the belief that he had shortened
+Salmasius's life, and both, perhaps, with more malignity than reason.
+Salmasius died at the spa, Sept. 3, 1653; and, as controvertists are
+commonly said to be killed by their last dispute, Milton was flattered
+with the credit of destroying him.
+
+Cromwell had now dismissed the parliament by the authority of which he
+had destroyed monarchy, and commenced monarch himself, under the title
+of protector, but with kingly, and more than kingly, power. That his
+authority was lawful, never was pretended: he himself founded his right
+only in necessity; but Milton, having now tasted the honey of publick
+employment, would not return to hunger and philosophy, but, continuing
+to exercise his office, under a manifest usurpation, betrayed to his
+power that liberty which he had defended. Nothing can be more just than
+that rebellion should end in slavery; that he, who had justified the
+murder of his king, for some acts which seemed to him unlawful, should
+now sell his services, and his flatteries, to a tyrant, of whom it was
+evident that he could do nothing lawful.
+
+He had now been blind for some years; but his vigour of intellect
+was such, that he was not disabled to discharge his office of Latin
+secretary, or continue his controversies. His mind was too eager to be
+diverted, and too strong to be subdued.
+
+About this time his first wife died in childbed, having left him three
+daughters. As he probably did not much love her, he did not long
+continue the appearance of lamenting her; but, after a short time,
+married Catharine, the daughter of one captain Woodcock, of Hackney; a
+woman, doubtless, educated in opinions like his own. She died, within a
+year, of childbirth, or some distemper that followed it; and her husband
+honoured her memory with a poor sonnet.
+
+The first reply to Milton's Defensio Populi was published in 1651,
+called Apologia pro Rege et Populo Anglicano, contra Johannis
+Polypragmatici, alias Miltoni, Defensionem destructivam Regis et Populi.
+Of this the author was not known; but Milton and his nephew, Philips,
+under whose name he published an answer, so much corrected by him that
+it might be called his own, imputed it to Bramhal; and, knowing him no
+friend to regicides, thought themselves at liberty to treat him as if
+they had known what they only suspected.
+
+Next year appeared Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum. Of this the author
+was Peter du Moulin, who was afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; but
+Morus, or More, a French minister, having the care of its publication,
+was treated as the writer by Milton in his Defensio Secunda, and
+overwhelmed by such violence of invective, that he began to shrink under
+the tempest, and gave his persecutors the means of knowing the true
+author. Du Moulin was now in great danger; but Milton's pride operated
+against his malignity; and both he and his friends were more willing
+that Du Moulin should escape than that he should be convicted of
+mistake.
+
+In this second defence he shows that his eloquence is not merely
+satirical; the rudeness of his invective is equalled by the grossness
+of his flattery. "Deserimur, Cromuelle, tu solus superes, ad te summa
+nostrarum rerum rediit, in te solo consistit, insuperabili tuae virtuti
+cedimus cuncti, nemine vel obloquente, nisi qui aequales inaequalis ipse
+honores sibi quaerit, aut digniori concessos invidet, aut non intelligit
+nihil esse in societate hominum magis vel Deo gratum, vel rationi
+consentaneum, esse in civitate nihil aequius, nihil utilius, quam potiri
+rerum dignissimum. Eum te agnoscunt omnes, Cromuelle, ea tu civis
+maximus et gloriosissimus[38], dux publici consilii, exercituum
+fortissimorum imperator, pater patriae gessisti. Sic tu spontanea
+bonorum omnium, et animitus missa voce salutaris."
+
+Caesar, when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not more servile
+or more elegant flattery. A translation may show its servility; but
+its elegance is less attainable. Having exposed the unskilfulness or
+selfishness of the former government, "We were left," says Milton,
+"to ourselves: the whole national interest fell into your hands, and
+subsists only in your abilities. To your virtue, overpowering and
+resistless, every man gives way, except some who, without equal
+qualifications, aspire to equal honours, who envy the distinctions of
+merit, greater than their own, or who have yet to learn, that, in the
+coalition of human society, nothing is more pleasing to God, or more
+agreeable to reason, than that the highest mind should have the
+sovereign power. Such, sir, are you by general confession; such are the
+things achieved by you, the greatest and most glorious of our countrymen,
+the director of our publick councils, the leader of unconquered armies,
+the father of your country; for by that title does every good man hail
+you with sincere and voluntary praise."
+
+Next year, having defended all that wanted defence, he found leisure to
+defend himself. He undertook his own vindication against More, whom he
+declares, in his title, to be justly called the author of the Regii
+Sanguinis Clamor. In this there is no want of vehemence or eloquence,
+nor does he forget his wonted wit: "Morus est? an Momus? an uterque idem
+est?" He then remembers that Morus is Latin for a mulberry-tree, and
+hints at the known transformation:
+
+  "Poma alba ferebat
+  Quae post nigra tulit Morus."
+
+With this piece ended his controversies; and he, from this time, gave
+himself up to his private studies and his civil employment.
+
+As secretary to the protector, he is supposed to have written the
+declaration of the reasons for a war with Spain. His agency was
+considered as of great importance; for, when a treaty with Sweden was
+artfully suspended, the delay was publickly imputed to Mr. Milton's
+indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to express his wonder,
+that only one man in England could write Latin, and that man blind.
+
+Being now forty-seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered
+from external interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former
+purposes, and to have resumed three great works, which he had planned
+for his future employment; an epick poem, the history of his country,
+and a dictionary of the Latin tongue.
+
+To collect a dictionary, seems a work of all others least practicable
+in a state of blindness, because it depends upon perpetual and minute
+inspection and collation. Nor would Milton probably have begun it, after
+he had lost his eyes; but, having had it always before him, he continued
+it, says Philips, "almost to his dying-day; but the papers were so
+discomposed and deficient, that they could not be fitted for the press."
+The compilers of the Latin dictionary, printed at Cambridge, had the use
+of those collections in three folios; but what was their fate afterwards
+is not known[39].
+
+To compile a history from various authors, when they can only be
+consulted by other eyes, is not easy, nor possible, but with more
+skilful and attentive help than can be commonly obtained; and it was
+probably the difficulty of consulting and comparing that stopped
+Milton's narrative at the conquest; a period at which affairs were not
+yet very intricate, nor authors very numerous.
+
+For the subject of his epick poem, after much deliberation, long
+choosing, and beginning late, he fixed upon Paradise Lost; a design so
+comprehensive, that it could be justified only by success. He had once
+designed to celebrate king Arthur, as he hints in his verses to Mansus;
+but "Arthur was reserved," says Fenton, "to another destiny[40]."
+
+It appears, by some sketches of poetical projects left in manuscript,
+and to be seen in a library[41] at Cambridge, that he had digested his
+thoughts on this subject into one of those wild dramas which were
+anciently called Mysteries[42]; and Philips had seen what he terms part
+of a tragedy, beginning with the first ten lines of Satan's address to
+the sun. These mysteries consist of allegorical persons; such as
+Justice, Mercy, Faith. Of the tragedy or mystery of Paradise Lost,
+there are two plans:
+
+The Persons.
+
+  Michael.
+  Chorus of Angels.
+  Heavenly Love.
+  Lucifer.
+  Adam,  }
+  Eve,   } with the Serpent.
+  Conscience.
+  Death.
+  Labour,      }
+  Sickness,    }
+  Discontent,  } Mutes.
+  Ignorance,   }
+  with others; }
+  Faith.
+  Hope.
+  Charity.
+
+The Persons.
+
+  Moses.
+  Divine Justice, Wisdom, Heavenly Love.
+  The Evening Star, Hesperus.
+  Chorus of Angels.
+  Lucifer.
+  Adam.
+
+  Eve.
+  Conscience.
+  Labour,      }
+  Sickness,    }
+  Discontent,  }  Mutes.
+  Ignorance,   }
+  Fear,        }
+  Death,       }
+  Faith.
+  Hope.
+  Charity.
+
+PARADISE LOST.
+
+The Persons.
+
+Moses [Greek: prologizei], recounting how he assumed his true body; that
+it corrupts not, because it is with God in the mount: declares the like
+of Enoch and Elijah; besides the purity of the place, that certain pure
+winds, dews, and clouds, preserve it from corruption; whence exhorts to
+the sight of God; tells they cannot see Adam in the state of innocence,
+by reason of their sin.
+
+  Justice, } debating what should become of man, if he fall.
+  Mercy,   }
+  Wisdom,  }
+
+Chorus of angels singing a hymn of the creation.
+
+ACT II.
+
+Heavenly Love.
+
+Evening Star.
+
+Chorus sings the marriage song, and describes Paradise.
+
+ACT III.
+
+Lucifer contriving Adam's ruin.
+
+Chorus fears for Adam, and relates Lucifer's rebellion and fall.
+
+ACT IV.
+
+  Adam,  } fallen.
+  Eve,   }
+
+Conscience cites them to God's examination.
+
+Chorus bewails, and tells the good Adam has lost.
+
+ACT V.
+
+  Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise.
+  ------presented by an angel with
+  Labour, Grief, Hatred, Envy, War, Famine,    }
+  Pestilence, Sickness, Discontent, Ignorance, } Mutes.
+  Fear, Death,                                 }
+  To whom he gives their names. Likewise Winter, Heat,
+  Tempest, &c.
+  Faith,    }
+  Hope,     }comfort him, and instruct him.
+  Charity,  }
+  Chorus briefly concludes.
+
+Such was his first design, which could have produced only an allegory,
+or mystery. The following sketch seems to have attained more maturity.
+
+Adam unparadised:
+
+The angel Gabriel, either descending or entering; showing, since
+this globe was created, his frequency as much on earth as in heaven;
+describes Paradise. Next, the chorus, showing the reason of his coming
+to keep his watch in Paradise, after Lucifer's rebellion, by command
+from God; and withal expressing his desire to see and know more
+concerning this excellent new creature, man. The angel Gabriel, as by
+his name signifying a prince of power, tracing Paradise with, a more
+free office, passes by the station of the chorus, and, desired by them,
+relates what he knew of man; as the creation of Eve, with their love
+and marriage. After this, Lucifer appears; after his overthrow, bemoans
+himself, seeks revenge on man. The chorus prepares resistance at his
+first approach. At last, after discourse of enmity on either side, he
+departs: whereat the chorus sings of the battle and victory in heaven,
+against him and his accomplices: as before, after the first act, was
+sung a hymn of the creation. Here again may appear Lucifer, relating and
+exulting in what he had done to the destruction of man. Man next, and
+Eve, having by this time been seduced by the serpent, appears confusedly
+covered with leaves. Conscience, in a shape, accuses him; justice cites
+him to the place whither Jehovah called for him. In the mean while, the
+chorus entertains the stage, and is informed by some angel the manner of
+the fall. Here the chorus bewails Adam's fall; Adam then and Eve return;
+accuse one another; but especially Adam lays the blame to his wife; is
+stubborn in his offence. Justice appears, reasons with him, convinces
+him. The chorus admonisheth Adam, and bids him beware Lucifer's example
+of impenitence. The angel is sent to banish them out of Paradise; but
+before, causes to pass before his eyes, in shapes, a mask of all the
+evils of this life and world. He is humbled, relents, despairs; at last
+appears Mercy, comforts him, promises the Messiah; then calls in Faith,
+Hope, and Charity; instructs him; he repents, gives God the glory,
+submits to his penalty. The chorus briefly concludes. Compare this with
+the former draught.
+
+These are very imperfect rudiments of Paradise Lost; but it is pleasant
+to see great works in their seminal state, pregnant with latent
+possibilities of excellence; nor could there be any more delightful
+entertainment than to trace their gradual growth and expansion, and to
+observe how they are sometimes suddenly advanced by accidental hints,
+and sometimes slowly improved by steady meditation.
+
+Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot
+obstruct, and, therefore, he naturally solaced his solitude by the
+indulgence of his fancy, and the melody of his numbers. He had done what
+he knew to be necessary previous to poetical excellence; he had made
+himself acquainted with "seemly arts and affairs;" his comprehension was
+extended by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual
+treasures. He was skilful in many languages, and had, by reading and
+composition, attained the full mastery of his own. He would have wanted
+little help from books, had he retained the power of perusing them.
+
+But while his greater designs were advancing, having now, like many
+other authors, caught the love of publication, he amused himself, as he
+could, with little productions. He sent to the press, 1658, a manuscript
+of Raleigh, called, the Cabinet Council; and next year gratified
+his malevolence to the clergy, by a Treatise of Civil Power in
+Ecclesiastical Cases, and the Means of removing Hirelings out of the
+Church.
+
+Oliver was now dead; Richard was constrained to resign: the system of
+extemporary government, which had been held together only by force,
+naturally fell into fragments, when that force was taken away; and
+Milton saw himself and his cause in equal danger. But he had still hope
+of doing something. He wrote letters, which Toland has published, to
+such men as he thought friends to the new commonwealth; and, even in the
+year of the restoration, he "bated no jot of heart or hope," but was
+fantastical enough to think that the nation, agitated as it was, might
+be settled by a pamphlet, called, a ready and easy Way to establish a
+free Commonwealth: which was, however, enough considered to be both
+seriously and ludicrously answered.
+
+The obstinate enthusiasm of the commonwealth-men was very remarkable.
+When the king was apparently returning, Harrington, with a few
+associates as fanatical as himself, used to meet, with all the gravity
+of political importance, to settle an equal government by rotation; and
+Milton, kicking when he could strike no longer, was foolish enough
+to publish, a few weeks before the restoration, notes upon a sermon
+preached by one Griffiths, entitled, the Fear of God and the King.
+To these notes an answer was written by L'Estrange, in a pamphlet,
+petulantly called, No Blind Guides.
+
+But whatever Milton could write, or men of greater activity could do,
+the king was now about to be restored with the irresistible approbation
+of the people. He was, therefore, no longer secretary, and was,
+consequently, obliged to quit the house which he held by his office;
+and, proportioning his sense of danger to his opinion of the importance
+of his writings, thought it convenient to seek some shelter, and hid
+himself, for a time, in Bartholomew close, by West Smithfield.
+
+I cannot but remark a kind of respect, perhaps unconsciously, paid to
+this great man by his biographers: every house in which he resided is
+historically mentioned, as if it were an injury to neglect naming any
+place that he honoured by his presence.
+
+The king, with lenity of which the world has had, perhaps, no other
+example, declined to be the judge or avenger of his own or his father's
+wrongs; and promised to admit into the act of oblivion all, except those
+whom the parliament should except; and the parliament doomed none to
+capital punishment, but the wretches who had immediately cooperated in
+the murder of the king. Milton was certainly not one of them; he had
+only justified what they had done.
+
+This justification was, indeed, sufficiently offensive; and, June 16, an
+order was issued to seize Milton's Defence, and Goodwin's Obstructers of
+Justice, another book of the same tendency, and burn them by the common
+hangman. The attorney-general was ordered to prosecute the authors; but
+Milton was not seized, nor, perhaps, very diligently pursued.
+
+Not long after, August 19, the flutter of innumerable bosoms was stilled
+by an act, which the king, that his mercy might want no recommendation
+of elegance, rather called an act of oblivion, than of grace. Goodwin
+was named, with nineteen more, as incapacitated for any publick trust;
+but of Milton there was no exception[43].
+
+Of this tenderness shown to Milton, the curiosity of mankind has not
+forborne to inquire the reason. Burnet thinks he was forgotten; but this
+is another instance which may confirm Dalrymple's observation, who
+says, "that whenever Burnet's narrations are examined, he appears to be
+mistaken."
+
+Forgotten he was not; for his prosecution was ordered; it must be,
+therefore, by design that he was included in the general oblivion. He is
+said to have had friends in the house, such as Marvel, Morrice, and
+sir Thomas Clarges: and, undoubtedly, a man like him must have
+had influence. A very particular story of his escape is told by
+Richardson[44] in his Memoirs, which he received from Pope, as delivered
+by Betterton, who might have heard it from Davenant. In the war between
+the king and parliament, Davenant was made prisoner and condemned to
+die; but was spared at the request of Milton. When the turn of success
+brought Milton into the like danger, Davenant repayed the benefit by
+appearing in his favour. Here is a reciprocation of generosity and
+gratitude so pleasing, that the tale makes its own way to credit. But,
+if help were wanted, I know not where to find it. The danger of Davenant
+is certain, from his own relation; but of his escape there is no
+account[45]. Betterton's narration can be traced no higher; it is
+not known that he had it from Davenant. We are told that the benefit
+exchanged was life for life; but it seems not certain that Milton's life
+ever was in danger. Goodwin, who had committed the same kind of crime,
+escaped with incapacitation; and, as exclusion from publick trust is a
+punishment which the power of government can commonly inflict, without
+the help of a particular law, it required no great interest to exempt
+Milton from a censure little more than verbal. Something may be
+reasonably ascribed to veneration and compassion; to veneration of his
+abilities, and compassion for his distresses, which made it fit to
+forgive his malice for his learning. He was now poor and blind; and who
+would pursue with violence an illustrious enemy, depressed by fortune,
+and disarmed by nature[46]?
+
+The publication of the act of oblivion put him in the same condition
+with his fellow subjects. He was, however, upon some pretence, not now
+known, in the custody of the serjeant, in December; and when he was
+released, upon his refusal of the fees demanded, he and the serjeant
+were called before the house. He was now safe within the shade of
+oblivion, and knew himself to be as much out of the power of a griping
+officer, as any other man. How the question was determined is not known.
+Milton would hardly have contended, but that he knew himself to have
+right on his side.
+
+He then removed to Jewin street, near Aldersgate street; and being
+blind, and by no means wealthy, wanted a domestick companion and
+attendant; and, therefore, by the recommendation of Dr. Paget, married
+Elizabeth Minshul, of a gentleman's family in Cheshire, probably without
+a fortune. All his wives were virgins; for he has declared that he
+thought it gross and indelicate to be a second husband: upon what
+other principles his choice was made cannot now be known; but marriage
+afforded not much of his happiness. The first wife left him in disgust,
+and was brought back only by terrour; the second, indeed, seems to have
+been more a favourite, but her life was short. The third, as Philips
+relates, oppressed his children in his lifetime, and cheated them at his
+death.
+
+Soon after his marriage, according to an obscure story, he was offered
+the continuance of his employment, and, being pressed by his wife to
+accept it, answered: "You, like other women, want to ride in your coach;
+my wish is to live and die an honest man." If he considered the Latin
+secretary as exercising any of the powers of government, he that had
+shared authority, either with the parliament or Cromwell, might have
+forborne to talk very loudly of his honesty; and, if he thought the
+office purely ministerial, he certainly might have honestly retained
+it under the king. But this tale has too little evidence to deserve a
+disquisition; large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most
+common topicks of falsehood.
+
+He had so much either of prudence or gratitude, that he forbore to
+disturb the new settlement with any of his political or ecclesiastical
+opinions, and, from this time, devoted himself to poetry and literature.
+Of his zeal for learning, in all its parts, he gave a proof by
+publishing, the next year, 1661, Accidence commenced Grammar; a little
+book, which has nothing remarkable, but that its author, who had been
+lately defending the supreme powers of his country, and was then writing
+Paradise Lost, could descend from his elevation to rescue children from
+the perplexity of grammatical confusion, and the trouble of lessons
+unnecessarily repeated[47].
+
+About this time Elwood, the quaker, being recommended to him, as one who
+would read Latin to him for the advantage of his conversation, attended
+him every afternoon, except on Sundays. Milton, who, in his letter to
+Hartlib, had declared, that "to read Latin with an English mouth is as
+ill a hearing as law French," required that Elwood should learn and
+practise the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, was necessary, if he
+would talk with foreigners. This seems to have been a task troublesome
+without use. There is little reason for preferring the Italian
+pronunciation to our own, except that it is more general; and to teach
+it to an Englishman is only to make him a foreigner at home. He who
+travels, if he speaks Latin, may so soon learn the sounds which every
+native gives it, that he need make no provision before his journey; and
+if strangers visit us, it is their business to practise such conformity
+to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries. Elwood
+complied with the directions, and improved himself by his attendance;
+for he relates, that Milton, having a curious ear, knew, by his voice,
+when he read what he did not understand, and would stop him, and "open
+the most difficult passages."
+
+In a short time he took a house in the Artillery walk, leading to
+Bunhill fields; the mention of which concludes the register of Milton's
+removals and habitations. He lived longer in this place than in any
+other.
+
+He was now busied by Paradise Lost. Whence he drew the original design
+has been variously conjectured, by men who cannot bear to think
+themselves ignorant of that which, at last, neither diligence nor
+sagacity can discover. Some find the hint in an Italian tragedy.
+Voltaire tells a wild and unauthorized story of a farce seen by Milton,
+in Italy, which opened thus: "Let the rainbow be the fiddlestick of
+the fiddle of heaven[48]." It has been already shown, that the first
+conception was of a tragedy or mystery, not of a narrative, but a
+dramatick work, which he is supposed to have begun to reduce to its
+present form about the time (1655) when he finished his dispute with the
+defenders of the king.
+
+He, long before, had promised to adorn his native country by some great
+performance, while he had yet, perhaps, no settled design, and was
+stimulated only by such expectations as naturally arose from the survey
+of his attainments, and the consciousness of his powers. What he should
+undertake, it was difficult to determine. He was "long choosing, and
+began late."
+
+While he was obliged to divide his time between his private studies and
+affairs of state, his poetical labour must have been often interrupted;
+and, perhaps, he did little more in that busy time than construct the
+narrative, adjust the episodes, proportion the parts, accumulate images
+and sentiments, and treasure in his memory, or preserve in writing, such
+hints as books or meditation would supply. Nothing particular is known
+of his intellectual operations while he was a statesman; for, having
+every help and accommodation at hand, he had no need of uncommon
+expedients.
+
+Being driven from all publick stations, he is yet too great not to be
+traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found, by Mr.
+Richardson, the fondest of his admirers, sitting "before his door in a
+grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh
+air; and so, as well as in his own room, receiving the visits of the
+people of distinguished parts, as well as quality." His visiters of
+high quality must now be imagined to be few; but men of parts might
+reasonably court the conversation of a man so generally illustrious,
+that foreigners are reported, by Wood, to have visited the house in
+Bread street, where he was born.
+
+According to another account, he was seen in a small house, "neatly
+enough dressed in black clothes, sitting in a room hung with rusty
+green; pale but not cadaverous, with chalkstones in his hand. He said,
+that, if it were not for the gout, his blindness would be tolerable."
+
+In the intervals of his pain, being made unable to use the common
+exercises, he used to swing in a chair, and sometimes played upon an
+organ.
+
+He was now confessedly and visibly employed upon his poem, of which the
+progress might be noted by those with whom he was familiar; for he
+was obliged, when he had composed as many lines as his memory would
+conveniently retain, to employ some friend in writing them, having, at
+least for part of the time, no regular attendant. This gave opportunity
+to observations and reports.
+
+Mr. Philips observes, that there was a very remarkable circumstance in
+the composure of Paradise Lost, "which I have a particular reason," says
+he, "to remember; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very
+beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in
+parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time, which, being written
+by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction, as to the
+orthography and pointing; having, as the summer came on, not been showed
+any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was
+answered, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal
+equinox to the vernal; and that whatever he attempted at other times was
+never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so
+that, in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have
+spent half his time therein."
+
+Upon this relation Toland remarks, that in his opinion, Philips has
+mistaken the time of the year; for Milton, in his elegies, declares,
+that with the advance of the spring he feels the increase of his
+poetical force, "redeunt in carmina vires." To this it is answered, that
+Philips could hardly mistake time so well marked; and it may be added,
+that Milton might find different times of the year favourable to
+different parts of life. Mr. Richardson conceives it impossible that
+"such a work should be suspended for six months, or for one. It may
+go on faster or slower, but it must go on." By what necessity it must
+continually go on, or why it might not be laid aside and resumed, it is
+not easy to discover.
+
+This dependance of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and
+periodical ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be
+derided, as the fumes of vain imagination: "Sapiens dominabitur astris."
+The author that thinks himself weather-bound will find, with a little
+help from hellebore, that he is only idle or exhausted. But while this
+notion has possession of the head, it produces the inability which it
+supposes. Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes: "possunt
+quia posse videutur." When success seems attainable, diligence is
+enforced; but when it is admitted that the faculties are suppressed by a
+cross wind, or a cloudy sky, the day is given up without resistance; for
+who can contend with the course of nature?
+
+From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free. There
+prevailed, in his time, an opinion, that the world was in its decay, and
+that we have had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of
+nature. It was suspected, that the whole creation languished, that
+neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors,
+and that every thing was daily sinking by gradual diminution[49]. Milton
+appears to suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and is
+not without some fear that his book is to be written in "an age too
+late" for heroick poesy[50].
+
+Another opinion wanders about the world, and sometimes finds reception
+among wise men; an opinion that restrains the operations of the mind to
+particular regions, and supposes that a luckless mortal may be born in a
+degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit. From this
+fancy, wild as it is, he had not wholly cleared his head, when he
+feared lest the climate of his country might be too cold for flights of
+imagination.
+
+Into a mind already occupied by such fancies, another not more
+reasonable might easily find its way. He that could fear lest his
+genius had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate, might
+consistently magnify to himself the influence of the seasons, and
+believe his faculties to be vigorous only half the year.
+
+His submission to the seasons was, at least, more reasonable than his
+dread of decaying nature, or a frigid zone; for general causes must
+operate uniformly in a general abatement of mental power; if less could
+be performed by the writer, less, likewise, would content the judges of
+his work. Among this lagging race of frosty grovellers he might still
+have risen into eminence, by producing something, which "they should not
+willingly let die." However inferiour to the heroes who were born in
+better ages, he might still be great among his contemporaries, with the
+hope of growing every day greater in the dwindle of posterity. He
+might still be a giant among the pygmies, the one-eyed monarch of the
+blind[51].
+
+Of his artifices of study, or particular hours of composition, we have
+little account, and there was, perhaps, little to be told. Richardson,
+who seems to have been very diligent in his inquiries, but discovers
+always a wish to find Milton discriminated from other men, relates, that
+"he would sometimes lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could he
+make; and on a sudden his poetical faculty would rush upon him with an
+impetus or oestrum, and his daughter was immediately called to secure
+what came. At other times he would dictate, perhaps, forty lines in a
+breath, and then reduce them to half the number."
+
+These bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these transient
+and involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having some
+appearance of deviation from the common train of nature, are eagerly
+caught by the lovers of a wonder. Yet something of this inequality
+happens to every man in every mode of exertion, manual or mental. The
+mechanick cannot handle his hammer and his file at all times with equal
+dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why, when "his hand is out."
+By Mr. Richardson's relation, casually conveyed, much regard cannot be
+claimed. That, in his intellectual hour, Milton called for his daughter
+to "secure what came," may be questioned; for unluckily it happens to be
+known, that his daughters were never taught to write; nor would he have
+been obliged, as is universally confessed, to have employed any casual
+visitor in disburdening his memory, if his daughter could have performed
+the office.
+
+The story of reducing his exuberance has been told of other authors,
+and, though, doubtless, true of every fertile and copious mind, seems
+to have been gratuitously transferred to Milton.
+
+What he has told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed
+much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose, before his mind
+was disturbed with common business; and that he poured out, with great
+fluency, his "unpremeditated verse." Versification, free, like his, from
+the distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and
+habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, the words would
+come at his command.
+
+At what particular times of his life the parts of his work were written,
+cannot often be known. The beginning of the third book shows that he had
+lost his sight; and the introduction to the seventh, that the return of
+the king had clouded him with discountenance: and that he was offended
+by the licentious festivity of the restoration. There are no other
+internal notes of time. Milton, being now cleared from all effects of
+his disloyalty, had nothing required from him but the common duty of
+living in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right of protection;
+but this, which, when he skulked from the approach of his king, was,
+perhaps, more than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for, no
+sooner is he safe, than he finds himself in danger: "fallen on evil days
+and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compass'd round."
+This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly
+deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger was ungrateful
+and unjust. He was fallen, indeed, on "evil days;" the time was come in
+which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness. But of "evil
+tongues" for Milton to complain, required impudence, at least, equal to
+his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he
+never spared any asperity of reproach, or brutality of insolence.
+
+But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to
+recollect any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous,
+through the whole remaining part of his life. He pursued his studies, or
+his amusements, without persecution, molestation, or insult. Such is
+the reverence paid to great abilities, however misused: they who
+contemplated in Milton the scholar and the wit, were contented to forget
+the reviler of his king.
+
+When the plague, 1665, raged in London, Milton took refuge at Chalfont,
+in Bucks; where Elwood, who had taken the house for him, first saw a
+complete copy of Paradise Lost, and, having perused it, said to him:
+"Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say
+upon Paradise Found?"
+
+Next year, when the danger of infection had ceased, he returned to
+Bunhill fields, and designed the publication of his poem. A license was
+necessary, and he could expect no great kindness from a chaplain of the
+archbishop of Canterbury. He seems, however, to have been treated with
+tenderness; for though objections were made to particular passages, and
+among them to the simile of the sun, eclipsed in the first book, yet the
+license was granted; and he sold his copy, April 27, 1667, to Samuel
+Simmons, for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to
+receive five pounds more, when thirteen hundred should be sold of the
+first edition; and again, five pounds after the sale of the same number
+of the second edition; and another five pounds after the same sale of
+the third. None of the three editions were to be extended beyond fifteen
+hundred copies.
+
+The first edition was of ten books, in a small quarto. The titles were
+varied from year to year; and an advertisement and the arguments of the
+books were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others.
+
+The sale gave him, in two years, a right to his second payment, for
+which the receipt was signed April, 26, 1669. The second edition was not
+given till 1674; it was printed in small octavo; and the number of books
+was increased to twelve, by a division of the seventh and twelfth; and
+some other small improvements were made. The third edition was published
+in 1678; and the widow, to whom the copy was then to devolve, sold all
+her claims to Simmons for eight pounds, according to her receipt given
+December 21, 1680. Simmons had already agreed to transfer the whole
+right to Brabazon Aylmer, for twenty-five pounds; and Aylmer sold to
+Jacob Tonson half, August 17, 1683, and half, March 24, 1690, at a price
+considerably enlarged. In the history of Paradise Lost, a deduction thus
+minute will rather gratify than fatigue.
+
+The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have been always
+mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of
+literary fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered,
+about the causes of its long obscurity and late reception. But has the
+case been truly stated? Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on
+an evil that was never felt?
+
+That in the reigns of Charles and James the Paradise Lost received no
+publick acclamations, is readily confessed. Wit and literature were on
+the side of the court; and who, that solicited favour or fashion would
+venture to praise the defender of the regicides? All that he himself
+could think his due, from "evil tongues" in "evil days," was that
+reverential silence which was generously preserved. But it cannot be
+inferred, that his poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly,
+admired.
+
+The sale, if it be considered, will justify the publick. Those who have
+no power to judge of past times, but by their own, should always doubt
+their conclusions. The call for books was not in Milton's age what it
+is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither
+traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.
+The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house
+supplied with a closet of knowledge. Those, indeed, who professed
+learning, were not less learned than at any other time; but of that
+middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, and
+who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was
+then comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it may be
+sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to
+1664, that is, forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of
+Shakespeare, which, probably, did not together make one thousand copies.
+
+The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so
+much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all, and
+disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius.
+The demand did not immediately increase; for many more readers than were
+supplied at first the nation did not afford. Only three thousand were
+sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance; its
+admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities
+now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; the
+means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by
+that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its
+ranks.
+
+But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the
+revolution put an end to the secrecy of love, and Paradise Lost broke
+into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.
+
+Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed
+the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its
+way in a kind of subterraneous current, through fear and silence. I
+cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at
+all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and
+waiting, without impatience, the vicissitudes of opinion, and the
+impartiality of a future generation.
+
+In the mean time he continued his studies, and supplied the want of
+sight by a very odd expedient, of which Philips gives the following
+account:
+
+Mr. Philips tells us, "that though our author had daily about him one or
+other to read, some persons of man's estate, who, of their own accord,
+greedily catched at the opportunity of bring his readers, that they
+might as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as oblige him
+by the benefit of their reading; and others of younger years were sent
+by their parents to the same end; yet excusing only the eldest daughter
+by reason of her bodily infirmity, and difficult utterance of speech,
+(which, to say truth, I doubt was the principal cause of excusing her,)
+the other two were condemned to the performance of reading, and exactly
+pronouncing of all the languages of whatever book he should, at one
+time or other, think fit to peruse, viz. the Hebrew, (and I think the
+Syriac,) the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French. All
+which sorts of books to be confined to read, without understanding one
+word, must needs be a trial of patience almost beyond endurance. Yet
+it was endured by both for a long time, though the irksomeness of this
+employment could not be always concealed, but broke out more and more
+into expressions of uneasiness; so that, at length, they were all, even
+the eldest also, sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts
+of manufacture, that are proper for women to learn, particularly
+embroideries in gold or silver."
+
+In the scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labour sets
+before our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the
+father are most to be lamented. A language not understood can never be
+so read as to give pleasure, and, very seldom, so as to convey
+meaning. If few men would have had resolution to write books with such
+embarrassments, few, likewise, would have wanted ability to find some
+better expedient.
+
+Three years after his Paradise Lost, 1667, he published his History
+of England, comprising the whole fable of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and
+continued to the Norman invasion. Why he should have given the first
+part, which he seems not to believe, and which is universally rejected,
+it is difficult to conjecture. The style is harsh; but it has something
+of rough vigour, which, perhaps, may often strike, though it cannot
+please.
+
+On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and, before he would
+transmit it to the press, tore out several parts. Some censures of the
+Saxon monks were taken away, lest they should be applied to the modern
+clergy; and a character of the long parliament, and assembly of divines,
+was excluded; of which the author gave a copy to the earl of Anglesea,
+and which, being afterwards published, has been since inserted in its
+proper place.
+
+The same year were printed Paradise Regained; and Sampson Agonistes, a
+tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and never designed by
+the author for the stage. As these poems were published by another
+bookseller, it has been asked, whether Simmons was discouraged from
+receiving them by the slow sale of the former? Why a writer changed
+his bookseller a hundred years ago, I am far from hoping to discover.
+Certainly, he who in two years sells thirteen hundred copies of a volume
+in quarto, bought for two payments of five pounds each, has no reason to
+repent his purchase.
+
+When Milton showed Paradise Regained to Elwood, "this," said he, "is
+owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question you put to me at
+Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of."
+
+His last poetical offspring was his favourite. He could not, as Elwood
+relates, endure to hear Paradise Lost preferred to Paradise Regained.
+Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgment of his own works. On that
+which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is
+unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain; what has been
+produced without toilsome efforts, is considered with delight, as a
+proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work,
+whatever it be, has, necessarily, most of the grace of novelty. Milton,
+however it happened, had this prejudice, and had it to himself.
+
+To that multiplicity of attainments, and extent of comprehension, that
+entitled this great author to our veneration, may be added a kind
+of humble dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to
+literature. The epick poet, the controvertist, the politician, having
+already descended to accommodate children with a book of rudiments,
+now, in the last years of his life, composed a book of logick, for the
+initiation of students in philosophy; and published, 1672, Artis Logicae
+plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata; that is, a new
+scheme of logick, according to the method of Ramus. I know not whether,
+even in this book, he did not intend an act of hostility against the
+universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppugners of the old
+philosophy, who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the schools.
+
+His polemical disposition again revived. He had now been safe so long,
+that he forgot his fears, and published a Treatise of true Religion,
+Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the best means to prevent the growth of
+Popery.
+
+But this little tract is modestly written, with respectful mention of
+the church of England, and an appeal to the thirty-nine articles.
+His principle of toleration is, agreement in the sufficiency of the
+scriptures; and he extends it to all who, whatever their opinions are,
+profess to derive them from the sacred books. The papists appeal to
+other testimonies, and are, therefore, in his opinion, not to be
+permitted the liberty of either publick or private worship; for, though
+they plead conscience, "we have no warrant," he says, "to regard
+conscience, which is not grounded in scripture."
+
+Those who are not convinced by his reasons, may be, perhaps, delighted
+with his wit. The term "Roman catholick is," he says, "one of the pope's
+bulls; it is particular universal, or catholick schismatick."
+
+He has, however, something better. As the best preservative against
+popery, he recommends the diligent perusal of the scriptures, a duty,
+from which he warns the busy part of mankind not to think themselves
+excused.
+
+He now reprinted his juvenile poems, with some additions.
+
+In the last year of his life he sent to the press, seeming to take
+delight in publication, a collection of Familiar Epistles in Latin;
+to which, being too few to make a volume, he added some academical
+exercises, which, perhaps, he perused with pleasure, as they recalled to
+his memory the days of youth, but for which nothing but veneration for
+his name could now procure a reader.
+
+When he had attained his sixty-sixth year, the gout, with which he had
+been long tormented, prevailed over the enfeebled powers of nature. He
+died by a quiet and silent expiration, about the tenth of November,
+1674, at his house in Bunhill fields; and was buried next his father in
+the chancel of St. Giles at Cripplegate. His funeral was very splendidly
+and numerously attended.
+
+Upon his grave there is supposed to have been no memorial; but in our
+time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey "to the author of
+Paradise Lost," by Mr. Benson, who has, in the inscription, bestowed
+more words upon himself than upon Milton.
+
+When the inscription for the monument of Philips, in which he was said
+to be "soli Miltono secundus," was exhibited to Dr. Sprat, then dean
+of Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name of Milton was, in his
+opinion, too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated
+to devotion. Atterbury, who succeeded him, being author of the
+inscription, permitted its reception. "And such has been the change of
+publick opinion," said Dr. Gregory, from whom I heard this account,
+"that I have seen erected in the church a statue of that man, whose name
+I once knew considered as a pollution of its walls."
+
+Milton has the reputation of having been, in his youth, eminently
+beautiful, so as to have been called the lady of his college. His hair,
+which was of a light brown, parted at the foretop, and hung down upon
+his shoulders, according to the picture which he has given of Adam. He
+was, however, not of the heroick stature, but rather below the middle
+size[52], according to Mr. Richardson, who mentions him as having
+narrowly escaped from being "short and thick." He was vigorous and
+active, and delighted in the exercise of the sword, in which he is
+related to have been eminently skilful. His weapon was, I believe, not
+the rapier, but the backsword, of which he recommends the use in his
+book on education.
+
+His eyes are said never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous
+fencer, they must have been once quick.
+
+His domestick habits, so far as they are known, were those of a severe
+student. He drank little strong drink of any kind, and fed without
+excess in quantity, and, in his earlier years, without delicacy of
+choice. In his youth he studied late at night; but afterwards changed
+his hours, and rested in bed from nine to four in the summer, and five
+in the winter. The course of his day was best known after he was blind.
+When he first rose, he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then
+studied till twelve; then took some exercise for an hour; then dined,
+then played on the organ, and sang, or heard another sing; then studied
+to six; then entertained his visiters till eight; then supped, and,
+after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed.
+
+So is his life described: but this even tenour appears attainable only
+in colleges. He that lives in the world will, sometimes, have the
+succession of his practice broken and confused. Visiters, of whom
+Milton is represented to have had great numbers, will come and stay
+unseasonably; business, of which every man has some, must be done when
+others will do it.
+
+When he did not care to rise early, he had something read to him by his
+bedside; perhaps, at this time, his daughters were employed. He composed
+much in the morning, and dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an
+elbowchair, with his leg thrown over the arm.
+
+Fortune appears not to have had much of his care. In the civil wars he
+lent his personal estate to the parliament; but when, after the contest
+was decided, he solicited repayment, he met not only with neglect, but
+"sharp rebuke;" and, having tired both himself and his friends, was
+given up to poverty and hopeless indignation, till he showed how able he
+was to do greater service. He was then made Latin secretary, with two
+hundred pounds a year; and had a thousand pounds for his Defence of
+the People. His widow, who, after his death, retired to Namptwich, in
+Cheshire, and died about 1729, is said to have reported, that he lost
+two thousand pounds by intrusting it to a scrivener; and that, in the
+general depredation upon the church, he had grasped an estate of about
+sixty pounds a year belonging to Westminster Abbey, which, like other
+sharers of the plunder of rebellion, he was afterwards obliged to
+return. Two thousand pounds, which he had placed in the excise-office,
+were also lost. There is yet no reason to believe that he was ever
+reduced to indigence. His wants, being few, were competently supplied.
+He sold his library before his death, and left his family fifteen
+hundred pounds, on which his widow laid hold, and only gave one hundred
+to each of his daughters.
+
+His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the languages
+which are considered either as learned or polite: Hebrew, with its two
+dialects, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. In Latin his skill
+was such as places him in the first rank of writers and criticks; and he
+appears to have cultivated Italian with uncommon diligence. The books
+in which his daughter, who used to read to him, represented him as most
+delighting, after Homer, which he could almost repeat, were Ovid's
+Metamorphoses and Euripides. His Euripides is, by Mr. Cradock's
+kindness, now in my hands: the margin is sometimes noted; but I have
+found nothing remarkable.
+
+Of the English poets, he set most value upon Spenser, Shakespeare, and
+Cowley. Spenser was apparently his favourite; Shakespeare he may easily
+be supposed to like, with every other skilful reader; but I should not
+have expected that Cowley, whose ideas of excellence were so different
+from his own, would have had much of his approbation. His character of
+Dryden, who sometimes visited him, was, that he was a good rhymist,
+but no poet. His theological opinions are said to have been first
+Calvinistical; and afterwards, perhaps, when he began to hate the
+presbyterians, to have tended towards Arminianism. In the mixed
+questions of theology and government, he never thinks that he can recede
+far enough from popery, or prelacy; but what Bandius says of Erasmus
+seems applicable to him, "magis habuit quod fugeret, quam quod
+sequeretur." He had determined rather what to condemn, than what
+to approve. He has not associated himself with any denomination of
+protestants; we know rather what he was not, than what he was. He was
+not of the church of Rome; he was not of the church of England.
+
+To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are
+distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by
+degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by
+external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary
+influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had full conviction of
+the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the holy scriptures with
+the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical
+peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the
+immediate and occasional agency of providence, yet grew old without any
+visible worship. In the distribution of his hours, there was no hour of
+prayer, either solitary or with his household; omitting publick prayers,
+he omitted all.
+
+Of this omission the reason has been sought upon a supposition, which
+ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and
+justify their conduct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not thought
+superfluous by him, who represents our first parents as praying
+acceptably in the state of innocence, and efficaciously after their
+fall. That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his studies
+and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family
+was, probably, a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he
+intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, intercepted
+his reformation. His political notions were those of an acrimonious and
+surly republican, for which it is not known that he gave any better
+reason than that "a popular government was the most frugal; for the
+trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth." It is
+surely very shallow policy that supposes money to be the chief good; and
+even this, without considering that the support and expense of a court
+is, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffick, by which
+money is circulated, without any national impoverishment.
+
+Milton's republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of
+greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient
+of control, and pride disdainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in
+the state, and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was
+required to obey. It is to be suspected, that his predominant desire was
+to destroy, rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love
+of liberty, as repugnance to authority.
+
+It has been observed, that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do
+not most liberally grant it. What we know of Milton's character, in
+domestick relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary. His family
+consisted of women; and there appears in his books something like a
+Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferiour beings. That
+his own daughters might not break the ranks, he suffered them to be
+depressed by a mean and penurious education. He thought women made only
+for obedience, and man only for rebellion.
+
+Of his family some account may be expected. His sister, first married to
+Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her first husband,
+who succeeded him in the crown-office. She had, by her first husband,
+Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; and, by her
+second, two daughters.
+
+His brother, sir Christopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catharine[53];
+and a son, Thomas, who succeeded Agar in the crown-office, and left a
+daughter living, in 1749, in Grosvenor street.
+
+Milton had children only by his first wife; Anne, Mary, and Deborah.
+Anne, though deformed, married a master-builder, and died of her first
+child. Mary died single. Deborah married Abraham Clark, a weaver in
+Spital fields, and lived seventy-six years, to August, 1727. This is the
+daughter of whom publick mention has been made. She could repeat the
+first lines of Homer, the Metamorphoses, and some of Euripides, by
+having often read them. Yet here incredulity is ready to make a
+stand. Many repetitions are necessary to fix in the memory lines not
+understood; and why should Milton wish or want to hear them so often?
+These lines were at the beginning of the poems. Of a book written in a
+language not understood, the beginning raises no more attention than the
+end; and as those that understand it know commonly the beginning best,
+its rehearsal will seldom be necessary. It is not likely that Milton
+required any passage to be so much repeated, as that his daughter could
+learn it; nor likely that he desired the initial lines to be read at
+all; nor that the daughter, weary of the drudgery of pronouncing unideal
+sounds, would voluntarily commit them to memory.
+
+To this gentlewoman Addison made a present, and promised some
+establishment, but died soon after. Queen Caroline sent her fifty
+guineas. She had seven sons and three daughters; but none of them had
+any children, except her son Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth. Caleb
+went to Fort St. George, in the East Indies, and had two sons, of whom
+nothing is now known. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in
+Spital fields; and had seven children, who all died. She kept a petty
+grocer's or chandler's shop, first at Holloway, and afterwards in Cock
+lane, near Shoreditch church. She knew little of her grandfather, and
+that little was not good. She told of his harshness to his daughters,
+and his refusal to have them taught to write; and, in opposition to
+other accounts, represented him as delicate, though temperate, in his
+diet.
+
+In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had so little
+acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was
+intended, when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were
+only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton brought a large
+contribution; and twenty pounds were given by Tonson, a man who is to
+be praised as often as he is named. Of this sum one hundred pounds were
+placed in the stocks, after some debate between her and her husband, in
+whose name it should be entered; and the rest augmented their little
+stock, with which they removed to Islington. This was the greatest
+benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author's descendants;
+and to this he, who has now attempted to relate his life, had the honour
+of contributing a prologue[54].
+
+In the examination of Milton's poetical works, I shall pay so much
+regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his early
+pieces he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable; what
+he has once written he resolves to preserve, and gives to the publick an
+unfinished poem, which he broke off, because he was "nothing satisfied
+with what he had done," supposing his readers less nice than himself.
+These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English.
+Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critick; but I have heard
+them commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit. The Latin
+pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is
+rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity
+of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of
+invention, or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value; the
+elegies excel the odes; and some of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason
+might have been spared.
+
+The English poems, though they make no promises of Paradise Lost[55],
+have this evidence of genius, that they have a cast original and
+unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ from
+the verses of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often
+distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combinations of words are
+new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be
+laboriously sought, and violently applied.
+
+That, in the early part of his life, he wrote with much care appears
+from his manuscripts, happily preserved at Cambridge, in which many
+of his smaller works are found, as they were first written, with the
+subsequent corrections. Such relicks show how excellence is acquired;
+what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with
+diligence.
+
+Those who admire the beauties of this great poet sometimes force their
+own judgment into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail
+upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular. All that
+short compositions can commonly attain, is neatness and elegance. Milton
+never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked
+the milder excellence of suavity and softness: he was a lion, that had
+no skill "in dandling the kid."
+
+One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is Lycidas;
+of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers
+unpleasing. What beauty there is, we must, therefore, seek in the
+sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of
+real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure
+opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls
+upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough "satyrs and fauns with
+cloven heel." Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.
+
+In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art,
+for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral: easy, vulgar,
+and, therefore, disgusting; whatever images it can supply are long ago
+exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction
+on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey, that they studied together, it
+is easy to suppose how much he must miss the companion of his labours,
+and the partner of his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be
+excited by these lines?
+
+  We drove afield, and both together heard,
+  What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn,
+  Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.
+
+We know that they never drove afield, and that they had no flocks
+to batten; and, though it be allowed that the representation may be
+allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is
+never sought, because it cannot be known when it is found.
+
+Among the flocks, and copses, and flowers, appear the heathen deities;
+Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Aeolus, with a long train of mythological
+imagery, such as a college easily supplies. Nothing can less display
+knowledge, or less exercise invention, than to tell how a shepherd has
+lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any
+judge of his skill in piping; and how one god asks another god what is
+become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves
+will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour.
+
+This poem has yet a grosser fault. With these trifling fictions are
+mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be
+polluted with such irreverend combinations. The shepherd, likewise,
+is now a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor, a
+superintendent of a Christian flock. Such equivocations are always
+unskilful; but here they are indecent, and, at least, approach to
+impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been
+conscious. Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its
+blaze drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could
+have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known the
+author.
+
+Of the two pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, I believe, opinion is
+uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure. The
+author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to show
+how objects derive their colours from the mind, by representing the
+operation of the same things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or
+upon the same man, as he is differently disposed; but rather how, among
+the successive variety of appearances, every disposition of mind takes
+hold on those by which it may be gratified.
+
+The cheerful man hears the lark in the morning; the pensive man hears
+the nightingale in the evening. The cheerful man sees the cock strut,
+and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks, "not
+unseen," to observe the glory of the rising sun, or listen to the
+singing milkmaid, and view the labours of the ploughman and the mower:
+then casts his eyes about him over scenes of smiling plenty, and looks
+up to the distant tower, the residence of some fair inhabitant; thus he
+pursues rural gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights
+himself at night with the fanciful narratives of superstitious
+ignorance.
+
+The pensive man, at one time, walks "unseen" to muse at midnight; and,
+at another, hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home, he
+sits in a room lighted only by "glowing embers;" or, by a lonely lamp,
+outwatches the north star, to discover the habitation of separate souls,
+and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or
+pathetick scenes of tragick or epick poetry. When the morning comes, a
+morning gloomy with rain and wind, he walks into the dark, trackless
+woods[56], falls asleep by some murmuring water, and with melancholy
+enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, or some musick played
+by aerial performers.
+
+Both mirth and melancholy are solitary, silent inhabitants of the
+breast, that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention is,
+therefore, made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion. The
+seriousness does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the
+gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle.
+
+The man of cheerfulness, having exhausted the country, tries what
+"towered cities" will afford, and mingles with scenes of splendour, gay
+assemblies, and nuptial festivities; but he mingles a mere spectator,
+as, when the learned comedies of Jonson, or the wild dramas of
+Shakespeare, are exhibited, he attends the theatre.
+
+The pensive man never loses himself in crowds, but walks the cloister,
+or frequents the cathedral. Milton probably had not yet forsaken the
+church.
+
+Both his characters delight in musick; but he seems to think, that
+cheerful notes would have obtained, from Pluto, a complete dismission of
+Eurydice, of whom solemn sounds only procured a conditional release.
+
+For the old age of cheerfulness he makes no provision; but melancholy he
+conducts with great dignity to the close of life. His cheerfulness is
+without levity, and his pensiveness without asperity.
+
+Through these two poems the images are properly selected, and nicely
+distinguished; but the colours of the diction seem not sufficiently
+discriminated. I know not whether the characters are kept sufficiently
+apart. No mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I am afraid
+that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth. They are two noble
+efforts of imagination[57].
+
+The greatest of his juvenile performances is the Masque of Comus, in
+which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise
+Lost. Milton appears to have formed very early that system of diction,
+and mode of verse, which his maturer judgment approved, and from which
+he never endeavoured nor desired to deviate.
+
+Nor does Comus afford only a specimen of his language; it exhibits,
+likewise, his power of description and his vigour of sentiment, employed
+in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truly poetical is
+rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive epithets, embellish
+almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines,
+therefore, it may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with
+which the votaries have received it.
+
+As a drama it is deficient. The action is not probable. A mask, in those
+parts where supernatural intervention is admitted, must, indeed, be
+given up to all the freaks of imagination; but, so far as the action is
+merely human, it ought to be reasonable, which can hardly be said of the
+conduct of the two brothers; who, when their sister sinks with fatigue
+in a pathless wilderness, wander both away together, in search of
+berries, too far to find their way back, and leave a helpless lady to
+all the sadness and danger of solitude. This, however, is a defect
+overbalanced by its convenience.
+
+What deserves more reprehension is, that the prologue spoken in the wild
+wood, by the attendant spirit, is addressed to the audience; a mode of
+communication so contrary to the nature of dramatick representation,
+that no precedents can support it[58].
+
+The discourse of the spirit is too long; an objection that may be made
+to almost all the following speeches; they have not the sprightliness
+of a dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but seem rather
+declamations deliberately composed, and formally repeated, on a moral
+question. The auditor, therefore, listens as to a lecture, without
+passion, without anxiety.
+
+The song of Comus has airiness and jollity; but, what may recommend
+Milton's morals, as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure are
+so general, that they excite no distinct images of corrupt enjoyment,
+and take no dangerous hold on the fancy.
+
+The following soliloquies of Comus and the Lady are elegant, but
+tedious. The song must owe much to the voice, if it ever can delight. At
+last, the brothers enter with too much tranquillity; and, when they have
+feared, lest their sister should be in danger, and hoped that she is
+not in danger, the elder makes a speech in praise of chastity, and the
+younger finds how fine it is to be a philosopher.
+
+Then descends the spirit, in form of a shepherd; and the brother,
+instead of being in haste to ask his help, praises his singing, and
+inquires his business in that place. It is remarkable, that, at this
+interview, the brother, is taken with a short fit of rhyming. The spirit
+relates that the lady is in the power of Comus; the brother moralizes
+again; and the spirit makes a long narration, of no use, because it is
+false, and, therefore, unsuitable to a good being.
+
+In all these parts the language is poetical, and the sentiments are
+generous; but there is something wanting to allure attention.
+
+The dispute between the lady and Comus is the most animated and
+affecting scene of the drama, and wants nothing but a brisker
+reciprocation of objections and replies to invite attention and detain
+it.
+
+The songs are vigorous and full of imagery; but they are harsh in their
+diction, and not very musical in their numbers.
+
+Throughout the whole the figures are too bold, and the language too
+luxuriant, for dialogue. It is a drama in the epick style, inelegantly
+splendid, and tediously instructive.
+
+The sonnets were written in different parts of Milton's life, upon
+different occasions. They deserve not any particular criticism; for of
+the best it can only be said, that they are not bad; and, perhaps, only
+the eighth and the twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender
+commendation. The fabrick of a sonnet, however adapted to the Italian
+language, has never succeeded in ours, which, having greater variety of
+termination, requires the rhymes to be often changed.
+
+Those little pieces may be despatched without much anxiety; a greater
+work calls for greater care. I am now to examine Paradise Lost, a poem,
+which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and
+with respect to performance the second, among the productions of the
+human mind.
+
+By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due
+to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the
+powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions. Poetry is the
+art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help
+of reason. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by
+the most pleasing precepts, and, therefore, relates some great event
+in the most affecting manner. History must supply the writer with the
+rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art,
+must animate by dramatick energy, and diversify by retrospection and
+anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds, and different
+shades, of vice and virtue; from policy and the practice of life, he
+has to learn the discriminations of character, and the tendency of the
+passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him with
+illustrations and images. To put these materials to poetical use, is
+required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing
+fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension
+of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the
+colours of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all
+the varieties of metrical modulation.
+
+Bossu is of opinion, that the poet's first work is to find a moral,
+which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish. This seems
+to have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other poems
+is incidental and consequent; in Milton's only it is essential and
+intrinsick. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous:
+"to vindicate the ways of God to man;" to show the reasonableness of
+religion, and the necessity of obedience to the divine law.
+
+To convey this moral, there must be a fable, a narration artfully
+constructed, so as to excite curiosity, and surprise expectation. In
+this part of his work, Milton must be confessed to have equalled every
+other poet. He has involved, in his account of the fall of man, the
+events which preceded, and those that were to follow it; he has
+interwoven the whole system of theology with such propriety, that every
+part appears to be necessary; and scarcely any recital is wished shorter
+for the sake of quickening the progress of the main action.
+
+The subject of an epick poem is naturally an event of great importance.
+That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a
+colony, or the foundation of an empire. His subject is the fate of
+worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against
+the supreme king, raised by the highest order of created beings; the
+overthrow of their host, and the punishment of their crime; the creation
+of a new race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and
+innocence, their forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to
+hope and peace.
+
+Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated
+dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton's poem, all other
+greatness shrinks away. The weakest of his agents are the highest and
+noblest of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with whose
+actions the elements consented; on whose rectitude, or deviation of
+will, depended the state of terrestrial nature, and the condition of all
+the future inhabitants of the globe. Of the other agents in the poem,
+the chief are such as it is irreverence to name on slight occasions. The
+rest were lower powers;
+
+  ----of which the least could wield
+  Those elements, and arm him with the force
+  Of all their regions;
+
+powers, which only the control of omnipotence restrains from laying
+creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and
+confusion. To display the motives and actions of beings thus superiour,
+so far as human reason can examine them, or human imagination represent
+them, is the task which this mighty poet has undertaken and performed.
+
+In the examination of epick poems much speculation is commonly employed
+upon the characters. The characters in the Paradise Lost, which admit of
+examination, are those of angels and of man; of angels good and evil; of
+man in his innocent and sinful state.
+
+Among the angels, the virtue of Raphael is mild and placid, of easy
+condescension and free communication; that of Michael is regal and
+lofty, and, as may seem, attentive to the dignity of his own nature.
+Abdiel and Gabriel appear occasionally, and act as every incident
+requires; the solitary fidelity of Abdiel is very amiably painted.
+
+Of the evil angels the characters are more diversified. To Satan, as
+Addison observes, such sentiments are given as suit "the most exalted
+and most depraved being." Milton has been censured by Clarke[59], for
+the impiety which, sometimes, breaks from Satan's mouth; for there are
+thoughts, as he justly remarks, which no observation of character can
+justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass,
+however transiently, through his own mind. To make Satan speak as
+a rebel, without any such expressions as might taint the reader's
+imagination, was, indeed, one of the great difficulties in Milton's
+undertaking; and I cannot but think that he has extricated himself with
+great happiness. There is in Satan's speeches little that can give pain
+to a pious ear. The language of rebellion cannot be the same with that
+of obedience. The malignity of Satan foams in haughtiness and obstinacy;
+but his expressions are commonly general, and no otherwise offensive
+than as they are wicked.
+
+The other chiefs of the celestial rebellion are very judiciously
+discriminated in the first and second books; and the ferocious character
+of Moloch appears, both in the battle and the council, with exact
+consistency.
+
+To Adam and to Eve are given, during their innocence, such sentiments
+as innocence can generate and utter. Their love is pure benevolence and
+mutual veneration; their repasts are without luxury, and their diligence
+without toil. Their addresses to their maker have little more than the
+voice of admiration and gratitude. Fruition left them nothing to ask;
+and innocence left them nothing to fear.
+
+But with guilt enter distrust and discord, mutual accusation, and
+stubborn self-defence; they regard each other with alienated minds, and
+dread their creator as the avenger of their transgression. At last
+they seek shelter in his mercy, soften to repentance, and melt in
+supplication. Both before and after the fall, the superiority of Adam is
+diligently sustained.
+
+Of the probable and the marvellous, two parts of a vulgar epick poem,
+which immerge the critick in deep consideration, the Paradise Lost
+requires little to be said. It contains the history of a miracle, of
+creation and redemption; it displays the power and the mercy of
+the supreme being; the probable, therefore, is marvellous, and the
+marvellous is probable. The substance of the narrative is truth; and, as
+truth allows no choice, it is, like necessity, superiour to rule. To the
+accidental or adventitious parts, as to every thing human, some slight
+exceptions may be made; but the main fabrick is immovably supported. It
+is justly remarked by Addison, that this poem has, by the nature of its
+subject, the advantage above all others, that it is universally and
+perpetually interesting. All mankind will, through all ages, bear the
+same relation to Adam and to Eve, and must partake of that good and evil
+which extend to themselves.
+
+Of the machinery, so called from 'theos apo maechanaes', by which
+is meant the occasional interposition of supernatural power, another
+fertile topick of critical remarks, here is no room to speak, because
+every thing is done under the immediate and visible direction of heaven;
+but the rule is so far observed, that no part of the action could have
+been accomplished by any other means.
+
+Of episodes, I think, there are only two, contained in Raphael's
+relation of the war in heaven, and Michael's prophetick account of the
+changes to happen in this world. Both are closely connected with the
+great action; one was necessary to Adam, as a warning, the other, as a
+consolation.
+
+To the completeness or integrity of the design, nothing can be objected;
+it has, distinctly and clearly, what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a
+middle, and an end. There is, perhaps, no poem, of the same length, from
+which so little can be taken without apparent mutilation. Here are no
+funeral games, nor is there any long description of a shield. The short
+digressions at the beginning of the third, seventh, and ninth books,
+might, doubtless, be spared; but superfluities so beautiful, who would
+take away? or who does not wish that the author of the Iliad had
+gratified succeeding ages with a little knowledge of himself? Perhaps
+no passages are more frequently or more attentively read, than those
+extrinsick paragraphs; and, since the end of poetry is pleasure, that
+cannot be unpoetical with which all are pleased.
+
+The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly one, whether
+the poem can be properly termed heroick, and who is the hero, are raised
+by such readers as draw their principles of judgment rather from books
+than from reason. Milton, though he entitled Paradise Lost only a poem,
+yet calls it himself heroick song. Dryden petulantly and indecently
+denies the heroism of Adam, because he was overcome; but there is no
+reason why the hero should not be unfortunate, except established
+practice, since success and virtue do not go necessarily together. Cato
+is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan's authority will not be suffered by
+Quintilian to decide. However, if success be necessary, Adam's deceiver
+was at last crushed; Adam was restored to his maker's favour, and,
+therefore, may securely resume his human rank.
+
+After the scheme and fabrick of the poem, must be considered its
+component parts, the sentiments and the diction.
+
+The sentiments, as expressive of manners, or appropriated to characters,
+are, for the greater part, unexceptionably just.
+
+Splendid passages, containing lessons of morality, or precepts of
+prudence, occur seldom. Such is the original formation of this poem,
+that, as it admits no human manners, till the fall, it can give little
+assistance to human conduct. Its end is to raise the thoughts above
+sublunary cares or pleasures. Yet the praise of that fortitude, with
+which Abdiel maintained his singularity of virtue against the scorn of
+multitudes, may be accommodated to all times; and Raphael's reproof of
+Adam's curiosity after the planetary motions, with the answer returned
+by Adam, may be confidently opposed to any rule of life which any poet
+has delivered.
+
+The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress, are
+such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree
+fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study
+and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind may be said to
+sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of
+science, unmingled with its grosser parts.
+
+He had considered creation, in its whole extent, and his descriptions
+are, therefore, learned. He had accustomed his imagination to
+unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions, therefore, were extensive.
+The characteristick quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes
+descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can
+occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is
+gigantick loftiness[60]. He can please, when pleasure is required; but
+it is his peculiar power to astonish.
+
+He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know
+what it was that nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon
+others; the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid,
+enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful;
+he, therefore, chose a subject on which too much could not be said, on
+which he might tire his fancy, without the censure of extravagance.
+
+The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate
+his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are requires a minute
+attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's
+delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a
+scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery,
+into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form
+new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superiour
+beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of
+heaven.
+
+But he could not be always in other worlds; he must sometimes revisit
+earth, and tell of things visible and known. When he cannot raise wonder
+by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.
+
+Whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the imagination. But his
+images and descriptions of the scenes, or operations of nature, do not
+seem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness,
+raciness, and energy of immediate observation. He saw nature, as Dryden
+expresses it, "through the spectacles of books;" and, on most occasions,
+calls learning to his assistance. The garden of Eden brings to his mind
+the vale of Enna, where Proserpine was gathering flowers. Satan makes
+his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean
+rocks, or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned
+Charybdis on the "larboard." The mythological allusions have been justly
+censured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they
+contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise
+of the memory and the fancy.
+
+His similes are less numerous, and more various, than those of his
+predecessors. But he does not confine himself within the limits of
+rigorous comparison; his great excellence is amplitude; and he expands
+the adventitious image beyond the dimensions which the occasion
+required. Thus comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the moon, he
+crowds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope, and all the
+wonders which the telescope discovers.
+
+Of his moral sentiments it is hardly praise to affirm that they excel
+those of all other poets; for this superiority he was indebted to his
+acquaintance with the sacred writings. The ancient epick poets, wanting
+the light of revelation, were very unskilful teachers of virtue: their
+principal characters may be great, but they are not amiable. The reader
+may rise from their works with a greater degree of active or passive
+fortitude, and sometimes of prudence; but he will be able to carry away
+few precepts of justice, and none of mercy.
+
+From the Italian writers it appears, that the advantages of even
+Christian knowledge may be possessed in vain. Ariosto's pravity is
+generally known; and, though the Deliverance of Jerusalem may be
+considered as a sacred subject, the poet has been very sparing of moral
+instruction.
+
+In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity
+of manners, except when the train of the narration requires the
+introduction of the rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled
+to acknowledge their subjection to God, in such a manner as excites
+reverence, and confirms piety.
+
+Of human beings there are but two; but those two are the parents of
+mankind, venerable before their fall for dignity and innocence, and
+amiable after it for repentance and submission. In the first state,
+their affection is tender without weakness, and their piety sublime
+without presumption. When they have sinned, they show how discord begins
+in mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbearance; how
+confidence of the divine favour is forfeited by sin; and how hope of
+pardon may be obtained by penitence and prayer. A state of innocence we
+can only conceive, if, indeed, in our present misery, it be possible
+to conceive it; but the sentiments and worship proper to a fallen and
+offending being, we have all to learn, as we have all to practise.
+
+The poet, whatever be done, is always great. Our progenitors, in their
+first state, conversed with angels; even when folly and sin had degraded
+them, they had not, in their humiliation, "the port of mean suitors;"
+and they rise again to reverential regard, when we find that their
+prayers were heard.
+
+As human passions did not enter the world, before the fall, there is, in
+the Paradise Lost, little opportunity for the pathetick; but what little
+there is has not been lost. That passion which is peculiar to rational
+nature, the anguish arising from the consciousness of transgression, and
+the horrours attending the sense of the divine displeasure, are very
+justly described and forcibly impressed. But the passions are moved only
+on one occasion; sublimity is the general and prevailing quality of this
+poem; sublimity variously modified, sometimes descriptive, sometimes
+argumentative.
+
+The defects and faults of Paradise Lost, for faults and defects every
+work of man must have, it is the business of impartial criticism to
+discover. As, in displaying the excellence of Milton, I have not made
+long quotations, because of selecting beauties there had been no end, I
+shall, in the same general manner, mention that which seems to deserve
+censure; for what Englishman can take delight in transcribing passages,
+which, if they lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish, in some
+degree, the honour of our country?
+
+The generality of my scheme does not admit the frequent notice of verbal
+inaccuracies; which Bentley, perhaps, better skilled in grammar than in
+poetry, has often found, though he sometimes made them, and which he
+imputed to the obtrusions of a reviser, whom the author's blindness
+obliged him to employ; a supposition rash and groundless, if he thought
+it true; and vile and pernicious, if, as is said, he, in private,
+allowed it to be false.
+
+The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience, that it comprises
+neither human actions nor human manners[61]. The man and woman who act
+and suffer are in a state which no other man or woman can ever know.
+The reader finds no transaction in which he can be engaged; beholds no
+condition in which he can, by any effort of imagination, place himself;
+he has, therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy.
+
+We all, indeed, feel the effect of Adam's disobedience; we all sin, like
+Adam, and, like him, must all bewail our offences; we have restless and
+insidious enemies in the fallen angels; and in the blessed spirits we
+have guardians and friends; in the redemption of mankind we hope to be
+included; and in the description of heaven and hell we are, surely,
+interested, as we are all to reside, hereafter, either in the regions of
+horrour or of bliss.
+
+But these truths are too important to be new; they have been taught to
+our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar
+conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the whole texture of
+life. Being, therefore, not new, they raise no unaccustomed emotion in
+the mind; what we knew before, we cannot learn; what is not unexpected,
+cannot surprise.
+
+Of the ideas suggested by these awful scenes, from some we recede with
+reverence, except when stated hours require their association; and
+from others we shrink with horrour, or admit them only as salutary
+inflictions, as counterpoizes to our interests and passions. Such images
+rather obstruct the career of fancy than incite it.
+
+Pleasure and terrour are, indeed, the genuine sources of poetry; but
+poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can, at least,
+conceive; and poetical terrour, such as human strength and fortitude may
+combat. The good and evil of eternity are too ponderous for the wings of
+wit; the mind sinks under them, in passive helplessness, content with
+calm belief and humble adoration.
+
+Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and be conveyed
+to the mind by a new train of intermediate images. This Milton has
+undertaken, and performed with pregnancy and vigour of mind peculiar
+to himself. Whoever considers the few radical positions which the
+scriptures afforded him, will wonder by what energetick operation he
+expanded them to such extent, and ramified them to so much variety,
+restrained, as he was, by religious reverence from licentiousness of
+fiction.
+
+Here is a full display of the united force of study and genius; of a
+great accumulation of materials, with judgment to digest, and fancy to
+combine them: Milton was able to select from nature or from story, from
+ancient fable or from modern science, whatever could illustrate or
+adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind,
+fermented by study, and exalted by imagination.
+
+It has been, therefore, said, without an indecent hyperbole, by one
+of his encomiasts, that in reading Paradise Lost, we read a book of
+universal knowledge.
+
+But original deficience cannot be supplied. The want of human interest
+is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader
+admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it
+longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read
+Milton for instruction, retire harassed and over-burdened, and look
+elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions.
+Another inconvenience of Milton's design is, that it requires the
+description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits. He saw
+that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could not show angels
+acting but by instruments of action; he, therefore, invested them with
+form and matter. This, being necessary, was, therefore, defensible;
+and he should have secured the consistency of his system, by keeping
+immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from
+his thoughts. But he has, unhappily, perplexed his poetry with his
+philosophy. His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit,
+and sometimes animated body. When Satan walks with his lance upon the
+"burning marl," he has a body; when, in his passage between hell and the
+new world, he is in danger of sinking in the vacuity, and is supported
+by a gust of rising vapours, he has a body; when he animates the toad,
+he seems to be mere spirit, that can penetrate matter at pleasure; when
+he starts "up in his own shape," he has, at least, a determined form;
+and, when he is brought before Gabriel, he has "a spear and a shield,"
+which he had the power of hiding in the toad, though the arms of the
+contending angels are evidently material.
+
+The vulgar inhabitants of Pandaemonium, being "incorporeal spirits,"
+are "at large, though without number," in a limited space: yet, in the
+battle, when they were overwhelmed by mountains, their armour hurt them,
+"crushed in upon their substance, now grown gross by sinning." This,
+likewise, happened to the uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown the
+"sooner for their arms, for unarmed they might easily, as spirits,
+have evaded by contraction or remove." Even as spirits they are hardly
+spiritual; for "contraction" and "remove" are images of matter; but if
+they could have escaped without their armour, they might have escaped
+from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he
+rides on a sunbeam, is material; Satan is material when he is afraid of
+the prowess of Adam.
+
+The confusion of spirit and matter, which pervades the whole narration
+of the war of heaven, fills it with incongruity; and the book in which
+it is related is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually
+neglected, as knowledge is increased.
+
+After the operation of immaterial agents which cannot be explained, may
+be considered that of allegorical persons, which have no real existence.
+To exalt causes into agents, to invest abstract ideas with form, and
+animate them with activity, has always been the right of poetry. But
+such airy beings are, for the most part, suffered only to do their
+natural office, and retire. Thus fame tells a tale, and victory hovers
+over a general, or perches on a standard; but fame and victory can do no
+more. To give them any real employment, or ascribe to them any material
+agency, is to make them allegorical no longer, but to shock the mind by
+ascribing effects to nonentity. In the Prometheus of Aeschylus, we see
+violence and strength, and in the Alcestis of Euripides, we see death
+brought upon the stage, all as active persons of the drama; but no
+precedents can justify absurdity.
+
+Milton's allegory of sin and death is, undoubtedly, faulty. Sin is,
+indeed, the mother of death, and may be allowed to be the portress of
+hell; but when they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as
+real, and when death offers him battle, the allegory is broken. That sin
+and death should have shown the way to hell, might have been allowed;
+but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, because the
+difficulty of Satan's passage is described as real and sensible, and the
+bridge ought to be only figurative. The hell assigned to the rebellious
+spirits is described as not less local than the residence of man. It
+is placed in some distant part of space, separated from the regions of
+harmony and order by a chaotick waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but
+sin and death worked up "a mole of aggravated soil," cemented with
+"asphaltus;" a work too bulky for ideal architects.
+
+This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the
+poem; and to this there was no temptation but the author's opinion of
+its beauty.
+
+To the conduct of the narrative some objections may be made. Satan is,
+with great expectation, brought before Gabriel in Paradise, and is
+suffered to go away unmolested. The creation of man is represented as the
+consequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulsion of the rebels;
+yet Satan mentions it as a report "rife in heaven" before his departure.
+
+To find sentiments for the state of innocence was very difficult; and
+something of anticipation, perhaps, is now and then discovered. Adam's
+discourse of dreams seems not to be the speculation of a new-created
+being. I know not whether his answer to the angel's reproof for curiosity
+does not want something of propriety; it is the speech of a man
+acquainted with many other men. Some philosophical notions, especially
+when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted. The
+angel, in a comparison, speaks of "timorous deer," before deer were yet
+timorous, and before Adam could understand the comparison.
+
+Dryden remarks, that Milton has some flats among his elevations. This is
+only to say, that all the parts are not equal. In every work, one part
+must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; a poem must
+have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be
+blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work
+there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the
+world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in
+the sky, may be allowed, sometimes, to revisit earth; for what other
+author ever soared so high, or sustained his flight so long?
+
+Milton, being well versed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed
+often from them; and, as every man catches something from his companions,
+his desire of imitating Ariosto's levity has disgraced his work with
+the Paradise of Fools; a fiction not, in itself, ill imagined, but too
+ludicrous for its place.
+
+His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations,
+which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his
+unnecessary and ungraceful use of terms of art; it is not necessary to
+mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally censured; and,
+at last, bear so little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely
+deserve the attention of a critick.
+
+Such are the faults of that wonderful performance, Paradise Lost; which
+he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered not as
+nice but as dull; as less to be censured for want of candour, than pitied
+for want of sensibility.
+
+Of Paradise Regained, the general judgment seems now to be right, that it
+is, in many parts, elegant, and everywhere instructive. It was not to be
+supposed that the writer of Paradise Lost could ever write without great
+effusions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The basis of Paradise
+Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please, like an
+union of the narrative and dramatick powers. Had this poem been written
+not by Milton, but by some imitator, it would have claimed and received
+universal praise.
+
+If Paradise Regained has been too much depreciated, Sampson Agonistes
+has, in requital, been too much admired. It could only be by long
+prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the
+ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions
+of the French and English stages; and it is only by a blind confidence
+in the reputation of Milton, that a drama can be praised, in which the
+intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hasten nor
+retard the catastrophe.
+
+In this tragedy are, however, many particular beauties, many just
+sentiments and striking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the
+attention, which a well-connected plan produces.
+
+Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew human nature
+only in the gross, and had never studied the shades of character, nor the
+combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending passions. He
+had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little
+in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must
+confer.
+
+Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of
+diction, a mode and cast of expression which bears little resemblance to
+that of any former writer; and which is so far removed from common use,
+that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, finds himself
+surprised by a new language.
+
+This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong in Milton,
+imputed to his laborious endeavours after words suitable to the grandeur
+of his ideas. "Our language," says Addison, "sunk under him." But the
+truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a
+perverse and pedantick principle. He was desirous to use English words
+with a foreign idiom. This in all his prose is discovered and condemned;
+for there judgment operates freely, neither softened by the beauty, nor
+awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but such is the power of his poetry,
+that his call is obeyed without resistance, the reader feels himself
+in captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticism sinks in
+admiration.
+
+Milton's style was not modified by his subject; what is shown with
+greater extent in Paradise Lost may be found in Comus. One source of his
+peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets; the disposition of
+his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps, sometimes, combined
+with other tongues.
+
+Of him, at last, may be said what Jonson says of Spenser, that "he wrote
+no language," but has formed what Butler calls a "Babylonish dialect,"
+in itself harsh and barbarous, but made by exalted genius and extensive
+learning the vehicle of so much instruction, and so much pleasure, that,
+like other lovers, we find grace in its deformity.
+
+Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of
+copiousness and variety; he was master of his language in its full
+extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, that
+from his book alone the art of English poetry might be learned.
+
+After his diction, something must be said of his versification. The
+"measure," he says, "is the English heroick verse without rhyme." Of
+this mode he had many examples among the Italians, and some in his own
+country. The earl of Surrey is said to have translated one of Virgil's
+books without rhyme[62]; and, beside our tragedies, a few short poems had
+appeared in blank verse, particularly one tending to reconcile the nation
+to Raleigh's wild attempt upon Guiana, and probably written by Raleigh
+himself. These petty performances cannot be supposed to have much
+influenced Milton, who, more probably took his hint from Trissino's
+Italia Liberata; and, finding blank verse easier than rhyme, was desirous
+of persuading himself that it is better.
+
+"Rhyme," he says, and says truly, "is no necessary adjunct of true
+poetry." But, perhaps, of poetry, as a mental operation, metre or musick
+is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, by the musick of metre that
+poetry has been discriminated in all languages; and, in languages
+melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and short
+syllables, metre is sufficient. But one language cannot communicate its
+rules to another; where metre is scanty and imperfect, some help is
+necessary. The musick of the English heroick lines strikes the ear so
+faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every
+line cooperate together; this cooperation can be only obtained by the
+preservation of every verse unmingled with another, as a distinct system
+of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the
+artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers
+of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods
+of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of
+Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or
+begin. "Blank verse," said an ingenious critick, "seems to be verse only
+to the eye." Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will
+not often please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared, but where the
+subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to
+that which is called the lapidary style; has neither the easiness
+of prose, nor the melody of numbers, and, therefore, tires by long
+continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as
+precedents, not one is popular; what reason could urge in its defence,
+has been confuted by the ear.
+
+But, whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to
+wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be
+other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than
+imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank
+verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.
+
+The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be said
+to have contrived the structure of an epick poem, and, therefore, owes
+reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations
+must be indebted for the, art of poetical narration, for the texture of
+the fable, the variation of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and
+all the stratagems that surprise and enchain attention. But, of all the
+borrowers from Homer, Milton is, perhaps, the least indebted. He was
+naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and
+disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to the
+thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek them. From
+his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is
+in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be
+gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation of
+support. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in
+blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for
+whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems,
+only because it is not the first.
+
+[Footnote 26: In this assertion Dr. Johnson was mistaken. Milton was
+admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar, as will appear by the following
+extract from the college register: "Johannes Milton, Londinensis, filius
+Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum elementis sub Mag'ro Gill Gymnasii
+Paulini praefecto, admissus est _Pensionarius Minor_, Feb. 12°, 1624, sub
+M'ro Chappell, solvitq. pro Ingr. 0l. 10s. 0d." R.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Published 1632. R.]
+
+[Footnote 28: On this subject, see Dr. Symons's Life of Milton, 71, 72.
+ED.]
+
+[Footnote 29: By the mention of this name, he evidently refers to
+Albumazar, acted at Cambridge, in 1614. Ignoramus, and other plays were
+performed at the same time. The practice was then very frequent. The
+last dramatick performance at either university, was the Grateful Fair,
+written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pembroke college,
+Cambridge, about 1747. R.]
+
+[Footnote 30: It has, nevertheless, its foundation in reality. The earl
+of Bridgewater, being president of Wales, in the year 1634, had his
+residence at Ludlow castle, in Shropshire, at which time lord Brackly
+and Mr. Egerton, his sons, and lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing
+through a place called the Haywood forest, or Haywood, in Herefordshire,
+were benighted, and the lady for a short time lost: this accident, being
+related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the
+request of his friend, Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote
+this masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night:
+the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part
+in the representation.
+
+The lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the earl of Carbury,
+who, at his seat called Golden grove, in Caermarthenshire, harboured Dr.
+Jeremy Taylor in the time of the usurpation. Among the doctor's sermons
+is one on her death, in which her character is finely portrayed. Her
+sister, lady Mary, was given in marriage to lord Herbert, of Cherbury.
+
+Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's assertion, that the fiction is derived from
+Homer's Circe, it may be conjectured, that it was rather taken from the
+Comus of Erycius Puteanus, in which, under the fiction of a dream, the
+characters of Comus and his attendants are delineated, and the delights
+of sensualists exposed and reprobated. This little tract was published
+at Louvain, in 1611, and afterwards at Oxford, in 1634, the very year in
+which Milton's Comus was written. H. Milton evidently was indebted to the
+Old Wives' Tale of George Peele for the plan of Comus. R.]
+
+[Footnote 31: This is inaccurately expressed: Philips, and Dr. Newton,
+after him, say a garden-house, i.e. a house situated in a garden, and of
+which there were, especially in the north suburbs of London, very many,
+if not few else. The term is technical, and frequently occurs in the
+Athen. and Fast. Oxon. The meaning thereof may be collected from the
+article, Thomas Farnaby, the famous schoolmaster, of whom the author
+says, that he taught in Goldsmith's rents, in Cripplegate parish, behind
+Redcross street, where were large gardens and handsome houses. Milton's
+house in Jewin street was also a garden-house, as were, indeed, most of
+his dwellings after his settlement in London. H.]
+
+[Footnote 32: Johnson did not here allude to Philips's Theatrum Poetarum,
+as has been ignorantly supposed, but, as he himself informed Mr. Malone,
+to another work by the same author, entitled, Tractatulus de carmine
+dramatico poetarum veterum praesertim in choris tragicis et veteris
+comoediae. Cui subjungitur compendiosa enumeratio poetarum (saltern
+quorum fama maxima enituit) qui a tempore Dantis Aligerii usque ad hanc
+aetatem claruerunt, etc. J. B.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew
+Newcomen, William Spurstow. R.]
+
+[Footnote 34: It was animadverted upon, but without any mention of
+Milton's name, by bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience, Decade 4, Case
+2. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 35: He terms the author of it a shallow-brained puppy; and thus
+refers to it in his index: "Of a noddy who wrote a book about wiving."
+J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 36: This charge, as far as regards Milton, is examined by Dr.
+Symons with more moderation than usually characterizes his high-sounding
+and wordy panegyrics. See Life of Milton. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 37: The work here referred to is Selectarum de Lingua Latina
+Observationum Libri duo. Ductu et cura Joannis Ker, 1719. Ker observes,
+that vapulandum is pinguis solaecismus. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 38: It may be doubted whether _gloriosissimus_ be here used
+with Milton's boasted purity. _Res gloriosa_ is an _illustrious thing_;
+but _vir gloriosus_ is _commonly_ a _braggart_, as in _miles gloriosus_.
+Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 39: The Cambridge dictionary, published in 4to. 1693, is
+no other than a copy, with some small additions, of that of Dr. Adam
+Littleton in 1686, by sundry persons, of whom though their names are
+concealed, there is great reason to conjecture that Milton's nephew,
+Edward Philips, is one: for it is expressly said by Wood, Fasti, vol. i.
+p. 266, that Milton's Thesaurus came to his hands; and it is asserted in
+the preface thereto, that the editors thereof had the use of three large
+folios in manuscript, collected and digested into alphabetical order by
+Mr. John Milton. It has been remarked, that the additions, together
+with the preface above mentioned, and a large part of the title of
+the Cambridge dictionary, have been incorporated and printed with the
+subsequent editions of Littleton's dictionary, till that of 1735. Vid.
+Biogr. Brit. 2985, in not. So that, for aught that appears to the
+contrary, Philips was the last possessor of Milton's manuscripts. H.]
+
+[Footnote 40: _Id est_, to be the subject of an heroick poem, written by
+sir Richard Blackmore. H.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Trinity college. R.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The dramas in which Justice, Mercy, Faith, &c. were
+introduced, were moralities, not mysteries. MALONE.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Philips says expressly, that Milton was excepted and
+disqualified from bearing any office; but Toland says he was not excepted
+at all, and consequently included in the general pardon, or act of
+indemnity, passed the 29th of August, 1660. Toland is right, for I find
+Goodwin and Ph. Nye, the minister, excepted in the act, but Milton not
+named. However, he obtained a special pardon in December, 1660, which
+passed the privy seal, but not the great seal. MALONE.]
+
+[Footnote 44: It was told before by A. Wood in Ath. Oxon. vol. ii. p.
+412. second edition.]
+
+[Footnote 45: That Milton saved Davenant, is attested by Aubrey, and by
+Wood, from him; but none of them say that Davenant saved Milton: this is
+Richardson's assertion merely. MALONE.]
+
+[Footnote 46: A different account of the means by which Milton secured
+himself, is given by an historian lately brought to light: "Milton,
+Latin secretary to Cromwell, distinguished by his writings in favour of
+the rights and liberties of the people, pretended to be dead, and had a
+publick funeral procession. The king applauded his policy in escaping
+the punishment of death, by a seasonable show of dying." Cunningham's
+History of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 14. R.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Gildon, in his continuation of Langbaine's account of the
+dramatick poets, 8vo. 1693, says, that he had been told that Milton,
+after the restoration, kept a school at or near Greenwich. The
+publication of an Accidence at that period gives some countenance to this
+tradition. MALONE]
+
+[Footnote 48: It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader, that this
+relation of Voltaire's was perfectly true, as far as relates to the
+existence of the play which he speaks of, namely, the Adamo of Andreini;
+but it is still a question whether Milton ever saw it. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 49: This opinion is, with great learning and ingenuity,
+refuted in a book now very little known, an Apology or Declaration of
+the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World, by Dr.
+George Hakewill, London, folio, 1635. The first who ventured to propagate
+it in this country was Dr. Gabriel Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, a man
+of a versatile temper, and the author of a book entitled, the Fall of Man,
+or the Corruption of Nature proved by Natural Reason. Lond. 1616, and
+1624. quarto. He was plundered in the usurpation, turned Roman catholick,
+and died in obscurity. See Athen, Oxon. vol. i. p. 727. H.]
+
+[Footnote 50:
+             --Unless _an age too late_, or cold
+             Climate, or years damp my intended wing.
+                            Par. Lost. b. ix. l. 44.]
+
+[Footnote 51: Johnson has, in many places of
+his Rambler and Idler, ridiculed the notion of a dependance of our mental
+powers on the variations of atmosphere. In Boswell's life, however,
+there are some recorded instances of his own subjection to this
+common infirmity. We cannot refrain from denouncing, as unfeeling and
+ungenerous, Johnson's sarcasms at Milton's distempered imagination, when
+old age, disease, and darkness had come upon him. Dr. Symons runs into
+the diametrically opposite extreme. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 52: "Statura fateor non sum procera: seel quae mediocri tamen
+quam parvae propior sit: sed quid si parva, qua et summi saepe tum pace
+tum bello viri fuere, quanquam parva cur dicitur, quae ad virtutem satis
+magna est." Defensio Secunda. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Both these persons were living at Holloway, about the year
+1734, and, at that time, possessed such a degree of health and strength,
+as enabled them, on Sundays and prayer-days, to walk a mile up a steep
+hill to Highgate chapel. One of them was ninety-two at the time of her
+death. Their parentage was known to few, and their names were corrupted
+into Melton. By the crown-office, mentioned in the two last paragraphs,
+we are to understand the crown-office of the court of Chancery. H.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Printed in the first volume of this collection.]
+
+[Footnote 55: With the exception of Comus, in which, Dr. J. afterwards
+says, may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise
+Lost. C.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Here, as Warton justly observes, "Johnson has confounded
+two descriptions!"
+
+  The melancholy man does not go
+  out while it rains, but waits, till----the sun begins to fling
+  His flaring beams.     J. B.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Mr. Warton intimates, and there can be little doubt of the
+truth of his conjecture, that Milton borrowed many of the images in these
+two fine poems from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, a book published
+in 1621, and, at sundry times since, abounding in learning, curious
+information, and pleasantry. Mr. Warton says, that Milton appears to have
+been an attentive reader thereof; and to this assertion I add, of my own
+knowledge, that it was a book that Dr. Johnson frequently resorted to,
+as many others have done, for amusement after the fatigue of study.
+H.--Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Johnson said, was the only book
+that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.
+Boswell's Life, ii. 120.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Surely there are precedents enough for the practice,
+though pessimi exempli, in Milton's favourite tragedian Euripides. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Author of the Essay on Study.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Algarotti terms it, "gigantesca sublimità Miltoniana."
+Dr.J.]
+
+[Footnote 61: But, says Dr. Warton, it has, throughout, a reference to
+human life and actions. C.]
+
+[Footnote 62: The earl of Surrey translated two books of Virgil without
+rhyme; the second and the fourth. J.B.]
+
+
+
+
+BUTLER.
+
+Of the great author of Hudibras there is a life prefixed to the later
+editions of his poem, by an unknown writer, and, therefore, of disputable
+authority; and some account is incidentally given by Wood, who confesses
+the uncertainty of his own narrative; more, however, than they knew
+cannot now be learned, and nothing remains but to compare and copy them.
+
+Samuel Butler was born in the parish of Strensham, in Worcestershire,
+according to his biographer, in 1612. This account Dr. Nash finds
+confirmed by the register. He was christened Feb. 14.
+
+His father's condition is variously represented: Wood mentions him as
+competently wealthy; but Mr. Longneville, the son of Butler's principal
+friend, says he was an honest farmer, with some small estate, who made a
+shift to educate his son at the grammar school of Worcester, under Mr.
+Henry Bright[63], from whose care he removed, for a short time, to
+Cambridge; but, for want of money, was never made a member of any college.
+Wood leaves us rather doubtful whether he went to Cambridge or Oxford;
+but, at last, makes him pass six or seven years at Cambridge, without
+knowing in what hall or college; yet it can hardly be imagined that he
+lived so long in either university but as belonging to one house or
+another; and it is still less likely that he could have so long inhabited
+a place of learning with so little distinction as to leave his residence
+uncertain. Dr. Nash has discovered that his father was owner of a house
+and a little land, worth about eight pounds a year, still called Butler's
+tenement.
+
+Wood has his information from his brother, whose narrative placed him at
+Cambridge, in opposition to that of his neighbours, which sent him to
+Oxford. The brother's seems the best authority, till, by confessing his
+inability to tell his hall or college, he gives reason to suspect that he
+was resolved to bestow on him an academical education; but durst not name
+a college, for fear of detection.
+
+He was, for some time, according to the author of his life, clerk to Mr.
+Jefferys, of Earl's Croomb, in Worcestershire, an eminent justice of
+the peace. In his service he had not only leisure for study, but for
+recreation: his amusements were musick and painting; and the reward of
+his pencil was the friendship of the celebrated Cooper. Some pictures,
+said to be his, were shown to Dr. Nash, at Earl's Croomb; but, when he
+inquired for them some years afterwards, he found them destroyed, to stop
+windows, and owns that they hardly deserved a better fate.
+
+He was afterwards admitted into the family of the countess of Kent, where
+he had the use of a library; and so much recommended himself to Selden,
+that he was often employed by him in literary business. Selden, as is
+well known, was steward to the countess, and is supposed to have gained
+much of his wealth by managing her estate.
+
+In what character Butler was admitted into that lady's service, how long
+he continued in it, and why he left it, is, like the other incidents of
+his life, utterly unknown. The vicissitudes of his condition placed him
+afterwards in the family of sir Samuel Luke, one of Cromwell's officers.
+Here he observed so much of the character of the sectaries, that he is
+said to have written or begun his poem at this time; and it is likely
+that such a design would be formed in a place where he saw the principles
+and practices of the rebels, audacious and undisguised in the confidence
+of success.
+
+At length the king returned, and the time came in which loyalty hoped
+for its reward. Butler, however, was only made secretary to the earl of
+Carbury, president of the principality of Wales; who conferred on him the
+stewardship of Ludlow castle, when the court of the marches was revived.
+
+In this part of his life, he married Mrs. Herbert, a gentlewoman of a
+good family; and lived, says Wood, upon her fortune, having studied
+the common law, but never practised it. A fortune she had, says his
+biographer, but it was lost by bad securities.
+
+In 1663 was published the first part, containing three cantos, of the
+poem of Hudibras, which, as Prior relates, was made known at court by
+the taste and influence of the earl of Dorset. When it was known, it was
+necessarily admired: the king quoted, the courtiers studied, and the
+whole party of the royalists applauded it. Every eye watched for the
+golden shower which was to fall upon the author, who certainly was not
+without his part in the general expectation.
+
+In 1664 the second part appeared; the curiosity of the nation was
+rekindled, and the writer was again praised and elated. But praise was
+his whole reward. Clarendon, says Wood, gave him reason to hope for
+"places and employments of value and credit;" but no such advantages did
+he ever obtain. It is reported that the king once gave him three hundred
+guineas; but of this temporary bounty I find no proof.
+
+Wood relates that he was secretary to Villiers, duke of Buckingham, when
+he was chancellor of Cambridge: this is doubted by the other writer, who
+yet allows the duke to have been his frequent benefactor. That both these
+accounts are false there is reason to suspect, from a story told by
+Packe, in his account of the life of Wycherley; and from some verses
+which Mr. Thyer has published in the author's Remains.
+
+"Mr. Wycherley," says Packe, "had always laid hold of an opportunity
+which offered of representing to the duke of Buckingham how well Mr.
+Butler had deserved of the royal family, by writing his inimitable
+Hudibras; and that it was a reproach to the court, that a person of his
+loyalty and wit should suffer in obscurity, and under the wants he did.
+The duke always seemed to hearken to him with attention enough; and,
+after some time, undertook to recommend his pretensions to his majesty.
+Mr. Wycherley, in hopes to keep him steady to his word, obtained of his
+grace to name a day, when he might introduce that modest and unfortunate
+poet to his new patron. At last an appointment was made, and the place of
+meeting was agreed to be the Roebuck. Mr. Butler and his friend attended
+accordingly; the duke joined them; but, as the d--l would have it, the
+door of the room where they sat was open, and his grace, who had seated
+himself near it, observing a pimp of his acquaintance (the creature too
+was a knight) trip by with a brace of ladies, immediately quitted his
+engagement to follow another kind of business, at which he was more ready
+than in doing good offices to men of desert, though no one was better
+qualified than he, both in regard to his fortune and understanding, to
+protect them; and, from that time to the day of his death, poor Butler
+never found the least effect of his promise!"
+
+Such is the story. The verses are written with a degree of acrimony, such
+as neglect and disappointment might naturally excite; and such as it
+would be hard to imagine Butler capable of expressing against a man who
+had any claim to his gratitude.
+
+Notwithstanding this discouragement and neglect, he still prosecuted his
+design; and, in 1678, published the third part, which still leaves the
+poem imperfect and abrupt. How much more he originally intended, or with
+what events the action was to be concluded, it is vain to conjecture. Nor
+can it be thought strange that he should stop here, however unexpectedly.
+To write without reward is sufficiently unpleasing. He had now arrived
+at an age when he might think it proper to be in jest no longer, and,
+perhaps, his health might now begin to fail.
+
+He died in 1680; and Mr. Longueville, having unsuccessfully solicited a
+subscription for his interment in Westminster Abbey, buried him, at his
+own cost, in the church-yard of Covent garden[64]. Dr. Simon Patrick read
+the service.
+
+Granger was informed by Dr. Pearce, who named for his authority Mr.
+Lowndes, of the treasury, that Butler had a yearly pension of an hundred
+pounds. This is contradicted by all tradition, by the complaints of
+Oldham, and by the reproaches of Dryden; and, I am afraid, will never be
+confirmed.
+
+About sixty years afterwards, Mr. Barber, a printer, mayor of London,
+and a friend to Butler's principles, bestowed on him a monument in
+Westminster Abbey, thus inscribed:
+
+  M. S.
+  SAMUELIS BUTLERI,
+
+  Qui Strenshamiae in agro Vigorn. nat. 1612,
+  obijt Lond. 1680.
+  Vir doctus imprimis, acer, integer;
+  Operibus ingenii, non item praemiis, foelix:
+  Satyrici apud nos carminis artifex egregius;
+  Quo simulatae religionis larvam detraxit,
+  Et perduellium scelera liberrime exagitavit;
+  Scriptorum in suo genere, primus et postremus.
+  Ne, cui vivo deerant fere omnia,
+  Deesset etiam mortuo tumulus,
+  Hoc tandem posito marmore, curavit
+  JOHANNES BARBER, Civis Londinensis, 1721.
+
+After his death were published three small volumes of his posthumous
+works; I know not by whom collected, or by what authority
+ascertained[65]; and, lately, two volumes more have been printed by Mr.
+Thyer, of Manchester, indubitably genuine. From none of these pieces can
+his life be traced, or his character discovered. Some verses, in the
+last collection, show him to have been among those who ridiculed the
+institution of the Royal Society, of which the enemies were, for some
+time, very numerous and very acrimonious; for what reason it is hard to
+conceive, since the philosophers professed not to advance doctrines, but
+to produce facts: and the most zealous enemy of innovation must admit
+the gradual progress of experience, however he may oppose hypothetical
+temerity.
+
+In this mist of obscurity passed the life of Butler, a man whose name can
+only perish with his language. The mode and place of his education are
+unknown; the events of his life are variously related; and all that can
+be told with certainty is, that he was poor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poem of Hudibras is one of those compositions of which a nation
+may justly boast; as the images which it exhibits are domestick, the
+sentiments unborrowed and unexpected, and the strain of diction original
+and peculiar. We must not, however, suffer the pride, which we assume
+as the countrymen of Butler, to make any encroachment upon justice, nor
+appropriate those honours which others have a right to share. The poem of
+Hudibras is not wholly English; the original idea is to be found in the
+history of Don Quixote; a book to which a mind of the greatest powers may
+be indebted without disgrace.
+
+Cervantes shows a man, who having, by the incessant perusal of incredible
+tales, subjected his understanding to his imagination, and familiarized
+his mind by pertinacious meditation to trains of incredible events, and
+scenes of impossible existence; goes out, in the pride of knighthood, to
+redress wrongs, and defend virgins, to rescue captive princesses, and
+tumble usurpers from their thrones; attended by a squire, whose cunning,
+too low for the suspicion of a generous mind, enables him often to cheat
+his master.
+
+The hero of Butler is a presbyterian justice, who, in the confidence of
+legal authority and the rage of zealous ignorance, ranges the country to
+repress superstition, and correct abuses, accompanied by an independent
+clerk, disputatious and obstinate, with whom he often debates, but never
+conquers him.
+
+Cervantes had so much kindness for Don Quixote, that, however he
+embarrasses him with absurd distresses, he gives him so much sense and
+virtue as may preserve our esteem; wherever he is, or whatever he does,
+he is made, by matchless dexterity, commonly ridiculous, but never
+contemptible.
+
+But for poor Hudibras, his poet had no tenderness; he chooses not that
+any pity should be shown, or respect paid him; he gives him up at once to
+laughter and contempt, without any quality that can dignify or protect
+him.
+
+In forming the character of Hudibras, and describing his person and
+habiliments, the author seems to labour with a tumultuous confusion of
+dissimilar ideas. He had read the history of the mock knights-errant; he
+knew the notions and manners of a presbyterian magistrate, and tried to
+unite the absurdities of both, however distant, in one personage. Thus he
+gives him that pedantick ostentation of knowledge which has no relation
+to chivalry, and loads him with martial encumbrances that can add nothing
+to his civil dignity. He sends him out a "colonelling," and yet never
+brings him within sight of war.
+
+If Hudibras be considered as the representative of the presbyterians, it
+is not easy to say why his weapons should be represented as ridiculous or
+useless; for, whatever judgment might be passed upon their knowledge or
+their arguments, experience had sufficiently shown that their swords were
+not to be despised. The hero, thus compounded of swaggerer and pedant, of
+knight and justice, is led forth to action, with his squire Ralpho, an
+independent enthusiast.
+
+Of the contexture of events planned by the author, which is called the
+action of the poem, since it is left imperfect, no judgment can he
+made. It is probable, that the hero was to be led through many luckless
+adventures, which would give occasion, like his attack upon the "bear
+and fiddle," to expose the ridiculous rigour of the sectaries; like his
+encounter with Sidrophel and Whacum, to make superstition and credulity
+contemptible; or, like his recourse to the low retailer of the law,
+discover the fraudulent practices of different professions.
+
+What series of events he would have formed, or in what manner he would
+have rewarded or punished his hero, it is now vain to conjecture. His
+work must have had, as it seems, the defect which Dryden imputes to
+Spenser; the action could not have been one; there could only have been
+a succession of incidents, each of which might have happened without the
+rest, and which could not all cooperate to any single conclusion.
+
+The discontinuity of the action might, however, have been easily
+forgiven, if there had been action enough; but, I believe, every reader
+regrets the paucity of events, and complains that, in the poem of
+Hudibras, as in the history of Thucydides, there is more said than done.
+The scenes are too seldom changed, and the attention is tired with long
+conversation.
+
+It is, indeed, much more easy to form dialogues than to contrive
+adventures. Every position makes way for an argument, and every objection
+dictates an answer. When two disputants are engaged upon a complicated
+and extensive question, the difficulty is not to continue, but to end
+the controversy. But whether it be that we comprehend but few of the
+possibilities of life, or that life itself affords little variety, every
+man, who has tried, knows how much labour it will cost to form such a
+combination of circumstances as shall have, at once, the grace of novelty
+and credibility, and delight fancy without violence to reason.
+
+Perhaps the dialogue of this poem is not perfect. Some power of engaging
+the attention might have been added to it by quicker reciprocation, by
+seasonable interruptions, by sudden questions, and by a nearer approach
+to dramatick sprightliness; without which, fictitious speeches will
+always tire, however sparkling with sentences, and however variegated
+with allusions.
+
+The great source of pleasure is variety. Uniformity must tire at last,
+though it be uniformity of excellence. We love to expect; and, when
+expectation is disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
+For this impatience of the present, whoever would please must make
+provision. The skilful writer "irritat, mulcet," makes a due distribution
+of the still and animated parts. It is for want of this artful
+intertexture, and those necessary changes, that the whole of a book may
+be tedious, though all the parts are praised.
+
+If inexhaustible wit could give perpetual pleasure, no eye would ever
+leave half-read the work of Butler; for what poet has ever brought so
+many remote images so happily together? It is scarcely possible to peruse
+a page without finding some association of images that was never found
+before. By the first paragraph the reader is amused, by the next he is
+delighted, and by a few more strained to astonishment; but astonishment
+is a toilsome pleasure; he is soon weary of wondering, and longs to be
+diverted:
+
+  "Omnia vult belle Matho dicere, dic aliquando
+  Et bene, die neutrum, dic aliquando male."
+
+Imagination is useless without knowledge: nature gives in vain the power
+of combination, unless study and observation supply materials to be
+combined. Butler's treasures of knowledge appear proportioned to his
+expense: whatever topick employs his mind, he shows himself qualified to
+expand and illustrate it with all the accessories that books can furnish:
+he is found not only to have travelled the beaten road, but the by-paths
+of literature; not only to have taken general surveys, but to have
+examined particulars with minute inspection.
+
+If the French boast the learning of Rabelais, we need not be afraid of
+confronting them with Butler.
+
+But the most valuable parts of his performance are those which retired
+study and native wit cannot supply. He that merely makes a book from
+books may be useful, but can scarcely be great. Butler had not suffered
+life to glide beside him unseen or unobserved. He had watched, with great
+diligence, the operations of human nature, and traced the effects of
+opinion, humour, interest, and passion. From such remarks proceeded
+that great number of sententious distichs, which have passed into
+conversation, and are added as proverbial axioms to the general stock of
+practical knowledge.
+
+When any work has been viewed and admired, the first question of
+intelligent curiosity is, how was it performed? Hudibras was not a hasty
+effusion; it was not produced by a sudden tumult of imagination, or a
+short paroxysm of violent labour. To accumulate such a mass of sentiments
+at the call of accidental desire, or of sudden necessity, is beyond the
+reach and power of the most active and comprehensive mind. I am informed
+by Mr. Thyer, of Manchester, the excellent editor of this author's
+relicks, that he could show something like Hudibras in prose. He has in
+his possession the commonplace-book, in which Butler reposited, not
+such events or precepts as are gathered by reading, but such remarks,
+similitudes, allusions, assemblages, or inferences, as occasion prompted,
+or meditation produced; those thoughts that were generated in his own
+mind, and might be usefully applied to some future purpose. Such is the
+labour of those who write for immortality.
+
+But human works are not easily found without a perishable part. Of the
+ancient poets every reader feels the mythology tedious and oppressive.
+Of Hudibras, the manners, being founded on opinions, are temporary and
+local, and, therefore, become every day less intelligible, and less
+striking. What Cicero says of philosophy is true, likewise, of wit and
+humour, that "time effaces the fictions of opinion, and confirms the
+determinations of nature." Such manners as depend upon standing relations
+and general passions are coextended with the race of man; but those
+modifications of life, and peculiarities of practice, which are the
+progeny of errour and perverseness, or, at best, of some accidental
+influence or transient persuasion, must perish with their parents.
+
+Much, therefore, of that humour which transported the last century[66]
+with merriment, is lost to us, who do not know the sour solemnity, the
+sullen superstition, the gloomy moroseness, and the stubborn scruples of
+the ancient puritans; or, if we know them, derive our information only
+from books, or from tradition, have never had them before our eyes, and
+cannot, but by recollection and study, understand the lines in which they
+are satirized. Our grandfathers knew the picture from the life; we judge
+of the life by contemplating the picture.
+
+It is scarcely possible, in the regularity and composure of the present
+time, to image the tumult of absurdity, and clamour of contradiction,
+which perplexed doctrine, disordered practice, and disturbed both publick
+and private quiet, in that age when subordination was broken, and awe was
+hissed away; when any unsettled innovator, who could hatch a half-formed
+notion, produced it to the publick; when every man might become a
+preacher, and almost every preacher could collect a congregation.
+
+The wisdom of the nation is very reasonably supposed to reside in the
+parliament. What can be concluded of the lower classes of the people,
+when in one of the parliaments, summoned by Cromwell, it was seriously
+proposed, that all the records in the Tower should be burnt, that all
+memory of things past should be effaced, and that the whole system of
+life should commence anew?
+
+We have never been witnesses of animosities excited by the use of minced
+pies and plumporridge; nor seen with what abhorrence those, who could eat
+them at all other times of the year, would shrink from them in December.
+An old puritan who was alive in my childhood, being, at one of the feasts
+of the church, invited by a neighbour to partake his cheer, told him,
+that if he would treat him at an alehouse with beer brewed for all times
+and seasons he should accept his kindness, but would have none of his
+superstitious meats or drinks.
+
+One of the puritanical tenets was the illegality of all games of chance;
+and he that reads Gataker upon Lots, may see how much learning and reason
+one of the first scholars of his age thought necessary to prove, that it
+was no crime to throw a die, or play at cards, or to hide a shilling for
+the reckoning.
+
+Astrology, however, against which so much of the satire is directed, was
+not more the folly of the puritans than of others. It had, in that time,
+a very extensive dominion. Its predictions raised hopes and fears in
+minds, which ought to have rejected it with contempt. In hazardous
+undertakings, care was taken to begin under the influence of a propitious
+planet; and, when the king was prisoner in Carisbrook castle, an
+astrologer was consulted what hour would be found most favourable to an
+escape.
+
+What effect this poem had upon the publick, whether it shamed imposture,
+or reclaimed credulity, is not easily determined. Cheats can seldom
+stand long against laughter. It is certain, that the credit of planetary
+intelligence wore fast away; though some men of knowledge, and Dryden
+among them, continued to believe that conjunctions and oppositions had a
+great part in the distribution of good or evil, and in the government of
+sublunary things.
+
+Poetical action ought to be probable upon certain suppositions, and such
+probability as burlesque requires is here violated only by one incident.
+Nothing can show more plainly the necessity of doing something, and the
+difficulty of finding something to do, than that Butler was reduced to
+transfer to his hero, the flagellation of Sancho, not the most agreeable
+fiction of Cervantes; very suitable, indeed, to the manners of that age
+and nation, which ascribed wonderful efficacy to voluntary penances; but
+so remote from the practice and opinions of the Hudibrastick time, that
+judgment and imagination are alike offended.
+
+The diction of this poem is grossly familiar, and the numbers purposely
+neglected, except in a few places where the thoughts, by their native
+excellence, secure themselves from violation, being such as mean language
+cannot express. The mode of versification has been blamed by Dryden, who
+regrets that the heroick measure was not rather chosen. To the critical
+sentence of Dryden, the highest reverence would be due, were not his
+decisions often precipitate, and his opinions immature. When he wished to
+change the measure, he probably would have been willing to change more.
+If he intended that, when the numbers were heroick, the diction should
+still remain vulgar, he planned a very heterogeneous and unnatural
+composition. If he preferred a general stateliness both of sound and
+words, he can be only understood to wish that Butler had undertaken a
+different work.
+
+The measure is quick, sprightly, and colloquial, suitable to the
+vulgarity of the words, and the levity of the sentiments. But such
+numbers and such diction can gain regard, only when they are used by a
+writer, whose vigour of fancy and copiousness of knowledge, entitle him
+to contempt of ornaments, and who, in confidence of the novelty and
+justness of his conceptions, can afford to throw metaphors and epithets
+away. To another that conveys common thoughts in careless versification,
+it will only be said, "Pauper videri Cinna vult, et est pauper." The
+meaning and diction will be worthy of each other, and criticism may
+justly doom them to perish together.
+
+Nor even though another Butler should arise, would another Hudibras
+obtain the same regard. Burlesque consists in a disproportion between the
+style and the sentiments, or between the adventitious sentiments and
+the fundamental subject. It, therefore, like all bodies compounded of
+heterogeneous parts, contains in it a principle of corruption. All
+disproportion is unnatural; and from what is unnatural, we can derive
+only the pleasure which novelty produces. We admire it awhile as a
+strange thing; but, when it is no longer strange, we perceive its
+deformity. It is a kind of artifice, which by frequent repetition detects
+itself; and the reader, learning in time what he is to expect, lays down
+his book, as the spectator turns away from a second exhibition of those
+tricks, of which the only use is to show that they can be played.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We extract from the second volume of Aubrey's Letters, p. 263, the
+following lines, entitled
+
+  _Hudibras imprinted._
+
+  No jesuite ever took in hand,
+  To plant a church in barren land;
+  Or ever thought it worth his while
+  A Swede or Russe to reconcile.
+  For where there is not store of wealth,
+  Souls are not worth the chardge of health.
+  Spain and America had designes
+  To sell their gospell for their wines,
+  For had the Mexicans been poore,
+  No Spaniard twice had landed on their shore.
+  'Twas gold the catholick religion planted,
+  Which, had they wanted gold, they still had wanted. ED.
+
+[Footnote 63: These are the words of the author of the short account of
+Butler, prefixed to Hudibras, which Dr. Johnson, notwithstanding what he
+says above, seems to have supposed was written by Mv. Longneville, the
+father; but the contrary is to be inferred from a subsequent passage,
+wherein the author laments that he had neither such an acquaintance nor
+interest with Mr. Longneville, as to procure from him the golden remains
+of Butler there mentioned. He was, probably, led into the mistake by
+a note in the Biog. Brit. p. 1077, signifying, that the son of
+this gentleman was living in 1736.
+
+Of this friend and generous patron of Butler, Mr. William Longneville, I
+find an account, written by a person who was well acquainted with him, to
+this effect, viz. that he was a conveyancing lawyer, and a bencher of the
+inner temple, and had raised himself from a low beginning, to very
+great eminence in that profession; that he was eloquent and learned, of
+spotless integrity; that he supported an aged father, who had ruined his
+fortunes by extravagance, and by his industry and application, reedified
+a ruined family; that he supported Butler, who, but for him, must
+literally have starved; and received from him, as a recompense, the
+papers called his Remains. Life of the lord-keeper Guildford, p. 289.
+These have since been given to the public by Mr. Thyer, of Manchester:
+and the originals are now in the hands of the Rev. Dr. Farmer, master of
+Emanuel college, Cambridge. H.]
+[Footnote 64: In a note in the Biographia Britannica, p. 1075, he is
+said, on the authority of the younger Mr. Longueville, to have lived for
+some years in Rose street, Covent garden, and also that he died there;
+the latter of these particulars is rendered highly probable, by his being
+interred in the cemetery of that parish.]
+
+[Footnote 65: They were collected into one, and published in 12mo. 1732.
+H.]
+
+[Footnote 66: The seventeenth. N.]
+
+
+
+
+ROCHESTER.
+
+John Wilmot, afterwards earl of Rochester, the son of Henry, earl of
+Rochester, better known by the title of lord Wilmot, so often mentioned
+in Clarendon's History, was born April 10, 1647, at Ditchley, in
+Oxfordshire. After a grammatical education at the school of Burford, he
+entered a nobleman into Wadham college in 1659, only twelve years old;
+and, in 1661, at fourteen, was, with some other persons of high rank,
+made master of arts by lord Clarendon in person.
+
+He travelled afterwards into France and Italy; and, at his return,
+devoted himself to the court. In 1665 he went to sea with Sandwich, and
+distinguished himself at Bergen by uncommon intrepidity; and the next
+summer served again on board sir Edward Spragge, who, in the heat of the
+engagement, having a message of reproof to send to one of his captains,
+could find no man ready to carry it but Wilmot, who, in an open boat,
+went and returned amidst the storm of shot.
+
+But his reputation for bravery was not lasting: he was reproached with
+slinking away in street quarrels, and leaving his companions to shift, as
+they could, without him; and Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, has left a
+story of his refusal to fight him.
+
+He had very early an inclination to intemperance, which he totally
+subdued in his travels; but, when he became a courtier, he unhappily
+addicted himself to dissolute and vitious company, by which his
+principles were corrupted, and his manners depraved. He lost all sense
+of religious restraint; and, finding it not convenient to admit the
+authority of laws, which he was resolved not to obey, sheltered his
+wickedness behind infidelity.
+
+As he excelled in that noisy and licentious merriment which wine incites,
+his companions eagerly encouraged him in excess, and he willingly
+indulged it; till, as he confessed to Dr. Burnet, he was for five years
+together continually drunk, or so much inflamed by frequent ebriety, as
+in no interval to be master of himself.
+
+In this state he played many frolicks, which it is not for his honour
+that we should remember, and which are not now distinctly known. He
+often pursued low amours in mean disguises, and always acted with great
+exactness and dexterity the characters which he assumed.
+
+He once erected a stage on Tower hill, and harangued the populace as a
+mountebank; and, having made physick part of his study, is said to have
+practised it successfully.
+
+He was so much in favour with king Charles, that he was made one of the
+gentlemen of the bedchamber, and comptroller of Woodstock park.
+
+Having an active and inquisitive mind, he never, except in his paroxysms
+of intemperance, was wholly negligent of study: he read what is
+considered as polite learning so much, that he is mentioned by Wood as
+the greatest scholar of all the nobility. Sometimes he retired into the
+country, and amused himself with writing libels, in which he did not
+pretend to confine himself to truth.
+
+His favourite author in French was Boileau, and in English Cowley.
+
+Thus in a course of drunken gaiety, and gross sensuality, with intervals
+of study, perhaps, yet more criminal, with an avowed contempt of all
+decency and order, a total disregard of every moral, and a resolute
+denial of every religious obligation, he lived worthless and useless, and
+blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness, till, at
+the age of one-and-thirty, he had exhausted the fund of life, and reduced
+himself to a state of weakness and decay.
+
+At this time he was led to an acquaintance with Dr. Burnet, to whom he
+laid open, with great freedom, the tenour of his opinions, and the
+course of his life, and from whom he received such conviction of the
+reasonableness of moral duty, and the truth of Christianity, as produced
+a total change both of his manners and opinions. The account of those
+salutary conferences is given by Burnet in a book entitled, Some Passages
+of the Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester, which the critick ought
+to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the
+saint for its piety. It were an injury to the reader to offer him an
+abridgment.
+
+He died July 26, 1680, before he had completed his thirty-fourth year;
+and was so worn away by a long illness, that life went out without a
+struggle.
+
+Lord Rochester was eminent for the vigour of his colloquial wit, and
+remarkable for many wild pranks and sallies of extravagance. The glare of
+his general character diffused itself upon his writings; the compositions
+of a man whose name was heard so often, were certain of attention, and
+from many readers certain of applause. This blaze of reputation is not
+yet quite extinguished; and his poetry still retains some splendour
+beyond that which genius has bestowed.
+
+Wood and Burnet give us reason to believe, that much was imputed to him
+which he did not write. I know not by whom the original collection was
+made, or by what authority its genuineness was ascertained. The
+first edition was published in the year of his death, with an air of
+concealment, professing, in the titlepage, to be printed at Antwerp.
+
+Of some of the pieces, however, there is no doubt: the Imitation of
+Horace's Satire, the Verses to lord Mulgrave, Satire against Man, the
+Verses upon Nothing, and, perhaps, some others, are, I believe, genuine;
+and, perhaps, most of those which the late collection exhibits[67].
+
+As he cannot be supposed to have found leisure for any course of
+continued study, his pieces are commonly short, such as one fit of
+resolution would produce.
+
+His songs have no particular character; they tell, like other songs,
+in smooth and easy language, of scorn and kindness, dismission and
+desertion, absence and inconstancy, with the commonplaces of artificial
+courtship. They are commonly smooth and easy; but have little nature, and
+little sentiment.
+
+His Imitation of Horace on Lucilius is not inelegant or unhappy. In the
+reign of Charles the second began that adaptation, which has since been
+very frequent, of ancient poetry to present times; and, perhaps, few will
+be found where the parallelism is better preserved than in this. The
+versification is, indeed, sometimes careless, but it is sometimes
+vigorous and weighty.
+
+The strongest effort of his muse is his poem upon Nothing. He is not the
+first who has chosen this barren topick for the boast of his fertility.
+There is a poem called Nihil in Latin, by Passerat, a poet and critick of
+the sixteenth century, in France; who, in his own epitaph, expresses his
+zeal for good poetry thus:
+
+  Molliter ossa quiescent
+  Sint modo carminibus non onerata malis.
+
+His works are not common, and, therefore, I shall subjoin his verses.
+
+In examining this performance, Nothing must be considered as having not
+only a negative, but a kind of positive signification; as I need not fear
+thieves, I have _nothing_, and _nothing_ is a very powerful protector. In
+the first part of the sentence it is taken negatively; in the second it
+is taken positively, as an agent. In one of Boileau's lines it was a
+question, whether he should use "à rien faire," or "à ne rien faire;"
+and the first was preferred, because it gave "rien" a sense in some sort
+positive. _Nothing_ can be a subject only in its positive sense, and such
+a sense is given it in the first line:
+
+  _Nothing_, thou elder brother ev'n to shade.
+
+In this line, I know not whether he does not allude to a curious book, De
+Umbra, by Wowerus, which, having told the qualities of _shade_, concludes
+with a poem, in which are these lines:
+
+  Jam primum terram validis circumspice claustris
+  Suspensam totam, decus admirabile mundi,
+  Terrasque, tractusque maris, camposque liquentes
+  Aeris, et vasti laqueata palatia coeli----
+  Omnibus UMBRA prior.
+
+The positive sense is generally preserved, with great skill, through
+the whole poem; though, sometimes, in a subordinate sense, the negative
+_nothing_ is injudiciously mingled. Passerat confounds the two senses.
+
+Another of his most vigorous pieces is his lampoon on sir Car Scroop,
+who, in a poem called the Praise of Satire, had some lines like
+these[68]:
+
+  He who can push into a midnight fray
+  His brave companion, and then run away,
+  Leaving him to be murder'd in the street,
+  Then put it off with some buffoon conceit;
+  Him, thus dishonour'd, for a wit you own,
+  And court him as top fiddler of the town.
+
+This was meant of Rochester, whose "buffoon conceit" was, I suppose, a
+saying often mentioned, that "every man would be a coward, if he durst;"
+and drew from him those furious verses; to which Scroop made, in reply,
+an epigram, ending with these lines:
+
+  Thou canst hurt no man's fame with thy ill word;
+  Thy pen is full as harmless as thy sword.
+
+Of the Satire against Man, Rochester can only claim what remains, when
+all Boileau's part is taken away.
+
+In all his works there is sprightliness and vigour, and every where may
+be found tokens of a mind, which study might have carried to excellence.
+What more can be expected from a life spent in ostentatious contempt of
+regularity, and ended, before the abilities of many other men began to be
+displayed[69]?
+
+  Poema Cl. V. JOANNIS PASSERATII,
+
+  Regii in Academia Parisiensi Professoris.
+
+  Ad ornatissimum virum ERRICUM MEMMIUM.
+
+  Janus adest, festae poscunt sua dona kalendae,
+  Munus abest festis quod possim offerre kalendis:
+  Siccine Castalius nobis exaruit humor?
+  Usque adeo ingenii nostri est exhausta facultas,
+  Immunem ut videat redeuntis janitor anni?
+  Quod nusquam est, potius nova per vestigia quaeram.
+  Ecce autem, partes dum sese versat in omnes,
+  Invenit mea musa NIHIL; ne despice munus:
+  Nam NIHIL est gemmis, NIHIL est pretiosius auro.
+  Hue animum, hue, igitur, vultus adverte benignos:
+  Res nova narratur quae nulli audita priorum;
+  Ausonii et Graii dixerunt caetera vates,
+  Ausoniae indictum NIHIL est, graecaeque, Camoenae,
+  E coelo quacunque Ceres sua prospicit arva,
+  Aut genitor liquidis orbem complectitur ulnis
+  Oceanus, NIHIL interitus et originis expers.
+  Immortale NIHIL, NIHIL omni parte beatum.
+  Quod si hinc majestas et vis divina probatur,
+  Num quid honore deûm, num quid dignabimur aris?
+  Conspectu lucis NIHIL est jucundius almae,
+  Vere NIHIL, NIHIL irriguo formosius horto,
+  Floridius pratis, Zephyri clementius aura;
+  In bello sanctum NIHIL est, Martisque tumultu:
+  Justum in pace NIHIL, NIHIL est in foedere tutum.
+  Felix cui NIHIL est, (fuerant haec vota Tibullo)
+  Non timet insidias; fures, incendia temnit;
+  Sollicitas sequitur nullo sub judice lites.
+  Ille ipse invictis qui subjicit omnia fatis,
+  Zenonis sapiens, NIHIL admiratur et optat.
+  Socraticique gregis fuit ista scientia quondam,
+
+  Scire NIHIL, studio cui nunc incumbitur uni.
+  Nec quicquam in ludo mavult didicisse juventus,
+  Ad magnas quia ducit opes, et culmen honorum.
+  Nosce NIHIL, nosces fertur quod Pythagoreae
+  Grano haerere fabae, cui vox adjuncta negantis.
+  Multi, Mercurio freti duce, viscera terrae
+  Pura liquefaciunt simul, et patrimonia miscent,
+  Arcano instantes operi, et carbonibus atris,
+  Qui tandem exhausti damnis, fractique labore,
+  Inveniunt, atque inventum NIHIL usque requirunt.
+  Hoc dimetiri non ulla decempeda possit:
+  Nec numeret Libycae numerum qui callet arenae.
+  Et Phoebo ignotum NIHIL est, NIHIL altius astris:
+  Tuque, tibi licet eximium sit mentis acumen,
+  Omnem in naturam penetrans, et in abdita rerum,
+  Pace tua, Memmi, NIHIL ignorare videris.
+  Sole tamen NIHIL est, et puro clarius igne.
+  Tange NIHIL, dicesque NIHIL sine corpore tangi.
+  Cerne NIHIL, cerni dices NIHIL absque colore.
+  Surdum audit loquiturque NIHIL sine voce, volatque
+  Absque ope pennarum, et graditur sine cruribus ullis.
+  Absque loco motuque NIHIL per inane vagatur.
+  Humano generi utilius NIHIL arte medendi;
+  Ne rhombos igitur, neu Thessala murmura tentet
+  Idalia vacuum trajectus arundine pectus,
+  Neu legat Idaeo Dictaeum in vertice gramen.
+  Vulneribus saevi NIHIL auxiliatur amoris.
+  Vexerit et quemvis trans moestas portitor undas,
+  Ad superos imo NIHIL hunc revocabit ab orco.
+  Inferni NIHIL inflectit praecordia regis,
+  Parcarumque colos, et inexorabile pensum.
+  Obruta Phlegraeis campis Titania pubes
+  Fulmineo sensit NIHIL esse potentius ictu.
+  Porrigitur magni NIHIL extra moenia mundi.
+  Diique NIHIL metuunt. Quid longo carmine plura
+  Commemorem? Virtute NIHIL praestantius ipsa,
+  Splendidius NIHIL est. NIHIL est Jove denique majus.
+  Sed tempus finem argutis imponere nugis:
+  Ne tibi si multa laudem mea carmina charta,
+  De NIHILO NIHILI pariant fastidia versus.
+
+[Footnote 67: Dr. Johnson has made no mention of Valentinian, altered
+from Beaumont and Fletcher, which was published after his death by a
+friend, who describes him in the preface, not only as being one of the
+greatest geniuses, but one of the most virtuous men that ever existed.
+J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 68: I quote from memory. Dr. J.] [Footnote 69: The late George
+Steevens, esq. made the selection of Rochester's poems which appears in
+Dr. Johnson's edition; but Mr. Malone observes, that the same task had
+been performed, in the early part of the last century, by Jacob Tonson.
+C.]
+
+
+
+
+ROSCOMMON
+
+Wentworth Dillon, earl of Roscommon, was the son of James Dillon and
+Elizabeth Wentworth, sister to the earl of Strafford. He was born in
+Ireland[70], during the lieutenancy of Strafford, who, being both his
+uncle and his godfather, gave him his own surname. His father, the
+third earl of Roscommon, had been converted by Usher to the protestant
+religion[71]; and when the popish rebellion broke out, Strafford,
+thinking the family in great danger from the fury of the Irish, sent for
+his godson, and placed him at his own seat in Yorkshire, where he was
+instructed in Latin; which he learned so as to write it with purity and
+elegance, though he was never able to retain the rules of grammar.
+
+Such is the account given by Mr. Fenton, from whose notes on Waller most
+of this account must be borrowed, though I know not whether all that he
+relates is certain. The instructer whom he assigns to Roscommon is one
+Dr. Hall, by whom he cannot mean the famous Hall, then an old man and a
+bishop.
+
+When the storm broke out upon Strafford, his house was a shelter no
+longer; and Dillon, by the advice of Usher, was sent to Caen, where the
+protestants had then an university, and continued his studies under
+Bochart.
+
+Young Dillon, who was sent to study under Bochart, and who is represented
+as having already made great proficiency in literature, could not be more
+than nine years old. Strafford went to govern Ireland in 1633, and
+was put to death eight years afterwards. That he was sent to Caen, is
+certain: that he was a great scholar, may be doubted. At Caen he is said
+to have had some preternatural intelligence of his father's death.
+
+"The lord Roscommon, being a boy of ten years of age, at Caen in
+Normandy, one day was, as it were, madly extravagant in playing, leaping,
+getting over the tables, boards, &c. He was wont to be sober enough;
+they said, God grant this bodes no ill luck to him! In the heat of this
+extravagant fit, he cries out, 'My father is dead.' A fortnight after,
+news came from Ireland that his father was dead. This account I had from
+Mr. Knolles, who was his governour, and then with him,--since secretary
+to the earl of Strafford; and I have heard his lordship's relations
+confirm the same." Aubrey's Miscellany.
+
+The present age is very little inclined to favour any accounts of this
+kind, nor will the name of Aubrey much recommend it to credit: it ought
+not, however, to be omitted, because better evidence of a fact cannot
+easily be found, than is here offered; and it must be by preserving such
+relations that we may, at last, judge how much they are to be regarded.
+If we stay to examine this account, we shall see difficulties on both
+sides: here is the relation of a fact given by a man who had no interest
+to deceive, and who could not be deceived himself; and here is, on the
+other hand, a miracle which produces no effect; the order of nature is
+interrupted to discover not a future, but only a distant event, the
+knowledge of which is of no use to him to whom it is revealed. Between
+these difficulties, what way shall be found? Is reason or testimony to be
+rejected? I believe, what Osborne says of an appearance of sanctity may
+be applied to such impulses or anticipations as this: "Do not wholly
+slight them, because they may be true; but do not easily trust them,
+because they may be false."
+
+The state both of England and Ireland was, at this time, such, that he
+who was absent from either country had very little temptation to return;
+and, therefore, Roscommon, when he left Caen, travelled into Italy, and
+amused himself with its antiquities, and, particularly, with medals, in
+which he acquired uncommon skill. At the restoration, with the other
+friends of monarchy, he came to England, was made captain of the band of
+pensioners, and learned so much of the dissoluteness of the court, that
+he addicted himself immoderately to gaming, by which he was engaged in
+frequent quarrels, and which, undoubtedly, brought upon him its usual
+concomitants, extravagance and distress.
+
+After some time, a dispute about part of his estate forced him into
+Ireland, where he was made, by the duke of Ormond, captain of the guards,
+and met with an adventure thus related by Fenton:
+
+"He was at Dublin, as much as ever, distempered with the same fatal
+affection for play, which engaged him in one adventure, that well
+deserves to be related. As he returned to his lodgings from a
+gaming-table, he was attacked, in the dark, by three ruffians, who were
+employed to assassinate him. The earl defended himself with so much
+resolution, that he despatched one of the aggressors; whilst a gentleman,
+accidentally passing that way, interposed, and disarmed another; the
+third secured himself by flight. This generous assistant was a disbanded
+officer, of a good family and fair reputation; who, by what we call the
+partiality of fortune, to avoid censuring the iniquities of the times,
+wanted even a plain suit of clothes to make a decent appearance at the
+castle. But his lordship, on this occasion, presenting him to the duke of
+Ormond, with great importunity prevailed with his grace, that he might
+resign his post of captain of the guards to his friend; which, for
+about three years, the gentleman enjoyed, and, upon his death, the duke
+returned the commission to his generous benefactor."
+
+When he had finished his business, he returned to London; was made master
+of the horse to the dutchess of York; and married the lady Frances,
+daughter of the earl of Burlington, and widow of colonel Courteney[72].
+
+He now busied his mind with literary projects, and formed the plan of a
+society for refining our language and fixing its standard;
+"in imitation," says Fenton, "of those learned and polite societies with
+which he had been acquainted abroad." In this design his friend Dryden is
+said to have assisted him.
+
+The same design, it is well known, was revived by Dr. Swift, in the
+ministry of Oxford; but it has never since been publickly mentioned,
+though, at that time, great expectations were formed, by some, of its
+establishment and its effects. Such a society might, perhaps, without
+much difficulty, be collected; but that it would produce what is expected
+from it, may be doubted.
+
+The Italian academy seems to have obtained its end. The language was
+refined, and so fixed that it has changed but little. The French academy
+thought they had refined their language, and, doubtless, thought rightly;
+but the event has not shown that they fixed it; for the French of the
+present time is very different from that of the last century.
+
+In this country an academy could be expected to do but little. If an
+academician's place were profitable, it would be given by interest; if
+attendance were gratuitous, it would be rarely paid, and no man would
+endure the least disgust. Unanimity is impossible, and debate would
+separate the assembly.
+
+But suppose the philological decree made and promulgated, what would be
+its authority? In absolute governments, there is, sometimes, a general
+reverence paid to all that has the sanction of power, and the countenance
+of greatness. How little this is the state of our country needs not to be
+told. We live in an age in which it is a kind of publick sport to refuse
+all respect that cannot be enforced. The edicts of an English academy
+would, probably, be read by many, only that they might be sure to disobey
+them.
+
+That our language is in perpetual danger of corruption cannot be denied;
+but what prevention can be found? The present manners of the nation would
+deride authority; and, therefore, nothing is left but that every writer
+should criticise himself. All hopes of new literary institutions were
+quickly suppressed by the contentious turbulence of king James's reign;
+and Roscommon, foreseeing that some violent concussion of the state was
+at hand, purposed to retire to Rome, alleging, that "it was best to sit
+near the chimney when the chamber smoked;" a sentence, of which the
+application seems not very clear.
+
+His departure was delayed by the gout; and he was so impatient either of
+hinderance or of pain, that he submitted himself to a French empirick,
+who is said to have repelled the disease into his bowels.
+
+At the moment in which he expired, he uttered, with an energy of voice,
+that expressed the most fervent devotion, two lines of his own version of
+Dies Irae:
+
+  My God, my father, and my friend,
+  Do not forsake me in my end.
+
+He died in 1684; and was buried, with great pomp, in Westminster Abbey.
+
+His poetical character is given by Mr. Fenton:
+
+"In his writings," says Fenton, "we view the image of a mind which was
+naturally serious and solid; richly furnished and adorned with all the
+ornaments of learning, unaffectedly disposed in the most regular and
+elegant order. His imagination might have probably been more fruitful
+and sprightly, if his judgment had been less severe. But that severity,
+delivered in a masculine, clear, succinct style, contributed to make
+him so eminent in the didactical manner, that no man, with justice, can
+affirm, he was ever equalled by any of our nation, without confessing,
+at the same time, that he is inferiour to none. In some other kinds of
+writing his genius seems to have wanted fire to attain the point of
+perfection; but who can attain it?"
+
+From this account of the riches of his mind, who would not imagine that
+they had been displayed in large volumes and numerous performances? Who
+would not, after the perusal of this character, be surprised to find
+that all the proofs of this genius, and knowledge, and judgment, are
+not sufficient to form a single book, or to appear otherwise than in
+conjunction with the works of some other writer of the same petty
+size[73]? But thus it is that characters are written: we know somewhat,
+and we imagine the rest. The observation, that his imagination would,
+probably, have been more fruitful and sprightly, if his judgment had been
+less severe, may be answered, by a remarker somewhat inclined to cavil,
+by a contrary supposition, that his judgment would, probably, have been
+less severe, if his imagination had been more fruitful. It is ridiculous
+to oppose judgment to imagination; for it does not appear that men have
+necessarily less of one, as they have more of the other.
+
+We must allow of Roscommon, what Fenton has not mentioned so distinctly
+as he ought, and what is yet very much to his honour, that he is,
+perhaps, the only correct writer in verse, before Addison; and that, if
+there are not so many or so great beauties in his compositions as in
+those of some contemporaries, there are, at least, fewer faults. Nor is
+this his highest praise; for Mr. Pope has celebrated him, as the only
+moral writer of king Charles's reign:
+
+  Unhappy Dryden! in all Charles's days,
+  Roscommon only boasts unspotted lays.
+
+His great work is his Essay on Translated Verse; of which Dryden writes
+thus, in the preface to his Miscellanies:
+
+"It was my lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse," says Dryden,
+"which made me uneasy, till I tried whether or no I was capable of
+following his rules, and of reducing the speculation into practice. For
+many a fair precept in poetry is like a seeming demonstration in
+mathematicks, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanick
+operation. I think I have generally observed his instructions: I am sure
+my reason is sufficiently convinced both of their truth and usefulness;
+which, in other words, is to confess no less a vanity than to pretend
+that I have, at least, in some places, made examples to his rules."
+
+This declaration of Dryden will, I am afraid, be found little more than
+one of those cursory civilities which one author pays to another; for
+when the sum of lord Roscommon's precepts is collected, it will not
+be easy to discover how they can qualify their reader for a better
+performance of translation than might have been attained by his own
+reflections.
+
+He that can abstract his mind from the elegance of the poetry, and
+confine it to the sense of the precepts, will find no other direction
+than that the author should be suitable to the translator's genius; that
+he should be such as may deserve a translation; that he who intends to
+translate him should endeavour to understand him; that perspicuity should
+be studied, and unusual and uncouth names sparingly inserted; and
+that the style of the original should be copied in its elevation and
+depression. These are the rules that are celebrated as so definite and
+important; and for the delivery of which to mankind so much honour has
+been paid. Roscommon has, indeed, deserved his praises, had they been
+given with discernment, and bestowed not on the rules themselves, but the
+art with which they are introduced, and the decorations with which they
+are adorned.
+
+The essay, though generally excellent, is not without its faults. The
+story of the quack, borrowed from Boileau, was not worth the importation;
+he has confounded the British and Saxon mythology:
+
+  I grant that from some mossy idol oak,
+  In double rhymes, our Thor and Woden spoke.
+
+The oak, as, I think, Gildon has observed, belonged to the British
+druids, and Thor and Woden were Saxon deities. Of the "double rhymes,"
+which he so liberally supposes, he certainly had no knowledge.
+
+His interposition of a long paragraph of blank verses is unwarrantably
+licentious. Latin poets might as well have introduced a series of
+iambicks among their heroicks.
+
+His next work is the translation of the Art of Poetry; which has
+received, in my opinion, not less praise than it deserves. Blank verse,
+left merely to its numbers, has little operation either on the ear or
+mind: it can hardly support itself without bold figures and striking
+images. A poem, frigidly didactick, without rhyme, is so near to prose,
+that the reader only scorns it for pretending to be verse.
+
+Having disentangled himself from the difficulties of rhyme, he may justly
+be expected to give the sense of Horace with great exactness, and to
+suppress no subtilty of sentiment, for the difficulty of expressing it.
+This demand, however, his translation will not satisfy; what he found
+obscure, I do not know that he has ever cleared.
+
+Among his smaller works, the eclogue of Virgil and the Dies Irae are
+well translated; though the best line in the Dies Irae is borrowed from
+Dryden. In return, succeeding poets have borrowed from Roscommon.
+
+In the verses on the Lap-dog, the pronouns _thou_ and _you_ are
+offensively confounded; and the turn at the end is from Waller.
+
+His versions of the two odes of Horace are made with great liberty, which
+is not recompensed by much elegance or vigour.
+
+His political verses are sprightly, and, when they were written, must
+have been very popular.
+
+Of the scene of Guarini, and the prologue to Pompey, Mrs. Phillips, in
+her letters to sir Charles Cotterel, has given the history.
+
+"Lord Roscommon," says she, "is certainly one of the most promising young
+noblemen in Ireland. He has paraphrased a psalm admirably; and a scene
+of Pastor Fido, very finely, in some places much better than sir Richard
+Fanshaw. This was undertaken merely in compliment to me, who happened to
+say, that it was the best scene in Italian, and the worst in English. He
+was only two hours about it." It begins thus:
+
+  Dear happy groves, and you, the dark retreat
+  Of silent horrour, Rest's eternal seat.
+
+From these lines, which are since somewhat mended, it appears that he did
+not think a work of two hours fit to endure the eye of criticism, without
+revisal.
+
+When Mrs. Phillips was in Ireland, some ladies that had seen her
+translation of Pompey, resolved to bring it on the stage at Dublin; and,
+to promote their design, lord Roscommon gave them a prologue, and
+sir Edward Deering, an epilogue; "which," says she, "are the best
+performances of those kinds I ever saw." If this is not criticism, it
+is, at least, gratitude. The thought of bringing Caesar and Pompey into
+Ireland, the only country over which Caesar never had any power, is
+lucky.
+
+Of Roscommon's works, the judgment of the publick seems to be right. He
+is elegant, but not great; he never labours after exquisite beauties,
+and he seldom falls into gross faults. His versification is smooth, but
+rarely vigorous; and his rhymes are remarkably exact. He improved
+taste, if he did not enlarge knowledge, and may be numbered among the
+benefactors to English literature[74].
+
+[Footnote 70: The Biographia Britannica says, probably about the year
+1632; but this is inconsistent with the date of Stratford's viceroyalty
+in the following page. C.]
+
+[Footnote 71: It was his grandfather, sir Robert Dillon, second earl of
+Roscommon, who was converted from popery; and his conversion is recited
+in the patent of sir James, the first earl of Roscommon, as one of the
+grounds of his creation. M.]
+
+[Footnote 72: He was married to lady Frances  Boyle in April, 1662. By
+this lady he had no issue. He married secondly, 10th November, 1674,
+Isabella, daughter of Matthew Boynton, of Barmston, in Yorkshire. M.]
+
+[Footnote 73: They were published, together with those of Duke, in an
+octavo volume, in 1717. The editor, whoever he was, professes to have
+taken great care to procure and insert all of his lordship's poems that
+are truly genuine. The truth of this assertion is flatly denied by the
+author of an account of Mr. John Pomfret, prefixed to his Remains; who
+asserts, that the Prospect of Death was written by that person, many
+years after lord Roscommon's decease; as also, that the paraphrase of the
+Prayer of Jeremy was written by a gentleman of the name of Southcourt,
+living in the year 1724. H.]
+
+[Footnote 74: This life was originally written by Dr. Johnson, in the
+Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1748. It then had notes, which are now
+incorporated with the text. C.]
+
+
+
+
+OTWAY.
+
+Of Thomas Otway, one of the first names in the English drama, little is
+known; nor is there any part of that little which his biographer can take
+pleasure in relating.
+
+He was born at Trottin, in Sussex, March 3, 1651, the son of Mr. Humphry
+Otway, rector of Woolbeding. From Winchester school, where he was
+educated, he was entered, in 1669, a commoner of Christ church; but left
+the university without a degree, whether for want of money, or from
+impatience of academical restraint, or mere eagerness to mingle with the
+world, is not known.
+
+It seems likely that he was in hope of being busy and conspicuous; for he
+went to London, and commenced player; but found himself unable to gain
+any reputation on the stage[75].
+
+This kind of inability he shared with Shakespeare and Jonson, as he
+shared likewise some of their excellencies. It seems reasonable to expect
+that a great dramatick poet should, without difficulty, become a great
+actor; that he who can feel, should express; that he who can excite
+passion, should exhibit, with great readiness, its external modes: but
+since experience has fully proved, that of those powers, whatever be
+their affinity, one may be possessed in a great degree by him who has
+very little of the other; it must be allowed that they depend upon
+different faculties, or on different use of the same faculty; that the
+actor must have a pliancy of mien, a flexibility of countenance, and a
+variety of tones, which the poet may be easily supposed to want; or that
+the attention of the poet and the player has been differently employed;
+the one has been considering thought, and the other action; one has
+watched the heart, and the other contemplated the face.
+
+Though he could not gain much notice as a player, he felt in himself
+such powers as might qualify for a dramatick author; and, in 1675, his
+twenty-fifth year, produced Alcibiades, a tragedy; whether from the
+Alcibiade of Palaprat, I have not means to inquire. Langbaine, the great
+detecter of plagiarism, is silent.
+
+In 1677, he published Titus and Berenice, translated from Rapin, with the
+Cheats of Scapin, from Molière; and, in 1678, Friendship in Fashion,
+a comedy, which, whatever might be its first reception, was, upon its
+revival at Drury lane, in 1749, hissed off the stage for immorality and
+obscenity.
+
+Want of morals, or of decency, did not, in those days, exclude any man
+from the company of the wealthy and the gay, if he brought with him any
+powers of entertainment; and Otway is said to have been, at this time,
+a favourite companion of the dissolute wits. But, as he who desires no
+virtue in his companion, has no virtue in himself, those whom Otway
+frequented had no purpose of doing more for him than to pay his
+reckoning. They desired only to drink and laugh: their fondness was
+without benevolence, and their familiarity without friendship. "Men of
+wit," says one of Otway's biographers, "received, at that time, no favour
+from the great, but to share their riots; from which they were dismissed
+again to their own narrow circumstances. Thus they languished in poverty,
+without the support of eminence."
+
+Some exception, however, must be made. The earl of Plymouth, one of king
+Charles's natural sons, procured for him a cornet's commission in some
+troops then sent into Flanders. But Otway did not prosper in his military
+character; for he soon left his commission behind him, whatever was the
+reason, and came back to London in extreme indigence, which Rochester
+mentions with merciless insolence, in the Session of the Poets:
+
+  Tom Otway came next, Tom Shadwell's dear zany,
+  And swears for heroicks he writes best of any;
+  Don Carlos his pockets so amply had fill'd,
+  That his mange was quite cur'd, and his lice were all kill'd:
+  But Apollo had seen his face on the stage,
+  And prudently did not think fit to engage
+  The scum of a playhouse, for the prop of an age.
+
+Don Carlos, from which he is represented as having received so much
+benefit, was played in 1675. It appears, by the lampoon, to have had
+great success, and is said to have been played thirty nights together.
+This, however, it is reasonable to doubt[76], as so long a continuance
+of one play upon the stage is a very wide deviation from the practice
+of that time; when the ardour for theatrical entertainments was not yet
+diffused through the whole people, and the audience, consisting nearly of
+the same persons, could be drawn together only by variety.
+
+The Orphan was exhibited in 1680. This is one of the few plays that keep
+possession of the stage, and has pleased for almost a century, through
+all the vicissitudes of dramatick fashion. Of this play nothing new can
+easily be said. It is a domestick tragedy drawn from middle life. Its
+whole power is upon the affections; for it is not written with much
+comprehension of thought, or elegance of expression. But if the heart is
+interested, many other beauties may be wanting, yet not be missed.
+
+The same year produced the History and Fall of Caius Marius; much of
+which is borrowed from the Romeo and Juliet of Shakespeare.
+
+In 1683[77] was published the first, and next year[78] the second, parts
+of the Soldier's Fortune, two comedies now forgotten; and, in 1685[79]
+his last and greatest dramatick work, Venice Preserved, a tragedy,
+which still continues to be one of the favourites of the publick,
+notwithstanding the want of morality in the original design, and the
+despicable scenes of vile comedy with which he has diversified his
+tragick action[80]. By comparing this with his Orphan, it will appear
+that his images were by time become stronger, and his language more
+energetick. The striking passages are in every mouth; and the publick
+seems to judge rightly of the faults and excellencies of this play, that
+it is the work of a man not attentive to decency, nor zealous for virtue;
+but of one who conceived forcibly, and drew originally, by consulting
+nature in his own breast.
+
+Together with those plays he wrote the poems which are in the present
+collection, and translated from the French the History of the
+Triumvirate.
+
+All this was performed before he was thirty-four years old; for he died
+April 14, 1685, in a manner which I am unwilling to mention. Having
+been compelled by his necessities to contract debts, and hunted, as is
+supposed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a publick house on
+Tower hill, where he is said to have died of want; or, as it is related
+by one of his biographers, by swallowing, after a long fast, a piece of
+bread which charity had supplied. He went out, as is reported, almost
+naked, in the rage of hunger, and, finding a gentleman in a neighbouring
+coffee-house, asked him for a shilling. The gentleman gave him a guinea;
+and Otway, going away, bought a roll, and was choked with the first
+mouthful. All this, I hope, is not true; and there is this ground of
+better hope, that Pope, who lived near enough to be well informed,
+relates in Spence's Memorials, that he died of a fever, caught by
+violent pursuit of a thief that had robbed one of his friends. But that
+indigence, and its concomitants, sorrow and despondency, pressed hard
+upon him, has never been denied, whatever immediate cause might bring him
+to the grave.
+
+Of the poems which the present collection admits, the longest is the
+Poet's Complaint of his Muse, part of which I do not understand; and in
+that which is less obscure, I find little to commend. The language is
+often gross, and the numbers are harsh. Otway had not much cultivated
+versification, nor much replenished his mind with general knowledge. His
+principal power was in moving the passions, to which Dryden[81], in his
+latter years, left an illustrious testimony. He appears, by some of his
+verses, to have been a zealous royalist, and had what was in those times
+the common reward of loyalty; he lived and died neglected.
+
+[Footnote 75: In Roscius Anglicanus, by Downes, the prompter, p. 34,
+we learn, that it was the character of the king in Mrs. Behn's Forced
+Marriage, or the Jealous Bridegroom, which Mr. Otway attempted to
+perform, and failed in. This event appears to have happened in the year
+1672. R.]
+
+[Footnote 76: This doubt is, indeed, very reasonable. I know not where it
+is said that Don Carlos was acted thirty nights together. Wherever it is
+said, it is untrue. Downes, who is perfectly good authority on this point,
+informs us, that it was performed ten days successively. M.]
+
+[Footnote 77: 1681.]
+
+[Footnote 78: 1684.]
+
+[Footnote 79: 1682.]
+
+[Footnote 80: The "despicable scenes of vile comedy" can be no bar
+to its being a favourite of the publick, as they are always omitted in
+the representation. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 81: In his preface to Fresnoy's Art of Painting. Dr.J.]
+
+
+
+
+WALLER
+
+Edmund Waller was born on the third of March, 1605, at Coleshill in
+Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, esq. of Agmondesham, in
+Buckinghamshire, whose family was originally a branch of the Kentish
+Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden in
+the same county, and sister to Hampden, the zealot of rebellion.
+
+His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him a yearly income
+of three thousand five hundred pounds; which, rating together the value
+of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than equivalent to
+ten thousand at the present time.
+
+He was educated, by the care of his mother, at Eton; and removed
+afterwards to King's college, in Cambridge. He was sent to parliament in
+his eighteenth, if not in his sixteenth year, and frequented the court of
+James the first, where he heard a very remarkable conversation, which the
+writer of the life prefixed to his works, who seems to have been well
+informed of facts, though he may sometimes err in chronology, has
+delivered as indubitably certain:
+
+"He found Dr. Andrews, bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neale, bishop of
+Durham, standing behind his majesty's chair; and there happened something
+extraordinary," continues this writer, "in the conversation those
+prelates had with the king, on which Mr. Waller did often reflect. His
+majesty asked the bishops: 'My lords, cannot I take my subjects' money,
+when I want it, without all this formality of parliament?' The bishop of
+Durham readily answered, 'God forbid, sir, but you should: you are the
+breath of our nostrils.' Whereupon the king turned and said to the bishop
+of Winchester, 'Well, my lord, what say you?' 'Sir,' replied the bishop,
+'I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases.' The king answered, 'No
+put-offs, my lord; answer me presently.' 'Then, sir,' said he, 'think it
+is lawful for you to take my brother Neale's money; for he offers it.'
+Mr. Waller said, the company was pleased with this answer, and the wit of
+it seemed to affect the king; for, a certain lord coming in soon after,
+his majesty cried out, 'Oh, my lord, they say you lig with my lady.' 'No,
+sir,' says his lordship, in confusion;' but I like her company, because
+she has so much wit.' 'Why then,' says the king, 'do you not lig with my
+lord of Winchester there?'"
+
+Waller's political and poetical life began nearly together. In his
+eighteenth year he wrote the poem that appears first in his works, on the
+Prince's Escape at St. Andero; a piece which justifies the observation,
+made by one of his editors, that he attained, by a felicity like
+instinct, a style which, perhaps, will never be obsolete; and that, "were
+we to judge only by the wording, we could not know what was wrote at
+twenty, and what at fourscore." His versification was, in his first
+essay, such as it appears in his last performance. By the perusal of
+Fairfax's translation of Tasso, to which, as Dryden relates[82], he
+confessed himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, and by
+his own nicety of observation, he had already formed such a system
+of metrical harmony, as he never afterwards much needed, or much
+endeavoured, to improve. Denham corrected his numbers by experience, and
+gained ground gradually upon the ruggedness of his age; but what was
+acquired by Denham was inherited by Waller.
+
+The next poem, of which the subject seems to fix the time, is supposed,
+by Mr. Fenton, to be the Address to the Queen, which he considers as
+congratulating her arrival, in Waller's twentieth year. He is apparently
+mistaken; for the mention of the nation's obligations to her frequent
+pregnancy, proves that it was written, when she had brought many
+children. We have, therefore, no date of any other poetical production
+before that which the murder of the duke of Buckingham occasioned: the
+steadiness with which the king received the news in the chapel, deserved,
+indeed, to be rescued from oblivion.
+
+Neither of these pieces, that seem to carry their own dates, could have
+been the sudden effusion of fancy. In the verses on the prince's escape,
+the prediction of his marriage with the princess of France must have
+been written after the event; in the other, the promises of the king's
+kindness to the descendants of Buckingham, which could not be properly
+praised, till it had appeared by its effects, show that time was taken
+for revision and improvement. It is not known that they were published
+till they appeared, long afterwards, with other poems.
+
+Waller was not one of those idolaters of praise who cultivate their minds
+at the expense of their fortunes. Rich as he was by inheritance, he took
+care early to grow richer, by marrying Mrs. Banks, a great heiress in
+the city, whom the interest of the court was employed to obtain for Mr.
+Crofts. Having brought him a son, who died young, and a daughter, who was
+afterwards married to Mr. Dormer, of Oxfordshire, she died in childbed,
+and left him a widower of about five-and-twenty, gay and wealthy, to
+please himself with another marriage.
+
+Being too young to resist beauty, and probably too vain to think himself
+resistible, he fixed his heart, perhaps half fondly and half ambitiously,
+upon the lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the earl of Leicester,
+whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated; the
+name is derived from the Latin appellation of sugar, and implies, if it
+means any thing, a spiritless mildness, and dull good-nature, such as
+excites rather tenderness than esteem, and such as, though always treated
+with kindness, is never honoured or admired.
+
+Yet he describes Sacharissa as a sublime predominating beauty, of lofty
+charms, and imperious influence, on whom he looks with amazement rather
+than fondness, whose chains he wishes, though in vain, to break, and
+whose presence is "wine that inflames to madness." His acquaintance with
+this high-born dame gave wit no opportunity of boasting its influence;
+she was not to be subdued by the powers of verse, but rejected his
+addresses, it is said, with disdain, and drove him away to solace his
+disappointment with Amoret or Phillis. She married, in 1639, the earl of
+Sunderland, who died at Newbury, in the king's cause; and, in her old
+age, meeting somewhere with Waller, asked him, when he would again write
+such verses upon her; "when you are as young, madam," said he, "and as
+handsome, as you were then."
+
+In this part of his life it was that he was known to Clarendon, among the
+rest of the men who were eminent in that age for genius and literature;
+but known so little to his advantage, that they who read his character
+will not much condemn Sacharissa, that she did not descend from her rank
+to his embraces, nor think every excellence comprised in wit.
+
+The lady was, indeed, inexorable; but his uncommon qualifications,
+though they had no power upon her, recommended him to the scholars and
+statesmen; and, undoubtedly, many beauties of that time, however they
+might receive his love, were proud of his praises. Who they were, whom he
+dignifies with poetical names, cannot now be known. Amoret, according to
+Mr. Fenton, was the lady Sophia Murray. Perhaps, by traditions, preserved
+in families, more may be discovered.
+
+From the verses written at Penshurst, it has been collected that he
+diverted his disappointment by a voyage; and his biographers, from his
+poem on the Whales, think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas;
+but it seems much more likely, that he should amuse himself with forming
+an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to
+America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability.
+
+From his twenty-eighth to his thirty-fifth year, he wrote his pieces on
+the reduction of Sallee; on the reparation of St. Paul's; to the King on
+his Navy; the panegyrick on the Queen Mother; the two poems to the earl
+of Northumberland; and perhaps others, of which the time cannot be
+discovered.
+
+When he had lost all hopes of Sacharissa, he looked round him for an
+easier conquest, and gained a lady of the family of Bresse, or Breaux.
+The time of his marriage is not exactly known. It has not been discovered
+that this wife was won by his poetry; nor is any thing told of her, but
+that she brought him many children. He, doubtless, praised some whom he
+would have been afraid to marry, and, perhaps, married one whom he would
+have been ashamed to praise. Many qualities contribute to domestick
+happiness, upon which poetry has no colours to bestow; and many airs and
+sallies may delight imagination, which he who flatters them never can
+approve. There are charms made only for distant admiration. No spectacle
+is nobler than a blaze.
+
+Of this wife, his biographers have recorded that she gave him five sons
+and eight daughters.
+
+During the long interval of parliament, he is represented as living among
+those with whom it was most honourable to converse, and enjoying an
+exuberant fortune with that independence and liberty of speech and
+conduct which wealth ought always to produce. He was, however, considered
+as the kinsman of Hampden, and was, therefore, supposed by the courtiers
+not to favour them.
+
+When the parliament was called in 1640, it appeared that Waller's
+political character had not been mistaken. The king's demand of a supply
+produced one of those noisy speeches which disaffection and discontent
+regularly dictate; a speech filled with hyperbolical complaints of
+imaginary grievances: "They," says he, "who think themselves already
+undone, can never apprehend themselves in danger; and they who have
+nothing left can never give freely." Political truth is equally in danger
+from the praises of courtiers, and the exclamations of patriots.
+
+He then proceeds to rail at the clergy, being sure, at that time, of a
+favourable audience. His topick is such as will always serve its purpose;
+an accusation of acting and preaching only for preferment; and he exhorts
+the commons "carefully to provide _for their_ protection against pulpit
+law."
+
+It always gratifies curiosity to trace a sentiment. Waller has, in this
+speech, quoted Hooker in one passage; and in another has copied him,
+without quoting. "Religion," says Waller, "ought to be the first thing in
+our purpose and desires; but that which is first in dignity is not always
+to precede in order of time; for well-being supposes a being; and the
+first impediment which men naturally endeavour to remove, is the want of
+those things without which they cannot subsist. God first assigned
+unto Adam maintenance of life, and gave him a title to the rest of the
+creatures, before he appointed a law to observe."
+
+"God first assigned Adam," says Hooker, "maintenance of life, and then
+appointed him a law to observe. True it is, that the kingdom of God
+must be the first thing in our purpose and desires; but, inasmuch as a
+righteous life presupposeth life, inasmuch as to live virtuously it
+is impossible, except we live; therefore the first impediment which
+naturally we endeavour to remove is penury, and want of things without
+which we cannot live." Book i. Sect. 9.
+
+The speech is vehement; but the great position, that grievances ought to
+be redressed, before supplies are granted, is agreeable enough to law and
+reason: nor was Waller, if his biographer may be credited, such an enemy
+to the king, as not to wish his distresses lightened; for he relates,
+"that the king sent particularly to Waller, to second his demand of some
+subsidies to pay off the army; and sir Henry Vane objecting against first
+voting a supply, because the king would not accept, unless it came up
+to his proportion, Mr. Waller spoke earnestly to sir Thomas Jermyn,
+comptroller of the household, to save his master from the effects of so
+bold a falsity; 'for' he said, 'I am but a country gentleman, and cannot
+pretend to know the king's mind:' but sir Thomas durst not contradict
+the secretary; and his son, the earl of St. Alban's, afterwards told Mr.
+Waller, that his father's cowardice ruined the king."
+
+In the long parliament, which, unhappily for the nation, met Nov. 3,
+1640, Waller represented Agmondesham the third time; and was considered,
+by the discontented party, as a man sufficiently trusty and acrimonious
+to be employed in managing the prosecution of judge Crawley, for his
+opinion in favour of ship-money; and his speech shows that he did not
+disappoint their expectations. He was, probably, the more ardent, as his
+uncle Hampden had been particularly engaged in the dispute, and, by
+a sentence, which seems generally to be thought unconstitutional,
+particularly injured.
+
+He was not, however, a bigot to his party, nor adopted all their
+opinions. When the great question, whether episcopacy ought to be
+abolished, was debated, he spoke against the innovation so coolly, so
+reasonably, and so firmly, that it is not without great injury to his
+name that his speech, which was as follows, has been hitherto omitted in
+his works[83]:
+
+"There is no doubt but the sense of what this nation hath suffered from
+the present bishops hath produced these complaints; and the apprehensions
+men have of suffering the like, in time to come, make so many desire the
+taking away of episcopacy: but I conceive it is possible that we may not,
+now, take a right measure of the minds of the people by their petitions;
+for, when they subscribed them, the bishops were armed with a dangerous
+commission of making new canons, imposing new oaths, and the like; but
+now we have disarmed them of that power. These petitioners lately did
+look upon episcopacy, as a beast armed with horns and claws; but now that
+we have cut and pared them (and may, if we see cause, yet reduce it into
+narrower bounds,) it may, perhaps, be more agreeable. Howsoever, if they
+be still in passion, it becomes us soberly to consider the right use and
+antiquity thereof; and not to comply further with a general desire, than
+may stand with a general good.
+
+"We have already showed, that episcopacy, and the evils thereof, are
+mingled like water and oil; we have also, in part, severed them; but, I
+believe, you will find, that our laws and the present government of
+the church are mingled like wine and water; so inseparable, that the
+abrogation of, at least, a hundred of our laws is desired in these
+petitions. I have often heard a noble answer of the lords, commended in
+this house, to a proposition of like nature, but of less consequence;
+they gave no other reason of their refusal but this, 'Nolumus mutare
+leges Angliae:' it was the bishops who so answered then; and it would
+become the dignity and wisdom of this house to answer the people now with
+a 'Nolumus mutare.'
+
+"I see some are moved with a number of hands against the bishops;
+which, I confess, rather inclines me to their defence; for I look upon
+episcopacy as a counterscarp, or outwork; which, if it be taken by this
+assault of the people, and, withal, this mystery once revealed, 'That we
+must deny them nothing, when they ask it thus in troops,' we may, in the
+next place, have as hard a task to defend our property, as we have lately
+had to recover it from the prerogative. If, by multiplying hands and
+petitions, they prevail for an equality in things ecclesiastical, the
+next demand, perhaps, may be 'Lex Agraria,' the like equality in things
+temporal.
+
+"The Roman story tells us, that when the people began to flock about the
+senate, and were more curious to direct and know what was done, than to
+obey, that commonwealth soon came to ruin; their 'Legem rogare' grew
+quickly to be a 'Legem ferre;' and after, when their legions had found
+that they could make a dictator, they never suffered the senate to have a
+voice any more in such election.
+
+"If these great innovations proceed, I shall expect a flat and level in
+learning too, as well as in church-preferments: 'Honos alit artes.' And
+though it be true, that grave and pious men do study for learning-sake,
+and embrace virtue for itself; yet it is as true that youth, which is the
+season when learning is gotten, is not without ambition, nor will
+ever take pains to excel in any thing, when there is not some hope of
+excelling others in reward and dignity.
+
+"There are two reasons chiefly alleged against our church-government.
+
+"First, Scripture, which, as some men think, points out another form.
+
+"Second, The abuses of the present superiours.
+
+"For scripture, I will not dispute it in this place; but I am confident
+that, whenever an equal division of lands and goods shall be desired,
+there will be as many places in scripture found out, which seem to favour
+that, as there are now alleged against the prelacy or preferment in the
+church. And, as for abuses, where you are now in the remonstrance told
+what this and that poor man hath suffered by the bishops, you may be
+presented with a thousand instances of poor men that have received hard
+measure from their landlords; and of worldly goods abused, to the injury
+of others, and disadvantage of the owners.
+
+"And, therefore, Mr. Speaker, my humble motion is, that we may settle
+men's minds herein; and, by a question, declare our resolution, 'to
+reform,' that is, 'not to abolish, episcopacy.'"
+
+It cannot but be wished that he, who could speak in this manner, had been
+able to act with spirit and uniformity.
+
+When the commons began to set the royal authority at open defiance,
+Waller is said to have withdrawn from the house, and to have returned
+with the king's permission; and, when the king set up his standard, he
+sent him a thousand broad-pieces. He continued, however, to sit in
+the rebellious conventicle; but "spoke," says Clarendon, "with great
+sharpness and freedom, which, now there was no danger of being outvoted,
+was not restrained; and, therefore, used as an argument against those who
+were gone, upon pretence that they were not suffered to deliver their
+opinion freely in the house, which could not be believed, when all men
+knew what liberty Mr. Waller took, and spoke every day with impunity
+against the sense and proceedings of the house."
+
+Waller, as he continued to sit, was one of the commissioners nominated
+by the parliament to treat with the king at Oxford; and, when they were
+presented, the king said to him, "Though you are the last, you are not
+the lowest, nor the least in my favour." Whitlock, who, being another of
+the commissioners, was witness of this kindness, imputes it to the king's
+knowledge of the plot, in which Waller appeared afterwards to have been
+engaged against the parliament. Fenton, with equal probability, believes
+that his attempt to promote the royal cause arose from his sensibility of
+the king's tenderness. Whitlock says nothing of his behaviour at Oxford:
+he was sent with several others to add pomp to the commission, but was
+not one of those to whom the trust of treating was imparted.
+
+The engagement, known by the name of Waller's plot, was soon afterwards
+discovered. Waller had a brother-in-law, Tomkyns, who was clerk of the
+queen's council, and, at the same time, had a very numerous acquaintance,
+and great influence, in the city. Waller and he, conversing with great
+confidence, told both their own secrets and those of their friends; and,
+surveying the wide extent of their conversation, imagined that they
+found, in the majority of all ranks, great disapprobation of the violence
+of the commons, and unwillingness to continue the war. They knew that
+many favoured the king, whose fear concealed their loyalty; and many
+desired peace, though they durst not oppose the clamour for war; and they
+imagined that, if those who had these good intentions could be informed
+of their own strength, and enabled by intelligence to act together, they
+might overpower the fury of sedition, by refusing to comply with the
+ordinance for the twentieth part, and the other taxes levied for the
+support of the rebel army, and by uniting great numbers in a petition for
+peace. They proceeded with great caution. Three only met in one place,
+and no man was allowed to impart the plot to more than two others; so
+that, if any should be suspected or seized, more than three could not be
+endangered.
+
+Lord Conway joined in the design, and, Clarendon imagines, incidentally
+mingled, as he was a soldier, some martial hopes or projects, which,
+however, were only mentioned, the main design being to bring the loyal
+inhabitants to the knowledge of each other; for which purpose there was
+to be appointed one in every district, to distinguish the friends of the
+king, the adherents to the parliament, and the neutrals. How far
+they proceeded does not appear; the result of their inquiry, as Pym
+declared[84], was, that within the walls, for one that was for the
+royalists, there were three against them; but that without the walls, for
+one that was against them, there were five for them. Whether this was
+said from knowledge or guess, was, perhaps, never inquired.
+
+It is the opinion of Clarendon, that in Waller's plan no violence or
+sanguinary resistance was comprised; that he intended only to abate the
+confidence of the rebels by publick declarations, and to weaken their
+powers by an opposition to new supplies. This, in calmer times, and
+more than this, is done without fear; but such was the acrimony of the
+commons, that no method of obstructing them was safe.
+
+About this time, another design was formed by sir Nicholas Crispe, a man
+of loyalty that deserves perpetual remembrance: when he was a merchant
+in the city, he gave and procured the king, in his exigencies, a hundred
+thousand pounds; and, when he was driven from the exchange, raised a
+regiment, and commanded it.
+
+Sir Nicholas flattered himself with an opinion, that some provocation
+would so much exasperate, or some opportunity so much encourage, the
+king's friends in the city, that they would break out in open resistance,
+and then would want only a lawful standard, and an authorized commander;
+and extorted from the king, whose judgment too frequently yielded to
+importunity, a commission of array, directed to such as he thought proper
+to nominate, which was sent to London by the lady Aubigney. She knew not
+what she carried, but was to deliver it on the communication of a certain
+token, which sir Nicholas imparted.
+
+This commission could be only intended to lie ready, till the time should
+require it. To have attempted to raise any forces, would have been
+certain destruction; it could be of use only when the forces should
+appear. This was, however, an act preparatory to martial hostility.
+Crispe would, undoubtedly, have put an end to the session of parliament,
+had his strength been equal to his zeal: and out of the design of Crispe,
+which involved very little danger, and that of Waller, which was an act
+purely civil, they compounded a horrid and dreadful plot.
+
+The discovery of Waller's design is variously related. In Clarendon's
+History, it is told, that a servant of Tomkyns, lurking behind the
+hangings, when his master was in conference with Waller, heard enough
+to qualify him for an informer, and carried his intelligence to Pym. A
+manuscript, quoted in the Life of Waller, relates, that "he was betrayed
+by his sister Price, and her presbyterian chaplain, Mr. Goode, who stole
+some of his papers; and, if he had not strangely dreamed the night
+before, that his sister had betrayed him, and, thereupon, burnt the rest
+of his papers, by the fire that was in his chimney, he had certainly lost
+his life by it." The question cannot be decided. It is not unreasonable
+to believe, that the men in power, receiving intelligence from the
+sister, would employ the servant of Tomkyns to listen at the conference,
+that they might avoid an act so offensive as that of destroying the
+brother by the sister's testimony.
+
+The plot was published in the most terrifick manner. On the 31st of
+May, 1643, at a solemn fast, when they were listening to the sermon, a
+messenger entered the church, and communicated his errand to Pym, who
+whispered it to others that were placed near him, and then went with them
+out of the church, leaving the rest in solicitude and amazement. They
+immediately sent guards to proper places, and, that night, apprehended
+Tomkyns and Waller; having yet traced nothing but that letters had been
+intercepted, from which it appeared that the parliament and the city were
+soon to be delivered into the hands of the cavaliers.
+
+They, perhaps, yet knew little themselves, beyond some general and
+indistinct notices. "But Waller," says Clarendon, "was so confounded with
+fear, that he confessed whatever he had heard, said, thought, or seen;
+all that he knew of himself, and all that he suspected of others, without
+concealing any person of what degree or quality soever, or any discourse
+which he had ever upon any occasion entertained with them; what such and
+such ladies of great honour, to whom, upon the credit of his wit and
+great reputation, he had been admitted, had spoke to him in their
+chambers upon the proceedings in the houses, and how they had encouraged
+him to oppose them; what correspondence and intercourse they had with
+some ministers of state at Oxford, and how they had conveyed all
+intelligence thither." He accused the earl of Portland, and lord Conway,
+as cooperating in the transaction; and testified, that the earl of
+Northumberland had declared himself disposed in favour of any attempt,
+that might check the violence of the parliament, and reconcile them to
+the king.
+
+He, undoubtedly, confessed much which they could never have discovered,
+and, perhaps, somewhat which they would wish to have been suppressed;
+for it is inconvenient, in the conflict of factions, to have that
+disaffection known which cannot safely be punished.
+
+Tomkyns was seized on the same night with Waller, and appears, likewise,
+to have partaken of his cowardice; for he gave notice of Crispe's
+commission of array, of which Clarendon never knew how it was discovered.
+Tomkyns had been sent with the token appointed, to demand it from lady
+Aubigney, and had buried it in his garden, where, by his direction, it
+was dug up; and thus the rebels obtained, what Clarendon confesses them
+to have had, the original copy.
+
+It can raise no wonder that they formed one plot out of these two
+designs, however remote from each other, when they saw the same agent
+employed in both, and found the commission of array in the hands of him,
+who was employed in collecting the opinions and affections of the people.
+
+Of the plot, thus combined, they took care to make the most. They sent
+Pym among the citizens, to tell them of their imminent danger, and happy
+escape; and inform them, that the design was, "to seize the lord mayor,
+and all the committee of militia, and would not spare one of them." They
+drew up a vow and covenant, to be taken by every member of either house,
+by which he declared his detestation of all conspiracies against the
+parliament, and his resolution to detect and oppose them. They then
+appointed a day of thanksgiving for this wonderful delivery; which
+shut out, says Clarendon, all doubts whether there had been such a
+deliverance, and whether the plot was real or fictitious.
+
+On June 11, the earl of Portland and lord Conway were committed, one to
+the custody of the mayor, and the other of the sheriff; but their lands
+and goods were not seized.
+
+Waller was still to immerse himself deeper in ignominy. The earl of
+Portland and lord Conway denied the charge; and there was no evidence
+against them but the confession of Waller, of which, undoubtedly, many
+would be inclined to question the veracity. With these doubts he was so
+much terrified, that he endeavoured to persuade Portland to a declaration
+like his own, by a letter extant in Fenton's edition. "But for me," says
+he, "you had never known any thing of this business, which was prepared
+for another; and, therefore, I cannot imagine why you should hide it
+so far as to contract your own ruin by concealing it, and persisting
+unreasonably to hide that truth, which without you already is, and will
+every day be made more manifest. Can you imagine yourself bound in honour
+to keep that secret, which is already revealed by another? or possible it
+should still be a secret, which is known to one of the other sex? If you
+persist to be cruel to yourself, for their sakes who deserve it not,
+it will, nevertheless, be made appear, ere long, I fear, to your ruin.
+Surely, if I had the happiness to wait on you, I could move you to
+compassionate both yourself and me, who, desperate as my case is, am
+desirous to die with the honour of being known to have declared
+the truth. You have no reason to contend to hide what is already
+revealed--inconsiderately to throw away yourself, for the interest of
+others, to whom you are less obliged than you are aware of."
+
+This persuasion seems to have had little effect. Portland sent, June
+29, a letter to the lords, to tell them, that he "is in custody, as
+he conceives, without any charge; and that, by what Mr. Waller hath
+threatened him with, since he was imprisoned, he doth apprehend a very
+cruel, long, and ruinous restraint:--He, therefore, prays, that he
+may not find the effects of Mr. Waller's threats, by a long and close
+imprisonment; but may be speedily brought to a legal trial, and then he
+is confident the vanity and falsehood of those informations which have
+been given against him will appear."
+
+In consequence of this letter, the lords ordered Portland and Waller
+to be confronted; when the one repeated his charge, and the other his
+denial. The examination of the plot being continued, July 1, Thinn, usher
+of the house of lords, deposed, that Mr. Waller having had a conference
+with the lord Portland in an upper room, lord Portland said, when he came
+down, "do me the favour to tell my lord Northumberland, that Mr. Waller
+has extremely pressed me to save my own life and his, by throwing the
+blame upon the lord Conway and the earl of Northumberland."
+
+Waller, in his letter to Portland, tells him of the reasons which he
+could urge with resistless efficacy in a personal conference; but he
+overrated his own oratory; his vehemence, whether of persuasion or
+entreaty, was returned with contempt.
+
+One of his arguments with Portland is, that the plot is already known
+to a woman. This woman was, doubtless, lady Aubigney, who, upon this
+occasion, was committed to custody; but who, in reality, when she
+delivered the commission, knew not what it was.
+
+The parliament then proceeded against the conspirators, and committed
+their trial to a council of war. Tomkyns and Chaloner were hanged near
+their own doors. Tomkyns, when he came to die, said it was a "foolish
+business;" and, indeed, there seems to have been no hope that it should
+escape discovery; for, though never more than three met at a time, yet
+a design so extensive must, by necessity, be communicated to many, who
+could not be expected to be all faithful, and all prudent. Chaloner was
+attended at his execution by Hugh Peters. His crime was, that he had
+commission to raise money for the king; but it appears not that the money
+was to be expended upon the advancement of either Crispe's or Waller's
+plot.
+
+The earl of Northumberland, being too great for prosecution, was only
+once examined before the lords. The earl of Portland and lord Conway,
+persisting to deny the charge, and no testimony, but Waller's, yet
+appearing against them, were, after a long imprisonment, admitted to
+bail. Hassel, the king's messenger, who carried the letters to Oxford,
+died the night before his trial. Hampden escaped death, perhaps, by the
+interest of his family; but was kept in prison to the end of his life.
+They, whose names were inserted in the commission of array, were not
+capitally punished, as it could not be proved that they had consented to
+their own nomination; but they were considered as malignants, and their
+estates were seized.
+
+"Waller, though confessedly," says Clarendon, "the most guilty, with
+incredible dissimulation, affected such a remorse of conscience, that his
+trial was put off, out of christian compassion, till he might recover his
+understanding." What use he made of this interval, with what liberality
+and success he distributed flattery and money, and how, when he was
+brought, July 4, before the house, he confessed and lamented, and
+submitted and implored, may be read in the History of the Rebellion, (b.
+vii.) The speech, to which Clarendon ascribes the preservation of his
+"dear-bought life," is inserted in his works. The great historian,
+however, seems to have been mistaken in relating that "he prevailed" in
+the principal part of his supplication, "not to be tried by a council of
+war;" for, according to Whitlock, he was, by expulsion from the house,
+abandoned to the tribunal which he so much dreaded, and, being tried and
+condemned, was reprieved by Essex; but, after a year's imprisonment,
+in which time resentment grew less acrimonious, paying a fine of ten
+thousand pounds, he was permitted to "recollect himself in another
+country."
+
+Of his behaviour in this part of his life, it is not necessary to
+direct the reader's opinion. "Let us not," says his last ingenious
+biographer[85], "condemn him with untempered severity, because he was
+not a prodigy which the world hath seldom seen, because his character
+included not the poet, the orator, and the hero."
+
+For the place of his exile he chose France, and stayed some time at Roan,
+where his daughter Margaret was born, who was afterwards his favourite,
+and his amanuensis. He then removed to Paris, where he lived with great
+splendour and hospitality; and, from time to time, amused himself with
+poetry, in which he sometimes speaks of the rebels, and their usurpation,
+in the natural language of an honest man.
+
+At last, it became necessary, for his support, to sell his wife's jewels;
+and being reduced, as he said, at last "to the rump-jewel," he solicited,
+from Cromwell, permission to return, and obtained it by the interest of
+colonel Scroop, to whom his sister was married. Upon the remains of a
+fortune which the danger of his life had very much diminished, he lived
+at Hall Barn, a house built by himself very near to Beaconsfield, where
+his mother resided. His mother, though related to Cromwell and Hampden,
+was zealous for the royal cause, and, when Cromwell visited her, used
+to reproach him; he, in return, would throw a napkin at her, and say he
+would not dispute with his aunt; but finding, in time, that she acted for
+the king, as well as talked, he made her a prisoner to her own daughter,
+in her own house. If he would do any thing, he could not do less.
+
+Cromwell, now protector, received Waller, as his kinsman, to familiar
+conversation. Waller, as he used to relate, found him sufficiently versed
+in ancient history; and when any of his enthusiastick friends came to
+advise or consult him, could, sometimes, overhear him discoursing in the
+cant of the times; but, when he returned, he would say: "Cousin Waller, I
+must talk to these men in their own way;" and resumed the common style of
+conversation.
+
+He repaid the protector for his favours (1654) by the famous Panegyrick,
+which has been always considered as the first of his poetical
+productions. His choice of encomiastick topicks is very judicious; for he
+considers Cromwell in his exaltation, without inquiring how he attained
+it; there is, consequently, no mention of the rebel or the regicide. All
+the former part of his hero's life is veiled with shades; and nothing is
+brought to view but the chief, the governour, the defender of England's
+honour, and the enlarger of her dominion. The act of violence, by
+which he obtained the supreme power, is lightly treated, and decently
+justified. It was, certainly, to be desired, that the detestable band
+should be dissolved, which had destroyed the church, murdered the king,
+and filled the nation with tumult and oppression; yet Cromwell had not
+the right of dissolving them, for all that he had before done could be
+justified only by supposing them invested with lawful authority. But
+combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage
+which licentious principles afford, did not those, who have long
+practised perfidy, grow faithless to each other.
+
+In the poem on the war with Spain are some passages, at least, equal
+to the best parts of the Panegyrick; and, in the conclusion, the poet
+ventures yet a higher flight of flattery, by recommending royalty to
+Cromwell and the nation. Cromwell was very desirous, as appears from his
+conversation, related by Whitlock, of adding the title to the power of
+monarchy, and is supposed to have been withheld from it partly by fear of
+the army, and partly by fear of the laws, which, when he should govern by
+the name of king, would have restrained his authority. When, therefore, a
+deputation was solemnly sent to invite him to the crown, he, after a long
+conference, refused it; but is said to have fainted in his coach, when he
+parted from them.
+
+The poem on the death of the protector seems to have been dictated by
+real veneration for his memory. Dryden and Sprat wrote on the same
+occasion; but they were young men, struggling into notice, and hoping for
+some favour from the ruling party. Waller had little to expect; he had
+received nothing but his pardon from Cromwell, and was not likely to ask
+any thing from those who should succeed him.
+
+Soon afterwards, the restoration supplied him with another subject; and
+he exerted his imagination, his elegance, and his melody, with equal
+alacrity, for Charles the second. It is not possible to read, without
+some contempt and indignation, poems of the same author, ascribing
+the highest degree of "power and piety" to Charles the first, then
+transferring the same "power and piety" to Oliver Cromwell; now inviting
+Oliver to take the crown, and then congratulating Charles the second
+on his recovered right. Neither Cromwell nor Charles could value his
+testimony, as the effect of conviction, or receive his praises, as
+effusions of reverence; they could consider them but as the labour of
+invention, and the tribute of dependence.
+
+Poets, indeed, profess fiction; but the legitimate end of fiction is the
+conveyance of truth; and he that has flattery ready for all whom the
+vicissitudes of the world happen to exalt, must be scorned, as a
+prostituted mind, that may retain the glitter of wit, but has lost the
+dignity of virtue.
+
+The Congratulation was considered as inferiour in poetical merit to the
+Panegyrick; and it is reported, that, when the king told Waller of the
+disparity, he answered, "poets, sir, succeed better in fiction than in
+truth."
+
+The Congratulation is, indeed, not inferiour to the Panegyrick, either by
+decay of genius, or for want of diligence; but because Cromwell had done
+much, and Charles had done little. Cromwell wanted nothing to raise him
+to heroick excellence but virtue; and virtue his poet thought himself at
+liberty to supply. Charles had yet only the merit of struggling without
+success, and suffering without despair. A life of escapes and indigence
+could supply poetry with no splendid images.
+
+In the first parliament, summoned by Charles the second, March 8, 1661,
+Waller sat for Hastings, in Sussex, and served for different places in
+all the parliaments of that reign. In a time when fancy and gaiety were
+the most powerful recommendations to regard, it is not likely that Waller
+was forgotten. He passed his time in the company that was highest both in
+rank and wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety did not exclude
+him. Though he drank water, he was enabled, by his fertility of mind, to
+heighten the mirth of Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr. Saville said, that
+"no man in England should keep him company without drinking, but Ned
+Waller."
+
+The praise given him by St. Evremond is a proof of his reputation; for it
+was only by his reputation that he could be known, as a writer, to a man
+who, though he lived a great part of a long life upon an English pension,
+never condescended to understand the language of the nation that
+maintained him.
+
+In parliament, "he was," says Burnet, "the delight of the house, and,
+though old, said the liveliest things of any among them." This, however,
+is said in his account of the year seventy-five, when Waller was only
+seventy. His name, as a speaker, occurs often in Grey's Collections; but
+I have found no extracts that can be more quoted, as exhibiting sallies
+of gaiety than cogency of argument.
+
+He was of such consideration, that his remarks were circulated and
+recorded. When the duke of York's influence was high, both in Scotland
+and England, it drew, says Burnet, a lively reflection from Waller, the
+celebrated wit. He said "the house of commons had resolved that the duke
+should not reign after the king's death; but the king, in opposition to
+them, had resolved that he should reign, even in his life." If there
+appear no extraordinary liveliness in this remark, yet its reception
+proves the speaker to have been a celebrated wit, to have had a name
+which the men of wit were proud of mentioning.
+
+He did not suffer his reputation to die gradually away, which may easily
+happen in a long life, but renewed his claim to poetical distinction,
+from time to time, as occasions were offered, either by publick events
+or private incidents; and, contenting himself with the influence of his
+muse, or loving quiet better than influence, he never accepted any office
+of magistracy.
+
+He was not, however, without some attention to his fortune; for he asked
+from the king, in 1665, the provostship of Eton college, and obtained
+it; but Clarendon refused to put the seal to the grant, alleging that
+it could be held only by a clergyman. It is known that sir Henry Wotton
+qualified himself for it by deacon's orders.
+
+To this opposition the Biographia imputes the violence and acrimony with
+which Waller joined Buckingham's faction in the prosecution of Clarendon.
+The motive was illiberal and dishonest, and showed that more than sixty
+years had not been able to teach him morality. His accusation is such as
+conscience can hardly be supposed to dictate, without the help of malice:
+"We were to be governed by janizaries, instead of parliaments, and are in
+danger from a worse plot than that of the fifth of November; then, if the
+lords and commons had been destroyed, there had been a succession; but
+here both had been destroyed for ever." This is the language of a man
+who is glad of an opportunity to rail, and ready to sacrifice truth to
+interest, at one time, and to anger, at another.
+
+A year after the chancellor's banishment, another vacancy gave him
+encouragement for another petition, which the king referred to the
+council, who, after hearing the question argued by lawyers for three
+days, determined that the office could be held only by a clergyman,
+according to the act of uniformity, since the provosts had always
+received institution, as for a parsonage, from the bishops of Lincoln.
+The king then said, he could not break the law which he had made; and Dr.
+Zachary Cradock, famous for a single sermon, at most, for two sermons,
+was chosen by the fellows.
+
+That he asked any thing else is not known; it is certain that he obtained
+nothing, though he continued obsequious to the court through the rest of
+Charles's reign.
+
+At the accession of king James, in 1685, he was chosen for parliament,
+being then fourscore, at Saltash, in Cornwall; and wrote a Presage of the
+Downfal of the Turkish Empire, which he presented to the king, on his
+birthday. It is remarked, by his commentator, Fenton, that, in reading
+Tasso, he had early imbibed a veneration for the heroes of the holy war,
+and a zealous enmity to the Turks, which never left him. James, however,
+having soon after begun what he thought a holy war at home, made haste to
+put all molestation of the Turks out of his power.
+
+James treated him with kindness and familiarity, of which instances are
+given by the writer of his life. One day, taking him into the closet, the
+king asked him how he liked one of the pictures: "My eyes," said Waller,
+"are dim, and I do not know it." The king said it was the princess of
+Orange. "She is," said Waller, "like the greatest woman in the world."
+The king asked who was that; and was answered, queen Elizabeth. "I
+wonder," said the king, "you should think so; but I must confess she
+had a wise council." "And, sir," said Waller, "did you ever know a fool
+choose a wise one?" Such is the story, which I once heard of some other
+man. Pointed axioms, and acute replies, fly loose about the world, and
+are assigned, successively, to those whom it may be the fashion to
+celebrate.
+
+When the king knew that he was about to marry his daughter to Dr. Birch,
+a clergyman, he ordered a French gentleman to tell him, that "the king
+wondered he could think of marrying his daughter to a falling church."
+"The king," said Waller, "does me great honour, in taking notice of my
+domestick affairs; but I have lived long enough to observe that this
+falling church has got a trick of rising again."
+
+He took notice to his friends of the king's conduct; and said that "he
+would be left like a whale upon the strand." Whether he was privy to any
+of the transactions which ended in the revolution, is not known. His heir
+joined the prince of Orange.
+
+Having now attained an age beyond which the laws of nature seldom suffer
+life to be extended, otherwise than by a future state, he seems to have
+turned his mind upon preparation for the decisive hour, and, therefore,
+consecrated his poetry to devotion. It is pleasing to discover that
+his piety was without weakness; that his intellectual powers continued
+vigorous; and that the lines which he composed when "he, for age, could
+neither read nor write," are not inferiour to the effusions of his youth.
+
+Towards the decline of life, he bought a small house, with a little land,
+at Coleshill; and said, "he should be glad to die, like the stag,
+where he was roused." This, however, did not happen. When he was at
+Beaconsfield, he found his legs grow tumid; he went to Windsor, where sir
+Charles Scarborough then attended the king, and requested him, as both a
+friend and a physician, to tell him, "What that swelling meant." "Sir,"
+answered Scarborough, "your blood will run no longer." Waller repeated
+some lines of Virgil, and went home to die.
+
+As the disease increased upon him, he composed himself for his departure;
+and, calling upon Dr. Birch to give him the holy sacrament, he desired
+his children to take it with him, and made an earnest declaration of his
+faith in christianity. It now appeared what part of his conversation
+with the great could be remembered with delight. He related, that being
+present when the duke of Buckingham talked profanely before king Charles,
+he said to him, "My lord, I am a great deal older than your grace, and
+have, I believe, heard more arguments for atheism than ever your grace
+did; but I have lived long enough to see there is nothing in them; and
+so, I hope, your grace will."
+
+He died October 21, 1687, and was buried at Beaconsfield, with a monument
+erected by his son's executors, for which Rymer wrote the inscription,
+and which, I hope, is now rescued from dilapidation.
+
+He left several children by his second wife; of whom, his daughter was
+married to Dr. Birch. Benjamin, the eldest son, was disinherited, and
+sent to New Jersey, as wanting common understanding. Edmund, the second
+son, inherited the estate, and represented Agmondesham in parliament,
+but, at last, turned quaker. William, the third son, was a merchant in
+London. Stephen, the fourth, was an eminent doctor of laws, and one of
+the commissioners for the union. There is said to have been a fifth, of
+whom no account has descended.
+
+The character of Waller, both moral and intellectual, has been drawn by
+Clarendon, to whom he was familiarly known, with nicety, which certainly
+none to whom he was not known can presume to emulate. It is, therefore,
+inserted here, with such remarks as others have supplied; after which,
+nothing remains but a critical examination of his poetry.
+
+"Edmund Waller," says Clarendon, "was born to a very fair estate, by the
+parsimony, or frugality, of a wise father and mother: and he thought it
+so commendable an advantage, that he resolved to improve it with his
+utmost care, upon which, in his nature, he was too much intent; and, in
+order to that, he was so much reserved and retired, that he was scarce
+ever heard of, till, by his address and dexterity, he had gotten a very
+rich wife in the city, against all the recommendation and countenance and
+authority of the court, which was thoroughly engaged on the behalf of
+Mr. Crofts, and which used to be successful, in that age, against any
+opposition. He had the good fortune to have an alliance and friendship
+with Dr. Morley, who had assisted and instructed him in the reading many
+good books, to which his natural parts and promptitude inclined him,
+especially the poets; and, at the age when other men used to give over
+writing verses, (for he was near thirty years when he first engaged
+himself in that exercise, at least that he was known to do so,) he
+surprised the town with two or three pieces of that kind; as if a tenth
+muse had been newly born to cherish drooping poetry. The doctor, at that
+time, brought him into that company which was most celebrated for good
+conversation; where he was received and esteemed with great applause and
+respect. He was a very pleasant discourser, in earnest and in jest, and,
+therefore, very grateful to all kind of company, where he was not the
+less esteemed for being very rich.
+
+"He had been even nursed in parliaments, where he sat when he was very
+young; and so, when they were resumed again, (after a long intermission,)
+he appeared in those assemblies with great advantage; having a graceful
+way of speaking, and by thinking much on several arguments, (which his
+temper and complexion, that had much of melancholick, inclined him to,)
+he seemed often to speak upon the sudden, when the occasion had only
+administered the opportunity of saying what he had thoroughly considered,
+which gave a great lustre to all he said; which yet was rather of delight
+than weight. There needs no more be said to extol the excellence and
+power of his wit, and pleasantness of his conversation, than that it was
+of magnitude enough to cover a world of very great faults; that is, so to
+cover them, that they were not taken notice of to his reproach; viz. a
+narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree; an abjectness and want of
+courage to support him in any virtuous undertaking; an insinuation and
+servile flattery to the height, the vainest and most imperious nature
+could be contented with; that it preserved and won his life from those
+who were most resolved to take it, and in an occasion in which he ought
+to have been ambitious to have lost it; and then preserved him again from
+the reproach and contempt that was due to him for so preserving it, and
+for vindicating it at such a price; that it had power to reconcile him to
+those whom he had most offended and provoked; and continued to his age
+with that rare felicity, that his company was acceptable where his spirit
+was odious; and he was, at least, pitied where he was most detested."
+
+Such is the account of Clarendon; on which it may not be improper to make
+some remarks.
+
+"He was very little known till he had obtained a rich wife in the city."
+
+He obtained a rich wife about the age of three-and-twenty; an age before
+which few men are conspicuous much to their advantage. He was known,
+however, in parliament and at court; and, if he spent part of his time
+in privacy, it is not unreasonable to suppose, that he endeavoured the
+improvement of his mind, as well as of his fortune.
+
+That Clarendon might misjudge the motive of his retirement is the more
+probable, because he has evidently mistaken the commencement of his
+poetry, which he supposes him not to have attempted before thirty. As
+his first pieces were, perhaps, not printed, the succession of his
+compositions was not known; and Clarendon, who cannot be imagined to
+have been very studious of poetry, did not rectify his first opinion by
+consulting Waller's book.
+
+Clarendon observes, that he was introduced to the wits of the age by Dr.
+Morley; but the writer of his life relates that he was already among
+them, when, hearing a noise in the street, and inquiring the cause, they
+found a son of Ben Jonson under an arrest. This was Morley, whom Waller
+set free, at the expense of one hundred pounds, took him into the country
+as director of his studies, and then procured him admission into the
+company of the friends of literature. Of this fact Clarendon had a nearer
+knowledge than the biographer, and is, therefore, more to be credited.
+
+The account of Waller's parliamentary eloquence is seconded by Burnet,
+who, though he calls him "the delight of the house," adds, that "he was
+only concerned to say that which should make him be applauded; he never
+laid the business of the house to heart, being a vain and empty, though a
+witty man."
+
+Of his insinuation and flattery it is not unreasonable to believe that
+the truth is told. Ascham, in his elegant description of those whom, in
+modern language, we term wits, says, that they are "open flatterers, and
+privy mockers." Waller showed a little of both, when, upon sight of the
+dutchess of Newcastle's verses on the Death of a Stag, he declared that
+he would give all his own compositions to have written them; and, being
+charged with the exorbitance of his adulation, answered, that "nothing
+was too much to be given, that a lady might be saved from the disgrace of
+such a vile performance." This, however, was no very mischievous or very
+unusual deviation from truth: had his hypocrisy been confined to such
+transactions, he might have been forgiven, though not praised; for who
+forbears to flatter an author or a lady.
+
+Of the laxity of his political principles, and the weakness of his
+resolution, he experienced the natural effect, by losing the esteem of
+every party. From Cromwell he had only his recall; and from Charles the
+second, who delighted in his company, he obtained only the pardon of his
+relation Hampden, and the safety of Hampden's son.
+
+As far as conjecture can be made from the whole of his writing, and his
+conduct, he was habitually and deliberately a friend to monarchy. His
+deviation towards democracy proceeded from his connexion with Hampden,
+for whose sake he prosecuted Crawley with great bitterness; and the
+invective which he pronounced on that occasion was so popular, that
+twenty thousand copies are said, by his biographer, to have been sold in
+one day.
+
+It is confessed that his faults still left him many friends, at least
+many companions. His convivial power of pleasing is universally
+acknowledged; but those who conversed with him intimately, found him not
+only passionate, especially in his old age, but resentful; so that the
+interposition of friends was sometimes necessary.
+
+His wit and his poetry naturally connected him with the polite writers
+of his time: he was joined with lord Buckhurst in the translation of
+Corneille's Pompey; and is said to have added his help to that of Cowley
+in the original draught of the Rehearsal.
+
+The care of his fortune, which Clarendon imputes to him, in a degree
+little less than criminal, was either not constant or not successful;
+for, having inherited a patrimony of three thousand five hundred pounds a
+year in the time of James the first, and augmented it, at least, by one
+wealthy marriage, he left, about the time of the revolution, an income of
+not more than twelve or thirteen hundred; which, when the different value
+of money is reckoned, will be found, perhaps, not more than a fourth part
+of what he once possessed.
+
+Of this diminution, part was the consequence of the gifts which he was
+forced to scatter, and the fine which he was condemned to pay at the
+detection of his plot; and if his estate, as is related in his life, was
+sequestered, he had probably contracted debts when he lived in exile;
+for we are told, that at Paris he lived in splendour, and was the only
+Englishman, except the lord St. Albans, that kept a table.
+
+His unlucky plot compelled him to sell a thousand a year; of the waste
+of the rest there is no account, except that he is confessed, by his
+biographer, to have been a bad economist. He seems to have deviated from
+the common practice; to have been a hoarder in his first years, and a
+squanderer in his last.
+
+Of his course of studies, or choice of books, nothing is known more than
+that he professed himself unable to read Chapman's translation of Homer,
+without rapture. His opinion concerning the duty of a poet is contained
+in his declaration, that "he would blot from his works any line that did
+not contain some motive to virtue."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+The characters, by which Waller intended to distinguish his writings, are
+sprightliness and dignity; in his smaller pieces, he endeavours to be
+gay; in the larger, to be great. Of his airy and light productions, the
+chief source is gallantry, that attentive reverence of female excellence
+which has descended to us from the Gothick ages. As his poems are
+commonly occasional, and his addresses personal, he was not so liberally
+supplied with grand as with soft images; for beauty is more easily found
+than magnanimity.
+
+The delicacy which he cultivated, restrains him to a certain nicety
+and caution, even when he writes upon the slightest matter. He has,
+therefore, in his whole volume, nothing burlesque, and seldom any thing
+ludicrous or familiar. He seems always to do his best; though his
+subjects are often unworthy of his care. It is not easy to think without
+some contempt on an author who is growing illustrious in his own opinion
+by verses, at one time, to a Lady who can do any thing but sleep when she
+pleases; at another, to a Lady who can sleep when she pleases; now, to a
+Lady on her passing through a crowd of people; then, on a Braid of divers
+colours, woven by four fair Ladies; on a tree cut in paper; or, to a
+Lady, from whom he received the copy of verses on the paper tree, which
+for many years had been missing.
+
+Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of
+Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself
+with a performance, which owes nothing to the subject. But compositions
+merely pretty have the fate of other pretty things, and are quitted in
+time for something useful: they are flowers fragrant and fair, but of
+short duration; or they are blossoms to be valued only as they foretell
+fruits. Among Waller's little poems are some which their excellency ought
+to secure from oblivion; as, to Amoret, comparing the different modes
+of regard, with which he looks on her and Sacharissa; and the verses on
+Love, that begin, "Anger in hasty words or blows."
+
+In others he is not equally successful; sometimes his thoughts are
+deficient, and sometimes his expression.
+
+The numbers are not always musical; as,
+
+  Fair Venus, in thy soft arms
+  The god of rage confine:
+  For thy whispers are the charms
+  Which only can divert his fierce design.
+  What though he frown, and to tumult do incline;
+  Thou the flame
+  Kindled in his breast canst tame
+  With that snow which unmelted lies on thine.
+
+He seldom, indeed, fetches an amorous sentiment from the depths of
+science; his thoughts are, for the most part, easily understood, and his
+images such as the superficies of nature readily supplies; he has a just
+claim to popularity, because he writes to common degrees of knowledge;
+and is free, at least, from philosophical pedantry, unless, perhaps,
+the end of a song to the sun may be excepted, in which he is too much a
+Copernican. To which may be added, the simile of the palm in the verses,
+on her passing through a crowd; and a line in a more serious poem on the
+Restoration, about vipers and treacle, which can only be understood by
+those who happen to know the composition of the Theriaca.
+
+His thoughts are sometimes hyperbolical, and his images unnatural:
+
+  The plants admire,
+  No less than those of old did Orpheus' lyre:
+  If she sit down, with tops all tow'rds her bow'd,
+  They round about her into arbours crowd:
+  Or if she walks, in even ranks they stand,
+  Like some well-marshall'd and obsequious band.
+
+In another place:
+
+  While in the park I sing, the listening deer
+  Attend my passion, and forget to fear:
+  When to the beeches I report my flame,
+  They bow their heads, as if they felt the same:
+  To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers,
+  With loud complaints they answer me in showers.
+  To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,
+  More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven!
+
+On the head of a stag:
+
+  O fertile head! which every year
+  Could such a crop of wonder bear!
+  The teeming earth did never bring,
+  So soon so hard, so huge a thing:
+  Which might it never have been cast,
+  Each year's growth added to the last,
+  These lofty branches had supply'd
+  The earth's bold sons' prodigious pride:
+  Heaven with these engines had been scal'd,
+  When mountains heap'd on mountains fail'd.
+
+Sometimes, having succeeded in the first part, he makes a feeble
+conclusion. In the song of Sacharissa's and Amoret's Friendship, the two
+last stanzas ought to have been omitted.
+
+His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate:
+
+  Then shall my love this doubt displace.
+  And gain such trust, that I may come
+  And banquet sometimes on thy face,
+  But make my constant meals at home.
+
+Some applications may be thought too remote and unconsequential; as in
+the verses on the Lady Dancing:
+
+  The sun in figures such as these
+  Joys with the moon to play:
+  To the sweet strains they advance,
+  Which do result from their own spheres;
+  As this nymph's dance
+  Moves with the numbers which she hears.
+
+Sometimes a thought, which might, perhaps, fill a distich, is expanded
+and attenuated, till it grows weak and almost evanescent:
+
+  Chloris! since first our calm of peace
+  Was frighted hence, this good we find,
+  Your favours with your fears increase,
+  And growing mischiefs make you kind.
+  So the fair tree, which still preserves
+  Her fruit, and state, while no wind blows,
+  In storms from that uprightness swerves;
+  And the glad earth about her strows
+  With treasure from her yielding boughs.
+
+His images are not always distinct; as, in the following passage, he
+confounds love, as a person, with love, as a passion:
+
+  Some other nymphs, with colours faint,
+  And pencil slow, may Cupid paint,
+  And a weak heart, in time, destroy;
+  She has a stamp, and prints the boy:
+  Can, with a single look, inflame
+  The coldest breast, the rudest tame.
+
+His sallies of casual flattery are sometimes elegant and happy, as that
+in Return for the Silver Pen; and sometimes empty and trifling, as that
+upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few Lines written in the
+Dutchess's Tasso, which he is said, by Fenton, to have kept a summer
+under correction. It happened to Waller, as to others, that his success
+was not always in proportion to his labour.
+
+Of these petty compositions, neither the beauties nor the faults deserve
+much attention. The amorous verses have this to recommend them, that
+they are less hyperbolical than those of some other poets. Waller is not
+always at the last gasp; he does not die of a frown, nor live upon a
+smile. There is, however, too much love, and too many trifles. Little
+things are made too important; and the empire of beauty is represented as
+exerting its influence further than can be allowed by the multiplicity of
+human passions, and the variety of human wants. Such books, therefore,
+may be considered, as showing the world under a false appearance, and, so
+far as they obtain credit from the young and unexperienced, as misleading
+expectation, and misguiding practice.
+
+Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is
+panegyrical: for of praise he was very lavish, as is observed by his
+imitator, lord Lansdowne:
+
+  No satyr stalks within the hallow'd ground,
+  But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound;
+  Glory and arms and love are all the sound.
+
+In the first poem, on the danger of the Prince on the coast of Spain,
+there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion, at the beginning; and
+the last paragraph, on the Cable, is, in part, ridiculously mean, and in
+part, ridiculously tumid. The poem, however, is such as may be justly
+praised, without much allowance for the state of our poetry and language
+at that time.
+
+The two next poems are upon the king's behaviour at the death of
+Buckingham, and upon his navy.
+
+He has, in the first, used the pagan deities with great propriety:
+
+  'Twas want of such a precedent as this,
+  Made the old heathen frame their gods amiss.
+
+In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble, which suppose the
+king's power secure against a second deluge; so noble, that it were
+almost criminal to remark the mistake of _centre_ for _surface_, or to
+say that the empire of the sea would be worth little, if it were not that
+the waters terminate in land.
+
+The poem upon Sallee has forcible sentiments; but the conclusion is
+feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul's has something vulgar and
+obvious; such as the mention of Amphion; and something violent and harsh;
+as,
+
+  So all our minds with his conspire to grace
+  The Gentiles' great apostle, and deface
+  Those state-obscuring sheds, that, like a chain,
+  Seem'd to confine, and fetter him again:
+
+  Which the glad saint shakes off at his command,
+  As once the viper from his sacred hand.
+  So joys the aged oak, when we divide
+  The creeping ivy from his injur'd side.
+
+Of the two last couplets, the first is extravagant, and the second mean.
+
+His praise of the queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought, that
+she "saves lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes are cured by lopping
+the limb," presents nothing to the mind but disgust and horrour.
+
+Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it seems not easy to say whether it
+is intended to raise terrour or merriment. The beginning is too splendid
+for jest, and the conclusion too light for seriousness. The versification
+is studied, the scenes are diligently displayed, and the images artfully
+amplified; but, as it ends neither in joy nor sorrow, it will scarcely be
+read a second time.
+
+The Panegyrick upon Cromwell has obtained from the publick a very liberal
+dividend of praise, which, however, cannot be said to have been unjustly
+lavished; for such a series of verses had rarely appeared before in the
+English language. Of the lines some are grand, some are graceful, and all
+are musical. There is now and then a feeble verse, or a trifling thought;
+but its great fault is the choice of its hero.
+
+The poem of the War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and
+striking than Waller is accustomed to produce. The succeeding parts
+are variegated with better passages and worse. There is something too
+far-fetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the English on,
+by saluting St. Lucar with cannon, "to lambs awakening the lion by
+bleating." The fate of the marquis and his lady, who were burnt in their
+ship, would have moved more, had the poet not made him die like the
+Phoenix, because he had spices about him, nor expressed their affection
+and their end, by a conceit, at once, false and vulgar:
+
+  Alive, in equal flames of love they burn'd,
+  And now together are to ashes turn'd.
+
+The verses to Charles on his Return were doubtless intended to
+counterbalance the Panegyrick on Cromwell. If it has been thought
+inferiour to that with which it is naturally compared, the cause of its
+deficience has been already remarked.
+
+The remaining pieces it is not necessary to examine singly. They must be
+supposed to have faults and beauties of the same kind with the rest. The
+Sacred Poems, however, deserve particular regard; they were the work of
+Waller's declining life, of those hours in which he looked upon the
+fame and the folly of the time past with the sentiments which his great
+predecessor, Petrarch, bequeathed to posterity, upon his review of that
+love and poetry which have given him immortality.
+
+That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much
+excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that the
+mind grows old with the body; and that he, whom we are now forced to
+confess superiour, is hastening daily to a level with ourselves. By
+delighting to think this of the living, we learn to think it of the dead;
+and Fenton, with all his kindness for Waller, has the luck to mark the
+exact time when his genius passed the zenith, which he places at his
+fifty-fifth year. This is to allot the mind but a small portion.
+Intellectual decay is, doubtless, not uncommon; but it seems not to
+be universal. Newton was, in his eighty-fifth year, improving his
+chronology, a few days before his death; and Waller appears not, in my
+opinion, to have lost, at eighty-two, any part of his poetical power.
+
+His Sacred Poems do not please like some of his other works; but before
+the fatal fifty-five, had he written on the same subjects, his success
+would hardly have been better.
+
+It has been the frequent lamentation of good men, that verse has been too
+little applied to the purposes of worship, and many attempts have been
+made to animate devotion by pious poetry. That they have very seldom
+attained their end, is sufficiently known, and it may not be improper
+to inquire, why they have miscarried. Let no pious ear be offended if I
+advance, in opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot
+often please. The doctrines of religion may, indeed, be defended in a
+didactick poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will
+not lose it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty
+and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the spring, and the harvests
+of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide, and the revolutions of the sky,
+and praise the maker for his works, in lines which no reader shall lay
+aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to
+piety; that of the description is not God, but the works of God.
+
+Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul,
+cannot be poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his creator,
+and plead the merits of his redeemer, is already in a higher state than
+poetry can confer.
+
+The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing
+something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topicks of devotion are
+few, and, being few, are universally known; but, few as they are, they
+can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment,
+and very little from novelty of expression.
+
+Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than
+things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display of those
+parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those which repel
+the imagination: but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and
+addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already.
+
+From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always
+obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy;
+but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion.
+Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name
+of the supreme being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; infinity cannot
+be amplified; perfection cannot be improved. The employments of pious
+meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith,
+invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations.
+Thanksgiving, the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a
+being without passions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt
+rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the
+judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication of
+man to man may diffuse itself through many topicks of persuasion; but
+supplication to God can only cry for mercy.
+
+Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple
+expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power,
+because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than
+itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory, and delight
+the ear, and, for these purposes, it may be very useful; but it supplies
+nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for
+eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestick for ornament; to
+recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify, by a concave mirror,
+the sidereal hemisphere.
+
+As much of Waller's reputation was owing to the softness and smoothness
+of his numbers, it is proper to consider those minute particulars to
+which a versifier must attend.
+
+He certainly very much excelled in smoothness most of the writers who
+were living when his poetry commenced. The poets of Elizabeth had
+attained an art of modulation, which was afterwards neglected or
+forgotten. Fairfax was acknowledged by him as his model; and he might
+have studied with advantage the poem of Davies[m86], which, though merely
+philosophical, yet seldom leaves the ear ungratified.
+
+But he was rather smooth than strong; of "the full resounding line,"
+which Pope attributes to Dryden, he has given very few examples. The
+critical decision has given the praise of strength to Denham, and of
+sweetness to Waller.
+
+His excellence of versification has some abatements. He uses the
+expletive _do_ very frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost,
+universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last
+compositions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and
+finding the world satisfied, he satisfied himself.
+
+His rhymes are sometimes weak words: _so_ is found to make the rhyme
+twice in ten lines, and occurs often as a rhyme through his book.
+
+His double rhymes, in heroick verse, have been censured by Mrs. Phillips,
+who was his rival in the translation of Corneille's Pompey; and more
+faults might be found, were not the inquiry below attention.
+
+He sometimes uses the obsolete termination of verbs, as _waxeth,
+affecteth_; and sometimes retains the final syllable of the preterite,
+as _amazed, supposed_, of which I know not whether it is not to the
+detriment of our language that we have totally rejected them.
+
+Of triplets he is sparing; but he did not wholly forbear them: of an
+alexandrine he has given no example.
+
+The general character of his poetry is elegance and gaiety. He is never
+pathetick, and very rarely sublime. He seems neither to have had a mind
+much elevated by nature, nor amplified by learning. His thoughts are such
+as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance with life would easily
+supply. They had, however, then, perhaps, that grace of novelty which
+they are now often supposed to want by those who, having already found
+them in later books, do not know or inquire who produced them first. This
+treatment is unjust. Let not the original author lose by his imitators.
+
+Praise, however, should be due before it is given. The author of Waller's
+life ascribes to him the first practice of what Erythraeus and some
+late criticks call alliteration, of using in the same verse many words
+beginning with the same letter. But this knack, whatever be its value,
+was so frequent among early writers, that Gascoigne, a writer of
+the sixteenth century, warns the young poet against affecting it;
+Shakespeare, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, is supposed to ridicule it;
+and, in another play, the sonnet of Holofernes fully displays it.
+
+He borrows too many of his sentiments and illustrations from the old
+mythology, for which it is vain to plead the example of ancient poets;
+the deities which they introduced so frequently, were considered as
+realities, so far as to be received by the imagination, whatever sober
+reason might even then determine. But of these images time has tarnished
+the splendour. A fiction, not only detected but despised, can never
+afford a solid basis to any position, though sometimes it may furnish a
+transient allusion, or slight illustration. No modern monarch can be much
+exalted by hearing that, as Hercules had his club, he has his navy.
+
+But of the praise of Waller, though much may be taken away, much will
+remain; for it cannot be denied that he added something to our elegance
+of diction, and something to our propriety of thought; and to him may be
+applied what Tasso said, with equal spirit and justice, of himself and
+Guarini, when, having perused the Pastor Fido, he cried out "if he had
+not read Aminta, he had never excelled it."
+
+As Waller professed himself to have learned the art of versification from
+Fairfax, it has been thought proper to subjoin a specimen of his work,
+which, after Mr. Hoole's translation, will, perhaps, not be soon
+reprinted. By knowing the state in which Waller found our poetry, the
+reader may judge how much he improved it.
+
+  1.
+
+  Erminia's steed (this while) his mistresse bore
+  Through forrests thicke among the shadie treene,
+  Her feeble hand the bridle reines forlore,
+  Halfe in a swoune she was for feare, I weene;
+  But her flit courser spared nere the more,
+  To beare her through the desart woods unseene
+  Of her strong foes, that chas'd her through the plaine,
+  And still pursu'd, but still pursu'd in vaine.
+
+  2.
+
+  Like as the wearie hounds at last retire,
+  Windlesse, displeased, from the fruitlesse chace,
+  When the slie beast Tapisht in bush and brire,
+  No art nor paines can rowse out of his place:
+  The christian knights so full of shame and ire
+  Returned backe, with faint and wearie pace!
+  Yet still the fearfull dame fled, swift as winde,
+  Nor ever staid, nor ever lookt behinde.
+
+  3.
+
+  Through thicke and thinne, all night, all day, she drived,
+  Withouten comfort, companie, or guide,
+  Her plaints and teares with every thought revived,
+  She heard and saw her greefes, but nought beside.
+  But when the sunne his burning chariot dived
+  In Thetis wave, and wearie teame untide,
+  On Jordans sandie bankes her course she staid,
+  At last, there downe she light, and downe she laid.
+
+  4.
+
+  Her teares, her drinke; her food, her sorrowings,
+  This was her diet that unhappie night:
+  But sleepe (that sweet repose and quiet brings)
+  To ease the greefes of discontented wight,
+  Spred foorth his tender, soft, and nimble wings,
+  In his dull armes foulding the virgin bright;
+  And love, his mother, and the graces kept
+  Strong watch and warde, while this faire ladie slept.
+
+  5.
+
+  The birds awakte her with their morning song,
+  Their warbling musicke pearst her tender eare,
+  The murmuring brookes and whistling windes among
+  The ratling boughes, and leaves, their parts did beare;
+  Her eies unclos'd beheld the groves along
+  Of swaines and shepherd groomes, that dwellings weare:
+  And that sweet noise, birds, winds, and waters sent,
+  Provokte againe the virgin to lament.
+
+  6.
+
+  Her plaints were interrupted with a sound
+  That seem'd from thickest bushes to proceed,
+  Some iolly shepheard sung a lustie round,
+  And to his voice had tun'd his oaten reed;
+  Thither she went, an old man there she found,
+  (At whose right hand his little flock did feed)
+  Sat making baskets, his three sonnes among,
+  That learn'd their father's art, and learn'd his song.
+
+  7.
+
+  Beholding one in shining armes appeare,
+  The seelie man and his were sore dismaid;
+  But sweet Erminia comforted their feare,
+  Her ventall vp, her visage open laid.
+  You happie folke, of heau'n beloued deare,
+  Work on (quoth she) vpon your harmlesse traid,
+  These dreadfull armes, I beare, no warfare bring
+  To your sweet toile, nor those sweet tunes you sing.
+
+  8.
+
+  But father, since this land, these townes and towres,
+  Destroied are with sword, with fire and spoile,
+  How may it be, unhurt, that you and yours
+  In safetie thus, applie your harmlesse toile?
+  My sonne (quoth he) this pore estate of ours
+  Is euer safe from storme of warlike broile;
+  This wildernesse doth vs in safetie keepe,
+  No thundring drum, no trumpet breakes our sleepe.
+
+  9.
+
+  Haply iust heau'n's defence and shield of right,
+  Doth loue the innocence of simple swaines,
+  The thunderbolts on highest mountains light,
+  And seld or neuer strike the lower plaines:
+  So kings haue cause to feare Bellonaes might,
+  Not they whose sweat and toile their dinner gaines,
+  Nor ever greedie soldier was entised
+  By pouertie, neglected and despised.
+
+  10.
+
+  O pouertie, chefe of the heau'nly brood,
+  Dearer to me than wealth or kingly crowne!
+  No wish for honour, thirst of other's good,
+  Can moue my hart, contented with my owne:
+  We quench our thirst with water of this flood,
+  Nor fear we poison should therein be throwne:
+  These little flocks of sheepe and tender goates
+  Giue milke for food, and wooll to make us coates.
+
+  11.
+
+  We little wish, we need but little wealth,
+  From cold and hunger vs to cloath and feed;
+  These are my sonnes, their care preserues from stealth
+  Their father's flocks, nor servants moe I need:
+  Amid these groues I walke oft for my health,
+  And to the fishes, birds, and beastes giue heed,
+  How they are fed, in forrest, spring and lake,
+  And their contentment for ensample take.
+
+  12.
+
+  Time was (for each one hath his doting time,
+  These siluer locks were golden tresses than)
+  That countrie life I hated as a crime,
+  And from the forrests sweet contentment ran,
+  To Memphis stately pallace would I clime,
+  And there became the mightie Caliphes man,
+  And though I but a simple gardner weare,
+  Yet could I marke abuses, see and heare.
+
+  13.
+
+  Entised on with hope of future gaine,
+  I suffred long what did my soule displease;
+  But when my youth was spent, my hope was vaine,
+  I felt my native strength at last decrease;
+  I gan my losse of lustie yeeres complaine,
+  And wisht I had enjoy'd the countries peace;
+  I bod the court farewell, and with content
+  My later age here have I quiet spent.
+
+  14.
+
+  While thus he spake, Erminia husht and still
+  His wise discourses heard, with great attention,
+  His speeches graue those idle fancies kill,
+  Which in her troubled soule bred such dissention;
+  After much thought reformed was her will,
+  Within those woods to dwell was her intention,
+  Till fortune should occasion new afford,
+  To turne her home to her desired lord.
+
+  15.
+
+  She said, therefore, O shepherd fortunate!
+  That troubles some didst whilom feele and proue,
+  Yet liuest now in this contented state,
+  Let my mishap thy thoughts to pitie moue,
+  To entertaine me, as a willing mate
+  In shepherd's life, which I admire and loue;
+  Within these pleasant groues, perchance, my hart
+  Of her discomforts may vnload some part.
+
+  16.
+
+  If gold or wealth, of most esteemed deare,
+  If iewells rich, thou diddest hold in prise,
+  Such store thereof, such plentie have I seen,
+  As to a greedie minde might well suffice:
+  With that downe trickled many a siluer teare,
+  Two christall streams fell from her watrie eies;
+  Part of her sad misfortunes than she told,
+  And wept, and with her wept that shepherd old.
+
+  17.
+
+  With speeches kinde, he gan the virgin deare
+  Towards his cottage gently home to guide;
+  His aged wife there made her homely cheare,
+  Yet welcomde her, and plast her by her side.
+  The princesse dond a poore pastoraes geare,
+  A kerchiefe course vpon her head she tide;
+  But yet her gestures and her lookes (I gesse)
+  Were such as ill beseem'd a shepherdesse.
+
+  18.
+
+  Not those rude garments could obscure, and hide
+  The heau'nly beautie of her angel's face,
+  Nor was her princely ofspring damnifide,
+  Or ought disparag'de, by those labours bace;
+  Her little flocks to pasture would she guide,
+  And milke her goates, and in their folds them place,
+  Both cheese and butter could she make, and frame
+  Her selfe to please the shepherd and his dame.
+
+[Footnote 82: Preface to his Fables. Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 83: This speech has been retrieved, from a paper printed at
+that time, by the writers of the Parliamentary History. Dr.J.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Parliamentary History, vol. xii. Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Life of Waller prefixed to an edition of his works,
+published in 1773, by Percival Stockdale. C.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Sir John Davies, entitled, Nosce Teipsum. This oracle
+expounded in two elegies; 1. Of Humane Knowledge: 2. Of the Soule of Man
+and the Immortalitie thereof, 1599. R.]
+
+[Footnote 87: It has been conjectured that our poet was either son or
+grandson of Charles, third son of sir John Stepney, the first baronet of
+that family. See Granger's History, vol. ii. p. 396. Edit. 8vo. 1775. Mr.
+Cole says, the poet's father was a grocer. Cole's manuscripts, in Brit.
+Mus. C.]
+
+
+
+
+POMFRET.
+
+Of Mr. John Pomfret nothing is known but from a slight and confused
+account, prefixed to his poems by a nameless friend; who relates, that he
+was the son of the Rev. Mr. Pomfret, rector of Luton, in Bedfordshire;
+that he was bred at Cambridge[87], entered into orders, and was rector of
+Malden, in Bedfordshire, and might have risen in the church; but that,
+when he applied to Dr. Compton, bishop of London, for institution to a
+living of considerable value, to which he had been presented, he found
+a troublesome obstruction raised by a malicious interpretation of some
+passage in his Choice; from which it was inferred, that he considered
+happiness as more likely to be found in the company of a mistress than of
+a wife.
+
+This reproach was easily obliterated; for it had happened to Pomfret, as
+to almost all other men who plan schemes of life; he had departed from
+his purpose, and was then married.
+
+The malice of his enemies had, however, a very fatal consequence: the
+delay constrained his attendance in London, where he caught the smallpox,
+and died in 1703, in the thirty-sixth year of his age.
+
+He published his poems in 1699; and has been always the favourite of that
+class of readers, who, without vanity or criticism, seek only their own
+amusement.
+
+His Choice exhibits a system of life adapted to common notions, and equal
+to common expectations; such a state as affords plenty and tranquillity,
+without exclusion of intellectual pleasures. Perhaps no composition in
+our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's Choice.
+
+In his other poems there is an easy volubility; the pleasure of smooth
+metre is afforded to the ear, and the mind is not oppressed with
+ponderous, or entangled with intricate, sentiment. He pleases many; and
+he who pleases many must have some species of merit.
+
+[Footnote 87: He was of Queen's college there, and, by the University
+Register, took his bachelor's degree in 1684, and master's in 1698. His
+father was of Trinity.]
+
+
+
+
+DORSET.
+
+Of the earl of Dorset the character has been drawn so largely and so
+elegantly by Prior, to whom he was familiarly known, that nothing can be
+added by a casual hand; and, as its author is so generally read, it would
+be useless officiousness to transcribe it.
+
+Charles Sackville was born January 24, 1637. Having been educated under a
+private tutor, he travelled into Italy, and returned a little before the
+restoration. He was chosen into the first parliament that was called, for
+East Grimstead, in Sussex, and soon became a favourite of Charles the
+second; but undertook no publick employment, being too eager of the
+riotous and licentious pleasures, which young men of high rank, who
+aspired to be thought wits, at that time imagined themselves entitled to
+indulge.
+
+One of these frolicks has, by the industry of Wood, come down to
+posterity. Sackville, who was then lord Buckhurst, with sir Charles
+Sedley and sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock in Bow street, by
+Covent garden, and, going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the
+populace in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley
+stood forth naked and harangued the populace in such profane language,
+that the publick indignation was awakened: the crowd attempted to force
+the door, and, being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and
+broke the windows of the house.
+
+For this misdemeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined five
+hundred pounds: what was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley
+employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission from the king;
+but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for
+themselves, and exacted it to the last groat. In 1665, lord Buckhurst
+attended the duke of York, as a volunteer in the Dutch war; and was
+in the battle of June 3, when eighteen great Dutch ships were taken,
+fourteen others were destroyed, and Opdam, the admiral, who engaged the
+duke, was blown up beside him, with all his crew.
+
+On the day before the battle, he is said to have composed the celebrated
+song, "To all you ladies now at land," with equal tranquillity of mind
+and promptitude of wit. Seldom any splendid story is wholly true. I
+have heard from the late earl of Orrery, who was likely to have good
+hereditary intelligence, that lord Buckhurst had been a week employed
+upon it, and only retouched or finished it on the memorable evening. But
+even this, whatever it may subtract from his facility, leaves him his
+courage.
+
+He was soon after made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and sent on short
+embassies to France.
+
+In 1674, the estate of his uncle, James Cranfield, earl of Middlesex,
+came to him by its owner's death, and the title was conferred on him
+the year after. In 1677, he became, by the death of his father, earl of
+Dorset, and inherited the estate of his family.
+
+In 1684, having buried his first wife, of the family of Bagot, who
+left him no child, he married a daughter of the earl of Northampton,
+celebrated both for beauty and understanding.
+
+He received some favourable notice from king James; but soon found it
+necessary to oppose the violence of his innovations, and with some other
+lords appeared in Westminster hall to countenance the bishops at their
+trial.
+
+As enormities grew every day less supportable, he found it necessary to
+concur in the revolution. He was one of those lords who sat every day in
+council to preserve the publick peace, after the king's departure; and,
+what is not the most illustrious action of his life, was employed to
+conduct the princess Anne to Nottingham with a guard, such as might alarm
+the populace, as they passed, with false apprehensions of her danger.
+Whatever end may be designed, there is always something despicable in a
+trick.
+
+He became, as may be easily supposed, a favourite of king William, who,
+the day after his accession, made him lord chamberlain of the household,
+and gave him afterwards the garter. He happened to be among those that
+were tossed with the king in an open boat sixteen hours, in very rough
+and cold weather, on the coast of Holland. His health afterwards
+declined; and, on Jan. 19, 1705-6, he died at Bath.
+
+He was a man whose elegance and judgment were universally confessed,
+and whose bounty to the learned and witty was generally known. To the
+indulgent affection of the publick, lord Rochester bore ample testimony
+in this remark: "I know not how it is, but lord Buckhurst may do what he
+will, yet is never in the wrong."
+
+If such a man attempted poetry, we cannot wonder that his works were
+praised. Dryden, whom, if Prior tells truth, he distinguished by his
+beneficence, and who lavished his blandishments on those who are not
+known to have so well deserved them, undertaking to produce authors of
+our own country superiour to those of antiquity, says, "I would instance
+your lordship in satire, and Shakespeare in tragedy." Would it be
+imagined that, of this rival to antiquity, all the satires were little
+personal invectives, and that his longest composition was a song of
+eleven stanzas?
+
+The blame, however, of this exaggerated praise falls on the encomiast,
+not upon the author; whose performances are, what they pretend to be, the
+effusions of a man of wit; gay, vigorous, and airy. His verses to Howard
+show great fertility of mind; and his Dorinda has been imitated by Pope.
+
+
+STEPNEY.
+
+
+George Stepney, descended from the Stepneys of Pendegrast, in
+Pembrokeshire, was born at Westminster, in 1663. Of his father's
+condition or fortune I have no account[88]. Having received the first
+part of his education at Westminster, where he passed six years in the
+college, he went, at nineteen, to Cambridge[p], where he continued a
+friendship begun at school with Mr. Montague, afterwards earl of Halifax.
+They came to London together, and are said to have been invited into
+publick life by the duke of Dorset[89].
+
+His qualifications recommended him to many foreign employments, so that
+his time seems to have been spent in negotiations. In 1692, he was sent
+envoy to the elector of Brandenburgh; in 1693, to the imperial court; in
+1694, to the elector of Saxony; in 1696, to the electors of Mentz and
+Cologne, and the congress at Frankfort; in 1698, a second time to
+Brandenburgh; in 1699, to the king of Poland; in 1701, again to the
+emperour; and, in 1706, to the States General. In 1697, he was made one
+of the commissioners of trade. His life was busy and not long. He died in
+1707, and is buried in Westminster Abbey, with this epitaph, which Jacob
+transcribed:
+
+  H. S. E.
+  GEORGIUS STEPNEIUS, armiger,
+  Vir,
+  Ob ingenii acumen,
+  Literarum scientiam,
+  Morum suavitatem,
+  Rerum usum,
+
+  Virorum amplissimorum consuetudinem,
+  Linguae, styli, ac vitae elegantiam,
+  Praeclara officia cum Britanniae tum Europae praestita,
+  Sua aetate multum celebratus,
+  Apud posteros semper celebrandus;
+  Plurimas legationes obijt
+  Ea fide, diligentia, ac felicitate,
+  Ut augustissimorum principum
+  Gulielmi et Annae
+  Spem in illo repositam
+  Numquam fefellerit,
+  Haud raro superaverit.
+  Post longum honorum cursum
+  Brevi temporis spatio confectum,
+  Cum naturae parum, famae satis vixerat,
+  Animam ad altiora aspirantem placide efflavit.
+
+On the left hand,
+
+  G. S.
+  Ex equestri familia Stepneiorum,
+  De Pendegrast, in comitatu
+  Pembrochiensi oriundus,
+  Westmonasterii natus est, A. D. 1663,
+  Electus in collegium
+  Sancti Petri Westmonast. A. 1676,
+  Sancti Trinitatis Cantab. 1682.
+  Consiliariorum quibus Commercii
+  Cura commissa est 1697.
+  Chelseiae mortuus, et, comitante
+  Magna procerum
+  Frequentia, hue elatus, 1707.
+
+It is reported that the juvenile compositions of Stepney "made grey
+authors blush." I know not whether his poems will appear such wonders to
+the present age. One cannot always easily find the reason for which the
+world has sometimes conspired to squander praise. It is not very unlikely
+that he wrote very early as well as he ever wrote; and the performances
+of youth have many favourers, because the authors yet lay no claim to
+publick honours, and are, therefore, not considered as rivals by the
+distributors of fame.
+
+He apparently professed himself a poet, and added his name to those of
+the other wits in the version of Juvenal; but he is a very licentious
+translator, and does not recompense his neglect of the author by beauties
+of his own. In his original poems, now and then, a happy line may,
+perhaps, be found, and, now and then, a short composition may give
+pleasure. But there is, in the whole, little either of the grace of wit,
+or the vigour of nature.
+
+[Footnote 88: He was entered of Trinity college, and took his master's
+degree in 1689. H.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Earl of Dorset.]
+
+
+
+
+J. PHILIPS.
+
+John Philips was born on the 30th of December, 1676, at Bampton, in
+Oxfordshire; of which place his father, Dr. Stephen Philips, archdeacon
+of Salop, was minister. The first part of his education was domestick;
+after which he was sent to Winchester, where, as we are told by Dr.
+Sewel, his biographer, he was soon distinguished by the superiority of
+his exercises; and, what is less easily to be credited, so much endeared
+himself to his schoolfellows, by his civility and good nature, that
+they, without murmur or ill will, saw him indulged by the master with
+particular immunities. It is related, that, when he was at school, he
+seldom mingled in play with the other boys, but retired to his chamber;
+where his sovereign pleasure was to sit, hour after hour, while his hair
+was combed by somebody, whose service he found means to procure.[90]
+
+At school he became acquainted with the poets, ancient and modern, and
+fixed his attention particularly on Milton.
+
+In 1694, he entered himself at Christ church; a college, at that time, in
+the highest reputation, by the transmission of Busby's scholars to the
+care first of Fell, and afterwards of Aldrich. Here he was distinguished
+as a genius eminent among the eminent, and for friendship particularly
+intimate with Mr. Smith, the author of Phaedra and Hippolytus. The
+profession which he intended to follow was that of physick; and he took
+much delight in natural history, of which botany was his favourite part.
+
+His reputation was confined to his friends and to the university; till,
+about 1703, he extended it to a wider circle by the Splendid Shilling,
+which struck the publick attention with a mode of writing new and
+unexpected.
+
+This performance raised him so high, that, when Europe resounded with
+the victory of Blenheim, he was, probably, with an occult opposition to
+Addison, employed to deliver the acclamation of the tories. It is said
+that he would willingly have declined the task, but that his friends
+urged it upon him. It appears that he wrote this poem at the house of Mr.
+St. John.
+
+Blenheim was published in 1705. The next year produced his greatest work,
+the poem upon Cider, in two books; which was received with loud praises,
+and continued long to be read, as an imitation of Virgil's Georgicks,
+which needed not shun the presence of the original.
+
+He then grew probably more confident of his own abilities, and began to
+meditate a poem on the Last Day; a subject on which no mind can hope to
+equal expectation.
+
+This work he did not live to finish; his diseases, a slow consumption
+and an asthma, put a stop to his studies, and on Feb. 15, 1708, at the
+beginning of his thirty-third year, put an end to his life.
+
+He was buried in the cathedral of Hereford; and sir Simon Harcourt,
+afterwards lord chancellor, gave him a monument in Westminster Abbey.
+The inscription at Westminster was written, as I have heard, by Dr.
+Atterbury, though commonly given to Dr. Freind.
+
+
+His epitaph at Hereford:
+
+  JOHANNES PHILIPS
+
+  Obijt 15 die Feb. Anno Dom. 1708., Aetat suae 32.
+
+  Cujus
+  Ossa si requiras, hanc urnam inspice:
+  Si ingenium nescias, ipsius opera consule;
+
+  Si tumulum desideras,
+  Templum adi Westmonasteriense:
+  Qualis quantusque vir fuerit,
+  Dicat elegans illa et praeclara,
+  Quae cenotaphium ibi decorat,
+  Inscriptio.
+  Quam interim erga cognatos pius et officiosus,
+  Testetur hoc saxum
+  A MARIA PHILIPS matre ipsius pientissima
+  Dilecti filii memoriae non sine lacrymis dicatum.
+
+His epitaph at Westminster:
+
+  Herefordiae conduntur ossa,
+  Hoc in delubro statuitur imago,
+  Britanniam omnem pervagatur fama,
+  JOHANNIS PHILIPS:
+  Qui viris bonis doctisque juxta charus,
+  Immortale suum ingenium,
+  Eruditione multiplici excultum,
+  Miro animi candore,
+  Eximia morum simplicitate,
+  Honestavit.
+  Litterarum amoeniorum sitim,
+  Quam Wintoniae puer sentire coeperat,
+  Inter Aedis Christi alumnos jugiter explevit.
+  In illo musarum domicilio
+  Praeclaris aemulorum studiis excitatus,
+  Optimis scribendi magistris semper intentus,
+  Carmina sermone patrio composuit
+  A Graecis Latinisque fontibus feliciter deducta,
+  Atticis Romanisque auribus omnino digna,
+  Versuum quippe harmoniam
+  Rythmo didicerat,
+  Antiquo illo, libero, multiformi,
+  Ad res ipsas apto prorsus, et attemperato,
+  Non numeris in eundem fere orbem redeuntibus,
+  Non clausularum similiter cadentium sono
+  Metiri:
+  Uni in hoc landis genere Miltono secundus,
+  Primoque poene par.
+
+  Res seu tenues, seu grandes, sen mediocres
+  Ornandas sumserat,
+  Nusquam, non quod decuit,
+  Et vidit, et assecutus est,
+  Egregius, quocunque stylum verteret,
+  Fandi author, et modorum artifex.
+  Fas sit huic,
+  Auso licet a tua metrorum lege discedere,
+  O poesis Anglicanae pater, atque conditor, Chaucere,
+  Alterum tibi latus claudere,
+  Vatum certe cineres tuos undique stipantium
+  Non dedecebit chorum.
+  SIMON HAHCOUKT, miles,
+  Viri bene de se, de litteris meriti,
+  Quoad viveret fautor,
+  Post obitum pie memor,
+  Hoc illi saxum poni voluit.
+  J. PHILIPS, STEPHANI, S. T. P. Archidiaconi
+  Salop. filius, natus est Bamptoniae
+  In agro Oxon. Dec. 30, 1676.
+  Obijt Herefordiae, Feb. 15, 1708.
+
+Philips has been always praised, without contradiction, as a man modest,
+blameless, and pious; who bore narrowness of fortune without discontent,
+and tedious and painful maladies without impatience; beloved by those
+that knew him, but not ambitious to be known. He was probably not formed
+for a wide circle. His conversation is commended for its innocent gaiety,
+which seems to have flowed only among his intimates; for I have been
+told, that he was in company silent and barren, and employed only upon
+the pleasures of his pipe. His addiction to tobacco is mentioned by
+one of his biographers, who remarks, that in all his writings, except
+Blenheim, he has found an opportunity of celebrating the fragrant fume.
+In common life he was probably one of those who please by not offending,
+and whose person was loved because his writings were admired. He died
+honoured and lamented, before any part of his reputation had withered,
+and before his patron St. John had disgraced him. His works are few. The
+Splendid Shilling has the uncommon merit of an original design, unless it
+may be thought precluded by the ancient Centos. To degrade the sounding
+words and stately construction of Milton, by an application to the lowest
+and most trivial things, gratifies the mind with a momentary triumph over
+that grandeur, which hitherto held its captives in admiration; the words
+and things are presented with a new appearance, and novelty is always
+grateful where it gives no pain.
+
+But the merit of such performances begins and ends with the first author.
+He that should again adapt Milton's phrase to the gross incidents
+of common life, and even adapt it with more art, which would not be
+difficult, must yet expect but a small part of the praise which Philips
+has obtained; he can only hope to be considered as the repeater of a
+jest.
+
+"The parody on Milton," says Gildon, "is the only tolerable production of
+its author." This is a censure too dogmatical and violent. The poem of
+Blenheim was never denied to be tolerable, even by those who do not
+allow its supreme excellence. It is, indeed, the poem of a scholar, "all
+inexpert of war;" of a man who writes books from books, and studies the
+world in a college. He seems to have formed his ideas of the field of
+Blenheim from the battles of the heroick ages, or the tales of chivalry,
+with very little comprehension of the qualities necessary to the
+composition of a modern hero, which Addison has displayed with so much
+propriety. He makes Marlborough behold at a distance the slaughter made
+by Tallard, then haste to encounter and restrain him, and mow his way
+through ranks made headless by his sword.
+
+He imitates Milton's numbers indeed, but imitates them very
+injudiciously. Deformity is easily copied; and whatever there is in
+Milton which the reader wishes away, all that is obsolete, peculiar, or
+licentious, is accumulated with great care by Philips. Milton's verse was
+harmonious, in proportion to the general state of our metre in Milton's
+age; and, if he had written after the improvements made by Dryden, it
+is reasonable to believe that he would have admitted a more pleasing
+modulation of numbers into his work; but Philips sits down with a
+resolution to make no more musick than he found; to want all that his
+master wanted, though he is very far from having what his master had.
+Those asperities, therefore, that are venerable in the Paradise Lost, are
+contemptible in the Blenheim.
+
+There is a Latin ode written to his patron St. John, in return for a
+present of wine and tobacco, which cannot be passed without notice. It is
+gay and elegant, and exhibits several artful accommodations of classick
+expressions to new purposes. It seems better turned than the odes of
+Hannes[91].
+
+To the poem on Cider, written in imitation of the Georgicks, may be given
+this peculiar praise, that it is grounded in truth; that the precepts
+which it contains are exact and just; and that it is, therefore, at once,
+a book of entertainment and of science. This I was told by Miller, the
+great gardener and botanist, whose expression was, that "there were many
+books written on the same subject in prose, which do not contain so much
+truth as that poem."
+
+In the disposition of his matter, so as to intersperse precepts relating
+to the culture of trees with sentiments more generally alluring, and in
+easy and graceful transitions from one subject to another, he has very
+diligently imitated his master; but he, unhappily, pleased himself with
+blank verse, and supposed that the numbers of Milton, which impress the
+mind with veneration, combined as they are with subjects of inconceivable
+grandeur, could be sustained by images which, at most, can rise only to
+elegance.
+
+Contending angels may shake the regions of heaven in blank verse; but the
+flow of equal measures, and the embellishment of rhyme, must recommend
+to our attention the art of engrafting, and decide the merit of the
+redstreak and pearmain.
+
+What study could confer, Philips had obtained; but natural deficience
+cannot be supplied. He seems not born to greatness and elevation. He is
+never lofty, nor does he often surprise with unexpected excellence: but,
+perhaps, to his last poem may be applied what Tully said of the work of
+Lucretius, that "it is written with much art, though with few blazes of
+genius."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following fragment, written by Edmund Smith, upon the works of
+Philips, has been transcribed from the Bodleian manuscripts.
+
+"A Prefatory Discourse to the Poem on Mr. Philips, with a character of
+his writings.
+
+"It is altogether as equitable some account should be given of those who
+have distinguished themselves by their writings, as of those who are
+renowned for great actions. It is but reasonable they, who contribute
+so much to the immortality of others, should have some share in it
+themselves; and since their genius only is discovered by their works, it
+is just that their virtues should be recorded by their friends. For no
+modest men (as the person I write of was in perfection) will write
+their own panegyricks; and it is very hard that they should go without
+reputation, only because they the more deserve it. The end of writing
+Lives is for the imitation of the readers. It will be in the power of
+very few to imitate the duke of Marlborough: we must be content with
+admiring his great qualities and actions, without hopes of following
+them. The private and social virtues are more easily transcribed. The
+life of Cowley is more instructive, as well as more fine, than any we
+have in our language. And it is to be wished, since Mr. Philips had so
+many of the good qualities of that poet, that I had some of the abilities
+of his historian. The Grecian philosophers have had their lives written,
+their morals commended, and their sayings recorded. Mr. Philips had
+all the virtues to which most of them only pretended, and all their
+integrity, without any of their affectation.
+
+"The French are very just to eminent men in this point; not a learned
+man nor a poet can die, but all Europe must be acquainted with his
+accomplishments. They give praise and expect it in their turns: they
+commend their Patrus and Molières, as well as their Condès and Turennes;
+their Pellisons and Racines have their elogies, as well as the prince
+whom they celebrate; and their poems, their mercuries, and orations, nay,
+their very gazettes are filled with the praises of the learned.
+
+"I am satisfied, had they a Philips among them, and known how to value
+him; had they one of his learning, his temper, but above all of that
+particular turn of humour, that altogether new genius, he had been an
+example to their poets, and a subject of their panegyricks, and, perhaps,
+set in competition with the ancients, to whom only he ought to submit.
+
+"I shall, therefore, endeavour to do justice to his memory, since nobody
+else undertakes it. And, indeed, I can assign no cause why so many of his
+acquaintance, that are as willing and more able than myself to give an
+account of him, should forbear to celebrate the memory of one so dear to
+them, but only that they look upon it as a work entirely belonging to me.
+
+"I shall content myself with giving only a character of the person and
+his writings, without meddling with the transactions of his life, which
+was altogether private: I shall only make this known observation of his
+family, that there was scarce so many extraordinary men in any one. I
+have been acquainted with five of his brothers, of which three are still
+living, all men of fine parts, yet all of a very unlike temper and
+genius. So that their fruitful mother, like the mother of the gods, seems
+to have produced a numerous offspring, all of different, though uncommon
+faculties. Of the living, neither their modesty, nor the humour of the
+present age, permits me to speak; of the dead, I may say something.
+
+"One of them had made the greatest progress in the study of the law of
+nature and nations, of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, and
+even improved, the notions of Grotius, and the more refined ones of
+Puffendorf. He could refute Hobbes with as much solidity as some of
+greater name, and expose him with as much wit as Echard. That noble
+study, which requires the greatest reach of reason and nicety of
+distinction, was not at all difficult to him. 'Twas a national loss to be
+deprived of one who understood a science so necessary, and yet so unknown
+in England. I shall add only, he had the same honesty and sincerity as
+the person I write of, but more heat: the former was more inclined to
+argue, the latter to divert: one employed his reason more; the other his
+imagination: the former had been well qualified for those posts, which
+the modesty of the latter made him refuse. His other dead brother would
+have been an ornament to the college of which he was a member. He had a
+genius either for poetry or oratory; and, though very young, composed
+several very agreeable pieces. In all probability he would have wrote as
+finely, as his brother did nobly. He might have been the Waller, as the
+other was the Milton of his time. The one might celebrate Marlborough,
+the other his beautiful offspring. This had not been so fit to describe
+the actions of heroes, as the virtues of private men. In a word, he had
+been fitter for my place; and, while his brother was writing upon the
+greatest men that any age ever produced, in a style equal to them, he
+might have served as a panegyrist on him.
+
+"This is all I think necessary to say of his family. I shall proceed to
+himself and his writings; which I shall first treat of, because I know
+they are censured by some out of envy, and more out of ignorance.
+
+"The Splendid Shilling, which is far the least considerable, has the more
+general reputation, and, perhaps, hinders the character of the rest. The
+style agreed so well with the burlesque, that the ignorant thought it
+could become nothing else. Every body is pleased with that work. But to
+judge rightly of the other, requires a perfect mastery of poetry and
+criticism, a just contempt of the little turns and witticisms now in
+vogue, and, above all, a perfect understanding of poetical diction and
+description.
+
+"All that have any taste of poetry will agree, that the great burlesque
+is much to be preferred to the low. It is much easier to make a great
+thing appear little, than a little one great: Cotton and others of a very
+low genius have done the former; but Philips, Garth, and Boileau, only
+the latter.
+
+"A picture in miniature is every painter's talent; but a piece for a
+cupola, where all the figures are enlarged, yet proportioned to the eye,
+requires a master's hand.
+
+"It must still be more acceptable than the low burlesque, because the
+images of the latter are mean and filthy, and the language itself
+entirely unknown to all men of good breeding. The style of Billingsgate
+would not make a very agreeable figure at St. James's. A gentleman would
+take but little pleasure in language, which he would think it hard to be
+accosted in, or in reading words which he could not pronounce without
+blushing. The lofty burlesque is the more to be admired, because, to
+write it, the author must be master of two of the most different talents
+in nature. A talent to find out and expose what is ridiculous, is very
+different from that which is to raise and elevate. We must read Virgil
+and Milton for the one, and Horace and Hudibras for the other. We know
+that the authors of excellent comedies have often failed in the grave
+style, and the tragedian as often in comedy. Admiration and laughter
+are of such opposite natures, that they are seldom created by the same
+person. The man of mirth is always observing the follies and weaknesses,
+the serious writer the virtues or crimes, of mankind; one is pleased with
+contemplating a beau, the other a hero: even from the same object they
+would draw different ideas: Achilles would appear in very different
+lights to Thersites and Alexander. The one would admire the courage and
+greatness of his soul; the other would ridicule the vanity and rashness
+of his temper. As the satirist says to Hannibal:
+
+  "I, curre per Alpes,
+  Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio fias.
+
+"The contrariety of style to the subject pleases the more strongly,
+because it is more surprising; the expectation of the reader is
+pleasantly deceived, who expects an humble style from the subject, or a
+great subject from the style. It pleases the more universally, because
+it is agreeable to the taste both of the grave and the merry; but more
+particularly so to those who have a relish of the best writers, and the
+noblest sort of poetry. I shall produce only one passage out of this
+poet, which is the misfortune of his galligaskins:
+
+  "My galligaskins, which have long withstood
+  The winter's fury and encroaching frosts,
+  By time subdued (what will not time subdue!)
+
+"This is admirably pathetical, and shows very well the vicissitudes of
+sublunary things. The rest goes on to a prodigious height; and a man in
+Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetick and terrible complaint.
+Is it not surprising that the subject should be so mean, and the verse so
+pompous; that the least things in his poetry, as in a microscope, should
+grow great and formidable to the eye? especially considering that, not
+understanding French, he had no model for his style? that he should have
+no writer to imitate, and himself be inimitable? that he should do all
+this before he was twenty? at an age which is usually pleased with a
+glare of false thoughts, little turns, and unnatural fustian? at an
+age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost said Virgil, were
+inconsiderable? So soon was his imagination at its full strength, his
+judgment ripe, and his humour complete.
+
+"This poem was written for his own diversion, without any design of
+publication. It was communicated but to me; but soon spread, and fell
+into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely mangled, by Ben.
+Bragge; and impudently said to be corrected by the author. This grievance
+is now grown more epidemical; and no man now has a right to his own
+thoughts, or a title to his own writings. Xenophon answered the Persian,
+who demanded his arms: 'We have nothing now left but our arms and our
+valour: if we surrender the one, how shall we make use of the other?'
+Poets have nothing but their wits and their writings; and if they are
+plundered of the latter, I don't see what good the former can do them.
+To pirate, and publickly own it, to prefix their names to the works they
+steal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never yet heard of but
+in England. It will sound oddly to posterity, that, in a polite nation,
+in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wise, most
+learned, and most generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the
+property of a mechanick should be better secured than that of a scholar!
+that the poorest manual operations should be more valued than the noblest
+products of the brain! that it should be felony to rob a cobbler of a
+pair of shoes, and no crime to deprive the best author of his whole
+subsistence! that nothing should make a man a sure title to his own
+writings but the stupidity of them! that the works of Dryden should meet
+with less encouragement than those of his own Flecknoe, or Blackmore!
+that Tillotson and St. George, Tom Thumb and Temple, should be set on
+an equal foot! This is the reason why this very paper has been so long
+delayed; and, while the most impudent and scandalous libels are publickly
+vended by the pirates, this innocent work is forced to steal abroad as if
+it were a libel.
+
+"Our present writers are by these wretches reduced to the same condition
+Virgil was, when the centurion seized on his estate. But I don't doubt
+but I can fix upon the Maecenas of the present age, that will retrieve
+them from it. But, whatever effect this piracy may have upon us, it
+contributed very much to the advantage of Mr. Philips: it helped him to
+a reputation which he neither desired nor expected, and to the honour of
+being put upon a work of which he did not think himself capable; but the
+event showed his modesty. And it was reasonable to hope, that he, who
+could raise mean subjects so high, should still be more elevated on
+greater themes; that he that could draw such noble ideas from a shilling,
+could not fail upon such a subject as the duke of Marlborough, "which
+is capable of heightening even the most low and trifling genius." And,
+indeed, most of the great works which have been produced in the world
+have been owing less to the poet than the patron. Men of the greatest
+genius are sometimes lazy, and want a spur; often modest, and dare not
+venture in publick: they certainly know their faults in the worst things;
+and even their best things they are not fond of, because the idea of what
+they ought to be is far above what they are. This induced me to believe
+that Virgil desired his works might be burnt, had not the same Augustus
+that desired him to write them, preserved them from destruction. A
+scribbling beau may imagine a poet _may_ be induced to write, by the
+very pleasure he finds in writing; but that is seldom, when people are
+necessitated to it. I have known men row, and use very hard labour, for
+diversion, which, if they had been tied to, they would have thought
+themselves very unhappy.
+
+"But to return to Blenheim, that work so much admired by some, and
+censured by others. I have often wished he had wrote it in Latin, that he
+might be out of the reach of the empty criticks, who could have as little
+understood his meaning in that language as they do his beauties in his
+own.
+
+"False criticks have been the plague of all ages; Milton himself, in a
+very polite court, has been compared to the rumbling of a wheelbarrow: he
+had been on the wrong side, and, therefore, could not be a good poet. And
+this, perhaps, may be Mr. Philips's case.
+
+"But I take, generally, the ignorance of his readers to be the occasion
+of their dislike. People that have formed their taste upon the French
+writers can have no relish for Philips: they admire points and turns,
+and, consequently, have no judgment of what is great and majestick; he
+must look little in their eyes, when he soars so high as to be almost out
+of their view. I cannot, therefore, allow any admirer of the French to be
+a judge of Blenheim, nor any who takes Bouhours for a complete critick.
+He generally judges of the ancients by the moderns, and not the moderns
+by the ancients; he takes those passages of their own authors to be
+really sublime which come the nearest to it; he often calls that a noble
+and a great thought which is only a pretty and a fine one; and has more
+instances of the sublime out of Ovid de Tristibus, than he has out of all
+Virgil.
+
+"I shall allow, therefore, only those to be judges of Philips, who make
+the ancients, and particularly Virgil, their standard.
+
+"But, before I enter on this subject, I shall consider what is particular
+in the style of Philips, and examine what ought to be the style of
+heroick poetry; and next inquire how far he is come up to that style.
+
+"His style is particular, because he lays aside rhyme, and writes in
+blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently postpones the adjective
+to the substantive, and the substantive to the verb; and leaves out
+little particles, _a_, and _the_; _her_, and _his_; and uses frequent
+appositions. Now let us examine, whether these alterations of style be
+conformable to the true sublime."
+
+[Footnote 90: Isaac Vossius relates, that he also delighted in having
+his hair combed when he could have it done by barbers or other persons
+skilled in the rules of prosody. Of the passage that contains this
+ridiculous fancy, the following is a translation: "Many people take
+delight in the rubbing of their limbs, and the combing of their hair; but
+these exercises would delight much more, if the servants at the baths,
+and of the barbers, were so skilful in this art, that they could express
+any measures with their fingers. I remember that more than once I have
+fallen into the hands of men of this sort, who could imitate any
+measure of songs in combing the hair, so as sometimes to express very
+intelligibly iambics, trochees, dactyls, &c. from whence there arose
+to me no small delight." See his treatise de Poematum Cantu et Viribus
+Rythmi. Oxon. 1673. p. 62. II.]
+
+[Footnote 91: This ode I am willing to mention, because there seems to be
+an errour in all the printed copies, which is, I find, retained in the
+last. They all read;
+
+  Quam Gratiarum cura decentium
+  O! O! labellis cui Venus insidet.
+
+The author probably wrote,
+
+  Quam Gratiarum cura decentium
+  Ornat; labellis cui Venus insidet. Dr. J.
+
+Hannes was professor of chemistry at Oxford, and wrote one or two poems
+in the Musae Anglicanae. J.B.]
+
+
+
+
+WALSH.
+
+William Walsh, the son of Joseph Walsh, esq. of Abberley, in
+Worcestershire, was born in 1663, as appears from the account of Wood,
+who relates, that at the age of fifteen he became, in 1678, a gentleman
+commoner of Wadham college.
+
+He left the university without a degree, and pursued his studies in
+London and at home; that he studied, in whatever place, is apparent from
+the effect, for he became, in Mr. Dryden's opinion, "the best critick in
+the nation."
+
+He was not, however, merely a critick or a scholar, but a man of fashion,
+and, as Dennis remarks, ostentatiously splendid in his dress. He was,
+likewise, a member of parliament and a courtier, knight of the shire for
+his native county in several parliaments; in another the representative
+of Richmond in Yorkshire; and gentleman of the horse to queen Anne, under
+the duke of Somerset.
+
+Some of his verses show him to have been a zealous friend to the
+revolution; but his political ardour did not abate his reverence
+or kindness for Dryden, to whom he gave a Dissertation on Virgil's
+Pastorals, in which, however studied, he discovers some ignorance of the
+laws of French versification.
+
+In 1705, he began to correspond with Mr. Pope, in whom he discovered very
+early the power of poetry. Their letters are written upon the pastoral
+comedy of the Italians, and those pastorals which Pope was then preparing
+to publish.
+
+The kindnesses which are first experienced are seldom forgotten. Pope
+always retained a grateful memory of Walsh's notice, and mentioned him,
+in one of his latter pieces, among those that had encouraged his juvenile
+studies:
+
+  Granville the polite,
+  And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.
+
+In his Essay on Criticism he had given him more splendid praise; and,
+in the opinion of his learned commentator, sacrificed a little of his
+judgment to his gratitude.
+
+The time of his death I have not learned. It must have happened between
+1707, when he wrote to Pope, and 1711, when Pope praised him in his
+Essay. The epitaph makes him forty-six years old: if Wood's account be
+right, he died in 1709.
+
+He is known more by his familiarity with greater men, than by any thing
+done or written by himself.
+
+His works are not numerous. In prose he wrote Eugenia, a Defence of
+Women; which Dryden honoured with a preface.
+
+Esculapius, or the Hospital of Fools, published after his death.
+
+A Collection of Letters and Poems, amorous and gallant, was published in
+the volumes called Dryden's Miscellany, and some other occasional pieces.
+
+To his poems and letters is prefixed a very judicious preface upon
+epistolary composition and amorous poetry.
+
+In his Golden Age Restored, there was something of humour, while the
+facts were recent; but it now strikes no longer. In his imitation of
+Horace, the first stanzas are happily turned; and, in all his writings,
+there are pleasing passages. He has, however, more elegance than vigour,
+and seldom rises higher than to be pretty.
+
+
+
+
+DRYDEN[92].
+
+
+Of the great poet whose life I am about to delineate, the curiosity which
+his reputation must excite, will require a display more ample than can
+now be given. His contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius,
+left his life unwritten; and nothing, therefore, can be known beyond what
+casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied.
+
+John Dryden was born August 9, 1631[93], at Aldwinkle, near Oundle,
+the son of Erasmus Dryden, of Titchmersh; who was the third son of
+sir Erasmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Ashby. All these places are in
+Northamptonshire; but the original stock of the family was in the county
+of Huntingdon[94].
+
+He is reported by his last biographer, Derrick, to have inherited, from
+his father, an estate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as
+was said, an anabaptist. For either of these particulars no authority is
+given[95]. Such a fortune ought to have secured him from that poverty
+which seems always to have oppressed him; or, if he had wasted it, to
+have made him ashamed of publishing his necessities. But, though he
+had many enemies, who, undoubtedly, examined his life with a scrutiny
+sufficiently malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with
+waste of his patrimony. He was, indeed, sometimes reproached for his
+first religion. I am, therefore, inclined to believe that Derrick's
+intelligence was partly true and partly erroneous[96].
+
+From Westminster school, where he was instructed, as one of the king's
+scholars, by Dr. Busby, whom he long after continued to reverence,
+he was, in 1650, elected to one of the Westminster scholarships at
+Cambridge[97].
+
+Of his school performances has appeared only a poem on the death of
+lord Hastings, composed with great ambition of such conceits as,
+notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example
+of Cowley still kept in reputation. Lord Hastings died of the smallpox;
+and his poet has made of the pustules first rosebuds, and then gems; at
+last exalts them into stars; and says,
+
+  No comet need foretell his change drew on,
+  Whose corpse might seem a constellation.
+
+At the university he does not appear to have been eager of poetical
+distinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious
+subjects, or publick occasions. He probably considered, that he, who
+proposed to be an author, ought first to be a student. He obtained,
+whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the college. Why he was
+excluded cannot now be known, and it is vain to guess; had he thought
+himself injured, he knew how to complain. In the life of Plutarch he
+mentions his education in the college with gratitude; but, in a prologue
+at Oxford, he has these lines:
+
+  Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
+  Than his own mother-university:
+  Thebes did his rude, unknowing youth engage;
+  He chooses Athens in his riper age.
+
+It was not till the death of Cromwell, in 1658, that he became a publick
+candidate for fame, by publishing Heroick Stanzas on the late Lord
+Protector[98]; which, compared with the verses of Sprat and Waller, on
+the same occasion, were sufficient to raise great expectations of the
+rising poet.
+
+When the king was restored, Dryden, like the other panegyrists of
+usurpation, changed his opinion, or his profession, and published Astrea
+Redux; a poem on the happy Restoration and Return of his most sacred
+Majesty King Charles the second.
+
+The reproach of inconstancy was, on this occasion, shared with such
+numbers, that it produced neither hatred nor disgrace! if he changed, he
+changed with the nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his
+reputation raised him enemies.
+
+The same year he praised the new king in a second poem on his
+restoration. In the Astrea was the line,
+
+  An horrid _stillness_ first _invades_ the _ear_,
+  And in that silence we a tempest fear--
+
+for which he was persecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps with
+more than was deserved. _Silence_ is, indeed, mere privation; and, so
+considered, cannot _invade_; but privation, likewise, certainly is
+_darkness_, and probably _cold_; yet poetry has never been refused the
+right of ascribing effects or agency to them as to positive powers. No
+man scruples to say that _darkness_ hinders him from his work; or that
+_cold_ has killed the plants. Death is also privation; yet who has made
+any difficulty of assigning to death a dart, and the power of striking?
+
+In settling the order of his works there is some difficulty; for, even
+when they are important enough to be formally offered to a patron, he
+does not commonly date his dedication; the time of writing and publishing
+is not always the same; nor can the first editions be easily found, if
+even from them could be obtained the necessary information[99].
+
+The time at which his first play was exhibited is not certainly known,
+because it was not printed till it was, some years afterwards, altered
+and revived; but since the plays are said to be printed in the order in
+which they were written, from the dates of some, those of others may
+be inferred; and thus it may be collected, that in 1663, in the
+thirty-second year of his life, he commenced a writer for the stage;
+compelled, undoubtedly, by necessity, for he appears never to have loved
+that exercise of his genius, or to have much pleased himself with his own
+dramas.
+
+Of the stage, when he had once invaded it, he kept possession for many
+years; not, indeed, without the competition of rivals who sometimes
+prevailed, or the censure of criticks, which was often poignant, and
+often just; but with such a degree of reputation as made him, at least,
+secure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the
+publick.
+
+His first piece was a comedy called the Wild Gallant[100]. He began with
+no happy auguries; for his performance was so much disapproved, that he
+was compelled to recall it, and change it from its imperfect state to the
+form in which it now appears, and which is yet sufficiently defective to
+vindicate the criticks.
+
+I wish that there were no necessity of following the progress of his
+theatrical fame, or tracing the meanders of his mind through the whole
+series of his dramatick performances; it will be fit, however,
+to enumerate them, and to take especial notice of those that are
+distinguished by any peculiarity, intrinsick or concomitant; for the
+composition and fate of eight-and-twenty dramas, include too much of a
+poetical life to be omitted.
+
+In 1664, he published the Rival Ladies, which he dedicated to the earl of
+Orrery, a man of high reputation both as a writer, and a statesman. In
+this play he made his essay of dramatick rhyme, which he defends in his
+dedication, with sufficient certainty of a favourable hearing; for Orrery
+was himself a writer of rhyming tragedies.
+
+He then joined with sir Robert Howard in the Indian Queen, a tragedy in
+rhyme. The parts which either of them wrote are not distinguished.
+
+The Indian Emperor was published in 1667. It is a tragedy in rhyme,
+intended for a sequel to Howard's Indian Queen. Of this connexion notice
+was given to the audience by printed bills, distributed at the door; an
+expedient supposed to be ridiculed in the Rehearsal, where Bayes
+tells how many reams he has printed, to instil into the audience some
+conception of his plot.
+
+In this play is the description of night, which Rymer has made famous by
+preferring it to those of all other poets.
+
+The practice of making tragedies in rhyme was introduced soon after the
+restoration, as it seems, by the earl of Orrery, in compliance with the
+opinion of Charles the second, who had formed his taste by the French
+theatre; and Dryden, who wrote, and made no difficulty of declaring that
+he wrote, only to please, and who, perhaps, knew that by his dexterity of
+versification he was more likely to excel others in rhyme than without
+it, very readily adopted his master's preference. He, therefore, made
+rhyming tragedies, till, by the prevalence of manifest propriety, he
+seems to have grown ashamed of making them any longer.
+
+To this play is prefixed a very vehement defence of dramatick rhyme, in
+confutation of the preface to the Duke of Lerma, in which sir Robert
+Howard had censured it.
+
+In 1667, he published Annus Mirabilis, the Year of Wonders, which may be
+esteemed one of his most elaborate works.
+
+It is addressed to sir Robert Howard by a letter, which is not properly
+a dedication; and, writing to a poet, he has interspersed many critical
+observations, of which some are common, and some, perhaps, ventured
+without much consideration. He began, even now, to exercise the
+domination of conscious genius, by recommending his own performance:
+"I am satisfied that as the prince and general [Rupert and Monk] are
+incomparably the best subjects I ever had, so what I have written on
+them is much better than what I have performed on any other. As I have
+endeavoured to adorn my poem with noble thoughts, so much more to express
+those thoughts with elocution."
+
+It is written in quatrains, or heroick stanzas of four lines; a measure
+which he had learned from the Gondibert of Davenant, and which he then
+thought the most majestick that the English language affords. Of this
+stanza he mentions the incumbrances, increased as they were by the
+exactness which the age required. It was, throughout his life, very much
+his custom to recommend his works, by representation of the difficulties
+that he had encountered, without appearing to have sufficiently
+considered, that where there is no difficulty there is no praise.
+
+There seems to be, in the conduct of sir Robert Howard and Dryden towards
+each other, something that is not now easily to be explained[101].
+Dryden, in his dedication to the earl of Orrery, had defended dramatick
+rhyme; and Howard, in the preface to a collection of plays, had censured
+his opinion. Dryden vindicated himself in his Dialogue on Dramatick
+Poetry: Howard, in his preface to the Duke of Lerma, animadverted on the
+vindication; and Dryden, in a preface to the Indian Emperor, replied to
+the animadversions with great asperity, and almost with contumely. The
+dedication to this play is dated the year in which the Annus Mirabilis
+was published. Here appears a strange inconsistency; but Langbaine
+affords some help, by relating that the answer to Howard was not
+published in the first edition of the play, but was added when it was
+afterwards reprinted; and, as the Duke of Lerma did not appear till 1668,
+the same year in which the dialogue was published, there was time enough
+for enmity to grow up between authors, who, writing both for the theatre,
+were naturally rivals.
+
+He was now so much distinguished, that, in 1668[102], he succeeded sir
+William Davenant as poet laureate. The salary of the laureate had been
+raised in favour of Jonson, by Charles the first, from a hundred marks
+to one hundred pounds a year, and a tierce of wine; a revenue, in those
+days, not inadequate to the conveniencies of life.
+
+The same year he published his Essay on Dramatick Poetry, an elegant and
+instructive dialogue; in which we are told, by Prior, that the principal
+character is meant to represent the duke of Dorset. This work seems to
+have given Addison a model for his Dialogues upon Medals.
+
+Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen, 1668, is a tragicomedy. In the preface
+he discusses a curious question, whether a poet can judge well of his
+own productions? and determines very justly, that, of the plan and
+disposition, and all that can be reduced to principles of science, the
+author may depend upon his own opinion; but that, in those parts where
+fancy predominates, self-love may easily deceive. He might have observed,
+that what is good only because it pleases, cannot be pronounced good till
+it has been found to please.
+
+Sir Martin Mar-all, 1668, is a comedy published without preface or
+dedication, and at first without the name of the author. Langbaine
+charges it, like most of the rest, with plagiarism; and observes, that
+the song is translated from Voiture, allowing, however, that both the
+sense and measure are exactly observed.
+
+The Tempest, 1670, is an alteration of Shakespeare's play, made by Dryden
+in conjunction with Davenant; "whom," says he, "I found of so quick a
+fancy, that nothing was proposed to him in which he could not suddenly
+produce a thought extremely pleasant and surprising; and those first
+thoughts of his, contrary to the Latin proverb, were not always the least
+happy; and as his fancy was quick, so, likewise, were the products of it
+remote and new. He borrowed not of any other; and his imaginations were
+such as could not easily enter into any other man."
+
+The effect produced by the conjunction of these two powerful minds was,
+that to Shakespeare's monster, Caliban, is added a sister monster,
+Sycorax; and a woman, who, in the original play, had never seen a man,
+is, in this, brought acquainted with a man that had never seen a woman.
+
+About this time, in 1673, Dryden seems to have had his quiet much
+disturbed by the success of the Emperess of Morocco, a tragedy written
+in rhyme, by Elkanah Settle; which was so much applauded, as to make him
+think his supremacy of reputation in some danger. Settle had not only
+been prosperous on the stage, but, in the confidence of success, had
+published his play, with sculptures and a preface of defiance. Here was
+one offence added to another; and, for the last blast of inflammation, it
+was acted at Whitehall by the court ladies.
+
+Dryden could not now repress those emotions, which he called indignation,
+and others jealousy; but wrote upon the play and the dedication such
+criticism as malignant impatience could pour out in haste.
+
+Of Settle he gives this character: "He's an animal of a most deplored
+understanding, without reading and conversation. His being is in a
+twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought, which he can never
+fashion into wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough-hewn,
+his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and
+ill-sounding. The little talent which he has, is fancy. He sometimes
+labours with a thought; but, with the pudder he makes to bring it into
+the world, 'tis commonly stillborn; so that, for want of learning and
+elocution, he will never be able to express any thing either naturally or
+justly."
+
+This is not very decent; yet this is one of the pages in which criticism
+prevails most over brutal fury.
+
+He proceeds: "He has a heavy hand at fools, and a great felicity in
+writing nonsense for them. Fools they will be, in spite of him. His king,
+his two emperesses, his villain, and his sub-villain, nay, his hero, have
+all a certain natural cast of the father--their folly was born and bred
+in them, and something of the Elkanah will be visible."
+
+This is Dryden's general declamation; I will not withhold from the reader
+a particular remark. Having gone through the first act, he says: "To
+conclude this act with the most rumbling piece of nonsense spoken yet:
+
+  "To flatt'ring lightning our feign'd smiles conform,
+  Which, back'd with thunder, do but gild a storm.
+
+"_Conform a smile to lightning_, make a _smile_ imitate _lightning_, and
+_flattering lightning_: lightning, sure, is a threatening thing. And
+this lightning must _gild a storm_. Now, if I must conform my smiles to
+lightning, then my smiles must gild a storm too: to _gild_ with _smiles_,
+is a new invention of gilding. And gild a storm by being _backed with
+thunder_. Thunder is part of the storm; so one part of the storm must
+help to _gild_ another part, and help by _backing_; as if a man would
+gild a thing the better for being backed, or having a load upon his back.
+So that here is _gilding_ by _conforming, smiling, lightning, backing_,
+and _thundering_. The whole is as if I should say thus: I will make my
+counterfeit smiles look like a flattering stonehorse, which, being backed
+with a trooper, does but gild the battle. I am mistaken, if nonsense is
+not here pretty thick sown. Sure the poet writ these two lines aboard
+some smack in a storm, and, being sea-sick, spewed up a good lump of
+clotted nonsense at once."
+
+Here is, perhaps, a sufficient specimen; but as the pamphlet, though
+Dryden's, has never been thought worthy of republication, and is not
+easily to be found, it may gratify curiosity to quote it more largely:
+
+  "Whene'er she bleeds,
+  He no severer a damnation needs,
+  That dares pronounce the sentence of her death,
+  Than the infection that attends that breath.
+
+"_That attends that breath_. The poet is at _breath_ again; _breath_
+can never scape him; and here he brings in a _breath_ that must be
+_infectious_ with _pronouncing_ a sentence; and this sentence is not to
+be pronounced till the condemned party _bleeds_; that is, she must be
+executed first, and sentenced after; and the _pronouncing_ of this
+_sentence_ will be infectious; that is, others will catch the disease of
+that sentence, and this infecting of others will torment a man's self.
+The whole is thus: when she bleeds, thou needest no greater hell or
+torment to thyself, than infecting of others by pronouncing a sentence
+upon her. What hodge-podge does he make here! Never was Dutch grout such
+clogging, thick, indigestible stuff. But this is but a taste to stay the
+stomach; we shall have a more plentiful mess presently.
+
+"Now to dish up the poet's broth, that I promised:
+
+  "For when we're dead, and our freed souls enlarg'd,
+  Of nature's grosser burden we're discharg'd,
+  Then gently, as a happy lover's sigh,
+  Like wand'ring meteors through the air we'll fly,
+  And in our airy walk, as subtle guests,
+  We'll steal into our cruel fathers' breasts,
+  There read their souls, and track each passion's sphere:
+  See how revenge moves there, ambition here!
+  And in their orbs view the dark characters
+  Of sieges, ruins, murders, blood, and wars.
+  We'll blot out all those hideous draughts, and write
+  Pure and white forms; then with a radiant light
+  Their breasts encircle, till their passions be
+  Gentle as nature in its infancy;
+  Till, soften'd by our charms, their furies cease,
+  And their revenge resolves into a peace.
+  Thus by our death their quarrel ends,
+  Whom living we made foes, dead we'll make friends.
+
+"If this be not a very liberal mess, I will refer myself to the stomach
+of any moderate guest. And a rare mess it is, far excelling any
+Westminster white-broth. It is a kind of giblet porridge, made of the
+giblets of a couple of young geese, stodged full of meteors, orbs,
+spheres, track, hideous draughts, dark characters, white forms, and
+radiant lights; designed not only to please appetite, and indulge luxury,
+but it is also physical, being an approved medicine to purge choler: for
+it is propounded by Morena, as a receipt to cure their fathers of their
+cholerick humours; and, were it written in characters as barbarous as
+the words, might very well pass for a doctor's bill. To conclude: it is
+porridge, 'tis a receipt, 'tis a pig with a pudding in the belly, 'tis
+I know not what: for, certainly, never any one that pretended to write
+sense, had the impudence before to put such stuff as this into the mouths
+of those that were to speak it before an audience, whom he did not take
+to be all fools; and, after that, to print it too, and expose it to the
+examination of the world. But let us see what we can make of this stuff:
+
+  "For when we're dead, and our freed souls enlarg'd--
+
+"Here he tells us what it is to be _dead_; it is to have _our freed souls
+set free_. Now, if to have a soul set free, is to be dead; then to have a
+_freed soul_ set free, is to have a dead man die.
+
+  "Then gentle, as a happy lover's sigh--
+
+"They two like one _sigh_, and that one _sigh_ like two wandering
+meteors,
+
+  "Shall fly through the air--
+
+"That is, they shall mount above like falling stars, or else they shall
+skip like two Jacks with lanterns, or Will with a wisp, and Madge with a
+candle.
+
+"_And in their airy walk steal into their cruel fathers' breasts, like
+subtle guests_. So that their _fathers' breasts_ must be in an _airy
+walk_, an airy _walk_ of a _flier. And there they will read their souls,
+and track the spheres of their passions_. That is, these walking fliers,
+Jack with a lantern, &c. will put on his spectacles, and fall a _reading
+souls_, and put on his pumps and fall a _tracking of spheres_; so that he
+will read and run, walk and fly, at the same time! Oh! Nimble Jack! _Then
+he will see, how revenge here, how ambition there_--The birds will hop
+about. _And then view the dark characters of sieges, ruins, murders,
+blood, and wars, in their orbs: track the characters_ to their forms! Oh!
+rare sport for Jack! Never was place so full of game as these breasts!
+You cannot stir, but flush a sphere, start a character, or unkennel an
+orb!"
+
+Settle's is said to have been the first play embellished with sculptures;
+those ornaments seem to have given poor Dryden great disturbance. He
+tries, however, to ease his pain by venting his malice in a parody:
+
+"The poet has not only been so impudent to expose all this stuff, but so
+arrogant to defend it with an epistle; like a saucy booth-keeper, that,
+when he had put a cheat upon the people, would wrangle and fight with
+any that would not like it, or would offer to discover it; for which
+arrogance our poet receives this correction; and, to jerk him a little
+the sharper, I will not transpose his verse, but by the help of his own
+words transnonsense sense, that, by my stuff, people may judge the better
+what his is:
+
+  "Great boy, thy tragedy and sculptures done,
+  From press and plates, in fleets do homeward come;
+  And in ridiculous and humble pride,
+  Their course in ballad-singers' baskets guide,
+  Whose greasy twigs do all new beauties take,
+  From the gay shows thy dainty sculptures make.
+  Thy lines a mess of rhyming nonsense yield,
+  A senseless tale, with flattering fustian fill'd.
+  No grain of sense does in one line appear,
+  Thy words big bulks of boist'rous bombast bear,
+  With noise they move, and from play'rs' mouths rebound,
+  When their tongues dance to thy words' empty sound.
+  By thee inspir'd the rumbling verses roll,
+  As if that rhyme and bombast lent a soul:
+  And with that soul they seem taught duty too;
+  To huffing words does humble nonsense bow,
+  As if it would thy worthless worth enhance,
+  To th' lowest rank of fops thy praise advance,
+  To whom, by instinct, all thy stuff is dear:
+  Their loud claps echo to the theatre:
+  From breaths of fools thy commendation spreads,
+  Fame sings thy praise with mouths of loggerheads.
+  With noise and laughing each thy fustian greets,
+  'Tis clapt by choirs of empty-headed cits,
+  Who have their tribute sent, and homage given,
+  As men in whispers send loud noise to heaven.
+
+"Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle: and now we are come from
+aboard his dancing, masking, rebounding, breathing fleet; and, as if we
+had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but fools and nonsense."
+
+Such was the criticism to which the genius of Dryden could be reduced,
+between rage and terrour; rage with little provocation, and terrour with
+little danger. To see the highest minds thus levelled with the meanest,
+may produce some solace to the consciousness of weakness, and some
+mortification to the pride of wisdom. But let it be remembered, that
+minds are not levelled in their powers but when they are first levelled
+in their desires. Dryden and Settle had both placed their happiness in
+the claps of multitudes.
+
+An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer, a comedy, 1671, is dedicated
+to the illustrious duke of Newcastle, whom he courts by adding to his
+praises those of his lady, not only as a lover but a partner of his
+studies. It is unpleasing to think how many names, once celebrated,
+are since forgotten. Of Newcastle's works nothing is now known but his
+Treatise on Horsemanship.
+
+The preface seems very elaborately written, and contains many just
+remarks on the fathers of English drama. Shakespeare's plots, he says,
+are in the hundred novels of Cinthio; those of Beaumont and Fletcher in
+Spanish Stories; Jonson only made them for himself. His criticisms upon
+tragedy, comedy, and farce, are judicious and profound. He endeavours to
+defend the immorality of some of his comedies by the example of former
+writers; which is only to say, that he was not the first, nor, perhaps,
+the greatest offender. Against those that accused him of plagiarism he
+alleges a favourable expression of the king: "He only desired that they,
+who accuse me of thefts, would steal him plays like mine;" and then
+relates how much labour he spends in fitting for the English stage what
+he borrows from others.
+
+Tyrannick Love, or the Virgin Martyr, 1672, was another tragedy in rhyme,
+conspicuous for many passages of strength and elegance, and many of empty
+noise and ridiculous turbulence. The rants of Maximin have been always
+the sport of criticism; and were, at length, if his own confession may be
+trusted, the shame of the writer.
+
+Of this play he takes care to let the reader know, that it was contrived
+and written in seven weeks. Want of time was often his excuse, or,
+perhaps, shortness of time was his private boast, in the form of an
+apology.
+
+It was written before the Conquest of Granada, but published after it.
+The design is to recommend piety: "I considered that pleasure was not the
+only end of poesy; and that even the instructions of morality were not
+so wholly the business of a poet, as that precepts and examples of piety
+were to be omitted; for to leave that employment altogether to the clergy,
+were to forget that religion was first taught in verse, which the laziness
+or dulness of succeeding priesthood turned afterwards into prose." Thus
+foolishly could Dryden write, rather than not show his malice to the
+parsons.
+
+The two parts of the Conquest of Granada, 1672, are written with a
+seeming determination to glut the publick with dramatick wonders; to
+exhibit, in its highest elevation, a theatrical meteor of incredible love
+and impossible valour, and to leave no room for a wilder flight to the
+extravagance of posterity. All the rays of romantick heat, whether
+amorous or warlike, glow in Almanzor, by a kind of concentration. He is
+above all laws; he is exempt from all restraints; he ranges the world at
+will, and governs wherever he appears. He fights without inquiring the
+cause, and loves, in spite of the obligations of justice, of rejection by
+his mistress, and of prohibition from the dead. Yet the scenes are, for
+the most part, delightful; they exhibit a kind of illustrious depravity,
+and majestick madness; such as, if it is sometimes despised, is often
+reverenced, and in which the ridiculous is mingled with the astonishing.
+
+In the epilogue to the second part of the Conquest of Granada, Dryden
+indulges his favourite pleasure of discrediting his predecessors; and
+this epilogue he has defended by a long postscript. He had promised a
+second dialogue, in which he should more fully treat of the virtues and
+faults of the English poets, who have written in the dramatick, epick, or
+lyrick way. This promise was never formally performed; but, with respect
+to the dramatick writers, he has given us in his prefaces, and in this
+postscript, something equivalent; but his purpose being to exalt
+himself by the comparison, he shows faults distinctly, and only praises
+excellence in general terms.
+
+A play thus written, in professed defiance of probability, naturally drew
+down upon itself the vultures of the theatre. One of the criticks that
+attacked it was Martin Clifford, to whom Sprat addressed the Life of
+Cowley, with such veneration of his critical powers as might naturally
+excite great expectations of instruction from his remarks. But let honest
+credulity beware of receiving characters from contemporary writers.
+Clifford's remarks, by the favour of Dr. Percy, were, at last, obtained;
+and that no man may ever want them more, I will extract enough to satisfy
+all reasonable desire.
+
+In the first letter his observation is only general: "You do live," says
+he, "in as much ignorance and darkness as you did in the womb: your
+writings are like a Jack-of-all-trades' shop; they have a variety, but
+nothing of value; and if thou art not the dullest plant-animal that ever
+the earth produced, all that I have conversed with are strangely mistaken
+in thee."
+
+In the second, he tells him that Almanzor is not more copied from
+Achilles than from Ancient Pistol: "But I am," says he, "strangely
+mistaken if I have not seen this very Almanzor of yours in some disguise
+about this town, and passing under another name. Pr'ythee tell me true,
+was not this Huffcap once the Indian Emperor? and, at another time, did
+he not call himself Maximin? Was riot Lyndaraxa once called Almeira?
+I mean under Montezuma the Indian Emperor. I protest and vow they are
+either the same, or so alike that I cannot, for my heart, distinguish one
+from the other. You are, therefore, a strange unconscionable thief; thou
+art not content to steal from others, but dost rob thy poor wretched self
+too."
+
+Now was Settle's time to take his revenge. He wrote a vindication of his
+own lines; and, if he is forced to yield any thing, makes reprisals upon
+his enemy. To say that his answer is equal to the censure, is no high
+commendation. To expose Dryden's method of analyzing his expressions, he
+tries the same experiment upon the description of the ships in the Indian
+Emperor, of which, however, he does not deny the excellence; but intends
+to show, that, by studied misconstruction, every thing may be
+equally represented as ridiculous. After so much of Dryden's elegant
+animadversions, justice requires that something of Settle's should be
+exhibited. The following observations are, therefore, extracted from a
+quarto pamphlet of ninety-five pages:
+
+  "Fate after him below with pain did move,
+  And victory could scarce keep pace above.
+
+"These two lines, if he can show me any sense or thought in, or any
+thing but bombast and noise, he shall make me believe every word in his
+observations on Morocco sense.
+
+"In the Empress of Morocco were these lines:
+
+  "I'll travel then to some remoter sphere,
+  Till I find out new worlds, and crown you there.
+
+"On which Dryden made this remark:
+
+"'I believe our learned author takes a sphere for a country: the sphere
+of Morocco; as if Morocco were the globe of earth and water; but a globe
+is no sphere neither, by his leave,' &c. So _sphere_ must not be sense,
+unless it relate to a circular motion about a globe, in which sense the
+astronomers use it. I would desire him to expound those lines in Granada:
+
+  "I'll to the turrets of the palace go,
+  And add new fire to those that fight below.
+  Thence, hero-like, with torches by my side,
+  (Far be the omen though) my love I'll guide.
+  No, like his better fortune I'll appear,
+  With open arms, loose veil, and flowing hair.
+  Just flying forward from my rowling sphere.
+
+"I wonder, if he be so strict, how he dares make so bold with _sphere_
+himself, and be so critical in other men's writings. Fortune is fancied
+standing on a globe, not on a _sphere_, as he told us in the first act.
+
+"Because 'Elkanah's similes are the most unlike things to what they are
+compared in the world,' I'll venture to start a simile in his Annus
+Mirabilis: he gives this poetical description of the ship called the
+London:
+
+  "The goodly London in her gallant trim,
+  The phoenix-daughter of the vanquisht old,
+  Like a rich bride does on the ocean swim,
+  And on her shadow rides in floating gold.
+  Her flag aloft spread ruffling in the wind,
+  And sanguine streamers seem'd the flood to fire:
+  The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd,
+  Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire.
+  With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,
+  Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,
+  Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,
+  She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.
+
+"What a wonderful pother is here, to make all these poetical
+beautifications of a ship! that is a _phoenix_ in the first stanza, and
+but a _wasp_ in the last: nay, to make his humble comparison of a _wasp_
+more ridiculous, he does not say it flies upon the waves as nimbly as a
+wasp, or the like, but it seemed a _wasp_. But our author at the writing
+of this was not in his altitudes, to compare ships to floating palaces: a
+comparison to the purpose, was a perfection he did not arrive to till his
+Indian Emperor's days. But, perhaps, his similitude has more in it than
+we imagine; this ship had a great many guns in her, and they, put all
+together, made the sting in the wasp's tail; for this is all the reason I
+can guess, why it seem'd a _wasp_. But, because we will allow him all we
+can to help out, let it be a _phoenix sea-wasp_, and the rarity of such
+an animal may do much towards heightening the fancy.
+
+"It had been much more to his purpose, if he had designed to render the
+senseless play little, to have searched for some such pedantry as this:
+
+  "Two ifs scarce make one possibility.
+  If justice will take all and nothing give,
+  Justice, methinks, is not distributive.
+  To die or kill you, is the alternative.
+  Rather than take your life, I will not live.
+
+"Observe how prettily our author chops logick in heroick verse. Three
+such fustian canting words as _distributive, alternative_, and _two ifs_,
+no man but himself would have come within the noise of. But he's a man of
+general learning, and all comes into his play.
+
+"'Twould have done well too if he could have met with a rant or two,
+worth the observation; such as,
+
+  "Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace,
+  Leave months and weeks behind thee in thy race.
+
+"But surely the sun, whether he flies a lover's or not a lover's pace,
+leaves weeks and months, nay, years too, behind him in his race.
+
+"Poor Robin, or any other of the philo-mathematicks, would have given him
+satisfaction in the point:
+
+  "If I could kill thee now, thy fate's so low,
+  That I must stoop, ere I can give the blow.
+  But mine is fixt so far above thy crown,
+  That all thy men,
+  Piled on thy back, can never pull it down.
+
+"Now where that is, Almanzor's fate is fixt, I cannot guess; but,
+wherever it is, I believe Almanzor, and think that all Abdalla's
+subjects, piled upon one another, might not pull down his fate so well as
+without piling: besides, I think Abdalla so wise a man, that, if Almanzor
+had told him piling his men upon his back might do the feat, he would
+scarce bear such a weight, for the pleasure of the exploit; but it is a
+huff, and let Abdalla do it if he dare.
+
+  "The people like a headlong torrent go,
+  And ev'ry dam they break or overflow.
+  But, unoppos'd, they either lose their force,
+  Or wind in volumes to their former course.
+
+"A very pretty allusion, contrary to all sense or reason. Torrents, I
+take it, let them wind never so much, can never return to their former
+course, unless he can suppose that fountains can go upwards, which is
+impossible; nay, more, in the foregoing page he tells us so too; a trick
+of a very unfaithful memory:
+
+  "But can no more than fountains upward flow;
+
+"which of a _torrent_, which signifies a rapid stream, is much more
+impossible. Besides, if he goes to quibble, and say that it is possible
+by art water may be made return, and the same water run twice in one and
+the same channel: then he quite confutes what he says; for it is by being
+opposed, that it runs into its former course; for all engines that make
+water so return, do it by compulsion and opposition. Or, if he means a
+headlong torrent for a tide, which would be ridiculous, yet they do riot
+wind in volumes, but come foreright back, (if their upright lies straight
+to their former course,) and that by opposition of the sea-water, that
+drives them back again.
+
+"And for fancy, when he lights of any thing like it, 'tis a wonder if it
+be not borrowed. As here, for example of, I find this fanciful thought in
+his Ann. Mirab.
+
+  "Old father Thames rais'd up his rev'rend head;
+  But fear'd the fate of Simoeis would return:
+  Deep in his ooze he sought his sedgy bed;
+  And shrunk his waters back into his urn.
+
+"This is stolen from Cowley's Davideis, p. 9.
+
+  "Swift Jordan started, and strait backward fled,
+  Hiding amongst thick reeds his aged head.
+  And when the Spaniards their assault begin,
+  At once beat those without and those within.
+
+"This Almanzor speaks of himself; and, sure, for one man to conquer an
+army within the city, and another without the city, at once, is something
+difficult; but this flight is pardonable to some we meet with in Granada:
+Osmin, speaking of Almanzor,
+
+  "Who, like a tempest that outrides the wind,
+  Made a just battle, ere the bodies join'd.
+
+"Pray, what does this honourable person mean by a 'tempest that outrides
+the wind?' a tempest that outrides itself. To suppose a tempest without
+wind, is as bad as supposing a man to walk without feet; for if he
+supposes the tempest to be something distinct from the wind, yet, as
+being the effect of wind only, to come before the cause is a little
+preposterous; so that, if he takes it one way, or if he takes it the
+other, those two _ifs_ will scarce make one _possibility_." Enough of
+Settle.
+
+Marriage à-la-mode, 1673, is a comedy dedicated to the earl of Rochester;
+whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry, but the
+promoter of his fortune. Langbaine places this play in 1673. The earl of
+Rochester, therefore, was the famous Wilmot, whom yet tradition always
+represents as an enemy to Dryden, and who is mentioned by him with some
+disrespect in the preface to Juvenal.
+
+The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, a comedy, 1673, was driven off the
+stage, "against the opinion," as the author says, "of the best judges."
+It is dedicated, in a very elegant address, to sir Charles Sedley; in
+which he finds an opportunity for his usual complaint of hard treatment
+and unreasonable censure.
+
+Amboyna, 1673, is a tissue of mingled dialogue in verse and prose, and
+was, perhaps, written in less time than the Virgin Martyr; though the
+author thought not fit, either ostentatiously or mournfully, to tell how
+little labour it cost him, or at how short a warning he produced it. It
+was a temporary performance, written in the time of the Dutch war,
+to inflame the nation against their enemies; to whom he hopes, as he
+declares in his epilogue, to make his poetry not less destructive than
+that by which Tyrtaeus of old animated the Spartans. This play was
+written in the second Dutch war, in 1673.
+
+Troilus and Cressida, 1679, is a play altered from Shakespeare; but so
+altered, that, even in Langbaine's opinion, "the last scene in the third
+act is a masterpiece." It is introduced by a discourse on the grounds
+of criticism in tragedy, to which I suspect that Rymer's book had given
+occasion.
+
+The Spanish Fryar, 1681, is a tragicomedy, eminent for the happy
+coincidence and coalition of the two plots. As it was written against the
+papists, it would naturally, at that time, have friends and enemies; and
+partly by the popularity which it obtained at first, and partly by the
+real power both of the serious and risible part, it continued long a
+favourite of the publick.
+
+It was Dryden's opinion, at least for some time, and he maintains it in
+the dedication of this play, that the drama required an alternation of
+comick and tragick scenes; and that it is necessary to mitigate, by
+alleviations of merriment, the pressure of ponderous events, and the
+fatigue of toilsome passions. "Whoever," says he, "cannot perform both
+parts, is but half a writer for the stage."
+
+The Duke of Guise, a tragedy, 1683, written in conjunction with Lee, as
+Oedipus had been before, seems to deserve notice only for the offence
+which it gave to the remnant of the covenanters, and in general to the
+enemies of the court, who attacked him with great violence, and were
+answered by him; though, at last, he seems to withdraw from the conflict,
+by transferring the greater part of the blame or merit to his partner. It
+happened that a contract had been made between them, by which they were
+to join in writing a play; and "he happened," says Dryden, "to claim the
+promise just upon the finishing of a poem, when I would have been glad of
+a little respite. _Two_-thirds of it belonged to him; and to me only the
+first scene of the play, the whole fourth act, and the first half, or
+somewhat more, of the fifth."
+
+This was a play written professedly for the party of the duke of York,
+whose succession was then opposed. A parallel is intended between the
+leaguers of France, and the covenanters of England: and this intention
+produced the controversy.
+
+Albion and Albanius, 1685, is a musical drama or opera, written, like
+the Duke of Guise, against the republicans. With what success it was
+performed, I have not found[103].
+
+The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, 1675, is termed, by him, an
+opera: it is rather a tragedy in heroick rhyme, but of which the
+personages are such as cannot decently be exhibited on the stage. Some
+such production was foreseen by Marvel, who writes thus to Milton:
+
+  Or if a work so infinite be spann'd,
+  Jealous I was, lest some less skilful hand
+  (Such as disquiet always what is well,
+  And by ill-imitating would excel,)
+  Might hence presume the whole creation's day
+  To change in scenes, and show it in a play.
+
+It is another of his hasty productions; for the heat of his imagination
+raised it in a month.
+
+This composition is addressed to the princess of Modena, then dutchess of
+York, in a strain of flattery which disgraces genius, and which it was
+wonderful that any man, that knew the meaning of his own words, could use
+without self-detestation. It is an attempt to mingle earth and heaven, by
+praising human excellence in the language of religion.
+
+The preface contains an apology for heroick verse and poetick license; by
+which is meant not any liberty taken in contracting or extending words,
+but the use of bold fictions and ambitious figures.
+
+The reason which he gives for printing what was never acted, cannot be
+overpassed: "I was induced to it in my own defence, many hundred copies
+of it being dispersed abroad without my knowledge or consent, and every
+one gathering new faults, it became, at length, a libel against me."
+These copies, as they gathered faults, were apparently manuscript; and
+he lived in an age very unlike ours, if many hundred copies of fourteen
+hundred lines were likely to be transcribed. An author has a right to
+print his own works, and needs not seek an apology in falsehood; but he
+that could bear to write the dedication, felt no pain in writing the
+preface.
+
+Aureng Zebe, 1676, is a tragedy founded on the actions of a great prince
+then reigning, but over nations not likely to employ their criticks upon
+the transactions of the English stage. If he had known and disliked
+his own character, our trade was not in those times secure from his
+resentment. His country is at such a distance, that the manners might be
+safely falsified, and the incidents feigned; for remoteness of place is
+remarked, by Racine, to afford the same conveniencies to a poet as length
+of time.
+
+This play is written in rhyme; and has the appearance of being the
+most elaborate of all the dramas. The personages are imperial; but the
+dialogue is often domestick, and, therefore, susceptible of sentiments
+accommodated to familiar incidents. The complaint of life is celebrated;
+and there are many other passages that may be read with pleasure.
+
+This play is addressed to the earl of Mulgrave, afterwards duke of
+Buckingham, himself, if not a poet, yet a writer of verses, and a
+critick. In this address Dryden gave the first hints of his intention to
+write an epick poem. He mentions his design in terms so obscure, that he
+seems afraid lest his plan should be purloined, as, he says, happened to
+him when he told it more plainly in his preface to Juvenal. "The design,"
+says he, "you know is great, the story English, and neither too near the
+present times, nor too distant from them."
+
+All for Love, or the World well Lost, 1678, a tragedy, founded upon the
+story of Antony and Cleopatra, he tells us, "is the only play which
+he wrote for himself:" the rest were given to the people. It is, by
+universal consent, accounted the work in which he has admitted the fewest
+improprieties of style or character; but it has one fault equal to many,
+though rather moral than critical, that, by admitting the romantick
+omnipotence of love, he has recommended as laudable, and worthy of
+imitation, that conduct which, through all ages, the good have censured
+as vitious, and the bad despised as foolish.
+
+Of this play the prologue and the epilogue, though written upon the
+common topicks of malicious and ignorant criticism, and without any
+particular relation to the characters or incidents of the drama, are
+deservedly celebrated for their elegance and sprightliness.
+
+Limberham, or the kind Keeper, 1680, is a comedy, which, after the third
+night, was prohibited as too indecent for the stage. What gave offence,
+was in the printing, as the author says, altered or omitted. Dryden
+confesses that its indecency was objected to; but Langbaine, who yet
+seldom favours him, imputes its expulsion to resentment, because it "so
+much exposed the keeping part of the town."
+
+Oedipus, 1679, is a tragedy formed by Dryden and Lee, in conjunction,
+from the works of Sophocles, Seneca, and Corneille. Dryden planned the
+scenes, and composed the first and third acts.
+
+Don Sebastian, 1690, is commonly esteemed either the first or second of
+his dramatick performances. It is too long to be all acted, and has many
+characters and many incidents; and though it is not without sallies
+of frantick dignity, and more noise than meaning, yet, as it makes
+approaches to the possibilities of real life, and has some sentiments
+which leave a strong impression, it continued long to attract attention.
+Amidst the distresses of princes, and the vicissitudes of empire, are
+inserted several scenes which the writer intended for comick; but which,
+I suppose, that age did not much commend, and this would not endure.
+There are, however, passages of excellence universally acknowledged; the
+dispute and the reconciliation of Dorax and Sebastian has always been
+admired.
+
+This play was first acted in 1690, after Dryden had for some years
+discontinued dramatick poetry.
+
+Amphitryon is a comedy derived from Plautus and Molière. The dedication
+is dated Oct. 1690. This play seems to have succeeded at its first
+appearance; and was, I think, long considered as a very diverting
+entertainment.
+
+Cleomenes, 1692, is a tragedy, only remarkable as it occasioned an
+incident related in the Guardian, and allusively mentioned by Dryden in
+his preface. As he came out from the representation, he was accosted thus
+by some airy stripling: "Had I been left alone with a young beauty, I
+would not have spent my time like your Spartan." "That sir," said Dryden,
+"perhaps, is true; but give me leave to tell you, that you are no hero."
+
+King Arthur, 1691, is another opera. It was the last work that Dryden
+performed for king Charles, who did not live to see it exhibited; and
+it does not seem to have been ever brought upon the stage[104]. In the
+dedication to the marquis of Halifax, there is a very elegant character
+of Charles, and a pleasing account of his latter life. When this was
+first brought upon the stage, news that the duke of Monmouth had landed
+was told in the theatre; upon which the company departed, and Arthur was
+exhibited no more.
+
+His last drama was Love Triumphant, a tragicomedy. In his dedication to
+the earl of Salisbury he mentions "the lowness of fortune to which he
+has voluntarily reduced himself, and of which he has no reason to be
+ashamed."
+
+This play appeared in 1694. It is said to have been unsuccessful. The
+catastrophe, proceeding merely from a change of mind, is confessed by the
+author to be defective. Thus he began and ended his dramatick labours
+with ill success.
+
+From such a number of theatrical pieces, it will be supposed, by most
+readers, that he must have improved his fortune; at least, that such
+diligence, with such abilities, must have set penury at defiance. But
+in Dryden's time the drama was very far from that universal approbation
+which it has now obtained. The playhouse was abhorred by the puritans,
+and avoided by those who desired the character of seriousness or decency.
+A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a young trader would
+have impaired his credit, by appearing in those mansions of dissolute
+licentiousness. The profits of the theatre, when so many classes of the
+people were deducted from the audience, were not great; and the poet had,
+for a long time, but a single night. The first that had two nights was
+Southern; and the first that had three was Howe. There were, however, in
+those days, arts of improving a poet's profit, which Dryden forbore to
+practise; and a play, therefore, seldom produced him more than a hundred
+pounds, by the accumulated gain of the third night, the dedication, and
+the copy.
+
+Almost every piece had a dedication, written with such elegance and
+luxuriance of praise, as neither haughtiness nor avarice could be
+imagined able to resist. But he seems to have made flattery too cheap.
+That praise is worth nothing of which the price is known.
+
+To increase the value of his copies, he often accompanied his work with a
+preface of criticism; a kind of learning then almost new in the English
+language, and which he, who had considered, with great accuracy, the
+principles of writing, was able to distribute copiously as occasions
+arose. By these dissertations the publick judgment must have been much
+improved; and Swift, who conversed with Dryden, relates that he regretted
+the success of his own instructions, and found his readers made suddenly
+too skilful to be easily satisfied.
+
+His prologues had such reputation, that for some time a play was
+considered as less likely to be well received, if some of his verses did
+not introduce it. The price of a prologue was two guineas, till, being
+asked to write one for Mr. Southern, he demanded three: "Not," said he,
+"young man, out of disrespect to you; but the players have had my goods
+too cheap[105]."
+
+Though he declares, that in his own opinion, his genius was not
+dramatick, he had great confidence in his own fertility; for he is said
+to have engaged, by contract, to furnish four plays a year.
+
+It is certain, that in one year, 1678[106], he published All for Love,
+Assignation, two parts of the Conquest of Granada, sir Martin Mar-all,
+and the State of Innocence, six complete plays; with a celerity of
+performance, which, though all Langbaine's charges of plagiarism should
+be allowed, shows such facility of composition, such readiness of
+language, and such copiousness of sentiment, as, since the time of Lopez
+de Vega, perhaps no other author has possessed.
+
+He did not enjoy his reputation, however great, nor his profits, however
+small, without molestation. He had criticks to endure, and rivals to
+oppose. The two most distinguished wits of the nobility, the duke of
+Buckingham and earl of Rochester, declared themselves his enemies.
+
+Buckingham characterized him, in 1671, by the name of Bayes, in the
+Rehearsal; a farce which he is said to have written with the assistance
+of Butler, the author of Hudibras; Martin Clifford, of the Charter-house;
+and Dr. Sprat, the friend of Cowley, then his chaplain. Dryden and his
+friends laughed at the length of time, and the number of hands, employed
+upon this performance; in which, though by some artifice of action it yet
+keeps possession of the stage, it is not possible now to find any thing
+that might not have been written without so long delay, or a confederacy
+so numerous.
+
+To adjust the minute events of literary history, is tedious and
+troublesome; it requires, indeed, no great force of understanding, but
+often depends upon inquiries which there is no opportunity of making, or
+is to be fetched from books and pamphlets not always at hand.
+
+The Rehearsal was played in 1671[107], and yet is represented as
+ridiculing passages in the Conquest of Granada and Assignation, which
+were not published till 1678; in Marriage à-la-mode, published in 1673;
+and in Tyrannick Love, in 1677. These contradictions show how rashly
+satire is applied[108].
+
+It is said that this farce was originally intended against Davenant, who,
+in the first draught, was characterized by the name of Bilboa. Davenant
+had been a soldier and an adventurer.
+
+There is one passage in the Rehearsal still remaining, which seems to
+have related originally to Davenant. Bayes hurts his nose, and comes in
+with brown paper applied to the bruise; how this affected Dryden, does
+not appear. Davenant's nose had suffered such diminution by mishaps among
+the women, that a patch upon that part evidently denoted him.
+
+It is said, likewise, that sir Robert Howard was once meant. The design
+was, probably, to ridicule the reigning poet, whoever he might be.
+
+Much of the personal satire, to which it might owe its first reception,
+is now lost or obscured. Bayes, probably, imitated the dress, and
+mimicked the manner, of Dryden: the cant words which are so often in
+his mouth may be supposed to have been Dryden's habitual phrases, or
+customary exclamations. Bayes, when he is to write, is blooded and
+purged: this, as Lamotte relates himself to have heard, was the real
+practice of the poet.
+
+There were other strokes in the Rehearsal by which malice was gratified:
+the debate between love and honour, which keeps prince Volscius in a
+single boot, is said to have alluded to the misconduct of the duke
+of Ormond, who lost Dublin to the rebels, while he was toying with a
+mistress.
+
+The earl of Rochester, to suppress the reputation of Dryden, took Settle
+into his protection, and endeavoured to persuade the publick that its
+approbation had been to that time misplaced. Settle was awhile in high
+reputation: his Empress of Morocco, having first delighted the town, was
+carried in triumph to Whitehall, and played by the ladies of the court.
+Now was the poetical meteor at the highest; the next moment began its
+fall. Rochester withdrew his patronage; seeming resolved, says one of his
+biographers, "to have a judgment contrary to that of the town;" perhaps
+being unable to endure any reputation beyond a certain height, even when
+he had himself contributed to raise it.
+
+Neither criticks nor rivals did Dryden much mischief, unless they gained
+from his own temper the power of vexing him, which his frequent bursts of
+resentment give reason to suspect. He is always angry at some past, or
+afraid of some future censure; but he lessens the smart of his wounds by
+the balm of his own approbation, and endeavours to repel the shafts of
+criticism by opposing a shield of adamantine confidence.
+
+The perpetual accusation produced against him, was that of plagiarism,
+against which he never attempted any vigorous defence; for, though he
+was, perhaps, sometimes injuriously censured, he would, by denying part
+of the charge, have confessed the rest; and, as his adversaries had the
+proof in their own hands, he, who knew that wit had little power against
+facts, wisely left in that perplexity which generality produces a
+question which it was his interest to suppress, and which, unless
+provoked by vindication, few were likely to examine.
+
+Though the life of a writer, from about thirty-five to sixty-three,
+may be supposed to have been sufficiently busied by the composition of
+eight-and-twenty pieces for the stage, Dryden found room in the same
+space for many other undertakings. But, how much soever he wrote, he was
+at least once suspected of writing more; for, in 1679, a paper of verses,
+called an Essay on Satire, was shown about in manuscript; by which the
+earl of Rochester, the dutchess of Portsmouth, and others, were so much
+provoked, that, as was supposed, (for the actors were never discovered,)
+they procured Dryden, whom they suspected as the author, to be
+way-laid and beaten. This incident is mentioned by the duke of
+Buckinghamshire[109], the true writer, in his Art of Poetry; where he
+says of Dryden:
+
+  Though prais'd and beaten for another's rhymes,
+  His own deserve as great applause sometimes.
+
+His reputation in time was such, that his name was thought necessary to
+the success of every poetical or literary performance, and, therefore,
+he was engaged to contribute something, whatever it might be, to many
+publications. He prefixed the Life of Polybius to the translation of sir
+Henry Sheers; and those of Lucian and Plutarch, to versions of their
+works by different hands. Of the English Tacitus he translated the first
+book; and, if Gordon be credited, translated it from the French. Such a
+charge can hardly be mentioned without some degree of indignation; but
+it is not, I suppose, so much to be inferred, that Dryden wanted the
+literature necessary to the perusal of Tacitus, as that, considering
+himself as hidden in a crowd, he had no awe of the publick; and, writing
+merely for money, was contented to get it by the nearest way.
+
+In 1680, the Epistles of Ovid being translated by the poets of the time,
+among which one was the work of Dryden[110], and another of Dryden and
+lord Mulgrave, it was necessary to introduce them by a preface; and
+Dryden, who on such occasions was regularly summoned, prefixed a
+discourse upon translation, which was then struggling for the liberty
+that it now enjoys. Why it should find any difficulty in breaking the
+shackles of verbal interpretation, which must for ever debar it from
+elegance, it would be difficult to conjecture, were not the power of
+prejudice every day observed. The authority of Jonson, Sandys, and
+Holiday, had fixed the judgment of the nation; and it was not easily
+believed that a better way could be found than they had taken, though
+Fanshaw, Denham, Waller, and Cowley, had tried to give examples of a
+different practice.
+
+In 1681 Dryden became yet more conspicuous by uniting politicks with
+poetry, in the memorable satire, called Absalom and Achitophel, written
+against the faction which, by lord Shaftesbury's incitement, set the duke
+of Monmouth at its head.
+
+Of this poem, in which personal satire was applied to the support of
+publick principles, and in which, therefore, every mind was interested,
+the reception was eager, and the sale so large, that my father, an old
+bookseller, told me, he had not known it equalled but by Sacheverell's
+Trial.
+
+The reason of this general perusal Addison has attempted to derive from
+the delight which the mind feels in the investigation of secrets; and
+thinks that curiosity to decipher the names, procured readers to the
+poem. There is no need to inquire why those verses were read, which, to
+all the attractions of wit, elegance, and harmony, added the cooperation
+of all the factious passions, and filled every mind with triumph or
+resentment.
+
+It could not be supposed that all the provocation given by Dryden, would
+be endured without resistance or reply. Both his person and his party
+were exposed, in their turns, to the shafts of satire, which, though
+neither so well pointed, nor, perhaps, so well aimed, undoubtedly drew
+blood.
+
+One of these poems is called, Dryden's Satire on his Muse; ascribed,
+though, as Pope says, falsely, to Somers, who was afterwards chancellor.
+The poem, whosesoever it was, has much virulence, and some sprightliness.
+The writer tells all the ill that he can collect both of Dryden and his
+friends.
+
+The poem of Absalom and Achitophel had two answers, now both forgotten;
+one called Azaria and Hushai; the other, Absalom senior. Of these hostile
+compositions, Dryden apparently imputes Absalom senior to Settle, by
+quoting in his verses against him the second line. Azaria and Hushai was,
+as Wood says, imputed to him, though it is somewhat unlikely that he
+should write twice on the same occasion. This is a difficulty which
+I cannot remove, for want of a minuter knowledge of poetical
+transactions[111].
+
+The same year he published The Medal, of which the subject is a
+medal struck on lord Shaftesbury's escape from a prosecution, by the
+_ignoramus_ of a grand jury of Londoners.
+
+In both poems he maintains the same principles, and saw them both
+attacked by the same antagonist. Elkanah Settle, who had answered
+Absalom, appeared with equal courage in opposition to The Medal, and
+published an answer called, The Medal Reversed, with so much success
+in both encounters, that he left the palm doubtful, and divided the
+suffrages of the nation. Such are the revolutions of fame, or such is
+the prevalence of fashion, that the man, whose works have not yet been
+thought to deserve the care of collecting them, who died forgotten in
+an hospital, and whose latter years were spent in contriving shows for
+fairs, and carrying an elegy or epithalamium, of which the beginning and
+end were occasionally varied, but the intermediate parts were always the
+same, to every house where there was a funeral or a wedding, might with
+truth have had inscribed upon his stone:
+
+  Here lies the rival and antagonist of Dryden.
+
+Settle was, for this rebellion, severely chastised by Dryden, under the
+name of Doeg, in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel; and was,
+perhaps, for his factious audacity, made the city poet, whose annual
+office was to describe the glories of the mayor's day. Of these bards he
+was the last, and seems not much to have deserved even this degree of
+regard, if it was paid to his political opinions; for he afterwards wrote
+a panegyrick on the virtues of judge Jefferies; and what more could have
+been done by the meanest zealot for prerogative?
+
+Of translated fragments, or occasional poems, to enumerate the titles, or
+settle the dates, would be tedious, with little use. It may be observed,
+that, as Dryden's genius was commonly excited by some personal regard, he
+rarely writes upon a general topick.
+
+Soon after the accession of king James, when the design of reconciling
+the nation to the church of Rome became apparent, and the religion of the
+court gave the only efficacious title to its favours, Dryden declared
+himself a convert to popery. This, at any other time, might have passed
+with little censure. Sir Kenelm Digby embraced popery; the two Reynolds's
+reciprocally converted one another[112]; and Chillingworth himself was
+awhile so entangled in the wilds of controversy, as to retire for quiet
+to an infallible church. If men of argument and study can find such
+difficulties, or such motives, as may either unite them to the church of
+Rome, or detain them in uncertainty, there can be no wonder that a man,
+who, perhaps, never inquired why he was a protestant, should, by an
+artful and experienced disputant, be made a papist, overborne by the
+sudden violence of new and unexpected arguments, or deceived by a
+representation which shows only the doubts on one part, and only the
+evidence on the other.
+
+That conversion will always be suspected that apparently concurs with
+interest. He that never finds his errour till it hinders his progress
+towards wealth or honour, will not be thought to love truth only for
+herself.
+
+Yet it may easily happen that information may come at a commodious time;
+and, as truth and interest are not by any fatal necessity at variance,
+that one may by accident introduce the other. When opinions are
+struggling into popularity, the arguments by which they are opposed or
+defended become more known; and he that changes his profession would,
+perhaps, have changed it before, with the like opportunities of
+instruction. This was then the state of popery; every artifice was used
+to show it in its fairest form; and it must be owned to be a religion of
+external appearance sufficiently attractive.
+
+It is natural to hope that a comprehensive is, likewise, an elevated
+soul, and that whoever is wise is also honest. I am willing to believe
+that Dryden, having employed his mind, active as it was, upon different
+studies, and filled it, capacious as it was, with other materials, came
+unprovided to the controversy, and wanted rather skill to discover the
+right, than virtue to maintain it. But inquiries into the heart are not
+for man; we must now leave him to his judge.
+
+The priests, having strengthened their cause by so powerful an adherent,
+were not long before they brought him into action. They engaged him to
+defend the controversial papers found in the strong box of Charles the
+second; and, what yet was harder, to defend them against Stillingfleet.
+
+With hopes of promoting popery, he was employed to translate Maimbourg's
+History of the League; which he published with a large introduction. His
+name is, likewise, prefixed to the English Life of Francis Xavier; but I
+know not that he ever owned himself the translator. Perhaps the use of
+his name was a pious fraud, which, however, seems not to have had much
+effect; for neither of the books, I believe, was ever popular.
+
+The version of Xavier's Life is commended by Brown, in a pamphlet not
+written to flatter; and the occasion of it is said to have been, that the
+queen, when she solicited a son, made vows to him as her tutelary saint.
+He was supposed to have undertaken to translate Varillas's History of
+Heresies; and, when Burnet published remarks upon it, to have written an
+answer[113]; upon which Burnet makes the following observation:
+
+"I have been informed from England, that a gentleman, who is famous
+both for poetry and several other things, had spent three months in
+translating M. Varillas's History; but that, as soon as my Reflections
+appeared, he discontinued his labour, finding the credit of his author
+was gone. Now, if he thinks it is recovered by his answer, he will,
+perhaps, go on with his translation; and this may be, for aught I know,
+as good an entertainment for him as the conversation that he had set on
+between the Hinds and Panthers, and all the rest of animals, for whom M.
+Varillas may serve well enough as an author: and this history, and that
+poem, are such extraordinary things of their kind, that it will be but
+suitable to see the author of the worst poem become, likewise, the
+translator of the worst history that the age has produced. If his grace
+and his wit improve both proportionably, he will hardly find that he has
+gained much by the change he has made, from having no religion, to choose
+one of the worst. It is true, he had somewhat to sink from in matter of
+wit; but, as for his morals, it is scarce possible for him to grow
+a worse man than he was. He has lately wreaked his malice on me for
+spoiling his three months' labour; but in it he has done me all the
+honour that any man can receive from him, which is to be railed at by
+him. If I had ill-nature enough to prompt me to wish a very bad wish for
+him, it should be, that he would go on and finish his translation. By
+that it will appear, whether the English nation, which is the most
+competent judge in this matter, has, upon the seeing our debate,
+pronounced in M. Varillas's favour, or in mine. It is true, Mr. D. will
+suffer a little by it; but, at least, it will serve to keep him in from
+other extravagancies; and if he gains little honour by this work, yet he
+cannot lose so much by it as he has done by his last employment."
+
+Having, probably, felt his own inferiority in theological controversy, he
+was desirous of trying whether, by bringing poetry to aid his arguments,
+he might be'come a more efficacious defender of his new profession. To
+reason in verse was, indeed, one of his powers; but subtilty and harmony,
+united, are still feeble, when opposed to truth.
+
+Actuated, therefore, by zeal for Rome, or hope of fame, he published The
+Hind and Panther, a poem in which the church of Rome, figured by the
+_milk-white hind_, defends her tenets against the church of England,
+represented by the _panther_, a beast beautiful, but spotted.
+
+A fable which exhibits two beasts talking theology, appears, at once,
+full of absurdity; and it was accordingly ridiculed in the City Mouse and
+Country Mouse, a parody, written by Montague, afterwards earl of Halifax,
+and Prior, who then gave the first specimen of his abilities.
+
+The conversion of such a man, at such a time, was not likely to pass
+uneensured. Three dialogues were published by the facetious Thomas Brown,
+of which the two first were called Reasons of Mr. Bayes's changing his
+Religion; and the third, The Reasons of Mr. Hains the Player's Conversion
+and Reconversion. The first was printed in 1688, the second not till
+1690, the third in 1691. The clamour seems to have been long continued,
+and the subject to have strongly fixed the publick attention.
+
+In the two first dialogues Bayes is brought into the company of Crites
+and Eugenius, with whom he had formerly debated on dramatick poetry. The
+two talkers in the third are Mr. Bayes and Mr. Hains.
+
+Brown was a man not deficient in literature, nor destitute of fancy; but
+he seems to have thought it the pinnacle of excellence to be a _merry
+fellow_; and, therefore, laid out his powers upon small jests or gross
+buffoonery; so that his performances have little intrinsick value, and
+were read only while they were recommended by the novelty of the event
+that occasioned them. These dialogues are like his other works: what
+sense or knowledge they contain is disgraced by the garb in which it is
+exhibited. One great source of pleasure is to call Dryden "little Bayes."
+Ajax, who happens to be mentioned, is "he that wore as many cow-hides
+upon his shield as would have furnished half the king's army with
+shoe-leather."
+
+Being asked whether he had seen the Hind and Panther, Crites answers:
+"Seen it! Mr. Bayes, why I can stir nowhere but it pursues me; it haunts
+me worse than a pewter-buttoned serjeant does a decayed cit. Sometimes I
+meet it in a bandbox, when my laundress brings home my linen; sometimes,
+whether I will or no, it lights my pipe at a coffee-house; sometimes it
+surprises me in a trunkmaker's shop; and sometimes it refreshes my memory
+for me on the backside of a Chancery lane parcel. For your comfort too,
+Mr. Bayes, I have not only seen it, as you may perceive, but have read it
+too, and can quote it as freely upon occasion as a frugal tradesman
+can quote that noble treatise The Worth of a Penny, to his extravagant
+'prentice, that revels in stewed apples and penny custards."
+
+The whole animation of these compositions arises from a profusion of
+ludicrous and affected comparisons. "To secure one's chastity," says
+Bayes, "little more is necessary than to leave off a correspondence with
+the other sex, which, to a wise man, is no greater a punishment than it
+would be to a fanatick parson to be forbid seeing The Cheats and The
+Committee; or for my lord mayor and aldermen to be interdicted the sight
+of The London Cuckold." This is the general strain, and, therefore, I
+shall be easily excused the labour of more transcription.
+
+Brown does not wholly forget past transactions: "You began," says Crites
+to Bayes, "with a very indifferent religion, and have not mended the
+matter in your last choice. It was but reason that your muse, which
+appeared first in a tyrant's quarrel, should employ her last efforts to
+justify the usurpations of the hind." Next year the nation was summoned
+to celebrate the birth of the prince. Now was the time for Dryden to
+rouse his imagination, and strain his voice. Happy days were at hand,
+and he was willing to enjoy and diffuse the anticipated blessings. He
+published a poem, filled with predictions of greatness and prosperity;
+predictions of which it is not necessary to tell how they have been
+verified.
+
+A few months passed after these joyful notes, and every blossom of popish
+hope was blasted for ever by the revolution. A papist now could be no
+longer laureate. The revenue, which he had enjoyed with so much pride and
+praise, was transferred to Shadwell, an old enemy, whom he had formerly
+stigmatised by the name of Og. Dryden could not decently complain that he
+was deposed; but seemed very angry that Shadwell succeeded him, and has,
+therefore, celebrated the intruder's inauguration in a poem exquisitely
+satirical, called Mac Flecknoe[114]; of which the Dunciad, as Pope
+himself declares, is an imitation, though more extended in its plan, and
+more diversified in its incidents.
+
+It is related by Prior, that lord Dorset, when, as chamberlain, he was
+constrained to eject Dryden from his office, gave him, from his own
+purse, an allowance equal to the salary. This is no romantick or
+incredible act of generosity; a hundred a year is often enough given to
+claims less cogent, by men less famed for liberality. Yet Dryden always
+represented himself as suffering under a publick infliction; and once
+particularly demands respect for the patience with which he endured the
+loss of his little fortune. His patron might, indeed, enjoin him to
+suppress his bounty; but, if he suffered nothing, he should not have
+complained.
+
+During the short reign of king James, he had written nothing for
+the stage[115], being, in his opinion, more profitably employed in
+controversy and flattery. Of praise he might, perhaps, have been less
+lavish without inconvenience, for James was never said to have much
+regard for poetry: he was to be flattered only by adopting his religion.
+
+Times were now changed: Dryden was no longer the court-poet, and was to
+look back for support to his former trade; and having waited about two
+years, either considering himself as discountenanced by the publick,
+perhaps expecting a second revolution, he produced Don Sebastian in 1690;
+and in the next four years four dramas more.
+
+In 1693 appeared a new version of Juvenal and Persius. Of Juvenal, he
+translated the first, third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires; and of
+Persius, the whole work. On this occasion, he introduced his two sons to
+the publick, as nurslings of the muses. The fourteenth of Juvenal was the
+work of John, and the seventh of Charles Dryden. He prefixed a very ample
+preface, in the form of a dedication to lord Dorset; and there gives an
+account of the design which he had once formed to write an epick poem on
+the actions either of Arthur or the Black Prince. He considered the
+epick as necessarily including some kind of supernatural agency, and had
+imagined a new kind of contest between the guardian angels of kingdoms,
+of whom he conceived that each might be represented zealous for his
+charge, without any intended opposition to the purposes of the supreme
+being, of which all created minds must in part be ignorant.
+
+This is the most reasonable scheme of celestial interposition that ever
+was formed. The surprises and terrours of enchantments, which have
+succeeded to the intrigues and oppositions of pagan deities, afford very
+striking scenes, and open a vast extent to the imagination; but, as
+Boileau observes, (and Boileau will be seldom found mistaken,) with this
+incurable defect, that, in a contest between heaven and hell, we know at
+the beginning which is to prevail; for this reason we follow Rinaldo to
+the enchanted wood with more curiosity than terrour.
+
+In the scheme of Dryden there is one great difficulty, which yet he
+would, perhaps, have had address enough to surmount. In a war, justice
+can be but on one side; and, to entitle the hero to the protection of
+angels, he must fight in the defence of indubitable right. Yet some
+of the celestial beings, thus opposed to each other, must have been
+represented as defending guilt.
+
+That this poem was never written, is reasonably to be lamented. It would,
+doubtless, have improved our numbers, and enlarged our language; and
+might, perhaps, have contributed, by pleasing instruction, to rectify our
+opinions, and purify our manners.
+
+What he required as the indispensable condition of such an undertaking, a
+publick stipend, was not likely, in those times, to be obtained. Riches
+were not become familiar to us; nor had the nation yet learned to be
+liberal.
+
+This plan he charged Blackmore with stealing; "only," says he, "the
+guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to
+manage."
+
+In 1694, he began the most laborious and difficult of all his works, the
+translation of Virgil; from which he borrowed two months, that he might
+turn Fresnoy's Art of Painting into English prose. The preface, which he
+boasts to have written in twelve mornings, exhibits a parallel of poetry
+and painting, with a miscellaneous collection of critical remarks, such
+as cost a mind, stored like his, no labour to produce them.
+
+In 1697, he published his version of the works of Virgil; and, that no
+opportunity of profit might be lost, dedicated the Pastorals to the lord
+Clifford, the Georgicks to the earl of Chesterfield, and the Aeneid to the
+earl of Mulgrave. This economy of flattery, at once lavish and discreet,
+did not pass without observation.
+
+This translation was censured by Milbourne, a clergyman, styled, by Pope,
+"the fairest of criticks," because he exhibited his own version to be
+compared with that which he condemned.
+
+His last work was his Fables, published in 1699, in consequence, as is
+supposed, of a contract now in the hands of Mr. Tonson; by which he
+obliged himself, in considerationof three hundred pounds, to finish for
+the press ten thousand verses.
+
+In this volume is comprised the well-known ode on St. Cecilia's day,
+which, as appeared by a letter communicated to Dr. Birch, he spent a
+fortnight in composing and correcting. But what is this to the patience
+and diligence of Boileau, whose Equivoque, a poem of only three hundred
+and forty-six lines, took from his life eleven months to write it, and
+three years to revise it?
+
+Part of this book of Fables is the first Iliad in English, intended as a
+specimen of a version of the whole. Considering into what hands Homer was
+to fall, the reader cannot but rejoice that this project went no further.
+
+The time was now at hand which was to put an end to all his schemes and
+labours. On the first of May, 1701, having been some time, as he tells
+us, a cripple in his limbs, he died, in Gerard street, of a mortification
+in his leg.
+
+There is extant a wild story relating to some vexatious events that
+happened at his funeral, which, at the end of Congreve's Life, by a
+writer of I know not what credit, are thus related, as I find the account
+transferred to a biographical dictionary[116].
+
+"Mr. Dryden dying on the Wednesday morning, Dr. Thomas Sprat, then bishop
+of Rochester and dean of Westminster, sent the next day to the lady
+Elizabeth Howard, Mr. Dryden's widow, that he would make a present of the
+ground, which was forty pounds, with all the other abbey fees. The lord
+Halifax, likewise, sent to the lady Elizabeth, and Mr. Charles Dryden
+her son, that, if they would give him leave to bury Mr. Dryden, he would
+inter him with a gentleman's private funeral, and afterwards bestow five
+hundred pounds on a monument in the abbey; which, as they had no reason
+to refuse, they accepted. On the Saturday following the company came:
+the corpse was put into a velvet hearse; and eighteen mourning coaches,
+filled with company, attended. When they were just ready to move, the
+lord Jefferies, son of the lord chancellor Jefferies, with some of his
+rakish companions, coming by, asked whose funeral it was; and, being
+told Mr. Dryden's, he said, 'What, shall Dryden, the greatest honour
+and ornament of the nation, be buried after this private manner! No,
+gentlemen, let all that loved Mr. Dryden, and honour his memory, alight
+and join with me in gaining my lady's consent to let me have the honour
+of his interment, which shall be after another manner than this; and I
+will bestow a thousand pounds on a monument in the abbey for him.' The
+gentlemen in the coaches, not knowing of the bishop of Rochester's
+favour, nor of the lord Halifax's generous design, (they both having, out
+of respect to the family, enjoined the lady Elizabeth and her son to
+keep their favour concealed to the world, and let it pass for their own
+expense,) readily came out of the coaches, and attended lord Jefferies up
+to the lady's bedside, who was then sick. He repeated the purport of what
+he had before said; but she absolutely refusing, he fell on his knees,
+vowing never to rise till his request was granted. The rest of the
+company, by his desire, kneeled also; and the lady, being under a sudden
+surprise, fainted away. As soon as she recovered her speech, she cried,
+'No, no.' 'Enough, gentlemen,' replied he; 'my lady is very good; she
+says, Go, go.' She repeated her former words with all her strength, but
+in vain, for her feeble voice was lost in their acclamations of joy;
+and the lord Jefferies ordered the horsemen to carry the corpse to Mr.
+Russel's, an undertaker in Cheapside, and leave it there till he should
+send orders for the embalment, which, he added, should be after the royal
+manner. His directions were obeyed, the company dispersed, and lady
+Elizabeth and her son remained inconsolable. The next day Mr. Charles
+Dryden waited on the lord Halifax and the bishop, to excuse his mother
+and himself, by relating the real truth. But neither his lordship nor the
+bishop would admit of any plea; especially the latter, who had the abbey
+lighted, the ground opened, the choir attending, an anthem ready set,
+and himself waiting, for some time, without any corpse to bury. The
+undertaker, after three days' expectance of orders for embalment without
+receiving any, waited on the lord Jefferies; who, pretending ignorance of
+the matter, turned it off with an ill-natured jest, saying, that those
+who observed the orders of a drunken frolick deserved no better; that he
+remembered nothing at all of it; and that he might do what he pleased
+with the corpse. Upon this, the undertaker waited upon the lady Elizabeth
+and her son, and threatened to bring the corpse home, and set it before
+the door. They desired a day's respite, which was granted. Mr. Charles
+Dryden wrote a handsome letter to the lord Jefferies, who returned it
+with this cool answer: 'that he knew nothing of the matter, and would be
+troubled no more about it.' He then addressed the lord Halifax and the
+bishop of Rochester, who absolutely refused to do any thing in it. In
+this distress Dr. Garth sent for the corpse to the College of Physicians,
+and proposed a funeral by subscription, to which himself set a most noble
+example. At last, a day, about three weeks after Mr. Dryden's decease,
+was appointed for the interment. Dr. Garth pronounced a fine Latin
+oration, at the college, over the corpse; which was attended to the abbey
+by a numerous train of coaches. When the funeral was over, Mr. Charles
+Dryden sent a challenge to the lord Jefferies, who refusing to answer it,
+he sent several others, and went often himself; but could neither get a
+letter delivered, nor admittance to speak to him: which so incensed
+him, that he resolved, since his lordship refused to answer him like a
+gentleman, that he would watch an opportunity to meet and fight off-hand,
+though with all the rules of honour; which his lordship hearing, left the
+town; and Mr. Charles Dryden could never have the satisfaction of meeting
+him, though he sought it till his death with the utmost application."
+
+This story I once intended to omit, as it appears with no great evidence;
+nor have I met with any confirmation, but in a letter of Farquhar; and he
+only relates that the funeral of Dryden was tumultuary and confused.[117]
+
+Supposing the story true, we may remark, that the gradual change of
+manners, though imperceptible in the process, appears great, when
+different times, and those not very distant, are compared. If, at this
+time, a young drunken lord should interrupt the pompous regularity of a
+magnificent funeral, what would be the event, but that he would be
+justled out of the way, and compelled to be quiet? If he should thrust
+himself into a house, he would be sent roughly away; and, what is yet
+more to the honour of the present time, I believe that those who had
+subscribed to the funeral of a man like Dryden, would not, for such an
+accident, have withdrawn their contributions[118].
+
+He was buried among the poets in Westminster Abbey, where, though the
+duke of Newcastle had, in a general dedication prefixed by Congreve to
+his dramatick works, accepted thanks for his intention of erecting him
+a monument, he lay long without distinction, till the duke of
+Buckinghamshire gave him a tablet, inscribed only with the name of
+DRYDEN.
+
+He married the lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the earl of Berkshire,
+with circumstances, according to the satire imputed to lord Somers, not
+very honourable to either party: by her he had three sons, Charles, John,
+and Henry. Charles was usher of the palace to pope Clement the eleventh;
+and, visiting England in 1704, was drowned in an attempt to swim across
+the Thames at Windsor.
+
+John was author of a comedy called The Husband his own Cuckold. He is
+said to have died at Rome. Henry entered into some religious order. It is
+some proof of Dryden's sincerity in his second religion, that he taught
+it to his sons. A man conscious of hypocritical profession in himself, is
+not likely to convert others; and, as his sons were qualified, in 1693,
+to appear among the translators of Juvenal, they must have been taught
+some religion before their father's change.
+
+Of the person of Dryden I know not any account; of his mind, the portrait
+which has been left by Congreve, who knew him with great familiarity, is
+such as adds our love of his manners to our admiration of his genius. "He
+was," we are told, "of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate,
+ready to forgive injuries, and capable of a sincere reconciliation with
+those who had offended him. His friendship, where he professed it, went
+beyond his professions. He was of a very easy, of very pleasing, access;
+but somewhat slow, and, as it were, diffident in his advances to others:
+he had that in his nature which abhorred intrusion into any society
+whatever. He was, therefore, less known, and consequently his character
+became more liable to misapprehensions and misrepresentations: he was
+very modest, and very easily to be discountenanced in his approaches to
+his equals or superiours. As his reading had been very extensive, so was
+he very happy in a memory tenacious of every thing that he had read. He
+was not more possessed of knowledge than he was communicative of it; but
+then his communication was by no means pedantick, or imposed upon the
+conversation, but just such, and went so far as, by the natural turn of
+the conversation in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted
+or required. He was extremely ready and gentle in his correction of the
+errours of any writer who thought fit to consult him, and full as ready
+and patient to admit of the reprehensions of others, in respect of his
+own over-sights or mistakes."
+
+To this account of Congreve nothing can be objected but the fondness of
+friendship; and to have excited that fondness in such a mind is no small
+degree of praise. The disposition of Dryden, however, is shown in this
+character rather as it exhibited itself in cursory conversation, than as
+it operated on the more important parts of life. His placability and his
+friendship, indeed, were solid virtues; but courtesy and good humour are
+often found with little real worth. Since Congreve, who knew him well,
+has told us no more, the rest must be collected, as it can, from other
+testimonies, and particularly from those notices which Dryden has very
+liberally given us of himself.
+
+The modesty which made him so slow to advance, and so easy to
+be repulsed, was certainly no suspicion of deficient merit, or
+unconsciousness of his own value: he appears to have known, in its whole
+extent, the dignity of his character, and to have set a very high value
+on his own powers and performances. He probably did not offer his
+conversation, because he expected it to be solicited; and he retired from
+a cold reception, not submissive but indignant, with such reverence
+of his own greatness as made him unwilling to expose it to neglect or
+violation.
+
+His modesty was by no means inconsistent with ostentatiousness: he is
+diligent enough to remind the world of his merit, and expresses, with
+very little scruple, his high opinion of his own powers; but his
+self-commendations are read without scorn or indignation; we allow his
+claims, and love his frankness.
+
+Tradition, however, has not allowed that his confidence in himself
+exempted him from jealousy of others. He is accused of envy and
+insidiousness; and is particularly charged with inciting Creech to
+translate Horace, that he might lose the reputation which Lucretius had
+given him.
+
+Of this charge we immediately discover that it is merely conjectural;
+the purpose was such as no man would confess; and a crime that admits no
+proof, why should we believe?
+
+He has been described as magisterially presiding over the younger
+writers, and assuming the distribution of poetical fame; but he who
+excels has a right to teach, and he whose judgment is incontestable, may,
+without usurpation, examine and decide.
+
+Congreve represents him as ready to advise and instruct; but there
+is reason to believe that his communication was rather useful than
+entertaining. He declares of himself that he was saturnine, and not
+one of those whose sprightly sayings diverted company; and one of his
+censurers makes him say:
+
+  Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay;
+  To writing bred, I knew not what to say[119].
+
+There are men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and
+whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment
+confuses, and objection disconcerts; whose bashfulness restrains their
+exertion, and suffers them not to speak till the time of speaking is
+past; or whose attention to their own character makes them unwilling to
+utter at hazard what has not been considered, and cannot be recalled.
+
+Of Dryden's sluggishness in conversation it is vain to search or to guess
+the cause. He certainly wanted neither sentiments nor language; his
+intellectual treasures were great, though they were locked up from his
+own use. "His thoughts," when he wrote, "flowed in upon him so fast, that
+his only care was which to choose, and which to reject." Such rapidity of
+composition naturally promises a flow of talk; yet we must be content to
+believe what an enemy says of him, when he, likewise, says it of himself.
+But, whatever was his character as a companion, it appears that he lived
+in familiarity with the highest persons of his time. It is related by
+Carte of the duke of Ormond, that he used often to pass a night with
+Dryden, and those with whom Dryden consorted: who they were Carte has
+not told; but certainly the convivial table at which Ormond sat was not
+surrounded with a plebeian society. He was, indeed, reproached with
+boasting of his familiarity with the great; and Horace will support him
+in the opinion, that to please superiours is not the lowest kind of
+merit.
+
+The merit of pleasing must, however, be estimated by the means. Favour
+is not always gained by good actions or laudable qualities. Caresses and
+preferments are often bestowed on the auxiliaries of vice, the procurers
+of pleasure, or the flatterers of vanity. Dryden has never been charged
+with any personal agency unworthy of a good character: he abetted vice
+and vanity only with his pen. One of his enemies has accused him of
+lewdness in his conversation; but, if accusation without proof be
+credited, who shall be innocent?
+
+His works afford too many examples of dissolute licentiousness and abject
+adulation; but they were, probably, like his merriment, artificial and
+constrained; the effects of study and meditation, and his trade rather
+than his pleasure.
+
+Of the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute
+itself with ideal wickedness, for the sake of spreading the contagion in
+society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation
+of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be
+contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had,
+Dryden has afforded, by living to repent, and to testify his repentance.
+
+Of dramatick immorality he did not want examples among his predecessors,
+or companions among his contemporaries; but, in the meanness and
+servility of hyperbolical adulation, I know not whether, since the days
+in which the Roman emperours were deified, he has been ever equalled,
+except by Afra Behn, in an address to Eleanor Gwyn. When once he has
+undertaken the task of praise, he no longer retains shame in himself, nor
+supposes it in his patron. As many odoriferous bodies are observed to
+diffuse perfumes, from year to year, without sensible diminution of bulk
+or weight, he appears never to have impoverished his mint of flattery
+by his expenses, however lavish. He had all the forms of excellence,
+intellectual and moral, combined in his mind, with endless variation;
+and, when he had scattered on the hero of the day the golden shower of
+wit and virtue, he had ready for him whom he wished to court on the
+morrow, new wit and virtue with another stamp. Of this kind of meanness
+he never seems to decline the practice, or lament the necessity: he
+considers the great as entitled to encomiastick homage, and brings praise
+rather as a tribute than a gift, more delighted with the fertility of his
+invention, than mortified by the prostitution of his judgment. It is,
+indeed, not certain, that on these occasions his judgment much rebelled
+against his interest. There are minds which easily sink into submission,
+that look on grandeur with undistinguishing reverence, and discover no
+defect where there is elevation of rank and affluence of riches.
+
+With his praises of others, and of himself, is always intermingled a
+strain of discontent and lamentation, a sullen growl of resentment, or
+a querulous murmur of distress. His works are undervalued, his merit is
+unrewarded, and "he has few thanks to pay his stars that he was born
+among Englishmen." To his criticks he is sometimes contemptuous,
+sometimes resentful, and sometimes submissive. The writer who thinks his
+works formed for duration, mistakes his interest when he mentions his
+enemies. He degrades his own dignity by showing that he was affected by
+their censures, and gives lasting importance to names, which, left to
+themselves, would vanish from remembrance. From this principle Dryden did
+not often depart; his complaints are, for the greater part, general; he
+seldom pollutes his page with an adverse name. He condescended, indeed,
+to a controversy with Settle, in which he, perhaps, may be considered
+rather as assaulting than repelling; and since Settle is sunk into
+oblivion, his libel remains injurious only to himself.
+
+Among answers to criticks, no poetical attacks, or altercations, are to
+be included; they are, like other poems, effusions of genius, produced as
+much to obtain praise as to obviate censure. These Dryden practised, and
+in these he excelled.
+
+Of Collier, Blackmore, and Milbourne, he has made mention in the preface
+to his Fables. To the censure of Collier, whose remarks may be rather
+termed admonitions than criticisms, he makes little reply; being, at
+the age of sixty-eight, attentive to better things than the claps of a
+playhouse. He complains of Collier's rudeness, and the "horseplay of his
+raillery;" and asserts, that "in many places he has perverted by his
+glosses the meaning" of what he censures; but in other things he
+confesses that he is justly taxed; and says, with great calmness and
+candour, "I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts or expressions of mine
+that can be truly accused of obscenity, immorality, or profaneness, and
+retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend,
+he will be glad of my repentance." Yet, as our best dispositions are
+imperfect, he left standing in the same book a reflection on Collier of
+great asperity, and, indeed, of more asperity than wit.
+
+Blackmore he represents as made his enemy by the poem of Absalom and
+Achitophel, which "he thinks a little hard upon his fanatick patrons;"
+and charges him with borrowing the plan of his Arthur from the preface to
+Juvenal, "though he had," says he, "the baseness not to acknowledge his
+benefactor, but instead of it to traduce me in a libel."
+
+The libel in which Blackmore traduced him, was a Satire upon Wit; in
+which, having lamented the exuberance of false wit, and the deficiency of
+true, he proposes that all wit should be recoined before it is current,
+and appoints masters of assay who shall reject all that is light or
+debased:
+
+  'Tis true, that, when the coarse and worthless dross
+  Is purg'd away, there will be mighty loss:
+  E'en Congreve, Southern, manly Wycherley,
+  When thus refin'd, will grievous sufferers be;
+  Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes,
+  What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!
+  How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay,
+  And wicked mixture, shall be purg'd away!
+
+Thus stands the passage in the last edition; but in the original there
+was an abatement of the censure, beginning thus:
+
+  But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear
+  Th' examination of the most severe.
+
+Blackmore, finding the censure resented, and the civility disregarded,
+ungenerously omitted the softer part. Such variations discover a writer
+who consults his passions more than his virtue; and it may be reasonably
+supposed that Dryden imputes his enmity to its true cause.
+
+Of Milbourne he wrote only in general terms, such as are always ready
+at the call of anger, whether just or not: a short extract will be
+sufficient. "He pretends a quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul upon
+priesthood; if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and
+am afraid his share of the reparation will come to little. Let him be
+satisfied that he shall never be able to force himself upon me for an
+adversary; I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him.
+
+"As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such
+scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them.
+Blackmore and Milbourne are only distinguished from the crowd by being
+remembered to their infamy."
+
+Dryden, indeed, discovered, in many of his writings, an affected and
+absurd malignity to priests and priesthood, which naturally raised him
+many enemies, and which was sometimes as unseasonably resented as it was
+exerted. Trapp is angry that he calls the sacrificer in the Georgicks
+"the holy butcher:" the translation is, indeed, ridiculous; but Trapp's
+anger arises from his zeal, not for the author, but the priest; as if any
+reproach of the follies of paganism could be extended to the preachers of
+truth.
+
+Dryden's dislike of the priesthood is imputed by Langbaine, and, I think,
+by Brown, to a repulse which he suffered when he solicited ordination;
+but he denies, in the preface to his Fables, that he ever designed to
+enter into the church; and such a denial he would not have hazarded, if
+he could have been convicted of falsehood.
+
+Malevolence to the clergy is seldom at a great distance from irreverence
+of religion, and Dryden affords no exception to this observation. His
+writings exhibit many passages, which, with all the allowance that can
+be made for characters and occasions, are such as piety would not have
+admitted, and such as may vitiate light and unprincipled minds. But there
+is no reason for supposing that he disbelieved the religion which he
+disobeyed. He forgot his duty rather than disowned it. His tendency to
+profaneness is the effect of levity, negligence, and loose conversation,
+with a desire of accommodating himself to the corruption of the times, by
+venturing to be wicked as far as he durst. When he professed himself a
+convert to popery, he did not pretend to have received any new conviction
+of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.
+
+The persecution of criticks was not the worst of his vexations; he was
+much more disturbed by the importunities of want. His complaints of
+poverty are so frequently repeated, either with the dejection of weakness
+sinking in helpless misery, or the indignation of merit claiming its
+tribute from mankind, that it is impossible not to detest the age which
+could impose on such a man the necessity of such solicitations, or not to
+despise the man who could submit to such solicitations without necessity.
+
+Whether by the world's neglect, or his own imprudence, I am afraid that
+the greatest part of his life was passed in exigencies. Such outcries
+were, surely, never uttered but in severe pain. Of his supplies or his
+expenses no probable estimate can now be made. Except the salary of
+the laureate, to which king James added the office of historiographer,
+perhaps with some additional emoluments, his whole revenue seems to have
+been casual; and it is well known that he seldom lives frugally who lives
+by chance. Hope is always liberal; and they that trust her promises make
+little scruple of revelling to-day on the profits of the morrow.
+
+Of his plays the profit was not great; and of the produce of his other
+works very little intelligence can be had. By discoursing with the
+late amiable Mr. Tonson, I could not find that any memorials of the
+transactions between his predecessor and Dryden had been preserved,
+except the following papers:
+
+"I do hereby promise to pay John Dryden, esq. or order, on the 25th of
+March, 1699, the sum of two hundred and fifty guineas, in consideration
+of ten thousand verses, which the said John Dryden, esq. is to deliver
+to me, Jacob Tonson, when finished, whereof seven thousand five hundred
+verses, more or less, are already in the said Jacob Tonson's possession.
+And I do hereby further promise and engage myself, to make up the said
+sum of two hundred and fifty guineas three hundred pounds sterling to the
+said John Dryden, esq. his executors, administrators, or assigns, at the
+beginning of the second impression of the said ten thousand verses.
+
+"In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this 20th day
+of March, 1698-9.
+
+"JACOB TONSON.
+
+  "Sealed and delivered, being
+  first duly stampt, pursuant
+  to the acts of parliament for
+  that purpose, in the presence
+  of
+  "BEN. PORTLOCK,
+  "WILL. CONGREVE."
+
+  "March 24, 1698.
+
+"Received then of Mr. Jacob Tonson the sum of two hundred sixty-eight
+pounds fifteen shillings, in pursuance of an agreement for ten thousand
+verses, to be delivered by me to the said Jacob Tonson, whereof I have
+already delivered to him about seven thousand five hundred, more or less;
+he, the said Jacob Tonson, being obliged to make up the foresaid sum of
+two hundred sixty-eight pounds fifteen shillings three hundred pounds,
+at the beginning of the second impression of the foresaid ten thousand
+verses;
+
+"I say, received by me,
+
+"JOHN DRYDEN.
+
+"Witness, CHARLES DRYDEN."
+
+Two hundred and fifty guineas, at 1_l_, 1_s_. 6_d_. is 268_l_. 15_s_.
+
+It is manifest, from the dates of this contract, that it relates to the
+volume of Fables, which contains about twelve thousand verses, and for
+which, therefore, the payment must have been afterwards enlarged.
+
+I have been told of another letter yet remaining, in which he desires
+Tonson to bring him money, to pay for a watch which he had ordered for
+his son, and which the maker would not leave without the price.
+
+The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence. Dryden had probably
+no recourse in his exigencies but to his bookseller. The particular
+character of Tonson I do not know; but the general conduct of traders
+was much less liberal in those times than in our own; their views were
+narrower, and their manners grosser. To the mercantile ruggedness of that
+race, the delicacy of the poet was sometimes exposed. Lord Bolingbroke,
+who in his youth had cultivated poetry, related to Dr. King, of
+Oxford, that one day, when he visited Dryden, they heard, as they were
+conversing, another person entering the house. "This," said Dryden, "is
+Tonson. You will take care not to depart before he goes away; for I
+have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and if you leave me
+unprotected, I must suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can
+prompt his tongue."
+
+What rewards he obtained for his poems, besides the payment of the
+bookseller, cannot be known. Mr. Derrick, who consulted some of his
+relations, was informed that his Fables obtained five hundred pounds from
+the dutchess of Ormond; a present not unsuitable to the magnificence of
+that splendid family; and he quotes Moyle, as relating that forty pounds
+were paid by a musical society for the use of Alexander's Feast.
+
+In those days the economy of government was yet unsettled, and the
+payments of the exchequer were dilatory and uncertain: of this disorder
+there is reason to believe that the laureate sometimes felt the effects;
+for, in one of his prefaces he complains of those, who, being intrusted
+with the distribution of the prince's bounty, suffer those that depend
+upon it to languish in penury.
+
+Of his petty habits or slight amusements, tradition has retained little.
+Of the only two men, whom I have found, to whom he was personally known,
+one told me, that at the house which he frequented, called Will's
+Coffee-house, the appeal upon any literary dispute was made to him;
+and the other related, that his armed chair, which in the winter had a
+settled and prescriptive place by the fire, was in the summer placed in
+the balcony, and that he called the two places his winter and his summer
+seat. This is all the intelligence which his two survivers afforded me.
+
+One of his opinions will do him no honour in the present age, though in
+his own time, at least in the beginning of it, he was far from having it
+confined to himself. He put great confidence in the prognostications
+of judicial astrology. In the appendix to the Life of Congreve is a
+narrative of some of his predictions wonderfully fulfilled; but I know
+not the writer's means of information, or character of veracity. That he
+had the configurations of the horoscope in his mind, and considered them
+as influencing the affairs of men, he does not forbear to hint:
+
+  The utmost malice of the stars is past.
+  Now frequent _trines_ the happier lights among,
+  And _high-rais'd Jove_, from his dark prison freed,
+  Those weights took off that on his planet hung,
+  Will gloriously the new-laid works succeed.
+
+He has, elsewhere, shown his attention to the planetary powers; and,
+in the preface to his Fables, has endeavoured obliquely to justify his
+superstition, by attributing the same to some of the ancients. The
+letter, added to this narrative, leaves no doubt of his notions or
+practice.
+
+So slight and so scanty is the knowledge which I have been able to
+collect concerning the private life and domestick manners of a man whom
+every English generation must mention with reverence as a critick and a
+poet.
+
+Dryden may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as
+the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of
+composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without
+rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled,
+and rarely deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of
+propriety had neglected to teach them.
+
+Two Arts of English Poetry were written in the days of Elizabeth by Webb
+and Puttenham, from which something might be learned, and a few hints had
+been given by Jonson and Cowley; but Dryden's Essay on Dramatick Poetry
+was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing.
+
+He who, having formed his opinions in the present age of English
+literature, turns back to peruse this dialogue, will not, perhaps, find
+much increase of knowledge, or much novelty of instruction; but he is to
+remember that critical principles were then in the hands of a few, who
+had gathered them partly from the ancients, and partly from the Italians
+and French. The structure of dramatick poems was not then generally
+understood. Audiences applauded by instinct, and poets, perhaps, often
+pleased by chance.
+
+A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre.
+Of an opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence ceases to
+be examined. Of an art universally practised, the first teacher is
+forgotten. Learning once made popular is no longer learning; it has the
+appearance of something which we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew
+appears to rise from the field which it refreshes.
+
+To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time,
+and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his
+means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at
+another. Dryden at least imported his science, and gave his country
+what it wanted before; or rather, he imported only the materials and
+manufactured them by his own skill.
+
+The Dialogue on the Drama was one of his first essays of criticism,
+written when he was yet a timorous candidate for reputation, and,
+therefore, laboured with that diligence which he might allow himself
+somewhat to remit, when his name gave sanction to his positions, and his
+awe of the publick was abated, partly by custom, and partly by success.
+It will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a
+treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of
+opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imagery, so brightened with
+illustrations. His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with
+great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakespeare may stand as a
+perpetual model of encomiastick criticism; exact without minuteness,
+and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus, on the
+attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes, fades away before
+it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, so extensive in its
+comprehension, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be
+added, diminished, or reformed; nor can the editors and admirers of
+Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, boast of much more than
+of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence, of having
+changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value though of greater
+bulk.
+
+In this, and in all his other essays on the same subject, the criticism
+of Dryden is the criticism of a poet; not a dull collection of theorems,
+nor a rude detection of faults, which, perhaps, the censor was not able
+to have committed; but a gay and vigorous dissertation, where delight
+is mingled with instruction, and where the author proves his right of
+judgment by his power of performance.
+
+The different manner and effect with which critical knowledge may be
+conveyed, was, perhaps, never more clearly exemplified than in the
+performances of Rymer and Dryden. It was said of a dispute between two
+mathematicians, "malim cum Scaligero errare, quam cum Clavio recte
+sapere;" that "it was more eligible to go wrong with one, than right
+with the other." A tendency of the same kind every mind must feel at the
+perusal of Dryden's prefaces and Rymer's discourses. With Dryden we are
+wandering in quest of truth; whom we find, if we find her at all, drest
+in the graces of elegance; and, if we miss her, the labour of the pursuit
+rewards itself; we are led only through fragrance and flowers. Rymer,
+without taking a nearer, takes a rougher way; every step is to be made
+through thorns and brambles; and truth, if we meet her, appears repulsive
+by her mien, and ungraceful by her habit. Dryden's criticism has the
+majesty of a queen; Rymer's has the ferocity of a tyrant.
+
+As he had studied with great diligence the art of poetry, and enlarged or
+rectified his notions, by experience perpetually increasing, he had his
+mind stored with principles and observations; he poured out his knowledge
+with little labour; for of labour, notwithstanding the multiplicity of
+his productions, there is sufficient reason to suspect that he was not
+a lover. To write _con amore_, with fondness for the employment, with
+perpetual touches and retouches, with unwillingness to take leave of his
+own idea, and an unwearied pursuit of unattainable perfection, was, I
+think, no part of his character.
+
+His criticism may be considered as general or occasional. In his general
+precepts, which depend upon the nature of things, and the structure
+of the human mind, he may, doubtless, be safely recommended to the
+confidence of the reader; but his occasional and particular positions
+were sometimes interested, sometimes negligent, and sometimes capricious.
+It is not without reason that Trapp, speaking of the praises which he
+bestows on Palamon and Arcite, says, "Novimus judicium Drydeni de poemate
+quodam Chauceri, pulchro sane illo, et admodum laudando, nimirum quod non
+modo vere epicum sit, sed Iliada etiam atque Aeneada aequet, imo superet.
+Sed novimus eodem tempore viri illius maximi non semper accuratissimas
+esse censuras, nec ad severissimam critices normam exactas: illo judice
+id plerumque optimum est, quod nunc prae manibus habet, et in quo nunc
+occupatur."
+
+He is, therefore, by no means constant to himself. His defence and
+desertion of dramatick rhyme is generally known. Spence, in his remarks
+on Pope's Odyssey, produces what he thinks an unconquerable quotation
+from Dryden's preface to the Aeneid, in favour of translating an epick
+poem into blank verse; but he forgets that when his author attempted the
+Iliad, some years afterwards, he departed from his own decision, and
+translated into rhyme.
+
+When he has any objection to obviate, or any license to defend, he is not
+very scrupulous about what he asserts, nor very cautious, if the present
+purpose be served, not to entangle himself in his own sophistries. But,
+when all arts are exhausted, like other hunted animals, he sometimes
+stands at bay; when he cannot disown the grossness of one of his plays,
+he declares that he knows not any law that prescribes morality to a
+comick poet.
+
+His remarks on ancient or modern writers are not always to be trusted.
+His parallel of the versification of Ovid with that of Claudian has been
+very justly censured by Sewel[120]. His comparison of the first line of
+Virgil with the first of Statius is not happier. Virgil, he says, is
+soft and gentle, and would have thought Statius mad, if he had heard him
+thundering out:
+
+  Quae superimposito moles geminata colosso.
+
+Statius, perhaps, heats himself, as he proceeds, to exaggerations
+somewhat hyperbolical; but undoubtedly Virgil would have been too hasty,
+if he had condemned him to straw for one sounding line. Dryden wanted an
+instance, and the first that occurred was imprest into the service.
+
+What he wishes to say, he says at hazard; he cited Gorbuduc, which he
+had never seen; gives a false account of Chapman's versification; and
+discovers, in the preface to his Fables, that he translated the first
+book of the Iliad without knowing what was in the second.
+
+It will be difficult to prove that Dryden ever made any great advances
+in literature. As, having distinguished himself at Westminster under the
+tuition of Busby, who advanced his scholars to a height of knowledge very
+rarely attained in grammar-schools, he resided afterwards at Cambridge,
+it is not to be supposed, that his skill in the ancient languages was
+deficient, compared with that of common students; but his scholastick
+acquisitions seem not proportionate to his opportunities and abilities.
+He could not, like Milton or Cowley, have made his name illustrious
+merely by his learning. He mentions but few books, and those such as lie
+in the beaten track of regular study; from which, if ever he departs, he
+is in danger of losing himself in unknown regions.
+
+In his Dialogue on the Drama, he pronounces, with great confidence, that
+the Latin tragedy of Medea is not Ovid's, because it is not sufficiently
+interesting and pathetick. He might have determined the question upon
+surer evidence; for it is quoted by Quintilian as the work of Seneca; and
+the only line which remains of Ovid's play, for one line is left us, is
+not there to be found. There was, therefore, no need of the gravity of
+conjecture, or the discussion of plot or sentiment, to find what was
+already known upon higher authority than such discussions can ever reach.
+
+His literature, though not always free from ostentation, will be commonly
+found either obvious, and made his own by the art of dressing it; or
+superficial, which, by what he gives, shows what he wanted; or erroneous,
+hastily collected, and negligently scattered.
+
+Yet it cannot be said that his genius is ever unprovided of matter, or
+that his fancy languishes in penury of ideas. His works abound with
+knowledge, and sparkle with illustrations. There is scarcely any science
+or faculty that does not supply him with occasional images and lucky
+similitudes; every page discovers a mind very widely acquainted both with
+art and nature, and in full possession of great stores of intellectual
+wealth. Of him that knows much, it is natural to suppose that he has read
+with diligence; yet I rather believe that the knowledge of Dryden was
+gleaned from accidental intelligence and various conversation, by a quick
+apprehension, a judicious selection, and a happy memory, a keen appetite
+of knowledge, and a powerful digestion; by vigilance that permitted
+nothing to pass without notice, and a habit of reflection that suffered
+nothing useful to be lost. A mind like Dryden's, always curious, always
+active, to which every understanding was proud to be associated, and of
+which every one solicited the regard, by an ambitious display of himself,
+had a more pleasant, perhaps a nearer way to knowledge than by the silent
+progress of solitary reading. I do not suppose that he despised books,
+or intentionally neglected them; but that he was carried out, by the
+impetuosity of his genius, to more vivid and speedy instructors; and
+that his studies were rather desultory and fortuitous than constant and
+systematical.
+
+It must be confessed, that he scarcely ever appears to want
+book-learning, but when he mentions books; and to him may be transferred
+the praise which he gives his master Charles:
+
+  His conversation, wit, and parts,
+  His knowledge in the noblest useful arts,
+  Were such, dead authors could not give,
+  But habitudes of those that live,
+  Who, lighting him, did greater lights receive:
+  He drained from all, and all they knew,
+  His apprehensions quick, his judgment true:
+  That the most learn'd with shame confess,
+  His knowledge more, his reading only less.
+
+Of all this, however, if the proof be demanded, I will not undertake to
+give it; the atoms of probability, of which my opinion has been formed,
+lie scattered over all his works; and by him who thinks the question
+worth his notice, his works must be perused with very close attention.
+
+Criticism, either didactick or defensive, occupies almost all his prose,
+except those pages which he has devoted to his patrons; but none of his
+prefaces were ever thought tedious. They have not the formality of a
+settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other.
+The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word
+seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing
+is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is
+little, is gay; what fe great, is splendid. He may be thought to mention
+himself too frequently; but, while he forces himself upon our esteem, we
+cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. Every thing is excused by the
+play of images, and the sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy,
+nothing is feeble; though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and
+though since his earlier works more than a century has passed, they have
+nothing yet uncouth or obsolete.
+
+He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of
+particular modes as may be easily noted. Dryden is always "another and
+the same;" he does not exhibit a second time the same elegancies in the
+same form, nor appears to have any art other than that of expressing
+with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His style could not easily be
+imitated, either seriously or ludicrously; for, being always equable and
+always varied, it has no prominent or discriminative characters. The
+beauty who is totally free from disproportion of parts and features,
+cannot be ridiculed by an overcharged resemblance.
+
+From his prose, however, Dryden derives only his accidental and secondary
+praise; the veneration with which his name is pronounced by every
+cultivator of English literature, is paid to him as he refined the
+language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English
+poetry.
+
+After about half a century of forced thoughts, and rugged metre, some
+advances towards nature and harmony had been already made by Waller and
+Denham; they had shown that long discourses in rhyme grew more pleasing
+when they were broken into couplets, and that verse consisted not only in
+the number but the arrangement of syllables.
+
+But though they did much, who can deny that they left much to do? Their
+works were not many, nor were their minds of very ample comprehension.
+More examples of more modes of composition were necessary for the
+establishment of regularity, and the introduction of propriety in word
+and thought.
+
+Every language of a learned nation necessarily divides itself into
+diction scholastick and popular, grave and familiar, elegant and gross:
+and from a nice distinction of these different parts arises a great part
+of the beauty of style. But if we except a few minds, the favourites of
+nature, to whom their own original rectitude was in the place of rules,
+this delicacy of selection was little known to our authors; our speech
+lay before them in a heap of confusion, and every man took for every
+purpose, what chance might offer him.
+
+There was, therefore, before the time of Dryden no poetical diction, no
+system of words at once refined from the grossness of domestick use, and
+free from the harshness of terms appropriated to particular arts. Words
+too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those
+sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily
+receive strong impressions, or delightful images; and words to which
+we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on
+themselves which they should transmit to things.
+
+Those happy combinations of words which distinguish poetry from prose had
+been rarely attempted; we had few elegancies or flowers of speech; the
+roses had not yet been plucked from the bramble; or different colours had
+not been joined to enliven one another.
+
+It may be doubted whether Waller and Denham could have overborne the
+prejudices which had long prevailed, fend which even then were sheltered
+by the protection of Cowley. The new versification, as it was called, may
+be considered as owing its establishment to Dryden; from whose time it is
+apparent that English poetry has had no tendency to relapse to its former
+savageness.
+
+The affluence and comprehension of our language is very illustriously
+displayed in our poetical translations of ancient writers; a work which
+the French seem to relinquish in despair, and which we were long unable
+to perform with dexterity. Ben Jonson thought it necessary to copy Horace
+almost word by word; Feltham, his contemporary and adversary, considers
+it as indispensably requisite in a translation to give line for line. It
+is said that Sandys, whom Dryden calls the best versifier of the
+last age, has struggled hard to comprise every book of his English
+Metamorphoses in the same number of verses with the original. Holyday had
+nothing in view but to show that he understood his author, with so little
+regard to the grandeur of his diction, or the volubility of his numbers,
+that his metres can hardly be called verses; they cannot be read without
+reluctance, nor will the labour always be rewarded by understanding
+them. Cowley saw that such copyers were a servile race; he asserted his
+liberty, and spread his wings so boldly that he left his authors. It was
+reserved for Dryden to fix the limits of poetical liberty, and give us
+just rules and examples of translation.
+
+When languages are formed upon different principles, it is impossible
+that the same modes of expression should always be elegant in both. While
+they run on together, the closest translation may be considered as the
+best; but when they divaricate, each must take its natural course. Where
+correspondence cannot be obtained, it is necessary to be content with
+something equivalent. "Translation, therefore," says Dryden, "is not so
+loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase."
+
+All polished languages have different styles; the concise, the diffuse,
+the lofty, and the humble. In the proper choice of style consists the
+resemblance which Dryden principally exacts from the translator. He is to
+exhibit his author's thoughts in such a dress of diction as the author
+would have given them, had his language been English; rugged magnificence
+is not to be softened; hyperbolical ostentation is not to be repressed;
+nor sententious affectation to have its point blunted. A translator is to
+be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.
+
+The reasonableness of these rules seems sufficient for their vindication;
+and the effects produced by observing them were so happy, that I know not
+whether they were ever opposed, but by sir Edward Sherburne, a man whose
+learning was greater than his powers of poetry, and who, being better
+qualified to give the meaning than the spirit of Seneca, has introduced
+his version of three tragedies by a defence of close translation. The
+authority of Horace, which the new translators cited in defence of their
+practice, he has, by a judicious explanation, taken fairly from them; but
+reason wants not Horace to support it.
+
+It seldom happens that all the necessary causes concur to any great
+effect: will is wanting to power, or power to will, or both are impeded
+by external obstructions. The exigencies in which Dryden was condemned
+to pass his life, are reasonably supposed to have blasted his genius,
+to have driven out his works in a state of immaturity, and to have
+intercepted the full-blown elegance, which longer growth would have
+supplied.
+
+Poverty, like other rigid powers, is sometimes too hastily accused. If
+the excellence of Dryden's works was lessened by his indigence, their
+number was increased; and I know not how it will be proved, that if he
+had written less he would have written better; or that, indeed, he would
+have undergone the toil of an author, if he had not been solicited by
+something more pressing than the love of praise.
+
+But, as is said by his Sebastian,
+
+  What had been is unknown; what is, appears.
+
+We know that Dryden's several productions were so many successive
+expedients for his support; his plays were, therefore, often borrowed;
+and his poems were almost all occasional.
+
+In an occasional performance no height of excellence can be expected
+from any mind, however fertile in itself, and however stored with
+acquisitions. He whose work is general and arbitrary has the choice of
+his matter, and takes that which his inclination and his studies have
+best qualified him to display and decorate. He is at liberty to delay his
+publication till he has satisfied his friends and himself, till he has
+reformed his first thoughts by subsequent examination, and polished away
+those faults which the precipitance of ardent composition is likely to
+leave behind it. Virgil is related to have poured out a great number of
+lines in the morning, and to have passed the day in reducing them to
+fewer.
+
+The occasional poet is circumscribed by the narrowness of his subject.
+Whatever can happen to man has happened so often, that little remains
+for fancy or invention. We have been all born; we have most of us been
+married; and so many have died before us, that our deaths can supply
+but few materials for a poet. In the fate of princes the publick has an
+interest; and what happens to them of good or evil, the poets have always
+considered as business for the muse. But after so many inauguratory
+gratulations, nuptial hymns, and funeral dirges, he must be highly
+favoured by nature, or by fortune, who says any thing not said before.
+Even war and conquest, however splendid, suggest no new images; the
+triumphal chariot of a victorious monarch can be decked only with those
+ornaments that have graced his predecessors.
+
+Not only matter but time is wanting. The poem must not be delayed till
+the occasion is forgotten. The lucky moments of animated imagination
+cannot be attended; elegancies and illustrations cannot be multiplied
+by gradual accumulation; the composition must be despatched, while
+conversation is yet busy, and admiration fresh; and haste is to be
+made, lest some other event should lay hold upon mankind. Occasional
+compositions may, however, secure to a writer the praise both of learning
+and facility; for they cannot be the effect of long study, and must be
+furnished immediately from the treasures of the mind.
+
+The death of Cromwell was the first publick event which called forth
+Dryden's poetical powers. His heroick stanzas have beauties and defects;
+the thoughts are vigorous, and, though not always proper, show a mind
+replete with ideas; the numbers are smooth; and the diction, if not
+altogether correct, is elegant and easy.
+
+Davenant was, perhaps, at this time, his favourite author, though
+Gondibert never appears to have been popular; and from Davenant he
+learned to please his ear with the stanza of four lines alternately
+rhymed.
+
+Dryden very early formed his versification; there are in this early
+production no traces of Donne's or Jonson's ruggedness; but he did not so
+soon free his mind from the ambition of forced conceits. In his verses on
+the restoration, he says of the king's exile:
+
+  He, toss'd by fate,
+  Could taste no sweets of youth's desir'd age,
+  But found his life too true a pilgrimage.
+
+And afterwards, to show how virtue and wisdom are increased by adversity,
+he makes this remark:
+
+  Well might the ancient poets then confer
+  On night the honour'd name of counsellor:
+  Since, struck with rays of prosperous fortune blind,
+  We light alone in dark afflictions find.
+
+His praise of Monk's dexterity comprises such a cluster of thoughts
+unallied to one another, as will not elsewhere be easily found:
+
+  'Twas Monk, whom providence design'd to loose
+  Those real bonds false freedom did impose.
+  The blessed saints that watch'd this turning scene
+  Did from their stars with joyful wonder lean,
+  To see small clues draw vastest weights along,
+  Not in their bulk, but in their order strong.
+
+  Thus pencils can by one slight touch restore
+  Smiles to that changed face that wept before.
+  With ease such fond chimeras we pursue.
+  As fancy frames for fancy to subdue;
+  But, when ourselves to action we betake,
+  It shuns the mint like gold that chymists make:
+  How hard was then his task, at once to be
+  What in the body natural we see!
+  Man's architect distinctly did ordain
+  The charge of muscles, nerves, and of the brain,
+  Through viewless conduits spirits to dispense
+  The springs of motion from the seat of sense:
+  'Twas not the hasty product of a day,
+  But the well-ripen'd fruit of wise delay.
+  He, like a patient angler, ere he strook,
+  Would let them play awhile upon the hook.
+  Our healthful food the stomach labours thus,
+  At first embracing what it straight doth crush.
+  Wise leeches will not vain receipts obtrude,
+  While growing pains pronounce the humours crude;
+  Deaf to complaints, they wait upon the ill,
+  Till some safe crisis authorize their skill.
+
+He had not yet learned, indeed he never learned well, to forbear the
+improper use of mythology. After having rewarded the heathen deities for
+their care,
+
+  With Alga who the sacred altar strows?
+  To all the seagods Charles an offering owes;
+  A bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain;
+  A ram to you, ye tempests of the main.
+
+He tells us, in the language of religion,
+
+  Pray'r storm'd the skies, and ravish'd Charles from thence,
+  As heav'n itself is took by violence.
+
+And afterwards mentions one of the most awful passages of sacred history.
+
+Other conceits there are, too curious to be quite omitted; as,
+
+  For by example most we sinn'd before,
+  And, glass-like, clearness mix'd with frailty bore.
+How far he was yet from thinking it necessary to found his sentiments on
+nature, appears from the extravagance of his fictions and hyperboles:
+
+  The winds, that never moderation knew,
+  Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew;
+  Or, out of breath with joy, could not enlarge
+  Their straiten'd lungs.
+
+  It is no longer motion cheats your view;
+  As you meet it, the land approacheth you;
+  The land returns, and in the white it wears
+  The marks of penitence and sorrow bears.
+
+I know not whether this fancy, however little be its value, was not
+borrowed. A French poet read to Malherbe some verses, in which he
+represents France as moving out of its place to receive the king: "Though
+this," said Malherbe, "was in my time, I do not remember it."
+
+His poem on the Coronation has a more even tenour of thought. Some lines
+deserve to be quoted:
+
+  You have already quench'd sedition's brand;
+  And zeal, that burnt it, only warms the land;
+  The jealous sects that durst not trust their cause
+  So far from their own will as to the laws,
+  Him for their umpire and their synod take,
+  And their appeal alone to Caesar make.
+
+Here may be found one particle of that old versification, of which, I
+believe, in all his works, there is not another:
+
+  Nor is it duty, or our hope alone,
+  Creates that joy, but full _fruition_.
+
+In the verses to the lord chancellor Clarendon, two years afterwards, is
+a conceit so hopeless at the first view, that few would have attempted
+it; and so successfully laboured, that though, at last, it gives the
+reader more perplexity than pleasure, and seems hardly worth the study
+that it costs, yet it must be valued as a proof of a mind at once subtile
+and comprehensive:
+
+  In open prospect nothing bounds our eye,
+  Until the earth seems join'd unto the sky;
+  So in this hemisphere our utmost view
+  Is only bounded by our king and you:
+  Our sight is limited where you are join'd,
+  And beyond that no farther heaven can find.
+  So well your virtues do with his agree,
+  That, though your orbs of different greatness be,
+  Yet both are for each other's use dispos'd,
+  His to enclose, and yours to be enclos'd.
+  Nor could another in your room have been,
+  Except an emptiness had come between.
+
+The comparison of the chancellor to the Indies leaves all resemblance too
+far behind it:
+
+  And as the Indies were not found before
+  Those rich perfumes which from the happy shore
+  The winds upon their balmy wings convey'd,
+  Whose guilty sweetness first their world betray'd;
+  So by your counsels we are brought to view
+  A new and undiscover'd world in you.
+
+There is another comparison, for there is little else in the poem, of
+which, though, perhaps, it cannot be explained into plain prosaick
+meaning, the mind perceives enough to be delighted, and readily forgives
+its obscurity, for its magnificence:
+
+  How strangely active are the arts of peace,
+  Whose restless motions less than wars do cease:
+  Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise;
+  And war more force, but not more pains employs.
+  Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,
+  That, like the earth's, it leaves our sense behind,
+  While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere,
+  That rapid motion does but rest appear.
+  For as in nature's swiftness, with the throng
+  Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,
+  All seems at rest to the deluded eye,
+  Mov'd by the soul of the same harmony:
+  So, carry'd on by your unwearied care,
+  We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.
+
+To this succeed four lines, which, perhaps, afford Dryden's first attempt
+at those penetrating remarks on human nature, for which he seems to have
+been peculiarly formed:
+
+  Let envy then those crimes within you see,
+  From which the happy never must be free;
+  Envy that does with misery reside,
+  The joy and the revenge of ruin'd pride.
+
+Into this poem he seems to have collected all his powers; and after this
+he did not often bring upon his anvil such stubborn and unmalleable
+thoughts; but, as a specimen of his abilities to unite the most
+unsociable matter, he has concluded with lines, of which I think not
+myself obliged to tell the meaning:
+
+  Yet unimpair'd with labours, or with time,
+  Your age but seems to a new youth to climb.
+  Thus heav'nly bodies do our time beget,
+  And measure change, but share no part of it:
+  And still it shall without a weight increase,
+  Like this new year, whose motions never cease.
+  For since the glorious course you have begun
+  Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun,
+  It must both weightless and immortal prove,
+  Because the centre of it is above.
+
+In the Annus Mirabilis he returned to the quatrain, which from that time
+he totally quitted, perhaps from experience of its inconvenience, for he
+complains of its difficulty. This is one of his greatest attempts. He
+had subjects equal to his abilities, a great naval war, and the fire
+of London. Battles have always been described in heroick poetry; but a
+seafight and artillery had yet something of novelty. New arts are long in
+the world before poets describe them; for they borrow every thing from
+their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature, or from
+life. Boileau was the first French writer that had ever hazarded in verse
+the mention of modern war, or the effects of gunpowder. We, who are less
+afraid of novelty, had already possession of those dreadful images:
+Waller had described a seafight. Milton had not yet transferred the
+invention of firearms to the rebellious angels.
+
+This poem is written with great diligence, yet does not fully answer the
+expectation raised by such subjects and such a writer. With the stanza
+of Davenant, he has sometimes his vein of parenthesis, and incidental
+disquisition, and stops his narrative for a wise remark.
+
+The general fault is, that he affords more sentiment than description,
+and does not so much impress scenes upon the fancy, as deduce
+consequences and make comparisons.
+
+The initial stanzas have rather too much resemblance to the first lines
+of Waller's poem on the War with Spain; perhaps such a beginning is
+natural, and could not be avoided without affectation. Both Waller and
+Dryden might take their hint from the poem on the civil war of Rome:
+"Orbem jam totum," &c.
+
+Of the king collecting his navy, he says,
+
+  It seems, as ev'ry ship their sov'reign knows,
+  His awful summons they so soon obey:
+  So hear the scaly herds when Proteus blows,
+  And so to pasture follow through the sea.
+
+It would not be hard to believe that Dryden had written the two first
+lines seriously, and that some wag had added the two latter in burlesque.
+Who would expect the lines that immediately follow, which are, indeed,
+perhaps indecently hyperbolical, but certainly in a mode totally
+different:
+
+  To see this fleet upon the ocean move,
+  Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies;
+  And heav'n, as if there wanted lights above,
+  For tapers made two glaring comets rise.
+
+The description of the attempt at Bergen will afford a very complete
+specimen of the descriptions in this poem:
+
+  And now approach'd their fleet from India, fraught
+  With all the riches of the rising sun:
+  And precious sand from southern climates brought,
+  The fatal regions where the war begun.
+
+  Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,
+  Their waylaid wealth to Norway's coast they bring:
+  Then first the north's cold bosom spices bore,
+  And winter brooded on the eastern spring.
+
+  By the rich scent we found our perfum'd prey,
+  Which, flank'd with rocks, did close in covert lie;
+  And round about their murd'ring cannon lay,
+  At once to threaten and invite the eye.
+
+  Fiercer than cannon, and than rocks more hard,
+  The English undertake th' unequal war;
+  Sev'n ships alone, by which the port is barr'd,
+  Besiege the Indies, and all Denmark dare.
+
+  These fight like husbands, but like lovers those;
+  These fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy;
+  And to such height their frantick passion grows,
+  That what both love, both hazard to destroy:
+
+  Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,
+  And now their odours arm'd against them fly:
+  Some preciously by shatter'd porc'lain fall,
+  And some by aromatick splinters die.
+
+  And though by tempests of the prize bereft,
+  In heav'n's inclemency some ease we find;
+  Our foes we vanquish'd by our valour left,
+  And only yielded to the seas and wind.
+
+In this manner is the sublime too often mingled with the ridiculous.
+The Dutch seek a shelter for a wealthy fleet: this, surely, needed no
+illustration; yet they must fly, not like all the rest of mankind on the
+same occasion, but "like hunted castors;" and they might with strict
+propriety be hunted; for we winded them by our noses--their _perfumes_
+betrayed them. The _husband_ and the _lover_, though of more dignity than
+the castor, are images too domestick to mingle properly with the horrours
+of war. The two quatrains that follow are worthy of the author. The
+account of the different sensations with which the two fleets retired,
+when the night parted them, is one of the fairest flowers of English
+poetry:
+
+  The night comes on, we eager to pursue
+  The combat still, and they asham'd to leave:
+  Till the last streaks of dying day withdrew,
+  And doubtful moonlight did our rage deceive.
+
+  In th' English fleet each ship resounds with joy,
+  And loud applause of their great leader's fame:
+  In fiery dreams the Dutch they still destroy,
+  And, slumb'ring, smile at the imagin'd flame.
+
+  Not so the Holland fleet, who, tir'd and done,
+  Stretch'd on their decks like weary oxen lie;
+  Faint sweats all down their mighty members run,
+  (Vast bulks, which little souls but ill supply.)
+
+  In dreams they fearful precipices tread,
+  Or, shipwreck'd, labour to some distant shore;
+  Or, in dark churches, walk among the dead:
+  They wake with horrour, and dare sleep no more.
+
+It is a general rule in poetry, that all appropriated terms of art should
+be sunk in general expressions, because poetry is to speak an universal
+language. This rule is still stronger with regard to arts not liberal, or
+confined to few, and, therefore, far removed from common knowledge; and
+of this kind, certainly, is technical navigation. Yet Dryden was of
+opinion, that a seafight ought to be described in the nautical language;
+"and certainly," says he, "as those, who in a logical disputation keep to
+general terms, would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical
+description would veil their ignorance."
+
+Let us then appeal to experience; for by experience, at last, we learn as
+well what will please as what will profit. In the battle, his terms seem
+to have been blown away; but he deals them liberally in the dock:
+
+  So here some pick out bullets from the side,
+  Some drive old _okum_ through each _seam_ and rift;
+  Their left hand does the _calking-iron_ guide,
+  The rattling _mallet_ with the right they lift.
+
+  With boiling pitch another near at hand
+  (From friendly Sweden brought) the _seams in-slops_:
+  Which, well-laid o'er, the salt sea-waves withstand,
+  And shake them from the rising beak in drops.
+
+  Some the _gall'd_ ropes with dauby _marling_ bind,
+  Or sear-cloth masts with strong _tarpawling_ coats;
+  To try new _shrouds_ one mounts into the wind,
+  And one below, their ease or stiffness notes.
+
+I suppose there is not one term which every reader does not wish
+away[121].
+
+His digression to the original and progress of navigation, with his
+prospect of the advancement which it shall receive from the Royal
+Society, then newly instituted, may be considered as an example seldom
+equalled of seasonable excursion and artful return.
+
+One line, however, leaves me discontented; he says, that, by the help of
+the philosophers,
+
+  Instructed ships shall sail to quick commerce,
+  By which remotest regions are allied.
+
+Which he is constrained to explain in a note "by a more exact measure of
+longitude." It had better become Dryden's learning and genius to have
+laboured science into poetry, and have shown, by explaining longitude,
+that verse did not refuse the ideas of philosophy.
+
+His description of the Fire is painted by resolute meditation, out of a
+mind better formed to reason than to feel. The conflagration of a city,
+with all its tumults of concomitant distress, is one of the most dreadful
+spectacles which this world can offer to human eyes; yet it seems to
+raise little emotion in the breast of the poet; he watches the flame
+coolly from street to street, with now a reflection, and now a simile,
+till at last he meets the king, for whom he makes a speech, rather
+tedious in a time so busy; and then follows again the progress of the
+fire.
+
+There are, however, in this part some passages that deserve attention; as
+in the beginning:
+
+  The diligence of trades and noiseful gain,
+  And luxury, more late, asleep were laid;
+  All was the night's, and in her silent reign
+  No sound the rest of nature did invade
+  In this deep quiet----
+
+The expression, "all was the night's," is taken from Seneca, who remarks
+on Virgil's line,
+
+  Omnia noctis erant, placida composta quiete,
+
+that he might have concluded better,
+
+  Omnia noctis erant.
+
+The following quatrain is vigorous and animated:
+
+  The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,
+  With hold fanatick spectres to rejoice;
+  About the fire into a dance they bend,
+  And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice.
+
+His prediction of the improvements which shall be made in the new city is
+elegant and poetical, and, with an event which poets cannot always boast,
+has been happily verified. The poem concludes with a simile that might
+have better been omitted.
+
+Dryden, when he wrote this poem, seems not yet fully to have formed his
+versification, or settled his system of propriety.
+
+From this time he addicted himself almost wholly to the stage, "to
+which," says he, "my genius never much inclined me," merely as the most
+profitable market for poetry. By writing tragedies in rhyme, he continued
+to improve his diction and his numbers. According to the opinion of
+Harte, who had studied his works with great attention, he settled his
+principles of versification in 1676, when he produced the play of Aureng
+Zebe; and, according to his own account of the short time in which he
+wrote Tyrannick Love, and the State of Innocence, he soon obtained the
+full effect of diligence, and added facility to exactness.
+
+Rhyme has been so long banished from the theatre, that we know not its
+effect upon the passions of an audience; but it has this convenience,
+that sentences stand more independent on each other, and striking
+passages are, therefore, easily selected and retained. Thus the
+description of night in the Indian Emperor, and the rise and fall of
+empire in the Conquest of Granada, are more frequently repeated than any
+lines in All for Love, or Don Sebastian.
+
+To search his plays for vigorous sallies and sententious elegancies, or
+to fix the dates of any little pieces which he wrote by chance, or by
+solicitation, were labour too tedious and minute.
+
+His dramatick labours did not so wholly absorb his thoughts, but that he
+promulgated the laws of translation in a preface to the English Epistles
+of Ovid; one of which he translated himself, and another in conjunction
+with the earl of Mulgrave.
+
+Absalom and Achitophel is a work so well known, that particular
+criticism is superfluous. If it be considered as a poem political and
+controversial, it will be found to comprise all the excellencies of which
+the subject is susceptible; acrimony of censure, elegance of praise,
+artful delineation of characters, variety and vigour of sentiment, happy
+turns of language, and pleasing harmony of numbers; and all these
+raised to such a height as can scarcely be found in any other English
+composition.
+
+It is not, however, without faults; some lines are inelegant or improper,
+and too many are irreligiously licentious. The original structure of the
+poem was defective; allegories drawn to great length will always break;
+Charles could not run continually parallel with David.
+
+The subject had likewise another inconvenience; it admitted little
+imagery or description; and a long poem of mere sentiments easily becomes
+tedious; though all the parts are forcible, and every line kindles new
+rapture, the reader, if not relieved by the interposition of something
+that sooths the fancy, grows weary of admiration, and defers the rest.
+
+As an approach to historical truth was necessary, the action and
+catastrophe were not in the poet's power; there is, therefore, an
+unpleasing disproportion between the beginning and the end. We are
+alarmed by a faction formed out of many sects various in their
+principles, but agreeing in their purpose of mischief, formidable for
+their numbers, and strong by their supports, while the king's friends are
+few and weak. The chiefs on either part are set forth to view; but when
+expectation is at the height, the king makes a speech, and
+
+  Henceforth a series of new times began.
+
+Who can forbear to think of an enchanted castle, with a wide moat and
+lofty battlements, walls of marble and gates of brass, which vanishes at
+once into air, when the destined knight blows his horn before it?
+
+In the second part, written by Tate, there is a long insertion, which,
+for poignancy of satire, exceeds any part of the former. Personal
+resentment, though no laudable motive to satire, can add great force to
+general principles. Self-love is a busy prompter.
+
+The Medal, written upon the same principles with Absalom and Achitophel,
+but upon a narrower plan, gives less pleasure, though it discovers equal
+abilities in the writer. The superstructure cannot extend beyond the
+foundation; a single character or incident cannot furnish as many ideas,
+as a series of events, or multiplicity of agents. This poem, therefore,
+since time has left it to itself, is not much read, nor, perhaps,
+generally understood; yet it abounds with touches both of humorous and
+serious satire. The picture of a man whose propensions to mischief are
+such, that his best actions are but inability of wickedness, is very
+skilfully delineated and strongly coloured:
+
+  Power was his aim; but, thrown from that pretence,
+  The wretch turn'd loyal in his own defence,
+  And malice reconcil'd him to his prince.
+  Him, in the anguish of his soul, he serv'd;
+  Rewarded faster still than he deserv'd:
+  Behold him now exalted into trust;
+  His counsels oft convenient, seldom just.
+  Ev'n in the most sincere advice he gave,
+  He had a grudging still to be a knave.
+  The frauds he learnt in his fanatick years,
+  Made him uneasy in his lawful gears:
+  At least as little honest as he could;
+  And, like white witches, mischievously good.
+  To this first bias, longingly he leans;
+  And rather would be great by wicked means.
+
+The Threnodia, which, by a term I am afraid neither authorized nor
+analogical, he calls Augustalis, is not among his happiest productions.
+Its first and obvious defect is the irregularity of its metre, to which
+the ears of that age, however, were accustomed. What is worse, it has
+neither tenderness nor dignity; it is neither magnificent nor pathetick.
+He seems to look round him for images which he cannot find, and what
+he has he distorts by endeavouring to enlarge them. "He is," he says,
+"petrified with grief;" but the marble sometimes relents, and trickles in
+a joke:
+
+  The sons of art all med'cines try'd,
+  And ev'ry noble remedy apply'd:
+
+  With emulation each essay'd
+  His utmost skill; _nay, more, they prayd;_
+  Was never losing game with better conduct play'd.
+
+He had been a little inclined to merriment before upon the prayers of
+a nation for their dying sovereign; nor was he serious enough to keep
+heathen fables out of his religion:
+
+  With him th' innumerable crowd of armed prayers
+  Knock'd at the gates of heav'n, and knock'd aloud;
+  _The first well-meaning rude petitioners_
+  All for his life assail'd the throne;
+  All would have brib'd the skies by off'ring up their own.
+  So great a throng not heav'n itself could bar;
+  'Twas almost borne by force, _as in the giants' war._
+  The pray'rs, at least, for his reprieve were heard:
+  His death, like Hezekiah's, was deferr'd.
+
+There is, throughout the composition, a desire of splendour without
+wealth. In the conclusion he seems too much pleased with the prospect of
+the new reign to have lamented his old master with much sincerity.
+
+He did not miscarry in this attempt for want of skill either in lyrick or
+elegiack poetry. His poem on the death of Mrs. Killigrew is, undoubtedly,
+the noblest ode that our language ever has produced. The first part flows
+with a torrent of enthusiasm: "Fervet immensusque ruit." All the stanzas,
+indeed, are not equal. An imperial crown cannot be one continued diamond;
+the gems must be held together by some less valuable matter.
+
+In his first ode for Cecilia's day, which is lost in the splendour of the
+second, there are passages which would have dignified any other poet. The
+first stanza is vigorous and elegant, though the word _diapason_ is too
+technical, and the rhymes are too remote from one another:
+
+  From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
+  This universal frame began:
+  When nature underneath a heap of jarring atoms lay,
+  And could not heave her head,
+  The tuneful voice was heard from high.
+  Arise, ye more than dead.
+
+  Then cold and hot, and moist and dry,
+  In order to their stations leap,
+  And musick's power obey.
+  From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
+  This universal frame began;
+  From harmony to harmony
+  Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
+  The diapason closing full in man.
+
+The conclusion is likewise striking; but it includes an image so awful in
+itself, that it can owe little to poetry; and I could wish the antithesis
+of _musick untuning_ had found some other place:
+
+  As from the power of sacred lays
+  The spheres began to move.
+  And sung the great creator's praise
+  To all the bless'd above:
+
+  So, when the last and dreadful hour
+  This crumbling pageant shall devour,
+  The trumpet shall be heard on high,
+  The dead shall live, the living die,
+  And musick shall untune the sky.
+
+Of his skill in elegy he has given a specimen in his Eleonora, of which
+the following lines discover their author:
+
+  Though all these rare endowments of the mind
+  Were in a narrow space of life confin'd,
+  The figure was with full perfection crown'd;
+  Though not so large an orb, as truly round:
+  As when in glory, through the publick place,
+  The spoils of conquer'd nations were to pass,
+  And but one day for triumph was allow'd,
+  The consul was constrain'd his pomp to crowd;
+  And so the swift procession hurry'd on,
+  That all, tho' not distinctly, might be shown;
+  So, in the straiten'd bounds of life confin'd,
+  She gave but glimpses of her glorious mind:
+  And multitudes of virtues pass'd along;
+  Each pressing foremost in the mighty throng,
+  Ambitious to be seen, and then make room
+  For greater multitudes that were to come.
+
+  Yet unemployed no minute slipp'd away;
+  Moments were precious in so short a stay.
+  The haste of heaven to have her was so great,
+  That some were single acts, though each complete;
+  And ev'ry act stood ready to repeat.
+
+This piece, however, is not without its faults; there is so much likeness
+in the initial comparison, that there is no illustration. As a king would
+be lamented, Eleonora was lamented:
+
+  As, when some great and gracious monarch dies,
+  Soft whispers, first, and mournful murmurs rise
+  Among the sad attendants; then the sound
+  Soon gathers voice, and spreads the news around,
+  Through town and country, till the dreadful blast
+  Is blown to distant colonies at last;
+  Who then, perhaps, were off'ring vows in vain,
+  For his long life, and for his happy reign:
+  So slowly, by degrees, unwilling fame
+  Did matchless Eleonora's fate proclaim,
+  Till publick as the loss the news became.
+
+This is little better than to say in praise of a shrub, that it is as
+green as a tree; or of a brook, that it waters a garden, as a river
+waters a country.
+
+Dryden confesses that he did not know the lady whom he celebrates: the
+praise being, therefore, inevitably general, fixes no impression upon the
+reader, nor excites any tendency to love, nor much desire of imitation.
+Knowledge of the subject is to the poet what durable materials are to the
+architect.
+
+The Religio Laici, which borrows its title from the Religio Medici of
+Browne, is almost the only work of Dryden which can be considered as a
+voluntary effusion; in this, therefore, it might be hoped, that the full
+effulgence of his genius would be found. But, unhappily, the subject
+is rather argumentative than poetical; he intended only a specimen of
+metrical disputation:
+
+  And this unpolish'd rugged verse I chose
+  As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.
+
+This, however, is a composition of great excellence in its kind, in which
+the familiar is very properly diversified with the solemn, and the grave
+with the humorous; in which metre has neither weakened the force, nor
+clouded the perspicuity of argument; nor will it be easy to find another
+example equally happy of this middle kind of writing, which, though
+prosaick in some parts, rises to high poetry in others, and neither
+towers to the skies, nor creeps along the ground.
+
+Of the same kind, or not far distant from it, is the Hind and Panther,
+the longest of all Dryden's original poems; an allegory intended to
+comprise and to decide the controversy between the Romanists and
+protestants. The scheme of the work is injudicious and incommodious; for
+what can be more absurd, than that one beast should counsel another to
+rest her faith upon a pope and council? He seems well enough skilled in
+the usual topicks of argument, endeavours to show the necessity of an
+infallible judge, and reproaches the reformers with want of unity; but
+is weak enough to ask, why, since we see without knowing how, we may not
+have an infallible judge without knowing where?
+
+The hind, at one time, is afraid to drink at the common brook, because
+she may be worried; but, walking home with the panther, talks by the way
+of the Nicene fathers, and at last declares herself to be the catholick
+church.
+
+This absurdity was very properly ridiculed in the City Mouse and Country
+Mouse of Montague and Prior; and, in the detection and censure of
+the incongruity of the fiction, chiefly consists the value of their
+performance, which, whatever reputation it might obtain by the help of
+temporary passions, seems, to readers almost a century distant, not very
+forcible or animated.
+
+Pope, whose judgment was, perhaps, a little bribed by the subject,
+used to mention this poem as the most correct specimen of Dryden's
+versification. It was, indeed, written when he had completely formed
+his manner, and may be supposed to exhibit, negligence excepted, his
+deliberate and ultimate scheme of metre. We may, therefore, reasonably
+infer, that he did not approve the perpetual uniformity which confines
+the sense to couplets, since he has broken his lines in the initial
+paragraph:
+
+  A milk-white hind, immortal and unchang'd.
+  Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang'd:
+  Without unspotted, innocent within,
+  She fear'd no danger, for she knew no sin.
+  Yet had she oft been chas'd with horns and hounds,
+  And Scythian shafts, and many winged wounds
+  Aim'd at her heart; was often forc'd to fly,
+  And doom'd to death, though fated not to die.
+
+These lines are lofty, elegant, and musical, notwithstanding the
+interruption of the pause, of which the effect is rather increase of
+pleasure by variety, than offence by ruggedness.
+
+To the first part it was his intention, he says, "to give the majestick
+turn of heroick poesy;" and, perhaps, he might have executed his design
+not unsuccessfully, had not an opportunity of satire, which he cannot
+forbear, fallen sometimes in his way. The character of a presbyterian,
+whose emblem is the wolf, is not very heroically majestick:
+
+  More haughty than the rest, the wolfish race
+  Appear with belly gaunt and famish'd face:
+  Never was so deform'd a beast of grace.
+  His ragged tail betwixt his legs he wears,
+  Close clapp'd for shame; but his rough crest he rears,
+  And pricks up his predestinating ears.
+
+His general character of the other sorts of beasts that never go to
+church, though sprightly and keen, has, however, not much of heroick
+poesy:
+
+  These are the chief; to number o'er the rest,
+  And stand like Adam naming ev'ry beast,
+  Were weary work; nor will the muse describe
+  A slimy-born, and sun-begotten tribe,
+
+  Who, far from steeples and their sacred sound,
+  In fields their sullen conventicles found.
+  These gross, half-animated lumps I leave;
+  Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive;
+  But, if they think at all, 'tis sure no higher
+  Than matter, put in motion, may aspire;
+  Souls that can scarce ferment their mass of clay,
+  So drossy, so divisible are they,
+  As would but serve pure bodies for allay:
+  Such souls as shards produce, such beetle things
+  As only buzz to heaven with evening wings;
+  Strike in the dark, offending but by chance;
+  Such are the blindfold blows of ignorance.
+  They know no being, and but hate a name;
+  To them the hind and panther are the same.
+
+One more instance, and that taken from the narrative part, where style
+was more in his choice, will show how steadily he kept his resolution of
+heroick dignity:
+
+  For when the herd, suffic'd, did late repair
+  To ferny heaths and to their forest lair,
+  She made a mannerly excuse to stay,
+  Proff'ring the hind to wait her half the way;
+  That, since the sky was clear, an hour of talk
+  Might help her to beguile the tedious walk.
+  With much good-will the motion was embrac'd,
+  To chat awhile on their adventures past:
+  Nor had the grateful hind so soon forgot
+  Her friend and fellow-suff'rer in the plot.
+  Yet, wond'ring how of late she grew estrang'd,
+  Her forehead cloudy and her count'nance chang'd,
+  She thought this hour th' occasion would present
+  To learn her secret cause of discontent,
+  Which well she hop'd might be with ease redress'd,
+  Consid'ring her a well-bred civil beast.
+  And more a gentlewoman than the rest.
+  After some common talk what rumours ran,
+  The lady of the spotted muff began.
+
+The second and third parts he professes to have reduced to diction more
+familiar and more suitable to dispute and conversation; the difference is
+not, however, very easily perceived; the first has familiar, and the two
+others have sonorous, lines. The original incongruity runs through the
+whole: the king is now Caesar, and now the Lion; and the name Pan is
+given to the supreme being.
+
+But when this constitutional absurdity is forgiven, the poem must be
+confessed to be written with great smoothness of metre, a wide extent of
+knowledge, and an abundant multiplicity of images; the controversy is
+embellished with pointed sentences, diversified by illustrations, and
+enlivened by sallies of invective. Some of the facts to which allusions
+are made are now become obscure, and, perhaps, there may be many
+satirical passages little understood.
+
+As it was by its nature a work of defiance, a composition which would
+naturally be examined with the utmost acrimony of criticism, it was
+probably laboured with uncommon attention; and there are, indeed, few
+negligencies in the subordinate parts. The original impropriety, and the
+subsequent unpopularity of the subject, added to the ridiculousness of
+its first elements, has sunk it into neglect; but it may be usefully
+studied, as an example of poetical ratiocination, in which the argument
+suffers little from the metre.
+
+In the poem on the Birth of the Prince of Wales, nothing is very
+remarkable but the exorbitant adulation, and that insensibility of
+the precipice on which the king was then standing, which the laureate
+apparently shared with the rest of the courtiers. A few months cured him
+of controversy, dismissed him from court, and made him again a playwright
+and translator.
+
+Of Juvenal there had been a translation by Stapylton, and another by
+Holiday; neither of them is very poetical. Stapylton is more smooth; and
+Holiday's is more esteemed for the learning of his notes. A new version
+was proposed to the poets of that time, and undertaken by them in
+conjunction. The main design was conducted by Dryden, whose reputation
+was such that no man was unwilling to serve the muses under him.
+
+The general character of this translation will be given when it is
+said to preserve the wit, but to want the dignity of the original. The
+peculiarity of Juvenal is a mixture of gaiety and stateliness, of pointed
+sentences and declamatory grandeur. His points have not been neglected;
+but his grandeur none of the band seemed to consider as necessary to be
+imitated, except Creech, who undertook the thirteenth satire. It is,
+therefore, perhaps, possible to give a better representation of that
+great satirist, even in those parts which Dryden himself has translated,
+some passages excepted, which will never be excelled.
+
+With Juvenal was published Persius, translated wholly by Dryden. This
+work, though like all the other productions of Dryden it may have shining
+parts, seems to have been written merely for wages, in an uniform
+mediocrity without any eager endeavour after excellence, or laborious
+effort of the mind.
+
+There wanders an opinion among the readers of poetry that one of
+these satires is an exercise of the school. Dryden says, that he once
+translated it at school; but not that he preserved or published the
+juvenile performance.
+
+Not long afterwards he undertook, perhaps, the most arduous work of its
+kind, a translation of Virgil, for which he had shown how well he was
+qualified, by his version of the Pollio, and two episodes, one of Nisus
+and Euryalus, the other of Mezentius and Lausus.
+
+In the comparison of Homer and Virgil, the discriminative excellence of
+Homer is elevation and comprehension of thought, and that of Virgil is
+grace and splendour of diction. The beauties of Homer are, therefore,
+difficult to be lost, and those of Virgil difficult to be retained. The
+massy trunk of sentiment is safe by its solidity, but the blossoms of
+elocution easily drop away. The author, having the choice of his own
+images, selects those which he can best adorn; the translator must, at
+all hazards, follow his original, and express thoughts which, perhaps,
+he would not have chosen. When to this primary difficulty is added the
+inconvenience of a language so much inferiour in harmony to the Latin, it
+cannot be expected that they who read the Georgicks and the Aeneid should
+be much delighted with any version.
+
+All these obstacles Dryden saw, and all these he determined to encounter.
+The expectation of his work was undoubtedly great; the nation considered
+its honour as interested in the event. One gave him the different
+editions of his author, and another helped him in the subordinate parts.
+The arguments of the several books were given him by Addison.
+
+The hopes of the publick were riot disappointed. He produced, says Pope,
+"the most noble and spirited translation that I know in any language." It
+certainly excelled whatever had appeared in English, and appears to have
+satisfied his friends, and, for the most part, to have silenced his
+enemies. Milbourne, indeed, a clergyman, attacked it; but his outrages
+seem to be the ebullitions of a mind agitated by stronger resentment than
+bad poetry can excite, and previously resolved not to be pleased.
+
+His criticism extends only to the Preface, Pastorals, and Georgicks; and,
+as he professes to give his antagonist an opportunity of reprisal, he has
+added his own version of the first and fourth Pastorals, and the first
+Georgick. The world has forgotten his book; but, since his attempt has
+given him a place in literary history, I will preserve a specimen of his
+criticism, by inserting his remarks on the invocation before the first
+Georgick, and of his poetry, by annexing his own version.
+
+Ver. 1.
+
+  "What makes a plenteous harvest, when to turn
+  The fruitful soil, and when to sow the corn.
+
+"It's _unlucky_, they say, _to stumble at the threshold_: but what has
+a _plenteous harvest_ to do here? Virgil would not pretend to prescribe
+_rules_ for _that_ which depends not on the _husbandman's_ care, but the
+_disposition of heaven_ altogether. Indeed, the _plenteous crop_ depends
+somewhat on the _good method of tillage_; and where the _land'_s
+ill-manur'd, the _corn_, without a miracle, can be but _indifferent_; but
+the _harvest_ may be _good_, which is its _properest_ epithet, tho' the
+_husbandman's skill_ were never so _indifferent_. The next _sentence_
+is _too literal_: and _when to plough_ had been _Virgil's_ meaning, and
+intelligible to every body; and _when to sow the corn_, is a needless
+_addition_.
+
+Ver. 3.
+
+  "The care of sheep, of oxen, and of kine,
+  And when to geld the lambs, and shear the swine,
+
+"would as well have fallen under the _cura boum, qui cultus habendo sit
+pecori_, as Mr. D.'s _deduction_ of particulars.
+
+  Ver. 5
+
+  "The birth and genius of the frugal bee
+  I sing, Maecenas, and I sing to thee.
+
+"But where did _experientia_ ever signify _birth andgenius_? or what
+ground was there for such a _figure_ in this place? How much more manly
+is Mr. Ogylby's version?
+
+  "What makes rich grounds, in what celestial signs
+  'Tis good to plough, and marry elms with vines:
+  What best fits cattle, what with sheep agrees,
+  And several arts improving frugal bees;
+  I sing, Maecenas.
+
+"Which four lines, though faulty enough, are yet much more to the purpose
+than Mr. D.'s six.
+
+Ver. 22.
+
+  "From fields and mountains to my song repair.
+
+"For _patrium linquens nemus, saltusque Lycaei_--Very well explained!
+
+Ver. 23, 24.
+
+  "Inventor Pallas, of the fatt'ning oil,
+  Thou founder of the plough, and ploughman's toil!
+
+"Written as if _these_ had been _Pallas's invention_. The _ploughman's
+toil's_ impertinent.
+
+Ver. 25.
+
+  "The shroud-like cypress----
+
+"Why _shroud-like_? Is a _cypress_ pulled up by the _roots_, which the
+_sculpture_ in the _last Eclogue_ fills _Silvanus's_ hand with, so very
+like a _shroud_? Or did not Mr. D. think of that kind of _cypress_ used
+often for _scarves and hatbands_, at funerals formerly, or for _widows'
+veils_, &c. ? If so, 'twas a _deep, good thought_.
+
+Ver. 26.
+
+  "That wear
+  The royal honours, and increase the year.
+
+"What's meant by _increasing the year_? Did the _gods_ or _goddesses_
+add more _months_, or _days_, or _hours_, to it? Or how can _arva tueri_
+signify to _wear rural honours_? Is this to _translate_, or _abuse_ an
+_author_? The next _couplet_ is borrowed from Ogylby, I suppose, because
+_less to the purpose_ than ordinary.
+
+Ver. 33.
+
+  "The patron of the world, and Rome's peculiar guard.
+
+"_Idle_, and none of Virgil's, no more than the sense of the _precedent
+couplet_; so again, _he interpolates Virgil_ with that and _the round
+circle of the year to guide powerful of blessings, which thou strew'st
+around_; a ridiculous _Latinism_, and an _impertinent addition_; indeed
+the whole _period_ is but one piece of _absurdity_ and _nonsense_, as
+those who lay it with the _original_ must find.
+
+Ver. 42, 43.
+
+  "And Neptune shall resign the fasces of the sea.
+
+"Was he _consul_ or _dictator_ there?
+
+  "And wat'ry virgins for thy bed shall strive.
+
+"Both absurd _interpolations_."
+
+Ver. 47, 48.
+
+  "Where in the void of heaven a place is free.
+
+  "_Ah, happy_ D----n, _were_ that place for _thee_!
+
+"But where is _that void_? Or, what does our _translator_ mean by it? He
+knows what Ovid says God did to prevent such a void in heaven; perhaps
+this was then forgotten: but Virgil talks more sensibly.
+
+Ver. 49.
+
+  "The scorpion ready to receive thy laws.
+
+"No, he would not then have _gotten out of his way_ so fast.
+
+Ver. 56.
+
+  "Though Proserpine affects her silent seat.
+
+"What made her then so _angry_ with _Ascalaphus_, for preventing her
+return? She was now mus'd to _Patience_ under the _determinations of
+Fate_, rather than _fond_ of her _residence_,
+
+Ver. 61, 62, 63.
+
+  "Pity the poet's and the ploughman's cares,
+  Interest thy greatness in our mean affairs,
+  And use thyself betimes to hear our prayers.
+
+"Which is such a wretched _perversion_ of Virgil's _noble thought_ as
+Vicars would have blushed at; but Mr. Ogylby makes us some amends, by his
+better lines:
+
+  "O, wheresoe'er thou art, from thence incline,
+  And grant assistance to my bold design!
+  Pity, with me, poor husbandmen's affairs,
+  And now, as if translated, hear our prayers.
+
+"This is _sense_, and _to the purpose_: the other, poor _mistaken
+stuff_."
+
+Such were the strictures of Milbourne, who found few abetters, and of
+whom it may be reasonably imagined, that many who favoured his design
+were ashamed of his insolence.
+
+When admiration had subsided, the translation was more coolly examined,
+and found, like all others, to be sometimes erroneous, and sometimes
+licentious. Those who could find faults, thought they could avoid them;
+and Dr. Brady attempted, in blank verse, a translation of the Aeneid,
+which, when dragged into the world, did not live long enough to cry,
+I have never seen it; but that such a version there is, or has been,
+perhaps some old catalogue informed me.
+
+With not much better success, Trapp, when his Tragedy and his Prelections
+had given him reputation, attempted another blank version of the Aeneid;
+to which, notwithstanding the slight regard with which it was treated, he
+had afterwards perseverance enough to add the Eclogues and Georgicks. His
+book may continue its existence as long as it is the clandestine refuge
+of schoolboys.
+
+Since the English ear has been accustomed to the mellifluence of Pope's
+numbers, and the diction of poetry has become more splendid, new attempts
+have been made to translate Virgil; and all his works have been attempted
+by men better qualified to contend with Dryden. I will not engage myself
+in an invidious comparison by opposing one passage to another; a work of
+which there would be no end, and which might be often offensive without
+use.
+
+It is not by comparing line with line, that the merit of great works is
+to be estimated, but by their general effects and ultimate result. It is
+easy to note a weak line, and write one more vigorous in its place; to
+find a happiness of expression in the original, and transplant it by
+force into the version: but what is given to the parts may be subducted
+from the whole, and the reader may be weary, though the critick may
+commend. Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by
+their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good
+in vain, which the reader throws away. He only is the master, who keeps
+the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness,
+and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion
+is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon
+departing day [122].
+
+By his proportion of this predomination I will consent that Dryden should
+be tried; of this, which, in opposition to reason, makes Ariosto the
+darling and the pride of Italy; of this, which, in defiance of criticism,
+continues Shakespeare the sovereign of the drama.
+
+His last work was his Fables, in which he gave us the first example of a
+mode of writing, which the Italians call _refaccimento_, a renovation
+of ancient writers, by modernizing their language. Thus the old poem
+of Boiardo has been new dressed by Domenichi and Berni. The works of
+Chaucer, upon which this kind of rejuvenescence has been bestowed by
+Dryden, require little criticism. The tale of the Cock seems hardly
+worth revival; and the story of Palamon and Arcite, containing an action
+unsuitable to the times in which it is placed, can hardly be suffered to
+pass without censure of the hyperbolical commendation which Dryden has
+given it in the general preface, and in a poetical dedication, a piece
+where his original fondness of remote conceits seems to have revived.
+
+Of the three pieces borrowed from Boccace, Sigismunda may be defended by
+the celebrity of the story. Theodore and Honoria, though it contains not
+much moral, yet afforded opportunities of striking description. And Cymon
+was formerly a tale of such reputation, that, at the revival of letters,
+it was translated into Latin by one of the Beroalds.
+
+Whatever subjects employed his pen, he was still improving our measures
+and embellishing our language.
+
+In this volume are interspersed some short original poems, which, with
+his prologues, epilogues, and songs, may be comprised in Congreve's
+remark, that even those, if he had written nothing else, would have
+entitled him to the praise of excellence in his kind.
+
+One composition must, however, be distinguished. The ode for St.
+Cecilia's Day, perhaps the last effort of his poetry, has been always
+considered as exhibiting the highest flight of fancy, and the exactest
+nicety of art. This is allowed to stand without a rival. If, indeed,
+there is any excellence beyond it, in some other of Dryden's works, that
+excellence must be found. Compared with the ode on Killigrew, it may be
+pronounced, perhaps, superiour in the whole; but without any single part
+equal to the first stanza of the other.
+
+It is said to have cost Dryden a fortnight's labour; but it does not want
+its negligences: some of the lines are without correspondent rhymes; a
+defect, which I never detected, but after an acquaintance of many years,
+and which the enthusiasm of the writer might hinder him from perceiving.
+
+His last stanza has less emotion than the former; but it is not less
+elegant in the diction. The conclusion is vitious; the musick of
+Timotheus, which "raised a mortal to the skies," had only a metaphorical
+power; that of Cecilia, which "drew an angel down," had a real effect:
+the crown, therefore, could not reasonably be divided.
+
+In a general survey of Dryden's labours, he appears to have a mind very
+comprehensive by nature, and much enriched with acquired knowledge. His
+compositions are the effects of a vigorous genius operating upon large
+materials.
+
+The power that predominated in his intellectual operations, was rather
+strong reason than quick sensibility. Upon all occasions that were
+presented, he studied rather than felt, and produced sentiments not
+such as nature enforces, but meditation supplies. With the simple and
+elemental passions, as they spring separate in the mind, he seems not
+much acquainted; and seldom describes them but as they are complicated
+by the various relations of society, and confused in the tumults and
+agitations of life.
+
+What he says of love may contribute to the explanation of his character:
+
+  Love various minds does variously inspire;
+  It stirs in gentle bosoms gentle fire,
+  Like that of incense on the altar laid;
+  But raging flames tempestuous souls invade:
+
+  A fire which ev'ry windy passion blows,
+  With pride it mounts, or with revenge it glows.
+
+Dryden's was not one of the "gentle bosoms:" love, as it subsists in
+itself, with no tendency but to the person loved, and wishing only for
+correspondent kindness; such love as shuts out all other interest; the
+love of the golden age, was too soft and subtile to put his faculties in
+motion. He hardly conceived it but in its turbulent effervescence with
+some other desires; when it was inflamed by rivalry, or obstructed by
+difficulties: when it invigorated ambition, or exasperated revenge.
+
+He is, therefore, with all his variety of excellence, not often
+pathetick; and had so little sensibility of the power of effusions purely
+natural, that he did not esteem them in others. Simplicity gave him no
+pleasure; and, for the first part of his life, he looked on Otway with
+contempt, though, at last, indeed very late, he confessed that in his
+play "there was nature, which is the chief beauty."
+
+We do not always know our own motives. I am not certain whether it was
+not rather the difficulty which he found in exhibiting the genuine
+operations of the heart, than a servile submission to an injudicious
+audience, that filled his plays with false magnificence. It was necessary
+to fix attention; and the mind can be captivated only by recollection,
+or by curiosity; by reviving natural sentiments, or impressing new
+appearances of things. Sentences were readier at his call than images; he
+could more easily fill the ear with some splendid novelty, than awaken
+those ideas that slumber in the heart.
+
+The favourite exercise of his mind was ratiocination; and, that argument
+might not be too soon at an end, he delighted to talk of liberty and
+necessity, destiny and contingence; these he discusses in the language of
+the school with so much profundity, that the terms which he uses are not
+always understood. It is, indeed, learning, but learning out of place.
+
+When once he had engaged himself in disputation, thoughts flowed in on
+either side: he was now no longer at a loss; he had always objections and
+solutions at command; "verbaque provisam rem"--give him matter for his
+verse, and he finds, without difficulty, verse for his matter.
+
+In comedy, for which he professes himself not naturally qualified, the
+mirth which he excites will, perhaps, not be found so much to arise from
+any original humour, or peculiarity of character nicely distinguished and
+diligently pursued, as from incidents and circumstances, artifices and
+surprises; from jests of action rather than of sentiment. What he had of
+humorous or passionate, he seems to have had not from nature, but from
+other poets; if not always as a plagiary, at least as an imitator.
+
+Next to argument, his delight was in wild and daring sallies of
+sentiment, in the irregular and eccentrick violence of wit. He delighted
+to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to
+mingle; to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss
+of unideal vacancy. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which
+he knew; as,
+
+  Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace,
+  Leave weeks and months behind thee in thy race.
+  Amamel flies
+  To guard thee from the demons of the air;
+  My flaming sword above them to display,
+  All keen, and ground upon the edge of day.
+
+And sometimes it issued in absurdities, of which, perhaps, he was not
+conscious:
+
+  Then we upon our orb's last verge shall go,
+  And see the ocean leaning on the sky;
+  From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
+  And on the lunar world securely pry.
+
+These lines have no meaning; but may we not say, in imitation of Cowley
+on another book,
+
+  'Tis so like _sense_ 'twill serve the turn as well?
+
+This endeavour after the grand and the new, produced sentiments either
+great or bulky, and many images either just or splendid:
+
+  I am as free as nature first made man,
+  Ere the base laws of servitude began,
+  When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
+
+  --'Tis but because the living death ne'er knew,
+  They fear to prove it, as a thing that's new:
+  Let me th' experiment before you try,
+  I'll show you first how easy 'tis to die.
+
+  --There with a forest of their darts he strove,
+  And stood like Capaneus defying Jove,
+  With his broad sword the boldest beating down,
+  While fate grew pale, lest he should win the town,
+  And turn'd the iron leaves of his dark book
+  To make new dooms, or mend what it mistook.
+
+  --I beg no pity for this mouldering clay;
+  For if you give it burial, there it takes
+  Possession of your earth;
+  If burnt, and scatter'd in the air, the winds
+  That strew my dust diffuse my royalty,
+  And spread me o'er your clime; for where one atom
+  Of mine shall light, know there Sebastian reigns.
+
+Of these quotations the two first may be allowed to be great, the two
+latter only tumid.
+
+Of such selection there is no end. I will add only a few more passages;
+of which the first, though it may, perhaps, not be quite clear in prose,
+is not too obscure for poetry, as the meaning that it has is noble[123]:
+
+  No, there is a necessity in fate,
+  Why still the brave bold man is fortunate;
+
+
+  He keeps his object ever full in sight;
+  And that assurance holds him firm and right;
+  True, 'tis a narrow way that leads to bliss,
+  But right before there is no precipice;
+  Fear makes men look aside, and so their footing miss.
+
+Of the images which the two following citations afford, the first is
+elegant, the second magnificent; whether either be just, let the reader
+judge:
+
+  What precious drops are these,
+  Which silently each other's track pursue,
+  Bright as young diamonds in their infant dew?
+
+  Resign your castle----
+
+  --Enter, brave sir; for, when you speak the word,
+  The gates shall open of their own accord;
+  The genius of the place its lord shall meet,
+  And bow its tow'ry forehead at your feet.
+
+These bursts of extravagance, Dryden calls the "Dalilahs" of the theatre;
+and owns that many noisy lines of Maximin and Almanzor call out for
+vengeance upon him: "but I knew," says he, "that they were bad enough to
+please, even when I wrote them." There is, surely, reason to suspect that
+he pleased himself, as well as his audience; and that these, like the
+harlots of other men, had his love, though not his approbation.
+
+He had, sometimes, faults of a less generous and splendid kind. He
+makes, like almost all other poets, very frequent use of mythology, and
+sometimes connects religion and fable too closely without distinction.
+
+He descends to display his knowledge with pedantick ostentation; as
+when, in translating Virgil, he says, "tack to the larboard,"--and "veer
+starboard;" and talks, in another work, of "virtue spooning before the
+wind."--His vanity now and then betrays his ignorance:
+
+  They nature's king through nature's opticks view'd;
+  Revers'd, they view'd him lessen'd to their eyes.
+
+He had heard of reversing a telescope, and unluckily reverses the object.
+He is, sometimes, unexpectedly mean. When he describes the supreme being
+as moved by prayer to stop the fire of London, what is his expression?
+
+  A hollow crystal pyramid he takes,
+  In firmamental waters dipp'd above,
+  Of this a broad _extinguisher_ he makes,
+  And _hoods_ the flames that to their quarry strove.
+
+When he describes the last day, and the decisive tribunal, he
+intermingles this image:
+
+  When rattling bones together fly,
+  From the four quarters of the sky.
+
+It was, indeed, never in his power to resist the temptation of a jest. In
+his elegy on Cromwell:
+
+  No sooner was the Frenchman's cause embrac'd,
+  Than the _light monsieur_ the _grave don_ outweigh'd;
+  His fortune turn'd the scale----
+
+He had a vanity, unworthy of his abilities, to show, as may be suspected,
+the rank of the company with whom he lived, by the use of French
+words, which had then crept into conversation; such as _fraicheur_ for
+_coolness, fougue_ for _turbulence_, and a few more, none of which the
+language has incorporated or retained. They continue only where they
+stood first, perpetual warnings to future innovators.
+
+These are his faults of affectation; his faults of negligence are beyond
+recital. Such is the unevenness of his compositions, that ten lines are
+seldom found together without something of which the reader is ashamed.
+Dryden was no rigid judge of his own pages; he seldom struggled after
+supreme excellence, but snatched in haste what was within his reach; and
+when he could content others, was himself contented. He did not keep
+present to his mind an idea of pure perfection; nor compare his works,
+such as they were, with what they might be made. He knew to whom he
+should be opposed. He had more musick than Waller, more vigour than
+Donham, and more nature than Cowley; and from his contemporaries he was
+in no danger. Standing, therefore, in the highest place, he had no care
+to rise by contending with himself; but while there was no name above his
+own, was willing to enjoy fame on the easiest terms.
+
+He was no lover of labour. What he thought sufficient, he did not stop
+to make better; and allowed himself to leave many parts unfinished, in
+confidence that the good lines would overbalance the bad. What he had
+once written, he dismissed from his thoughts; and, I believe, there is no
+example to be found of any correction or improvement made by him after
+publication. The hastiness of his productions might be the effect of
+necessity; but his subsequent neglect could hardly have any other cause
+than impatience of study.
+
+What can be said of his versification, will be little more than a
+dilatation of the praise given it by Pope:
+
+  Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
+  The varying verse, the full resounding line,
+  The long majestick march, and energy divine.
+
+Some improvements had been already made in English numbers; but the full
+force of our language was not yet felt; the verse that was smooth was
+commonly feeble. If Cowley had sometimes a finished line, he had it by
+chance. Dryden knew how to choose the flowing and the sonorous words; to
+vary the pauses, and adjust the accents; to diversify the cadence, and
+yet preserve the smoothness of his metre.
+
+Of triplets and alexandrines, though he did not introduce the use, he
+established it. The triplet has long subsisted among us. Dryden seems not
+to have traced it higher than to Chapman's Homer; but it is to be found
+in Phaer's Virgil, written in the reign of Mary; and in Hall's Satires,
+published five years before the death of Elizabeth.
+
+The alexandrine was, I believe, first used by Spenser, for the sake
+of closing his stanza with a fuller sound. We had a longer measure of
+fourteen syllables, into which the Aeneid was translated by Phaer, and
+other works of the ancients by other writers; of which Chapman's Iliad
+was, I believe, the last.
+
+The two first lines of Phaer's third Aeneid will exemplify this measure:
+
+  When Asia's state was overthrown, and Priam's kingdom stout,
+  All guiltless, by the power of gods above was rooted out.
+
+As these lines had their break, or caesura, always at the eighth syllable,
+it was thought, in time, commodious to divide them: and quatrains of
+lines, alternately, consisting of eight and six syllables, make the most
+soft and pleasing of our lyrick measures; as,
+
+  Relentless time, destroying pow'r,
+  Which stone and brass obey,
+  Who giv'st to ev'ry flying hour
+  To work some new decay.
+
+In the alexandrine, when its power was once felt, some poems, as
+Drayton's Polyolbion, were wholly written; and sometimes the measures of
+twelve and fourteen syllables were interchanged with one another. Cowley
+was the first that inserted the alexandrine at pleasure among the heroick
+lines of ten syllables, and from him Dryden professes to have adopted
+it[124].
+
+The triplet and alexandrine are not universally approved. Swift always
+censured them, and wrote some lines to ridicule them. In examining
+their propriety, it is to be considered that the essence of verse is
+regularity, and its ornament is variety. To write verse, is to dispose
+syllables and sounds harmonically by some known and settled rule; a rule,
+however, lax enough to substitute similitude for identity, to admit
+change without breach of order, and to relieve the ear without
+disappointing it. Thus a Latin hexameter is formed from dactyls and
+spondees, differently combined; the English heroick admits of acute or
+grave syllables, variously disposed. The Latin never deviates into seven
+feet, or exceeds the number of seventeen syllables; but the English
+alexandrine breaks the lawful bounds, and surprises the reader with two
+syllables more than he expected.
+
+The effect of the triplet is the same: the ear has been accustomed to
+expect a new rhyme in every couplet; but is on a sudden surprised with
+three rhymes together, to which the reader could not accommodate his
+voice, did he not obtain notice of the change from the braces of the
+margins. Surely there is something unskilful in the necessity of such
+mechanical direction.
+
+Considering the metrical art simply as a science, and, consequently,
+excluding all casualty, we must allow that triplets and alexandrines,
+inserted by caprice, are interruptions of that constancy to which science
+aspires. And though the variety which they produce may very justly be
+desired, yet, to make our poetry exact, there ought to be some stated
+mode of admitting them.
+
+But till some such regulation can be formed, I wish them still to be
+retained in their present state. They are sometimes grateful to the
+reader, and sometimes convenient to the poet. Fenton was of opinion, that
+Dryden was too liberal, and Pope too sparing, in their use.
+
+The rhymes of Dryden are commonly just, and he valued himself for his
+readiness in finding them; but he is sometimes open to objection.
+
+It is the common practice of our poets to end the second line with a weak
+or grave syllable:
+
+  Together o'er the Alps methinks we fly,
+  Fill'd with ideas of fair Italy.
+
+Dryden sometimes puts the weak rhyme in the first:
+
+  Laugh all the powers that favour _tyranny_,
+  And all the standing army of the sky.
+
+Sometimes he concludes a period or paragraph with the first line of a
+couplet, which, though the French seem to do it without irregularity,
+always displeases in English poetry.
+
+The alexandrine, though much his favourite, is not always very diligently
+fabricated by him. It invariably requires a break at the sixth syllable;
+a rule which the modern French poets never violate, but which Dryden
+sometimes neglected:
+
+  And with paternal thunder vindicates his throne.
+
+Of Dryden's works it was said by Pope, that he "could select from them
+better specimens of every mode of poetry than any other English writer
+could supply." Perhaps no nation ever produced a writer that enriched
+his language with such variety of models. To him we owe the improvement,
+perhaps the completion, of our metre, the refinement of our language, and
+much of the correctness of our sentiments. By him we are taught "sapere
+et fari," to think naturally and express forcibly. Though Davies has
+reasoned in rhyme before him, it may be, perhaps, maintained that he was
+the first who joined argument with poetry. He showed us the true bounds
+of a translator's liberty. What was said of Rome, adorned by Augustus,
+may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry, embellished by
+Dryden, "lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit." He found it brick, and
+he left it marble.
+
+The invocation before the Georgicks is here inserted from Mr. Milbourne's
+version, that, according to his own proposal, his verses may be compared
+with those which he censures:
+
+  What makes the richest _tilth_, beneath what signs
+  To _plough_, and when to match your _elms and vines_;
+
+  What care with _flocks_, and what with _herds_ agrees,
+  And all the management of frugal _bees_;
+  I sing, Maecenas! Ye immensely clear,
+  Vast orbs of light, which guide the rolling year;
+  Bacchus, and mother Ceres, if by you
+  We fatt'ning _corn_ for hungry _mast_ pursue,
+  If, taught by you, we first the _cluster_ prest,
+  And _thin cold streams_ with _sprightly juice_ refresht;
+  Ye _fawns_, the present _numens_ of the field,
+  _Wood nymphs_ and _fawns_, your kind assistance yield;
+  Your gifts I sing! And thou, at whose fear'd stroke
+  From rending earth the fiery _courser_ broke,
+  Great Neptune, O assist my artful song!
+  And thou to whom the woods and groves belong,
+  Whose snowy heifers on her flow'ry plains
+  In mighty herds the Caean isle maintains!
+  Pan, happy shepherd, if thy cares divine
+  E'er to improve thy Maenalas incline,
+  Leave thy _Lycaean wood_ and _native grove_,
+  And with thy lucky smiles our work approve!
+  Be Pallas too, sweet oil's inventor, kind;
+  And he who first the crooked _plough_ design'd!
+  Sylvanus, god of all the woods, appear,
+  Whose hands a new-drawn tender _cypress_ bear!
+  Ye _gods_ and _goddesses_, who e'er with love
+  Would guard our pastures and our fields improve!
+  You, who new plants from unknown lands supply,
+  And with condensing clouds obscure the sky,
+  And drop 'em softly thence in fruitful show'rs;
+  Assist my enterprise, ye gentler pow'rs!
+
+  And thou, great Caesar! though we know not yet
+  Among what gods thou'lt fix thy lofty seat;
+  Whether thou'lt be the kind _tutelar_ god
+  Of thy own Rome; or with thy awful nod
+  Guide the vast world, while thy great hand shall bear
+  The fruits and seasons of the turning year,
+  And thy bright brows thy mother's myrtles wear;
+  Whether thou'lt all the boundless ocean sway,
+  And seamen only to thyself shall pray,
+  Thule, the farthest island, kneel to thee,
+  And, that thou may'st her son by marriage be,
+
+  Tethys will for the happy purchase yield
+  To make a _dowry_ of her wat'ry field;
+  Whether thou'lt add to heaven a _brighter sign_,
+  And o'er the _summer months_ serenely shine;
+  Where between Cancer and Erigone,
+  There yet remains a spacious _room_ for thee;
+  Where the hot _Scorpion_ too his arms declines,
+  And more to thee than half his _arch_ resigns;
+  Whate'er thou'lt be; for sure the realms below
+  No just pretence to thy command can show:
+  No such ambition sways thy vast desires,
+  Though Greece her own _Elysian fields_ admires.
+  And now, at last, contented Proserpine
+  Can all her mother's earnest pray'rs decline.
+  Whate'er thou'lt be, O guide our gentle course;
+  And with thy smiles our bold attempts enforce;
+  With me th' unknowing _rustics_' wants relieve,
+  And, though on earth, our sacred vows receive!
+
+Mr. Dryden, having received from Rymer his Remarks on the Tragedies of
+the last Age, wrote observations on the blank leaves; which, having been
+in the possession of Mr. Garrick, are, by his favour, communicated to the
+publick, that no particle of Dryden may be lost:
+
+"That we may the less wonder why pity and terrour are not now the only
+springs on which our tragedies move, and that Shakespeare may be more
+excused, Rapin confesses that the French tragedies, now all run on the
+_tendre_; and gives the reason, because love is the passion which most
+predominates in our souls, and that, therefore, the passions represented
+become insipid, unless they are conformable to the thoughts of the
+audience. But it is to be concluded, that this passion works not now
+amongst the French so strongly as the other two did amongst the ancients.
+Amongst us, who have a stronger genius for writing, the operations from
+the writing are much stronger; for the raising of Shakespeare's passions
+is more from the excellency of the words and thoughts, than the justness
+of the occasion; and if he has been able to pick single occasions, he
+has never founded the whole reasonably: yet, by the genius of poetry in
+writing, he has succeeded.
+
+"Rapin attributes more to the _dictio_, that is, to the words and
+discourse of a tragedy, than Aristotle has done, who places them in the
+last rank of beauties; perhaps, only last in order, because they are the
+last product of the design, of the disposition or connexion of its
+parts; of the characters, of the manners of those characters, and of the
+thoughts proceeding from those manners. Rapin's words are remarkable:
+'Tis not the admirable intrigue, the surprising events, and extraordinary
+incidents, that make the beauty of a tragedy; 'tis the discourses, when
+they are natural and passionate: so are Shakespeare's.
+
+"The parts of a poem, tragick or heroick, are,
+
+"1. The fable itself.
+
+"2. The order or manner of its contrivance, in relation of the parts to
+the whole.
+
+"3. The manners, or decency, of the characters, in speaking or acting
+what is proper for them, and proper to be shown by the poet.
+
+"4. The thoughts which express the manners.
+
+"5. The words which express those thoughts.
+
+"In the last of these Homer excels Virgil; Virgil all other ancient
+poets; and Shakespeare all modern poets.
+
+"For the second of these, the order: the meaning is, that a fable ought
+to have a beginning, middle, and an end, all just and natural; so that
+that part, e.g. which is the middle, could not naturally be the beginning
+or end, and so of the rest: all depend on one another, like the links of
+a curious chain. If terrour and pity are only to be raised, certainly
+this author follows Aristotle's rules, and Sophocles' and Euripides'
+example: but joy may be raised too, and that doubly, either by seeing
+a wicked man punished, or a good man at last fortunate; or, perhaps,
+indignation, to see wickedness prosperous, and goodness depressed: both
+these may be profitable to the end of tragedy, reformation of manners;
+but the last improperly, only as it begets pity in the audience: though
+Aristotle, I confess, places tragedies of this kind in the second form.
+
+"He who undertakes to answer this excellent critique of Mr. Rymer, in
+behalf of our English poets against the Greek, ought to do it in this
+manner: either by yielding to him the greatest part of what he contends
+for, which consists in this, that the 'mithos', i. e. the design
+and conduct of it, is more conducing in the Greeks to those ends of
+tragedy, which Aristotle and he propose, namely, to cause terrour and
+pity; yet the granting this does not set the Greeks above the English
+poets.
+
+"But the answerer ought to prove two things: first, that the fable is not
+the greatest masterpiece of a tragedy, though it be the foundation of it.
+
+"Secondly, that other ends, as suitable to the nature of tragedy, may be
+found in the English, which were not in the Greek.
+
+"Aristotle places the fable first; not 'quoad dignitatem, sed quoad
+fundamentum:' for a fable, never so movingly contrived to those ends of
+his, pity and terrour, will operate nothing on our affections, except the
+characters, manners, thoughts, and words, are suitable.
+
+"So that it remains for Mr. Rymer to prove, that in all those, or the
+greatest part of them, we are inferiour to Sophocles and Euripides: and
+this he has offered at, in some measure; but, I think, a little partially
+to the ancients.
+
+"For the fable itself, 'tis in the English more adorned with episodes,
+and larger than in the Greek poets; consequently more diverting. For, if
+the action be but one, and that plain, without any counterturn of design
+or episode, i.e. underplot, how can it be so pleasing as the English,
+which have both underplot and a turned design, which keeps the audience
+in expectation of the catastrophe? whereas in the Greek poets we see
+through the whole design at first.
+
+"For the characters, they are neither so many nor so various in Sophocles
+and Euripides, as in Shakespeare and Fletcher; only they are more adapted
+to those ends of tragedy which Aristotle commends to us, pity and
+terrour.
+
+"The manners flow from the characters, and, consequently, must partake of
+their advantages and disadvantages.
+
+"The thoughts and words, which are the fourth and fifth beauties of
+tragedy, are certainly more noble and more poetical in the English than
+in the Greek, which must be proved by comparing them somewhat more
+equitably than Mr. Rymer has done.
+
+"After all, we need not yield, that the English way is less conducing to
+move pity and terrour, because they often show virtue oppressed and vice
+punished; where they do not both, or either, they are not to be defended.
+
+"And if we should grant that the Greeks performed this better, perhaps it
+may admit of dispute, whether pity and terrour are either the prime, or,
+at least, the only ends of tragedy.
+
+"'Tis not enough that Aristotle has said so; for Aristotle drew his
+models of tragedy from Sophocles and Euripides; and, if he had seen ours,
+might have changed his mind. And chiefly we have to say (what I hinted on
+pity and terrour, in the last paragraph save one,) that the punishment of
+vice and reward of virtue are the most adequate ends of tragedy, because
+most conducing to good example of life. Now, pity is not so easily raised
+for a criminal (and the ancient tragedy always represents its chief
+person such) as it is for an innocent man; and the suffering of innocence
+and punishment of the offender is of the nature of English tragedy:
+contrarily, in the Greek, innocence is unhappy often, and the offender
+escapes. Then we are not touched with the sufferings of any sort of men
+so much as of lovers; and this was almost unknown to the ancients; so
+that they neither administered poetical justice, of which Mr. Rymer
+boasts, so well as we; neither knew they the best commonplace of pity,
+which is love.
+
+"He, therefore, unjustly blames us for not building on what the ancients
+left us; for it seems, upon consideration of the premises, that we have
+wholly finished what they began.
+
+"My judgment on this piece is this: that it is extremely learned, but
+that the author of it is better read in the Greek than in the English
+poets; that all writers ought to study this critique, as the best account
+I have ever seen of the ancients; that the model of tragedy he has here
+given is excellent, and extremely correct; but that it is not the only
+model of all tragedy, because it is too much circumscribed in plot,
+characters, &c.; and, lastly, that we may be taught here justly to admire
+and imitate the ancients, without giving them the preference with this
+author, in prejudice to our own country.
+
+"Want of method in this excellent treatise makes the thoughts of the
+author sometimes obscure.
+
+"His meaning, that pity and terrour are to be moved, is, that they are
+to be moved, as the means conducing to the ends of tragedy, which are
+pleasure and instruction.
+
+"And these two ends may be thus distinguished. The chief end of the poet
+is to please; for his immediate reputation depends on it.
+
+"The great end of the poem is to instruct, which is performed by making
+pleasure the vehicle of that instruction; for poesy is an art, and all
+arts are made to profit. _Rapin_.
+
+"The pity, which the poet is to labour for, is for the criminal, not for
+those or him whom he has murdered, or who have been the occasion of the
+tragedy. The terrour is likewise in the punishment of the same criminal;
+who, if he be represented too great an offender, will not be pitied: if
+altogether innocent, his punishment will be unjust.
+
+"Another obscurity is, where he says, Sophocles perfected tragedy by
+introducing the third actor; that is, he meant, three kinds of action;
+one company singing, or speaking; another playing on the musick; a third
+dancing.
+
+"To make a true judgment in this competition betwixt the Greek poets and
+the English, in tragedy:
+
+"Consider, first, how Aristotle has defined a tragedy. Secondly, what he
+assigns the end of it to be. Thirdly, what he thinks the beauties of it.
+Fourthly, the means to attain the end proposed.
+
+"Compare the Greek and English tragick poets justly, and without
+partiality, according to those rules.
+
+"Then, secondly, consider whether Aristotle has made a just definition of
+tragedy; of its parts, of its ends, and of its beauties; and whether he,
+having not seen any others but those of Sophocles, Euripides, &c. had
+or truly could determine what all the excellencies of tragedy are, and
+wherein they consist.
+
+"Next, show in what ancient tragedy was deficient: for example, in the
+narrowness of its plots, and fewness of persons; and try whether that
+be not a fault in the Greek poets; and whether their excellency was so
+great, when the variety was visibly so little; or whether what they did
+was not very easy to do.
+
+"Then make a judgment on what the English have added to their beauties:
+as, for example, not only more plot, but also new passions; as, namely,
+that of love, scarcely touched on by the ancients, except in this one
+example of Phaedra, cited by Mr. Rymer; and in that how short they were
+of Fletcher!
+
+"Prove also that love, being an heroick passion, is fit for tragedy,
+which cannot be denied, because of the example alleged of Phaedra; and
+how far Shakespeare has outdone them in friendship, &c.
+
+"To return to the beginning of this inquiry; consider if pity and terrour
+be enough for tragedy to move: and I believe, upon a true definition of
+tragedy, it will be found that its work extends farther, and that it is
+to reform manners, by a delightful representation of human life in great
+persons, by way of dialogue. If this be true, then not only pity and
+terrour are to be moved, as the only means to bring us to virtue, but
+generally love to virtue, and hatred to vice; by showing the rewards of
+one, and punishments of the other; at least, by rendering virtue always
+amiable, though it be shown unfortunate; and vice detestable, though it
+be shown triumphant.
+
+"If, then, the encouragement of virtue and discouragement of vice be the
+proper ends of poetry in tragedy, pity and terrour, though good means,
+are not the only. For all the passions, in their turns, are to be set
+in a ferment: as joy, anger, love, fear, are to be used as the poet's
+commonplaces; and a general concernment for the principal actors is to be
+raised, by making them appear such in their characters, their words, and
+actions, as will interest the audience in their fortunes.
+
+"And if, after all, in a larger sense, pity comprehends this concernment
+for the good, and terrour includes detestation for the bad, then let us
+consider whether the English have not answered this end of tragedy as
+well as the ancients, or perhaps better.
+
+"And here Mr. Rymer's objections against these plays are to be
+impartially weighed, that we may see whether they are of weight enough to
+turn the balance against our countrymen.
+
+"'Tis evident those plays, which he arraigns, have moved both those
+passions in a high degree upon the stage.
+
+"To give the glory of this away from the poet, and to place it upon the
+actors, seems unjust.
+
+"One reason is, because whatever actors they have found, the event has
+been the same; that is, the same passions have been always moved:
+which shows, that there is something of force and merit in the plays
+themselves, conducing to the design of raising these two passions: and
+suppose them ever to have been excellently acted, yet action only adds
+grace, vigour, and more life, upon the stage; but cannot give it wholly
+where it is not first. But, secondly, I dare appeal to those who have
+never seen them acted, if they have not found these two passions moved
+within them: and if the general voice will carry it, Mr. Rymer's
+prejudice will take off his single testimony.
+
+"This, being matter of fact, is reasonably to be established by this
+appeal; as, if one man says it is night, when the rest of the world
+conclude it to be day, there needs no farther argument against him, that
+it is so.
+
+"If he urge, that the general taste is depraved, his arguments to prove
+this can, at best, but evince that our poets took not the best way to
+raise those passions; but experience proves against him, that those
+means, which they have used, have been successful, and have produced
+them.
+
+"And one reason of that success is, in my opinion, this: that Shakespeare
+and Fletcher have written to the genius of the age and nation in which
+they lived; for though nature, as he objects, is the same in all places,
+and reason too the same; yet the climate, the age, the disposition of the
+people, to whom a poet writes, may be so different, that what pleased the
+Greeks would not satisfy an English audience.
+
+"And if they proceeded upon a foundation of truer reason to please the
+Athenians, than Shakespeare and Fletcher to please the English, it only
+shows that the Athenians were a more judicious people; but the poet's
+business is certainly to please the audience.
+
+"Whether our English audience have been pleased, hitherto, with acorns,
+as he calls it, or with bread, is the next question; that is, whether the
+means which Shakespeare and Fletcher have used, in their plays, to raise
+those passions before named, be better applied to the ends by the Greek
+poets than by them. And, perhaps, we shall not grant him this wholly: let
+it be granted, that a writer is not to run down with the stream, or to
+please the people by their usual methods, but rather to reform their
+judgments, it still remains to prove that our theatre needs this total
+reformation.
+
+"The faults, which he has found in their designs, are rather wittily
+aggravated in many places than reasonably urged; and as much may be
+returned on the Greeks, by one who were as witty as himself.
+
+"They destroy not, if they are granted, the foundation of the fabrick:
+only take away from the beauty of the symmetry: for example, the faults
+in the character of the king, in King and No King, are not, as he makes
+them, such as render him detestable, but only imperfections which
+accompany human nature, and are, for the most part, excused by the
+violence of his love; so that they destroy not our pity or concernment
+for him: this answer may be applied to most of his objections of that
+kind.
+
+"And Rollo committing many murders, when he is answerable but for one,
+is too severely arraigned by him; for, it adds to our horrour and
+detestation of the criminal; and poetick justice is not neglected
+neither; for we stab him in our minds for every offence which he commits;
+and the point, which the poet is to gain on the audience, is not so much
+in the death of an offender as the raising an horrour of his crimes.
+
+"That the criminal should neither be wholly guilty, nor wholly innocent,
+but so participating of both as to move both pity and terrour, is
+certainly a good rule, but not perpetually to be observed; for that were
+to make all tragedies too much alike; which objection he foresaw, but has
+not fully answered.
+
+"To conclude, therefore; if the plays of the ancients are more correctly
+plotted, ours are more beautifully written. And, if we can raise passions
+as high on worse foundations, it shows our genius in tragedy is greater;
+for in all other parts of it the English have manifestly excelled them."
+
+The original of the following letter is preserved in the library at
+Lambeth, and was kindly imparted to the publick by the reverend Dr. Vyse.
+
+  Copy of an original letter from John Dryden, esq. to
+  his sons in Italy, from a MS. in the Lambeth library,
+  marked N°. 933, p. 56.
+
+  (_Superscribed_)
+
+  "All' illustrissimo Sig're
+  Carlo Dryden, Camariere
+  d'Honore a S.S.
+
+  "In Roma.
+
+  "Franca per Mantoua.
+
+  "DEAR SONS,
+
+  "Sept. the 3d, our style.
+
+  "Being now at sir William Bowyer's in the country, I
+  cannot write at large, because I find myself somewhat indisposed
+  with a cold, and am thick of hearing, rather worse
+  than I was in town. I am glad to find, by your letter of
+  July 26th, your style, that you are both in health; but
+  wonder you should think me so negligent as to forget to
+  give you an account of the ship in which your parcel is to
+  come. I have written to you two or three letters concerning
+  it, which I have sent by safe hands, as I told you, and
+  doubt not but you have them before this can arrive to you.
+  Being out of town, I have forgotten the ship's name, which
+  your mother will inquire, and put it into her letter, which
+  is joined with mine. But the master's name I remember:
+  he is called Mr. Ralph Thorp; the ship is bound to Leghorn,
+  consigned to Mr. Peter and Mr. Thomas Ball, merchants.
+  I am of your opinion, that by Tonson's means
+  almost all our letters have miscarried for this last year.
+  But, however, he has missed of his design in the dedication,
+  though he had prepared the book for it; for in every
+  figure of Aeneas he has caused him to be drawn like king
+  William, with a hooked nose. After my return to town,
+  I intend to alter a play of sir Robert Howard's, written
+  long since, and lately put by him into my hands; 'tis called
+  the Conquest of China by the Tartars. It will cost me
+  six weeks' study, with the probable benefit of a hundred
+  pounds. In the mean time, I am writing a song for St.
+  Cecilia's Feast, who, you know, is the patroness of musick.
+  This is troublesome, and no way beneficial; but I could
+  not deny the stewards of the feast, who came in a body to
+  me to desire that kindness, one of them being Mr. Bridgman,
+  whose parents are your mother's friends.  I hope to
+  send you thirty guineas between Michaelmas and Christmas,
+  of which I will give you an account when I come to
+  town. I remember the counsel you give me in your letter;
+  but dissembling, though lawful in some cases, is not my
+  talent; yet, for your sake, I will struggle with the plain
+  openness of my nature, and keep in my just resentments
+  against that degenerate order. In the mean time I flatter
+  not myself with any manner of hopes, but do my duty, and
+  suffer for God's sake; being assured, beforehand, never
+  to be rewarded, though the times should alter. Towards
+  the latter end of this month, September, Charles will begin
+  to recover his perfect health, according to his nativity,
+  which, casting it myself, I am sure is true, and all things
+  hitherto have happened accordingly to the very time that
+  I predicted them: I hope, at the same time, to recover
+  more health, according to my age. Remember me to poor
+  Harry, whose prayers I earnestly desire. My Virgil succeeds
+  in the world beyond its desert or my expectation.
+  You know the profits might have been more; but neither
+  my conscience nor my honour would suffer me to take
+  them: but I never can repent of my constancy, since I
+  am thoroughly persuaded of the justice of the cause for
+  which I suffer. It has pleased God to raise up many
+  friends to me amongst my enemies, though they who
+  ought to have been my friends are negligent of me. I am
+  called to dinner, and cannot go on with this letter, which
+  I desire you to excuse; and am
+
+  "Your most affectionate father,
+
+  "JOHN DRYDEN."
+
+[Footnote 92: The life of Dryden is written with more than Johnson's
+usual copiousness of biography, and with peculiar vigour and justness of
+criticism. "None, perhaps, of the Lives of the Poets," says the Edinburgh
+Review, for October, 1808, "is entitled to so high a rank. No prejudice
+interfered with his judgment; he approved his politics; he could feel no
+envy of such established fame; he had a mind precisely formed to relish
+the excellencies of Dryden--more vigorous than refined; more reasoning
+than impassioned." Edinburgh Review, xxv. p. 117. Many dates, however,
+and little facts have been rectified by Mr. Malone, in his most minute
+Account of the Life and Writings of John Dryden; and sir Walter Scott, in
+the life prefixed to his edition of Dryden's works, has been still more
+industrious in the collection of incidents and contemporary writings,
+that can only interest the antiquary. Those to whom Johnson's life seems
+not sufficiently ample, we refer to the above works. For an eulogy
+on Dryden's powers, as a satirist, see the notes on the Pursuits of
+Literature. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Mr. Malone has lately proved, that there is no satisfactory
+evidence for this date. The inscription on Dryden's monument says only
+"natus 1632." See Malone's Life of Dryden, prefixed to his Critical and
+Miscellaneous Prose Works, p. 5. note. C.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Of Cumberland. Ibid. p. 10. C.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Mr. Malone has furnished us with a detailed account of
+our poet's circumstances, from which it appears, that although he was
+possessed of a sufficient income, in the early part of his life, he was
+considerably embarrassed at its close. See Malone's Life, p. 440.]
+
+[Footnote 96: Mr. Derrick's Life of Dryden was prefixed to a very
+beautiful and correct edition of Dryden's Miscellanies, published by
+the Tonsons, in 1760,4 vols. 8vo. Derrick's part, however, was poorly
+executed, and the edition never became popular. C.]
+
+[Footnote 97: He went off to Trinity college, and was admitted to a
+bachelor's degree in Jan. 1653-4, and in 1657 was made M.A.]
+
+[Footnote 98: This is a mistake; his poem on the death of lord Hastings
+appeared in a volume entitled Tears of the Muses on the death of Henry
+Lord Hastings. 8vo. 1649. M.]
+
+[Footnote 99: The order of his plays has been accurately ascertained by
+Mr. Malone. C.]
+
+[Footnote 100: The duke of Guise was his first attempt in the drama, but
+laid aside, and afterwards new modelled. See Malone, p. 51.]
+
+[Footnote 101: See Malone, p. 91.]
+
+[Footnote 102: He did not obtain the laurel till Aug. 18, 1670, but Mr.
+Malone informs us, the patent had a retrospect, and the salary commenced
+from the Midsummer after Davenant's death. C.]
+
+[Footnote 103: Downes says it was performed on a very unlucky day, viz.
+that on which the duke of Monmouth landed in the west; and he intimates,
+that the consternation into which the kingdom was thrown by this event,
+was a reason why it was performed but six times, and was in general ill
+received. H.]
+
+[Footnote 104: This is a mistake. It was set to musick by Purcell, and
+well received, and is yet a favourite entertainment. H.]
+
+[Footnote 105: Johnson has here quoted from memory. Warburton is the
+original relater of this anecdote, who says he had it from Southern
+himself. According to him, Dryden's usual price had been _four guineas_,
+and he made Southern pay _six_. In the edition of Southern's plays, 1774,
+we have a different deviation from the truth, _five_ and _ten_ guineas.
+M.]
+
+[Footnote 106: Dr. Johnson, in this assertion, was misled by Langbaine.
+Only one of these plays appeared in 1678. Nor were there more than three
+in any one year. The dates are now added from the original editions. R.]
+
+[Footnote 107: It was published in 1672. R.]
+
+[Footnote 108: This remark, as Mr. Malone observes, is founded upon
+the erroneous dates with which Johnson was supplied by Langbaine. The
+Rehearsal was played in 1671, but not published till the next year; The
+Wild Gallant was printed in 1669, The Maiden Queen in 1668, Tyrannick
+Love in 1670; the two parts of Granada were performed in 1669 and 1670,
+though not printed till 1672. Additions were afterwards made to The
+Rehearsal, and among these are the parodies on Assignation, which are not
+to be found in Buckingham's play as it originally appeared. Mr. Malone
+denies that there is any allusion to Marriage à-la-mode. See Malone, p.
+100. J. B.]
+
+[Footnote 109: It is mentioned by A. Wood, Athen, Oxon. vol. ii. p. 804.
+2nd ed. C.]
+
+[Footnote 110: Dryden translated two entire epistles, Canace to Macareus,
+and Dido to Aeneas. Helen to Paris was translated by him and lord
+Mulgrave. Malone, J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Azaria and Hushai was written by Samuel Pordage, a
+dramatick writer of that time.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Dr. John Reynolds, who lived temp. Jac. I. was at first a
+zealous papist, and his brother William as earnest a protestant; but by
+mutual disputation each converted the other. See Fuller's Church History,
+p. 47. book x. II.]
+
+[Footnote 113: This is a mistake. See Malone, p. 194, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 114: All Dryden's biographers have misdated this poem, which
+Mr. Malone's more accurate researches prove to have been published on the
+4th of Oct. 1682.]
+
+[Footnote 115: Albion and Albanius must, however, be excepted. R.]
+
+[Footnote 116: This story has been traced to its source, and clearly
+proved to be a fabrication, by Mr. Malone. See Malone's Life, 347.]
+
+[Footnote 117: An earlier account of Dryden's funeral than that above
+cited, though without the circumstances that preceded it, is given by
+Edward Ward, who, in his London Spy, published in 1706, relates, that on
+the occasion there was a performance of solemn musick at the college,
+and that at the procession, which himself saw, standing at the end
+of Chancery lane, Fleet street, there was a concert of hautboys and
+trumpets. The day of Dryden's interment, he says, was Monday, the 13th of
+May, which, according to Johnson, was twelve days after his decease,
+and shows how long his funeral was in suspense. Ward knew not that
+the expense of it was defrayed by subscription; but compliments lord
+Jefferies for so pious an undertaking. He also says, that the cause of
+Dryden's death was an inflammation in his toe, occasioned by the flesh
+growing over the nail, which, being neglected, produced a mortification
+in his leg. H.]
+
+[Footnote 118: In the register of the College of Physicians, is the
+following entry: "May 3, 1700. Comitiis Censoriis ordinariis. At the
+request of several persons of quality, that Mr. Dryden might be carried
+from the College of Physicians to be interred at Westminster, it was
+unanimously granted by the president and censors."
+
+This entry is not calculated to afford any credit to the narrative
+concerning lord Jefferies. R.]
+
+[Footnote 119: See what is said on this head with regard to Cowley and
+Addison, in their respective lives.]
+
+[Footnote 120: Preface to Ovid's Metamorphoses. Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 121: We are not about to attempt a justification of Dryden's
+strange use, in the above stanzas, of nautical phrases, but we must
+remark, that Johnson's antipathy to ships, and every thing connected
+with them, made him unusually sensitive of any thing like naval
+technicalities. And yet surely the occasional and judicious use of them
+in description is quite as allowable as the introduction of allusions to
+the printing office or bookseller's shop, with which Johnson happened to
+be familiar, and, therefore, did not disapprove. St. Paul did not disdain
+to adopt naval phraseology in his exquisite narrative of his own perils
+by sea. ED.]
+
+[Footnoteb 122: A heart-sinking and painful depression has been
+experienced by most of us on concluding a favourite author; but the
+sensation has never been more vividly portrayed in language, than in the
+above passage. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 123: I cannot see why Johnson has thought there was any want of
+clearness in this passage even in prose. Addison has given us almost the
+very same thought in very good prose: "If we look forward to him [the
+deity] for help, we shall never be in danger of falling down those
+precipices which our imagination is apt to create. Like those who walk
+upon a line, if we keep our eye fixed upon one point, we may step forward
+securely; whereas an imprudent or cowardly glance on either side will
+infallibly destroy us." Spectator, No. 615. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 124: This is an error. The alexandrine inserted among heroick
+lines of ten syllables is found in many of the writers of queen
+Elizabeth's reign. It will be sufficient to mention Hall, who has already
+been quoted for the use of the triplet:
+
+  As tho' the staring world hang'd on his sleeve.
+  Whenever he smiles to laugh, and when he sighs to grieve.
+
+Hall's Sat. book i. sat. 7.
+
+Take another instance:
+
+  For shame! or better write or Labeo write none.
+
+Hall's Sat. book ii. sat 1. J.B.]
+
+
+
+
+SMITH
+
+Edmund Smith is one of those lucky writers who have, without much labour,
+attained high reputation, and who are mentioned with reverence, rather
+for the possession, than the exertion of uncommon abilities.
+
+Of his life little is known; and that little claims no praise but what
+can be given to intellectual excellence, seldom employed to any virtuous
+purpose. His character, as given by Mr. Oldisworth, with all the
+partiality of friendship, which is said, by Dr. Burton, to show "what
+fine things one man of parts can say of another," and which, however,
+comprises great part of what can be known of Mr. Smith, it is better to
+transcribe, at once, than to take by pieces. I shall subjoin such little
+memorials as accident has enabled me to collect.
+
+Mr. Edmund Smith was the only son of an eminent merchant, one Mr. Neale,
+by a daughter of the famous baron Lechmere. Some misfortunes of his
+father, which were soon followed by his death, were the occasion of the
+son's being left very young in the hands of a near relation, (one who
+married Mr. Neale's sister,) whose name was Smith.
+
+This gentleman and his lady treated him as their own child, and put him
+to Westminster school, under the care of Dr. Busby; whence, after the
+loss of his faithful and generous guardian, (whose name he assumed and
+retained,) he was removed to Christ church, in Oxford, and there, by his
+aunt, handsomely maintained till her death; after which he continued a
+member of that learned and ingenious society, till within five years of
+his own; though, some time before his leaving Christ church, he was
+sent for by his mother to Worcester, and owned and acknowledged as
+her legitimate son; which had not been mentioned, but to wipe off the
+aspersions that were ignorantly cast by some on his birth. It is to be
+remembered, for our author's honour, that, when at Westminster election
+he stood a candidate for one of the universities, he so signally
+distinguished himself by his conspicuous performances, that there arose
+no small contention, between the representative electors of Trinity
+college, in Cambridge, and Christ church, in Oxon, which of those two
+royal societies should adopt him as their own. But the electors of
+Trinity college having the preference of choice that year, they
+resolutely elected him; who yet, being invited, at the same time, to
+Christ church, chose to accept of a studentship there. Mr. Smith's
+perfections, as well natural as acquired, seem to have been formed upon
+Horace's plan, who says, in his Art of Poetry:
+
+  Ego nec studium sine divite vena,
+  Nec rude quid prosit video ingenium; alterius sic
+  Altera poscit opem res, et conjurat amice.
+
+He was endowed by nature with all those excellent and necessary
+qualifications which are previous to the accomplishment of a great man.
+His memory was large and tenacious, yet, by a _curious felicity, chiefly_
+susceptible of the finest impressions it received from the best authors
+he read, which it always preserved in their primitive strength and
+amiable order.
+
+He had a quickness of apprehension, and vivacity of understanding, which
+easily took in and surmounted the most subtile and knotty parts of
+mathematicks and metaphysicks. His wit was prompt and flowing, yet
+solid and piercing; his taste delicate, his head clear, and his way of
+expressing his thoughts perspicuous and engaging. I shall say nothing of
+his person, which yet was so well _turned_, that no neglect of himself in
+his dress could render it disagreeable; insomuch, that the fair sex, who
+observed and esteemed him, at once commended and reproved him by the name
+of the _handsome_ sloven. An eager but generous and noble emulation grew
+up with him; which (as it were a rational sort of instinct) pushed him
+upon striving to excel in every art and science that could make him a
+credit to his college, and that college the ornament of the most
+learned and polite university; and it was his happiness to have several
+contemporaries and fellow-students who exercised and excited this virtue
+in themselves and others, thereby becoming so deservedly in favour with
+this age, and so good a proof of its nice discernment. His judgment,
+naturally good, soon ripened into an exquisite fineness and
+distinguishing sagacity, which as it was active and busy, so it
+was vigorous and manly, keeping even paces with a rich and strong
+imagination, always upon the wing, and never tired with aspiring. Hence
+it was, that, though he writ as young as Cowley, he had no puerilities;
+and his earliest productions were so far from having any thing in them
+mean and trifling, that, like the junior compositions of Mr. Stepney,
+they may make grey authors blush. There are many of his first essays in
+oratory, in epigram, elegy, and epick, still handed about the university
+in manuscript, which show a masterly hand; and, though maimed and injured
+by frequent transcribing, make their way into our most celebrated
+miscellanies, where they shine with uncommon lustre. Besides those verses
+in the Oxford books, which he could not help setting his name to, several
+of his compositions came abroad under other names, which his own singular
+modesty, and faithful silence, strove in vain to conceal. The Encaenia
+and publick collections of the university upon state subjects, were
+never in such esteem, either for elegy or congratulation, as when he
+contributed most largely to them; and it was natural for those who knew
+his peculiar way of writing, to turn to his share in the work, as by
+far the most relishing part of the entertainment. As his parts were
+extraordinary, so he well knew how to improve them; and not only to
+polish the diamond, but enchase it in the most solid and durable metal.
+Though he was an academick the greatest part of his life, yet he
+contracted no sourness of temper, no spice of pedantry, no itch of
+disputation, or obstinate contention for the old or new philosophy, no
+assuming way of dictating to others, which are faults (though excusable)
+which some are insensibly led into, who are constrained to dwell long
+within the walls of a private college. His conversation was pleasant and
+instructive, and what Horace said of Plotius, Varius, and Virgil, might
+justly be applied to him:
+
+  Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico. Sat. v. l. 1.
+
+As correct a writer as he was in his most elaborate pieces, he read the
+works of others with candour, and reserved his greatest severity for his
+own compositions; being readier to cherish and advance, than damp or
+depress a rising genius, and as patient of being excelled himself (if any
+could excel him) as industrious to excel others.
+
+'Twere to be wished he had confined himself to a particular profession,
+who was capable of surpassing in any; but, in this, his want of
+application was, in a great measure, owing to his want of due
+encouragement.
+
+He passed through the exercises of the college and university with
+unusual applause; and though he often suffered his friends to call him
+off from his retirements, and to lengthen out those jovial avocations,
+yet his return to his studies was so much the more passionate, and
+his intention upon those refined pleasures of reading and thinking
+so vehement, (to which his facetious and unbended intervals bore no
+proportion,) that the habit grew upon him; and the series of meditation
+and reflection being kept up whole weeks together, he could better sort
+his ideas, and take in the sundry parts of a science at one view, without
+interruption or confusion. Some, indeed, of his acquaintance, who were
+pleased to distinguish between the wit and the scholar, extolled him
+altogether on the account of the first of these titles; but others, who
+knew him better, could not forbear doing him justice as a prodigy in both
+kinds. He had signalized himself, in the schools, as a philosopher and
+polemick of extensive knowledge and deep penetration; and went through
+all the courses with a wise regard to the dignity and importance of each
+science.
+
+I remember him in the Divinity school responding and disputing with a
+perspicuous energy, a ready exactness, and commanding force of argument,
+when Dr. Jane worthily presided in the chair; whose condescending and
+disinterested commendation of him gave him such a reputation, as
+silenced the envious malice of his enemies, who durst not contradict
+the approbation of so profound a master in theology. None of those
+self-sufficient creatures, who have either trifled with philosophy, by
+attempting to ridicule it, or have encumbered it with novel terms and
+burdensome explanations, understood its real weight and purity half so
+well as Mr. Smith. He was too discerning to allow of the character of
+unprofitable, rugged, and abstruse, which some superficial sciolists, (so
+very smooth and polite, as to admit of no impression,) either out of an
+unthinking indolence, or an ill-grounded prejudice, had affixed to this
+sort of studies. He knew the thorny terms of philosophy served well to
+fence in the true doctrines of religion; and looked upon school-divinity
+as upon a rough but well-wrought armour, which might at once adorn and
+defend the christian hero, and equip him for the combat.
+
+Mr. Smith had a long and perfect intimacy with all the Greek and Latin
+classicks; with whom he had carefully compared whatever was worth
+perusing in the French, Spanish, and Italian, (to which languages he was
+no stranger,) and in all the celebrated writers of his own country.
+But then, according to the curious observation of the late earl of
+Shaftesbury, he kept the poet in awe by regular criticism; and, as it
+were, married the two arts for their mutual support and improvement.
+There was not a tract of credit, upon that subject, which he had not
+diligently examined, from Aristotle down to Hedelin and Bossu; so that,
+having each rule constantly before him, he could carry the art through
+every poem, and at once point out the graces and deformities. By this
+means he seemed to read with a design to correct, as well as imitate.
+
+Being thus prepared, he could not but taste every little delicacy that
+was set before him; though it was impossible for him, at the same time,
+to be fed and nourished with any thing but what was substantial and
+lasting. He considered the ancients and moderns not as parties or rivals
+for fame, but as architects upon one and the same plan, the art of
+poetry; according to which he judged, approved, and blamed, without
+flattery or detraction. If he did not always commend the compositions of
+others, it was not ill-nature, (which was not in his temper,) but strict
+justice, that would not let him call a few flowers set in ranks, a glib
+measure, and so many couplets, by the name of poetry: he was of Ben
+Jonson's opinion, who could not admire
+
+  Verses as smooth and soft as cream,
+  In which there was neither depth nor stream.
+
+And, therefore, though his want of complaisance for some men's
+overbearing vanity made him enemies, yet the better part of mankind were
+obliged by the freedom of his reflections.
+
+His Bodleian Speech, though taken from a remote and imperfect copy, hath
+shown the world how great a master he was of the Ciceronian eloquence,
+mixed with the conciseness and force of Demosthenes, the elegant and
+moving turns of Pliny, and the acute and wise reflections of Tacitus.
+
+Since Temple and Roscommon, no man understood Horace better, especially
+as to his happy diction, rolling numbers, beautiful imagery, and
+alternate mixture of the soft and the sublime. This endeared Dr. Hannes's
+odes to him, the finest genius for Latin lyrick since the Augustan age.
+His friend Mr. Philips's ode to Mr. St. John, (late lord Bolingbroke,)
+after the manner of Horace's Lusory or Amatorian Odes, is certainly a
+masterpiece; but Mr. Smith's Pocockius is of the sublimer kind, though,
+like Waller's writings upon Oliver Cromwell, it wants not the most
+delicate and surprising turns peculiar to the person praised. I do not
+remember to have seen any thing like it in Dr. Bathurst[125], who had
+made some attempts this way with applause. He was an excellent judge of
+humanity; and so good an historian, that in familiar discourse he would
+talk over the most memorable facts in antiquity, the lives, actions, and
+characters of celebrated men, with amazing facility and accuracy. As he
+had thoroughly read and digested Thuanus's works, so he was able to copy
+after him; and his talent in this kind was so well known and allowed,
+that he had been singled out, by some great men, to write a history,
+which it was for their interest to have done with the utmost art and
+dexterity. I shall not mention for what reasons this design was dropped,
+though they are very much to Mr. Smith's honour. The truth is, and I
+speak it before living witnesses, whilst an agreeable company could
+fix him upon a subject of useful literature, nobody shone to greater
+advantage; he seemed to be that Memmius whom Lucretius speaks of:
+
+  Quem tu, dea, tempore in omni
+  Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus.
+
+His works are not many, and those scattered up and down in miscellanies
+and collections, being wrested from him by his friends with great
+difficulty and reluctance. All of them together make but a small part of
+that much greater body which lies dispersed in the possession of numerous
+acquaintance; and cannot, perhaps, be made entire without great injustice
+to him, because few of them had his last hand, and the transcriber was
+often obliged to take the liberties of a friend. His condolence for the
+death of Mr. Philips is full of the noblest beauties, and hath done
+justice to the ashes of that second Milton, whose writings will last as
+long as the English language, generosity, and valour. For him Mr. Smith
+had contracted a perfect friendship; a passion he was most susceptible
+of, and whose laws he looked upon as sacred and inviolable.
+
+Every subject that passed under his pen had all the life, proportion,
+and embellishments bestowed on it, which an exquisite skill, a warm
+imagination, and a cool judgment, possibly could bestow on it. The epick,
+lyrick, elegiack, every sort of poetry he touched upon, (and he had
+touched upon a great variety,) was raised to its proper height, and the
+differences between each of them observed with a judicious accuracy. We
+saw the old rules and new beauties placed in admirable order by each
+other; and there was a predominant fancy and spirit of his own infused,
+superiour to what some draw off from the ancients, or from poesies here
+and there culled out of the moderns, by a painful industry and servile
+imitation. His contrivances were adroit and magnificent; his images
+lively and adequate; his sentiments charming and majestick; his
+expressions natural and bold; his numbers various and sounding; and
+that enamelled mixture of classical wit, which, without redundance and
+affectation, sparkled through his writings, and was no less pertinent and
+agreeable.
+
+His Phaedra is a consummate tragedy, and the success of it was as great
+as the most sanguine expectations of his friends could promise or
+foresee. The number of nights, and the common method of filling the
+house, are not always the surest marks of judging what encouragement a
+play meets with; but the generosity of all the persons of a refined taste
+about town was remarkable on this occasion; and it must not be forgotten
+how zealously Mr. Addison espoused his interest, with all the elegant
+judgment and diffusive good-nature for which that accomplished gentleman
+and author is so justly valued by mankind. But as to Phaedra, she has
+certainly made a finer figure under Mr. Smith's conduct, upon the English
+stage, than either in Rome or Athens; and if she excels the Greek and
+Latin Phaedra, I need not say she surpasses the French one, though
+embellished with whatever regular beauties and moving softness Racine
+himself could give her.
+
+No man had a juster notion of the difficulty of composing than Mr. Smith;
+and he sometimes would create greater difficulties than he had reason
+to apprehend. Writing with ease, what (as Mr. Wycherley speaks) may
+be easily written, moved his indignation. When he was writing upon a
+subject, he would seriously consider what Demosthenes, Homer, Virgil,
+or Horace, if alive, would say upon that occasion, which whetted him to
+exceed himself, as well as others. Nevertheless, he could not, or would
+not, finish several subjects he undertook; which may be imputed either
+to the briskness of his fancy, still hunting after new matter, or to an
+occasional indolence, which spleen and lassitude brought upon him, which,
+of all his foibles, the world was least inclined to forgive. That this
+was not owing to conceit and vanity, or a fulness of himself, (a frailty
+which has been imputed to no less men than Shakespeare and Jonson,) is
+clear from hence; because he left his works to the entire disposal of
+his friends, whose most rigorous censures he even courted and solicited,
+submitting to their animadversions, and the freedom they took with them,
+with an unreserved and prudent resignation.
+
+I have seen sketches and rough draughts of some poems he designed, set
+out analytically; wherein the fable, structure, and connexion, the
+images, incidents, moral episodes, and a great variety of ornaments, were
+so finely laid out, so well fitted to the rules of art, and squared so
+exactly to the precedents of the ancients, that I have often looked on
+these poetical elements with the same concern with which curious men are
+affected at the sight of the most entertaining remains and ruins of an
+antique figure or building. Those fragments of the learned, which
+some men have been so proud of their pains in collecting, are useless
+rarities, without form and without life, when compared with these
+embryos, which wanted not spirit enough to preserve them; so that I
+cannot help thinking, that, if some of them were to come abroad, they
+would be as highly valued by the poets, as the sketches of Julio and
+Titian are by the painters; though there is nothing in them but a few
+outlines, as to the design and proportion.
+
+It must be confessed, that Mr. Smith had some defects in his conduct,
+which those are most apt to remember who could imitate him in nothing
+else. His freedom with himself drew severer acknowledgments from him than
+all the malice he ever provoked was capable of advancing, and he did not
+scruple to give even his misfortunes the hard name of faults; but, if the
+world had half his good-nature, all the shady parts would be entirely
+struck out of his character.
+
+A man, who under poverty, calamities, and disappointments, could make so
+many friends, and those so truly valuable, must have just and noble ideas
+of the passion of friendship, in the success of which consisted the
+greatest, if not the only, happiness of his life. He knew very well what
+was due to his birth, though fortune threw him short of it in every other
+circumstance of life. He avoided making any, though perhaps reasonable,
+complaints of her dispensations, under which he had honour enough to be
+easy, without touching the favours she flung in his way when offered to
+him at the price of a more durable reputation. He took care to have no
+dealings with mankind in which he could not be just; and he desired to
+be at no other expense in his pretensions than that of intrinsick merit,
+which was the only burden and reproach he ever brought upon his friends.
+He could say, as Horace did of himself, what I never yet saw translated:
+
+  Meo sum pauper in aere.
+
+At his coming to town, no man was more surrounded by all those who really
+had or pretended to wit, or more courted by the great men, who had then a
+power and opportunity of encouraging arts and sciences, and gave proofs
+of their fondness for the name of patron in many instances, which will
+ever be remembered to their glory. Mr. Smith's character grew upon his
+friends by intimacy, and outwent the strongest prepossessions which had
+been conceived in his favour. Whatever quarrel a few sour creatures,
+whose obscurity is their happiness, may possibly have to the age; yet,
+amidst a studied neglect, and total disuse of all those ceremonial
+attendances, fashionable equipments, and external recommendations,
+which are thought necessary introductions into the _grand monde_, this
+gentleman was so happy as still to please; and whilst the rich, the gay,
+the noble, and honourable, saw how much he excelled in wit and learning,
+they easily forgave him all other differences. Hence it was that both his
+acquaintance and retirements were his own free choice. What Mr. Prior
+observes upon a very great character was true of him, "that most of his
+faults brought their excuse with them."
+
+Those who blamed him most, understood him least, it being the custom of
+the vulgar to charge an excess upon the most complaisant, and to form a
+character by the morals of a few, who have sometimes spoiled an hour or
+two in good company. Where only fortune is wanting to make a great name,
+that single exception can never pass upon the best judges and most
+equitable observers of mankind; and when the time comes for the world to
+spare their pity, we may justly enlarge our demands upon them for their
+admiration.
+
+Some few years before his death, he had engaged himself in several
+considerable undertakings; in all which he had prepared the world to
+expect mighty things from him. I have seen about ten sheets of his
+English Pindar, which exceeded any thing of that kind I could ever hope
+for in our own language. He had drawn out the plan of a tragedy of the
+Lady Jane Grey, and had gone through several scenes of it. But he could
+not well have bequeathed that work to better hands than where, I hear, it
+is at present lodged; and the bare mention of two such names may justify
+the largest expectations, and is sufficient to make the town an agreeable
+invitation.
+
+His greatest and noblest undertaking was Longinus. He had finished an
+entire translation of the Sublime, which he sent to the reverend Mr.
+Richard Parker, a friend of his, late of Merton college, an exact critick
+in the Greek tongue, from whom it came to my hands. The French version of
+monsieur Boileau, though truly valuable, was far short of it. He proposed
+a large addition to this work, of notes and observations of his own, with
+an entire system of the art of poetry, in three books, under the titles
+of Thought, Diction, and Figure. I saw the last of these perfect, and
+in a fair copy, in which he showed prodigious judgment and reading; and
+particularly had reformed the art of rhetorick, by reducing that vast
+and confused heap of terms, with which a long succession of pedants had
+encumbered the world, to a very narrow compass, comprehending all that
+was useful and ornamental in poetry. Under each head and chapter, he
+intended to make remarks upon all the ancients and moderns, the Greek,
+Latin, English, French, Spanish, and Italian poets, and to note their
+several beauties and defects.
+
+What remains of his works is left, as I am informed, in the hands of men
+of worth and judgment, who loved him. It cannot be supposed they would
+suppress any thing that was his, but out of respect to his memory, and
+for want of proper hands to finish what so great a genius had begun.
+
+Such is the declamation of Oldisworth, written while his admiration was
+yet fresh, and his kindness warm; and, therefore, such as, without any
+criminal purpose of deceiving, shows a strong desire to make the most of
+all favourable truth. I cannot much commend the performance. The praise
+is often indistinct, and the sentences are loaded with words of more pomp
+than use. There is little, however, that can be contradicted, even when a
+plainer tale comes to be told.
+
+Edmund Neale, known by the name of Smith, was born at Handley, the
+seat of the Lechmeres, in Worcestershire. The year of his birth is
+uncertain[126].
+
+He was educated at Westminster. It is known to have been the practice of
+Dr. Busby to detain those youths long at school, of whom he had formed
+the highest expectations. Smith took his master's degree on the 8th of
+July, 1696; he, therefore, was probably admitted into the university in
+1689[127], when we may suppose him twenty years old.
+
+His reputation for literature in his college was such as has been told;
+but the indecency and licentiousness of his behaviour drew upon him, Dec.
+24, 1694, while he was yet only bachelor, a publick admonition, entered
+upon record, in order to his expulsion. Of this reproof the effect is not
+known. He was probably less notorious. At Oxford, as we all know,
+much will be forgiven to literary merit; and of that he had exhibited
+sufficient evidence by his excellent ode on the death of the great
+orientalist, Dr. Pocock, who died in 1691, and whose praise must
+have been written by Smith when he had been yet but two years in the
+university.
+
+This ode, which closed the second volume of the Musse Anglicanae, though,
+perhaps, some objections may be made to its Latinity, is by far the best
+lyrick composition in that collection; nor do I know where to find it
+equalled among the modern writers. It expresses, with great felicity,
+images not classical in classical diction: its digressions and returns
+have been deservedly recommended by Trapp, as models for imitation.
+
+He has several imitations of Cowley:
+
+  Vestitur hinc tot sermo coloribus
+  Quot tu, Pococki, dissimilis tui
+  Orator effers, quot vicissim
+  Te memores celebrare gaudent.
+
+I will not commend the figure which makes the orator _pronounce colours_,
+or give to _colours memory_ and _delight_. I quote it, however, as an
+imitation of these lines:
+
+  So many languages he had in store,
+  That only fame shall speak of him in more[128].
+
+The simile, by which an old man, retaining the fire of his youth, is
+compared to Aetna flaming through the snow, which Smith has used with
+great pomp, is stolen from Cowley, however little worth the labour of
+conveyance.
+
+He proceeded to take his degree of master of arts, July 8, 1696. Of
+the exercises which he performed on that occasion, I have not heard
+any thing memorable.
+
+As his years advanced, he advanced in reputation; for he continued to
+cultivate his mind, though he did not amend his irregularities, by which
+he gave so much offence, that, April 24, 1700, the dean and chapter
+declared "the place of Mr. Smith void, he having been convicted of
+riotous misbehaviour in the house of Mr. Cole, an apothecary; but it was
+referred to the dean when, and upon what occasion, the sentence should be
+put in execution."
+
+Thus tenderly was he treated: the governours of his college could hardly
+keep him, and yet wished that he would not force them to drive him away.
+
+Some time afterwards he assumed an appearance of decency: in his own
+phrase, he _whitened_ himself, having a desire to obtain the censorship,
+an office of honour and some profit in the college; but, when the
+election came, the preference was given to Mr. Foulkes, his junior:
+the same, I suppose, that joined with Freind in an edition of part of
+Demosthenes. The censor is a tutor; and it was not thought proper to
+trust the superintendence of others to a man who took so little care of
+himself.
+
+From this time Smith employed his malice and his wit against the dean,
+Dr. Aldrich, whom he considered as the opponent of his claim. Of his
+lampoon upon him, I once heard a single line, too gross to be repeated.
+
+But he was still a genius and a scholar, and Oxford was unwilling to lose
+him: he was endured, with all his pranks and his vices, two years longer;
+but, on Dec. 20, 1705, at the instance of all the canons, the sentence,
+declared five years before, was put in execution.
+
+The execution was, I believe, silent and tender; for one of his friends,
+from whom I learned much of his life, appeared not to know it.
+
+He was now driven to London, where he associated himself with the whigs;
+whether because they were in power, or because the tories had expelled
+him, or because he was a whig by principle, may, perhaps, be doubted. He
+was, however, caressed by men of great abilities, whatever were their
+party, and was supported by the liberality of those who delighted in his
+conversation.
+
+There was once a design, hinted at by Oldisworth, to have made him
+useful. One evening, as he was sitting with a friend at a tavern, he was
+called down by the waiter; and, having staid some time below, came up
+thoughtful. After a pause, said he to his friend: "He that wanted me
+below was Addison, whose business was to tell me that a History of the
+Revolution was intended, and to propose that I should undertake it.
+I said, 'What shall I do with the character of lord Sunderland?' and
+Addison immediately returned, 'When, Rag, were you drunk last?' and went
+away."
+
+Captain _Rag_ was a name which he got at Oxford, by his negligence of
+dress.
+
+This story I heard from the late Mr. Clark, of Lincoln's Inn, to whom it
+was told by the friend of Smith.
+
+Such scruples might debar him from some profitable employments; but,
+as they could not deprive him of any real esteem, they left him many
+friends; and no man was ever better introduced to the theatre than he,
+who, in that violent conflict of parties, had a prologue and epilogue
+from the first wits on either side.
+
+But learning and nature will now and then take different courses. His
+play pleased the criticks, and the criticks only. It was, as Addison
+has recorded, hardly heard the third night. Smith had, indeed, trusted
+entirely to his merit, had ensured no band of applauders, nor used any
+artifice to force success, and found that naked excellence was not
+sufficient for its own support.
+
+The play, however, was bought by Lintot, who advanced the price from
+fifty guineas, the current rate, to sixty; and Halifax, the general
+patron, accepted the dedication. Smith's indolence kept him from writing
+the dedication, till Lintot, after fruitless importunity, gave notice
+that he would publish the play without it. Now, therefore, it was
+written; and Halifax expected the author with his book, and had prepared
+to reward him with a place of three hundred pounds a year. Smith, by
+pride, or caprice, or indolence, or bashfulness, neglected to attend him,
+though doubtless warned and pressed by his friends, and, at last, missed
+his reward by not going to solicit it.
+
+Addison has, in the Spectator, mentioned the neglect of Smith's tragedy
+as disgraceful to the nation, and imputes it to the fondness for operas,
+then prevailing. The authority of Addison is great; yet the voice of the
+people, when to please the people is the purpose, deserves regard. In
+this question, I cannot but think the people in the right. The fable is
+mythological, a story which we are accustomed to reject as false; and the
+manners are so distant from our own, that we know them not from sympathy,
+but by study: the ignorant do not understand the action; the learned
+reject it as a schoolboy's tale; "incredulus odi;" what I cannot for a
+moment believe, I cannot for a moment behold with interest or anxiety.
+The sentiments thus remote from life are removed yet further by the
+diction, which is too luxuriant and splendid for dialogue, and envelopes
+the thoughts rather than displays them. It is a scholar's play, such as
+may please the reader rather than the spectator; the work of a vigorous
+and elegant mind, accustomed to please itself with its own conceptions,
+but of little acquaintance with the course of life.
+
+Dennis tells us, in one of his pieces, that he had once a design to have
+written the tragedy of Phaedra; but was convinced that the action was too
+mythological.
+
+In 1709, a year after the exhibition of Phaedra, died John Philips, the
+friend and fellow-collegian of Smith, who, on that occasion, wrote a
+poem, which justice must place among the best elegies which our language
+can show, an elegant mixture of fondness and admiration, of dignity
+and softness. There are some passages too ludicrous; but every human
+performance has its faults.
+
+This elegy it was the mode among his friends to purchase for a guinea;
+and, as his acquaintance was numerous, it was a very profitable poem.
+
+Of his Pindar, mentioned by Oldisworth, I have never otherwise heard.
+His Longinus he intended to accompany with some illustrations, and had
+selected his instances of the false sublime from the works of Blackmore.
+
+He resolved to try again the fortune of the stage, with the story of Lady
+Jane Grey. It is not unlikely, that his experience of the inefficacy and
+incredibility of a mythological tale might determine him to choose an
+action from English history, at no great distance from our own times,
+which was to end in a real event, produced by the operation of known
+characters.
+
+A subject will not easily occur that can give more opportunities
+of informing the understanding, for which Smith was unquestionably
+qualified, or for moving the passions, in which I suspect him to have had
+less power.
+
+Having formed his plan, and collected materials, he declared, that a few
+months would complete his design; and, that he might pursue his work with
+less frequent avocations, he was, in June 1710, invited, by Mr. George
+Ducket to his house, at Gartham, in Wiltshire. Here he found such
+opportunities of indulgence as did not much forward his studies, and
+particularly some strong ale, too delicious to be resisted. He ate and
+drank till he found himself plethorick; and then, resolving to ease
+himself by evacuation, he wrote to an apothecary in the neighbourhood a
+prescription of a purge so forcible, that the apothecary thought it his
+duty to delay it, till he had given notice of its danger. Smith, not
+pleased with the contradiction of a shopman, and boastful of his own
+knowledge, treated the notice with rude contempt, and swallowed his own
+medicine, which, in July, 1710, brought him to the grave. He was buried
+at Gartham.
+
+Many years afterwards, Ducket communicated to Oldmixon, the historian,
+an account, pretended to have been received from Smith, that Clarendon's
+History was, in its publication, corrupted by Aldrich, Smalridge,
+and Atterbury; and that Smith was employed to forge and insert the
+alterations.
+
+This story was published triumphantly by Oldmixon, and may be supposed
+to have been eagerly received; but its progress was soon checked; for,
+finding its way into the Journal of Trévoux, it fell under the eye of
+Atterbury, then an exile in France, who immediately denied the charge,
+with this remarkable particular, that he never, in his whole life, had
+once spoken to Smith[129]; his company being, as must be inferred, not
+accepted by those who attended to their characters.
+
+The charge was afterwards very diligently refuted, by Dr. Burton, of
+Eton, a man eminent for literature, and, though not of the same party
+with Aldrich and Atterbury, too studious of truth to leave them burdened
+with a false charge. The testimonies which he has collected have
+convinced mankind, that either Smith or Ducket was guilty of wilful and
+malicious falsehood.
+
+This controversy brought into view those parts of Smith's life, which,
+with more honour to his name, might have been concealed.
+
+Of Smith I can yet say a little more. He was a man of such estimation
+among his companions, that the casual censures or praises, which he
+dropped in conversation, were considered, like those of Scaliger, as
+worthy of preservation.
+
+He had great readiness and exactness of criticism, and, by a cursory
+glance over a new composition, would exactly tell all its faults and
+beauties.
+
+He was remarkable for the power of reading with great rapidity, and of
+retaining, with great fidelity, what he so easily collected.
+
+He, therefore, always knew what the present question required; and, when
+his friends expressed their wonder at his acquisitions, made in a state
+of apparent negligence and drunkenness, he never discovered his hours of
+reading, or method of study, but involved himself in affected silence,
+and fed his own vanity with their admiration and conjectures.
+
+One practice he had, which was easily observed: if any thought or image
+was presented to his mind, that he could use or improve, he did not
+suffer it to be lost; but, amidst the jollity of a tavern, or in the
+warmth of conversation, very diligently committed it to paper.
+
+Thus it was that he had gathered two quires of hints for his new tragedy;
+of which Howe, when they were put into his hands, could make, as he says,
+very little use, but which the collector considered as a valuable stock
+of materials.
+
+When he came to London, his way of life connected him with the licentious
+and dissolute; and he affected the airs and gaiety of a man of pleasure;
+but his dress was always deficient; scholastick cloudiness still hung
+about him; and his merriment was sure to produce the scorn of his
+companions.
+
+With all his carelessness and all his vices, he was one of the murmurers
+at fortune; and wondered why he was suffered to be poor, when Addison was
+caressed and preferred; nor would a very little have contented him; for
+he estimated his wants at six hundred pounds a year.
+
+In his course of reading it was particular, that he had diligently
+perused, and accurately remembered, the old romances of knight-errantry.
+
+He had a high opinion of his own merit, and was something contemptuous in
+his treatment of those whom he considered as not qualified to oppose or
+contradict him. He had many frailties; yet it cannot but be supposed that
+he had great merit, who could obtain to the same play a prologue from
+Addison, and an epilogue from Prior; and who could have at once the
+patronage of Halifax, and the praise of Oldisworth.
+
+For the power of communicating these minute memorials, I am indebted
+to my conversation with Gilbert Walmsley[130], late registrar of the
+ecclesiastical court of Lichfield, who was acquainted both with Smith and
+Ducket; and declared, that, if the tale concerning Clarendon were forged,
+he should suspect Ducket of the falsehood, "for _Rag_ was a man of great
+veracity."
+
+Of Gilbert Walmsley, thus presented to my mind, let me indulge myself in
+the remembrance. I knew him very early: he was one of the first friends
+that literature procured me, and I hope that, at least, my gratitude made
+me worthy of his notice.
+
+He was of an advanced age, and I was only not a boy; yet he never
+received my notions with contempt. He was a whig, with all the virulence
+and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us
+apart. I honoured him, and he endured me.
+
+He had mingled with the gay world, without exemption from its vices or
+its follies, but had never neglected the cultivation of his mind; his
+belief of revelation was unshaken; his learning preserved his principles;
+he grew first regular, and then pious.
+
+His studies had been so various, that I am not able to name a man of
+equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great: and what he did
+not immediately know, he could, at least, tell where to find. Such was
+his amplitude of learning, and such his copiousness of communication,
+that it may be doubted whether a day now passes in which I have not some
+advantage from his friendship.
+
+At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours, with
+companions such as are not often found; with one who has lengthened, and
+one who has gladdened life; with Dr. James, whose skill in physick
+will be long remembered; and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have
+gratified with this character of our common friend; but what are the
+hopes of man! I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has
+eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the publick stock of
+harmless pleasure.
+
+In the library at Oxford is the following ludicrous analysis of
+Pocockius:
+
+
+EX AUTOGRAPHO.
+
+[Sent by the author to Mr. Urry.]
+
+Opusculum hoc, Halberdarie amplissime, in lucem proferre hactenus
+distuli, judicii tui acumen subveritus magis quam bipennis. Tandem
+aliquando oden hanc ad te mitto sublimem, teneram, flebilem, suavem,
+qualem demum divinus (si musis vacaret) scripsisset Gastrellus: adeo
+scilicet sublimem ut inter legendum dormire, adeo flebilem ut ridere
+velis. Cujus elegantiam ut melius inspicias, versuum ordinem et materiam
+breviter referam. 1mus versus de duobus praeliis decantatis. 2dus et 3us
+de Lotharingio, cuniculis subterraneis, saxis, ponto, hostibus, et
+Asia. 4tus et 5tus de catenis, sudibus, uncis, draconibus, tigribus et
+crocodilis. 6us, 7us, 8us, 9us de Gomorrha, de Babylone, Babele, et
+quodam domi suae peregrine. 10us, aliquid de quodam Pocockio. 11us, 12us,
+de Syria, Solyma. 13us, 14us, de Hosea, et quercu, et de juvene quodam
+valde sene. 15us, 16us, de Aetna, et quomodo Aetna Pocockio sit valde
+similis. 17us, 18us, de tuba, astro, umbra, flammis, rotis, Pocockio non
+neglecto. Caetera, de Christianis, Ottomanis, Babyloniis, Arabibus, et
+gravissima agrorum melancholia; de Caesare, _Flacco_[131], Nestore,
+et miserando juvenis cujusdam florentissimi fato, anno aetatis suae
+centesimo praemature abrepti. Quae omnia cum accurate expenderis, necesse
+est ut oden hanc meam admiranda plane varietate constare fatearis.
+Subito ad Batavos proficiscor, lauro ab illis donandus. Prius vero
+Pembrochienses voco ad certamen poeticum. Vale.
+
+Illustrissima tua deosculor crura.
+
+E. SMITH.
+
+[Footnote 125: Dr. Ralph Bathurst, whose Life and Literary Remains were
+published in 1761, by Mr. Thomas Warton. C.]
+
+[Footnote 126: By his epitaph he appears to have been forty-two years old
+when he died. He was, consequently, born in the year 1668. R.
+
+He was born in 1662, as appears from the register of matriculations among
+the archives of the university of Oxford.]
+
+[Footnote 127: He was elected to Cambridge, 1688; but, as has been before
+stated, went to Oxford. J.B.]
+
+[Footnote 128: Cowley on sir R. Wotton. L. B.]
+
+[Footnote 129: See bishop Atterbury's Epistolary Correspondence, 1799,
+vol. iii. pp. 126, 133. In the same work, vol. i. p. 325, it appears that
+Smith was at one time suspected, by Atterbury, to have been the author of
+the Tale of a Tub. N. See Idler, No. 65.]
+
+[Footnote 130: See prefatory remarks to Irene, vol. i. p. 25.]
+
+[Footnote 131: Pro _Flacco_, animo paulo attentiore, scripsissem
+_Marone_.]
+
+
+
+
+DUKE
+
+Of Mr. Richard Duke I can find few memorials. He was bred at
+Westminster[132] and Cambridge; and Jacob relates, that he was some time
+tutor to the duke of Richmond.
+
+He appears, from his writings, to have been not ill qualified for
+poetical compositions; and being conscious of his powers, when he left
+the university, he enlisted himself among the wits[133]. He was the
+familiar friend of Otway; and was engaged, among other popular names, in
+the translations of Ovid and Juvenal. In his Review, though unfinished,
+are some vigorous lines. His poems are not below mediocrity; nor have I
+found much in them to be praised[134].
+
+With the wit he seems to have shared the dissoluteness of the times;
+for some of his compositions are such as he must have reviewed with
+detestation in his later days, when he published those sermons which
+Felton has commended.
+
+Perhaps, like some other foolish young men, he rather talked than lived
+vitiously, in an age when he that would be thought a wit was afraid to
+say his prayers; and whatever might have been bad in the first part of
+his life, was surely condemned and reformed by his better judgment.
+
+In 1683, being then master of arts and fellow of Trinity college in
+Cambridge, he wrote a poem, on the marriage of the lady Anne with George,
+prince of Denmark. He took orders[135]; and, being made prebendary of
+Gloucester, became a proctor in convocation for that church, and chaplain
+to queen Anne.
+
+In 1710, he was presented, by the bishop of Winchester, to the wealthy
+living of Witney, in Oxfordshire, which he enjoyed but a few months. On
+February 10, 1710-11, having returned from an entertainment, he was found
+dead the next morning. His death is mentioned in Swift's Journal.
+
+[Footnote 132: He was admitted there in 1670; was elected to Trinity
+college, Cambridge, in 1675; and took his master's degree in 1682. N.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Floriana, a pastoral, on the death of the dutchess of
+Southampton, published anonymously in folio, May 17, 1681, was written by
+Richard Duke. M.]
+
+[Footnote 134: They make a part of a volume published by Tonson in 8vo.
+1717, containing the poems of the earl of Roscommon, and the duke of
+Buckingham's Essay on Poetry; but were first published in Dryden's
+Miscellany, as were most, if not all, of the poems in that collection.
+H.]
+
+[Footnote 135: He was presented to the rectory of Blaby, in
+Leicestershire, in 1687-8; and obtained a prebend at Gloucester in 1688.
+N.]
+
+
+
+
+KING
+
+William King was born in London in 1663; the son of Ezekiel King, a
+gentleman. He was allied to the family of Clarendon.
+
+From Westminster school, where he was a scholar on the foundation, under
+the care of Dr. Busby, he was, at eighteen, elected to Christ church,
+in 1681; where he is said to have prosecuted his studies with so much
+intenseness and activity, that before he was eight years standing he had
+read over, and made remarks upon, twenty-two thousand odd hundred books
+and manuscripts[136]. The books were certainly not very long, the
+manuscripts not very difficult, nor the remarks very large; for the
+calculator will find that he despatched seven a day for every day of his
+eight years, with a remnant that more than satisfies most other students.
+He took his degree in the most expensive manner, as a grand compounder;
+whence it is inferred that he inherited a considerable fortune.
+
+In 1688, the same year in which he was made master of arts, he published
+a confutation of Varillas's account of Wickliffe; and, engaging in the
+study of the civil law, became doctor in 1692, and was admitted advocate
+at Doctors' Commons.
+
+He had already made some translations from the French, and written some
+humorous and satirical pieces; when, in 1694, Molesworth published his
+Account of Denmark, in which he treats the Danes and their monarch with
+great contempt; and takes the opportunity of insinuating those wild
+principles, by which he supposes liberty to be established, and by
+which his adversaries suspect that all subordination and government is
+endangered.
+
+This book offended prince George; and the Danish minister presented a
+memorial against it. The principles of its author did not please Dr.
+King; and, therefore, he undertook to confute part, and laugh at the
+rest. The controversy is now forgotten; and books of this kind seldom
+live long, when interest and resentment have ceased.
+
+In 1697, he mingled in the controversy between Boyle and Bentley; and was
+one of those who tried what wit could perform in opposition to learning;
+on a question which learning only could decide.
+
+In 1699, was published by him, a Journey to London, after the method of
+Dr. Martin Lister, who had published a Journey to Paris. And, in 1700, he
+satirized the Royal Society, at least sir Hans Sloane, their president,
+in two dialogues, entitled The Transactioneer.
+
+Though he was a regular advocate in the courts of civil and canon law,
+he did not love his profession, nor, indeed, any kind of business which
+interrupted his voluptuary dreams, or forced him to rouse from that
+indulgence in which only he could find delight. His reputation, as a
+civilian, was yet maintained by his judgments in the courts of delegates,
+and raised very high by the address and knowledge which he discovered in
+1700, when he defended the earl of Anglesea against his lady, afterwards
+dutchess of Buckinghamshire, who sued for a divorce, and obtained it.
+
+The expense of his pleasures, and neglect of business, had now lessened
+his revenues; and he was willing to accept of a settlement in Ireland,
+where, about 1702, he was made judge of the admiralty, commissioner
+of the prizes, keeper of the records in Birmingham's tower, and
+vicar-general to Dr. Marsh, the primate.
+
+But it is vain to put wealth within the reach of him who will not
+stretch out his hand to take it. King soon found a friend, as idle and
+thoughtless as himself, in Upton, one of the judges, who had a pleasant
+house called Mountown, near Dublin, to which King frequently retired;
+delighting to neglect his interest, forget his cares, and desert his
+duty.
+
+Here he wrote Mully of Mountown, a poem; by which, though fanciful
+readers, in the pride of sagacity, have given it a political
+interpretation, was meant originally no more than it expressed, as it was
+dictated only by the author's delight in the quiet of Mountown.
+
+In 1708, when lord Wharton was sent to govern Ireland, King returned to
+London, with his poverty, his idleness, and his wit; and published some
+essays, called Useful Transactions. His Voyage to the Island of Cajamai
+is particularly commended. He then wrote the Art of Love, a poem
+remarkable, notwithstanding its title, for purity of sentiment; and, in
+1709, imitated Horace in an Art of Cookery, which he published, with some
+letters to Dr. Lister.
+
+In 1710, he appeared as a lover of the church, on the side of
+Sacheverell; and was supposed to have concurred, at least, in the
+projection of The Examiner. His eyes were open to all the operations of
+whiggism; and he bestowed some strictures upon Dr. Kennett's adulatory
+sermon at the funeral of the duke of Devonshire.
+
+The History of the Heathen Gods, a book composed for schools, was written
+by him in 1710. The work is useful; but might have been produced without
+the powers of King. The same year he published Rufinus, an historical
+essay; and a poem, intended to dispose the nation to think as he thought
+of the duke of Marlborough and his adherents.
+
+In 1711, competence, if not plenty, was again put into his power. He was,
+without the trouble of attendance, or the mortification of a request,
+made gazetteer. Swift, Freind, Prior, and other men of the same party,
+brought him the key of the gazetteer's office. He was now again placed
+in a profitable employment, and again threw the benefit away. An act of
+insolvency made his business, at that time, particularly troublesome;
+and he would not wait till hurry should be at an end, but impatiently
+resigned it, and returned to his wonted indigence and amusements.
+
+One of his amusements at Lambeth, where he resided, was to mortify Dr.
+Tenison, the archbishop, by a publick festivity, on the surrender of
+Dunkirk to Hill; an event with which Tenison's political bigotry did
+not suffer him to be delighted. King was resolved to counteract his
+sullenness, and, at the expense of a few barrels of ale, filled the
+neighbourhood with honest merriment.
+
+In the autumn of 1712, his health declined; he grew weaker by degrees,
+and died on Christmas day. Though his life had not been without
+irregularity, his principles were pure and orthodox, and his death was
+pious.
+
+After this relation it will be naturally supposed that his poems were
+rather the amusements of idleness than efforts of study; that he
+endeavoured rather to divert than astonish; that his thoughts seldom
+aspired to sublimity; and that, if his verse was easy and his images
+familiar, he attained what he desired. His purpose is to be merry; but,
+perhaps, to enjoy his mirth, it may be sometimes necessary to think well
+of his opinions[137].
+
+[Footnote 137: Dr. Johnson appears to have made but little use of the
+life of Dr. King, prefixed to his works, in three vols. 1776; to which it
+may not be impertinent to refer the reader. His talent for humour ought
+to be praised in the highest terms. In that, at least, he yielded to none
+of his contemporaries.]
+
+
+
+
+SPRAT
+
+Thomas Sprat was born in 1636, at Tallaton in Devonshire, the son of
+a clergyman; and having been educated, as he tells of himself, not at
+Westminster or Eton, but at a little school by the church-yard side,
+became a commoner of Wadham college, in Oxford, in 1651; and, being
+chosen scholar next year, proceeded through the usual academical course,
+and, in 1657, became master of arts. He obtained a fellowship, and
+commenced poet.
+
+In 1659, his poem on the death of Oliver was published, with those of
+Dryden and Waller. In his dedication to Dr. Wilkins, he appears a very
+willing and liberal encomiast, both of the living and the dead. He
+implores his patron's excuse of his verses, both as falling "so
+infinitely below the full and sublime genius of that excellent poet who
+made this way of writing free of our nation," and being "so little equal
+and proportioned to the renown of the prince on whom they were written;
+such great actions and lives deserving to be the subject of the noblest
+pens and most divine phansies." He proceeds: "Having so long experienced
+your care and indulgence, and been formed, as it were, by your own hands,
+not to entitle you to any thing which my meanness produces, would be not
+only injustice, but sacrilege."
+
+He published, the same year, a poem on the Plague of Athens; a subject of
+which it is not easy to say what could recommend it. To these he added,
+afterwards, a poem on Mr. Cowley's death.
+
+After the restoration he took orders, and by Cowley's recommendation was
+made chaplain to the duke of Buckingham, whom he is said to have helped
+in writing the Rehearsal. He was likewise chaplain to the king.
+
+As he was the favourite of Wilkins, at whose house began those
+philosophical conferences and inquiries, which in time produced the Royal
+Society, he was consequently engaged in the same studies, and became one
+of the fellows; and when, after their incorporation, something seemed
+necessary to reconcile the publick to the new institution, he undertook
+to write its history, which he published in 1667. This is one of the few
+books which selection of sentiment and elegance of diction have been
+able to preserve, though written upon a subject flux and transitory. The
+History of the Royal Society is now read, not with the wish to know what
+they were then doing, but how their transactions are exhibited by Sprat.
+
+In the next year he published Observations on Sorbière's Voyage into
+England, in a letter to Mr. Wren. This is a work not ill-performed; but,
+perhaps, rewarded with at least its full proportion of praise.
+
+In 1668, he published Cowley's Latin poems, and prefixed, in Latin, the
+life of the author; which he afterwards amplified, and placed before
+Cowley's English works, which were by will committed to his care.
+
+Ecclesiastical benefices now fell fast upon him. In 1668, he became a
+prebendary of Westminster, and had afterwards the church of St. Margaret,
+adjoining to the abbey. He was, in 1680, made canon of Windsor; in 1683,
+dean of Westminster; and, in 1684, bishop of Rochester.
+
+The court having thus a claim to his diligence and gratitude, he was
+required to write the History of the Rye-house Plot; and, in 1685,
+published a true Account and Declaration of the horrid Conspiracy against
+the late King, his present Majesty, and the present Government; a
+performance which he thought convenient, after the revolution, to
+extenuate and excuse.
+
+The same year, being clerk of the closet to the king, he was made dean of
+the chapel royal; and, the year afterwards, received the last proof of
+his master's confidence, by being appointed one of the commissioners
+for ecclesiastical affairs. On the critical day, when the declaration
+distinguished the true sons of the church of England, he stood neuter,
+and permitted it to be read at Westminster; but pressed none to violate
+his conscience; and, when the bishop of London was brought before them,
+gave his voice in his favour.
+
+Thus far he suffered interest or obedience to carry him; but further
+he refused to go. When he found that the powers of the ecclesiastical
+commission were to be exercised against those who had refused the
+declaration, he wrote to the lords, and other commissioners, a formal
+profession of his unwillingness to exercise that authority any longer,
+and withdrew himself from them. After they had read his letter, they
+adjourned for six months, and scarcely ever met afterwards.
+
+When king James was frighted away, and a new government was to be
+settled, Sprat was one of those who considered, in a conference, the
+great question, Whether the crown was vacant, and manfully spoke in
+favour of his old master.
+
+He complied, however, with the new establishment, and was left
+unmolested; but, in 1692, a strange attack was made upon him by one
+Robert Young and Stephen Blackhead, both men convicted of infamous
+crimes, and both, when the scheme was laid, prisoners in Newgate. These
+men drew up an association, in which they whose names were subscribed,
+declared their resolution to restore king James, to seize the princess of
+Orange, dead or alive, and to be ready with thirty thousand men to meet
+king James when he should land. To this they put the names of Sancroft,
+Sprat, Marlborough, Salisbury, and others. The copy of Dr. Sprat's name
+was obtained by a fictitious request, to which an answer in his own hand
+was desired. His hand was copied so well, that he confessed it might have
+deceived himself. Blackhead, who had carried the letter, being sent
+again with a plausible message, was very curious to see the house, and
+particularly importunate to be let into the study; where, as is supposed,
+he designed to leave the association. This, however, was denied him;
+and he dropped it in a flower-pot in the parlour. Young now laid an
+information before the privy council; and May 7, 1692, the bishop was
+arrested, and kept at a messenger's, under a strict guard, eleven days.
+His house was searched, and directions were given that the flower-pots
+should be inspected. The messengers, however, missed the room in which
+the paper was left. Blackhead went, therefore, a third time; and finding
+his paper where he had left it, brought it away.
+
+The bishop having been enlarged, was, on June the 10th and 13th, examined
+again before the privy council, and confronted with his accusers. Young
+persisted, with the most obdurate impudence, against the strongest
+evidence; but the resolution of Blackhead, by degrees, gave way. There
+remained at last no doubt of the bishop's innocence, who, with great
+prudence and diligence, traced the progress, and detected the characters
+of the two informers, and published an account of his own examination and
+deliverance; which made such an impression upon him, that he commemorated
+it through life by a yearly day of thanksgiving.
+
+With what hope or what interest, the villains had contrived an accusation
+which they must know themselves utterly unable to prove, was never
+discovered.
+
+After this he passed his days in the quiet exercise of his function.
+When the cause of Sacheverell put the publick in commotion, he honestly
+appeared among the friends of the church. He lived to his seventy-ninth
+year, and died May 20, 1713.
+
+Burnet is not very favourable to his memory; but he and Burnet were old
+rivals. On some publick occasion they both preached before the house of
+commons. There prevailed, in those days, an indecent custom: when the
+preacher touched any favourite topick, in a manner that delighted his
+audience, their approbation was expressed by a loud _hum_, continued in
+proportion to their zeal or pleasure. When Burnet preached, part of his
+congregation _hummed_ so loudly and so long, that he, sat down to enjoy
+it, and rubbed his face with his handkerchief. When Sprat preached, he
+likewise was honoured with the like animating _hum_; but he stretched
+out his hand to the congregation, and cried, "Peace, peace, I pray you,
+peace."
+
+This I was told in my youth by my father, an old man, who had been no
+careless observer of the passages of those times.
+
+Burnet's sermon, says Salmon, was remarkable for sedition, and Sprat's
+for loyalty. Burnet had the thanks of the house; Sprat had no thanks, but
+a good living from the king, which, he said, was of as much value as the
+thanks of the commons.
+
+The works of Sprat, besides his few poems, are, the History of the Royal
+Society, the Life of Cowley, the Answer to Sorbière, the History of the
+Rye-house Plot, the Relation of his own Examination, and a volume of
+sermons. I have heard it observed, with great justness, that every
+book is of a different kind, and that each has its distinct and
+characteristical excellence[138].
+
+My business is only with his poems. He considered Cowley as a model; and
+supposed that, as he was imitated, perfection was approached. Nothing,
+therefore, but Pindarick liberty was to be expected. There is in his few
+productions no want of such conceits as he thought excellent; and of
+those our judgment may be settled by the first that appears in his praise
+of Cromwell, where he says, that Cromwell's "fame, like man, will grow
+white as it grows old."
+
+[Footnote 138: This observation was made to Dr. Johnson by the right hon.
+Wm. Gerard Hamilton, as he told me, at Tunbridge, August, 1792. M.]
+
+
+
+
+HALIFAX
+
+The life of the earl of Halifax was properly that of an artful and active
+statesman, employed in balancing parties, contriving expedients, and
+combating opposition, and exposed to the vicissitudes of advancement and
+degradation; but, in this collection, poetical merit is the claim to
+attention; and the account which is here to be expected may properly be
+proportioned not to his influence in the state, but to his rank among the
+writers of verse.
+
+Charles Montague was born April 16, 1661, at Horton, in Northamptonshire,
+the son of Mr. George Montague, a younger son of the earl of Manchester.
+He was educated first in the country, and then removed to Westminster,
+where, in 1677, he was chosen a king's scholar, and recommended himself
+to Busby by his felicity in extemporary epigrams. He contracted a very
+intimate friendship with Mr. Stepney; and, in 1682, when Stepney was
+elected to Cambridge, the election of Montague being not to proceed till
+the year following, he was afraid lest, by being placed at Oxford, he
+might be separated from his companion, and, therefore, solicited to be
+removed to Cambridge, without waiting for the advantages of another year.
+
+It seems, indeed, time to wish for a removal; for he was already a
+schoolboy of one-and-twenty.
+
+His relation, Dr. Montague, was then master of the college in which he
+was placed a fellow-commoner, and took him under his particular care.
+Here he commenced an acquaintance with the great Newton, which continued
+through his life, and was at last attested by a legacy[139].
+
+In 1685, his verses on the death of king Charles made such an impression
+on the earl of Dorset, that he was invited to town, and introduced by
+that universal patron to the other wits. In 1687, he joined with Prior
+in the City Mouse and Country Mouse, a burlesque of Dryden's Hind and
+Panther. He signed the invitation to the prince of Orange, and sat in
+the convention. He, about the same time, married the countess dowager of
+Manchester, and intended to have taken orders; but afterwards altering
+his purpose, he purchased, for 1500_l_. the place of one of the clerks of
+the council.
+
+After he had written his epistle on the victory of the Boyne, his patron
+Dorset introduced him to king William, with this expression: "Sir, I have
+brought a _mouse_ to wait on your majesty." To which the king is said
+to have replied, "You do well to put me in the way of making a _man_
+of him;" and ordered him a pension of five hundred pounds. This story,
+however current, seems to have been made after the event. The king's
+answer implies a greater acquaintance with our proverbial and familiar
+diction than king William could possibly have attained.
+
+In 1691, being member of the house of commons, he argued warmly in favour
+of a law to grant the assistance of counsel in trials for high treason;
+and, in the midst of his speech falling into some confusion, was for
+awhile silent; but, recovering himself, observed, "how reasonable it was
+to allow counsel to men called as criminals before a court of justice,
+when it appeared how much the presence of that assembly could disconcert
+one of their own body[140]."
+
+After this he rose fast into honours and employments, being made one of
+the commissioners of the treasury, and called to the privy council. In
+1694, he became chancellor of the exchequer; and the next year engaged
+in the great attempt of the recoinage, which was in two years happily
+completed. In 1696, he projected the _general fund_ and raised the
+credit of the exchequer; and, after inquiry concerning a grant of Irish
+crown-lands, it was determined, by a vote of the commons, that Charles
+Montague, esquire, "had deserved his majesty's favour." In 1698, being
+advanced to the first commission of the treasury, he was appointed one of
+the regency in the king's absence; the next year he was made auditor of
+the exchequer, and the year after created baron Halifax. He was, however,
+impeached by the commons; but the articles were dismissed by the lords.
+
+At the accession of queen Anne he was dismissed from the council; and in
+the first parliament of her reign was again attacked by the commons, and
+again escaped by the protection of the lords. In 1704, he wrote an answer
+to Bromley's speech against occasional conformity. He headed the inquiry
+into the danger of the church. In 1706, he proposed and negotiated the
+union with Scotland; and when the elector of Hanover received the garter,
+after the act had passed for securing the protestant succession, he was
+appointed to carry the ensigns of the order to the electoral court. He
+sat as one of the judges of Sacheverell; but voted for a mild sentence.
+Being now no longer in favour, he contrived to obtain a writ for
+summoning the electoral prince to parliament, as duke of Cambridge.
+
+At the queen's death he was appointed one of the regents; and at the
+accession of George the first was made earl of Halifax, knight of the
+garter, and first commissioner of the treasury, with a grant to his
+nephew of the reversion of the auditorship of the exchequer. More was not
+to be had, and this he kept but a little while; for, on the 19th of May,
+1715, he died of an inflammation of his lungs.
+
+Of him, who from a poet became a patron of poets, it will be readily
+believed that the works would not miss of celebration. Addison began
+to praise him early, and was followed or accompanied by other poets;
+perhaps, by almost all, except Swift and Pope, who forbore to flatter him
+in his life, and after his death spoke of him, Swift with slight censure,
+and Pope, in the character of Bufo, with acrimonious contempt[141].
+
+He was, as Pope says, "fed with dedications;" for Tickell affirms that no
+dedicator was unrewarded. To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt
+of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the
+falsehoods of his assertions, is, surely, to discover great ignorance of
+human nature and human life. In determinations depending not on rules,
+but on experience and comparison, judgment is always, in some degree,
+subject to affection. Very near to admiration is the wish to admire.
+
+Every man willingly gives value to the praise which he receives,
+and considers the sentence passed in his favour as the sentence of
+discernment. We admire, in a friend, that understanding that selected us
+for confidence; we admire more, in a patron, that judgment which, instead
+of scattering bounty indiscriminately, directed it to us; and, if the
+patron be an author, those performances which gratitude forbids us to
+blame, affection will easily dispose us to exalt.
+
+To these prejudices, hardly culpable, interest adds a power always
+operating, though not always, because not willingly, perceived. The
+modesty of praise wears gradually away; and, perhaps, the pride of
+patronage may be in time so increased, that modest praise will no longer
+please.
+
+Many a blandishment was practised upon Halifax, which he would never have
+known, had he no other attractions than those of his poetry, of which a
+short time has withered the beauties. It would now be esteemed no honour,
+by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verses, to be told, that, in
+strains either familiar or solemn, he sings like Montague.
+
+[Footnote 139: He left sir Isaac Newton 200/. M.]
+
+[Footnote 140: Mr. Reed observes, that this anecdote is related by Mr.
+Walpole, in his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, of the earl of
+Shaftesbury, author of the Characteristicks, but it appears to me to be
+a mistake, if we are to understand that the words were spoken by
+Shaftesbury at this time, when he had no seat in the house of commons;
+nor did the bill pass at this time, being thrown out by the house of
+lords. It became a law in the seventh of William, when Halifax and
+Shaftesbury both had seats. The editors of the Biog. Brit. adopt Mr.
+Walpole's story, but they are not speaking of this period. The story
+first appeared in the life of lord Halifax, published in 1715.]
+
+[Footnote 141: Mr. Roscoe denies that Pope's character of Bufo, in the
+prologue to the Satires, was intended for Halifax. In evidence of his
+assertion he quotes several passages from Pope's poems, and the preface
+to the Iliad, all published after that nobleman's death, when the poet
+could hope for no return for his praises, when flattery could not sooth
+"the dull cold ear of death." Twenty years after Halifax's decease, he is
+thus commemorated:
+
+  "But does the court one worthy man remove,
+  That moment I declare he has my love:
+  I shun their zenith, court their mild decline;
+  Thus SOMERS once, and HALIFAX were mine."
+
+See Roscoe's Pope, vol. i. p. 138. ED.]
+
+
+
+
+PARNELL
+
+The life of Dr. Parnell is a task which I should very willingly decline,
+since it has been lately written by Goldsmith, a man of such variety of
+powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do
+best that which he was doing; a man who had the art of being minute
+without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was
+copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without
+weakness.
+
+What such an author has told, who would tell again? I have made an
+abstract from his larger narrative; and have this gratification from my
+attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the
+memory of Goldsmith:
+
+
+  'Tho geras esti thanonton'
+
+Thomas Parnell was the son of a commonwealthsman of the same name, who,
+at the restoration, left Congleton, in Cheshire, where the family had
+been established for several centuries, and, settling in Ireland,
+purchased an estate, which, with his lands in Cheshire, descended to the
+poet, who was born at Dublin, in 1679; and, after the usual education at
+a grammar-school, was, at the age of thirteen, admitted into the college,
+where, in 1700, he became master of arts; and was the same year ordained
+a deacon, though under the canonical age, by a dispensation from the
+bishop of Derry.
+
+About three years afterwards he was made a priest; and, in 1705, Dr.
+Ashe, the bishop of Clogher, conferred upon him the archdeaconry of
+Clogher. About the same time he married Mrs. Anne Minchin, an amiable
+lady, by whom he had two sons, who died young, and a daughter who long
+survived him.
+
+At the ejection of the whigs, in the end of queen Anne's reign, Parnell
+was persuaded to change his party, not without much censure from those
+whom he forsook, and was received by the new ministry as a valuable
+reinforcement. When the earl of Oxford was told that Dr. Parnell waited
+among the crowd in the outer room, he went, by the persuasion of Swift,
+with his treasurer's staff in his hand, to inquire for him, and to bid
+him welcome; and, as may be inferred from Pope's dedication, admitted him
+as a favourite companion to his convivial hours, but, as it seems often
+to have happened in those times to the favourites of the great, without
+attention to his fortune, which, however, was in no great need of
+improvement.
+
+Parnell, who did not want ambition or vanity, was desirous to make
+himself conspicuous, and to show how worthy he was of high preferment. As
+he thought himself qualified to become a popular preacher, he displayed
+his elocution with great success in the pulpits of London; but the
+queen's death putting an end to his expectations, abated his diligence;
+and Pope represents him as falling from that time into intemperance of
+wine. That in his latter life he was too much a lover of the bottle, is
+not denied; but I have heard it imputed to a cause more likely to obtain
+forgiveness from mankind, the untimely death of a darling son; or, as
+others tell, the loss of his wife, who died, 1712, in the midst of his
+expectations.
+
+He was now to derive every future addition to his preferments from
+his personal interest with his private friends, and he was not long
+unregarded. He was warmly recommended by Swift to archbishop King, who
+gave him a prebend in 1713; and in May, 1716, presented him to the
+vicarage of Finglass, in the diocese of Dublin, worth four hundred pounds
+a year. Such notice from such a man inclines me to believe, that the vice
+of which he has been accused was not gross, or not notorious.
+
+But his prosperity did not last long. His end, whatever was its cause,
+was now approaching. He enjoyed his preferment little more than a year;
+for in July, 1717, in his thirty-eighth year, he died at Chester, on his
+way to Ireland.
+
+He seems to have been one of those poets who take delight in writing. He
+contributed to the papers of that time, and probably published more than
+he owned. He left many compositions behind him, of which Pope selected
+those which he thought best, and dedicated them to the earl of Oxford. Of
+these Goldsmith has given an opinion, and his criticism it is seldom safe
+to contradict. He bestows just praise upon the Rise of Woman, the Fairy
+Tale, and the Pervigilium Veneris; but has very properly remarked, that
+in the Battle of Mice and Frogs, the Greek names have not in English
+their original effect.
+
+He tells us, that the Bookworm is borrowed from Beza; but he should have
+added, with modern applications; and, when he discovers that Gay Bacchus
+is translated from Augurellus, he ought to have remarked, that the latter
+part is purely Parnell's. Another poem, when Spring comes on, is, he
+says, taken from the French. I would add, that the description of
+Barrenness, in his verses to Pope, was borrowed from Secundus; but lately
+searching for the passage, which I had formerly read, I could not find
+it. The Night-piece on Death is indirectly preferred by Goldsmith to
+Gray's Church-yard; but, in my opinion, Gray has the advantage in
+dignity, variety, and originality of sentiment. He observes, that the
+story of the Hermit is in More's Dialogues and Howell's Letters, and
+supposes it to have been originally Arabian.
+
+Goldsmith has not taken any notice of the Elegy to the old Beauty, which
+is, perhaps, the meanest; nor of the Allegory on Man, the happiest of
+Parnell's performances. The hint of the Hymn to Contentment[142] I
+suspect to have been borrowed from Cleiveland.
+
+The general character of Parnell is not great extent of comprehension, or
+fertility of mind. Of the little that appears, still less is his own. His
+praise must be derived from the easy sweetness of his diction: in his
+verses there is more happiness than pains; he is sprightly without
+effort, and always delights, though he never ravishes; every thing is
+proper, yet every thing seems casual. If there is some appearance of
+elaboration in The Hermit, the narrative, as it is less airy, is less
+pleasing[143]. Of his other compositions it is impossible to say whether
+they are the productions of nature, so excellent as not to want the help
+of art, or of art so refined as to resemble nature.
+
+This criticism relates only to the pieces published by Pope. Of the large
+appendages, which I find in the last edition, I can only say, that I know
+not whence they came, nor have ever inquired whither they are going. They
+stand upon the faith of the compilers.
+
+[Footnote 142: Parnell's "exquisite Hymn to Contentment, is manifestly
+formed on the Divine _Psalmodia_ of cardinal Bona--this imitation has
+escaped the notice of Dr. Johnson, and, it is believed, of all other
+critics and commentators." Dr. Jebb's Sermons, second edition, p. 94.]
+
+[Footnote 143: Dr. Warton asks, "Less than what?"]
+
+
+
+
+GARTH
+
+Samuel Garth was of a good family in Yorkshire, and, from some school in
+his own country, became a student at Peter-house, in Cambridge, where he
+resided till he became doctor of physick, on July the 7th, 1691. He was
+examined before the college at London, on March the 12th, 1691-2, and
+admitted fellow, July 26th, 1693. He was soon so much distinguished
+by his conversation and accomplishments, as to obtain very extensive
+practice; and, if a pamphlet of those times may be credited, had the
+favour and confidence of one party, as Radcliffe had of the other.
+
+He is always mentioned as a man of benevolence; and it is just to
+suppose, that his desire of helping the helpless disposed him to so much
+zeal for the dispensary; an undertaking of which some account, however
+short, is proper to be given.
+
+Whether what Temple says be true, that physicians have had more learning
+than the other faculties, I will not stay to inquire; but, I believe,
+every man has found in physicians great liberality and dignity of
+sentiment, very prompt effusion of beneficence, and willingness to exert
+a lucrative art where there is no hope of lucre. Agreeably to this
+character, the College of Physicians, in July, 1687, published an
+edict, requiring all the fellows, candidates, and licentiates, to give
+gratuitous advice to the neighbouring poor.
+
+This edict was sent to the court of aldermen; and, a question being made
+to whom the appellation of the _poor_ should be extended, the college
+answered, that it should be sufficient to bring a testimonial from the
+clergyman officiating in the parish where the patient resided.
+
+After a year's experience, the physicians found their charity frustrated
+by some malignant opposition, and made, to a great degree, vain by the
+high price of physick; they, therefore, voted, in August, 1688, that the
+laboratory of the college should be accommodated to the preparation of
+medicines, and another room prepared for their reception; and that the
+contributors to the expense should manage the charity.
+
+It was now expected, that the apothecaries would have undertaken the care
+of providing medicines; but they took another course. Thinking the whole
+design pernicious to their interest, they endeavoured to raise a faction
+against it in the college, and found some physicians mean enough to
+solicit their patronage, by betraying to them the counsels of the
+college. The greater part, however, enforced by a new edict, in 1694,
+the former order of 1687, and sent it to the mayor and aldermen, who
+appointed a committee to treat with the college, and settle the mode of
+administering the charity.
+
+It was desired by the aldermen, that the testimonials of churchwardens
+and overseers should be admitted; and that all hired servants, and all
+apprentices to handicrafts-men, should be considered as poor. This,
+likewise, was granted by the college.
+
+It was then considered who should distribute the medicines, and who
+should settle their prices. The physicians procured some apothecaries to
+undertake the dispensation, and offered that the warden and company of
+the apothecaries should adjust the price. This offer was rejected; and
+the apothecaries who had engaged to assist the charity were considered as
+traitors to the company, threatened with the imposition of troublesome
+offices, and deterred from the performance of their engagements. The
+apothecaries ventured upon publick opposition, and presented a kind of
+remonstrance against the design to the committee of the city, which the
+physicians condescended to confute; and, at last, the traders seem to
+have prevailed among the sons of trade; for the proposal of the college
+having been considered, a paper of approbation was drawn up, but
+postponed and forgotten.
+
+The physicians still persisted; and, in 1696, a subscription was raised
+by themselves, according to an agreement prefixed to The Dispensary. The
+poor were, for a time, supplied with medicines; for how long a time, I
+know not. The medicinal charity, like others, began with ardour, but soon
+remitted, and, at last, died gradually away.
+
+About the time of the subscription begins the action of The Dispensary.
+The poem, as its subject was present and popular, cooperated with
+passions and prejudices then prevalent, and, with such auxiliaries to its
+intrinsick merit, was universally and liberally applauded. It was on
+the side of charity against the intrigues of interest, and of regular
+learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority; and was,
+therefore, naturally favoured by those who read and can judge of poetry.
+
+In 1697, Garth spoke that which is now called the Harveian oration; which
+the authors of the Biographia mention with more praise than the passage
+quoted in their notes will fully justify. Garth, speaking of the
+mischiefs done by quacks, has these expressions: "Non tamen telis
+vulnerat ista agyrtarum colluvies, sed theriaca quadam magis perniciosa;
+non pyrio, sed pulvere nescio quo exotico certat; non globulis plumbeis,
+sed pilulis aeque lethalibus interficit." This was certainly thought fine
+by the author, and is still admired by his biographer. In October, 1702,
+he became one of the censors of the college.
+
+Garth, being an active and zealous whig, was a member of the Kit-cat
+club, and, by consequence, familiarly known to all the great men of that
+denomination. In 1710, when the government fell into other hands, he writ
+to lord Godolphin, on his dismission, a short poem, which was criticised
+in The Examiner, and so successfully either defended or excused by Mr.
+Addison, that, for the sake of the vindication, it ought to be preserved.
+
+At the accession of the present family his merits were acknowledged and
+rewarded. He was knighted with the sword of his hero, Marlborough; and
+was made physician in ordinary to the king, and physician general to the
+army. He then undertook an edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated
+by several hands; which he recommended by a preface, written with more
+ostentation than ability; his notions are half-formed, and his materials
+immethodically confused. This was his last work. He died Jan. 18,
+1717-18, and was buried at Harrow-on-the-Hill.
+
+His personal character seems to have been social and liberal. He
+communicated himself through a very wide extent of acquaintance; and
+though firm in a party, at a time when firmness included virulence, yet
+he imparted his kindness to those who were not supposed to favour his
+principles. He was an early encourager of Pope, and was, at once, the
+friend of Addison and of Granville. He is accused of voluptuousness and
+irreligion; and Pope, who says, that "if ever there was a good Christian,
+without knowing himself to be so, it was Dr. Garth," seems not able to
+deny what he is angry to hear, and loath to confess.
+
+Pope afterwards declared himself convinced, that Garth died in the
+communion of the church of Rome, having been privately reconciled. It is
+observed by Lowth, that there is less distance than is thought between
+skepticism and popery; and that a mind, wearied with perpetual doubt,
+willingly seeks repose in the bosom of an infallible church.
+
+His poetry has been praised, at least, equally to its merit. In The
+Dispensary there is a strain of smooth and free versification; but few
+lines are eminently elegant. No passages fall below mediocrity, and few
+rise much above it. The plan seems formed without just proportion to the
+subject; the means and end have no necessary connexion. Resnel, in his
+Preface to Pope's Essay, remarks, that Garth exhibits no discrimination
+of characters; and that what any one says might, with equal propriety,
+have been said by another. The general design is, perhaps, open to
+criticism; but the composition can seldom be charged with inaccuracy or
+negligence. The author never slumbers in self-indulgence; his full vigour
+is always exerted; scarcely a line is left unfinished; nor is it easy
+to find an expression used by constraint, or a thought imperfectly
+expressed. It was remarked by Pope, that The Dispensary had been
+corrected in every edition, and that every change was an improvement. It
+appears, however, to want something of poetical ardour, and something
+of general delectation; and, therefore, since it has been no longer
+supported by accidental and extrinsick popularity, it has been scarcely
+able to support itself.
+
+
+
+ROWE
+
+
+Nicholas Rowe was born at Little Beckford, in Bedfordshire, in 1673. His
+family had long possessed a considerable estate, with a good house, at
+Lambertoun, in Devonshire[144]. The ancestor from whom he descended, in a
+direct line, received the arms borne by his descendants for his bravery
+in the holy war. His father, John Rowe, who was the first that quitted
+his paternal acres to practise any art of profit, professed the law, and
+published Benlow's and Dallison's Reports, in the reign of James the
+second, when in opposition to the notions, then diligently propagated,
+of dispensing power, he ventured to remark how low his authors rated the
+prerogative. He was made a sergeant, and died April 30, 1692. He was
+buried in the Temple church.
+
+Nicholas was first sent to a private school at Highgate; and, being
+afterwards removed to Westminster, was, at twelve years[145], chosen one
+of the king's scholars. His master was Busby, who suffered none of his
+scholars to let their powers lie useless; and his exercises in several
+languages are said to have been written with uncommon degrees of
+excellence, and yet to have cost him very little labour.
+
+At sixteen he had, in his father's opinion, made advances in learning
+sufficient to qualify him for the study of law, and was entered a student
+of the Middle Temple, where, for some time, he read statutes and reports
+with proficiency proportionate to the force of his mind, which was
+already such that he endeavoured to comprehend law, not as a series
+of precedents, or collection of positive precepts, but as a system of
+rational government, and impartial justice.
+
+When he was nineteen, he was, by the death of his father, left more to
+his own direction, and, probably, from that time suffered law gradually
+to give way to poetry[146]. At twenty-five he produced the Ambitious
+Step-Mother, which was received with so much favour, that he devoted
+himself, from that time, wholly to elegant literature.
+
+His next tragedy, 1702, was Tamerlane, in which, under the name of
+Tamerlane, he intended to characterize king William, and Lewis the
+fourteenth under that of Bajazet. The virtues of Tamerlane seem to have
+been arbitrarily assigned him by his poet, for I know not that history
+gives any other qualities than those which make a conqueror. The fashion,
+however, of the time was, to accumulate upon Lewis all that can raise
+horrour and detestation; and whatever good was withheld from him, that it
+might not be thrown away, was bestowed upon king William.
+
+This was the tragedy which Rowe valued most, and that which, probably by
+the help of political auxiliaries, excited most applause; but occasional
+poetry must often content itself with occasional praise. Tamerlane has
+for a long time been acted only once a year, on the night when king
+William landed. Our quarrel with Lewis has been long over; and it now
+gratifies neither zeal nor malice to see him painted with aggravated
+features, like a Saracen upon a sign.
+
+The Fair Penitent, his next production, 1703, is one of the most pleasing
+tragedies on the stage, where it still keeps its turns of appearing, and
+probably will long keep them, for there is scarcely any work of any poet,
+at once, so interesting by the fable and so delightful by the language.
+The story is domestick, and, therefore, easily received by the
+imagination, and assimilated to common life; the diction is exquisitely
+harmonious, and soft or sprightly as occasion requires.
+
+The character of Lothario seems to have been expanded by Richardson into
+Lovelace; but he has excelled his original in the moral effect of the
+fiction. Lothario, with gaiety which cannot be hated, and bravery which
+cannot be despised, retains too much of the spectator's kindness. It
+was in the power of Richardson alone to teach us, at once, esteem and
+detestation; to make virtuous resentment overpower all the benevolence
+which wit, elegance, and courage, naturally excite; and to lose, at last,
+the hero in the villain.
+
+The fifth act is not equal to the former; the events of the drama are
+exhausted, and little remains but to talk of what is past. It has been
+observed that the title of the play does not sufficiently correspond
+with the behaviour of Calista, who, at last, shows no evident signs
+of repentance, but may be reasonably suspected of feeling pain from
+detection rather than from guilt, and expresses more shame than sorrow,
+and more rage than shame.
+
+His next, 1706, was Ulysses; which, with the common fate of mythological
+stories, is now generally neglected. We have been too early acquainted
+with the poetical heroes, to expect any pleasure from their revival; to
+show them as they have already been shown, is to disgust by repetition;
+to give them new qualities, or new adventures, is to offend by violating
+received notions.
+
+The Royal Convert, 1708, seems to have a better claim to longevity. The
+fable is drawn from an obscure and barbarous age, to which fictions are
+most easily and properly adapted; for when objects are imperfectly
+seen, they easily take forms from imagination. The scene lies among
+our ancestors in our own country, and, therefore, very easily catches
+attention. Rodogune is a personage truly tragical, of high spirit, and
+violent passions, great with tempestuous dignity, and wicked with a soul
+that would have been heroick if it had been virtuous. The motto seems to
+tell that this play was not successful.
+
+Rowe does not always remember what his characters require. In Tamerlane
+there is some ridiculous mention of the god of love; and Rodogune, a
+savage Saxon, talks of Venus, and the eagle that bears the thunder of
+Jupiter.
+
+This play discovers its own date, by a prediction of the union, in
+imitation of Cranmer's prophetick promises to Henry the eighth. The
+anticipated blessings of union are not very naturally introduced, nor
+very happily expressed.
+
+He once, 1706, tried to change his hand. He ventured on a comedy, and
+produced The Biter; with which, though it was unfavourably treated by the
+audience, he was himself delighted; for he is said to have sat in the
+house laughing with great vehemence, whenever he had, in his own opinion,
+produced a jest. But, finding that he and the publick had no sympathy of
+mirth, he tried at lighter scenes no more.
+
+After the Royal Convert, 1714, appeared Jane Shore, written, as its
+author professes, "in imitation of Shakespeare's style." In what he
+thought himself an imitator of Shakespeare, it is not easy to conceive.
+The numbers, the diction, the sentiments, and the conduct, every thing in
+which imitation can consist, are remote, in the utmost degree, from the
+manner of Shakespeare; whose dramas it resembles only as it is an English
+story, and as some of the persons have their names in history. This play,
+consisting chiefly of domestick scenes and private distress, lays hold
+upon the heart. The wife is forgiven, because she repents, and the
+husband is honoured, because he forgives. This, therefore, is one of
+those pieces which we still welcome on the stage.
+
+His last tragedy, 1715, was Lady Jane Grey. This subject had been chosen
+by Mr. Smith, whose papers were put into Rowe's hands, such as he
+describes them in his preface. This play has, likewise, sunk into
+oblivion. From this time he gave nothing more to the stage.
+
+Being, by a competent fortune, exempted from any necessity of combating
+his inclination, he never wrote in distress, and, therefore, does not
+appear to have ever written in haste. His works were finished to his own
+approbation, and bear few marks of negligence or hurry. It is remarkable,
+that his prologues and epilogues are all his own, though he sometimes
+supplied others; he afforded help, but did not solicit it. As his studies
+necessarily made him acquainted with Shakespeare, and acquaintance
+produced veneration, he undertook, 1709, an edition of his works, from
+which he neither received much praise, nor seems to have expected it;
+yet, I believe, those who compare it with former copies will find, that
+he has done more than he promised; and that, without the pomp of notes,
+or boasts of criticism, many passages are happily restored. He prefixed
+a life of the author, such as tradition, then almost expiring, could
+supply, and a preface[147], which cannot be said to discover much
+profundity or penetration. He, at least, contributed to the popularity of
+his author.
+
+He was willing enough to improve his fortune by other arts than poetry.
+He was under-secretary, for three years, when the duke of Queensberry was
+secretary of state, and afterwards applied to the earl of Oxford for some
+publick employment[148]. Oxford enjoined him to study Spanish; and when,
+some time afterwards, he came again, and said that he had mastered it,
+dismissed him, with this congratulation: "Then, sir, I envy you the
+pleasure of reading Don Quixote in the original."
+
+This story is sufficiently attested; but why Oxford, who desired to
+be thought a favourer of literature, should thus insult a man of
+acknowledged merit; or how Rowe, who was so keen a whig[148], that he
+did not willingly converse with men of the opposite party, could ask
+preferment from Oxford, it is not now possible to discover. Pope, who
+told the story, did not say on what occasion the advice was given; and,
+though he owned Rowe's disappointment, doubted whether any injury was
+intended him, but thought it rather lord Oxford's _odd way_.
+
+It is likely that he lived on discontented through the rest of queen
+Anne's reign; but the time came, at last, when he found kinder friends.
+At the accession of king George he was made poet-laureate; I am afraid,
+by the ejection of poor Nahum Tate, who, 1716, died in the Mint, where
+he was forced to seek shelter by extreme poverty[150]. He was made,
+likewise, one of the land-surveyors of the customs of the port of
+London. The prince of Wales chose him clerk of his council; and the lord
+chancellor Parker, as soon as he received the seals, appointed him,
+unasked, secretary of the presentations. Such an accumulation of
+employments undoubtedly produced a very considerable revenue.
+
+Having already translated some parts of Lucan's Pharsalia, which had been
+published in the Miscellanies, and doubtless received many praises, he
+undertook a version of the whole work, which he lived to finish, but not
+to publish. It seems to have been printed under the care of Dr. Welwood,
+who prefixed the author's life, in which is contained the following
+character:
+
+"As to his person, it was graceful and well made; his face regular, and
+of a manly beauty. As his soul was well lodged, so its rational and
+animal faculties excelled in a high degree. He had a quick and fruitful
+invention, a deep penetration, and a large compass of thought, with
+singular dexterity and easiness in making his thoughts to be understood.
+He was master of most parts of polite learning, especially the classical
+authors, both Greek and Latin; understood the French, Italian, and
+Spanish languages; and spoke the first fluently, and the other two
+tolerably well.
+
+"He had likewise read most of the Greek and Roman histories in their
+original languages, and most that are wrote in English, French, Italian,
+and Spanish. He had a good taste in philosophy; and, having a firm
+impression of religion upon his mind, he took great delight in divinity
+and ecclesiastical history, in both which he made great advances in the
+times he retired into the country, which were frequent. He expressed, on
+all occasions, his full persuasion of the truth of revealed religion; and
+being a sincere member of the established church himself, he pitied, but
+condemned not, those that dissented from it. He abhorred the principles
+of persecuting men upon the account of their opinions in religion; and,
+being strict in his own, he took it not upon him to censure those of
+another persuasion. His conversation was pleasant, witty, and learned,
+without the least tincture of affectation or pedantry; and his inimitable
+manner of diverting and enlivening the company made it impossible for any
+one to be out of humour when he was in it. Envy and detraction seemed to
+be entirely foreign to his constitution; and whatever provocations he
+met with at any time, he passed them over without the least thought of
+resentment or revenge. As Homer had a Zoilus, so Mr. Rowe had sometimes
+his; for there were not wanting malevolent people, and pretenders to
+poetry too, that would now and then bark at his best performances; but
+he was conscious of his own genius, and had so much good-nature as to
+forgive them; nor could he ever be tempted to return them an answer.
+
+"The love of learning and poetry made him not the less fit for business,
+and nobody applied himself closer to it, when it required his attendance.
+The late duke of Queensberry, when he was secretary of state, made him
+his secretary for publick affairs; and when that truly great man came
+to know him well, he was never so pleased as when Mr. Rowe was in
+his company. After the duke's death, all avenues were stopped to his
+preferment; and, during the rest of that reign, he passed his time with
+the muses and his books, and sometimes the conversation of his friends.
+
+"When he had just got to be easy in his fortune, and was in a fair way to
+make it better, death swept him away, and in him deprived the world of
+one of the best men, as well as one of the best geniuses of the age. He
+died like a christian and a philosopher, in charity with all mankind,
+and with an absolute resignation to the will of God. He kept up his
+good-humour to the last; and took leave of his wife and friends
+immediately before his last agony, with the same tranquillity of mind,
+and the same indifference for life, as though he had been upon taking
+but a short journey. He was twice married; first to a daughter of Mr.
+Parsons, one of the auditors of the revenue; and afterwards to a daughter
+of Mr. Devenish, of a good family in Dorsetshire[151]. By the first he
+had a son; and by the second a daughter, married afterwards to Mr. Fane.
+He died the sixth of December, 1718, in the forty-fifth year of his age;
+and was buried the nineteenth of the same month in Westminster Abbey,
+in the aisle where many of our English poets are interred, over against
+Chaucer, his body being attended by a select number of his friends, and
+the dean and choir officiating at the funeral."
+
+To this character, which is apparently given with the fondness of a
+friend, may be added the testimony of Pope, who says, in a letter to
+Blount: "Mr. Rowe accompanied me, and passed a week in the forest. I
+need not tell you how much a man of his turn entertained me; but I must
+acquaint you, there is a vivacity and gaiety of disposition, almost
+peculiar to him, which makes it impossible to part from him without that
+uneasiness which generally succeeds all our pleasure."
+
+Pope has left behind him another mention of his companion, less
+advantageous, which is thus reported by Dr. Warburton.
+
+"Rowe, in Mr. Pope's opinion, maintained a decent character, but had no
+heart. Mr. Addison was justly offended with some behaviour which arose
+from that want, and estranged himself from him; which Rowe felt
+very severely. Mr. Pope, their common friend, knowing this, took an
+opportunity, at some juncture of Mr. Addison's advancement, to tell him
+how poor Rowe was grieved at his displeasure, and what satisfaction he
+expressed at Mr. Addison's good fortune, which he expressed so naturally,
+that he (Mr. Pope) could not but think him sincere. Mr. Addison replied,
+'I do not suspect that he feigned; but the levity of his heart is such,
+that he is struck with any new adventure; and it would affect him just in
+the same manner, if he heard I was going to be hanged.' Mr. Pope said he
+could not deny but Mr. Addison understood Rowe well[152]."
+
+This censure time has not left us the power of confirming or refuting;
+but observation daily shows, that much stress is not to be laid on
+hyperbolical accusations, and pointed sentences, which even he that
+utters them desires to be applauded rather than credited. Addison can
+hardly be supposed to have meant all that he said. Few characters can
+bear the microscopick scrutiny of wit quickened by anger; and, perhaps,
+the best advice to authors would be, that they should keep out of the way
+of one another.
+
+Rowe is chiefly to be considered as a tragick writer and a translator. In
+his attempt at comedy he failed so ignominiously, that his Biter is not
+inserted in his works; and his occasional poems and short compositions
+are rarely worthy of either praise or censure; for they seem the casual
+sports of a mind seeking rather to amuse its leisure than to exercise its
+powers.
+
+In the construction of his dramas, there is not much art; he is not a
+nice observer of the unities. He extends time and varies place as his
+convenience requires. To vary the place is not, in my opinion, any
+violation of nature, if the change be made between the acts; for it is no
+less easy for the spectator to suppose himself at Athens in the second
+act, than at Thebes in the first; but to change the scene, as is done by
+Rowe, in the middle of an act, is to add more acts to the play, since an
+act is so much of the business as is transacted without interruption.
+Rowe, by this license, easily extricates himself from difficulties; as,
+in Jane Grey, when we have been terrified with all the dreadful pomp of
+publick execution, and are wondering how the heroine or the poet will
+proceed, no sooner has Jane pronounced some prophetick rhymes, than--pass
+and be gone--the scene closes, and Pembroke and Gardiner are turned out
+upon the stage.
+
+I know not that there can be found in his plays any deep search into
+nature, any accurate discriminations of kindred qualities, or nice
+display of passion in its progress; all is general and undefined. Nor
+does he much interest or affect the auditor, except in Jane Shore, who is
+always seen and heard with pity. Alicia is a character of empty noise,
+with no resemblance to real sorrow, or to natural madness.
+
+Whence, then, has Rowe his reputation? From the reasonableness and
+propriety of some of his scenes, from the elegance of his diction, and
+the suavity of his verse. He seldom moves either pity or terrour, but
+he often elevates the sentiments; he seldom pierces the breast, but he
+always delights the ear, and often improves the understanding.
+
+His translation of the Golden Verses, and of the first book of Quillet's
+poem, have nothing in them remarkable. The Golden Verses are tedious.
+
+The version of Lucan is one of the greatest productions of English
+poetry; for there is, perhaps, none that so completely exhibits the
+genius and spirit of the original. Lucan is distinguished by a kind of
+dictatorial or philosophick dignity, rather, as Quintilian observes,
+declamatory than poetical; full of ambitious morality and pointed
+sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines. This character Rowe
+has very diligently and successfully preserved. His versification,
+which is such as his contemporaries practised, without any attempt at
+innovation or improvement, seldom wants either melody or force. His
+author's sense is sometimes a little diluted by additional infusions,
+and sometimes weakened by too much expansion. But such faults are to
+be expected in all translations, from the constraint of measures and
+dissimilitude of languages. The Pharsalia of Rowe deserves more notice
+than it obtains, and, as it is more read, will be more esteemed[153].
+
+[Footnote 144: In the Villare, _Lamerton_. Dr. J.]
+
+[Footnote 145: He was not elected till 1688. N.]
+
+[Footnote 146: Sewell, in a life of Rowe, says, that he was called to the
+bar and kept chambers in one of the inns of court, till he had produced
+two plays; that is till 1702, at which time he was twenty-nine. M.]
+
+
+[Footnote 147: Mr. Rowe's preface, however, is not distinct, as it might
+be supposed from this passage, from the life. R.]
+
+[Footnote 148: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 149: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 150: Jacob, who wrote only four years afterwards, says, that
+Tate had to write the first birthday ode after the accession of king
+George, (Lives of the Poets, 11. 232.) so that he was probably not
+ejected to make room for Rowe, but made a vacancy by his death, in 1716.
+M.]
+
+[Footnote 151: Mrs. Anne Deanes Devenish, of a very good family in
+Dorsetshire, was first married to Mr. Rowe the poet, by whom she was left
+in not abounding circumstances, was afterwards married to colonel Deanes,
+by whom also she was left a widow; and upon the family estate, which was
+a good one, coming to her by the death of a near relation, she resumed
+the family name of Devenish. She was a clever, sensible, agreeable woman,
+had seen a great deal of the world, had kept much good company, and was
+distinguished by a happy mixture of elegance and sense in every thing she
+said or did. Bishop Newton's Life by himself, p. 32.
+
+About the year 1738, he, by her desire, collected and published Mr.
+Rowe's works, with a dedication to Frederick prince of Wales. Mrs.
+Devenish, I believe, died about the year 1758. She was, I think, the
+person meant by Pope in the line,
+
+  Each widow asks it for her own good man. M.]
+
+[Footnote 152: Sewell, who was acquainted with Howe, speaks very highly
+of him: "I dare not venture to give you his character, either as a
+companion, a friend, or a poet. It may be enough to say, that all good
+and learned men loved him; that his conversation either struck out mirth,
+or promoted learning or honour whereever he went; that the openness of a
+gentleman, the unstudied eloquence of a scholar, and the perfect freedom
+of an Englishman, attended him in all his actions." Life of Rowe prefixed
+to his poems. M.
+
+That the author of Jane Shore should have no heart; that Addison should
+assert this, whilst he admitted, in the same breath, that Rowe was
+grieved at his displeasure; and that Pope should coincide in such an
+opinion, and yet should have stated in his epitaph on Rowe,
+
+'That never heart felt passion more sincere,'
+
+are circumstances that cannot be admitted, without sacrificing to the
+veracity of an anecdote, the character and consistency of all the persons
+introduced. Roscoe's Life of Pope, prefixed to his works, vol. i. p.
+250.]
+
+[Footnote 153: Rowe's Lucan, however, has not escaped without censure.
+Bentley has criticised it with great severity in his Philoleutheros
+Lipsiensis. J.B.
+
+The life of Rowe is a very remarkable instance of the uncommon strength
+of Dr. Johnson's memory. When I received from him the MS. he complacently
+observed, "that the criticism was tolerably well done, considering that
+he had not read one of Rowe's plays for thirty years!" N.]
+
+
+
+
+ADDISON
+
+Joseph Addison was born on the 1st of May, 1672, at Milston, of which
+his father, Launcelot Addison, was then rector, near Ambrosebury, in
+Wiltshire, and appearing weak and unlikely to live, he was christened
+the same day[154]. After the usual domestick education, which, from the
+character of his father, may be reasonably supposed to have given him
+strong impressions of piety, he was committed to the care of Mr. Naish,
+at Ambrosebury, and afterwards of Mr. Taylor, at Salisbury.
+
+Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for literature,
+is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously
+diminished: I would, therefore, trace him through the whole process of
+his education. In 1683, in the beginning of his twelfth year, his father,
+being made dean of Lichfield, naturally carried his family to his new
+residence, and, I believe, placed him, for some time, probably not long,
+under Mr. Shaw, then master of the school at Lichfield, father of the
+late Dr. Peter Shaw. Of this interval his biographers have given no
+account, and I know it only from a story of a barring-out, told me, when
+I was a boy, by Andrew Corbet, of Shropshire, who had heard it from Mr.
+Pigot his uncle.
+
+The practice of barring-out was a savage license, practised in many
+schools to the end of the last century, by which the boys, when the
+periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at the approach of
+liberty, some days before the time of regular recess, took possession
+of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade their master
+defiance from the windows. It is not easy to suppose that on such
+occasions the master would do more than laugh; yet, if tradition may be
+credited, he often struggled hard to force or surprise the garrison. The
+master, when Pigot was a schoolboy, was barred-out at Lichfield; and the
+whole operation, as he said, was planned and conducted by Addison.
+
+To judge better of the probability of this story, I have inquired when he
+was sent to the Chartreux; but, as he was not one of those who enjoyed
+the founder's benefaction, there is no account preserved of his
+admission. At the school of the Chartreux, to which he was removed either
+from that of Salisbury or Lichfield, he pursued his juvenile studies
+under the care of Dr. Ellis, and contracted that intimacy with
+sir Richard Steele, which their joint labours have so effectually
+recorded[155].
+
+Of this memorable friendship the greater praise must be given to Steele.
+It is not hard to love those from whom nothing can be feared; and Addison
+never considered Steele as a rival; but Steele lived, as he confesses,
+under an habitual subjection to the predominating genius of Addison, whom
+he always mentioned with reverence, and treated with obsequiousness.
+
+Addison[156], who knew his own dignity, could not always forbear to show
+it, by playing a little upon his admirer; but he was in no danger of
+retort: his jests were endured without resistance or resentment.
+
+But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst. Steele, whose imprudence
+of generosity, or vanity of profusion, kept him always incurably
+necessitous, upon some pressing exigence, in an evil hour, borrowed a
+hundred pounds of his friend, probably without much purpose of repayment;
+but Addison, who seems to have had other notions of a hundred pounds,
+grew impatient of delay, and reclaimed his loan by an execution. Steele
+felt, with great sensibility, the obduracy of his creditor, but with
+emotions of sorrow rather than of anger[157].
+
+In 1687 he was entered into Queen's college in Oxford, where, in 1689,
+the accidental perusal of some Latin verses gained him the patronage
+of Dr. Lancaster, afterwards provost of Queen's college; by whose
+recommendation he was elected into Magdalen college as a demy, a term by
+which that society denominates those which are elsewhere called scholars;
+young men, who partake of the founder's benefaction, and succeed in their
+order to vacant fellowships[158]. Here he continued to cultivate poetry
+and criticism, and grew first eminent by his Latin compositions, which
+are, indeed, entitled to particular praise. He has not confined himself
+to the imitation of any ancient author, but has formed his style from
+the general language, such as a diligent perusal of the productions of
+different ages happened to supply.
+
+His Latin compositions seem to have had much of his fondness, for he
+collected a second volume of the Musae Anglicanae, perhaps, for a
+convenient receptacle, in which all his Latin pieces are inserted, and
+where his poem on the Peace has the first place. He afterwards presented
+the collection to Boileau, who, from that time, "conceived," says
+Tickell, "an opinion of the English genius for poetry." Nothing is better
+known of Boileau, than that he had an injudicious and peevish contempt of
+modern Latin, and, therefore, his profession of regard was, probably, the
+effect of his civility rather than approbation.
+
+Three of his Latin poems are upon subjects on which, perhaps, he would
+not have ventured to have written in his own language. The Battle of the
+Pygmies and Cranes; the Barometer; and a Bowling-green. When the matter
+is low or scanty, a dead language, in which nothing is mean because
+nothing is familiar, affords great conveniencies; and, by the sonorous
+magnificence of Roman syllables, the writer conceals penury of thought
+and want of novelty, often from the reader, and often from himself.
+
+In his twenty-second year he first showed his power of English poetry
+by some verses addressed to Dryden; and soon afterwards published a
+translation of the greater part of the fourth Georgick upon bees; after
+which, says Dryden, "my latter swarm is hardly worth the hiving."
+
+About the same time he composed the arguments prefixed to the several
+books of Dryden's Virgil; and produced an Essay on the Georgicks,
+juvenile, superficial, and uninstructive, without much either of the
+scholar's learning or the critick's penetration.
+
+His next paper of verses contained a character of the principal English
+poets, inscribed to Henry Sacheverell, who was then, if not a poet, a
+writer of verses[159]; as is shown by his version of a small part of
+Virgil's Georgicks, published in the Miscellanies; and a Latin Encomium
+on queen Mary, in the Musae Anglicanae. These verses exhibit all the
+fondness of friendship; but, on one side or the other, friendship was
+afterwards too weak for the malignity of faction.
+
+In this poem is a very confident and discriminative character of Spenser,
+whose work he had then never read[160]. So little, sometimes, is
+criticism the effect of judgment. It is necessary to inform the reader,
+that about this time he was introduced by Congreve to Montague, then
+chancellor of the exchequer[161]: Addison was then learning the trade of
+a courtier, and subjoined Montague, as a poetical name to those of Cowley
+and Dryden.
+
+By the influence of Mr. Montague, concurring, according to Tickell, with
+his natural modesty, he was diverted from his original design of entering
+into holy orders. Montague alleged the corruption of men who engaged in
+civil employments without liberal education; and declared, that, though
+he was represented as an enemy to the church, he would never do it any
+injury but by withholding Addison from it.
+
+Soon after, in 1695, he wrote a poem to king William, with a rhyming
+introduction, addressed to lord Somers[162]. King William had no regard
+to elegance or literature; his study was only war; yet by a choice
+of ministers, whose disposition was very different from his own, he
+procured, without intention, a very liberal patronage to poetry. Addison
+was caressed both by Somers and Montague.
+
+In 1697 appeared his Latin verses on the Peace of Ryswick, which he
+dedicated to Montague, and which was afterwards called, by Smith, "the
+best Latin poem since the Aeneid." Praise must not be too rigorously
+examined; but the performance cannot be denied to be vigorous and
+elegant.
+
+Having yet no publick employment, he obtained, in 1699, a pension of
+three hundred pounds a year, that he might be enabled to travel. He staid
+a year at Blois[163], probably to learn the French language; and then
+proceeded in his journey to Italy, which he surveyed with the eyes of a
+poet.
+
+While he was travelling at leisure, he was far from being idle; for he
+not only collected his observations on the country, but found time to
+write his Dialogues on Medals, and four acts of Cato. Such, at least, is
+the relation of Tickell. Perhaps he only collected his materials, and
+formed his plan.
+
+Whatever were his other employments in Italy, he there wrote the letter
+to lord Halifax, which is justly considered as the most elegant, if not
+the most sublime, of his poetical productions[164]. But in about two
+years he found it necessary to hasten home; being, as Swift informs
+us, distressed by indigence, and compelled to become the tutor of a
+travelling squire, because his pension was not remitted[165].
+
+At his return he published his travels, with a dedication to lord Somers.
+As his stay in foreign countries was short[166], his observations are
+such as might be supplied by a hasty view, and consist chiefly in
+comparisons of the present face of the country with the descriptions left
+us by the Roman poets, from whom he made preparatory collections, though
+he might have spared the trouble, had he known that such collections had
+been made twice before by Italian authors.
+
+The most amusing passage of his book is his account of the minute
+republick of San Marino: of many parts it is not a very severe censure to
+say, that they might have been written at home. His elegance of language,
+and variegation of prose and verse, however, gains upon the reader; and
+the book, though awhile neglected, became, in time, so much the favourite
+of the publick, that before it was reprinted it rose to five times its
+price.
+
+When he returned to England, in 1702, with a meanness of appearance which
+gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found
+his old patrons out of power, and was, therefore, for a time, at full
+leisure for the cultivation of his mind; and a mind so cultivated gives
+reason to believe that little time was lost[167].
+
+But he remained not long neglected or useless. The victory at Blenheim,
+1704, spread triumph and confidence over the nation; and lord Godolphin,
+lamenting to lord Halifax, that it had not been celebrated in a manner
+equal to the subject, desired him to propose it to some better poet.
+Halifax told him, that there was no encouragement for genius; that
+worthless men were unprofitably enriched with publick money, without any
+care to find or employ those whose appearance might do honour to their
+country. To this Godolphin replied, that such abuses should, in time, be
+rectified; and that, if a man could be found capable of the task then
+proposed, he should not want an ample recompense. Halifax then named
+Addison; but required that the treasurer should apply to him in his
+own person. Godolphin sent the message by Mr. Boyle, afterwards lord
+Carleton; and Addison, having undertaken the work, communicated it to the
+treasurer, while it was yet advanced no farther than the simile of the
+angel, and was immediately rewarded by succeeding Mr. Locke in the place
+of commissioner of appeals.
+
+In the following year he was at Hanover with lord Halifax: and the year
+after was made under-secretary of state, first to sir Charles Hedges, and
+in a few months more to the earl of Sunderland.
+
+About this time the prevalent taste for Italian operas inclined him to
+try what would be the effect of a musical drama in our own language. He,
+therefore, wrote the opera of Rosamond, which, when exhibited on the
+stage, was either hissed or neglected[168]; but, trusting that the
+readers would do him more justice, he published it, with an inscription
+to the dutchess of Marlborough; a woman without skill, or pretensions
+to skill, in poetry or literature. His dedication was, therefore, an
+instance of servile absurdity, to be exceeded only by Joshua Barnes's
+dedication of a Greek Anacreon to the duke.
+
+His reputation had been somewhat advanced by the Tender Husband, a comedy
+which Steele dedicated to him, with a confession, that he owed to him
+several of the most successful scenes. To this play Addison supplied a
+prologue.
+
+When the marquis of Wharton was appointed lord lieutenant of
+Ireland[169], Addison attended him as his secretary; and was made keeper
+of the records in Birmingham's tower, with a salary of three hundred
+pounds a year. The office was little more than nominal, and the salary
+was augmented for his accommodation.
+
+Interest and faction allow little to the operation of particular
+dispositions, or private opinions. Two men of personal characters more
+opposite than those of Wharton and Addison could not easily be brought
+together. Wharton was impious, profligate, and shameless, without regard,
+or appearance of regard, to right and wrong: whatever is contrary to this
+may be said of Addison; but, as agents of a party, they were connected,
+and how they adjusted their other sentiments we cannot know.
+
+Addison, must, however, not be too hastily condemned. It is not necessary
+to refuse benefits from a bad man, when the acceptance implies no
+approbation of his crimes; nor has the subordinate officer any obligation
+to examine the opinions or conduct of those under whom he acts, except
+that he may not be made the instrument of wickedness. It is reasonable to
+suppose, that Addison counteracted, as far as he was able, the malignant
+and blasting influence of the lieutenant; and that, at least, by his
+intervention some good was done, and some mischief prevented.
+
+When he was in office, he made a law to himself, as Swift has recorded,
+never to remit his regular fees in civility to his friends: "for," said
+he, "I may have a hundred friends; and, if my fee be two guineas, I
+shall, by relinquishing my right, lose two hundred guineas, and no friend
+gain more than two; there is, therefore, no proportion between the good
+imparted and the evil suffered." He was in Ireland when Steele, without
+any communication of his design, began the publication of the Tatler; but
+he was not long concealed: by inserting a remark on Virgil, which Addison
+had given him, he discovered himself. It is, indeed, not easy for any man
+to write upon literature, or common life, so as not to make himself known
+to those with whom he familiarly converses, and who are acquainted with
+his track of study, his favourite topicks, his peculiar notions, and his
+habitual phrases.
+
+If Steele desired to write in secret, he was not lucky; a single month
+detected him. His first Tatler was published April 12, 1709; and
+Addison's contribution appeared May 26. Tickell observes, that the Tatler
+began, and was concluded without his concurrence. This is, doubtless,
+literally true; but the work did not suffer much by his unconsciousness
+of its commencement, or his absence at its cessation; for he continued
+his assistance to December 23, and the paper stopped on January 2,
+1710-11. He did not distinguish his pieces by any signature; and I know
+not whether his name was not kept secret till the papers were collected
+into volumes.
+
+To the Tatler, in about two months, succeeded the Spectator[170]; a
+series of essays of the same kind, but written with less levity, upon a
+more regular plan, and published daily. Such an undertaking showed the
+writers not to distrust their own copiousness of materials or facility
+of composition, and their performance justified their confidence. They
+found, however, in their progress, many auxiliaries. To attempt a single
+paper was no terrifying labour; many pieces were offered, and many were
+received.
+
+Addison had enough of the zeal of party; but Steele had, at that time,
+almost nothing else. The Spectator, in one of the first papers, showed
+the political tenets of its authors; but a resolution was soon taken, of
+courting general approbation by general topicks, and subjects on which
+faction had produced no diversity of sentiments; such as literature,
+morality, and familiar life. To this practice they adhered with few
+deviations. The ardour of Steele once broke out in praise of Marlborough;
+and when Dr. Fleetwood prefixed to some sermons a preface, overflowing
+with whiggish opinions, that it might be read by the queen[171], it was
+reprinted in the Spectator.
+
+To teach the minuter decencies and inferiour duties, to regulate the
+practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are
+rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if
+they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first
+attempted by Casa in his book of Manners, and Castiglione in his
+Courtier; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance, and
+which, if they are now less read, are neglected only because they have
+effected that reformation which their authors intended, and their
+precepts now are no longer wanted. Their usefulness to the age in which
+they were written is sufficiently attested by the translations which
+almost all the nations of Europe were in haste to obtain.
+
+This species of instruction was continued, and perhaps advanced, by the
+French; among whom la Bruyère's Manners of the Age, though, as Boileau
+remarked, it is written without connexion, certainly deserves great
+praise, for liveliness of description, and justness of observation.
+
+Before the Tatler and Spectator, if the writers for the theatre are
+excepted, England had no masters of common life. No writers had
+yet undertaken to reform either the savageness of neglect, or the
+impertinence of civility; to show when to speak, or to be silent; how
+to refuse, or how to comply. We had many books to teach us our more
+important duties, and to settle opinions in philosophy or politicks;
+but an Arbiter Elegantiarum, a judge of propriety, was yet wanting, who
+should survey the track of daily conversation, and free it from thorns
+and prickles, which tease the passer, though they do not wound him.
+
+For this purpose nothing is so proper as the frequent publication of
+short papers, which we read not as study but amusement. If the subject be
+slight, the treatise, likewise, is short. The busy may find time, and the
+idle may find patience.
+
+This mode of conveying cheap and easy knowledge began among us in the
+civil war[172], when it was much the interest of either party to raise
+and fix the prejudices of the people. At that time appeared Mercurius
+Aulicus, Mercurius Rusticus, and Mercurius Civicus. It is said, that when
+any title grew popular, it was stolen by the antagonist, who, by this
+stratagem, conveyed his notions to those who would not have received him,
+had he not worn the appearance of a friend. The tumult of those
+unhappy days left scarcely any man leisure to treasure up occasional
+compositions; and so much were they neglected, that a complete collection
+is nowhere to be found.
+
+These Mercuries were succeeded by l'Estrange's Observator; and that by
+Lesley's Rehearsal, and, perhaps, by others; but hitherto nothing had
+been conveyed to the people, in this commodious manner, but controversy
+relating to the church or state; of which they taught many to talk, whom
+they could not teach to judge.
+
+It has been suggested that the Royal Society was instituted soon after
+the restoration, to divert the attention of the people from publick
+discontent. The Tatler and Spectator had the same tendency; they were
+published at a time when two parties, loud, restless, and violent, each
+with plausible declarations, and each, perhaps, without any distinct
+termination of its views, were agitating the nation; to minds heated with
+political contest they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections;
+and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent work, that they had a
+perceptible influence upon the conversation of that time, and taught the
+frolick and the gay to unite merriment with decency; an effect which they
+can never wholly lose, while they continue to be among the first books by
+which both sexes are initiated in the elegancies of knowledge.
+
+The Tatler and Spectator adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice of
+daily intercourse by propriety and politeness; and, like la Bruyère,
+exhibited the characters and manners of the age. The personages
+introduced in these papers were not merely ideal; they were then known
+and conspicuous in various stations. Of the Tatler this is told by Steele
+in his last paper; and of the Spectator by Budgel, in the preface to
+Theophrastus, a book which Addison has recommended, and which he was
+suspected to have revised, if he did not write it. Of those portraits,
+which may be supposed to be sometimes embellished, and sometimes
+aggravated, the originals are now partly known and partly forgotten.
+
+But to say that they united the plans of two or three eminent writers,
+is to give them but a small part of their due praise; they superadded
+literature and criticism, and sometimes towered far above their
+predecessors; and taught, with great justness of argument and dignity of
+language, the most important duties and sublime truths.
+
+All these topicks were happily varied with elegant fictions and refined
+allegories, and illuminated with different changes of style and
+felicities of invention.
+
+It is recorded by Budgel, that, of the characters feigned or exhibited
+in the Spectator, the favourite of Addison was sir Roger de Coverley, of
+whom he had formed a very delicate and discriminated idea[173], which he
+would not suffer to be violated; and, therefore, when Steele had shown
+him innocently picking up a girl in the temple, and taking her to a
+tavern, he drew upon himself so much of his friend's indignation, that he
+was forced to appease him by a promise of forbearing sir Roger for the
+time to come.
+
+The reason which induced Cervantes to bring his hero to the grave, "para
+mi solo nacio don Quixote, y yo para el," made Addison declare, with an
+undue vehemence of expression, that he would kill sir Roger; being of
+opinion that they were born for one another, and that any other hand
+would do him wrong.
+
+It may be doubted whether Addison ever filled up his original
+delineation. He describes his knight as having his imagination somewhat
+warped; but of this perversion he has made very little use. The
+irregularities in sir Roger's conduct seem not so much the effects of a
+mind deviating from the beaten track of life, by the perpetual pressure
+of some overwhelming idea, as of habitual rusticity, and that negligence
+which solitary grandeur naturally generates.
+
+The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient
+madness, which, from time to time, cloud reason, without eclipsing it,
+it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been
+deterred from prosecuting his own design.
+
+To sir Roger, who, as a country gentleman, appears to be a tory, or, as
+it is gently expressed, an adherent to the landed interest, is opposed
+sir Andrew Freeport, a new man, a wealthy merchant, zealous for the
+moneyed interest, and a whig. Of this contrariety of opinions, it is
+probable more consequences were at first intended, than could be produced
+when the resolution was taken to exclude party from the paper. Sir Andrew
+does but little, and that little seems not to have pleased Addison, who,
+when he dismissed him from the club, changed his opinions. Steele had
+made him, in the true spirit of unfeeling commerce, declare that he
+"would not build an hospital for idle people;" but at last he buys land,
+settles in the country, and builds not a manufactory, but an hospital
+for twelve old husbandmen, for men with whom a merchant has little
+acquaintance, and whom he commonly considers with little kindness.
+
+Of essays thus elegant, thus instructive, and thus commodiously
+distributed, it is natural to suppose the approbation general, and the
+sale numerous. I once heard it observed, that the sale may be calculated
+by the product of the tax, related in the last number to produce more
+than twenty pounds a week, and, therefore, stated at one-and-twenty
+pounds, or three pounds ten shillings a day: this, at a half-penny a
+paper, will give sixteen hundred and eighty[174] for the daily number.
+
+This sale is not great; yet this, if Swift be credited, was likely to
+grow less; for he declares that the Spectator, whom he ridicules for his
+endless mention of the _fair sex,_ had, before his recess, wearied his
+readers. The next year, 1713, in which Cato came upon the stage, was the
+grand climacterick of Addison's reputation. Upon the death of Cato, he
+had, as is said, planned a tragedy in the time of his travels[175], and
+had, for several years, the first four acts finished, which were shown to
+such as were likely to spread their admiration. They were seen by Pope,
+and by Cibber, who relates that Steele, when he took back the copy, told
+him, in the despicable cant of literary modesty, that, whatever spirit
+his friend had shown in the composition, he doubted whether he would have
+courage sufficient to expose it to the censure of a British audience.
+
+The time, however, was now come, when those, who affected to think
+liberty in danger, affected, likewise, to think that a stage-play might
+preserve it; and Addison was importuned, in the name of the tutelary
+deities of Britain, to show his courage and his zeal by finishing his
+design.
+
+To resume his work he seemed perversely and unaccountably unwilling; and
+by a request, which, perhaps, he wished to be denied, desired Mr. Hughes
+to add a fifth act[176]. Hughes supposed him serious; and, undertaking
+the supplement, brought, in a few days, some scenes for his examination;
+but he had, in the mean time, gone to work himself, and produced half
+an act, which he afterwards completed, but with brevity irregularly
+disproportionate to the foregoing parts, like a task performed with
+reluctance, and hurried to its conclusion.
+
+It may yet be doubted whether Cato was made publick by any change of the
+author's purpose; for Dennis charged him with raising prejudices in
+his own favour by false positions of preparatory criticism, and with
+"poisoning the town" by contradicting, in the Spectator, the established
+rule of poetical justice, because his own hero, with all his virtues, was
+to fall before a tyrant. The fact is certain; the motives we must guess.
+
+Addison was, I believe, sufficiently disposed to bar all avenues against
+all danger. When Pope brought him the prologue, which is properly
+accommodated to the play, there were these words, "Britons, arise, be
+worth like this approved;" meaning nothing more than, Britons, erect
+and exalt yourselves to the approbation of publick virtue. Addison was
+frighted lest he should be thought a promoter of insurrection, and the
+line was liquidated to "Britons, attend."
+
+Now "heavily in clouds came on the day, the great, the important day,"
+when Addison was to stand the hazard of the theatre. That there might,
+however, be left as little hazard as was possible, on the first night
+Steele, as himself relates, undertook to pack an audience. This, says
+Pope[177], had been tried, for the first time, in favour of the Distrest
+Mother; and was now, with more efficacy, practised for Cato.
+
+The danger was soon over. The whole nation was, at that time, on fire
+with faction. The whigs applauded every line in which liberty was
+mentioned, as a satire on the tories; and the tories echoed every clap,
+to show that the satire was unfelt. The story of Bolingbroke is well
+known. He called Booth to his box, and gave him fifty guineas for
+defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator[178].
+The whigs, says Pope, design a second present, when they can accompany it
+with as good a sentence.
+
+The play, supported thus by the emulation of factious praise, was acted,
+night after night for a longer time than, I believe, the publick had
+allowed to any drama before; and the author, as Mrs. Porter long
+afterwards related, wandered through the whole exhibition behind the
+scenes with restless and unappeasable solicitude.
+
+When it was printed, notice was given that the queen would be pleased
+if it was dedicated to her; "but, as he had designed that compliment
+elsewhere, he found himself obliged," says Tickell, "by his duty on the
+one hand, and his honour on the other, to send it into the world without
+any dedication."
+
+Human happiness has always its abatements; the brightest sunshine of
+success is not without a cloud. No sooner was Cato offered to the reader,
+than it was attacked by the acute malignity of Dennis, with all the
+violence of angry criticism. Dennis, though equally zealous, and probably
+by his temper more furious, than Addison, for what they called liberty,
+and though a flatterer of the whig ministry, could not sit quiet at a
+successful play; but was eager to tell friends and enemies, that they had
+misplaced their admirations. The world was too stubborn for instruction;
+with the fate of the censurer of Corneille's Cid, his animadversions
+showed his anger without effect, and Cato continued to be praised.
+
+Pope had now an opportunity of courting the friendship of Addison, by
+vilifying his old enemy, and could give resentment its full play, without
+appearing to revenge himself. He, therefore, published a Narrative of the
+Madness of John Dennis; a performance which left the objections to the
+play in their full force, and, therefore, discovered more desire of
+vexing the critick than of defending the poet.
+
+Addison, who was no stranger to the world, probably saw the selfishness
+of Pope's friendship; and, resolving that he should have the consequences
+of his officiousness to himself, informed Dennis, by Steele, that he was
+sorry for the insult; and that, whenever he should think fit to answer
+his remarks, he would do it in a manner to which nothing could be
+objected.
+
+The greatest weakness of the play is in the scenes of love, which are
+said, by Pope[179], to have been added to the original plan upon a
+subsequent review, in compliance with the popular practice of the stage.
+Such an authority it is hard to reject; yet the love is so intimately
+mingled with the whole action, that it cannot easily be thought
+extrinsick and adventitious; for, if it were taken away, what would be
+left? or how were the four acts filled in the first draught?
+
+At the publication the wits seemed proud to pay their attendance with
+encomiastick verses. The best are from an unknown hand, which will,
+perhaps, lose somewhat of their praise when the author is known to be
+Jeffreys.
+
+Cato had yet other honours. It was censured as a party-play by a scholar
+of Oxford; and defended in a favourable examination by Dr. Sewel. It was
+translated by Salvini into Italian, and acted at Florence; and by the
+Jesuits of St. Omer's into Latin, and played by their pupils. Of this
+version a copy was sent to Mr. Addison: it is to be wished that it could
+be found, for the sake of comparing their version of the soliloquy with
+that of Bland.
+
+A tragedy was written on the same subject by Deschamps, a French poet,
+which was translated with a criticism on the English play. But the
+translator and the critick are now forgotten.
+
+Dennis lived on unanswered, and, therefore, little read. Addison knew the
+policy of literature too well to make his enemy important by drawing
+the attention of the publick upon a criticism, which, though sometimes
+intemperate, was often irrefragable.
+
+While Cato was upon the stage, another daily paper, called the Guardian,
+was published by Steele[180]. To this Addison gave great assistance,
+whether occasionally, or by previous engagement, is not known.
+
+The character of guardian was too narrow and too serious: it might
+properly enough admit both the duties and the decencies of life, but
+seemed not to include literary speculations, and was, in some degree,
+violated by merriment and burlesque. What had the guardian of the Lizards
+to do with clubs of tall or of little men, with nests of ants, or with
+Strada's prolusions?
+
+Of this paper nothing is necessary to be said, but that it found many
+contributors, and that it was a continuation of the Spectator, with the
+same elegance, and the same variety, till some unlucky sparkle, from a
+tory paper, set Steele's politicks on fire, and wit at once blazed
+into faction. He was soon too hot for neutral topicks, and quitted the
+Guardian to write the Englishman.
+
+The papers of Addison are marked in the Spectator by one of the letters
+in the name of Clio, and in the Guardian by a hand; whether it was, as
+Tickell pretends to think, that he was unwilling to usurp the praise of
+others, or, as Steele, with far greater likelihood, insinuates, that he
+could not, without discontent, impart to others any of his own. I have
+heard that his avidity did not satisfy itself with the air of renown, but
+that with great eagerness he laid hold on his proportion of the profits.
+
+Many of these papers were written with powers truly comick, with nice
+discrimination of characters, and accurate observation of natural or
+accidental deviations from propriety; but it was not supposed that he had
+tried a comedy on the stage, till Steele, after his death, declared him
+the author of the Drummer. This, however, Steele did not know to be true
+by any direct testimony; for, when Addison put the play into his hands,
+he only told him, it was the work of a "gentleman in the company;" and
+when it was received, as is confessed, with cold disapprobation, he was
+probably less willing to claim it. Tickell omitted it in his collection;
+but the testimony of Steele, and the total silence of any other claimant,
+has determined the publick to assign it to Addison, and it is now printed
+with his other poetry. Steele carried the Drummer to the playhouse, and
+afterwards to the press, and sold the copy for fifty guineas.
+
+To the opinion of Steele may be added the proof supplied by the
+play itself, of which the characters are such as Addison would have
+delineated, and the tendency such as Addison would have promoted. That it
+should have been ill received would raise wonder, did we not daily see
+the capricious distribution of theatrical praise.
+
+He was not all this time an indifferent spectator of publick affairs. He
+wrote, as different exigencies required, in 1707, the present State of
+the War, and the Necessity of an Augmentation; which, however judicious,
+being written on temporary topicks, and exhibiting no peculiar powers,
+laid hold on no attention, and has naturally sunk by its own weight
+into neglect. This cannot be said of the few papers entitled the Whig
+Examiner, in which is employed all the force of gay malevolence and
+humorous satire. Of this paper, which just appeared and expired, Swift
+remarks, with exultation, that "it is now down among the dead men[181]."
+He might well rejoice at the death of that which he could not have
+killed. Every reader of every party, since personal malice is past, and
+the papers which once inflamed the nation are read only as effusions of
+wit, must wish for more of the Whig Examiners; for on no occasion was
+the genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and on none did the
+superiority of his powers more evidently appear. His Trial of Count
+Tariff, written to expose the treaty of commerce with France, lived no
+longer than the question that produced it.
+
+Not long afterwards, an attempt was made to revive the Spectator, at a
+time, indeed, by no means favourable to literature, when the succession
+of a new family to the throne filled the nation with anxiety, discord,
+and confusion; and either the turbulence of the times, or the satiety of
+the readers, put a stop to the publication, after an experiment of eighty
+numbers, which were afterwards collected into an eighth volume, perhaps
+more valuable than any of those that went before it. Addison produced
+more than a fourth part[182]; and the other contributors are, by no
+means, unworthy of appearing as his associates. The time that had passed
+during the suspension of the Spectator, though it had not lessened his
+power of humour, seems to have increased his disposition to seriousness:
+the proportion of his religious, to his comick papers, is greater than in
+the former series.
+
+The Spectator, from its recommencement, was published only three times a
+week; and no discriminative marks were added to the papers. To Addison
+Tickell has ascribed twenty-three.
+
+The Spectator had many contributors; and Steele, whose negligence kept
+him always in a hurry, when it was his turn to furnish a paper, called
+loudly for the letters, of which Addison, whose materials were more, made
+little use; having recourse to sketches and hints, the product of his
+former studies, which he now reviewed and completed: among these are
+named by Tickell, the essays on Wit, those on the Pleasures of the
+Imagination, and the Criticism on Milton.
+
+When the house of Hanover took possession of the throne, it was
+reasonable to expect that the zeal of Addison would be suitably rewarded.
+Before the arrival of king George, he was made secretary to the regency,
+and was required, by his office, to send notice to Hanover that the queen
+was dead, and that the throne was vacant. To do this would not have
+been difficult to any man but Addison, who was so overwhelmed with the
+greatness of the event, and so distracted by choice of expression, that
+the lords, who could not wait for the niceties of criticism, called Mr.
+Southwell, a clerk in the house, and ordered him to despatch the message.
+Southwell readily told what was necessary in the common style of
+business, and valued himself upon having done what was too hard for
+Addison[183].
+
+He was better qualified for the Freeholder, a paper which he published
+twice a week, from Dec. 23, 1715, to the middle of the next year. This
+was undertaken in defence of the established government, sometimes with
+argument, and sometimes with mirth. In argument he had many equals; but
+his humour was singular and matchless. Bigotry itself must be delighted
+with the Tory Fox-hunter.
+
+There are, however, some strokes less elegant, and less decent; such as
+the Pretender's Journal, in which one topick of ridicule is his poverty.
+This mode of abuse had been employed by Milton against king Charles the
+second.
+
+  _Jacobaei_
+  Centum, exulantis viscera marsupii regis.
+
+And Oldmixon delights to tell of some alderman of London, that he had
+more money than the exiled princes; but that which might be expected from
+Milton's savageness, or Oldmixon's meanness, was not suitable to the
+delicacy of Addison.
+
+Steele thought the humour of the Freeholder too nice and gentle for such
+noisy times; and is reported to have said, that the ministry made use of
+a lute, when they should have called for a trumpet.
+
+This year, 1716[184], he married the countess dowager of Warwick, whom
+he had solicited by a very long and anxious courtship, perhaps with
+behaviour not very unlike that of sir Roger to his disdainful widow; and
+who, I am afraid, diverted herself often by playing with his passion. He
+is said to have first known her by becoming tutor to her son [185]. "He
+formed," said Tonson, "the design of getting that lady from the time when
+he was first recommended into the family." In what part of his life he
+obtained the recommendation, or how long and in what manner he lived
+in the family, I know not. His advances, at first, were certainly
+timorous[186], but grew bolder as his reputation and influence increased;
+till, at last, the lady was persuaded to marry him, on terms much like
+those on which a Turkish princess is espoused, to whom the sultan is
+reported to pronounce, "Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave."
+The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition
+to his happiness; it neither found them nor made them equal. She always
+remembered her own rank, and thought herself entitled to treat with very
+little ceremony the tutor of her son. Howe's ballad of the Despairing
+Shepherd, is said to have been written, either before or after marriage,
+upon this memorable pair; and it is certain that Addison has left behind
+him no encouragement for ambitious love.
+
+The year after, 1717, he rose to his highest elevation, being made
+secretary of state. For this employment he might justly be supposed
+qualified by long practice of business, and by his regular ascent through
+other offices; but expectation is often disappointed; it is universally
+confessed that he was unequal to the duties of his place. In the house of
+commons he could not speak, and, therefore, was useless to the defence
+of the government. In the office, says Pope,[187] he could not issue
+an order without losing his time in quest of fine expressions. What he
+gained in rank he lost in credit; and, finding by experience his own
+inability, was forced to solicit his dismission, with a pension of
+fifteen hundred pounds a year. His friends palliated this relinquishment,
+of which both friends and enemies knew the true reason, with an account
+of declining health, and the necessity of recess and quiet.
+
+He now returned to his vocation, and began to plan literary occupations
+for his future life. He purposed a tragedy on the death of Socrates; a
+story of which, as Tickell remarks, the basis is narrow, and to which I
+know not how love could have been appended. There would, however, have
+been no want either of virtue in the sentiments, or elegance in the
+language.
+
+He engaged in a nobler work, a defence of the Christian religion, of
+which part was published after his death; and he designed to have made a
+new poetical version of the psalms.
+
+These pious compositions Pope imputed[188] to a selfish motive, upon the
+credit, as he owns, of Tonson[189], who, having quarrelled with Addison,
+and not loving him, said, that when he laid down the secretary's office,
+he intended to take orders, and obtain a bishoprick; "For," said he, "I
+always thought him a priest in his heart."
+
+That Pope should have thought this conjecture of Tonson worth
+remembrance, is a proof, but, indeed, so far as I have found, the only
+proof, that he retained some malignity from their ancient rivalry. Tonson
+pretended but to guess it; no other mortal ever suspected it; and Pope
+might have reflected, that a man, who had been secretary of state in
+the ministry of Sunderland, knew a nearer way to a bishoprick than by
+defending religion, or translating the psalms.
+
+It is related, that he had once a design to make an English dictionary,
+and that he considered Dr. Tillotson as the writer of highest authority.
+There was formerly sent to me by Mr. Locker, clerk of the leathersellers'
+company, who, was eminent for curiosity and literature, a collection of
+examples selected from Tillotson's works, as Locker said, by Addison. It
+came too late to be of use, so I inspected it but slightly, and remember
+it indistinctly. I thought the passages too short.
+
+Addison, however, did not conclude his life in peaceful studies; but
+relapsed, when he was near his end, to a political dispute.
+
+It so happened that, 1718-19, a controversy was agitated, with great
+vehemence, between those friends of long continuance, Addison and Steele.
+It may be asked, in the language of Homer, what power or what cause
+could set them at variance. The subject of their dispute was of great
+importance. The earl of Sunderland proposed an act, called the Peerage
+Bill; by which the number of peers should be fixed, and the king
+restrained from any new creation of nobility, unless when an old family
+should be extinct. To this the lords would naturally agree; and the king,
+who was yet little acquainted with his own prerogative, and, as is now
+well known, almost indifferent to the possessions of the crown, had been
+persuaded to consent. The only difficulty was found among the commons,
+who were not likely to approve the perpetual exclusion of themselves and
+their posterity. The bill, therefore, was eagerly opposed, and, among
+others, by sir Robert Walpole, whose speech was published.
+
+The lords might think their dignity diminished by improper advancements,
+and particularly by the introduction of twelve new peers at once, to
+produce a majority of tories in the last reign; an act of authority
+violent enough, yet certainly legal, and by no means to be compared with
+that contempt of national right with which, some time afterwards, by the
+instigation of whiggism, the commons, chosen by the people for three
+years, chose themselves for seven. But, whatever might be the disposition
+of the lords, the people had no wish to increase their power. The
+tendency of the bill, as Steele observed in a letter to the earl of
+Oxford, was to introduce an aristocracy; for a majority in the house of
+lords, so limited, would have been despotick and irresistible.
+
+To prevent this subversion of the ancient establishment, Steele, whose
+pen readily seconded his political passions, endeavoured to alarm the
+nation by a pamphlet called the Plebeian. To this an answer was published
+by Addison, under the title of the Old Whig, in which it is not
+discovered that Steele was then known to be the advocate for the commons.
+Steele replied by a second Plebeian; and, whether by ignorance or by
+courtesy, confined himself to his question, without any personal notice
+of his opponent.
+
+Nothing, hitherto, was committed against the laws of friendship, or
+proprieties of decency; but controvertists cannot long retain their
+kindness for each other. The Old Whig answered the Plebeian, and could
+not forbear some contempt of "little Dicky, whose trade it was to write
+pamphlets." Dicky, however, did not lose his settled veneration for his
+friend; but contented himself with quoting some lines of Cato, which
+were at once detection and reproof. The bill was laid aside during that
+session; and Addison died before the next, in which its commitment was
+rejected by two hundred and sixty-five to one hundred and seventy-seven.
+
+Every reader surely must regret that these two illustrious friends, after
+so many years passed in confidence and endearment, in unity of interest,
+conformity of opinion, and fellowship of study, should finally part
+in acrimonious opposition. Such a controversy was "Bellum plusquam
+_civile_," as Lucan expresses it. Why could not faction find other
+advocates? But, among the uncertainties of the human state, we are doomed
+to number the instability of friendship.
+
+Of this dispute I have little knowledge but from the Biographica
+Britannica. The Old Whig is not inserted in Addison's works; nor is it
+mentioned by Tickell in his life; why it was omitted, the biographers,
+doubtless, give the true reason; the fact was too recent, and those who
+had been heated in the contention were not yet cool.
+
+The necessity of complying with times, and of sparing persons, is the
+great impediment of biography. History may be formed from permanent
+monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal
+knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost
+for ever. What is known can seldom be immediately told; and when it might
+be told, it is no longer known. The delicate features of the mind, the
+nice discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of
+conduct, are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice,
+obstinacy, frolick, and folly, however they might delight in the
+description, should be silently forgotten, than that, by wanton merriment
+and unseasonable detection, a pang should be given to a widow, a
+daughter, a brother, or a friend. As the process of these narratives is
+now bringing me among my contemporaries, I begin to feel myself "walking
+upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished," and coming to the
+time of which it will be proper rather to say "nothing that is false,
+than all that is true."
+
+The end of this useful life was now approaching. Addison had, for some
+time, been oppressed by shortness of breath, which was now aggravated
+by a dropsy; and, finding his danger pressing, he prepared to die
+conformably to his own precepts and professions.
+
+During this lingering decay, he sent, as Pope relates[190], a message by
+the earl of Warwick to Mr. Gay, desiring to see him. Gay, who had not
+visited him for some time before, obeyed the summons, and found himself
+received with great kindness. The purpose for which the interview had
+been solicited was then discovered. Addison told him, that he had injured
+him; but that, if he recovered, he would recompense him. What the injury
+was, he did not explain, nor did Gay ever know, but supposed that
+some preferment designed for him had, by Addison's intervention, been
+withheld.
+
+Lord Warwick was a young man of very irregular life, and, perhaps, of
+loose opinions[191]. Addison, for whom he did not want respect, had
+very diligently endeavoured to reclaim him; but his arguments and
+expostulations had no effect. One experiment, however, remained to be
+tried: when he found his life near its end, he directed the young lord to
+be called; and when he desired, with great tenderness, to hear his last
+injunctions, told him: "I have sent for you, that you may see how a
+Christian can die." What effect this awful scene had on the earl, I know
+not: he, likewise, died himself in a short time, In Tickell's excellent
+elegy on his friend are these lines:
+
+  He taught us how to live; and, oh! too high
+  The price of knowledge, taught us how to die.
+
+In which he alludes, as he told Dr. Young, to this moving interview.
+
+Having given directions to Mr. Tickell for the publication of his works,
+and dedicated them on his deathbed to his friend Mr. Craggs, he died June
+17, 1719, at Holland-house, leaving no child but a daughter[192].
+
+Of his virtue it is a sufficient testimony, that the resentment of party
+has transmitted no charge of any crime. He was not one of those who are
+praised only after death; for his merit was so generally acknowledged,
+that Swift, having observed that his election passed without a contest,
+adds, that, if he had proposed himself for king, he would hardly have
+been refused.
+
+His zeal for his party did not extinguish his kindness for the merit of
+his opponents: when he was secretary in Ireland, he refused to intermit
+his acquaintance with Swift.
+
+Of his habits, or external manners, nothing is so often mentioned as that
+timorous or sullen taciturnity, which his friends called modesty, by too
+mild a name. Steele mentions, with great tenderness, "that remarkable
+bashfulness, which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit;" and tells
+us, "that his abilities were covered only by modesty, which doubles the
+beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to all that are
+concealed." Chesterfield affirms, that "Addison was the most timorous
+and awkward man that he ever saw." And Addison, speaking of his own
+deficiency in conversation, used to say of himself, that, with respect to
+intellectual wealth, "he could draw bills for a thousand pounds, though
+he had not a guinea in his pocket."
+
+That he wanted current coin for ready payment, and, by that want, was
+often obstructed and distressed; that he was oppressed by an improper and
+ungraceful timidity; every testimony concurs to prove; but Chesterfield's
+representation is, doubtless, hyperbolical. That man cannot be supposed
+very unexpert in the arts of conversation and practice of life, who,
+without fortune or alliance, by his usefulness and dexterity, became
+secretary of state; and who died at forty-seven, after having not only
+stood long in the highest rank of wit and literature, but filled one of
+the most important offices of state.
+
+The time in which he lived had reason to lament his obstinacy of silence;
+"or he was," says Steele, "above all men in that talent called humour,
+and enjoyed it in such perfection, that I have often reflected, after
+a night spent with him apart from all the world, that I had had the
+pleasure of conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and
+Catullus, who had all their wit and nature, heightened with humour more
+exquisite and delightful than any other man ever possessed." This is the
+fondness of a friend; let us hear what is told us by a rival: "Addison's
+conversation[193]," says Pope, "had something in it more charming than
+I have found in any other man. But this was only when familiar; before
+strangers, or, perhaps, a single stranger, he preserved his dignity by a
+stiff silence."
+
+This modesty was by no means inconsistent with a very high opinion of
+his own merit. He demanded to be the first name in modern wit; and, with
+Steele to echo him, used to depreciate Dryden, whom Pope and Congreve
+defended against them[194]. There is no reason to doubt, that he suffered
+too much pain from the prevalence of Pope's poetical reputation; nor is
+it without strong reason suspected, that by some disingenuous acts he
+endeavoured to obstruct it; Pope was not the only man whom he insidiously
+injured, though the only man of whom he could be afraid.
+
+His own powers were such as might have satisfied him with conscious
+excellence. Of very extensive learning he has, indeed, given no proofs.
+He seems to have had small acquaintance with the sciences, and to have
+read little except Latin and French; but, of the Latin poets, his
+Dialogues on Medals show that, he had perused the works with great
+diligence and skill. The abundance of his own mind left him little
+need of adventitious sentiments; his wit always could suggest what the
+occasion demanded. He had read, with critical eyes, the important volume
+of human life, and knew the heart of man from the depths of stratagem to
+the surface of affectation.
+
+What he knew he could easily communicate. "This," says Steele, "was
+particular in this writer, that, when he had taken his resolution, or
+made his plan for what he designed to write, he would walk about a room,
+and dictate it into language, with as much freedom and ease as any one
+could write it down, and attend to the coherence and grammar of what he
+dictated."
+
+Pope[195], who can be less suspected of favouring his memory, declares
+that he wrote very fluently, but was slow and scrupulous in correcting;
+that many of his Spectators were written very fast, and sent immediately
+to the press; and that it seemed to be for his advantage not to have time
+for much revisal.
+
+"He would alter," says Pope, "any thing to please his friends, before
+publication; but would not retouch his pieces afterwards: and, I believe,
+not one word in Cato, to which I made an objection, was suffered to
+stand."
+
+The last line of Cato is Pope's, having been originally written,
+
+  And, oh! 'twas this that ended Cato's life.
+
+Pope might have made more objections to the six concluding lines. In the
+first couplet the words, "from hence," are improper; and the second line
+is taken from Dryden's Virgil. Of the next couplet, the first verse being
+included in the second, is, therefore, useless; and in the third, discord
+is made to produce strife.
+
+Of the course of Addison's familiar day[196], before his marriage, Pope
+has given a detail. He had in the house with him Budgell, and, perhaps,
+Philips. His chief companions were Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey,
+Davenant, and colonel Brett. With one or other of these he always
+breakfasted. He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went
+afterwards to Button's.
+
+Button had been a servant in the countess of Warwick's family; who, under
+the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side of Russel
+street, about two doors from Covent garden. Here it was that the wits of
+that time used to assemble. It is said, that when Addison had suffered
+any vexation from the countess, he withdrew the company from Button's
+house.
+
+From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late,
+and drank too much wine. In the bottle, discontent seeks for comfort,
+cowardice for courage, and bashfulness tot confidence. It is not unlikely
+that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission which he
+obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours. He that feels
+oppression from the presence of those to whom he knows himself superiour,
+will desire to set loose his powers of conversation; and who, that ever
+asked succours from Bacchus, was able to preserve himself from being
+enslaved by his auxiliary?
+
+Among those friends it was that Addison displayed the elegance of his
+colloquial accomplishments, which may easily be supposed such as Pope
+represents them. The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an
+evening in his company, declared that he was a parson in a tie-wig, can
+detract little from his character; he was always reserved to strangers,
+and was not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like that of
+Mandeville.
+
+From any minute knowledge of his familiar manners, the intervention of
+sixty years has now debarred us. Steele once promised Congreve and the
+publick a complete description of his character; but the promises of
+authors are like the vows of lovers. Steele thought no more on his
+design, or thought on it with anxiety that at last disgusted him, and
+left his friend in the hands of Tickell.
+
+One slight lineament of his character Swift has preserved. It was his
+practice, when he found any man invincibly wrong, to flatter his opinions
+by acquiescence, and sink him yet deeper in absurdity. This artifice
+of mischief was admired by Stella; and Swift seems to approve her
+admiration.
+
+His works will supply some information. It appears, from his various
+pictures of the world, that, with all his bashfulness, he had conversed
+with many distinct classes of men, had surveyed their ways with very
+diligent observation, and marked, with great acuteness, the effects
+of different modes of life. He was a man in whose presence nothing
+reprehensible was out of danger; quick in discerning whatever was wrong
+or ridiculous, and not unwilling to expose it. "There are," says Steele,
+"in his writings many oblique strokes upon some of the wittiest paen of
+the age." His delight was more to excite merriment than detestation; and
+he detects follies rather than crimes.
+
+If any judgment be made, from his books, of his moral character, nothing
+will be found but purity and excellence. Knowledge of mankind, indeed,
+less extensive than that of Addison, will show, that to write, and to
+live, are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise
+it. Yet it is reasonable to believe that Addison's professions and
+practice were at no great variance, since, amidst that storm of faction
+in which most of his life was passed, though his station made him
+conspicuous, and his activity made him formidable, the character given
+him by his friends was never contradicted by his enemies: of those, with
+whom interest or opinion united him, he had not only the esteem, but the
+kindness; and of others, whom the violence of opposition drove against
+him, though he might lose the love, he retained the reverence.
+
+It is justly observed by Tickell, that he employed wit on the side of
+virtue and religion. He not only made the proper use of wit himself, but
+taught it to others; and from his time it has been generally subservient
+to the cause of reason and of truth. He has dissipated the prejudice that
+had long connected gaiety with vice, and easiness of manners with
+laxity of principles. He has restored virtue to its dignity, and taught
+innocence not to be ashamed. This is an elevation of literary character,
+"above all Greek, above all Roman fame." No greater felicity can genius
+attain, than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated
+mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness; of having taught
+a succession of writers to bring elegance and gaiety to the aid of
+goodness; and, if I may use expressions yet more awful, of having "turned
+many to righteousness."
+
+Addison, in his life, and for some time afterwards, was considered, by
+the greater part of readers, as supremely excelling both in poetry
+and criticism. Part of his reputation may be probably ascribed to
+the advancement of his fortune: when, as Swift observes, he became a
+statesman, and saw poets waiting at his levee, it is no wonder that
+praise was accumulated upon him. Much, likewise, may be more honourably
+ascribed to his personal character: he who, if he had claimed it, might
+have obtained the diadem, was not likely to be denied the laurel.
+
+But time quickly puts an end to artificial and accidental fame; and
+Addison is to pass through futurity protected only by his genius. Every
+name, which kindness or interest once raised too high, is in danger, lest
+the next age should, by the vengeance of criticism, sink it in the same
+proportion. A great writer has lately styled him "an indifferent poet,
+and a worse critick."
+
+His poetry is first to be considered; of which it must be confessed,
+that it has not often those felicities of diction which give lustre to
+sentiments, or that vigour of sentiment that animates diction; there
+is little of ardour, vehemence, or transport; there is very rarely the
+awfulness of grandeur, and not very often the splendour of elegance. He
+thinks justly; but he thinks faintly. This is his general character; to
+which, doubtless, many single passages will furnish exceptions.
+
+Yet, if he seldom reaches supreme excellence, he rarely sinks into
+dulness, and is still more rarely entangled in absurdity. He did not
+trust his powers enough to be negligent. There is, in most of his
+compositions, a calmness and equability, deliberate and cautious,
+sometimes with little that delights, but seldom with any thing that
+offends.
+
+Of this kind seem to be his poems to Dryden, to Somers, and to the king.
+His ode on St. Cecilia has been imitated by Pope, and has something in it
+of Dryden's vigour. Of his account of the English poets, he used to speak
+as a "poor thing[197];" but it is not worse than his usual strain. He has
+said, not very judiciously, in his character of Waller,
+
+  Thy verse could show ev'n Cromwell's innocence,
+  And compliment the storms that bore him hence.
+  O! had thy muse not come an age too soon,
+  But seen great Nassau on the British throne,
+  How had his triumph glitter'd in thy page!
+
+What is this but to say, that he who could compliment Cromwell had been
+the proper poet for king William; Addison, however, never printed the
+piece.
+
+The letter from Italy has been always praised, but has never been praised
+beyond its merit. It is more correct, with less appearance of labour,
+and more elegant, with less ambition of ornament, than any other of
+his poems. There is, however, one broken metaphor, of which notice may
+properly be taken:
+
+  Fir'd with that name--
+  I bridle in my struggling muse with pain,
+  That longs to launch into a nobler strain.
+
+To _bridle a goddess_ is no very delicate idea; but why must she be
+_bridled_? because she _longs to launch_; an act which was never hindered
+by a _bridle_: and whither will she _launch_? into a _nobler strain_. She
+is in the first line a _horse_, in the second a _boat_; and the care of
+the poet is to keep his _horse_ or his _boat_ from _singing_.
+
+The next composition is the far-famed Campaign, which Dr. Warton has
+termed a "Gazette in rhyme," with harshness not often used by the
+good-nature of his criticism. Before a censure so severe is admitted, let
+us consider that war is a frequent subject of poetry, and then inquire
+who has described it with more justness and force. Many of our own
+writers tried their powers upon this year of victory; yet Addison's is
+confessedly the best performance: his poem is the work of a man not
+blinded by the dust of learning; his images are not borrowed merely from
+books. The superiority which he confers upon his hero is not personal
+prowess, and "mighty bone," but deliberate intrepidity, a calm command of
+his passions, and the power of consulting his own mind in the midst of
+danger. The rejection and contempt of fiction is rational and manly.
+
+It may be observed that the last line is imitated by Pope:
+
+  Marlb'rough's exploits appear divinely bright--
+  Rais'd of themselves, their genuine charms they boast,
+  And those that paint them truest, praise them most.
+
+This Pope had in his thoughts: but, not knowing how to use what was not
+his own, he spoiled the thought when he had borrowed it:
+
+  The well-sung woes shall sooth my pensive ghost;
+  He best can paint[198]them who shall feel them most.
+
+Martial exploits may be _painted_; perhaps _woes_ may be _painted_; but
+they are surely not _painted_ by being _well-sung_: it is not easy to
+paint in song, or to sing in colours.
+
+No passage in the Campaign has been more often mentioned than the simile
+of the angel, which is said, in the Tatler, to be "one of the noblest
+thoughts that ever entered into the heart of man," and is, therefore,
+worthy of attentive consideration. Let it be first inquired whether it
+be a simile. A poetical simile is the discovery of likeness between two
+actions, in their general nature dissimilar, or of causes terminating by
+different operations in some resemblance of effect. But the mention of
+another like consequence from a like cause, or of a like performance by a
+like agency, is not a simile, but an exemplification. It is not a simile
+to say that the Thames waters fields, as the Po waters fields; or that as
+Hecla vomits flames in Iceland, so Aetna vomits flames in Sicily. When
+Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse,
+as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that
+his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders
+to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is
+impressed with the resemblance of things generally unlike, as unlike as
+intellect and body. But if Pindar had been described as writing with the
+copiousness and grandeur of Homer; or Horace had told that he reviewed
+and finished his own poetry with the same care as Isocrates polished his
+orations, instead of similitude he would have exhibited almost identity;
+he would have given the same portraits with different names. In the poem
+now examined, when the English are represented as gaining a fortified
+pass, by repetition of attack and perseverance of resolution; their
+obstinacy of courage, and vigour of onset, is well illustrated by the
+sea that breaks, with incessant battery, the dikes of Holland. This is a
+simile; but when Addison, having celebrated the beauty of Marlborough's
+person, tells us, that "Achilles thus was form'd with ev'ry grace," here
+is no simile, but a mere exemplification. A simile may be compared to
+lines converging at a point, and is more excellent as the lines approach
+from greater distance; an exemplification may be considered as two
+parallel lines, which run on together without approximation, never far
+separated, and never joined. Marlborough is so like the angel in the
+poem, that the action of both is almost the same, and performed by both
+in the same manner. Marlborough "teaches the battle to rage;" the angel
+"directs the storm:" Marlborough is "unmoved in peaceful thought;" the
+angel is "calm and serene:" Marlborough stands "unmoved amidst the
+shock of hosts;" the angel rides "calm in the whirlwind." The lines on
+Marlborough are just and noble; but the simile gives almost the same
+images a second time.
+
+But, perhaps, this thought, though hardly a simile, was remote from
+vulgar conceptions, and required great labour of research, or dexterity
+of application. Of this, Dr. Madden, a name which Ireland ought to
+honour, once gave me his opinion. "If I had set," said he, "ten
+schoolboys to write on the battle of Blenheim, and eight had brought me
+the angel, I should not have been surprised."
+
+The opera of Rosamond, though it is seldom mentioned, is one of the first
+of Addison's compositions. The subject is well chosen, the fiction is
+pleasing, and the praise of Marlborough, for which the scene gives an
+opportunity, is, what perhaps every human excellence must be, the product
+of good luck, improved by genius. The thoughts are sometimes great, and
+sometimes tender; the versification is easy and gay. There is, doubtless,
+some advantage in the shortness of the lines, which there is little
+temptation to load with expletive epithets. The dialogue seems commonly
+better than the songs. The two comick characters of sir Trusty
+and Grideline, though of no great value, are yet such as the poet
+intended[199]. Sir Trusty's account of the death of Rosamond is, I think,
+too grossly absurd. The whole drama is airy and elegant; engaging in its
+process, and pleasing in its conclusion. If Addison had cultivated the
+lighter parts of poetry, he would, probably, have excelled.
+
+The tragedy of Cato, which, contrary to the rule observed in selecting
+the works of other poets, has, by the weight of its character, forced its
+way into the late collection, is unquestionably the noblest production
+of Addison's genius. Of a work so much read, it is difficult to say any
+thing new. About things on which the publick thinks long, it commonly
+attains to think right; and of Cato it has been not unjustly determined,
+that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession
+of just sentiments in elegant language, than a representation of natural
+affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing
+here "excites or assuages emotion:" here is "no magical power of raising
+phantastick terrour or wild anxiety." The events are expected without
+solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we
+have no care: we consider not what they are doing, or what they are
+suffering; we wish only to know what they have to say. Cato is a being
+above our solicitude; a man of whom the gods take care, and whom we leave
+to their care with heedless confidence. To the rest, neither gods nor men
+can have much attention; for there is not one amongst them that strongly
+attracts either affection or esteem. But they are made the vehicles of
+such sentiments and such expression, that there is scarcely a scene in
+the play which the reader does not wish to impress upon his memory.
+
+When Cato was shown to Pope[200], he advised the author to print it,
+without any theatrical exhibition; supposing that it would be read more
+favourably than heard. Addison declared himself of the same opinion; but
+urged the importunity of his friends for its appearance on the stage.
+The emulation of parties made it successful beyond expectation; and its
+success has introduced or confirmed among us the use of dialogue too
+declamatory, of unaffecting elegance, and chill philosophy.
+
+The universality of applause, however it might quell the censure of
+common mortals, had no other effect than to harden Dennis in fixed
+dislike; but his dislike was not merely capricious. He found and showed
+many faults: he showed them, indeed, with anger, but he found them with
+acuteness, such as ought to rescue his criticism from oblivion; though,
+at last, it will have no other life than it derives from the work which
+it endeavours to oppress.
+
+Why he pays no regard to the opinion of the audience, he gives his
+reason, by remarking, that,
+
+"A deference is to be paid to a general applause, when it appears that
+that applause is natural and spontaneous; but that little regard is to
+be had to it, when it is affected and artificial. Of all the tragedies
+which, in his memory, have had vast and violent runs, not one has been
+excellent; few have been tolerable; most have been scandalous. When a
+poet writes a tragedy, who knows he has judgment, and who feels he has
+genius, that poet presumes upon his own merit, and scorns to make a
+cabal. That people come coolly to the representation of such a tragedy,
+without any violent expectation, or delusive imagination, or invincible
+prepossession; that such an audience is liable to receive the impressions
+which the poem shall naturally make on them, and to judge by their own
+reason, and their own judgments, and that reason and judgment are calm
+and serene, not formed by nature to make proselytes, and to control and
+lord it over the imaginations of others. But that when an author writes a
+tragedy, who knows he has neither genius nor judgment, he has recourse
+to the making a party, and he endeavours to make up in industry what
+is wanting in talent, and to supply by poetical craft the absence of
+poetical art; that such an author is humbly contented to raise men's
+passions by a plot without doors, since he despairs of doing it by
+that which he brings upon the stage. That party and passion, and
+prepossession, are clamorous and tumultuous things, and so much the
+more clamorous and tumultuous by how much the more erroneous: that
+they domineer and tyrannise over the imaginations of persons who want
+judgment, and sometimes too of those who have it; and, like a fierce
+and outrageous torrent, bear down all opposition before them." He then
+condemns the neglect of poetical justice; which is always one of his
+favourite principles.
+
+"'Tis certainly the duty of every tragick poet, by the exact distribution
+of poetical justice, to imitate the divine dispensation, and to inculcate
+a particular providence. 'Tis true, indeed, upon the stage of the world,
+the wicked sometimes prosper, and the guiltless suffer. But that is
+permitted by the governor of the world, to show, from the attribute of
+his infinite justice, that there is a compensation in futurity, to prove
+the immortality of the human soul, and the certainty of future rewards
+and punishments. But the poetical persons in tragedy exist no longer than
+the reading, or the representation; the whole extent of their entity
+is circumscribed by those; and, therefore, during that reading or
+representation, according to their merits or demerits, they must be
+punished or rewarded. If this is not done, there is no impartial
+distribution of poetical justice, no instructive lecture of a particular
+providence, and no imitation of the divine dispensation. And yet the
+author of this tragedy does not only run counter to this, in the fate of
+his principal character; but every where, throughout it, makes virtue
+suffer, and vice triumph: for not only Cato is vanquished by Caesar,
+but the treachery and perfidiousness of Syphax prevail over the
+honest simplicity and the credulity of Juba; and the sly subtlety and
+dissimulation of Portius over the generous frankness and open-heartedness
+of Marcus."
+
+Whatever pleasure there may be in seeing crimes punished and virtue
+rewarded, yet, since wickedness often prospers in real life, the poet is
+certainly at liberty to give it prosperity on the stage. For if poetry
+has an imitation of reality, how are its laws broken by exhibiting the
+world in its true form? The stage may sometimes gratify our wishes; but,
+if it be truly the "mirror of life," it ought to show us sometimes what
+we are to expect.
+
+Dennis objects to the characters, that they are not natural, or
+reasonable; but as heroes and heroines are not beings that are seen every
+day, it is hard to find upon what principles their conduct shall be
+tried. It is, however, not useless to consider what he says of the manner
+in which Cato receives the account of his son's death.
+
+"Nor is the grief of Cato, in the fourth act, one jot more in nature than
+that of his son and Lucia in the third. Cato receives the news of his
+son's death not only with dry eyes, but with a sort of satisfaction; and,
+in the same page, sheds tears for the calamity of his country, and does
+the same thing in the next page upon the bare apprehension of the danger
+of his friends. Now, since the love of one's country is the love of one's
+countrymen, as I have shown upon another occasion, I desire to ask these
+questions: Of all our countrymen, which do we love most, those whom we
+know, or those whom we know not? And of those whom we know, which do we
+cherish most, our friends or our enemies? And of our friends, which are
+the dearest to us, those who are related to us, or those who are not? And
+of all our relations, for which have we most tenderness, for those who
+are near to us, or for those who are remote? And of our near relations,
+which are the nearest, and, consequently, the dearest to us, our
+offspring, or others? Our offspring most certainly; as nature, or, in
+other words, providence, has wisely contrived for the preservation of
+mankind. Now, does it not follow, from what has been said, that for a man
+to receive the news of his son's death with dry eyes, and to weep at the
+same time for the calamities of his country, is a wretched affectation,
+and a miserable inconsistency? Is not that, in plain English, to receive
+with dry eyes the news of the deaths of those for whose sake our country
+is a name so dear to us, and, at the same time, to shed tears for those
+for whose sake our country is not a name so dear to us?"
+
+But this formidable assailant is least resistible when he attacks the
+probability of the action, and the reasonableness of the plan. Every
+critical reader must remark, that Addison has, with a scrupulosity almost
+unexampled on the English stage, confined himself in time to a single
+day, and in place to rigorous unity. The scene never changes, and the
+whole action of the play passes in the great hall of Cato's house at
+Utica. Much, therefore, is done in the hall, for which any other place
+had been more fit; and this impropriety affords Dennis many hints of
+merriment, and opportunities of triumph. The passage is long; but as such
+disquisitions are not common, and the objections are skilfully formed
+and vigorously urged, those who delight in critical controversy will not
+think it tedious.
+
+"Upon the departure of Portius, Sempronius makes but one soliloquy, and
+immediately in comes Syphax, and then the two politicians are at it
+immediately. They lay their heads together, with their snuffboxes in
+their hands, as Mr. Bayes has it, and league it away. But in the midst of
+that wise scene, Syphax seems to give a seasonable caution to Sempronius:
+
+'_Syph_.
+
+  But is it true, Sempronius, that your senate
+  Is call'd together? Gods! thou must be cautious;
+  Cato has piercing eyes.'
+
+"There is a great deal of caution shown indeed, in meeting in a
+governor's own hall to carry on their plot against him. Whatever opinion
+they have of his eyes, I suppose they had none of his ears, or they would
+never have talked at this foolish rate so near:
+
+  'Gods! thou must be cautious.'
+
+Oh! yes, very cautious, for if Cato should overhear you, and turn you off
+for politicians, Caesar would never take you; no, Caesar would never take
+you.
+
+"When Cato, act the second, turns the senators out of the hall, upon
+pretence of acquainting Juba with the result of their debates, he appears
+to me to do a thing which is neither reasonable nor civil. Juba might
+certainly have better been made acquainted with the result of that debate
+in some private apartment of the palace. But the poet was driven upon
+this absurdity to make way for another; and that is, to give Juba an
+opportunity to demand Marcia of her father. But the quarrel and rage of
+Juba and Syphax, in the same act; the invectives of Syphax against the
+Romans and Cato; the advice that he gives Juba, in her father's hall, to
+bear away Marcia by force; and his brutal and clamorous rage upon his
+refusal, and at a time when Cato was scarcely out of sight, and, perhaps,
+not out of hearing, at least some of his guards or domesticks must
+necessarily be supposed to be within hearing; is a thing that is so far
+from being probable, that it is hardly possible.
+
+"Sempronius, in the second act, comes back once more in the same morning
+to the governor's hall, to carry on the conspiracy with Syphax against
+the governor, his country, and his family; which is so stupid, that it is
+below the wisdom of the O--'s, the Mac's, and the Teague's; even Eustace
+Cummins himself would never have gone to Justice-hall to have conspired
+against the government. If officers at Portsmouth should lay their heads
+together, in order to the carrying off[201] J---- G----'s niece or
+daughter, would they meet in J--- G---'s hall, to carry on that
+conspiracy? There would be no necessity for their meeting there, at least
+till they came to the execution of their plot, because there would be
+other places to meet in. There would be no probability that they
+should meet there, because there would be places more private and more
+commodious. Now there ought to be nothing in a tragical action but what
+is necessary or probable.
+
+"But treason is not the only thing that is carried on in this hall; that,
+and love, and philosophy, take their turns in it, without any manner
+of necessity or probability occasioned by the action, as duly and as
+regularly, without interrupting one another, as if there were a triple
+league between them, and a mutual agreement that each should give place
+to, and make way for the other, in a due and orderly succession.
+
+"We now come to the third act. Sempronius, in this act, comes into the
+governor's hall, with the leaders of the mutiny; but, as soon as Cato
+is gone, Sempronius, who but just before had acted like an unparalleled
+knave, discovers himself, like an egregious fool, to be an accomplice in
+the conspiracy.
+
+'_Semp_.
+
+  Know, villains, when such paltry slaves presume
+  To mix in treason, if the plot succeeds,
+  They're thrown neglected by; but, if it fails,
+  They're sure to die like dogs, as you shall do.
+  Here, take these factious monsters, drag them forth
+  To sudden death.'--
+
+"'Tis true, indeed, the second leader says, there are none there but
+friends; but is that possible at such a juncture? Can a parcel of rogues
+attempt to assassinate the governor of a town of war, in his own house,
+in mid-day, and, after they are discovered, and defeated, can there
+be none near them but friends? Is it not plain, from these words of
+Sempronius,
+
+  'Here, take these factious monsters, drag them forth
+  To sudden death'--
+
+and from the entrance of the guards upon the word of command, that
+those guards were within ear-shot? Behold Sempronius, then, palpably
+discovered. How comes it to pass, then, that instead of being hanged
+up with the rest, he remains secure in the governor's hall, and there
+carries on his conspiracy against the government, the third time in the
+same day, with his old comrade Syphax, who enters at the same time that
+the guards are carrying away the leaders, big with the news of the defeat
+of Sempronius; though where he had his intelligence so soon is difficult
+to imagine? And now the reader may expect a very extraordinary scene:
+there is not abundance of spirit indeed, nor a great deal of passion, but
+there is wisdom more than enough to supply all defects.
+
+'_Syph_.
+
+  Still there remains an after-game to play:
+
+  My troops are mounted, their Numidian steeds
+  Snuff up the winds, and long to scour the desert.
+  Let but Sempronius lead us in our flight,
+  We'll force the gate, where Marcus keeps his guard,
+  And hew down all that would oppose our passage;
+  A day will bring us into Caesar's camp.
+
+  '_Semp_. Confusion! I have fail'd of half my purpose;
+  Marcia, the charming Marcia's left behind.'
+
+"Well! but though he tells us the half-purpose that he has failed of, he
+does not tell us the half that he has carried. But what does he mean by,
+
+  'Marcia, the charming Marcia's left behind?'
+
+He is now in her own house; and we have neither seen her, nor heard of
+her, any where else since the play began. But now let us hear Syphax:
+
+  'What hinders then, but that thou find her out,
+  And hurry her away by manly force?'
+
+But what does old Syphax mean by finding her out? They talk as if she
+were as hard to be found as a hare in a frosty morning.
+
+  '_Semp_. But how to gain admission?'
+
+Oh! she is found out then, it seems--
+
+  But how to gain admission! for access
+  Is giv'n to none, but Juba and her brothers.'
+
+But, raillery apart, why access to Juba? For he was owned and received
+as a lover neither by the father nor by the daughter. Well! but let
+that pass. Syphax puts Sempronius out of pain immediately; and, being
+a Numidian, abounding in wiles, supplies him with a stratagem for
+admission, that, I believe, is a non-pareille.
+
+  '_Syph_. Thou shalt have Juba's dress, and Juba's guards;
+  The doors will open when Numidia's prince
+  Seems to appear before them.'
+
+"Sempronius is, it seems, to pass for Juba in full day at Cato's house,
+where they were both so very well known, by having Juba's dress and his
+guards: as if one of the marshals of France could pass for the duke of
+Bavaria, at noonday, at Versailles, by having his dress and liveries. But
+how does Syphax pretend to help Sempronius to young Juba's dress? Does he
+serve him in a double capacity, as general and master of his wardrobe?
+But why Juba's guards? For the devil of any guards has Juba appeared with
+yet. Well! though this is a mighty politick invention, yet, methinks,
+they might have done without it: for, since the advice that Syphax gave
+to Sempronius was,
+
+  'To hurry her away by manly force,'
+
+in my opinion, the shortest and likeliest way of coming at the lady
+was by demolishing, instead of putting on an impertinent disguise to
+circumvent two or three slaves. But Sempronius, it seems, is of another
+opinion. He extols to the skies the invention of old Syphax:
+
+  '_Semp_. Heav'us! what a thought was there!'
+
+"Now I appeal to the reader, if I have not been as good as my word. Did I
+not tell him, that I would lay before him a very wise scene?
+
+"But now let us lay before the reader that part of the scenery of the
+fourth act, which may show the absurdities which the author has run
+into, through the indiscreet observance of the unity of place. I do not
+remember that Aristotle has said any thing expressly concerning the unity
+of place. 'Tis true, implicitly he has said enough in the rules which he
+has laid down for the chorus. For, by making the chorus an essential part
+of tragedy, and by bringing it on the stage immediately after the opening
+of the scene, and retaining it there till the very catastrophe, he has so
+determined and fixed the place of action, that it was impossible for an
+author on the Grecian stage to break through that unity. I am of opinion,
+that if a modern tragick poet can preserve the unity of place, without
+destroying the probability of the incidents, 'tis always best for him
+to do it; because, by the preservation of that unity, as we have taken
+notice above, he adds grace, and clearness, and comeliness, to the
+representation. But since there are no express rules about it, and we are
+under no compulsion to keep it, since we have no chorus, as the Grecian
+poet had; if it cannot be preserved, without rendering the greater
+part of the incidents unreasonable and absurd, and, perhaps, sometimes
+monstrous, 'tis certainly better to break it.
+
+"Now comes bully Sempronius, comically accoutred and equipped with his
+Numidian dress and his Numidian guards. Let the reader attend to him with
+all his ears; for the words of the wise are precious:
+
+  '_Semp_. The deer is lodg'd, I've track'd her to her covert.'
+
+"Now I would fain know why this deer is said to be lodged, since we have
+not heard one word, since the play began, of her being at all out of
+harbour; and if we consider the discourse with which she and Lucia begin
+the act, we have reason to believe that they had hardly been talking
+of such matters in the street. However, to pleasure Sempronius, let us
+suppose, for once, that the deer is lodged:
+
+  'The deer is lodg'd, I've track'd her to her covert.'
+
+"If he had seen her in the open field, what occasion had he to track her,
+when he had so many Numidian dogs at his heels, which, with one halloo,
+he might have set upon her haunches? If he did not see her in the open
+field, how could he possibly track her? If he had seen her in the street,
+why did he not set upon her in the street, since through the street she
+must be carried at last? Now here, instead of having his thoughts upon
+his business, and upon the present danger; instead of meditating and
+contriving how he shall pass with his mistress through the southern gate,
+where her brother Marcus is upon the guard, and where she would certainly
+prove an impediment to him, which is the Roman word for the baggage;
+instead of doing this, Sempronius is entertaining himself with whimseys:
+
+  '_Semp_. How will the young Numidian rave to see
+  His mistress lost! If aught could glad my soul,
+  Beyond th' enjoyment of so bright a prize,
+  'Twould be to torture that young gay barbarian.
+  But hark! what noise? Death to my hopes! 'tis he,
+  'Tis Juba's self! There is but one way left!
+  He must be murder'd, and a passage cut
+  Through those his guards.'
+
+"Pray, what are 'those his guards?' I thought, at present, that Juba's
+guards had been Sempronius's tools, and had been dangling after his
+heels.
+
+"But now let us sum up all these absurdities together. Sempronius goes at
+noonday, in Juba's clothes, and with Juba's guards, to Cato's palace,
+in order to pass for Juba, in a place where they were both so very well
+known: he meets Juba there, and resolves to murder him with his own
+guards. Upon the guards appearing a little bashful, he threatens them:
+
+  'Hah! dastards, do you tremble!
+  Or act like men; or, by yon azure heav'n!'--
+
+But the guards still remaining restive, Sempronius himself attacks Juba,
+while each of the guards is representing Mr. Spectator's sign of the
+Gaper, awed, it seems, and terrified by Sempronius's threats. Juba kills
+Sempronius, and takes his own army prisoners, and carries them in triumph
+away to Cato. Now, I would fain know, if any part of Mr. Bayes's tragedy
+is so full of absurdity as this?
+
+"Upon hearing the clash of swords, Lucia and Marcia come in. The question
+is, why no men come in upon hearing the noise of swords in the governor's
+hall? Where was the governor himself? Where were his guards? Where were
+his servants? Such an attempt as this, so near the person of a governor
+of a place of war, was enough to alarm the whole garrison: and yet, for
+almost half an hour after Sempronius was killed, we find none of those
+appear, who were the likeliest in the world to be alarmed; and the noise
+of swords is made to draw only two poor women thither, who were most
+certain to run away from it. Upon Lucia and Marcia's coming in, Lucia
+appears in all the symptoms of an hysterical gentlewoman:
+
+  '_Luc_. Sure 'twas the clash of swords! my troubl'd heart
+  Is so cast down, and sunk amidst its sorrows,
+  It throbs with fear, and aches at ev'ry sound!'
+
+And immediately her old whimsey returns upon her:
+
+  'O Marcia, should thy brothers, for my sake--
+  die away with horrour at the thought.'
+
+She fancies that there can be no cutting of throats, but it must be for
+her. If this is tragical, I would fain know what is comical. Well! upon
+this they spy the body of Sempronius; and Marcia, deluded by the habit,
+it seems, takes him for Juba; for says she,
+
+  'The face is muffl'd up within the garment.'
+
+"Now, how a man could fight, and fall with his face muffled up in his
+garment, is, I think, a little hard to conceive! Besides, Juba, before he
+killed him, knew him to be Sempronius. It was not by his garment that he
+knew this; it was by his face then; his face, therefore, was not muffled.
+Upon seeing this man with the muffled face, Marcia falls a raving; and,
+owning her passion for the supposed defunct, begins to make his funeral
+oration. Upon which Juba enters listening, I suppose on tiptoe; for I
+cannot imagine how any one can enter listening in any other posture. I
+would fain know how it came to pass, that during all this time he had
+sent nobody, no, not so much as a candle-snuffer, to take away the dead
+body of Sempronius. Well! but let us regard him listening. Having left
+his apprehension behind him, he, at first, applies what Marcia says to
+Sempronius. But finding at last, with much ado, that he himself is the
+happy man, he quits his eve-dropping, and discovers himself just time
+enough to prevent his being cuckolded by a dead man, of whom the moment
+before he had appeared so jealous; and greedily intercepts the bliss
+which was fondly designed for one who could not be the better for it. But
+here I must ask a question: how comes Juba to listen here, who had not
+listened before throughout the play? Or how comes he to be the only
+person of this tragedy who listens, when love and treason were so often
+talked in so publick a place as a hall? I am afraid the author was driven
+upon all these absurdities only to introduce this miserable mistake of
+Marcia; which, after all, is much below the dignity of tragedy, as any
+thing is which is the effect or result of trick.
+
+"But let us come to the scenery of the fifth act, Cato appears first upon
+the scene, sitting in a thoughtful posture; in his hand Plato's treatise
+on the Immortality of the Soul, a drawn sword on the table by him. Now
+let us consider the place in which this sight is presented to us. The
+place, forsooth, is a long hall. Let us suppose, that any one should
+place himself in this posture, in the midst of one of our halls in
+London; that he should appear solus, in a sullen posture, a drawn sword
+on the table by him; in his hand Plato's treatise on the Immortality of
+the Soul, translated lately by Bernard Lintot: I desire the reader to
+consider, whether such a person as this would pass, with them who beheld
+him, for a great patriot, a great philosopher, or a general, or for some
+whimsical person who fancied himself all these? and whether the people,
+who belonged to the family, would think that such a person had a design
+upon their midriffs or his own?
+
+"In short, that Cato should sit long enough, in the aforesaid posture,
+in the midst of this large hall, to read over Plato's treatise on the
+Immortality of the Soul, which is a lecture of two long hours; that he
+should propose to himself to be private there upon that occasion; that he
+should be angry with his son for intruding there; then, that he should
+leave this hall upon the pretence of sleep, give himself the mortal wound
+in his bedchamber, and then be brought back into that hall to expire,
+purely to show his good-breeding, and save his friends the trouble of
+coming up to his bedchamber; all this appears to me to be improbable,
+incredible, impossible."
+
+Such is the censure of Dennis. There is, as Dryden expresses it, perhaps
+"too much horseplay in his raillery;" but if his jests are coarse, his
+arguments are strong. Yet, as we love better to be pleased than to be
+taught, Cato is read, and the critick is neglected.
+
+Flushed with consciousness of these detections of absurdity in the
+conduct, he afterwards attacked the sentiments of Cato; but he then
+amused himself with petty cavils, and minute objections.
+
+Of Addison's smaller poems, no particular mention is necessary; they have
+little that can employ or require a critick. The parallel of the princes
+and gods, in his verses to Kneller, is often happy, but is too well known
+to be quoted.
+
+His translations, so far as I have compared them, want the exactness of
+a scholar. That he understood his authors cannot be doubted; but his
+versions will not teach others to understand them, being too licentiously
+paraphrastical. They are, however, for the most part, smooth and easy;
+and, what is the first excellence of a translator, such as may be read
+with pleasure by those who do not know the originals.
+
+His poetry is polished and pure; the product of a mind too judicious to
+commit faults, but not sufficiently vigorous to attain excellence. He has
+sometimes a striking line, or a shining paragraph; but, in the whole, he
+is warm rather than fervid, and shows more dexterity than strength. He
+was, however, one of our earliest examples of correctness.
+
+The versification which he had learned from Dryden, he debased rather
+than refined. His rhymes are often dissonant; in his Georgick he admits
+broken lines. He uses both triplets and alexandrines, but triplets more
+frequently in his translations than his other works. The mere structure
+of verses seems never to have engaged much of his care. But his lines are
+very smooth in Rosamond, and, too smooth in Cato.
+
+Addison is now to be considered as a critick; a name which the present
+generation is scarcely willing to allow him. His criticism is condemned
+as tentative or experimental, rather than scientifick; and he is
+considered as deciding by taste[202] rather than by principles.
+
+It is not uncommon, for those who have grown wise by the labour of
+others, to add a little of their own, and overlook their masters. Addison
+is now despised by some who, perhaps, would never have seen his defects,
+but by the lights which he afforded them. That he always wrote as
+he would think it necessary to write now, cannot be affirmed; his
+instructions were such as the character of his readers made propers That
+general knowledge which now circulates in common talk, was in his time
+rarely to be found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of
+ignorance; and, in the female world, any acquaintance with books was
+distinguished only to be censured. His purpose was to infuse literary
+curiosity, by gentle and unsuspected conveyance, into the gay, the idle,
+and the wealthy; he, therefore, presented knowledge in the most alluring
+form, not lofty and austere, but accessible and familiar. When he showed
+them their defects, he showed them, likewise, that they might be easily
+supplied. His, attempt succeeded; inquiry was awakened, and comprehension
+expanded. An emulation of intellectual elegance was excited, and, from
+his time to our own, life has been gradually exalted, and conversation
+purified and enlarged.
+
+Dryden had, not many years before, scattered criticism, over his prefaces
+with very little parsimony; but, though he sometimes condescended to be
+somewhat familiar, his manner was in general too scholastick for those
+who had yet their rudiments to learn, and found it not easy to understand
+their master. His observations were framed rather for those that were
+learning to write, than for those that read only to talk.
+
+An instructer like Addison was now wanting, whose remarks being
+superficial, might be easily understood, and being just, might prepare
+the mind for more attainments.
+
+Had he presented Paradise Lost to the publick with all the pomp of system
+and severity of science, the criticism would, perhaps, have been admired,
+and the poem still have been neglected; but, by the blandishments of
+gentleness and facility, he has made Milton an universal favourite, with
+whom readers of every class think it necessary to be pleased.
+
+He descended, now and then, to lower disquisitions; and, by a serious
+display of the beauties of Chevy-Chase, exposed himself to the ridicule
+of Wagstaffe, who bestowed a like pompous character on Tom Thumb; and to
+the contempt of Dennis, who, considering the fundamental position of his
+criticism, that Chevy-Chase pleases, and ought to please, because it is
+natural, observes, "that there is a way of deviating from nature, by
+bombast or tumour, which soars above nature, and enlarges images beyond
+their real bulk; by affectation, which forsakes nature in quest of
+something unsuitable; and by imbecility, which degrades nature by
+faintness and diminution, by obscuring its appearances, and weakening
+its effects." In Chevy-Chase there is not much of either bombast or
+affectation; but there is chill and lifeless imbecility. The story cannot
+possibly be told in a manner that shall make less impression on the mind.
+
+Before the profound observers of the present race repose too securely on
+the consciousness of their superiority to Addison, let them consider
+his Remarks on Ovid, in which may be found specimens of criticism
+sufficiently subtile and refined: let them peruse, likewise, his essays
+on Wit, and on the Pleasures of Imagination, in which he founds art
+on the base of nature, and draws the principles of invention from
+dispositions inherent in the mind of man with skill and elegance[203],
+such as his contemners will not easily attain. As a describer of life and
+manners, he must be allowed to stand, perhaps, the first of the first
+rank. His humour, which, as Steele observes, is peculiar to himself, is
+so happily diffused as to give the grace of novelty to domestick scenes
+and daily occurrences. He never "outsteps the modesty of nature," nor
+raises merriment or wonder by the violation of truth. His figures neither
+divert by distortion, nor amaze by aggravation. He copies life with so
+much fidelity, that he can be hardly said to invent; yet his exhibitions
+have an air so much original, that it is difficult to suppose them not
+merely the product of imagination.
+
+As a teacher of wisdom, he may be confidently followed. His religion has
+nothing in it enthusiastick or superstitious: he appears neither weakly
+credulous, nor wantonly skeptical; his morality is neither dangerously
+lax, nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy, and all the
+cogency of argument, are employed to recommend to the reader his real
+interest, the care of pleasing the author of his being. Truth is shown
+sometimes as the phantom of a vision; sometimes appears half-veiled in an
+allegory; sometimes attracts regard in the robes of fancy, and sometimes
+steps forth in the confidence of reason. She wears a thousand dresses,
+and in all is pleasing.
+
+  "Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet."
+
+His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal,
+on light occasions not grovelling, pure without scrupulosity, and exact
+without apparent elaboration; always equable, and always easy, without
+glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never deviates from his
+track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no
+hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in
+unexpected splendour.
+
+It was, apparently, his principal endeavour to avoid all harshness
+and severity of diction; he is, therefore, sometimes verbose in his
+transitions and connexions, and sometimes descends too much to the
+language of conversation; yet if his language had been less idiomatical,
+it might have lost somewhat of its genuine Anglicism. What he
+attempted, he performed; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be
+energetick[204]; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. His sentences
+have neither studied amplitude, nor affected brevity: his periods, though
+not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an
+English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious,
+must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
+
+[Footnote 154: Mr. Tyers says, he was actually laid out for dead, as soon
+as he was born. Addisoniana, ii. 218.
+
+A writer, who signs himself T.J. informed Dr. Birch, (Gen. Dict. i. 62.)
+that Mr. Addison's mother was Jane Gulstone, a circumstance that should
+not have been omitted. Dr. Launcelot Addison had by his wife six
+children: 1. Jane, born April 23,1671. 2. Joseph, 1st May, 1672. 3.
+Gulstone, in April, 1673. 4. Dorothy, in May, 1674. 5. Anne, in April,
+1676; and 6. Launcelot, in 1680. Both Gulstone and Launcelot, who was a
+fellow of Magdalen college, Oxford, were reputed to be very well skilled
+in the classicks, and in polite literature. Dr. Addison's living at
+Milston was 120_l_. per annum; and after his death his son Joseph was
+sued for dilapidations by the next incumbent. The writer abovementioned
+informed Dr. Birch, that "there was a tradition at Milston, that when at
+school in the country, (probably at Ambrosebury,) having committed some
+slight fault, he was so afraid of being corrected for it, that he ran
+away from his father's house, and fled into the fields, where he lived
+upon fruits, and took up his lodging in a hollow tree, till, upon the
+publication of a reward to whoever should find him, he was discovered and
+restored to his parents." M.]
+
+[Footnote 155: "At the Charter-house (says Oldmixon, who was personally
+acquainted with Addison, and as a zealous whig, probably encouraged by
+him) he made acquaintance with two persons, for whom he had ever after an
+entire friendship, Stephen Clay, esq. of the Inner Temple, author of the
+epistle in verse, from the elector of Bavaria to the French king after
+the battle of Ramilies; and sir Richard Steele, whom he served both with
+his pen and purse." Hist. of England, xi. 632. M.]
+
+[Footnote 156: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 157: This fact was communicated to Johnson, in my hearing, by a
+person of unquestionable veracity, but whose name I am not at liberty to
+mention. He had it, as he told us, from lady Primrose, to whom Steele
+related it with tears in his eyes. The late Dr. Stinton confirmed it to
+me, by saying, that he had heard it from Mr. Hooke, author of the Roman
+History; and he, from Mr. Pope. H.
+
+See in Steele's Epistolary Correspondence, 1809, vol. i. pp. 208, 356,
+this transaction somewhat differently related. N.
+
+The compiler of Addisoniana is of opinion, that Addison's conduct on
+this occasion was dictated by the kindest motives; and that the step
+apparently so severe, was designed to awaken him, if possible, to a sense
+of the impropriety of his mode and habits of life. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 158: He took the degree of M.A. Feb. 14, 1693. N.]
+
+[Footnote 159: A letter which I found among Dr. Johnson's papers, dated
+in January, 1784, from a lady in Wiltshire, contains a discovery of some
+importance in literary history, viz. that by the initials H.S. prefixed
+to the poem, we are not to understand the famous Dr. Henry Sacheverell,
+whose trial is the most remarkable incident in his life. The information
+thus communicated is, that the verses in question were not an address to
+the famous Dr. Sacheverell, but to a very ingenious gentleman of the same
+name, who died young, supposed to be a Manksman, for that he wrote the
+history of the Isle of Man. That this person left his papers to Mr.
+Addison, and had formed a plan of a tragedy upon the death of Socrates,
+The lady says, she had this information from a Mr. Stephens, who was a
+fellow of Merton college, a contemporary and intimate with Mr. Addison in
+Oxford, who died near fifty years ago, a prebendary of Winchester. H.]
+
+[Footnote 160: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 161: A writer already mentioned, J.P. (Gen. Dict, _ut supra_,)
+asserts that his acquaintance with Montague commenced at Oxford: but for
+this there is no foundation. Mr. Montague was bred at Trinity college,
+Cambridge.]
+
+[Footnote 162: Lord Somers, on this poem being presented to him,
+according to Tickell, sent to Addison to desire his acquaintance.
+According to Oldmixon, he was introduced to him by Tonson. M.]
+
+[Footnote 163: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 164: See Swift's libel on Dr. Delany. Addison's distress for
+money commenced with the death of king William, which happened in March,
+1702. In June, 1703, he was at Rotterdam, and seems then to have done
+with his _squire_: for in that month the duke of Somerset wrote a letter
+to old Jacob Tonson, (of which I have a copy,) proposing that Addison
+should be tutor to his son, (who was then going abroad.) "Neither
+lodging, diet, or travelling," says the duke, "shall cost him sixpence:
+and over and above that, my son shall present him, at the year's end,
+with a hundred guineas, as long as he is pleased to continue in that
+service." Mr. Addison declined this _magnificent_ offer in these words,
+as appears from another letter of the duke's to Tonson: "As for the
+recompence that is proposed to me, I must confess I can by no means see
+my account in it." M.]
+
+[Footnote 165: In this letter he uses the phrase _classick ground_, which
+has since become so common, but never had been employed before: it was
+ridiculed by some of his contemporary writers (I forget which) as very
+quaint and affected. M.]
+
+[Footnote 166: It is incorrect that Addison's stay in foreign countries
+was but short. He went to travel in 1700, and did not return till the
+latter end of 1703; so that he was abroad near four years. M.]
+
+[Footnote 167: Addison's father, who was then dean of Lichfield, died in
+April, 1703; a circumstance which should have been mentioned on his tomb
+at Lichfield: he is said to have been seventy-one.]
+
+[Footnote 168: Rosamond was first exhibited, March 4th, 1707, and, after
+three representations, was laid aside. M.]
+
+[Footnote 169: Thomas _earl_ of Wharton was constituted lord lieutenant
+of Ireland Dec. 4, 1708, and went there in April, 1709. He was not made a
+_marquis_ till Dec. 1714. M.]
+
+[Footnote 170: The first number of the Tatler was published April 12,
+1709. The last (271) Jan. 2, 1710-11. The first number of the Spectator
+appeared March 1, 1710-11, and N°. 555, which is the last of the seventh
+volume, was published Dec. 6, 1712. The paper was then discontinued, and
+was recommenced, June 18, 1714, when N°. 556 appeared. From thence, to
+N°. 635 inclusive, forms the eighth volume. M.]
+
+[Footnote 171: This particular number of the Spectator, it is said, was
+not published till twelve o'clock, that it might come out precisely at
+the hour of her majesty's breakfast, and that no time might be left
+for deliberating about serving it up with that meal, as usual. See the
+edition of the Tatler with notes, vol. vi. No. 271, note; p. 462, Sec. N.]
+
+[Footnote 172: Newspapers appear to have had an earlier date than here
+assigned. Cleiveland, in his Character of a London Diurnal, says, "the
+original sinner of this kind was Dutch; Gallo-belgicus the Protoplast,
+and the Modern Mercuries but Hans en kelders." Some intelligence given by
+Mercurius Gallo-belgicus is mentioned in Carew's Survey of Cornwall, p.
+126, originally published in 1602. These vehicles of information are
+often mentioned in the plays of James and Charles the first. R.
+
+See Idler, Nº. 7, and note; and Idler, Nº. 40, and note. Ed.]
+
+[Footnote 173: The errors in this account are explained at considerable
+length in the preface to the Spectator, prefixed to the edition in the
+British Essayists. The original delineation of sir Roger undoubtedly
+belongs to Steele.
+
+See, however, Addisoniana, vol. i.]
+
+[Footnote 174: That this calculation is not exaggerated, that it is even
+much below the real number, see the notes on the Taller, edit. 1786, vol.
+vi. 452. N--See likewise prefatory notice to the Rambler, vol. ii. p.
+viii. of the present edition. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 175: Tickell says, "he took up a design of writing a play upon
+this subject when he was at the university, and even attempted something
+in it then, though not a line as it now stands. The work was performed by
+him in his travels, and retouched in England, without any formed design
+of bringing it on the stage." Cibber (Apol. 377.) says, that in 1704 he
+had the pleasure of reading the first four acts of Cato (which were all
+that were then written) privately with sir Richard Steele; and Steele
+told him they were written in Italy. M.]
+
+[Footnote 176: The story about Hughes was first told by Oldmixon, in his
+Art of Criticism, 1728. M.]
+
+[Footnote 177: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 178: Alluding to the duke of Marlborough, at that time
+suspected of an ambitious aim to obtain the post of general in chief for
+life. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 179: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 180: The Guardian was published in the interval between the
+Spectator's being laid down and taken up again. The first number was
+published March 12, 1713; and the last appeared October 1st, 1713. M.]
+
+[Footnote 181: From a tory song in vogue at the time, the burden whereof
+is,
+
+  And he, that will this health deny,
+  Down among the dead men let him lie.
+
+H.]
+
+[Footnote 182: Addison wrote twenty-three papers out of forty-five, viz.
+Numbs. 556, 557, 558, 559, 561, 562. 565. 567, 568, 569. 571. 574, 575.
+579, 580. 582,583, 584, 585. 590. 592. 598. 600; so that he produced more
+than one half.]
+
+[Footnote 183: When lord Sunderland was appointed lord lieutenant of
+Ireland, in 1714, Addison was appointed his secretary. Johnson has
+omitted another step in his promotions. He was, in 1715, made a lord of
+trade. M.]
+
+[Footnote 184: August 2.]
+
+[Footnote 185: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 186: It has been said, that Addison first discovered his
+addresses to the countess of Warwick would not be unacceptable, from the
+manner of her receiving such an article in the newspapers, of his own
+inserting, at which, when he read it to her, he affected to be much
+astonished. Many anecdotes are on record of Addison's tavern resorts when
+Holland-house was rendered disagreeable by the haughty caprices of his
+aristocratic bride. When he had suffered any vexation from her, he would
+propose to withdraw the club from Button's, who had been a servant in the
+countess's family. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 187: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 188: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 189: This is inaccurately stated. Pope does not mention the
+conjecture of Tonson at all. Spence himself has mentioned it from
+Tonson's own information; for he has subscribed the name of Tonson to the
+paragraph in question, according to his constant practice of stating the
+name of his informer. M.]
+
+[Footnote 190: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 191: This account of Addison's death is from Dr. Young, who
+calls lord Warwick a youth finely accomplished; and does not give the
+least ground for the representation in the text, that he was of irregular
+life, and that this was a last effort of Addison's to reclaim him.
+M.--Dr. Young was far too much of a courtier to see the vices of a
+peer, but even his guarded statement does give ground for Dr. Johnson's
+conclusion. His words are, "finely accomplished, but not above being the
+better for good impressions from a dying friend." ED.]
+
+[Footnote 192: Who died at Bilton, in Warwickshire, at a very advanced
+age, in 1797. See Gent. Mag. vol. lxvii. p. 256. 385. N.]
+
+[Footnote 193: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 194: Tonson and Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 195: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 196: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 197: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 198: "Paint means," says Dr. Warton, "express, or describe
+them."]
+
+[Footnote 199: But, according to Dr. Warton, "ought not to have
+intended."]
+
+[Footnote 200: Spence.]
+
+[Footnote 201: The person meant by the initials, J.G. is sir John Gibson,
+lieutenant-governor of Portsmouth in the year 1710, and afterwards. He
+was much beloved in the army, and by the common soldiers called Johnny
+Gibson. H.]
+
+[Footnote 202: Taste must decide. WARTON.]
+
+[Footnote 203: Far, in Dr. Warton's opinion, beyond Dryden.]
+
+[Footnote 204: But, says Dr. Warton, he sometimes is so; and, in another
+manuscript note, he adds, often so.]
+
+
+
+
+HUGHES
+
+John Hughes, the son of a citizen of London, and of Anne Burgess, of an
+ancient family in Wiltshire, was born at Marlborough, July 29, 1677. He
+was educated at a private school; and though his advances in literature
+are in the Biographia very ostentatiously displayed, the name of his
+master is somewhat ungratefully concealed[205].
+
+At nineteen he drew the plan of a tragedy; and paraphrased, rather too
+diffusely, the ode of Horace which begins "Integer vitas." To poetry
+he added the science of musick, in which he seems to have attained
+considerable skill, together with the practice of design, or rudiments of
+painting.
+
+His studies did not withdraw him wholly from business, nor did business
+hinder him from study. He had a place in the office of ordnance; and was
+secretary to several commissions for purchasing lands necessary to secure
+the royal docks at Chatham and Portsmouth; yet found time to acquaint
+himself with modern languages.
+
+In 1697 he published a poem on the Peace of Ryswick: and, in 1699,
+another piece, called the Court of Neptune, on the return of king
+William, which he addressed to Mr. Montague, the general patron of the
+followers of the muses. The same year he produced a song on the duke of
+Gloucester's birthday.
+
+He did not confine himself to poetry, but cultivated other kinds of
+writing with great success; and about this time showed his knowledge of
+human nature by an essay on the Pleasure of being deceived. In 1702, he
+published, on the death of king William, a Pindarick ode, called the
+House of Nassau; and wrote another paraphrase on the "Otium Divos" of
+Horace.
+
+In 1703, his ode on Musick was performed at Stationers' hall; and he
+wrote afterwards six cantatas, which were set to musick by the greatest
+master of that time, and seem intended to oppose or exclude the Italian
+opera, an exotick and irrational entertainment, which has been always
+combated, and always has prevailed.
+
+His reputation was now so far advanced, that the publick began to pay
+reverence to his name; and he was solicited to prefix a preface to the
+translation of Boccalini, a writer whose satirical vein cost him his life
+in Italy, but who never, I believe, found many readers in this country,
+even though introduced by such powerful recommendation.
+
+He translated Fontenelle's Dialogues of the Dead; and his version was,
+perhaps, read at that time, but is now neglected; for by a book not
+necessary, and owing its reputation wholly to its turn of diction, little
+notice can be gained but from those who can enjoy the graces of the
+original. To the dialogues of Fontenelle he added two composed by
+himself; and, though not only an honest but a pious man, dedicated his
+work to the earl of Wharton. He judged skilfully enough of his own
+interest; for Wharton, when he went lord lieutenant to Ireland, offered
+to take Hughes with him, and establish him; but Hughes, having hopes or
+promises from another man in power, of some provision more suitable to
+his inclination, declined Wharton's offer, and obtained nothing from the
+other.
+
+He translated the Miser of Moliere, which he never offered to the stage;
+and occasionally amused himself with making versions of favourite scenes
+in other plays.
+
+Being now received as a wit among the wits, he paid his contributions
+to literary undertakings, and assisted both the Tatler, Spectator, and
+Guardian. In 1712, he translated Vertot's History of the Revolution of
+Portugal; produced an Ode to the Creator of the World, from the Fragments
+of Orpheus; and brought upon the stage an opera, called Calypso and
+Telemachus, intended to show that the English language might be very
+happily adapted to musick. This was impudently opposed by those who
+were employed in the Italian opera; and, what cannot be told without
+indignation, the intruders had such interest with the duke of Shrewsbury,
+then lord chamberlain, who had married an Italian, as to obtain an
+obstruction of the profits, though not an inhibition of the performance.
+
+There was, at this time, a project formed by Tonson for a translation of
+the Pharsalia by several hands; and Hughes englished the tenth book.
+But this design, as must often happen where the concurrence of many
+is necessary, fell to the ground; and the whole work was afterwards
+performed by Rowe.
+
+His acquaintance with the great writers of his time appears to have been
+very general; but of his intimacy with Addison there is a remarkable
+proof. It is told, on good authority, that Cato was finished and played
+by his persuasion. It had long wanted the last act, which he was desired
+by Addison to supply. If the request was sincere, it proceeded from an
+opinion, whatever it was, that did not last long; for when Hughes came
+in a week to show him his first attempt, he found half an act written by
+Addison himself.
+
+He afterwards published the works of Spenser, with his life, a glossary,
+and a discourse on allegorical poetry; a work for which he was well
+qualified as a judge of the beauties of writing, but, perhaps, wanted an
+antiquary's knowledge of the obsolete words. He did not much revive
+the curiosity of the publick; for near thirty years elapsed before his
+edition was reprinted. The same year produced his Apollo and Daphne, of
+which the success was very earnestly promoted by Steele, who, when the
+rage of party did not misguide him, seems to have been a man of boundless
+benevolence.
+
+Hughes had hitherto suffered the mortifications of a narrow fortune;
+but, in 1717, the lord chancellor Cowper set him at ease, by making him
+secretary to the commissions of the peace; in which he afterwards, by a
+particular request, desired his successor, lord Parker, to continue him.
+He had now affluence; but such is human life, that he had it when his
+declining health could neither allow him long possession, nor quick
+enjoyment.
+
+His last work was his tragedy, the Siege of Damascus, after which, a
+Siege became a popular title. This play, which still continues on the
+stage, and of which it is unnecessary to add a private voice to such
+continuance of approbation, is not acted or printed according to the
+author's original draught, or his settled intention. He had made Phocyas
+apostatize from his religion; after which the abhorrence of Eudocia would
+have been reasonable, his misery would have been just, and the horrours
+of his repentance exemplary. The players, however, required, that the
+guilt of Phocyas should terminate in desertion to the enemy; and Hughes,
+unwilling that his relations should lose the benefit of his work,
+complied with the alteration.
+
+He was now weak with a lingering consumption, and not able to attend
+the rehearsal; yet was so vigorous in his faculties, that only ten days
+before his death he wrote the dedication to his patron lord Cowper. On
+February 17, 1719-20, the play was represented, and the author died.
+He lived to hear that it was well received; but paid no regard to
+the intelligence, being then wholly employed in the meditations of a
+departing Christian.
+
+A man of his character was, undoubtedly, regretted; and Steele devoted
+an essay, in the paper called the Theatre, to the memory of his virtues.
+His life is written in the Biographia with some degree of favourable
+partiality; and an account of him is prefixed to his works by his
+relation, the late Mr. Buncombe, a man whose blameless elegance deserved
+the same respect.
+
+The character of his genius I shall transcribe from the correspondence of
+Swift and Pope.
+
+"A month ago," says Swift, "were sent me over, by a friend of mine, the
+works of John Hughes, esquire. They are in prose and verse. I never heard
+of the man in my life, yet I find your name as a subscriber. He is too
+grave a poet for me; and I think among the mediocrists, in prose as well
+as verse."
+
+To this Pope returns: "To answer your question as to Mr. Hughes; what he
+wanted in genius, he made up as an honest man; but he was of the class
+you think him[206]."
+
+In Spence's Collections Pope is made to speak of him with still less
+respect, as having no claim to poetical reputation but from his tragedy.
+
+[Footnote 205: He was educated in a dissenting academy, of which the
+reverend Mr. Thomas Rowe was tutor; and was a fellow-student there with
+Dr. Isaac Watts, Mr. Samuel Say, and other persons of eminence. In the
+Hora Lyricae of Dr. Watts, is a poem to the memory of Mr. Rowe. H.]
+
+[Footnote 206: This, Dr. Warton asserts, is very unjust censure; and in a
+note in his late edition of Pope's works, asks if "the author of such a
+tragedy as the Siege of Damascus was one of the _mediocribus_? Swift and
+Pope seem not to recollect the value and rank of an author who could
+write such a tragedy."]
+
+
+
+
+SHEFFIELD
+DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
+
+John Sheffield, descended from a long series of illustrious ancestors,
+was born in 1649, the son of Edmund, earl of Mulgrave, who died in
+1658[207]. The young lord was put into the hands of a tutor, with whom he
+was so little satisfied, that he got rid of him in a short time, and, at
+an age not exceeding twelve years, resolved to educate himself. Such a
+purpose, formed at such an age, and successfully prosecuted, delights as
+it is strange, and instructs as it is real.
+
+His literary acquisitions are more wonderful, as those years in which
+they are commonly made were spent by him in the tumult of a military
+life, or the gaiety of a court. When war was declared against the Dutch,
+he went, at seventeen, on board the ship in which prince Rupert and
+the duke of Albemarle sailed, with the command of the fleet; but, by
+contrariety of winds, they were restrained from action. His zeal for the
+king's service was recompensed by the command of one of the independent'
+troops of horse, then raised to protect the coast.
+
+Next year he received a summons to parliament, which, as he was then
+but eighteen years old, the earl of Northumberland censured as at least
+indecent, and his objection was allowed. He had a quarrel with the earl
+of Rochester, which he has, perhaps, too ostentatiously related, as
+Rochester's surviving sister, the lady Sandwich, is said to have told him
+with very sharp reproaches.
+
+When another Dutch war, 1672, broke out, he went again a volunteer in the
+ship which the celebrated lord Ossory commanded; and there made, as he
+relates, two curious remarks.
+
+
+"I have observed two things, which I dare affirm, though not generally
+believed. One was, that the wind of a cannon bullet, though flying never
+so near, is incapable of doing the least harm; and, indeed, were it
+otherwise, no man above deck would escape. The other was, that a great
+shot may be sometimes avoided, even as it flies, by changing one's ground
+a little; for, when the wind sometimes blew away the smoke, it was so
+clear a sunshiny day, that we could easily perceive the bullets, that
+were half-spent, fall into the water, and from thence bound up again
+among us, which gives sufficient time for making a step or two on any
+side; though, in so swift a motion, 'tis hard to judge well in what line
+the bullet comes, which, if mistaken, may, by removing, cost a man his
+life, instead of saving it."
+
+His behaviour was so favourably represented by lord Ossory, that he was
+advanced to the command of the Catharine, the best second-rate ship in
+the navy.
+
+He afterwards raised a regiment of foot, and commanded it as colonel. The
+land-forces were sent ashore by prince Rupert; and he lived in the camp
+very familiarly with Schomberg. He was then appointed colonel of the old
+Holland regiment, together with his own; and had the promise of a garter,
+which he obtained in his twenty-fifth year. He was, likewise, made
+gentleman of the bedchamber. He afterwards went into the French service,
+to learn the art of war under Turenne, but staid only a short time.
+Being, by the duke of Monmouth, opposed in his pretensions to the first
+troop of horse-guards, he, in return, made Monmouth suspected by the
+duke of York. He was not long after, when the unlucky Monmouth fell
+into disgrace, recompensed with the lieutenancy of Yorkshire and the
+government of Hull.
+
+Thus rapidly did he make his way both to military and civil honours and
+employments; yet, busy as he was, he did not neglect his studies, but, at
+least, cultivated poetry; in which he must have been early considered as
+uncommonly skilful, if it be true which is reported, that, when he was
+yet not twenty years old, his recommendation advanced Dryden to the
+laurel.
+
+The Moors having besieged Tangier, he was sent, 1680, with two thousand
+men to its relief. A strange story is told of danger to which he was
+intentionally exposed in a leaky ship, to gratify some resentful jealousy
+of the king, whose health he, therefore, would never permit at his
+table, till he saw himself in a safer place. His voyage was prosperously
+performed in three weeks; and the Moors, without a contest, retired
+before him.
+
+In this voyage he composed the Vision; a licentious poem, such as was
+fashionable in those times, with little power of invention or propriety
+of sentiment.
+
+At his return he found the king kind, who, perhaps, had never been angry;
+and he continued a wit and a courtier, as before.
+
+At the succession of king James, to whom he was intimately known, and by
+whom he thought himself beloved, he naturally expected still brighter
+sunshine; but all know how soon that reign began to gather clouds. His
+expectations were not disappointed; he was immediately admitted into the
+privy council, and made lord chamberlain. He accepted a place in the high
+commission, without knowledge, as he declared after the revolution, of
+its illegality. Having few religious scruples, he attended the king to
+mass, and kneeled with the rest, but had no disposition to receive
+the Romish faith, or to force it upon others; for when the priests,
+encouraged by his appearances of compliance, attempted to convert him,
+he told them, as Burnet has recorded, that he was willing to receive
+instruction, and that he had taken much pains to believe in God, who made
+the world and all men in it; but that he should not be easily persuaded
+"that man was quits, and made God again."
+
+A pointed sentence is bestowed by successive transmission on the last
+whom it will fit: this censure of transubstantiation, whatever be its
+value, was uttered long ago by Anne Askew, one of the first sufferers
+for the protestant religion, who, in the time of Henry the eighth, was
+tortured in the Tower; concerning which there is reason to wonder that it
+was not known to the historian of the reformation.
+
+In the revolution he acquiesced, though he did not promote it. There
+was once a design of associating him in the invitation of the prince of
+Orange; but the earl of Shrewsbury discouraged the attempt, by declaring
+that Mulgrave would never concur. This king William afterwards told him;
+and asked what he would have done if the proposal had been made? "Sir,"
+said he, "I would have discovered it to the king whom I then served." To
+which king William replied, "I cannot blame you."
+
+Finding king James irremediably excluded, he voted for the conjunctive
+sovereignty, upon this principle, that he thought the titles of the
+prince and his consort equal, and it would please the prince, their
+protector, to have a share in the sovereignty. This vote gratified king
+William; yet, either by the king's distrust or his own discontent,
+he lived some years without employment. He looked on the king with
+malevolence, and, if his verses or his prose may be credited, with
+contempt. He was, notwithstanding this aversion or indifference, made
+marquis of Normanby, 1694; but still opposed the court on some important
+questions; yet, at last, he was received into the cabinet council, with a
+pension of three thousand pounds.
+
+At the accession of queen Anne, whom he is said to have courted when they
+were both young, he was highly favoured. Before her coronation. 1702, she
+made him lord privy seal, and, soon after, lord lieutenant of the north
+Riding of Yorkshire. He was then named commissioner for treating with the
+Scots about the union; and was made, next year, first, duke of Normanby,
+and then of Buckinghamshire, there being suspected to be somewhere a
+latent claim to the title of Buckingham[208].
+
+Soon after, becoming jealous of the duke of Marlborough, he resigned the
+privy seal, and joined the discontented tories in a motion, extremely
+offensive to the queen, for inviting the princess Sophia to England.
+The queen courted him back with an offer no less than that of the
+chancellorship; which he refused. He now retired from business, and built
+that house in the Park, which is now the queen's, upon ground granted by
+the crown.
+
+When the ministry was changed, 1710, he was made lord chamberlain of the
+household, and concurred in all transactions of that time, except that he
+endeavoured to protect the Catalans. After the queen's death, he became
+a constant opponent of the court; and, having no publick business, is
+supposed to have amused himself by writing his two tragedies. He died
+February 24, 1720-21.
+
+He was thrice married; by his first two wives he had no children; by his
+third, who was the daughter of king James, by the countess of Dorchester,
+and the widow of the earl of Anglesey, he had, besides other children
+that died early, a son born in 1716, who died in 1735, and put an end to
+the line of Sheffield. It is observable, that the duke's three wives were
+all widows. The dutchess died in 1742.
+
+His character is not to be proposed as worthy of imitation. His religion
+he may be supposed to have learned from Hobbes; and his morality was such
+as naturally proceeds from loose opinions. His sentiments with respect to
+women he picked up in the court of Charles; and his principles concerning
+property were such as a gaming-table supplies. He was censured as
+covetous, and has been defended by an instance of inattention to his
+affairs; as if a man might not at once be corrupted by avarice and
+idleness. He is said, however, to have had much tenderness, and to have
+been very ready to apologize for his violences of passion.
+
+He is introduced into this collection only as a poet; and, if we credit
+the testimony of his contemporaries, he was a poet of no vulgar rank. But
+favour and flattery are now at an end; criticism is no longer softened by
+his bounties, or awed by his splendour; and, being able to take a more
+steady view, discovers him to be a writer that sometimes glimmers, but
+rarely shines; feebly laborious, and, at best, but pretty. His songs are
+upon common topicks; he hopes, and grieves, and repents, and despairs,
+and rejoices, like any other maker of little stanzas: to be great, he
+hardly tries; to be gay, is hardly in his power[209].
+
+In the Essay on Satire he was always supposed to have had the help of
+Dryden. His Essay on Poetry is the great work for which he was praised by
+Roscommon, Dryden, and Pope; and, doubtless, by many more, whose eulogies
+have perished.
+
+Upon this piece he appears to have set a high value; for he was all his
+life improving it by successive revisals, so that there is scarcely any
+poem to be found of which the last edition differs more from the first.
+Amongst other changes, mention is made of some compositions of Dryden,
+which were written after the first appearance of the essay.
+
+At the time when this work first appeared, Milton's fame was not yet
+fully established, and, therefore, Tasso and Spenser were set before him.
+The two last lines were these. The epick poet, says he,
+
+  Must above Milton's lofty flights prevail,
+  Succeed where great Torquato, and where greater Spenser, fail.
+
+The last line in succeeding editions was shortened, and the order of
+names continued; but now Milton is at last advanced to the highest place,
+and the passage thus adjusted:
+
+  Must above Tasso's lofty flights prevail,
+  Succeed where Spenser, and ev'n Milton, fail.
+
+Amendments are seldom made without some token of a rent: _lofty_ does not
+suit Tasso so well as Milton.
+
+One celebrated line seems to be borrowed. The essay calls a perfect
+character,
+
+  A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw.
+
+Scaliger, in his poems, terms Virgil "sine labe monstrum." Sheffield can
+scarcely be supposed to have read Scaliger's poetry; perhaps he found the
+words in a quotation.
+
+Of this essay, which Dryden has exalted so highly, it may be justly
+said, that the precepts are judicious, sometimes new, and often happily
+expressed; but there are, after all the emendations, many weak lines, and
+some strange appearances of negligence; as, when he gives the laws of
+elegy, he insists upon connexion and coherence; without which, says he,
+
+  'Tis epigram, 'tis point, 'tis what you will;
+  But not an elegy, nor writ with skill,
+  No Panegyrick, nor a Cooper's Hill.
+
+Who would not suppose that Waller's Panegyrick and Denham's Cooper's Hill
+were elegies?
+
+His verses are often insipid; but his memoirs are lively and agreeable;
+he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and
+fancy of a poet.
+
+[Footnote 207: His mother was Elizabeth, one of the daughters of Lionel
+Cranfield, earl of Middlesex. M.]
+
+[Footnote 208: In the earliest editions of the duke's works he is styled
+duke of Buckingham; and Walpole, in his Catalogue of Noble Authors,
+mentions a wish, cherished by Sheffield, to be confounded with his
+predecessor in the title; "but he would more easily," remarks Walpole,
+sarcastically, "have been mistaken with the other Buckingham, if he had
+not written at all." Burnet also, and other authorities, speak of him
+under the title of duke of Buckingham. His epitaph, being in Latin, will
+not settle the point. It is to be regretted, therefore, that Johnson
+adduced no better evidence for his doubt than his own unsupported
+assertion. ED.]
+
+[Footnote 209: "The life of this peer takes up fourteen pages and a half
+in folio, in the General Dictionary, where it has little pretensions to
+occupy a couple: but his pious relict was always purchasing places for
+him, herself, and their son, in every suburb of the temple of fame; a
+tenure, against which, of all others, quo-warrantos are sure to take
+place. The author of the article in the dictionary calls the duke one of
+the most beautiful prose writers, and greatest poets, of his age: which
+is also, he says, proved by the finest writers, his contemporaries;
+certificates that have little weight, where the merit is not proved by
+the author's own works. It is certain, that his grace's compositions in
+prose have nothing extraordinary in them; his poetry is most indifferent,
+and the greatest part of both is already fallen into total neglect."
+Walpole's Noble Authors, vol. i. p. 436 of his works.]
+
+
+END OF VOL. VII.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1, by Samuel Johnson
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