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!
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!
Samuel Johnson - Lives of the Poets - 1
"
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!
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!
