No More Learning

Compare the Greek and English tragic poets justly, and without
partiality, according to those rules.

Then, secondly, consider whether Aristotle has made a just definition
of tragedy; of its parts, of its ends, and of its beauties; and whether
he, having not seen any others but those of Sophocles, Euripides, &c.
had, or truly could determine what all the excellencies of tragedy are,
and wherein they consist.

Next shew in what ancient tragedy was deficient; for example, in the
narrowness of its plots, and fewness of persons; and try whether that
be not a fault in the Greek poets, and whether their excellency was so
great, when the variety was visibly so little; or whether what they did
was not very easy to do.

Then make a judgment on what the English have added to their beauties;
as, for example, not only more plot, but also new passions, as, namely,
that of love, scarce touched on by the ancients, except in this one
example of Phædra, cited by Mr Rymer; and in that how short they were
of Fletcher.

Prove also that love, being an heroic passion, is fit for tragedy,
which cannot be denied, because of the example alleged of Phædra; and
how far Shakespeare has out-done them in friendship, &c.

To return to the beginning of this enquiry; consider, if pity and
terror be enough for tragedy to move; and I believe, upon a true
definition of tragedy, it will be found, that its work extends farther,
and that is to reform manners, by a delightful representation of human
life in great persons, by way of dialogue. If this be true, then not
only pity and terror are to be moved, as the only means to bring
us to virtue, but generally love to virtue, and hatred to vice, by
shewing the rewards of one, and punishments of the other; at least, by
rendering virtue always amiable, though it be shewn unfortunate, and
vice detestable, though it be shewn triumphant.

If then, the encouragement of virtue, and discouragement of vice, be
the proper ends of poetry in tragedy, pity and terror, though good
means, are not the only. For all the passions, in their turns, are
to be set in a ferment; as joy, anger, love, fear, are to be used as
the poet's common-places, and a general concernment for the principal
actors is to be raised, by making them appear such in their characters,
their words, and actions, as will interest the audience in their
fortunes.

And if, after all, in a larger sense, pity comprehends this concernment
for the good, and terror includes detestation for the bad, then let us
consider whether the English have not answered this end of tragedy, as
well as the ancients, or perhaps better.

And here Mr Rymer's objections against these plays are to be
impartially weighed, that we may see whether they are of weight enough
to turn the balance against our countrymen.

It is evident, those plays which he arraigns, have moved both those
passions in a high degree upon the stage.

To give the glory of this away from the poet, and to place it upon the
actors, seems unjust. [156]

One reason is, because whatever actors they have found, the event has
been the same, that is, the same passions have been always moved;
which shews, that there is something of force and merit in the plays
themselves, conducing to the design of raising these two passions:
and suppose them ever to have been excellently acted, yet action only
adds grace, vigour, and more life, upon the stage, but cannot give it
wholly where it is not first. But secondly, I dare appeal to those who
have never seen them acted, if they have not found these two passions
moved within them; and if the general voice will carry it, Mr Rymer's
prejudice will take off his single testimony.

This, being matter of fact, is reasonably to be established by this
appeal; as if one man says it is night, when the rest of the world
conclude it to be day, there needs no farther argument against him,
that it is so.

If he urge, that the general taste is depraved, his arguments to prove
this can at best but evince, that our poets took not the best way to
raise those passions; but experience proves against him, that those
means which they have used have been successful, and have produced them.

And one reason of that success is, in my opinion, this, that
Shakespeare and Fletcher have written to the genius of the age and
nation in which they lived; for though nature, as he objects, is the
same in all places, and reason too the same, yet the climate, the
age, the disposition of the people, to whom a poet writes, may be so
different, that what pleased the Greeks would not satisfy an English
audience.

And if they proceeded upon a foundation of truer reason to please the
Athenians, than Shakespeare and Fletcher to please the English, it only
shews, that the Athenians were a more judicious people; but the poet's
business is certainly to please the audience.

Whether our English audience have been pleased hitherto with acorns, as
he calls it, or with bread, is the next question; that is, whether the
means which Shakespeare and Fletcher have used in their plays to raise
those passions before named, be better applied to the ends by the Greek
poets than by them. And perhaps we shall not grant him this wholly: let
it be yielded, that a writer is not to run down with the stream, or
to please the people by their own usual methods, but rather to reform
their judgments,--it still remains to prove, that our theatre needs
this total reformation.

The faults which he has found in their designs, are rather wittily
aggravated in many places, than reasonably urged; and as much may be
returned on the Greeks by one who were as witty as himself.

2. They destroy not, if they are granted, the foundation of the
fabric, only take away from the beauty of the symmetry: for example,
the faults in the character of the "King and no King"[157] are not as
he makes them, such as render him detestable, but only imperfections
which accompany human nature, and are for the most part excused by the
violence of his love; so that they destroy not our pity or concernment
for him. This answer may be applied to most of his objections of that
kind.

And Rollo[158] committing many murders, when he is answerable but
for one, is too severely arraigned by him, for it adds to our horror
and detestation of the criminal; and poetic justice is not neglected
neither, for we stab him in our minds for every offence which he
commits; and the point which the poet is to gain on the audience is not
so much in the death of an offender, as the raising an horror of his
crimes.

That the criminal should neither be wholly guilty, nor wholly innocent,
but so participating of both as to move both pity and terror, is
certainly a good rule, but not perpetually to be observed; for that
were to make all tragedies too much alike; which objection he foresaw,
but has not fully answered.

To conclude, therefore; if the plays of the ancients are more correctly
plotted, ours are more beautifully written. And if we can raise
passions as high on worse foundations, it shews our genius in tragedy
is greater; for, in all other parts of it, the English have manifestly
excelled them.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 154: Rymer sets out with the old dogma, that no source of
tragedy was legitimate, except that springing from pity or terror. ]

[Footnote 155: "After much new-modelling, many changes, and
alterations, Æschylus came with a second actor on the stage, and
lessened the business of the chorus proportionably. But Sophocles
adding a third actor and painted scenes, gave, in Aristotle's opinion,
the utmost perfection to tragedy. " RYMER'S _Remarks_, p. 13. ]

[Footnote 156: Alluding to the following remarks of Rymer transferring
the pleasing effect of the plays, which he censures, to the lively
representation. "Amongst those who will be objecting against the
doctrine I lay down, may peradventure appear a sort of men who have
remembered so and so; and value themselves upon their experience. I may
write by the book (say they) what I have a mind, but they know what
will please. Those are a kind of stage-quacks and empirics in poetry,
who have got a receipt to please; and no collegiate like them for
purging the passions.

"These say (for instance) a "King and no King" pleases. I say the
comical part pleases.

"I say that Mr Hart pleases; most of the business falls to his share,
and what he delivers, every one takes upon content; their eyes are
prepossessed and charmed by his action, before aught of the poet's can
approach their ears; and to the most wretched of characters, he gives a
lustre and brilliance, which dazzles the sight, that the deformities in
the poetry cannot be perceived. "--_Remarks_, p. 5.

He has a similar observation in page 138:--"We may remember, however
we find this scene of Melantius and Amintor written in the book, that
at the theatre we have a good scene acted. There is work cut out, and
both our Æsopus and Roscius are on the stage together: whatever defect
may be in Amintor and Melantius, Mr Hart and Mr Mohun are wanting in
nothing. To these we owe for what is pleasing in the scene; and to this
scene we may impute the success of the "Maid's Tragedy. "]

[Footnote 157: After laying it down as a necessary rule, that a king in
tragedy is, _ex jure_, a hero, Rymer proceeds to arraign the character
of Arbaces, for his vain glory, presumption, incestuous passion for his
sister, and extravagance of language. He sums his character up in the
words of the Irish inscription:

For fierceness and for furiousness,
Men call me the queen's mortar-piece.
]

[Footnote 158: "When Rollo has murdered his brother, he stands
condemned by the laws of poetry; and nothing remains but that the
poet see him executed, and the poet is to answer for all the mischief
committed afterwards. But Rollo we find has made his escape, and woe
be to the chancellor, to the school-master, and to the chancellor's
man; for those are to be men of this world no longer. Here is like to
be poetical justice, so many lives taken away, and but the life of one
guilty person to answer for all; and is not this a strange method of
killing? If the planets had contrived him for a cock of thirteen, his
first victory should not have been the most important; he should first
have practised on his subjects, and have risen by degrees to the height
of iniquity. His brother sovereign was his top-murder; nothing remained
after that, unless it were his lady-mother. "]




PREFACE

TO

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

ON

THE EMPRESS OF MOROCCO.


The following effusion of spleen, which is altogether unworthy of
Dryden, took its rise in the animosity of literary rivalship.

About 1673, the Earl of Rochester, who had been formerly on good terms
with Dryden, had received a dedication from him, and made a suitable
return of compliment,[159] became his bitter opponent and enemy. This
was probably owing to Dryden's intimacy with Sheffield, Earl Mulgrave,
who had challenged Rochester, and publicly branded him with cowardice
for his refusal to fight him. [160] The witty and profligate courtier
turned that resentment against the poet, which he durst not shew to the
patron, and endeavoured to injure him on every opportunity.

Elkanah Settle, whom we have had former opportunities to commemorate,
was now rising into notice. He was the son of Joseph Settle, of
Dunstable, in Bedfordshire, and had distinguished himself by a tragedy,
called "Cambyses, King of Persia," which was acted for three weeks
together. Emboldened by this success, he produced a second play,
entitled "The Empress of Morocco. " Upon this tragedy, and its author,
Rochester fixed, as the implements of his plan, to humble and mortify
Dryden. He made use of his influence to introduce Settle at court as
a poet greatly superior to our bard; and he was received at least
upon equal terms with him. Even Sheffield contributed to Dryden's
mortification, and, perhaps in obedience to the king, graced "The
Empress of Morocco" with a prologue of his own writing, which was
spoken by Lady Betty Howard, when the piece was presented at Whitehall,
by the gentlemen and ladies of the court. Rochester wrote a second
prologue, which was spoken by the same lady, on a second representation
of the same distinguished kind. The bookseller contributed his share
of celebrity to the piece, by decorating it with four engravings, each
representing a scene in the play; an honour which had not hitherto been
conferred on any single play: with these decorations it sold for two
shillings, being double the common price. Lastly, the public bought up
the edition with great rapidity, and very naturally employed themselves
in weighing the merits of the new bard against those of our author, who
had hitherto reigned paramount over the drama.

All these circumstances combined to vex the spirit of Dryden. There was
not only a vile bombastic production publicly weighed against his most
laboured plays, but the author, presuming upon the countenance of a
numerous party among the public, had openly bid him defiance, by sundry
irreverend sneers at him in the prefatory epistle of his garnished
and bedizened performance. This Dryden termed, "a most arrogant,
calumniating, ill-natured, and scandalous preface. "[161]

It had been undoubtedly wise in Dryden to have disdained to enter the
arena with such an antagonist. Settle must soon have sunk by his own
weight, to the dishonour and confusion of his supporters; but the
spirit of controversy and party were to buoy him up a little longer.
Our author, irritated and imprudent, entered into a league with
Shadwell, (afterwards a hostile name,) and with John Crowne, another
dramatist of the day, to humble at once the pride of Settle, by such
a criticism as should make his party ashamed of their poet, and the
poet of his own production. Accordingly, "The Notes and Observations
on the Empress of Morocco," the work of the three allies, came forth
in 4to, in 1674. None of the consequences followed which Dryden had
probably expected. Settle retorted, and stupid and vulgar as he was,
it was hardly possible for him to fall beneath the Billingsgate with
which he had been assailed. [162] On the contrary, he rather gained
reputation by the contest, and fairly divided with Dryden the applauses
of the court and of the universities. It was not until the controversy
subsided, that Elkanah lost his unnatural and unmerited literary
importance. In the mean time, the feud between Dryden and him was
inflamed by political hatred, and at length procured Elkanah the bitter
distinction, of being described in "Absalom and Achitophel," under the
name of Doeg. Vol. IX. pages 331, 373.

It were to be wished, our author could be exculpated from any share in
the coarse and illiberal invective which follows these introductory
remarks. But it is too certain, from the evidence of Dennis, as well as
Settle's affirmation, that Dryden did stoop to revise the pamphlet, and
probably to write the preface and postscript. These cannot therefore be
rejected from a full edition of his works; but I willingly follow Mr
Malone's authority in rejecting the rest of the pamphlet, excepting a
small specimen.

Morally considered, the piece affords an useful lesson, how much
irritation can debase even the composition of genius. The best
satirist, like a fencer, loses the skill of his art when he loses his
temper; and if Dryden afterwards succeeded in making a ridiculous
portrait of Elkanah Settle, it was because he had lost apprehension
of him as a rival, and cooled his indignation with a proportion of
contempt suitable to its object.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 159: See Vol. IV. p. 235. ]

[Footnote 160: See the story as told by Sheffield himself, p. 215. ]

[Footnote 161: It is addressed to Henry Earl of Norwich, and is
obviously levelled against the manner of our author's dedications.
"The impudence of scribblers in this age has so corrupted the original
design of dedications, that before I dare tell you this trifle begs
your lordship's protection, I ought first to examine on what grounds
I make the attack; for now every thing that ere saw the stage, how
modest soever it has been there, without daring to shew its face above
three days, has yet the arrogance to thrust itself into the world in
print, with a great name before it: When the fawning scribbler shall
compendiously say,--The factions of critics, the ill time of the year,
and the worse acting of the players, has prejudiced his play; but he
doubts not, but his grace, or his honour's more impartial judgment will
find that pardonable, which the world has so maliciously censured; that
is as much as to say,--Sir, you are the only person at court, whose
blind side I dare venture on; not doubting, but your good nature will
excuse what all the world (except the author) has justly condemned.
Thus a dedication, which was formerly a present to a person of quality,
is now made a libel on him; whilst the poet either supposes his patron
to be so great a sot to defend that in print, which he hist off the
stage; or else makes himself a greater, in asking a favour from him,
which he never expects to obtain. However, that which is abuse to the
patron, is a compliment to the bookseller, who whispers the poet, and
tells him, sir, your play had misfortune, and all that--but if you'd
but write a dedication, or preface. --The poet takes the hint, picks out
a person of honour, tells him he has a great deal of wit, gives us an
account who writ sense in the last age, supposing we cannot be ignorant
who writes it in this; disputes the nature of verse, answers a cavil
or two, quibbles upon the court, huffs the critics, and the work's
done. 'Tis not to be imagined how far a sheet of this goes to make a
bookseller rich, and a poet famous.

"But, my lord, whilst I trouble you with this kind of discourse, I
beg you would not think I design to give rules to the press, as some
of our tribe have done to the stage; or that I find fault with their
dedications, in compliment to my own: no, that's a trick I do not
pretend to. "]

[Footnote 162: He thus characterizes his three antagonists.

"Thereupon, with very little conjuration, by those three remarkable
qualities of _railing_, _boasting_, and _thieving_, I found a Dryden
in the frontispiece; then going through the preface, I observed the
drawing of a fool's picture to be the design of the whole piece; and
reflecting on the painter, I considered that probably the pamphlet
might be like his plays, not to be written without help: and according
to expectation, I discovered the author of "Epsom Wells," and the
author of "Pandion and Amphigenia," lent their assistance. How!
Three to one, thought I! and three gentlemen of such disagreeing
qualifications in one club! The first, a man that has had wit, but is
past it; the second, that has it, if he can keep it; and the third,
that neither has, nor is ever like to have it. Then boldly on I went,
and fortified with patience (as I found it required) for a full
perusal, I wondered the less at the deformity of the piece, when such
different heads went to the composure. The first of these is the only
person that pretends an injury, received from a satiric line or two in
the "Epistle to Morocco;" and consequently I conclude him the promoter
of so ill-natured a retort. The second, I suppose only putting his
comical hand, to help forward with the mirth of so ridiculous a libel;
and the third, perhaps out of a vain glory of being in print, knowing
himself to be such a reptile in poetry, that he's beholding to lampoon
for giving the world to know that there is such a writer in being. "]




PREFACE

TO

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

ON

THE EMPRESS OF MOROCCO.


When I first saw "The Empress of Morocco," though I found it then to be
a rhapsody of nonsense, I was very well contented to have let it pass,
that the reputation of a new author might not be wholly damned; but
that he might be encouraged to make his audience some part of amends
another time. In order to this, I strained a point of conscience to cry
up some passages of the play, which I hoped would recommend it to the
liking of the more favourable judges; but the ill report it had from
those that had seen it at Whitehall, had already done its business with
judicious men. It was generally disliked by them; and but for the help
of scenes, and habits, and a dancing tree, even the Ludgate audience
had forsaken it. [163]

After this ill success, one would have thought the poet should have
been sufficiently mortified; and though he were not naturally modest,
should at least have deferred the showing of his impudence till a
fitter season: but instead of this, he has written before his play
the most arrogant, calumniating, ill-mannered, and senseless Preface
I ever saw. This upstart illiterate scribbler, who lies more open to
censure than any writer of the age, comes amongst the poets, like one
of the earth-born brethren; and his first business in the world is to
attack and murder all his fellows. This, I confess, raised a little
indignation in me, as much as I was capable of for so contemptible a
wretch, and made me think it somewhat necessary that he should be made
an example, to the discouragement of all such petulant ill writers;
and that he should be dragged out of that obscurity to which his own
poetry would for ever have condemned him. I knew, indeed, that to write
against him was to do him too great an honour; but I considered Ben
Jonson had done it before to Dekker, our author's predecessor, whom he
chastised in his "Poetaster," under the character of Crispinus; and
brought him in vomiting up his fustian and nonsense. [164] Should our
poet have been introduced in the same manner, he must have disgorged
his whole play, ere he had been cleansed. Never did I see such a
confused heap of false grammar, improper English, strained hyperboles,
and downright bulls. His plot is incoherent, and full of absurdities,
and the characters of his persons so ill chosen, that they are all
either knaves or fools; only his knaves are fools into the bargain,
and so must be of necessity, while they are in his management. They
all speak alike, and without distinction of character; that is, every
one rants, and swaggers, and talks nonsense abundantly. He steals
notoriously from his contemporaries, but he so alters the property,
by disguising his theft in ill English and bad applications, that he
makes the child his own by deforming it:--_male dum recitas, incipit
esse tuus_. A poet, when he sees his thoughts in so ill a dress, is
ashamed to confess they ever belonged to him. For the Latin and Greek
authors, he had certainly done them the same injury he has done the
English, but that he has the excuse of Aretine for not railing against
God;--he steals not from them, because he never knew them. In short,
he is 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 either into wit or English. His
style is boisterous and rough-hewn; his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and
his numbers perpetually harsh and ill sounding. That 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, it is commonly
still-born; so that, for want of learning and elocution, he will never
be able to express any thing either naturally or justly. This subjects
him on all occasions to false allusions, and mistaken points of wit.
As for judgment, he has not the least grain of it; and therefore all
his plays will be a mere confusion. What a beastly pattern of a king,
whom he intends virtuous, has he shewn in his Muly Labas? Yet he is the
only person who is kept to his character; for he is a perpetual fool;
and I dare undertake, that if he were played by Nokes, who acted just
such another monarch in "Macbeth,"[165] it would give new life to the
play, and do it more good than all its devils. But of all women, the
Lord bless us from his Laula! nobody can be safe from her: she is so
naturally mischievous, that she kills without the least occasion, for
the mere lechery of bloodshed. I suspect he took her character from the
poisoning-woman, who, they say, makes almost as little ceremony of a
murder as that Queen.

It were endless to run over the rest; but they are all of the same
stamp. 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 empresses, his villain, and his sub-villain, nay his hero, have all
a certain natural cast of the father; one turn of the countenance goes
through all his children. Their folly was born and bred in them; and
something of the Elkanah will be visible. Our poet, in writing fools,
has very much in him of that sign-post painter, who was famous only for
drawing roses: when a vintner desired him to paint a lion, he answered,
he would do it to content him, but he was sure it would be like a
rose. Yet since the common audience are much of his level, and both the
great vulgar and the small (as Mr Cowley calls them) are apt to admire
what they do not understand, (_omne ignotum habent pro magnifico_,)
and think all which rumbles is heroic, it will be no wonder if he
pass for a great author amongst town fools and city wits. With these
men, they who laugh at him will be thought envious; for they will be
sure to rise up in arms for nonsense, and violently defend a cause in
which they are engaged by the ties of nature and education. But it
will be for the benefit of mankind hereafter to observe what kind of
people they are who frequent this play, that men of common sense may
know whom to shun. Yet I dare assure the reader, that one half of the
faults and absurdities are not shewn; what is here is only selected
fustian, impertinence, and false grammar. There is as much behind, as
would reasonably damn as many plays as there are acts; for I am sure
there are no four lines together, which are free from some error, and
commonly a gross one. But here is enough to take a taste of him; to
have observed all, were to have swelled a volume, and have made you pay
as dear for a fool's picture, as you have done for his tragedy with
sculptures.

* * * * *

"As men in incense send up vows to heaven. "

_Empress of Morocco_, Act II.

As if incense could carry up thoughts, or a thought go up in smoke: he
may as well say, he will roast or bake thoughts, as smoke them. And
the allusion too is very agreeable and natural: he compares thunder,
lightning, and roaring of guns, to incense; and says thus,--he
expresses his loud joys in a concert of thundering guns, as men send up
silent vows in gentle incense. If this description is not plentifully
supplied with nonsense, I will refer myself to the reader. No doubt
it was worth our poet's pains to cut a river up to Morocco, for the
sake of such a description of ships as this. A rare and studied piece
it is. The poet has employed his art about every line, that it may be
esteemed a curiosity in its kind, and himself a person endowed with
a peculiar talent in writing new and exact nonsense. And for this no
doubt it was, that our poet was so much courted, sent for from place
to place, that you could hardly cross a street but you met him puffing
and blowing, with his fardel of nonsense under his arm, driving his
bulls in haste to some great person or other to shew them, as if he had
lately come out of Asia or Africa with strange kinds of dromedaries,
rhinoceroses, or a new Cambyses, a beast more monstrous than any of the
former. Nay, both the playhouses contended for him, as if he had found
out some new way of eating fire. No doubt their design was to entertain
the town with a rarity. People had been long weary of good sense that
looked like nonsense, and now they would treat them with nonsense which
yet looked very like sense. But as he that pretended he would shew a
beast which was very like a horse, and was no horse, set people much
admiring what strange animal it should be, but when they came in, and
found it was nothing but a plain grey mare, laughed a while at the
conceit, but were ready after to stone the fellow for his impudence; so
it must needs fare with our poet, when his upper-gallery fools discover
they have tricks put upon them, and all that they have so ignorantly
clapped is downright nonsense. And for my part, I cannot but admire,
that not only to those who know, or at least have had time enough to
learn, what sense is, but also to a people who, of all nations in the
world, pretend to understand best what belongs to shipping, our poet
should dare to offer this fustian for sense and a description of ships;
a description so ridiculous, that Mulylabas, as errant a fool, and as
ignorant of ships as he is, must needs discover, that he is abused,
and that ships cannot be such things as the poet makes them. But the
poet has not only been so impudent to expose all this stuff, but so
arrogant to defend it with an Epistle; like a saucy booth-keeper, that
when he had put a cheat upon the people, would wrangle and fight with
any that would not like it, or would offer to discover it; for which
arrogance our poet receives this correction; and to jerk him a little
the sharper, I will not transpose his verse, but by the help of his own
words trans-nonsense sense, that, by my stuff, people may judge the
better what his is:

Great Boy, thy tragedy and sculptures done,
From press and plates, in fleets do homeward run:
And in ridiculous and humble pride,
Their course in ballad-singers' baskets guide;
Whose greasy twigs do all new beauties take
From the gay shows thy dainty sculptures make.
Thy lines a mess of rhyming nonsense yield,
A senseless tale, with fluttering fustian filled.
No grain of sense does in one line appear;
Thy words big bulks of boisterous bombast bear;
With noise they move, and from players' mouths rebound,
When their tongues dance to thy words' empty sound.
By thee inspired, thy rumbling verses roll,
As if that rhyme and bombast lent a soul;
And with that soul they seem taught duty too;
To huffing words does humble nonsense bow,
As if it would thy worthless worth enhance,
To the lowest rank of fops thy praise advance,

To whom by instinct all thy stuff is dear;
Their loud claps echo to the theatre.
From breaths of fools thy commendation spreads,
Fame sings thy praise with mouths of loggerheads;
With noise and laughing each thy fustian greets,
'Tis clapped by choirs of empty-headed cits,
Who have their tribute sent, and homage given,
_As men in whispers send loud noise to heaven_. [166]

Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle. And now we are come from
aboard his dancing, masquing, rebounding, breathing fleet; and as if we
had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but fools and nonsense.

Order and harmony in each appear,
Their lofty bulks the flaming billows bear;
In state they move, and on the waves rebound,
As if they danced to their own trumpets' sound:
By winds inspired, with lively grace they roll,
As if that breath and motion lent a soul;
And with that soul they seem taught duty too,
Their topsails lowered, their heads with reverence bow,
As if they would their general's worth enhance,
From him by instinct taught allegiance.
Whilst the loud cannons echo to the shore,
Their flaming breaths salute you emperor;
From their deep mouths he does your glory sing,
With thunder and with lightning greets his King.
Thus to express his joys, in a loud choir,
And concert of winged messengers of fire,
He has his tribute sent, and homage given,
As men in incense send up vows to heaven.


POSTSCRIPT.

Some who are pleased with the bare sound of verse, or the rumbling
of robustious nonsense, will be apt to think Mr Settle too severely
handled in this pamphlet; but I do assure the reader, that there are
a vast number of errors passed by, perhaps as many, or more, than are
taken notice of, both to avoid the tediousness of the work, and the
greatness. It might have occasioned a volume upon such a trifle. I
dare affirm, that no objections in this book are fruitless cavils: but
if, through too much haste, Mr Settle may be accused of any seeming
fault, which may reasonably be defended, let the passing by many gross
errors without reprehension compound for it. I am not ignorant, that
his admirers, who most commonly are women, will resent this very ill;
and some little friends of his, who are smatterers in poetry, will be
ready for most of his gross errors to use that much mistaken plea of
_poetica licentia_, which words fools are apt to use for the palliating
the most absurd nonsense in any poem. I cannot find when poets had
liberty, from any authority, to write nonsense, more than any other
men. Nor is that plea of _poetica licentia_ used as a subterfuge by
any but weak professors of that art, who are commonly given over to a
mist of fancy, a buzzing of invention, and a sound of something like
sense, and have no use of judgment. They never think thoroughly, but
the best of their thoughts are like those we have in dreams, imperfect;
which though perhaps we are often pleased with sleeping, we blush at
waking. The licentious wildness and extravagance of such men's conceits
have made poetry contemned by some, though it be very unjust for any to
condemn the science for the weakness of some of the professors.

Men that are given over to fancy only, are little better than madmen.
What people say of fire, viz. that it is a good servant, but an ill
master, may not unaptly be applied to fancy; which, when it is too
active, rages, but when cooled and allayed by the judgment, produces
admirable effects. But this rage of fancy is never Mr Settle's crime;
he has too much phlegm, and too little choler, to be accused of this.
He has all the pangs and throes of a fanciful poet, but is never
delivered of any more perfect issue of his phlegmatic brain, than a
dull Dutchwoman's sooterkin is of her body.

His style is very muddy, and yet much laboured; for his meaning (for
sense there is not much) is most commonly obscure, but never by reason
of too much height, but lowness. His fancy never flies out of sight,
but often sinks out of sight:--but now I hope the reader will excuse
some digression upon the extravagant use of fancy and poetical licence.

Fanciful poetry and music, used with moderation, are good; but men
who are wholly given over to either of them, are commonly as full
of whimsies as diseased and splenetic men can be. Their heads are
continually hot, and they have the same elevation of fancy sober,
which men of sense have when they drink. So wine used moderately
does not take away the judgment, but used continually, debauches
men's understandings, and turns them into sots, making their heads
continually hot by accident, as the others are by nature; so, mere
poets and mere musicians are as sottish as mere drunkards are, who live
in a continual mist, without seeing or judging any thing clearly.

A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a
reasonable, philosophical, and in some measure a mathematical head,
to be a complete and excellent poet; and besides this, should have
experience in all sorts of humours and manners of men; should be
thoroughly skilled in conversation, and should have a great knowledge
of mankind in general. Mr Settle having never studied any sort of
learning but poetry, and that but slenderly, as you may find by his
writings, and having besides no other advantages, must make very
lame work on't; he himself declares, he neither reads, nor cares for
conversation; so that he would persuade us he is a kind of fanatic in
poetry, and has a light within him, and writes by an inspiration; which
(like that of the heathen prophets) a man must have no sense of his own
when he receives; and no doubt he would be thought inspired, and would
be reverenced extremely in the country where Santons are worshipped.
But some will, I doubt not, object, that poetry should not be reduced
to the strictness of mathematics; to which I answer, it ought to be so
far mathematical as to have likeness and proportion, since they will
all confess that it is a kind of painting. But they will perhaps say,
that a poem is a picture to be seen at a distance, and therefore ought
to be bigger than the life. I confess there must be a due distance
allowed for the seeing of any thing in the world; for an object can no
more be seen at all too near, than too far off the eye: but granting
that a poem is a picture to be viewed at a great distance, the distance
and the bigness ought to be so suited, as though the picture be much
bigger than the life, yet it must not seem so; and what miserable
mistakes some poets make for want of knowing this truly, I leave to
men of sense to judge; and by the way, let us consider that dramatic
poetry, especially the English, brings the picture nearer the eye, than
any other sort of poetry.

But some will say after this, what licence is left for poets?
Certainly the same that good poets ever took, without being faulty,
(for surely the best were so sometimes, because they were but men,)
and that licence is fiction; which kind of poetry is like that of
landscape-painting; and poems of this nature, though they be not
_vera_, ought to be _verisimilia_.

The great art of poets is either the adorning and beautifying of
truth, or the inventing pleasing and probable fictions. If they invent
impossible fables, like some of Æsop's, they ought to have such morals
couched under them, as may tend to the instruction of mankind, or the
regulation of manners, or they can be of no use; nor can they really
delight any but such as would be pleased with Tom Thumb, without these
circumstances.
But there are some pedants, who will quote authority
from the ancients for the faults and extravagancies of some of the
moderns; who being able to imitate nothing but the faults of the
classic authors, mistake them for their excellencies. I speak with all
due reverence to the ancients; for no man esteems their perfections
more than myself, though I confess I have not that blind implicit faith
in them which some ignorant schoolmasters would impose upon us, to
believe in all their errors, and own all their crimes: to some pedants
every thing in them is of that authority, that they will create a new
figure of rhetoric out of the fault of an old poet. I am apt to believe
the same faults were found in them, when they wrote, which men of sense
find now; but not the excellencies which schoolmasters would persuade
us: yet I must say now,

_Nobis non licet esse tam disertis,
Musas qui colimus severiores. _

MARTIAL. Epipgr. ix. 12.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 163: There was a royal theatre at Whitehall, where this play
was twice acted. This playhouse was burned in 1697. The _dancing tree_,
refers to this stage direction in the second act: "A Moorish dance
is presented by Moors in several habits, who bring in an artificial
palm-tree, about which they dance to several antique instruments of
music. "]

[Footnote 164: For Ben Jonson's controversy with Dekker, See Vol. X. p.
451. Dekker was as far superior to Settle, as Dryden was to Jonson. ]

[Footnote 165: This seems, as conjectured by Mr Malone, to have been
some parody on Macbeth, which, strange to tell! had been converted
into a sort of opera by D'Avenant. Such burlesque performances were
fashionable about this time. ]

[Footnote 166: These lines are a parody on the following passage in
"The Empress of Morocco," (act ii. sc. 1. ) which, we are told in the
Remarks, was much admired.

_The scene opened, is represented the prospect of a large river,
with a glorious fleet of ships, supposed to be the navy of Muly
Hamet. After the sound of trumpets, and the discharging of guns,_

_Enter King, young Queen_, HAMETALHAZ, _and Attendants. _

_Hamet. _ Great Sir, your royal father's general
Prince Muly Hamet's fleet does homeward sail,
And in a solemn and triumphant pride
Their course up the great river Tensift guide,
Whose gilded currents do new glories take
From the reflexion his bright streamers make.
The waves a masque of martial pageants yield,
A flying army on a floating field.
]




PREFACE TO THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD.


_This play was written by John Dryden, our author's second son, and is
said to have been founded on a real incident which happened at Rome. It
was dedicated to Sir Robert Howard, the author's uncle, and acted in
1696, with the advantages of a Prologue from Congreve, and an Epilogue
from our author. _ See Vol. X. p. 423.

I have thought convenient to acquaint the reader with somewhat
concerning this comedy, though perhaps not worth his knowledge. It
was sent me from Italy some years since, by my second son, to try its
fortune on the stage; and being the essay of a young unexperienced
author, to confess the truth, I thought it not worthy of that honour.
It is true, I was not willing to discourage him so far, as to tell him
plainly my opinion, but it seems he guessed somewhat of my mind, by my
long delays of his expectation; and therefore, in my absence from the
town last summer, took the boldness to dedicate his play to that person
of honour whose name you will find before his Epistle. It was received
by that noble gentleman with so much candour and generosity, as neither
my son nor I could deserve from him. Then the play was no longer in my
power; the patron demanding it in his own right, it was delivered to
him: and he was farther pleased, during my sickness, to put it into
that method in which you find it; the loose scenes digested into order,
and knit into a tale.

As it is, I think it may pass amongst the rest of our new plays: I
know but two authors, and they are both my friends,[167] who have done
better since the Revolution. This I dare venture to maintain, that the
taste of the age is wretchedly depraved in all sorts of poetry; nothing
almost but what is abominably bad can please. The young hounds, who
ought to come behind, now lead the pack; but they miserably mistake
the scent. Their poets, worthy of such an audience, know not how to
distinguish their characters; the manners are all alike inconsistent,
and interfering with each other. There is scarce a man or woman of
God's making in all their farces, yet they raise an unnatural sort
of laughter, the common effect of buffoonery; and the rabble, which
takes this for wit, will endure no better, because it is above their
understanding. This account I take from the best judges; for I thank
God, I have had the grace hitherto to avoid the seeing or reading of
their gallimaufries. But it is the latter end of a century, and I hope
the next will begin better.

This play, I dare assure the reader, is none of those; it may want
beauties, but the faults are neither gross, nor many. Perfection in any
art is not suddenly obtained: the author of this, to his misfortune,
left his country at a time when he was to have learned the language.
The story he has treated, was an accident which happened at Rome,
though he has transferred the scene to England. If it shall please God
to restore him to me, I may perhaps inform him better of the rules of
writing; and if I am not partial, he has already shewn that a genius
is not wanting to him. All that I can reasonably fear is, that the
perpetual good success of ill plays may make him endeavour to please by
writing worse, and by accommodating himself to the wretched capacity
and liking of the present audience, from which heaven defend any of my
progeny! A poet, indeed, must live by the many; but a good poet will
make it his business to please the few. I will not proceed farther on a
subject which arraigns so many of the readers.

For what remains, both my son and I are extremely obliged to my dear
friend, Mr Congreve, whose excellent Prologue was one of the greatest
ornaments of the play. Neither is my Epilogue the worst which I have
written; though it seems, at the first sight, to expose our young
clergy with too much freedom. It was on that consideration that I had
once begun it otherwise, and delivered the copy of it to be spoken,
in case the first part of it had given offence. This I will give you,
partly in my own justification, and partly too because I think it
not unworthy of your sight; only remembering you, that the last line
connects the sense to the ensuing part of it. --Farewell, reader: if
you are a father, you will forgive me; if not, you will when you are a
father.

Time was, when none could preach without degrees,
And seven-years toil at Universities;
But when the canting saints came once in play,
The spirit did their business in a day:
A zealous cobler, with the gift of tongue,
If he could pray six hours, might preach as long.
Thus, in the primitive times of poetry,
The stage to none but men of sense was free;
But thanks to your judicious taste, my masters,
It lies in common, now, to poetasters.
You set them up, and till you dare condemn,
The satire lies on you, and not on them.
When mountebanks their drugs at market cry,
Is it their fault to sell, or yours to buy?
'Tis true, they write with ease, and well they may; }
Fly-blows are gotten every summer's day; }
The poet does but buz, and there's a play. }
Wit's not his business, &c.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 167: Probably, Southerne and Congreve. ]


END OF THE FIFTEENTH VOLUME.

Edinburgh,
Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.

* * * * *

+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber notes: |
| |
| P. 132. 'daar' is 'dart' in other copy. Changed. |
| Footnote 124: 'Cleveland' is 'Cleiveland' in other copy, changed. |
| P. 378. 'houshold' changed to 'household'. |
| |
| Underscore before and after text indicates italics. |
| Fixed various punctuation. |
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+





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