No More Learning

1039. ]

[Footnote 11: Richardsoniana. ]

[Footnote 12: It is to be found in Poggii Facetiae. J. B. ]

[Footnote 13: The same thought is found in one of Owen's epigrams,
lib. i. epig. 123. and in Poggii Facetiae. J. B. ]

[Footnote 14: Prior was not the first inventor of this stanza; for
excepting the alexandrine close, it is to be found in Churchyard's
Worthies of Wales. See his introduction for Brecknockshire. J. B. ]




CONGREVE.


William Congreve descended from a family in Staffordshire, of so great
antiquity that it claims a place among the few that extend their line
beyond the Norman conquest; and was the son of William Congreve, second
son of Richard Congreve, of Congreve and Stratton. He visited, once, at
least, the residence of his ancestors; and, I believe, more places than
one are still shown, in groves and gardens, where he is related to have
written his Old Bachelor.

Neither the time nor place of his birth are certainly known: if the
inscription upon his monument be true, he was born in 1672[15]. For the
place; it was said by himself, that he owed his nativity to England, and
by every body else that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him
with sharp censure, as a man that meanly disowned his native country.
The biographers assign his nativity to Bardsa, near Leeds, in Yorkshire,
from the account given by himself, as they suppose, to Jacob.

To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the truth about his own
birth, is, in appearance, to be very deficient in candour; yet nobody
can live long without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or vanity,
falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the
general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and
once uttered are sullenly supported. Boileau, who desired to be thought
a rigorous and steady moralist, having told a petty lie to Lewis the
fourteenth, continued it afterwards by false dates; thinking himself
obliged, _in honour_, says his admirer, to maintain what, when he said
it, was so well received.

Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated first at Kilkenny, and
afterwards at Dublin, his father having some military employment that
stationed him in Ireland: but, after having passed through the usual
preparatory studies, as may be reasonably supposed, with great celerity
and success, his father thought it proper to assign him a profession, by
which something might be gotten; and, about the time of the revolution,
sent him, at the age of sixteen, to study law in the Middle Temple,
where he lived for several years, but with very little attention to
statutes or reports.

His disposition to become an author appeared very early, as he very
early felt that force of imagination, and possessed that copiousness of
sentiment, by which intellectual pleasure can be given. His first
performance was a novel, called Incognita, or Love and Duty reconciled:
it is praised by the biographers, who quote some part of the preface,
that is indeed, for such a time of life, uncommonly judicious. I would
rather praise it than read it.

His first dramatick labour was the Old Bachelor; of which he says, in
his defence against Collier, "that comedy was written, as several know,
some years before it was acted. When I wrote it, I had little thoughts
of the stage; but did it, to amuse myself in a slow recovery from a fit
of sickness. Afterwards, through my indiscretion, it was seen, and in
some little time more it was acted; and I, through the remainder of my
indiscretion, suffered myself to be drawn into the prosecution of a
difficult and thankless study, and to be involved in a perpetual war
with knaves and fools. "

There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have
done every thing by chance. The Old Bachelor was written for amusement,
in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with
great elaborateness of dialogue, and incessant ambition of wit. The age
of the writer considered, it is, indeed, a very wonderful performance;
for, whenever written, it was acted, 1693, when he was not more than
twenty-one years old; and was then recommended by Mr. Dryden, Mr.
Southern, and Mr. Maynwaring. Dryden said, that he, never had seen such
a first play; but they found it deficient in some things requisite to
the success of its exhibition, and by their greater experience fitted it
for the stage.

Southern used to relate of one comedy, probably of this, that, when
Congreve read it to the players, he pronounced it so wretchedly that
they had almost rejected it; but they were afterwards so well persuaded
of its excellence, that, for half a year before it was acted, the
manager allowed its author the privilege of the house.

Few plays have ever been so beneficial to the writer; for it procured
him the patronage of Halifax, who immediately made him one of the
commissioners for licensing coaches, and soon after gave him a place in
the pipe-office, and another in the customs, of six hundred pounds a
year. Congreve's conversation must surely have been, at least, equally
pleasing with his writings.

Such a comedy, written at such an age, requires some consideration. As
the lighter species of dramatick poetry professes the imitation of
common life, of real manners, and daily incidents, it apparently
presupposes a familiar knowledge of many characters, and exact
observation of the passing world; the difficulty, therefore, is to
conceive how this knowledge can be obtained by a boy.

But if the Old Bachelor be more nearly examined, it will be found to be
one of those comedies which may be made by a mind vigorous and acute,
and furnished with comick characters by the perusal of other poets,
without much actual commerce with mankind. The dialogue is one constant
reciprocation of conceits, or clash of wit, in which nothing flows
necessarily from the occasion, or is dictated by nature. The characters,
both of men and women, are either fictitious and artificial, as those of
Heartwell, and the ladies; or easy and common, as Wittol, a tam idiot;
Bluff, a swaggering coward; and Fondlewife, a jealous puritan; and the
catastrophe arises from a mistake not very probably produced, by
marrying a woman in a mask.

Yet this gay comedy, when all these deductions are made, will still
remain the work of very powerful and fertile faculties; the dialogue is
quick and sparkling, the incidents such as seize the attention, and the
wit so exuberant, that it "o'er-informs its tenement. "

Next year he gave another specimen of his abilities in the Double
Dealer, which was not received with equal kindness. He writes to his
patron, the lord Halifax, a dedication, in which he endeavours to
reconcile the reader to that which found few friends among the audience.
These apologies are always useless: "de gustibus non est disputandum;"
men may be convinced, but they cannot be pleased, against their will.
But, though taste is obstinate, it is very variable; and time often
prevails when arguments have failed.

Queen Mary conferred upon both those plays the honour of her presence;
and when she died, soon after, Congreve testified his gratitude by a
despicable effusion of elegiack pastoral; a composition in which all is
unnatural, and yet nothing is new.

In another year, 1695, his prolifick pen produced Love for Love; a
comedy of nearer alliance to life, and exhibiting more real manners than
either of the former. The character of Foresight was then common. Dryden
calculated nativities; both Cromwell and king William had their lucky
days; and Shaftesbury himself, though he had no religion, was said to
regard predictions. The Sailor is not accounted very natural, but he is
very pleasant.

With this play was opened the new theatre, under the direction of
Betterton the tragedian; where he exhibited, two years afterwards, 1697,
the Mourning Bride, a tragedy, so written as to show him sufficiently
qualified for either kind of dramatick poetry.

In this play, of which, when he afterwards revised it, he reduced the
versification to greater regularity, there is more bustle than
sentiment; the plot is busy and intricate, and the events take hold on
the attention; but, except a very few passages, we are rather amused
with noise, and perplexed with stratagem, than entertained with any true
delineation of natural characters. This, however, was received with more
benevolence than any other of his works, and still continues to be acted
and applauded.

But whatever objections may be made, either to his comick or tragick
excellence, they are lost, at once, in the blaze of admiration, when it
is remembered that he had produced these four plays before he had passed
his twenty-fifth year; before other men, even such as are some time to
shine in eminence, have passed their probation of literature, or presume
to hope for any other notice than such as is bestowed on diligence and
inquiry. Among all the efforts of early genius which literary history
records, I doubt whether any one can be produced that more surpasses the
common limits of nature than the plays of Congreve.

About this time began the long-continued controversy between Collier and
the poets. In the reign of Charles the first the puritans had raised a
violent clamour against the drama, which they considered as an
entertainment not lawful to christians, an opinion held by them in
common with the church of Rome; and Prynne published Histriomastix, a
huge volume, in which stageplays were censured. The outrages and crimes
of the puritans brought afterwards their whole system of doctrine into
disrepute, and from the restoration the poets and the players were left
at quiet; for to have molested them would have had the appearance of
tendency to puritanical malignity.

This danger, however, was worn away by time; and Collier, a fierce and
implacable nonjuror, knew that an attack upon the theatre would never
make him suspected for a puritan; he, therefore, 1698, published a short
View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, I believe
with no other motive than religious zeal and honest indignation. He was
formed for a controvertist; with sufficient learning; with diction
vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect; with
unconquerable pertinacity; with wit, in the highest degree, keen and
sarcastick; and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by just
confidence in his cause.

Thus qualified, and thus incited, he walked out to battle, and assailed,
at once, most of the living writers, from Dryden to d'Urfey. His onset
was violent: those passages, which while they stood single had passed
with little notice, when they were accumulated and exposed together,
excited horrour; the wise and the pious caught the alarm; and the nation
wondered why it had so long suffered irreligion and licentiousness to be
openly taught at the publick charge.

Nothing now remained for the poets but to resist or fly. Dryden's
conscience, or his prudence, angry as he was, withheld him from the
conflict; Congreve and Vanbrugh attempted answers. Congreve, a very
young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air
of confidence and security. His chief artifice of controversy is to
retort upon his adversary his own words: he is very angry, and, hoping
to conquer Collier with his own weapons, allows himself in the use of
every term of contumely and contempt; but he has the sword without the
arm of Scanderbeg; he has his antagonist's coarseness, but not his
strength. Collier replied; for contest was his delight: he was not to be
frighted from his purpose or his prey.

The cause of Congreve was not tenable: whatever glosses he might use for
the defence or palliation of single passages, the general tenour and
tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with
universal conviction, that the perusal of his works will make no man
better; and that their ultimate effect is to represent pleasure in
alliance with vice, and to relax those obligations by which life ought
to be regulated.

The stage found other advocates, and the dispute was protracted through
ten years; but, at last, comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to
see the reward of his labour in the reformation of the theatre.

Of the powers by which this important victory was achieved, a quotation
from Love for Love, and the remark upon it, may afford a specimen:

_Sir Samps_. "Sampson's a very good name; for your Sampsons were strong
dogs from the beginning. "

_Angel_. "Have a care---If you remember, the strongest Sampson of your
name pull'd an old house over his head at last. "

"Here you have the sacred history burlesqued; and Sampson once more
brought into the house of Dagon, to make sport for the Philistines! "

Congreve's last play was the Way of the World; which, though as he hints
in his dedication it was written with great labour and much thought, was
received with so little favour, that, being in a high degree offended
and disgusted, he resolved to commit his quiet and his fame no more to
the caprices of an audience.

From this time his life ceased to be publick; he lived for himself and
for his friends; and, among his friends, was able to name every man of
his time whom wit and elegance had raised to reputation. It may be,
therefore, reasonably supposed that his manners were polite, and his
conversation pleasing.

He seems not to have taken much pleasure in writing, as he contributed
nothing to the Spectator, and only one paper to the Tatler, though
published by men with whom he might be supposed willing to associate;
and though he lived many years after the publication of his
Miscellaneous Poems, yet he added nothing to them, but lived on in
literary indolence; engaged in no controversy, contending with no rival,
neither soliciting flattery by publick commendations, nor provoking
enmity by malignant criticism, but passing his time among the great and
splendid, in the placid enjoyment of his fame and fortune.

Having owed his fortune to Halifax, he continued always of his patron's
party, but, as it seems, without violence or acrimony; and his firmness
was naturally esteemed, as his abilities were reverenced. His security,
therefore, was never violated; and when, upon the extrusion of the
whigs, some intercession was used lest Congreve should be displaced, the
earl of Oxford made this answer:

"Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni,
Nec tam aversus equos Tyria sol jungit ab urbe. "

He that was thus honoured by the adverse party might naturally expect
to be advanced when his friends returned to power; and he was,
accordingly, made secretary for the island of Jamaica[16], a place, I
suppose, without trust or care, but which, with his post in the customs,
is said to have afforded him twelve hundred pounds a year.

His honours were yet far greater than his profits. Every writer
mentioned him with respect; and, among other testimonies to his merit,
Steele made him the patron of his Miscellany, and Pope inscribed to him
his translation of the Iliad.

But he treated the muses with ingratitude; for, having long conversed
familiarly with the great, he wished to be considered rather as a man of
fashion than of wit; and, when he received a visit from Voltaire,
disgusted him by the despicable foppery of desiring to be considered not
as an author but a gentleman; to which the Frenchman replied, "that if
he had been only a gentleman, he should not have come to visit him. "

In his retirement he may be supposed to have applied himself to books;
for he discovers more literature than the poets have commonly attained.
But his studies were, in his latter days, obstructed by cataracts in his
eyes, which, at last, terminated in blindness. This melancholy state was
aggravated by the gout, for which he sought relief by a journey to Bath;
but, being overturned in his chariot, complained from that time of a
pain in his side, and died, at his house in Surrey-street, in the
Strand, Jan. 29[17], 1728-9. Having lain in state in the
Jerusalem-chamber, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument
is erected to his memory by Henrietta, duchess of Marlborough, to whom,
for reasons either not known or not mentioned, he bequeathed a legacy of
about ten thousand pounds; the accumulation of attentive parsimony,
which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great
assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time,
by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress.

* * * * *

Congreve has merit of the highest kind; he is an original writer, who
borrowed neither the models of his plot nor the manner of his dialogue.
Of his plays I cannot speak distinctly; for, since I inspected them many
years have passed; but what remains upon my memory is, that his
characters are commonly fictitious and artificial, with very little of
nature, and not much of life. He formed a peculiar idea of comick
excellence, which he supposed to consist in gay remarks and unexpected
answers; but that which he endeavoured, he seldom failed of performing.
His scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion; his
personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to
ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; his wit
is a meteor playing to and fro with alternate coruscations. His comedies
have, therefore, in some degree, the operation of tragedies; they
surprise rather than divert, and raise admiration oftener than
merriment. But they are the works of a mind replete with images, and
quick in combination.

Of his miscellaneous poetry, I cannot say any thing very favourable. The
powers of Congreve seem to desert him when he leaves the stage, as
Antæus was no longer strong than when he could touch the ground. It
cannot be observed without wonder, that a mind so vigorous and fertile
in dramatick compositions should, on any other occasion, discover
nothing but impotence and poverty. He has, in these little pieces,
neither elevation of fancy, selection of language, nor skill in
versification: yet, if I were required to select from the whole mass of
English poetry the most poetical paragraph, I know not what I could
prefer to an exclamation in the Mourning Bride:


ALMERIA.

It was a fancy'd noise; for all is hush'd.

LEONORA.

It bore the accent of a human voice.

ALMERIA.

It was thy fear, or else some transient wind
Whistling thro' hollows of this vaulted isle:
We'll listen--

LEONORA.

Hark!

ALMERIA.

No, all is hush'd and still as death. --'Tis dreadful!
How reverend is the face of this tall pile;
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,
To bear aloft its arch'd and ponderous roof,
By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable,
Looking tranquillity! It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight; the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold,
And shoot a chilness to my trembling heart.
Give me thy hand, and let me hear thy voice;
Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear
Thy voice--my own affrights me with its echoes.

He who reads these lines enjoys, for a moment, the powers of a poet; he
feels what he remembers to have felt before, but he feels it with great
increase of sensibility; he recognises a familiar image, but meets it
again amplified and expanded, embellished with beauty, and enlarged with
majesty.

Yet could the author, who appears here to have enjoyed the confidence of
nature, lament the death of queen Mary in lines like these:

The rocks are cleft, and new-descending rills
Furrow the brows of all th' impending hills.
The water-gods to floods their rivulets turn,
And each, with streaming eyes, supplies his wanting urn.
The fauns forsake the woods, the nymphs the grove,
And round the plain in sad distractions rove:
In prickly brakes their tender limbs they tear,
And leave on thorns their locks of golden hair.
With their sharp nails, themselves the satyrs wound,
And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground.
Lo Pan himself, beneath a blasted oak,
Dejected lies, his pipe in pieces broke.
See Pales weeping too, in wild despair,
And to the piercing winds her bosom bare.
And see yon fading myrtle, where appears
The queen of love, all bath'd in flowing tears;
See how she wrings her hands, and beats her breast,
And tears her useless girdle from her waist!
Hear the sad murmurs of her sighing doves!
For grief they sigh, forgetful of their loves.

And, many years after, he gave no proof that time had improved his
wisdom or his wit; for, on the death of the marquis of Blandford, this
was his song:

And now the winds, which had so long been still.
Began the swelling air with sighs to fill:
The water-nymphs, who motionless remain'd,
Like images of ice, while she complain'd,
Now loos'd their streams; as when descending rains
Roll the steep torrents headlong o'er the plains.
The prone creation, who so long had gaz'd,
Charm'd with her cries, and at her griefs amaz'd,
Began to roar and howl with horrid yell,
Dismal to hear and terrible to tell!
Nothing but groans and sighs were heard around,
And echo multiplied each mournful sound.

In both these funeral poems, when he has _yelled_ out many _syllables_
of senseless _dolour_, he dismisses his reader with senseless
consolation: from the grave of Pastora rises a light that forms a star;
and where Amaryllis wept for Amyntas, from every tear sprung up a
violet.

But William is his hero, and of William he will sing:

The hov'ring winds on downy wings shall wait around,
And catch, and waft to foreign lands, the flying sound.

It cannot but be proper to show what they shall have to catch and carry:

'Twas now, when flow'ry lawns the prospect made,
And flowing brooks beneath a forest shade,
A lowing heifer, loveliest of the herd,
Stood feeding by; while two fierce bulls prepar'd
Their armed heads for fight, by fate of war to prove
The victor worthy of the fair one's love.
Unthought presage of what met next my view;
For soon the shady scene withdrew.
And now, for woods, and fields, and springing flowers,
Behold a town arise, bulwark'd with walls and lofty towers;
Two rival armies all the plain o'erspread,
Each in battalia rang'd, and shining arms array'd;
With eager eyes beholding both from far
Namur, the prize and mistress of the war.

The Birth of the Muse is a miserable fiction. One good line it has,
which was borrowed from Dryden. The concluding verses are these:

This said, no more remain'd. Th' ethereal host
Again impatient crowd the crystal coast.
The father now, within his spacious hands,
Encompass'd all the mingled mass of seas and lands;
And, having heav'd aloft the pond'rous sphere,
He launch'd the world to float in ambient air.

Of his irregular poems, that to Mrs. Arabella Hunt seems to be the best;
his ode for St. Cecilia's Day, however, has some lines which Pope had in
his mind when he wrote his own.

His imitations of Horace are feebly paraphrastical, and the additions
which he makes are of little value. He sometimes retains what were more
properly omitted, as when he talks of _vervain_ and _gums_ to propitiate
Venus.

Of his translations, the satire of Juvenal was written very early, and
may, therefore, be forgiven, though it have not the massiness and vigour
of the original. In all his versions strength and sprightliness are
wanting: his hymn to Venus, from Homer, is, perhaps, the best. His lines
are weakened with expletives, and his rhymes are frequently imperfect.

His petty poems are seldom worth the cost of criticism: sometimes the
thoughts are false, and sometimes common. In his verses on lady Gethin,
the latter part is in imitation of Dryden's ode on Mrs. Killigrew; and
Doris, that has been so lavishly flattered by Steele, has, indeed, some
lively stanzas, but the expression might be mended; and the most
striking part of the character had been already shown in Love for Love.
His Art of Pleasing is founded on a vulgar, but, perhaps, impracticable
principle, and the staleness of the sense is not concealed by any
novelty of illustration or elegance of diction.

This tissue of poetry, from which he seems to have hoped a lasting name,
is totally neglected, and known only as it is appended to his plays.

While comedy, or while tragedy, is regarded, his plays are likely to be
read; but, except what relates to the stage[18], I know not that he has
ever written a stanza that is sung, or a couplet that is quoted. The
general character of his Miscellanies is, that they show little wit, and
little virtue.

Yet to him it must be confessed, that we are indebted for the correction
of a national errour, and for the cure of our Pindarick madness. He
first taught the English writers that Pindar's odes were regular; and
though certainly he had not the fire requisite for the higher species of
lyrick poetry, he has shown us, that enthusiasm has its rules, and that,
in mere confusion, there is neither grace nor greatness.

-----

[Footnote 15: Mr. Malone has ascertained both the place and time of his
birth by the register of Bardsey, which is as follows: "William, the
sonne of Mr. William Congreve of Bardsey Grange, was baptised Febru.
10th, 1669. " See Malone's Dryden, vol. i. p. 225. J. B. ]

[Footnote 16: Dec. 17, 1714, and May 3, 1718, he received a patent for
the same place for life. ]

[Footnote 17: The Historical Register says Jan. 19. aet. 57. ]

[Footnote 18: "Except! " Dr. Warton exclaims, "Is not this a high sort of
poetry? " He mentions, likewise, that Congreve's opera, or oratorio, of
Semele, was set to musick by Handel; I believe, in 1743. ]




BLACKMORE.


Sir Richard Blackmore is one of those men whose writings have attracted
much notice, but of whose life and manners very little has been
communicated, and whose lot it has been to be much oftener mentioned by
enemies than by friends.

He was the son of Robert Blackmore, of Corsham, in Wiltshire, styled, by
Wood, gentleman, and supposed to have been an attorney. Having been, for
some time, educated in a country school, he was sent, at thirteen, to
Westminster; and, in 1668, was entered at Edmund hall, in Oxford, where
he took the degree of M. A. June 3, 1676, and resided thirteen years; a
much longer time than it is usual to spend at the university; and which
he seems to have passed with very little attention to the business of
the place; for, in his poems, the ancient names of nations or places,
which he often introduces, are pronounced by chance. He afterwards
travelled: at Padua he was made doctor of physick; and, after having
wandered about a year and a half on the continent, returned home.

In some part of his life, it is not known when, his indigence compelled
him to teach a school; an humiliation, with which, though it certainly
lasted but a little while, his enemies did not forget to reproach him,
when he became conspicuous enough to excite malevolence; and let it be
remembered, for his honour, that to have been once a schoolmaster is the
only reproach which all the perspicacity of malice, animated by wit, has
ever fixed upon his private life.

When he first engaged in the study of physick, he inquired, as he says,
of Dr. Sydenham, what authors he should read, and was directed by
Sydenham to Don Quixote; "which," said he, "is a very good book; I read
it still. " The perverseness of mankind makes it often mischievous in
men of eminence to give way to merriment; the idle and the illiterate
will long shelter themselves under this foolish apophthegm.

Whether he rested satisfied with this direction, or sought for better,
he commenced physician, and obtained high eminence and extensive
practice. He became fellow of the College of Physicians, April 12, 1687,
being one of the thirty, which, by the new charter of king James, were
added to the former fellows. His residence was in Cheapside[19], and his
friends were chiefly in the city. In the early part of Blackmore's time,
a citizen was a term of reproach; and his place of abode was another
topick to which his adversaries had recourse, in the penury of scandal.

Blackmore, therefore, was made a poet not by necessity but inclination,
and wrote not for a livelihood but for fame; or, if he may tell his own
motives, for a nobler purpose, to engage poetry in the cause of virtue.

I believe it is peculiar to him, that his first publick work was an
heroick poem. He was not known as a maker of verses till he published,
in 1695, Prince Arthur, in ten books, written, as he relates, "by such
catches and starts, and in such occasional uncertain hours, as his
profession afforded, and for the greatest part in coffee-houses, or in
passing up and down the streets. " For the latter part of this apology he
was accused of writing "to the rumbling of his chariot-wheels.
" He had
read, he says, "but little poetry throughout his whole life; and for
fifteen years before had not written an hundred verses, except one copy
of Latin verses in praise of a friend's book[20]. "

He thinks, and with some reason, that from such a performance perfection
cannot be expected; but he finds another reason for the severity of his
censurers, which he expresses in language such as Cheapside easily
furnished. "I am not free of the poets' company, having never kissed the
governor's hands: mine is, therefore, not so much as a permission poem,
but a downright interloper. Those gentlemen who carry on their poetical
trade in a joint stock, would, certainly, do what they could to sink and
ruin an unlicensed adventurer, notwithstanding I disturbed none of their
factories, nor imported any goods they had ever dealt in. " He had lived
in the city till he had learned its note.

That Prince Arthur found many readers is certain; for in two years it
had three editions; a very uncommon instance of favourable reception, at
a time when literary curiosity was yet confined to particular classes of
the nation. Such success naturally raised animosity; and Dennis attacked
it by a formal criticism, more tedious and disgusting than the work
which he condemns. To this censure may be opposed the approbation of
Locke and the admiration of Molineux, which are found in their printed
letters. Molineux is particularly delighted with the song of Mopas,
which is, therefore, subjoined to this narrative.

It is remarked by Pope, that what "raises the hero, often sinks the
man. " Of Blackmore it may be said, that, as the poet sinks, the man
rises; the animadversions of Dennis, insolent and contemptuous as they
were, raised in him no implacable resentment: he and his critick were
afterwards friends; and in one of his latter works he praises Dennis as
"equal to Boileau in poetry, and superior to him in critical abilities. "

He seems to have been more delighted with praise than pained by censure,
and, instead of slackening, quickened his career. Having in two years
produced ten books of Prince Arthur, in two years more, 1697, he sent
into the world King Arthur, in twelve. The provocation was now doubled,
and the resentment of wits and criticks may be supposed to have
increased in proportion. He found, however, advantages more than
equivalent to all their outrages; he was this year made one of the
physicians in ordinary to king William, and advanced by him to the
honour of knighthood, with the present of a gold chain and a medal.

The malignity of the wits attributed his knighthood to his new poem;
but king William was not very studious of poetry; and Blackmore,
perhaps, had other merit; for he says, in his dedication to Alfred, that
"he had a greater part in the succession of the house of Hanover than
ever he had boasted. "

What Blackmore could contribute to the succession, or what he imagined
himself to have contributed, cannot now be known. That he had been of
considerable use, I doubt not but he believed, for I hold him to have
been very honest; but he might easily make a false estimate of his own
importance: those whom their virtue restrains from deceiving others, are
often disposed, by their vanity, to deceive themselves. Whether he
promoted the succession or not, he at least approved it, and adhered
invariably to his principles and party through his whole life.

His ardour of poetry still continued; and not long after, 1700, he
published a Paraphrase on the book of Job, and other parts of the
scripture. This performance Dryden, who pursued him with great
malignity, lived long enough to ridicule in a prologue.

The wits easily confederated against him, as Dryden, whose favour they
almost all courted, was his professed adversary. He had besides given
them reason for resentment, as, in his preface to Prince Arthur, he had
said of the dramatick writers almost all that was alleged afterwards by
Collier; but Blackmore's censure was cold and general, Collier's was
personal and ardent; Blackmore taught his reader to dislike, what
Collier incited him to abhor.

In his preface to King Arthur he endeavoured to gain, at least, one
friend, and propitiated Congreve by higher praise of his Mourning Bride
than it has obtained from any other critick.

The same year he published a Satire on Wit, a proclamation of defiance
which united the poets almost all against him, and which brought upon
him lampoons and ridicule from every side. This he doubtless foresaw,
and evidently despised; nor should his dignity of mind be without its
praise, had he not paid the homage to greatness which he denied to
genius, and degraded himself by conferring that authority over the
national taste, which he takes from the poets, upon men of high rank and
wide influence, but of less wit, and not greater virtue.

Here is again discovered the inhabitant of Cheapside, whose head cannot
keep his poetry unmingled with trade. To hinder that intellectual
bankruptcy which he affects to fear, he will erect a _bank for wit_.

In this poem he justly censured Dryden's impurities, but praised his
powers; though, in a subsequent edition, he retained the satire, and
omitted the praise. What was his reason I know not; Dryden was then no
longer in his way.

His head still teemed with heroick poetry; and, 1705, he published
Eliza, in ten books. I am afraid that the world was now weary of
contending about Blackmore's heroes; for I do not remember that by any
author, serious or comical, I have found Eliza either praised or blamed.
She "dropped," as it seems, "dead-born from the press. " It is never
mentioned, and was never seen by me till I borrowed it for the present
occasion. Jacob says, "it is corrected and revised for another
impression;" but the labour of revision was thrown away.

From this time he turned some of his thoughts to the celebration of
living characters; and wrote a poem on the Kit-cat Club[21], and Advice
to the Poets how to celebrate the Duke of Marlborough; but, on occasion
of another year of success, thinking himself qualified to give more
instruction, he again wrote a poem of Advice to a Weaver of Tapestry.
Steele was then publishing the Tatler; and, looking round him for
something at which he might laugh, unluckily lighted on sir Richard's
work, and treated it with such contempt, that, as Fenton observes, he
put an end to the species of writers that gave _advice to painters_.

Not long after, 1712, he published Creation, a philosophical poem, which
has been, by my recommendation, inserted in the late collection. Whoever
judges of this by any other of Blackmore's performances, will do it
injury. The praise given it by Addison, Spectator, 339, is too well
known to be transcribed; but some notice is due to the testimony of
Dennis, who calls it a "philosophical poem, which has equalled that of
Lucretius in the beauty of its versification, and infinitely surpassed
it in the solidity and strength of its reasoning. "

Why an author surpasses himself, it is natural to inquire. I have heard
from Mr. Draper, an eminent bookseller, an account received by him from
Ambrose Philips, "That Blackmore, as he proceeded in this poem, laid his
manuscript, from time to time, before a club of wits with whom he
associated; and that every man contributed, as he could, either
improvement or correction; so that," said Philips, "there are, perhaps,
nowhere in the book thirty lines together that now stand as they were
originally written. "

The relation of Philips, I suppose, was true; but when all reasonable,
all credible allowance is made for this friendly revision, the author
will still retain an ample dividend of praise; for to him must always be
assigned the plan of the work, the distribution of its parts, the choice
of topicks, the train of argument, and, what is yet more, the general
predominance of philosophical judgment and poetical spirit. Correction
seldom effects more than the suppression of faults: a happy line, or a
single elegance, may, perhaps, be added; but, of a large work, the
general character must always remain; the original constitution can be
very little helped by local remedies; inherent and radical dulness will
never be much invigorated by extrinsick animation.

This poem, if he had written nothing else, would have transmitted him to
posterity among the first favourites of the English muse; but to make
verses was his transcendent pleasure, and, as he was not deterred by
censure, he was not satiated with praise.

He deviated, however, sometimes into other tracks of literature, and
condescended to entertain his readers with plain prose. When the
Spectator stopped, he considered the polite world as destitute of
entertainment; and, in concert with Mr. Hughes, who wrote every third
paper, published, three times a week, the Lay Monastery, founded on the
supposition that some literary men, whose characters are described, had
retired to a house in the country to enjoy philosophical leisure, and
resolved to instruct the publick, by communicating their disquisitions
and amusements. Whether any real persons were concealed under fictitious
names, is not known. The hero of the club is one Mr. Johnson; such a
constellation of excellence, that his character shall not be suppressed,
though there is no great genius in the design, nor skill in the
delineation.

"The first I shall name is Mr. Johnson, a gentleman that owes to nature
excellent faculties and an elevated genius, and to industry and
application many acquired accomplishments. His taste is distinguishing,
just, and delicate: his judgment clear, and his reason strong,
accompanied with an imagination full of spirit, of great compass, and
stored with refined ideas. He is a critick of the first rank; and, what
is his peculiar ornament, he is delivered from the ostentation,
malevolence, and supercilious temper, that so often blemish men of that
character. His remarks result from the nature and reason of things, and
are formed by a judgment free, and unbiassed by the authority of those
who have lazily followed each other in the same beaten track of
thinking, and are arrived only at the reputation of acute grammarians
and commentators; men, who have been copying one another many hundred
years, without any improvement; or, if they have ventured farther, have
only applied in a mechanical manner the rules of ancient criticks to
modern writings, and, with great labour, discovered nothing but their
own want of judgment and capacity. As Mr. Johnson penetrates to the
bottom of his subject, by which means his observations are solid and
natural, as well as delicate, so his design is always to bring to light
something useful and ornamental; whence his character is the reverse to
theirs, who have eminent abilities in insignificant knowledge, and a
great felicity in finding out trifles. He is no less industrious to
search out the merit of an author, than sagacious in discerning his
errors and defects; and takes more pleasure in commending the beauties,
than exposing the blemishes of a laudable writing; like Horace, in a
long work, he can bear some deformities, and justly lay them on the
imperfection of human nature, which is incapable of faultless
productions. When an excellent drama appears in publick, and by its
intrinsick worth attracts a general applause, he is not stung with envy
and spleen; nor does he express a savage nature, in fastening upon the
celebrated author, dwelling upon his imaginary defects, and passing over
his conspicuous excellencies. He treats all writers upon the same
impartial footing; and is not, like the little criticks, taken up
entirely in finding out only the beauties of the ancient, and nothing
but the errors of the modern writers. Never did any one express more
kindness and good-nature to young and unfinished authors; he promotes
their interests, protects their reputation, extenuates their faults, and
sets off their virtues, and, by his candour, guards them from the
severity of his judgment. He is not like those dry criticks, who are
morose because they cannot write themselves, but is himself master of a
good vein in poetry; and though he does not often employ it, yet he has
sometimes entertained his friends with his unpublished performances. "

The rest of the lay monks seem to be but feeble mortals, in comparison
with the gigantick Johnson; who yet, with all his abilities, and the
help of the fraternity, could drive the publication but to forty papers,
which were afterwards collected into a volume, and called, in the title,
a Sequel to the Spectators.

Some years afterwards, 1716 and 1717, he published two volumes of essays
in prose, which can be commended only as they are written for the
highest and noblest purpose, the promotion of religion. Blackmore's
prose is not the prose of a poet; for it is languid, sluggish, and
lifeless; his diction is neither daring nor exact, his flow neither
rapid nor easy, and his periods neither smooth nor strong. His account
of wit, will show with how little clearness he is content to think, and
how little his thoughts are recommended by his language.

"As to its efficient cause, wit owes its production to an extraordinary
and peculiar temperament in the constitution of the possessor of it, in
which is found a concurrence of regular and exalted ferments, and an
affluence of animal spirits, refined and rectified to a great degree of
purity; whence, being endowed with vivacity, brightness, and celerity,
as well in their reflections as direct motions, they become proper
instruments for the sprightly operations of the mind; by which means the
imagination can, with great facility, range the wide field of nature,
contemplate an infinite variety of objects, and, by observing the
similitude and disagreement of their several qualities, single out and
abstract, and then suit and unite, those ideas which will best serve its
purpose. Hence beautiful allusions, surprising metaphors, and admirable
sentiments, are always ready at hand: and while the fancy is full of
images, collected from innumerable objects and their different
qualities, relations, and habitudes, it can at pleasure dress a common
notion in a strange but becoming garb; by which, as before observed, the
same thought will appear a new one, to the great delight and wonder of
the hearer. What we call _genius_ results from this particular happy
complexion in the first formation of the person that enjoys it, and is
nature's gift, but diversified by various specifick characters and
limitations, as its active fire is blended and allayed by different
proportions of phlegm, or reduced and regulated by the contrast of
opposite ferments. Therefore, as there happens in the composition of a
facetious genius a greater or less, though still an inferior degree of
judgment and prudence, one man of wit will be varied and distinguished
from another. "

In these essays he took little care to propitiate the wits; for he
scorns to avert their malice at the expense of virtue or of truth.

"Several, in their books, have many sarcastical and spiteful strokes at
religion in general; while others make themselves pleasant with the
principles of the christian. Of the last kind, this age has seen a most
audacious example in the book entitled, a Tale of a Tub. Had this
writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are justly
impatient of all indignity offered to the established religion of their
country, no doubt but the author would have received the punishment he
deserved. But the fate of this impious buffoon is very different; for in
a protestant kingdom, zealous of their civil and religious immunities,
he has not only escaped affronts, and the effects of publick resentment,
but has been caressed and patronised by persons of great figure, and of
all denominations. Violent party-men, who differed in all things
besides, agreed in their turn to show particular respect and friendship
to this insolent derider of the worship of his country, till at last the
reputed writer is not only gone off with impunity, but triumphs in his
dignity and preferment. I do not know that any inquiry or search was
ever made after this writing, or that any reward was ever offered for
the discovery of the author, or that the infamous book was ever
condemned to be burnt in publick; whether this proceeds from the
excessive esteem and love that men in power, during the late reign, had
for wit, or their defect of zeal and concern for the christian religion,
will be determined best by those who are best acquainted with their
character. "

In another place he speaks with becoming abhorrence of a "godless
author," who has burlesqued a psalm. This author was supposed to be
Pope, who published a reward for any one that would produce the coiner
of the accusation, but never denied it; and was afterwards the perpetual
and incessant enemy of Blackmore.

One of his essays is upon the Spleen, which is treated by him so much to
his own satisfaction, that he has published the same thoughts in the
same words; first in the Lay Monastery; then in the Essay; and then in
the preface to a Medical Treatise on the Spleen. One passage, which I
have found already twice, I will here exhibit, because I think it better
imagined, and better expressed, than could be expected from the common
tenour of his prose:

"As the several combinations of splenetick madness and folly produce an
infinite variety of irregular understanding, so the amicable
accommodation and alliance between several virtues and vices produce an
equal diversity in the dispositions and manners of mankind; whence it
comes to pass, that as many monstrous and absurd productions are found
in the moral, as in the intellectual world. How surprising is it to
observe, among the least culpable men, some whose minds are attracted by
heaven and earth, with a seeming equal force; some who are proud of
humility; others who are censorious and uncharitable, yet self-denying
and devout; some who join contempt of the world with sordid avarice; and
others who preserve a great degree of piety, with ill-nature and
ungoverned passions! Nor are instances of this inconsistent mixture less
frequent among bad men, where we often, with admiration, see persons at
once generous and unjust, impious lovers of their country, and
flagitious heroes, good-natured sharpers, immoral men of honour, and
libertines who will sooner die than change their religion; and though it
is true that repugnant coalitions of so high a degree are found but in a
part of mankind, yet none of the whole mass, either good or bad, are
entirely exempted from some absurd mixture. "

He, about this time, Aug. 22, 1716, became one of the elects of the
College of Physicians; and was soon after, Oct. 1, chosen censor. He
seems to have arrived late, whatever was the reason, at his medical
honours.

Having succeeded so well in his book on Creation, by which he
established the great principle of all religion, he thought his
undertaking imperfect, unless he, likewise, enforced the truth of
revelation; and, for that purpose, added another poem on Redemption. He
had, likewise, written, before his Creation, three books on the Nature
of Man.

The lovers of musical devotion have always wished for a more happy
metrical version than they have yet obtained of the Book of Psalms: this
wish the piety of Blackmore led him to gratify; and he produced, 1721, a
new version of the psalms of David, fitted to the tunes used in
churches; which, being recommended by the archbishops and many bishops,
obtained a license for its admission into publick worship: but no
admission has it yet obtained, nor has it any right to come where Brady
and Tate have got possession. Blackmore's name must be added to those of
many others, who, by the same attempt, have obtained only the praise of
meaning well.

He was not yet deterred from heroick poetry. There was another monarch
of this island, for he did not fetch his heroes from foreign countries,
whom he considered as worthy of the epick muse; and he dignified Alfred,
1723, with twelve books. But the opinion of the nation was now settled;
a hero introduced by Blackmore was not likely to find either respect or
kindness; Alfred took his place by Eliza, in silence and darkness:
benevolence was ashamed to favour, and malice was weary of insulting. Of
his four epick poems, the first had such reputation and popularity as
enraged the criticks; the second was, at least, known enough to be
ridiculed; the two last had neither friends nor enemies.

Contempt is a kind of gangrene, which, if it seizes one part of a
character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. Blackmore, being despised
as a poet, was, in time, neglected as a physician; his practice, which
was once invidiously great, forsook him in the latter part of his life;
but being by nature, or by principle, averse from idleness, he employed
his unwelcome leisure in writing books on physick, and teaching others
to cure those whom he could himself cure no longer. I know not whether I
can enumerate all the treatises by which he has endeavoured to diffuse
the art of healing; for there is scarcely any distemper, of dreadful
name, which he has not taught his reader how to oppose. He has written
on the smallpox, with a vehement invective against inoculation; on
consumptions, the spleen, the gout, the rheumatism, the king's evil, the
dropsy, the jaundice, the stone, the diabetes, and the plague.

Of those books, if I had read them, it could not be expected that I
should be able to give a critical account. I have been told that there
is something in them of vexation and discontent, discovered by a
perpetual attempt to degrade physick from its sublimity, and to
represent it as attainable without much previous or concomitant
learning. By the transient glances which I have thrown upon them, I have
observed an affected contempt of the ancients, and a supercilious
derision of transmitted knowledge. Of this indecent arrogance, the
following quotation, from his preface to the treatise on the smallpox,
will afford a specimen; in which, when the reader finds, what I fear is
true, that, when he was censuring Hippocrates, he did not know the
difference between aphorism and apophthegm, he will not pay much regard
to his determinations concerning ancient learning.

"As for this book of aphorisms, it is like my lord Bacon's of the same
title, a book of jests, or a grave collection of trite and trifling
observations; of which though many are true and certain, yet they
signify nothing, and may afford diversion, but no instruction; most of
them being much inferior to the sayings of the wise men of Greece, which
yet are so low and mean, that we are entertained every day with more
valuable sentiments at the table-conversation of ingenious and learned
men. "

I am unwilling, however, to leave him in total disgrace, and will,
therefore, quote, from another preface, a passage less reprehensible.

"Some gentlemen have been disingenuous and unjust to me, by wresting and
forcing my meaning in the preface to another book, as if I condemned and
exposed all learning, though they knew I declared that I greatly
honoured and esteemed all men of superiour literature and erudition; and
that I only undervalued false or superficial learning, that signifies
nothing for the service of mankind; and that, as to physick, I expressly
affirmed that learning must be joined with native genius, to make a
physician of the first rank; but if those talents are separated, I
asserted, and do still insist, that a man of native sagacity and
diligence will prove a more able and useful practiser, than a heavy
notional scholar, encumbered with a heap of confused ideas. "

He was not only a poet and a physician, but produced, likewise, a work
of a different kind; a true and impartial History of the Conspiracy
against King William, of glorious memory, in the year 1695. This I have
never seen, but suppose it, at least, compiled with integrity. He
engaged, likewise, in theological controversy, and wrote two books
against the Arians; Just Prejudices against the Arian Hypothesis; and
Modern Arians unmasked. Another of his works is Natural Theology, or
Moral Duties considered apart from Positive; with some observations on
the Desirableness and Necessity of a supernatural Revelation. This was
the last book that he published. He left behind him the Accomplished
Preacher, or an Essay upon Divine Eloquence; which was printed, after
his death, by Mr. White, of Nayland, in Essex, the minister who attended
his deathbed, and testified the fervent piety of his last hours. He
died on the eighth of October, 1729.

Blackmore, by the unremitted enmity of the wits, whom he provoked more
by his virtue than his dulness, has been exposed to worse treatment than
he deserved. His name was so long used to point every epigram upon dull
writers, that it became, at last, a by-word of contempt; but it deserves
observation, that malignity takes hold only of his writings, and that
his life passed without reproach, even when his boldness of reprehension
naturally turned upon him many eyes desirous to espy faults, which many
tongues would have made haste to publish. But those who could not
blame, could, at least, forbear to praise, and, therefore, of his
private life and domestick character there are no memorials.

As an author he may justly claim the honours of magnanimity. The
incessant attacks of his enemies, whether serious or merry, are never
discovered to have disturbed his quiet, or to have lessened his
confidence in himself; they neither awed him to silence nor to caution;
they neither provoked him to petulance, nor depressed him to complaint.
While the distributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate
and degrade him, he either despised or defied them, wrote on as he had
written before, and never turned aside to quiet them by civility, or
repress them by confutation.

He depended with great security on his own powers, and perhaps was, for
that reason, less diligent in perusing books. His literature was, I
think, but small. What he knew of antiquity, I suspect him to have
gathered from modern compilers; but, though he could not boast of much
critical knowledge, his mind was stored with general principles, and he
left minute researches to those whom he considered as little minds.

With this disposition he wrote most of his poems. Having formed a
magnificent design, he was careless of particular and subordinate
elegancies; he studied no niceties of versification; he waited for no
felicities of fancy; but caught his first thoughts in the first words in
which they were presented: nor does it appear that he saw beyond his own
performances, or had ever elevated his views to that ideal perfection,
which every genius, born to excel, is condemned always to pursue, and
never overtake. In the first suggestions of his imagination he
acquiesced; he thought them good, and did not seek for better. His works
may be read a long time without the occurrence of a single line that
stands prominent from the rest.

The poem on Creation has, however, the appearance of more
circumspection; it wants neither harmony of numbers, accuracy of
thought, nor elegance of diction: it has either been written with great
care, or, what cannot be imagined of so long a work, with such felicity
as made care less necessary.

Its two constituent parts are ratiocination and description. To reason
in verse, is allowed to be difficult; but Blackmore not only reasons in
verse, but very often reasons poetically; and finds the art of uniting
ornament with strength, and ease with closeness. This is a skill which
Pope might have condescended to learn from him, when he needed it so
much in his Moral Essays.

In his descriptions, both of life and nature, the poet and the
philosopher happily coöperate; truth is recommended by elegance, and
elegance sustained by truth.

In the structure and order of the poem, not only the greater parts are
properly consecutive, but the didactick and illustrative paragraphs are
so happily mingled, that labour is relieved by pleasure, and the
attention is led on, through a long succession of varied excellence, to
the original position, the fundamental principle of wisdom and of
virtue.

* * * * *

As the heroick poems of Blackmore are now little read, it is thought
proper to insert, as a specimen from Prince Arthur, the song of Mopas,
mentioned by Molineux.

But that which Arthur with most pleasure heard,
Were noble strains, by Mopas sung, the bard
Who to his harp in lofty verse began,
And through the secret maze of nature ran.
He the great spirit sung, that all things fill'd,
That the tumultuous waves of chaos still'd:
Whose nod dispos'd the jarring seeds to peace,
And made the wars of hostile atoms cease.
All beings we in fruitful nature find,
Proceeded from the great eternal mind;
Streams of his unexhausted spring of power,
And cherish'd with his influence, endure.
He spread the pure cerulean fields on high,
And arch'd the chambers of the vaulted sky,
Which he, to suit their glory with their height,
Adorn'd with globes, that reel, as drunk with light.
His hand directed all the tuneful spheres,
He turn'd their orbs, and polish'd all the stars.
He fill'd the sun's vast lamp with golden light,
And bid the silver moon adorn the night.
He spread the airy ocean without shores,
Where birds are wafted with their feather'd oars.
Then sung the bard how the light vapours rise
From the warm earth, and cloud the smiling skies:
He sung how some, chill'd in their airy flight,
Fall scatter'd down in pearly dew by night;
How some, rais'd higher, sit in secret steams
On the reflected points of bounding beams,
Till, chill'd with cold, they shade th' ethereal plain,
Then on the thirsty earth descend in rain;
How some, whose parts a slight contexture show,
Sink hov'ring through the air, in fleecy snow;
How part is spun in silken threads, and clings
Entangled in the grass in gluey strings;
How others stamp to stones, with rushing sound
Fall from their crystal quarries to the ground;
How some are laid in trains, that kindled fly
In harmless fires by night, about the sky;
How some in winds blow with impetuous force,
And carry ruin where they bend their course,
While some conspire to form a gentle breeze,
To fan the air, and play among the trees;
How some, enrag'd, grow turbulent and loud,
Pent in the bowels of a frowning cloud,
That cracks, as if the axis of the world
Was broke, and heav'n's bright tow'rs were downwards
hurl'd.
He sung how earth's wide ball, at Jove's command,
Did in the midst on airy columns stand;
And how the soul of plants, in prison held,
And bound with sluggish fetters, lies conceal'd,
Till with the spring's warm beams, almost releas'd
From the dull weight, with which it lay opprest,
Its vigour spreads, and makes the teeming earth
Heave up, and labour with the sprouting birth:
The active spirit freedom seeks in vain,
It only works and twists a stronger chain;
Urging its prison's sides to break away,
It makes that wider, where 'tis forc'd to stay:
Till, having form'd its living house, it rears
Its head, and in a tender plant appears.
Hence springs the oak, the beauty of the grove,
Whose stately trunk fierce storms can scarcely move.
Hence grows the cedar, hence the swelling vine
Does round the elm its purple clusters twine.
Hence painted flowers the smiling gardens bless,
Both with their fragrant scent and gaudy dress.
Hence the white lily in full beauty grows.
Hence the blue violet, and blushing rose.
He sung how sunbeams brood upon the earth,
And in the glebe hatch such a num'rous birth;
Which way the genial warmth in summer storms
Turns putrid vapours to a bed of worms;
How rain, transform'd by this prolifick power,
Falls from the clouds an animated shower.
He sung the embryo's growth within the womb,
And how the parts their various shapes assume;
With what rare art the wondrous structure's wrought,
From one crude mass to such perfection brought;
That no part useless, none misplac'd we see,
None are forgot, and more would monstrous be.

-----

[Footnote 19: At Saddlers' hall. ]

[Footnote 20: The book he alludes to was Nova Hypothesis ad explicanda
febrium intermittentium symptomata, &c. Authore Gulielmo Cole, M. D.
1693. ]

[Footnote 21: "The Kit-cat Club," says Horace Walpole, "though generally
mentioned as a set of wits, were, in fact, the patriots who saved
Britain. " See, for the history of its origin and name, Addisoniana, i.
120; Ward's complete and humorous account of the remarkable Clubs and
Societies. ED. ]




FENTON.


The brevity with which I am to write the account of Elijah Fenton, is
not the effect of indifference or negligence. I have sought intelligence
among his relations in his native county, but have not obtained it.

He was born near Newcastle, in Staffordshire, of an ancient family[22]
whose state was very considerable; but he was the youngest of eleven
children, and being, therefore, necessarily destined to some lucrative
employment, was sent first to school, and afterwards to Cambridge[23],
but with many other wise and virtuous men, who, at that time of discord
and debate, consulted conscience, whether well or ill informed, more
than interest, he doubted the legality of the government, and, refusing
to qualify himself for publick employment by the oaths required, left
the university without a degree; but I never heard that, the enthusiasm
of opposition impelled him to separation from the church.

By this perverseness of integrity he was driven out a commoner of
nature, excluded from the regular modes of profit and prosperity, and
reduced to pick up a livelihood uncertain and fortuitous; but it must be
remembered that he kept his name unsullied, and never suffered himself
to be reduced, like too many of the same sect, to mean arts and
dishonourable shifts. Whoever mentioned Fenton, mentioned him with
honour.

The life that passes in penury must necessarily pass in obscurity. It is
impossible to trace Fenton from year to year, or to discover what means
he used for his support. He was awhile secretary to Charles, earl of
Orrery in Flanders, and tutor to his young son, who afterwards mentioned
him with great esteem and tenderness. He was, at one time, assistant in
the school of Mr. Bonwicke, in Surrey; and at another kept a school for
himself at Sevenoaks, in Kent, which he brought into reputation; but was
persuaded to leave it, 1710, by Mr. St. John, with promises of a more
honourable employment.

His opinions, as he was a nonjuror, seem not to have been remarkably
rigid. He wrote with great zeal and affection the praises of queen Anne,
and very willingly and liberally extolled the duke of Marlborough when
he was, 1707, at the height of his glory.

He expressed still more attention to Marlborough and his family by an
elegiack pastoral on the marquis of Blandford, which could be prompted
only by respect or kindness; for neither the duke nor dutchess desired
the praise, or liked the cost of patronage.

The elegance of his poetry entitled him to the company of the wits of
his time, and the amiableness of his manners made him loved wherever he
was known. Of his friendship to Southern and Pope there are lasting
monuments.

He published, in 1707[24] a collection of poems.

By Pope he was once placed in a station that might have been of great
advantage. Craggs, when he was advanced to be secretary of state, about
1720, feeling his own want of literature, desired Pope to procure him an
instructer, by whose help he might supply the deficiencies of his
education. Pope recommended Fenton, in whom Craggs found all that he was
seeking. There was now a prospect of ease and plenty, for Fenton had
merit, and Craggs had generosity; but the smallpox suddenly put an end
to the pleasing expectation.

When Pope, after the great success of his Iliad, undertook the Odyssey,
being, as it seems, weary of translating, he determined to engage
auxiliaries. Twelve books he took to himself, and twelve he distributed
between Broome and Fenton: the books allotted to Fenton were the first,
the fourth, the nineteenth, and the twentieth. It is observable, that he
did not take the eleventh, which he had before translated into blank
verse; neither did Pope claim it, but committed it to Broome. How the
two associates performed their parts is well known to the readers of
poetry, who have never been able to distinguish their books from those
of Pope.

In 1723 was performed his tragedy of Mariamne; to which Southern, at
whose house it was written, is said to have contributed such hints as
his theatrical experience supplied. When it was shown to Cibber, it was
rejected by him, with the additional insolence of advising Fenton to
engage himself in some employment of honest labour, by which he might
obtain that support which he could never hope from his poetry. The play
was acted at the other theatre; and the brutal petulance of Cibber was
confuted, though, perhaps, not shamed, by general applause. Fenton's
profits are said to have amounted to near a thousand pounds, with which
he discharged a debt contracted by his attendance at court.

Fenton seems to have had some peculiar system of versification.
Mariamne is written in lines of ten syllables, with few of those
redundant terminations which the drama not only admits, but requires, as
more nearly approaching to real dialogue. The tenour of his verse is so
uniform that it cannot be thought casual; and yet upon what principle he
so constructed it, is difficult to discover.

The mention of his play brings to my mind a very trifling occurrence.
Fenton was one day in the company of Broome, his associate, and Ford, a
clergyman[25], at that time too well known, whose abilities, instead of
furnishing convivial merriment to the voluptuous and dissolute, might
have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wise. They
determined all to see the Merry Wives of Windsor, which was acted that
night; and Fenton, as a dramatick poet, took them to the stage-door;
where the door-keeper, inquiring who they were, was told that they were
three very necessary men, Ford, Broome, and Fenton. The name in the
play, which Pope restored to Brook, was then Broome.

It was, perhaps, after his play that he undertook to revise the
punctuation of Milton's poems, which, as the author neither wrote the
original copy, nor corrected the press, was supposed capable of
amendment. To this edition he prefixed a short and elegant account of
Milton's life, written, at once, with tenderness and integrity.