No More Learning

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What gravity can hold from laughing out,
To see him drag his feeble legs about,
Like hounds ill-coupled? Jowler lugs him still
Through hedges, ditches, and through all that's ill.
'Twere crime in any man but him alone,
To use a body so, though 'tis one's own:
Yet this false comfort never gives him o'er,
That, whilst he creeps, his vigorous thoughts can soar:
Alas! that soaring to those few that know,
Is but a busy grovelling here below.
So men in rapture think they mount the sky, }
Whilst on the ground the entranced wretches lie: }
So modern fops have fancied they could fly. }
As the new earl,[42] with parts deserving praise,
And wit enough to laugh at his own ways,
Yet loses all soft days and sensual nights,
Kind nature checks, and kinder fortune slights;
Striving against his quiet all he can,
For the fine notion of a busy man.
And what is that at best, but one, whose mind
Is made to tire himself and all mankind?
For Ireland he would go; faith, let him reign;
For, if some odd fantastic lord would fain
Carry in trunks, and all my drudgery do,
I'll not only pay him, but admire him too.
But is there any other beast that lives,
Who his own harm so wittingly contrives?
Will any dog that has his teeth and stones,
Refinedly leave his bitches and his bones,
To turn a wheel? and bark to be employed,
While Venus is by rival dogs enjoyed?
Yet this fond man, to get a statesman's name,
Forfeits his friends, his freedom, and his fame.
Though satire nicely writ with humour stings
But those who merit praise in other things;
Yet we must needs this one exception make,
And break our rules for silly Tropos' sake;[43]
Who was too much despised to be accused,
And therefore scarce deserves to be abused;
Raised only by his mercenary tongue,
For railing smoothly, and for reasoning wrong.
As boys, on holidays let loose to play,
Lay waggish traps for girls that pass that way;
Then shout to see, in dirt and deep distress,
Some silly cit in her flowered foolish dress,--[44]
So have I mighty satisfaction found,
To see his tinsel reason on the ground;
To see the florid fool despised, and know it,
By some who scarce have words enough to show it;
For sense sits silent, and condemns for weaker
The finer, nay sometimes the wittier speaker:
But 'tis prodigious so much eloquence
Should be acquired by such little sense;
For words and wit did anciently agree,
And Tully was no fool, though this man be:
At bar abusive; on the bench unable;
Knave on the woolsack; fop at council-table.
These are the grievances of such fools as would
Be rather wise than honest, great than good.
Some other kind of wits must be made known,
Whose harmless errors hurt themselves alone;
Excess of luxury they think can please,
And laziness call loving of their ease;
To live dissolved in pleasures still they feign,
Though their whole life's but intermitting pain;
So much of surfeits, head-aches, claps are seen,
We scarce perceive the little time between;
Well-meaning men, who make this gross mistake,
And pleasure lose only for pleasure's sake;
Each pleasure has its price, and when we pay
Too much of pain, we squander life away.
Thus Dorset,[45] purring like a thoughtful cat,
Married,--but wiser puss ne'er thought of that;
And first he worried her with railing rhyme,
Like Pembroke's mastives at his kindest time;
Then for one night sold all his slavish life,
A teeming widow, but a barren wife.
Swelled by contact of such a fulsome toad,
He lugged about the matrimonial load;
Till fortune, blindly kind as well as he,
Has ill restored him to his liberty;
Which he would use in his old sneaking way,
Drinking all night, and dozing all the day;
Dull as Ned Howard, whom his brisker times
Had famed for dulness in malicious rhymes. [46]
Mulgrave[47] had much ado to 'scape the snare,
Though learned in all those arts that cheat the fair;
For, after all his vulgar marriage-mocks,
With beauty dazzled, Numps was in the stocks;
Deluded parents dried their weeping eyes,
To see him catch his Tartar for his prize:
The impatient town waited the wished-for change,
And cuckolds smiled in hopes of sweet revenge;
Till Petworth plot made us with sorrow see,
As his estate, his person too was free:
Him no soft thoughts, no gratitude could move;
To gold he fled from beauty and from love;
Yet failing there he keeps his freedom still,
Forced to live happily against his will;
'Tis not his fault, if too much wealth and power
Break not his boasted quiet every hour.
And little Sid. [48] for simile renowned,
Pleasure has always sought, but never found;
Though all his thoughts on wine and women fall,
His are so bad, sure he ne'er thinks at all.
The flesh he lives upon is rank and strong,
His meat and mistresses are kept too long.
But sure we all mistake this pious man,
Who mortifies his person all he can:
What we uncharitably take for sin,
Are only rules of this odd capuchin;
For never hermit, under grave pretence,
Has lived more contrary to common sense;
And 'tis a miracle, we may suppose,
No nastiness offends his skilful nose;
Which from all stink can, with peculiar art,
Extract perfume and essence from a f----t.
Expecting supper is his great delight;
He toils all day but to be drunk at night;
Then o'er his cups this night-bird chirping sits,
Till he takes Hewet[49] and Jack Hall[B] for wits.
Rochester I despise for want of wit,
Though thought to have a tail and cloven feet;
For, while he mischief means to all mankind,
Himself alone the ill effects does find;
And so, like witches, justly suffers shame,
Whose harmless malice is so much the same.
False are his words, affected is his wit;
So often he does aim, so seldom hit;
To every face he cringes while he speaks,
But when the back is turned the head he breaks.
Mean in each action, lewd in every limb,
Manners themselves are mischievous in him;
A proof that chance alone makes every creature,
A very Killigrew without good nature.
For what a Bessus[52] has he always lived,
And his own kickings notably contrived?
For, there's the folly that's still mixt with fear,
Cowards more blows than any hero bear;
Of fighting sparks some may their pleasures say,
But 'tis a bolder thing to run away.
The world may well forgive him all his ill,
For every fault does prove his penance still;
Falsely he falls into some dangerous noose,
And then as meanly labours to get loose;
A life so infamous is better quitting,
Spent in base injury and low submitting. [53]
I'd like to have left out his poetry;
Forgot by all almost as well as me.
Sometimes he has some humour, never wit,
And if it rarely, very rarely, hit,
'Tis under so much nasty rubbish laid,
To find it out's the cinderwoman's trade,
Who, for the wretched remnants of a fire,
Must toil all day in ashes and in mire.
So lewdly dull his idle works appear,
The wretched text deserves no comments here;
Where one poor thought sometimes, left all alone,
For a whole page of dulness must atone.
How vain a thing is man, and how unwise!
E'en he, who would himself the most despise!
I, who so wise and humble seem to be,
Now my own vanity and pride can't see.
While the world's nonsense is so sharply shown,
We pull down others but to raise our own;
That we may angels seem, we paint them elves,
And are but satires to set up ourselves.
I, who have all this while been finding fault,
E'en with my master, who first satire taught;
And did by that describe the task so hard,
It seems stupendous and above reward;
Now labour with unequal force to climb
That lofty hill, unreached by former time,--
'Tis just that I should to the bottom fall,
Learn to write well, or not to write at all.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 31: Would Dryden have pardoned such a rhyme? ]

[Footnote 32: Sir Thomas Armstrong, then an officer of the guards, and
gentleman of horse to the king. He seems to have been remarkable for
riot and profligacy, even in that profligate age; witness his stabbing
a gentleman in the pit of the theatre. Thus principled, he became,
unfortunately for himself and his patron, a favourite of the Duke of
Monmouth, and engaged deeply in all his intrigues, particularly in that
of the Rye-house plot, on the discovery of which he fled to Holland, of
which he was a native: nevertheless, he was there seized and delivered.
He was tried by Jefferies; and sustained the brutality of that judge
with more spirit than his friends or his enemies expected. Upon a
conviction of outlawry for treason, he was executed, June 1685. ]

[Footnote 33: Aston is mentioned as a sort of half wit in some of
the lampoons of the day; but I have not been able to trace any thing
of his history, except that he seems to have been a courtier of the
period; perhaps the same Colonel Aston, whom the reader will find
in a subsequent note, acting as Mulgrave's second, in an intended
duel with Rochester. If this be so, from the slight with which he is
here mentioned, there may have been a coolness in their friendship,
although, indeed, the mere want of _morals_ was not considered as an
insufferable stigma in the reign of Charles II. , and might pass for a
good-natured joke, were the epithet _dull_ omitted. The name Aston is
mentioned in the "Epistle to Julian. "]

[Footnote 34: Robert Constable, third Viscount of Dunbar. He is
elsewhere mentioned with the epithet of "brawny Dunbar. " He married,
1st, Mary, daughter of Lord Bellasis; 2dly, the countess-dowager of
Westmoreland. ]

[Footnote 35: The unfortunate duke; the qualities of whose mind did not
correspond to his exterior accomplishments. Rochester says of him,--

But, now we talk of Maestricht, where is he
Famed for that brutal piece of bravery?
He, with his thick impenetrable scull,
The solid hardened armour of a fool,
Well might himself to all war's ills expose,
Who, come what will, yet had no brains to lose.
]

[Footnote 36: Sir Carr Scroop, a poet and courtier. See Note on the
"Epistle to Julian. "]

[Footnote 37: The royal mistresses were, the Duchesses of Cleveland
and of Portsmouth. Neither was supposed over-scrupulous in fidelity to
their royal lover. The Duchess of Cleveland, in particular, lavished
her favours even upon Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer; at least, so
Count Hamilton assures us, in the "Memoirs of Grammont. " The Duchess
of Portsmouth was a pensioner of the French court; by whom she was
thrown into the arms of Charles, with the express purpose of securing
his attachment to the cause of France. Charles knew, as well as any
of his subjects, the infidelity of one mistress, and the treachery
of the other; and Sheffield has elsewhere vindicated the epithet of
"sauntering," which is here bestowed on that indolent monarch. "I am
of opinion," says the duke, "that, in his latter times, there was
as much of laziness as of love in all those hours he passed among
his mistresses; who, after all, only served to fill up his seraglio,
while a bewitching kind of pleasure, called _sauntering_, and talking
without constraint, was the true sultana-queen he delighted in. "[38]
While Sheffield thus solemnly confirms, in prose, the character given
of Charles in the "Essay upon Satire," he ascertains his claim to
the property of the poem. And I must add, I should be sorry to think
Dryden was accessary to lampooning persons, to whom he had offered the
incense of his verse. See the "Epistle to Lady Castlemain," afterwards
Duchess of Cleveland, and "The Fair Stranger," addressed to Louise
Querouailles, afterwards Duchess of Portsmouth. ]

[Footnote 38: _Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham's Works_, Vol. II. p. 61.
4to, 1723. ]

[Footnote 39: Sir John Earnely was bred to the law; but became
distinguished as a second-rate statesman. He was chancellor of the
exchequer in 1686; and was made one of the commissioners of the
treasury, in the room of the Earl of Rochester. ]

[Footnote 40: Robert Bruce, second Earl of Elgin, in Scotland,
created after the Restoration an English peer, by the titles of
Baron and Viscount Bruce, Earl of Aylesbury. In 1678, he was of the
privy-council to his majesty, and a gentleman of the bed-chamber. In
the reign of James II. , the Earl of Aylesbury succeeded to the office
of lord-chamberlain, upon the death of the Earl of Arlington, in July
1685; an office which he held only two months, as he died in October
following. ]

[Footnote 41: The Earl of Shaftesbury; of whose decrepit body,
and active mind, much has been said in the notes on "Absalom and
Achitophel," and on the "Medal. "]

[Footnote 42: This was Arthur, first Earl of Essex of his name. He was
son of that Lord Capel, who so gallantly defended Colchester during the
civil wars, and was executed upon the place being taken. Lord Essex
had been lieutenant of Ireland from 1672 to 1677, and was supposed
to have fixed his ambition upon returning to that situation. Being
disappointed, he joined in the measures of Shaftesbury and Monmouth,
and was a violent opponent of the court. He was committed to the Tower
on account of his accession to the Rye-house plot; and, upon the
morning on which Lord Russel was conveyed to his trial, he was found
with his throat cut, the King and Duke of York being in the Tower at
the very time, to witness some experiment on the ordnance. It was
afterwards asserted, that he had been murdered by order of the court.
Even Burnet, however, seems to acquit them of the crime, both because
Essex was a free-thinker, and accustomed to vindicate suicide, and
because his surgeon declared to him, that, from the mode in which the
wound was inflicted, it could only have been done with his own hand.
But the violent proceedings against Braddon and Speke, who attempted to
investigate this mysterious affair, threw some suspicion upon the court
party. If Charles was accessary to the murder, the time was strangely
chosen, and the king's dissimulation equally remarkable; for, on
hearing the event, be exclaimed, "Alas! Lord Essex might have trusted
my clemency, I owed his family a life. "]

[Footnote 43: This was the infamous Lord Chief-Justice Scroggs. He had
ready eloquence, and much impudence. At first he stickled hard for the
Popish Plot; but, finding that ceased to be the road to preferment, he
became as eager on the other side. North allows, that his course of
life was scandalous. ]

[Footnote 44: This seems to have been copied by Gay in his Trivia:

Why do you, boys, the kennel's surface spread,
To tempt, with faithless pass, the matron's tread?
How can you laugh to see the damsel spurn,
Sink in your frauds, and her green stocking mourn?
]

[Footnote 45: The witty Earl of Dorset, whom we have often had occasion
to mention in these notes. His first wife was the Countess-Dowager of
Falmouth. Sheffield insinuates, that he had previously lampooned this
lady, and hints at some scandal now obsolete. She died without any
issue by Dorset. ]

[Footnote 46: Alluding to Dorset's verses to Mr Edward Howard. "On his
incomparable incomprehensible Poem, called the British Princess. "]

[Footnote 47: Mulgrave here alludes to some anecdotes of his own life
and amours, which probably were well known at the time, but are now too
obscure to be traced. He was three times married, and always to widows.
His lordship is here pleased to represent himself as a gallant of the
first order, skilled in all the arts of persuasion and conquest. But
his contemporaries did not esteem him so formidable, at least if we may
believe the author of a satire, called, "A Heroical Epistle from Lord
Allpride to Doll Common;" a bitter and virulent satire on Mulgrave. He
is thus described, in an epigram on Lord Allpride:

Against his stars the coxcomb ever strives,
And to be something they forbid contrives.
With a red nose, splay foot, and goggle eye,
A ploughman's booby mien, face all awry,
A filthy breath, and every loathsome mark,
The punchinello sets up for a spark:
With equal self-conceit he takes up arms,
But with such vile success his part performs,
That he burlesques the trade, and, what is best
In others, turns, like Harlequin, to jest:
So have I seen, at Smithfield's wonderous fair,
When all his brother-monsters flourish there,
A lubbard elephant divert the town,
With making legs, and shooting of a gun.
Go where he will, he never finds a friend,
Shame and derision all his steps attend;
Alike abroad, at home, i'the camp, and court,
This knight o'the burning pestle makes us sport.

This seems to have been written by the offended Sir Car Scrope. ]

[Footnote 48: Derrick is inclined to think, that Sidney, brother of the
Earl of Leicester, and of the famous Algernon Sidney, is here meant.
But the character better suits Sir Charles Sedley or Sidley, for he
spelled the name both ways. In explanation of the line, there is, in
the 4to edition of Sheffield's Works, this short note, "Remarkable for
making pleasant and proper similies upon all occasions. " In a satire in
the State Poems, Vol. II.

To a soul so mean e'en Shadwell is a stranger;
Nay, little Sid. it seems, less values danger.
]

[Footnote 49: Sir George Hewet was a coxcomb of the period, after whom
Etherege is said to have modelled Sir Fopling Flutter's character:

Scarce will their greater grief pierce every heart,
Should Sir George Hewit or Sir Car depart.
Had it not better been, than thus to roam,
To stay and tie the cravat string at home;
To strut, look big, shake pantaloon, and swear
With Hewit, "Damme, there's no action here! "

_Rochester's Farewell. _

His pretensions to gallantry are elsewhere ridiculed:

Yet most against their genius blindly run,
The wrong they chuse, and what they're made for shun;
Thus Arlington thinks for state affairs he's fit,
Hewit for ogling, C----ly for a wit.

_The Town Life. _

And again,

May Hewet's _billets doux_ successful prove,
In tempting of her little Grace to love.

Sir George Hewet attended the Prince of Denmark when he joined the
Prince of Orange.

Jack Hall, the rotten Uzza of "Absalom and Achitophel," (Vol. IX. pp.
331. 373. ) He seems to have gone into opposition to the court with
Sidley, his patron. There is a comical account given of a literary
effort of his in one of the State Poems:

Jack Hall---- ---- ----
---- ---- ----left town,
But first writ something that he durst not own;
Of prologue lawfully begotten,
And full nine months maturely thought on;
Born with hard labour and much pain,
Ousely was doctor chamberlain. [50]
At length, from stuff and rubbish picked,
As bears' cubs into form are licked,
When Wharton, Etherege, and Soame, }
To give it their last strokes were come, }
Those critics differed in their doom; }
Yet Swan[51] says, he admired it 'scaped,
Being Jack Hall's, without being clapped.
]

[Footnote 50: _Then a famous accoucheur. _]

[Footnote 51: _The same, I suppose, whom Dryden dignifies with the
title of honest Mr Swan_, Vol XIII. p. 97. ]

[Footnote 52: A cowardly braggadocio character in Beaumont and
Fletcher's excellent play of "King and no King. "]

[Footnote 53: No one could know the cowardice of Lord Rochester so
well as Mulgrave, who, in his Memoirs, records the following infamous
instance of it. He had heard it reported, that Lord Rochester had said
something of him very malicious: "I therefore sent Colonel Aston, a
very mettled friend of mine, to call him to account for it. He denied
the words; and, indeed, I was soon convinced he had never said them:
but the mere report, though I found it to be false, obliged me (as I
then foolishly thought) to go on with the quarrel; and the next day
was appointed for us to fight on horseback, a way in England a little
unusual, but it was his part to chuse. Accordingly, I and my second
lay the night before at Knightsbridge, privately, to avoid the being
secured at London upon any suspicion; which yet we found ourselves more
in danger of there, because we had all the appearance of highway-men,
that had a mind to lie skulking in an odd inn for one night; but
this, I suppose, the people of that house were used to, and so took
no notice of us, but liked us the better. In the morning, we met the
Lord Rochester at the place appointed, who, instead of James Porter,
whom, he assured Aston, he would make his second, brought an errant
lifeguard-man, whom nobody knew. To this Mr Aston took exception, upon
the account of his being no suitable adversary; especially considering
how extremely well he was mounted, whereas we had only a couple of
pads. Upon which, we all agreed to fight on foot: But, as my Lord
Rochester and I were riding into the next field, in order to it, he
told me, that he had at first chosen to fight on horseback, because he
was so weak with a distemper, that he found himself unfit to fight at
all any way, much less a-foot. I was extremely surprised, because, at
that time, no man had a better reputation for courage; and (my anger
against him being quite over, because I was satisfied that he never
spoke those words I resented,) I took the liberty of representing,
what a ridiculous story it would make if we returned without fighting;
and therefore advised him, for both our sakes, especially for his
own, to consider better of it; since I must be obliged, in my own
defence, to lay the fault on him, by telling the truth of the matter.
His answer was, that he submitted to it; and hoped, that I would
not desire the advantage of having to do with any man in so weak a
condition. I replied, that, by such an argument, he had sufficiently
tied my hands, upon condition I might call our seconds to be witnesses
of the whole business; which he consented to, and so we parted. When
we returned to London, we found it full of this quarrel, upon our
being absent so long; and therefore Mr Aston thought himself obliged
to write down every word and circumstance of this whole matter, in
order to spread every where the true reason of our returning without
having fought; which being never in the least either contradicted or
resented by the Lord Rochester, entirely ruined his reputation as to
courage, (of which I was really sorry to be the occasion,) though no
body had still a greater as to wit; which supported him pretty well
in the world, notwithstanding some more accidents of the same kind,
that never fail to succeed one another when once people know a man's
weakness. "--_Memoirs of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. _

Conscious of his infamy, Rochester only ventured to reply to Sheffield,
the real author of the above satire, by some cold sneers on his
expedition to Tangiers, which occur in the poem called "Rochester's
Farewell. "]




A

FAMILIAR EPISTLE

TO

MR JULIAN,

SECRETARY OF THE MUSES.


The extremity of license in manners, necessarily leads to equal license
in personal satire; and there never was an age in which both were
carried to such excess as in that of Charles II. These personal and
scandalous libels acquired the name of lampoons, from the established
burden formerly sung to them:

_Lampone, lampone, camerada lampone_.

Dryden suffered under these violent and invisible assaults, as much as
any one of his age; to which his own words, in several places of his
writings, and also the existence of many of the pasquils themselves in
the Luttrel Collection, bear ample witness. In many of his prologues
and epilogues he alludes to this rage for personal satire, and to the
employment which it found for the half and three quarter wits and
courtiers of the time:

Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes;
Ye abuse yourselves more dully than the times.
Scandal, the glory of the English nation,
Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion:
Such harmless thrusts, as if, like fencers wise,
They had agreed their play before their prize.
Faith they may hang their harp upon the willows;
'Tis just like children when they box with pillows.

_See_ Vol. X. p. 365.

Upon the general practice of writing lampoons, and the necessity
of finding some mode of dispersing them, which should diffuse the
scandal widely, while the authors remained concealed, was founded
the self-erected office of Julian, secretary, as he called himself,
to the Muses. This person attended Will's, the Wits Coffeehouse, as
it was called; and dispersed, among the crowds who frequented that
place of gay resort, copies of the lampoons which had been privately
communicated to him by their authors. "He is described," says Mr
Malone, "as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a
libel. " Several satires were written, in the form of addresses, to him,
as well as the following. There is one among the State Poems, beginning,

Julian, in verse, to ease thy wants I write,
Not moved by envy, malice, or by spite,
Or pleased with the empty names of wit and sense,
But merely to supply thy want of pence:
This did inspire my muse, when, out at eel,
She saw her needy secretary reel.
Grieved that a man, so useful to the age,
Should foot it in so mean an equipage;
A crying scandal, that the fees of sense
Should not be able to support the expence
Of a poor scribe, who never thought of wants
When able to procure a cup of Nantz.

Another, called, "A Consoling Epistle to Julian," is said to have been
written by the Duke of Buckingham.

From a passage in one of the "Letters from the Dead to the Living," we
learn, that, after Julian's death, and the madness of his successor,
called Summerton, lampoon felt a sensible decay; and there was no more
that "brisk spirit of verse, that used to watch the follies and vices
of the men and women of figure, that they could not start new ones
faster than lampoons exposed them. "

In another epistle of the same collection, supposed to be written by
Julian from the shades, to Will Pierre, a low comedian, he is made thus
to boast of the extent of the dominion which he exercised when on earth.

"The conscious Tub Tavern can witness, and my Berry Street apartment
testify, the solicitations I have had, for the first copy of a new
lampoon, from the greatest lords of the court, though their own folly
and their wives' vices were the subjects. My person was so sacred,
that the terrible scan-man had no terrors for me, whose business was
so public and so useful, as conveying about the faults of the great
and the fair; for in my books, the lord was shewn a knave or fool,
though his power defended the former, and his pride would not see
the latter. The antiquated coquet was told of her age and ugliness,
though her vanity placed her in the first row in the king's box at the
playhouse; and in the view of the congregation at St James's church.
The precise countess, that would be scandalized at _double entendre_,
was shown betwixt a pair of sheets with a well-made footman, in spite
of her quality and conjugal vow. The formal statesman, that set up
for wisdom and honesty, was exposed as a dull tool, and yet a knave,
losing at play his own revenue, and the bribes incident to his post,
besides enjoying the infamy of a poor and fruitless knavery without
any concern. The demure lady, that would scarce sip off the glass in
company, was shewn carousing her bottles in private, of cool Nantz too,
sometimes, to correct the crudities of her last night's debauch. In
short, in my books were seen men and women as they were, not as they
would seem,--stript of their hypocrisy, spoiled of the fig-leaves of
their quality. A knave was called a knave, a fool a fool, a jilt a
jilt, and a whore a whore. And the love of scandal and native malice,
that men and women have to one another, made me in such request when
alive, that I was admitted to the lord's closet, when a man of letters
and merit would be thrust out of doors. And I was as familiar with the
ladies as their lap-dogs: for to them I did often good services; under
pretence of a lampoon, I conveyed a _billet doux_; and so, whilst I
exposed their vast vices in the present, I prompted matter for the next
lampoon. "

The following lampoon, in which it is highly improbable that Dryden
had any share, is chiefly levelled against Sir Car Scrope, son of
Sir Adrian Scrope of Cockington, in Lincolnshire, a courtier of
considerable poetical talents, of whom Anthony Wood says, "that, as
divers satirical copies of verses were made upon him by other persons,
so he hath diverse made by himself upon them, which are handed about
to this day. " We have seen that he is mentioned with contempt in the
"Essay on Satire;" and, in the "Advice to Apollo," in the State Poems,
Vol. I. his studies are thus commemorated:

----Sir Car, that knight of withered face,
Who, for the reversion of a poet's place,
Waits on Melpomene, and sooths her grace;
That angry miss alone he strives to please,
For fear the rest should teach him wit and ease,
And make him quit his loved laborious walks,
Where, sad or silent, o'er the room he stalks,
And strives to write as wisely as he talks.

He is also mentioned in many other libels of the day, and some of his
answers are still extant. Rochester assailed him in his "Allusion to
the Tenth Satire of Horace's first Book. " Sir Car Scrope replied, and
published a poem in Defence of Satire, to which the earl retorted by
a very coarse set of verses, addressed to the knight by name. Sir Car
Scrope was a tolerable translator from the classics; and his version
of the "Epistle from Sappho to Phaon" is inserted in the translation
of Ovid's Epistles by several hands, edited by our author. Dryden
mentions, in one of his prefaces, Sir Car Scrope's efforts with
approbation. But it is not from this circumstance alone I conclude that
this epistle has been erroneously attributed to our author; for the
whole internal evidence speaks loudly against its authenticity. Indeed,
it only rests on Dryden's name being placed to it in the 6th volume of
the Miscellanies published after his death.




A

FAMILIAR EPISTLE

TO

MR JULIAN,

SECRETARY OF THE MUSES.


Thou common shore of this poetic town,
Where all the excrements of wit are thrown;
For sonnet, satire, bawdry, blasphemy,
Are emptied, and disburdened all in thee:
The choleric wight, untrussing all in rage,
Finds thee, and lays his load upon thy page.
Thou Julian, or thou wise Vespasian rather,
Dost from this dung thy well-pickt guineas gather.
All mischief's thine; transcribing, thou wilt stoop
From lofty Middlesex[54] to lowly Scroop.
What times are these, when, in the hero's room, }
Bow-bending Cupid doth with ballads come, }
And little Aston[55] offers to the bum? }
Can two such pigmies such a weight support,
Two such Tom Thumbs of satire in a court?
Poor George[56] grows old, his muse worn out of fashion,
Hoarsely he sung Ephelia's lamentation.
Less art thou helped by Dryden's bed-rid age;
That drone has lost his sting upon the stage.
Resolve me, poor apostate, this my doubt,
What hope hast thou to rub this winter out?
Know, and be thankful then, for Providence
By me hath sent thee this intelligence.
A knight there is,[57] if thou canst gain his grace,
Known by the name of the hard-favoured face.
For prowess of the pen renowned is he,
From Don Quixote descended lineally;
And though, like him, unfortunate he prove,
Undaunted in attempts of wit and love.
Of his unfinished face, what shall I say,--
But that 'twas made of Adam's own red clay;
That much, much ochre was on it bestowed;
God's image 'tis not, but some Indian god:
Our christian earth can no resemblance bring,
But ware of Portugal for such a thing;
Such carbuncles his fiery face confess,
As no Hungarian water can redress.
A face which, should he see, (but heaven was kind,
And, to indulge his self, Love made him blind,)
He durst not stir abroad for fear to meet
Curses of teeming women in the street:
The best could happen from this hideous sight, }
Is, that they should miscarry with the fright,-- }
Heaven guard them from the likeness of the knight! }
Such is our charming Strephon's outward man,
His inward parts let those disclose who can.
One while he honoureth Birtha with his flame,
And now he chants no less Lovisa's[58] name;
For when his passion hath been bubbling long,
The scum at last boils up into a song;
And sure no mortal creature, at one time,
Was e'er so far o'ergone with love and rhyme.
To his dear self of poetry he talks,
His hands and feet are scanning as he walks;
His writhing looks his pangs of wit accuse,
The airy symptoms of a breeding muse,
And all to gain the great Lovisa's grace.
But never pen did pimp for such a face;
There's not a nymph in city, town, or court,
But Strephon's _billet-doux_ has been their sport.
Still he loves on, yet still he's sure to miss,
As they who wash an Ethiop's face, or his.
What fate unhappy Strephon does attend,
Never to get a mistress, nor a friend!
Strephon alike both wits and fools detest,
'Cause he's like Esop's bat, half bird half beast;
For fools to poetry have no pretence,
And common wit supposes common sense;
Not quite so low as fool, nor quite a top,
He hangs between them both, and is a fop.
His morals, like his wit, are motley too;
He keeps from arrant knave with much ado.
But vanity and lying so prevail,
That one grain more of each would turn the scale;
He would be more a villain had he time,
But he's so wholly taken up with rhyme,
That he mistakes his talent; all his care
Is to be thought a poet fine and fair.
Small beer and gruel are his meat and drink,
The diet he prescribes himself to think;
Rhyme next his heart he takes at the morn peep,
Some love epistles at the hour of sleep;--
So, betwixt elegy and ode, we see
Strephon is in a course of poetry.
This is the man ordained to do thee good,
The pelican to feed thee with his blood;
Thy wit, thy poet, nay thy friend, for he
Is fit to be a friend to none but thee.
Make sure of him, and of his muse betimes,
For all his study is hung round with rhymes.
Laugh at him, jostle him, yet still he writes,
In rhyme he challenges, in rhyme he fights.
Charged with the last, and basest infamy,
His business is to think what rhymes to lie;
Which found, in fury he retorts again.
Strephon's a very dragon at his pen;
His brother murdered,[59] and his mother's whored,
His mistress lost, and yet his pen's his sword.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, was created Earl of Middlesex
in 1675. He is better known as the Earl of Dorset. ]

[Footnote 55: Probably the person mentioned in the "Essay on Satire. "]

[Footnote 56: Sir George Etherege. ]

[Footnote 57: Sir Car Scrope. ]

[Footnote 58: Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. ]

[Footnote 59: Probably the Mr Scrope whom Langbaine saw stabbed in
the theatre, by Sir Thomas Armstrong, during the representation of
"Macbeth. " Wood mentions a satire of Sir Car Scrope's, in which Sir
Thomas Armstrong is reflected upon. The author of the epistle seems to
allude to some such circumstance. ]




THE

ART OF POETRY.




THE ART OF POETRY.


This piece was inserted among Dryden's Works, upon authority of the
following advertisement by his publisher Jacob Tonson.

"This translation of Monsieur Boileau's 'Art of Poetry' was made in the
year 1680, by Sir William Soame of Suffolk, Baronet; who, being very
intimately acquainted with Mr Dryden, desired his revisal of it. I saw
the manuscript lie in Mr Dryden's hands for above six months, who made
very considerable alterations in it, particularly the beginning of the
Fourth Canto; and it being his opinion, that it would be better to
apply the poem to English writers, than keep to the French names, as
it was first translated, Sir William desired he would take the pains
to make that alteration; and accordingly that was entirely done by Mr
Dryden.

"The poem was first published in the year 1683. Sir William was after
sent ambassador to Constantinople, in the reign of King James, but died
in the voyage. "--J. T.

To give weight to Tonson's authority, it may be added, that great part
of the poem bears marks of Dryden's polishing hand; and that some
entire passages show at once his taste in criticism, principles, and
prejudices.




THE

ART OF POETRY.


CANTO I.

Rash author, 'tis a vain presumptuous crime,
To undertake the sacred art of rhyme;
If at thy birth the stars that ruled thy sense
Shone not with a poetic influence,
In thy strait genius thou wilt still be bound,
Find Phœbus deaf, and Pegasus unsound.
You, then, that burn with the desire to try
The dangerous course of charming poetry,
Forbear in fruitless verse to lose your time,
Or take for genius the desire of rhyme;
Fear the allurements of a specious bait,
And well consider your own force and weight.
Nature abounds in wits of every kind,
And for each author can a talent find.
One may in verse describe an amorous flame,
Another sharpen a short epigram;
Waller a hero's mighty acts extol,
Spenser sing Rosalind in pastoral:
But authors, that themselves too much esteem,
Lose their own genius, and mistake their theme;
Thus in times past Dubartas[60] vainly writ,
Allaying sacred truth with trifling wit;
Impertinently, and without delight,
Described the Israelites triumphant flight;
And, following Moses o'er the sandy plain,
Perished with Pharaoh in the Arabian main.
Whate'er you write of pleasant or sublime,
Always let sense accompany your rhyme.
Falsely they seem each other to oppose;
Rhyme must be made with reason's laws to close;
And when to conquer her you bend your force,
The mind will triumph in the noble course.
To reason's yoke she quickly will incline,
Which, far from hurting, renders her divine;
But if neglected, will as easily stray,
And master reason, which she should obey.
Love reason then; and let whate'er you write
Borrow from her its beauty, force, and light.
Most writers mounted on a resty muse,
Extravagant and senseless objects chuse;
They think they err, if in their verse they fall
On any thought that's plain or natural.
Fly this excess; and let Italians be
Vain authors of false glittering poetry.
All ought to aim at sense; but most in vain
Strive the hard pass and slippery path to gain;
You drown, if to the right or left you stray;
Reason to go has often but one way.
Sometimes an author, fond of his own thought,
Pursues its object till it's over wrought:
If he describes a house, he shews the face,
And after walks you round from place to place;
Here is a vista, there the doors unfold,
Balconies here are ballustred with gold;
Then counts the rounds and ovals in the halls,
"The festoons, freezes, and the astragals:"
Tired with his tedious pomp, away I run,
And skip o'er twenty pages, to be gone.
Of such descriptions the vain folly see,
And shun their barren superfluity.
All that is needless carefully avoid;
The mind once satisfied is quickly cloyed:
He cannot write, who knows not to give o'er;
To mend one fault, he makes a hundred more:
A verse was weak, you turn it much too strong,
And grow obscure for fear you should be long.
Some are not gaudy, but are flat and dry;
Not to be low, another soars too high.
Would you of every one deserve the praise?
In writing vary your discourse and phrase;
A frozen style, that neither ebbs nor flows,
Instead of pleasing, makes us gape and dose.
Those tedious authors are esteemed by none
Who tire us, humming the same heavy tone.
Happy who in his verse can gently steer,
From grave to light; from pleasant to severe:
His works will be admired wherever found,
And oft with buyers will be compassed round.
In all you write, be neither low nor vile;
The meanest theme may have a proper style.
The dull burlesque appeared with impudence,
And pleased by novelty in spite of sense.
All, except trivial points, grew out of date;
Parnassus spoke the cant of Billingsgate;
Boundless and mad, disordered rhyme was seen;
Disguised Apollo changed to Harlequin.
This plague, which first in country towns began,
Cities and kingdoms quickly over-ran;
The dullest scribblers some admirers found,
And the "Mock Tempest"[61] was a while renowned.
But this low stuff the town at last despised,
And scorned the folly that they once had prized;
Distinguished dull from natural and plain,
And left the villages to Flecknoe's reign.
Let not so mean a style your muse debase,
But learn from Butler the buffooning grace;
And let burlesque in ballads be employed,
Yet noisy bombast carefully avoid;
Nor think to raise, though on Pharsalia's plain,
"Millions of mourning mountains of the slain:"[62]
Nor with Dubartas bridle up the floods,
And periwig with wool the baldpate woods. [63]
Chuse a just style; be grave without constraint,
Great without pride, and lovely without paint:
Write what your reader may be pleased to hear,
And for the measure have a careful ear.
On easy numbers fix your happy choice;
Of jarring sounds avoid the odious noise:
The fullest verse, and the most laboured sense,
Displease us, if the ear once take offence.
Our ancient verse, as homely as the times,
Was rude, unmeasured, only tagged with rhymes;
Number and cadence, that have since been shown,
To those unpolished writers were unknown.
Fairfax[64] was he, who, in that darker age,
By his just rules restrained poetic rage;
Spenser did next in pastorals excel,[65]
And taught the noble art of writing well;
To stricter rules the stanza did restrain,
And found for poetry a richer vein.
Then D'Avenant[66] came, who, with a new-found art,
Changed all, spoiled all, and had his way apart;
His haughty muse all others did despise,
And thought in triumph to bear off the prize,
'Till the sharp-sighted critics of the times,
In their Mock-Gondibert, exposed his rhymes;
The laurels he pretended did refuse,
And dashed the hopes of his aspiring muse.
This headstrong writer falling from on high,
Made following authors take less liberty.
Waller came last, but was the first whose art
Just weight and measure did to verse impart;
That of a well-placed word could teach the force,
And shewed for poetry a nobler course;
His happy genius did our tongue refine,
And easy words with pleasing numbers join;
His verses to good method did apply,
And changed hard discord to soft harmony.
All owned his laws; which, long approved and tried,
To present authors now may be a guide.
Tread boldly in his steps, secure from fear,
And be, like him, in your expressions clear.
If in your verse you drag, and sense delay,
My patience tires, my fancy goes astray;
And from your vain discourse I turn my mind,
Nor search an author troublesome to find.
There is a kind of writer pleased with sound,
Whose fustian head with clouds is compassed round,
No reason can disperse them with its light:
Learn then to think ere you pretend to write.
As your idea's clear, or else obscure,
The expression follows perfect or impure:
What we conceive with ease we can express;
Words to the notions flow with readiness.
Observe the language well in all you write,
And swerve not from it in your loftiest flight.
The smoothest verse, and the exactest sense,
Displease us, if ill English give offence:
A barbarous phrase no reader can approve;
Nor bombast, noise, or affectation love.
In short, without pure language, what you write
Can never yield us profit or delight.
Take time for thinking; never work in haste;
And value not yourself for writing fast.
A rapid poem, with such fury writ,
Shews want of judgment, not abounding wit.
More pleased we are to see a river lead
His gentle streams along a flowery mead,
Than from high banks to hear loud torrents roar,
With foamy waters on a muddy shore.
Gently make haste,[67] of labour not afraid;
A hundred times consider what you've said:
Polish, repolish, every colour lay,
And sometimes add, but oftener take away.
'Tis not enough, when swarming faults are writ,
That here and there are scattered sparks of wit:
Each object must be fixed in the due place,
And differing parts have corresponding grace;
Till, by a curious art disposed, we find
One perfect whole, of all the pieces joined.
Keep to your subject close in all you say;
Nor for a sounding sentence ever stray.
The public censure for your writings fear,
And to yourself be critic most severe.
Fantastic wits their darling follies love;
But find you faithful friends that will reprove,
That on your works may look with careful eyes,
And of your faults be zealous enemies:
Lay by an author's pride and vanity,
And from a friend a flatterer descry,
Who seems to like, but means not what he says:
Embrace true counsel, but suspect false praise.
A sycophant will every thing admire;
Each verse, each sentence sets his soul on fire:
All is divine! there's not a word amiss!
He shakes with joy, and weeps with tenderness;
He overpowers you with his mighty praise.
Truth never moves in those impetuous ways;
A faithful friend is careful of your fame,
And freely will your heedless errors blame;
He cannot pardon a neglected line,
But verse to rule and order will confine;
Reprove of words the too-affected sound;--
Here the sense flags, and your expression's round,
Your fancy tires, and your discourse grows vain,
Your terms improper; make it just and plain. --
Thus 'tis a faithful friend will freedom use;
But authors, partial to their darling muse,
Think to protect it they have just pretence,
And at your friendly counsel take offence. --
Said you of this, that the expression's flat?
Your servant, sir, you must excuse me that,
He answers you. --This word has here no grace,
Pray leave it out;--that, sir, 's the properest place. --
This turn I like not;--'tis approved by all.
Thus, resolute not from one fault to fall,
If there's a syllable of which you doubt,
'Tis a sure reason not to blot it out.
Yet still he says you may his faults confute,
And over him your power is absolute.
But of his feigned humility take heed;
'Tis a bait laid to make you hear him read.
And when he leaves you happy in his muse,
Restless he runs some other to abuse,
And often finds; for in our scribbling times
No fool can want a sot to praise his rhymes.
The flattest work has ever in the court
Met with some zealous ass for its support;
And in all times a forward scribbling fop
Has found some greater fool to cry him up.


CANTO II.

PASTORAL.

As a fair nymph, when rising from her bed,
With sparkling diamonds dresses not her head,
But without gold, or pearl, or costly scents,
Gathers from neighbouring fields her ornaments;
Such, lovely in its dress, but plain withal,
Ought to appear a perfect Pastoral.
Its humble method nothing has of fierce,
But hates the rattling of a lofty verse;
There native beauty pleases, and excites,
And never with harsh sounds the ear affrights.
But in this style a poet often spent,
In rage throws by his rural instrument,
And vainly, when disordered thoughts abound,
Amidst the Eclogue makes the trumpet sound:
Pan flies alarmed into the neighbouring woods,
And frighted nymphs dive down into the floods.
Opposed to this, another, low in style,
Makes shepherds speak a language base and vile:
His writings, flat and heavy, without sound,
Kissing the earth, and creeping on the ground,
You'd swear that Randal, in his rustic strains,[68]
Again was quavering to the country swains,
And changing, without care of sound or dress,
Strephon and Phyllis, into Tom and Bess.
'Twixt these extremes 'tis hard to keep the right;
For guides take Virgil, and read Theocrite:
Be their just writings, by the Gods inspired,
Your constant pattern, practised, and admired.
By them alone you'll easily comprehend
How poets, without shame, may condescend
To sing of gardens, fields, of flowers, and fruit,
To stir up shepherds, and to tune the flute;
Of love's rewards to tell the happy hour,
Daphne a tree, Narcissus made a flower,
And by what means the Eclogue yet has power
To make the woods worthy a conqueror:
This of their writings is the grace and flight;
Their risings lofty, yet not out of sight.


ELEGY.

The Elegy, that loves a mournful style,
With unbound hair weeps at a funeral pile;
It paints the lover's torments and delights,
A mistress flatters, threatens, and invites:
But well these raptures if you'll make us see,
You must know love as well as poetry.
I hate those lukewarm authors, whose forced fire
In a cold style describes a hot desire;
That sigh by rule, and, raging in cold blood,
Their sluggish muse whip to an amorous mood:
Their feigned transports appear but flat and vain;
They always sigh, and always hug their chain,
Adore their prison, and their sufferings bless,
Make sense and reason quarrel as they please.
'Twas not of old in this affected tone,
That smooth Tibullus made his amorous moan;
Nor Ovid, when instructed from above,
By nature's rules he taught the art of love.
The heart in Elegies forms the discourse.


ODE.

The Ode is bolder, and has greater force;
Mounting to heaven in her ambitious flight,
Amongst the Gods and heroes takes delight;
Of Pisa's wrestlers tells the sinewy force,
And sings the dusty conqueror's glorious course;
To Simoïs' streams does fierce Achilles bring,
And makes the Ganges bow to Britain's king.
Sometimes she flies like an industrious bee,
And robs the flowers by nature's chemistry,
Describes the shepherd's dances, feasts, and bliss,
And boasts from Phyllis to surprise a kiss,
When gently she resists with feigned remorse,
That what she grants may seem to be by force:
Her generous style at random oft will part,
And by a brave disorder shows her art.
Unlike those fearful poets, whose cold rhyme
In all their raptures keeps exactest time,
That sing the illustrious hero's mighty praise
(Lean writers! ) by the terms of weeks and days;
And dare not from least circumstances part,
But take all towns by strictest rules of art:
Apollo drives those fops from his abode;
And some have said that once the humorous god
Resolving all such scribblers to confound,
For the short Sonnet ordered this strict bound;
Set rules for the just measure, and the time,
The easy running and alternate rhyme;
But above all, those licences denied
Which in these writings the lame sense supplied;
Forbade an useless line should find a place,
Or a repeated word appear with grace.
A faultless Sonnet, finished thus, would be
Worth tedious volumes of loose poetry.
A hundred scribbling authors without ground,
Believe they have this only phœnix found:
When yet the exactest scarce have two or three,
Among whole tomes from faults and censure free.
The rest, but little read, regarded less,
Are shovelled to the pastry from the press.
Closing the sense within the measured time,
'Tis hard to fit the reason to the rhyme.


EPIGRAM.

The Epigram, with little art composed,
Is one good sentence in a distich closed.
These points that by Italians first were prized,
Our ancient authors knew not, or despised:
The vulgar dazzled with their glaring light,
To their false pleasures quickly they invite;
But public favour so increased their pride,
They overwhelmed Parnassus with their tide.
The Madrigal at first was overcome,
And the proud Sonnet fell by the same doom;
With these grave Tragedy adorned her flights,
And mournful Elegy her funeral rites:
A hero never failed them on the stage,
Without his point a lover durst not rage;
The amorous shepherds took more care to prove
True to his point, than faithful to their love.
Each word, like Janus, had a double face;
And prose, as well as verse, allowed it place:
The lawyer with conceits adorned his speech,
The parson without quibbling could not preach.
At last affronted reason looked about,
And from all serious matters shut them out;
Declared that none should use them without shame,
Except a scattering in the Epigram;
Provided that by art, and in due time,
They turned upon the thought, and not the rhyme.
Thus in all parts disorders did abate:
Yet quibblers in the court had leave to prate;
Insipid jesters, and unpleasant fools,
A corporation of dull punning drolls.
'Tis not, but that sometimes a dexterous muse
May with advantage a turned sense abuse,
And on a word may trifle with address;
But above all avoid the fond excess,
And think not, when your verse and sense are lame,
With a dull point to tag your Epigram.
Each poem his perfection has apart;
The British round in plainness shows his art.
The Ballad, though the pride of ancient time,
Has often nothing but his humorous rhyme;
The Madrigal may softer passions move,
And breathe the tender ecstasies of love.
Desire to show itself, and not to wrong,
Armed Virtue first with Satire in its tongue.


SATIRE.

Lucilius was the man, who, bravely bold,
To Roman vices did this mirror hold,
Protected humble goodness from reproach,
Showed worth on foot, and rascals in the coach.
Horace his pleasing wit to this did add,
And none uncensured could be fool or mad:
Unhappy was that wretch, whose name might be
Squared to the rules of their sharp poetry.
Persius obscure, but full of sense and wit,
Affected brevity in all he writ;
And Juvenal, learned as those times could be,
Too far did stretch his sharp hyperbole;
Though horrid truths through all his labours shine,
In what he writes there's something of divine,
Whether he blames the Caprean debauch,
Or of Sejanus' fall tells the approach,
Or that he makes the trembling senate come
To the stern tyrant to receive their doom;
Or Roman vice in coarsest habits shews,
And paints an empress reeking from the stews:
In all he writes appears a noble fire;
To follow such a master then desire.
Chaucer alone, fixed on this solid base,
In his old style conserves a modern grace:
Too happy, if the freedom of his rhymes
Offended not the method of our times.
The Latin writers decency neglect;
But modern authors challenge our respect,
And at immodest writings take offence,
If clean expression cover not the sense.
I love sharp Satire, from obsceneness free;
Not impudence, that preaches modesty:
Our English, who in malice never fail,
Hence in lampoons and libels learn to rail;
Pleasant detraction, that by singing goes
From mouth to mouth, and as it marches grows:
Our freedom in our poetry we see,
That child of joy begot by liberty.
But, vain blasphemer, tremble when you chuse
God for the subject of your impious muse:
At last, those jests which libertines invent,
Bring the lewd author to just punishment.
Even in a song there must be art and sense;
Yet sometimes we have seen that wine, or chance,
Have warmed cold brains, and given dull writers mettle,
And furnished out a scene for Mr Settle.
But for one lucky hit, that made thee please,
Let not thy folly grow to a disease,
Nor think thyself a wit; for in our age
If a warm fancy does some fop engage,
He neither eats nor sleeps till he has writ,
But plagues the world with his adulterate wit.
Nay 'tis a wonder, if, in his dire rage,
He prints not his dull follies for the stage;
And in the front of all his senseless plays,
Makes David Logan crown his head with bays. [69]


CANTO III.

TRAGEDY.

There's not a monster bred beneath the sky,
But well-disposed by art, may please the eye:
A curious workman by his skill divine,
From an ill object makes a good design.
Thus to delight us, Tragedy, in tears
For Œdipus, provokes our hopes and fears;
For parricide Orestes asks relief,
And, to encrease our pleasure, causes grief.
You then that in this noble art would rise,
Come, and in lofty verse dispute the prize.
Would you upon the stage acquire renown,
And for your judges summon all the town?
Would you your works for ever should remain,
And after ages past be sought again?
In all you write, observe with care and art
To move the passions, and incline the heart.
If in a laboured act, the pleasing rage
Cannot our hopes and fears by turns engage,
Nor in our mind a feeling pity raise,
In vain with learned scenes you fill your plays:
Your cold discourse can never move the mind
Of a stern critic, naturally unkind,
Who, justly tired with your pedantic flight,
Or falls asleep, or censures all you write.
The secret is, attention first to gain;
To move our minds, and then to entertain;
That from the very opening of the scenes,
The first may show us what the author means.
I'm tired to see an actor on the stage,
That knows not whether he's to laugh or rage;
Who, an intrigue unravelling in vain,
Instead of pleasing keeps my mind in pain.
I'd rather much the nauseous dunce should say
Downright, my name is Hector in the play;
Than with a mass of miracles, ill-joined,
Confound my ears, and not instruct my mind.
The subject's never soon enough exprest;
Your place of action must be fixed, and rest.
A Spanish poet may with good event,
In one day's space whole ages represent;
There oft the hero of a wandering stage
Begins a child, and ends the play of age:
But we, that are by reason's rules confined,
Will, that with art the poem be designed;
That unity of action, time, and place,
Keep the stage full, and all our labours grace. [70]
Write not what cannot be with ease conceived;
Some truths may be too strong to be believed.
A foolish wonder cannot entertain;
My mind's not moved if your discourse be vain.
You may relate what would offend the eye:
Seeing, indeed, would better satisfy;
But there are objects that a curious art
Hides from the eyes, yet offers to the heart.
The mind is most agreeably surprised,
When a well-woven subject, long disguised,
You on a sudden artfully unfold,
And give the whole another face and mould.
At first the Tragedy was void of art;
A song, where each man danced and sung his part,
And of God Bacchus roaring out the praise,
Sought a good vintage for their jolly days:
Then wine and joy were seen in each man's eyes,
And a fat goat was the best singer's prize.
Thespis was first, who, all besmeared with lee,
Began this pleasure for posterity:
And with his carted actors, and a song,
Amused the people as he passed along.
Next Æschylus the different persons placed,
And with a better mask his players graced:
Upon a theatre his verse expressed,
And showed his hero with a buskin dressed.
Then Sophocles, the genius of his age,
Encreased the pomp and beauty of the stage,
Engaged the chorus song in every part,
And polished rugged verse by rules of art:
He in the Greek did those perfections gain,
Which the weak Latin never could attain.
Our pious fathers, in their priest-rid age,
As impious and prophane, abhorred the stage:
A troop of silly pilgrims, as 'tis said,
Foolishly zealous, scandalously played,
Instead of heroes, and of love's complaints,
The angels, God, the Virgin, and the saints. [71]
At last, right reason did his laws reveal,
And showed the folly of their ill-placed zeal,
Silenced those nonconformists of the age,
And raised the lawful heroes of the stage:
Only the Athenian mask was laid aside,
And chorus by the music was supplied.
Ingenious love, inventive in new arts,
Mingled in plays, and quickly touched our hearts:
This passion never could resistance find,
But knows the shortest passage to the mind.
Paint then, I'm pleased my hero be in love;
But let him not like a tame shepherd move;
Let not Achilles be like Thyrsis seen,
Or for a Cyrus show an Artamen;[72]
That struggling oft, his passions we may find,
The frailty, not the virtue of his mind.
Of romance heroes shun the low design;
Yet to great hearts some human frailties join:
Achilles must with Homer's heat engage;
For an affront I'm pleased to see him rage.
Those little failings in your hero's heart
Show that of man and nature he has part.
To leave known rules you cannot be allowed;
Make Agamemnon covetous and proud,
Æneas in religious rites austere.
Keep to each man his proper character.
Of countries and of times the humours know;
From different climates different customs grow:
And strive to shun their fault, who vainly dress
An antique hero like some modern ass;
Who make old Romans like our English move,
Show Cato sparkish, or make Brutus love.
In a romance those errors are excused:
There 'tis enough that, reading, we're amused:
Rules too severe would there be useless found;
But the strict scene must have a juster bound;
Exact decorum we must always find.
If then you form some hero in your mind,
Be sure your image with itself agree;
For what he first appears, he still must be.
Affected wits will naturally incline
To paint their figures by their own design;
Your bully poets, bully heroes write; }
Chapman in Bussy D'Ambois[73] took delight, }
And thought perfection was to huff and fight. }
Wise nature by variety does please;
Clothe differing passions in a differing dress.
Bold anger, in rough haughty words appears;
Sorrow is humble, and dissolves in tears.
Make not your Hecuba with fury rage,
And show a ranting grief upon the stage;
Or tell in vain how the rough Tanaïs bore
His sevenfold waters to the Euxine shore:
These swoln expressions, this affected noise,
Shows like some pedant that declaims to boys.
In sorrow you must softer methods keep;
And, to excite our tears, yourself must weep.
Those noisy words with which ill plays abound,
Come not from hearts that are in sadness drowned.
The theatre for a young poet's rhymes
Is a bold venture in our knowing times:
An author cannot easily purchase fame;
Critics are always apt to hiss, and blame:
You may be judged by every ass in town,
The privilege is bought for half-a-crown.
To please, you must a hundred changes try;
Sometimes be humble, then must soar on high;
In noble thoughts must everywhere abound,
Be easy, pleasant, solid, and profound;
To these you must surprising touches join,
And show us a new wonder in each line;
That all, in a just method well-designed,
May leave a strong impression in the mind.
These are the arts that tragedy maintain:


THE EPIC.

But the Heroic claims a loftier strain.
In the narration of some great design,
Invention, art, and fable, all must join:
Here fiction must employ its utmost grace;
All must assume a body, mind, and face:
Each virtue a divinity is seen;
Prudence is Pallas, Beauty, Paphos' queen.
'Tis not a cloud from whence swift lightnings fly,
But Jupiter, that thunders from the sky;
Nor a rough storm that gives the sailor pain,
But angry Neptune plowing up the main;
Echo's no more an empty airy sound,
But a fair nymph that weeps her lover drowned.
Thus in the endless treasure of his mind,
The poet does a thousand figures find;
Around the work his ornaments he pours,
And strows with lavish hand his opening flowers.
'Tis not a wonder if a tempest bore
The Trojan fleet against the Libyan shore;
From faithless fortune this is no surprise,
For every day 'tis common to our eyes:
But angry Juno, that she might destroy,
And overwhelm the rest of ruined Troy;
That Æolus, with the fierce goddess joined,
Opened the hollow prisons of the wind;
Till angry Neptune, looking o'er the main,
Rebukes the tempest, calms the waves again,
Their vessels from the dangerous quicksands steers.
These are the springs that move our hopes and fears:
Without these ornaments before our eyes,
The unsinewed poem languishes and dies:
Your poet in his art will always fail,
And tell you but a dull insipid tale.
In vain have our mistaken authors tried
To lay these ancient ornaments aside,
Thinking our God, and prophets that he sent,
Might act like those the poets did invent,
To fright poor readers in each line with hell,
And talk of Satan, Ashtaroth, and Bel. [74]
The mysteries which Christians must believe,
Disdain such shifting pageants to receive:
The gospel offers nothing to our thoughts
But penitence, or punishment for faults;
And mingling falsehoods with those mysteries,
Would make our sacred truths appear like lies.
Besides, what pleasure can it be to hear
The howlings of repining Lucifer,
Whose rage at your imagined hero flies,
And oft with God himself disputes the prize?
Tasso, you'll say, has done it with applause:--
It is not here I mean to judge his cause:
Yet though our age has so extolled his name,
His works had never gained immortal fame,
If holy Godfrey in his ecstasies
Had only conquered Satan on his knees;
If Tancred and Armida's pleasing form
Did not his melancholy theme adorn.
'Tis not, that Christian poems ought to be
Filled with the fictions of idolatry;
But, in a common subject, to reject
The gods, and heathen ornaments neglect;
To banish Tritons, who the seas invade,
To take Pan's whistle, or the fates degrade,
To hinder Charon in his leaky boat
To pass the shepherd with the man of note,
Is with vain scruples to disturb your mind,
And search perfection you can never find:
As well they may forbid us to present
Prudence or Justice for an ornament,
To paint old Janus with his front of brass,
And take from Time his scythe, his wings, and glass,
And everywhere, as 'twere idolatry,
Banish descriptions from our poetry.
Leave them their pious follies to pursue;
But let our reason such vain fears subdue:
And let us not, amongst our vanities,
Of the true God create a god of lies.
In fable we a thousand pleasures see,
And the smooth names seem made for poetry;
As Hector, Alexander, Helen, Phyllis,
Ulysses, Agamemnon, and Achilles:
In such a crowd, the poet were to blame
To chuse king Chilperic for his hero's name.
Sometimes the name, being well or ill applied,
Will the whole fortune of your work decide.
Would you your reader never should be tired,
Chuse some great hero, fit to be admired,
In courage signal, and in virtue bright;
Let even his very failings give delight;
Let his great actions our attention bind,
Like Cæsar, or like Scipio, frame his mind,
And not like Œdipus his perjured race;
A common conqueror is a theme too base.