A CHARACTER OF MR. WYCHERLEY*. } F all our modern wits, none seems to me Once to have touch'd upon true comedy, But hafty Shadwell, and flow Wycherley. Shadwell's unfinish'd works do yet impart Great proofs of Nature's force, though none of Art ; But *This character, however juft in other particulars, yet is injurious in one; Mr. Wycherley being reprefented as a laborious writer, which every man who has the leaft perfonal knowledge of him can contradict. Those indeed who form their judgment only from his writings, may be apt to imagine fo many admirable reflections, fuch diverfity of images and characters, fuch ftrict enquiries into nature, fuch clofe obfervations on the feveral humours, manners, and affections of all ranks and degrees of men, and, as it were, fo true and fo perfect a diffection of humankind, delivered with fo much pointed wit and force of expreffion, could be no other than the work of extraordinary diligence and application: whereas others, who have the happiness to be acquainted with the author, as well as his writitings, are able to affirm these happy performances were due to his infinite genius and natural penetration. We owe the pleasure and advantage of having been fo well entertained and inftructed by him to his facility of doing it; for, if I mistake him not extremely, had it been a trouble to him to write, he would have fpared himself that trouble. What he has performed would indeed have been difficult for another; but the club which a man of ordinary fize could not lift, was but a walking-stick for Hercules. Mr. But Wycherley earns hard what e'er he gains, Mr. Wycherley, in his writings, has been the sharpest fatyrift of his time; but, in his nature, he has all the foftness of the tendereft difpofitions: in his writings he is fevere, bold, undertaking: in his nature, gentle, modeft, inoffenfive he makes use of his fatire as a man truly brave of his courage, only upon public occafions and for public good. He compaffionates the wounds he is under a neceffity to probe, or, like a good-natur'd conqueror, grieves at the occafions that provoke him to make fuch havock. There are who object to his verfification: but a diamond is not lefs a diamond for not being polifhed. Verfification is in poetry what colouring is in painting, a beautiful ornament: but if the proportions are juft, the posture true, the figure bold, and the refemblance according to nature, though the colours fhould happen to be rough, or carelessly laid on, yet may the piece be of inestimable value: whereas the fineft and the niceft colouring art can invent, is but labour in vain, where the rest is wanting. Our prefent writers indeed, for the most part, feem to lay the whole ftrefs of their endeavours upon the harmony of words; but then, like eunuchs, they facrifice their manhood for a voice, and reduce our poetry to be like echo, nothing but found. In Mr. Wycherley, every thing is mafculine: his Mufe is not led forth as to a review, but as to a bartle; not adorned for parade, but execution: he would be tried by the sharpness of his blade, and not by the finery: like your heroes of antiquity, he charges in iron, and feems to defpife all ornament but intrinfic merit; and like thofe heroes has therefore added another name to his own, and by the unanimous confent of his cotemporaries, is diftinguished by the just appellation of Manly Wycherley. LANSDOWNE, VERS E S Written in a Leaf of the AUTHOR'S POEMS, prefented to the QUEEN. THE MUSE'S LAST DYING SONG. A Mufe expiring, who, with earlieft voice, Made kings and queens, and beauty's charms her Now on her death-bed, this laft homage pays, Thus fang the Muse, in her last moments fir'd Written |