nor such noble sentiments of morality in either Amintor or Melantius as in Brutus.8 Having thus given, we hope, pretty strong proofs of our authors excellence in the sublime, and shewn how near they approach in splendor to the great sun of the British Theatre; let us now just touch on their comedies and draw one parallel of a very different kind. Horace makes a doubt whether comedy should be called poetry or not, i. e. whether the comedies of Terence, Plautus, Menander, &c. should be esteemed such, for in its own nature there is a comic poetic diction as well as a tragic one; a diction which Horace himself was a great master of, though it had not then been used in the drama; for even the sublimest sentiments of Terence, when his comedy raises its voice to the greatest dignity, are still not clothed in poetic diction. The British drama which before Jonson received only some little improvement from the models of Greece and Rome, but sprung chiefly from their own moralities, and religious farces; and had a birth extremely similar to what the Grecian drama originally sprung from; differed in its growth from the Greeks chiefly in two particulars. The latter separated the solemn parts of their religious shews from the satiric farcical parts of them, and so formed the distinct species of tragedy and comedy; the Britons were not so happy, but suffered them to continue united, even in hands of as great or greater poets than Sophocles and Euripides. But they had far better success in the second instance. The Greeks appropriated the spirit and nerves of poetry to tragedy only, and though they did not wholly deprive the comedy of metre, they left it not the shadow of poetic diction and sentiment; "Idcirco quidam, comœdia necne poema Esset, quæsivére: Quod acer spiritus ac vis The Britons not only retained metre in their comedies, but also all the acer spiritus, all the strength and nerves of poetry, which was in a good measure owing to the happiness of our blank verse, which at the same time that it is capable of the highest sublimity, the most extensive and noblest harmony of the tragic and epic; yet when used familiarly is so near the sermo pedestris, so easy and natural as to be well adapted even to the drollest comic dialogue. The French common metre is the very reverse of this; it is much too stiff and formal either for tragedy or comedy, unable to rise with 8 One key to Amintor's heroism and distress, will, I believe, solve all the objections that have been raised to this scene; which will vanish at once by only an occasional conformity to our authors ethical and political principles. They held passive obedience and non-resistance to princes an indispensable duty; a doctrine which Queen Elizabeth's goodness made her subjects fond of imbibing, and which her successor's king-craft, with far different views, carried to its highest pitch. In this period, our authors wrote, and we may as well quarrel with Tasso for Popery, or with Homer and Virgil for Heathenism, as with our authors for this principle. It is therefore the violent shocks of the highest provocations struggling with what Amintor thought his eternal duty; of nature rebelling against principle (as a famous partisan for this doctrine in Queen Ann's reign expressed it, when he happened not to be in the ministry) which drive the heroic youth into that phrenzy, which makes him challenge his dearest friend for espousing too revengefully his own quarrel against the sacred majesty of the most abandonedly wicked king. The same key is necessary to the heroism of Ecius, Aubrey, Archas, and many others of our author's characters; in all which the reader will perhaps think, there is something unnaturally absurd; but the absurdity is wholly chargeable on the doctrine not on the poets. proper proper dignity to the sublimity of the one, or to descend with ease to the jocose familiarity of the other. Besides the cramp of rhime every line is cut asunder by so strong a casure, that in English we should divide it into. the three-foot stanza, as "When Fanny blooming fair First caught my ravish'd sight, Take one of the rhimes from these, and write them in two lines, they are exactly the same with the French tragic and epic metre. In a language where this is their sublimest measure, no wonder that their greatest poet should write his Telemaque an epic poem in prose. Every one must know that the genteel parts of comedy, descriptions of polite life, moral sentences, paternal fondness, filial duty, generous friendship, and particularly the delicacy and tenderness of lovers' sentiments are equally proper to poetry in comedy as tragedy; in these things there is no sort of real difference between the two, and what the Greeks and Latins formed had no foundation in nature; our old poets therefore made no such difference, and their comedies in this respect vastly excel the Latins and Greeks. Jonson who reformed many faults of our drama, and followed the plans of Greece and Rome very closely in most instances, yet preserved the poetic fire and diction of comedy as a great excellence. How many instances of inimitable poetic beauties might one produce from Shakespeare's comedies? Not so many yet extremely numerous are those of our authors, and such as in an ancient classic would be thought beauties of the first magnitude. These lie before me in such variety, that I scarce know where to fix. But I'll confine myself chiefly to moral sentiments. In the Elder Brother, Charles the scholar thus speaks of the joys of literature; being asked by his father—— Take care of my estate? "Nor will you Char. But in my wishes; For know, Sir, that the wings on which my soul With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels; Unto a strict account, and, in my fancy, Vol. i. act. i. scene ii. R.] In [* This is the first stanza of a song by Lord Chesterfield. In Monsieur Thomas, a youth in love with his friend's intended wife, after resisting the greatest temptations of passion, is thus encouraged by the young lady to persevere in his integrity. Francis. Whither do you drive me? Cellide. Back to your honesty, make that good ever, Keep your ears, From ever yielding to dishonest ends, Ridg'd round about with virtue, that no breaches, Our authors, in carrying the metaphor of a citadel compared to the mind through so many divisions, seem to have built on the foundation of St. Paul, who in like manner carries on a metaphor from armour through its several parts. Ephesians vi. 11. Put on the whole armour of God-having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breast-plate of righteousness.-Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. See also the same metaphor in Isaiah, lix. 17. from whom St. Paul took his. Were I to quote our author's frequent resemblance to the stile and sentiments of the Scriptures, another very large field would open to us; and this would help us to the solution of two questions, which they who have a just taste of the excellencies of our old English poets naturally ask: 1. How came the British muse in the very infancy of literature, when but just sprung from the dark womb of monkish superstition, to rise at once to such maturity, as she did in Spenser, Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson and Massenger? 2. What spirit is it that has animated the frozen foggy genius of Britain into a nobler and fiercer flame of poetry than was ever yet kindled in the bright invigorating climes of France and modern Italy; insomuch, that a Gallic and Italian eye is dazzled and offended at the brightness of the noblest expressions of Milton, and the authors above-mentioned? We answer. It was no less a spirit than the Spirit of God, it was the sun of righteousness, the hallowed light of the Scriptures that was just then risen on the British cfime, but is still hid in clouds and darkness to France and Italy. A light to which the brightest strokes of Milton and Shakespeare are but as rays of the mid-day sun, when compared to that ineffable inconceivable lustre which surrounds the throne of God. When the zeal of religion ran high, and a collection of far the noblest poems that were ever wrote in the world, those of Job, David, Isaiah and all the prophets were daily read, and publicly, solemnly and learnedly commented upon, in almost every town in the kingdom; when every man thought it a disgrace not to study them in private, and not to treasure the noblest parts of them in his memory, what wonder was it that our poets should catch so much of the sacred fire, or that the British genius should be arrayed with the beams of the east? But when the love of the scriptures waxed faint, the nerves of our poetry grew in the same proportion weak and languid. One of the best means therefore to gain a true taste of the extreme poetic sublimity of the sacred scriptures, is to converse with those poets whose stile and sentiments most resemble them. And the very best means to restore the British genius to its pristine vigour, and to create other Shakespeares and other Miltons, is to promote the study, love and admiration of those Scriptures. A concurrent cause, which raised the spirit of poetry to such a height in Queen Elizabeth's reign, was the encouragement and influence of the queen herself; to whom polite literature was the most courtly accomplishment. Look into Spenser's Description of her Lords and Favourites, and you'll find a learned queen made a whole court of poets, just as an amorous monarch afterwards made every flowery courtier write romance; and martial princes have turned intimidated armies into heroes. As As Cellide had before used a light behaviour in trial of his virtue, upon finding it only a trial, and receiving from her this virtuous lecture, he rejoins; "How like the sun Labouring in his eclipse, dark and prodigious She shew'd till now? when having won his way, And sheds his virtuous beams?" Such passages as these are frequent in our authors comedies; were they exprest only in genteel prose, they would rank with the very noblest passages of Terence, but what reason upon earth can be assigned, but mere fashion, why, because they are parts of comedies, they should be weakened and flattened into prose by drawing the sinews of their strength and eclipsing those poetic beams that shed vigour, life and lustre on every sentiment? 10 Such poetic excellence therefore will the reader find in the genteel parts of our author's comedies, but, as before hinted, there is a poetic stile often equally proper and excellent even in the lowest drollery of comedy. Thus when the jocose old Miramont in the Elder Brother catches austere solemn magistrate Brisac endeavouring to debauch his servant's wife—Before he breaks in upon him, he says; "Oh, th' infinite frights that will assail this gentleman! That'll hang, like sergeants, on his worship's shoulders! And that severe face that speaks chains and shackles !" How small a change of the comic words would turn this into the sublime? suppose it spoke of Nero by one who knew he would be at once deserted by the senate and army, and given up to the fury of the people. "What infinite frights will soon assail the tyrant? How will that fierce terrific eye appear, Whose slightest bend spake dungeons, chains, and death?" Such as the former, is the general stile of our author's drollery, particularly of Fletcher's; Beaumont deals chiefly in another species, the burlesque epic. Thus when the Little comic French Lawyer is run fightingmad, and his antagonist excepts against his shirt for not being laced (as gentlemen's shirts of that age used to be) he answers, "Base and degenerate cousin, dost not know 10 There is much less prose left in this edition than there was in all the former; in which the measure was often most miserably neglected. Wit Without Money, the very first play which fell to my lot to prepare for the press after Mr. Theobald's death, was all printed as prose, except about twenty lines towards the end; but the reader will now find it as true measure as almost any comedy of our authors. This This stile runs through many of Beaumont's characters, besides LaWrit's, as Lazarillo, the Knight of the Burning-Pestle, Bessus's two Swordsmen, &c. and he has frequent allusions to and even parodies of the sublimest parts of Shakespeare; which both Mr. Sympson and Mr. Theobold look upon as sneers upon a poet of greater eminence than the supposed sneerer (a very great I crime if true) but I believe it an entire mistake. The nature of this burlesque epic requires the frequent use of the most known and most acknowledged expressions of sublimity, which applied to low objects render them, not the author of those expressions, ridiculous. Almost all men of wit make the same use of Shakespeare and Milton's expressions in common conversation without the least thought of sneering either; and indeed if every quotation from Shakespeare thus jocularly applied is a real sneer upon him, then all burlesque sublime is a sneer upon the real sublime, and Beaumont sneered himself as well as Shakespeare. From these three short specimens the reader will form, we hope, a just idea of the three stiles used in our author's Comedies, the sublime, the droll poetic, and the burlesque sublime. There is indeed a small mixture of prose, which is the only part of our old dramatic poets stile that moderns have vouchsafed to imitate. Did they acknowledge the truth, and confess their inability to rise to the spirit, vigour, and dignity of the other stiles, they were pardonable. But far from it, our reformed taste calls for prose only, and before Beaumont and Fletcher's plays can be endured by such Attic ears, they must be corrected into prose, as if, because well-brewed porter is a wholesome draught, therefore claret and burgundy must be dashed with porter before they were drinkable. For a true specimen of our modern taste, we will give the reader one cup of our author's wine thus porterized, and that by one who perfectly knew the palate of the age, who pleased it greatly in this very instance, and some of whose comedies have as much or more merit than any moderns except Congreve. Mr. Cibber has consolidated two of our author's plays, the Elder Brother, and the Custom of the Country, to form his Love makes a Man; or, the Fop's Fortune. the former there are two old French noblemen, Lewis and Brisac; the first proud of his family and fortune, the other of his magisterial power and dignity; neither men of learning, and therefore both preferring courtly accomplishments, and the knowledge of the world, to the deepest knowledge of books, and the most extensive literature. Such characters exclude not good sense in general, but in that part of their characters only where their foibles lie; (as Polonius in Hamlet is a fool in his pedantic foibles, and a man of sense in all other instances) accordingly Fletcher makes Brisac and Lewis thus treat of a marriage between their children, Bri. Good monsieur Lewis, I esteem myself And see what you have purpos'd put in act; For a further defence of our Authors from this imputation, see note 43 of The Little French Lawyer, and note 32 of The Woman-Hater. In both which there is a mistake with regard to the Author of those Plays. When I wrote the notes, I supposed it Fletcher, til Beaumont's letter at the end of The Nice Valour, gave me a key, which is given to the reader in the first section of the Preface, and which explains the difference of manner between Beaumont and Fletcher. A hopeful |