our literature; and his peculiar merits are happily, and on the whole justly, summed up by Pope in his well-known lines: "Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join His works are too numerous to be specified; but the chief are, "Astræa Redux," "Annus Mirabilis," the "Fables," the "Hind and Panther," "Ode on St Cecilia's Day," "Absalom and Achithophel," his translations, of which his "Virgil" is the best, and his dramatic works, of which "Don Sebastian" and the "Spanish Friar" are considered the finest. His prose works consist of the introductions to his poems, and are chiefly remarkable as the first attempt in the language to reduce criticism to a science; and though that science has made great progress since Dryden's day, yet the liveliness of his style and the general truth of his remarks will always prevent these, the earliest of our critical essays, from falling into oblivion. 1. COMPARISON OF VIRGIL AND HOMER. In the works of Virgil and Homer, we may read their manners and natural inclinations, which are wholly different. Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words: Homer was rapid in his thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of expression, which his language and the age in which he lived allowed him. Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's more confined; so that if Homer had not led the way, it was not in Virgil to have begun heroic poetry: for nothing can be more evident, than that the Roman poem is but the second part of the "Iliad," a continuation of the same story, and the persons already formed; the manners of Æneas are those of Hector, superadded to those which Homer gave him. The adventures of Ulysses in the "Odyssey" are imitated in the first six books of Virgil's "Eneid:" and though the accidents are not the same (which would have argued him of servile copying and total barrenness of invention), yet the seas were the same in which both the heroes wandered; and Dido cannot be denied to be the poetical daughter of Calypso. The six latter books of Virgil's poem are the four-and-twenty Iliads contracted: a quarrel occasioned by a lady, a single combat, battles fought, and a town besieged. I say not this in derogation to Virgil, neither do I contradict anything which I have formerly said in his just praise: for his episodes are almost wholly of his own invention; and the form which he has given to the telling makes the tale his own, even though the original story had been the same. But this proves, however, that Homer taught Virgil to design; and, if invention be the first virtue of an epic poet, then the Latin poem can only be allowed the second place. Mr Hobbes, in the preface to his own bald translation of the "Iliad" (studying poetry, as he did mathematics, when it was too late), Mr Hobbes, I say, begins the praise of Homer where he should have ended it. He tells us, that the first beauty of an epic poem consists in diction, that is, in the choice of words and harmony of numbers: now, the words are the colouring of the work, which, in the order of nature, is the last to be considered. The design, the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts, are all before it: where any of these are wanting, or imperfect, so much wants or is imperfect in the imitation of human life, which is the very definition of a poem. Words, indeed, like glaring colours, are the first beauties that arise and strike the sight; but if the draught be false or lame, the figures ill-disposed, the manners obscure or inconsistent, or the thoughts unnatural, then the finest colours are but daubing, and the piece is a beautiful monster at the best. Neither Virgil nor Homer were deficient in any of the former beauties; but in this last, which is expression, the Roman poet is at least equal to the Grecian, supplying the poverty of his language by his musical ear and his diligence. But to return: our two great poets, being so different in their tempers, one choleric and sanguine, the other phlegmatic and melancholic, that which makes them excel in their several ways is, that each has followed his own natural inclination, as well in forming the design as in the execution of it. The very heroes show their authors; Achilles is hot, impatient, revengeful; Æneas patient, considerate, careful of his people, merciful to his enemies, and ever submissive to the will of Heaven. I could please myself with enlarging on this subject, but I am forced to defer it to a future time. From all I have said, I will only draw this inference, that the action of Homer, being more full of vigour than that of Virgil, according to the temper of the writer, is of consequence more pleasing to the reader. One warms you by degrees; the other sets you on fire all at once, and never intermits his heat. It is the same difference which Longinus makes betwixt the effects of eloquence in Demosthenes and Tully. One persuades, the other commands. You never cool while you read Homer, not even in the second book (a graceful flattery to his countrymen); but he hastens from the ships, and concludes not that book till he has made you amends by the violent playing of a new machine. From thence he hurries on his action with variety of events, and ends it in less compass than two months. 2. CHAUCER. As he is the father of English poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or the Romans Virgil: he is a perpetual fountain of good sense; learned in all sciences; and, therefore, speaks properly on all subjects: as he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off; a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the an cients, excepting Virgil and Horace. Chaucer followed nature everywhere; but was never so bold as to go beyond her. 1 for The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us; but it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends, it was suited to the ears of his time; they who lived with him, and some time after him, thought it musical; and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lidgate and Gower, his contemporaries: there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect. It is true, Í cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him; he would make us believe the fault is in our ears, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine; but this opinion is not worth confuting; it is so gross and obvious an error, that common sense, which is a rule in everything but matters of faith and revelation, must convince the reader, that equality of numbers in every verse, which we call heroic, was either not known or not always practised in Chaucer's age. It were an easy matter to produce some thousands of his verses which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise. We can only say, that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first. We must be children before we grow men. There was an Ennius, and, in process of time, a Lucilius and a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace; even after Chaucer, there was a Spencer, a Harrington, a Fairfax, before Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in their nonage till these last appeared. Chaucer must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his "Canterbury Tales" the various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and, not only in their inclinations, but in their physiognomies and persons. Baptista Porta2 could not have described their natures better than by the marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours, and callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity; their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some are virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the lower characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the 1 The reader will find the metrical system of Chaucer discussed in almost every edition of that poet's works. A famous Neapolitan philosopher of the sixteenth century, much distinguished for the study of physiognomy. SHAKSPERE AND BEN JONSON. 219 Cook, are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing Lady Prioress, and the broad-speaking, gape-toothed wife of Bath. But enough of this: there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. We have our forefathers and great-grandames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of Monks, and Friars, and Canons, and Lady Abbesses, and Nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered. 3. SHAKSPERE AND BEN JONSON. All the Shakspere was the man who, of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it—you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets, "As the tall cypress towers above the shrubs." 1 The consideration of this made Mr Hales of Eton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better done in Shakspere; and however others are now 2 generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem. And in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspere far above him. As for Jonson, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit and language, and humour also in some 1 Dryden here quotes the well-known line of Virgil, Eclogue 1. Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi. 2 In the degenerate ages after the Restoration. 2 Charles I. measure, we had before him; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such a height. Humour was his proper sphere; and in that he delighted most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them; there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times whom he has not translated in "Sejanus" and "Catiline."1 But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represented Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language, 'twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially: perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Skakspere, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspere the greater wit. Shakspere was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets: Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakspere. XXVII. ROBERT SOUTH. ROBERT SOUTH was born in London in 1633, and was educated at Westminster and Oxford, where he made himself very conspicuous by his ability, and was chosen University orator. On the Restoration he became chaplain to Lord Clarendon, and the influence of that powerful nobleman secured for him a considerable share of church preferment, though he never reached the position to which his wit, talents, and enthusiastically royalist principles might seem to entitle him. He died in 1714. South is universally allowed to be the wittiest of our divines; and though wit is not usually considered a clerical excellence, yet it has been used by him with great discretion,-for his judgment is as great as his wit, and so as effectually to serve the interests of religion and morality. He belonged to the High Church party, and never hesitates to express in the strongest possible terms his dislike of the Dissenters, his hatred of many of their doctrines, his 1 Two of Jonson's most famous tragedies; they are literally crammed with translations from the Latin. |