1 ADDITIONAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. Rhymed tragedies, p. 3. Johnson says, "The practice of making tragedies in rhyme was introduced, as it seems, by the Earl of Orrery, in compliance with the opinion of Charles II., who had formed his taste by the French theatre; and Dryden, who wrote, and made no difficulty of declaring that he wrote only to please, and who perhaps knew that by his dexterity of versification he was more likely to excel others in rhyme than without it, very readily adopted his master's preference." It was not necessary for Johnson to mention that our earliest plays, both tragedy and comedy, were in rhyme; this he may have supposed his readers to have known, after the publication of Dodsley's selection of Old Plays. But if he had remembered the tragedies of Daniel, Lord Brook, and Lord Sterline, he would have noticed them. Those of the two latter, however, were not designed for representation, and were composed, with more or less resemblance, upon the ancient model. The rhymes, too, were not in couplets, and the pieces were rather dramatic poems than plays. Riding rhyme, p. 6.. If Dr. Warton had remembered the opinion expressed in this appellation, he would not have censured Pope for modernizing Chaucer's story of January and May in the same measure as the original. "Pope," he says, "has endeavored suitably to familiarize the stateliness of our heroic measure in this ludicrous narrative; but after all his pains, this measure is not adapted to such subjects so well as the lines of four feet, or the French numbers of Fontaine." Essay on Pope, vol. ii. p. 5. Dryden's conversion to the Church of Rome, p. 17. My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires: Such was 1, such by nature still I am; Be thing the glory, and be m ne the shame. Good I fe be now my task: my doubts are done: What more could fright my faith, than three in one? Disgnised in mortal mould and infancy? That the great Maker of the world could die ? Which ealls in question his omnipotence? Can I my reason to my faith compel? Shall their subservient orgaus be my guide? And winking tapers show the sun his way! Hind and Panther. Any one who understood the grounds of the Protestant faith might have quoted to Dryden, upon this notable passage, his own words Winnow well this thought, and you shall find 'Tis light as chaff that fl.es before the wind! The mysteries of the Trinity, of the Divinity of our Savior, and of the real presence, are believed by the Church of England. because the belief of that church is founded upon the scriptures, and the scriptures only. Dryden's error upon the latter point lay in confounding the mystery of the real presence with the figment of transubstantiation. But when Dryden wrote the Religio Laici, a strong sense of the mischiefs produced by sectarianism had prepared him for his subsequent change. In the preface to that poem, after showing what were the real dangers from Popery, he speaks of that other extreme of our religion, the fanatics, or schismatics of the English Church. "Since the Bible," says he, "has been translated into our tongue, they have used it so as if their business was not to be saved, but to be damned by its contents. If we consider only them, better had it been for the English nation that it had still remained in the original Greek and Hebrew, or at least in the honest Latin of St. Jerome, than that several texts in it should have been prevaricated to the destruction of that government which put it into so ungrateful hands. Many of them who had been in France and Geneva brought back the rigid opinions and imperious discipline of Calvin to graft upon our reformation, which though they cunningly concealed at first, as well knowing how nauseously that drug would go down in a lawful monarchy which was prescribed for a rebellious commonwealth, yet they always kept it in reserve; and were never wanting to themselves either in court or parliament when they had any prospect of a numerous party of fanatic members of the one, or the encouragement of any favorite in the other, whose covetousness was gaping at the patrimony of the church. To their ignorance all things are wit which are abusive; but if church and state were made the theme, then the doctoral degree of wit was to be taken at Billingsgate even the most saintlike of the party, though they durst not excuse their contempt and vilifying of the government, yet were pleased, and grinned at it with a pious smile, and called it a judgment of God against the hierarchy. Thus sectaries, we may see, were born with teeth, foul-mouthed and scurrilous from their infancy; and if spiritual pride, venom, violence, contempt of superiors, and slander, had been the marks of orthodox belief, the presbytery, and the rest of our schismatics, which are their spawn, were always the most visible church in the Christian world. "While we were papists, our holy father led us by pretending authority out of the scriptures to depose princes. When we shook off his authority, the sectaries furnished themselves with the same weapons, and out of the same magazine — the Bible; so that the scriptures, which are in themselves the greatest security of governors, as com manding express obedience to them, are now turned to their destruction; and never since the reformation has there wanted a text of their interpreting to authorize a rebel. And it is to be noted by the way, that the doctrines of king-killing and deposing, which have been taken up only by the worst party of the papistry, the most frontless flatterers of the pope's authority, have been espoused, defended, and are still maintained by the whole body of nonconformists and republicans. It is but dubbing themselves the people of God, which it is the interest of their preachers to tell them they are, and their own interest to believe; and after that they cannot dip into the Bible, but one text or another will turn up for their purpose; if they are under persecution, as they call it, then that is a mark of their election; if they flourish then God works miracles for their deliverance, and the saints are to possess the earth."- Preface to Religio Laici. The pinchbeck age of poetry, p. 24.-"Indeed it is not without reason that poetry is now generally held in little esteem; in general modern poetry deserves but little. Since the happy invention of printing, this species of literature has gradually sunk into disregard; and the reason is obvious. Every dull pretender to the Muse finds means to get his compositions, be they ever so bad, into print, and then the public is pestered with them, according to the various circumstances and degrees of the author's necessities or vanity. It was otherwise among the ancients, who saw every thing in manuscript. Nobody would take the trouble of transcribing bad things, except their authors; and even they were under the less temptation of being either at the pains of copying their works themselves, or the expense of paying others to do it for them, as doubtless they always found it difficult enough to get them off at such a price as would be deemed equivalent to the trouble or charge. Hence it is that we have so few bad books from the ancients, and hence it was that poetry acquired more universal esteem and honor with them than it does with us. They seldom met with any but the works of such excellent geniuses as to this day are greatly valued and admired But in our later times, so large has been the inundation of rhyming trumpery from the press, that even the name of a poet and of poetry are become so cheap, so contemptible, and in some instances so abominable, that a real genius is often ashamed to be ranked among the sons of the Muses, though in company even with Homer, Horace, and Milton."-Monthly Review, vol. iv. Nov. 1750, pp. 28, 29. Fifteen years later (1765) the same journal speaks of "the herd of poetasters with which the pamphlet-shops, the Magazines, the Chronicles, the Evening Posts, the Advertisers, the Gazetteers, the Weekly Journals, and even the very Almanacs are pestered. It is said a remedy has been found for the epidemical distemper among the cattle; we are sorry that no one in this no-trum-inventing age has yet discovered a cure for the poetical murrain by which so many of his majesty's subjects are totally lost- to society."- Vol. xxxii. p. 75. The art of poetry was made easy to the meanest capacity, p. 25. "There is a great deal of cant in the style of poetry, especially of modern poetry. A set of epithets. and figures, and phrases, which a certain set of versifiers bring in upon all occasions. in order to make out their verses and prepare their rhymes, if a poet has got a good stock of these, and a knack of applying them, and is not very solicitous about energy, consistency, or truth of sentiment, he may write verses with great ease and rapidity; but such verses are not read above once or twice, and are seldom or never remembered.". Life, vol. ii. p. 13. ·Beattie. Forbes's "There are authors without one original power of the mind, who can pour out mechanical verses with an inexhaustible vein. Let an acute critic examine these verses, and he will trace with the most unqualified certainty the echo of mere words impressed by the author's study of original writers; to which words, from the use made of them, from the jumbled combination, and the utter want of any intelligible train of ideas, it will be demonstrable that no distinct images or thoughts are affixed. It is possible that they may excite some confused activity in the writer's brains; but the words are only suggested, and follow one another by some mechanical link. Or, if we admit that they convey to the author's mind the ideas which they properly represent, still in such authors the words lead the thoughts, and not the thoughts the words. "There is scarce any class of writers more contemptible than these. All false pretence is always disgusting in itself; and doubly so, because it has a tendency to degrade what is true, by exposing it to be confounded with the false by the ignorant multitude." Sir Egerton Brydges's Recollections of Foreign Travels, vol. i. p. 240. His taste had been influenced by the set with which he associated in early life, p. 27.-Lloyd was manly enough to write and insert in his Magazine, in the form of an epistle to himself, a remonstrance upon this subject. I hate the style that still defends Of Thornton's humor, Garick's nature, If I make free, though he's your friend; When Churchill's named for smart abuse; - On Slander's dung his mushroom bays. The priest, I grant, has something clever, A something that will last forever. Let him in part be made your pattern, Whose Muse, now queen, and now a slattern, The only man to make us laugh, The grand conductor and adviser Good sense, I know, though dashed with oddity, Much learning, too, I can descry, Beneath his periwig doth lie. I beg his pardon; I declare His grizzle's gone for greasy hair, Which now the wag with ease can screw With dirty riband in a queue. But why neglect (his trade forsaking For scribbling, and for merry-making) With tye to overshade that brain Which might have shone in Warwick Lane? Why not, with spectacle on nose, In chariot lazily repose, A formal, pompous, deep physician, Himself a sign-post exhibition? St. James's Mag. April, 1783, pp. 114, 115, 116. Churchill, p. 38.-Heartily as Churchill hated the Scotch, he was himself of the half-blood. This appears from a passage in the Proph ecy of Famine, remarkable also for containing an unequivocal intimation that he had renounced not only his orders, but his belief. Once, be the hour accursed, accursed the place! I ventured to blaspheme the chosen race. Madly I leagued against that sacred earth, When heavenly Truth presents her friendly clew? V. 217-234. Churchill's dislike of Pope, p. 41.- One of the most poetical passages in Gotham would have been disfigured by an expression of this feeling, if he had not wisely struck out a couplet so ill in keeping with all that preceded and followed it. Farewell, ye Muses! - though it cuts my heart, When the fresh morn bade lusty Nature wake; When the birds, sweetly twittering through the brake, When all things with new vigor were inspired, How often have we strayed, while sportive rhyme VOL. II. 30 |