CHAPTER XII. FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: 1. "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse."-2. Charles Montague.-3. Matthew Prior.-4. Sir Richard Blackmore.-5. John Dennis; Charles Gildon; Joseph Spence.-6. Jonathan Swift.-7. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele.-8. John Philips.-9. Ambrose Philips.-10. Thomas Tickell.-11. Nicholas Rowe.-12. Susanna Centlivre.-13. John Hughes.-14. John Arbuthnot.15. Thomas Parnell.-16. Lewis Theobald; Colley Cibber.-17. John Gay. -18. Alexander Pope.-19. Matthew Green. - 20. Allan Ramsay.-21. James Thomson.-22. John Dyer; William Somerville.-23. Gilbert West; John Armstrong.-24. William Shenstone.-25. George Lillo; Edward Moore; David Mallet; Vincent Bourne; William Whitehead; Paul Whitehead; Richard Glover; Christopher Pitt; Stephen Duck.-26. Edward Young; Robert Blair. -27. William Collins.-28. Richard Savage. 1. DRYDEN's powerful poem, "The Hind and the Panther," published in 1687, represents a series of theological and political discussions carried on by animals, and all contrived for the support of Roman Catholicism. Such a poem invited caricature; and this soon came in the form of an imitation of "The Rehearsal." It was entitled "The Hind and the Panther Transversed to the Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse." "Mr. Bayes is boasting to "Mr. Johnson" of his fable of the hind and the panther, in defence of his religion. "An apt contrivance, indeed," says Johnson. "What, do you make a fable of your religion?" Bayes: "Ay, I'gad, and without morals, too; for I tread in no man's steps; and to show you how far I can outdo any thing that ever was writ in this kind, I have taken Horace's design, but, I'gad, have so outdone him, you shall be ashamed for your old friend. You remember in him the Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse; what a plain, simple thing it is! it has no more life and spirit in it, I'gad, than a hobby-horse; and his mice talk so meanly, such common stuff, so like mere mice, that I wonder it has pleased the world so long. But now will I undeceive mankind, and teach 'em to heighten and elevate a fable. I'll bring you in the very same mice disputing the depth of philosophy, searching into the fundamentals of religion, quoting texts, fathers, councils, and all that; I'gad, as you shall see, either of 'em could easily make an ass of a country vicar. Now, whereas Horace keeps to the dry, naked story, I have more copiousness than to do that, I'gad. Here, I draw you general characters, and describe all the beasts of the creation; there, I launch out into long digressions, and leave my mice for twenty pages together; then I fall into raptures, and make the finest soliloquies, as would ravish you. Won't this do, think you?" Johnson: "Faith, sir, I don't well conceive you; all this about two mice?" Bayes: "Ay, why not? Is it not great and heroical? But come, you'll understand it better when you hear it; and pray be as severe as you can; I'gad, I defy all critics. Thus it begins: "A milk-white mouse, immortal and unchang'd, She fear'd no danger, for she knew no gin.'" This new jest upon Dryden was by two young men who became afterwards famous, Charles Montague and Matthew Prior. 2. Charles Montague, born in April, 1661, was the fourth son of the Hon. George Montague, a younger son of the first Earl of Manchester. He was sent at fourteen to Westminster School, where he formed so intimate a friendship with George Stepney that he avoided a scholarship at Oxford, and got leave from his friends to join Stepney at Trinity College, Cambridge. At the death of Charles II., Montague contributed to the volume of condolences and congratulations for the new king, that was put together according to custom. His poem, "On the Death of His Most Sacred Majesty, King Charles II.,” pleased Lord Dorset and Sir Charles Sedley so well that they invited Montague to town. The piece was a clever but unineasured panegyric, opening with this bold couplet : "Farewell, great Charles, monarch of blest renown, Dorset and Sedley were on the popular side, in opposition to the king's designs, made more alarming by his setting up of a standing army for aid in suppressing possible resistance to them. At their suggestion, Montague joined Prior in reply to Dryden's "Hind and Panther." After the accession of William III., he rose rapidly in political life; and in 1694 became Chancellor of the Exchequer, acquiring great distinction by his financial skill. He became Earl of Halifax, and died in 1715, with an extraordinary reputation for literary as well as political abilities. His works, consisting of poems and speeches, were published in the year of his death. 3. His associate in writing the famous burlesque on Dryden, Matthew Prior, was born in 1664. Having lost his father when young, he came into the care of his uncle, Samuel Prior, who kept the "Rummer" Tavern, near Charing Cross. It was a house frequented by nobility and gentry; so it chanced that the Earl of Dorset found in it young Prior, who had been taught at Westminster School, reading Horace for his amusement. He talked to him, saw him to be clever, and paid the cost of sending him to St. John's College, Cambridge. Prior was then eighteen. He took his B.A. degree in 1686, returned to London, and took his place among the young wits of the Whig party by the brightness of the satire upon Dryden's "Hind and Panther." He made friends also by the good quality of a poem on the Deity, written according to a practice of his college to send every year some poems upon sacred subjects to the Earl of Exeter in return for a benefaction by one of his ancestors. In 1690 he was appointed Secretary of the Embassy at the Congress opened at the Hague in January, 1691; and thus entered upon a diplomatic career in which he was greatly distinguished. At the end of June, 1692, after a memorable siege, the French completed the capture of Namur and its forts. Boileau then celebrated the glory of Louis XIV. in a Pindaric ode, which served the purpose also of a shot at Perrault in the Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns. Matthew Prior afterwards returned Boileau's fire with a laughing comment upon his ode, which he followed stanza for stanza, in "An English Ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King of Great Britain," 1695; for in that year there was another siege of Namur, and, on the 31st of August, William III. took the citadel by open assault in daytime, and in presence of Villeroi's army of a hundred thousand that would not risk battle. Prior was in high diplomatic service when he wrote, in the century year, his finest ode, the "Carmen Seculare," in praise of William. After the death of William, Prior deserted the Whigs for the Tories, and conducted a paper in the interest of the latter, called "The Examiner." He assisted in negotiating the treaty of Utrecht, and was sent as ambassador to Paris. His political career ended with the reign of Queen Anne. He died in 1721. Besides his prose writings, constituting two volumes of "Miscellaneous Works," and including a History of his Own Time," he left numerous small poems; also, "Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind," in three cantos; and, "Solomon on the Vanity of the World," a poem in three books. 66 4. Sir Richard Blackmore (b. about 1650, d. 1729) was educated at Westminster School, and St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1676; graduated in medicine at Padua, and became a prosperous physician in Cheapside. In 1695 he published "Prince Arthur," an epic poem in ten books. In his preface Blackmore attacked the abuse of wit upon the stage, said that in its other departments the poetry of the day had become impure; and that for this reason, among others, he had, in the intervals of business, written Prince Arthur." "I was willing," he said, "to make one effort towards the rescuing of the Muses out of the hands of those ravishers, and to restore them to their sweet and chaste mansions, and to engage them in an employment suitable to their dignity." He then prosed upon epic poetry, of which, he said, the purpose was "to give men right and just conceptions of religion and virtue;" and told his public that he had endeavored to form himself on Virgil's model, substituting Christian for pagan machinery—that is to say, he used Lucifer, Raphael, Uriel, etc., instead of heathen deities. His Arthur sailed to the Saxon coast; devils and angels affected |