PART I.

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BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCLII. FEBRUARY, 1845. VOL. LVII.

CONTENTS.

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS, 133

THE TOWER OF LONDON. BY THOMAS ROSCOE, 158

POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE. NO. III., 165

SPAIN AS IT IS, 181

THE SUPERFLUITIES OF LIFE, 194

THE OVERLAND PASSAGE, 204

MESMERISM, 219

AESTHETICS OF DRESS. ABOUT A BONNET, 242

GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES, 251

EDINBURGH

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;

AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.

_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE

No. CCCLII. FEBRUARY, 1845. VOL. LVII.

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.

DRYDEN.

Poetry, according to Lord Bacon a Third Part of Learning, must be a

social interest of momentous power. That Wisest of Men--so our dear

friends may have heard--extols it above history and above philosophy, as

the more divine in its origin, the more immediately and intimately

salutary and sanative in its use. Are not Shakspeare and Milton two of

our greatest moral teachers? CRITICISM opens to us the poetry we

possess; and, like a magnanimous kingly protector, shelters and fosters

all its springing growths. What is criticism as a science? Essentially

this--FEELING KNOWN--that is, affections of the heart and imagination

become understood subject-matter to the self-conscious intelligence.

Must feeling perish because intelligence sounds its depths? Quite the

reverse. Greatest minds are those in which, in and out of poetry, the

understanding contemplates the will. Then first the soul has its proper

strength. Disorderly passions are then tamed, and become the massy

pillars of high-built virtue. Criticism? It is a shape of

self-intuition. Confession and penitence, in the church, are a moral and

a religious criticism. The imagination is less august and solemn, but of

the same character. The first age of the world lived by divine

instincts; the later must by reason. How, then, shall we possess the

poetry of our being, unless we guard and arm it? If it be a benign,

holy, potent faculty, nevertheless it cannot, the most delicate of all

our faculties, sustain itself in the strife of opinions raging and

thundering around. Then, if it should rightly hold dominion over us, let

legislative opinion acknowledge, establish, and fortify that impaled

territory. The temper of the times is in sundry respects favourable,

notwithstanding its too frequent possession by an incensed political

spirit. Has there not been for half a century a spontaneous, an ardent,

a loving return in literature, of our own and all countries, to the old

and great in the productions of the human mind--to nature, with all her

fountains? Does not the spirit of man, in the great civilized nations at

this day, travail with desire of knowing itself, its laws, its

conditions, its means, its powers, its hopes? It studies with irregular,

often blind and perverted, efforts; but still it studies--itself. And is

not criticism, when it speaks, much bolder, more glowing and generous,

ampler-spirited, more inspiring, and withal more enquiring and

philosophical? During the whole period we speak of, poetry and

criticism--in nature near akin--with occasional complaints and quarrels,

have flourished amicably together, side by side. Both have been strong,

healthy, and good. Prigs of both kinds--the pert and the pompous--will

keep prating about the shallowness and superficiality of periodical

criticism--deep enough to drown the whole tribe in its very fords. They

call for systems. Why will they not be contented with the system of the

universe?--of which they know not that periodical criticism is a

conspicuous part. Every other year the nations without telescopes see

the rising of some new, bright, particular star. Comets, with tails like

O'Connell, are so common as to lose attraction, and blaze by weekly into

indiscoverable realms. We have constructed an Orrery of Ebony, which we

mean to exhibit at the next great cattle-show, displaying, in their

luminous order, the orbs and orbits of all the heavenly bodies. In the

centre----but this is not the time for such high revelations. We have

now another purpose; and, leaving all those golden urns to yield light

at their leisure, we desire you to take a look along with us at the

choice critics of other days, waked by our potent voice from the

long-gathering dust. In our plainer style, we beg, ladies and gentlemen,

to draw your attention to a series of articles in _Blackwood_, of which

this is Alpha. Omega is intended for a Christmas present to your

great-grandchildren.

Ay, there were giants in those days, as well as in these--also much

dwarfs. But we shall not lose ourselves with you in the darkness of

antiquity--one longish stride backwards of some hundred and fifty years

or so, and then let us leisurely look about us for the Critics. Who

comes here? A grenadier--GLORIOUS JOHN. Him Scott, Hallam, Macaulay,

have pronounced, each in his own peculiar and admirable way, to have

been, in criticism, "a light to his people." Him Samuel Johnson called

"a man whom every English generation must mention with reverence as a

critic and a poet."

"Dryden," says the sage, in a splendid eulogium on his prose writings,

"may be properly considered as the father of English criticism--as the

writer who first taught us to determine, upon principles, the merit of

composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without

rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled,

and never deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of

propriety had neglected to teach them." And he adds wisely--"To judge

rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time, and

examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his

means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at

another." Let us, then, examine some of Dryden's expositions of

principles; and first, those on which he defends Heroic Verse in Rhyme,

as the best language of the tragic drama.

This can be done effectually only by following him wherever he has

treated the subject, and by condensing all his opinions into one

consecutive argument.

His first play, (a comedy,) "The Wild Gallant," was brought on the stage

in February 1662-3, and with indifferent success, though he has told us

that it was more than once the divertisement of Charles II. by his own

command, and a favourite with "the Castlemain." "The Rival Ladies" (a

tragi-comedy) was acted and published in the year following, and the

serious scenes are executed in rhyme. Of its success we know nothing in

particular; but Sir Walter thinks that the flowing verse into which some

part of the dialogue is thrown, with the strong point and antithesis

which all along distinguished his style, especially his argumentative

poetry, tended to redeem the credit of the author of the "Wild Gallant."

Up to this time Dryden, now in his thirty-third year, had not written

much; but in his "Heroic Stanzas on the death of Oliver Cromwell,"

"Astrea Redux, or Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of his Sacred

Majesty," and "A Panegyric on his Coronation," he had not only shown his

measureless superiority to the Sprats and Wallers--poetasters of the

same class after all, though Sprat was always but a small fish, while

Waller was long thought like a whale--but manifested a vigour of thought

and expression that gave assurance of a veritable poet. In those noble

compositions he exults in his conscious power of numerous verse; and,

like an eagle in the middle element, sweeps along majestically on easy

wings. In "The Rival Ladies," the rhymed dialogue is exceedingly

graceful, the blank verse somewhat cumbrous; and, in his dedication to

the Earl of Orrery, he justifies himself "for following the new way; I

mean, of writing scenes _in verse_." It may here, once for all, be

remarked, that in all his disquisitions, by "verse" he usually means

rhyme as opposed to blank verse. "To speak properly," he says, "it is

not so much a new way amongst us, as an old way revived; for many years

before Shakspeare's plays was the tragedy of 'Queen Gorboduc,' in

English verse, written by that famous Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of

Dorset." Dryden here shows how little conversant he then was with the

old English drama. For the tragedy of "Ferrex and Porrex" was first

surreptitiously published under the title of "Gorboduc," who is not

Queen, but King of England; and it is not written in rhyme, but,

excepting the choruses, in blank verse; while Sackville's part of the

play comprehends only the two last acts, of themselves sufficient to

place him in the highest order of Noble Authors. "But supposing," he

continues, "our countrymen had not received this writing till of late,

shall we oppose ourselves to the most polished and civilized nations of

Europe? * * * All the Spanish and Italian tragedies I have yet seen are

writ in rhyme. * * * Shakspeare (who, with some errors not to be avoided

in that age, _had undoubtedly a larger soul of poesy than ever any of

our nation_,) was the first who, to shun the pains of continual rhyming,

invented that kind of writing which we call blank verse, but the French

more properly _prose mesuree_; into which the English tongue so

naturally glides, that in writing prose it is hardly to be avoided."

Here again, it is hardly indeed worth while to remark, is another

mistake; Marlow and several other dramatists having used blank verse

(but how inferior to the divine man's!) before Shakspeare. Coleridge

somewhere quotes a verse or two forming itself in prose composition as a

rarity and a fault; but, though it had better perhaps be avoided, and

though its frequent recurrence would be offensive, yet, when words in

their natural order do form a verse, it might be difficult to give a

good reason why they may not be permitted to do so, more especially if

they are not felt to be a verse insulated among the circumfluent prose.

From the very best prose we could pick out thousands of single verses,

which are to be found only when you seek for them; and not from rich

prose only like Coleridge's own or Jeremy Taylor's, but from the

poorest, like Dr Blair's or Gerald's of Aberdeen. Dryden says he cannot

"but admire how some men should perpetually stumble in a way so

easy"--that is, as blank verse--"into which the English tongue so

naturally glides," and should strive to attain it by inverting the order

of the words, to make the "blanks" sound more heroically--as, for

example, instead of "Sir, I ask your pardon," "Sir, I your pardon ask."

And adds--"I should judge him to have little command of English, when

the necessity of a rhyme should force often upon this rock; though

sometimes it cannot easily be avoided; _and, indeed, this is the only

inconvenience with which rhyme can be charged_." In this lively style

does he pursue his argument in favour of rhyme. For this it is which

makes its adversaries say _rhyme is not natural_! But the fault lies

with the poet who is not master of his art, and either makes a vicious

choice of words, or places them, for rhyme's sake, so unnaturally as no

man would in ordinary speech. But when it is so judiciously ordered that

the first word in the verse seems to beget the second, and that again

the next, till that becomes the last word in the line, which, in the

negligence of prose, would be so; it must then be granted, that rhyme

has all the advantages of prose--_besides its own_.

"Glorious John" (who must have been laughing in his sleeve) then

declares, that the "excellence and dignity of it were never fully known

till Mr Waller taught it;" that it was afterwards "followed in the epic

by Sir John Denham, in his 'Cooper's Hill,' a poem which your lordship

knows, for the majesty of the style, is, and ever will be, the exact

standard of good writing;" and that we are "acknowledging for the

noblest use of it to Sir William D'Avenant, who at once brought it upon

the stage, _and made it perfect in the Siege of Rhodes_!"

Having thus carried things all his own way, he triumphantly declares,

that the advantages which rhyme has over blank verse are so many, that

"it were lost time to name them." And then, with fresh vigour, he sets

himself to name some of the chief--and first, that one illustrated by

Sir Philip Sidney in his "Defence of Poesy," "the help it brings to

memory, which rhyme so knits up by the affinity of sound, that by

remembering the last word in one line, we often call to mind both the

verses." Then, in the quickness of repartees (which in discoursive

scenes fall very often) it has, he says, so particular a grace, and is

so aptly united to them, that the sudden smartness of the answer, and

the exactness of the rhyme, set off the beauty of each other.

But its greatest benefit of all, according to Dryden, is, that it bounds

and circumscribes the fancy. The great easiness of blank verse renders

the poet too luxuriant; he is tempted to say many things which might be

better omitted, or at least shut up in fewer words. But when the

difficulty of artificial rhyming is interposed; where the poet commonly

confines his verse to his couplet, and must continue that verse in such

words that the rhyme shall naturally follow them, not they the rhyme,

the fancy then gives leisure to the judgment to come in; which, seeing

so heavy a task imposed, is ready to cut off all unnecessary expenses.

And this furnishes a complete answer, he maintains, to the ordinary

objection, that rhyme is only an embroidery of verse, to make that which

is ordinary in itself pass for excellent with less examination. For that

which most regulates the fancy, and gives the judgment its busiest

employment, is like to bring forth the richest and clearest thoughts.

The poet examines that most which he produces with the greatest leisure,

and which he knows must pass the severest test of the audience, because

they are aptest to have it ever in the memory. In conclusion, he winds

up skilfully by applying all he has said to "a fit subject"--that is, an

Heroic Play. For neither must the argument alone, but the characters and

persons, be great and noble, otherwise rhymed verse would be out of

place, which, for the reasons assigned, is manifestly suited for the

utterance of lofty sentiments, and for occasions of dignity and

importance. Heroic Plays were then all the rage, and Dryden was

meditating to enter on that career which for many years occupied his

genius, not essentially dramatic, to the exclusion of other kinds of

poetry in which he afterwards excelled all competitors.

Sir Robert Howard's Heroic Play, the "Indian Queen," "part of which was

written by Dryden," and the whole revised and corrected no doubt,

especially in the article of versification, was acted in 1664 with great

applause. "It presented," says Sir Walter, "battles and sacrifices on

the stage, aerial demons singing in the air, and the god of dreams

ascending through a trap, the least of which has often saved a worse

tragedy." Evelyn, in his Memoirs, has recorded, that the scenes were the

richest ever seen in England, or perhaps elsewhere, upon a public stage.

Dryden, by its reception, was encouraged to engraft on it another drama

called the "Indian Emperor"--a continuation of the tale--which had the

most ample success, and, till a revolution in the public taste, retained

possession of the stage. Soon after its publication, Sir Robert Howard,

in a peevish Preface to some plays of his, chose to answer what Dryden

had said in behalf of verse in his Epistle Dedicatory to his "Rival

Ladies," and not only without any mention of his name, but without any

allusion to the "Indian Emperor," while he bestowed the most extravagant

eulogies on the heroic plays of my Lord of Orrery--"in whose verse the

greatness of the majesty seems unsullied with the cares, and the

inimitable fancy descends to us in such easy expressions, that they seem

as if neither had ever been added to the other, but both together

flowing from a height, like birds so high that use no balancing wings,

but only with an easy care preserve a steadiness in motion. But this

particular happiness among those multitudes which that excellent person

is an owner of, does not convince my reason but employ my wonder; yet I

am glad that such verse has been written for the stage, since it has so

happily exceeded those whom we seemed to imitate. But while I give these

arguments against verse, I may seem faulty that I have not only written

ill ones, but written any; but since it was the fashion, I was resolved,

as in all indifferent things, not to appear singular--the danger of the

vanity being greater than the error; and therefore I followed it as a

fashion, though very far off." Sir Robert appears to have been in the

sulks, for some cause not now known, with his great brother-in-law; and

was pleased to punish him by thus publicly pretending ignorance of his

existence as an heroic play-wright. Yet the "Annus Mirabilis" was about

this time dedicated to Sir Robert; and only about a year before, John

had had a helping hand with the "Indian Queen." My Lord of Orrery must

have been a proud man to have his gouty too so fervently kissed by the

jealous rivals. "The muses," Dryden had said in his dedication to that

nobleman, "have seldom employed your thoughts but when some violent fit

of the gout has snatched you from affairs of state; and, like the

priestess of Apollo, you never come to deliver your oracles but

unwillingly and in torments. So we are obliged to your lordship's misery

for our delight. You treat us with the cruel pleasure of a Turkish

triumph, where those who cut and wound their bodies, sing songs of

victory as they pass, and divert others with their own sufferings. Other

men endure their diseases--your lordship only can enjoy them." Dryden,

however, was not disposed to stomach Sir Robert's supercilious silence,

and took a noble revenge in his "Essay on Dramatic Poesy."

This celebrated Essay was first published at the close of 1668; and the

writing of it, Dryden tells us, in a dedication, many years afterwards,

to the Earl of Dorset, "served as an amusement to me in the country,

when the violence of the last plague had driven me from the town.

Seeing, then, our theatres shut up, I was engaged in these kind of

thoughts with the same delight with which men think upon their absent

mistresses." It is in the form of dialogue; under the feigned

appellations of Lisideius, Crites, Eugenius, and Neander, the speakers

are Sir Charles Sedley, Sir Robert Howard, Lord Buckhurst, and Dryden.

Nothing can exceed the grace with which the dialogue is conducted--the

choice of scene is most happy--and the description of it in the highest

degree striking and poetical.

"It was that memorable day, in the first summer of the late war,

when our navy engaged the Dutch; a day wherein the two most mighty

and best appointed fleets which any age had ever seen, disputed the

command of the greater half of the globe, the commerce of nations,

and the riches of the universe. While these vast floating bodies,

on either side, moved against each other in parallel lines, and our

countrymen, under the happy conduct of his Royal Highness, went

breaking, little by little, into the line of the enemies, the noise

of the cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city; so

that all men being alarmed with it, and in a dreadful suspense of

the event which they knew was then deciding, every one went

following the sound as his fancy led him; and leaving the town

almost empty, some took towards the Park, some cross the river,

some down it, all seeking the noise in the depth of silence.

"Amongst the rest, it was the fortune of Eugenius, Crites,

Lisideius, and Neander, to be in company together, three of them

persons whom their wit and quality have made known to all the town,

and whom I have chose to hide under these borrowed names, that they

may not suffer by so ill a narration as I am going to make of their

discourse.

"Taking, then, a barge, which a servant of Lisideius had provided

for them, they made haste to shoot the bridge, and left behind them

that great fall of waters which hindered them from hearing what

they desired; after which, having disengaged themselves from many

vessels which rode at anchor in the Thames, and almost blocked up

the passage towards Greenwich, they ordered the watermen to let

fall their oars more gently; and then every one favouring his own

curiosity with a strict silence, it was not long ere they perceived

the air to break about them like the noise of distant thunder, or

of swallows in a chimney--those little undulations of sound, though

almost vanishing before they reached them, yet still seeming to

retain somewhat of their first horror which they had betwixt the

fleets. After they had attentively listened till such time as the

sound, by little and little, went from them, Eugenius, lifting up

his head, and taking notice of it, was the first who congratulated

to the rest that happy omen of our nation's victory; adding, that

we had but this to desire in confirmation of it, that we might hear

no more of that noise which was now leaving the English coast. When

the rest had concurred in the same opinion, Crites, a person of

sharp judgment, and somewhat too delicate a taste in wit, which the

world hath mistaken in him for ill-nature, said, smiling to us,

that if the concernment of this battle had not been so exceeding

great, he could scarce have wished the victory at the price he knew

he must pay for it, in being subject to the reading and hearing of

so many ill verses as he was sure would be made on that subject;

adding, that no argument could 'scape some of these eternal

rhymers, who watch a battle with more diligence than the ravens and

birds of prey, and the worst of them surest to be first in upon the

quarry; while the better able, either out of modesty writ not at

all, or set that due value upon their poems, as to let them be

often desired and long expected. There are some of those

impertinent people of whom you speak, answered Lisideius, who, to

my knowledge, are already so provided either way, that they can

produce not only a panegyric upon the victory, but, if need be, a

funeral elegy upon the Duke, wherein, after they have crowned his

valour with many laurels, they will at last deplore the odds under

which he fell, concluding that his courage deserved a better

destiny. All the company smiled at the conceit of Lisideius; but

Crites, more eager than before, began to make particular exceptions

against some writers, and said the public magistrates ought to send

betimes to forbid them; and that it concerned the peace and quiet

of all honest people that ill poets should be as well silenced as

seditious preachers."

We may perhaps have occasion, by and by, to notice other important

topics spiritedly and eloquently discussed by these choice spirits in

the barge; meanwhile our business is with the argument, "rhyme _versus_

blank verse," between Crites and Neander. Crites maintains, sometimes in

the very words, Sir Robert's views in the Preface to his plays, in which

he had animadverted on Dryden's dedication to the "Rival Ladies," while

Neander combats them; and it may be observed, that the worthy Baronet is

made to speak forcibly and well--much better indeed, on the whole, than

he does in his own preface. From beginning to end there cannot be

imagined a more fair and gentlemanly dialogue. But first, we cannot

resist giving the very beautiful close.

"Neander was pursuing this discussion so eagerly, that Eugenius had

called to him twice or thrice ere he took notice that the barge

stood still, and that they were at the foot of Somerset stairs,

where they had appointed it to land. The company were all sorry to

separate so soon, though a great part of the evening was already

spent; and stood awhile looking back on the water, upon which the

moonbeams played, and made it appear like floating quicksilver. At

last they went up through a crowd of French people, who were

merrily dancing in the open air, and nothing concerned for the

noise of guns which had alarmed the town that afternoon. Walking

three together to the Piazza, they parted there; Eugenius and

Lisideius to some pleasant appointment they had made, Crites and

Neander to their several lodgings."

But now to the argument. Crites, who is not more long-winded than may be

permitted to a polite proser, at least on the Thames of a summer

evening, somewhat condensed, reasoneth thus.

A play being the imitation of nature, dialogue is there presented as the

effect of sudden thought; and since no man without premeditation speaks

in rhyme, neither ought he to do it on the stage. The fancy may be

elevated to a higher pitch of thought than it is in ordinary discourse,

for men of excellent and quick parts may speak noble things extempore;

but surely not when fettered with rhyme, for what more unnatural than to

present the most free way of speaking in that which is the most

constrained? The Greek tragedians, therefore, wrote in iambics, the

kind of verse nearest to prose, which with us is blank verse.

The champions of rhyme say that the quickness of repartees receives an

ornament from it in argumentative scenes. But do men not only light on a

sudden upon the wit but the rhyme too? Then must they be born poets. If

they do not seem in the dialogue to make rhymes whether they will or no,

it will look rather like the design of two than the answer of one--as if

your actors hold intelligence together, and perform their tricks like

fortune-tellers by confederacy. The hand of art will be too visible.

Neither is it any answer to say that, however you manage it, 'tis still

known to be a play; for a play is still an imitation of nature, and one

can be deceived only with a probability of truth. The mind of man does

naturally tend to truth, and the nearer any thing comes to the imitation

of it, the more readily will the imagination believe.

Rhyme, it is said, circumscribes a quick and luxuriant fancy, which

would extend itself too far on every subject, did not the labour which

is required to well-turned and polished rhyme set bounds to it. But he

who wants judgment to confine his fancy in blank verse, may want it as

much in rhyme; and he who has it will avoid errors in both kinds. Latin

verse was as great a confinement to the imagination as rhyme; yet Ovid's

fancy was not limited by it, and Virgil needed it not to bind his. In

our own language, Ben Jonson confined himself to what ought to be said,

even in the liberty of blank verse; and Corneille, the most judicious of

the French poets, is still varying the same sense a hundred ways, and

dwelling eternally on the same subject, though confined by rhyme.

Such is the substance of Crites' answer to Dryden's Defence of Rhyme;

and Neander, before replying, begs it to be understood that he excludes

all comedy from his defence, and that he does not deny that blank verse

may be also used; but he asserts that, in Serious Plays, where the

subject and characters are great, and the plot unmixed with mirth, which

might allay or divert those concernments which are produced, rhyme is

there as natural, and more effective, than blank verse--for what other

conditions, he asks, are required to make rhyme natural in itself,

besides an election of apt words, and a right disposition of them? The

due choice of your words expresses your sense naturally, and the due

placing them adapts the rhyme to it. If both the words and rhyme be apt,

one verse cannot be made merely for sake of the other, as Crites had

urged; for supposing there be a dependence of sense betwixt the first

line and the second, then, in the natural position of the words, the

latter line must of necessity flow from the former; and if there be no

dependence, yet still the due ordering of words makes the last line as

natural in itself as the other. A good poet, he affirms, never

establishes the first line till he has sought out such a rhyme as may

fit the verse, already prepared to heighten the second. Many times the

close of the sense falls into the middle of the next verse, or further

off; and he may often avail himself of the same advantages in English

which Virgil had in Latin--he may break off in the hemistich, and begin

another line. The not observing these two last things, makes plays which

are writ in verse so tedious; for though most commonly the sense is to

be confined to the couplet, yet nothing that does run in the same

channel can please always. 'Tis like the murmuring of a stream, which,

not varying in the fall, causes at first attention, at last drowsiness.

Variety of cadence is the best rule, the greatest help to the actor and

refreshment of the audience.

If, then, verse may be made natural in itself, how becomes it unnatural

in a play? The stage, you say, is the representation of nature, and no

man in ordinary conversation speaks in rhyme. True; but neither does he

in blank verse. All the difference between them, when they are both

good, is the sound in one which the other wants; and if so, the

sweetness of it, and other advantages, handled in the Preface to the

"Rival Ladies," all stand good.

The dialogue of plays, you say, is presented as the effect of sudden

thought; but that no man speaks _extempore_ in rhyme, which cannot

therefore be proper in dramatic poesy, unless we could suppose all men

born so much more than poets. But it must not be forgotten that the

question regards the nature of a Serious Play, which is indeed the

representation of nature, but nature wrought up to an high pitch. The

plot, the characters, the wit, the passions, the descriptions, are all

exalted above the level of common converse, as high as the imagination

of the poet can carry them, with proportion to verisimility. Tragedy is

wont to image to us the minds and fortunes of noble persons; and to

portray these exactly, heroic rhyme is nearest nature, as being the

noblest kind of modern verse. Verse, it is true, is not the effect of

sudden thought; but this hinders not that sudden thought may be

represented in verse, since these thoughts are such as must be higher

than nature can raise them without premeditation, especially to a

continuance of them, even out of verse; and consequently you cannot

imagine them to have been sudden, either in the poet or the actors. A

play to be like nature is to be set above it; as statues which are

placed on high are made greater than the life, that they may descend to

the sight in their just proportion.

But rhyme, it has been argued, appears most unnatural in repartees or

short replies, when he who answers (it being presumed he knew not what

the other would say, yet) makes up that part of the verse which was left

incomplete, and supplies both the sound and the measure of it. This,

'tis said, looks rather like the confederacy of two than the answer of

one. But suppose the repartee were made in blank verse, is not the

measure as often supplied there as in rhyme?--the latter half of the

hemistich as commonly made up, or a second line subjoined, as a reply to

the former? But suppose it allowed to look like a confederacy. What more

beautiful than a well-contrived dance? You see there the united design

of many persons to make up one figure: after they have separated

themselves in many petty divisions, they rejoin one by one into a group:

the confederacy is plain among them, for chance could never produce any

thing so beautiful, and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your

sight. True, then, the hand of wit appears in repartee, as it must in

all kinds of verse. When, with the quiet and poignant brevity of it,

there mingles the cadency and sweetness of verse--"the soul of the

hearer has nothing more to desire."

Rhyme was said by its defender to be a help to the poet's judgment, by

putting bounds to a wild overflowing fancy. And it was answered by the

admirer of blank verse, that he who wants judgment in the liberty of his

poesy, may as well show the defect of it when he is confined to verse;

for he who has judgment will avoid errors, and he who has it not will

commit them in all kind of writing. Granted that he who has judgment so

profound, strong, and infallible that he needs no help to keep it always

poised and right, will commit no faults in rhyme or out of it. But where

is that judgment to be found? Take it, therefore, as it is found in the

best poets. Judgment is indeed the master workman in a play; but he

requires many subordinate hands, many tools to his assistance, and rhyme

is one of them--it is a rule and line by which he keeps his building

compact and even, which otherwise lawless imagination would raise

loosely and irregularly--it is, in short, a slow and painful but the

surest kind of working. Second thoughts being usually the best, as

receiving the maturest digestion from judgment, and the last and most

mature product of these thoughts being artful and laboured verse, it may

well be inferred that verse is a great help to a luxuriant fancy, and

that is what the argument opposed was to evince.

Sir Robert, though always made to speak well in the Dialogue, was yet

made to speak on the losing side; and in an address to the reader,

prefixed to "The Great Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma," a tragedy

published soon after, having, by way of retaliation, sharply criticised

some of Neander's dogmas about the drama, brought down on himself a cool

but cutting castigation--more severe than was merited by so small an

offence. His retort, in as far as the question of rhyme or blank verse

is concerned, was, however, to say the best of it, very feeble. "I

cannot, therefore, but beg leave of the reader to take a little notice

of the great pains the author of an Essay of Dramatic Poetry has taken

to prove rhyme as natural in a Serious Play, and more effectual, than

blank verse: Thus he states the question but pursues that which he calls

natural in a wrong application; for 'tis not the question, whether rhyme

or not rhyme be best or most natural for a grave or serious subject; but

what is nearest the nature of that which it presents. Now, after all the

endeavours of that ingenious person, a play will still be supposed to be

a composition of several persons speaking _extempore_, and it is as

certain, that good verses are the hardest things that can be imagined to

be so spoken; so that if any will be pleased to impose the rule of

measuring things to be the best by being nearest to nature, it is

proved, by consequence, that which is most remote from the thing

supposed, must needs be most improper; and therefore I may justly say,

that both I and the question were equally mistaken, for I do own, I had

rather read good than either blank verse or prose, and therefore the

author did himself injury, if he like verse so well in plays, to lay

down rules and raise arguments only unanswerable against himself."

We had rather that Dryden should answer this than we; for much of it

eludes our comprehension. In his "Defence of the Essay on Dramatic

Poesy" he replies thus:--"A play will still be supposed to be a

composition of several persons speaking extempore," quoth Sir Robert; "I

must move leave to dissent from his opinion," requoth John; "for if I am

not deceived, a play is supposed to be the work of the poet, imitating

or representing the conversation of several persons; and this I think to

be as clear as he thinks the contrary." There he has the baronet on the

hip; and gives him a throw. He then makes bold to prove this

paradox--that one great reason why prose is not to be used in Serious

Plays is, "because it is too near the nature of converse." Thus, in

"Bartholomew Fair," or the lowest kind of comedy, where he was not to go

out of prose, Ben does yet so raise his matter, in that prose, as to

render it delightful, which he could never have performed had he only

said or done those very things that are daily spoken or practised in the

fair; for then the fair itself would be as full of pleasure to an

enquiring person as the play, which we manifestly see it is not. "But he

hath made an excellent lazar of it. The copy is of price, though the

original be vile." Even in the lowest prose comedy, then, the matter and

the wording must be lifted out of nature--as _we_ should now say,

idealized. In "Catiline" and "Sejanus" again, where the argument is

great, Ben sometimes ascends into rhyme; and had his genius been proper

for rhyme--which Dryden more than once asserts it was not--"it is

probable he would have adorned those subjects with that kind of writing.

Thus prose," he finely says, "though the rightful prince, yet is by

common consent deposed as too weak for the government of Serious Plays;

and he failing, there now start up two competitors, one the nearer in

blood, which is blank verse; the other more fit for the ends of

government, which is rhyme. Blank verse is, indeed, the nearer prose,

but he is blemished with the weakness of his predecessor. Rhyme (for I

will deal clearly) has somewhat of the usurper in him, but he is brave

and generous, and his dominion pleasing."

It was then, "for the reason of delight," that the ancients wrote all

their tragedies in verse--and not in prose; because it was most remote

from conversation. Rhyme had not then been invented. But again he

reminds his adversary, that it seems to have been adopted by the general

consent of poets in all modern languages--and that almost all their

Serious Plays are written in it, which, though it be no demonstration

that therefore they ought to be so, yet at least the practice first, and

the continuation of it, shows that it attained the end, which was to

please. It is thus that Dryden deals with Sir Robert, as if blank verse

in Serious Plays had not a leg to stand on. Yet throughout he preserves

a wonderful air of candour and moderation, as most becoming the

victorious champion of rhyme. As, for example, where he allows that,

whether it be natural or not in plays, is a problem not demonstrable on

either side. But in reference to Sir Robert's acknowledgment, that he

had rather read good verse than prose, he adds triumphantly, "that is

enough for me; for if all the enemies of verse will confess as much, I

shall not need to prove that it is natural. I am satisfied if it cause

delight; for delight is the chief, if not the only end of poesy;

instruction can be admitted but in the second place, for poesy only

instructs as it delights. It is true, that to imitate well is a poet's

work; but to affect the soul, and to excite the passions, and, above

all, to move admiration, (which is the delight of Serious Plays,) a bare

imitation will not serve. The converse, therefore, which a poet is to

imitate, must be heightened with all the arts and ornaments of poesy;

and must be such as, strictly considered, could never be supposed spoken

by any without premeditation."

In his various argument in defence of the use of rhyme on the stage,

Dryden, we have seen, always speaks of its peculiar adaptation to

"Serious Plays," or "Heroic Plays." In an essay thereon, prefixed to the

"Conquest of Grenada," in the pride of success he says, "whether heroic

verse ought to be admitted into Serious Plays, is not now to be

disputed." And he again takes up the obstinate objection to rhyme, which

he had not yet, it seems, battered to death, that it is not so near

conversation as prose, and therefore not so natural. But it is very

clear to all who understand poetry, that Serious Plays ought not to

imitate conversation too nearly. If nothing were to be traced above that

level, the foundation of poetry would be destroyed. Once grant that

thoughts may be exalted, and that images and actions may be raised above

the life, and described in measure without rhyme, and that leads you

insensibly from your principles; admit some latitude, and having

forsaken the imitation of ordinary converse, where are you now? "You are

gone beyond it, and to continue where you are, is to lodge in the open

fields between two inns." You have lost that which you call natural, and

have not acquired the last perfection of art. It was only custom, he

says, which cozened us so long; we thought because Shakspeare and

Fletcher went no further, that there the pillars of poetry were to be

erected; that because they excellently described passion without rhyme,

therefore rhyme was not capable of describing it. _"But time has since

convinced most men of that error._"

What, then, according to Dryden's idea of it, was a serious or heroic

play? An heroic play, he says, ought to be an imitation, in little, of

an heroic poem; and, consequently, Love and Valour ought to be the

subject of it. D'Avenant's astonishing "Siege of Rhodes"--formerly

declared to be the _beau-ideal_ of an heroic play--was after all, it

seems, wanting in fulness of plot, variety of character, and even beauty

of style. Above all, it was not sufficiently great and majestic. He knew

not, honest man, that, in a true heroic play, you ought to draw all

things as far above the ordinary proportion of the stage, as that is

beyond the common words and actions of human life. The play that

imitates mere nature as she walks in this world, may be written in

suitable language; but, as in epic poetry all poets have agreed that we

shall behold the highest pattern of human life, so in the heroic play,

modelled by the rules of an heroic poem, we must be shown only

correspondent characters. Gods and spirits, too, are privileged to

appear on such a stage, and so are drums and trumpets. But Dryden

himself denies that he was the first to introduce representations of

battles on the English stage, Shakspeare having set him the example;

while Jonson, though he shows no battle, lets you hear in "Catiline,"

from behind the scenes, the shouts of fighting armies. Warlike

instruments, and some fighting on the stage, are indeed necessary to

produce the effects of a heroic play. They help the imagination to gain

absolute dominion over the mind of an audience.

Were we to believe Dryden, his heroic plays were dramatic imitations of

such epic poems as the Iliad and the AEneid. And he has the brazen-faced

assurance to say, that the first image he had of Almanzor, in the

"Conquest of Grenada," was from the Achilles of Homer! The next was

from Tasso's Rinaldo, and the third--_risum teneatis amici--from the

Artaban of Monsieur Calpranede_! Unquestionably our English heroic plays

were borrowed from the French--as these were the legitimate offspring of

the dramas of Calpranede and Scuderi. But Dryden's compositions are

unparalleled in any literature. Nature is systematically outraged in one

and all--from beginning to end. Never was such mouthing seen and heard

beneath moon and stars. Through the whole range of rant he rages like a

man inspired. He is the emperor of bombast. Yet these plays contain many

passages of powerful declamation--not a few of high eloquence; some that

in their argumentative amplitude, if they do not reach, border on the

sublime. Nor are their wanting outbreaks of genuine passion among the

utmost extravagances of false sentiment--when momentarily heroes and

heroines warm into men and women, and for a few sentences confabulate

like flesh and blood.

But it is with Dryden as a critic, not as a poet, that we have now to

do; and we have said these few words about his heroic plays only in

connexion with our account of his argument in support of his doctrine

with regard to heroic verse in rhyme. That blank verse is better adapted

than any other for the drama, has been settled by Shakspeare. But though

Dryden has driven his argument too far, till his doctrine, as he

promulgates it, becomes untenable, as little do we doubt that he has

made good this position, that there may be good plays in rhyme. His

heroic plays are bad, not because they are in rhyme, but because they

are absurd; the rhyme is their chief merit; 'tis not possible to dream

what they had been in blank verse. True, that "All for Love" and "Don

Sebastian" are in blank verse, and may be said, after a fashion, to be

fine plays. But they are constructed on rational principles, and in them

he was doing his best to write like Shakspeare. What reason is there for

believing that those plays, in many respects excellent, are the better

for not being in rhyme? None whatever. Rhyme, in our opinion, would have

given them both a superior charm. In his heroic plays, it often carries

us along with absurdities which we know not whether we should call tame

or wild; it gives an air of originality to trivial commonplaces; it

embellishes what is vigorous, and invigorates what is beautiful; and

among events and characters alike unnatural, its music sustains our

flagging interest, and enables us to read on. There can be no doubt,

that in representations on the stage, the same cause must have been most

effective on audiences accustomed to that kind of pleasure, and who

delighted in rhyme, to them at once a necessary and a luxury of life.

"Aurengzebe," the last of his rhyming plays, is, to our mind, little if

at all inferior to "All for Love," or "Don Sebastian;" and we know that

it was most successful on the stage.

Sir Walter says, "that during the space which occurred between the

writing of the 'Conquest of Grenada,' and 'Aurengzebe,' Dryden's

researches into the nature and causes of harmony of versification, led

him to conclude that the Drama ought to be emancipated from the fetters

of rhyme--and that the perusal of Shakspeare, on whom Dryden had now

turned his attention, led him to feel that something further might be

attained in tragedy than the expression of exaggerated sentiment in

smooth verse, and that the scene ought to represent, not a fanciful set

of agents exerting their superhuman faculties in a fairyland of the

poet's own creation, but human characters acting from the direct and

energetic influence of human passions, with whose emotions the audience

might sympathize, because akin to the feelings of their own hearts. When

Dryden had once discovered that fear and pity were more likely to be

excited by other causes than the logic of metaphysical love, or the

dictates of fantastic honour, he must have found that rhyme sounded as

unnatural in the dialogue of characters drawn upon the usual scale of

humanity, as the plate and mail of chivalry would have appeared on the

persons of the actors." All this is finely said; but does it not assume

the point in question? Dryden may have learned at last from the study of

Shakspeare, (in whom, however, he was well read many years before, as

witness his Essay on Dramatic Poesy,) that "something further might be

attained in tragedy than the expression of exaggerated sentiment in

smooth verse." But we do not see the necessity of the inference, "that

rhyme sounded unnatural in the dialogue of characters drawn upon the

usual scale of humanity." Is rhyme self-evidently unnatural in the

expression, in verse, of strong and deep human passion? To that

question, put thus generally, the right answer is--NO. And is it, then,

necessarily unnatural in the drama?

Like all great powers, that of rhyme is a secret past finding out. In

itself a mere barbarous jingle, it yet gives perfection to speech. The

music of versification has endless varieties of measures, and rhyme

lends enchantment to them all. Not an affection, emotion, or passion of

the soul that may not be soothed by its syllablings, enkindled, or

raised to rapture. Pity and terror, joy and grief, love and devotion,

are all alike sensible of its influence; as the sweet similarities keep

echoing through some artful strain, that all the while is thought by

them who listen to come in simplicity from the unpremeditating heart.

Songs, hymns, elegies, epicedia, epithalamia--rhyme rules alike all the

shadowy tribes. The triumphant ode--the penitential psalm--wisdom's

moral lesson--the philosophic strain "that vindicates the ways of God to

man;" such is the range of rhyme, down all the depths of the pathetic,

up all the heights of the sublime. It is yet unlimited. Where shall we

find its bounds? Let us try.

In the Epos, the poet in person is the relater. But he hides his own

personality in that of the Muse he invokes; and offers himself to his

auditors as the Voice only by which she speaks. She, the Muse, is

thought to be throughout a faithful recorder; for she is supposed to

have access to know all; and however marvellous may be the narrations,

they are accepted with undoubting faith. Since she speaks, or rather

sings, and the auditor only listens, the commonest and the most uncommon

events are, in one respect, upon an even footing. For the hearer must

picture them for himself. All are alike acted absent from the senses,

and before the imagination alone. Hence the Epic Poet has an

extraordinary facility afforded him for introducing into his work that

order of representation which is called the marvellous. For it is just

as easy to the hearer to set before his fancy a giant or a pigmy, as a

man; the one-eyed monster Polyphemus, as the beautiful, the graceful,

the swift, the strong, the sublime, the terrible Achilles. It is just as

easy for him to transport himself in fancy to the summit of Olympus, to

the palace of Jupiter, and to the Council or to the Banquet of the Gods,

or to the deep sea-caves where Thetis sits with her companion nymphs in

the hall of her father, the sea-god Nereus--as it is to remove himself

from the festal hall, where the poet is singing to him and to the other

guests, away to the camp of the Greeks, or to the court of Priam, or to

the bower of Andromache. He has no more difficulty to think of Minerva

darting, in the likeness of a hawk, from the snowy crest of Olympus to

the shore of the Hellespont--or to imagine the Thunderer in his

celestial car, lashing on his golden-maned steeds that pace the clouds

and the air, and waft him at the speed almost of a wish from the

unfolding portals of heaven to the summit of Mount Ida--than when he is

called upon, in the midst of some totally different scene, to figure to

himself a mortal hero, with waving crest, glittering in polished brass,

advancing erect in his war-chariot, hurling his lance that misses his

foe; and in return transpierced by that of his antagonist, falling

backwards to the ground in his resounding arms, and groaning out his

soul in the bloody dust. The truth is, that when you are called upon to

see and to hear _within the mind_, you rejoice in the capacities of

seeing and hearing that are thus unfolded in you, infinitely surpassing

similar capacities which you possess in your bodily eye and ear; and

therefore the stronger the demands that are made, the more readily even

do you comply with them; and in this way, in part, we must understand

the character that is impressed upon the _Iliad_, and the temper of mind

in the hearer answering to the character. It is one of infinite liberty.

The mind of the poet seems to be released from all bonds and from all

bounds; and the temper in the hearer is the same. Another character,

proper to Epic poetry, judging after its great model, the _Iliad_--is

_universality_. In the direct narrative, we have gods and men, heaven,

earth, sea, for seats of action--and, for a moment, a glimpse of hell.

Recollect whilst the conflagration of war is raging, how the poet has

found a moment, at the Scaean Gate, for the touching picture of an heroic

father, a noble mother, and a babe in arms, scared at his father's

dazzling and overshadowing helmet, who smiles, puts it from his head

upon the ground, and lifts up the boy, with a prayer to Jove. Sacrifices

to the gods, games, funeral rites, come in the course of the relation;

and because the scene of the poem is distracted with warfare, the great

poet has found, in the Vulcanian sculptures on the shield of Achilles,

place for images of peace--the labours of the husbandman; the mirthful

gathering in of the vintage with dance and song; the hymeneal pomp led

along the streets. And in the similes, what pictures from animal life

and manners! And then our enchantment is heightened by a prevailing

duplication. Throughout, or nearly so, the transactions that are

presented in the natural, are also presented in the supernatural. Thus

we have earthly councils, heavenly councils; warring men, warring gods;

kings of men, kings of gods; mortal husbands and wives, and sons and

daughters; immortal husbands and wives, and sons and daughters. Palaces

in heaven as on earth. The sea, in a manner, triplicates. Terrestrial

steeds--celestial steeds--marine steeds! The natural and supernatural

are united--when Achilles is half of mortal, half of immortal

derivation; when heavenly coursers are yoked in the chariots of men;

when Juno, for a moment, grants voice to the horse of Achilles; and the

horse, whom Achilles has unjustly reproved, answers prophesying the

death of the hero.

Why Homer made the _Iliad_ in hexameters, no man can tell; but having

done so, he thereby constituted for ever the proper metre of Greek--and

Latin--Epic poetry. But what a multitude of subjects, how different from

one another does that, and every other Epic poem, comprehend! Glory to

the hexameter! it suits them all. Now, in every Epic poem, and in few

more than in the _Iliad_, there are many dramatic scenes. But in the

Greek tragic drama, the dialogue is mainly in iambics; for this reason,

that iambics are naturally suited for the language of conversation. Be

it so. Yet here in the Epic, the dialogue is felt to be as natural in

hexameters as the heart of man can desire. Hear Agamemnon and Achilles.

Call to mind that colloquy in Pelides' tent.

Rhyme is unknown in Greek; and it is of rhyme that we are treating,

though you may not see our drift. From Homer, then, pass on to Ariosto

and Tasso. They, too, are Epic poets who have charmed the world. Their

poems may not have such a sweep as the _Iliad_, still their sweep is

great. Rich in rhyme is their language--rich the stanza they delighted

in--_ottava rima_, how rich the name! Is rhyme unnatural from the lips

of their peers and paladins? No--an inspired speech. Is hexameter blank

verse alone fit for the mouths of Greek heroes--eight-line stanzas of

oft-recurring rhymes for the mouths of Italian? Gentle shepherd, tell me

why.

But the "Paradise Lost" is in blank verse. It is. The fallen angels

speak not in rhyme--nor Eve nor Adam. So Milton willed. But Dante's

Purgatory, and Hell, and Heaven, are in rhyme--ay, and in difficult

rhyme, too--_terza rima_. Yet the damned speak it naturally--so do the

blessed. How dreadful from Ugolino, how beautiful from Beatrice!

But the drama--the drama--the drama--is your cry--what say we to the

drama? Listen, and you shall hear--

The Tragic Drama rose at Athens. The splendid and inexhaustible

mythology of gods and heroes, which had supplied the Epic Muse with the

materials of her magnificent relations, furnished the matter of a new

species of poetry. A palace--or a temple--or a cave by the wild

sea-shore, was painted; actors, representing by their attire, and their

majestic demeanour, heroes and heroines of the old departed world; nay,

upon high occasions, celestial gods and goddesses--trod the Stage and

spoke, in measured recitation, before assembled thousands of spectators,

seated in wonder and awe-stricken expectation. The change to the poet in

the manner of communicating with his hearers, alters the character of

the composition. The stage trodden by living feet, the scenery, voices

from human tongues varying with all the changes of emotion, impassioned

gestures, and events no longer spoken of, but transacted in presence,

before the eyes of the audience, are elements full of power, that claim

for tragedy and impose upon it a character of its own. The heart is more

interested, and the imagination less. Persons who accompany the whole

business that is to be done, with speaking--a poem consisting of

incessant dialogue--must disclose, with more precise and profounder

discovery, the minds represented as engaged. Motives are produced and

debated--the sudden turns of thought--the violent fluctuations of the

passions--the gentle variations of the feelings, appear. Time is given

for this internal display--and a species of poetry arises, distinguished

for the fulness and the decision with which the springs of action in the

human bosom are shown as breaking forth into, and determining, human

action. Meanwhile, the means that are thus afforded to the poet of a

more energetic representation, curb in him the flights of imagination.

To represent Neptune as at three strides from his seat on a mountain-top

descending the slope, that with all its woods quakes under the immortal

feet, and as reaching at the fourth step his wave-covered palace--this,

which was easy between the epic poet and his hearer, becomes out of

place and impossible for tragedy, simply because no actors and no stage

can represent a god so stepping and the hills so trembling. We know what

the pathetically sublime literature was which the drama gave to Athens;

how poets of profound and capacious spirits, who had looked into

themselves--and, so enlightened, had observed human life--were able, by

taking for their subjects the strongly portrayed characters and the

stern situations of the old Greek fable, to unite in their lofty and

impressive scenes the truth of nature and the tender interests which

endear our familiar homes, to the grandeur of heroic recollections, to

the awe of religion, and to the pomp, the magnificence, and the beauty

of a gorgeous yet intellectual art.

The Greek Tragic drama is from end to end in verse; and unavoidably,

because 'tis a part of a splendid religious celebration. It is involved

in the solemn pomp of a festival. Therefore it dons its own solemn

festival robes. The musical form is our key to the spirit. And in that

varying musical form there are three degrees--first, the Iambic, nearest

real speech--second, the Lyrical dialogue, farther off--third, the full

Chorus--utmost removal. Pray, do not talk to us of the naturalness of

the language. You never heard the like spoken in all your days. Natural

it was on that stage--and over the roofless theatre the tutelary deities

of Athens leant listening from the sky.

The model, or law, or self of the English drama, is _Shakspeare_. The

character of his drama is, the imaging of nature. A foremost

characteristic of nature is infinite and infinitely various production,

expressing or intimating an indefatigably and inexhaustibly active

spirit. But such a spirit of life, so acting and producing, appears to

us as a fountain, ever freshly flowing from the very hand of God. All

_that_ Shakspeare's drama images; and thus his art appears to us, as

always the highest art appears to us to be, a Divine thing. The musical

forms of his language should answer; and they do. They are; first,

prose; second, loose blank verse; third, tied blank verse; fourth,

rhyme.[1] This unbounded variety of the musical form really seems to

answer to the premised idea; seems really to clothe infinite and

infinitely varied intellectual production. Observe, we beseech you, what

varieties of music! The rhyme--ay, the rhyme--has a dozen at

least;--couplets--interlaced rhyme--single rhyme and

double--anapests--diverse lyrical measures. Observe, too, that speakers

of all orders and characters use all the forms. Hamlet, Othello, Lear,

Coriolanus, Lance, use prose; Leontes and his little boy, Lear,

Coriolanus, and his domestics--to say nothing of the Steward--Macbeth

and his murderlings, use blank verse. Even Falstaff, now and then, a

verse. All, high and low, wise, merry, and sad, _rhyme_. Fools, witches,

fairies--we know not who else--use lyrical measures. Upon the whole, the

_uttermost_--that is, the musical form--answers herein to the

_innermost_ spirit. The spirit, endlessly-varying, creates

endlessly-varying musical form. The total character is accordingly

self-lawed, irrepressible creation.

Blank verse, then, is the predominating musical form of Shakspeare's

comedies, histories, and tragedies. To such a degree as that _all_ the

other forms often slip from one's recollection; and, to speak strictly,

blank verse must be called the rule; while all other forms are diverse

exceptions.

Only one comedy, the homely and English "Merry Wives of Windsor," has,

for its rule, prose. Even here the two true lovers hold their few short

colloquies in blank verse. And when the concluding fairy masque is

toward, blank verse rages. Page and Ford catch it. The merry wife, Mrs

Page, turns poetess to describe and project the superstitions to be

used. In the fairy-scene Sir John himself, Shakspeare's most dogged

observer of prose, is quelled by the spirit of the hour, and RHYMES. You

would think that the soul of Shakspeare has been held chained through

the play, and breaks loose for a moment ere ending it. All this being

said, it may be asked:--"Why is blank verse the ordinary musical form of

Shakspeare's Dramas?" And the obvious answer appears to be:--"Because it

has a _middle removedness_ or _estrangement_ from the ordinary speech of

men:--raising the language into imagination, and yet not out of

sympathy."

Shakspeare and Sophocles agree in truth and strength, in life, passion,

and imagination. They differ inwardly herein--Shakspeare founds in the

power of nature. Under his hand nature brings forth art. The Attic

tragedy begins from art. Its first condition is order, since it is part

of a religious ceremonial. It resorts to nature, to quicken, strengthen,

bear up art. Nature enters upon the Athenian stage, under a previous

recognition of art as dominant.

From all that has been now said--and it is more than we at first

intended to say--this conclusion follows, that there may be English

rhymed dramas. There are French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian ones--and

fine ones too; and nothing in nature forbids that there may be

infinitely finer. That which universally affects off the stage, in all

kinds of poetry, would, in the work of a great master, affect on it. The

delusion of the theatre overcomes far greater difficulties carried with

us thither in the constitution of our habitual life, than the use of

rhyme by the visionary beings in the mimic scene. Beyond all doubt there

might arise in rhyme a most beautiful romantic drama. Unreal infused

into real, turns real at once into poetry. But this is of all degrees.

In the lowest prose of life there is an infusion which we overlook. We

should drop down dead without it. Let the unreal a little predominate;

and now we become sensible to its presence, and now we _call_ the

compound poetry. Let it be an affair of words, and we require verse as

the fitting form. Our stage and language have settled upon blank verse

as the proper metrical form for the proper measure of the unreal upon

the ordinary tragic stage. Rhymed verse has a more marked separation, or

is more distant from prose than blank verse is. Hence, you might suppose

that it will be fitted on the stage for a surcharge of the unreal.

Dryden's heroic tragedies are a proof, as far as one authority goes; and

even they had great power over audiences willing to be charmed, and

accustomed to what we should think a wide and continued departure from

nature. But imagine a romantic play, full of beautiful and tender

imagination, exquisitely written in rhyme, and modelled to some suitable

mould invented by a happy genius. Why, the "Gentle Shepherd," idealizing

modern Scottish pastoral life, was, in its humble way, an achievement;

and, within our memory, critics of the old school looked on it well

pleased when acted by lads and lasses of high degree, delighting to deem

themselves for an evening the simple dwellers in huts around Habbie's

How.

Let us now collect together all that Dryden has, in different moods of

his unsettled and unsteady mind, written about Shakspeare. In the

Dialogue formerly spoken of, comparisons are made between the modern

English and the modern French drama. "If you consider the plots," says

Neander, "our own are fuller of variety, if the writing, ours are more

quick and fuller of spirit." And he denies--like a bold man as he

was--that the English have in aught imitated or borrowed from the

French. He says our plots are weaved in English looms; we endeavour

therein to follow the variety and greatness of characters, which are

derived to us from Shakspeare and Fletcher; the copiousness and

well-knitting of the intrigues we have from Jonson. These two things he

dares affirm of the English drama, that with more variety of plot and

character, it has equal regularity; and that in most of the irregular

plays of Shakspeare and Fletcher, (for Ben Jonson's are for the most

part regular,) there is a more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the

writing, than there is in any of the French. For a pattern of a perfect

play, he is proposing to examine "the Silent Woman" of Jonson, the most

careful and learned observer of the dramatic laws, when he is requested

by Eugenius to give in full Ben's character. He agrees to do so, but

says it will first be necessary to speak somewhat of Shakspeare and

Fletcher; "his rivals in poesy, and one of them, in my opinion, at least

his equal, perhaps his superior." Malone observes, that the caution

observed in this decision, proves the miserable taste of the age; and

Sir Walter, that Jonson, "by dint of learning and arrogance, fairly

bullied the age into receiving his own character of his merits, and that

he was not the only person of the name that has done so." This is coming

it rather too strong; yet to stand well with others there is nothing

like having a good opinion of one's-self, and proclaiming it with the

sound of a trumpet.

"To begin, then, with Shakspeare. He was the man who, of all modern

and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive

soul; all the images of nature were still present to him, and he

drew them, not laboriously but luckily; when he describes any

thing, 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

every where 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,

'Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.'

"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 Shakspeare: and, however others are now

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 Shakspeare far above

him.

"Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to speak, had, with the

advantage of Shakspeare's wit, which was their precedent, great

natural gifts, improved by study. Beaumont, especially, being so

accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson while he lived submitted

all his writings to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his

judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots. What

value he had for him appeared by the verses he writ to him, and

therefore I need speak no further of it. The first play that

brought Fletcher and him into esteem was their 'Philaster;' for

before that they had written two or three very unsuccessfully, as

the like is reported of Ben Jonson before he writ 'Every Man in his

Humour.' Their plots were generally more regular than Shakspeare's,

especially those which were made before Beaumont's death; and they

understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better,

whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartee no poet

before them could paint as they have done. Humour, which Ben Jonson

derived from particular persons, they made it not their business to

describe; they represented all the passions very lively, but, above

all, love. I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived

to the highest perfection--what words have since been taken in are

rather superfluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the most

pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage, two of theirs

being acted through the year for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's;

the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies,

and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with

all men's humours. Shakspeare's language is likewise a little

obsolete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs.

"As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, 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 retouch or alter.

Wit and language, and humour also, in some 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 succeeded 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 an 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.' 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 those

writers he so represents old 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 it was, 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 follow with

the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspeare, I must

acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater

wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father, of our dramatic poets;

Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing. I admire

him, but I love Shakspeare. To conclude of him, as he has given us

the most correct plays, so, in the precepts which he has laid down

in his 'Discoveries,' we have as many and profitable rules for

perfecting the stage as any wherewith the French can furnish us."

Samuel Johnson truly says of the Dialogue, "that it will not be easy to

find, in all the opulence of our language, a treatise so artfully

variegated with successive representations of opposite probabilities, so

enlivened with imagery, and heightened with illustration." But we have

some difficulty in going along with him when he adds--"The account of

Shakspeare may stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism,

exact without minuteness, and lofty without exaggeration. The praise

lavished by Longinus on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon by

Demosthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a

character, so sublime in its comprehension, and so curious in its

limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed; nor

can the editors and admirers of Shakspeare, in all their emulation of

reverence, boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased

his epitome of excellence; of having changed Dryden's gold for baser

metal, of lower value, though of greater bulk." Since this great

critic's day--ay, with all his defects and perversities, Samuel was a

great critic--what a blaze of illumination has been brought to bear on

the genius of Shakspeare! Nevertheless, all honour to Glorious John!

Next comes the famous prologue:--

As when a tree's cut down, the secret root

Lives under ground, and thence new branches shoot;

So, from old Shakspeare's honour'd dust, this day

Springs up the buds, a new reviving play.

Shakspeare, who (taught by none) did first impart

To Fletcher wit, to labouring Jonson art;

He, monarch-like, gave those, his subjects, law,

And is that nature which they paint and draw.

Fletcher reach'd that which on his heights did grow,

While Jonson crept and gather'd all below.

This did his love, and this his mirth digest;

One imitates him most, the other best.

If they have since outwrit all other men,

'Tis with the drops which fell from Shakspeare's pen.

The storm which vanish'd on the neighbouring shore,

Was taught by Shakspeare's 'Tempest' first to roar.

That innocence and beauty which did smile

In Fletcher, grew on this enchanted isle.

But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be--

Within that circle none durst walk but he.

I must confess 'twas bold, nor would you now

That liberty to vulgar wits allow,

Which works by magic supernatural things;

But Shakspeare's power is sacred as a king's.

Those legends from old priesthood were received,

And he them writ as people them believed."

Strange that he who could write so nobly about Shakspeare, could commit

such an outrage on his divine genius as the play to which this is the

prologue--"The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island," a Comedy. It

was--Dryden tells us, and we must believe him--"originally Shakspeare's;

a poet for whom Sir William D'Avenant had particularly a high

veneration, and whom he first taught me to admire." So the two together,

to show their joint and judicious admiration, set about altering "The

Tempest." Fletcher had imitated it all in vain in his "Sea Voyage;" "the

storm, the desert island, and the woman who had never seen a man, are

all implicit testimonies of it." Few more delightful poets than

Fletcher; but in an evil hour, and deserted by his good genius, did he

then hoist his sail. But now cover your face with your hands--and then

shut your ears. "_Sir John Suckling, a professed admirer of our author,

has followed his footsteps_ in his '_Goblins_;' his Regmella being an

open imitation of Shakspeare's Miranda, and his spirits, _though

counterfeit_, yet are copied from Ariel." But Sir William D'Avenant, "as

he was a man of quick and piercing imagination, soon found that somewhat

might be added to the design of Shakspeare, of which neither Fletcher

nor Suckling had ever thought;" "and this excellent contrivance," he was

pleased, says Dryden with looks of liveliest gratitude, "to communicate

to me, and to desire my assistance in it." You probably knew what was

the "excellent contrivance" by which "the last hand"--the hand after

Suckling's--"was put to it;" so that thenceforth the "Tempest" was to be

let alone in its glory. "The counterpart to Shakspeare's plot, namely,

that of a man who had never seen a woman, that by this means these two

characters of innocence and love might the more illustrate and commend

each other. _I confess that from the very first moment it so pleased me,

that I never writ_ any thing with more delight." Sir Walter says it

seems to have been undertaken chiefly with a view to give room for

scenical decoration, and that Dryden's share in the alteration was

probably little more than the care of adapting it to the stage. But

Dryden's own words contradict that supposition, and he further tells us

that his writings received D'Avenant's daily amendments; "and that is

the reason why it is not so faulty as the rest, which I have done

without the help and correction of so judicious a friend." They wrote

together at the same desk. And Dryden found D'Avenant of "so quick a

fancy, that nothing was proposed to him on which he would not suddenly

produce a thought, extremely pleasant and surprising. * * His

imagination was such as could not easily enter into any other man." It

had been easy enough, he adds, to have arrogated more to himself than

was his due in the writing of the play; but "besides the worthlessness

of the action, which deterred me from it, (there being nothing so base

as to rob the dead of his reputation,) I am satisfied I could never have

received so much honour in being thought the author of any poem, how

excellent soever--as I shall from the joining of my imperfections with

the merit and name of Shakspeare and Sir William D'Avenant." From all

this, and more of the same sort, 'tis plain that Dryden's share in the

composition was at least equal to--we should say, much greater

than--D'Avenant's.

You must not meddle with Miranda--for she is all our own. Yet we

cheerfully introduce you to her sister, Dorinda, and leave you all alone

by yourselves for an hour's flirtation. Hush! she is describing the

ship!

"This floating Ram did bear his horns above,

And tied with ribands, ruffling in the wind:

Sometimes he nodded down his head awhile,

And then the waves did heave him to the moon,

He climbing to the top of all the billows;

And then again he curtsied down so low

I could not see him. Till at last, all sidelong

With a great crack, his belly burst in pieces."

We had but once before handled this performance--some threescore and ten

years ago, when a man of middle age. We dimly remember being amused in

our astonishment. Now that we are beginning to get a little old, we are,

perhaps, growing too fastidious; yet surely it is something very

shocking. Portsmouth Poll and Plymouth Sall--sisters originating at

Yarmouth--when brought into comparison with Miranda and Dorinda of the

enchanted island, to our imagination seem idealized into Vestal virgins.

True, they were famous--when not half seas over--for keeping a quiet

tongue in their mouths: with them mum was the word. Only when drunk as

blazes, poor things, did they, by word or gesture, offend modesty's most

sacred laws. But D'Avenant's and Dryden's daughters are such leering and

lascivious drabs, so dreadfully addicted to innuendoes and _doubles

entendres_ of the most alarming character, that, high as is our opinion

of the intrepidity of British seamen, we should not fear to back the two

at odds against a full-manned jolly-boat from a frigate in the offing

sent in to fill her water-casks. Caliban himself--and what a Caliban he

has become!--fights shy of the plenireps. Why--if it must be so--we give

our arm to his sister Sycorax, a "fearsome dear" no doubt, but what

better could one expect in a misbegotten monster? Oh, the confounding

mysteries of self-degrading genius!

In the preface to "An Evening's Love; or, the Mock Astrologer," we again

meet with some criticism on Shakspeare. We learn from it that Dryden had

formed the ambitious design of writing on the difference betwixt the

plays of his own age and those of his predecessors on the English stage,

in order to show in what parts of "dramatic poesy we were excelled by

Ben Jonson--I mean, humour and contrivance of comedy; and _in what we

may justly claim precedence of Shakspeare and Fletcher_! namely, in

heroic plays." He had, moreover, proposed to treat "of the improvement

of our language since Fletcher's and Jonson's days, and, consequently,

of our refining the courtship, raillery, and conversation of plays." In

great attempts 'tis glorious even to fail; and assuredly had Dryden

essayed all this, his failure would have been complete. "I would," said

he, with his usual ignorance of his own and his age's worst sins and

defects, "have the characters well chosen, and kept distant from

interfering with each other, which is more than Fletcher _or Shakspeare

did_! * * I think there is no folly so great in any part of our age, as

the superfluity and waste of wit was in some of our predecessors,

particularly Fletcher _and Shakspeare_." Refining the courtship,

raillery, and conversation of plays! We cannot, perhaps, truly say very

much in praise of those qualities in Ben's comedies, admirable as they

are, and superior, in all respects, a thousand times over to the best of

Dryden's and of his contemporaries'; but wilfully blind indeed, or

worse, must the man who could thus write have been to the matchless

grace, vivacity, delicacy, prodigality, and poetry of Shakspeare's

comedy, which as far transcends all the happiest creations of other

men's wit, as the pervading pathos and sublimity of his tragedy all

their happiest inspirations from the holy fountain of ennobling or

pitying tears.

In its day, the following Epilogue caused a great hubbub--

"They, who have best succeeded on the stage,

Have still conform'd their genius to their age.

Thus Jonson did mechanic humours show,

When men were dull, and conversation low.

Then comedy was faultless, but 'twas coarse:

Cobb's tankard was a jest, and Otter's horse.

And, as their comedy, their love was mean;

Except by chance, in some one labour'd scene,

Which must atone for an ill-written play.

They rose, but at their height could seldom stay:

Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped;

And they have kept it since by being dead.

But, were they now to write, when critics weigh

Each line, and every word, throughout a play,

None of them, no not Jonson in his height,

Could pass without allowing grains for weight.

Think it not envy that these truths are told--

Our poet's not malicious, though he's bold.

'Tis not to brand them that their faults are shown,

But by their errors, to excuse his own.

If love and honour now are higher raised,

'Tis not the poet, but the age is praised.

Wit's now arrived to a more high degree;

Our native language more refined and free;

Our ladies and our men now speak more wit,

In conversation, than those poets writ.

Then, one of these is, consequently, true;

That what this poet writes comes short of you,

And imitates you ill (which most he fears,)

Or else his writing is not worse than theirs.

Yet, though you judge (as sure the critics will)

That some before him writ with greater skill,

In this one praise he has their fame surpast,

To please an age more gallant than the last."

Dryden was called over the coals for this sacrilegious Epilogue by

persons ill qualified for censors--among others, by my Lord

Rochester--and was instantly ready with his defence--an "Essay on the

Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age." In it he repeats the senseless

assertion, "that the language, wit, and conversation of our age are

improved and refined above the last;" and he takes care to include among

the writers of the last age, _Shakspeare_, Fletcher, and Jonson. "In

what," he asks "does the refinement of a language principally consist?"

"Either in rejecting such old words or phrases which are ill

sounding or improper, or in admitting new, which are more proper,

more sounding, and more luxuriant. * * * Malice and partiality set

apart, let any man who understands English, read diligently the

works of _Shakspeare_ and Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he

will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some

notorious flaw in sense; yet these men are reverenced, when we are

not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times their

expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny. But the times were

ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was then, if not in its

infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigour and maturity.

Witness the lameness of their plots, many of which, especially

those they writ first, (for even that age refined itself in some

measure,) were made up of some ridiculous, incoherent story, which

in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I

need not name 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre,' _nor the historical plays

of Shakspeare_, besides many of the rest, as the 'Winter's Tale,'

'Love's Labour Lost,' 'Measure for Measure,' which were either

founded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the

comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your

concernment."

In all this this rash and wretched folly, Dryden shows his ignorance of

the order in which Shakspeare wrote his plays; and Sir Walter kindly

says, that there will be charity in believing that he was not intimately

acquainted with those he so summarily and unjustly condemns. But

unluckily this nonsense was written during the very time he was said by

Sir Walter to have been "engaged in a closer and more critical

examination of the ancient English poets than he had before bestowed

upon them;" and, from the perusal of Shakspeare, learning that the sole

staple of the drama was "human characters acting from the direct and

energetic influence of human passions." Yet Sir Walter was right; only

Dryden's opinions and judgments kept fluctuating all his life long, too

much obedient to the gusts of whim and caprice, or oftener still to the

irregular influences of an impatient spirit, that could not brook any

opposition from any quarter to its domineering self-will. For in not

many months after, in the Prologue to "Aurengzebe," are these noble

lines--

"But spite of all his pride, a secret shame

Invades his heart at Shakspeare's sacred name;

Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage,

He, in a just despair, would quit the stage,

And to an age less polish'd, more unskill'd,

Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield."

Less polished--more unskilled! Here, too, he is possessed with the same

foolish fancy as when he said, in the "Defence of the Epilogue,"--"But

these absurdities which those poets committed, may more properly be

called the age's fault than theirs. For besides the want of education

and learning, (which was their particular unhappiness,) they wanted the

benefit of converse. Their audiences were no better, and therefore were

satisfied with what they brought. Those who call theirs the golden age

of poetry, have only this reason for it, that they were then content

with acorns before they knew the use of bread!" Then, after a somewhat

hasty and unconvincing examination of certain incorrectnesses and

meannesses of expression even in Ben Jonson, learned as he was, he asks,

"What correctness after this can be expected from _Shakspeare_ or

Fletcher, who wanted that learning and care which Jonson had? I will

therefore spare myself the trouble of enquiring into their faults, who,

had they lived now, had doubtless written more correctly." Since

Shakspeare's days, too, the English language had been refined, he says,

by receiving new words and phrases, and becoming the richer for them, as

it would be "by importation of bullion." It is admitted, however, that

Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Jonson did indeed beautify our tongue by their

_curiosa felicitas_ in the use of old words, to which it often gave a

rare meaning; but in that they were followed by "Sir John Suckling and

Mr Waller, _who refined upon them_!" But the greatest improvement and

refinement of all, "in this age," is said to have been in wit. Pure wit,

and without alloy, was the wit of the court of Charles the Second, and

of the Clubs. It shines like gold, yea much fine gold, in the works of

all the master play-wrights. Whereas, "Shakspeare, who many times has

written better than any poet in any language, is yet so far from writing

wit always, or expressing that wit according to the dignity of the

subject, that he writes, in many places, below the dullest writers of

ours, or any preceding age. Never did any author precipitate himself

from such height of thought to so low expressions, as he often does. He

is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost every where two faces; and

you have scarce begun to admire the one ere you despise the other." That

the wit "of this age" is much more courtly, may, Dryden thinks, be

easily proved by viewing the characters of gentlemen which were written

in the last. For example--who do you think? Why, MERCUTIO. "Shakspeare

showed the best of his skill in Mercutio; and he said himself that he

was forced to kill him in the third act, to prevent being killed by him.

But for my part I cannot find he was so dangerous a person: I see

nothing in him but what was so exceedingly harmless, that he might have

lived to the end of the play and died in his bed, without offence to any

man." Wit Shakspeare had in common with his ingenious contemporaries;

but theirs, to speak out plainly, "was not that of gentlemen; there was

ever somewhat that was ill-natured and clownish in it, and which

confessed the conversation of the authors." "In this age," Dryden

declares the last and greatest advantage of writing proceeds from

conversation. "In that age" there was "less gallantry;" and "neither did

they (Shakspeare, Ben, and the rest) keep the best company of theirs."

But let the illustrious time-server speak at large.

"Now, if they ask me, whence it is that our conversation is so much

refined? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the

court; and in it, particularly to the king, whose example gives a

law to it. His own misfortunes, and the nation's, afforded him an

opportunity, which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes--I mean

of travelling, and being conversant in the most polished courts of

Europe; and, thereby, of cultivating a spirit which was formed by

nature to receive the impressions of a gallant and generous

education. At his return, he found a nation lost as much in

barbarism as in rebellion; and, as the excellency of his nature

forgave the one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the

other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern, first awakened

the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural

reservedness; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation,

and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus,

insensibly, our way of living became more free; and the fire of the

English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained,

melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force by

mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of our

neighbours. This being granted to be true, it would be a wonder if

the poets, whose work is imitation, should be the only persons in

three kingdoms who should not receive advantage by it; or, if they

should not more easily imitate the wit and conversation of the

present age than of the past.

"Let us, therefore, admire the beauties and the heights of

Shakspeare, without falling after him into a carelessness, and, as

I may call it, a lethargy of thought, for whole scenes together."

Shakspeare lethargic--comatose!

Sir Walter's admiration of "glorious John" was so much part of his very

nature, that he says, "it is a bold, perhaps presumptuous, task to

attempt to separate the true from the false criticism in the foregoing

essay: for who is qualified to be umpire betwixt Shakspeare and Dryden?"

None that ever breathed, better than his own great and good self. Yet

surely he was wrong in saying, that when Shakspeare wrote for the stage,

"wit was not required." Required or not, there it was in perfection, of

which Dryden, with all his endowments, had no idea. The question is not

as he puts it, were those "audiences incapable of receiving the delights

which a cultivated mind derives from the gradual development of a story,

the just dependence of its parts upon each other, the minute beauties of

language, and the absence of every thing incongruous or indecorous?"

They may have been so, though we do not believe they were. But the

question is, are Shakspeare's Plays, beyond all that ever were written,

distinguished for those very excellences, and free from almost all those

very defects? That they are, few if any will now dare to deny. While

the best of Dryden's own Plays, and still more those of his forgotten

contemporaries, infinitely inferior to Shakspeare's in all those very

excellences, are choke-full of all manner of faults and flagrant sins

against decorum and congruity, in the eyes of mere taste; and with a few

exceptions, according to no rules can be rated high as works of art. The

truth of all this manifestly forced itself upon Sir Walter's seldom

erring judgment, as he proceeded in the composition of the elaborate

note, in which he would fain have justified Dryden even at the expense

of Shakspeare. And, as it now stands, though beautifully written, it

swarms with _non-sequiturs_, and perplexing half-truths.

In the Preface to "Troilus and Cressida," (1679,) Dryden again--and for

the last time--descants, in the same unsatisfactory strain, on

Shakspeare. AEschylus, he tells us, was held in the same veneration by

the Athenians of after ages as Shakspeare by his countrymen. But in the

age of that poet, the Greek tongue had arrived at its full perfection,

and they had among them an exact standard of writing and speaking;

whereas the English language, even in his (Dryden's) own age, was

wanting in the very foundation of certainty, "a perfect grammar:" so,

what must it have been in Shakspeare's time?

"The tongue in general is so much refined since then, that many of

his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of

those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse;

and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions,

that it is as affected as it is obscure. It is true that, in his

latter plays, he had worn off somewhat of the rust; but the tragedy

which I have undertaken to correct was in all probability one of

his first endeavours on the stage.... So lamely is it left to us,

that it is not divided into acts. For the play itself, the author

seems to have begun it with some fire. The characters of Pandarus

and Thersites are promising enough; but, as if he grew weary of his

task, after an entrance or two, he lets them fall; and the latter

part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of drums and

trumpets, excursions, and alarms. The persons who give name to the

tragedy are left alive. Cressida is false, and is not punished.

Yet, after all, because the play was Shakspeare's, and that there

appeared in some places of it the admirable genius of the author, I

undertook to remove that heap of rubbish, under which many

excellent thoughts lay wholly buried. Accordingly, I have

remodelled the plot, threw out many unnecessary persons, improved

those which were begun and left unfinished, as Hector, Troilus,

Pandarus, and Thersites, and added that of Andromache. After that,

I made, with no small trouble, an order and connexion of all the

scenes, removing them from the place where they were inartificially

set; and though it was impossible to keep them all unbroken,

because the scene must be sometimes in the city and sometimes in

the court, yet I have so ordered them, that there is a coherence of

them with one another, and a dependence on the main design: no

leaping from Troy to the Grecian tents, and thence back again, in

the same act, but a due proportion of time allowed for every

motion. I need not say that I have refined the language, which

before was obsolete; but I am willing to acknowledge, that as I

have often drawn his English nearer to our times, so I have

sometimes conformed my own to his; and consequently, the language

is not altogether so pure as it is significant."

John Dryden and Samuel Johnson resemble one another very strongly in

their treatment of Shakspeare. Both of them seem at times to have

perfectly understood and felt his greatness, and both of them have

indited glorious things in its exaltation. Their praise is the utterance

of worship. You might believe them on their knees before an idol. But

theirs is a strange kind of reverence. It alternates with derision, and

is compatible with contempt. The god sinks into the man and the man is a

barbarian, babbling uncouth speech. "Coarse," "ungrammatical,"

"obscure," "affected," "unintelligible," "rusty!" The words distilled

from the lips of Cordelia, Desdemona, Juliet, Imogen!

Dryden informs us, that ages after the death of AEschylus, the Athenians

ordained an equal reward to the poets who could alter his plays to be

acted in the theatre, with those whose productions were wholly new, and

of their own. But the case, he laments, is not the same in England,

though the difficulties are greater. AEschylus wrote good Greek,

Shakspeare bad English; and to make it intelligible to a refined

audience was a hard job. Sorely "pestered with figurative expressions"

must have been the transmogrifier; and he had to look for wages, not to

a nation's gratitude, but a manager's greed. It was, indeed, a desperate

expedient for raising the funds. In his judgment the Play itself was but

a poor affair--an attempt by an apprentice, that, to be producible,

required the shaping of a master's hand. "Lamely left" it had to be set

on its feet ere it could tread the stage. With what _nonchalance_ does

he throw out "unnecessary persons," and improve "unfinished!" Hector,

Troilus, Pandarus, and Thersites, skilless Shakspeare had but

begun--artful Dryden made an end of them; Cressida, who was false as she

was fair, yet left alive to deceive more men, became a paragon of truth,

chastity, and suicide; and by an amazing stretch of invention, far

beyond the Swan's, was added Andromache. Dryden proudly announces that

"the scenes of Pandarus and Cressida, of Troilus and Pandarus, of

Andromache with Hector and the Trojans, in the second act, are wholly

new; together with that of Nestor and Ulysses with Thersites, and that

of Thersites with Ajax and Achilles. I will not weary my reader with the

scenes which are added of Pandarus and the lovers in the third, and

those of Thersites, which are wholly altered; but I cannot omit the last

scene in it, which is almost half the act, betwixt Troilus and Hector. I

have been so tedious in three acts, that I shall contract myself in the

two last. The beginning scenes of the fourth act are either added, or

changed wholly by me; the middle of it is Shakspeare's, altered and

mingled with my own; three or four of the last scenes are altogether

new; and the whole fifth act, both the plot and the writing, are my own

additions." O heavens! why was it not all "my own?"

No human being can have a right to use another in such a way as this.

Shakspeare's plays were then, and are now, as much his own property as

the property of the public--or rather, the public holds them in trust.

Dryden was a delinquent towards the dead. His crime was sacrilege. In

reading _his_ "Troilus and Cressida," you ever and anon fear you have

lost your senses. Bits of veritable Shakspearean gold, burnished

star-bright, embossed in pewter! Diamonds set in dirt! Sentences

illuminated with words of power, suddenly rising and sinking, through a

flare of fustian! Here Apollo's lute--there hurdy-gurdy.

"For the play itself," said Dryden insolently, "the author seems to have

begun it with some fire;" and here it is continued with much smoke. "The

characters of Pandarus and Thersites are promising enough;" here we

shudder at their performance. Such a monstrous Pandarus would have been

blackballed at the Pimp. Thersites--Shakspeare's Thersites--for Homer's

was another Thersites quite--finely called by Coleridge, "the Caliban of

demagogic life"--loses all individuality, and is but a brutal buffoon

grossly caricatured. The scene between Ulysses and Achilles, with its

wondrous wisdomful speech, is omitted! of itself, worth all the poetry

written between the Restoration and the Revolution.

Spirit of Glorious John! forgive, we beseech thee, truth-telling

Christopher--but angels and ministers of grace defend us! WHO ART THOU?

Shakspeare's ghost.

PROLOGUE, SPOKEN BY MR BETTERTON, REPRESENTING THE GHOST OF SHAKSPEARE.

"See, my loved Britons, see your Shakspeare rise,

An awful ghost confess'd to human eyes!

Unnamed, methinks, distinguish'd I had been

From other shades, by this eternal green,

About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive,

And, with a touch, their wither'd bays revive.

Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age,

I found not, but created first the stage;

And if I drain'd no Greek or Latin store,

'Twas that my own abundance gave me more.

On foreign trade I needed not rely,

Like fruitful Britain, rich without supply.

In this my rough-drawn play you shall behold

Some master-strokes, so manly and so bold,

That he who meant to alter, found 'em such,

He shook, and thought it sacrilege to touch.

Now, where are the successors to my name?

What bring they to fill out a poet's fame?

Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age;

Scarce living to be christen'd on the stage!

For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense,

That tolls the knell for their departed sense.

Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace,

Might meet with reverence in its proper place.

The fulsome clench that nauseates the town,

Would from a judge or alderman go down--

Such virtue is there in a robe and gown!

And that insipid stuff which here you hate,

Might somewhere else be call'd a grave debate:

Dulness is decent in the church and state.

But I forget that still 'tis understood

Bad plays are best decried by showing good.

Sit silent, then, that my pleased soul may see

A judging audience once, and worthy me.

My faithful scene from true records shall tell,

How Trojan valour did the Greek excel;

Your great forefathers shall their fame regain,

And Homer's angry ghost repine in vain."

The best hand of any man that ever lived, at prologue and epilogue, was

Dryden. And here he showed himself to be the boldest too; and above fear

of ghosts. For though it was but a make-believe, it must have required

courage in Shakspeare's murderer to look on its mealy face. The ghost

speaks well--nobly--for six lines--though more like Dryden's than

Shakspeare's. _That_ was not his style when alive. The seventh line

would have choked him, had he been a mere light-and-shadow ghost. But in

death never would he thus have given the lie to his life. "Untaught," he

might have truly said--for he had no master. "Unpractised!" Nay,

"Troilus and Cressida" sprang from a brain that had teemed with many a

birth. "A barbarous age!" Read--"Great Eliza's golden time," when the

sun of England's genius was at meridian. "Sacrilege to touch!" Prologue

had not read Preface. Little did the "injured ghost" suspect the

spectacle that was to ensue. Much of what follows is, in worse degree,

Drydenish all over. Sweetest Shakspeare scoffed not so!

Suppose Shakspeare's ghost to have slipped quietly into the manager's

box to witness the performance. Poets after death do not lose all memory

of their own earthly visions. Thoughts of the fairest are with them in

Paradise. At first sight of Dorinda he would have bolted.

Dryden says, that "he knew not to distinguish the blown puffy style from

true sublimity." He would then have done so, and no mistake. "The fury

of his fancy often transported him beyond the bounds of judgment, either

in coining of new words and phrases, or racking words which were in use,

into the violence of catachresis." His ears would have been jarred by

Prospero's "polite conversation," so unlike what he, who had not "kept

the best society," was confined to "in a barbarous age." Yet Dryden

confessed that he "understood the nature of the passions," and "made his

characters distinct;" so that "his failings were not so much in the

passions themselves, as in his manner of expression." Unfortunately, his

vocabulary was neither choice nor extensive, and he "often obscured his

meaning by his words, and sometimes made it unintelligible."

"To speak justly of this whole matter: it is neither height of

thought that is discommended, nor pathetic vehemence, nor any

nobleness of expression in its proper place; but it is a false

measure of all these, something which is like them, and is not

them; it is the Bristol stone, which appears like a diamond; it is

an extravagant thought instead of a sublime one; it is a roaring

madness instead of vehemence; a sound of words instead of sense. If

Shakspeare were stripped of all the bombasts in his passions, and

dressed in the most vulgar words, we should find the beauties of

his thoughts remaining; if his embroideries were burnt down, there

would still be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot, but I fear

(at least let me fear it for myself) that we, who ape his sounding

words, have nothing of his thought, but are all outside; there is

not so much as dwarf within our giant's clothes. Therefore, let not

Shakspeare suffer for our sakes; it is our fault, who succeed him

in an age that is more refined, if we imitate him so ill that we

copy his failings only, and make a virtue of that in our writings

which in his was an imperfection.

"For what remains, the excellency of that poet was, as I have said,

in the more manly passions; Fletcher's in the softer. Shakspeare

writ better betwixt man and man; Fletcher betwixt man and woman:

consequently the one described friendship better--the other love.

Yet Shakspeare taught Fletcher to write love; and Juliet and

Desdemona are originals. It is true, the scholar had the softer

soul, but the master had the kinder. Friendship is both a virtue

and a passion essentially; love is passion only in its nature, and

is not a virtue but by accident: good-nature makes friendship, but

effeminacy love. Shakspeare had an universal mind, which

comprehended all characters and passions; Fletcher, a more confined

and limited: for though he treated love in perfection, yet honour,

ambition, revenge, and generally all the stronger passions, he

either touched not, or not masterly. To conclude all he was a limb

of Shakspeare."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The prose even is, in its music, rude in ordinary folks--or

_artful_, as in Hamlet's admiration of the world.]

THE TOWER OF LONDON.--A POEM.

BY THOMAS ROSCOE.

PART I.

Proud Julian towers! ye whose grey turrets rise

In hoary grandeur, mingling with the skies--

Whose name--thought--image--every spot are rife

With startling legends--themes of death in life!

Recall the voices of wrong'd spirits fled--

Echoes of life that long survived their dead;

And let them tell the history of thy crimes,

The present teach, and warn all future times.

Time's veil withdrawn, what tragedies of woe

Loom in the distance, fill the ghastly show!

Oh, tell what hearts, torn from light's cheering ray,

Within thy death-shades bled their lives away;

What anxious hopes, strifes, agonies, and fears,

In thy dread walls have linger'd years on years--

Still mock'd the patient prisoner as he pray'd

That death would shroud his woes--too long delay'd!

Could the great Norman, with prophetic eye,

Have scann'd the vista of futurity,

And seen the cell-worn phantoms, one by one,

Rise and descend--the father to the son--

Whose purest blood, by treachery and guilt,

On thy polluted scaffolds has been spilt,

Methinks Ambition, with his subtle art,

Had fired his hero to a nobler part.

Yes! curst Ambition--spoiler of mankind--

That with thy trophies lur'st the dazzled mind,

That 'neath the gorgeous veil thy conquests weave,

Would'st hide thy form, and Reason's eye deceive--

By what strange spells still dost thou rule the mind

That madly worships thee, or, tamely blind,

Forbears to fathom thoughts, that at thy name

Should kindle horror, and o'erwhelm with shame.

Alas, that thus the human heart should pay

Too willing homage to thy bloody sway;

Should stoop submissive to a fiend sublime

And venerate e'en the majesty of crime!

How soon to those that tempt thee art thou near--

To prompt, direct, and steel the heart to fear!

Oh, not to such the voice of peace shall speak,

Nor placid zephyr fan their fever'd cheek;

Sleep ne'er shall seal their hot and blood-stain'd eye,

But conscious visions ever haunt them nigh;

Grandeur to them a faded flower shall be,

Wealth but a thorn, and power a fruitless tree;

And, as they near the tomb, with panting breast,

Shrink from the dread unknown, yet hope no rest!

Stern towers of strength! once bulwarks of the land,

When feudal power bore sway with sovereign hand--

Frown ye no more--the glory of the scene--

Sad, silent witness of what crimes have been!

Accurst the day when first our Norman foe

Taught Albion's high-born Saxon sons to bow

'Neath victor-pride and insolence--learn to feel

What earth's dark woes--when abject vassals kneel;

And worse the hour when his remorseless heir,

Alike uncheck'd by heaven, or earthly prayer,

With lusts ignoble, fed by martial might,

Usurp'd man's fair domains and native right.

Ye generous spirits that protect the brave,

And watch the seaman o'er the crested wave,

Cast round the fearless soul your glorious spell,

That fired a Hampden and inspired a Tell--

Why left ye Wallace, greatest of the free,

His hills' proud champion--heart of liberty--

Alone to cope with tyranny and hate,

To sink at last in ignominious fate?

Sad Scotia wept, and still on valour's shrine

Our glistening tears, like pearly dewdrops, shine,

To tell the world how Albyn's hero bled,

And treasure still the memory of her dead.

Whose prison annals speak of thrilling deeds,

How truth is tortured and how genius bleeds?

Whose eye dare trace them down the tragic stream--

Mark what fresh phantoms in the distance gleam,

As dark and darker o'er th' ensanguined page

The ruthless deed pollutes each later age?

See where the rose of Bolingbroke's rich bloom

Fades on the bed of martyr'd Richard's tomb!

Look where the spectre babes, still smiling fair,

Spring from the couch of death to realms of air!

Oh, thought accurst! that uncle, guardian, foe,

Should join in one to strike the murderous blow.

Ask we for tears from pity's sacred fount?

"Forbear!" cries vengeance--"that is my account."

There is a power--an eye whose light can span

The dark-laid schemes of the vain tyrant, man.

Lo! where it pierces through the shades of night,

And all its hideous secrets start to light--

In vain earth's puny conquerors heaven defy--

Their kingdom's dust, and but one throne on high.

See heaven's applause support the virtuous wrong'd,

And 'midst his state the despot's fears prolong'd.

Thou tyrant, yes! the declaration God

Himself hath utter'd--"I'm the avenging rod!"

Words wing'd with fate and fire! oh, not in vain

Ye cleft the air, and swept Gomorrah's plain,

When, dark idolatry unmask'd, she stood

The mark of heaven--a fiery solitude!

And still ye sped--still mark'd the varied page

In every time--through each revolving age--

Wherever man trampled his fellow man,

Unscared by crimes, ye marr'd his ruthless plan--

Still shall ye speed till time has pass'd away,

And retribution reigns o'er earth's last day.

Methinks I hear from each relentless stone

The spirits of thy martyr'd victims groan,

And eager whispers Echo round each cell

The oft repeated legend, and re-dwell,

With the same fondness that bespeaks delight

In childhood's heart, when on some winter's night,

As stormy winds low whistle through the vale,

It shuddering lists the thrilling ghostly tale.

It seems but now that blood was spilt, whose stain

Proclaims the dastard soul--the bloody reign

Of the Eighth Harry--vampire to his wife,

Who traffick'd for his divorce with her life;

So fresh, so moist, each ruddy drop appears

Indelible through centuries of years!

And who is this whose beauteous figure moves,

Onward to meet the reeking form she loves;

Whose noble mien--whose dignity of grace,

Extort compassion from each gazing face?

'Tis Dudley's bride! like some fair opening flower

Torn from its stem--she meets fate's direst hour;

Still unappall'd she views that bloody bier,

Takes her last sad farewell without a tear.

Each weeping muse hath told how Essex died,

Favourite and victim, doom'd by female pride.

How courtly Suffolk spent his latest day,

And dying Raleigh penn'd his deathless lay.

Here noble Strafford too severely taught

How dearly royal confidence is bought;

Received the warrant which demands his breath,

And with a calm composure walk'd--to death.

Nor 'mong the names that liberty holds dear,

Shall the great Russell be forgotten here;

His country's boast--each patriot's honest pride--

For them he lived--for them he wept and died.

And must we yet another page unfold,

To glean fresh moral from the deeds of old?

Ye busy spirits that pervade the air,

And still with dark intents to earth repair;

That goad the passions of the human breast,

And bear the missives of Fate's stern behest--

Say, stifle ye those thoughts that Heaven reveals--

The tears of sympathy--the glow that steals

O'er the young heart, or prompts soft pity's sigh--

The prayer to snatch from harsh captivity

The virtuous doom'd--teach but to praise--admire--

Forbid to catch one spark of generous fire?

The godlike wish of genius, man to bless,

With rank and wealth still leaguing to oppress!

Oh! when shall glory wreathe bright virtue's claim,

And both to honour give a holier fame?

Ye towers of death!--the noblest still your prey,

Here spent in solitude their sunless day;

In your wall'd graves a living doom they found;

Broke o'er their night no ray, no gladd'ning sound.

Yet the mind's splendour, with imprison'd wings,

Rose high, and shone where the pure seraph sings;

Where human thought taught conscience it was free,

And burst the shackles of the Romish See.

Oh, sweetest liberty! how dear to die!

Bound by each sacred link;, each holy tie;

To save unspotted from the spoiler's hand,

Child of our heart--our own--our native land!

And, oh! how dear life's latest drop to shed,

To free the minds by superstition led;--

To spread with holy earnest zeal abroad,

That priceless gem--freedom to worship God!

To keep unmingled with the world's vain lore,

The faith that lightens every darken'd hour;

That faith which can alone the sinner save,

Prepare for death, and raise him from the grave;

Show how, by yielding all, we surest prove,

How humbly, deeply, truly, we can love;

How much we prize that hope divinely given,

The key--the seal--the passport into heaven.