Who would, with the awful severity of Plato, banish poets from the
Republic? But it may be desirable that the Republic should not be
banished from poets, which it seems to be when an inordinate passion
for writing verses drives them from every active pursuit. There is no
greater enemy to domestic quiet than a confirmed versifier; yet are
most of them much to be pitied: it is the _mediocre_ critics they
first meet with who are the real origin of a populace of _mediocre_
poets. A young writer of verses is sure to get flattered by those who
affect to admire what they do not even understand, and by those who,
because they understand, imagine they are likewise endowed with
delicacy of taste and a critical judgment. What sacrifices of social
enjoyments, and all the business of life, are lavished with a
prodigal's ruin in an employment which will be usually discovered to
be a source of early anxiety, and of late disappointment![137] I say
nothing of the ridicule in which it involves some wretched Maevius, but
of the misery that falls so heavily on him, and is often entailed on
his generation. Whitehead has versified an admirable reflection of
Pope's, in the preface to his works:--
For wanting wit be totally undone,
And barr'd all arts, for having fail'd in one?
The great mind of BLACKSTONE never showed him more a poet than when he
took, not without affection, "a farewell of the Muse," on his being
called to the bar. DRUMMOND, of Hawthornden, quitted the bar from his
love of poetry; yet he seems to have lamented slighting the profession
which his father wished him to pursue. He perceives his error, he
feels even contrition, but still cherishes it: no man, not in his
senses, ever had a more lucid interval:--
I changed countries, new delights to find;
But ah! for pleasure I did find new pain;
Enchanting pleasure so did reason blind,
That father's love and words I scorn'd as vain.
I know that all the Muses' heavenly lays,
With toil of spirit which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds of few or none are sought,
That there is nothing lighter than vain praise;
Know what I list, this all cannot me move,
But that, alas! I both must write and love!
Thus, like all poets, who, as Goldsmith observes, "are fond of
enjoying the present, careless of the future," he talks like a man of
sense, and acts like a fool.
This wonderful susceptibility of praise, to which poets seem more
liable than any other class of authors, is indeed their common food;
and they could not keep life in them without this nourishment. NAT.
LEE, a true poet in all the excesses of poetical feelings--for he was
in such raptures at times as to lose his senses--expresses himself in
very energetic language on the effects of the praise necessary for
poets:--
"Praise," says Lee, "is the greatest encouragement we chamelions can
pretend to, or rather the manna that keeps soul and body together; we
devour it as if it were angels' food, and vainly think we grow
immortal. There is nothing transports a poet, next to love, like
commending in the right place."
This, no doubt, is a rare enjoyment, and serves to strengthen his
illusions. But the same fervid genius elsewhere confesses, when
reproached for his ungoverned fancy, that it brings with itself its
own punishment:--
"I cannot be," says this great and unfortunate poet, "so ridiculous a
creature to any man as I am to myself; for who should know the house
so well as the good man at home? who, when his neighbour comes to see
him, still sets the best rooms to view; and, if he be not a wilful
ass, keeps the rubbish and lumber in some dark hole, where nobody
comes but himself, to mortify at melancholy hours."
Study the admirable preface of POPE, composed at that matured period
of life when the fever of fame had passed away, and experience had
corrected fancy. It is a calm statement between authors and readers;
there is no imagination that colours by a single metaphor, or conceals
the real feeling which moved the author on that solemn occasion, of
collecting his works for the last time. It is on a full review of the
past that this great poet delivers this remarkable sentence:--
"_I believe, if any one, early in his life, should contemplate the
dangerous fate of AUTHORS, he would scarce be of their number on any
consideration._ The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth; and to
pretend to serve the learned world in any way, one must have the
constancy of a martyr, and a resolution to suffer for its sake."
All this is so true in literary history, that he who affects to
suspect the sincerity of Pope's declaration, may flatter his sagacity,
but will do no credit to his knowledge.
If thus great poets pour their lamentations for having devoted
themselves to their art, some sympathy is due to the querulousness of
a numerous race of _provincial bards_, whose situation is ever at
variance with their feelings. These usually form exaggerated
conceptions of their own genius, from the habit of comparing
themselves with their contracted circle. Restless, with a desire of
poetical celebrity, their heated imagination views in the metropolis
that fame and fortune denied them in their native town; there they
become half-hermits and half-philosophers, darting epigrams which
provoke hatred, or pouring elegies, descriptive of their feelings,
which move derision: their neighbours find it much easier to ascertain
their foibles than comprehend their genius; and both parties live in a
state of mutual persecution. Such, among many, was the fate of the
poet HERRICK; his vein was pastoral, and he lived in the elysium of
the west, which, however, he describes by the sullen epithet, "Dull
Devonshire," where "he is still sad." Strange that such a poet should
have resided near twenty years in one of our most beautiful counties
in a very discontented humour. When he quitted his village of
"Deanbourne," the petulant poet left behind him a severe "farewell,"
which was found still preserved in the parish, after a lapse of more
than a century. Local satire has been often preserved by the very
objects it is directed against, sometimes from the charm of the wit
itself, and sometimes from the covert malice of attacking our
neighbours. Thus he addresses "Deanbourne, a rude river in Devonshire,
by which, sometime, he lived:"--
Dean-bourn, farewell!
Thy rockie bottom that doth tear thy streams,
And makes them frantic, e'en to all extremes.
Rockie thou art, and rockie we discover
Thy men,--
O men! O manners!--
O people currish, churlish as their seas--
He rejoices he leaves them, never to return till "rocks shall turn to
rivers." When he arrives in London,
From the dull confines of the drooping west,
To see the day-spring from the pregnant east,
he, "ravished in spirit," exclaims, on a view of the metropolis--
O place! O people! manners form'd to please
All nations, customs, kindreds, languages!