CALAMITIES of Epic Poets--Character and Anecdotes of
D'AVENANT--attempts a new vein of invention--the Critics
marshalled against each other on the "Gondibert"--D'AVENANT'S
sublime feelings of Literary Fame--attacked by a Club of Wits in
two books of Verses--the strange misconception hitherto given
respecting the Second Part--various specimens of the Satires on
Gondibert, the Poet, and his Panegyrist HOBBES--the Poet's
silence; and his neglect of the unfinished Epic, while the
Philosopher keenly retorts on the Club, and will not allow of any
authority in WIT.
The memoirs of epic poets, in as far as they relate to the history of
their own epics, would be the most calamitous of all the suitors of
the Muses, whether their works have reached us, or scarcely the names
of the poets. An epic, which has sometimes been the labour of a life,
is the game of the wits and the critics. One ridicules what is
written; the other censures for what has not been written:--and it has
happened, in some eminent instances, that the rudest assailants of him
who "builds the lofty rhyme," have been his ungenerous contemporaries.
Men, whose names are now endeared to us, and who have left their
~KTEMA ES AEI~, which HOBBES so energetically translates "a possession
for everlasting," have bequeathed an inheritance to posterity, of
which they have never been in the receipt of the revenue. "The first
fruits" of genius have been too often gathered to place upon its tomb.
Can we believe that MILTON did not endure mortification from the
neglect of "evil days," as certainly as Tasso was goaded to madness by
the systematic frigidity of his critics? He who is now before us had a
mind not less exalted than Milton or Tasso; but was so effectually
ridiculed, that he has only sent us down the fragment of a great
work.
One of the curiosities in the history of our poetry, is the GONDIBERT
of D'AVENANT; and the fortunes and the fate of this epic are as
extraordinary as the poem itself. Never has an author deserved more
copious memoirs than the fertility of this man's genius claims. His
life would have exhibited a moving picture of genius in action and in
contemplation. With all the infirmities of lively passions, he had all
the redeeming virtues of magnanimity and generous affections; but with
the dignity and the powers of a great genius, falling among an age of
wits, he was covered by ridicule. D'Avenant was a man who had viewed
human life in all its shapes, and had himself taken them. A poet and a
wit, the creator of the English stage with the music of Italy and the
scenery of France; a soldier, an emigrant, a courtier, and a
politician:--he was, too, a state-prisoner, awaiting death with his
immortal poem in his hand;[321] and at all times a philosopher!
That hardiness of enterprise which had conducted him through life,
brought the same novelty, and conferred on him the same vigour in
literature.
D'Avenant attempted to open a new vein of invention in narrative
poetry; which not to call _epic_, he termed _heroic_; and which we who
have more completely emancipated ourselves from the arbitrary mandates
of Aristotle and Bossu, have since styled romantic. Scott, Southey,
and Byron have taught us this freer scope of invention, but
characterised by a depth of passion which is not found in D'Avenant.
In his age, the title which he selected to describe the class of his
poetical narrative, was a miserable source of petty criticism. It was
decreed that every poem should resemble another poem, on the plan of
the ancient epic. This was the golden age of "the poet-apes," till
they found that it was easier to produce epic writers than epic
readers.
But our poet, whose manly genius had rejected one great absurdity, had
the folly to adopt another. The first reformers are always more heated
with zeal than enlightened by sagacity. The four-and-twenty chapters
of an epic, he perceived, were but fantastical divisions, and
probably, originally, but accidental; yet he proposed another form as
chimerical; he imagined that by having only five he was constructing
his poem on the dramatic plan of five acts. He might with equal
propriety have copied the Spanish comedy which I once read, in
twenty-five acts, and in no slender folio. "Sea-marks (says D'Avenant,
alluding to the works of antiquity) are chiefly useful to _coasters_,
and serve not those who have the ambition of _discoverers_, that love
to sail in untried seas;" and yet he was attempting to turn an epic
poem into a monstrous drama, from the servile habits he had contracted
from his intercourse with the theatre! This error of the poet has,
however, no material influence on the "Gondibert," as it has come down
to us; for, discouraged and ridiculed, our adventurer never finished
his voyage of discovery. He who had so nobly vindicated the freedom of
the British Muse from the meanness of imitation, and clearly defined
what such a narrative as he intended should be, "a perfect glass of
nature, which gives us a familiar and easy view of ourselves," did not
yet perceive that there is no reason why a poetical narrative should
be cast into any particular form, or be longer or shorter than the
interest it excites will allow.
More than a century and a half have elapsed since the first
publication of "Gondibert," and its merits are still a subject of
controversy; and indubitable proof of some inherent excellence not
willingly forgotten. The critics are marshalled on each side, one
against the other, while between these formidable lines stands the
poet, with a few scattered readers;[322] but what is more surprising
in the history of the "Gondibert," the poet is a great poet, the work
imperishable!
The "Gondibert" has poetical defects fatal for its popularity; the
theme was not happily chosen; the quatrain has been discovered by
capricious ears to be unpleasing, though its solemnity was felt by
Dryden.[323] The style is sometimes harsh and abrupt, though often
exquisite; and the fable is deficient in that rapid interest which the
story-loving readers of all times seem most to regard. All these are
diseases which would have long since proved mortal in a poem less
vital; but our poet was a commanding genius, who redeemed his bold
errors by his energetic originality. The luxuriancy of his fancy, the
novelty of his imagery, the grandeur of his views of human life; his
delight in the new sciences of his age;--these are some of his
poetical virtues. But, above all, we dwell on the impressive solemnity
of his philosophical reflections, and his condensed epigrammatic
thoughts. The work is often more ethical than poetical; yet, while we
feel ourselves becoming wiser at every page, in the fulness of our
minds we still perceive that our emotions have been seldom stirred by
passion. The poem falls from our hands! yet is there none of which we
wish to retain so many single verses. D'Avenant is a poetical
Rochefoucault; the sententious force of his maxims on all human
affairs could only have been composed by one who had lived in a
constant intercourse with mankind.[324]
A delightful invention in this poem is "the House of Astragon," a
philosophical residence. Every great poet is affected by the
revolutions of his age. The new experimental philosophy had revived
the project of Lord Bacon's learned retirement, in his philosophical
romance of the _Atalantis_; and subsequently in a time of civil repose
after civil war, Milton, Cowley, and Evelyn attempted to devote an
abode to science itself. These tumults of the imagination subsided in
the establishment of the Royal Society. D'Avenant anticipated this
institution. On an estate consecrated to philosophy stands a retired
building on which is inscribed, "Great Nature's Office," inhabited by
sages, who are styled "Nature's Registers," busily recording whatever
is brought to them by "a throng of Intelligencers," who make "patient
observations" in the field, the garden, the river, on every plant, and
"every fish, and fowl, and beast." Near at hand is "Nature's Nursery,"
a botanical garden. We have also "a Cabinet of Death," "the Monument
of Bodies," an anatomical collection, which leads to "the Monument of
vanished Minds," as the poet finely describes the library. Is it not
striking to find, says Dr. Aikin, so exact a model of _the school of
Linnaeus_?
This was a poem to delight a philosopher; and Hobbes, in a curious
epistle prefixed to the work, has strongly marked its distinct
beauties. "Gondibert" not only came forth with the elaborate panegyric
of Hobbes, but was also accompanied by the high commendatory poems of
Waller and Cowley; a cause which will sufficiently account for the
provocations it inflamed among the poetical crew; and besides these
accompaniments, there is a preface of great length, stamped with all
the force and originality of the poet's own mind; and a postscript, as
sublime from the feelings which dictated it as from the time and place
of its composition.
In these, this great genius pours himself out with all that "glory of
which his large soul appears to have been full," as Hurd has nobly
expressed it.[325] Such a conscious dignity of character struck the
petulant wits with a provoking sense of their own littleness.
A club of wits caballed and produced a collection of short poems
sarcastically entitled "Certain Verses written by several of the
Author's Friends, to be reprinted in the Second Edition of 'Gondibert,'"
1653. Two years after appeared a brother volume, entitled "The
Incomparable Poem of Gondibert vindicated from the Wit-Combats of Four
Esquires; Clinias, Dametas, Sancho and Jack Pudding;"[326] with these
mottoes:
~Koteei kai aoidos aoido~.
Vatum quoque gratia, rara est.
Anglice,
One wit-brother
Envies another.
Of these rare tracts, we are told by Anthony Wood and all subsequent
literary historians, too often mere transcribers of title-pages, that
the second was written by our author himself. Would not one imagine
that it was a real vindication, or at least a retort-courteous on
these obliging friends. The irony of the whole volume has escaped
their discovery. The second tract is a continuation of the satire: a
mock defence, where the sarcasm and the pretended remonstrance are
sometimes keener than the open attack. If, indeed, D'Avenant were the
author of a continuation of a satire on himself, it is an act of _felo
de se_ no poet ever committed; a self-flagellation by an iron whip,
where blood is drawn at every stroke, the most penitent bard never
inflicted on himself. Would D'Avenant have bantered his proud labour,
by calling it "incomparable?" And were it true, that he felt the
strokes of their witty malignity so lightly, would he not have secured
his triumph by finishing that "Gondibert," "the monument of his mind?"
It is too evident that this committee of wits hurt the quiet of a
great mind.
As for this series of literary satires, it might have been expected,
that since the wits clubbed, this committee ought to have been more
effective in their operations. Many of their papers were, no doubt,
more blotted with their wine than their ink. Their variety of attack
is playful, sarcastic, and malicious. They were then such exuberant
wits, that they could make even ribaldry and grossness witty. My
business with these wicked trifles is only as they concerned the
feelings of the great poet, whom they too evidently hurt, as well as
the great philosopher who condescended to notice these wits, with wit
more dignified than their own.
Unfortunately for our "jeered Will," as in their usual court-style
they call him, he had met with "a foolish mischance," well known among
the collectors of our British portraits. There was a feature in his
face, or rather no feature at all, that served as a perpetual
provocative: there was no precedent of such a thing, says Suckling, in
"The Sessions of the Poets"--
In all their records, in verse or in prose,
There was none of a Laureat who wanted a nose.