THE
WORKS
OF
JOHN DRYDEN.
THE
WORKS
OF
JOHN DRYDEN,
NOW FIRST COLLECTED
_IN EIGHTEEN VOLUMES_.
ILLUSTRATED
WITH NOTES,
HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND EXPLANATORY,
AND
A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,
BY
WALTER SCOTT, ESQ.
VOL. XIII.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR WILLIAM MILLER, ALBEMARLE STREET,
BY JAMES BALLANTYNE AND CO. EDINBURGH.
1808.
CONTENTS
OF
VOLUME THIRTEENTH.
PAGE.
TRANSLATIONS FROM JUVENAL.
Essay on Satire; addressed to Charles, Earl of Dorset
and Middlesex, 3
The First Satire of Juvenal, 119
The Third Satire of Juvenal, 130
The Sixth Satire of Juvenal, 148
The Tenth Satire of Juvenal, 178
The Sixteenth Satire of Juvenal, 198
TRANSLATIONS FROM PERSIUS.
The First Satire of Persius, 205
Notes, 217
The Second Satire of Persius, 221
Notes, 227
The Third Satire of Persius, 230
Notes, 239
The Fourth Satire of Persius, 242
Notes, 248
The Fifth Satire of Persius, inscribed to the Rev.
Dr Busby, 251
Notes, 262
The Sixth Satire of Persius, 267
Notes, 274
THE WORKS OF VIRGIL, TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
VERSE.
Names of Subscribers to the Cuts of Virgil, 283
Recommendatory Poems on the Translation of Virgil, 289
The Life of Publius Virgilius Maro, by William
Walsh, 297
PASTORALS.
Dedication of the Pastorals, to Lord Clifford, Baron
of Chudleigh, 337
Preface to the Pastorals, with a short defence of
Virgil, by William Walsh, 345
Pastoral I. or Tityrus and Meliboeus, 369
II. or Alexis, 374
III. or Palæmon, 378
IV. or Pollio, 386
V. or Daphnis, 391
VI. or Silenus, 397
VII. or Meliboeus, 402
VIII. or Pharmaceutria, 407
IX. or Lycidas and Mæris, 413
X. or Gallus, 417
TRANSLATIONS
FROM
JUVENAL.
ESSAY ON SATIRE:
ADDRESSED TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
CHARLES,
EARL OF DORSET AND MIDDLESEX,
LORD CHAMBERLAIN OF HIS MAJESTY'S HOUSEHOLD, KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE
ORDER OF THE GARTER, &C.[1]
MY LORD,
The wishes and desires of all good men, which have attended your
lordship from your first appearance in the world, are at length
accomplished, from your obtaining those honours and dignities which you
have so long deserved. There are no factions, though irreconcileable
to one another, that are not united in their affection to you, and the
respect they pay you. They are equally pleased in your prosperity, and
would be equally concerned in your afflictions. Titus Vespasian was not
more the delight of human kind. The universal empire made him only more
known, and more powerful, but could not make him more beloved. He had
greater ability of doing good, but your inclination to it is not less;
and though you could not extend your beneficence to so many persons,
yet you have lost as few days as that excellent emperor; and never had
his complaint to make when you went to bed, that the sun had shone upon
you in vain, when you had the opportunity of relieving some unhappy
man. This, my lord, has justly acquired you as many friends as there
are persons who have the honour to be known to you. Mere acquaintance
you have none; you have drawn them all into a nearer line; and they
who have conversed with you are for ever after inviolably yours. This
is a truth so generally acknowledged, that it needs no proof: it is of
the nature of a first principle, which is received as soon as it is
proposed; and needs not the reformation which Descartes used to his;
for we doubt not, neither can we properly say, we think we admire and
love you above all other men; there is a certainty in the proposition,
and we know it. With the same assurance I can say, you neither have
enemies, nor can scarce have any; for they who have never heard of you,
can neither love or hate you; and they who have, can have no other
notion of you, than that which they receive from the public, that you
are the best of men. After this, my testimony can be of no farther use,
than to declare it to be day-light at high-noon; and all who have the
benefit of sight, can look up as well, and see the sun.
It is true, I have one privilege which is almost particular to myself,
that I saw you in the east at your first arising above the hemisphere:
I was as soon sensible as any man of that light, when it was but just
shooting out, and beginning to travel upwards to the meridian. I made
my early addresses to your lordship, in my "Essay of Dramatic Poetry;"
and therein bespoke you to the world, wherein I have the right of a
first discoverer.[2] When I was myself in the rudiments of my poetry,
without name or reputation in the world, having rather the ambition of
a writer, than the skill; when I was drawing the outlines of an art,
without any living master to instruct me in it; an art which had been
better praised than studied here in England, wherein Shakespeare, who
created the stage among us, had rather written happily, than knowingly
and justly, and Jonson, who, by studying Horace, had been acquainted
with the rules, yet seemed to envy to posterity that knowledge,
and, like an inventor of some useful art, to make a monopoly of his
learning; when thus, as I may say, before the use of the load-stone, or
knowledge of the compass, I was sailing in a vast ocean, without other
help than the pole-star of the ancients, and the rules of the French
stage amongst the moderns, which are extremely different from ours, by
reason of their opposite taste; yet even then, I had the presumption to
dedicate to your lordship--a very unfinished piece, I must confess, and
which only can be excused by the little experience of the author, and
the modesty of the title--"An Essay." Yet I was stronger in prophecy
than I was in criticism; I was inspired to foretell you to mankind, as
the restorer of poetry, the greatest genius, the truest judge, and the
best patron.
Good sense and good nature are never separated, though the ignorant
world has thought otherwise. Good nature, by which I mean beneficence
and candour, is the product of right reason; which of necessity will
give allowance to the failings of others, by considering that there
is nothing perfect in mankind; and by distinguishing that which comes
nearest to excellency, though not absolutely free from faults, will
certainly produce a candour in the judge. It is incident to an elevated
understanding, like your lordship's, to find out the errors of other
men; but it is your prerogative to pardon them; to look with pleasure
on those things, which are somewhat congenial, and of a remote kindred
to your own conceptions; and to forgive the many failings of those,
who, with their wretched art, cannot arrive to those heights that you
possess, from a happy, abundant, and native genius: which are as inborn
to you, as they were to Shakespeare; and, for aught I know, to Homer;
in either of whom we find all arts and sciences, all moral and natural
philosophy, without knowing that they ever studied them.
There is not an English writer this day living, who is not perfectly
convinced, that your lordship excels all others in all the several
parts of poetry which you have undertaken to adorn. The most vain,
and the most ambitious of our age, have not dared to assume so much,
as the competitors of Themistocles: they have yielded the first place
without dispute; and have been arrogantly content to be esteemed as
second to your lordship; and even that also, with a _longo, sed proximi
intervallo_. If there have been, or are any, who go farther in their
self-conceit, they must be very singular in their opinion; they must
be like the officer in a play, who was called Captain, Lieutenant,
and Company. The world will easily conclude, whether such unattended
generals can ever be capable of making a revolution in Parnassus.
I will not attempt, in this place, to say any thing particular of
your Lyric Poems, though they are the delight and wonder of this
age, and will be the envy of the next.[3] The subject of this book
confines me to satire; and in that, an author of your own quality,
(whose ashes I will not disturb,) has given you all the commendation
which his self-sufficiency could afford to any man: "The best good
man, with the worst-natured muse."[4] In that character, methinks, I
am reading Jonson's verses to the memory of Shakespeare; an insolent,
sparing, and invidious panegyric: where good nature, the most godlike
commendation of a man, is only attributed to your person, and denied
to your writings; for they are every where so full of candour, that,
like Horace, you only expose the follies of men, without arraigning
their vices; and in this excel him, that you add that pointedness of
thought, which is visibly wanting in our great Roman. There is more of
salt in all your verses, than I have seen in any of the moderns, or
even of the ancients; but you have been sparing of the gall, by which
means you have pleased all readers, and offended none. Donne alone,
of all our countrymen, had your talent; but was not happy enough to
arrive at your versification; and were he translated into numbers,
and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression.
That which is the prime virtue, and chief ornament, of Virgil, which
distinguishes him from the rest of writers, is so conspicuous in your
verses, that it casts a shadow on all your contemporaries; we cannot
be seen, or but obscurely, while you are present. You equal Donne in
the variety, multiplicity, and choice of thoughts; you excel him in
the manner and the words. I read you both with the same admiration,
but not with the same delight. He affects the metaphysics, not only
in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should
reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations
of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them
with the softnesses of love. In this (if I may be pardoned for so bold
a truth) Mr Cowley has copied him to a fault; so great a one, in my
opinion, that it throws his Mistress infinitely below his Pindarics,
and his latter compositions, which are undoubtedly the best of his
poems, and the most correct. For my own part, I must avow it freely to
the world, that I never attempted any thing in satire, wherein I have
not studied your writings as the most perfect model. I have continually
laid them before me; and the greatest commendation, which my own
partiality can give to my productions, is, that they are copies, and no
farther to be allowed, than as they have something more or less of the
original. Some few touches of your lordship, some secret graces which
I have endeavoured to express after your manner, have made whole poems
of mine to pass with approbation; but take your verses altogether,
and they are inimitable. If therefore I have not written better, it
is because you have not written more. You have not set me sufficient
copy to transcribe; and I cannot add one letter of my own invention, of
which I have not the example there.
It is a general complaint against your lordship, and I must have leave
to upbraid you with it, that, because you need not write, you will
not. Mankind, that wishes you so well in all things that relate to
your prosperity, have their intervals of wishing for themselves, and
are within a little of grudging you the fulness of your fortune: they
would be more malicious if you used it not so well, and with so much
generosity.
Fame is in itself a real good, if we may believe Cicero, who was
perhaps too fond of it; but even fame, as Virgil tells us, acquires
strength by going forward. Let Epicurus give indolency as an attribute
to his gods, and place in it the happiness of the blest; the divinity
which we worship has given us not only a precept against it, but his
own example to the contrary. The world, my lord, would be content to
allow you a seventh day for rest; or if you thought that hard upon you,
we would not refuse you half your time: if you came out, like some
great monarch, to take a town but once a year, as it were for your
diversion, though you had no need to extend your territories. In short,
if you were a bad, or, which is worse, an indifferent poet, we would
thank you for our own quiet, and not expose you to the want of yours.
But when you are so great and so successful, and when we have that
necessity of your writing, that we cannot subsist entirely without it,
any more (I may almost say) than the world without the daily course of
ordinary providence, methinks this argument might prevail with you, my
lord, to forego a little of your repose for the public benefit. It is
not that you are under any force of working daily miracles, to prove
your being; but now and then somewhat of extraordinary, that is, any
thing of your production, is requisite to refresh your character.
This, I think, my lord, is a sufficient reproach to you; and should I
carry it as far as mankind would authorise me, would be little less
than satire. And, indeed, a provocation is almost necessary, in behalf
of the world, that you might be induced sometimes to write; and in
relation to a multitude of scribblers, who daily pester the world with
their insufferable stuff, that they might be discouraged from writing
any more. I complain not of their lampoons and libels, though I have
been the public mark for many years. I am vindictive enough to have
repelled force by force, if I could imagine that any of them had ever
reached me; but they either shot at rovers,[5] and therefore missed,
or their powder was so weak, that I might safely stand them, at the
nearest distance. I answered not the "Rehearsal," because I knew the
author sat to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes
of his own farce: because also I knew, that my betters[6] were more
concerned than I was in that satire: and, lastly, because Mr Smith and
Mr Johnson, the main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen
in their conversation, that I could liken them to nothing but to their
own relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about
the town. The like considerations have hindered me from dealing with
the lamentable companions of their prose and doggrel. I am so far from
defending my poetry against them, that I will not so much as expose
theirs. And for my morals, if they are not proof against their attacks,
let me be thought by posterity, what those authors would be thought,
if any memory of them, or of their writings, could endure so long as
to another age. But these dull makers of lampoons, as harmless as they
have been to me, are yet of dangerous example to the public. Some
witty men may perhaps succeed to their designs, and, mixing sense with
malice, blast the reputation of the most innocent amongst men, and the
most virtuous amongst women.
Heaven be praised, our common libellers are as free from the imputation
of wit as of morality; and therefore whatever mischief they have
designed, they have performed but little of it. Yet these ill writers,
in all justice, ought themselves to be exposed; as Persius has given us
a fair example in his first satire, which is levelled particularly at
them;[7] and none is so fit to correct their faults, as he who is not
only clear from any in his own writings, but is also so just, that he
will never defame the good; and is armed with the power of verse, to
punish and make examples of the bad. But of this I shall have occasion
to speak further, when I come to give the definition and character of
true satires.
In the mean time, as a counsellor bred up in the knowledge of the
municipal and statute laws, may honestly inform a just prince how far
his prerogative extends; so I may be allowed to tell your lordship,
who, by an undisputed title, are the king of poets, what an extent of
power you have, and how lawfully you may exercise it, over the petulant
scribblers of this age. As lord chamberlain, I know, you are absolute
by your office, in all that belongs to the decency and good manners
of the stage. You can banish from thence scurrility and profaneness,
and restrain the licentious insolence of poets, and their actors, in
all things that shock the public quiet, or the reputation of private
persons, under the notion of humour. But I mean not the authority,
which is annexed to your office; I speak of that only which is inborn
and inherent to your person; what is produced in you by an excellent
wit, a masterly and commanding genius over all writers: whereby you
are empowered, when you please, to give the final decision of wit; to
put your stamp on all that ought to pass for current; and set a brand
of reprobation on clipped poetry, and false coin. A shilling dipped
in the Bath may go for gold amongst the ignorant, but the sceptres on
the guineas show the difference.[8] That your lordship is formed by
nature for this supremacy, I could easily prove, (were it not already
granted by the world,) from the distinguishing character of your
writing: which is so visible to me, that I never could be imposed on
to receive for yours, what was written by any others; or to mistake
your genuine poetry for their spurious productions. I can farther add,
with truth, (though not without some vanity in saying it,) that in the
same paper, written by divers hands, whereof your lordship's was only
part, I could separate your gold from their copper; and though I could
not give back to every author his own brass, (for there is not the
same rule for distinguishing betwixt bad and bad, as betwixt ill and
excellently good,) yet I never failed of knowing what was yours, and
what was not; and was absolutely certain, that this, or the other part,
was positively yours, and could not possibly be written by any other.
True it is, that some bad poems, though not all, carry their owners'
marks about them. There is some peculiar awkwardness, false grammar,
imperfect sense, or, at the least, obscurity; some brand or other on
this buttock, or that ear, that it is notorious who are the owners of
the cattle, though they should not sign it with their names. But your
lordship, on the contrary, is distinguished, not only by the excellency
of your thoughts, but by your style and manner of expressing them. A
painter, judging of some admirable piece, may affirm, with certainty,
that it was of Holbein, or Vandyck; but vulgar designs, and common
draughts, are easily mistaken, and misapplied. Thus, by my long study
of your lordship, I am arrived at the knowledge of your particular
manner. In the good poems of other men, like those artists, I can only
say, this is like the draught of such a one, or like the colouring
of another. In short, I can only be sure, that it is the hand of a
good master; but in your performances, it is scarcely possible for me
to be deceived. If you write in your strength, you stand revealed at
the first view; and should you write under it, you cannot avoid some
peculiar graces, which only cost me a second consideration to discover
you: for I may say it, with all the severity of truth, that every line
of yours is precious. Your lordship's only fault is, that you have not
written more; unless I could add another, and that yet greater, but I
fear for the public the accusation would not be true,--that you have
written, and out of a vicious modesty will not publish.
Virgil has confined his works within the compass of eighteen thousand
lines, and has not treated many subjects; yet he ever had, and ever
will have, the reputation of the best poet. Martial says of him, that
he could have excelled Varius in tragedy, and Horace in lyric poetry,
but out of deference to his friends, he attempted neither.[9]
The same prevalence of genius is in your lordship, but the world cannot
pardon your concealing it on the same consideration; because we have
neither a living Varius, nor a Horace, in whose excellencies, both of
poems, odes, and satires, you had equalled them, if our language had
not yielded to the Roman majesty, and length of time had not added a
reverence to the works of Horace. For good sense is the same in all or
most ages; and course of time rather improves nature, than impairs her.
What has been, may be again: another Homer, and another Virgil, may
possibly arise from those very causes which produced the first; though
it would be impudence to affirm, that any such have yet appeared.
It is manifest, that some particular ages have been more happy than
others in the production of great men, in all sorts of arts and
sciences; as that of Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and the rest,
for stage poetry amongst the Greeks; that of Augustus, for heroic,
lyric, dramatic, elegiac, and indeed all sorts of poetry, in the
persons of Virgil, Horace, Varius, Ovid, and many others; especially
if we take into that century the latter end of the commonwealth,
wherein we find Varo, Lucretius, and Catullus; and at the same time
lived Cicero, and Sallust, and Cæsar. A famous age in modern times, for
learning in every kind, was that of Lorenzo de Medici, and his son Leo
the Tenth; wherein painting was revived, and poetry flourished, and the
Greek language was restored.
Examples in all these are obvious: but what I would infer is this;
that in such an age, it is possible some great genius may arise, to
equal any of the ancients; abating only for the language. For great
contemporaries whet and cultivate each other; and mutual borrowing, and
commerce, makes the common riches of learning, as it does of the civil
government.
But suppose that Homer and Virgil were the only of their species, and
that nature was so much worn out in producing them, that she is never
able to bear the like again, yet the example only holds in heroic
poetry: in tragedy and satire, I offer myself to maintain against some
of our modern critics, that this age and the last, particularly in
England, have excelled the ancients in both those kinds; and I would
instance in Shakespeare of the former, of your lordship in the latter
sort.[10]
Thus I might safely confine myself to my native country; but if I
would only cross the seas, I might find in France a living Horace and
a Juvenal, in the person of the admirable Boileau; whose numbers are
excellent, whose expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just, whose
language is pure, whose satire is pointed, and whose sense is close;
what he borrows from the ancients, he repays with usury of his own,
in coin as good, and almost as universally valuable: for, setting
prejudice and partiality apart, though he is our enemy, the stamp of a
Louis, the patron of all arts, is not much inferior to the medal of an
Augustus Cæsar. Let this be said without entering into the interests of
factions and parties, and relating only to the bounty of that king to
men of learning and merit; a praise so just, that even we, who are his
enemies, cannot refuse it to him.
Now if it may be permitted me to go back again to the consideration of
epic poetry, I have confessed, that no man hitherto has reached, or
so much as approached, to the excellencies of Homer, or of Virgil; I
must farther add, that Statius, the best versificator next to Virgil,
knew not how to design after him, though he had the model in his eye;
that Lucan is wanting both in design and subject, and is besides too
full of heat and affectation; that amongst the moderns, Ariosto neither
designed justly, nor observed any unity of action, or compass of time,
or moderation in the vastness of his draught: his style is luxurious,
without majesty or decency, and his adventures without the compass
of nature and possibility. Tasso, whose design was regular, and who
observed the rules of unity in time and place more closely than Virgil,
yet was not so happy in his action; he confesses himself to have been
too lyrical, that is, to have written beneath the dignity of heroic
verse, in his Episodes of Sophronia, Erminia, and Armida. His story
is not so pleasing as Ariosto's; he is too flatulent sometimes, and
sometimes too dry; many times unequal, and almost always forced; and,
besides, is full of conceipts, points of epigram, and witticisms; all
which are not only below the dignity of heroic verse, but contrary
to its nature: Virgil and Homer have not one of them. And those who
are guilty of so boyish an ambition in so grave a subject, are so far
from being considered as heroic poets, that they ought to be turned
down from Homer to the Anthologia, from Virgil to Martial and Owen's
Epigrams, and from Spenser to Flecno; that is, from the top to the
bottom of all poetry. But to return to Tasso: he borrows from the
invention of Boiardo, and in his alteration of his poem, which is
infinitely for the worse, imitates Homer so very servilely, that (for
example) he gives the king of Jerusalem fifty sons, only because Homer
had bestowed the like number on king Priam; he kills the youngest in
the same manner, and has provided his hero with a Patroclus, under
another name, only to bring him back to the wars, when his friend
was killed.[11] The French have performed nothing in this kind which
is not far below those two Italians, and subject to a thousand more
reflections, without examining their St Lewis, their Pucelle, or their
Alarique.[12] The English have only to boast of Spenser and Milton, who
neither of them wanted either genius or learning to have been perfect
poets, and yet both of them are liable to many censures. For there is
no uniformity in the design of Spenser: he aims at the accomplishment
of no one action; he raises up a hero for every one of his adventures;
and endows each of them with some particular moral virtue, which
renders them all equal, without subordination, or preference. Every one
is most valiant in his own legend: only we must do him that justice to
observe, that magnanimity, which is the character of Prince Arthur,
shines throughout the whole poem; and succours the rest, when they are
in distress. The original of every knight was then living in the court
of Queen Elizabeth; and he attributed to each of them that virtue,
which he thought was most conspicuous in them; an ingenious piece of
flattery, though it turned not much to his account. Had he lived to
finish his poem, in the six remaining legends, it had certainly been
more of a piece; but could not have been perfect, because the model was
not true. But Prince Arthur, or his chief patron Sir Philip Sydney,
whom he intended to make happy by the marriage of his Gloriana, dying
before him, deprived the poet both of means and spirit to accomplish
his design.[13] For the rest, his obsolete language,[14] and the ill
choice of his stanza, are faults but of the second magnitude; for,
notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at least after
a little practice; and for the last, he is the more to be admired,
that, labouring under such a difficulty, his verses are so numerous,
so various, and so harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he professedly
imitated, has surpassed him among the Romans; and only Mr Waller among
the English.
As for Mr Milton, whom we all admire with so much justice, his subject
is not that of an heroic poem, properly so called. His design is the
losing of our happiness; his event is not prosperous, like that of all
other epic works; his heavenly machines are many, and his human persons
are but two. But I will not take Mr Rymer's work out of his hands: he
has promised the world a critique on that author;[15] wherein, though
he will not allow his poem for heroic, I hope he will grant us, that
his thoughts are elevated, his words sounding, and that no man has so
happily copied the manner of Homer, or so copiously translated his
Grecisms, and the Latin elegancies of Virgil. It is true, he runs into
a flat of thought, sometimes for a hundred lines together, but it is
when he has got into a track of scripture. His antiquated words were
his choice, not his necessity; for therein he imitated Spenser, as
Spenser did Chaucer. And though, perhaps, the love of their masters may
have transported both too far, in the frequent use of them, yet, in
my opinion, obsolete words may then be laudably revived, when either
they are more sounding, or more significant, than those in practice;
and when their obscurity is taken away, by joining other words to
them, which clear the sense; according to the rule of Horace, for
the admission of new words.[16] But in both cases a moderation is
to be observed in the use of them: for unnecessary coinage, as well
as unnecessary revival, runs into affectation; a fault to be avoided
on either hand. Neither will I justify Milton for his blank verse,
though I may excuse him, by the example of Hannibal Caro, and other
Italians, who have used it; for whatever causes he alleges for the
abolishing of rhyme, (which I have not now the leisure to examine,) his
own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was not his talent;
he had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it; which is
manifest in his "Juvenilia," or verses written in his youth, where his
rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at
an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes
almost every man a rhymer, though not a poet.
By this time, my lord, I doubt not but that you wonder, why I have run
off from my bias so long together, and made so tedious a digression
from satire to heroic poetry. But if you will not excuse it, by the
tattling quality of age, which, as Sir William D'Avenant says, is
always narrative, yet I hope the usefulness of what I have to say on
this subject will qualify the remoteness of it; and this is the last
time I will commit the crime of prefaces, or trouble the world with my
notions of any thing that relates to verse.[17] I have then, as you
see, observed the failings of many great wits amongst the moderns,
who have attempted to write an epic poem. Besides these, or the like
animadversions of them by other men, there is yet a farther reason
given, why they cannot possibly succeed so well as the ancients,
even though we could allow them not to be inferior, either in genius
or learning, or the tongue in which they write, or all those other
wonderful qualifications which are necessary to the forming of a true
accomplished heroic poet. The fault is laid on our religion; they say,
that Christianity is not capable of those embellishments which are
afforded in the belief of those ancient heathens.
And it is true, that, in the severe notions of our faith, the fortitude
of a Christian consists in patience, and suffering, for the love of
God, whatever hardships can befall in the world; not in any great
attempts, or in performance of those enterprizes which the poets call
heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, ostentation,
pride, and worldly honour: that humility and resignation are our prime
virtues; and that these include no action, but that of the soul;
when as, on the contrary, an heroic poem requires to its necessary
design, and as its last perfection, some great action of war, the
accomplishment of some extraordinary undertaking; which requires the
strength and vigour of the body, the duty of a soldier, the capacity
and prudence of a general, and, in short, as much, or more, of the
active virtue, than the suffering. But to this the answer is very
obvious. God has placed us in our several stations; the virtues of
a private Christian are patience, obedience, submission, and the
like; but those of a magistrate, or general, or a king, are prudence,
counsel, active fortitude, coercive power, awful command, and the
exercise of magnanimity, as well as justice. So that this objection
hinders not, but that an epic poem, or the heroic action of some great
commander, enterprized for the common good, and honour of the Christian
cause, and executed happily, may be as well written now, as it was of
old by the heathens; provided the poet be endued with the same talents;
and the language, though not of equal dignity, yet as near approaching
to it, as our modern barbarism will allow; which is all that can be
expected from our own, or any other now extant, though more refined;
and therefore we are to rest contented with that only inferiority,
which is not possibly to be remedied.
I wish I could as easily remove that other difficulty which yet
remains. It is objected by a great French critic, as well as an
admirable poet, yet living, and whom I have mentioned with that honour
which his merit exacts from me, I mean Boileau, that the machines
of our Christian religion, in heroic poetry, are much more feeble
to support that weight than those of heathenism. Their doctrine,
grounded as it was on ridiculous fables, was yet the belief of the
two victorious monarchies, the Grecian and Roman. Their gods did not
only interest themselves in the event of wars, (which is the effect of
a superior providence,) but also espoused the several parties, in a
visible corporeal descent, managed their intrigues, and fought their
battles sometimes in opposition to each other: though Virgil (more
discreet than Homer in that last particular) has contented himself
with the partiality of his deities, their favours, their counsels or
commands, to those whose cause they had espoused, without bringing them
to the outrageousness of blows. Now, our religion (says he) is deprived
of the greatest part of those machines; at least the most shining
in epic poetry. Though St Michael, in Ariosto, seeks out Discord,
to send her among the Pagans, and finds her in a convent of friars,
where peace should reign, which indeed is fine satire; and Satan, in
Tasso, excites Solyman to an attempt by night on the Christian camp,
and brings an host of devils to his assistance; yet the archangel, in
the former example, when Discord was restive, and would not be drawn
from her beloved monastery with fair words, has the whip-hand of her,
drags her out with many stripes, sets her, on God's name, about her
business, and makes her know the difference of strength betwixt a
nuncio of heaven, and a minister of hell. The same angel, in the latter
instance from Tasso, (as if God had never another messenger belonging
to the court, but was confined like Jupiter to Mercury, and Juno to
Iris,) when he sees his time, that is, when half of the Christians
are already killed, and all the rest are in a fair way to be routed,
stickles betwixt the remainders of God's host, and the race of fiends;
pulls the devils backward by the tails, and drives them from their
quarry; or otherwise the whole business had miscarried, and Jerusalem
remained untaken. This, says Boileau, is a very unequal match for the
poor devils, who are sure to come by the worst of it in the combat;
for nothing is more easy, than for an Almighty Power to bring his old
rebels to reason, when he pleases. Consequently, what pleasure, what
entertainment, can be raised from so pitiful a machine, where we see
the success of the battle from the very beginning of it; unless that,
as we are Christians, we are glad that we have gotten God on our side,
to maul our enemies, when we cannot do the work ourselves? For, if the
poet had given the faithful more courage, which had cost him nothing,
or at least have made them exceed the Turks in number, he might have
gained the victory for us Christians, without interesting heaven in
the quarrel, and that with as much ease, and as little credit to the
conqueror, as when a party of a hundred soldiers defeats another which
consists only of fifty.
This, my lord, I confess, is such an argument against our modern
poetry, as cannot be answered by those mediums which have been used. We
cannot hitherto boast, that our religion has furnished us with any such
machines, as have made the strength and beauty of the ancient buildings.
But what if I venture to advance an invention of my own, to supply
the manifest defect of our new writers? I am sufficiently sensible
of my weakness; and it is not very probable that I should succeed in
such a project, whereof I have not had the least hint from any of my
predecessors, the poets, or any of their seconds and coadjutors, the
critics. Yet we see the art of war is improved in sieges, and new
instruments of death are invented daily; something new in philosophy,
and the mechanics, is discovered almost every year; and the science of
former ages is improved by the succeeding. I will not detain you with a
long preamble to that, which better judges will, perhaps, conclude to
be little worth.
It is this, in short--that Christian poets have not hitherto been
acquainted with their own strength. If they had searched the Old
Testament as they ought, they might there have found the machines
which are proper for their work; and those more certain in their
effect, than it may be the New Testament is, in the rules sufficient
for salvation. The perusing of one chapter in the prophecy of Daniel,
and accommodating what there they find with the principles of Platonic
philosophy, as it is now christianized, would have made the ministry of
angels as strong an engine, for the working up heroic poetry, in our
religion, as that of the ancients has been to raise theirs by all the
fables of their gods, which were only received for truths by the most
ignorant and weakest of the people.[18]
It is a doctrine almost universally received by Christians, as well
Protestants as Catholics, that there are guardian angels, appointed by
God Almighty, as his vicegerents, for the protection and government
of cities, provinces, kingdoms, and monarchies; and those as well of
heathens, as of true believers. All this is so plainly proved from
those texts of Daniel, that it admits of no farther controversy. The
prince of the Persians, and that other of the Grecians, are granted
to be the guardians and protecting ministers of those empires. It
cannot be denied, that they were opposite, and resisted one another.
St Michael is mentioned by his name as the patron of the Jews,[19]
and is now taken by the Christians, as the protector-general of our
religion. These tutelar genii, who presided over the several people
and regions committed to their charge, were watchful over them for
good, as far as their commissions could possibly extend. The general
purpose, and design of all, was certainly the service of their Great
Creator. But it is an undoubted truth, that, for ends best known to the
Almighty Majesty of heaven, his providential designs for the benefit
of his creatures, for the debasing and punishing of some nations, and
the exaltation and temporal reward of others, were not wholly known to
these his ministers; else why those factious quarrels, controversies,
and battles amongst themselves, when they were all united in the same
design, the service and honour of their common master? But being
instructed only in the general, and zealous of the main design; and, as
finite beings, not admitted into the secrets of government, the last
resorts of providence, or capable of discovering the final purposes
of God, who can work good out of evil as he pleases, and irresistibly
sways all manner of events on earth, directing them finally for the
best, to his creation in general, and to the ultimate end of his own
glory in particular; they must, of necessity, be sometimes ignorant
of the means conducing to those ends, in which alone they can jar and
oppose each other. One angel, as we may suppose--the Prince of Persia,
as he is called, judging, that it would be more for God's honour,
and the benefit of his people, that the Median and Persian monarchy,
which delivered them from the Babylonish captivity, should still be
uppermost; and the patron of the Grecians, to whom the will of God
might be more particularly revealed, contending, on the other side,
for the rise of Alexander and his successors, who were appointed to
punish the backsliding Jews, and thereby to put them in mind of their
offences, that they might repent, and become more virtuous, and more
observant of the law revealed. But how far these controversies, and
appearing enmities, of those glorious creatures may be carried; how
these oppositions may be best managed, and by what means conducted,
is not my business to show or determine; these things must be left
to the invention and judgement of the poet: if any of so happy a
genius be now living, or any future age can produce a man, who, being
conversant in the philosophy of Plato, as it is now accommodated to
Christian use, (for, as Virgil gives us to understand by his example,
that is the only proper, of all others, for an epic poem,) who, to his
natural endowments, of a large invention, a ripe judgment, and a strong
memory, has joined the knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences, and
particularly moral philosophy, the mathematics, geography, and history,
and with all these qualifications is born a poet; knows, and can
practise the variety of numbers, and is master of the language in which
he writes;--if such a man, I say, be now arisen, or shall arise, I am
vain enough to think, that I have proposed a model to him, by which he
may build a nobler, a more beautiful, and more perfect poem, than any
yet extant since the ancients.
There is another part of these machines yet wanting; but, by what I
have said, it would have been easily supplied by a judicious writer. He
could not have failed to add the opposition of ill spirits to the good;
they have also their design, ever opposite to that of heaven; and this
alone has hitherto been the practice of the moderns: but this imperfect
system, if I may call it such, which I have given, will infinitely
advance and carry farther that hypothesis of the evil spirits
contending with the good. For, being so much weaker, since their fall,
than those blessed beings, they are yet supposed to have a permitted
power from God of acting ill, as, from their own depraved nature, they
have always the will of designing it. A great testimony of which we
find in holy writ, when God Almighty suffered Satan to appear in the
holy synod of the angels, (a thing not hitherto drawn into example by
any of the poets,) and also gave him power over all things belonging to
his servant Job, excepting only life.
Now, what these wicked spirits cannot compass, by the vast
disproportion of their forces to those of the superior beings, they
may, by their fraud and cunning, carry farther, in a seeming league,
confederacy, or subserviency to the designs of some good angel, as far
as consists with his purity to suffer such an aid, the end of which
may possibly be disguised, and concealed from his finite knowledge.
This is, indeed, to suppose a great error in such a being: yet since
a devil can appear like an angel of light; since craft and malice
may sometimes blind, for a while, a more perfect understanding; and,
lastly, since Milton has given us an example of the like nature, when
Satan, appearing like a cherub to Uriel, the intelligence of the
sun, circumvented him even in his own province, and passed only for
a curious traveller through those new-created regions, that he might
observe therein the workmanship of God, and praise him in his works,--I
know not why, upon the same supposition, or some other, a fiend may not
deceive a creature of more excellency than himself, but yet a creature;
at least, by the connivance, or tacit permission, of the Omniscient
Being.
Thus, my lord, I have, as briefly as I could, given your lordship, and
by you the world, a rude draught of what I have been long labouring
in my imagination, and what I had intended to have put in practice,
(though far unable for the attempt of such a poem,) and to have left
the stage, (to which my genius never much inclined me,) for a work
which would have taken up my life in the performance of it. This,
too, I had intended chiefly for the honour of my native country, to
which a poet is particularly obliged. Of two subjects, both relating
to it, I was doubtful whether I should choose that of King Arthur
conquering the Saxons, which, being farther distant in time, gives the
greater scope to my invention; or that of Edward, the Black Prince, in
subduing Spain, and restoring it to the lawful prince, though a great
tyrant, Don Pedro the Cruel: which, for the compass of time, including
only the expedition of one year; for the greatness of the action,
and its answerable event; for the magnanimity of the English hero,
opposed to the ingratitude of the person whom he restored; and for the
many beautiful episodes, which I had interwoven with the principal
design, together with the characters of the chiefest English persons;
(wherein, after Virgil and Spenser, I would have taken occasion to
represent my living friends and patrons of the noblest families, and
also shadowed the events of future ages, in the succession of our
imperial line,)--with these helps, and those of the machines, which
I have mentioned, I might perhaps have done as well as some of my
predecessors, or at least chalked out a way for others to amend my
errors in a like design; but being encouraged only with fair words
by King Charles II., my little salary ill paid, and no prospect of
a future subsistence, I was then discouraged in the beginning of my
attempt; and now age has overtaken me, and want, a more insufferable
evil, through the change of the times, has wholly disenabled me. Though
I must ever acknowledge, to the honour of your lordship, and the
eternal memory of your charity, that, since this revolution, wherein
I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss
of that poor subsistence which I had from two kings, whom I had served
more faithfully than profitably to myself,--then your lordship was
pleased, out of no other motive but your own nobleness, without any
desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most
bountiful present, which, at that time, when I was most in want of it,
came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief. That favour, my
lord, is of itself sufficient to bind any grateful man to a perpetual
acknowledgment, and to all the future service, which one of my mean
condition can ever be able to perform. May the Almighty God return it
for me, both in blessing you here, and rewarding you hereafter! I must
not presume to defend the cause for which I now suffer, because your
lordship is engaged against it; but the more you are so, the greater is
my obligation to you, for your laying aside all the considerations of
factions and parties, to do an action of pure disinterested charity.
This is one amongst many of your shining qualities, which distinguish
you from others of your rank. But let me add a farther truth, that,
without these ties of gratitude, and abstracting from them all, I
have a most particular inclination to honour you; and, if it were
not too bold an expression, to say, I love you. It is no shame to
be a poet, though it is to be a bad one. Augustus Cæsar of old, and
Cardinal Richlieu of late, would willingly have been such; and David
and Solomon were such. You who, without flattery, are the best of the
present age in England, and would have been so, had you been born in
any other country, will receive more honour in future ages, by that one
excellency, than by all those honours to which your birth has entitled
you, or your merits have acquired you.
_Ne, fortè, pudori
Sit tibi Musa lyræ solers, et cantor Apollo._