and humours in the "Silent Woman;" all which persons have several
concernments of their own, yet are all used by the poet, to the
conducting of the main design to perfection. I shall not waste time in
commending the writing of this play; but I will give you my opinion,
that there is more wit and acuteness of fancy in it than in any of
Ben Jonson's. Besides, that he has here described the conversation
of gentlemen in the persons of True-Wit, and his friends, with more
gaiety, air, and freedom, than in the rest of his comedies.[142] For
the contrivance of the plot, 'tis extreme, elaborate, and yet withal
easy; for the λύσις, or untying of it, 'tis so admirable,
that when it is done, no one of the audience would think the poet could
have missed it; and yet it was concealed so much before the last scene,
that any other way would sooner have entered into your thoughts. But
I dare not take upon me to commend the fabric of it, because it is
altogether so full of art, that I must unravel every scene in it to
commend it as I ought. And this excellent contrivance is still the more
to be admired, because 'tis comedy where the persons are only of common
rank, and their business private, not elevated by passions or high
concernments, as in serious plays. Here every one is a proper judge
of all he sees; nothing is represented but that with which he daily
converses: so that by consequence all faults lie open to discovery, and
few are pardonable. 'Tis this which Horace has judiciously observed:
_Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere
Sudoris minimum; sed habet Comedia tanto
Plus oneris, quanto veniæ minus_.
But our poet, who was not ignorant of these difficulties, has made use
of all advantages; as he who designs a large leap, takes his rise from
the highest ground. One of these advantages is that which Corneille
has laid down as the greatest which can arrive to any poem, and which
he himself could never compass above thrice in all his plays; viz. the
making choice of some signal and long-expected day, whereon the action
of the play is to depend. This day was that designed by Dauphine for
the settling of his uncle's estate upon him; which, to compass, he
contrives to marry him. That the marriage had been plotted by him long
beforehand, is made evident, by what he tells True-Wit in the second
act, that in one moment he had destroyed what he had been raising many
months.
There is another artifice of the poet, which I cannot here omit,
because by the frequent practice of it in his comedies, he has left
it to us almost as a rule; that is, when he has any character or
humour wherein he would shew a _coupe de maître_, or his highest
skill, he recommends it to your observation, by a pleasant description
of it before the person first appears. Thus, in "Bartholomew-Fair,"
he gives you the pictures of Numps and Cokes, and in this, those of
Daw, Lafoole, Morose, and the Collegiate Ladies; all which you hear
described before you see them. So that before they come upon the
stage, you have a longing expectation of them, which prepares you to
receive them favourably; and when they are there, even from their first
appearance you are so far acquainted with them, that nothing of their
humour is lost to you.
I will observe yet one thing further of this admirable plot; the
business of it rises in every act. The second is greater than the
first; the third than the second; and so forward to the fifth. There
too you see, till the very last scene, new difficulties arising to
obstruct the action of the play; and when the audience is brought
into despair that the business can naturally be effected, then, and
not before, the discovery is made. But that the poet might entertain
you with more variety all this while, he reserves some new characters
to shew you, which he opens not till the second and third act. In
the second, Morose, Daw, the Barber, and Otter; in the third, the
Collegiate Ladies; all which he moves afterwards in by-walks, or
under-plots, as diversions to the main design, lest it should grow
tedious, though they are still naturally joined with it, and somewhere
or other subservient to it. Thus, like a skilful chess-player, by
little and little he draws out his men, and makes his pawns of use to
his greater persons.
If this comedy, and some others of his, were translated into French
prose, (which would now be no wonder to them, since Moliere has lately
given them plays out of verse, which have not displeased them,) I
believe the controversy would soon be decided betwixt the two nations,
even making them the judges.[143] But we need not call our heroes to
our aid; be it spoken to the honour of the English, our nation can
never want in any age such, who are able to dispute the empire of wit
with any people in the universe. And though the fury of a civil war,
and power, for twenty years together, abandoned to a barbarous race
of men, enemies of all good learning, had buried the muses under the
ruins of monarchy; yet, with the restoration of our happiness, we see
revived poesy lifting up its head, and already shaking off the rubbish
which lay so heavy on it. We have seen since his majesty's return, many
dramatic poems which yield not to those of any foreign nation, and
which deserve all laurels but the English. I will set aside flattery
and envy; it cannot be denied but we have had some little blemish
either in the plot or writing of all those plays which have been made
within these seven years; and perhaps there is no nation in the world
so quick to discern them, or so difficult to pardon them, as ours: yet
if we can persuade ourselves to use the candour of that poet, who,
though the most severe of critics, has left us this caution by which
to moderate our censures--
----_ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis
Offendar maculis_;----
if, in consideration of their many and great beauties, we can wink
at some slight and little imperfections, if we, I say, can be thus
equal to ourselves, I ask no favour from the French. And if I do not
venture upon any particular judgment of our late plays, 'tis out of
the consideration which an ancient writer gives me: _vivorum, ut magna
admiratio, ita censura difficilis_: betwixt the extremes of admiration
and malice, 'tis hard to judge uprightly of the living. Only I think it
may be permitted me to say, that as it is no lessening to us to yield
to some plays, and those not many, of our own nation, in the last age,
so can it be no addition to pronounce of our present poets, that they
have far surpassed all the ancients, and the modern writers of other
countries.
This was the substance of what was then spoke on that occasion; and
Lisideius, I think, was going to reply, when he was prevented thus
by Crites:--I am confident, said he, that the most material things
that can be said, have been already urged on either side; if they
have not, I must beg of Lisideius, that he will defer his answer till
another time: for I confess I have a joint quarrel to you both, because
you have concluded, without any reason given for it, that rhyme is
proper for the stage. I will not dispute how ancient it hath been
among us to write this way; perhaps our ancestors knew no better till
Shakespeare's time. I will grant it was not altogether left by him, and
that Fletcher and Ben Jonson used it frequently in their pastorals,
and sometimes in other plays. Farther, I will not argue whether we
received it originally from our own countrymen, or from the French;
for that is an inquiry of as little benefit as theirs, who, in the
midst of the late plague, were not so solicitous to provide against
it, as to know whether we had it from the malignity of our own air, or
by transportation from Holland. I have therefore only to affirm, that
it is not allowable in serious plays; for comedies, I find you already
concluding with me. To prove this, I might satisfy myself to tell
you, how much in vain it is for you to strive against the stream of
the people's inclination; the greatest part of which are prepossessed
so much with those excellent plays of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Ben
Jonson, which have been written out of rhyme, that except you could
bring them such as were written better in it, and those too by persons
of equal reputation with them, it will be impossible for you to gain
your cause with them, who will still be judges. This it is to which,
in fine, all your reasons must submit. The unanimous consent of an
audience is so powerful, that even Julius Cæsar, (as Macrobius reports
of him,) when he was perpetual dictator, was not able to balance it
on the other side; but when Laberius, a Roman knight, at his request
contended in the _Mime_ with another poet, he was forced to cry out,
_Etiam favente me victus es, Laberi_. But I will not, on this occasion,
take the advantage of the greater number, but only urge such reasons
against rhyme, as I find in the writings of those who have argued for
the other way. First then, I am of opinion, that rhyme is unnatural in
a play, because dialogue there is presented as the effect of sudden
thought.[144] For a play is the imitation of nature; and since no man,
without premeditation, speaks in rhyme, neither ought he to do it on
the stage. This hinders not but the fancy may be there elevated to an
higher pitch of thought than it is in ordinary discourse; for there
is a probability that men of excellent and quick parts may speak noble
things _extempore_: but those thoughts are never fettered with numbers,
or sound of verse, without study; and therefore it cannot be but
unnatural to present the most free way of speaking in that which is the
most constrained. For this reason, says Aristotle, 'tis best to write
tragedy in that kind of verse which is the least such, or which is
nearest prose: and this amongst the ancients was the iambic, and with
us is blank verse, or the measure of verse kept exactly without rhyme.
These numbers therefore are fittest for a play; the others for a paper
of verses, or a poem; blank verse being as much below them, as rhyme is
improper for the drama. And if it be objected, that neither are blank
verses made _extempore_, yet, as nearest nature, they are still to be
preferred. But there are two particular exceptions, which many besides
myself have had to verse; by which it will appear yet more plainly, how
improper it is in plays. And the first of them is grounded on that very
reason for which some have commended rhyme; they say, the quickness of
repartees in argumentative scenes receives an ornament from verse. Now
what is more unreasonable than to imagine, that a man should not only
light upon the wit, but the rhyme too, upon the sudden? This nicking
of him who spoke before both in sound and measure, is so great an
happiness, that you must at least suppose the persons of your play to
be born poets: _Arcades omnes, et cantare pares, et respondere parati_;
they must have arrived to the degree of _quicquid conabar dicere_,
to make verses almost whether they will or no. If they are any thing
below this, it will look rather like the design of two, than the answer
of one: it will appear that your actors hold intelligence together;
that they perform their tricks like fortune-tellers, by confederacy.
The hand of art will be too visible in it, against that maxim of all
professions--_Ars est celare artem_; that it is the greatest perfection
of art to keep itself undiscovered. Nor will it serve you to object,
that however you manage it, 'tis still known to be a play; and
consequently, the dialogue of two persons, understood to be the labour
of one poet. For a play is still an imitation of nature; we know we are
to be deceived, and we desire to be so; but no man ever was deceived
but with a probability of truth; for who will suffer a gross lie to be
fastened on him? Thus we sufficiently understand, that the scenes which
represent cities and countries to us, are not really such, but only
painted on boards and canvass; but shall that excuse the ill painture
or designment of them? Nay, rather ought they not to be laboured with
so much the more diligence and exactness, to help the imagination?
since the mind of man does naturally tend to truth; and therefore the
nearer any thing comes to the imitation of it, the more it pleases.
Thus, you see, your rhyme is uncapable of expressing the greatest
thoughts naturally, and the lowest it cannot with any grace: for what
is more unbefitting the majesty of verse, than to call a servant, or
bid a door be shut in rhyme? and yet you are often forced on this
miserable necessity. But verse, you say, 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. Yet this argument, if granted, would only prove,
that we may write better in verse, but not more naturally. Neither is
it able to evince that; for 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 of those poets, as rhyme to ours: and yet you find Ovid
saying too much on every subject. _Nescivit_ (says Seneca) _quod bene
cessit relinquere_; of which he gives you one famous instance in his
description of the deluge:
_Omnia pontus erat, deerant quoque litora ponto_.
Now all was sea, nor had that sea a shore.
Thus Ovid's fancy was not limited by verse, and Virgil needed not verse
to have bounded his.
In our own language we see Ben Jonson confining himself to what ought
to be said, even in the liberty of blank verse; and yet Corneille, the
most judicious of the French poets, is still varying the same sense
an hundred ways, and dwelling eternally on the same subject, though
confined by rhyme. Some other exceptions I have to verse; but since
these I have named are for the most part already public, I conceive it
reasonable they should first be answered.
It concerns me less than any, said Neander, (seeing he had ended,) to
reply to this discourse; because when I should have proved, that verse
may be natural in plays, yet I should always be ready to confess, that
those which I have written in this kind come short of that perfection
which is required.[145] Yet since you are pleased I should undertake
this province, I will do it, though with all imaginable respect and
deference, both to that person from whom you have borrowed your
strongest arguments, and to whose judgment, when I have said all, I
finally submit. But before I proceed to answer your objections, I must
first remember you, that I exclude all comedy from my defence; and
next, that I deny not but blank verse may be also used, and content
myself only to assert, that in serious plays, where the subject and
characters are great, and the plot unmixed with mirth, which might
allay or divert these concernments which are produced, rhyme is there
as natural, and more effectual, than blank verse.
And now having laid down this as a foundation,--to begin with
Crites,--I must crave leave to tell him, that some of his arguments
against rhyme reach no farther than, from the faults or defects of ill
rhyme, to conclude against the use of it in general. May not I conclude
against blank verse by the same reason? If the words of some poets, who
write in it, are either ill chosen, or ill placed, (which makes not
only rhyme, but all kind of verse in any language unnatural,) shall
I, for their vicious affectation, condemn those excellent lines of
Fletcher, which are written in that kind? Is there any thing in rhyme
more constrained than this line in blank verse?--
I heaven invoke, and strong resistance make;
where you see both the clauses are placed unnaturally; that is,
contrary to the common way of speaking, and that without the excuse
of a rhyme to cause it: yet you would think me very ridiculous, if I
should accuse the stubbornness of blank verse for this, and not rather
the stiffness of the poet. Therefore, Crites, you must either prove,
that words, though well chosen, and duly placed, yet render not rhyme
natural in itself; or that however natural and easy the rhyme may be,
yet it is not proper for a play. If you insist on the former part, I
would ask you, what other conditions are required to make rhyme natural
in itself, besides an election of apt words, and a right disposition of
them? For the due choice of your words expresses your sense naturally,
and the due placing them adapts the rhyme to it. If you object, that
one verse may be made for the sake of another, though both the words
and rhyme be apt, I answer, it cannot possibly so fall out; for either
there is a dependance of sense betwixt the first line and the second,
or there is none: if there be that connection, then in the natural
position of the words the latter line must of necessity flow from the
former; if there be no dependance, yet still the due ordering of words
makes the last line as natural in itself as the other: so that the
necessity of a rhyme never forces any but bad or lazy writers to say
what they would not otherwise. 'Tis true, there is both care and art
required to write in verse. A good poet never establishes the first
line, till he has sought out such a rhyme as may fit the sense, already
prepared to heighten the second: many times the close of the sense
falls into the middle of the next verse, or farther off, and he may
often avail himself of the same advantages in English which Virgil had
in Latin,--he may break off in the hemistick, and begin another line.
Indeed, 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 _perpetuo tenore
fluere_, 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 cadences is the best rule;
the greatest help to the actors, and refreshment to the audience.
If then verse may be made natural in itself, how becomes it unnatural
in a play? You say the stage is the representation of nature, and no
man in ordinary conversation speaks in rhyme. But you foresaw, when
you said this, that it might be answered--neither does any man speak
in blank verse, or in measure without rhyme. Therefore you concluded,
that which is nearest nature is still to be preferred. But you took
no notice, that rhyme might be made as natural as blank verse, by the
well placing of the words, &c. All the difference between them, when
they are both correct, is the sound in one, which the other wants;
and if so, the sweetness of it, and all the advantage resulting from
it, which are handled in the preface to the "Rival Ladies," will yet
stand good. As for that place of Aristotle, where he says plays should
be writ in that kind of verse which is nearest prose, it makes little
for you; blank verse being properly but measured prose. Now measure
alone, in any modern language, does not constitute verse; those of
the ancients in Greek and Latin consisted in quantity of words, and a
determinate number of feet. But when, by the inundation of the Goths
and Vandals into Italy, new languages were introduced, and barbarously
mingled with the Latin, of which the Italian, Spanish, French, and
ours, (made out of them and the Teutonic,) are dialects, a new way
of poesy was practised; new, I say, in those countries, for in all
probability it was that of the conquerors in their own nations: at
least we are able to prove, that the eastern people have used it from
all antiquity.[146] This new way consisted in measure or number of
feet, and rhyme. The sweetness of rhyme, and observation of accent,
supplying the place of quantity in words, which could neither exactly
be observed by those barbarians, who knew not the rules of it, neither
was it suitable to their tongues as it had been to the Greek and Latin.
No man is tied in modern poesy to observe any farther rule in the feet
of his verse, but that they be dissyllables; whether Spondee, Trochee,
or Iambic, it matters not; only he is obliged to rhyme: neither do
the Spanish, French, Italian, or Germans, acknowledge at all, or very
rarely, any such kind of poesy as blank verse amongst them. Therefore,
at most 'tis but a poetic prose, a _sermo pedestris_; and, as such,
most fit for comedies, where I acknowledge rhyme to be improper.
Farther, as to that quotation of Aristotle, our couplet verses may be
rendered as near prose as blank verse itself, by using those advantages
I lately named,--as breaks in an hemistick, or running the sense into
another line,--thereby making art and order appear as loose and free
as nature: or not tying ourselves to couplets strictly, we may use
the benefit of the Pindaric way, practised in the "Siege of Rhodes;"
where the numbers vary, and the rhyme is disposed carelessly, and far
from often chyming. Neither is that other advantage of the ancients
to be despised, of changing the kind of verse when they please, with
the change of the scene, or some new entrance; for they confine not
themselves always to iambics, but extend their liberty to all lyric
numbers, and sometimes even to hexameter. But I need not go so far
to prove, that rhyme, as it succeeds to all other offices of Greek
and Latin verse, so especially to this of plays, since the custom of
nations at this day confirms it; the French, Italian, and Spanish
tragedies are generally writ in it; and sure the universal consent of
the most civilized parts of the world, ought in this, as it doth in
other customs, to include the rest.
But perhaps you may tell me, I have proposed such a way to make rhyme
natural, and consequently proper to plays, as is unpracticable; and
that I shall scarce find six or eight lines together in any play, where
the words are so placed and chosen as is required to make it natural.
I answer, no poet need constrain himself at all times to it. It is
enough he makes it his general rule; for I deny not but sometimes
there may be a greatness in placing the words otherwise; and sometimes
they may sound better; sometimes also the variety itself is excuse
enough. But if, for the most part, the words be placed as they are
in the negligence of prose, it is sufficient to denominate the way
practicable; for we esteem that to be such, which in the trial oftener
succeeds than misses. And thus far you may find the practice made good
in many plays: where you do not, remember still, that if you cannot
find six natural rhymes together, it will be as hard for you to produce
as many lines in blank verse, even among the greatest of our poets,
against which I cannot make some reasonable exception.
And this, sir, calls to my remembrance the beginning of your discourse,
where you told us we should never find the audience favourable to this
kind of writing, till we could produce as good plays in rhyme, as
Ben Jonson, Fletcher, and Shakespeare, had writ out of it. But it is
to raise envy to the living, to compare them with the dead. They are
honoured, and almost adored by us, as they deserve; neither do I know
any so presumptuous of themselves as to contend with them. Yet give me
leave to say thus much, without injury to their ashes, that not only
we shall never equal them, but they could never equal themselves, were
they to rise and write again. We acknowledge them our fathers in wit,
but they have ruined their estates themselves, before they came to
their children's hands. There is scarce an humour, a character, or any
kind of plot, which they have not used. All comes sullied or wasted to
us: and were they to entertain this age, they could not now make so
plenteous treatments out of such decayed fortunes. This therefore will
be a good argument to us either not to write at all, or to attempt some
other way. There is no bays to be expected in their walks: _tentanda
via est, quâ me quoque possum tollere humo_.
This way of writing in verse, they have only left free to us; our age
is arrived to a perfection in it, which they never knew; and which (if
we may guess by what of theirs we have seen in verse, as the "Faithful
Shepherdess," and "Sad Shepherd") it is probable they never could have
reached. For the genius of every age is different; and though ours
excel in this, I deny not but that to imitate nature in that perfection
which they did in prose, is a greater commendation than to write in
verse exactly. As for what you have added,--that the people are not
generally inclined to like this way,--if it were true, it would be no
wonder, that betwixt the shaking off an old habit, and the introducing
of a new, there should be difficulty. Do we not see them stick to
Hopkins and Sternhold's Psalms, and forsake those of David, I mean
Sandys his translation of them? If by the people you understand the
multitude, the ὁι πολλοὶ, it is no matter what they think;
they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong: their judgment
is a mere lottery. _Est ubi plebs recté putat, est ubi peccat._[147]
Horace says it of the vulgar, judging poesy. But if you mean the mixed
audience of the populace and the noblesse, I dare confidently affirm,
that a great part of the latter sort are already favourable to verse;
and that no serious plays, written since the king's return, have
been more kindly received by them, than "The Siege of Rhodes," the
"Mustapha," "The Indian Queen," and "Indian Emperor."[148]
But I come now to the inference of your first argument. You said, that
the dialogue of plays is presented as the effect of sudden thought,
but no man speaks suddenly, or _extempore_, in rhyme; and you inferred
from thence, that rhyme, which you acknowledge to be proper to epic
poesy, cannot equally be proper to dramatic, unless we could suppose
all men born so much more than poets, that verses should be made in
them, not by them.
It has been formerly urged by you, and confessed by me, that since no
man spoke any kind of verse _extempore_, that which was nearest nature
was to be preferred. I answer you, therefore, by distinguishing betwixt
what is nearest to the nature of comedy, which is the imitation of
common persons and ordinary speaking, and what is nearest the nature of
a serious play: this last is indeed the representation of nature, but
'tis nature wrought up to an higher 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, we know, is wont
to image to us the minds and fortunes of noble persons, and to pourtray
these exactly; heroic rhyme is nearest nature, as being the noblest
kind of modern verse.
_Indignatur enim privatis, et prope socco
Dignis, carminibus, narrari cæna Thyeste_,--
says Horace: and in another place,
_Effutire leves indigna tragœdia versus._
Blank verse is acknowledged to be too low for a poem, nay more, for a
paper of verses; but if too low for an ordinary sonnet, how much more
for tragedy, which is by Aristotle, in the dispute betwixt the epic
poesy and the dramatic, for many reasons he there alleges, ranked above
it?
But setting this defence aside, your argument is almost as strong
against the use of rhyme in poems as in plays; for the epic way is
every where interlaced with dialogue, or discoursive scenes; and
therefore you must either grant rhyme to be improper there, which
is contrary to your assertion, or admit it into plays by the same
title which you have given it to poems. For though tragedy be justly
preferred above the other, yet there is a great affinity between
them, as may easily be discovered in that definition of a play which
Lisideius gave us. The _genus_ of them is the same,--a just and
lively image of human nature, in its actions, passions, and traverses
of fortune: so is the end,--namely for the delight and benefit of
mankind. The characters and persons are still the same, _viz._ the
greatest of both sorts; only the manner of acquainting us with those
actions, passions, and fortunes, is different. Tragedy performs it
_viva voce_, or by action, in dialogue; wherein it excels the epic
poem, which does it chiefly by narration, and therefore is not so
lively an image of human nature. However, the agreement betwixt them
is such, that if rhyme be proper for one, it must be for the other.
Verse, 'tis true, is not the effect of sudden thought; but this hinders
not that sudden thought may be represented in verse, since those
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, as I have said, 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.
Perhaps I have insisted too long on this objection; but the clearing of
it will make my stay shorter on the rest. You tell us, Crites, that
rhyme 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 measure of it. This, you say, looks rather
like the confederacy of two, than the answer of one.
This, I confess, is an objection which is in every man's mouth, who
loves not rhyme: but suppose, I beseech you, the repartee were made
only in blank verse, might not part of the same argument be turned
against you? for the measure is as often supplied there as it is in
rhyme; the latter half of the hemistick as commonly made up, or a
second line subjoined, as a reply to the former; which any one leaf
in Jonson's plays will sufficiently clear to you. You will often find
in the Greek tragedians, and in Seneca, that when a scene grows up
into the warmth of repartees, (which is the close fighting of it,) the
latter part of the trimeter is supplied by him who answers; and yet it
was never observed as a fault in them by any of the ancient or modern
critics.[149] The case is the same in our verse as it was in theirs;
rhyme to us being in lieu of quantity to them. But if no latitude is to
be allowed a poet, you take from him not only his licence of _quidlibet
audendi_, but you tie him up in a straiter compass than you would a
philosopher. This is indeed _Musas colere severiores_. You would have
him follow nature, but he must follow her on foot: you have dismounted
him from his Pegasus. But you tell us, this supplying the last half of
a verse, or adjoining a whole second to the former, looks more like
the design of two, than the answer of one. Suppose we acknowledge it:
How comes this confederacy to be more displeasing to you than in a
dance which is well contrived? 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 gross: the
confederacy is plain amongst them, for chance could never produce
any thing so beautiful; and yet there is nothing in it that shocks
your sight. I acknowledge the hand of art appears in repartee, as of
necessity it must in all kind of verse. But there is also the quick and
poignant brevity of it (which is an high imitation of nature in those
sudden gusts of passion) to mingle with it; and this, joined with the
cadency and sweetness of the rhyme, leaves nothing in the soul of the
hearer to desire. It is an art which appears; but it appears only like
the shadowings of painture, which being to cause the rounding of it,
cannot be absent; but while that is considered, they are lost: so while
we attend to the other beauties of the matter, the care and labour of
the rhyme is carried from us, or at least drowned in its own sweetness,
as bees are sometimes buried in their honey. When a poet has found the
repartee, the last perfection he can add to it, is, to put it into
verse. However good the thought may be, however apt the words in which
it is couched, yet he finds himself at a little unrest, while rhyme is
wanting. He cannot leave it till that comes naturally, and then is at
ease, and sits down contented.
From replies, which are the most elevated thoughts of verse, you pass
to those which are most mean, and which are common with this lowest
of household conversation. In these, you say, the majesty of verse
suffers. You instance in the calling of a servant, or commanding a door
to be shut, in rhyme. This, Crites, is a good observation of yours,
but no argument: for it proves no more but that such thoughts should
be waved, as often as may be, by the address of the poet. But suppose
they are necessary in the places where he uses them, yet there is no
need to put them into rhyme. He may place them in the beginning of a
verse, and break it off, as unfit, when so debased, for any other use;
or granting the worst,--that they require more room than the hemistick
will allow, yet still there is a choice to be made of the best words,
and least vulgar, provided they be apt to express such thoughts. Many
have blamed rhyme in general, for this fault, when the poet, with a
little care, might have redressed it. But they do it with no more
justice, than if English poesy should be made ridiculous for the sake
of the Water-poet's rhymes.[150] Our language is noble, full, and
significant; and I know not why he who is master of it may not clothe
ordinary things in it as decently as the Latin, if he use the same
diligence in his choice of words:
_Delectus verborum origo est eloquentiæ._
It was the saying of Julius Cæsar, one so curious in his, that none
of them can be changed but for a worse. One would think, _unlock the
door_, was a thing as vulgar as could be spoken; and yet Seneca could
make it sound high and lofty in his Latin:--
_Reserate clusos regii postes laris._[151]
Set wide the palace gates.
But I turn from this exception, both because it happens not above twice
or thrice in any play that those vulgar thoughts are used; and then
too, were there no other apology to be made, yet the necessity of them,
which is alike in all kind of writing, may excuse them. For if they are
little and mean in rhyme, they are of consequence such in blank verse.
Besides that the great eagerness and precipitation with which they are
spoken, makes us rather mind the substance than the dress; that for
which they are spoken, rather than what is spoke. For they are always
the effect of some hasty concernment, and something of consequence
depends on them.
Thus, Crites, I have endeavoured to answer your objections: it remains
only that I should vindicate an argument for verse, which you have
gone about to overthrow. It had formerly been said, that the easiness
of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant; but that the labour of
rhyme bounds and circumscribes an over-fruitful fancy; the sense there
being commonly confined to the couplet, and the words so ordered,
that the rhyme naturally follows them, not they the rhyme. To this
you answered, that it was no argument to the question in hand; for
the dispute was not which way a man may write best, but which is most
proper for the subject on which he writes.
First, give me leave, sir, to remember you, that the argument against
which you raised this objection, was only secondary: it was built on
this hypothesis,--that to write in verse was proper for serious plays.
Which supposition being granted, (as it was briefly made out in that
discourse, by shewing how verse might be made natural,) it asserted,
that this way of writing was an help to the poet's judgment, by putting
bounds to a wild overflowing fancy. I think therefore it will not be
hard for me to make good what it was to prove on that supposition. But
you add, that were this let pass, yet he who wants judgment in the
liberty of his fancy, may as well shew 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 kinds of writing.
This argument, as you have taken it from a most acute person,[152]
so, I confess, it carries much weight in it: but by using the word
judgment here indefinitely, you seem to have put a fallacy upon us.
I grant, he who has judgment, that is, so profound, so strong, or
rather so infallible a judgment, that he needs no helps to keep it
always poised and upright, will commit no faults either in rhyme, or
out of it. And on the other extreme, he who has a judgment so weak and
crazed, that no helps can correct or amend it, shall write scurvily
out of rhyme, and worse in it. But the first of these judgments is no
where to be found, and the latter is not fit to write at all. To speak
therefore of judgment as it is in the best poets; they who have the
greatest proportion of it, want other helps than from it, within. As
for example, you would be loth to say, that he who is endued with a
sound judgment, has no need of history, geography, or moral philosophy,
to write correctly. Judgment is indeed the master-workman in a play;
but he requires many subordinate hands, many tools to his assistance.
And verse I affirm to be one of these: it is a rule and line by which
he keeps his building compact and even, which otherwise lawless
imagination would raise either irregularly or loosely; at least, if
the poet commits errors with this help, he would make greater and more
without it:--it is, in short, a slow and painful, but the surest kind
of working. Ovid, whom you accuse for luxuriancy in verse, had perhaps
been farther guilty of it, had he writ in prose. And for your instance
of Ben Jonson, who, you say, writ exactly without the help of rhyme;
you are to remember, it is only an aid to a luxuriant fancy, which
his was not: as he did not want imagination, so none ever said he had
much to spare. Neither was verse then refined so much, to be an help
to that age, as it is to ours. Thus then the second thoughts being
usually the best, as receiving the maturest digestion from judgment,
and the last and most mature product of those thoughts being artful
and laboured verse, it may well be inferred, that verse is a great help
to a luxuriant fancy; and this is what that argument which you opposed
was to evince.
Neander was pursuing this discourse 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 moon-beams played, and
made it appear like floating quicksilver: at last they went up through
a crowd of French people,[153] who were merrily dancing in the open
air, and nothing concerned for the noise of guns, which had alarmed the
town that afternoon. Walking thence together to the Piazze, they parted
there; Eugenius and Lisideius to some pleasant appointment they had
made, and Crites and Neander to their several lodgings.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 106: The third of June, 1665. See the "Annus Mirabilis,"
and the Notes, Vol. IX. p. 108, 161. Our author, in his poem to the
Duchess, mentions the circumstance of the cannon being heard at London:
When from afar we heard the cannon play,
Like distant thunder on a shiny day.
Vol. IX. p. 79.
]
[Footnote 107: James Duke of York, afterwards James II.]
[Footnote 108: There is something very striking in this description,
which was doubtless copied from reality.]
[Footnote 109: This is a favourable representation of the character of
Sir Robert Howard, who is described by his contemporaries as very vain,
obstinate, and opinionative, and as such was ridiculed by Shadwell
under the character of Sir Positive Atall, in the "Impertinents."]
[Footnote 110: This was certainly Dr Robert Wild; an allusion to whose
"_Iter Boreale_" occurs a little below. It is written in a harsh and
barbarous style, filled with "clenches and carwhichets," as the time
called them; which having been in fashion in the reign of James I. and
his unfortunate son, now revived after the Restoration. One of these
poets would perhaps have told us, in rugged verse, that the Muse having
been long in mourning, it was no wonder that her gayer dress should
appear unfashionable when resumed. The other scribbler, Mr Malone
thinks, might be Flecnoe. Or it may have been Samuel Holland, a great
scribbler on public occasions.]
[Footnote 111: Cleiveland, being a violent cavalier, had a sort of
claim to become a model after the Restoration. He has such notable
conceits as the following comparison of a weeping mistress, to the
angel in the scripture, who moved the pool of Bethesda, the first
passage which occurred at opening the book:
----pious Julia, angel-wise,
Moves the Bethesda of her trickling eyes,
To cure the spittal world of maladies.
_Cleveland's Vindiciæ_, 1677, p. 10.
]
[Footnote 112: This was an absurd and cruel doctrine of the English
lawyers of the time, who had begun to disbelieve in witchcraft, and
were yet willing to justify the execution of witches. One of them says,
that if a man firmly believes that, by whirling his hat round his head,
and crying _bo_, he could occasion the death of an enemy, he becomes,
by performing that ceremony, guilty of murder. Observe that, unless
in virtue of special statute, he could not be capitally punished, if,
instead of this whimsical device, he had actually fired a gun, and
missed the person he aimed at.]
[Footnote 113: A voluminous author of the reign of Charles I.]
[Footnote 114: The _Iter Boreale_.]
[Footnote 115: One mode of sale by auction.]
[Footnote 116: If CRITES be really Sir Robert Howard, as there
is every reason to believe, Dryden here represents him as supporting a
point which he gives up in his preface; for he censures both the plots
and diction of the ancients, and concludes, that upon Horace's rules,
"our English plays may justly challenge the pre-eminence." See Preface
to his Plays in folio, 1665.]
[Footnote 117: "Now, that it should be one, and entire. One is
considerable two ways; either, as it is only separate, and by itself;
or as being composed of many parts, it begins to be one, as those
parts grow, or are wrought together. That it should be one the first
way alone, and by itself, no man that hath tasted letters ever would
say, especially having required, before, a just magnitude, and equal
proportion of the parts in themselves. Neither of which can possibly
be, if the action be single and separate, nor composed of parts, which
laid together in themselves, with an equal and fitting proportion, tend
to the same end, which thing, out of antiquity itself, hath deceived
many; and more this day it doth deceive."--_Jonson's Discoveries._]
[Footnote 118: Malone and Langbaine have both observed, that our author
elsewhere uses the same image, applied indeed to the very same person:
Subtle was got by our Albumazar,
That Alchemist by this Astrologer:
Here he was fashioned; and we may suppose,
He liked the fashion well, who wore the clothes.
]
[Footnote 119: Dorset gave an instance of the honour in which he held
Ben Jonson, by an excellent epilogue, upon the reviving of "Every
Man in his Humour." When the speaker of the epilogue has proceeded a
good way in the usual style of rallying the piece and author, he is
interrupted by
_Jonson's Ghost._
Hold, and give way, for I myself will speak:
Can you encourage so much insolence,
And add new faults still to the great offence
Your ancestors so rashly did commit,
Against the mighty powers of art and wit,
When they condemned those noble works of mine,
Sejanus, and my best loved Catiline?
Repent, or on your guilty heads shall fall
The curse of many a rhyming pastoral.
The three bold Beauchamps shall revive again,
And with the London-Prentice conquer Spain.
All the dull follies of the former age
Shall find applause on this corrupted stage.
But if you pay the great arrears of praise,
So long since due to my much injured plays,
From all past crimes I first will set you free,
And then inspire some one to write like me.
]
[Footnote 120: This objection, although stated against Crites the
prototype of Howard, occurs in Sir Robert's own preface, who points out
an additional advantage attending it. He observes, that the subjects
of the ancients were usually the most known stories and fables; a
circumstance which led them to compose their plays rather of speeches
and chorus's, than of scenic action, and representation: Because,
"Seneca making choice of Medea, Hippolytus, and Hercules Œtus,
it was impossible to show Medea throwing the mangled limbs of Jason
into her age-renewing kettle, or to present the scattered limbs of
Hippolytus upon the stage, or show Hercules burning upon his own
funeral pile."]
[Footnote 121: Our author has quoted from memory. The lines
are--_At nostri proavi_, &c. and afterwards--_Ne dicam_ stulte,
_mirati_.--MALONE.]
[Footnote 122: A mistake for eighth.]
[Footnote 123: This remark is unfounded; for the words are--_et longæ
visent Capitolia pompæ_. Ovid. MET. l. i. In the preceding
quotation, for _verbo_, we should read _verbis_; and for _metuam
summi_,--_timeam magni_.--MALONE.]
[Footnote 124: The insurrection in Scotland, in Charles I.'s time,
inflamed Cleiveland as much as the nation. We have often heard of
poetic fire, but he is the only author who calls for a bucket of water
to quench it:
Ring the bells backward, I am all on fire;
Not all the buckets in a country quire
Shall quench my rage--
]
[Footnote 125: Our author (as Dr Johnson has observed) "might have
determined this question upon surer evidence; for it [Medea] is quoted
by Quintilian as Seneca's, and the only line which remains of Ovid's
play, (for one line is left us,) is not found there."]
[Footnote 126: One of the old theatres, and of the lowest order among
them.]
[Footnote 127: Although a zealous admirer of the author, I am at a loss
to see much merit in the plot of "The Bloody Brother, or Rollo" of
Fletcher. The hero is a Duke of Normandy, who first kills his brother
in his mother's arms; then has his chancellor chopped to pieces, and
thrown to the dogs; beheads his tutor, kills an officer of his guards
for burying the reliques of his chancellor, and finally is stabbed by
the captain of his guards, and succeeded in his dukedom by his cousin;
a person of no note through the play, but who, being left alive when
every other person is killed, is raised to the throne as a matter
of necessity. This is the history of Geta and Caracalla, and a very
disagreeable one it is, but certainly not the plot of a play. As for
the farce mingled with it, there are three state criminals led to be
hanged, who join in the old catch,
And three merry boys,
And three merry boys,
And three merry boys are we,
As ever did sing
Three parts in a string,
All under the triple tree.
]
[Footnote 128: I thought I had discovered this ingenious person to be
the honourable Edward Howard, author of the "British Princes," who,
in the preface to the "Woman's Conquest," has this passage: "And here
I cannot chuse but reflect on our mean imitation of French plays, by
introducing of servants and waiting-women to have parts, without being
essential characters; an error well avoided by our former writers,
who never admitted any otherwise than as messengers and attendants,
except on the account of being characters, as is to be seen by Numphs
in "Bartholomew Fair," and Face in the "Alchymist;" the latter of which
(notwithstanding what can be objected against him) may deservedly be
granted one of the best parts on our English stage." But the passage
does not quite correspond with the sentiment in the text; besides, the
"Woman's Conquest" did not appear till 1670-1, two years after the
Essay. The preface contains some oblique attacks upon Dryden.]
[Footnote 129: Our author's last play of "Love Triumphant" is winded up
in the last act by the mere change of will on the part of Veramond.]
[Footnote 130: Velleius Paterculus, I. 17.]
[Footnote 131: Here the first edition has, "by Mr Hart." This play was
first acted in 1661, under the title of "The Liar," and revived in
1685, under that of "The Mistaken Beauty."]
[Footnote 132: In 1642.]
[Footnote 133: "The Adventures of five Hours," is a comedy imitated
from the Spanish of Calderon, by Sir Samuel Tuke, with some assistance
from the Earl of Bristol. It was acted at court 1663, and received
great applause. Cowley writes a laudatory poem, for which in the
"Session of Poets" he is censured by Apollo; Diego is described, in
the characters of the _dramatis personæ_, as "servant to Octavio, bred
a scholar, a great coward, and a pleasant droll." It would seem from
the preface, that this mode of affixing characters to the _dramatis
personæ_ was then a novelty.]
[Footnote 134: The custom of placing an hour-glass before the clergyman
was then common in England. It is still the furniture of a country
pulpit in Scotland. A facetious preacher used to press his audience to
_take another glass with him_.]
[Footnote 135: Most modern readers revolt at the incident, as a
monstrous improbability.]
[Footnote 136: The insolence with which the dry and dogged Jonson used
to carp at Shakespeare, is highly illustrative of that jealousy with
which he is taxed by Drummond of Hawthornden. The most memorable attack
on Shakespeare, on the score mentioned in the text, is the prologue to
"Every Man in his Humour."
Though need make many poets, and some such
As art and nature have not bettered much;
Yet ours, for want, hath not so loved the stage,
As he dare serve the ill customs of the age,
Or purchase your delight at such a rate,
As, for it, he himself must justly hate:
To make a child new swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot, and half-foot words,
Fight over York, and Lancaster's long jars,
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
He rather prays, you will be pleased to see
One such to day, as other plays should be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down, the boys to please,
Nor nimble squib is seen, to make afeard
The gentlewomen; nor rolled bullet heard
To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;
But deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would chuse;
When she would shew an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes;
Except we make them such, by loving still
Our popular errors, as you'll all confess,
By laughing at them, they deserve no less:
Which when you heartily do, there's hope left, then
You, that have so graced monsters, may like men.
In "Every Man Out of his Humour," the same sneer is directed against
the same quarter:
"_Mit._ He cannot alter the scene without crossing the seas.
"_Cor._ He need not, having a whole island to run through, I thinke.
"_Mit._ No! how comes it then that _in some one play we see so
many seas, countries, and kingdoms passed over with such admirable
dexteritie_?
"_Cor._ O, that but shews how well the authors can travaile in their
vocation, and outrun the apprehension of their auditorie."]
[Footnote 137: Our old poets saw something peculiarly ludicrous in
the anapoestic canter of these doggrel Alexandrines. The old comedy
of "Gammer Gurton's Needle" is composed entirely of them. Shakespeare
often uses them where the dialogue is carried on by his clowns, or
comic characters; as in "Love's Labour's Lost," act III.; in most of
the quaint skirmishes of wit and punning, in the "Comedy of Errors;"
and in the "Taming of the Shrew." Other examples from low comedy of
that early age are given in Reed's edition of Shakespeare, Vol. xx. p.
462. After all, this same Alexandrine is only the common ballad-stanza
of "Chevy Chace," written in two lines at length, instead of being
subdivided into four. Mr Malone remarks, that the assertion in the text
is too general.]
[Footnote 138: Mr Malone justly observes, that the caution observed
in this decision, proves the miserable taste of the age. In fact,
Jonson, by dint of learning and arrogance, fairly bullied the age into
receiving his own character of his merits; and he was not the only
person of the name that has done so.]
[Footnote 139: The learned John Hales of Eton, whom Wood calls a
_walking library_, and Clarendon pronounces the least man and greatest
scholar of his time. Gildon tells the anecdote to which Dryden seems to
allude, in an essay addressed to Dryden himself on the vindication of
Shakespeare, and he quotes our author as his authority. "The matter of
fact, if my memory fail me not, was this: Mr Hales of Eton affirmed,
that he would show all the poets of antiquity out-done by Shakespeare,
in all the topics and common places made use of in poetry. The enemies
of Shakespeare would by no means yield him so much excellence; so that
it came to a resolution of a trial of skill upon that subject. The
place agreed on for the dispute, was Mr Hales's chamber at Eton. A
great many books were sent down by the enemies of this poet; and on the
appointed day, my Lord Falkland, Sir John Suckling, and all the persons
of quality that had wit and learning, and interested themselves in the
quarrel, met there; and upon a thorough disquisition of the point, the
judges chosen by agreement out of this learned and ingenious assembly,
unanimously gave the preference to Shakespeare; and the Greek and Roman
poets were adjudged to veil at least their glory in that to the English
hero." GILDON'S _Essays_.
Tate, in the preface to the "Loyal General," and Rowe, in his "Life of
Shakespeare," quote the same anecdote.]
[Footnote 140: _Humour_, in the ancient dramatic language, signified
some peculiar or fantastic bias, or habit of mind, in an individual.
See Vol. X. p. 396, 456.]
[Footnote 141: Dryden here understands _wit_ in the enlarged sense of
invention, or genius.]
[Footnote 142: This conversation, however, appears formidably stiff in
the present age.]
[Footnote 143: I should be sorry to see the comparative merits of the
stages tried upon that issue: Moliere, in natural comedy, is as far
superior to Jonson, as Shakespeare is to both.]
[Footnote 144: The reasons against rhyme,--and very weighty our author
at last found them,--are taken from the Preface to Sir Robert Howard's
plays, the Crites of the dialogue.
"Another way of the ancients, which the French follow, and our stage
has now lately practised, is, to write in rhyme; and this is the
dispute betwixt many ingenious persons, whether verse in rhyme, or
verse without the sound, which may be called _blank_ verse, (though a
hard expression,) is to be preferred. But take the question largely,
and it is never to be decided; but, by right application, I suppose
it may; for in the general, they are both proper, that is, one for a
play, the other for a poem or copy of verses; a blank verse being as
much too low for one, as rhyme is unnatural for the other. A poem,
being a premeditated form of thoughts upon designed occasions, ought
not to be unfurnished of any harmony in words or sound; the other is
presented as the present effect of accidents not thought of: so that
it is impossible it should be equally proper to both these, unless it
were possible that all persons were born so much more than poets, that
verses were not to be composed by them, but already made in them. Some
may object, that this argument is trivial, because, whatever is shewed,
it is known still to be but a play; but such may as well excuse an ill
scene, that is not naturally painted, because they know it is only a
scene, and not really a city or country.
"But there is yet another thing which makes verse upon the stage
appear more unnatural; that is, when a piece of a verse is made up by
one that knew not what the other meant to say, and the former verse
answered as perfectly in sound as the last is supplied in measure; so
that the smartness of a reply, which has its beauty by coming from
sudden thoughts, seems lost by that which rather looks like a design
of two, than the answer of one. It may be said, that rhyme is such a
confinement to a quick and luxuriant fancy, that it gives a stop to
its speed, till slow judgment comes in to assist it; but this is no
argument for the question in hand: for the dispute is not, which way
a man may write best in, but which is most proper for the subject he
writes upon; and, if this were let pass, the argument is yet unsolved
in itself: for he that wants judgment in the liberty of his fancy,
may as well shew the defect of it in its confinement: and, to say
truth, he that has judgment will avoid the errors, and he that wants
it will commit them both. It may be objected, it is improbable that
any should speak _extempore_ as well as Beaumont and Fletcher makes
them, though in blank verse: I do not only acknowledge that, but that
it is also improbable any will write so well that way. But if that may
be allowed improbable, I believe it may be concluded impossible that
any should speak as good verses in rhyme, as the best poets have writ;
and therefore, that which seems nearest to what it intends, is ever to
be preferred. Nor is great thoughts more adorned by verse, than verse
unbeautified by mean ones; so that verse seems not only unfit in the
best use of it, but much more in the worse, when a servant is called,
or a door bid to be shut, in rhyme. Verses (I mean good ones) do in
their height of fancy declare the labour that brought them forth, like
majesty, that grows with care; and Nature, that made the poet capable,
seems to retire, and leave its offers to be made perfect by pains and
judgement. Against this I can raise no argument but my Lord of Orrery's
writings, in whose verse the greatness of the majesty seems unsullied
with the cares, and his 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 got so
high, that use no labouring wings, but only with an easy care preserve
a steadiness in motion. But this particular happiness, among those
multitudes which that excellent person is owner of, does not convince
my reason, but employ my wonder: yet I am glad such verse has been
written for our 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."]
[Footnote 145: This makes it obvious, that Neander is Dryden himself.]
[Footnote 146: Vide Daniel, his _Defence of Rhyme_. DRYDEN.]
[Footnote 147: Accurately,
_Interdum vulgus recté videt est ubi peccat_.]
[Footnote 148: "The Siege of Rhodes," by Sir William D'Avenant;
"Mustapha," by Lord Orrery; "The Indian Queen," by Sir Robert Howard
and Dryden; and "The Indian Emperor," by Dryden alone.]
[Footnote 149: There is this great difference, that, from the mode of
pronouncing, the rhythm of the blank verse does not necessarily obtrude
itself on the audience: that of the couplet indubitably must.]
[Footnote 150: John Taylor, the Water-poet as he called himself, from
his profession of a waterman, was, according to Wood, a man who, having
a prodigious _genie_ to poetry, wrote eighty books, which not only made
much sport at the time, but were thought worthy of being remitted into
a large folio. He was a staunch cavalier, which might in some degree
bribe Anthony's judgment of his poetry. His poetry is very like that
which Skelton wrote a century before him. Among other pieces, there are
some comical addresses to his subscribers, whom he divides into those
who had received and paid their books; those who had done neither; and
those who, having received, were unable to pay. To the first class
he abounds in gratitude; the second he addresses as between hope and
despair; the third he treats civilly, as they were defaulters from
inability, and had always given him plenty of sack and fair promises:
But, as was reason, he reserves the extremity of his displeasure for a
fourth class of subscribers, who, having received his books, refused to
pay the subscription.]
[Footnote 151: This Sir Robert Howard quoted, in his preface to the
"Duke of Lerma;" and unluckily translated it, "Shutting the palace
gates," for which Dryden severely animadverts on him, Vol. II. p. 278.]
[Footnote 152: Meaning Sir Robert Howard himself.]
[Footnote 153: From the conduct of Louis XIV., who gradually retrenched
until he altogether abolished the edict of Nantes, there was a constant
emigration to England of his Huguenot subjects.]
HEADS
OF
AN ANSWER TO RYMER's REMARKS, &c.
Thomas Rymer, distinguished as the editor of the _Fœdera_ of
England, was in his earlier years ambitious of the fame of a critic. In
1678, he published a small duodecimo, entitled, "The Tragedies of the
last Age considered and examined by the practice of the Ancients, and
the common Sense of all Ages, in a Letter to Fleetwood and Shepherd."
The criticisms apply chiefly to the tragedies of the latter part of
the reigns of Elizabeth, and James I.; out of which he has singled, as
the particular subjects of reprehension, those of "Rollo," "The Maid's
Tragedy," and "King and no King." In this criticism, there was "much
malice mingled with a little wit;" obvious faults and absurdities were
censured as disgusting to common sense, on the one hand; on the other,
licenses unpractised by the ancients were condemned as barbarous and
unclassical.
A severe critic, if able but plausibly to support his remarks by
learning and acumen, strikes terror through the whole world of
literature. It is in vain to represent to such a person, that he only
examines the debtor side of the account, and omits to credit the
unfortunate author with the merit that he has justly a title to claim.
Instead of a fair accounting between the public and the poet, his cause
is tried as in a criminal action, where, if he is convicted of a crime,
all the merit of his work will not excuse him. There must be something
in the mind of man favourable to a system which tends to the levelling
of talents in the public estimation, or such critics as Rymer could
never have risen into notice. Yet Dryden, in the following projected
answer to his Remarks, has treated him with great respect; and Pope,
according to Spence, pronounced him "one of the best critics we ever
had."
That Dryden should have been desirous to conciliate the favour of an
avowed critic, was natural enough; but that Pope should have so spoken
of Rymer, only argues, either that he was prejudiced by the opinions
which his youth had sucked in from Walsh, Wycherly, and Trumbull, or
that his taste for the drama was far inferior to his powers in every
other range of poetry.
If Dryden had arranged and extended the materials of his answer, it is
possible that he would have treated Rymer with less deference than he
shewed while collecting them; for in the latter years of Dryden's life
they were upon bad terms. See Vol. xii. p. 45, and Epistle to Congreve,
Vol. xi. p. 57.
To a reader of the present day, when the cant of criticism has been in
some degree abandoned, nothing can be more disgusting than the remarks
of Rymer, who creeps over the most beautiful passages of the drama with
eyes open only to their defects, or their departure from scholastic
precept; who denies the name of poetry to the "Paradise Lost," and
compares judging of "Rollo" by "Othello," to adjusting one crooked line
by another. But I would be by no means understood to say, that there is
not sometimes justice, though never mercy, in his criticism.
Dryden had intended to enter the lists with Rymer in defence of the
ancient theatre, and with this view had wrote the following Heads of an
Answer to the Remarks. They were jotted down on the blank leaves of a
copy of the book presented to Dryden by Rymer. The volume falling into
the hands of the publisher of Beaumont and Fletcher's works, in 1711,
they prefixed Dryden's observations, as furnishing an apology for their
authors. They were again published by Dr Johnson, into whose hands
they were put by Garrick, who had the original in his collection. The
arrangement is different in the two copies; that of Dr Johnson has been
adopted, as preferred by Mr Malone.
HEADS
OF AN
ANSWER TO RYMER's REMARKS
ON THE
TRAGEDIES OF THE LAST AGE.
That we may the less wonder why pity and terror are not now the
only springs on which our tragedies move,[154] and that Shakespeare
may be more excused, Rapin confesses, that the French tragedies now
all run on the _tendre_; and gives the reason, because love is the
passion which most predominates in our souls; and that therefore the
passions represented become insipid, unless they are conformable to
the thoughts of the audience. But it is to be concluded, that this
passion works not now amongst the French so strongly, as the other two
did amongst the ancients. Amongst us, who have a stronger genius for
writing, the operations from the writing are much stronger; for the
raising of Shakespeare's passions is more from the excellency of the
words and thoughts, than the justness of the occasion; and if he has
been able to pick single occasions, he has never founded the whole
reasonably; yet, by the genius of poetry in writing, he has succeeded.
Rapin attributes more to the _dictio_, that is, to the words and
discourse of a tragedy, than Aristotle has done, who places them in
the last rank of beauties; perhaps, only last in order, because they
are the last product of the design, of the disposition or connection
of its parts, of the characters, of the manners of those characters,
and of the thoughts proceeding from those manners. Rapin's words are
remarkable:--It is not the admirable intrigue, the surprising events,
and extraordinary incidents, that make the beauty of a tragedy; it
is the discourses, when they are natural and passionate.--So are
Shakespeare's.
The parts of a poem, tragic or heroic, are,
1. The fable itself.
2. The order or manner of its contrivance, in relation of the
parts to the whole.
3. The manners, or decency of the characters, in speaking or
acting what is proper for them, and proper to be shewn by the poet.
4. The thoughts, which express the manners.
5. The words, which express those thoughts.
In the last of these, Homer excels Virgil; Virgil all other ancient
poets; and Shakespeare all modern poets.
For the second of these, the order: the meaning is, that a fable ought
to have a beginning, middle, and an end, all just and natural; so
that that part, _e.g._ which is the middle, could not naturally be
the beginning or end, and so of the rest: all depend on one another,
like the links of a curious chain. If terror and pity are only to
be raised, certainly this author follows Aristotle's rules, and
Sophocles' and Euripides's example; but joy may be raised too, and that
doubly, either by seeing a wicked man punished, or a good man at last
fortunate; or perhaps indignation, to see wickedness prosperous, and
goodness depressed: both these may be profitable to the end of tragedy,
reformation of manners; but the last improperly, only as it begets pity
in the audience; though Aristotle, I confess, places tragedies of this
kind in the second form.
He who undertakes to answer this excellent critique of Mr Rymer, in
behalf of our English poets against the Greek, ought to do it in this
manner: either by yielding to him the greatest part of what he contends
for, which consists in this, that the μύθος _i.e._ the design
and conduct of it, is more conducing in the Greeks to those ends of
tragedy, which Aristotle and he propose, namely, to cause terror and
pity; yet the granting this does not set the Greeks above the English
poets.
But the answerer ought to prove two things: First, that the fable is
not the greatest master-piece of a tragedy, though it be the foundation
of it.
Secondly, that other ends, as suitable to the nature of tragedy, may be
found in the English, which were not in the Greek.
Aristotle places the fable first; not _quoad dignitatem, sed quoad
fundamentum_: for a fable, never so movingly contrived to those ends
of his, pity and terror, will operate nothing on our affections, except
the characters, manners, thoughts, and words, are suitable.
So that it remains for Mr Rymer to prove, that in all those, or the
greatest part of them, we are inferior to Sophocles and Euripides;
and this he has offered at, in some measure; but, I think, a little
partially to the ancients.
For the fable itself: it is in the English more adorned with episodes,
and larger than in the Greek poets; consequently more diverting. For
if the action be but one, and that plain, without any counter-turn of
design or episode, _i.e._ under-plot, how can it be so pleasing as the
English, which have both under-plot and a turned design, which keeps
the audience in expectation of the catastrophe? whereas in the Greek
poets we see through the whole design at first.
For the characters, they are neither so many nor so various in
Sophocles and Euripides, as in Shakespeare and Fletcher; only they are
more adapted to those ends of tragedy which Aristotle commends to us,
pity and terror.
The manners flow from the characters, and consequently must partake of
their advantages and disadvantages.
The thoughts and words, which are the fourth and fifth beauties of
tragedy, are certainly more noble and more poetical in the English than
in the Greek, which must be proved by comparing them somewhat more
equitably than Mr Rymer has done.
After all, we need not yield, that the English way is less conducing
to move pity and terror, because they often shew virtue oppressed and
vice punished; where they do not both, or either, they are not to be
defended.
And if we should grant that the Greeks performed this better, perhaps
it may admit of dispute, whether pity and terror are either the prime,
or at least the only ends of tragedy.
It is not enough that Aristotle has said so, for Aristotle drew his
models of tragedy from Sophocles and Euripides; and if he had seen
ours, might have changed his mind. And chiefly we have to say, (what
I hinted on pity and terror, in the last paragraph save one,) that
the punishment of vice and reward of virtue are the most adequate
ends of tragedy, because most conducing to good example of life. Now
pity is not so easily raised for a criminal, (and the ancient tragedy
always represents its chief person such,) as it is for an innocent
man; and the suffering of innocence and punishment of the offender is
of the nature of English tragedy: contrarily, in the Greek, innocence
is unhappy often, and the offender escapes. Then we are not touched
with the sufferings of any sort of men so much as of lovers, and this
was almost unknown to the ancients: so that they neither administered
poetical justice, of which Mr Rymer boasts, so well as we; neither knew
they the best common-place of pity, which is love.
He therefore unjustly blames us for not building on what the ancients
left us; for it seems, upon consideration of the premises, that we have
wholly finished what they began.
My judgment on this piece is this; that it is extremely learned, but
that the author of it is better read in the Greek than in the English
poets; that all writers ought to study this critique, as the best
account I have ever seen of the ancients; that the model of tragedy he
has here given is excellent, and extreme correct; but that it is not
the only model of all tragedy, because it is too much circumscribed in
plot, characters, &c.; and lastly, that we may be taught here justly to
admire and imitate the ancients, without giving them the preference,
with this author, in prejudice to our own country.
Want of method in this excellent treatise, makes the thoughts of the
author sometimes obscure.
His meaning, that pity and terror are to be moved, is, that they are
to be moved as the means conducing to the ends of tragedy, which are
pleasure and instruction.
And these two ends may be thus distinguished. The chief end of the poet
is to please; for his immediate reputation depends on it.
The great end of the poem is to instruct, which is performed by making
pleasure the vehicle of that instruction; for poesy is an art, and all
arts are made to profit. Rapin.
The pity which the poet is to labour for, is for the criminal, not for
those or him whom he has murdered, or who have been the occasion of the
tragedy. The terror is likewise in the punishment of the same criminal,
who, if he be represented too great an offender, will not be pitied; if
altogether innocent, his punishment will be unjust.
Another obscurity is, where he says, Sophocles perfected tragedy by
introducing the third actor;[155] that is, he meant, three kinds of
action; one company singing, or speaking; another playing on the music;
a third dancing.
To make a true judgment in this competition betwixt the Greek poets and
the English, in tragedy:
Consider, first, how Aristotle has defined a tragedy. Secondly, what he
assigns the end of it to be. Thirdly, what he thinks the beauties of
it. Fourthly, the means to attain the end proposed.
Compare the Greek and English tragic poets justly, and without
partiality, according to those rules.
Then, secondly, consider whether Aristotle has made a just definition
of tragedy; of its parts, of its ends, and of its beauties; and whether
he, having not seen any others but those of Sophocles, Euripides, &c.
had, or truly could determine what all the excellencies of tragedy are,
and wherein they consist.
Next shew in what ancient tragedy was deficient; for example, in the
narrowness of its plots, and fewness of persons; and try whether that
be not a fault in the Greek poets, and whether their excellency was so
great, when the variety was visibly so little; or whether what they did
was not very easy to do.
Then make a judgment on what the English have added to their beauties;
as, for example, not only more plot, but also new passions, as, namely,
that of love, scarce touched on by the ancients, except in this one
example of Phædra, cited by Mr Rymer; and in that how short they were
of Fletcher.
Prove also that love, being an heroic passion, is fit for tragedy,
which cannot be denied, because of the example alleged of Phædra; and
how far Shakespeare has out-done them in friendship, &c.
To return to the beginning of this enquiry; consider, if pity and
terror be enough for tragedy to move; and I believe, upon a true
definition of tragedy, it will be found, that its work extends farther,
and that is to reform manners, by a delightful representation of human
life in great persons, by way of dialogue. If this be true, then not
only pity and terror are to be moved, as the only means to bring
us to virtue, but generally love to virtue, and hatred to vice, by
shewing the rewards of one, and punishments of the other; at least, by
rendering virtue always amiable, though it be shewn unfortunate, and
vice detestable, though it be shewn triumphant.
If then, the encouragement of virtue, and discouragement of vice, be
the proper ends of poetry in tragedy, pity and terror, though good
means, are not the only. For all the passions, in their turns, are
to be set in a ferment; as joy, anger, love, fear, are to be used as
the poet's common-places, and a general concernment for the principal
actors is to be raised, by making them appear such in their characters,
their words, and actions, as will interest the audience in their
fortunes.
And if, after all, in a larger sense, pity comprehends this concernment
for the good, and terror includes detestation for the bad, then let us
consider whether the English have not answered this end of tragedy, as
well as the ancients, or perhaps better.
And here Mr Rymer's objections against these plays are to be
impartially weighed, that we may see whether they are of weight enough
to turn the balance against our countrymen.
It is evident, those plays which he arraigns, have moved both those
passions in a high degree upon the stage.
To give the glory of this away from the poet, and to place it upon the
actors, seems unjust.[156]
One reason is, because whatever actors they have found, the event has
been the same, that is, the same passions have been always moved;
which shews, that there is something of force and merit in the plays
themselves, conducing to the design of raising these two passions:
and suppose them ever to have been excellently acted, yet action only
adds grace, vigour, and more life, upon the stage, but cannot give it
wholly where it is not first. But secondly, I dare appeal to those who
have never seen them acted, if they have not found these two passions
moved within them; and if the general voice will carry it, Mr Rymer's
prejudice will take off his single testimony.
This, being matter of fact, is reasonably to be established by this
appeal; as if one man says it is night, when the rest of the world
conclude it to be day, there needs no farther argument against him,
that it is so.
If he urge, that the general taste is depraved, his arguments to prove
this can at best but evince, that our poets took not the best way to
raise those passions; but experience proves against him, that those
means which they have used have been successful, and have produced them.
And one reason of that success is, in my opinion, this, that
Shakespeare and Fletcher have written to the genius of the age and
nation in which they lived; for though nature, as he objects, is the
same in all places, and reason too the same, yet the climate, the
age, the disposition of the people, to whom a poet writes, may be so
different, that what pleased the Greeks would not satisfy an English
audience.
And if they proceeded upon a foundation of truer reason to please the
Athenians, than Shakespeare and Fletcher to please the English, it only
shews, that the Athenians were a more judicious people; but the poet's
business is certainly to please the audience.
Whether our English audience have been pleased hitherto with acorns, as
he calls it, or with bread, is the next question; that is, whether the
means which Shakespeare and Fletcher have used in their plays to raise
those passions before named, be better applied to the ends by the Greek
poets than by them. And perhaps we shall not grant him this wholly: let
it be yielded, that a writer is not to run down with the stream, or
to please the people by their own usual methods, but rather to reform
their judgments,--it still remains to prove, that our theatre needs
this total reformation.
The faults which he has found in their designs, are rather wittily
aggravated in many places, than reasonably urged; and as much may be
returned on the Greeks by one who were as witty as himself.
2. They destroy not, if they are granted, the foundation of the
fabric, only take away from the beauty of the symmetry: for example,
the faults in the character of the "King and no King"[157] are not as
he makes them, such as render him detestable, but only imperfections
which accompany human nature, and are for the most part excused by the
violence of his love; so that they destroy not our pity or concernment
for him. This answer may be applied to most of his objections of that
kind.
And Rollo[158] committing many murders, when he is answerable but
for one, is too severely arraigned by him, for it adds to our horror
and detestation of the criminal; and poetic justice is not neglected
neither, for we stab him in our minds for every offence which he
commits; and the point which the poet is to gain on the audience is not
so much in the death of an offender, as the raising an horror of his
crimes.
That the criminal should neither be wholly guilty, nor wholly innocent,
but so participating of both as to move both pity and terror, is
certainly a good rule, but not perpetually to be observed; for that
were to make all tragedies too much alike; which objection he foresaw,
but has not fully answered.
To conclude, therefore; if the plays of the ancients are more correctly
plotted, ours are more beautifully written. And if we can raise
passions as high on worse foundations, it shews our genius in tragedy
is greater; for, in all other parts of it, the English have manifestly
excelled them.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 154: Rymer sets out with the old dogma, that no source of
tragedy was legitimate, except that springing from pity or terror.]
[Footnote 155: "After much new-modelling, many changes, and
alterations, Æschylus came with a second actor on the stage, and
lessened the business of the chorus proportionably. But Sophocles
adding a third actor and painted scenes, gave, in Aristotle's opinion,
the utmost perfection to tragedy." RYMER'S _Remarks_, p. 13.]
[Footnote 156: Alluding to the following remarks of Rymer transferring
the pleasing effect of the plays, which he censures, to the lively
representation. "Amongst those who will be objecting against the
doctrine I lay down, may peradventure appear a sort of men who have
remembered so and so; and value themselves upon their experience. I may
write by the book (say they) what I have a mind, but they know what
will please. Those are a kind of stage-quacks and empirics in poetry,
who have got a receipt to please; and no collegiate like them for
purging the passions.
"These say (for instance) a "King and no King" pleases. I say the
comical part pleases.
"I say that Mr Hart pleases; most of the business falls to his share,
and what he delivers, every one takes upon content; their eyes are
prepossessed and charmed by his action, before aught of the poet's can
approach their ears; and to the most wretched of characters, he gives a
lustre and brilliance, which dazzles the sight, that the deformities in
the poetry cannot be perceived."--_Remarks_, p. 5.
He has a similar observation in page 138:--"We may remember, however
we find this scene of Melantius and Amintor written in the book, that
at the theatre we have a good scene acted. There is work cut out, and
both our Æsopus and Roscius are on the stage together: whatever defect
may be in Amintor and Melantius, Mr Hart and Mr Mohun are wanting in
nothing. To these we owe for what is pleasing in the scene; and to this
scene we may impute the success of the "Maid's Tragedy."]
[Footnote 157: After laying it down as a necessary rule, that a king in
tragedy is, _ex jure_, a hero, Rymer proceeds to arraign the character
of Arbaces, for his vain glory, presumption, incestuous passion for his
sister, and extravagance of language. He sums his character up in the
words of the Irish inscription:
For fierceness and for furiousness,
Men call me the queen's mortar-piece.
]
[Footnote 158: "When Rollo has murdered his brother, he stands
condemned by the laws of poetry; and nothing remains but that the
poet see him executed, and the poet is to answer for all the mischief
committed afterwards. But Rollo we find has made his escape, and woe
be to the chancellor, to the school-master, and to the chancellor's
man; for those are to be men of this world no longer. Here is like to
be poetical justice, so many lives taken away, and but the life of one
guilty person to answer for all; and is not this a strange method of
killing? If the planets had contrived him for a cock of thirteen, his
first victory should not have been the most important; he should first
have practised on his subjects, and have risen by degrees to the height
of iniquity. His brother sovereign was his top-murder; nothing remained
after that, unless it were his lady-mother."]
PREFACE
TO
NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS
ON
THE EMPRESS OF MOROCCO.
The following effusion of spleen, which is altogether unworthy of
Dryden, took its rise in the animosity of literary rivalship.
About 1673, the Earl of Rochester, who had been formerly on good terms
with Dryden, had received a dedication from him, and made a suitable
return of compliment,[159] became his bitter opponent and enemy. This
was probably owing to Dryden's intimacy with Sheffield, Earl Mulgrave,
who had challenged Rochester, and publicly branded him with cowardice
for his refusal to fight him.[160] The witty and profligate courtier
turned that resentment against the poet, which he durst not shew to the
patron, and endeavoured to injure him on every opportunity.
Elkanah Settle, whom we have had former opportunities to commemorate,
was now rising into notice. He was the son of Joseph Settle, of
Dunstable, in Bedfordshire, and had distinguished himself by a tragedy,
called "Cambyses, King of Persia," which was acted for three weeks
together. Emboldened by this success, he produced a second play,
entitled "The Empress of Morocco." Upon this tragedy, and its author,
Rochester fixed, as the implements of his plan, to humble and mortify
Dryden. He made use of his influence to introduce Settle at court as
a poet greatly superior to our bard; and he was received at least
upon equal terms with him. Even Sheffield contributed to Dryden's
mortification, and, perhaps in obedience to the king, graced "The
Empress of Morocco" with a prologue of his own writing, which was
spoken by Lady Betty Howard, when the piece was presented at Whitehall,
by the gentlemen and ladies of the court. Rochester wrote a second
prologue, which was spoken by the same lady, on a second representation
of the same distinguished kind. The bookseller contributed his share
of celebrity to the piece, by decorating it with four engravings, each
representing a scene in the play; an honour which had not hitherto been
conferred on any single play: with these decorations it sold for two
shillings, being double the common price. Lastly, the public bought up
the edition with great rapidity, and very naturally employed themselves
in weighing the merits of the new bard against those of our author, who
had hitherto reigned paramount over the drama.
All these circumstances combined to vex the spirit of Dryden. There was
not only a vile bombastic production publicly weighed against his most
laboured plays, but the author, presuming upon the countenance of a
numerous party among the public, had openly bid him defiance, by sundry
irreverend sneers at him in the prefatory epistle of his garnished
and bedizened performance. This Dryden termed, "a most arrogant,
calumniating, ill-natured, and scandalous preface."[161]
It had been undoubtedly wise in Dryden to have disdained to enter the
arena with such an antagonist. Settle must soon have sunk by his own
weight, to the dishonour and confusion of his supporters; but the
spirit of controversy and party were to buoy him up a little longer.
Our author, irritated and imprudent, entered into a league with
Shadwell, (afterwards a hostile name,) and with John Crowne, another
dramatist of the day, to humble at once the pride of Settle, by such
a criticism as should make his party ashamed of their poet, and the
poet of his own production. Accordingly, "The Notes and Observations
on the Empress of Morocco," the work of the three allies, came forth
in 4to, in 1674. None of the consequences followed which Dryden had
probably expected. Settle retorted, and stupid and vulgar as he was,
it was hardly possible for him to fall beneath the Billingsgate with
which he had been assailed.[162] On the contrary, he rather gained
reputation by the contest, and fairly divided with Dryden the applauses
of the court and of the universities. It was not until the controversy
subsided, that Elkanah lost his unnatural and unmerited literary
importance. In the mean time, the feud between Dryden and him was
inflamed by political hatred, and at length procured Elkanah the bitter
distinction, of being described in "Absalom and Achitophel," under the
name of Doeg. Vol. IX. pages 331, 373.
It were to be wished, our author could be exculpated from any share in
the coarse and illiberal invective which follows these introductory
remarks. But it is too certain, from the evidence of Dennis, as well as
Settle's affirmation, that Dryden did stoop to revise the pamphlet, and
probably to write the preface and postscript. These cannot therefore be
rejected from a full edition of his works; but I willingly follow Mr
Malone's authority in rejecting the rest of the pamphlet, excepting a
small specimen.
Morally considered, the piece affords an useful lesson, how much
irritation can debase even the composition of genius. The best
satirist, like a fencer, loses the skill of his art when he loses his
temper; and if Dryden afterwards succeeded in making a ridiculous
portrait of Elkanah Settle, it was because he had lost apprehension
of him as a rival, and cooled his indignation with a proportion of
contempt suitable to its object.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 159: See Vol. IV. p. 235.]
[Footnote 160: See the story as told by Sheffield himself, p. 215.]
[Footnote 161: It is addressed to Henry Earl of Norwich, and is
obviously levelled against the manner of our author's dedications.
"The impudence of scribblers in this age has so corrupted the original
design of dedications, that before I dare tell you this trifle begs
your lordship's protection, I ought first to examine on what grounds
I make the attack; for now every thing that ere saw the stage, how
modest soever it has been there, without daring to shew its face above
three days, has yet the arrogance to thrust itself into the world in
print, with a great name before it: When the fawning scribbler shall
compendiously say,--The factions of critics, the ill time of the year,
and the worse acting of the players, has prejudiced his play; but he
doubts not, but his grace, or his honour's more impartial judgment will
find that pardonable, which the world has so maliciously censured; that
is as much as to say,--Sir, you are the only person at court, whose
blind side I dare venture on; not doubting, but your good nature will
excuse what all the world (except the author) has justly condemned.
Thus a dedication, which was formerly a present to a person of quality,
is now made a libel on him; whilst the poet either supposes his patron
to be so great a sot to defend that in print, which he hist off the
stage; or else makes himself a greater, in asking a favour from him,
which he never expects to obtain. However, that which is abuse to the
patron, is a compliment to the bookseller, who whispers the poet, and
tells him, sir, your play had misfortune, and all that--but if you'd
but write a dedication, or preface.--The poet takes the hint, picks out
a person of honour, tells him he has a great deal of wit, gives us an
account who writ sense in the last age, supposing we cannot be ignorant
who writes it in this; disputes the nature of verse, answers a cavil
or two, quibbles upon the court, huffs the critics, and the work's
done. 'Tis not to be imagined how far a sheet of this goes to make a
bookseller rich, and a poet famous.
"But, my lord, whilst I trouble you with this kind of discourse, I
beg you would not think I design to give rules to the press, as some
of our tribe have done to the stage; or that I find fault with their
dedications, in compliment to my own: no, that's a trick I do not
pretend to."]
[Footnote 162: He thus characterizes his three antagonists.
"Thereupon, with very little conjuration, by those three remarkable
qualities of _railing_, _boasting_, and _thieving_, I found a Dryden
in the frontispiece; then going through the preface, I observed the
drawing of a fool's picture to be the design of the whole piece; and
reflecting on the painter, I considered that probably the pamphlet
might be like his plays, not to be written without help: and according
to expectation, I discovered the author of "Epsom Wells," and the
author of "Pandion and Amphigenia," lent their assistance. How!
Three to one, thought I! and three gentlemen of such disagreeing
qualifications in one club! The first, a man that has had wit, but is
past it; the second, that has it, if he can keep it; and the third,
that neither has, nor is ever like to have it. Then boldly on I went,
and fortified with patience (as I found it required) for a full
perusal, I wondered the less at the deformity of the piece, when such
different heads went to the composure. The first of these is the only
person that pretends an injury, received from a satiric line or two in
the "Epistle to Morocco;" and consequently I conclude him the promoter
of so ill-natured a retort. The second, I suppose only putting his
comical hand, to help forward with the mirth of so ridiculous a libel;
and the third, perhaps out of a vain glory of being in print, knowing
himself to be such a reptile in poetry, that he's beholding to lampoon
for giving the world to know that there is such a writer in being."]
PREFACE
TO
NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS
ON
THE EMPRESS OF MOROCCO.
When I first saw "The Empress of Morocco," though I found it then to be
a rhapsody of nonsense, I was very well contented to have let it pass,
that the reputation of a new author might not be wholly damned; but
that he might be encouraged to make his audience some part of amends
another time. In order to this, I strained a point of conscience to cry
up some passages of the play, which I hoped would recommend it to the
liking of the more favourable judges; but the ill report it had from
those that had seen it at Whitehall, had already done its business with
judicious men. It was generally disliked by them; and but for the help
of scenes, and habits, and a dancing tree, even the Ludgate audience
had forsaken it.[163]
After this ill success, one would have thought the poet should have
been sufficiently mortified; and though he were not naturally modest,
should at least have deferred the showing of his impudence till a
fitter season: but instead of this, he has written before his play
the most arrogant, calumniating, ill-mannered, and senseless Preface
I ever saw. This upstart illiterate scribbler, who lies more open to
censure than any writer of the age, comes amongst the poets, like one
of the earth-born brethren; and his first business in the world is to
attack and murder all his fellows. This, I confess, raised a little
indignation in me, as much as I was capable of for so contemptible a
wretch, and made me think it somewhat necessary that he should be made
an example, to the discouragement of all such petulant ill writers;
and that he should be dragged out of that obscurity to which his own
poetry would for ever have condemned him. I knew, indeed, that to write
against him was to do him too great an honour; but I considered Ben
Jonson had done it before to Dekker, our author's predecessor, whom he
chastised in his "Poetaster," under the character of Crispinus; and
brought him in vomiting up his fustian and nonsense.[164] Should our
poet have been introduced in the same manner, he must have disgorged
his whole play, ere he had been cleansed. Never did I see such a
confused heap of false grammar, improper English, strained hyperboles,
and downright bulls. His plot is incoherent, and full of absurdities,
and the characters of his persons so ill chosen, that they are all
either knaves or fools; only his knaves are fools into the bargain,
and so must be of necessity, while they are in his management. They
all speak alike, and without distinction of character; that is, every
one rants, and swaggers, and talks nonsense abundantly. He steals
notoriously from his contemporaries, but he so alters the property,
by disguising his theft in ill English and bad applications, that he
makes the child his own by deforming it:--_male dum recitas, incipit
esse tuus_. A poet, when he sees his thoughts in so ill a dress, is
ashamed to confess they ever belonged to him. For the Latin and Greek
authors, he had certainly done them the same injury he has done the
English, but that he has the excuse of Aretine for not railing against
God;--he steals not from them, because he never knew them. In short,
he is an animal of a most deplored understanding, without reading and
conversation: his being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering
of thought, which he can never fashion either into wit or English. His
style is boisterous and rough-hewn; his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and
his numbers perpetually harsh and ill sounding. That little talent
which he has, is fancy. He sometimes labours with a thought, but
with the pudder he makes to bring it into the world, it is commonly
still-born; so that, for want of learning and elocution, he will never
be able to express any thing either naturally or justly. This subjects
him on all occasions to false allusions, and mistaken points of wit.
As for judgment, he has not the least grain of it; and therefore all
his plays will be a mere confusion. What a beastly pattern of a king,
whom he intends virtuous, has he shewn in his Muly Labas? Yet he is the
only person who is kept to his character; for he is a perpetual fool;
and I dare undertake, that if he were played by Nokes, who acted just
such another monarch in "Macbeth,"[165] it would give new life to the
play, and do it more good than all its devils. But of all women, the
Lord bless us from his Laula! nobody can be safe from her: she is so
naturally mischievous, that she kills without the least occasion, for
the mere lechery of bloodshed. I suspect he took her character from the
poisoning-woman, who, they say, makes almost as little ceremony of a
murder as that Queen.
It were endless to run over the rest; but they are all of the same
stamp. He has a heavy hand at fools, and a great felicity in writing
nonsense for them. Fools they will be in spite of him. His king, his
two empresses, his villain, and his sub-villain, nay his hero, have all
a certain natural cast of the father; one turn of the countenance goes
through all his children. Their folly was born and bred in them; and
something of the Elkanah will be visible. Our poet, in writing fools,
has very much in him of that sign-post painter, who was famous only for
drawing roses: when a vintner desired him to paint a lion, he answered,
he would do it to content him, but he was sure it would be like a
rose. Yet since the common audience are much of his level, and both the
great vulgar and the small (as Mr Cowley calls them) are apt to admire
what they do not understand, (_omne ignotum habent pro magnifico_,)
and think all which rumbles is heroic, it will be no wonder if he
pass for a great author amongst town fools and city wits. With these
men, they who laugh at him will be thought envious; for they will be
sure to rise up in arms for nonsense, and violently defend a cause in
which they are engaged by the ties of nature and education. But it
will be for the benefit of mankind hereafter to observe what kind of
people they are who frequent this play, that men of common sense may
know whom to shun. Yet I dare assure the reader, that one half of the
faults and absurdities are not shewn; what is here is only selected
fustian, impertinence, and false grammar. There is as much behind, as
would reasonably damn as many plays as there are acts; for I am sure
there are no four lines together, which are free from some error, and
commonly a gross one. But here is enough to take a taste of him; to
have observed all, were to have swelled a volume, and have made you pay
as dear for a fool's picture, as you have done for his tragedy with
sculptures.
* * * * *
"As men in incense send up vows to heaven."
_Empress of Morocco_, Act II.
As if incense could carry up thoughts, or a thought go up in smoke: he
may as well say, he will roast or bake thoughts, as smoke them. And
the allusion too is very agreeable and natural: he compares thunder,
lightning, and roaring of guns, to incense; and says thus,--he
expresses his loud joys in a concert of thundering guns, as men send up
silent vows in gentle incense. If this description is not plentifully
supplied with nonsense, I will refer myself to the reader. No doubt
it was worth our poet's pains to cut a river up to Morocco, for the
sake of such a description of ships as this. A rare and studied piece
it is. The poet has employed his art about every line, that it may be
esteemed a curiosity in its kind, and himself a person endowed with
a peculiar talent in writing new and exact nonsense. And for this no
doubt it was, that our poet was so much courted, sent for from place
to place, that you could hardly cross a street but you met him puffing
and blowing, with his fardel of nonsense under his arm, driving his
bulls in haste to some great person or other to shew them, as if he had
lately come out of Asia or Africa with strange kinds of dromedaries,
rhinoceroses, or a new Cambyses, a beast more monstrous than any of the
former. Nay, both the playhouses contended for him, as if he had found
out some new way of eating fire. No doubt their design was to entertain
the town with a rarity. People had been long weary of good sense that
looked like nonsense, and now they would treat them with nonsense which
yet looked very like sense. But as he that pretended he would shew a
beast which was very like a horse, and was no horse, set people much
admiring what strange animal it should be, but when they came in, and
found it was nothing but a plain grey mare, laughed a while at the
conceit, but were ready after to stone the fellow for his impudence; so
it must needs fare with our poet, when his upper-gallery fools discover
they have tricks put upon them, and all that they have so ignorantly
clapped is downright nonsense. And for my part, I cannot but admire,
that not only to those who know, or at least have had time enough to
learn, what sense is, but also to a people who, of all nations in the
world, pretend to understand best what belongs to shipping, our poet
should dare to offer this fustian for sense and a description of ships;
a description so ridiculous, that Mulylabas, as errant a fool, and as
ignorant of ships as he is, must needs discover, that he is abused,
and that ships cannot be such things as the poet makes them. But the
poet has not only been so impudent to expose all this stuff, but so
arrogant to defend it with an Epistle; like a saucy booth-keeper, that
when he had put a cheat upon the people, would wrangle and fight with
any that would not like it, or would offer to discover it; for which
arrogance our poet receives this correction; and to jerk him a little
the sharper, I will not transpose his verse, but by the help of his own
words trans-nonsense sense, that, by my stuff, people may judge the
better what his is:
Great Boy, thy tragedy and sculptures done,
From press and plates, in fleets do homeward run:
And in ridiculous and humble pride,
Their course in ballad-singers' baskets guide;
Whose greasy twigs do all new beauties take
From the gay shows thy dainty sculptures make.
Thy lines a mess of rhyming nonsense yield,
A senseless tale, with fluttering fustian filled.
No grain of sense does in one line appear;
Thy words big bulks of boisterous bombast bear;
With noise they move, and from players' mouths rebound,
When their tongues dance to thy words' empty sound.
By thee inspired, thy rumbling verses roll,
As if that rhyme and bombast lent a soul;
And with that soul they seem taught duty too;
To huffing words does humble nonsense bow,
As if it would thy worthless worth enhance,
To the lowest rank of fops thy praise advance,
To whom by instinct all thy stuff is dear;
Their loud claps echo to the theatre.
From breaths of fools thy commendation spreads,
Fame sings thy praise with mouths of loggerheads;
With noise and laughing each thy fustian greets,
'Tis clapped by choirs of empty-headed cits,
Who have their tribute sent, and homage given,
_As men in whispers send loud noise to heaven_.[166]
Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle. And now we are come from
aboard his dancing, masquing, rebounding, breathing fleet; and as if we
had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but fools and nonsense.
Order and harmony in each appear,
Their lofty bulks the flaming billows bear;
In state they move, and on the waves rebound,
As if they danced to their own trumpets' sound:
By winds inspired, with lively grace they roll,
As if that breath and motion lent a soul;
And with that soul they seem taught duty too,
Their topsails lowered, their heads with reverence bow,
As if they would their general's worth enhance,
From him by instinct taught allegiance.
Whilst the loud cannons echo to the shore,
Their flaming breaths salute you emperor;
From their deep mouths he does your glory sing,
With thunder and with lightning greets his King.
Thus to express his joys, in a loud choir,
And concert of winged messengers of fire,
He has his tribute sent, and homage given,
As men in incense send up vows to heaven.
POSTSCRIPT.
Some who are pleased with the bare sound of verse, or the rumbling
of robustious nonsense, will be apt to think Mr Settle too severely
handled in this pamphlet; but I do assure the reader, that there are
a vast number of errors passed by, perhaps as many, or more, than are
taken notice of, both to avoid the tediousness of the work, and the
greatness. It might have occasioned a volume upon such a trifle. I
dare affirm, that no objections in this book are fruitless cavils: but
if, through too much haste, Mr Settle may be accused of any seeming
fault, which may reasonably be defended, let the passing by many gross
errors without reprehension compound for it. I am not ignorant, that
his admirers, who most commonly are women, will resent this very ill;
and some little friends of his, who are smatterers in poetry, will be
ready for most of his gross errors to use that much mistaken plea of
_poetica licentia_, which words fools are apt to use for the palliating
the most absurd nonsense in any poem. I cannot find when poets had
liberty, from any authority, to write nonsense, more than any other
men. Nor is that plea of _poetica licentia_ used as a subterfuge by
any but weak professors of that art, who are commonly given over to a
mist of fancy, a buzzing of invention, and a sound of something like
sense, and have no use of judgment. They never think thoroughly, but
the best of their thoughts are like those we have in dreams, imperfect;
which though perhaps we are often pleased with sleeping, we blush at
waking. The licentious wildness and extravagance of such men's conceits
have made poetry contemned by some, though it be very unjust for any to
condemn the science for the weakness of some of the professors.
Men that are given over to fancy only, are little better than madmen.
What people say of fire, viz. that it is a good servant, but an ill
master, may not unaptly be applied to fancy; which, when it is too
active, rages, but when cooled and allayed by the judgment, produces
admirable effects. But this rage of fancy is never Mr Settle's crime;
he has too much phlegm, and too little choler, to be accused of this.
He has all the pangs and throes of a fanciful poet, but is never
delivered of any more perfect issue of his phlegmatic brain, than a
dull Dutchwoman's sooterkin is of her body.
His style is very muddy, and yet much laboured; for his meaning (for
sense there is not much) is most commonly obscure, but never by reason
of too much height, but lowness. His fancy never flies out of sight,
but often sinks out of sight:--but now I hope the reader will excuse
some digression upon the extravagant use of fancy and poetical licence.
Fanciful poetry and music, used with moderation, are good; but men
who are wholly given over to either of them, are commonly as full
of whimsies as diseased and splenetic men can be. Their heads are
continually hot, and they have the same elevation of fancy sober,
which men of sense have when they drink. So wine used moderately
does not take away the judgment, but used continually, debauches
men's understandings, and turns them into sots, making their heads
continually hot by accident, as the others are by nature; so, mere
poets and mere musicians are as sottish as mere drunkards are, who live
in a continual mist, without seeing or judging any thing clearly.
A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a
reasonable, philosophical, and in some measure a mathematical head,
to be a complete and excellent poet; and besides this, should have
experience in all sorts of humours and manners of men; should be
thoroughly skilled in conversation, and should have a great knowledge
of mankind in general. Mr Settle having never studied any sort of
learning but poetry, and that but slenderly, as you may find by his
writings, and having besides no other advantages, must make very
lame work on't; he himself declares, he neither reads, nor cares for
conversation; so that he would persuade us he is a kind of fanatic in
poetry, and has a light within him, and writes by an inspiration; which
(like that of the heathen prophets) a man must have no sense of his own
when he receives; and no doubt he would be thought inspired, and would
be reverenced extremely in the country where Santons are worshipped.
But some will, I doubt not, object, that poetry should not be reduced
to the strictness of mathematics; to which I answer, it ought to be so
far mathematical as to have likeness and proportion, since they will
all confess that it is a kind of painting. But they will perhaps say,
that a poem is a picture to be seen at a distance, and therefore ought
to be bigger than the life. I confess there must be a due distance
allowed for the seeing of any thing in the world; for an object can no
more be seen at all too near, than too far off the eye: but granting
that a poem is a picture to be viewed at a great distance, the distance
and the bigness ought to be so suited, as though the picture be much
bigger than the life, yet it must not seem so; and what miserable
mistakes some poets make for want of knowing this truly, I leave to
men of sense to judge; and by the way, let us consider that dramatic
poetry, especially the English, brings the picture nearer the eye, than
any other sort of poetry.
But some will say after this, what licence is left for poets?
Certainly the same that good poets ever took, without being faulty,
(for surely the best were so sometimes, because they were but men,)
and that licence is fiction; which kind of poetry is like that of
landscape-painting; and poems of this nature, though they be not
_vera_, ought to be _verisimilia_.
The great art of poets is either the adorning and beautifying of
truth, or the inventing pleasing and probable fictions. If they invent
impossible fables, like some of Æsop's, they ought to have such morals
couched under them, as may tend to the instruction of mankind, or the
regulation of manners, or they can be of no use; nor can they really
delight any but such as would be pleased with Tom Thumb, without these
circumstances. But there are some pedants, who will quote authority
from the ancients for the faults and extravagancies of some of the
moderns; who being able to imitate nothing but the faults of the
classic authors, mistake them for their excellencies. I speak with all
due reverence to the ancients; for no man esteems their perfections
more than myself, though I confess I have not that blind implicit faith
in them which some ignorant schoolmasters would impose upon us, to
believe in all their errors, and own all their crimes: to some pedants
every thing in them is of that authority, that they will create a new
figure of rhetoric out of the fault of an old poet. I am apt to believe
the same faults were found in them, when they wrote, which men of sense
find now; but not the excellencies which schoolmasters would persuade
us: yet I must say now,
_Nobis non licet esse tam disertis,
Musas qui colimus severiores._
MARTIAL. Epipgr. ix. 12.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 163: There was a royal theatre at Whitehall, where this play
was twice acted. This playhouse was burned in 1697. The _dancing tree_,
refers to this stage direction in the second act: "A Moorish dance
is presented by Moors in several habits, who bring in an artificial
palm-tree, about which they dance to several antique instruments of
music."]
[Footnote 164: For Ben Jonson's controversy with Dekker, See Vol. X. p.
451. Dekker was as far superior to Settle, as Dryden was to Jonson.]
[Footnote 165: This seems, as conjectured by Mr Malone, to have been
some parody on Macbeth, which, strange to tell! had been converted
into a sort of opera by D'Avenant. Such burlesque performances were
fashionable about this time.]
[Footnote 166: These lines are a parody on the following passage in
"The Empress of Morocco," (act ii. sc. 1.) which, we are told in the
Remarks, was much admired.
_The scene opened, is represented the prospect of a large river,
with a glorious fleet of ships, supposed to be the navy of Muly
Hamet. After the sound of trumpets, and the discharging of guns,_
_Enter King, young Queen_, HAMETALHAZ, _and Attendants._
_Hamet._ Great Sir, your royal father's general
Prince Muly Hamet's fleet does homeward sail,
And in a solemn and triumphant pride
Their course up the great river Tensift guide,
Whose gilded currents do new glories take
From the reflexion his bright streamers make.
The waves a masque of martial pageants yield,
A flying army on a floating field.
]
PREFACE TO THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD.
_This play was written by John Dryden, our author's second son, and is
said to have been founded on a real incident which happened at Rome. It
was dedicated to Sir Robert Howard, the author's uncle, and acted in
1696, with the advantages of a Prologue from Congreve, and an Epilogue
from our author._ See Vol. X. p. 423.
I have thought convenient to acquaint the reader with somewhat
concerning this comedy, though perhaps not worth his knowledge. It
was sent me from Italy some years since, by my second son, to try its
fortune on the stage; and being the essay of a young unexperienced
author, to confess the truth, I thought it not worthy of that honour.
It is true, I was not willing to discourage him so far, as to tell him
plainly my opinion, but it seems he guessed somewhat of my mind, by my
long delays of his expectation; and therefore, in my absence from the
town last summer, took the boldness to dedicate his play to that person
of honour whose name you will find before his Epistle. It was received
by that noble gentleman with so much candour and generosity, as neither
my son nor I could deserve from him. Then the play was no longer in my
power; the patron demanding it in his own right, it was delivered to
him: and he was farther pleased, during my sickness, to put it into
that method in which you find it; the loose scenes digested into order,
and knit into a tale.
As it is, I think it may pass amongst the rest of our new plays: I
know but two authors, and they are both my friends,[167] who have done
better since the Revolution. This I dare venture to maintain, that the
taste of the age is wretchedly depraved in all sorts of poetry; nothing
almost but what is abominably bad can please. The young hounds, who
ought to come behind, now lead the pack; but they miserably mistake
the scent. Their poets, worthy of such an audience, know not how to
distinguish their characters; the manners are all alike inconsistent,
and interfering with each other. There is scarce a man or woman of
God's making in all their farces, yet they raise an unnatural sort
of laughter, the common effect of buffoonery; and the rabble, which
takes this for wit, will endure no better, because it is above their
understanding. This account I take from the best judges; for I thank
God, I have had the grace hitherto to avoid the seeing or reading of
their gallimaufries. But it is the latter end of a century, and I hope
the next will begin better.
This play, I dare assure the reader, is none of those; it may want
beauties, but the faults are neither gross, nor many. Perfection in any
art is not suddenly obtained: the author of this, to his misfortune,
left his country at a time when he was to have learned the language.
The story he has treated, was an accident which happened at Rome,
though he has transferred the scene to England. If it shall please God
to restore him to me, I may perhaps inform him better of the rules of
writing; and if I am not partial, he has already shewn that a genius
is not wanting to him. All that I can reasonably fear is, that the
perpetual good success of ill plays may make him endeavour to please by
writing worse, and by accommodating himself to the wretched capacity
and liking of the present audience, from which heaven defend any of my
progeny! A poet, indeed, must live by the many; but a good poet will
make it his business to please the few. I will not proceed farther on a
subject which arraigns so many of the readers.
For what remains, both my son and I are extremely obliged to my dear
friend, Mr Congreve, whose excellent Prologue was one of the greatest
ornaments of the play. Neither is my Epilogue the worst which I have
written; though it seems, at the first sight, to expose our young
clergy with too much freedom. It was on that consideration that I had
once begun it otherwise, and delivered the copy of it to be spoken,
in case the first part of it had given offence. This I will give you,
partly in my own justification, and partly too because I think it
not unworthy of your sight; only remembering you, that the last line
connects the sense to the ensuing part of it.--Farewell, reader: if
you are a father, you will forgive me; if not, you will when you are a
father.
Time was, when none could preach without degrees,
And seven-years toil at Universities;
But when the canting saints came once in play,
The spirit did their business in a day:
A zealous cobler, with the gift of tongue,
If he could pray six hours, might preach as long.
Thus, in the primitive times of poetry,
The stage to none but men of sense was free;
But thanks to your judicious taste, my masters,
It lies in common, now, to poetasters.
You set them up, and till you dare condemn,
The satire lies on you, and not on them.
When mountebanks their drugs at market cry,
Is it their fault to sell, or yours to buy?
'Tis true, they write with ease, and well they may; }
Fly-blows are gotten every summer's day; }
The poet does but buz, and there's a play. }
Wit's not his business, &c.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 167: Probably, Southerne and Congreve.]
END OF THE FIFTEENTH VOLUME.
Edinburgh,
Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.
* * * * *
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber notes: |
| |
| P.132. 'daar' is 'dart' in other copy. Changed. |
| Footnote 124: 'Cleveland' is 'Cleiveland' in other copy, changed.|
| P.378. 'houshold' changed to 'household'. |
| |
| Underscore before and after text indicates italics. |
| Fixed various punctuation. |
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+