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THE

COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT
IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME FIVE

All rights

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

WILLIAM HAZLITT

EDITED BY A. R. WALLER
AND ARNOLD GLOVER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

W. E. HENLEY

Lectures on the English Poets

and on the

Dramatic Literature of the

Age of Elizabeth

Etc.

i 902

LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.
McCLURE, PHILLIPS &• CO. : NEW YORK

Edinburgh : Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE

CONTENTS

PAGE

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS . i

LECTURES ON THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH ... 169

PREFACE AND CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS FROM

SELECT BRITISH POETS . .365

NOTES . . . • . . 381

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The Lectures on The English Poets. Delivered at the Surrey Institution. By William
Hazlitt, were published in 8vo. (8f X 5^), in the year of their delivery, 1818 ; a
second edition was published in 1819, of which the present issue is a reprint.
The imprint reads, ' London : Printed for Taylor and Hessey, 93, Fleet Street.
1819,' and the volume was printed by 'T. Miller, Printer, Noble Street, Cheapside.'
Behind the half-title appears the following advertisement : ' This day is published,
Characters of Shakespear's Plays, by William Hazlitt. Second Edition, 8vo. price
i os. 6d. boards.' A four-page advertisement of ' Books just published by Taylor
and Hessey' ends the volume, with 'Characters of Shakspeare's Plays' at the top,
and a notice of it from the Edinburgh Review.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I.

PAGE

Introductory. — On Poetry in General 1

LECTURE II.
On Chaucer and Spenser X9

LECTURE III.

* On Shakspeare and Milton 44

LECTURE IV.

"(Ori Dryden and Pope 68

LECTURE V.

On Thomson and Cowper . . 85

LECTURE VI.

^ On Swift, Young, Gng»£allips, etc. 104

LECTURE VII.

On Burns, and the Old English Ballads 123

LECTURE VIII.
On the Living Poets H3

LECTURES ON
THE ENGLISH POETS

LECTURE -I.— INTRODUCTORY

THE best general notion which I can give of poetry is, that it is the
I natural impression of any object or event, by its vividness exciting
1 an involuntary movement of imagination and passion, and producing,
by sympathy, a certain modulation of the voice, or sounds, ex-
pressing it.

In treating of poetry, I shall speak first of the subject-matter of it,
next of the forms of expression to which it gives birth, and afterwards
of its connection with harmony of sound.

Poetry is the language of tke • pagination and the passions. It re-
lates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind.
It comes home to the bosoms and businesses of men ; for nothing
but what so comes home to them in the most general and intelligible
. shape, can be a subject for poetry. _Poetry is the universal language
which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a con-
tempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for any
thing else. It is not a mere frivolous accomplishment, (as some
persons have been led to imagine) the trifling amusement of a few
idle readers or leisure hours — it has been the study and delight of
mankind in all ages. Many people suppose that poetry is something
to be found only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables, with
like endings : but wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or
harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the growth of a
flower that 'spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and dedicates its
beauty to the sun,' — there is poetry, in its birth. If history is a grave
study, poetry may be said to be a graver : its materials lie deeper, and
VOL. v. : A J

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

are spread wider. History treats, for the most part, of the cumbrous
and unwieldly masses of things, the empty cases in which the affairs of
the world are packed, under the heads of intrigue or war, in different
states, and from century to century : but there is no thought or feel-
ing that can have entered into the mind of man, which he would be
eager to communicate to others, or which they would listen to with
delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry. It is not a branch of
authorship : it is * the stuff of which our life is made.' The rest is
'mere oblivion/ a dead letter: for all that is worth remembering in
life, is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is
poetry, hatred is poetry ; contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration,
wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all poetry. Poetry is that
fine particle within us, that expands, rarefies, refines, raises our whole
being : without it * man's life is poor as beast's.' Man is a poetical
animal : and those of us who do not study the principles of poetry,
act upon them all our lives, like Molie're's Bourgeois Genti/homme, who
had always spoken prose without knowing it. The child is a poet
in fact, when he first plays at hide-and-seek, or repeats the story of
Jack the Giant-killer ; the shepherd-boy is a poet, when he first
crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers ; the countryman, when
he stops to look at the rainbow ; the city-apprentice, when he gazes
after the Lord-Mayor's show ; the miser, when he hugs his gold ;
the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile ; the savage, who
paints his idol with blood ; the slave, who worships a tyrant, or the
tyrant, who fancies himself a god ; — the vain, the ambitious, the proud,
the choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar and the king,
the rich and the poor, the young and the old, all live in a world of
their own making ; and the poet does no more than describe what all
the others think and act. If his art is folly and madness, it is folly
and madness at second hand. 'There is warrant for it.' Poets
alone have not ' such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that
apprehend more than cooler reason ' can.

' The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold ;
The madman. While the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n ;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination.'
2

0N POETRY IN GENERAL

If poetry is a dream, the business of life is much the same. If
it is a fiction, made up of what we wish things to be, and fancy
that they are, because we wish them so, there is no other nor
better reality. Ariosto has described the loves of Angelica and
Medoro : but was not Medoro, who carved the name of his mistress
on the barks of trees, as much enamoured of her charms as he ?
Homer has celebrated the anger of Achilles : but was not the hero
as mad as the poet ? Plato banished the poets from his Common-
wealth^ lest their descriptions of the natural man should spoil his
mathematical man, who was to be without passions and affections,
who was neither to laugh nor weep, to feel sorrow nor anger, to be
cast down nor elated by any thing. This was a chimera, however,
which never existed but in the brain of the inventor ; and Homer's
poetical world has outlived Plato's philosophical Republic.

Poetry then is an imitation of nature, but the imagination and the
passions are a part of man's nature. We shape things according to
our wishes and fancies, without poetry; but poetry is the most
emphatical language that can be found for those creations of the
mind « which ecstacy is very cunning in.' Neither a mere description
of natural objects, nor a mere delineation of natural feelings, however
distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim of poetry,
without the heightenings of the imagination. The light of poetry is
not only a direct but also a reflected light, that while it shews us the
object, throws a sparkling radiance on all around it : the flame of
the passions, communicated to the imagination, reveals to us, as with
a flash of lightning, the inmost recesses of thought, and penetrates our
whole being. Poetry represents forms chiefly as they suggest other

. forms ; feelings, as they suggest forms or other feelings. Poetry puts
a spirit of life and motion into the universe. It describes the flowing,
not the fixed. It does not define the limits of sense, or analyze the
distinctions of the understanding, but signifies the excess of the
imagination beyond the actual or ordinary impression of any object

• or feeling. The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy,
exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within
itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame)
strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or
grandeur ; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy,
and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the
boldest manner, and by the most striking examples of the same quality
in other instances. Poetry, according to Lord Bacon, for this
reason, * has something divine in it, because it raises the mind and
hurries it into sublimity, by conforming the shows of things to the
desires of the soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things,

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

as reason and history do.' It is strictly the language of the imagina-
tion ; and the imagination is that faculty which represents objects,
not as they are in themselves, but as they are moulded by other
thoughts and feelings, into an infinite variety of shapes and combina-
tions of power. This language is not the less true to nature, because
it is false in point of fact ; but so much the more true and natural, if
it conveys the impression which the object under the influence of
passion makes on the mind. Let an object, for instance, be pre-
sented to the senses in a state of agitation or fear — and the imagination
will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness of
whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. « Our eyes are made
the fools ' of our other faculties. This is the universal law of the
imagination,

' That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy :
Or in the night imagining some fear,
How easy is each bush supposed a bear ! '

When lachimo says of Imogen,

-The flame o' th' taper

Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids
To see the enclosed lights ' —

this passionate interpretation of the motion of the flame to accord
with the speaker's own feelings, is true poetry. The lover, equally
with the poet, speaks of the auburn tresses of his mistress as locks of
shining gold, because the least tinge of yellow in the hair has, from
novelty and a sense of personal beauty, a more lustrous effect to the
imagination than the purest gold. We compare a man of gigantic
stature to a tower : not that he is any thing like so large, but because
the excess of his size beyond what we are accustomed to expect, or
the usual size of things of the same class, produces by contrast a
greater feeling of magnitude and ponderous strength than another
, object of ten times the same dimensions. The intensity of the feeling
j makes up for the disproportion of the objects. Things are equal to
the imagination, which have the power of affecting the mind with an
equal degree of terror, admiration, delight, or love. When Lear
calls upon the heavens to avenge his cause, ' for they are old like
him,' there is nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime identifica-
tion of his age with theirs ; for there is no other image which could
do justice to the agonising sense of his wrongs and his despair !

Poetry is the high-wrought enthusiasm of fancy and feeling. As
in describing natural objects, it impregnates sensible impressions with
4

ON POETRY IN GENERAL

the forms of fancy, so it describes the feelings of pleasure or pain, by
blending them with the strongest movements of passion, and the most
striking forms of nature. Tragic poetry, which is the most im-
passioned species of it, strives to carry on the feeling to the utmost
point of sublimity or pathos, by all the force of comparison or con-
trast ; loses the sense of present suffering in the imaginary exaggeration
of it ; exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited indulgence of it ;
grapples with impossibilities in its desperate impatience of restraint ;
throws us back upon the past, forward into the future ; brings every
moment of our being or object of nature in startling review before us;
and in the rapid whirl of events, lifts us from the depths of woe to
the highest contemplations on human life. When Lear says of
Edgar, ' Nothing but his unkind daughters could have brought him
to this ; ' what a bewildered amazement, what a wrench of the
imagination, that cannot be brought to conceive of any other cause of
misery than that which has bowed it down, and absorbs all other
sorrow in its own ! His sorrow, like a flood, supplies the sources of
all other sorrow. Again, when he exclaims in the mad scene, * The
little dogs and all, Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at
me ! ' it is passion lending occasion to imagination to make every
creature in league against him, conjuring up ingratitude and insult in
their least looked-for and most galling shapes, searching every thread
and fibre of his heart, and finding out the last remaining image of
respect or attachment in the bottom of his breast, only to torture and
kill it ! In like manner, the ' So I am ' of Cordelia gushes from her
heart like a torrent of tears, relieving it of a weight of love and of
supposed ingratitude, which had pressed upon it for years. What a
fine return of the passion upon itself is that in Othello — with what
a mingled agony of regret and despair he clings to the last traces of
departed happiness — when he exclaims,

' Oh now, for ever

Farewel the tranquil mind. Farewel content ;
Farewel the plumed troops and the big war,
That make ambition virtue ! Oh farewel !
Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war :
And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewel ! Othello's occupation 's gone ! '

How his passion lashes itself up and swells and rages like a tide in its

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

sounding course, when in answer to the doubts expressed of his
returning love, he says,

' Never, lago. Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont :
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.' —

The climax of his expostulation afterwards with Desdemona is at
that line,

' But there where I had garner'd up my heart,
To be discarded thence ! ' —

One mode in which the dramatic exhibition of passion excites our
sympathy without raising our disgust is, that in proportion as it
sharpens the edge of calamity and disappointment, it strengthens the
desire of good. It enhances our consciousness of the blessing, by
making us sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of
passion lays bare and shews us the rich depths of the human soul :
the whole of our existence, the sum total of our passions and pursuits,
of that which we desire and that which we dread, is brought before
us by contrast ; the action and re-action are equal ; the keenness of
immediate suffering only gives us a more intense aspiration after, and
a more intimate participation with the antagonist world of good ;
makes us drink deeper of the cup of human life ; tugs at the heart-
strings ; loosens the pressure about them ; and calls the springs of
thought and feeling into play with tenfold force.

Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual
part of our nature, as well as of the sensitive — of the desire to know,
the will to act, and the power to feel ; and ought to appeal to these
different parts of our constitution, in order to be perfect. The
domestic or prose tragedy, which is thought to be the most natural,
is in this sense the least so, because it appeals almost exclusively to
one of these faculties, our sensibility. The tragedies of Moore and
Lillo, for this reason, however affecting at the time, oppress and lie
like a dead weight upon the mind, a load of misery which it is unable
to throw off : the tragedy of Shakspeare, which is true poetry, stirs
our inmost affections ; abstracts evil from itself by combining it with
all the forms of imagination, and with the deepest workings of the
heart, and rouses the whole man within us.

ON POETRY IN GENERAL

The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry, is not any
thing peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and fanciful thing. It is
not an anomaly of the imagination. It has its source and ground- work
in the common love of strong excitement. As Mr. Burke observes,
people flock to see a tragedy ; but if there were a public execution in
the next street, the theatre would very soon be empty. It is not
then the difference between fiction and reality that solves the difficulty.
Children are satisfied with the stories of ghosts and witches in plain
prose : nor do the hawkers of full, true, and particular accounts of
murders and executions about the streets, find it necessary to have
them turned into penny ballads, before they can dispose of these
interesting and authentic documents. The grave politician drives a
thriving trade of abuse and calumnies poured out against those whom
he makes his enemies for no other end than that he may live by them.
The popular preacher makes less frequent mention of heaven than of
hell. Oaths and nicknames are only a more vulgar sort of poetry or
rhetoric. We are as fond of indulging our violent passions as of
reading a description of those of others. We are as prone to make
a torment of our fears, as to luxuriate in our hopes of good. If it be
asked, Why we do so ? the best answer will be, Because we cannot
help it. The sense of power is as strong a principle in the mind as
the love of pleasure. Objects of terror and pity exercise the same
despotic control over it as those of love or beauty. It is as natural
to hate as to love, to despise as to admire, to express our hatred or
contempt, as our love or admiration.

' Masterless passion sways us to the mood
Of what it likes or loathes.1

Not that we like what we loathe; but we like to indulge our
hatred and scorn of it ; to dwell upon it, to exasperate our idea of it
by every refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of illustration ; to
make it a bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to others in all the
splendour of deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatise it by
name, to grapple with it in thought, in action, to sharpen our intellect,
to arm our will against it, to know the worst we have to contend
with, and to contend with it to the utmost. Poetry is only the
highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that
can be given to our conception of any thing, whether pleasurable or
, painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect
coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have,
and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant
* satisfaction to the thought.' This is equally the origin of wit and

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. When
Pope says of the Lord Mayor's shew, —

' Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er,
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more ! '

— when Collins makes Danger, <with limbs of giant mould,'

'Throw him on the steep

Of some loose hanging rock asleep : '

when Lear calls out in extreme anguish,

' Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
How much more hideous shew'st in a child
Than the sea-monster!'

— the passion of contempt in the one case, of terror in the other, and
of indignation in the last, is perfectly satisfied. We see the thing
ourselves, and shew it to others as we feel it to exist, and as, in spite
of ourselves, we are compelled to think of it. The imagination, by
thus embodying and turning them to shape, gives an obvious relief to
the indistinct and importunate cravings of the will. — We do not
wish the thing to be so ; but we wish it to appear such as it is.
For knowledge is conscious power ; and the mind is no longer, in this
case, the dupe, though it may be the victim of vice or folly.

Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagination and the
passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, therefore, can be more absurd
than the outcry which has been sometimes raised by frigid and pedantic
critics, for reducing the language of poetry to the standard of common
sense and reason : for the end and use of poetry, * both at the first
and now, was and is to hold the mirror up to nature,' seen through
the medium of passion and imagination, not divested of that medium
by means of literal truth or abstract reason. The painter of history
might as well be required to represent the face of a person who has
just trod upon a serpent with the still-life expression of a common
portrait, as the poet to describe the most striking and vivid impressions
which things can be supposed to make upon the mind, in the language
of common conversation. Let who will strip nature of the colours
and the shapes of fancy, the poet is not bound to do so ; the im-
pressions of common sense and strong imagination, that is, of passion
and indifference, cannot be the same, and they must have a separate
language to do justice to either. Objects must strike differently upon
the mind, independently of what they are in themselves, as long as
we have a different interest in them, as we see them in a different
point of view, nearer or at a greater distance (morally or physically

ON POETRY IN GENERAL

speaking) from novelty, from old acquaintance, from our ignorance
of them, from our fear of their consequences, from contrast, from
unexpected likeness. We can no more take away the faculty of
the imagination, than we can see all objects without light or shade.
Some things must dazzle us by their preternatural light ; others must
hold us in suspense, and tempt our curiosity to explore their obscurity.
Those who would dispel these various illusions, to give us their drab-
coloured creation in their stead, are not very wise. Let the naturalist,
if he will, catch the glow-worm, carry it home with him in a box,
and find it next morning nothing but a little grey worm ; let the poet
or the lover of poetry visit it at evening, when beneath the scented
hawthorn and the crescent moon it has built itself a palace of
emerald light. This is also one part of nature, one appearance which
the glow-worm presents, and that not the least interesting ; so poetry
is one part of the history of the human mind, though it is neither
science nor philosophy. It cannot be concealed, however, that the
progress of knowledge and refinement has a tendency to circumscribe
the limits of the imagination, and to clip the wings of poetry. The
province of the imagination is principally visionary, the unknown
and undefined : the understanding restores things to their natural
boundaries, and strips them of their fanciful pretensions. Hence
the history of religious and poetical enthusiasm is much the same
and both have received a sensible shock from the progress of ex-
perimental philosophy. It is the undefined and uncommon that gives
birth and scope to the imagination ; we can only fancy what we do
not know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill
them with what shapes we please, with ravenous beasts, with caverns
vast, and drear enchantments, so in our ignorance of the world about
us, we make gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no
bounds to the wilful suggestions of our hopes and fears.

' And visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough.'

There can never be another Jacob's dream. _Since that time, the
heavens have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They have
become averse to the imagination, nor will they return to us on the
squares of the distances, or on Doctor Chalmers's Discourses.
Rembrandt's picture brings the matter nearer to us. — It is not only
the progress of mechanical knowledge, but the necessary advances of
civilization that are unfavourable to the spirit of poetry. We not
only stand in less awe of the preternatural world, but we can calculate
more surely, and look with more indifference, upon the regular routine
of this. The heroes of the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

and giants. At present we are less exposed to the vicissitudes of
good or evil, to the incursions of wild beasts or ' bandit fierce,' or to
the unmitigated fury of the elements. The time has been that ' our
fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life were in
it.' But the police spoils all ; and we now hardly so much as dream
of a midnight murder. Macbeth is only tolerated in this country
for the sake of the music ; and in the United States of America,
where the philosophical principles of government are carried still
farther in theory and practice, we find that the Beggar's Opera is
hooted from the stage. Society, by degrees, is constructed into a
machine that carries us safely and insipidly from one end" oTTTfe "to
the other, in a very comfortable prose style.

' Obscurity her curtain round them drew,
And siren Sloth a dull quietus sung.1

The remarks which have been here made, would, in some measure,
lead to a solution of the question of the comparative merits of painting
and poetry. I do not mean to give any preference, but it should
seem that the argument which has been sometimes set up, that paint-
ing must affect the imagination more strongly, because it represents
the image more distinctly, is not well founded. We may assume
without much temerity, that poetry is more poetical than painting.
When artists or connoisseurs talk on stilts about the poetry of painting,
they shew that they know little about poetry, and have little love for
the art. Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies.
Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself : poetry suggests
what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it. But this
last is the proper province of the imagination. Again, as it relates
to passion, painting gives the event, poetry the progress of events :
but it is during the progress, in the interval of expectation and
suspense, while our hopes and fears are strained to the highest pitch
of breathless agony, that the pinch of the interest lies.

' Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.
The mortal instruments are then in council ;
And the state of man, like to a little kingdom,
Suffers then the nature of an insurrection.'

But by the time that the picture is painted, all is over. Faces are
the best part of a picture ; but even faces are not what we chiefly
remember in what interests us most. — But it may be asked then, Is

ON POETRY IN GENERAL

there anything better than Claude Lorraine's landscapes, than Titian's
portraits, than Raphael's cartoons, or the Greek statues ? Of the
two first I shall say nothing, as they are evidently picturesque, rather
than imaginative. Raphael's cartoons are certainly the finest com-
ments that ever were made on the Scriptures. Would their effect be
the same, if we were not acquainted with the text ? But the New
Testament existed before the cartoons. There is one subject of
which there is no cartoon, Christ washing the feet of the disciples
the night before his death. But that chapter does not need a
commentary ! It is for want of some such resting place for the
imagination that the Greek statues are little else than specious
forms. They are marble to the touch and to the heart. They
have not an informing principle within them. In their faultless
excellence they appear sufficient to themselves. By their beauty
they are raised above the frailties of passion or suffering. By their
beauty they are deified. But they are not objects of religious faith
to us, and their forms are a reproach to common humanity. They
seem to have no sympathy with us, and not to want our admiration.

Poetry in its matter and form is natural imagery or feeling, combined
with passion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it combines the
ordinary use of language with musical expression. There is a
question of long standing, in what the essence of poetry consists ;
or what it is that determines why one set of ideas should be expressed
in prose, another in verse. Milton has told us his idea of poetry in
a single line —

' Thoughts that voluntary move I

Harmonious numbers.'

As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and
the song and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain
thoughts that lead to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound,
and change 'the words of Mercury into the songs of Apollo.' There
is a striking instance of this adaptation of the movement of sound and
rhythm to the subject, in Spenser's description of the Satyrs
accompanying Una to the cave of Sylvanus.

' So from the ground she fearless doth arise

And walketh forth without suspect of crime.
They, all as glad as birds of joyous prime,

Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round,
Shouting and singing all a shepherd's rhyme ;

And with green branches strewing all the ground,
Do worship her as queen with olive garland crown'd.

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

And all the way their merry pipes they sound,
That all the woods and doubled echoes ring ;

And with their horned feet do wear the ground,
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring ;

So towards old Sylvanus they her bring,
Who with the noise awaked, cometh out.'1

Faery Sjueen, b. i. c. vi.

On the contrary, there is nothing either musical or natural in the
or4inary construction of language. It is a thing altogether arbitrary
and conventional. Neither in the sounds themselves, which are the
voluntary signs of certain ideas, nor in their grammatical arrange-
ments in common speech, is there any principle of natural imitation,
or correspondence to the individual ideas, or to the tone of feeling
with which they are conveyed to others. The jerks, the breaks,
the inequalities, and harshnesses of prose, are fatal to the flow of a
poetical imagination, as a jolting road or a stumbling horse disturbs
the reverie of an absent man. But poetry makes these odds all
even. It is the music of language, answering to the music of the
mind, untying as it were * the secret soul of harmony.' Wherever
any object takes such a hold of the mind as to make us dwell upon it,
and brood over it, melting the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a
sentiment of enthusiasm ; — wherever a movement of imagination or
passion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and
repeat the emotion, to bring all other objects into accord with it,
and to give the same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous,
or gradually varied according to the occasion, to the sounds that

, express it — this is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and
continuous ; the musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also.
There is a near connection between music and deep-rooted passion.
Mad people sing. As often as articulation passes naturally into
intonation, there poetry begins. Where one idea gives a tone and
colour to others, where one feeling melts others into it, there can be
no reason why the same principle should not be extended to the
sounds by which the voice utters these emotions of the soul, and
blends syllables and lines into each other. It is to supply the in-
herent defect of harmony in the customary mechanism of language, to
make the sound an echo to the sense, when the sense becomes a sort of

; echo to itself — to mingle the tide of verse, ' the golden cadences of
poetry,' with the tide of feeling, flowing and murmuring as it flows — in
short, to take the language of the imagination from off the ground, and
enable it to spread its wings where it may indulge its own impulses —

' Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air—

ON POETRY IN GENERAL

without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the abruptnesses and

petty obstacles, and discordant flats and sharps of prose, that poetry

was invented. It is to common language, what springs are to a

carriage, or wings to feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain

harmony by the modulations of the voice : in poetry the same thing

is done systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has

been well observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows

intent upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured

prose. The merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way

* sounding always the increase of his winning.' Every prose-writer

has more or less of rhythmical adaptation, except poets, who, when. 1 y /

deprived of the regular mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle /

of modulation left in their writings.

An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same manner. It is
but fair that the ear should linger on the sounds that delight it, or
avail itself of the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence
of syllables, that have been displayed in the invention and collocation
of images. It is allowed that rhyme assists the memory ; and a man
of wit and shrewdness has been heard to say, that the only four
good lines of poetry are the well-known ones which tell the number
of days in the months of the year.

' Thirty days hath September,' &c.

But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken
the fancy ? and there are other things worth having at our fingers'
ends, besides the contents of the almanac. — Pope's versification is
tiresome, from its excessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare's
blank verse is the perfection of dramatic dialogue.

All is not poetry that passes for such : nor does verse make the
whole difference between poetry and prose. The Iliad does not
cease to be poetry in a literal translation ; and Addison's Campaign
has been very properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common
prose differs from poetry, as treating for the most part either of such
trite, familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extra-
ordinary impulse to the imagination, or else of such difficult and
laborious processes of the understanding, as do not admit of the way-
ward or violent movements either of the imagination or the passions.

I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as
possible without absolutely being so, namely, the Pilgrim's Progress,
Robinson Crusoe, and the Tales of Boccaccio. Chaucer and
Dryden have translated some of the last into English rhyme, but the
essence and the power of poetry was there before. That which lifts
the spirit above the earth, which draws the soul out of itself with

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

indescribable longings, is poetry in kind, and generally fit to become
so in name, by being ' married to immortal verse.' If it is of the
essence of poetry to strike and fix the imagination, whether we will
' i or no, to make the eye of childhood glisten with the starting tear, to
be never thought of afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and
Daniel Defoe may be permitted to pass for poets in their way. The
mixture of fancy and reality in the Pilgrim's Progress was never
equalled in any allegory. His pilgrims walk above the earth, and
yet are on it. What zeal, what beauty, what truth of fiction !
What deep feeling in the description of Christian's swimming
across the water at last, and in the picture of the Shining Ones
within the gates, with wings at their backs and garlands on their heads,
who are to wipe all tears from his eyes ! The writer's genius, though
not ' dipped in dews of Castalie,' was baptised with the Holy
Spirit and with fire. The prints in this book are no small part of
it. If the confinement of Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos was a
subject for the most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies, what shall
we say to Robinson Crusoe in his ? Take the speech of the Greek
hero on leaving his cave, beautiful as it is, and compare it with the
reflections of the English adventurer in his solitary place of confine-
ment. The thoughts of home, and of all from which he is for ever
cut off, swell and press against his bosom, as the heaving ocean rolls
its ceaseless tide against the rocky shore, and the very beatings of
his heart become audible in the eternal silence that surrounds him.
Thus he says,

* As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the country,
the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a
sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods, the
mountains, the deserts I was in ; and how I was a prisoner, locked up with
the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, with-
out redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures of my mind,
this would break out upon me like a storm, and make me wring my hands,
and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my
work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the
ground for an hour or two together, and this was still worse to me, for if
I could burst into tears or vent myself in words, it would go off, and the
grief having exhausted itself would abate.' P. 50.

The story of his adventures would not make a poem like the
Odyssey, it is true ; but the relator had the true genius of a poet.
It has been made a question whether Richardson's romances are
poetry ; and the answer perhaps is, that they are not poetry, because
they are not romance. The interest is worked up to an incon-
ceivable height ; but it is by an infinite number of little things, by

ON POETRY IN GENERAL

incessant labour and calls upon the attention, by a repetition of blows
that have no rebound in them. The sympathy excited is not a
voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is unforced and
spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. The story
does not * give an echo to the seat where love is throned.' The
heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music. The fancy does
not run on before the writer with breathless expectation, but is
dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like those
with which the Lilliputians dragged Gulliver ! pinioned to the
royal palace. — Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of
a figure would he cut, translated into an epic poem, by the side of
Achilles ? Clarissa, the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half.
She is interesting in her ruffles, in her gloves, her samplers, her aunts
and uncles — she is interesting in all that is uninteresting. Such
things, however intensely they may be brought home to us, are not
conductors to the imagination. There is infinite truth and feeling in
Richardson ; but it is extracted from a caput mortuum of circum-
stances : it does not evaporate of itself. His poetical genius is like
Ariel confined in a pine-tree, and requires an artificial process to let
it out. Shakspeare says —

4 Our poesy is as a gum

Which issues whence 'tis nourished, our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and like the current flies
Each bound it chafes/ 1

I shall conclude this general account with some remarks on four of
the principal works of poetry in the world, at different periods of
history — Homer, the Bible, Dante, and let me add, Ossian. In
Homer, the principle of action or life is predominant ; in the Bible,
the principle of faith and the idea of Providence ; Dante is a
personification of blind will ; and in Ossian we see the decay of life,
and the lag end of the world. Homer's poetry is the heroic : it is
full of life and action : it is bright as the day, strong as a river. In
the vigour of his intellect, he grapples with all the objects of nature,

1 Burke's writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of the fancy,
because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural, but artificial. The
difference between poetry and eloquence is, that the one is the eloquence of the
imagination, and the other of the understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade
the will, and convince the reason : poetry produces its effect by instantaneous
sympathy. Nothing is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in
general bad prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, are not
to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French poetry wants the
forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than dramatic. And some of our
own poetry which has been most admired, is only poetry in the rhyme, and in the
studied use of poetic diction.

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

and enters into all the relations of social life. He saw many
countries, and the manners of many men ; and he has brought them
all together in his poem. He describes his heroes going to battle
with a prodigality of life, arising from an exuberance of animal spirits :
we see them before us, their number, and their order of battle,
poured out upon the plain * all plumed like estriches, like eagles newly
bathed, wanton as goats, wild as young bulls, youthful as May, and
gorgeous as the sun at midsummer,' covered with glittering armour,
with dust and blood ; while the Gods quaff their nectar in golden
cups, or mingle in the fray ; and the old men assembled on the walls
of Troy rise up with reverence as Helen passes by them. The
multitude of things in Homer is wonderful ; their splendour, their
truth, their force, and variety. His poetry is, like his religion, the
poetry of number and form : he describes the bodies as well as the
souls of men.

The poetry of the Bible is that of imagination and of faith : it is
abstract and disembodied : it is not the poetry of form, but of power ;
not of multitude, but of immensity. It does not divide into many,
but aggrandizes into one. Its ideas of nature are like its ideas of
God. It is not the poetry of social life, but of solitude : each man

! seems alone in the world, with the original forms of nature, the rocks,
the earth, and the sky. It is not the poetry of action or heroic
enterprise, but of faith in a supreme Providence, and resignation to
the power that governs the universe. As the idea of God was
removed farther from humanity, and a scattered polytheism, it became
more profound and intense, as it became more universal, for the

, Infinite is present to every thing : ' If we fly into the uttermost parts
of the earth, it is there also ; if we turn to the east or the west, we
cannot escape from it.' Man is thus aggrandised in the image of
his Maker. The history of the patriarchs is of this kind ; they are
founders of a chosen race of people, the inheritors of the earth ; they
exist in the generations which are to come after them. Their poetry,
like their religious creed, is vast, unformed, obscure, and infinite ; a
vision is upon it — an invisible hand is suspended over it. The spirit
of the Christian religion consists in the glory hereafter to be revealed ;
but in the Hebrew dispensation, Providence took an immediate share
in the affairs of this life. Jacob's dream arose out of this intimate
communion between heaven and earth : it was this that let down, in
the sight of the youthful patriarch, a golden ladder from the sky to
the earth, with angels ascending and descending upon it, and shed a
light upon the lonely place, which can never pass away. The story
of Ruth, again, is as if all the depth of natural affection in the
human race was involved in her breast. There are descriptions in
16

ON POETRY IN GENERAL

the book of Job more prodigal of imagery, more intense in passion,
than any thing in Homer, as that of the state of his prosperity, and
of the vision that came upon him by night. The metaphors in the
Old Testament are more boldly figurative. Things were collected
more into masses, and gave a greater momentum to the imagination.

Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may therefore claim
a place in this connection. His poem is the first great step from J
Gothic darkness and barbarism ; and the struggle of thought in it to *•*
burst the thraldom in which the human mind had been so long held,
is felt in every page. He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark"^
shore which separates the ancient and the modern world ; and saw I
the glories of antiquity dawning through the abyss of time, while j
revelation opened its passage to the other world. He was lost in
wonder at what had been done before him, and he dared to emulate
it. Dante seems to have been indebted to the Bible for the gloomy
tone of his mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which exalts and
kindles his poetry ; but he is utterly unlike Homer. His genius is
not a sparkling flame, but the sullen heat of a furnace. He is power,
passion, self-will personified. In all that relates to the descriptive or
fanciful part of poetry, he bears no comparison to many who had gone
before, or who have come after him ; but there is a gloomy abstrac-
tion in his conceptions, which lies like a dead weight upon the mind ;
a benumbing stupor, a breathless awe, from the intensity of the
impression ; a terrible obscurity, like that which oppresses us in
dreams ; an identity of interest, which moulds every object to its own
purposes, and clothes all things with the passions and imaginations of
the human soul, — that make amends for all other deficiencies. The
immediate objects he presents to the mind are not much in themselves,
they want grandeur, beauty, and order ; but they become every thing
by the force of the character he impresses upon them. His mind
lends its own power to the objects which it contemplates, instead of
borrowing it from them. He takes advantage even of the nakedness
and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples the
shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He is the severest
of all writers, the most hard and impenetrable, the most opposite to
the flowery and glittering ; who relies most on his own power, and
the sense of it in others, and who leaves most room to the imagination
of his readers. Dante's only endeavour is to interest ; and he
interests by exciting our sympathy with the emotion by which he is
himself possessed. He does not place before us the objects by which
that emotion has been created ; but he seizes on the attention, by
shewing us the effect they produce on his feelings ; and his poetry
accordingly gives the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation,
VOL. v. : B 17

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

which is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some
object of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness
and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive : but the interest never
flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's
, great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects.
Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering inscription is written,
seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its
dread warning, not without a sense of mortal woes. This author
habitually unites the absolutely local and individual with the greatest
wildness and mysticism. In the midst of the obscure and shadowy
regions of the lower world, a tomb suddenly rises up with the
inscription, ' I am the tomb of Pope Anastasius the Sixth ' : and half
the personages whom he has crowded into the Inferno are his own
acquaintance. All this, perhaps, tends to heighten the effect by the
bold intermixture of realities, and by an appeal, as it were, to the
individual knowledge and experience of the reader. He affords few
subjects for picture. There is, indeed, one gigantic one, that of
Count Ugolino, of which Michael Angelo made a bas-relief, and
which Sir Joshua Reynolds ought not to have painted.

Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I cannot
persuade myself to think a mere modern in the groundwork, is
Ossian. He is a feeling and a name that can never be destroyed in
the minds of his readers. As Homer is the first vigour and
lustihed, Ossian is the decay and old age of poetry. He lives only
in the recollection and regret of the past. There is one impression
which he conveys more entirely than all other poets, namely, the
sense of privation, the loss of all things, of friends, of good name, of
country — he is even without God in the world. He converses only
with the spirits of the departed ; with the motionless and silent
clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his head ; the
fox peeps out of the ruined tower ; the thistle waves its beard to the
wandering gale ; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age,
as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the
dry reeds in the winter's wind ! The feeling of cheerless desolation,
of the loss of the pith and sap of existence, of the annihilation of the
substance, and the clinging to the shadow of all things as in a mock-
embrace, is here perfect. In this way, the lamentation of Selma for
the loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it were indeed possible to
shew that this writer was nothing, it would only be another instance
of mutability, another blank made, another void left in the heart,
another confirmation of that feeling which makes him so often
complain, * Roll on, ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your
wing to Ossian ! '

t«

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

LECTURE II

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

HAVING, in the former Lecture, given some account of the nature of
poetry in general, I shall proceed, in the next place, to a more
particular consideration of the genius and history of English poetry.
I shall take, as the subject of the present lecture, Chaucer and
Spenser, two out of four of the greatest names in poetry, which this
country has to boast. Both of them, however, were much indebted
to the early poets of Italy, and may be considered as belonging, in a
certain degree, to the same school. The freedom and copiousness
with which our most original writers, in former periods, availed
themselves of the productions of their predecessors, frequently
transcribing whole passages, without scruple or acknowledgment, may
appear contrary to the etiquette of modern literature, when the whole
stock of poetical common-places has become public property, and no
one is compelled to trade upon any particular author. But it is not
so much a subject of wonder, at a time when to read and write was of
itself an honorary distinction, when learning was almost as great a
rarity as genius, and when in fact those who first transplanted the
beauties of other languages into their own, might be considered as
public benefactors, and the founders of a national literature. — There
are poets older than Chaucer, and in the interval between him and
Spenser ; but their genius was not such as to place them in any point
of comparison with either of these celebrated men ; and an inquiry
into their particular merits or defects might seem rather to belong to
the province of the antiquary, than be thought generally interesting to
the lovers of poetry in the present day.

Chaucer (who has been very properly considered as the father of
English poetry) preceded Spenser by two centuries. He is supposed
to have been born in London, in the year 1328, during the reign of
Edward HI. and to have died in 1400, at the age of seventy-two.
He received a learned education at one, or at both of the universities,
and travelled early into Italy, where he became thoroughly imbued
with the spirit and excellences of the great Italian poets and prose-
writers, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccace ; and is said to have had a
personal interview with one of these, Petrarch. He was connected,
by marriage, with the famous John of Gaunt, through whose interest
he was introduced into several public employments. Chaucer was an
active partisan, a religious reformer, and from the share he took in
some disturbances, on one occasion, he was obliged to fly the country.

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

On his return, he was imprisoned, and made his peace with govern-
ment, as it is said, by a discovery of his associates. Fortitude does not
appear, at any time, to have been the distinguishing virtue of poets.
— There is, however, an obvious similarity between the practical turn
of Chaucer's mind and restless impatience of his character, and the
tone of his writings. Yet it would be too much to attribute the one
to the other as cause and effect : for Spenser, whose poetical tempera-
ment was an effeminate as Chaucer's was stern and masculine, was
equally engaged in public affairs, and had mixed equally in the great
world. So much does native disposition predominate over accidental
circumstances, moulding them to its previous bent and purposes ! For
while Chaucer's intercourse with the busy world, and collision with
the actual passions and conflicting interests of others, seemed to
brace the sinews of his understanding, and gave to his writings the
air of a man who describes persons and things that he had known
and been intimately concerned in ; the same opportunities, operating
on a differently constituted frame, only served to alienate Spenser's
mind the more from the * close-pent up ' scenes of ordinary life, and
to make him * rive their concealing continents,' to give himself up to
the unrestrained indulgence of ' flowery tenderness.'

It is not possible for any two writers to be more opposite in this
respect. Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoyment ; Chaucer, in
severe activity of mind. As Spenser was the most romantic and
visionary, Chaucer was the most practical of all the great poets, the most
a man of business and the world. His poetry reads like history.
Every thing has a downright reality ; at least in the relator's mind.
A simile, or a sentiment, is as if it were given in upon evidence.
Thus he describes Cressid's first avowal of her love.

* And as the new abashed nightingale,
That stinteth first when she beginneth sing,
When that she heareth any herde's tale,
Or in the hedges any wight stirring,
And after, sicker, doth her voice outring ;
Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent,
Open'd her heart, and told him her intent.'

This is so true and natural, and beautifully simple, that the two
things seem identified with each other. Again, it is said in the
Knight's Tale—

' Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day,
Till it felle ones in a morwe of May,
That Emelie that fayrer was to sene
Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene;
20

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

And fresher than the May with floures newe,
For with the rose-colour strof hire hewe :
I n'ot which was the finer of hem two.'

This scrupulousness about the literal preference, as if some question of
matter of fact was at issue, is .remarkable. I might mention that
other, where he compares the meeting between Talamon and Arcite
to a hunter waiting for a lion in a gap; —

' That stondeth at a gap with a spere,
Whan hunted is the lion or the here,
And hereth him come rushing in the greves,
And breking both the boughes and the leves : ' —

or that still finer one of Constance, when she is condemned to
death : —

' Have ye not seen somtime a pale face
(Among a prees) of him that hath been lad
Toward his deth, wheras he geteth no grace,
And swiche a colour in his face hath had.
Men mighten know him that was so bestad,
Amonges all the faces in that route ;
So stant Custance, and loketh hire aboute.'

The beauty, the pathos here does not seem to be of the poet's
seeking, but a part of the necessary texture of the fable. He speaks
of what he wishes to describe with the accuracy, the discrimination
of one who relates what has happened to himself, or has had the
best information from those who have been eye-witnesses of it. The
strokes of his pencil always tell. He dwells only on the essential,
on that which would be interesting to the persons really concerned :
yet as he never omits any material circumstance, he is prolix from the
number of points on which he touches, without being diffuse on any
one ; and is sometimes tedious from the fidelity with which he
adheres to his subject, as other writers are from the frequency of
their digressions from it. The chain of his story is composed of a
number of fine links, closely connected together, and rivetted by a
single blow. There is an instance of the minuteness which he
introduces into his most serious descriptions in his account of Palamon
when left alone in his cell :

' Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grete tour
Resouned of his yelling and clamour :
The pure fetters on his shinnes grete
Were of his bitter sake teres wete.'

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

The mention of this last circumstance looks like a part of the instruc-
tions he had to follow, which he had no discretionary power to leave
out or introduce at pleasure. He is contented to. _find_grace and
vbeauty in truth. He exhibits for the most part the naked object,
with little drapery thrown over it. His metaphors, which are few,
are not for ornament, but use, and as like as possible to the things
themselves. He does not affect to shew his power over the reader's
mind, but the power which his subject has over his own. The
readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly what the persons he
describes must have felt, than perhaps those of any other poet. His
sentiments are not voluntary effusions of the poet's fancy, but founded
on the natural impulses and habitual prejudices of the characters he
has to represent. There is an inveteracy of purpose, a sincerity of
feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid, in whatever they do or
say. There is no artificial, pompous display, but a strict parsimony
of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of the age in which he
lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing from the ground,
rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no * babbling gossip
of the air,' fluent and redundant ; but, like a stammerer, or a dumb
person, that has just found the use of speech, crowds many things
together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and fond repetitions
to prevent mistake. His words point as an index to the objects, like
the eye or finger. There were none of the common-places of poetic
diction in our author's time, no reflected lights of fancy, no borrowed
roseate tints ; he was obliged to inspect things for himself, to look
narrowly, and almost to handle the object, as in the obscurity of
morning we partly see and partly grope our way ; so that his descrip-
tions have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce
the effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for
truth of nature and discrimination of character ; and his interest in
what he saw gave new distinctness and force to his power of observa-
tion. The picturesque and the dramatic are in him closely blended
together, and hardly distinguishable ; for he principally describes
external appearances as indicating character, as symbols of internal
sentiment. There is a meaning in what he sees ; and it is this which
catches his eye by sympathy. Thus the costume and dress of the
Canterbury Pilgrims — of the Knight — the Squire — the Oxford
Scholar — the Gap-toothed Wife of Bath, and the rest, speak for
themselves. To take one or two of these at random :

* There was also a nonne, a Prioresse,
That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy ;
Hire gretest othe n'as but by seint Eloy :
22

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

And she was cleped Madame Eglentine.
Ful wel she sange the service divine
Entuned in hire nose ful swetely ;
And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly,
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.
At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle $
She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle,
Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe.

*******
And sikerly she was of great disport,
And ful plesant, and amiable of port,
And peined hire to contrefeten chere
Of court, and ben estatelich of manere,
And to ben holden digne of reverence.

But for to speken of hire conscience,
She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous
Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde.
Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde
With rested flesh, and milk, and wastel brede.
But sore wept she if on of hem were dede,
Or if men smote it with a yerde smert :
And all was conscience and tendre herte.

Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was ;
Hire nose tretis ; hire eyen grey as glas ;
Hire mouth ful smale ; and therto soft and red ;
But sickerly she hadde a fayre forehed.
It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe.'

A Monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie,
An out-rider, that loved venerie :
A manly man, to ben an abbot able.
Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable :
And whan he rode, men mighte his bridel here,
Gingeling in a whistling wind as clere,
And eke as loude, as doth the chapell belle,
Ther as this lord was keper of the celle.

The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit,
Because that it was olde and somdele streit,
This ilke monk lette olde thinges pace,
And held after the newe world the trace.
He yave not of the text a pulled hen,
That saith, that hunters ben not holy men ; —
Therfore he was a prickasoure a right :
Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight :
Of pricking and of hunting for the hare
Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

I saw his sieves purfiled at the hond
With gris, and that the finest of the lond.
And for to fasten his hood under his chinne,
He had of gold ywrought a curious pinne :
A love-knotte in the greter end ther was.
His hed was balled, and shone as any glas,
And eke his face, as it hadde ben anoint.
He was a lord ful fat and in good point.
His eyen stepe, and rolling in his hed,
That stemed as a forneis of a led.
His botes souple, his hors in gret estat,
Now certainly he was a fayre prelat.
He was not pale as a forpined gost.
A fat swan loved he best of any rost.
His palfrey was as broune as is a bery/

The Serjeant at Law is the same identical individual as Lawyer
Dowling in Tom Jones, who wished to divide himself into a hundred
pieces, to be in a hundred places at once.

' No wher so besy a man as he ther n'as,
And yet he semed besier than he was.'

The Frankelein, in ' whose hous it snewed of mete and drinke ' ; the
Shipman, ' who rode upon a rouncie, as he couthe ' ; the Doctour of
Phisike, ' whose studie was but litel of the Bible ' ; the Wif of
Bath, in

' All whose parish ther was non,
That to the offring before hire shulde gon,
And if ther did, certain so wroth was she,
That she was out of alle charitee ; '

— the poure Persone of a toun, « whose parish was wide, and houses
fer asonder ' ; the Miller, and the Reve, * a slendre colerike man,'
are all of the same stamp. They are every one samples of a kind ;
abstract definitions of a species. Chaucer, it has been said, numbered
the classes of men, as Linnaeus numbered the plants. Most of them
remain to this day : others that are obsolete, and may well be dis-
pensed with, still live in his descriptions of them. Such is the
Sompnoure :

' A Sompnoure was ther with us in that place,
That hadde a fire-red cherubinnes face,
For sausefleme he was, with eyen narwe,
As hote he was, and likerous as a sparwe,
With scalled browes blake, and pilled berd :
Of his visage children were sore aferd.
24

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

Ther n'as quicksilver, litarge, ne brimston,
Boras, ceruse, ne oile of tartre non,
Ne oinement that wolde dense or bite,
That him might helpen of his whelkes white,
Ne of the knobbes sitting on his chekes.
Wei loved he garlike, onions, and lekes,
And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood.
Than wolde he speke, and crie as he were wood.
And whan that he wel dronken had the win,
Than wold he speken no word but Latin.
A fewe termes coude he, two or three,
That he had lerned out of som decree ;
No wonder is, he heard it all the day. —

In danger hadde he at his owen gise
The yonge girles of the diocise,
And knew hir conseil, and was of hir rede.
A gerlond hadde he sette upon his hede
As gret as it were for an alestake :
A bokeler hadde he made him of a cake.
With him ther rode a gentil Pardonere —
That hadde a vois as smale as hath a gote.'

It would be a curious speculation (at least for those who think that
the characters of men never change, though manners, opinions, and
institutions may) to know what has become of this character of the
Sompnoure in the present day ; whether or not it has any technical
representative in existing professions ; into what channels and conduits
it has withdrawn itself, where it lurks unseen in cunning obscurity,
or else shews its face boldly, pampered into all the insolence of office,
in some other shape, as it is deterred or encouraged by circumstances.
Chaucer's characters modernised, upon this principle of historic deriva-
tion, would be an useful addition to our knowledge of human nature.
But who is there to undertake it ?

The descriptions of the equipage, and accoutrements of the two
kings of Thrace and Inde, in the Knight's Tale, are as striking and
grand, as the others are lively and natural :

' Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon
Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace :
Blake was his berd, and manly was his face.
The cercles of his eyen in his hed
They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red,
And like a griffon loked he about,
With kemped heres on his browes stout ;
His limmes gret, his braunes hard and stronge,
His shouldres brode, his armes round and longe.

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

And as the guise was in his contree,
Ful highe upon a char of gold stood he,
With foure white holies in the trais.
Instede of cote-armure on his harnais,
With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold,
He hadde a beres skin, cole-blake for old.
His longe here was kempt behind his bak,
As any ravenes fether it shone for blake.
A wreth of gold arm-gret, of huge weight,
Upon his hed sate full of stones bright,
Of fine rubins and of diamants.
About his char ther wenten white alauns,
Twenty and mo, as gret as any stere,
To hunten at the Icon or the dere,
And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound. —

With Arcita, in stories as men find,
The grete Emetrius, the king of Inde,
Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele,
Came riding like the god of armes Mars.
His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars,
Couched with perles, white, and round and grete.
His sadel was of brent gold new ybete ;
A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging
Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling.
His crispe here like ringes was yronne,
And that was yelwe, and glitered as the Sonne.
His nose was high, his eyen bright citrin,
His lippes round, his colour was sanguin,
A fewe fraknes in his face yspreint,
Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint,
And as a leon he his loking caste.
Of five and twenty yere his age I caste.
His berd was wel begonnen for to spring ;
His vois was as a trompe thondering.
Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene
A gerlond freshe and lusty for to sene.
Upon his hond he bare for his deduit
An egle tame, as any lily whit. —
About this king ther ran on every part
Ful many a tame leon and leopart.'

What a deal of terrible beauty there is contained in this description !
The imagination of a poet brings such objects before us, as when we
look at wild beasts in a menagerie ; their claws are pared, their eyes
glitter like harmless lightning ; but we gaze at them with a pleasing
awe, clothed in beauty, formidable in the sense of abstract power.

Chaucer's descriptions of natural scenery possess the same sort of

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

characteristic excellence, or what might be termed gusto. They
have a local truth and freshness, which gives the very feeling of the
air, the coolness or moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects are
thus made to have a fellow-feeling in the interest of the story ; and
render back the sentiment of the speaker's mind. One of the finest
parts of Chaucer is of this mixed kind. It is the beginning of the
Flower and the Leaf, where he describes the delight of that young
beauty, shrowded in her bower, and listening, in the morning of the
year, to the singing of the nightingale ; while her joy rises with the
rising song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne along with
the full tide of pleasure, and still increases and repeats, and prolongs
itself, and knows no ebb. The coolness of the arbour, its retirement,
the early time of the day, the sudden starting up of the birds in the
neighbouring bushes, the eager delight with which they devour and rend
the opening buds and flowers, are expressed with a truth and feeling,
which make the whole appear like the recollection of an actual scene :

' Which as me thought was right a pleasing sight,
And eke the briddes song for to here,
Would haue rejoyced any earthly wight,
And I that couth not yet in no manere
Heare the nightingale of all the yeare,
Ful busily herkened with herte and with eare,
If I her voice perceiue coud any where.

And I that all this pleasaunt sight sie,
Thought sodainly I felt so sweet an aire
Of the eglentere, that certainely
There is no herte I deme in such dispaire,
Ne with thoughts froward and contraire,
So ouerlaid, but it should soone haue bote,
If it had ones felt this savour sote.

And as I stood and cast aside mine eie,

I was ware of the fairest medler tree

That ever yet in all my life I sie

As full of blossomes as it might be,

Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile

Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet

Here and there of buds and floures sweet.

And to the herber side was joyning
This faire tree, of which I haue you told,
And at the last the brid began to sing,
Whan he had eaten what he eat wold,
So passing sweetly, that by manifold
It was more pleasaunt than I coud deiiise,
And whan his song was ended in this wise,

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

The nightingale with so merry a note

Answered him, that all the wood rong

So sodainly, that as it were a sote,

I stood astonied, so was I with the song

Thorow rauished, that till late and long,

I ne wist in what place I was, ne where,

And ayen me thought she song euen by mine ere.

Wherefore I waited about busily
On euery side, if I her might see,
And at the last I gan full well aspie
Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree,
On the further side euen right by me,
That gaue so passing a delicious smell,
According to the eglentere full well.

Whereof I had so inly great pleasure,
That as me thought I surely rauished was
Into Paradice, where my desire
Was for to be, and no ferther passe
As for that day, and on the sote grasse,
I. sat me downe, for as for mine entent,
The birds song was more conuenient,

And more pleasaunt to me by manifold,
Than meat or drinke, or any other thing,
' Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold,
The wholesome sauours eke so comforting,
That as I demed, sith the beginning
Of the world was neur scene or than
So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man.

And as I sat the birds barkening thus,
Me thought that I heard voices sodainly,
The most sweetest and most delicious
That euer any wight I trow truly
Heard in their life, for the armony
And sweet accord was in so good musike,
That the uoice to angels was most like.'

There is here no affected rapture, no flowery sentiment : the
whole is an ebullition of natural delight 'welling out of the heart,' like
water from a crystal spring. Nature is the soul of art : there is a
strength as well as a simplicity in the imagination that reposes entirely
on nature, that nothing else can supply. It was the same trust in
nature, and reliance on his subject, which enabled Chaucer to describe
the grief and patience of Griselda ; the faith of Constance ; and the

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

heroic perseverance of the little child, who, going to school through
the streets of Jewry,

' Oh Alma Redemptoris mater, loudly sung,'

and who after his death still triumphed in his song. Chaucer has
more of this deep, internal, sustained sentiment, than any other writer,
except Boccaccio. In depth of simple pathos, and intensity of con-
ception, never swerving from his subject, I think no other writer comes
near him, not even the Greek tragedians. I wish to be allowed
to give one or two instances of what I mean. I will take the
following from the Knight's Tale. The distress of Arcite, in conse-
quence of his banishment from his love, is thus described :

' Whan that Arcite to Thebes comen was,
Ful oft a day he swelt and said Alas,
For sene his lady shall be never mo.
And shortly to concluden all his wo,
So mochel sorwe hadde never creature,
That is or shall be, while the world may dure.
His slepe, his mete, his drinke is him byraft.
That lene he wex, and drie as is a shaft.
His eyen holwe, and grisly to behold,
His hewe salwe, and pale as ashen cold,
And solitary he was, and ever alone,
And wailing all the night, making his mone.
And if he herde song or instrument,
Than wold he wepe, he mighte not be stent.
So feble were his spirites, and so low,
And changed so, that no man coude know
His speche ne his vois, though men it herd.'

This picture of the sinking of the heart, of the wasting away of the
body and mind, of the gradual failure of all the faculties under the
contagion of a rankling sorrow, cannot be surpassed. Of the same
kind is his farewel to his mistress, after he has gained her hand and
lost his life in the combat :

' Alas the wo ! alas the peines stronge,
That I for you have suffered, and so longe !
Alas the deth ! alas min Emilie !
Alas departing of our compagnie :
Alas min hertes quene ! alas my wif !
Min hertes ladie, ender of my lif !
What is this world ? what axen men to have ?
Now with his love, now in his colde grave
Alone withouten any compagnie.'

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

The death of Arcite is the more affecting, as it comes after triumph
and victory, after the pomp of sacrifice, the solemnities of prayer, the
celebration of the gorgeous rites of chivalry. The descriptions of
the three temples of Mars, of Venus, and Diana, of the ornaments
and ceremonies used in each, with the reception given to the offerings
of the lovers, have a beauty and grandeur, much of which is lost in
Dryden's version. For instance, such lines as the following are not
rendered with their true feeling.

' Why shulde I not as well eke tell you all
The purtreiture that was upon the wall
Within the temple of mighty Mars the rede —
That highte the gret temple of Mars in Trace
In thilke colde and frosty region,
Ther as Mars hath his sovereine mansion.
First on the wall was peinted a forest,
In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best,
With knotty knarry barrein trees old
Of stubbes sharpe and hideous to behold ;
In which ther ran a romble and a swough,
As though a storme shuld bresten every bough.1

And again, among innumerable terrific images of death and slaughter
painted on the wall, is this one :

' The statue of Mars upon a carte stood
Armed, and looked grim as he were wood.
A wolf ther stood beforne him at his fete
With eyen red, and of a man he etc/

The story of Griselda is in Boccaccio ; but the Clerk of Oxen-
forde, who tells it, professes to have learned it from Petrarch. This
story has gone all over Europe, and has passed into a proverb. In
spite of the barbarity of the circumstances, which are abominable, the
sentiment remains unimpaired and unalterable. It is of that kind,
' that heaves no sigh, that sheds no tear ' ; but it hangs upon the
beatings of the heart ; it is a part of the very being ; it is as
inseparable from it as the breath we draw. It is still and calm as the
face of death. Nothing can touch it in its ethereal purity : tender as
the yielding flower, it is fixed as the marble firmament. The only
remonstrance she makes, the only complaint she utters against all the
ill-treatment she receives, is that single line where, when turned back
naked to her father's house, she says,

' Let me not like a worm go by the way.'

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

The first outline given of the character is inimitable :

' Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable,
Wher as this markis shope his mariage,
Ther stood a thorpe, of sighte delitable,
In which that poure folk of that village
Hadden hir bestes and her herbergage,
And of hir labour toke hir sustenance,
After that the earthe yave hem habundance.

Among this poure folk ther dwelt a man,
Which that was holden pourest of hem all :
But highe God sometime senden can
His grace unto a litel oxes stall :
Janicola men of that thorpe him call.
A doughter had he, faire ynough to sight,
And Grisildis this yonge maiden hight.

But for to speke of vertuous beautee,
Than was she on the fairest under Sonne :
Ful pourely yfostred up was she :
No likerous lust was in hire herte yronne ;
Ful ofter of the well than of the tonne
She dranke, and for she wolde vertue plese,
She knew wel labour, but non idel ese.

But though this mayden tend re were of age,

Yet in the brest of hire virginitee

Ther was enclosed sad and ripe corage :

And in gret reverence and charitee

Hire olde poure fader fostred she :

A few sheep spinning on the feld she kept,

She wolde not ben idel til she slept.

And whan she homward came she wolde bring

Wortes and other herbes times oft,

The which she shred and sethe for hire living,

And made hire bed ful hard, and nothing soft :

And ay she kept hire fadres lif on loft

With every obeisance and diligence,

That child may don to fadres reverence,

Upon Grisilde, this poure creature,
Ful often sithe this markis sette his sye,
As he on hunting rode paraventure :
And whan it fell that he might hire espie,
He not with wanton loking of folie
His eyen cast on hire, but in sad wise
Upon hire chere he wold him oft avise,

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

Commending in his herte hire womanhede,
And eke hire vertue, passing any wight
Of so yong age, as wel in chere as dede.
For though the people have no gret insight
In vertue, he considered ful right
Hire bountee, and disposed that he wold
Wedde hire only, if ever he wedden shold.

Grisilde of this (God wot) ful innocent,
That for hire shapen was all this array,
To fetchen water at a welle is went,
And cometh home as sone as ever she may.
For wel she had herd say, that thilke day
The markis shulde wedde, and, if she might,
She wolde fayn han seen som of that sight.

She thought, " I wol with other maidens stond,

That ben my felawes, in our dore, and see

The markisesse, and therto wol I fond

To don at home, as sone as it may be,

The labour which longeth unto me,

And than I may at leiser hire behold,

If she this way unto the castel hold."

And she wolde over the threswold gon,
The markis came and gan hire for to call,
And she set doun her water-pot anon
Beside the threswold in an oxes stall,
And doun upon hire knees she gan to fall.
And with sad countenance kneleth still,
Till she had herd what was the lordes will.''

The story of the little child slain in Jewry, (which is told by the
Prioress, and worthy to be told by her who was ' all conscience and
tender heart/) is not less touching than that of Griselda. It is
simple and heroic to the last degree. The poetry of Chaucer has a
religious sanctity about it, connected with the manners and supersti-
tions of the age. It has all the spirit of martyrdom.

It has also all the extravagance and the utmost licentiousness of
comic humour, equally arising out of the manners of the time. In
this too Chaucer resembled Boccaccio that he excelled in both styles,
and could pass at will ' from grave to gay, from lively to severe ' ;
but he never confounded the two styles together (except from that
involuntary and unconscious mixture of the pathetic and humorous,
which is almost always to be found in nature,) and was exclusively
taken up with what he set about, whether it was jest or earnest. The
Wife of Bath's Prologue (which Pope has very admirably modern-

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

ised) is, perhaps, unequalled as a comic story. The Cock and the
Fox is also excellent for lively strokes of character and satire.
January and May is not so good as some of the others. Chaucer's
versification, considering the time at which he wrote, and that
versification is a thing in a great degree mechanical, is not one of his
least merits. It has considerable strength and harmony, and its
apparent deficiency in the latter respect arises chiefly from the altera-
tions which have since taken place in the pronunciation or mode of
accenting the words of the language. The best general rule for
reading him is to pronounce the final e, as in reading Italian.

It was observed in the last Lecture that painting describes what
the object is in itself, poetry what it implies or suggests. Chaucer's
poetry is not, in general, the best confirmation of the truth of this
distinction, for his poetry is more picturesque and historical than
almost any other. But there is one instance in point which I cannot
help giving in this place. It is the story of the three thieves who go
in search of Death to kill him, and who meeting with him, are
entangled in their fate by his words, without knowing him. In the
printed catalogue to Mr. West's (in some respects very admirable)
picture of Death on the Pale Horse, it is observed, that ' In poetry
the same effect is produced by a few abrupt and rapid gleams of
description, touching, as it were with fire, the features and edges of a
general mass of awful obscurity ; but in painting, such indistinctness
would be a defect, and imply that the artist wanted the power to
pourtray the conceptions of his fancy. Mr. West was of opinion
that to delineate a physical form, which in its moral impression
would approximate to that of the visionary Death of Milton, it was
necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance of super-human
strength and energy. He has therefore exerted the utmost force and
perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure.' — One might suppose
from this, that the way to represent a shadow was to make it as
substantial as possible. Oh, no ! Painting has its prerogatives, (and
high ones they are) but they lie in representing the visible, not the
invisible. The moral attributes of Death are powers and effects of
an infinitely wide and general description, which no individual or
physical form can possibly represent, but by a courtesy of speech, or
by a distant analogy. The moral impression of Death is essentially
visionary ; its reality is in the mind's eye. Words are here the only
things ; and things, physical forms, the mere mockeries of the under-
standing. The less definite, the less bodily the conception, the more
vast, unformed, and unsubstantial, the nearer does it approach to some
resemblance of that omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresistible principle,
which every where, and at some time or other, exerts its power over

VOL. v. : c 33

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

all things. Death is a mighty abstraction, like Night, or Space, or
Time. He is an ugly customer, who will not be invited to supper,
or to sit for his picture. He is with us and about us, but we do not
see him. He stalks on before us, and we do not mind him : he
follows us close behind, and we do not turn to look back at him.
We do not see him making faces at us in our life-time, nor perceive
him afterwards sitting in mock-majesty, a twin-skeleton, beside us,
tickling our bare ribs, and staring into our hollow eye-balls ! Chaucer
knew this. He makes three riotous companions go in search of
Death to kill him, they meet with an old man whom they reproach
with his age, and ask why he does not die, to which he answers
thus :

' Ne Deth, alas ! ne will not ban my lit".
Thus walke I like a restless caitiff,
And on the ground, which is my modres gate,
I knocke with my staf, erlich and late,
And say to hire, " Leve mother, let me in.
Lo, how I vanish, flesh and blood and skin,
Alas ! when shall my bones ben at reste ?
Mother, with you wolde I changen my cheste,
That in my chambre longe time hath be,
Ye, for an heren cloute to wrap in me."
But yet to me she will not don that grace,
For which ful pale and welked is my face.'

They then ask the old man where they shall find out Death to
kill him, and he sends them on an errand which ends in the death of
all three. We hear no more of him, but it is Death that they have
encountered !

The interval between Chaucer and Spenser is long and dreary.
There is nothing to fill up the chasm but the names of Occleve,
' ancient Gower,' Lydgate, Wyatt, Surry, and Sackville. Spenser
flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir John
Davies into Ireland, of which he has left behind him some tender
recollections in his description of the bog of Allan, and a record in
an ably written paper, containing observations on the state of that
country and the means of improving it, which remain in full force to
the present day. Spenser died at an obscure inn in London, it is
supposed in distressed circumstances. The treatment he received
from Burleigh is well known. Spenser, as well as Chaucer, was
engaged in active life ; but the genius of his poetry was not active : it
is inspired by the love of ease, and relaxation from all the cares and
business of life. Of all the poets, he is the most poetical. Though
much later than Chaucer, his obligations to preceding writers were

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

less. He has in some measure borrowed the plan of his poem (as a
number of distinct narratives) from Ariosto ; but he has engrafted
upon it an exuberance of fancy, and an endless voluptuousness of
sentiment, which are not to be found in the Italian writer. Farther,
Spenser is even more of an inventor in the subject-matter. There is
an originality, richness, and variety in his allegorical personages and
fictions, which almost vies with the splendor of the ancient mythology.
If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance, Spenser's poetry
is all fairy-land. In Ariosto, we walk upon the ground, in a
company, gay, fantastic, and adventurous enough. In Spenser, we
wander in another world, among ideal beings. The poet takes and
lays us in the lap of a lovelier nature, by the sound of softer streams,
among greener hills and fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we
find it, but as we expected to find it ; and fulfils the delightful
promise of our youth. He waves his wand of enchantment — and at
once embodies airy beings, and throws a delicious veil over all actual
objects. The two worlds of reality and of fiction are poised on the
wings of his imagination. His ideas, indeed, seem more distinct than
his perceptions. He is the painter of abstractions, and describes them
with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask of Cupid he makes the God
of Love ' clap on high his coloured winges twain y : and it is said of
Gluttony, in the Procession of the Passions,

* In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad/

At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of beauty ; as
where he compares Prince Arthur's crest to the appearance of the
almond tree :

' Upon the top of all his lofty crest,

A bunch of hairs discolour'd diversely
With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest
Did shake and seem'd to daunce for jollity ;
Like to an almond tree ymounted high

On top of green Selenis all alone,
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily ;
Her tender locks do tremble every one
At every little breath that under heav'n is blown.'

The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, is the moving principle
of his mind ; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule
but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates
equally in scenes of Eastern magnificence ; or the still solitude of a
hermit's cell — in the extremes of sensuality or refinement.

In reading the Faery Queen, you see a little withered old man by
a wood-side opening a wicket, a giant, and a dwarf lagging far behind,

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

a damsel in a boat upon an enchanted lake, wood-nymphs, and satyrs ;
and all of a sudden you are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers
burning, amidst knights and ladies, with dance and revelry, and song,
'and mask, and antique pageantry.' What can be more solitary,
more shut up in itself, than his description of the house of Sleep, to
which Archimago sends for a dream :

' And more to lull him in his slumber soft

A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down,
And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft,

Mix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the sound
Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swound.
No other noise, nor people's troublous cries.
That still are wont t' annoy the walled town

Might there be heard ; but careless Quiet lies
Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies.'

It is as if ' the honey-heavy dew of slumber ' had settled on his pen
in writing these lines. How different in the subject (and yet how
like in beauty) is the following description of the Bower of Bliss :

' Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound

Of all that mote delight a dainty ear ;
Such as at once might not on living ground,
Save in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere :
Right hard it was for wight which did it hear,
To tell what manner musicke that mote be ;
For all that pleasing is to living eare

Was there consorted in one harmonee :
Birds, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree.

The joyous birdes shrouded in chearefull shade

Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet :
The angelical soft trembling voices made

To th' instruments divine respondence meet.
The silver sounding instruments did meet

With the base murmur of the water's fall j
The water's fall with difference discreet,

Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call 5
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.'

The remainder of the passage has all that voluptuous pathos, and
languid brilliancy of fancy, in which this writer excelled :

* The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay;

Ah ! see, whoso fayre thing dost thou fain to see,
In springing flower the image of thy day !
Ah ! see the virgin rose, how sweetly she

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty,
That fairer seems the less ye see her may !

Lo ! see soon after, how more bold and free
Her bared bosom she doth broad display ;
Lo ! see soon after, how she fades and falls away !

So passeth in the passing of a day

Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower ;
Ne more doth flourish after first decay,

That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower
Of many a lady and many a paramour !

Gather therefore the rose whilst yet is prime,
For soon comes age that will her pride deflower ;

Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time,
Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime. J

He ceased ; and then gan all the quire of birds

Their divers notes to attune unto his lay,
As in approvance of his pleasing wordes.

The constant pair heard all that he did say,
Yet swerved not, but kept their forward way

Through many covert groves and thickets close,
In which they creeping did at last display 2

That wanton lady with her lover loose,
Whose sleepy head she in her lap did soft dispose.

Upon a bed of roses she was laid

As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin ;
And was arrayed or rather disarrayed,

All in a veil of silk and silver thin,
That hid no whit her alabaster skin,

But rather shewed more white, if more might be :
More subtle web Arachne cannot spin ;

Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee.

Her snowy breast was bare to greedy spoil

Of hungry eyes which n' ote therewith be fill'd,
And yet through languor of her late sweet toil

Few drops more clear than nectar forth distill'd,
That like pure Orient perles adown it trill'd ;

And her fair eyes sweet smiling in delight
Moisten'd their fiery beams, with which she thrill'd

Frail hearts, yet quenched not ; like starry light,
Which sparkling on the silent waves does seem more bright.'

1 Taken from Tasso.

2 This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms which Spenser some-
times took with language.

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

The finest things in Spenser are, the character of Una, in the first
book ; the House of Pride ; the Cave of Mammon, and the Cave
of Despair ; the account of Memory, of whom it is said, among other
things,

* The wars he well remember'd of King Nine,
Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine ' ;

the description of Belphoebe ; the story of Florimel and the Witch's
son ; the Gardens of Adonis, and the Bower of Bliss ; the Mask of
Cupid ; and Colin Clout's vision, in the last book. But some people
will say that all this may be very fine, but that they cannot understand
it on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if
they thought it would bite them : they look at it as a child looks at
a painted dragon, and think it will strangle them in its shining folds.
This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the
allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the
whole is as plain as a pike-staff. It might as well be pretended that,
we cannot see Poussin's pictures for the allegory, as that the allegory
prevents us from understanding Spenser. For instance, when Brito-
mart, seated amidst the young warriors, lets fall her hair and discovers
her sex, is it necessary to know the part she plays in the allegory, to
understand the beauty of the following stanza ?

' And eke that stranger knight amongst the rest

Was for like need enforced to disarray.
Tho when as vailed was her lofty crest,

Her golden locks that were in trammels gay
Upbounden, did themselves adown display,

And raught unto her heels like sunny beams
That in a cloud their light did long time stay $

Their vapour faded, shew their golden gleams,
And through the persant air shoot forth their azure streams.'

Or is there any mystery in what is said of Belphoebe, that her hair
was sprinkled with flowers and blossoms which had been entangled in
it as she fled through the woods ? Or is it necessary to have a more
distinct idea of Proteus, than that which is given of him in his boat,
with the frighted Florimel at his feet, while

* the cold icicles from his rough beard

Dropped adown upon her snowy breast ! '

Or is it not a sufficient account of one of the sea-gods that pass by
them, to say —

' That was Arion crowned : —
So went he playing on the watery plain/

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

Or to take the Procession of the Passions that draw the coach of
Pride, in which the figures of Idleness, of Gluttony, of Lechery, of
Avarice, of Envy, and of Wrath speak, one should think, plain
enough for themselves ; such as this of Gluttony :

' And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,

Deformed creature, on a filthy swine ;
His belly was up blown with luxury ;

And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne j
And like a crane his neck was long and fine,

With which he swallowed up excessive feast,
For want whereof poor people oft did pine.

In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad ;

For other clothes he could not wear for heat :
And on his head an ivy garland had,

From under which fast trickled down the sweat :
Still as he rode, he somewhat still did eat.

And in his hand did bear a bouzing can,
Of which he supt so oft, that on his seat

His drunken corse he scarce upholden can ;
In shape and size more like a monster than a man.1

Or this of Lechery :

* And next to him rode lustfull Lechery

Upon a bearded goat, whose rugged hair
And whaly eyes (the sign of jealousy)

Was like the person's self whom he did bear :
Who rough and black, and filthy did appear.

Unseemly man to please fair lady's eye :
Yet he of ladies oft was loved dear,

When fairer faces were bid standen by :
O ! who does know the bent of woman's fantasy ?

In a green gown he clothed was full fair,

Which underneath did hide his filthiness ;
And in his hand a burning heart he bare,

Full of vain follies and new fangleness ;
For he was false and fraught with fickleness ;

And learned had to love with secret looks ;
And well could dance ; and sing with ruefulness ;

And fortunes tell ; and read in loving books ;
And thousand other ways to bait his fleshly hooks.

Inconstant man that loved all he saw,

And lusted after all that he did love ;
Ne would his looser life be tied to law;

But joyed weak women's hearts to tempt and prove,
If from their loyal loves he might them move.'

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

This is pretty plain-spoken. Mr. Southey says of Spenser :
' Yet not more sweet

Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise ;
High priest of all the Muses' mysteries ! '

On the contrary, no one was more apt to pry into mysteries which do
not strictly belong to the Muses.

Of the same kind with the Procession of the Passions, as little
obscure, and still more beautiful, is the Mask of Cupid, with his train
of votaries :

' The first was Fancy, like a lovely boy

Of rare aspect, and beauty without peer ;

His garment neither was of silk nor say,

But painted plumes in goodly order dight,
Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array

Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight :
As those same plumes so seenTd he vain and light,

That by his gait might easily appear ;
For still he far'd as dancing in delight,

And in his hand a windy fan did bear
That in the idle air he mov'd still here and there.

And him beside march'd amorous Desire,

Who seem'd of riper years than the other swain,
Yet was that other swain this elder's sire,

And gave him being, common to them twain :
His garment was disguised very vain,

And his embroidered bonnet sat awry ;
Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strain,

Which still he blew, and kindled busily,
That soon they life conceiv'd and forth in flames did fly.

Next after him went Doubt, who was yclad

In a discolour'd coat of strange disguise,
That at his back a broad capuccio had,

And sleeves dependant Albanese-*wise ;
He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes,

And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way,
Or that the floor to shrink he did avise ;

And on a broken reed he still did stay
His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay.

With him went Daunger, cloth'd in ragged weed,

Made of bear's skin, that him more dreadful made ;
Yet his own face was dreadfull, ne did need
Strange horror to deform his grisly shade ;
40

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

A net in th' one hand, and a rusty blade

In th' other was ; this Mischiefe, that Mishap ;

With th' one his foes he threatened to invade,

With th' other he his friends meant to enwrap j
For whom he could not kill he practiz'd to entrap.

Next him was Fear, all arm'd from top to toe,

Yet thought himselfe not safe enough thereby,
But fear'd each shadow moving to and fro ;

And his own arms when glittering he did spy
Or clashing heard, he fast away did rly,

As ashes pale of hue, and winged-heel'd j
And evermore on Daunger fixt his eye,

'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield,
Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield.

With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid,

Of chearfull look and lovely to behold ;
In silken samite she was light array'd,

And her fair locks were woven up in gold 5
She always smil'd, and in her hand did hold

An holy-water sprinkle dipt in dew,
With which she sprinkled favours manifold

On whom she list, and did great liking shew,
Great liking unto many, but true love to few.

Next after them, the winged God himself

Came riding on a lion ravenous,
Taught to obey the menage of that elfe

That man and beast with power imperious
Subdueth to his kingdom tyrannous :

His blindfold eyes he bade awhile unbind,
That his proud spoil of that same dolorous

Fair dame he might behold in perfect kind ;
Which seen, he much rejoiced in his cruel mind.

Of which full proud, himself uprearing high,

He looked round about with stern disdain,
And did survey his goodly company :

And marshalling the evil-ordered train,
With that the darts which his right hand did strain,

Full dreadfully he shook, that all did quake,
And clapt on high his colour'd winges twain,

That all his many it afraid did make :
Tho, blinding him again, his way he forth did take.'

The description of Hope, in this series of historical portraits, is one
of the most beautiful in Spenser : and the triumph of Cupid at the
mischief he has made, is worthy of the malicious urchin deity. In

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

reading these descriptions, one can hardly avoid being reminded of
Rubens's allegorical pictures ; but the account of Satyrane taming the
lion's whelps and lugging the bear's cubs along in his arms while yet
an infant, whom his mother so naturally advises to 'go seek some
other play-fellows,' has even more of this high picturesque character.
Nobody but Rubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser ; and he
could not have given the sentiment, the airy dream that hovers over it !
With all this, Spenser neither makes us laugh nor weep. The
only jest in his poem is an allegorical play upon words, where he
describes Malbecco as escaping in the herd of goats, ' by the help of
his fayre homes on hight.' But he has been unjustly charged with a
want of passion and of strength. He has both in an immense degree.
He has not indeed the pathos of immediate action or suffering, which
is more properly the dramatic ; but he has all the pathos of sentiment
and romance — all that belongs to distant objects of terror, and
uncertain, imaginary distress. His strength, in like manner, is not
strength of will or action, of bone and muscle, nor is it coarse and
palpable — but it assumes a character of vastness and sublimity seen
through the same visionary medium, and blended with the appalling
associations of preternatural agency. We need only turn, in proof of
this, to the Cave of Despair, or the Cave of Mammon, or to the
account of the change of Malbecco into Jealousy. The following
stanzas, in the description of the Cave of Mammon, the grisly house
of Plutus, are unrivalled for the portentous massiness of the forms, the
splendid chiaro-scuro, and shadowy horror.

' That house's form within was rude and strong,

Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift,
From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung,

Embossed with massy gold ot glorious gift,
And with rich metal loaded every rift,

That heavy ruin they did seem to threat :
And over them Arachne high did lift

Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net,
Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet.

Both roof and floor, and walls were all of gold,

But overgrown with dust and old decay,1
And hid in darkness that none could behold

1 'That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,
Tho* they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to Dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than gold o'er-dusted."

Troilus and Cressida.
42

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

The hue thereof : for view of cheerful day
Did never in that house itself display,

But a faint shadow of uncertain light ;
Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away ;

Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night
Does shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright.

*******
And over all sad Horror with grim hue

Did always soar, beating his iron wings ;
And after him owls and night-ravens flew,

The hateful messengers of heavy things,
Of death and dolour telling sad tidings ;

Whiles sad Celleno, sitting on a clift,
A song of bitter bale and sorrow sings,

That heart of flint asunder could have rift ;
Which having ended, after him she flieth swift.'

The Cave of Despair is described with equal gloominess and power of
fancy ; and the fine moral declamation of the owner of it, on the evils
of life, almost makes one in love with death. In the story of
Malbecco, who is haunted by jealousy, and in vain strives to run away
from his own thoughts —

' High over hill and over dale he flies ' —

the truth of human passion and the preternatural ending are equally
striking. — It is not fair to compare Spenser with Shakspeare, in point
of interest. A fairer comparison would be with Comus ; and the
result would not be unfavourable to Spenser. There is only one
work of the same allegorical kind, which has more interest than
Spenser (with scarcely less imagination) : and that is the Pilgrim's
Progress. The three first books of the Faery Queen are very
superior to the three last. One would think that Pope, who used to
ask if any one had ever read the Faery Queen through, had only
dipped into these last. The only things in them equal to the former,
are the account of Talus, the Iron Man, and the delightful episode of
Pastorella.

The language of Spenser is full, and copious, to overflowing : it is
less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer's, and is enriched and adorned
with phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both
ancient and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain
license of expression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his
complicated rhymed stanza from the limited resources of his native
language. This stanza, with alternate and repeatedly recurring
rhymes, is borrowed from the Italians. It was peculiarly fitted to

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

their language, which abounds in similar vowel terminations, and is as
little adapted to ours, from the stubborn, unaccommodating resistance
which the consonant endings of the northern languages make to this
sort of endless sing-song. — Not that I would, on that account, part
with the stanza of Spenser. We are, perhaps, indebted to this very
necessity of finding out new forms of expression, and to the occasional
faults to which it led, for a poetical language rich and varied and
magnificent beyond all former, and almost all later example. His
versification is, at once, the most smooth and the most sounding in
the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds, * in many a winding
bout of linked sweetness long drawn out ' — that would cloy by their
very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly relieved and enchanted
by their continued variety of modulation — dwelling on the pauses of
the action, or flowing on in a fuller tide of harmony with the move-
ment of the sentiment. It has not the bold dramatic transitions of
Shakspeare's blank verse, nor the high-raised tone of Milton's ; but
it is the perfection of melting harmony, dissolving the soul in pleasure,
or holding it captive in the chains of suspense. Spenser was the
poet of our waking dreams ; and he has invented not only a language,
but a music of his own for them. The undulations are infinite, like
those of the waves of the sea : but the effect is still the same, lulling
the senses into a deep oblivion of the jarring noises of the world,
from which we have no wish to be ever recalled.

LECTURE III
ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

I H. looking back to the great works of genius in former times, we are

sometimes disposed to wonder at the little progress which has since

been made in poetry, and in the arts of imitation in general. But

S this is pefnaps a foolish wonder. Nothing can be more contrary to

the fact, than the supposition that in what we understand by the foe

J arts, as painting, and poetry, relative perfection is only the result of

/ repeated efforts in successive periods, and that what has been once

\ ,.. well done, constantly leads to something better. What is mechanical,

reducible to rule, or capable of demonstration, is progressive, and

j admits of gradual improvement : what is not mechanical, or definite,

but depends on feeling, taste, and genius, very soon becomes stationary,

or retrograde, and loses more than it gains by transfusion. The

contrary opinion is a vulgar error, which has grown up, like many
"

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

others, from transferring an analogy of one kind to something quite
distinct, without taking into the account the difference in the nature
of the things, or attending to the difference of the results. For most'1
persons, finding what wonderful advances have been made in biblical
criticism, in chemistry, in mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, &c. •
i.e. in things depending on mere inquiry and experiment, or on
absolute demonstration, have been led hastily to conclude, that there
was a general tendency in the efforts of the human intellect to improve
by repetition, and, in all other arts and institutions, to grow perfect
and mature by time. We look back upon the theological creed of
our ancestors, and their discoveries in natural philosophy, with a
smile of pity : science, and the arts connected with it, have all had
their infancy, their youth, and manhood, and seem to contain in them
no principle of limitation or decay : and, inquiring no farther about
the matter, we infer, in the intoxication of our pride, and the height
of our self-congratulation, that the same progress has been made, and
will continue to be made, in all other things which are the work of
man. The fact, however, stares us so plainly in the face, that one
would think the smallest reflection must suggest the truth, and over-
turn our sanguine theories. The greatest poets, the ablest orators,
the best painters, and the finest sculptors that the world ever saw,
appeared soon after the birth of these arts, and lived in a state of/
society which was, in other respects, comparatively barbarous. Those ,
arts, which depend on individual genius and incommunicable power,
hav£ always leaped at once from infancy to manhood, from tnenrst
rude dawn of invention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre,
and have in general declined ever after. This is the peculiar dis-
tinction and privilege of each, of science and of art : — of the one,
never to attain its utmost limit of perfection ; and of the other, to
arrive at it almost at once. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare,
Dante, and Ariosto, (Milton alone was of a later age, and not the
worse for it) — Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio,
Cervantes, and Boccaccio, the Greek sculptors and tragedians, — all
lived near the beginning of their arts — perfected, and all but created
them. These giant-sons of genius stand indeed upon the earth, but
they tower above their fellows ; and the long line of their successors,
in different ages, does not interpose any object to obstruct their view,
or lessen their brightness. In strength and stature they are unrivalled ;
in grace and beauty they have not been surpassed. In after-ages, and
more refined periods, (as they are called) great men have arisen, one by
one, as it were by throes and at intervals; though in general the best of
these cultivated and artificial minds were of an inferior order; as Tasso
and Pope, among poets ; Guido and Vandyke, among painters. But

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

in the earlier stages of the arts, as soon as the first mechanical difficulties
had been got over, and the language was sufficiently acquired, they
rose by clusters, and in constellations, never so to rise again !

The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with the world of
thought within us, and with the world of sense around us — with what
we know, and see, and feel intimately. They flow from the sacred
shrine of our own breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp of
nature. But the pulse of the passions assuredly beat as high, the
depths and soundings of the human heart were as well understood
three thousand, or three hundred years ago, as they are at present :
the face of nature, and * the human face divine ' shone as bright then
as they have ever done. But it is their light, reflected by true genius
on art, that marks out its path before it, and sheds a glory round the
Muses' feet, like that which

' Circled Una's angel face,
And made a sunshine in the shady place.'

The four greatest names in English poetry, are almost the four first__
we come to — Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. There are
no others that can really be put in competition with these. The two
last have had justice done them by the voice of common fame. Their
names are blazoned in the very firmament of reputation ; while the
two first (though * the fault has been more in their stars than in
themselves that they are underlings ' ) either never emerged far above
the horizon, or were too soon involved in the obscurity of time. The
A three first of these are excluded from Dr. Johnson's Lives of the

\ Poets (Shakspeare indeed is so from the dramatic form of his com-

I positions) : and the fourth, Milton, is admitted with a reluctant and

I churlish welcome.

In comparing these four writers together, it might be said that
Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of real life ; Spenser, as
the poet of romance ; Shakspeare as the poet of nature (in the largest

Xuse of the term) ; and Milton, as the poet of morality. Chaucer
• most frequently describes things as they are ; Spenser, as we wish
them to be ; Shakspeare, as they would be ; and Milton as they /

I ought to be. As poets, and as great poets, imagination, that is, the
power of -feigning thiags._ac cor ding to nature, was common to them
all : but the principle or moving power, to which this faculty was
moist subservient in Crrau'cer, was habit, or inveterate prejudice ; in
Spenser, novelty, and the love of the marvellous ; in Shakspeare, it
was the force of passion, combined with every variety of possible
circumstances ; and in Milton, only with the highest. The charac-
teristic of Chaucer is intensity ; of Spenser, remoteness ; of Milton,
46

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

elevation ; of Shakspeare, every thing.- — It has been said by some
critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished from the other dramatic
writers of his day only by his wit ; that they had all his other
qualities but that ; that one writer had as much sense, another as
much fancy, another as much knowledge of character, another the
same depth of passion, and another as great a power of language.
This statement is not true ; nor is the inference from it well-founded,
even if it were. This person does not seem to have been aware that,
upon his own shewing, the great distinction of Shakspeare's genius
was its virtually including the genius of all the great men of his age,
and not his differing from them in one accidental particular. But to
have done with such minute and literal trifling.

The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its generic
quality, its power of communication with all other minds — so that
it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had
no one peculiar bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He
was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He
was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing
in himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could
become. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and
feeling, but he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all
their conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune or
conflict of passion, or turn of thought. He had * a mind reflecting
ages past,' and present : — all the people that ever lived are there.
There was no respect of persons with him. His genius shone
equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the
monarch and the beggar : * All corners of the earth, kings, queens,
and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,' are hardly
hid from his searching glance. He was like the genius of humanity,
changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our
purposes as with his own. He turned the globe round for his
amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals
as they passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices,
virtues, actions, and motives — as well those that they knew, as those
which they did not know, or acknowledge to themselves. The
dreams of childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of his
fancy. Airy beings waited at his call, and came at his bidding.
Harmless fairies ' nodded to him, and did him curtesies ' : and the
night-hag bestrode the blast at the command of ' his so potent art.'
The world of spirits lay open to him, like the world of real men and
women : and there is the same truth in his delineations of the one as
of the other ; for if the preternatural characters he describes could be
supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel, and act, as he makes

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

them. He had only to think of any thing in order to become that
thing, with all the circumstances belonging to it. When he conceived
of a character, whether real or imaginary, he not only entered into
all its thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by
touching a secret spring, to be surrounded with all the same objects,
* subject to the same skyey influences/ the same local, outward, and
unforeseen accidents which would occur in reality. Thus the
character of Caliban not only stands before us with a language and
manners of its own, but the scenery and situation of the enchanted
island he inhabits, the traditions of the place, its strange noises, its
hidden recesses, ' his frequent haunts and ancient neighbourhood,5 are
given with a miraculous truth of nature, and with all the familiarity
of an old recollection. The whole ' coheres semblably together ' in
. time, place, and circumstance. In reading this author, you do not
merely learn what his characters say, — you see their persons. By
something expressed or understood, you are at no loss to decypher
their peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the grouping, the
bye-play, as we might see it on the stage. A word, an epithet paints
a whole scene, or throws us back whole years in the history of the
person represented. So (as it has been ingeniously remarked) when
Prospero describes himself as left alone in the boat with his daughter,
the epithet which he applies to her, ' Me and thy crying self,' flings
the imagination instantly back from the grown woman to the helpless
condition of infancy, and places the first and most trying scene of his
misfortunes before us, with all that he must have suffered in the
interval. How well the silent anguish of MacdufF is conveyed to the
reader, by the friendly expostulation of Malcolm — * What ! man,
ne'er pull your hat upon your brows ! ' Again, Hamlet, in the
scene with Rosencrans and Guildenstern, somewhat abruptly concludes
his fine soliloquy on life by saying, * Man delights not me, nor
woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.' Which
is explained by their answer — * My lord, we had no such stuff in our
thoughts. But we smiled to think, if you delight not in man, what
lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you, whom we
met on the way ' : — as if while Hamlet was making this speech, his
two old schoolfellows from Wittenberg had been really standing by,
and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at the idea of the players
crossing their minds. It is not * a combination and a form ' of words,
a set speech or two, a preconcerted theory of a character, that will do
this : but all the persons concerned must have been present in the
poet's imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal ; and whatever would
have passed through their minds on the occasion, and have been
observed by others, passed through his, and is made known to the

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

reader. — I may add in passing, that Shakspeare always gives the best
directions for the costume and carriage of his heroes. Thus to take
one example, Ophelia gives the following account of Hamlet ; and as
Ophelia had seen Hamlet, I should think her word ought to be taken
against that of any modern authority.

' Ophelia, My lord, as I was reading in my closet,
Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd,
No hat upon his head, his stockings loose,
Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous,
As if he had been sent from hell
To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me.

Polonius. Mad for thy love !

Oph. My lord, I do not know,
But truly I do fear it.

Pol. What said he ?

Oph. He took me by the wrist, and held me hard
Then goes he to the length of all his arm ;
And with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face,
As he would draw it : long staid he so ;
At last, a little shaking of my arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound,
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And with his head over his shoulder turn'd,
He seem'd to find his way without his eyes 5
For out of doors he went without their help,
And to the last bended their light on me.'

Act. II. Scene i.

How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered
melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with
strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is
difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the
prompter's cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of
Ophelia's death begins thus :

' There is a willow hanging o'er a brook,
That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream.' —

Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power of mind which

is as true to nature as itself. The leaves of the willow are, in fact,

white underneath, and it is this part of them which would appear

VOL. v. : D 49

' hoary ' in the reflection in the brook. The same sort of intuitive
power, the same faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether
present or absent, before the mind's eye, is observable in the speech
of Cleopatra, when conjecturing what were the employments of Antony
in his absence : — * He 's speaking now, or murmuring, where 's my
serpent of old Nile ? ' How fine to make Cleopatra have this con-
sciousness of her own character, and to make her feel that it is this
for which Antony is in love with her ! She says, after the battle of
Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, ' It is my
birth-day ; I had thought to have held it poor : but since my lord is
Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.' What other poet would have
thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have
'dared to avail himself of it ? The thing happens in the play as it
might have happened in fact. — That which, perhaps, more than any
thing else distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from
all others, is this wonderful truth and individuality of conception.
Each of his characters is as much itself, and as absolutely independent
of the rest, as well as of the author, as if they were living persons, not
. fictions of the mind. The poet may be said, for the time, to identify
himself with the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one
to another, like the same soul successively animating different bodies.
By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out
of himself, and makes every word appear to proceed from the mouth
of the person in whose name it is given. His plays alone are properly
expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them. His characters
are real beings of flesh and blood ; they speak like men, not like
authors. One might suppose that he had stood by at the time, and
overheard what passed. As in our dreams we hold conversations
with ourselves, make remarks, or communicate intelligence, and have
no idea of the answer which we shall receive, and which we ourselves
make, till we hear it : so the dialogues in Shakspeare are carried on
without any consciousness of what is to follow, without any appearance
of preparation or premeditation. The gusts of passion come and go
like sounds of music borne on the wind. Nothing is made out by
formal inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis : all comes, or
seems to come, immediately from nature. Each object and circum-
stance exists in his mind, as it would have existed in reality : each
several train of thought and feeling goes on of itself, without confusion
or effort. In the world of his imagination, every thing has a life,
a place, and being of its own !

"Chaucer's characters are sufficiently distinct from one another, but
they are too little varied in themselves, too much like identical pro-
positions. They are consistent, but uniform ; we get no new idea of
50

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

them from first to last ; they are not placed in different lights, nor
are their subordinate traits brought out in new situations ; they are
like portraits or physiognomical studies, with the distinguishing
features marked with inconceivable truth and precision, but that
preserve the same unaltered air and attitude. Shakspeare's are
historical figures, equally true and correct, but put into action, where
every nerve and muscle is displayed in the struggle with others, with
all the effect of collision and contrast, with every variety of light and
shade. -Chaucer's characters are narrative, Shakspeare's dramatic,
I Milton's epic. That is, Chaucer told only as much of his story as
he pleased, as was required for a particular purpose. He answered
for his characters himself. In Shakspeare they are introduced upon
the stage, are liable to be asked all sorts of questions, and are forced ,
to answer for themselves. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of
character. In Shakspeare there is a continual composition and de-
composition of its elements, a fermentation of every particle in the
whole mass, by its alternate affinity or antipathy to other principles
which are brought in contact with it. Till the experiment is tried,
we do not know the result, the turn which the character will take in
its new circumstances. Milton took only a few simple principles of
character, and raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and
refined them from every base alloy. His imagination, ' nigh sphered
in Heaven,' claimed kindred only with what he saw from that height,
and could raise to the same elevation with itself. He sat retired and
kept his state alone, ' playing with wisdom ' ; while Shakspeare
mingled with the crowd, and played the host, ' to make society the
sweeter welcome.'

. The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his delineation
of character. It is not some one habitual feeling or sentiment prey-
ing upon itself, growing out of itself, and moulding every thing to
itself; it is passion modified by passion, by all the other feelings
to which the individual is liable, and to which others are liable with
him ; subject to all the fluctuations of caprice and accident ; calling
into play all the resources of the understanding and all the energies of
the will ; irritated by obstacles or yielding to them ; rising from
small beginnings to its utmost height ; now drunk with hope, now
stung to madness, now sunk in despair, now blown to air with a
breath, now raging like a torrent. The human soul is made the
sport of fortune, the prey of adversity : it is stretched on the wheel
of destiny, in restless ecstacy. The passions are in a state of pro-
jection. Years are melted down to moments, and every instant
teems with fate. We know the results, we see the process. Thus
after I ago has been boasting to himself of the effect of his poisonous

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

suggestions on the mind of Othello, * which, with a little act upon
the blood, will work like mines of sulphur,' he adds —

' Look where he comes ! not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow'dst yesterday.' —

And he enters at this moment, like the crested serpent, crowned with
his wrongs and raging for revenge ! The whole depends upon the
turn of a thought. A word, a look, blows the spark of jealousy into
a flame ; and the explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano.
The dialogues in Lear, in Macbeth, that between Brutus and Cassius,
and nearly all those in Shakspeare, where the interest is wrought up
to its highest pitch, afford examples of this dramatic fluctuation of
passion. The interest in Chaucer is quite different ; it is like the
course of a river, strong, and full, and increasing. In Shakspeare, on
the contrary, it is like the sea, agitated this way and that, and loud-
lashed by furious storms ; while in the still pauses of the blast, we
distinguish only the cries of despair, or the silence of death ! Milton.
on the other hand, takes the imaginative part of passion — :that which
remains after the event, which the mind reposes on when all is over,
which looks upon circumstances from the remotest elevation ^f
thought and fancy, and abstracts them from the world of action to
that of contemplation. The objects of^drjjn^j^^e.tt^j-iSUfikctJiS by
sympathy, by their nearness to ourselves, as they take us by surprise,
or force us upon action, ' while rage with rage doth sympathise ' ; the
objects of epic poetry affect us through the medium of the imagina-
tion, by magnitude and distance, by their permanence and universality.
The one fill us with terror and pity, the other with admiration and
delight. There are certain objects that strike the imagination, and
inspire awe in the very idea of them, independently of any dramatic
interest, that is, of any connection with the vicissitudes of human life.
For instance, we cannot think of the pyramids of Egypt, of a Gothic
ruin, or an old Roman encampment, without a certain emotion, a
sense of power and sublimity coming over the mind. The heavenly
bodies that hung over our heads wherever we go, and * in their
untroubled element shall shine when we are laid in dust, and all our
cares forgotten,' affect us in the same way. Thus Satan's address to
the Sun has an epic, not a dramatic interest ; for though the second
person in the dialogue makes no answer and feels no concern, yet the
eye of that vast luminary is upon him, like the eye of heaven, and
seems conscious of what he says, like an universal presence. Dramatic
poetry and epic, in their perfection, indeed, approximate to and

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

strengthen one another. Dramatic poetry borrows aid from the
dignity of persons and things, as the heroic does from human passion,
but in theory they are distinct. — When Richard 11. calls for the
looking-glass to contemplate his faded majesty in it, and bursts into
that affecting exclamation : * Oh, that I were a mockery-king of
snow, to melt away before the sun of Bolingbroke,' we have here the
utmost force of human passion, combined with the ideas of regal
splendour and fallen power. When Milton says of Satan :

' His form had not yet lost

All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruin'd, and th' excess
Of glory obscur'd ; ' —

the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the sense
of irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavailing regret, is perfect.

The_ great fault of a modern school of poetry is, that it is an '
experiment to reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility ;
pr._what_is_worse^lajdivest-it both of imaginary splendour and human
passion,, to surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and
devouring egotism of the writers' own minds. Milton and Shakspeare
did not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation
both to nature and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of
the one and the other, to fill up the dreary void with the Moods of
their own Minds. They owe their power over the human mind to
their having had a deeper sense than others of what was grand in the
objects of nature, or affecting in the events of human life. But to
the men I speak of there is nothing interesting, nothing herolcal,
but themselves. To them the fall of gods or of great men is the
same. They do not enter into the feeling. They cannot under-
stand the terms. They are even debarred from the last poor, paltry
consolation of an unmanly triumph over fallen greatness ; for their
minds reject, with a convulsive effort and intolerable loathing, the
very idea that there ever was, or was thought to be, any thing
superior to themselves. All that has ever excited the attention or
admiration of the world, they look upon with the most perfect
indifference ; and they are surprised to find that the world repays
their indifference with scorn. * With what measure they mete, it has
been meted to them again.' —

Shakespeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as his con-
ception of character or passion. * It glances from heaven to earth,
from earth to heaven.' Its movement is rapid and devious. It
unites the most opposite extremes : or, as Puck says, in boasting of
his own feats, ' puts a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.'

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

He seems always hurrying from his subject, even while describing it ;
but the stroke, like the lightning's, is sure as it is sudden. He takes
the widest possible range, but from that very range he has his choice
of the greatest variety and aptitude of materials. He brings together
images the most alike, but placed at the greatest distance from each
other ; that is, found in circumstances of the greatest dissimilitude.
From the remoteness of his combinations, and the celerity with which
they are effected, they coalesce the more indissolubly together. The
more the thoughts are strangers to each other, and the longer they
have been kept asunder, the more intimate does their union seem to
become. Their felicity is equal to their force. Their likeness is
made more dazzling by their novelty. They startle, and take the
fancy prisoner in the same instant. I will mention one or two which
are very striking, and not much known, out of Troilus and Cressida.
./Eneas says to Agamemnon,

' I ask that I may waken reverence,
And on the cheek be ready with a blush
Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phoebus.'

Ulysses urging Achilles to shew himself in the field, says —

* No man is the lord of anything,
Till he communicate his parts to others :
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught,
Till he behold them formed in the applause,
Where they 're extended ! which like an arch reverberates
The voice again, or like a gate of steel,
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
Its figure and its heat.'

Patroclus gives the indolent warrior the same advice.

' Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,
And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane
Be shook to air.'

Shakspeare's language and versification are like the rest of him.
He has a magic power over words : they come winged at his
bidding ; and seem to know their places. They are struck out at a
heat, on the spur of the occasion, and have all the truth and vividness
which arise from an actual impression of the objects. His epithets
and single phrases are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination,
fired by the whirling rapidity of its own motion. His language is
54

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

hieroglyphical. It translates thoughts into visible images. It abounds
in sudden transitions and elliptical expressions. This is the source of
his mixed metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms of speech.
These, however, give no pain from long custom. They have, in
fact, become idioms in the language. They are the building, and not
the scaffolding to thought. We take the meaning and effect of a
well-known passage entire, and no more stop to scan and spell out the
particular words and phrases, than the syllables of which they are
composed. In trying to recollect any other author, one sometimes
stumbles, in case of failure, on a word as good. In Shakspeare, any
other word but the true one, is sure to be wrong. If any body, for
instance, could not recollect the words of the following description,

1 Light thickens,

And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood,'

he would be greatly at a loss to substitute others for them equally
expressive of the feeling. These remarks, however, are strictly
applicable only to the impassioned parts of Shakspeare's language,
which flowed from the warmth and originality of his imagination, and
were his own. The language used for prose conversation and
ordinary business is sometimes technical, and involved in the affecta-
tion of the time. Compare, for example, Othello's apology to the
senate, relating * his whole course of love,' with some of the preceding
parts relating to his appointment, and the official dispatches from
Cyprus. In this respect, « the business of the state does him offence.'
His versification is no less powerful, sweet, and varied. It has
every occasional excellence, of sullen intricacy, crabbed and
perplexed, or of the smoothest and loftiest expansion — from the
ease and familiarity of measured conversation to the lyrical sounds

* Of ditties highly penned,

Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower,
With ravishing division to her lute.'

It is the only blank verse in the language, except Milton's, that for
itself is readable. It is not stately and uniformly swelling like his,
but varied and broken by the inequalities of the ground it has to pass
over in its uncertain course,

' And so by many winding nooks it strays,
With willing sport to the wild ocean.'

It remains to speak of the faults of Shakspeare. They are not so
many or so great as they have been represented ; what there are, are
chiefly owing to the following causes : — The universality of his genius

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

was, perhaps, a disadvantage to his single works ; the variety of his
resources, sometimes diverting him from applying them to the most
effectual purposes. He might be said to combine the powers of
-/Eschylus and Aristophanes, of Dante and Rabelais, in his own mind.
If he had been only half what he was, he would perhaps have
appeared greater. The natural ease and indifference of his temper
made him sometimes less scrupulous than he might have been. He
is relaxed and careless in critical places ; he is in earnest throughout
only in Timon, Macbeth, and Lear. Again, he had no models of
acknowledged excellence constantly in view to stimulate his efforts,
and by all that appears, no love of fame. He wrote for the * great
vulgar and the small,' in his time, not for posterity. If Queen
Elizabeth and the maids of honour laughed heartily at his worst
jokes, and the catcalls in the gallery were silent at his best passages,
he went home satisfied, and slept the next night well. He did not
trouble himself about Voltaire's criticisms. He was willing to take
advantage of the ignorance of the age in many things ; and if his plays
pleased others, not to quarrel with them himself. His very facility
of production would make him set less value on his own excellences,
and not care to distinguish nicely between what he did well or
ill. His blunders in chronology and geography do not amount to
above half a dozen, and they are offences against chronology and
geography, not against poetry. As to the unities, he was right in
setting them at defiance. He was fonder of puns than became so
great a man. His barbarisms were those of his age. His genius
was his own. He had no objection to float down with the stream of
common taste and opinion : he rose above it by his own buoyancy,
and an impulse which he could not keep under, in spite of himself or
others, and ' his delights did shew most dolphin-like.'

He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy ; and his tragedies
are better than his comedies, because tragedy is better than comedy.
His female characters, which have been found fault with as insipid,
are the finest in the world. Lastly, Shakspeare was the least of a
coxcomb of any one that ever lived, and much of a gentleman.

Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm, and
an indifference to personal reputation ; he had none of the bigotry of
his age, and his political prejudices were not very strong. In these
respects, as well as in every other, he formed a direct contrast to
Milton. Milton's works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses ; a
hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on the con-
templation of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a perfect commonwealth ;
and he seized the pen with a hand just warm from the touch of the
ark of faith. His religious zeal infused its character into his im-

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

agination ; so that he devotes himself with the same sense of duty to
the cultivation of his genius, as he did to the exercise of virtue, or the
good of his country. The spirit of the poet, the patriot, and the
prophet, vied with each other in his breast. His mind appears to
have held equal communion with the inspired writers, and with the
bards and sages of ancient Greece and Rome ; —

' Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides,
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old/

He had a high standard, with which he was always comparing him-
self, nothing short of which could satisfy his jealous ambition. He
thought of nobler forms and nobler things than those he found about
him. He lived apart, in the solitude of his own thoughts, carefully
excluding from his mind whatever might distract its purposes or.
alloy its purity, or damp its zeal. * With darkness and with dangers
compassed round,' he had the mighty models of antiquity always
present to his thoughts, and determined to raise a monument of equal
height and glory, * piling up every stone of lustre from the brook,'
for the delight and wonder of posterity. He had girded himself up,
and as it were, sanctified his genius to this service from his youth.
' For after,' he says, * I had from my first years, by the ceaseless
diligence and care of my father, been exercised to the tongues, and
some sciences as my age could suffer, by sundry masters and teachers,
it was found that whether aught was imposed upon me by them, or
betaken to of my own choice, the style by certain vital signs it had,
was likely to live ; but much latelier, in the private academies of
Italy, perceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, composed
at under twenty or thereabout, met with acceptance above what was
looked for ; I began thus far to assent both to them and divers
of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward prompting
which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intense study
(which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong
propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to
after-times as they should not willingly let it die. The accomplish-
ment of these intentions, which have lived within me ever since
I could conceive myself anything worth to my country, lies not
but in a power above man's to promise ; but that none hath by
more studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied spirit
that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as life and
free leisure will extend. Neither do I think it shame to covenant
with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet, I may go on
trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as
being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

of wine ; like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar
amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be
obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters,
but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit who can enrich with all
utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the
hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he
pleases : to this must be added industrious and select reading, steady
observation, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs.
Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much before-
hand ; but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small
willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than
these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful
and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and
hoarse disputes, from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the
quiet and still air of delightful studies.'
So that of Spenser :

' The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,

And is with child of glorious great intent,
Can never rest until it forth have brought
The eternal brood of glory excellent.'1

Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse, but after a
severe examination of his own strength, and with a resolution to leave
nothing undone which it was in his power to do. He always labours,
and almost always succeeds. He strives hard to say the finest things
in the world, and he does say them. He adorns and dignifies his
subject to the utmost : he surrounds it with every possible association
of beauty or grandeur, whether moral, intellectual, or physical. He
refines on his descriptions of beauty ; loading sweets on sweets, till
the sense aches at them ; and raises his images of terror to a gigantic
elevation, that 'makes Ossa like a wart.' In Milton, there is always
an appearance of effort : in Shakespeare, scarcely any.

Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted
every source of imitation, sacred or profane ; yet he is perfectly
distinct from every other writer. He is a writer of centos, and yet
in originality scarcely inferior to Homer. The power of his mind
is stamped on every line. The fervour of his imagination melts
down and renders malleable, as in a furnace, the most contradictory
materials. In reading his works, we feel ourselves under the influence
of a mighty intellect, that the nearer it approaches to others, becomes
more distinct from them. The quantity of art in him shews the
strength of his genius : the weight of his intellectual obligations
would have oppressed any other writer. Milton's leaTmnphas the

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

effect of intuition. He describes objects, of which he could only
tiave1 read in- books, with the vividness of actual observation. His
imagination has the force of nature. He makes words tell as
pictures.

' Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat

Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks

Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.'

The word lucid here gives to the idea all the sparkling effect of the
most perfect landscape.
And again :

* As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey,
To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids
On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams j
But in his way lights on the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light.'

If Milton had taken a journey for the express purpose, he could not
have described this scenery and mode of life better. Such passages
are like demonstrations of natural history. Instances might be
multiplied without end.

We might be tempted to suppose that the vividness with which he
describes visible objects, was owing to their having acquired an
unusual degree of strength in his mind, after the privation of his sight ;
but we find the same palpableness and truth in the descriptions which
occur in his early poems. In Lycidas he speaks of ' the great vision
of the guarded mount,' with that preternatural weight of impression
with which it would present itself suddenly to ' the pilot of some
small night-foundered skiff' : and the lines in the Penseroso, describing
' the wandering moon,'

1 Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way,'

are as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her. There is also
the same depth of impression in his descriptions of the objects of all
the different senses, whether colours, or sounds, or smells — the same A]
absorption of his mind in whatever engaged his attention at the time. 11
It has been indeed objected to Milton, by a common perversity of
criticism, that his ideas were musical rather than picturesque) as if
because they were in the highest degree musical, they must be (to

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

Ckeep the sage critical balance even, and to allow no one man to possess
two qualities at the same time) proportionably deficient in other
f respects. But Milton's poetry is not cast in any such narrow,
common-place mould ; it is not so barren of resources. His worship
of the Muse was not so simple or confined. A sound arises 'like
a steam of rich distilled perfumes ' ; we hear the pealing organ, but
the incense on the altars is also there, and the statues of the gods are
ranged around ! The ear indeed predominates over the eye, because
it is more immediately affected, and because the language of music
blends more immediately with, and forms a more natural accompani-
ment to, the variable and indefinite associations of ideas conveyed by
words. But where the associations of the imagination are not the
principal thing, the individual object is given by Milton with equal
force and beauty. The strongest and best proof of this, as a
characteristic power of his mind, is, that the persons of Adam and
Eve, of Satan, &c. are always accompanied, in our imagination, with
the grandeur of the naked figure ; they convey to us the ideas of
sculpture. As an instance, take the following :

{ — He soon

Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand,

The same whom John saw also in the sun :

His back was turned, but not his brightness hid ;

Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar

Circled his head, nor less his locks behind

Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings

Lay waving round ; on some great charge employed

He seem'd, or fixM in cogitation deep.

Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope

To find who might direct his wand'ring flight

To Paradise, the happy seat of man,

His journey's end, and our beginning woe.

But first he casts to change his proper shape,

Which else might work him danger or delay

And now a stripling cherub he appears,

Not of the prime, yet such as in his face

Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb

Suitable grace diffus'd, so well he feign'd :

Under a coronet his flowing hair

In curls on either cheek play'd ; wings he wore

Of many a colour'd plume sprinkled with gold,

His habit fit for speed succinct, and held

Before his decent steps a silver wand.'

The figures introduced here have all the elegance and precision of
a Greek statue ; glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden light, and
musical as the strings of Memnon's harp !

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

Again, nothing can be more magnificent than the portrait of
Beelzebub :

' With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies : '

Or the comparison of Satan, as he ' lay floating many a rood/ to
* that sea beast,'

* Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream ! '

What a force of imagination is there in this last expression ! What
an idea it conveys of the size of that hugest of created beings, as if it
shrunk up the ocean to a stream, and took up the sea in its nostrils as
a very little thing ? Force of style is one of Milton's greatest
excellences. _Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading,
and less afterwards. The way to defend Milton against all impugners,
is to take down the book and read it.

Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the language (except ; f» **
Shakspeare's) that deserves the name of verse. Dr. Johnson, who \**^*
had modelled his ideas of versification on the regular sing-song of
Pope, condemns the Paradise Lost as harsh and unequal. I shall not
pretend to say that this is not sometimes the case ; for where a
degree of excellence beyond the mechanical rules of art is attempted,
the poet must sometimes fail. But I imagine that tlrere are more
perfect examples in Milton of musical expression, or of an adaptation of
the sound and movement of the verse to the meaning of the passage,
than in all our other writers, whether of rhyme or blank verse, put
together, (with the exception already mentioned). Spenser is the
most harmonious of our stanza writers, as Dryden is the most sounding
and varied of our rhymists. But in neither is there any thing like the
same ear for music, the same power of approximating the varieties of
poetical to those of musical rhythm, as there is in our great epic poet.
The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression of the sentiment,
almost of the very image. They rise or fall, pause or hurry rapidly
on, with exquisite art, but without the least trick or affectation, as the
occasion seems to require.

The following are some of the finest instances :

* His hand was known

In Heaven by many a tower'd structure high ; —
Nor was his name unheard or unador'd
In ancient Greece : and in the Ausonian land
Men called him Mulciber : and how he fell
From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

Sheer o'er the chrystal battlements ; from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day ; and with the setting sun
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star
On Lemnos, the ^Egean isle : thus they relate,
Erring.1 —

' But chief the spacious hall

Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air,

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees

In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides,

Pour forth their populous youth about the hive

In clusters ; they among fresh dews and flow'rs

Fly to and fro : or on the smoothed plank,

The suburb of their straw-built citadel,

New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer

Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd

Swarm'd and were straiten'd ; till the signal giv'n,

Behold a wonder ! They but now who seem'd

In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons,

Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room

Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race

Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves,

Whose midnight revels by a forest side

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,

Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon

Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth

Wheels her pale course : they on their mirth and dance

Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ;

At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.'

I can only give another instance, though I have some difficulty in
leaving off.

' Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood
So high above the circling canopy
Of night's extended shade) from th' eastern point
Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas
Beyond the horizon : then from pole to pole
He views in breadth, and without longer pause
Down right into the world's first region throws
His flight precipitant, and winds with ease
Through the pure marble air his oblique way
Amongst innumerable stars that shone
Stars distant, but nigh hand seem'd other worlds ;
Or other worlds they seem'd or happy isles,' &c.

The verse, in this exquisitely modulated passage, floats up and down
62

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

as if it had itself wings. Milton has himself given us the theory of his
versification —

' Such as the meeting soul may pierce

In notes with many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out.'

Dr. Johnson and Pope would have converted his vaulting Pegasus
into, a racking-horse. Read any other blank verse but Milton's, —
Thomson's, Young's, Cowper's, Wordsworth's, — and it will be
found, from the want of the same insight into * the hidden soul of
harmony,' to be mere lumbering prose.

To proceed to a consideration of the merits of Paradise Lost, in
the most essential point of view, I mean as to the poetry of character
and passion. I shall say nothing of the fable, or of other technical
objections or excellences ; but I shall try to explain at once the
foundation of the interest belonging to the poem. I am ready to give
up the dialogues in Heaven, where, as Pope justly observes, * God
the Father turns a school-divine ' ; nor do I consider the battle of the
angels as the climax of sublimity, or the most successful effort of
Milton's pen. In a word, the interest of the poem arises from the
daring ambition and fierce passions of Satan, and from the account of
the paradisaical happiness, and the loss of it by our first parents.
Three-fourths of the work are taken up with these characters, and
nearly all that relates to them is unmixed sublimity and beauty. The
two first books alone are like two massy pillars of solid gold.

Satan is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen for a poem ;
and the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the
first of created beings, who, for endeavouring to be equal with the
highest, and to divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was
hurled down to hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the
universe ; his means, myriads of angelic armies bright, the third part
of the heavens, whom he lured after him with his countenance, and
who durst defy the Omnipotent in arms. His ambition was the
greatest, and his punishment was the greatest ; but not so his despair,
for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings. His strength of mind
was matchless as his strength of body ; the vastness of his designs
did not surpass the firm, inflexible determination with which he
submitted to his irreversible doom, and final loss of all good. His
power of action and of suffering was equal. He was the greatest
power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist
or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He stood like a
tower ; or

' As when Heaven's fire

Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines.'

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

He was still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed warriors,
who own him as their sovereign leader, and with whose fate he
sympathises as he views them round, far as the eye can reach ; though
he keeps aloof from them in his own mind, and holds supreme
counsel only with his own breast. An outcast from Heaven, Hell
trembles beneath his feet, Sin and Death are at his heels, and man-
kind are his easy prey.

* All is not lost ; th' unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what else is not to be overcome,'

are still his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in the magnitude
of it ; the fierceness of tormenting flames is qualified and made
innoxious by the greater fierceness of his pride ; the loss of infinite
happiness to himself is compensated in thought, by the power of
inflicting infinite misery on others. Yet Satan is not the principle
of malignity, or of the abstract love of evil — but of the abstract love
of power, of pride, of self-will personified, to which last principle all
other good and evil, and even his own, are subordinate. From this
principle he never once flinches. His love of power and contempt
for suffering are never once relaxed from the highest pitch of intensity.
His thoughts burn like a hell within him ; but the power of thought
holds dominion in his mind over every other consideration. The
consciousness of a determined purpose, of 'that intellectual being,
those thoughts that wander through eternity,' though accompanied
with endless pain, he prefers to nonentity, to * being swallowed up
and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night.' He expresses the
sum and substance of all ambition in one line. ' Fallen cherub, to be
weak is miserable, doing or suffering ! ' After such a conflict as
his, and such a defeat, to retreat in order, to rally, to make terms,
to exist at all, is something ; but he does more than this — he founds
a new empire in hell, and from it conquers this new world, whither
he bends his undaunted flight, forcing his way through nether and
surrounding fires. The poet has not in all this given us a mere
shadowy outline ; the strength is equal to the magnitude of the
conception. The Achilles of Homer is not more distinct ; the
Titans were not more vast ; f rometheus chained to his rock was not
a more terrific example of suffering and of crime. Wherever the
figure of Satan is introduced, whether he walks or flies, ' rising aloft
incumbent on the dusky air,' it is illustrated with the most striking
and appropriate images : so that we see it always before us, gigantic,
irregular, portentous, uneasy, and disturbed — but dazzling in its faded
64

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

splendour, the clouded ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan
is only in the depravity of his will ; he has no bodily deformity to
excite our loathing or disgust. The horns and tail are not there,
poor emblems of the unbending, unconquered spirit, of the writhing
agonies within. Milton was too magnanimous and open an antagonist
to support his argument by the bye-tricks of a hump and cloven foot ;
to bring into the fair field of controversy the good old catholic
prejudices of which Tasso and Dante have availed themselves, and
which the mystic German critics would restore. He relied on the
justice of his cause, and did not scruple to give the devil his due.
Some persons may think that he has carried his liberality too far,
and injured the cause he professed to espouse by making him the
chief person in his poem. Considering the nature of his subject, he
would be equally in danger of running into this fault, from his faith
in religion, and his love of rebellion ; and perhaps each of these
motives had its full share in determining the choice of his subject.

Not only the figure of Satan, but his speeches in council, his
soliloquies, his address to Eve, his share in the war in heaven, or in
the fall of man, shew the same decided superiority of character. To
give only one instance, almost the first speech he makes :

' Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,
Said then the lost archangel, this the seat
That we must change for Heaven ; this mournful gloom
For that celestial light ? Be it so, since he
Who now is sov'rain can dispose and bid
What shall be right : farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equal'd, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewel happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells : Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor : one who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, ifj be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at least
We shall be free ; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence :
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell :
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven/

The whole of the speeches and debates in Pandemonium are well
worthy of the place and the occasion — with Gods for speakers, and
VOL. v. : E 65

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

angels and archangels for hearers. There is a decided manly tone in
the arguments and sentiments, an eloquent dogmatism, as if each
person spoke from thorough conviction ; an excellence which Milton
probably borrowed from his spirit of partisanship, or else his spirit of
partisanship from the natural firmness and vigour of his mind. In
this respect Milton resembles Dante, (the only modern writer with
whom he has any thing in common) and it is remarkable that Dante,
as well as Milton, was a political partisan. That approximation to
the severity of impassioned prose which has been made an objection
to Milton's poetry, and which is chiefly to be met with in these bitter
invectives, is one of its great excellences. The author might here
turn his philippics against Salmasius to good account. The rout in
Heaven is like the fall of some mighty structure, nodding to its base,
'with hideous ruin and combustion down.' But, perhaps, of all the
passages in Paradise Lost, the description of the employments of the
angels during the absence of Satan, some of whom ' retreated in a
silent valley, sing with notes angelical to many a harp their own
heroic deeds and hapless fall by doom of battle,' is the most perfect
example of mingled pathos and sublimity. — What proves the truth of
this noble picture in every part, and that the frequent complaint of
want of interest in it is the fault of the reader, not of the poet, is that
when any interest of a practical kind takes a shape that can be at all
turned into this, (and there is little doubt that Milton had some such
in his eye in writing it,) each party converts it to its own purposes,
feels the absolute identity of these abstracted and high speculations ;
and that, in fact, a noted political writer of the present day has
exhausted nearly the whole account of Satan in the Paradise Lost,
by applying it to a character whom he considered as after the devil,
(though I do not know whether he would make even that exception)
the greatest enemy of the human race. This may serve to shew that
Milton's Satan is not a very insipid personage.

Of Adam and Eve it has been said, that the ordinary reader can
feel little interest in them, because they have none of the passions,
pursuits, or even relations of human life, except that of man and wife,
the least interesting of all others, if not to the parties concerned, at
least to the by-standers. The preference has on this account been
given to Homer, who, it is said, has left very vivid and infinitely
diversified pictures of all the passions and affections, public and
private, incident to human nature — the relations of son, of brother,
parent, friend, citizen, and many others. Longinus preferred the
Iliad to the Odyssey, on account of the greater number of battles it
contains ; but I can neither agree to his criticism, nor assent to the
present objection. It is true, there is little action in this part of

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

Milton's poem; but there is much repose, and more enjoyment.
There are none of the every-day occurrences, contentions, disputes,
wars, fightings, feuds, jealousies, trades, professions, liveries, and
common handicrafts of life ; * no kind of traffic ; letters are not
known ; no use of service, of riches, poverty, contract, succession,
bourne, bound of land, tilth, vineyard none ; no occupation, no
treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, nor need of any engine.'
So much the better ; thank Heaven, all these were yet to come.
But still the die was cast, and in them our doom was sealed. In
them

' The generations were prepared } the pangs,

The internal pangs, were ready, the dread strife

Of poor humanity's afflicted will,

Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny/

In their first false step we trace all our future woe, with loss of
Eden. But there was a short and precious interval between, like the
first blush" of morning before the day is overcast with tempest, the
dawn of the world, the birth of nature from « the unapparent deep,'
with its first dews and freshness on its cheek, breathing odours.
Theirs was the first delicious taste of life, and on them depended all
that was to come of it. In them hung trembling all our hopes and
fears. They were as yet alone in the world, in the eye of nature,
wondering at their new being, full of enjoyment and enraptured with
one another, with the voice of their Maker walking in the garden,
and ministering angels attendant on their steps, winged messengers
from heaven like rosy clouds descending in their sight. Nature
played around them her virgin fancies wild ; and spread for them a
repast where no crude surfeit reigned. Was there nothing in this
scene, which God and nature alone witnessed, to interest a modern
critic ? What need was there of action, where the heart was full of
bliss and innocence without it ! They had nothing to do but feel
their own happiness, and * know to know no more.' * They toiled
not, neither did they spin ; yet Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these.' All things seem to acquire fresh sweet-
ness, and to be clothed with fresh beauty in their sight. They tasted
as it were for themselves and us, of all that there ever was pure in
human bliss. * In them the burthen of the mystery, the heavy and
the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened.' They
stood awhile perfect, but they afterwards fell, and were driven out of
Paradise, tasting the first fruits of bitterness as they had done of bliss.
But their pangs were such as a pure spirit might feel at the sight
— their tears * such as angels weep.' The pathos is of that mild

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

contemplative kind which arises from regret for the loss of unspeakable
happiness, and resignation to inevitable fate. There is none of the
fierceness of intemperate passion, none of the agony of mind and
turbulence of action, which is the result of the habitual struggles of
the will with circumstances, irritated by repeated disappointment, and
constantly setting its desires most eagerly on that which there is an
impossibility of attaining. This would have destroyed the beauty of
the whole picture. They had received their unlooked-for happiness
as a free gift from their Creator's hands, and they submitted to its
loss, not without sorrow, but without impious and stubborn repining.

' In either hand the hastening angel caught
Our lingering parents, and to th' eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain ; then disappeared.
They looking back, all th1 eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming brand, the gate
With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms :
Some natural tears they dropt, but wip'd them soon ;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide/

LECTURE IV

ON DRYDEN AND POPE

DRYDEN and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style of
poetry in our language, as the poets of whom I have already treated,
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, were of the natural ; and
though this artificial style is generally and very justly acknowledged
to be inferior to the other, yet those who stand at the head of that
class, ought, perhaps, to rank higher than those who occupy an
inferior place in a superior class. They have a clear and independent
claim upon our gratitude, as having produced a kind and degree of
excellence which existed equally nowhere else. What has been done
well by some later writers of the highest style of poetry, is included
in, and obscured by a greater degree of power and genius in those
before them : what has been done best by poets of an entirely distinct
turn of mind, stands by itself, and tells for its whole amount.
Young, for instance, Gray, or Akenside, only follow in the train of
Milton and Shakspeare : Pope and Dryden walk by their side,
though of an unequal stature, and are entitled to a first place in the
68

ON DRYDEN AND POPE

lists of fame. This seems to be not only the reason of the thing, but
the common sense of mankind, who, without any regular process of
reflection, judge of the merit of a work, not more by its inherent and
absolute worth, than by its originality and capacity of gratifying a
different faculty of the mind, or a different class of readers ; for it
should be recollected, that there may be readers (as well as poets)
not of the highest class, though very good sort of people, and not
altogether to be despised.

The question, whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been
settled, and is hardly worth settling ; for if he was not a great poet,
he must have been a great prose-writer, that is, he was a great writer
of some sort. He was a man of exquisite faculties, and of the most
refined taste ; and as he chose verse (the most obvious distinction of
poetry) as the vehicle to express his ideas, he has generally passed
for a poet, and a good one. If, indeed, by a great poet, we mean
one who gives the utmost grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or
the utmost force to the passions of the heart, Pope was not in this
sense a great poet ; for the bent, the characteristic power of his mind,
lay the clean contrary way ; namely, in representing things as they
appear to the indifferent observer, stripped of prejudice and passion,
as in his Critical Essays ; or in representing them in the most con-
temptible and insignificant point of view, as in his Satires ; or in
clothing the little with mock-dignity, as in his poems of Fancy ; or
in adorning the trivial incidents and familiar relations of life with the
utmost elegance of expression, and all the flattering illusions of friend-
ship or self-love, as in his Epistles. He was not then distinguished
as a poet of lofty enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with a passionate
sense of the beauties of nature, or a deep insight into the workings of
the heart ; but he wa* a. wit, and a critic, a man of sense,, of observa-
tion, and the world, with a keen relish for .the elegances of art, or of
naturejwhen embellished by art, a quick tact for propriety of thought
an? manners as established by trie forms and customs of society, a
refined sympathy with the sentiments and habitudes of human life, as
he felt them within the little circle of his family and friends. He
was, in a word, the poet, not of nature, but of art ; and the distinc-
tion between the two, as well as I can make it out, is this — The poet
of nature is one who, from the elements of beauty, of power, and of
passion in his own breast, sympathises with whatever is beautiful, and
grand, and impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, in its
immediate appeal to the senses, to the thoughts and hearts of all
men ; so that the poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony
of his mind, may be said to hold communion with the very soul of
nature; to be identified with and to foreknow and to record the

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

feelings of all men at all times and places, as they are liable to the
same impressions ; and to exert the same power over the minds of
his readers, that nature does. He sees things in their eternal beauty,
for he sees them as they are ; he feels them in their universal interest,
for he feels them as they affect the first principles of his and our
common nature. Such was Homer, such was Shakspeare, whose
works will last as long as nature, because they are a copy of the
indestructible forms and everlasting impulses of nature, welling out
from the bosom as from a perennial spring, or stamped upon the
senses by the hand of their maker. The power of the imagination in
them, is the representative power of all nature. It has its centre
in the human soul, and makes the circuit of the universe. ,A

Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the first rank of
it. vHe saw nature only dressed by art ; he judged of beauty by

\ fashion ; he sought for truth in the opinions of the world ; he judged
of the feelings of others by his own. The capacious soul of Shak-
speare had an intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could
enter into the heart of man in all possible circumstances : Pope had
an exact knowledge of all that he himself loved or hated, wished or
wanted. Milton has winged his daring flight from heaven to earth,
through Chaos and old Night. Pope's Muse never wandered with
safety, but from his library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his
library back again. His mind dwelt with greater pleasure on his own

-^garden, than on the garden of Eden ; he could describe the faultless
whole-length mirror that reflected his own person, better than the
smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face of heaven — a piece of
cut glass or a pair of paste buckles with more brilliance and effect,
than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the sun.^* He would be more
delighted with a patent lamp, than with * the pale reflex of Cynthia's
brow,' that fills the skies with its soft silent lustre, that trembles
through the cottage window, and cheers the watchful mariner on the
lonely wave. In short, he was the poet of personality and of polished
life. That which was nearest to him, was the greatest ; the fashion
of the day bore sway in his mind over the immutable laws of nature.
He preferred the artificial to the natural in external objects, because
he had a stronger fellow-feeling with the self-love of the maker or
proprietor of a gewgaw, than admiration of that which was interesting
to all mankind. He preferred the artificial to the natural in passion,
because the involuntary and uncalculating impulses of the one hurried
him away with a force and vehemence with which he could not
grapple ; while he could trifle with the conventional and superficial
modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or admire, put them
on or off like a masquerade-dress, make much or little of them,
70

ON DRYDEN AND POPE

indulge them for a longer or a shorter time, as he pleased ; and
because while they amused his fancy and exercised his ingenuity,
they never once disturbed his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His
mind was the antithesis of strength and grandeur ; its power was the
power of indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry ; -
he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion.

•It cannot be denied, that his chief excellence lay more in diminish-
ing, than in aggrandizing objects ; in checking, not in encouraging .
our enthusiasm ; in sneering at the extravagances of fancy or passion,
instead of giving a loose to them ; in describing a row of pins and
needles, rather than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans ;
in penning a lampoon or a compliment, and in praising Martha
Blount.

Shakspeare says,

-In Fortune's ray and brightness

The herd hath more annoyance by the brize
Than by the tyger : but when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,
And flies fled under shade, why then
The thing of courage,

As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise ;
And with an accent tuned in the self-same key,
Replies to chiding Fortune/

There is none of this rough work in Pope. His Muse was on a
peace-establishment, and grew somewhat effeminate by long ease and
indulgence. He lived in the smiles of fortune, and basked in the
favour of the great. In his smooth and polished verse we meet with
no prodigies of nature, but with miracles of wit ; the thunders of his
pen are whispered flatteries ; its forked lightnings pointed sarcasms ;
for * the gnarled oak,' he gives us ' the soft myrtle ' : for rocks, and
seas, and mountains, artificial grass-plats, gravel-walks, and tinkling
rills ; for earthquakes and tempests, the breaking of a flower-pot, or
the fall of a china jar ; for the tug and war of the elements, or the
deadly strife of the passions, we have

' Calm contemplation and poetic ease.'

Yet within this retired and narrow circle how much, and that how
exquisite, was contained ! What discrimination, what wit, what
delicacy, what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought,
what pampered refinement of sentiment ! It is like looking at the
world through a microscope, where every thing assumes a new
character and a new consequence, where things are seen in their

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference ; where the
little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiful, and the beautiful
deformed. The wrong end of the magnifier is, to be sure, held to
every thing, but still the exhibition is highly curious, and we know
not whether to be most pleased or surprised.,,* Such, at least, is the
best account I am able to give of this extraordinary man, without
doing injustice to him or others. It is time to refer to particular
instances in his works. — The Rape of the Lock is the best or most
ingenious of these. It is the most exquisite specimen of filagree
work ever invented. It is admirable in proportion as it is made of
nothing.

* More subtle web Arachne cannot spin,
Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew, do not in th' air more lightly flee.'

It is made of gauze and silver spangles. The most glittering appear-
ance is given to every thing, to paste, pomatum, billet-doux, and
patches. Airs, languid airs, breathe around ; — the atmosphere is
perfumed with affectation. A toilette is described with the solemnity
of an altar raised to the Goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver
bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared,
no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction, to set off
the meanest things. The balance between the concealed irony and
the assumed gravity, is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in
Europe. The little is made great, and the great little. You hardly
know whether to laugh or weep. It is the triumph of insignificance,
the apotheosis of foppery and folly. It is the perfection of the mock-
heroic ! I will give only the two following passages in illustration of
these remarks. Can any thing be more elegant and graceful than the
description of Belinda, in the beginning of the second canto ?

* Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main.
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs, and well-drest youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those :
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends ;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike ;
And like the sun, they shine on all alike.
72

ON DRYDEN AND POPE

Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide :
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you '11 forget 'em all.

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourish'd two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspir'd to deck
With shining ringlets the smooth iv'ry neck.'

The following is the introduction to the account of Belinda's
assault upon the baron bold, who had dissevered one of these locks
' from her fair head for ever and for ever.'

' Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.
(The same his ancient personage to deck,
Her great, great grandsire wore about his neck,
In three seal-rings ; which after, melted down,
Form'd a vast buckle for his widow's gown :
Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew,
The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew;
Then in a bodkin grac'd her mother's hairs,
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears).'

I do not know how far Pope was indebted for the original idea,
or the delightful execution of this poem, to the Lutrin of
Boileau.

The Rape of the Lock is a double-refined essence of wit and
fancy, as the Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense. The quantity ,
of thought and observation in this work, for so young a man as Pope !
was when he wrote it, is wonderful : unless we adopt the supposition,
that most men of genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others
what they themselves have learned under twenty. The conciseness
and felicity of the expression are equally remarkable. Thus in reason-
ing on the variety of men's opinion, he says —

' 'Tis with our judgments, as our watches ; none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.'

Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks
and illustrations in the Essay : the critical rules laid down are too
much those of a school, and of a confined one. There is one passage
in the Essay on Criticism in which the author speaks with that
eloquent enthusiasm of the fame of ancient writers, which those
will always feel who have themselves any hope or chance of

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

immortality. I have quoted the passage elsewhere, but I will repeat
it here.

' Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,

Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ;

Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,

Destructive war, and all-involving age.

Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,

Immortal heirs or universal praise !

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,

As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow.'

These lines come with double force and beauty on the reader, as
they were dictated by the writer's despair of ever attaining that
lasting glory which he celebrates with such disinterested enthusiasm
in others, from the lateness of the age in which he lived, and from
his writing in a tongue, not understood by other nations, and that
grows obsolete and unintelligible to ourselves at the end of every
second century. But he needed not have thus antedated his own
poetical doom — the loss and entire oblivion of that which can never
die. If he had known, he might have boasted that ' his little bark '
wafted down the stream of time,

' With theirs should sail,

Pursue the triumph and partake the gale ' —

if those who know how to set a due value on the blessing, were not
the last to decide confidently on their own pretensions to it.

There Jsacant_in_the jyesgot day_qbout_geniug. as every thing in
poetry : there was a cant in the time of Pope about sen$e, as per-
forming all sorts of wonders. It was a kind of watchword, the
shibboleth of a critical party of the day. As a proof of the exclusive
attention which it occupied in their minds, it is remarkable that in
the Essay on Criticism (not a very long poem) there are no less than
half a score successive couplets rhyming to the word sense. This
appears almost incredible without giving the instances, and no less so
when they are given.

' But of the two, less dangerous is the offence,
To tire our patience than mislead our sense.' — lines 3, 4.

' In search of wit these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence.' — /. 28, 29.

' Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.' — /. 209, 10.

' Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.' — /. 324, 5.

ON DRYDEN AND POPE

' 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence ;
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.' — /. 364, 5.

' At every trifle scorn to take offence ;
That always shews great pride, or little sense.' — /. 386, 7.

' Be silent always, when you doubt your sense,
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.' — /. 366, 7.

' Be niggards of advice on no pretence,
For the worst avarice is that of sense.' — /. 578, 9.

' Strain out the last dull dropping of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.' — /. 608, 9.

' Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense.' — /. 653, 4.

I have mentioned this the more for the sake of those critics who
are bigotted idolisers of our author, chiefly on the score of his correct-
ness. These persons seem to be of opinion that ' there is but one
perfect writer, even Pope.' This is, however, a mistake : his excel-
lence is by no means faultlessness. If he had no great faults, he is
full of little errors. His grammatical construction is often lame and
imperfect. In the Abelard and Eloise, he says —

' There died the best of passions, Love and Fame.'

This is not a legitimate ellipsis. Fame is not a passion, though love
is : but his ear was evidently confused by the meeting of the sounds
1 love and fame,' as if they of themselves immediately implied * love,
and love of fame.' Pope's rhymes are constantly-defectiye, being
rhymes to the eye instead of the ear ; and this to a greater degree,
not only than in later, but than in preceding writers. The praise
of his versification must be confined to its uniform smoothness and
harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been considered
as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually changes the
tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which
shews either a want of technical resources, or great inattention to
punctilious exactness. But to have done with this.

The epistle of Eloise to Abelard is the only exception I can
think of, to the general spirit of the foregoing remarks ; and I should
be disingenuous not to acknowledge that it is an exception. The
foundation is in the letters themselves of Abelard and Eloise, which
are quite as impressive, but still in a different way. It is fine as a
poem : it is finer as a piece of high-wrought eloquence. No woman
could be supposed to write a better love-letter in verse. Besides the
richness of the historical materials, the high gusto of the original

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

sentiments which Pope had to work upon, there were perhaps
circumstances in his own situation which made him enter into the
subject with even more than a poet's feeling. The tears shed are
drops gushing from the heart : the words are burning sighs breathed
from the soul of love. Perhaps the poem to which it bears the
greatest similarity in our language, is Dryden's Tancred and Sigis-
munda, taken from Boccaccio. Pope's Eloise will bear this com-
parison ; and after such a test, with Boccaccio for the original
author, and Dryden for the translator, it need shrink from no other.
There is something exceedingly tender and beautiful in the sound of
the concluding lines :

* If ever chance two wandering lovers brings
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,' &c.

The Essay on Man is not Pope's best work. It is a theory
which Bolingbroke is supposed to have given him, and which he
expanded into verse. But * he spins the thread of his verbosity
finer than the staple of his argument.' All that he says, « the very
words, and to the self-same tune,' would prove just as well that
whatever is, is wrong, as that whatever is, is right. The Dunciad
has splendid passages, but in general it is dull, heavy, and mechanical.
The sarcasm already quoted on Settle, the Lord Mayor's poet, (for
at that time there was a city as well as a court poet)

' Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er,
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more ' —

is the finest inversion of immortality conceivable. It is even better
than his serious apostrophe to the great heirs of glory, the triumphant
bards of antiquity !

The finest burst of severe moral invective in all Pope, is the
prophetical conclusion of the epilogue to the Satires :

' Virtue may chuse the high or low degree,
'Tis just alike to virtue, and to me ;
Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king,
She 's still the same belov'd, contented thing.
Vice is undone if she forgets her birth,
And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth.
But 'tis the Fall degrades her to a whore :
Let Greatness own her, and she 's mean no more.
Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess,
Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless ;
In golden chains the willing world she draws,
And hers the gospel is, and hers the laws ;
76

ON DRYDEN AND POPE

Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head,

And sees pale Virtue carted in her stead.

Lo ! at the wheels of her triumphal car,

Old England's Genius, rough with many a scar,

Dragg'd in the dust ! his arms hang idly round,

His flag inverted trains along the ground !

Our youth, all livery 'd o'er with foreign gold,

Before her dance ; behind her, crawl the old !

See thronging millions to the Pagod run,

And offer country, parent, wife, or son !

Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim,

That not to be corrupted is the shame.

In soldier, churchman, patriot, man in pow'r,

'Tis avVice all, ambition is no more !

See all our nobles begging to be slaves !

See all our fools aspiring to be knaves !

The wit of cheats, the courage of a whore,

Are what ten thousand envy and adore :

All, all look up with reverential awe,

At crimes that 'scape or triumph o'er the law ;

While truth, worth, wisdom, daily they decry :

Nothing is sacred now but villainy.

Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain)

Show there was one who held it in disdain.'

His Satires are not in general so good as his Epistles. His
enmity is effeminate and petulant from a sense of weakness, as his
friendship was tender from a sense of gratitude. I do not like,
for instance, his character of Chartres, or his characters of women.
His delicacy often borders upon sickliness ; his fastidiousness makes
others fastidious. But his compliments are divine ; they are equal in
value to a house or an estate. Take the following. In address-
ing Lord Mansfield, he speaks of the grave as a scene,

'Where Murray, long enough his country's pride,
Shall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde.'

To Bolingbroke he says —

' Why rail they then if but one wreath of mine,
Oh all-accomplish'd St. John, deck thy shrine ? '

Again, he has bequeathed this praise to Lord Cornbury —

' Despise low thoughts, low gains :
Disdain whatever Combury disdains j
Be virtuous and be happy for your pains.'

One would think (though there is no knowing) that a descendant of

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

this nobleman, if there be such a person living, could hardly be guilty
of a mean or paltry action.

The finest piece of personal satire in Pope (perhaps in the world)
is his character of Addison ; and this, it may be observed, is of a
mixed kind, made up of his respect for the man, and a cutting sense
of his failings. The other finest one is that of Buckingham, and the
best part of that is the pleasurable.

' Alas ! how changed from him,

That life of pleasure and that soul of whim :
Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love ! '

Among his happiest and most inimitable effusions are the Epistles
to Arbuthnot, and to Jervas the painter ; amiable patterns of the
delightful unconcerned life, blending ease with dignity, which poets
and painters then led. Thus he says to Arbuthnot —

' Why did I write ? What sin to me unknown
Dipp'd me in ink, my parents' or my own ?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.
I left no calling for this idle trade,
No duty broke, no father disobey'd :
The muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife ;
To help me through this long disease, my life,
To second, Arbuthnot ! thy art and care,
And teach the being you preserv'd to bear.

But why then publish ? Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write ;
Well-natur'd Garth inflam'd with early praise,
And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd my lays ;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read ;
E'en mitred Rochester would nod the head ;
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before)
With open arms receiv'd one poet more.
Happy my studies, when by these approv'd !
Happier their author, when by these belov'd !
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks.'

I cannot help giving also the conclusion of the Epistle to Jervas.

' Oh, lasting as those colours may they shine,
Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line ;
New graces yearly like thy works display,
Soft without weakness, without glaring gay ;

ON DRYDEN AND POPE

Led by some rule, that guides, but not constrains ;
And finished more through happiness than pains.
The kindred arts shall in their praise conspire,
One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre.
Yet should the Graces all thy figures place,
And breathe an air divine on ev'ry face ;
Yet should the Muses bid my numbers roll
Strong as their charms, and gentle as their soul ;
With Zeuxis' Helen thy Bridgewater vie,
And these be sung till Granville's Myra die :
Alas ! how little from the grave we claim !
Thou but preserv'st a face, and I a name.'

And shall we cut ourselves off from beauties like these with]
a theory ? Shall we shut up our books, and seal up our senses, to '
please the dull spite and inordinate vanity of those ' who have eyes,
but they see not — ears, but they hear not — and understandings, but
they understand not,' — and go about asking our blind guides,
whether Pope was a poet or not ? It will never do. Such persons,
when you point out to them a fine passage in Pope, turn it off
to something of the same sort in some other writer. Thus they say
that the line, ' I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came,' is pretty,
but taken from that of Ovid — Et quum conabar scribere, versus
erat. They are safe in this mode of criticism : there is no danger
of any one's tracing their writings to the classics.

Pope's letters and prose writings neither take away from, nor add
to his poetical reputation. There is, occasionally, a littleness of
manner, and an unnecessary degree of caution. He appears anxious ;
to say a good thing in every word, as well as every sentence. They, '
however, give a very favourable idea of his moral character in all
respects ; and his letters to Atterbury, in his disgrace and exile, do
equal honour to both. If I had to choose, there are one or two
persons, and but one or two, that I should like to have been better
than Pope !

Dryden was a better prose-writer, and a bolder and more varied*
versifier than Pope. He was a more vigorous thinker, a more
correct and logical declaimer, and had more of what may be called
strength of mind than Pope ; but he had not the same refinement and •
delicacy of feeling. Dryden's eloquence and spirit were possessed in
a higher degree by others, and in nearly the same degree by Pope
himself; but that by which Pope was distinguished, was an essence
which he alone possessed, and of incomparable value on that sole
account. Dryden's Epistles are excellent, but inferior to Pope's, .'
though they appear (particularly the admirable one to Congreve) to
have been the model on which the latter formed his. His Satires

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

are better than Pope's. His Absalom and Achitophel is superior, •'
both in force of invective and discrimination of character, to any thing
of Pope's in the same way. The character of Achitophel is very
fine ; and breathes, if not a sincere love for virtue, a strong spirit of
indignation against vice.

Mac Flecknoe is the origin of the idea of the Dunciad ; but it is
less elaborately constructed, less feeble, and less heavy. The differ-
ence between Pope's satirical portraits and Dryden's, appears to be ]
this in a good measure, that Dryden seems to grapple with his !
antagonists, and to describe real persons ; Pope seems to refine upon ;
them in his own mind, and to make them out just what he pleases,
till they are not real characters, but the mere driveling effusions of
his spleen and malice. Pope describes the thing, and then goes on
describing his own description till he loses himself in verbal repetitions. /
Dryden recurs to the object often, takes fresh sittings of nature, and
gives us new strokes of character as well as of his pencil. The Hind
and Panther is an allegory as well as a satire ; and so far it tells less
home ; the battery is not so point-blank. But otherwise it has more
genius, vehemence, and strength of description than any other of
Dryden's works, not excepting the Absalom and Achitophel. It
also contains the finest examples of varied and sounding versification.
I will quote the following as an instance of what I mean. He is
complaining of the treatment which the Papists, under James n.
received from the church of England.

* Besides these jolly birds, whose corpse impure
Repaid their commons with their salt manure,
Another farm he had behind his house,
Not overstocked, but barely for his use ;
Wherein his poor domestic poultry fed,
And from his pious hand 'received their bread.'
Our pampered pigeons, with malignant eyes,
Beheld these inmates, and their nurseries ;
Though hard their fare, at evening, and at morn,
(A cruise of water, and an ear of corn,)
Yet still they grudged that modicum, and thought
A sheaf in every single grain was brought.
Fain would they filch that little food away,
While unrestrained those happy gluttons prey ;
And much they grieved to see so nigh their hall,
The bird that warned St. Peter of his fall ,-
That he should raise his mitred crest on high,
And clap his wings, and call his family
To sacred rites ; and vex the ethereal powers
With midnight mattins at uncivil hours ;
80

ON DRYDEN AND POPE

Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest,

Just in the sweetness of their morning rest.

Beast of a bird ! supinely when he might

Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light !

What if his dull forefathers usM that cry,

Could he not let a bad example die ?

The world was fallen into an easier way :

This age knew better than to fast and pray.

Good sense in sacred worship would appear,

So to begin as they might end the year.

Such feats in former times had wrought the falls

Of crowing chanticleers in cloister'd walls.

ExpelPd for this, and for their lands they fled ;

And sister Partlet with her hooded head

Was hooted hence, because she would not pray a-bed.'

There is a rriagnanimity of abuse in some of these epithets, a fearless
choice of topics of invective, which may be considered as the heroical
in satire.

The Annu3 Mirabilis is a tedious performance ; it is a tissue of
far-fetched, heavy, lumbering conceits, and in the worst style of what
has been denominated metaphysical poetry. His Odes in general are
of the same stamp ; they are the hard-strained offspring of a meagre,
meretricious fancy. The famous Ode on St. Cecilia deserves its
reputation ; for, as piece of poetical mechanism to be set to music, or
recited in alternate strophe and antistrophe, with classical allusions,
and flowing verse, nothing can be better. It is equally fit to be said
or sung ; it is not equally good to read. It is lyrical, without being
epic or dramatic. For instance, the description of Bacchus,

' The jolly god in triumph comes,
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums ;
Flush'd with a purple grace,
He shews his honest face ' —

does not answer, as it ought, to our idea of the God, returning from
the conquest of India, with satyrs and wild beasts, that he had tamed,
following in his train ; crowned with vine leaves, and riding in a
chariot drawn by leopards — such as we have seen him painted by
Titian or Rubens ! Lyrical poetry, of all others, bears the nearest
resemblance to painting : it deals in hieroglyphics and passing figures,
which depend for effect, not on the working out, but on the selection.
It is the dance and pantomime of poetry. In variety and rapidity of
movement, the Alexander's Feast has all that can be required in this
respect ; it only wants loftiness and truth of character.

Dryden's plays ^re better than Pope could have written ; for
VOL. v. : F 8 1

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

though he does not go out of himself by the force of imagination,
he goes out of himself by the force of common-places and rhetorical
dialogue. On the other hand, they are not so good as Shakspeare's ;
but he has left the best character of Shakspeare that has ever been
written.1

His alterations from Chaucer and Boccaccio shew a greater
I knowledge of the taste of his readers and power of pleasing them,
| than acquaintance with the genius of his authors. He ekes out the
^lameness of the verse in the former, and breaks the force of the
passion in both. The Tancred and Sigismunda is the only general
exception, in which, I think, he has fully retained, if not improved
upon, the impassioned declamation of the original. The Honoria
has none of the bewildered, dreary, preternatural effect of Boccaccio's
story. Nor has the Flower and the Leaf any thing of the enchanting
simplicity and concentrated feeling of Chaucer's romantic fiction.
Dryden, however, sometimes seemed to indulge himself as well as
his readers, as in keeping entire that noble line in Palamon's address
to Venus :

' Thou gladder of the mount of Cithaeron ! '

His Tales have been, upon the whole, the most popular of his
works ; and I should think that a translation of some of the other
serious tales in Boccaccio and Chaucer, as that of Isabella, the
Falcon, of Constance, the Prioress's Tale, and others, if executed
with taste and spirit, could not fail to succeed in the present day.

It should appear, in tracing the history of our literature, that
poetry had, at the period of which we are speaking, in general
declined, by successive gradations, from the poetry of imagination, in
the time of Elizabeth, to the poetry of fancy (to adopt a modern
distinction) in the time of Charles i. ; and again from the poetry ot
fancy to that of wit, as in the reign of Charles n. and Queen Anne.
It degenerated into the poetry of mere common places, both in style

1 ' To begin then with Shakspeare : he was the man who of all modern, and
perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most I comprehensive soul. All the
images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but
luckily : when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too.
Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commenda-
tion : he was naturally learned : he needed not the spectacles of books to read
nature ; he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say, he is every where
alike ; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of
mankind. He is many times flat, and insipid ; his comic wit degenerating into
clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some
great occasion is presented to him. No man can say, he ever had a fit subject for
his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

Quantum lenta solent inter Viburna Cupressi,'1

ON DRYDEN AND POPE

and thought, in the succeeding reigns : as in the latter part of the
last century, it was transformed, by means of the French Revolution,
into the poetry of paradox.

Of Donne I know nothing but some beautiful verses to his wife, ]
dissuading her from accompanying him on his travels abroad, and
some quaint riddles in verse, which the Sphinx could not unravel.

Waller still lives in the name of Sacharissa ; and his lines on the
death of Oliver Cromwell shew that he was a man not without genius
and strength of thought.

Marvel is a writer of nearly the same period, and worthy of a
better age. Some of his verses are harsh, as the words of Mercury ;
others musical, as is Apollo's lute. Of the latter kind are his boat-
song, his description of a fawn, and his lines to Lady Vere. His
lines prefixed to Paradise Lost are by no means the most favourable
specimen of his powers.

Butler's Hudibras is a poem of more wit than any other in the
language. The rhymes have as much genius in them as the thoughts ;
but there is no story in it, and but little humour. Humour is the
making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously : wit is the
pointing but and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more
or less ill-nature. The fault of Butler's poem is not that it has too
much wit, but that it has not an equal quantity of other things.
One would suppose that the starched manners and sanctified grimace
of the times in which he lived, would of themselves have been
sufficiently rich in ludicrous incidents and characters ; but they seem
rather to have irritated his spleen, than to have drawn forth his
powers of picturesque imitation. Certainly if we compare Hudibras
with Don Quixote in this respect, it seems rather a meagre and
unsatisfactory performance.

Rochester's poetry is the poetry of wit combined with the love of
pleasure, of thought with licentiousness. His extravagant heedless
levity has a sort of passionate enthusiasm in it ; his contempt for
every thing that others respect, almost amounts to sublimity. His
poem upon Nothing is itself no trifling work. His epigrams were
the bitterest, the least laboured, and the truest, that ever were written.

Sir John Suckling was of the same mercurial stamp, but with a
greater fund of animal spirits ; as witty, but less malicious. His
Ballad on a Wedding is perfect in its kind, and has a spirit of high
enjoyment in it, of sportive fancy, a liveliness of description, and a
truth of nature, that never were surpassed. It is superior to either
Gay or Prior ; for with all their naivete and terseness, it has a
Shakspearian grace and luxuriance about it, which they could not
have reached.

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

Denham and Cowley belong to the same period, but were quite
distinct from each other : the one was grave and prosing, the other
melancholy and fantastical. There are a number of good lines and
good thoughts in the Cooper's Hill. And in Cowley there is an
inexhaustible fund of sense and ingenuity, buried in inextricable
conceits, and entangled in the cobwebs of the schools. He was a
great man, not a great poet. But I shall say no more on this
subject. I never wish to meddle with names that are sacred, unless
when they stand in the way of things that are more sacred.

Withers is a name now almost forgotten, and his "works seldom
read ; but his poetry is not unfrequently distinguished by a tender
and pastoral turn of thought ; and there is one passage of exquisite
feeling, describing the consolations of poetry in the following terms :

' She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow ;
Makes the desolatest place l
To her presence be a grace ;
And the blackest discontents
Be her fairest ornaments.
In my former days of bliss
Her divine skill taught me this,
That from every thing I saw,
I could some invention draw ;
And raise pleasure to her height,
Through the meanest object's sight,
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rusteling,
By a daisy whose leaves spread
Shut when Titan goes to bed }
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me,
Than all Nature's beauties can,
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow
Some things that may sweeten gladness
In the very gall of sadness.
The dull loneness, the black shade,
That these hanging vaults have made,
The strange music of the waves,
Beating on these hollow caves,
This black den which rocks emboss,
Overgrown with eldest moss,
The rude portals that give light
More to terror than delight,

1 Written in the Fleet Prison.
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ON THOMSON AND COWPER

This my chamber of neglect,

Wall'd about with disrespect,

From all these and this dull air,

A fit object for despair,

She hath taught me by her might

To draw comfort and delight.

Therefore, thou best earthly bliss,

I will cherish thee for this.

Poesie ; thou sweet'st content

That ere Heav'n to mortals lent :

Though they as a trifle leave thee,

Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee,

Though thou be to them a scorn,

That to nought but earth are born :

Let my life no longer be

Than I am in love with thee.

Though our wise ones call thee madness,

Let me never taste of sadness,

If I love not thy maddest fits,

Above all their greatest wits.

And though some too seeming holy,

Do account thy raptures folly,

Thou dost teach me to contemn

What makes knaves and fools of them.1

LECTURE V

ON THOMSON AND COWPER

THOMSON, the kind-hearted Thomson, was the most indolent of
mortals and of poets. But he was also one of the best both of
mortals and of poets. Dr. Johnson makes it his praise that he wrote
'no line which dying he would wish to blot.' Perhaps a better
proof of his honest simplicity, and inoffensive goodness of disposition,
would be that he wrote no line which any other person living would
wish that he should blot. Indeed, he himself wished, on his death-
bed, formally to expunge his dedication of one of the Seasons to that
finished courtier, and candid biographer of his own life, Bub
Doddington. As critics, however, not as moralists, we might say
on the other hand — * Would he had blotted a thousand ! ' — The
same suavity of temper and sanguine warmth of feeling which threw
such a natural grace and genial spirit of enthusiasm over his poetry,
was also the cause of its inherent vices and defects. He is affected
through carelessness : pompous from unsuspecting simplicity of

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

character. He is frequently pedantic and ostentatious in his style,
because he had no consciousness of these vices in himself. He
mounts upon stilts, not out of vanity, but indolence. He seldom
writes a good line, but he makes up for it by a bad one. He takes
advantage of all the most trite and mechanical common-places of
imagery and diction as a kindly relief to his Muse, and as if he
thought them quite as good, and likely to be quite as acceptable to
the reader, as his own poetry. He did not think the difference
worth putting himself to the trouble of accomplishing. He had too
little art to conceal his art : or did not even seem to know that there
was any occasion for it. His art is as naked and undisguised as his
nature ; the one is as pure and genuine as the other is gross, gaudy,
and meretricious. — All that is admirable in the Seasons, is the
emanation of a fine natural genius, and sincere love of his subject,
unforced, unstudied, that conies uncalled for, and departs unbidden.
But he takes no pains, uses no self-correction ; or if he seems to
labour, it is worse than labour lost. His genius * cannot be con-
strained by mastery.' The feeling of nature, of the changes of the
seasons, was in his mind ; and he could not help conveying this
feeling to the reader, by the mere force of spontaneous expression ;
but if the expression did not come of itself, he left the whole business
to chance ; or, willing to evade instead of encountering the difficulties
of his subject, fills up the intervals of true inspiration with the most
vapid and worthless materials, pieces out a beautiful half line with a
bombastic allusion, or overloads an exquisitely natural sentiment or
image with a cloud of painted, pompous, cumbrous phrases, like the
shower of roses, in which he represents the Spring, his own lovely,
fresh, and innocent Spring, as descending to the earth.

' Come, gentle Spring ! ethereal Mildness ! come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veiTd in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend/

Who, from such a flimsy, round-about, unmeaning commencement as
this, would expect the delightful, unexaggerated, home-felt descriptions
of natural scenery, which are scattered in such unconscious profusion
through this and the following cantos ? For instance, the very next
passage is crowded with a set of striking images.

* And see where surly Winter passes off
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts :
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shattered forest, and the ravag'd vale ;
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch
«6

ON THOMSON AND COWPER

Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless ; so that scarce
The bittern knows his time with bill ingulpht
To shake the sounding marsh, or from the shore
The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.1

Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets : for he gives most
of the poetry of natural description. Others have been quite equal
to him, or have surpassed him, as Cowper for instance, in the
picturesque part of his art, in marking the peculiar features and
curious details of objects ; — no one has yet come up to him in giving
the sum total of their effects, their varying influences on the mind.
He does not go into the minutix of a landscape, but describes the
vivid impression which the whole makes upon his own imagination ;
and thus transfers the same unbroken, unimpaired impression to the
imagination of his readers. The colours with which he paints seem
yet wet and breathing, like those of the living statue in the Winter's
Tale. Nature in his descriptions is seen growing around us, fresh
and lusty as in itself. We feel the effect of the atmosphere, its
humidity or clearness, its heat or cold, the glow of summer, the
gloom of winter, the tender promise of the spring, the full over-
^sh^adowing foliage, the declining pomp and deepening tints of autumn.
': He transports us to the scorching heat of vertical suns, or plunges us
into the chilling horrors and desolation of the frozen zone. We
hear the snow drifting against the broken casement without, and see
the fire blazing on the hearth within. The first scattered drops of
a vernal shower patter on the leaves above our heads, or the coming
storm resounds through the leafless groves. In a word, he describes
not to the eye alone, but to the other senses, and to the whole man.
He puts his heart into his subject, writes as he feels, and humanises
whatever he touches. He makes all his descriptions teem with life
and vivifying soul. His faults were those of his style — of the author
and the man ; but the original genius of the poet, the pith and marrow
of his imagination, the fine natural mould in which his feelings were
bedded, were too much for him to counteract by neglect, or affectation,
or false ornaments. It is for this reason that he is, perhaps, the most
popular of all our poets, treating of a subject that all can understand,
and in a way that is interesting to all alike, to the ignorant or the
refined, because he gives back the impression which the things

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

themselves make upon us in nature. ' That,' said a man of genius,
seeing a little shabby soiled copy of Thomson's Seasons lying on the
window-seat of an obscure country alehouse — * That is true fame ! '

It has been supposed by some, that the Castle of Indolence is
Thomson's best poem ; but that is not the case. He has in it,
indeed, poured out the whole soul of indolence, diffuse, relaxed,
supine, dissolved into a voluptuous dream ; and surrounded himself
with a set of objects and companions, in entire unison with the
listlessness of his own temper. Nothing can well go beyond the
descriptions of these inmates of the place, and their luxurious
pampered way of life — of him who came among them like 'a
burnished fly in month of June,' but soon left them on his heedless
way ; and him,

' For whom the merry bells had rung, I ween,
If in this nook of quiet, bells had ever been.'

The in-door quiet and cushioned ease, where * all was one full-
swelling bed ' ; the out-of-door stillness, broken only by * the stock-
dove's plaint amid the forest deep,'

' That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale ' —

are in the most perfect and delightful keeping. But still there are no
passages in this exquisite little production of sportive ease and fancy,
equal to the best of those in the Seasons. Warton, in his Essay on
Pope, was the first to point out and do justice to some of these ; for
instance, to the description of the effects of the contagion among our
ships at Carthagena — ' of the frequent corse heard nightly plunged
amid the sullen waves,' and to the description of the pilgrims lost in
the deserts of Arabia. This last passage, profound and striking as
it is, is not free from those faults of style which I have already
noticed.

< Breath'd hot

From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
And the wide-glittering waste of burning sand,
A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,
Son of the desert, ev'n the camel feels
Shot through his wither'd heart the fiery blast.
Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,
Commov'd around, in gathering eddies play ;
Nearer and nearer still they dark'ning come,
Till with the gen'ral all-involving storm
Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise,
And by their noon-day fount dejected thrown,
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ON THOMSON AND COWPER

Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,

Beneath descending hills the caravan

Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets,

Th' impatient merchant, wond'ring, waits in vain ;

And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'

There are other passages of equal beauty with these ; such as that
of the hunted stag, followed by ' the inhuman rout,'

-That from the shady depth

Expel him, circling through his ev'ry shift.
He sweeps the forest oft, and sobbing sees
The glades mild op'ning to the golden day,
Where in kind contest with his butting friends
He wont to struggle, or his loves enjoy.'

The whole of the description of the frozen zone, in the Winter, is
perhaps even finer and more thoroughly felt, as being done from early
associations, that that of the torrid zone in his Summer. Any thing
more beautiful than the following account of the Siberian exiles is, I
think, hardly to be found in the whole range of poetry.

' There through the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barr'd by the hand of nature from escape,
Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around
Strikes his sad eye but deserts lost in snow,
And heavy-loaded groves, and solid floods,
That stretch athwart the solitary vast
Their icy horrors to the frozen main ;
And cheerless towns far distant, never bless'd,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,
With news of human kind.'

The feeling of loneliness, of distance, of lingering, slow-revolving
years of pining expectation, of desolation within and without the
heart, was never more finely expressed than it is here.

The account which follows of the employments of the Polar night
— of the journeys of the natives by moonlight, drawn by rein-deer,
and of the return of spring in Lapland —

' Where pure Niemi's fairy mountains rise,
And fring'd with roses Tenglio rolls his stream,'

is equally picturesque and striking in a different way. The traveller
lost in the snow, is a well-known and admirable dramatic episode. I
prefer, however, giving one example of our author's skill in painting
common domestic scenery, as it will bear a more immediate com-
parison with the style of some later writers on such subjects. It is of

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

little consequence what passage we take. The following description
of the first setting in of winter is, perhaps, as pleasing as any.

' Through the hush'd air the whitening shower descends,
At first thin wav'ring, till at last the flakes
Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The cherish'd fields
Put on their winter-robe of purest white :
'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low the woods
Bow their hoar head ; and ere the languid Sun,
Faint, from the West emits his ev'ning ray,
Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill,
Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the lab'rer-ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heav'n,
Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
The red-breast, sacred to the household Gods,
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first
Against the window beats ; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth ; then hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is :
Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urg'd on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heav'n, and next, the glist'ning earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed,
Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow.'

It is thus that Thomson always gives a moral sense to nature.

Thomson's blank verse is not harsh, or utterly untuneable ; but it
is heavy and monotonous ; it seems always labouring up-hill. The
selections which have been made from his works in Enfield's
Speaker, and other books of extracts, do not convey the most favour-
able idea of his genius or taste ; such as Palemon and Lavinia, Damon
and Musidora, Celadon and Amelia. Those parts of any author
which are most liable to be stitched in worsted, and framed and

ON THOMSON AND COWPER

glazed, are not by any means always the best. The moral descriptions
and reflections in the Seasons are in an admirable spirit, and written
with great force and fervour.

His poem on Liberty is not equally good : his Muse was too easy
and good-natured for the subject, which required as much indignation
against unjust and arbitrary power, as complacency in the constitutional
monarchy, under which, just after the expulsion of the Stuarts and
the establishment of the House of Hanover, in contempt of the claims
of hereditary pretenders to the throne, Thomson lived. Thomson
was but an indifferent hater ; and the most indispensable part of the
love of liberty has unfortunately hitherto been the hatred of tyranny.
Spleen is the soul of patriotism, and of public good : but you would
not expect a man who has been seen eating peaches off a tree with
both hands in his waistcoat pockets, to be ' overrun with the spleen,'
or to heat himself needlessly about an abstract proposition.

His plays are liable to the same objection. They are never acted,
and seldom read. The author could not, or would not, put himself
out of his way, to enter into the situations and passions of others,
particularly of a tragic kind. The subject of Tancred and Sigismunda,
which is taken from a serious episode in Gil Bias, is an admirable
one, but poorly handled : the ground may be considered as still
unoccupied.

Cowper, whom I shall speak of in this connection, lived at a
considerable distance of time after Thomson ; and had some advantages
over him, particularly in simplicity of style, in a certain precision and
minuteness of graphical description, and in a more careful and leisurely
choice of such topics only as his genius and peculiar habits of mind
prompted him to treat of. The Task has fewer blemishes than the
Seasons ; but it has not the same capital excellence, the * unbought
grace ' of poetry, the power of moving and infusing the warmth of the
author's mind into that of the reader. If Cowper had a more
polished taste, Thomson had, beyond comparison, a more fertile
genius, more impulsive force, a more entire forgetfulness of himself
in his subject. If in Thomson you are sometimes offended with the
slovenliness of the author by profession, determined to get through
his task at all events ; in Cowper you are no less dissatisfied with the
finicalness of the private gentleman, who does not care whether he
completes his work or not ; and in whatever he does, is evidently
more solicitous to please himself than the public. There is an
effeminacy about him, which shrinks from and repels common and
hearty sympathy. With all his boasted simplicity and love of the
country, he seldom launches out into general descriptions of nature :
he looks at her over his clipped hedges, and from his well-swept

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

garden-walks ; or if he makes a bolder experiment now and then,
it is with an air of precaution, as if he were afraid of being caught in
a shower of rain, or of not being able, in case of any untoward
accident, to make good his retreat home. He shakes hands with
nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on, and leads * his Vashti '
forth to public view with a look of consciousness and attention to
etiquette, as a fine gentleman hands a lady out to dance a minuet.
He is delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back, after a romantic
adventure with crazy Kate, a party of gypsies or a little child on
a common, to the drawing room and the ladies again, to the sofa and
the tea-kettle — No, I beg his pardon, not to the singing, well-scoured
tea-kettle, but to the polished and loud-hissing urn. His walks and
arbours are kept clear of worms and snails, with as much an appear-
ance of petit-maitreship as of humanity. He has some of the sickly
sensibility and pampered refinements of Pope ; but then Pope prided
himself in them : whereas, Cowper affects to be all simplicity and
plainness. He had neither Thomson's love of the unadorned beauties
of nature, nor Pope's exquisite sense of the elegances of art. He
was, in fact, a nervous man, afraid of trusting himself to the seductions
of the one, and ashamed of putting forward his pretensions to an
intimacy with the other : but to be a coward, is not the way to
succeed either in poetry, in war, or in love ! Still he is a genuine
poet, and deserves all his reputation. His worst vices are amiable
weaknesses, elegant trifling. Though there is a frequent dryness,
timidity, and jejuneness in his manner, he has left a number of
pictures of domestic comfort and social refinement, as well as of
natural imagery and feeling, which can hardly be forgotten but with
the language itself. Such, among others, are his memorable descrip-
tion of the post coming in, that of the preparations for tea in a winter's
evening in the country, of the unexpected fall of snow, of the frosty
morning (with the fine satirical transition to the Empress of Russia's
palace of ice), and most of all, the winter's walk at noon. Every
one of these may be considered as distinct studies, or highly finished
cabinet-pieces, arranged without order or coherence. I shall be
excused for giving the last of them, as what has always appeared
to me one of the most feeling, elegant, and perfect specimens of this
writer's manner.

' The night was winter in his roughest mood j
The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon
Upon the southern side of the slant hills,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast,
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue,
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ON THOMSON AND COWPER

Without a cloud, and white without a speck

The dazzling splendour of the scene below.

Again the harmony conies o'er the vale ;

And through the trees I view th' embattled tow'r,

Whence all the music. I again perceive

The soothing influence of the wafted strains,

And settle in soft musings as I tread

The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms,

Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.

The roof, though moveable through all its length,

As the wind sways it, has yet well suffic'd,

And, intercepting in their silent fall

The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.

No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.

The redbreast warbles still, but is content

With slender notes, and more than half suppress'd.

Pleas'd with his solitude, and flitting light

From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes

From many a twig the pendent drop of ice,

That tinkle in the withered leaves below.

Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,

Charms more than silence. Meditation here

May think down hours to moments. Here the heart

May give a useful lesson to the head,

And Learning wiser grow without his books.

Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,

Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells

In heads replete with thoughts of other men ;

Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

Books are not seldom talismans and spells,

By which the magic art of shrewder wits

Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled.

Some to the fascination of a name

Surrender judgment hood-wink'd. Some the style

Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds

Of error leads them, by a tune entranc'd,

While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear

The insupportable fatigue of thought,

And swallowing therefore without pause or choice

The total grist unsifted, husks and all.

But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course

Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,

And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,

And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time

Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,

Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,

Not shy, as in the world, and to be won

By slow solicitation, seize at once

The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.'

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

His satire is also excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the
polished manners of the gentleman, and the honest indignation of the
virtuous man. His religious poetry, except where it takes a tincture
of controversial heat, wants elevation and fire. His Muse had not
a seraph's wing. I might refer, in illustration of this opinion, to
the laboured anticipation of the Millennium at the end of the sixth
book. He could describe a piece of shell-work as well as any
modern poet : but he could not describe the New Jerusalem so well
as John Bunyan ; — nor are his verses on Alexander Selkirk so good
as Robinson Crusoe. The one is not so much like a vision, nor is
the other so much like the reality.

The first volume of Cowper's poems has, however, been less read
than it deserved. The comparison in these poems of the proud and
humble believer to the peacock and the pheasant, and the parallel
between Voltaire and the poor cottager, are exquisite pieces of
eloquence and poetry, particularly the last.

* Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins all her little store ;
Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay,
Shuffling her threads about the live-long day,
Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night,
Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light ;
She, for her humble sphere by nature fit,
Has little understanding, and no wit,
Receives no praise ; but, though her lot be such,
(Toilsome and indigent) she renders much j
Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true —
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew ;
And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes
Her title to a treasure in the skies.

O happy peasant ! Oh unhappy bard !
His the mere tinsel, hers the rich reward ;
He prais'd, perhaps, for ages yet to come,
She never heard of half a mile from home :
He lost in errors his vain heart prefers,
She safe in the simplicity of hers.'

His character ot Whitfield, in the poem on Hope, is one ot his
most spirited and striking things. It is written con amore.

' But if, unblameable in word and thought,
A man arise, a man whom God has taught,
With all Elijah's dignity of tone,
And all the love of the beloved John,
To storm the citadels they build in air,
To smite the untemper'd wall ('tis death to spare,)

ON THOMSON AND COWPER

To sweep away all refuges of lies,

And place, instead of quirks, themselves devise,

Lama Sabachthani before their eyes $

To show that without Christ all gain is loss,

All hope despair that stands not on his cross ;

Except a few his God may have impressed,

A tenfold phrensy seizes all the rest.'

These lines were quoted, soon after their appearance, by the Monthly
Reviewers, to shew that Cowper was no poet, though they afterwards
took credit to themselves for having been the first to introduce his
verses to the notice of the public. It is not a little remarkable that
these same critics regularly damned, at its first coming out, every
work which has since acquired a standard reputation with the public.
— Cowper's verses on his mother's picture, and his lines to Mary,
are some of the most pathetic that ever were written. His stanzas on
the loss of the Royal George have a masculine strength and feeling
beyond what was usual with him. The story of John Gilpin has
perhaps given as much pleasure to as many people as any thing of the
same length that ever was written.

His life was an unhappy one. It was embittered by a morbid
affection, and by his religious sentiments. Nor are we to wonder at
this, or bring it as a charge against religion ; for it is the nature of
the poetical temperament to carry every thing to excess, whether it
be love, religion, pleasure, or pain, as we may see in the case of
Cowper and of Burns, and to find torment or rapture in that in which
others merely find a resource from ennui, or a relaxation from common
occupation.

There are two poets still living who belong to the same class of
excellence, and of whom I shall here say a few words ; I mean
Crabbe, and Robert Bloomfield, the author of the Farmer's Boy.
As a painter of simple natural scenery, and of the still life of the
country, few writers have more undeniable and unassuming pre-
tensions than the ingenious and self-taught poet, last-mentioned.
Among the sketches of this sort I would mention, as equally distin-
guished for delicacy, faithfulness, and naivete, his description of
lambs racing, of the pigs going out an acorn ing, of the boy sent to
feed his sheep before the break of day in winter ; and I might add
the innocently told story of the poor bird-boy, who in vain through
the live-long day expects his promised companions at his hut, to
share his feast of roasted sloes with him, as an example of that
humble pathos, in which this author excels. The fault indeed of
his genius is that it is too humble : his Muse has something not
only rustic, but menial in her aspect. He seems afraid of elevating

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

nature, lest she should be ashamed of him. Bloomfield very
beautifully describes the lambs in springtime as racing round the
hillocks of green turf: Thomson, in describing the same image,
makes the mound of earth the remains of an old Roman encampment.
Bloomfield never gets beyond his own experience ; and that is some-
what confined. He gives the simple appearance of nature, but he
gives it naked, shivering, and unclothed with the drapery of a moral
imagination. His poetry has much the effect of the first approach
of spring, * while yet the year is unconfirmed,' where a few tender
buds venture forth here and there, but are chilled by the early frosts
and nipping breath of poverty. — It should seem from this and other
instances that have occurred within the last century, that we cannot
expect from original genius alone, without education, in modern and
more artificial periods, the same bold and independent results as in
former periods. And one reason appears to be, that though such
persons, from whom we might at first expect a restoration of the good
old times of poetry, are not encumbered and enfeebled by the
trammels of custom, and the dull weight of other men's ideas ; yet
they are oppressed by the consciousness of a want of the common
advantages which others have ; are looking at the tinsel finery of the
age, while they neglect the rich unexplored mine in their own breasts ;
and instead of setting an example for the world to follow, spend their
lives in aping, or in the despair of aping, the hackneyed accomplish-
ments of their inferiors. Another cause may be, that original genius
alone is not sufficient to produce the highest excellence, without a
corresponding state of manners, passions, and religious belief: that no
single mind can move in direct opposition to the vast machine of the
world around it ; that the poet can do no more than stamp the mind
of his age upon his works ; and that all that the ambition of the highest
genius can hope to arrive at, after the lapse of one or two generations,
is the perfection of that more refined and effeminate style of studied
elegance and adventitious ornament, which is the result, not of nature,
but of art. In fact, no other style of poetry has succeeded, or seems
likely to succeed, in the present day. The public taste hangs like a
millstone round the neck of all original genius that does not conform
to established and exclusive models. The writer is not only without
popular sympathy, but without a rich and varied mass of materials
for his mind to work upon and assimilate unconsciously to itself; his
attempts at originality are looked upon as affectation, and in the end,
degenerate into it from the natural spirit of contradiction, and the
constant uneasy sense of disappointment and undeserved ridicule.
But to return.

Crabbe is, if not the most natural, the most literal of our descriptive

ON THOMSON AND COWPER

poets. He exhibits the smallest circumstances of the smallest things.
He gives the very costume of meanness ; the nonessentials of every
trifling incident. He is his own landscape-painter, and engraver too.
His pastoral scenes seem pricked on paper in little dotted lines. He
describes the interior of a cottage like a person sent there to distrain
for rent. He has an eye to the number of arms in an old worm-
eaten chair, and takes care to inform himself and the reader whether a
joint-stool stands upon three legs or upon four. If a settle by the
fire-side stands awry, it gives him as much disturbance as a tottering
world ; and he records the rent in a ragged counterpane as an event
in history. He is equally curious in his back-grounds and in his
figures. You know the Christian and surnames of every one of his
heroes, — the dates of their achievements, whether on a Sunday or a
Monday, — their place of birth and burial, the colour of their clothes,
and of their hair, and whether they squinted or not. He takes an
inventory of the human heart exactly in the same manner as of the
furniture of a sick room : his sentiments have very much the air of
fixtures ; he gives you the petrifaction of a sigh, and carves a tear, to
the life, in stone. Almost all his characters are tired of their lives,
and you heartily wish them dead. They remind one of anatomical
preservations ; or may be said to bear the same relation to actual life
that a stuffed cat in a glass-case does to the real one purring on the
hearth : the skin'is the same, but the life and the sense of heat is gone.
Crabbe's poetry is like a museum, or curiosity-shop : every thing has
the same posthumous appearance, the same inanimateness and identity
of character. If Bloomfield is too much of the Farmer's Boy, Crabbe
is too much of the parish beadle, an overseer of the country poor. He
has no delight beyond the walls of a workhouse, and his officious zeal
would convert the world into a vast infirmary. He is a kind of
Ordinary, not of Newgate, but of nature. His poetical morality is taken
from Burn's Justice, or the Statutes against Vagrants. He sets his own
imagination in the stocks, and his Muse, like Malvolio, * wears cruel
garters.' He collects all the petty vices of the human heart, and
superintends, as in a panopticon, a select circle of rural malefactors.
He makes out the poor to be as bad as the rich — a sort of vermin for
the others to hunt down and trample upon, and this he thinks a good
piece of work. With him there are but two moral categories, riches
and poverty, authority and dependence. His parish apprentice,
Richard Monday, and his wealthy baronet, Sir Richard Monday, of
Monday-place, are the same individual — the extremes of the same
character, and of his whole system. * The latter end of his Common-
wealth does not forget the beginning.' But his parish ethics are
the very worst model for a state : any thing more degrading and
VOL. v. : G 97

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

helpless cannot well be imagined. He exhibits just the contrary
view of human life to that which Gay has done in his Beggar's
Opera. In a word, Crabbe is the only poet who has attempted and
succeeded in the still life of tragedy : who gives the stagnation of
hope and fear — the deformity of vice without the temptation — the
pain of sympathy without the interest — and who seems to rely, for
the delight he is to convey to his reader, on the truth and accuracy
with which he describes only what is disagreeable.

The best descriptive poetry is not, after all, to be found in our
descriptive poets. There are set descriptions of the flowers, for
instance, in Thomson, Cowper, and others ; but none equal to those
in Milton's Lycidas, and in the Winter's Tale.

We have few good pastorals in the language. Our manners are
not Arcadian ; our climate is not an eternal spring ; our age is not
the age of gold. We have no pastoral-writers equal to Theocritus,
nor any landscapes like those of Claude Lorraine. The best parts of
Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar are two fables, Mother Hubberd's
Tale, and the Oak and the Briar ; which last is as splendid a piece
of oratory as any to be found in the records of the eloquence of the
British senate ! Browne, who came after Spenser, and Withers,
have left some pleasing allegorical poems of this kind. Pope's are as
full of senseless finery and trite affectation, as if a peer of the realm
were to sit for his picture with a crook and cocked hat on, smiling
with an insipid air of no-meaning, between nature and fashion. Sir
Philip Sidney's Arcadia is a lasting monument of perverted power ;
where an image of extreme beauty, as that of * the shepherd boy
piping as though he should never be old,' peeps out once in a hundred
folio pages, amidst heaps of intricate sophistry and scholastic quaint-
ness. It is not at all like Nicholas Poussin's picture, in which he
represents some shepherds wandering out in a morning of the spring,
and coming to a tomb with this inscription — ' I also was an Arcadian ! '
Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that prose-poem, Walton's
Complete Angler. That well-known work has a beauty and romantic
interest equal to its simplicity, and arising out of it. In the descrip-
tion of a fishing-tackle, you perceive the piety and humanity of the
author's mind. It is to be doubted whether Sannazarius's Piscatory
Eclogues are equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks
of the river Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air : we walk
with him along the dusty road-side, or repose on the banks of the
river under a shady tree ; and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe
what he beautifully calls ' the patience and simplicity of poor honest
fishermen.' We accompany them to their inn at night, and partake
of their simple, but delicious fare ; while Maud, the pretty milk-maid,

ON THOMSON AND COWPER

at her mother's desire, sings the classical ditties of the poet Marlow ;
' Come live with me, and be my love.' Good cheer is not neglected
in this work, any more than in Homer, or any other history that sets
a proper value on the good things of this life. The prints in the
Complete Angler give an additional reality and interest to the scenes
it describes. While Tottenham Cross shall stand, and longer, thy
work, amiable and happy old man, shall last ! — It is in the notes to
it that we find that character of * a fair and happy milkmaid,' by Sir
Thomas Overbury, which may vie in beauty and feeling with
Chaucer's character of Griselda.

' A fair and happy milk-maid is a country wench that is so far from
making herself beautiful by art, that one look of her's is able to put all
face-physic out of countenance. She knows a fair look is but a dumb
orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not. All her excellences
stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her know-
ledge. The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far better than
outsides of tissue ; for though she be not arrayed in the spoil of the silk-
worm, she is decked in innocency, a far better wearing. She doth not,
with lying long in bed, spoil both her complexion and conditions. Nature
hath taught her, too immoderate sleep is rust to the soul : she rises therefore
with chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night makes the lamb her curfew.
Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new-
made haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft
with pity j and when winter evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel)
she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of Fortune. She doth all things
with so sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, being
her mind is to do well. She bestows her year's wages at next fairj and in
choosing her garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency. The
garden and bee-hive are all her physic and chirurgery, and she lives the
longer for 't. She dares go alone, and unfold sheep in the night, and fears
no manner of ill, because she means none : yet, to say the truth, she is
never alone, for she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts,
and prayers, but short ones 5 yet they have their efficacy, in that they are
not palled with ensuing idle cogitations. Lastly, her dreams are so chaste,
that she dare tell them ; only a Friday's dream is all her superstition ; that
she conceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she ; and all her care is she
may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her
winding-sheet.'

The love of the country has been sung by poets, and echoed by
philosophers ; but the first have not attempted, and the last have been
greatly puzzled to account for it. 1 do not know that any one has
ever explained, satisfactorily, the true source of this feeling, or of that
soothing emotion which the sight of the country, or a lively descrip-
tion of rural objects hardly ever fails to infuse into the mind. Some
have ascribed this feeling to the natural beauty of the objects them-

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

selves ; others to the freedom from care, the silence and tranquillity
which scenes of retirement afford ; others to the healthy and innocent
employments of a country life ; others to the simplicity of country
manners, and others to a variety of different causes ; but none to the
right one. All these, indeed, have their effect ; but there is another
principal one which has not been touched upon, or only slightly
glanced at. I will not, however, imitate Mr. Home Tooke, who
after enumerating seventeen different definitions of the verb, and
laughing at them all as deficient and nugatory, at the end of two
quarto volumes does not tell us what the verb really is, and has left
posterity to pluck out * the heart of his mystery.' I will say at once
what it is that distinguishes this interest from others, and that is its
abstractedness. The interest we feel in human nature is exclusive,
and confined to the individual ; the interest we feel in external nature
is common, and transferable from one object to all others of the same
class. Thus.

Rousseau in his Confessions relates, that when he took possession
of his room at Annecy, he found that he could see * a little spot of
green ' from his window, which endeared his situation the more to
him, because, he says, it was the first time he had had this object
constantly before him since he left Boissy, the place where he was at
school when a child.1 Some such feeling as that here described will
be found lurking at the bottom of all our attachments of this sort.
Were it not for the recollections habitually associated with them,
natural objects could not interest the mind in the manner they do.
No doubt, the sky is beautiful, the clouds sail majestically along its
bosom ; the sun is cheering ; there is something exquisitely graceful
in the manner in which a plant or tree puts forth its branches ; the
motion with which they bend and tremble in the evening breeze is
soft and lovely ; there is music in the babbling of a brook ; the view
from the top of a mountain is full of grandeur ; nor can we behold
the ocean with indifference. Or, as the Minstrel sweetly sings,

* Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her votary yields !
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields ;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,

And all that echoes to the song of even,
All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,

And all the dread magnificence of heaven,
Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven ! '

1 Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old post which stood
in the court-yard before the house where he was brought up.
IOO

ON THOMSON AND COWPER

It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone that we
admire in Nature ; the most insignificant and rudest objects are often
found connected with the strongest emotions ; we become attached to
the most common and familiar images, as to the face of a friend whom
we have long known, and from whom we have received many benefits.
It is because natural objects have been associated with the sports of
our childhood, with air and exercise, with our feelings in solitude,
when the mind takes the strongest hold of things, and clings with
the fondest interest to whatever strikes its attention ; with change of
place, the pursuit of new scenes, and thoughts of distant friends ; it is
because they have surrounded us in almost all situations, in joy and in
sorrow, in pleasure and in pain ; because they have been one chief
source and nourishment of our feelings, and a part of our being, that
we love them as we do ourselves.

There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for our love of
Nature as for all our habitual attachments, namely, association of
ideas. But this is not all. That which distinguishes this attachment
from others is the transferable nature of our feelings with respect to
physical objects ; the associations connected with any one object
extending to the whole class. Our having been attached to any
particular person does not make us feel the same attachment to the
next person we may chance to meet ; but, if we have once associated
strong feelings of delight with the objects of natural scenery, the tie
becomes indissoluble, and we shall ever after feel the same attachment
to other objects of the same sort. I remember when I was abroad,
the trees, and grass, and wet leaves, rustling in the walks of the
Thuilleries, seemed to be as much English, to be as much the same
trees and grass, that I had always been used to, as the sun shining
over my head was the same sun which I saw in England ; the faces
only were foreign to me. Whence comes this difference ? It arises
from our always imperceptibly connecting the idea of the individual
with man, and only the idea of the class with natural objects. In the
one case, the external appearance or physical structure is the least
thing to be attended to ; in the other, it is every thing. The springs
that move the human form, and make it friendly or adverse to me, lie
hid within it. There is an infinity of motives, passions, and ideas,
contained in that narrow compass, of which I know nothing, and in
which I have no share. Each individual is a world to himself,
governed by a thousand contradictory and wayward impulses. I can,
therefore, make no inference from one individual to another ; nor can
my habitual sentiments, with respect to any individual, extend beyond
himself to others. A crowd of people presents a disjointed, confused,
and unsatisfactory appearance to the eye, because there is nothing to

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LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

connect the motley assemblage into one continuous or general im-
pression, unless when there is some common object of interest to fix
their attention, as in the case of a full pit at the play-house. The
same principle will also account for that feeling of littleness, vacuity,
and perplexity, which a stranger feels on entering the streets of a
populous city. Every individual he meets is a blow to his personal
identity. Every new face is a teazing, unanswered riddle. He feels
the same wearisome sensation in walking from Oxford Street to
Temple Bar, as a person would do who should be compelled to read
through the first leaf of all the volumes in a library. But it is other-
wise with respect to nature. A flock of sheep is not a contemptible,
but a beautiful sight. The greatest number and variety of physical
objects do not puzzle the will, or distract the attention, but are
massed together under one uniform and harmonious feeling. The
heart reposes in greater security on the immensity of Nature's works,
* expatiates freely there,' and finds elbow room and breathing space.
We are always at home with Nature. There is neither hypocrisy,
caprice, nor mental reservation in her favours. Our intercourse with
her is not liable to accident or change, suspicion or disappointment :
she smiles on us still the same. A rose is always sweet, a lily is
always beautiful : we do not hate the one, nor envy the other. If
we have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into a
deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its foot, we are sure
that wherever we can find a shady stream, we can enjoy the same
pleasure again ; so that when we imagine these objects, we can easily
form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them,
Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade.
Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. All objects of the
same kind being the same, not only in their appearance, but in their
practical uses, we habitually confound them together under the same
general idea ; and whatever fondness we may have conceived for one,
is immediately placed to the common account. The most opposite
kinds and remote trains of feeling gradually go to enrich the same
sentiment ; and in our love of nature, there is all the force of in-
dividual attachment, combined with the most airy abstraction. It is
this circumstance which gives that refinement, expansion, and wild
interest, to feelings of this sort, when strongly excited, which every
one must have experienced who is a true lover of nature.

It is the same setting sun that we see and remember year after
year, through summer and winter, seed-time and harvest. The moon
that shines above our heads, or plays through the checquered shade,
is the same moon that we used to read of in Mrs. Radcliffe's
romances. We see no difference in the trees first covered with leaves
1 02

ON THOMSON AND COWPER

in the spring. The dry reeds rustling on the side of a stream — the
woods swept by the loud blast — the dark massy foliage of autumn —
the grey trunks and naked branches of the trees in winter — the
sequestered copse, and wide-extended heath — the glittering sunny
showers, and December snows — are still the same, or accompanied
with the same thoughts and feelings : there is no object, however
trifling or rude, that does not in some mood or other find its way into
the heart, as a link in the chain of our living being ; and this it is that
makes good that saying of the poet —

' To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.'

Thus nature is a kind of universal home, and every object it presents
to us an old acquaintance with unaltered looks; for there is that
consent and mutual harmony among all her works, one undivided
spirit pervading them throughout, that to him who has well acquainted
himself with them, they speak always the same well-known language,
striking on the heart, amidst unquiet thoughts and the tumult of the
world, like the music of one's native tongue heard in some far-off
country.

' My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky :

So was it when my life began,

So is it now I am a man,

So shall it be when I grow old and die.

The child 's the father of the man,

And I would have my years to be

Linked each to each by natural piety.'

The daisy that first strikes the child's eye in trying to leap over
his own shadow, is the same flower that with timid upward glance
implores the grown man not to tread upon it. Rousseau, in one of
his botanical excursions, meeting with the periwinkle, fell upon his
knees, crying out — Ah ! *uoila de la pervenche ! It was because
he had thirty years before brought home the same flower with him
in one of his rambles with Madame de Warens, near Chambery. It
struck him as the same identical little blue flower that he remembered
so well ; and thirty years of sorrow and bitter regret were effaced
from his memory. That, or a thousand other flowers of the same
name, were the same to him, to the heart, and to the eye ; but there
was but one Madame Warens in the world, whose image was never
absent from his thoughts ; with whom flowers and verdure sprung up
beneath his feet, and without whom all was cold and barren in nature
and in his own breast. The cuckoo, ' that wandering voice,' that

103

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

comes and goes with the spring, mocks our ears with one note from
youth to age ; and the lapwing, screaming round the traveller's path,
repeats for ever the same sad story of Tereus and Philomel !

LECTURE VI
ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, &C.

I SHALL in the present Lecture go back to the age of Queen Anne,
and endeavour to give a cursory account of the most eminent of our
poets, of whom I have not already spoken, from that period to the
present.

The three principal poets among the wits of Queen Anne's reign,
next to Pope, were Prior, Swift, and Gay. Parnell, though a good-
natured, easy man, and a friend to poets and the Muses, was himself
little more than an occasional versifier ; and Arbuthnot, who had as
much wit as the best of them, chose to shew it in prose, and not in
verse. He had a very notable share in the immortal History of John
Bull, and the inimitable and praise-worthy Memoirs of Martinus
Scriblerus. There has been a great deal said and written about the
plagiarisms of Sterne ; but the only real plagiarism he has been guilty
of (if such theft were a crime), is in taking Tristram Shandy's father
from Martin's, the elder Scriblerus. The original idea of the
character, that is, of the opinionated, captious old gentleman, who is
pedantic, not from profession, but choice, belongs to Arbuthnot. —
Arbuthnot's style is distinguished from that of his contemporaries,.
even by a greater degree of terseness and conciseness. He leaves out
every superfluous word ; is sparing of connecting particles, and intro-
ductory phrases ; uses always the simplest forms of construction ; and
is more a master of the idiomatic peculiarities and internal resources
of the language than almost any other writer. There is a research in
the choice of a plain, as well as of an ornamented or learned style ;
and, in fact, a great deal more. Among common English words,
there may be ten expressing the same thing with different degrees of
force and propriety, and. only one of them the very word we' want,
because it is the only one that answers exactly with the idea we have
in our minds. Each word in familiar use has a different set of
associations and shades of meaning attached to it, and distinguished
from each other by inveterate custom ; and it is in having the whole
of these at our command, and in knowing which to choose, as they
are called for by the occasion, that the perfection of a pure conversa-
tional prose-style consists. But in writing a florid and artificial style,

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ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

neither the same range of invention, nor the same quick sense of pro-
priety— nothing but learning is required. If you know the words,
and their general meaning, it is sufficient : it is impossible you should
know the nicer inflections of signification, depending on an endless
variety of application, in expressions borrowed from a foreign or dead
language. They all impose upon the ear alike, because they are not
familiar to it ; the only distinction left is between the pompous and
the plain ; the sesquipedalia <verba have this advantage, that they are
all of one length ; and any words are equally fit for a learned style,
so that we have never heard them before. Themistocles thought
that the same sounding epithets could not suit all subjects, as the
same dress does not fit all persons. The style of our modern prose-
writers is very fine in itself; but it wants variety of inflection and
adaptation ; it hinders us from seeing the differences of the things it
undertakes to describe.

What I have here insisted on will be found to be the leading dis-
tinction between the style of Swift, Arbuthnot, Steele, and the other
writers of the age of Queen Anne, and the style of Dr. Johnson,
which succeeded to it. The one is English, and the other is not.
The writers first mentioned, in order to express their thoughts, looked
about them for the properest word to convey any idea, that the
language which they spoke, and which their countrymen understood,
afforded : Dr. Johnson takes the first English word that offers, and
by translating it at a venture into the first Greek or Latin word he
can think of, only retaining the English termination, produces an
extraordinary effect upon the reader, by much the same sort of
mechanical process that Trim converted the old jack-boots into a pair
of new mortars.

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man, who liked to think and talk,
better than to read or write ; who, however, wrote much and well,
but too often by rote. His long compound Latin phrases required
less thought, and took up more room than others. What shews the
facilities afforded by this style of imposing generalization, is, that it
was instantly adopted with success by all those who were writers by
profession, or who were not ; and that at present, we cannot see a
lottery puff or a quack advertisement pasted against a wall, that is
not perfectly Johnsonian in style. Formerly, the learned had the
privilege of translating their notions into Latin ; and a great privilege
it was, as it confined the reputation and emoluments of learning to
themselves. Dr. Johnson may be said to have naturalised this
privilege, by inventing a sort of jargon translated half-way out of one
language into the other, which raised the Doctor's reputation, and
confounded all ranks in literature.

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LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

In the short period above alluded to, authors professed to write as
other men spoke; every body now affects to speak as authors write; and
any one who retains the use of his mother tongue, either in writing or
conversation, is looked upon as a very illiterate character.

Prior and Gay belong, in the characteristic excellences of their
style, to the same class of writers with Suckling, Rochester, and
Sedley : the former imbibed most of the licentious levity of the age
of Charles 11. and carried it on beyond the Revolution under King
William. Prior has left no single work equal to Gay's Fables, or
the Beggar's Opera. But in his lyrical and fugitive pieces he has
shown even more genius, more playfulness, more mischievous gaiety.
No one has exceeded him in the laughing grace with which he glances
at a subject that will not bear examining, with which he gently hints
at what cannot be directly insisted on, with which he half con-
ceals, and half draws aside the veil from some of the Muses' nicest
mysteries. His Muse is, in fact, a giddy wanton flirt, who spends
her time in playing at snap-dragon and blind-man's buff, who tells
what she should not, and knows more than she tells. She laughs
at the tricks she shews us, and blushes, or would be thought to do so,
at what she keeps concealed. Prior has translated several of Fontaine's
Tales from the French ; and they have lost nothing in the translation,
either of their wit or malice. I need not name them : but the one I
like the most, is that of Cupid in search of Venus's doves. No one
could insinuate a knavish plot, a tender point, a loose moral, with
such unconscious archness, and careless raillery, as if he gained new
self-possession and adroitness from the perplexity and confusion into
which he throws scrupulous imaginations, and knew how to seize on
all the ticklish parts of his subject, from their involuntarily shrinking
under his grasp. Some of his imitations of Boileau's servile addresses
to Louis xiv. which he has applied with a happy mixture of wit and
patriotic enthusiasm to King William, or as he familiarly calls him, to

' Little Will, the scourge of France,
No Godhead, but the first of men,'

are excellent, and shew the same talent for double-entendre and the
same gallantry of spirit, whether in the softer lyric, or the more lively
heroic. Some of Prior's bon mots are the best that are recorded. —
His serious poetry, as his Solomon, is as heavy as his familiar style
was light and agreeable. His moral Muse is a Magdalen, and should
not have obtruded herself on public view. Henry and Emma is
a paraphrase of the old ballad of the Nut-brown Maid, and not so
good as the original. In short, as we often see in other cases, where
1 06

ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

men thwart their own genius, Prior's sentimental and romantic pro-
ductions are mere affectation, the result not of powerful impulse or
real feeling, but of a consciousness of his deficiencies, and a wish to
supply their place by labour and art.

Gay was sometimes grosser than Prior, not systematically, but
inadvertently — from not being so well aware of what he was about ;
nor was there the same necessity for caution, for his grossness is by no
means so seductive or inviting.

Gay's Fables are certainly a work of great merit, both as to the
quantity of invention implied, and as to the elegance and facility of the
execution. They are, however, spun out too long ; the descriptions
and narrative are too diffuse and desultory ; and the moral is some-
times without point. They are more like Tales than Fables. The
best are, perhaps, the Hare with Many Friends, the Monkeys, and
the Fox at the Point of Death. His Pastorals are pleasing and
poetical. But his capital work is his Beggar's Opera. It is indeed
a masterpiece of wit and genius, not to say of morality. In composing
it, he chose a very unpromising ground to work upon, and he has
prided himself in adorning it with all the graces, the precision, and
brilliancy of style. It is a vulgar error to call this a vulgar play.
So far from it, that I do not scruple to say that it appears to me one
of the most refined productions in the language. The elegance of
the composition is in exact proportion to the coarseness of the
materials : by ' happy alchemy of mind,' the author has extracted an
essence of refinement from the dregs of human life, and turns its very
dross into gold. The scenes, characters, and incidents are, in
themselves, of the lowest and most disgusting kind : but, by the
sentiments and reflections which are put into the mouths of highway-
men, turnkeys, their mistresses, wives, or daughters, he has converted
this motley group into a set of fine gentlemen and ladies, satirists and
philosophers. He has also effected this transformation without once
violating probability, or ' o'erstepping the modesty of nature.' In fact,
Gay has turned the tables on the critics ; and by the assumed licence
of the mock-heroic style, has enabled himself to do justice to nature,
that is, to give all the force, truth, and locality of real feeling to the
thoughts and expressions, without being called to the bar of false
taste and affected delicacy. The extreme beauty and feeling of the
song, * Woman is like the fair flower in its lustre,' are only equalled
by its characteristic propriety and naivete. Polly describes her lover
going to the gallows, with the same touching simplicity, and with all
the natural fondness of a young girl in her circumstances, who sees in
his approaching catastrophe nothing but the misfortunes and the
personal accomplishments of the object of her affections. 'I see

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him sweeter than the nosegay in his hand; the admiring crowd
lament that so lovely a youth should come to an untimely end : —
even butchers weep, and Jack Ketch refuses his fee rather than
consent to tie the fatal knot.' The preservation of the character
and costume is complete. It has been said by a great authority —
4 There is some soul of goodness in things evil ' : — and the Beggar s
Opera is a good-natured but instructive comment on this text. The
poet has thrown all the gaiety and sunshine of the imagination, all the
intoxication of pleasure, and the vanity of despair, round the short-
lived existence of his heroes ; while Peachum and Lockitt are seen in
the back-ground, parcelling out their months and weeks between
them. The general view exhibited of human life is of the most
subtle and abstracted kind. The author has, with great felicity,
brought out the good qualities and interesting emotions almost in-
separable from the lowest conditions ; and with the same penetrating
glance, has detected the disguises which rank and circumstances lend
to exalted vice. Every line in this sterling comedy sparkles with
wit, and is fraught with the keenest sarcasm. The very wit,
however, takes off from the ofFensiveness of the satire ; and I have
seen great statesmen, very great statesmen, heartily enjoying the joke,
laughing most immoderately at the compliments paid to them as not
much worse than pickpockets and cut-throats in a different line of
life, and pleased, as it were, to see themselves humanised by some
sort of fellowship with their kind. Indeed, it may be said that the
moral of the piece is to shew the vulgarity of vice ; or that the same
violations of integrity and decorum, the same habitual sophistry in
palliating their want of principle, are common to the great and
powerful, with the meanest and most contemptible of the species.
What can be more convincing than the arguments used by these
would-be politicians, to shew that in hypocrisy, selfishness, and
treachery, they do not come up to many of their betters ? The
exclamation of Mrs. Peachum, when her daughter marries Macheath,
1 Hussy, hussy, you will be as ill used, and as much neglected, as if
you had married a lord,' is worth all Miss Hannah More's laboured
invectives on the laxity of the manners of high life !

I shall conclude this account of Gay with his verses on Sir Richard
Blackmore, which may serve at once as a specimen of his own
manner, and as a character of a voluminous contemporary poet, who
was admired by Mr. Locke, and knighted by King William HI.

c See who ne'er was nor will be half-read,
Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred ;
Praised great Eliza in God's anger,
Till all tme Englishmen cried, ' Hang her ! ' —
1 08

ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

Maul'd human wit in one thick satire ;

Next in three books spoil'd human nature :

Undid Creation at a jerk,

And of Redemption made damn'd work.

Then took his Muse at once, and dipt her

Full in the middle of the Scripture.

What wonders there the man, grown old, did ?

Sternhold himself he out Stemholded.

Made David seem so mad and freakish,

All thought him just what thought King Achish.

No mortal read his Solomon

But judg'd Re'boam his own son.

Moses he serv'd as Moses Pharaoh,

And Deborah as she Siserah ;

Made Jeremy full sore to cry,

And Job himself curse God and die.

What punishment all this must follow ?

Shall Arthur use him like King Tollo ?

Shall David as Uriah slay him ?

Or dextrous Deborah Siserah him ?

No ! — none of these ! Heaven spare his life !

But send him, honest Job, thy wife ! '

Gay's Trivia, or Art of Walking the Streets, is as pleasant as
walking the streets must have been at the time when it was written.
His ballad of Black Eyed Susan is one of the most delightful that
can be imagined ; nor do I see that it is a bit the worse for
Mr. Jekyll's parody on it.

Swift's reputation as a poet has been in a manner obscured by the
greater splendour, by the natural force and inventive genius of his
prose writings ; but if he had never written either the Tale of a Tub
or Gulliver's Travels, his name merely as a poet would have come
down to us, and have gone down to posterity with well-earned
honours. His Imitations of Horace, and still more his Verses on
his own Death, place him in the first rank of agreeable moralists in
verse. There is not only a dry humour, an exquisite tone of irony,
in these productions of his pen ; but there is a touching, unpretending
pathos, mixed up with the most whimsical and eccentric strokes of
pleasantry and satire. His Description of the Morning in London,
and of a City Shower, which were first published in the Taller, are
among the most delightful of the contents of that very delightful
work. Swift shone as one of the most sensible of the poets ; he is
also distinguished as one of the most nonsensical of them. No man
has written so many lack-a-daisical, slip-shod, tedious, trifling, foolish,
fantastical verses as he, which are so little an imputation on the
wisdom of the writer ; and which, in fact, only shew his readiness

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to oblige others, and to forget himself. He has gone so far as to
invent a new stanza of fourteen and sixteen syllable lines for Mary
the cookmaid to vent her budget of nothings, and for Mrs. Harris to
gossip with the deaf old housekeeper. Oh, when shall we have such
another Rector of Laracor !— The Tale of a Tub is one of the most
masterly compositions in the language, whether for thought, wit, or
style. It is so capital and undeniable a proof of the author's talents,
that Dr. Johnson, who did not like Swift, would not allow that he
wrote it. It is hard that the same performance should stand in the
way of a man's promotion to a bishopric, as wanting gravity, and at the
same time be denied to be his, as having too much wit. It is a pity
the Doctor did not find out some graver author, for whom he felt a
critical kindness, on whom to father this splendid but unacknowledged
production. Dr. Johnson could not deny that Gulliver's Travels
were his ; he therefore disputed their merits, and said that after the
first idea of them was conceived, they were easy to execute ; all the
rest followed mechanically. I do not know how that may be ; but
the mechanism employed is something very different from any that
the author of Rasselas was in the habit of bringing to bear on such
occasions. There is nothing more futile, as well as invidious, than
this mode of criticising a work of original genius. Its greatest merit
is supposed to be in the invention ; and you say, very wisely, that it
is not in the execution. You might as well take away the merit of the
invention of the telescope, by saying that, after its uses were explained
and understood, any ordinary eyesight could look through it. Whether
the excellence of Gulliver's Travels is in the conception or the
execution, is of little consequence ; the power is somewhere, and it
is a power that has moved the world. The power is not that of big
words and vaunting common places. Swift left these to those who
wanted them ; and has done what his acuteness and intensity of mind
alone could enable any one to conceive or to perform. His object
was to strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing air which
external circumstances throw around them ; and for this purpose he
has cheated the imagination of the illusions which the prejudices of
sense and of the world put upon it, by reducing every thing to the
abstract predicament of size. He enlarges or diminishes the scale, as
he wishes to shew the insignificance or the grossness of our over-
weening self-love. That he has done this with mathematical precision,
with complete presence of mind and perfect keeping, in a manner that
comes equally home to the understanding of the man and of the child,
does not take away from the merit of the work or the genius of the
author. He has taken a new view of human nature, such as a being
of a higher sphere might take of it ; he has torn the scales from off
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ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

his moral vision ; he has tried an experiment upon human life, and
sifted its pretensions from the alloy of circumstances ; he has measured
it with a rule, has weighed it in a balance, and found it, for the most
part, wanting and worthless — in substance and in shew. Nothing solid,
nothing valuable is left in his system but virtue and wisdom. What a
libel is this upon mankind ! What a convincing proof of misanthropy !
What presumption and what malice prepense, to shew men what they are,
and to teach them what they ought to be ! What a mortifying stroke
aimed at national glory, is that unlucky incident of Gulliver's wading
across the channel and carrying off the whole fleet of Blefuscu !
After that, we have only to consider which of the contending parties
was in the right. What a shock to personal vanity is given in the
account of Gulliver's nurse Glumdalclitch ! Still, notwithstanding
the disparagement to her personal charms, her good-nature remains
the same amiable quality as before. I cannot see the harm, the
misanthropy, the immoral and degrading tendency of this. The
moral lesson is as fine as the intellectual exhibition is amusing. It is
an attempt to tear off the mask of imposture from the world ; and
nothing but imposture has a right to complain of it. It is, indeed, the
way with our quacks in morality to preach up the dignity of human
nature, to pamper pride and hypocrisy with the idle mockeries of the
virtues they pretend to, and which they have not : but it was not
Swift's way to cant morality, or any thing else ; nor did his genius
prompt him to write unmeaning panegyrics on mankind !

I do not, therefore, agree with the estimate of Swift's moral or
intellectual character, given by an eminent critic, who does not seem
to have forgotten the party politics of Swift. I do not carry my
political resentments so far back : I can at this time of day forgive
Swift for having been a Tory. I feel little disturbance (whatever I
might think of them ) at his political sentiments, which died with him,
considering how much else he has left behind him of a more solid and
imperishable nature! If he had, indeed, (like some others) merely
left behind him the lasting infamy of a destroyer of his country, or
the shining example of an apostate from liberty, I might have thought
the case altered.

The determination with which Swift persisted in a preconcerted
theory, savoured of the morbid affection of which he died. There is
nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get
rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an
obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable. Swift
was not a Frenchman. In this respect he differed from Rabelais and
Voltaire. They have been accounted the three greatest wits in
modern times ; but their wit was of a peculiar kind in each. They

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

are little beholden to each other ; there is some resemblance between
Lord Peter in the Tale of a Tub, and Rabelais' Friar John ; but in
general they are all three authors of a substantive character in them-
selves. Swift's wit (particularly in his chief prose works) was
serious, saturnine, and practical ; Rabelais' was fantastical and joyous ;
Voltaire's was light, sportive, and verbal. Swift's wit was the wit of
sense ; Rabelais', the wit of nonsense ; Voltaire's, of indifference to
both. The ludicrous in Swift arises out of his keen sense of
impropriety, his soreness and impatience of the least absurdity. He
separates, with a severe and caustic air, truth from falsehood, folly
from wisdom, * shews vice her own image, scorn her own feature ' ;
and it is the force, the precision, and the honest abruptness with
which the separation is made, that excites our surprise, our admiration,
and laughter. He sets a mark of reprobation on that which offends
good sense and good manners, which cannot be mistaken, and which
holds it up to our ridicule and contempt ever after. His occasional
disposition to trifling (already noticed) was a relaxation from the
excessive earnestness of his mind. Indignatio facit versus. His better
genius was his spleen. It was the biting acrimony of his temper that
sharpened his other faculties. The truth of his perceptions produced
the pointed coruscations of his wit ; his playful irony was the result of
inward bitterness of thought ; his imagination was the product of the
literal, dry, incorrigible tenaciousness of his understanding. He
endeavoured to escape from the persecution of realities into the
regions of fancy, and invented his Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians,
Yahoos, and Houynhyms, as a diversion to the more painful knowledge
of the world around him : they only made him laugh, while men and
women made him angry. His feverish impatience made him view
the infirmities of that great baby the world, with the same scrutiniz-
ing glance and jealous irritability that a parent regards the failings of
its offspring ; but, as Rousseau has well observed, parents have not on
this account been supposed to have more affection for other people's
children than their own. In other respects, and except from the
sparkling effervescence of his gall, Swift's brain was as 'dry as the
remainder biscuit after a voyage.' He hated absurdity — Rabelais
loved it, exaggerated it with supreme satisfaction, luxuriated in its
endless varieties, rioted in nonsense, ' reigned there and revelled.'
He dwelt on the absurd and ludicrous for the pleasure they gave him,
not for the pain. He lived upon laughter, and died laughing. He
indulged his vein, and took his full swing of folly. He did not
baulk his fancy or his readers. His wit was to him 'as riches
fineless ' ; he saw no end of his wealth in that way, and set no limits
to his extravagance : he was communicative, prodigal, boundless, and

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ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

inexhaustible. His were the Saturnalia of wit, the riches and the
royalty, the health and long life. He is intoxicated with gaiety,
mad with folly. His animal spirits drown him in a flood of mirth :
his blood courses up and down his veins like wine. His thirst of
enjoyment is as great as his thirst of drink : his appetite for good
things of all sorts is unsatisfied, and there is a never-ending supply.
Discourse is dry ; so they moisten their words in their cups, and
relish their dry jests with plenty of Botargos and dried neats' tongues.
It is like Camacho's wedding in Don Quixote, where Sancho ladled
out whole pullets and fat geese from the soup-kettles at a pull. The
flagons are set a running, their tongues wag at the same time, and
their mirth flows as a river. How Friar John roars and lays about
him in the vineyard ! How Panurge whines in the storm, and how
dexterously he contrives to throw the sheep overboard ! How much
Pantagruel behaves like a wise king ! How Gargantua mewls, and
pules, and slabbers his nurse, and demeans himself most like a royal
infant ! what provinces he devours ! what seas he drinks up ! How
he eats, drinks, and sleeps — sleeps, eats, and drinks ! The style of
Rabelais is no less prodigious than his matter. His words are of
marrow, unctuous, dropping fatness. He was a mad wag, the king
of good fellows, and prince of practical philosophers !

Rabelais was a Frenchman of the old school — Voltaire of the new.
The wit of the one arose from an exuberance of enjoyment — of the
other, from an excess of indifference, real or assumed. Voltaire had
no enthusiasm for one thing or another : he made light of every thing.
In his hands all things turn to chaff and dross, as the pieces of silver
money in the Arabian Nights were changed by the hands of the en-
chanter into little dry crumbling leaves ! He is a Parisian. He never
exaggerates, is never violent : he treats things with the most provok-
ing sangfroid; and expresses his contempt by the most indirect hints,
and in the fewest words, as if he hardly thought them worth even his
contempt. He retains complete possession of himself and of his
subject. He does not effect his purpose by the eagerness of his
blows, but by the delicacy of his tact. The poisoned wound he
inflicted was so fine, as scarcely to be felt till it rankled and festered
in its ' mortal consequences.' His callousness was an excellent foil
for the antagonists he had mostly to deal with. He took knaves and
fools on his shield well. He stole away its cloak from grave
imposture. If he reduced other things below their true value, making
them seem worthless and hollow, he did not degrade the pretensions
of tyranny and superstition below their true value, by making them
seem utterly worthless and hollow, as contemptible as they were
odious. This was the service he rendered to truth and mankind !

VOL. v. : H 113

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

His Candide is a masterpiece of wit. It has been called ' the dull
product of a scoffer's pen' ; it is indeed the 'product of a scoffer's pen ';
but after reading the Excursion, few people will think it dulL It is in
the most perfect keeping, and without any appearance of effort. Every
sentence tells, and the whole reads like one sentence. There is some-
thing sublime in Martin's sceptical indifference to moral good and evil.
It is the repose of the grave. It is better to suffer this living death,
than a living martyrdom. * Nothing can touch him further.' The
moral of Candide (such as it is) is the same as that of Rasselas : the
execution is different. Voltaire says, ' A great book is a great evil.'
Dr. Johnson would have laboured this short apophthegm into a
voluminous common-place. Voltaire's traveller (in another work)
being asked * whether he likes black or white mutton best,' replies
that « he is indifferent, provided it is tender.' Dr. Johnson did not
get at a conclusion by so short a way as this. If Voltaire's licentious-
ness is objected to me, I say, let it be placed to its true account, the
manners of the age and court in which he lived. The lords and
ladies of the bedchamber in the reign of Louis xv. found no fault
with the immoral tendency of his writings. Why then should our
modern purists quarrel with them ? — But to return.

Young is a gloomy epigrammatist. He has abused great powers
both of thought and language. His moral reflections are sometimes
excellent; but he spoils their beauty by overloading them with a
religious horror, and at the same time giving them all the smart turns
and quaint expression of an enigma or repartee in verse. The well-
known lines on Procrastination are in his best manner :

' Be wise to-day ; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead ;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time ;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears
The palm, " That all men are about to live,"
For ever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They, one day, shall not drivel ; and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise j
At least, their own ; their future selves applauds ;
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead !
Time lodg'd in their own hands is Folly's vails :
That lodg'd in Fate's, to Wisdom they consign ;
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone.
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ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

'Tis not in Folly, not to scorn a fool ;

And scarce in human Wisdom to do more.

All Promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage. When young, indeed,

In full content we, sometimes, nobly rest,

Un-anxious for ourselves ; and only wish,

As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.

At thirty man suspects himself a fool ;

Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ;

At fifty chides his infamous delay,

Pushes his prudent purpose to Resolve ;

In all the magnanimity of thought

Resolves, and re-resolves ; then dies the same.

And why ? Because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal, but themselves ;
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread ;
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close ; where past the shaft, no trace is found.
As from the wing no scar the sky retains ;
The parted wave no furrow from the keel ;
So dies in human hearts the thought of death.
Ev'n with the tender tear which nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.'

His Universal Passion is a keen and powerful satire ; but the effort
takes from the effect, and oppresses attention by perpetual and violent
demands upon it. His tragedy of the Revenge is monkish and
scholastic. Zanga is a vulgar caricature of lago. The finest lines
in it are the burst of triumph at the end, when his revenge is
completed :

* Let Europe and her pallid sons go weep,
Let Afric on her hundred thrones rejoice,' &c.

Collins is a writer of a very different stamp, who had perhaps less
general power of mind than Young ; but he had that true VMMM vis,
that genuine inspiration, which alone can give birth to the highest
efforts of poetry. He leaves stings in the minds of his readers,
certain traces of thought and feelings which never wear out, because
nature had left them in his own mind. He is the only one of the
minor poets of whom, if he had lived, it cannot be said that he might
not have done the greatest things. The germ is there. He is some-
times affected, unmeaning, and obscure ; but he also catches rich
glimpses of the bowers of Paradise, and has lofty aspirations after
the highest seats of the Muses. With a great deal of tinsel and
splendid patch-work, he has not been able to hide the solid sterling

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

ore of genius. In his best works there is an attic simplicity, a pathos,
and fervour of imagination, which make us the more lament that the
efforts of his mind were at first depressed by neglect and pecuniary
embarrassment, and at length buried in the gloom of an unconquerable
and fatal malady. How many poets have gone through all the
horrors of poverty and contempt, and ended their days in moping
melancholy or moody madness !

' We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.'

Is this the fault of themselves, of nature in tempering them of too
fine a clay, or of the world, that spurner of living, and patron of dead
merit ? Read the account of Collins — with hopes frustrated, with
faculties blighted, at last, when it was too late for himself or others,
receiving the deceitful favours of relenting Fortune, which served
only to throw their sunshine on his decay, and to light him to an
early grave. He was found sitting with every spark of imagination
extinguished, and with only the faint traces of memory and reason
left — with only one book in his room, the Bible ; * but that,' he said,
' was the best.' A melancholy damp hung like an unwholesome
mildew upon his faculties — a canker had consumed the flower of his
life. He produced works of genius, and the public regarded them
with scorn : he aimed at excellence that should be his own, and his
friends treated his efforts as the wanderings of fatuity. The proofs
of his capacity are, his Ode on Evening, his Ode on the Passions
(particularly the fine personification of Hope), his Ode to Fear, the
Dirge in Cymbeline, the Lines on Thomson's Grave, and his
Eclogues, parts of which are admirable. But perhaps his Ode on
the Poetical Character is the best of all. A rich distilled perfume
emanates from it like the breath of genius ; a golden cloud envelopes
it ; a honeyed paste of poetic diction encrusts it, like the candied coat
of the auricula. His Ode to Evening shews equal genius in the
images and versification. The sounds steal slowly over the ear, like
the gradual coming on of evening itself:

' If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs and dying gales,

O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun
Sits on yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts

With brede ethereal wove,

O'erhang his wavy bed :
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ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey'd bat,
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,

Or where the beetle winds
1 His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum.

Now teach me, maid composM,

To breathe some soften'd strain,

Whose numbers stealing through thy darkling vale
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,

As musing slow, I hail

Thy genial, lovM return !

For when thy folding star arising shews
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp

The fragrant Hours and Elves

Who slept in flow'rs the day,

And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge,
And sheds the fresh'ning dew, and lovelier still,

The pensive Pleasures sweet

Prepare thy shadowy car ;

Then lead, calm Votress, where some sheety lake
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow'd pile,

Or upland fallows grey

Reflect its last cool gleam.

But when chill blustering winds, or driving rain,
Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut,

That from the mountain's side

Views wilds and swelling floods,

And hamlets brown, and dim discovered spires,
And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all

Thy dewy fingers draw

The gradual dusky veil.

While Spring shall pour his show'rs, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve !

While Summer loves to sport

Beneath thy lingering light ;

While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves ;
Or Winter yelling through the troublous air,

Affrights thy shrinking train,

And rudely rends thy robes $

So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed,

Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp'd Health,

Thy gentlest influence own,

And hymn thy favourite name.'

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Hammond, whose poems are bound up with Collins's, in Bell's
pocket edition, was a young gentleman, who appears to have fallen
in love about the year 1740, and who translated Tibullus into English
verse, to let his mistress and the public know of it.

I should conceive that Collins had a much greater poetical genius
than Gray : he had more of that fine madness which is inseparable
from it, of its turbid effervescence, of all that pushes it to the verge
of agony or rapture. Gray's Pindaric Odes are, I believe, generally
given up at present : they are stately and pedantic, a kind of
methodical borrowed phrenzy. But I cannot so easily give up, nor
will the world be in any haste to part with his Elegy in a Country
Church-yard: it is one of the most classical productions that ever
was penned by a refined and thoughtful mind, moralising on human
life. Mr. Coleridge (in his Literary Life) says, that his friend
Mr. Wordsworth had undertaken to shew that the language of the
Elegy is unintelligible: it has, however, been understood! The
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College is more mechanical and
common-place ; but it touches on certain strings about the heart,
that vibrate in unison with it to our latest breath. No one ever
passes by Windsor's * stately heights,' or sees the distant spires of
Eton College below, without thinking of Gray. He deserves that
we should think of him ; for he thought of others, and turned a
trembling, ever-watchful ear to 'the still sad music of humanity.' —
His Letters are inimitably fine. If his poems are sometimes finical
and pedantic, his prose is quite free from affectation. He pours his
thoughts out upon paper as they arise in his mind ; and they arise in
his mind without pretence, or constraint, from the pure impulse
of learned leisure and contemplative indolence. He is not here on
stilts or in buckram ; but smiles in his easy chair, as he moralises
through the loopholes of retreat, on the bustle and raree-show of the
world, or on « those reverend bedlams, colleges and schools ! ' He
had nothing to do but to read and to think, and to tell his friends
what he read and thought. His life was a luxurious, thoughtful
dream. « Be mine,' he says in one of his Letters, « to read eternal
new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon.' And in another, to shew
his contempt for action and the turmoils of ambition, he says to some

one, « Don't you remember Lords and , who are now great

statesmen, little dirty boys playing at cricket ? For my part, I do
not feel a bit wiser, or bigger, or older than I did then.' What an
equivalent for not being wise or great, to be always young ! What
a happiness never to lose or gain any thing in the game of human life,
by being never any thing more than a looker-on !

How different from Shenstone, who only wanted to be looked at :
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ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

who withdrew from the world to be followed by the crowd, and
courted popularity by affecting privacy ! His Letters shew him to
have lived ,in a continual fever of petty vanity, and to have been a
finished literary coquet. He seems always to say, ' You will find
nothing in the world so amiable as Nature and me : come, and admire
us.' His poems are indifferent and tasteless, except his Pastoral
Ballad, his Lines on Jemmy Dawson, and his School-mistress, which
last is a perfect piece of writing.

Akenside had in him the materials of poetry, but he was hardly a
great poet. He improved his Pleasures of the Imagination in the
subsequent editions, by pruning away a great many redundances of
style and ornament. Armstrong is better, though he has not chosen
a very exhilarating subject — The Art of Preserving Health.
Churchill's Satires on the Scotch, and Characters of the Players,
are as good as the subjects deserved — they are strong, coarse, and
full of an air of hardened assurance. I ought not to pass over with-
out mention Green's Poem on the Spleen, or Dyer's Grongar Hill.

The principal name of the period we are now come to is that of
Goldsmith, than which few names stand higher or fairer in the
annals of modern literature. One should have his own pen to
describe him as he ought to be described — amiable, various, and
bland, with careless inimitable grace touching on every kind of
excellence — with manners unstudied, but a gentle heart — performing
miracles of skill from pure happiness of nature, and whose greatest
fault was ignorance of his own worth. As a poet, he is the most
flowing and elegant of our versifiers since Pope, with traits of artless
nature which Pope had not, and with a peculiar felicity in his turns
upon words, which he constantly repeated with delightful effect :
such as —

' — His lot, though small,
He sees that little lot, the lot of all.'
*****
* And turn'd and look'd, and turn'd to look again.'

As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all Europe.
What reader is there in the civilised world, who is not the better for
the story of the washes which the worthy Dr. Primrose demolished
so deliberately with the poker — for the knowledge of the guinea
which the Miss Primroses kept unchanged in their pockets — the
adventure of the picture of the Vicar's family, which could not be
got into the house — and that of the Flamborough family, all painted
with oranges in their hands — or for the story of the case of shagreen
spectacles and the cosmogony ?

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As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin draws forth new powers
from Mr. Listen's face. That alone is praise enough for it. Poor
Goldsmith ! how happy he has made others ! how unhappy he was
in himself! He never had the pleasure of reading his own works!
He had only the satisfaction of good-naturedly relieving the necessities
of others, and the consolation of being harassed to death with his
own ! He is the most amusing and interesting person, in one of the
most amusing and interesting books in the world, Boswell's Life of
Johnson. His peach-coloured coat shall always bloom in Boswell's
writings, and his fame survive in his own! — His genius was a
mixture of originality and imitation : he could do nothing without
some model before him, and he could copy nothing that he did not
adorn with the graces of his own mind. Almost all the latter part
of the Vicar of Wakefield, and a great deal of the former, is taken
from Joseph Andrews ; but the circumstances I have mentioned
above are not.

The finest things he has left behind him in verse are his character
of a country school-master, and that prophetic description of Burke
in the Retaliation. His moral Essays in the Citizen of the World,
are as agreeable chit-chat as can be conveyed in the form of didactic
discourses.

Warton was a poet and a scholar, studious with ease, learned with-
out affectation. He had a happiness which some have been prouder
of than he, who deserved it less — he was poet-laureat.

' And that green wreath which decks the bard when dead,
That laurel garland crown'd his living head.'

But he bore his honours meekly, and performed his half-yearly task
regularly. I should not have mentioned him for this distinction alone
(the highest which a poet can receive from the state), but for another
circumstance ; I mean his being the author of some of the finest
sonnets in the language — at least so they appear to me ; and as this
species of composition has the necessary advantage of being short
(though it is also sometimes both 'tedious and brief), I will here
repeat two or three of them, as treating pleasing subjects in a pleasing
and philosophical way.

Written in a blank leaf of Dugdali s Monasticon

c Deem not, devoid of elegance, the sage,
By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguil'd,
Df painful pedantry the poring child j
Who turns of these proud domes the historic page,
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ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage.
Think'st thou the warbling Muses never smil'd
On his lone hours ? Ingenuous views engage
His thoughts, on themes unclassic falsely styl'd,
Intent. While cloistered piety displays
Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores
New manners, and the pomp of elder days,
Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores.
Not rough nor barren are the winding ways
Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers.'

Sonnet. Written at Stonehenge.

' Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle,
Whether, by Merlin's aid, from Scythia's shore
To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore,
Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile,
T' entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile :
Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,
Taught mid thy massy maze their mystic lore :
Or Danish chiefs, enrich'd with savage spoil,
To victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine,
Rear'd the rude heap, or in thy hallow'd ground
Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line;
Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd ;
Studious to trace thy wondrous origin,
We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd.'

Nothing can be more admirable than the learning here displayed, or
the inference from it, that it is of no use but as it leads to interesting
thought and reflection.

That written after seeing Wilton House is in the same style, but I
prefer concluding with that to the river Lodon, which has a personal
as well as poetical interest about it.

' Ah ! what a weary race my feet have run,
Since first I trod thy banks with alders crown'd,
And thought my way was all through fairy ground,
Beneath the azure sky and golden sun :
When first my Muse to lisp her notes begun !
While pensive memory traces back the round
Which fills the varied interval between j
Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene. —
Sweet native stream ! those skies and suns so pure
No more return, to cheer my evening road !
Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure
Nor useless, all my vacant days have flow'd
From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature,
Nor with the Muse's laurel unbestow'd.'

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I have thus gone through all the names of this period I could
think of, but I find that there are others still waiting behind that I
had never thought of. Here is a list of some of them — Pattison,
Tickell, Hill, Somerville, Browne, Pitt, Wilkie, Dodsley, Shaw,
Smart, Langhorne, Bruce, Greame, Glover, Lovibond, Penrose,
Mickle, Jago, Scott, Whitehead, Jenyns, Logan, Cotton, Cunning-
ham, and Blacklock. — I think it will be best to let them pass and say
nothing about them. It will be hard to persuade so many respectable
persons that they are dull writers, and if we give them any praise,
they will send others.

But here comes one whose claims cannot be so easily set aside :
they have been sanctioned by learning, hailed by genius, and hallowed
by misfortune — I mean Chatterton. Yet I must say what I think of
him, and that is not what is generally thought. I pass over the
disputes between the learned antiquaries, Dr. Mills, Herbert Croft,
and Dr. Knox, whether he was to be placed after Shakspeare and
Dryden, or to come after Shakspeare alone. A living poet has
borne a better testimony to him —

' I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,

The sleepless soul that perished in his pride ;
And him 1 who walked in glory and in joy
Beside his plough along the mountain side.'

I am loth to put asunder whom so great an authority has joined
together ; but I cannot find in Chatterton's works any thing so
extraordinary as the age at which they were written. They have a
facility, vigour, and knowledge, which were prodigious in a boy of
sixteen, but which would not have been so in a man of twenty. He
did not shew extraordinary powers of genius, but extraordinary
precocity. Nor do I believe he would have written better, had he
lived. He knew this himself, or he would have lived. Great
geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think of to kill them-
selves ; for their mind to them also ' a kingdom is.' With an un-
accountable power coming over him at an unusual age, and with the
youthful confidence it inspired, he performed wonders, and was will-
ing to set a seal on his reputation by a tragic catastrophe. He had
done his best ; and, like another Empedocles, threw himself into
.flLtna, to ensure immortality. The brazen slippers alone remain ! —

1 Burns. — These lines are taken from the introduction to Mr. Wordsworth's
poem of the LEECH-GATHERER.

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ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

LECTURE VII

ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

I AM sorry that what I said in the conclusion of the last Lecture
respecting Chatterton, should have given dissatisfaction to some
persons, with whom I would willingly agree on all such matters.
What I meant was less to call in question Chatterton's genius, than
to object to the common mode of estimating its magnitude by its
prematureness. The lists of fame are not filled with the dates of
births or deaths ; and the side-mark of the age at which they were
done, wears out in works destined for immortality. Had Chatterton
really done more, we should have thought less of him, for our
attention would then have been fixed on the excellence of the works
themselves, instead of the singularity of the circumstances in which
they were produced. But because he attained to the full powers of
manhood at an early age, I do not see that he would have attained to
more than those powers, had he lived to be a man. He was a
prodigy, because in him the ordinary march of nature was violently
precipitated ; and it is therefore inferred, that he would have con-
tinued to hold on his course, ' unslacked of motion.' On the
contrary, who knows but he might have lived to be poet-laureat ? It
is much better to let him remain as he was. Of his actual produc-
tions, any one may think as highly as he pleases ; I would only
guard against adding to the account of his quantum meruit, those
possible productions by which the learned rhapodists of his time
raised his gigantic pretensions to an equality with those of Homer
and Shakspeare. It is amusing to read some of these exaggerated
descriptions, each rising above the other in extravagance. In
Anderson's Life, we find that Mr. Warton speaks of him « as a
prodigy of genius,' as 'a singular instance of prematurity of abilities ':
that may be true enough, and Warton was at any rate a competent judge ;
but Mr. Malone * believes him to have been the greatest genius that
England has produced since the days of Shakspeare.' Dr. Gregory
says, * he must rank, as a universal genius, above Dryden, and
perhaps only second to Shakspeare.' Mr. Herbert Croft is still more
unqualified in his praises ; he asserts, that * no such being, at any
period of life, has ever been known, or possibly ever will be known.'
He runs a parallel between Chatterton and Milton ; and asserts, that
' an army of Macedonian and Swedish mad butchers fly before him,'

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LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

meaning, I suppose, that Alexander the Great and Charles the
Twelfth were nothing to him ; * nor,' he adds, ' does my memory
supply me with any human being, who at such an age, with such
advantages, has produced such compositions. Under the heathen
mythology, superstition and admiration would have explained all,
by bringing Apollo on earth; nor would the God ever have
descended with more credit to himself.' — Chatterton's physiognomy
would at least have enabled him to pass incognito. It is quite
different from the look of timid wonder and delight with which
Annibal Caracci has painted a young Apollo listening to the first
sounds he draws from a Pan's pipe, under the tutelage of the old
Silenus ! If Mr. Croft is sublime on the occasion, Dr. Knox is no
less pathetic. * The testimony of Dr. Knox,' says Dr. Anderson,
(Essays, p. 144), 'does equal credit to the classical taste and
amiable benevolence of the writer, and the genius and reputation of
Chatterton.' ' When I read,' says the Doctor, * the researches of
those learned antiquaries who have endeavoured to prove that the
poems attributed to Rowley were really written by him, I observe
many ingenious remarks in confirmation of their opinion, which it
would be tedious, if not difficult, to controvert.'

Now this is so far from the mark, that the whole controversy
might have been settled by any one but the learned antiquaries them-
selves, who had the smallest share of their learning, from this single
circumstance, that the poems read as smooth as any modern poems, if
you read them as modern compositions ; and that you cannot read them,
or make verse of them at all, if you pronounce or accent the words as
they were spoken at the time when the poems were pretended to
have been written. The whole secret of the imposture, which
nothing but a deal of learned dust, raised by collecting and removing
a great deal of learned rubbish, could have prevented our laborious
critics from seeing through, lies on the face of it (to say nothing of
the burlesque air which is scarcely disguised throughout) in the
repetition of a few obsolete words, and in the mis-spelling of common
ones.

* No sooner,' proceeds the Doctor, * do I turn to the poems, than
the labour of the antiquaries appears only waste of time ; and I am
involuntarily forced to join in placing that laurel, which he seems so
well to have deserved, on the brow of Chatterton. The poems bear
so many marks of superior genius, that they have deservedly excited
the general attention of polite scholars, and are considered as the
most remarkable productions in modern poetry. We have many
instances of poetical eminence at an early age ; but neither Cowley,
Milton, nor Pope, ever produced any thing while they were boys,

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ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

which can justly be compared to the poems of Chatterton. The
learned antiquaries do not indeed dispute their excellence. They
extol it in the highest terms of applause. They raise their favourite
Rowley to a rivalry with Homer : but they make the very merits of
the works an argument against their real author. Is it possible, say
they, that a boy should produce compositions so beautiful and
masterly ? That a common boy should produce them is not possible,'
rejoins the Doctor ; ' but that they should be produced by a boy
of an extraordinary genius, such as was that of Homer or Shakspeare,
though a prodigy, is such a one as by no means exceeds the bounds
of rational credibility.'

Now it does not appear that Shakspeare or Homer were such early
prodigies ; so that by this reasoning he must take precedence of them
too, as well as of Milton, Cowley, and Pope. The reverend and
classical writer then breaks out into the following melancholy
raptures : —

* Unfortunate boy ! short and evil were thy days, but thy fame
shall be immortal. Hadst thou been known to the munificent
patrons of genius. . . .

* Unfortunate boy ! poorly wast thou accommodated during thy
short sojourning here among us ; — rudely wast thou treated — sorely did
thy feelings suffer from the scorn of the unworthy ; and there are at last
those who wish to rob thee of thy only meed, thy posthumous glory.
Severe too are the censures of thy morals. In the gloomy moments
of despondency, I fear thou hast uttered impious and blasphemous
thoughts. But let thy more rigid censors reflect, that thou wast
literally and strictly but a boy. Let many of thy bitterest enemies
reflect what were their own religious principles, and whether they
had any at the age of fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. Surely it is
a severe and unjust surmise that thou wouldst probably have ended
thy life as a victim to the laws, if thou hadst not ended it as thou
didst.'

Enough, enough, of the learned antiquaries, and of the classical and
benevolent testimony of Dr. Knox. Chatterton was, indeed, badly
enough off; but he was at least saved from the pain and shame of
reading this woful lamentation over fallen genius, which circulates
splendidly bound in the fourteenth edition, while he is a prey to
worms. As to those who are really capable of admiring Chatterton's
genius, or of feeling an interest in his fate, I would only say, that I
never heard any one speak of any one of his works as if it were an
old well-known favourite, and had become a faith and a religion in his
mind. It is his name, his youth, and what he might have lived to
have done, that excite our wonder and admiration. He has the same

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LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

sort of posthumous fame that an actor of the last age has — an abstracted
reputation which is independent of any thing we know of his
works. The admirers of Collins never think of him without recalling
to their minds his Ode on Evening, or on the Poetical Character.
Gray's Elegy, and his poetical popularity, are identified together, and
inseparable even in imagination. It is the same with respect to
Burns : when you speak of him as a poet, you mean his works, his
Tarn o' Shanter, or his Cotter's Saturday Night. But the enthusiasts
for Chatterton, if you ask for the proofs of his extraordinary genius,
are obliged to turn to the volume, and perhaps find there what
they seek ; but it is not in their minds ; and it is of that I spoke.
The Minstrel's song in ^Ella is I think the best.

' O ! synge untoe my roundelaie,
O ! droppe the brynie teare wythe mee,
Daunce ne moe atte hallie dale,
Lycke a rennynge ryver bee.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Black hys cryne as the wyntere nyght,
Whyte hys rode as the sommer snowe,
Rodde hys face as the mornynge lyghte,
Cale he lyes ynne the grave belowe.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Swote hys tongue as the throstles note,
Quycke ynne daunce as thought cann bee,
Defte his taboure, codgelle stote,
O ! hee lys bie the wyllowe-tree.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Harke ! the ravenne flappes hys wynge,
In the briered dell belowe ;
Harke ! the dethe-owle loude dothe synge,
To the nygthe-mares as theie goe.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gone to hys deathe-bedde,
f , Al under the wyllowe-tree.

See ! the whyte moone sheenes onne hie ;
Whyterre ys mie true loves shroude ;
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ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

Whyterre yanne the mornynge skie,
Whyterre yanne the evenynge cloude.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree,

Heere, upon mie true loves grave,
Schalle the baren fleurs be layde,
Ne one hallie seyncte to save
Al the celness of a mayde.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to his deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Wythe mie hondes I '11 dent the brieres
Round e hys hallie corse to gre,
Ouphante fairies, lyghte your fyres,
Heere mie boddie stille schalle bee.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Comme, wythe acorne-coppe and thorne,
Drayne my hartys blodde awaie ;
Lyfe and all yttes goode I scorne,
Daunce bie nete, or feaste by daie.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Water wytches, crownede wythe reytes,
Bere mee to yer leathalle tyde.
I die ; I comme ; mie true love waytes.
Thos the damselle spake, and dyed.'

To proceed to the more immediate subject of the present Lecture,
the character and writings of Burns. — Shakspeare says of some one,
that 'he was like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring.'
Burns, the poet, was not such a man. He had a strong mind, and a
strong body, the fellow to it. He had a real heart of flesh and/
blood beating in his bosom — you can almost hear it throb. Some''
one said, that if you had shaken hands with him, his hand would
have burnt yours. The Gods, indeed, ' made him poetical ' ; but
nature had a hand in him first. His heart was in the right place.
He did not ' create a soul under the ribs of death,' by tinkling siren
sounds, or by piling up centos of poetic diction ; but for the artificial
flowers of poetry, he plucked the mountain-daisy under his feet ; and
a field-mouse, hurrying from its ruined dwelling, could inspire him

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LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

with the sentiments of terror and pity. He held the plough or the
pen with the same firm, manly grasp ; nor did he cut out poetry as
we cut out watch-papers, with finical dexterity, nor from the same
flimsy materials. Burns was not like Shakspeare in the range of his
genius ; but there is something of the same magnanimity, directness,
and unaffected character about him. He was not a sickly senti-
mentalist, a namby-pamby poet, a mincing metre ballad-monger, any
more than Shakspeare. He would as soon hear 'a brazen candle-
stick tuned, or a dry wheel grate on the axletree.' He was as much
of a man — not a twentieth part as much of a poet as Shakspeare.
With but little of his imagination or inventive power, he had the
same life of mind : within the narrow circle of personal feeling or
domestic incidents, the pulse of his poetry flows as healthily and
vigorously. He had an eye to see; a heart to feel: — no more.
His pictures of good fellowship, of social glee, of quaint humour, are
equal to any thing; they come up to nature, and they cannot go
beyond it. The sly jest collected in his laughing eye at the sight of
the grotesque and ludicrous in manners — the large tear rolled down
his manly cheek at the sight of another's distress. He has made us
as well acquainted with himself as it is possible to be ; has let out the
honest impulses of his native disposition, the unequal conflict of the
passions in his breast, with the same frankness and truth of description.
His strength is not greater than his weakness : his virtues were greater
than his vices. His virtues belonged to his genius : his vices to his
situation, which did not correspond to his genius.

It has been usual to attack Burns's moral character, and the moral
tendency of his writings at the same time ; and Mr. Wordsworth, in
a letter to Mr. Gray, Master of the High School at Edinburgh, in
attempting to defend, has only laid him open to a more serious and
unheard-of responsibility. Mr. Gray might very well have sent him
back, in return for his epistle, the answer of Holofernes in Love's
Labour's Lost: — < Via goodman Dull, thou hast spoken no word all
this while.' The author of this performance, which is as weak in
effect as it is pompous in pretension, shews a great dislike of
Robespierre, Buonaparte, and of Mr. Jeffrey, whom he, by some
unaccountable fatality, classes together as the three most formidable
enemies of the human race that have appeared in his (Mr. Words-
worth's) remembrance ; but he betrays very little liking to Burns.
He is, indeed, anxious to get him out of the unhallowed clutches of
the Edinburgh Reviewers (as a mere matter of poetical privilege),
only to bring him before a graver and higher tribunal, which is his
own ; and after repeating and insinuating ponderous charges against
him, shakes his head, and declines giving any opinion in so tremendous

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ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

a case ; so that though the judgment of the former critic is set aside,
poor Burns remains just where he was, and nobody gains any thing
by the cause but Mr. Wordsworth, in an increasing opinion of his
own wisdom and purity. * Out upon this half-faced fellowship ! '
The author of the Lyrical Ballads has thus missed a fine opportunity
of doing Burns justice and himself honour. He might have shewn
himself a philosophical prose-writer, as well as a philosophical poet.
He might have offered as amiable and as gallant a defence of the
Muses, as my uncle Toby, in the honest simplicity of his heart, did
of the army. He might have said at once, instead of making a parcel
of wry faces over the matter, that Burns had written Tam o' Shanter,
and that that alone was enough ; that he could hardly have described
the excesses of mad, hairbrained, roaring mirth and convivial in-
dulgence, which are the soul of it, if he himself had not * drunk full
ofter of the ton than of the well ' — unless ' the act and practique part
of life had been the mistress of his theorique.' Mr. Wordsworth
might have quoted such lines as —

* The landlady and Tam grew gracious,
Wi' favours secret, sweet, and precious ' ; —

or,

' Care, mad to see a man so happy,
E'en drown'd himself among the nappy ' ;

and fairly confessed that he could not have written such lines from a
want of proper habits and previous sympathy ; and that till some great
puritanical genius should arise to do these things equally well without
any knowledge of them, the world might forgive Burns the injuries
he had done his health and fortune in his poetical apprenticeship to
experience, for the pleasure he had afforded them. Instead of this,
Mr. Wordsworth hints, that with different personal habits and greater
strength of mind, Burns would have written differently, and almost as
well as be does. He might have taken that line of Gay's,

' The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets,1 —

and applied it in all its force and pathos to the poetical character.
He might have argued that poets are men of genius, and that a man
of genius is not a machine ; that they live in a state of intellectual
intoxication, and that it is too much to expect them to be distinguished
by peculiar sang froid, circumspection, and sobriety. Poets are by
nature men of stronger imagination and keener sensibilities than others;
and it is a contradiction to suppose them at the same time governed
only by the cool, dry, calculating dictates of reason and foresight.
Mr. Wordsworth might have ascertained the boundaries that part the
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LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

provinces of reason and imagination : — that it is the business of the
understanding to exhibit things in their relative proportions and
ultimate consequences — of the imagination to insist on their im-
mediate impressions, and to indulge their strongest impulses ; but it is
the poet's office to pamper the imagination of his readers and his own
with the extremes of present ecstacy or agony, to snatch the swift-
winged golden minutes, the torturing hour, and to banish the dull,
prosaic, monotonous realities of life, both from his thoughts and from
his practice. Mr. Wordsworth might have shewn how it is that all
men of genius, or of originality and independence of mind, are liable
to practical errors, from the very confidence their superiority inspires,
which makes them fly in the face of custom and prejudice, always
rashly, sometimes unjustly ; for, after all, custom and prejudice are
not without foundation in truth and reason, and no one individual is
a match for the world in power, very few in knowledge. The world
may altogether be set down as older and wiser than any single person
in it.

Again, our philosophical letter-writer might have enlarged on the
temptations to which Burns was exposed from his struggles with
fortune and the uncertainty of his fate. He might have shewn how a
poet, not born to wealth or title, was kept in a constant state of feverish
anxiety with respect to his fame and the means of a precarious liveli-
hood : that ' from being chilled with poverty, steeped in contempt, he
had passed into the sunshine of fortune, and was lifted to the very
pinnacle of public favour ' ; yet even there could not count on the
continuance of success, but was, * like the giddy sailor on the mast,
ready with every blast to topple down into the fatal bowels of the
deep ! ' He might have traced his habit of ale-house tippling to the
last long precious draught of his favourite usquebaugh, which he took
in the prospect of bidding farewel for ever to his native land ; and his
conjugal infidelities to his first disappointment in love, which would
not have happened to him, if he had been born to a small estate in
land, or bred up behind a counter !

Lastly, Mr. Wordsworth might have shewn the incompatibility
between the Muses and the Excise, which never agreed well to-
gether, or met in one seat, till they were unaccountably reconciled
on Rydal Mount. He must know (no man better) the distraction
created by the opposite calls of business and of fancy, the torment of
extents, the plague of receipts laid in order or mislaid, the disagree-
ableness of exacting penalties or paying the forfeiture ; and how all
this ^together with the broaching of casks and the splashing of beer-
barrels) must have preyed upon a mind like Burns, with more than
his natural sensibility and none of his acquired firmness.

130

ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

Mr. Coleridge, alluding to this circumstance of the promotion of
the Scottish Bard to be * a gauger of ale-firkins,' in a poetical epistle
to his friend Charles Lamb, calls upon him in a burst of heartfelt
indignation, to gather a wreath of henbane, nettles, and nightshade,

' To twine

The illustrious brow of Scotch nobility.'

If, indeed, Mr. Lamb had undertaken to write a letter in defence of
Burns, how different would it have been from this of Mr. Words-
worth's ! How much better than I can even imagine it to have been
done !

It is hardly reasonable to look for a hearty or genuine defence of
Burns from the pen of Mr. Wordsworth ; for there is no common
link of sympathy between them. Nothing can be more different or
hostile than the spirit of their poetry. Mr. Wordsworth's poetry is
the poetry of mere sentiment and pensive contemplation : Burns's
is a very highly sublimated essence of animal existence. With
Burns, * self-love and social are the same ' —

' And we '11 tak a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.'

Mr. Wordsworth is * himself alone,' a recluse philosopher, or a
reluctant spectator of the scenes of many-coloured life ; moralising on
them, not describing, not entering into them. Robert Burns has
exerted all the vigour of his mind, all the happiness of his nature, in
exalting the pleasures of wine, of love, and good fellowship : but
in Mr. Wordsworth there is a total disunion and divorce of the
faculties of the mind from those of the body ; the banns are forbid,
or a separation is austerely pronounced from bed and board — a mensd
et thoro. From the Lyrical Ballads, it does not appear that men eat
or drink, marry or are given in marriage. If we lived by every
sentiment that proceeded out of mouths, and not by bread or wine, or
if the species were continued like trees (to borrow an expression
from the great Sir Thomas Brown), Mr. Wordsworth's poetry
would be just as good as ever. It is not so with Burns : he is
' famous for the keeping of it up,' and in his verse is ever fresh and
gay. For this, it seems, he has fallen under the displeasure of the
Edinburgh Reviewers, and the still more formidable patronage of
Mr. Wordsworth's pen.

' This, this was the unkindest cut of all.'
I was going to give some extracts out of this composition in

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

support of what I have said, but I find them too tedious. Indeed (if I
may be allowed to speak my whole mind, under correction) Mr.
Wordsworth could not be in any way expected to tolerate or give a
favourable interpretation to Burns's constitutional foibles — even his
best virtues are not good enough for him. He is repelled and driven
back into himself, not less by the worth than by the faults of others.
His taste is as exclusive and repugnant as his genius. It is because
so few things give him pleasure, that he gives pleasure to so few
people. It is not every one who can perceive the sublimity of a
daisy, or the pathos to be extracted from a withered thorn !

To proceed from Burns's patrons to his poetry, than which no two
things can be more different. His * Twa Dogs ' is a very spirited
piece of description, both as it respects the animal and human creation,
and conveys a very vivid idea of the manners both of high and low
life. The burlesque panegyric of the first dog,

' His locked, lettered, braw brass collar
Shew'd him the gentleman and scholar ' —

reminds one of Launce's account of his dog Crabbe, where he is said,
as an instance of his being in the way of promotion, * to have got
among three or four gentleman-like dogs under the Duke's table.'
The * Halloween ' is the most striking and picturesque description of
local customs and scenery. The Brigs of Ayr, the Address to a
Haggis, Scotch Drink, and innumerable others are, however, full of
the same kind of characteristic and comic painting. But his master-
piece in this way is his Tam o' Shanter. I shall give the beginning
of it, but I am afraid I shall hardly know when to leave off.

' When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors, neebors meet,
As market-days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate ;
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
And getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter j
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonny lasses.)
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ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

O Tarn ! hadst thou but been sae wise,
As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice !
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,
A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum ;
That frae November till October
Ae market-day thou was na sober $
That ilka melder, wi' the miller,
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller ;
That ev'ry naig was ca'd a shoe on,
The smith and thee gat roaring fou on j
That at the Lord's house, ev'n on Sunday,
Thou drank wi' Kirton Jean till Monday —
She prophesy 'd, that late or soon,
Thou wad be found deep drown'd in Doon ,•
Or catcht wi' warlocks in the mirk,
By Alloway's auld haunted kirk.

Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet,
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthen'd, sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises !

But to our tale : Ae market night,
Tarn had got planted unco right
Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely,
Wi' reaming swats, that drank divinely j
And at his elbow, Souter Johnny,
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony ;
Tarn lo'ed him like a vera brither ;
They had been fou for weeks thegither.
The night drave on wi' sangs an clatter,
And aye the ale was growing better :
The landlady and Tarn grew gracious
Wi' favours secret, sweet, and precious :
The Souter tauld his queerest stories ;
The landlord's laugh was ready chorus :
The storm without might rair and rustle,
Tarn did na mind the storm a whistle.

Care, mad to see a man sae happy,
E'en drown'd himsel amang the nappy 5
As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure,
The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure :
Kings may be blest, but Tarn was glorious,
O'er a' the ills of life victorious !

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow'r — its bloom is shed ;
Or like the snow, falls in the river,
A moment white — then melts for ever 5

'33

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

Or like the Borealis race,

That flit ere you can point their place ;

Or like the rainbow's lovely form,

Evanishing amid the storm. —

Nae man can tether time or tide,

The hour approaches, Tarn maun ride $

That hour o' night's black arch the key-stane,

That dreary hour he mounts his beast in,

And sic a night he taks the road in,

As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in.

The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last ;
The rattling showers rose on the blast,
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd,
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd :
That night a child might understand,
The Deil had business on his hand.

Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg,
A better never lifted leg,
Tarn skelpit on thro' dub and mire,
Despising wind, and rain, and fire ;
Whiles haulding fast his gude blue bonnet ;
Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet ;
Whiles glowring round wi' prudent cares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares ;
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry. —

By this time Tam was cross the ford,
Whare in the snaw, the chapman smoor'd $
And past the birks and meikle stane,
Whare drunken Charlie brak 's neck-bane ;
And thro' the whins, and by the cairn,
Where hunters fand the murder'd bairn ;
And near the thorn, aboon the well,
Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel. —
Before him Doon pours all his floods ;
The doubling storm roars thro' the woods ;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole ;
Near and more near the thunders roll :
Whan, glimmering thro' the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze ;
Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing ;
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn !
What dangers thou canst make us scorn !
Wi' Tippenny, we fear nae evil,
Wi' Usqueba, we '11 face the devil !
'34

ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddle,
Fair play, he car'd na de'ils a boddle.
But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd,
Till by the heel and hand admonish 'd,
She ventur'd forward on the light,
And, vow ! Tarn saw an unco sight !
Warlocks and witches in a dance,
Nae light cotillion new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
As winnock-bunker, in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast ;
A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge ;
He screw'd the pipes, and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl —
Coffins stood round like open presses,
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses ;
And, by some devilish cantrip slight,
Each in its cauld hand held a light —
By which heroic Tarn was able
To note upon the haly table,
A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns ;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns j
A thief, new cutted frae a rape,
WT his last gasp his gab did gape ;
Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red rusted j
Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted ;
A garter, which a babe had strangled ;
A knife, a father's throat had mangled.
Whom his ain son o' life bereft,
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft ;
Wi' mair, o' horrible and awfu',
Which e'en to name wad be unlawfu'.

As Tammie glowr'd amaz'd, and curious,
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious :
The Piper loud and louder blew ;
The dancers quick and quicker flew ;
They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit,
Till ilka Carlin swat and reekit,
And coost her duddies to the wark,
And linket at it in her sark !

Now Tarn, O Tarn ! had they been queans
A' plump and strapping in their teens ;
Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen,
Been snaw-white seventeen hundred linen !

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LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair,
That ance were plush, o' guid blue hair,
I wad hae gi'en them aff my hurdies,
For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies !

But wither'd beldams, auld and droll,
Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal,
Louping and flinging on a crummock,
I wonder did na turn thy stomach.

But Tam ken'd what was what fV brawly,
There was ae winsome wench and waly,
That night enlisted in the core,
(Lang after ken'd on Carrick shore ;
For mony a beast to dead she shot,
And perish'd mony a bonnie boat,
And shook baith meikle corn and bear,
And kept the country-side in fear — )
Her cutty sark o' Paisley harn,
That while a lassie she had worn,
In longitude tho' sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vaunty. —
Ah ! little ken'd thy reverend grannie,
That sark she coft for her wee Nannie,
Wi' twa pund Scots ('twas a' her riches),
Wad ever grac'd a dance of witches !

But here my Muse her wing maun cour ;
Sic flights are far beyond her power :
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was, and strang)
And how Tam stood like ane bewitch'd,
And thought his very een enriched ;
Ev'n Satan glowr'd and fidg'd fu' fain,
And hotch't, and blew wi' might and main ;
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason a' thegither,
And roars out, ' Weel done, Cutty Sark ! '
And in an instant all was dark ;
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion sallied.

As bees biz out wi' angry fyke
When plundering herds assail their byke ;
As open pussie's mortal foes,
i When, pop ! she starts before their nose ;
As eager rins the market-crowd,
When « Catch the thief ! ' resounds aloud ;
So Maggie rins — the witches follow,
Wi' mony an eldritch skreech and hollow,
136

ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

Ah, Tarn ! ah, Tarn ! thou '11 get thy fairin' !
In hell they '11 roast thee like a herrin' !
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin' !
Kate soon will be a waefu' woman !
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stane o' the brig j
There, at them thou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they dare na cross ;
But ere the key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail she had to shake !
For Nannie, far before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And flew at Tarn wi' furious ettle ;
But little wist she Maggie's mettle —
Ae spring brought off her master hale,
But left behind, her ain grey tail :
The Carlin claught her by the rump,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.

Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother's son tak heed :
Whane'er to drink you are inclin'd,
Or Cutty Sarks rin in your mind,
Think, ye may buy the joys owre dear ;
Remember Tarn o' Shanter's mare.'

Burns has given the extremes of licentious eccentricity and con-
vivial enjoyment, in the story of this scape-grace, and of patriarchal
simplicity and gravity in describing the old national character of the
\Scottish peasantry. The Cotter's Saturday Night is a noble and
pathetic picture of human manners, mingled with a fine religious awe.
It comes over the mind like a slow and solemn strain of music. The
soul of the poet aspires from this scene of low-thoughted care, and
reposes, in trembling hope, on * the bosom of its Father and its God.'
Hardly any thing can be more touching than the following stanzas,
for instance, whether as they describe human interests, or breathe a
lofty devotional spirit.

' The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes,
This night his weekly moil is at an end,
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.

At length his lonely cot appears in view,

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ;
Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through

To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise and glee.

•37

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

His wee-bit ingle, blinkin bonilie,

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile,
The lisping infant, prattling on his knee,

Does a' his weary carking cares beguile,
And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil.

Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in,

At service out, amang the farmers roun',
Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin

A cannie errand to a neebor town ;
Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,

In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e,
Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown,

Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee,
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.

Wi' joy unfeign'd, brothers and sisters meet,

An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers ;
The social hours, swift-winged, unnotic'd fleet ;

Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears :
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years ;

Anticipation forward points the view 5
The mither, wi' her needle an' her shears,

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel 's the new ;
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.

But, hark ! a rap comes gently to the door ;

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same,
Tells how a neebor lad cam o'er the moor,

To do some errands, and convoy her hame.
The wily mother sees the conscious flame

Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek ;
With heart-struck, anxious care, inquires his name,

While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak ;
Weel pleas'd the mother hears it 's nae wild, worthless rake.

Wi' kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben ;

A strappan youth ; he taks the mother's eye ;
Blithe Jenny sees the visit 's no ill ta'en ;

The father craks of horses, pleughs, and kye.
The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy,

But blate an' laithfu', scarce can weel behave ;
The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy

What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave ;
Weel-pleas'd to think her bairn 's respected like the lave.

But now the supper crowns their simple board,
The halesome parritch, chief o' Scotia's food :

ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

The soupe their only hawkie does afford,

That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood :

The dame brings forth, in complimental mood,
To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell,

An' aft he 's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid 5
The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell,

How 'twas a towmond auld, sin' lint was i' the bell.

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,

They, round the ingle, form a circle wide j
The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace,

The big ha'- Bible, ance his father's pride :
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,

His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,

He wales a portion wi' judicious care ;
And ' Let us worship God ! ' he says, with solemn air.

They chant their artless notes in simple guise ;

They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim :
Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbling measures rise,

Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name ;
Or noble Elgin beets the heav'n-ward flame,

The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays :
Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame j

The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise ;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.' —

Burns's poetical epistles to his friends are admirable, whether for
the touches of satire, the painting of character, or the sincerity of
friendship they display. Those to Captain Grose, and to Davie, a
brother poet, are among the best : — they are ' the true pathos and
sublime of human life.' His prose-letters are sometimes tinctured
with affectation. They seem written by a man who has been
admired for his wit, and is expected on all occasions to shine. Those in
which he expresses his ideas of natural beauty in reference to Alison's
Essay on Taste, and advocates the keeping up the remembrances of
old customs and seasons, are the most powerfully written. His
English serious odes and moral stanzas are, in general, failures, such
as the The Lament, Man was made to Mourn, &c. nor do I much
admire his * Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled.' In this strain of
didactic or sentimental moralising, the lines to Glencairn are the
most happy, and impressive. His imitations of the old humorous
ballad style of Ferguson's songs are no whit inferior to the admirable
originals, such as 'John Anderson, my Joe,' and many more. But
of all his productions, the pathetic and serious love-songs which he

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

has left behind him, in the manner of the old ballads, are perhaps
those which take the deepest and most lasting hold of the mind.
Such are the lines to Mary Morison, and those entitled Jessy.

' Here 's a health to ane I lo'e dear —
Here 's a health to ane I lo'e dear —
Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet,
And soft as their parting tear— Jessy !

Altho' thou maun never be mine,

Altho' even hope is denied ;
'Tis sweeter for thee despairing,

Than aught in the world beside — Jessy ! '

The conclusion of the other is as follows.

' Yestreen, when to the trembling string

The dance gaed through the lighted ha',
To thee my fancy took its wing,

I sat, but neither heard nor saw.
Tho' this was fair, and that was bra',

And yon the toast of a' the town,
I sighed and said among them a',

Ye are na' Mary Morison.'

That beginning, « Oh gin my love were a bonny red rose,' is a piece
of rich and fantastic description. One would think that nothing
could surpass these in beauty of expression, and in true pathos : and
nothing does or can, but some of the old Scotch ballads themselves.
There is in them a still more original cast of thought, a more
romantic imagery — the thistle's glittering down, the gilliflower on the
old garden -wall, the horseman's silver bells, the hawk on its perch —
a closer intimacy with nature, a firmer reliance on it, as the only
stock of wealth which the mind has to resort to, a more infantine
simplicity of manners, a greater strength of affection, hopes longer
cherished and longer deferred, sighs that the heart dare hardly heave,
and 'thoughts that often lie too deep for tears.' We seem to feel
that those who wrote and sung them (the early minstrels) lived in the
open air, wandering on from place to place with restless feet and
thoughts, and lending an ever-open ear to the fearful accidents of war
or love, floating on the breath of old tradition or common fame, and
moving the strings of their harp with sounds that sank into a nation's
heart. How fine an illustration of this is that passage in Don
Quixote, where the knight and Sancho, going in search of Dulcinea,
inquire their way of the countryman, who was driving his mules to
plough before break of day, « singing the ancient ballad of Ronces-
140

ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

valles.' Sir Thomas Overbury describes his country girl as still
accompanied with fragments of old songs. One of the best and most
striking descriptions of the effects of this mixture of national poetry
and music is to be found in one of the letters of Archbishop Herring,
giving an account of a confirmation-tour in the mountains of Wales.

' That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, for we were to
mount a rock, and in many places of the road, over natural stairs of stone.
I submitted to this, which they told me was but a taste of the country, and
to prepare me for worse things to come. However, worse things did not
come that morning, for we dined soon after out of our own wallets ; and
though our inn stood in a place of the most frightful solitude, and the best
formed for the habitation of monks (who once possessed it) in the world,
yet we made a cheerful meal. The novelty of the thing gave me spirits, and
the air gave me appetite much keener than the knife I ate with. We had
our music too ; for there came in a harper, who soon drew about us a group
of figures that Hogarth would have given any price for. The harper was
in his true place and attitude ; a man and woman stood before him, singing
to his instrument wildly, but not disagreeably ; a little dirty child was
playing with the bottom of the harp ; a woman in a sick night-cap hanging
over the stairs ; a boy with crutches fixed in a staring attention, and a girl
carding wool in the chimney, and rocking a cradle with her naked feet,
interrupted in her business by the charms of the music ; all ragged and
dirty, and all silently attentive. These figures gave us a most entertaining
picture, and would please you or any man of observation ; and one reflection
gave me a particular comfort, that the assembly before us demonstrated,
that even here, the influential sun warmed poor mortals, and inspired them
with love and music.1

I could wish that Mr. Wilkie had been recommended to take this
group as the subject of his admirable pencil ; he has painted a picture
of Bathsheba, instead.

In speaking of the old Scotch ballads, I need do no ifaore than
mention the name of Auld Robin Gray. The effect of reading this
old ballad is as if all our hopes and fears hung upon the last fibre of
the heart, and we felt that giving way. What silence, what loneli-
ness, what leisure for grief and despair !

' My father pressed me sair,

Though my mother did na' speak ;
But she looked in my face

Till my heart was like to break.'

The irksomeness of the situations, the sense of painful dependence, is
excessive ; and yet the sentiment of deep-rooted, patient affection
triumphs over all, and is the only impression that remains. Lady

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LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

Ann Both well's Lament is not, I think, quite equal to the lines
beginning —

' O waly, waly, up the bank,

And waly, waly, down the brae,
And waly, waly, yon burn side,

Where I and my love wont to gae.
I leant my back unto an aik,

I thought it was a trusty tree ;
But first it bow'd, and syne it brak,

Sae my true-love 's forsaken me.

O waly, waly, love is bonny,

A little time while it is new ;
But when its auld, it waxeth cauld,

And fades awa' like the morning dew.
When cockle-shells turn siller bells,

And muscles grow on every tree,
Whan frost and snaw sail warm us aw,

Then sail my love prove true to me.

Now Arthur seat sail be my bed,
The sheets sail ne'er be fyld by me :

Saint Anton's well sail be my drink,
Since my true-love 's forsaken me.

Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw,
And shake the green leaves aff the tree ?

0 gentle death, whan wilt thou cum,
And tak' a life that wearies me !

'Tis not the frost that freezes sae,

Nor blawing snaw's inclemencie,
'Tis not sic cauld, that makes me cry,

But my love's heart grown cauld to me.
Whan we came in by Glasgow town,

We were a comely sight to see,
My love was clad in black velvet,

And I myself in cramasie. j

But had I wist before I lust,

That love had been sae hard to win ;

1 'd lockt my heart in case of gowd,

And pinn'd it with a siller pin.
And oh ! if my poor babe were born,

And set upon the nurse's knee,
And I mysel in the cold grave !

Since my true-love 's forsaken me.'

The finest modern imitation of this style is the Braes of Yarrow ;
and perhaps the finest subject for a story of the same kind in any
142

ON THE LIVING POETS

modern book, is that told in Turner's History of England, of a
Mahometan woman, who having fallen in love with an English
merchant, the father of Thomas a Becket, followed him all the way
to England, knowing only the word London, and the name of her
lover, Gilbert.

But to have done with this, which is rather too serious a subject. —
The old English ballads are of a gayer and more lively turn. They
are adventurous and romantic ; but they relate chiefly to good living
and good fellowship, to drinking and hunting scenes. Robin Hood
is the chief of these, and he still, in imagination, haunts Sherwood
Forest. The archers green glimmer under the waving branches ;
the print on the grass remains where they have just finished their
noon-tide meal under the green- wood tree ; and the echo of their
bugle-horn and twanging bows resounds through the tangled mazes of
the forest, as the tall slim deer glances startled by.

* The trees in Sherwood Forest are old and good 5
The grass beneath them now is dimly green :
Are they deserted all ? Is no young mien,
With loose-slung bugle, met within the wood ?

No arrow found — foil'd of its antler'd food —

Struck in the oak's rude side ? — Is there nought seen
To mark the revelries which there have been,

In the sweet days of merry Robin Hood ?

Go there with summer, and with evening — go

In the soft shadows, like some wand'ring man —

And thou shalt far amid the forest know
The archer-men in green, with belt and bow,

Feasting on pheasant, river-fowl and swan,

With Robin at their head, and Marian.' 1

LECTURE VIII

ON THE LIVING POETS

1 No more of talk where God or Angel guest
With man, as with his friend, familiar us'd
To sit indulgent.'

GENIUS is the heir of fame ; but the hard condition on which the
bright reversion must be earned is the loss of life. Fame is the
recompense not of the living, but of the dead. The temple of fame

1 Sonnet on Sherwood Forest, by J. H. Reynolds, Esq.

'43

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

stands upon the grave : the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled
from the ashes of great men. Fame itself is immortal, but it is not
begot till the breath of genius is extinguished. For fame is not
popularity, the shout of the multitude, the idle buzz of fashion, the
venal puff, the soothing flattery of favour or of friendship; but it is
the spirit of a man surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of
other men, undying and imperishable. It is the power which the
intellect exercises over the intellect, and the lasting homage which is
paid to it, as such, independently of time and circumstances, purified
from partiality and evil-speaking. Fame is the sound which the
stream of high thoughts, carried down to future ages, makes as it flows
— deep, distant, murmuring evermore like the waters of the mighty
ocean. He who has ears truly touched to this music, is in a manner
deaf to the voice of popularity. — The love of fame differs from mere
vanity in this, that the one is immediate and personal, the other ideal
and abstracted. It is not the direct and gross homage paid to himself,
that the lover of true fame seeks or is proud of ; but the indirect and
pure homage paid to the eternal forms of truth and beauty as they
are reflected in his mind, that gives him confidence and hope. The
love of nature is the first thing in the mind of the true poet : the

(admiration of himself the last. A man of genius cannot well be
a coxcomb ; for his mind is too full of other things to be much
occupied with his own person. He who is conscious of great powers in
himself, has also a high standard of excellence with which to compare
his efforts : he appeals also to a test and judge of merit, which is
the highest, but which is too remote, grave, and impartial, to flatter his
self-love extravagantly, or puff him up with intolerable and vain conceit.
This, indeed, is one test of genius and of real greatness of mind,
whether a man can wait patiently and calmly for the award of
posterity, satisfied with the unwearied exercise of his faculties, retired
within the sanctuary of his own thoughts ; or whether he is eager to
forestal his own immortality, and mortgage it for a newspaper pufT.
He who thinks much of himself, will be in danger of being forgotten
by the rest of the world : he who is always trying to lay violent
hands on reputation, will not secure the best and most lasting. If
the restless candidate for praise takes no pleasure, no sincere and
heartfelt delight in his works, but as they are admired and applauded
by others, what should others see in them to admire or applaud ?
They cannot be expected to admire them because they are his ; but
for the truth and nature contained in them, which must first be inly
felt and copied with severe delight, from the love of truth and nature,
before it can ever appear there. Was Raphael, think you, when he
painted his pictures of the Virgin and Child in all their inconceivable
144

ON THE LIVING POETS

truth and beauty of expression, thinking most of his subject or of
himself? Do you suppose that Titian, when he painted a landscape,
was pluming himself on being thought the finest colourist in the world,
or making himself so by looking at nature ? Do you imagine that
Shakspeare, when he wrote Lear or Othello, was thinking of any
thing but Lear and Othello ? Or that Mr. Kean, when he plays
these characters, is thinking of the audience ? — No : he who would
be great in the eyes of others, must first learn to be nothing in his
own. The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only
.another name for the love of excellence ; or it is the ambition to attain
the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority — that of
time.

Those minds, then, which are the most entitled to expect it, can
best put up with the postponement of their claims to lasting fame.
They can afford to wait. They are not afraid that truth and nature
will ever wear out ; will lose their gloss with novelty, or their effect
with fashion. If their works have the seeds of immortality in them,
they will live ; if they have not, they care little about them as theirs.
They do not complain of the start which others have got of them in
the race of everlasting renown, or of the impossibility of attaining the
honours which time alone can give, during the term of their natural
lives. They know that no applause, however loud and violent, can
anticipate or over-rule the judgment of posterity ; that the opinion of
no one individual, nor of any one generation, can have the weight, the
authority (to say nothing of the force of sympathy and prejudice),
which must belong to that of successive generations. The brightest
living reputation cannot be equally imposing to the imagination, with
that which is covered and rendered venerable with the hoar of
innumerable ages. No modern production can have the same
atmosphere of sentiment around it, as the remains of classical
antiquity. But then our moderns may console themselves with the
reflection, that they will be old in their turn, and will either be
remembered with still increasing honours, or quite forgotten!

I would speak of the living poets as I have spoken of the dead\\
(for I think highly of many of them) ; but I cannot speak of themj \
with the same reverence, because I do not feel it ; with the same) \
confidence, because I cannot have the same authority to sanction my
opinion. I cannot be absolutely certain that any body, twenty years
hence, will think any thing about any of them ; but we may be
pretty sure that Milton and Shakspeare will be remembered twenty
years hence. We are, therefore, not without excuse if we husband our
enthusiasm a little, and do not prematurely lay out our whole stock
in untried ventures, and what may turn out to be false bottoms. I

VOL. v. : K 145

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

have myself out-lived one generation of favourite poets, the Darwins,
the Hayleys, the Sewards. Who reads them now ? — If, however, I
have not the verdict of posterity to bear me out in bestowing the
most unqualified praises on their immediate successors, it is also to
be remembered, that neither does it warrant me in condemning them.
Indeed, it was not my wish to go into this ungrateful part of the
subject ; but something of the sort is expected from me, and I must
run the gauntlet as well as I can. Another circumstance that adds
to the difficulty of doing justice to all parties is, that I happen to
have had a personal acquaintance with some of these jealous votaries
of the Muses ; and that is not the likeliest way to imbibe a high
opinion of the rest. Poets do not praise one another in the language
of hyperbole. I am afraid, therefore, that I labour under a degree
of prejudice against some of the most popular poets of the day, from
an early habit of deference to the critical opinions of some of the
least popular. I cannot say that I ever learnt much about Shakspeare
or Milton, Spenser or Chaucer, from these professed guides ; for I
never heard them say much about them. They were always talking
of themselves and one another. Nor am I certain that this sort of
personal intercourse with living authors, while it takes away all real
relish or freedom of opinion with regard to their contemporaries,
greatly enhances our respect for themselves. Poets are not ideal beings ;
but have their prose-sides, like the commonest of the people. We
, often hear persons say, What they would have given to have seen
Shakspeare ! For my part, I would give a great deal not to have
seen him ; at least, if he was at all like any body else that I have
ever seen. But why should he ; for his works are not ! This is,
doubtless, one great advantage which the dead have over the living.
It is always fortunate for ourselves and others, when we are prevented
from exchanging admiration for knowledge. The splendid vision
that in youth haunts our idea of the poetical character, fades, upon
acquaintance, into the light of common day ; as the azure tints that
deck the mountain's brow are lost on a nearer approach to them.
It is well, according to the moral of one of the Lyrical Ballads, —
« To leave Yarrow unvisited.' But to leave this « face-making,' and
begin. —

I am a great admirer of the female writers of the present day ;
they appear to me like so many modern Muses. I could be in love
with Mrs. Inchbald, romantic with Mrs. Radcliffe, and sarcastic
with Madame D'Arblay : but they are novel-writers, and, like
Audrey, may « thank the Gods for not having made them poetical.'
Did any one here ever read Mrs. Leicester's School ? If they have
not, I wish they would ; there will be just time before the next three

146

ON THE LIVING POETS

volumes of the Tales of My T.anrllnrH come out. That is not a
school of affectation, but of humanity. No one can think too highly
of the work, or highly enough of the author.

The first poetess I can recollect is Mrs. Barbauld, with whose
works I became acquainted before those" 6F any other author, male
or female, when I was learning to spell words of one syllable in her
story-books for children. I became acquainted with her poetical
works long after in Enfield's Speaker ; and remember being much
divided in my opinion at that time, between her Ode to Spring and
Collins's Ode to Evening. I wish I could repay my childish debt of
gratitude in terms of appropriate praise. She is a very pretty poetess ;
and, to my fancy, strews the flowers of poetry most agreeably round
the borders of religious controversy. She is a neat and pointed
prose-writer. Her * Thoughts on the Inconsistency of Human
Expectations,' is one of the most ingenious and sensible essays in
the language. There is the same idea in one of Barrow's Sermons.

Mrs. Hannah More is another celebrated modern poetess, and I
believe still living. She has written a great deal which I have never
read.

Miss Baillie must make up this trio of female poets. Her tragedies
and comedies, one of each to illustrate each of the passions, separately
from the rest, are heresies in the dramatic art. She is a Unitarian
in poetry. With her the passions are, like the French republic, one
and indivisible : they are not so in nature, or in Shakspeare. Mr.
Southey has, I believe, somewhere expressed an opinion, that the
Basil of Miss Baillie is superior to Romeo and Juliet. I shall not
stay to contradict him. On the other hand, I prefer her De Mont-
fort, which was condemned on the stage, to some later tragedies,
which have been more fortunate — to the Remorse, Bertram, and
lastly, Fazio. There is in the chief character of that play a nerve,
a continued unity of interest, a setness of purpose and precision of
outline which John Kemble alone was capable of giving ; and there
is all the grace which women have in writing. In saying that De
Montfort was a character which just suited Mr. Kemble, I mean to
pay a compliment to both. He was not ' a man of no mark or likeli-
hood ' : and what he could be supposed to do particularly well, must
have a meaning in it. As to the other tragedies just mentioned, there
is no reason why any common actor should not * make mouths in
them at the invisible event,' — one as well as another. Having thus
expressed my sense of the merits of the authoress, I must add, that
her comedy of the Election, performed last summer at the Lyceum
with indifferent success, appears to me the perfection of baby-house
theatricals. Every thing in it has such a do-me-good air, is so insipid

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

and amiable. Virtue seems such a pretty playing at make-believe,
and vice is such a naughty word. It is a theory of some French
author, that little girls ought not to be suffered to have dolls to play
with, to call them pretty dears, to admire their black eyes and cherry
cheeks, to lament and bewail over them if they fall down and hurt
their faces, to praise them when they are good, and scold them when
they are naughty. It is a school of affectation : Miss Baillie has
profited of it. She treats her grown men and women as little girls
treat their dolls — makes moral puppets of them, pulls the wires, and
they talk virtue and act vice, according to their cue and the title
prefixed to each comedy or tragedy, not from any real passions of
their own, or love either of virtue or vice.

The transition from these to Mr. Rogers's Pleasures of Memory,
is not far : he is a very lady-like poet. He is an elegant, but feeble
writer. He wraps up obvious thoughts in a glittering cover of fine
words ; is full of enigmas with no meaning to them ; is studiously
inverted, and scrupulously far-fetched; and his verses are poetry, 1
chiefly because no particle, line, or syllable of them reads like prose. I
He differs from Milton in this respect, who is accused of having
inserted a number of prosaic lines in Paradise Lost. This kind
of poetry, which is a more minute and inoffensive species of the
Delia Cruscan, is like the game of asking what one's thoughts are
like. It is a tortuous, tottering, wriggling, fidgetty translation of
every thing from the vulgar tongue, into all the tantalizing, teasing,
tripping, lisping mimminee-pimminee of the highest brilliancy and
fashion of poetical diction. You have nothing like truth of nature
or simplicity of expression. The fastidious and languid reader is
never shocked by meeting, from the rarest chance in the world,
with a single homely phrase or intelligible idea. You cannot see
the thought for the ambiguity of the language, the figure for the
finery, the picture for the varnish. The whole is refined, and
frittered away into an appearance of the most evanescent brilliancy
and tremulous imbecility. — There is no other fault to be found with £
the Pleasures of Memory, than a want of taste and genius. The 1
sentiments are amiable, and the notes at the end highly interesting,
particularly the one relating to the Countess Pillar (as it is called)
between Appleby and Penrith, erected (as the inscription tells the
thoughtful traveller) by Anne Countess of Pembroke, in the year
1648, in memory of her last parting with her good and pious mother
in the same place in the year 1616.

' To shew that power of love, how great

Beyond all human estimate.'
148

ON THE LIVING POETS

This story is also told in the poem, but with so many artful innuendos
and tinsel words, that it is hardly intelligible ; and still less does it
reach the heart.

Campbell's Pleasures of Hope is of the same school, in which a
painful attention is paid to the expressiuu in proportion as there is
little to express, and the decomposition of prose is substituted for the
composition of poetry. How much the sense and keeping in the
ideas are sacrificed to a jingle of words and epigrammatic turn of
expression, may be seen in such lines as the following : — one of the
characters, an old invalid, wishes to end his days under

' Some hamlet shade, to yield his sickly form
Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm.'

Now the antithesis here totally fails : for it is the breeze, and not
the tree, or as it is quaintly expressed, hamlet shade, that affords
health, though it is the tree that affords shelter in or from the storm.
Instances of the same sort of curiosa infelicitas are not rare in this
author. His verses on the Battle of Hohenlinden have considerable
spirit and animation. His Gertrude of Wyoming is his principal
performance. It is a kind of historical paraphrase of Mr. Words-
worth's poem of Ruth. It shews little power, or power enervated
by extreme fastidiousness. It is

* Of outward show

Elaborate ; of inward less exact.'

There are painters who trust more to the setting of their pictures
than to the truth of the likeness. Mr. Campbell always seems to me
to be thinking how his poetry will look when it comes to be hot-
pressed on superfine wove paper, to have a disproportionate eye to
points and commas, and dread of errors of the press. He is so
afraid of doing wrong, of making the smallest mistake, that he does
little or nothing. Lest he should wander irretrievably from the
right path, he stands still. He writes according to established
etiquette. He offers the Muses no violence. If he lights upon a
good thought, he immediately drops it for fear of spoiling a good
thing. When he launches a sentiment that you think will float him
triumphantly for once to the bottom of the stanza, he stops short
at the end of the first or second line, and stands shivering on the
brink of beauty, afraid to trust himself to the fathomless abyss. Tutus
nimium, timidusque procellarum. His very circumspection betrays
him. The poet, as well as the woman, that deliberates, is undone.
He is much like a man whose heart fails him just as he is going up
in a balloon, and who breaks his neck by flinging himself out of it

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LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

when it is too late. Mr. Campbell too often maims and mangles
his ideas before they are full formed, to fit them to the Procustes'
bed of criticism ; or strangles his intellectual offspring in the birth, j
lest they should come to an untimely end in the Edinburgh Review, f
He plays the hypercritic on himself, and starves his genius to death
from a needless apprehension of a plethora. No writer who thinks
habitually of the critics, either to tremble at their censures or set
them at defiance, can write well. It is the business of reviewers
to watch poets, not of poets to watch reviewers. — There is one
admirable simile in this poem, of the European child brought by
the sooty Indian in his hand, * like morning brought by night.' The
love-scenes in Gertrude of Wyoming breathe a balmy voluptuousness
of sentiment ; but they are generally broken off in the middle ; they
are like the scent of a bank of violets, faint and rich, which the
gale suddenly conveys in a different direction. Mr. Campbell is
careful of his own reputation, and economical of the pleasures of
his readers. He treats them as the fox in the fable treated his
guest the stork ; or, to use his own expression, his fine things are

'Like angels' visits, few, and far between/ 1

There is another fault in this poem, which is the mechanical structure
of the fable. The most striking events occur in the shape of
antitheses. TJie story is cut into the form of a parallelogram.
There is the same systematic alternation of good and evil, of violence
and repose, that there is of light and shade in a picture. The Indian,
who is the chief agent in the interest of the poem, vanishes and
returns after long intervals, like the periodical revolutions of the
planets. He unexpectedly appears just in the nick of time, after
years of absence, and without any known reason but the convenience
of the author and the astonishment of the reader ; as if nature were
a machine constructed on a principle of complete contrast, to produce
a theatrical effect. Nee Deus intersit, nisi dignus mndice nodus. Mr.
Campbell's savage never appears but upon great occasions, and then
his punctuality is preternatural and alarming. He is the most
wonderful instance on record of poetical reliability. The most
dreadful mischiefs happen at the most mortifying moments; and
when your expectations are wound up to the highest pitch, you are
sure to have them knocked on the head by a premeditated and
1 There is the same idea in Blair's Grave.

Its visits,

Like those of angels, short, and far between.
Campbell
' are the
I50

Mr. Campbell in altering the expression has spoiled it. 'Few,' and 'far
between,' are the same thing.

ON THE LIVING POETS

remorseless stroke of the poet's pen. This is done so often for the
convenience of the author, that in the end it ceases to be for the
satisfaction of the reader.

Tornjvjourf is a poet of a quite different stamp. He is as heed-
less, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful,
reserved, and parsimonious. The genius of both is national. Mr.
Moore's Muse is another Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable,
and as humane a spirit. His fancy is for ever on the wing, flutters
in the gale, glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and
sparkles in his poetry, while over all love waves his purple light.
His thoughts are as restless, as many, and as bright as the insects
that people the sun's beam. ' So work the honey-bees,' extracting
liquid sweets from opening buds ; so the butterfly expands its wings
to the idle air ; so the thistle's silver down is wafted over summer
seas. An airy voyager on life's stream, his mind inhales the fragrance
of a thousand shores, and drinks of endless pleasures under halcyon
skies. Wherever his footsteps tend over the enamelled ground of
fairy fiction —

' Around him the bees in play flutter and cluster,
And gaudy butterflies frolic around/

The fault of Mr. Moore is an exuberance of involuntary power.
His facility of production lessens the effect of, and hangs as a dead
weight upon, what he produces. His levity at last oppresses. The
infinite delight he takes in such an infinite number of things, creates
indifference in minds less susceptible of pleasure than his own. He
exhausts attention by being inexhaustible. His variety cloys ; his
rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight. The graceful ease with
which he lends himself to every subject, the genial spirit with which
he indulges in every sentiment, prevents him from giving their full
force to the masses of things, from connecting them into a whole.
He wants intensity, strength, and grandeur. His mind does not
brood over the great and permanent ; it glances over the surfaces,
the first impressions of things, instead of grappling with the deep-
rooted prejudices of the mind, its inveterate habits, and that * perilous
stuff that weighs upon the heart.' His pen, as it is rapid and fanciful,
wants momentum and passion. It requires the same principle to
make us thoroughly like poetry, that makes us like ourselves so well,
the feeling of continued identity. The impressions of Mr. Moore's
poetry are detached, desultory, and physical. Its gorgeous colours
brighten and fade like the rainbow's. Its sweetness evaporates like
the effluvia exhaled from beds of flowers ! His gay laughing style,
which relates to the immediate pleasures of love or wine, is better

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

than his sentimental and romantic vein. His Irish melodies are not
free from affectation and a certain sickliness of pretension. His
serious descriptions are apt to run into flowery tenderness. His
pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or crystallizes
into all the prettinesses of allegorical language, and glittering hardness
of external imagery. But he has wit at will, and of the first quality.
His satirical and burlesque poetry is his best : it is first-rate. His
Twopenny Post- Bag is a perfect * nest of spicery ' ; where the Cayenne
is not spared. The politician there sharpens the poet's pen. In this
too, our bard resembles the bee — he has its honey and its sting.

Mr. Moore ought not to have written Lalla Rookh, even for three
thousand guineas. His fame is worth more than that. He should
have minded the advice of Fadladeen. It is not, however, a failure,
so much as an evasion and a consequent disappointment of public
expectation. He should have left it to others to break conventions
with nations, and faith with the world. He should, at any rate,
have kept his with the public. Lalla Rookh is not what people
wanted to see whether Mr. Moore could do ; namely, whether he
could write a long epic poem. It is four short tales. The interest,
however, is often high-wrought and tragic, but the execution still
turns to the effeminate and voluptuous side. Fortitude of mind is
the first requisite of a tragic or epic writer. Happiness of nature
and felicity of genius are the pre-eminent characteristics of the bard
of Erin. If he is not perfectly contented with what he is, all the
world beside is. He had no temptation to risk any thing in adding
to the love and admiration of his age, and more than one country.

* Therefore to be possessed with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper light
To seek the beauteous eye of heav'n to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.'

The same might be said of Mr. Moore's seeking to bind an epic
crown, or the shadow of one, round his other laurels.

1r If Mr. Moore has not suffered enough personally, Lord Byron
(judging from the tone of his writings) might be thought to have
suffered too much to be a truly great poet. If Mr. Moore lays
himself too open to all the various impulses of things, the outward
shews of earth and sky, to every breath that blows, to every stray
sentiment that crosses his fancy ; Lord Byron shuts himself up too
152

ON THE LIVING POETS

much in the impenetrable gloom of his own thoughts, and buries the
natural light of things in 'nook monastic.' xFhe Giaour, the Corsair,
Childe Harold, are all the same person, and they are apparently all
himself. The everlasting repetition of one subject, the same dark
ground of fiction, with the darker colours of the poet's mind spread
over it, the unceasing accumulation of horrors on horror's head, steels
the mind against the sense of pain, as inevitably as the unwearied
Siren sounds and luxurious monotony of Mr. Moore's poetry make
it inaccessible to pleasure. Lord Byron's poetry is as morbid as
Mr. Moore's is careless and dissipated. He has more depth of
passion, more force and impetuosity, but the passion is always of the
same unaccountable character, at once violent and sullen, fierce and
gloomy. It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune,
or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying upon itself,
and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things. There is
nothing less poetical than this sort of unaccommodating selfishness.
There is nothing more repulsive than this sort of ideal absorption of
all the interests of others, of the good and ills of life, in the ruling
passion and moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it would make
itself the centre of the universe, and there was nothing worth cherish-
ing but its intellectual diseases. It is like a cancer, eating into the
heart of poetry. But still there is power ; and power rivets attention
and forces admiration. * He hajtb ^a.. demon i ' and that is the next
thing to being full of the God. His brow collects the scattered gloom :
his eye flashes livid fire that withers and consumes. But still we
watch the progress of the scathing bolt with interest, and mark the
ruin it leaves behind with awe. Within the contracted range of his
imagination, he has great unity and truth of keeping. He chooses
elements and agents congenial to his mind, the dark and glittering
ocean, the frail bark hurrying before the storm, pirates and men that
' house on the wild sea with wild usages.' He gives the tumultuous
eagerness of action, and the fixed despair of thought. In vigour of
style and force of conception, he in one sense surpasses every writer
of the present day. His indignant apothegms are like oracles of
misanthropy. He who wishes for 'a curse to kill with,' may find it
in Lord Byron's writings. Yet he has beauty lurking underneath
his strength, tenderness sometimes joined with the_phrenzy of despair.
A flash of golden light sometimes follows from a stroke of his pencil,
like a falling meteor. The flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over
charnel-houses and the grave !

There is one subject on which Lord Byron is fond of writing, on
which I wish he would not write — Buonaparte. Not that I quarrel
with his writing for him, or against him, but with his writing both

153

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

for him and against him. What right has he to do this? Buonaparte's
character, be it what else it may, does not change every hour accord-
ing to his Lordship's varying humour. He is not a pipe for Fortune's
finger, or for his Lordship's Muse, to play what stop she pleases on.
Why should Lord Byron now laud him to the skies in the hour of
his success, and then peevishly wreak his disappointment on the God
of his idolatry ? The man he writes of does not rise or fall with
circumstances : but * looks on tempests and is never shaken.' Besides,
he is a subject for history, and not for poetry.

' Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread,

But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
And in themselves their pride lies buried ;

For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior, famoused for fight,

After a thousand victories once foil'd,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd.'

If Lord Byron will write any thing more on this hazardous theme,
let him take these lines of Shakspeare for his guide, and finish them
in the spirit of the original — they will then be worthy of the subject.
—•-Walter Scott is the most popular of all the poets of the present
day, and deservedly so. He describes that which is most easily and
generally understood with more vivacity and effect than any body else.
He has no excellences, either of a lofty or recondite kind, which lie
beyond the reach of the most ordinary capacity to find out ; but he
has all the good qualities which all the world agree to understand.
His style is clear, flowing, and transparent : his sentiments, of which
his style is an easy and natural medium, are common to him with his
• readers. He has none of Mr. Wordsworth's idiosyncracy. He differs
/ from his readers only in a greater range of knowledge and facility of
{ expression. His poetry belongs to the class of improvisatori poetry.
It has neither depth, height, nor breadth in it ; neither uncommon
strength, nor uncommon refinement of thought, sentiment, or lan-
guage. It has no originality. But if this author has no research,
no moving power in his own breast, he relies with the greater safety
and success on the force of his subject. He selects a story such as
is sure to please, full of incidents, characters, peculiar manners,
1 costume, and scenery ; and he tells it in a way that can offend no
one. He never wearies or disappoints you. He is communicative
and garrulous ; but he is not his own hero. He never obtrudes him-
self on your notice to prevent your seeing the subject. What passes
in the poem, passes much as it would have done in reality. The
author has little or nothing to do with it. Mr. Scott has great
'54

ON THE LIVING POETS

intuitive power of fancy, great vividness of pencil in placing external
objects and events before the eye. The force of his mind is pic-
turesque, rather than moral. He gives more of the features of nature
than the soul of passion. He conveys the distinct outlines and visible
changes in outward objects, rather than ' their mortal consequences.'
He is very inferior to Lord Byron in intense passion, to Moore in
delightful fancy, to Mr. Wordsworth in profound sentiment : but he
has more picturesque power than any of them ; that is, he pl*aces~tHe~
objects themselves, about which (key might feel and think, in a much
more striking point of view, with greater variety of dress and attitude,
and with more local truth of colouring. His imagery is Gothic and
grotesque. The manners and actions have the interest and curiosity
belonging to a wild country and a distant period of time. Few
descriptions have a more complete reality, a more striking appearance
of life and motion, than that of the warriors in the Lady of the Lake,
who start up at the command of Rhoderic Dhu, from their conceal-
ment under the fern, and disappear again in an instant. The Lay of
the Last Minstrel and Marmion are the first, and perhaps the best
of his works. The Goblin Page, in the first of these, is a very
interesting and inscrutable little personage. In reading these poems,
I confess I am a little disconcerted, in turning over the page, to find
Mr. Westall's pictures, which always seem foe-similes of the persons
represented, with ancient costume and a theatrical air. This may be
a compliment to Mr. Westall, but it is not one to Walter Scott.
The truth is, there is a modern air in the midst of the antiquarian
research of Mr. Scott's poetry. It is history or tradition in mas-
querade. Not only the crust of old words and images is worn off
with time, — the substance is grown comparatively light and worthless.
The forms are old and uncouth ; but the spirit is effeminate and
frivolous. This is a deduction from the praise I have given to his
pencil for extreme fidelity, though it has been no obstacle to its
drawing-room success. He has just hit the town between the
romantic and the fashionable ; and between the two, secured all
classes of readers on his side. In a word, I conceive that he is to
the great poet, what an excellent mimic is to a great actor. There
is no determinate impression left on the mind by reading his poetry.
It has no results. The reader rises up from the perusal with new
images and associations, but he remains the same man that he was
before. A great mind is one that moulds the minds of others.
Mr. Scott has put the Border Minstrelsy and scattered traditions of
the country into easy, animated verse. But the Notes to his poems
are just as entertaining as the poems themselves, and his poems are
only entertaining.

'55

Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet now living. He is the
reverse of Walter Scott in his defects and excellences. He has
nearly all that the other wants, and wants all that the other possesses.
His poetry is not external, but internal ; it does not depend upon
tradition, or story, or old song ; he furnishes it from his own mind,
and is his own subject. He is the poet of mere sentiment. Of many
of the Lyrical Ballads, it is not possible to speak in terms of too high
praise, such as Hart-leap Well, the Banks of the Wye, Poor Susan,
parts of the Leech-gatherer, the lines to a Cuckoo, to a Daisy, the
Complaint, several of the Sonnets, and a hundred others of incon-
ceivable beauty, of perfect originality and pathos. They open a finer
and deeper vein of thought and feeling than any poet in modern times
has done, or attempted^. He has produced a deeper impression, and
on a smaller circle, than any other of his contemporaries. His
powers have been mistaken by the age, nor does he exactly under-
stand them himself. He cannot form a whole. He has not the
constructive faculty. He can give only the fine tones of thought,
drawn from his mind by accident or nature, like the sounds drawn
from the ./Eolian harp by the wandering gale. — He is totally deficient
in all the machinery of poetry. His Excursion, taken as a whole, not-
withstanding the noble materials thrown away in it, is a proof of this.
! The line labours, the sentiment moves slow, but the poem stands
• stock-still. The reader makes no way from the first line to the last.
It is more than any thing in the world like Robinson Crusoe's boat,
which would have been an excellent good boat, and would have
carried him to the other side of the globe, but that he could not get
it out of the sand where it stuck fast. I did what little I could to
help to launch it at the time, but it would not do. I am not, however,
one of those who laugh at the attempts or failures of men of genius.
It is not my way to cry * Long life to the conqueror.' Success and
desert are not with me synonymous terms ; and the less Mr. Words-
worth's general merits have been understood, the more necessary is it
to insist upon them. This is not the place to repeat what I have
already said on the subject. The reader may turn to it in the Round
Table. I do not think, however, there is any thing in the larger
poem equal to many of the detached pieces in the Lyrical Ballads.
As Mr. Wordsworth's poems have been little known to the public,
or chiefly through garbled extracts from them, I will here give an
entire poem (one that has always been a favourite with me), that the
reader may know what it is that the admirers of this author find to
be delighted with in his poetry. Those who do not feel the beauty
and the force of it, may save themselves the trouble of inquiring
farther.
156

ON THE LIVING POETS

HART-LEAP WELL

' The knight had ridden down from Wensley moor

With the slow motion of a summer's cloud ;
He turned aside towards a vassal's door,

And, " Bring another horse ! " he cried aloud.

" Another horse ! " — That shout the vassal heard,
And saddled his best steed, a comely gray;

Sir Walter mounted him ; he was the third
Which he had mounted on that glorious day.

Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes :
The horse and horseman are a happy pair j

But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies,
There is a doleful silence in the air.

A rout this morning left Sir Walter's hall,
That as they galloped made the echoes roar ;

But horse and man are vanished, one and all ;
Such race, I think, was never seen before.

Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind,

Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain :

Brach, Swift, and Music, noblest of their kind,
Follow, and up the weary mountain strain.

The knight hallooed, he chid and cheered them on
With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern ;

But breath and eye-sight fail ; and, one by one,
The dogs are stretched among the mountain fern.

Where is the throng, the tumult of the race ?

The bugles that so joyfully were blown ?
— This chase it looks not like an earthly chase ;

Sir Walter and the hart are left alone.

The poor hart toils along the mountain side ;

I will not stop to tell how far he fled,
Nor will I mention by what death he died ;

But now the knight beholds him lying dead.

Dismounting then, he leaned against a thorn ;

He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy :
He neither smacked his whip, nor blew his horn,

But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy.

Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned,
Stood his dumb partner in this glorious act j

Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned ;
And foaming like a mountain cataract.

157

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

Upon his side the hart was lying stretched :
His nose half-touched a spring beneath a hill,

And with the last deep groan his breath had fetched
The waters of the spring were trembling still.

And now, too happy for repose or rest,
(Was never man in such a joyful case !)

Sir Walter walked all round, north, south, and west,
And gazed, and gazed upon that darling place.

And climbing up the hill — (it was at least
Nine roods of sheer ascent) Sir Walter found,

Three several hoof-marks which the hunted beast
Had left imprinted on the verdant ground.

Sir Walter wiped his face and cried, " Till now
Such sight was never seen by living eyes :

Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow,
Down to the very fountain where he lies.

I '11 build a pleasure-house upon this spot,
And a small arbour, made for rural joy ;

'Twill be the traveller's shed, the pilgrim's cot,
A place of love for damsels that are coy.

A cunning artist will I have to frame

A bason for that fountain in the dell ;
And they, who do make mention of the same

From this day forth, shall call it HART-LEAP WELL.

And, gallant brute ! to make thy praises known,
Another monument shall here be raised j

Three several pillars, each a rough-hewn stone,
And planted where thy hoofs the turf have grazed.

And, in the summer-time when days are long,
I will come hither with my paramour ;

And with the dancers, and the minstrel's song,
We will make merry in that pleasant bower.

Till the foundations of the mountains fail,
My mansion with its arbour shall endure ; —

The joy of them who till the fields of Swale,

And them who dwell among the woods of Ure ! "

Then home he went, and left the hart, stone-dead,
With breathless nostrils stretched above the spring.

— Soon did the knight perform what he had said,

And far and wide the fame thereof did ring.
1 58

ON THE LIVING POETS

Ere thrice the moon into her port had steered,
A cup of stone received the living well 5

Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter reared,
And built a house of pleasure in the dell.

And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall
With trailing plants and trees were intertwined,-

Which soon composed a little sylvan hall,
A leafy shelter from the sun and wind.

And thither, when the summer-days were long,
Sir Walter journeyed with his paramour ;

And with the dancers and the minstrel's song
Made merriment within that pleasant bower.

%,The knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time,

And his bones lie in his paternal vale. —
But there is matter for a second rhyme,
And I to this would add another tale.'

PART SECOND

' The moving accident is not my trade :

To freeze the blood I have no ready arts :
'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.

As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair,

It chanced that I saw standing in a dell
Three aspens at three comers of a square,

And one, not four yards distant, near a well.

What this imported I could ill divine :

And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop,

I saw three pillars standing in a line,
The last stone pillar on a dark hill-top.

The trees were gray, with neither arms nor head ;

Half-wasted the square mound of tawny green ;
So that you just might say, as then I said,

" Here in old time the hand of man hath been."

I looked upon the hill both far and near,

More doleful place did never eye survey ;
It seemed as if the spring-time came not here,

And Nature here were willing to decay.

I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost,
When one, who was in shepherd's garb attired,

Came up the hollow : — Him did I accost,

And what this place might be I then inquired.

'59

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

The shepherd stopped, and that same story told
Which in my former rhyme I have rehearsed.

" A jolly place," said he, " in times of old !
But something ails it now ; the spot is curst.

You see these lifeless stumps of aspen wood —
Some say that they are beeches, others elms —

These were the bower ; and here a mansion stood,
The finest palace of a hundred realms !

The arbour does its own condition tell j

You see the stones, the fountain, and the stream ;

But as to the great lodge ! you might as well
Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.

There 's neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep,
Will wet his lips within that cup of stone ;

And oftentimes, when all are fast asleep,

This water doth send forth a dolorous groan.

Some say that here a murder has been done,

And blood cries out for blood : but, for my part,
/ I Ve guessed, when I 've been sitting in the sun,
That it was all for that unhappy hart.

What thoughts must through the creature's brain have
passed !

Even from the top-most stone, upon the steep,
Are but three bounds — and look, Sir, at this last —

— O Master ! it has been a cruel leap.

For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race;

And in my simple mind we cannot tell
What cause the hart might have to love this place,

And come and make his death-bed near the well.

Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank,
Lulled by this fountain in the summer-tide ;

This water was perhaps the first he drank

When he had wandered from his mother's side.

In April here beneath the scented thorn

He heard the birds their morning carols sing ;

And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was born
Not half a furlong from that self-same spring.

But now here 's neither grass nor pleasant shade j

The sun on drearier hollow never shone ;
So will it be, as I have often said,

Till trees, and stones, and fountain all are gone.'
1 60

ON THE LIVING POETS

' Gray-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well ;

Small difference lies between thy creed and mine :
This beast not unobserved by Nature fell j

His death was mourned by sympathy divine.

The Being, that is in the clouds and air,

That is in the green leaves among the groves,

Maintains a deep, and reverential care

For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.

The pleasure-house is dust : — behind, before,
This is no common waste, no common gloom ;

But Nature, in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

She leaves these objects to a slow decay,

That what we are, and have been, may be known ;

But at the coming of the milder day,
These monuments shall all be overgrown.

One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,

Taught both by what she shews, and what conceals,

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.'

Mr. Wordsworth is at the head of that which has been denominated
the Lake school of poetry ; a school which, with all my respect for
it, I do not think sacred from criticism or exempt from faults, of
some of which faults I shall speak with becoming frankness ; for I
do not see that the liberty of the press ought to be shackled, or free-
dom of speech curtailed, to screen either its revolutionary or renegado
extravagances. This school of poetry had its origin in the French
revolution, or rather in those sentiments and opinions which produced
that revolution ; and which sentiments and opinions were indirectly
imported into this country in translations from the German about that
period. Our poetical literature had, towards the close of the last
century, degenerated into the most trite, insipid, and mechanical of all
things, in the hands of the followers of Pope and the old French school
of poetry. It wanted something to stir it up, and it found that some-
thing in the principles and events of the French revolution. From
the impulse it thus received, it rose at once from the most servile
imitation and tamest common-place, to the utmost pitch of singularity
and paradox. The change in the belles-lettres was as complete, and
to many persons as startling, as the change in politics, with which it
went hand in hand. There was a mighty ferment in the heads of
statesmen and poets, kings and people. According to the prevailing
notions, all was to be natural and new. Nothing that was established

VOL. v. : L 161

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

was to be tolerated. All the common-place figures of poetry, tropes,
allegories, personifications, with the whole heathen mythology, were
instantly discarded ; a classical allusion was considered as a piece of
antiquated foppery; capital letters were no more allowed in print,
than letters-patent of nobility were permitted in real life ; kings and
queens were dethroned from their rank and station in legitimate
tragedy or epic poetry, as they were decapitated elsewhere ; rhyme
was looked upon as a relic of the feudal system, and regular metre
was abolished along with regular government. Authority and fashion,
elegance or arrangement, were hooted out of countenance, as pedantry
and prejudice. Every one did that which was good in his own eyes.
The object was to reduce all things to an absolute level; and a
singularly affected and outrageous simplicity prevailed in dress and
manners, in style and sentiment. A striking effect produced where
it was least expected, something new and original, no matter whether
good, bad, or indifferent, whether mean or lofty, extravagant or
childish, was all that was aimed at, or considered as compatible with
sound philosophy and an age of reason. The licentiousness grew
extreme : Coryate's Crudities were nothing to it. The world was
to be turned topsy-turvy ; and poetry, by the good will of our Adam-
wits, was to share its fate and begin de novo. It was a time of
promise, a renewal of the world and of letters ; and the Deucalions,
who were to perform this feat of regeneration, were the present poet-
laureat and the two authors of the Lyrical Ballads. The Germans,
who made heroes of robbers, and honest women of cast-off mistresses,
had already exhausted the extravagant and marvellous in sentiment
and situation : our native writers adopted a wonderful simplicity of
style and matter. The paradox they set out with was, that all things
are by nature equally fit subjects for poetry ; or that if there is any
preference to be given, those that are the meanest and most unpro-
mising are the best, as they leave the greatest scope for the unbounded
stores of thought and fancy in the writer's own mind. Poetry had
with them ' neither buttress nor coigne of vantage to make its pendant
bed and procreant cradle.' It was not * born so high : its aiery
buildeth in the cedar's top, and dallies with the wind, and scorns
the sun.' It grew like a mushroom out of the ground ; or was
hidden in it like a truffle, which it required a particular sagacity and
industry to find out and dig up. They founded the new school on a
principle of sheer humanity, on pure nature void of art. It could not
be said of these sweeping reformers and dictators in the republic of
letters, that « in their train walked crowns and crownets ; that realms
and islands, like plates, dropt from their pockets ' : but they were
surrounded, in company with the Muses, by a mixed rabble of idle
162

ON THE LIVING POETS

apprentices and Botany Bay convicts, female vagrants, gipsies, meek
daughters in the family of Christ, of ideot boys and mad mothers,
and after them 'owls and night-ravens flew.' They scorned 'degrees,
priority, and place, insisture, course, proportion, season, form, office,
and custom in all line of order ' : — the distinctions of birth, the
vicissitudes of fortune, did not enter into their abstracted, lofty, and
levelling calculation of human nature. He who was more than man,
with them was none. They claimed kindred only with the commonest
of the people : peasants, pedlars, and village-barbers were their oracles
and bosom friends. Their poetry, in the extreme to which it
professedly tended, and was in effect carried, levels all distinctions
of nature and society; has 'no figures nor no fantasies,' which the
prejudices of superstition or the customs of the world draw in the
brains of men ; ' no trivial fond records ' of all that has existed in
the history of past ages ; it has no adventitious pride, pomp, or
circumstance, to set it off; 'the marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's
robe ' ; neither tradition, reverence, nor ceremony, ' that to great
ones 'longs ' : it breaks in pieces the golden images of poetry, and
defaces its armorial bearings, to melt them down in the mould of
common humanity or of its own upstart self-sufficiency. They took
the same method in their new-fangled ' metre ballad-mongering '
scheme, which Rousseau did in his prose paradoxes — of exciting
attention by reversing the established standards of opinion and
estimation in the world. They were for bringing poetry back to
its primitive simplicity and state of nature, as he was for bringing
society back to the savage state : so that the only thing remarkable
left in the world by this change, would be the persons who had
produced it. A thorough adept in this school of poetry and
philanthropy is jealous of all excellence but his own. He does
not even like to share his reputation with his subject ; for he would
have it all proceed from his own power and originality of mind.
Such a one is slow to admire any thing that is admirable ; feels no
interest in what is most interesting to others, no grandeur in any
thing grand, no beauty in anything beautiful. He tolerates only
what he himself creates ; he sympathizes only with what can enter
into no competition with him, with ' the bare trees and mountains
bare, and grass in the green field/ He sees nothing but himself and
the universe. He hates all greatness and all pretensions to it, whether
well or ill-founded. His egotism is in some respects a madness ; for
he scorns even the admiration of himself, thinking it a presumption in
any one to suppose that he has taste or sense enough to understand
him. He hates all science and all art ; he hates chemistry, he hates
conchology ; he hates Voltaire ; he hates Sir Isaac Newton ; he

163

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

hates wisdom ; he hates wit ; he hates metaphysics, which he says
are unintelligible, and yet he would be thought to understand them ;
he hates prose; he hates all poetry but his own; he hates the
dialogues in Shakespeare ; he hates music, dancing, and painting ; he
hates Rubens, he hates Rembrandt; he hates Raphael, he hates
Titian; he hates Vandyke; he hates the antique; he hates the
Apollo Belvidere; he hates the Venus of Medicis. This is the
reason that so few people take an interest in his writings, because he
takes an interest in nothing that others do! — The effect has been
perceived as something odd; but the cause or principle has never
been distinctly traced to its source before, as far as I know. The
proofs are to be found every where — in Mr. Southey's Botany Bay
Eclogues, in his book of Songs and Sonnets, his Odes and Inscrip-
tions, so well parodied in the Anti-Jacobin Review, in his Joan of
Arc, and last, though not least, in his Wat Tyler :

' When Adam delved, and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman ? '

( — or the poet laureat either, we may ask?) — In Mr. Coleridge's
Ode to an Ass's Foal, in his Lines to Sarah, his Religious Musings ;
and in his and Mr. Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, passim.

Of Mr. Southey's larger epics, I have but a faint recollection at
this distance of time, but all that I remember of them is mechanical
and extravagant, heavy and superficial. His affected, disjointed style
is well imitated in the Rejected Addresses. The difference between
him and Sir Richard Blackmore seems to be, that the one is heavy
and the other light, the one solemn and the other pragmatical, the
one phlegmatic and the other flippant ; and that there is no Gay
in the present time to give a Catalogue Raisonne of the performances
of the living undertaker of epics. Kehama is a loose sprawling
figure, such as we see cut out of wood or paper, and pulled or jerked
with wire or thread, to make sudden and surprising motions, without
meaning, grace, or nature in them. By far the best of his works are
some of his shorter personal compositions, in which there is an
ironical mixture of the quaint and serious, such as his lines on a
picture of Caspar Poussin, the fine tale of Gualberto, his Description
of a Pig, and the Holly-tree, which is an affecting, beautiful, and
modest retrospect on his own character. May the aspiration with
which it concludes be fulfilled ! l — But the little he has done of true

1 * O reader ! hast thou ever stood to see

The Holly Tree ?
The eye that contemplates it well perceives

Its glossy leaves,
164

ON THE LIVING POETS

and sterling excellence, is overloaded by the quantity of indifferent
matter which he turns out every year, 'prosing or versing,' with
equally mechanical and irresistible facility. His Essays, or political
and moral disquisitions, are not so full of original matter as Montaigne's.
They are second or third rate compositions in that class.
s*° It remains that I should say a few words of Mr. Coleridge ; and
there is no one who has a better right to say what he thinks of him

Ordered by an intelligence so wise

As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen

Wrinkled and keen ;
No grazing cattle through their prickly round

Can reach to wound ;
But as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,

And moralize ;
And in the wisdom of the Holly Tree

Can emblems see

Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme,
Such as may profit in the after time.

So, though abroad perchance I might appear

Harsh and austere,
To those who on my leisure would intrude

Reserved and rude,

Gentle at home amid my friends I 'd be,
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt I know,

Some harshness show,
All vain asperities I day by day

Would wear away,

Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And as when all the summer trees are seen

So bright and green,
The Holly leaves their fadeless hues display

Less bright than they,

But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree ?

So serious should my youth appear among

The thoughtless throng,
So would I seem amid the young and gay

More grave than they,
That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly Tree.' —

l6S

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

than I have. * Is there here any dear friend of Caesar ? To him I
say, that Brutus's love to Caesar was no less than his.' But no
matter. — His Ancient Mariner is his most remarkable performance,
and the only one that I could point out to any one as giving an
adequate idea of his great natural powers. It is high German,
however, and in it he seems to * conceive of poetry but as a drunken
dream, reckless, careless, and heedless, of past, present, and to come.'
His tragedies (for he has written two) are not answerable to it ; they
are, except a few poetical passages, drawling sentiment and meta-
physical jargon. He has no genuine dramatic talent. There is one
fine passage in his Christabel, that which contains the description
of the quarrel between Sir Leoline and Sir Roland de Vaux of
Tryermaine, who had been friends in youth.

'Alas ! they had been friends in youth,
But whispering tongues can poison truth ;
And constancy lives in realms above ;
And life is thorny ; and youth is vain ;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain :
And thus it chanc'd as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother,
And parted ne'er to meet again !
But neither ever found another
To free the hollow heart from paining —

They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder :
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away I ween
The marks of that which once hath been.

Sir Leoline a moment's space
Stood gazing on the damsel's face ;
And the youthful lord of Tryermaine
Came back upon his heart again.'

It might seem insidious if I were to praise his ode entitled Fire,
Famine, and Slaughter, as an effusion of high poetical enthusiasm,
and strong political feeling. His Sonnet to Schiller conveys a fine
compliment to the author of the Robbers, and an equally fine idea of
the state of youthful enthusiasm in which he composed it.
1 66

ON THE LIVING POETS

'Schiller ! that hour I would have wish'd to die,
If through the shuddering midnight I had sent
From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent,
That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry —

That in no after moment aught less vast

Might stamp me mortal ! A triumphant shout
Black Horror scream'd, and all her goblin rout

From the more withering scene diminished pass'd.

Ah ! Bard tremendous in sublimity !

Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood,
Wand'ring at eve, with finely frenzied eye,

Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood !

Awhile, with mute awe gazing, I would brood,
Then weep aloud in a wild ecstacy ! ' —

His Condones ad Populum, Watchman, &c. are dreary trash. Of
his Friend, I have spoken the truth elsewhere. But I may say of
him here, that he is the only person I ever knew who answered to
the idea of a man of genius. He is the only person from whom I
ever learnt any thing. There is only one thing he could learn from
me in return, but that he has not. He was the first poet I ever '
knew. His genius at that time had angelic wings, and fed on manna.
He talked on for ever ; and you wished him to talk on for ever.
His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort ; but as if
borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination
lifted him from off his feet. His voice rolled on the ear like the
pealing organ, and its sound alone was the music of thought. His
mind was clothed with wings ; and raised on them, he lifted '
philosophy to heaven. In his descriptions, you then saw the
progress of human happiness and liberty in bright and never-ending
succession, like the steps of Jacob's ladder, with airy shapes ascending
and descending, and with the voice of God at the top of the ladder.
And shall I, who heard him then, listen to him now ? Not I ! ....
That spell is broke ; that time is gone for ever ; that voice is heard
no more : but still the recollection comes rushing by with thoughts of
long-past years, and rings in my ears with never-dying sound.

' What though the radiance which was once so bright,
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow'r ;
I do not grieve, but rather find
Strength in what remains behind 5
In the primal sympathy,

167

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

Which having been, must ever be $
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering ;
In years that bring the philosophic mind ! ' —

I have thus gone through the task I intended, and have come at
last to the level ground. I have felt my subject gradually sinking
from under me as I advanced, and have been afraid of ending in
nothing. The interest has unavoidably decreased at almost every
successive step of the progress, like a play that has its catastrophe
in the first or second act. This, however, I could not help. I have
done as well as I could.

End of LECTURES ON
THE ENGLISH POETS

1 68

LECTURES ON

THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth ; Delivered at the
Surrey Institution, By William Hazlitt, were published in 8vo (8J x 5^), in the year
of their delivery, 1820, and they were reviewed in the same year in The Edin-
burgh Re-view. A second edition was published in 1821, of which the present
issue is a reprint. The half-title.reads simply * Hazlitt's Lectures,' and the imprint
is ' London : John Warren, Old Bond-Street. MDCCCXXI.' An ' Erratum,' behind
the Advertisement, 'Page 18, 1. 20, for " wildnesses," read wildernesses,' has been
corrected in the present text.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I.

PAGE

Introductory. — General view of the Subject . . . 175

LECTURE II.

On the Dramatic Writers contemporary with Shakespear, Lyly,

/Marlow, Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley . . 192

LECTURE III.
'On Marston, Chapman, Deckar, and Webster . . . 223

LECTURE IV.

On Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Ford, and Massinger . 248

LECTURE..V.

Tf-

On single Plays, Poems, &c., the Four P's, the Return from

Parnassus, Gammer Gurton's Npedle, and other Works . 274

LECTURE VI.

On Miscellaneous Poems, F. Beaumont, P. Fletcher, Drayton,

Daniel, &c., Sir P. Sidney's Arcadia, and Sonnets . . - 295

LECTUR* VII.

Character of Lord Bacon's Work>^-compared as to style with

Sir Thomas Brown and _Jg»rtny Taylor . . . 326

LECTURE VIII.

On the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Literature — on the German

Drama, contrasted witb fhat of the Age of Elizabeth . 345

BY the Age of Elizabeth (as it relates to the History of our
Literature) I would be understood to mean the time from the
Reformation, to the end of Charles i. including the Writers of
a certain School or style of Poetry or Prose, who flourished together
or immediately succeeded one another within this period. I have,
in the following pages, said little of two of the greatest Writers of
that Age, Shakespear and Spenser, because I had treated of them
separately in former Publications.

LECTURES ON
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH, &c.

LECTURE L— INTRODUCTORY

GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT

THE age of Elizabeth was distinguished, beyond, perhaps, any other
in our history, by a number of great men, famous in different ways,
and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours ;
statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers, Raleigh,
Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still
more frequent in our mouths, Shakespear, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon,
Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, mea whom fame has eternised in
her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were
benefactors of their country, and ornaments of human nature. Their
attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it
was sterling : what they did, had the mark of their age and country
upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak
without offence or flattery), never shone out fuller or brighter, or
looked more like itself, than at this period. Our writers and great
men had something in them that savoured of the soil from which
they grew : they were not French, they were not Dutch, or German,
or Greek, or Latin ; they were truly English. They did not look
out of themselves to see what they should be ; they sought for
truth and nature, and found it in themselves. There was no tinsel,
and but little art ; they were not the spoiled children of affectation
and refinement, but a bold, vigorous, independent race of thinkers,
with prodigious strength and energy, with none but natural grace,
and heartfelt unobtrusive delicacy. They were not at all sophisticated.
The mind of their country was great in them, and it prevailed. With
their learning and unexampled acquirement, they did not forget that
they were men : with all their endeavours after excellence, they did
not lay aside the strong original bent and character of their minds.

'75

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

What they performed was chiefly nature's handy-work ; and time
has claimed it for his own. — To these, however, might be added
others not less learned, nor with a scarce less happy vein, but less
fortunate in the event, who, though as renowned in their day, have
sunk into 'mere oblivion,' and of whom the only record (but that
the noblest) is to be found in their works. Their works and their
names, * poor, poor dumb names,' are all that remains of such men
as Webster, Deckar, Marston, Marlow, Chapman, Heywood,
Middleton, and Rowley ! ' How lov'd, how honour'd once, avails
them not : ' though they were the friends and fellow-labourers of
Shakespear, sharing his fame and fortunes with him, the rivals of
Jonson, and the masters of BeannMffl airf Fletcher's well-sung woes! !
They went out one by one unnoticed, like evening lights ; or were
swallowed up in the headlong torrent of puritanic zeal which suc-
ceeded, and swept away every thing in its unsparing course, throwing
up the wrecks of taste and genius at random, and at long fitful
intervals, amidst the painted gew-gaws and foreign frippery of the
reign of Charles n. and from which we are only now recovering the
scattered fragments and broken images to erect a temple to true
Fame ! How long, before it will be completed ?

If I can do any thing to rescue some of these writers from hope-
less obscurity, and to do them right, without prejudice to well-
deserved reputation, I shall have succeeded in what I chiefly propose.
I shall not attempt, indeed, to adjust the spelling, or restore the
pointing, as if the genius of poetry lay hid in errors of the press,
but leaving these weightier matters of criticism to those who are
more able and willing to bear the burden, try to bring out their real
beauties to the eager sight, 'draw the curtain of Time, and shew
the picture of Genius,' restraining my own admiration within
reasonable bounds !

There is not a lower ambition, a poorer way of thought, than
that which would confine all excellence, or arrogate its final accom-
plishment to the present, or modern times. We ordinarily speak
and think of those who had the misfortune to write or live before
us, as labouring under very singular privations and disadvantages in
not having the benefit of those improvements which we have made,
as buried in the grossest ignorance, or the slaves ' of poring pedantry' ;
and we make a cheap and infallible estimate of their progress in
civilization upon a graduated scale of perfectibility, calculated from
the meridian of our own times. If we have pretty well got rid of
the narrow bigotry that would limit all sense or virtue to our own
country, and have fraternized, like true cosmopolites, with our
neighbours and contemporaries, we have made our self-love amends

176

GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT

by letting the generation we live in engross nearly all our admiration
and by pronouncing a sweeping sentence of barbarism and ignorance
on our ancestry backwards, from the commencement (as near as can
be) of the nineteenth, or the latter end of the eighteenth century.
From thence we date a new era, the dawn of our own intellect
and that of the world, like * the sacred influence of light ' glimmer-
ing on the confines of Chaos and old night ; new manners rise, and
all the cumbrous * pomp of elder days ' vanishes, and is lost in
worse than Gothic darkness. Pavilioned in the glittering pride of
our superficial accomplishments and upstart pretensions, we fancy
that every thing beyond that magic circle is prejudice and error ;
and all, before the present enlightened period, but a dull and useless
blank in the great map of time. We are so dazzled with the gloss
and novelty of modern discoveries, that we cannot take into our
mind's eye the vast expanse, the lengthened perspective of human
intellect, and a cloud hangs over and conceals its loftiest monuments,
if they are removed to a little distance from us — the cloud of our
own vanity and shortsightedness. The modern sciolist stultifies all
understanding but his own, and that which he conceives like his
own. We think, in this age of reason and consummation of philo-
sophy, because we knew nothing twenty or thirty years ago, and
began to think then for the first time in our lives, that the rest of
mankind were in the same predicament, and never knew any thing till
we did ; that the world had grown old in sloth and ignorance, had
dreamt out its long minority of five thousand years in a dozing state,
and that it first began to wake out of sleep, to rouse itself, and look
about it, startled by the light of our unexpected discoveries, and the
noise we made about them. Strange error of our infatuated self-love !
Because the clothes we remember to have seen worn when we were
children, are now out of fashion, and our grandmothers were then
old women, we conceive with magnanimous continuity of reasoning,
that it must have been much worse three hundred years before, and
that grace, youth, and beauty are things of modern date — as if nature
had ever been old, or the sun had first shone on our folly and pre-
sumption. Because, in a word, the last generation, when tottering
off the stage, were not so active, so sprightly, and so promising as we
were, we begin to imagine, that people formerly must have crawled
about in a feeble, torpid state, like flies in winter, in a sort of dim v-
twilight of the understanding ; ' nor can we think what thoughts they
could conceive,' in the absence of all those topics that so agreeably
enliven and diversify our conversation and literature, mistaking the
imperfection of our knowledge for the defect of their organs, as if it
was necessary for us to have a register and certificate of their thoughts,
VOL. v. : M 177

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

or as if, because they did not see with our eyes, hear with our ears,
and understand with our understandings, they could hear, see, and
understand nothing. A falser inference could not be drawn, nor
one more contrary to the maxims and cautions of a wise humanity.
* Think,' says Shakespear, the prompter of good and true feelings,
'there's livers out of Britain.' So there have been thinkers, and
great and sound ones, before our time. They had the same capacities
that we have, sometimes greater motives for their exertion, and, for
the most part, the same subject-matter to work upon. What we
learn from nature, we may hope to do as well as they; what we
learn from them, we may in general expect to do worse. — What is,
I think, as likely as any thing to cure us of this overweening admira-
tion of the present, and unmingled contempt for past times, is the
looking at the finest old pictures ; at Raphael's heads, at Titian's
faces, at Claude's landscapes. We have there the evidence of the
senses, without the alterations of opinion or disguise of language.
We there see the blood circulate through the veins (long before it
was known that it did so), the same red and white 'by nature's own
sweet and cunning hand laid on,' the same thoughts passing through
the mind and seated on the lips, the same blue sky, and glittering
sunny vales, ' where Pan, knit with the Graces and the Hours in
dance, leads on the eternal spring.' And we begin to feel, that
nature and the mind of man are not a thing of yesterday, as we had
been led to suppose ; and that ' there are more things between heaven
and earth, than were ever dreamt of in our philosophy.' — Or grant
that we improve, in some respects, in a uniformly progressive ratio,
and build, Babel-high, on the foundation of other men's knowledge,
as in matters of science and speculative inquiry, where by going often
over the same general ground, certain general conclusions have been
arrived at, and in the number of persons reasoning on a given
subject, truth has at last been hit upon, and long-established error
exploded ; yet this does not apply to cases of individual power and
knowledge, to a million of things beside, in which we are still to
seek as much as ever, and in which we can only hope to find, by
going to the fountain-head of thought and experience. We are quite
wrong in supposing (as we are apt to do), that we can plead an
exclusive title to wit and wisdom, to taste and genius, as the net
produce and clear reversion of the age we live in, and that all we
have to do to be great, is to despise those who have gone before us
as nothing.

Or even if we admit a saving clause in this sweeping proscription,
and do not make the rule absolute, the very nature of the exceptions
shews the spirit in which they are made. We single out one or two

178

GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT

striking instances, say Shakespear or Lord Bacon, which we would
fain treat as prodigies, and as a marked contrast to the rudeness and
barbarism that surrounded them. These we delight to dwell upon
and magnify ; the praise and wonder we heap upon their shrines, are
at the expence of the time in which they lived, and would leave it
poor indeed. We make them out something more than human,
* matchless, divine, what we will,' so to make them no rule for their
age, and no infringement of the abstract claim to superiority which
we set up. Instead of letting them reflect any lustre, or add any
credit to the period of history to which they rightfully belong, we
only make use of their example to insult and degrade it still more
beneath our own level.

It is the present fashion to speak with veneration of old English
literature ; but the homage we pay to it is more akin to the rites of
superstition, than the worship of true religion. Our faith is doubtful ;
our love cold ; our knowledge little or none. We now and then
repeat the names of some of the old writers by rote ; but we are shy
of looking into their works. Though we seem disposed to think
highly of them, and to give them every credit for a masculine and
original vein of thought, as a matter of literary courtesy and enlarge-
ment of taste, we are afraid of coming to the proof, as too great a
trial of our candour and patience. We regard the, enthusiastic
admiration of these obsolete authors, or a desire to make proselytes
to a belief in their extraordinary merits, as an amiable weakness,
a pleasing delusion ; and prepare to listen to some favourite passage,
that may be referred to in support of this singular taste, with an
incredulous smile ; and are in no small pain for the result of the
hazardous experiment ; feeling much the same awkward condescend-
ing disposition to patronise these first crude attempts at poetry and
lispings of the Muse, as when a fond parent brings forward a bashful
child to make a display of its wit or learning. We hope the best,
put a good face on the matter, but are sadly afraid the thing cannot
answer. — Dr. Johnson said of these writers generally, that ' they were
sought after because they were scarce, and would not have been
scarce, had they been much esteemed.' His decision is neither true
history nor sound criticism. They were esteemed, and they deserved
to be so.

One cause that might be pointed out here, as having contributed
to the long-continued neglect of our earlier writers, lies in the very
nature of our academic institutions, which unavoidably neutralizes
a taste for the productions of native genius, estranges the mind from
the history of our own literature, and makes it in each successive
age like a book sealed. The Greek and Roman classics are a sort of

179

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

privileged text-books, the standing order of the day, in a University
education, and leave little leisure for a competent acquaintance with,
or due admiration of, a whole host of able writers of our own, who
are suffered to moulder in obscurity on the shelves of our libraries,
with a decent reservation of one or two top-names, that are cried up
for form's sake, and to save the national character. Thus we keep
a few of these always ready in capitals, and strike off the rest, to
prevent the tendency to a superfluous population in the republic of
letters ; in other words, to prevent the writers from becoming more
numerous than the readers. The ancients are become effete in this
respect, they no longer increase and multiply ; or if they have
imitators among us, no one is expected to read, and still less to
admire them. It is not possible that the learned professors and the
reading public should clash in this way, or necessary for them to
use any precautions against each other. But it is not the same with
the living languages, where there is danger of being overwhelmed by
the crowd of competitors ; and pedantry has combined with ignorance
to cancel their unsatisfied claims.

We affect to wonder at Shakespear, and one or two more of that
period, as solitary instances upon record ; whereas it is our own
dearth of information that makes the waste ; for there is no time
more populous of intellect, or more prolific of intellectual wealth,
than the one we are speaking of. Shakespear did not look upon
himself in this light, as a sort of monster of poetical genius, or on his
contemporaries as ' less than smallest dwarfs,' when he speaks with
true, not false modesty, of himself and them, and of his wayward
thoughts, 'desiring this man's art, and that man's scope.' We fancy
that there were no such men, that could either add to or take any
thing away from him, but such there were. He indeed overlooks
and commands the admiration of posterity, but he does it from the
tableland of the age in which he lived. He towered above his fellows,
' in shape and gesture proudly eminent ' ; but he was one of a race of
giants, the tallest, the strongest, the most graceful, and beautiful of
them ; but it was a common and a noble brood. He was not some-
thing sacred and aloof from the vulgar herd of men, but shook hands
with nature and the circumstances of the time, and is distinguished
from his immediate contemporaries, not in kind, but in degree and
greater variety of excellence. He did not form a class or species by
himself, but belonged to a class or species. His age was necessary
to him ; nor could he have been wrenched from his place in the
edifice of which he was so conspicuous a part, without equal injury
to himself and it. Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton, « that his soul
was like a star, and dwelt apart.' This cannot be said with any
1 80

GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT

propriety of Shakespear, who certainly moved in a constellation of

bright luminaries, and ' drew after him a third part of the heavens.'

If we allow, for argument's sake (or for truth's, which is better),

that he was in himself equal to all his competitors put together ;

yet there was more dramatic excellence in that age than in the whole

of the period that has elapsed since. If his contemporaries, with

their united strength, would hardly make one Shakespear, certain it

is that all his successors would not make half a one. With the

exception of a single writer, Otway, and of a single play of his

(Venice Preserved), there is nobody in tragedy and dramatic poetry

(I do not here speak of comedy) to be compared to the great men

of the age of Shakespear, and immediately after. They are a

mighty phalanx of kindred spirits closing him round, moving in the

same orbit, and impelled by the same causes in their whirling and*

eccentric career. They had the same faults and the same excellences ;

the same strength and depth and richness, the same truth of character,

passion, imagination, thought and language, thrown, heaped, massed

together without careful polishing or exact method, but poured out in

unconcerned profusion from the lap of nature and genius in boundless

and unrivalled magnificence. The sweetness of Deckar, the thought

of Marston, the gravity of Chapman, the grace of Fletcher and his

young-eyed wit, Jonson's learned sock, the flowing vein of Middleton,

Hey wood's ease, the pathos of Webster, and Mario w's deep designs,

add a double lustre to the sweetness, thought, gravity, grace, wit,

artless nature, copiousness, ease, pathos, and sublime conceptions of

Shakespear's Muse. They are indeed the scale by which we canx

best ascend to the true knowledge and love of him. Our admiration"

of them does not lessen our relish for him : but, on the contrary,

increases and confirms it. — For such an extraordinary combination

and development of fancy and genius many causes may be assigned ;

and we may seek for the chief of them in religion, in politics, in the

circumstances of the time, the recent diffusion of letters, in local

situation, and in the character of the men who adorned that period,

and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed within their

reach.

I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these causes, and
of the manner in which they operated to mould and stamp the poetry
of the country at the period of which I have to treat ; independently
of incidental and fortuitous causes, for which there is no accounting,
but which, after all, have often the greatest share in determining the
most important results.

The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general
effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This

181

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and
inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices
throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general ;
but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the
full-grown, intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow ; heaved the
ground from under the feet of bigotted faith and slavish obedience ;
and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their accustomed
hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never
yet subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten fear,
and gave the watch-word ; but England joined the shout, and echoed
it back with her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy
shores, in a longer and a louder strain. With that cry, the genius
of Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations.
There was a mighty fermentation : the waters were out ; public
opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty was held out to all to
think and speak the truth. Men's brains were busy ; their spirits
stirring ; their hearts full ; and their hands not idle. Their eyes
were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with
curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them
free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and
bloated hypocrisy, loosened their tongues, and made the talismans
and love-tokens of Popish superstition, with which she had beguiled
her followers and committed abominations with the people, fall
harmless from their necks.

The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work.
It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and
morality, which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed
the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired
teachers (such they were thought) to the meanest of the people.
It gave them a common interest in the common cause. Their hearts
burnt within them as they read. It gave a mind to the people, by
giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. It cemented
their union of character and sentiment : it created endless diversity
and collision of opinion. They found objects to employ their
faculties, and a motive in the magnitude of the consequences attached
to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and the
most daring intrepidity in maintaining it. Religious controversy
sharpens the understanding by the subtlety and remoteness of the
topics it discusses, and braces the will by their infinite importance.
We perceive in the history of this period a nervous masculine intellect.
No levity, no feebleness, no indifference ; or if there were, it is a
relaxation from the intense activity which gives a tone to its general
character. But there is a gravity approaching to piety ; a seriousness

182

GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT

of impression, a conscientious severity of argument, an habitual fervour
and enthusiasm in their mode of handling almost every subject. The
debates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough ; but they
wanted interest and grandeur, and were besides confined to a few :
they did not affect the general mass of the community. But the
Bible was thrown open to all ranks and conditions 'to run and read,'
with its wonderful table of contents from Genesis to the Revelations.
Every village in England would present the scene so well described
in Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night. I cannot think that all this
variety and weight of knowledge could be thrown in all at once upon
the mind of a people, and not make some impressions upon it, the
traces of which might be discerned in the manners and literature of
the age. For to leave more disputable points, and take only the
historical parts of the Old Testament, or the moral sentiments of the
New, there is nothing like them in the power of exciting awe and
admiration, or of rivetting sympathy. We see what Milton has made
of the account of the Creation, from the manner in which he has
treated it, imbued and impregnated with the spirit of the time of
which we speak. Or what is there equal (in that romantic interest
and patriarchal simplicity which goes to the heart of a country, and
rouses it, as it were, from its lair in wastes and wildernesses) equal to
the story of Joseph and his Brethren, of Rachael and Laban, of
Jacob's Dream, of Ruth and Boaz, the descriptions in the book of
Job, the deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt, or the account of their
captivity and return from Babylon ? There is in all these parts of the
Scripture, and numberless more of the same kind, to pass over the
Orphic hymns of David, the prophetic denunciations of Isaiah, or
the gorgeous visions of Ezekiel, an originality, a vastness of conception,
a depth and tenderness of feeling, and a touching simplicity in the
mode of narration, which he who does not feel, need be made of no
' penetrable stuff.' There is something in the character of Christ too
(leaving religious faith quite out of the question) of more sweetness
and majesty, and more likely to work a change in the mind of man,
by the contemplation of its idea alone, than any to be found in history,
whether actual or feigned. This character is that of a sublime
humanity, such as was never seen on earth before, nor since. This
shone manifestly both in his words and actions. We see it in his
washing the Disciples' feet the night before his death, that unspeak-
able instance of humility and love, above all art, all meanness, and all
pride, and in the leave he took of them on that occasion, ' My peace
I give unto you, that peace which the world cannot give, give I unto
you ' ; and in his last commandment, that ' they should love one
another.' Who can read the account of his behaviour on the cross,

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

when turning to his mother he said, * Woman, behold thy son,' and
to the Disciple John, « Behold thy mother,' and « from that hour that
Disciple took her to his own home,' without having his heart smote
within him ! We see it in his treatment of the woman taken in
adultery, and in his excuse for the woman who poured precious
ointment on his garment as an offering of devotion and love, which is
here all in all. His religion was the religion of the heart. We see
it in his discourse with the Disciples as they walked together towards
Emmaus, when their hearts burned within them ; in his sermon from
the Mount, in his parable of the good Samaritan, and in that of the
Prodigal Son — in every act and word of his life, a grace, a mildness,
a dignity and love, a patience and wisdom worthy of the Son of God.
His whole life and being were imbued, steeped in this word, charity ; it
was the spring, the well-head from which every thought and feeling
gushed into act ; and it was this that breathed a mild glory from his
face in that last agony upon the cross, * when the meek Saviour bowed
his head and died,' praying for his enemies. He was the first true
teacher of morality ; for he alone conceived the idea of a pure
humanity. He redeemed man from the worship of that idol, self, and
instructed him by precept and example to love his neighbour as him-
self, to forgive our enemies, to do good to those that curse us and
despitefully use us. He taught the love of good for the sake of good,
without regard to personal or sinister views, and made the affections of
the heart the sole seat of morality, instead of the pride of the under-
standing or the sternness of the will. In answering the question,

* who is our neighbour ? ' as one who stands in need of our assistance,
and whose wounds we can bind up, he has done more to humanize
the thoughts and tame the unruly passions, than all who have tried to
reform and benefit mankind. The very idea of abstract benevolence,
of the desire to do good because another wants our services, and of
regarding the human race as one family, the offspring of one common
parent, is hardly to be found in any other code or system. It was

* to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness.'
The Greeks and Romans never thought of considering others, but as
they were Greeks or Romans, as they were bound to them by certain
positive ties, or, on the other hand, as separated from them by fiercer
antipathies. Their virtues were the virtues of political machines,
their vices were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to endure pain
with obdurate and remorseless inflexibility of purpose. But in the
Christian religion, « we perceive a softness coming over the heart of a
nation, and the iron scales that fence and harden it, melt and drop off.'
It becomes malleable, capable of pity, of forgiveness, of relaxing in its
claims, and remitting its power. We strike it, and it does not hurt

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GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT

us : it is not steel or marble, but flesh and blood, clay tempered with
tears, and ' soft as sinews of the new-born babe.' The gospel was
first preached to the poor, for it consulted their wants and interests,
not its own pride and arrogance. It first promulgated the equality of
mankind in the community of duties and benefits. It denounced the
iniquities of the chief Priests and Pharisees, and declared itself at
variance with principalities and powers, for it sympathizes not with
the oppressor, but the oppressed. It first abolished slavery, for it did
not consider the power of the will to inflict injury, as clothing it with
a right to do so. Its law is good, not power. It at the same time
tended to wean the mind from the grossness of sense, and a particle of
its divine flame was lent to brighten and purify the lamp of love !

There have been persons who, being sceptics as to the divine
mission of Christ, have taken an unaccountable prejudice to his
doctrines, and have been disposed to deny the merit of his character ;
but this was not the feeling of the great men in the age of Elizabeth
(whatever might be their belief) one of whom says of him, with a
boldness equal to its piety :

' The best of men

That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer ;
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit j
The first true gentleman that ever breathed.'

This was old honest Deckar, and the lines ought to embalm his
memory to every one who has a sense either of religion, or philosophy,
or humanity, or true genius. Nor can I help thinking, that we may
discern the traces of the influence exerted by religious faith in the
spirit of the poetry of the age of Elizabeth, in the means of exciting
terror and pity, in the delineation of the passions of grief, remorse,
love, sympathy, the sense of shame, in the fond desires, the longings
after immortality, in the heaven of hope, and the abyss of despair it
lays open to us.1

The literature of this age then, I would say, was strongly influenced
(among other causes), first by the spirit of Christianity, and secondly
by the spirit of Protestantism.

The effects of the Reformation on politics and philosophy may be
seen in the writings and history of the next and of the following ages.
They are still at work, and will continue to be so. The effects on
the poetry of the time were chiefly confined to the moulding of the
character, and giving a powerful impulse to the intellect of the

1 In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part supplied the place of the
translation of the Bible : and this dumb art arose in the silence of the written
oracles.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

country. The immediate use or application that was made of religion
to subjects of imagination and fiction was not (from an obvious ground
of separation) so direct or frequent, as that which was made of the
classical and romantic literature.

For much about the same time, the rich and fascinating stores of
the Greek and Roman mythology, and those of the romantic poetry
of Spain and Italy, were eagerly explored by the curious, and thrown
open in translations to the admiring gaze of the vulgar. This last
circumstance could hardly have afforded so much advantage to the
poets of that day, who were themselves, in fact, the translators, as it
shews the general curiosity and increasing interest in such subjects, as
a prevailing feature of the times. There were translations of Tasso
by Fairfax, and of Ariosto by Harrington, of Homer and Hesiod by
Chapman, and of Virgil long before, and Ovid soon after ; there was
Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, of which Shakespear has
made such admirable use in his Coriolanus and Julius Caesar : and Ben
Jonson's tragedies of Catiline and Sejanus may themselves be
considered as almost literal translations into verse, of Tacitus, Sallust,
and Cicero's Orations in his consulship. Boccacio, the divine
Boccacio, Petrarch, Dante, the satirist Aretine, Machiavel, Castiglione,
and others, were familiar to our writers, and they make occasional
mention of some few French authors, as Ronsard and Du Bartas ; for
the French literature had not at this stage arrived at its Augustan
period, and it was the imitation of their literature a century afterwards,
when it had arrived at its greatest height (itself copied from the
Greek and Latin), that enfeebled and impoverished our own. But
of the time that we are considering, it might be said, without much
extravagance, that every breath that blew, that every wave that rolled
to our shores, brought with it some accession to our knowledge, which
was engrafted on the national genius. In fact, all the disposeable
materials that had been accumulating for a long period of time, either
in our own, or in foreign countries, were now brought together, and
required nothing more than to be wrought up, polished, or arranged in
striking forms, for ornament and use. To this every inducement
prompted, the novelty of the acquisition of knowledge in many cases,
the emulation of foreign wits, and of immortal works, the want and
the expectation of such works among ourselves, the opportunity and
encouragement afforded for their production by leisure and affluence ;
and, above all, the insatiable desire of the mind to beget its own image,
and to construct out of itself, and for the delight and admiration of
the world and posterity, that excellence of which the idea exists
hitherto only in its own breast, and the impression of which it would
make as universal as the eye of heaven, the benefit as common as the

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GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT

air we breathe. The first impulse of genius is to create what never
existed before : the contemplation of that, which is so created, is
sufficient to satisfy the demands of taste ; and it is the habitual study
and imitation of the original models that takes away the power, and
even wish to do the like. Taste limps after genius, and from copying
the artificial models, we lose sight of the living principle of nature.
It is the effort we make, and the impulse we acquire, in overcoming
the first obstacles, that projects us forward ; it is the necessity for
exertion that makes us conscious of our strength ; but this necessity
and this impulse once removed, the tide of fancy and enthusiasm,
which is at first a running stream, soon settles and crusts into the
standing pool of dulness, criticism, and virtu.

What also gave an unusual impetus to the mind of man at this
period, was the discovery of the New World, and the reading of
voyages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise,
as by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery waste, and invite
the cupidity, or wing the imagination of the dreaming speculator.
Fairy land was realised in new and unknown worlds. * Fortunate
fields and groves and flowery vales, thrice happy isles,' were found
floating * like those Hesperian gardens famed of old,' beyond Atlantic
seas, as dropt from the zenith. The people, the soil, the clime,
everything gave unlimited scope to the curiosity of the traveller and
reader. Other manners might be said to enlarge the bounds of
knowledge, and new mines of wealth were tumbled at our feet. It is
from a voyage to the Straits of Magellan that Shakespear has taken
the hint of Prospero's Enchanted Island, and of the savage Caliban
with his god Setebos.1 Spenser seems to have had the same feeling
in his mind in the production of his Faery Queen, and vindicates his
poetic fiction on this very ground of analogy.

' Right well I wote, most mighty sovereign,
That all this famous antique history
Of some the abundance of an idle brain
Will judged be, and painted forgery,
Rather than matter of just memory :
Since none that breatheth living air, doth know
Where is that happy land of faery
Which I so much do vaunt, but no where show,
But vouch antiquities, which nobody can know.

But let that man with better sense avise,
That of the world least part to us is read:
And daily how through hardy enterprize
Many great regions are discovered,

1 See a Voyage to the Straits of Magellan, 1594.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Which to late age were never mentioned.
Who ever heard of rh' Indian Peru ?
Or who in venturous vessel measured
The Amazons' huge river, now found true ?
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view ?

Yet all these were when no man did them know,
Yet have from wisest ages hidden been :
And later times things more unknown shall show.
Why then should witless man so much misween
That nothing is but that which he hath seen ?
What if within the moon's fair shining sphere,
What if in every other star unseen,
Of other worlds he happily should hear,
He wonder would much more ; yet such to some appear.'

Fancy's air-drawn pictures after history's waking dream shewed
like clouds over mountains ; and from the romance of real life to the
idlest fiction, the transition seemed easy. — Shakespear, as well as
others of his time, availed himself of the old Chronicles, and of the
traditions or fabulous inventions contained in them in such ample
measure, and which had not yet been appropriated to the purposes of
poetry or the drama. The stage was a new thing ; and those who
had to supply its demands laid their hands upon whatever came
within their reach : they were not particular as to the means, so that
they gained the end. Lear is founded upon an old ballad ; Othello
on an Italian novel ; Hamlet on a Danish, and Macbeth on a Scotch
tradition : one of which is to be found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the
last in Hollingshed. The Ghost-scenes and the Witches in each,
are authenticated in the old Gothic history. There was also this
connecting link between the poetry of this age and the supernatural
traditions of a former one, that the belief in them was still extant,
and in full force and visible operation among the vulgar (to say no
more) in the time of our authors. The appalling and wild chimeras
of superstition and ignorance, ' those bodiless creations that ecstacy is
very cunning in,' were inwoven with existing manners and opinions,
and all their effects on the passions of terror or pity might be
gathered from common and actual observation — might be discerned in
the workings of the face, the expressions of the tongue, the writhings
of a troubled conscience. ' Your face, my Thane, is as a book where
men may read strange matters.' Midnight and secret murders too,
from the imperfect state of the police, were more common ; and the
ferocious and brutal manners that would stamp the brow of the
hardened ruffian or hired assassin, more incorrigible and undisguised.
The portraits of Tyrrel and Forrest were, no doubt, done from the

188

GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT

life. We find that the ravages of the plague, the destructive rage of
fire, the poisoned chalice, lean famine, the serpent's mortal sting, and
the fury of wild beasts, were the common topics of their poetry, as
they were common occurrences in more remote periods of history.
They were the strong ingredients thrown into the cauldron of tragedy,
to make it 'thick and slab.' Man's life was (as it appears to me)
more full of traps and pit-falls ; of hair-breadth accidents by flood and
field ; more way-laid by sudden and startling evils ; it trod on the
brink of hope and fear ; stumbled upon fate unawares ; while the
imagination, close behind it, caught at and clung to the shape of
danger, or * snatched a wild and fearful joy ' from its escape. The
accidents of nature were less provided against ; the excesses of the
passions and of lawless power were less regulated, and produced more
strange and desperate catastrophes. The tales of Boccacio are
founded on the great pestilence of Florence, Fletcher the poet died of
the plague, and Marlow was stabbed in a tavern quarrel. The strict
authority of parents, the inequality of ranks, or the hereditary feuds
between different families, made more unhappy loves or matches.

'The course of true love never did run even.'

Again, the heroic and martial spirit which breathes in our elder
writers, was yet in considerable activity in the reign of Elizabeth.
' The age of chivalry was not then quite gone, nor the glory of
Europe extinguished for ever.' Jousts and tournaments were still
common with the nobility in England and in foreign countries : Sir
Philip Sidney was particularly distinguished for his proficiency in
these exercises (and indeed fell a martyr to his ambition as a soldier)
— and the gentle Surrey was still more famous, on the same account,
just before him. It is true, the general use of firearms gradually
superseded the necessity of skill in the sword, or bravery in the
person : and as a symptom of the rapid degeneracy in this respect, we
find Sir John Suckling soon after boasting of himself as one —

' Who prized black eyes, and a lucky hit
At bowls, above all the trophies of wit.'

It was comparatively an age of peace,

' Like strength reposing on his own right arm ; '

but the sound of civil combat might still be heard in the distance, the
spear glittered to the eye of memory, or the clashing of armour struck
on the imagination of the ardent and the young. They were
borderers on the savage state, on the times of war and bigotry, though
in the lap of arts, of luxury, and knowledge. They stood on the

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

shore and saw the billows rolling after the storm : « they heard the
tumult, and were still.' The manners and out-of-door amusements were
more tinctured with a spirit of adventure and romance. The war with
wild beasts, &c. was more strenuously kept up in country sports. I do
not think we could get from sedentary poets, who had never mingled in
the vicissitudes, the dangers, or excitements of the chase, such descrip-
tions of hunting and other athletic games, as are to be found in Shakes-
pear's Midsummer Night's Dream, or Fletcher's Noble Kinsmen.

With respect to the good cheer and hospitable living of those times,
I cannot agree with an ingenious and agreeable writer of the present
day, that it was general or frequent. The very stress laid upon
certain holidays and festivals, shews that they did not keep up the
same Saturnalian licence and open house all the year round. They
reserved themselves for great occasions, and made the best amends
they could, for a year of abstinence and toil by a week of merriment
and convivial indulgence. Persons in middle life at this day, who can
afford a good dinner every day, do not look forward to it as any
particular subject of exultation : the poor peasant, who can only
contrive to treat himself to a joint of meat on a Sunday, considers it
as an event in the week. So, in the old Cambridge comedy of the
Returne from Parnassus, we find this indignant description of the
progress of luxury in those days, put into the mouth of one of
the speakers.

' Why is 't not strange to see a ragged clerke,
Some stammell weaver, or some butcher's sonne,
That scrubb'd a late within a sleeveless gowne,
When the commencement, like a morrice dance,
Hath put a bell or two about his legges,
Created him a sweet cleane gentleman :
How then he 'gins to follow fashions.
He whose thin sire dwelt in a smokye roofe,
Must take tobacco, and must wear a locke.
His thirsty dad drinkes in a wooden bowle,
But his sweet self is served in silver plate.
His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legges
For one good Christmas meal on new year's day,
But his mawe must be capon cramm'd each day."

Act III. Scene 2.

This does not look as if in those days ' it snowed of meat and
drink' as a matter of course throughout the year! — The distinctions
of dress, the badges of different professions, the very signs of the
shops, which we have set aside for written inscriptions over the doors,
were, as Mr. Lamb observes, a sort of visible language to the imagina-
tion, and hints for thought. Like the costume of different foreign

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GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT

nations, they had an immediate striking and picturesque effect, giving
scope to the fancy. The surface of society was embossed with
hieroglyphics, and poetry existed 'in act and complement extern.'
The poetry of former times might be directly taken from real life, as
our poetry is taken from the poetry of former times. Finally, the
face of nature, which was the same glorious object then that it is now,
was open to them ; and coming first, they gathered her fairest flowers
to live for ever in their verse :— the movements of the human heart
were not hid from them, for they had the same passions as we, only
less disguised, and less subject to controul. Deckar has given an
admirable description of a mad-house in one of his plays. But it
might be perhaps objected, that it was only a literal account taken
from Bedlam at that time : and it might be answered, that the old
poets took the same method of describing the passions and fancies of
men whom they met at large, which forms the point of communion
between us : for the title of the old play, ' A Mad World, my
Masters,' is hardly yet obsolete ; and we are pretty much the same
Bedlam still, perhaps a little better managed, like the real one, and
with more care and humanity shewn to the patients !

Lastly, to conclude this account ; what gave a unity and common
direction to all these causes, was the natural genius of the country,
which was strong in these writers in proportion to their strength.
We are a nation of islanders, and we cannot help it ; nor mend our-
selves if we would. We are something in ourselves, nothing when
we try to ape others. Music and painting are not our forte; for what
we have done in that way has been little, and that borrowed from
others with great difficulty. But we may boast of our poets and
philosophers. That's something. We have had strong heads and
sound hearts among us. Thrown on one side of the world, and left
to bustle for ourselves, we have fought out many a battle for truth and
freedom. That is our natural style ; and it were to be wished we
had in no instance departed from it. Our situation has given us a
certain cast of thought and character ; and our liberty has enabled us
to make the most of it. We are of a stiff clay, not moulded into
every fashion, with stubborn joints not easily bent. We are slow to
think, and therefore impressions do not work upon us till they act in
masses. We are not forward to express our feelings, and therefore
they do not come from us till they force their way in the most
impetuous eloquence. Our language is, as it were, to begin anew,
and we make use of the most singular and boldest combinations to
explain ourselves. Our wit comes from us, « like birdlime, brains
and all.' We pay too little attention to form and method,Jeave our
works in an unfinished state, but still the materials we work in are

191

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

solid and of nature's mint ; we do not deal in counterfeits. We both
under and over-do, but we keep an eye to the prominent features, the
main chance. We are more for weight than show ; care only about
what interests ourselves, instead of trying to impose upon others by
plausible appearances, and are obstinate and intractable in not con-
forming to common rules, by which many arrive at their ends with
half the real waste of thought and trouble. We neglect all but the
principal object, gather our force to make a great blow, bring it down,
and relapse into sluggishness and indifference again. Materiam
superabat opus, cannot be said of us. We may be accused of gross-
ness, but not of flimsiness ; of extravagance, but not of affectation ;
of want of art and refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature.
Our literature, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque ; unequal and
irregular ; not cast in a previous mould, nor of one uniform texture,
but of great weight in the whole, and of incomparable value in the
best parts. It aims at an excess of beauty or power, hits or misses,
and_is_either veryjgood indeed, or absolutely good for nothing. This
character applies in particular to our literature in Ihe age of Elizabeth,
which is its best period, before the introduction of a rage for French
.rules and French modelsj for whatever may be the value of our own
original style of composition, there can be neither offence nor pre-
sumption in saying, that it is at least better than our second-hand
imitations of others. Our understanding (such as it is, and must
remain to be good for any thing) is not a thoroughfare for common
places, smooth as the palm of one's hand, but full of knotty points
and jutting excrescences, rough, uneven, overgrown with brambles ;
and I like this aspect of the mind (as some one said of the country),
where nature keeps a good deal of the soil in her own hands. Perhaps
the genius of our poetry has more of Pan than of Apollo ; « but Pan
is a God, Apollo is no more ! '

LECTURE II

ON THE DRAMATIC WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH
SHAKESPEAR, LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWQOD, MIDDLE-
TON, AND ROWLEY

THE period of which I shall have to treat (from the Reformation to
the middle of Charles i.) was prolific in dramatic excellence, even
more than in any other. In approaching it, we seem to be approaching
the RICH STROND described in Spenser, where treasures of all kinds
192

ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

lay scattered, or rather crowded together on the shore in inexhaustible
but unregarded profusion, 'rich as the oozy bottom of the deep in
sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.' We are confounded with the
variety, and dazzled with the dusky splendour of names sacred in
their obscurity, and works gorgeous in their decay, « majestic, though
in ruin,' like Guyon when he entered the Cave of Mammon, and was
shewn the massy pillars and huge unwieldy fragments of gold, covered
with dust and cobwebs, and ' shedding a faint shadow of uncertain
light,

* Such as a lamp whose light doth fade away,
Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night
Doth shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright.'

The dramatic literature of this period only wants exploring, to fill
the enquiring mind with wonder and delight, and to convince us that
we have been wrong in lavishing all our praise on * new-born gauds,
though they are made and moulded of things past ; ' and in * giving
to dust, that is a little gilded, more laud than gilt o'er-dusted.' In
short, the discovery of such an unsuspected and forgotten mine of
wealth will be found amply to repay the labour of the search, and it
will be hard, if in most cases curiosity does not end in admiration, and
modesty teach us wisdom. A few of the most singular productions
of these times remain unclaimed ; of others the authors are uncertain ;
many of them are joint productions of different pens ; but of the best
the writers' names are in general known, and obviously stamped on
the productions themselves. The names of Ben Jonson, for instance,
Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, are almost, though not quite, as
familiar to us, as that of Shakespear ; and their works still keep
regular possession of the stage. Another set of writers included in
the same general period (the end of the sixteenth and the beginning
of the seventeenth century), who are next, or equal, or sometimes
superior to these in power, but whose names are now little known,
and their writings nearly obsolete, are Lyly, Marlow, Marston,
Chapman, Middleton, and Rowley, Heywood, Webster, Deckar, and
Ford. I shall devote the present and two following Lectures to the
best account I can give of these, and shall begin with some of the
least known.

The earliest tragedy of which I shall take notice (I believe the
earliest that we have) is that of Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc (as
it has been generally called), the production of Thomas Sackville,
Lord Buckhurst, afterwards created Earl of Dorset, assisted by one
Thomas Norton. This was first acted with applause before the
Queen in 1561, the noble author being then quite a young man.

VOL. v. : N 193

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

This tragedy being considered as the first in our language, is certainly
a curiosity, and in other respects it is also remarkable ; though, per-
haps, enough has been said about it. As a work of genius, it may be
set down as nothing, for it contains hardly a memorable line or
passage ; as a work of art, and the first of its kind attempted in the
language, it may be considered as a monument of the taste and skill
of the authors. Its merit is confined to the regularity of the plot and
metre, to its general good sense, and strict attention to common
decorum. If the poet has not stamped the peculiar genius of his age
upon this first attempt, it is no inconsiderable proof of strength of mind
and conception sustained by its own sense of propriety alone, to have
so far anticipated the taste of succeeding times, as to have avoided
any glaring offence against rules and models, which had no existence
in his day. Or perhaps a truer solution might be, that there were as
yet no examples of a more ambiguous and irregular kind to tempt him
to err, and as he had not the impulse or resources within himself to
strike out a new path, he merely adhered with modesty and caution
to the classical models with which, as a scholar, he was well
acquainted. The language of the dialogue is clear, unaffected, and
intelligible without the smallest difficulty, even to this day ; it has
' no figures nor no fantasies,' to which the most fastidious critic can
object, but the dramatic power is nearly none at all. It is written
expressly to set forth the dangers and mischiefs that arise from the
division of sovereign power ; and the several speakers dilate upon the
different views of the subject in turn, like clever schoolboys set to
compose a thesis, or declaim upon the fatal consequences of ambition,
and the uncertainty of human affairs. The author, in the end,
declares for the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance ; a
doctrine which indeed was seldom questioned at that time of day.
Eubulus, one of the old king's counsellors, thus gives his opinion —

' Eke fully with the duke my mind agrees,
That no cause serves, whereby the subject may
Call to account the doings of his prince ;
Much less in blood by sword to work revenge :
No more than may the hand cut off the head.
In act nor speech, no nor in secret thought,
The subject may rebel against his lord,
Or judge of him that sits in Caesar's seat,
With grudging mind to damn those he mislikes.
Though kings forget to govern as they ought,
Yet subjects must obey as they are bound.'

Yet how little he was borne out in this inference by the unbiassed
dictates of his own mind, may appear from the freedom and unguarded
194

ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

boldness of such lines as the following, addressed by a favourite to a
prince, as courtly advice.

' Know ye that lust of kingdoms hath no law :
The Gods do bear and well allow in kings
The things that they abhor in rascal routs.
When kings on slender quarrels run to wars,
And then in cruel and unkindly wise
Command thefts, rapes, murder of innocents,
The spoil of towns, ruins of mighty realms ;
Think you such princes do suppose themselves
Subject to laws of kind and fear of Gods ?
Murders and violent thefts in private men
Are heinous crimes, and full of foul reproach ;
Yet none offence, but deck'd with noble name
Of glorious conquests in the hands of kings/

The principal characters make as many invocations to the names of
their children, their country, and their friends, as Cicero in his
Orations, and all the topics insisted upon are open, direct, urged in
the face of day, with no more attention to time or place, to an enemy
who overhears, or an accomplice to whom they are addressed ; in a
word, with no more dramatic insinuation or byeplay than the pleadings
in a court of law. Almost the only passage that I can instance, as
rising above this didactic tone of mediocrity into the pathos of poetry,
is one where Marcella laments the untimely death of her lover, Ferrex.

' Ah ! noble prince, how oft have I beheld
Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed,
Shining in armour bright before the tilt;
And with thy mistress' sleeve tied on thy helm,
And charge thy staff to please thy lady's eye,
That bowed the head-piece of thy friendly foe !
How oft in arms on horse to bend the mace,
How oft in arms on foot to break the sword,
Which never now these eyes may see again ! '

There seems a reference to Chaucer in the wording of the following
lines —

' Then saw I how he smiled with slaying knife
Wrapp'd under cloke, then saw I deep deceit
Lurk in his face, and death prepared for me.1 1

Sir Philip Sidney says of this tragedy : * Gorboduc is full of
stately speeches, and well sounding phrases, climbing to the height of

1 'The 8miler with the knife under his cloke.'

Knight1 i Tale.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Seneca his style, and as full of notable morality ; which it doth most
delightfully teach, and thereby obtain the very end of poetry.' And
Mr. Pope, whose taste in such matters was very different from Sir
Philip Sidney's, says in still stronger terms : ' That the writers of
the succeeding age might have improved as much in other respects,
by copying from him a propriety in the sentiments, an unaffected
perspicuity of style, and an easy flow in the numbers. In a word,
that chastity, correctness, and gravity of style, which are so essential
to tragedy, and which all the tragic poets who followed, not excepting
Shakespear himself, either little understood, or perpetually neglected.'
It was well for us and them that they did so !

The Induction to the Mirrour for Magistrates does his Muse more
credit. It sometimes reminds one of Chaucer, and at others seems
like an anticipation, in some degree, both of the measure and manner
of Spenser. The following stanzas may give the reader an idea of
the merit of this old poem, which was published in 1563.

' By him lay heauie Sleepe cosin of Death
Flat on the ground, and still as any stone,
A very corps, saue yeelding forth a breath.
Small keepe tooke he whom Fortune frowned on,
Or whom she lifted vp into the throne

Of high renowne, but as a liuing death,

So dead aliue, of life he drew the breath.

The bodies rest, the quiet of the hart,
The trauailes ease, the still nights feere was he.
And of our life in earth the better part,
Reuer of sight, and yet in whom we see
Things oft that tide, and oft that neuer bee.

Without respect esteeming equally

King Crcesus pompe, and Irus pouertie.

And next in order sad Old Age we found,
His beard all hoare, his eyes hollow and blind,
With drouping cheere still poring on the ground,
As on the place where nature him assigned
To rest, when that the sisters had vntwin'd

His vitall thred, and ended with their knife

The fleeting course of fast declining life.

There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint
Rew with himselfe his end approaching fast,
And all for naught his wretched mind torment,
With sweete remembrance of his pleasures past,
And fresh delites of lustic youth forewast.

Recounting which, how would he sob and shreek ?

And to be yong again of lone beseeke.
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ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

But and the cruell fates so fixed be,

That time forepast cannot returne againe,

This one request of loue yet prayed he :

That in such withred plight, and wretched paine,

As eld (accompanied with lothsome traine)

Had brought on him, all were it woe and griefe,
He might a while yet linger forth his life,

And not so soone descend into the pit :
Where Death, when he the mortall corps hath slaine,
With wretchlesse hand in graue doth couer it,
Thereafter neuer to enioy againe
The gladsome light, but in the ground ylaine,
In depth of darknesse waste and weare to nought,
As he had nere into the world been brought.

But who had scene him, sobbing how he stood
Vnto himselfe, and how he would bemone
His youth forepast, as though it wrought him good
To talke of youth, all were his youth foregone,
He would haue musde and maruail'd much whereon
This wretched Age should life desire so faine,
And knowes ful wel life doth but length his paine.

Crookebackt he was, toothshaken, and blere eyde,
Went on three feete, and sometime crept on foure,
With old lame bones, that railed by his side,
His scalpe all pil'd, and he with eld forelore :
His withred fist still knocking at Deaths dore,
Fumbling and driueling as he drawes his breath,
For briefe, the shape and messenger of Death.'

John Lyly (born in the Weold of Kent about the year 1553),
was the author of Midas and Endymion, of Alexander and Campaspe,
and of the comedy of Mother Bombie. Of the last it may be said,
that it is very much what its name would import, old, quaint, and
vulgar. — I may here observe, once for all, that I would not be under-
stood to say, that the age of Elizabeth was all of gold without any
alloy. There was both gold and lead in it, and often in one and the
same writer. In our impatience to form an opinion, we conclude,
when we first meet with a good thing, that it is owing to the age ; or,
if we meet with a bad one, it is characteristic of the age, when, in
fact, it is neither ; for there are good and bad in almost all ages, and
one age excels in one thing, another in another : — only one age may
excel more and in higher things than another, but none can excel
equally and completely in all. The writers of Elizabeth, as poets,
soared to the height they did, by indulging their own unrestrained
enthusiasm : as comic writers, they chiefly copied the manners of the

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

age, which did not give them the same advantage over their suc-
cessors. Lyly's comedy, for instance, is * poor, unfledged, has never
winged from view o* th nest,' and tries in vain to rise above the
ground with crude conceits and clumsy levity. Lydia, the heroine
of the piece, is silly enough, if the rest were but as witty. But the
author has shewn no partiality in the distribution of his gifts. To say
truth, it was a very common fault of the old comedy, that its humours
were too low, and the weaknesses exposed too great to be credible,
or an object of ridicule, even if they were. The affectation of their
courtiers is passable, and diverting as a contrast to present manners ;
but the eccentricities of their clowns are ' very tolerable, and not to be
endured.' Any kind of activity of mind might seem to the writers
better than none : any nonsense served to amuse their hearers ; any
cant phrase, any coarse allusion, any pompous absurdity, was taken for
wit and drollery. Nothing could be too mean, too foolish, too
improbable, or too offensive, to be a proper subject for laughter. Any
one (looking hastily at this side of the question only) might be
tempted to suppose the youngest children of Thespis a very callow
brood, chirping their slender notes, or silly swains ' grating their lean
and flashy jests on scrannel pipes of wretched straw.' The genius of
comedy looked too often like a lean and hectic pantaloon ; love was
a slip-shod shepherdess ; wit a parti-coloured fool like Harlequin, and
the plot came hobbling, like a clown, after all. A string of impertinent
and farcical jests (or rather blunders), was with great formality ushered
into the world as * a right pleasant and conceited comedy.' Comedy
could not descend lower than it sometimes did, without glancing at
physical imperfections and deformity. The two young persons in the
play before us, on whom the event of the plot chiefly hinges, do in
fact turn out to be no better than changelings and natural idiots.
This is carrying innocence and simplicity too far. So again, the
character of Sir Tophas in Endymion, an affected, blustering,
talkative, cowardly pretender, treads too near upon blank stupidity
and downright want of common sense, to be admissible as a butt for
satire. Shakespear has contrived to clothe the lamentable nakedness
of the same sort of character with a motley garb from the wardrobe
of his imagination, and has redeemed it from insipidity by a certain
plausibility of speech, and playful extravagance of humour. But the
undertaking was nearly desperate. Ben Jonson tried to overcome the
difficulty by the force of learning and study : and thought to gain his
end by persisting in error ; but he only made matters worse ; for his
clowns and coxcombs (if we except Bobadil), are the most incorrigible
and insufferable of all others. — The story of Mother Bombie is little
else than a tissue of absurd mistakes, arising from the confusion of the
198

ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

different characters one with another, like another Comedy of Errors,
and ends in their being (most of them), married in a game at cross-
purposes to the persons they particularly dislike.

To leave this, and proceed to something pleasanter, Midas and
Endymion, which are worthy of their names and of the subject. The
story in both is classical, and the execution is for the most part elegant
and simple. There is often something that reminds one of the grace-
ful communicativeness of Lucian or of Apuleius, from whom one of
the stories is borrowed. Lyly made a more attractive picture of
Grecian manners at second-hand, than of English characters from his
own observation. The poet (which is the great merit of a poet in
such a subject) has transported himself to the scene of action, to
ancient Greece or Asia Minor ; the manners, the images, the
traditions are preserved with truth and delicacy, and the dialogue
(to my fancy) glides and sparkles like a clear stream from the Muses'
spring. I know few things more perfect in characteristic painting,
than the exclamation of the Phrygian shepherds, who, afraid of
betraying the secret of Midas' s ears, fancy that ' the very reeds bow
down, as though they listened to their talk ' ; nor more affecting in
sentiment, than the apostrophe addressed by his friend Eumenides to
Endymion, on waking from his long sleep, ' Behold the twig to which
thou laidest down thy head, is now become a tree.' The narrative
is sometimes a little wandering and desultory ; but if it had been ten
times as tedious, this thought would have redeemed it ; for I cannot
conceive of any thing more beautiful, more simple or touching, than
this exquisitely chosen image and dumb proof of the manner in which
he had passed his life, from youth to old age, in a dream, a dream of
love. Happy Endymion ! Faithful Eumenides ! Divine Cynthia !
Who would not wish to pass his life in such a sleep, a long, long
sleep, dreaming of some fair heavenly Goddess, with the moon shining
upon his face, and the trees growing silently over his head! — There
is something in this story which has taken a strange hold of my fancy,
perhaps « out of my weakness and my melancholy ' ; but for the
satisfaction of the reader, I will quote the whole passage : * it is silly
sooth, and dallies with the innocence of love, like the old age.'

'Cynthia. Well, let us to Endymion. I will not be so stately (good
Endymion) not to stoop to do thee good ; and if thy liberty consist in a
kiss from me, thou shalt have it. And although my mouth hath been
heretofore as untouched as my thoughts, yet now to recover thy life (though
to restore thy youth it be impossible) I will do that to Endymion, which
yet never mortal man could boast of heretofore, nor shall ever hope for
hereafter. (She kisses him}.

Eumenides. Madam, he beginneth to stir.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Cynthia. Soft, Eumenides, stand still.

Eumenides. Ah ! I see his eyes almost open.

Cynthia. I command thee once again, stir not: I will stand behind him.

Panelion. What do I see ? Endymion almost awake ?

Eumenides. Endymion, Endymion, art thou deaf or dumb ? Or hath
this long sleep taken away thy memory ? Ah ! my sweet Endymion, seest
thou not Eumenides, thy faithful friend, thy faithful Eumenides, who for
thy sake hath been careless of his own content ? Speak, Endymion !
Endymion ! Endymion !

Endymion. Endymion ! I call to mind such a name.

Eumenides. Hast thou forgotten thyself, Endymion ? Then do I not
marvel thou rememberest not thy friend. I tell thee thou art Endymion,
and I Eumenides. Behold also Cynthia, by whose favour thou art awaked,
and by whose virtue thou shalt continue thy natural course.

Cynthia. Endymion ! Speak, sweet Endymion ! Knowest thou not
Cynthia ?

Endymion. Oh, heavens ! whom do I behold ? Fair Cynthia, divine
Cynthia ?

Cynthia. I am Cynthia, and thou Endymion.

Endymion. Endymion ! What do I hear ? What ! a grey beard, hollow
eyes, withered body, and decayed limbs, and all in one night?

Eumenides. One night ! Thou hast slept here forty years, by what
enchantress, as yet it is not known : and behold the twig to which thou
laidest thy head, is now become a tree. Callest thou not Eumenides to
remembrance ?

Endymion. Thy name I do remember by the sound, but thy favour I do
not yet call to mind : only divine Cynthia, to whom time, fortune, death,
and destiny are subject, I see and remember; and in all humility, I regard
and reverence.

Cynthia. You shall have good cause to remember Eumenides, who hath
for thy safety forsaken his own solace.

Endymion. Am I that Endymion, who was wont in court to lead my
life, and in justs, tourneys, and arms, to exercise my youth ? Am I that
Endymion ?

Eumenides. Thou art that Endymion, and I Eumenides: wilt thou not
yet call me to remembrance ?

Endymion. Ah ! sweet Eumenides, I now perceive thou art he, and that
myself have the name of Endymion ; but that this should be my body,
I doubt : for how could my curled locks be turned to gray hair, and my
strong body to a dying weakness, having waxed old, and not knowing it ?

Cynthia. Well, Endymion, arise : awhile sit down, for that thy limbs are
stiff and not able to stay thee, and tell what thou hast seen in thy sleep all
this while. What dreams, visions, thoughts, and fortunes: for it is
impossible but in so long time, thou shouldst see strange things/

Act 7. Scene i .

It does not take away from the pathos of this poetical allegory on
the chances of love and the progress of human life, that it may be
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ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

supposed to glance indirectly at the conduct of Queen Elizabeth to
our author, who, after fourteen years' expectation of the place of
Master of the Revels, was at last disappointed. This princess took
no small delight in keeping her poets in a sort of Fool's Paradise.
The wit of Lyly, in parts of this romantic drama, seems to have
grown spirited and classical with his subject. He puts this fine
hyperbolical irony in praise of Dipsas, (a most unamiable personage,
as it will appear), into the mouth of Sir Tophas :

' Oh what fine thin hair hath Dipsas ! What a pretty low forehead !
What a tall and stately nose ! What little hollow eyes ! What great and
goodly lips ! How harmless she is, being toothless ! Her fingers fat and
short, adorned with long nails like a bittern ! What a low stature she is,
and yet what a great foot she carrieth ! How thrifty must she be, in whom
there is no waist ; how virtuous she is like to be, over whom no man can
be jealous ! ' Act III. Scene 3 .

It is singular that the style of this author, which is extremely
sweet and flowing, should have been the butt of ridicule to his con-
temporaries, particularly Dray ton, who compliments Sidney as the
author that

' Did first reduce

Our tongue from Lyly's writing, then in use ;

Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,

Playing with words and idle similes,

As the English apes and very zanies be

Of every thing that they do hear and see.'

Which must apply to the prose style of his work, called * Euphues and
his England,' and is much more like Sir Philip Sidney's own manner,
than the dramatic style of our poet. Besides the passages above
quoted, I might refer to the opening speeches of Midas, and again to
the admirable contention between Pan and Apollo for the palm of
music. — His Alexander and Campaspe is another sufficient answer to
the charge. This play is a very pleasing transcript of old manners
and sentiment. It is full of sweetness and point, of Attic salt and
the honey of Hymettus. The following song given to Apelles,
would not disgrace the mouth of the prince of painters :

' Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses, Cupid paid ;
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows ;
His mother's doves, and team of sparrows ;
Loses them too, then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on 's cheek (but none knows how)
With these the chrystal of his brow,

2OI

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

And then the dimple of his chin j
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes,
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O, Love ! has she done this to thee ?
What shall, alas ! become of me ? '

The conclusion of this drama is as follows. Alexander addressing
himself to Apelles, says,

' Well, enjoy one another : I give her thee frankly, Apelles. Thou
shalt see that Alexander maketh but a toy of love, and leadeth affection in
fetters : using fancy as a fool to make him sport, or a minstrel to make him
merry. It is not the amorous glance of an eye can settle an idle thought
in the heart : no, no, it is children's game, a life for sempsters and scholars ;
the one, pricking in clouts, have nothing else to think on ; the other,
picking fancies out of books, have little else to marvel at. Go, Apelles,
take with you your Campaspe ; Alexander is cloyed with looking on that,
which thou wonderest at.

Apelles. Thanks to your Majesty on bended knee ; you have honoured
Apelles.

Campaspe. Thanks with bowed heart ; you have blest Campaspe. [Exeunt.

Alexander. Page, go warn Clytus and Parmenio, and the other lords, to
be in readiness ; let the trumpet sound, strike up the drum, and I will
presently into Persia. How now, Hephestion, is Alexander able to resist
love as he list ?

Hephestion. The conquering of Thebes was not so honourable as the
subduing of these thoughts.

Alexander. It were a shame Alexander should desire to command the
world, if he could not command himself. But come, let us go. And,
good Hephestion, when all the world is won, and every country is thine and
mine, either find me out another to subdue, or on my word, I will fall in
love.'

Marlowe is a name that stands high, and almost first in this list of
dramatic worthies. He was a little before Shakespear's time,1 and
has a marked character both from him and the rest. There is a lust
of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a
glow of the imagination, unhallowed by any thing but its own
energies. His thoughts burn within him like a furnace with bickering
flames ; or throwing out black smoke and mists, that hide the dawn
of genius, or like a poisonous mineral, corrode the heart. His Life
and Death of Doctor Faustus, though an imperfect and unequal
performance, is his greatest work. Faustus himselfjs a rudejketch^,.
but it is a gigantic one. This character may be considered as a
personification of the pride of will and eagerness of curiosity, sublimed

1 He died about 1594.
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ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

beyond the reach of fear and remorse. He is hurried away, and, as
it were, devoured by a tormenting desire to enlarge his knowledge to
the utmost bounds of nature and art, and to extend his power with
his knowledge. He would realise all the fictions of a lawless
imagination, would solve the most subtle speculations of abstract
reason ; and for this purpose, sets at defiance all mortal consequences,
and leagues himself with demoniacal power, with * fate and meta-
physical aid.' The idea of witchcraft and necromancy, once the
dread of the vulgar and the darling of the visionary recluse, seems to
have had its origin in the restless tendency of the human mind, to
conceive of and aspire to more than it can atchieve by natural means,
and in the obscure apprehension that the gratification of this extrava-
gant and unauthorised desire, can only be attained by the sacrifice of
all our ordinary hopes, and better prospects to the infernal agents that
lend themselves to its accomplishment. Such is the foundation of the
present story. Faustus, in his impatience to fulfil at once and for a
moment, for a few short years, all the desires and conceptions of his
soul, is willing to give in exchange his soul and body to the great
enemy of mankind. Whatever he fancies, becomes by this means
present to his sense : whatever he commands, is done. He calls back
time past, and anticipates the future : the visions of antiquity pass
before him, Babylon in all its glory, Paris and CEnone : all the
projects of philosophers, or creations of the poet pay tribute at his
feet: all the delights of fortune, of ambition, of pleasure, and of
learning are centered in his person ; and from a short-lived dream of
supreme felicity and drunken power, he sinks into an abyss of darkness
and perdition. This is the alternative to which he submits ; the bond
which he signs with his blood ! As the outline of the character is
grand and daring, the execution is abrupt and fearful. The thoughts
are vast and irregular ; and the style halts and staggers under them,
* with uneasy steps ' ; — * such footing found the sole of unblest feet.'
There is a little fustian and incongruity of metaphor now and then,
which is not very injurious to the subject. It is time to give a few
passages in illustration of this account. He thus opens his mind at
the beginning:

' How am I glutted with conceit of this ?
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please ?
Resolve me of all ambiguities ?
Perform what desperate enterprise I will ?
I '11 have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world,
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

I '11 have them read me strange philosophy,
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings :
I '11 have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg 5
I '11 have them fill the public schools with skill,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad $
I '11 levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole king of all the provinces :
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp bridge,
I '11 make my servile spirits to invent.

Enter Valdes and Cornelius.

Come, German Valdes, and Cornelius,

And make me blest with your sage conference.

Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,

Know that your words have won me at the last,

To practice magic and concealed arts.

Philosophy is odious and obscure ;

Both Law and Physic are for petty wits 5

'Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish 'd me.

Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt}

And I, that have with subtile syllogisms

Gravell'd the pastors of the German church,

And made the flow'ring pride of Wittenberg

Swarm to my problems, as th' infernal spirits

On sweet Musaeus when he came to hellj

Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,

Whose shadow made all Europe honour him.

Paldes. These books, thy wit, and our experience
Shall make all nations to canonize us.
As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords,
So shall the Spirits of every element
Be always serviceable to us three.
Like lions shall they guard us when we please;
Like Almain Rutters with their horsemen's staves,
Or Lapland giants trotting by our sides :
Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love.
From Venice they shall drag whole argosies,
And from America the golden fleece,
That yearly stuffs old Philip's treasury ; 1
If learned Faustus will be resolute.

Faustus. As resolute am I in this
As thou to live, therefore object it not.'

1 An anachronism.
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ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

In his colloquy with the fallen angel, he shews the fixedness of his
determination : —

' What is great Mephostophilis so passionate
For being deprived of the joys of heaven ?
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,
And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.'

Yet we afterwards find him faltering in his resolution, and struggling
with the extremity of his fate.

* My heart is hardened, I cannot repent :
Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven :
Swords, poisons, halters, and envenomed steel
Are laid before me to dispatch myself;
And long ere this I should have done the deed,
Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd deep despair.
Have I not made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander's love and CEnon's death ?
And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sounds of his melodious harp,
Made music with my Mephostophilis ?
Why should I die then or basely despair ?
I am resolv'd, Faustus shall not repent.
Come, Mephostophilis, let us dispute again,
And reason of divine astrology.'

There is one passage more of this kind, which is so striking and
beautiful, so like a rapturous and deeply passionate dream, that
I cannot help quoting it here : it is the Address to the Apparition of
Helen.

' Enter Helen again, passing over between t<wo Cupids.

Faustus. Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burned the topless tow'rs of Ilium ?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul ! See where it flies.
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for Heav'n is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack'd ;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
— Oh ! thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars :
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

When he appeared to hapless Semele ;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms ;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour.'

The ending of the play is terrible, and his last exclamations betray
an anguish of mind and vehemence of passion, not to be contemplated
without shuddering.

— « Oh, Faustus !

Now hast thou but one bare'^hour to live,
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually.
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heav'n,
That time may cease, and midnight never come.
Fair nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day ; or let this hour be but a year,
A month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent, and save his soul.

{The Clock strikes Twelve.)

It strikes, it strikes ! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
Oh soul ! be chang'd into small water-drops,
And fall into the ocean ; ne'er be found.

(Thunder. Enter the Devils.)

Oh ! mercy, Heav'n ! Look not so fierce on me !
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile ! —
Ugly hell, gape not ! Come not, Lucifer !
I Ml burn my books ! Oh ! Mephostophilis.'

Perhaps the finest trait in the whole play, and that which softens
and subdues the horror of it, is the interest taken by the two scholars
in the fate of their master, and their unavailing attempts to dissuade
him from his relentless career. The regard to learning is the ruling
passion of this drama ; and its indications are as mild and amiable in
them as its ungoverned pursuit has been fatal to Faustus.

' Yet, for he was a scholar once admir'd
For wondrous knowledge in our German schools,
We '11 give his mangled limbs due burial ;
And all the students, clothed in mourning black,
Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.'

So the Chorus :

' Cut is the branch that might have grown full strait,
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.'
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ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

And still more affecting are his own conflicts of mind and agonising
doubts on this subject just before, when he exclaims to his friends;

* Oh, gentlemen ! Hear me with patience, and tremble not at my
speeches. Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have
been a student here these thirty years ; oh ! would I had never seen
Wittenberg, never read book ! ' A finer compliment was never paid,
nor a finer lesson ever read to the pride of learning. — The intermediate
comic parts, in which Faustus is not directly concerned, are mean and
grovelling to the last degree. One of the Clowns says to another :

* Snails ! what hast got there ? A book ? Why thou can'st not tell
ne'er a word on 't.' Indeed, the ignorance and barbarism of the
time, as here described, might almost justify Faustus's overstrained
admiration of learning, and turn the heads of those who possessed it,
from novelty and unaccustomed excitement, as the Indians are made
drunk with wine ! Goethe, the German poet, has written a drama on
this tradition of his country, which is considered a master-piece.
I cannot find, in Marlowe's play, any proofs of the atheism or impiety
attributed to him, unless the belief in witchcraft and the Devil can
be regarded as such ; and at the time he wrote, not to have believed
in both, would have been construed into the rankest atheism and
irreligion. There is a delight, as Mr. Lamb says, * in dallying with
interdicted subjects ' ; but that does not, by any means, imply either
a practical or speculative disbelief of them.

LUST'S DOMINION ; or, THE LASCIVIOUS QUEEN, is referable to the
same general style of writing ; and is a striking picture, or rather
caricature, of the unrestrained love of power, not as connected with
learning, but with regal ambition and external sway. There is a
good deal of the same intense passion, the same recklessness of purpose,
the same smouldering fire within : but there is not any of the same
relief to the mind in the lofty imaginative nature of the subject ; and
the continual repetition of plain practical villainy and undigested
horrors disgusts the sense, and blunts the interest. The mind is
hardened into obduracy, not melted into sympathy, by such bare-faced
and barbarous cruelty. Eleazar, the Moor, is such another character
as Aaron in Titus Andronicus, and this play might be set down
without injustice as 'pue-fellow' to that. I should think Marlowe
has a much fairer claim to be the author of Titus Andronicus than
Shakespear, at least from internal evidence ; and the argument of
Schlegel, that it must have been Shakespear's, because there was no
one else capable of producing either its faults or beauties, fails in each
particular. The Queen is the same character in both these plays ;
and the business of the plot is carried on in much the same revolting
manner, by making the nearest friends and relatives of the wretched

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

victims the instruments of their sufferings and persecution by an arch-
villain. To shew however, that the same strong-braced tone of
passionate declamation is kept up, take the speech of Eleazar on
refusing the proffered crown :

' What do none rise ?
No, no, for kings indeed are Deities.
And who 'd not (as the sun) in brightness shine ?
To be the greatest is to be divine.
Who among millions would not be the mightiest ?
To sit in godlike state ; to have all eyes
Dazzled with admiration, and all tongues
Shouting loud prayers ; to rob every heart
Of love ; to have the strength of every arm j
A sovereign's name, why 'tis a sovereign charm.
This glory round about me hath thrown beams :
I have stood upon the top of Fortune's wheel,
And backward turn'd the iron screw of fate.
The destinies have spun a silken thread
About my life ; yet thus I cast aside
The shape of majesty, and on my knee
To this Imperial state lowly resign
This usurpation ; wiping off your fears
Which stuck so hard upon me.'

This is enough to shew the unabated vigour of the author's style.
This strain is certainly doing justice to the pride of ambition, and the
imputed majesty of kings.

We have heard much of ' Marlowe's mighty line,' and this play
furnishes frequent instances of it. There are a number of single lines
that seem struck out in the heat of a glowing fancy, and leave a track
of golden fire behind them. The following are a few that might be
given.

' I know he is not dead ; I know proud death
Durst not behold such sacred majesty.'
*****

' Hang both your greedy ears upon my lips,
Let them devour my speech, suck in my breath.'

*****

' From discontent grows treason,

And on the stalk of treason, death.'

*****
' Tyrants swim safest in a crimson flood.'

*****
208

ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

The two following lines —

' Oh ! I grow dull, and the cold hand of sleep
Hath thrust his icy fingers in my breast ' —

are the same as those in King John —

' And none of you will bid the winter come
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw/

and again the Moor's exclamation,

' Now by the proud complexion of my cheeks,
Ta'en from the kisses of the amorous sun ' —

is the same as Cleopatra's —

' But I that am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black ' — &c.

Eleazar's sarcasm,

'These dignities,

Like poison, make men swell ; this ratVbane honour,
Oh, 'tis so sweet ! they '11 lick it till they burst ' —

shews the utmost virulence of smothered spleen ; and his concluding
strain of malignant exultation has been but tamely imitated by Young's
Zanga.

' Now tragedy, thou minion of the night,
Rhamnusia's pewfellow,1 to thee I '11 sing,
Upon a harp made of dead Spanish bones,
The proudest instrument the world affords :
To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks
Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee
I consecrate my murders, all my stabs,' &c.

It may be worth while to observe, for the sake of the curious, that
many of Marlowe's most sounding lines consist of monosyllables, or
nearly so. The repetition of Eleazar's taunt to the Cardinal, retorting
his own words upon him, * Spaniard or Moor, the saucy slave shall
die ' — may perhaps have suggested Falconbridge's spirited reiteration
of the phrase — * And hang a calve's skin on his recreant limbs/

I do not think THE RICH JEW OF MALTA so characteristic a
specimen of 'this writer's powers. It has not the same fierce glow of
passion or expression. It is extreme in act, and outrageous in plot
and catastrophe ; but it has not the same vigorous filling up. The
author seems to have relied on the horror inspired by the subject, and
the national disgust excited against the principal character, to rouse
the feelings of the audience : for the rest, it is a tissue of gratuitous^
unprovoked^ and incredible atrocities, which are committed, one upon

1 This expression seems to be ridiculed by Falstaff.
VOL. v. : o 209

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

the back of the other, by the parties concerned, without motive,
passion, or object. There are, notwithstanding, some striking
passages in it, as Barabbas's description of the bravo, Philia Borzo l ;
the relation of his own unaccountable villainies to Ithamore ; his
rejoicing over his recovered jewels ' as the morning lark sings over
her young ; ' and the backwardness he declares in himself to forgive
the Christian injuries that are offered him,2 which may have given the
idea of one of Shylock's speeches, where he ironically disclaims any
enmity to the merchants on the same account. It is perhaps hardly
fair to compare the Jew of Malta with the Merchant of Venice ; for
it is evident, that Shakespear's genius shews to as much advantage in
knowledge of character, in variety and stage-effect, as it does in point
of general humanity.

1 ' He sent a shaggy, tattered, staring slave,

That when he speaks, draws out his grisly beard,

And winds it twice or thrice about his ear ;

Whose face has been a grind-stone for men's swords :

His hands are hack'd, some fingers cut quite off,

Who when he speaks, grunts like a hog, and looks

Like one that is employ'd in catzerie,

And cross-biting ; such a rogue

As is the husband to a hundred whores ;

And I by him must send three hundred crowns.'

Act IV.

2 ' In spite of these swine-eating Christiana

(Unchosen nation, never circumcised ;

Such poor villains as were ne'er thought upon,

Till Titus and Vespasian conquer'd us)

Am I become as wealthy as I was.

They hoped my daughter would have been a nun ;

But she's at home, and I have bought a house

As great and fair as is the Governor's:

And there, in spite of Malta, will I dwell,

Having Ferneze's hand ; whose heart I '11 have,

Aye, and his son's too, or it shall go hard.

I am not of the tribe of Levi, I,
That can so soon forget an injury.
We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please ;
And when we grin we bite ; yet are our looks
As innocent and harmless as a lamb's.
I learn'd in Florence how to kiss my hand,
Heave up my shoulders when they call me dog,
And duck as low as any bare-foot Friar :
Hoping to see them starve upon a stall,
Or else be gather'd for in our synagogue,
That when the offering bason comes to me,
Even for charity I may spit into it.'
2IO

ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

Edward n. is, according to the modern standard of composition,
Marlowe's best play. It is written with few offences against the
common rules, and in a succession of smooth and flowing lines. The
poet however succeeds less in the voluptuous and effeminate descrip-
tions which he here attempts, than in the more dreadful and violent
bursts of passion. Edward 11. is drawn with historic truth, but
without much dramatic effect. The management of the plot is feeble
and desultory ; little interest is excited in the various turns of fate ;
the characters are too worthless, have too little energy, and their
punishment is, in general, too well deserved, to excite our commisera-
tion ; so that this play will bear, on the whole, but a distant comparison
with Shakespear's Richard u. in conduct, power, or effect. But the \
death of Edward n. in Marlow's tragedy, is certainly superior to that I
of Shakespear's King ; and in heart-breaking distress, and the sense /
of human weakness, claiming pity from utter helplessness and conscious J
misery, is not surpassed by any writer whatever.

' Edward. Weep'st thou already ? List awhile to me,
And then thy heart, were it as Gurney's is,
Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus,
Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale.
This dungeon, where they keep me, is the sink
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls.

Lightborn. Oh villains.

Edward. And here in mire and puddle have I stood
This ten days' space ; and lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum.
They give me bread and water, being a king 5
So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,
My mind 's distempered, and my body 's numbed :
And whether I have limbs or no, I know not.
Oh ! would my blood drop out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tatter'd robes !
Tell Isabel, the Queen, I looked not thus,
When for her sake I ran at tilt in France,
And there unhors'd the Duke of Cleremont.'

There are some excellent passages scattered up and down. The
description of the King and Gaveston looking out of the palace
window, and laughing at the courtiers as they pass, and that of the
different spirit shewn by the lion and the forest deer, when wounded,
are among the best. The Song « Come, live with me and be my
love,' to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote an answer, is Marlowe's.

Heywood I shall mention next, as a direct contrast to Marlowe in
everything but the smoothness of his verse. As Marlowe's imagina-
tion glows like a furnace, Heywood's is a gentle, lambent flame that

211

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

purifies without consuming. His manner is simplicity itself. There
is nothing supernatural, nothing startling, or terrific. He makes use
of the commonest circumstances of every-day life, and of the easiest
tempers, to shew the workings, or rather the inefficacy of the passions,
the -vis inertia of tragedy. His incidents strike from their very
familiarity, and the distresses he paints invite our sympathj, from the
calmness and resignation with which they are borne. The pathos
might be deemed purer from its having no mixture of turbulence or
vindictiveness in it ; and in proportion as the sufferers are made to
deserve a better fate. In the midst of the most untoward reverses
and cutting injuries, good-nature and good sense keep their accustomed
sway. He describes men's errors with tenderness, and their duties
only with zeal, and the heightenings of a poetic fancy. His style is
equally natural, simple, and unconstrained. The dialogue (bating the
verse), is such as might be uttered in ordinary conversation. It is
beautiful prose put into heroic measure. It is not so much that he
uses the common English idiom for everything (for that I think the
most poetical and impassioned of our elder dramatists do equally),
but the simplicity of the characters, and the equable flow of the
sentiments do not require or suffer it to be warped from the tone of
level speaking, by figurative expressions, or hyperbolical allusions.
A few scattered exceptions occur now and then, where the hectic
flush of passion forces them from the lips, and they are not the worse
for being rare. Thus, in the play called A WOMAN KILLED WITH
KINDNESS, Wendoll, when reproached by Mrs. Frankford with his
obligations to her husband, interrupts her hastily, by saying

' Oh speak no more !

For more than this I know, and have recorded
Within the red-leagued table of my heart.'

And further on, Frankford, when doubting his wife's fidelity, says,
with less feeling indeed, but with much elegance of fancy,

' Cold drops of sweat sit dangling on my hairs,
Like morning dew upon the golden flow'rs.'

So also, when returning to his house at midnight to make the fatal
discovery, he exclaims,

' Astonishment,

Fear, and amazement beat upon my heart,
Even as a madman beats upon a drum.'

It is the reality of things present to their imaginations, that makes
these writers so fine, so bold, and yet so true in what they describe.

212

ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

Nature lies open to them like a book, and was not to them ' invisible,
or dimly seen ' through a veil of words and filmy abstractions. Such
poetical ornaments are however to be met with at considerable intervals
in this play, and do not disturb the calm serenity and domestic
simplicity of the author's style. The conclusion of Wendoll's
declaration of love to Mrs. Frankford may serve as an illustration of
its general merits, both as to thought and diction.

* Fair, and of all beloved, I was not fearful
Bluntly to give my life into your hand,
And at one hazard, all my earthly means.
Go, tell your husband : he will turn me off,
And I am then undone. I care not, 1 5
'Twas for your sake. Perchance in rage he '11 kill me ;
I care not ; 'twas for you. Say I incur
The general name of villain thro' the world,
Of traitor to my friend : I care not, I ;
Poverty, shame, death, scandal, and reproach,
For you I '11 hazard all : why what care I ?
For you I love, and for your love I '11 die.'

The affecting remonstrance of Frankford to his wife, and her
repentant agony at parting with him, are already before the public, in
Mr. Lamb's Specimens. The winding up of this play is rather
awkwardly managed, and the moral is, according to established usage,
equivocal. It required only Frankford's reconciliation to his wife,
as well as his forgiveness of her, for the highest breach of matrimonial
duty, to have made a Woman Killed with Kindness a complete
anticipation of the Stranger. Hey wood, however, was in that respect
but half a Kotzebue ! — The view here given of country manners is
truly edifying. As in the higher walk of tragedy we see the
manners and moral sentiments of kings and nobles of former times,
here we have the feuds and amiable qualities of country 'squires and
their relatives ; and such as were the rulers, such were their subjects.
The frequent quarrels and ferocious habits of private life are well
exposed in the fatal rencounter between Sir Francis Acton and Sir
Charles Mountford about a hawking match, in the ruin and rancorous
persecution of the latter in consequence, and in the hard, unfeeling,
cold-blooded treatment he receives in his distress from his own
relations, and from a fellow of the name of Shafton. After reading
the sketch of this last character, who is introduced as a mere ordinary
personage, the representative of a class, without any preface or apology,
no one can doubt the credibility of that of Sir Giles Over- reach, who
is professedly held up (I should think almost unjustly) as a prodigy
of grasping and hardened selfishness. The influence of philosophy

213

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

and prevalence of abstract reasoning, if it has done nothing for our
poetry, has done, I should hope, something for our manners. The
callous declaration of one of these unconscionable churls,

' This is no world in which to pity men/

might have been taken as a motto for the good old times in general,
and with a very few reservations, if Heywood has not grossly libelled
them. — Heywood's plots have little of artifice or regularity of design
to recommend them. He writes on carelessly, as it happens, and
trusts to Nature, and a certain happy tranquillity of spirit, for gaining
the favour of the audience. He is said, besides attending to his
duties as an actor, to have composed regularly a sheet a day. This
may account in some measure for the unembarrassed facility of his
style. His own account makes the number of his writings for the
stage, or those in which he had a main hand, upwards of 200. In
fact, I do not wonder at any quantity that an author is said to have
written ; for the more a man writes, the more he can write.

The same remarks will apply, with certain modifications, to other
remaining works of this writer, the Royal King and Loyal Subject,
a Challenge for Beauty, and the English Traveller. The barb of
misfortune is sheathed in the mildness of the writer's temperament,
and the story jogs on very comfortably, without effort or resistance, to
the euthanasia of the catastrophe. In two of these, the person
principally aggrieved survives, and feels himself none the worse for it.
The most splendid passage in Heywood's comedies is the account of
Shipwreck by Drink, in the English Traveller, which was the
foundation of Cowley's Latin Poem, Naufragium Joculare.

The names of Middleton and Rowley, with which I shall conclude
this Lecture, generally appear together as two writers who frequently
combined their talents in the production of joint-pieces. Middleton
(judging from their separate works) was 'the more potent spirit' of
the two ; but they were neither of them equal to some others.
Rowley appears to have excelled in describing a certain amiable
quietness of disposition and disinterested tone of morality, carried
almost to a paradoxical excess, as in his Fair Quarrel, and in the
comedy of A Woman never Vexed, which is written, in many parts,
with a pleasing simplicity and naivete equal to the novelty of the
conception. Middleton's style was not marked by any peculiar
quality of his own, but was made up, in equal proportions, of the
faults and excellences common to his contemporaries. In his Women
Beware Women, there is a rich marrowy vein of internal sentiment,
with fine occasional insight into human nature, and cool cutting irony
of expression. He is lamentably deficient in the plot and denouement

214

ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

of the story. It is like the rough draught of a tragedy, with a
number of fine things thrown in, and the best made use of first ; but
it tends to no fixed goal, and the interest decreases, instead of increas-
ing, as we read on, for want of previous arrangement and an eye to
the whole. We have fine studies of heads, a piece of richly-coloured
drapery, 'a foot, an hand, an eye from Nature drawn, that 's worth a
history ' ; but the groups are ill disposed, nor are the figures
proportioned to each other or the size of the canvas. The author's
power is in the subject, not over it ; or he is in possession of excellent
materials, which he husbands very ill. This character, though it
applies more particularly to Middleton, might be applied generally to
the age. Shakespear alone seemed to stand over his work, and to do
what he pleased with it. He saw to the end of what he was about,
and with the same faculty of lending himself to the impulses of
Nature and the impression of the moment, never forgot that he
himself had a task to perform, nor the place which each figure ought
to occupy in his general design. — The characters of Livia, of Bianca,
of Leantio and his Mother, in the play of which I am speaking, are
all admirably drawn. The art and malice of Livia shew equal want
of principle and acquaintance with the world ; and the scene in
which she holds the mother in suspense, while she betrays the
daughter into the power of the profligate Duke, is a master-piece of
dramatic skill. The proneness of Bianca to tread the primrose path
of pleasure, after she has made the first false step, and her sudden
transition from unblemished virtue to the most abandoned vice, in
which she is notably seconded by her mother-in-law's ready submission
to the temptations of wealth and power, form a true and striking
picture. The first intimation of the intrigue that follows, is given in
a way that is not a little remarkable for simplicity and acuteness.
Bianca says,

' Did not the Duke look up ? Methought he saw us.'
To which the more experienced mother answers,

' That 's every one's conceit that sees a Duke.
If he looks stedfastly, he looks straight at them,
When he perhaps, good careful gentleman,
Never minds any, but the look he casts
Is at his own intentions, and his object
Only the public good.'

It turns out however, that he had been looking at them, and not
' at the public good.' The moral of this tragedy is rendered more
impressive from the manly, independent character of Leantio in the

215

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

first instance, and the manner in which he dwells, in a sort of doting
abstraction, on his own comforts, in being possessed of a beautiful and
faithful wife. As he approaches his own house, and already treads
on the brink of perdition, he exclaims with an exuberance of
satisfaction not to be restrained —

' How near am I to a happiness
That earth exceeds not ! Not another like it :
The treasures of the deep are not so precious,
As are the conceal'd comforts of a man
Lock'd up in woman's love. I scent the air
Of blessings when I come but near the house :
What a delicious breath marriage sends forth !
The violet-bed 's not sweeter. Honest wedlock
Is like a banquetting-house built in a garden,
On which the spring's chaste flowers take delight
To cast their modest odours ; when base lust,
With all her powders, paintings, and best pride,
Is but a fair house built by a ditch side.
When I behold a glorious dangerous strumpet,
Sparkling in beauty and destruction too,
Both at a twinkling, I do liken straight
Her beautified body to a goodly temple
That 's built on vaults where carcasses lie rotting ;
And so by little and little I shrink back again,
And quench desire with a cool meditation ;
And I 'm as well, methinks. Now for a welcome
Able to draw men's envies upon man :
A kiss now that will hang upon my lip,
As sweet as morning dew upon a rose,
And full as long ; after a five days' fast
She '11 be so greedy now and cling about me :
I take care how I shall be rid of her ;
And here 't begins.'

This dream is dissipated by the entrance of Bianca and his Mother.

' Bian. Oh, sir, you 're welcome home.

Moth. Oh, is he come ? I am glad on 't.

Lean. {Aside.') Is that all ?
Why this is dreadful now as sudden death
To some rich man, that flatters all his sins
With promise of repentance when he 's old,
And dies in the midway before he comes to 't.
Sure you 're not well, Bianca ! How dost, prithee ?

Bian. I have been better than I am at this time.

Lean. Alas, I thought so.

Bian. Nay, I have been worse too,
Than now you see me, sir.

2l6

ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEY WOOD, ETC.

Lean. I 'm glad thou mendst yet,
I feel my heart mend too. How came it to thee ?
Has any thing dislik'd thee in my absence ?

Bian. No, certain, I have had the best content
That Florence can afford.

Lean. Thou makest the best on 't :
Speak, mother, what 's the cause ? you must needs know.

Mot A. Troth, I know none, son ; let her speak herself;
Unless it be the same gave Lucifer a tumbling cast ; that 's pride.

Bian. Methinks this house stands nothing to my mind ;
I 'd have some pleasant lodging i' th' high street, sir ;
Or if 'twere near the court, sir, that were much better ;
'Tis a sweet recreation for a gentlewoman
To stand in a bay-window, and see gallants.

Lean. Now I have another temper, a mere stranger
To that of yours, it seems ; I should delight
To see none but yourself.

Bian. I praise not that ;
Too fond is as unseemly as too churlish :
I would not have a husband of that proneness,
To kiss me before company, for a world :
Beside, 'tis tedious to see one thing still, sir,
Be it the best that ever heart affected ;
Nay, were 't yourself, whose love had power you know
To bring me from my friends, I would not stand thus,
And gaze upon you always ; troth, I could not, sir ;
As good be blind, and have no use of sight,
As look on one thing still : what's the eye's treasure,
But change of objects ? You are learned, sir,
And know I speak not ill ; 'tis full as virtuous
For woman's eye to look on several men,
As for her heart, sir, to be fixed on one.

Lean. Now thou com'st home to me ; a kiss for that word.

Bian. No matter for a kiss, sir ; let it pass ;
'Tis but a toy, we '11 not so much as mind it j
Let 's talk of other business, and forget it.
What news now of the pirates ? any stirring ?
Prithee discourse a little.

Moth. (Aside.") I am glad he 's here yet
To see her tricks himself; I had lied monst'rously
If I had told 'em first.

Lean. Speak, what 's the humour, sweet,
You make your lips so strange ? This was not wont.

Bian. Is there no kindness betwixt man and wife,
Unless they make a pigeon-house of friendship,
And be still billing ? 'tis the idlest fondness
That ever was invented ; and 'tis pity
It 's grown a fashion for poor gentlewomen ;
There 's many a disease kiss'd in a year by 't,

217

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

And a French court' sy made to't : Alas, sir,
Think of the world, how we shall live, grow serious 5
We have been married a whole fortnight now.

Lean. How ? a whole fortnight ! why, is that so long ?

Bian. 'Tis time to leave off dalliance ; 'tis a doctrine
Of your own teaching, if you be remember'd,
And I was bound to obey it.

Moth. (Aside.') Here 's one fits him ;
This was well catch'd i' faith, son, like a fellow
That rids another country of a plague,
And brings it home with him to his own house.

[A Messenger from the Duke knocks nvithin.
Who knocks ?

Lean. Who 's there now ? Withdraw you, Bianca ;
Thou art a gem no stranger's eye must see,
Howe'er thou 'rt pleas'd now to look dull on me.

[Exit Bianca.''

The Witch of Middleton is his most remarkable performance ;
both on its own account, and from the use that Shakespear has made
of some of the characters and speeches in his Macbeth. Though the
employment which Middleton has given to Hecate and the rest, in
thwarting the purposes and perplexing the business of familiar and
domestic life, is not so grand or appalling as the more stupendous
agency which Shakespear has assigned them, yet it is not easy to deny
the merit of the first invention to Middleton, who has embodied the
existing superstitions of the time, respecting that anomalous class of
beings, with a high spirit of poetry, of the most grotesque and fanciful
kind. The songs and incantations made use of are very nearly the
same. The other parts of this play are not so good ; and the solution
of the principal difficulty, by Antonio's falling down a trap-door,
most lame and impotent. As a specimen of the similarity of the
preternatural machinery, I shall here give one entire scene.

* The Witches' Habitation.
Enter Heccat, Stadlin, Hoppo, and other Witches.

Hec. The moon 's a gallant : see how brisk she rides.

Stad. Here 's a rich evening, Heccat.

Hec. Aye, is 't not, wenches,
To take a journey of five thousand miles ?

Hop. Our's will be more to-night.

Hec. Oh, 'twill be precious. Heard you the owl yet ?

Stad. Briefly, in the copse,
As we came thro' now.

Hec. 'Tis high time for us then.

Stad. There was a bat hung at my lips three times

218

ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

As we came thro1 the woods, and drank her fill :
Old Puckle saw her.

Hec. You are fortunate still,
The very scritch-owl lights upon your shoulder,
And woos you like a pidgeon. Are you furnish 'd ?
Have you your ointments ?

Stad. All.

Hec. Prepare to flight then.
I 'II overtake you swiftly.

Stad. Hye then, Heccat !
We shall be up betimes.

Hec. I 'II reach you quickly. [They ascend.

Enter Firestone.

Fire. They are all going a birding to-night. They talk of fowls i' th'
air, that fly by day, I 'm sure they 'II be a company of foul sluts there
to-night. If we have not mortality affeared, I 'II be hang'd, for they are
able to putrify it, to infect a whole region. She spies me now.

Hec. What, Firestone, our sweet son ?

Fire. A little sweeter than some of you ; or a dunghill were too good
for me.

Hec. How much hast there ?

Fire. Nineteen, and all brave plump ones ; besides six lizards, and three
serpentine eggs.

Hec. Dear and sweet boy ! What herbs hast thou ?

Fire. I have some mar-martin, and man-dragon.

Hec. Marmarittin, and mandragora, thou would'st say.

Fire. Here 's pannax, too. I thank thee ; my pan akes, I am sure, with
kneeling down to cut 'em.

Hec. And selago,

Hedge-hissop too ! How near he goes my cuttings !
Were they all cropt by moon-light ?

Fire. Every blade of 'em, or I 'm a moon-calf, mother.

Hec. Hie thee home with 'em.
Look well to th' house to-night : I 'm for aloft.

Fire. Aloft, quoth you ! I would you would break your neck once, that
I might have all quickly (Aside}. — Hark, hark, mother ! They are above
the steeple already, flying over your head with a noise of musicians.

Hec. They are indeed. Help me ! Help me ! I 'm too late else.

SONG, (in the air above).

Come away, come away !
Heccat, Heccat, come away !
Hec. I come, I come, I come, I come,
With all the speed I may,
With all the speed I may.
Where 's Stadlin ?
(Above). Here.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Hec. Where 's Puckle ?
(Above), Here :

And Hoppo too, and Hellwain too :

We lack but you, we lack but you.

Come away, make up the count !
Hec. I will but 'noint, and then I mount.

(A Spirit descends in the shape of a Cat).

(Above). There's one come down to fetch his dues ;
A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood j
And why thou stay'st so long, I muse, I muse,
Since th' air's so sweet and good ?
Hec. Oh, art thou come,

What news, what news ?
Spirit. All goes still to our delight,
Either come, or else
Refuse, refuse.

Hec. Now I am furnished for the flight.

fire. Hark, hark ! The cat sings a brave treble in her own language.
Hec. (Ascending *with the Spirit).
Now I go, now I fly,
Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I.
Oh, what a dainty pleasure 'tis
To ride in the air
When the moon shines fair,
And sing, and dance, and toy, and kiss !
Over woods, high rocks, and mountains,
Over seas our mistress' fountains,
Over steep towers and turrets,
We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits.
No ring of bells to our ears sounds,
No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds :
No, not the noise of water's breach,
Or cannon's roar, our height can reach.
(Above) No ring of bells, &c.

Fire. Well, mother, I thank you for your kindness. You must be
gamboling i' th' air, and leave me here like a fool and a mortal. [Exit.''

The Incantation scene at the cauldron, is also the original of that
in Macbeth, and is in like manner introduced by the Duchess's
visiting the Witches' Habitation.

1 The Witches" Habitation.
Enter Duchess, Heccat, Firestone.

Hec. What death is't you desire for Almachildes?
Duch. A sudden and a subtle.
Hec. Then I Ve fitted you.
Here lie the gifts of both ; sudden and subtle ;
220

ON LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, ETC.

His picture made in wax, and gently molten
By a blue fire, kindled with dead men's eyes,
Will waste him by degrees.

Duck. In what time, pr'ythee ?

Hec. Perhaps in a month's progress.

Duck. What ? A month ?
Out upon pictures ! If they be so tedious,
Give me things with some life.

Hec. Then seek no farther.

Duck. This must be done with speed, dispatched this night,
If it may possibly.

Hec. I have it for you :

Here 's that will do't. Stay but perfection's time,
And that 's not five hours hence.

Duch. Can'st thou do this ?

Hec. Can I ?

Duch. I mean, so closely.

Hec. So closely do you mean too ?

Duch. So artfully, so cunningly.

Hec. Worse and worse j doubts and incredulities,
They make me mad. Let scrupulous creatures know,
Cum <volui, ripis ipsis mirantibus, amnes
In f antes rediere suos : concuss aque sisto,
Stantia concutio cantufreta 5 nubila pello,
Nubilaque induco : *uentos abigoque <vocoque.
Viper ecu rumpo <verbis et carmine fauces ;
Et sifoas moveo, jubeoque tremiscere mantes,
Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchres.
Te quoque luna traho.
Can you doubt me then, daughter ?

That can make mountains tremble, miles of woods walk ;
Whole earth's foundations bellow, and the spirits
Of the entomb'd to burst out from their marbles ;
Nay, draw yon moon to my involv'd designs ?

fire. I know as well as can be when my mother 's mad, and our great
cat angry ; for one spits French then, and th' other spits Latin.

Duch. I did not doubt you, mother.

Hec. No ? what did you ?
My power 's so firm, it is not to be question'd.

Duch. Forgive what 's past : and now I know th1 offensiveness
That vexes art, I '11 shun th' occasion ever.

Hec. Leave all to me and my five sisters, daughter.
It shall be conveyed in at howlet-time.
Take you no care. My spirits know their moments ;
Raven or scritch-owl never fly by th' door,
But they call in (I thank 'em), and they lose not by 't.
I give 'em barley soak'd in infants' blood :
They shall have semina cum sanguine,
Their gorge cramm'd full, if they come once to our house :

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

We are no niggard. • [.Exit Duchess.

Fire. They fare but too well when they come hither. They ate up as
much t' other night as would have made me a good conscionable pudding.

Hec. Give me some lizard's brain : quickly, Firestone !
Where 's grannam Stadlin, and all the rest o' th' sisters ?

Fire . All at hand, forsooth.

Hec. Give me marmaritin ; some bear-breech. When ?

Fire. Here 's bear-breech and lizard's brain, forsooth.

Hec. Into the vessel ;

And fetch three ounces of the red-hair'd girl
I kill'd last midnight.

Fire. Whereabouts, sweet mother ?

Hec. Hip ; hip or flank. Where is the acopus ?

Fire. You shall have acopus, forsooth.

Hec. Stir, stir about, whilst I begin the charm.

A CHARM SONG,
(The Witches going about the Cauldron).

Black spirits, and white j red spirits, and gray ;
Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may.

Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in ;

Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky ;

Liard, Robin, you must bob in.
Round, around, around, about, about j
All ill come running in ; all good keep out !

i st Witch. Here 's the blood of a bat.

Hec . Put in that ; oh, put in that.

*d Witch. Here 's libbard's-bane.

Hec. Put in again.

ist Witch. The juice of toad; the oil of adder.

zd Witch. Those will make the yonker madder.

Hec. Put in : there 's all, and rid the stench.

Fire. Nay, here 's three ounces of the red-hair'd wench.

All. Round, around, around, &c.

Hec. See, see enough : into the vessel with it.

There ; 't hath the true perfection. I 'm so light
At any mischief: there 's no villainy
But is in tune, methinks.

Fire. A tune ! 'Tis to the tune of damnation then. I warrant you that
song hath a villainous burthen.

Hec. Come, my sweet sisters ; let the air strike our tune,

Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon.

[The Witches dance, and then exeunt. ,'

I will conclude this account with Mr. Lamb's observations on the
distinctive characters of these extraordinary and formidable personages,
as they are described by Middleton or Shakespear.

' Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms in

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ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

Macbeth and the incantations in this play, which is supposed to have
preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from the originality
of Shakespear. His witches are distinguished from the witches of
Middleton by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man
or woman, plotting some dire mischief, might resort for occasional
consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses
to men. From the moment that their eyes first meet Macbeth's, he
is spell-bound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never
break the fascination. These Witches can hurt the body ; those
have power over the soul. — Hecate, in Middleton, has a son, a low
buffoon : the Hags of Shakespear have neither child of their own, nor
seem to be descended from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of
whom we know not whence they sprung, nor whether they have
beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, so they
seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder and
lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of them.
— Except Hecate, they have no names, which heightens their
mysteriousness. The names, and some of the properties which
Middleton has given to his Hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters
are serious things. Their presence cannot consist with mirth. But
in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are fine creations.
Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They " raise
jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o'er life." '

LECTURE III

ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, AND WEBSTER

THE writers of whom I have already treated, may be said to have
been ' no mean men ' ; those of whom I have yet to speak, are
certainly no whit inferior. Would that I could do them any thing
like justice ! It is not difficult to give at least their seeming due to
great and well-known names ; for the sentiments of the reader meet
the descriptions of the critic more than half way, and clothe what is
perhaps vague and extravagant praise with a substantial form and
distinct meaning. But in attempting to extol the merits of an obscure
work of genius, our words are either lost in empty air, or are ' blown
stifling back ' upon the mouth that utters them. The greater those
merits are, and the truer the praise, the more suspicious and dispro-
portionate does it almost necessarily appear; for it has no relation to
any image previously existing in the public mind, and therefore looks

223

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

like an imposition fabricated out of nothing. In this case, the only
way that I know of is, to make these old writers (as much as can be)
vouchers for their own pretensions, which they are well able to make
good. I shall in the present Lecture give some account of Marston
and Chapman, and afterwards of Deckar and Webster.

Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the
ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy, either with the
stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter in-
dignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself
either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist.
He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him.
He was first on terms of great intimacy, and afterwards at open war,
with Ben Jonson ; and he is most unfairly criticised in The Return
from Parnassus, under the name of Monsieur Kinsayder, as a mere
libeller and buffoon. Writers in their life-time do all they can to
degrade and vilify one another, and expect posterity to have a very
tender care of their reputations ! The writers of this age, in general,
cannot however be reproached with this infirmity. The number of
plays that they wrote in conjunction, is a proof of the contrary ; and
a circumstance no less curious, as to the division of intellectual labour,
than the cordial union of sentiment it implied. Unlike most poets,
the love of their art surmounted their hatred of one another. Genius
was not become a vile and vulgar pretence, and they respected in
others what they knew to be true inspiration in themselves. They
courted the applause of the multitude, but came to one another for
judgment and assistance. When we see these writers working
together on the same admirable productions, year after year, as was
the case with Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Rowley, with
Chapman, Deckar, and Jonson, it reminds one of Ariosto's eloquent
apostrophe to the Spirit of Ancient Chivalry, when he has seated his
rival knights, Renaldo and Ferraw, on the same horse.

' Oh ancient knights of true and noble heart,
They rivals were, one faith they liv'd not under ;
Besides, they felt their bodies shrewdly smart
Of blows late given, and yet (behold a wonder)
Thro' thick and thin, suspicion set apart,
Like friends they ride, and parted not asunder,
Until the horse with double spurring drived
Unto a way parted in two, arrived.' x

Marston's Antonio and Mellida is a tragedy of considerable force
and pathos ; but in the most critical parts, the author frequently breaks

1 Sir John Harrington's translation.
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ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

off or flags without any apparent reason but want of interest in his
subject ; and farther, the best and most affecting situations and bursts
of feeling are too evidently imitations of Shakespear. Thus the
unexpected meeting between Andrugio and Lucio, in the beginning
of the third act, is a direct counterpart of that between Lear and
Kent, only much weakened : and the interview between Antonio and
Mellida has a strong resemblance to the still more affecting one
between Lear and 'Cordelia, and is most wantonly disfigured by the
sudden introduction of half a page of Italian rhymes, which gives the
whole an air of burlesque. The conversation of Lucio and Andrugio,
again, after his defeat seems to invite, but will not bear a comparison
with Richard the Second's remonstrance with his courtiers, who
offered him consolation in his misfortunes ; and no one can be at a
loss to trace the allusion to Romeo's conduct on being apprized of his
banishment, in the termination of the following speech.

' Antonio. Each man takes hence life, but no man death :
He 's a good fellow, and keeps open house :
A thousand thousand ways lead to his gate,
To his wide-mouthed porch : when niggard life
Hath but one little, little wicket through.
We wring ourselves into this wretched world
To pule and weep, exclaim, to curse and rail,
To fret and ban the fates, to strike the earth
As I do nvw. Antonio, curse thy birth,
And die.'

The following short passage might be quoted as one of exquisite
beauty and originality —

— ' As having clasp'd a rose
Within my palm, the rose being ta'en away,
My hand retains a little breath of sweet ;
So may man's trunk, his spirit slipp'd away,
Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest.'

Act IV. Scene i.

The character of Felice in this play is an admirable satirical accom-
paniment, and is the favourite character of this author (in all probability
his own), that of a shrewd, contemplative cynic, and sarcastic spectator
in the drama of human life. It runs through all his plays, is shared
by Quadratus and Lampatho in WHAT YOU WILL (it is into the
mouth of the last of these that he has put that fine invective against
the uses of philosophy, in the account of himself and his spaniel, * who
still slept while he baus'd leaves, tossed o'er the dunces, por'd on
the old print'), and is at its height in the Fawn and Malevole, in

VOL. v. : p 225

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

his Parasitaster and Malcontent. These two comedies are his chef
d'auvres. The character of the Duke Hercules of Ferrara, disguised
as the Parasite, in the first of these, is well sustained throughout, with
great sense, dignity, and spirit. He is a wise censurer of men and
things, and rails at the world with charitable bitterness. He may put
in a claim to a sort of family likeness to the Duke, in Measure for
Measure: only the latter descends from his elevation to watch in
secret over serious crimes ; the other is only a spy on private follies.
There is something in this cast of character (at least in comedy —
perhaps it neutralizes the tone and interest in tragedy), that finds a
wonderful reciprocity in the breast of the reader or audience. It
forms a kind of middle term or point of union between the busy
actors in the scene and the indifferent byestander, insinuates the plot,
and suggests a number of good wholesome reflections, for the sagacity
and honesty of which we do not fail to take credit to ourselves. We
are let into its confidence, and have a perfect reliance on its sincerity.
Our sympathy with it is without any drawback ; for it has no part to
perform itself, and ' is nothing, if not critical.' It is a sure card
to play. We may doubt the motives of heroic actions, or differ about
the just limits and extreme workings of the passions ; but the pro-
fessed misanthrope is a character that no one need feel any scruples
in trusting, since the dislike of folly and knavery in the abstract is
common to knaves and fools with the wise and honest ! Besides the
instructive moral vein of Hercules as the Fawn or Parasitaster, which
contains a world of excellent matter, most aptly and wittily delivered ;
there are two other characters perfectly hit off, Gonzago the old
prince of Urbino, and Granuffo, one of his lords in waiting. The
loquacious, good-humoured, undisguised vanity of the one is excellently
relieved by the silent gravity of the other. The wit of this last
character (GranufFo) consists in his not speaking a word through the
whole play ; he never contradicts what is said, and only assents by
implication. He is a most infallible courtier, and follows the prince
like his shadow, who thus graces his pretensions.

' We would be private, only Faunus stay 5 he is a wise fellow, daughter,
a very wise fellow, for he is still just of my opinion ; my Lord GranufFo,
you may likewise stay, for I know you '11 say nothing.'

And again, a little farther on, he says —

' Faunus, this GranufFo is a right wise good lord, a man of excellent
discourse, and never speaks ; his signs to me and men of profound reach
instruct abundantly ; he begs suits with signs, gives thanks with signs, puts
ofF his hat leisurely, maintains his beard learnedly, keeps his lust privately,
makes a nodding leg courtly, and lives happily.' — ' Silence,' replies Hercules,

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ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

' is an excellent modest grace j but especially before so instructing a wisdom
as that of your Excellency.'

The garrulous self-complacency of this old lord is kept up in a vein
of pleasant humour ; an instance of which might be given in his
owning of some learned man, that * though he was no duke, yet he
was wise ; ' and the manner in which the others play upon this foible,
and make him contribute to his own discomfiture, without his having
the least suspicion of the plot against him, is full of ingenuity and
counterpoint. In the last scene he says, very characteristically,

* Of all creatures breathing, I do hate those things that struggle to seem
wise, and yet are indeed very fools. I remember when I was a young man,
in my father's days, there were four gallant spirits for resolution, as proper
for body, as witty in discourse, as any were in Europe ; nay, Europe had
not such. I was one of them. We four did all love one lady; a most
chaste virgin she was : we all enjoyed her, and so enjoyed her, that, despite
the strictest guard was set upon her, we had her at our pleasure. I speak
it for her honour, and my credit. Where shall you find such witty fellows
now a-days ? Alas ! how easy is it in these weaker times to cross love-
tricks ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! Alas, alas ! I smile to think (I must confess with
some glory to mine own wisdom), to think how I found out, and crossed,
and curbed, and in the end made desperate Tiberio's love. Alas ! good
silly youth, that dared to cope with age and such a beard !

Hercules. But what yet might your well-known wisdom think,
If such a one, as being most severe,
A most protested opposite to the match
Of two young lovers ; who having barr'd them speech,
All interviews, all messages, all means
To plot their wished ends ; even he himself
Was by their cunning made the go-between,
The only messenger, the token-carrier ;
Told them the times when they might fitly meet,
Nay, shew'd the way to one another's bed ? '

To which Gonzago replies, in a strain of exulting dotage :

' May one have the sight of such a fellow for nothing ? Doth there
breathe such an egregious ass ? Is there such a foolish animal in rerum
natura ? How is it possible such a simplicity can exist ? Let us not lose
our laughing at him, for God's sake ; let folly's sceptre light upon him,
and to the ship of fools with him instantly.

Dondolo. Of all these follies I arrest your grace.'

Molie"re has built a play on nearly the same foundation, which is
not much superior to the present. Marston, among other topics of
satire, has a fling at the pseudo-critics and philosophers of his time,

227

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

who were 'full of wise saws and modern instances.' Thus he
freights his Ship of Fools :

' Dondolo. Yes, yes; but they got a supersedeas; all of them proved
themselves either knaves or madmen, and so were let go : there 's none left
now in our ship but a few citizens that let their wives keep their shop-
books, some philosophers, and a few critics ,• one of which critics has lost
his flesh with fishing at the measure of Plautus' verses j another has vowed
to get the consumption of the lungs, or to leave to posterity the true
orthography and pronunciation of laughing.

Hercules. But what philosophers ha' ye ?

Dondolo. Oh very strange fellows ; one knows nothing, dares not aver he
lives, goes, sees, feels.

Nymphadoro. A most insensible philosopher.

Dondolo. Another, that there is no present time ; and that one man
to-day and to-morrow, is not the same man ; so that he that yesterday
owed money, to-day owes none ; because he is not the same man.

Herod. Would that philosophy hold good in law ?

Hercules. But why has the Duke thus laboured to have all the fools
shipped out of his dominions ?

Dondolo. Marry, because he would play the fool alone without any rival.'

Act IV.

Moliere has enlarged upon the same topic in his Manage Force,
but not with more point or effect. Nymphadoro's reasons for devot-
ing himself to the sex generally, and Hercules's description of the
different qualifications of different men, will also be found to contain
excellent specimens, both of style and matter. — The disguise of
Hercules as the Fawn, is assumed voluntarily, and he is comparatively
a calm and dispassionate observer of the times. Malevole's disguise
in the Malcontent has been forced upon him by usurpation and
injustice, and his invectives are accordingly more impassioned and
virulent. His satire does not * like a wild goose fly, unclaimed of
any man,' but has a bitter and personal application. Take him in
the words of the usurping Duke's account of him.

1 This Malevole is one of the most prodigious affections that ever con-
versed with Nature ; a man, or rather a monster, more discontent than
Lucifer when he was thrust out of the presence. His appetite is unsatiable
as the grave, as far from any content as from heaven. His highest delight
is to procure others vexation, and therein he thinks he truly serves Heaven ;
for 'tis his position, whosoever in this earth can be contented, is a slave,
and damned ; therefore does he afflict all, in that to which they are most
affected. The elements struggle with him ; his own soul is at variance
with herself ; his speech is halter-worthy at all hours. I like him, faith ;
he gives good intelligence to my spirit, makes me understand those
weaknesses which others' flattery palliates.

Hark ! they sing.

228

ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

Enter Malevole, after the Song.

Pietro Jacomo. See he comes ! Now shall you hear the extremity of a
Malcontent ; he is as free as air ; he blows over every man. And — Sir,
whence come you now ?

Malevole. From the public place of much dissimulation, the church.

Pietro 'Jacomo. What didst there ?

Malevole. Talk with a usurer ; take up at interest.

Pietro Jacomo. I wonder what religion thou art of ?

Malevole. Of a soldier's religion.

Pietro Jacomo. And what dost think makes most infidels now ?

Malevole. Sects, sects. I am weary : would I were one of the Duke's
hounds.

Pietro Jacomo. But what 's the common news abroad ? Thou dogg'st
rumour still.

Malevole. Common news ? Why, common words are, God save ye,
fare ye well : common actions, flattery and cozenage : common things,
women and cuckolds.' Act I. Scene 3.

In reading all this, one is somehow reminded perpetually of Mr.
Kean's acting : in Shakespear we do not often think of him, except
in those parts which he constantly acts, and in those one cannot
forget him. I might observe on the above passage, in excuse for
some bluntnesses of style, that the ideal barrier between names and
things seems to have been greater then than now. Words have
become instruments of more importance than formerly. To mention
certain actions, is almost to participate in them, as if consciousness
were the same as guilt. The standard of delicacy varies at different
periods, as it does in different countries, and is not a general test of
superiority. The French, who pique themselves (and justly, in
some particulars) on their quickness of tact and refinement of breed-
ing, say and do things which we, a plainer and coarser people, could
not think of without a blush. What would seem gross allusions to
us at present, were without offence to our ancestors, and many things
passed for jests with them, or matters of indifference, which would
not now be endured. Refinement of language, however, does not
keep pace with simplicity of manners. The severity of criticism
exercised in our theatres towards some unfortunate straggling phrases
in the old comedies, is but an ambiguous compliment to the immaculate
purity of modern times. Marston's style was by no means more
guarded than that of his contemporaries. He was also much more of
a free-thinker than Marlowe, and there is a frequent, and not unfavour-
able allusion in his works, to later sceptical opinions. — In the play of
the Malcontent we meet with an occasional mixture of comic gaiety,
to relieve the more serious and painful business of the scene, as in the
easy loquacious effrontery of the old intriguante Maquerella, and in

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

the ludicrous facility with which the idle courtiers avoid or seek the
notice of Malevole, as he is in or out of favour ; but the general tone
and import of the piece is severe and moral. The plot is somewhat
too intricate and too often changed (like the shifting of a scene), so
as to break and fritter away the interest at the end ; but the part of
Aurelia, the Duchess of Pietro Jacomo, a dissolute and proud-spirited
woman, is the highest strain of Marston's pen. The scene in parti-
cular, in which she receives and exults in the supposed news of her
husband's death, is nearly unequalled in boldness of conception and
in the unrestrained force of passion, taking away not only the
consciousness of guilt, but overcoming the sense of shame.1

Next to Marston, I must put Chapman, whose name is better
known as the translator of Homer than as a dramatic writer. He is,
like Marston, a philosophic observer, a didactic reasoner : but he has
both more gravity in his tragic style, and more levity in his comic
vein. His BUSSY D'AMBOIS, though not without interest or some
fancy, is rather a collection of apophthegms or pointed sayings in the
form of a dialogue, than a poem or a tragedy. In his verses the
oracles have not ceased. Every other line is an axiom in morals — a
libel on mankind, if truth is a libel. He is too stately for a wit, in
his serious writings — too formal for a poet. Bussy d'Ambois is
founded on a French plot and French manners. The character,
from which it derives its name, is arrogant and ostentatious to an
unheard-of degree, but full of nobleness and lofty spirit. His pride
and unmeasured pretensions alone take away from his real merit ; and
by the quarrels and intrigues in which they involve him, bring about
the catastrophe, which has considerable grandeur and imposing effect,
in the manner of Seneca. Our author aims at the highest things in
poetry, and tries in vain, wanting imagination and passion, to fill up
the epic moulds of tragedy with sense and reason alone, so that he
often runs into bombast and turgidity — is extravagant and pedantic at
one and the same time. From the nature of the plot, which turns
upon a love intrigue, much of the philosophy of this piece relates to
the character of the sex. Milton says,

' The way of women's will is hard to hit.'

But old Chapman professes to have found the clue to it, and winds
his uncouth way through all the labyrinth of love. Its deepest
recesses ' hide nothing from his view.' The close intrigues of court
policy, the subtle workings of the human soul, move before him like
a sea dark, deep, and glittering with wrinkles for the smile of beauty.

1 See the conclusion of Lecture IV.
230

ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

Fulke Greville alone could go beyond him in gravity and mystery.
The plays of the latter (Mustapha and Alaham) are abstruse as the
mysteries of old, and his style inexplicable as the riddles of the Sphinx.
As an instance of his love for the obscure, the marvellous, and
impossible, he calls up ' the ghost of one of the old kings of Ormus,'
as prologue to one of his tragedies ; a very reverend and inscrutable
personage, who, we may be sure, blabs no living secrets. Chapman,
in his other pieces, where he lays aside the gravity of the philosopher
and poet, discovers an unexpected comic vein, distinguished by equal
truth of nature and lively good humour. I cannot say that this
character pervades any one of his entire comedies ; but the intro-
ductory sketch of Monsieur D' Olive is the undoubted prototype of
that light, flippant, gay, and infinitely delightful class of character,
of the professed men of wit and pleasure about town, which we have
in such perfection in Wycherley and Congreve, such as Sparkish,
Witwoud and Petulant, &c. both in the sentiments and in the style of
writing. For example, take the last scene of the first act.

« Enter D'Olive.

Rhoderique. What, Monsieur D'Olive, the only admirer of wit and good
words.

D^Olive. Morrow, wits : morrow, good wits : my little parcels of wit, I
have rods in pickle for you. How dost, Jack ; may I call thee, sir, Jack
yet?

Mugeron. You may, sir ; sir 's as commendable an addition as Jack, for
ought I know.

D'Ol. I know it, Jack, and as common too.

Rhod. Go to, you may cover ; we have taken notice of your embroidered
beaver.

D'Ol. Look you : by heaven thou 'rt one of the maddest bitter slaves in
Europe : I do but wonder how I made shift to love thee all this while.

Rkod. Go to, what might such a parcel-gilt cover be worth ?

Mug. Perhaps more than the whole piece beside.

D'Ol. Good T faith, but bitter. Oh, you mad slaves, I think you had
Satyrs to your sires, yet I must love you, I must take pleasure in you, and
i' faith tell me, how is 't ? live I see you do, but how ? but how, wits ?

Rhod. Faith, as you see, like poor younger brothers.

D'Ol. By your wits ?

Mug. Nay, not turned poets neither.

D'Ol. Good in sooth ! but indeed to say truth, time was when the sons
of the Muses had the privilege to live only by their wits, but times are
altered, Monopolies are now called in, and wit 's become a free trade for
all sorts to live by : lawyers live by wit, and they live worshipfully : soldiers
live by wit, and they live honourably : panders live by wit, and they live
honestly : in a word, there are but few trades but live by wit, only bawds
and midwives live by women's labours, as fools and fiddlers do by making

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

mirth, pages and parasites by making legs, painters and players by
making mouths and faces : ha, does 't well, wits ?

Rhod. Faith, thou followest a figure in thy jests, as country gentlemen
follow fashions, when they be worn threadbare.

/>'O/. Well, well, let 's leave these wit skirmishes, and say when shall
we meet ?

Mug. How think you, are we not met now ?

D'Ol. Tush, man ! I mean at my chamber, where we may take free
use of ourselves $ that is, drink sack, and talk satire, and let our wits run
the wild-goose chase over court and country. I will have my chamber the
rendezvous of all good wits, the shop of good words, the mint of good
jests, an ordinary of fine discourse ; critics, essayists, linguists, poets, and
other professors of that faculty of wit, shall, at certain hours i' th' day,
resort thither ; it shall be a second Sorbonne, where all doubts or differences
of learning, honour, duellism, criticism, and poetry, shall be disputed : and
how, wits, do ye follow the court still ?

Rhod. Close at heels, sir ; and I can tell you, you have much to answer
to your stars, that you do not so too.

D'Ol. As why, wits ? as why ?

Rhod. Why, sir, the court 's as 'twere the stage : and they that have a
good suit of parts and qualities, ought to press thither to grace them, and
receive their due merit.

D'Ol. Tush, let the court follow me : he that soars too near the sun,
melts his wings many times ; as I am, I possess myself, I enjoy my liberty,
my learning, my wit : as for wealth and honour, let 'em go ; I '11 not lose
my learning to be a lord, nor my wit to be an alderman.

Mug. Admirable D'Olive !

D'Ol. And what ! you stand gazing at this comet here, and admire it, I
dare say.

Rhod. And do not you ?

D'Ol. Not I, I admire nothing but wit.

Rhod. But I wonder how she entertains time in that solitary cell : does
she not take tobacco, think you ?

D'Ol. She does, she does : others make it their physic, she makes it her
food : her sister and she take it by turn, first one, then the other, and
Vandome ministers to them both.

Mug. How sayest thou by that Helen of Greece the Countess's sister ?
there were a paragon, Monsieur D'Olive, to admire and marry too.

D'Ol. Not for me.

Rhod. No ? what exceptions lie against the choice ?

D'Ol. Tush, tell me not of choice ; if I stood affected that way, I would
choose my wife as men do Valentines, blindfold, or draw cuts for them,
for so I shall be sure not to be deceived in choosing ; for take this of me,
there 's ten times more deceit in women than in horse-flesh ; and I say still,
that a pretty well-pac'd chamber-maid is the only fashion j if she grows
full or fulsome, give her but sixpence to buy her a hand-basket, and send
her the way of all flesh, there 's no more but so.

Mug. Indeed that 's the savingest way.

D'Ol. O me ! what a hell 'tis for a man to be tied to the continual

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ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

charge of a coach, with the appurtenances, horses, men, and so forth : and
then to have a man's house pestered with a whole country of guests, grooms,
panders, waiting-maids, &c. I careful to please my wife, she careless to
displease me $ shrewish if she be honest ; intolerable if she be wise ;
imperious as an empress ; all she does must be law, all she says gospel :
oh, what a penance 'tis to endure her ! I glad to forbear still, all to keep
her loyal, and yet perhaps when all 's done, my heir shall be like my horse-
keeper : fie on 't ! the very thought of marriage were able to cool the
hottest liver in France.

Rhod. Well, I durst venture twice the price of your gilt coney's wool,
we shall have you change your copy ere a twelvemonth's day.

Mug. We must have you dubb'd o' th' order ; there 's no remedy : you
that have, unmarried, done such honourable service in the commonwealth,
must needs receive the honour due to 't in marriage.

Rhod. That he may do, and never marry.

U'OL As how, wits ? i' faith as how ?

RJiod. For if he can prove his father was free o' th' order, and that he
was his father's son, then, by the laudable custom of the city, he may be a
cuckold by his father's copy, and never serve for 't.

D'Ol. Ever good i' faith !

Mug. Nay how can he plead that, when 'tis as well known his father
died a bachelor ?

D'Ol. Bitter, in verity, bitter ! But good still in its kind.

Rhod. Go to, we must have you follow the lantern of your forefathers.

Mug. His forefathers ? S'body, had he more fathers than one ?

Z)'0/. Why, this is right : here 's wit canvast out on 's coat, into 's
jacket : the string sounds ever well, that rubs not too much o' th' frets : I
must love your wits, I must take pleasure in you. Farewell, good wits :
you know my lodging, make an errand thither now and then, and save
your ordinary ; do, wits, do.

Mug. We shall be troublesome t' ye.

VOl. O God, sir, you wrong me, to think I can be troubled with wit :
I love a good wit as I love myself : if you need a brace or two of crowns
at any time, address but your sonnet, it shall be as sufficient as your bond
at all times : I carry half a score birds in a cage, shall ever remain at your
call. Farewell, wits j farewell, good wits. \_Exit.

Rhod. Farewell the true map of a gull : by heaven he shall to th' court !
'tis the perfect model of an impudent upstart j the compound of a poet and
a lawyer ; he shall sure to th' court.

Mug . Nay, for God's sake, let 's have no fools at court.

Rhod. He shall to 't, that 's certain. The Duke had a purpose to dis-
patch some one or other to the French king, to entreat him to send for the
body of his niece, which the melancholy Earl of St. Anne, her husband,
hath kept so long unburied, as meaning one grave should entomb himself
and her together.

Mug. A very worthy subject for an embassage, as D'Olive is for an
embassador agent ; and 'tis as suitable to his brain, as his parcel-gilt beaver
to his fool's head.

Rhod. Well, it shall go hard, but he shall be employed. Oh, 'tis a most

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

accomplished ass; the mongrel of a gull, and a villain : the very essence of
his soul is pure villainy; the substance of his brain, foolery: one that
believes nothing from the stars upward ; a pagan in belief, an epicure
beyond belief; prodigious in lust ; prodigal in wasteful expense ; in neces-
sary, most penurious. His wit is to admire and imitate ; his grace is to
censure and detract ; he shall to th' court, T faith he shall thither : I will
shape such employment for him, as that he himself shall have no less con-
tentment, in making mirth to the whole court, than the Duke and the
whole court shall have pleasure in enjoying his presence. A knave, if he
be rich, is fit to make an officer, as a fool, if he be a knave, is fit to make
an intelligencer. [Exeunt.'

His May-Day is not so good. All Fools, The Widow's Tears,
and Eastward Hoe, are comedies of great merit, (particularly the
last). The first is borrowed a good deal from Terence, and the
character of Valerio, an accomplished rake, who passes with his
father for a person of the greatest economy and rusticity of manners,
is an excellent idea, executed with spirit. Eastward Hoe was
written in conjunction with Ben Jonson and Marston ; and for his
share in it, on account of some allusions to the Scotch, just after the
accession of James i. our author, with his friends, had nearly lost his
ears. Such were the notions of poetical justice in those days ! The
behaviour of Ben Jonson's mother on this occasion is remarkable.
' On his release from prison, he gave an entertainment to his friends,
among whom were Camden and Selden. In the midst of the enter-
tainment, his mother, more an antique Roman than a Briton, drank to
him, and shewed him a paper of poison, which she intended to
have given him in his liquor, having first taken a portion of it herself,
if the sentence for his punishment had been executed.' This play
contains the first idea of Hogarth's Idle and Industrious Apprentices.

It remains for me to say something of Webster and Deckar. For
these two writers I do not know how to shew my regard and admira-
tion sufficiently. Noble-minded Webster, gentle-hearted Deckar,
how may I hope to * express ye unblam'd,' and repay to your
neglected manes some part of the debt of gratitude I owe for proud
and soothing recollections ? I pass by the Appius and Virginia of
the former, which is however a good, sensible, solid tragedy, cast in a
frame-work of the most approved models, with little to blame or praise
in it, except the affecting speech of Appius to Virginia just before he
kills her ; as well as Deckar's Wonder of a Kingdom, his Jacomo
Gentili, that truly ideal character of a magnificent patron, and Old
Fortunatus and his Wishing-cap, which last has the idle garrulity of
age, with the freshness and gaiety of youth still upon its cheek and in
its heart. These go into the common catalogue, and are lost in the

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ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

crowd ; but Webster's Vittoria Corombona I cannot so soon part
with ; and old honest Deckar's Signior Orlando Friscobaldo I shall
never forget ! I became only of late acquainted with this last-
mentioned worthy character ; but the bargain between us is, I trust,
for life. We sometimes regret that we had not sooner met with
characters like these, that seem to raise, revive, and give a new zest
to our being. Vain the complaint! We should never have known
their value, if we had not known them always : they are old, very old
acquaintance, or we should not recognise them at first sight. We
only find in books what is already written within 'the red-leaved
tables of our hearts.' The pregnant materials are there ; ' the pangs,
the internal pangs are ready ; and poor humanity's afflicted will
struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.' But the reading of fine
poetry may indeed open the bleeding wounds, or pour balm and con-
solation into them, or sometimes even close them up for ever! Let
any one who has never known cruel disappointment, nor comfortable
hopes, read the first scene between Orlando and Hippolito, in Deckar's
play of the Honest Whore, and he will see nothing in it. But I
think few persons will be entirely proof against such passages as some
of the following.

' Enter Orlando Friscobaldo.

Omnes. Signior Friscobaldo.

Hipolito. Friscobaldo, oh ! pray call him, and leave me; we two have
business.

Carolo. Ho, Signior ! Signior Friscobaldo, the Lord Hipolito. [Exeunt.

Orlando. My noble Lord ! the Lord Hipolito ! The Duke's son ! his
brave daughter's brave husband ! How does your honour 'd Lordship ?
Does your nobility remember so poor a gentleman as Signior Orlando
Friscobaldo ? old mad Orlando ?

Hip. Oh, Sir, our friends ! they ought to be unto us as our jewels ; as
dearly valued, being locked up and unseen, as when we wear them in our
hands. I see, Friscobaldo, age hath not command of your blood j for all
time's sickle hath gone over you, you are Orlando still.

Orl. Why, my Lord, are not the fields mown and cut down, and stript
bare, and yet wear they not pied coats again ? Though my head be like
a leek, white, may not my heart be like the blade, green ?

Hip. Scarce can I read the stories on your brow,
Which age hath writ there : you look youthful still.

Orl. I eat snakes, my Lord, I eat snakes. My heart shall never have a
wrinkle in it, so long as I can cry Hem ! with a clear voice. * *

Hip. You are the happier man, Sir.

Orl. May not old Friscobaldo, my Lord, be merry now, ha ? I have a
little, have all things, have nothing: I have no wife, I have no child, have
no chick, and why should I not be in my jocundare ?

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Hip. Is your wife then departed ?

Orl. She's an old dweller in those high countries, yet not from me :
here, she 's here ; a good couple are seldom parted.

Hip. You had a daughter, too, Sir, had you not ?

Orl. Oh, my Lord ! this old tree had one branch, and but one branch,
growing out of it : it was young, it was fair, it was strait : I pruned it
daily, drest it carefully, kept it from the wind, helped it to the sun ; yet for
all my skill in planting, it grew crooked, it bore crabs : I hew'd it down.
What 's become of it, I neither know nor care.

Hip. Then can I tell you what 's become of it : that branch is withered.

Orl. So 'twas long ago.

Hip. Her name, I think, was Bellafront ; she 's dead.

Orl. Ha ! dead ?

Hip. Yes, what of her was left, not worth the keeping,
Even in my sight, was thrown into a grave.

Orl. Dead ! my last and best peace go with her ! I see death 's a good

trencherman ; he can eat coarse homely meat as well as the daintiest

Is she dead ?

Hip. She's turn'd to earth.

Orl. Would she were turned to Heaven. Umph ! Is she dead ? I am
glad the world has lost one of his idols : no whoremonger will at midnight
beat at the doors : in her grave sleep all my shame and her own ; and all
my sorrows, and all her sins.

Hip. I'm glad you are wax, not marble ; you are made
Of man's best temper ; there are now good hopes
That all these heaps of ice about your heart,
By which a father's love was frozen up,
Are thaw'd in those sweet show'rs fetch 'd from your eye :
We are ne'er like angels till our passions die.
She is not dead, but lives under worse fate ;
I think she 's poor ; and more to clip her wings,
Her husband at this hour lies in the jail,
For killing of a man: to save his blood,
Join all your force with mine ; mine shall be shown,
The getting of his life preserves your own.

Orl. In my daughter you will say ! Does she live then ? I am sorry
I wasted tears upon a harlot ! but the best is, I have a handkerchief to
drink them up, soap can wash them all out again. Is she poor ?

Hip. Trust me, I think she is.

Orl. Then she 's a right strumpet. I never knew one of their trade rich
two years together ; sieves can hold no water, nor harlots hoard up money :
taverns, tailors, bawds, panders, fiddlers, swaggerers, fools, and knaves, do
all wait upon a common harlot's trencher ; she is the gallypot to which
these drones fly : not for love to the pot, but for the sweet sucket in it, her
money, her money.

Hip. I almost dare pawn my word, her bosom gives warmth to no such
snakes ; when did you see her ?

Orl. Not seventeen summers.

Hip. Is your hate so old ?

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ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

Orl. Older; it has a white head, and shall never die 'till she be buried :
her wrongs shall be my bed-fellow.

Hip. Work yet his life, since in it lives her fame.

Orl. No, let him hang, and half her infamy departs out of the world ;
I hate him for her : he taught her first to taste poison ; I hate her for her-
self, because she refused my physic.

Hip. Nay, but Friscobaldo.

Orl. I detest her, I defy both, she 's not mine, she 's —

Hip. Hear her but speak.

Orl. I love no mermaids, I '11 not be caught with a quail-pipe.

Hip. You're now beyond all reason. Is't dotage to relieve your child,
being poor ?

Orl. 'Tis foolery ; relieve her ? Were her cold limbs stretcht out upon
a bier, I would not sell this dirt under my nails, to buy her an hour's
breath, nor give this hair, unless it were to choak her.

Hip. Fare you well, for I '11 trouble you no more. [Exit.

Orl. And fare you well, Sir, go thy ways ; we have few lords of thy
making, that love wenches for their honesty. — 'Las, my girl, art thou poor ?
Poverty dwells next door to despair, there 's but a wall between them :
despair is one of hell's catchpoles, and lest that devil arrest her, I '11 to her;
yet she shall not know me : she shall drink of my wealth as beggars do of
running water, freely; yet never know from what fountain's head it flows.
Shall a silly bird pick her own breast to nourish her young ones : and can
a father see his child starve ? That were hard : the pelican does it, and
shall not I ? '

The rest of the character is answerable to the beginning. The
execution is, throughout, as exact as the conception is new and
masterly. There is the least colour possible used ; the pencil drags ;
the canvas is almost seen through : but then, what precision of outline,
what truth and purity of tone, what firmness of hand, what marking
of character ! The words and answers all along are so true and
pertinent, that we seem to see the gestures, and to hear the tone with
which they are accompanied. So when Orlando, disguised, says to
his daughter, ' You '11 forgive me,' and she replies, * I am not marble,
I forgive you ; ' or again, when she introduces him to her husband,
saying simply, * It is my father,' there needs no stage-direction to
supply the relenting tones of voice or cordial frankness of manner
with which these words are spoken. It is as if there were some fine
art to chisel thought, and to embody the inmost movements of the
mind in every-day actions and familiar speech. It has been asked,

' Oh ! who can paint a sun-beam to the blind,
Or make him feel a shadow with his mind ? '

But this difficulty is here in a manner overcome. Simplicity and
extravagance of style, homeliness and quaintness, tragedy and comedy,

237

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

interchangeably set their hands and seals to this admirable production.
We find die simplicity of prose with the graces of poetry. The stalk
grows out of the ground ; but the flowers spread their flaunting leaves
in the air. The mixture of levity in the chief character bespeaks the
bitterness from which it seeks relief; it is the idle echo of fixed
despair, jealous of observation or pity. The sarcasm quivers on the
lip, while the tear stands congealed on the eye-lid. This ' tough
senior,' this impracticable old gentleman softens into a little child ;
this choke-pear melts in the mouth like marmalade. In spite of his
resolute professions of misanthropy, he watches over his daughter with
kindly solicitude ; plays the careful housewife ; broods over her lifeless
hopes ; nurses the decay of her husband's fortune, as he had supported
her tottering infancy ; saves the high-flying Matheo from the gallows
more than once, and is twice a father to them. The story has all
the romance of private life, all the pathos of bearing up against silent
grief, all the tenderness of concealed affection : — there is much sorrow
patiently borne, and then comes peace. Bellafront, in the two parts
of this play taken together, is a most interesting character. It is an
extreme, and I am afraid almost an ideal case. She gives the play
its title, turns out a true penitent, that is, a practical one, and is the
model of an exemplary wife. She seems intended to establish the
converse of the position, that a reformed rake makes the best husband,
the only difficulty in proving which, is, I suppose, to meet with the
character. The change of her relative position, with regard to
Hippolito, who, in the first part, in the sanguine enthusiasm of youth-
ful generosity, has reclaimed her from vice, and in the second part,
his own faith and love of virtue having been impaired with the pro-
gress of years, tries in vain to lure her back again to her former
follies, has an effect the most striking and beautiful. The pleadings
on both sides, for and against female faith and constancy, are managed
with great polemical skill, assisted by the grace and vividness of
poetical illustration. As an instance of the manner in which Bella-
front speaks of the miseries of her former situation, * and she has felt
them knowingly,' I might give the lines in which she contrasts the
different regard shewn to the modest or the abandoned of her sex.

' I cannot, seeing she 's woven of such bad stuff,
Set colours on a harlot bad enough.
Nothing did make me when I lov'd them best,
To loath them more than this : when in the street
A fair, young, modest damsel, I did meet ;
She seem'd to all a dove, when I pass'd by,
And I to all a raven : every eye
That followed her, went with a bashful glance ;
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ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

At me each bold and jeering countenance

Darted forth scorn : to her, as if she had been

Some tower unvanquished, would they all vail ,-

'Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail.

She crown'd with reverend praises, pass'd by them ;

I, though with face mask'd, could not 'scape the hem ;

For, as if heav'n had set strange marks on whores,

Because they should be pointing-stocks to man,

Drest up in civilest shape, a courtesan,

Let her walk saint-like, noteless, and unknown,

Yet she 's betray'd by some trick of her own.'

Perhaps this sort of appeal to matter of fact and popular opinion, is
more convincing than the scholastic subtleties of the Lady in Comus.
The manner too, in which Infelice, the wife of Hippolito, is made
acquainted with her husband's infidelity, is finely dramatic ; and in the
scene where she convicts him of his injustice by taxing herself with
incontinence first, and then turning his most galling reproaches to her
into upbraidings against his own conduct, she acquits herself with
infinite spirit and address. The contrivance, by which, in the first
part, after being supposed dead, she is restored to life, and married
to Hippolito, though perhaps a little far-fetched, is affecting and
romantic. There is uncommon beauty in the Duke her father's
description of her sudden illness. In reply to Infelice's declaration
on reviving, * I 'm well,' he says,

' Thou wert not so e'en now. Sickness' pale hand
Laid hold on thee, ev'n in the deadst of feasting :
And when a cup, crown'd with thy lover's health,
Had touch'd thy lips, a sensible cold dew
Stood on thy cheeks, as if that death had wept
To see such beauty altered.'

Candido, the good-natured man of this play, is a character of
inconceivable quaintness and simplicity. His patience and good-
humour cannot be disturbed by any thing. The idea (for it is
nothing but an idea) is a droll one, and is well supported. He is not
only resigned to injuries, but ' turns them,' as FalstafF says of diseases,
' into commodities.' He is a patient Grizzel out of petticoats, or a
Petruchio reversed. He is as determined upon winking at affronts,
and keeping out of scrapes at all events, as the hero of the Taming of
a Shrew is bent upon picking quarrels out of straws, and signalizing
his manhood without the smallest provocation to do so. The sudden
turn of the character of Candido, on his second marriage, is, however,
as amusing as it is unexpected.

Matheo, 'the high-flying' husband of Bellafront, is a masterly

239

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

portrait, done with equal ease and effect. He is a person almost
without virtue or vice, that is, he is in strictness without any moral
principle at all. He has no malice against others, and no concern for
himself. He is gay, profligate, and unfeeling, governed entirely by
the impulse of the moment, and utterly reckless of consequences.
His exclamation, when he gets a new suit of velvet, or a lucky run
on the dice, 'do we not fly high,' is an answer to all arguments.
Punishment or advice has no more effect upon him, than upon the
moth that flies into the candle. He is only to be left to his fate.
Orlando saves him from it, as we do the moth, by snatching it out of
the flame, throwing it out of the window, and shutting down the case-
ment upon it !

Webster would, I think, be a greater dramatic genius than Deckar,
if he had the same originality ; and perhaps is so, even without it.
His White Devil and Duchess of Malfy, upon the whole perhaps,
come the nearest to Shakespear of any thing we have upon record ;
the only drawback to them, the only shade of imputation that can be
thrown upon them, * by which they lose some colour,' is, that they
are too like Shakespear, and often direct imitations of him, both in
general conception and individual expression. So far, there is nobody
else whom it would be either so difficult or so desirable to imitate ;
but it would have been still better, if all his characters had been
entirely his own, had stood out as much from others, resting only on
their own naked merits, as that of the honest Hidalgo, on whose
praises I have dwelt so much above. Deckar has, I think, more
truth of character, more instinctive depth of sentiment, more of the
unconscious simplicity of nature ; but he does not, out of his own
stores, clothe his subject with the same richness of imagination, or the
same glowing colours of language. Deckar excels in giving expression
to certain habitual, deeply-rooted feelings, which remain pretty much
the same in all circumstances, the simple uncompounded elements of
nature and passion : — Webster gives more scope to their various
combinations and changeable aspects, brings them into dramatic play
by contrast and comparison, flings them into a state of fusion by a
kindled fancy, makes them describe a wider arc of oscillation from
the impulse of unbridled passion, and carries both terror and pity to
a more painful and sometimes unwarrantable excess. Deckar is con-
tented with the historic picture of suffering ; Webster goes on to
suggest horrible imaginings. The pathos of the one tells home and
for itself; the other adorns his sentiments with some image of tender
or awful beauty. In a word, Deckar is more like Chaucer or
Boccaccio ; as Webster's mind appears to have been cast more in the
mould of Shakespear's, as well naturally as from studious emulation.

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ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

The Bellafront and Vittoria Corombona of these two excellent
writers, shew their different powers and turn of mind. The one is
all softness ; the other 'all fire and air.' The faithful wife of Matheo
sits at home drooping, ' like the female dove, the whilst her golden
couplets are disclosed ' ; while the insulted and persecuted Vittoria
darts killing scorn and pernicious beauty at her enemies. This White
Devil (as she is called) is made fair as the leprosy, dazzling as the
lightning. She is dressed like a bride in her wrongs and her revenge.
In the trial-scene in particular, her sudden indignant answers to the
questions that are asked her, startle the hearers. Nothing can be
imagined finer than the whole conduct and conception of this scene,
than her scorn of her accusers and of herself. The sincerity of her
sense of guilt triumphs over the hypocrisy of their affected and official
contempt for it. In answer to the charge of having received letters
from the Duke of Brachiano, she says,

' Grant I was tempted :

Condemn you me, for that the Duke did love me ?
So may you blame some fair and chrystal river,
For that some melancholic distracted man
Hath drown'd himself in 't.'

And again, when charged with being accessary to her husband's
death, and shewing no concern for it —

' She comes not like a widow ; she comes arm'd
With scorn and impudence. Is this a mourning habit ? '

she coolly replies,

' Had I foreknown his death as you suggest,
I would have bespoke my mourning/

In the closing scene with her cold-blooded assassins, Lodovico and
Gasparo, she speaks daggers, and might almost be supposed to
exorcise the murdering fiend out of these true devils. Every word
probes to the quick. The whole scene is the sublime of contempt
and indifference.

' Vittoria. If Florence be i' th' Court, he would not kill me.

Gasparo. Fool ! princes give rewards with their own hands,
But death or punishment by the hands of others.

Lodovico (To Flamineo). Sirra, you once did strike me;

I '11 strike you
Unto the centre.

Flam. Thou 'It do it like a hangman, a base hangman,
Not like a noble fellow ; for thou see'st

VOL. v. : Q 241

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

I cannot strike again.

Lod. Dost laugh ?

flam. Would'st have me die, as I was born, in whining ?

Gasp. Recommend yourself to Heaven.

flam. No, I will carry mine own commendations thither.

Lod. Oh ! could I kill you forty times a-day,
And use 't four years together, 'twere too little :
Nought grieves, but that you are too few to feed
The famine of our vengeance. What do'st think on ?

flam. Nothing ; of nothing : leave thy idle questions —
I am i' th' way to study a long silence.
To prate were idle : I remember nothing j
There 's nothing of so infinite vexation
As man's own thoughts.

Lod. O thou glorious strumpet !
Could I divide thy breath from this pure air
When 't leaves thy body, I would suck it up,
And breathe 't upon some dunghill.

Pit. Cor. You my death's-man !
Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough ;
Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman :
If thou be, do thy office in right form ;
Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness.

Lod. O ! thou hast been a most prodigious comet j
But I '11 cut off your train : kill the Moor first.

Vit. Cor. You shall not kill her first ; behold my breast ;
I will be waited on in death : my servant
Shall never go before me.

Gasp. Are you so brave ?

Vit. Cor. Yes, I shall welcome death
As princes do some great embassadours ;
I '11 meet thy weapon half way.

Lod. Thou dost not tremble !
Methinks, fear should dissolve thee into air.

Fit. Cor. O, thou art deceiv'd, I am too true a woman !
Conceit can never kill me. I '11 tell thee what,
I will not in my death shed one base tear ;
Or if look pale, for want of blood, not fear.

Gasp. (To Zanche). Thou art my task, black fury.

Zanche. I have blood

As red as either of theirs ! Wilt drink some ?
'Tis good for the falling-sickness : I am proud
Death cannot alter my complexion,
For I shall ne'er look pale.

Lod. Strike, strike,
With a joint motion.

Fit. Cor. 'Twas a manly blow :
The next thou giv'st, murther some sucking infant,
And then thou wilt be famous.'

242

ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

Such are some of the terrible graces of the obscure, forgotten
Webster. There are other parts of this play of a less violent, more
subdued, and, if it were possible, even deeper character ; such is the
declaration of divorce pronounced by Brachiano on his wife :

' Your hand I '11 kiss :
This is the latest ceremony of my love ;
I '11 never more live with you/ &c.

which is in the manner of, and equal to, Deckar's finest things : —
and others, in a quite different style of fanciful poetry and bewildered
passion ; such as the lamentation of Cornelia, his mother, for the
death of Marcello, and the parting scene of Brachiano ; which would
be as fine as Shakespear, if they were not in a great measure borrowed
from his inexhaustible store. In the former, after Flamineo has
stabbed his brother, and Hortensio comes in, Cornelia exclaims,

' Alas ! he is not dead 5 he 's in a trance.
Why, here's nobody shall get any thing by his death :
Let me call him again, for God's sake.

Hor. I would you were deceiv'd.

Corn. O you abuse me, you abuse me, you abuse me ! How many have
gone away thus, for want of 'tendance ? Rear up 's head, rear up 's head ;
his bleeding inward will kill him.

Hor. You see he is departed.

Corn. Let me come to him ; give me him as he is. If he be turn'd to
earth, let me but give him one hearty kiss, and you shall put us both into
one coffin. Fetch a looking-glass : see if his breath will not stain it ; or
pull out some feathers from my pillow, and lay them to his lips. Will you
lose him for a little pains-taking ?

Hor. Your kindest office is to pray for him.

Corn. Alas ! I would not pray for him yet. He may live to lay me
i' th' ground, and pray for me, if you '11 let me come to him.

Enter Brachiano, all armed, save the Bearer, with Flamineo and Page.

Brack. Was this your handy-work ?
Flam. It was my misfortune.

Corn. He lies, he lies; he did not kill him. These have killed him,
that would not let him be better looked to.
Brach. Have comfort, my griev'd mother.
Corn. O, you screech-owl !
Hor. Forbear, good madam.
Corn. Let me go, let me go.

(She runs to Flamineo --with her knife drawn, and coming to him,

lets it fait).

The God of Heav'n forgive thee ! Dost not wonder
I pray for thee ? I '11 tell thee what 's the reason :

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

I have scarce breath to number twenty minutes ;
I 'd not spend that in cursing. Fare thee well !
Half of thyself lies there ; and may'st thou live
To fill an hour-glass with his moulder'd ashes,
To tell how thou should'st spend the time to come
In blest repentance.

Brack. Mother, pray tell me,
How came he by his death ? What was the quarrel ?

Corn. Indeed, my younger boy presum'd too much
Upon his manhood, gave him bitter words,
Drew his sword first ; and so, I know not how,
For I was out of my wits, he fell with 's head
Just in my bosom.

Page. This is not true, madam.

Corn. I pr'ythee, peace.
One arrow 's graz'd already : it were vain
To lose this ; for that will ne'er be found again.'1

This is a good deal borrowed from Lear ; but the inmost folds of
the human heart, the sudden turns and windings of the fondest affec-
tion, are also laid open with so masterly and original a hand, that it
seems to prove the occasional imitations as unnecessary as they are
evident. The scene where the Duke discovers that he is poisoned,
is as follows, and equally fine.

' Brack. Oh ! I am gone already. The infection
Flies to the brain and heart. O, thou strong heart,
There 's such a covenant 'tween the world and thee,
They 're loth to part.

Giovanni. O my most lov'd father !

Brack. Remove the boy away :
Where 's this good woman ? Had I infinite worlds,
They were too little for thee. Must I leave thee ?

(To Vittoria).
What say you, screech-owls. (To the Physicians) Is the venom mortal ?

Phy. Most deadly.

Brack. Most corrupted politic hangman !
You kill without book ; but your art to save
Fails you as oft as great men's needy friends :
I that have given life to offending slaves,
And wretched murderers, have I not power
To lengthen mine own a twelve-month ?
Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee.
This unction is sent from the great Duke of Florence.

Francesco de Medici (in disguise'). Sir, be of comfort.

Brack. Oh thou soft natural death ! that art joint-twin
To sweetest slumber !— no rough-bearded comet
Stares on thy mild departure : the dull owl
Beats not against thy casement : the hoarse wolf

244

ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

Scents not thy carrion. Pity winds thy corse,
Whilst horror waits on princes.

fit. Cor. I am lost for ever.

Brack. How miserable a thing it is to die
'Mongst women howling ! What are those ?

Flam. Franciscans.
They have brought the extreme unction.

Brack. On pain of death let no man name death to me :
It is a word most infinitely terrible.
Withdraw into our cabinet.1

The deception practised upon him by Lodovico and Gasparo,
who offer him the sacrament in the disguise of Monks, and then
discover themselves to damn him, is truly diabolical and ghastly.
But the genius that suggested it was as profound as it was lofty.
When they are at first introduced, Flamineo says,

' See, see how firmly he doth fix his eye
Upon the crucifix.'

To which Vittoria answers,

' Oh, hold it constant :
It settles his wild spirits ; and so his eyes
Melt into tears.'

The Duchess of Malfy is not, in my judgment, quite so spirited or
effectual a performance as the White Devil. But it is distinguished
by the same kind of beauties, clad in the same terrors. I do not
know but the occasional strokes of passion are even profounder and
more Shakespearian ; but the story is more laboured, and the horror
is accumulated to an overpowering and insupportable height. How-
ever appalling to the imagination and finely done, the scenes of the
madhouse to which the Duchess is condemned with a view to unsettle
her reason, and the interview between her and her brother, where he
gives her the supposed dead hand of her husband, exceed, to my
thinking, the just bounds of poetry and of tragedy. At least, the
merit is of a kind, which, however great, we wish to be rare.
A series of such exhibitions obtruded upon the senses or the imagina-
tion must tend to stupefy and harden, rather than to exalt the fancy
or meliorate the heart. I speak this under correction ; but I hope
the objection is a venial common-place. In a different style altogether
are the directions she gives about her children in her last struggles ;

' I prythee, look thou giv'st my little boy
Some syrop for his cold, and let the girl
Say her pray'rs ere she sleep. Now what death you please — '

and her last word, 'Mercy,' which she recovers just strength enough

245

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

to pronounce ; her proud answer to her tormentors, who taunt her
with her degradation and misery — « But I am Duchess of Malfy
still*1 — as if the heart rose up, like a serpent coiled, to resent the
indignities put upon it, and being struck at, struck again ; and the
staggering reflection her brother makes on her death, * Cover her
face : my eyes dazzle : she died young ! ' Bosola replies :

' I think not so ; her infelicity
Seem'd to have years too many.

Ferdinand. She and I were twins :
And should I die this instant, I had liv'd
Her time to a minute.'

This is not the bandying of idle words and rhetorical common-
places, but the writhing and conflict, and the sublime colloquy of
man's nature with itself!

The Revenger's Tragedy, by Cyril Tourneur, is the only other
drama equal to these and to Shakespear, in 'the dazzling fence of
impassioned argument,' in pregnant illustration, and in those profound
reaches of thought, which lay open the soul of feeling. The play, on
the whole, does not answer to the expectations it excites ; but the
appeals of Castiza to her mother, who endeavours to corrupt her
virtuous resolutions, * Mother, come from that poisonous woman there,'
with others of the like kind, are of as high and abstracted an essence
of poetry, as any of those above mentioned.

In short, the great characteristic of the elder dramatic writers is,
that there is nothing theatrical about them. In reading them, you
only think how the persons, into whose mouths certain sentiments are
put, would have spoken or looked : in reading Dryden and others of
that school, you only think, as the authors themselves seem to have
done, how they would be ranted on the stage by some buskined hero
or tragedy-queen. In this respect, indeed, some of his more obscure
contemporaries have the advantage over Shakespear himself, inasmuch
as we have never seen their works represented on the stage ; and there
is no stage-trick to remind us of it. The characters of their heroes
have not been cut down to fit into the prompt-book, nor have we ever
seen their names flaring in the play-bills in small or large capitals.
— I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of the stage ; but I think

1 'Am I not thy Duchess ?

Bosola. Thou art some great woman, sure ; for riot begins to sit on thy forehead
(clad in gray hairs) twenty years sooner than on a merry milkmaid's. Thou
sleep's! worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up his lodging in a cat's
ear : a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out, as
if thou wert the more unquiet bed-fellow.

Duch. I am Duchess of Malfy still.'
246

ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, ETC.

higher still of nature, and next to that, of books. They are the
nearest to our thoughts : they wind into the heart ; the poet's verse
slides into the current of our blood. We read them when young, we
remember them when old. We read there of what has happened to
others ; we feel that it has happened to ourselves. They are to be
had every where cheap and good. We breathe but the air of books :
we owe every thing to their authors, on this side barbarism ; and we
pay them easily with contempt, while living, and with an epitaph,
when dead! Michael Angelo is beyond the Alps; Mrs. Siddons
has left the stage and us to mourn her loss. Were it not so, there
are neither picture-galleries nor theatres-royal on Salisbury-plain,
where I write this ; but here, even here, with a few old authors,
I can manage to get through the summer or the winter months,
without ever knowing what it is to feel ennui. They sit with me at
breakfast ; they walk out with me before dinner. After a long walk
through unfrequented tracks, after starting the hare from the fern, or
hearing the wing of the raven rustling above my head, or being greeted
by the woodman's * stern good-night,' as he strikes into his narrow
homeward path, I can * take mine ease at mine inn,' beside the
blazing hearth, and shake hands with Signor Orlando Friscobaldo, as
the oldest acquaintance I have. Ben Jonson, learned Chapman,
Master Webster, and Master Heywood, are there ; and seated round,
discourse the silent hours away. Shakespear is there himself, not in
Gibber's manager's coat. Spenser is hardly yet returned from a
ramble through the woods, or is concealed behind a group of nymphs,
fawns, and satyrs. Milton lies on the table, as on an altar, never
taken up or laid down without reverence. Lyly's Endymion sleeps
with the moon, that shines in at the window ; and a breath of wind
stirring at a distance seems a sigh from the tree under which he grew
old. Faustus disputes in one corner of the room with fiendish faces,
and reasons of divine astrology. Bellafront soothes Matheo,
Vittoria triumphs over her judges, and old Chapman repeats one of
the hymns of Homer, in his own fine translation ! I should have no
objection to pass my life in this manner out of the world, not thinking
of it, nor it of me ; neither abused by my enemies, nor defended by
my friends; careless of the future, but sometimes dreaming of the
past, which might as well be forgotten ! Mr. Wordsworth has
expressed this sentiment well (perhaps I have borrowed it from him) —

' Books, dreams, are both a world ; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good,
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness may grow.
*******

247

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Two let me mention dearer than the rest,

The gentle lady wedded to the Moor,

And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.

Blessings be with them and eternal praise,
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays.
Oh, might my name be numbered among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days ! '

I hare no sort of pretension to join in the concluding wish of the
last stanza ; but I trust the writer feels that this aspiration of his early
and highest ambition is already not unfulfilled !

LECTURE IV

ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, BEN JONSON, FORD,
AND MASSINGER.

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, with all their prodigious merits, appear to
me the first writers who in some measure departed from the genuine
tragic style of the age of Shakespear. They thought less of their
subject, and more of themselves, than some others. They had a
great and unquestioned command over the stores both of fancy and
passion ; but they availed themselves too often of common-place
extravagances and theatrical trick. Men at first produce effect by
studying nature, and afterwards they look at nature only to produce
effect. It is the same in the history of other arts, and of other periods
of literature. With respect to most of the writers of this age, their
subject was their master. Shakespear was alone, as I have said
before, master of his subject; but Beaumont and Fletcher were the
first who made a play-thing of it, or a convenient vehicle for the
display of their own powers. The example of preceding or con-
temporary writers had given them facility ; the frequency of dramatic
exhibition had advanced the popular taste ; and this facility of pro-
duction, and the necessity for appealing to popular applause, tended to
vitiate their own taste, and to make them willing to pamper that of
the public for novelty and extraordinary effect. There wants some-
thing of the sincerity and modesty of the older writers. They do
not wait nature's time, or work out her materials patiently and faith-
fully, but try to anticipate her, and so far defeat themselves. .They
would have a catastrophe in every scene ; so that you have none at
248

ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

last; they would raise admiration to its height in every line; so that
the impression of the whole is comparatively loose and desultory.
They pitch the characters at first in too high a key, and exhaust
themselves by the eagerness and impatience of their efforts. We find
all the prodigality of youth, the confidence inspired by success, an
enthusiasm bordering on extravagance, richness running riot, beauty
dissolving in its own sweetness. They are like heirs just come to
their estates, like lovers in the honey-moon. In the economy of
nature's gifts, they ' misuse the bounteous Pan, and thank the Gods
amiss.' Their productions shoot up in haste, but bear the marks of
precocity and premature decay. Or they are two goodly trees, the
stateliest of the forest, crowned with blossoms, and with the verdure
springing at their feet ; but they do not strike their roots far enough
into the ground, and the fruit can hardly ripen for the flowers !

It cannot be denied that they are lyrical and descriptive poets of
the first order ; every page of their writings is a Jlorilegium : they are
dramatic poets of the second class, in point of knowledge, variety,
vivacity, and effect ; there is hardly a passion, character, or situation,
which they have not touched in their devious range, and whatever
they touched, they adorned with some new grace or striking feature ;
they are masters of style and versification in almost every variety of
melting modulation or sounding pomp, of which they are capable : in
comic wit and spirit, they are scarcely surpassed by any writers of
any age. There they are in their element, ' like eagles newly baited ' ;
but I speak rather of their serious poetry ; — and this, I apprehend,
with all its richness, sweetness, loftiness, and grace, wants something
— stimulates more than it gratifies, and leaves the mind in a certain
sense exhausted and unsatisfied. Their fault is a too ostentatious and
indiscriminate display of power. Every thing seems in a state of
fermentation and effervescence, and not to have settled and found its
centre in their minds. The ornaments, through neglect or abundance,
do not always appear sufficiently appropriate : there is evidently a rich
wardrobe of words and images, to set off any sentiments that occur,
but not equal felicity in the choice of the sentiments to be expressed ;
the characters in general do not take a substantial form, or excite a
growing interest, or leave a permanent impression ; the passion does
not accumulate by the force of time, of circumstances, and habit, but
wastes itself in the first ebullitions of surprise and novelty.

Besides these more critical objections, there is a too frequent
mixture of voluptuous softness or effeminacy of character with horror
in the subjects, a conscious weakness (I can hardly think it wanton-
ness) of moral constitution struggling with wilful and violent situations,
like the tender wings of the moth, attracted to the flame that dazzles

249

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

and consumes it. In the hey-day of their youthful ardour, and the
intoxication of their animal spirits, they take a perverse delight in
tearing up some rooted sentiment, to make a mawkish lamentation
over it; and fondly and gratuitously cast the seeds of crimes into
forbidden grounds, to see how they will shoot up and vegetate into
luxuriance, to catch the eye of fancy. They are not safe teachers of
morality : they tamper with it, like an experiment tried in corf ore vili ;
I and seem to regard the decomposition of the common affections, and
I the dissolution of the strict bonds of society, as an agreeable study and
la careless pastime. The tone of Shakespear's writings is manly and
bracing ; theirs is at once insipid and meretricious, in the comparison.
Shakespear never disturbs the grounds of moral principle ; but leaves
his characters (after doing them heaped justice on all sides) to be
judged of by our common sense and natural feeling. Beaumont and
Fletcher constantly bring in equivocal sentiments and characters, as if
to set them up to be debated by sophistical casuistry, or varnished
over with the colours of poetical ingenuity. Or Shakespear may be
said to * cast the diseases of the mind, only to restore it to a sound and
pristine health ' : the dramatic paradoxes of Beaumont and Fletcher
are, to all appearance, tinctured with an infusion of personal vanity and
I laxity of principle. I do not say that this was the character of the
men ; but it strikes me as the character of their minds. The two
' things are very distinct. The greatest purists (hypocrisy apart) are
often free-livers ; and some of the most unguarded professors of a
general license of behaviour, have been the last persons to take the
benefit of their own doctrine, from which they reap nothing, but the
obloquy and the pleasure of startling their * wonder-wounded ' hearers.
There is a division of labour, even in vice. Some persons addict
themselves to the speculation only, others to the practice. The
peccant humours of the body or the mind break out in different ways.
One man sows his iv'ild oats in his neighbour's field : another on Mount
Parnassus ; from whence, borne on the breath of fame, they may hope
to spread and fructify to distant times and regions. Of the latter
class were our poets, who, I believe, led unexceptionable lives, and
only indulged their imaginations in occasional unwarrantable liberties
with the Muses. What makes them more inexcusable, and confirms
this charge against them, is, that they are always abusing * wanton
poets,' as if willing to shift suspicion from themselves.

Beaumont and Fletcher were the first also who laid the foundation
of the artificial diction and tinselled pomp of the next generation of
poets, by aiming at a profusion of ambitious ornaments, and by trans-
lating the commonest circumstances into the language of metaphor
and passion. It is this misplaced and inordinate craving after striking
250

ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

effect and continual excitement that had at one time rendered our
poetry the most vapid of all things, by not leaving the moulds of
poetic diction to be filled up by the overflowings of nature and passion,
but by swelling out ordinary and unmeaning topics to certain precon-
ceived and indispensable standards of poetical elevation and grandeur.
— I shall endeavour to confirm this praise, mixed with unwilling
blame, by remarking on a few of their principal tragedies. If I have
done them injustice, the resplendent passages I have to quote will set
every thing to rights.

THE MAID'S TRAGEDY is one of the poorest. The nature of the
distress is of the most disagreeable and repulsive kind ; and not the
less so, because it is entirely improbable and uncalled-for. JThere is
no sort of reason, or no sufficient reason to the reader's mind, why
the king should marry off his mistress to one of his courtiers, why he
should pitch upon the worthiest for this purpose, why he should, by
such a choice, break off Amintor's match with the sister of another
principal support of his throne (whose death is the consequence),
why he should insist on the inviolable fidelity of his former mistress
to him after she is married, and why her husband should thus
inevitably be made acquainted with his dishonour, and roused to
madness and revenge, except the mere love of mischief, and gratuitous
delight in torturing the feelings of others, and tempting one's own
fate. The character of Evadne, however, her naked, unblushing
impudence, the mixture of folly with vice, her utter insensibility to
any motive but her own pride and inclination, her heroic superiority
to any signs of shame or scruples of conscience from a recollection of
what is due to herself or others, are well described ; and the lady is
true to herself in her repentance, which is owing to nothing but the
accidental impulse and whim of the moment. The deliberate volun-
tary disregard of all moral ties and all pretence to virtue, in the
structure of the fable, is nearly unaccountable. Amintor (who is
meant to be the hero of the piece) is a feeble, irresolute character :
his slavish, recanting loyalty to his prince, who has betrayed and
dishonoured him, is of a piece with the tyranny and insolence of
which he is made the sport ; and even his tardy revenge is snatched
from his hands, and he kills his former betrothed and beloved
mistress, instead of executing vengeance on the man who has destroyed
his peace of mind and unsettled her intellects. The king, however,
meets his fate from the penitent fury of Evadne ; and on this account,
the Maid's Tragedy was forbidden to be acted in the reign of
Charles u. as countenancing the doctrine of regicide. Aspatia is a
beautiful sketch of resigned and heart-broken melancholy; and
Calianax, a blunt, satirical courtier, is a character of much humour

251

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

and novelty. There are striking passages here and there, but fewer
than in almost any of their plays. Amintor's speech to Evadne,
when she makes confession of her unlooked-for remorse, is, I think,
the finest.

' Do not mock me :

Though I am tame, and bred up with my wrongs,

Which are my foster-brothers, I may leap,

Like a hand-wolf, into my natural wildness,

And do an outrage. Prithee, do not mock me ! '

KING AND No KING, which is on a strangely chosen subject as
strangely treated, is very superior in power and effect. There is an
unexpected reservation in the plot, which, in some measure, relieves
the painfulness of the impression. Arbaces is painted in gorgeous,
but not alluring colours. His vain-glorious pretensions and impatience
of contradiction are admirably displayed, and are so managed as to
produce an involuntary comic effect to temper the lofty tone of
tragedy, particularly in the scenes in which he affects to treat his
vanquished enemy with such condescending kindness ; and perhaps
this display of upstart pride was meant by the authors as an oblique
satire on his low origin, which is afterwards discovered. His pride
of self-will and fierce impetuosity, are the same in war and in love.
The haughty voluptuousness and pampered effeminacy of his character
admit neither respect for his misfortunes, nor pity for his errors.
His ambition is a fever in the blood ; and his love is a sudden
transport of ungovernable caprice that brooks no restraint, and is
intoxicated with the lust of power, even in the lap of pleasure, and
the sanctuary of the affections. The passion of Panthea is, as it
were, a reflection from, and lighted at the shrine of her lover's
flagrant vanity. In the elevation of his rank, and in the consciousness
of his personal accomplishments, he seems firmly persuaded (and by
sympathy to persuade others) that there is nothing in the world
which can be an object of liking or admiration but himself. The
first birth and declaration of this perverted sentiment to himself,
when he meets with Panthea after his return from conquest, fostered
by his presumptuous infatuation and the heat of his inflammable
passions, and the fierce and lordly tone in which he repels the
suggestion of the natural obstacles to his sudden phrenzy, are in Beau-
mont and Fletcher's most daring manner : but the rest is not equal.
What may be called the love-scenes are equally gross and common-
place ; and instead of any thing like delicacy or a struggle of different
feelings, have all the indecency and familiarity of a brothel. Bessus,
a comic character in this play, is a swaggering coward, something
between Parolles and Falstaff.

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ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

The FALSE ONE is an indirect imitation of Antony and Cleopatra.
We have Septimius for GEnobarbas and Caesar for Antony. Cleopatra
herself is represented in her girlish state, but she is made divine in

' Youth that opens like perpetual spring/

and promises the rich harvest of love and pleasure that succeeds it.
Her first presenting herself before Caesar, when she is brought in by
Sceva, and the impression she makes upon him, like a vision dropt
from the clouds, or

' Like some celestial sweetness, the treasure of soft love.'

are exquisitely conceived. Photinus is an accomplished villain, well-
read in crooked policy and quirks of state ; and the description of
Pompey has a solemnity and grandeur worthy of his unfortunate end.
Septimius says, bringing in his lifeless head,

* 'Tis here, 'tis done ! Behold, you fearful viewers,
Shake, and behold the model of the world here,
The pride and strength ! Look, look again, 'tis finished !
That that whole armies, nay, whole nations,
Many and mighty kings, have been struck blind at,
And fled before, wing'd with their fear and terrors,
That steel War waited on, and Fortune courted,
That high-plum'd Honour built up for her own ;
Behold that mightiness, behold that fierceness,
Behold that child of war, with all his glories,
By this poor hand made breathless ! '

And again Caesar says of him, who was his mortal enemy (it was
not held the fashion in those days, nor will it be held so in time to
come, to lampoon those whom you have vanquished) —

' Oh thou conqueror,

Thou glory of the world once, now the pity,
Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus ?
What poor fate followed thee, and plucked thee on
To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian ?
The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger,
That honourable war ne'er taught a nobleness,
Not worthy circumstance shew'd what a man was ?
That never heard thy name sung but in banquets,
And loose lascivious pleasures ? to a boy,
That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness,
No study of thy life to know thy goodness ?
Egyptians, do you think your highest pyramids,
Built to outdure the sun, as you suppose,
Where your unworthy kings lie raked in ashes,
Are monuments fit for him ! No, brood of Nilus,

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven ;
No pyramids set off his memories,
But the eternal substance of his greatness,
To which I leave him.'

It is something worth living for, to write or even read such poetry
as this is, or to know that it has been written, or that there have
been subjects on which to write it ! — This, of all Beaumont and
Fletcher's plays, comes the nearest in style and manner to Shakespear,
not excepting the first act of the Two Noble Kinsmen, which has
been sometimes attributed to him.

The FAITHFUL .SHEPHERDESS by Fletcher alone, is 'a perpetual
feast of nectar'd sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.' The author
has in it given a loose to his fancy, and his fancy was his most
delightful and genial quality, where, to use his own words,

' He takes most ease, and grows ambitious
Thro' his own wanton fire and pride delicious.'

The songs and lyrical descriptions throughout are luxuriant and
delicate in a high degree. He came near to Spenser in a certain
tender and voluptuous sense of natural beauty; he came near to
Shakespear in the playful and fantastic expression of it. The whole
composition is an exquisite union of dramatic and pastoral poetry ;
where the local descriptions receive a tincture from the sentiments
and purposes of the speaker, and each character, cradled in the lap of
nature, paints 'her virgin fancies wild' with romantic grace and
classic elegance.

The place and its employments are thus described by Chloe to
Thenot :

' Here be woods as green

As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet
As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curled stream, with flow'rs as many
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any ;
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
Arbours o'ergrown with woodbine ; caves, and dells ;
Chuse where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes, to make many a ring
For thy long fingers 5 tell thee tales of love,
How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies ;
How she conveyed him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
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ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest/

There are few things that can surpass in truth and beauty of
allegorical description, the invocation of Amaryllis to the God of
Shepherds, Pan, to save her from the violence of the Sullen Shepherd,
for Syrinx' sake :

* For her dear sake,

That loves the rivers' brinks, and still doth shake
In cold remembrance of thy quick pursuit ! '

Or again, the friendly Satyr promises Clorin —

' Brightest, if there be remaining
Any service, without feigning
I will do it ; were I set
To catch the nimble wind, or get
Shadows gliding on the green/

It would be a task no less difficult than this, to follow the flight of
the poet's Muse, or catch her fleeting graces, fluttering her golden
wings, and singing in notes angelical of youth, of love, and joy !

There is only one affected and ridiculous character in this drama,
that of Thenot in love with Clorin. He is attached to her for her
inviolable fidelity to her buried husband, and wishes her not to grant
his suit, lest it should put an end to his passion. Thus he pleads to
her against himself:

' If you yield, I die

To all affection ; 'tis that loyalty

You tie unto this grave I so admire ;

And yet there 's something else I would desire,

If you would hear me, but withal deny.

Oh Pan, what an uncertain destiny

Hangs over all my hopes ! I will retire ;

For if I longer stay, this double fire

Will lick my life up.'

This is paltry quibbling. It is spurious logic, not genuine feeling.
A pedant may hang his affections on the point of a dilemma in this
manner ; but nature does not sophisticate ; or when she does, it is to
gain her ends, not to defeat them.

The Sullen Shepherd turns out too dark a character in the end,
and gives a shock to the gentle and pleasing sentiments inspired
throughout.

The resemblance of Comus to this poem is not so great as has

255

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

been sometimes contended, nor are the particular allusions important
or frequent. Whatever Milton copied, he made his own. In
reading the Faithful Shepherdess, we find ourselves breathing the
moonlight air under the cope of heaven, and wander by forest side or
fountain, among fresh dews and flowers, following our vagrant fancies,
or smit with the love of nature's works. In reading Milton's Comus,
and most of his other works, we seem to be entering a lofty dome
raised over our heads and ascending to the skies, and as if nature and
every thing in it were but a temple and an image consecrated by the
poet's art to the worship of virtue and pure religion. The speech of
Clorin, after she has been alarmed by the Satyr, is the only one of
which Milton has made a free use.

' And all my fears go with thee,
What greatness or what private hidden power
Is there in me to draw submission
From this rude man and beast ? Sure I am mortal :
The daughter of a shepherd ; he was mortal,
And she that bore me mortal : prick my hand,
And it will bleed ; a fever shakes me, and
The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink,
Makes me a-cold : my fear says, I am mortal.
Yet I have heard, (my mother told it me,
And now I do believe it), if I keep
My virgin flow'r uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend,
Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves,
Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion
Draw me to wander after idle fires;
Or voices calling me in dead of night
To make me follow, and so tole me on
Thro' mire and standing pools to find my ruin ;
Else, why should this rough thing, who never knew
Manners, nor smooth humanity, whose heats
Are rougher than himself, and more mishapen,
Thus mildly kneel to me ? Sure there 's a pow'r
In that great name of Virgin, that binds fast
All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites
That break their confines : then, strong Chastity,
Be thou my strongest guard, for here I '11 dwell,
In opposition against fate and hell ! '

Ben Jonson's Sad Shepherd comes nearer it in style and spirit, but
still with essential differences, like the two men, and without any
appearance of obligation. Ben's is more homely and grotesque,
Fletcher's is more visionary and fantastical. 1 hardly know which
to prefer. If Fletcher has the advantage in general power and

256

ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

sentiment, Jonson is superior in naivete and truth of local colour-
ing.

The Two NOBLE KINSMEN is another monument of Fletcher's
genius ; and it is said also of Shakespear's. The style of the first
act has certainly more weight, more abruptness, and more involution,
than the general style of Fletcher, with fewer softenings and fillings-
up to sheathe the rough projecting points and piece the disjointed
fragments together. For example, the compliment of Theseus to one
of the Queens, that Hercules

' Tumbled him down upon his Nemean hide,
And swore his sinews thaw'd '

at sight of her beauty, is in a bolder and more masculine vein than
Fletcher usually aimed at. Again, the supplicating address of the
distressed Queen to Hippolita,

' Lend us a knee :

But touch the ground for us no longer time

Than a dove's motion, when the head 's pluck'd off' —

is certainly in the manner of Shakespear, with his subtlety and strength
of illustration. But, on the other hand, in what immediately follows,
relating to their husbands left dead in the field of battle,

' Tell him if he i' th' blood-siz'd field lay swoln,
Shewing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon,
What you would do ' —

I think we perceive the extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher, not
contented with truth or strength of description, but hurried away by
the love of violent excitement into an image of disgust and horror,
not called for, and not at all proper in the mouth into which it is
put. There is a studied exaggeration of the sentiment, and an evident
imitation of the parenthetical interruptions and breaks in the line,
corresponding to what we sometimes meet in Shakespear, as in the
speeches of Leontes in the Winter's Tale; but the sentiment is over-
done, and the style merely mechanical. Thus Hippolita declares, on
her lord's going to the wars,

' We have been soldiers, and we cannot weep,
When our friends don their helms, or put to sea,
Or tell of babes broach'd on the lance, or women
That have seethed their infants in (and after eat them)
The brine they wept at killing 'em j then if
You stay to see of us such spinsters, we
Should hold you here forever.'
VOL. v. : R 257

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

One might apply to this sort of poetry what Marvel says of some
sort of passions, that it is

' Tearing our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.'

It is not in the true spirit of Shakespear, who was ' born only heir
to all humanity,' whose horrors were not gratuitous, and who did not
harrow up the feelings for the sake of making mere bravura speeches.
There are also in this first act, several repetitions of Shakespear's
phraseology : a thing that seldom or never occurs in his own works.
For instance,

'Past slightly

His careless execution ' —

' The 'very lees of such, millions of rates
Exceed the wine of others ' —

' Let the event,

That never-erring arbitrator, tell us ' —

' Like old importmenfs bastard'' —

There are also words that are never used by Shakespear in a
similar sense :

' All our surgeons

Convent in their behoof ' —

' We convent nought else but woes ' —

In short, it appears to me that the first part of this play was
written in imitation of Shakespear's manner ; but I see no reason to
suppose that it was his, but the common tradition, which is however
by no means well established. The subsequent acts are confessedly
Fletcher's, and the imitations of Shakespear which occur there (not
of Shakespear's manner as differing from his, but as it was congenial
to his own spirit and feeling of nature) are glorious in themselves, and
exalt our idea of the great original which could give birth to such
magnificent conceptions in another. The conversation of Palamon
and Arcite in prison is of this description — the outline is evidently
taken from that of Guiderius, Arviragus, and Bellarius in Cymbeline,
but filled up with a rich profusion of graces that make it his own
again.

* Pal. How do you, noble cousin ?

Arc. How do you, Sir ?

Pal. Why, strong enough to laugh at misery,
And bear the chance of war yet. We are prisoners,
I fear for ever, cousin.
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ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

Arc . I believe it ;

And to that destiny have patiently
Laid up my hour to come.

Pal. Oh, cousin Arcite,

Where is Thebes now ? where is our noble country ?
Where are our friends and kindreds ? Never more
Must we behold those comforts ; never see
The hardy youths strive for the games of honour,
Hung with the painted favours of their ladies,
Like tall ships under sail : then start amongst 'em,
And as an east wind, leave 'em all behind us
Like lazy clouds, whilst Palamon and Arcite,
Even in the wagging of a wanton leg,
Outstript the people's praises, won the garlands,
Ere they have time to wish 'em ours. Oh, never
Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour,
Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses,
Like proud seas under us ! Our good swords now
(Better the red-eyed God of war ne'er wore)
Ravish'd our sides, like age, must run to rust,
And deck the temples of those Gods that hate us :
These hands shall never draw 'em out like lightning,
To blast whole armies more.

Arc. No, Palamon,

Those hopes are prisoners with us : here we are,
And here the graces of our youth must wither,
Like a too-timely spring : here age must find us,
And which is heaviest, Palamon, unmarried ;
The sweet embraces of a loving wife
Loaden with kisses, arm'd with thousand Cupids,
Shall never clasp our necks ! No issue know us,
No figures of ourselves shall we e'er see,
To glad our age, and like young eaglets teach 'em
Boldly to gaze against bright arms, and say,
Remember what your fathers were, and conquer !
The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments,
And in their songs curse ever-blinded fortune,
Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done
To youth and nature. This is all our world :
We shall know nothing here, but one another ;
Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes ;
The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it j
Summer shall come, and with her all delights,
But dead-cold winter must inhabit here still.

Pal. 'Tis too true, Arcite ! To our Theban hounds,
That shook the aged forest with their echoes,
No more now must we halloo ; no more shake
Our pointed javelins, while the angry swine
Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages,

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Struck with our well-steel'd darts ! All valiant uses
(The food and nourishment of noble minds)
In us two here shall perish j we shall die
(Which is the curse of honour) lazily,
Children of grief and ignorance.

Arc . Yet, cousin,

Even from the bottom of these miseries,
From all that fortune can inflict upon us,
I see two comforts rising, two mere blessings,
If the Gods please to hold here ; a brave patience,
And the enjoying of our griefs together.
Whilst Palamon is with me, let me perish
If I think this our prison !

Pal. Certainly,

'Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes
Were twinn'd together ; 'tis most true, two souls
Put in two noble bodies, let 'em suffer
The gall of hazard, so they grow together,
Will never sink ; they must not ; say they could,
A willing man dies sleeping, and all 's done.

Arc. Shall we make worthy uses of this place,
That all men hate so much ?

Pal. How, gentle cousin ?

Arc. Let 's think this prison a holy sanctuary
To keep us from corruption of worse men !
We 're young, and yet desire the ways of honour :
That, liberty and common conversation,
The poison of pure spirits, might, like women,
Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing
Can be, but our imaginations

May make it ours ? And here, being thus together,
We are an endless mine to one another j
We're father, friends, acquaintance ;
We are, in one another, families ;
I am your heir, and you are mine 5 this place
Is our inheritance ; no hard oppressor
Dare take this from us ; here, with a little patience,
We shall live long, and loving ; no surfeits seek us :
The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas
Swallow their youth ; were we at liberty,
A wife might part us lawfully, or business ;
Quarrels consume us ; envy of ill men
Crave our acquaintance ; I might sicken, cousin,
Where you should never know it, and so perish
Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,
Or prayers to the Gods -. a thousand chances,
Were we from hence, would sever us.

Pal. You have made me
(I thank you, cousin Arcite) almost wanton
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ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

With my captivity j what a misery

It is to live abroad, and every where !

'Tis like a beast, methinks ! I find the court here,

I 'm sure a more content ; and all those pleasures,

That woo the wills of men to vanity,

I see thro' now : and am sufficient

To tell the world, 'tis but a gaudy shadow

That old time, as he passes by, takes with him.

What had we been, old in the court of Creon,

Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance

The virtues of the great ones ? Cousin Arcite,

Had not the loving Gods found this place for us,

We had died as they do, ill old men unwept,

And had their epitaphs, the people's curses !

Shall I say more ?

Arc . I would hear you still.

Pal. You shall.

Is there record of any two that lov'd
Better than we do, Arcite ?

Arc . Sure there cannot.

Pal. I do not think it possible our friendship
Should ever leave us.

Arc. Till our deaths it cannot.'

Thus they ' sing their bondage freely : ' but just then enters ./Emilia,
who parts all this friendship between them, and turns them to
deadliest foes.

The jailor's daughter, who falls in love with Palamon, and goes
mad, is a wretched interpolation in the story, and a fantastic copy of
Ophelia. But they readily availed themselves of all the dramatic
common-places to be found in Shakespear, love, madness, processions,
sports, imprisonment, &c. and copied him too often in earnest, to
have a right to parody him, as they sometimes did, in jest. — The
story of the Two Noble Kinsmen is taken from Chaucer's Palamon
and Arcite ; but the latter part, which in Chaucer is full of dramatic
power and interest, degenerates in the play into a mere narrative of
the principal events, and possesses little value or effect. — It is not
improbable that Beaumont and Fletcher's having dramatised this
story, put Dryden upon modernising it.

I cannot go through all Beaumont and Fletcher's dramas (52
in number), but I have mentioned some of the principal, and the
excellences and defects of the rest may be judged of from these.
The Bloody Brother, A Wife for a Month, Bonduca, Thierry and
Theodoret, are among the best of their tragedies : among the comedies,
the Night Walker, the Little French Lawyer, and Monsieur Thomas,
come perhaps next to the Chances, the Wild Goose Chase, and Rule

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

a Wife and Have a Wife. — Philaster, or Love lies a Bleeding, is
one of the most admirable productions of these authors (the last I
shall mention) ; and the patience of Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario,
the tenderness of Arethusa, and the jealousy of Philaster, are beyond
all praise. The passages of extreme romantic beauty and high-
wrought passion that I might quote, are out of number. One only
must suffice, the account of the commencement of Euphrasia's love
to Philaster.

' Sitting in my window,

Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a God
I thought (but it was you) enter our gates ;
My blood flew out, and back again as fast
As I had puffed it forth and suck'd it in
Like breath ; then was I called away in haste
To entertain you. Never was a man
Heav'd from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais'd
So high in thoughts as I : you left a kiss
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep
From you forever. I did hear you talk
Far above singing ! '

And so it is our poets themselves write, * far above singing.' 1 I am
loth to part with them, and wander down, as we now must,

' Into a lower world, to theirs obscure
And wild — To breathe in other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.'

Ben Jonson's serious productions are, in. .my opinion, superior to
his comic ones. What he does, is the result of strong sense and
painful industry ; but sense and industry agree better with the grave
and severe, than with the light and gay productions of the Muse.
' His plays were works,' as some one said of them, ' while others'
works were plays.' The observation had less of compliment than of
truth in it. He may be said to mine his way into a subject, like a
mole, and throws up a prodigious quantity of matter on the surface,
so that the richer the soil in which he labours, the less dross and
rubbish we have. His fault is, that he sets himself too much to his
subject, and cannot let go his hold of an idea, after the insisting on
it becomes tiresome or painful to others. But his tenaciousness of
what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy than his delight in

1 Euphrasia as the Page, just before speaking of her life, which Philaster
threatens to take from her, says,

"Tis not a life ;

"Pis but a piece of childhood thrown away.'

What exquisite beauty and delicacy !
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ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords better with
didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar gabble ; his learning
engrafted on romantic tradition or classical history, looks like genius.

'Miraturque notvas frondes et non sua poma."

He was equal, by an effort, to the highest things, and took the
same, and even more successful pains to grovel to the lowest. He
raised himself up or let himself down to the level of his subject, by
ponderous machinery. By dint of application, and a certain strength
of nerve, he could do justice to Tacitus and Sallust no less than to
mine Host of the New Inn. His tragedy of the Fall of Sejanus,
in particular, is an admirable piec^iFancienTTnosaic. The principal
character giveTT Wie-thc ide*~of a lofty column of solid granite,
nodding to its base from its pernicious height, and dashed in pieces,
by a breath of air, a word of its creator — feared, not pitied, scorned,
unwept, and forgotten. The depth of knowledge and gravity of
expression sustain one another throughout : the poet has worked
out the historian's outline, so that the vices and passions, the
ambition and servility of public men, in the heated and poisoned
atmosphere of a luxurious and despotic court, were never described
in fuller or more glowing colours. — I am half afraid to give any
extracts, lest they should be tortured into an application to other
times and characters than those referred to by the poet. Some of
the sounds, indeed, may bear (for what I know), an awkward
construction : some of the objects may look double to squint-eyed
suspicion. But that is not my fault. It only proves, that the
characters of prophet and poet are implied in each other ; that he
who describes human nature well once, describes it for good and
all, as it was, is, and I begin to fear, will ever be. Truth always
was, and must always remain a libel to the tyrant and the slave.
Thus Satrius Secundus and Pinnarius Natta, two public informers
in those days, are described as

' Two of Sejanus' blood-hounds, whom he breeds
With human flesh, to bay at citizens.'

But Rufus, another of the same well-bred gang, debating the point of
his own character with two Senators whom he has entrapped, boldly
asserts, in a more courtly strain,

' To be a spy on traitors,

Is honourable vigilance.'

This sentiment of the respectability of the employment of a
government spy, which had slept in Tacitus for near two thousand

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

years, has not been without its modern patrons. The effects of
such « honourable vigilance ' are very finely exposed in the following
high-spirited dialogue between Lepidus and Arruntius, two noble
Romans, who loved their country, but were not fashionable enough
to confound their country with its oppressors, and the extinguishers
of its liberty.

' Arr. What are thy arts (good patriot, teach them me)
That have preserved thy hairs to this white dye,
And kept so reverend and so dear a head
Safe on his comely shoulders ?

Lep. Arts, Arruntius !
None but the plain and passive fortitude
To suffer and be silent ; never stretch
These arms against the torrent ; live at home,
With my own thoughts and innocence about me,
Not tempting the wolves' jaws : these are my arts.

Arr. I would begin to study 'em, if I thought
They would secure me. May I pray to Jove
In secret, and be safe ? aye, or aloud ?
With open wishes ? so I do not mention
Tiberius or Sejanus ? Yes, I must,
If I speak out. 'Tis hard, that. May I think,
And not be rack'd ? What danger is 't to dream ?
Talk in one's sleep, or cough ! Who knows the law ?
May I shake my head without a comment ? Say
It rains, or it holds up, and not be thrown
Upon the Gemonies ? These now are things,
Whereon men's fortunes, yea, their fate depends :
Nothing hath privilege 'gainst the violent ear.
No place, no day, no hour (we see) is free
(Not our religious and most sacred times)
From some one kind of cruelty ; all matter,
Nay, all occasion pleaseth. Madman's rage,
The idleness of drunkards, women's nothing,
Jesters' simplicity, all, all is good
That can be catch'd at.'

'Tis a pretty picture ; and the duplicates of it, though multiplied
without end, are seldom out of request.

The following portrait of a prince besieged by flatterers (taken
from Tiberius) has unrivalled force and beauty, with historic
truth.

' If this man

Had but a mind allied unto his words,
How blest a fate were it to us, and Rome ?
Men are deceived, who think there can be thrall
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ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

Under a virtuous prince. Wish' d liberty

Ne'er lovelier looks than under such a crown.

But when his grace is merely but lip-good,

And that, no longer than he airs himself

Abroad in public, there to seem to shun

The strokes and stripes of flatterers, which within

Are lechery unto him, and so feed

His brutish sense with their afflicting sound,

As (dead to virtue) he permits himself

Be carried like a pitcher by the ears

To every act of vice ; this is a case

Deserves our fear, and doth presage the nigh

And close approach of bloody tyranny.

Flattery is midwife unto princes' rage :

And nothing sooner doth help forth a tyrant

Than that, and whisperers' grace, that have the time,

The place, the power, to make all men offenders ! '

The only part of this play in which Ben Jonson has completely
forgotten himself, (or rather seems not to have done so), is in the
conversations between Livia and Eudemus, about a wash for her
face, here called a fucus, to appear before Sejanus. Catiline's
Conspiracy does not furnish by any means an equal number of
striking passages, and is spun out to an excessive length with
Cicero's artificial and affected orations against Catiline, and in
praise of himself. His apologies for his own eloquence, and
declarations that in all his art he uses no art at all, put one in
mind of Polonius's circuitous way of coming to the point. Both
these tragedies, it might be observed, are constructed on the exact
principles of a French historical picture, where every head and figure
is borrowed from the antique ; but somehow, the precious materials
of old Roman history and character are better preserved in Jonson's
page than on David's canvas.

Two of the most poetical passages in Ben Jonson, are the descrip-
tion of Echo in Cynthia's Revels, and the fine comparison of the
mind to a temple, in the New Inn ; a play which, on the whole,
however, I can read with no patience.

I must hasten to conclude this Lecture with some account of
Massinger and Ford, who wrote in the time of Charles i. I am
sorry I cannot do it con amore. The writers of whom I have
chiefly had to speak were true poets, impassioned, fanciful, * musical
as is Apollo's lute ; ' but Massinger is harsh and crabbed, Ford
finical and fastidious. I find little in the works of these two drama-
tists, but a display of great strength and subtlety of understanding,
inveteracy of purpose, and perversity of will. This is not exactly what

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we look for in poetry, which, according to the most approved recipes,
should combine pleasure with profit, and not owe all its fascination over
the mind to its power of shocking or perplexing us. The Muses should
attract by grace or dignity of mien. Massinger makes an impression
by hardness and repulsiveness of manner. In the intellectual processes
which he delights to describe, ' reason panders will : ' he fixes arbitrarily
on some object which there is no motive to pursue, or every motive
combined against it, and then by screwing up his heroes or heroines
to the deliberate and blind accomplishment of this, thinks to arrive
at * the true pathos and sublime of human life.' That is not the way.
He seldom touches the heart or kindles the fancy. It is in vain to
hope to excite much sympathy with convulsive efforts of the will, or
intricate contrivances of the understanding, to obtain that which is
better left alone, and where the interest arises principally from the
conflict between the absurdity of the passion and the obstinacy with
which it is persisted in. For the most part, his villains are a sort
of lusus nature ; his impassioned characters are like drunkards or
madmen. Their conduct is extreme and outrageous, their motives
unaccountable and weak ; their misfortunes are without necessity,
and their crimes without temptation, to ordinary apprehensions. I
do not say that this is invariably the case in all Massinger's scenes,
but I think it will be found that a principle of playing at cross-
purposes is the ruling passion throughout most of them. This is
the case in the tragedy of the Unnatural Combat, in the Picture,
the Duke of Milan, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and even in
the Bondman, and the Virgin Martyr, &c. In the Picture, Matthias
nearly loses his wife's affections, by resorting to the far-fetched and
unnecessary device of procuring a magical portrait to read the slightest
variation in her thoughts. In the same play, Honoria risks her
reputation and her life to gain a clandestine interview with Matthias,
merely to shake his fidelity to his wife, and when she has gained
her object, tells the king her husband in pure caprice and fickleness
of purpose. The Virgin Martyr is nothing but a tissue of instantaneous
conversions to and from Paganism and Christianity. The only
scenes of any real beauty and tenderness in this play, are those
between Dorothea and Angelo, her supposed friendless beggar-boy,
but her guardian angel in disguise, which are understood to be by
Deckar. The interest of the Bondman turns upon two different
acts of penance and self-denial, in the persons of the hero and heroine,
Pisander and Cleora. In the Duke of Milan (the most poetical of
Massinger's productions), Sforza's resolution to destroy his wife,
rather than bear the thought of her surviving him, is as much out
of the verge of nature and probability, as it is unexpected and revolt-
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ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

ing, from the want of any circumstances of palliation leading to it.
It stands out alone, a pure piece of voluntary atrocity, which seems
not the dictate of passion, but a start of phrensy ; as cold-blooded in
the execution as it is extravagant in the conception.

Again, Francesco, in this play, is a person whose actions we are
at a loss to explain till the conclusion of the piece, when the attempt
to account for them from motives originally amiable and generous,
only produces a double sense of incongruity, and instead of satisfying
the mind, renders it totally incredulous. He endeavours to seduce
the wife of his benefactor, he then (failing) attempts her death,
slanders her foully, and wantonly causes her to be slain by the hand
of her husband, and has him poisoned by a nefarious stratagem, and
all this to appease a high sense of injured honour, that « felt a stain
like a wound,' and from the tender overflowings of fraternal affection,
his sister having, it appears, been formerly betrothed to, and after-
wards deserted by, the Duke of Milan. Sir Giles Overreach is
the most successful and striking effort of Massinger's pen, and the
best known to the reader, but it will hardly be thought to form an
exception to the tenour of the above remarks.1 The same spirit of

1 The following criticism on this play has appeared in another publication, but
may be not improperly inserted here :

' A New Way to Pay Old Debts is certainly a very admirable play, and highly
characteristic of the genius of its author, which was hard and forcible, and cal-
culated rather to produce a strong impression than a pleasing one. There is
considerable unity of design and a progressive interest in the fable, though the
artifice by which the catastrophe is brought about, (the double assumption of the
character of favoured lovers by Wellborn and Lovell), is somewhat improbable,
and out of date ; and the moral is peculiarly striking, because its whole weight
falls upon one who all along prides himself in setting every principle of justice and
all fear of consequences at defiance.

* The character of Sir Giles Overreach (the most prominent feature of the play,
whether in the perusal, or as it is acted) interests us less by exciting our sympathy
than our indignation. We hate him very heartily, and yet not enough ; for he
has strong, robust points about him that repel the impertinence of censure, and
he sometimes succeeds in making us stagger in our opinion of his conduct, by
throwing off any idle doubts or scruples that might hang upon it in his own mind,
' like dew-drops from the lion's mane.' His steadiness of purpose scarcely stands
in need of support from the common sanctions of morality, which he intrepidly
breaks through, and he almost conquers our prejudices by the consistent and deter-
mined manner in which he braves them. Self-interest is his idol, and he makes
no secret of his idolatry : he is only a more devoted and unblushing worshipper at
this shrine than other men. Self-will is the only rule of his conduct, to which he
makes every other feeling bend : or rather, from the nature of his constitution, he
has no sickly, sentimental obstacles to interrupt him in his headstrong career.
He is a character of obdurate self-will, without fanciful notions or natural
affections ; one who has no regard to the feelings of others, and who professes
an equal disregard to their opinions. He minds nothing but his own ends, and
takes the shortest and surest way to them. His understanding is clear-sighted,

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

caprice and sullenness survives in Rowe's Fair Penitent, taken from
this author's Fatal Dowry.

Ford is not so great a favourite with me as with some others,
from whose judgment I dissent with diffidence. It has been
lamented that the play of his which has been most admired ('Tis
Pity She's a Whore) had not a less exceptionable subject. I do
not know, but I suspect that the exceptionableness of the subject is
that which constitutes the chief merit of the play. The repulsiveness
of the story is what gives it its critical interest ; for it is a studiously
prosaic statement of facts, and naked declaration of passions. It was
not the least of Shakespear's praise, that he never tampered with
unfair subjects. His genius was above it ; his taste kept aloof from
it. I do not deny the power of simple painting and polished style in

and his passions strong-nerved. Sir Giles is no flincher, and no hypocrite ; and
he gains almost as much by the hardihood with which he avows his impudent and
sordid designs as others do by their caution in concealing them. He is the demon
of selfishness personified ; and carves out his way to the objects of his unprincipled
avarice and ambition with an arm of steel, that strikes but does not feel the blow
it inflicts. The character of calculating, systematic self-love, as the master-key to
all his actions, is preserved with great truth of keeping and in the most trifling
circumstances. Thus ruminating to himself he says, " I '11 walk, to get me an
appetite : 'tis but a mile ; and exercise will keep me from being pursy ! " — Yet
to show the absurdity and impossibility of a man's being governed by any such
pretended exclusive regard to his own interest, this very Sir Giles, who laughs at
conscience, and scorns opinion, who ridicules every thing as fantastical but wealth,
solid, substantial wealth, and boasts of himself as having been the founder of his
own fortune, by his contempt for every other consideration, is ready to sacrifice the
whole of his enormous possessions — to what ? — to a title, a sound, to make his
daughter " right honourable," the wife of a lord whose name he cannot repeat
without loathing, and in the end he becomes the dupe of, and falls a victim to,
that very opinion of the world which he despises !

The character of Sir Giles Overreach has been found fault with as unnatural ;
and it may, perhaps, in the present refinement of our manners, have become in a
great measure obsolete. But we doubt whether even still, in remote and insulated
parts of the country, sufficient traces of the same character of wilful selfishness,
mistaking the inveteracy of its purposes for their rectitude, and boldly appealing to
power as justifying the abuses of power, may not be found to warrant this an
undoubted original — probably a fac-simile of some individual of the poet's actual
acquaintance. In less advanced periods of society than that in which we live, if
we except rank, which can neither be an object of common pursuit nor immediate
attainment, money is the only acknowledged passport to respect. It is not merely
valuable as a security from want, but it is the only defence against the insolence of
power. Avarice is sharpened by pride and necessity. There are then few of the
arts, the amusements, and accomplishments that soften and sweeten life, that raise
or refine it : ,the only way in which any one can be of service to himself or
another, is by his command over the gross commodities of life ; and a man is
worth just so much as he has. Where he who is not * lord of acres ' is looked
upon as a slave and a beggar, the soul becomes wedded to the soil by which its
worth is measured, and takes root in it in proportion to its own strength and

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ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

this tragedy in general, and of a great deal more in some few of the
scenes, particularly in the quarrel between Annabella and her husband,
which is wrought up to a pitch of demoniac scorn and phrensy with
consummate art and knowledge ; but I do not find much other power
in the author (generally speaking) than that of playing with edged
tools, and knowing the use of poisoned weapons. And what confirms
me in this opinion is the comparative inefficiency of his other plays.
Except the last scene of the Broken Heart (which I think extrava-
gant— others may think it sublime, and be right) they are merely
exercises of style and effusions of wire-drawn sentiment. Where they
have not the sting of illicit passion, they are quite pointless, and seem
painted on gauze, or spun of cobwebs. The affected brevity and

stubbornness of character. The example of Wellborn may be cited in illustration
of these remarks. The loss of his land makes all the difference between "young
master Wellborn" and "rogue Wellborn ;" and the treatment he meets with in
this latter capacity is the best apology for the character of Sir Giles. Of the two
it is better to be the oppressor than the oppressed.

' Massinger, it is true, dealt generally in extreme characters, as well as in very
repulsive ones. The passion is with him wound up to its height at once, and he
never lets it down afterwards. It does not gradually arise out of previous circum-
stances, nor is it modified by other passions. This gives an appearance of
abruptness, violence, and extravagance to all his plays. Shakespear's characters
act from mixed motives, and are made what they are by various circumstances.
Massinger's characters act from single motives, and become what they are, and
remain so, by a pure effort of the will, in spite of circumstances. This last author
endeavoured to embody an abstract principle ; labours hard to bring out the same
individual trait in its most exaggerated state ; and the force of his impassioned
characters arises for the most part, from the obstinacy with which they exclude
every other feeling. Their vices look of a gigantic stature from their standing
alone. Their actions seem extravagant from their having always the same fixed
aim — the same incorrigible purpose. The fault of Sir Giles Overreach, in this
respect, is less in the excess to which he pushes a favourite propensity, than in the
circumstance of its being unmixed with any other virtue or vice.

'We may find the same simplicity of dramatic conception in the comic as in the
tragic characters of the author. Justice Greedy has but one idea or subject in his
head throughout. He is always eating, or talking of eating. His belly is always
in his mouth, and we know nothing of him but his appetite ; he is as sharpset as
travellers from off a journey. His land of promise touches on the borders of the
wilderness : his thoughts are constantly in apprehension of feasting or famishing.
A fat turkey floats before his imagination in royal state, and his hunger sees
visions of chines of beef, venison pasties, and Norfolk dumplings, as if it were
seized with a calenture. He is a very amusing personage ; and in what relates to
eating and drinking, as peremptory as Sir Giles himself. — Marrall is another
instance of confined comic humour, whose ideas never wander beyond the ambition
of being the implicit drudge of another's knavery or good fortune. He sticks to
his stewardship, and resists the favour of a salute from a fine lady as not entered
in his accounts. The humour of this character is less striking in the play than in
Munden's personification of it. The other characters do not require any particular
analysis. They are- very insipid, good sort of people.'

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division of some of the lines into hemistichs, &c. so as to make in one
case a mathematical stair-case of the words and answers given to
different speakers,1 is an instance of frigid and ridiculous pedantry.
An artificial elaborateness is the general characteristic of Ford's
style. In this respect his plays resemble Miss Baillie's more than
any others I am acquainted with, and are quite distinct from the
exuberance and unstudied force which characterised his immediate
predecessors. There is too much of scholastic subtlety, an innate
perversity of understanding or predominance of will, which either
seeks the irritation of inadmissible subjects, or to stimulate its own
faculties by taking the most barren, and making something out of
nothing, in a spirit of contradiction. He does not draw along with
the reader : he does not work upon our sympathy, but on our
antipathy or our indifference ; and there is as little of the social or
gregarious principle in his productions as there appears to have been
in his personal habits, if we are to believe Sir John Suckling, who
says of him in the Sessions of the Poets —

' Iii the dumps John Ford alone by himself sat
With folded arms and melancholy hat.'

I do not remember without considerable effort the plot or persons
of most of his plays — Perkin Warbeck, The Lover's Melancholy,
Love's Sacrifice, and the rest. There is little character, except of
the most evanescent or extravagant kind (to which last class we may
refer that of the sister of Calantha in the Broken Heart) — little
imagery or fancy, and no action. It is but fair however to give a
scene or two, in illustration of these remarks (or in confutation of
them, if they are wrong) and I shall take the concluding one of the
Broken Heart, which is held up as the author's master-piece.

* SCENE — A Room in the Palace.

Loud Music. — Enter Euphranea, led by Groneas and Hemophil : Prophilus,

led by Christalla and Philema : Nearchus supporting Calantha, Crotolon,

and Amelus. — (Music ceases).

Cal. We miss our servants, Ithocles and Orgilus ; on whom attend they ?

Crot. My son, gracious princess,
Whisper'd some new device, to which these revels

1 * Ithocles. Soft peace enrich this room.

Orgilui. How fares the lady ?

Philema. Dead !
Chriitalla. Dead !
Philema. Starv'd !

Chrittalla. Starv'd !

ItAocles. Me miserable ! *

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ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

Should be but usher : wherein I conceive
Lord Ithocles and he himself are actors.

Col. A fair excuse for absence. As for Bassanes,
Delights to him are troublesome. Armostes
Is with the king ?

Crot. He is.

Col. On to the dance !

Dear cousin, hand you the bride : the bridegroom must be
Entrusted to my courtship. Be not jealous,
Euphranea ; I shall scarcely prove a temptress.
Fall to our dance !

(They dance the first change, during <which enter Armostes).

Arm. (in a 'whisper to Calantha). The king your father's dead.

Col. To the other change.

Arm. Is 't possible ?

Another Dance. — Enter Bassanes.

Bass, (in a 'whisper to Calantha). Oh ! Madam,
Panthea, poor Panthea 's starv'd.

Cal. Beshrew thee !
Lead to the next !

Bass. Amazement dulls my senses.

Another Dance. — Enter Orgilus.

Org. Brave Ithocles is murder'd, murder'd cruelly.

(Aside to Calantha).

Cal. How dull this music sounds ! Strike up more sprightly :
Our footings are not active like our heart,1
Which treads the nimbler measure.

Org. I am thunderstruck.

The last Change. — Music ceases.

Cal. So ; Let us breathe awhile. Hath not this motion
Rais'd fresher colours on our cheek ?

Near. Sweet princess,
A perfect purity of blood enamels
The beauty of your white.

Cal. We all look cheerfully :
And, cousin, 'tis methinks a rare presumption
In any who prefers our lawful pleasures
Before their own sour censure, to interrupt
The custom of this ceremony bluntly.

Near. None dares, lady.

Cal. Yes, yes j some hollow voice deliver'd to me
How that the king was dead.

Arm. The king is dead,' &c. &c.

1 * High as our heart.' — See passage from the Malcontent.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

This, I confess, appears to me to be tragedy in masquerade.
Nor is it, I think, accounted for, though it may be in part redeemed
by her solemn address at the altar to the dead body of her husband.

* Col. Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadow
Of my contracted lord ! Bear witness all,
I put my mother's wedding-ring upon
His finger ; 'twas my father's last bequest :

(Places a ring on the finger o/Tthocles).
Thus I new marry him, whose wife I am :
Death shall not separate us. Oh, my lords,
I but deceiv'd your eyes with antic gesture,
When one news strait came huddling on another
Of death, and death, and death : still I danc'd forward ;
But it struck home and here, and in an instant.
Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries
Can vow a present end to all their sorrows,
Yet live to vow new pleasures, and outlive them.
They are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings :
Let me die smiling.

Near. 'Tis a truth too ominous.

Cat. One kiss on these cold lips — my last : crack, crack :
Argos, now Sparta's king, command the voices
Which wait at th' altar, now to sing the song
I fitted for my end.'

And then, after the song, she dies.

This is the true false gallop of sentiment : any thing more artificial
and mechanical I cannot conceive. The boldness of the attempt,
however, the very extravagance, might argue the reliance of the
author on the truth of feeling prompting him to hazard it ; but the
whole scene is a forced transposition of that already alluded to in
Marston's Malcontent. Even the form of the stage directions is the
same.

* Enter Mendozo supporting the Duchess ; Guerrino ; the Ladies that are on
the stage rise. Ferrardo ushers in the Duchess ; then takes a Lady to
tread a measure.

Aurelia. We will dance : music : we will dance. . . .

Enter Prepasso.

Who saw the Duke ? the Duke ?
Aurelia. Music.

Prepasso. The Duke ? is the Duke returned ?
Aurelia. Music.

Enter Celso.

The Duke is quite invisible, or else is not.
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ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

Aurelia. We are not pleased with your intrusion upon our private retire-
ment} we are not pleased : you have forgot yourselves.

Enter a Page.

Celso. Boy, thy master ? where 's the Duke ?

Page. Alas, I left him burying the earth with his spread joyless limbs ;
he told me he was heavy, would sleep : bid me walk off, for the strength
of fantasy oft made him talk in his dreams : I strait obeyed, nor ever saw
him since j but wheresoe'er he is, he 's sad.

Aurelia. Music, sound high, as in our heart ; sound high.

Enter Malevole and her Husband, disguised like a Hermit.

Male-vole. The Duke ? Peace, the Duke is dead.

Aurelia. Music !' Act IV. Scene 3.

The passage in Ford appears to me an ill-judged copy from this.
That a woman should call for music, and dance on in spite of the
death of her husband whom she hates, without regard to common
decency, is but too possible : that she should dance on with the same
heroic perseverance in spite of the death of her husband, of her
father, and of every one else whom she loves, from regard to common
courtesy or appearance, is not surely natural. The passions may
silence the voice of humanity, but it is, I think, equally against
probability and decorum to make both the passions and the voice of
humanity give way (as in the example of Calantha) to a mere form of
outward behaviour. Such a suppression of the strongest and most
uncontroulable feelings can only be justified from necessity, for some
great purpose, which is not the case in Ford's play ; or it must be
done for the effect and eclat of the thing, which is not fortitude but
affectation. Mr. Lamb in his impressive eulogy on this passage in
the Broken Heart has failed (as far as I can judge) in establishing
the parallel between this uncalled-for exhibition of stoicism, and the
story of the Spartan Boy.

It may be proper to remark here, that most of the great men of
the period I have treated of (except the greatest of all, and one
other) were men of classical education. They were learned men in
an unlettered age ; not self-taught men in a literary and critical age.
This circumstance should be taken into the account in a theory of
the dramatic genius of that age. Except Shakespear, nearly all of
them, indeed, came up from Oxford or Cambridge, and immediately
began to write for the stage. No wonder. The first coming up to
London in those days must have had a singular effect upon a young
man of genius, almost like visiting Babylon or Susa, or a journey to
the other world. The stage (even as it then was), after the
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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

recluseness and austerity of a college-life, must have appeared like
Armida's enchanted palace, and its gay votaries like

' Fairy elves beyond the Indian mount,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees j while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course : they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear:
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.'

So our young novices must have felt when they first saw the magic of
the scene, and heard its syren sounds with rustic wonder, and the
scholar's pride : and the joy that streamed from their eyes at that
fantastic vision, at that gaudy shadow of life, of all its business and all
its pleasures, and kindled their enthusiasm to join the mimic throng,
still has left a long lingering glory behind it ; and though now « deaf
the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue,' lives in their eloquent
page, ' informed with music, sentiment, and thought, never to die ! '

LECTURE V

ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC., THE FOUR P'S, THE
RETURN FROM PARNASSUS, GAMMER GURTON's
NEEDLE, AND OTHER WORKS.

I SHALL, in this Lecture, turn back to give some account of single
plays, poems, etc. ; the authors of which are either not known or not
very eminent, and the productions themselves, in general, more
remarkable for their singularity, or as specimens of the style and
manners of the age, than for their intrinsic merit or poetical excellence.
There are many more works of this kind, however, remaining, than
I can pretend to give an account of; and what I shall chiefly aim at,
will be, to excite the curiosity of the reader, rather than to satisfy it.

The FOUR P's is an interlude, or comic dialogue, in verse, between
a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar, in which each
exposes the tricks of his own and his neighbours' profession, with
much humour and shrewdness. It was written by John Heywood,
the Epigrammatist, who flourished chiefly in the reign of Henry vm.,
was the intimate friend of Sir Thomas More, with whom he seems
to have had a congenial spirit, and died abroad, in consequence of his

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ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.

devotion to the Roman Catholic cause, about the year 1565. His
zeal, however, on this head, does not seem to have blinded his judg-
ment, or to have prevented him from using the utmost freedom and
severity in lashing the abuses of Popery, at which he seems to have
looked « with the malice of a friend.' The Four P's bears the date
of 1547. It is very curious, as an evidence both of the wit, the
manners, and opinions of the time. Each of the parties in the
dialogue gives an account of the boasted advantages of his own
particular calling, that is, of the frauds which he practises on credulity
and ignorance, and is laughed at by the others in turn. In fact, they
all of them strive to outbrave each other, till the contest becomes a
jest, and it ends in a wager, who shall tell the greatest lie ? when the
prize is adjudged to him, who says, that he had found a patient
woman.1 The common superstitions (here recorded) in civil and
religious matters, are almost incredible ; and the chopped logic, which
was the fashion of the time, and which comes in aid of the author's
shrewd and pleasant sallies to expose them, is highly entertaining.
Thus the Pardoner, scorning the Palmer's long pilgrimages and
circuitous route to Heaven, flouts him to his face, and vaunts his own
superior pretensions.

' Pard. By the first part of this last tale,
It seemeth you came of late from the ale :
For reason on your side so far doth fail,
That you leave reasoning, and begin to rail.
Wherein you forget your own part clearly,
For you be as untrue as I :
But in one point you are beyond me,
For you may lie by authority,
And all that have wandered so far,
That no man can be their controller.
And where you esteem your labour so much,
I say yet again, my pardons are such,
That if there were a thousand souls on a heap,
I would bring them all to heaven as good sheep,
As you have brought yourself on pilgrimage,
In the last quarter of your voyage,
Which is far a this side heaven, by God :
There your labour and pardon is odd.
With small cost without any pain,
These pardons bring them to heaven plain :
Give me but a penny or two-pence,
And as soon as the soul departeth hence,
In half an hour, or three-quarters at the most,
The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.*

1 Or never known one otherwise than patient.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

The Poticary does not approve of this arrogance of the Friar, and
undertakes, in mood and figure, to prove them both 'false knaves.'
It is he, he says, who sends most souls to heaven, and who ought,
therefore, to have the credit of it.

' No soul, ye know, entereth heaven-gate,
'Till from the body he be separate :
And whom have ye known die honestly,
Without help of the Poticary ?
Nay, all that cometh to our handling,

Except ye hap to come to hanging

Since of our souls the multitude
I send to heaven, when all is view'd
Who should but I then altogether
Have thank of all their coming thither ?'

The Pardoner here interrupts him captiously —

' If ye kill'd a thousand in an hour's space,
When come they to heaven, dying out of grace ? '

But the Poticary not so baffled, retorts —

' If a thousand pardons about your necks were tied ;
When come they to heaven, if they never died ?
******
But when ye feel your conscience ready,
I can send you to heaven very quickly.'

The Pedlar finds out the weak side of his new companions, and
tells them very bluntly, on their referring their dispute to him, a piece
of his mind.

' Now have I found one mastery,
That ye can do indifferently ;
And it is neither selling nor buying,
But even only very lying.'

At this game of imposture, the cunning dealer in pins and laces
undertakes to judge their merits ; and they accordingly set to work
like regular graduates. The Pardoner takes the lead, with an account
of the virtues of his relics ; and here we may find a plentiful mixture
of Popish superstition and indecency. The bigotry of any age is by
no means a test of its piety, or even sincerity. Men seemed to make
themselves amends for the enormity of their faith by levity of feeling,
as well as by laxity of principle ; and in the indifference or ridicule
with which they treated the wilful absurdities and extravagances to
which they hood-winked their understandings, almost resembled
children playing at blindman's buff, who grope their way in the dark,
and make blunders on purpose to laugh at their own idleness and

276

ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.

folly. The sort of mummery at which Popish bigotry used to play
at the time when this old comedy was written, was not quite so
harmless as blind-man's buff : what was sport to her, was death to
others. She laughed at her own mockeries of common sense and
true religion, and murdered while she laughed. The tragic farce
was no longer to be borne, and it was partly put an end to. At
present, though her eyes are blindfolded, her hands are tied fast
behind her, like the false Duessa's. The sturdy genius of modern
philosophy has got her in much the same situation that Count Fathom
has the old woman that he lashes before him from the robbers' cave
in the forest. In the following dialogue of this lively satire, the most
sacred mysteries of the Catholic faith are mixed up with its idlest
legends by old Heywood, who was a martyr to his religious zeal
without the slightest sense of impropriety. The Pardoner cries out
in one place (like a lusty Friar John, or a trusty Friar Onion) —

* Lo, here be pardons, half a dozen,
For ghostly riches they have no cousin ;
And moreover, to me they bring
Sufficient succour for my living.
And here be relics of such a kind,
As in this world no man can find.
Kneel down all three, and when ye leave kissing,
Who list to offer shall have my blessing.
Friends, here shall ye see even anon,
Of All-Hallows the blessed jaw-bone.
Mark well this, this relic here is a whipper 5
My friends unfeigned, here is a slipper
Of one of the seven sleepers, be sure. —
Here is an eye-tooth of the great Turk :
Whose eyes be once set on this piece of work,
May happily lose part of his eye-sight,
But not all till he be blind outright.
Kiss it hardly with good devotion.

Pot. This kiss shall bring us much promotion :
Fogh, by St. Saviour I never kiss'd a worse.
******

For by All-Hallows, yet methinketh,
That All-Hallows' breath stinketh.

Palm. Ye judge All-Hallows' breath unknown :
If any breath stink, it is your own.

Pot. I know mine own breath from All-Hallows,
Or else it were time to kiss the gallows.

Pard. Nay, Sirs, here may ye see
The great toe of the Trinity ;
Who to this toe any money voweth,
And once may roll it in his mouth,

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

All his life after I undertake,

He shall never be vex'd with the tooth-ache.

Pot. I pray you turn that relic about ;
Either the Trinity had the gout ;
Or else, because it is three toes in one,
God made it as much as three toes alone.

Pard. Well, let that pass, and look upon this :
Here is a relic that doth not miss
To help the least as well as the most :
This is a buttock-bone of Penticost.

******
Here is a box full of humble bees,
That stung Eve as she sat on her knees
Tasting the fruit to her forbidden :
Who kisseth the bees within this hidden,
Shall have as much pardon of right,
As for any relic he kiss'd this night . .
Good friends, I have yet here in this glass,
Which on the drink at the wedding was
Of Adam and Eve undoubtedly :
If ye honour this relic devoutly,
Although ye thirst no whit the less,
Yet shall ye drink the more, doubtless.
After which drinking, ye shall be as meet
To stand on your head as on your feet.'

The same sort of significant irony runs through the Apothecary's
knavish enumeration of miraculous cures in his possession.

' For this medicine helpeth one and other,
And bringeth them in case that they need no other.
Here is a syrapus de Byzansis,
A little thing is enough of this;
For even the weight of one scrippal
Shall make you as strong as a cripple. . . .
These be the things that break all strife,
Between man's sickness and his life.
From all pain these shall you deliver,
And set you even at rest forever.
Here is a medicine no more like the same,
Which commonly is called thus by name. . . .
Not one thing here particularly,
But worketh universally ;
For it doth me as much good when I sell it,
As all the buyers that take it or smell it.
If any reward may entreat ye,
I beseech your mastership be good to me,
And ye shall have a box of marmalade,
So fine that you may dig it with a spade.'
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After these quaint but pointed examples of it, Swift's boast with
respect to the invention of irony,

'Which I was born to introduce,
Refin'd it first, and shew'd its use,'

can be allowed to be true only in part.

The controversy between them being undecided, the Apothecary,
to clench his pretensions ' as a liar of the first magnitude,' by a coup-
dt-grace, says to the Pedlar, ' You are an honest man,' but this home-
thrust is somehow ingeniously parried. The Apothecary and
Pardoner fall to their narrative vein again ; and the latter tells a
story of fetching a young woman from the lower world, from which
I shall only give one specimen more as an instance of ludicrous and
fantastic exaggeration. By the help of a passport from Lucifer,
' given in the furnace of our palace,' he obtains a safe conduct from
one of the subordinate imps to his master's presence.

' This devil and I walked arm in arm
So far, 'till he had brought me thither,
Where all the devils of hell together
Stood in array in such apparel,
As for that day there meetly fell.
Their horns well gilt, their claws full clean,
Their tails well kempt, and as I ween,
With sothery butter their bodies anointed ;
I never saw devils so well appointed.
The master-devil sat in his jacket,
And all the souls were playing at racket.
None other rackets they had in hand,
Save every soul a good fire-brand ;
Wherewith they play'd so prettily,
That Lucifer laugh 'd merrily.
And all the residue of the fiends
Did laugh thereat full well like friends.
But of my friend I saw no whit,
Nor durst not ask for her as yet.
Anon all this rout was brought in silence,
And I by an usher brought to presence
Of Lucifer ; then low, as well I could,
I kneeled, which he so well allow'd
That thus he beck'd, and by St. Antony
He smiled on me well-favour'dly,
Bending his brows as broad as barn-doors ;
Shaking his ears as rugged as burrs ;
Rolling his eyes as round as two bushels ;
Flashing the fire out of his nostrils ;

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Gnashing his teeth so vain-gloriously,
That methought time to fall to flattery,
Wherewith I told, as I shall tell ;
Oh pleasant picture ! O prince of hell ! ' &c.

The piece concludes with some good wholesome advice from the
Pedlar, who here, as well as in the poem of the Excursion, performs
the part of Old Morality ; but he does not seem, as in the latter
case, to be acquainted wth the * mighty stream of Tendency.' He
is more * full of wise saws than modern instances ; ' as prosing, but
less paradoxical !

' But where ye doubt, the truth not knowing,
Believing the best, good may be growing.
In judging the best, no harm at the least :
In judging the worst, no good at the best.
But best in these things it seemeth to me,
To make no judgment upon ye $
But as the church does judge or take them,
So do ye receive or forsake them.
And so be you sure you cannot err,
But may be a fruitful follower.'

Nothing can be clearer than this.

The RETURN FROM PARNASSUS was 'first publicly acted,' as the
title-page imports, * by the Students in St. John's College, in
Cambridge.' It is a very singular, a very ingenious, and as I think,
a very interesting performance. It contains criticisms on con-
temporary authors, strictures on living manners, and the earliest
denunciation (I know of) of the miseries and unprofitableness of a
scholar's life. The only part I object to in our author's criticism
is his abuse of Marston ; and that, not because he says what is
severe, but because he says what is not true of him. Anger may
sharpen our insight into men's defects ; but nothing should make
us blind to their excellences. The whole passage is, however, so
curious in itself (like the Edinburgh Review lately published for
the year 1755) t'iat ^ cannot forbear quoting a great part of it. We
find in the list of candidates for praise many a name —

' That like a trumpet, makes the spirits dance : '

there are others that have long since sunk to the bottom of the
stream of time, and no Humane Society of Antiquarians and Critics
is ever likely to fish them up again.

' Read the names,' says Judicio.
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ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.

' Ingenioso. So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them.

Edmund Spenser,
Henry Constable,
Thomas Lodge,
Samuel Daniel,
Thomas Watson,
Michael Drayton,
John Davis,

John Marston,

Kit. Marlowe,

William Shakespear ; ' and

, one Churchyard [who is

consigned to an untimely

grave.]

' Good men and true, stand together, hear your censure : what 's thy
judgment of Spenser ?

Jud. A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po ;
A shriller nightingale than ever blest
The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome.
Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud,
While he did chaunt his rural minstrelsy.
Attentive was full many a dainty ear :
Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue,
While sweetly of his Faery Queen he sung ;
While to the water's fall he tuned her fame,
And in each bark engrav'd Eliza's name.
And yet for all, this unregarding soil
Unlaced the line of his desired life,
Denying maintenance for his dear relief;
Careless even to prevent his exequy,
Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye.

Ing. Pity it is that gentler wits should breed,
Where thick-skinn'd chuffs laugh at a scholar's need.
But softly may our honour'd ashes rest,
That lie by merry Chaucer's noble chest.

But I pray thee proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may be proud of
myself, as in the first, so in the last, my censure may jump with thine.
Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Watson.

Jud. Sweet Constable doth take the wondering ear,
And lays it up in willing prisonment :
Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage
War with the proudest big Italian,
That melts his heart in sugar'd sonnetting.
Only let him more sparingly make use
Of others' wit, and use his own the more,
That well may scorn base imitation.
For Lodge and Watson, men of some desert,
Yet subject to a critic's marginal :
Lodge for his oar in every paper boat,
He that turns over Galen every day,
To sit and simper Euphues' legacy.

Ing. Michael Drayton.

Jud. Drayton's sweet Muse is like a sanguine dye,
Able to ravish the rash gazer's eye.

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Ing. However, he wants one true note of a poet of our times ; and that
is this, he cannot swagger in a tavern, nor domineer in a hot-house. John
Davis —

Jud. Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes,
That jerk in hidden charms these looser times :
Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein,
Is graced with a fair and sweeping train.
John Marston —

Jud. What, Monsieur Kinsayder, put up man, put up for shame,
Methinks he is a ruffian in his style,
Withouten bands or garters' ornament.
He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's helicon,
Then royster doyster in his oily terms
Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoe'er he meets,
And strews about Ram-alley meditations.
Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch 'd terms,
Cleanly to gird our looser libertines ?
Give him plain naked words stript from their shirts,
That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine.

Ing. Christopher Marlowe —

Jud. Marlowe was happy in his buskin'd Muse ;
Alas ! unhappy in his life and end.
Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell,
Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.

Ing. Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got
A tragic penman for a dreary plot.
Benjamin Jonson.

Jud. The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England.

Ing. A mere empirick, one that gets what he hath by observation, and
makes only nature privy to what he endites : so slow an inventor, that he
were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying, a blood whoreson,
as confident now in making of a book, as he was in times past in laying of
a brick.
William Shakespear.

Jud. Who loves Adonis' love, or Lucrece' rape,
His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life,
Could but a graver subject him content,
Without love's lazy foolish languishment.'

This passage might seem to ascertain the date of the piece, as it
must be supposed to have been written before Shakespeare had
become known as a dramatic poet. Yet he afterwards introduces
Kempe the actor talking with Burbage, and saying, * Few (of the
University) pen plays well: they smell too much of that writer
Ovid, and of that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of
Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here's our fellow Shakespear puts
them all down ; aye, and Ben Jonson too.' — There is a good deal
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ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.

of discontent in all this ; but the author complains of want of success
in a former attempt, and appears not to have been on good terms
with fortune. The miseries of a poet's life form one of the
favourite topics of The Return from Parnassus, and are treated, as
if by some one who had ' felt them knowingly.' Thus Philomusus
and Studioso chaunt their griefs in concert.

' Phil. Bann'd be those hours, when 'mongst the learned throng,
By Granta's muddy bank we whilom sung.

Stud. Bann'd be that hill which learned wits adore,
Where erst we spent our stock and little store.

Phil. Bann'd be those musty mews, where we have spent
Our youthful days in paled languishment.

Stud. Bann'd be those cozening arts that wrought our woe,
Making us wandering pilgrims to and fro . . .

Phil. Curst be our thoughts whene'er they dream of hope 5
Bann'd be those haps that henceforth flatter us,
When mischief dogs us still, and still for aye,
From our first birth until our burying day.
In our first gamesome age, our doting sires
Carked and car'd to have us lettered :
Sent us to Cambridge where our oil is spent :
Us our kind college from the teat did tent,
And forced us walk before we weaned were.
From that time since wandered have we still
In the wide world, urg'd by our forced will ;
Nor ever have we happy fortune tried j
Then why should hope with our rent state abide ? '

' Out of our proof we speak.' — This sorry matter-of-fact retrospect
of the evils of a college-life is very different from the hypothetical
aspirations after its incommunicable blessings expressed by a living
writer of true genius and a lover of true learning, who does not
seem to have been cured of the old-fashioned prejudice in favour of
classic lore, two hundred years after its vanity and vexation of spirit
had been denounced in the Return from Parnassus :

' I was not train'd in Academic bowers ;
And to those learned streams I nothing owe,
Which copious from those fair twin founts do flow :
Mine have been any thing but studious hours.
Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers,
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap.
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap ;
And I walk gowned ; feel unusual powers.
Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech ;
Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain,

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

And my skull teems with notions infinite :

Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach

Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen's vein ;

And half had stagger'd that stout Stagyrite.1

Thus it is that our treasure always lies, where our knowledge does
not ; and fortunately enough perhaps ; for the empire of imagina-
tion is wider and more prolific than that of experience.

The author of the old play, whoever he was, appears to have be-
longed to that class of mortals, who, as Fielding has it, feed upon
their own hearts ; who are egotists the wrong way, ' made desperate
by too quick a sense of constant infelicity ; ' and have the same
intense uneasy consciousness of their own defects that most men
have self-complacency in their supposed advantages. Thus venting
the dribblets of his spleen still upon himself, he prompts the Page
to say, 'A mere scholar is a creature that can strike fire in the
morning at his tinder-box, put on a pair of lined slippers, sit reuming
till dinner, and then go to his meat when the bell rings ; one that
hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and a licence to spit : or if you will
have him defined by negatives, he is one that cannot make a good
leg, one that cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly, one that cannot
ride a horse without spur-galling, one that cannot salute a woman,
and look on her directly, one that cannot '

If I was not afraid of being tedious, I might here give the ex-
amination of Signer Immerito, a raw ignorant clown (whose father
has purchased him a living) by Sir Roderick and the Recorder,
which throws considerable light on the state of wit and humour,
as well as of ecclesiastical patronage in the reign of Elizabeth. It
is to be recollected, that one of the titles of this play is A Scourge
for Simony.

' Rec. For as much as nature has done her part in making you a hand-
some likely man — in the next place some art is requisite for the perfection
of nature : for the trial whereof, at the request of my worshipful friend, I
will in some sort propound questions fit to be resolved by one of your
profession. Say what is a person, that was never at the university ?

1m. A person that was never in the university, is a living creature that
can eat a tythe pig.

Rec. Very well answered -. but you should have added — and must be
officious to his patron. Write down that answer, to shew his learning in
logic.

Sir Rad. Yea, boy, write that down : very learnedly, in good faith. I
pray now let me ask you one question that I remember, whether is the
masculine gender or the feminine more worthy ?

1 Sonnet to Cambridge, by Charles Lamb.
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ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.

Im. The feminine, Sir.

Sir Rod. The right answer, the right answer. In good faith, I have
been of that mind always: write, boy, that, to shew he is a gram-
marian.

Rec. What university are you of?

Im. Of none.

Sir Rod. He tells truth : to tell truth is an excellent virtue : boy, make
two heads, one for his learning, another for his virtues, and refer this to
the head of his virtues, not of his learning. Now, Master Recorder, if it
please you, I will examine him in an author, that will sound him to the
depth ; a book of astronomy, otherwise called an almanack.

Rec. Very good, Sir Roderick ; it were to be wished there were no
other book of humanity j then there would not be such busy state-prying
fellows as are now a-days. Proceed, good Sir.

Sir Rod. What is the dominical letter ?

Im. C, Sir, and please your worship.

Sir Rod. A very good answer, a very good answer, the very answer of
the book. Write down that, and refer it to his skill in philosophy.
How many days hath September ?

Im. Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, February
hath twenty-eight alone, and all the rest hath thirty and one.

Sir Rod. Very learnedly, in good faith : he hath also a smack in poetry.
Write down that, boy, to shew his learning in poetry. How many miles
from Waltham to London ?

Im. Twelve, Sir.

Sir Rod. How many from New Market to Grantham ?

Im. Ten, Sir.

Sir Rad. Write down that answer of his, to shew his learning in
arithmetic.

Page. He must needs be a good arithmetician that counted [out] money
so lately.

Sir Rod. When is the new moon ?

Im. The last quarter, the fth day, at two of the clock, and thirty-eight
minutes in the morning.

Sir Rad. How call you him that is weather-wise ?

Rec. A good astronomer.

Sir Rad. Sirrah, boy, write him down for a good astronomer. What
day of the month lights the queen's day on ?

Im. The ijth of November.

Sir Rad. Boy, refer this to his virtues, and write him down a good
subject.

Page. Faith, he were an excellent subject for two or three good wits :
he would make a fine ass for an ape to ride upon.

Sir Rad. And these shall suffice for the parts of his learning. Now it
remains to try, whether you be a man of a good utterance, that is, whether
you can ask for the strayed heifer with the white face, as also chide the
boys in the belfry, and bid the sexton whip out the dogs : let me hear your
voice.

Im. If any man or woman —

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Sir Rad. That 's too high.

Int. If any man or woman —

Sir Rad. That 's too low.

1m. If any man or woman can tell any tidings of a horse with four feet,
two ears, that did stray about the seventh hour, three minutes in the fore-
noon, the fifth day —

Sir Rad. Boy, write him down for a good utterance. Master Recorder,
I think he hath been examined sufficiently.

Rec. Aye, Sir Roderick, 'tis so : we have tried him very thoroughly.

Page. Aye, we have taken an inventory of his good parts, and prized
them accordingly.

Sir Rad. Signior Immerito, forasmuch as we have, made a double trial ot
thee, the one of your learning, the other of your erudition j it is expedient,
also, in the next place, to give you a few exhortations, considering the
greatest clerks are not the wisest men : this is therefore first to exhort you
to abstain from controversies j secondly, not to gird at men of worship,
such as myself, but to use yourself discreetly ; thirdly, not to speak when
any man or woman coughs : do so, and in so doing, I will persevere to be
your worshipful friend and loving patron. Lead Immerito in to my son,
and let him dispatch him, and remember my tythes to be reserved, paying
twelve-pence a-year.'

Gammer Gurton's Needle 1 is a still older and more curious relic ;
and is a regular comedy in five acts, built on the circumstance of an
old woman having lost her needle, which throws the whole village
into confusion, till it is at last providentially found sticking in an
unlucky part of Hodge's dress. This must evidently have happened
at a time when the manufacturers of Sheffield and Birmingham had
not reached the height of perfection which they have at present done.
Suppose that there is only one sewing-needle in a parish, that the
owner, a diligent notable old dame, loses it, that a mischief-making
wag sets it about that another old woman has stolen this valuable
instrument of household industry, that strict search is made every
where in-doors for it in vain, and that then the incensed parties sally
forth to scold it out in the open air, till words end in blows, and
the affair is referred over to the higher authorities, and we shall have
an exact idea (though perhaps not so lively a one) of what passes in
this authentic document between Gammer Gurton and her Gossip
Dame Chat, Dickon the Bedlam (the causer of these harms),
Hodge, Gammer Gurton's servant, Tyb her maid, Cocke, her
'prentice boy, Doll, Scapethrift, Master Baillie his master, Doctor
Rat, the Curate, and Gib the Cat, who may be fairly reckoned one
of the dramatis person*, and performs no mean part.

1 The name of Still has been assigned as the author of this singular production,
with the date of 1566.
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ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.

' Gog's crosse, Gammer ' (says Cocke the boy), ' if ye will laugh, look in

but at the door,

And see how Hodge lieth tumbling and tossing amidst the floor,
Raking there, some fire to find among the ashes dead '

[That is, to light a candle to look for the lost needle],
' Where there is not a spark so big as a pin's head :
At last in a dark corner two sparks he thought he sees,
Which were indeed nought else but Gib our cat's two eyes.
Puff, quoth Hodge ; thinking thereby to have fire without doubt ;
With that Gib shut her two eyes, and so the fire was out ;
And by and by them open'd, even as they were before,
With that the sparks appeared, even as they had done of yore :
And even as Hodge blew the fire, as he did think,
Gib, as he felt the blast, strait way began to wink ;
Till Hodge fell of swearing, as came best to his turn ;
The fire was sure bewitch' d, and therefore would not burn.
At last Gib up the stairs, among old posts and pins,
And Hodge he hied him after, till broke were both his shins j
Cursing and swearing oaths, were never of his making,
That Gib would fire the house, if that she were not taken.'

Diccon the strolling beggar (or Bedlam, as he is called) steals a
piece of bacon from behind Gammer Gurton's door, and in answer
to Hodge's complaint of being dreadfully pinched for hunger, asks —

' Why Hodge, was there none at home thy dinner for to set ?

Hodge. Gog's bread, Diccon, I came too late, was nothing there to get:
Gib (a foul fiend might on her light) lick'd the milk-pan so clean :
See Diccon, 'twas not so well wash'd this seven year, I ween.
A pestilence light on all ill luck, I had thought yet for all this,
Of a morsel of bacon behind the door, at worst I should not miss :
But when I sought a slip to cut, as I was wont to do,
Gog's souls, Diccon, Gib our cat had eat the bacon too.'

Hodge's difficulty in making Diccon understand what the needle
is which his dame has lost, shows his superior acquaintance with
the conveniences and modes of abridging labour in more civilised life,
of which the other had no idea.

* Hodge. Has she not gone, trowest now thou, and lost her neele ? ' [So

it is called here.]
1 Die. (says staring"). Her eel, Hodge ! Who fished of late ? That

was a dainty dish.
Hodge. Tush, tush, her neele, her neele, her neele, man, 'tis neither flesh

nor fish :

A little thing with a hole in the end, as bright as any siller [silver],
Small, long, sharp at the point, and strait as any pillar.

Die. I know not what a devil thou meanest, thou bring'st me more in
doubt.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Hodge, (answers nuith disdain). Know'st not with what Tom tailor's

man sits broching through a clout ?
A neele, a neele, my Gammer's neele is gone/

The rogue Diccon threatens to shew Hodge a spirit ; but though
Hodge runs away through pure fear before it has time to appear, he
does not fail, in the true spirit of credulity, to give a faithful and
alarming account of what he did not see to his mistress, concluding
with a hit at the Popish Clergy.

' By the mass, I saw him of late call up a great black devil.

Oh, the knave cried, ho, ho, he roared and he thunder'd ;

And ye had been there, I am sure you 'd murrainly ha' wonder'd.

Gam. Wast not thou afraid, Hodge, to see him in his place ?

Hodge (lies and says'). No, and he had come to me, should have laid

him on his face,
Should have promised him.

Gam. But, Hodge, had he no horns to push ?

Hodge. As long as your two arms. Saw ye never Friar Rush,
Painted on a cloth, with a fine long cow's tail,
And crooked cloven feet, and many a hooked nail ?
For all the world (if I should judge) should reckon him his brother :
Look even what face Friar Rush had, the devil had such another.'

He then adds (quite apocryphally) while he is in for it, that 'the
devil said plainly that Dame Chat had got the needle,' which makes
all the disturbance. The same play contains the well-known good
old song, beginning and ending —

' Back and side, go bare, go bare,
Both foot and hand go cold :
But belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old.
I cannot eat but little meat,
My stomach is not good ;
But sure I think, that I can drink
With him that wears a hood :
Though I go bare, take ye no care j
I nothing am a-cold :
I stuff my skin so full within
Of jolly good ale and old.
Back and side go bare, &c.

I love no roast, but a nut-brown toast,
And a crab laid in the fire :
A little bread shall do me stead,
Much bread I not desire.
No frost nor snow, no wind I trow,
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ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.

Can hurt me if I wolde,
I am so wrapt and thoroughly lapt
In jolly good ale and old.
Back and side go bare, &c.

And Tib, my wife, that as her life

Loveth well good ale to seek ;

Full oft drinks she, till ye may see

The tears run down her cheek :

Then doth she troll to me the bowl,

Even as a malt-worm sholde :

And saith, sweetheart, I took my part

Of this jolly good ale and old.

Back and side go bare, go bare,

Both foot and hand go cold :

But belly, God send thee good ale enough,

Whether it be new or old.

Such was the wit, such was the mirth of our ancestors : — homely,
but hearty ; coarse perhaps, but kindly. Let no man despise it, for
* Evil to him that evil thinks.' To think it poor and beneath notice
because it is not just like ours, is the same sort of hypercriticism that
was exercised by the person who refused to read some old books,
because they were ' such very poor spelling.' The meagreness of
their literary or their bodily fare was at least relished by themselves ;
and this is better than a surfeit or an indigestion. It is refreshing to
look out of ourselves sometimes, not to be always holding the glass
to our own peerless perfections : and as there is a dead wall which
always intercepts the prospect of the future from our view (all that
we can see beyond it is the heavens), it is as well to direct our eyes
now and then without scorn to the page of history, and repulsed in
our attempts to penetrate the secrets of the next six thousand years,
not to turn our backs on old long syne !

The other detached plays of nearly the same period of which
I proposed to give a cursory account, are Green's Tu Quoque,
Microcosmus, Lingua, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Pinner
of Wakefield, and the Spanish Tragedy. Of the spurious plays
attributed to Shakespear, and to be found in the editions of his
works, such as the Yorkshire Tragedy, Sir John Oldcastle, The
Widow of Watling Street, &c. I shall say nothing here, because I
suppose the reader to be already acquainted with them, and because
I have given a general account of them in another work.

Green's Tu Quoque, by George Cook, a contemporary of
Shakespear's, is so called from Green the actor, who played the
part of Bubble in this very lively and elegant comedy, with the cant

VOL. v. : T 289

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

phrase of Tu Quoque perpetually in his mouth. The double change
of situation between this fellow and his master, Staines, each passing
from poverty to wealth, and from wealth to poverty again, is equally
well imagined and executed. A gay and gallant spirit pervades the
whole of it ; wit, poetry, and morality, each take their turn in it.
The characters of the two sisters, Joyce and Gertrude, are very
skilfully contrasted, and the manner in which they mutually betray
one another into the hands of their lovers, first in the spirit of
mischief, and afterwards of retaliation, is quite dramatic. * If you
cannot find in your heart to tell him you love him, I '11 sigh it out
for you. Come, we little creatures must help one another,' says
the Madcap to the Madonna. As to style and matter, this play has
a number of pigeon-holes full of wit and epigrams which are flying
out in almost every sentence. I could give twenty pointed conceits,
wrapped up in good set terms. Let one or two at the utmost
suffice. A bad hand at cards is thus described. Will Rash says to
Scattergood, « Thou hast a wild hand indeed : thy small cards shew
like a troop of rebels, and the knave of clubs their chief leader.'
Bubble expresses a truism very gaily on finding himself equipped like
a gallant — * How apparel makes a man respected ! The very children
in the street do adore me.' We find here the first mention of Sir
John Suckling's * melancholy hat,' as a common article of wear —
the same which he chose to clap on Ford's head, and the first
instance of the theatrical double entendre which has been repeated ever
since of an actor's ironically abusing himself in his feigned character.

(Ger-vase. They say Green 's a good clown.
Bubble, (Played by Green, says') Green ! Green 's an ass.
Scattergood. Wherefore do you say so ?

Bub. Indeed, I ha' no reason ; for they say he 's as like me as ever he
can look.'

The following description of the dissipation of a fortune in the
hands of a spendthrift is ingenious and beautiful.

' Know that which made him gracious in your eyes,
And gilded o'er his imperfections,
Is wasted and consumed even like ice,
Which by the vehemence of heat dissolves,
And glides to many rivers : so his wealth,
That felt a prodigal hand, hot in expence,
Melted within his gripe, and from his coffers
Ran like a violent stream to other men's.'

Microcosmus, by Thomas Nabbes, is a dramatic mask or allegory,
in which the Senses, the Soul, a Good and a Bad Genius,
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ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.

Conscience, &c. contend for the dominion of a man ; and notwith-
standing the awkwardness of the machinery, is not without poetry,
elegance, and originality. Take the description of morning as a proof.

' What do I see ? Blush, grey-eyed morn and spread
Thy purple shame upon the mountain tops :
Or pale thyself with envy, since here comes
A brighter Venus than the dull-eyed star
That lights thee up.'

But what are we to think of a play, of which the following is a
literal list of the dramatis persona ?

'NATURE, a fair woman, in a white robe, wrought with birds, beasts,

fruits, flowers, clouds, stars, &c. ; on her head a wreath of flowers inter-
woven with stars.
JANUS, a man with two faces, signifying Providence, in a yellow robe,

wrought with snakes, as he is deus anni : on his head a crown. He is

Nature's husband.
FIRE, a fierce-countenanced young man, in a flame-coloured robe, wrought

with gleams of fire ; his hair red, and on his head a crown of flames.

His creature a Vulcan.
AIR, a young man of a variable countenance, in a blue robe ; wrought

with divers-coloured clouds; his hair blue; and on his head a wreath of

clouds. His creature a giant or silvan.
WATER, a young woman in a sea-green robe, wrought with waves ; her

hair a sea-green, and on her head a wreath of sedge bound about with

waves. Her creature a syren.
EARTH, a young woman of a sad countenance, in a grass-green robe,

wrought with sundry fruits and flowers ; her hair black, and on her

head a chaplet of flowers. Her creature a pigmy.
LOVE, a Cupid in a flame-coloured habit; bow and quiver, a crown of

flaming hearts &c.
PHYSANDER, a perfect grown man, in a long white robe, and on his head

a garland of white lilies and roses mixed. His name airo TTJS <j)vo-(os

Kal T£> dvftpos.

CHOLER, a fencer ; his clothes red.
BLOOD, a dancer, in a watchet-coloured suit.

PHLEGM, a physician, an old man ; his doublet white and black ; trunk hose.
MELANCHOLY, a musician : his complexion, hair, and clothes, black ; a

lute in his hand. He is likewise an amorist.
BELLANIMA, a lovely woman, in a long white robe ; on her head a wreath

of white flowers. She signifies the soul.

BONUS GENIUS, an angel, in a like white robe; wings and wreath white.
MALUS GENIUS, a devil, in a black robe ,• hair, wreath, and wings, black.
The Five Senses — SEEING, a chambermaid; HEARING, the usher of the

hall ; SMELLING, a huntsman or gardener; TASTING, a cook ; TOUCH-
ING, a gentleman usher.
SENSUALITY, a wanton woman, richly habited, but lasciviously dressed,

&c.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

TEMPERANCE, a lovely woman, of a modest countenance ; her garments
plain, but decent, &c.

A Philosopher, "\

An Eremite, I „ , habited

A Ploughman,

A Shepherd, J

Three Furies as they are commonly fancied.

FEAR, the Crier of the Court, with a tipstaff.

CONSCIENCE, the Judge of the Court.

HOPE and DESPAIR, an advocate and a lawyer.

The other three Virtues, as they are frequently expressed by painters.

The Heroes, in bright antique habits, &c.

The front of a workmanship, proper to the fancy of the rest, adorned with
brass figures of angels and devils, with several inscriptions ; the title is
an escutcheon, supported by an Angel and a Devil. Within the arch
a continuing perspective of ruins, which is drawn still before the other
scenes, whilst they are varied.

THE INSCRIPTIONS.
Hinc gloria. Hinc peena.

Appetitus boni. AppetitusMali."

Antony Brewer's Lingua (1607) is of the same cast. It is much
longer as well as older than Microcosmus. It is also an allegory
celebrating the contention of the Five Senses for the crown of
superiority, and the pretensions of Lingua or the Tongue to be
admitted as a sixth sense. It is full of child's play, and old wives'
tales ; but is not unadorned with passages displaying strong good
sense, and powers of fantastic description.

Mr. Lamb has quoted two passages from it — the admirable
enumeration of the characteristics of different languages, ' The
Chaldee wise, the Arabian physical,' &c. ; and the striking de-
scription of the ornaments and uses of tragedy and comedy. The
dialogue between Memory, Common Sense, and Phantasies, is
curious and worth considering.

' Common Sense. Why, good father, why are you so late now-a-days ?

Memory. Thus 'tis ; the most customers I remember myself to have, are,
as your lordship knows, scholars, and now-a-days the most of them are
become critics, bringing me home such paltry things to lay up for them,
that I can hardly find them again.

Phantasies. Jupiter, Jupiter, I had thought these flies had bit none but
myself: do critics tickle you, i'faith ?

Mem. Very familiarly : for they must know of me, forsooth, how every
idle word is written in all the musty moth-eaten manuscripts, kept in all
the old libraries in every city, betwixt England and Peru.

Common Sense. Indeed I have noted these times to affect antiquities
more than is requisite.

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ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.

Mem, I remember in the age of Assaracus and Ninus, and about the
wars of Thebes, and the siege of Troy, there were few things committed
to my charge, but those that were well worthy the preserving ; but now
every trifle must be wrapp'd up in the volume of eternity. A rich pudding-
wife, or a cobbler, cannot die but I must immortalize his name with an
epitaph ; a dog cannot water in a nobleman's shoe, but it must be sprinkled
into the chronicles; so that I never could remember my treasure more
full, and never emptier of honourable and true heroical actions.*

And again Mendacio puts in his claim with great success to many
works of uncommon merit.

' Appe. Thou, boy ! how is this possible ? Thou art but a child, and
there were sects of philosophy before thou wert born.

Men. Appetitus, thou mistakest me; I tell thee three thousand
years ago was Mendacio born in Greece, nursed in Crete, and ever since
honoured every where : I '11 be sworn I held old Homer's pen when he writ
his Iliads and his Odysseys.

Appe. Thou hadst need, for I hear say he was blind.

Men. I helped Herodotus to pen some part of his Muses ; lent Pliny
ink to write his history ; rounded Rabelais in the ear when he historified
Pantagruel ; as for Lucian, I was his genius ; O, those two books de Vera
Historia, however they go under his name, I '11 be sworn I writ them every
tittle.

Appe. Sure as I am hungry, thou 'It have it for lying. But hast thou
rusted this latter time for want of exercise ?

Men. Nothing less. I must confess I would fain have jogged Stow and
great Hollingshed on their elbows, when they were about their chronicles ;
and, as I remember, Sir John Mandevill's travels, and a great part of the
Decad's, were of my doing : but for the Mirror of Knighthood, Bevis of
Southampton, Palmerin of England, Amadis of Gaul, Huon de Bourdeaux,
Sir Guy of Warwick, Martin Marprelate, Robin Hood, Garagantua,
Gerilion, and a thousand such exquisite monuments as these, no doubt but
they breathe in my breath up and down.'

The Merry Devil of Edmonton which has been sometimes
attributed to Shakespear, is assuredly not unworthy of him. It is
more likely, however, both from the style and subject-matter to have
been Heywood's than any other person's. It is perhaps the first
example of sentimental comedy we have — romantic, sweet, tender,
it expresses the feelings of honour, of love, and friendship in their
utmost delicacy, enthusiasm, and purity. The names alone, Raymond
Mounchersey, Frank Jerningham, Clare, Millisent, 'sound silver
sweet like lovers' tongues by night.' It sets out with a sort of story
of Doctor Faustus, but this is dropt as jarring on the tender chords
of the rest of the piece. The wit of the Merry Devil of Edmonton
is as genuine as the poetry. Mine Host of the George is as good
a fellow as Boniface, and the deer-stealing scenes in the forest between

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

him, Sir John the curate, Smug the smith, and Banks the miller, are
'very honest knaveries,' as Sir Hugh Evans has it. The air is
delicate, and the deer, shot by their cross-bows, fall without a groan !
Frank Jerningham says to Clare,

'The way lies right: hark, the clock strikes at Enfield : what's the
hour ?

Young Clare. Ten, the bell says.

Jern. It was but eight when we set out from Cheston : Sir John and
his sexton are at their ale to-night, the clock runs at random.

Y. Clare. Nay, as sure as thou livest, the villainous vicar is abroad in the
chase. The priest steals more venison than half the country.

Jern. Millisent, how dost thou ?

Mil. Sir, very well.
I would to God we were at Brian's lodge.'

A volume might be written to prove this last answer Shakespear's,
in which the tongue says one thing in one line, and the heart con-
tradicts it in the next ; but there were other writers living in the
time of Shakespear, who knew these subtle windings of the passions
besides him, — though none so well as he !

The Pinner of Wakefield, or George a Greene, is a pleasant
interlude, of an early date, and the author unknown, in which kings
and coblers, outlaws and maid Marians are ' hail-fellow well met,'
and in which the features of the antique world are made smiling and
amiable enough. Jenkin, George a Greene's servant, is a notorious
wag. Here is one of his pretended pranks.

Jenkin. This fellow comes to me,
And takes me by the bosom : you slave,
Said he, hold my horse, and look
He takes no cold in his feet.
No, marry shall he, Sir, quoth I,
I '11 lay my cloak underneath him.
I took my cloak, spread it all along,
And his horse on the midst of it.

George. Thou clown, did'st thou set his horse upon thy cloak ?

Jenk. Aye, but mark how I served him.
Madge and he was no sooner gone down into the ditch
But I plucked out my knife, cut four holes in my cloak,
and made his horse stand on the bare ground.'

The first part of Jeronymo is an indifferent piece of work, and
the second, or the Spanish Tragedy by Kyd, is like unto it, except
the interpolations idly said to have been added by Ben Jonson,
relating to Jeronymo's phrensy 'which have all the melancholy
madness of poetry, if not the inspiration.'

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ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

LECTURE VI

ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, F. BEAUMONT, P. FLETCHER,
DRAYTON, DANIEL, &C. SIR P. SIDNEY'S ARCADIA,
AND OTHER WORKS.

I SHALL, in the present Lecture, attempt to give some idea of the
lighter productions of the Muse in the period before us, in order to
shew that grace and elegance are not confined entirely to later times,
and shall conclude with some remarks on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia.

I have already made mention of the lyrical pieces of Beaumont
and Fletcher. It appears from his poems, that many of these were
composed by Francis Beaumont, particularly the very beautiful ones
in the tragedy of the False One, the Praise of Love in that of
Valentinian, and another in the Nice Valour or Passionate Madman,
an Address to Melancholy, which is the perfection of this kind of
writing.

1 Hence, all you vain delights ;

As short as are the nights

Wherein you spend your folly :

There 's nought in this life sweet,

If man were wise to see 't,

But only melancholy,

Oh, sweetest melancholy.

Welcome folded arms and fixed eyes,

A sight that piercing mortifies ;

A look that 's fasten'd to the ground,

A tongue chain'd up without a sound ;

Fountain heads, and pathless groves,

Places which pale passion loves :

Moon-light walks, when all the fowls

Are warmly hous'd, save bats and owls;

A midnight bell, a passing groan,

These are the sounds we feed upon :

Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley ;

Nothing so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.'

It has been supposed (and not without every appearance of good
reason) that this pensive strain, 'most musical, most melancholy,'
gave the first suggestion of the spirited introduction to Milton's

II Penseroso.

' Hence, vain deluding joys,
The brood of folly without father bred ! . . . .

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy,
Hail, divinest melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight, &c.'

The same writer thus moralises on the life of man, in a set of
similes, as apposite as they are light and elegant.

' Like to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood :
Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight call'd in and paid to night : —
The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring intomb'd in autumn lies ;
The dew's dried up, the star is shot,
The flight is past, and man forgot.'

* The silver foam which the wind severs from the parted wave ' is
not more light or sparkling than this : the dove's downy pinion is not
softer and smoother than the verse. We are too ready to conceive
of the poetry of that day, as altogether old-fashioned, meagre, squalid,
deformed, withered and wild in its attire, or as a sort of uncouth
monster, like ' grim-visaged comfortless despair,' mounted on a
lumbering, unmanageable Pegasus, dragon-winged, and leaden-hoofed ;
but it as often wore a sylph-like form with Attic vest, with faery feet,
and the butterfly's gaudy wings. The bees were said to have come,
and built their hive in the mouth of Plato when a child ; and the
fable might be transferred to the sweeter accents of Beaumont and
Fletcher ! Beaumont died at the age of five and twenty. One of
these writers makes Bellario the Page say to Philaster, who threatens
to take his life —

'Tis but a piece

' 'Tis not a life ;

of childhood thrown away.'

But here was youth, genius, aspiring hope, growing reputation, cut
off like a flower in its summer-pride, or like ' the lily on its stalk
green,' which makes us repine at fortune and almost at nature, that
seem to set so little store by their greatest favourites. The life of
poets is or ought to be (judging of it from the light it lends to
ours) a golden dream, full of brightness and sweetness, * lapt in
Elysium ; ' and it gives one a reluctant pang to see the splendid
vision, by which they are attended in their path of glory, fade like

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ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

a vapour, and their sacred heads laid low in ashes, before the sand
of common mortals has run out. Fletcher too was prematurely cut
off by the plague. Raphael died at four and thirty, and Correggio
at forty. Who can help wishing that they had lived to the age of
Michael Angelo and Titian ? Shakespear might have lived another
half-century, enjoying fame and repose, « now that his task was
smoothly done,' listening to the music of his name, and better still,
of his own thoughts, without minding Rymer's abuse of ' the
tragedies of the last age.' His native stream of Avon would then
have flowed with softer murmurs to the ear, and his pleasant birth-
place, Stratford, would in that case have worn even a more gladsome
smile than it does, to the eye of fancy ! — Poets however have a sort
of privileged after-life, which does not fall to the common lot : the
rich and mighty are nothing but while they are living : their power
ceases with them ; but ' the sons of memory, the great heirs of fame '
leave the best part of what was theirs, their thoughts, their verse,
what they most delighted and prided themselves in, behind them —
imperishable, incorruptible, immortal ! — Sir John Beaumont (the
brother of our dramatist) whose loyal and religious effusions are
not worth much, very feelingly laments his brother's untimely death
in an epitaph upon him.

' Thou shoulcTst have followed me, but death to blame
Miscounted years, and measured age by fame :
So dearly hast thou bought thy precious lines,
Their praise grew swiftly ; so thy life declines.
Thy Muse, the hearer's Queen, the reader's Love,
All ears, all hearts (but Death's) could please and move.'

Beaumont's verses addressed to Ben Jonson at the Mermaid, are
a pleasing record of their friendship, and of the way in which they
' fleeted the time carelessly ' as well as studiously ' in the golden age '
of our poetry.

\Lines sent from the Country <with two unfinished Comedies, which
deferred their merry meetings at the Mermaid.~\

1 The sun which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends, because the self-same thing
They know they see, however absent is,
(Here our best hay-maker, forgive me this,
It is our country style) in this warm shine
I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine :
Oh, we have water mixt with claret lees,
Drink apt to bring in drier heresies
Than here, good only for the sonnet's strain,
With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain : —

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Think with one draught a man's invention fades,

Two cups had quite spoil'd Homer's Iliads.

'Tis liquor that will find out Sutclift's wit,

Like where he will, and make him write worse yet :

Fill'd with such moisture, in most grievous qualms1

Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms :

And so must I do this : and yet I think

It is a potion sent us down to drink

By special providence, keep us from fights,

Make us not laugh when we make legs to knights ;

'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states,

A medicine to obey our magistrates.

******
Methinks the little wit I had is lost
Since I saw you, for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best
With the best gamesters. What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid ! Hard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtile flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolv'd to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life ; then when there hath been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past, wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly,
Till that were cancell'd ; and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone
Was able to make the two next companies
Right witty, though but downright fools more wise.'

I shall not, in this place repeat Marlowe's celebrated song, ' Come
live with me and be my love/ nor Sir Walter Raleigh's no less
celebrated answer to it (they may both be found in Walton's Complete
Angler, accompanied with scenery and remarks worthy of them) ;
but I may quote as a specimen of the high and romantic tone in
which the poets of this age thought and spoke of each other the
* Vision upon the conceipt of the Fairy Queen,' understood to be by
Sir Walter Raleigh.

' Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple, where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn, and passing by that way
To see that buried dust of living fame,

1 So in Rochester's Epigram. %

' Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms,

When they translated David's Psalms.'
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ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept.
All suddenly I saw the Faery Queen :
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept ;
And from thenceforth those Graces were not seen,
For they this queen attended, in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse.
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the Heav'ns did pierce,
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,
And curst th' access of that celestial thief.'

A higher strain of compliment cannot well be conceived than this,
which raises your idea even of that which it disparages in the com-
parison, and makes you feel that nothing could have torn the writer
from his idolatrous enthusiasm for Petrarch and his Laura's tomb,
but Spenser's magic verses and diviner Faery Queen — the one lifted
above mortality, the other brought from the skies !

The name of Drummond of Hawthornden is in a manner entwined
in cypher with that of Ben Jonson. He has not done himself or
Jonson any credit by his account of their conversation ; but his
Sonnets are in the highest degree elegant, harmonious, and striking.
It appears to me that they are more in the manner of Petrarch than
any others that we have, with a certain intenseness in the sentiment,
an occasional glitter of thought, and uniform terseness of expression.
The reader may judge for himself from a few examples.

' I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is wrought
In time's great periods shall return to nought ;
That fairest states have fatal nights and days.
I know that all the Muse's heavenly lays,
With toil of spright which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought ;
That there is nothing lighter than vain praise.
I know frail beauty 's like the purple flow'r,
To which one morn oft birth and death affords :
That love a jarring is of minds' accords,
Where sense and will bring under reason's pow'r.
Know what I list, this all cannot me move,
But that, alas ! I both must write and love.'

Another —

' Fair moon, who with thy cold and silver shine
Mak'st sweet the horror of the dreadful night,
Delighting the weak eye with smiles divine,
Which Phoebus dazzles with his too much light ;

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Bright queen of the first Heav'n, if in thy shrine

By turning oft, and Heav'n's eternal might,

Thou hast not yet that once sweet fire of thine,

Endymion, forgot, and lovers' plight :

If cause like thine may pity breed in thee,

And pity somewhat else to it obtain,

Since thou hast power of dreams as well as he

That holds the golden rod and mortal chain ;

Now while she sleeps,1 in doleful guise her show,

These tears, and the black map of all my woe.'

This is the eleventh sonnet : the twelfth is full of vile and forced
conceits, without any sentiment at all ; such as calling the Sun * the
Goldsmith of the stars,' 'the enameller of the moon,' and 'the
Apelles of the flowers.' This is as bad as Cowley or Sir Philip
Sidney. Here is one that is worth a million of such quaint devices.

' To the Nightingale :

Dear chorister, who from these shadows sends,2

Ere that the blushing morn dare show her light,

Such sad lamenting strains, that night attends

(Become all ear 3) stars stay to hear thy plight.

If one whose grief even reach of thought transcends,

Who ne'er (not in a dream) did taste delight,

May thee importune who like case pretends,

And seem'st to joy in woe, in woe's despite :

Tell me (so may thou milder fortune try,

And long, long sing !) for what thou thus complains,2

Since winter 's gone, and sun in dappled sky

Enamour'd smiles on woods and flow'ry plains ?

The bird, as if my questions did her move,

With trembling wings sigh'd forth, ' I love, I love.'

Or if a mixture of the Delia Cruscan style be allowed to enshrine
the true spirit of love and poetry, we have it in the following address
to the river Forth, on which his mistress had embarked.

' Slide soft, fair Forth, and make a chrystal plain,
Cut your white locks, and on your foamy face
Let not a wrinkle be, when you embrace
The boat that earth's perfections doth contain.
Winds wonder, and through wondering hold your peace,
Or if that you your hearts cannot restrain
From sending sighs, feeling a lover's case,
Sigh, and in her fair hair yourselves enchain.

1 His mistress.

2 Scotch for send'st, for complain'st, &c.

3 ' I was all ear,' see Milton's Comus.
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ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

Or take these sighs, which absence makes arise
From my oppressed breast, and fill the sails,
Or some sweet breath new brought from Paradise.
The floods do smile, love o'er the winds prevails,
And yet huge waves arise j the cause is this,
The ocean strives with Forth the boat to kiss.'

This to the English reader will express the very soul of Petrarch,
the molten breath of sentiment converted into the glassy essence of
a set of glittering but still graceful conceits.

* The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets,' and the critic that
tastes poetry, « his ruin meets.' His feet are clogged with its honey,
and his eyes blinded with its beauties ; and he forgets his proper
vocation, which is to buz and sting. I am afraid of losing my way
in Drummond's * sugar'd sonnetting ; ' and have determined more
than once to break off abruptly ; but another and another tempts the
rash hand and curious eye, which I am loth not to give, and I give
it accordingly : for if I did not write these Lectures to please
myself, I am at least sure I should please nobody else. In fact,
I conceive that what I have undertaken to do in this and former
cases, is merely to read over a set of authors with the audience, as
I would do with a friend, to point out a favourite passage, to explain
an objection ; or if a remark or a theory occurs, to state it in illustra-
tion of the subject, but neither to tire him nor puzzle myself with
pedantic rules and pragmatical formulas of criticism that can do no
good to any body. I do not come to the task with a pair of
compasses or a ruler in my pocket, to see whether a poem is round
or square, or to measure its mechanical dimensions, like a meter and
alnager of poetry : it is not in my bond to look after excisable
articles or contraband wares, or to exact severe penalties and for-
feitures for trifling oversights, or to give formal notice of violent
breaches of the three unities, of geography and chronology ; or to
distribute printed stamps and poetical licences (with blanks to be
filled up) on Mount Parnassus. I do not come armed from top to
toe with colons and semicolons, with glossaries and indexes, to
adjust the spelling or reform the metre, or to prove by everlasting
contradiction and querulous impatience, that former commentators
did not know the meaning of their author, any more than I do, who
am angry at them, only because I am out of humour with myself —
as if the genius of poetry lay buried under the rubbish of the press ;
and the critic was the dwarf-enchanter who was to release its airy
form from being stuck through with blundering points and misplaced
commas ; or to prevent its vital powers from being worm-eaten and
consumed, letter by letter, in musty manuscripts and black-letter

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

print. I do not think that is the way to learn « the gentle craft '
of poesy or to teach it to others : — to imbibe or to communicate its
spirit ; which if it does not disentangle itself and soar above the
obscure and trivial researches of antiquarianism is no longer itself,
'a Phcenix gazed by all.' At least, so it appeared to me (it is for
others to judge whether I was right or wrong). In a word, I have
endeavoured to feel what was good, and to * give a reason for the
faith that was in me ' when necessary, and when in my power. This
is what I have done, and what I must continue to do.

To return to Drummond. — I cannot but think that his Sonnets
come as near as almost any others to the perfection of this kind of
writing, which should embody a sentiment and every shade of a
sentiment, as it varies with time and place and humour, with the
extravagance or lightness of a momentary impression, and should,
when lengthened out into a series, form a history of the wayward
moods of the poet's mind, the turns of his fate ; and imprint the
smile or frown of his mistress in indelible characters on the scattered
leaves. I will give the two following, and have done with this
author.

* In vain I haunt the cold and silver springs,
To quench the fever burning in my veins :
In vain (love's pilgrim) mountains, dales, and plains
I over-run ; vain help long absence brings.
In vain, my friends, your counsel me constrains
To fly, and place my thoughts on other things.
Ah, like the bird that fired hath her wings,
The more I move the greater are my pains.
Desire, alas ! desire a Zeuxis new,
From the orient borrowing gold, from western skies
Heavenly cinnabar, sets before my eyes
In every place her hair, sweet look and hue ;
That fly, run, rest I, all doth prove but vain ;
My life lies in those eyes which have me slain.*

The other is a direct imitation of Petrarch 's description of the
bower where he first saw Laura.

' Alexis, here she stay'd, among these pines,
Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair :
Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,
More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines ;
Here sat she by these musked eglantines ;
The happy flowers seem yet the print to bear :
Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar 'd lines,
To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend an ear.
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ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

She here me first perceiv'd, and here a morn
Of bright carnations did o'erspread her face :
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were bom,
Here first I got a pledge of promised grace 5
But ah ! what serves to have been made happy so,
Sith passed pleasures double but new woe ! '

I should, on the whole, prefer Drummond's Sonnets to Spenser's ;
and they leave Sidney's, picking their way through verbal intricacies
and ' thorny queaches,' * at an immeasurable distance behind.
Drummond's other poems have great, though not equal merit ; and
he may be fairly set down as one of our old English classics.

Ben Jonson's detached poetry I like much, as indeed I do all
about him, except when he degraded himself by 'the laborious
foolery ' of some of his farcical characters, which he could not deal
with sportively, and only made stupid and pedantic. I have been
blamed for what I have said, more than once, in disparagement of
Ben Jonson's comic humour ; but I think he was himself aware of
his infirmity, and has (not improbably) alluded to it in the following
speech of Crites in Cynthia's Revels.

* Oh, how despised and base a thing is man,
If he not strive to erect his groveling thoughts
Above the strain of flesh ! But how more cheap,
When even his best and understanding part
(The crown and strength of all his faculties)
Floats like a dead-drown'd body, on the stream
Of vulgar humour, mix'd with common's! dregs :
I suffer for their guilt now ,- and my soul
(Like one that looks on ill-affected eyes)
Is hurt with mere intention on their follies.
Why will I view them then ? my sense might ask me :
Or is't a rarity or some new object
That strains my strict observance to this point :
But such is the perverseness of our nature,
That if we once but fancy levity,
(How antic and ridiculous soever
It suit with us) yet will our muffled thought
Chuse rather not to see it than avoid it, &c.

Ben Jonson had self-knowledge and self-reflection enough to apply
this to himself. His tenaciousness on the score of critical objections
does not prove that he was not conscious of them himself, but the
contrary. The greatest egotists are those whom it is impossible to
offend, because they are wholly and incurably blind to their own

1 Chapman's Hymn to Pan.

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

defects ; or if they could be made to see them, would instantly
convert them into so many beauty-spots and ornamental graces. Ben
Jonson's fugitive and lighter pieces are not devoid of the characteristic
merits of that class of composition ; but still often in the happiest of
them, there is a specific gravity in the author's pen, that sinks him to
the bottom of his subject, though buoyed up for a time with art and
painted plumes, and produces a strange mixture of the mechanical and
fanciful, of poetry and prose, in his songs and odes. For instance,
one of his most airy effusions is the Triumph of his Mistress : yet
there are some lines in it that seem inserted almost by way of
burlesque. It is however well worth repeating.

' See the chariot at hand here of love,
Wherein my lady rideth !
Each that draws it is a swan or a dove ;
And well the car love guideth !
As she goes all hearts do duty

Unto her beauty :
And enamour'd, do wish so they might

But enjoy such a sight,
That they still were to run by her side,
Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.
Do but look on her eyes, they do light

All that love's world compriseth !
Do but look on her hair, it is bright
As love's star when it riseth !
Do but mark, her forehead 's smoother

Than words that soothe her :
And from her arch'd brows, such a grace

Sheds itself through the face,
As alone there triumphs to the life
All the gain, all the good of the elements' strife.

Have you seen but a bright lily grow,

Before rude hands have touch'd it ?

Ha' you mark'd but the fall of the snow

Before the soil hath smutch'd it ?

Ha' you felt the wool of beaver ?

Or swan's down ever ?

Or have smelt o' the bud o' the briar ?

Or the nard in the fire f

Or have tasted the bag of the bee ?

Oh, so white ! Oh so soft ! Oh so sweet is she ! '

His Discourse with Cupid, which follows, is infinitely delicate and
piquant, and without one single blemish. It is a perfect 'nest of
spicery.'

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ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

' Noblest Charis, you that are
Both my fortune and my star !
And do govern more my blood,
Than the various moon the flood !
Hear, what late discourse of you,
Love and I have had ; and true.
'Mongst my Muses finding me,
Where he chanc't your name to see
Set, and to this softer strain ;
' Sure,' said he, ' if I have brain,
This here sung can be no other,
By description, but my mother !
So hath Homer prais'd her hair ;
So Anacreon drawn the air
Of her face, and made to rise,
Just about her sparkling eyes,
Both her brows, bent like my bow.
By her looks I do her know,
Which you call my shafts. And see !
Such my mother's blushes be,
As the bath your verse discloses
In her cheeks, of milk and roses ;
Such as oft I wanton in.
And, above her even chin,
Have you plac'd the bank of kisses,
Where you say, men gather blisses,
Rip'ned with a breath more sweet,
Than when flowers and west-winds meet.
Nay, her white and polish'd neck,
With the lace that doth it deck,
Is my mother's ! hearts of slain
Lovers, made into a chain !
And between each rising breast
Lies the valley, call'd my nest,
Where I sit and proyne my wings
After flight ; and put new stings
To my shafts ! Her very name
With my mother's is the same.' —
' I confess all,' I replied,
1 And the glass hangs by her side,
And the girdle 'bout her waste,
All is Venus : save unchaste.
But, alas ! thou seest the least
Of her good, who is the best
Of her sex ; but could'st thou, Love,
Call to mind the forms, that strove
For the apple, and those three
Make in one, the same were she.
For this beauty yet doth hide
VOL. v. : u 305

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Something more than thou hast spied.
Outward grace weak love beguiles :
She is Venus when she smiles,
But she 's Juno when she walks,
And Minerva when she talks.'

In one of the songs in Cynthia's Revels, we find, amidst some
very pleasing imagery, the origin of a celebrated line in modern
poetry —

* Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, &c,'

This has not even the merit of originality, which is hard upon it.
Ben Jonson had said two hundred years before,

' Oh, I could still
(Like melting snow upon some craggy hill)

Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature's pride is now a wither'd daffodil. '

His Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Gary and Sir H. Morrison,
has been much admired, but I cannot but think it one of his most
fantastical and perverse performances.

I cannot, for instance, reconcile myself to such stanzas as these.

— ' Of which we priests and poets say

Such truths as we expect for happy men,
And there he lives with memory ; and Ben

THE STAND

Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went

Himself to rest,

Or taste a part of that full joy he meant

To have exprest,

In this bright asterism ;

Where it were friendship's schism

(Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry)

To separate these twi —

Lights, the Dioscori ;

And keep the one half from his Harry.

But fate doth so alternate the design,

While that in Heaven, this light on earth doth shine.'

This seems as if because he cannot without difficulty write smoothly,
he becomes rough and crabbed in a spirit of defiance, like those
persons who cannot behave well in company, and affect rudeness to
show their contempt for the opinions of others.

His Epistles are particularly good, equally full of strong sense and
sound feeling. They shew that he was not without friends, whom he

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esteemed, and by whom he was deservedly esteemed in return. The
controversy started about his character is an idle one, carried on in
the mere spirit of contradiction, as if he were either made up entirely
of gall, or dipped in « the milk of human kindness.' There is no
necessity or ground to suppose either. He was no doubt a sturdy,
plain-spoken, honest, well-disposed man, inclining more to the severe
than the amiable side of things ; but his good qualities, learning,
talents, and convivial habits preponderated over his defects of temper
or manners ; and in a course of friendship some difference of character,
even a little roughness or acidity, may relish to the palate ; and olives
may be served up with effect as well as sweetmeats. Ben Jonson,
even by his quarrels and jealousies, does not seem to have been curst
with the last and damning disqualification for friendship, heartless
indifference. He was also what is understood by a good fellow, fond
of good cheer and good company : and the first step for others to
enjoy your society, is for you to enjoy theirs. If any one can do
without the world, it is certain that the world can do quite as well
without him. His ' verses inviting a friend to supper,' give us as
familiar an idea of his private habits and character as his Epistle to
Michael Drayton, that to Selden, &c., his lines to the memory of
Shakespear, and his noble prose eulogy on Lord Bacon, in his
disgrace, do a favourable one.

Among the best of these (perhaps the very best) is the address
to Sir Robert Wroth, which besides its manly moral sentiments,
conveys a strikingly picturesque description of rural sports and
manners at this interesting period.

4 How blest art thou, canst love the country, Wroth,
Whether by choice, or fate, or both !
And though so near the city and the court,
Art ta'en with neither's vice nor sport :
That at great times, art no ambitious guest
Of sheriff's dinner, or of mayor's feast.
Nor com'st to view the better cloth of state ;
The richer hangings, or the crown-plate ;
Nor throng'st (when masquing is) to have a sight
Of the short bravery of the night ;
To view the jewels, stuffs, the pains, the wit
There wasted, some not paid for yet !
But canst at home in thy securer rest,
Live with un-bought provision blest ;
Free from proud porches or their guilded roofs,
'Mongst lowing herds and solid hoofs :
Along the curled woods and painted meads,
Through which a serpent river leads

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

To some cool courteous shade, which he calls his,
And makes sleep softer than it is !
Or if thou list the night in watch to break,
A-bed canst hear the loud stag speak,
In spring oft roused for their master's sport,
Who for it makes thy house his court ;
Or with thy friends, the heart of all the year,
Divid'st upon the lesser deer ;
In autumn, at the partrich mak'st a flight,
And giv'st thy gladder guests the sight ;
And in the winter hunt'st the flying hare,
More for thy exercise than fare ;
While all that follows, their glad ears apply
To the full greatness of the cry :
Or hawking at the river or the bush,
Or shooting at the greedy thrush,
Thou dost with sc ne delight the day out-wear,
Although the colcest of the year!
The whil'st the several seasons thou hast seen
Of flow'ry fields, of copses green,
The mowed meadows, with the fleeced sheep,
And feasts that either shearers keep ;
The ripened ears yet humble in their height,
And furrows laden with their weight 5
The apple-harvest that doth longer last $
The hogs returned home fat from mast ;
The trees cut out in log ; and those boughs made
A fire now, that lent a shade !
Thus Pan and Sylvan having had their rites,
Comus puts in for new delights ;
And fills thy open hall with mirth and cheer,
As if in Saturn's reign it were j
Apollo's harp and Hermes' lyre resound,
Nor are the Muses strangers found :
The rout of rural folk come thronging in,
(Their rudeness then is thought no sin)
Thy noblest spouse affords them welcome grace ;
And the great heroes of her race
Sit mixt with loss of state or reverence.
Freedom doth with degree dispense.
The jolly wassail walks the often round,
And in their cups their cares are drown'd :
They think not then which side the cause shall leese,
Nor how to get the lawyer fees.
Such, and no other was that age of old,
Which boasts t' have had the head of gold.
And such since thou canst make thine own content,
Strive, Wroth, to live long innocent.
Let others watch in guilty arms, and stand
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The fury of a rash command,

Go enter breaches, meet the cannon's rage,

That they may sleep with scars in age.

And show their feathers shot and colours torn,

And brag that they were therefore born.

Let this man sweat, and wrangle at the bar

For every price in every jar

And change possessions oftener with his breath,

Than either money, war or death :

Let him, than hardest sires, more disinherit,

And each where boast it as his merit,

To blow up orphans, widows, and their states ;

And think his power doth equal Fate's.

Let that go heap a mass of wretched wealth,

Purchas'd by rapine, worse than stealth,

And brooding o'er it sit, with broadest eyes,

Not doing good, scarce when he dies.

Let thousands more go flatter vice, and win,

By being organs to great sin,

Get place and honour, and be glad to keep

The secrets, that shall breake their sleep :

And, so they ride in purple, eat in plate,

Though poyson, think it a great fate.

But thou, my Wroth, if I can truth apply,

Shalt neither that, nor this envy :

Thy peace is made ; and, when man's state is well,

'Tis better, if he there can dwell.

God wisheth none should wrack on a strange shelf;

To him man 's dearer than t' himself.

And, howsoever we may think things sweet,

He alwayes gives what he knows meet ;

Which who can use is happy : such be thou.

Thy morning's and thy evening's vow

Be thanks to him, and earnest prayer, to find

A body sound, with sounder mind ;

To do thy country service, thy self right 5

That neither want do thee affright,

Nor death ; but when thy latest sand is spent,

Thou mayst think life a thing but lent.'

Of all the poetical Epistles of this period, however, that of Daniel
to the Countess of Cumberland, for weight of thought and depth of
feeling, bears the palm. The reader will not peruse this effusion with
less interest or pleasure, from knowing that it is a favourite with
Mr. Wordsworth.

* He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,

3°9

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved pow'rs ; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same :
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey !
And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil,
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood : where honour, pow'r, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet,
As frailty doth ; and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem.

He looks upon the mightiest monarch's wars
But only as on stately robberies ;
Where evermore the fortune that prevails
Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best-fac'd enterprize.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails :
Justice, he sees (as if seduced) still
Conspires with pow'r, whose cause must not be ill.

He sees the face of right t' appear as manifold
As are the passions of uncertain man.
Who puts it in all colours, all attires,
To serve his ends, and make his courses hold.
He sees, that let deceit work what it can,
Plot and contrive base ways to high desires ;
That the all-guiding Providence doth yet

All disappoint, and mocks this smoke of wit.
Nor is he mov'd with all the thunder-cracks

Of tyrants' threats, or with the surly brow

Of pow'r, that proudly sits on others' crimes :

Charg'd with more crying sins than those he checks.

The storms of sad confusion, that may grow

Up in the present for the coming times,

Appal not him ; that hath no side at all,

But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.
Although his heart (so near ally'd to earth)

Cannot but pity the perplexed state

Of troublous and distress'd mortality,

That thus make way unto the ugly birth

Of their own sorrows, and do still beget

Affliction upon imbecility :

Yet seeing thus the course of things must run,

He looks thereon not strange, but as fore-done.
And whilst distraught ambition compasses,

And is encompass'd ; whilst as craft deceives,

And is deceived ; whilst man doth ransack man,
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And builds on blood, and rises by distress ;
And th' inheritance of desolation leaves
To great expecting hopes : he looks thereon,
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture in impiety.11

Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion is a work of great length and of
unabated freshness and vigour in itself, though the monotony of the
subject tires the reader. He describes each place with the accuracy
of a topographer, and the enthusiasm of a poet, as if his Muse were
the very genius loci. His Heroical Epistles are also excellent. He
has a few lighter pieces, but none of exquisite beauty or grace. His
mind is a rich marly soil that produces an abundant harvest, and
repays the husbandman's toil, but few flaunting flowers, the garden's
pride, grow in it, nor any poisonous weeds.

P. Fletcher's Purple Island is nothing but a long enigma, describing
the body of a man, with the heart and veins, and the blood circulating
in them, under the fantastic designation of the Purple Island.

The other Poets whom I shall mention, and who properly belong
to the age immediately following, were William Brown, Carew,
Crashaw, Herrick, and Marvell. Brown was a pastoral poet, with
much natural tenderness and sweetness, and a good deal of allegorical
quaintness and prolixity. Carew was an elegant court-trifler.
Herrick was an amorist, with perhaps more fancy than feeling,
though he has been called by some the English Anacreon. Crashaw
was a hectic enthusiast in religion and in poetry, and erroneous in
both. Marvell deserves to be remembered as a true poet as well
as patriot, not in the best of times. — I will, however, give short
specimens from each of these writers, that the reader may judge for
himself; and be led by his own curiosity, rather than my recommen-
dation, to consult the originals. Here is one by T. Carew.

' Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose :
For in your beauties, orient deep
These flow'rs, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more, whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day ;
For in pure love, Heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more, whither doth haste
The nightingale, when May is past ;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Ask me no more, where those stars light,
That downwards fall in dead of night $
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become, as in their sphere.

Ask me no more, if east or west
The phoenix builds her spicy nest ;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.'

The Hue and Cry of Love, the Epitaphs on Lady Mary Villiers,
and the Friendly Reproof to Ben Jonson for his angry Farewell to the
stage, are in the author's best manner. We may perceive, however,
a frequent mixture of the superficial and common-place, with far-
fetched and improbable conceits.

Herrick is a writer who does not answer the expectations I had
formed of him. He is in a manner a modern discovery, and so far
has the freshness of antiquity about him. He is not trite and thread-
bare. But neither is he likely to become so. He is a writer of
epigrams, not of lyrics. He has point and ingenuity, but I think
little of the spirit of love or wine. From his frequent allusion to
pearls and rubies, one might take him for a lapidary instead of a poet.
One of his pieces is entitled

' The Rock of Rubies, and the Quarry of Pearls.

Some ask'd me where the rubies grew j

And nothing I did say ;
But with my finger pointed to

The lips of Julia.

Some ask'd how pearls did grow, and where ;

Then spoke I to my girl
To part her lips, and shew them there

The quarrelets of pearl.'

Now this is making a petrefaction both of love and poetry.

His poems, from their number and size, are * like the motes that
play in the sun's beams ; ' that glitter to the eye of fancy, but leave
no distinct impression on the memory. The two best are a translation
of Anacreon, and a successful and spirited imitation of him.

« The Wounded Cupid,

Cupid, as he lay among
Roses, by a bee was stung.
Whereupon, in anger flying
To his mother said thus, crying,
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Help, oh help, your boy 's a dying !

And why, my pretty lad ? said she.

Then, blubbering, replied he,

A winged snake has bitten me,

Which country-people call a bee.

At which she smiled ; then with her hairs

And kisses drying up his tears,

Alas, said she, my wag ! if this

Such a pernicious torment is j

Come, tell me then, how great's the smart

Of those thou woundest with thy dart ? '

The Captive Bee, or the Little Filcher, is his own.
' As Julia once a slumbering lay,
It chanced a bee did fly that way,
After a dew or dew-like show'r,
To tipple freely in a flow'r.
For some rich flow'r he took the lip
Of Julia, and began to sip :
But when he felt he suck'd from thence
Honey, and in the quintessence;
He drank so much he scarce could stirj
So Julia took the pilferer.
And thus surpris'd, as filchers use,
He thus began himself to excuse :
Sweet lady-flow'r ! I never brought
Hither the least one thieving thought j
But taking those rare lips of yours
For some fresh, fragrant, luscious flow'rs,
I thought I might there take a taste,
Where so much syrup ran at waste :
Besides, know this, I never sting
The flow'r that gives me nourishing ;
But with a kiss or thanks, do pay
For honey that I bear away.
This said, he laid his little scrip
Of honey 'fore her ladyship :
And told her, as some tears did fall,
That that he took, and that was all.
At which she smil'd, and bid him go,
And take his bag, but thus much know,
When next he came a pilfering so,
He should from her full lips derive
Honey enough to fill his hive.'

Of Marvell I have spoken with such praise, as appears to me his
due, on another occasion : but the public are deaf, except to proof or
to their own prejudices, and I will therefore give an example of the
sweetness and power of his verse.

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

* To his Coy Mistress.

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Should'st rubies find : I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood ;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast 5
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should shew your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state ;
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near :
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song : then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity :
And your quaint honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave 's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now, therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may ;
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd pow'r.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball ;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.'

ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

In Brown's Pastorals, notwithstanding the weakness and prolixity
of his general plan, there are repeated examples of single lines and
passages of extreme beauty and delicacy, both of sentiment and
description, such as the following Picture of Night.

' Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song,
And silence girt the woods : no warbling tongue
Talk'd to the echo ; Satyrs broke their dance,
And all the upper world lay in a trance,
Only the curled streams soft chidings kept ;
And little gales that from the green leaf swept
Dry summer's dust, in fearful whisp 'rings stirr'd,
As loth to waken any singing bird.'

Poetical beauties of this sort are scattered, not sparingly, over the
green lap of nature through almost every page of our author's writings.
His description of the squirrel hunted by mischievous boys, of the
flowers stuck in the windows like the hues of the rainbow, and
innumerable others might be quoted.

His Philarete (the fourth song of the Shepherd's Pipe) has been
said to be the origin of Lycidas : but there is no resemblance, except
that both are pastoral elegies for the loss of a friend. The Inner
Temple Mask has also been made the foundation of Comus, with as
little reason. But so it is : if an author is once detected in borrowing,
he will be suspected of plagiarism ever after : and every writer that
finds an ingenious or partial editor, will be made to set up his claim
of originality against him. A more serious charge of this kind has
been urged against the principal character in Paradise Lost (that of
Satan), which is said to have been taken from Marino, an Italian
poet. Of this, we may be able to form some judgment, by a com-
parison with Crashaw's translation of Marino's Sospetto d'Herode.
The description of Satan alluded to, is given in the following stanzas :

' Below the bottom of the great abyss,
There where one centre reconciles all things,
The world's profound heart pants ; there placed is
Mischief's old master ; close about him clings
A curl'd knot of embracing snakes, that kiss
His correspondent cheeks ; these loathsome strings
Hold the perverse prince in eternal ties
Fast bound, since first he forfeited the skies.

The judge of torments, and the king of tears,
He fills a burnish 'd throne of quenchless fire j
And for his old fair robes of light, he wears
A gloomy mantle of dark flames ; the tire

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

That crowns his hated head, on high appears ;
Where seven tall horns (his empire's pride) aspire ;
And to make up hell's majesty, each horn
Seven crested hydras horribly adorn.

His eyes, the sullen dens of death and night,

Startle the dull air with a dismal red ;

Such his fell glances as the fatal light

Of staring comets, that look kingdoms dead.

From his black nostrils and blue lips, in spite

Of hell's own stink, a worser stench is spread.

His breath hell's lightning is j and each deep groan

Disdains to think that heaven thunders alone.

His flaming eyes' dire exhalation

Unto a dreadful pile gives fiery breath j

Whose unconsum'd consumption preys upon

The never-dying life of a long death.

In this sad house of slow destruction

(His shop of flames) he fries himself, beneath

A mass of woes ; his teeth for torment gnash,

While his steel sides sound with his tail's strong lash.'

This portrait of monkish superstition does not equal the grandeur
of Milton's description.

— — * His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruin'd and the excess
Of glory obscured.'

Milton has got rid of the horns and tail, the vulgar and physical
insignia of the devil, and clothed him with other greater and intellectual
terrors, reconciling beauty and sublimity, and converting the grotesque
and deformed into the ideal and classical. Certainly Milton's mind
rose superior to all others in this respect, on the outstretched wings of
philosophic contemplation, in not confounding the depravity of the
will with physical distortion, or supposing that the distinctions of good
and evil were only to be subjected to the gross ordeal of the senses.
In the subsequent stanzas, we however find the traces of some of
Milton's boldest imagery, though its effect is injured by the incon-
gruous mixture above stated.

* Struck with these great concurrences of things,1
Symptoms so deadly unto death and him ;
Fain would he have forgot what fatal strings
Eternally bind each rebellious limb.

1 Alluding to the fulfilment of the prophecies and the birth of the Messiah.
316

ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

He shook himself, and spread his spacious wings,
Which like two bosom 'd sails l embrace the dim
Air, with a dismal shade, but all in vain ;
Of sturdy adamant is his strong chain.

While thus heav'n's highest counsels, by the low
Footsteps of their effects, he traced too well,
He tost his troubled eyes, embers that glow
Now with new rage, and wax too hot for hell.
With his foul claws he fenced his furrow'd brow,
And gave a ghastly shriek, whose horrid yell
Ran trembling through the hollow vaults of night.'

The poet adds —

* The while his twisted tail he knaw'd for spite.'

There is no keeping in this. This action of meanness and mere
vulgar spite, common to the most contemptible creatures, takes away
from the terror and power just ascribed to the prince of Hell, and
implied in the nature of the consequences attributed to his every
movement of mind or body. Satan's soliloquy to himself is more
beautiful and more in character at the same time.

' Art thou not Lucifer ? he to whom the droves
Of stars that gild the morn in charge were given ?
The nimblest of the lightning-winged loves ?
The fairest and the first-born smile of Heav'n ?
Look in what pomp the mistress planet moves,
Reverently circled by the lesser seven :
Such and so rich the flames that from thine eyes
Opprest the common people of the skies ?
Ah ! wretch ! what boots it to cast back thine eyes
Where dawning hope no beam of comfort shews ? ' &c.

This is true beauty and true sublimity : it is also true pathos and
morality : for it interests the mind, and affects it powerfully with the
idea of glory tarnished, and happiness forfeited with the loss of virtue :
but from the horns and tail of the brute-demon, imagination cannot
reascend to the Son of the morning, nor be dejected by the transition
from weal to woe, which it cannot, without a violent effort, picture to
itself.

In our author's account of Cruelty, the chief minister of Satan,
there is also a considerable approach to Milton's description of Death
and Sin, the portress of hell-gates.

' Thrice howl'd the caves of night, and thrice the sound,
Thundering upon the banks of those black lakes,

1 ' He spreads his sail-broad vans.' — Par. Lost, b. ii. 1. 927.

3'7

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Rung through the hollow vaults of hell profound :
At last her listening ears the noise o'ertakes,
She lifts her sooty lamps, and looking round,
A general hiss,1 from the whole tire of snakes
Rebounding through hell's inmost caverns came,
In answer to her formidable name.

'Mongst all the palaces in hell's command,
No one so merciless as this of hers,
The adamantine doors forever stand
Impenetrable, both to prayers and tears.
The wall's inexorable steel, no hand
Of time, or teeth of hungry ruin fears.'

On the whole, this poem, though Milton has undoubtedly availed
himself of many ideas and passages in it, raises instead of lowering
our conception of him, by shewing how much more he added to it
than he has taken from it.

Crashaw's translation of Strada's description of the Contention
between a nightingale and a musician, is elaborate and spirited, but
not equal to Ford's version of the same story in his Lover's Melan-
choly. One line may serve as a specimen of delicate quaintness, and
of Crashaw's style in general.

4 And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings.'

Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I cannot acquire a taste.
As Mr. Burke said, 'he could not love the French Republic' — so
I may say, that I cannot love the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia,
with all my good-will to it. It will not do for me, however, to
imitate the summary petulance of the epigrammatist.

* The reason why I cannot tell,
But I don't like you, Dr. Fell.'

I must give my reasons, ' on compulsion,' for not speaking well of
a person like Sir Philip Sidney —

' The soldier's, scholar's, courtier's eye, tongue, sword,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form ; '

the splendour of whose personal accomplishments, and of whose wide-
spread fame was, in his life time,

' Like a gate of steel,

Fronting the sun, that renders back
His figure and his heat' —

1 See Satan's reception on his return to Pandemonium, in book x. of Paradise
Lost.
3I8

ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

a writer too who was universally read and enthusiastically admired for
a century after his death, and who has been admired with scarce less
enthusiastic, but with a more distant homage, for another century,
after ceasing to be read.

We have lost the art of reading, or the privilege of writing,
voluminously, since the days of Addison. Learning no longer
weaves the interminable page with patient drudgery, nor ignorance
pores over it with implicit faith. As authors multiply in number,
books diminish in size ; we cannot now, as formerly, swallow libraries
whole in a single folio : solid quarto has given place to slender
duodecimo, and the dingy letter-press contracts its dimensions, and
retreats before the white, unsullied, faultless margin. Modern author-
ship is become a species of stenography : we contrive even to read by
proxy. We skim the cream of prose without any trouble ; we get
at the quintessence of poetry without loss of time. The staple
commodity, the coarse, heavy, dirty, unwieldy bullion of books is
driven out of the market of learning, and the intercourse of the
literary world is carried on, and the credit of the great capitalists
sustained by the flimsy circulating medium of magazines and reviews.
Those who are chiefly concerned in catering for the taste of others,
and serving up critical opinions in a compendious, elegant, and
portable form, are not forgetful of themselves : they are not scrupu-
lously solicitous, idly inquisitive about the real merits, the bona Jlde
contents of the works they are deputed to appraise and value, any
more than the reading public who employ them. They look no
farther for the contents of the work than the title page, and pronounce
a peremptory decision on its merits or defects by a glance at the name
and party of the writer. This state of polite letters seems to admit
of improvement in only one respect, which is to go a step further,
and write for the amusement and edification of the world, accounts of
works that were never either written or read at all, and to cry up or
abuse the authors by name, although they have no existence but in the
critic's invention. This would save a great deal of labour in vain :
anonymous critics might pounce upon the defenceless heads of
fictitious candidates for fame and bread ; reviews, from being novels
founded upon facts, would aspire to be pure romances ; and we should
arrive at the beau ideal of a commonwealth of letters, at the euthanasia
of thought, and Millennium of criticism !

At the time that Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia was written, those
middle men, the critics, were not known. The author and reader
came into immediate contact, and seemed never tired of each other's
company. We are more fastidious and dissipated : the effeminacy
of modern taste would, I am afraid, shrink back affrighted at the

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

formidable sight of this once popular work, which is about as long
(horresco referent!} as all Walter Scott's novels put together; but
besides its size and appearance, it has, I think, other defects of a
more intrinsic and insuperable nature. It is to me one of the greatest
monuments of the abuse of intellectual power upon record. It puts
one in mind of the court dresses and preposterous fashions of the time
which are grown obsolete and disgusting. It is not romantic, but
scholastic ; not poetry, but casuistry ; not nature, but art, and the
worst sort of art, which thinks it can do better than nature. Of the
number of fine things that are constantly passing through the author's
mind, there is hardly one that he has not contrived to spoil, and to
spoil purposely and maliciously, in order to aggrandize our idea of
himself. Out of five hundred folio pages, there are hardly, I conceive,
half a dozen sentences expressed simply and directly, with the sincere
'"desire to convey the image implied, and without a systematic inter-
polation of the wit, learning, ingenuity, wisdom and everlasting
impertinence of the writer, so as to disguise the object, instead of
displaying it in its true colours and real proportions. Every page is
* with centric and eccentric scribbled o'er ; ' his Muse is tattooed and
tricked out like an Indian goddess. He writes a court-hand, with
flourishes like a schoolmaster ; his figures are wrought in chain-stitch.
All his thoughts are forced and painful births, and may be said to be
delivered by the Cassarean operation. At last, they become distorted
and ricketty in themselves ; and before they have been cramped and
twisted and swaddled into lifelessness and deformity. Imagine a
writer to have great natural talents, great powers of memory and
invention, an eye for nature, a knowledge of the passions, much
learning and equal industry ; but that he is so full of a consciousness
of all this, and so determined to make the reader conscious of it at
every step, that he becomes a complete intellectual coxcomb or nearly
so ; — that he never lets a casual observation pass without perplexing
it with an endless, running commentary, that he never states a feeling
without so many drcumambages, without so many interlineations and
parenthetical remarks on all that can be said for it, and anticipations
of all that can be said against it, and that he never mentions a fact
without giving so many circumstances and conjuring up so many
things that it is like or not like, that you lose the main clue of the
story in its infinite ramifications and intersections ; and we may form
some faint idea of the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, which is spun
with great labour out of the author's brains, and hangs like a huge
cobweb over the face of nature ! This is not, as far as I can judge,
an exaggerated description : but as near the truth as I can make it.
The proofs are not far to seek. Take the first sentence, or open the
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ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

volume any where and read. I will, however, take one of the most
beautiful passages near the beginning, to shew how the subject-matter,
of which the noblest use might have been made, is disfigured by the
affectation of the style, and the importunate and vain activity of the
writer's mind. The passage I allude to, is the celebrated description
of Arcadia.

* So that the third day after, in the time that the morning did strew roses
and violets in the heavenly floor against the coming of the sun, the
nightingales (striving one with the other which could in most dainty
variety recount their wrong-caused sorrow) made them put off their sleep,
and rising from under a tree (which that night had been their pavilion)
they went on their journey, which by and by welcomed Musidorus' eyes
(wearied with the wasted soil of Laconia) with welcome prospects. There
were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees : humble
valleys whose base estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver
rivers ; meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers ; thickets,
which being lined with most pleasant shade were witnessed so to, by the
cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with
sheep feeding with sober security, while the pretty lambs with bleating
oratory craved the dam's comfort ; here a shepherd's boy piping, as though
he should never be old : there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal
singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and
her hands kept time to her voice-music. As for the houses of the country
(for many houses came under their eye) they were scattered, no two being
one by the other, and yet not so far off, as that it barred mutual succour ;
a shew, as it were, of an accompaniable solitariness, and of a civil
wildness. I pray you, said Musidorus, (then first unsealing his long-silent
lips) what countries be these we pass through, which are so divers in shew,
the one wanting no store, the other having no store but of want. The
country, answered Claius, where you were cast ashore, and now are past
through is Laconia : but this country (where you now set your foot) is
Arcadia.'

One would think the very name might have lulled his senses to
delightful repose in some still, lonely valley, and hare laid the restless i
spirit of Gothic quaintness, witticism, and conceit in the lap of classic
elegance and pastoral simplicity. Here are images too of touching
beauty and everlasting truth that needed nothing but to be simply and
nakedly expressed to have made a picture equal (nay superior) to the
allegorical representation of the Four Seasons of Life by Georgioni.
But no ! He cannot let his imagination or that of the reader dwell
for a moment on the beauty or power of the real object. He thinks
nothing is done, unless it is his doing. He must officiously and
gratuitously interpose between you and the subject as the Cicerone of
Nature, distracting the eye and the mind by continual uncalled-for
interruptions, analysing, dissecting, disjointing, murdering every thing,

VOL. v. : x 321

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

and reading a pragmatical, self-sufficient lecture over the dead body of
nature. The moving spring of his mind is not sensibility or imagina-
tion, but dry, literal, unceasing craving after intellectual excitement,
which is indifferent to pleasure or pain, to beauty or deformity, and
likes to owe everything to its own perverse efforts rather than the
sense of power in other things. It constantly interferes to perplex
and neutralise. It never leaves the mind in a wise passiveness. In
the infancy of taste, the froward pupils of art took nature to pieces,
as spoiled children do a watch, to see what was in it. After taking
it to pieces they could not, with all their cunning, put it together
again, so as to restore circulation to the heart, or its living hue to the
face ! The quaint and pedantic style here objected to was not
however the natural growth of untutored fancy, but an artificial
excrescence transferred from logic and rhetoric to poetry. It was
not owing to the excess of imagination, but of the want of it, that is,
to the predominance of the mere understanding or dialectic faculty
over the imaginative and the sensitive. It is in fact poetry
degenerating at every step into prose, sentiment entangling itself in
a controversy, from the habitual leaven of polemics and casuistry in
the writer's mind. The poet insists upon matters of fact from the
beauty or grandeur that accompanies them ; our prose-poet insists
upon them because they are matters of fact, and buries the beauty and
grandeur in a heap of common rubbish, ' like two grains of wheat in
a bushel of chaff.' The true poet illustrates for ornament or use :
the fantastic pretender, only because he is not easy till he can translate
every thing out of itself into something else. Imagination consists in
enriching one idea by another, which has the same feeling or set of
associations belonging to it in a higher or more striking degree ; the
quaint or scholastic style consists in comparing one thing to another
by the mere process of abstraction, and the more forced and naked
the comparison, the less of harmony or congruity there is in it, the
more wire-drawn and ambiguous the link of generalisation by which
objects are brought together, the greater is the triumph of the false
and fanciful style. There was a marked instance of the difference
in some lines from Ben Jonson which I have above quoted, and
which, as they are alternate examples of the extremes of both in the
same author and in the same short poem, there can be nothing
invidious in giving. In conveying an idea of female softness and
sweetness, he asks —

* Have you felt the wool of the beaver,
Or swan's down ever ?
Or smelt of the bud of the briar,
Or the nard in the fire ? '
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ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

Now 'the swan's down' is a striking and beautiful image of the
most delicate and yielding softness ; but we have no associations of
a pleasing sort with the wool of the beaver. The comparison is dry,
hard, and barren of effect. It may establish the matter of fact, but
detracts from and impairs the sentiment. The smell of ' the bud of
the briar ' is a double-distilled essence of sweetness : besides, there
are all the other concomitant ideas of youth, beauty, and blushing
modesty, which blend with and heighten the immediate feeling : but
the poetical reader was not bound to know even what nard is (it is
merely a learned substance, a non-entity to the imagination) nor
whether it has a fragrant or disagreeable scent when thrown into the
fire, till Ben Jonson went out of his way to give him this pedantic
piece of information. It is a mere matter of fact or of experiment ;
and while the experiment is making in reality or fancy, the sentiment
stands still ; or even taking it for granted in the literal and scientific
sense, we are where we were ; it does not enhance the passion to be
expressed : we have no love for the smell of nard in the fire, but we
have an old, a long-cherished one, from infancy, for the bud of the
briar. Sentiment, as Mr. Burke said of nobility, is a thing of
inveterate prejudice, and cannot be created, as some people (learned
and unlearned) are inclined to suppose, out of fancy or out of any
thing by the wit of man. The artificial and natural style do not
alternate in this way in the Arcadia : the one is but the Helot, the
eyeless drudge of the other. Thus even in the above passage, which
is comparatively beautiful and simple in its general structure, we have

* the bleating oratory ' of lambs, as if anything could be more unlike
oratory than the bleating of lambs ; we have a young shepherdess
knitting, whose hands keep time not to her voice, but to her

* voice-music,' which introduces a foreign and questionable distinction,
merely to perplex the subject ; we have meadows enamelled with all
sorts of * eye-pleasing flowers,' as if it were necessary to inform the
reader that flowers pleased the eye, or as if they did not please any
other sense : we have valleys refreshed * with silver streams,' an
epithet that has nothing to do with the refreshment here spoken of:
we have * an accompaniable solitariness and a civil wildness,' which
are a pair of very laboured antitheses ; in fine, we have * want of
store, and store of want.'

Again, the passage describing the shipwreck of Pyrochles, has been
much and deservedly admired: yet it is not free from the same
inherent faults.

* But a little way off they saw the mast (of the vessel) whose proud
height now lay along, like a widow having lost her mate, of whom she
held her honour ; ' [This needed explanation] ' but upon the mast they saw

323

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

a young man (at least if it were a man) bearing show of about eighteen
years of age, who sat (as on horseback) having nothing upon him but his
shirt, which being wrought with blue silk and gold, had a kind of resem-
blance to the sea ' [This is a sort of alliteration in natural history] ' on
which the sun (then near his western home) did shoot some of his beams.
His hair, (which the young men of Greece used to wear very long) was
stirred up and down with the wind, which seemed to have a sport to play
with it, as the sea had to kiss his feet ; himself full of admirable beauty, set
forth by the strangeness both of his seat and gesture ; for holding his head
up full of unmoved majesty, he held a sword aloft with his fair arm, which
often he waved about his crown, as though he would threaten the world
in that extremity.'

If the original sin of alliteration, antithesis, and metaphysical
conceit could be weeded out of this passage, there is hardly a more
heroic one to be found in prose or poetry.

Here is one more passage marred in the making. A shepherd is
supposed to say of his mistress,

' Certainly, as her eyelids are more pleasant to behold, than two white
kids climbing up a fair tree and browsing on his tenderest branches, and
yet are nothing, compared to the day-shining stars contained in them ;
and as her breath is more sweet than a gentle south-west wind, which
comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat
of summer; and yet is nothing compared to the honey-flowing speech that
breath doth carry ; no more all that our eyes can see of her (though when
they have seen her, what else they shall ever see is but dry stubble after
clover grass) is to be matched with the flock of unspeakable virtues, laid up
delightfully in that best-builded fold.'

Now here are images of singular beauty and of Eastern originality
and daring, followed up with enigmatical or unmeaning common-
places, because he never knows when to leave off, and thinks he can
never be too wise or too dull for his reader. He loads his prose
Pegasus, like a pack-horse, with all that comes and with a number
of little trifling circumstances, that fall off, and you are obliged to
stop to pick them up by the way. He cannot give his imagination a
moment's pause, thinks nothing done, while any thing remains to do,
and exhausts nearly all that can be said upon a subject, whether good,
bad, or indifferent. The above passages are taken from the beginning
of the Arcadia, when the author's style was hardly yet formed. The
following is a less favourable, but fairer specimen of the work. It is
the model of a love-letter, and is only longer than that of Adriano de
Armada, in Love's Labour Lost.

'Most blessed paper, which shalt kiss that hand, whereto all blessedness
is in nature a servant, do not yet disdain to carry with thee the woeful

ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

words of a miser now despairing : neither be afraid to appear before her,
bearing the base title of the sender. For no sooner shall that divine hand
touch thee, but that thy baseness shall be turned to most high preferment.
Therefore mourn boldly my ink : for while she looks upon you, your
blackness will shine : cry out boldly my lamentation, for while she reads
you, your cries will be music. Say then (O happy messenger of a most
unhappy message) that the too soon bom and too late dying creature,
which dares not speak, no, not look, no, not scarcely think (as from his
miserable self unto her heavenly highness), only presumes to desire thee (in
the time that her eyes and voice do exalt thee) to say, and in this manner
to say, not from him, oh no, that were not fit, but of him, thus much unto
her sacred judgment. O you, the only honour to women, to men the only
admiration, you that being armed by love, defy him that armed you, in
this high estate wherein you have placed me' [i.e. the letter] 'yet let me
remember him to whom I am bound for bringing me to your presence :
and let me remember him, who (since he is yours, how mean soever he be)
it is reason you have an account of him. The wretch (yet your wretch)
though with languishing steps runs fast to his grave ; and will you suffer a
temple (how poorly built soever, but yet a temple of your deity) to be
rased ? But he dyeth : it is most true, he dyeth : and he in whom you
live, to obey you, dyeth. Whereof though he plain, he doth not complain,
for it is a harm, but no wrong, which he hath received. He dies, because
in woeful language all his senses tell him, that such is your pleasure : for
if you will not that he live, alas, alas, what followeth, what followeth of
the most ruined Dorus, but his end? End, then, evil-destined Dorus,
end j and end thou woeful letter, end : for it sufficeth her wisdom to know,
that her heavenly will shall be accomplished.' Lib. ii. p. 117.

This style relishes neither of the lover nor the poet. Nine-tenths
of the work are written in this manner. It is in the very manner of
those books of gallantry and chivalry, which, with the labyrinths of
their style, and « the reason of their unreasonableness,' turned the
fine intellects of the Knight of La Mancha. In a word (and not to
speak it profanely), the Arcadia is a riddle, a rebus, an acrostic
in folio : it contains about 4000 far-fetched similes, and 6000
impracticable dilemmas, about 10,000 reasons for doing nothing at
all, and as many more against it ; numberless alliterations, puns,
questions and commands, and other figures of rhetoric ; about a score
good passages, that one may turn to with pleasure, and the most
involved, irksome, improgressive, and heteroclite subject that ever
was chosen to exercise the pen or patience of man. It no longer
adorns the toilette or lies upon the pillow of Maids of Honour and
Peeresses in their own right (the Pamelas and Philocleas of a later
age), but remains upon the shelves of the libraries of the curious in
long works and great names, a monument to shew that the author was
one of the ablest men and worst writers of the age of Elizabeth.

3*5

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

His Sonnets, inlaid in the Arcadia, are jejune, far-fetched and
frigid. I shall select only one that has been much commended. It
is to the High Way where his mistress had passed, a strange subject,
but not unsuitable to the author's genius.

' High-way, since you my chief Parnassus be,
And that my Muse (to some ears not unsweet)
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet
More oft than to a chamber melody ;
Now blessed you bear onward blessed me
To her, where I my heart safe left shall meet ;
My Muse, and I must you of duty greet
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully.
Be you still fair, honoured by public heed,
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot ;
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed ;
And that you know, I envy you no lot
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss.'

The answer of the High-way has not been preserved, but the
sincerity of this appeal must no doubt have moved the stocks and
stones to rise and sympathise. His Defence of Poetry is his most
readable performance ; there he is quite at home, in a sort of special
pleader's office, where his ingenuity, scholastic subtlety, and tenacious-
ness in argument stand him in good stead ; and he brings off poetry
with flying colours ; for he was a man of wit, of sense, and learning,
though not a poet of true taste or unsophisticated genius.

LECTURE VII

CHARACTER OF LORD BACON's WORKS COMPARED

AS TO STYLE WITH SIR THOMAS BROWN AND
JEREMY TAYLOR.

LORD BACON has been called (and justly) one of the wisest of
mankind. The word 'wisdom characterises him more than any other.
It was not that he did so much himself to advance the knowledge of
man or nature, as that he saw what others had done to advance it,
and what was still wanting to its full accomplishment. He stood
upon the high 'vantage ground of genius and learning ; and traced,
'as in a map the voyager his course,' the long devious march of
human intellect, its elevations and depressions, its windings and its
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CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS

errors. He had a « large discourse of reason, looking before and
after.' He had made an exact and extensive survey of human
acquirements : he took the gauge and meter, the depths and soundings
of the human capacity. He was master of the comparative anatomy
of the mind of man, of the balance of power among the different
faculties. He had thoroughly investigated and carefully registered
the steps and processes of his own thoughts, with their irregularities
and failures, their liabilities to wrong conclusions, either from the
difficulties of the subject, or from moral causes, from prejudice,
indolence, vanity, from conscious strength or weakness ; and he
applied this self-knowledge on a mighty scale to the general advances
or retrograde movements of the aggregate intellect of the world. He
knew well what the goal and crown of moral and intellectual power
was, how far men had fallen short of it, and how they came to miss
it. He had an instantaneous perception of the quantity of truth or
good in any given system ; and of the analogy of any given result or
principle to others of the same kind scattered through nature or
history. His observations take in a larger range, have more profundity
from the fineness of his tact, and more comprehension from the extent
of his knowledge, along the line of which his imagination ran with
equal celerity and certainty, than any other person's, whose writings
I know. He however seized upon these results, rather by intuition
than by inference : he knew them in their mixed modes, and combined
effects rather than by abstraction or analysis, as he explains them to
others, not by resolving them into their component parts and elemen-
tary principles, so much as by illustrations drawn from other things
operating in like manner, and producing similar results ; or as he
himself has finely expressed it, ' by the same footsteps of nature
treading or printing upon several subjects or matters.' He had great
sagacity of observation, solidity of judgment and scope of fancy ; in
this resembling Plato and Burke, that he was a popular philosopher
and a philosophical declaimer. His writings have the gravity of
prose with the fervour and vividness of poetry. His sayings have
the effect of axioms, are at once striking and self-evident. He views
objects from the greatest height, and his reflections acquire a sublimity
in proportion to their profundity, as in deep wells of water we see the
sparkling of the highest fixed stars. The chain of thought reaches
to the centre, and ascends the brightest heaven of invention. Reason
in him works like an instinct : and his slightest suggestions carry the
force of conviction. His opinions are judicial. His induction of
particulars is alike wonderful for learning and vivacity, for curiosity
and dignity, and an all-pervading intellect binds the whole together in
a graceful and pleasing form. His style is equally sharp and sweet,

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flowing and pithy, condensed and expansive, expressing volumes in a
sentence, or amplifying a single thought into pages of rich, glowing,
and delightful eloquence. He had great liberality from seeing the
various aspects of things (there was nothing bigotted or intolerant or
exclusive about him) and yet he had firmness and decision from
feeling their weight and consequences. His character was then an
amazing insight into the limits of human knowledge and acquaintance
with the landmarks of human intellect, so as to trace its past history
or point out the path to future enquirers, but when he quits the ground
of contemplation of what others have done or left undone to project
himself into future discoveries, he becomes quaint and fantastic, instead
of original. His strength was in reflection, not in production : he
was the surveyor, not the builder of the fabric of science. He had
not strictly the constructive faculty. He was the principal pioneer
in the march of modern philosophy, and has completed the education
and discipline of the mind for the acquisition of truth, by explaining
all the impediments or furtherances that can be applied to it or cleared
out of its way. In a word, he was one of the greatest men this
country has to boast, and his name deserves to stand, where it is
generally placed, by the side of those of our greatest writers, whether
we consider the variety, the strength or splendour of his faculties, for
ornament or use.

His Advancement of Learning is his greatest work ; and next to
that, I like the Essays ; for the Novum Organum is more laboured
and less effectual than it might be. I shall give a few instances from
the first of these chiefly, to explain the scope of the above remarks.

The Advancement of Learning is dedicated to James i. and he
there observes, with a mixture of truth and flattery, which looks
very much like a bold irony,

* I am well assured that this which I shall say is no amplification at all,
but a positive and measured truth; which is, that there hath not been,
since Christ's time, any king or temporal monarch, which hath been so
learned in all literature and erudition, divine and human (as your majesty).
For let a man seriously and diligently revolve and peruse the succession of
the Emperours of Rome, of which Caesar the Dictator, who lived some
years before Christ, and Marcus Antoninus were the best-learned ; and so
descend to the Emperours of Grecia, or of the West, and then to the lines
of France, Spain, England, Scotland, and the rest, and he shall find his
judgment is truly made. For it seemeth much in a king, if by the com-
pendious extractions of other men's wits and labour, he can take hold of
any superficial ornaments and shews of learning, or if he countenance and
prefer learning and learned men : but to drink indeed of the true fountain
of learning, nay, to have such a fountain of learning in himself, in a king,
and in a king born, is almost a miracle.'

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CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS

To any one less wrapped up in self-sufficiency than James, the rule
would have been more staggering than the exception could have been
gratifying. But Bacon was a sort of prose-laureat to the reigning
prince, and his loyalty had never been suspected.

In recommending learned men as fit counsellors in a state, he thus
points out the deficiencies of the mere empiric or man of business in
not being provided against uncommon emergencies. — 'Neither,' he
says, 'can the experience of one man's life furnish examples and
precedents for the events of one man's life. For as it happeneth
sometimes, that the grand-child, or other descendant, resembleth the
ancestor more than the son : so many times occurrences of present
times may sort better with ancient examples, than with those of the
latter or immediate times ; and lastly, the wit of one man can no
more countervail learning, than one man's means can hold way with
a common purse.' — This is finely put. It might be added, on the
other hand, by way of caution, that neither can the wit or opinion
of one learned man set itself up, as it sometimes does, in opposition to
the common sense or experience of mankind.

When he goes on to vindicate the superiority of the scholar over
the mere politician in disinterestedness and inflexibility of principle,
by arguing ingeniously enough — * The corrupter sort of mere
politiques, that have not their thoughts established by learning in the
love and apprehension of duty, nor never look abroad into universality,
do refer all things to themselves, and thrust themselves into the centre
of the world, as if all times should meet in them and their fortunes,
never caring in all tempests what becomes of the ship of estates, so
they may save themselves in the cock-boat of their own fortune,
whereas men that feel the weight of duty, and know the limits of
self-love, use to make good their places and duties, though with peril '
— I can only wish that the practice were as constant as the theory is
plausible, or that the time gave evidence of as much stability and
sincerity of principle in well-educated minds as it does of versatility
and gross egotism in self-taught men. I need not give the instances,
'they will receive' (in our author's phrase) 'an open allowance:'
but I am afraid that neither habits of abstraction nor the want of
them will entirely exempt men from a bias to their own interest ;
that it is neither learning nor ignorance that thrusts us into the centre
of our own little world, but that it is nature that has put a man
there !

His character of the school-men is perhaps the finest philosophical
sketch that ever was drawn. After observing that there are 'two
marks and badges of suspected and falsified science ; the one, the
novelty or strangeness of terms, the other the strictness of positions,

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

which of necessity doth induce oppositions, and so questions and
altercations' — he proceeds — 'Surely like as many substances in
nature which are solid, do putrify and corrupt into worms : so it is
the property of good and sound knowledge to putrify and dissolve
into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term
them) vermiculate questions: which have indeed a kind of quickness
and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality.
This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the
school-men, who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of
leisure, and small variety of reading ; but their wits being shut up in
the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their
persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and
knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great
quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto us those
laborious webs of learning, which are extant in their books. For the
wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contem-
plation of the creatures of God, worketh according to tjie stuff, and
is limited thereby : but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh
his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of
learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no
substance or profit.'

And a little further on, he adds — ' Notwithstanding, certain it is,
that if those school-men to their great thirst of truth and unwearied
travel of wit, had joined variety and universality of reading and con-
templation, they had proved excellent lights, to the great advancement
of all learning and knowledge ; but as they are, they are great under-
takers indeed, and fierce with dark keeping. But as in the inquiry
of the divine truth, their pride inclined to leave the oracle of God's
word, and to varnish in the mixture of their own inventions ; so in
the inquisition of nature, they ever left the oracle of God's works,
and adored the deceiving and deformed images, which the unequal
mirror of their own minds, or a few received authors or principles
did represent unto them.'

One of his acutest (I might have said profoundest) remarks relates
to the near connection between deceiving and being deceived.
Volumes might be written in explanation of it. « This vice there-
fore,' he says, « brancheth itself into two sorts ; delight in deceiving,
and aptness to be deceived, imposture and credulity ; which although
they appear to be of a diverse nature, the one seeming to proceed of
cunning, and the other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the
most part concur. For as the verse noteth Percontatorem fugito, nam
garrulus idem est ; an inquisitive man is a prattler: so upon the like
reason, a credulous man is a deceiver ; as we see it in fame, that he

33°

CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS

that will easily believe rumours, will as easily augment rumours, and
add somewhat to them of his own, which Tacitus wisely noteth,
when he saith, Fingunt simul creduntque, so great an affinity hath
fiction and belief.'

I proceed to his account of the causes of error, and directions for
the conduct of the understanding, which are admirable both for their
speculative ingenuity and practical use.

' The first of these/ says Lord Bacon, ' is the extreme affection of two
extremities ; the one antiquity, the other novelty, wherein it seemeth the
children of time do take after the nature and malice of the father. For as
he devoureth his children ; so one of them seeketh to devour and suppress
the other ; while antiquity envieth there should be new additions, and
novelty cannot be content to add, but it must deface. Surely, the advice
of the prophet is the true direction in this respect, state super vias
antiquas, et <uidete quxnam sit 'via recta et bona, et ambulate in ea. Antiquity
deserveth that reverence, that men should make a stand thereupon, and
discover what is the best way, but when the discovery is well taken, then
to take progression. And to speak truly,' he adds, ( Antiquitas seculi
juventus mundi. These times are the ancient times when the world is
ancient; and not those which we count ancient ordine retrograde, by a
computation backwards from ourselves.

'Another error induced by the former, is a distrust that any thing
should be now to be found out which the world should have missed and
passed over so long time, as if the same objection were to be made to time
that Lucian makes to Jupiter and other the Heathen Gods, of which he
wondereth that they begot so many children in old age, and begot none
in his time, and asketh whether they were become septuagenary, or
whether the law Papia made against old men's marriages had restrained
them. So it seemeth men doubt, lest time was become past children and
generation : wherein contrary-wise, we see commonly the levity and un-
constancy of men's judgments, which till a matter be done, wonder that
it can be done, and as soon as it is done, wonder again that it was done
no sooner, as we see in the expedition of Alexander into Asia, which at
first was prejudged as a vast and impossible enterprise, and yet afterwards
it pleaseth Livy to make no more of it than this, nil aliud quam bene ausus
vana contemnere. And the same happened to Columbus in his western
navigation. But in intellectual matters, it is much more common; as
may be seen in most of the propositions in Euclid, which till they be
demonstrate, they seem strange to our assent, but being demonstrate, our
mind accepteth of them by a kind of relation (as the lawyers speak) as if
we had known them before.

' Another is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due
and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation
are not unlike the two ways of action, commonly spoken of by the
Ancients. The one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end
impassable : the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a
while fair and even ; so it is in contemplation, if a man will begin with

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certainties, he shall end in doubts ; but if he will be content to begin with
doubts, he shall end in certainties.

' Another error is in the manner of the tradition or delivery of know-
ledge, which is for the most part magistral and peremptory, and not in-
genuous and faithful ; in a sort, as may be soonest believed, and not
easiliest examined. It is true, that in compendious treatises for practice,
that form is not to be disallowed. But in the true handling of knowledge,
men ought not to fall either on the one side into the vein of Velleius the
Epicurean ; nil tarn metuens quam ne dubitare aliqua de re wideretur : nor
on the other side, into Socrates his ironical doubting of all things, but to
propound things sincerely, with more or less asseveration ; as they stand
in a man's own judgment, proved more or less.'

Lord Bacon in this part declares, 'that it is not his purpose to
enter into a laudative of learning or to make a Hymn to the Muses,'
yet he has gone near to do this in the following observations on the
dignity of knowledge. He says, after speaking of rulers and
conquerors :

' But the commandment of knowledge is yet higher than the command-
ment over the will ; for it is a commandment over the reason, belief, and
understanding of man, which is the highest part of the mind, and giveth
law to the will itself. For there is no power on earth which setteth a
throne or chair of estate in the spirits and souls of men, and in their
cogitations, imaginations, opinions, and beliefs, but knowledge and learn-
ing. And therefore we see the detestable and extreme pleasure that arch-
heretics and false prophets and impostors are transported with, when they
once find in themselves that they have a superiority in the faith and
conscience of men : so great, as if they have once tasted of it, it is seldom
seen that any torture or persecution can make them relinquish or abandon
it. But as this is that which the author of the Revelations calls the depth
or profoundness of Satan ; so by argument of contraries, the just and
lawful sovereignty over men's understanding, by force of truth rightly
interpreted, is that which approacheth nearest to the similitude of the
Divine Rule. . . . Let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of
knowledge and learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire,
which is immortality or continuance : for to this tendeth generation, and
raising of houses and families $ to this tendeth buildings, foundations, and
monuments ; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration,
and in effect, the strength of all other humane desires ; we see then how
far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monu-
ments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer
continued twenty-five hundred years and more, without the loss of a
syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles,
cities, have been decayed and demolished ? It is not possible to have the
true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, no, nor of the kings,
or great personages of much later years. For the originals cannot last ;
and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But the images of
men's wits and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the wrong of

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CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER

time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be
called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the
minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in
succeeding ages. So that, if the invention of the ship was thought so
noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and
consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how
much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships, pass through the
vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom,
illuminations, and inventions the one of the other ? '

Passages of equal force and beauty might be quoted from almost
every page of this work and of the Essays.

Sir Thomas Brown and Bishop Taylor were two prose-writers in
the succeeding age, who, for pomp and copiousness of style, might be
compared to Lord Bacon. In all other respects they were opposed
to him and to one another. — As Bacon seemed to bend all his
thoughts to the practice of life, and to bring home the light of
science to ' the bosoms and businesses of men,' Sir Thomas Brown
seemed to be of opinion that the only business of life, was to think,
and that the proper object of speculation was, by darkening
knowledge, to breed more speculation, and * find no end in wandering
mazes lost.' He chose the incomprehensible and impracticable as
almost the only subjects fit for a lofty and lasting contemplation, or
for the exercise of a solid faith. He cried out for an oh alt'itudo
beyond the heights of revelation, and posed himself with apocryphal
mysteries, as the pastime of his leisure hours. He pushes a question
to the utmost verge of conjecture, that he may repose on the certainty
of doubt ; and he removes an object to the greatest distance from
him, that he may take a high and abstracted interest in it, consider
it in its relation to the sum of things, not to himself, and bewilder
his understanding in the universality of its nature and the inscrutable-
ness of its origin. His is the sublime of indifference ; a passion for
the abstruse and imaginary. He turns the world round for his
amusement, as if it was a globe of paste-board. He looks down on
sublunary affairs as if he had taken his station in one of the planets.
The Antipodes are next-door neighbours to him, and Dooms-day is
not far off. With a thought he embraces both the poles ; the march
of his pen is over the great divisions of geography and chronology.
Nothing touches him nearer than humanity. He feels that he is
mortal only in the decay of nature, and the dust of long forgotten
tombs. The finite is lost in the infinite. The orbits of the heavenly
bodies or the history of empires are to him but a point in time or a
speck in the universe. The great Platonic year revolves in one of
his periods. Nature is too little for the grasp of his style. He

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scoops an antithesis out of fabulous antiquity, and rakes up an epithet
from the sweepings of Chaos. It is as if his books had dropt from
the clouds, or as if Friar Bacon's head could speak. He stands on
the edge of the world of sense and reason, and gains a vertigo by
looking down at impossibilities and chimeras. Or he busies himself
with the mysteries of the Cabbala, or the enclosed secrets of the
heavenly quincunxes, as children are amused with tales of the nursery.
The passion of curiosity (the only passion of childhood) had in him
survived to old age, and had superannuated his other faculties. He
moralizes and grows pathetic on a mere idle fancy of his own, as if
thought and being were the same, or as if * all this world were one
glorious lie.' For a thing to have ever had a name is sufficient
warrant to entitle it to respectful belief, and to invest it with all the
rights of a subject and its predicates. He is superstitious, but not
bigotted : to him all religions are much the same, and he says that
he should not like to have lived in the time of Christ and the
Apostles, as it would have rendered his faith too gross and palpable.
— His gossipping egotism and personal character have been preferred
unjustly to Montaigne's. He had no personal character at all but
the peculiarity of resolving all the other elements of his being into
thought, and of trying experiments on his own nature in an ex-
hausted receiver of idle and unsatisfactory speculations. All that
he ' differences himself by,' to use his own expression, is this moral
and physical indifference. In describing himself, he deals only in
negatives. He says he has neither prejudices nor antipathies to
manners, habits, climate, food, to persons or things ; they were
alike acceptable to him as they afforded new topics for reflection ;
and he even professes that he could never bring himself heartily to
hate the Devil. He owns in one place of the Religio Medici, that
* he could be content if the species were continued like trees,' and
yet he declares that this was from no aversion to love, or beauty, or
harmony ; and the reasons he assigns to prove the orthodoxy of his
taste in this respect, is, that he was an admirer of the music of the
spheres ! He tells us that he often composed a comedy in his
sleep. It would be curious to know the subject or the texture of
the plot. It must have been something like Nabbes's Mask of
Microcosmus, of which the dramatis persona have been already
given ; or else a misnomer, like Dante's Divine Comedy of Heaven,
Hell, and Purgatory. He was twice married, as if to shew his
disregard even for his own theory ; and he had a hand in the
execution of some old women for witchcraft, I suppose, to keep a
decorum in absurdity, and to indulge an agreeable horror at his own
fantastical reveries on the occasion. In a word, his mind seemed
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CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER

to converse chiefly with the intelligible forms, the spectral apparitions
of things, he delighted in the preternatural and visionary, and he only
existed at the circumference of his nature. He had the most intense
consciousness of contradictions and non-entities, and he decks them
out in the pride and pedantry of words as if they were the attire of
his proper person : the categories hang about his neck like the gold
chain of knighthood, and he * walks gowned ' in the intricate folds
and swelling drapery of dark sayings and impenetrable riddles !

I will give one gorgeous passage to illustrate all this, from his Urn-
Burial, or Hydriotaphia. He digs up the urns of some ancient
Druids with the same ceremony and devotion as if they had contained
the hallowed relics of his dearest friends ; and certainly we feel (as
it has been said) the freshness of the mould, and the breath of
mortality, in the spirit and force of his style. The conclusion of
this singular and unparalleled performance is as follows :

* What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he
hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all
conjecture. What time the persons of these Ossuaries entered the famous
nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit
a wide solution. But who were the proprietors of these bones, or what
bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarianism : not to
be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the
provincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as good
provision for their names, as they have done for their reliques, they had
not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones,
and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes,
which in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found
unto themselves, a fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity,
as emblems of mortal vanities; antidotes against pride, vain glory, and
madding vices. Pagan vain-glories, which thought the world might last
for ever, had encouragement for ambition, and rinding no Atropos unto
the immortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity of
oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts
of their vain glories, who, acting early, and before the probable meridian
of time, have, by this time, found great accomplishment of their designs,
whereby the ancient heroes have already outlasted their monuments, and
mechanical preservations. But in this latter scene of time we cannot
expect such mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the
prophecy of Elias, and Charles the Fifth can never hope to live within two
Methuselah's of Hector.

'And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories
unto present considerations, seems a vanity almost out of date, and super-
annuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names
as some have done in their persons : one face of Janus holds no proportion
unto the other. 'Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of
the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To extend

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our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose
duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent
of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We whose genera-
tions are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off
from such imaginations. And being necessitated to eye the remaining
particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next
world, and cannot excuseably decline the consideration of that duration,
which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that 's past a moment.

' Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-
lined circle, must conclude and shut up all. There is no antidote against
the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things ; our fathers
find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be
buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years : genera-
tions pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. To
be read by bare inscriptions like many in Gruter, to hope for eternity
by enigmatical epithets, or first letters of our names, to be studied by
antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the
mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by
everlasting languages.

' To be content that times to come should only know there was such a
man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in
Cardan : disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgment of himself,
who cares to subsist like Hippocrates' patients, or Achilles' horses in
Homer, under naked nominations without deserts and noble acts, which
are the balsam of our memories, the Entelechia and soul of our subsistences.
To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The
Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, than Herodias
with one. And who had not rather have been the good thief, than
Pilate ?

' But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals
with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who
can but pity the founder of the pyramids ? Herostratus lives that burnt
the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it j time hath spared the
epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we
compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad
have equal durations : and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon,
without the favour of the everlasting register. Who knows whether the
best of men be known ? or whether there be not more remarkable persons
forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time ?
the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life
had been his only chronicle.

* Oblivion is not to be hired : the greater part must be content to be as
though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the
record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and the
recorded names ever since, contain not one living century. The number
of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far
surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox ? Every hour
adds unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And
since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans could doubt

336

CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER

whether thus to live, were to die : since our longest sun sets at right
descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long
before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes ; since the
brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time that
grows old itself, bids us hope no long duration : diuturnity is a dream and
folly of expectation.

' Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with
memory, a great part even of our living beings ; we slightly remember our
felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon
us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves.
To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are
slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy
stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past,
is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few
and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remem-
brances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great
part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration
of their souls. A good way to continue their memories, while having the
advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remark-
able in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves,
make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than
be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into
the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things,
which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original
again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, conserving their bodies in
sweet consistences, to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity,
feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or
time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchan-
dise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.

' In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from
oblivion, in preservations below the moon : Men have been deceived even
in their flatteries above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their
names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already
varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion,
and Osyris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the
heavens, we find they are but like the earth ; durable in their main bodies,
alterable in their parts : whereof beside comets and new stars, per-
spectives begin to tell tales. And the spots that wander about the
sun, with Phaeton's favour, would make clear conviction.

' There is nothing immortal, but immortality ; whatever hath no
beginning may be confident of no end. All others have a dependent
being, and within the reach of destruction, which is the peculiar of that
necessary essence that cannot destroy itself; and the highest strain of
omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from
the power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates
all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly
of posthumous memory. God who can only destroy our souls, and hath
assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath directly
promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance, that the

VOL. v. : y 337

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold long
subsistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble animal,
splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and
Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, in the
infamy of his nature.

' Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A
small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while
men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus ; but
the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes, and reduced
undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so
mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn.

4 Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus ; the man of God
lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by Angels,
and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks directing
humane discovery. Enoch and Elias without either tomb or burial, in an
anomalous state of being, are the great examples of perpetuity, in their
long and living memory, in strict account being still on this side death,
and having a late part yet to act on this stage of earth. If in the decretory
term of the world we shall not all die but be changed, according to received
translation ; the last day will make but few graves ; at least quick resurrec-
tions will anticipate lasting sepultures; some graves will be opened before
they be quite closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. When many that feared
to die shall groan that they can die but once, the dismal state is the
second and living death, when life puts despair on the damned ; when men
shall wish the covering of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilation
shall be courted.

' While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined
them : and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not
acknowledge their graves ; wherein Alaricus seems most subtle, who had
a river turned to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla that thought
himself safe in his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and stones
thrown at his monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent,
who deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid to meet them
in the next, who when they die, make no commotion among the dead,
and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah.

1 Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory,
and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous
resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride, and
sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity,
unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in
angles of contingency.

' Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little
more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they lay
obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their fore-beings.
And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian
annihilation, extasies, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of
the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they
have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven ; the glory of the
world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.

338

CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER

' To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist
in their names, and predicament of Chimeras, was large satisfaction unto
old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums. But all this is
nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. To live indeed is to be again
ourselves, which being not only an hope but an evidence in noble believers :
'tis all one to lie in St. Innocent's church-yard, as in the sands of Egypt :
ready to be any thing, in the extasy of being ever, and as content with six
foot as the moles of Adrianus.'

I subjoin the following account of this extraordinary writer's style,
said to be written in a blank leaf of his works by Mr. Coleridge.

* Sir Thomas Brown is among my first favourites. Rich in
various knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and conceits; con-
templative, imaginative, often truly great and magnificent in his style
and diction, though, doubtless, too often big, stiff, and hyperlatinlstic :
thus I might, without admixture of falshood, describe Sir T.
Brown ; and my description would have this fault only, that it
would be equally, or almost equally, applicable to half a dozen other
writers, from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth to the end of
the reign of Charles the Second. He is indeed all this ; and what
he has more than all this, and peculiar to himself, I seem to convey
to my own mind in some measure, by saying, that he is a quiet and
sublime enthusiast, with a strong tinge of the fantast ; the humourist
constantly mingling with, and flashing across the philosopher, as the
darting colours in shot silk play upon the main dye. In short, he
has brains in his head, which is all the more interesting for a little
twist in the brains. He sometimes reminds the reader of Montaigne ;
but from no other than the general circumstance of an egotism
common to both, which, in Montaigne, is too often a mere amusing
gossip, a chit-chat story of whims and peculiarities that lead to
nothing ; but which, in Sir Thomas Brown, is always the result of
a feeling heart, conjoined with a mind of active curiosity, the natural
and becoming egotism of a man, who, loving other men as himself,
gains the habit and the privilege of talking about himself as familiarly
as about other men. Fond of the curious, and a hunter of oddities
and strangenesses, while he conceives himself with quaint and
humorous gravity, an useful inquirer into physical truths and funda-
mental science, he loved to contemplate and discuss his own thoughts
and feelings, because he found by comparison with other men's, that
they, too, were curiosities ; and so, with a perfectly graceful interest-
ing ease, he put them, too, into his museum and cabinet of rarities.
In very truth, he was not mistaken, so completely does he see every
thing in a light of his own ; reading nature neither by sun, moon, or
candle-light, but by the light of the fairy glory around his own bead ;

339

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

that you might say, that nature had granted to him in perpetuity, a
patent and monopoly for all his thoughts. Read his Hydriotaphia
above all, and, in addition to the peculiarity, the exclusive Sir Thomas
Browne-ness, of all the fancies and modes of illustration, wonder
at, and admire, his entireness in every subject which is before him.
He is totus in illo, he follows it, he never wanders from it, and he
has no occasion to wander ; for whatever happens to be his subject,
he metamorphoses all nature into it. In that Hydriotaphia, or
treatise on some urns dug up in Norfolk — how earthy, how redolent
of graves and sepulchres is every line ! You have now dark mould ;
now a thigh-bone ; now a skull ; then a bit of a mouldered coffin ;
a fragment of an old tombstone, with moss in its hie jacet ; a ghost,
a winding sheet ; or the echo of a funeral psalm wafted on a
November wind : and the gayest thing you shall meet with, shall be
a silver nail, or gilt anno domini, from a perished coffin top! — The
very same remark applies in the same force, to the interesting, though
far less interesting treatise on the Quincuncial Plantations of the
Ancients, the same entireness of subject ! Quincunxes in heaven
above ; quincunxes in earth below ; quincunxes in deity ; quincunxes
in the mind of man ; quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in roots
of trees, in leaves, in every thing ! In short, just turn to the last
leaf of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself the seven last
paragraphs of chapter 5th, beginning with the words " More con-
siderable." But it is time for me to be in bed. In the words of
Sir T. Brown (which will serve as a fine specimen of his manner),
"But the quincunxes of Heaven (the hyades, or Jive stars about the
horizon, at midnight at that time] run low, and it is time we close
the five parts of knowledge ; we are unwilling to spin out our waking
thoughts into the phantoms of sleep, which often continue precogita-
tions, making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome groves.
To keep our eyes open longer, were to act our antipodes ! The
huntsmen are up in Arabia ; and they have already passed their first
sleep in Persia." Think you, that there ever was such a reason given
before for going to bed at midnight ; to wit, that if we did not, we
should be acting the part of our antipodes ! And then, " THE
HUNTSMEN ARE UP IN ARABIA," — what life, what fancy ! Does the
whimsical knight give us thus, the essence of gunpowder tea, and call
it an opiate ? ' *

1 Sir Thomas Brown has it, 'The huntsmen are up in America,' but Mr.
Coleridge prefers reading Arabia. I do not think his account of the Urn-Burial
very happy. Sir Thomas can be said to be ' wholly in his subject,' only because he
is -wholly out of it. There is not a word in the Hydriotaphia about 'a thigh-bone, or
a skull, or a bit of mouldered coffin, or a tomb-stone, or a ghost, or a winding-
340

CHARACTER OF JEREMY TAYLOR

Jeremy Taylor was a writer as different from Sir Thomas Brown
as it was possible for one writer to be from another. He was a
dignitary of the church, and except in matters of casuistry and con-
troverted points, could not be supposed to enter upon speculative
doubts, or give a loose to a sort of dogmatical scepticism. He had
less thought, less * stuff of the conscience,' less « to give us pause,' in
his impetuous oratory, but he had equal fancy — not the same vastness
and profundity, but more richness and beauty, more warmth and
tenderness. He is as rapid, as flowing, and endless, as the other is
stately, abrupt, and concentrated. The eloquence of the one is like a
river, that of the other is more like an aqueduct. The one is as
sanguine, as the other is saturnine in the temper of his mind. Jeremy
Taylor took obvious and admitted truths for granted, and illustrated
them with an inexhaustible display of new and enchanting imagery.
Sir Thomas Brown talks in sum-totals : Jeremy Taylor enumerates
all the particulars of a subject. He gives every aspect it will bear,
and never ' cloys with sameness.' His characteristic is enthusiastic
and delightful amplification. Sir Thomas Brown gives the beginning
and end of things, that you may judge of their place and magnitude :
Jeremy Taylor describes their qualities and texture, and enters into
all the items of the debtor and creditor account between life and
death, grace and nature, faith and good works. He puts his heart
into his fancy. He does not pretend to annihilate the passions and
pursuits of mankind in the pride of philosophic indifference, but treats
them as serious and momentous things, warring with conscience and
the soul's health, or furnishing the means of grace and hopes of glory.
In his writings, the frail stalk of human life reclines on the bosom of
eternity. His Holy Living and Dying is a divine pastoral. He
writes to the faithful followers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes to his
flock. He introduces touching and heartfelt appeals to familiar life ;
condescends to men of low estate ; and his pious page blushes with
modesty and beauty. His style is prismatic. It unfolds the colours
of the rainbow ; it floats like the bubble through the air ; it is like

sheet, or an echo,' nor is ' a silver nail or a gilt anno domlni the gayest thing you
shall meet with.' You do not meet with them at all in the text ; nor is it possible,
either from the nature of the subject, or of Sir T. Brown's mind, that you should !
He chose the subject of Urn-Burial, because it was ' one of no mark or likelihood,'
totally free from the romantic prettinesses and pleasing poetical common-places
with which Mr. Coleridge has adorned it, and because, being ' without form and
void,' it gave unlimited scope to his high-raised and shadowy imagination. The
motto of this author's compositions might be — ' De affartntibut et non existentitus
eadcm tit ratio! He created his own materials : or to speak of him in his own
language, 'he saw nature in the elements of its chaos, and discerned his favourite
notions in the great obscurity of nothing !'

34-1

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

innumerable dew-drops that glitter on the face of morning, and tremble
as they glitter. He does not dig his way underground, but slides
upon ice, borne on the winged car of fancy. The dancing light he
throws upon objects is like an Aurora Borealis, playing betwixt
heaven and earth —

' Where pure Niemi's faery banks arise,
And fringed with roses Tenglio rolls its stream.'

His exhortations to piety and virtue are a gay memento mor'i. He
mixes up death's-heads and amaranthine flowers ; makes life a
procession to the grave, but crowns it with gaudy garlands, and ' rains
sacrificial roses ' on its path. In a word, his writings are more like
fine poetry than any other prose whatever ; they are a choral song in
praise of virtue, and a hymn to the Spirit of the Universe. I shall
give a few passages, to shew how feeble and inefficient this praise is.

The Holy Dying begins in this manner :

' A man is a bubble. He is born in vanity and sin j he comes into the
world like morning mushrooms, soon thrusting up their heads into the air,
and conversing with their kindred of the same production, and as soon they
turn into dust and forgetfulness ; some of them without any other interest
in the affairs of the world, but that they made their parents a little glad,
and very sorrowful. Others ride longer in the storm ; it may be until seven
years of vanity be expired, and then peradventure the sun shines hot upon
their heads, and they fall into the shades below, into the cover of death
and darkness of the grave to hide them. But if the bubble stands the
shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the chances of a child, of a careless
nurse, of drowning in a pail of water, of being over-laid by a sleepy servant,
or such little accidents, then the young man dances like a bubble empty
and gay, and shines like a dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow, which
hath no substance, and whose very imagery and colours are phantastical ;
and so he dances out the gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in a
storm, and endures, only because he is not knocked on the head by a drop
of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat, or
quenched by the disorder of an ill-placed humour ; and to preserve a man
alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle
as to create him ; to preserve him from rushing into nothing, and at first to
draw him up from nothing, were equally the issues of an Almighty power.'

Another instance of the same rich continuity of feeling and
transparent brilliancy in working out an idea, is to be found in his
description of the dawn and progress of reason.

* Some are called at age at fourteen, some at one and twenty, some never ;
but all men late enough ; for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and
insensibly. But as when the sun approaches towards the gates of the
morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of

342

CHARACTER OF JEREMY TAYLOR

darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to mattins, and
by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills,
thrusting out his golden horns, like those which decked the brows of
Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the
face of God ; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher,
till he shews a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day,
under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and
sets quickly : so is a man's reason and his life.'

This passage puts one in mind of the rising dawn and kindling skies
in one of Claude's landscapes. Sir Thomas Brown has nothing of
this rich finishing and exact gradation. The genius of the two men
differed, as that of the painter from the mathematician. The one
measures objects, the other copies them. The one shews that things
are nothing out of themselves, or in relation to the whole : the one,
what they are in themselves, and in relation to us. Or the one may
be said to apply the telescope of the mind to distant bodies; the
other looks at nature in its infinite minuteness and glossy splendour
through a solar microscope.

In speaking of Death, our author's style assumes the port and
withering smile of the King of Terrors. The following are scattered
passages on this subject.

' It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday or
a maid servant to-day; and at the same time in which you die, in that very
night a thousand creatures die with you, some wise men, and many fools ;
and the wisdom of the first will not quit him, and the folly of the latter
does not make him unable to die.'

' I have read of a fair young German gentleman, who, while living, often
refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of his friends' desire by
giving way that after a few days' burial, they might send a painter to his
vault, and if they saw cause for it, draw the image of his death unto the life.
They did so, and found his face half-eaten, and his midriff and back-bone
full of serpents ; and so he stands pictured among his armed ancestors.' . . .

' It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and it
is visible to us, who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightfulness of
youth and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childhood, from the vigorotisness
and strong flexure of the joints of five and twenty, to the hollowness and dead
paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial, and we
shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange. But so have
I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was
fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as the lamb's fleece ;
but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled
its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness and to
decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age, it bowed the head and
broke its stalk, and at night, having lost some of its leaves, and all its
beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces. So does the

343

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

fairest beauty change, and it will be as bad with you and me ; and then
what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave ? What friends
to visit us ? What officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwhole-
some cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults,
which are the longest weepers for our funerals ? '

' A man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that ever man
preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of kings. In the same
Escurial where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, and decree
war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery where their ashes and their
glory shall sleep till time shall be no more : and where our kings have been
crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their
grandsires' head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal
seed, the copy of the greatest change from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs
to arched coffins, from living like Gods to die like men. There is enough
to cool the flames of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch
of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a
lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the
peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised
princes mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell
all the world that when we die, our ashes shall be equal to kings, and our
accounts easier, and our pains for our crimes shall be less.1 To my
apprehension, it is a sad record which is left by Athenaeus concerning
Ninus the great Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is summed up
in these words: "Ninus the Assyrian had an ocean of gold, and other
riches more than the sand in the Caspian sea ; he never saw the stars,
and perhaps he never desired it ; he never stirred up the holy fire
among the Magi ; nor touched his God with the sacred rod according to
the laws : he never offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the deity, nor

1 The above passage is an inimitably fine paraphrase of some lines on the tombs
in Westminster Abbey by F. Beaumont. It shows how near Jeremy Taylor's
style was to poetry, and how well it weaves in with it.

* Mortality, behold, and fear,
What a charge of flesh is here !
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones :
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their hands.
Where from their pulpits seal'd in dust,
They preach " In greatness is no trust."
Here 's an acre sown indeed
With the richest, royal'st seed
That the earth did e'er suck in,
Since the first man died for sin.
Here the bones of birth have cried,
Though Gods they were, as men they died.
Here are sands, ignoble things,
Dropp'd from the ruin'd sides of kings.
Here 's a world of pomp and state
Buried in dust, once dead by fate.'

344

ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE

administered justice, nor spake to the people ; nor numbered them : but he
was most valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his wines, he threw
the rest upon the stones. This man is dead : behold his sepulchre, and
now hear where Ninus is. Sometime I was Ninus, and drew the breath of a
living man, but now am nothing but clay. I have nothing but what I
did eat, and what I served to myself in lust is all my portion : the wealth
with which I was blessed, my enemies meeting together shall carry away,
as the mad Thyades carry a raw goat. I am gone to hell : and when I
went thither, I neither carried gold nor horse, nor silver chariot. I that
wore a mitre, am now a little heap of dust." '

He who wrote in this manner also wore a mitre, and is now a heap
of dust ; but when the name of Jeremy Taylor is no longer remem-
bered with reverence, genius will have become a mockery, and virtue
an empty shade !

LECTURE VIII

ON THE SPIRIT OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERA-
TURE ON THE GERMAN DRAMA, CONTRASTED

WITH THAT OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

BEFORE I proceed to the more immediate subject of the present
Lecture, I wish to say a few words of one or two writers in our own
time, who have imbibed the spirit and imitated the language of our
elder dramatists. Among these I may reckon the ingenious author of
the Apostate and Evadne, who in the last-mentioned play, in particular,
has availed himself with much judgment and spirit of the tragedy of
the Traitor by old Shirley. It would be curious to hear the opinion
of a professed admirer of the Ancients, and captious despiser of the
Moderns, with respect to this production, before he knew it was a
copy of an old play. Shirley himself lived in the time of Charles i.
and died in the beginning of Charles ii.1 ; but he had formed his style
on that of the preceding age, and had written the greatest number of
his plays in conjunction with Jonson, Deckar, and Massinger. He
was * the last of those fair clouds that on the bosom of bright honour
sailed in long procession, calm and beautiful.' The name of Mr.
Tobin is familiar to every lover of the drama. His Honey-Moon is
evidently founded on The Taming of a Shrew, and Duke Aranza has
been pronounced by a polite critic to be 'an elegant Petruchio.'
The plot is taken from Shakespear ; but the language and sentiments,
both of this play and of the Curfew, bear a more direct resemblance to

1 He and his wife both died from fright, occasioned by the great fire of London
in 1665, and lie buried in St. Giles's church-yard.

345

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

the flowery tenderness of Beaumont and Fletcher, who were, I
believe, the favourite study of our author. Mr. Lamb's John
Woodvil may be considered as a dramatic fragment, intended for the
closet rather than the stage. It would sound oddly in the lobbies of
either theatre, amidst the noise and glare and bustle of resort ; but
* there where we have treasured up our hearts,' in silence and in
solitude, it may claim and find a place for itself. It might be read
with advantage in the still retreats of Sherwood Forest, where it
would throw a new-born light on the green, sunny glades ; the
tenderest flower might seem to drink of the poet's spirit, and ' the tall
deer that paints a dancing shadow of his horns in the swift brook,'
might seem to do so in mockery of the poet's thought. Mr. Lamb,
with a modesty often attendant on fine feeling, has loitered too long in
the humbler avenues leading to the temple of ancient genius, instead
of marching boldly up to the sanctuary, as many with half his
pretensions would have done : * but fools rush in, where angels fear to
tread.' The defective or objectionable parts of this production are
imitations of the defects of the old writers : its beauties are his own,
though in their manner. The touches of thought and passion are
often as pure and delicate as they are profound ; and the character of
his heroine Margaret is perhaps the finest and most genuine female
character out of Shakespear. This tragedy was not critic-proof: it
had its cracks and flaws and breaches, through which the enemy
marched in triumphant. The station which he had chosen was not
indeed a walled town, but a straggling village, which the experienced
engineers proceeded to lay waste ; and he is pinned down in more
than one Review of the day, as an exemplary warning to indiscreet
writers, who venture beyond the pale of periodical taste and con-
ventional criticism. Mr. Lamb was thus hindered by the taste of the
polite vulgar from writing as he wished ; his own taste would not
allow him to write like them: and he (perhaps wisely) turned critic
and prose-writer in his own defence. To say that he has written
better about Shakespear, and about Hogarth, than any body else, is
saying little in his praise. — A gentleman of the name of Cornwall,
who has lately published a volume of Dramatic Scenes, has met with
a very different reception, but I cannot say that he has deserved it.
He has made no sacrifice at the shrine of fashionable affectation or
false glitter. There is nothing common-place in his style to soothe
the complacency of dulness, nothing extravagant to startle the
grossness of ignorance. He writes with simplicity, delicacy, and
fervour ; continues a scene from Shakespear, or works out a hint
from Boccacio in the spirit of his originals, and though he bows with
reverence at the altar of those great masters, he keeps an eye curiously
346

ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE

intent on nature, and a mind awake to the admonitions of his own
heart. As he has begun, so let him proceed. Any one who will
turn to the glowing and richly-coloured conclusion of the Falcon,
will, I think, agree with me in this wish !

There are four sorts or schools of tragedy with which I am
acquainted. The first is the antique or classical. This consisted, I
apprehend, in the introduction of persons on the stage, speaking,
feeling, and acting according to nature, that is, according to the
impression of given circumstances on the passions and mind of man in
those circumstances, but limited by the physical conditions of time
and place, as to its external form, and to a certain dignity of attitude
and expression, selection in the figures, and unity in their grouping, as
in a statue or bas-relief. The second is the Gothic or romantic, or
as it might be called, the historical or poetical tragedy, and differs
from the former, only in having a larger scope in the design and
boldness in the execution ; that is, it is the dramatic representation of
nature and passion emancipated from the precise imitation of an
actual event in place and time, from the same fastidiousness in the
choice of the materials, and with the license of the epic and fanciful
form added to it in the range of the subject and the decorations of
language. This is particularly the style or school of Shakespear and
of the best writers of the age of Elizabeth, and the one immediately
following. Of this class, or genus, the tragedie bourgeoise is a variety,
and the antithesis of the classical form. The third sort is the French
or common-place rhetorical style, which is founded on the antique as
to its form and subject-matter ; but instead of individual nature, real
passion, or imagination growing out of real passion and the circum-
stances of the speaker, it deals only in vague, imposing, and laboured
declamations, or descriptions of nature, dissertations on the passions,
and pompous flourishes which never entered any head but the
author's, have no existence in nature which they pretend to identify,
and are not dramatic at all, but purely didactic. The fourth and last
is the German or paradoxical style, which differs from the others in
representing men as acting not from the impulse of feeling, or as
debating common-place questions of morality, but as the organs and
mouth-pieces (that is, as acting, speaking, and thinking, under the
sole influence) of certain extravagant speculative opinions, abstracted
from all existing customs, prejudices and institutions. — It is my
present business to speak chiefly of the first and last of these.

Sophocles differs from Shakespear as a Doric portico does from
Westminster Abbey. The principle of the one is simplicity and
harmony, of the other richness and power. The one relies on form
or proportion, the other on quantity and variety and prominence of

347

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

parts. The one owes its charm to a certain union and regularity of
feeling, the other adds to its effects from complexity and the com-
bination of the greatest extremes. The classical appeals to sense and
habit : the Gothic or romantic strikes from novelty, strangeness and
contrast. Both are founded in essential and indestructible principles
of human nature. We may prefer the one to the other, as we chuse,
but to set up an arbitrary and bigotted standard of excellence in conse-
quence of this preference, and to exclude either one or the other from
poetry or art, is to deny the existence of the first principles of the
human mind, and to war with nature, which is the height of weakness
and arrogance at once. — There are some observations on this subject
in a late number of the Edinburgh Review, from which I shall here
make a pretty long extract.

' The most obvious distinction between the two styles, the classical
and the romantic, is, that the one is conversant with objects that are
grand or beautiful in themselves, or in consequence of obvious and
universal associations ; the other, with those that are interesting only
by the force of circumstances and imagination. A Grecian temple,
for instance, is a classical object : it is beautiful in itself, and excites
immediate admiration. But the ruins of a Gothic castle have no
beauty or symmetry to attract the eye ; and yet they excite a more
powerful and romantic interest, from the ideas with which they are
habitually associated. If, in addition to this, we are told, that this is
Macbeth's castle, the scene of the murder of Duncan, the interest
will be instantly heightened to a sort of pleasing horror. The
classical idea or form of any thing, it may also be observed, remains
always the same, and suggests nearly the same impressions ; but the
associations of ideas belonging to the romantic character may vary
infinitely, and take in the whole range of nature and accident. Anti-
gone, in Sophocles, waiting near the grove of the Furies — Electra,
in ^Eschylus, offering sacrifice at the tomb of Agamemnon — are
classical subjects, because the circumstances and the characters have a
correspondent dignity, and an immediate interest, from their mere
designation. Florimel, in Spenser, where she is described sitting on
the ground in the Witch's hut, is not classical, though in the highest
degree poetical and romantic : for the incidents and situation are in
themselves mean and disagreeable, till they are redeemed by the
genius of the poet, and converted, by the very contrast, into a source
of the utmost pathos and elevation of sentiment. Othello's hand-
kerchief is not classical, though " there was magic in the web : " — it is
only a powerful instrument of passion and imagination. Even Lear
is not classical ; for he is a poor crazy old man, who has nothing
sublime about him but his afflictions, and who dies of a broken heart

348

ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE

« Schlegel somewhere compares the Furies of ^schylus to the
Witches of Shakespear — we think without much reason. Perhaps
Shakespear has surrounded the Weird Sisters with associations as
terrible, and even more mysterious, strange, and fantastic, than the
Furies of ./Eschylus ; but the traditionary beings themselves are not so
petrific. These are of marble, — their look alone must blast the
beholder ; — those are of air, bubbles ; and though " so withered and
so wild in their attire," it is their spells alone which are fatal. They
owe their power to metaphysical aid : but the others contain all that
is dreadful in their corporal figures. In this we see the distinct spirit
of the classical and the romantic mythology. The serpents that
twine round the head of the Furies are not to be trifled with, though
they implied no preternatural power. The bearded Witches in
Macbeth are in themselves grotesque and ludicrous, except as this
strange deviation from nature staggers our imagination, and leads us
to expect and to believe in all incredible things. They appal the
faculties by what they say or do ; — the others are intolerable, even to
sight.

« Our author is right in affirming, that the true way to understand
the plays of Sophocles and ^Eschylus, is to study them before the
groupes of the Niobe or the Laocoon. If we can succeed in
explaining this analogy, we shall have solved nearly the whole
difficulty. For it is certain, that there are exactly the same powers
of mind displayed in the poetry of the Greeks as in their statues.
Their poetry is exactly what their sculptors might have written.
Both are exquisite imitations of nature ; the one in marble, the other
in words. It is evident, that the Greek poets had the same perfect
idea of the subjects they described, as the Greek sculptors had of the
objects they represented; and they give as much of this absolute
truth of imitation, as can be given by words. But in this direct and
simple imitation of nature, as in describing the form of a beautiful
woman, the poet is greatly inferior to the sculptor : it is in the power
of illustration, in comparing it to other things, and suggesting other
ideas of beauty or love, that he has an entirely new source of imagina-
tion opened to him : and of this power, the moderns have made at
least a bolder and more frequent use than the ancients. The
description of Helen in Homer is a description of what might have
happened and been seen, as " that she moved with grace, and that the
old men rose up with reverence as she passed;" the description of
Belphcebe in Spenser is a description of what was only visible to the
eye of the poet.

" Upon her eyelids many graces sat,
Under the shadow of her even brows."

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

The description of the soldiers going to battle in Shakespear, " all
plumed like estriches, like eagles newly baited, wanton as goats, wild
as young bulls," is too bold, figurative, and profuse of dazzling images,
for the mild, equable tone of classical poetry, which never loses sight
of the object in the illustration. The ideas of the ancients were too
exact and definite, too much attached to the material form or vehicle
by which they were conveyed, to admit of those rapid combinations,
those unrestrained flights of fancy, which, glancing from heaven to
earth, unite the most opposite extremes, and draw the happiest illus-
trations from things the most remote. The two principles of imitation
and imagination, indeed, are not only distinct, but almost opposite.

* The great difference, then, which we find between the classical
and the romantic style, between ancient and modern poetry, is, that
the one more frequently describes things as they are interesting in
themselves, — the other for the sake of the associations of ideas con-
nected with them ; that the one dwells more on the immediate
impressions of objects on the senses — the other on the ideas which
they suggest to the imagination. The one is the poetry of form, the
other of effect. The one gives only what is necessarily implied in
the subject, the other all that can possibly arise out of it. The one
seeks to identify the imitation with the external object, — clings to it,
— is inseparable from it, — is either that or nothing ; the other seeks
to identify the original impression with whatever else, within the
range of thought or feeling, can strengthen, relieve, adorn or elevate
it. Hence the severity and simplicity of the Greek tragedy, which
excluded every thing foreign or unnecessary to the subject. Hence
the Unities : for, in order to identify the imitation as much as possible
with the reality, and leave nothing to mere imagination, it was
necessary to give the same coherence and consistency to the different
parts of a story, as to the different limbs of a statue. Hence the
beauty and grandeur of their materials ; for, deriving their power over
the mind from the truth of the imitation, it was necessary that the
subject which they made choice of, and from which they could not
depart, should be in itself grand and beautiful. Hence the perfection
of their execution ; which consisted in giving the utmost harmony,
delicacy, and refinement to the details of a given subject. Now, the
characteristic excellence of the moderns is the reverse of all this.
As, according to our author, the poetry of the Greeks is the same as
their sculpture; so, he says, our own more nearly resembles painting,
— where the artist can relieve and throw back his figures at pleasure,
— use a greater variety of contrasts, — and where light and shade, like
the colours of fancy, are reflected on the different objects. The
Muse of classical poetry should be represented as a beautiful naked

35°

ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE

figure: the Muse of modern poetry should be represented clothed,
and with wings. The first has the advantage in point of form ; the
last in colour and motion.

« Perhaps we may trace this difference to something analogous in
physical organization, situation, religion, and manners. First, the
physical organization of the Greeks seems to have been more perfect,
more susceptible of external impressions, and more in harmony with
external nature than ours, who have not the same advantages of
climate and constitution. Born of a beautiful and vigorous race, with
quick senses and a clear understanding, and placed under a mild
heaven, they gave the fullest developement to their external faculties :
and where all is perceived easily, every thing is perceived in harmony
and proportion. It is the stern genius of the North which drives men
back upon their own resources, which makes them slow to perceive,
and averse to feel, and which, by rendering them insensible to the
single, successive impressions of things, requires their collective and
combined force to rouse the imagination violently and unequally. It
should be remarked, however, that the early poetry of some of the
Eastern nations has even more of that irregularity, wild enthusiasm,
and disproportioned grandeur, which has been considered as the dis-
tinguishing character of the Northern nations.

' Again, a good deal may be attributed to the state of manners and
political institutions. The ancient Greeks were warlike tribes
encamped in cities. They had no other country than that which was
enclosed within the walls of the town in which they lived. Each
individual belonged, in the first instance, to the state ; and his
relations to it were so close, as to take away, in a great measure, all
personal independence and free-will. Every one was mortised to his
place in society, and had his station assigned him as part of the
political machine, which could only subsist by strict subordination and
regularity. Every man was, as it were, perpetually on duty, and his
faculties kept constant watch and ward. Energy of purpose and
intensity of observation became the necessary characteristics of such a
state of society ; and the general principle communicated itself from
this ruling concern for the public, to morals, to art, to language, to
every thing. — The tragic poets of Greece were among her best
soldiers ; and it is no wonder that they were as severe in their poetry
as in their discipline. Their swords and their styles carved out their
way with equal sharpness. — After all, however, the tragedies of
Sophocles, which are the perfection of the classical style, are hardly
tragedies in our sense of the word.1 They do not exhibit the
extremity of human passion and suffering. The object of modern

1 The difference in the tone of moral sentiment is the greatest of all others.

35'

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

tragedy is to represent the soul utterly subdued as it were, or at least
convulsed and overthrown by passion or misfortune. That of the
ancients was to shew how the greatest crimes could be perpetrated
with the least remorse, and the greatest calamities borne with the
least emotion. Firmness of purpose and calmness of sentiment are
their leading characteristics. Their heroes and heroines act and suffer
as if they were always in the presence of a higher power, or as if
human life itself were a religious ceremony, performed in honour of
the Gods and of the State. The mind is not shaken to its centre ;
the whole being is not crushed or broken down. Contradictory
motives are not accumulated; the utmost force of imagination and
passion is not exhausted to overcome the repugnance of the will to
crime ; the contrast and combination of outward accidents are not
called in to overwhelm the mind with the whole weight of unexpected
calamity. The dire conflict of the feelings, the desperate struggle
with fortune, are seldom there. All is conducted with a fatal com-
posure ; prepared and submitted to with inflexible constancy, as if
Nature were only an instrument in the hands of Fate.

' This state of things was afterwards continued under the Roman
empire. In the ages of chivalry and romance, which, after a con-
siderable interval, succeeded its dissolution, and which have stamped
their character on modern genius and literature, all was reversed.
Society was again resolved into its component parts ; and the world
was, in a manner, to begin anew. The ties which bound the citizen
and the soldier to the state being loosened, each person was thrown
back into the circle of the domestic affections, or left to pursue his
doubtful way to fame and fortune alone. This interval of time might
be accordingly supposed to give birth to all that was constant in
attachment, adventurous in action, strange, wild, and extravagant in
invention. Human life took the shape of a busy, voluptuous dream,
where the imagination was now lost amidst " antres vast and deserts
idle ; " or suddenly transported to stately palaces, echoing with dance
and song. In this uncertainty of events, this fluctuation of hopes and
fears, all objects became dim, confused, and vague. Magicians,
dwarfs, giants, followed in the train of romance ; and Orlando's
enchanted sword, the horn which he carried with him, and which he
blew thrice at Roncesvalles, and Rogero's winged horse, were not
sufficient to protect them in their unheard-of encounters, or deliver
them from their inextricable difficulties. It was a return to the
period of the early heroic ages ; but tempered by the difference of
domestic manners, and the spirit of religion. The marked difference
in the relation of the sexes arose from the freedom of choice in
women ; which, from being the slaves of the will and passions of

3S2

ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE

men, converted them into the arbiters of their fate, which introduced
the modern system of gallantry, and first made love a feeling of the
heart, founded on mutual affection and esteem. The leading virtues
of the Christian religion, self-denial and generosity, assisted in pro-
ducing the same effect. — Hence the spirit of chivalry, of romantic
love, and honour !

' The mythology of the romantic poetry differed from the received
religion : both differed essentially from the classical. The religion
or mythology of the Greeks was nearly allied to their poetry : it was
material and definite. The Pagan system reduced the Gods to the
human form, and elevated the powers of inanimate nature to the same
standard. Statues carved out of the finest marble, represented the
objects of their religious worship in airy porticos, in solemn temples,
and consecrated groves. Mercury was seen " new-lighted on some
heaven-kissing hill ; " and the Naiad or Dryad came gracefully forth
as the personified genius of the stream or wood. All was subjected
to the senses. The Christian religion, on the contrary, is essentially
spiritual and abstracted ; it is " the evidence of things unseen." In
the Heathen mythology, form is every where predominant; in the
Christian, we find only unlimited, undefined power. The imagination
alone " broods over the immense abyss, and makes it pregnant."
There is, in the habitual belief of an universal, invisible principle of
all things, a vastness and obscurity which confounds our perceptions,
while it exalts our piety. A mysterious awe surrounds the doctrines of
the Christian faith : the infinite is everywhere before us, whether we
turn to reflect on what is revealed to us of the divine nature or our own.
* History, as well as religion, has contributed to enlarge the bounds
of imagination : and both together, by shewing past and future objects
at an interminable distance, have accustomed the mind to contemplate
and take an interest in the obscure and shadowy. The ancients were
more circumscribed within " the ignorant present time," — spoke only
their own language, — were conversant only with their own customs,
— were acquainted only with the events of their own history. The
mere lapse of time then, aided by the art of printing, has served to
accumulate an endless mass of mixed and contradictory materials ;
and, by extending our knowledge to a greater number of things, has
made our particular ideas less perfect and distinct. The constant
reference to a former state of manners and literature is a marked
feature in modern poetry. We are always talking of the Greeks and
Romans ; — they never said any thing of us. This circumstance has
tended to give a certain abstract elevation, and ethereal refinement to
the mind, without strengthening it. We are lost in wonder at what
has been done, and dare not think of emulating it. The earliest
VOL. v. : z 353

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

modern poets, accordingly, may be conceived to hail the glories of
the antique world, dawning through the dark abyss of time ; while
revelation, on the other hand, opened its path to the skies. So Dante
represents himself as conducted by Virgil to the shades below ; while
Beatrice welcomes him to the abodes of the blest.'

The French are the only people in modern Europe, who have pro-
fessedly imitated the ancients ; but from their being utterly unlike the
Greeks or Romans, have produced a dramatic style of their own,
which is neither classical nor romantic. The same article contains
the following censure of this style :

4 The true poet identifies the reader with the characters he
represents ; the French poet only identifies him with himself. There
is scarcely a single page of their tragedy which fairly throws nature
open to you. It is tragedy in masquerade. We never get beyond
conjecture and reasoning — beyond the general impression of the
situation of the persons — beyond general reflections on their passions
— beyond general descriptions of objects. We never get at that
something more, which is what we are in search of, namely, what we
ourselves should feel in the same situations. The true poet transports
you to the scene — you see and hear what is passing — you catch, from
the lips of the persons concerned, what lies nearest to their hearts ; —
the French poet takes you into his closet, and reads you a lecture
upon it. The chef d'aswres of their stage, then, are, at best, only
ingenious paraphrases of nature. The dialogue is a tissue of common-
places, of laboured declamations on human life, of learned casuistry
on the passions, on virtue and vice, which any one else might make
just as well as the person speaking ; and yet, what the persons them-
selves would say, is all we want to know, and all for which the poet
puts them into those situations.'

After the Restoration, that is, after the return of the exiled family
of the Stuarts from France, our writers transplanted this artificial,
monotonous, and imposing common-place style into England, by
imitations and translations, where it could not be expected to take
deep root, and produce wholesome fruits, and where it has indeed
given rise to little but turgidity and rant in men of original force of
genius, and to insipidity and formality in feebler copyists. Otway is
the only writer of this school, who, in the lapse of a century and a
half, has produced a tragedy (upon the classic or regular model) of
indisputable excellence and lasting interest. The merit of Venice
Preserved is not confined to its effect on the stage, or to the oppor-
tunity it affords for the display of the powers of the actors in it, of a
Jaffier, a Pierre, a Belvidera : it reads as well in the closet, and loses
little or none of its power of rivetting breathless attention, and stirring

354

ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE

the deepest yearnings of affection. It has passages of great beauty in
themselves (detached from the fable) touches of true nature and
pathos, though none equal or indeed comparable to what we meet
with in Shakespear and other writers of that day ; but the awful
suspense of the situations, the conflict of duties and passions, the
intimate bonds that unite the characters together, and that are violently
rent asunder like the parting of soul and body, the solemn march of
the tragical events to the fatal catastrophe that winds up and closes
over all, give to this production of Otway's Muse a charm and power
that bind it like a spell on the public mind, and have made it a proud
and inseparable adjunct of the English stage. Thomson has given it
due honour in his feeling verse, when he exclaims,

' See o'er the stage the Ghost of Hamlet stalks,
Othello rages, poor Monimia mourns,
And Belvidera pours her soul in love.'

There is a mixture of effeminacy, of luxurious and cowardly
indulgence of his wayward sensibility, in Jaffier's character, which is,
however, finely relieved by the bold intrepid villainy and contemptuous
irony of Pierre, while it is excused by the difficulties of his situation,
and the loveliness of Belvidera : but in the Orphan there is little
else but this voluptuous effeminacy of sentiment and mawkish distress,
which strikes directly at the root of that mental fortitude and heroic
cast of thought which alone makes tragedy endurable — that renders
its sufferings pathetic, or its struggles sublime. Yet there are lines
and passages in it of extreme tenderness and beauty ; and few persons,
I conceive (judging from my own experience) will read it at a
certain time of life without shedding tears over it as fast as the
* Arabian trees their medicinal gums.' Otway always touched the
reader, for he had himself a heart. We may be sure that he
blotted his page often with his tears, on which so many drops have
since fallen from glistening eyes, 'that sacred pity had engendered
there.' He had susceptibility of feeling and warmth of genius ;
but he had not equal depth of thought or loftiness of imagination,
and indulged his mere sensibility too much, yielding to the immediate
impression or emotion excited in his own mind, and not placing
himself enough in the minds and situations of others, or following
the workings of nature sufficiently with keenness of eye and strength
of will into its heights and depths, its strongholds as well as its weak
sides. The Orphan was attempted to be revived some time since
with the advantage of Miss O'Neill playing the part of Monimia.
It however did not entirely succeed (as it appeared at the time) from
the plot turning all on one circumstance, and that hardly of a nature

355

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

to be obtruded on the public notice. The incidents and characters
are taken almost literally from an old play by Robert Tailor, called

HoG HATH LOST HIS PEARL.

Addison's Cato, in spite of Dennis's criticism, still retains
possession of the stage with all its unities. My love and admira-
tion for Addison is as great as any person's, let that other person
be who he will ; but it is not founded on his Cato, in extolling
which Whigs and Tories contended in loud applause. The interest
of this play (bating that shadowy regret that always clings to and
flickers round the form of free antiquity) is confined to the declama-
tion, which is feeble in itself, and not heard on the stage. I have
seen Mr. Kemble in this part repeat the Soliloquy on Death without
a line being distinctly heard ; nothing was observable but the thought-
ful motion of his lips, and the occasional extension of his hand in
sign of doubts suggested or resolved ; yet this beautiful and expressive
dumb-show, with the propriety of his costume, and the elegance of
his attitude and figure, excited the most lively interest, and kept
attention even more on the stretch, to catch every imperfect syllable
or speaking gesture. There is nothing, however, in the play to
excite ridicule, or shock by absurdity, except the love-scenes which
are passed over as what the spectator has no proper concern with :
and however feeble or languid the interest produced by a dramatic
exhibition, unless there is some positive stumbling-block thrown in
the way, or gross offence given to an audience, it is generally suffered
to linger on to a euthanasia, instead of dying a violent and premature
death. If an author (particularly an author of high reputation)
can contrive to preserve a uniform degree of insipidity, he is nearly
sure of impunity. It is the mixture of great faults with splendid
passages (the more striking from the contrast) that is inevitable
damnation. Every one must have seen the audience tired out and
watching for an opportunity to wreak their vengeance on the author,
and yet not able to accomplish their wish, because no one part seemed
more tiresome or worthless than another. The philosophic mantle
of Addison's Cato, when it no longer spreads its graceful folds on
the shoulders of John Kemble, will I fear fall to the ground ; nor do
I think Mr. Kean likely to pick it up again, with dauntless ambition or
stoic pride, like that of Coriolanus. He could not play Cato (at least
I think not) for the same reason that he will play Coriolanus. He
can always play a living man ; he cannot play a lifeless statue.

Dryden's plays have not come down to us, except in the collection
of his printed works. The last of them that was on the list of
regular acting plays was Don Sebastian. The Mask of Arthur and
Emmeline was the other day revived at one of our theatres, without

356

ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE

much success. Alexander the Great is by Lee, who wrote some
things in conjunction with Dryden, and who had far more power
and passion of an irregular and turbulent kind, bordering upon
constitutional morbidity, and who might have done better things (as
we see from his OEdipus) had not his genius been perverted and
rendered worse than abortive by carrying the vicious manner of his
age to the greatest excess. Dryden's plays are perhaps the fairest
specimen of what this manner was. I do not know how to describe
it better than by saying that it is one continued and exaggerated
common-place. All the characters are put into a swaggering attitude
of dignity, and tricked out in the pomp of ostentatious drapery.
The images are extravagant, yet not far-fetched ; they are out-
rageous caricatures of obvious thoughts : the language oscillates
between bombast and bathos : the characters are noisy pretenders
to virtue, and shallow boasters in vice ; the versification is laboured
and monotonous, quite unlike the admirably free and flowing rhyme
of his satires, in which he felt the true inspiration of his subject,
and could find modulated sounds to express it. Dryden had no
dramatic genius either in tragedy or comedy. In his plays he
mistakes blasphemy for sublimity, and ribaldry for wit. He had
so little notion of his own powers, that he has put Milton's Paradise
Lost into dramatic rhyme to make Adam look like a fine gentleman ;
and has added a double love-plot to the Tempest, to ' relieve the
killing languor and over-laboured lassitude ' of that solitude of the
imagination, in which Shakespear had left the inhabitants of his
Enchanted Island. I will give two passages out of Don Sebastian
in illustration of what I have said above of this mock-heroic style.

Almeyda advising Sebastian to fly from the power of Muley-
Moluch addresses him thus :

* Leave then the luggage of" your fate behind ;

To make your flight more easy, leave Almeyda.

Nor think me left a base, ignoble prey,

Exposed to this inhuman tyrant's lust.

My virtue is a guard beyond my strength ;

And death my last defence within my call.'

Sebastian answers very gravely :

' Death may be called in vain, and cannot come :
Tyrants can tye him up from your relief:
Nor has a Christian privilege to die.
Alas, thou art too young in thy new faith :
Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls,
And give them furloughs for another world :
But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand,
In starless nights, and wait the appointed hour.'

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

Sebastian then urging her to prevent the tyrant's designs by an
instant marriage, she says,

' 'Tis late to join, when we must part so soon.

Sebastian. Nay, rather let us haste it, e'er we part :
Our souls for want of that acquaintance here
May wander in the starry walks above,
And, forced on worse companions, miss ourselves.'

In the scene with Muley-Moluch where she makes intercession
for Sebastian's life, she says,

' My father's, mother's, brother's death I pardon :
That 's somewhat sure, a mighty sum of murder,
Of innocent and kindred blood struck off.
My prayers and penance shall discount for these,
And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me :
Behold what price I offer, and how dear
To buy Sebastian's life.

Emperor. Let after-reckonings trouble fearful fools ;
I '11 stand the trial of those trivial crimes :
But since thou begg'st me to prescribe my terms,
The only I can offer are thy love ;
And this one day of respite to resolve.
Grant or deny, for thy next word is Fate ;
And Fate is deaf to Prayer.

Almeyda. May heav'n be so
At thy last breath to thine : I curse thee not :
For who can better curse the plague or devil
Than to be what they are ? That curse be thine.
Now do not speak, Sebastian, for you need not,
But die, for I resign your life : Look heav'n,
Almeyda dooms her dear Sebastian's death
But is there heaven, for I begin to doubt ?
The skies are hush'd ; no grumbling thunders roll :
Now take your swing, ye impious : sin, unpunish'd.
Eternal Providence seems over-watch'd,
And with a slumbering nod assents to murder. . . .
Farewell, my lost Sebastian !
I do not beg, I challenge Justice now :
O Powers, if Kings be your peculiar care,
Why plays this wretch with your prerogative ?
Now flash him dead, now crumble him to ashes :
Or henceforth live confined in your own palace ;
And look not idly out upon a world
That is no longer yours.'

These passages, with many like them, will be found in the first
scene of the third act.

The occasional striking expressions, such as that of souls at the
358

ON THE GERMAN DRAMA

resurrection 'fumbling for their limbs,' are the language of strong
satire and habitual disdain, not proper to tragic or serious poetry.

After Dryden there is no writer that has acquired much reputation
as a tragic poet for the next hundred years. In the hands of his
successors, the Smiths, the Hughes, the Hills, the Murphys, the
Dr. Johnsons, of the reigns of George i. and 11., tragedy seemed
almost afraid to know itself, and certainly did not stand where it had
done a hundred and fifty years before. It had degenerated by regular
and studied gradations into the most frigid, insipid, and insignificant of
all things. It faded to a shade, it tapered to a point, ' fine by
degrees, and beautifully less.' I do not believe there is a single play
of this period which could be read with any degree of interest or even
patience, by a modern reader of poetry, if we except the productions
of Southern, Lillo and Moore, the authors of the Gamester,
Oroonoko, and Fatal Curiosity, and who instead of mounting on
classic stilts and making rhetorical flourishes, went out of the
established road to seek for truth and nature and effect in the
commonest life and lowest situations. In short, the only tragedy of
this period is that to which their productions gave a name, and which
has been called in contradistinction by the French, and with an
express provision for its merits and defects, the tragedie bourgcoise.
An anecdote is told of the first of these writers by Gray, in one of
his Letters, dated from Horace Walpole's country-seat, about the year
1740, who says, * Old Mr. Southern is here, who is now above 80:
a very agreeable old man, at least I think so when I look in his face,
and think of Isabella and Oroonoko.' It is pleasant to see these
traits of attachment and gratitude kept up in successive generations of
poets to one another, and also to find that the same works of genius
that have 'sent us weeping to our beds,' and made us 'rise sadder and
wiser on the morrow morn,' have excited just the same fondness of
affection in others before we were born ; and it is to be hoped, will
do so, after we are dead. Our best feelings, and those on which we
pride ourselves most, and with most reason, are perhaps the commonest
of all others.

Up to the present reign, and during the best part of it (with another
solitary exception, Douglas, which with all its feebleness and extrava-
gance, has in its style and sentiments a good deal of poetical and
romantic beauty) tragedy wore the face of the Goddess of Dulness in
the Dunciad, serene, torpid, sickly, lethargic, and affected, till it was
roused from its trance by the blast of the French Revolution, and by
the loud trampling of the German Pegasus on the English stage,
which now appeared as pawing to get free from its ancient trammels,
and rampant shook off the incumbrance of all former examples,

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LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

opinions, prejudices, and principles. If we have not been alive and
well since this period, at least we have been alive, and it is better to
be alive than dead. The German tragedy (and our own, which is
only a branch of it) aims at effect, and produces it often in the
highest degree ; and it does this by going all the lengths not only of
instinctive feeling, but of speculative opinion, and startling the hearer
by overturning all the established maxims of society, and setting at
nought all the received rules of composition. It cannot be said of
this style that in it 'decorum is the principal thing/ It is the
violation of decorum, that is its first and last principle, the beginning,
middle, and end. It is an insult and defiance to Aristotle's definition
of tragedy. The action is not grave, but extravagant : the fable is
not probable, but improbable : the favourite characters are not only
low, but vicious : the sentiments are such as do not become the
person into whose mouth they are put, nor that of any other person :
the language is a mixture of metaphysical jargon and flaring prose :
the moral is immorality. In spite of all this, a German tragedy is a
good thing. It is a fine hallucination : it is a noble madness, and as
there is a pleasure in madness, which none but madmen know, so
there is a pleasure in reading a German play to be found in no other.
The world have thought so : they go to see the Stranger, they go to
see Lovers' Vows and Pizarro, they have their eyes wide open all
the time, and almost cry them out before they come away, and
therefore they go again. There is something in the style that hits
the temper of men's minds; that, if it does not hold the mirrour up
to nature, yet * shews the very age and body of the time its form and
pressure.' It embodies, it sets off and aggrandizes in all the pomp of
action, in all the vehemence of hyperbolical declamation, in scenery,
in dress, in music, in the glare of the senses, and the glow of
sympathy, the extreme opinions which are floating in our time, and
which have struck their roots deep and wide below the surface of the
public mind. We are no longer as formerly heroes in warlike enter-
prise ; martyrs to religious faith ; but we are all the partisans of a
political system, and devotees to some theory of moral sentiments.
The modern style of tragedy is not assuredly made up of pompous
common-place, but it is a tissue of philosophical, political, and moral
paradoxes. I am not saying whether these paradoxes are true or
false : all that I mean to state is, that they are utterly at variance
with old opinions, with established rules and existing institutions ;
that it is this tug of war between the inert prejudice and the startling
novelty which is to batter it down (first on the stage of the theatre,
and afterwards on the stage of the world) that gives the excitement
and the zest. We see the natural always pitted against the social
360

ON THE GERMAN DRAMA

man ; and the majority who are not of the privileged classes, take part
with the former. The hero is a sort of metaphysical Orson, armed
not with teeth and a club, but with hard sayings and unanswerable
sentences, ticketted and labelled with extracts and mottos from the
modern philosophy. This common representative of mankind is a
natural son of some feudal lord, or wealthy baron : and he comes to
claim as a matter of course and of simple equity, the rich reversion of
the title and estates to which he has a right by the bounty of nature
and the privilege of his birth. This produces a very edifying scene,
and the proud, unfeeling, unprincipled baron is hooted from the stage.
A young woman, a sempstress, or a waiting maid of much beauty and
accomplishment, who would not think of matching with a fellow of
low birth or fortune for the world, falls in love with the heir of an
immense estate out of pure regard to his mind and person, and thinks
it strange that rank and opulence do not follow as natural appendages
in the train of sentiment. A lady of fashion, wit, and beauty,
forfeits the sanctity of her marriage-vow, but preserves the inviolability
of her sentiments and character,

' Pure in the last recesses of the mind ' —

and triumphs over false opinion and prejudice, like gold out of the
fire, the brighter for the ordeal. A young man turns robber and
captain of a gang of banditti ; and the wonder is to see the heroic
ardour of his sentiments, his aspirations after the most godlike
goodness and unsullied reputation, working their way through the
repulsiveness of his situation, and making use of fortune only as a foil
to nature. The principle of contrast and contradiction is here made
use of, and no other. All qualities are reversed : virtue is always at
odds with vice, * which shall be which : ' the internal character and
external situation, the actions and the sentiments, are never in accord :
you are to judge of everything by contraries : those that exalt them-
selves are abased, and those that should be humbled are exalted : the
high places and strongholds of power and greatness are crumbled in
the dust ; opinions totter, feelings are brought into question, and the
world is turned upside down, with all things in it ! — « There is some
soul of goodness in things evil ' — and there is some soul of goodness
in all this. The world and every thing in it is not just what it ought
to be, or what it pretends to be ; or such extravagant and prodigious
paradoxes would be driven from the stage — would meet with sympathy
in no human breast, high or low, young or old. There 's something
rotten in the state of Denmark. Opinion is not truth: appearance is
not reality : power is not beneficence : rank is not wisdom : nobility
is not the only virtue : riches are not happiness : desert and success

361

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

are different things : actions do not always speak the character any
more than words. We feel this, and do justice to the romantic
extravagance of the German Muse.

In Germany, where this outre style of treating every thing
established and adventitious was carried to its height, there were, as
we learn from the Sorrows of Werter, seven-and-twenty ranks in
society, each raised above the other, and of which the one above did
not speak to the one below it. Is it wonderful that the poets and
philosophers of Germany, the discontented men of talent, who thought
and mourned for themselves and their fellows, the Goethes, the
Lessings, the Schillers, the Kotzebues, felt a sudden and irresistible
impulse by a convulsive effort to tear aside this factitious drapery of
society, and to throw off that load of bloated prejudice, of maddening
pride and superannuated folly, that pressed down every energy of their
nature and stifled the breath of liberty, of truth and genius in their
bosoms? These Titans of our days tried to throw off the dead
weight that encumbered them, and in so doing, warred not against
heaven, but against earth. The same writers (as far as I have seen)
have made the only incorrigible Jacobins, and their school of poetry
is the only real school of Radical Reform.

In reasoning, truth and soberness may prevail, on which side
soever they meet : but in works of imagination novelty has the
advantage over prejudice ; that which is striking and unheard-of, over
that which is trite and known before, and that which gives unlimited
scope to the indulgence of the feelings and the passions (whether
erroneous or not) over that which imposes a restraint upon them.

I have half trifled with this subject ; and I believe I have done so,
because I despaired of finding language for some old rooted feelings
I have about it, which a theory could neither give or can it take
away. The Robbers was the first play I ever read : and the effect
it produced upon me was the greatest. It stunned me like a blow,
and I have not recovered enough from it to describe how it was.
There are impressions which neither time nor circumstances can
efface. Were I to live much longer than I have any chance of
doing, the books which I read when I was young, I can never forget.
Five-and-twenty years have elapsed since I first read the translation
of the Robbers, but they have not blotted the impression from my
mind : it is here still, an old dweller in the chambers of the brain.
The scene in particular in which Moor looks through his tears at the
evening sun from the mountain's brow, and says in his despair, * It
was my wish like him to live, like him to die : it was an idle thought,
a boy's conceit,' took fast hold of my imagination, and that sun has
to me never set ! The last interview in Don Carlos between the

362

ON THE GERMAN DRAMA

two lovers, in which the injured bride struggles to burst the prison-
house of her destiny, in which her hopes and youth lie coffined, and
buried, as it were, alive, under the oppression of unspeakable anguish,
I remember gave me a deep sense of suffering and a strong desire
after good, which has haunted me ever since. I do not like Schiller's
later style so well. His Wallenstein, which is admirably and almost
literally translated by Mr. Coleridge, is stately, thoughtful, and
imaginative : but where is the enthusiasm, the throbbing of hope and
fear, the mortal struggle between the passions ; as if all the happiness
or misery of a life were crowded into a moment, and the die was to
be cast that instant ? Kotzebue's best work I read first in Cumber-
land's imitation of it in the Wheel of Fortune ; and I confess that
that style of sentiment which seems to make of life itself a long-drawn
endless sigh, has something in it that pleases me, in spite of rules and
criticism. Goethe's tragedies are (those that I have seen of them,
his Count Egmont, Stella, &c.) constructed upon the second or
inverted manner of the German stage, with a deliberate design to
avoid all possible effect and interest, and this object is completely
accomplished. He is however spoken of with enthusiasm almost
amounting to idolatry by his countrymen, and those among ourselves
who import heavy German criticism into this country in shallow flat-
bottomed unwieldy intellects. Madame De Stael speaks of one
passage in his Iphigenia, where he introduces a fragment of an old
song, which the Furies are supposed to sing to Tantalus in hell,
reproaching him with the times when he sat with the Gods at their
golden tables, and with his after-crimes that hurled him from heaven,
at which he turns his eyes from his children and hangs his head in
mournful silence. This is the true sublime. Of all his works I like
his Werter best, nor would I part with it at a venture, even for the
Memoirs of Anastasius the Greek, whoever is the author ; nor ever
cease to think of the times, ' when in the fine summer evenings they
saw the frank, noble-minded enthusiast coming up from the valley,'
nor of * the high grass that by the light of the departing sun waved in
the breeze over his grave.'

But I have said enough to give an idea of this modern style, com-
pared with our own early Dramatic Literature, of which I had to
treat. — I have done : and if I have done no better, the fault has been
in me, not in the subject. My liking to this grew with my knowledge
of it : but so did my anxiety to do it justice. I somehow felt it as
a point of honour not to make my hearers think less highly of some
of these old writers than I myself did of them. If I have praised an
author, it was because I liked him : if I have quoted a passage, it was
because it pleased me in the reading : if I have spoken contemptuously

363

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

of any one, it has been reluctantly. It is no easy task that a writer,
even in so humble a class as myself, takes upon him ; he is scouted
and ridiculed if he fails ; and if he succeeds, the enmity and cavils
and malice with which he is assailed, are just in proportion to his
success. The coldness and jealousy of his friends not unfrequently
keep pace with the rancour of his enemies. They do not like you a
bit the better for fulfilling the good opinion they always entertained of
you. They would wish you to be always promising a great deal, and
doing nothing, that they may answer for the performance. That
shows their sagacity and does not hurt their vanity. An author
wastes his time in painful study and obscure researches, to gain a little
breath of popularity, meets with nothing but vexation and disappoint-
ment in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred ; or when he thinks to
grasp the luckless prize, finds it not worth the trouble — the perfume
of a minute, fleeting as a shadow, hollow as a sound ; * as often got
without merit as lost without deserving.' He thinks that the attain-
ment of acknowledged excellence will secure him the expression of
those feelings in others, which the image and hope of it had excited
in his own breast, but instead of that, he meets with nothing (or
scarcely nothing) but squint-eyed suspicion, idiot wonder, and grinning
scorn. — It seems hardly worth while to have taken all the pains he
has been at for this !

In youth we borrow patience from our future years : the spring of
hope gives us courage to act and suffer. A cloud is upon our
onward path, and we fancy that all is sunshine beyond it. The
prospect seems endless, because we do not know the end of it. We
think that life is long, because art is so, and that, because we have
much to do, it is well worth doing : or that no exertions can be too
great, no sacrifices too painful, to overcome the difficulties we have to
encounter. Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and
to do what we cannot. But as we approach the goal, we draw in the
reins ; the impulse is less, as we have not so far to go ; as we see
objects nearer, we become less sanguine in the pursuit : it is not the
despair of not attaining, so much as knowing there is nothing worth
obtaining, and the fear of having nothing left even to wish for, that
damps our ardour, and relaxes our efforts ; and if the mechanical
habit did not increase the facility, would, I believe, take away all
inclination or power to do any thing. We stagger on the few
remaining paces to the end of our journey ; make perhaps one final
effort ; and are glad when our task is done !

End of LECTURES ON THE

AGE OF ELIZABETH
364

PREFACE AND CRITICAL LIST
OF AUTHORS

FROM

SELECT BRITISH POETS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The first edition of the Select British Poets (5f in. x 9 in.) was published in 1824
with the following title-page : ' Select British Poets, or New Elegant Extracts from
Chaucer to the Present Time, with Critical Remarks. By William Hazlitt.
Embellished with Seven Ornamented Portraits, after a Design by T. Stothard, R.A.
London : Published by Wm. C. Hall, and sold by all Booksellers. 1824.' The
frontispiece bore the imprint 'London. Published by T. Tegg, 73, Cheapside,
June 1824.' This edition included selections from the works of living poets, and
was suppressed upon a threat of legal proceedings on behalf of some of the copy-
right owners. There is a copy in the British Museum, but the volume is exceed-
ingly rare. In the following year (1825), a second edition was published with a
fresh title-page, the copyright poems being omitted. The title-page ran : ' Select
Poets of Great Britain. To which are prefixed, Critical Notices of Each Author.
By William Hazlitt, Esq. Author of " Lectures on the English Poets," " Characters
of Shakspeare's Plays," "Lectures on Dramatic Literature," etc. London : Printed
by Thomas Davison, Whitefriars, for Thomas Tegg, 73, Cheapside ; R. Griffin
and Co., Glasgow; also R. Milliken, Dublin; and M. Baudry, Paris. 1825.'
The pages which follow are printed from the first (complete) edition of 1824.

PREFACE

THE volume here presented to the public is an attempt to improve
upon the plan of the Elegant Extracts in Verse by the late Dr.
Knox. From the length of time which had elapsed since the first
appearance of that work, a similar undertaking admitted of consider-
able improvement, although the size of the volume has been com-
pressed by means of a more severe selection of matter. At least,
a third of the former popular and in many respects valuable work
was devoted to articles either entirely worthless, or recommended
only by considerations foreign to the reader of poetry. The object
and indeed ambition of the present compiler has been to offer to the
public a BODY OF ENGLISH POETRY, from Chaucer to Burns, such as
might at once satisfy individual curiosity and justify our national
pride. We have reason to boast of the genius of our country for
poetry and of the trophies earned in that way ; and it is well to have
a collection of such examples of excellence inwoven together as may
serve to nourish our own taste and love for the sublime or beautiful,
and also to silence the objections of foreigners, who are too ready to
treat us as behindhand with themselves in all that relates to the arts
of refinement and elegance. If in some respects we are so, it behoves
us the more to cultivate and cherish the superiority we can lay claim
to in others. Poetry is one of those departments in which we possess
a decided and as it were natural pre-eminence : and therefore no
pains should be spared in selecting and setting off to advantage the
different proofs and vouchers of it.

All that could be done for this object, has been attempted in the
present instance. I have brought together in one view (to the best
of my judgment) the most admired smaller pieces of poetry, and the
most striking passages in larger works, which could not themselves be
given entire. I have availed myself of the plan chalked out by my
predecessor, but in the hope of improving upon it. To possess a

367

SELECT BRITISH POETS

work of this kind ought to be like holding the contents of a library
•-in one's hand without any of the refuse or 'baser matter.' If it had
not been thought that the former work admitted of considerable
improvement in the choice of subjects, inasmuch as inferior and
indifferent productions not rarely occupied the place of sterling
excellence, the present publication would not have been hazarded.
Another difference is that I have followed the order of time, instead
of the division of the subjects. By this method, the progress of
poetry is better seen and understood ; and besides, the real subjects of
poetry are so much alike or run so much into one another, as not
easily to come under any precise classification.

The great deficiency which I have to lament is the small portion
of Shakespear's poetry, which has been introduced into the work ;
but this arose unavoidably from the plan of it, which did not extend
to dramatic poetry as a general species. The extracts from the best
parts of Chaucer, which are given at some length, will, it is hoped,
be acceptable to the lover both of poetry and history. The quotations
from Spenser do not occupy a much larger space than in the Elegant
Extracts ; but entire passages are given, instead of a numberless
quantity of shreds and patches. The essence of Spenser's poetry
was a continuous, endless flow of indescribable beauties, like the
galaxy or milky way : — Dr. Knox has * taken him and cut him out
in little stars,' which was repugnant to the genius of his writings.
I have made it my aim to exhibit the characteristic and striking
features of English poetry and English genius ; and with this view
have endeavoured to give such specimens from each author as showed
his peculiar powers of mind and the peculiar style in which he
excelled, and have omitted those which were not only less remark-
able in themselves, but were common to him with others, or in which
others surpassed him, who were therefore the proper models in that
particular way. Cuique tribuitur suum. In a word, it has been
proposed to retain those passages and pieces with which the reader
of taste and feeling would be most pleased in the perusal of the
original works, and to which he would wish oftenest to turn again —
and which consequently may be conceived to conduce most beneficially
to form the taste and amuse the fancy of those who have not leisure
or industry to make themselves masters of the whole range of
368

PREFACE

English poetry. By leaving out a great deal of uninteresting and
common-place poetry, room has been obtained for nearly all that
was emphatically excellent. The reader, it is presumed, may here
revel and find no end of delight, in the racy vigour and manly
characteristic humour, or simple pathos of Chaucer's Muse, in the
gorgeous voluptuousness and romantic tenderness of Spenser, in the
severe, studied beauty and awful majesty of Milton, in the elegance
and refinement and harmony of Pope, in the strength and satire and
sounding rhythm of Dryden, in the sportive gaiety and graces of
Suckling, Dorset, Gay, and Prior, in Butler's wit, in Thomson's
rural scenes, in Cowper's terse simplicity, in Burns's laughing eye
and feeling heart (among standard and established reputations) — and
in the polished tenderness of Campbell, the buoyant heart-felt levity
of Moore, the striking, careless, picturesque beauties of Scott, the
thoughtful humanity of Wordsworth, and Byron's glowing rage
(among those whose reputation seems less solid and towering,
because we are too near them to perceive its height or measure its
duration). Others might be mentioned to lengthen out the list of
poetic names

' That on the steady breeze of honour sail
In long possession, calm and beautiful : ' —

but from all together enough has been gleaned to make a ' perpetual
feast of nectar'd sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.' Such at
least has been my ardent wish ; and if this volume is not pregnant
with matter both 'rich and rare,' it has been the fault of the
compiler, and not of the poverty or niggardliness of the ENGLISH

MUSE.

W. H.

VOL. V. I 2 A

369

A CRITICAL LIST

AUTHORS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME

CHAUCER is in the first class of poetry (the natural) and one of the
first. He describes the common but individual objects of nature and
the strongest and most universal, because spontaneous workings of the
heart. In invention he has not much to boast, for the materials are
chiefly borrowed (except in some of his comic tales) ; but the
masterly execution is his own. He is remarkable for the degree
and variety of the qualities he possesses — excelling equally in the
comic and serious. He has little fancy, but he has great wit, great
humour, strong manly sense, great power of description, perfect
knowledge of character, occasional sublimity, as in parts of the
Knight's Tale, and the deepest pathos, as in the story of Griselda,
distance, the Flower and the Leaf, &c. In humour and spirit, the
Wife of Bath is unequalled.

SPENSER excels in the two qualities in which Chaucer is most
deficient — invention and fancy. The invention shown in his allegorical
personages is endless, as the fancy shown in his description of them is
gorgeous and delightful. He is the poet of romance. He describes
things as in a splendid and voluptuous dream. He has displayed no
comic talent, except in his Shepherd's Calendar. He has little attempt
at character, an occasional visionary sublimity, and a pensive tender-
ness approaching to the finest pathos. Nearly all that is excellent in
the Faery Queen is contained in the three first Books. His style is
sometimes ambiguous and affected ; but his versification is to the last
degree flowing and harmonious.

Sir PHILIP SIDNEY is an affected writer, but with great power of
thought and description. His poetry, of which he did not write
much, has the faults of his prose without its recommendations.

DRAYTON has chiefly tried his strength in description and learned
narrative. The plan of the Poly-Olbion (a local or geographical
account of Great Britain) is original, but not very happy. The

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A CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS

descriptions of places are often striking and curious, but become
tedious by uniformity. There is some fancy in the poem, but little
general interest. His Heroic Epistles have considerable tenderness
and dignity ; and, in the structure of the verse, have served as a
model to succeeding writers.

DANIEL is chiefly remarkable for simplicity of style, and natural
tenderness. In some of his occasional pieces (as the Epistle to the
Countess of Cumberland) there is a vast philosophic gravity and
stateliness of sentiment.

Sir JOHN SUCKLING is one of the most piquant and attractive of
the Minor poets. He has fancy, wit, humour, descriptive talent,
the highest elegance, perfect ease, a familiar style and a pleasing
versification. He has combined all these in his Ballad on a Wedding,
which is a masterpiece of sportive gaiety and good humour. His
genius was confined entirely to the light and agreeable.

GEORGE WITHER is a poet of comparatively little power ; though
he has left one or two exquisitely affecting passages, having a personal
reference to his own misfortunes.

WALLER belonged to the same class as Suckling — the sportive, the
sparkling, the polished, with fancy, wit, elegance of style, and easiness
of versification at his command. Poetry was the plaything of his
idle hours — the mistress, to whom he addressed his verses, was his
real Muse. His lines on the Death of Oliver Cromwell are however
serious, and even sublime.

MILTON was one of the four great English poets, who must
certainly take precedence over all others, I mean himself, Spenser,
Chaucer, and Shakespear. His subject is not common or natural
indeed, but it is of preternatural grandeur and unavoidable interest.
He is altogether a serious poet ; and in this differs from Chaucer and
Shakespear, and resembles Spenser. He has sublimity in the highest
degree : beauty in an equal degree ; pathos in a degree next to the
highest ; perfect character in the conception of Satan, of Adam and
Eve ; fancy, learning, vividness of description, stateliness, decorum.
He seems on a par with his subjects in Paradise Lost ; to raise it,
and to be raised with it. His style is elaborate and powerful, and
his versification, with occasional harshness and affectation, superior in
harmony and variety to all other blank verse. It has the effect of a
piece of fine music. His smaller pieces, Lycidas, U Allegro, II
Penseroso, the Sonnets, &c., display proportionable excellence, from
their beauty, sweetness, and elegance.

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A CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS

COWLEY is a writer of great sense, ingenuity, and learning ; but as
a poet, his fancy is quaint, far-fetched, and mechanical, and he has
no other distinguishing quality whatever. To these objections his
Anacreontics are a delightful exception. They are the perfection of
that sort of gay, unpremeditated, lyrical effusion. They breathe the
very spirit of love and wine. Most of his other pieces should be
read for instruction, not for pleasure.

MARVELL is a writer almost forgotten : but undeservedly so. His
poetical reputation seems to have sunk with his political party. His
satires were coarse, quaint, and virulent ; but his other productions
are full of a lively, tender, and elegant fancy. His verses leave an
echo on the ear, and find one in the heart. See those entitled
BERMUDAS, To HIS COY MISTRESS, ON THE DEATH OF A FAWN, &c.

BUTLER (the author of Hudibras\ has undoubtedly more wit than
any other writer in the language. He has little besides to recommend
him, if we except strong sense, and a laudable contempt of absurdity
and hypocrisy. He has little story, little character, and no great
humour in his singular poem. The invention of the fable seems
borrowed from Don Quixote. He has however prodigious merit in
his style, and in the fabrication of his rhymes.

Sir JOHN DEN HAM'S fame rests chiefly on his Cooper s Hill. This
poem is a mixture of the descriptive and didactic, and has given birth
to many poems on the same plan since. His forte is strong, sound
sense, and easy, unaffected, manly verse.

DRYDEN stands nearly at the head of the second class of English
poets, -viz. the artificial, or those who describe the mixed modes of
artificial life, and convey general precepts and abstract ideas. He
had invention in the plan of his Satires, very little fancy, not much
wit, no humour, immense strength of character, elegance, masterly
ease, indignant contempt approaching to the sublime, not a particle of
tenderness, but eloquent declamation, the perfection of uncorrupted
English style, and of sounding, vehement, varied versification. The
Alexander's Feast, his Fables and Satires, are his standard and lasting
works.

ROCHESTER, as a wit, is first-rate : but his fancy is keen and caustic,
not light and pleasing, like Suckling or Waller. His verses cut and
sparkle like diamonds.

ROSCOMMON excelled chiefly as a translator ; but his translation of
Horace's Art of Poetry is so unique a specimen of fidelity and felicity,
that it has been adopted into this collection.

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A CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS

POMFRET left one popular poem behind him, THE CHOICE; the
attraction of which may be supposed to lie rather in the subject than
in the peculiar merit of the execution.

Lord DORSET, for the playful ease and elegance of his verses,
is not surpassed by any of the poets of that class.

J. PHILIPS'S SPLENDID SHILLING makes the fame of this poet — it is
a lucky thought happily executed.

HALIFAX (of whom two short poems are here retained) was the
least of the Minor poets — one of « the mob of gentlemen who wrote
with ease.'

The praise of PARNELL'S poetry is, that it was moral, amiable, with
a tendency towards the pensive; and it was his fortune to be the
friend of poets.

PRIOR is not a very moral poet, but the most arch, piquant, and
equivocal of those that have been admitted into this collection. He
is a graceful narrator, a polished wit, full of the delicacies of style
amidst gross allusions.

POPE is at the head of the second class of poets, viz. the describers
of artificial life and manners. His works are a delightful, never-
failing fund of good sense and refined taste. He had high invention
and fancy of the comic kind, as in the Rape of the Lock ; wit, as in
the Dunciad and Satires ; no humour ; some beautiful descriptions, as
in the Windsor Forest ; some exquisite delineations of character (those
of Addison and Villiers are master-pieces) ; he is a model of elegance
everywhere, but more particularly in his eulogies and friendly epistles ;
his ease is the effect of labour ; he has no pretensions to sublimity,
but sometimes displays an indignant moral feeling akin to it ; his
pathos is playful and tender, as in his Epistles to Arbuthnot and
Jervas, or rises into power by the help of rhetoric, as in the Eloisa,
and Elegy on the Death of an Unfortunate Lady ; his style is polished
and almost faultless in its kind ; his versification tires by uniform
smoothness and harmony. He has been called * the most sensible of
poets : ' but the proofs of his sense are to be looked for in his single
observations and hints, as in the Essay on Criticism and Moral Epistles,
and not in the larger didactic reasonings of the Essay on Man, which
is full of verbiage and bombast.

If good sense has been made the characteristic of Pope, good-
nature might be made (with at least equal truth) the characteristic of
GAY. He was a satirist without gall. He had a delightful placid

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A CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS

vein of invention, fancy, wit, humour, description, ease and elegance,
a happy style, and a versification which seemed to cost him nothing.
His Beggar's Opera indeed has stings in it, but it appears to have left
the writer's mind without any.

The Grave of BLAIR is a serious and somewhat gloomy poem, but
pregnant with striking reflections and fine fancy.

SWIFT'S poetry is not at all equal to his prose. He was actuated
by the spleen in both. He has however sense, wit, humour, ease,
and even elegance when he pleases, in his poetical effusions. But he
trifled with the Muse. He has written more agreeable nonsense than
any man. His Verses on his own Death are affecting and beautiful.

AMBROSE PHILIPS'S Pastorals were ridiculed by Pope, and their
merit is of an humble kind. They may be said rather to mimic
nature than to imitate it. They talk about rural objects, but do
not paint them. His verses descriptive of a NORTHERN WINTER are
better.

THOMSON is the best and most original of our descriptive poets.
He had nature ; but, through indolence or affectation, too often
embellished it with the gaudy ornaments of art. Where he gave
way to his genuine impulses, he was excellent. He had invention in
the choice of his subject (The Seasons), some fancy, wit and humour
of a most voluptuous kind ; in the Castle of Indolence, great descrip-
tive power. His elegance is tawdriness ; his ease slovenliness ; he
sometimes rises into sublimity, as in his account of the Torrid and
Frozen Zones ; he has occasional pathos too, as in his Traveller Lost
in the Snoiv ; his style is barbarous, and his ear heavy and bad.

COLLINS, of all our Minor poets, that is, those who have attempted
only short pieces, is probably the one who has shown the most of the
highest qualities of poetry, and who excites the most intense interest
in the bosom of the reader. He soars into the regions of imagina-
tion, and occupies the highest peaks of Parnassus. His fancy is
glowing, vivid, but at the same time hasty and obscure. Gray's
sublimity was borrowed and mechanical, compared to Collins's, who
has the true inspiration, the vivida vis of the poet. He heats and
melts objects in the fervour of his genius, as in a furnace. See his
Odes to Fear, On the Poetical Character, and To Evening. The Ode
on the Passions is the most popular, but the most artificial of his
principal ones. His qualities were fancy, sublimity of conception,
and no mean degree of pathos, as in the Eclogues, and the Dirge in
Cymbeline.

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A CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS

DYER'S Grongar Hill is a beautiful moral and descriptive effusion,
with much elegance, and perfect ease of style and versification.

SHENSTONE was a writer inclined to feebleness and affectation : but
when he could divest himself of sickly pretensions, he produces
occasional excellence of a high degree. His SCHOOL-MISTRESS is the
perfection of naive description, and of that mixture of pathos and
humour, than which nothing is more delightful or rare.

MALLET was a poet of small merit — but every one has read his
Edwin and Emma, and no one ever forgot it.

AKENSIDE is a poet of considerable power, but of little taste or
feeling. His thoughts, like his style, are stately and imposing,
but turgid and gaudy. In his verse, « less is meant than meets the
ear.' He has some merit in the invention of the subject (the
Pleasures of Imagination} his poem being the first of a series of
similar ones on the faculties of the mind, as the Pleasures of Memory,
of Hope, &c.

YOUNG is a poet who has been much over-rated from the popu-
larity of his subject, and the glitter and lofty pretensions of his
style. I wished to have made more extracts from the Night-Thoughts,
but was constantly repelled by the tinsel of expression, the false
ornaments, and laboured conceits. Of all writers who have gained
a great name, he is the most meretricious and objectionable. His is
false wit, false fancy, false sublimity, and mock-tenderness. At least,
it appears so to me.

GRAY was an author of great pretensions, but of great merit. He
has an air of sublimity, if not the reality. He aims at the highest
things ; and if he fails, it is only by a hair's-breadth. His pathos
is injured, like his sublimity, by too great an ambition after the
ornaments and machinery of poetry. His craving after foreign
help perhaps shows the want of the internal impulse. His Elegy
in a Country Churchyard, which is the most simple, is the best of
his productions.

CHURCHILL is a fine rough satirist. He had sense, wit, eloquence,
and honesty.

GOLDSMITH, both in verse and prose, was one of the most delightful
writers in the language. His verse flows like a limpid stream. His
ease is quite unconscious. Every thing in him is spontaneous, un-
studied, unaffected, yet elegant, harmonious, graceful, nearly faultless.
Without the point or refinement of Pope, he has more natural tender-

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A CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS

ness, a greater suavity of manner, a more genial spirit. Goldsmith
never rises into sublimity, and seldom sinks into insipidity, or stumbles
upon coarseness. His Traveller contains masterly national sketches.
The Deserted Village is sometimes spun out into a mawkish senti-
mentality ; but the characters of the Village Schoolmaster, and the
Village Clergyman, redeem a hundred faults. His Retaliation is a poem
of exquisite spirit, humour, and freedom of style.

ARMSTRONG'S Art of Preserving Health displays a fine natural vein
of sense and poetry on a most unpromising subject.

CHATTERTON'S Remains show great premature power, but are chiefly
interesting from his fate. He discovered great boldness of spirit and
versatility of talent ; yet probably, if he had lived, would not have
increased his reputation for genius.

THOMAS WARTON was a man of taste and genius. His SONNETS I
cannot help preferring to any in the language.

COWPER is the last of the English poets in the first division of this
collection, but though last, not least. He is, after Thomson, the
best of our descriptive poets — more minute and graphical, but with
less warmth of feeling and natural enthusiasm than the author of THE
SEASONS. He has also fine manly sense, a pensive and interesting
turn of thought, tenderness occasionally running into the most touch-
ing pathos, and a patriotic or religious zeal mounting almost into
sublimity. He had great simplicity with terseness of style : his
versification is neither strikingly faulty nor excellent. His occasional
copies of verses have great elegance ; and his John Gilpin is one of
the most humorous pieces in the language.

BURNS concludes the series of the ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD; and one
might be tempted to write an elegy rather than a criticism on him.
In naivete, in spirit, in characteristic humour, in vivid description of
natural objects and of the natural feelings of the heart, he has left
behind him no superior.

Of the living poets I wish to speak freely, but candidly.

ROGERS is an elegant and highly polished writer, but without much
originality or power. He seems to have paid the chief attention to
his style — Materiam super abat opus. He writes, however, with an
admiration of the muse, and with an interest in humanity.

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A CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS

CAMPBELL has equal elegance, equal elaborateness, with more power
and scope both of thought and fancy. His Pleasures of Hope is too
artificial and antithetical; but his Gertrude of Wyoming strikes at the
heart of nature, and has passages of extreme interest, with an air of
tenderness and sweetness over the whole, like the breath of flowers.
Some of his shorter effusions have great force and animation, and a
patriotic fire.

BLOOMFIELD'S excellence is confined to a minute and often interest-
ing description of individual objects in nature, in which he is sur-
passed perhaps by no one.

CRABBE is a writer of great power, but of a perverse and morbid
taste. He gives the very objects and feelings he treats of, whether
in morals or rural scenery, but he gives none but the most uninterest-
ing or the most painful. His poems are a sort of funeral dirge over
human life, but without pity, without hope. He has neither smiles
nor tears for his readers.

COLERIDGE has shewn great wildness of conception in his Ancient
Mariner, sublimity of imagery in his Ode to the Departing Tear,
grotesqueness of fancy in his Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, and tender-
ness of sentiment in his Genevieve. He has however produced
nothing equal to his powers.

Mr. WORDSWORTH'S characteristic is one, and may be expressed in
one word ; — a power of raising the smallest things in nature into
sublimity by the force of sentiment. He attaches the deepest and
loftiest feelings to the meanest and most superficial objects. His
peculiarity is his combination of simplicity of subject with profundity
and power of execution. He has no fancy, no wit, no humour, little
descriptive power, no dramatic power, great occasional elegance, with
continual rusticity and boldness of allusion ; but he is sublime without
the Muse's aid, pathetic in the contemplation of his own and man's
nature ; add to this, that his style is natural and severe, and his
versification sonorous and expressive.

Mr. SOUTHEY'S talent in poetry lies chiefly in fancy and the
invention of his subject. Some of his oriental descriptions, characters,
and fables, are wonderfully striking and impressive, but there is an air
of extravagance in them, and his versification is abrupt, affected, and
repulsive. In his early poetry there is a vein of patriotic fervour,
and mild and beautiful moral reflection.

Sir WALTER SCOTT is the most popular of our living poets. His

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A CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS

excellence is romantic narrative and picturesque description. He has
great bustle, great rapidity of action and flow of versification, with
a sufficient distinctness of character, and command of the ornaments
of style. He has neither lofty imagination, nor depth or intensity of
feeling ; vividness of mind is apparently his chief and pervading
excellence.

Mr. C. LAMB has produced no poems equal to his prose writings :
but I could not resist the temptation of transferring into this collection
his Farewell to Tobacco^ and some of the sketches in his John IVoodvil;
the first of which is rarely surpassed in quaint wit, and the last in
pure feeling.

MONTGOMERY is an amiable and pleasing versifier, who puts his
heart and fancy into whatever he composes.

Lord BYRON'S distinguishing quality is intensity of conception and
expression. He wills to be sublime or pathetic. He has great
wildness of invention, brilliant and elegant fancy, caustic wit, but no
humour. Gray's description of the poetical character — * Thoughts
that glow, and words that burn,' — applies to him more than to any
of his contemporaries.

THOMAS MOORE is the greatest wit now living. His light, ironical
pieces are unrivalled for point and facility of execution. His fancy
is delightful and brilliant, and his songs have gone to the heart of a
nation.

LEIGH HUNT has shewn great wit in his Feast of the Poets, elegance
in his occasional verses, and power of description and pathos in his
Story of Rimini. The whole of the third canto of that poem is as
chaste as it is classical.

The late Mr. SHELLEY (for he is dead since the commencement of
this publication) was chiefly distinguished by a fervour of philosophic
speculation, which he clad in the garb of fancy, and in words of
Tyrian die. He had spirit and genius, but his eagerness to give effect
and produce conviction often defeated his object, and bewildered
himself and his readers.

Lord THURLOW has written some very unaccountable, but some
occasionally good and feeling poetry.

Mr. KEATS is also dead. He gave the greatest promise of genius
of any poet of his day. He displayed extreme tenderness, beauty,
originality, and delicacy of fancy ; all he wanted was manly strength

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A CRITICAL LIST OF AUTHORS

and fortitude to reject the temptations of singularity in sentiment and
expression. Some of his shorter and later pieces are, however, as
free from faults as they are full of beauties.

Mr. MILMAN is a writer of classical taste and attainments rather
than of original genius. Poeta nascitur — nonfo.

Of BOWLES'S sonnets it is recommendation enough to say, that they
were the favourites of Mr. Coleridge's youthful mind.

It only remains to speak of Mr. BARRY CORNWALL, who, both in
the drama, and in his other poems, has shewn brilliancy and tender-
ness of fancy, and a fidelity to truth and nature, in conceiving the
finer movements of the mind equal to the felicity of his execution in
expressing them.

Some additions have been made in the Miscellaneous part of the
volume, from the Lyrical effusions of the elder Dramatists, whose
beauty, it is presumed, can never decay, whose sweetness can never
cloy !

379

NOTES

NOTES
LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

I. ON POETRY IN GENERAL

Any differences between the text quoted by Hazlitt and the texts used for the
purposes of these notes which seem worth pointing out are indicated in square
brackets.

For Sergeant Talfourd's impressions of these lectures, and other matters of
interest connected with their delivery, the reader may be referred to the Memoirs of
William Hazlitt, vol. i., pp. 236 et seq.

PAGE

1. Spreads its sweet leaves. Romeo and Juliet, i. I.

2. The stuff of -which our life is made. Cf. The Tempest, iv. I.
Mere oblivion. As You Like It, 11. 7.

Man's life is poor as beasfs. King Lear, n. 4. [' Man's life 's as cheap as beast's.']
There is -warrant for it. Cf. Richard III., i. 4, and Macbeth, n. 3.
Such seething brains and the lunatic. A Midsummer Nights Dream, v. i.

3. Angelica and Medoro. Characters in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516).
Plato banished the poets. The Republic, Book x.

Ecstasy is very cunning in. Hamlet, in. 4.

According to Lord Bacon. An adaptation of a passage in the Advancement of
Learning, Book n., Chap. xiii. (ed. Joseph Devey, Bohn, p. 97).

4. Our eyes are made the fools. Macbeth, 11. I.

That if it -would but apprehend. A Midsummer Night's Dream, v. i.
The flame o' the taper. Cymbeline,n. z.
For they are old. Cf. King Lear, n. 4.

5. Nothing but his unkind daughters. King Lear, in. 4. ['Could have subdued

nature to such a lowness.']
The little dogs. King Lear, in. 6.
So I am. King Lear, iv. 7.
0 now for ever. Othello, in. 3.

6. Never, logo. Othello, in. 3.

But there -where I have garner' d. Othello, iv. z.

Moore. Edward Moore (1712-1757), author of The Gamester (1753).
Lillo. George Lillo (1693-1739), author of The London Merchant, or the
History of George Barn-well (1731).

7. As Mr. Burke observes. Sublime and Beautiful, Part i. § 15.
Master less passion. Merchant of Venice, iv. i.

[' for affection,

Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood.']
Satisfaction to the thought. Cf. Othello, HI. 3.

8. Navo night descending. Dunciad, i. 89, 90.

383

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

PAGE

8. Throw him on the steep. Ode to Fear.

['ridgy steep

Of some loose hanging rock to sleep.']
Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend. King Lear, i. 4. [' More hideous,

when thou show'st thee in a child.']
Both at the first and now. Hamlet, HI. 2.

9. Doctor Chalmers's Discoveries. Thomas Chalmers, D.D. (1780-1847), who

sought in his A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, viewed in

connection 'with Modern Astronomy (1817), to reconcile science with

current conceptions of Christianity. See The Spirit of the Age, vol. HI.

p. 228 and note.

10. Bandit fierce. Comus, 1. 426.
Our fell of hair. Macbeth, v. 5.
Macbeth . . . for the sake of the music. Probably Purcell's. It was written for

D'Avenant's version and produced in 1672 (Genest). Cf. The Round Table,

vol. i. p. 138 and note.
Between the acting. Julius Caesar, 11. i. ['The Genius and the mortal

instruments.']
n. Thoughts that voluntary move. Paradise Lost, in. 37, 38.

The 'words of Mercury. Love's Labour 's Lost, v. n . [' The words of Mercury

are harsh after the songs of Apollo.']
So from the ground. Faery Queene, i. vi. [' With doubled Eccho.']

12. The secret soul of 'harmony '. L' Allegro, 1. 144. ['The hidden soul of harmony.']
The golden cadences of poetry. Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2.

Sailing with supreme dominion. Gray's Progress of Poesy, in. 3.

13. Sounding always. Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 1. 275.

Addimft Campaign. 1705. Addison wrote it on Maryborough's victory of
Blenheim. For its description as a ' Gazette in Rhyme,' see Dr. Joseph
Warton's (1722-1800) An Essay on the Writings and Genius oj Pope
(1756-82).

14. Married to immortal verse. L 'Allegro, 1. 137.
Dipped in dews of Castalie. Cf. T. Hey wood's,

* And Jonson, though his learned pen

Was dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben.'

The most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies. Sophocles's Philoctetet.
Ai I -walked about . Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Part I. p. 125, ed. G. A. Aitken.

15. Give an echo. Twelfth Night, n. 4.

Our poesy. Timon of Athens, i. I. ['Which oozes.']

1 6. All plumed like ostriches. Adapted from the First Part of King Henry If., iv. I.

['As full of spirit as the month of May.']
If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth. Cf. Psalms, cxxxix. 9-11.

1 8. Pope Anastasius the Sixth. Inferno, xi.

Count Ugolino. Inferno, xxxiu. Neither was Lamb satisfied with the concep-
tion. See his paper on ' The Reynolds Gallery ' in The Examiner, June 6,
1813.

The lamentation of Selma. Colma's lament in the Songs ofSelma.

I II. ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER.

The Chaucer and Spenser references throughout are to Skeat's Student's Chaucer,
and to the Globe Edition of Spenser (Morris and Hales).

19. Chaucer. Modern authorities date Chaucer's birth from 1340. It is no

longer held as true that he had an university education. The story of his
plot against the king, his flight and his imprisonment, is also legendary.

384

NOTES

PAGE

20. Close pent up, and the next quotation. King Lear, in. 2.
Flowery tenderness. Measure for Measure, in. I.

And as the new abashed nightingale. Troilus and Criseyde, in. 177.
Thus passeth yere by y ere. 11. 1033-9 ['fairer of hem two'].

21. That stondeth at a gap. 'The Knightes Tale,' 1639-42.
Have ye not seen. 'The Tale of the Man of Law,' 645-51.
Swiche sorrow he maketh. 'The Knightes Tale,' 1277-80.

22. Babbling gossip of the air. Twelfth Night, i. 5.

There was also a nonne. 'The Prologue,' 118-129 [' Entuned in hir nose ful
semely'] ; 137-155 ['And held after the newe world the space'];
165-178 ; 189-207.

24. Lawyer Dowling. Book vin., Chap. viii.

No wher so besy a man. ' The Prologue,' 321-2.

Whose hous it snewed. Ibid. 345.

Who rode upon a rouncie. Ibid. 390.

Whose studie was but litel of the Bible. Ibid. 438.

All "whose parish. /£/</. 449-52.

Whose parish -was "wide. Ibid. 491.

A slendre colerikeman. Ibid. 587.

Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the classes of men. Cf. Wm. Blake's
Descriptive Catalogue, III. 'As Newton numbered the stars, and as
Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes of men.'

A Sompnoure. Ibid. 623-41. ['Children were aferd,' 'oynons, and eek lekes,'
'A fewe termes hadde he']; 663-669.

25. Ther maist thou se. 'The Knightes Tale,' 2128-2151 ; 2155-2178 ; 2185-6.

27. The Flower and the Leaf. Most modern scholars regard the evidence which

attributes this poem to Chaucer as insufficient. The same few words
of Hazlitt's were originally used in The Round Table, ' Why the Arts are not
Progressive ? ' vol. i. p. 162.

28. Griselda. 'The Clerkes Tale.' See The Round Table, vol. i. p. 162.
The faith of Constance. ' The Tale of the Man of Law.'

29. Oh Alma redemptoris mater. ' The Prioress's Tale.'

Whan that Arcite. ' The Knightes Tale,' 1355-71. [' His hewe falwe.']
Alas the wo! 11. 2771-9.

30. The three temples, 11. 1918-2092.

Dryden's -version, i.e. his ' Palamon and Arcite.'
Why shulde I not. 'The Knightes Tale,' 1967-9,1972-80. ['In which ther

dwelleth.']

The statue of Man. Ibid. 2041-2, 2047-8.
That heaves no sigh. ' Heave thou no sigh, nor shed a tear,' Prior ! Answer to

Chloe.
Let me not like a worm. ' The Clerkes Tale,' 1. 880.

31. Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable. Ibid. 197-245. ['Sette his ye'];

274-94 [' Hir threshold goon '].

32. All conscience and tendtr heart. 'The Prologue,' 150.
From grave to gay. Pope, Etsay on Man, Ep. iv. 380.

33. The Cock and the Fox. 'The Nonne Preestes Tale of the Cok and Hen.'
January and May. ' The Marchantes Tale.'

The story of the three thieves. 'The Pardoners Tale.'

Mr. West. Benjamin West (1738-1820). See the article on this picture by

Hazlitt in The Edinburgh Magazine, Dec. 1817, where the same extract is

quoted.

34. Ne Deth, alas. ' The Marchantes Tale,' 727-38.

VOL. v. : 2 B 385

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

PAGE

34. Occle-ve. Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (b. 1368), who expressed his grief at

his 'master dear' Chaucer's death in his version of De Regtmine Principum.

'Ancient Gower? John Gower (1330-1408), who wrote Confessio Amantis
(1392-3), and to whom Chaucer dedicated (' O moral Gower') his Troilus
and Crheyde. See Pericles, I.

Lydgate. John Lydgate (c. 1370-^. 1440), poet and imitator of Chaucer.

IPyatt, Surry, and Sackville. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), courtier and
poet ; Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1518-1 547), who shares with Wyatt
the honour of introducing the sonnet into English verse ; Thomas Sackville,
Earl of Dorset (c. 1536-1608), part author of the earliest tragedy in English,
Ferrex and Porrex, acted 1561-2.

Sir John Da-vies (1569-1626), poet and statesman. Spenser was sent to
Ireland in 1580 as private secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton, Lord
Deputy of Ireland. Davies was sent to Ireland as Solicitor-General in
1603, four years after Spenser's death.

The bog of Allan. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto ix.

An ably written paper. ' A View of the Present State of Ireland,' registered
1598, printed 1633.

An obscure inn. In King Street, Westminster, Jan. 13, 1599.

The treatment he received from Burleigh. It has been suggested that the dis-
favour with which Spenser was regarded by Burleigh — a disfavour that
stood in the way of his preferment — was because of Spenser's friendship
with Essex, and Leicester's patronage of him.

35. Clap on high. The Faerie Queenc, III. xn. 23.
In green -vine leaves. I. iv. 22.

Upon the top of all his lofty crest. I. vn. 32.

In reading the Faery ^ueen. The incidents mentioned will be found in
Books in. 9, i. 7, ii. 6, and in. 12, respectively.

36. And mask, and antique pageantry. I? Allegro, 128.
And more to lull him. I. I. 41.

The honey-heavy dtw of slumber. Julius Caesar, n. I.

Eftsoons they heard. II. xn. 70-1. ['To read what manner.']

The 'whiles some one did chaunt. Ibid. 74-8. [' Bare to ready spoyl.']

38. The House of Pride. I. iv.

The Cave of Mammon. II. vn. 28-50.

The Cave of Despair. I. IX. 33-35.

The -wars he well remember 'd. II. IX. 56.

The description of Belphcebe. II. in. 21.

Florimel and the Witch's son. III. vn. 12.

The gardens of Adonn. III. vi. 29.

The Bower of Bliss. II. xn. 42.

Poussin's pictures. Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). See Hazlitt's Table Talk,

vol. vi. p. 1 68, et seq.
And eke that stranger knight. III. ix. 20.
Her hair was sprinkled with Jiowers. II. in. 30.
The cold icicles. III. vin. 35. [' Ivory breast.'].
That -was Arion crowned. IV. xi. line 3, stanza 23, and line I, stanza 24.

39. And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony. I. iv. 21-2. [' In shape and life.']
And next to him rode lustful! Lechery. Ibid. 24-6.

40. Tetnot more sweet. Carmen Nuptiale, TheLay of the Laureate (i8i6),xviii. 4-6.
The frst was Fancy. III. xn. 7-13, 22-3. [' Next after her.']

42. The account of Satyrane. I. vi. 24.

Go seek some other play-fellows. Stanza 28. [' Go find.']

386

NOTES

PAGE

42. By the helf ofhisfayre horns. III. x. 47.

The change of Malbecco into Jealousy. III. x. 56-60.

That house's form. II. vn. 28-9, 23.

That all -with one consent. Troilus and Cressida, HI. 3.

43. High over hill. III. X. 55.

P<2>e, w^o «W to ask. In view of this remark, it may be of interest to quote
the following passage from Spence's Anecdotes (pp. 296-7, 1820 ; Section
viii., 1743-4) : 'There is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly
in one's old age, as it did in one's youth. I read the Faerie Sjuecne, when
I was about twelve, with infinite delight, and I think it gave me as much,
when I read it over about a year or two ago.'

The account of Talus, the Iron Man. V. i. 12.

The . . . Episode of Paitorella. VI. ix. 12.

44. In many a "winding bout. L1 Allegro, 139-140.

III. ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

The references are to the Globe Edition of Shakespeare, and Masson's three-
volume edition of Milton's Poetical Works. See The Round Table, ' On Milton's
Versification,' vol. i. pp. 36 et seq., for passages used again for the purposes of this
lecture. See also ibid. 'Why the Arts are not Progressive ? ' pp. 160 et seq, and notes
to those two Essays.

PAGE

46. The human face divine . Paradise Lost, in. 44.

And made a sunshine in the shady place. Faerie Queene, I. in. 4.

The fault has been more in their [is not in our] stars. Cf. Julius Caesar, i. 2.

47. A mind reflecting ages past. See vol. iv. notes to p. 213.
All corners of the earth. Cymbeline, in. iv.

Nodded to him. A Midsummer Night's Dream, in. i.
His so potent art. Tempest, v. I .

48. Subject [servile] to the same [all] skyey influences. Measure for Measure, in. I.
His frequent haunts [' my daily walks ']. Comus, 314.

Coheres semblably together. Cf. 2 Henry IV., 7. I.

Me and thy crying self. The Tempest, i. 2.

What, man ! ne'er pull your hat. Macbeth, iv. 3.

Man delights not me, and the following quotation. Adapted from Hamlet, n. 2.

Rosencraus should be Rosencrantz.
A combination and a form. Hamlet, in. 4.

49. My lord, as I 'was reading [sewing], Hamlet, 11. i. [' His stockings foul'd . . .

so piteous in purport . . . loosed out of hell.']
There is a 'willow ['grows aslant']. Hamlet, iv. 7.

50. He 's speaking ncrw. Antony and Cleopatra, i. 5.
It is my birth-day. Antony and Cleopatra, in. 1 3.

51. Nigh sphered in Heaven. Collins's Ode on the Poetical Character, 66.
To make society the sweeter -welcome. Macbeth, HI. i.

52. With a little act upon the blood [burn] like the mines of sulphur. Othello, in. 3.

[' Syrups of the world.'].

While rage -with rage. Troilus and Cressida, I. 3.
In their untroubled element.

' That glorious star
In its untroubled element will shine,
As now it shines, when we are laid in earth
And safe from all our sorrows.'

Wordsworth, The Excursion, vi. 763-66.

387

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

PAGE

52. Satan's address to the sun. Paradise Lost, iv. 31 et seq.

53. 0 that I luere a mockery king of snow [standing before] the sun of Bolingbroke.

Richard II., iv. i.

His form had not yet lost. Paradise Lost, i. 591-4.
A modern school of poetry. The Lake School.
With -what measure they mete. St. Mark, iv. 24 ; St. Luke, vi. 38.
It glances from heaven to earth. A Midsummer Night's Dream, v. i.
Puts a girdle. Ibid. n. i.

54. 7 ask that I might -waken reverence ['and bid the cheek']. Troilus and

Cressida, i. 3.
No man is the lord of anything, and the following quotation. Ibid. HI. 3.

55. In Shakespeare. Cf. ' On application to study,' The Plain Speaker.
Light thickens. Macbeth, m. 2.

His "whole course of love. Othello, i. 3.

The business of the State. Ibid. iv. 2.

Of ditties highly penned. I King Henry If., in. i.

And so by many -winding nooks. Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. 7.

56. Great vulgar and the small. Cowley's Translation of Horace's Ode, m. I.
His delights [were] dolphin-like. Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2.

57. Blind Thamyris. Paradise Lost, in. 35-6.
With darkness. Ibid. vii. 27.

Piling up every stone. Ibid. xi. 324-5.

For after ... 7 had from my first yean. The Reason of Church Government,
Book ii.

58. The noble heart. Faerie Queene, I. v. i.
Makes Ossa like a wart. Hamlet, v. I.

59. Him fillo-wed Rimmon. Paradise Lost, i. 467-9.
As -when a vulture. Ibid. in. 431-9.

The great vision. Lycidas, 161.

The Pilot. Paradise Lost, i. 204.

The -wandering moon. 11 Penseroso, 67-70.

60. Like a steam. Comus, 556.

He soon saw within ken. Paradise Lost, in. 621-44.

6 1. With Atlantean shoulders. Ibid. 11. 306-7.
Lay fioating many a rood. Ibid. i. 196.
That sea beast, Leviathan. Ibid. i. 200-202.

What a force of imagination. Cf. Notes and Queries, 4th Series, xi. 174, where
J. H. T. Oakley points out that Milton is simply translating a well-known
Greek phrase for the ocean.

His hand -was known. Paradise Lost, J. 732-47.

62. But chief the spacious hall. Ibid. i. 762-88.
Round he surveys. Ibid. in. 555-67.

63. Such as the meeting soul. L' Allegro, 138-140.
The hidden soul. Ibid. 144.

God the Father turns a school-divine. Pope, 1st Epistle, Hor. Book n. 102.
As -when heaven's fire. Paradise Lost, i. 612-13.

64. All is not lost. Paradise Lost, i. 106-9.

That intellectual being. Paraaise Lost, n. 147-8.

Being swallowed up. Ibid. 11. 149-50.

Fallen cherub. Ibid. i. 157-%.

Rising aloft ['he steers his flight aloft']. Ibid. i. 225-6.

65. Is this the region. Ibid. i. 242-63.

66. His philippics against Salmasius. In 1651 Milton replied in his Defensio pro

388

NOTES

PAGE

66. Populo Anglicano to Defensio Regia pro Carolo 1. (1649) by Claudius
Salmasius or Claude de Saumaise (1588-1658), a professor at Leyden. The
latter work had been undertaken at the request of Charles n. by Salmasius,
who was regarded as the leading European scholar of his day.

With hideous ruin. Paradise Lost, i. 46.

Retreated in a silent -valley. Paradise Lost, n. 547-50.

A noted political writer of the present day. See Political Essay t, vol. in. pp. 155,

et seq. 'Illustrations of the Times Newspaper,' and notes thereto. Dr.

Stoddart and Napoleon the Great are the persons alluded to. See' also

Hone's ' Buonapartephobia, or the Origin of Dr. Slop's Name,' which had

reached a tenth edition in 1820.
Longinus. On the Sublime, ix.

67. No kind of traffic. Adapted from The Tempest, n. I.

The generations -were prepared. Wordsworth, The Excursion, vi. 554-57.

The unapparent deep. Paradise Lost, VH. 103.

Know to know no more. Cf. Cowper, Truth, 327.

They toiled not. St. Matthew, vi. 28, 29.

In them the burthen. Wordsworth, ' Lines composed a few miles above Tintcrn

Abbey,' 38-41.
Such as angels -weep. Paradise Lost, i. 620.

68. In either hand. Paradise Lost, xn. 637-47.

IV. ON DRYDEN AND POPE

The references throughout are to the Globe Editions of Pope and Dryden.
69-71. The question, whether Pope was a poet. In a slightly different form these
paragraphs appeared in The Edinburgh Magazine, Feb. 1818.

70. The pale reflex of Cynthia s trow. Romeo and yuliet, in. 5.

71. Martha Blount (1690-1762). She was Pope's life-long friend, to whom

he dedicated several poems, and to whom he bequeathed most of his

property.

In Fortune's ray. Troilus and Crestia'a, i. 3.

The gnarled oak . . . the soft myrtle. Measure for Measure, n. 2.
Calm contemplation and poetic ease. Thomson's Autumn, 1275.

72. More subtle web Arachne cannot spin. Faerie S^ueene, II. xn. 77.
Not with more glories. The Rape of the Lock, n. 1-22.

73. From her fair head. Ibid. in. 154.
Now meet thy fate. Ibid. v. 87-96.

The Lutrin of Boileau. Boileau's account of an ecclesiastical dispute over a
reading-desk was published in 1674-81. It was translated into English by
Nicholas Rowe in 1708. The Rape of the Lock was published in 1712-14.

'Tis with our judgments. Essay on Criticism, 9-10.

74. Still green with bays. Ibid. 181-92.

His little bark with theirs should sail. Essay on Man, iv. 383-6. ['My little

bark attendant sail.']
But of the two, etc. Essay en Criticism, See the Round Table, vol. I. p. 41, for

the first mention of these couplets by Hazlitt.

75. There died the best of passions. Eloisa to Abelard, 40.

76. If ever chance. Ibid. 347-8.

He spins [' ciraweth out '] the thread of his verbosity. Love's Labour 's Lest, v. i.

The -very words. Macbeth, i. 3.

Now night descending. The Dunciad, i. 89-90.

Virtue may chuse. Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue i., 137-172.

389

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

PAGE

77. His character of Chartres. Moral Essays, Epistle in.

Where Murray. Imitations of Horace, Epistle vi., To Mr. Murray, 52-3.

William Murray (1704-1793) was created Baron Mansfield in 1756.
Why rail they then. Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue n. 138-9.
Desfise low thoughts [joys]. Imitations of Horace, Epistle vi., To Mr. Murray,

6o-2.

78. Character of Addison. Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 193-214.
Alas! how changed. Moral Essays, Epistle in. 305-8.
Why did I -write? Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 125-146.
Oh, lasting as those colours. Epistle to Mr. Jer-vas, 63-78.

79. Who ha-ue eyes, but they see not. Psalm, cxv. 5, etc.
I lisp' d in numbers. Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 128.

Et quum conabar scribere, -versus erat. Ovid, Trist., iv. x. 25-26.

' Sponte sua numeros carmen veniebat ad aptos ;
Et, quod tentabam dicere, versus erat.'

80. Besides these jolly birds. The Hind and the Panther, m. 991-1025. ['Whose

crops impure.']

8 1 . The jolly God. Alexander's Feast, or the po-wer of music : A song in honour

of St. Cecilia's Day 1697, 49-52. A few phrases from this criticism were
used in the Essay on Mr. Wordsworth, The Spirit of the Age (vol. iv. p. 276).
For for, as piece, read for, as a piece.

82. The best character of Shakespeare. Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy, ed. Ker,

I. 79-80.

Tancred and Sigismunda. i.e. Sigismonda and Guiscardo.
Thou gladder of the mount. Palamon and Arcite, in. 145.

83. Donne. John Donne (1573-1631), whose life was written by Izaak Walton,

and whom Ben Jonson described as 'the first poet in the world in some
things,' but who would not live 'for not being understood.'

Waller. Edmund Waller's (1605-1687) Saccharissa was Lady Dorothy Sidney,
daughter of the Earl of Leicester.

Marvel. Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), 'poet, patriot, and friend of
Milton.'

Harsh, as the -words of Mercury. [' The words of Mercury are harsh after the
songs of Apollo.'] Lo-ve'i Labour's Lost, v. 2.

Rochester. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680).

Denham. Sir John Denham (1615-1669). His Cooper's Hill was published
in 1642.

Withers. George Wither (1588-1667). See Lamb's Essay on the Poetical
Works of George Wither. Poems, Plays, and Essays, ed. Ainger. The lines
quoted by Hazlitt are from 'The Shepheards' Hunting,' (1615). ['To be
pleasing ornaments.' ' Let me never taste of gladnesse.']

V. ON THOMSON AND COWPER

85. Dr. Johnson makes it his praise. ' It is said by Lord Lyttelton, in the Prologue

to his posthumous play, that his works contained "no line which, dying,

he could wish to blot." ' Life of Thomson.
Bub Doddington. George Bubb Dodington (1691-1762), one of Browning's

'persons of importance in their day.' His Diary was published in

1784.
Would he had blotted a thousand ! Said by Ben Jonson of Shakespeare, in his

Timber.

39°

NOTES

PAGE

86. Cannot be constrained by mastery.

' Love will not submit to be controlled
By mastery.'

Wordsworth, The Excursion, vi.
Come, gentle Sfring ! ' Spring,' i -4.
And see -where surly Winter. Ibid. 11-25.

88. A man of genius. Coleridge. See Hazlitt's Essay, ' My First Acquaintance

with the Poets.'

A burnished fy. The Castle of Indolence, i. 64. [' In prime of June.']
For -whom the merry bells. Ibid. i. 62.
All -was one full-swelling bed. Ibid. i. 33.
The stock-do-ve' s plaint. Ibid. i. 4.
The effects of the contagion. 'Summer,' 1040-51.
Of the frequent corse. Ibid. 1048-9.
Breath' d hot. 7^/^.961-979.

89. The inhuman rout. ' Autumn,' 439-44.
There through the prison. ' Winter," 799-809.
Where pure Numfs fairy mountains rise. Ibid. 875-6.
The traveller lost in the snow. Ibid. 925-35.

90. Through the hush'd air. Ibid. 229-64.

Enf eld's Speaker. The Speaker, or Miscellaneous Pieces selected from the best
English Writers, 1775, and often reprinted. By William Enfield, LL.D.,
(1741-1797).

Palemon and La-vinia. 'Autumn,' 177-309.

Damon and Musidora. 'Summer,' 1267-1370.

Celadon and Amelia . Ibid. 1171-1222.

91. 0-verrun ivitk the spleen. Cf. ' The lad lay swallow' d up in spleen.' — Swift's

Cassinus and Peter, a Tragical Elegy, 1731.

Unbought grace. Burke's Reflections on the French Re-volution : Select Works,
ed. Payne, n. 89.

92. His Vashti. The Task, in. 715.

Crazy Kate, etc. The Task, i. 534, et seq.

Loud hissing urn. Ibid. iv. 38.

The night was -winter. Ibid. vi. 57-117.

94. The first -volume of Cowper's poems. This was published in 1782, and contained

Table Talk, The Progress of Error, Truth, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, Con-
versation, Retirement, etc.

The proud and humble believer. Truth, 58-70.

Ton cottager. Truth, 317-36.

But if, unblamable in -word and thought. Hope, 622-34.

95. Robert Bloomfield (1766-1823). The Farmer's Boy was written in a London

garret. It was published in 1800, and rapidly became popular.

96. Thomson, in describing the same image. The Seasons, 'Spring,' 833-45.

While yet the year. ['As yet the trembling year is unconfirm'd.'] The Seasons,
'Spring,' 1 8.

97. Burn's Justice. Justice of the Peace, by Richard Burn (1709-1785), the first

of many editions of which was issued in two vols., 1755.
Wean cruel garters. Tweljth Night, n. 5. ['Cross-gartered.']
A panopticon. Jeremy Bentham's name for his method of prison supervision.

See The Spirit of the Age, vol. in., note to p. 197.
The latter end of his Common-wealth [does not] Jorget[s] the beginning. The

Tempest, n. I.

98. Mother Hubbercfs Tale. Prosopopcia, or Mother Hubberfs Tale.

39 »

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

PAG*

98. The Oak and the Briar. ' Februarie,' in The Shepheard's Calender.

Broivne. William Browne (1591-? 1643), pastoral poet. His chief work
was Britannia's Pastorals (1613-6).

Withers. See note to p. 83, ante. The family name is occasionally spelt
Withers though the poet is generally known as Wither.

The shepherd boy piping. Book i, chap. ii.

Like Nicholas Poussin's picture. See Hazlitt's Essay ' On a Landscape by
Nicolas Poussin' in Table Talk, vol. vi. p. 168, et seq.

Sannaxarius's Piscatory Eclogues. lacopo Sannazaro's (1458-1530) Piscatory
Eclogues, translated by Rooke, appeared in England in 1726. See The Round
Table, vol. i. p. 56, ' On John Buncle,' for a similar passage on Walton.
99. A fair and happy milk-maid. The quotation of the 'Character' from Sir
Thomas Overbury's Wife was contributed to the notes to Walton's Complete
Angler by Sir Henry Ellis, editor of Bagster's edition, 1815. He took it
from the twelfth edition, 1627, of Sir Thomas Overbury's book. The
following passages may be added between ' curfew ' and 'her breath' to
make the note as quoted perfect : — 'In milking a cow, and straining the
teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk press makes the
milk the whiter or sweeter ; for never came almond glue or aromatic oint-
ment of her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her
feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and led prisoners
by the same hand that felled them."

100. T-wo quarto -volumes. John Home Tooke's Diversions of Purley was published
in two volumes, 410, in 1786-1805. See The Spirit of the Age, vol. iv. p.
231, on 'The Late Mr. Home Tooke.'

The heart of his mystery. Hamlet, in. 2.

Rousseau in his Confessions . . . a little spot of green. Part I. Book in. See
The Round Table, ' On the Love of the Country,' and notes thereto, vol. i.
p. 17, et. seq. The greater part of that letter was used for the purposes of
this lecture.

102. Expatiates freely. Pope's Essay on Man, Epis. i. 5.

Mrs. Radclffi's romances. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), author of The Romance
of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and other popular
stories of sombre mystery and gloom.

103. My heart leaps up. Wordsworth.

[' So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die !

The Child is father of the Man ;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.']

Ah ! -voila de la per-venche. Confessions, Part I. Book vi.
That -wandering -voice. Wordsworth. To the Cuckoo.

VI. ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

104. Parnell. Thomas Parnell (1679-1717). His poems were published by Pope,

and his life was written by Goldsmith.

Arbuthnot. John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), physician and writer. He had the
chief share in the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, which was published
amongst Pope's works in 1741. His History of John Bull was published
in 1712.

105. Trim. . . . the old jack-boots. Tristram Shandy, m. 20.

392

NOTES

PAGE

106. Prior. Matthew Prior (1664-1721), diplomatist and writer of 'occasional*

verse. See Thackeray's English Humourists.

Sedley. Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701), Restoration courtier and poet.
Little Will. An English Ballad on the taking of Namur by the King of

Great Britain, 1695.

107. Gay. John Gay (1685-1732), the author of Fables, The Beggar's Opera, so

often quoted by Hazlitt, and Black-eyed Susan. Polly was intended as a
sequel to The Beggar's Opera, but it was prohibited from being played,
though permitted to be printed. See The Round Table, The Beggar's Opera,
and notes thereto. That Essay was used as part of the present lecture.

Happy alchemy of mind. See The Round Table, vol. i., p. 65. Cf. also
Lamb's essay, 'The Londoner,' Morning Post, Feb. I, 1802 : 'Thus an art
of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a town life, is
attained by the same well-natured alchemy, with which the Foresters of
Arden,' etc.

O'ersteptoing [not] the modesty of nature. Hamlet, in. 2.

1 08. Miss Hannah More's laboured invectives. Thoughts on the Importance of the

Manners of the Great to General Society, 1788, and An Estimate of the
Religion of the Fashionable World, 1790. Each passed through several edi-
tions before the close of the century. Of the first named, the third edition
is stated to have been sold out in four hours.

Sir Richard Blackmore. Court physician to William and Anne. He died in
1729, after having written six epics in sixty books.

109. Mr. Jekylfs parody. Joseph Jekyll (1754-1837), Master of Chancery.

The parody was published in the Morning Chronicle, Friday, Aug. 19,
1809.

A City Shower. See The Tatler, No. 238.

no. Mary the cookmaid . . . Mrs. Harris. 'Mary the Cook-maid's letter to Dr.
Sheridan,' 1723, which begins thus : —

' Well, if ever I saw such another man since my mother bound my head !
You a gentleman ! marry come up ! I wonder where you were bred."

'Mrs. Harris's Petition,' 1699, after the preliminaries —

' Humbly sheweth,

That I went to warm myself in Lady Betty's chamber, because I was cold ;
And I had in a purse seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence, besides
farthings, in money and gold.'

Rector of Laracor. Swift was appointed to the vicarage of Laracor, Trim,

West Meath, Ireland, in 1700.
Gulliver's nurse. In the Voyage to Brobdingnag.
An eminent critic. Jeffrey's article on Scott's Swift, Edinburgh Review,

No. 53, Sept. 1816, vol. xxvii. pp. I et seq.

112. Shews vice her own image. [To shew virtue her own feature, scorn her own

image.] Hamlet, in. 2.

Indignaiio facit versus. [Facit indignatio versum.] Juvenal, Sat. 1. 79.
As dry as the remainder biscuit. As You Like It, 11. 7.
Reigned there and revelled. Paradise Lost, iv. 765.
As riches fineless. Othello, in. 3.

113. Camacho's "wedding. Part 11. chap. xx.

Hou> Friar John . . . lays about him. Gargantua, Book I., chap, xxvii.
How Panurge -whines in the storm. Pantagruel, Book iv. chap, xix., et seq.
How Gargantua mewls. Gargantua, Book I., chap. vii.

393

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

PAGE

113. The pieces of silver money in the Arabian Nights, The Story of the Barber's

Fourth Brother.
Mortal consequences. Macbeth, v. 3.

114. The dull product of a scoffer's pen. Wordsworth's Excursion, Book n.
Nothing can touch him further. Macbeth, HI. 2.

Voltaire's Traveller. See Histoire des Voyages de Scarmentado.
Be •wise to-day. Night Thoughts, i. 390-433.

115. Zanga is a -vulgar caricature of it. Cf. Characters of Shakespeare's Plays,

' Othello,' vol. i. p. 209. Edward Young's (1683-1765) Revenge was first
acted in 1721.

116. We poets in our youth. Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence, 8.

Read the account of Collins. See Johnson's life of him in his English Poets,
where the eighth verse of the ' Ode to Evening ' is as follows : —

' Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene,
Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose Walls more awful nod,
By thy religious gleams.'
And the last : —

* So long regardful of thy quiet rule,
Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace,
Thy gentlest influence own,
And love thy favourite name ! '

118. Hammond. James Hammond (1710-1741). See Johnson's Lives of the Poets.

He seems to have died of love. His Love Elegies, in imitation of Tibullus,

were published posthumously.
Mr. Coleridge (in his Literary Life). See ed. Bohn, p. 19. ' [I] felt almost as

if I had been newly couched, when by Mr. Wordsworth's conversation, I

had been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Gray's celebrated

Elegy.'

The still sad music of humanity, Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey,
Be mine . . . to read eternal new romances. Letter to Richard West, Thursday,

April 1742.
Don't you remember Lords and . Letter to Richard West, May 27,

1742.
Shenstone. William Shenstone (1714-1763), the 'water-gruel bard ' of Horace

Walpole.

119. Akenside. Mark Akenside (1721-1770), physician and poet. The Pleasures

of the Imagination was begun in his eighteenth year, and was first published

in 1744.
Armstrong. John Armstrong (1709-1779), also physician and poet, whose

Art of Preserving Health,* poem in four books, was also published in 1744.
Churchill. Charles Churchill (1731-1764), satirist. His Rosciad, in which

the chief actors of the time were taken off, was published in 1761. The

Prophecy of Famine, a Scots Pastoral, inscribed to John Wilkes, Esq., in

which the Scotch are ridiculed, appeared in 1763.
Green. Matthew Green (1696-1737). The Spleen (1737).
Dyer. John Dyer (? 1700-1758), Grongar Hilt (1727). See Johnson's Lives

of the Poets and Wordsworth's Sonnet to him.
His lot [feasts] though small. The Traveller.
And turn'd and look'd. The Deserted Village, 370. ' Return'd and wept and

still return'd to weep.'

120. Mr. Listen. John Listen (1776-1846).

394

NOTES

PAGE

120. His character of a country schoolmaster. In The Deserted Village.

Warton. Thomas Warton (1728-1790), author of The History of English

Poetry (1774-81). He succeeded William Whitehead as poet laureate.
Tedious and brief. All's Well that Ends Well, n. 3, etc.

122. Chatterton. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770). The verse of Wordsworth's

quoted is in Resolution and Independence.

Dr. Miiles, etc. Dr. Jeremiah Milles (1713-1784), whom Coleridge described
as 'an owl mangling a poor dead nightingale.' See Sir Herbert Croft's
(1751-1816) Love and Madness, Letter 51 (1780). Vicesimus Knox, D.D.
(1752-1821), author of many volumes of Essays, Sermons, etc.

VII. ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

123. Unpacked of motion. See vol. iv., note to p. 42.

Anderson. Robert Anderson, M.D. (1751-1830), editor and biographer of
British Poets.

Mr. Malone. Edmond Malone (1741-1812), the Shakespearian editor. He
did not believe in the 'antiquity' of Chatterton's productions. See his
'Cursory Observations on the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley,' 1782.

Dr. Gregory. George Gregory, D.D. (1754-1808), author of The Life of
Thomas Chatterton, "with Criticisms on his Genius and Writings, and a concise
•view of the Contro-versy concerning Rowley's Poems. 1789.

124. Annibal Caracci. Annibale Caracci (1560-1609), painter of the Farnese

Gallery at Rome.

Essays, p. 144. The reference should be to Dr. Knox's Essay, No. ex LI v.,
not p. 144 (vol. iii. p. 206, 1787).

127. He "was like a man made after supper. 2 King Henry IV., III. 2.

Some one said. Cf. Hazlitt's Essay, ' Of Persons one would wish to have seen,'
where Burns's hand, held out to be grasped, is described as 'in a burning fever.'
Made him poetical. As Tou Like It, HI. 2.
Create a soul under the ribs of death. Comus, 562.

128. A brazen candlestick tuned. I King Henry IV., in. I.
In a letter to Mr. Gray. January 1816.

Via goodman Dull. Love's Labour 's Lost, v. i .

129. Out upon this half-faced fellowship. I King Henry IV., I. 3.
As my Uncle Toby. Tristram Shandy, Book vi., chap, xxxii.

Drunk full after. Chaucer's The Clerkes Tale. 'Wei ofter of the welle than

of the tonne she drank.'

The act and practique part. King Henry V., i. I.
Thefy that sips treacle. The Beggar's Opera, 11. 2.

131. In a poetical epistle. To a friend who had declared his intention of writing no

more poetry.

Self-love and social. Pope's Essay on Man, iv. 396.
Himself alone. 3 King Henry VI., v. 6.
If the species -were continued like trees. Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici,

Part n.
This, this -was the unkindest cut. Juliuf Caesar, in. 2.

132. Launce's account of his dog Crabbe. Two Gentlemen of Verona, iv. 4.
135. Tarn o' Shanter. [For ' light cotillon,' read ' cotillon, brent.']
137. The bosom of its Father. Gray's Elegy.

The Cotter's Saturday Night. [For 'carking cares,' read ' kiaugh and care.']^

139. The true pathos and sublime of human life. Burns, ' Epistle to Dr. Blacklock."

140. 0 gin my love. [' O my luv's like a red, red rose.']

395

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

PAGE

140. Thoughts that often lie. Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality.
Singing the ancient ballad of Ronces-valles. Part II., Chap. IX.

141. Archbishop Herring. Thomas Herring (1693-1757), Archbishop of Canter-

bury. Letters to William Buncombe, Esq., 1728-1757 (1777), Letter xn.,
Sept. n, 1739.

Auld Robin Gray . . . Lady Ann Bothivelf 's lament. Lady Anne Barnard
(1750-1825) did not acknowledge her authorship of 'Auld Robin Gray' (to
Sir Walter Scott) until 1823.

142. 0 ivaly, ivaly. This ballad was first published in Allan Ramsay's Tea Table

Miscellany, 1724.

[i. 8. ' Sae my true love did lichtlie me.'

n. 5-8. ' O wherefore should I busk my heid,

Or wherefore should I kame my hair ?
For my true love has me forsook,
And says he '11 never lo'e me mair.'

in. 2, 8. ' The sheets sail ne'er be press'd by me
For of my life I am wearie.'

v. 7-8. ' And I mysel' were dead and gane,

And the green grass growing over me ! ' ]

William Allingham's Ballad Book, p. 41.

The Braes of Yarrow. By William Hamilton, of Bangour (1704-1754).

143. Turner's History of England. Sharon Turner (1768-1847), History of England

from the Norman Conquest to the Death of 'Elizabeth (1814-1823). The story
is a pretty one, but the Eastern lady was not the mother of the Cardinal.
jf. H. Reynolds. John Hamilton Reynolds (1796-1852).

VIII. ON THE LIVING POETS

143. JVb more talk where God or angel guest. Paradise Lost, ix. 1-3.

146. The Darivins, the Hayleys^the Bernards. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), grand-

father of Charles Darwin, and author of The Loves of the Plants (1789), a
poem parodied by Frere in The Anti-Jacobin as ' The Loves of the Triangles.'
William Hay ley (1745-1820), who wrote The Triumphs of Temper and a
Life ofCoivper. Anna Seward (1747-1809), the 'Swan of Lichfield.' She
wrote poetical novels, sonnets and a life of Dr. Darwin.

Face-making. Hamlet, in. 2.

Mrs. Inchbald. Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821), novelist, dramatist and
actress.

Thank the Gods. Cf. As You Like it, in. 3.

Mrs. Leicester's School. Ten narratives, seven by Mary, three by Charles,
Lamb (1807).

The next three volumes of the Tales of My Landlord. The Heart of Midlothian
(second series of the Tales') was published in 1818, and the third series,
consisting of The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose, in 1819.

147. Mrs. Barbauld. Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825), daughter of the Rev.

John Aitken, D.D., joint-author, with her brother John Aitken, of Evenings
at Home.

Mrs. Hannah More (1745-1833). Her verses and sacred dramas were
published in the first half of her life : she gradually retired from London
society, and this may have led to Hazlitt's doubtful remark as to her being
still in life.

396

NOTES

PAGE

147. Miss Baillie. Joanna Baillie (1762-1851). Count Basil is one of her Plays

of the Passions (1798-1802), and is concerned with the ' passion ' of love.

De Montfort was acted at Drury Lane in 1800 by Mrs. Siddons and

Kemble.
Remorse, Bertram, and lastly Fazio. Coleridge's Remorse (1813), for twenty

nights at Drury Lane. C. R. Maturin's Bertram (1816), successful at

Drury lane. Dean Milman's Fazio (1815), acted at Bath and then at

Covent Garden.

A man of no mark, I King Henry If., in. 2.
Make mouths [in them]. Hamlet, iv. 3.
Mr. Rogers't Pleasures of Memory. Published in 1792.
The Election. Genest says it was performed for the third time on June 10,

1817.

148. The Delia Cruscan. The sentimental and affected style, initiated in 1785 by

some English residents at Florence, and extinguished by Giffbrd's satire in
the Ba-viad (1794), anc' Maeviad (1796).
To show that power of love

* He knows who gave that love sublime,
And gave that strength of feeling great
Above all human estimate.'

Wordsworth's Fidelity.

149. CampbelFs Pleasures of Hope. Published in 1799, Gertrude of Wyoming in 1809.
Some hamlet shade. Pleasures of Hope, I. 309-10.

Curiosa infelicitas. ' Curiosa felicitas Horatii.' Petronius Arbiter, § 118.

Of outward show elaborate. Paradise Lost, vm. 538.

Tutus nimium, timidusque procellarum. Horace, De Arte Poet., 128.

150. Like morning brought by night. Gertrude of Wyoming, i. xiii.

Like Angel? -visits. Pleasures of Hope, Part II., 1. 378. Cf. The Spirit of the

Age, vol. in. p. 346.
Nee Deus inter sit, nisi dignus -vindice nodus. Horace, De Arte Poetica, 191.

151. So -work the honey-bees. Henry V., i. 2.

Around him the bees. From the Sixth Song in The Beggar's Opera.
Perilous stuff. Macbeth, v. 3.

152. Nest of spicery. King Richard III., iv. 4.

Therefore to be possessed with double pomp. King John, IV. 2.

153. Nook monastic. As Tou Like It, HI. 2.

He hath a demon. Cf. ' He hath a devil,' St. John x. 20.
House on the wild sea. Coleridge's The Piccolomini, i. iv. 1 17.

154. Looks on tempests. Shakespeare's Sonnets, cxvi.
Great princes' favourites. Shakespeare's Sonnets, xxv.

155. Their mortal consequences. Macbeth, v. 3.

The warriors in the Lady of the Lake. Canto v. 9.
The Goblin Page. Canto n. 31.

Mr. Westaffs pictures. Richard Westall (1765-1836). He designed numerous
drawings to illustrate Milton, Shakespeare, Scott, etc.

156. Robinson Crusoe's boat. The Surprising Ad-ventures of Robinson Crusoe, p. 138,

ed. G. A. Aitken.
/ did what little I could. Hazlitt reviewed The Excursion m The Examiner

(see The Round Table, vol. i. pp. 111-125).
162. Coryate't Crudites. Hastily gabled up in Five MonetAs' Tra-vells in France, etc.

(1611), by Thomas Coryate (? 1577-1617).
The present poet-laureate. Southey.
Neither butress nor coign of -vantage. Macbeth, i. 6.

397

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

PAGE

162. Born so high. King Richard HI., i. 3.

In their train [' his livery '] "walked croivns. Antony and Cleopatra, \. z.

163. Meek daughters. Coleridge's The Eolian Harp.

Owls and night-ravens jle<w. Cf. Titus Andronicus, n. 3. * The nightly owl

or fatal raven.'

Degrees, priority, and place. Troilus and Cressida, i. 3.
Nojigurei nor no fantasies. Julius Caesar, 11. I.
[No] trivial fond records. Hamlet, i. v.

The marshal's truncheon, and the next quotation. Measure for Measure, n. 2.
Metre ballad-mongering. i King Henry IV., in. I.
The bare trees and mountains bare. Wordsworth, ' To my Sister.'
He hates conchology. See The Spirit of the Age, vol. iv. p. 277.

164. The Anti-Jacobin Review. Not The Anti-Jacobin Review (1798-1821) but

The Anti-Jacobin, wherein will be found Canning and Frere's parodies, the

best-known of which is the one on Southey's The Widow, entitled ' The

Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.'
When Adam delved. See Political Essays, 'Wat Tyler,' Vol. in. pp. 192 et

seq., and notes thereto.

The Rejected Addresses. By Horace and James Smith (1812).
Sir Richard Blackmore. See p. 108 and note thereto ante.

1 66. Is there here any dear friend of Caesar? Julius Caesar, in. 2.

Conceive of poetry. 'Apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken
sleep 5 careless, reckless, and fearless of what *s past, present, or to come,'
Measure for Measure, iv. 2.

It might seem insidious. Probably a misprint for * invidious.'

167. Schiller! that hour.

[' Lest in some after moment aught more mean . . .
Diminished shrunk from the more withering scene.']

His Condones ad Populum. Two addresses against Pitt, 1795, republished in

'Essays on his Own Times.'
The Watchman. A Weekly Miscellany lasted from March i, 1796, to May

13, 1796.
His Friend. Coleridge's weekly paper lived from June i, 1809, to March 15,

1 8 10.
What though the radiance. Intimations of Immortality.

[' Of splendour in the grass ; of glory in the flower ;
We will grieve not, rather find.']

NOTES ON LECTURES ON THE AGE
OF ELIZABETH

I. GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT

170. Add, to the Bibliographical Note : 'The volume was printed by B. M'Millan,
Bow Street, Covent Garden.'

175. Coke. Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), the jurist.

176. Mere oblivion. As You Like It, n. 7.

Poor, poor dumb names [mouths.] Julius Caesar, in. 2.
Webster. John Webster (?d. 1625).
Deckar. Thomas Dekker (c. 1570-^. 1637).
Marston. John Marston (? 1575-1634).

398

NOTES

PAGE

176. Marlow. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593).
Chapman. George Chapman (? 1559-1634).
Heywood. Thomas Hey wood (c. i575-f. 1641).
Middleton. Thomas Middleton (c. 1570-1627).
Jonson. Ben Jonson (1572/3-1637).
Beaumont. Francis Beaumont (1584-1616).
Fletcher. John Fletcher (1579-1625).

Rowley. William Rowley (c. 1585-^. 1642) is chiefly remembered as a

collaborator with the better-known Elizabethan Dramatists.
How lov'd, how honoured once. Pope's Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate

Lady.
Draw the curtain of time. Cf. Twelfth Night, i. 5. 'Draw the curtain and

shew you the picture.'
Of poring pedantry. « Of painful pedantry the poring child.' Warton :

Sonnet "written in a blank leaf of Dugdale' s Monasticon.

177. The sacred influence of light. Paradise Lost, 11. 1034.
Pomp of elder days. Warton's sonnet referred to above.

Nor can we think what thoughts. Dry den's The Hind and the Panther, i. 315.

178. Think . . . there's livers out of Britain. Cymbeline, in. 4.

By nature's own sweet and cunning hand. Twelfth Night, i. 5.

Where Pan, knit with the Graces [' while universal Pan.'] Paradise Lost, iv.

266.
There are more things bet-ween [in] heaven and earth. Hamlet, i. 5.

179. Matchless, divine, what we -will. Pope, Imitations of Horace, Epis. i.,

Book ii. 70.

1 80. Less than smallest dwarfs. Paradise Lost, i. 779.
Desiring this man's art. Shakspeare's Sonnets, xxiv. 7.

In shape and gesture proudly eminent. Paradise Lost, i. 590.
Hit soul was like a star. Wordsworth's London, 1802.

1 8 1. Drew after him. Paradise Lost, n. 692.

Otway . . . Venice Preserved. Thomas Otway's (1651-85) play was

published in 1682.
Jonson's learned sock. Milton's L* Allegro.

183. To run and read. Habakkuk,\\. 2.
Penetrable stuff. Hamlet, in. 4.

My peace I give unto you [' not as the world giveth.'] S. John, xiv. 27.
That they should love one another. Ibid. xv. 1 2.

184. Woman behold thy son. Ibid. xix. 26-7.
To the Jews, i Cor. I. 23.

185. Soft as sinews of the new-born babe. Hamlet, in. 3.

The best of men. Dekker's The Honest Whore. Part i. Act v. 2.

1 86. Tasso by Fairfax. Edward Fairfax's translation of Jerusalem Delivered was

published in 1600.
Ariosto by Harrington. Sir John Harington's translation of Orlando Furioso

was published in 1591.
Homer and Hesiod by Chapman. A part of George Chapman's translation of

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey appeared in 1598 and the rest at various dates to

1615 ; Hesiod in 1618.
Virgil long before. Possibly Gawin Douglas's version of the Mneid (1512-

53) is in mind.

Ovid soon after. (?) Arthur Gelding's Ovid (1565-75).
North's translation of Plutarch. In 1579, by Sir Thomas North.
Catiline and Sejanus. Acted in 1611 and 1603 respectively.

399

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

PAGE

186. The satirist Aretine. Pietro Aretino (1492-1557), the 'Scourge of Princes.'
Machiavel. The Arte of Warre and The Florentine Historie appeared in

English in 1560 and 1594 respectively.
Castiglione, Count Baldasare Castiglione's // Cortegiano, a Manual for

Courtiers, was translated in 1561 by Sir Thomas Hoby.
Ronsard. Pierre de Ronsard (1524-85), ' Prince of Poets.'
Du Bartas. Guillaume de Saluste Seigneur du Bartas (1544-1590), soldier,

statesman and precursor of Milton as a writer on the theme of creation.

His ' Diuine Weekes and Workes" were Englished in 1592 and later by 'yt

famous Philomusus,' Joshua Sylvester (1563-1618). See Dr. Grosart's

edition of his works.

187. Fortunate fields and groves, etc. Paradise Lost, in. 568-70.

Prosperous Enchanted Island. Modern editors give Eden's History of Travayle,

1577, as the probable source of Setebos, etc.
Right -well I-wote. The Faerie Sjueene, Stanzas i.-m.

1 88. Lear . . . old ballad. Or rather from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia

Britonum, c. 1 1 30. The ballad of King Leir (Percy's Reliques) is probably

of later date than Shakespeare.
Othello . , . Italian novel. The Heccatommithi of Giraldi Cinthio. The

work may have been known in England through a French translation.
Those bodiless creations. Hamlet, HI. 4.
Tour face, my Thane. Macbeth, i. 5.
Tyrrel and Forrest. In King Richard III.

189. Thick and slab. Macbeth, iv. I.

Snatched a [wild and] fearful joy. Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton

College.
The great pestilence of Florence. In 1348. The plague forms but the artificial

framework of the tales ; to escape it certain Florentines retire to a country

house and, in its garden, they tell the tales that form the book.
The course of true love never did run even [smooth.] A Midsummer Nighfs

Dream, 1. 1.
The age of chivalry. ' The age of chivalry is gone . . . and the glory of

Europe is extinguished for ever." Burke's Reflections on the French

Re-volution. Select Works, ed. Payne, 11. 89.
The gentle Surrey. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1517-1547) whose

Songs and Sonnets are in Tottel's Miscellany (1557).
Sir John Suckling, 1609-42. Besides writing A bal'ad upon a -wedding Sir

John was the best player at bowls in the country and he ' invented '

cribbage.

Who prized black eyes. The Session of the Poets, Ver. 20.
Like strength reposing. ' 'Tis might half slumbering on it own right arm.'

Keats' Sleep and Poetry, 237.

190. They heard the tumult. Cowper's The Task, iv. 99-100.

'I behold

The tumult and am still.'
Fletcher's Noble Kinsmen. The Two Noble Kinsmen, 1634. Although

Fletcher was certainly one of the two authors of the play, it is not known

who was the other. Scenes have been attributed, with some probability, to

Shakespeare.

The Returne from Parnassus. 1606. See post, p. 280.
It snowed of meat and drink. Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 345.
As Mr. Lamb observes. Cf. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, Lamb's

note attached to Marston's What you -will,

400

NOTES

PAGE

191. In act and complement [compliment] extern. Othello, i. i.
Description of a madhouse. In The Honest Whore, Part I. Act v. 2.

A Mad World, my Masters. The title of one of Middleton's comedies

1608.
Like birdlime, brains and all. Othello, n. I.

' My invention

Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frize ;
It plucks out brains and all.'

192. But Pan is a God. Lyly's Midas, Act iv. i.
Materiam superabat opus. Ovid, Met., u. 5.

II. ON LYLY, MARLOW, ETC.

It is not possible to give references to thoroughly satisfactory texts of the
Elizabethan dramatists for the simple reason that, unfortunately, few exist. For
reading purposes the volumes of select plays in ' The Mermaid Series ' and a few
single plays in ' The Temple Dramatists ' may be mentioned.
PAGE

192. The rich strand. The Faerie S^ueene, in. iv. 20, 34.

193. Rich as the cozy bottom. King Henry V., i. 2. ['sunken wreck.']
Majestic though in ruin. Paradise Lost, n. 300.

The Cave of Mammon. The Faerie Queene, n. vii. 29.
New-born gauds, etc. Troilus and Cressida, in. 3.

Ferrex and Porrex. By Thomas Norton (1532-1584), and Thomas Sackville,
Lord Buckhurst (1536-1608). Acted Jan. 18, 1561-2.

194. No figures nor no fantasies. Julius Caesar, n. I.

195. Sir Philip Sidney says. In his Apologiefor Poetrie.

196. Mr. Pope . . says. See Spence, Letter to the Earl of Middlesex, prefixed to

Dodsley's edition of Gorboduc.

His Muse. Thomas Sackville wrote the Induction (1563).
John Lyly. The Euphuist (c. 1554-1606), a native of the Kentish Weald.

Midas (1592), Endymion (1591), Alexander and Campaspe (1584), Mother

Bombie (1594).

198. Poor, unfledged. Cymbeline, in. 3.

Very [most] tolerable. Much Ado about Nothing, in. 3.
Grating their lean and jlashy jtsts. Lycidas, 123-4.

'their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.'

Bobadil. Captain Bobadil, in Every Man in his Humour.

199. The -very reeds b<rw down. Act iv. 2.
Out of my -weakness. Hamlet, n. 2.
It is silly sooth. Tioelfth Night, n. 4.

201. Did first reduce. Elegy to Henry Reynolds, Esquire, 91 et seq.

Euphues and his England. Euphues : The Anatomy of Wit, appeared in 1579
and Euphues and his England the year following. They may be read in
Arber's reprint.

Pan and Apollo. Midas, iv. I.

202. Note. Marlowe died in 1593. He was stabbed in a tavern quarrel at

Deptford.
Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. Printed 1604, 1616. See the editions of

VOL. V. : 2 C 4OI

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

PAGE

Dr. A. W. Ward and Mr. Israel Gollancz. The latter is a 'contamination'
of the two texts.

202. Fate and metaphysical aid. Macbeth, i. 5.

203. With uneasy steps. Paradise Lost, i. 295.
Such footing [resting.] Paradise Lost, i. 237-8.

How am I glutted. Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Scene i. [public schools
with silk.]

205. What is gj eat Mephostophilis. Scene m.
My heart is harden'd. Scene vi.

Was this the face f Scene xvn.

206. Oh, Fausius. Scene xix.

Yet, for he was a scholar. And the next quotation. Scene xx.

207. Oh, gentlemen ? Scene xix.

Snails ! what hast got there, Cf. Scene vni.

' Come, what dost thou with that same book ?
Thou can'st not read."

As Mr. Lamb says. Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, ed.

Gollancz, Vol. i. p. 43. (Published originally in 1808).
Lust's Dominion. Published 1657. The view now seems to be that Dekker

had a hand in it : in the form in which we have it it cannot be Marlowe's.

See also W. C. Hazlitt's Manual of Old Plays, 1892.
Put-fellow [pew-fellow.] Richard III, iv. 4.
The argument of Schlegel. Cf. Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (Bohn,

1846), pp. 442-4.
108. What, do none rise? Act v. I.

Marlowe's mighty line. The phrase is Ben Jonson's, in his lines ' To the

Memory of my Beloved Master William Shakespeare, and what he hath

left us,' originally prefixed to the First Folio of Shakespeare, 1623.
/ know he is not dead. Lust's Dominion, i. 3.

Hang both your greedy ears, and the next quotation. Ibid. Act n. 2.
Tyrants swim safest. Act v. 3.
209. Oh! I grow dull. Act in. 2.

And none of you. King John, v. 7.

Now by the proud complexion. Lust's Dominion, Act in. 4.

But I that am. Antony and Cleopatra, i. 5.

These dignities. Lust's Dominion, Act v. 5.

Now tragedy. Act v. 6.

Spaniard or Moor. Act v. i.

And hang a cal-ve's [calf 'i] skin. King John, in. I.

The rich Jew of Malta. The Jew of Malta, acted 1588.

209. Note Falstajf. Cf. 'minions of the moon,' i King Henry IV., \. z.

210. The relation. Act n. 3.

As the morning lark. Act II. I .

In spite of these swine-eating Christians. Act 11. 3.

One of Shy lock's speeches. Merchant of Venice, Act i. 3.

211. Edward II. 1594.

ffeef'st thou already ? Act v. 5.
The King and Ga-veston. Cf. Act i. i.
The lion and the forest deer. Act v. i.
The Song. See p. 298 and note.

212. A Woman killed with Kindness. 1603.
Oh, speak no more. Act 11. 3.

402

NOTES

PAGE

212. Cold drops of sweat. Act in. 2.
Astonishment. Act iv. 4.

213. In-visible, or dimly seen. Paradise Lost, v. 157.
Fair, and of all beloved. Act u. 3.

The affecting remonstrance. Act v. 5.

The Stranger. Benjamin Thompson's (1776 ?-i8i6) translation of Kotzebue's

(1761-1819) Menschenhass und Reue.
Sir Giles Over-reach. In Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts.

214. This is no -world in which to pity men. A Woman killed -with Kindness* Act HI

3 (ed. Dr. Ward).
His own account. See his address 'To the Reader' in The English Traveller,

printed 1633.

The Royal King and Loyal Subject. 1637.
A Challenge for Beauty. 1636.
Shipwreck by Drink. Act n. I.
Fair Quarrel. 1617.
A Woman never Vexed. 1632.
Women beware Women. 1657.

215. She holds the mother in suspense. Act n. 2.
Did not the Duke look up f Act i. 3.

216. How near am I. Act in. I.

218. The Witch. No date can be given for this play.

The moon 's a gal/ant. Act HI. 3. ['If we have not mortality after 't '] [' leave

me to walk here.']
220. What death is 't you desire? Act v. 2.

222. Mr. Lamb's Observations. The same extract from the Specimens is quoted

in Characters of Shakespear's Plays, vol. i. p. 194 [cannot co-exist with
mirth.]

III. ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, ETC.

223. Blown stifling back. Paradise Lost, xi. 313.

224. Monsieur Kmsayder. This was the nom-de-plume under which John Marston

published his Scourge o/ Villanie, 1598.
Oh ancient Knights. Sir John Harington's translation of Orlando Furioso

was published in 1591.
Antonio and Mellida. 1602.

225. Half a page of Italian rhymes. Part I. Act iv.
Each man takes hence life. Part I. Act HI.

225. What you Will. 1607.
Who still slept. Act n. i.

Par asit aster and Malcontent. Parasitaster ; or The Fawn, 1606. The Mal-
content, 1604.

226. Is nothing, if not critical. Othello, n. I.

We "would be private. The Fawn, Act n. I.
Faunas, this Granuffb. Act in.

227. Though he "was no duke. Act^n. i.
Moliere has built a play. L'Ecole des Marts.
Full of wise saws. As You Like It, Act n. 7.

228. Nymphadoro's reasons. The Fawn, Act in.
Hercules's description. Act u. i.

Like a wild goose fly. As You Like It, n. 7.
230. Bussy a"Ami>ois. 1607.

403

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

PAGE

230. The <way of "women's "will.

' It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit,
That woman's love can win, or long inherit,
But what it is hard is to say,
Harder to hit. . . .'

Samson Agonistes, 1010 et uq.

Hide nothing. Paradise Lost, I. 27.

231. Fulke Gre-ville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628). Alaham and Mustapha were

published in the folio edition of Brooke, 1633. He was the school friend,
and wrote the Life, of Sir Philip Sidney. His self-composed epitaph reads,
' Fulke Grevill, servant to Queene Elizabeth, conceller to King James,
frend to Sir Philip Sidney.' See Hazlitt's Essay * Of Persons one would
wish to have seen.'

The ghost of one of the old kings. Alaham.

Monsieur D' Olive. 1606.

Sparkish. In Wycherley's Country Wife (1675).

Witwoud and Petulant. In Congreve's The Way of the World (1700).

234. May-Day. 1611.
All Fools. 1605.

The Widow's Tears. 1612.

Eastward Hoe. 1605. Ben Jonson accompanied his two friends to prison

for this voluntarily. Their imprisonment was of short duration.
On his release from prison. See Drummond's Conversations, xui.
Express ye unblam'd. Paradise Lost, in. 3.
Appius and Virginia. Printed 1654.

The affecting speech. I.e. that of Virginius to Virginia, Act iv. i.
Wonder of a Kingdom. Published 1636.
Jacomo Gentili. In the above play.
Old Fortunatus. 1 600.

235. Vittoria Corombona. The White Devil, 1612.

Signior Orlando Friscobaldo. In The Honest Whore, Part II., 1630.

The red-leaved tables. Heywood's A Woman Killed ivith Kindness, Act n. 3.

The pangs. Wordsworth's Excursion, vi. 554.

The Honest Whore. In two Parts, 1604 and 1630.

Signior Friscobaldo. The Second Part, Act i. 2.

237. You 'II forgive me. The Second Part, Act n. I.
// is my father. The Second Part, Act iv. i.
Oh I "who can paint.

238. Tough senior. Love's Labour's Lost, Act I. 2.
And she has felt them knowingly. Cymbeline, in. 3.

I cannot. The Honest Whore, Second Part, Act iv. I.

239. The manner too. The Second Part, Act in. i.

I'm -well. The First Part, Act i. 3 [' midst of feasting '].

Turns them. 11. Henry IV., i. 2.

Patient Grizxel. Griselda in Chaucer's Clerke's Tale. Dekker collaborated

in a play entitled The Pleasant Comedy of Patient Grissill (1603).
The high-Jlying. The Honest Whore, Second Part, Act n. I. etc.

240. White Devil. 1612.
Duchess of Malfy. 1623.

By -which they lose some colour. Cf. Othello, i. I. ' As it may lose some
colour.'

404

NOTES

PAGE

241. All fire and air. Henry V., HI. 7, 'he is pure air and fire,' and Antony and

Cleopatra, v. 2, ' I am fire and air.'
Like the female dove. Hamlet, v. i, 'As patient as the female dove, when that

her golden couplets are disclosed.'

The trial scene and the two following quotations, The White Devil. Act in. 1.
243. Your hand I'll kin. Act 11. I.

The lamentation of Cornelia. Act v. 2.
The parting scene ofBrachiano. Act v. 3 .

245. The scenes of the madhouse. Act iv. 2.
The interview. Act iv. I.

I prythee,znA the three following quotations and note on p. 246. The Duchess
of Malfy, Act iv. 2.

246. The Revenger's Tragedy. 1607.

The dazzling fence. Cf. the ' dazzling fence ' of rhetoric, Comas, 790-91.
The appeals of Castivut. Act 11. I., and Act iv. 4.

247. Mrs. Siddons has left the stage. Mrs. Siddons left the stage in June 1819.

See The Round Table, vol. i., Note to p. 156.
On Salisbury-plain. At Winterslow Hut. See Memoirs of W. Haxlitt. 1867,

vol. i. p. 259.
Stern good-night. Macbeth, Act n. 2. 'The fatal bellman which gives the

stern'st good night.'
Take mine ease, i Henry If. HI. 3.
Gibber's manager's coat. Colley Cibber (1671-1757), actor, dramatist, and

manager. See the Apology for his Life (1740).
Books, dreams. Personal Talk. [' Dreams, books, are each a world . . . Two

shall be named pre-eminently dear ... by heavenly lays . . .']

IV. ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, ETC.

249. Misuse [praise] the bounteous Pan. Comus, 176-7.
Like eagles newly tailed. Cf.

' All plumed like estridges that with the wind
Baited like eagles having lately bathed.'

i King Henry IV., iv. i .

250. Cast the diseases of the mind. Cf.

' Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased . . . cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health ? '

Macbeth, v. 3.

Wonder-iuounded. Hamlet, v. I.

Wanton poets. Cf. Marlowe's Ed-ward //., Act i. i., and Beaumont and
Fletcher's The Maid's tragedy, 11. 2.

251. The Maid's Tragedy. Acted 1609-10, printed 1619.

252. Do not mock me. Act iv. i.

King and No King. Licensed 1611, printed 1619.
When he meets with Panthea. Act HI. I.

253. The False One. 1619.
Youth that opens. Act in. 2.

Like [' I should imagine '] some celestial sweetness. Act n. 3.

T» here, and the next quotation. Act n. i. [' Egyptians, dare ye think.']

254. The Faithful Shepherdess. Acted 1610.
A perpetual feast. Comus, 479-80.

405

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

PAG!

254. He takes most ease. The Faithful Shepherdess, Act v. 3.
Her -virgin fancies loild. Paradise Lost, v. 296-7.
Here he -woods. The Faithful Shepherdess, Act i. 3.

255. For her dear sake. Act v. 3.
Brightest. Act iv. 2.

If you yield. Act n. 2.

256. And all my fears. Act I. I.
Sad Shepherd. 1637.

257. Tumbled him [He tumbled] down, and the two following quotations. The Two

Noble Kinsmen, Act 1. 1.
We ha-ve been soldiers. Act i. 3.

258. Tearing our pleasures. To his Coy Mistress, 43 and 44.

How do you. The T-wo Noble Kinsmen, Act n. 2. [' lastly, children of grief
and ignorance.']

261. Sng their bondage. Cymbeline, HI. 3.

The Bloody Brother, 1624; A Wife for a Month, 1623; Bonduca, acted
c. 16195 Thierry and Theodoret, 1621 ; The Night Walker, 1625 ; The Little
French Lawyer, c. 1618 ; Monsieur Thomas, c. 16195 The Chances, c. 1620 5
The Wild Goose Chase, acted 1621 ; Rule a Wife and Ha-ve a Wife, 1624.

262. Philaster. Acted c. 1608.
Sitting in my window. Act v. 5.

Into a lower -world. Paradise Lost, xi. 283-5.

His flays -were -works. Suckling's The Session of the Poets, ver. 5.

Note, Euphrasia. Philaster, Act v. 2.

263. Miraturijuc. Virgil, Georgics, n. 82.
The New Inn. Acted 1630.

The Fall of Sej anus. Acted 1603.
T-wo ofSejanus'1 bloodhounds. Act in. I.
To be a spy. Act iv. 3.

264. What are thy arts. Act iv. 5.

If this man. Act I. 2 ['blood and tyranny.']

265. The conversations between Li-via. Act n. i.
Catiline's Conspiracy. Acted 1611.

David's canvas. Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), historical painter.

The description of Echo. Act I. i. Cynthia's Revels was acted in 1600 and

printed the year after.

The fine comparison . . . the New Inn. Cf. Act in. 2.
Massinger and Ford. Philip Massinger (1583-1640) and John Ford (1586-

Musical as is Apollo's lute. Comus, 478.

266. Reason panders -will. Hamlet, in. 4.

The true pathos. Burns, Epistle to Dr. Blacklock.

The Unnatural Combat, 1639 ; The Picture, licensed 1629 ; The Duke of Milan,

1623 ; A New Way to Pay Old Debts, 1633 ; The Bondman, 1624 ; The

Virgin Martyr, 1622.

267. Felt a stain like a -wound. Burke, Reflections on the French Re-volution, ed.

Payne, n. 89.
Note. See A View of the English Stage, and notes thereto.

268. Rowe's Fair Penitent. 1703. Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718).
Fatal Dowry. 1632.

Tw Pity She 's a Whore. 1633.

269. Annabdla and her husband. Act iv. 3.
The Broken Heart. 1633.

406

NOTES

PAGE

270. Miss Baillie. See p. 147 and notes thereto.
Perkin Warbeck. 1634.
The Lover's Melancholy. 1628.
Love's Sacrifice. 1633.
Note. Soft peace. Act iv. 4.
The concluding one. Act v. 2 and 3 [' court new pleasures'.]

272. Already alluded to. See p. 230.

273. Mr. Lamb in his impressive eulogy. Specimens, vol. n. p. 199.

274. Armida's enchanted palace. The sorceress who seduces the Crusaders. Tasso's

Jerusalem Delivered.
Fairy elves. Paradise Lost, i. 781 et seq.

' Like that Pygmean race
Beyond the Indian mount ; or faery elves.'
Deaf the praised ear. Pope's Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.

V. ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC.

The Four P's. ? 1530-3.

John Heywood. (c. 1497-*. 1575). He was responsible for various collections
of Epigrams, containing six hundred proverbs.

276. False knaves. Much Ado About Nothing, iv. z.

277. Count Fathom. Chap. xxi.

Friar John. Rabelais' Gargantua, i. 27.

278. L. 5 from foot. Take [taste].

279. Which I was born to introduce. Swift's lines On the Death of Dr. Swift.
As a liar of the first magnitude. Congreve's Love for Love, Act n. 5.

280. Mighty stream of Tendency. The Excursion, ix. 87.
Full of wise saws. As Tou Like It, Act u. 7.

The Return from Parnassus. 1606.

Like the Edinburgh Review. Only two numbers were published, which were

reprinted (8vo) 1818.
Read the names. The Return from Parnassus, Act i. 2.

282. Kempe the actor. William Kempe, fl. c. 1600.

Burbage. Richard Burbage (c. 1567-1618), the builder of the Globe

Theatre, and a great actor therein.
Few (of the University). Act iv. 3.

283. Felt them knowingly. Cymbeline, in. 3.
Philomusus and Studioso. Act n. I, Act in. 5.
Out of our proof we speak. Cymbeline, HI. 3.

/ was not train' d. Charles Lamb's Sonnet, written at Cambridge, August 15,
1819.

284. Made desperate. The Excursion, vi. 532-3, quoted from Jeremy Taylor's

Holy Dying, Chap. I, § v.
A mere scholar. Return from Parnassus, n. 6.
The examination of Signer Immerito. Act in. i.

286. Gammer Gurton's Needle. Printed 1575. John Still (1543-1607), afterwardi

Bishop of Bath and Wells, is supposed to be its author.

287. Gog's crosse, and the following quotations. Act i. 5.

289. Such very poor spelling. Cf. Lamb's story of Randal Norris, who once re-
marked after trying to read a black-letter Chaucer, ' in those old books,
Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very indifferent spelling.' See

407

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

PAG!

Lamb's Letter to H. Crabb Robinson, Jan. 20, 1827 ; Hone's Table Book,
Feb. 10, 1827 5 and the first edition of the Last Essays of Elia, 1833,
A Death- Bed.

289. The Yorkshire Tragedy. 1604 (attributed to Shakespeare) ; Sir John Old-

castle, 1600, (? by Munday and Drayton) ; The Widow of Watling Street,
[The Puritan, or The Widow, etc.], 1607 (?by Went worth Smith). See The
Round Table, vol. i. p. 353, et seq., for Schlegel and Hazlitt on these.
Green's Tu S^uoque, by George Cook. Greene's ' Tu Quoque,' 1614, by Joseph
Cooke (fl. c. 1600). Greene, the comedian, after whom the play is called,
died 1612.

290. SucA/ing's melancholy hat. Cf. p. 270 ante.

Microcosmus, by Thomas Nabbet. 1637. Thomas Nabbes flourished in the
time of Charles I.

291. What do I see? Act iv.

292. Antony Brewer's Lingua. 1607. This play is now said to be by John

Tomkins, Scholar of Trinity, Cambridge (1594-8).
Mr. Lamb has quoted two passages. Specimens, vol. i. pp. 99-100.

292. Why, good father. Act n. 4.

293. Thou, boy. Act n. I.

The Merry Devil of Edmonton. 1608. The author is unknown.

Sound silver soviet. Romeo and Juliet, n. 2.

The deer-stealing scenes. The Merry Devil of Edmonton, Act v. I., etc.

294. Very honest knaveries. Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4.

The way lies right. The Merry Devil of Edmonton, Act iv. I.

The Pinner of Wakefeid. By Robert Greene (1560-1592). His works have

been edited by Dr. Grosart, and by Mr. Churton Collins.
Hail-Jellow well met. Cf. Swift's My Lady's Lamentation.
Jeronymo. 1588. The Spanish Tragedy (? 1583-5), licensed and performed

1592. See Prof. Schick's edition in ' The Temple Dramatists.' Thomas

Kyd, baptised November 6, 1558, died before 1601.
Which hai'e all the melancholy madness of poetry. Junius : Letter No 7. to Sir

W. Draper.

VI. ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, ETC.

295. The False One. 1619.

Valentinian. Produced before 1619. 'Now the lusty spring is seen,'

Act ii. 5.

The Nice Valour, or Passionate Madman. Published 1647.
Most musical. II Penseroso, 62.

296. The silver foam. Cowper's Winter's Walk at Noon, 11. 155-6 —

' Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf
That the wind severs from the broken wave.'

Grim-visaged, comfortless despair. Cf. 'grim visag'd war.' Richard III., I. i ;

and 'grim and comfortless despair.' Comedy of Errors, \. i.
Beaumont died. His years were thirty-two (1584-1616).
'Tis not a life. Philaster, Act v. 2. See p. 262.
The lily on its ttalk green. Chaucer, The Knighte's Tale, 1036.
Lapt in Elysium. Camus, 257.
Raphael, Raphael's years were thirty-seven (1483-1520).

297. Now that his task. Comus, 1012.

408

NOTES

PAGE

297. Rymer's abuse. See Thomas Rymer's (1641-1713) The Tragedies of the Last

Age Considered (1678). He was called by Pope ' the best' and by Macaulav

the worst English critic.

The ions of memory. Milton's Sonnet on Shakespeare, 1630.
Sir John Beaumont (1582-1628), the author of Bosviorth Field.
Fleeted the time carelessly. As Teu Like It, i. i. ['golden world.']

298. Walton's Complete Angler. Third Day, chap. iv.

Note. Rochester's Epigram. Sternhold and Hopkins were the joint-authors
of the greater number of the metrical versions of the Psalms (1547-62)
which used to form part of the Book of Common Prayer.

299-300. Drummond of Hatvthornden. William Drummond (1585-1649). His
Conversations with Ben Jonson were written of a visit paid him by Jonson in
1618. Mention might be made of Mr. W. C. Ward's edition of his Poems
(1894), wherein many variations from Hazlitt's text of the sonnets may be
noted, too numerous to detail here.

Note. I -was all ear. Comus, 560.

301. The fy that sips treacle. Gay's Beggar's Opera, n. 2.

Sugar' d sonnetting. Cf. Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia, 1598, concerning
Shakespeare's 'sugred Sonnets,' and Judicio in The Return from Parnassus
(see p. 281 ante), 'sugar'd sonnetting.'

302. The gentle craft. The sub-title of a play of T. Dekker's : The Shoemaker's

Holiday, or the Gentle Craft (1600). The phrase has long been associated

with that handicraft.

A Phoenix gazed by all. Paradise Lost, v. 272.
Give a reason for the faith that -was in me. Cf. Sydney Smith's — 'It is always

right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is

within him.'

303. Oh, ho-w despised. Act i. I.

304. The Triumph of his Mistress. The Triumph of Charts.
Nest of spicery. Richard ///., iv. 4.

Oh, I could still. Cynthia's Re-veli, i. i.

306. A celebrated line. See Coleridge's Tragedy Osorio, Act iv., Sc. i., written

1797, but not published in its original form until 1873. Coleridge's Poetical
Works, ed. Dykes Campbell, p. 498.

' Drip ! drip ! drip ! drip ! in such a place as this
It has nothing else to do but drip ! drip ! drip ! '

Recast and entitled Remorse, the tragedy was performed at Drury Lane,
Jan. 23, 1813, and published in pamphlet form. In the Preface Coleridge
relates the story of Sheridan reading the play to a large company, and
turning it into ridicule by saying —

' Drip ! drip ! drip ! there's nothing here but dripping.'
Hazlitt's quotation is taken, of course, from this Preface to Remorse.

307. The milk of human kindness. Macbeth, I. 5.
309. Daniel. Samuel Daniel, 1562-1619.

311. Michael Drayton (1563-1631). His Polyolbion, or * chorographicall ' descrip-
tion of England in thirty books was issued in 1612-22. See the Spenser
Society's editions of Drayton's works.

P. Fletcher's Purple Island. Phineas Fletcher (i 582-1650). The Purple Island,
1633. The poem has been topographically catalogued under 'Man,
Isle of !

Broivn. William Browne (i59i-r. 1643). Britannia's Pastorals, 1613-16 :
a third book (in MSS.) was printed in 1852.

400

LECTURES ON THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

PAGE

311. Carew. Thomas Carew (c. ity^-c. 1639).

Herrick. Robert Herrick (1591-1674). His poems were edited by Dr.

Grosart in 1876.
Crashaw. Richard Crashaw (? 1612-1649), the English Mystic. See Dr.

Grosart's edition, 1872.
Mar-veil. Andrew Marvell (1621-1678). See Dr. Grosart's edition,

1872-74.

312. Like the motes. 'The gay motes that people the sunbeams.' Milton's //

Penseroso, 8.

313. On another occasion. See ante p. 83.

315- Clamour grew dumb. Pastorals, Book n. Song I.
The squirrel. Book I. Song 5.
The hues of the rainbow. Book n. Song 3.
The Shepherd's Pipe, 1614.
The Inner Temple Mask, 1620.
Marino. Giambattista Marini (1569-1625).
His form had not yet lost. Paradise Lost, i. 591.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86). See Grosart's edition of the Poems and Arber's

editions of the Apologie and Astrophel and Stella.
318. Ford's Persian. See Act i. i . The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia was published

in 1690.

On compulsion, i. Henry IV. n. 4.
The soldier's. Hamlet, HI. i.
Like a gate of steel. Troilus and Cressida in. 3. [' receives and renders '].

320. With centric. Paradise Lost, vm. 83.

321. So that the third day. Book i. chap. ii. [' delightful prospects'].
Georgioni, i.e. Giorgione, or Giorgio Barbarella (1477-1511), the great

Venetian painter.

322. Like two grains of "wheat. The Merchant of Venice, i. i. ['hid in two

bushels '].
Have you felt the wool. In The Triumph of Char is.

323. As Mr. Burke said of nobility. Cf. Rejections on the Revolution in France, ed.

Payne, vol. n. p. 163. 'To be honoured and even privileged by the laws,
opinions and inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice
of ages, has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man.'
The shipwreck of Pyrochles. Book i. chap. i.

324. Certainly, as her eyelids. Book i. chap. i.

Adriano de Armada, in Love's Labour Lost. See the two characteristic
letters of Don Adriano de Armado, in Lo-ve's Labour 's Lost, Act i. I., and

IV. I.

325. The reason of their unreasonableness. Don Quixote, I. I.
Pamelas and Philocleas. Heroines of the Arcadia.

326. Defence of Poetry. An Apologie for Poetry, 1595.

VII. CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS, ETC.

One of the tvisest. Pope's Essay on Man, Epis. iv. 282.

As in a map. Cowper's Task, vi. 17.
327. Large discourse. Hamlet, iv. 4.

331. Sir Thomas Brown. Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682).
333. The bosoms and businesses. Dedication to Bacon's Essays.

Find no end. Paradise Lost, n. 561.

4IO

NOTES

PAGE

333. Oh altitude. Religio Medici, Part I. 'I love to lose myself in a mystery, to

pursue my reason to an O altitude ! '
334- Differences himself by. Religio Medici, Part I. 'But (to difference my iclf

nearer, and draw into a lesser Circle).'
He could be content if the species -were continued like trees. Religio Medici

Part II.

335. Walks gowned. Lamb's Sonnet, written at Cambridge, August 15, 1819.
As it has been said. Cf. the passage quoted later (p. 340) from Coleridge.
339. Mr. Coleridge. See Coleridge's Literary Remains, vol. n. 1836. On p. 340,

1. 4 the phrase, as written by Coleridge, should be ' Sir-Thomas-Brown.

ness.'

341. Stuff of the conscience. Othello, i. 2.
To give us pause. Hamlet, in. i.

Cloys with sameness. Cf. Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, xix., ' cloy thy lips

with loathed satiety.'

Note. One of no mark, i Henry IV., m. 2.
Without form and -void. Genesis, i. 2.
He saw nature in the elements of its chaos. Religio Medici, Part I.

342. Where pure Niem?s faery banks [mountains]. Thomson's Winter, 875-6.
Rains sacrificial roses [whisperings], Timon of Athens, i. i.

Some are called at age. Chap. i. § 3.

343. It is the same. Chap. iii. § 7.

I have read, and the next two quotations. Chap. i. § 2.

VIII. ON THE SPIRIT OF ANCIENT AND MODERN
LITERATURE, ETC.

345. The Apostate and Evadne. The Apostate (1817) by Richard Lalor Sheil (1791-

1851), Evadne (1819).

The Traitor by old Shirley. James Shirley's (1596-1666) The Traitor (1637).
The last of those fair clouds.
Mr. Tobin. John Tobin (1770-1804). The Honey-Moon was produced at

Drury Lane, Jan. 31, 1805. See Characters of Shakespear's Plays,

vol. i. p. 344.
The Curfew. Tobin's play was produced at Drury Lane, Feb. 19, 1807.

346. Mr. Lamb's John Woodvil. Published 1802.
There "where we have treasured. Cf. S. Matt. vi. 21.

The tall [and elegant stag] deer that paints a dancing shadow of his horns in the

swift brook [in the water, where he drinks].

Lamb's John Woodvil, n. ii. 195-7.
But fools rush in. Pope's Essay on Criticism, HI. 66.
To say that he has "written better. Lamb's articles in Leigh Hunt's Rejlector

on Hogarth and Shakespeare's tragedies, appeared in 1811.
A gentleman of the name of Cornwall. Bryan Waller Procter's (Barry

Cornwall 1787-1874), Dramatic Scenes were published in 1819.

347. The Falcon. Boccaccio's Decameron, §th day, gth story. See Characters of

Shakespear's Plays, vol. i. p. 331, and The Round Table, vol. i. p. 163.

348. A late number of the Edinburgh Review. The article is by Hazlitt himself, in

the number for Feb. 1816, vol. 26, pp. 68, et seq.
Florimel in Spenser. Book HI. 7.
There -was magic. Othello, in. 4.

349. Schlegel somewhere compares. Cf. Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature

(Bohn, 1846) p. 407.

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

PAGE

349. So withered. Macbeth, i. 3.

The description of Belphcebe. The Faerie Queent, 11. iii. 21 et seq.

350. All plumed like estriches. Cf. I King Henry IV. iv. i.
35Z. Ant res vast. Othello, I. 3.

Orlando . . . Rogero. In Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.
353. New-lighted. Hamlet, in. 4.

T/6« evidence of things unseen. Hebrews, xi. i.

Broods over the immense [vast] abyss. Paradise Lost, 1. 21.

The ignorant present time. Macbeth, i. 5.

355. See o'er the stage. Thomson's Winter, 11. 646-8.
The Orphan. By Otway, 1680.

Arabian trees. Othello, v. 2.

That sacred pity. As Tou Like It, n. 7.

Miss O'Neill. Eliza O'Neill (1791-1872).

356. Hog hath lost his Pearl. 1613.
Addison's Cato, 1713-

Dennis's Criticism. John Dennis's (1657-1734) Remarks on Cato, 1713.
Z)o« Sebastian. 1690.

T>4e >»<«>£ e/ Arthur and Emmeline. King Arthur, or the British Worthy
1691, a Dramatic Opera with music by Purcell.

357. Alexander the Great . . . Lee. The Rival Queens (1677) by Nathaniel Lee

(1655-92).
CEdipus. 1679.
Relieve the killing languor. Burke's Rejections on the Revolution in France

(Select Works, ed. Payne, n. 120).
Leave then the luggage, and the two following quotations. Don Sebastian,

Act ii. i.

359. The Hughes. John Hughes (1677-1720) author of The Siege of Damascus

1720, and one of the contributors to The Spectator.
The Hills. Aaron Hill (1684-1749) poet and dramatist.
The Murphys. Arthur Murphy (1727-1805) dramatist and biographer.
Fine by degrees. Matthew Prior's Henry and Emma.
Southern. Thomas Southerne (1660/1-1746), who wrote Oroonoko, or the

Royal Slave (1696).

Lillo. George Lillo (1693-1739), Fatal Curiosity, 1737.
Moore. Edward Moore (1712-1757), The Gamester, 1753.
In one of his Letters. See the letter dated September, 1737.
Sent us "weeping. Richard II. v. i .
Rise sadder. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.
Douglas. A tragedy by John Home (1724-1808), first played at Edinburgh

in 1756.

360. Decorum is the principal thing. 'What Decorum is, which is the grand

Master-piece to observe.' Milton on Education, Works, 1738, i. p. 140.
Aristotle's definition of tragedy. In the Poetics.
Lovers' Vows. Mrs. Inchbald's adaptation from Kotzebue, 1800.
Pi'zarro. Sheridan's adaptation from Kotzebue's The Spaniard in Peru, 1799.
Shews the very age. Hamlet, in. 2.

361. Orson. In the fifteenth century romance, Valentine and Orson.

Pure in the last recesses. Dryden's translation from the Second Satire of

Persius, 133.

There is some soul of goodness. Henry V., iv. i.
T/iere's something rotten. Hamlet, i. 4.

362. The Sorrows of tferter. Goethe's Sorrows ofWerthtr was finished in 1774.

4J2

NOTES

PAGE

362. The Robbers. By Schiller, 1781.
It ivas my wish. Act in. 2.

363. Don Carlos. 1787.

His Wallenstein. Schiller's, 1799 ; Coleridge's, 1800.

Cumberland's imitation. Richard Cumberland's (1732-1811) Wheel of Fort une

(1779).

Goethe's tragedies. Count Egmont, 1788 ; Stella, 1776 ; Iphigenia, 1786.
Memoirs of Anastasius the Greek. Thomas Hope's (1770-1831) Eastern

romance was published in 1819 and was received with enthusiasm by the

Edinburgh Review.
When in the fine summer evenings. Werther (ed. Bohn), p. 337.

364. As often got -without merit. Othello, n. 3.

SELECT BRITISH POETS

Dates, etc., are not given of those writers mentioned earlier in the present
volume.

See W. C. Hazlitt's Memoirs of William Hazlitt, n. 197-8, for the few details
that are known concerning the origin of this work. It was the opinion of Edward
Fitzgerald that ' Hazlitt's Poets is the best selection I have ever seen.'

367. Dr. Knox. Vicesimus Knox, D.D. (1752-1821), a voluminous and able

author, preacher, and compiler. See Boswell's Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, iv.
390-1.

368. Baser matter. Hamlet, I. 5.

Taken him. Romeo and Juliet, HI. 2.

369. Perpetual feast. Comus, 480.

Rich and rare. Cf. Pope, Prologue to Satires, 171.

371. Daniel. Samuel Daniel, 1562-1619.

372. Co-wley. Abraham Cowley, 1618-1667.

Roscommon. Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, 1634-1685. His
translation of Horace's Art of Poetry was published in 1680.

Pomfret. John Pomfret, 1667-1703. The Choice, 1699.

Lord Dorset. Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (c. 1536-1608), author of
the Induction to a Mirror for Magistrates, and joint-author with Thomas
Norton of the tragedy Ferrex and Porrex (Gorboduc). See p. 193, et sea.

J. Philips. John Philips, 1676-1708. The Splendid Shilling, 1705.

Halifax. Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, 1661-1715, joint-author with
Matthew Prior of the parody on Dryden's Hind and Panther, entitled The
Town and Country Moust.

373. The mob of gentlemen. Pope, Epis. Hor. Ep. i. Book n. 108.

Parnell. Thomas Parnell, 1679-1717. He was a friend of Swift and of

Pope.
Prior. Matthew Prior, 1664-1721.

374. Blair. Robert Blair, 1699-1746. The Grave, 1743.

Ambrose Philips''! Pastorals. These appeared in Tonson's Miscellany (1709).
Ambrose Philips's dates are ? 1675-1749. He has his place in The
Dunciad.

375. Mallet. David Mallet, 1700-1765, is best remembered for his fusion of two

old ballads into his William and Margaret, and for his possible authorship
of Rule Britannia.

4*3

SELECT BRITISH POETS

PAGE

375. Less is meant. Cf. Milton's // Penseroso, 120.

378. Thoughts that glow [breathe]. Gray's Progress of Poesy, no.

Lord Thurlow. Edward, second Lord Thurlow (1781-1829), a nephew of
the Lord Chancellor, published Verses on Several Occasions (1812), Ariadne
(1814), and other volumes of poems.

379. Mr. Mi/mart. Henry Hart Milman, 1791-1868, of Latin Christianity

fame was also the author of several dramas and dramatic poems, and of

several well-known hymns.
Bmvlet. William Lisle Bowles, 1762-1850.
Mr. Barry Cornwall. Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874).

Edinburgh : Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE

4.770

1902

v.5

Hazlitt, William
Collected works

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