Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

with the power of verfe, to punish and make examples of the bad. But of this I fhall have occafion to speak further, when I come to give the definition and character of true fatires.

In the mean time, as a counfellor bred up in the knowledge of the municipal and ftatute laws, may honeftly inform a juft prince how far his prerogative extends; fo I may be allowed to tell your Lordship, who, by an undisputed title, are the king of Poets, what an extent of power you have, and how lawfully you may exercise it, over the petulant fcriblers of this age. As Lord Chamberlain, I know you are abfolute by your office, in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of the Stage. You can banish from thence fcurrility and prophaneness, and reftrain the licentious infolence of Poets and their Actors in all things that fhock the public quiet, or the reputation of private perfons, under the notion of Humour, But I mean not the authority, which is annexed to your office: I fpeak of that only which is inborn and inherent to your perfon, What is produced in you by an excellent wit, a masterly and commanding genius over all writers: whereby you are impowered, when you pleafe, to give the final decifion of wit; to put your ftamp on all that ought to pass for current; and fet a brand of reprobation on clipt poetry, and falfe coin. A fhilling dipt in the Bath may go for gold amongst the ignorant, but the 'fcepters on the guineas fhew the difference. That your Lordfhip is formed by nature for this fupremacy, I could eafily prove, (were it not already granted by the world) from the diftinguishing character of your writing. Which is fo vifible to me that I never could be impofed on to receive for yours, what is written by any others; or to mistake your genuine poetry for their fpurious productions. I can farther add with truth (though not without fome vanity in faying it) that in the fame paper, written by divers hands, whereof your Lord fhip was only part, I could feparate your gold from their copper: and though I

could

could not give back to every author his own brass, (for there is not the fame rule for distinguishing betwixt bad and bad, as betwixt ill and excellently good) yet I never failed of knowing what was yours, and what was not and was abfolutely certain, that this, or the other part, was pofitively yours, and could not poffibly be written by any other.

True it is, that fome bad poems, though not all, carry their owners marks about them. There is fome peculiar aukwardnefs, falfe grammar, imperfect fenfe, or, at the leaft, obfcurity; fome brand or other on this buttock, or that ear, that it is notorious who the owners of the cattle, though they should not fign it with their names. But your Lord fiip, on the contrary, is diftinguished, not only by the excellency of your thoughts, but by your ftyle and manner of expreffing them. A painter judging of fome admirable piece, may affirm with certainty, that it was of Holben, or Vandike: but vulgar designs, and common draughts, are easily mistaken and mifapplied. Thus, by my long ftudy of your lordship, I am arrived at the knowledge of your particular manner. In the good poems of other men, like those artists, I can only fay, this is like the draught of fuch a one, or like the colouring of another. In short, I can only be fure, that it is the hand of a good mafter; but in your performances, it is fcarcely poffible for me to be deceived. If you write in your ftrength, you ftand revealed at the firft view; and fhould you write under it, you cannot avoid fome peculiar graces, which only coft me a fecond confideration to discover you: for I muft fay it, with all the feverity of truth, that every line of yours is precious. Your Lordship's only fault is, that you have not written more; unless I could add another, and that yet a greater, but I fear for the public the accufation would not be true, that you have written, and out of vicious modefty will not publish.

Virgil has confined his works within the compafs of eighteen thousand lines, and has not treated many fubjects; yet he ever had, and ever will have, the reputation

reputation of the beft Poet. Martial fays of him, that he could have excelled Varius in Tragedy, and Horace in Lyric Poetry, but out of deference to his friends, he attempted neither.

The fame prevalence of genius is in your Lordship, but the world cannot pardon your concealing it, on the fame confideration; because we have neither a living Varius, nor a Horace, in whofe excellencies both of Poems, Odes, and Satires you have equalled them, if our language had not yielded to the Roman majefty, and length of time had not added a reverence to the works of Horace. For good fenfe is the fame in all or most ages; and courfe of time rather improves nature, than impairs her. What has been, may be again another Homer, and another Virgil, may poffibly arise from those very caufes which produced the first: though it would be impudence to affirm that any fuch have appeared.

:

It is manifeft, that fome particular ages have been more happy than others in the production of great men in all forts of arts and fciences: as that of Euripides, Sophocles, Ariftophanes, and the rest for Stage Poetry amongst the Greeks: that of Auguftus for Heroic, Lyric, Dramatic, Elegiac, and indeed all forts of Poetry in the perfons of Virgil, Horace, Varius, Ovid, and many others; efpecially if we take into that century the latter end of the commonwealth; wherein we find Varro, Lucretius, and Catullus: and at the fame time lived Cicero, Salust, and Cæfar. A famous age in modern times, for learning in every kind, was that of Lorenzo de Medici, and his fon Leo X. wherein painting was revived, and Poetry flourished, and the Greek language was reftored.

Examples in all these are obvious: but what I would infer is this; That in fuch an age, it is poffible fome great genius may arife, to equal any of the ancients; abating only for the language. For great contemporaries whet and cultivate each other: and mutual borrowing, and commerce, makes the common riches of learning, as it does of the civil government.

But

But fuppofe that Homer and Virgil were the only of their fpecies, and that nature was fo much worn out in producing them, that she is never able to bear the like again; yet the example only holds in Heroic Poetry in Tragedy and Satire, I offer myself to maintain against fome of our modern critics, that this age and the laft, particularly in England, have excelled the ancients in both thofe kinds; and I would inftance in Shakefpear of the former, of your lordship in the latter fort.

Thus I might fafely confine myself to my native country: but if I would only cross the feas, I might find in France a living Horace and a Juvenal, in the perfon of the admirable Boileau; whofe numbers are excellent, whofe expreffions are noble, whofe thoughts are juft, whofe language is pure, whofe fatire is pointed, and whofe fenfe is clofe: what he borrows from the ancients, he repays with ufury of his own, in coin as good, and almoft as univerfally valuable: for fetting prejudice and partiality apart, though he is our enemy, the ftamp of Louis, the patron of all arts, is not much inferior to the medal of an Auguftus Cæfar: Let this be faid without entering into the intereft of factions and parties, and relating only to the bounty of that king to men of learning and merit a praife fo juft, that even we who are his enemies, cannot refufe it to him.

Now if it be permitted me to go back again to the confideration of Epique Poetry, I have confessed, that no man hitherto has reached, or fo much as approached to the excellencies of Homer, or of Virgil; I must farther add, that Statius, the best verfificator next Virgil, knew not how to defign after him, though he had the model in his eye; that Lucan is wanting both in defign and fubject, and is befides too full of heat and affectation; that among the moderns, Ariofto, neither defigned juftly, nor obferved any unity of action, or compafs of time, or moderation in the vaftnefs of his draught: his ftyle. is luxurious, without majefty, or decency, and his adventures

adventures without the compafs of nature and poffibility: Taffo, whofe defign was regular, and who obferved the rules of unity in time and place, more closely than Virgil, yet was not fo happy in his action; he confeffes himself to have been too lyrical, that is, to have written beneath the dignity of Heroic Verfe, in his Epifodes of Sophronia, Erminia, and Armida; his story is not fo pleafing as Ariofto's; he is too flatulent fometimes, and fometimes too dry; many times unequal, and almost always forced; and befides, is full of conceptions, points of epigram, and witticisms; all which are not only below the dignity of Heroic verfe, but contrary to its nature: Virgil and Homer have not one of them. And those who are guilty of fo boyish an ambition in fo grave a fubject, are so far from being confidered as Heroic Poets, that they ought to be turned down from Homer to the Anthologia, from Virgil to Martial and Owen's Epigrams, and from Spencer to Flecno; that is, from the top to the bottom of all Poetry. But to return to Taffo, he borrows from the invention of Boyardo, and in his alteration of his Poem, which is infinitely the worse, imitates Homer fo very fervilely, that (for example) he gives the king of Jerufalem fifty fons, only because Homer had bestowed the like number on king Priam; he kills the youngest in the fame manner, and has provided his hero with a Patroclus, under another name, only to bring him back to the wars, when his friend was killed. The French have performed nothing in this kind, which is not be low thofe two Italians, and fubject to a thousand more reflections, without examining their St. Lewis, their Pucelle, or their Alarique: the English have only to boast of Spencer and Milton, who neither of them wanted either genius or learning, to have been perfect Poets; and yet both of them are liable to many cenfures. For there is no uniformity in the defign of Spencer: he aims at the accomplishment of no one action: he raises up a hero for every one of his adventures; and endows each of them with

fome

« FöregåendeFortsätt »