words, and the want of spirit she recompenses with malignity. recommendation This profession has one peculiar to itself, that it gives vent to malignity without real mischief. No genius was ever blasted by the breath of critics. The poison, which, if confined, would have burst the heart, fumes away in empty hisses, and malice is set at ease with very little danger to merit. The Critic is the only man whose triumph is without another's pain, and whose greatness does not rise upon another's ruin. To a study at once so easy and so reputable, so malicious and so harmless, it cannot be necessary to invite my readers by a long or laboured exhortation; it is sufficient, since all would be Critics if they could, to shew by one eminent example that all can be critics if they will. Dick Minim, after the common course of puerile studies, in which he was no great proficient, was put an apprentice to a brewer, with whom he had lived two years, when his uncle died in the city, and left him a large fortune in the stocks. Dick had for six months before used the company of the lower players, of whom he had learned to scorn a trade, and, being now at liberty to follow his genius, he resolved to be a man of wit and humour. That he might be properly initiated in his new character, he frequented the coffeehouses near the theatres, where he listened very diligently, day after day, to those who talked of language and sentiments, and unities and 1 Johnson does not in his Dictionary give any example of this idiom "used the company." catastrophes, till by slow degrees he began to think that he understood something of the stage, and hoped in time to talk himself. But he did not trust so much to natural sagacity as wholly to neglect the help of books. When the theatres were shut, he retired to Richmond with a few select writers, whose opinions he impressed upon his memory by unwearied diligence ;1 and, when he returned with other wits to the town, was able to tell, in very proper phrases, that the chief business of art is to copy nature;2 that a perfect writer is not to be expected,3 because genius decays as judgment increases; that the great art is the art of blotting ;5 and that, according to the rule of Horace, every piece should be kept nine years. 1 In what follows Johnson puts into Minim's mouth opinions gathered from these writers. In the following notes I have traced his course wherever I could, and have shown also in one or two cases Johnson's own opinions subsequently expressed. 2 "First follow nature, and your judgment frame 3 "Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be." -Ib., 1. 253. 4 "Thus in the soul while memory prevails, -Ib., 1. 56. "Ev'n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, -Pope, Imitations of Horace, Epis. ii., i. 280. 6 "And drop at last, but in unwilling ears, This saving counsel, 'keep your piece nine years.'" His Of the great authors he now began to display the characters, laying down as an universal position, that all had beauties and defects. opinion was, that Shakespear, committing himself wholly to the impulse of nature, wanted that correctness which learning would have given him ;1 and that Jonson, trusting to learning, did not sufficiently cast his eye on nature. He blamed the stanza of Spenser, and could not bear the hexameters of Sidney.3 Denham and Waller he held the first reformers of English numbers; and thought that if Waller could have obtained the strength of Denham, or Denham the sweetness of Waller, there had been nothing wanting to 1 "fluent Shakespeare scarce effaced a line." -Pope, Imitations of Horace, Epis. ii. 1, 279. -Pope, The Dunciad, ii. 223. 2 "Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part; -Collins, Epistle to Hanmer, 1. 55. "Then Jonson came, instructed from the school -Johnson's Prologue at the Opening of Drury 3 "Spenser himself affects the obsolete, And Sydney's verse halts ill on Ronan feet." -Pope, Imitations of Horace, Epis. ii., i. 97. 4 "Our numbers were in their nonage till Waller and Denham appeared."-Dryden, Preface to the Fables. "Denham is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry. 'Denham and Waller,' says Prior, 'improved our versification, and Dryden perfected it.'"-Johnson's Works vii. 60. complete a poet.' He often expressed his commisera tion of Dryden's poverty, and his indignation at the age which suffered him to write for bread2; he repeated with rapture the first lines of All for Love, but wondered at the corruption of taste which could bear any thing so unnatural as rhyming tragedies. In Otway he found uncommon powers of moving the passions, but was 1 "And praise the easy vigour of a line, Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join." -Pope, Essay on Criticism, 1. 361. "The critical decision has given the praise of strength to Denham, and of sweetness to Waller."-Johnson's Works, vii. 215. Pope, I suspect, borrowed from Dryden, who says:"If I should instruct some of my fellow poets to make wellrunning verses, they want genius to give them strength as well as sweetness."-Dryden's Works, ed. 1821, xiv. 204. 2 Cf. Pope's lines on Dryden's funeral : "But still the great have kindness in reserve, -Prologue to the Satires, 1. 247. 8 All for Love is founded upon Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Dryden says in the Preface:-"In my style I have professed to imitate the Divine Shakespeare; which that I might perform more freely, I have disencumbered myself from rhyme." The passage which Minim repeated so rapturously is, I conjecture, the following: " 'Last night, between the hours of twelve and one, A whirlwind rose, that with a violent blast disgusted by his general negligence,1 and blamed him for making a conspirator his hero2; and never concluded his disquisition, without remarking how happily the sound of the clock is made to alarm the audience.3 Southern would have been his favourite, but that he mixes comic with tragic scenes, intercepts the natural course of the passions, and fills the mind with a wild confusion of mirth and melancholy. The versification of Rowe he thought too melodious for the stage, and too little varied in different passions. He made it the great fault of Congreve, that all his persons were wits, and that he always wrote with more art than nature.5 He considered Cato rather as a poem than a play, and allowed Addison to be the Otway failed to polish or refine." 1" -Pope, Imitations of Horace, Epis. ii., i. 278. 2 "It has been observed by others that this poet has founded his tragedy of Venice Preserved on so wrong a plot, that the greatest characters in it are those of rebels and traitors."-The Spectator, No 39. 3 In the last scene but one the passing-bell tolls. Johnson, speaking of Brown's Barbarossa, says :-" Otway had tolled a bell before Dr. Brown, and we are not to be made April fools twice by the same trick."-Murphy's Life of Garrick, p. 173. 4 "In a word, Rowe's plays are musical and pleasing poems, but inactive and unmoving tragedies."-J. Warton's Essay on Pope, ed. 1762, i. 271. 5 "His characters are commonly fictitious and artificial, with very little of nature, and not much of life. He formed a peculiar idea of comic excellence which he supposed to consist in gay remarks and unexpected answers."-Johnson's Works, viii. 31. 6" Cato is a fine dialogue on liberty and the love of one's country."-Warton's Essay on Pope, i. 259. |