THOMAS OTWAY. [THOMAS OTWAY was born at Trottin, in Sussex, March 3, 1651, and died at Tower Hill, April 14, 1685, choked by a mouthful of bread ravenously eaten when he was at the brink of starvation. His most famous tragedies. The Orphan, and Venice Pre-erved, were printed respectively in 1680 and 1(82.] This is not the place to dwell on the splendid tragic genius of Otway, or to discuss his abject failure as a comedian. He claims our attention here on the score of two slender quartos of nondramatic verse, The Poet's Complaint of his Muse, 1680, and Windsor Castle, 1685. The latter is a political and descriptive piece in the heroic measure; it is modelled on Denham's Cooper's Hill, and betrays, notwithstanding some felicitous passages, the fatigue which was stealing over the dying author. But The Poet's Complaint of his Muse is a much more original and powerful poem; it is written in the irregular measure called 'Pindaric,' and contains a satirical portrait of the poet and of his times, drawn without charm or colour, but in firm, bold lines, like a harsh engraving. Otway displays more observation of nature than most of his contemporaries; but when he draws the world we live in, he is a draughtsman even sterner than Crabbe. We quote as an example of this important but rugged and unattractive poem the first strophe, which contains some picturesque and vivid lines. It should be remarked that Otway was absolutely unable to write even a fairly good soug, EDMUND W. GOSSE FROM THE POET'S COMPLAINT OF HIS MUSE.' To a high hill where never yet stood tree, The flocks in tattered fleeces hardly graze, Which did too much his pensive mind amaze, Came, looked about him, sighed, and laid him down When by the Word it first was made, Let grass and herbs and every green thing grow, Aloft his eyes on the wide heavens he cast, Sighed deep, and cried 'How far is peace from me!1 JOHN OLDHAM. [Bon August 9, 1653, at Shipton, near Tedbury, in Gloucestershire; after taking his degree at Oxford, spent three years as usher at the Croydon Free School, and not long afterwards settled among the wits in London. He died December 9. 1683, on a visit to the Earl of Kingston at HolmesPierpont in Nottinghamshire.] Certain features in the brief life of Oldham, as well as in the verse to which his name owes its celebrity, have very naturally engaged the attention of historical enquirers, while others have attracted the sympathy o: literary students. He seems really to have valued that independence of which authors too often only prate; he left it to the leaders fashionable society and of fashionable literature to seek him out in his obscurity; and when he ventured to publish his poems, he published them without a patron. But if he had a high spirit, he lacked the equally noble possession of an unfettered mind. Even a domestic chaplain in the Restoration days-such a one as Oldham has painted in one of the following extracts, and such as Macaulay, largely following Oldham, has repainted in a well-known passage of his History—may have in him more of human dignity and freedom than the flatterer of popular fury and the pandar to mob-prejudice. Oldham was the laureate of the Popish Plot frenzy; and his laurels are accordingly stained with much mire and with much blood. To what lengths the fanaticism of excited popular feeling, together with an inborn love of strong language, can carry a bold and facile pen, the second of the following extracts will suffice to show. It illustrates the indignation which inspired Oldham's most sustained series of efforts, and the unreasoning violence and malignant exuberance of his invective, together with its frequent bad rhymes and occasional bad grammar. He has been repeatedly compared with Dryden, whose earlier and worse manner he imitated in his own earlier efforts, but whom he preceded as a satirist. It is in the latter capacity only that Oldham is memorable among our poets; for his panegyrical and other odes are laboured without being effective; his paraphrases have the flatness too common to their kind; and the rest of his verse, though occasionally pleasing, has no peculiar value. But on the roll of our later poetic satirists, which begins with Donne and ends with Gifford, Oldham occupies a far from insignificant place. Both Johnson and Pope may have owed something to him; but by Dryden he was valued and acknowledged as to him the most congenial of his fellow-authors. At the time of Oldham's death Dryden, though a supporter of the Court, was not yet a Roman Catholic; and there was accordingly no stint in the praise which, with his usual magnanimity, he offered on the early death of his younger predecessor. He had but one exception to take, and even this he was ready himself to overrule. Had Oldham lived longer, Dryden wrote, advancing age 'might (what Nature never gives the young) To us there is much besides defects of form to overlook of forgive in Oldham. His most famous satires have the reck of an essentially grosser flame than that in which the greatest masters of poetic satire, ancient or modern, forged their darts. But he was capable of productions tempered with nicer art if with less expenditure of vigour than those by which he is best known. His Imitations of Horace, Juvenal, and Boileau are all more or less felicitous; and in a few shorter original pieces of the same cast he shows occasional lightness as well as his habitual strength of touch. It should certainly not be forgotten that he died at thirty-one, and that the species of poetry in which he was chiefly gifted for excelling was one more especially suited to matured powers. And to have been the foremost English writer of satire at a time when Dryden was already famous, though not in this branch of poetry; was to have secured a fair title to remembrance. A. W. WARD. VOL. II. Ff THE JESUITS. [From the Second of the Satires upon the Jesuits. 1860.] These are the Janissaries of the cause, The life-guard of the Roman Sultan, chose Who, 'stead of lace and ribbons, doctrine cry; As the known factors here, the brethren, once And shall these great Apostles be contemned, And thus by scoffing heretics defamed? They, by whose means both Indies now enjoy The two choice blessing, lust and Popery? It grieved to see such goodly nations hold Yet these were in compassion sent to Hell, 'Cardinal Bellarmin, the great Jesuit controversialist, opposed by James The Spanish pieza de à ocho, a dollar, or eight silver reals. |