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If your readers, Mr. Urban, are convinced by these quotations, that the assertion of Dr. Johnson was rash and unfounded, it may usefully admonish them not to admit too hastily a sentiment, merely because it has the sanction of a great name; and not to condemn particular modes of expression because they are rendered ridiculous by the prac

tice of bad writers.

1787, June.

J. A.

XCVII. Langelande, Author of Pierce Plowman's Visions.

MR. URBAN,

Nov. 12.

OUR poet Chaucer lately met with a commentator who hath done him ample justice; it is, perhaps, needless to say I allude to Mr. Tyrwhitt; but the Visions of Pierce Plowman, the work of Langelande, a bard of the same early day, have hitherto lain in the deepest obscurity, and in deplorable confusion. If Mr. Warton had not taken notice of him in the highly valuable History of English Poetry, and in the Observations on Spenser, even his name would have remained still unknown to the generality of readers.Though Langelande will by no means bear a comparison with Chaucer for wit, pleasantry, or discrimination of character, yet the inquirer into the origin of our language will find in him a greater fund of materials to elucidate the progress of the Saxon tongue, which Chaucer is accused of vitiating with discordant Gallicisms. The diction and versification, indeed, of these two poets, are as widely distant as those of Milton and his contemporary Waller. This consideration should teach the critic how little dependance is to be placed on style and manner in fixing the era of an uncertain composition.

Mean as the structure of the verse in these Visions must appear to modern eyes, let it be remembered, that Langelande was the Ennius of Milton. What this Anglo-Saxon poet attempted by uncouth alliteration only, the immortal bard perfected by elevated expression and metrical cadence. But our language was much longer ripening than the Roman. Little more than a century passed between Ennius and Virgil, whereas Langelande preceded Milton, and Chaucer flourished before Dryden, full three centuries.

This now-forgotten satire was formerly so much admired, that it went through three editions in one year. So favour

able a reception at such an early period of printing in our country as 1550, was probably owing to its falling in with the prevailing temper of the times in the reign of young Edward, and in some sort justifying the Reformation, by exposing the abuses of the Romish Church.

This poem, in common with other publications of those days, hath suffered greatly both from licentious and negli gent transcribers, and from careless and unskilful printers. To instance no farther than the passage cited to fix the date of the work. One of the editions in 1550 reads,

It is not long passed

Ther was a careful como, whe no cart came to town
With bread from Stratford, tho gan beggers wepe
And workeme were agast a litle, this wol be thought longe.
In date of our bryght, in a drye Apriell

A thousand and thre hundred, twyse twentye and ten
My wafers ther wer geise wha Chichester was Mair.

Imprinted by R. Cowley. Passus decimus tercius. Stow, in his Survey of London, informs us, that bread was regularly brought to the city for sale from "Stratford the Bow," till about the middle of the sixteenth century.— Many years ago I had corrected bryght to aright, Saxon for lord, and have since found that Mr. Warton adopts that emendation at the suggestion of Mr. Lye. However, brytta also means lord according to Lye's Dictionary, if the word be not a literal error in the authorities. For when we consider in what low estimation the Saxons held the Britons, it is very difficult to imagine that they would use brytta, a Briton, as a term of honour likewise: Geisen is probably misprinted for geifen, given. Wafers signify cakes, bread. It appears by Stow's list of mayors, that Chichester did not serve that office more than once, and that was during part of the years 1369 and 1370; soon after which time, by the expression" it is not long passed," it is plain that this poem was composed. So that "wyse twentye and ten" should either be thrice twentye and ten," or, as Stow gives it in the succeeding quotation, "twice thirty and ten." "In the 44th of Edward the third, John Chichester being Maior of London, I read in the Visions of Pierce Plowman, a book so called, as followeth: Ther was a carefull commune, when no cart came to towne with basket bread from Stratford: tho gan beggers weepe, and workemen were agasst a little, this will bee thought long in the date of our Dirte, in a dry Averell a thousand and three hundred, twice thirty and ten." p. 169.

It is evident from the above, that Stow had a copy of this

work written without the distinction of verses, as was often the practice formerly, and that, like Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who talked prose and did not know it, the honest antiquarian was not aware that he was transcribing poetry; for, to do him justice, even the meanest attempt at monumental metre stands throughout his compilation in regular lines. The reading of commune (debate) explains common in my edition. "This will be thought long" is unintelligible in both extracts. Dirte for dright or bryght could convey no idea. In such labyrinths of error hath this book been in many places involved for ages; and through such entangled passages, and depraved and distorted texts, were our ancestors frequently obliged to search for a meaning.

Is there then no Tyrwhitt left to rescue the father of English blank verse from his present wretched plight, and place him by the side of Chaucer, the father of our rhyme? 1787, Nov. T. H. W.

XCVIII. Remarks on Dryden's Ode in Memory of Mrs. Killigrew.

AMONG the various extraordinary judgments contained in Dr. Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," which may be attributed either to the force of prejudice, or to vitiated and defective feelings respecting poetical beauty, none has struck me more than the superlative praise he bestows on a composition of Dryden's, which was scarcely known by the greatest admirers of that poet till he brought it forward to notice. "His poem on the death of Mrs. Killigrew," says this eminent critic," is undoubtedly the noblest ode that our language ever has produced." On reading this decisive sentence, I flew with impatience to a poem, of which I had never before heard, as to a newly discovered treasure. I perused it over and over with strong partialities in its favour; but the result was so much disappointment, nay disgust, that I should not satisfy myself without sitting down and entering on a particular exposition of those defects which caused me to feel so differently from its warm encomiast.

It may be supposed, considering Dr. Johnson's turn of mind, that this predilection for this poem was partly owing to its religious cast; yet he has elsewhere explicitly declared his opinion of the inadequateness of poetry to give due dignity to subjects, in their own nature too high for artificial elevation, and which cannot be illustrated by any thing so great

as themselves. The very beginning of this ode might have served him as a proof of this truth:

Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,

Made in the last promotion of the blest!

Who does not feel a debasement, approaching to the lu dierous, in this allusion to a gazette list of promotions, by which the reception of a soul into the celestial mansions is imaged? He goes on,

Whose palms, new-pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest.

It is, surely, a false thought, that in a state of eternal and increasing felicity, the honours of a newly-admitted guest should be more conspicuous than those of all, the former inmates.

The remainder of this first stanza, with which Dr. Johnson is particularly transported, has that mixture of grandeur and meanness in conception, which appears in so many of the efforts of this poet. After having supposed, in some very lofty and melodious lines, that her present residence is either in some planet, fixed star, or other more exalted region of Heaven, he bids her for a time cease her celestial songand why? to hear him sing. A most lame and impotent

conclusion!

The next stanza touches upon the metaphysical question, whether souls are derived from parents to children, ex traduce, or whether, from a pre-existent state, they have suc cessively passed through different bodies? If the latter was the case, he says, hers

-did through all the mighty poets roll,
Who Greek or Latin laurels wore:

a compliment much too hyperbolical for the reader to acqui, esce in, even if he were not to reflect that several of these poets were contemporaries.

In the third stanza he supposes that all heaven kept holiday on his heroine's birth; an idea which gives occasion to a most extravagant, and almost impious, piece of bombast

And if no clust'ring swarm of bees

On thy sweet mouth distill'd their golden dew, 'Twas that such vulgar miracles

Heaven had no leisure to renew;

For all thy blest fraternity of love

Solemniz'd there thy birth, and kept thy holy-day above.

Certainly Dr. Johnson could not admire such passages as these at the time he criticised Donne and Cowley!

A very just and feeling censure of himself, and the other poets of that vicious age, for perverting their sacred art to the most licentious purposes, next succeeds, to which nothing can be objected, but the offensiveness of the images expressed in a line or two.

The following stanza, describing the poetical and moral character of the lady, is not only unexceptionable, but contains lines of exquisite beauty, though rather of the Ovidian than Pindaric strain:

E'en love (for love sometimes her Muse exprest)

Was but a lambent flame which play'd about her breast, Light as the vapours of a morning dream;

So cold herself, whilst she such warmth exprest, 'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream.

The sixth stanza relates to the skill in painting possessed by this extraordinary fair-one. The poet begins by considering what he calls painture as an additional province exposed to her inroads, where she establishes a chamber of dependencies; and he runs this fancy quite out of breath, in Cowley's manner. He proceeds to give views, rather pretty than masterly, of her various productions in landscape-painting; summing up the whole in a couplet which looks like burlesque, and certainly will not convey a high idea of Dryden's taste in this art, notwithstanding he translated Fresnoy:

So strange a concourse ne'er was seen before,
But when the peopled ark the whole creation bore.

We are next presented, in some spirited lines, with pictures of the king and queen, as painted by Mrs. Killigrew. A simile is then introduced, which, whether perfectly just or not, is at least very poetically expressed :

Thus nothing to her genius was denied,
But, like a ball of fire, the further thrown,
Still with a greater blaze she shone,

And her bright soul broke out on ev'ry side.

At the close, he resumes the idea of a conqueror in a most extravagant hyperbole :

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