Or say our fathers never broke a rule; But let them own, that greater faults than we 95 They had, and greater virtues, I'll agree. Spenser himself affects the obsolete, And Sidney's verse halts ill on *Roman feet: NOTES. Ver. 92. Careless Husband praise,] This line is quoted as an instance of our author's candour towards Cibber. This play was at first denied to be Cibber's, and was given to the Duke of Argyle, and other noblemen. It met with the greatest success, and was soon ascribed to its right author. Mrs. Oldfield's abilities were first known and admired by her acting Lady Betty Modish. The reconciliation scene between Sir Charles and Lady Easy was applauded. It is singular, that Cibber should be the first writer that, after the Restoration, produced a play, his Love's Last Shift, in which any purity of manners, any decency of language, and any respect to the honour of the marriage-bed, were preserved. (See Davis's Miscell. p. 400. v. 3.) Warton. Ver. 97. affects the obsolete,] One, who is allowed to have studied Spenser attentively, has remarked, "that the censure of Jonson upon his style, is perhaps unreasonable; Spenser in affecting the ancients writ no language." The ground-work and substance of his style is the language of his age. This indeed is seasoned with various expressions, adopted from the elder poets; but in such a manner, that the language of his age was rather strengthened and dignified, than debased and disguised, by such a practice. In truth, the affectation of Spenser in this point is by no means so striking and visible as B. Jonson has insinuated; nor is his phraseology so difficult and obsolete as it is generally supposed to be. For many stanzas together, we may frequently read him with as much facility as we can the same number of lines in Shakespear. Observations on the Fairy Queen, vol. i. p. 133. by Thomas Warton, A. M. Warton. Ver. 98. And Sidney's verse] For a specimen, take the following stanza of one of his Sapphics: Arcadia, book i. p. 142: "If Dicere cedit eos, 'ignavè multa fatetur, Et sapit, et mecum facit, et Jove judicat æquo. sed emendata videri Pulchraque, et exactis minimùm distantia, miror: NOTES. "If the spheres senseless do yet hold a music, If the swan's sweet voice be not heard, but at death, Yieldeth a lute's tune." Warton. Ver. 100. Now serpent-like,] Nobody can deny there are inequalities in this poem; and this observation of our author is adopted from Dryden, who says, that Milton runs into a flat thought sometimes for a hundred lines together; "but it is when he is got into a tract of scripture;" but such passages bear no proportion to the General sublime of the poem. Warton. Ver. 104. Bentley] This excellent critic, who had the fortune to be extravagantly despised and ridiculed by two of the greatest wits [P. S.], and as extravagantly feared and flattered by two of the greatest scholars of his time [C. H.], will deserve to have that justice done him now, which he never met with while alive. He was a great master both of the languages and the learning of polite antiquity; whose writings he studied with no other design than to correct the errors of the text. For this he had a strong natural understanding, a great share of penetration, and a sagacity and acumen very uncommon; all which qualities he had greatly improved by long exercise and application. Yet, at the same time, he had so little of that elegance of judgment, we call Taste, that he knew nothing of Style, as it accommodates itself, and is appropriated to, the various kinds of composition. And his reasoning faculty being infinitely better than that of his imagination, the style of poetry was what he least understood. So that, that clearness of conception, which so much assisted his cri tical Milton's strong pinion now not Heaven can bound, And God the Father turns a school-divine. NOTES. tical sagacity, in discovering and reforming errors in books of science, where a philosophical precision and grammatical exactness of language is employed, served but to betray him into absurd and extravagant conjectures, whenever he attempted to reform the text of a poet; whose diction he was always for reducing to the prosaic rules of logical severity; and whenever he found what a great master of speech calls verbum ardens, he was sure not to leave it till he had thoroughly quenched it in his critical standish. But to make philology amends, he was a perfect master of all the mysteries of the ancient rhythmus. The most important of his works, as a scholar, is his Critique on the Epistles of Phalaris; and the least considerable, his Remarks on the Discourse concerning Free-thinking. Yet the first, with all its superiority of learning, argument, and truth, was borne down by the vivacity and clamour of a party, which (as usual) carried the public along with them: while the other, employed only in the easy and trifling task of exposing a very dull and very ignorant rhapsodist, was as extravagantly extolled. For it was his odd fortune (as our poet expresses it) to pass for "A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits:" whereas, in truth, he was neither one nor the other. The injustice that had been done him in the first case, made him always speak, amongst his friends, of the blind partiality of the public, in the latter, with the contempt it deserved. For however he might sometimes mistake his own force, he was never the dupe of the public judgment; of which, a learned prelate, now living, gave me this instance: He accidentally met Bentley in the days of Pha laris; Inter quæ verbum emicuit si forte decorum, et 'Indignor quidquam reprehendi, non quia crassè Compositum, illepidève putetur, sed quia nuper ; Nec veniam antiquis, sed honorem et præmia posci. 'Rectè necne crocum floresque perambulet Atta NOTES. For laris; and after having complimented him on that noble piece of criticism (the Answer to the Oxford writers,) he bade him not be discouraged at this run upon him: for though they had got the laughers on their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not hold it out long against a work of so much learning. To which the other replied: "Indeed, Dr. S. I am in no pain about the matter. it is a maxim with me, that no man was ever written out of reputation, but by himself.". Warburton. Ver. 109. Sprat,] Rightly put at the head of the small wits. He is now known to most advantage as the friend of Mr. Cowley. His learning was comprised in the well rounding of a period; for, as Seneca said of Triarius: "Compositione verborum belle cadentium multos Scholasticos delectabat, omnes decipiebat." As to the turn of his piety and genius, it is best seen by his last Will and Testament, where he gives God thanks that he, who had been bred neither at Eton nor Westminster, but at a little country school by the churchyard side, should at last come to be a bishop. But the honour of being a Westminster school-boy some have at one age, and some at another; and some all their life long. Our grateful bishop, though he had it not in his youth, yet it came upon him in his old age. Warburton. Ver. 110. Like twinkling stars] Among the trash that fills those six volumes, called Dryden's Miscellanies, are several copies of verses so dull and despicable, that they would hardly gain admittance in a modern monthly magazine : "Unfinish'd things one knows not what to call." Dodsley's six volumes are on the whole superior. Milton, in his Second Defence, has very severely proscribed the common writers of miscellaneous poems: "Poetas equidem verè dictos, et diligo et But for the wits of either Charles's days, The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease, Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more, Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o'er, One simile, that Psolitary shines In the dry desert of a thousand lines, 110 Or 'lengthen'd thought that gleams through many a page, Has sanctified whole poems for an age. 'I lose my patience, and I own it too, 115 When works are censured, not as bad but new ; NOTES. 120 et colo, et audiendo sæpe delector; istos vero versiculorum nugivendos quis non oderit? quo genere nihil stultius, aut vanius, aut corruptius, aut mendacius. Laudant, vituperant, sine delectû, sine discrimine, judicio, aut modo, nunc principes, nunc plebeios, doctos juxta atque indoctos, probos an improbos perinde habent; prout Cantharus, aut spes nummuli, aut fatuus ille furor inflat, ac rapit." A sensible French writer makes the very same complaint that our author has done in verse 116. Some shining passages, and a few striking lines, were sufficient to recommend a whole piece. The weakness and meanness of many other lines were excused, on being considered only as made merely for connecting the former, and therefore they were called, as we learn from Marolles's Memoirs, des Vers de Passages. Du Bos, Sect. 7. The reading such works, says Bayle, is like the journey of a caravan over the deserts of Arabia, which often goes twenty or thirty leagues together without finding a single fruit-tree or fountain. This thought has a close resemblance to the 111th line of our poet. Warton. |