Forced by reflective reason, I confess That human science is uncertain guess. Alas! we grasp the clouds and beat the air, Can thought beyond the bounds of matter climb In vain we lift up our presumptuous eyes To what our Maker to their ken denies : The searcher follows fast; the object faster flies. Seduces only the bewildered mind To fruitless search of something left behind. The same serious moral note often recurs in Prior's lighter and more familiar verse. Montague, he says: Writing to Charles Our hopes, like towering falcons, aim At objects in an airy height : Our anxious pains we all the day In search of what we like employ : At distance through an artful glass To the mind's eye things will appear : If we see right we see our woes; We wearied should lie down in death; Prior's mirth, therefore, has in it a strong vein of melancholy, but his philosophical conclusion is to find cheerfulness in action; a moral which he may even have commended to himself by the more solemn aspiration with which he closes his Solomon :— Now, Solomon, remembering who thou art, Supreme, all wise, eternal Potentate! Whom no man fully sees, and none can see! Reading these lines, evidently written with emotion, we seem to feel the sincerity of the simple and pious verses to Lady Margaret Cavendish Holles Harley in her childhood: My noble, lovely, little Peggy, Let this, my first epistle, beg ye, In double beauty say your prayer : If to these precepts you attend, No Second-Letter need I send, And so I rest your constant friend. But though, for the purpose of discovering the true character of his poetical genius, it is certainly necessary to study his serious as well as his lighter verse, injustice is done him by subjecting his poetry to solemn canons of criticism, whether applied for the purpose of blame or praise. An example of the former kind of injustice remains in Johnson's judgment on Henry and Emma: The greatest of all his amorous essays is Henry and Emma, a dull and tedious dialogue which excites neither esteem for the man nor tenderness for the woman. The example of Emma, who resolves to follow an outlawed murderer wherever fear and guilt shall drive him, deserves no imitation; and the experiment by which Henry tries the lady's constancy is such as must end either in infamy to her, or in disappointment to himself.1 Here it is evident that Johnson is judging by a moral and not by a poetical law. But Cowper, in defending Prior on poetical grounds, does not greatly improve the cause of his client. He says of Johnson's criticism: But what shall we say of his old, fusty, rusty remarks upon Henry and Emma? I agree with him that, morally considered, both the knight and his lady are bad characters, and that each exhibits an example which ought not to be followed. The man dissembles in a way that would have justified the woman had she renounced him; and the woman resolves to follow him at the expense of delicacy, propriety, and even modesty itself. But when the critic calls it a dull dialogue, who but a critic will believe him? There are few readers of poetry, of either sex, in the country who cannot remember how that enchanting piece has bewitched them-who do not know that, instead of finding it tedious, they have been so delighted with the romantic turn of it as to have overlooked all its defects, and to have given it a consecrated place in their memories without ever feeling it a burden.2 As Spenser says, "Thoughts of men do as themselves decay." While probably almost all modern readers will agree with Johnson's low estimate of Henry and Emma rather than with Cowper's, they will certainly dissent from the grounds of the former's judgment. Prior's error was one not so much of morals as of taste. Fancying that he could improve the ballad of The Nut-brown Maid, he endeavoured to rationalise and, as he thought, to harmonise one of the most artlessly beautiful and melodious 2 Letter to Unwin, January 5, 1782. 1 Lives of the Poets: Prior. VOL. V I poems in the English language, by tacking a narrative on to the dialogue, and translating the latter into the rhetorical diction appropriate to the heroic couplet. The old author of the ballad had no object of the kind that Johnson and Cowper imagine: his purpose, as he shows us, was simply to defend women against the charge of being fickle in their affections, and this he does in the directest way by a kind of "Tenson," after the Provençal manner. The reader may judge of the desecration of the original in Prior's version by comparing a question and answer in the ancient and modern form. (THE NUT-BROWN MAID) A Nay, nay, not so; ye shall not go, and I shall tell you why: For lyke as ye have sayed to me, in lykewyse hardely Ye would answère, whosoever it were, in way of company. It is sayd of old-" Sone hote, sone cold"; and so is a womàn : For I must to the grene wode go, alone, a banyshed man. B Yf ye take hede, it is no nede such wordes to say by me ; (PRIOR) HENRY O wildest thoughts of an abandoned mind ! O guilty error! and O wretched maid! Whose roving fancy would resolve the same With him who next should tempt her easy fame; And blow with empty words the susceptible flame : No longer loose desire for constant love Mistake: but say 'tis man with whom thou long'st to rove. EMMA Are there not poisons, racks, and flames, and swords, More fatal Henry's words: they mangle Emma's fame. That I of all mankind have loved but thee alone. When Johnson, fixing his attention exclusively on this and other serious poems of Prior, goes on to criticise the latter's diction, his remarks inevitably raise a smile : His diction is more his own than that of any among the successors of Dryden; he borrows no lucky turns or commodious modes of language from his predecessors. His phrases are original, but they are sometimes harsh; as he inherited no elegances, none has he bequeathed. His expression has every mark of laborious study: the line seldom seems to have been formed at once; the words did not come till they were called, and were then put by constraint into their places, where they do their duty, but do it sullenly.1 On this Cowper remarks with perfect justice and great felicity: By your leave, most learned Doctor, this is the most disingenuous remark I ever met with, and would have come with a better grace from Curll or Dennis. Every man conversant 1 Lives of the Poets: Prior. |