Page images
PDF
EPUB

:

THE wit, the vigour, and the honefty of Mr. Pope's Satiric Writings had raised a great clamour against him, as if the Supplement, as he calls it, to the Public Laws, was a violation of morality and fociety. In anfwer to this charge he had it in his purpose to shew, that two of the most respectable characters in the modeft and virtuous age of Elizabeth, Dr. Donne and Bishop Hall, had arraigned Vice publicly, and fhewn it in ftronger colours, than he had done, whether they found it,

"On the Pillory, or near the Throne."

In pursuance of this purpose, our Poet hath admirably verified, as he expreffes it, two or three Satires of Dr. Donne. He intended to have given two or three of Bishop Hall's likewise, whose force and claffical elegance he much admired; but as Hall was a better verfifier, and as a mere Academic, had not his vein viciated like Donne's, by the fantastic language of Courts, Mr. Pope's purpose was only to correct a little, and smooth the verfification. In the first edition of Hall's Satires, which was in Mr. Pope's library, we find that long Satire, called the firft of the Sixth Book, corrected throughout, and the verfification mended for his ufe. He intitles it, in the beginning of his corrections, by the name of Sat. Opt. This writer Hall fell under a fevere examiner of his wit and reasoning, in the famous Milton. For Hall, a little before the unhappy breach between Charles I. and the long Parliament, having written in defence of Episcopacy, Milton, who first set out an advocate for Prefbytery, thought fit to take Hall's defence to task. And as he rarely gave quarter to his adversaries, from the Bishop's theologic writings, he fell upon his Poetry. But a stronger proof of the excellency of these Satires can hardly be given, than that all he could find to cavil at, was the title to the three first Books, which Hall, ridiculously enough, calls TOOTHLESS SATIRES: on this, for want of better hold, Milton fastens, and sufficiently mumbles.

W.

SIR,

SATIRE II.

IR, though (I thank God for it) I do hate
Perfectly all this town; yet there's one state

In all ill things, fo excellently beft,

That hate towards them, breeds pity towards the rest. Though

NOTES.

VER. I. Yes; thank my stars!] Two noblemen of taste and learning, the Duke of Shrewsbury and the Earl of Oxford, defired Pope to melt down and caft anew, the weighty bullion of Dr. Donne's Satires; who had degraded and deformed a vast fund of fterling wit and ftrong fenfe, by the moft harsh and uncouth diction. Pope fucceeded in giving harmony to a writer, more rough and rugged than even any of his age, and who profited fo little by the example Spencer had fet, of a most musical and mellifluous verfification; far beyond the versification of Fairfax, who is frequently mentioned as the greatest improver of the harmony of our language. The Satires of Hall, written in very smooth and pleas ing numbers, preceded thofe of Donne many years; for his Vir gidemiarum were published, in fix books, in the year 1597; in which he calls himself the very first English Satirift. This, however, was not true in fact; for Sir Thomas Wyatt, of Allington Castle in Kent, the friend and favourite of Henry VIII. and, as was fug. gefted, of Ann Boleyn, was our first writer of Satire worth notice. But it was not in his numbers only that Donne was reprehenfible. He abounds in falfe thoughts, in far-fought sentiments, in forced unnatural conceits. He was the first corrupter of Cowley. Dry. den was the first who called him a metaphyfical poet. He had a confiderable share of learning, and though he entered late into orders, yet he was esteemed a good divine. James I. was so earnest to prefer him in the church, that he even refused the Earl of Somerfet, his favourite, the requeft he earneftly made, of giving

Donne

SATIRE II.

YES; thank my stars! as early as I knew
This Town, I had the fenfe to hate it too:
Yet here, as ev'n in Hell, there must be still
One Giant-Vice, fo excellently ill,

That all befide, one pities, not abhors;

As who knows Sappho, fmiles at other whores.

NOTES.

5

I grant

Donne an office in the council. In the entertaining account of that converfation, which Ben Jonfon is faid to have held with Mr. Drummond, of Hauthornden in Scotland, in the year 1619, containing his judgments of the English Poets, he fpeaks thus of Donne, (who was his intimate friend, and had frequently addressed him in various poems :) "Donne was originally a poet; his grandfather, on the mother's fide, was Heywood the epigrammatist; but for not being underftood, he would perish. He esteemed him the first poet in the world for fome things; his Verses of the Loft Ochadine, he had by heart; and that paffage of the Calm, "That duft and feather, did not ftir, all was fo quiet." He affirmed, that Donne wrote all his beft pieces before he was twentyfive years of age. The conceit of Donne's transformation, or metempfychofis, was, that he fought the foul of that apple which Eve pulled, and hereafter made it the foul of a bitch, then of a she wolf, and so of a woman; his general purpose was to have brought it into all the bodies of the heretics, from the foul of Cain, and at last left it in the body of Calvin. He only wrote one sheet of this; and fince he was made Doctor, repented heartily, and refolved to destroy all his poems. He told Donne, that his Anniverfary was prophane; that if it had been written on the Virgin Mary, it had been tolerable; to which Donne answered, That he described the idea of a woman, and not as she was."

Donne

Though Poetry, indeed, be fuch a fin,

As, I think, that brings Dearth and Spaniards in:
Though like the peftilence, and old-fashion'd love,
Ridlingly it catch men, and doth remove
Never, till it be ftarv'd out; yet their state
Is poor, difarm'd, like Papifts, not worth hate.

One (like a wretch, which at barre judg❜d as dead, Yet prompts him which stands next, and cannot read,

And faves his life) gives Idiot Actors means,
(Starving himself,) to live by's labour'd scenes.
As in fome Organs, Puppits dance above,
And bellows pant below, which them do move.

One would move love by rythmes; but witchcraft's

charms

Bring not now their old fears, nor their old harms: Rams and flings now are filly battery,

Pistolets are the best artillery.

And they who write to Lords, rewards to get,
Are they not like fingers at doors for meat?
And they who write, because all write, have ftill
That 'fcufe for writing, and for writing ill.

NOTES.

But

Donne was one of our Poets who wrote elegantly in Latin; as did Ben Jonfon, Cowley, Milton, Addison, and Gray. In Donne's Introduction to his Witty Catalogue of Imaginary Books, (which Swift has imitated before the Tale of a Tub,) there is a passage so minutely applicable to the present times, that I am tempted to transcribe it: "Evum fortiti fumus, quo plane indoctis nihil turpius, plenè doctis nihil rarius. Tam omnes in literis aliquid fciunt, tam nemo omnia. Mediâ igitur plerumque itur viâ, & ad

evitandam

« PreviousContinue »