"To begin, then, with Shakspeare. He was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul; all the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously but luckily; when he describes any thing, you more than see it—you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned, he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature, he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him—no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,'Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.'"The consideration of this made Mr Hales of Eton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better done in Shakspeare: and, however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher, and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem; and in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above him."Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to speak, had, with the advantage of Shakspeare's wit, which was their precedent, great natural gifts, improved by study. Beaumont, especially, being so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson while he lived submitted all his writings to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots. What value he had for him appeared by the verses he writ to him, and therefore I need speak no further of it. The first play that brought Fletcher and him into esteem was their 'Philaster;' for before that they had written two or three very unsuccessfully, as the like is reported of Ben Jonson before he writ 'Every Man in his Humour.' Their plots were generally more regular than Shakspeare's, especially those which were made before Beaumont's death; and they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better, whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartee no poet before them could paint as they have done. Humour, which Ben Jonson derived from particular persons, they made it not their business to describe; they represented all the passions very lively, but, above all, love. I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived to the highest perfection—what words have since been taken in are rather superfluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage, two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's; the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with all men's humours. Shakspeare's language is likewise a little obsolete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs."As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself, (for his last plays were but his dotages,) I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge; of himself as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it in his works; you find little to retouch or alter. Wit and language, and humour also, in some measure, we had before him; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who succeeded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such an height. Humour was his proper sphere, and in that he delighted most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them. There is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times, whom he has not translated in 'Sejanus' and 'Catiline.' But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him. With the spoils of those writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that, if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language it was, that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially. Perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words, which he translated, almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough follow with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father, of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing. I admire him, but I love Shakspeare. To conclude of him, as he has given us the most correct plays, so, in the precepts which he has laid down in his 'Discoveries,' we have as many and profitable rules for perfecting the stage as any wherewith the French can furnish us."
"To begin, then, with Shakspeare. He was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul; all the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously but luckily; when he describes any thing, you more than see it—you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned, he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature, he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him—no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,
'Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.'
"The consideration of this made Mr Hales of Eton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better done in Shakspeare: and, however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher, and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem; and in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above him.
"Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to speak, had, with the advantage of Shakspeare's wit, which was their precedent, great natural gifts, improved by study. Beaumont, especially, being so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson while he lived submitted all his writings to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots. What value he had for him appeared by the verses he writ to him, and therefore I need speak no further of it. The first play that brought Fletcher and him into esteem was their 'Philaster;' for before that they had written two or three very unsuccessfully, as the like is reported of Ben Jonson before he writ 'Every Man in his Humour.' Their plots were generally more regular than Shakspeare's, especially those which were made before Beaumont's death; and they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better, whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartee no poet before them could paint as they have done. Humour, which Ben Jonson derived from particular persons, they made it not their business to describe; they represented all the passions very lively, but, above all, love. I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived to the highest perfection—what words have since been taken in are rather superfluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage, two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's; the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with all men's humours. Shakspeare's language is likewise a little obsolete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs.
"As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself, (for his last plays were but his dotages,) I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge; of himself as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it in his works; you find little to retouch or alter. Wit and language, and humour also, in some measure, we had before him; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who succeeded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such an height. Humour was his proper sphere, and in that he delighted most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them. There is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times, whom he has not translated in 'Sejanus' and 'Catiline.' But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him. With the spoils of those writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that, if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language it was, that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially. Perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words, which he translated, almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough follow with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father, of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing. I admire him, but I love Shakspeare. To conclude of him, as he has given us the most correct plays, so, in the precepts which he has laid down in his 'Discoveries,' we have as many and profitable rules for perfecting the stage as any wherewith the French can furnish us."
Samuel Johnson truly says of the Dialogue, "that it will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imagery, and heightened with illustration." But we have some difficulty in going along with him when he adds—"The account of Shakspeare may stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism, exact without minuteness, and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, so sublime in its comprehension, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed; norcan the editors and admirers of Shakspeare, in all their emulation of reverence, boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased his epitome of excellence; of having changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value, though of greater bulk." Since this great critic's day—ay, with all his defects and perversities, Samuel was a great critic—what a blaze of illumination has been brought to bear on the genius of Shakspeare! Nevertheless, all honour to Glorious John! Next comes the famous prologue:—
As when a tree's cut down, the secret rootLives under ground, and thence new branches shoot;So, from old Shakspeare's honour'd dust, this daySprings up the buds, a new reviving play.Shakspeare, who (taught by none) did first impartTo Fletcher wit, to labouring Jonson art;He, monarch-like, gave those, his subjects, law,And is that nature which they paint and draw.Fletcher reach'd that which on his heights did grow,While Jonson crept and gather'd all below.This did his love, and this his mirth digest;One imitates him most, the other best.If they have since outwrit all other men,'Tis with the drops which fell from Shakspeare's pen.The storm which vanish'd on the neighbouring shore,Was taught by Shakspeare's 'Tempest' first to roar.That innocence and beauty which did smileIn Fletcher, grew on this enchanted isle.But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be—Within that circle none durst walk but he.I must confess 'twas bold, nor would you nowThat liberty to vulgar wits allow,Which works by magic supernatural things;But Shakspeare's power is sacred as a king's.Those legends from old priesthood were received,And he them writ as people them believed."
Strange that he who could write so nobly about Shakspeare, could commit such an outrage on his divine genius as the play to which this is the prologue—"The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island," a Comedy. It was—Dryden tells us, and we must believe him—"originally Shakspeare's; a poet for whom Sir William D'Avenant had particularly a high veneration, and whom he first taught me to admire." So the two together, to show their joint and judicious admiration, set about altering "The Tempest." Fletcher had imitated it all in vain in his "Sea Voyage;" "the storm, the desert island, and the woman who had never seen a man, are all implicit testimonies of it." Few more delightful poets than Fletcher; but in an evil hour, and deserted by his good genius, did he then hoist his sail. But now cover your face with your hands—and then shut your ears. "Sir John Suckling, a professed admirer of our author, has followed his footstepsin his 'Goblins;' his Regmella being an open imitation of Shakspeare's Miranda, and his spirits,though counterfeit, yet are copied from Ariel." But Sir William D'Avenant, "as he was a man of quick and piercing imagination, soon found that somewhat might be added to the design of Shakspeare, of which neither Fletcher nor Suckling had ever thought;" "and this excellent contrivance," he was pleased, says Dryden with looks of liveliest gratitude, "to communicate to me, and to desire my assistance in it." You probably knew what was the "excellent contrivance" by which "the last hand"—the hand after Suckling's—"was put to it;" so that thenceforth the "Tempest" was to be let alone in its glory. "The counterpart to Shakspeare's plot, namely, that of a man who had never seen a woman, that by this means these two characters of innocence and love might the more illustrate and commend each other.I confess that from the very first moment it so pleased me, that I never writany thing with more delight." Sir Walter says it seems tohave been undertaken chiefly with a view to give room for scenical decoration, and that Dryden's share in the alteration was probably little more than the care of adapting it to the stage. But Dryden's own words contradict that supposition, and he further tells us that his writings received D'Avenant's daily amendments; "and that is the reason why it is not so faulty as the rest, which I have done without the help and correction of so judicious a friend." They wrote together at the same desk. And Dryden found D'Avenant of "so quick a fancy, that nothing was proposed to him on which he would not suddenly produce a thought, extremely pleasant and surprising. * * His imagination was such as could not easily enter into any other man." It had been easy enough, he adds, to have arrogated more to himself than was his due in the writing of the play; but "besides the worthlessness of the action, which deterred me from it, (there being nothing so base as to rob the dead of his reputation,) I am satisfied I could never have received so much honour in being thought the author of any poem, how excellent soever—as I shall from the joining of my imperfections with the merit and name of Shakspeare and Sir William D'Avenant." From all this, and more of the same sort, 'tis plain that Dryden's share in the composition was at least equal to—we should say, much greater than—D'Avenant's.
You must not meddle with Miranda—for she is all our own. Yet we cheerfully introduce you to her sister, Dorinda, and leave you all alone by yourselves for an hour's flirtation. Hush! she is describing the ship!
"This floating Ram did bear his horns above,And tied with ribands, ruffling in the wind:Sometimes he nodded down his head awhile,And then the waves did heave him to the moon,He climbing to the top of all the billows;And then again he curtsied down so lowI could not see him. Till at last, all sidelongWith a great crack, his belly burst in pieces."
We had but once before handled this performance—some threescore and ten years ago, when a man of middle age. We dimly remember being amused in our astonishment. Now that we are beginning to get a little old, we are, perhaps, growing too fastidious; yet surely it is something very shocking. Portsmouth Poll and Plymouth Sall—sisters originating at Yarmouth—when brought into comparison with Miranda and Dorinda of the enchanted island, to our imagination seem idealized into Vestal virgins. True, they were famous—when not half seas over—for keeping a quiet tongue in their mouths: with them mum was the word. Only when drunk as blazes, poor things, did they, by word or gesture, offend modesty's most sacred laws. But D'Avenant's and Dryden's daughters are such leering and lascivious drabs, so dreadfully addicted to innuendoes anddoubles entendresof the most alarming character, that, high as is our opinion of the intrepidity of British seamen, we should not fear to back the two at odds against a full-manned jolly-boat from a frigate in the offing sent in to fill her water-casks. Caliban himself—and what a Caliban he has become!—fights shy of the plenireps. Why—if it must be so—we give our arm to his sister Sycorax, a "fearsome dear" no doubt, but what better could one expect in a misbegotten monster? Oh, the confounding mysteries of self-degrading genius!
In the preface to "An Evening's Love; or, the Mock Astrologer," we again meet with some criticism on Shakspeare. We learn from it that Dryden had formed the ambitious design of writing on the difference betwixt the plays of his own age and those of his predecessors on the English stage, in order to show in what parts of "dramatic poesy we were excelled by Ben Jonson—I mean, humour and contrivance of comedy; andin what we may justly claim precedence of Shakspeare and Fletcher! namely, in heroic plays." He had, moreover, proposed to treat "of the improvement of our language since Fletcher's and Jonson's days, and, consequently, of our refining the courtship, raillery, and conversation of plays." In great attempts 'tis glorious even to fail; and assuredly had Dryden essayed allthis, his failure would have been complete. "I would," said he, with his usual ignorance of his own and his age's worst sins and defects, "have the characters well chosen, and kept distant from interfering with each other, which is more than Fletcheror Shakspeare did! * * I think there is no folly so great in any part of our age, as the superfluity and waste of wit was in some of our predecessors, particularly Fletcherand Shakspeare." Refining the courtship, raillery, and conversation of plays! We cannot, perhaps, truly say very much in praise of those qualities in Ben's comedies, admirable as they are, and superior, in all respects, a thousand times over to the best of Dryden's and of his contemporaries'; but wilfully blind indeed, or worse, must the man who could thus write have been to the matchless grace, vivacity, delicacy, prodigality, and poetry of Shakspeare's comedy, which as far transcends all the happiest creations of other men's wit, as the pervading pathos and sublimity of his tragedy all their happiest inspirations from the holy fountain of ennobling or pitying tears.
In its day, the following Epilogue caused a great hubbub—
"They, who have best succeeded on the stage,Have still conform'd their genius to their age.Thus Jonson did mechanic humours show,When men were dull, and conversation low.Then comedy was faultless, but 'twas coarse:Cobb's tankard was a jest, and Otter's horse.And, as their comedy, their love was mean;Except by chance, in some one labour'd scene,Which must atone for an ill-written play.They rose, but at their height could seldom stay:Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped;And they have kept it since by being dead.But, were they now to write, when critics weighEach line, and every word, throughout a play,None of them, no not Jonson in his height,Could pass without allowing grains for weight.Think it not envy that these truths are told—Our poet's not malicious, though he's bold.'Tis not to brand them that their faults are shown,But by their errors, to excuse his own.If love and honour now are higher raised,'Tis not the poet, but the age is praised.Wit's now arrived to a more high degree;Our native language more refined and free;Our ladies and our men now speak more wit,In conversation, than those poets writ.Then, one of these is, consequently, true;That what this poet writes comes short of you,And imitates you ill (which most he fears,)Or else his writing is not worse than theirs.Yet, though you judge (as sure the critics will)That some before him writ with greater skill,In this one praise he has their fame surpast,To please an age more gallant than the last."
Dryden was called over the coals for this sacrilegious Epilogue by persons ill qualified for censors—among others, by my Lord Rochester—and was instantly ready with his defence—an "Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age." In it he repeats the senseless assertion, "that the language, wit, and conversation of our age are improved and refined above the last;" and he takes care to include among the writers of the last age,Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Jonson. "In what," he asks "does the refinement of a language principally consist?"
"Either in rejecting such old words or phrases which are ill sounding or improper, or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding, and more luxuriant. * * * Malice and partiality set apart, let any man whounderstands English, read diligently the works ofShakspeareand Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense; yet these men are reverenced, when we are not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times their expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny. But the times were ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was then, if not in its infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigour and maturity. Witness the lameness of their plots, many of which, especially those they writ first, (for even that age refined itself in some measure,) were made up of some ridiculous, incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre,'nor the historical plays of Shakspeare, besides many of the rest, as the 'Winter's Tale,' 'Love's Labour Lost,' 'Measure for Measure,' which were either founded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment."
"Either in rejecting such old words or phrases which are ill sounding or improper, or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding, and more luxuriant. * * * Malice and partiality set apart, let any man whounderstands English, read diligently the works ofShakspeareand Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense; yet these men are reverenced, when we are not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times their expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny. But the times were ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was then, if not in its infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigour and maturity. Witness the lameness of their plots, many of which, especially those they writ first, (for even that age refined itself in some measure,) were made up of some ridiculous, incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre,'nor the historical plays of Shakspeare, besides many of the rest, as the 'Winter's Tale,' 'Love's Labour Lost,' 'Measure for Measure,' which were either founded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment."
In all this this rash and wretched folly, Dryden shows his ignorance of the order in which Shakspeare wrote his plays; and Sir Walter kindly says, that there will be charity in believing that he was not intimately acquainted with those he so summarily and unjustly condemns. But unluckily this nonsense was written during the very time he was said by Sir Walter to have been "engaged in a closer and more critical examination of the ancient English poets than he had before bestowed upon them;" and, from the perusal of Shakspeare, learning that the sole staple of the drama was "human characters acting from the direct and energetic influence of human passions." Yet Sir Walter was right; only Dryden's opinions and judgments kept fluctuating all his life long, too much obedient to the gusts of whim and caprice, or oftener still to the irregular influences of an impatient spirit, that could not brook any opposition from any quarter to its domineering self-will. For in not many months after, in the Prologue to "Aurengzebe," are these noble lines—
"But spite of all his pride, a secret shameInvades his heart at Shakspeare's sacred name;Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage,He, in a just despair, would quit the stage,And to an age less polish'd, more unskill'd,Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield."
Less polished—more unskilled! Here, too, he is possessed with the same foolish fancy as when he said, in the "Defence of the Epilogue,"—"But these absurdities which those poets committed, may more properly be called the age's fault than theirs. For besides the want of education and learning, (which was their particular unhappiness,) they wanted the benefit of converse. Their audiences were no better, and therefore were satisfied with what they brought. Those who call theirs the golden age of poetry, have only this reason for it, that they were then content with acorns before they knew the use of bread!" Then, after a somewhat hasty and unconvincing examination of certain incorrectnesses and meannesses of expression even in Ben Jonson, learned as he was, he asks, "What correctness after this can be expected fromShakspeareor Fletcher, who wanted that learning and care which Jonson had? I will therefore spare myself the trouble of enquiring into their faults, who, had they lived now, had doubtless written more correctly." Since Shakspeare's days, too, the English language had been refined, he says, by receiving new words and phrases, and becoming the richer for them, as it would be "by importation of bullion." It is admitted, however, that Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Jonson did indeed beautify our tongue by theircuriosa felicitasin the use of old words, to which it often gave a rare meaning; but in that they were followed by "Sir John Suckling and Mr Waller,who refined upon them!" But the greatest improvement and refinement of all, "in this age," is said to have been in wit. Pure wit, and without alloy, was the wit of the court of Charles the Second, and of the Clubs. It shines like gold, yea much fine gold, in the works of all the master play-wrights. Whereas, "Shakspeare, who many times haswritten better than any poet in any language, is yet so far from writing wit always, or expressing that wit according to the dignity of the subject, that he writes, in many places, below the dullest writers of ours, or any preceding age. Never did any author precipitate himself from such height of thought to so low expressions, as he often does. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost every where two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one ere you despise the other." That the wit "of this age" is much more courtly, may, Dryden thinks, be easily proved by viewing the characters of gentlemen which were written in the last. For example—who do you think? Why,Mercutio. "Shakspeare showed the best of his skill in Mercutio; and he said himself that he was forced to kill him in the third act, to prevent being killed by him. But for my part I cannot find he was so dangerous a person: I see nothing in him but what was so exceedingly harmless, that he might have lived to the end of the play and died in his bed, without offence to any man." Wit Shakspeare had in common with his ingenious contemporaries; but theirs, to speak out plainly, "was not that of gentlemen; there was ever somewhat that was ill-natured and clownish in it, and which confessed the conversation of the authors." "In this age," Dryden declares the last and greatest advantage of writing proceeds from conversation. "In that age" there was "less gallantry;" and "neither did they (Shakspeare, Ben, and the rest) keep the best company of theirs." But let the illustrious time-server speak at large.
"Now, if they ask me, whence it is that our conversation is so much refined? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the court; and in it, particularly to the king, whose example gives a law to it. His own misfortunes, and the nation's, afforded him an opportunity, which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes—I mean of travelling, and being conversant in the most polished courts of Europe; and, thereby, of cultivating a spirit which was formed by nature to receive the impressions of a gallant and generous education. At his return, he found a nation lost as much in barbarism as in rebellion; and, as the excellency of his nature forgave the one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern, first awakened the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural reservedness; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation, and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus, insensibly, our way of living became more free; and the fire of the English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained, melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of our neighbours. This being granted to be true, it would be a wonder if the poets, whose work is imitation, should be the only persons in three kingdoms who should not receive advantage by it; or, if they should not more easily imitate the wit and conversation of the present age than of the past."Let us, therefore, admire the beauties and the heights of Shakspeare, without falling after him into a carelessness, and, as I may call it, a lethargy of thought, for whole scenes together."
"Now, if they ask me, whence it is that our conversation is so much refined? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the court; and in it, particularly to the king, whose example gives a law to it. His own misfortunes, and the nation's, afforded him an opportunity, which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes—I mean of travelling, and being conversant in the most polished courts of Europe; and, thereby, of cultivating a spirit which was formed by nature to receive the impressions of a gallant and generous education. At his return, he found a nation lost as much in barbarism as in rebellion; and, as the excellency of his nature forgave the one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern, first awakened the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural reservedness; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation, and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus, insensibly, our way of living became more free; and the fire of the English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained, melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of our neighbours. This being granted to be true, it would be a wonder if the poets, whose work is imitation, should be the only persons in three kingdoms who should not receive advantage by it; or, if they should not more easily imitate the wit and conversation of the present age than of the past.
"Let us, therefore, admire the beauties and the heights of Shakspeare, without falling after him into a carelessness, and, as I may call it, a lethargy of thought, for whole scenes together."
Shakspeare lethargic—comatose!
Sir Walter's admiration of "glorious John" was so much part of his very nature, that he says, "it is a bold, perhaps presumptuous, task to attempt to separate the true from the false criticism in the foregoing essay: for who is qualified to be umpire betwixt Shakspeare and Dryden?" None that ever breathed, better than his own great and good self. Yet surely he was wrong in saying, that when Shakspeare wrote for the stage, "wit was not required." Required or not, there it was in perfection, of which Dryden, with all his endowments, had no idea. The question is not as he puts it, were those "audiences incapable of receiving the delights which a cultivated mind derives from the gradual development of a story, the just dependence of its parts upon each other, the minute beauties of language, and the absence of every thing incongruous or indecorous?" They may have been so, though we do not believe they were. But the question is, are Shakspeare's Plays, beyond all that ever were written, distinguished for those very excellences, and free from almost all those very defects? That they are, few ifany will now dare to deny. While the best of Dryden's own Plays, and still more those of his forgotten contemporaries, infinitely inferior to Shakspeare's in all those very excellences, are choke-full of all manner of faults and flagrant sins against decorum and congruity, in the eyes of mere taste; and with a few exceptions, according to no rules can be rated high as works of art. The truth of all this manifestly forced itself upon Sir Walter's seldom erring judgment, as he proceeded in the composition of the elaborate note, in which he would fain have justified Dryden even at the expense of Shakspeare. And, as it now stands, though beautifully written, it swarms withnon-sequiturs, and perplexing half-truths.
In the Preface to "Troilus and Cressida," (1679,) Dryden again—and for the last time—descants, in the same unsatisfactory strain, on Shakspeare. Æschylus, he tells us, was held in the same veneration by the Athenians of after ages as Shakspeare by his countrymen. But in the age of that poet, the Greek tongue had arrived at its full perfection, and they had among them an exact standard of writing and speaking; whereas the English language, even in his (Dryden's) own age, was wanting in the very foundation of certainty, "a perfect grammar:" so, what must it have been in Shakspeare's time?
"The tongue in general is so much refined since then, that many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure. It is true that, in his latter plays, he had worn off somewhat of the rust; but the tragedy which I have undertaken to correct was in all probability one of his first endeavours on the stage.... So lamely is it left to us, that it is not divided into acts. For the play itself, the author seems to have begun it with some fire. The characters of Pandarus and Thersites are promising enough; but, as if he grew weary of his task, after an entrance or two, he lets them fall; and the latter part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of drums and trumpets, excursions, and alarms. The persons who give name to the tragedy are left alive. Cressida is false, and is not punished. Yet, after all, because the play was Shakspeare's, and that there appeared in some places of it the admirable genius of the author, I undertook to remove that heap of rubbish, under which many excellent thoughts lay wholly buried. Accordingly, I have remodelled the plot, threw out many unnecessary persons, improved those which were begun and left unfinished, as Hector, Troilus, Pandarus, and Thersites, and added that of Andromache. After that, I made, with no small trouble, an order and connexion of all the scenes, removing them from the place where they were inartificially set; and though it was impossible to keep them all unbroken, because the scene must be sometimes in the city and sometimes in the court, yet I have so ordered them, that there is a coherence of them with one another, and a dependence on the main design: no leaping from Troy to the Grecian tents, and thence back again, in the same act, but a due proportion of time allowed for every motion. I need not say that I have refined the language, which before was obsolete; but I am willing to acknowledge, that as I have often drawn his English nearer to our times, so I have sometimes conformed my own to his; and consequently, the language is not altogether so pure as it is significant."
"The tongue in general is so much refined since then, that many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure. It is true that, in his latter plays, he had worn off somewhat of the rust; but the tragedy which I have undertaken to correct was in all probability one of his first endeavours on the stage.... So lamely is it left to us, that it is not divided into acts. For the play itself, the author seems to have begun it with some fire. The characters of Pandarus and Thersites are promising enough; but, as if he grew weary of his task, after an entrance or two, he lets them fall; and the latter part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of drums and trumpets, excursions, and alarms. The persons who give name to the tragedy are left alive. Cressida is false, and is not punished. Yet, after all, because the play was Shakspeare's, and that there appeared in some places of it the admirable genius of the author, I undertook to remove that heap of rubbish, under which many excellent thoughts lay wholly buried. Accordingly, I have remodelled the plot, threw out many unnecessary persons, improved those which were begun and left unfinished, as Hector, Troilus, Pandarus, and Thersites, and added that of Andromache. After that, I made, with no small trouble, an order and connexion of all the scenes, removing them from the place where they were inartificially set; and though it was impossible to keep them all unbroken, because the scene must be sometimes in the city and sometimes in the court, yet I have so ordered them, that there is a coherence of them with one another, and a dependence on the main design: no leaping from Troy to the Grecian tents, and thence back again, in the same act, but a due proportion of time allowed for every motion. I need not say that I have refined the language, which before was obsolete; but I am willing to acknowledge, that as I have often drawn his English nearer to our times, so I have sometimes conformed my own to his; and consequently, the language is not altogether so pure as it is significant."
John Dryden and Samuel Johnson resemble one another very strongly in their treatment of Shakspeare. Both of them seem at times to have perfectly understood and felt his greatness, and both of them have indited glorious things in its exaltation. Their praise is the utterance of worship. You might believe them on their knees before an idol. But theirs is a strange kind of reverence. It alternates with derision, and is compatible with contempt. The god sinks into the man and the man is a barbarian, babbling uncouth speech. "Coarse," "ungrammatical," "obscure," "affected," "unintelligible," "rusty!" The words distilled from the lips of Cordelia, Desdemona, Juliet, Imogen!
Dryden informs us, that ages after the death of Æschylus, the Athenians ordained an equal reward to the poets who could alter his plays to be acted in the theatre, with those whose productions were wholly new, and of their own. But the case, he laments,is not the same in England, though the difficulties are greater. Æschylus wrote good Greek, Shakspeare bad English; and to make it intelligible to a refined audience was a hard job. Sorely "pestered with figurative expressions" must have been the transmogrifier; and he had to look for wages, not to a nation's gratitude, but a manager's greed. It was, indeed, a desperate expedient for raising the funds. In his judgment the Play itself was but a poor affair—an attempt by an apprentice, that, to be producible, required the shaping of a master's hand. "Lamely left" it had to be set on its feet ere it could tread the stage. With whatnonchalancedoes he throw out "unnecessary persons," and improve "unfinished!" Hector, Troilus, Pandarus, and Thersites, skilless Shakspeare had but begun—artful Dryden made an end of them; Cressida, who was false as she was fair, yet left alive to deceive more men, became a paragon of truth, chastity, and suicide; and by an amazing stretch of invention, far beyond the Swan's, was added Andromache. Dryden proudly announces that "the scenes of Pandarus and Cressida, of Troilus and Pandarus, of Andromache with Hector and the Trojans, in the second act, are wholly new; together with that of Nestor and Ulysses with Thersites, and that of Thersites with Ajax and Achilles. I will not weary my reader with the scenes which are added of Pandarus and the lovers in the third, and those of Thersites, which are wholly altered; but I cannot omit the last scene in it, which is almost half the act, betwixt Troilus and Hector. I have been so tedious in three acts, that I shall contract myself in the two last. The beginning scenes of the fourth act are either added, or changed wholly by me; the middle of it is Shakspeare's, altered and mingled with my own; three or four of the last scenes are altogether new; and the whole fifth act, both the plot and the writing, are my own additions." O heavens! why was it not all "my own?"
No human being can have a right to use another in such a way as this. Shakspeare's plays were then, and are now, as much his own property as the property of the public—or rather, the public holds them in trust. Dryden was a delinquent towards the dead. His crime was sacrilege. In readinghis"Troilus and Cressida," you ever and anon fear you have lost your senses. Bits of veritable Shakspearean gold, burnished star-bright, embossed in pewter! Diamonds set in dirt! Sentences illuminated with words of power, suddenly rising and sinking, through a flare of fustian! Here Apollo's lute—there hurdy-gurdy.
"For the play itself," said Dryden insolently, "the author seems to have begun it with some fire;" and here it is continued with much smoke. "The characters of Pandarus and Thersites are promising enough;" here we shudder at their performance. Such a monstrous Pandarus would have been blackballed at the Pimp. Thersites—Shakspeare's Thersites—for Homer's was another Thersites quite—finely called by Coleridge, "the Caliban of demagogic life"—loses all individuality, and is but a brutal buffoon grossly caricatured. The scene between Ulysses and Achilles, with its wondrous wisdomful speech, is omitted! of itself, worth all the poetry written between the Restoration and the Revolution.
Spirit of Glorious John! forgive, we beseech thee, truth-telling Christopher—but angels and ministers of grace defend us!WHO ART THOU?Shakspeare's ghost.
"See, my loved Britons, see your Shakspeare rise,An awful ghost confess'd to human eyes!Unnamed, methinks, distinguish'd I had beenFrom other shades, by this eternal green,About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive,And, with a touch, their wither'd bays revive.Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age,I found not, but created first the stage;And if I drain'd no Greek or Latin store,'Twas that my own abundance gave me more.On foreign trade I needed not rely,Like fruitful Britain, rich without supply.In this my rough-drawn play you shall beholdSome master-strokes, so manly and so bold,That he who meant to alter, found 'em such,He shook, and thought it sacrilege to touch.Now, where are the successors to my name?What bring they to fill out a poet's fame?Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age;Scarce living to be christen'd on the stage!For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense,That tolls the knell for their departed sense.Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace,Might meet with reverence in its proper place.The fulsome clench that nauseates the town,Would from a judge or alderman go down—Such virtue is there in a robe and gown!And that insipid stuff which here you hate,Might somewhere else be call'd a grave debate:Dulness is decent in the church and state.But I forget that still 'tis understoodBad plays are best decried by showing good.Sit silent, then, that my pleased soul may seeA judging audience once, and worthy me.My faithful scene from true records shall tell,How Trojan valour did the Greek excel;Your great forefathers shall their fame regain,And Homer's angry ghost repine in vain."
The best hand of any man that ever lived, at prologue and epilogue, was Dryden. And here he showed himself to be the boldest too; and above fear of ghosts. For though it was but a make-believe, it must have required courage in Shakspeare's murderer to look on its mealy face. The ghost speaks well—nobly—for six lines—though more like Dryden's than Shakspeare's.Thatwas not his style when alive. The seventh line would have choked him, had he been a mere light-and-shadow ghost. But in death never would he thus have given the lie to his life. "Untaught," he might have truly said—for he had no master. "Unpractised!" Nay, "Troilus and Cressida" sprang from a brain that had teemed with many a birth. "A barbarous age!" Read—"Great Eliza's golden time," when the sun of England's genius was at meridian. "Sacrilege to touch!" Prologue had not read Preface. Little did the "injured ghost" suspect the spectacle that was to ensue. Much of what follows is, in worse degree, Drydenish all over. Sweetest Shakspeare scoffed not so!
Suppose Shakspeare's ghost to have slipped quietly into the manager's box to witness the performance. Poets after death do not lose all memory of their own earthly visions. Thoughts of the fairest are with them in Paradise. At first sight of Dorinda he would have bolted.
Dryden says, that "he knew not to distinguish the blown puffy style from true sublimity." He would then have done so, and no mistake. "The fury of his fancy often transported him beyond the bounds of judgment, either in coining of new words and phrases, or racking words which were in use, into the violence of catachresis." His ears would have been jarred by Prospero's "polite conversation," so unlike what he, who had not "kept the best society," was confined to "in a barbarous age." Yet Dryden confessed that he "understood the nature of the passions," and "made his characters distinct;" so that "his failings were not so much in the passions themselves, as in his manner of expression." Unfortunately, his vocabulary was neither choice nor extensive, and he "often obscured his meaning by his words, and sometimes made it unintelligible."
"To speak justly of this whole matter: it is neither height of thought that is discommended, nor pathetic vehemence, nor any nobleness of expression in its proper place; but it is a false measure of all these, something which is like them, and is not them; it is the Bristol stone, which appears like a diamond; it is an extravagant thought instead of a sublime one; it is a roaring madness instead of vehemence; a sound of words instead of sense. If Shakspeare were stripped of all the bombasts in his passions, and dressed in the most vulgar words, we should find the beauties of his thoughts remaining; if his embroideries were burnt down, there would still be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot, but I fear (at least let me fear it for myself) that we, who ape his sounding words, have nothing of his thought, but are all outside; there is not so much as dwarf within our giant's clothes. Therefore, let not Shakspeare suffer for our sakes; it is our fault, who succeed him in an age that is more refined, if we imitate him so ill that we copy his failings only, and make a virtue of that in our writings which in his was an imperfection."For what remains, the excellency of that poet was, as I have said, in the more manly passions; Fletcher's in the softer. Shakspeare writ better betwixt man and man; Fletcher betwixt man and woman: consequently the one described friendship better—the other love. Yet Shakspeare taught Fletcher to write love; and Juliet and Desdemona are originals. It is true, the scholar had the softer soul, but the master had the kinder. Friendship is both a virtue and a passion essentially; love is passion only in its nature, and is not a virtue but by accident: good-nature makes friendship, but effeminacy love. Shakspeare had an universal mind, which comprehended all characters and passions; Fletcher, a more confined and limited: for though he treated love in perfection, yet honour, ambition, revenge, and generally all the stronger passions, he either touched not, or not masterly. To conclude all he was a limb of Shakspeare."
"To speak justly of this whole matter: it is neither height of thought that is discommended, nor pathetic vehemence, nor any nobleness of expression in its proper place; but it is a false measure of all these, something which is like them, and is not them; it is the Bristol stone, which appears like a diamond; it is an extravagant thought instead of a sublime one; it is a roaring madness instead of vehemence; a sound of words instead of sense. If Shakspeare were stripped of all the bombasts in his passions, and dressed in the most vulgar words, we should find the beauties of his thoughts remaining; if his embroideries were burnt down, there would still be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot, but I fear (at least let me fear it for myself) that we, who ape his sounding words, have nothing of his thought, but are all outside; there is not so much as dwarf within our giant's clothes. Therefore, let not Shakspeare suffer for our sakes; it is our fault, who succeed him in an age that is more refined, if we imitate him so ill that we copy his failings only, and make a virtue of that in our writings which in his was an imperfection.
"For what remains, the excellency of that poet was, as I have said, in the more manly passions; Fletcher's in the softer. Shakspeare writ better betwixt man and man; Fletcher betwixt man and woman: consequently the one described friendship better—the other love. Yet Shakspeare taught Fletcher to write love; and Juliet and Desdemona are originals. It is true, the scholar had the softer soul, but the master had the kinder. Friendship is both a virtue and a passion essentially; love is passion only in its nature, and is not a virtue but by accident: good-nature makes friendship, but effeminacy love. Shakspeare had an universal mind, which comprehended all characters and passions; Fletcher, a more confined and limited: for though he treated love in perfection, yet honour, ambition, revenge, and generally all the stronger passions, he either touched not, or not masterly. To conclude all he was a limb of Shakspeare."
Part I.
Proud Julian towers! ye whose grey turrets riseIn hoary grandeur, mingling with the skies—Whose name—thought—image—every spot are rifeWith startling legends—themes of death in life!Recall the voices of wrong'd spirits fled—Echoes of life that long survived their dead;And let them tell the history of thy crimes,The present teach, and warn all future times.Time's veil withdrawn, what tragedies of woeLoom in the distance, fill the ghastly show!Oh, tell what hearts, torn from light's cheering ray,Within thy death-shades bled their lives away;What anxious hopes, strifes, agonies, and fears,In thy dread walls have linger'd years on years—Still mock'd the patient prisoner as he pray'dThat death would shroud his woes—too long delay'd!Could the great Norman, with prophetic eye,Have scann'd the vista of futurity,And seen the cell-worn phantoms, one by one,Rise and descend—the father to the son—Whose purest blood, by treachery and guilt,On thy polluted scaffolds has been spilt,Methinks Ambition, with his subtle art,Had fired his hero to a nobler part.Yes! curst Ambition—spoiler of mankind—That with thy trophies lur'st the dazzled mind,That 'neath the gorgeous veil thy conquests weave,Would'st hide thy form, and Reason's eye deceive—By what strange spells still dost thou rule the mindThat madly worships thee, or, tamely blind,Forbears to fathom thoughts, that at thy nameShould kindle horror, and o'erwhelm with shame.Alas, that thus the human heart should payToo willing homage to thy bloody sway;Should stoop submissive to a fiend sublimeAnd venerate e'en the majesty of crime!How soon to those that tempt thee art thou near—To prompt, direct, and steel the heart to fear!Oh, not to such the voice of peace shall speak,Nor placid zephyr fan their fever'd cheek;Sleep ne'er shall seal their hot and blood-stain'd eye,But conscious visions ever haunt them nigh;Grandeur to them a faded flower shall be,Wealth but a thorn, and power a fruitless tree;And, as they near the tomb, with panting breast,Shrink from the dread unknown, yet hope no rest!Stern towers of strength! once bulwarks of the land,When feudal power bore sway with sovereign hand—Frown ye no more—the glory of the scene—Sad, silent witness of what crimes have been!Accurst the day when first our Norman foeTaught Albion's high-born Saxon sons to bow'Neath victor-pride and insolence—learn to feelWhat earth's dark woes—when abject vassals kneel;And worse the hour when his remorseless heir,Alike uncheck'd by heaven, or earthly prayer,With lusts ignoble, fed by martial might,Usurp'd man's fair domains and native right.Ye generous spirits that protect the brave,And watch the seaman o'er the crested wave,Cast round the fearless soul your glorious spell,That fired a Hampden and inspired a Tell—Why left ye Wallace, greatest of the free,His hills' proud champion—heart of liberty—Alone to cope with tyranny and hate,To sink at last in ignominious fate?Sad Scotia wept, and still on valour's shrineOur glistening tears, like pearly dewdrops, shine,To tell the world how Albyn's hero bled,And treasure still the memory of her dead.Whose prison annals speak of thrilling deeds,How truth is tortured and how genius bleeds?Whose eye dare trace them down the tragic stream—Mark what fresh phantoms in the distance gleam,As dark and darker o'er th' ensanguined pageThe ruthless deed pollutes each later age?See where the rose of Bolingbroke's rich bloomFades on the bed of martyr'd Richard's tomb!Look where the spectre babes, still smiling fair,Spring from the couch of death to realms of air!Oh, thought accurst! that uncle, guardian, foe,Should join in one to strike the murderous blow.Ask we for tears from pity's sacred fount?"Forbear!" cries vengeance—"that is my account."There is a power—an eye whose light can spanThe dark-laid schemes of the vain tyrant, man.Lo! where it pierces through the shades of night,And all its hideous secrets start to light—In vain earth's puny conquerors heaven defy—Their kingdom's dust, and but one throne on high.See heaven's applause support the virtuous wrong'd,And 'midst his state the despot's fears prolong'd.Thou tyrant, yes! the declaration GodHimself hath utter'd—"I'm the avenging rod!"Words wing'd with fate and fire! oh, not in vainYe cleft the air, and swept Gomorrah's plain,When, dark idolatry unmask'd, she stoodThe mark of heaven—a fiery solitude!And still ye sped—still mark'd the varied pageIn every time—through each revolving age—Wherever man trampled his fellow man,Unscared by crimes, ye marr'd his ruthless plan—Still shall ye speed till time has pass'd away,And retribution reigns o'er earth's last day.Methinks I hear from each relentless stoneThe spirits of thy martyr'd victims groan,And eager whispers Echo round each cellThe oft repeated legend, and re-dwell,With the same fondness that bespeaks delightIn childhood's heart, when on some winter's night,As stormy winds low whistle through the vale,It shuddering lists the thrilling ghostly tale.It seems but now that blood was spilt, whose stainProclaims the dastard soul—the bloody reignOf the Eighth Harry—vampire to his wife,Who traffick'd for his divorce with her life;So fresh, so moist, each ruddy drop appearsIndelible through centuries of years!And who is this whose beauteous figure moves,Onward to meet the reeking form she loves;Whose noble mien—whose dignity of grace,Extort compassion from each gazing face?'Tis Dudley's bride! like some fair opening flowerTorn from its stem—she meets fate's direst hour;Still unappall'd she views that bloody bier,Takes her last sad farewell without a tear.Each weeping muse hath told how Essex died,Favourite and victim, doom'd by female pride.How courtly Suffolk spent his latest day,And dying Raleigh penn'd his deathless lay.Here noble Strafford too severely taughtHow dearly royal confidence is bought;Received the warrant which demands his breath,And with a calm composure walk'd—to death.Nor 'mong the names that liberty holds dear,Shall the great Russell be forgotten here;His country's boast—each patriot's honest pride—For them he lived—for them he wept and died.And must we yet another page unfold,To glean fresh moral from the deeds of old?Ye busy spirits that pervade the air,And still with dark intents to earth repair;That goad the passions of the human breast,And bear the missives of Fate's stern behest—Say, stifle ye those thoughts that Heaven reveals—The tears of sympathy—the glow that stealsO'er the young heart, or prompts soft pity's sigh—The prayer to snatch from harsh captivityThe virtuous doom'd—teach but to praise—admire—Forbid to catch one spark of generous fire?The godlike wish of genius, man to bless,With rank and wealth still leaguing to oppress!Oh! when shall glory wreathe bright virtue's claim,And both to honour give a holier fame?Ye towers of death!—the noblest still your prey,Here spent in solitude their sunless day;In your wall'd graves a living doom they found;Broke o'er their night no ray, no gladd'ning sound.Yet the mind's splendour, with imprison'd wings,Rose high, and shone where the pure seraph sings;Where human thought taught conscience it was free,And burst the shackles of the Romish See.Oh, sweetest liberty! how dear to die!Bound by each sacred link;, each holy tie;To save unspotted from the spoiler's hand,Child of our heart—our own—our native land!And, oh! how dear life's latest drop to shed,To free the minds by superstition led;—To spread with holy earnest zeal abroad,That priceless gem—freedom to worship God!To keep unmingled with the world's vain lore,The faith that lightens every darken'd hour;That faith which can alone the sinner save,Prepare for death, and raise him from the grave;Show how, by yielding all, we surest prove,How humbly, deeply, truly, we can love;How much we prize that hope divinely given,The key—the seal—the passport into heaven.
Part II.
What sudden blaze spreads through the crimson skies,And still in loftier volumes seems to rise?What meteor gleams, that from the fiery north,In savage grandeur fast are bursting forth,And light your very walls? Tell me, ye Towers—'Tis Smithfield revelling in his festal hours,Fed with your captives: shrieks that wildly pierceThe roaring flames now undulating fierce,And gasping struggles, mingled groans, proclaimThe power of torture o'er the writhing frame.Dark are your dens, and deep your secret cells,Whose silent gloom your tale of horrors tells.Saw ye how Cranmer dared—yet fear'd to die,Trembling 'mid hopes of immortality?He stood alone;—a brighter band appearsUnaw'd by threats—impregnable to fears;Who suffer'd glad the sacred truth to spread,In mild obedience to its fountain-head.And when at length our popish James would seeCold superstition bend th' unhallow'd knee,The mystic tapers on our altars burn,And clouds of incense shade the fragrant urn,Shone England's prelates faithful to their call,In bonds of truth within thy massive wall.See grace divine—see Heaven in mercy pour,The balm of peace on Albion's boasted shore.Once wrought by captive fingers on thy wall,The hero's home and prison, grave and pall,What dark lines meet the startled stranger's gaze,Thoughts that ennoble—sentiments that raiseThe iron'd captive from captivity,How high above the power of tyranny!—And ye that wander by the evening tide,Where mountains swell or mossy streamlets glide;That on fresh hills can hail morn's orient ray,And chant with birds your grateful hymns to day;Or seek at noon, beneath some pleasant shade,To feel the sunbeams cool'd by leafy glade—That free as air, morn, noon, and eve, can roam,Where'er you list, and nature call your home;Learn from a hopeless prisoner's words and fate,"Virtue is valour—to be patient, great!"When traced on prison walls, such words as theseArrest the eye—appall e'en while they please—"Ah! hapless he who cannot bear the weight,With patient heart of a too partial fate,For adverse times and fortunes do not kill,But rash impatience of impending ill."Yes, still they speak to bosoms that are freeWithin the girdle of captivity;Of spirits dauntless, who could spurn the chainOf human punishment or mortal pain;That e'en amid these precincts of despair,Dared free themselves from thraldom's jealous care—Bound but by ties of faith and virtue, beHeirs of bright hopes and immortality.Oh! great mind's proud inscriptions! Who shall tellWhat hand engraved those lines within that cell?What heart yet steadfast while around him stoodPhantoms of death to chill his curdling blood,Could battle with despair on reason's throne,And conquer where the fiend would reign alone?Ah! who can tell what sorrows pierced his breast—Ran through each vein, usurp'd his hours of rest?What struggle nerved his trembling hand to traceWith moral courage words he dared to faceWith acts that ask'd new efforts while he wroteTo man his soul and fix his every thought!Tremble, thou tyrant! proud ambition, blush!Hearts such as these thy power can never crush.Are they forgotten? no, the rugged stone,The lap of earth on which they rested lone;The very implements of torture there—The axe, the rack, the tyrant's jealous care;Each mark that meets successive ages' eyesSpeaks, trumpet-tongued, a fame that never dies;And tells the thoughtful stranger, while the tearUnbidden starts, that freedom triumph'd here—Plumed her immortal wings for nobler flight,And bore her martyr'd brave to realms of light.Nor false their faith, nor like the fleeting wind,Their spirits fled! for theirs the unprison'd mind,No tyrant-chains, no bonds of earth and time,Could hold from truth and freedom's heights sublime—From that bright heaven of science, whence they shedFresh glory o'er man's cause for which they bled.Ask what is left? their names forgotten now?Their birth, their fortune? not a trace to showWhere sleeps their dust? Go, seek the blest abode,Their mind's pure joy, the bosom of their God!Then tell if in the dull cold prison's air,And wasted to a living shadow there,Earth scarcely knew them! if they were aloneWhere they were cast, to pine away unknown?Friends, had they none? nor beam'd a wish to shareLove, friendship, and to breathe the common air.Lost, lost to all! like some lone desert flower,Felt they unseen Time's slow consuming power,And hail'd each parting day with fond delight,As the tired pilgrim greets the waning light?No! glad bright spirits, guardians of the mind,Were with them; as the demon-powers unbindAnd lash their furies on the conscious breastOf earth's fell tyrants who ne'er dream of rest.Theirs, too, joy's harbinger, the thoughts aye fedWith brighter objects than of earth, that shedA light within their narrow home, and gaveA triumph's lustre to the yawning grave.And in that hour when the proud heart's o'erthrown,And self all-powerless, self is truly known;When pride no more could darken the free mind,But all to God in firm faith was resign'd—Then drank their souls the stream of love divine,More richly flowing than the Eastern mine;Felt heaven expanding in the heart renew'd,And more than friends in desert solitude.Peace to thy martyrs! thou art frowning nowWith all the array of bold and martial show;The same thy battlements with trophies dress'd,Present defiance to the hostile breast;Around thy walls the soldier keeps his ward,Scared with war's sights no more thy peaceful guard.Long may ye stand, the voice of other years,And ope, in future times, no fount of tearsAnd sorrows like the past, such as have broughtA mournful gloom and shadow o'er the thought;And if the eye one pitying drop has shed,That drop is sacred, it embalms the dead.What though a thousand years have roll'd awaySince thy dread walls entomb'd their noble prey;To us they speak, ask the warm tear to flowFor ills now pressing and for present woe;Bid us to succour fellow-men who hasteAlong the thorny road of life, and tasteThe bitterness of poverty, endureAll that befalls the too neglected poor;And with no friend, no bounty to assist,Steal from the world unwept for and unmiss'd.What though no dungeon wrap the wasting clay,Or from the eye exclude the cheering ray;What though no tortures visibly may tearThe writhing limbs, and leave their signet there;Has not chill penury a poison'd dart,Inflicting deeper wounds upon the heart?All the decrees the sternest fate may bind,To weigh the courage or display the mind—All man could bear, with heart unflinching bear,Did not a dearer part his sufferings share—Worse than the captive's fate—wife, child, his all,The husband, and the father's name, appallHis very soul, and bid him thrilling feelDistraction, as he makes the vain appeal.Upon his brow, where manhood's hand had seal'dIts perfect dignity, is now reveal'dA haggard wanness; from his livid eyeThe manly fire has faded; cold and dry,No more it glistens to the light. His thought,To the last pitch of frantic memory wrought,Turns to the partner of his heart and woe,Who, weigh'd with grief, no lesser love can know;Despair soon haunts the hope that fills his breast,And passion's flood in tumult is express'd.Amid the plains where ample plenty spreadsHer copious stores and decks the yellow meads,The outcast turns a ghastly look to heaven;Oh, not for him is Nature's plenty given;Robb'd of the birthright nature freely gave,Save that last portion freely left—a grave!Oh, that another power would rule man's heart,Uncramp its free-born will in every part;Mercy more swift, justice more just, more slow,Grandeur less prone to deal the cruel blow,To bind men's hands with fetters than with alms,And spurn the only boon that soothes and calms.England! thou dearest child of liberty;Free as thine ocean home for ever be;Thy commerce thrive; may thy deserted poorNo more the pangs of poverty endure.Then shall thy Towers, proud monument! displayThe thousand trophies of a happier day;And genial climes, from earth's remotest shore,Their richest tributes to her genius pour,With wealth from Ind, with treasures from the West,Thy homes, thy hamlets—cities still be blest;Till virtue, truth, and justice, shall combine,And heavenly hope o'er many a bosom shine;Auspicious days hail thy fair Sovereign's reign,And happy subjects throng their golden train.