Marcus Portius Cato—Messalla Corvinus.
Cato.—Oh, Messalla! is it then possible that what some of our countrymen tell me should be true? Is it possible that you could live the courtier of Octavius; that you could accept of employments and honours from him, from the tyrant of your country; you, the brave, the noble-minded, the virtuous Messalla; you, whom I remember, my son-in-law Brutus has frequently extolled as the most promising youth in Rome, tutored by philosophy, trained up in arms, scorning all those soft, effeminate pleasures that reconcile men to an easy and indolent servitude, fit for all the roughest tasks of honour and virtue, fit to live or to die a free man?
Messalla.—Marcus Cato, I revere both your life and your death; but the last, permit me to tell you, did no good to your country, and the former would have done more if you could have mitigated a little the sternness of your virtue, I will not say of your pride. For my own part, I adhered with constant integrity and unwearied zeal to the Republic, while the Republic existed. I fought for her at Philippi under the only commander, who, if he had conquered, would have conquered for her, not for himself. When hewas dead I saw that nothing remained to my country but the choice of a master. I chose the best.
Cato.—The best! What! a man who had broken all laws, who had violated all trusts, who had led the armies of the Commonwealth against Antony, and then joined with him and that sottish traitor Lepidus, to set up a triumvirate more execrable by far than either of the former; who shed the best blood in Rome by an inhuman proscription, murdered even his own guardian, murdered Cicero, to whose confidence, too improvidently given, he owed all his power? Was this the master you chose? Could you bring your tongue to give him the name of Augustus? Could you stoop to beg consulships and triumphs from him? Oh, shame to virtue! Oh, degeneracy of Rome! To what infamy are her sons, her noblest sons, fallen. The thought of it pains me more than the wound that I died of; it stabs my soul.
Messalla.—Moderate, Cato, the vehemence of your indignation. There has always been too much passion mixed with your virtue. The enthusiasm you are possessed with is a noble one, but it disturbs your judgment. Hear me with patience, and with the tranquillity that becomes a philosopher. It is true that Octavius had done all you have said; but it is no less true that, in our circumstances, he was the best master Rome could choose. His mind was fitted by nature for empire. His understanding was clear and strong. His passions were cool, and under the absolute command of his reason. His name gave him an authority over the troops and the people which no other Roman could possess in an equal degree. He used that authority to restrain the excesses of both, which it was no longer in the power of the Senate to repress, nor of any other general or magistrate in the state. He restored discipline in our armies, the first means of salvation, without which no legal government could have been formed or supported. He avoided all odious and invidious names. He maintainedand respected those which time and long habits had endeared to the Roman people. He permitted a generous liberty of speech. He treated the nobles of Pompey’s party as well as those of his father’s, if they did not themselves, for factious purposes, keep up the distinction. He formed a plan of government, moderate, decent, respectable, which left the senate its majesty, and some of its power. He restored vigour and spirit to the laws; he made new and good ones for the reformation of manners; he enforced their execution; he governed the empire with lenity, justice, and glory; he humbled the pride of the Parthians; he broke the fierceness of the barbarous nations; he gave to his country, exhausted and languishing with the great loss of blood which she had sustained in the course of so many civil wars, the blessing of peace—a blessing which was become so necessary for her, that without it she could enjoy no other. In doing these things I acknowledge he had my assistance. I am prouder of it, and I think I can justify myself more effectually to my country, than if I had died by my own hand at Philippi. Believe me, Cato, it is better to do some good than to project a great deal. A little practical virtue is of more use to society than the most sublime theory, or the best principles of government ill applied.
Cato.—Yet I must think it was beneath the character of Messalla to join in supporting a government which, though coloured and mitigated, was still a tyranny. Had you not better have gone into a voluntary exile, where you would not have seen the face of the tyrant, and where you might have quietly practised those private virtues which are all that the gods require from good men in certain situations?
Messalla.—No; I did much more good by continuing at Rome. Had Augustus required of me anything base, anything servile, I would have gone into exile, I would have died, rather than do it. But he respected my virtue, he respected my dignity; he treated me as well as Agrippa, or as Mæcenas, with this distinction alone, that he neveremployed my sword but against foreign nations, or the old enemies of the republic.
Cato.—It must, I own, have been a pleasure to be employed against Antony, that monster of vice, who plotted the ruin of liberty, and the raising of himself to sovereign power, amidst the riot of bacchanals, and in the embraces of harlots, who, when he had attained to that power, delivered it up to a lascivious queen, and would have made an Egyptian strumpet the mistress of Rome, if the Battle of Actium had not saved us from that last of misfortunes.
Messalla.—In that battle I had a considerable share. So I had in encouraging the liberal arts and sciences, which Augustus protected. Under his judicious patronage the muses made Rome their capital seat. It would have pleased you to have known Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, Livy, and many more, whose names will be illustrious to all generations.
Cato.—I understand you, Messalla. Your Augustus and you, after the ruin of our liberty, made Rome a Greek city, an academy of fine wits, another Athens under the government of Demetrius Phalareus. I had much rather have seen her under Fabricius and Curius, and her other honest old consuls, who could not read.
Messalla.—Yet to these writers she will owe as much of her glory as she did to those heroes. I could say more, a great deal more, on the happiness of the mild dominion of Augustus. I might even add, that the vast extent of the empire, the factions of the nobility, and the corruption of the people, which no laws under the ordinary magistrates of the state were able to restrain, seemed necessarily to require some change in the government; that Cato himself, had he remained upon earth, could have done us no good, unless he would have yielded to become our prince. But I see you consider me as a deserter from the republic, and an apologist for a tyrant. I, therefore, leave you to the company of those ancient Romans, for whose societyyou were always much fitter than for that of your contemporaries. Cato should have lived with Fabricius and Curius, not with Pompey and Cæsar.
Christina,Queen Of Sweden—ChancellorOxenstiern.
Christina.—You seem to avoid me, Oxenstiern; and, now we are met, you don’t pay me the reverence that is due to your queen! Have you forgotten that I was your sovereign?
Oxenstiern.—I am not your subject here, madam; but you have forgotten that you yourself broke that bond, and freed me from my allegiance, many years before you died, by abdicating the crown, against my advice and the inclination of your people. Reverence here is paid only to virtue.
Christina.—I see you would mortify me if it were in your power for acting against your advice. But my fame does not depend upon your judgment. All Europe admired the greatness of my mind in resigning a crown to dedicate myself entirely to the love of the sciences and the fine arts; things of which you had no taste in barbarous Sweden, the realm of Goths and Vandals.
Oxenstiern.—There is hardly any mind too great for a crown, but there are many too little. Are you sure, madam, it was magnanimity that caused you to fly from the government of a kingdom which your ancestors, and particularly your heroic father Gustavus, had ruled with so much glory?
Christina.—Am I sure of it? Yes; and to confirm my own judgment, I have that of many learned men andbeaux espritsof all countries, who have celebrated my action as the perfection of heroism.
Oxenstiern.—Thosebeaux espritsjudged according to their predominant passion. I have heard young ladies express their admiration of Mark Antony for heroically leaving hisfleet at the Battle of Actium to follow his mistress. Your passion for literature had the same effect upon you. But why did not you indulge it in a manner more becoming your birth and rank? Why did not you bring the muses to Sweden, instead of deserting that kingdom to seek them in Rome? For a prince to encourage and protect arts and sciences, and more especially to instruct an illiterate people and inspire them with knowledge, politeness, and fine taste is indeed an act of true greatness.
Christina.—The Swedes were too gross to be refined by any culture which I could have given to their dull, their half-frozen souls. Wit and genius require the influence of a more southern climate.
Oxenstiern.—The Swedes too gross! No, madam, not even the Russians are too gross to be refined if they had a prince to instruct them.
Christina.—It was too tedious a work for the vivacity of my temper to polish bears into men. I should have died of the spleen before I had made any proficiency in it. My desire was to shine among those who were qualified to judge of my talents. At Paris, at Rome I had the glory of showing the French and Italian wits that the North could produce one not inferior to them. They beheld me with wonder. The homage I had received in my palace at Stockholm was paid to my dignity. That which I drew from the French and Roman academies was paid to my talents. How much more glorious, how much more delightful to an elegant and rational mind was the latter than the former! Could you once have felt the joy, the transport of my heart, when I saw the greatest authors and all the celebrated artists in the most learned and civilised countries of Europe bringing their works to me and submitting the merit of them to my decisions; when I saw the philosophers, the rhetoricians, the poets making my judgment the standard of their reputation, you would not wonder that I preferred the empire of wit to any other empire.
Oxenstiern.—O great Gustavus! my ever-honoured, my adored master! O greatest of kings, greatest in valour, in virtue, in wisdom, with what indignation must thy soul, enthroned in heaven, have looked down on thy unworthy, thy degenerate daughter! With what shame must thou have seen her rambling about from court to court deprived of her royal dignity, debased into a pedant, a witling, a smatterer in sculpture and painting, reduced to beg or buy flattery from each needy rhetorician or hireling poet! I weep to think on this stain, this dishonourable stain, to thy illustrious blood! And yet, would to God! would to God! this was all the pollution it has suffered!
Christina.—Darest thou, Oxenstiern, impute any blemish to my honour?
Oxenstiern.—Madam, the world will scarce respect the frailties of queens when they are on their thrones, much less when they have voluntarily degraded themselves to the level of the vulgar. And if scandalous tongues have unjustly aspersed their fame, the way to clear it is not by an assassination.
Christina.—Oh! that I were alive again, and restored to my throne, that I might punish the insolence of this hoary traitor! But, see! he leaves me, he turns his back upon me with cool contempt! Alas! do I not deserve this scorn? In spite of myself I must confess that I do. O vanity, how short-lived are the pleasures thou bestowest! I was thy votary. Thou wast the god for whom I changed my religion. For thee I forsook my country and my throne. What compensation have I gained for all these sacrifices so lavishly, so imprudently made? Some puffs of incense from authors who thought their flattery due to the rank I had held, or hoped to advance themselves by my recommendation, or, at best, over-rated my passion for literature, and praised me to raise the value of those talents with which they were endowed. But in the esteem of wise men I stand very low, and their esteem alone is the true measure ofglory. Nothing, I perceive, can give the mind a lasting joy but the consciousness of having performed our duty in that station which it has pleased the Divine Providence to assign to us. The glory of virtue is solid and eternal. All other will fade away like a thin vapoury cloud, on which the casual glance of some faint beams of light has superficially imprinted their weak and transient colours.
Titus Vespasianus—Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus.
Titus.—No, Scipio, I can’t give place to you in this. In other respects I acknowledge myself your inferior, though I was Emperor of Rome and you only her consul. I think your triumph over Carthage more glorious than mine over Judæa. But in that I gained over love I must esteem myself superior to you, though your generosity with regard to the fair Celtiberian, your captive, has been celebrated so highly.
Scipio.—Fame has been, then, unjust to your merit, for little is said of the continence of Titus, but mine has been the favourite topic of eloquence in every age and country.
Titus.—It has; and in particular your great historian Livy has poured forth all the ornaments of his admirable rhetoric to embellish and dignify that part of your story. I had a great historian too—Cornelius Tacitus; but either from the brevity which he affected in writing, or from the severity of his nature, which never having felt the passion of love, thought the subduing of it too easy a victory to deserve great encomiums, he has bestowed but three lines upon my parting with Berenicé, which cost me more pain and greater efforts of mind than the conquest of Jerusalem.
Scipio.—I wish to hear from yourself the history of that parting, and what could make it so hard and painful to you.
Titus.—While I served in Palestine under the auspices of my father, Vespasian, I became acquainted with Berenicé, sister to King Agrippa, and who was herself a queen in one of those Eastern countries. She was the most beautiful woman in Asia, but she had graces more irresistible still than her beauty. She had all the insinuation and wit of Cleopatra, without her coquetry. I loved her, and was beloved; she loved my person, not my greatness. Her tenderness, her fidelity so inflamed my passion for her that I gave her a promise of marriage.
Scipio.—What do I hear? A Roman senator promise to marry a queen!
Titus.—I expected, Scipio, that your ears would be offended with the sound of such a match. But consider that Rome was very different in my time from Rome in yours. The ferocious pride of our ancient republican senators had bent itself to the obsequious complaisance of a court. Berenicé made no doubt, and I flattered myself that it would not be inflexible in this point alone. But we thought it necessary to defer the completion of our wishes till the death of my father. On that event the Roman Empire and (what I knew she valued more) my hand became due to her, according to my engagements.
Scipio.—The Roman Empire due to a Syrian queen! Oh, Rome, how art thou fallen! Accursed be the memory of Octavius Cæsar, who by oppressing its liberty so lowered the majesty of the republic, that a brave and virtuous Roman, in whom was vested all the power of that mighty state, could entertain such a thought! But did you find the senate and people so servile, so lost to all sense of their honour and dignity, as to affront the great genius of imperial Rome and the eyes of her tutelary gods, the eyes of Jupiter Capitolinus, with the sight of a queen—an Asiatic queen—on the throne of the Cæsars?
Titus.—I did not. They judged of it as you, Scipio, judge; they detested, they disdained it. In vain did Iurge to some particular friends, who represented to me the sense of the Senate and people, that a Messalina, a Poppæa, were a much greater dishonour to the throne of the Cæsars than a virtuous foreign princess. Their prejudices were unconquerable; I saw it would be impossible for me to remove them. But I might have used my authority to silence their murmurs. A liberal donative to the soldiers, by whom I was fondly beloved, would have secured their fidelity, and consequently would have forced the Senate and people to yield to my inclination. Berenicé knew this, and with tears implored me not to sacrifice her happiness and my own to an unjust prepossession. Shall I own it to you, Publius? My heart not only pitied her, but acknowledged the truth and solidity of her reasons. Yet so much did I abhor the idea of tyranny, so much respect did I pay to the sentiments of my subjects, that I determined to separate myself from her for ever, rather than force either the laws or the prejudices of Rome to submit to my will.
Scipio.—Give me thy hand, noble Titus. Thou wast worthy of the empire, and Scipio Africanus honours thy virtue.
Titus.—My virtue can have no greater reward from the approbation of man. But, O Scipio, think what anguish my heart must have felt when I took that resolution, and when I communicated it to my dear, my unhappy Berenicé. You saw the struggle of Masinissa, when you forced him to give up his beloved Sophonisba. Mine was a harder conflict. She had abandoned him to marry the King of Numidia. He knew that her ruling passion was ambition, not love. He could not rationally esteem her when she quitted a husband whom she had ruined, who had lost his crown and his liberty in the cause of her country and for her sake, to give her person to him, the capital foe of that unfortunate husband. He must, in spite of his passion, have thought her a perfidious, a detestable woman. But Iesteemed Berenicé; she deserved my esteem. I was certain she would not have accepted the empire from any other hand; and had I been a private man she would have raised me to her throne. Yet I had the fortitude—I ought, perhaps, to say the hardness of heart—to bid her depart from my sight; depart for ever! What, O Publius, was your conquest over yourself, in giving back to her betrothed lover the Celtiberian captive compared to this? Indeed, that was no conquest. I will not so dishonour the virtue of Scipio as to think he could feel any struggle with himself on that account. A woman engaged to another—engaged by affection as well as vows, let her have been ever so beautiful—could raise in your heart no sentiments but compassion and friendship. To have violated her would have been an act of brutality, which none but another Tarquin could have committed. To have detained her from her husband would have been cruel. But where love is mutual, where the object beloved suffers more in the separation than you do yourself, to part with her is indeed a struggle. It is the hardest sacrifice a good heart can make to its duty.
Scipio.—I acknowledge that it is, and yield you the palm. But I will own to you, Titus, I never knew much of the tenderness you describe. Hannibal, Carthage, Rome, the saving of my country, the subduing of its rival, these filled my thoughts, and left no room there for those effeminate passions. I do not blame your sensibility; but when I went to the capitol to talk with Jove, I never consulted him about love affairs.
Titus.—If my soul had been possessed by ambition alone, I might possibly have been a greater man than I was; but I should not have been more virtuous, nor have gained the title I preferred to that of conqueror of Judæa and Emperor of Rome, in being called the delight of humankind.
Henry Duke of Guise—Machiavel.
Guise.—Avaunt! thou fiend. I abhor thy sight. I look upon thee as the original cause of my death, and of all the calamities brought upon the French nation, in my father’s time and my own.
Machiavel.—I the cause of your death! You surprise me!
Guise.—Yes. Your pernicious maxims of policy, imported from Florence with Catherine of Medicis, your wicked disciple, produced in France such a government, such dissimulation, such perfidy, such violent, ruthless counsels, as threw that whole kingdom into the utmost confusion, and ended my life, even in the palace of my sovereign, by the swords of assassins.
Machiavel.—Whoever may have a right to complain of my policy, you, sir, have not. You owed your greatness to it, and your deviating from it was the real cause of your death. If it had not been for the assassination of Admiral Coligni and the massacre of the Huguenots, the strength and power which the conduct of so able a chief would have given to that party, after the death of your father, its most dangerous enemy, would have been fatal to your house; nor could you, even with all the advantage you drew from that great stroke of royal policy, have acquired the authority you afterwards rose to in the kingdom of France; but by pursuing my maxims, by availing yourself of the specious name of religion to serve the secret purposes of your ambition, and by suffering no restraint of fear or conscience, not even the guilt of exciting a civil war, to check the necessary progress of your well-concerted designs. But on the day of the barricades you most imprudently let the king escape out of Paris, when you might have slain or deposed him. This was directly against the great rule of my politics, not to stop short in rebellion or treason till the work is fully completed. And you were justly censuredfor it by Pope Sixtus Quintus, a more consummate politician, who said, “You ought to have known that when a subject draws his sword against his king he should throw away the scabbard.â€Â You likewise deviated from my counsels, by putting yourself in the power of a sovereign you had so much offended. Why would you, against all the cautions I had given, expose your life in a loyal castle to the mercy of that prince? You trusted to his fear, but fear, insulted and desperate, is often cruel. Impute therefore your death not to any fault in my maxims, but to your own folly in not having sufficiently observed them.
Guise.—If neither I nor that prince had ever practised your maxims in any part of our conduct, he would have reigned many years with honour and peace, and I should have risen by my courage and talents to as high a pitch of greatness as it consisted with the duty of a subject to desire. But your instructions led us on into those crooked paths, out of which there was no retreat without great danger, nor a possibility of advancing without being detested by all mankind, and whoever is so has everything to fear from that detestation. I will give you a proof of this in the fate of a prince, who ought to have been your hero instead of Cæsar Borgia, because he was incomparably a greater man, and, of all who ever lived, seems to have acted most steadily according to the rules laid down by you; I mean Richard III., King of England. He stopped at no crime that could be profitable to him; he was a dissembler, a hypocrite, a murderer in cool blood. After the death of his brother he gained the crown by cutting off, without pity, all who stood in his way. He trusted no man any further than helped his own purposes and consisted with his own safety. He liberally rewarded all services done him, but would not let the remembrance of them atone for offences or save any man from destruction who obstructed his views. Nevertheless, though his nature shrunk from no wickedness which could serve hisambition, he possessed and exercised all those virtues which you recommend to the practice of your prince. He was bold and prudent in war, just and strict in the general administration of his government, and particularly careful, by a vigorous execution of the laws, to protect the people against injuries or oppressions from the great. In all his actions and words there constantly appeared the highest concern for the honour of the nation. He was neither greedy of wealth that belonged to other men nor profuse of his own, but knew how to give and where to save. He professed a most edifying sense of religion, pretended great zeal for the reformation of manners, and was really an example of sobriety, chastity, and temperance in the whole course of his life. Nor did he shed any blood, but of those who were such obstacles in his way to dominion as could not possibly be removed by any other means. This was a prince after your heart, yet mark his end. The horror his crimes had excited in the minds of his subjects, and the detestation it produced, were so pernicious to him, that they enabled an exile, who had no right to the crown, and whose abilities were much inferior to his, to invade his realm and destroy him.
Machiavel.—This example, I own, may seem to be of some weight against the truth of my system. But at the same time it demonstrates that there was nothing so new in the doctrines I published as to make it reasonable to charge me with the disorders and mischiefs which, since my time, any kingdom may have happened to suffer from the ambition of a subject or the tyranny of a prince. Human nature wants no teaching to render it wicked. In courts more especially there has been, from the first institution of monarchies, a policy practised, not less repugnant than mine to the narrow and vulgar laws of humanity and religion. Why should I be singled out as worse than other statesmen?
Guise.—There have been, it must be owned, in all ages and all states, many wicked politicians; but thou art thefirst that ever taught the science of tyranny, reduced it to rules, and instructed his disciples how to acquire and secure it by treachery, perjuries, assassinations, proscriptions, and with a particular caution, not to be stopped in the progress of their crimes by any check of the conscience or feeling of the heart, but to push them as far as they shall judge to be necessary to their greatness and safety. It is this which has given thee a pre-eminence in guilt over all other statesmen.
Machiavel.—If you had read my book with candour you would have perceived that I did not desire to render men either tyrants or rebels, but only showed, if they were so, what conduct, in such circumstances, it would be rational and expedient for them to observe.
Guise.—When you were a minister of state in Florence, if any chemist or physician had published a treatise, to instruct his countrymen in the art of poisoning, and how to do it with the most certain destruction to others and security to themselves, would you have allowed him to plead in his justification that he did not desire men to poison their neighbours? But, if they would use such evil means of mending their fortunes, there could surely be no harm in letting them know what were the most effectual poisons, and by what methods they might give them without being discovered. Would you have thought it a sufficient apology for him that he had dropped in his preface, or here and there in his book, a sober exhortation against the committing of murder? Without all doubt, as a magistrate concerned for the safety of the people of Florence, you would have punished the wretch with the utmost severity, and taken great care to destroy every copy of so pernicious a book. Yet your own admired work contains a more baneful and more infernal art. It poisons states and kingdoms, and spreads its malignity, like a general pestilence, over the whole world.
Machiavel.—You must acknowledge at least that mydiscourses on Livy are full of wise and virtuous maxims and precepts of government.
Guise.—This, I think, rather aggravates than alleviates your guilt. How could you study and comment upon Livy with so acute and profound an understanding, and afterwards write a book so absolutely repugnant to all the lessons of policy taught by that sage and moral historian? How could you, who had seen the picture of virtue so amiably drawn by his hand, and who seemed yourself to be sensible of all its charms, fall in love with a fury, and set up her dreadful image as an object of worship to princes?
Machiavel.—I was seduced by vanity. My heart was formed to love virtue. But I wanted to be thought a greater genius in politics than Aristotle or Plato. Vanity, sir, is a passion as strong in authors as ambition in princes, or rather it is the same passion exerting itself differently. I was a Duke of Guise in the republic of letters.
Guise.—The bad influences of your guilt have reached further than mine, and been more lasting. But, Heaven be praised, your credit is at present much declining in Europe. I have been told by some shades who are lately arrived here, that the ablest statesman of his time, a king, with whose fame the world is filled, has answered your book, and confuted all the principles of it, with a noble scorn and abhorrence. I am also assured, that in England there is a great and good king, whose whole life has been a continued opposition to your evil system; who has hated all cruelty, all fraud, all falseness; whose word has been sacred, whose honour inviolate; who has made the laws of his kingdom the rules of his government, and good faith and a regard for the liberty of mankind the principles of his conduct with respect to foreign powers; who reigns more absolutely now in the hearts of his people, and does greater things by the confidence they place in him, and by the efforts they make from the generous zeal of affection, than any monarch ever did, or ever will do, by all the arts of iniquity which you recommended.
Virgil—Horace—Mercury—Scaliger the Elder.
Virgil.—My dear Horace, your company is my greatest delight, even in the Elysian Fields. No wonder it was so when we lived together in Rome. Never had man so genteel, so agreeable, so easy a wit, or a temper so pliant to the inclinations of others in the intercourse of society. And then such integrity, such fidelity, such generosity in your nature! A soul so free from all envy, so benevolent, so sincere, so placable in its anger, so warm and constant in its affections! You were as necessary to Mæcenas as he to Augustus. Your conversation sweetened to him all the cares of his ministry; your gaiety cheered his drooping spirits; and your counsels assisted him when he wanted advice. For you were capable, my dear Horace, of counselling statesmen. Your sagacity, your discretion, your secrecy, your clear judgment in all affairs, recommended you to the confidence, not of Mæcenas alone, but of Augustus himself; which you nobly made use of to serve your old friends of the republican party, and to confirm both the minister and the prince in their love of mild and moderate measures, yet with a severe restraint of licentiousness, the most dangerous enemy to the whole commonwealth under any form of government.
Horace.—To be so praised by Virgil would have put me in Elysium while I was alive. But I know your modesty will not suffer me, in return for these encomiums, to speak of your character. Supposing it as perfect as your poems, you would think, as you did of them, that it wanted correction.
Virgil.—Don’t talk of my modesty. How much greater was yours, when you disclaimed the name of a poet, you whose odes are so noble, so harmonious, so sublime!
Horace.—I felt myself too inferior to the dignity of that name.
Virgil.—I think you did like Augustus, when he refused to accept the title of king, but kept all the power with which it was ever attended. Even in your Epistles and Satires, where the poet was concealed, as much as he could be, you may properly be compared to a prince in disguise, or in his hours of familiarity with his intimate friends: the pomp and majesty were let drop, but the greatness remained.
Horace.—Well, I will not contradict you; and, to say the truth, I should do it with no very good grace, because in some of my Odes I have not spoken so modestly of my own poetry as in my Epistles. But to make you know your pre-eminence over me and all writers of Latin verse, I will carry you to Quintilian, the best of all Roman critics, who will tell you in what rank you ought to be placed.
Virgil.—I fear his judgment of me was biassed by your commendation. But who is this shade that Mercury is conducting? I never saw one that stalked with so much pride, or had such ridiculous arrogance expressed in his looks!
Horace.—They come towards us. Hail, Mercury! What is this stranger with you?
Mercury.—His name is Julius Cæsar Scaliger, and he is by profession a critic.
Horace.—Julius Cæsar Scaliger! He was, I presume, a dictator in criticism.
Mercury.—Yes, and he has exercised his sovereign power over you.
Horace.—I will not presume to oppose it. I had enough of following Brutus at Philippi.
Mercury.—Talk to him a little. He’ll amuse you. I brought him to you on purpose.
Horace.—Virgil, do you accost him. I can’t do it with proper gravity. I shall laugh in his face.
Virgil.—Sir, may I ask for what reason you cast your eyes so superciliously upon Horace and me? I don’t remember that Augustus ever looked down upon us with such an air of superiority when we were his subjects.
Scaliger.—He was only a sovereign over your bodies, and owed his power to violence and usurpation. But I have from Nature an absolute dominion over the wit of all authors, who are subjected to me as the greatest of critics or hypercritics.
Virgil.—Your jurisdiction, great sir, is very extensive. And what judgments have you been pleased to pass upon us?
Scaliger.—Is it possible you should be ignorant of my decrees? I have placed you, Virgil, above Homer, whom I have shown to be—
Virgil.—Hold, sir. No blasphemy against my master.
Horace.—But what have you said of me?
Scaliger.—I have said that I had rather have written the little dialogue between you and Lydia than have been made king of Arragon.
Horace.—If we were in the other world you should give me the kingdom, and take both the ode and the lady in return. But did you always pronounce so favourably for us?
Scaliger.—Send for my works and read them. Mercury will bring them to you with the first learned ghost that arrives here from Europe. There is instruction for you in them. I tell you of your faults. But it was my whim to commend that little ode, and I never do things by halves. When I give praise, I give it liberally, to show my royal bounty. But I generally blame, to exert all the vigour of my censorian power, and keep my subjects in awe.
Horace.—You did not confine your sovereignty to poets; you exercised it, no doubt, over all other writers.
Scaliger.—I was a poet, a philosopher, a statesman, an orator, an historian, a divine without doing the drudgery of any of these, but only censuring those who did, and showing thereby the superiority of my genius over them all.
Horace.—A short way, indeed, to universal fame! And I suppose you were very peremptory in your decisions?
Scaliger.—Peremptory! ay. If any man dared to contradict my opinions I called him a dunce, a rascal, a villain, and frightened him out of his wits.
Virgil.—But what said others to this method of disputation?
Scaliger.—They generally believed me because of the confidence of my assertions, and thought I could not be so insolent or so angry if I was not absolutely sure of being in the right. Besides, in my controversies, I had a great help from the language in which I wrote. For one can scold and call names with a much better grace in Latin than in French or any tame modern tongue.
Horace.—Have not I heard that you pretended to derive your descent from the princes of Verona?
Scaliger.—Pretended! Do you presume to deny it?
Horace.—Not I, indeed. Genealogy is not my science. If you should claim to descend in a direct line from King Midas I would not dispute it.
Virgil.—I wonder, Scaliger, that you stooped to so low an ambition. Was it not greater to reign over all Mount Parnassus than over a petty state in Italy?
Scaliger.—You say well. I was too condescending to the prejudices of vulgar opinion. The ignorant multitude imagine that a prince is a greater man than a critic. Their folly made me desire to claim kindred with the Scalas of Verona.
Horace.—Pray, Mercury, how do you intend to dispose of this august person? You can’t think it proper to let him remain with us. He must be placed with the demigods; he must go to Olympus.
Mercury.—Be not afraid. He shall not trouble you long. I brought him hither to divert you with the sight of an animal you never had seen, and myself with your surprise. He is the chief of all the modern critics, the most renowned captain of that numerous and dreadful band. Whatever you may think of him, I can seriously assure you thatbefore he went mad he had good parts and great learning. But I will now explain to you the original cause of the absurdities he has uttered. His mind was formed in such a manner that, like some perspective glasses, it either diminished or magnified all objects too much; but, above all others, it magnified the good man to himself. This made him so proud that it turned his brain. Now I have had my sport with him, I think it will be charity to restore him to his senses, or rather to bestow what Nature denied him—a sound judgment. Come hither, Scaliger. By this touch of my Caduceus I give thee power to see things as they are, and, among others, thyself. Look, gentlemen, how his countenance is fallen in a moment! Hear what he says. He is talking to himself.
Scaliger.—Bless me! with what persons have I been discoursing? With Virgil and Horace! How could I venture to open my lips in their presence? Good Mercury, I beseech you let me retire from a company for which I am very unfit. Let me go and hide my head in the deepest shade of that grove which I see in the valley. After I have performed a penance there, I will crawl on my knees to the feet of those illustrious shades, and beg them to see me burn my impertinent books of criticism in the fiery billows of Phlegethon with my own hands.
Mercury.—They will both receive thee into favour. This mortification of truly knowing thyself is a sufficient atonement for thy former presumption.
Boileau—Pope.
Boileau.—Mr. Pope, you have done me great honour. I am told that you made me your model in poetry, and walked on Parnassus in the same paths which I had trod.
Pope.—We both followed Horace, but in our manner ofimitation, and in the turn of our natural genius, there was, I believe, much resemblance. We both were too irritable and too easily hurt by offences, even from the lowest of men. The keen edge of our wit was frequently turned against those whom it was more a shame to contend with than an honour to vanquish.
Boileau.—Yes. But in general we were the champions of good morals, good sense, and good learning. If our love of these was sometimes heated into anger against those who offended them no less than us, is that anger to be blamed?
Pope.—It would have been nobler if we had not been parties in the quarrel. Our enemies observe that neither our censure nor our praise was always impartial.
Boileau.—It might perhaps have been better if in some instances we had not praised or blamed so much. But in panegyric and satire moderation is insipid.
Pope.—Moderation is a cold unpoetical virtue. Mere historical truth is better written in prose. And, therefore, I think you did judiciously when you threw into the fire your history of Louis le Grand, and trusted his fame to your poems.
Boileau.—When those poems were published that monarch was the idol of the French nation. If you and I had not known, in our occasional compositions, how to speak to the passions, as well as to the sober reason of mankind, we should not have acquired that despotic authority in the empire of wit which made us so formidable to all the inferior tribe of poets in England and France. Besides, sharp satirists want great patrons.
Pope.—All the praise which my friends received from me was unbought. In this, at least, I may boast a superiority over the pensioned Boileau.
Boileau.—A pension in France was an honourable distinction. Had you been a Frenchman you would have ambitiously sought it; had I been an Englishman I should have proudly declined it. If our merit in other respects benot unequal, this difference will not set me much below you in the temple of virtue or of fame.
Pope.—It is not for me to draw a comparison between our works. But, if I may believe the best critics who have talked to me on the subject, my “Rape of the Lock†is not inferior to your “Lutrin;†and my “Art of Criticism†may well be compared with your “Art of Poetry;†my “Ethic Epistles†are esteemed at least equal to yours; and my “Satires†much better.
Boileau.—Hold, Mr. Pope. If there is really such a sympathy in our natures as you have supposed, there may be reason to fear that, if we go on in this manner comparing our works, we shall not part in good friendship.
Pope.—No, no; the mild air of the Elysian Fields has mitigated my temper, as I presume it has yours. But, in truth, our reputations are nearly on a level. Our writings are admired, almost equally (as I hear) for energy and justness of thought. We both of us carried the beauty of our diction, and the harmony of our numbers, to the highest perfection that our languages would admit. Our poems were polished to the utmost degree of correctness, yet without losing their fire, or the agreeable appearance of freedom and ease. We borrowed much from the ancients, though you, I believe, more than I; but our imitations (to use an expression of your own) had still an original air.
Boileau.—I will confess, sir (to show you that the Elysian climate has had its effects upon me), I will fairly confess, without the least ill humour, that in your “Eloisa to Abelard,†your “Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,†and some others you wrote in your youth, there is more fire of poetry than in any of mine. You excelled in the pathetic, which I never approached. I will also allow that you hit the manner of Horace and the sly delicacy of his wit more exactly than I, or than any other man who has written since his time. Nor could I, nor did even Lucretius himself, make philosophy so poetical, and embellish it withsuch charms as you have given to that of Plato, or (to speak more properly) of some of his modern disciples, in your celebrated “Essay on Man.â€
Pope.—What do you think of my “Homer?â€
Boileau.—Your “Homer†is the most spirited, the most poetical, the most elegant, and the most pleasing translation that ever was made of any ancient poem, though not so much in the manner of the original, or so exactly agreeable to the sense in all places, as might perhaps be desired. But when I consider the years you spent in this work, and how many excellent original poems you might, with less difficulty, have produced in that time, I can’t but regret that your talents were thus employed. A great poet so tied down to a tedious translation is a Columbus chained to an oar. What new regions of fancy, full of treasures yet untouched, might you have explored, if you had been at liberty to have boldly expanded your sails, and steered your own course, under the conduct and direction of your own genius! But I am still more angry with you for your edition of Shakespeare. The office of an editor was below you, and your mind was unfit for the drudgery it requires. Would anybody think of employing a Raphael to clean an old picture?
Pope.—The principal cause of my undertaking that task was zeal for the honour of Shakespeare; and, if you knew all his beauties as well as I, you would not wonder at this zeal. No other author had ever so copious, so bold, so creative an imagination, with so perfect a knowledge of the passions, the humours, and sentiments of mankind. He painted all characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal force. If human nature were destroyed, and no monument were left of it except his works, other beings might know what man was from those writings.
Boileau.—You say he painted all characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal force. I can’t deny that he did so; but I wish he had not jumbledthose characters together in the composition of his pictures as he has frequently done.
Pope.—The strange mixture of tragedy, comedy, and farce in the same play, nay, sometimes in the same scene, I acknowledge to be quite inexcusable. But this was the taste of the times when Shakespeare wrote.
Boileau.—A great genius ought to guide, not servilely follow, the taste of his contemporaries.
Pope.—Consider from how thick a darkness of barbarism the genius of Shakespeare broke forth! What were the English, and what, let me ask you, were the French dramatic performances, in the age when he nourished? The advances he made towards the highest perfection, both of tragedy and comedy, are amazing! In the principal points, in the power of exciting terror and pity, or raising laughter in an audience, none yet has excelled him, and very few have equalled.
Boileau.—Do you think that he was equal in comedy to Molière?
Pope.—In comic force I do; but in the fine and delicate strokes of satire, and what is called genteel comedy, he was greatly inferior to that admirable writer. There is nothing in him to compare with theMisanthrope, theÉcole des Femmes, orTartuffe.
Boileau.—This, Mr. Pope, is a great deal for an Englishman to acknowledge. A veneration for Shakespeare seems to be a part of your national religion, and the only part in which even your men of sense are fanatics.
Pope.—He who can read Shakespeare, and be cool enough for all the accuracy of sober criticism, has more of reason than taste.
Boileau.—I join with you in admiring him as a prodigy of genius, though I find the most shocking absurdities in his plays—absurdities which no critic of my nation can pardon.
Pope.—We will be satisfied with your feeling the excellenceof his beauties. But you would admire him still more if you could see the chief characters in all his test tragedies represented by an actor who appeared on the stage a little before I left the world. He has shown the English nation more excellencies in Shakespeare than the quickest wits could discern, and has imprinted them on the heart with a livelier feeling than the most sensible natures had ever experienced without his help.
Boileau.—The variety, spirit, and force of Mr. Garrick’s action have been much praised to me by many of his countrymen, whose shades I converse with, and who agree in speaking of him as we do of Baron, our most natural and most admired actor. I have also heard of another, who has now quitted the stage, but who had filled, with great dignity, force, and elevation, some tragic parts, and excelled so much in the comic, that none ever has deserved a higher applause.
Pope.—Mr. Quin was, indeed, a most perfect comedian. In the part of Falstaff particularly, wherein the utmost force of Shakespeare’s humour appears, he attained to such perfection that he was not an actor; he was the man described by Shakespeare; he was Falstaff himself! When I saw him do it the pleasantry of the fat knight appeared to me so bewitching, all his vices were so mirthful, that I could not much wonder at his having seduced a young prince even to rob in his company.
Boileau.—That character is not well understood by the French; they suppose it belongs, not to comedy, but to farce, whereas the English see in it the finest and highest strokes of wit and humour. Perhaps these different judgments may be accounted for in some measure by the diversity of manners in different countries. But don’t you allow, Mr. Pope, that our writers, both of tragedy and comedy, are, upon the whole, more perfect masters of their art than yours? If you deny it, I will appeal to the Athenians, the only judges qualified to decidethe dispute. I will refer it to Euripides, Sophocles, and Menander.
Pope.—I am afraid of those judges, for I see them continually walking hand-in-hand, and engaged in the most friendly conversation with Corneille, Racine, and Molière. Our dramatic writers seem, in general, not so fond of their company; they sometimes shove rudely by them, and give themselves airs of superiority. They slight their reprimands, and laugh at their precepts—in short, they will be tried by their country alone; and that judicature is partial.
Boileau.—I will press this question no further. But let me ask you to which of our rival tragedians, Racine and Corneille, do you give the preference?
Pope.—The sublimest plays of Corneille are, in my judgment, equalled by theAthaliaof Racine, and the tender passions are certainly touched by that elegant and most pathetic writer with a much finer hand. I need not add that he is infinitely more correct than Corneille, and more harmonious and noble in his versification. Corneille formed himself entirely upon Lucan, but the master of Racine was Virgil. How much better a taste had the former than the latter in choosing his model!
Boileau.—My friendship with Racine, and my partiality for his writings, make me hear with great pleasure the preference given to him above Corneille by so judicious a critic.
Pope.—That he excelled his competitor in the particulars I have mentioned, can’t, I think, be denied. But yet the spirit and the majesty of ancient Rome were never so well expressed as by Corneille. Nor has any other French dramatic writer, in the general character of his works, shown such a masculine strength and greatness of thought. Racine is the swan described by ancient poets, which rises to the clouds on downy wings and sings a sweet but a gentle and plaintive note. Corneille is the eagle, which soars to the skies on bold and sounding pinions, and fears not to perchon the sceptre of Jupiter, or to bear in his pounces the lightning of the god.
Boileau.—I am glad to find, Mr. Pope, that in praising Corneille you run into poetry, which is not the language of sober criticism, though sometimes used by Longinus.
Pope.—I caught the fire from the idea of Corneille.
Boileau.—He has bright flashes, yet I think that in his thunder there is often more noise than fire. Don’t you find him too declamatory, too turgid, too unnatural, even in his best tragedies?
Pope.—I own I do; yet the greatness and elevation of his sentiments, and the nervous vigour of his sense, atone, in my opinion, for all his faults. But let me now, in my turn, desire your opinion of our epic poet, Milton.
Boileau.—Longinus perhaps would prefer him to all other writers, for he surpasses even Homer in the sublime; but other critics who require variety, and agreeableness, and a correct regularity of thought and judgment in an epic poem, who can endure no absurdities, no extravagant fictions, would place him far below Virgil.
Pope.—His genius was indeed so vast and sublime, that his poem seems beyond the limits of criticism, as his subject is beyond the limits of nature. The bright and excessive blaze of poetical fire, which shines in so many parts of the “Paradise Lost,†will hardly permit the dazzled eye to see its faults.
Boileau.—The taste of your countrymen is much changed since the days of Charles II., when Dryden was thought a greater poet than Milton!
Pope.—The politics of Milton at that time brought his poetry into disgrace, for it is a rule with the English, they see no good in a man whose politics they dislike; but, as their notions of government are apt to change, men of parts whom they have slighted become their favourite authors, and others who have possessed their warmest admiration are in their turn undervalued. This revolution of favour wasexperienced by Dryden as well as Milton; he lived to see his writings, together with his politics, quite out of fashion. But even in the days of his highest prosperity, when the generality of the people admired hisAlmanzor, and thought hisIndian Emperorthe perfection of tragedy, the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Rochester, the two wittiest noblemen our country has produced, attacked his fame, and turned the rants of his heroes, the jargon of his spirits, and the absurdity of his plots into just ridicule.
Boileau.—You have made him good amends by the praise you have given him in some of your writings.
Pope.—I owed him that praise as my master in the art of versification, yet I subscribe to the censures which have been passed by other writers on many of his works. They are good critics, but he is still a great poet. You, sir, I am sure, must particularly admire him as an excellent satirist; his “Absalom and Achitophel†is a masterpiece in that way of writing, and his “Mac Flecno†is, I think, inferior to it in nothing but the meanness of the subject.
Boileau.—Did not you take the model of your “Dunciad†from the latter of those very ingenious satires?
Pope.—I did; but my work is more extensive than his, and my imagination has taken in it a greater scope.
Boileau.—Some critics may doubt whether the length of your poem was so properly suited to the meanness of the subject as the brevity of his. Three cantos to expose a dunce crowned with laurel! I have not given above three lines to the author of the “Pucelle.â€
Pope.—My intention was to expose, not one author alone, but all the dulness and false taste of the English nation in my times. Could such a design be contracted into a narrower compass?
Boileau.—We will not dispute on this point, nor whether the hero of your “Dunciad†was really a dunce. But has not Dryden been accused of immorality and profaneness in some of his writings?
Pope.—He has, with too much reason: and I am sorry to say that all our best comic writers after Shakespeare and Johnson, except Addison and Steele, are as liable as he to that heavy charge. Fletcher is shocking. Etheridge, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar have painted the manners of the times in which they wrote with a masterly hand; but they are too often such manners that a virtuous man, and much more a virtuous woman, must be greatly offended at the representation.
Boileau.—In this respect our stage is far preferable to yours. It is a school of morality. Vice is exposed to contempt and to hatred. No false colours are laid on to conceal its deformity, but those with which it paints itself are there taken off.
Pope.—It is a wonderful thing that in France the comic Muse should be the gravest lady in the nation. Of late she is so grave, that one might almost mistake her for her sister Melpomene. Molière made her indeed a good moral philosopher; but then she philosophised, like Democritus, with a merry, laughing face. Now she weeps over vice instead of showing it to mankind, as I think she generally ought to do, in ridiculous lights.
Boileau.—Her business is more with folly than with vice, and when she attacks the latter, it should be rather with ridicule than invective. But sometimes she may be allowed to raise her voice, and change her usual smile into a frown of just indignation.
Pope.—I like her best when she smiles. But did you never reprove your witty friend, La Fontaine, for the vicious levity that appears in many of his tales? He was as guilty of the crime of debauching the Muses as any of our comic poets.
Boileau.—I own he was, and bewail the prostitution of his genius, as I should that of an innocent and beautiful country girl. He was all nature, all simplicity! yet in that simplicity there was a grace, and unaffected vivacity,with a justness of thought and easy elegance of expression that can hardly be found in any other writer. His manner is quite original, and peculiar to himself, though all the matter of his writings is borrowed from others.
Pope.—In that manner he has been imitated by my friend Mr. Prior.
Boileau.—He has, very successfully. Some of Prior’s tales have the spirit of La Fontaine’s with more judgment, but not, I think, with such an amiable and graceful simplicity.
Pope.—Prior’s harp had more strings than La Fontaine’s. He was a fine poet in many different ways: La Fontaine but in one. And, though in some of his tales he imitated that author, his “Alma†was an original, and of singular beauty.
Boileau.—There is a writer of heroic poetry, who lived before Milton, and whom some of your countrymen place in the highest class of your poets, though he is little known in France. I see him sometimes in company with Homer and Virgil, but oftener with Tasso, Ariosto, and Dante.
Pope.—I understand you mean Spenser. There is a force and beauty in some of his images and descriptions, equal to any in those writers you have seen him converse with. But he had not the art of properly shading his pictures. He brings the minute and disagreeable parts too much into sight; and mingles too frequently vulgar and mean ideas with noble and sublime. Had he chosen a subject proper for epic poetry, he seems to have had a sufficient elevation and strength in his genius to make him a great epic poet: but the allegory, which is continued throughout the whole work, fatigues the mind, and cannot interest the heart so much as those poems, the chief actors in which are supposed to have really existed. The Syrens and Circe in the “Odyssey†are allegorical persons; but Ulysses, the hero of the poem, was a man renowned in Greece, which makes the account of his adventures affecting and delightful. To benow and then in Fairyland, among imaginary beings, is a pleasing variety, and helps to distinguish the poet from the orator or historian, but to be always there is irksome.
Boileau.—Is not Spenser likewise blamable for confounding the Christian with the Pagan theology in some parts of his poem?
Pope.—Yes; he had that fault in common with Dante, with Ariosto, and with Camoëns.
Boileau.—Who is the poet that arrived soon after you in Elysium, whom I saw Spenser lead in and present to Virgil, as the author of a poem resembling the “Georgics� On his head was a garland of the several kinds of flowers that blow in each season, with evergreens intermixed.
Pope.—Your description points out Thomson. He painted nature exactly, and with great strength of pencil. His imagination was rich, extensive, and sublime: his diction bold and glowing, but sometimes obscure and affected. Nor did he always know when to stop, or what to reject.
Boileau.—I should suppose that he wrote tragedies upon the Greek model. For he is often admitted into the grove of Euripides.
Pope.—He enjoys that distinction both as a tragedian and as a moralist. For not only in his plays, but all his other works, there is the purest morality, animated by piety, and rendered more touching by the fine and delicate sentiments of a most tender and benevolent heart.
Boileau.—St. Evremond has brought me acquainted with Waller. I was surprised to find in his writings a politeness and gallantry which the French suppose to be appropriated only to theirs. His genius was a composition which is seldom to be met with, of the sublime and the agreeable. In his comparison between himself and Apollo, as the lover of Daphne, and in that between Amoret and Sacharissa, there is afinesseand delicacy of wit which the most elegant of our writers have never exceeded. Nor had Sarrazin or Voiture the art of praising more genteelly theladies they admired. But his epistle to Cromwell, and his poem on the death of that extraordinary man, are written with a force and greatness of manner which give him a rank among the poets of the first class.
Pope.—Mr. Waller was unquestionably a very fine writer. His Muse was as well qualified as the Graces themselves to dress out a Venus; and he could even adorn the brows of a conqueror with fragrant and beautiful wreaths. But he had some puerile and low thoughts, which unaccountably mixed with the elegant and the noble, like schoolboys or a mob admitted into a palace. There was also an intemperance and a luxuriancy in his wit which he did not enough restrain. He wrote little to the understanding, and less to the heart; but he frequently delights the imagination, and sometimes strikes it with flashes of the highest sublime. We had another poet of the age of Charles I., extremely admired by all his contemporaries, in whose works there is still more affectation of wit, a greater redundancy of imagination, a worse taste, and less judgment; but he touched the heart more, and had finer feelings than Waller. I mean Cowley.
Boileau.—I have been often solicited to admire his writings by his learned friend, Dr. Spratt. He seems to me a great wit, and a very amiable man, but not a good poet.
Pope.—The spirit of poetry is strong in some of his odes, but in the art of poetry he is always extremely deficient.
Boileau.—I hear that of late his reputation is much lowered in the opinion of the English. Yet I cannot but think that, if a moderate portion of the superfluities of his wit were given by Apollo to some of their modern bards, who write commonplace morals in very smooth verse, without any absurdity, but without a single new thought, or one enlivening spark of imagination, it would be a great favour to them, and do them more service than all the rules laid down in my “Art of Poetry†and yours of “Criticism.â€
Pope.—I am much of your mind. But I left in England some poets whom you, I know, will admire, not only for the harmony and correctness of style, but the spirit and genius you will find in their writings.
Boileau.—France, too, has produced some very excellent writers since the time of my death. Of one particularly I hear wonders. Fame to him is as kind as if he had been dead a thousand years. She brings his praises to me from all parts of Europe. You know I speak of Voltaire.
Pope.—I do; the English nation yields to none in admiration of his extensive genius. Other writers excel in some one particular branch of wit or science; but when the King of Prussia drew Voltaire from Paris to Berlin, he had a whole academy ofbelles lettresin him alone.
Boileau.—That prince himself has such talents for poetry as no other monarch in any age or country has ever possessed. What an astonishing compass must there be in his mind, what an heroic tranquillity and firmness in his heart, that he can, in the evening, compose an ode or epistle in the most elegant verse, and the next morning fight a battle with the conduct of Cæsar or Gustavus Adolphus!
Pope.—I envy Voltaire so noble a subject both for his verse and his prose. But if that prince will write his own commentaries, he will want no historian. I hope that, in writing them, he will not restrain his pen, as Cæsar has done, to a mere account of his wars, but let us see the politician, and the benignant protector of arts and sciences, as well as the warrior, in that picture of himself. Voltaire has shown us that the events of battles and sieges are not the most interesting parts of good history, but that all the improvements and embellishments of human society ought to be carefully and particularly recorded there.
Boileau.—The progress of arts and knowledge, and the great changes that have happened in the manners of mankind, are objects far more worthy of a leader’s attentionthan the revolutions of fortune. And it is chiefly to Voltaire that we owe this instructive species of history.
Pope.—He has not only been the father of it among the moderns, but has carried it himself to its utmost perfection.
Boileau.—Is he not too universal? Can any writer be exact who is so comprehensive?
Pope.—A traveller round the world cannot inspect every region with such an accurate care as exactly to describe each single part. If the outlines are well marked, and the observations on the principal points are judicious, it is all that can be required.
Boileau.—I would, however, advise and exhort the French and English youth to take a fuller survey of some particular provinces, and to remember that although, in travels of this sort, a lively imagination is a very agreeable companion, it is not the best guide. To speak without a metaphor, the study of history, both sacred and profane, requires a critical and laborious investigation. The composer of a set of lively and witty remarks on facts ill-examined, or incorrectly delivered, is not an historian.
Pope.—We cannot, I think, deny that name to the author of the “Life of Charles XII., King of Sweden.â€
Boileau.—No, certainly. I esteem it the very best history that this age has produced. As full of spirit as the hero whose actions it relates, it is nevertheless most exact in all matters of importance. The style of it is elegant, perspicuous, unaffected; the disposition and method are excellent; the judgments given by the writer acute and just.
Pope.—Are you not pleased with that philosophical freedom of thought which discovers itself in all the works of Voltaire, but more particularly in those of an historical nature?
Boileau.—If it were properly regulated, I should reckon it among their highest perfections. Superstition, and bigotry, and party spirit are as great enemies to the truth and candour of history as malice or adulation. Tothink freely is therefore a most necessary quality in a perfect historian. But all liberty has its bounds, which, in some of his writings, Voltaire, I fear, has not observed. Would to Heaven he would reflect, while it is yet in his power to correct what is faulty, that all his works will outlive him; that many nations will read them; and that the judgment pronounced here upon the writer himself will be according to the scope and tendency of them, and to the extent of their good or evil effects on the great society of mankind.
Pope.—It would be well for all Europe if some other wits of your country, who give the tone to this age in all polite literature, had the same serious thoughts you recommend to Voltaire. Witty writings, when directed to serve the good ends of virtue and religion, are like the lights hung out in apharos, to guide the mariners safe through dangerous seas; but the brightness of those that are impious or immoral shines only to betray and lead men to destruction.
Boileau.—Has England been free from all seductions of this nature?
Pope.—No. But the French have the art of rendering vice and impiety more agreeable than the English.
Boileau.—I am not very proud of this superiority in the talents of my countrymen. But as I am told that the good sense of the English is now admired in France, I hope it will soon convince both nations that true wisdom is virtue, and true virtue is religion.