On the head of a stag:
O fertile head! which every yearCould such a crop of wonder bear!The teeming earth did never bring,So soon so hard, so huge a thing:Which might it never have been cast,Each year's growth added to the last,These lofty branches had supply'dThe earth's bold sons' prodigious pride:Heaven with these engines had been scal'd,When mountains heap'd on mountains fail'd.
Sometimes, having succeeded in the first part, he makes a feeble conclusion. In the song of Sacharissa's and Amoret's Friendship, the two last stanzas ought to have been omitted.
His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate:
Then shall my love this doubt displace.And gain such trust, that I may comeAnd banquet sometimes on thy face,But make my constant meals at home.
Some applications may be thought too remote and unconsequential; as in the verses on the Lady Dancing:
The sun in figures such as theseJoys with the moon to play:To the sweet strains they advance,Which do result from their own spheres;As this nymph's danceMoves with the numbers which she hears.
Sometimes a thought, which might, perhaps, fill a distich, is expanded and attenuated, till it grows weak and almost evanescent:
Chloris! since first our calm of peaceWas frighted hence, this good we find,Your favours with your fears increase,And growing mischiefs make you kind.So the fair tree, which still preservesHer fruit, and state, while no wind blows,In storms from that uprightness swerves;And the glad earth about her strowsWith treasure from her yielding boughs.
His images are not always distinct; as, in the following passage, he confounds love, as a person, with love, as a passion:
Some other nymphs, with colours faint,And pencil slow, may Cupid paint,And a weak heart, in time, destroy;She has a stamp, and prints the boy:Can, with a single look, inflameThe coldest breast, the rudest tame.
His sallies of casual flattery are sometimes elegant and happy, as that in Return for the Silver Pen; and sometimes empty and trifling, as that upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few Lines written in the Dutchess's Tasso, which he is said, by Fenton, to have kept a summer under correction. It happened to Waller, as to others, that his success was not always in proportion to his labour.
Of these petty compositions, neither the beauties nor the faults deserve much attention. The amorous verses have this to recommend them, that they are less hyperbolical than those of some other poets. Waller is not always at the last gasp; he does not die of a frown, nor live upon a smile. There is, however, too much love, and too many trifles. Little things are made too important; and the empire of beauty is represented as exerting its influence further than can be allowed by the multiplicity of human passions, and the variety of human wants. Such books, therefore, may be considered, as showing the world under a false appearance, and, so far as they obtain credit from the young and unexperienced, as misleading expectation, and misguiding practice.
Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is panegyrical: for of praise he was very lavish, as is observed by his imitator, lord Lansdowne:
No satyr stalks within the hallow'd ground,But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound;Glory and arms and love are all the sound.
In the first poem, on the danger of the Prince on the coast of Spain, there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion, at the beginning; and the last paragraph, on the Cable, is, in part, ridiculously mean, and in part, ridiculously tumid. The poem, however, is such as may be justly praised, without much allowance for the state of our poetry and language at that time.
The two next poems are upon the king's behaviour at the death ofBuckingham, and upon his navy.
He has, in the first, used the pagan deities with great propriety:
'Twas want of such a precedent as this,Made the old heathen frame their gods amiss.
In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble, which suppose the king's power secure against a second deluge; so noble, that it were almost criminal to remark the mistake ofcentreforsurface, or to say that the empire of the sea would be worth little, if it were not that the waters terminate in land.
The poem upon Sallee has forcible sentiments; but the conclusion is feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul's has something vulgar and obvious; such as the mention of Amphion; and something violent and harsh; as,
So all our minds with his conspire to graceThe Gentiles' great apostle, and defaceThose state-obscuring sheds, that, like a chain,Seem'd to confine, and fetter him again:
Which the glad saint shakes off at his command,As once the viper from his sacred hand.So joys the aged oak, when we divideThe creeping ivy from his injur'd side.
Of the two last couplets, the first is extravagant, and the second mean.
His praise of the queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought, that she "saves lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes are cured by lopping the limb," presents nothing to the mind but disgust and horrour.
Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it seems not easy to say whether it is intended to raise terrour or merriment. The beginning is too splendid for jest, and the conclusion too light for seriousness. The versification is studied, the scenes are diligently displayed, and the images artfully amplified; but, as it ends neither in joy nor sorrow, it will scarcely be read a second time.
The Panegyrick upon Cromwell has obtained from the publick a very liberal dividend of praise, which, however, cannot be said to have been unjustly lavished; for such a series of verses had rarely appeared before in the English language. Of the lines some are grand, some are graceful, and all are musical. There is now and then a feeble verse, or a trifling thought; but its great fault is the choice of its hero.
The poem of the War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and striking than Waller is accustomed to produce. The succeeding parts are variegated with better passages and worse. There is something too far-fetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the English on, by saluting St. Lucar with cannon, "to lambs awakening the lion by bleating." The fate of the marquis and his lady, who were burnt in their ship, would have moved more, had the poet not made him die like the Phoenix, because he had spices about him, nor expressed their affection and their end, by a conceit, at once, false and vulgar:
Alive, in equal flames of love they burn'd,And now together are to ashes turn'd.
The verses to Charles on his Return were doubtless intended to counterbalance the Panegyrick on Cromwell. If it has been thought inferiour to that with which it is naturally compared, the cause of its deficience has been already remarked.
The remaining pieces it is not necessary to examine singly. They must be supposed to have faults and beauties of the same kind with the rest. The Sacred Poems, however, deserve particular regard; they were the work of Waller's declining life, of those hours in which he looked upon the fame and the folly of the time past with the sentiments which his great predecessor, Petrarch, bequeathed to posterity, upon his review of that love and poetry which have given him immortality.
That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that the mind grows old with the body; and that he, whom we are now forced to confess superiour, is hastening daily to a level with ourselves. By delighting to think this of the living, we learn to think it of the dead; and Fenton, with all his kindness for Waller, has the luck to mark the exact time when his genius passed the zenith, which he places at his fifty-fifth year. This is to allot the mind but a small portion. Intellectual decay is, doubtless, not uncommon; but it seems not to be universal. Newton was, in his eighty-fifth year, improving his chronology, a few days before his death; and Waller appears not, in my opinion, to have lost, at eighty-two, any part of his poetical power.
His Sacred Poems do not please like some of his other works; but before the fatal fifty-five, had he written on the same subjects, his success would hardly have been better.
It has been the frequent lamentation of good men, that verse has been too little applied to the purposes of worship, and many attempts have been made to animate devotion by pious poetry. That they have very seldom attained their end, is sufficiently known, and it may not be improper to inquire, why they have miscarried. Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please. The doctrines of religion may, indeed, be defended in a didactick poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the spring, and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide, and the revolutions of the sky, and praise the maker for his works, in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the description is not God, but the works of God.
Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his creator, and plead the merits of his redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer.
The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topicks of devotion are few, and, being few, are universally known; but, few as they are, they can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression.
Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those which repel the imagination: but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already.
From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the supreme being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; infinity cannot be amplified; perfection cannot be improved. The employments of pious meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a being without passions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication of man to man may diffuse itself through many topicks of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy.
Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory, and delight the ear, and, for these purposes, it may be very useful; but it supplies nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestick for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify, by a concave mirror, the sidereal hemisphere.
As much of Waller's reputation was owing to the softness and smoothness of his numbers, it is proper to consider those minute particulars to which a versifier must attend.
He certainly very much excelled in smoothness most of the writers who were living when his poetry commenced. The poets of Elizabeth had attained an art of modulation, which was afterwards neglected or forgotten. Fairfax was acknowledged by him as his model; and he might have studied with advantage the poem of Davies[m86], which, though merely philosophical, yet seldom leaves the ear ungratified.
But he was rather smooth than strong; of "the full resounding line," which Pope attributes to Dryden, he has given very few examples. The critical decision has given the praise of strength to Denham, and of sweetness to Waller.
His excellence of versification has some abatements. He uses the expletivedovery frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost, universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last compositions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and finding the world satisfied, he satisfied himself.
His rhymes are sometimes weak words:sois found to make the rhyme twice in ten lines, and occurs often as a rhyme through his book.
His double rhymes, in heroick verse, have been censured by Mrs. Phillips, who was his rival in the translation of Corneille's Pompey; and more faults might be found, were not the inquiry below attention.
He sometimes uses the obsolete termination of verbs, aswaxeth, affecteth; and sometimes retains the final syllable of the preterite, asamazed, supposed, of which I know not whether it is not to the detriment of our language that we have totally rejected them.
Of triplets he is sparing; but he did not wholly forbear them: of an alexandrine he has given no example.
The general character of his poetry is elegance and gaiety. He is never pathetick, and very rarely sublime. He seems neither to have had a mind much elevated by nature, nor amplified by learning. His thoughts are such as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance with life would easily supply. They had, however, then, perhaps, that grace of novelty which they are now often supposed to want by those who, having already found them in later books, do not know or inquire who produced them first. This treatment is unjust. Let not the original author lose by his imitators.
Praise, however, should be due before it is given. The author of Waller's life ascribes to him the first practice of what Erythraeus and some late criticks call alliteration, of using in the same verse many words beginning with the same letter. But this knack, whatever be its value, was so frequent among early writers, that Gascoigne, a writer of the sixteenth century, warns the young poet against affecting it; Shakespeare, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, is supposed to ridicule it; and, in another play, the sonnet of Holofernes fully displays it.
He borrows too many of his sentiments and illustrations from the old mythology, for which it is vain to plead the example of ancient poets; the deities which they introduced so frequently, were considered as realities, so far as to be received by the imagination, whatever sober reason might even then determine. But of these images time has tarnished the splendour. A fiction, not only detected but despised, can never afford a solid basis to any position, though sometimes it may furnish a transient allusion, or slight illustration. No modern monarch can be much exalted by hearing that, as Hercules had his club, he has his navy.
But of the praise of Waller, though much may be taken away, much will remain; for it cannot be denied that he added something to our elegance of diction, and something to our propriety of thought; and to him may be applied what Tasso said, with equal spirit and justice, of himself and Guarini, when, having perused the Pastor Fido, he cried out "if he had not read Aminta, he had never excelled it."
As Waller professed himself to have learned the art of versification from Fairfax, it has been thought proper to subjoin a specimen of his work, which, after Mr. Hoole's translation, will, perhaps, not be soon reprinted. By knowing the state in which Waller found our poetry, the reader may judge how much he improved it.
1.
Erminia's steed (this while) his mistresse boreThrough forrests thicke among the shadie treene,Her feeble hand the bridle reines forlore,Halfe in a swoune she was for feare, I weene;But her flit courser spared nere the more,To beare her through the desart woods unseeneOf her strong foes, that chas'd her through the plaine,And still pursu'd, but still pursu'd in vaine.
2.
Like as the wearie hounds at last retire,Windlesse, displeased, from the fruitlesse chace,When the slie beast Tapisht in bush and brire,No art nor paines can rowse out of his place:The christian knights so full of shame and ireReturned backe, with faint and wearie pace!Yet still the fearfull dame fled, swift as winde,Nor ever staid, nor ever lookt behinde.
3.
Through thicke and thinne, all night, all day, she drived,Withouten comfort, companie, or guide,Her plaints and teares with every thought revived,She heard and saw her greefes, but nought beside.But when the sunne his burning chariot divedIn Thetis wave, and wearie teame untide,On Jordans sandie bankes her course she staid,At last, there downe she light, and downe she laid.
4.
Her teares, her drinke; her food, her sorrowings,This was her diet that unhappie night:But sleepe (that sweet repose and quiet brings)To ease the greefes of discontented wight,Spred foorth his tender, soft, and nimble wings,In his dull armes foulding the virgin bright;And love, his mother, and the graces keptStrong watch and warde, while this faire ladie slept.
5.
The birds awakte her with their morning song,Their warbling musicke pearst her tender eare,The murmuring brookes and whistling windes amongThe ratling boughes, and leaves, their parts did beare;Her eies unclos'd beheld the groves alongOf swaines and shepherd groomes, that dwellings weare:And that sweet noise, birds, winds, and waters sent,Provokte againe the virgin to lament.
6.
Her plaints were interrupted with a soundThat seem'd from thickest bushes to proceed,Some iolly shepheard sung a lustie round,And to his voice had tun'd his oaten reed;Thither she went, an old man there she found,(At whose right hand his little flock did feed)Sat making baskets, his three sonnes among,That learn'd their father's art, and learn'd his song.
7.
Beholding one in shining armes appeare,The seelie man and his were sore dismaid;But sweet Erminia comforted their feare,Her ventall vp, her visage open laid.You happie folke, of heau'n beloued deare,Work on (quoth she) vpon your harmlesse traid,These dreadfull armes, I beare, no warfare bringTo your sweet toile, nor those sweet tunes you sing.
8.
But father, since this land, these townes and towres,Destroied are with sword, with fire and spoile,How may it be, unhurt, that you and yoursIn safetie thus, applie your harmlesse toile?My sonne (quoth he) this pore estate of oursIs euer safe from storme of warlike broile;This wildernesse doth vs in safetie keepe,No thundring drum, no trumpet breakes our sleepe.
9.
Haply iust heau'n's defence and shield of right,Doth loue the innocence of simple swaines,The thunderbolts on highest mountains light,And seld or neuer strike the lower plaines:So kings haue cause to feare Bellonaes might,Not they whose sweat and toile their dinner gaines,Nor ever greedie soldier was entisedBy pouertie, neglected and despised.
10.
O pouertie, chefe of the heau'nly brood,Dearer to me than wealth or kingly crowne!No wish for honour, thirst of other's good,Can moue my hart, contented with my owne:We quench our thirst with water of this flood,Nor fear we poison should therein be throwne:These little flocks of sheepe and tender goatesGiue milke for food, and wooll to make us coates.
11.
We little wish, we need but little wealth,From cold and hunger vs to cloath and feed;These are my sonnes, their care preserues from stealthTheir father's flocks, nor servants moe I need:Amid these groues I walke oft for my health,And to the fishes, birds, and beastes giue heed,How they are fed, in forrest, spring and lake,And their contentment for ensample take.
12.
Time was (for each one hath his doting time,These siluer locks were golden tresses than)That countrie life I hated as a crime,And from the forrests sweet contentment ran,To Memphis stately pallace would I clime,And there became the mightie Caliphes man,And though I but a simple gardner weare,Yet could I marke abuses, see and heare.
13.
Entised on with hope of future gaine,I suffred long what did my soule displease;But when my youth was spent, my hope was vaine,I felt my native strength at last decrease;I gan my losse of lustie yeeres complaine,And wisht I had enjoy'd the countries peace;I bod the court farewell, and with contentMy later age here have I quiet spent.
14.
While thus he spake, Erminia husht and stillHis wise discourses heard, with great attention,His speeches graue those idle fancies kill,Which in her troubled soule bred such dissention;After much thought reformed was her will,Within those woods to dwell was her intention,Till fortune should occasion new afford,To turne her home to her desired lord.
15.
She said, therefore, O shepherd fortunate!That troubles some didst whilom feele and proue,Yet liuest now in this contented state,Let my mishap thy thoughts to pitie moue,To entertaine me, as a willing mateIn shepherd's life, which I admire and loue;Within these pleasant groues, perchance, my hartOf her discomforts may vnload some part.
16.
If gold or wealth, of most esteemed deare,If iewells rich, thou diddest hold in prise,Such store thereof, such plentie have I seen,As to a greedie minde might well suffice:With that downe trickled many a siluer teare,Two christall streams fell from her watrie eies;Part of her sad misfortunes than she told,And wept, and with her wept that shepherd old.
17.
With speeches kinde, he gan the virgin deareTowards his cottage gently home to guide;His aged wife there made her homely cheare,Yet welcomde her, and plast her by her side.The princesse dond a poore pastoraes geare,A kerchiefe course vpon her head she tide;But yet her gestures and her lookes (I gesse)Were such as ill beseem'd a shepherdesse.
18.
Not those rude garments could obscure, and hideThe heau'nly beautie of her angel's face,Nor was her princely ofspring damnifide,Or ought disparag'de, by those labours bace;Her little flocks to pasture would she guide,And milke her goates, and in their folds them place,Both cheese and butter could she make, and frameHer selfe to please the shepherd and his dame.
[Footnote 82: Preface to his Fables. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 83: This speech has been retrieved, from a paper printed at that time, by the writers of the Parliamentary History. Dr.J.]
[Footnote 84: Parliamentary History, vol. xii. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 85: Life of Waller prefixed to an edition of his works, published in 1773, by Percival Stockdale. C.]
[Footnote 86: Sir John Davies, entitled, Nosce Teipsum. This oracle expounded in two elegies; 1. Of Humane Knowledge: 2. Of the Soule of Man and the Immortalitie thereof, 1599. R.]
[Footnote 87: It has been conjectured that our poet was either son or grandson of Charles, third son of sir John Stepney, the first baronet of that family. See Granger's History, vol. ii. p. 396. Edit. 8vo. 1775. Mr. Cole says, the poet's father was a grocer. Cole's manuscripts, in Brit. Mus. C.]
Of Mr. John Pomfret nothing is known but from a slight and confused account, prefixed to his poems by a nameless friend; who relates, that he was the son of the Rev. Mr. Pomfret, rector of Luton, in Bedfordshire; that he was bred at Cambridge[87], entered into orders, and was rector of Malden, in Bedfordshire, and might have risen in the church; but that, when he applied to Dr. Compton, bishop of London, for institution to a living of considerable value, to which he had been presented, he found a troublesome obstruction raised by a malicious interpretation of some passage in his Choice; from which it was inferred, that he considered happiness as more likely to be found in the company of a mistress than of a wife.
This reproach was easily obliterated; for it had happened to Pomfret, as to almost all other men who plan schemes of life; he had departed from his purpose, and was then married.
The malice of his enemies had, however, a very fatal consequence: the delay constrained his attendance in London, where he caught the smallpox, and died in 1703, in the thirty-sixth year of his age.
He published his poems in 1699; and has been always the favourite of that class of readers, who, without vanity or criticism, seek only their own amusement.
His Choice exhibits a system of life adapted to common notions, and equal to common expectations; such a state as affords plenty and tranquillity, without exclusion of intellectual pleasures. Perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's Choice.
In his other poems there is an easy volubility; the pleasure of smooth metre is afforded to the ear, and the mind is not oppressed with ponderous, or entangled with intricate, sentiment. He pleases many; and he who pleases many must have some species of merit.
[Footnote 87: He was of Queen's college there, and, by the University Register, took his bachelor's degree in 1684, and master's in 1698. His father was of Trinity.]
Of the earl of Dorset the character has been drawn so largely and so elegantly by Prior, to whom he was familiarly known, that nothing can be added by a casual hand; and, as its author is so generally read, it would be useless officiousness to transcribe it.
Charles Sackville was born January 24, 1637. Having been educated under a private tutor, he travelled into Italy, and returned a little before the restoration. He was chosen into the first parliament that was called, for East Grimstead, in Sussex, and soon became a favourite of Charles the second; but undertook no publick employment, being too eager of the riotous and licentious pleasures, which young men of high rank, who aspired to be thought wits, at that time imagined themselves entitled to indulge.
One of these frolicks has, by the industry of Wood, come down to posterity. Sackville, who was then lord Buckhurst, with sir Charles Sedley and sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock in Bow street, by Covent garden, and, going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the populace in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley stood forth naked and harangued the populace in such profane language, that the publick indignation was awakened: the crowd attempted to force the door, and, being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house.
For this misdemeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined five hundred pounds: what was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission from the king; but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for themselves, and exacted it to the last groat. In 1665, lord Buckhurst attended the duke of York, as a volunteer in the Dutch war; and was in the battle of June 3, when eighteen great Dutch ships were taken, fourteen others were destroyed, and Opdam, the admiral, who engaged the duke, was blown up beside him, with all his crew.
On the day before the battle, he is said to have composed the celebrated song, "To all you ladies now at land," with equal tranquillity of mind and promptitude of wit. Seldom any splendid story is wholly true. I have heard from the late earl of Orrery, who was likely to have good hereditary intelligence, that lord Buckhurst had been a week employed upon it, and only retouched or finished it on the memorable evening. But even this, whatever it may subtract from his facility, leaves him his courage.
He was soon after made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and sent on short embassies to France.
In 1674, the estate of his uncle, James Cranfield, earl of Middlesex, came to him by its owner's death, and the title was conferred on him the year after. In 1677, he became, by the death of his father, earl of Dorset, and inherited the estate of his family.
In 1684, having buried his first wife, of the family of Bagot, who left him no child, he married a daughter of the earl of Northampton, celebrated both for beauty and understanding.
He received some favourable notice from king James; but soon found it necessary to oppose the violence of his innovations, and with some other lords appeared in Westminster hall to countenance the bishops at their trial.
As enormities grew every day less supportable, he found it necessary to concur in the revolution. He was one of those lords who sat every day in council to preserve the publick peace, after the king's departure; and, what is not the most illustrious action of his life, was employed to conduct the princess Anne to Nottingham with a guard, such as might alarm the populace, as they passed, with false apprehensions of her danger. Whatever end may be designed, there is always something despicable in a trick.
He became, as may be easily supposed, a favourite of king William, who, the day after his accession, made him lord chamberlain of the household, and gave him afterwards the garter. He happened to be among those that were tossed with the king in an open boat sixteen hours, in very rough and cold weather, on the coast of Holland. His health afterwards declined; and, on Jan. 19, 1705-6, he died at Bath.
He was a man whose elegance and judgment were universally confessed, and whose bounty to the learned and witty was generally known. To the indulgent affection of the publick, lord Rochester bore ample testimony in this remark: "I know not how it is, but lord Buckhurst may do what he will, yet is never in the wrong."
If such a man attempted poetry, we cannot wonder that his works were praised. Dryden, whom, if Prior tells truth, he distinguished by his beneficence, and who lavished his blandishments on those who are not known to have so well deserved them, undertaking to produce authors of our own country superiour to those of antiquity, says, "I would instance your lordship in satire, and Shakespeare in tragedy." Would it be imagined that, of this rival to antiquity, all the satires were little personal invectives, and that his longest composition was a song of eleven stanzas?
The blame, however, of this exaggerated praise falls on the encomiast, not upon the author; whose performances are, what they pretend to be, the effusions of a man of wit; gay, vigorous, and airy. His verses to Howard show great fertility of mind; and his Dorinda has been imitated by Pope.
George Stepney, descended from the Stepneys of Pendegrast, in Pembrokeshire, was born at Westminster, in 1663. Of his father's condition or fortune I have no account[88]. Having received the first part of his education at Westminster, where he passed six years in the college, he went, at nineteen, to Cambridge[p], where he continued a friendship begun at school with Mr. Montague, afterwards earl of Halifax. They came to London together, and are said to have been invited into publick life by the duke of Dorset[89].
His qualifications recommended him to many foreign employments, so that his time seems to have been spent in negotiations. In 1692, he was sent envoy to the elector of Brandenburgh; in 1693, to the imperial court; in 1694, to the elector of Saxony; in 1696, to the electors of Mentz and Cologne, and the congress at Frankfort; in 1698, a second time to Brandenburgh; in 1699, to the king of Poland; in 1701, again to the emperour; and, in 1706, to the States General. In 1697, he was made one of the commissioners of trade. His life was busy and not long. He died in 1707, and is buried in Westminster Abbey, with this epitaph, which Jacob transcribed:
H. S. E.GEORGIUS STEPNEIUS, armiger,Vir,Ob ingenii acumen,Literarum scientiam,Morum suavitatem,Rerum usum,
Virorum amplissimorum consuetudinem,Linguae, styli, ac vitae elegantiam,Praeclara officia cum Britanniae tum Europae praestita,Sua aetate multum celebratus,Apud posteros semper celebrandus;Plurimas legationes obijtEa fide, diligentia, ac felicitate,Ut augustissimorum principumGulielmi et AnnaeSpem in illo repositamNumquam fefellerit,Haud raro superaverit.Post longum honorum cursumBrevi temporis spatio confectum,Cum naturae parum, famae satis vixerat,Animam ad altiora aspirantem placide efflavit.
On the left hand,
G. S.Ex equestri familia Stepneiorum,De Pendegrast, in comitatuPembrochiensi oriundus,Westmonasterii natus est, A. D. 1663,Electus in collegiumSancti Petri Westmonast. A. 1676,Sancti Trinitatis Cantab. 1682.Consiliariorum quibus CommerciiCura commissa est 1697.Chelseiae mortuus, et, comitanteMagna procerumFrequentia, hue elatus, 1707.
It is reported that the juvenile compositions of Stepney "made grey authors blush." I know not whether his poems will appear such wonders to the present age. One cannot always easily find the reason for which the world has sometimes conspired to squander praise. It is not very unlikely that he wrote very early as well as he ever wrote; and the performances of youth have many favourers, because the authors yet lay no claim to publick honours, and are, therefore, not considered as rivals by the distributors of fame.
He apparently professed himself a poet, and added his name to those of the other wits in the version of Juvenal; but he is a very licentious translator, and does not recompense his neglect of the author by beauties of his own. In his original poems, now and then, a happy line may, perhaps, be found, and, now and then, a short composition may give pleasure. But there is, in the whole, little either of the grace of wit, or the vigour of nature.
[Footnote 88: He was entered of Trinity college, and took his master's degree in 1689. H.]
[Footnote 89: Earl of Dorset.]
John Philips was born on the 30th of December, 1676, at Bampton, in Oxfordshire; of which place his father, Dr. Stephen Philips, archdeacon of Salop, was minister. The first part of his education was domestick; after which he was sent to Winchester, where, as we are told by Dr. Sewel, his biographer, he was soon distinguished by the superiority of his exercises; and, what is less easily to be credited, so much endeared himself to his schoolfellows, by his civility and good nature, that they, without murmur or ill will, saw him indulged by the master with particular immunities. It is related, that, when he was at school, he seldom mingled in play with the other boys, but retired to his chamber; where his sovereign pleasure was to sit, hour after hour, while his hair was combed by somebody, whose service he found means to procure.[90]
At school he became acquainted with the poets, ancient and modern, and fixed his attention particularly on Milton.
In 1694, he entered himself at Christ church; a college, at that time, in the highest reputation, by the transmission of Busby's scholars to the care first of Fell, and afterwards of Aldrich. Here he was distinguished as a genius eminent among the eminent, and for friendship particularly intimate with Mr. Smith, the author of Phaedra and Hippolytus. The profession which he intended to follow was that of physick; and he took much delight in natural history, of which botany was his favourite part.
His reputation was confined to his friends and to the university; till, about 1703, he extended it to a wider circle by the Splendid Shilling, which struck the publick attention with a mode of writing new and unexpected.
This performance raised him so high, that, when Europe resounded with the victory of Blenheim, he was, probably, with an occult opposition to Addison, employed to deliver the acclamation of the tories. It is said that he would willingly have declined the task, but that his friends urged it upon him. It appears that he wrote this poem at the house of Mr. St. John.
Blenheim was published in 1705. The next year produced his greatest work, the poem upon Cider, in two books; which was received with loud praises, and continued long to be read, as an imitation of Virgil's Georgicks, which needed not shun the presence of the original.
He then grew probably more confident of his own abilities, and began to meditate a poem on the Last Day; a subject on which no mind can hope to equal expectation.
This work he did not live to finish; his diseases, a slow consumption and an asthma, put a stop to his studies, and on Feb. 15, 1708, at the beginning of his thirty-third year, put an end to his life.
He was buried in the cathedral of Hereford; and sir Simon Harcourt,afterwards lord chancellor, gave him a monument in Westminster Abbey.The inscription at Westminster was written, as I have heard, by Dr.Atterbury, though commonly given to Dr. Freind.
His epitaph at Hereford:
Obijt 15 die Feb. Anno Dom. 1708., Aetat suae 32.
CujusOssa si requiras, hanc urnam inspice:Si ingenium nescias, ipsius opera consule;
Si tumulum desideras,Templum adi Westmonasteriense:Qualis quantusque vir fuerit,Dicat elegans illa et praeclara,Quae cenotaphium ibi decorat,Inscriptio.Quam interim erga cognatos pius et officiosus,Testetur hoc saxumA MARIA PHILIPS matre ipsius pientissimaDilecti filii memoriae non sine lacrymis dicatum.
His epitaph at Westminster:
Herefordiae conduntur ossa,Hoc in delubro statuitur imago,Britanniam omnem pervagatur fama,JOHANNIS PHILIPS:Qui viris bonis doctisque juxta charus,Immortale suum ingenium,Eruditione multiplici excultum,Miro animi candore,Eximia morum simplicitate,Honestavit.Litterarum amoeniorum sitim,Quam Wintoniae puer sentire coeperat,Inter Aedis Christi alumnos jugiter explevit.In illo musarum domicilioPraeclaris aemulorum studiis excitatus,Optimis scribendi magistris semper intentus,Carmina sermone patrio composuitA Graecis Latinisque fontibus feliciter deducta,Atticis Romanisque auribus omnino digna,Versuum quippe harmoniamRythmo didicerat,Antiquo illo, libero, multiformi,Ad res ipsas apto prorsus, et attemperato,Non numeris in eundem fere orbem redeuntibus,Non clausularum similiter cadentium sonoMetiri:Uni in hoc landis genere Miltono secundus,Primoque poene par.
Res seu tenues, seu grandes, sen mediocresOrnandas sumserat,Nusquam, non quod decuit,Et vidit, et assecutus est,Egregius, quocunque stylum verteret,Fandi author, et modorum artifex.Fas sit huic,Auso licet a tua metrorum lege discedere,O poesis Anglicanae pater, atque conditor, Chaucere,Alterum tibi latus claudere,Vatum certe cineres tuos undique stipantiumNon dedecebit chorum.SIMON HAHCOUKT, miles,Viri bene de se, de litteris meriti,Quoad viveret fautor,Post obitum pie memor,Hoc illi saxum poni voluit.J. PHILIPS, STEPHANI, S. T. P. ArchidiaconiSalop. filius, natus est BamptoniaeIn agro Oxon. Dec. 30, 1676.Obijt Herefordiae, Feb. 15, 1708.
Philips has been always praised, without contradiction, as a man modest, blameless, and pious; who bore narrowness of fortune without discontent, and tedious and painful maladies without impatience; beloved by those that knew him, but not ambitious to be known. He was probably not formed for a wide circle. His conversation is commended for its innocent gaiety, which seems to have flowed only among his intimates; for I have been told, that he was in company silent and barren, and employed only upon the pleasures of his pipe. His addiction to tobacco is mentioned by one of his biographers, who remarks, that in all his writings, except Blenheim, he has found an opportunity of celebrating the fragrant fume. In common life he was probably one of those who please by not offending, and whose person was loved because his writings were admired. He died honoured and lamented, before any part of his reputation had withered, and before his patron St. John had disgraced him. His works are few. The Splendid Shilling has the uncommon merit of an original design, unless it may be thought precluded by the ancient Centos. To degrade the sounding words and stately construction of Milton, by an application to the lowest and most trivial things, gratifies the mind with a momentary triumph over that grandeur, which hitherto held its captives in admiration; the words and things are presented with a new appearance, and novelty is always grateful where it gives no pain.
But the merit of such performances begins and ends with the first author. He that should again adapt Milton's phrase to the gross incidents of common life, and even adapt it with more art, which would not be difficult, must yet expect but a small part of the praise which Philips has obtained; he can only hope to be considered as the repeater of a jest.
"The parody on Milton," says Gildon, "is the only tolerable production of its author." This is a censure too dogmatical and violent. The poem of Blenheim was never denied to be tolerable, even by those who do not allow its supreme excellence. It is, indeed, the poem of a scholar, "all inexpert of war;" of a man who writes books from books, and studies the world in a college. He seems to have formed his ideas of the field of Blenheim from the battles of the heroick ages, or the tales of chivalry, with very little comprehension of the qualities necessary to the composition of a modern hero, which Addison has displayed with so much propriety. He makes Marlborough behold at a distance the slaughter made by Tallard, then haste to encounter and restrain him, and mow his way through ranks made headless by his sword.
He imitates Milton's numbers indeed, but imitates them very injudiciously. Deformity is easily copied; and whatever there is in Milton which the reader wishes away, all that is obsolete, peculiar, or licentious, is accumulated with great care by Philips. Milton's verse was harmonious, in proportion to the general state of our metre in Milton's age; and, if he had written after the improvements made by Dryden, it is reasonable to believe that he would have admitted a more pleasing modulation of numbers into his work; but Philips sits down with a resolution to make no more musick than he found; to want all that his master wanted, though he is very far from having what his master had. Those asperities, therefore, that are venerable in the Paradise Lost, are contemptible in the Blenheim.
There is a Latin ode written to his patron St. John, in return for a present of wine and tobacco, which cannot be passed without notice. It is gay and elegant, and exhibits several artful accommodations of classick expressions to new purposes. It seems better turned than the odes of Hannes[91].
To the poem on Cider, written in imitation of the Georgicks, may be given this peculiar praise, that it is grounded in truth; that the precepts which it contains are exact and just; and that it is, therefore, at once, a book of entertainment and of science. This I was told by Miller, the great gardener and botanist, whose expression was, that "there were many books written on the same subject in prose, which do not contain so much truth as that poem."
In the disposition of his matter, so as to intersperse precepts relating to the culture of trees with sentiments more generally alluring, and in easy and graceful transitions from one subject to another, he has very diligently imitated his master; but he, unhappily, pleased himself with blank verse, and supposed that the numbers of Milton, which impress the mind with veneration, combined as they are with subjects of inconceivable grandeur, could be sustained by images which, at most, can rise only to elegance.
Contending angels may shake the regions of heaven in blank verse; but the flow of equal measures, and the embellishment of rhyme, must recommend to our attention the art of engrafting, and decide the merit of the redstreak and pearmain.
What study could confer, Philips had obtained; but natural deficience cannot be supplied. He seems not born to greatness and elevation. He is never lofty, nor does he often surprise with unexpected excellence: but, perhaps, to his last poem may be applied what Tully said of the work of Lucretius, that "it is written with much art, though with few blazes of genius."
* * * * *
The following fragment, written by Edmund Smith, upon the works ofPhilips, has been transcribed from the Bodleian manuscripts.
"A Prefatory Discourse to the Poem on Mr. Philips, with a character of his writings.
"It is altogether as equitable some account should be given of those who have distinguished themselves by their writings, as of those who are renowned for great actions. It is but reasonable they, who contribute so much to the immortality of others, should have some share in it themselves; and since their genius only is discovered by their works, it is just that their virtues should be recorded by their friends. For no modest men (as the person I write of was in perfection) will write their own panegyricks; and it is very hard that they should go without reputation, only because they the more deserve it. The end of writing Lives is for the imitation of the readers. It will be in the power of very few to imitate the duke of Marlborough: we must be content with admiring his great qualities and actions, without hopes of following them. The private and social virtues are more easily transcribed. The life of Cowley is more instructive, as well as more fine, than any we have in our language. And it is to be wished, since Mr. Philips had so many of the good qualities of that poet, that I had some of the abilities of his historian. The Grecian philosophers have had their lives written, their morals commended, and their sayings recorded. Mr. Philips had all the virtues to which most of them only pretended, and all their integrity, without any of their affectation.
"The French are very just to eminent men in this point; not a learned man nor a poet can die, but all Europe must be acquainted with his accomplishments. They give praise and expect it in their turns: they commend their Patrus and Molières, as well as their Condès and Turennes; their Pellisons and Racines have their elogies, as well as the prince whom they celebrate; and their poems, their mercuries, and orations, nay, their very gazettes are filled with the praises of the learned.
"I am satisfied, had they a Philips among them, and known how to value him; had they one of his learning, his temper, but above all of that particular turn of humour, that altogether new genius, he had been an example to their poets, and a subject of their panegyricks, and, perhaps, set in competition with the ancients, to whom only he ought to submit.
"I shall, therefore, endeavour to do justice to his memory, since nobody else undertakes it. And, indeed, I can assign no cause why so many of his acquaintance, that are as willing and more able than myself to give an account of him, should forbear to celebrate the memory of one so dear to them, but only that they look upon it as a work entirely belonging to me.
"I shall content myself with giving only a character of the person and his writings, without meddling with the transactions of his life, which was altogether private: I shall only make this known observation of his family, that there was scarce so many extraordinary men in any one. I have been acquainted with five of his brothers, of which three are still living, all men of fine parts, yet all of a very unlike temper and genius. So that their fruitful mother, like the mother of the gods, seems to have produced a numerous offspring, all of different, though uncommon faculties. Of the living, neither their modesty, nor the humour of the present age, permits me to speak; of the dead, I may say something.
"One of them had made the greatest progress in the study of the law of nature and nations, of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, and even improved, the notions of Grotius, and the more refined ones of Puffendorf. He could refute Hobbes with as much solidity as some of greater name, and expose him with as much wit as Echard. That noble study, which requires the greatest reach of reason and nicety of distinction, was not at all difficult to him. 'Twas a national loss to be deprived of one who understood a science so necessary, and yet so unknown in England. I shall add only, he had the same honesty and sincerity as the person I write of, but more heat: the former was more inclined to argue, the latter to divert: one employed his reason more; the other his imagination: the former had been well qualified for those posts, which the modesty of the latter made him refuse. His other dead brother would have been an ornament to the college of which he was a member. He had a genius either for poetry or oratory; and, though very young, composed several very agreeable pieces. In all probability he would have wrote as finely, as his brother did nobly. He might have been the Waller, as the other was the Milton of his time. The one might celebrate Marlborough, the other his beautiful offspring. This had not been so fit to describe the actions of heroes, as the virtues of private men. In a word, he had been fitter for my place; and, while his brother was writing upon the greatest men that any age ever produced, in a style equal to them, he might have served as a panegyrist on him.
"This is all I think necessary to say of his family. I shall proceed to himself and his writings; which I shall first treat of, because I know they are censured by some out of envy, and more out of ignorance.
"The Splendid Shilling, which is far the least considerable, has the more general reputation, and, perhaps, hinders the character of the rest. The style agreed so well with the burlesque, that the ignorant thought it could become nothing else. Every body is pleased with that work. But to judge rightly of the other, requires a perfect mastery of poetry and criticism, a just contempt of the little turns and witticisms now in vogue, and, above all, a perfect understanding of poetical diction and description.
"All that have any taste of poetry will agree, that the great burlesque is much to be preferred to the low. It is much easier to make a great thing appear little, than a little one great: Cotton and others of a very low genius have done the former; but Philips, Garth, and Boileau, only the latter.
"A picture in miniature is every painter's talent; but a piece for a cupola, where all the figures are enlarged, yet proportioned to the eye, requires a master's hand.
"It must still be more acceptable than the low burlesque, because the images of the latter are mean and filthy, and the language itself entirely unknown to all men of good breeding. The style of Billingsgate would not make a very agreeable figure at St. James's. A gentleman would take but little pleasure in language, which he would think it hard to be accosted in, or in reading words which he could not pronounce without blushing. The lofty burlesque is the more to be admired, because, to write it, the author must be master of two of the most different talents in nature. A talent to find out and expose what is ridiculous, is very different from that which is to raise and elevate. We must read Virgil and Milton for the one, and Horace and Hudibras for the other. We know that the authors of excellent comedies have often failed in the grave style, and the tragedian as often in comedy. Admiration and laughter are of such opposite natures, that they are seldom created by the same person. The man of mirth is always observing the follies and weaknesses, the serious writer the virtues or crimes, of mankind; one is pleased with contemplating a beau, the other a hero: even from the same object they would draw different ideas: Achilles would appear in very different lights to Thersites and Alexander. The one would admire the courage and greatness of his soul; the other would ridicule the vanity and rashness of his temper. As the satirist says to Hannibal:
"I, curre per Alpes,Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio fias.
"The contrariety of style to the subject pleases the more strongly, because it is more surprising; the expectation of the reader is pleasantly deceived, who expects an humble style from the subject, or a great subject from the style. It pleases the more universally, because it is agreeable to the taste both of the grave and the merry; but more particularly so to those who have a relish of the best writers, and the noblest sort of poetry. I shall produce only one passage out of this poet, which is the misfortune of his galligaskins:
"My galligaskins, which have long withstoodThe winter's fury and encroaching frosts,By time subdued (what will not time subdue!)
"This is admirably pathetical, and shows very well the vicissitudes of sublunary things. The rest goes on to a prodigious height; and a man in Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetick and terrible complaint. Is it not surprising that the subject should be so mean, and the verse so pompous; that the least things in his poetry, as in a microscope, should grow great and formidable to the eye? especially considering that, not understanding French, he had no model for his style? that he should have no writer to imitate, and himself be inimitable? that he should do all this before he was twenty? at an age which is usually pleased with a glare of false thoughts, little turns, and unnatural fustian? at an age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost said Virgil, were inconsiderable? So soon was his imagination at its full strength, his judgment ripe, and his humour complete.
"This poem was written for his own diversion, without any design of publication. It was communicated but to me; but soon spread, and fell into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely mangled, by Ben. Bragge; and impudently said to be corrected by the author. This grievance is now grown more epidemical; and no man now has a right to his own thoughts, or a title to his own writings. Xenophon answered the Persian, who demanded his arms: 'We have nothing now left but our arms and our valour: if we surrender the one, how shall we make use of the other?' Poets have nothing but their wits and their writings; and if they are plundered of the latter, I don't see what good the former can do them. To pirate, and publickly own it, to prefix their names to the works they steal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never yet heard of but in England. It will sound oddly to posterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wise, most learned, and most generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick should be better secured than that of a scholar! that the poorest manual operations should be more valued than the noblest products of the brain! that it should be felony to rob a cobbler of a pair of shoes, and no crime to deprive the best author of his whole subsistence! that nothing should make a man a sure title to his own writings but the stupidity of them! that the works of Dryden should meet with less encouragement than those of his own Flecknoe, or Blackmore! that Tillotson and St. George, Tom Thumb and Temple, should be set on an equal foot! This is the reason why this very paper has been so long delayed; and, while the most impudent and scandalous libels are publickly vended by the pirates, this innocent work is forced to steal abroad as if it were a libel.
"Our present writers are by these wretches reduced to the same condition Virgil was, when the centurion seized on his estate. But I don't doubt but I can fix upon the Maecenas of the present age, that will retrieve them from it. But, whatever effect this piracy may have upon us, it contributed very much to the advantage of Mr. Philips: it helped him to a reputation which he neither desired nor expected, and to the honour of being put upon a work of which he did not think himself capable; but the event showed his modesty. And it was reasonable to hope, that he, who could raise mean subjects so high, should still be more elevated on greater themes; that he that could draw such noble ideas from a shilling, could not fail upon such a subject as the duke of Marlborough, "which is capable of heightening even the most low and trifling genius." And, indeed, most of the great works which have been produced in the world have been owing less to the poet than the patron. Men of the greatest genius are sometimes lazy, and want a spur; often modest, and dare not venture in publick: they certainly know their faults in the worst things; and even their best things they are not fond of, because the idea of what they ought to be is far above what they are. This induced me to believe that Virgil desired his works might be burnt, had not the same Augustus that desired him to write them, preserved them from destruction. A scribbling beau may imagine a poetmaybe induced to write, by the very pleasure he finds in writing; but that is seldom, when people are necessitated to it. I have known men row, and use very hard labour, for diversion, which, if they had been tied to, they would have thought themselves very unhappy.
"But to return to Blenheim, that work so much admired by some, and censured by others. I have often wished he had wrote it in Latin, that he might be out of the reach of the empty criticks, who could have as little understood his meaning in that language as they do his beauties in his own.
"False criticks have been the plague of all ages; Milton himself, in a very polite court, has been compared to the rumbling of a wheelbarrow: he had been on the wrong side, and, therefore, could not be a good poet. And this, perhaps, may be Mr. Philips's case.
"But I take, generally, the ignorance of his readers to be the occasion of their dislike. People that have formed their taste upon the French writers can have no relish for Philips: they admire points and turns, and, consequently, have no judgment of what is great and majestick; he must look little in their eyes, when he soars so high as to be almost out of their view. I cannot, therefore, allow any admirer of the French to be a judge of Blenheim, nor any who takes Bouhours for a complete critick. He generally judges of the ancients by the moderns, and not the moderns by the ancients; he takes those passages of their own authors to be really sublime which come the nearest to it; he often calls that a noble and a great thought which is only a pretty and a fine one; and has more instances of the sublime out of Ovid de Tristibus, than he has out of all Virgil.
"I shall allow, therefore, only those to be judges of Philips, who make the ancients, and particularly Virgil, their standard.
"But, before I enter on this subject, I shall consider what is particular in the style of Philips, and examine what ought to be the style of heroick poetry; and next inquire how far he is come up to that style.
"His style is particular, because he lays aside rhyme, and writes in blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently postpones the adjective to the substantive, and the substantive to the verb; and leaves out little particles,a, andthe;her, andhis; and uses frequent appositions. Now let us examine, whether these alterations of style be conformable to the true sublime."
[Footnote 90: Isaac Vossius relates, that he also delighted in having his hair combed when he could have it done by barbers or other persons skilled in the rules of prosody. Of the passage that contains this ridiculous fancy, the following is a translation: "Many people take delight in the rubbing of their limbs, and the combing of their hair; but these exercises would delight much more, if the servants at the baths, and of the barbers, were so skilful in this art, that they could express any measures with their fingers. I remember that more than once I have fallen into the hands of men of this sort, who could imitate any measure of songs in combing the hair, so as sometimes to express very intelligibly iambics, trochees, dactyls, &c. from whence there arose to me no small delight." See his treatise de Poematum Cantu et Viribus Rythmi. Oxon. 1673. p. 62. II.]
[Footnote 91: This ode I am willing to mention, because there seems to be an errour in all the printed copies, which is, I find, retained in the last. They all read;
Quam Gratiarum cura decentiumO! O! labellis cui Venus insidet.
The author probably wrote,
Quam Gratiarum cura decentiumOrnat; labellis cui Venus insidet. Dr. J.
Hannes was professor of chemistry at Oxford, and wrote one or two poems in the Musae Anglicanae. J.B.]