Part 8

And now, my muse, a nobler flight prepare, And sing so loud, that heaven and earth may hear. Behold from Italy an awful ray Of heavenly light illuminates the day; Northward she bends, majestically bright, And here she fixes her imperial light. Be bold, be bold, my muse, nor fear to raise Thy voice to her who was thy earliest praise[a]. What though the sullen fates refuse to shine, Or frown severe on thy audacious line; Keep thy bright theme within thy steady sight, The clouds shall fly before thy dazzling light, And everlasting day direct thy lofty flight. Thou, who hast never yet put on disguise, To flatter faction, or descend to vice, Let no vain fear thy generous ardour tame, But stand erect, and sound as loud as fame. As when our eye some prospect would pursue, Descending from a hill looks round to view, Passes o'er lawns and meadows, till it gains Some favourite spot, and fixing there remains; With equal ardour my transported muse Flies other objects, this bright theme to chuse. Queen of our hearts, and charmer of our sight! A monarch's pride, his glory and delight! Princess adored and loved! if verse can give A deathless name, thine shall for ever live; Invoked where'er the British lion roars, Extended as the seas that guard the British shores. The wise immortals, in their seats above, To crown their labours still appointed love; Phoebus enjoyed the goddess of the sea, Alcides had Omphale, James has thee. O happy James! content thy mighty mind, Grudge not the world, for still thy queen is kind; To be but at whose feet more glory brings, Than 'tis to tread on sceptres and on kings. Secure of empire in that beauteous breast, Who would not give their crowns to be so blest? Was Helen half so fair, so formed for joy, Well chose the Trojan, and well burned was Troy. But ah! what strange vicissitudes of fate, What chance attends on every worldly state! As when the skies were sacked, the conquered gods, Compelled from heaven, forsook their blessed abodes; Wandering in woods, they hid from den to den, And sought their safety in the shapes of men; As when the winds with kindling flames conspire, The blaze increases as they fan the fire; From roof to roof the burning torrent pours, Nor spares the palace nor the loftiest towers; Or as the stately pine, erecting high Her lofty branches shooting to the sky, If riven by the thunderbolt of Jove, Down falls at once the pride of all the grove; Level with lowest shrubs lies the tall head, That, reared aloft, as to the clouds was spread, So-- But cease, my muse, thy colours are too faint; Shade with a veil those griefs thou can'st not paint. That sun is set!--

_Progress of Beauty._

The beauty, which inspired the romantic and unchanging admiration of Granville, may be allowed to justify some of the flights of Dryden's panegyric. I fear enough will still remain to justify the stricture of Johnson, who observes, that Dryden's dedication is an "attempt to mingle earth and heaven, by praising human excellence in the language of religion."

At the date of this address, the Duchess of York was only in her sixteenth year.

Footnote: a. He had written verses to the Earl of Peterborough, on the Duke of York's marriage with the Princess of Modena, before he was twelve years old.

TO

MR DRYDEN,

ON HIS

POEM OF PARADISE.

Forgive me, awful poet, if a muse, Whom artless nature did for plainness chuse, In loose attire presents her humble thought, Of this best poem that you ever wrought. This fairest labour of your teeming brain I would embrace, but not with flatt'ry stain. Something I would to your vast virtue raise, But scorn to daub it with a fulsome praise; That would but blot the work I would commend, And shew a court-admirer, not a friend. To the dead bard your fame a little owes, For Milton did the wealthy mine disclose, And rudely cast what you could well dispose: He roughly drew, on an old fashioned ground, A chaos; for no perfect world was found, Till through the heap your mighty genius shined: He was the golden ore, which you refined. He first beheld the beauteous rustic maid, And to a place of strength the prize conveyed: You took her thence; to court this virgin brought, Drest her with gems, new weaved her hard-spun thought, And softest language sweetest manners taught; Till from a comet she a star doth rise, Not to affright, but please, our wondering eyes. Betwixt you both is trained a nobler piece, Than e'er was drawn in Italy or Greece. Thou from his source of thoughts even souls dost bring, As smiling gods from sullen Saturn spring. When night's dull mask the face of heaven does wear, 'Tis doubtful light, but here and there a star, Which serves the dreadful shadows to display, That vanish at the rising of the day; But then bright robes the meadows all adorn, And the world looks as it were newly born. So, when your sense his mystic reason cleared, The melancholy scene all gay appeared; Now light leapt up, and a new glory smiled, And all throughout was mighty, all was mild. Before this palace, which thy wit did build, Which various fancy did so gaudy gild, And judgment has with solid riches filled, My humbler muse begs she may sentry stand, Amongst the rest that guard this Eden land. But there's no need, for ev'n thy foes conspire Thy praise, and, hating thee, thy work admire. On then, O mightiest of the inspired men! Monarch of verse! new themes employ thy pen. The troubles of majestic Charles set down; Not David vanquished more to reach a crown. Praise him as Cowley did that Hebrew king: Thy theme's as great; do thou as greatly sing. Then thou may'st boldly to his favour rise, Look down, and the base serpent's hiss despise; From thund'ring envy safe in laurel sit, While clam'rous critics their vile heads submit, Condemned for treason at the bar of wit.

NAT. LEE.

THE

AUTHOR'S APOLOGY

FOR

HEROIC POETRY, AND POETIC LICENCE.

To satisfy the curiosity of those, who will give themselves the trouble of reading the ensuing poem, I think myself obliged to render them a reason why I publish an opera which was never acted. In the first place, I shall not be ashamed to own, that my chiefest motive was, the ambition which I acknowledged in the Epistle. I was desirous to lay at the feet of so beautiful and excellent a princess, a work, which, I confess, was unworthy her, but which, I hope, she will have the goodness to forgive. I was also induced to it in my own defence; many hundred copies of it being dispersed abroad without my knowledge, or consent: so that every one gathering new faults, it became at length a libel against me; and I saw, with some disdain, more nonsense than either I, or as bad a poet, could have crammed into it, at a month's warning; in which time it was wholly written, and not since revised. After this, I cannot, without injury to the deceased author of "Paradise Lost," but acknowledge, that this poem has received its entire foundation, part of the design, and many of the ornaments, from him. What I have borrowed will be so easily discerned from my mean productions, that I shall not need to point the reader to the places: And truly I should be sorry, for my own sake, that any one should take the pains to compare them together; the original being undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems, which either this age or nation has produced. And though I could not refuse the

## partiality of my friend, who is pleased to commend me in his verses, I

hope they will rather be esteemed the effect of his love to me, than of his deliberate and sober judgment. His genius is able to make beautiful what he pleases: Yet, as he has been too favourable to me, I doubt not but he will hear of his kindness from many of our contemporaries for we are fallen into an age of illiterate, censorious, and detracting people, who, thus qualified, set up for critics.

In the first place, I must take leave to tell them, that they wholly mistake the nature of criticism, who think its business is principally to find fault. Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant a standard of judging well; the chiefest part of which is, to observe those excellencies which should delight a reasonable reader. If the design, the conduct, the thoughts, and the expressions of a poem, be generally such as proceed from a true genius of poetry, the critic ought to pass his judgement in favour of the author. It is malicious and unmanly to snarl at the little lapses of a pen, from which Virgil himself stands not exempted. Horace acknowledges, that honest Homer nods sometimes: He is not equally awake in every line; but he leaves it also as a standing measure for our judgments,

--Non, _ubi plura nitent in carmine, paucis_ Offendi _maculis, quas aut incuria fudit, Aut humana parùm cavit natura._--

And Longinus, who was undoubtedly, after Aristotle the greatest critic amongst the Greeks, in his twenty-seventh chapter, [Greek: PERI HUPSOUS], has judiciously preferred the sublime genius that sometimes errs, to the middling or indifferent one, which makes few faults, but seldom or never rises to any excellence. He compares the first to a man of large possessions, who has not leisure to consider of every slight expence, will not debase himself to the management of every trifle: Particular sums are not laid out, or spared, to the greatest advantage in his economy; but are sometimes suffered to run to waste, while he is only careful of the main. On the other side, he likens the mediocrity of wit, to one of a mean fortune, who manages his store with extreme frugality, or rather parsimony; but who, with fear of running into profuseness, never arrives to the magnificence of living. This kind of genius writes indeed correctly. A wary man he is in grammar, very nice as to solecism or barbarism, judges to a hair of little decencies, knows better than any man what is not to be written, and never hazards himself so far as to fall, but plods on deliberately, and, as a grave man ought, is sure to put his staff before him. In short, he sets his heart upon it, and with wonderful care makes his business sure; that is, in plain English, neither to be blamed nor praised.--I could, says my author, find out some blemishes in Homer; and am perhaps as naturally inclined to be disgusted at a fault as another man; but, after all, to speak impartially, his failings are such, as are only marks of human frailty: they are little mistakes, or rather negligences, which have escaped his pen in the fervour of his writing; the sublimity of his spirit carries it with me against his carelessness; and though Apollonius his "Argonauts," and Theocritus his "Idyllia," are more free from errors, there is not any man of so false a judgment, who would chuse rather to have been Apollonius or Theocritus, than Homer.

It is worth our consideration a little, to examine how much these hypercritics in English poetry differ from the opinion of the Greek and Latin judges of antiquity; from the Italians and French, who have succeeded them; and, indeed, from the general taste and approbation of all ages. Heroic poetry, which they condemn, has ever been esteemed, and ever will be, the greatest work of human nature: In that rank has Aristotle placed it; and Longinus is so full of the like expressions, that he abundantly confirms the other's testimony. Horace as plainly delivers his opinion, and particularly praises Homer in these verses:

_Trojani Belli scriptorem, maxime Lolli, Dum tu declamas Romæ, Præneste relegi: Qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit._

And in another place, modestly excluding himself from the number of poets, because he only writ odes and satires, he tells you a poet is such an one,

--_Cui mens divinior, atque os Magna soniturum._

Quotations are superfluous in an established truth; otherwise I could reckon up, amongst the moderns, all the Italian commentators on Aristotle's book of poetry; and, amongst the French, the greatest of this age, Boileau and Rapin; the latter of which is alone sufficient, were all other critics lost, to teach anew the rules of writing. Any man, who will seriously consider the nature of an epic poem, how it agrees with that of poetry in general, which is to instruct and to delight, what actions it describes, and what persons they are chiefly whom it informs, will find it a work which indeed is full of difficulty in the attempt, but admirable when it is well performed. I write not this with the least intention to undervalue the other parts of poetry: for Comedy is both excellently instructive, and extremely pleasant; satire lashes vice into reformation, and humour represents folly so as to render it ridiculous. Many of our present writers are eminent in both these kinds; and, particularly, the author of the "Plain Dealer," whom I am proud to call my friend, has obliged all honest and virtuous men, by one of the most bold, most general, and most useful satires, which has ever been presented on the English theatre. I do not dispute the preference of Tragedy; let every man enjoy his taste: but it is unjust, that they, who have not the least notion of heroic writing, should therefore condemn the pleasure which others receive from it, because they cannot comprehend it. Let them please their appetites in eating what they like; but let them not force their dish on all the table. They, who would combat general authority with particular opinion, must first establish themselves a reputation of understanding better than other men. Are all the flights of heroic poetry to be concluded bombast, unnatural, and mere madness, because they are not affected with their excellencies? It is just as reasonable as to conclude there is no day, because a blind man cannot distinguish of light and colours. Ought they not rather, in modesty, to doubt of their own judgments, when they think this or that expression in Homer, Virgil, Tasso, or Milton's "Paradise," to be too far strained, than positively to conclude, that it is all fustian, and mere nonsense? It is true, there are limits to be set betwixt the boldness and rashness of a poet; but he must understand those limits, who pretends to judge as well as he who undertakes to write: and he who has no liking to the whole, ought, in reason, to be excluded from censuring of the parts. He must be a lawyer before he mounts the tribunal; and the judicature of one court, too, does not qualify a man to preside in another. He may be an excellent pleader in the Chancery, who is not fit to rule the Common Pleas. But I will presume for once to tell them, that the boldest strokes of poetry, when they are managed artfully, are those which most delight the reader.

Virgil and Horace, the severest writers of the severest age, have made frequent use of the hardest metaphors, and of the strongest hyperboles; and in this case the best authority is the best argument; for generally to have pleased, and through all ages, must bear the force of universal tradition. And if you would appeal from thence to right reason, you will gain no more by it in effect, than, first, to set up your reason against those authors; and, secondly, against all those who have admired them. You must prove, why that ought not to have pleased, which has pleased the most learned, and the most judicious; and, to be thought knowing, you must first put the fool upon all mankind. If you can enter more deeply, than they have done, into the causes and resorts of that which moves pleasure in a reader, the field is open, you may be heard: But those springs of human nature are not so easily discovered by every superficial judge: It requires philosophy, as well as poetry, to sound the depth of all the passions; what they are in themselves, and how they are to be provoked: And in this science the best poets have excelled. Aristotle raised the fabric of his poetry from observation of those things, in which Euripides, Sophocles, and Æschylus pleased: He considered how they raised the passions, and thence has drawn rules for our imitation. From hence have sprung the tropes and figures, for which they wanted a name, who first practised them, and succeeded in them. Thus I grant you, that the knowledge of nature was the original rule; and that all poets ought to study her, as well as Aristotle and Horace, her interpreters. But then this also undeniably follows, that those things, which delight all ages, must have been an imitation of nature; which is all I contend. Therefore is rhetoric made an art; therefore the names of so many tropes and figures were invented; because it was observed they had such and such effect upon the audience. Therefore catachreses and hyperboles have found their place amongst them; not that they were to be avoided, but to be used judiciously, and placed in poetry, as heightenings and shadows are in painting, to make the figure bolder, and cause it to stand off to sight.

_Nec retia cervis Ulla dolum meditantur;_

says Virgil in his Eclogues: and speaking of Leander, in his Georgics,

_Nocte natat cæca serus freta, quem super ingens Porta tonat cæli, et scopulis illisa reclamant Æquora:_

In both of these, you see, he fears not to give voice and thought to things inanimate.

Will you arraign your master, Horace, for his hardness of expression, when he describes the death of Cleopatra, and says she did--_asperos tractare serpentes, ut atrum corpore combiberet cenenum,_--because the body, in that action, performs what is proper to the mouth?

As for hyperboles, I will neither quote Lucan, nor Statius, men of an unbounded imagination, but who often wanted the poize of judgment. The divine Virgil was not liable to that exception; and yet he describes Polyphemus thus:

_--Graditurque per æquor Jam medium; necdum fluctus latera ardua tinxit._

In imitation of this place, our admirable Cowley thus paints Goliah:

The valley, now, this monster seemed to fill; And we, methought, looked up to him from our hill:

where the two words, _seemed_ and _methought_, have mollified the figure; and yet if they had not been there, the fright of the Israelites might have excused their belief of the giant's stature[1].

In the eighth of the Æneids, Virgil paints the swiftness of Camilla thus:

_Ilia vel intactæ segetis per summa volaret Gramina, nec teneras cursu læsisset aristas; Vel mare per medium, fluctu suspensa tumenti, Ferret iter, celeres nec tingeret æquore plantas._

You are not obliged, as in history, to a literal belief of what the poet says; but you are pleased with the image, without being cozened by the fiction.

Yet even in history, Longinus quotes Herodotus on this occasion of hyperboles. The Lacedemonians, says he, at the straits of Thermopylæ, defended themselves to the last extremity; and when their arms failed them, fought it out with their nails and teeth; till at length, (the Persians shooting continually upon them) they lay buried under the arrows of their enemies. It is not reasonable, (continues the critic) to believe, that men could defend themselves with their nails and teeth from an armed multitude; nor that they lay buried under a pile of darts and arrows; and yet there wants not probability for the figure: because the hyperbole seems not to have been made for the sake of the description; but rather to have been produced from the occasion.

It is true, the boldness of the figures is to be hidden sometimes by the address of the poet; that they may work their effect upon the mind, without discovering the art which caused it. And therefore they are principally to be used in passion; when we speak more warmly, and with more precipitation than at other times: For then, _Si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi;_ the poet must put on the passion he endeavours to represent: A man in such an occasion is not cool enough, either to reason rightly, or to talk calmly. Aggravations are then in their proper places; interrogations, exclamations, hyperbata, or a disordered connection of discourse, are graceful there, because they are natural. The sum of all depends on what before I hinted, that this boldness of expression is not to be blamed, if it be managed by the coolness and discretion which is necessary to a poet.

Yet before I leave this subject, I cannot but take notice how disingenuous our adversaries appear: All that is dull, insipid, languishing, and without sinews, in a poem, they call an imitation of nature: They only offend our most equitable judges, who think beyond them; and lively images and elocution are never to be forgiven.

What fustian, as they call it, have I heard these gentlemen find out in Mr Cowley's Odes! I acknowledge myself unworthy to defend so excellent an author, neither have I room to do it here; only in general I will say, that nothing can appear more beautiful to me, than the strength of those images which they condemn.

Imaging is, in itself, the very height and life of poetry. It is, as Longinus describes it, a discourse, which, by a kind of enthusiasm, or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us, that we behold those things which the poet paints, so as to be pleased with them, and to admire them.

If poetry be imitation, that part of it must needs be best, which describes most lively our actions and passions; our virtues and our vices; our follies and our humours: For neither is comedy without its part of imaging; and they who do it best are certainly the most excellent in their kind. This is too plainly proved to be denied: But how are poetical fictions, how are hippocentaurs and chimeras, or how are angels and immaterial substances to be imaged; which, some of them, are things quite out of nature; others, such whereof we can have no notion? This is the last refuge of our adversaries; and more than any of them have yet had the wit to object against us. The answer is easy to the first part of it: The fiction of some beings which are not in nature, (second notions, as the logicians call them) has been founded on the conjunction of two natures, which have a real separate being. So hippocentaurs were imaged, by joining the natures of a man and horse together; as Lucretius tells us, who has used this word of _image_ oftener than any of the poets:

_Nam certè ex vivo centauri non fit imago, Nulla fuit quoniam talis natura animai: Verùm ubi equi atque hominis, casu, convenit imago, Hærescit facilè extemplò,_ &c.