Part 6 (1/2)
_Pope_.--It would have been n.o.bler 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 pa.s.sions, 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 be not 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 friends.h.i.+p.
_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 with such 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.”
_Pope_.--What do you think of my ”Homer?”
_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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sions, 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 jumbled those 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Moliere?
_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 the _Misanthrope_, the _Ecole des Femmes_, or _Tartuffe_.
_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 excellence of 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.