Part 6 (2/2)

_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 decide the 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 Moliere. 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 the _Athalia_ of Racine, and the tender pa.s.sions 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 n.o.ble 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 compet.i.tor 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 perch on the sceptre of Jupiter, or to bear in his pounces the lightning of the G.o.d.

_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 surpa.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+nes 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 was experienced by Dryden as well as Milton; he lived to see his writings, together with his politics, quite out of fas.h.i.+on. But even in the days of his highest prosperity, when the generality of the people admired his _Almanzor_, and thought his _Indian Emperor_ the perfection of tragedy, the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Rochester, the two wittiest n.o.blemen 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 pa.s.sed 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.”

_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 compa.s.s?

_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.

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