Volume IV Part 28 (2/2)
Canst thou be only clear'd by disobedience, And justified by crimes?--What! love my foe!
Love one descended from a race of tyrants, Whose blood yet reeks on my avenging sword!
I'm curst each moment I delay thy fate: Haste to the shades, and tell, the happy Pallas, Ismena's flames, and let him taste such joys As thou giv'st me; go tell applauding Minos, The pious love you bore his daughter Phaedra; Tell it the chatt'ring ghosts, and hissing furies, Tell it the grinning fiends, till h.e.l.l found nothing To thy pleas'd ears, but Phaedra and Ismena.
We cannot suppose that a man wrought up to fury, by the flame of jealousy, and a sense of afronted dignity, could be so particular in giving his son directions how to behave in h.e.l.l, and to whom he should relate the story of his fate. When any pa.s.sion violently overwhelms the soul, the person who feels it, always speaks sententiously, avoids repet.i.tions, and is not capable of much recollection, at least of making a minute detail of circ.u.mstances. In how few words, and with greater force would Shakespear have conduced this speech of Theseus.
An example will prove it: when Oth.e.l.lo is informed that Ca.s.sio is slain, he replies,
Had all his hairs been lives, My great revenge had stomach for them all.
When Phaedra is made acquainted with the ruin of Hyppolitus, the poet makes her utter the following beautiful speech, which, however, is liable to the same objection as the former, for it seems rather a studied declamation, than an expression of the most agonizing throes she is then supposed to experience.
What's life? Oh all ye G.o.ds! can life attone For all the monstrous crimes by which 'tis bought?
Or can I live? when thou, O Soul of honour!
O early hero! by my crimes art ruin'd.
Perhaps even now, the great unhappy youth, Falls by the sordid hands of butchering villains; Now, now he bleeds, he dies,--O perjur'd traitor!
See his rich blood in purple torrents flows, And nature sallies in unbidden groans; Now mortal pangs distort his lovely form, His rosy beauties fade, his starry eyes Now darkling swim, and fix their closing beams; Now in short gasps his lab'ring spirit heaves, And weakly flutters on his falt'ring tongue, And struggles into sound. Hear, monster hear, With his last breath, he curses purjured Phaedra: He summons Phaedra to the bar of Minos; Thou too shalt there appear; to torture thee Whole h.e.l.l shall be employ'd, and suff'ring Phaedra Shall find some care to see thee still more wretched.
No man had a juster notion of the difficulty of composing, than Mr.
Smith, and he sometimes would create greater difficulties than he had reason to apprehend. Mr. Smith had, indeed, some defects in his conduct, which those are more apt to remember, who could imitate him in nothing else. Amongst the blemishes of an innocent kind, which attended Mr. Smith, was his extreme carelessness in the particular of dress; this oddity procured him the name of Captain Ragg. His person was so well formed, and he possessed so much natural gracefulness, that notwithstanding the disadvantage of his appearance, he was called, by the Ladies, the Handsome Sloven.
It is to be wondered at (says Mr. Oldisworth) that a man under poverty, calamities, and disappointments, could make so many friends, and those so truly valuable. He had, indeed, a n.o.ble idea of the pa.s.sion of friends.h.i.+p, in the success of which, consisted the greatest, if not the only happiness of his Life. He was serene and chearful under the dispensations of providence; he avoided having any dealings with mankind in which he could not be just, and therefore refused to embrace some opportunities of amending his fortune.
Upon Mr. Smith's coming to town, no man was more surrounded by all those who really had, or pretended to wit, or more courted by the great men, who had then a power and opportunity of encouraging arts and sciences. Mr. Smith's character grew upon his friends by intimacy, and exceeded the strongest prepossessions which had been conceived in his favour. A few years before his death, Mr. Smith engaged in some considerable Undertakings; in all which he raised expectations in the world, which he lived not to gratify. Mr. Oldisworth observes, that he had seen about ten sheets of Pindar translated into English, which, he says, exceeded any thing of that kind, he could ever hope for in our language. He had drawn out a plan for a tragedy of Lady Jane Grey, and had written several scenes of it: a subject afterwards n.o.bly executed by Mr. Rowe. His greatest undertaking was Longinus, which he executed in a very masterly manner. He proposed a large addition to this work, of notes and observations of his own, with an intire system of the art of poetry in three books, under the t.i.tle of Thoughts, Action, and Figure; in this work he proposed to reform the art of Rhetoric, by reducing that confused heap of Terms, with which a long succession of Pedants had inc.u.mbered the world, to a very narrow compa.s.s; comprehending all that was useful and ornamental in poetry under each head, and chapter. He intended to make remarks upon all the ancients and moderns, the Greek, Latin, English, French, Spanish, and Italian poets, and to anamadvert upon their several beauties and defects.
Mr. Smith died in the year 1710, in the 42d of his age, at the seat of George Ducket esq; called Hartham, in Wilts.h.i.+re; and was buried in the parish church there. We shall give the character of this celebrated poet in the words of Mr. Oldisworth:--”He had a quickness of apprehension and vivacity of understanding, which easily took in, and surmounted, the most knotty parts of mathematics and metaphysics.
His wit was prompt and flowing, yet solid and piercing; his taste delicate, his head clear, and his manner of expressing his thoughts perspicuous, and engaging; an eager, but generous, emulation grew up in him, which push'd him upon striving to excel in every art and science, that could make him a credit to his college: and it was his happiness to have several cotemporaries, and fellow students, who exercised and excited this virtue in themselves and others: his judgment naturally good, soon ripened into an exquisite fineness, and distinguis.h.i.+ng sagacity, which as it was active and busy, so it was vigorous and manly, keeping even pace with a rich and strong imagination, always on the wing, and never tired with aspiring; there are many of his first essays in oratory, in epigram, elegy and epic, still handed about the university in ma.n.u.script, which shew a masterly hand, and though maimed and injured by frequent transcribing, make their way into our most celebrated miscellanies, where they mine with uncommon l.u.s.tre. As his parts were extraordinary, so he well knew how to improve them; and not only to polish the diamond, but enchase it in the most solid and durable metal.
”Though he was an academic the greatest part of his life, yet he contracted no sourness of temper, no tincture of pedantry, no itch of disputation, or obstinate contention for the old, or new philosophy, no a.s.suming way of dictating to others, which are faults which some are insensibly led into, who are constrained to dwell within the walls of a private college.” Thus far Mr. Oldisworth, who has drawn the character of his deceased friend, with a laudable fondness. Mr. Smith, no doubt, possessed the highest genius for poetry; but it is certain he had mixed but too little in life. His language, however luxuriously poetical, yet is far from being proper for the drama, and there is too much of the poet in every speech he puts in the mouths of his characters, which produces an uniformity, that nothing could teach him to avoid, but a more general knowledge of real life and characters.
It is acknowledged that Mr. Smith was much inclined to intemperance, though Mr. Oldisworth has glossed it over with the hand of a friend; nor is it improbable, that this disposition sunk him in that vis inertiae, which has been the bane of many of the brightest geniuses of the world. Mr. Smith was, upon the whole, a good natured man, a great poet, a finished scholar, and a discerning critic.
[Footnote A: See the Life and Character of Mr. Smith, by Mr.
Oldisworth, prefixed to his Phaedra and Hippolitus, edit. 1719.]
[Footnote B: Oldisworth, ubi supra.]
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