Part 9 (1/2)

Of his more elevated occasional poems, there is, perhaps, none that does not deserve commendation. In the verses to Fletcher, we have an image that has since been often adopted[24]:

But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise; Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built, Nor need thy juster t.i.tle the foul guilt

Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign, Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred, slain.

After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues,

Poets are sultans, if they had their will; For ev'ry author would his brother kill.

And Pope,

Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne.

But this is not the best of his little pieces: it is excelled by his poem to Fanshaw, and his elegy on Cowley.

His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini contains a very sprightly and judicious character of a good translator:

That servile path thou n.o.bly dost decline, Of tracing word by word and line by line.

Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains, Not the effect of poetry but pains; Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords No flight for thoughts, but poorly stick at words, A new and n.o.bler way thou dost pursue, To make translations and translators too, They but preserve the ashes; thou the flame, True to his sense, but truer to his fame.

The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they contain was not, at that time, generally known.

His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, and, among his shorter works, his best performance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts are just.

Cooper's Hill is the work that confers upon him the rank and dignity of an original author. He seems to have been, at least among us, the author of a species of composition that may be denominated _local poetry_, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection, or incidental meditation.

To trace a new scheme of poetry, has, in itself, a very high claim to praise, and its praise is yet more, when it is apparently copied by Garth and Pope[25]; after whose names little will be gained by an enumeration of smaller poets, that have left scarcely a corner of the island not dignified either by rhyme or blank verse.

Cooper's Hill, if it be maliciously inspected, will not be found without its faults. The digressions are too long, the morality too frequent, and the sentiments, sometimes, such as will not bear a rigorous inquiry.

The four verses, which, since Dryden has commended them, almost every writer for a century past has imitated, are generally known:

O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.

The lines, are, in themselves, not perfect; for most of the words, thus artfully opposed, are to be understood simply on one side of the comparison, and metaphorically on the other; and, if there be any language which does not express intellectual operations by material images, into that language they cannot be translated. But so much meaning is comprised in so few words; the particulars of resemblance are so perspicaciously collected, and every mode of excellence separated from its adjacent fault by so nice a line of limitation; the different parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted; and the flow of the last couplet is so smooth and sweet; that the pa.s.sage, however celebrated, has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be produced at will by wit and labour, but must rise unexpectedly in some hour propitious to poetry.

He appears to have been one of the first that understood the necessity of emanc.i.p.ating translation from the drudgery of counting lines, and interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the clearest, and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors, may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them are the works of men well qualified, not only by critical knowledge, but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness, degraded, at once, their originals and themselves.

Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success.

His versions of Virgil are not pleasing; but they taught Dryden to please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on Old Age has neither the clearness of prose, nor the sprightliness of poetry.

The ”strength of Denham,” which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk.

On the Thames.

Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold; His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore, Search not his bottom, but survey his sh.o.r.e.

On Strafford.