Part 30 (2/2)
”For when we're dead, and our freed souls enlarg'd--
”Here he tells us what it is to be _dead_; it is to have _our freed souls set free_. Now, if to have a soul set free, is to be dead; then to have a _freed soul_ set free, is to have a dead man die.
”Then gentle, as a happy lover's sigh--
”They two like one _sigh_, and that one _sigh_ like two wandering meteors,
”Shall fly through the air--
”That is, they shall mount above like falling stars, or else they shall skip like two Jacks with lanterns, or Will with a wisp, and Madge with a candle.
”_And in their airy walk steal into their cruel fathers' b.r.e.a.s.t.s, like subtle guests_. So that their _fathers' b.r.e.a.s.t.s_ must be in an _airy walk_, an airy _walk_ of a _flier. And there they will read their souls, and track the spheres of their pa.s.sions_. That is, these walking fliers, Jack with a lantern, &c. will put on his spectacles, and fall a _reading souls_, and put on his pumps and fall a _tracking of spheres_; so that he will read and run, walk and fly, at the same time! Oh! Nimble Jack! _Then he will see, how revenge here, how ambition there_--The birds will hop about. _And then view the dark characters of sieges, ruins, murders, blood, and wars, in their orbs: track the characters_ to their forms! Oh!
rare sport for Jack! Never was place so full of game as these b.r.e.a.s.t.s!
You cannot stir, but flush a sphere, start a character, or unkennel an orb!”
Settle's is said to have been the first play embellished with sculptures; those ornaments seem to have given poor Dryden great disturbance. He tries, however, to ease his pain by venting his malice in a parody:
”The poet has not only been so impudent to expose all this stuff, but so arrogant to defend it with an epistle; like a saucy booth-keeper, that, when he had put a cheat upon the people, would wrangle and fight with any that would not like it, or would offer to discover it; for which arrogance our poet receives this correction; and, to jerk him a little the sharper, I will not transpose his verse, but by the help of his own words transnonsense sense, that, by my stuff, people may judge the better what his is:
”Great boy, thy tragedy and sculptures done, From press and plates, in fleets do homeward come; And in ridiculous and humble pride, Their course in ballad-singers' baskets guide, Whose greasy twigs do all new beauties take, From the gay shows thy dainty sculptures make.
Thy lines a mess of rhyming nonsense yield, A senseless tale, with flattering fustian fill'd.
No grain of sense does in one line appear, Thy words big bulks of boist'rous bombast bear, With noise they move, and from play'rs' mouths rebound, When their tongues dance to thy words' empty sound.
By thee inspir'd the rumbling verses roll, As if that rhyme and bombast lent a soul: And with that soul they seem taught duty too; To huffing words does humble nonsense bow, As if it would thy worthless worth enhance, To th' lowest rank of fops thy praise advance, To whom, by instinct, all thy stuff is dear: Their loud claps echo to the theatre: From breaths of fools thy commendation spreads, Fame sings thy praise with mouths of loggerheads.
With noise and laughing each thy fustian greets, 'Tis clapt by choirs of empty-headed cits, Who have their tribute sent, and homage given, As men in whispers send loud noise to heaven.
”Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle: and now we are come from aboard his dancing, masking, rebounding, breathing fleet; and, as if we had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but fools and nonsense.”
Such was the criticism to which the genius of Dryden could be reduced, between rage and terrour; rage with little provocation, and terrour with little danger. To see the highest minds thus levelled with the meanest, may produce some solace to the consciousness of weakness, and some mortification to the pride of wisdom. But let it be remembered, that minds are not levelled in their powers but when they are first levelled in their desires. Dryden and Settle had both placed their happiness in the claps of mult.i.tudes.
An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer, a comedy, 1671, is dedicated to the ill.u.s.trious duke of Newcastle, whom he courts by adding to his praises those of his lady, not only as a lover but a partner of his studies. It is unpleasing to think how many names, once celebrated, are since forgotten. Of Newcastle's works nothing is now known but his Treatise on Horsemans.h.i.+p.
The preface seems very elaborately written, and contains many just remarks on the fathers of English drama. Shakespeare's plots, he says, are in the hundred novels of Cinthio; those of Beaumont and Fletcher in Spanish Stories; Jonson only made them for himself. His criticisms upon tragedy, comedy, and farce, are judicious and profound. He endeavours to defend the immorality of some of his comedies by the example of former writers; which is only to say, that he was not the first, nor, perhaps, the greatest offender. Against those that accused him of plagiarism he alleges a favourable expression of the king: ”He only desired that they, who accuse me of thefts, would steal him plays like mine;” and then relates how much labour he spends in fitting for the English stage what he borrows from others.
Tyrannick Love, or the Virgin Martyr, 1672, was another tragedy in rhyme, conspicuous for many pa.s.sages of strength and elegance, and many of empty noise and ridiculous turbulence. The rants of Maximin have been always the sport of criticism; and were, at length, if his own confession may be trusted, the shame of the writer.
Of this play he takes care to let the reader know, that it was contrived and written in seven weeks. Want of time was often his excuse, or, perhaps, shortness of time was his private boast, in the form of an apology.
It was written before the Conquest of Granada, but published after it.
The design is to recommend piety: ”I considered that pleasure was not the only end of poesy; and that even the instructions of morality were not so wholly the business of a poet, as that precepts and examples of piety were to be omitted; for to leave that employment altogether to the clergy, were to forget that religion was first taught in verse, which the laziness or dulness of succeeding priesthood turned afterwards into prose.” Thus foolishly could Dryden write, rather than not show his malice to the parsons.
The two parts of the Conquest of Granada, 1672, are written with a seeming determination to glut the publick with dramatick wonders; to exhibit, in its highest elevation, a theatrical meteor of incredible love and impossible valour, and to leave no room for a wilder flight to the extravagance of posterity. All the rays of romantick heat, whether amorous or warlike, glow in Almanzor, by a kind of concentration. He is above all laws; he is exempt from all restraints; he ranges the world at will, and governs wherever he appears. He fights without inquiring the cause, and loves, in spite of the obligations of justice, of rejection by his mistress, and of prohibition from the dead. Yet the scenes are, for the most part, delightful; they exhibit a kind of ill.u.s.trious depravity, and majestick madness; such as, if it is sometimes despised, is often reverenced, and in which the ridiculous is mingled with the astonis.h.i.+ng.
In the epilogue to the second part of the Conquest of Granada, Dryden indulges his favourite pleasure of discrediting his predecessors; and this epilogue he has defended by a long postscript. He had promised a second dialogue, in which he should more fully treat of the virtues and faults of the English poets, who have written in the dramatick, epick, or lyrick way. This promise was never formally performed; but, with respect to the dramatick writers, he has given us in his prefaces, and in this postscript, something equivalent; but his purpose being to exalt himself by the comparison, he shows faults distinctly, and only praises excellence in general terms.
A play thus written, in professed defiance of probability, naturally drew down upon itself the vultures of the theatre. One of the criticks that attacked it was Martin Clifford, to whom Sprat addressed the Life of Cowley, with such veneration of his critical powers as might naturally excite great expectations of instruction from his remarks. But let honest credulity beware of receiving characters from contemporary writers.
Clifford's remarks, by the favour of Dr. Percy, were, at last, obtained; and that no man may ever want them more, I will extract enough to satisfy all reasonable desire.
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