Part 31 (1/2)
In the first letter his observation is only general: ”You do live,” says he, ”in as much ignorance and darkness as you did in the womb: your writings are like a Jack-of-all-trades' shop; they have a variety, but nothing of value; and if thou art not the dullest plant-animal that ever the earth produced, all that I have conversed with are strangely mistaken in thee.”
In the second, he tells him that Almanzor is not more copied from Achilles than from Ancient Pistol: ”But I am,” says he, ”strangely mistaken if I have not seen this very Almanzor of yours in some disguise about this town, and pa.s.sing under another name. Pr'ythee tell me true, was not this Huffcap once the Indian Emperor? and, at another time, did he not call himself Maximin? Was riot Lyndaraxa once called Almeira?
I mean under Montezuma the Indian Emperor. I protest and vow they are either the same, or so alike that I cannot, for my heart, distinguish one from the other. You are, therefore, a strange unconscionable thief; thou art not content to steal from others, but dost rob thy poor wretched self too.”
Now was Settle's time to take his revenge. He wrote a vindication of his own lines; and, if he is forced to yield any thing, makes reprisals upon his enemy. To say that his answer is equal to the censure, is no high commendation. To expose Dryden's method of a.n.a.lyzing his expressions, he tries the same experiment upon the description of the s.h.i.+ps in the Indian Emperor, of which, however, he does not deny the excellence; but intends to show, that, by studied misconstruction, every thing may be equally represented as ridiculous. After so much of Dryden's elegant animadversions, justice requires that something of Settle's should be exhibited. The following observations are, therefore, extracted from a quarto pamphlet of ninety-five pages:
”Fate after him below with pain did move, And victory could scarce keep pace above.
”These two lines, if he can show me any sense or thought in, or any thing but bombast and noise, he shall make me believe every word in his observations on Morocco sense.
”In the Empress of Morocco were these lines:
”I'll travel then to some remoter sphere, Till I find out new worlds, and crown you there.
”On which Dryden made this remark:
”'I believe our learned author takes a sphere for a country: the sphere of Morocco; as if Morocco were the globe of earth and water; but a globe is no sphere neither, by his leave,' &c. So _sphere_ must not be sense, unless it relate to a circular motion about a globe, in which sense the astronomers use it. I would desire him to expound those lines in Granada:
”I'll to the turrets of the palace go, And add new fire to those that fight below.
Thence, hero-like, with torches by my side, (Far be the omen though) my love I'll guide.
No, like his better fortune I'll appear, With open arms, loose veil, and flowing hair.
Just flying forward from my rowling sphere.
”I wonder, if he be so strict, how he dares make so bold with _sphere_ himself, and be so critical in other men's writings. Fortune is fancied standing on a globe, not on a _sphere_, as he told us in the first act.
”Because 'Elkanah's similes are the most unlike things to what they are compared in the world,' I'll venture to start a simile in his Annus Mirabilis: he gives this poetical description of the s.h.i.+p called the London:
”The goodly London in her gallant trim, The phoenix-daughter of the vanquisht old, Like a rich bride does on the ocean swim, And on her shadow rides in floating gold.
Her flag aloft spread ruffling in the wind, And sanguine streamers seem'd the flood to fire: The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd, Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire.
With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves, Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length, She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.
”What a wonderful pother is here, to make all these poetical beautifications of a s.h.i.+p! that is a _phoenix_ in the first stanza, and but a _wasp_ in the last: nay, to make his humble comparison of a _wasp_ more ridiculous, he does not say it flies upon the waves as nimbly as a wasp, or the like, but it seemed a _wasp_. But our author at the writing of this was not in his alt.i.tudes, to compare s.h.i.+ps to floating palaces: a comparison to the purpose, was a perfection he did not arrive to till his Indian Emperor's days. But, perhaps, his similitude has more in it than we imagine; this s.h.i.+p had a great many guns in her, and they, put all together, made the sting in the wasp's tail; for this is all the reason I can guess, why it seem'd a _wasp_. But, because we will allow him all we can to help out, let it be a _phoenix sea-wasp_, and the rarity of such an animal may do much towards heightening the fancy.
”It had been much more to his purpose, if he had designed to render the senseless play little, to have searched for some such pedantry as this:
”Two ifs scarce make one possibility.
If justice will take all and nothing give, Justice, methinks, is not distributive.
To die or kill you, is the alternative.
Rather than take your life, I will not live.
”Observe how prettily our author chops logick in heroick verse. Three such fustian canting words as _distributive, alternative_, and _two ifs_, no man but himself would have come within the noise of. But he's a man of general learning, and all comes into his play.
”'Twould have done well too if he could have met with a rant or two, worth the observation; such as,
”Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace, Leave months and weeks behind thee in thy race.
”But surely the sun, whether he flies a lover's or not a lover's pace, leaves weeks and months, nay, years too, behind him in his race.