Part 40 (2/2)

Love various minds does variously inspire; It stirs in gentle bosoms gentle fire, Like that of incense on the altar laid; But raging flames tempestuous souls invade:

A fire which ev'ry windy pa.s.sion blows, With pride it mounts, or with revenge it glows.

Dryden's was not one of the ”gentle bosoms:” love, as it subsists in itself, with no tendency but to the person loved, and wis.h.i.+ng only for correspondent kindness; such love as shuts out all other interest; the love of the golden age, was too soft and subtile to put his faculties in motion. He hardly conceived it but in its turbulent effervescence with some other desires; when it was inflamed by rivalry, or obstructed by difficulties: when it invigorated ambition, or exasperated revenge.

He is, therefore, with all his variety of excellence, not often pathetick; and had so little sensibility of the power of effusions purely natural, that he did not esteem them in others. Simplicity gave him no pleasure; and, for the first part of his life, he looked on Otway with contempt, though, at last, indeed very late, he confessed that in his play ”there was nature, which is the chief beauty.”

We do not always know our own motives. I am not certain whether it was not rather the difficulty which he found in exhibiting the genuine operations of the heart, than a servile submission to an injudicious audience, that filled his plays with false magnificence. It was necessary to fix attention; and the mind can be captivated only by recollection, or by curiosity; by reviving natural sentiments, or impressing new appearances of things. Sentences were readier at his call than images; he could more easily fill the ear with some splendid novelty, than awaken those ideas that slumber in the heart.

The favourite exercise of his mind was ratiocination; and, that argument might not be too soon at an end, he delighted to talk of liberty and necessity, destiny and contingence; these he discusses in the language of the school with so much profundity, that the terms which he uses are not always understood. It is, indeed, learning, but learning out of place.

When once he had engaged himself in disputation, thoughts flowed in on either side: he was now no longer at a loss; he had always objections and solutions at command; ”verbaque provisam rem”--give him matter for his verse, and he finds, without difficulty, verse for his matter.

In comedy, for which he professes himself not naturally qualified, the mirth which he excites will, perhaps, not be found so much to arise from any original humour, or peculiarity of character nicely distinguished and diligently pursued, as from incidents and circ.u.mstances, artifices and surprises; from jests of action rather than of sentiment. What he had of humorous or pa.s.sionate, he seems to have had not from nature, but from other poets; if not always as a plagiary, at least as an imitator.

Next to argument, his delight was in wild and daring sallies of sentiment, in the irregular and eccentrick violence of wit. He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle; to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he knew; as,

Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace, Leave weeks and months behind thee in thy race.

Amamel flies To guard thee from the demons of the air; My flaming sword above them to display, All keen, and ground upon the edge of day.

And sometimes it issued in absurdities, of which, perhaps, he was not conscious:

Then we upon our orb's last verge shall go, And see the ocean leaning on the sky; From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, And on the lunar world securely pry.

These lines have no meaning; but may we not say, in imitation of Cowley on another book,

'Tis so like _sense_ 'twill serve the turn as well?

This endeavour after the grand and the new, produced sentiments either great or bulky, and many images either just or splendid:

I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the n.o.ble savage ran.

--'Tis but because the living death ne'er knew, They fear to prove it, as a thing that's new: Let me th' experiment before you try, I'll show you first how easy 'tis to die.

--There with a forest of their darts he strove, And stood like Capaneus defying Jove, With his broad sword the boldest beating down, While fate grew pale, lest he should win the town, And turn'd the iron leaves of his dark book To make new dooms, or mend what it mistook.

--I beg no pity for this mouldering clay; For if you give it burial, there it takes Possession of your earth; If burnt, and scatter'd in the air, the winds That strew my dust diffuse my royalty, And spread me o'er your clime; for where one atom Of mine shall light, know there Sebastian reigns.

Of these quotations the two first may be allowed to be great, the two latter only tumid.

Of such selection there is no end. I will add only a few more pa.s.sages; of which the first, though it may, perhaps, not be quite clear in prose, is not too obscure for poetry, as the meaning that it has is n.o.ble[123]:

No, there is a necessity in fate, Why still the brave bold man is fortunate;

He keeps his object ever full in sight; And that a.s.surance holds him firm and right; True, 'tis a narrow way that leads to bliss, But right before there is no precipice; Fear makes men look aside, and so their footing miss.

Of the images which the two following citations afford, the first is elegant, the second magnificent; whether either be just, let the reader judge:

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