Part 50 (1/2)

[331] Alluding to a ridiculous rumour, that the King was to receive foreign troops by a Danish fleet.

[332] Col. Urrey, _alias_ Hurrey, deserted the Parliament, and went over to the King; afterwards deserted the King, and discovered to the Parliament all he knew of the King's forces.--_See Clarendon._

[333] This Sir William Brereton, or, as Clarendon writes the name, Bruerton, was the famous Ches.h.i.+re knight, whom Cleveland characterizes as one of those heroes whose courage lies in their teeth. ”Was Brereton,” says the loyal satirist, ”to fight with his teeth, as he in all other things resembles the beast, he would have odds of any man at this weapon. He's a terrible slaughterman at a Thanksgiving dinner. Had he been cannibal enough to have eaten those he vanquished, his gut would have made him valiant.” And in ”Loyal Songs” his valiant appet.i.te is noticed:

”But, oh! take heed lest he do eat The Rump all at one dinner!”

And Aulicus, we see, accuses him of concealing his bravery in a hayrick. It is always curious and useful to confer the writers of intemperate times one with another. Lord Clarendon, whose great mind was incapable of descending to scurrility, gives a very different character to this pot-valiant and hayrick runaway; for he says, ”It cannot be denied but Sir William Brereton, and the other gentlemen of that party, albeit their educations and course of life had been very different from their present engagements, and for the most part very unpromising in matters of war, and therefore were too much contemned enemies, executed their commands with notable sobriety and indefatigable industry (virtues not so well practised in the King's quarters), insomuch as the best soldiers who encountered with them had no cause to despise them.”--_Clarendon_, vol. ii. p. 147.

[334] ”The Scotch Dove” seems never to have recovered from this metamorphosis, but ever after, among the newsmen, was known to be only a Widgeon. His character is not very high in ”The Great a.s.sizes.”

”The innocent _Scotch Dove_ did then advance, Full sober in his wit and countenance: And, though his book contain'd not mickle scence, Yet his endictment shew'd no great offence.

Great wits to perils great, themselves expose Oft-times; but the _Scotch Dove_ was none of those.

In many words he little matter drest, And did laconick brevity detest.

But while his readers did expect some Newes, They found a Sermon--”

The Scotch Dove desires to meet the cla.s.sical Aulicus in the duel of the pen:--

------------”to turn me loose, A _Scottish Dove_ against a _Roman Goose_.”

”The Scotch Dove” is condemned ”to cross the seas, or to repa.s.se the Tweede.” They all envy him his ”easy mulet,” but he wofully exclaims at the hard sentence,

”For if they knew that _home_ as well as he, They'd rather die than there imprison'd be!”

[335] This stroke alludes to a rumour of the times, noticed also by Clarendon, that Pym died of the _morbus pediculosus_.

[336] ”Peard, a bold lawyer of little note.”--_Clarendon._

[337] These divines were as ready with the sword as the pen; thus, we are told in ”The Impartial Scout” for July, 1650--”The ministers are now as active in the military discipline as formerly they were in the gospel profession, Parson Ennis, Parson Brown, and about thirty other ministers having received commissions to be majors and captains, who now hold forth the Bible in one hand, and the sword in the other, telling the soldiery that they need not fear what man can do against them--that G.o.d is on their side--and that He hath prepared an engine in heaven to break and blast the designs of all covenant-breakers.”--ED.

POLITICAL CRITICISM

ON LITERARY COMPOSITIONS.

ANTHONY WOOD and LOCKE--MILTON and SPRAT--BURNET and his History--PRIOR and ADDISON--SWIFT and STEELE--WAGSTAFFE and STEELE--STEELE and ADDISON--HOOKE and MIDDLETON--GILBERT WAKEFIELD--MARVEL and MILTON--CLARENDON and MAY.

VOLTAIRE, in his letters on our nation, has. .h.i.t off a marked feature in our national physiognomy. ”So violent did I find parties in London, that I was a.s.sured by several that the Duke of MARLBOROUGH was a coward, and Mr. POPE a fool.”

A foreigner indeed could hardly expect that in collecting the characters of English authors by English authors (a labour which has long afforded me pleasure often interrupted by indignation)--in a word, that a cla.s.s of literary history should turn out a collection of personal quarrels. Would not this modern Baillet, in his new _Jugemens des Scavans_, so ingeniously inquisitive but so infinitely confused, require to be initiated into the mysteries of that spirit of party peculiar to our free country!

All that boiling rancour which sputters against the thoughts, the style, the taste, the moral character of an author, is often nothing more than practising what, to give it a name, we may call _Political Criticism in Literature_; where an author's literary character is attacked solely from the accidental circ.u.mstance of his differing in opinion from his critics on subjects unconnected with the topics he treats of.

Could Anthony Wood, had he not been influenced by this political criticism, have sent down LOCKE to us as ”a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented, prating and troublesome?”[338] But Locke was the antagonist of FILMER, that advocate of arbitrary power; and Locke is described ”as bred under a fanatical tutor,” and when in Holland, as one of those who under the Earl of Shaftesbury ”stuck close to him when discarded, and carried on the _trade of faction_ beyond and within the seas several years after.” In the great original genius, born, like BACON and NEWTON, to create a new era in the history of the human mind, this political literary critic, who was not always deficient in his perceptions of genius, could only discover ”a trader in faction,” though in his honesty he acknowledges him to be ”a noted writer.”

A more ill.u.s.trious instance of party-spirit operating against works of genius is presented to us in the awful character of MILTON. From earliest youth to latest age endowed with all the characteristics of genius; fervent with all the inspirations of study; in all changes still the same great literary character as Velleius Paterculus writes of one of his heroes--”Aliquando fortuna, semper animo maximus:” while in his own day, foreigners, who usually antic.i.p.ate posterity, were inquiring after Milton, it is known how utterly disregarded he lived at home. The divine author of the ”Paradise Lost” was always connected with the man for whom a reward was offered in the _London Gazette_.

But in their triumph, the lovers of monarchy missed their greater glory, in not separating for ever the republican Secretary of State from the rival of Homer.

That the genius of Milton pined away in solitude, and that all the consolations of fame were denied him during his life, from this political criticism on his works, is generally known; but not perhaps that this spirit propagated itself far beyond the poet's tomb. I give a remarkable instance. Bishop Sprat, who surely was capable of feeling the poetry of Milton, yet from political antipathy retained such an abhorrence of his _name_, that when the writer of the Latin Inscription on the poet JOHN PHILIPS, in describing his versification, applied to it the term _Miltono_, Sprat ordered it to be erased, as polluting a monument raised in a church.[339] A mere critical opinion on versification was thus sacrificed to political feeling:--a stream indeed which in its course has hardly yet worked itself clear. It could only have been the strong political feeling of Warton which could have induced him to censure the prose of Milton with such asperity, while he closed his critical eyes on its resplendent pa.s.sages, which certainly he wanted not the taste to feel,--for he caught in his own pages, occasionally, some of the reflected warmth.

This feeling took full possession of the mind of Johnson, who, with all the rage of political criticism on subjects of literature, has condemned the finest works of Milton, and in one of his terrible paroxysms has demonstrated that the Samson Agonistes is ”a tragedy which ignorance has admired and bigotry applauded.” Had not Johnson's religious feelings fortunately interposed between Milton and his ”Paradise,” we should have wanted the present n.o.ble effusion of his criticism; any other Epic by Milton had probably sunk beneath his vigorous sophistry, and his tasteless sarcasm. Lauder's attack on Milton was hardily projected, on a prospect of encouragement, from this political criticism on the literary character of Milton; and he succeeded as long as he could preserve the decency of the delusion.