It was the saying of Julius Cæsar, one so curious in his, that none of them can be changed but for a worse. One would think, unlock the door, was a thing as vulgar as could be spoken; and yet Seneca could make it sound high and lofty in his Latin:—
But I turn from this exception, both because it happens not above twice or thrice in any play that those vulgar thoughts are used; and then too, were there no other apology to be made, yet the necessity of them, which is alike in all kind of writing, may excuse them. For if they are little and mean in rhyme, they are of consequence such in blank verse. Besides that the great eagerness and precipitation with which they are spoken, makes us rather mind the substance than the dress; that for which they are spoken, rather than what is spoke. For they are always the effect of some hasty concernment, and something of consequence depends on them.
Thus, Crites, I have endeavoured to answer your objections: it remains only that I should vindicate an argument for verse, which you have gone about to overthrow. It had formerly been said, that the easiness of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant; but that the labour of rhyme bounds and circumscribes an over-fruitful fancy; the sense there being commonly confined to the couplet, and the words so ordered, that the rhyme naturally follows them, not they the rhyme. To this you answered, that it was no argument to the question in hand; for the dispute was not which way a man may write best, but which is most proper for the subject on which he writes.
First, give me leave, sir, to remember you, that the argument against which you raised this objection, was only secondary: it was built on this hypothesis,—that to write in verse was proper for serious plays. Which supposition being granted, (as it was briefly made out in that discourse, by shewing how verse might be made natural,) it asserted, that this way of writing was an help to the poet's judgment, by putting bounds to a wild overflowing fancy. I think therefore it will not be hard for me to make good what it was to prove on that supposition. But you add, that were this let pass, yet he who wants judgment in the liberty of his fancy, may as well shew the defect of it when he is confined to verse; for he who has judgment will avoid errors, and he who has it not, will commit them in all kinds of writing.
This argument, as you have taken it from a most acute person,[152] so, I confess, it carries much weight in it: but by using the word judgment here indefinitely, you seem to have put a fallacy upon us. I grant, he who has judgment, that is, so profound, so strong, or rather so infallible a judgment, that he needs no helps to keep it always poised and upright, will commit no faults either in rhyme, or out of it. And on the other extreme, he who has a judgment so weak and crazed, that no helps can correct or amend it, shall write scurvily out of rhyme, and worse in it. But the first of these judgments is no where to be found, and the latter is not fit to write at all. To speak therefore of judgment as it is in the best poets; they who have the greatest proportion of it, want other helps than from it, within. As for example, you would be loth to say, that he who is endued with a sound judgment, has no need of history, geography, or moral philosophy, to write correctly. Judgment is indeed the master-workman in a play; but he requires many subordinate hands, many tools to his assistance. And verse I affirm to be one of these: it is a rule and line by which he keeps his building compact and even, which otherwise lawless imagination would raise either irregularly or loosely; at least, if the poet commits errors with this help, he would make greater and more without it:—it is, in short, a slow and painful, but the surest kind of working. Ovid, whom you accuse for luxuriancy in verse, had perhaps been farther guilty of it, had he writ in prose. And for your instance of Ben Jonson, who, you say, writ exactly without the help of rhyme; you are to remember, it is only an aid to a luxuriant fancy, which his was not: as he did not want imagination, so none ever said he had much to spare. Neither was verse then refined so much, to be an help to that age, as it is to ours. Thus then the second thoughts being usually the best, as receiving the maturest digestion from judgment, and the last and most mature product of those thoughts being artful and laboured verse, it may well be inferred, that verse is a great help to a luxuriant fancy; and this is what that argument which you opposed was to evince.
Neander was pursuing this discourse so eagerly, that Eugenius had called to him twice or thrice, ere he took notice that the barge stood still, and that they were at the foot of Somerset-stairs, where they had appointed it to land. The company were all sorry to separate so soon, though a great part of the evening was already spent; and stood awhile looking back on the water, upon which the moon-beams played, and made it appear like floating quicksilver: at last they went up through a crowd of French people,[153] who were merrily dancing in the open air, and nothing concerned for the noise of guns, which had alarmed the town that afternoon. Walking thence together to the Piazze, they parted there; Eugenius and Lisideius to some pleasant appointment they had made, and Crites and Neander to their several lodgings.
Thomas Rymer, distinguished as the editor of the Fœdera of England, was in his earlier years ambitious of the fame of a critic. In 1678, he published a small duodecimo, entitled, "The Tragedies of the last Age considered and examined by the practice of the Ancients, and the common Sense of all Ages, in a Letter to Fleetwood and Shepherd." The criticisms apply chiefly to the tragedies of the latter part of the reigns of Elizabeth, and James I.; out of which he has singled, as the particular subjects of reprehension, those of "Rollo," "The Maid's Tragedy," and "King and no King." In this criticism, there was "much malice mingled with a little wit;" obvious faults and absurdities were censured as disgusting to common sense, on the one hand; on the other, licenses unpractised by the ancients were condemned as barbarous and unclassical.
A severe critic, if able but plausibly to support his remarks by learning and acumen, strikes terror through the whole world of literature. It is in vain to represent to such a person, that he only examines the debtor side of the account, and omits to credit the unfortunate author with the merit that he has justly a title to claim. Instead of a fair accounting between the public and the poet, his cause is tried as in a criminal action, where, if he is convicted of a crime, all the merit of his work will not excuse him. There must be something in the mind of man favourable to a system which tends to the levelling of talents in the public estimation, or such critics as Rymer could never have risen into notice. Yet Dryden, in the following projected answer to his Remarks, has treated him with great respect; and Pope, according to Spence, pronounced him "one of the best critics we ever had."
That Dryden should have been desirous to conciliate the favour of an avowed critic, was natural enough; but that Pope should have so spoken of Rymer, only argues, either that he was prejudiced by the opinions which his youth had sucked in from Walsh, Wycherly, and Trumbull, or that his taste for the drama was far inferior to his powers in every other range of poetry.
If Dryden had arranged and extended the materials of his answer, it is possible that he would have treated Rymer with less deference than he shewed while collecting them; for in the latter years of Dryden's life they were upon bad terms. See Vol. xii. p. 45, and Epistle to Congreve, Vol. xi. p. 57.
To a reader of the present day, when the cant of criticism has been in some degree abandoned, nothing can be more disgusting than the remarks of Rymer, who creeps over the most beautiful passages of the drama with eyes open only to their defects, or their departure from scholastic precept; who denies the name of poetry to the "Paradise Lost," and compares judging of "Rollo" by "Othello," to adjusting one crooked line by another. But I would be by no means understood to say, that there is not sometimes justice, though never mercy, in his criticism.
Dryden had intended to enter the lists with Rymer in defence of the ancient theatre, and with this view had wrote the following Heads of an Answer to the Remarks. They were jotted down on the blank leaves of a copy of the book presented to Dryden by Rymer. The volume falling into the hands of the publisher of Beaumont and Fletcher's works, in 1711, they prefixed Dryden's observations, as furnishing an apology for their authors. They were again published by Dr Johnson, into whose hands they were put by Garrick, who had the original in his collection. The arrangement is different in the two copies; that of Dr Johnson has been adopted, as preferred by Mr Malone.
That we may the less wonder why pity and terror are not now the only springs on which our tragedies move,[154] and that Shakespeare may be more excused, Rapin confesses, that the French tragedies now all run on the tendre; and gives the reason, because love is the passion which most predominates in our souls; and that therefore the passions represented become insipid, unless they are conformable to the thoughts of the audience. But it is to be concluded, that this passion works not now amongst the French so strongly, as the other two did amongst the ancients. Amongst us, who have a stronger genius for writing, the operations from the writing are much stronger; for the raising of Shakespeare's passions is more from the excellency of the words and thoughts, than the justness of the occasion; and if he has been able to pick single occasions, he has never founded the whole reasonably; yet, by the genius of poetry in writing, he has succeeded.
Rapin attributes more to the dictio, that is, to the words and discourse of a tragedy, than Aristotle has done, who places them in the last rank of beauties; perhaps, only last in order, because they are the last product of the design, of the disposition or connection of its parts, of the characters, of the manners of those characters, and of the thoughts proceeding from those manners. Rapin's words are remarkable:—It is not the admirable intrigue, the surprising events, and extraordinary incidents, that make the beauty of a tragedy; it is the discourses, when they are natural and passionate.—So are Shakespeare's.
The parts of a poem, tragic or heroic, are,
1. The fable itself.
2. The order or manner of its contrivance, in relation of the parts to the whole.
3. The manners, or decency of the characters, in speaking or acting what is proper for them, and proper to be shewn by the poet.
4. The thoughts, which express the manners.
5. The words, which express those thoughts.
In the last of these, Homer excels Virgil; Virgil all other ancient poets; and Shakespeare all modern poets.
For the second of these, the order: the meaning is, that a fable ought to have a beginning, middle, and an end, all just and natural; so that that part, e.g. which is the middle, could not naturally be the beginning or end, and so of the rest: all depend on one another, like the links of a curious chain. If terror and pity are only to be raised, certainly this author follows Aristotle's rules, and Sophocles' and Euripides's example; but joy may be raised too, and that doubly, either by seeing a wicked man punished, or a good man at last fortunate; or perhaps indignation, to see wickedness prosperous, and goodness depressed: both these may be profitable to the end of tragedy, reformation of manners; but the last improperly, only as it begets pity in the audience; though Aristotle, I confess, places tragedies of this kind in the second form.
He who undertakes to answer this excellent critique of Mr Rymer, in behalf of our English poets against the Greek, ought to do it in this manner: either by yielding to him the greatest part of what he contends for, which consists in this, that the μύθος i.e. the design and conduct of it, is more conducing in the Greeks to those ends of tragedy, which Aristotle and he propose, namely, to cause terror and pity; yet the granting this does not set the Greeks above the English poets.
But the answerer ought to prove two things: First, that the fable is not the greatest master-piece of a tragedy, though it be the foundation of it.
Secondly, that other ends, as suitable to the nature of tragedy, may be found in the English, which were not in the Greek.
Aristotle places the fable first; not quoad dignitatem, sed quoad fundamentum: for a fable, never so movingly contrived to those ends of his, pity and terror, will operate nothing on our affections, except the characters, manners, thoughts, and words, are suitable.
So that it remains for Mr Rymer to prove, that in all those, or the greatest part of them, we are inferior to Sophocles and Euripides; and this he has offered at, in some measure; but, I think, a little partially to the ancients.
For the fable itself: it is in the English more adorned with episodes, and larger than in the Greek poets; consequently more diverting. For if the action be but one, and that plain, without any counter-turn of design or episode, i.e. under-plot, how can it be so pleasing as the English, which have both under-plot and a turned design, which keeps the audience in expectation of the catastrophe? whereas in the Greek poets we see through the whole design at first.
For the characters, they are neither so many nor so various in Sophocles and Euripides, as in Shakespeare and Fletcher; only they are more adapted to those ends of tragedy which Aristotle commends to us, pity and terror.
The manners flow from the characters, and consequently must partake of their advantages and disadvantages.
The thoughts and words, which are the fourth and fifth beauties of tragedy, are certainly more noble and more poetical in the English than in the Greek, which must be proved by comparing them somewhat more equitably than Mr Rymer has done.
After all, we need not yield, that the English way is less conducing to move pity and terror, because they often shew virtue oppressed and vice punished; where they do not both, or either, they are not to be defended.
And if we should grant that the Greeks performed this better, perhaps it may admit of dispute, whether pity and terror are either the prime, or at least the only ends of tragedy.
It is not enough that Aristotle has said so, for Aristotle drew his models of tragedy from Sophocles and Euripides; and if he had seen ours, might have changed his mind. And chiefly we have to say, (what I hinted on pity and terror, in the last paragraph save one,) that the punishment of vice and reward of virtue are the most adequate ends of tragedy, because most conducing to good example of life. Now pity is not so easily raised for a criminal, (and the ancient tragedy always represents its chief person such,) as it is for an innocent man; and the suffering of innocence and punishment of the offender is of the nature of English tragedy: contrarily, in the Greek, innocence is unhappy often, and the offender escapes. Then we are not touched with the sufferings of any sort of men so much as of lovers, and this was almost unknown to the ancients: so that they neither administered poetical justice, of which Mr Rymer boasts, so well as we; neither knew they the best common-place of pity, which is love.
He therefore unjustly blames us for not building on what the ancients left us; for it seems, upon consideration of the premises, that we have wholly finished what they began.
My judgment on this piece is this; that it is extremely learned, but that the author of it is better read in the Greek than in the English poets; that all writers ought to study this critique, as the best account I have ever seen of the ancients; that the model of tragedy he has here given is excellent, and extreme correct; but that it is not the only model of all tragedy, because it is too much circumscribed in plot, characters, &c.; and lastly, that we may be taught here justly to admire and imitate the ancients, without giving them the preference, with this author, in prejudice to our own country.
Want of method in this excellent treatise, makes the thoughts of the author sometimes obscure.
His meaning, that pity and terror are to be moved, is, that they are to be moved as the means conducing to the ends of tragedy, which are pleasure and instruction.
And these two ends may be thus distinguished. The chief end of the poet is to please; for his immediate reputation depends on it.
The great end of the poem is to instruct, which is performed by making pleasure the vehicle of that instruction; for poesy is an art, and all arts are made to profit. Rapin.
The pity which the poet is to labour for, is for the criminal, not for those or him whom he has murdered, or who have been the occasion of the tragedy. The terror is likewise in the punishment of the same criminal, who, if he be represented too great an offender, will not be pitied; if altogether innocent, his punishment will be unjust.
Another obscurity is, where he says, Sophocles perfected tragedy by introducing the third actor;[155] that is, he meant, three kinds of action; one company singing, or speaking; another playing on the music; a third dancing.
To make a true judgment in this competition betwixt the Greek poets and the English, in tragedy:
Consider, first, how Aristotle has defined a tragedy. Secondly, what he assigns the end of it to be. Thirdly, what he thinks the beauties of it. Fourthly, the means to attain the end proposed.
Compare the Greek and English tragic poets justly, and without partiality, according to those rules.
Then, secondly, consider whether Aristotle has made a just definition of tragedy; of its parts, of its ends, and of its beauties; and whether he, having not seen any others but those of Sophocles, Euripides, &c. had, or truly could determine what all the excellencies of tragedy are, and wherein they consist.
Next shew in what ancient tragedy was deficient; for example, in the narrowness of its plots, and fewness of persons; and try whether that be not a fault in the Greek poets, and whether their excellency was so great, when the variety was visibly so little; or whether what they did was not very easy to do.
Then make a judgment on what the English have added to their beauties; as, for example, not only more plot, but also new passions, as, namely, that of love, scarce touched on by the ancients, except in this one example of Phædra, cited by Mr Rymer; and in that how short they were of Fletcher.
Prove also that love, being an heroic passion, is fit for tragedy, which cannot be denied, because of the example alleged of Phædra; and how far Shakespeare has out-done them in friendship, &c.
To return to the beginning of this enquiry; consider, if pity and terror be enough for tragedy to move; and I believe, upon a true definition of tragedy, it will be found, that its work extends farther, and that is to reform manners, by a delightful representation of human life in great persons, by way of dialogue. If this be true, then not only pity and terror are to be moved, as the only means to bring us to virtue, but generally love to virtue, and hatred to vice, by shewing the rewards of one, and punishments of the other; at least, by rendering virtue always amiable, though it be shewn unfortunate, and vice detestable, though it be shewn triumphant.
If then, the encouragement of virtue, and discouragement of vice, be the proper ends of poetry in tragedy, pity and terror, though good means, are not the only. For all the passions, in their turns, are to be set in a ferment; as joy, anger, love, fear, are to be used as the poet's common-places, and a general concernment for the principal actors is to be raised, by making them appear such in their characters, their words, and actions, as will interest the audience in their fortunes.
And if, after all, in a larger sense, pity comprehends this concernment for the good, and terror includes detestation for the bad, then let us consider whether the English have not answered this end of tragedy, as well as the ancients, or perhaps better.
And here Mr Rymer's objections against these plays are to be impartially weighed, that we may see whether they are of weight enough to turn the balance against our countrymen.
It is evident, those plays which he arraigns, have moved both those passions in a high degree upon the stage.
To give the glory of this away from the poet, and to place it upon the actors, seems unjust.[156]
One reason is, because whatever actors they have found, the event has been the same, that is, the same passions have been always moved; which shews, that there is something of force and merit in the plays themselves, conducing to the design of raising these two passions: and suppose them ever to have been excellently acted, yet action only adds grace, vigour, and more life, upon the stage, but cannot give it wholly where it is not first. But secondly, I dare appeal to those who have never seen them acted, if they have not found these two passions moved within them; and if the general voice will carry it, Mr Rymer's prejudice will take off his single testimony.
This, being matter of fact, is reasonably to be established by this appeal; as if one man says it is night, when the rest of the world conclude it to be day, there needs no farther argument against him, that it is so.
If he urge, that the general taste is depraved, his arguments to prove this can at best but evince, that our poets took not the best way to raise those passions; but experience proves against him, that those means which they have used have been successful, and have produced them.
And one reason of that success is, in my opinion, this, that Shakespeare and Fletcher have written to the genius of the age and nation in which they lived; for though nature, as he objects, is the same in all places, and reason too the same, yet the climate, the age, the disposition of the people, to whom a poet writes, may be so different, that what pleased the Greeks would not satisfy an English audience.
And if they proceeded upon a foundation of truer reason to please the Athenians, than Shakespeare and Fletcher to please the English, it only shews, that the Athenians were a more judicious people; but the poet's business is certainly to please the audience.
Whether our English audience have been pleased hitherto with acorns, as he calls it, or with bread, is the next question; that is, whether the means which Shakespeare and Fletcher have used in their plays to raise those passions before named, be better applied to the ends by the Greek poets than by them. And perhaps we shall not grant him this wholly: let it be yielded, that a writer is not to run down with the stream, or to please the people by their own usual methods, but rather to reform their judgments,—it still remains to prove, that our theatre needs this total reformation.
The faults which he has found in their designs, are rather wittily aggravated in many places, than reasonably urged; and as much may be returned on the Greeks by one who were as witty as himself.
2. They destroy not, if they are granted, the foundation of the fabric, only take away from the beauty of the symmetry: for example, the faults in the character of the "King and no King"[157] are not as he makes them, such as render him detestable, but only imperfections which accompany human nature, and are for the most part excused by the violence of his love; so that they destroy not our pity or concernment for him. This answer may be applied to most of his objections of that kind.
And Rollo[158] committing many murders, when he is answerable but for one, is too severely arraigned by him, for it adds to our horror and detestation of the criminal; and poetic justice is not neglected neither, for we stab him in our minds for every offence which he commits; and the point which the poet is to gain on the audience is not so much in the death of an offender, as the raising an horror of his crimes.
That the criminal should neither be wholly guilty, nor wholly innocent, but so participating of both as to move both pity and terror, is certainly a good rule, but not perpetually to be observed; for that were to make all tragedies too much alike; which objection he foresaw, but has not fully answered.
To conclude, therefore; if the plays of the ancients are more correctly plotted, ours are more beautifully written. And if we can raise passions as high on worse foundations, it shews our genius in tragedy is greater; for, in all other parts of it, the English have manifestly excelled them.
The following effusion of spleen, which is altogether unworthy of Dryden, took its rise in the animosity of literary rivalship.
About 1673, the Earl of Rochester, who had been formerly on good terms with Dryden, had received a dedication from him, and made a suitable return of compliment,[159] became his bitter opponent and enemy. This was probably owing to Dryden's intimacy with Sheffield, Earl Mulgrave, who had challenged Rochester, and publicly branded him with cowardice for his refusal to fight him.[160] The witty and profligate courtier turned that resentment against the poet, which he durst not shew to the patron, and endeavoured to injure him on every opportunity.
Elkanah Settle, whom we have had former opportunities to commemorate, was now rising into notice. He was the son of Joseph Settle, of Dunstable, in Bedfordshire, and had distinguished himself by a tragedy, called "Cambyses, King of Persia," which was acted for three weeks together. Emboldened by this success, he produced a second play, entitled "The Empress of Morocco." Upon this tragedy, and its author, Rochester fixed, as the implements of his plan, to humble and mortify Dryden. He made use of his influence to introduce Settle at court as a poet greatly superior to our bard; and he was received at least upon equal terms with him. Even Sheffield contributed to Dryden's mortification, and, perhaps in obedience to the king, graced "The Empress of Morocco" with a prologue of his own writing, which was spoken by Lady Betty Howard, when the piece was presented at Whitehall, by the gentlemen and ladies of the court. Rochester wrote a second prologue, which was spoken by the same lady, on a second representation of the same distinguished kind. The bookseller contributed his share of celebrity to the piece, by decorating it with four engravings, each representing a scene in the play; an honour which had not hitherto been conferred on any single play: with these decorations it sold for two shillings, being double the common price. Lastly, the public bought up the edition with great rapidity, and very naturally employed themselves in weighing the merits of the new bard against those of our author, who had hitherto reigned paramount over the drama.
All these circumstances combined to vex the spirit of Dryden. There was not only a vile bombastic production publicly weighed against his most laboured plays, but the author, presuming upon the countenance of a numerous party among the public, had openly bid him defiance, by sundry irreverend sneers at him in the prefatory epistle of his garnished and bedizened performance. This Dryden termed, "a most arrogant, calumniating, ill-natured, and scandalous preface."[161]
It had been undoubtedly wise in Dryden to have disdained to enter the arena with such an antagonist. Settle must soon have sunk by his own weight, to the dishonour and confusion of his supporters; but the spirit of controversy and party were to buoy him up a little longer. Our author, irritated and imprudent, entered into a league with Shadwell, (afterwards a hostile name,) and with John Crowne, another dramatist of the day, to humble at once the pride of Settle, by such a criticism as should make his party ashamed of their poet, and the poet of his own production. Accordingly, "The Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco," the work of the three allies, came forth in 4to, in 1674. None of the consequences followed which Dryden had probably expected. Settle retorted, and stupid and vulgar as he was, it was hardly possible for him to fall beneath the Billingsgate with which he had been assailed.[162] On the contrary, he rather gained reputation by the contest, and fairly divided with Dryden the applauses of the court and of the universities. It was not until the controversy subsided, that Elkanah lost his unnatural and unmerited literary importance. In the mean time, the feud between Dryden and him was inflamed by political hatred, and at length procured Elkanah the bitter distinction, of being described in "Absalom and Achitophel," under the name of Doeg. Vol. IX. pages 331, 373.
It were to be wished, our author could be exculpated from any share in the coarse and illiberal invective which follows these introductory remarks. But it is too certain, from the evidence of Dennis, as well as Settle's affirmation, that Dryden did stoop to revise the pamphlet, and probably to write the preface and postscript. These cannot therefore be rejected from a full edition of his works; but I willingly follow Mr Malone's authority in rejecting the rest of the pamphlet, excepting a small specimen.
Morally considered, the piece affords an useful lesson, how much irritation can debase even the composition of genius. The best satirist, like a fencer, loses the skill of his art when he loses his temper; and if Dryden afterwards succeeded in making a ridiculous portrait of Elkanah Settle, it was because he had lost apprehension of him as a rival, and cooled his indignation with a proportion of contempt suitable to its object.
When I first saw "The Empress of Morocco," though I found it then to be a rhapsody of nonsense, I was very well contented to have let it pass, that the reputation of a new author might not be wholly damned; but that he might be encouraged to make his audience some part of amends another time. In order to this, I strained a point of conscience to cry up some passages of the play, which I hoped would recommend it to the liking of the more favourable judges; but the ill report it had from those that had seen it at Whitehall, had already done its business with judicious men. It was generally disliked by them; and but for the help of scenes, and habits, and a dancing tree, even the Ludgate audience had forsaken it.[163]
After this ill success, one would have thought the poet should have been sufficiently mortified; and though he were not naturally modest, should at least have deferred the showing of his impudence till a fitter season: but instead of this, he has written before his play the most arrogant, calumniating, ill-mannered, and senseless Preface I ever saw. This upstart illiterate scribbler, who lies more open to censure than any writer of the age, comes amongst the poets, like one of the earth-born brethren; and his first business in the world is to attack and murder all his fellows. This, I confess, raised a little indignation in me, as much as I was capable of for so contemptible a wretch, and made me think it somewhat necessary that he should be made an example, to the discouragement of all such petulant ill writers; and that he should be dragged out of that obscurity to which his own poetry would for ever have condemned him. I knew, indeed, that to write against him was to do him too great an honour; but I considered Ben Jonson had done it before to Dekker, our author's predecessor, whom he chastised in his "Poetaster," under the character of Crispinus; and brought him in vomiting up his fustian and nonsense.[164] Should our poet have been introduced in the same manner, he must have disgorged his whole play, ere he had been cleansed. Never did I see such a confused heap of false grammar, improper English, strained hyperboles, and downright bulls. His plot is incoherent, and full of absurdities, and the characters of his persons so ill chosen, that they are all either knaves or fools; only his knaves are fools into the bargain, and so must be of necessity, while they are in his management. They all speak alike, and without distinction of character; that is, every one rants, and swaggers, and talks nonsense abundantly. He steals notoriously from his contemporaries, but he so alters the property, by disguising his theft in ill English and bad applications, that he makes the child his own by deforming it:—male dum recitas, incipit esse tuus. A poet, when he sees his thoughts in so ill a dress, is ashamed to confess they ever belonged to him. For the Latin and Greek authors, he had certainly done them the same injury he has done the English, but that he has the excuse of Aretine for not railing against God;—he steals not from them, because he never knew them. In short, he is an animal of a most deplored understanding, without reading and conversation: his being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought, which he can never fashion either into wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough-hewn; his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and ill sounding. That little talent which he has, is fancy. He sometimes labours with a thought, but with the pudder he makes to bring it into the world, it is commonly still-born; so that, for want of learning and elocution, he will never be able to express any thing either naturally or justly. This subjects him on all occasions to false allusions, and mistaken points of wit. As for judgment, he has not the least grain of it; and therefore all his plays will be a mere confusion. What a beastly pattern of a king, whom he intends virtuous, has he shewn in his Muly Labas? Yet he is the only person who is kept to his character; for he is a perpetual fool; and I dare undertake, that if he were played by Nokes, who acted just such another monarch in "Macbeth,"[165] it would give new life to the play, and do it more good than all its devils. But of all women, the Lord bless us from his Laula! nobody can be safe from her: she is so naturally mischievous, that she kills without the least occasion, for the mere lechery of bloodshed. I suspect he took her character from the poisoning-woman, who, they say, makes almost as little ceremony of a murder as that Queen.
It were endless to run over the rest; but they are all of the same stamp. He has a heavy hand at fools, and a great felicity in writing nonsense for them. Fools they will be in spite of him. His king, his two empresses, his villain, and his sub-villain, nay his hero, have all a certain natural cast of the father; one turn of the countenance goes through all his children. Their folly was born and bred in them; and something of the Elkanah will be visible. Our poet, in writing fools, has very much in him of that sign-post painter, who was famous only for drawing roses: when a vintner desired him to paint a lion, he answered, he would do it to content him, but he was sure it would be like a rose. Yet since the common audience are much of his level, and both the great vulgar and the small (as Mr Cowley calls them) are apt to admire what they do not understand, (omne ignotum habent pro magnifico,) and think all which rumbles is heroic, it will be no wonder if he pass for a great author amongst town fools and city wits. With these men, they who laugh at him will be thought envious; for they will be sure to rise up in arms for nonsense, and violently defend a cause in which they are engaged by the ties of nature and education. But it will be for the benefit of mankind hereafter to observe what kind of people they are who frequent this play, that men of common sense may know whom to shun. Yet I dare assure the reader, that one half of the faults and absurdities are not shewn; what is here is only selected fustian, impertinence, and false grammar. There is as much behind, as would reasonably damn as many plays as there are acts; for I am sure there are no four lines together, which are free from some error, and commonly a gross one. But here is enough to take a taste of him; to have observed all, were to have swelled a volume, and have made you pay as dear for a fool's picture, as you have done for his tragedy with sculptures.
As if incense could carry up thoughts, or a thought go up in smoke: he may as well say, he will roast or bake thoughts, as smoke them. And the allusion too is very agreeable and natural: he compares thunder, lightning, and roaring of guns, to incense; and says thus,—he expresses his loud joys in a concert of thundering guns, as men send up silent vows in gentle incense. If this description is not plentifully supplied with nonsense, I will refer myself to the reader. No doubt it was worth our poet's pains to cut a river up to Morocco, for the sake of such a description of ships as this. A rare and studied piece it is. The poet has employed his art about every line, that it may be esteemed a curiosity in its kind, and himself a person endowed with a peculiar talent in writing new and exact nonsense. And for this no doubt it was, that our poet was so much courted, sent for from place to place, that you could hardly cross a street but you met him puffing and blowing, with his fardel of nonsense under his arm, driving his bulls in haste to some great person or other to shew them, as if he had lately come out of Asia or Africa with strange kinds of dromedaries, rhinoceroses, or a new Cambyses, a beast more monstrous than any of the former. Nay, both the playhouses contended for him, as if he had found out some new way of eating fire. No doubt their design was to entertain the town with a rarity. People had been long weary of good sense that looked like nonsense, and now they would treat them with nonsense which yet looked very like sense. But as he that pretended he would shew a beast which was very like a horse, and was no horse, set people much admiring what strange animal it should be, but when they came in, and found it was nothing but a plain grey mare, laughed a while at the conceit, but were ready after to stone the fellow for his impudence; so it must needs fare with our poet, when his upper-gallery fools discover they have tricks put upon them, and all that they have so ignorantly clapped is downright nonsense. And for my part, I cannot but admire, that not only to those who know, or at least have had time enough to learn, what sense is, but also to a people who, of all nations in the world, pretend to understand best what belongs to shipping, our poet should dare to offer this fustian for sense and a description of ships; a description so ridiculous, that Mulylabas, as errant a fool, and as ignorant of ships as he is, must needs discover, that he is abused, and that ships cannot be such things as the poet makes them. But 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 trans-nonsense sense, that, by my stuff, people may judge the better what his is: