Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle. And now we are come from aboard his dancing, masquing, rebounding, breathing fleet; and as if we had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but fools and nonsense.

POSTSCRIPT.

Some who are pleased with the bare sound of verse, or the rumbling of robustious nonsense, will be apt to think Mr Settle too severely handled in this pamphlet; but I do assure the reader, that there are a vast number of errors passed by, perhaps as many, or more, than are taken notice of, both to avoid the tediousness of the work, and the greatness. It might have occasioned a volume upon such a trifle. I dare affirm, that no objections in this book are fruitless cavils: but if, through too much haste, Mr Settle may be accused of any seeming fault, which may reasonably be defended, let the passing by many gross errors without reprehension compound for it. I am not ignorant, that his admirers, who most commonly are women, will resent this very ill; and some little friends of his, who are smatterers in poetry, will be ready for most of his gross errors to use that much mistaken plea of poetica licentia, which words fools are apt to use for the palliating the most absurd nonsense in any poem. I cannot find when poets had liberty, from any authority, to write nonsense, more than any other men. Nor is that plea of poetica licentia used as a subterfuge by any but weak professors of that art, who are commonly given over to a mist of fancy, a buzzing of invention, and a sound of something like sense, and have no use of judgment. They never think thoroughly, but the best of their thoughts are like those we have in dreams, imperfect; which though perhaps we are often pleased with sleeping, we blush at waking. The licentious wildness and extravagance of such men's conceits have made poetry contemned by some, though it be very unjust for any to condemn the science for the weakness of some of the professors.

Men that are given over to fancy only, are little better than madmen. What people say of fire, viz. that it is a good servant, but an ill master, may not unaptly be applied to fancy; which, when it is too active, rages, but when cooled and allayed by the judgment, produces admirable effects. But this rage of fancy is never Mr Settle's crime; he has too much phlegm, and too little choler, to be accused of this. He has all the pangs and throes of a fanciful poet, but is never delivered of any more perfect issue of his phlegmatic brain, than a dull Dutchwoman's sooterkin is of her body.

His style is very muddy, and yet much laboured; for his meaning (for sense there is not much) is most commonly obscure, but never by reason of too much height, but lowness. His fancy never flies out of sight, but often sinks out of sight:—but now I hope the reader will excuse some digression upon the extravagant use of fancy and poetical licence.

Fanciful poetry and music, used with moderation, are good; but men who are wholly given over to either of them, are commonly as full of whimsies as diseased and splenetic men can be. Their heads are continually hot, and they have the same elevation of fancy sober, which men of sense have when they drink. So wine used moderately does not take away the judgment, but used continually, debauches men's understandings, and turns them into sots, making their heads continually hot by accident, as the others are by nature; so, mere poets and mere musicians are as sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging any thing clearly.

A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical, and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet; and besides this, should have experience in all sorts of humours and manners of men; should be thoroughly skilled in conversation, and should have a great knowledge of mankind in general. Mr Settle having never studied any sort of learning but poetry, and that but slenderly, as you may find by his writings, and having besides no other advantages, must make very lame work on't; he himself declares, he neither reads, nor cares for conversation; so that he would persuade us he is a kind of fanatic in poetry, and has a light within him, and writes by an inspiration; which (like that of the heathen prophets) a man must have no sense of his own when he receives; and no doubt he would be thought inspired, and would be reverenced extremely in the country where Santons are worshipped. But some will, I doubt not, object, that poetry should not be reduced to the strictness of mathematics; to which I answer, it ought to be so far mathematical as to have likeness and proportion, since they will all confess that it is a kind of painting. But they will perhaps say, that a poem is a picture to be seen at a distance, and therefore ought to be bigger than the life. I confess there must be a due distance allowed for the seeing of any thing in the world; for an object can no more be seen at all too near, than too far off the eye: but granting that a poem is a picture to be viewed at a great distance, the distance and the bigness ought to be so suited, as though the picture be much bigger than the life, yet it must not seem so; and what miserable mistakes some poets make for want of knowing this truly, I leave to men of sense to judge; and by the way, let us consider that dramatic poetry, especially the English, brings the picture nearer the eye, than any other sort of poetry.

But some will say after this, what licence is left for poets? Certainly the same that good poets ever took, without being faulty, (for surely the best were so sometimes, because they were but men,) and that licence is fiction; which kind of poetry is like that of landscape-painting; and poems of this nature, though they be not vera, ought to be verisimilia.

The great art of poets is either the adorning and beautifying of truth, or the inventing pleasing and probable fictions. If they invent impossible fables, like some of Æsop's, they ought to have such morals couched under them, as may tend to the instruction of mankind, or the regulation of manners, or they can be of no use; nor can they really delight any but such as would be pleased with Tom Thumb, without these circumstances. But there are some pedants, who will quote authority from the ancients for the faults and extravagancies of some of the moderns; who being able to imitate nothing but the faults of the classic authors, mistake them for their excellencies. I speak with all due reverence to the ancients; for no man esteems their perfections more than myself, though I confess I have not that blind implicit faith in them which some ignorant schoolmasters would impose upon us, to believe in all their errors, and own all their crimes: to some pedants every thing in them is of that authority, that they will create a new figure of rhetoric out of the fault of an old poet. I am apt to believe the same faults were found in them, when they wrote, which men of sense find now; but not the excellencies which schoolmasters would persuade us: yet I must say now,

PREFACE
TO THE
HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD.

I have thought convenient to acquaint the reader with somewhat concerning this comedy, though perhaps not worth his knowledge. It was sent me from Italy some years since, by my second son, to try its fortune on the stage; and being the essay of a young unexperienced author, to confess the truth, I thought it not worthy of that honour. It is true, I was not willing to discourage him so far, as to tell him plainly my opinion, but it seems he guessed somewhat of my mind, by my long delays of his expectation; and therefore, in my absence from the town last summer, took the boldness to dedicate his play to that person of honour whose name you will find before his Epistle. It was received by that noble gentleman with so much candour and generosity, as neither my son nor I could deserve from him. Then the play was no longer in my power; the patron demanding it in his own right, it was delivered to him: and he was farther pleased, during my sickness, to put it into that method in which you find it; the loose scenes digested into order, and knit into a tale.

As it is, I think it may pass amongst the rest of our new plays: I know but two authors, and they are both my friends,[167] who have done better since the Revolution. This I dare venture to maintain, that the taste of the age is wretchedly depraved in all sorts of poetry; nothing almost but what is abominably bad can please. The young hounds, who ought to come behind, now lead the pack; but they miserably mistake the scent. Their poets, worthy of such an audience, know not how to distinguish their characters; the manners are all alike inconsistent, and interfering with each other. There is scarce a man or woman of God's making in all their farces, yet they raise an unnatural sort of laughter, the common effect of buffoonery; and the rabble, which takes this for wit, will endure no better, because it is above their understanding. This account I take from the best judges; for I thank God, I have had the grace hitherto to avoid the seeing or reading of their gallimaufries. But it is the latter end of a century, and I hope the next will begin better.

This play, I dare assure the reader, is none of those; it may want beauties, but the faults are neither gross, nor many. Perfection in any art is not suddenly obtained: the author of this, to his misfortune, left his country at a time when he was to have learned the language. The story he has treated, was an accident which happened at Rome, though he has transferred the scene to England. If it shall please God to restore him to me, I may perhaps inform him better of the rules of writing; and if I am not partial, he has already shewn that a genius is not wanting to him. All that I can reasonably fear is, that the perpetual good success of ill plays may make him endeavour to please by writing worse, and by accommodating himself to the wretched capacity and liking of the present audience, from which heaven defend any of my progeny! A poet, indeed, must live by the many; but a good poet will make it his business to please the few. I will not proceed farther on a subject which arraigns so many of the readers.

For what remains, both my son and I are extremely obliged to my dear friend, Mr Congreve, whose excellent Prologue was one of the greatest ornaments of the play. Neither is my Epilogue the worst which I have written; though it seems, at the first sight, to expose our young clergy with too much freedom. It was on that consideration that I had once begun it otherwise, and delivered the copy of it to be spoken, in case the first part of it had given offence. This I will give you, partly in my own justification, and partly too because I think it not unworthy of your sight; only remembering you, that the last line connects the sense to the ensuing part of it.—Farewell, reader: if you are a father, you will forgive me; if not, you will when you are a father.

END OF THE FIFTEENTH VOLUME.

Edinburgh,
Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.