recklessness of the courtesan, the jealousies of the grisette, the pettiness of a chapman's wife, the billingsgate of a fishwoman. The heroes are the most unpleasant of swashbucklers. Leonidas, first recognised as hereditary prince, then suddenly forsaken, consoles himself with this modest reflection: "Tis true I am alone. So was the godhead, ere he made the world, And better served himself than served by nature. . . . I have scene enough within To exercise my virtue.' 1 Shall I speak of that great trumpet-blower Almanzor, painted, as Dryden confesses, after Artaban, a redresser of wrongs, a battalionsmiter, a destroyer of kingdoms? They are but overcharged sentiments, extemporised devotions, exaggerated generosities, high-sounding brag of a clumsy chivalry; at bottom the characters are clods and barbarians, who have tried to deck themselves in French honour and fashionable politeness. And such, in fact, was the English court: it imitated that of Louis XIV. as a sign-painter imitates an artist. It had neither taste nor refinement, and wished to appear as if it possessed them. Panders and licentious women, bullying or butchering courtiers, who would go and see Harrison drawn, or mutilate Coventry, maids of honour who have awkward accidents at a ball, or sell to the planters the convicts presented to them, a palace full of baying dogs and yelling gamesters, a king who would bandy obscenities in public with his halfnaked mistresses,—such was this illustrious society; from French modes they took but those of dress, from their noble sentiments but highsounding words. IV. The second point worthy of imitation in classical tragedy is the style. Dryden, in fact, purifies his own, and renders it more clear, by introducing close reasoning and precise words. He has oratorical discussions like Corneille, well-delivered retorts, symmetrical, like a 1 Marriage à la Mode, iv. 3. 1. 2 The first image I had of him was from the Achilles of Homer, the next from Tasso's Rinaldo, and the third from the Artaban of Monsieur Calpranède.'-Preface to Almanzor. 3 The Moors have heaven, and me, to assist their cause' (i. 1). 'I'll whistle thy tame fortune after me' (3. 1). He falls in love, and speaks thus: 5 Compare the song of the Zambra dance in the first part of Almanzor and Almahide, 3. 1. duel of argument. He has maxims vigorously enclosed in the compass of a single line, distinctions, developments, and the whole art of special pleading. He has happy antitheses, ornamental epithets, finely-wrought comparisons, and all the artifices of the literary mind. What is most striking is, that he abandons the dramatic and national verse, which is without rhyme, and the mixture of prose and verse common to the old authors, for a rhymed tragedy like the French, fancying that he is thus inventing a new species, which he calls heroic play. But in this transformation the good perished, the bad remains. For mark, rhyme is a different thing in different races. To an Englishman it resembles a song, and transports him at once to an ideal and fairy world. To a Frenchman it is only a conventionalism or an expediency, and transports him at once to an ante-chamber or a drawing-room; to him it is an ornamental dress and nothing more; if it mars prose, it ennobles it; it imposes respect, not enthusiasm, and changes a vulgar into a high-bred style. Moreover, in French aristocratic verse everything is connected; pedantry, logical machinery of every kind, is excluded from it; there is nothing more disagreeable to well-bred and refined persons than the scholastic rust. Images are rare, but always well kept up; bold poesy, real fantasy, have no place in it; their brilliancy and divergencies would derange the politeness and regular flow of the social world. The right word, the prominence of free expressions, are not to be met with in it; general terms, always rather threadbare, suit best the caution and niceties of select society. Dryden stumbles heavily against all these rules. His rhymes, to an Englishman's ear, scatter at once the whole illusion of the stage; they see that the characters who speak thus are but squeaking mannikins; he himself admits that his heroic tragedy is only fit to represent on the stage chivalric poems like those of Ariosto and Spenser. Poetic dash gives the finishing stroke to all likelihood. Would you recognise the dramatic accent in this epic comparison ? 'As some fair tulip, by a storm oppress'd, Hears, from within, the wind sing round its head, So, shrouded up, your beauty disappears: Unveil, my love, and lay aside your fears, The storm, that caused your fright, is pass'd and done.'1 What a singular triumphal song are these concetti of Cortez as he lands: 'On what new happy climate are we thrown, So long kept secret, and so lately known? As if our old world modestly withdrew, And here in private had brought forth a new.'2 1 The first part of Almanzor and Almahide, iv. 5. 2. Think how these patches of colour would contrast with the sober design of French dissertation. Here lovers lay siege with metaphors; there a wooer, in order to magnify the beauties of his mistress, says that 'bloody hearts lie panting in her hand.' In every page harsh or vulgar words spoil the regularity of a noble style. Ponderous logic is broadly displayed in the speeches of princesses. "Two ifs,' says Lyndaraxa, ‘scarce make one possibility." Dryden sets his college cap on the heads of these poor women. Neither he nor his characters are well brought up; they have taken from the French but the outer garb of the bar and the schools; they have left behind symmetrical eloquence, measured diction, elegance and delicacy. A while before, the licentious coarseness of the Restoration pierced the mask of the fine sentiments with which it was covered; now the rude English imagination breaks the oratorical mould in which it tried to enclose itself. Let us turn the picture. Dryden would keep the foundation of the old English drama, and retains the abundance of events, the variety of plot, the surprise of accident, and the physical representation of bloody or violent action. He kills as many people as Shakspeare. Unfortunately, all poets are not justified in killing. When they take their spectators among murders and sudden accidents, they ought to have a hundred hidden preparations. Fancy a sort of rapture and romantic folly, a most daring style, eccentric and poetical, songs, pictures, reveries spoken aloud, frank scorn of all verisimilitude, a mixture of tenderness, philosophy, and mockery, all the retiring charms of varied feelings, all the whims of a buoyant fancy; the truth of events matters little. No one before Cymbeline or As you Like it was a politician or a historian; no one took these military processions, these accessions of princes, seriously; the spectators were present at dissolving views. They did not demand that things should proceed after the laws of nature; on the contrary, they willingly did require that they should proceed against the laws of nature. The irrationality is the charm. That new world must be all imagination; if it was only so by halves, no one would care to rise to it. This is why we do not rise to Dryden's. A queen dethroned, then suddenly set up again; a tyrant who finds his lost son, is deceived, adopts a girl in his place; a young prince led to punishment, who snatches the sword of a guard, and recovers his crown: such are the romances which constitute the Maiden Queen and the Marriage à la Mode. We can imagine what a display classical dissertations make in this medley; solid reason beats down imagination, stroke after stroke, to the ground. We cannot tell if the matter be a true portrait or a fancy painting; we remain suspended between truth and fancy; we should like either to get up to 1 The first part of Almanzor and Almahide, iv. 2. 1. This same Lyndaraxa says also to Abdalla (4. 2), 'Poor women's thoughts are all extempore, and logical, and coarse;' in Act 2. 1, to the same lover, who entreats her to make him 'happy,' If I make you so, you shall pay my price.' heaven or down to earth, and we jump down as quick as possible from the clumsy scaffolding where the poet would perch us. On the other hand, when Shakspeare wishes to impress a doctrine, not raise a dream, he disposes us to it beforehand, but after another fashion. We naturally remain in doubt before a cruel action: we divine that the red irons which are about to put out the eyes of little Arthur are painted sticks, and that the six rascals who besiege Rome, are supernumeraries hired at a shilling a night. To conquer this mistrust we must employ the most natural style, circumstantial and rude imitation of the manners of the guardroom and of the alehouse; I could only believe in Jack Cade's sedition on hearing the dirty words of bestial lewdness and mobbish stupidity. You must let me have the jests, the coarse laughter, drunkenness, the manners of butchers and tanners, to make me imagine a mob or an election. So in murders, let me feel the fire of bubbling passion, the accumulation of despair or hate which have unchained the will and nerved the hand. When the unchecked words, the fits of rage, the convulsive ejaculations of exasperated desire, have brought me in contact with all the links of the inward necessity which has moulded the man and guided the crime, I shall no longer think whether the knife is bloody, because I shall feel with inner trembling the passion which has handled it. Must I verify the death of Shakspeare's Cleopatra? The strange laugh that bursts from her when the basket of saps is brought, the sudden tension of nerves, the flow of feverish words, the fitful gaiety, the coarse language, the torrent of ideas with which she overflows, have already made me sound all the depths of suicide,1 and I have foreseen it from the beginning. This madness of an imagination, fired by climate and despotic power; these woman's, queen's, prostitute's nerves; this marvellous self-abandonment to all the raptures of invention and desire these cries, tears, foam on the lips, tempest of insults, actions, 1'He words me, girls; he words me, that I should not Now, Iras, what think'st thou ? Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown In Rome, as well as I: mechanic slaves, With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall Saucy lictors Will catch at us, like strumpets; and scald rhymers Ballad us out o' tune; the quick comedians Extemporally will stage us, and present Our Alexandrian revels; Antony Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness I' the posture of a whore. . . . Husband, I come : Now to that name my courage prove my title! emotions; this promptitude to murder, announce the rage with which she would rush against the least obstacle and be dashed to pieces. What does Dryden effect in this matter with his written phrases ? What of the maid, speaking in the author's words, who bids her halfmad mistress 'call reason to assist you?' What of such a Cleopatra as his, designed after Lady Castlemaine,1 skilled in artifices and whimpering, voluptuous and a coquette, with neither the nobleness of virtue nor the greatness of crime: 'Nature meant me A wife; a silly, harmless, household dove, Nay, certainly, or at least this turtle-dove would not have tamed or kept an Antony; a woman without any prejudices alone could do it, by the superiority of boldness and the fire of genius. I can see already from the title of the piece why Dryden has softened Shakspeare: All for Love; or, the World well Lost. What a wretchedness, to reduce such events to a pastoral, to excuse Antony, to praise Charles II. indirectly, to bleat as in a sheepfold! And such was the taste of his contemporaries. When Dryden wrote the Tempest after Shakspeare, and the State of Innocence after Milton, he again spoiled the ideas of his masters; he turned Eve and Miranda into courtesans; he extinguished everywhere, under conventionalism and indecencies, the frankness, severity, delicacy, and charm of the original invention. By his side, Settle, Shadwell, Sir Robert Howard did worse. The Empress of Morocco, by Settle, was so admired, that the gentlemen and ladies of the court learned it by heart, to play at Whitehall before the king. And this was not a passing I give to baser life. So; have you done? Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep?'-Shakspeare's Antony and Cleopatra, 5. 2. These two last lines, referring to the asp, are sublime as the joke of a courtesan and an artist. 3 1'Come to me, come, my soldier, to my arms! With broken murmurs, and with amorous sighs, I'll say, you were unkind, and punish you, And mark you red with many an eager kiss.'-All for Love, v. 3. 1. All for Love, 4. 1. * Dryden's Miranda says, in the Tempest (2. 2): ‘And if I can but escape with life, I had rather be in pain nine months, as my father threatened, than lose my longing.' Miranda has a sister; they quarrel, are jealous of each other, and so See also in The State of Innocence, 3. 1, the description which Eve gives of her happiness, and the ideas which her confidences suggest to Satan. on. VOL. II. B |