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The widow, the termagant heroine of the poem, is still more disagreeable than her lover: and her sarcastic account of the passion of love, as consisting entirely in an attachment to land and houses, goods and chattels, which is enforced with all the rhetoric the author is master of, and hunted down through endless similes, is evidently false. The vulgarity and meanness of sentiment which Butler complains of in the Presbyterians, seems at last, from long familiarity and close contemplation, to have tainted his own mind. Their worst vices appear to have taken root in his imagination. Nothing but what was selfish and groveling sunk into his memory, in the depression of a menial situation under his supposed hero. He has, indeed, carried his private grudge too far into his general speculations. He even makes out the rebels to be cowards and well beaten, which does not accord with the history of the times. In an excess of zeal for church and state, he is too much disposed to treat religion as a cheat and liberty as a farce. It was the cant of that day (from which he is not free) to cry down sanctity and sobriety as marks of disaffection, as it is the cant of this to hold them up as proofs of loyalty and staunch monarchical principles. Religion and morality are, in either case, equally subservient to the spirit of party, and a stalking-horse to the love of power. Finally, there is a want of pathos and humour, but no want of interest in Hudibras. It is difficult to lay it down. One thought is inserted into another; the links in the chain of reasoning are so closely rivetted, that the attention seldom flags, but is kept alive (without any other assistance) by the mere force of writing. There are occasional indications of poetical fancy, and an eye for natural beauty; but these are kept under or soon discarded, judiciously enough, but it should seem, not for lack of power, for they are certainly as masterly as they are rare. Such is the burlesque description of the stocks, or allegorical prison, in which first Crowdero and then Hudibras are confined: the passage beginning-

"As when an owl that's in a barn,

Sees a mouse creeping in the corn,
Sits still and shuts his round blue eyes,
As if he slept," &c.

And the description of the moon going down in the early morning, which is as pure, original, and picturesque as possible :

"The queen of night, whose large command

Rules all the sea and half the land,

And over moist and crazy brains

In high spring-tides at midnight reigns,
Was now declining to the west,

To go to bed and take her rest."

Butler is sometimes scholastic, but he makes his learning tell to good account; and for the purposes of burlesque, nothing can be better fitted than the scholastic style.

Butler's 'Remains' are nearly as good and full of sterling genius as his principal poem. Take the following ridicule of the plan of the Greek tragedies as an instance:

"Reduce all tragedy, by rules of art,
Back to its ancient theatre, a cart,

And make them henceforth keep the beaten roads
Of reverend choruses and episodes;

Reform and regulate a puppet-play,
According to the true and ancient way;
That not an actor shall presume to squeak
Unless he have a licence for 't in Greek;
Nor devil in the puppet-play be allowed
To roar and spit fire, but to fright the crowd,
Unless some god or demon chance to have piques
Against an ancient family of Greeks;

That other men may tremble and take warning
Now such a fatal progeny they're born in;

For none but such for tragedy are fitted

That have been ruined only to be pitied;

And only those held proper to deter

Who have th' ill luck against their wills to err;
Whence only such as are of middling sizes,

Betwixt morality and venial vices,

Are qualified to be destroyed by fate,
For other mortals to take warning at."

Upon Critics.

His ridicule of Milton's Latin style is equally severe, but not so

well founded.

I have only to add a few words respecting the dramatic writers about this time, before we arrive at the golden period of our comedy. Those of Etherege* are good for nothing, except 'The Man of Mode,' or 'Sir Fopling Flutter,' which is, I think, a more exquisite and airy picture of the manners of that age than any other extant. Sir Fopling himself is an inimitable coxcomb, but pleasant withal. He is a suit of clothes personified. Dorimant (supposed to be Lord Rochester) is the genius of grace, gallantry, and gaiety. The women in this courtly play have very much the look and air (but something more demure and significant) of Sir Peter Lely's beauties. Harriet, the mistress of Dorimant, who "tames his wild heart to her loving hand," is the flower of the piece. Her natural, untutored grace and spirit, her meeting with Dorimant in the Park, bowing and mimicking him, and the luxuriant description which is given of her fine person, altogether form one of the chefs-d'œuvre of dramatic painting. I should think this comedy would bear reviving; and if Mr. Liston were to play Sir Fopling, the part would shine out with double lustre, "like the morn risen on mid-noon." Dryden's comedies have all the point that there is in ribaldry, and all the humour that there is in extravagance. I am sorry I can say nothing better of them. He was not at home in this kind of writing, of which he was himself conscious. His play was horse-play. His wit (what there is of it) is ingenious and scholar-like, rather than natural and dramatic. Thus Burr, in the 'Wild Gallant,' says to Failer, "She shall sooner cut an atom than part us." His plots are pure voluntaries in absurdity, that bend and shift to his purpose without any previous notice or reason, and are governed by final causes. 'Sir Martin Marall,' which was taken from the Duchess of Newcastle, is the best of his plays, and the origin of the 'Busy Body.' Otway's comedies do no sort of credit to him: on the contrary, they are as desperate as his fortunes. The Duke of Buckingham's famous 'Rehearsal,' which has made, and deservedly, so much noise in the world, is in a great measure taken from Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Knight of the Burning Pestle,' which

* 'Love in a Tub,' and 'She Would if She Could.’

was written in ridicule of the London apprentices in the reign. of Elizabeth, who had a great hand in the critical decisions of that age. There were other dramatic writers of this period, noble and plebeian. I shall only mention one other piece, the 'Committee,' I believe by Sir Robert Howard, which has of late been cut down into the farce called 'Honest Thieves,' and which I remember reading with a great deal of pleasure many years ago.

One cause of the difference between the immediate reception and lasting success of dramatic works at this period may be, that after the court took the play-houses under its particular protection, everything became very much an affair of private patronage. If an author could get a learned lord or a countess-dowager to bespeak a box at his play, and applaud the doubtful passages, he considered his business as done. On the other hand, there was a reciprocity between men of letters and their patrons; critics were "mitigated into courtiers, and submitted,” as Mr. Burke has it, "to the soft collar of social esteem," in pronouncing sentence on the works of lords and ladies. How ridiculous this seems now! What a hubbub it would create if it were known that a particular person of fashion and title had taken a front box in order to decide on the fate of a first play! How the newspaper critics would laugh in their sleeves! How the public would sneer! But at this time there was no public. I will not say, therefore, that these times are better than those; but they are better, I think, in this respect. An author now-a-days no longer hangs dangling on the frown of a lord, or the smile of a lady of quality (the one governed perhaps by his valet, and the other by her waiting-maid,) but throws himself boldly, making a lover's leap of it, into the broad lap of public opinion, on which he falls like a feather-bed; and which, like the great bed of Ware, is wide enough to hold us all very comfortably!

LECTURE IV.

On Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar.

COMEDY is a "graceful ornament to the civil order; the Corinthian capital of polished society." Like the mirrors which have been added to the sides of one of our theatres, it reflects the images of grace, of gaiety, and pleasure double, and completes the perspective of human life. To read a good comedy is to keep the best company in the world, where the best things are said, and the most amusing happen. The wittiest remarks are always ready on the tongue, and the luckiest occasions are always at hand to give birth to the happiest conceptions. Sense makes strange havoc of nonsense. Refinement acts as a foil to affectation, and affectation to ignorance. Sentence after sentence tells. We don't know which to admire most, the observation or the answer to it. We would give our fingers to be able to talk so ourselves, or to hear others talk so. In turning over the pages of the best comedies, we are almost transported to another world, and escape from this dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and humour. The curtain rises, and a gayer scene presents itself, as on the canvass of Watteau. We are admitted behind the scenes like spectators at court, on a levee or birthday; but it is the court, the gala day of wit and pleasure, of gallantry and Charles II.! What an air breathes from the name! what a rustling of silks and waving of plumes! what a sparkling of diamond ear-rings and shoe-buckles! What bright eyes, (ah, those were Waller's Sacharissa's as she passed!) what killing looks and graceful motions! How the faces of the whole ring are dressed in smiles! how the repartee goes round! how wit and folly, elegance and awkward imitation of it, set one another off! Happy, thoughtless age, when king and nobles led purely ornamental lives; when the utmost stretch of a morning's study.

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