Such was our prince; yet owned a soul above The highest acts it could produce to show: Thus poor mechanic arts in public move Whilst the deep secrets beyond practice go. Nor died he when his ebbing fame went less, But when fresh laurels courted him to live: He seemed but to prevent some new success, As if above what triumphs earth could give. His latest victories still thickest came, As near the centre motion doth increase; Till he, pressed down by his own weighty name, Did, like the vestal, under spoils decease. But first the ocean as a tribute sent The giant prince of all her watery herd; And the isle, when her protecting genius went, Upon his obsequies loud sighs conferred.3 No civil broils have since his death arose, His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest; His name a great example stands, to show How strangely high endeavours may be blessed, Where piety and valour jointly go. 13 L at the Porch House in July, 1667. His genius was at its best in these years of calm retirement by the Thames. His riper mind had put off some of its affection for conceits of later Euphuism in which he had shone, and his prose Essays written at this time with interspersed verse, partly translations of passages from Latin poets apt to his mood, are COWLEY IN LATER LIFE. From a Portrait prefixed to his Works in 1681. full of his best thought in his best English. These lines are a version of an epigram from Martial, the 47th of the 10th book : A HAPPY LIFE. Since, dearest friend, 'tis your desire to see In the same weight prudence and innocence take, But a few friendships wear, and let them be By nature and by fortune fit for thee; Instead of art and luxury in food, Let mirth and freedom make thy table good. If any cares into thy day-time creep, At night, without wine's opium, let them sleep; 10 20 Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past, And neither fear, nor wish th' approaches of the last. 1 30 In the latter days of Charles I. and during the Commonwealth there was a development of French literature with which exiled English royalists in Paris were brought into contact. They were edified by the refinements of the fine ladies whose work was accounted precious, who were politely called the Précieuses, and who had taken language under their especial patronage. They made acquaintance with the first labours of the French Academy in word sifting; with the first and best plays of Corneille, written before the time of our Commonwealth, and his critical essays written during the Commonwealth; with the genius of Molière and the rise of the reaction against faded conceits and tasteless extravagance in writing. The decayed influence of Italy was passing away, and there was a growing energy of French thought that had been busy in legislation upon language, and was about to launch into criticism upon forms of writing also. The deathblow to the perishing Italian influence was given by Boileau, whose career began with his satires in the year of the Restoration. He published his "Art Poëtique" in 1674, and thenceforth became the king of the French critical world. That supremacy of criticism made writers in France and in all adjacent countries emulous of the glory of writing well about writing. If they do anything, said Regnard, it is prosing about rhyme and rhyming about prose. The service done by Boileau's vigorous and healthy genius was substantial. The Précieuses and the Grammarians and the Academicians had been dealing with language. They found an unsettled Vocabulary between the two dialects of North and South, and had resolved to establish a good standard of French that, since French is a Romance tongue, was to be made as homogeneous as possible by a general preference of words with Latin roots. Added to this, and greatly encouraged by the ladies who concerned themselves with the new questions of criticism, was a notion that the language of literature should be protected from mean associations, and acquire dignity by avoidance of the homely ords and idioms of daily life. Literature was held o be for the select and cultivated few, not for the many. It must on no account be "low." Without stooping to all the absurdities of this new school, but rather satirising such of them as might claim nearer kindred with the outgoing than with the incoming influence, Boileau taught writers to avoid the paste brilliants of Italy, to aim at Good Sense. That they might express their good thoughts like good artists in clear manly phrase, he bade them take for models the Latin writers of the Augustan age. All this was excellent corrective doctrine, but the teaching of small critics, who soon swarmed in all our quarters, bred a servile imitation of the Latin authors. So we were led to a perverse avoidance of the native elements of our Teutonic English, and that we might follow our neighbours to the letter, we took, so far as the 1 "S'ils font quelque chose C'est proser de la rime et rimer de la prose." spirit of the counsel was concerned, a course precisely opposite to theirs. Our fine gentlemen, already in Charles II.'s time, became as skilful in critical slang on the points of a poem as some now are in stable slang on the points of a horse. They wrote assiduously about writing; Lord Roscommon wrote on Writing Verse Translations, besides translating Horace's "Art of Poetry; the Earl of Mulgrave, John Sheffield, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, wrote on Writing Satire, and on Writing Poetry; Lord Lansdowne wrote on Unnatural Flights in Poetry; Sir William Soame translated Boileau's "Art of Poetry," and so forth. As the critical swarm began to thicken, the fields of literature that were darkened by them lost their verdure. Where there had been depths of earnestness there were too often only shallows of conceit; the pedants constituted themselves representatives of what they called the Understanding Age. Ignorant of most things, including all our literature before the Commonwealth, they glorified themselves and their immediate surroundings. They saw only what they could touch, and touched nothing they could understand. This is, of course, said only of the thousands of small critics who followed, as Dryden said "The mode of France; without whose rules None must presume to set up here for fools." The strength of the French influence was in such writers as Molière, Corneille, Lafontaine, Racine, and in the critical supremacy of one so honest and so able as Boileau, who lived on until 1711, the year Verse," by Wentworth Dillon, grandson to the Earl of Strafford. He was born in 1633, and by the death of his father became Earl of Roscommon at the age of ten. Until the Restoration he was much abroad in Italy and France. in Italy and France. After 1660 he was a gay English courtier with love of literature, strong faith in French critics, and a desire to establish in England (for the supposed good of literature) an Academy like that of France. He died in 1684, and this excellent poem of his must serve as sufficient example of the versifying about versifying that begins now to abound: AN ESSAY ON TRANSLATED VERSE. Happy that author, whose correct Essay 1 When mourning nymphs attend their Daphnis' herse, When France had breath'd, after intestine broils, And peace and conquest crown'd her foreign toils, There, cultivated by a royal hand," Learning grew fast, and spread, and blest the land; The choicest books that Rome or Greece have known Her excellent translators made her own, And Europe still considerably gains, Both by their good example and their pains. 10 20 30 3 The translation of Theocritus by Thomas Creech was published in 1681, about which time Roscommon's Essay is supposed to have been written. Pastoral poetry was called, from its origin, Sicilian. 5 In the reign of Francis I. famous translations appeared that were one sign of the revival of letters. Jaques Amyot received an abbey from Francis for his translation of Theagenes and Chariclea-the "sugared invention" that delighted Sir Philip Sidney-from the Ethiopica of the Greek Bishop Heliodorus, and Amyot's translation of Plutarch was one of the most famous works of its time. The first great work, a task perform'd by few, Is that yourself may to yourself be true: No mask, no tricks, no favour, no reserve; Dissect your mind, examine every nerve. Whoever vainly on his strength depends, Begins like Virgil, but like Mævius ends. That wretch (in spite of his forgotten rhymes) Condemned to live to all succeeding times, With pompous nonsense and a bellowing sound Sung lofty Ilium tumbling to the ground.4 And if my muse can through past ages see) That noisy, nauseous, gaping fool was he; Exploded, when with universal scorn, The mountains laboured and a mouse was born. 60 You grow familiar, intimate, and fond; Your thoughts, your words, your styles, your souls agree, No longer his interpreter, but he. With how much ease is a young Muse betray'd, How nice the reputation of the maid! Your early, kind, paternal care appears By chaste instruction of her tender years; The first impression in her infant breast Immodest words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense. 90 100 110 70 What mod'rate fop would rake the park or stews, Who among troops of faultless nymphs may choose? Variety of such is to be found; 80 130 1 Horace's "Art of Poetry" had been translated by Ben Jonson 1640); his “Odes" by Barten Holiday (1652), and others. Roscommon himself translated the" Art of Poetry" when all the rhymers of the day were set upon Horace. Baralipton, the name of an imperfect syllogism, chosen as an example of pompous sound, and suggested by the old Latin verse on forms of syllogism, "Barbara, celarent, darii, ferio, baralipton." 3 The reference is to the lines in Virgil's third eclogue"Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mævi; Atque idem jungat vulpes, et mulgeat hircos." Let him who can stand Bavius delight in your verse, Mævius; and let him be the man to yoke foxes and milk the he-goats. • The reference is to lines 126-30 of Horace's "Art of Poetry," in which Roscommon assumes Mævins to be the bad poet referred to. Roscommon's own version of the lines is "Begin not as th' old Poetaster did, And such applause it must expect to meet, As would some painter busy in a street, To copy bulls and bears, and every sign That calls the staring sots to nasty wine. Yet 'tis not all to have a subject good, It must delight us when 'tis understood. He that brings fulsome objects to my view, (As many old have done, and many new) With nauseous images my fancy fills, And all goes down like oxymel of squills. Instruct the list ning world how Maro sings Of useful subjects and of lofty things. These will such true, such bright ideas raise, As merit gratitude as well as praise: But foul descriptions are offensive still, Either for being like or being ill. For who, without a qualm, hath ever looked On holy garbage, though by Homer cooked? Whose railing heroes, and whose wounded gods, Make some suspect he snores as well as nods. But I offend- Virgil begins to frown, And Horace looks with indignation down; 140 5 Milo of Crotona was a strong man who is said to have carried an ox a furlong without resting, then killed it at a blow and eaten it at a meal. He tried to split an oak in the forest, had his arms caught in the cleft, and was so held till the wild beasts came and ate him up. Pride, of all others the most dangerous fault, Heaven shakes not more at Jove's imperial nod, The Muse instruct my voice, and thou inspire the Muse. What I have instanced only in the best, Is, in proportion, true of all the rest. Take pains the genuine meaning to explore: There sweat, there strain, there tug the laborious oar: 180 Search every comment that your care can find, Some here, some there, may hit the poet's mind. Makes all Jove's thunder on her verses wait, 170 A quack too scandalously mean to name? Had, by man-midwifery, got wealth and fame; As if Lucina had forgot her trade, Truth still is one, Truth is divinely bright, No cloudy doubts obscure her native light: While in your thoughts you find the least debate, You may confound, but never can translate; Your style will this through all disguises show, For none explain more clearly than they know. He only proves he understands a text, Whose exposition leaves it unperplex'd. They who too faithfully on names insist, Rather create than dissipate the mist, And grow unjust by being over-nice, For superstitious virtue turns to vice. 200 The lab'ring wife invokes his surer aid; Who while she guzzles, chats the doctor's praise, And largely, what she wants in words, supplies 250 With maudlin eloquence of trickling eyes. 260 1 The reference is to lines 9-12 of the sixth ode in Horace's Third Book. This is adapted from a passage in the fourth canto of Boileau's "Art Poëtique.” |