ENGLISH LITERATURE. in his exquisite imitation of Horace's sixth satire; [Extract from The Choice.] If Heaven the grateful liberty would give On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood.. His thoughts so tender, and express'd so well: Too much at fortune; they should taste of mine; Should be reliev'd with what my wants could spare ; To feed the stranger, and the neighbouring poor. EARL OF DORSET. CHARLES SACKVILLE, EARL OF DORSET (1637-1706), He was a lord of the bedchamber to trifling; a few satires and songs make up the cata- So the dull eel moves nimbler in the mud Song. Written at sea, the first Dutch war, 1665, the night before To all you ladies now at land, But first would have you understand The Muses now, and Neptune too, With a fa la, la, la, la. For though the Muses should prove kind, Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind, Our paper, pen, and ink, and we, Then, if we write not by each post, By Dutchmen or by wind: The king with wonder and surprise, 377 Should foggy Opdam chance to know From men who've left their hearts behind? Let wind and weather do its worst, Be you to us but kind; Let Dutchmen vapour, Spaniards curse, 'Tis then no matter how things go, To pass our tedious hours away, But now our fears tempestuous grow, When any mournful tune you hear, As if it sigh'd with each man's care Think then how often love we've made To you, when all those tunes were play'd. In justice, you cannot refuse To think of our distress, Our certain happiness; And now we've told you all our loves, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. [Extract from the Essay on Poetry.] Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Which, though sometimes behind a cloud retir'd, First, then, of songs, which now so much abound; " JOHN SHEFFIELD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE (1649-1721) was associated in his latter days with the wits and poets of the reign of Queen Anne, but he properly belongs to the previous age. He went with Prince Rupert against the Dutch, and was afterwards colonel of a regiment of foot. In order For as in rows of richest pearl there lies to learn the art of war under Marshall Turenne, he Many a blemish that escapes our eyes, made a campaign in the French service. The lite- The least of which defects is plainly shown rary taste of Sheffield was never neglected amidst In one small ring, and brings the value down: the din of arms, and he made himself an accomplished So songs should be to just perfection wrought; scholar. He was a member of the privy council of Yet when can one be seen without a fault! James II., but acquiesced in the Revolution, and was Exact propriety of words and thought; afterwards a member of the cabinet council of Expression easy, and the fancy high; William and Mary, with a pension of £3000. Shef-Yet that not seem to creep, nor this to fly; field is said to have made love' to Queen Anne No words transpos'd, but in such order all, when they were both young, and her majesty heaped As wrought with care, yet seem by chance to fall. honours on the favourite immediately on her accession to the throne. He was an opponent of the court of George I., and continued actively engaged in public affairs till his death. Sheffield wrote several poems and copies of verses. Among the * Of all the ways that wisest men could find ון "Tis hard to write on such a subject more, That stain a beauty which we so much love. And sharpest thoughts in smoothest words convey'd. Rage you must hide, and prejudice lay down; * By painful steps at last we labour up And with just pride behold the rest below. To be the utmost stretch of human sense; There are but two the world has yet brought forth- Do those mere sounds the world's attention draw! Has shown where all their mighty magic lies; DRAMATISTS. JOHN DRYDEN. trical representation-the regular introduction of actresses, or female players, and the use of moveable scenery and appropriate decorations. Females had performed on the stage previous to the Restoration, and considerable splendour and variety of scenery had been exhibited in the Court Masques and Revels. Neither, however, had been familiar to the public, and they now formed a great attraction to the two patent theatres. Unfortunately, these powerful auxiliaries were not brought in aid of the good old dramas of the age of Elizabeth and James. Instead of adding grace and splendour to the creations of Shakspeare and Jonson, they were lavished to support a new and degenerate dramatic taste, which Charles II. had brought with him from the continent. Rhyming or heroic plays had long been fashionable in France, and were dignified by the genius of Corneille and Racine. They had little truth of colouring or natural passion, but dealt exclusively with personages in high life and of transcendent virtue or ambition; with fierce combats and splendid processions; with superhuman love and beauty; and with long dialogues alternately formed of metaphysical subtlety and the most extravagant and bombastic expression. 'Blank verse,' says Dryden, 'is acknowledged to be too low for a poem, nay more, for a paper of verses; but if too low for an ordinary sonnet, how much more for tragedy! Accordingly, the heroic plays were all in rhyme, set off not only with superb dresses and decorations, but with the richest and most ornate kind of verse, and the farthest removed from ordinary colloquial diction.' The comedies were degenerate in a different way. They were framed after the model of the Spanish stage, and adapted to the taste of the king, as exhibiting a variety of complicated intrigues, successful disguises, and constantly-shifting scenes and adventures. The old native English virtues of sincerity, conjugal fidelity, and prudence, were held up to constant ridicule, as if amusement could only be obtained by obliterating the moral feelings. Dryden ascribes the licentiousness of the stage to the example of the king. Part, however, must be assigned to the earlier comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, and part to the ascetic puritanism and denial of all public amusements during the time of the commonwealth. If the Puritans had contented themselves with regulating and purifying, the theatres, they would have conferred a benefit on the nation; but, by shutting them up entirely, and denouncing all public recreations, they provoked a counteraction in the taste and manners of the people. The over-austerity of one period led naturally to the shameless degeneracy of the succeeding period; and deeply is it to be deplored, that the great talents of Dryden were the most instrumental in extending and prolonging this depravation of the national taste. The operas and comedies of Sir William Davenant were the first pieces brought out on the stage after the Restoration. He wrote twenty-five in all; but, notwithstanding the partial revival of the old dramatists, none of Davenant's productions have been reprinted. His last work,' says Southey, was his At the restoration of the monarchy the drama was worst; it was an alteration of the Tempest, exealso restored, and with new lustre, though less cuted in conjunction with Dryden; and marvellous decency. Two theatres were licensed in the metro- indeed it is, that two men of such great and indupolis, one under the direction of Sir William Dave-bitable genius should have combined to debase, and nant, who, as already mentioned, had been permitted to act plays even during the general proscription of the drama, and whose performers were now (in compliment to the Duke of York) named the Duke's Company. The other establishment was managed by Thomas Killigrew, a well-known wit and courtier, whose company took the name of the King's Servants. Davenant effected two great improvements in thea vulgarise, and pollute such a poem as the Tempest." formed, like all his other plays, by scenes of spu rious and licentious comedy, it contains passages that approach closely to Shakspeare. The quarrel and reconciliation of Sebastian and Dorax is a masterly copy from the similar scene between Brutus and Cassius. In the altercation between Ventidius! and Antony in All for Love,' he has also challenged comparison with the great poet, and seems to have been inspired to new vigour by the competition. This latter triumph in the genius of Dryden was completed by his Ode to St Cecilia' and the 'Fables,' pubpen.lished together in the spring of 1700, a few weeks before his death-thus realising a saying of his own Sebastian So, from old Shakspeare's honour'd dust, this day A setting sun Voltaire, he probably never drew a tear from reader or spectator. His merit consists in a sort of Eastern magnificence of style, and in the richness of his verlust, and crime-are the staple materials of his sification. The bowl and dagger-glory, ambition, tragedy, and lead occasionally to poetical grandeur and brilliancy of fancy. His comedy is, with scarce an exception, false to nature, improbable and illarranged, and subversive equally of taste and morality. Before presenting a scene from Dryden, we shall string together a few of those similes or detached sentiments which relieve the great mass of his turgid dramatic verse: Should leave a track of glory in the skies. Dryden's plays have fallen completely into oblivion. Dryden was in the full tide of his theatrical popu- command of rich stores of language, information, He could reason powerfully in verse, and had the larity when Davenant died, in 1688. The great poet and imagery. Strong energetic characters and pascommenced writing for the stage in 1662, when he sions he could portray with considerable success, produced his Wild Gallant, which was followed next year by the Rival Ladies, the serious parts of which but he had not art or judgment to construct an inteare in rhyme. He then joined Sir Robert Howard resting or consistent drama, or to preserve himself in composing the Indian Queen, a rhyming heroic racter and softer passions seem to have been entirely from extravagance and absurdity. The female chaplay, brought out in 1664, with a splendour never beyond his reach. His love is always licentiousness before seen in England upon a public stage. A con-his tenderness a mere trick of the stage. Like tinuation of this piece was shortly afterwards written by Dryden, entitled the Indian Emperor, and both were received with great applause. All the defects of his style, and many of the choicest specimens of his smooth and easy versification, are to be found in these inflated tragedies. In 1667 was represented his Maiden Queen, a tragi-comedy; and shortly afterwards the Tempest. These were followed by two comedies copied from the French of Moliere and Corneille; by the Royal Martyr, another furious tragedy, and by his Conquest of Granada, in two parts, in which he concentrated the wild magnificence, incongruous splendour, and absurd fable that run through all his heroic plays, mixed up with occasional gleams of true genius. The extravagance and unbounded popularity of the heroic drama, now at its height, prompted the Duke of Buckingham to compose a lively and amusing farce, in ridicule of Dryden and the prevailing taste of the public, which was produced in 1671, under the title of the Rehearsal. The success of the 'Rehearsal' was unbounded; the very popularity of the plays ridiculed aiding,' as Sir Walter Scott has remarked, the effect of the satire, since everybody had in their recollection the originals of the passages parodied.' There is little genuine wit or dramatic art in the 'Rehearsal,' but it is a clever travesty, and it was well-timed. A fatal blow was struck at the rhyming plays, and at the rant and fustian to which they gave birth. Dryden now resorted to comedy, and produced Marriage a-laMode, and the Assignation. In 1673 he constructed a dramatic poem, the State of Innocence, or the Fall of Man, out of the great epic of Milton, destroying, of course, nearly all that is sublime, simple, and pure, in the original. His next play, Aureng-Zebe (1675), was also 'heroic,' stilted, and unnatural; but this was the last great literary sin of Dryden. He was now engaged in his immortal satires and fables, and he abandoned henceforward the false and glittering taste which had so long deluded him. His All for Love, and Troilus and Cressida, are able adaptations from Shakspeare in blank verse. The Spanish Friar is a good comedy, remarkable for its happy union of two plots, and its delineation of comic character. His principal remaining plays are Don Sebastian (1690), Amphitryon (1690), Cleomenes(1692), and Love Triumphant (1694). Don Sebastian' is his highest effort in dramatic composition, and though de Love is that madness which all lovers have; As some fair tulip, by a storm oppress'd, your Ibid. Part I. That friendship which from wither'd love doth shoot, Ibid. Part II. So Venus moves, when to the Thunderer, And drawn by doves, she cuts the liquid skies, 380 1 A change so swift what heart did ever feel! [Midnight Repose.] Spanish Friar. What precious drops are those Which silently each others track pursue, Men are but children of a larger growth; All for Love. Man is but man; unconstant still, and various; The next a swarm of base ungrateful thoughts [Fear of Death.] BERENICE. SAINT CATHERINE. Ber. Now death draws near, a strange perplexity Creeps coldly on me, like a fear to die: Courage uncertain dangers may abate, And wish to stay, though they resolve to go. Ber. As some faint pilgrim, standing on the shore, Both heavenly faith and human fear obey; Tyrannic Love. Which is my tyrant's right, death will remove. [Adam after the Fall.] ADAM. RAPHAEL. EVE. Toid Adam. Heaven is all mercy; labour I would choose; And could sustain this Paradise to lose: The bliss; but not the place. Here,' could I say, 'Heaven's winged messenger did pass the day; Under this pine the glorious angel stay'd:' Then show my wondering progeny the shade. In woods and lawns, where'er thou didst appear, Each place some monument of thee should bear. I, with green turfs, would grateful altars raise, And heaven, with gums and offer'd incense, praise. Raph. Where'er thou art, He is; th' eternal mind Acts through all places; is to none confined: Fills ocean, earth, and air, and all above. And through the universal mass does move. Thou canst be no where distant: yet this place Had been thy kingly seat, and here thy race, From all the ends of peopled earth, had come To reverence thee, and see their native home. |