Curiosities of Literature Volume Ii Part 13

Oldham, the satirist, says in his satires upon the Jesuits, that had Cain been of this black fraternity, he had not been content with a quarter of mankind.

Had he been Jesuit, _had he but put on Their savage cruelty, the rest had gone!_ Satire ii.

Doubtless at that moment echoed in his poetical ear the energetic and caustic epigram of Andrew Marvel, against Blood stealing the crown dressed in a parson's ca.s.sock, and sparing the life of the keeper:

With the Priest's vestment _had he but put on The Prelate's cruelty--the Crown had gone!_

The following pa.s.sages seem echoes to each other, and it is but justice due to Oldham, the satirist, to acknowledge him as the parent of this ant.i.thesis:

On Butler who can think without just rage, _The glory and the scandal of the age_?

_Satire against Poetry_.

It seems evidently borrowed by Pope, when he applies the thought to Erasmus:--

At length Erasmus, that great injured name, The _glory of the priesthood_ and the _shame_!

Young remembered the ant.i.thesis when he said,

Of some for _glory_ such the boundless rage, That they're the blackest _scandal_ of the age.

Voltaire, a great reader of Pope, seems to have borrowed part of the expression:--

_Scandale_ d'Eglise, et des rois le modele.

De Caux, an old French poet, in one of his moral poems on an hour-gla.s.s, inserted in modern collections, has many ingenious thoughts. That this poem was read and admired by Goldsmith, the following beautiful image seems to indicate. De Caux, comparing the world to his hour-gla.s.s, says beautifully,

_C'est un verre qui luit, Qu'un souffle peut detruire, et qu'un souffle a produit._

Goldsmith applies the thought very happily--

Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; _A breath can make them, as a breath has made._

I do not know whether we might not read, for modern copies are sometimes incorrect,

A breath _unmakes_ them, as a breath has made.

Thomson, in his pastoral story of Palemon and Lavinia, appears to have copied a pa.s.sage from Otway. Palemon thus addresses Lavinia:--

Oh, let me now into a richer soil _Transplant_ thee safe, where vernal _suns_ and showers Diffuse their warmest, largest influence; And of my _garden_ be the pride and joy!

Chamont employs the same image when speaking of Monimia; he says--

You took her up a _little tender flower_, ---- and with a careful loving hand _Transplanted_ her into your own fair _garden_, Where the _sun_ always s.h.i.+nes.

The origin of the following imagery is undoubtedly Grecian; but it is still embellished and modified by our best poets:--

----While universal _Pan_, Knit with the _graces_ and the _hours, in dance Led_ on th' eternal spring.

_Paradise Lost_.

Thomson probably caught this strain of imagery:

Sudden to heaven Thence weary vision turns, where _leading soft The silent hours_ of love, with purest ray Sweet _Venus_ s.h.i.+nes.

_Summer_, v. 1692.

Gray, in repeating this imagery, has borrowed a remarkable epithet from Milton:

Lo, where the _rosy-bosom'd hours, Fair Venus' train_, appear.

_Ode to Spring_.

Along the crisped shades and bowers Revels the spruce and jocund _spring_; The _graces_ and the _rosy-bosom'd hours_ Thither all their bounties bring.

_Comus_, v. 984.

Collins, in his Ode to _Fear_, whom he a.s.sociates with _Danger_, there grandly personified, was I think considerably indebted to the following stanza of Spenser:

Next him was _Fear_, all arm'd from top to toe, Yet thought himself not safe enough thereby: But fear'd each sudden movement to and fro; And _his own arms_ when glittering he did spy, Or _clas.h.i.+ng heard_, he fast away did fly, As ashes pale of hue and wingy heel'd; And evermore on _Danger_ fix'd his eye, 'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen s.h.i.+eld, Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield.

_Faery Queen_, B. iii. c. 12, s. 12.

Warm from its perusal, he seems to have seized it as a hint to the Ode to Fear, and in his "Pa.s.sions" to have very finely copied an idea here:

First _Fear_, his hand, his skill to try, Amid the chords bewildered laid, And _back recoil'd_, he knew not why, _E'en at the sound himself had made._ _Ode to the Pa.s.sions_.

The stanza in Beattie's "Minstrel," first book, in which his "visionary boy," after "the storm of summer rain," views "the rainbow brighten to the setting sun," and runs to reach it:

Fond fool, that deem'st the streaming glory nigh, How vain the chase thine ardour has begun!

'Tis fled afar, ere half thy purposed race be run; Thus it fares with age, &c.

The same train of thought and imagery applied to the same subject, though the image itself be somewhat different, may be found in the poems of the platonic John Norris; a writer who has great originality of thought, and a highly poetical spirit. His stanza runs thus:

So to the unthinking boy the distant sky Seems on some mountain's surface to relie; He with ambitious haste climbs the ascent, _Curious to touch the firmament_; But when with an unwearied pace, He is arrived at the long-wish'd-for place, With sighs the sad defeat he does deplore, His heaven is still as distant as before!

_The Infidel_, by JOHN NORRIS.

In the modern tragedy of _The Castle Spectre_ is this fine description of the ghost of Evelina:--"Suddenly a female form glided along the vault. I flew towards her. My arms were already _unclosed to clasp her,--when suddenly her figure changed_! Her face grew pale--a stream of blood gushed from her bosom. While speaking, her form withered away; _the flesh fell from her bones_; a skeleton loathsome and meagre clasped me in her _mouldering arms_. Her infected breath was mingled with mine; her _rotting fingers_ pressed my hand; and my face was covered with her kisses. Oh! then how I trembled with disgust!"

There is undoubtedly singular merit in this description. I shall contrast it with one which the French Virgil has written, in an age whose faith was stronger in ghosts than ours, yet which perhaps had less skill in describing them. There are some circ.u.mstances which seem to indicate that the author of the _Castle Spectre_ lighted his torch at the altar of the French muse. Athalia thus narrates her dream, in which the spectre of Jezabel, her mother, appears:

C'etoit pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit, Ma mere Jezabel devant moi s'est montree, Comme au jour de sa mort, pompeus.e.m.e.nt paree.-- ---- En achevant ces mots epouvantables, Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser, Et moi, je lui tendois les mains pour l'embra.s.ser, Mais _je n'ai plus trouve qu'un horrible melange D'os et de chair meurtris_, et trainee dans la fange, _Des lambeaux pleins de sang et des membres affreux_.

RACINE'S _Athalie_, Acte ii. s. 5.

Goldsmith, when, in his pedestrian tour, he sat amid the Alps, as he paints himself in his "Traveller," and felt himself the solitary neglected genius he was, desolate amidst the surrounding scenery, probably at that moment applied to himself the following beautiful imagery of Thomson:

As in the hollow breast of Apennine Beneath the centre of encircling hills, A myrtle rises, far from human eyes, And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild.

_Autumn_, v. 202.

Goldsmith very pathetically applies a similar image:

E'en now where Alpine solitudes ascend, I sit me down a pensive hour to spend, Like yon _neglected shrub_ at random cast, That shades the steep, and sighs at every blast.

_Traveller_.