Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 47

"But canst thou devise when things will be mended?"

Which is thus answered:--

"When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended!".--ED.

[311] So Burnet tells us.

[312] See "The Rehearsal Transprosed, the second part," p. 76.

[313] One of the canting terms used by the saints of those days, and not obsolete in the dialect of those who still give themselves out to be saints in the present.

[314] Marvell admirably describes Parker's journey to London at the Restoration, where "he spent a considerable time in creeping into all corners and companies, horoscoping up and down concerning the duration of the government." This term, so expressive of his political doubts, is from "Judicial Astrology," then a prevalent study. "Not considering anything as best, but as most lasting and most profitable; and after having many times cast a figure, he at last satisfied himself that the episcopal government would endure as long as this king lived, and from thenceforwards cast about to find the highway to preferment. To do this, he daily enlarged not only his conversation but his conscience, and was made free of some of the town vices; imagining, like Mulea.s.ses, King of Tunis (for I take witness that on all occasions I treat him rather above his quality than otherwise), that by hiding himself among the onions he should escape being traced by his perfumes." The narrative proceeds with a curious detail of all his sycophantic attempts at seducing useful patrons, among whom was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Then began "those pernicious books," says Marvell, "in which he first makes all that he will to be law, and then whatsoever is law, to be divinity." Parker, in his "Ecclesiastical Polity," came at length to promulgate such violent principles as these, "He openly declares his submission to the government of a Nero and a Caligula, rather than suffer a dissolution of it." He says, "it is absolutely necessary to set up a more severe government over men's consciences and religious persuasions than over their vices and immoralities;" and that "men's vices and debaucheries may lie more safely indulged than their consciences." Is it not difficult to imagine that this man had once been an Independent, the advocate for every congregation being independent of a bishop or a synod?

[315] Parker's father was a lawyer, and one of Oliver's most submissive sub-committee men, who so long pillaged the nation and spilled its blood, "not in the hot and military way (which diminishes always the offence), but in the cooler blood and sedentary execution of an high court of justice." He wrote a very remarkable book (after he had been pet.i.tioned against for a misdemeanour) in defence of that usurped irregular state called "The Government of the People of England." It had "a most hieroglyphical t.i.tle" of several emblems: two hands joined, and beneath a sheaf of arrows, stuffed about with half-a-dozen mottoes, "enough," says Marvell, "to have supplied the mantlings and achievement of this (G.o.dly) family." An anecdote in this secret history of Parker is probably true. "He shortly afterwards did inveigh against his father's memory, and in his mother's presence, before witnesses, for a couple of whining fanatics."--_Rehearsal Transprosed_, second part, p. 75.

[316] This preface was prefixed to Bishop Bramball's "Vindication of the Bishops from the Presbyterian Charge of Popery."

[317] As a specimen of what old Anthony calls "a jerking flirting way of writing," I transcribe the t.i.tles of these answers which Marvell received. As Marvell had nicknamed Parker, Bayes, the quaint humour of one ent.i.tled his reply, "Rosemary and Bayes;" another, "The Transproser Rehea.r.s.ed, or the Fifth Act of Mr. Bayes's Play;" another, "Gregory Father Greybeard, with his Vizard off;" another formed "a Commonplace Book out of the Rehearsal, digested under heads;" and lastly, "Stoo him Bayes, or some Animadversions on the Humour of writing Rehearsals."--_Biog. Brit._ p. 3055.

This was the very Bartlemy-fair of wit!

[318] The t.i.tle will convey some notion of its intolerant principles: "A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity, wherein the authority of the Civil Magistrate _over the Consciences of Subjects_, in matters of external Religion, is a.s.serted."

[319] Milton had become acquainted with Marvell when travelling in Italy, where he had gone to perfect his studies. He returned to England in 1653, and was connected with the Cromwellian party, through the introduction of Milton, in 1657. The great poet was at that time secretary to Cromwell, and he became his a.s.sistant-secretary. He afterwards represented his native town of Hull in Parliament.--ED.

[320] Va.n.u.s, pannosus, et famelicus poetaster oenopolis quovis vapulans, fuste et calce indies petulantiae poenas tulit--are the words in Parker's "_De Rebus sui Temporis Commentariorum_,"

p. 275.

D'AVENANT

AND A CLUB OF WITS.

CALAMITIES of Epic Poets--Character and Anecdotes of D'AVENANT--attempts a new vein of invention--the Critics marshalled against each other on the "Gondibert"--D'AVENANT'S sublime feelings of Literary Fame--attacked by a Club of Wits in two books of Verses--the strange misconception hitherto given respecting the Second Part--various specimens of the Satires on Gondibert, the Poet, and his Panegyrist HOBBES--the Poet's silence; and his neglect of the unfinished Epic, while the Philosopher keenly retorts on the Club, and will not allow of any authority in WIT.

The memoirs of epic poets, in as far as they relate to the history of their own epics, would be the most calamitous of all the suitors of the Muses, whether their works have reached us, or scarcely the names of the poets. An epic, which has sometimes been the labour of a life, is the game of the wits and the critics. One ridicules what is written; the other censures for what has not been written:--and it has happened, in some eminent instances, that the rudest a.s.sailants of him who "builds the lofty rhyme," have been his ungenerous contemporaries.

Men, whose names are now endeared to us, and who have left their ????? ?S ???, which HOBBES so energetically translates "a possession for everlasting," have bequeathed an inheritance to posterity, of which they have never been in the receipt of the revenue. "The first fruits" of genius have been too often gathered to place upon its tomb.

Can we believe that MILTON did not endure mortification from the neglect of "evil days," as certainly as Ta.s.so was goaded to madness by the systematic frigidity of his critics? He who is now before us had a mind not less exalted than Milton or Ta.s.so; but was so effectually ridiculed, that he has only sent us down the fragment of a great work.

One of the curiosities in the history of our poetry, is the GONDIBERT of D'AVENANT; and the fortunes and the fate of this epic are as extraordinary as the poem itself. Never has an author deserved more copious memoirs than the fertility of this man's genius claims. His life would have exhibited a moving picture of genius in action and in contemplation. With all the infirmities of lively pa.s.sions, he had all the redeeming virtues of magnanimity and generous affections; but with the dignity and the powers of a great genius, falling among an age of wits, he was covered by ridicule. D'Avenant was a man who had viewed human life in all its shapes, and had himself taken them. A poet and a wit, the creator of the English stage with the music of Italy and the scenery of France; a soldier, an emigrant, a courtier, and a politician:--he was, too, a state-prisoner, awaiting death with his immortal poem in his hand;[321] and at all times a philosopher!

That hardiness of enterprise which had conducted him through life, brought the same novelty, and conferred on him the same vigour in literature.

D'Avenant attempted to open a new vein of invention in narrative poetry; which not to call _epic_, he termed _heroic_; and which we who have more completely emanc.i.p.ated ourselves from the arbitrary mandates of Aristotle and Bossu, have since styled romantic. Scott, Southey, and Byron have taught us this freer scope of invention, but characterised by a depth of pa.s.sion which is not found in D'Avenant.

In his age, the t.i.tle which he selected to describe the cla.s.s of his poetical narrative, was a miserable source of petty criticism. It was decreed that every poem should resemble another poem, on the plan of the ancient epic. This was the golden age of "the poet-apes," till they found that it was easier to produce epic writers than epic readers.

But our poet, whose manly genius had rejected one great absurdity, had the folly to adopt another. The first reformers are always more heated with zeal than enlightened by sagacity. The four-and-twenty chapters of an epic, he perceived, were but fantastical divisions, and probably, originally, but accidental; yet he proposed another form as chimerical; he imagined that by having only five he was constructing his poem on the dramatic plan of five acts. He might with equal propriety have copied the Spanish comedy which I once read, in twenty-five acts, and in no slender folio. "Sea-marks (says D'Avenant, alluding to the works of antiquity) are chiefly useful to _coasters_, and serve not those who have the ambition of _discoverers_, that love to sail in untried seas;" and yet he was attempting to turn an epic poem into a monstrous drama, from the servile habits he had contracted from his intercourse with the theatre! This error of the poet has, however, no material influence on the "Gondibert," as it has come down to us; for, discouraged and ridiculed, our adventurer never finished his voyage of discovery. He who had so n.o.bly vindicated the freedom of the British Muse from the meanness of imitation, and clearly defined what such a narrative as he intended should be, "a perfect gla.s.s of nature, which gives us a familiar and easy view of ourselves," did not yet perceive that there is no reason why a poetical narrative should be cast into any particular form, or be longer or shorter than the interest it excites will allow.

More than a century and a half have elapsed since the first publication of "Gondibert," and its merits are still a subject of controversy; and indubitable proof of some inherent excellence not willingly forgotten. The critics are marshalled on each side, one against the other, while between these formidable lines stands the poet, with a few scattered readers;[322] but what is more surprising in the history of the "Gondibert," the poet is a great poet, the work imperishable!

The "Gondibert" has poetical defects fatal for its popularity; the theme was not happily chosen; the quatrain has been discovered by capricious ears to be unpleasing, though its solemnity was felt by Dryden.[323] The style is sometimes harsh and abrupt, though often exquisite; and the fable is deficient in that rapid interest which the story-loving readers of all times seem most to regard. All these are diseases which would have long since proved mortal in a poem less vital; but our poet was a commanding genius, who redeemed his bold errors by his energetic originality. The luxuriancy of his fancy, the novelty of his imagery, the grandeur of his views of human life; his delight in the new sciences of his age;--these are some of his poetical virtues. But, above all, we dwell on the impressive solemnity of his philosophical reflections, and his condensed epigrammatic thoughts. The work is often more ethical than poetical; yet, while we feel ourselves becoming wiser at every page, in the fulness of our minds we still perceive that our emotions have been seldom stirred by pa.s.sion. The poem falls from our hands! yet is there none of which we wish to retain so many single verses. D'Avenant is a poetical Rochefoucault; the sententious force of his maxims on all human affairs could only have been composed by one who had lived in a constant intercourse with mankind.[324]

A delightful invention in this poem is "the House of Astragon," a philosophical residence. Every great poet is affected by the revolutions of his age. The new experimental philosophy had revived the project of Lord Bacon's learned retirement, in his philosophical romance of the _Atalantis_; and subsequently in a time of civil repose after civil war, Milton, Cowley, and Evelyn attempted to devote an abode to science itself. These tumults of the imagination subsided in the establishment of the Royal Society. D'Avenant antic.i.p.ated this inst.i.tution. On an estate consecrated to philosophy stands a retired building on which is inscribed, "Great Nature's Office," inhabited by sages, who are styled "Nature's Registers," busily recording whatever is brought to them by "a throng of Intelligencers," who make "patient observations" in the field, the garden, the river, on every plant, and "every fish, and fowl, and beast." Near at hand is "Nature's Nursery,"

a botanical garden. We have also "a Cabinet of Death," "the Monument of Bodies," an anatomical collection, which leads to "the Monument of vanished Minds," as the poet finely describes the library. Is it not striking to find, says Dr. Aikin, so exact a model of _the school of Linnaeus_?

This was a poem to delight a philosopher; and Hobbes, in a curious epistle prefixed to the work, has strongly marked its distinct beauties. "Gondibert" not only came forth with the elaborate panegyric of Hobbes, but was also accompanied by the high commendatory poems of Waller and Cowley; a cause which will sufficiently account for the provocations it inflamed among the poetical crew; and besides these accompaniments, there is a preface of great length, stamped with all the force and originality of the poet's own mind; and a postscript, as sublime from the feelings which dictated it as from the time and place of its composition.

In these, this great genius pours himself out with all that "glory of which his large soul appears to have been full," as Hurd has n.o.bly expressed it.[325] Such a conscious dignity of character struck the petulant wits with a provoking sense of their own littleness.

A club of wits caballed and produced a collection of short poems sarcastically ent.i.tled "Certain Verses written by several of the Author's Friends, to be reprinted in the Second Edition of 'Gondibert,'"

1653. Two years after appeared a brother volume, ent.i.tled "The Incomparable Poem of Gondibert vindicated from the Wit-Combats of Four Esquires; Clinias, Dametas, Sancho and Jack Pudding;"[326] with these mottoes:

??tee? ?a? a??d?? a??d?.

Vatum quoque gratia, rara est.

Anglice, One wit-brother Envies another.

Of these rare tracts, we are told by Anthony Wood and all subsequent literary historians, too often mere transcribers of t.i.tle-pages, that the second was written by our author himself. Would not one imagine that it was a real vindication, or at least a retort-courteous on these obliging friends. The irony of the whole volume has escaped their discovery. The second tract is a continuation of the satire: a mock defence, where the sarcasm and the pretended remonstrance are sometimes keener than the open attack. If, indeed, D'Avenant were the author of a continuation of a satire on himself, it is an act of _felo de se_ no poet ever committed; a self-flagellation by an iron whip, where blood is drawn at every stroke, the most penitent bard never inflicted on himself. Would D'Avenant have bantered his proud labour, by calling it "incomparable?" And were it true, that he felt the strokes of their witty malignity so lightly, would he not have secured his triumph by finis.h.i.+ng that "Gondibert," "the monument of his mind?"

It is too evident that this committee of wits hurt the quiet of a great mind.

As for this series of literary satires, it might have been expected, that since the wits clubbed, this committee ought to have been more effective in their operations. Many of their papers were, no doubt, more blotted with their wine than their ink. Their variety of attack is playful, sarcastic, and malicious. They were then such exuberant wits, that they could make even ribaldry and grossness witty. My business with these wicked trifles is only as they concerned the feelings of the great poet, whom they too evidently hurt, as well as the great philosopher who condescended to notice these wits, with wit more dignified than their own.

Unfortunately for our "jeered Will," as in their usual court-style they call him, he had met with "a foolish mischance," well known among the collectors of our British portraits. There was a feature in his face, or rather no feature at all, that served as a perpetual provocative: there was no precedent of such a thing, says Suckling, in "The Sessions of the Poets"--

In all their records, in verse or in prose, There was none of a Laureat who wanted a nose.

Besides, he was now doomed--

Nor could old Hobbes Defend him from dry bobbs.

The preface of "Gondibert," the critical epistle of Hobbes, and the poems of the two greatest poets in England, were first to be got rid of. The attack is brisk and airy.

UPON THE PREFACE.

Room for the best of poets heroic, If you'll believe two wits and a Stoic.

Down go the _Iliads_, down go the _aeneidos_: All must give place to the _Gondiberteidos_.

For to _Homer_ and _Virgil_ he has a just pique, Because one's writ in Latin, the other in Greek; Besides an old grudge (our critics they say so) With _Ovid_, because his sirname was _Naso_.

If fiction the fame of a poet thus raises, What poets are you that have writ his praises?

But we justly quarrel at this our defeat; You give us a stomach, he gives us no meat.

A preface to no book, a porch to no house; Here is the mountain, but where is the mouse?

This stroke, in the mock defence, is thus warded off, with a slight confession of the existence of "the mouse."

Why do you bite, you men of fangs (That is, of teeth that forward hangs), And charge my dear Ephestion With want of meat? you want digestion.

We poets use not so to do, To find men meat and stomach too.

You have the book, you have the house, And mum, good Jack, and catch the mouse.