Dialogues of the Dead Part 7

_Pope_.--It is a wonderful thing that in France the comic Muse should be the gravest lady in the nation. Of late she is so grave, that one might almost mistake her for her sister Melpomene. Moliere made her indeed a good moral philosopher; but then she philosophised, like Democritus, with a merry, laughing face. Now she weeps over vice instead of showing it to mankind, as I think she generally ought to do, in ridiculous lights.

_Boileau_.--Her business is more with folly than with vice, and when she attacks the latter, it should be rather with ridicule than invective. But sometimes she may be allowed to raise her voice, and change her usual smile into a frown of just indignation.

_Pope_.--I like her best when she smiles. But did you never reprove your witty friend, La Fontaine, for the vicious levity that appears in many of his tales? He was as guilty of the crime of debauching the Muses as any of our comic poets.

_Boileau_.--I own he was, and bewail the prost.i.tution of his genius, as I should that of an innocent and beautiful country girl. He was all nature, all simplicity! yet in that simplicity there was a grace, and unaffected vivacity, with a justness of thought and easy elegance of expression that can hardly be found in any other writer. His manner is quite original, and peculiar to himself, though all the matter of his writings is borrowed from others.

_Pope_.--In that manner he has been imitated by my friend Mr. Prior.

_Boileau_.--He has, very successfully. Some of Prior's tales have the spirit of La Fontaine's with more judgment, but not, I think, with such an amiable and graceful simplicity.

_Pope_.--Prior's harp had more strings than La Fontaine's. He was a fine poet in many different ways: La Fontaine but in one. And, though in some of his tales he imitated that author, his "Alma" was an original, and of singular beauty.

_Boileau_.--There is a writer of heroic poetry, who lived before Milton, and whom some of your countrymen place in the highest cla.s.s of your poets, though he is little known in France. I see him sometimes in company with Homer and Virgil, but oftener with Ta.s.so, Ariosto, and Dante.

_Pope_.--I understand you mean Spenser. There is a force and beauty in some of his images and descriptions, equal to any in those writers you have seen him converse with. But he had not the art of properly shading his pictures. He brings the minute and disagreeable parts too much into sight; and mingles too frequently vulgar and mean ideas with n.o.ble and sublime. Had he chosen a subject proper for epic poetry, he seems to have had a sufficient elevation and strength in his genius to make him a great epic poet: but the allegory, which is continued throughout the whole work, fatigues the mind, and cannot interest the heart so much as those poems, the chief actors in which are supposed to have really existed. The Syrens and Circe in the "Odyssey" are allegorical persons; but Ulysses, the hero of the poem, was a man renowned in Greece, which makes the account of his adventures affecting and delightful. To be now and then in Fairyland, among imaginary beings, is a pleasing variety, and helps to distinguish the poet from the orator or historian, but to be always there is irksome.

_Boileau_.--Is not Spenser likewise blamable for confounding the Christian with the Pagan theology in some parts of his poem?

_Pope_.--Yes; he had that fault in common with Dante, with Ariosto, and with Camoens.

_Boileau_.--Who is the poet that arrived soon after you in Elysium, whom I saw Spenser lead in and present to Virgil, as the author of a poem resembling the "Georgics"? On his head was a garland of the several kinds of flowers that blow in each season, with evergreens intermixed.

_Pope_.--Your description points out Thomson. He painted nature exactly, and with great strength of pencil. His imagination was rich, extensive, and sublime: his diction bold and glowing, but sometimes obscure and affected. Nor did he always know when to stop, or what to reject.

_Boileau_.--I should suppose that he wrote tragedies upon the Greek model. For he is often admitted into the grove of Euripides.

_Pope_.--He enjoys that distinction both as a tragedian and as a moralist. For not only in his plays, but all his other works, there is the purest morality, animated by piety, and rendered more touching by the fine and delicate sentiments of a most tender and benevolent heart.

_Boileau_.--St. Evremond has brought me acquainted with Waller. I was surprised to find in his writings a politeness and gallantry which the French suppose to be appropriated only to theirs. His genius was a composition which is seldom to be met with, of the sublime and the agreeable. In his comparison between himself and Apollo, as the lover of Daphne, and in that between Amoret and Sacharissa, there is a _finesse_ and delicacy of wit which the most elegant of our writers have never exceeded. Nor had Sarrazin or Voiture the art of praising more genteelly the ladies they admired. But his epistle to Cromwell, and his poem on the death of that extraordinary man, are written with a force and greatness of manner which give him a rank among the poets of the first cla.s.s.

_Pope_.--Mr. Waller was unquestionably a very fine writer. His Muse was as well qualified as the Graces themselves to dress out a Venus; and he could even adorn the brows of a conqueror with fragrant and beautiful wreaths. But he had some puerile and low thoughts, which unaccountably mixed with the elegant and the n.o.ble, like schoolboys or a mob admitted into a palace. There was also an intemperance and a luxuriancy in his wit which he did not enough restrain. He wrote little to the understanding, and less to the heart; but he frequently delights the imagination, and sometimes strikes it with flashes of the highest sublime. We had another poet of the age of Charles I., extremely admired by all his contemporaries, in whose works there is still more affectation of wit, a greater redundancy of imagination, a worse taste, and less judgment; but he touched the heart more, and had finer feelings than Waller. I mean Cowley.

_Boileau_.--I have been often solicited to admire his writings by his learned friend, Dr. Spratt. He seems to me a great wit, and a very amiable man, but not a good poet.

_Pope_.--The spirit of poetry is strong in some of his odes, but in the art of poetry he is always extremely deficient.

_Boileau_.--I hear that of late his reputation is much lowered in the opinion of the English. Yet I cannot but think that, if a moderate portion of the superfluities of his wit were given by Apollo to some of their modern bards, who write commonplace morals in very smooth verse, without any absurdity, but without a single new thought, or one enlivening spark of imagination, it would be a great favour to them, and do them more service than all the rules laid down in my "Art of Poetry"

and yours of "Criticism."

_Pope_.--I am much of your mind. But I left in England some poets whom you, I know, will admire, not only for the harmony and correctness of style, but the spirit and genius you will find in their writings.

_Boileau_.--France, too, has produced some very excellent writers since the time of my death. Of one particularly I hear wonders. Fame to him is as kind as if he had been dead a thousand years. She brings his praises to me from all parts of Europe. You know I speak of Voltaire.

_Pope_.--I do; the English nation yields to none in admiration of his extensive genius. Other writers excel in some one particular branch of wit or science; but when the King of Prussia drew Voltaire from Paris to Berlin, he had a whole academy of _belles lettres_ in him alone.

_Boileau_.--That prince himself has such talents for poetry as no other monarch in any age or country has ever possessed. What an astonishing compa.s.s must there be in his mind, what an heroic tranquillity and firmness in his heart, that he can, in the evening, compose an ode or epistle in the most elegant verse, and the next morning fight a battle with the conduct of Caesar or Gustavus Adolphus!

_Pope_.--I envy Voltaire so n.o.ble a subject both for his verse and his prose. But if that prince will write his own commentaries, he will want no historian. I hope that, in writing them, he will not restrain his pen, as Caesar has done, to a mere account of his wars, but let us see the politician, and the benignant protector of arts and sciences, as well as the warrior, in that picture of himself. Voltaire has shown us that the events of battles and sieges are not the most interesting parts of good history, but that all the improvements and embellishments of human society ought to be carefully and particularly recorded there.

_Boileau_.--The progress of arts and knowledge, and the great changes that have happened in the manners of mankind, are objects far more worthy of a leader's attention than the revolutions of fortune. And it is chiefly to Voltaire that we owe this instructive species of history.

_Pope_.--He has not only been the father of it among the moderns, but has carried it himself to its utmost perfection.

_Boileau_.--Is he not too universal? Can any writer be exact who is so comprehensive?

_Pope_.--A traveller round the world cannot inspect every region with such an accurate care as exactly to describe each single part. If the outlines are well marked, and the observations on the princ.i.p.al points are judicious, it is all that can be required.

_Boileau_.--I would, however, advise and exhort the French and English youth to take a fuller survey of some particular provinces, and to remember that although, in travels of this sort, a lively imagination is a very agreeable companion, it is not the best guide. To speak without a metaphor, the study of history, both sacred and profane, requires a critical and laborious investigation. The composer of a set of lively and witty remarks on facts ill-examined, or incorrectly delivered, is not an historian.

_Pope_.--We cannot, I think, deny that name to the author of the "Life of Charles XII., King of Sweden."

_Boileau_.--No, certainly. I esteem it the very best history that this age has produced. As full of spirit as the hero whose actions it relates, it is nevertheless most exact in all matters of importance. The style of it is elegant, perspicuous, unaffected; the disposition and method are excellent; the judgments given by the writer acute and just.

_Pope_.--Are you not pleased with that philosophical freedom of thought which discovers itself in all the works of Voltaire, but more particularly in those of an historical nature?

_Boileau_.--If it were properly regulated, I should reckon it among their highest perfections. Superst.i.tion, and bigotry, and party spirit are as great enemies to the truth and candour of history as malice or adulation.

To think freely is therefore a most necessary quality in a perfect historian. But all liberty has its bounds, which, in some of his writings, Voltaire, I fear, has not observed. Would to Heaven he would reflect, while it is yet in his power to correct what is faulty, that all his works will outlive him; that many nations will read them; and that the judgment p.r.o.nounced here upon the writer himself will be according to the scope and tendency of them, and to the extent of their good or evil effects on the great society of mankind.

_Pope_.--It would be well for all Europe if some other wits of your country, who give the tone to this age in all polite literature, had the same serious thoughts you recommend to Voltaire. Witty writings, when directed to serve the good ends of virtue and religion, are like the lights hung out in a _pharos_, to guide the mariners safe through dangerous seas; but the brightness of those that are impious or immoral shines only to betray and lead men to destruction.

_Boileau_.--Has England been free from all seductions of this nature?

_Pope_.--No. But the French have the art of rendering vice and impiety more agreeable than the English.

_Boileau_.--I am not very proud of this superiority in the talents of my countrymen. But as I am told that the good sense of the English is now admired in France, I hope it will soon convince both nations that true wisdom is virtue, and true virtue is religion.

_Pope_.--I think it also to be wished that a taste for the frivolous may not continue too prevalent among the French. There is a great difference between gathering flowers at the foot of Parna.s.sus and ascending the arduous heights of the mountain. The palms and laurels grow there, and if any of your countrymen aspire to gain them, they must no longer enervate all the vigour of their minds by this habit of trifling. I would have them be perpetual compet.i.tors with the English in manly wit and substantial learning. But let the compet.i.tion be friendly. There is nothing which so contracts and debases the mind as national envy. True wit, like true virtue, naturally loves its own image in whatever place it is found.

DIALOGUE XV.

OCTAVIA--PORTIA--ARRIA.

_Portia_.--How has it happened, Octavia, that Arria and I, who have a higher rank than you in the Temple of Fame, should have a lower here in Elysium? We are told that the virtues you exerted as a wife were greater than ours. Be so good as to explain to us what were those virtues. It is the privilege of this place that one can bear superiority without mortification. The jealousy of precedence died with the rest of our mortal frailties. Tell us, then, your own story. We will sit down under the shade of this myrtle grove and listen to it with pleasure.

_Octavia_.--n.o.ble ladies, the glory of our s.e.x and of Rome, I will not refuse to comply with your desire, though it recalls to my mind some scenes my heart would wish to forget. There can be only one reason why Minos should have given to my conjugal virtues a preference above yours, which is that the trial a.s.signed to them was harder.

_Arria_.--How, madam! harder than to die for your husband! We died for ours.

_Octavia_.--You did for husbands who loved yon, and were the most virtuous men of the ages they lived in--who trusted you with their lives, their fame, their honour. To outlive such husbands is, in my judgment, a harder effort of virtue than to die for them or with them. But Mark Antony, to whom my brother Octavius, for reasons of state, gave my hand, was indifferent to me, and loved another. Yet he has told me himself I was handsomer than his mistress Cleopatra. Younger I certainly was, and to men that is generally a charm sufficient to turn the scale in one's favour. I had been loved by Marcellus. Antony said he loved me when he pledged to me his faith. Perhaps he did for a time; a new handsome woman might, from his natural inconstancy, make him forget an old attachment.

He was but too amiable. His very vices had charms beyond other men's virtues. Such vivacity! such fire! such a towering pride! He seemed made by nature to command, to govern the world; to govern it with such ease that the business of it did not rob him of an hour of pleasure.

Nevertheless, while his inclination for me continued, this haughty lord of mankind who could hardly bring his high spirit to treat my brother, his partner in empire, with the necessary respect, was to me as submissive, as obedient to every wish of my heart, as the humblest lover that ever sighed in the vales of Arcadia. Thus he seduced my affection from the manes of Marcellus and fixed it on himself. He fixed it, ladies (I own it with some confusion), more fondly than it had ever been fixed on Marcellus. And when he had done so he scorned me, he forsook me, he returned to Cleopatra. Think who I was--the sister of Caesar, sacrificed to a vile Egyptian queen, the harlot of Julius, the disgrace of her s.e.x!

Every outrage was added that could incense me still more. He gave her at sundry times, as public marks of his love, many provinces of the Empire of Rome in the East. He read her love-letters openly in his tribunal itself--even while he was hearing and judging the causes of kings. Nay, he left his tribunal, and one of the best Roman orators pleading before him, to follow her litter, in which she happened to be pa.s.sing by at that time. But, what was more grievous to me than all these demonstrations of his extravagant pa.s.sion for that infamous woman, he had the a.s.surance, in a letter to my brother, to call her his wife. Which of you, ladies, could have patiently borne this treatment?

_Arria_.--Not I, madam, in truth. Had I been in your place, the dagger with which I pierced my own bosom to show my dear Paetus how easy it was to die, that dagger should I have plunged into Antony's heart, if piety to the G.o.ds and a due respect to the purity of my own soul had not stopped my hand. But I verily believe I should have killed myself; not, as I did, out of affection to my husband, but out of shame and indignation at the wrongs I endured.