Lives of the Poets Part 19

One of the puritanical tenets was the illegality of all games of chance; and he that reads Gataker upon Lots, may see how much learning and reason one of the first scholars of his age thought necessary to prove, that it was no crime to throw a die, or play at cards, or to hide a shilling for the reckoning.

Astrology, however, against which so much of the satire is directed, was not more the folly of the puritans than of others. It had, in that time, a very extensive dominion. Its predictions raised hopes and fears in minds, which ought to have rejected it with contempt. In hazardous undertakings, care was taken to begin under the influence of a propitious planet; and, when the king was prisoner in Carisbrook castle, an astrologer was consulted what hour would be found most favourable to an escape.

What effect this poem had upon the publick, whether it shamed imposture, or reclaimed credulity, is not easily determined. Cheats can seldom stand long against laughter. It is certain, that the credit of planetary intelligence wore fast away; though some men of knowledge, and Dryden among them, continued to believe that conjunctions and oppositions had a great part in the distribution of good or evil, and in the government of sublunary things.

Poetical action ought to be probable upon certain suppositions, and such probability as burlesque requires is here violated only by one incident.

Nothing can show more plainly the necessity of doing something, and the difficulty of finding something to do, than that Butler was reduced to transfer to his hero, the flagellation of Sancho, not the most agreeable fiction of Cervantes; very suitable, indeed, to the manners of that age and nation, which ascribed wonderful efficacy to voluntary penances; but so remote from the practice and opinions of the Hudibrastick time, that judgment and imagination are alike offended.

The diction of this poem is grossly familiar, and the numbers purposely neglected, except in a few places where the thoughts, by their native excellence, secure themselves from violation, being such as mean language cannot express. The mode of versification has been blamed by Dryden, who regrets that the heroick measure was not rather chosen. To the critical sentence of Dryden, the highest reverence would be due, were not his decisions often precipitate, and his opinions immature. When he wished to change the measure, he probably would have been willing to change more.

If he intended that, when the numbers were heroick, the diction should still remain vulgar, he planned a very heterogeneous and unnatural composition. If he preferred a general stateliness both of sound and words, he can be only understood to wish that Butler had undertaken a different work.

The measure is quick, sprightly, and colloquial, suitable to the vulgarity of the words, and the levity of the sentiments. But such numbers and such diction can gain regard, only when they are used by a writer, whose vigour of fancy and copiousness of knowledge, ent.i.tle him to contempt of ornaments, and who, in confidence of the novelty and justness of his conceptions, can afford to throw metaphors and epithets away. To another that conveys common thoughts in careless versification, it will only be said, "Pauper videri Cinna vult, et est pauper." The meaning and diction will be worthy of each other, and criticism may justly doom them to perish together.

Nor even though another Butler should arise, would another Hudibras obtain the same regard. Burlesque consists in a disproportion between the style and the sentiments, or between the advent.i.tious sentiments and the fundamental subject. It, therefore, like all bodies compounded of heterogeneous parts, contains in it a principle of corruption. All disproportion is unnatural; and from what is unnatural, we can derive only the pleasure which novelty produces. We admire it awhile as a strange thing; but, when it is no longer strange, we perceive its deformity. It is a kind of artifice, which by frequent repet.i.tion detects itself; and the reader, learning in time what he is to expect, lays down his book, as the spectator turns away from a second exhibition of those tricks, of which the only use is to show that they can be played.

We extract from the second volume of Aubrey's Letters, p. 263, the following lines, ent.i.tled

_Hudibras imprinted._

No jesuite ever took in hand, To plant a church in barren land; Or ever thought it worth his while A Swede or Russe to reconcile.

For where there is not store of wealth, Souls are not worth the chardge of health.

Spain and America had designes To sell their gospell for their wines, For had the Mexicans been poore, No Spaniard twice had landed on their sh.o.r.e.

'Twas gold the catholick religion planted, Which, had they wanted gold, they still had wanted. ED.

[Footnote 63: These are the words of the author of the short account of Butler, prefixed to Hudibras, which Dr. Johnson, notwithstanding what he says above, seems to have supposed was written by Mv. Longneville, the father; but the contrary is to be inferred from a subsequent pa.s.sage, wherein the author laments that he had neither such an acquaintance nor interest with Mr. Longneville, as to procure from him the golden remains of Butler there mentioned. He was, probably, led into the mistake by a note in the Biog. Brit. p. 1077, signifying, that the son of this gentleman was living in 1736.

Of this friend and generous patron of Butler, Mr. William Longneville, I find an account, written by a person who was well acquainted with him, to this effect, viz. that he was a conveyancing lawyer, and a bencher of the inner temple, and had raised himself from a low beginning, to very great eminence in that profession; that he was eloquent and learned, of spotless integrity; that he supported an aged father, who had ruined his fortunes by extravagance, and by his industry and application, reedified a ruined family; that he supported Butler, who, but for him, must literally have starved; and received from him, as a recompense, the papers called his Remains. Life of the lord-keeper Guildford, p. 289.

These have since been given to the public by Mr. Thyer, of Manchester: and the originals are now in the hands of the Rev. Dr. Farmer, master of Emanuel college, Cambridge. H.]

[Footnote 64: In a note in the Biographia Britannica, p. 1075, he is said, on the authority of the younger Mr. Longueville, to have lived for some years in Rose street, Covent garden, and also that he died there; the latter of these particulars is rendered highly probable, by his being interred in the cemetery of that parish.]

[Footnote 65: They were collected into one, and published in 12mo. 1732.

H.]

[Footnote 66: The seventeenth. N.]

ROCHESTER.

John Wilmot, afterwards earl of Rochester, the son of Henry, earl of Rochester, better known by the t.i.tle of lord Wilmot, so often mentioned in Clarendon's History, was born April 10, 1647, at Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. After a grammatical education at the school of Burford, he entered a n.o.bleman into Wadham college in 1659, only twelve years old; and, in 1661, at fourteen, was, with some other persons of high rank, made master of arts by lord Clarendon in person.

He travelled afterwards into France and Italy; and, at his return, devoted himself to the court. In 1665 he went to sea with Sandwich, and distinguished himself at Bergen by uncommon intrepidity; and the next summer served again on board sir Edward Spragge, who, in the heat of the engagement, having a message of reproof to send to one of his captains, could find no man ready to carry it but Wilmot, who, in an open boat, went and returned amidst the storm of shot.

But his reputation for bravery was not lasting: he was reproached with slinking away in street quarrels, and leaving his companions to shift, as they could, without him; and Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, has left a story of his refusal to fight him.

He had very early an inclination to intemperance, which he totally subdued in his travels; but, when he became a courtier, he unhappily addicted himself to dissolute and vitious company, by which his principles were corrupted, and his manners depraved. He lost all sense of religious restraint; and, finding it not convenient to admit the authority of laws, which he was resolved not to obey, sheltered his wickedness behind infidelity.

As he excelled in that noisy and licentious merriment which wine incites, his companions eagerly encouraged him in excess, and he willingly indulged it; till, as he confessed to Dr. Burnet, he was for five years together continually drunk, or so much inflamed by frequent ebriety, as in no interval to be master of himself.

In this state he played many frolicks, which it is not for his honour that we should remember, and which are not now distinctly known. He often pursued low amours in mean disguises, and always acted with great exactness and dexterity the characters which he a.s.sumed.

He once erected a stage on Tower hill, and harangued the populace as a mountebank; and, having made physick part of his study, is said to have practised it successfully.

He was so much in favour with king Charles, that he was made one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and comptroller of Woodstock park.

Having an active and inquisitive mind, he never, except in his paroxysms of intemperance, was wholly negligent of study: he read what is considered as polite learning so much, that he is mentioned by Wood as the greatest scholar of all the n.o.bility. Sometimes he retired into the country, and amused himself with writing libels, in which he did not pretend to confine himself to truth.

His favourite author in French was Boileau, and in English Cowley.

Thus in a course of drunken gaiety, and gross sensuality, with intervals of study, perhaps, yet more criminal, with an avowed contempt of all decency and order, a total disregard of every moral, and a resolute denial of every religious obligation, he lived worthless and useless, and blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness, till, at the age of one-and-thirty, he had exhausted the fund of life, and reduced himself to a state of weakness and decay.

At this time he was led to an acquaintance with Dr. Burnet, to whom he laid open, with great freedom, the tenour of his opinions, and the course of his life, and from whom he received such conviction of the reasonableness of moral duty, and the truth of Christianity, as produced a total change both of his manners and opinions. The account of those salutary conferences is given by Burnet in a book ent.i.tled, Some Pa.s.sages of the Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester, which the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety. It were an injury to the reader to offer him an abridgment.

He died July 26, 1680, before he had completed his thirty-fourth year; and was so worn away by a long illness, that life went out without a struggle.

Lord Rochester was eminent for the vigour of his colloquial wit, and remarkable for many wild pranks and sallies of extravagance. The glare of his general character diffused itself upon his writings; the compositions of a man whose name was heard so often, were certain of attention, and from many readers certain of applause. This blaze of reputation is not yet quite extinguished; and his poetry still retains some splendour beyond that which genius has bestowed.

Wood and Burnet give us reason to believe, that much was imputed to him which he did not write. I know not by whom the original collection was made, or by what authority its genuineness was ascertained. The first edition was published in the year of his death, with an air of concealment, professing, in the t.i.tlepage, to be printed at Antwerp.

Of some of the pieces, however, there is no doubt: the Imitation of Horace's Satire, the Verses to lord Mulgrave, Satire against Man, the Verses upon Nothing, and, perhaps, some others, are, I believe, genuine; and, perhaps, most of those which the late collection exhibits[67].

As he cannot be supposed to have found leisure for any course of continued study, his pieces are commonly short, such as one fit of resolution would produce.

His songs have no particular character; they tell, like other songs, in smooth and easy language, of scorn and kindness, dismission and desertion, absence and inconstancy, with the commonplaces of artificial courtship. They are commonly smooth and easy; but have little nature, and little sentiment.

His Imitation of Horace on Lucilius is not inelegant or unhappy. In the reign of Charles the second began that adaptation, which has since been very frequent, of ancient poetry to present times; and, perhaps, few will be found where the parallelism is better preserved than in this. The versification is, indeed, sometimes careless, but it is sometimes vigorous and weighty.

The strongest effort of his muse is his poem upon Nothing. He is not the first who has chosen this barren topick for the boast of his fertility.

There is a poem called Nihil in Latin, by Pa.s.serat, a poet and critick of the sixteenth century, in France; who, in his own epitaph, expresses his zeal for good poetry thus:

Molliter ossa quiescent Sint modo carminibus non onerata malis.

His works are not common, and, therefore, I shall subjoin his verses.

In examining this performance, Nothing must be considered as having not only a negative, but a kind of positive signification; as I need not fear thieves, I have _nothing_, and _nothing_ is a very powerful protector. In the first part of the sentence it is taken negatively; in the second it is taken positively, as an agent. In one of Boileau's lines it was a question, whether he should use "a rien faire," or "a ne rien faire;"

and the first was preferred, because it gave "rien" a sense in some sort positive. _Nothing_ can be a subject only in its positive sense, and such a sense is given it in the first line:

_Nothing_, thou elder brother ev'n to shade.

In this line, I know not whether he does not allude to a curious book, De Umbra, by Wowerus, which, having told the qualities of _shade_, concludes with a poem, in which are these lines:

Jam primum terram validis circ.u.mspice claustris Suspensam totam, decus admirabile mundi, Terrasque, tractusque maris, camposque liquentes Aeris, et vasti laqueata palatia coeli---- Omnibus UMBRA prior.

The positive sense is generally preserved, with great skill, through the whole poem; though, sometimes, in a subordinate sense, the negative _nothing_ is injudiciously mingled. Pa.s.serat confounds the two senses.