Books: Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope
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Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope
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"The first I shall name is Mr. Johnson, a gentleman that owes to
nature excellent faculties and an elevated genius, and to industry
and application many acquired accomplishments. His taste is
distinguishing, just, and delicate; his judgment clear, and his
reason strong, accompanied with an imagination full of spirit, of
great compass, and stored with refined ideas. He is a critic of the
first rank and, what is his peculiar ornament, he is delivered from
the ostentation, malevolence, and supercilious temper, that so often
blemish men of that character. His remarks result from the nature
and reason of things, and are formed by a judgment free and
unbiassed by the authority of those who have lazily followed each
other in the same beaten track of thinking, and are arrived only at
the reputation of acute grammarians and commentators; men who have
been copying one another many hundred years without any improvement,
or, if they have ventured farther, have only applied in a mechanical
manner the rules of ancient critics to modern writings, and with
great labour discovered nothing but their own want of judgment and
capacity. As Mr. Johnson penetrates to the bottom of his subject,
by which means his observations are solid and natural, as well as
delicate, so his design is always to bring to light something useful
and ornamental; whence his character is the reverse to theirs, who
have eminent abilities in insignificant knowledge, and a great
felicity in finding out trifles. He is no less industrious to
search out the merit of an author, than sagacious in discerning his
errors and defects, and takes more pleasure in commending the
beauties than exposing the blemishes of a laudable writing. Like
Horace, in a long work he can bear some deformities, and justly lay
them on the imperfection of human nature, which is incapable of
faultless productions. When an excellent drama appears in public,
and by its intrinsic worth attracts a general applause, he is not
stung with envy and spleen; nor does he express a savage nature in
fastening upon the celebrated author, dwelling upon his imaginary
defects, and passing over his conspicuous excellences. He treats
all writers upon the same impartial foot, and is not, like the
little critics, taken up entirely in finding out only the beauties
of the ancient and nothing but the errors of the modern writers.
Never did any one express more kindness and good-nature to young and
unfinished authors, he promotes their interests, protects their
reputation, extenuates their faults, and sets off their virtues, and
by his candour guards them from the severity of his judgment. He is
not like those dry critics who are morose because they cannot write
themselves, but is himself master of a good vein in poetry; and
though he does not often employ it, yet he has sometimes entertained
his friends with his unpublished performances."
The rest of the lay monks seem to be but feeble mortals an
comparison with the gigantic Johnson, who yet, with all his
abilities and the help of the fraternity, could drive the
publication but to forty papers, which were afterwards collected
into a volume, and called in the title "A Sequel to the Spectators."
Some years afterwards (1716 and 1717) he published two volumes of
essays in prose, which can be commended only as they are written for
the highest and noblest purpose--the promotion of religion.
Blackmore's prose is not the prose of a poet, for it is languid,
sluggish, and lifeless; his diction is neither daring nor exact, his
flow neither rapid nor easy, and his periods neither smooth nest
strong. His account of WIT will show with how little clearness he
is content to think, and how little his thoughts are recommended by
his language.
"As to its efficient cause, WIT owes its production to an
extraordinary and peculiar temperament in the constitution of the
possessor of it, in which is found a concurrence of regular and
exalted ferments, and an affluence of animal spirits, refined and
rectified to a great degree of purity; whence, being endowed with
vivacity, brightness, and celerity, as well in their reflections as
direct motions, they become proper instruments for the sprightly
operations of the mind, by which means the imagination can with
great facility range the wide field of Nature, contemplate an
infinite variety of objects, and, by observing the similitude and
disagreement of their several qualities, single out and abstract,
and then suit and unite, those ideas which will best serve its
purpose. Hence beautiful allusions, surprising metaphors, and
admirable sentiments, are always ready at hand; and while the fancy
is full of images, collected from innumerable objects, and their
different qualities, relations, and habitudes, it can at pleasure
dress a common notion in a strange but becoming garb, by which, as
before observed, the same thought will appear a new one, to the
great delight and wonder of the hearer. What we call genius results
from this particular happy complexion in the first formation of the
person that enjoys it, and is Nature's gift, but diversified by
various specific characters and limitations, as its active fire is
blended and allayed by different proportions of phlegm, or reduced
and regulated by the contrast of opposite ferments. Therefore, as
there happens in the composition of facetious genius a greater or
less, though still an inferior, degree of judgment and prudence, one
man of wit will be varied and distinguished from another."
In these essays he took little care to propitiate the wits, for he
scorns to avert their malice at the expense of virtue or of truth.
"Several, in their books, have many sarcastical and spiteful strokes
at religion in general; while others make themselves pleasant with
the principles of the Christian. Of the last kind this age has seen
a most audacious example in the book entitled 'A Tale of a Tub.'
Had this writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are
justly impatient of all indignity offered to the established
religion of their country, no doubt but the author would have
received the punishment he deserved. But the fate of this impious
buffoon is very different, for in a Protestant kingdom, zealous of
their civil and religious immunities, he has not only escaped
affronts and the effects of public resentment, but has been caressed
and patronised by persons of great figure, and of all denominations.
Violent party-men, who differed in all things besides, agreed in
their turn to show particular respect and friendship to this
insolent derider of the worship of his country, till at last the
reputed writer is not only gone off with impunity, but triumphs in
his dignity and preferment. I do not know that any inquiry or
search was ever made after this writing, or that any reward was ever
offered for the discovery of the author, or that the infamous book
was ever condemned to be burnt in public. Whether this proceeds
from the excessive esteem and love that men in power, during the
late reign, had for wit, or their defect of zeal and concern for the
Christian religion will be determined best by those who are best
acquainted with their character."
In another place he speaks with becoming abhorrence of a GODLESS
AUTHOR who has burlesqued a Psalm. This author was supposed to be
Pope, who published a reward for any one that would produce the
coiner of the accusation, but never denied it, and was afterwards
the perpetual and incessant enemy of Blackmore.
One of his essays is upon the spleen, which is treated by him so
much to his own satisfaction, that he has published the same
thoughts in the same words; first, in the "Lay Monastery," then in
the "Essay," and then in the "Preface to a Medical Treatise on the
Spleen." One passage, which I have found already twice, I will here
exhibit, because I think it better imagined and better expressed
than could be expected from the common tenor of his prose:-
"--As the several combinations of splenetic madness and folly
produce an infinite variety of irregular under-standing, so the
amicable accommodation and alliance between several virtues and
vices produce an equal diversity in the dispositions and manners of
mankind; whence it comes to pass, that as many monstrous and absurd
productions are found in the moral as in the intellectual world.
How surprising is it to observe among the least culpable men, some
whose minds are attracted by heaven and earth with a seeming equal
force; some who are proud of humility; others who are censorious and
uncharitable, yet self-denying and devout; some who join contempt of
the world with sordid avarice; and others, who preserve a great
degree of piety with ill-nature and ungoverned passions. Nor are
instances of this inconsistent mixture less frequent among bad men,
where we often with admiration see persons at once generous and
unjust, impious lovers of their country, and flagitious heroes,
good-natured sharpers, immoral men of honour, and libertines who
will sooner die than change their religion; and though it is true
that repugnant coalitions of so high a degree are found but in a
part of mankind, yet none of the whole mass, either good or bad, are
entirely exempted from some absurd mixture."
He about this time (August 22, 1716) became one of the elects of the
College of Physicians, and was soon after (October 1) chosen Censor.
He seems to have arrived late, whatever was the reason, at his
medical honours.
Having succeeded so well in his book on Creation, by which he
established the great principle of all religion, he thought his
undertaking imperfect, unless he likewise enforced the truth of
Revelation, and for that purpose added another poem on "Redemption."
He had likewise written before his "Creation" three books on the
Nature of Man.
The lovers of musical devotion have always wished for a more happy
metrical version than they have yet obtained of the Book of Psalms.
This wish the piety of Blackmore led him to gratify, and he produced
(1721) "A New Version of the Psalms of David fitted to the Tunes
used in Churches," which being recommended by the archbishops and
many bishops, obtained a license for its admission into public
worship; but no admission has it yet obtained, nor has it any right
to come where Brady and Tate have got possession. Blackmore's name
must be added to those of many others who, by the same attempt, have
obtained only the praise of meaning well.
He was not yet deterred from heroic poetry. There was another
monarch of this island (for he did not fetch his heroes from foreign
countries) whom he considered as worthy the epic muse, and he
dignified "Alfred" (1723) with twelve books. But the opinion of the
nation was now settled; a hero introduced by Blackmore was not
likely to find either respect or kindness; "Alfred" took his place
by "Eliza" in silence and darkness. Benevolence was ashamed to
favour, and malice was weary of insulting. Of his four epic poems,
the first had such reputation and popularity as enraged the critics;
the second was at least known enough to be ridiculed; the two last
had neither friends nor enemies.
Contempt is a kind of gangrene, which, if it seizes one part of a
character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. Blackmore being
despised as a poet, was in time neglected as a physician; his
practice, which was once invidiously great, forsook him in the
latter part of his life, but being by nature, or by principle,
averse from idleness, he employed his unwelcome leisure in writing
books on physic, and teaching others to cure those whom he could
himself cure no longer. I know not whether I can enumerate all the
treatises by which he has endeavoured to diffuse the art of healing,
for there is scarcely any distemper of dreadful name which he has
not taught the reader how to oppose. He has written on the small-
pox, with a vehement invective against inoculation; on consumption,
the spleen, the gout, the rheumatism, the king's evil, the dropsy,
the jaundice, the stone, the diabetes, and the plague. Of those
books, if I had read them, it could nor be expected that I should be
able to give a critical account. I have been told that there is
something in them of vexation and discontent, discovered by a
perpetual attempt to degrade physic from its sublimity, and to
represent it as attainable without much previous or concomitant
learning. By the transient glances which I have thrown upon them I
have observed an affected contempt of the ancients, and a
supercilious derision of transmitted knowledge. Of this indecent
arrogance the following quotation from his preface to the "Treatise
on the Small-pox" will afford a specimen, in which, when the reader
finds what I fear is true, that, when he was censuring Hippocrates,
he did not know the difference between aphorism and apophthegm, he
will not pay much regard to his determinations concerning ancient
learning.
"As for this book of aphorisms, it is like my Lord Bacon's of the
same title, a book of jests, or a grave collection of trite and
trifling observations; of which, though many are true and certain,
yet they signify nothing, and may afford diversion, but no
instruction, most of them being much inferior to the sayings of the
wise men of Greece, which yet are so low and mean, that we are
entertained every day with more valuable sentiments at the table
conversation of ingenious and learned men."
I am unwilling, however, to leave him in total disgrace, and will
therefore quote from another preface a passage less reprehensible.
"Some gentlemen have been disingenuous and unjust to me, by wresting
and forcing my meaning, in the preface to another book, as if I
condemned and exposed all learning, though they knew I declared that
I greatly honoured and esteemed all men of superior literature and
erudition, and that I only undervalued false or superficial
learning, that signifies nothing for the service of mankind; and
that as to physic, I expressly affirmed that learning must be joined
with native genius to make a physician of the first rank; but if
those talents are separated, I asserted, and do still insist, that a
man of native sagacity and diligence will prove a more able and
useful practiser than a heavy notional scholar, encumbered with a
heap of confused ideas."
He was not only a poet and a physician, but produced likewise a work
of a different kind, "A True and Impartial History of the Conspiracy
against King William of Glorious Memory in the Year 1695." This I
have never seen, but suppose it is at least compiled with integrity.
He engaged likewise in theological controversy, and wrote two books
against the Arians: "Just Prejudices against the Arian Hypothesis,"
and "Modern Arians Unmasked." Another of his works is "Natural
Theology; or, Moral Duties considered apart from Positive; with some
Observations on the Desirableness and Necessity of a Supernatural
Revelation." This was the last book that he published. He left
behind him "The Accomplished Preacher; or, an Essay upon Divine
Eloquence," which was printed after his death by Mr. White of
Nayland, in Essex, the minister who attended his death-bed, and
testified the fervent piety of his last hours. He died on the 8th
of October, 1729.
Blackmore, by the unremitted enmity of the wits, whom he provoked
more by his virtue than his dulness, has been exposed to worse
treatment than he deserved. His name was so long used to point
every epigram upon dull writers, that it became at last a byword of
contempt but it deserves observation, that malignity takes hold only
of his writings, and that his life passed without reproach, even
when his boldness of reprehension naturally turned upon him many
eyes desirous to espy faults which many tongues would have made
haste to publish. But those who could not blame, could, at least,
forbear to praise, and therefore of his private life and domestic
character there are no memorials.
As an author, he may justly claim the honours of magnanimity. The
incessant attacks of his enemies, whether serious or merry, are
never discovered to have disturbed his quiet, or to have lessened
his confidence in himself: they neither awed him to silence nor to
caution: they neither provoked him to petulance, nor depressed him
to complaint. While the distributors of literary fame were
endeavouring to depreciate and degrade him, he either despised or
defied them, wrote on as he had written before, and never turned
aside to quiet them by civility, or repress them by confutation. He
depended with great security on his own powers, and perhaps was for
that reason less diligent in perusing books. His literature was, I
think, but small. What he knew of antiquity, I suspect him to have
gathered from modern compilers; but, though he could not boast of
much critical knowledge, his mind was stored with general
principles, and he left minute researches to those whom he
considered as little minds. With this disposition he wrote most of
his poems. Having formed a magnificent design, he was careless of
particular and subordinate elegances; he studied no niceties of
versification; he waited for no felicities of fancy, but caught his
first thoughts in the first words in which they were presented; nor
does it appear that he saw beyond his own performances, or had ever
elevated his was to that ideal perfection which every genius born to
excel is condemned always to pursue, and never overtake. In the
first suggestions of his imagination he acquiesced; he thought them
good, and did not seek for better. His works may be read a long
time without the occurrence of a single line that stands prominent
from the rest. The poem on "Creation" has, however, the appearance
of more circumspection; it wants neither harmony of numbers,
accuracy of thought, nor elegance of diction. It has either been
written with great care, or, what cannot be imagined of so long a
work, with such felicity as made care less necessary. Its two
constituent parts are ratiocination and description. To reason in
verse is allowed to be difficult; but Blackmore not only reasons in
verse, but very often reasons poetically; and finds the art of
uniting ornament with strength and ease with closeness. This is a
skill which Pope might have condescended to learn from him, when he
needed it so much in his "Moral Essays."
In his descriptions both of life and nature, the poet and the
philosopher happily co-operate; truth is recommended by elegance,
and elegance sustained by truth. In the structure and order of the
poem, not only the greater parts are properly consecutive, but the
didactic and illustrative paragraphs are so happily mingled, that
labour is relieved by pleasure, and the attention is led on through
a long succession of varied excellence to the original position, the
fundamental principle of wisdom and of virtue.
As the heroic poems of Blackmore are now little read, it is thought
proper to insert, as a specimen from "Prince Arthur," the song of
Mopas mentioned by Molyneux:-
"But that which Arthur with most pleasure heard
Were noble strains, by Mopas sung the bard,
Who to his harp in lofty verse began,
And through the secret maze of Nature ran.
He the Great Spirit sung, that all things filled,
That the tumultuous waves of Chaos stilled;
Whose nod disposed the jarring seeds to peace,
And made the wars of hostile Atoms cease.
All Beings, we in fruitful Nature find,
Proceeded from the Great Eternal mind:
Streams of his unexhausted spring of power,
And, cherished with his influence, endure.
He spread the pure cerulean fields on high,
And arched the chambers of the vaulted sky,
Which he, to suit their glory with their height,
Adorned with globes, that reel, as drunk with light.
His hand directed all the tuneful spheres,
He turned their orbs, and polished all the stars.
He filled the Sun's vast lamp with golden light:
And bid the silver Moon adorn the night.
He spread the airy Ocean without shores,
Where birds are wafted with their feathered oars.
Then sung the bard how the light vapours rise
From the warm earth, and cloud the smiling skies;
He sung how some, chilled in their airy flight,
Fall scattered down in pearly dew by night;
How some, raised higher, sit in secret steams
On the reflected points of bounding beams,
Till, chilled with cold, they shade th' ethereal plain,
Then on the thirsty earth descend in rain;
How some, whose parts a slight contexture show,
Sink hovering through the air in fleecy snow;
How part is spun in silken threads, and clings
Entangled in the grass is gluey strings;
How others stamp to stones, with rushing sound
Fall from their crystal quarries to the ground;
How some are laid in trains, that kindled fly,
In harmless fires by night, about the sky;
How some in winds blow with impetuous force,
And carry ruin where they bend their course,
While some conspire to form a gentle breeze,
To fan the air, and play among the trees;
How some, enraged, grow turbulent and loud,
Pent in the bowels of a frowning cloud,
That cracks, as if the axis of the world
Was broke, and Heaven's bright towers were downwards hurled.
He sung how earth's wide ball, at Jove's command,
Did in the midst on airy columns stand;
And how the soul of plants, in prison held,
And bound with sluggish fetters, lies concealed,
Till with the spring's warm beams, almost released
From the dull weight, with which it lay opprest,
Its vigour spreads, and makes the teeming earth
Heave up, and labour with the sprouting birth:
The active spirit freedom seeks in vain,
It only works and twists a stronger chain;
Urging its prison's sides to break a way,
It makes that wider, where 'tis forced to stay:
Till, having formed its living house, it rears
Its head, and in a tender plant appears.
Hence springs the oak, the beauty of the grove,
Whose stately trunk fierce storms can scarcely move.
Hence grows the cedar, hence the swelling vine
Does round the elm its purple clusters twine.
Hence painted flowers the smiling gardens bless,
Both with their fragrant scent and gaudy dress.
Hence the white lily in full beauty grows,
Hence the blue violet and blushing rose.
He sung how sunbeams brood upon the earth,
And in the glebe hatch such a numerous birth;
Which way the genial warmth in Summer storms
Turns putrid vapours to a bed of worms;
How rain, transformed by this prolific power,
Falls from the clouds an animated shower.
He sung the embryo's growth within the womb,
And how the parts their various shapes assume.
With what rare art the wondrous structure's wrought,
From one crude mass to such perfection brought;
That no part useless, none misplaced we see,
None are forgot, and more would monstrous be."
POPE
Alexander Pope was born in London, May 22, 1688, of parents whose
rank or station was never ascertained: we are informed that they
were of "gentle blood;" that his father was of a family of which the
Earl of Downe was the head, and that his mother was the daughter of
William Turner, Esquire, of York, who had likewise three sons, one
of whom had the honour of being killed, and the other of dying, in
the service of Charles the First; the third was made a general
officer in Spain, from whom the sister inherited what sequestrations
and forfeitures had left in the family. This, and this only, is
told by Pope, who is more willing, as I have heard observed, to show
what his father was not, than what he was. It is allowed that he
grew rich by trade; but whether in a shop or on the Exchange was
never discovered till Mr. Tyers told, on the authority of Mrs.
Racket, that he was a linendraper in the Strand. Both parents were
Papists.
Pope was from his birth of a constitution tender and delicate, but
is said to have shown remarkable gentleness and sweetness of
disposition. The weakness of his body continued through his life,
but the mildness of his mind perhaps ended with his childhood. His
voice when he was young was so pleasing, that he was called in
fondness "The Little Nightingale."
Being not sent early to school, he was taught to read by an aunt;
and, when he was seven or eight years old, became a lover of books.
He first learned to write by imitating printed books, a species of
penmanship in which he retained great excellence through his whole
life, though his ordinary hand was not elegant. When he was about
eight he was placed in Hampshire, under Taverner, a Romish priest,
who, by a method very rarely practised, taught him the Greek and
Latin rudiments together. He was now first regularly initiated in
poetry by the perusal of "Ogilby's Homer" and "Sandys' Ovid."
Ogilby's assistance he never repaid with any praise; but of Sandys
he declared, in his notes to the "Iliad," that English poetry owed
much of its beauty to his translations. Sandys very rarely
attempted original composition.
From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was
considerable, he was removed to a school at Twyford, near
Winchester, and again to another school about Hyde Park Corner, from
which he used sometimes to stroll to the play-hones, and was so
delighted with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play
from "Ogilby's Iliad," with some verses of his own intermixed, which
he persuaded his schoolfellows to act, with the addition of his
master's gardener, who personated Ajax.
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