Books: Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc.

S >> Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

Petrarch entertained the learned men of his age with the novelty of
modern pastorals in Latin. Being not ignorant of Greek, and finding
nothing in the word "eclogue" of rural meaning, he supposed it to be
corrupted by the copiers, and therefore called his own productions
"AEglogues," by which he meant to express the talk of goat-herds,
though it will mean only the talk of goats. This new name was
adopted by subsequent writers, and among others by our Spenser.

More than a century afterwards (1498) Mantuan published his Bucolics
with such success that they were soon dignified by Badius with a
comment, and, as Scaliger complained, received into schools, and
taught as classical; his complaint was vain, and the practice,
however injudicious, spread far and continued long. Mantuan was
read, at least in some of the inferior schools of this kingdom, to
the beginning of the present century. The speakers of Mantuan
carried their disquisitions beyond the country to censure the
corruptions of the Church, and from him Spenser learned to employ
his swains on topics of controversy. The Italians soon transferred
pastoral poetry into their own language. Sannazaro wrote "Arcadia"
in prose and verse; Tasso and Guarini wrote "Favole Boschareccie,"
or Sylvan Dramas; and all nations of Europe filled volumes with
Thyrsis and Damon, and Thestylis and Phyllis.

Philips thinks it "somewhat strange to conceive how, in an age so
addicted to the Muses, pastoral poetry never comes to be so much as
thought upon." His wonder seems very unseasonable; there had never,
from the time of Spenser, wanted writers to talk occasionally of
Arcadia and Strephon, and half the book, in which he first tried his
powers, consists of dialogues on Queen Mary's death, between Tityrus
and Corydon, or Mopsus and Menalcas. A series or book of pastorals,
however, I know not that anyone had then lately published.

Not long afterwards Pope made the first display of his powers in
four pastorals, written in a very different form. Philips had taken
Spenser, and Pope took Virgil for his pattern. Philips endeavoured
to be natural, Pope laboured to be elegant.

Philips was now favoured by Addison and by Addison's companions, who
were very willing to push him into reputation. The Guardian gave an
account of Pastoral, partly critical and partly historical; in
which, when the merit of the modern is compared, Tasso and Guarini
are censured for remote thoughts and unnatural refinements, and,
upon the whole, the Italians and French are all excluded from rural
poetry, and the pipe of the pastoral muse is transmitted by lawful
inheritance from Theocritus to Virgil, from Virgil to Spenser, and
from Spenser to Philips. With this inauguration of Philips his
rival Pope was not much delighted; he therefore drew a comparison of
Philips's performance with his own, in which, with an unexampled and
unequalled artifice of irony, though he has himself always the
advantage, he gives the preference to Philips. The design of
aggrandising himself he disguised with such dexterity that, though
Addison discovered it, Steele was deceived, and was afraid of
displeasing Pope by publishing his paper. Published however it was
(Guardian, No. 40), and from that time Pope and Philips lived in a
perpetual reciprocation of malevolence. In poetical powers, of
either praise or satire, there was no proportion between the
combatants; but Philips, though he could not prevail by wit, hoped
to hurt Pope with another weapon, and charged him, as Pope thought
with Addison's approbation, as disaffected to the Government. Even
with this he was not satisfied, for, indeed, there is no appearance
that any regard was paid to his clamours. He proceeded to grosser
insults, and hung up a rod at Button's, with which he threatened to
chastise Pope, who appears to have been extremely exasperated, for
in the first edition of his Letters he calls Philips "rascal," and
in the last still charges him with detaining in his hands the
subscriptions for "Homer" delivered to him by the Hanover Club. I
suppose it was never suspected that he meant to appropriate the
money; he only delayed, and with sufficient meanness, the
gratification of him by whose prosperity he was pained.

Men sometimes suffer by injudicious kindness; Philips became
ridiculous, without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his
friends, who decorated him with honorary garlands, which the first
breath of contradiction blasted.

When upon the succession of the House of Hanover every Whig expected
to be happy, Philips seems to have obtained too little notice; he
caught few drops of the golden shower, though he did not omit what
flattery could perform. He was only made a commissioner of the
lottery (1717), and, what did not much elevate his character, a
justice of the peace.

The success of his first play must naturally dispose him to turn his
hopes towards the stage; he did not, however, soon commit himself to
the mercy of an audience, but contented himself with the fame
already acquired, till after nine years he produced (1722) The
Briton, a tragedy which, whatever was its reception, is now
neglected; though one of the scenes, between Vanoc the British
Prince and Valens the Roman General, is confessed to be written with
great dramatic skill, animated by spirit truly poetical. He had not
been idle though he had been silent, for he exhibited another
tragedy the same year on the story of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester.
This tragedy is only remembered by its title.

His happiest undertaking was (1711) of a paper called The
Freethinker, in conjunction with associates, of whom one was Dr.
Boulter, who, then only minister of a parish in Southwark, was of so
much consequence to the Government that he was made first Bishop of
Bristol, and afterwards Primate of Ireland, where his piety and his
charity will be long honoured. It may easily be imagined that what
was printed under the direction of Boulter would have nothing in it
indecent or licentious; its title is to be understood as implying
only freedom from unreasonable prejudice. It has been reprinted in
volumes, but is little read; nor can impartial criticism recommend
it as worthy of revival.

Boulter was not well qualified to write diurnal essays, but he knew
how to practise the liberality of greatness and the fidelity of
friendship. When he was advanced to the height of ecclesiastical
dignity, he did not forget the companion of his labours. Knowing
Philips to be slenderly supported, he took him to Ireland as
partaker of his fortune, and, making him his secretary, added such
preferments as enabled him to represent the county of Armagh in the
Irish Parliament. In December, 1726, he was made secretary to the
Lord Chancellor, and in August, 1733, became Judge of the
Prerogative Court.

After the death of his patron he continued some years in Ireland,
but at last longing, as it seems, for his native country, he
returned (1748) to London, having doubtless survived most of his
friends and enemies, and among them his dreaded antagonist Pope. He
found, however, the Duke of Newcastle still living, and to him he
dedicated his poems collected into a volume.

Having purchased an annuity of 400 pounds, he now certainly hoped to
pass some years of life in plenty and tranquillity; but his hope
deceived him: he was struck with a palsy, and died June 18, 1749,
in his seventy-eighth year.

Of his personal character all that I have heard is, that he was
eminent for bravery and skill in the sword, and that in conversation
he was solemn and pompous. He had great sensibility of censure, if
judgment may be made by a single story which I heard long ago from
Mr. Ing, a gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire. "Philips,"
said he, "was once at table, when I asked him, 'How came thy king of
Epirus to drive oxen, and to say, "I'm goaded on by love"?' After
which question he never spoke again."

Of The Distressed Mother not much is pretended to be his own, and
therefore it is no subject of criticism: his other two tragedies, I
believe, are not below mediocrity, nor above it. Among the poems
comprised in the late Collection, the "Letter from Denmark" may be
justly praised; the Pastorals, which by the writer of the Guardian
were ranked as one of the four genuine productions of the rustic
Muse, cannot surely be despicable. That they exhibit a mode of life
which did not exist, nor ever existed, is not to be objected: the
supposition of such a state is allowed to be pastoral. In his other
poems he cannot be denied the praise of lines sometimes elegant; but
he has seldom much force or much comprehension. The pieces that
please best are those which, from Pope and Pope's adherents,
procured him the name of "Namby-Pamby," the poems of short lines, by
which he paid his court to all ages and characters, from Walpole the
"steerer of the realm," to Miss Pulteney in the nursery. The
numbers are smooth and sprightly, and the diction is seldom faulty.
They are not loaded with much thought, yet, if they had been written
by Addison, they would have had admirers: little things are not
valued but when they are done by those who can do greater.

In his translations from "Pindar" he found the art of reaching all
the obscurity of the Theban bard, however he may fall below his
sublimity; he will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have more
smoke. He has added nothing to English poetry, yet at least half
his book deserves to be read: perhaps he valued most himself that
part which the critic would reject.

WEST.

Gilbert West is one of the writers of whom I regret my inability to
give a sufficient account; the intelligence which my inquiries have
obtained is general and scanty. He was the son of the Rev. Dr.
West; perhaps him who published "Pindar" at Oxford about the
beginning of this century. His mother was sister to Sir Richard
Temple, afterwards Lord Cobham. His father, purposing to educate
him for the Church, sent him first to Eton, and afterwards to
Oxford; but he was seduced to a more airy mode of life, by a
commission in a troop of horse, procured him by his uncle. He
continued some time in the army, though it is reasonable to suppose
that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love, or
much neglected the pursuit, of learning; and afterwards, finding
himself more inclined to civil employment, he laid down his
commission, and engaged in business under the Lord Townshend, then
Secretary of State, with whom he attended the King to Hanover.

His adherence to Lord Townshend ended in nothing but a nomination
(May, 1729) to be Clerk-Extraordinary of the Privy Council, which
produced no immediate profit; for it only placed him in a state of
expectation and right of succession, and it was very long before a
vacancy admitted him to profit.

Soon afterwards he married, and settled himself in a very pleasant
house at Wickham, in Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and
to piety. Of his learning the late Collection exhibits evidence,
which would have been yet fuller if the dissertations which
accompany his version of "Pindar" had not been improperly omitted.
Of his piety the influence has, I hope, been extended far by his
"Observations on the Resurrection," published in 1747, for which the
University of Oxford created him a Doctor of Laws, by diploma (March
30, 1748), and would doubtless have reached yet further had he lived
to complete what he had for some time meditated--the "Evidences of
the Truth of the New Testament." Perhaps it may not be without
effect to tell that he read the prayers of the public Liturgy every
morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening he called his
servants into the parlour and read to them first a sermon and then
prayers. Crashaw is now not the only maker of verses to whom may be
given the two venerable names of Poet and Saint. He was very often
visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they were weary of faction
and debates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a decent
table, and literary conversation. There is at Wickham a walk made
by Pitt; and, what is of far more importance, at Wickham, Lyttelton
received that conviction which produced his "Dissertation on St.
Paul." These two illustrious friends had for a while listened to
the blandishments of infidelity; and when West's book was published,
it was bought by some who did not know his change of opinion, in
expectation of new objections against Christianity; and as infidels
do not want malignity, they revenged the disappointment by calling
him a Methodist.

Mr. West's income was not large; and his friends endeavoured, but
without success, to obtain an augmentation. It is reported that the
education of the young Prince was offered to him, but that he
required a more extensive power of superintendence than it was
thought proper to allow him. In time, however, his revenue was
improved; he lived to have one of the lucrative clerkships of the
Privy Council (1752); and Mr. Pitt at last had it in his power to
make him Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital. He was now sufficiently
rich; but wealth came too late to be long enjoyed; nor could it
secure him from the calamities of life; he lost (1755) his only son;
and the year after (March 26) a stroke of the palsy brought to the
grave one of the few poets to whom the grave might be without its
terrors.

Of his translations I have only compared the first Olympic Ode with
the original, and found my expectation surpassed, both by its
elegance and its exactness. He does not confine himself to his
author's train of stanzas; for he saw that the difference of
languages required a different mode of versification. The first
strophe is eminently happy; in the second he has a little strayed
from Pindar's meaning, who says, "If thou, my soul, wishest to speak
of games, look not in the desert sky for a planet hotter than the
sun; nor shall we tell of nobler games than those of Olympia." He
is sometimes too paraphrastical. Pindar bestows upon Hiero an
epithet which, in one word, signifies DELIGHTING IN HORSES; a word
which, in the translation, generates these lines:--

"Hiero's royal brows, whose care
Tends the courser's noble breed,
Pleased to nurse the pregnant mare,
Pleased to train the youthful steed."

Pindar says of Pelops, that "he came alone in the dark to the White
Sea;" and West--

"Near the billow-beaten side
Of the foam-besilvered main,
Darkling, and alone, he stood:"

which, however, is less exuberant than the former passage.

A work of this kind must, in a minute examination, discover many
imperfections; but West's version, so far as I have considered it,
appears to be the product of great labour and great abilities.

His "Institution of the Garter" (1742) is written with sufficient
knowledge of the manners that prevailed in the age to which it is
referred, and with great elegance of diction; but, for want of a
process of events, neither knowledge nor elegance preserves the
reader from weariness.

His "Imitations of Spenser" are very successfully performed, both
with respect to the metre, the language, and the fiction; and being
engaged at once by the excellence of the sentiments, and the
artifice of the copy, the mind has two amusements together. But
such compositions are not to be reckoned among the great
achievements of intellect, because their effect is local and
temporary; they appeal not to reason or passion, but to memory, and
presuppose an accidental or artificial state of mind. An imitation
of Spenser is nothing to a reader, however acute, by whom Spenser
has never been perused. Works of this kind may deserve praise, as
proofs of great industry and great nicety of observation; but the
highest praise, the praise of genius, they cannot claim. The
noblest beauties of art are those of which the effect is co-extended
with rational nature, or at least with the whole circle of polished
life; what is less than this can be only pretty, the plaything of
fashion, and the amusement of a day.

There is in the Adventurer a paper of verses given to one of the
authors as Mr. West's, and supposed to have been written by him. It
should not be concealed, however, that it is printed with Mr. Jago's
name in Dodsley's Collection, and is mentioned as his in a letter of
Shenstone's. Perhaps West gave it without naming the author, and
Hawkesworth, receiving it from him, thought it his; for his he
thought it, as he told me, and as he tells the public.

COLLINS.

William Collins was born at Chichester, on the 25th day of December,
about 1720. His father was a hatter of good reputation. He was in
1733, as Dr. Warton has kindly informed me, admitted scholar of
Winchester College, where he was educated by Dr. Burton. His
English exercises were better than his Latin. He first courted the
notice of the public by some verses to a "Lady weeping," published
in The Gentleman's Magazine (January, 1739).

In 1740 he stood first in the list of the scholars to be received in
succession at New College, but unhappily there was no vacancy. He
became a Commoner of Queen's College, probably with a scanty
maintenance; but was, in about half a year, elected a Demy of
Magdalen College, where he continued till he had taken a Bachelor's
degree, and then suddenly left the University; for what reason I
know not that he told.

He now (about 1744) came to London a literary adventurer, with many
projects in his head, and very little money in his pocket. He
designed many works; but his great fault was irresolution; or the
frequent calls of immediate necessity broke his scheme, and suffered
him to pursue no settled purpose. A man doubtful of his dinner, or
trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted
meditation or remote inquiries. He published proposals for a
"History of the Revival of Learning;" and I have heard him speak
with great kindness of Leo X., and with keen resentment of his
tasteless successor. But probably not a page of his history was
ever written. He planned several tragedies, but he only planned
them. He wrote now and then odes and other poems, and did
something, however little. About this time I fell into his company.
His appearance was decent and manly; his knowledge considerable, his
views extensive, his conversation elegant, and his disposition
cheerful. By degrees I gained his confidence; and one day was
admitted to him when he was immured by a bailiff that was prowling
in the street. On this occasion recourse was had to the
booksellers, who, on the credit of a translation of Aristotle's
"Poetics," which he engaged to write with a large commentary,
advanced as much money as enabled him to escape into the country.
He showed me the guineas safe in his hand. Soon afterwards his
uncle, Mr. Martin, a lieutenant-colonel, left him about 2000 pounds;
a sum which Collins could scarcely think exhaustible, and which he
did not live to exhaust. The guineas were then repaid, and the
translation neglected. But man is not born for happiness. Collins,
who, while he studied to live, felt no evil but poverty, no sooner
lived to study than his life was assailed by more dreadful
calamities--disease and insanity.

Having formerly written his character, while perhaps it was yet more
distinctly impressed upon my memory, I shall insert it here.

"Mr. Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous
faculties. He was acquainted not only with the learned tongues, but
with the Italian, French, and Spanish languages. He had employed
his mind chiefly on works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by
indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted
with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature,
and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence
in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and
monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment,
to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the
waterfalls of Elysian gardens. This was, however, the character
rather of his inclination than his genius; the grandeur of wildness,
and the novelty of extravagance, were always desired by him, but not
always attained. Yet, as diligence is never wholly lost, if his
efforts sometimes caused harshness and obscurity, they likewise
produced in happier moments sublimity and splendour. This idea
which he had formed of excellence led him to Oriental fictions and
allegorical imagery, and, perhaps, while he was intent upon
description, he did not sufficiently cultivate sentiment. His poems
are the productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor unfurnished
with knowledge either of books or life, but somewhat obstructed in
its progress by deviation in quest of mistaken beauties.

"His morals were pure, and his opinions pious; in a long continuance
of poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it cannot be expected
that any character should be exactly uniform. There is a degree of
want by which the freedom of agency is almost destroyed; and long
association with fortuitous companions will at last relax the
strictness of truth, and abate the fervour of sincerity. That this
man, wise and virtuous as he was, passed always unentangled through
the snares of life, it would be prejudice and temerity to affirm;
but it may be said that at least he preserved the source of action
unpolluted, that his principles were never shaken, that his
distinctions of right and wrong were never confounded, and that his
faults had nothing of malignity or design, but proceeded from some
unexpected pressure, or casual temptation.

"The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and
sadness. He languished some years under that depression of mind
which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves
reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it.
These clouds which he perceived gathering on his intellect he
endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found
himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned. He was
for some time confined in a house of lunatics, and afterwards
retired to the care of his sister in Chichester, where death, in
1756, came to his relief.

"After his return from France, the writer of this character paid him
a visit at Islington, where he was waiting for his sister, whom he
had directed to meet him. There was then nothing of disorder
discernible in his mind by any but himself; but he had withdrawn
from study, and travelled with no other book than an English
Testament, such as children carry to the school. When his friend
took it into his hand, out of curiosity to see what companion a man
of letters had chosen, 'I have but one book,' said Collins, 'but
that is the best.'"

Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to
converse, and whom I yet remember with tenderness.

He was visited at Chichester, in his last illness, by his learned
friends Dr. Warton and his brother, to whom he spoke with
disapprobation of his "Oriental Eclogues," as not sufficiently
expressive of Asiatic manners, and called them his "Irish Eclogues."
He showed them, at the same time, an ode inscribed to Mr. John Home,
on the superstitions of the Highlands, which they thought superior
to his other works, but which no search has yet found. His disorder
was no alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness--a
deficiency rather of his vital than his intellectual powers. What
he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few minutes
exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a
short cessation restored his powers, and he was again able to talk
with his former vigour. The approaches of this dreadful malady he
began to feel soon after his uncle's death; and, with the usual
weakness of men so diseased, eagerly snatched that temporary relief
with which the table and the bottle flatter and seduce. But his
health continually declined, and he grew more and more burthensome
to himself.

To what I have formerly said of his writings may be added, that his
diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously
selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of
revival: and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to
think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose
is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow
motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are
often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may
sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure.

Mr. Collins's first production is added here from the Poetical
Calendar:--

TO MISS AURELIA C--R,

ON HER WEEPING AT HER SISTER'S WEDDING.

"Cease, fair Aurelia, cease to mourn;
Lament not Hannah's happy state;
You may be happy in your turn,
And seize the treasure you regret.
With Love united Hymen stands,
And softly whispers to your charms,
'Meet but your lover in my bands,
You'll find your sister in his arms.'"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13