The Age of Pope Part 8

''Tis to the vulgar Death too harsh appears, The ill we feel is only in our fears; To die is landing on some silent sh.o.r.e Where billows never break, nor tempests roar; Ere well we feel th' friendly stroke 'tis o'er.

The wise through thought th' insults of death defy, The fools through blest insensibility.

'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave; Sought by the wretch and vanquished by the brave.

It eases lovers, sets the captive free, And though a tyrant, offers liberty.'

Addison in defending Garth in the _Whig-Examiner_ from the criticisms of Prior in the _Examiner_, the organ of the Tory party, says he does not question but the author 'who has endeavoured to prove that he who wrote the _Dispensary_ was no poet, will very suddenly undertake to show that he who gained the battle of _Blenheim_ is no general.' The comparison was an unfortunate one. Marlborough's military reputation has grown brighter with time, Garth's fame as a poet has long ago ceased to exist.

A literary although not a poetical interest is a.s.sociated with the name of "well-natured Garth," who, as Pope acknowledges, was one of his earliest friends; like Arbuthnot, he lived among the wits, and as a member of the famous Kit-cat Club he wrote verses upon the Whig beauties toasted by its members. His name is linked with Dryden's as well as with that of his ill.u.s.trious successor. It will be remembered how, on the death of Dryden, the poet's body lay in state in the College of Physicians, and how, before the great procession started for Westminster Abbey, Sir Samuel, who was then President, delivered a Latin oration.

Garth died in January, 1717-18, and, according to Pope, was a good Christian without knowing it. Addison, however, who visited Garth in his last illness, told Dr. Berkeley that he rejected Christianity on the a.s.surance of his friend Halley that its doctrines were incomprehensible, and the religion itself an imposture. According to another report which comes through Pope, he actually 'died a papist.'

[Sidenote: Ambrose Philips (1671-1749).]

Ambrose Philips, who belonged, like Tickell, to Addison's 'little senate,' was born in 1671, and educated at St. John's, Cambridge. His _Pastorals_ were published in Tonson's _Miscellany_ (1709), and the same volume contained the _Pastorals_ of Pope. Log-rolling was understood in those days, and Philips's verses received warm praise in more than one number of the _Guardian_, the writer in one place declaring that there have been only four masters of the art in above two thousand years: 'Theocritus, who left his dominions to Virgil; Virgil, who left his to his son Spenser; and Spenser, who was succeeded by his eldest born, Philips.'

Pope's _Pastorals_ were not mentioned, and in revenge he devised the consummate artifice of sending an anonymous paper to the _Guardian_, in which, while appearing to praise Philips, he exalted himself. Steele took the bait, and considering that the essay depreciated Pope would not publish it without his permission, which was of course readily granted.

'From that time,' says Johnson, 'Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence.'

Philips's tragedy, _The Distrest Mother_ (1712), a translation, or nearly so, of Racine's _Andromaque_, was puffed in the _Spectator_. It is the play to which Sir Roger de Coverley was taken by his friends, and the representation supplied the good knight with an opportunity for much humorous comment.

'When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would never have him; to which he added with a more than ordinary vehemence, "You cannot imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow." Upon Pyrrhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook his head, and muttered to himself, "Ay, do if you can." This part dwelt so much upon my friend's imagination that at the close of the third Act, as I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, "These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray," says he, "you that are a critic, is this play according to your dramatic rules, as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do not know the meaning of."'[32] Addison also inserted and praised in the _Spectator_ Philips's translations from Sappho (Nos. 223, 229).

His odes to babes and children earned for him the _sobriquet_ of 'Namby Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated into the English language to designate mawkish sentiment. Namby was the infantine p.r.o.nunciation of Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of Philips's surname and that reduplication of sound which is natural to lisping children.'[33]

Between simplicity and absurdity the line is a narrow one, and Philips stepped over it when he wrote to a child in the nursery--

'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling, All caressing, none beguiling; Bud of beauty, fairly blowing, Every charm to nature owing.'

The longest of his baby songs is addressed to the Hon. Miss Carteret, in which he pictures the child's progress to womanhood, and antic.i.p.ates her future loveliness and maiden reign:

'Then the taper-moulded waist With a span of ribbon braced; And the swell of either breast, And the wide high-vaulted chest; And the neck so white and round, Little neck with brilliants bound; And the store of charms which s.h.i.+ne Above, in lineaments divine, Crowded in a narrow s.p.a.ce To complete the desperate face; These alluring powers, and more, Shall enamoured youths adore; These and more in courtly lays Many an aching heart shall praise.'

The inventory of the maiden's physical charms which follows includes veiny temples, sloping shoulders, a hazely lucid eye, and cheek of health; but in the category the only allusion to the attractions of intellect and heart is in a couplet foretelling her

'Gentleness of mind, Gentle from a gentle kind.'

That Philips translated _The Persian Tales_ is indelibly recorded by Pope:

'The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown, Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown, Just writes to make his barrenness appear, And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.'

But even Pope could award praise to Philips. In a letter to Henry Cromwell, in 1710, he observes that he was capable of writing very n.o.bly, 'as I guess by a small copy of his, published in the _Tatler_, on the Danish winter;' and two years later he says to his friend Caryll: 'Mr. Philips has two lines which seem to me what the French call very _picturesque_, that I cannot omit to you:

'All hid in snow in bright confusion lie, And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye!'

The lines, not quite accurately quoted by Pope, are from an epistle, addressed to Lord Dorset from Copenhagen, which contains a few striking couplets, two of which may be transcribed before bidding adieu to Ambrose Philips:

'The vast leviathan wants room to play, And spout his waters in the face of day.

The starving wolves along the main sea prowl, And to the moon in icy valleys howl.'

[Sidenote: John Philips (1676-1708).]

Ambrose Philips must not be confounded with his namesake John, the author of a clever burlesque of Milton, called _The Splendid s.h.i.+lling_ (1705); of _Blenheim_ (1705), a poem which he was urged to write by the Tories in opposition to Addison's _Campaign_; and of a poem upon _Cider_ (1706), in 'Miltonian verse,' which seems to have afforded several suggestions to Pope in his _Windsor Forest_. It is said to display a considerable knowledge of the subject, and in that its princ.i.p.al merit consists. From _The Splendid s.h.i.+lling_ a brief extract may be given:

'So pa.s.s my days. But when nocturnal shades This world envelop, and th' inclement air Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood; Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn, Amidst the horrors of the tedious night, Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades, Or desperate lady near a purling stream, Or lover pendent on a willow tree.

Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose.

But if a slumber haply does invade My weary limbs, my fancy still awake, Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream Tipples imaginary pots of ale In vain; awake I find the settled thirst Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.'

'Philips,' says the poet Campbell, 'had the merit of studying and admiring Milton, but he never could imitate him without ludicrous effect, either in jest or earnest. His _Splendid s.h.i.+lling_ is the earliest and one of the best of our parodies; but _Blenheim_ is as completely a burlesque upon Milton as _The Splendid s.h.i.+lling_, though it was written and read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn admiration over his Miltonic cadences.'

[Sidenote: Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718).]

Nicholas Rowe had the honour, if it was one in those days, of being made Laureate on the accession of George I. His odes, epistles, and songs are without merit, but he gained reputation as the translator of Lucan's _Pharsalia_, of which Sir Arthur Gorges had produced a version in 1614, and his plays ent.i.tle him to a place, though not a high one, in our dramatic literature.

Rowe edited an edition of Shakespeare, and should have known his author, yet in a prologue he declares that he could not draw women--an amazing a.s.sertion echoed by Collins, who praises Fletcher for his knowledge of the 'female mind,' and adds that 'stronger Shakespeare felt for man alone.'

The chronological list of Rowe's dramas runs as follows: _The Ambitious Step-mother_ (1700); _Tamerlane_ (1702); _The Fair Penitent_ (1703); _Ulysses_ (1705); _The Royal Convert_ (1707); the _Tragedy of Jane Sh.o.r.e_ (1714); and the _Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey_ (1715). Measured by his contemporary dramatists he is a distinguished playwright. His characters do not live, but he could invent effective scenes, though in some cases the poet's taste may be questioned.

For many years _Tamerlane_ was acted at Drury Lane on the anniversary of King William's landing in England, and under the names of Tamerlane and Bajazet the king is belauded at the expense of Louis XIV. _The Fair Penitent_, a piece even more successful upon the stage, will still please the reader, though he may question the high eulogium of Johnson, that "scarcely any work of any poet is at once so interesting by the fable, and so delightful by the language." Rowe has not the tragic power which can express pa.s.sion without rant, and pathos without extravagance.

In _The Fair Penitent_ Calista gives utterance to her feelings by piling up expletives. Thus, when her husband attacks the lover who has ruined her, she exclaims, 'Destruction! fury! sorrow! shame! and death!' and, on another occasion, she cries out, 'Madness! confusion!' words which give a sense of the ludicrous rather than of the tragic; and so also does Calista's last utterance when, addressing Altamont, she says:

'Had I but early known Thy wondrous worth, thou excellent young man We had been happier both--now 'tis too late!'

Rowe may be regarded as the princ.i.p.al representative of tragedy in the 'age of Pope,' but his respectable work shows a fatal degeneration from the 'gorgeous tragedy' of the Elizabethans.

[Sidenote: Aaron Hill (1684-1749).]

Aaron Hill, unlike Rowe, was not distinguished as a dramatist, and succeeded only in two or three adaptations from the French. His claims as a poet are also insignificant. He was born in London in 1684, with expectations that were not destined to be realized, but Fortune was not unkind to him. His uncle, Lord Paget, Amba.s.sador at Constantinople, gave the youth a warm welcome, supplied him with a tutor, and sent him to travel in the East. On Lord Paget's return to England, Hill accompanied him, and together they are said to have visited a great part of Europe.

Some time later Hill went abroad again, and was absent two or three years. For awhile--it could not have been long--he was secretary to the Earl of Peterborough, and at the age of twenty-six, his good star being still in the ascendant, he married a young lady 'of great merit and beauty, with whom he had a very handsome fortune.' Hill was then appointed manager of Drury Lane, and he wrote a number of plays, the very names of which are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in his own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He wrote eight books of a long and unfinished epic called _Gideon_, which I suppose no one in the present century has had the hardihood to read; like Young he wrote a poem on _The Judgment Day_, a theme attempted also, shortly before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his kind, he produced a Pindaric ode goes without saying. A long poem called _The Northern Star_, a panegyric on Peter the Great, is said to have pa.s.sed through several editions. The poem does not prove Hill to be a poet, but it shows his command of the heroic couplet. The style of the poem, which is an indiscriminate panegyric, may be judged from the following lines:

'Transcendent prince! how happy must thou be!

What can'st thou look upon unblessed by thee?

What inward peace must that calm bosom know, Whence conscious virtue does so strongly flow!

Such are the kings who make G.o.d's image s.h.i.+ne, Nor blush to dare a.s.sert their right divine!

No earth-born bias warps their climbing will, No pride their power, no avarice whets their skill.

They poise each hope which bids the wise obey, And shed broad blessings from their widening sway; To raise the afflicted, stretch the healing hand, Drive crushed oppression from each rescued land, Bold in alternate right, or sheath or draw The sword of conquest, or the sword of law; Spare what resists not, what opposes bend, And govern cool, what they with warmth defend.'

Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon Pope, who had put him into the treatise on the _Bathos_, and then into the _Dunciad_, where, however, the lines have more of compliment than censure, since he is made to mount 'far off among the swans of Thames.' Irritated by a note in the _Dunciad_, Hill replied in a long poem ent.i.tled _The Progress of Wit, a Caveat_, which opens with the following pointed lines:

'Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side, The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride; With merit popular, with wit polite, Easy though vain, and elegant though light; Desiring, and deserving others' praise, Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays; Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves, And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves.'

In a letter to Hill Pope complained of these lines, and had the hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great matters of his poetical capacity, but prided himself on the superiority of his moral life. Hill returned a masterly and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement, in the course of which he says:

'I am sorry to hear you say you never thought any great matters of your poetry. It is in my opinion the characteristic you are to hope your distinction from. To be honest is the duty of every plain man. Nor, since the soul of poetry is sentiment, can a great poet want morality. But your honesty you possess in common with a million who will never be remembered; whereas your poetry is a peculiar, that will make it impossible that you should be forgotten.'

He adds that if Pope had not been in the spleen when he wrote, he would have remembered that humility is a moral virtue; and how, asks the writer, can you know that your moral life is above that of most of the wits 'since you tell me in the same letter that many of their names were unknown to you?'