Among My Books Volume I Part 7

The thought is Cicero's, but how it is intensified by the "starless nights"! Dryden, I suspect, got it from his favorite, Montaigne, who says, "Que nous ne pouvons abandonner cette garnison du monde, sans le commandement exprez de celuy qui nous y a mis." (L. ii. chap. 3.) In the same play, by a very Drydenish verse, he gives new force to an old comparison:--

"And I should break through laws divine and human.

And think 'em cobwebs spread for little man, _Which all the bulky herd of Nature breaks_."

[41] Not his solemn historical droning under that t.i.tle, but addressed "To the Cambrio-Britons on their harp."

[42] "Les poetes euxmemes s'animent et s'echauffent par la lecture des autres poetes. Messieurs de Malherbe, Corneille, &c., se disposoient au travail par la lecture des poetes qui etoient de leur gout."--Vigneul, Marvilliana, I. 64, 65.

[43] For example, Waller had said,

"Others may use the ocean as their road, Only the English _make it their abode_; * * * * *

We _tread on billows with a steady foot_"--

long before Campbell. Campbell helps himself to both thoughts, enlivens them into

"Her march is o'er the mountain wave, Her home is on the deep,"

and they are his forevermore. His "leviathans afloat" he _lifted_ from the "Annus Mirabilis"; but in what court could Dryden sue?

Again, Waller in another poem calls the Duke of York's flag

"His dreadful streamer, like a comet's hair";

and this, I believe, is the first application of the celestial portent to this particular comparison. Yet Milton's "imperial ensign"

waves defiant behind his impregnable lines, and even Campbell flaunts his "meteor flag" in Waller's face. Gray's bard might be sent to the lock-up, but even he would find bail.

"C'est imiter quelqu'un que de planter des choux."

[44] Corneille's tragedy of "Pertharite" was acted unsuccessfully in 1659. Racine made free use of it in his more fortunate "Andromaque."

[45] Dryden's publisher.

[46] Preface to the Fables.

[47] I interpret some otherwise ambiguous pa.s.sages in this charming and acute essay by its t.i.tle: "On the _artificial_ comedy of the last century."

[48] See especially his defence of the epilogue to the Second Part of the "Conquest of Granada" (1672).

[49] Defence of an Essay on Dramatick Poesy.

[50] "The favor which heroick plays have lately found upon our theatres has been wholly derived to them from the countenance and approbation they have received at Court." (Dedication of "Indian Emperor" to d.u.c.h.ess of Monmouth.)

[51] Dedication of "Rival Ladies."

[52] Defence of the Essay. Dryden, in the happiness of his ill.u.s.trative comparisons, is almost unmatched. Like himself, they occupy a middle ground between poetry and prose,--they are a cross between metaphor and simile.

[53] Discoveries.

[54] What a wretched rhymer he could be we may see in his _alteration_ of the "Maid's Tragedy" of Beaumont and Fletcher:--

"Not long since walking in the field, My nurse and I, we there beheld A goodly fruit; which, tempting me, I would have plucked: but, trembling, she, Whoever eat those berries, cried, In less than half an hour died!"

What intolerable seesaw! Not much of Byron's "fatal facility" in _these_ octosyllabics!

[55] In more senses than one. His last and best portrait shows him in his own gray hair.

[56] Essay on Dramatick Poesy.

[57] A French hendecasyllable verse runs exactly like our ballad measure:--

A cobbler there was and he lived in a stall, ...

_La raison, pour marcher, n'a souvent qu'une voye._

(Dryden's note.)

The verse is not a hendecasyllable. "Attended watchfully to her recitative (Mile. d.u.c.h.esnois), and find that, in nine lines out of ten, 'A cobbler there was,' &c, is the tune of the French heroics."--_Moore's Diary_, 24th April, 1821.

[58] "The language of the age is never the language of poetry, except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose."--Gray to West.

[59] Diderot and Rousseau, however, thought their language unfit for poetry, and Voltaire seems to have half agreed with them. No one has expressed this feeling more neatly than Fauriel: "Nul doute que l'on ne puisse dire en prose des choses eminemment poetiques, tout comme il n'est que trop certain que l'on peut en dire de fort prosaiques en vers, et meme en excellents vers, en vers elegamment tournes, et en beau langage. C'est un fait dont je n'ai pas besoin d'indiquer d'exemples: aucune litterature n'en fournirait autant que le notre."--Hist. de la Poesie Provencale, II. 237.

[60] Parallel of Poetry and Painting.

[61] "Il y a seulement la scene de _Ventidius_ et d'_Antoine_ qui est digne de Corneille. C'est la le sentiment de milord Bolingbroke et de tous les bons auteurs; c'est ainsi que pensait Addisson."--Voltaire to M. De Fromont, 15th November, 1735.

[62] Inst. X., i. 129.