The Poetical Works of William Collins; With a Memoir Part 16

ON OUR LATE TASTE IN MUSIC.[[63]]

----Quid vocis modulamen inane juvabat Verborum sensusque vacans numerique loquacis?

MILTON.

Britons! away with the degenerate pack!

Waft, western winds! the foreign spoilers back!

Enough has been in wild amus.e.m.e.nts spent, Let British verse and harmony content!

No music once could charm you like your own, 5 Then tuneful Robinson,[64] and Tofts were known; Then Purcell touched the strings, while numbers hung Attentive to the sounds--and blest the song!

E'en gentle Weldon taught us manly notes, Beyond the enervate thrills of Roman throats! 10 Notes, foreign luxury could ne'er inspire, That animate the soul, and swell the lyre!

That mend, and not emasculate our hearts, And teach the love of freedom and of arts.

Nor yet, while guardian Phbus gilds our isle, 15 Does heaven averse await the muses' toil; Cherish but once our worth of native race, The sister-arts shall soon display their face!

Even half discouraged through the gloom they strive, Smile at neglect, and o'er oblivion live. 20 See Handel, careless of a foreign fame, Fix on our sh.o.r.e, and boast a Briton's name: While, placed marmoric in the vocal grove,[65]

He guides the measures listening throngs approve.

Mark silence at the voice of Arne confess'd, 25 Soft as the sweet enchantress rules the breast; As when transported Venice lent an ear, Camilla's charms to view, and accents hear![66]

So while she varies the impa.s.sion'd song, Alternate motions on the bosom throng! 30 As heavenly Milton[67] guides her magic voice, And virtue thus convey'd allures the choice.

Discard soft nonsense in a slavish tongue, The strain insipid, and the thought unknown; From truth and nature form the unerring test; 35 Be what is manly, chaste, and good the best!

'Tis not to ape the songsters of the groves, Through all the quiverings of their wanton loves; 'Tis not the enfeebled thrill, or warbled shake, The heart can strengthen, or the soul awake! 40 But where the force of energy is found When the sense rises on the wings of sound; When reason, with the charms of music twined, Through the enraptured ear informs the mind; Bids generous love or soft compa.s.sion glow, 45 And forms a tuneful Paradise below!

Oh Britons! if the honour still you boast, No longer purchase follies at such cost!

No longer let unmeaning sounds invite To visionary scenes of false delight: 50 When, shame to sense! we see the hero's rage Lisp'd on the tongue, and danced along the stage!

Or hear in eunuch sounds a hero squeak, While kingdoms rise or fall upon a shake!

Let them at home to slavery's painted train, 55 With siren art, repeat the pleasing strain: While we, like wise Ulysses, close our ear To songs which liberty forbids to hear!

Keep, guardian gales, the infectious guests away, To charm where priests direct, and slaves obey. 60 Madrid, or wanton Rome, be their delight; There they may warble as their poets write.

The temper of our isle, though cold, is clear; And such our genius, n.o.ble though severe.

Our Shakespeare scorn'd the trifling rules of art, 65 But knew to conquer and surprise the heart!

In magic chains the captive thought to bind, And fathom all the depths of human kind!

Too long, our shame, the prost.i.tuted herd Our sense have bubbled, and our wealth have shared. 70 Too long the favourites of our vulgar great Have bask'd in luxury, and lived in state!

In Tuscan wilds now let them villas rear[68]

Enn.o.bled by the charity we spare.

There let them warble in the tainted breeze, 75 Or sing like widow'd orphans to the trees: There let them chant their incoherent dreams, Where howls Charybdis, and where Scylla screams!

Or where Avernus, from his darksome round, May echo to the winds the blasted sound! 80 As fair Alcyone,[69] with anguish press'd, Broods o'er the British main with tuneful breast, Beneath the white-brow'd cliff protected sings, Or skims the azure plain with painted wings!

Grateful, like her, to nature, and as just, 85 In our domestic blessings let us trust; Keep for our sons fair learning's honour'd prize, Till the world own the worth they now despise!

FOOTNOTES:

[63] See Memoir, p. x.x.xviii.

[64] Now Countess-dowager of Peterborough.

[65] Vauxhall.

[66] Vide the Spectator's Letters from Camilla, vol. vi.

[67] Milton's Comus lately revived.

[68] Senesino has built a palace near Sienna on an estate which carries the t.i.tle of a Marquisate, but purchased with English gold.

[69] The king-fisher.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ORIENTAL ECLOGUES AND ODES.

BY DR. LANGHORNE.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ORIENTAL ECLOGUES.

The genius of the pastoral, as well as of every other respectable species of poetry, had its origin in the east, and from thence was transplanted by the muses of Greece; but whether from the continent of the Lesser Asia, or from Egypt, which, about the era of the Grecian pastoral, was the hospitable nurse of letters, it is not easy to determine. From the subjects, and the manner of Theocritus, one would incline to the latter opinion, while the history of Bion is in favour of the former.

However, though it should still remain a doubt through what channel the pastoral traveled westward, there is not the least shadow of uncertainty concerning its oriental origin.

In those ages which, guided by sacred chronology, from a comparative view of time, we call the early ages, it appears, from the most authentic historians, that the chiefs of the people employed themselves in rural exercises, and that astronomers and legislators were at the same time shepherds. Thus Strabo informs us, that the history of the creation was communicated to the Egyptians by a Chaldean shepherd.

From these circ.u.mstances it is evident, not only that such shepherds were capable of all the dignity and elegance peculiar to poetry, but that whatever poetry they attempted would be of the pastoral kind; would take its subjects from those scenes of rural simplicity in which they were conversant, and, as it was the offspring of harmony and nature, would employ the powers it derived from the former, to celebrate the beauty and benevolence of the latter.

Accordingly we find that the most ancient poems treat of agriculture, astronomy, and other objects within the rural and natural systems.

What const.i.tutes the difference between the georgic and the pastoral, is love and the colloquial or dramatic form of composition peculiar to the latter; this form of composition is sometimes dispensed with, and love and rural imagery alone are thought sufficient to distinguish the pastoral. The tender pa.s.sion, however, seems to be essential to this species of poetry, and is hardly ever excluded from those pieces that were intended to come under this denomination: even in those eclogues of the Ambean kind, whose only purport is a trial of skill between contending shepherds, love has its usual share, and the praises of their respective mistresses are the general subjects of the compet.i.tors.

It is to be lamented, that scarce any oriental compositions of this kind have survived the ravages of ignorance, tyranny, and time; we cannot doubt that many such have been extant, possibly as far down as that fatal period, never to be mentioned in the world of letters without horror, when the glorious monuments of human ingenuity perished in the ashes of the Alexandrian library.

Those ingenious Greeks, whom we call the parents of pastoral poetry, were, probably, no more than imitators, of imitators that derived their harmony from higher and remoter sources, and kindled their poetical fires at those then unextinguished lamps which burned within the tombs of oriental genius.

It is evident that Homer has availed himself of those magnificent images and descriptions so frequently to be met with in the books of the Old Testament; and why may not Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion have found their archetypes in other eastern writers, whose names have perished with their works? yet, though it may not be illiberal to admit such a supposition, it would certainly be invidious to conclude, what the malignity of cavillers alone could suggest with regard to Homer, that they destroyed the sources from which they borrowed, and, as it is fabled of the young of the pelican, drained their supporters to death.

As the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament was performed at the request, and under the patronage, of Ptolemy Philadelphus, it were not to be wondered if Theocritus, who was entertained at that prince's court, had borrowed some part of his pastoral imagery from the poetical pa.s.sages of those books. I think it can hardly be doubted that the Sicilian poet had in his eye certain expressions of the prophet Isaiah, when he wrote the following lines:

??? ?a e? f??e??te at??, f??e??te d' a?a??a?.

? de ?a?a ?a???ss?? ep' a??e????s? ??asa?; ?a?ta d' e?a??a ?e???t?, ?a? ? p?t?? ???a? e?e??a?

?a? t?? ???a? ??af?? ?????.

~Nyn ia men ph.o.r.eoite batoi, ph.o.r.eoite d' akanthai.

Ha de kala Narkissos ep' arkeuthoisi komasai; Panta d' enalla genoito, kai ha pitus ochnas eneikai ----kai tos kynas holaphos helkoi.~

Let vexing brambles the blue violet bear, On the rude thorn Narcissus dress his hair, All, all reversed--The pine with pears be crown'd, And the bold deer shall drag the trembling hound.

The cause, indeed, of these phenomena is very different in the Greek from what it is in the Hebrew poet; the former employing them on the death, the latter on the birth, of an important person: but the marks of imitation are nevertheless obvious.

It might, however, be expected, that if Theocritus had borrowed at all from the sacred writers, the celebrated pastoral epithalamium of Solomon, so much within his own walk of poetry, would not certainly have escaped his notice. His epithalamium on the marriage of Helena, moreover, gave him an open field for imitation; therefore, if he has any obligations to the royal bard, we may expect to find them there. The very opening of the poem is in the spirit of the Hebrew song:

??t? d? p????a ?ated?a?e?, ? f??e ?a?e;