My Galligafkins, which have long withstood By time fubdued (what will not time fubdue!) This is admirably pathetical, and fhews very well the viciffitudes of fublunary things. The reft goes on to a prodigious height; and a man in Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetick and terrible complaint. Is it not furprising that the fubject fhould be fo mean, and the verfe fo pompous; that the leaft things in his poetry, as in a microscope, should grow great and formidable to the eye? especially confidering that, not understanding French, he had no model for his ftyle? that he fhould have no writer to imitate, and himself be inimitable? that he fhould do all this before he was twenty? at an age, which is usually pleased with a glare of false thoughts, little turns, and unnatural fuftian? at an age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost said Virgil, were inconfiderable? So foon was his imagination at its full strength, his judgement ripe, and his humour complete. This poem was written for his own diversion without any defign of publication. It was communicated but to me; but foon fpread, and fell into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely mangled, by Ben Bragge; and impudently faid to be corrected by the author. This grievance is now grown more epidemical; and no man now has a right to his own thoughts; or a title to his own writings. Xenophon answered the Perfian, who demanded his arms, "We have nothing now left but our arms and our valour; if we furrender the one, "how fhall we make ufe of the other?" Poets have nothing but their wits and their writings; and if they are plundered of the latter, I don't fee what good the former former can do them. To pirate, and publickly own it, to prefix their names to the works they fteal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never yet heard of but in England. It will found oddly to pofterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wife, most learned, and most generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick fhould be better fecured than that of a scholar; that the poorest manual operations should be more valued than the nobleft products of the brain; that it should be felony to rob a cobler of a pair of fhoes, and no crime to deprive the best author of his whole fubfiftence; that nothing fhould make a man a fure title to his own writings but the ftupidity of them; that the works of Dryden fhould meet with lefs encouragement than thofe of his own Flecknoe, or Blackmore; that Tillotson and St. George, Tom Thumb and Temple, fhould be fet on an equal foot. This is the reason why this very paper has been so long delayed; and while the most impudent and fcandalous libels are publickly vended by the pirates, this innocent work is forced to fteal abroad as if it were a libel. Our prefent writers are by these wretches reduced to the fame condition Virgil was, when the centurion feized on his eftate. But I don't doubt but I can fix upon the Mæcenas of the prefent age, that will retrieve them from it. But, whatever effect this piracy may have upon us, it contributed very much to the advantage of Mr. Philips; it helped him to a reputa- ́ tion, which he neither defired nor expected, and to the honour of being put upon a work of which he did not think himself capable; but the event fhewed his modesty. And it was reafonable to hope, that he, who who could raife mean fubjects fo high, fhould still be more elevated on greater themes; that he, that could draw fuch noble ideas from a fhilling, could not fail upon fuch a subject as the duke of Marlborough, which is capable of heightening even the most low and trifling genius. And, indeed, moft of the great works which have been produced in the world have been owing lefs to the poet than the patron. Men of the greatest genius are fometimes lazy, and want a fpur 3 often modeft, and dare not venture in publick; they certainly know their faults in the worst things; and even their best things they are not fond of, because the idea of what they ought to be is far above what they are. This induced me to believe that Virgil defired his work might be burnt, had not the fame Auguftus that defired him to write them preferved them from deftruction. A fcribling beau may imagine a Poet may be induced to write, by the very pleasure he finds in writing; but that is feldom, when people are neceffitated to it. I have known men row, and use very hard labour, for diverfion, which, if they had been tied to, they would have thought themselves very unhappy. But to return to Blenheim, that work fo much admired by fome, and cenfured by others. I have often wished he had wrote it in Latin, that he might be out of the reach of the empty criticks, who could have as little understood his meaning in that language as they do his beauties in his own. Falfe criticks have been the plague of all ages; Milton himfeif, in a very polite court, has been compared to the rumbling of a wheel-barrow: he had been on the wrong fide, and therefore could not be a good poet. And this, perhaps, may be Mr. Philips's cafe. But But I take generally the ignorance of his readers to be the occafion of their dislike. People that have formed their tafte upon the French writers can have no relifh for Philips: they admire points and turns, and confequently have no judgement of what is great and majestick; he muft look little in their eyes, when he foars fo high as to be almoft out of their view. I cannot therefore allow any admirer of the French to be a judge of Blenheim, nor any who takes Bouhours for a compleat critick. He generally judges of the ancients by the moderns, and not the moderns by the ancients; he takes those paffages of their own authors to be really fublime which come the nearest to it; he often calls that a noble and a great thought which is only a pretty and fine one, and has more inftances of the fublime out of Ovid de Triftibus, than he has out of all Virgil. I fhall allow, therefore, only thofe to be judges of Philips, who make the ancients, and particularly Virgil, their standard. But, before I enter on this subject, I fhall confider what is particular in the style of Philips, and examine what ought to be the style of heroick poetry, and next inquire how far he is come up to that style. His style is particular, because he lays afide rhyme, and writes in blank verfe, and uses old words, and frequently poftpones the adjective to the fubftantive, and the fubftantive to the verb; and leaves out little particles, a, and the; her, and his; and ufes frequent appofitions. Now let us examine, whether thefe alterations of style be conformable to the true fubline. ****** *Nothing but the reputation of the author, and his relation to the University of Oxford, can be affigned as a reafon for making AM the Bodleian library the repofitory of this flimfy difcourfe, which, as well for the fentiments as the style, is to the lowest degree contemptible. The position respecting miniature painting is falfe, and its comparison with cupola painting injudicious. The expreffions, elevated themes, unnatural fuftian, and the citation from Xenophon, are puerile and pedantic, and the complaints of envy and falfe criticscommon cant. There is nothing pathetic in the quotation from The Splendid Shilling;' nor does it give occafion for the folema remark which the writer has made on it. It is not clear to every one that the life of Cowley is more instructive, as well as more fine, than any we have in our language; nor do we know that Tom Thumb and Temple were ever fet on an equal foot. It was in ridicule of fuch writers as this, that Swift wrote his Tritical effay on the faculties of the mind.' WALSH |