ページの画像
PDF
ePub

e laurel by their followers worn! task congenial to their powers)

auctions waste the morning hours, all noon away in Rumford's fane, he evening out at Drury-lane.

THE MEVIAD.

UM non odit, amet tua carmina, Mævi.

INTRODUCTION.

more sparingly in the Gracie an
determined

"To have the current in that place damm'd up;"
and accordingly began the present poem-for which,
I had
indeed, I had by this time other reasons.
been told that there were still a few admirers of
the Cruscan school, who thought the contempt ex-
pressed for it was not sufficiently justified by the
few passages produced in the Baviad. I thought
it best, therefore, to exhibit the tribe of Bell once
more; and, as they passed in review before me, to
make such additional extractst from their works,
as should put their demerits beyond the power of
future question.

RODUCTION to the preceding pages, a
I remembered that this great critic, in his excel-
t is given of the rise and progress of
s species of poetry which lately infest-lent remarks on the Baviad, had charged the author
opolis, and gave occasion to the BAVIAD. with "bespattering nearly all the poetical eminence
ignorant of what I exposed myself to of the day." Anxious, therefore, to do impartial
lication of that work. If abuse could justice, I ran for the ALBUM, to discover who had
ed me, I should not probably have made been spared. Here I read, "In this collection are
ple my enemies, habituated to ill lan- names whom genius will ever look upon as its best
possessed of such convenient vehicles supporters! Sheridan"-what, is Saul also among
mination. But I never regarded it from the prophets!'-"Sheridan, Merry, Parsons, Cowley,
and, indeed, deprecated nothing but Andrews, Jerningham, Greathead, Topham, Robin-
I respect, in common with every man son," &c.
⇒censure of the wise and good; but the
litions of folly unmasked, and vanity
ass by me " like the idle wind," or, if
-ve merely to grace succeeding editions
ad.

however, that the work was received urably than I expected. Bell, indeed, others, whose craft was touched, vented mation in prose and verse; but, on the clamour against me was not loud, and -insensible degrees in the applauses of was truly ambitious to please.

ported, the good effects of the satire (glo-r) were not long in manifesting themella Crusca appeared no more in the Oraany of his followers ventured to treat with a soft sonnet, it was not, as before, by a pompous preface. Pope and Miled their superiority; and Este and his silently acquiesced in the growing opiir incompetency, and showed some sense

s I was satisfied. I had taken up my pen er end, and was quietly retiring, with the I had "done the state some service," and to abandon for ever the cæstus, which a e critic fancies I wielded" with too much when I was once more called into the

f these fashionable writers were connected blic prints. Della Crusca was a worthy coThe mad and malignant idiot who conducted Arno and Lorenzo were either proprietors of another paper. Edwin and Anna Matilda red contributors to several ; and Laura Maria,

Thus furnished with " ALL the poetical eminence of the day," I proceeded, as Mr. Bell says, to bespatter it; taking, for the vehicle of my design, a satire of Horace-to which I was led by its supplyiug me (amid many happy allusions) with an opportunity of briefly noticing the wretched state of dramatic poetry among us.‡

that

* I hope no one will do me the injustice to suppose
I imagine myself another Hercules contending with hy-
dras, &c. Far from it. My enemies cannot well have
an humbler opinion of me than I have of myself; and yet,
"if I am not ashamed of them, I am a soused gurnet."

Mere pecora inertia! The contest is without danger,
and the victory without glory. At the same time, I de-
clare against any undue advantage being taken of these
concessions. Though I knew the impotence of these
literary Askaparts, the town did not; and many a man,
who now affects to pity me for wasting my strength upon
umresisting imbecility, would, not long since, have heard
their poems with applause, and their praises with delight.

It will now be said that I have done it usque ad nau-
seam. I confess it; and for the reason given above.
And yet I can honestly assure the reader, that most, if
not all, of the trash here quoted, passed with the authors
for superlative beauties, every second word being printed
either in italics or capitals.

I know not if the stage has been so low. since the days of Gammer Gurton, as at this hour. It seems as if all the blockheads in the kingdom had started up, and exclaimed, with one voice, Come! let us write for the theatres. In this there is nothing, perhaps, altogether new; the strik ing and peculiar novelty of the times seems to be, that ALL they write is received. Of the three parties concerned in this business, the writers and the managers seem the least culpable. If the town will feed on husks, extraordinary pains need not be taken to find them any thing more palatable. But what shall we say of the

[ocr errors][ocr errors]

still voice of the muses was not likely to be listened to amid the din of arms. After an interval of two years, however, circumstances, which it is not material to mention, have induced me to finish, and trust it, without more preface, to the candour to which I am already so highly indebted for the kind reception of the Baviad.

YES, I DID say that Crusca's* "true sublime" Lack'd taste, and sense, and every thing but rhyme;

In this with me, save
Yet still, the souL of c
Their jingling elegies
That lords hung blubb
That lady-critics wept
That love-lorn priests
And sentimental ensig
Wiped the sad drops o
And burst between a
Yet, not content, like
And split my head wit
For" more! more! more

ble follies of O'Keefe, and Cobbe, and Pilon, and I know not who-Sardi venales, each worse than the other-The full, the unreserv that they have lost all relish for simplicity and genuine St. John* might then n humour; nay, ignorance itself, unless it be gross and And claim my suffrage glaring, cannot hope for "their most sweet voices.". And Greathead,† rising And the higher ranks are so mawkishly mild, that they take with a placid simper whatever comes before them; Fling the forgotten "R or, if they now and then experience a slight fit of disgust, have not resolution enough to express it, but sit yawning and gaping in each other's faces for a little encourage-ness of perception in his ment in their culpable forbearance. have styled him the "

man in the present insta

pr

When this was written, I thought the town had "sound- Bell, if I had not previou ed," as Shakspeare says, "the very bass string of humi-greater man, (absit invid lity;" but it has since appeared, that the lowest point of I trust that this incide degradation had not then been reached. The force of jealousy-for though, as English folly, indeed, could go no farther, and so far I oaken staff EACH merits, was right; but the auxiliary supplies of Germany were man, who, like Mr. Bell at hand, and the taste, vitiated by the lively nonsense of after dinner, that "if two O'Keefe and Co., was destined to be utterly destroyed by them must ride behind." successive importations of the heavy, lumbering, monotonous stupidity of Kotzebue and Schiller.

* St. John, &c. Having duction, that the Mæviad since, and consequently man, I have only to add have introduced any of th Flaminia tegitur cinis, at it necessary to make any ting such as have passed a writing and publishing.

The reader will find, small pretensions to pro more than the present.

The object of these writers has been detailed with such force and precision in the introduction to "THE ROVERS," that nothing remains to be said on that head-indeed the simple perusal of "The Rovers" would supersede the necessity of any critique on the merits of the German drama in general; since there is not a folly, however gross, an absurdity, however monstrous, to be found in that charming jeu d'esprit, that I would not undertake to parallel from one or other of the most admired works of the German Shakspeares. Why it has not been produced on the stage is to me a matter of astonishment, since it unites the beauties of "The Stranger" and "Pizarro;""recommended to the wo + Greathead's Regent.and, though perfectly German in its sentiments, is Eng- and others, as "the work lish in its language-intelligible English; which is infinitely more than can be said of the translation from Kotzebue, so maliciously attributed to Mr. Sheridan. In a word, if you take from the German dramas their horrid blasphemies, their wanton invocations of the sacred Name, and their minute and ridiculous stage directions, which seem calculated to turn the whole into a pantomime, nothing will remain but a caput mortuum, a vapid and gloomy mass of matter, unenlightened by a single ray of genius or nature. If you leave them their blasphemies, &c., you have then a nameless something, insipid though immoral, tedious though impious, and stupid though extravagant !—so much so, that, as a judicious writer well observes," it becomes a doubt which are the greatest objects of contempt and scorn, those who conceived and wrote them, or those who have the effrontery to praise them." Yet" these be thy gods, O Israel!" and to these are sacrificed our taste, our sense, and our national honour.

express my just contempt conduct absurd, the langu false and unnatural, the general style grovelling a a word, the whole piece t stupidity that ever disgra

It is to be wished that c the influence which their ities when they sit down t the public taste, would div they consider as, a solem find them, as in the prese applause on works that ca It is but fair, however, to in favour of Mr. Greathea added his all-sufficient su

"O bard! to whom
Each purest fount
Who old Ilyssus'
In his own Avon
O favour'd clime
That boasts, to sa
A Greathead!!!"-

* Crusca's "true sublime." The words between inverted commas in this and the following verses, are Mr. Bell's. They contain, as the reader sees, a short character of the works to which they are respectively affixed. Though I have the misfortune to differ from this gentle- When I first read these, a

ill say, or, if ye ask it, swear;
nough, though this be somewhat too,
), perhaps,* than Jerningham can do,—

what, I was naturally led to conclude that Mr. ceeded better in his smaller pieces than in his id thus justified in some degree the cry of his ""&c. &c. But no-all was a blank!

a few samples of the "Ilyssean dews infused athead into his own Avon"-muddied, I sup

debased by the home-bred streamlet of one

e.

In fuller presence we descry,
Mid mountain rocks-a deity
Than eye of man shall e'er behold
In living grace of sculptured gold."
er for a May morning!

"ODE ON APATHY.

irsed be dull lethargic Apathy,
ther at eve she listless ride
luggish car by tortoise drawn-
h mimic air of senseless pride,

feebly throws on all her withering sight,
le too observant of her sway,
nark'd her droning subjects lie,
Le to her who murmur or obey."
reader understands it.

"ODE TO DUEL.

r didst thou appear

e Tiber's sons gave law to all the world; ruch they loved to desolate and slaughter. Lage! attest my words.

ut their sanguinary rage,

itizens but gladiators fall.

-ry and vassalage,

savage broils 'twixt nobles are no more. sh thou likewise"-

se are ODES, good heavens! "After the manner "I take for granted.

of Mr. Greathead. I have only to add, that I

ed by no personal dislike; for I can say with at, indeed, I can of all the heroes of the Mæviad,) e not the slightest knowledge of him. But the strutted too long: it is more than time to strip eir adventitious plumage; and if, in doing it, I ck off any feathers which originally belonged hey have only to thank their own vanity, or the ess of their injudicious friends.

more, perhaps, than Jerningham can do. No; gham has lately written a tragedy and a farce; mely well spoken of by the reviewers, and both the "pastry-cooks.”

To crowd our stage with scaffolds, or to fright
Our wives with rapes, repeated thrice a night;
JUDGES Not such as, self-created, sit
On that TREMENDOUS BENCH* which skirts the pit
Where idle Thespis nods, while Arnot dreams
Of Nereids" purling in ambrosial streams ;"
Where Este in rapture cons fantastic airs,

44

Old Pistol new revived" in Topham stares,
Johnson's worst frailties, rolls from side to side,
And Boswell, aping, with preposterous pride,
His heavy head from hour to hour erects,
Affects the fool, and is what he affects.—
JUDGES of truth and sense, yet more demand
That art to nature lend a helping hand!
That fables well devised be simply told,
Correct if new, and probable if old.

When Mason leads Elfrida forth to view,
Adorn'd with virtues which she never knew,
I feel for every tear; while, borne along
By the full tide of unresisted song,

I stop not to inquire if all be just,

But take her goodness, as her grief, on trust,
Till calm reflection checks me, and I see
The heroine as she was, and ought to be;
A bold, bad woman, wading to the throne
Through seas of blood, and crimes till then un
known:

Then, then I hate the magic that deceived,
And blush to think how fondly I believed.§

There is a trait of scholarship in Mr. Jerningham's last poem, which should not be overlooked; more especially as it is the only one. Having occasion to mention "Agave and her infant," he subjoins the following explanation "Alluding to Agave, who in a delirium slew her child. See Ovid." No, I'll take Mr. Jerningham's word for it,

though I had twenty Ovids before me.

* When this was written, which was while the Opera House was used for plays, the "learned justices" here enumerated, together with the others not yet taken, were accustomed to flock nightly to this BENCH, from which the unlettered vulgar were always scornfully repelled with an ουδεις άμουσος.

I have not heard whether the New Theatre be possessed of such a one; I think not; for critics are no more gregarious than spiders. Like them, they might do great things in concert; but, like them too, they usually end with devouring one another.

hought that I understood something of faces, + Arno.-The dreams of this gentleman, which continue read my Lavater again, I find. That a gentle-to make their appearance in the Oracle, under the name he "physiognomie d'un mouton qui rêve” should start forth a new Tyrtaus, and pour a dreadful ugh a cracked war-trump, amazes me.-Well, LLA FIDES shall henceforth be my motto. pride of his heart Mr. Jerningham has taken the t from his mouth, and given me a smart stroke ad with it: this is fair,

mus, inque vicem præbemus crura sagittis."
so levelled a deadly blow at a gentleman who,
redly, never dreamed of having our Drawcansir
tagonist: this, though not quite so fair, is not
r unprecedented;

eagle, towering in his pride of place, as by a mousing owl hawk'd at!"

e lines (Mr. Parsons says) are not Greathead's." But they are

vish his nama in the Album · which evolucive of their stanidit v.

of Thespis, are not always of Nereids. He dreamed one, night that Mr. Pope played Posthumus with less spirit than usual, and it was Mr. Johnston singing Grammachree! Another night, that the Mourning Bride might have been better cast, and lo! it was the Comedy of Errors that was played.

This was rather unfortunate; but the reader must have already reflected, from the strange occupations of these self-created judges," (here faithfully described,) that sleeping or waking, they were attentive to every thing but what passed before their eyes.

Pauper videri cotta vult, et est pauper!

§ Mr. Parsons' note on this passage is-"Did you BELIEVE? could you possibly be so ignorant ?"-Even so. But I humbly conceive that Mr. Mason, who seduced my unsuspecting youth, is equally culpable with myself

Not so, when Edgar,* made, in some strange plot, Forbid it, inspiration! Thus your pain

The hero of a day that knew him not,

Struts from the field his enemy had won,
On stately stilts, exulting and undone !
Here I can only pity, only smile;

Where not one grace, one elegance of style,
Redeems th' audacious folly of the rest,
Truth sacrificed, and history made a jest.

[ocr errors]

Let this, ye Cruscans,t if your heads be made

Of penetrable stuff," let this persuade

Your husky tribes their wanderings to restrain, Nor hope what taste and Mason fail'd to gain. Then let your style be brief, your meaning clear, Nor, like Lorenzo, tire the labouring ear

With a wild waste of words; sound without sense,
And all the florid glare of impotence.

Still with your characters your language change,
From grave to gay, as nature dictates, range;
Now droop in all the plaintiveness of wo,
Now in glad numbers light and airy flow;
Now shake the stage with guilt's alarming tone,
And make the aching bosom all your own;
Now But I sing in vain; from first to last
Your joy is fustian, and your grief bombast:
Rhetoric has banish'd reason; kings and queens
Vent in hyberboles their royal spleens ;
Guardsmen in metaphors express their hopes,
And "maidens in white linen," howl in tropes.
Reverent I greet the bards of other days:
Blest be your names, and lasting be your praise!
From nature's varied face ye widely drew,
And following ages own'd the copies true.
O had our sots, who rhyme with headlong haste,
And think reflection still a foe to taste,
But brains your pregnant scenes to understand,
And give us truth, though but at second hand,
"Twere something yet! But no, they never look-
Shall souls of fire, they cry, a tutor brook?

There is also one William Shakspeare, who, I am ready to take my oath, is a notorious offender in this way; having led not only me, but divers others, into the most gross and ridiculous errors; making us laugh, cry, &c., for persons whom we ought to have known to be mere nonentities.

Is void, and ye have lived, for them, in vain;
In vain for Crusca and his skipping school,
Cobbe, Reynolds, Andrews, and that nobler fool;
Who naught but Laura's* tinkling trash admire,
And the mad jangle of Matilda's* lyre.

* Laura's tinkling trash, &c.-I had amassed a world of this "tinkling trash" for the behoof of the reader, but having, fortunately for him, mislaid it, and not being disposed to undertake again the drudgery of wading through Mr. Bell's collections, I can only offer the little which occurs to my memory. Of this little, the merits must be principally shared among Mrs. Robinson, Mrs. Cowley, and Mr. Merry;

"Et vos, O Lauri, carpam, et te, proxima Myrte,
Sic posite quoniam suaves miscetis odores."
"O let me fly

Where Greenland darkness drinks the beamy sky;"
"But O! beware how thou dost fling

Thy hot pulse o'er the quivering string "
"Pluck from their dark and rocky bed

The yelling demons of the deep,
Who, soaring o'er the comet's head,
The bosom of the welkin sweep."
"And when the jolly full moon laughs,
In her clear zenith to behold

The envious stars withdraw their gleams of gold,
"Tis to thy health she stooping quaffs

The sapphire cup that fairy zephyrs bring!" On considering these and the preceding lines, I was tempted to indulge a wish that the Blue Stocking club would issue an immediate order to Mr. Bell to examine the cells of Bedlam. Certainly, if an accurate transcript were made from the "darkened walls" once or twice a quarter, an Album might be presented to the fashionable world, more poetical, and far more rational, than any which they have lately honoured with their applause. "Why does thy stream of sweetest song

Foam on the mountain's murmuring side,
Or through the vocal covert glide ?
"I heard a tuneful phantom in the wind,
I saw it watch the rising moon afar,
Wet with the weeping of the twilight star.-
"The pilgrim who with tearful eye shall view
The moon's wan lustre in the midnight dew,
Soothed by her light————"

This is an admirable reason for his crying!-but what!
Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire. Mr.
Bell is in raptures with it, and very properly recommends
it to the admiration of Della Crusca, as being the produc-

But Mr. Parsons has happily obtained an obdurate and impassable head: let him, therefore, "give God thanks, and make no boast of it." He is a wise and a wary reader, and follows the most judicious Bottom, who having, like himself, too much sagacity to be imposed upon by ation of "a congenial soul." There is also another judifeigned character, was laudably anxious to undeceive the world. "No," quoth he, "let him thrust his face through the lion's neck, and say, if you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life-no, I am no such thing: I am a man, as other men are;-and then, indeed, let him name his name, and tell them plainly he is SNUG the joiner."

cious critic, one Dr. Tasker, (should it not be Dr. Trusler?) who has given a decided opinion, it seems, in favour of the writer's abilities; which may console her for the sneers of fifty such envious scribblers as the author of the Baviad.

And first you shall hear what Mrs. Robinson says of Dr. Tasker."The learned and ingenious Dr. Tasker,

* Edgar Atheling.-See the "Battle of Hastings," a in the third volume of his elegant and critical works, tragedy by Mr. Cumberland.

+ Ye Cruscans!

O voi, che della Crusca vi chiamate, Come quei che farina non avendo Di quella a tutto pasto vi saziate! Lorenzo." A lamentable tragedy by Della Crusca, mixed full of pleasant mirth." The house laughed a-good at it, but Mr. Harris cried sadly. Here is another instance, if it were wanted, of the bad effects of prostitute applause. Could Mr. Harris, if his mind had not been previously warped by the eternal puffs of Bell and his followers, have supposed, for a moment, that a knack of stringing together"hoar hills," and "rippling rills," and "red skies glare,” and “thin, thin air,” qualified a man for writing tragedy?

has PRONOUNCED some of Mrs. Robinson's poems superior to those of Milton on the same subject, particularly her Address to the Nightingale. The praises of so competent and disinterested a judge, STAMPS celebrity that neither time nor envy can obliterate."-Oracle, Dec. 10.

Next you shall hear what Dr. Tasker says of Mrs. Ro binson.

"In ancient Greece by two fair forms were seen
Wisdom's stern goddess, and Love's smiling queen;
Pallas presided over arms and arts,
And Venus over gentle virgins' hearts;
But now both powers in one fair form combine,
And in famed Robinson united shine."

"This lady,equally celebrated in the pollte and literary circles, has honoured Mr."-Lo! the Dr. has dwindled

with beauties every sparkling шine;

s with new meanings to dispense, fancy, and confound the sense! reason! Is it thus you praise Woolsey song, framed with such ease, cy of thought, that every line

iny growing lame w um

ངས་་བབབ་ ་

To many a sonnet call thy claims in doubt,
And," at one entrance, shut thy glory out."
Yet mewl thou still. Shall my lord's dormouse die,
And low in dust without a requiem lie?

No, mewl thou still: and, while thy d-s join

pt e'en Vaughan to whisper, "This is Their melancholy symphonies to thine,

e!"

a well remember'd.

plains

My righteous verse shall labour to restore

He, good man, The well earned fame it robb'd them of before :

x'd his name to Edwin's strains:

fr." has honoured Mr. Tasker's poetical productions with high and distinguished marks -obation."-Gazetteer, Jan. 16.

s is the very song of Prodicus, ἡ χειρ την χει -for the rest, I trust my readers will readily o the praises which these most "competent rested judges" have reciprocally lavished upon

ms!

-My hand, at night's fell noon,
ucks from the tresses of the moon
sparkling crown of silvery hue,
esprent with studs of frozen dew!"
n the dizzy height inclined,
listen to the passing wind,

hat loves my mournful song to seize,
nd bears it to the mountain breeze."

nd that listening to the wind, and singing to it, nd the same thing; and that-but I can make the rest.

Then in black obtrusive clouds

he chilly moon her pale cheek shrouds,
mark the twinkling starry train
ulting glitter in her wane,

nd proudly gleam their borrow'd light
gem the sombre dome of night."
admirable observer of nature is this great poetess!
s twinkling in a cloudy night, and gleaming
owed lustre, is superlatively good. I had almost
observe that these and the preceding lines are
m the Ode to the Nightingale, so superior, in the
judgment of Dr. Tasker, to one of a Mr. John
the same subject.

"The lightning's rays

through the night's scarce pervious gloom, acted by"- -(what! for a ducat?) acted by the rose's bloom!"

but thy lyre impatient seize

arting twilight's filmy breeze,

t winds th' enchanting chords among

ingering labyrinths of song."

in the clouds its mast the proud bark laves, rning the aid of ocean's humble waves!"

is it appears, that Mrs. Cowley imagines proud = float on their masts. It is proper to mention vessel takes such extraordinary state on herself, she carries Della Crusca!

"From a young grove's shade,

hose infant boughs but mock th' expecting glade! weet sounds stole forth, upborne upon the gale, ess'd through the air, and broke upon the vale; men silent walk'd the breezes of the plain, soar'd aloft, and seized the hovering strain."Della Crusca.

force of folly can no farther go! dwin's strains.-If the reader will turn to the conn of the Banad, he will find a delicious EITACIOV

[ocr errors]

Edwin, whatever elegies of wo

Drop from the gentle mouths of Vaughan and Co.,
To this or that, henceforth no more confined,
Shall, like a surname, take in all the kind.

Right! cry the brethren. When the heaven

born muse

Shames her descent, and, for low, earthly views,
Hums o'er a beetle's bier the doleful stave,
Or sits chief mourner at a May-bug's grave,
Satire should scourge her from the vile employ,
And bring her back to friendship, love, and joy.
But spare Cesario,* Carlos,† Adelaide,‡
The truest poetess! the truest maid!

laying before the public another effusion of the same exquisite pen.

It will be found, I flatter myself, not less beautiful than the former; and fully prove that the author, though ostensibly devoted to elegy, can, on a proper occasion, assume an air of gayety, and be "profound" with ease, and instructive with elegance.

Εδουιν προλογίζει.

"On the circumstance of a mastiff's running furiously (sad dog!) tocard two young ladies, and, upon coming up to them, becoming instantly gentle (good dog!) and tractable."

Tantum ad narrandum argumentum est benignitas! "When Orpheus took his lyre to hell,

To fetch his rib away,

On that same thing he pleased so well,
That devils learn'd to play.
"Besides, in books it may be read,
That whilst he swept the lute,
Grim Cerberus hung his savage head,
And lay astoundly mute.

"But here we can with justice say,

That nature rivals art;

He sang a mastiff's rage away,
You look'd one through the heart."
Fecit Edwin.

*Cesario. In the Baviad are a few stanzas of a most delectable ode to an owl. They were ascribed to Arno; nor was I conscious of any mistake, till I received a polite note from that gentleman, assuring me that he was not only not the author of them, but (horresco referens) that he thought them "execrable." Mr. Bell, on the other hand, affirms them to be "admirable."

"Who shall decide when doctors disagree?"

Be this as it may, I am happy to say that I have discovered the true author. They were written by Cesario; and as I rather incline to Mr. Bell, pace Arno dixerim, I shall make no scruple of laying the remainder of this "mellifluous piece" before the reader.

[ocr errors]

Slighted love the soul subduing, Silent sorrow chills the heart, Treacherous fancy still pursuing, Still repels the poison'd dart.

« 前へ次へ »