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cepts which it contains are exact and just; and | in this point; not a learned man nor a poet can that it is therefore, at once, a book of entertain-die, but all Europe must be acquainted with ment and of science. This I was told by Miller, the great gardener and botanist, whose expression was, that "there were many books written on the same subject in prose, which do not contain so much truth as that poem."

his accomplishments. They give praise and expect it in their turns; they commend their Patrus and Molieres, as well as their Condés and Turennes; their Pellisons and Racines have their eulogies, as well as the Prince whom they celebrate; and their poems, their mercuries, and orations, nay, their very gazettes, are filled with the praises of the learned.

"I am satisfied, had they a Philips among them, and known how to value him; had they one of his learning, his temper, but above all of that particular turn of humour, that altogether new genius, he had been an example to their poets, and a subject of their panegyrics, and perhaps set in competition with the ancients, to whom only he ought to submit.

In the disposition of his matter, so as to intersperse precepts relating to the culture of trees with sentiments more generally alluring, and in easy and graceful transitions from one subject to another, he has very diligently imitated his master; but he unhappily pleased himself with blank verse, and supposed that the numbers of Milton, which impress the mind with veneration, combined as they are with subjects of inconceivable grandeur, could be sustained by images, which, at most, can rise only to elegance. Contending angels may shake the regions of "I shall therefore endeavour to do justice to heaven in blank verse: but the flow of equal his memory, since nobody else undertakes it. measures, and the embellishment of rhyme, And indeed I can assign no cause why so many must recommend to our attention the art of en- of his acquaintance (that are as willing and more grafting, and decide the merit of the redstreakable than myself to give an account of him) and pearmain. should forbear to celebrate the memory of one so dear to them, but only that they look upon it as a work entirely belonging to me.

What study could confer, Philips had obtained: but natural deficiency cannot be supplied. He seems not born to greatness and elevation. He is never lofty, nor does he often surprise with unexpected excellence; but, perhaps, to his last poem may be applied what Tully said of the work of Lucretius, that it is written with much art, though with few blazes of genius.

The following fragment written by Edmund Smith, upon the works of Philips, has been transcribed from the Bodleian manuscripts. "A Prefatory Discourse to the poem on Mr. Philips, with a character of his writings.

"It is altogether as equitable some account should be given of those who have distinguished themselves by their writings, as of those who are renowned for great actions. It is but reasonable they, who contribute so much to the inmortality of others, should have some share in it themselves; and since their genius only is discovered by their works, it is just that their virtues should be recorded by their friends. For no modest men (as the person I write of was in perfection) will write their own penegyrics; and it is very hard that they should go without reputation, only because they the more deserve it. The end of writing lives is for the imitation of the readers. It will be in the power of very few to imitate the Duke of Marlborough; we must be content with admiring his great qualities and actions, without hopes of following them. The private and social virtues are more easily transcribed. The life of Cowley is more instructive, as well as more fine, than any we have in our language. And it is to be wished, since Mr. Philips had so many of the good qualities of that poet, that I had some of the abilities of his historian.

"The Grecian philosophers have had their lives written, their morals commended, and their sayings recorded. Mr. Philips had all the virtues to which most of them only pretended, and all their integrity without any of their affec

tation.

"The French are very just to eminent men

"I shall content myself with giving only a character of the person and his writings, without meddling with the transactions of his life, which was altogether private. I shall only make this known observation of his family, that there was scarcely so many extraordinary men in any one. I have been acquainted with five of his brothers (of which three are still living), all men of fine parts, yet all of a very unlike temper and genius. So that their fruitful mother, like the mother of the gods, seems to have produced a numerous offspring, all of different though uncommon faculties. Of the living, neither their modesty, nor the humour of the present age, permits me to speak: of the dead, I may say something.

"One of them had made the greatest progress in the study of the law of nature and nations of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, and even improved, the notions of Grotius, and the more refined ones of Puffendorf. He could refute Hobbes with as much solidity as some of greater name, and expose him with as much wit as Echard. That noble study which requires the greatest reach of reason and nicety of distinction, was not at all difficult to him. 'Twas a national loss to be deprived of one who understood a science so necessary, and yet so unknown in England. I shall add only, he had the same honesty and sincerity as the person I write of, but more heat; the former was more inclined to argue, the latter to divert; one employed his reason more, the other his ima gination: the former had been well qualified for those posts, which the modesty of the latter made him refuse. His other dead brother would have been an ornament to the College of which he was a member. He had a genius either for poetry or oratory; and, though very young, composed several very agreeable pieces. In all probability he would have written as finely as his brother did nobly. He might have been the Waller, as the other was the Milton of his time. The one might celebrate Marlborough, the other his beautiful offspring. This had not been so fit to describe the actions of heroes as the

virtues of private men. In a word, he had been fitter for my place; and while his brother was writing upon the greatest men that any age ever produced, in a style equal to them, he might have served as a panegyrist on him.

"This is all I think necessary to say of his family. I shall proceed to himself and his writings; which I shall first treat of, because I know they are censured by some out of envy, and more out of ignorance,

rest.

6

"The Splendid Shilling,' which is far the least considerable, has the more general reputation, and perhaps hinders the character of the The style agreed so well with the burlesque, that the ignorant thought it could become nothing else. Every body is pleased with that work. But to judge rightly of the other requires a perfect mastery of poetry and criticism, a just contempt of the little turns and witticisms now in vogue, and, above all, a perfect understanding of poetical diction and descrip

tion.

"All that have any taste for poetry will agree, that the great burlesque is much to be preferred to the low. It is much easier to make a great thing appear little, than a little one great: Cotton and others of a very low genius have done the former: but Philips, Garth, and Boileau, only the latter.

"A picture in miniature is every painter's talent; but a piece for a cupola, where all the figures are enlarged, yet proportioned to the eye, requires a master's hand.

"It must still be more acceptable than the low burlesque, because the images of the latter are mean and filthy, and the language itself entirely unknown to all men of good breeding. The style of Billingsgate would not make a very agreeable figure at St. James's. A gentleman would take but little pleasure in language which he would think it hard to be accosted in, or in reading words which he could not pronounce without blushing. The lofty burlesque is the more to be admired, because, to write it, the author must be master of two of the most different talents in nature. A talent to find out and expose what is ridiculous, is very different from that which is to raise and elevate. We must read Virgil and Milton for the one, and Horace and Hudibras for the other. We know that the authors of excellent comedies have often failed in the grave style, and the tragedian as often in comedy. Admiration and laughter are of such opposite natures, that they are seldom created by the same person. The man of mirth is always observing the follies and weaknesses, the serious writer the virtues or crimes, of mankind; one is pleased with contemplating a beau, the other a hero; even from the same object they would draw different ideas: Achilles would appear in very different lights to Thersites and Alexander; the one would admire the courage and greatness of his soul; the other would ridicule the vanity and rashness of his temper. As the satirist says to Hannibal :

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subject, or a great subject from the style. It pleases the more universally, because it is agreeable to the taste both of the grave and the merry; but more particularly so to those who have a re lish of the best writers, and the noblest sort of poetry. I shall produce only one passage out of this Poet, which is the misfortune of his galli. gaskins;

My galligaskins, which have long withstood The winter's fury and encroaching frosts, By time subdu'd (what will not time subdue!) This is admirably pathetical, and shows very well the vicissitudes of sublunary things. The rest goes on to a prodigious height; and a man in Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetic and terrible complaint. Is it not sur prising that the subject should be so mean, and the verse so pompous, that the least things in his poetry, as in a microscope, should grow great and formidable to the eye; especially con sidering that, not understanding French, he had no model for his style? that he should have no writer to imitate, and himself be inimitable? that he should do all this before he was twenty; at an age which is usually pleased with a glare of false thoughts, little turns, and unnatural fus tian? at an age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost said Virgil, were inconsiderable; so soon was his imagination at its full strength, his judgment ripe, and his humour complete.

"This poem was written for his own diversion, without any design of publication. It was com municated but to me; but soon spread, and fell into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely mangled by Ben Bragge; and impudently said 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 Persian who demanded his arms, 'We have nothing now left but our arms and our valour: if we surrender the one, how shall we make use of the other? Poets have nothing but their wits and their writings; and if they are plundered of the latter, I don't see what good the former can do them. To pirate, and publicly own it, to prefix their names to the works they steal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never yet heard of but in England. It will sound oddly to posterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wise, most learned, and most generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanic should be better secured than that of a scholar! that the poorest manual operations should be more valued than the noblest products of the brain! that it should be felony to rob a cobbler of a pair of shoes, and no crime to deprive the best author of his whole subsistence; that nothing should make a man a sure title to his own writings but the stupidity of them! that the works of Dryden should meet with less encou ragement than those of his own Flecknoe or Blackmore! that Tillotson and St. George, Tom Thumb and Temple, should be set on an equal footing! This is the reason why this very paper has been so long delayed; and, while the most impudent and scandalous libels are publicly vended by the pirates, this innocent work is forced to steal abroad as if it were a libel.

"Our present writers are by these wretches reduced to the same condition Virgil was, when

the centurion seized on his estate. But I don't doubt but I can fix upon the Mæcenas of the present age, that will retrieve them from it. But, whatever effects this piracy may have upon us, it contributed very much to the advantage of Mr. Philips; it helped him to a reputation which he neither desired nor expected, and to the honour of being put upon a work of which he did not think himself capable: but the event showed his modesty. And it was reasonable to hope, that he, who could raise mean subjects so high, should still be more elevated on greater themes; that he, that could draw such noble ideas from a shilling, could not fail upon such a subject as the Duke of Marlborough, which is capable of heightening even the most low and trifling genius. And, indeed, most of the great works which have been produced in the world have been owing less to the poet than the patron. Men of the greatest genius are sometimes lazy, and want a spur; often modest, and dare not venture in public; 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 desired his works might be burned, had not the same Augustus, that desired him to write them, preserved them from destruction. A scribbling beau may imagine a poet may be induced to write, by the very pleasure he finds in writing; but that is seldom, when people are necessitated to it. I have known men row, and use very hard labour for diversion, which, if they had been tied to, they would have thought themselves very unhappy.

"But to return to 'Blenheim,' that work so much admired by some, and censured by others. I have often wished he had wrote it in Latin, that he might be out of the reach of the empty critic, who could have as little understood his meaning in that language as they do his beauties in his own,

"False critics have been the plague of all ages: Milton himself, in a very polite court, has been compared to the rumbling of a wheelbarrow: he had been on the wrong side, and therefore could not be a good poet. And this, perhaps, may be Mr. Philips's case.

"But I take generally the ignorance of his readers to be the occasion of their dislike. People that have formed their taste upon the French writers can have no relish for Philips; they admire points and turns, and consequently have no judgment of what is great and majestic; he must look little in their eyes, when he soars so high as to be almost 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 complete critic. He generally judges of the ancients by the moderns, and not the moderns by the ancients; he takes those passages of their own authors to be really sublime which come the nearest to it; he often calls that a noble and a great thought which is only a pretty and a fine one; and has more instances of the sublime out of 'Ovid de Tristibus,' than he has out of all Virgil.

"I shall allow, therefore, only those to be judges of Philips, who make the ancients, and particularly Virgil, their standard.

"But before I enter on this subject, I shall consider what is particular in the style of Philips, and examine what ought to be the style of heroic poetry; and next inquire how far he has come up to that style.

"His style is particular, because he lays aside rhyme, and writes in blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently postpones the adjective to the substantive, and the substantive to the verb; and leaves out little particles, a and the; her, and his; and uses frequent appositions. Now let us examine whether these alterations of style be conformable to the true sublime." *

WALSH.

WILLIAM WALSH, the son of Joseph Walsh, | Esq., of Abberley, in Worcestershire, was born in 1663, as appears from the account of Wood, who relates that at the age of fifteen he became, in 1678, a gentleman commoner of Wadham College.

He left the University without a degree, and pursued his studies in London and at home; that he studied, in whatever place, is apparent from its effect, for he became in Mr. Dryden's opinion the best critic in the nation.

He was not, however, merely a critic or a scholar, but a man of fashion; and, as Dennis remarks, ostentatiously splendid in his dress. He was likewise a member of parliament and a courtier, knight of the shire for his native county in several parliaments; in another the representative of Richmond in Yorkshire; and gen

tleman of the horse to Queen Anne, under the Duke of Somerset.

Some of his verses show him to have been a zealous friend to the Revolution; but his political ardour did not abate his reverence or kindness for Dryden, to whom he gave a dissertation on Virgil's "Pastorals," in which, however studied, he discovers some ignorance of the laws of French versification.

In 1705, he began to correspond with Mr. Pope, in whom he discovered very early the power of poetry. Their letters are written upon the pastoral comedy of the Italians, and those pastorals which Pope was then preparing to publish.

The kindnesses which are first experienced are seldom forgotten. Pope always retained a grateful memory of Walsh's notice, and men

tioned him in one of his latter pieces among I wrote "Eugenia, a Defence of Women;" which those that had encouraged his juvenile studies: Dryden honoured with a Preface.

-Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.

In his "Essay on Criticism" he had given him more splendid praise; and, in the opinion of his more learned commentator, sacrificed a little of his judgment to his gratitude.

The time of his death I have not learned. It must have happened between 1707, when he wrote to Pope, and 1711, when Pope praised aim in his "Essay." The epitaph makes him forty-six years old; if Wood's account be right, he died in 1709.

He is known more by his familiarity with greater men, than by any thing done or written by himself.

His works are not numerous. In prose he

"Esculapius, or the Hospital of Fools," published after his death.

"A Collection of Letters and Poems, amorous and gallant," was published in the volumes called Dryden's Miscellany, and some other occasional pieces.

To his Poems and Letters is prefixed a very judicious Preface upon Epistolary Composition and Amorous Poetry.

In his "Golden Age restored," there was something of humour, while the facts were recent; but it now strikes no longer. In his imitation of Horace, the first stanzas are happily turned ; and in all his writings there are pleasing passages. He has, however, more elegance than vigour, and seldom rises higher than to be pretty.

DRYDEN.*

Or the great poet whose life I am about to delineate, the curiosity which his reputation must excite will require a display more ample than can now be given. His contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius, left his life unwritten; and nothing therefore can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied.

JOHN DRYDEN was born August 9, 1631, at Aldwinkle, near Oundle, the son of Erasmus Dryden, of Titchmersh; who was the third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Ashby. All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the original stock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon.‡

He is reported by his last biographer, Derrick, to have inherited from his father an estate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as was said, an anabaptist. For either of these particulars no authority is given.§ Such a fortune ought to have secured him from that poverty which seems always to have oppressed him; or, if he had wasted it, to have made him ashamed of publishing his, necessities. But though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life with a scrutiny sufficiently

The Life of Dryden, though in point of composition it is one of the most admirable of Johnson's productions, is in many particulars incorrect. Mr. Malone, in the biography prefixed to his Prose Works," has collected a much more ample and accurate account; and from that valuable work several dates and other particulars have been here set right.-J. B.

Mr. Malone has lately proved that there is no satisfactory evidence for this date. The inscription on Dryden's monument says only natus 1632. See Malone's Life of Dryden, prefixed to his "Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works," p. 5, note.-C.

Of Cumberland. Ibid. p. 10.-C.

Mr. Malone has furnished us with a detailed account of our Pocus circunstances; from which it appears that although he was possessed of a sufficient income in the early part of his life, he was considerably embarrassed at its close. See Malone's Life, p. 410.-J. B.

malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with waste of his patrimony. He was, indeed, sometimes reproached for his first religion. I am therefore inclined to believe that Derrick's intelligence was partly true, and partly erroneous.||

From Westminster School, where he was instructed as one of the King's scholars by Dr. Busby, whom he long after continued to reverence, he was, in 1650, elected to one of the Westminster scholarships at Cambridge.¶

a

Of his school performances has appeared only poem on the death of Lord Hastings, composed with great ambition of such conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley still kept in reputation. Lord Hastings died of the small-pox; and his poet has made of the pustules first rose-buds, and then gems: at last exalts them into stars; and says,

No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation.

At the University he does not appear to have been eager of poetical distinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious subjects or public occasions. He probably considered, that he who proposed to be an author ought first to be a student. He obtained, whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the College. Why he was excluded cannot now be known, and it is vain to guess: had he thought himself injured, he knew how to complain. In the Life of Plutarch he mentions his education

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in the College with gratitude; but, in a prologue | often poignant and often just; but with such a at Oxford, he has these lines:

Oxford to him a dearer name shall be,
Than his own mother university;

Thebes did his rude unknowing youth engage;
He chooses Athens in his riper age.

It was not till the death of Cromwell, in 1658, that he became a public candidate for fame,* by publishing "Heroic Stanzas on the late Lord Protector" which, compared with the verses of Sprat and Waller on the same occasion, were sufficient to raise great expectations of the rising Poet.

When the King was restored, Dryden, like the other panegyrists of usurpation, changed his opinion, or his profession, and published "Astrea Redux, a Poem on the happy Restoration and Return of his most sacred Majesty King Charles the Second."

The reproach of inconstancy was, on this occasion, shared with such numbers, that it produced neither hatred nor disgrace! if he changed, he changed with the nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his reputation raised him enemies.

The same year he praised the new King in a second poem on his restoration. In the "Astrea" were the lines,

An horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we a tempest fear-

degree of reputation, as made him at least secure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the public.

His first piece was a comedy called "The Wild Gallant." He began with no happy auguries; for his performance was so much disapproved, that he was compelled to recall it, and change it from its imperfect state to the form in which it now appears, and which is yet sufficiently defective to vindicate the critics.

I wish that there were no necessity of following the progress of his theatrical fame, or tracing the meanders of his mind through the whole series of his dramatic performances; it will be fit, however, to enumerate them, and to take especial notice of those that are distinguished by any peculiarity, intrinsic or concomitant; for the composition and fate of eight-and-twenty dramas include too much of a poetical life to be omitted.

In 1664, he published "The Rival Ladies," which he dedicated to the Earl of Orrery, a man of high reputation both as a writer and as a statesman. In this play he made his essay of dramatic rhyme, which he defends, in his dedication, with sufficient certainty of a favourable hearing; for Orrery was himself a writer of rhyming tragedies.

He then joined with Sir Robert Howard in parts which either of them wrote are not distin"The Indian Queen," a tragedy in rhyme. The

guished.

for which he was persecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps with more than was deserved. Silence is indeed mere privation; and, so considered, cannot invade; but privation likewise It is a tragedy in rhyme, intended for a sequel "The Indian Emperor" was published in 1667. certainly is darkness, and probably cold; yet to Howard's "Indian Queen." Of this connexpoetry has never been refused the right of as-ion notice was given to the audience by printed cribing effects or agency to them as to positive powers. No man scruples to say, that darkness hinders him from his work; or that cold has killed the plants. Death is also privation; yet who has made any difficulty of assigning to death a dart and the power of striking?

bills, distributed at the door; an expedient supposed to be ridiculed in "The Rehearsal," where instil into the audience some conception of his Bayes tells how many reams he has printed, to plot.

Rymer has made famous by preferring it to those In this play is the description of Night, which of all other poets.

In settling the order of his works there is some difficulty; for, even when they are important enough to be formally offered to a patron, he does not commonly date his dedication; The practice of making tragedies in rhyme the time of writing and publishing is not always the was introduced soon after the Restoration, as it same; nor can the first editions be easily found, the opinion of Charles the Second, who had seems by the Earl of Orrery, in compliance with if even from them could be obtained the neces-formed his taste by the French theatre; and sary information.†

The time at which his first play was exhibited is not certainly known, because it was not printed till it was, some years afterwards, altered and revived; but since the plays are said to be printed in the order in which they were written, from the dates of some, those of others may be inferred; and thus it may be collected, that in 1663, in the thirty-second year of his life, he commenced a writer for the stage; compelled undoubtedly by necessity, for he appears never to have loved that exercise of his genius, or to have much pleased himself with his own dramas. Of the stage, when he had once invaded it, he kept possession for many years; not indeed without the competition of rivals who sometimes prevailed, or the censure of critics, which was

This is a mistake. His poem on the death of Lord Hastings appeared in a volume entitled "Tears of the Muses on the death of Henry Lord Hastings; 8vo. 1649." Malone.-J. B.

The order of his plays has been accurately ascertained by Mr. Malone.-C.

declaring that he wrote only to please, and who Dryden, who wrote, and made no difficulty of perhaps knew that by his dexterity of versification he was more likely to excel others in rhyme than without it, very readily adopted his master's preference. He therefore made rhyming tragedies, till, by the prevalence of manifest propriety, he seems to have grown ashamed of making them any longer.

dramatic rhyme, in confutation of the preface to To this play is prefixed a vehement defence of Howard had censured it. "The Duke of Lerma," in which Sir Robert

In 1667, he published "Annus Mirabilis, the Year of Wonders," which may be esteemed one

of his most elaborate works.

It is addressed to Sir Robert Howard by a letter, which is not properly a dedication; and

The "Duke of Guise" was his first attempt in the drama, but laid aside and afterwards new modelled.-See Malone, p. 51.-J. B.

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