he speaks the most polished and refined dialect of the stage; and even some of his over-heightened scenes of voluptuousness are meant, though with a very mistaken judgment, to inculcate morality.* I consider his genius, indeed, as rather brilliant and elegant than strong or lofty. His tragedies are defective in fire, grandeur, and passion; and we must select his comedies, to have any favourable idea of his humour. His finest poetry comes forth in situations rather more familiar than tragedy and more grave than comedy, which I should call sentimental comedy, if the name were not associated with ideas of modern insipidity. That he was capable, however, of pure and excellent comedy will be felt by those who have yet in reserve the amusement of reading his Gamester, Hyde-park, and Lady of Pleasure. In the first and last of these there is a subtle ingenuity in producing comic effect and surprise, which might be termed Attic, if it did not surpass any thing that is left us in Athenian comedy. I shall leave to others the more special enumeration of his faults, only observing, that the airy touches of his expression, the delicacy of his sentiments, and the beauty of his similes, are often found where the poet survives the dramatist, and where he has not power to transfuse life and strong individuality through the numerous characters of his voluminous drama. His style, to use a line of his own, is "studded like a frosty night with stars;" and a severe critic might say, that the stars often shine when the atmosphere is rather too frosty. In other words, there is more beauty of fancy than strength of feeling in his works. From this remark, however, a defender of his fame might justly appeal to exceptions in many of his pieces. From a general impression of his works I should not paint his Muse with the haughty form and features of inspiration, but with a countenance, in its happy moments, arch, lovely, and interesting both in smiles and in tears; crowned with flowers, and not unindebted to ornament, but wearing the drapery and * The scene in Shirley's Love's Cruelty, for example, between Hippolito and the object of his admiration, Act 4, scene i., and another in The Grateful Servant, between Belinda and Lodwick. Several more might be mentioned. [† Mr. Campbell has been too kind to Shirley, whose merits are exaggerated by the length and frequency of his quotations from him. The reader who will turn to chaplet with a claim to them from natural beauty. Of his style I subjoin one or two more examples, lest I may not have done justice to him in that respect in the body of the work.t " FROM THE GRATEFUL SERVANT." CLEONA INFORMED BY THE PAGE DULCINO OF FOSCARI, WHOM SHE HAD THOUGHT DEAD, BEING STILL ALIVE. Cleona. The day breaks glorious to my darken'd thoughts. He lives, he lives yet! cease, ye amorous fears, Dulcino. Not perfect, madam, Until you bless him with the knowledge of Your constancy. Cleon. O get thee wings and fly then: Tell him my love doth burn like vestal fire, Which with his memory, richer than all spices, Dispersed odours round about my soul, And did refresh it, when 'twas dull and sad, With thinking of his absence -Yet stay, Thou goest away too soon; where is he? speak. Cleon. The sun's loved flower, that shuts his yellow curtain When he declineth, opens it again At his fair rising: with my parting lord FROM THE SAME. FOSCARI, IN HIS MELANCHOLY, ANNOUNCING TO FATHER Foscari. There is a sun, ten times more glorious To rise from earth, and no more to turn back Valentio. My lord, the truth is, like your coat of arms, Shirley's six volumes, and seek there for a succession of such passages as Mr. Campbell has here given, for happiness of plot, dialogue, and language, is certain only of disappointment. In endeavouring to atone for the injustice of one age, another is apt to overleap the mark, and to err as far in the other way. Shirley shines in extract-in passages-not in plays, or even in scenes.-C.] FROM "THE TRAITOR." THE DUKE OF FLORENCE TO HIS MURDERER, LORENZO. * For thee, inhuman murderer, expect My blood shall fly to heaven, and there inflamed, Hang a prodigious meteor all thy life: And when, by some as bloody hand as thine, Thy soul is ebbing forth, it shall descend, In flaming drops, upon thee. O! I faint! Thou flattering world, farewell. Let princes gather My dust into a glass, and learn to spend Their hour of state-that's all they have-for when That's out, Time never turns the glass again. FROM THE SAME. When our souls shall leave this dwelling. The glory of one fair and virtuous action Is above all the scutcheons on our tomb, Or silken banners over us. FROM THE COMEDY OF "THE BROTHERS." FERNANDO DESCRIBING HIS MISTRESS TO FRANCISCO. Fern. You have, then, a mistress, And thrive upon her favours-but thou art Fran. Is it a secret that you went to church? So sweet a face, so harmless, so intent Her eye did seem to labour with a tear, [*The citation of this beautiful passage by Dr. Farmer in his Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare, 1766, may be regarded as one of the earliest attempts to rescue the works of Shirley from the long oblivion to which they had been consigned.-DYCE's Shirley, vol. i. p. xi.] [† In Mac Flecknoe. "The critical decisions of Dryden," says Dyce, "however unjust, had no slight influence on the public mind."] [That Dryden at any time undervalued Otway, we have no very positive proof-a coffee-house criticism retailed, though the retailer was Otway himself, at secondhand. The play that Dryden is said to have spoken pe The contempt which Dryden expresses for Shirley† might surprise us, if it were not recollected that he lived in a degenerate age of dramatic taste, and that his critical sentences were neither infallible nor immutable. He at one time undervalued Otway, though he lived to alter his opinion.‡ The civil wars put an end to this dynasty of our dramatic poets. Their immediate successors or contemporaries, belonging to the reign of Charles I., many of whom resumed their lyres after the interregnum, may, in a general view, be divided into the classical and metaphysical schools. The former class, containing Denham, Waller, and Carew, upon the whole cultivated smooth and distinct melody of numbers, correctness of imagery, and polished elegance of expression. The latter, in which Herrick and Cowley stood at the head of Donne's metaphysical followers, were generally loose or rugged in their versification, and preposterous in their metaphors. But this distinction can only be drawn in very general terms; for Cowley, the prince of the metaphysicians, has bursts of natural feeling and just thoughts in the midst of his absurdities. And Herrick, who is equally whimsical, has left some little gems of highlyfinished composition. On the other hand, the correct Waller is sometimes mataphysical; and ridiculous hyperboles are to be found in the elegant style of Carew. The characters of Denham, Waller, and Cowley have been often described. Had Cowley written nothing but his prose, it would have stamped him a man of genius, and an improver of our language. Of his poetry, Rochester indecorously said, that "not being of God, it could not stand."? Had the word nature been substituted, it would have equally conveyed the intended meaning, but still that meaning would not have been strictly just. There is much in Cowley that will stand. He teems, in many places, with the imagery, the feeling, the grace and gayety of a poet. No tulantly and disparagingly about, was Don Carlos. The Orphan and Venice Preserved were of a later date, and justified Dryden's firm conviction, that Otway possessed the art of expressing the passions and emotions of the mind as thoroughly as any of the ancients or moderns. Don Carlos gives no promise of The Orphan, or of Venice Preserved.] [Told on the authority of Dryden. (Malone, vol. iv. p. 612.) Yet Burnet, Joseph Warton, and Johnson speak of Cowley as Rochester's favourite author.] [Nature is but a name for an effect,] Whose cause is God.-CowPER, The Task, B. vi.] thing but a severer judgment was wanting to collect the scattered lights of his fancy. His unnatural flights arose less from affectation than self-deception. He cherished false thoughts as men often associate with false friends, not from insensibility to the difference between truth and falsehood, but from being too indolent to examine the difference. Herrick, if we were to fix our eyes on a small portion of his works, might be pronounced a writer of delightful Anacreontic spirit. He has passages where the thoughts seem to dance into numbers from his very heart, and where he frolics like a being made up of melody and pleasure; as when he sings Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a flying; And this same flower that blooms to-day, In the same spirit are his verses to Anthea, concluding Thou art my life, my love, my heart. And hast command of every part, To live and die for thee. But his beauties are so deeply involved in surrounding coarseness and extravagance, as to constitute not a tenth part of his poetry; or rather it may be safely affirmed, that of 1400 pages of verse which he has left, not a hundred are worth reading. In Milton there may be traced obligations to several minor English poets; but his genius had too great a supremacy to belong to any school. Though he acknowledged a filial reverence for Spenser as a poet, he left no Gothic irregular tracery in the design of his own great work, but gave a classical harmony of parts to its stupendous pile. It thus resembles a dome, the vastness of which is at first sight concealed by its symmetry, but which expands more and more to the eye while it is contemplated. His early poetry seems to have neither disturbed nor corrected the bad taste of his age. Comus came into the world unacknowledged by its author, and Lycidas appeared at first only with his ini [* Comus, 1637-Lycidas, 1638.] [† 1673.] [See note B, at the end of the volume.] [? There is a solemnity of sentiment, as well as majesty of numbers, in the exordium of this noble poem, which in the works of the ancients has no example. . . . . We cannot read this exordium without perceiving that the author possesses more fire than he shows. There is a sup tials. These and other exquisite pieces, composed in the happiest years of his life, at his father's country-house at Horton, were collectively published, with his name affixed to them, in 1645; but that precious volume which included L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, did not come to a second edition, till it was republished by himself at the distance of eight-and-twenty years. Almost a century elapsed before his minor works obtained their proper fame. Handel's music is said, by Dr. Warton, to have drawn the first attention to them; but they must have been admired before Handel set them to music; for he was assuredly not the first to discover their beauty. But of Milton's poetry being above the comprehension of his age, we should have a sufficient proof, if we had no other, in the grave remark of Lord Clarendon, that Cowley had, in his time, "taken a flight above all men in poetry. Even when "Paradise Lost" appeared, though it was not neglected, it attracted no crowd of imitators and made no visible change in the poetical practice of the age. He stood alone and aloof above his times, the bard of immortal subjects, and, as far as there is perpetuity in language, of immortal fame. The very choice of those subjects bespoke a contempt for any species of excellence that was attainable by other men. There is something that overawes the mind in conceiving his long deliberated selection of that theme-his attempting it when his eyes were shut upon the face of nature-his dependence, we might almost say, on supernatural inspiration, and in the calm air of strength with which he opens "Paradise Lost," beginning a mighty performance without the appearance of an effort. Taking the subject all in all, his powers could nowhere else have enjoyed the same scope. It was only from the height of this great argument that he could look back upon eternity past, and forward upon eternity to come; that he could survey the abyss of infernal darkness, open visions of Paradise, or ascend to heaven and breathe empyreal air. Still the subject had precipitous pressed force in it, the effect of judgment. His judgment controls his genius, and his genius reminds us (to use his own beautiful similitude) of A proud steed rein'd, Champing his iron curb. He addresses himself to the performance of great things, but makes no great exertion in doing it; a sure symptom of uncommon vigour.-CowPER, Commentary.] difficulties. It obliged him to relinquish the warm, multifarious interests of human life. For these indeed he could substitute holier things; but a more insuperable objection to the theme was, that it involved the representation of a war between the Almighty and his created beings. To the vicissitudes of such a warfare it was impossible to make us attach the same fluctuations of hope and fear, the same curiosity, suspense, and sympathy, which we feel amidst the battles of the Iliad, and which make every brave young spirit long to be in the midst of them. Milton has certainly triumphed over one difficulty of his subject, the paucity and the loneliness of its human agents; for no one in contemplating the garden of Eden would wish to exchange it for a more populous world. His earthly pair could only be represented, during their innocence, as beings of simple enjoyment and negative virtue, with no other passions than the fear of heaven and the love of each other. Yet from these materials what a picture has he drawn of their homage to the Deity, their mutual affection, and the horrors of their alienation! By concentrating all exquisite ideas of external nature in the representation of their abode-by conveying an inspired impression of their spirits and forms, while they first shone under the fresh light of creative heaven-by these powers of description, he links our first parents, in harmonious subordination, to the angelic natures-he supports them in the balance of poetical importance with their divine coadjutors and enemies, and makes them appear at once worthy of the friendship and envy of gods. In the angelic warfare of the poem, Milton has done whatever human genius could accomplish. But, although Satan speaks of having "put to proof his (Maker's) high supremacy, in dubious battle, on the plains of heaven," the expression, though finely characteristic of his blasphemous pride, does not prevent us from feeling that the battle cannot for a moment be dubious. Whilst the powers of description and language are [Book vi. 1. 712. The bow and sword of the Almighty are copied from the Psalms vii. and xlv.] [† In this line we seem to hear a thunder suited both to the scene and the occasion, incomparably more awful than any ever heard on earth. The thunder of Milton is not hurled from the hand, like Homer's, but discharged taxed and exhausted to portray the combat, it is impossible not to feel, with regard to the blessed spirits, a profound and reposing security that they have neither great dangers to fear nor reverses to suffer. At the same time it must be said that, although in the actual contact of the armies the inequality of the strife becomes strongly visible to the imagination, and makes it a contest more of noise than terror; yet, while positive action is suspended, there is a warlike grandeur in the poem, which is nowhere to be paralleled. When Milton's genius dares to invest the Almighty himself with arms, "his bow and thunder," the astonished mind admits the image with a momentary credence.* It is otherwise when we are involved in the circumstantial details of the campaign. We have then leisure to anticipate its only possible issue, and can feel no alarm for any temporary check that may be given to those who fight under the banners of Omnipotence. The warlike part of Paradise Lost was inseparable from its subject. Whether it could have been differently managed, is a problem which our reverence for Milton will scarcely permit us to state. I feel that reverence too strongly to suggest even the possibility that Milton could have improved his poem by having thrown his angelic warfare into more remote perspective; but it seems to me to be most sublime when it is least distinctly brought home to the imagination. What an awful effect has the dim and undefined conception of the conflict, which we gather from the opening of the first book! There the veil of mystery is left undrawn between us and a subject which the powers of description were inadequate to exhibit. The ministers of divine vengeance and pursuit had been recalled-the thunders had ceased "To bellow through the vast and boundless deep," Par. Lost, Book i. v. 177. (in that line what an image of sound and space is conveyed!)†-and our terrific conception of the past is deepened by its indistinctness. In optics there are some phenomena which are beautifully deceptive at like an arrow: as if jealous for the honour of a true God, the poet disdained to arm him like the God of the hea then.-COWPER.] [Of all the articles of which the dreadful scenery of Milton's hell consists, Scripture furnished him only with a lake of fire and brimstone. Yet, thus slenderly assisted. a certain distance, but which lose their illusive charm on the slightest approach to them that changes the light and position in which they are viewed. Something like this takes place in the phenomena of fancy. The array of the fallen angels in hell-the unfurling of the standard of Satan-and the march of his troops "In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders"-Book i. 1. 550; all this human pomp and circumstance of war-is magic and overwhelming illusion. The imagination is taken by surprise. But the noblest efforts of language are tried with very unequal effect to interest us, in the immediate and close view of the battle itself in the sixth book; and the martial demons, who charmed us in the shades of hell, lose some portion of their sublimity when their artillery is discharged in the daylight of heaven. If we call diction the garb of thought, Milton, in his style, may be said to wear the costume of sovereignty. The idioms even of foreign languages contributed to adorn it. He was the most learned of poets; yet his learning interferes not with his substantial English purity.* His simplicity is unimpaired by glowing ornament, like the bush in the sacred flame, which burnt, but "was not consumed." In delineating the blessed spirits, Milton has exhausted all the conceivable variety that could be given to pictures of unshaded sanctity; but it is chiefly in those of the fallen angels that his excellence is conspicuous above every thing ancient or modern. Tasso had, indeed, portrayed an infernal council, and had given the hint to our poet of ascribing the origin of pagan worship to those reprobate spirits. But how poor and squalid in comparison of the Miltonic Pandemonium are the Scyllas, the Cyclopses, and the Chimeras of the Infernal Council of the Jerusalem! Tasso's conclave of fiends is a den of ugly, incongruous monsters. O come strane, o come orribil forme! what a world of wo has he constructed, proved in this single instance, the most creative that ever poet owned.COWPER. The slender materials for Comus and Paradise Regained are alike wonderful, and attest the truth of Cowper's remark.] Stampano alcuni il suol di ferine orme, E'n fronte umana han chiome d' angui attorte; * La Gerusalemme, Canto IV. The powers of Milton's hell are godlike shapes and forms. Their appearance dwarfs every other poetical conception, when we turn our dilated eyes from contemplating them. It is not their external attributes alone which expand the imagination, but their souls, which are as colossal as their stature their "thoughts that wander through eternity"-the pride that burns amid the ruins of their divine natures-and their genius, that feels with the ardour and debates with the eloquence of heaven. The subject of Paradise Lost was the origin of evil-an era in existence-an event more than all others dividing past from future time-an isthmus in the ocean of eternity. The theme was in its nature connected with every thing important in the circumstances of human history; and amid these circumstances, Milton saw that the fables of paganism were too important and poetical to be omitted. As a Christian, he was entitled wholly to neglect them; but as a poet, he chose to treat them, not as dreams of the human mind, but as the delusions of infernal existences. Thus anticipating a beautiful propriety for all classical allusions, thus connecting and reconciling the co-existence of fable and of truth, and thus identifying the fallen angels with the deities of "gay religions, full of pomp and gold," he yoked the heathen mythology in triumph to his subject, and clothed himself in the spoils of superstition. One eminent production of wit, namely, Hudibras, may be said to have sprung out of the Restoration, or at least out of the contempt of fanaticism, which had its triumph in that event; otherwise, the return of royalty [ Our most learned poets were classed by Joseph Warton, a very competent judge, in the following order :1. Milton; 2 Jonson; 3 Gray; 4 Akenside. Milton and Gray were of Cambridge, Ben Johnson was a very short time there, not long enough however to catch much of the learning of the place; but Akenside was of no college -it is believed self-taught.] |