THE ENGLISH POETS

AND

PROSE WRITERS.

[AND A FEW Foreign writers.]

SHAKSPEARE.

1728. It was and is a general opinion, that Ben Jonson and Shakspeare lived in enmity with each other. Betterton has assured me often that there was nothing in it, and that such a supposition was founded only on the two parties, which in their lifetime listed under one, and endeavoured to lessen the character of the other mutually.—Mr. Pope.

Dryden used to think that the verses Jonson made on Shakspeare's death had something of satire at the bottom: for my part, I cannot discover any thing like it in them.-The same.

1736. Shakspeare generally used to stiffen his style with high words and meta

G

phors for the speeches of kings and great men he mistook it for a mark of greatness. This is strongest in his early plays; but in his very last, his Othello, what a forced language has he put into the mouth of the Duke of Venice! This was the way of Chapman, Massinger, and all the tragic writers of those days.-The same.

It was mighty simple in Rowe to write a play professedly in Shakespeare's style; that is, professedly in the style of a bad age.-The same.

D'AVENANT

1730. That notion of Sir William D'Avenant being more than a poetical child only of Shakspeare was common in town, and Sir William himself seemed fond of having it taken for truth.-The same.

1744. Shakspeare, in his frequent journeys between London and his native place, Stratford-upon-Avon, used to lie at D'Avenant's, at the Crown in Oxford. He was very

well acquainted with Mrs. D'Avenant; and her son, afterwards Sir William, was

supposed to be more nearly related to him than as a godson only. One day, when Shakspeare was just arrived, and the boy sent for from school to him, a head of one of the colleges, who was pretty well acquainted with the affairs of the family, met the child running home, and asked him whither he was going in so much haste: the boy said, "to my godfather, Shakspeare."—" Fie, child," says the old gentleman, “why are you so superfluous? Have you not learnt yet that you should not use the name of God in vain ?"—The same.

Chapelain is about the rate of Sir William D'Avenant: he has strong thoughts, and no versification--The same...

He mentioned Cleaveland and Cartwright as equally good, or rather as equally bad. What a noise was there made about the superior merits of those two sad writers! Donne is superior to Randolph, and Sir William D'Avenant a better poet than Donne.-The same.

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Sir William D'Avenant's Gondibert is not a good poem, you take it on the

whole; but there are a great many good things in it. He is a scholar of Donne's, and took his sententiousness and metaphysics from him.-The same.

The burlesque prologue to one of Sir William D'Avenant's plays began with this couplet:

"You who stand sitting still to hear our play, Which we this night present you here to-day." The same.

BEN JONSON.

There was such a real character as Morose in Ben Jonson's time: Dryden somewhere says so*; and Mr. Pope had it from Betterton, and he from Sir William D'Avenant, who lived in Jonson's time, and knew the man. What trash are his works, taken altogether!-The same.

CHAUCER.

I read Chaucer still with as much pleasure as any of our poets. He is a master of manners and of description, and the first

* In his Essay on Dramatic Poetry.

tale-teller in the true enlivened natural way. The same.

It is easy to mark out the general course of our poetry. Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Dryden, are the great landmarks for it.-The same. [It is plain that he was speaking of our miscellaneous writers, by his omitting Shakspeare and other considerable names in the dramatic way. His own name added to the four he mentionéd would complete the series of our great poets in general.]

Chaucer and his contemporaries borrowed a good deal from the Provencal poets; the best account of whom in our language is in Rymer's piece on tragedies. "Rymer, a learned and strict critic?" Ay, that is exactly his character. He is generally right, though rather too severe in his opinion of the particular plays he speaks of; and is, on the whole, one of the best critics we ever had.-The same.

GOWER.

There is but little worth reading in Gower; he wants the spirit of poetry and