In search of wit these lose their common sense, 30 There are, who judge still worse than he can write. As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass. 41 NOTES. Ver. 28. In search of wit these lose their common sense,] This observation is extremely just. Search of Wit is not only the occasion, but the efficient cause of the loss of common sense. For Wit consisting in choosing out, and setting together such Ideas from whose assemblage pleasant pictures may be drawn on the Fancy; the Judgment, through an habitual search of Wit, loses, by degrees, its faculty of seeing the true relation of things; in which consists the exercise of common sense. W. Ver. 38. Some neither can for Wits nor Critics pass,] These lines and those preceding and following them, are excellently satirical; and were, I think, the first we find in his works, that give an indication of that species of poetry to which his talent was most powerfully bent, and in which, though not as we shall see in others, he excelled all mankind. The simile of the mule heightens the satire, and is new; as is the application of the insects of the Nile. Pope never shines so brightly as when he is proscribing bad authors. "The Nile (says Fenton on Waller) has been as fruitful of English similes as the sun; from both of which it would be severe to restrain a young poet, as forbidding the use of fire and water was esteemed among the Romans." Unfinish'd things, one knows not what to call, 45 To tell 'em would a hundred tongues require, 55 NOTES. Ver. 56. Thus in the Soul] The beauty of imagery in these lines should not make us blind to the want of justness in the thought. To represent strength of memory as incompatible with solidity of understanding, is so obviously contrary to fact, that I presume the author had in his eye only the case of extraordinary memory for names, dates, and things, which offer no ideas to the mind; which has, indeed, been often displayed in great perfection by mere idiots. For, it is difficult to conceive how the faculty of judgment, which consists in the comparison of different ideas, can at all be exercised without the power of storing up ideas in the mind, and calling them forth when required. From the second couplet, apparently meant to be the converse of the first, one would suppose that he considered the understanding and the imagination as the same faculty, else the counterpart is defective. Farther, so far is it from being true, that imagination obliterates the figures of memory, that the circunistance which causes a thing to be remembered, is principally its being associated with other ideas by the agency of the imagination. If the poet only meant, that those ideas, about Where beams of warm imagination play, One science only will one genius fit; 60 So vast is art, so narrow human wit: NOTES. which imagination is occupied, are apt to exclude ideas of a different kind, the remark is true, but it should have been differently expressed. Voltaire says well, " He that retains the greatest number of images in the magazine of memory, has the best imagination." Encycl. v. xxxi. p. 187. And also in another place; "The faculty of imagination depends entirely on the memory. We see men, animals, horses, gardens, and other sensible objects; these perceptions enter our minds by the senses; the memory retains them; the imagination combines them; and this is the reason why the Greeks called the Muses the Daughters of Memory." Ver. 60. One science only will one genius fit ;] When Tully attempted poetry, he became as ridiculous as Bolingbroke when he attempted philosophy and divinity. We look in vain for that genius which produced the Dissertation on Parties, in his tedious philosophical works; of which it is no exaggerated satire to say, that the reasoning of them is sophistical and inconclusive, the style diffuse and verbose, and the learning seemingly contained in them not drawn from the originals, but picked up and purloined from French critics and translations; and particularly from Bayle, Rapin, and Thomassin (as perhaps may be one day minutely shewn), together with the assistances which our Cudworth and Stanley happily afforded a writer confessedly ignorant of the Greek tongue, who has yet the insufferable arrogance to vilify and censure, and to think he can confute, the best writers in that best language. When Fontaine, whose Tales indicated a truly comic genius, brought a comedy on the stage, it was received with a contempt equally unexpected and deserved. Terence has left us no tragedy; and the Mourning Bride of Congreve, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on it by Pope, in the Dunciad, is certainly a despicable performance; the plot is unnaturally intricate, and overcharged with incidents, the sentiments trite, and the language turgid and bombast. The Biter of Rowe is wretched. Not only bounded to peculiar arts, But oft in those confin'd to single parts. Like Kings we lose the conquests gain'd before, 65 NOTES. Heemskirk and Teniers could not succeed in a serious and sublime subject of history painting. The latter, it is well known, designed cartoons for tapestry, representing the history of the Turriani of Lombardy. Both the composition and the expression are extremely indifferent; and certain nicer virtuosi have have remarked, that in the serious pieces of Titian himself, even in one of his Last Suppers, a circumstance of the ridiculous and the familiar is introduced, which suits not with the dignity of his subject. Hogarth's Sigismonda disgraced his pencil. The modesty and good sense of the ancients is, in this particular, as in others, remarkable. The same writer never presumed to undertake more than one kind of dramatic poetry, if we except the Cyclops of Euripides. A poet never presumed to plead in public, or to write history, or indeed any considerable work in prose. The same actors never recited tragedy and comedy: this was observed long ago, by Plato, in the third book of his Republic. They seem to have held that diversity, nay universality, of excellence, at which the moderns frequently aim, to be a gift unattainable by man. We therefore, of Great Britain, have, perhaps more reason to congratulate ourselves, on two great phenomena; I mean Shakspeare's being able to portray characters so very different as Falstaff and Macbeth; and Garrick's being able to personate so inimitably a Lear, or an Abel Drugger. Nothing can more fully demonstrate the extent and versatility of these two original geniuses. Corneille, whom the French are so fond of opposing to Shakspeare, produced very contemptible comedies; and the Plaideures of Racine is so close a resemblance of Aristophanes, that it ought not to be here urged. The most universal of authors seems to be Voltaire, who has written almost equally well, both in prose and verse; and whom either the tragedies of Merope and Mahomet, or the history of Louis XIV. or Charles XII. would alone have immortalized. It might have been expected that the author of Candide would have been able to produce a good comedy; and that a writer who draws characters, and plans a fable so inimitably Each might his sev'ral province well command, NOTES. well, as Fielding in Tom Jones, would have done the same; but both these authors have failed in the attempt. Ver. 66. his sev'ral province] A clear head and strong sense were the characteristical qualities of our Author; and every man soonest and best displays his radical excellences. If his predominaut talent be warmth and vigour of imagination, it will break out in fanciful and luxuriant descriptions, the colouring of which will perhaps be too rich and glowing. If his chief force lies in the understanding rather than in the imagination, it will soon appear by solid and manly observations on life or learning, expressed in a more chaste and subdued style. The former will frequently be hurried into obscurity or turgidity, and a false grandeur of diction; the latter will seldom hazard a figure, whose usage is not already established, or an image beyond common life; will always be perspicuous, if not elevated; will never disgust, if not transport, his readers; will avoid the grosser faults, if not arrive at the greater beauties, of composition. The "eloquentiæ genus," for which he will be distinguished, will not be the "plenum, et erectum, et audax, et præcelsum," but the "pressum, et mite, et limatum." In the earliest letters of Pope to Wycherley, to Walsh, and Cromwell, we find many admirable and acute judgments of men and books, and an intimate acquaintance, not only with some of the best Greek and Roman, particularly the latter, but the most celebrated French and Italian classics, Du Bos fixes the period of time, at which, generally speaking, the poets and the painters have arrived at as high a pitch of perfection, as their geniuses will permit, to be the age of thirty years, or a few years more or less. Virgil was near thirty when he composed his first eclogue. Horace was a grown man when he began to be talked of at Rome, as a poet, having been formerly engaged in a busy military life. Racine was about the same age when his Andromache, which may be regarded as his first good tragedy, was played. Corneille was more than thirty |