It is, indeed, much more easy to form dialogues than to contrive adventures. Every position makes way for an argument, and every objection dictates an answer. When two disputants are engaged upon a complicated and extensive question, the difficulty is not to continue, but to end, the controversy. But whether it be that we comprehend but few of the possibilities of life, or that life itself affords little variety, every man who has tried knows how much labour it will cost to form such a combination of circumstances as shall have at once the grace of novelty and credibility, and delight fancy without violence to reason. Perhaps the dialogue of this poem is not perfect. Some power of engaging the attention might have been added to it by quicker reciprocation, by seasonable interruptions, by sudden questions, and by a nearer approach to dramatic sprightliness; without which fictitious speeches will always tire, however sparkling with sentences, and however variegated with allusions. The great source of pleasure is variety. Uniformity must tire at last, though it be uniformity of excellence. We love to expect; and, when expectation is disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting. For this impatience of the present, whoever would please must make provision. The skilful writer irritat, mulcet, makes a due distribution of the still and animated parts. It is for want of this artful intertexture, and those necessary changes, that the whole of a book may be tedious, though all the parts are praised. If inexhaustible wit could give perpetual pleasure, no eye would ever leave half-read the work of Butler; for what poet has ever brought so many remote images so happily together? It is scarcely possible to peruse a page without finding some association of images that was never found before. By the first paragraph the reader is amused, by the next he is delighted, and by a few more strained to astonishment; but astonishment is a toilsome pleasure; he is soon weary of wondering, and longs to be diverted. Omnia vult belle Matho dicere, dic aliquando Et bene, dic neutrum, dic aliquando male. verbial axioms to the general stock of practical knowledge. When any work has been viewed and admired, the first question of intelligent curiosity is, how was it performed? "Hudibras" was not a hasty effusion; it was not produced by a sudden tumult of imagination, or a short paroxysm of violent labour. To accumulate such a mass of sentiments at the call of accidental desire, or of sudden necessity, is beyond the reach and power of the most active and comprehensive mind. I am informed by Mr. Thyer, of Manchester, that excellent editor of this author's relics, that he could show something like "Hudibras" in prose. He has in his possession the common-place book, in which Butler reposited not such events and precepts as are gathered by reading, but such remarks, similitudes, allusions, assemblages, or inferences, as occasion prompted, or meditation produced, those thoughts that were generated in his own mind, and might be usefully applied to some future purpose. Such is the labour of those who write for immortality. But human works are not easily found without a perishable part. Of the ancient poets every reader feels the mythology tedious and oppressive. Of "Hudibras," the manners, being founded on opinions, are temporary and local, and therefore become every day less intelligible, and less striking. What Cicero says of philosophy is true likewise of wit and humour, that "time effaces the fictions of opinions, and confirms the determinations of Nature." Such manners as depend upon standing relations and general passions are co-extended with the race of man; but those modifications of life and peculiarities of practice, which are the progeny of error and perverseness, or at best of some accidental influence or transient persuasion, must perish with their parents. Much therefore of that humour which transported the last century with merriment is lost to us, who do not know the sour solemnity, the sullen superstition, the gloomy moroseness, and the stubborn scruples of the ancient puritans; or, if we knew them, derive our information only from books, or from tradition, have never had them before our eyes, and cannot but by recollection and study understand the lines in which they are satirized. Our grandfathers knew the picture from the life; we judge of the life by contemplat Imagination is useless without knowledge: nature gives in vain the power of combination, unless study and observation supply materials to be combined. Butler's treasures of knowledge ap-ing the picture. pear proportioned to his expense: whatever topic It is scarcely possible, in the regularity and employs his mind, he shows himself qualified to composure of the present time, to image the tuexpand and illustrate it with all the accessaries mult of absurdity, and clamour of contradiction, that books can furnish: he is found not only to which perplexed doctrine, disordered practice, and have travelled the beaten road, but the by-paths disturbed both public and private quiet, in that of literature; not only to have taken general surage when subordination was broken, and awe was veys, but to have examined particulars with mi-hissed away; when any unsettled innovator, who nute inspection. If the French boast the learning of Rabelais, we need not be afraid of confronting them with Butler. But the most valuable parts of his performance are those which retired study and native wit canot supply. He that merely makes a book from oks may be useful, but can scarcely be great. atler had not suffered life to glide beside him seen or unobserved. He had watched with great diligence the operations of human nature, and traced the effects of opinion, humour, interest, and passion. From such remarks proceeded that great number of sententious distichs which have passed into conversation, and are added as pre could hatch a half-formed notion, produced it to the public; when every man might become a preacher, and almost every preacher could collect a congregation. The wisdom of the nation is very reasonably supposed to reside in the parliament. What can be concluded of the lower classes of the people, when, in one of the parliaments summoned by Cromwell, it was seriously proposed, that all the records in the tower should be burned, that all memory of things past should be effaced, and that the whole system of life should commence anew? We have never been witnesses of animosities The seventeenth. excited by the use of mince-pies and plum-porridge; nor seen with what abhorrence those, who could eat them at all other times of the year, would shrink from them in December. An old puritan, who was alive in my childhood, being at one of the feasts of the church invited by a neighbour to partake his cheer, told him, that if he would treat him at an alehouse with beer brewed for all times and seasons, he should accept his kindness, but would have none of his superstitious meats or drinks. One of the puritanical tenets was the illegality of all games of chance; and he that reads Gataker upon Lots may see how much learning and reason one of the first scholars of his age thought necessary, to prove that it was no crime to throw a die, or play at cards, or to hide a shilling for the reckoning. Astrology, however, against which so much of the satire is directed, was not more the folly of the puritans than of others. It had in that time a very extensive dominion. Its predictions raised hopes and fears in minds which ought to have rejected it with contempt. In hazardous undertakings care was taken to begin under the influence of a propitious planet; and, when the King was prisoner in Carisbrook Castle, an astrologer was consulted what hour would be found most favourable to an escape. What effect this poem had upon the public, whether it shamed imposture, or reclaimed credulity, is not easily determined. Cheats can seldom stand long against laughter. It is certain that the credit of planetary intelligence wore fast away; though some men of knowledge, and Dryden among them, continued to believe that conjunctions and oppositions had a great part in the distribution of good or evil, and in the government of sublunary things. The diction of this poem is grossly familiar and the numbers purposely neglected, except in a few places where the thoughts by their native excellence secure themselves from violation, being such as mean language cannot express. The mode of versification has been blamed by Dryden, who regrets that the heroic measure was not rather chosen. To the critical sentence of Dryden the highest reverence would be due, were not his decisions often precipitate, and his opinions immature. When he wished to change the measure, he probably would have been willing to change more. If he intended that, when the numbers were heroic, the diction should still remain vulgar, he planned a very heterogeneous and unnatural composition. If he preferred a general stateliness both of sound and words, he can be only understood to wish Butler had undertaken a different work. The measure is quick, sprightly, and colloquia., suitable to the vulgarity of the words and the levity of the sentiments. But such numbers and such diction can gain regard only when they are used by a writer whose vigour of fancy and copiousness of knowledge entitle him to contempt of ornaments, and who, in consequence of the novelty and justness of his conceptions, can afford to throw metaphors and epithets away. To another that conveys common thoughts in careless versification, it will only be said, Pauper videri Cinna vult, et est pauper. The meaning and diction will be worthy of each other, and criticism may justly doom them to perish together. Nor, even though another Butler should arise, would another "Hudibras" obtain the same regard. Burlesque consists in a disproportion between the style and the sentiments, or between the adventitious sentiments and the fundamental Poetical action ought to be probable upon cer- subject. It, therefore, like all bodies compounded tain suppositions; and such probability as bur- of heterogeneous parts, contains in it a principle lesque requires is here violated only by one inci- of corruption. All disproportion is unnatural. dent. Nothing can show more plainly the neces- and from what is unnatural we can derive only sity of doing something, and the difficulty of find the pleasure which novelty produces. We ading something to do, than that Butler was reduced mire it awhile as a strange thing; but when it is to transfer to his hero the flagellation of Sancho, no longer strange, we perceive its deformity. It not the most agreeable fiction of Cervantes; very is a kind of artifice, which by frequent repetition suitable indeed to the manners of that age and detects itself: and the reader, learning in time nation, which ascribed wonderful efficacy to vo- what he is to expect, lays down his book, as the luntary penances; but so remote from the prac-spectator turns away from a second exhibition of tice and opinions of the Hudibrastic time, that those tricks, of which the only use is to show that judgment and imagination are alike offended. they can be played. ROCHESTER. He travelled afterwards into France and Italy; and at his return devoted himself to the court. In 1665, he went to sea with Sandwich, and distinguished himself at Bergen, by uncommon intrepidity; and the next summer served again on board Sir Edward Spragge, who, in the heat of the engagement, having a message of reproof to send to one of his captains, could find no man ready to carry it but Wilmot, who, in an open boat, went and returned amidst the storm of shot But his reputation for bravery was not lasting; he was reproached with slinking away in street quarrels, and leaving his companions to shift as they could without him; and Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, has left a story of his refusal to fight him. He died, July 26, 1630, before he had completed his thirty-fourth year; and was so worn away by a long illness, that life went out without a struggle. Lord Rochester was eminent for the vigour of his colloquial wit, and remarkable for many wild He had very early an inclination to intemper- pranks and sallies of extravagance. The glare ance, which he totally subdued in his travels; of his general character diffused itself upon his but, when he became a courtier, he unhappily writings; the compositions of a man whose name addicted himself to dissolute and vicious com- was heard so often were certain of attention, and pany, by which his principles were corrupted, and from many readers certain of applause. This his manners depraved. He lost all sense of re- blaze of reputation is not yet quite extinguished; ligious restraint, and, finding it not convenient to and his poetry still retains some splendour be admit the authority of laws, which he was re-yond that which genius has bestowed. solved not to obey, sheltered his wickedness behind infidelity. Wood and Burnet give us reason to believe, that much was imputed to him which he did not As he excelled in that noisy and licentious mer- write. I know not by whom the original collecriment which wine excites, his companions eagerly tion was made, or by what authority its genuineencouraged him in excess, and he willingly in-ness was ascertained. The first edition was pubdulged it; till, as he confessed to Dr. Burnet, he was for five years together continually drunk, or so much inflamed by frequent ebriety, as in no interval to be master of himself. In this state he played many frolics, which it is not for his honour that we should remember, and which are not now distinctly known. He often pursued low amours in mean disguises, and always acted with great exactness and dexterity the characters which he assumed. He once erected a stage on Tower-hill, and harangued the populace as a mountebank; and, having made physic part of his study, is said to have practised it successfully. He was so much in favour with King Charles, that he was made one of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber, and comptroller of Woodstock Park. Having an active and inquisitive mind, he never, except in his paroxysms of intemperance, was wholly negligent of study; he read what is considered as polite learning so much, that he is mentioned by Wood, as the greatest scholar of all the nobility. Sometimes he retired into the country, and amused himself with writing libels, in which he did not pretend to confine himself to truth. His favourite author in French was Boileau, and in English, Cowley. Thus in a course of drunken gayety, and gross sensuality, with intervals of study perhaps yet more criminal, with an avowed contempt of all decency and order, a total disregard of every moral, and a resolute denial of every religious obligation, he lived worthless and useless, and blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness; till, at the age of one-and-thirty, he had exhausted the fund of life, and reduced himself to a state of weakness and decay. At this time he was led to an acquaintance with Dr. Burnet, to whom he laid open with great freedom the tenor of his opinions, and the course of his life, and from whom he received such conviction of the reasonableness of moral duty, and the truth of Christianity, as produced a total change both of his manners and opinions. The account of those salutary conferences is given by Burnet, in a book entitled, "Some Passages of the Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester," which the critic ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety. It were an injury to the reader to offer him an abridgment. lished in the year of his death, with an air of concealment, professing in the title-page to be printed at Antwerp. Of some of the pieces, however, there is no doubt. The imitation of Horace's satire, the verses to Lord Mulgrave, satire against Man, the verses upon "Nothing," and perhaps some others, are I believe genuine, and perhaps most of those which the collection exhibits.* As he cannot be supposed to have found leisure for any course of continued study, his pieces are commonly short, such as one fit of resolution would produce. His songs have no particular character; they tell, like other songs, in smooth and easy language, of scorn and kindness, dismission and desertion, absence and inconstancy, with the common-places of artificial courtship. They are commonly smooth and easy; but have little nature, and little sentiment. His imitation of Horace on Lucilius is not inelegant, or unhappy. In the reign of Charles the Second, began that adaption, which has since been very frequent, of ancient poetry to present times; and perhaps few will be found where the parallelism is better preserved than in this. The versification is indeed sometimes careless, but it is sometimes vigorous and weighty. The strongest effort of his Muse is his poem upon "Nothing." He is not the first who has chosen this barren topic for the boast of his fertility. There is a poem called "Nihil," in Latin, by Passerat, a poet and critic of the sixteenth century, in France; who, in his own epitaph, ex presses his zeal for good poetry thus: -Molliter ossa quiescent, Sint modo carminibus non onerata malis. His works are not common, and therefore I shall subjoin his verses. must be considered as having not only a negative, In examining this performance, "Nothing" but a kind of positive signification; as, I need not fear thieves; I have nothing; and nothing is a very powerful protector. In the first part of the sentence it is taken negatively, in the second it is taken positively, as an agent. In one of Boileau's Dr. Johnson has made no mention of "Valen tinian" (altered from Beaumont and Fletcher.) which was published after his death, by a friend, who describes him in the preface, not only as being one of the greatest geniuses, but one of the most virtuous men that ever existed.-J. B. 52 lines it was a question, whether he should use à rien faire, or à ne rien faire; and the first was preferred, because it gave rien a sense in some sort positive. Nothing can be a subject only in its positive sense, and such a sense is given it in the first line: Nothing, thou elder brother ey'n to shade. In this line, I know not whether he does not allude to a curious book, "De Umbra," by Wowerus, which having told the qualities of shade, concludes with a poem in which are these lines: Jam primum terram validis circumspice claustris The positive sense is generally preserved with great skill through the whole poem; though, sometimes, in a subordinate sense, the negative nothing is injudiciously mingled. Passerat confounds the two senses. Another of his most vigorous pieces is his lampoon on Sir Car Scrope, who, in a poem called "The Praise of Satire," had some lines like these:* He who can push into a midnight fray This was meant of Rochester, whose buffoon onceit was, I suppose, a saying often mentioned, that every man would be a coward if he durst; and drew from him those furious verses; to which Scrope made in reply an epigram, ending with these lines: I quote from memory.-Dr. J. The late George Stephens, Esq. made the selection of Rochester's Poems, which appears in Dr. Johnson's edition; but Mr. Malone observes, that the same task had been performed in the early part of the last century, by Jacob Tonson.-C. POEMA Cl. V. JOANNIS PASSERATII, AD ORNATISSIMUM VIRUM ERRICUM MEMMIUM. Nam nihil est gemmis, nihil est pretiosius auro. E' cœlo quacunque Ceres sua prospicit arva ROSCOMMON. WENTWORTH DILLON, Earl of Roscommon, was the son of James Dillon, and Elizabeth Wentworth, sister to the Earl of Strafford. He was born in Ireland* during the lieutenancy of Strafford, who being both his uncle and his godfather, gave him his own surname. His father, the third Earl of Roscommon, had been converted by Usher to the protestant religion ; and when the popish rebellion broke out, Strafford, thinking the family in great danger from the fury of the Irish, sent for his godson, and placed him at his own seat in Yorkshire, where he was instructed in Latin; which he learned so as to write it with purity and elegance, though he was never able to retain the rules of grammar. better evidence of a fact cannot easily be found Such is the account given by Mr. Fenton, from whose notes on Waller most of this account must be borrowed, though I know not whether all that he relates is certain. The in-be false." structor whom he assigns to Roscommon, is one Dr. Hall, by whom he cannot mean the famous Hall, then an old man and a bishop. When the storm broke out upon Strafford, his house was a shelter no longer; and Dillon, by the advice of Usher, was sent to Caen, where the protestants had then a university, and continued his studies under Bochart. Young Dillon, who was sent to study under Bochart, and who is represented as having already made great proficiency in literature, could not be more than nine years old. Strafford went to govern Ireland in 1633, and was put to death eight years afterwards. That he was sent to Caen is certain; that he was a great scholar may be doubted. At Caen he is said to have had some preternatural intelligence of his father's death. "The Lord Roscommon, being a boy of ten years of age, at Caen, in Normandy, one day was, as it were, madly extravagant in playing, leaping, getting over the tables, boards, &c. He was wont to be sober enough; they said, God grant this bodes no ill-luck to him! In the heat of this extravagant fit he cries out, 'My father is dead! A fortnight after, news came from Ireland that his father was dead. This account I had from Mr. Knolles, who was his governor, and then with him—since secretary to the Earl of Strafford; and I have heard his Lordship's relations confirm the same."-AUBREY'S MIS The state both of England and Ireland was at this time such, that he who was absent from either country had very little temptation to return; and therefore Roscommon, when he left Caen, travelled into Italy, and amused himself with its antiquities, and particularly with medals, in which he acquired uncommon skill. At the Restoration, with the other friends of monarchy, he came to England, was made captain of the band of pensioners, and learned so much of the dissoluteness of the court, that he addicted himself immoderately to gaming, by which he was engaged in frequent quarrels, and which undoubtedly brought upon him its usual concomitants, extravagance and distress. After some time, a dispute about part of his estate forced him into Ireland, where he was made by the Duke of Ormond captain of the guards, and met with an adventure thus related by Fenton : "He was at Dublin as much as ever distempered with the same fatal affection for play, which engaged him in one adventure that well deserves to be related. As he returned to his lodgings from a gaming-table, he was attacked in the dark by three ruffians, who were employed to assassinate him. The Earl defended himself with so much resolution, that he despatched one of the aggressors: whilst a gentleman, accidentally passing that way, interposed, and disarmed another: the third secured himself by flight. This generous assistant was a disbanded officer, of a good family and fair reputation; who, by what we call the partiality of fortune, to avoid censuring the iniquities of the times, wanted even a plain suit of clothes to make a decent appearance at the Castle. But his Lordship, on this occasion, presenting him to the Duke of Ormond, with great importunity prevailed with his Grace, that he might resign his post of captain of the guards to his friend; which for about three years the gentleman enjoyed, and, upon his death, the Duke returned the commission to his generous benefactor." |