repeating a tale with which the audience is already tired, and which could bring no honour to any but its inventor. There are, I think, two schemes of writing, on which the laborious wits of the present time employ their faculties. One is the adaptation of sense to all the rhymes which our language can supply to some word, that makes the burden of the stanza; but this, as it has been only used in a kind of amorous burlesque, can scarcely be censured with much acrimony. The other is the imitation of Spenser, which, by the influence of some men of learning and genius, seems likely to gain upon the age, and therefore deserves to be more attentively considered.1 1 Johnson alludes, I think, to Prior, "whose imitation of Spenser consists principally in I ween and I weet; without exclusion of later modes of speech" (Johnson's Works, viii. 16); to Thomson who, in his Castle of Indolence, imitated Spenser's diction and stanza; and to Collins, of whom he says in his Life, "he affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival."-Johnson's Works, viii. 404. Shenstone's Schoolmistress was also an avowed imitation of Spenser ; but of this Johnson says:-"The adoption of a particular style in light and short compositions contributes much to the increase of pleasure; we are entertained at once with two imitations, of nature in the sentiments, of the original author in the style, and between them the mind is kept in perpetual enjoyment."-Ib., p. 415. Percy and Thomas Warton, who belonged to the same school, were too young to be known as poets. Goldsmith, in his Life of Parnell, renewed the attack on the "misguided innovators. It is indeed amazing,” he writes, "after what has been done by Dryden, Addison, and Pope, to improve and harmonise our native tongue, that their successors should have taken so much pains to involve it into pristine barbarity."-Goldsmith's Works, ed. 1801, iv. 22. To imitate the fictions and sentiments of Spenser can incur no reproach, for allegory is perhaps one of the most pleasing vehicles of instruction. But I am very far from extending the same respect to his diction or his stanza. His style was in his own time allowed to be vicious, so darkened with old words and peculiarities of phrase, and so remote from common use, that Jonson boldly pronounces him "to have written no language." His stanza is at once difficult and unpleasing; tiresome to the ear by its uniformity, and to the attention by its length. It was at first formed in imitation of the Italian poets, without due regard to the genius of our language. The Italians have little variety of termination, and were forced to contrive such a stanza as might admit the greatest number of similar rhymes; but our words end with so much diversity, that it is seldom convenient for us to bring more than two of the same sound together. If it be justly observed by Milton, that rhyme obliges poets to express their thoughts in improper terms,' these improprieties must always be multiplied, as 1 "Spenser, in affecting the ancients writ no language; yet I would have him read for his matter, but as Virgil read Ennius."-Ben Jonson's Works, ed. 1756, vii. 128. 2 "Rhyme is no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse, than else they would have expressed them."-Introduction to Paradise Lost. the difficulty of rhyme is increased by long concatenations. The imitators of Spenser are indeed not very rigid censors of themselves, for they seem to conclude, that when they have disfigured their lines with a few obsolete syllables, they have accomplished their design, without considering that they ought not only to admit old words, but to avoid new. The laws of imitation are broken by every word introduced since the time of Spenser,1 as the character of Hector is violated by quoting Aristotle in the play. It would, indeed, be difficult to exclude from a long poem all modern phrases, though it is easy to sprinkle it with gleanings of antiquity. Perhaps, however, the style of Spenser might by long labour be justly copied; but life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value, but because it has been forgotten. 2 1 "Prior's imitation of Spenser, which consists principally in I ween and I weet, without exclusion of later modes of speech, makes his poem neither ancient nor modern."Johnson's Works, viii. 16. 2 Troilus and Cressida, Act ii. sc. 2, 1. 166. No. 137. TUESDAY, JULY 9, 1751. Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt. -HOR.1 -Whilst fools one vice condemn, HAT wonder is the effect of ignorance, has been often observed. The awful stillness of attention, with which the mind is overspread at the first view of an unexpected effect, ceases when we have leisure to disentagle complications and investigate causes. Wonder is a pause of reason, a sudden cessation of the mental progress, which lasts only while the understanding is fixed upon some single idea, and is at an end when it recovers force enough to divide the object into its parts, or mark the intermediate gradations from the first agent to the last consequence. It may be remarked with equal truth, that ignorance is often the effect of wonder. It is common for those who have never accustomed inquiry, nor invi themselves to the labour of gorated their confidence by conquests over difficulty, to sleep in the gloomy quiescence of astonishment, without any effort to animate inquiry or dispel obscurity. What they cannot immediately conceive, they consider as too high to be reached, or too extensive to be comprehended; they therefore content themselves with the gaze of 1 Horace, 1 Satires, ii. 24. folly, forbear to attempt what they have no hopes of performing, and resign the pleasure of rational contemplation to more pertinacious study or more active faculties. Among the productions of mechanic art, many are of a form so different from that of their first materials, and many consist of parts so numerous and so nicely adapted to each other, that it is not possible to view them without amazement. But when we enter the shops of artificers, observe the various tools by which every operation is facilitated, and trace the progress of a manufacture through the different hands, that, in succession to each other, contribute to its perfection, we soon discover that every single man has an easy task, and that the extremes, however remote, of natural rudeness and artificial elegance, are joined by a regular concatenation of effects, of which every one is introduced by that which precedes it, and equally introduces that which is to follow. The same is the state of intellectual and manual performances. Long calculations or complex diagrams affright the timorous and unexperienced from a second view; but if we have skill sufficient to analyze them into simple principles, it will be discovered that our fear was groundless. Divide and Conquer,1 is a principle equally just in science as in policy. Complication is a species of confederacy which, while it continues united, bids defiance to the most active and vigorous intellect; but of which every 1 Divide et impera. |