Chapter V: Part 5

A plan like the present, even in a mind which should feel itself incapable of the exertion, will not be regarded without that reverence we feel for genius animating such industry. This scheme of study, though it may never be rigidly pursued, will be found excellent. Ten years' labour of happy diligence may render a student capable of consigning to posterity a history as universal in its topics, as that of the historian who led to this investigation.

POETICAL IMITATIONS AND SIMILARITIES.

Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis.
_Georg._ Lib. iv. v. 204.

Such rage of honey in our bosom beats,
And such a zeal we have for flowery sweets!
DRYDEN.

This article was commenced by me many years ago in the early volumes of the Monthly Magazine, and continued by various correspondents, with various success. I have collected only those of my own contribution, because I do not feel authorised to make use of those of other persons, however some may be desirable. One of the most elegant of literary recreations is that of tracing poetical or prose imitations and similarities; for assuredly, similarity is not always imitation. Bishop Hurd's pleasing essay on "The Marks of Imitation" will assist the critic in deciding on what may only be an accidental similarity, rather than a studied imitation. Those critics have indulged an intemperate abuse in these entertaining researches, who from a _single word_ derive the imitation of an _entire passage_. Wakefield, in his edition of Gray, is very liable to this censure.

This kind of literary amusement is not despicable: there are few men of letters who have not been in the habit of marking parallel passages, or tracing imitation, in the thousand shapes it assumes; it forms, it cultivates, it delights taste to observe by what dexterity and variation genius conceals, or modifies, an original thought or image, and to view the same sentiment, or expression, borrowed with art, or heightened by embellishment. The ingenious writer of "A Criticism on Gray's Elegy, in continuation of Dr. Johnson's," has given some observations on this subject, which will please. "It is often entertaining to trace imitation. To detect the adopted image; the copied design; the transferred sentiment; the appropriated phrase; and even the acquired manner and frame, under all the disguises that imitation, combination, and accommodation may have thrown around them, must require both parts and diligence; but it will bring with it no ordinary gratification. A book professedly on the 'History and Progress of Imitation in Poetry,' written by a man of perspicuity, an adept in the art of discerning likenesses, even when minute, with examples properly selected, and gradations duly marked, would make an impartial accession to the store of human literature, and furnish rational curiosity with a high regale." Let me premise that these notices (the wrecks of a large collection of passages I had once formed merely as exercises to form my taste) are not given with the petty malignant delight of detecting the unacknowledged imitations of our best writers, but merely to habituate the young student to an instructive amusement, and to exhibit that beautiful variety which the same image is capable of exhibiting when retouched with all the art of genius.

Gray, in his "Ode to Spring," has

The Attic warbler POURS HER THROAT.

Wakefield in his "Commentary" has a copious passage on this poetical diction. He conceives it to be "an admirable improvement of the Greek and Roman classics:"

--κἑεν αυδἡν: HES. Scut. Her. 396.
--Suaves ex ore _loquelas_
_Funde_. LUCRET. i. 40.

This learned editor was little conversant with modern literature, as he proved by his memorable editions of Gray and Pope. The expression is evidently borrowed not from Hesiod, nor from Lucretius, but from a brother at home.

Is it for thee, the Linnet POURS HER THROAT?
_Essay on Man_, Ep. iii, v. 33.

Gray, in the "Ode to Adversity," addresses the power thus,

Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose IRON SCOURGE and TORTURING HOUR
The bad affright, afflict the best.

Wakefield censures the expression "_torturing hour_," by discovering an impropriety and incongruity. He says, "consistency of figure rather required some _material_ image, like _iron scourge_ and _adamantine chain_." It is curious to observe a verbal critic lecture such a poet as Gray! The poet probably would never have replied, or, in a moment of excessive urbanity, he might have condescended to point out to this minutest of critics the following passage in Milton:--

----When the SCOURGE
Inexorably, and the TORTURING HOUR
Calls us to penance.
_Par. Lost_, B. ii. v. 90.

Gray, in his "Ode to Adversity," has

Light THEY DISPERSE, and with them go
The SUMMER FRIEND.

Fond of this image, he has it again in his "Bard,"

They SWARM, that in thy NOONTIDE BEAM are born,
Gone!

Perhaps the germ of this beautiful image may be found in Shakspeare:--

---- for men, like BUTTERFLIES,
Show not their mealy wings but to THE SUMMER.
_Troilus and Cressida_, Act iii. s. 7.

And two similar passages in _Timon of Athens_:--

The swallow follows not summer more willingly than we your lordship.

_Timon_. Nor more willingly leaves winter; such _summer birds_ are
men.--Act iii.

Again in the same,

----one cloud of winter showers
These flies are couch'd.--Act ii.

Gray, in his "Progress of Poetry," has

In climes beyond the SOLAR ROAD.

Wakefield has traced this imitation to Dryden; Gray himself refers to Virgil and Petrarch. Wakefield gives the line from Dryden, thus:--

Beyond the year, and out of heaven's high-way;

which he calls extremely bold and poetical. I confess a critic might be allowed to be somewhat fastidious in this unpoetical diction on the _high-way_, which I believe Dryden never used. I think his line was thus:--

Beyond the year, out of the SOLAR WALK.

Pope has expressed the image more elegantly, though copied from Dryden,

Far as the SOLAR WALK, or milky way.

Gray has in his "Bard,"

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.

Gray himself points out the imitation in Shakspeare of the latter image; but it is curious to observe that Otway, in his _Venice Preserved_, makes Priuli most pathetically exclaim to his daughter, that she is

Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life,
Dear as these eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee.

Gray tells us that the image of his "Bard,"

Loose his beard and hoary hair
Streamed like a METEOR to the troubled air,

was taken from a picture of the Supreme Being by Raphael. It is, however, remarkable, and somewhat ludicrous, that the _beard_ of Hudibras is also compared to a _meteor_: and the accompanying observation of Butler almost induces one to think that Gray derived from it the whole plan of that sublime Ode--since his _Bard_ precisely performs what the _beard_ of Hudibras _denounced_. These are the verses:--

This HAIRY METEOR did denounce
_The fall of sceptres and of crowns_.
_Hudibras_, c. 1.

I have been asked if I am serious in my conjecture that "the _meteor beard_" of Hudibras might have given birth to the "_Bard_" of Gray? I reply, that the _burlesque_ and the _sublime_ are extremes, and extremes meet. How often does it merely depend on our own state of mind, and on our own taste, to consider the sublime as burlesque! A very vulgar, but acute genius, Thomas Paine, whom we may suppose destitute of all delicacy and refinement, has conveyed to us a notion of the _sublime_, as it is probably experienced by ordinary and uncultivated minds; and even by acute and judicious ones, who are destitute of imagination. He tells us that "the _sublime_ and the _ridiculous_ are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again." May I venture to illustrate this opinion? Would it not appear the ridiculous or burlesque to describe the sublime revolution of the _Earth_ on her axle, round the _Sun_, by comparing it with the action of a _top_ flogged by a boy? And yet some of the most exquisite lines in Milton do this; the poet only alluding in his mind to the _top_. The earth he describes, whether

----She from west her _silent course_ advance
With _inoffensive pace_ that _spinning sleeps_
On her _soft axle_, while she _paces even_.

Be this as it may! it has never I believe been remarked (to return to Gray) that when he conceived the idea of the beard of his _Bard_, he had in his mind the _language_ of Milton, who describes Azazel sublimely unfurling

The imperial ensign, which full high advanced,
_Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind_.
_Par. Lost_, B. i. v. 535.

Very similar to Gray's

_Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air!_

Gray has been severely censured by Johnson for the expression,

Give _ample room and verge enough_,
The characters of hell to trace.--_The Bard_.

On the authority of the most unpoetical of critics, we must still hear that the poet _has no line so bad_.--"_ample room_" is feeble, but would have passed unobserved in any other poem but in the poetry of Gray, who has taught us to admit nothing but what is exquisite. "_Verge enough_" is poetical, since it conveys a material image to the imagination. No one appears to have detected the source from whence, probably, the _whole line_ was derived. I am inclined to think it was from the following passage in Dryden:

Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me,
I have a soul that, like an AMPLE SHIELD,
Can take in all, and VERGE ENOUGH for more!
Dryden's _Don Sebastian._

Gray in his Elegy has

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.

This line is so obscure that it is difficult to apply it to what precedes it. Mason in his edition in vain attempts to derive it from a thought of Petrarch, and still more vainly attempts to amend it; Wakefield expends an octavo page to paraphrase this single verse. From the following lines of Chaucer, one would imagine Gray caught the recollected idea. The old Reve, in his prologue, says of himself, and of old men,

For whan we may not don than wol we speken;
Yet in our ASHEN cold is FIRE yreken.
TYRWHIT'S _Chaucer_, vol. i. p. 153, v. 3879.

Gray has a very expressive _word_, highly poetical, but I think not common:

FOR WHO TO DUMB FORGETFULNESS a prey--

Daniel has, as quoted in Cooper's Muses' Library,

And _in himself with sorrow_, does complain
The misery of DARK FORGETFULNESS.

A line of Pope's, in his Dunciad, "High-born Howard," echoed in the ear of Gray, when he gave, with all the artifice of alliteration,

High-born Hoel's harp.

Johnson bitterly censures Gray for giving to adjectives the termination of participles, such as the _cultured_ plain; the _daisied_ bank: but he solemnly adds, I was sorry to see in the line of a scholar like Gray, "the _honied_ spring." Had Johnson received but the faintest tincture of the rich Italian school of English poetry, he would never have formed so tasteless a criticism. _Honied_ is employed by Milton in more places than one.

Hide me from day's garish eye
While the bee with HONIED thigh
_Penseroso_, v. 142.

The celebrated stanza in Gray's Elegy seems partly to be borrowed.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd eaves of ocean bear:
Full many a _flower_ is torn to blush _unseen,_
And _waste its sweetness in the desert air_.

Pope had said:

There kept by charms conceal'd from mortal eye,
Like _roses_ that in _deserts bloom_ and _die_.
_Rape of the Lock._

Young says of nature:

In distant wilds by human eye _unseen_
She rears her _flowers_ and spreads her velvet green;
Pure gurgling rills the lonely _desert_ trace,
And _waste their music_ on the savage race.

And Shenstone has--

And like the _desert's lily_ bloom to fade!
Elegy iv.

Gray was so fond of this pleasing imagery, that he repeats it in his Ode to the Installation; and Mason echoes it in his Ode to Memory.

Milton thus paints the evening sun:

If chance the radiant SUN with FAREWELL SWEET
Extends his evening beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, &c.
_Par. Lost_, B. ii. v. 492.

Can there be a doubt that he borrowed this beautiful _farewell_ from an obscure poet, quoted by Poole, in his "English Parnassus," 1657? The date of Milton's great work, I find since, admits the conjecture: the first edition being that of 1669. The homely lines in Poole are these,

To Thetis' watery bowers the _sun_ doth hie,
BIDDING FAREWELL unto the gloomy sky.

Young, in his "Love of Fame," very adroitly improves on a witty conceit of Butler. It is curious to observe that while Butler had made a remote allusion of a _window_ to a _pillory_, a conceit is grafted on this conceit, with even more exquisite wit.

Each WINDOW like the PILLORY appears,
With HEADS thrust through: NAILED BY THE EARS!
_Hudibras_, Part ii. c. 3, v. 301.

An opera, like a PILLORY, may be said
To NAIL OUR EARS down, and EXPOSE OUR HEAD.
YOUNG'S _Satires_.

In the Duenna we find this thought differently illustrated; by no means imitative, though the satire is congenial. Don Jerome alluding to the _serenaders_ says, "These amorous orgies that steal the senses in the _hearing_; as they say Egyptian embalmers serve mummies, _extracting the brain through the ears_." The wit is original, but the subject is the same in the three passages; the whole turning on the allusion to the _head_ and to the _ears_.

When Pope composed the following lines on Fame,

How vain that second life in others' breath,
The ESTATE which wits INHERIT after death;
Ease, health, and life, for this they must resign,
(Unsure the _tenure_, but how vast the _fine!_)
_Temple of Fame_.

he seems to have had present in his mind a single idea of Butler, by which he has very richly amplified the entire imagery. Butler says,

Honour's a LEASE for LIVES TO COME,
And cannot be extended from
The LEGAL TENANT.
_Hudibras_, Part i. c. 3, v. 1043.

The same thought may be found in Sir George Mackenzie's "Essay on preferring Solitude to public Employment," first published in 1665: Hudibras preceded it by two years. The thought is strongly expressed by the eloquent Mackenzie: "_Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts_; and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve ourselves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after our death."

Dryden, in his "Absalom and Achitophel," says of the Earl of Shaftesbury,

David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
_And Heaven had wanted one immortal song_.

This verse was ringing in the ear of Pope, when with equal modesty and felicity he adopted it in addressing his friend Dr. Arbuthnot.

Friend of my life; which did not you prolong,
_The world had wanted many an idle song!_

Howell has prefixed to his Letters a tedious poem, written in the taste of the times, and he there says of _letters_, that they are

The heralds and sweet harbingers that move
From _East to West, on embassies of love_;
They can the _tropic cut_, and _cross the line_.

It is probable that Pope had noted this thought, for the following lines seem a beautiful heightening of the idea:

Heaven first taught _letters_, for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd _lover_, or some captive maid.

Then he adds, they

_Speed the soft intercourse_ from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from _Indus_ to the _Pole_.
_Eloisa_.

There is another passage in "Howell's Letters," which has a great affinity with a thought of Pope, who, in "the Rape of the Lock," says,

Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,
And _beauty draws us with a single hair_.

Howell writes, p. 290, "'Tis a powerful sex:--they were too strong for the first, the strongest and wisest man that was; they must needs be strong, when _one hair of a woman can draw more than an hundred pair of oxen_."

Pope's description of the death of the lamb, in his "Essay on Man," is finished with the nicest touches, and is one of the finest pictures our poetry exhibits. Even familiar as it is to our ear, we never examine it but with undiminished admiration.

The _lamb_, thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.

After pausing on the last two fine verses, will not the reader smile that I should conjecture the image might originally have been discovered in the following humble verses in a poem once considered not as contemptible:

A gentle _lamb_ has rhetoric to plead,
And when she sees the butcher's knife decreed,
Her voice entreats him not to make her bleed.
DR. KING'S _Mully of Mountown_.

This natural and affecting image might certainly have been observed by Pope, without his having perceived it through the less polished lens of the telescope of Dr. King. It is, however, a _similarity_, though it may not be an _imitation_; and is given as an example of that art in composition which can ornament the humblest conception, like the graceful vest thrown over naked and sordid beggary.

I consider the following lines as strictly copied by Thomas Warton:

The daring artist
Explored the pangs that rend the royal breast,
_Those wounds that lurk beneath the tissued vest_.
T. WARTON on Shakspeare.

Sir Philip Sidney, in his "Defence of Poesie," has the same image. He writes, "Tragedy openeth the greatest _wounds_, and showeth forth the _ulcers_ that are _covered with tissue_."

The same appropriation of thought will attach to the following lines of Tickell:

While the charm'd reader with thy thought complies,
And views thy _Rosamond_ with _Henry's_ eyes.
TICKELL to ADDISON.

Evidently from the French Horace:

En vain contre le Cid un ministre se ligue;
Tout Paris, pour _Chimene_, a les yeux de _Rodrigue_.
BOILEAU.

Oldham, the satirist, says in his satires upon the Jesuits, that had Cain been of this black fraternity, he had not been content with a quarter of mankind.

Had he been Jesuit, _had he but put on
Their savage cruelty, the rest had gone!_
Satire ii.

Doubtless at that moment echoed in his poetical ear the energetic and caustic epigram of Andrew Marvel, against Blood stealing the crown dressed in a parson's cassock, and sparing the life of the keeper:

With the Priest's vestment _had he but put on
The Prelate's cruelty--the Crown had gone!_

The following passages seem echoes to each other, and it is but justice due to Oldham, the satirist, to acknowledge him as the parent of this antithesis:

On Butler who can think without just rage,
_The glory and the scandal of the age_?
_Satire against Poetry_.

It seems evidently borrowed by Pope, when he applies the thought to Erasmus:--

At length Erasmus, that great injured name,
The _glory of the priesthood_ and the _shame_!

Young remembered the antithesis when he said,

Of some for _glory_ such the boundless rage,
That they're the blackest _scandal_ of the age.

Voltaire, a great reader of Pope, seems to have borrowed part of the expression:--

_Scandale_ d'Eglise, et des rois le modèle.

De Caux, an old French poet, in one of his moral poems on an hour-glass, inserted in modern collections, has many ingenious thoughts. That this poem was read and admired by Goldsmith, the following beautiful image seems to indicate. De Caux, comparing the world to his hour-glass, says beautifully,

_C'est un verre qui luit,
Qu'un souffle peut détruire, et qu'un souffle a produit._

Goldsmith applies the thought very happily--

Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;
_A breath can make them, as a breath has made._

I do not know whether we might not read, for modern copies are sometimes incorrect,

A breath _unmakes_ them, as a breath has made.

Thomson, in his pastoral story of Palemon and Lavinia, appears to have copied a passage from Otway. Palemon thus addresses Lavinia:--

Oh, let me now into a richer soil
_Transplant_ thee safe, where vernal _suns_ and showers
Diffuse their warmest, largest influence;
And of my _garden_ be the pride and joy!

Chamont employs the same image when speaking of Monimia; he says--

You took her up a _little tender flower_,
---- and with a careful loving hand
_Transplanted_ her into your own fair _garden_,
Where the _sun_ always shines.

The origin of the following imagery is undoubtedly Grecian; but it is still embellished and modified by our best poets:--

----While universal _Pan_,
Knit with the _graces_ and the _hours, in dance
Led_ on th' eternal spring.
_Paradise Lost_.

Thomson probably caught this strain of imagery:

Sudden to heaven
Thence weary vision turns, where _leading soft
The silent hours_ of love, with purest ray
Sweet _Venus_ shines.
_Summer_, v. 1692.

Gray, in repeating this imagery, has borrowed a remarkable epithet from Milton:

Lo, where the _rosy-bosom'd hours,
Fair Venus' train_, appear.
_Ode to Spring_.

Along the crisped shades and bowers
Revels the spruce and jocund _spring_;
The _graces_ and the _rosy-bosom'd hours_
Thither all their bounties bring.
_Comus_, v. 984.

Collins, in his Ode to _Fear_, whom he associates with _Danger_, there grandly personified, was I think considerably indebted to the following stanza of Spenser:

Next him was _Fear_, all arm'd from top to toe,
Yet thought himself not safe enough thereby:
But fear'd each sudden movement to and fro;
And _his own arms_ when glittering he did spy,
Or _clashing heard_, he fast away did fly,
As ashes pale of hue and wingy heel'd;
And evermore on _Danger_ fix'd his eye,
'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield,
Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield.
_Faery Queen_, B. iii. c. 12, s. 12.

Warm from its perusal, he seems to have seized it as a hint to the Ode to Fear, and in his "Passions" to have very finely copied an idea here:

First _Fear_, his hand, his skill to try,
Amid the chords bewildered laid,
And _back recoil'd_, he knew not why,
_E'en at the sound himself had made._
_Ode to the Passions_.

The stanza in Beattie's "Minstrel," first book, in which his "visionary boy," after "the storm of summer rain," views "the rainbow brighten to the setting sun," and runs to reach it:

Fond fool, that deem'st the streaming glory nigh,
How vain the chase thine ardour has begun!
'Tis fled afar, ere half thy purposed race be run;
Thus it fares with age, &c.

The same train of thought and imagery applied to the same subject, though the image itself be somewhat different, may be found in the poems of the platonic John Norris; a writer who has great originality of thought, and a highly poetical spirit. His stanza runs thus:

So to the unthinking boy the distant sky
Seems on some mountain's surface to relie;
He with ambitious haste climbs the ascent,
_Curious to touch the firmament_;
But when with an unwearied pace,
He is arrived at the long-wish'd-for place,
With sighs the sad defeat he does deplore,
His heaven is still as distant as before!
_The Infidel_, by JOHN NORRIS.

In the modern tragedy of _The Castle Spectre_ is this fine description of the ghost of Evelina:--"Suddenly a female form glided along the vault. I flew towards her. My arms were already _unclosed to clasp her,--when suddenly her figure changed_! Her face grew pale--a stream of blood gushed from her bosom. While speaking, her form withered away; _the flesh fell from her bones_; a skeleton loathsome and meagre clasped me in her _mouldering arms_. Her infected breath was mingled with mine; her _rotting fingers_ pressed my hand; and my face was covered with her kisses. Oh! then how I trembled with disgust!"

There is undoubtedly singular merit in this description. I shall contrast it with one which the French Virgil has written, in an age whose faith was stronger in ghosts than ours, yet which perhaps had less skill in describing them. There are some circumstances which seem to indicate that the author of the _Castle Spectre_ lighted his torch at the altar of the French muse. Athalia thus narrates her dream, in which the spectre of Jezabel, her mother, appears:

C'étoit pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit,
Ma mère Jezabel devant moi s'est montrée,
Comme au jour de sa mort, pompeusement paree.--
---- En achevant ces mots epouvantables,
Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser,
Et moi, je lui tendois les mains pour l'embrasser,
Mais _je n'ai plus trouvé qu'un horrible mélange
D'os et de chair meurtris_, et trainée dans la fange,
_Des lambeaux pleins de sang et des membres affreux_.
RACINE'S _Athalie_, Acte ii. s. 5.

Goldsmith, when, in his pedestrian tour, he sat amid the Alps, as he paints himself in his "Traveller," and felt himself the solitary neglected genius he was, desolate amidst the surrounding scenery, probably at that moment applied to himself the following beautiful imagery of Thomson:

As in the hollow breast of Apennine
Beneath the centre of encircling hills,
A myrtle rises, far from human eyes,
And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild.
_Autumn_, v. 202.

Goldsmith very pathetically applies a similar image:

E'en now where Alpine solitudes ascend,
I sit me down a pensive hour to spend,
Like yon _neglected shrub_ at random cast,
That shades the steep, and sighs at every blast.
_Traveller_.

Akenside illustrates the native impulse of genius by a simile of Memnon's marble statue, sounding its lyre at the touch of the sun:

For as old Memnon's image, long renown'd
By fabling Nilus, to the quivering touch
Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string
Consenting, sounded through the warbling air
Unbidden strains; even so did nature's hand, &c.

It is remarkable that the same image, which does not appear obvious enough to have been the common inheritance of poets, is precisely used by old Regnier, the first French satirist, in the dedication of his Satires to the French king. Louis XIV. supplies the place of nature to the courtly satirist. These are his words:--"On lit qu'en Ethiope il y avoit une statue qui rendoit un son harmonieux, toutes les fois que le soleil levant la regardoit. Ce même miracle, Sire, avez vous fait en moi, qui touché de l'astre de Votre Majesté, ai reçu la voix et la parole."

In that sublime passage in "Pope's Essay on Man," Epist. i. v. 237, beginning,

Vast chain of being! which from God began,

and proceeds to

From nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

Pope seems to have caught the idea and image from Waller, whose last verse is as fine as any in the "Essay on Man:"--

The chain that's fixed to the throne of Jove,
On which the fabric of our world depends,
One link dissolv'd, the whole creation ends.
_Of the Danger his Majesty escaped_, &c. v. 168.

It has been observed by Thyer, that Milton borrowed the expression _imbrowned_ and _brown_, which he applies to the evening shade, from the Italian. See Thyer's elegant note in B. iv., v. 246:

----And where the unpierced shade
_Imbrowned_ the noon tide bowers.

And B. ix., v. 1086:

---- Where highest Woods impenetrable
To sun or star-light, spread their umbrage broad,
And _brown as evening_.

_Fa l'imbruno_ is an expression used by the Italians to denote the approach of the evening. Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso, have made a very picturesque use of this term, noticed by Thyer. I doubt if it be applicable to our colder climate; but Thomson appears to have been struck by the fine effect it produces in poetical landscape; for he has

----With quickened step
_Brown night_ retires.
_Summer_, v. 51.

If the epithet be true, it cannot be more appropriately applied than in the season he describes, which most resembles the genial clime with the deep serenity of an Italian heaven. Milton in Italy had experienced the _brown evening_, but it may be suspected that Thomson only recollected the language of the poet.

The same observation may be made on two other poetical epithets. I shall notice the epithet "LAUGHING" applied to inanimate objects; and "PURPLE" to beautiful objects."

The natives of Italy and the softer climates receive emotions from the view of their WATERS in the SPRING not equally experienced in the British roughness of our skies. The fluency and softness of the water are thus described by Lucretius:--

----Tibi suaveis Dædala tellus
Submittit flores: _tibi_ RIDENT _æquora ponti_.

Inelegantly rendered by Creech,

The roughest sea puts on smooth looks, and SMILES.

Dryden more happily,

The ocean SMILES, and smooths her wavy breast.

But Metastasio has copied Lucretius:--

A te fioriscono
Gli erbosi prat:
E i flutti RIDONO
Nel mar placati.

It merits observation, that the _Northern Poets_ could not exalt their imagination higher than that the water SMILED, while the modern Italian, having before his eyes _a different Spring_, found no difficulty in agreeing with the ancients, that the waves LAUGHED. Modern poetry has made a very free use of the animating epithet LAUGHING. Gray has LAUGHING FLOWERS: and Langhorne in two beautiful lines personifies Flora:--

Where Tweed's soft banks in liberal beauty lie,
And Flora LAUGHS beneath an azure sky.

Sir William Jones, in the spirit of Oriental poetry, has "the LAUGHING AIR." Dryden has employed this epithet boldly in the delightful lines, almost entirely borrowed from his original, Chaucer:--

The morning lark, the messenger of day,
Saluted in her song the morning gray;
And soon the sun arose, with beams so bright,
That all THE HORIZON LAUGHED to see the joyous sight.
_Palamon and Arcite_, B. ii.[25]

It is extremely difficult to conceive what the ancients precisely meant by the word _purpureus_. They seem to have designed by it anything BRIGHT and BEAUTIFUL. A classical friend has furnished me with numerous significations of this word which are very contradictory. Albinovanus, in his elegy on Livia, mentions _Nivem purpureum_. Catullus, _Quercus ramos purpureos_. Horace, _Purpureo bibet ore nectar_, and somewhere mentions _Olores purpureos_. Virgil has _Purpuream vomit ille animam_; and Homer calls the sea _purple_, and gives it in some other book the same epithet, when in a storm.

The general idea, however, has been fondly adopted by the finest writers in Europe. The PURPLE of the ancients is not known to us. What idea, therefore, have the moderns affixed to it? Addison, in his Vision of the Temple of Fame, describes the country as "being covered with a kind of PURPLE LIGHT." Gray's beautiful line is well known:--

The bloom of young desire and _purple light_ of love.

And Tasso, in describing his hero Godfrey, says, Heaven

Gli empie d'onor la faccia, e vi riduce
Di Giovinezza _il bel purpureo lume_.

Both Gray and Tasso copied Virgil, where Venus gives to her son Æneas--

----_Lumenque_ Juventæ
_Purpureum_.

Dryden has omitted the _purple light_ in his version, nor is it given by Pitt; but Dryden expresses the general idea by

---- With hands divine,
Had formed his curling locks and _made his temples shine_,
And given his rolling eys a _sparkling grace_.

It is probable that Milton has given us his idea of what was meant by _this purple light_, when applied to the human countenance, in the felicitous expression of

CELESTIAL ROSY-RED.

Gray appears to me to be indebted to Milton for a hint for the opening of his Elegy: as in the first line he had Dante and Milton in his mind, he perhaps might also in the following passage have recollected a congenial one in Comus, which he altered. Milton, describing the evening, marks it out by

---- What time the _laboured ox_
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the _swinkt hedger_ at his supper sat.

Gray has

The _lowing herd_ wind slowly o'er the lea,
The _ploughman_ homeward plods his weary way.

Warton has made an observation on this passage in Comus; and observes further that it is a _classical_ circumstance, but not a _natural_ one, in an _English landscape_, for our ploughmen quit their work at noon. I think, therefore, the imitation is still more evident; and as Warton observes, both Gray and Milton copied here from books, and not from life.

There are three great poets who have given us a similar incident.

Dryden introduces the highly finished picture of the _hare_ in his Annus Mirabilis:--

_Stanza_ 131.
So I have seen some _fearful hare_ maintain
A course, till tired before the dog she lay,
Who stretched behind her, pants upon the plain,
Past power to kill, as she to get away.

132.
With his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey;
His warm breath blows her flix up as she lies:
She trembling creeps upon the ground away
And looks back to him with _beseeching eyes_.

Thomson paints the _stag_ in a similar situation:--

----Fainting breathless toil
Sick seizes on his heart--he stands at bay:
The _big round tears_ run down his _dappled_ face,
He _groans_ in anguish.
_Autumn_, v. 451.

Shakspeare exhibits the same object:--

The wretched animal heaved forth such _groans_,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the _big round tears_
Coursed one another down his _innocent nose_
In piteous chase.

Of these three pictures the _beseeching eyes_ of Dryden perhaps is more pathetic than _the big round tears_, certainly borrowed by Thomson from Shakspeare, because the former expression has more passion, and is therefore more poetical. The sixth line in Dryden is perhaps exquisite for its imitative harmony, and with peculiar felicity paints the action itself. Thomson adroitly drops the _innocent nose_, of which one word seems to have lost its original signification, and the other offends now by its familiarity. _The dappled face_ is a term more picturesque, more appropriate, and more poetically expressed.

EXPLANATION OF THE FAC-SIMILE.

The manuscripts of Pope's version of the Iliad and Odyssey are preserved in the British Museum in three volumes, the gift of David Mallet. They are written chiefly on the backs of letters, amongst which are several from Addison, Steele, Jervaise, Rowe, Young, Caryl, Walsh, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Fenton, Craggs, Congreve, Hughes, his mother Editha, and Lintot and Tonson the booksellers.[26]

From these letters no information can be gathered, which merits public communication; they relate generally to the common civilities and common affairs of life. What little could be done has already been given in the additions to Pope's works.

It has been observed, that Pope taught himself to write, by copying printed books: of this singularity we have in this collection a remarkable instance; several parts are written in Roman and Italic characters, which for some time I mistook for print; no imitation can be more correct.

What appears on this Fac-Simile I have printed, to assist its deciphering; and I have also subjoined the passage as it was given to the public, for immediate reference. The manuscript from whence this page is taken consists of the first rude sketches; an intermediate copy having been employed for the press; so that the corrected verses of this Fac-Simile occasionally vary from those published.

This passage has been selected, because the parting of Hector and Andromache is perhaps the most pleasing episode in the Iliad, while it is confessedly one of the most finished passages.

The lover of poetry will not be a little gratified, when he contemplates the variety of epithets, the imperfect idea, the gradual embellishment, and the critical rasures which are here discovered.[27] The action of Hector, in lifting his infant in his arms, occasioned Pope much trouble; and at length the printed copy has a different reading.

I must not omit noticing, that the whole is on the back of a letter franked by Addison; which cover I have given at one corner of the plate.

The parts distinguished by Italics were rejected.

Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy
_Extends his eager arms to embrace his boy_,
lovely
Stretched his fond arms to seize the _beauteous_ boy;
babe
The _boy_ clung crying to his nurse's breast,
Scar'd at the dazzling helm and nodding crest.
each _kind_
With silent pleasure _the_ fond parent smil'd,
And Hector hasten'd to relieve his child.
The glittering terrors unbound,
_His radiant helmet_ from his brows _unbrac'd_,
_on the ground, he
And on the ground the glittering terror plac'd_,
beamy
And placed the _radiant_ helmet on the ground,
_Then seized the boy and raising him in air_,
lifting
Then _fondling_ in his arms his infant heir,
_dancing_
Thus to the gods addrest a father's prayer.
glory fills
O thou, whose _thunder shakes_ th' ethereal throne,
deathless
And all ye other _powers_ protect my son!
_Like mine, this war, blooming youth with every virtue blest_,
_grace_
_The shield and glory of the Trojan race;
Like mine his valour, and his just renown.
Like mine his labours, to defend the crown_.
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
the Trojans
To guard _my country_, to defend the crown:
_In arms like me, his country's war to wage_,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
Against his country's foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
successful
So when triumphant from the _glorious_ toils
Of heroes slain, he bears the reeking spoils,
Whole hosts may
_All Troy shall_ hail him, with deserv'd acclaim,
own the son
And _cry, this chief_ transcends his father's fame.
While pleas'd, amidst the general shouts of Troy,
His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy.
fondly on her
He said, and gazing _o'er his consort's charms_,
Restor'd his infant to her longing arms.
on
Soft _in_ her fragrant breast the babe she laid,
_Prest to her heart_, and with a smile survey'd;
to repose
Hush'd _him to rest_, and with a smile survey'd.
_passion_
But soon the troubled pleasure _mixt with rising fears_,
dash'd with fear,
The tender pleasure soon, chastised by fear,
She mingled with the smile a tender tear.

The passage appears thus in the printed work. I have marked in Italics the _variations_.

Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy
Stretch'd his fond arms to _clasp_ the lovely boy.
The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast,
Scar'd at the dazzling helm and nodding crest.
With _secret_[28] pleasure each fond parent smil'd,
And Hector hasted to relieve his child,
The glittering terrors from his brows unbound,
And placed the _beaming_ helmet on the ground:
_Then kiss'd the child_, and lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods _preferr'd_ a father's prayer:

O thou, whose glory fills th' ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless powers, protect my son!
Grant him like me to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown;
Against his country's foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
So when, triumphant from successful toils,
Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils,
Whole hosts may hail him, with deserv'd acclaim,
And say, _this chief_ transcends his father's fame:
While pleas'd amidst the general shouts of Troy,
His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy.

He _spoke_, and fondly gazing on her charms,
Restor'd _the pleasing burden to her arms_:
Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid,
Hush'd to repose, and with a smile survey'd.
The _troubled pleasure_ soon chastis'd by fear,
She mingled with the smile a tender tear.

LITERARY FASHIONS.

There is such a thing as Literary Fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats. Dr. Kippis, who had a taste for literary history, has observed that "'Dodsley's Oeconomy of Human Life' long received the most extravagant applause, from the supposition that it was written by a celebrated nobleman; an instance of the power of _Literary Fashion_; the history of which, as it hath appeared in various ages and countries, and as it hath operated with respect to the different objects of science, learning, art, and taste, would form a work that might be highly instructive and entertaining."

The favourable reception of Dodsley's "Oeconomy of Human Life," produced a whole family of oeconomies; it was soon followed by a _second part_, the gratuitous ingenuity of one of those officious imitators, whom an original author never cares to thank. Other oeconomies trod on the heels of each other.

For some memoranda towards a history of literary fashions, the following may be arranged:--

At the restoration of letters in Europe, commentators and compilers were at the head of the literati; translators followed, who enriched themselves with their spoils on the commentators. When in the progress of modern literature, writers aimed to rival the great authors of antiquity, the different styles, in their servile imitations, clashed together; and parties were formed who fought desperately for the style they chose to adopt. The public were long harassed by a fantastic race, who called themselves Ciceronian, of whom are recorded many ridiculous practices, to strain out the words of Cicero into their hollow verbosities. They were routed by the facetious Erasmus. Then followed the brilliant æra of epigrammatic points; and good sense, and good taste, were nothing without the spurious ornaments of false wit. Another age was deluged by a million of sonnets; and volumes were for a long time read, without their readers being aware that their patience was exhausted. There was an age of epics, which probably can never return again; for after two or three, the rest can be but repetitions with a few variations.

In Italy, from 1530 to 1580, a vast multitude of books were written on Love; the fashion of writing on that subject (for certainly it was not always a passion with the indefatigable writer) was an epidemical distemper. They wrote like pedants, and pagans; those who could not write their love in verse, diffused themselves in prose. When the Poliphilus of Colonna appeared, which is given in the form of a dream, this dream made a great many dreamers, as it happens in company (says the sarcastic Zeno) when one yawner makes many yawn. When Bishop Hall first published his satires, he called them "Toothless Satires," but his latter ones he distinguished as "Biting Satires;" many good-natured men, who could only write good-natured verse, crowded in his footsteps, and the abundance of their labours only showed that even the "toothless" satires of Hall could bite more sharply than those of servile imitators. After Spenser's "Faerie Queen" was published, the press overflowed with many mistaken imitations, in which fairies were the chief actors--this circumstance is humorously animadverted on by Marston, in his satires, as quoted by Warton: every scribe now falls asleep, and in his

----dreams, straight tenne pound to one
Outsteps some _fairy_----
Awakes, straiet rubs his eyes, and PRINTS HIS TALE.

The great personage who gave a fashion to this class of literature was the courtly and romantic Elizabeth herself; her obsequious wits and courtiers would not fail to feed and flatter her taste. Whether they all felt the beauties, or languished over the tediousness of "The Faerie Queen," and the "Arcadia" of Sidney, at least her majesty gave a vogue to such sentimental and refined romance. The classical Elizabeth introduced another literary fashion; having translated the Hercules Oetacus, she made it fashionable to translate Greek tragedies. There was a time, in the age of fanaticism, and the Long Parliament, that books were considered the more valuable for their length. The seventeenth century was the age of folios. Caryl wrote a "Commentary on Job" in two volumes folio, of above one thousand two hundred sheets! as it was intended to inculcate the virtue of patience, these volumes gave at once the theory and the practice. One is astonished at the multitude of the divines of this age; whose works now lie buried under the brick and mortar tombs of four or five folios, which, on a moderate calculation, might now be "wire-woven" into thirty or forty modern octavos.

In Charles I.'s time, love and honour were heightened by the wits into florid romance; but Lord Goring turned all into ridicule; and he was followed by the Duke of Buckingham, whose happy vein of ridicule was favoured by Charles II., who gave it the vogue it obtained.

Sir William Temple justly observes, that changes in veins of wit are like those of habits, or other modes. On the return of Charles II., none were more out of fashion among the new courtiers than the old Earl of Norwich, who was esteemed the greatest wit, in his father's time, among the old.

Modern times have abounded with what may be called fashionable literature. Tragedies were some years ago as fashionable as comedies are at this day;[29] Thomson, Mallet, Francis, Hill, applied their genius to a department in which they lost it all. Declamation and rant, and over-refined language, were preferred to the fable, the manners, and to nature--and these now sleep on our shelves! Then too we had a family of paupers in the parish of poetry, in "Imitations of Spenser." Not many years ago, Churchill was the occasion of deluging the town with _political poems in quarto_.--These again were succeeded by _narrative poems_, in the ballad measure, from all sizes of poets.--The Castle of Otranto was the father of that marvellous, which once over-stocked the circulating library and closed with Mrs. Radcliffe.--Lord Byron has been the father of hundreds of graceless sons!--Travels and voyages have long been a class of literature so fashionable, that we begin to prepare for, or to dread, the arrival of certain persons from the Continent!

Different times, then, are regulated by different tastes. What makes a strong impression on the public at one time, ceases to interest it at another; an author who sacrifices to the prevailing humours of his day has but little chance of being esteemed by posterity; and every age of modern literature might, perhaps, admit of a new classification, by dividing it into its periods of _fashionable literature_.

THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS.

Il est des gens de qui l'esprit guindé
Sous un front jamais déridé
Ne souffre, n'approuve, et n'estime
Que le pompeux, et le sublime;
Pour moi j'ose poser en fait
Qu'en de certains momens l'esprit le plus parfait
Peut aimer sans rougir jusqu'aux marionettes;
Et qu'il est des tems et des lieux,
Où le grave, et le sérieux,
Ne valent pas d'agréables sornettes.
Peau d'Ane.

People there are who never smile;
Their foreheads still unsmooth'd the while,
Some lambent flame of mirth will play,
That wins the easy heart away;
Such only choose in prose or rhyme
A bristling pomp,--they call sublime!
I blush not to like Harlequin,
Would he but talk,--and all his kin.
Yes, there are times, and there are places,
When flams and old wives' tales are worth the Graces.

Cervantes, in the person of his hero, has confessed the delight he received from amusements which disturb the gravity of some, who are apt, however, to be more entertained by them than they choose to acknowledge. Don Quixote thus dismisses a troop of merry strollers--"_Andad con Dios, buena gente, y hazad vuestra fiesta, porque desde muchacho fui aficionado a la_ Carátula, _y en mi mocedad se ne ivan los ojos tras la_ Farándula." In a literal version the passage may run thus:--"Go, good people, God be with you, and keep your merry making! for from childhood I was in love with the _Carátula_, and in my youth my eyes would lose themselves amidst the _Farándula_." According to Pineda, _La Carátula_ is an actor masked, and _La Farándula_ is a kind of farce.[30]

Even the studious Bayle, wrapping himself in his cloak, and hurrying to the market-place to Punchinello, would laugh when the fellow had humour in him, as was usually the case; and I believe the pleasure some still find in pantomimes, to the annoyance of their gravity, is a very natural one, and only wants a little more understanding in the actors and the spectators.[31]

The truth is, that here our Harlequin and all his lifeless family are condemned to perpetual silence. They came to us from the genial hilarity of the Italian theatre, and were all the grotesque children of wit, and whim, and satire. Why is this burlesque race here privileged to cost so much, to do so little, and to repeat that little so often? Our own pantomime may, indeed, boast of two inventions of its own growth: we have turned Harlequin into a magician, and this produces the surprise of sudden changes of scenery, whose splendour and curious correctness have rarely been equalled: while in the metamorphosis of the scene, a certain sort of wit to the eye, "mechanic wit," as it has been termed, has originated; as when a surgeon's shop is turned into a laundry, with the inscription "Mangling done here;" or counsellors at the bar changed into fish-women.

Every one of this grotesque family were the creatures of national genius, chosen by the people for themselves. Italy, both ancient and modern, exhibits a gesticulating people of comedians, and the same comic genius characterised the nation through all its revolutions, as well as the individual through all his fortunes. The lower classes still betray their aptitude in that vivid humour, where the action is suited to the word--silent gestures sometimes expressing whole sentences. They can tell a story, and even raise the passions, without opening their lips. No nation in modern Europe possesses so keen a relish for the _burlesque_, insomuch as to show a class of unrivalled poems, which are distinguished by the very title; and perhaps there never was an Italian in a foreign country, however deep in trouble, but would drop all remembrance of his sorrows, should one of his countrymen present himself with the paraphernalia of Punch at the corner of a street. I was acquainted with an Italian, a philosopher and a man of fortune, residing in this country, who found so lively a pleasure in performing Punchinello's little comedy, that, for this purpose, with considerable expense and curiosity, he had his wooden company, in all their costume, sent over from his native place. The shrill squeak of the tin whistle had the same comic effect on him as the notes of the _Ranz des Vaches_ have in awakening the tenderness of domestic emotions in the wandering Swiss--the national genius is dramatic. Lady Wortley Montagu, when she resided at a villa near Brescia, was applied to by the villagers for leave to erect a theatre in her saloon: they had been accustomed to turn the stables into a playhouse every carnival. She complied, and, as she tells us, was "surprised at the beauty of their scenes, though painted by a country painter. The performance was yet more surprising, the actors being all peasants; but the Italians have so natural a genius for comedy, they acted as well as if they had been brought up to nothing else, particularly the _Arlequino_, who far surpassed any of our English, though only the tailor of our village, and I am assured never saw a play in any other place." Italy is the mother, and the nurse, of the whole Harlequin race.

Hence it is that no scholars in Europe but the most learned Italians, smit by the national genius, could have devoted their vigils to narrate the revolutions of pantomime, to compile the annals of Harlequin, to unrol the genealogy of Punch, and to discover even the most secret anecdotes of the obscurer branches of that grotesque family, amidst their changeful fortunes, during a period of two thousand years! Nor is this all; princes have ranked them among the Rosciuses; and Harlequins and Scaramouches have been ennobled. Even Harlequins themselves have written elaborate treatises on the almost insurmountable difficulties of their art. I despair to convey the sympathy they have inspired me with to my reader; but every _Tramontane_ genius must be informed, that of what he has never seen he must rest content to be told.

Of the ancient Italian troop we have retained three or four of the characters, while their origin has nearly escaped our recollection; but of the burlesque comedy, the extempore dialogue, the humorous fable, and its peculiar species of comic acting, all has vanished.

Many of the popular pastimes of the Romans unquestionably survived their dominion, for the people will amuse themselves, though their masters may be conquered; and tradition has never proved more faithful than in preserving popular sports. Many of the games of our children were played by Roman boys; the mountebanks, with the dancers and tumblers on their moveable stages, still in our fairs, are Roman; the disorders of the _Bacchanalia_, Italy appears to imitate in her carnivals. Among these Roman diversions certain comic characters have been transmitted to us, along with some of their characteristics, and their dresses. The speaking pantomimes and extemporal comedies which have delighted the Italians for many centuries, are from this ancient source.[32]

Of the _Mimi_ and the _Pantomimi_ of the Romans the following notices enter into our present researches: