Hume proper judges. Have you found it sufficiently to survive the flames, notwithstanding the most intelligible? Does it appear true to you? Do precious part of an author, which is obviously his the style and language seem tolerable? These book, has been burnt in an auto da fe. three questions comprehend every thing; and I once more tried the press in "The Natural beg of you to answer them with the utmost free- History of Religion." It proved but another dom and sincerity. I know 'tis a custom to flatter martyrdom! Still was the fall (as he terms it) of Poets on their performances, but I hope Philoso- the first volume of his History haunting his nerphers may be exempted; and the more so that vous imagination, when he found himself yet their cases are by no means alike: when we do not strong enough to hold a pen in his hand, and approve of any thing in a Poet we commonly can ventured to produce a second, which "helped to give no reason for our dislikes but our particular buoy up its unfortunate brother." But the third taste; which not being convincing, we think it part, containing the reign of Elizabeth, was parbetter to conceal our sentiments altogether. But ticularly obnoxious, and he was doubtful whether every error in Philosophy can be distinctly markt he was again to be led to the stake. But Hume, and proved to be such; and this is a favour Ia little hardened by a little success, grew, to use flatter myself you'll indulge me in with regard to the performance I put into your hands. I am, indeed, afraid, that it would be too great a trouble for you to mark all the Errors you have observed: I shall only insist upon being informed of the most material of them, and you may assure yourself will consider it as a singular favour.-I am, with great esteem, 44 "Sir, your most obedient and most 'Aprile 6, 1739. "DAVID HUME. his own words, "callous against the impressions of public folly," and completed his History, which was now received "with tolerable, and but tolerable, success." At length, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, our author began, a year or two before he died, as he writes, to see 46 many symptoms of my literary reputation, breaking out at last with additional lustre, though I know that I can have but few years to enjoy it." What a provoking consolation for a philosopher, who, according to the result of "Please direct to me at Ninewells, near Berwick his own system, was close upon a state of annihiupon Tweed." "I thought that I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and, as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment! All classes of men and readers united in their rage against him who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford." "What was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink into oblivion, and in a twelvemonth not more than forty-five copies were sold." Even Hume, a stoic hitherto in his literary character, was struck down, and dismayed-he lost all courage to proceed-and, had the war not prevented him, "he had resolved to change his name, and never more to have returned to his native country." But an author, though born to suffer martyrdom, does not always expire; he may be flayed like St. Bartholomew, and yet he can breathe without a skin; stoned, like St. Stephen, and yet write on with a broken head; and he has been even known lation ! To Hume, let us add the illustrious name of DRYDEN. It was after preparing a second edition of Virgil, that the great Dryden, who had lived, and was to die in harness, found himself still obliged to seek for daily bread. Scarcely relieved from one heavy task, he was compelled to hasten to another; and his efforts were now stimulated by a domestic feeling, the expected return of his son in ill-health from Rome. In a letter to his bookseller he pathetically writes, "if it please God that I must die of overstudy, I cannot spend my life better than in preserving his." It was on this occasion, on the verge of his seventieth year, as he describes himself in the dedication of his Virgil, that, "worn out with study, and oppressed with fortune," he contracted to supply the bookseller with 10,000 verses at sixpence a line! What was his entire dramatic life, but a series of vexation and hostility, from his first play to his last? On those very boards whence Dryden was to have derived the means of his existence and his fame, he saw his foibles aggravated, and his morals aspersed. Overwhelmed by the keen ridicule of Buckingham, and maliciously mortified by the triumph which Settle, his meanest rival, was allowed to obtain over him-and doomed still to encounter the cool malignant eye of Langbaine, who read poetry only to detect plagiarism. Contemporary genius is inspected with too much familiarity to be felt with reverence; and the posterity! Opening all the feelings of his heart, angry prefaces of Dryden only excited the little we live among his domestic sorrows. Johnson revenge of the wits. How could such sympathise censures Dryden for saying he has few thanks to with injured, but with lofty feelings? They pay his stars that he was born among Englishspread two reports of him, which may not be men*. We have just seen that Hume went true, but which hurt him with the public. It was farther, and sighed to fly to a retreat beyond said that, being jealous of the success of Creech, that country which knew not to reward genius.— for his version of Lucretius, he advised him to What, if Dryden felt the dignity of that character attempt Horace, in which Dryden knew he would he supported, dare we blame his frankness? If fail-and a contemporary haunter of the theatre, in a curious letter * on "The Winter Diversions," says of Congreve's angry preface to the "Double Dealer," that This lively critic is still more vivacious on the great Dryden, who had then produced his "Love Triumphant," which, the critic says, "Was damned by the universal cry of the town, nemine contradicente but the conceited poet. He says in his prologue, that this is the last the town must expect from him :' he had done himself a kindness had he taken his leave before." He then describes the success of Southerne's "Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery;" and concludes, "This kind usage will encourage desponding minor poets, and vex huffing Dryden and Congreve to madness." I have quoted thus much of this letter, that we may have before us a true image of those feelings which contemporaries entertain of the greater geniuses of their age; how they seek to level them; and in what manner men of genius are doomed to be treated-slighted, starved, and abused. Dryden and Congreve! the one the finest genius, the other the most exquisite wit of our nation, are to be vered to madness!-their failures are not to excite sympathy, but contempt or ridicule! How the feelings and the language of contemporaries differ from that of posterity! And yet let us not exult in our purer and more dignified feelingswe are, indeed, the posterity of Dryden and Congreve; but we are the contemporaries of others who must patiently hope for better treatment from our sons than they have received from the fathers. Dryden was no master of the pathetic, yet never were compositions more pathetic than the Prefaces this great man has transmitted to * A letter found among the papers of the late Mr. Windham, which Mr. Malone has preserved. the age be ungenerous, shall contemporaries escape the scourge of the great author, who feels he is addressing another age more favourable to him? Johnson, too, notices his "Self-commendation; his diligence in reminding the world of his merits, and expressing, with very little scruple, his high opinion of his own powers." Dryden shall answer in his own words; with all the simplicity of Montaigne, he expresses himself with the dignity that would have become Milton or Gray : "It is a vanity common to all writers to overvalue their own productions; and it is better for me to own this failing in myself, than the world to do it for me. For what other reason have I spent my life in such an unprofitable study? Why am I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and application which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown, which are often given to men of as little learning, and less honesty, than myself." How feelingly Whitehead paints the situation of Dryden in his old age : "Yet lives the man, how wild soe'er his aim, "Ill-fated bard! where'er thy name appears, MICKLE'S version of the Lusiad offers an affecting instance of the melancholy fears which often accompany the progress of works of magnitude, undertaken by men of genius. Five years he had buried himself in a farm-house, devoted to the solitary labour; and he closes his preface with the fragment of a poem, whose stanzas have perpetuated all the tremblings and the emotions, whose + There is an affecting remonstrance of Dryden to Hyde. Earl of Rochester, on the state of his poverty and neglect in which is this remarkable passage :-"It is enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley, and starved Mr. Butler." unhappy influence the author had experienced through the long work. Thus pathetically he addresses the Muse: "Well thy meed repays thy worthless toil; And when, at length, the great and anxious labour was completed, the author was still more unhappy than under the former influence of his foreboding terrors. The work is dedicated to the Duke of Buccleugh. Whether his Grace had been prejudiced against the poetical labour by Adam Smith, who had as little comprehension of the nature of poetry as becomes a political economist, or from whatever cause, after possessing it for six weeks the Duke had never condescended to open the volume. It is to the honour of Mickle that the Dedication is a simple respectful inscription, in which the poet had not compromised his dignity,-and that in the second edition he had the magnanimity not to withdraw the dedication to this statue-like patron. Neither was the critical reception of this splendid labour of five devoted years grateful to the sensibility of the author: he writes to a friend "Though my work is well received at Oxford, I will honestly own to you, some things have hurt me. A few grammatical slips in the introduction have been mentioned; and some things in the notes about Virgil, Milton, and Homer, have been called the arrogance of criticism. But the greatest offence of all is, what I say of blank verse." Such was the language which cannot now be read without exciting our sympathy for the author of the version of an epic, which, after a solemn devotion of no small portion of the most valuable years of life, had been presented to the world, with not sufficient remuneration or notice of the author, to create even hope in the sanguine temperament of a poet. Mickle was more honoured at Lisbon than in his own country. So imperceptible are the gradations of public favour to the feelings of genius, and so vast an interval separates that author, who does not immediately address the tastes or the fashions of his age, from the reward or the enjoyment of his studies. We cannot account, among the lesser calamities of literature, that of a man of genius, who, dedicating his days to the composition of a voluminous and national work, when that labour is accomplished, finds, on its publication, the hope of fame, and perhaps other hopes as necessary to reward past toil, and open to future enterprise, all annihilated. Yet this work neglected, or not relished, perhaps even the sport of witlings, afterwards is placed among the treasures of our language, when the author is no more! but what is posthumous gratitude, could it reach even the ear of an angel? The calamity is unavoidable; but this circumstance does not lessen it. New works must for a time be submitted to popular favour; but posterity is the inheritance of genius. The man of genius, however, who has composed this great work, calculates his vigils, is best acquainted with its merits, and is not without an anticipation of the future feeling of his country; he "But weeps the more, because he weeps in vain." Such is the fate which has awaited many great works; and the heart of genius has died away on its own labours. I need not go so far back as the Elizabethan age to illustrate a calamity which will excite the sympathy of every man of letters; but the great work of a man of no ordinary genius presents itself on this occasion. He was, indeed, after this great work was given to the public, as unhappy as at any preceding period of his life; and Mickle too, like Hume and Dryden, could feel a wish to forsake his native land! He still found his "head houseless ;" and "the vetchy bed" and "loathly dungeon" still haunted his dreams. "To write for the book- This great work is "The Polyolbion" of MICHAEL sellers is what I never will do," exclaimed this DRAYTON; a poem unrivalled for its magnitude man of genius, though struck by poverty. He and its character. The genealogy of poetry is projected an edition of his own poems by sub- always suspicious; yet I think it owed its birth to scription. Leland's magnificent view of his intended work "Desirous of giving an edition of my works, in on Britain, and was probably nourished by the which I shall bestow the utmost attention, which," Britannia" of Camden, who inherited the perhaps, will be my final farewell to that blighted spot mighty industry, without the poetical spirit, of (worse than the most bleak mountains of Scotland) Leland; Drayton embraced both. This singular yclept Parnassus; after this labour is finished, if combination of topographical erudition and poetical Governor Johnstone cannot or does not help me to fancy, constitutes a national work-a union that a little independence, I will certainly bid adieu to some may conceive not fortunate, no more than Europe, to unhappy suspense, and perhaps also “the slow length" of its Alexandrine metre, for to the chagrin of soul which I feel to accompany the purposes of mere delight. Yet what theme it." can be more elevating than a bard chanting to his "Father-land," as the Hollanders called their country? Our tales of ancient glory, our worthies who must not die, our towns, our rivers, and our mountains, all glancing before the picturesque eye of the naturalist and the poet! It is, indeed, a labour of Hercules; but it was not unaccompanied by the lyre of Apollo. This national work was ill received; and the great author dejected, never pardoned his contemporaries, and even lost his temper. Drayton and his poetical friends beheld indignantly the trifles of the hour overpowering the neglected Polyolbion. Drayton published his Polyolbion first in eighteen parts; and the second portion afterwards. In this interval we have a letter to Drummond, dated in 1619 : "I thank you, my dear sweet Drummond, for your good opinion of Polyolbion. I have done twelve books more, that is, from the 18th book, which was Kent (if you note it), all the east parts and north to the river of Tweed; but it lieth by me, for the booksellers and 1 are in terms: they are a company of base knaves, whom I scorn and kick at." The vengeance of the poet had been more justly wreaked on the buyers of books, than on the sellers, who, though knavery has a strong con nection with trade, yet, were they knaves, they would be true to their own interests. Far from impeding a successful author, booksellers are apt to hurry his labours; for they prefer the crude to the mature fruit, whenever the public taste can be appeased even by an unripened dessert. These "knaves," however, seem to have succeeded in forcing poor Drayton to observe an abstinence from the press, which must have convulsed all the feelings of authorship. The second part was not published till three years after this letter was written; and then without maps. Its preface is remarkable enough; it is pathetic, till Drayton loses the dignity of genius in its asperity. It is inscribed, in no good humour "TO ANY THAT WILL READ IT! "When I first undertook this poem, or, as some have pleased to term it, this Herculean labour, I was by some virtuous friends persuaded that I should receive much comfort and encouragement; and for these reasons: First, it was a new clear way, never before gone by any; that it contained all the delicacies, delights, and rarities of this renowned isle, interwoven with the histories of the Britains, Saxons, Normans, and the later English. And further, that there is scarcely any of the nobility or gentry of this land, but that he is some way or other interested therein. "But it hath fallen out otherwise; for instead of that comfort which my noble friends proposed as my due, I have met with barbarous ignorance and base detraction; such a cloud hath the devil drawn over the world's judgment. Some of the stationers that had the selling of the first part of this poem, because it went not so fast away in the selling as some of their beastly and abominable trash (a shame both to our language and our nation), have despightfully left out the epistles to the readers, and so have cousened the buyers with imperfected books, which those that have undertaken the second part have been forced to amend in the first, for the small number that are yet remaining in their hands. "And some of our outlandish, unnatural English (I know not how otherwise to express them) stick not to say that there is nothing in this island worthy studying for, and take a great pride to be ignorant in anything thereof. As for these cattle, odi profanum vulgus, et arceo; of which I account them, be they never so great." Yet, as a true poet, whose impulse, like fate, overturns all opposition, Drayton is not to be thrown out of his avocation; but intrepidly closes by promising "they shall not deter me from going on with Scotland, if means and time do not hinder first song." Who could have imagined that such me to perform as much as I have promised in my bitterness of style, and such angry emotions, could have been raised in the breast of a poet of pastoral elegance and fancy? "Whose bounding muse o'er ev'ry mountain rode, And every river warbled as it flow'd." KIRKPATRICK. It is melancholy to reflect, that some of the greatest works in our language have involved their authors in distress and anxiety; and that many have gone down to their grave insensible of that glory which soon covered it. THE ILLUSIONS OF WRITERS IN VERSE. WHO would, with the awful severity of Plato, banish poets from the republic? But it may be desirable that the republic should not be banished from poets, which it seems to be when an inordinate passion for writing verses drives them from every active pursuit. There is no greater enemy to domestic quiet than a confirmed versifier; yet are most of them much to be pitied: it is the mediocre critics they first meet with, who are the real origin of a populace of mediocre poets. A young writer of verses is sure to get flattered by those who affect to admire what they do not even understand, and by those who, because they understand, imagine they are likewise endowed with delicacy of taste and a critical judgment. What sacrifices of social enjoyments, and all the business of life, are lavished with a prodigal's ruin in an employment which will be usually discovered to be a source of early anxiety, and of late disappointment * ! I say nothing of the ridicule in which it involves some wretched Mævius, but of the misery that falls so heavily on him, and is often entailed on his generation. Whitehead has versified an admirable reflection of Pope's, in the preface to his works : "For wanting wit be totally undone,' The great mind of BLACKSTONE never showed him more a poet than when he took, not without affection, “a farewell of the Muse," on his being called to the bar. DRUMMOND, of Hawthornden, quitted the bar from his love of poetry; yet he seems to have lamented slighting the profession which his father wished him to pursue. He perceives his error, he feels even contrition, but still cherishes it no man, not in his senses, ever had a more lucid interval: "I changed countries, new delights to find; But ah! for pleasure I did find new pain; Enchanting pleasure so did reason blind, That father's love and words I scorn'd as vain. I know that all the Muses' heavenly lays, With toil of spirit which are so dearly bought, As idle sounds of few or none are sought, That there is nothing lighter than vain praise; Know what I list, this all cannot me move, But that, alas! I both must write and love!" Thus, like all poets, who, as Goldsmith observes, 66 are fond of enjoying the present, careless of the future," he talks like a man of sense, and acts like a fool. This wonderful susceptibility of praise, to which poets seem more liable than any other class of authors, is indeed their common food; and they could not keep life in them without this nourishment. NAT. LEE, a true poet in all the excesses of poetical feelings-for he was in such raptures at times as to lose his senses—expresses himself in very energetic language on the effects of the praise necessary for poets :— "Praise," says Lee," is the greatest encouragement we chameleons can pretend to, or rather the manna that keeps soul and body together; we devour it as if it were angels' food, and vainly think we grow immortal. There is nothing transports a poet, next to love, like commending in the right place." This, no doubt, is a rare enjoyment, and serves to strengthen his illusions. But the same fervid genius elsewhere confesses, when reproached for his ungoverned fancy, that it brings with itself its own punishment : "I cannot be," says this great and unfortunate poet, "so ridiculous a creature to any man as I am to myself; for who should know the house so well as the good man at home? who, when his neighbour comes to see him, still sets the best rooms to view; and, if he be not a wilful ass, keeps the rubbish and lumber in some dark hole, where nobody comes but himself, to mortify at melancholy hours." Study the admirable preface of POPE, composed at that matured period of life when the fever of fame had passed away, and experience had corrected fancy. It is a calm statement between authors and readers; there is no imagi * An elegant poet of our times alludes, with due feeling, nation that colours by a single metaphor, or to these personal sacrifices. Addressing Poetry, he exclaims "In devotion to thy heavenly charms, I clasp'd thy altar with my infant arms; How often may we lament that poets are too apt "to clasp the altar with infant arms." Goldsmith was near forty when he published his popular poems-and the greater number of the most valued poems were produced in mature life. When the poet begins in "infancy," he too often contracts a habit of writing verses, and some times, in all his life, never reaches poetry. conceals the real feeling which moved the author on that solemn occasion, of collecting his works for the last time. It is on a full review of the past that this great poet delivers this remarkable sentence: "I believe, if any one, early in his life, should contemplate the dangerous fate of AUTHORS, he would scarce be of their number on any consideration. The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth; and to pretend to serve the learned world in any way, one must have the constancy of a martyr, and a resolution to suffer for its sake." |