Lives Of The Poets, Vol. 1 (fiscle part-III) - Samuel Johnson (classic books to read txt) 📗
- Author: Samuel Johnson
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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 Dramatick 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, Die Neutrum, Dic Aliquando Male."
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 Appear Proportioned to His
Expense: Whatever Topick Employs His Mind, He Shows Himself Qualified to
Expand And Illustrate It With All The Accessories That Books Can Furnish:
He Is Found Not Only To Have Travelled the Beaten Road, But The By-Paths
Of Literature; Not Only To Have Taken General Surveys, But To Have
Examined particulars With Minute 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 Cannot Supply. He That Merely Makes A Book From
Books May Be Useful, But Can Scarcely Be Great. Butler Had Not Suffered
Life To Glide Beside Him Unseen 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 Proverbial 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, The Excellent Editor Of This Author'S
Relicks, That He Could Show Something like Hudibras In prose. He Has In
His Possession The Commonplace-Book, In which Butler Reposited, Not
Such Events Or 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 Opinion, And Confirms The
Determinations Of Nature." Such Manners As Depend Upon Standing relations
And General Passions Are Coextended with The Race Of Man; But Those
Modifications Of Life, And Peculiarities Of Practice, Which Are The
Progeny Of Errour 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[66]
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 Know 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 Contemplating the Picture.
It Is Scarcely Possible, In the Regularity And Composure Of The Present
Time, To Image The Tumult Of Absurdity, And Clamour Of Contradiction,
Which Perplexed doctrine, Disordered practice, And Disturbed both Publick
And Private Quiet, In that Age When Subordination Was Broken, And Awe Was
Hissed away; When Any Unsettled innovator, Who Could Hatch A Half-Formed
Notion, Produced it To The Publick; 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 Burnt, 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 Excited by The Use Of Minced
Pies And Plumporridge; 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 Publick, 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.
Poetical Action Ought To Be Probable Upon Certain Suppositions, And Such
Probability As Burlesque Requires Is Here Violated only By One Incident.
Nothing can Show More Plainly The Necessity Of Doing something, And The
Difficulty Of Finding something to Do, Than That Butler Was Reduced to
Transfer To His Hero, The Flagellation Of Sancho, Not The Most Agreeable
Fiction Of Cervantes; Very Suitable, Indeed, To The Manners Of That Age
And Nation, Which Ascribed wonderful Efficacy To Voluntary Penances; But
So Remote From The Practice And Opinions Of The Hudibrastick Time, That
Judgment And Imagination Are Alike Offended.
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 Heroick 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 Heroick, 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 That Butler Had Undertaken A
Different Work.
The Measure Is Quick, Sprightly, And Colloquial, 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 confidence 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 Subject. It, Therefore, Like All Bodies Compounded of
Heterogeneous Parts, Contains In it A Principle Of Corruption. All
Disproportion Is Unnatural; And From What Is Unnatural, We Can Derive
Only The Pleasure Which Novelty Produces. We Admire It Awhile As A
Strange Thing; But, When It Is No Longer Strange, We Perceive Its
Deformity. It Is A Kind Of Artifice, Which By Frequent Repetition Detects
Itself; And The Reader, Learning in time What He Is To Expect, Lays Down
His Book, As The Spectator Turns Away From A Second Exhibition Of Those
Tricks, Of Which The Only Use Is To Show That They Can Be Played.
* * * * *
We Extract From The Second Volume Of Aubrey'S Letters, P. 263, The
Following lines, Entitled
_Hudibras Imprinted._
No Jesuite Ever Took In hand,
To Plant A Church In barren Land;
Or Ever Thought It Worth His While
A Swede Or Russe To Reconcile.
For Where There Is Not Store Of Wealth,
Souls Are Not Worth The Chardge Of Health.
Spain And America Had Designes
To Sell Their Gospell For Their Wines,
For Had The Mexicans Been Poore,
No Spaniard Twice Had Landed on Their Shore.
'Twas Gold The Catholick Religion Planted,
Which, Had They Wanted gold, They Still Had Wanted. Ed.
[Footnote 63: These Are The Words Of The Author Of The Short Account Of
Butler, Prefixed to Hudibras, Which Dr. Johnson, Notwithstanding what He
Says Above, Seems To Have Supposed was Written By Mv. Longneville, The
Father; But The Contrary Is To Be Inferred from A Subsequent Passage,
Wherein The Author Laments That He Had Neither Such An Acquaintance Nor
Interest With Mr. Longneville, As To Procure From Him The Golden Remains
Of Butler There Mentioned. He Was, Probably, Led into The Mistake By
A Note In the Biog. Brit. P. 1077, Signifying, That The Son Of
This Gentleman Was Living in 1736.
Of This Friend And Generous Patron Of Butler, Mr. William Longneville, I
Find An Account, Written By A Person Who Was Well Acquainted with Him, To
This Effect, Viz. That He Was A Conveyancing lawyer, And A Bencher Of The
Inner Temple, And Had Raised himself From A Low Beginning, To Very
Great Eminence In that Profession; That He Was Eloquent And Learned, Of
Spotless Integrity; That He Supported an Aged father, Who Had Ruined his
Fortunes By Extravagance, And By His Industry And Application, Reedified
A Ruined family; That He Supported butler, Who, But For Him, Must
Literally Have Starved; And Received from Him, As A Recompense, The
Papers Called his Remains. Life Of The Lord-Keeper Guildford, P. 289.
These Have Since Been Given To The Public By Mr. Thyer, Of Manchester:
And The Originals Are Now In the Hands Of The Rev. Dr. Farmer, Master Of
Emanuel College, Cambridge. H.]
[Footnote 64: In a Note In the Biographia Britannica, P. 1075, He Is
Said, On The Authority Of The Younger Mr. Longueville, To Have Lived for
Some Years In rose Street, Covent Garden, And Also That He Died there;
The Latter Of These Particulars Is Rendered highly Probable, By His Being
Interred in the Cemetery Of That Parish.]
[Footnote 65: They Were Collected into One,
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