Wales, nor could the Archbishop of Canterbury, when he gave her the sacrament, prevail on her, though she said she heartily forgave the Prince."* In justice, however, to her memory, we should not forget how recent were the Prince's insults, and how zealously he had seized every occasion to treat her with studied slight and disrespect. If, indeed, we could trust the assurances of Horace Walpole, Lord Orford, to Mr. Coxe, we might assert, that the Queen had sent both her forgiveness and her blessing to her son, and said that she would have seen him with pleasure had she not feared to irritate the King. But the authority of Horace Walpole will seldom weigh with a dispassionate historian, unless when confirmed, or, at least, not opposed, by others. As is well observed by Mr. Hallam on another occasion, "his want of accuracy or veracity, or both, is so palpable (above all in his verbal communications), that no great stress can be laid upon his testimony."‡ During the ten years (from 1727 till 1737) in which Queen Caroline wielded so great an influence over public business, it continued to flow in a smooth and uniform current, seldom broken by obstacles, and bearing along comparatively few materials for history. Yet the periods which seem the most barren of striking incidents are sometimes the most fruitful of great results; and I shall here pause in my narrative to trace, first, the progress of LITERATURE, and next the origin and growth of METHODISM. * Mr. Charles Ford to Swift, November 22, 1737. Coxe's Life, p. 550. Constit. Hist. vol. iii. p. 383. 1 ["I fear," says Mr. Croker, in a note to chap. xxxix. of Hervey's Memoirs, "I fear Lord Hervey's silence must be taken as strong evidence against Horace Walpole's apologetical statement. It is probable and might have passed at the interview which Sir Robert had with the Queen alone, and he may, for obvious reasons, not have repeated it at the time to Lord Hervey; but as the town had a story of the same kind (Ford's letter to Swift, 22d Nov.), his Lordship could hardly have failed to hear it, and would surely have related it, had it been true." The Queen, it appears, did not receive the sacrament of the Holy Communion. The last word she spoke was "Pray."] CHAPTER XVIII. LITERATURE. THROUGHOUT all the states of Europe, the literature of the Middle Ages was nearly the same. The usual fault of a barbarous period is not so much the absence as the false direction of learning and research, which waste themselves on subjects either beneath the notice, or above the comprehension, of man. In Spain and in Italy, as in France and England, the learned few, five centuries ago, equally lost themselves in the mazes of Thomas Aquinas, and trod in the beaten track of Aristotle; while their lighter hours were amused with Latin quibbles and Leonine verses. But when, towards the year 1500, the human mind burst forth from its trammels, and the human intellect was stirred to its inmost depths; when, at nearly one and the same period, printing was diffused, America discovered, and the errors of the Church of Rome reformed; then was a new and original impulse every where given to genius. And thus, in the next generation, almost every people began to possess a separate and distinctive literature of its own. No where did there gather a brighter galaxy of genius than in England during the era of Elizabeth: it is by those great old writers that our language was raised and dignified; it is from that "pure well of English undefiled," that all successive generations will draw with a quenchless thirst and in inexhaustible profusion. In the first half of the seventeenth century, most of our writers, trusting less, and having less reason to trust, their own inspirations, began to look abroad for models. The literature of Spain was then eagerly sought and studied, and by its faults infected ours. Had it been studied in a more discriminating spirit, our writers might have advantageously borrowed that remarkable nobility and loftiness of sentiment which pervades it, or those romantic traces of Eastern poetry which yet linger in the land of the Moors. Thus that beautiful fable of the Loves of the Rose and Nightingale, first made known to us, I think, by Lady Mary Montagu, in a translation of a Turkish ode,* and since so often sung and so highly adorned by the muse of Byron,† might have been found, two centuries ago, in the See her letter to Pope, April 1, 1717. †The Giaour, v. 21. The Bride of Abydos, conclusion, &c. Spanish verse of Calderon.* But the English imitators rather preferred to fix on the fanciful conceits and forced allegories—the AGUDEZAS (to use their own expression) of the Spaniards; as when the same Calderon compares the sun setting beneath light clouds to a golden corpse entombed in a silver monument!† Such wild shoots of fancy, which had also struck deep root in Italy, the wits of Charles the First laboured, and not without effect, to transplant among us. As under Charles the First the national taste was corrupted by the example of Spain, so was it under Charles the Second by the example of France. The king's youth had been passed in that country: its literature, and his inclinations, equally pointed to gallantry; and the gay wit of St. Evremond and Grammont sparkled at his Court. Nor was the nation ill prepared to receive them. The gloomy thraldom of the Puritans had weighed especially upon our stage; and the pressure once removed, it flew too high by the rebound. Thus it happened that a general licentiousness began to prevail amongst authors, and that even the genius of Dryden cannot shield his plays from just reproach. Nay, it may be said of him, that he went far beyond his models. It is not so much any rapturous descriptions, or overflowings of ardent passion, that we find to condemn; but his favourite heroes, his Woodalls and his Wildbloods display a low, hard, ruffianly coarseness-a taste for almost every thing base, which there is seldom any touch of generosity or kindness to redeem. A legion of other writers could emulate the coarseness, though not the wit, of a Dryden; and as Liberty had just run riot, so did Gaiety then. The great writers of Queen Anne's reign, and of the succeeding, happily shunned these faults of the last century, whether derived from Spain or from France. We may still, indeed, here and there detect some conceits like Cowley's, some license like Rochester's; but these are few and rare: the current ran in the opposite direction, and was no more to be turned by some exceptions, than, on the other hand, the sublime genius of Milton could guide or reform the a most remarkable performance; I think, in some respects, superior to Faust. 1 "Quando el Sol cayendo vaya A sepultarse en las ondas, Que entre obscuras nubes pardas Al gran cadaver de oro Son monumentos de plata!" [See remarks on the degradation of the Drama at the time of the Restoration, in "Southey's" Life of Cowper, vol. ii. p. 112, in the Chapter (xii.) entitled "Sketch of the progress of English Poetry from Chaucer to Cowper." The chapter is a valuable contribution to the history of English Poetry. Charles Lamb, in a note on Shirley, in his "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets," speaks of him as "the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of moral feelings and notions in common. A new language and quite a new turn of tragic and comic interest came in with the Restoration."-vol. ii. p. 119.] taste of the preceding generation. Wit was now refined from its alloy. Poetry was cleared of its redundancies. The rules both of prose and of the drama became better understood, and more strictly followed. It was sought to form, and not merely to flatter, the public taste: nor did genius, when well directed in its flights, soar less high. In English prose, it would be difficult to equal, in their various departments, "from lively to severe," the manner of Bolingbroke, Addison, Atterbury, and Chesterfield. Or who has ever exceeded in their different styles and subjects the poetry of Pope, Swift, Gay, and Prior? By these, and such as these, was our literature enriched and refined, and our language almost finally formed. It was immediately after them that a genius not inferior to theirs compiled that celebrated Dictionary, which, first published in 1755, has ever since been esteemed as the standard of the English tongue. Since that time new words or phrases have been but seldom attempted, and still more seldom received and acknowledged. Yet, notwithstanding the advantages that attend a fixed and final standard, I still hope that the door is not wholly closed against foreign words, as aliens, but that some of real value may be received as denizens, and allowed to rank with the King's English. How advantageously might not several be chosen, especially from the parent German stock! Who would not wish, for example, that some writers of sufficient authority would adopt and make our own the Teutonic term FATHERLAND, which not only expresses in one word a NATIVE COUNTRY, but comprises the reason why we love it!-But let me return from this short digression.' If then we compare as a body the literary men under Queen Anne and George the First, with those under the two Charleses, we shall find a great and manifest improvement. If we compare them with the older writers of the era of Elizabeth, we shall, I think, pronounce them to have less loftiness and genius, but far more correctness. This judgment was once so universally received, that it might almost be considered a truism, and was first called in question by that great and good man to whom I have just referred. Dr. Johnson, in his preface to Shakspeare, denies the superior correctness of later times, taking issue especially upon the unities of time and place in dramatic composition. The want of these unities, he argues, is no defect, nor their attainment of any value; they are rules that "arise evidently from false assumptions.' When Johnson wrote, those rules were so universally honoured, and sanctioned by such high authorities, that he declares himself "almost frighted at his own temerity, and ready to sink down in reverential silence." So completely has the public judgment veered round since his times, and so much has his own been adopted, that perhaps the same expressions might now be as appropriate in venturing to allege some reasons for the opposite opinion. [See some excellent observations on the subject of introduction of new words and the growth of language in the "Guesses at Truth."—p. 270, etc.] 2D VOL. I. In the first place, I would endeavour to clear away the objection so often urged, that a respect for these unities implies a coldness or distaste for Shakspeare and our great old dramatists. Surely no such consequence can be fairly deduced. To maintain the general rule is quite compatible with the highest admiration for particular exceptions. Let us admit that Shakspeare was most great, not only in spite of his irregularity, but even, sometimes, if you will, by and through his irregularity; should we therefore proclaim irregularity as our future rule? Thus, in Dryden, we may admit that such incorrect rhymes as FORM and MAN-GONE and SOON,* are combined in such beautiful couplets as to make us forget their incorrectness; nay, that without the incorrectness we might have lost the beauty. But does it follow that these rhymes should be allowed in all succeeding poets? In like manner, who that has beheld the Alhambra in all its glories of gold and azure; with its forests of slender marble pillars, and its fretwork of high emblazoned walls, has not stood entranced before that happy deviation from all architectural rules? But does it follow that we should burn Vitruvius? The argument of Dr. Johnson is, that no dramatic representation is ever mistaken for truth, and that, therefore, as the spectator does not really imagine himself at Alexandria in the first act, there is nothing to startle him at finding the second act transferred to Rome. For the same reason, he maintains that the second act may represent events that happened several years after the first. "The spectators," says Johnson, "are always in their senses, and know from first to last that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players." But does not this argument, in fact, amount to this -that art is not perfect, and that therefore there should be no art at all? Johnson himself, on another subject, has told us that "perfection is unattainable, but nearer and nearer approaches may be made." So, likewise, in the stage, the object is complete illusion; to draw the spectator as nearly as possible into the idea that those are no feigned sorrows which he sees; that a real Iphigenia stands weeping before him; that a real Cato has pierced his heroic breast.1 The success, it is true, always falls short of this perfection, but the nearer it is attained the more do we applaud. The more tears are drawn from the audience; the more they are induced, either by the genius of the poet or the skill of the player, to identify themselves with the characters upon the stage, and to feel for them as they would for real sufferers; the closer we attain this point, the closer do we come to the aim which is set before us. Follow out the prin "Our thoughtless sex is caught by outward form, "Each has his share of good, and when 'tis gone, † Advertisement to the fourth edition of the English Dictionary. [See on the subject of imitation in “Art,” Coleridge's Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 220, etc., Lecture xiii. on "Poesy or Art."] |