Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

venture in publick; they certainly know their faults in the worst things; and even their best things they are not fond of, because the idea of what they ought to be is far above what they are. This induced me to believe that Virgil desired his work might be burnt, had not the same Augustus that desired him to write them, preserved them from destruction'. A scribling beau may imagine a Poet may be induced to write, by the very pleasure he finds in writing; but that is seldom, when people are necessitated to it 2. I have known men row, and use very hard labour, for diversion, which, if they had been tied to, they would have thought themselves very unhappy.

33 'But to return to Blenheim, that work so much admired by some, and censured by others. I have often wished he had wrote it in Latin, that he might be out of the reach of the empty criticks, who would have as little understood his meaning in that language as they do his beauties in his own.

34

35

'False criticks have been the plague of all ages; Milton himself, in a very polite court, has been compared to the rumbling of a wheelbarrow he had been on the wrong side, and therefore could not be a good poet. And this, perhaps, may be Mr. Philips's case3.

'But I take generally the ignorance of his readers to be the occasion of their dislike. People that have formed their taste upon the French writers, can have no relish for Philips: they admire points and turns, and consequently have no judgement of what is great and majestick; he must look little in their eyes, when he soars so high as to be almost out of their view. I cannot therefore allow any admirer of the French to be a judge of Blenheim, nor any who takes Bouhours for a compleat critick. He generally judges of the ancients by the moderns, and not the moderns by the ancients; he takes those passages of their own authors to be really sublime which come the nearest to it; he often calls that a noble and a great thought which is only a pretty and fine one, and has more instances of the sublime out of Ovid de Tristibus, than he has out of all Virgil.

[blocks in formation]

'I shall allow, therefore, only those to be judges of Philips, who 36 make the ancients, and particularly Virgil, their standard.

'But, before I enter on this subject, I shall consider what is 37 particular in the style of Philips, and examine what ought to be the style of heroick poetry, and next inquire how far he is come up to that style.

His style is particular, because he lays aside rhyme, and writes 38 in blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently postpones the adjective to the substantive, and the substantive to the verb; and leaves out little particles, a and the; her and his; and uses frequent appositions. Now let us examine, whether these alterations of style be conformable to the true sublime. . . .'

1

[ocr errors]

2

3

4

WALSH

7ILLIAM WALSH, the son of Joseph Walsh, Esq., of Abberley in Worcestershire, was born in 1663, as appears from the account of Wood', who relates that at the age of fifteen he became, in 1678, a gentleman commoner 2 of Wadham College.

He left the university without a degree, and pursued his studies in London and at home; that he studied, in whatever place, is apparent from the effect, for he became, in Mr. Dryden's opinion, 'the best critick in the nation 3.'

He was not, however, merely a critick or a scholar, but a man of fashion, and, as Dennis remarks, ostentatiously splendid in his dress. He was likewise a member of parliament and a courtier, knight of the shire for his native county in several parliaments; in another the representative of Richmond in Yorkshire; and gentleman of the horse to Queen Anne under the duke of Somerset ".

Some of his verses shew him to have been a zealous friend to the Revolution; but his political ardour did not abate his rever

[blocks in formation]

The Duke was Master of the Horse.

7 'I would as soon murder a man for his estate as prosecute him for his religious and speculative errors; and since I am in a way of quoting verses, I will give you three out of Walsh's famous Ode to King William:— "Nor think it a sufficient cause To punish men [man] by penal laws,

For not believing right."

[Eng. Poets, xvii. 392.]' CHESTERFIELD, Works, 1779, iv. 273. Pope, writing to Swift about the number of masses required to save the souls of his friends, says:'Walsh was not only a Socinian, but (what you will own is harder to be saved) a Whig. He cannot modestly be rated at less than a hundred.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 5.

ence or kindness for Dryden, to whom he gave a Dissertation on Virgil's Pastorals, in which, however studied, he discovers some ignorance of the laws of French versification'.

In 1705 he began to correspond with Mr. Pope, in whom he 5 discovered very early the power of poetry. Their letters are written upon the pastoral comedy of the Italians, and those pastorals which Pope was then preparing to publish 2.

The kindnesses which are first experienced are seldom forgotten. 6 Pope always retained a grateful memory of Walsh's notice, and mentioned him in one of his latter pieces among those that had encouraged his juvenile studies:

'Granville the polite,

And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write 3.'

In his Essay on Criticism he had given him more splendid 7 praise, and, in the opinion of his learned commentator 5, sacrificed a little of his judgement to his gratitude.

The time of his death I have not learned. It must have 8 happened between 1707, when he wrote to Pope, and 17116, when Pope praised him in his Essay. The epitaph makes him forty-six years old: if Wood's account be right, he died in 17097.

This Dissertation, according to Malone (Malone's Dryden, iii. 563), was written by Knightly Chetwood, as is shown by Dryden's letter of Dec. 1697, in Dryden's Works, xviii. 139. See post, DRYDEN, 305 m. For the criticism on French versification see his Works, xiii. 341.

2 'Another of my earliest acquaintance,' said Pope, 'was Walsh. I was with him at his seat in Worcestershire for a good part of the summer of 1705, and showed him my Essay on Criticism in 1706. Walsh died the year after.' Spence, Anec. p. 194. Walsh wrote to him four letters. Post, POPE, 30; Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 49-60.

3 Prol. Sat. l. 135.

'Such late was Walsh-the Muse's judge and friend,

Who justly knew to blame or to commend;

To failings mild, but zealous for desert;

The clearest head, and the sincerest heart.

This humble praise, lamented
shade! receive,

This praise at least a grateful
Muse may give :

The Muse whose early voice you
taught to sing,

Prescrib'd her heights, and prun'd her tender wing

(Her guide now lost), no more attempts to rise,

But in low numbers short excursions tries.' Essay on Criticism, 1.729. 5 Dr. Warton. Warton's Essay on Pope, i. 198. Warburton had said much the same. Warburton's Pope's Works, i. 159.

In the third edition 1721-no doubt a misprint for 1711, the date correctly given in the first edition.

7 His epitaph in Abberley Church says that he died at Marlborough on March 16, 1707, aged 46: Nash's Worcestershire, i.4, where his portrait and a picture of his house are given. Luttrell (vi. 280), writing on March 18, 1707-8, mentions his death, so that he died on March 16, 1708 N. S.

9

10

He is known more by his familiarity with greater men, than by anything done or written by himself.

His works are not numerous. In prose he wrote Eugenia, a Defence of Women', which Dryden honoured with a Preface. Esculapius, or the Hospital of Fools, published after his death". A collection of Letters and Poems, amorous and gallant, was published in the volumes called Dryden's Miscellany, and some other occasional pieces 3.

11 To his Poems and Letters is prefixed a very judicious preface upon Epistolary Composition and Amorous Poetry *.

12 In his Golden Age Restored, there was something of humour, while the facts were recent; but it now strikes no longer. In his imitation of Horace, the first stanzas are happily turned; and in all his writings there are pleasing passages. He has however more elegance than vigour, and seldom rises higher than to be pretty'.

A Dialogue concerning Women, Being a Defence of the Sex. Written to Eugenia. 1691. For Dryden's Preface see his Works, xviii. 5.

2 In Poems and Translations by Several Hands, 1714.

3 [The edition of Miscellany Poems in six volumes published by Tonson in 1716, wherein Letters and Poems Amorous and Gallant by William Walsh are included (vol. iv. pp. 335395), has no just title to the name by which it goes of Dryden's Miscellany Poems. See Mr. W. D. Christie's bibliographical notice of the Miscellany Poems edited by Dryden, in Dryden's Select Poems, Introd. p. 60.]

Dryden wrote to Walsh (n.d.) :'Your apostrophe's to your Mistresse, where you break off the thrid of your discourse and address youreself to her, are, in my opinion, as fine turnes of gallantry as I have mett with anywhere.' Works, xviii. 183.

'Walsh's letters seem written as exercises, and were never sent to any living mistress or friend.' Post, POPE, 171.

See Boswell's Johnson, ii. 133, for some lines from Walsh's Retirement, which Johnson 'quoted with great pathos.' The last line but one,

'In her blest arms contented could
I live,'
he changed into

'With such a one,' &c.

Eng. Poets, xvii. 364. Johnson, in The Rambler, No. 152, writing of 'criticisms upon the epistolary style,' says of the Preface to this collection as published in Dryden's Misc. :-"The observations with which Walsh has introduced his pages of inanity are such as give him little claim to the rank assigned him by Dryden among the critics [ante, WALSH, 2]. In the reprint of the Preface in Eng. Poets, xvii. 333, these 'pages of inanity' have disappeared. 5 Eng. Poets, xvii. 393. • HORACE, Odes, iii. 3. It begins:

'The man that's resolute and just, Firm to his principles and trust,

Nor hopes nor fears can blind; No passions his designs control, Not Love, that tyrant of the soul, Can shake his steady mind.' Eng. Poets, xvii. 390. 7 His prettiest lines are, perhaps, the following:

'I can endure my own despair, But not another's hope.'

Ib. p. 366.

« AnteriorContinuar »