To rail men into approbation Is new to your's alone; And prospers not: for know, Fame is as coy, as you Can be disdainful; and who dares to prove "Leave then this humour vain, And this more humorous strain, Where self-conceit, and choler of the blood, Then if you please those raptures high to touch, And but forbear your crown Till the world puts it on: No doubt, from all you may amazement draw, To console dejected Ben for this just reprimand, Randolph, one of the adopted poetical sons of Jonson, addressed him with all that warmth of grateful affection which a man of genius should have felt on the occasion. "An Answer to Mr. Ben Jonson's ODE, to persuade him not to leave the Stage. I: "Ben, do not leave the stage 'Cause 'tis a loathsome age; For pride and impudence will grow too bold, When they shall hear it told They frighted thee: Stand high as is thy cause, Their hiss is thy applause : Had they approv'd thy vein : So thou for them, and they for thee were born; II. "Will't thou engross thy store Of wheat, and pour no more, Because their bacon-brains have such a taste No! set them forth a board of dainties, full And thirst, midst all their wine. What greater plague can hell itself devise, III. "Thou canst not find them stuff, That will be bad enough To please their pallates: let 'em them refuse, She is too fair an hostess, 'twere a sin For them to like thine Inn: 'T was made to entertain Guests of a nobler strain, Yet if they will have any of the store, Give them some scraps, and send them from thy dore. IV. "And let those things in plush Till they be taught to blush, Like, what they will, and more contented be I know thy worth, and that thy lofty strains But thy great spleen doth rise, 'Cause moles will have no eyes: This only in my Ben I faulty find, He's angry, they'll not see him, that are blind. V. "Why shou'd the scene be mute 'Cause thou canst touch thy lute And string thy Horace? Let each muse of nine 'T were fond, to let all other flames expire, For by so strange neglect I should myself suspect Thy palsiet, were as well thy brain's disease, VI. "And tho' thou well canst sing The glories of thy king, And on the wings of verse his chariot bear Yet let thy muse as well some raptures raise, * His man, Richard Broome, wrote with success several comedies. He had been the amanuensis or attendant of Jonson. The epigram made appears to have been against Pope for the assistance W. Broome gave him, I would not have thee chuse Only a treble muse; But have this envious, ignorant age to know, ARIOSTO AND TASSo. I CONCEIVE the first to display an original, an extravagant, but a delightful genius: the other a regular, classical, and beautiful taste;-but it surprises one to find among the literary Italians his merits most keenly disputed: slaves to classical authority they bend down to the majestic regularity of Tasso. Yet the father of Tasso, before his son had rivalled the romantic Ariosto, describes in a letter the effects of the "Orlando" on the people :- "There is no man of learning, no mechanic, no lad, no girl, no old man, who are satisfied to read the " Orlando Furioso" once. This poem serves as the solace of the traveller, who fatigued in his travels, deceives his lassitude by chaunting some octaves of this poem. You may hear them sing these stanzas in the streets and in the fields every day, and by every one!" One would have expected that Ariosto would have been the favourite of the people, and Tasso, of the critics. I am assured by a native, that in Venice it is very common to hear the gondoliers, and others sing passages which are generally taken from Tasso, and rarely from Ariosto. A different fate I imagined would have attended the poet, who has been distinguished by the epithet of "The Divine." I have been told by an Italian man of letters, that this circumstance arises from the relation which Tasso's poem bears to Turkish affairs; as many of the common people have passed into Turkey, either through chance or War. Besides that the long antipathy existing between the Venetians and the Turks, gives additional force to the patriotic poetry of Tasso. We cannot boast of any similar poems. Thus it was that the people of Greece and Ionia sung the poems of Homer. The Academia della Crusca gave a public preference to Ariosto. This, as was natural to suppose, irritated certain critics, and none more than Chapelain, who could taste the regularity of Tasso, but not feel the "brave disorder" of Ariosto. He could not approve of those writers, "Who snatch a Grace beyond the reach of Art." On this occasion he writes to a friend, "I thank you for the sonnet which your indignation dictated, at the Academy's preference of Ariosto to Tasso. This judgment is overthrown by the confessions of many of the Cruscanti, my associates. It would be tedious to enter into its discussion; but it was passion and not equity that prompted that decision. We confess that as to what concerns |