Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage, Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night, And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.' 1 And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.] The two greatest poets of our nation have been divided in their sentiments of the testimony which Jonson gives in these verses to the merits and the genius of Shakspeare. Jonson, it must be owned, was not formed to that facility of praise, which flows indiscriminately where prejudice or humour point the way. His suffrage was never given, but matured by judgment, and authorised by science. Mr. Dryden calls it an invidious and sparing, but I incline to Mr. Pope's opinion in thinking it an ample and honourable panegyrick to the memory of his friend. WHAL. I should conceive that every unprejudiced reader must be of Whalley's mind. But is it possible to be silent and hear the warmest encomium, the most affectionate tribute of praise, that was ever offered to the memory of departed worth and genius, taxed with envy by every scribbler who is profligate enough to belie his understanding for the sake of indulging his malice? Jonson not only sets Shakspeare above his contemporaries, but above the ancients, whose works himself idolized, and of whose genuine merits. he was, perhaps, a more competent judge than any scholar of his age: yet for this glowing effusion, which does more credit to the talents and genius of Shakspeare than all that has since appeared on those subjects, Mr. Malone sneers at him, and Mr. Steevens adds to the insult. "Now let us compare the present eulogium of old Ben with such of his other sentiments as have reached posterity:" and he deliberately proceeds to re-copy the vile forgery of Macklin, which had been just detected and exposed in the preceding volume. With respect to the critical notions of Dryden, I utterly disclaim them. He saw clearly, and decided justly, where his interest or his passions did not interpose; but this was so frequently the case, that no reliance can be securely placed on any one opinion which he ever advanced. He hated, and what must astonish a reader of the present day, feared Shadwell; and because Shadwell spoke with respect of Jonson, and preferred him to all the dramatic writers of his own times, Dryden laboured to decry and injure him. This is the true secret of his criticism. It must mightily console the admirers of Shakspeare to find one so tremblingly alive to his reputation, as to discover a spirit of detraction in the panegyric of Jonson, thus atoning for the injustice, in his own name. "Shakspeare writes (Dryden says) in many XIII. ON THE HONOURED POEMS OF HIS HONOURED FRIEND, SIR JOHN BEAUMONT, BARONET. 康 2 HIS book will live; it hath a Genius; this Hence, then, profane! here needs no words expense In bulwarks, rav'lins, ramparts for defence: places below the dullest writers of ours or any precedent age. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost every where two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one ere you despise the other. His plots are lame, and made up, many of them, of some ridiculous and incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. Many of his plays, as the Winter's Tale, Love's Labour's Lost, and Measure for Measure, are either grounded on impossibilities, or, at least, so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment." I have yet a word to say of Dryden. Of all the dramatic writers of Charles's days, who traded in obscenity and profaneness, he is by far the most inexcusable. Nothing can be so stupid, nothing so loathsome as his perpetual struggle to be impious and immoral. It is evident that Nature built up this great poet for the defence of wisdom and virtue; and it is truly shocking to see him laboriously lashing and spurring his reluctant and jaded powers forward in the cause of vice. He is wicked by mere effort; but, happily, not dangerous :-and it is hard to decide whether his reader or himself is most obliged to the dulness which renders his mischievous propensities so innoxious. On the honoured poems of his honoured friend, sir John Beaumont.] I have taken the following copy from the complimentary verses, prefixed to the poems which it celebrates. Sir John Beaumont was the elder brother of Francis Beaumont the dramatic writer, and a man of genius and virtue. His poems were published after his decease, and dedicated to king Charles, by sir John Beau And doth deserve all muniments of praise, But higher power, as spight could not make less, mont, his son. The most esteemed amongst them is the poem of Bosworth Field. But the reader will be able to form some idea of his merit, from the following verses: AN EPITAPH UPON MY DEAR BROTHER FRANCIS BEAUMONT. "On Death thy murd'rer this revenge I take; All ears, all hearts, but Death's, could please and move." WHAL. XIV. TO MR. JOHN FLETCHER, UPON HIS FAITHFUL 康 SHEPHERDESS. HE wise, and many-headed bench, that sits Lady or pucelle, that wears mask or fan, With the shop's foreman, or some such brave spark Or moths shall eat what all these fools admire." XV. EPITAPH ON THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE.“ NDERNEATH this sable herse Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother; 3 This poem, which was taken by Whalley from Seward's edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, must have been written at an early period of Jonson's life, as the Faithful Shepherdess was brought out about 1610. See vol. vi. p. 286. Jonson has no reason to be ashamed of his prediction. Epitaph on the countess of Pembroke, &c.] This delicate Learn'd and fair, and good as she, epitaph is universally assigned to our author, though it hath never yet been printed with his works: it is therefore with some pleasure, that I have given it a place here. This lady, for whose entertainment sir Philip Sidney wrote the Arcadia, lived to a good old age, and died in 1621. She was buried in the cathedral of Salisbury, in the burial-place of the Pembroke family. WHAL. The exquisite beauty of this little piece (the most perfect of its kind) has drawn a word of approbation from the stern and cynical Osborne. "Lest I should seem (he says) to trespasse upon truth in the praise of this lady, I shall leave the world her epitaph, in which the author doth manifest himself a poet in all things but untruth." To the lines in the text, Osborne subjoins the following: "Marble piles let no man raise To her name, for after days. Shall turn statue, and become Both her mourner and her tomb." On this paltry addition, the editors of the Secret History of the Court of James I., who manifest on all occasions a strange hostility to our author, observe, "It is possible that Jonson cancelled these lines on account of the outrageous wit with which they disgrace the commencement." vol. i. p. 225. It is also possible that Jonson never saw them. Setting aside the absurdity of supposing the poet to say in one line, that such another character would never appear, and to admit in the next that nothing was so likely, the critics ought to have known (for the fact was very accessible) that the verses in question were copied from the poems of the earl of Pembroke, a humble votary of the Muses, to whose pen they are assigned by the prefix of his usual initials. There can, in fact, be no doubt that they proceeded from his lordship, whose singular affection for his venerable parent furnishes a ready apology for their defects. Whalley has said nothing of the literary merits of the countess of Pembroke, which were of a very distinguished nature. She wrote verse with grace and facility, and she translated the Tragedie of Antonie from the French: her chief works, however, were works of piety, and her virtues still went before her talents. This рань has been proved to be by ww. Brown |