LITERA TURE. characters tell us that we are at Rome. When he CHA P. leaps over some years, his characters must in like XVIII. manner become chronologists. Such news seldom comes naturally into the dialogue : it appears forced and constrained, and too often reminds us of that scene in the Critic, where the two officers at Tilbury Fort inform one another that Queen Elizabeth is their sovereign, and that the English hold the Protestant faith! It is said, however, and with great truth, that some cases will occur, in which you must relinquish beauties, unless you will break these rules. Here, however, as in all similar cases, we must weigh one advantage against the other; and whenever the beauties to be attained by a sacrifice of the unities are really sufficient to warrant that sacrifice, let no one doubt or hesitate to make it. Thus, in Joan of Arc, the nature of the story seems utterly to preclude the unities of either time or place. This was felt by Schiller; and who that reads his noble tragedy will not rejoice that he has ventured to "snatch a grace beyond the reach of art!" Thus again in Marino Faliero, the unity of place might have been still more strictly observed, had the Doge in the third act convened the conspirators in his palace, instead of going forth to meet them. But this would have lost us a splendid scene; and the latter course was therefore wisely preferred by Lord Byron, as he himself tells us in his preface. In fact, as it appears to me, a small temptation may be sufficient to justify a writer CHAP. for changing the scene to a short distance either XVIII. of time or space. Then the illusion is but LITERA TURE. slightly disturbed, and soon restored; and the audience not shocked by any breach of probability. In the Siege of Calais, for example, we not only forgive, but even expect, that the scene should pass sometimes without and sometimes within the walls. But where the action is made to extend over several years, or several hundred miles,-when, as in the Winter's Tale, we find a child not born in the first act, married in the fifth,—then I certainly think that the mind of the spectator recoils from the supposition, and that none but the very highest beauties of composition can redeem such an error of design. I think also, that the cases are by no means numerous, where any large departure from the unities is essential to the beauty of the play. Take the instance of Othello. Had it been attempted to make that play regular, the first act must have been laid like the four others at Cyprus, and the events at Venice left to Othello or Desdemona to relate. But would this necessarily have been a blemish? In epic poems it is admitted as a beauty, that part of the story should be told by the hero, while the rest is left to the narration of the poet. The same variety is not without its charm in tragedy. If we imagine, not what we ourselves could do, but what the genius of a Shakspeare could achieve, we shall perhaps in this, and in like cases, form to ourselves an idea of what might have been, not below the works which actually CHAP. exist. XVIII. On the whole then, I would not forego any beauty LITERA of description, or developement of character, for the TURE. sake of the unities. But where, without loss or detriment, it is possible to maintain them, I certainly think them an additional charm to the public, an additional merit in the poet. I would advise a writer to seek them, not to sacrifice to them. is on the same principle, that in versifying he should make every attempt to find a perfect rhyme before he uses a defective one. But if he cannot find any of the former, I would rather bear a faulty rhyme than lose a noble thought. It In our own times, not merely has the depreciation of the unities gained ground, but the poets of the age of Anne have been censured as carrying too far the smoothness and correctness of versification. Pope especially, as the foremost of this class, has been nibbled at by men whom, when alive, a single brandish of his pen would have silenced and struck down. He has been denied imagination, variety, true poetic genius, and allowed scarce any thing beyond the talent of harmonious numbers! But his defence has been promptly undertaken by gifted hands, and conducted in a manner worthy of himself and of them. Mr. Thomas Campbell has, with generous spirit and admirable sense, vindicated our British Horace.* Lord Byron point * Essay on English Poetry, pp. 260-268. ed. 1819. XVIII. TURE. CHAP. edly observes, that Pope is the only poet whose very faultlessness has been urged as his reproach, ITERA- and that he is only blamed as Aristides was banished, because the world are weary of hearing him called the Just. Nay, so eager was Byron to do justice to his predecessor, that he became unjust to himself: he compares the poetry of the last century to the Parthenon, and that of his own times to a Turkish mosque, and boasts, that though he had assisted in rearing the gaudy and fantastic edifice, he had ever refrained from defacing and despoiling the monuments of a purer taste.* may The real truth seems to be, that Pope's was not the highest class of poetry, but that in the second class he deserves to hold the very highest rank. It also be observed, that this class, though inferior in the scale of merit, is perhaps more generally and permanently pleasing than any other. Milton was undoubtedly a far greater poet than Pope; yet Paradise Lost too often remains praised but unread upon the shelf, while the Moral Essays are turned over by a thousand eager hands. I am far from saying, that this is a right taste; but I do say that it is, and I believe ever will be, the taste of the larger number of readers. When Pope is blamed for wanting the highest poetic flights, we should remember, that such flights did not accord with the subjects he had chosen, and that sublimity misplaced would only become ridiculous. Still less *Letter on the Rev. W. Bowles. XVIII. should he be condemned, as appears his frequent CHAP. fate, only because his imitators, for the following fifty years, were for the most part tasteless and insipid LITERA copyists of his harmony without his sense; or, to TURE. adopt his own expression, "word-catchers that live "on syllables"-who wrote, in very even balanced numbers, very chilling love-verses and very innocent satires! All this is true, yet all this reflects no discredit upon Pope. It is the fate of all great writers to produce many wretched imitations, and to become the model of all the aspiring dunces of their day. How many ponderous epics have come forth stillborn from the press in imitation of Milton! In our own time, what fooleries have been perpetrated, with Byron for their model! What shoals of would-be Laras and Harolds! How many an accom. plished young lady, with a richly bound album, has thought it fashionable to describe herself in it as plunged in the lowest depths of despair and hatred to mankind; as one "who dreads the darkness, and yet loathes the light"-who claims the "brother"hood of Cain"- whose hours are "all tortured "into ages!" But do all these mincing dainty miseries recoil against the illustrious source of them, and tarnish his great poetic name? And why then is Pope alone to be held responsible for the faults and follies of his copyists ? The writers of the age of Anne, by descending from the highest but less popular flights of poetry, and by refining the licentiousness which had heretofore prevailed, greatly extended and enlarged the |