1 XVIII. LITERA TURE. CHAP. 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. 66 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 Spanish verse of Calderon. ‡ * See her letter to Pope, April 1. 1717. The Giaour, v. 21. The Bride of Abydos, conclusion, &c. "Ave que canto amo rosa." CALDERON, El Magico Prodigioso; a most remarkable performance; I think, in some respects, superior to Faust. XVIII. LITERA TURE. But the English imitators rather preferred to fix CHAP. 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 shroud! 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 "Quando el Sol cayendo vaya "Al gran cadaver de oro, "Son monumentos de plata!" XVIII. TURE. CHAP. rapturous descriptions, or overflowings of ardent passion, that we find to condemn; but his faLITERA- Vourite 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 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. LITERA Or who has ever exceeded in their different styles CHA P. and subjects the poetry of Pope, Swift, Gay, and XVIII. Prior? By these, and such as these, was our literature enriched and refined, and our language TUKE. 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 CHA P. loftiness and genius, but far more correctness. XVIII. LITERA TURE. 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. 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 |