in his metaphors. The Campaign is full of conventional imagery like the following: Or, Or, To vengeance roused the soldier fills his hand In crackling flames a thousand harvests burns; Mountains of slain lie heaped upon the ground, But, O my Muse what numbers wilt thou find Generalised descriptions such as the above and otiose epithets, such as "gay gilded scenes," "the gay victorious army," leave us with the frequent impression that Addison has been translating loosely from some Latin poet of the post-Augustan age. His narrative style in The Campaign may indeed be said to be the exact opposite of that of Lucan in the Pharsalia. Lucan, whom he would doubtless have condemned on principle as an incorrect poet, strives to show his cleverness by the unexpected form he gives to every sentence; Addison, when he has once settled on the proper turn of thought in each paragraph, is not sufficiently particular in the choice of words required to produce the general rhythmical effect. Such peculiarities of expression discover the tendencies of classical Whiggism in its transition from the extravagant Toryism of the antecedent era. They reflect the change from the feudal Absolutism of the Stuarts to the Parliamentary system of the eighteenth century. poetry of the earlier period, in one sense or another, generally involved the flattery of persons; the poetry that followed concerned itself more and more with the exposition of principles. Judged by the true balance of art the one school errs mainly by excess, the other by defect. Donne and Cowley seldom think faintly; they often think violently: their successors, while avoiding their extravagance, are apt to sink into mediocrity: the former in their metaphysical lyrics individualise their imagery so highly that they get out of sight of reason and common-sense: the latter generalise their expression in the heroic couplet, and thereby disguise the essential insipidity of their thought. The onward movement of the national imagination is continued by those poets of genius who have force enough to express the individuality of their own character within the classical limitations which the taste of their age requires. CHAPTER III WHIG AND TORY HEROIC, MOCK - HEROIC, AND DIDACTIC VERSE AFTER THE REVOLUTION: SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE; SIR SAMUEL GARTH; JOHN Philips. THE negative political character of the Whig victory is further reflected in the turn of poetical invention during the years immediately following the fall of James II. A certain wild vigour marks the poetry of action in the whole period of the Restoration of the Stuarts. The feverish extravagances of the heroic play; the unrestrained license of Caroline comedy; the virulent exchange of personal abuse between Whig and Tory satirists, are all marks of an age when public imagination was concentrated on the amusements and interests of a semi-absolute Court. When those amusements and interests disappeared, the poets of the day were deprived of a powerful external stimulus to invention. There was nothing in the Court of William and Mary or of Anne to supply the place of the joyous dissipation of Charles II. The social fashions of those monarchs were decorous, but they were also dull. On the other hand, some compensation was made for the failure of Court patronage by the increased interest of the public in literature. By the termination of the civil conflict, the people were able to extend their imagination to spheres of taste lying beyond the range of politics. During the reign of William III., Dryden was chiefly engaged on his translation of Virgil, his intended trans lation of Homer, and those other experiments of general literary interest which are preserved in the volume containing his Fables. All his writing at this period indicates his consciousness of the growth of a fresh audience, making new kinds of demand upon the imagination; and the taste to which he ministered with supreme genius guided, though it scarcely stimulated, the humbler efforts of his contemporaries. The poetry of the time, if far from lively, is of some interest, on account of the new tendencies it reveals. Even Blackmore's grotesque attempts at epic poetry show signs of originality, and his didactic verse is often marked by an excellence that forecasts the coming of Pope's ethical style. Garth's Dispensary is the prelude to The Rape of the Lock; John Philips, in his Splendid Shilling and Cider, strikes a new vein of metrical composition, which is destined to be largely developed in the course of the eighteenth century. The work of all three poets deserves attention, not so much in itself as in its illustration of the temper of the age included between the Revolution of 1688 and the Treaty of Utrecht. Richard Blackmore was the son of Robert Blackmore of Corsham in Wiltshire (supposed to have been an attorney), and was born some time after 1650. He was sent to Westminster when thirteen years of age, and passed thence in 1668 to St. Edmund's Hall, Oxford, where he took his M.A. degree on the 3rd of June 1676. After residing at Oxford in all for thirteen years, he travelled in Italy, and in Padua was made Doctor of Medicine. In 1687 he became Fellow of the College of Physicians. He seems to have obtained in his profession a high reputation and a considerable practice, which probably lay mainly among the merchants of the City, where he had a house in Cheapside. It does not appear how, in the midst of so much business, he first came to turn his thoughts to poetry. "I had read but little poetry throughout my whole life," he says in the preface to King Arthur, "and in fifteen years before I had not, as I can remember, wrote a hundred lines in verse, excepting a copy of Latin verse 1714 in honour of a friend's book." In his preface to Prince Arthur, he says he was mainly inspired by a wish to produce some form of entertainment which should occupy the imagination of the young more innocently than did the vicious comedies of the age. "I have also," said he, in his preface to King Arthur, "another reason . . . and that is, that I am so far fallen out with all hypotheses in Philosophy, and all doctrines of Physic, that I am almost reduced to a sceptical despair." If he had learned from his profession that life was short, he did not seem to recognise that art was long; for in the same preface he informs us that Prince Arthur was "begun, carried on, and completed in less than two years' time, and by such catches and starts, and in such occasional uncertain hours as the business of my profession would afford me. And, therefore, for the greatest part, that poem was written in coffee-houses, and in passing up and down the streets, because I had little leisure elsewhere to apply to it." This poem-which contained ten books-was extremely popular. It passed through three editions in two years, and won the admiration of the unpoetical John Locke. Stimulated by his success, Blackmore continued the adventures of his hero in King Arthur, an epic of twelve books, celebrating Arthur's conquest of France and the capture of Lutetia. Johnson says: "The malignity of the wits attributed his knighthood to his new poem; but King William was not very studious of poetry." Blackmore was certainly knighted and made physician-in-ordinary to the King in 1697; and I think it is more than probable that these honours were the reward of King Arthur, an epic poem, intended to allegorise the exploits of King William in his war against France. In it Louis XIV. is satirised under the name of King Clotar, a monstrous tyrant, who persecutes the Christians (ie. the Huguenots), and makes his meals on the raw limbs of his subjects; while the Assassination Plot of 1696 forms an episode in the action, and flattering portraits, under fictitious names, are drawn of the Whig Ministers, Somers and Halifax. |