Chapter 43

Had these "Wit-combats," between Shakspeare and Jonson, which Fuller notices, been chronicled by some faithful _Boswell_ of the age, our literary history would have received an interesting accession. A letter has been published by Dr. Berkenhout relating to an evening's conversation between our great rival bards, and Alleyn the actor. Peele, a dramatic poet, writes to his friend Marlow, another poet. The Doctor unfortunately in giving this copy did not recollect his authority.

"FRIEND MARLOW,

"I never longed for thy companye more than last night: we were all very merrye at the Globe, where Ned Alleyn did not scruple to affirme pleasantly to thy friend WILL, that he had stolen his speech about the qualityes of an actor's excellencye in Hamlet his Tragedye, from conversations manyfold which had passed between them, and opinyons given by Alleyn touchinge this subject. SHAKSPEARE did not take this talk in good sorte; but JONSON put an end to the strife, by wittylie remarking,--this affaire needeth no contention: you stole it from NED, no doubt, do not marvel; have you not seen him act times out of number?"

This letter is one of those ingenious forgeries which the late George Steevens practised on the literary antiquary; they were not always of this innocent cast. The present has been frequently quoted as an original document. I have preserved it as an example of _Literary Forgeries_, and the danger which literary historians incur by such nefarious practices.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 101: Marana appears to have carelessly deserted his literary offspring. It is not improbable that his English translators continued his plan, and that their volumes were translated; so that what appears the French original may be, for the greater part, of our own home manufacture. The superiority of the first part was early perceived. The history of our ancient Grub-street is enveloped in the obscurity of its members, and there are more claimants than one for the honour of this continuation. We know too little of Marana to account for his silence; Cervantes was indignant at the impudent genius who dared to continue the immortal Quixote.

The tale remains imperfectly told.

See a correspondence on this subject in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1840 and 1841.]

BEN JONSON, FELTHAM, AND RANDOLPH.

Ben Jonson, like most celebrated wits, was very unfortunate in conciliating the affections of his brother writers. He certainly possessed a great share of arrogance, and was desirous of ruling the realms of Parnassus with a despotic sceptre. That he was not always successful in his theatrical compositions is evident from his abusing, in their title-page, the actors and the public. In this he has been imitated by Fielding. I have collected the following three satiric odes, written when the reception of his "_New Inn_, or _The Light Heart_," warmly exasperated the irritable disposition of our poet.

He printed the title in the following manner:--

"_The New Inn_, or _The Light Heart_; a Comedy never acted, but most negligently played by some, the King's servants; and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the King's subjects, 1629. Now at last set at liberty to the readers, his Majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged, 1631."

At the end of this play he published the following Ode, in which he threatens to quit the stage for ever; and turn at once a Horace, an Anacreon, and a Pindar.

"The just indignation the author took at the vulgar censure of his play, begat this following Ode to himself:--

Come, leave the loathed stage, And the more loathsome age; Where pride and impudence (in faction knit,) Usurp the chair of wit; Inditing and arraigning every day Something they call a play. Let their fastidious, vaine Commission of braine Run on, and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn; They were not made for thee,--less thou for them.

Say that thou pour'st them wheat, And they will acorns eat; 'Twere simple fury, still, thyself to waste On such as have no taste! To offer them a surfeit of pure bread, Whose appetites are dead! No, give them graines their fill, Husks, draff, to drink and swill. If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, Envy them not their palate with the swine.

No doubt some mouldy tale Like PERICLES,[102] and stale As the shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish-- Scraps, out of every dish Thrown forth, and rak't into the common-tub, May keep up the play-club: There sweepings do as well As the best order'd meale, For who the relish of these guests will fit, Needs set them but the almes-basket of wit.

And much good do't you then, Brave plush and velvet men Can feed on orts, and safe in your stage clothes, Dare quit, upon your oathes, The stagers, and the stage-wrights too (your peers), Of larding your large ears With their foul comic socks, Wrought upon twenty blocks: Which if they're torn, and turn'd, and patch'd enough The gamesters share your gilt and you their stuff.

Leave things so prostitute, And take the Alcæick lute, Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyre; Warm thee by Pindar's fire; And, tho' thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold, Ere years have made thee old, Strike that disdainful heat Throughout, to their defeat; As curious fools, and envious of thy strain, May, blushing, swear no palsy's in thy brain.[103]

But when they hear thee sing The glories of thy King, His zeal to God, and his just awe o'er men, They may blood-shaken then, Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers, As they shall cry 'like ours, In sound of peace, or wars, No harp ere hit the stars, In tuning forth the acts of his sweet raign, And raising Charles his chariot 'bove his wain.'"

This Magisterial Ode, as Langbaine calls it, was answered by _Owen Feltham_, author of the admirable "Resolves," who has written with great satiric acerbity the retort courteous. His character of this poet should be attended to:--

AN ANSWER TO THE ODE, COME LEAVE THE LOATHED STAGE, &C.

Come leave this sawcy way Of baiting those that pay Dear for the sight of your declining wit: 'Tis known it is not fit That a sale poet, just contempt once thrown, Should cry up thus his own. I wonder by what dower, Or patent, you had power From all to rape a judgment. Let't suffice, Had you been modest, y'ad been granted wise.

'Tis known you can do well, And that you do excell As a translator; but when things require A genius, and fire, Not kindled heretofore by other pains, As oft y'ave wanted brains And art to strike the white, As you have levell'd right: Yet if men vouch not things apocryphal, You bellow, rave, and spatter round your gall.

Jug, Pierce, Peek, Fly,[104] and all Your jests so nominal, Are things so far beneath an able brain, As they do throw a stain Thro' all th' unlikely plot, and do displease As deep as PERICLES. Where yet there is not laid Before a chamber-maid Discourse so weigh'd,[105] as might have serv'd of old For schools, when they of love and valour told.

Why rage, then? when the show Should judgment be, and know-[106] ledge, there are plush who scorn to drudge For stages, yet can judge Not only poet's looser lines, but wits, And all their perquisits; A gift as rich as high Is noble poesie: Yet, tho' in sport it be for Kings to play, 'Tis next mechanicks' when it works for pay.

Alcæus lute had none, Nor loose Anacreon E'er taught so bold assuming of the bays When they deserv'd no praise. To rail men into approbation Is new to your's alone: And prospers not: for known, Fame is as coy, as you Can be disdainful; and who dares to prove A rape on her shall gather scorn--not love.

Leave then this humour vain, And this more humourous strain, Where self-conceit, and choler of the blood, Eclipse what else is good: Then, if you please those raptures high to touch, Whereof you boast so much: And but forbear your crown Till the world puts it on: No doubt, from all you may amazement draw, Since braver theme no Phoebus ever saw.

To console dejected Ben for this just reprimand, Randolph, 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: More just were thy disdain, Had they approved thy vein: So thou for them, and they for thee were born; They to incense, and thou as much to scorn.

II.

Wilt thou engross thy store Of wheat, and pour no more, Because their bacon-brains had such a taste As more delight in mast: No! set them forth a board of dainties, full As thy best muse can cull Whilst they the while do pine And thirst, midst all their wine. What greater plague can hell itself devise, Than to be willing thus to tantalise?

III.

Thou canst not find them stuff, That will be bad enough To please their palates: let 'em them refuse, For some Pye-corner muse; She is too fair an hostess, 'twere a sin For them to like thine Inn: 'Twas 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 With what Broome[107] swept from thee. I know thy worth, and that thy lofty strains Write not to cloaths, but brains: 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 the lute And string thy Horace! Let each Muse of nine Claim thee, and say, th'art mine. 'Twere fond, to let all other flames expire, To sit by Pindar's fire: For by so strange neglect I should myself suspect Thy palsie were as well thy brain's disease, If they could shake thy muse which way they please.

VI.

And tho' thou well canst sing The glories of thy King, And on the wings of verse his chariot bear To heaven, and fix it there; Yet let thy muse as well some raptures raise To please him, as to praise. I would not have thee chuse Only a treble muse; But have this envious, ignorant age to know, Thou that canst sing so high, canst reach as low.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 102: This play, Langbaine says, is written by Shakspeare.]

[Footnote 103: He had the palsy at that time.]

[Footnote 104: The names of several of Jonson's dramatis personæ.]

[Footnote 105: New Inn, Act iii. Scene 2.--Act iv. Scene 4.]

[Footnote 106: This break was purposely designed by the poet, to expose that singular one in Ben's third stanza.]

[Footnote 107: His man, Richard Broome, wrote with success several comedies. He had been the amanuensis or attendant of Jonson. The epigram made against Pope for the assistance W. Broome gave him appears to have been borrowed from this pun. Johnson has inserted it in "Broome's Life."]

ARIOSTO AND TASSO.

It surprises one to find among the literary Italians the merits of Ariosto 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 effect of the "Orlando" on the people:--"There is no man of learning, no mechanic, no lad, no girl, no old man, who is satisfied to read the 'Orlando Furioso' once. This poem serves as the solace of the traveller, who fatigued on his journey deceives his lassitude by chanting some octaves of this poem. You may hear them sing these stanzas in the streets and in the fields every day." One would have expected that Ariosto would have been the favourite of the people, and Tasso of the critics. But in Venice 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 arose from the relation which Tasso's poem bears to Turkish affairs; as many of the common people have passed into Turkey either by chance or by war. Besides, the long antipathy existing between the Venetians and the Turks gave 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 sang the poems of Homer.

The Accademia della Crusca gave a public preference to Ariosto. This 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.

"I thank you," he writes, "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 invention and purity of language, Ariosto has eminently the advantage over Tasso; but majesty, pomp, numbers, and a style truly sublime, united to regularity of design, raise the latter so much above the other that no comparison can fairly exist."

The decision of Chapelain is not unjust; though I did not know that Ariosto's language was purer than Tasso's.

Dr. Cocchi, the great Italian critic, compared "Ariosto's poem to the richer kind of harlequin's habit, made up of pieces of the very best silk, and of the liveliest colours. The parts of it are, many of them, _more beautiful_ than in Tasso's poem, but the whole in Tasso is without comparison more of a piece and better made." The critic was extricating himself as safely as he could out of this critical dilemma; for the disputes were then so violent, that I think one of the disputants took to his bed, and was said to have died of Ariosto and Tasso.

It is the conceit of an Italian to give the name of _April_ to _Ariosto_, because it is the season of _flowers_; and that of _September_ to _Tasso_, which is that of _fruits_. Tiraboschi judiciously observes that no comparison ought to be made between these great rivals. It is comparing "Ovid's Metamorphoses" with "Virgil's Æneid;" they are quite different things. In his characters of the two poets, he distinguishes between a romantic poem and a regular epic. Their designs required distinct perfections. But an English reader is not enabled by the wretched versions of Hoole to echo the verse of La Fontaine, "JE CHERIS L'Arioste et J'ESTIME le Tasse."

Boileau, some time before his death, was asked by a critic if he had repented of his celebrated decision concerning the merits of Tasso, which some Italians had compared with those of Virgil? Boileau had hurled his bolts at these violators of classical majesty. It is supposed that he was ignorant of the Italian language, but some expressions in his answer may induce us to think that he was not.

"I have so little changed my opinion, that, on a _re-perusal_ lately of Tasso, I was sorry that I had not more amply explained myself on this subject in some of my reflections on 'Longinus.' I should have begun by acknowledging that Tasso had a sublime genius, of great compass, with happy dispositions for the higher poetry. But when I came to the use he made of his talents, I should have shown that judicious discernment rarely prevailed in his works. That in the greater portion of his narrations he attached himself to the agreeable, oftener than to the just. That his descriptions are almost always overcharged with superfluous ornaments. That in painting the strongest passions, and in the midst of the agitations they excite, frequently he degenerates into witticisms, which abruptly destroy the pathetic. That he abounds with images of too florid a kind; affected turns; conceits and frivolous thoughts; which, far from being adapted to his Jerusalem, could hardly be supportable in his 'Aminta.' So that all this, opposed to the gravity, the sobriety, the majesty of Virgil, what is it but tinsel compared with gold?"

The merits of Tasso seem here precisely discriminated; and this criticism must be valuable to the lovers of poetry. The errors of Tasso were national.

In Venice the gondoliers know by heart long passages from Ariosto and Tasso, and often chant them with a peculiar melody. Goldoni, in his life, notices the gondolier returning with him to the city: "He turned the prow of the gondola towards the city, singing all the way the twenty-sixth stanza of the sixteenth canto of the Jerusalem Delivered." The late Mr. Barry once chanted to me a passage of Tasso in the manner of the gondoliers; and I have listened to such from one who in his youth had himself been a gondolier. An anonymous gentleman has greatly obliged me with his account of the recitation of these poets by the gondoliers of Venice.

There are always two concerned, who alternately sing the strophes. We know the melody eventually by Rousseau, to whose songs it is printed; it has properly no melodious movement, and is a sort of medium between the canto fermo and the canto figurato; it approaches to the former by recitativical declamation, and to the latter by passages and course, by which one syllable is detained and embellished.

I entered a gondola by moonlight: one singer placed himself forwards, and the other aft, and thus proceeded to Saint Giorgio. One began the song: when he had ended his strophe the other took up the lay, and so continued the song alternately. Throughout the whole of it, the same notes invariably returned; but, according to the subject matter of the strophe, they laid a greater or a smaller stress, sometimes on one, and sometimes on another note, and indeed changed the enunciation of the whole strophe, as the object of the poem altered.

On the whole, however, their sounds were hoarse and screaming: they seemed, in the manner of all rude uncivilised men, to make the excellency of their singing consist in the force of their voice: one seemed desirous of conquering the other by the strength of his lungs, and so far from receiving delight from this scene (shut up as I was in the box of the gondola), I found myself in a very unpleasant situation.

My companion, to whom I communicated this circumstance, being very desirous to keep up the credit of his countrymen, assured me that this singing was very delightful when heard at a distance. Accordingly we got out upon the shore, leaving one of the singers in the gondola, while the other went to the distance of some hundred paces. They now began to sing against one another; and I kept walking up and down between them both, so as always to leave him who was to begin his part. I frequently stood still, and hearkened to the one and to the other.

Here the scene was properly introduced. The strong declamatory, and, as it were, shrieking sound, met the ear from far, and called forth the attention; the quickly succeeding transitions, which necessarily required to be sung in a lower tone, seemed like plaintive strains succeeding the vociferations of emotion or of pain. The other, who listened attentively, immediately began where the former left off, answering him in milder or more vehement notes, according as the purport of the strophe required. The sleepy canals, the lofty buildings, the splendour of the moon, the deep shadows of the few gondolas that moved like spirits hither and thither, increased the striking peculiarity of the scene, and amidst all these circumstances it was easy to confess the character of this wonderful harmony.

It suits perfectly well with an idle solitary mariner, lying at length in his vessel at rest on one of these canals, waiting for his company or for a fare; the tiresomeness of which situation is somewhat alleviated by the songs and poetical stories he has in memory. He often raises his voice as loud as he can, which extends itself to a vast distance over the tranquil mirror; and, as all is still around, he is as it were in a solitude in the midst of a large and populous town. Here is no rattling of carriages, no noise of foot passengers; a silent gondola glides now and then by him, of which the splashing of the oars is scarcely to be heard.

At a distance he hears another, perhaps utterly unknown to him. Melody and verse immediately attach the two strangers; he becomes the responsive echo to the former, and exerts himself to be heard as he had heard the other. By a tacit convention they alternate verse for verse; though the song should last the whole night through, they entertain, themselves without fatigue; the hearers, who are passing between the two, take part in the amusement.

This vocal performance sounds best at a great distance, and is then inexpressibly charming, as it only fulfils its design in the sentiment of remoteness. It is plaintive, but not dismal in its sound; and at times it is scarcely possible to refrain from tears. My companion, who otherwise was not a very delicately organised person, said quite unexpectedly, "E singolare come quel canto intenerisce, e molto più quando la cantano meglio."

I was told that the women of Lido, the long row of islands that divides the Adriatic from the Lagouns, particularly the women of the extreme districts of Malamocca and Palestrina, sing in like manner the works of Tasso to these and similar tunes.

They have the custom, when their husbands are fishing out at sea, to sit along the shore in the evenings and vociferate these songs, and continue to do so with great violence, till each of them can distinguish the responses of her own husband at a distance.

How much more delightful and more appropriate does this song show itself here, than the call of a solitary person uttered far and wide, till another equally disposed shall hear and answer him! It is the expression of a vehement and hearty longing, which yet is every moment nearer to the happiness of satisfaction.

Lord Byron has told us that with the independence of Venice the song of the gondolier has died away--

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more.