Chapter 5

_Guise_.--This, I think, rather aggravates than alleviates your guilt. How could you study and comment upon Livy with so acute and profound an understanding, and afterwards write a book so absolutely repugnant to all the lessons of policy taught by that sage and moral historian? How could you, who had seen the picture of virtue so amiably drawn by his hand, and who seemed yourself to be sensible of all its charms, fall in love with a fury, and set up her dreadful image as an object of worship to princes?

_Machiavel_.--I was seduced by vanity. My heart was formed to love virtue. But I wanted to be thought a greater genius in politics than Aristotle or Plato. Vanity, sir, is a passion as strong in authors as ambition in princes, or rather it is the same passion exerting itself differently. I was a Duke of Guise in the republic of letters.

_Guise_.--The bad influences of your guilt have reached further than mine, and been more lasting. But, Heaven be praised, your credit is at present much declining in Europe. I have been told by some shades who are lately arrived here, that the ablest statesman of his time, a king, with whose fame the world is filled, has answered your book, and confuted all the principles of it, with a noble scorn and abhorrence. I am also assured, that in England there is a great and good king, whose whole life has been a continued opposition to your evil system; who has hated all cruelty, all fraud, all falseness; whose word has been sacred, whose honour inviolate; who has made the laws of his kingdom the rules of his government, and good faith and a regard for the liberty of mankind the principles of his conduct with respect to foreign powers; who reigns more absolutely now in the hearts of his people, and does greater things by the confidence they place in him, and by the efforts they make from the generous zeal of affection, than any monarch ever did, or ever will do, by all the arts of iniquity which you recommended.

DIALOGUE XIII.

VIRGIL--HORACE--MERCURY--SCALIGER THE ELDER.

_Virgil_.--My dear Horace, your company is my greatest delight, even in the Elysian Fields. No wonder it was so when we lived together in Rome. Never had man so genteel, so agreeable, so easy a wit, or a temper so pliant to the inclinations of others in the intercourse of society. And then such integrity, such fidelity, such generosity in your nature! A soul so free from all envy, so benevolent, so sincere, so placable in its anger, so warm and constant in its affections! You were as necessary to Maecenas as he to Augustus. Your conversation sweetened to him all the cares of his ministry; your gaiety cheered his drooping spirits; and your counsels assisted him when he wanted advice. For you were capable, my dear Horace, of counselling statesmen. Your sagacity, your discretion, your secrecy, your clear judgment in all affairs, recommended you to the confidence, not of Maecenas alone, but of Augustus himself; which you nobly made use of to serve your old friends of the republican party, and to confirm both the minister and the prince in their love of mild and moderate measures, yet with a severe restraint of licentiousness, the most dangerous enemy to the whole commonwealth under any form of government.

_Horace_.--To be so praised by Virgil would have put me in Elysium while I was alive. But I know your modesty will not suffer me, in return for these encomiums, to speak of your character. Supposing it as perfect as your poems, you would think, as you did of them, that it wanted correction.

_Virgil_.--Don't talk of my modesty. How much greater was yours, when you disclaimed the name of a poet, you whose odes are so noble, so harmonious, so sublime!

_Horace_.--I felt myself too inferior to the dignity of that name.

_Virgil_.--I think you did like Augustus, when he refused to accept the title of king, but kept all the power with which it was ever attended. Even in your Epistles and Satires, where the poet was concealed, as much as he could be, you may properly be compared to a prince in disguise, or in his hours of familiarity with his intimate friends: the pomp and majesty were let drop, but the greatness remained.

_Horace_.--Well, I will not contradict you; and, to say the truth, I should do it with no very good grace, because in some of my Odes I have not spoken so modestly of my own poetry as in my Epistles. But to make you know your pre-eminence over me and all writers of Latin verse, I will carry you to Quintilian, the best of all Roman critics, who will tell you in what rank you ought to be placed.

_Virgil_.--I fear his judgment of me was biassed by your commendation. But who is this shade that Mercury is conducting? I never saw one that stalked with so much pride, or had such ridiculous arrogance expressed in his looks!

_Horace_.--They come towards us. Hail, Mercury! What is this stranger with you?

_Mercury_.--His name is Julius Caesar Scaliger, and he is by profession a critic.

_Horace_.--Julius Caesar Scaliger! He was, I presume, a dictator in criticism.

_Mercury_.--Yes, and he has exercised his sovereign power over you.

_Horace_.--I will not presume to oppose it. I had enough of following Brutus at Philippi.

_Mercury_.--Talk to him a little. He'll amuse you. I brought him to you on purpose.

_Horace_.--Virgil, do you accost him. I can't do it with proper gravity. I shall laugh in his face.

_Virgil_.--Sir, may I ask for what reason you cast your eyes so superciliously upon Horace and me? I don't remember that Augustus ever looked down upon us with such an air of superiority when we were his subjects.

_Scaliger_.--He was only a sovereign over your bodies, and owed his power to violence and usurpation. But I have from Nature an absolute dominion over the wit of all authors, who are subjected to me as the greatest of critics or hypercritics.

_Virgil_.--Your jurisdiction, great sir, is very extensive. And what judgments have you been pleased to pass upon us?

_Scaliger_.--Is it possible you should be ignorant of my decrees? I have placed you, Virgil, above Homer, whom I have shown to be--

_Virgil_.--Hold, sir. No blasphemy against my master.

_Horace_.--But what have you said of me?

_Scaliger_.--I have said that I had rather have written the little dialogue between you and Lydia than have been made king of Arragon.

_Horace_.--If we were in the other world you should give me the kingdom, and take both the ode and the lady in return. But did you always pronounce so favourably for us?

_Scaliger_.--Send for my works and read them. Mercury will bring them to you with the first learned ghost that arrives here from Europe. There is instruction for you in them. I tell you of your faults. But it was my whim to commend that little ode, and I never do things by halves. When I give praise, I give it liberally, to show my royal bounty. But I generally blame, to exert all the vigour of my censorian power, and keep my subjects in awe.

_Horace_.--You did not confine your sovereignty to poets; you exercised it, no doubt, over all other writers.

_Scaliger_.--I was a poet, a philosopher, a statesman, an orator, an historian, a divine without doing the drudgery of any of these, but only censuring those who did, and showing thereby the superiority of my genius over them all.

_Horace_.--A short way, indeed, to universal fame! And I suppose you were very peremptory in your decisions?

_Scaliger_.--Peremptory! ay. If any man dared to contradict my opinions I called him a dunce, a rascal, a villain, and frightened him out of his wits.

_Virgil_.--But what said others to this method of disputation?

_Scaliger_.--They generally believed me because of the confidence of my assertions, and thought I could not be so insolent or so angry if I was not absolutely sure of being in the right. Besides, in my controversies, I had a great help from the language in which I wrote. For one can scold and call names with a much better grace in Latin than in French or any tame modern tongue.

_Horace_.--Have not I heard that you pretended to derive your descent from the princes of Verona?

_Scaliger_.--Pretended! Do you presume to deny it?

_Horace_.--Not I, indeed. Genealogy is not my science. If you should claim to descend in a direct line from King Midas I would not dispute it.

_Virgil_.--I wonder, Scaliger, that you stooped to so low an ambition. Was it not greater to reign over all Mount Parnassus than over a petty state in Italy?

_Scaliger_.--You say well. I was too condescending to the prejudices of vulgar opinion. The ignorant multitude imagine that a prince is a greater man than a critic. Their folly made me desire to claim kindred with the Scalas of Verona.

_Horace_.--Pray, Mercury, how do you intend to dispose of this august person? You can't think it proper to let him remain with us. He must be placed with the demigods; he must go to Olympus.

_Mercury_.--Be not afraid. He shall not trouble you long. I brought him hither to divert you with the sight of an animal you never had seen, and myself with your surprise. He is the chief of all the modern critics, the most renowned captain of that numerous and dreadful band. Whatever you may think of him, I can seriously assure you that before he went mad he had good parts and great learning. But I will now explain to you the original cause of the absurdities he has uttered. His mind was formed in such a manner that, like some perspective glasses, it either diminished or magnified all objects too much; but, above all others, it magnified the good man to himself. This made him so proud that it turned his brain. Now I have had my sport with him, I think it will be charity to restore him to his senses, or rather to bestow what Nature denied him--a sound judgment. Come hither, Scaliger. By this touch of my Caduceus I give thee power to see things as they are, and, among others, thyself. Look, gentlemen, how his countenance is fallen in a moment! Hear what he says. He is talking to himself.

_Scaliger_.--Bless me! with what persons have I been discoursing? With Virgil and Horace! How could I venture to open my lips in their presence? Good Mercury, I beseech you let me retire from a company for which I am very unfit. Let me go and hide my head in the deepest shade of that grove which I see in the valley. After I have performed a penance there, I will crawl on my knees to the feet of those illustrious shades, and beg them to see me burn my impertinent books of criticism in the fiery billows of Phlegethon with my own hands.

_Mercury_.--They will both receive thee into favour. This mortification of truly knowing thyself is a sufficient atonement for thy former presumption.

DIALOGUE XIV.

BOILEAU--POPE.

_Boileau_.--Mr. Pope, you have done me great honour. I am told that you made me your model in poetry, and walked on Parnassus in the same paths which I had trod.

_Pope_.--We both followed Horace, but in our manner of imitation, and in the turn of our natural genius, there was, I believe, much resemblance. We both were too irritable and too easily hurt by offences, even from the lowest of men. The keen edge of our wit was frequently turned against those whom it was more a shame to contend with than an honour to vanquish.

_Boileau_.--Yes. But in general we were the champions of good morals, good sense, and good learning. If our love of these was sometimes heated into anger against those who offended them no less than us, is that anger to be blamed?

_Pope_.--It would have been nobler if we had not been parties in the quarrel. Our enemies observe that neither our censure nor our praise was always impartial.

_Boileau_.--It might perhaps have been better if in some instances we had not praised or blamed so much. But in panegyric and satire moderation is insipid.

_Pope_.--Moderation is a cold unpoetical virtue. Mere historical truth is better written in prose. And, therefore, I think you did judiciously when you threw into the fire your history of Louis le Grand, and trusted his fame to your poems.

_Boileau_.--When those poems were published that monarch was the idol of the French nation. If you and I had not known, in our occasional compositions, how to speak to the passions, as well as to the sober reason of mankind, we should not have acquired that despotic authority in the empire of wit which made us so formidable to all the inferior tribe of poets in England and France. Besides, sharp satirists want great patrons.

_Pope_.--All the praise which my friends received from me was unbought. In this, at least, I may boast a superiority over the pensioned Boileau.

_Boileau_.--A pension in France was an honourable distinction. Had you been a Frenchman you would have ambitiously sought it; had I been an Englishman I should have proudly declined it. If our merit in other respects be not unequal, this difference will not set me much below you in the temple of virtue or of fame.

_Pope_.--It is not for me to draw a comparison between our works. But, if I may believe the best critics who have talked to me on the subject, my "Rape of the Lock" is not inferior to your "Lutrin;" and my "Art of Criticism" may well be compared with your "Art of Poetry;" my "Ethic Epistles" are esteemed at least equal to yours; and my "Satires" much better.

_Boileau_.--Hold, Mr. Pope. If there is really such a sympathy in our natures as you have supposed, there may be reason to fear that, if we go on in this manner comparing our works, we shall not part in good friendship.

_Pope_.--No, no; the mild air of the Elysian Fields has mitigated my temper, as I presume it has yours. But, in truth, our reputations are nearly on a level. Our writings are admired, almost equally (as I hear) for energy and justness of thought. We both of us carried the beauty of our diction, and the harmony of our numbers, to the highest perfection that our languages would admit. Our poems were polished to the utmost degree of correctness, yet without losing their fire, or the agreeable appearance of freedom and ease. We borrowed much from the ancients, though you, I believe, more than I; but our imitations (to use an expression of your own) had still an original air.

_Boileau_.--I will confess, sir (to show you that the Elysian climate has had its effects upon me), I will fairly confess, without the least ill humour, that in your "Eloisa to Abelard," your "Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady," and some others you wrote in your youth, there is more fire of poetry than in any of mine. You excelled in the pathetic, which I never approached. I will also allow that you hit the manner of Horace and the sly delicacy of his wit more exactly than I, or than any other man who has written since his time. Nor could I, nor did even Lucretius himself, make philosophy so poetical, and embellish it with such charms as you have given to that of Plato, or (to speak more properly) of some of his modern disciples, in your celebrated "Essay on Man."

_Pope_.--What do you think of my "Homer?"

_Boileau_.--Your "Homer" is the most spirited, the most poetical, the most elegant, and the most pleasing translation that ever was made of any ancient poem, though not so much in the manner of the original, or so exactly agreeable to the sense in all places, as might perhaps be desired. But when I consider the years you spent in this work, and how many excellent original poems you might, with less difficulty, have produced in that time, I can't but regret that your talents were thus employed. A great poet so tied down to a tedious translation is a Columbus chained to an oar. What new regions of fancy, full of treasures yet untouched, might you have explored, if you had been at liberty to have boldly expanded your sails, and steered your own course, under the conduct and direction of your own genius! But I am still more angry with you for your edition of Shakespeare. The office of an editor was below you, and your mind was unfit for the drudgery it requires. Would anybody think of employing a Raphael to clean an old picture?

_Pope_.--The principal cause of my undertaking that task was zeal for the honour of Shakespeare; and, if you knew all his beauties as well as I, you would not wonder at this zeal. No other author had ever so copious, so bold, so creative an imagination, with so perfect a knowledge of the passions, the humours, and sentiments of mankind. He painted all characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal force. If human nature were destroyed, and no monument were left of it except his works, other beings might know what man was from those writings.

_Boileau_.--You say he painted all characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal force. I can't deny that he did so; but I wish he had not jumbled those characters together in the composition of his pictures as he has frequently done.

_Pope_.--The strange mixture of tragedy, comedy, and farce in the same play, nay, sometimes in the same scene, I acknowledge to be quite inexcusable. But this was the taste of the times when Shakespeare wrote.

_Boileau_.--A great genius ought to guide, not servilely follow, the taste of his contemporaries.

_Pope_.--Consider from how thick a darkness of barbarism the genius of Shakespeare broke forth! What were the English, and what, let me ask you, were the French dramatic performances, in the age when he nourished? The advances he made towards the highest perfection, both of tragedy and comedy, are amazing! In the principal points, in the power of exciting terror and pity, or raising laughter in an audience, none yet has excelled him, and very few have equalled.

_Boileau_.--Do you think that he was equal in comedy to Moliere?

_Pope_.--In comic force I do; but in the fine and delicate strokes of satire, and what is called genteel comedy, he was greatly inferior to that admirable writer. There is nothing in him to compare with the _Misanthrope_, the _Ecole des Femmes_, or _Tartuffe_.

_Boileau_.--This, Mr. Pope, is a great deal for an Englishman to acknowledge. A veneration for Shakespeare seems to be a part of your national religion, and the only part in which even your men of sense are fanatics.

_Pope_.--He who can read Shakespeare, and be cool enough for all the accuracy of sober criticism, has more of reason than taste.

_Boileau_.--I join with you in admiring him as a prodigy of genius, though I find the most shocking absurdities in his plays--absurdities which no critic of my nation can pardon.

_Pope_.--We will be satisfied with your feeling the excellence of his beauties. But you would admire him still more if you could see the chief characters in all his test tragedies represented by an actor who appeared on the stage a little before I left the world. He has shown the English nation more excellencies in Shakespeare than the quickest wits could discern, and has imprinted them on the heart with a livelier feeling than the most sensible natures had ever experienced without his help.

_Boileau_.--The variety, spirit, and force of Mr. Garrick's action have been much praised to me by many of his countrymen, whose shades I converse with, and who agree in speaking of him as we do of Baron, our most natural and most admired actor. I have also heard of another, who has now quitted the stage, but who had filled, with great dignity, force, and elevation, some tragic parts, and excelled so much in the comic, that none ever has deserved a higher applause.

_Pope_.--Mr. Quin was, indeed, a most perfect comedian. In the part of Falstaff particularly, wherein the utmost force of Shakespeare's humour appears, he attained to such perfection that he was not an actor; he was the man described by Shakespeare; he was Falstaff himself! When I saw him do it the pleasantry of the fat knight appeared to me so bewitching, all his vices were so mirthful, that I could not much wonder at his having seduced a young prince even to rob in his company.

_Boileau_.--That character is not well understood by the French; they suppose it belongs, not to comedy, but to farce, whereas the English see in it the finest and highest strokes of wit and humour. Perhaps these different judgments may be accounted for in some measure by the diversity of manners in different countries. But don't you allow, Mr. Pope, that our writers, both of tragedy and comedy, are, upon the whole, more perfect masters of their art than yours? If you deny it, I will appeal to the Athenians, the only judges qualified to decide the dispute. I will refer it to Euripides, Sophocles, and Menander.

_Pope_.--I am afraid of those judges, for I see them continually walking hand-in-hand, and engaged in the most friendly conversation with Corneille, Racine, and Moliere. Our dramatic writers seem, in general, not so fond of their company; they sometimes shove rudely by them, and give themselves airs of superiority. They slight their reprimands, and laugh at their precepts--in short, they will be tried by their country alone; and that judicature is partial.

_Boileau_.--I will press this question no further. But let me ask you to which of our rival tragedians, Racine and Corneille, do you give the preference?

_Pope_.--The sublimest plays of Corneille are, in my judgment, equalled by the _Athalia_ of Racine, and the tender passions are certainly touched by that elegant and most pathetic writer with a much finer hand. I need not add that he is infinitely more correct than Corneille, and more harmonious and noble in his versification. Corneille formed himself entirely upon Lucan, but the master of Racine was Virgil. How much better a taste had the former than the latter in choosing his model!

_Boileau_.--My friendship with Racine, and my partiality for his writings, make me hear with great pleasure the preference given to him above Corneille by so judicious a critic.

_Pope_.--That he excelled his competitor in the particulars I have mentioned, can't, I think, be denied. But yet the spirit and the majesty of ancient Rome were never so well expressed as by Corneille. Nor has any other French dramatic writer, in the general character of his works, shown such a masculine strength and greatness of thought. Racine is the swan described by ancient poets, which rises to the clouds on downy wings and sings a sweet but a gentle and plaintive note. Corneille is the eagle, which soars to the skies on bold and sounding pinions, and fears not to perch on the sceptre of Jupiter, or to bear in his pounces the lightning of the god.

_Boileau_.--I am glad to find, Mr. Pope, that in praising Corneille you run into poetry, which is not the language of sober criticism, though sometimes used by Longinus.

_Pope_.--I caught the fire from the idea of Corneille.

_Boileau_.--He has bright flashes, yet I think that in his thunder there is often more noise than fire. Don't you find him too declamatory, too turgid, too unnatural, even in his best tragedies?

_Pope_.--I own I do; yet the greatness and elevation of his sentiments, and the nervous vigour of his sense, atone, in my opinion, for all his faults. But let me now, in my turn, desire your opinion of our epic poet, Milton.

_Boileau_.--Longinus perhaps would prefer him to all other writers, for he surpasses even Homer in the sublime; but other critics who require variety, and agreeableness, and a correct regularity of thought and judgment in an epic poem, who can endure no absurdities, no extravagant fictions, would place him far below Virgil.

_Pope_.--His genius was indeed so vast and sublime, that his poem seems beyond the limits of criticism, as his subject is beyond the limits of nature. The bright and excessive blaze of poetical fire, which shines in so many parts of the "Paradise Lost," will hardly permit the dazzled eye to see its faults.