Part 13

Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis, Ignotus pecori, nullo convulsus aratro, Quem mulcent auræ, firmat sol, educat imber, Multi illum pueri, multæ optavere puellæ. Idem, quum tenui carptus defloruit ungui, Nulli illum pueri, nullæ optavere puellæ.

It came in Jonson’s way, in one of his masks, to translate this passage; and observe with what industry he has secured the sense, while the spirit of his author escapes him.

Look, how a flower that close in closes grows, Hid from rude cattle, bruised with no plows, Which th’ air doth stroke, sun strengthen, show’rs shoot high’r, It many youths, and many maids desire; The same, when cropt by cruel hand, is wither’d, No youths at all, no maidens have desir’d.

—It was not thus, you remember, that Ariosto and Pope have translated these fine verses. But to return to our purpose:

To this consideration of the _Age_ of a writer, you may add, if you please, that of his EDUCATION. Though it might not, in general, be the fashion to affect learning, the habits acquired by a particular writer might dispose him to do so. What was less esteemed by the enthusiasts of Milton’s time (of which however he himself was one of the greatest) than prophane or indeed any kind of learning? Yet we, who know that his youth was spent in the study of the best writers in every language, want but little evidence to convince us that his great genius did not disdain to stoop to imitation. You assent, I dare say, to Dryden’s compliment, though it be an invidious one, “That no man has so copiously translated Homer’s Grecisms, and the Latin elegancies of Virgil.” Nay, don’t you remember, the other day, that we were half of a mind to give him up for a shameless plagiary, chiefly because we were sure he had been a great reader.

But no good writer, it will be said, has flourished out of a learned age, or at least without some tincture of learning. It may be so. Yet every writer is not disposed to make the most of these advantages. What if we pay some regard then to the CHARACTER of the writer? A poet, enamoured of himself, and who sets up for a great inventive genius, thinks much to profit by the sense of his predecessors, and even when he steals, takes care to dissemble his thefts, and to conceal them as much as possible. You know I have instanced in such a poet in Sir _William D’Avenant_. In detecting the imitations of such a writer, one must then proceed with some caution. But what if our concern be with _one_, whose modesty leads him to revere the sense and even the expression of approved authors, whose taste enables him to select the finest passages in their works, and whose judgment determines him to make a free use of them? Suppose we know all this from common fame, and even from his own confession; would you scruple to call that an _imitation_ in him, which in the other might have passed for _resemblance_ only?

As the character is amiable, you will be pleased to hear me own, there are many modern poets to whom it belongs. Perhaps, the first that occurred to my thoughts was Mr. Addison. But the observation holds of others, and of _one_, in particular, very much his superior in true genius. I know not whether you agree with me, that the famous line in the _Essay on Man_;

“An honest man’s the noblest work of God,”

is taken from Plato’s, Πάντων ἱερώτατόν ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος ὁ ἀγαθός. But I am sure you will that the still more famous lines, which shallow men repeat without understanding,

“For modes of Faith let graceless zealots fight, His, can’t be wrong whose life is in the right:”

are but copied, though with vast improvement in the force and turn of expression, from the excellent and, let it be no disparagement to him to say, from the orthodox Mr. Cowley. The poet is speaking of his friend CRASHAW.

“His Faith perhaps in some nice tenets might Be wrong; his life, I’m sure, was in the right.”

Mr. Pope, who found himself in the same circumstances with Crashaw, and had suffered no doubt from the like uncharitable constructions of _graceless zeal_, was very naturally tempted to adopt this candid sentiment, and to give it the further heightening of his own spirited expression.

Let us see then how far we are got in this inquiry. We may say of the old Latin poets, that they all came out of the Greek schools. It is as true of the moderns in this part of the world, that they, in general, have had their breeding in both the Greek and Latin. But when the question is of any particular writer, how far and in what instances you may presume on his being a professed imitator, much will depend on the certain knowledge you have of his _Age_, _Education_, and _Character_. When all these circumstances meet in one man, as they have done in others, but in none perhaps so eminently as in B. Jonson, wherever you find an acknowledged likeness, you will do him no injustice to call it _imitation_.

Yet all this, you say, comes very much short of what you require of me. You want me to specify those peculiar considerations, and even to reduce them into rule, from which one may be authorised, in any instance to pronounce of imitations. It is not enough, you pretend, to say of any passage in a celebrated poet, that it most probably was taken from some other. In your extreme jealousy for the credit of your order, you call upon me to shew the distinct marks which convict him of this commerce.

In a word, You require me to turn to the poets; to gather a number of those passages I call Imitations; and to point to the _circumstances_ in each that prove them to be so. I attend you with pleasure in this amusing search. It is not material, I suppose, that we observe any strict method in our ramblings. And yet we will not wholly neglect it.

Perhaps then we shall find undoubted marks of Imitation, both in the SENTIMENT, and EXPRESSION of great writers.

To begin with such considerations as are most GENERAL.

I. An identity of the _subject-matter_ of poetry is no sure evidence of Imitation: and least of all, perhaps, in natural description. Yet where the _local_ peculiarities of nature are to be described, there an exact conformity of the matter will evince an imitation.

Descriptive poets have ever been fond of lavishing all the riches of their fancy on the _Spring_. But the appearances of this _prime of the year_ are so diversified with the climate, that descriptions of it, if taken directly from nature, must needs be very different. The Greek and Latin, and, since them, the Provencial poets, when they insist, as they always do, on the indulgent softness of this season, its _genial dews_ and _fostering breezes_, speak nothing but what is agreeable to their own experience and feeling.

It ver; et Venus; et Veneris praenuntius antè Pinnatus graditur Zephyrus vestigia propter: Flora quibus mater praespergens antè viaï Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.

Venus, or the spirit of love, is represented by those poets as brooding o’er this delicious season;

Rura foecundat voluptas: rura VENEREM sentiunt. Ipsa gemmas purpurantem pingit annum floribus: Ipsa surgentis papillas de Favonî spiritu Urguet in toros tepentes; ipsa roris lucidi, &c.

and a great deal more to the same purpose, which every one recollects in the old classic and in the Provencial poets.

But when we hear this language from the more Northern, and particularly our English bards, who perhaps are shivering with the blasts of the North-east, at the very time their imagination would warm itself with these notions, one is certain this cannot be the effect of _observation_, but of a sportful fancy; enchanted by the native loveliness of these exotic images, and charmed by the secret insensible power of _imitation_.

And to shew the certainty of this conclusion, Shakespear, we may observe, who had none of this classical or Provencial bias on his mind, always describes, not a Greek, or Italian, or Provencial, but an English Spring; where we meet with many unamiable characters; and, among the rest, instead of Zephyr or Favonius, we have the bleak North-east, that _nips the blooming infants of the Spring_.

But there are other obvious examples. In Cranmer’s prophetic speech, at the end of HENRY VIII. when the poet makes him say of Queen Elizabeth, that,

“In her days ev’ry man shall eat with safety Under his own vine what he plants.”

and of King James, that,

“He shall flourish, And, like a mountain Cedar, reach his branches To all the plains about him”—

It is easy to see that his _Vine_ and _Cedar_ are not of English growth, but transplanted from Judæa. I do not mention this as an impropriety in the poet, who, for the greater solemnity of his prediction, and even from a principle of decorum, makes his Arch-bishop fetch his imagery from Scripture. I only take notice of it as a certain argument that the imagery was not his own, that is, not suggested by his own observation of nature.

The case you see, in these instances, is the same as if an English landskip-painter should choose to decorate his Scene with an Italian sky. The Connoisseur would say, he had copied this particular from Titian, and not from Nature. I presume then to give it for a certain note of Imitation, _when the properties of one clime are given to another_.

II. You will draw the same conclusion whenever you find “The Genius of one _people_ given to another.”

1. Plautus gives us the following true picture of the Greek manners:

—In hominum aetate multa eveniunt hujusmodi— Irae interveniunt, redeunt rursum in gratiam, Verùm irae siquae fortè eveniunt hujusmodi, Inter eos rursum si reventum in gratiam est, Bis tanto amici sunt inter se, quàm prius. AMPHYT. A. III. S. 2.

You are better acquainted with the modern Italian writers than I am; but if ever you find any of them transferring this placability of temper into an eulogy of his countrymen, conclude without hesitation, that the sentiment is taken.

2. The late Editor of Jonson’s works observes very well the impropriety of leaving a trait of Italian manners in his _Every man in his humour_, when he fitted up that Play with English characters. Had the scene been laid originally in England, and that _trait_ been given us, it had convicted the poet of _Imitation_.

3. This attention to the genius of a people will sometimes shew you, that the _form_ of composition, as well as particular sentiments, comes from Imitation. An instance occurs to me as I am writing. The Greeks, you know, were great haranguers. So were the ancient Romans, but in a less degree. One is not surprized therefore that their historians abound in set speeches; which, in their hands, become the finest parts of their works. But when you find modern writers indulging in this practice of speech-making, you may guess from what source the habit is derived. Would Machiavel, for instance, as little of a Scholar as, they say, he was, have adorned his fine history of Florence with so many harangues, if the classical bias, imperceptibly, it may be, to himself, had not hung on his mind?

Another example is remarkable. You have sometimes wondered how it has come to pass that the moderns delight so much in _dialogue-writing_, and yet that so very few have succeeded in it. The proper answer to the first part of your enquiry will go some way towards giving you satisfaction as to the last. The practice is not original, has no foundation in the manners of modern times. It arose from the excellence of the Greek and Roman dialogues, which was the usual form in which the ancients chose to deliver their sentiments on any subject.

Still another instance comes in my way. How happened it, one may ask, that Sir PHILIP SYDNEY in his Arcadia, and afterwards SPENSER in his Fairy Queen, observed so unnatural a conduct in those works; in which the Story proceeds, as it were, by snatches, and with continual interruptions? How was the good sense of those writers, so conversant besides in the best models of antiquity, seduced into this preposterous method? The answer, no doubt, is, that they were copying the design, or disorder rather, of ARIOSTO, the favourite poet of that time.

III. Of near akin to this contrariety _to the genius of a people_ is another mark which a careful reader will observe “in the representation of certain TENETS, different from those which prevail in a writer’s country or time.”

1. We seldom are able to fasten an imitation, with certainty, on such a writer as Shakespear. Sometimes we are, but never to so much advantage as when he happens to forget himself in this respect. When Claudio, in _Measure for Measure_, pleads for his life in that famous speech,

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lye in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison’d in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence about The pendant world—

It is plain that these are not the Sentiments which any man entertained of _Death_ in the writer’s age or in that of the speaker. We see in this passage a mixture of Christian and Pagan ideas; all of them very susceptible of poetical ornament, and conducive to the argument of the Scene; but such as Shakespear had never dreamt of but for Virgil’s Platonic hell; where, as we read,

aliae panduntur inanes Suspensae ad ventos: aliis sub gurgite vasto, Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni. Virg. l. vi.

2. A prodigiously fine passage in Milton may furnish another example of this sort,

When Lust By unchast looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish act of Sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose The divine property of her first being. Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp, Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres, Ling’ring, and sitting by a new-made grave, As loth to leave the body, that it lov’d, And linkt itself by carnal sensuality To a degenerate and degraded state. _Mask at Ludlow Castle._

This philosophy of _imbruted souls_ becoming _thick shadows_ is so remote from any ideas entertained at present of the effects of Sin, and at the same time is so agreeable to the notions of Plato (a double favourite of Milton, for his own sake, and for the sake of his being a favourite with his Italian Masters), that there is not the least question of its being taken from the PHAEDO.

Ἡ τοιαύτη ψυχὴ βαρύνεταί τε καὶ ἕλκεται πάλιν εἰς τὸν ὁρατὸν τόπον, φόβῳ τοῦ ἀειδοῦς τε καὶ ᾅδου, περὶ τὰ μνήματα καὶ τοὺς τάφους κυλινδουμένη· περὶ ἃ δὴ καὶ ὤφθη ἄττα ψυχῶν σκιοειδῆ φαντάσματα, οἷα παρέχονται αἱ τοιαῦται ψυχαὶ εἴδωλα, αἱ μὴ καθαρῶς ἀπολυθεῖσαι——

There is no wonder, now one sees the fountain Milton drew from, that, in admiration of this poetical philosophy (which nourished the fine spirits of that time, though it corrupted some), he should make the other speaker in the scene cry out, as in a fit of extasy,

How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo’s lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns—

The very ideas which Lord SHAFTESBURY has employed in his encomiums on the Platonic philosophy; and the very language which Dr. HENRY MORE would have used, if he had known to express himself so soberly.

3. Having said so much of Plato, whom the Italian writers have helped to make known to us, let me just observe one thing, to our present purpose, of those Italian writers themselves. One of their peculiarities, and almost the first that strikes us, is a certain sublime mystical air which runs through all their fictions. We find them a sort of philosophical fanatics, indulging themselves in strange conceits “concerning the _Soul_, the _chyming of celestial orbs_, and presiding _Syrens_.” One may tell by these marks, that they doted on the fancies of Plato; if we had not, besides, direct evidence for this conclusion. Tasso says of himself, and he applauds the same thing in Petrarch, “Lessi già tutte l’opere di Platone, è mi rimassero molti semi nella menta della sua dottrina.” I take these words from Menage, who has much more to the same purpose, in his elegant observations on the _Amintas_ of this poet.

One sees then where Milton had been for that imagery in the ARCADES,

then listen I To the celestial Syrens’ harmony, That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres And sing to those that hold the vital shears, And turn the adamantine spindle round, On which the fate of Gods and men is wound.

The best comment on these verses is a passage in the x^{th} Book of Plato’s Republic, where this whole system, of _Syrens quiring to the fates_, is explained or rather delivered.

IV. We have seen a _Mark_ of Imitation, in the allusion of writers to certain strange, and foreign tenets of philosophy. The observation may be extended to all those passages (which are innumerable in our poets) that allude to the _rites, customs, language, and theology of Paganism_.

It is true, indeed, this Species of Imitation is not that which is, properly, the subject of this Letter. The most original writer is allowed to furnish himself with poetical ideas from all quarters. And the management of learned _Allusion_ is to be regarded, perhaps, as one of the nicest offices of Invention. Yet it may be useful to see from what sources a great poet derives his materials; and the rather, as this detection will sometimes account for the _manner_ in which he disposes of them. However, I will but detain you with a remark or two on this class of Imitations.

1. I observe, that even Shakespear himself abounds in learned Allusions. How he came by them, is another question; though not so difficult to be answered, you know, as some have imagined. They, who are in such astonishment at the learning of Shakespear, besides that they certainly carry the notion of his illiteracy too far, forget that the Pagan imagery was familiar to all the poets of his time—that abundance of this sort of learning was to be picked up from almost every English book, he could take into his hands—that many of the best writers in Greek and Latin had been translated into English—that his conversation lay among the most learned, that is, the most paganized poets of his age—but above all, that, if he had never looked into books, or conversed with bookish men, he might have learned almost all the secrets of paganism (so far, I mean, as a poet had any use of them) from the MASKS of B. Jonson; contrived by that poet with so pedantical an exactness, that one is ready to take them for lectures and illustrations on the ancient learning, rather than exercises of modern wit. The taste of the age, much devoted to erudition, and still more, the taste of the Princes, for whom he writ, gave a prodigious vogue to these unnatural exhibitions. And the knowledge of antiquity, requisite to succeed in them, was, I imagine, the reason that Shakespear was not over-fond to try his hand at these elaborate trifles. Once indeed he _did_, and with such success as to disgrace the very best things of this kind we find in Jonson. The short Mask in the _Tempest_ is fitted up with a classical exactness. But its chief merit lies in the beauty of the _Shew_, and the richness of the _poetry_. Shakespear was so sensible of his Superiority, that he could not help exulting a little upon it, where he makes _Ferdinand_ say,

This is a most majestic _Vision_, and Harmonious charming _Lays_—

’Tis true, another Poet, who possessed a great part of Shakespear’s genius and all Jonson’s learning, has carried this courtly entertainment to its last perfection. But the _Mask at Ludlow Castle_ was, in some measure, owing to the _fairy Scenes_ of his Predecessor; who chose this province of _Tradition_, not only as most suitable to the wildness of his vast creative imagination, but as the _safest_ for his unlettered Muse to walk in. For here he had much, you knew, to expect from the popular credulity, and nothing to fear from the classic superstition of that time.

2. It were endless to apply this _note_ of imitation to other poets confessedly learned. Yet one instance is curious enough to be just mentioned.

Mr. Waller, in his famous poem on the victory over the Dutch on June 3, 1665, has the following lines;

His flight tow’rds heav’n th’ aspiring BELGIAN took; But fell, like PHAETON, with thunder strook: From vaster hopes than his, he seem’d to fall, That durst attempt the BRITISH Admiral: From her broadsides a ruder flame is thrown, Than from the fiery chariot of the Sun: THAT, bears THE RADIANT ENSIGN OF THE DAY; And SHE, the flag that governs in the Sea.

He is comparing the British Admiral’s _Ship_ to the _Chariot_ of the Sun. You smile at the quaintness of the conceit, and the ridicule he falls into, in explaining it. But that is not the question at present. The _latter_, he says, bears _the radiant ensign of the day_: The _other_, _the ensign of naval dominion_. We understand how properly the _English Flag_ is here denominated. But what is that _other Ensign_? The _Sun_ itself, it will be said. But who, in our days, ever expressed the Sun by such a periphrasis? The image is apparently antique, and easily explained by those who know that anciently the Sun was commonly emblematized by a _starry or radiate figure_; nay, that such a figure was placed aloft, as an _Ensign_, over the _Sun’s charioteer_, as we may see in representations of this sort on ancient Gems and Medals.

From this original then Mr. Waller’s imagery was certainly taken; and it is properly applied in this place where he is speaking of the _Chariot of the Sun_, and _Phaeton’s fall_ from it. But to remove all doubt in the case, we can even point to the very passage of a Pagan poet, which Mr. Waller had in his eye, or rather translated.

Proptereà noctes hiberno tempore longæ Cessant, dum veniat RADIATUM INSIGNE DIEI. _Lucr._ l. v. 698.

Here, you see, the poet’s allusion to a classic idea has led us to the discovery of the very passage from which it was taken. And this use a learned reader will often make of the species of Imitation, here considered.

V. Great writers, you find, sometimes forget the character of the _Age_, they live in; the _principles_, and _notions_ that belong to it. “Sometimes they forget _themselves_, that is, their own situation and character.” Another sign of the influence of _Imitation_.

1. When we see such men, as STRADA and MARIANA, writers of fine talents indeed, but of recluse lives and narrow observation, chusing to talk like men of the world, and abounding in the most refined conclusions of the cabinet, we are sure that this character, which we find so natural in a Cardinal DE RETZ, is but assumed by these Jesuits. And we are not surprized to discover, on examination, that their best reflexions are copied from TACITUS.

On the other hand, when a man of the world took it into his head, the other day, in a moping fit, to talk _Sentences_, every body concluded that this was not the language of the writer or his situation, but that he had been poaching in some pedant; perhaps in the _Stoical Fop_, he affected so much contempt of, SENECA.

2. Sometimes we catch a great writer deviating from his _natural manner_, and taking pains, as it were, to appear the very reverse of his proper _character_. Would you wish a stronger proof of his being seduced, at least for the time, by the charms of _imitation_?