Their praise is still,-The Style is excellent; Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found: 310 False eloquence, like the prismatic glass, Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place; COMMENTARY. guage, and shews [from ver. 304 to 337.] that this quality, where it holds the principal place in a work, deserves no commendation; 1. Because it excludes qualities more essential. And when the abounding Verbiage has choked and suffocated the sense, the writer will be obliged to varnish over the mischief with all the false colouring of eloquence. 2. Secondly, because the Critic who busies himself with this quality alone, is unable to make a right Judgment of it; because true Expression is only the dress of thought; and so must be perpetually varied according to the subject, and manner of treating it. But those who never concern themselves with the Sense, can form no judgment of the correspondence between that and the Language. 66 Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable," &c. Now as these Critics are ignorant of this correspondence, their whole judgment in language is reduced to verbal criticism, or the examination of single words; and generally those which are most to his taste, are (for an obvious reason) such as smack most of antiquity on which account our author has bestowed a little raillery upon it; concluding with a short and proper direction concerning the use of words, so far as regards their novelty and ancientry. : NOTES. recommended. We have no English, French, or Italian Writer that can be placed in the same rank with them, for this uncommon excellence. Warton. Ver. 311. False eloquence, &c.] This simile is beautiful. For the false colouring given to objects by the prismatic glass, is owing to its untwisting by its obliquities, those threads of light which nature had put together, in order to spread over its work an ingenious and simple candour, that should not hide but only heighten the The face of Nature we no more survey, NOTES. 320 the native complexion of the objects. And false Expression is nothing else but the straining and divaricating the parts of true Expression; and then daubing them over with what the Rhetoricians very properly term Colours, in lieu of that candid light, now lost, which was reflected from them in their natural state, while sincere and entire. Warburton. Ver. 324. Some by old words, &c.] "Abolita et abrogata retinere, insolentiæ cujusdam est, et frivolæ in parvis jactantiæ." Quint. lib. i. c. 6. "Opus est, ut verba à vetustate repetita neque crebra sint, neque manifesta, quia nil est odiosius affectatione, nec utique ab ultimis repetita temporibus. Oratio cujus summa virtus est perspicuitas, quam sit vitiosa, si egeat interprete? Ergo ut novorum optima erunt maxime vetera, ita veterum maxima nova."-Idem. P. Quintilian's advice on this subject is as follows: "Cum sint autem verba propria, ficta, translata; propriis dignitatem dat antiquitas. Namque et sanctiorem, et magis admirabilem reddunt orationem, quibus non quilibet fuit usurus: eoque ornamento acerrimi judicii Virgilius unice est usus. "The language of the age (says Mr. Gray, admirably well,) is never the language of poetry; except among the French, whose verse, Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile. Unlucky, as Fungoso in the Play, 330 These sparks with aukward vanity display Be not the first by whom the new are try'd, 335 NOTES. verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose. Our poetry, on the contrary, has a language peculiar to itself; to which almost every one that has written, has added something by enriching it with foreign idioms and derivatives: nay, sometimes words of their own composition or invention. Shakespear and Milton have been great creators this way; and no one more licentious than Pope or Dryden, who perpetually borrow expressions from the former. Let me give you some instances from Dryden, whom every body reckons a great master of our poetical tongue. Full of museful mopings,-unlike the trim of love, -a pleasant beverage,-a roundelay of love,-stood silent in his mood,-with knots and knares deformed,—his ireful mood,—in proud array, his boon was granted,-and disarray and shameful rout, wayward but wise,-furbished for the field, the foiled dodderd oaks, disherited, smouldring flames,-retchless of laws,-crones old and ugly, the beldam at his side, the grandam hag,-villanize his father's fame.-But they are infinite; and our language not being a settled thing (like the French), has an undoubted right to words of an hundred years old, provided antiquity have not rendered them unintelligible. In truth, Shakespear's language is one of his principal beauties; and he has no less advantage over your Addisons and Rowes in this, than in those great excellencies you mention. Every word in him is a picture." Warton. Ver. 328. Unlucky, as Fungoso, &c.] See Ben. Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour. P. But most by Numbers judge a Poet's song, And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong: In the bright Muse, tho' thousand charms conspire, Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; COMMENTARY. 340 Ver. 337. But most by Numbers judge, &c.] The last sort are those [from ver. 336 to 384.] whose ears are attached only to the Harmony of a poem. Of which they judge as ignorantly and as perversely as the other sort did of the Eloquence, and for the same reason. Our Author first describes that false Harmony with which they are so much captivated; and shews that it is wretchedly flat and unvaried: for. "Smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong." 1 He then describes the true. 1. As it is in itself, constant; with a happy mixture of strength and sweetness, in contradiction to the roughness and flatness of false harmony: And 2. as it is varied in compliance to the subject, where the sound becomes an echo to the sense, so far as is consistent with the preservation of numbers; in contradiction to the monotony of false harmony: of this he gives us, in the delivery of his precepts, four beautiful examples of smoothness, roughness, slowness, and rapidity. The first use of this correspondence of the sound to the sense, is to aid the fancy in acquiring a perfecter and more lively image of the thing represented. A second and nobler, is to calm and subdue the turbulent and selfish passions, and to raise and warm the beneficent: which he illustrates in the famous adventure of Timotheus and Alexander : where, in referring to Mr. Dryden's Ode on that subject, he turns it to a high compliment on his favourite Poet. NOTES. Ver. 337. But most by Numbers, &c.] "Quis populi sermo est ? quis enim? nisi carmine molli Pers. Sat. i. P. Having described the causes of false judgment in Critics who judge Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire; While expletives their feeble aid do join; 345 And ten low words oft creep in one dull line: While they ring round the same unvary'd chimes, With sure returns of still expected rhymes; NOTES. judge by parts only of a poem, who confine their taste to CONCEITS, or to language instead of sense; he proceeds to speak of those who judge merely by numbers. 66 Ver. 345. Tho' oft the ear, &c.] Fugiemus crebras vocalium concursiones, quæ vastam atque hiantem orationem reddunt." Cic. ad Heren. lib. iv. Vide etiam Quintil. lib. ix. c. 4. P. "Non tamen (says the sensible Quintilian) id ut crimen ingens expavescendum est; ac nescio negligentia in hoc, an solicitudo sit major; nimiosque non immeritò in hâc curâ putant omnes Isocratem secutos, præcipuèque Theopompum. At Demosthenes et Cicero modicè respexerunt ad hanc partem.”—Quintil. lib. ix. c. 9. Warton. Ver. 347. ten low words] Our language is thought to be overloaded with monosyllables; Shaftesbury, we are told, limited their number to nine in any sentence; Quintilian condemns too great a concourse of them; etiam monosyllaba, si plura sunt, malè continuabuntur; quia necesse est compositio, multis clausulis concisa, subsultet. Inst. lib. ix. e. 4. Warton. IMITATIONS. Ver. 346. While expletives their feeble aid do join, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:] From Dryden. "He creeps along with ten little words in every line, and helps out his numbers with [for] [to] and [unto] and all the pretty expletives he can find, while the sense is left half tired behind it."-Essay on Dram. Poetry. But there are many lines of monosyllables that have much force and energy; in our author himself, as well as Dryden. Warton. |