perhaps no poet among the English, has had so great an influence in this respect as Shakspeare. His phrases are moulded into our every day compositions; and Mr. Burke, in his reflections on the French revolution, does more than once seem to have had him view, particularly his play of Othello. The exclamation of Othello's occupation's gone! with the Farewells which precede it, unquestionably gave form to the eloquent lamentation on the loss of chivalry, as noticed by Mr. Paine; nor can we doubt that the last speech of Othello was present to the mind of Mr. Burke, when he penned the concluding paragraph of his reflections. The structure of the sentences is the same, there is the same flow in the diction, the same melody in the cadence. Then must you speak Of one (says Othello) who lov'd not wisely but too well, Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand, &c. &c. I have little to recommend my opinions (says Mr. Burke) but long observation and much impartiality. They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who, in his last acts, does not wish to belie the tenor of his life. They come from one almost the whole of whose public exertion has been a struggle for the liberty of others; from one in whose breast, &c. &c. As the style of our prose compositions partakes as observed of the manner of Shakspeare, so have the peculiarities of the English tragedy, been derived from his transcendant genius. Among these peculiarities may be reckoned the description of the apothecary and his shop in Romeo and Juliet, and that of the magic handkerchief in Othello, both master-pieces of picturesque and fanciful solemnity. Otway's wrinkled hag in the Orphan, is a portrait of the same school, and in its true manner and spirit. The "Quidquid agunt homines, nostri farago libelli," would be more appropriate to the works of this admirable author, than to those perhaps of any other that ever wrote. They are in fact the characteristics of man in every rank and situation of life. Nothing so minute as to escape his observation, of which the allusion of 1 Hamlet to the ridiculous affectation of writing a bad hand, is an instance. I once did hold it as our statists do A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much It is remarkable that so trifling a thing as the handkerchief of Othello and the muff of Sophia Western are the hinges on which the most important interests in their respective dramas, are in a great degree, made to turn. But their offices are very different, the one, being accessary to the creation of the "greeneyed monster which doth make the meat it feeds on," the other to the resuscitation of that train of joyous emotions, which makes "the bosom's lord sit slightly on its throne" and by which the desponding lover at once "revives and is an emperor." The incidents connected with the muff, are certainly among the happiest that were ever conceived by a novelist. The readers of Richardson's novels, if haply such there be in the present teeming age of fictitious narration, will probably recollect the scene at Smith's the comb maker, where Lovelace suddenly seizing the fellow, that had been called down from his work by way of champion for the house, round the neck, eagerly calls for a knife to extract one of his teeth, to supply the loss of one he had had shortly before knocked from his man Will's jaws. If he does recollect it he will recognize it to be a very lively and diverting scene; but he will hardly deem it a circumstance so peculiarly characteristic of libertine levity, as to be worthy of being borrowed from another; and yet, I cannot read the following passage in the Don Juan of Moliere, without being persuaded, that it suggested to Richardson, the incident here alluded to. Sganerelle. Voila le soupè. [Il prend un morceau d'un de plats qu'on apporte, et le met dans sa bouche.] Don Juan. Il me semble que tu as la joüe enflée, qu'est-ce que c'est? Parle donc, Qu'as-tu là? Sganerelle Rien. Don Juan. Montrez un peu, parbleu c'est une fluxion qui lui est tombée sur la joue, vite une lacette pour percer cela. Le pauvre garçon n'en peut plus, et cet abeez le pourroit étouffer, attends, voyez comme il etoit meur. Ah, coquin, que vous ettes! Thus, in constructing his Lovelace, it would appear, that Richardson did not confine himself to any particular model; and that neither the real duke of Wharton nor the fictitious rake of Rowe, was his only material. Of the English poets none have excelled Prior in a Horatian sprightliness of manner. Voltaire bestows much commenda tion on his ballad of, "Some folks are drunk, yet do not know it," written in retaliation of Boileau's ode sur la prise de Namur; and he allows, that he therein lashes his countryman with considerable efficiency. As another specimen of his vivacity in the gallant kind might be adduced his "As Chloe came into the room t'other day, &c." But however animated this and other of his poems, they seem surpassed in airy gayety by his Secretary, written at the Hague, in 1696; an effusion to be found in some of the earlier editions of his works, but which, on account of its libertinism, has been properly omitted in the later and more correct editions. Should it fall to the lot, however, of the reverend doctor Wharton to reedit his works, he would no doubt preserve it as he has some of the equally loose productions of Pope, and for which, he has been pretty severely animadverted upon by the author of the Pursuits of Literature. Still it may be said, that all sorts of readers have their rights; and if none are to be gratified but those who are old or sick of the vanities of the world, it may be asked, what mental amusement remains for the gay and the fashionable and such as delight in just delineations of human nature? or, will they be persuaded to employ their leisure on sermonizing romances, and to lay down Roderic Random and Tom Jones in favour of Celebs in search of a wife? This might be a desirable reformation in literature; yet the writers who may seriously aim at bringing it about, can by no means be charged with a want of confidence in their powers. There is probably no vehicle in which ridicule and satire can be rendered more poignant than by parody. This Boileau seems to have been aware of, by his Parodie de quelques Endroits du Cid, in which he lashes Chaplain, Cassaigne, and Le Serret. The bringing down, in this manner, of grave and lofty poetry, to low and familiar subjects, has, when well done, a very pleasing effect; and Churchill, perhaps, is in no part of his Rosciad, more pitylessly severe, than where he thus lampoons Murphy through a ranting speech of Nat. Lee's Alexander. Can none remember? Yes, I know all must, Whilst common sense stood trembling at the door. Pope in his Dunciad and Rape of the Lock, has frequent recourse to short parodies on passages of Homer and Virgil; and no where has he more elegant and enchanting poetry, than when in his Dunciad imitating Catullus's Ut flos in septis secretis nas-, citur hortis, &c. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of transcribing both the complaint of the florist, in ridicule of the then prevailing rage for flowers, and the justificatory address of the impaler of butterflies, which last includes allusions both to Spencer and Milton. The first thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call, Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread, Bright with the gilded button tipt its head. VOL. I. 3 x And lo the wretch! whose vile, whose insect lust He ceas'd and wept. With innocence of mein, Of all th' enamel'd race, whose silv'ry wing Once brighest shined this child of heat and air. The rising game, and chas'd from flow'r to flow'r. It stopp'd, I stopp'd; it mov'd, I mov'd again. I meddle, goddess! only in my sphere. The following French verses are in Mr. Lewis's Monk. A supposed prettiness, or at least novelty in the thought, whetting the pen for translation in an idle hour, the trifle was transformed into the two different English shapes here exhibited: Pour chasser de sa souvenance L'objet qui plait, On se donne bien de souffrance Pour peu d'effet. Le souvenir durant la vie, Toujours revient, En pensant qu'il faut qu'on l'oublie On s'en souvient. Translation. To drive from remembrance an object that charms, How painful the effort! how useless our arms! Still through life, the fond theme each exertion eludes, And in pond'ring our duty, the image intrudes. |