215 220 Unhappy Dryden!-In all Charles's days, 230 The boys and girls, whom charity maintains, work, 235 Verse prays for peace, or sings down pope and The silent preacher yields to potent strain, 224 The rights a court attack'd. The attorney-general of the day must have been peculiarly sensitive to libel: he found public danger in this vague line; and Pope, for the first time in his life, was startled with the threat of a prosecution. POPE. II. R The blessing thrills through all the laboring throng, And heaven is won by violence of 240 246 song. Our rural ancestors, with little bless'd, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts and offerings, and a thankful strain : The joy their wives, their sons, and servants share, Ease of their toil, and partners of their care: The laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl, Smoothed every brow, and open'd every soul: With growing years the pleasing license grew, And taunts alternate innocently flew. But times corrupt, and nature, ill-inclined, Produced the point that left a sting behind; Till friend with friend, and families at strife, Triumphant malice raged through private life: Who felt the wrong or fear'd it, took the alarm, Appeal'd to law, and justice lent her arm. At length, by wholesome dread of statutes bound, The poets learn'd to please, and not to wound: 250 256 240 Heaven is won by violence of song. The use of so direct an allusion to Scripture is unbecoming: the contemptuous air of the passage, too, is unwise. The fashion of Pope's day was aristocratic, in the worst sense of the word: all below the line of the opulent, the titled, and the educated, went for nothing. This was the French folly, introduced by Charles II. In France the roturier was, as the dust of the earth, fit only to be trampled on; but the old habits of England, more manly, generous, and natural, held the peasantry at their proper value. To the fastidious tastes of opera-hunting men and women, the rudeness of village psalmody must occasionally repel the ear; but want of refinement may be easily forgiven for sincerity of devotion. No pomp of foreign worship is equal in true power over the heart to the noble simplicity of supplication, the ardent sympathy of homage, gratitude, and love, often felt in the united hymn of an English congregation. Most warp'd to flattery's side; but some, more nice, 265 270 Her arts victorious triumph'd o'er our arms; And fluent Shakspeare scarce effaced a line. 276 274 Exact Racine. This is but frigid praise for Racine; but it is perhaps all that an English ear can honestly give. The charm of Racine is in his harmony; a charm which no man can feel in the poets of any land but his own: though our scholars conceive that they can feel the harmony of verse in two languages, dead a thousand years ago; which they do not pronounce even like the descendants of those who spoke them, and of which they are not secure of the sound of a single letter! The French prefer Racine to all their other tragedians; but laugh at the idea of an Englishman's attempting to enjoy the flow of his language: as the English laugh at the Frenchman's attempt to enjoy the sweetness of Shakspeare's lines. Both are in the right: yet both alike pretend to be enraptured with the silver stream of Euripides. Ev'n copious Dryden wanted or forgot, 280 285 290 295 O, you! whom vanity's light bark conveys On fame's mad voyage, by the wind of praise, With what a shifting gale your course you ply, For ever sunk too low, or borne too high! Who pants for glory finds but short repose; 300 There still remains, to mortify a wit, 305 267 Congreve. He alludes to the characters of Brisk and Witwood. 290 Astrea. A name taken by Mrs. Behn, authoress of several gross plays, &c. Clattering their sticks before ten lines are spoke, 320 325 330 313 From heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes. The course of theatrical degeneracy, as Warburton says, 'from plays to operas, and from operas to pantomimes. 319 Old Edward's armor beams on Cibber's breast. The coronation of Henry VIII. and queen Anne Boleyn, in which the playhouses vied with each other to represent all the pomp of a coronation. In this noble contention the armor of one of the kings of England was borrowed from the Tower to dress the champion.-Pope. 328 Orcas' stormy steep. The farthest northern promontory of Scotland, opposite to the Orcades.-Pope. |