And to the gallant youth did cry, XIII. On the rough meadow of his cheek, The scythe he laid full twice a week, Foster'd the honours of his head, That wide as scrub-oak branches spread, In short, he tried each gentle art And gave him oft the bag to hold.' P. 88-94 SPIRIT OF MAGAZINES. THE BANQUET CONDEMNED, A Morality from the French of the Fourteenth Century. AMONG the quaint little moral dramas of former times, was a piece with the above title. It opens with the following personages enjoying themselves at table. -- Good Company-I drink your health. I pledge you.-Fre quent repetition.-Supper.-Pastime.-Gluttony.-Daintiness.These gay fellows are watched through a window by others very ill disposed towards them. Apoplexy, Paralysis, Epilepsy, Pleurisy, Colic, Squinancy, Hydropsy, Jaundice, Gravel, and others of the same nature, not less formidable, grotesquely habited, and armed with bludgeons. After some time, Supper, who betrays his guests, admits the whole cohort of enemies. A dreadful battle ensues. The table is overthrown, and its contents dashed to shivers. At this instant enters a personage more traitorous still than Supper; this is Banquet himself, who affects to protect the jolly company, seats them again at table, and they begin to revive; but are once more surprised by the diseases, who prevail against them fatally. Good Company is the only one who escapes; and resorts to dame Experience with his complaints. This sage dame causes Supper and Banquet to be arrested by Sobriety, Medicine, Phlebotomy, and Fasting, by whom they are led away to prison. He afterwards holds council with Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, and Averhoës. The criminals are condemned. Remedy passes sentence on them. Banquet is executed. Supper is pronounced not guilty, as to himself; but by reason of his having admitted too great a number and variety of dishes on the table, he is sentenced to wear a badge on his arm, of leaden tufts down the whole front of his sleeve; and forbid to approach dinner, modestly and moderately taken, nearer than the distance of six hours, at the least. 244 BIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS OTWAY. THOMAS OTWAY was born March 3d, 1651, at Trotton, near Midhurst, Sussex, upon the borders of the river Arun; being the only son of the Rev. Humphrey Otway, rector of Wolbeding, in the same county. He was educated at Wickeham school, Winchester, and originally intended for the church. At the age of eighteen, he entered at Christ Church College, Oxford, early in the year 1669. His connexions here appear to have been highly respectable; but the narrow circumstances in which he was placed by the sudden death of his father, compelled him to leave the university, without taking a degree. In 1671, he came to London, unprovided with any regular means of subsistence. After an unsuccessful essay on the stage, he sought the patronage of men of rank and fashion, to whom his social qualifications rendered him highly acceptable. Among his friends were, the young Earl of Plymouth, a natural son of the king, and the notorious Earl of Rochester. He spent some time in a course of dissipation, and at length roused himself to attempt dramatic composition. His first production, entitled Alcibiades, was written in the heroic couplet, and had some success, although it gave no promise of future eminence. His abilities were probably repressed by a compliance with the absurd custom, inapplicable to the English language, but at that time popular, of composing in rhyme; a style first introduced in compliment to the depraved taste of the king, who allowed himself to be too much swayed by continental influence, both in poetry and politics. Don Carlos, written also in rhyme, was performed the next year, and met with uncommon encouragement; less owing to intrinsic merit, than to the patronage of the Earl of Rochester, who was led, at that period, by some capricious motive, to bestow his favour on Otway, in opposition to Dryden, although he afterwards lampooned the former. In the next year, 1677, he produced Titus and Berenice, and the Cheats of Scapin. The first of these pieces was imitated from Racine, the latter from Molière. The encouragement which French literature received during the reign of Charles II. was not, probably, beneficial to our own, since it repressed the exertions of native genius, and imposed upon the nation, especially in dramatic composition, a taste not congenial with its character. English audiences were oftner indebted, for theatrical entertainment, to Racine, Corneille, or Molière, than to Shakspeare, and our other early dramatists; and the stage was gradually filled with pieces which deviated more and more from the chasteness and simplicity of nature. Hence proceeded the romantic attachment to rhyming, or heroic plays, cherished and diffused by the writers of that period, with little regard to the legitimate end of tragedy: for how seldom can the heart be interested, where the language bears no resemblance to that of nature, and where the characters and sentiments are equally hypothetical! Passions too fierce to be in fetters bound, Prol. to Aurengzebe. With this declaration of the impotence of rhyme, Dryden (once its strenuous advocate) abandoned the use of it in tragedy; and as his example was much regarded by his contempora ries, the ardour for heroic plays was superseded by a more just and rational taste. In 1678 he went to Flanders, with the army commanded by the Duke of Monmouth; having obtained a cornet's commission in a new regiment of horse, by the interest of the Earl of Plymouth. Before his departure, he had made his first effort in comedy, under the title of Friendship in Fashion, which appeared in 1678. -It is hardly necessary to observe, that the same powers which constitute a good writer of tragedy, are not sufficient of themselves to insure success in the other department of the drama, which depends upon the exertion of talents essentially different. This will, therefore, diminish our surprise at the disproportion of Otway's powers in tragedy and comedy. But in judging of his efforts in the latter, we adopt a rule which he was compelled to disregard. A happy improvement in morals has purified the stage, and proscribed licentiousness; but in Otway's time, inde cency, so far from being in disrepute, was an indispensable quality in comedy; none, in short, succeeded without it. Writers must conform their taste to that of their audience. If, therefore, the legislators of the drama applauded those scenes most, where grossness constituted the obvious feature, we may charitably suppose that authors often sacrificed, unwillingly, their judg ment to their interest. The torrent of immorality, thus unchecked by those to whom it belonged to resist its first encroachments, soon polluted the stage: mirth was excited by profanity, and ribaldry was esteemed as wit. No proof of the depravity of taste to which we allude, can be more convincing, than that "Friendship in Fashion," certainly a most immoral play, is reckoned by Langbaine a very diverting one, and stated to have met with general applause. The troops, to which he was attached, being recalled, he returned home in a state of extreme penury, aggravated by the disadvantageous mode of payment to which government had recourse for the discharge of the military appointments. Poverty was not the only cause of disquietude to Otway. He cherished a hopeless passion for Mrs. Barry, an actress of considerable eminence, respecting whom we shall take occasion to say more hereafter. Being now returned to his native country, he published, in 1680, The History and Fall of Caius Marius, on which he had been occupied while he was abroad. Considerable part of this play was borrowed from Shakspeare's Romeo and Juliet; and it was written with a reference to the political troubles of the author's own times. In the same year appeared The Poet's Complaint of his Muse; and also THE ORPHAN. This work an indisputable proof of his supreme command over the passions, of which some evidence had broken forth in different parts of Caius Marius. In this place the editor justly censures the vulgar and envious ribaldry which Voltaire has aimed at this play. The strictures of this writer we remember to have read several years ago with profound contempt. The mode of criticism that he adopts is, to disfigure the harmony of English blank verse, by translating it into French prose, and to supply vulgarity where it is wanting. In this malignant attempt, he failed as ingloriously as he had already done in his attack on Shakspeare. The punishment for his sacrilege to our immortal monarch of the drama awaited him from a female hand;* and he cowered under the castigation that he had merited. His next literary birth was The Soldier's Fortune, in 1681; which, although it obtained extraordinary success, and produced both profit and reputation to the theatre, appears to have given more pleasure to the public than profit to the author. Otway, notwithstanding, appears now to have felt sufficiently the irksomeness of his profession. It is not difficult to conceive the pangs which he endured, with a spirit not yet inured to want, or subdued by adversity. Exposed by his situation, as an author, to the shafts of malice; alternately elevated with promises, and dejected by scorn and neglect; caressed for his wit, and despised for his poverty; we must not wonder that these complicated vexations and disgusts should engender those gloomy feelings which he describes in the epilogue! "With the discharge of passions much opprest, Full of those thoughts which make th' unhappy sad, The poet led abroad his mourning muse," &c. * Mrs. Montagu's Essay on Shakspeare. |