In fuch a state, where nature is so distorted and debased, what poet, if he dared, can imitate naturally men and manners? And fhould accidentally a genius arife, yet he'll foon find it neceffary to flatter defpotic power. For perfect writers we must therefore go to Athens; not. even to Rome; nor seek it in Virgil or Horace. For who, I would afk, can bear the reading fuch a blafphemous piece of flattery as this? O Melibaee, Deus nobis haec otia fecit. 2 Namque erit ille mihi femper-deus. All the beautiful lines in that eclogue, cannot atone for the vileness of these. Or what can we think of the following? Sive mutata juvenem figura Ales in terris imitaris almae Filium Majae, PATIENS VOCARI CAESARIS ULTOR. Horace certainly had forgotten his patron 3 Brutus, and all the doctrines he learnt at Athens, when 2 Semper-deus, a perpetual deity ipi, as the grammarians fay. So Callimachus in his hymn to Jupiter, - Θεὸν αὐτὸν, ἀεὶ μέγαν, ἀεὶ ἀνακλα ; For fo the verfe is to be written. 3 Horace was early patronized by Brutus. When he was at Athens he imbibed the principles of the Stoic phi lofophy : when he praised this young tyrant for his bloody prosecutions of the Romans, who attempted the recovery of their ancient liberties and free conftitution. But you have none of these abandoned principles in the Athenian writers; none in old Homer, or in our modern Milton. One could wish that Shakespeare was as free from flattery, as Sophocles and Euripides. But our liberty was then in it's dawn; so that some pieces of flattery, which we find in Shakespeare, must be afcribed to the times. To omit fome of his rants about kings, which border on blafphemy; how losophy at the breaking out of the civil wars he joined himself to Brutus, who gave him the command of a Roman legion. His fortune being ruin'd, he went to the court of Auguftus, turned, rake, atheift, and poet. Afterwards he grew fober, and a Stoic philofopher again.-Virgil had not thofe private obligations to Brutus: his ruin'd circumftances fent him to court. An Emperor, and such a minifter as Maecenas could easily debauch a poor poet. But at length Virgil, as well as Horace, was willing to retreat : and at last he ordered his divine poem to be burnt, not because it wanted perfection as an epic poem, but because it flattered the fubverter of the constitution. 4 In Macbeth A& II. Macd. Moft facrilegious murther hath broke ope how abruptly has he introduced, in his Macbeth, a physician giving Malcolm an account of Edward's touching for the king's evil? And this, to pay a fervile homage to king James, who highly valued himself for a miraculous power, (as he and his credulous fubjects really believed,) of curing a kind of fcrophulous humours, which frequently are known to go away of themselves in either fex, when they arrive at a certain age. In his K. Henry VIII, the ftory which should have ended at the marriage of Anna Bullen, is lengthened out on purpose to make a christening of Elizabeth; and to introduce by way of prophecy a complement to her royal person and dignity and what is ftill worse, when the play was some time after acted before K. James, another prophetical patch of flattery was tacked to it. If a fubject is taken from the Roman hiftory, he feems afraid to do juftice to the citizens. In K. John A&t V. Hubert is speaking of the monk who poifon'd K. John. A refolved villain Whofe bowels fuddenly burft out. So 'tis written of Judas, Acts I, 18. He fell beadlong and burft afunder: iraxnor μio. You fee he has Chrift in view whenever he speaks of kings, and this was the courtlanguage: I wish it never went farther. The The patricians were the few in confpiracy against the many. And the ftruggles of the people were an honeft struggle for that share of power, which was kept unjustly from them. No wonder the historians have reprefented the tribunes factious, and the people rebellious, when most of that fort now remaining wrote after the fubverfion of their conftitution, and under the fear or favour of the Caefars. One would think our poet had been bred in the court of Nero, when we see in what colours he paints the tribunes, or the people he seems to have no other idea of them, than as a mob of Wat Tylers and Jack Cades. Hence he has fpoiled, one of the finest fubjects of tragedy from the Roman history, his Coriolanus. But if this be the fault of Shakespeare, 'twas no lefs the fault of Virgil and Horace; he errs in good company. Yet this is a poor apology, for the poet ought never to fubmit his art to wrong opinions, and prevailing fashion. AND now I am confidering the faulty fide of our poet, I cannot pass over his ever and anon confounding the manners of the age which he is describing, with thofe in which he lived: for if these are at all introduced, it should be done with great art and delicacy; and with fuch an antique antique caft, as Virgil has given to his Roman customs and manners. Much lefs can many of his anacronisms be defended. Other kind of errors (if they may be fo called) are properly the errors of great genius's; fuch are inaccura cies of language, and a faulty fublime, which is furely preferable to a faultlefs mediocrity. Shakefpeare labouring with a multiplicity of fublime ideas often gives himself not time to be delivered of them by the rules of flow-endeavouring art: hence he crowds various figures together, and metaphor upon metaphor; and runs the hazard of far-fetched expreffions, whilft intent on nobler ideas he condefcends not to grammatical niceties here the audience are to accompany the poet in his conceptions, and to fupply what he has sketched out for them. I will mention an inftance or two of this fort. ing to his father's ghost, Hamlet is speak Ob! anfwer me, Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell 5 Such expreffions, Longinus fect. 32. calls prettily enough, (after better critics than himself) wagaxırdurev16 κώτερα. |