Letters on England [48]
Son palais fut un Temple," &c.
"We must resign! heaven his great soul does claim
In storms as loud as his immortal fame;
His dying groans, his last breath shakes our isle,
And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile:
About his palace their broad roots are tost
Into the air; so Romulus was lost!
New Rome in such a tempest missed her king,
And from obeying fell to worshipping.
On OEta's top thus Hercules lay dead,
With ruined oaks and pines about him spread.
Nature herself took notice of his death,
And, sighing, swelled the sea with such a breath,
That to remotest shores the billows rolled,
Th' approaching fate of his great ruler told."
WALLER.
It was this elogium that gave occasion to the reply (taken notice of
in Bayle's Dictionary), which Waller made to King Charles II. This
king, to whom Waller had a little before (as is usual with bards and
monarchs) presented a copy of verses embroidered with praises,
reproached the poet for not writing with so much energy and fire as
when he had applauded the Usurper (meaning Oliver). "Sir," replied
Waller to the king, "we poets succeed better in fiction than in
truth." This answer was not so sincere as that which a Dutch
ambassador made, who, when the same monarch complained that his
masters paid less regard to him than they had done to Cromwell.
"Ah, sir!" says the Ambassador, "Oliver was quite another man--" It
is not my intent to give a commentary on Waller's character, nor on
that of any other person; for I consider men after their death in no
other light than as they were writers, and wholly disregard
everything else. I shall only observe that Waller, though born in a
court, and to an estate of five or six thousand pounds sterling a
year, was never so proud or so indolent as to lay aside the happy
talent which Nature had indulged him. The Earls of Dorset and
Roscommon, the two Dukes of Buckingham, the Lord Halifax, and so
many other noblemen, did not think the reputation they obtained of
very great poets and illustrious writers, any way derogatory to
their quality. They are more glorious for their works than for
their titles. These cultivated the polite arts with as much
assiduity as though they had been their whole dependence.
They also have made learning appear venerable in the eyes of the
vulgar, who have need to be led in all things by the great; and who,
nevertheless, fashion their manners less after those of the nobility
(in England I mean) than in any other country in the world.
LETTER XXII.--ON MR. POPE AND SOME OTHER FAMOUS POETS
I intended to treat of Mr. Prior, one of the most amiable English
poets, whom you saw Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary at Paris
in 1712. I also designed to have given you some idea of the Lord
Roscommon's and the Lord Dorset's muse; but I find that to do this I
should be obliged to write a large volume, and that, after much
pains and trouble, you would have but an imperfect idea of all those
works. Poetry is a kind of music in which a man should have some
knowledge before he pretends to judge of it. When I give you a
translation of some passages from those foreign poets, I only prick
down, and that imperfectly, their music; but then I cannot express
the taste of their harmony.
There is one English poem especially which I should despair of ever
making you understand, the title whereof is "Hudibras." The subject
of it is the Civil War in the time of the grand rebellion, and the
principles and practice of the Puritans are therein ridiculed. It
is Don Quixote, it is our "Satire Menippee" blended together. I
never found so much wit in one single book as in that, which at the
same time is the most difficult to be translated. Who would believe
that a work which paints in such lively and natural colours the
several foibles and follies of mankind, and where we meet with more
sentiments