Chapter XVIII: Preface: TO

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

ON

THE EMPRESS OF MOROCCO.

When I first saw "The Empress of Morocco," though I found it then to be a rhapsody of nonsense, I was very well contented to have let it pass, that the reputation of a new author might not be wholly damned; but that he might be encouraged to make his audience some part of amends another time. In order to this, I strained a point of conscience to cry up some passages of the play, which I hoped would recommend it to the liking of the more favourable judges; but the ill report it had from those that had seen it at Whitehall, had already done its business with judicious men. It was generally disliked by them; and but for the help of scenes, and habits, and a dancing tree, even the Ludgate audience had forsaken it.[163]

After this ill success, one would have thought the poet should have been sufficiently mortified; and though he were not naturally modest, should at least have deferred the showing of his impudence till a fitter season: but instead of this, he has written before his play the most arrogant, calumniating, ill-mannered, and senseless Preface I ever saw. This upstart illiterate scribbler, who lies more open to censure than any writer of the age, comes amongst the poets, like one of the earth-born brethren; and his first business in the world is to attack and murder all his fellows. This, I confess, raised a little indignation in me, as much as I was capable of for so contemptible a wretch, and made me think it somewhat necessary that he should be made an example, to the discouragement of all such petulant ill writers; and that he should be dragged out of that obscurity to which his own poetry would for ever have condemned him. I knew, indeed, that to write against him was to do him too great an honour; but I considered Ben Jonson had done it before to Dekker, our author's predecessor, whom he chastised in his "Poetaster," under the character of Crispinus; and brought him in vomiting up his fustian and nonsense.[164] Should our poet have been introduced in the same manner, he must have disgorged his whole play, ere he had been cleansed. Never did I see such a confused heap of false grammar, improper English, strained hyperboles, and downright bulls. His plot is incoherent, and full of absurdities, and the characters of his persons so ill chosen, that they are all either knaves or fools; only his knaves are fools into the bargain, and so must be of necessity, while they are in his management. They all speak alike, and without distinction of character; that is, every one rants, and swaggers, and talks nonsense abundantly. He steals notoriously from his contemporaries, but he so alters the property, by disguising his theft in ill English and bad applications, that he makes the child his own by deforming it:--_male dum recitas, incipit esse tuus_. A poet, when he sees his thoughts in so ill a dress, is ashamed to confess they ever belonged to him. For the Latin and Greek authors, he had certainly done them the same injury he has done the English, but that he has the excuse of Aretine for not railing against God;--he steals not from them, because he never knew them. In short, he is an animal of a most deplored understanding, without reading and conversation: his being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought, which he can never fashion either into wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough-hewn; his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and ill sounding. That little talent which he has, is fancy. He sometimes labours with a thought, but with the pudder he makes to bring it into the world, it is commonly still-born; so that, for want of learning and elocution, he will never be able to express any thing either naturally or justly. This subjects him on all occasions to false allusions, and mistaken points of wit. As for judgment, he has not the least grain of it; and therefore all his plays will be a mere confusion. What a beastly pattern of a king, whom he intends virtuous, has he shewn in his Muly Labas? Yet he is the only person who is kept to his character; for he is a perpetual fool; and I dare undertake, that if he were played by Nokes, who acted just such another monarch in "Macbeth,"[165] it would give new life to the play, and do it more good than all its devils. But of all women, the Lord bless us from his Laula! nobody can be safe from her: she is so naturally mischievous, that she kills without the least occasion, for the mere lechery of bloodshed. I suspect he took her character from the poisoning-woman, who, they say, makes almost as little ceremony of a murder as that Queen.

It were endless to run over the rest; but they are all of the same stamp. He has a heavy hand at fools, and a great felicity in writing nonsense for them. Fools they will be in spite of him. His king, his two empresses, his villain, and his sub-villain, nay his hero, have all a certain natural cast of the father; one turn of the countenance goes through all his children. Their folly was born and bred in them; and something of the Elkanah will be visible. Our poet, in writing fools, has very much in him of that sign-post painter, who was famous only for drawing roses: when a vintner desired him to paint a lion, he answered, he would do it to content him, but he was sure it would be like a rose. Yet since the common audience are much of his level, and both the great vulgar and the small (as Mr Cowley calls them) are apt to admire what they do not understand, (_omne ignotum habent pro magnifico_,) and think all which rumbles is heroic, it will be no wonder if he pass for a great author amongst town fools and city wits. With these men, they who laugh at him will be thought envious; for they will be sure to rise up in arms for nonsense, and violently defend a cause in which they are engaged by the ties of nature and education. But it will be for the benefit of mankind hereafter to observe what kind of people they are who frequent this play, that men of common sense may know whom to shun. Yet I dare assure the reader, that one half of the faults and absurdities are not shewn; what is here is only selected fustian, impertinence, and false grammar. There is as much behind, as would reasonably damn as many plays as there are acts; for I am sure there are no four lines together, which are free from some error, and commonly a gross one. But here is enough to take a taste of him; to have observed all, were to have swelled a volume, and have made you pay as dear for a fool's picture, as you have done for his tragedy with sculptures.

* * * * *

"As men in incense send up vows to heaven."

_Empress of Morocco_, Act II.

As if incense could carry up thoughts, or a thought go up in smoke: he may as well say, he will roast or bake thoughts, as smoke them. And the allusion too is very agreeable and natural: he compares thunder, lightning, and roaring of guns, to incense; and says thus,--he expresses his loud joys in a concert of thundering guns, as men send up silent vows in gentle incense. If this description is not plentifully supplied with nonsense, I will refer myself to the reader. No doubt it was worth our poet's pains to cut a river up to Morocco, for the sake of such a description of ships as this. A rare and studied piece it is. The poet has employed his art about every line, that it may be esteemed a curiosity in its kind, and himself a person endowed with a peculiar talent in writing new and exact nonsense. And for this no doubt it was, that our poet was so much courted, sent for from place to place, that you could hardly cross a street but you met him puffing and blowing, with his fardel of nonsense under his arm, driving his bulls in haste to some great person or other to shew them, as if he had lately come out of Asia or Africa with strange kinds of dromedaries, rhinoceroses, or a new Cambyses, a beast more monstrous than any of the former. Nay, both the playhouses contended for him, as if he had found out some new way of eating fire. No doubt their design was to entertain the town with a rarity. People had been long weary of good sense that looked like nonsense, and now they would treat them with nonsense which yet looked very like sense. But as he that pretended he would shew a beast which was very like a horse, and was no horse, set people much admiring what strange animal it should be, but when they came in, and found it was nothing but a plain grey mare, laughed a while at the conceit, but were ready after to stone the fellow for his impudence; so it must needs fare with our poet, when his upper-gallery fools discover they have tricks put upon them, and all that they have so ignorantly clapped is downright nonsense. And for my part, I cannot but admire, that not only to those who know, or at least have had time enough to learn, what sense is, but also to a people who, of all nations in the world, pretend to understand best what belongs to shipping, our poet should dare to offer this fustian for sense and a description of ships; a description so ridiculous, that Mulylabas, as errant a fool, and as ignorant of ships as he is, must needs discover, that he is abused, and that ships cannot be such things as the poet makes them. But the poet has not only been so impudent to expose all this stuff, but so arrogant to defend it with an Epistle; like a saucy booth-keeper, that when he had put a cheat upon the people, would wrangle and fight with any that would not like it, or would offer to discover it; for which arrogance our poet receives this correction; and to jerk him a little the sharper, I will not transpose his verse, but by the help of his own words trans-nonsense sense, that, by my stuff, people may judge the better what his is:

Great Boy, thy tragedy and sculptures done,
From press and plates, in fleets do homeward run:
And in ridiculous and humble pride,
Their course in ballad-singers' baskets guide;
Whose greasy twigs do all new beauties take
From the gay shows thy dainty sculptures make.
Thy lines a mess of rhyming nonsense yield,
A senseless tale, with fluttering fustian filled.
No grain of sense does in one line appear;
Thy words big bulks of boisterous bombast bear;
With noise they move, and from players' mouths rebound,
When their tongues dance to thy words' empty sound.
By thee inspired, thy rumbling verses roll,
As if that rhyme and bombast lent a soul;
And with that soul they seem taught duty too;
To huffing words does humble nonsense bow,
As if it would thy worthless worth enhance,
To the lowest rank of fops thy praise advance,

To whom by instinct all thy stuff is dear;
Their loud claps echo to the theatre.
From breaths of fools thy commendation spreads,
Fame sings thy praise with mouths of loggerheads;
With noise and laughing each thy fustian greets,
'Tis clapped by choirs of empty-headed cits,
Who have their tribute sent, and homage given,
_As men in whispers send loud noise to heaven_.[166]

Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle. And now we are come from aboard his dancing, masquing, rebounding, breathing fleet; and as if we had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but fools and nonsense.

Order and harmony in each appear,
Their lofty bulks the flaming billows bear;
In state they move, and on the waves rebound,
As if they danced to their own trumpets' sound:
By winds inspired, with lively grace they roll,
As if that breath and motion lent a soul;
And with that soul they seem taught duty too,
Their topsails lowered, their heads with reverence bow,
As if they would their general's worth enhance,
From him by instinct taught allegiance.
Whilst the loud cannons echo to the shore,
Their flaming breaths salute you emperor;
From their deep mouths he does your glory sing,
With thunder and with lightning greets his King.
Thus to express his joys, in a loud choir,
And concert of winged messengers of fire,
He has his tribute sent, and homage given,
As men in incense send up vows to heaven.

POSTSCRIPT.

Some who are pleased with the bare sound of verse, or the rumbling of robustious nonsense, will be apt to think Mr Settle too severely handled in this pamphlet; but I do assure the reader, that there are a vast number of errors passed by, perhaps as many, or more, than are taken notice of, both to avoid the tediousness of the work, and the greatness. It might have occasioned a volume upon such a trifle. I dare affirm, that no objections in this book are fruitless cavils: but if, through too much haste, Mr Settle may be accused of any seeming fault, which may reasonably be defended, let the passing by many gross errors without reprehension compound for it. I am not ignorant, that his admirers, who most commonly are women, will resent this very ill; and some little friends of his, who are smatterers in poetry, will be ready for most of his gross errors to use that much mistaken plea of _poetica licentia_, which words fools are apt to use for the palliating the most absurd nonsense in any poem. I cannot find when poets had liberty, from any authority, to write nonsense, more than any other men. Nor is that plea of _poetica licentia_ used as a subterfuge by any but weak professors of that art, who are commonly given over to a mist of fancy, a buzzing of invention, and a sound of something like sense, and have no use of judgment. They never think thoroughly, but the best of their thoughts are like those we have in dreams, imperfect; which though perhaps we are often pleased with sleeping, we blush at waking. The licentious wildness and extravagance of such men's conceits have made poetry contemned by some, though it be very unjust for any to condemn the science for the weakness of some of the professors.

Men that are given over to fancy only, are little better than madmen. What people say of fire, viz. that it is a good servant, but an ill master, may not unaptly be applied to fancy; which, when it is too active, rages, but when cooled and allayed by the judgment, produces admirable effects. But this rage of fancy is never Mr Settle's crime; he has too much phlegm, and too little choler, to be accused of this. He has all the pangs and throes of a fanciful poet, but is never delivered of any more perfect issue of his phlegmatic brain, than a dull Dutchwoman's sooterkin is of her body.

His style is very muddy, and yet much laboured; for his meaning (for sense there is not much) is most commonly obscure, but never by reason of too much height, but lowness. His fancy never flies out of sight, but often sinks out of sight:--but now I hope the reader will excuse some digression upon the extravagant use of fancy and poetical licence.

Fanciful poetry and music, used with moderation, are good; but men who are wholly given over to either of them, are commonly as full of whimsies as diseased and splenetic men can be. Their heads are continually hot, and they have the same elevation of fancy sober, which men of sense have when they drink. So wine used moderately does not take away the judgment, but used continually, debauches men's understandings, and turns them into sots, making their heads continually hot by accident, as the others are by nature; so, mere poets and mere musicians are as sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging any thing clearly.

A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical, and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet; and besides this, should have experience in all sorts of humours and manners of men; should be thoroughly skilled in conversation, and should have a great knowledge of mankind in general. Mr Settle having never studied any sort of learning but poetry, and that but slenderly, as you may find by his writings, and having besides no other advantages, must make very lame work on't; he himself declares, he neither reads, nor cares for conversation; so that he would persuade us he is a kind of fanatic in poetry, and has a light within him, and writes by an inspiration; which (like that of the heathen prophets) a man must have no sense of his own when he receives; and no doubt he would be thought inspired, and would be reverenced extremely in the country where Santons are worshipped. But some will, I doubt not, object, that poetry should not be reduced to the strictness of mathematics; to which I answer, it ought to be so far mathematical as to have likeness and proportion, since they will all confess that it is a kind of painting. But they will perhaps say, that a poem is a picture to be seen at a distance, and therefore ought to be bigger than the life. I confess there must be a due distance allowed for the seeing of any thing in the world; for an object can no more be seen at all too near, than too far off the eye: but granting that a poem is a picture to be viewed at a great distance, the distance and the bigness ought to be so suited, as though the picture be much bigger than the life, yet it must not seem so; and what miserable mistakes some poets make for want of knowing this truly, I leave to men of sense to judge; and by the way, let us consider that dramatic poetry, especially the English, brings the picture nearer the eye, than any other sort of poetry.

But some will say after this, what licence is left for poets? Certainly the same that good poets ever took, without being faulty, (for surely the best were so sometimes, because they were but men,) and that licence is fiction; which kind of poetry is like that of landscape-painting; and poems of this nature, though they be not _vera_, ought to be _verisimilia_.

The great art of poets is either the adorning and beautifying of truth, or the inventing pleasing and probable fictions. If they invent impossible fables, like some of Æsop's, they ought to have such morals couched under them, as may tend to the instruction of mankind, or the regulation of manners, or they can be of no use; nor can they really delight any but such as would be pleased with Tom Thumb, without these circumstances. But there are some pedants, who will quote authority from the ancients for the faults and extravagancies of some of the moderns; who being able to imitate nothing but the faults of the classic authors, mistake them for their excellencies. I speak with all due reverence to the ancients; for no man esteems their perfections more than myself, though I confess I have not that blind implicit faith in them which some ignorant schoolmasters would impose upon us, to believe in all their errors, and own all their crimes: to some pedants every thing in them is of that authority, that they will create a new figure of rhetoric out of the fault of an old poet. I am apt to believe the same faults were found in them, when they wrote, which men of sense find now; but not the excellencies which schoolmasters would persuade us: yet I must say now,

_Nobis non licet esse tam disertis,
Musas qui colimus severiores._

MARTIAL. Epipgr. ix. 12.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 163: There was a royal theatre at Whitehall, where this play was twice acted. This playhouse was burned in 1697. The _dancing tree_, refers to this stage direction in the second act: "A Moorish dance is presented by Moors in several habits, who bring in an artificial palm-tree, about which they dance to several antique instruments of music."]

[Footnote 164: For Ben Jonson's controversy with Dekker, See Vol. X. p. 451. Dekker was as far superior to Settle, as Dryden was to Jonson.]

[Footnote 165: This seems, as conjectured by Mr Malone, to have been some parody on Macbeth, which, strange to tell! had been converted into a sort of opera by D'Avenant. Such burlesque performances were fashionable about this time.]

[Footnote 166: These lines are a parody on the following passage in "The Empress of Morocco," (act ii. sc. 1.) which, we are told in the Remarks, was much admired.

_The scene opened, is represented the prospect of a large river,
with a glorious fleet of ships, supposed to be the navy of Muly
Hamet. After the sound of trumpets, and the discharging of guns,_

_Enter King, young Queen_, HAMETALHAZ, _and Attendants._

_Hamet._ Great Sir, your royal father's general
Prince Muly Hamet's fleet does homeward sail,
And in a solemn and triumphant pride
Their course up the great river Tensift guide,
Whose gilded currents do new glories take
From the reflexion his bright streamers make.
The waves a masque of martial pageants yield,
A flying army on a floating field.
]