Chapter VIII: Book XII: Argument (4)

[Footnote 53: No one could know the cowardice of Lord Rochester so well as Mulgrave, who, in his Memoirs, records the following infamous instance of it. He had heard it reported, that Lord Rochester had said something of him very malicious: "I therefore sent Colonel Aston, a very mettled friend of mine, to call him to account for it. He denied the words; and, indeed, I was soon convinced he had never said them: but the mere report, though I found it to be false, obliged me (as I then foolishly thought) to go on with the quarrel; and the next day was appointed for us to fight on horseback, a way in England a little unusual, but it was his part to chuse. Accordingly, I and my second lay the night before at Knightsbridge, privately, to avoid the being secured at London upon any suspicion; which yet we found ourselves more in danger of there, because we had all the appearance of highway-men, that had a mind to lie skulking in an odd inn for one night; but this, I suppose, the people of that house were used to, and so took no notice of us, but liked us the better. In the morning, we met the Lord Rochester at the place appointed, who, instead of James Porter, whom, he assured Aston, he would make his second, brought an errant lifeguard-man, whom nobody knew. To this Mr Aston took exception, upon the account of his being no suitable adversary; especially considering how extremely well he was mounted, whereas we had only a couple of pads. Upon which, we all agreed to fight on foot: But, as my Lord Rochester and I were riding into the next field, in order to it, he told me, that he had at first chosen to fight on horseback, because he was so weak with a distemper, that he found himself unfit to fight at all any way, much less a-foot. I was extremely surprised, because, at that time, no man had a better reputation for courage; and (my anger against him being quite over, because I was satisfied that he never spoke those words I resented,) I took the liberty of representing, what a ridiculous story it would make if we returned without fighting; and therefore advised him, for both our sakes, especially for his own, to consider better of it; since I must be obliged, in my own defence, to lay the fault on him, by telling the truth of the matter. His answer was, that he submitted to it; and hoped, that I would not desire the advantage of having to do with any man in so weak a condition. I replied, that, by such an argument, he had sufficiently tied my hands, upon condition I might call our seconds to be witnesses of the whole business; which he consented to, and so we parted. When we returned to London, we found it full of this quarrel, upon our being absent so long; and therefore Mr Aston thought himself obliged to write down every word and circumstance of this whole matter, in order to spread every where the true reason of our returning without having fought; which being never in the least either contradicted or resented by the Lord Rochester, entirely ruined his reputation as to courage, (of which I was really sorry to be the occasion,) though no body had still a greater as to wit; which supported him pretty well in the world, notwithstanding some more accidents of the same kind, that never fail to succeed one another when once people know a man's weakness."--_Memoirs of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham._

Conscious of his infamy, Rochester only ventured to reply to Sheffield, the real author of the above satire, by some cold sneers on his expedition to Tangiers, which occur in the poem called "Rochester's Farewell."]

A

FAMILIAR EPISTLE

TO

MR JULIAN,

SECRETARY OF THE MUSES.

The extremity of license in manners, necessarily leads to equal license in personal satire; and there never was an age in which both were carried to such excess as in that of Charles II. These personal and scandalous libels acquired the name of lampoons, from the established burden formerly sung to them:

_Lampone, lampone, camerada lampone_.

Dryden suffered under these violent and invisible assaults, as much as any one of his age; to which his own words, in several places of his writings, and also the existence of many of the pasquils themselves in the Luttrel Collection, bear ample witness. In many of his prologues and epilogues he alludes to this rage for personal satire, and to the employment which it found for the half and three quarter wits and courtiers of the time:

Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes;
Ye abuse yourselves more dully than the times.
Scandal, the glory of the English nation,
Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion:
Such harmless thrusts, as if, like fencers wise,
They had agreed their play before their prize.
Faith they may hang their harp upon the willows;
'Tis just like children when they box with pillows.

_See_ Vol. X. p. 365.

Upon the general practice of writing lampoons, and the necessity of finding some mode of dispersing them, which should diffuse the scandal widely, while the authors remained concealed, was founded the self-erected office of Julian, secretary, as he called himself, to the Muses. This person attended Will's, the Wits Coffeehouse, as it was called; and dispersed, among the crowds who frequented that place of gay resort, copies of the lampoons which had been privately communicated to him by their authors. "He is described," says Mr Malone, "as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a libel." Several satires were written, in the form of addresses, to him, as well as the following. There is one among the State Poems, beginning,

Julian, in verse, to ease thy wants I write,
Not moved by envy, malice, or by spite,
Or pleased with the empty names of wit and sense,
But merely to supply thy want of pence:
This did inspire my muse, when, out at eel,
She saw her needy secretary reel.
Grieved that a man, so useful to the age,
Should foot it in so mean an equipage;
A crying scandal, that the fees of sense
Should not be able to support the expence
Of a poor scribe, who never thought of wants
When able to procure a cup of Nantz.

Another, called, "A Consoling Epistle to Julian," is said to have been written by the Duke of Buckingham.

From a passage in one of the "Letters from the Dead to the Living," we learn, that, after Julian's death, and the madness of his successor, called Summerton, lampoon felt a sensible decay; and there was no more that "brisk spirit of verse, that used to watch the follies and vices of the men and women of figure, that they could not start new ones faster than lampoons exposed them."

In another epistle of the same collection, supposed to be written by Julian from the shades, to Will Pierre, a low comedian, he is made thus to boast of the extent of the dominion which he exercised when on earth.

"The conscious Tub Tavern can witness, and my Berry Street apartment testify, the solicitations I have had, for the first copy of a new lampoon, from the greatest lords of the court, though their own folly and their wives' vices were the subjects. My person was so sacred, that the terrible scan-man had no terrors for me, whose business was so public and so useful, as conveying about the faults of the great and the fair; for in my books, the lord was shewn a knave or fool, though his power defended the former, and his pride would not see the latter. The antiquated coquet was told of her age and ugliness, though her vanity placed her in the first row in the king's box at the playhouse; and in the view of the congregation at St James's church. The precise countess, that would be scandalized at _double entendre_, was shown betwixt a pair of sheets with a well-made footman, in spite of her quality and conjugal vow. The formal statesman, that set up for wisdom and honesty, was exposed as a dull tool, and yet a knave, losing at play his own revenue, and the bribes incident to his post, besides enjoying the infamy of a poor and fruitless knavery without any concern. The demure lady, that would scarce sip off the glass in company, was shewn carousing her bottles in private, of cool Nantz too, sometimes, to correct the crudities of her last night's debauch. In short, in my books were seen men and women as they were, not as they would seem,--stript of their hypocrisy, spoiled of the fig-leaves of their quality. A knave was called a knave, a fool a fool, a jilt a jilt, and a whore a whore. And the love of scandal and native malice, that men and women have to one another, made me in such request when alive, that I was admitted to the lord's closet, when a man of letters and merit would be thrust out of doors. And I was as familiar with the ladies as their lap-dogs: for to them I did often good services; under pretence of a lampoon, I conveyed a _billet doux_; and so, whilst I exposed their vast vices in the present, I prompted matter for the next lampoon."

The following lampoon, in which it is highly improbable that Dryden had any share, is chiefly levelled against Sir Car Scrope, son of Sir Adrian Scrope of Cockington, in Lincolnshire, a courtier of considerable poetical talents, of whom Anthony Wood says, "that, as divers satirical copies of verses were made upon him by other persons, so he hath diverse made by himself upon them, which are handed about to this day." We have seen that he is mentioned with contempt in the "Essay on Satire;" and, in the "Advice to Apollo," in the State Poems, Vol. I. his studies are thus commemorated:

----Sir Car, that knight of withered face,
Who, for the reversion of a poet's place,
Waits on Melpomene, and sooths her grace;
That angry miss alone he strives to please,
For fear the rest should teach him wit and ease,
And make him quit his loved laborious walks,
Where, sad or silent, o'er the room he stalks,
And strives to write as wisely as he talks.

He is also mentioned in many other libels of the day, and some of his answers are still extant. Rochester assailed him in his "Allusion to the Tenth Satire of Horace's first Book." Sir Car Scrope replied, and published a poem in Defence of Satire, to which the earl retorted by a very coarse set of verses, addressed to the knight by name. Sir Car Scrope was a tolerable translator from the classics; and his version of the "Epistle from Sappho to Phaon" is inserted in the translation of Ovid's Epistles by several hands, edited by our author. Dryden mentions, in one of his prefaces, Sir Car Scrope's efforts with approbation. But it is not from this circumstance alone I conclude that this epistle has been erroneously attributed to our author; for the whole internal evidence speaks loudly against its authenticity. Indeed, it only rests on Dryden's name being placed to it in the 6th volume of the Miscellanies published after his death.

A

FAMILIAR EPISTLE

TO

MR JULIAN,

SECRETARY OF THE MUSES.

Thou common shore of this poetic town,
Where all the excrements of wit are thrown;
For sonnet, satire, bawdry, blasphemy,
Are emptied, and disburdened all in thee:
The choleric wight, untrussing all in rage,
Finds thee, and lays his load upon thy page.
Thou Julian, or thou wise Vespasian rather,
Dost from this dung thy well-pickt guineas gather.
All mischief's thine; transcribing, thou wilt stoop
From lofty Middlesex[54] to lowly Scroop.
What times are these, when, in the hero's room, }
Bow-bending Cupid doth with ballads come, }
And little Aston[55] offers to the bum? }
Can two such pigmies such a weight support,
Two such Tom Thumbs of satire in a court?
Poor George[56] grows old, his muse worn out of fashion,
Hoarsely he sung Ephelia's lamentation.
Less art thou helped by Dryden's bed-rid age;
That drone has lost his sting upon the stage.
Resolve me, poor apostate, this my doubt,
What hope hast thou to rub this winter out?
Know, and be thankful then, for Providence
By me hath sent thee this intelligence.
A knight there is,[57] if thou canst gain his grace,
Known by the name of the hard-favoured face.
For prowess of the pen renowned is he,
From Don Quixote descended lineally;
And though, like him, unfortunate he prove,
Undaunted in attempts of wit and love.
Of his unfinished face, what shall I say,--
But that 'twas made of Adam's own red clay;
That much, much ochre was on it bestowed;
God's image 'tis not, but some Indian god:
Our christian earth can no resemblance bring,
But ware of Portugal for such a thing;
Such carbuncles his fiery face confess,
As no Hungarian water can redress.
A face which, should he see, (but heaven was kind,
And, to indulge his self, Love made him blind,)
He durst not stir abroad for fear to meet
Curses of teeming women in the street:
The best could happen from this hideous sight, }
Is, that they should miscarry with the fright,-- }
Heaven guard them from the likeness of the knight! }
Such is our charming Strephon's outward man,
His inward parts let those disclose who can.
One while he honoureth Birtha with his flame,
And now he chants no less Lovisa's[58] name;
For when his passion hath been bubbling long,
The scum at last boils up into a song;
And sure no mortal creature, at one time,
Was e'er so far o'ergone with love and rhyme.
To his dear self of poetry he talks,
His hands and feet are scanning as he walks;
His writhing looks his pangs of wit accuse,
The airy symptoms of a breeding muse,
And all to gain the great Lovisa's grace.
But never pen did pimp for such a face;
There's not a nymph in city, town, or court,
But Strephon's _billet-doux_ has been their sport.
Still he loves on, yet still he's sure to miss,
As they who wash an Ethiop's face, or his.
What fate unhappy Strephon does attend,
Never to get a mistress, nor a friend!
Strephon alike both wits and fools detest,
'Cause he's like Esop's bat, half bird half beast;
For fools to poetry have no pretence,
And common wit supposes common sense;
Not quite so low as fool, nor quite a top,
He hangs between them both, and is a fop.
His morals, like his wit, are motley too;
He keeps from arrant knave with much ado.
But vanity and lying so prevail,
That one grain more of each would turn the scale;
He would be more a villain had he time,
But he's so wholly taken up with rhyme,
That he mistakes his talent; all his care
Is to be thought a poet fine and fair.
Small beer and gruel are his meat and drink,
The diet he prescribes himself to think;
Rhyme next his heart he takes at the morn peep,
Some love epistles at the hour of sleep;--
So, betwixt elegy and ode, we see
Strephon is in a course of poetry.
This is the man ordained to do thee good,
The pelican to feed thee with his blood;
Thy wit, thy poet, nay thy friend, for he
Is fit to be a friend to none but thee.
Make sure of him, and of his muse betimes,
For all his study is hung round with rhymes.
Laugh at him, jostle him, yet still he writes,
In rhyme he challenges, in rhyme he fights.
Charged with the last, and basest infamy,
His business is to think what rhymes to lie;
Which found, in fury he retorts again.
Strephon's a very dragon at his pen;
His brother murdered,[59] and his mother's whored,
His mistress lost, and yet his pen's his sword.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, was created Earl of Middlesex in 1675. He is better known as the Earl of Dorset.]

[Footnote 55: Probably the person mentioned in the "Essay on Satire."]

[Footnote 56: Sir George Etherege.]

[Footnote 57: Sir Car Scrope.]

[Footnote 58: Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth.]

[Footnote 59: Probably the Mr Scrope whom Langbaine saw stabbed in the theatre, by Sir Thomas Armstrong, during the representation of "Macbeth." Wood mentions a satire of Sir Car Scrope's, in which Sir Thomas Armstrong is reflected upon. The author of the epistle seems to allude to some such circumstance.]

THE

ART OF POETRY.

THE ART OF POETRY.

This piece was inserted among Dryden's Works, upon authority of the following advertisement by his publisher Jacob Tonson.

"This translation of Monsieur Boileau's 'Art of Poetry' was made in the year 1680, by Sir William Soame of Suffolk, Baronet; who, being very intimately acquainted with Mr Dryden, desired his revisal of it. I saw the manuscript lie in Mr Dryden's hands for above six months, who made very considerable alterations in it, particularly the beginning of the Fourth Canto; and it being his opinion, that it would be better to apply the poem to English writers, than keep to the French names, as it was first translated, Sir William desired he would take the pains to make that alteration; and accordingly that was entirely done by Mr Dryden.

"The poem was first published in the year 1683. Sir William was after sent ambassador to Constantinople, in the reign of King James, but died in the voyage."--J.T.

To give weight to Tonson's authority, it may be added, that great part of the poem bears marks of Dryden's polishing hand; and that some entire passages show at once his taste in criticism, principles, and prejudices.

THE

ART OF POETRY.