Ev’n a romance, a tune, a rhyme,
Help thee to pass the tedious time,
Which else would on thy hand remain;
Though flown it ne’er looks back again:
And cards are dealt, and chess-boards brought,
To ease the pain of coward thought:
Happy result of human wit!
That Alma may herself forget.
Dick, thus we act, and thus we are,
Or toss’d by hope or sunk by care.
With endless pain this man pursues
What if he gain’d he could not use;
And th’ other fondly hopes to see
What never was nor e’er shall be.
We err by use, go wrong by rules,
In gesture grave, in action fools:
We join hypocrisy to pride,
Doubling the faults we strive to hide,
Or grant that with extreme surprise
We find ourselves at sixty wise,
And twenty pretty things are known,
Of which we can’t accomplish one,
Whilst, as my System says, the Mind
Is to these upper rooms confined.
Should I, my Friend, at large repeat
Her borrow’d sense, her fond conceit,
The bede-roll of her vicious tricks,
My Poem would be too prolix:
For could I my remarks sustain,
Like Socrates or Miles Montaigne,
Who in these times would read my books,
But Tom o’ Stiles or John o’ Nokes?
At Brentford kings, discreet and wise,
After long thought and grave advice,
Into Lardella’s coffin peeping,
Saw nought to cause their mirth or weeping;
So Alma, now to joy or grief
Superior, finds her late relief;
Wearied of being high or great,
And nodding in her chair of state,
Stunn’d and worn out with endless chat,
Of Will did this and Nan said that,
She finds, poor thing, some little crack,
Which Nature forced by time must make,
Through which she wings her destined way;
Upward she soars and down drops clay;
While some surviving friend supplies
Hic jacet, and a hundred lies.
O Richard, till that day appears
Which must decide our hopes and fears,
Would Fortune calm her present rage,
And give us playthings for our age;
Would Clotho wash her hands in milk,
And twist our thread with gold and silk;
Would she in friendship, peace, and plenty
Spin out our years to four times twenty;
And should we both in this condition
Have conquer’d love, and worse ambition;
(Else those two passions by the way
May chance to show us scurvy play)
Then, Richard, then should we sit down,
Far from the tumult of this town;
I fond of my well-chosen seat,
My pictures, medals, books complete;
Or should we mix our friendly talk,
O’ershadow’d in that favourite walk
Which thy own hand had whilom planted,
Both pleased with all we thought we wanted;
Yet then, even then, one cross reflection
Would spoil thy grove and my recollection:
Thy son and his e’er that may die,
And time some uncouth heir supply,
Who shall for nothing else be known
But spoiling all that thou hast done.
Who set the twigs shall he remember,
That is in haste to fell the timber;
And what shall of thy woods remain
Except the box that threw the main?
Nay, may not time and death remove
The near relations whom I love?
And my Coz Tom, or his Coz Mary,
(Who hold the plough or skim the dairy)
My favourite books and pictures sell
To Smart or Doiley by the ell?
Kindly throw in a little figure,
And set their price upon the bigger?
Those who could never read their grammar,
When my dear volumes touch the hammer,
May think books best as richest bound:
My copper medals by the pound
May be with learned justice weigh’d;
To turn the balance, Otho’s head
May be thrown in; and for the mettle
The coin may mend a tinker’s kettle
Tired with these thoughts, Less tired than I,
Quoth Dick, with your philosophy
That people live and die, I knew
An hour ago as well as you;
And if Fate spins us longer years,
Or is in haste to take the shears,
I know we must both fortunes try,
And bear our evils wet or dry.
Yet let the goddess smile or frown,
Bread we shall eat or white or brown,
And in a cottage or a court
Drink fine Champaigne or muddled Port.
What need of books these truths to tell,
Which folks perceive who cannot spell?
And must we spectacles apply
To view what hurts our naked eye?
Sir, if it be your wisdom’s aim
To make me merrier than I am,
I’ll be all night at your devotion,
Come on, Friend; broach the pleasing notion;
But if you would depress my thought,
Your System is not worth a groat,
For Plato’s fancies what care I?
I hope you would not have me die,
Like simple Cato in the play,
For any thing that he can say?
E’en let him of ideas speak
To Heathens in his native Greek;
If to be sad is to be wise,
I do most heartily despise
Whatever Socrates has said,
Or Tully writ, or Wanley read.
Dear Drift, to set our matters right,
Remove these papers from my sight;
Burn Matt’s Descart and Aristotle.
Here, Jonathan, your master’s bottle.
SOLOMON ON THE VANITY OF THE WORLD.
A POEM IN THREE BOOKS.
The bewailing of man’s miseries hath been elegantly and copiously set forth by many, in the writings as well of philosophers as divines; and it is both a pleasant and a profitable contemplation. Lord Bacon’s Advancement of Learning.
PREFACE.
IT is hard for a man to speak of himself with any tolerable satisfaction or success: he can be no more pleased in blaming himself, than in reading a satire made on him by another: and though he may justly desire, that a friend should praise him; yet, if he makes his own panegyric, he will get very few to read it. It is harder for him to speak of his own writings. An author is in the condition of a culprit: the public are his judges: by allowing too much, and condescending too far, he may injure his own cause, and become a kind of felo de se: and by pleading and asserting too boldly, he may displease the court that sits upon him: his apology may only heighten his accusation. I would avoid those extremes; and though, I grant, it would not be very civil to trouble the reader with a long preface, before he enters upon an indifferent poem; I would say something to persuade him to take it as it is, or to excuse it for not being better.
The noble images and reflections, the profound reasonings upon human actions, and excellent precepts for the government of life, which are found in the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and other books, commonly attributed to Solomon, afford subjects for finer poems in every kind, than have, I think, yet appeared in the Greek, Latin, or any modern language: how far they were verse in their original, is a dissertation not to be entered into at present.
Out of this great tre
asure, which lies heaped up together, in a confused magnificence, above all order, I had a mind to collect and digest such observations, and apophthegms, as most particularly tend to the proof of that great assertion, laid down in the beginning of the Ecclesiastes, “all is vanity.”
Upon the subject thus chosen, such various images present themselves to a -writer’s mind, that he must find it easier to judge what should be rejected, than what ought to be received. The difficulty lies in drawing and disposing; or (as painters term it) in grouping such a multitude of different objects, preserving still the justice and conformity of style and colouring, the simplex duntaxat et unum, which Horace prescribes, as requisite to make the whole picture beautiful and perfect.
As precept, however true in theory, or useful in practice, would be but dry and tedious in verse, especially if the recital be long, I found it necessary to form some story, and give a kind of body to the poem. Under what species it may be comprehended, whether didascalic or heroic, I leave to the judgment of the critics; desiring them to be favourable in their censure; and not solicitous what the poem is called, provided it may be accepted.
The chief personage or character in the epic, is always proportioned to the design of the work, to carry on the narration and the moral. Homer intended to show us in his Iliad, that dissensions amongst great men obstruct the execution of the noblest enterprises, and tend to the ruin of a state or kingdom. His Achilles, therefore, is haughty and passionate, impatient of any restraint by laws, and arrogant in arms. In his Odysses the same poet endeavours to explain, that the hardest difficulties may be overcome by labour, and our fortune restored after the severest afflictions. Ulysses, therefore, is valiant, virtuous, and patient. Virgil’s design was to tell us how, from a small colony established by the Trojans in Italy, the Roman empire rose, and from what ancient families Augustus (who was his prince and patron) descended. His hero, therefore, was to fight his way to the throne, still distinguished and protected by the favour of the gods. The poet to this end takes off from the vices of Achilles, and adds to the virtues of Ulysses; from both perfecting a character proper for his work in the person of Æneas.
As Virgil copied after Homer, other epic poets have copied after them both. Tasso’s Gierusalemme Liberate is directly Troy town sacked; with this difference only, that the two, chief characters in Homer, which the Latin poet had joined in one, the Italian has separated in his Godfrey and Rinaldo: but he makes them both carry on his work with very great success. — Ronsard’s Franciade (incomparably good as far as it goes) is again Virgil’s Æneis. His hero comes from a foreign country, settles a colony, and lays the foundation of a future empire. I instance in these, as the greatest Italian and French poets in the epic. In our language Spenser has not contented himself with this submissive manner of imitation: he launches out into very flowery paths, which still seem to conduct him into one great road. His Fairy Queen (had it been finished) must have ended in the account, which every knight was to give of his adventures, and in the accumulated praises of his heroine Gloriana. The whole would have been an heroic poem, but in another cast and figure, than any that had ever been written before. Yet it is observable that every hero (as far as we can judge by the books still remaining) bears his distinguished character, and represents some particular virtue conducive to the whole design.
To bring this to our present subject. The pleasures of life do not compensate the miseries: age steals upon us unawares; and death, as the only cure of our ills, ought to be expected, but not feared. This instruction is to be illustrated by the action of some great person. Who therefore more proper for the business, than Solomon himself? and why may he not be supposed now to repeat what, we take it for granted, he acted almost three thousand years since? If in the fair situation where this prince was placed, he was acquainted with sorrow; if endowed with the greatest perfections of nature, and possessed of all the advantages of external condition, he could not find happiness; the rest of mankind may safely take the monarch’s word for the truth of what he asserts. And the author who would persuade, that we should bear the ills of life patiently, merely because Solomon felt the same, has a better argument, than Lucretius had, when in his imperious way, he at once convinces and commands, that we ought to submit to death without repining, because Epicurus died.
The whole poem is a soliloquy: Solomon is the person that speaks: he is at once the hero and the author; but he tells us very often what others say to him. Those chiefly introduced are his rabbies and philosophers in the first book, and his women and their attendants in the second: with these the sacred history mentions him to have conversed; as likewise with the angel brought down in the third book, to help him out of his difficulties, or at least to teach him how to overcome them.
Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus.
I presume this poetical liberty may be very justly allowed me on so solemn an occasion.
In my description I have endeavoured to keep to the notions and manners of the Jewish nation at the time when Solomon lived: and where I allude to the customs of the Greeks, I believe I may be justified by the strictest chronology; though a poet is not obliged to the rulers that confine an historian. Virgil has anticipated two hundred years; or the Trojan hero and Carthaginian queen could not have been brought together: and without the same anachronism several of the finest parts of his Æneis must have been omitted. Our countryman Milton goes yet farther. He takes up many of his material images some thousands of years after the fall of man: nor could he otherwise have written, or we read one of the sublimest pieces of invention that was ever yet produced. This likewise takes off the objection, that some names of countries, terms of art, and notions in natural philosophy are otherwise expressed, than can be warranted by the geography or astronomy of Solomon’s time. Poets are allowed the same liberty in their descriptions and comparisons, as painters in their draperies and ornaments: their personages may be dressed, not exactly in the same habits which they wore, but in such as make them appear most graceful. In this case probability must atone for the want of truth. This liberty has indeed been abused by eminent masters in either science. Raphael and Tasso have showed their discretion, where Paul Veronese and Ariosto are to answer for their extravagances. It is the excess, not the thing itself, that is blamable.
I would say one word of the measure, in which this, and most poems of the age are written. Heroic with continued rhyme, as Donne and his contemporaries used it, carrying the sense of one verse most commonly into another, was found too dissolute and wild, and came very often too near prose. As Davenant and Waller corrected, and Dryden preferred it, it is too confined: it cuts off the sense at the end of every first line, which must always rhyme to the next following; and consequently, produces too frequent an identity in the sound, and brings every couplet to the point of an epigram. It is indeed too broken and weak, to convey the sentiments and represent the images proper for epic. And, as it tires the writer while he composes, it must do the same to the reader while he repeats; especially in a poem of any considerable length.
If striking out into blank verse, as Milton did (and in this kind Mr. Philips, had he lived, would have excelled) or running the thought into alternate and stanza, which allows a greater variety, and still preserves the dignity of the verse, as Spenser and Fairfax have done; if either of these, I say, be a proper remedy for my poetical complaint, or if any other may be found, I dare not determine: I am only inquiring, in order to be better informed; without presuming to direct the judgment of others. And while I am speaking of the verse itself, I give all just praise to many of my friends now living, who have in epic carried the harmony of their numbers as far as the nature of this measure will permit. But once more: he that writes in rhymes, dances in fetters: and as his chain is more extended, he may certainly take larger steps.
I need make no apology for the short digressive panegyric upon Great Britain, in the first book: I am glad to have it observed, that there appears throughout all my verses a zeal for the
honour of my country; and I had rather be thought a good Englishman, than the best poet, or greatest scholar that ever wrote.
And now as to the publishing of this piece, though I have in a literal sense observed Horace’s Nonum prematur in Annum; yet have I by no means obeyed our poetical lawgiver, according to the spirit of the precept. The poem has indeed been written and laid aside much longer than the term prescribed; but in the mean time I had little leisure, and less inclination to revise or print it. The frequent interruptions I have met with in my private studies, and great variety of public life in which I have been employed; my thoughts (such as they are) having generally been expressed in foreign language, and even formed by a habitude very different from what the beauty and eloquence of English poetry requires: all these, and some other circumstances which we had as good pass by at present, do justly contribute to make my excuse in this behalf very plausible. Far indeed from designing to print, I had locked up these papers in my scritoire, there to lie in peace till my executors might have taken them out. What altered this design, or how my scritoire came to be unlocked before my coffin was nailed, is the question. The true reason I take to her the best: many of my friends of the first quality, finest learning, and greatest understanding, have wrested the key from my hands by a very kind and irresistible violence: and the poem is published, not without my consent indeed, but a little against my opinion; and with an implicit submission to the partiality of their judgment. As I give up here the fruits of many of my vacant hours to their amusement and pleasure, I shall always think myself happy, if I may dedicate my most serious endeavours to their interest and service. And I am proud to finish this preface by saying, that the violence of many enemies, whom I never justly offended, is abundantly recompensed by the goodness of more friends, whom I can never sufficiently oblige. And if I here assume the liberty of mentioning my Lord Harley and Lord Bathurst as the authors of this amicable confederacy, among all those whose names do me great honour at the beginning of my book, these two only ought to be angry with me; for I disobey their positive order, whilst I make even this small acknowledgment of their particular kindness.
Complete Works of Matthew Prior Page 29
