The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our day than it was in his own. We read his poems solely for the sake of the ‘lighter pieces,’ which Johnson despised. The poet thought Solomon his best work, but no one who toils through the three books which form that poem is likely to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work like an atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century, and among them was John Wesley, who, in reply to Johnson’s complaint of its tediousness, said he should as soon think of calling the Second or Sixth Æneid tedious. In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he “had rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or greatest scholar that ever wrote,” a passage which does more honour to the poet than any in the text. A far more popular piece was Henry and Emma, which even so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called ‘inimitable.’ Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none but the greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly Prior does not, and Henry and Emma affords a striking illustration of the contrast between the poetical spirit of Prior’s age and that which influences ours. The poem is founded on the fine ballad of the Nut-Browne Maide. The story, as originally told, is homely and quaint, written without apparent effort and told in 360 lines. Prior requires considerably more than twice that number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional machinery of the age, and bring Jove and Mars, Cupid and Venus upon the scene, with allusions to Marlborough’s victories and to ‘Anna’s wondrous reign.’
Alma, a poem written in Hudibrastic verse, which shows that Prior had in a measure caught the vein of Butler, has some couplets familiar in quotations. He won, too, not a little contemporary reputation for his tales in verse, which are singularly coarse; but an age that tolerated Mrs. Manley and read the plays and novels of Aphra Behn was not likely to object to the grossness of Prior. Dr. Johnson would not admit that his poems were unfit for a lady’s table, and Wesley, who appears to have been strangely oblivious to Prior’s moral delinquencies, observes that his tales are the best told of any in the English tongue. Cowper praised him for his ‘charming ease,’ and this gift enabled him to write some of the most delightful occasional verses produced in the century. There is nothing more exquisite of its kind than his address, To a Child of Quality, written when the child was five years old and the poet forty, and one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by Thomas Moore, who more than once caught his note. A reader familiar with Moore and ignorant of Prior would without hesitation attribute the following stanzas, from the Answer to Chloe Jealous, to the Irish poet:
‘The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun, How after his journeys he sets up his rest; If at morning o’er earth ‘tis his fancy to run, At night he declines on his Thetis’s breast.
‘So when I am wearied with wandering all day, To thee, my delight, in the evening I come; No matter what beauties I saw in my way; They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
‘Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war, And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree; For thou art a girl as much brighter than her As he was a poet sublimer than me.’
“The grammatical lapse in these last two lines,” says Mr. Austin Dobson, “perhaps calls for correction, but many readers will probably agree with Moore (Diary, November, 1818), ‘that it is far prettier as it is.’ ‘Nothing,’ he says truly, ‘can be more gracefully light and gallant than this little poem.’”
It was fancy and not imagination which conceived the following lines, but how charming is the fancy! The poem, which is given in a slightly abridged form, is addressed
‘To a Lady: she refusing to continue a dispute with me, and leaving me in the argument.
‘In the dispute whate’er I said, My heart was by my tongue belied; And in my looks you might have read How much I argued on your side.
‘You, far from danger as from fear, Might have sustained an open fight; For seldom your opinions err; Your eyes are always in the right.
‘Alas! not hoping to subdue, I only to the fight aspired; To keep the beauteous foe in view Was all the glory I desired.
‘But she, howe’er of victory sure, Contemns the wreath too long delayed; And, armed with more immediate power, Calls cruel silence to her aid.
‘Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight: She drops her arms, to gain the field; Secures her conquest by her flight; And triumphs, when she seems to yield.
‘So when the Parthian turned his steed, And from the hostile camp withdrew; With cruel skill the backward reed He sent; and as he fled, he slew.’
Wit and a ready command of verse are the characteristics of Prior’s poetry. Both of these gifts are to be seen in his lively English ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King of Great Britain, in which he travesties Boileau’s Ode sur la prise de Namur. As an epigrammatist he reaped his advantage from a study of Martial, and in this department of verse Prior is often successful. If brevity be a prominent merit in an epigram, he sometimes excels his master, as, for example, in this stanza:
‘To John I owed great obligation; But John unhappily thought fit To publish it to all the nation; Sure John and I are more than quit.’
This is half the length of the original Latin, and what it loses in elegance it gains in point.
It may be hoped that the next quotation is a libel on Bishop Atterbury; if so, the lines have every merit but truth. The epigram is on the funeral of the Duke of Buckingham, who died in 1721.
‘I have no hopes,’ the duke he says, and dies; ‘In sure and certain hopes,’ the prelate cries: Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man, Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman? The duke he stands an infidel confest; ‘He’s our dear brother,’ quoth the lordly priest. The duke, though knave, still ‘brother dear,’ he cries; And who can say the reverend prelate lies?
Prior, it may be observed here, could say pointed things in prose as well as in verse, and nothing can be happier than his reply to the Frenchman’s inquiry whether the King of England had anything to show in his palace equal to the paintings at Versailles illustrating the victories of Louis XIV: ‘The monuments of my master’s actions,’ said the poet, ‘are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.’
It is always interesting to link poet with poet, and in relation to Prior many readers will recall the pathetic incident related of Sir Walter Scott when the wonderful intellect which had entranced the world was giving indications of decay. Lockhart relates how, as they were travelling together, a quotation from Prior led Scott to make another, slightly altered for the occasion, and he adds:
‘This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he repeated several striking passages both of the Alma and the Solomon. He was still at this when we reached a longish hill, and he got out to walk a little. As we climbed the ascent, he leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met by a couple of beggars, who were, or professed to be, old soldiers both of Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them wanted a leg, which circumstance alone would have opened Scott’s purse-strings, though, ex facie, a sad old blackguard; but the fellow had recognized his person as it happened, and in asking an alms bade God bless him fervently by his name. The mendicants went on their way, and we stood breathing on the knoll. Sir Walter followed them with his eye, and planting his stick firmly on the sod, repeated, without break or hesitation Prior’s verses to the historian Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly obvious, and therefore I must quote them.
‘“Whate’er thy countrymen have done, By law and wit, by sword and gun, In thee is faithfully recited; And all the living world that view Thy work, give thee the praises due, At once instructed and delighted.
‘“Yet for the fame of all these deeds, What beggar in the Invalides, With lameness broke, with blindness smitten, Wished ever decently to die, To have been either Mezeray, Or any monarch he has written?
‘“It strange, dear author, yet it true is, That down from Pharamond to Louis All covet life, yet call it pain: All feel the
ill, yet shun the cure; Can sense this paradox endure? Resolve me Cambray or Fontaine.
‘“The man in graver tragic known (Though his best part long since was done), Still on the stage desires to tarry; And he who played the Harlequin, After the jest still loads the scene, Unwilling to retire, though weary.”’
John Gay (1685-1732).
Gay, who enjoyed an unbroken friendship with the brotherhood of wits, and was treated by them like a spoilt child, was born at Barnstaple in 1685, and left an orphan at the age of ten. He was educated at the free grammar school in the town, and was afterwards, to his discontent, apprenticed to a mercer in London. He escaped from this uncongenial employment to be dependent on an uncle, and thus early exhibited his life-long disposition to rely upon others for support. ‘Providence,’ Swift writes, ‘never designed Gay to be above two-and-twenty by his thoughtlessness and gullibility. He has as little foresight of age, sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen.’ His weakness, it has been said, appealed to Swift’s strength, and Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot were Gay’s most faithful friends. They found something in him to laugh at and to love. Ladies, too, treated him with the kind of friendliness which has a touch of commiseration. In 1714 Gay was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon, a post which he owed to Swift, but the death of Queen Anne in that year brought the Whigs into office, and destroyed the poet’s prospects. Prior to this he had been secretary to the imperious Duchess of Monmouth. He was now left without money or employment, and owed much to the generosity of Pope. It was Gay’s lot ‘in suing long to bide,’ to be always hoping, and nearly always disappointed. ‘He seems,’ says his latest biographer, ‘to have begun his career under the impression that it was somebody’s duty to provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to him through nearly the whole of a lifetime.’ Ten years before his death he was eagerly looking to others for support. Writing to Swift, he says: ‘I lodge at present in Burlington House, and have received many civilities from many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder at each other for not providing for me, and I wonder at them all.’
Gay’s first poem of any mark was The Shepherd’s Week (1714), six burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him by Pope, who was then smarting from the praise Philips had received in The Guardian. But if Pope meant Gay to poke his fun at Philips in The Shepherd’s Week, he must have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as genuine bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are, to say the least, more true to rustic life than the pastorals either of Philips or of Pope. The Shepherd’s Week was followed by Trivia (1715), a piece suggested by Swift’s City Shower. It is one of Gay’s most notable productions, not as a poem, but as a vivid description of the streets of London nearly two hundred years ago. The great reputation he obtained as the author of The Fables (1727), and still more of The Beggar’s Opera (1728), the idea of which was suggested to Gay by Swift, survived him for some years. The Fables were written for and dedicated to the youthful Duke of Cumberland, who is asked to “accept the moral lay, and in these tales mankind survey.” There is skill and ingenuity in the poems, but higher merit they cannot boast, and young readers are likely to prefer the illustrations which generally accompany The Fables to the letterpress. Many of Gay’s allusions are beyond the apprehension of the young, and have a political flavour. The Beggar’s Opera was intended as a burlesque of the Italian opera, which had been long the laughing-stock of men of letters, and as the play was thought to have political significance, and the character of Macheath to be a portrait of Walpole, it was received with enthusiasm, and acted in London for about sixty nights. So popular did the opera become, that ladies carried about the songs on their fans.
Eight years before, Gay had published his poems by subscription, and in those happy days for versemen had gained £1,000 by the venture. He put the money into South Sea stock, and lost it all. For The Beggar’s Opera he received about £800. It was followed by Polly, a play of the same coarse character, which, for political reasons, was not allowed to be acted. The result was that it had a large sale, and put money in Gay’s purse. Ten thousand five hundred copies are said to have been printed in one year, and the £1,200 realized by the sale were very wisely retained for the poet’s use by the Duke of Queensberry, under whose roof he had at length found a warm nest. To the student Gay is chiefly interesting as the only noteworthy poet of the period, south of the Tweed, gifted with a lyrical capacity. Two or three of his songs and ballads, and especially Black-Eyed Susan, have a charm beyond the reach of the mechanical versifier. But the art of song is at a low level even in the hands of Gay. The lyric which the Elizabethan and Jacobean poets loved so well, and of which the present century has produced specimens to be matched only by Shakespeare, may be said to have been lost to English poetry for the first half of the last century, since neither Prior’s verse, delightful though it be, nor the songs of Gay, have enough of the poetical element to form exceptions to this statement.
In his Tales he follows Prior in grossness, while inferior to him in art. Like the greater number of the Queen Anne poets, Gay flatters with a free hand. In an epistle addressed to Lintot, the bookseller, he declares that Anacreon lives once more in Sheffield, and Waller in Granville, that Buckingham’s verse will last to distant time; while Ovid sings again in Addison, and ‘Homer’s Iliad shines in his Campaign.’
One of the liveliest and most graceful of Gay’s poems is addressed to Pope ‘On his having finished his translation of Homer’s Iliad.’ It is called A Welcome from Greece, and describes the friends who assembled to greet the poet on his return to England.
Three stanzas from the Epistle shall be quoted:
‘Oh, what a concourse swarms on yonder quay! The sky re-echoes with new shouts of joy; By all this show, I ween ‘tis Lord Mayor’s day; I hear the voice of trumpet and hautboy — No, now I see them near. — Oh, these are they Who come in crowds to welcome thee from Troy. Hail to the bard, whom long as lost we mourned From siege, from battle, and from storm returned!
‘What lady’s that to whom he gently bends? Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley’s eyes: How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends! For she distinguishes the good and wise. The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends; Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies; Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well, With thee Youth’s youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.
‘I see two lovely sisters hand in hand, The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown; Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land; And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down. Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand, For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known; Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain? Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!’
Gay’s love of good living was known to all his friends. ‘As the French philosopher,’ Congreve wrote, ‘used to prove his existence by cogito ergo sum, the greatest proof of Gay’s existence is edit ergo est.’ For a long time his health compelled him to give up wine, and he tells Swift that he had also left off verse-making, ‘for I really think that man must be a bold writer who trusts to wit without it.’ He was dispirited, he told Swift not long before his death, for want of a pursuit, and found ‘indolence and idleness the most tiresome things in the world.’
Gay died in 1732 at the Duke of Queensberry’s house, and Pope grieved that one of his nearest and longest ties was broken. He was interred, to quote Arbuthnot’s words, ‘as a peer of the realm,’ in Westminster Abbey. The superficial character of the poet may be seen in his couplet transcribed upon the monument:
‘Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, and now I know it.’
Edward Young (1684-1765).
Gay’s moderate gift of song was withheld from the famous author of the Night Thoughts. Yet Young was vain enough to think that he possessed it, and wrote a patriotic ode called Ocean, preceded by an elaborate essay on lyric poetry. He also produced Imperium Pelagi (1729), A Naval Lyric written in Imitation of Pindar’s spirit. The lyric, which was tr
avestied by Fielding in his Tom Thumb, reads like a burlesque, and badly treated though Pindar was by the versemen of the last century, there is perhaps not one of them who mocks him more outrageously than Young. He says that this ode is an original, and no critic is likely to dispute the assertion.
Young was born in 1684 at Upham, near Winchester, his father, who was afterwards Dean of Sarum, being at that time the rector of the village. Edward was placed upon the foundation at Winchester College, and remained there until he was eighteen. He was then sent up to New College, and afterwards removed to Corpus. At the age of twenty-seven he was nominated to a law fellowship at All Souls, and took his degree of B.C.L. and his doctor’s degree some years later. Characteristically enough he began his poetical career by An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne (1712), who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to have been born “to make the muse immortal.” His next poem of any consequence, The Last Day, written in heroic couplets, and filling three books, is correct, or fairly so, in versification, and execrable in taste. Young, it may be supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in the treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting that the very land ‘where the Stuarts filled an awful throne’ will in that day be forgotten. The want of taste which so often deforms Young’s verse is also seen in the imagery he employs to illustrate the fear which even good men may have on appearing before that ‘dread tribunal.’
‘Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh, Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye; Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein, And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain, Lest still some intervening chance should rise, Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize, Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late, And stab him in the crisis of his fate.’
Alexander Pope - Delphi Poets Series Page 179
