Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

ladies and gentlemen from Versailles, and that even their sheep have a coquettish air. He relates a ludicrous anecdote of their taste in sculpture. "On the piers of a garden not far from Paris, I observed two coquette sphinxes. These lady-monsters had straw hats, gracefully smart, on one side of their heads, and silken cloaks half veiling their necks, all executed in stone."

Lord Monboddo.

To be blind to our own faults, yet to be lynxeyed to those of others, is not more common in moral than in literary censures. What reader is not disgusted and astonished to hear my Lord Monboddo utter his severe censure on the style of Tacitus the historian, in a collocation of terms which would subject the style of the critic to the most contemptuous invective. He calls the composition of Tacitus "the short and priggish cut of style, so much in use now."-Orig. and Prog. of Lang. 3 vols.

Swift's Tale of the Tub well described.

"Had this writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are justly impatient of alk

This is teaching by example.

indignity offered to the established religion of their country, no doubt but the author would have received the punishment he deserved. But the fate of this impious buffoon is very different; for in a Protestant kingdom, zealous of their civil and religious immunities, he has not only escaped affronts, and the effects of public resentment, but he has been caressed and patronized by persons of great figure, and of all denominations." To this severe but just censure, the Dean of St. Patrick's could only retort by false wit and scurrility.

Definition and Description.

These terms, though often confounded in conversation, and even in writing, are yet very different. If a person should undertake to describe any thing, he gives it all the parts which properly belong to it; but if he define any thing, he gives it only those parts which exclusively belong to it, and mark its peculiar character. When Plato is said to have defined man to be a two-legged animal without feathers; Diogenes, who was a sturdy logician, laughed at the attempt, and brought into the room where Plato and his audience were, a cock stripped of its feathers, and exclaimed in derision, "See Plato's man!"

• Blackmore's Essays, 1717.

Dramatic Humour.

Congreve, in his letter to John Dennis, the great critic, says he despairs of answering his enquiry, "What is humour?" He not only is unwilling to define what humour is, but even to describe it. At length he ventures to say, "I take it to be a singular and unavoidable manner of doing and saying any thing, peculiar and natural to one man only, by which his speech and actions are distinguished from those of other men." He speaks more plainly, when he points out to his correspondent the character of Morose, in Ben Johnson, as a specimen of humour; and declares his opinion of Ben Johnson's plays as replete with humour. It is remarkable, that in his description of what characters are not humorous, he exempts all country clowns, sailors, tradesmen, jockeys, gamesters, &c., though his own Sailor Ben, in "Love for Love," seems, in common parlance, the most humorous of all his characters.

Congreve's Dramatic Genius.

A very acute and profound critic* has well described the comic powers of Congreve: "His

* Lives of the Poets, art. Congreve.

scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion. His personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; his wit is a meteor, playing to and fro with alternate corruscations." Congreve, in the before-mentioned letter to Dennis, speaking of humour in female characters of the stage, says, "I must confess I have never made any observations of what I apprehend to be true humour in women; for if any thing does seem comical or ridiculous in a woman, I think it is little more than an acquired folly, or an affectation."

Humour continued.

It is to be observed, that when an author is himself an humorist, as was Swift in England, and Fontaine in France, they may be considered as drawing their sources of humour from themselves, and so writing in character. Dr. Arbuthnot and Mr. Addison were men of grave deportment and regulated minds, so that their humour, excellent as it was, claimed the superiority of being original, and the offspring of their own imaginations, and totally independent of any wrong bias in their own moral or intellectual characters and conduct.

Metaphorical or Figurative Language.

It is observable, that writers who possess and bring little matter to the subject on which they wish to display their talents, are very fond of dressing it in figurative language. Such a practice dazzles and confounds; yet words are the money of fools, and the counters of wise men. A splendid dress will set off an indifferent person, and give to a mean character an air of consequence. Good writers, replete with learning and sense, and conscious of their powers of information and perspicuity, use these figures of speech very sparingly, if at all—

As men of fortane venture to go plain.

Dr Young's Universal Passion.

Rules for Sonnets, Elegies, and Epitaphs.

That most judicious of all ancient critics, Quintilian, has spoken with much acuteness and propriety of lugubrious compositions: "Nunquam debet esse miseratio longa; nam cum veros dolores mitiget tempus, citius evanescat, necesse est, illa quam dicendo effinximus imago, nec speremus fore nt aliena mala quisquam diu ploret."-Lib. 6. "Pity or the pathetic should not be prolix; for as time causes real grief to vanish, so the image of

« PředchozíPokračovat »