I am sick of these men of quality; and the more so, the oftener I have any business to transact with them. They look upon it as one of their distinguishing privileges, not to be punctual in any business, of how great importance soever; nor to set other people at ease, with the loss of the least part of their own. conduct of his vexes me; but to what purpose? or how can I alter it? This I long to see the original MS. of Milton; but do not know how to come at it without your repeated assistance. I hope you will not utterly forget what passed in the coach about Samson Agonistes. I shall not press you as to time, but, some time or other, I wish you would review, and polish that piece. If upon a new perusal of it (which I desire you to make) you think as I do, that it is written in the very spirit of the ancients, it The Dr. Johnson thought differently about this Tragedy; written evidently and happily in the style and manner of Eschylus; and said, "that it was deficient in both requisites of a true Aristotelic middle. Its intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence; neither hasten nor retard the catastrophe." To which opinion the judicious Mr. Twining accedes. What Dr. Warburton said of it is wonderfully ridiculous; that Milton "chose the subject for the sake of the satire on bad wives ;" and that the subjects of this tragedy, and Paradise Lost, were not very different, "the fall of two heroes by a woman." Milton, in this drama, has given an example of every species of measure which the English language is capable of exhibiting; not only in the Choruses, but in the dialogue part. chief parts of the Dialogue (though there is a great variety of measure in the Choruses of the Greek Tragedies) are in Iambic verse. I recollect but three places in which Hexameter verses are introduced in the Greek Tragedies, once in the Trachinia, once in the Philoctetes of Sophocles, and once in the Troades of Euripides. Voltaire wrote an opera on this subject of Samson, 1732, which was set to music by Rameau, but was never performed. He has inserted Choruses to Venus and Adonis; and the piece finishes by introducing Samson, actually pulling down the Temple, on the stage, and crushing all the assembly, which Milton has flung into so fine a narration; and the opera is ended by Samson's saying, "J'ai réparé ma honte, et j'expire en vainqueur." And yet this was the man that dared to deride the irregularities of Shakespeare.-Warton. 5 What are we to think of a poem of Milton polished, even by Pope? Pope, however, did not presume to touch it; but the request of Atterbury must ever remain a monument, I will not say of his want of taste, (for no one seems more pleased with Milton,) but of the submission of his taste, and almost faculties, where poetry was concerned, to Pope.-Bowles. deserves your care, and is capable of being improved, with little trouble, into a perfect model and standard of tragic poetry-always allowing for its being a story taken out of the Bible; which is an objection that at this time of day I know is not to be got over. I am, &c. LETTER XIX. TO THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. July 27. I HAVE been as constantly at Twitenham as your lordship has at Bromley, ever since you saw Lord Bathurst. At the time of the Duke of Marlborough's funeral, I intend to lie at the deanery, and moralize one evening with you on the vanity of human glory. 7 The Duchess's 6 letter concerns me nearly, and you know it, who know all my thoughts without disguise. I must keep clear of flattery; I will, and as this is an honest resolution, I dare hope your lordship will not be so unconcerned for my keeping it, as not to assist me in so doing. I beg therefore you would represent thus much at least to her Grace, that as to the fears she seems touched with, [That the Duke's memory should have no advantage but what he must give himself, without being beholden to any one friend,] your lordship may certainly, and agreeable to your character, both of rigid honour and Christian plainness, tell her, that no man can have any other advantage: and that 6 The Duchess of Buckingham.-Warburton. 7 The Duchess of Buckingham was natural daughter of James II. "Atterbury, when at Paris," says Mr. Coxe, "frequently met her in the Bois de Boulogne, for the ostensible purpose of giving her his advice concerning the education of her son*. The real object of these conferences was not discovered until her arrival at Rome, when she prevailed on her brother to remove Hay and Murray, and invest Atterbury with the principal management of his affairs."-Bowles. *The "Patriot" youth, on whom Pope wrote the epitaph. all offerings of friends in such a case pass for nothing. Be but so good as confirm what I have represented to her, that an inscription in the ancient way, plain, pompous, yet modest, will be the most uncommon, and therefore the most distinguishing manner of doing it. And so, I hope, she will be satisfied, the Duke's honour be preserved, and my integrity also: which is too sacred a thing to be forfeited, in consideration of any little (or what people of quality may call great) honour or distinction whatever, which those of their rank can bestow on one of mine; and which indeed they are apt to over-rate, but never so much, as when they imagine us under any obligation to say one untrue word in their favour. I can only thank you, my lord, for the kind transition you make from common business, to that which is the only real business of every reasonable creature. Indeed I think more of it than you imagine, though not so much as I ought. I am pleased with those Latin verses extremely, which are so very good that I thought them yours, till you called them an Horatian Cento, and then I recollected the disjecta membra poetæ. I will not pretend I am so totally in those sentiments which you compliment me with, as I yet hope to be: you tell me I have them, as the civillest method to put me in mind how much it fits me to have them. I ought, first, to prepare my mind by a better knowledge even of good profane writers, especially the moralists, &c. before I can be worthy of tasting that supreme of books, and sublime of all writings; in which, as in all the intermediate ones, you may (if your friendship and charity toward me continue so far) be the best guide to Your, &c. For some remarks on the subject alluded to in the latter part of this letter, the reader may refer to the Life of Pope, prefixed to this edition, chap. iv. and v. VOL. VII. Р LETTER XX. FROM THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 9 July 30, 1722. I HAVE written to the duchess just as you desired, and referred her to our meeting in town for a further account of it. I have done it the rather because your opinion in the case is sincerely mine; and if it had not been so, you yourself should not have induced me to give it. Whether, and how far she will acquiesce in it, I cannot say, especially in a case where she thinks the duke's honour concerned; but should she seem to persist a little at present, her good sense (which I depend upon) will afterwards satisfy her that we are in the right. I go to-morrow to the deanery, and, I believe, I shall stay there, till I have said dust to dust, and shut up that last scene' of pompous vanity 2. 9 The Duchess of Buckingham.-Warburton. Of this lady the late Lord Orford has left a very amusing character, in his Reminiscences. The following anecdote relates to the subject of her correspondence with Atterbury and Pope. She made a funeral for her husband, as splendid as that of the great Marlborough. She renewed that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age, and for herself; and prepared and decorated waxen dolls of him, and of herself, to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster Abbey. It was for the procession at her son's burial, that she wrote to old Sarah of Marlborough, to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the corpse of the duke. carried my Lord Marlborough," replied the other, "and shall never be used for any body else." "I have consulted the undertaker,” replied the Duchess of Buckingham, "and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds." Orford's Works, vol. iv. p. 317. C.-Bowles. "It This was the funeral of the Duke of Marlborough, at which the Bishop officiated as Dean of Westminster, in Aug. 1722.-Pope. 2 His portrait has been elegantly drawn by Lord Chesterfield. "Of all the men I ever knew in my life (and I knew him extremely well), the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them: and indeed he got the most by them; for I will venture (contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always assign deep causes for great events) to ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough's greatness and riches to those graces. He was eminently illiterate; wrote bad English, and spelled it still worse. He had no share of what is commonly called parts; that is, he had no brightness, nothing shining in his genius. He had, most undoubtedly, an excellent good plain It is a great while for me to stay there at this time of year: and I know I shall often say to myself, while I am expecting the funeral: O Rus, quando ego te aspiciam! quandoque licebit In that case I shall fancy I hear the ghost of the dead, thus entreating me: At tu sacratæ ne parce malignus arenæ Ossibus et capiti inhumato Particulam dare Quanquam festinas, non est mora longa; licebit, Injecto ter pulvere, curras. There is an answer for me somewhere in Hamlet to this request, which you remember, though I do not. Poor ghost! thou shalt be satisfied!or something like it. However that be, take care that you do not fail in understanding, with sound judgment. But these alone would probably have raised him but something higher than they found him, which was page to King James II.'s Queen. There the graces protected and promoted him; for while he was ensign of the Guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, then favourite mistress to king Charles II., struck by those very graces, gave him five thousand pounds; with which he immediately bought an annuity for his life, of five hundred pounds a-year, of my grandfather, Halifax; which was the foundation of his subsequent fortunes. His figure was beautiful; but his manner was irresistible by either man or woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner, that he was enabled, during all his wars, to connect the various and jarring powers of the Grand Alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies, and wrong-headednesses. Whatever court he went to, (and he was often obliged to go himself to some resty and refractory ones,) he as constantly prevailed, and brought them into his measures."-Warton. 3 This letter, as indeed are many of them, is crowded, even to affectation, with very trite quotations from Horace and Virgil. The Bishop appears to have been rather a polite than profound scholar. One of his best compositions is a Preface to Waller's Poems, written 1690; in which is a rational and powerful defence of blank verse, and one of the earliest encomiums on the Paradise Lost; which HE, and not Lord Somers, had the great merit of procuring to be printed in folio by subscription. He wrote a large part of Boyle's Dissertation on Phalaris, against Bentley; but complained afterwards of the coldness and ingratitude with which his labours on this occasion were treated by Mr. Boyle. Never was there a more complete victory than was gained over him by Bp. Hoadly, for his perverse and groundless interpretation of the text, "If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable" Hoadly also powerfully attacked him on the doctrine of Passive Obedience: a doctrine so singularly absurd, as scarce indeed to merit a serious refutation.-Warton. |