FOOTNOTES:
[51] "Valentinian" was probably produced in 1684.
[52] The Bond was entered into in 1663.
[53] Genest says that "Bellamira" is by far the best of Sedley's plays.
[54] Should be 1671.
[55] This is, of course, satirically said by the author.
[56] The Edict of Nantes was not revoked till 1685. Motteux was born in 1660.
[57] Biographia Dramatica.
SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT.
[CHAPTER X.]
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS.
The men who took up dramatic authorship seriously as a vocation, during the last half of the seventeenth century, amount to something more than two dozen. They begin with Davenant and Dryden; include Tate and Brady,[58] Lee and Otway, Wycherley, Congreve, Cibber, and Vanbrugh; and conclude with Farquhar, and with Rowe.
I include Sir John Vanbrugh because he preferred fame as an author to fame as an architect, and I insert Congreve, despite the reflection that the ghost of that writer would daintily protest against it if he could. When Voltaire called upon him, in London, the Frenchman intimated that his visit was to the "author." "I am a gentleman," said Congreve. "Nay," rejoined the former, "had you been only a gentleman, you would never have received a visit from me at all."
Let me here repeat the names:—Davenant, Dryden, Shirley, Lee, Cowley, Shadwell, Flecknoe, Settle, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Otway, Durfey, Banks, Rymer, Tate, Brady, Southerne, Congreve, Cibber, Dilke,[59] Vanbrugh, Gildon, Farquhar, Dennis, and Rowe. The half dozen in italics were poets-laureate.
All of them were sons of "gentlemen," save three, Davenant, Cowley, and Dennis, whose sires were, respectively, a vintner, a hatter,[60] and a saddler. The sons, however, received a collegiate education. Cowley distinguished himself at Cambridge, but Davenant left Oxford without a degree, and from the former University Dennis was expelled, in March 1680, "for assaulting and wounding Sir Glenham with a sword."
Besides Cowley and Dennis, we are indebted to Cambridge for Dryden, Lee, and Rymer. From Oxford University came Davenant, and Settle, degreeless as Davenant, with Shirley, whose mole on his cheek had rendered him ineligible in Laud's eyes, for ordination; Wycherley, Otway, Southerne, and Dilke. Dublin University yielded Tate and Brady; and better fruit still, Southerne,[61] Congreve, who went to Ireland at an early age, and Farquhar. Douay gave us Gildon, and we are not proud of the gift.
Lee, Otway, and Tate were sons of clergymen. Little Crowne's father was an Independent minister in Nova Scotia, and Crowne himself laid claim, fruitlessly, to a vast portion of the territory there—unjustly made over by the English Government to the French. Cibber was an artist, on the side of his father the statuary, and a "gentleman" by his mother.
It may be said of a good number of these gentlemen that idleness and love of pleasure made them dramatic poets. Shadwell, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Durfey, Bankes, Southerne, Congreve, and Rowe, were all apprenticed to the law; but the study was one too dull for men of their vivacious temperament, and they all turned from it in disgust. According to their success, so were they praised or blamed.
The least successful dramatists on the above list were the most presumptuous of critics. Rymer, who was wise enough to stick to the law while he endeavoured to turn at least Melpomene to good account, tried to persuade the public that Shakspeare was even of less merit than it was the fashion to assign to him. In 1678,[62] Rymer boldly asserted that "in the neighing of a horse as the growling of a mastiff, there is a meaning; there is as lively expression and, may I say, more humanity than many times in the tragical flights of Shakspeare." He says, that "no woman bred out of a pigstye could talk so meanly as Desdemona," in that tragedy which Rymer calls "a bloody farce without salt or savour." Of Brutus and Cæsar, he says Shakspeare has depicted them as "Jack Puddins." To show how much better he understood the art, Rymer published, in 1678, the tragedy he could not get represented, "Edgar, or the English Monarch." He professes to imitate the ancients, and his tragedy is in rhyme; he accuses Shakspeare of anachronisms, and his Saxon princess is directed to "pull off her patches!" The author was ambitious enough to attempt to supersede Shakspeare, and he pooh-poohed John Milton by speaking of Paradise Lost as "a thing which some people were pleased to call a poem."
Dennis was not quite so audacious as this. He was a better critic than the author of the Fœdera, and a more voluminous writer, or rather adapter, of dramatic pieces. He spoke, however, of Tasso as compassionately as the village-painter did of Titian; but his usefulness was acknowledged by the commentator, who remarked that men might construct good plays by following his precepts and avoiding his examples. Boyer has said something similar of Gildon, who was a critic as well as dramatist—namely, "he wrote an English Art of Poetry, which he had practised himself very unsuccessfully in his dramatic performances."
Cowley, although he is now little remembered as a dramatic writer, was among the first who seized the earliest opportunity after the Restoration to set up as playwrights; but Cowley failed, and was certainly mortified at his failure. He re-trimmed a play of his early days, the "Guardian," and called it the "Cutter of Coleman Street." All there is broad farce, in which the Puritan "congregation of the spotless" is coarsely ridiculed, and cavalierism held up to admiration. The audience condemned the former as "profane," and Cowley's cavaliers were found to be such scamps that he was suspected of disloyalty. Gentle as he was by nature, Cowley was irritable under criticism. "I think there was something of faction against it," he says, "by the early appearance of some men's disapprobation before they had seen enough of it to build their dislike upon their judgment." "Profane!" exclaims Abraham, with a shudder, and declares it is enough to "knock a man down." Is it profane, he asks, "to deride the hypocrisy of those men whose skulls are not yet bare upon the gates since the public and just punishment of it," namely, profanity. Thus were the skulls of the Commonwealth leaders tossed up in comedy. He adds, in a half saucy, half deprecatory sort of way, that "there is no writer but may fail sometimes in point of wit, and it is no less frequent for the auditors to fail in point of judgment." Nevertheless, he had humbly asked favour at the hands of the critics when his piece was first played, in these words:—
"Gentlemen critics of Argier,
For your own int'rest, I'd advise ye here
To let this little forlorn hope go by
Safe and untouch'd. 'That must not be!' you'll cry.
If ye be wise, it must: I'll tell ye why.
There are 7, 8, 9,—stay, there are behind
Ten plays at least, which wait but for a wind
And the glad news that we the enemy miss;
And those are all your own, if you spare this.
Some are but new-trimm'd up, others quite new,
Some by known shipwrights built, and others too
By that great author made, whoe'er he be,
That styles himself 'Person of Quality.'"
The "Cutter" rallied a little, and then was laid aside; but some of its spars were carried off by later gentlemen, who have piqued themselves on their originality. Colonel Jolly's advice to the bully, Cutter, if he would not be known, to "take one more disguise at last, and put thyself in the habit of a gentleman," has been quoted as the wit of Sheridan, who took his Sir Anthony Absolute from Truman, senior. And when Cowley made Aurelia answer to the inquiry, if she had looked in Lucia's eye, that she had, and that "there were pretty babies in it," he little thought that there would rise a Tom Moore to give a turn to the pretty idea, and spoil it, as he has done, in the "Impromptu," in Little's Poems.
One of the most remarkable circumstances in Cowley's character, considering how he distinguished himself at college, is, that he never thoroughly understood the rules of grammar! and that in seriously setting up for a dramatic author, he took, like Dryden, the course in which he acquired the least honour. When Charles II., on hearing of Cowley's death, declared that he had not left a better man behind him in England, the King was, assuredly, not thinking of the poet as a dramatist.
Several of Cowley's contemporaries who were considered better men by some judges, were guilty of offence from which he was entirely free. That offence consisted in their various attempts to improve Shakspeare, by lowering him to what they conceived to be the taste of the times. Davenant took "Measure for Measure," and "Much Ado about Nothing," and manipulated them into one absurd comedy, the "Law against Lovers." He subsequently improved "Macbeth" and "Julius Cæsar;"[63] and Dryden, who with at least some show of reason, re-arranged "Troilus and Cressida," united with Davenant in a sacrilegious destruction of all that was beautiful in the "Tempest." Nat Lee, who was accounted mad, had at least sense enough to refrain from marring Shakspeare. Shadwell corrected the great poet's view of "Timon of Athens," which, as he not too modestly observed, he "made into a play;" but, with more modesty in the epilogue, he asked for forgiveness for his own part, for the sake of the portion that was Shakspeare's. Crowne, more impudently, remodelled two parts of "Henry VI.," with some affectation of reverence for the original author, and a bold assertion of his own original merits with regard to some portions of the play. Crowne's originality is shown, in making Clifford swear like a drunken tapster, and in affirming that a king is a king—sacred, and not to be even thought ill of, let him be never so hateful a miscreant. Ravenscroft, in his "Titus Andronicus," only piled the agony a little more solidly and comically, and can be hardly said to have thereby molested Shakspeare. There was less excuse for Otway, who, not caring to do as he pleased with a doubtful play, ruthlessly seized "Romeo and Juliet," stripped the lovers of their romance, clapped them into a classical costume, and converted the noble but obstinate houses of Capulet and Montagu into riotous followers of Marius and Sylla—Caius Marius the younger wishing he were a glove upon the hand of Lavinia Metella, and a sententious Sulpitius striving in vain to be as light and sparkling as Mercutio. Tate's double rebuke to Shakspeare, in altering his "King Lear" and "Coriolanus," was a small offence compared with Otway's assault. He undertook, as he says, to "rectify what was wanting;" and accordingly, he abolishes the faithful fool, makes a pair of silly lovers of Edgar and Cordelia, and converts the solemn climax into comedy, by presenting the old king and his matchless daughter, hand in hand, alive and merry, as the curtain descends. Tate smirkingly maintained, that he wrought into perfection the rough and costly material left by Shakspeare. "In my humble opinion," said Addison, "it has lost half its beauty;" and yet Tate's version kept its place for many years!—though not so long as Cibber's version of "Richard III.," which was constructed out of Shakspeare, with more regard for the actor than respect for the author.
In the last year of the century, the last attempt to improve that inefficient poet was made by Gildon, who produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields his idea of what "Measure for Measure" should be, by omitting all the comic characters, introducing music and dancing, transposing incidents, adding much nonsense of his own to that of Davenant, and sprinkling all with an assortment of blunders, amusing enough to make some compensation for the absence of the comic characters in the original play.
It seemed to be the idea of these men, that it were wise to reduce Shakspeare to the capacities of those who could appreciate him. There were unhappy persons thus afflicted. Even Mr. Pepys speaks of "Henry VIII." as "a simple thing, made up of a great many patches." The "Tempest," he thinks, "has no great wit—but yet good, above ordinary plays." "Othello" was to him "a mean thing," compared with the last new comedy by another author. "Twelfth Night," "one of the weakest plays I ever saw on the stage." "Macbeth," he liked or disliked, according to the humour of the hour; but there was a "divertissement" in it, which struck him as being a droll thing in tragedy, but in this case proper and natural! Finally, he records, in 1662, of the "Midsummer's Night's Dream," which he "had never seen before, nor ever shall again," that "it is the most insipid, ridiculous play, that ever I saw in my life."
Of the characteristics of the chief of these dramatists, it may be said, first of Davenant, that, if he was quick of fancy and careful in composition, the result is not answerable to the labour expended on it. One of the pleasantest features about Dryden was, that as he grew old he increased in power; but his heart was untouched by his own magic, and he was but a cold reader of the best of his own works. Lee, as tender and impassioned as he is often absurd and bombastic, was an exquisite reader of what he wrote, his heart acknowledging the charm. Shadwell's characters have the merit of being well conceived, and strongly marked; and Shirley (a poet belonging to an earlier period), has only a little above the measure of honour due to him, when he is placed on a level with Fletcher. Crowne is more justly placed in the third rank of dramatists; but he had originality, lacking the power to give it effect. Ravenscroft had neither invention nor expression; yet he was a most prolific writer, a caricaturist, but without truth or refinement; altogether unclean. Wycherley, on the other hand, was admirable for the epigrammatic turn of his stage conversations, the aptness of his illustrations, the acuteness of his observation, the richness of his character-painting, and the smartness of his satire; in the indulgence or practice of all which, however, the action of the drama is often impeded, that the audience may enjoy a shower of sky rockets.
Pope said that Wycherley was inspired by the Muses, with the wit of Plautus. He had, indeed, "Plautus' wit," and an obscenity rivalling that of the "Curculio;" but he had none of the pathos which is to be found in the "Rudens." But Wycherley was also described as having the "art of Terence and Menander's fire." If by the first, Pope meant skill in invention of plot, Wycherley surpassed the Carthaginian; and as to "Menander's fire," in Wycherley it was no purifying fire; and Wesley was not likely to illustrate a sermon by a quotation from Wycherley, as St. Paul did by citing a line from Menander.
We are charmed by the humour of Wycherley; but after that, posterity disagrees with Pope's verdict. We are not instructed by the sense of Wycherley, nor swayed by his judgment, nor warmed honestly by his spirit; his unblushing profligacy ruins all. But if his men and women are as coarse as Etherege's or Sedley's, they are infinitely more clever people; so clever, indeed, that Sheridan has not been too proud to borrow "good things" from some of them. Wycherley is perhaps more natural and consistent than Congreve, whose Jeremy speaks like an oracle, and is as learned, though not so nasty as his master. It may be, that for a man to enjoy Congreve's wit, he should be as witty as Congreve. To me, it seems to shine at best but as a brilliant on a dirty finger. As for his boasted originality, Valentine and Trapbois are Don Juan and M. Dimanche; and as for Valentine, as the type of a gentleman, his similes smack more of the stable-yard than the drawing-room; and there is more of impertinent prattle generally among his characters than among those of Wycherley. His ladies are a shade more elegant than those of the latter poet; but they are mere courtezans, brilliant, through being decked with diamonds; but not a jot the more virtuous or attractive on that account. Among the comedy-writers of this half century, however, Congreve and Wycherley stand supreme; they were artists; too many of their rivals or successors were but coarse daubers.
In coarseness of sentiment the latter could not go beyond their prototypes; and in the expression of it, they had neither the wit of their greatest, nor the smartness of their less famous masters. This coarseness dates, however, from earlier days than those of the Restoration; and Dryden, who remembered the immorality of Webster's comedies, seems to have thought that the Restoration was to give the old grossness to the stage, as well as a new king to the country. It is, nevertheless, certain, that a large portion of the public protested against this return to an evil practice, and hissed his first piece, "The Wild Gallant," played in the little theatre in Vere Street, Drury Lane, in 1662. "It was not indecent enough for them," said the poet, who promised "not to offend in the way of modesty again." His "Kind Keeper, or Mr. Limberham," under which name the Duke of Lauderdale is said to have been satirised, and which Dryden held to be his best comedy, was utterly condemned. "Ah!" said he, "it was damned by a cabal of keepers!" It never occurred to him that the public might prefer wit to immorality. Long before, he had written an unseemly piece, called "The Rival Ladies;" he seasoned it in what he maintained was the taste of the town, and in a prologue—prologues then were often savagely defiant of the opinions of the audience, asserted his own judgment by saying:—
"He's bound to please, not to write well, and knows
There is a mode in plays as well as clothes."
I do not know how true it may be that Dryden, the coarsest of dramatic writers, was "the modestest of men in conversation;" but I have small trust in the alleged purity of a writer who stooped to gratify the baser feelings of an audience, according to their various degrees; who could compose for one class the filthy dish served up in his "Wild Gallant," and for another the more dangerous, if more refined, fare for youthful palates, so carefully manipulated in the Alexis and Cælia song, in his "Mariage à la Mode."
We must not forget, indeed, that the standard of morals was different at that time from what it is now. Later in the half century, Jeremy Collier especially attacked Congreve and Wycherley, as men who applied their natural gifts to corrupt instead of purify the stage. The public too were scandalised at passages in Congreve's "Double Dealer," a comedy of which the author said "the mechanical part was perfect."[64] The play was not a success, and the fault was laid to its gross inuendoes, and its plainer indecency. "I declare," says the author, in the preface, "that I took a particular care to avoid it, and if they find any, it is of their own making, for I did not design it to be so understood."
This point, on which the author and the public were at issue, proves that on the part of the latter the standard was improving—for Congreve is deep in the mire before the first scene is over. He had looked for censure for other offence, and says in his usual lofty manner with the critics:—"I would not have anybody imagine that I think this play without its faults, for I am conscious of several, and ready to own 'em; but it shall be to those who are able to find 'em out." This is not ill said. For the critics there was at least as much contempt as fear. In "The Country Wife," Wycherley speaks of "the most impudent of creatures, an ill poet, or what is yet more impudent, a second-hand critic!" The less distinguished writers were, of course, severer still against the critics.
In later years, Sheridan expressed the greatest contempt for such part of the public as found that the grossness of Congreve was not compensated for by his wit. Sheridan avowed that Congreve must be played unmutilated or be shelved. He compared his great predecessor to a horse whose vice is cured at the expense of his vigour.
Sheridan must, nevertheless, have felt that he was in error with regard to these old authors. In his "Trip to Scarborough," which is an entire recasting of Vanbrugh's "Relapse," he makes Loveless (Smith) say, "It would surely be a pity to exclude the productions of some of our best writers for want of a little wholesome pruning, which might be effected by any one who possessed modesty enough to believe that we should preserve all we can of our deceased authors, at least, till they are outdone by the living ones."
Dryden said of Congreve's "Double Dealer," that though it was censured by the greater part of the town, it was approved of by those best qualified to judge. The people who had a sense of decency were derided by Dryden; they were angry, he insinuated, only because the satire touched them nearly. Applying the grossest terms to women, in a letter to Walsh, he protests that they are incensed because Congreve exposes their vices, and that the gallants are equally enraged because their vices, too, are exposed; but even if it were true that Congreve copied from nature, it is also true that he laughs with his vicious and brilliant bad men and women, makes a joke of vice, and never attempts to correct it.
Dryden, as an erst Westminster boy and Cambridge man, may have felt some annoyance on the exposure of his false quantity in the penultimate of "Cleomenes," but to a pert coffee-house fop, who presumed to review his tragedy of that name, he could deliver a crushing reply. In that play Cleomenes virtuously resists the blandishments of Cassandra. "Had I been left alone with a young beauty," said a stripling critic to glorious John, "I would not have spent my time like your Spartan." "That, sir," said Dryden, "perhaps is true; but give me leave to tell you, you are no hero!" Good as this is, Lee said even a better thing to the coxcomb who visited him in Bedlam, during Lee's four years sojourn there. "It is an easy thing," observed this fellow, "to write like a madman." "No," answered Lee, "it is not an easy thing to write like a madman; but it is very easy to write like a fool."
Dryden, however, could criticise himself with justness. He confessed that he was not qualified to write comedies. He saw, too, the defects in his tragedies. He was ashamed of his "Tyrannic Love," and laughed at the rant and fustian of his Maximin. He allowed that in his "Conquest of Granada" the sublimity burst into burlesque, and he could censure the extravagance of Almanzor as freely as he did the bombast of Maximin. Still he was uneasy under censure; he was disappointed at the reception given to his "Assignation," and complained bitterly of the critics, especially of Settle. His best defender was Charles II. Some courtiers ventured to wonder at the King going so often to see "The Spanish Friar," as the piece was a wholesale robbery. "Odds fish!" exclaimed Charles, "select me another such a comedy,[65] and I'll go and see it as often as I do 'The Spanish Friar.'" "All for Love" is Dryden's most carefully written play, and the author repeatedly declared that the scene in Act I., between Anthony and Ventidius, was superior to anything he had ever composed.
Dryden attributed whatever merit he had as a writer of prose to having studied the works of Tillotson, and the prelate, it will be remembered, owed some of his graces of delivery to Betterton. In his comedies, Dryden was the encourager, not the scourger of vice; and yet he could warmly approve the purity of Southerne, when Southerne chose to be pure, and acknowledge that it were as politic to silence vicious poets as seditious preachers. If there were few good poets in his day, Dryden sees the cause in the turbulence of the times; and if people loved the stilted nonsense of heroic tragedies, it was simply, he says, because "the fashion was set them by the court." To court-protection, he himself owed much, and he states what one may smile at now, that the King's kindness, in calling the "Maiden Queen" his play,—that singular piece, in which there are eight women and three men, saved the drama from the malice of the poet's enemies. There is no such privilege for poets in our days!
Had Shadwell, who left the law to find a livelihood by literature, not been a Whig, we should have heard less of him in parallels or contrasts with Dryden. Of his dramatic pieces, amounting to about a dozen and a half, there is scarcely one that does not please more in perusal than any by the poet of the greater name,—always excepting Dryden's "Love for Love." Shadwell's "Squire of Alsatia," "Bury Fair," "Epsom Wells," and some others, were necessarily favourites with his public, as they are good character comedies, brisk with movement and incident. For attacking Dryden's "Duke of Guise," Dryden pilloried the assailant for ever, as "Mac Flecnoe;" but when he says that "Shadwell never deviates into sense," he has as little foundation for his assertion as he has for his contempt of Wilmot, when he says in the Essay upon Satire, "Rochester I despise for want of wit." Rochester may have praised Shadwell because he hated Dryden; but Dryden's aspersions on the other two spring decidedly more from his passion than his judgment. To Shadwell was given the laureateship of which Dryden was deprived. The latter would have borne the deprivation better if the laurel-crown had fallen on another head, as he sings to Congreve:
"Oh that your brows my laurel had sustained;
Well had I been depos'd, if you had reigned!"
In one respect, Dryden was no match at all for Shadwell; and, indeed, he has, inadvertently, confessed as much. When speaking of his incapacity for writing comedy, he says, "I want that gaiety of humour which is required in it; my conversation slow and dull; my humour saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, and endeavour to make repartees; so that those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit; reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend." This is the picture of a dull man, of which Shadwell, whose comedies, to say the least of them, have as much merit as Dryden's, was the exact opposite. He was a most brilliant talker; and Rochester remarked of him that even had Shadwell burnt all he wrote, and only printed all he spoke, his wit and humour would be found to exceed that of any other poet.
We come, however, to a greater than Shadwell, in Sir John Vanbrugh, who belongs to two centuries, and who was a man of many occupations, but a dramatist by predilection. He was architect, poet, wit, herald; he stole some of his plots; and he sold his office of Clarencieux, to which he had been appointed, because he was a successful playwright. He had humour, and was exceedingly coarse; but, says Schlegel, "under Queen Anne, manners became again more decorous; and this may be easily traced in the comedies. In the series of English comic poets, Wycherley, Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, Steele, Cibber, &c., we may perceive something like a gradation from the most unblushing indecency to a tolerable degree of modesty." This, however, is only partly true; and Schlegel himself remarks in the same page, "that after all we know of the licentiousness of manners under Charles II., we are still lost in astonishment at the audacious ribaldry of Wycherley and Congreve."
Of Vanbrugh's ten or eleven plays, that which has longest kept the stage is the "Relapse," still acted, in its altered form, by Sheridan, as the "Trip to Scarborough." This piece was produced at the Theatre de l'Odeon, in Paris, in the spring of 1862, as a posthumous comedy of Voltaire's! It was called the "Comte de Boursoufle," and had a "run." The story ran with it that Voltaire had composed it in his younger days for private representation, that it had been more than once played in the houses of his noble friends, under various titles, that he had then locked it up, and that the manuscript had only recently been discovered by the lucky individual who persuaded the manager of the Odeon to produce it on his stage! The bait took. All the French theatrical world in the capital flocked to the Faubourg St. Germain to witness a new play by Voltaire. Critics examined the plot, philosophised on its humour, applauded its absurdities, enjoyed its wit, and congratulated themselves on the circumstance that the Voltairean wit especially was as enjoyable then as in the preceding century! Of the authorship they had no doubt whatever; for, said they, if Voltaire did not write this piece, who could have written it? The reply was given at once from this country; but when the mystification was exposed, the French critics gave no sign of awarding honour where honour was due, and probably this translation of the "Relapse" may figure in future French editions as an undoubted work by Voltaire!
On looking back upon the names of these authors by profession, the brightest still is Otway's, of whom his critical biographers have said that, in tragedy, few English poets ever equalled him. His comedies are certainly detestable; but of his tragedies, "Venice Preserved" alone is ever now played. The "Orphan" is read; "Alcibiades," "Don Carlos," "Titus and Berenice" are all forgotten. Successful as he is in touching the passions, and eminently so in dealing with ardent love, Otway, I think, is inferior to Lee, occasionally, in the latter respect. Of Lee, Mrs. Siddons entertained the greatest admiration, notwithstanding his bombast, and she read his "Theodosius, or the Force of Love," with such feeling, as to at once wring sighs from the heart and tears from the eyes. She saw in Lee's poetry a very rare quality, or, as Campbell remarks, "a much more frequent capability for stage effect than a mere reader would be apt to infer from the superabundance of the poet's extravagance." Let it not be forgotten that Addison accuses Lee and Shakspeare of a spurious sublimity; and, he adds, that "in these authors, the affectation of greatness often hurts the perspicuity of style!"
The professional authors were not equally successful. Davenant achieved a good estate, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, like a gentleman. Dryden, with less to bequeath, was interred in the same place, without organ or ceremony, two choristers walking before the body, candle in hand, and singing an ode of Horace—like a poet. His victim, Tom Shadwell, acquired wealth fairly; he lies in Chelsea Church, but his son raised a monument to his memory in the Abbey that he might be in thus much as great a man as his satirist. Congreve, too, is there, after enjoying a greater fortune than the others together had ever built up, and leaving £10,000 of it to Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, who so valued the "honour and pleasure of his company" when living, that, as the next best thing, she sat of an evening with his "wax figure" after he was dead. Among the dead there, also, rest Cibber, Vanbrugh, and Rowe, of whom the first, too careless of his money affairs, died the poorest man.
Better men than either of the last sleep in humbler graves. Poor Nat Lee, tottering homeward from the Bull and Harrow, on a winter's night, and with more punch under his belt than his brain could bear, falls down in the snow, near Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and is dead when he is picked up. He is shuffled away to St. Clement's Danes. If Lee died tipsy, outside a public-house, Otway died half-starved, within one, at the Bull, on Tower Hill. The merits of Lee and Otway might have carried them to Westminster, but their misfortunes barred the way thither. Almost as unfortunate, Settle died, after hissing in a dragon at Bartholomew Fair, a recipient of the charity of the Charter-house. Crowne died in distress, just as he hoped his "Sir Courtly Nice" would have placed him at his ease. Wycherley, with less excuse, died more embarrassed than Crowne, or would have done so had he not robbed his young wife of her portion, made it over to his creditors, and left her little wherewith to bury him in the churchyard in Covent Garden. Two other poets, who passed away unencumbered by a single splendid shilling, rest in St. James's, Westminster—Tom Durfey and Bankes. Careless, easy, free, and fuddling Tate, died in the sanctuary of the Mint; and St. George's, Southwark, gave him a few feet of earth; while Brady pushed his way at court to preferment, and died a comfortable pluralist and chaplain to Caroline, Princess of Wales. Farquhar, with all his wit, died a broken-hearted beggar, at the age of thirty-seven; and Dennis, who struggled forty years longer with fortune, came to the same end, utterly destitute of all but the contemptuous pity of his foes, and the insulting charity of Pope.
I think that, of the whole brotherhood, Southerne, after he left the army and had sown his wild oats, was the most prudent, and not the least successful. He was a perfect gentleman; he did not lounge away his days or nights in coffee-houses or taverns, but after labour, cultivated friendship in home circles, where virtue and moderate mirth sat at the hearth. In his bag-wig, his black velvet dress, his sword, powder, brilliant buckles, and self-possession, Southerne charmed his company, wherever he visited, even at fourscore. He kept the even tenor of his way, owing no man anything; never allowing his nights to be the marrer of his mornings; and at six and eighty carrying a bright eye, a steady hand, a clear head, and a warm heart—wherewith to calmly meet and make surrender of all to the Inevitable Angel.
As Southerne originally wrote "Oroonoko," that tragedy could not now be represented. The mixture of comic scenes with tragic is not its worst fault. His comedies are of no worth whatever, except as they illustrate the manners and habits of his times. They more closely resemble those of Ravenscroft than of Congreve or Wycherley. His "Sir Anthony Love" was successful; it is impossible to conjecture wherefore. It has not a wise sentiment or a happy saying in it; and all to be learned from it is, that Englishmen, when abroad, in those days, used to herd together in self-defence, against being cheated; that they were too wise to learn anything by travel; and were fond of passing themselves off as having made a campaign. As Cowley anticipated Moore, in the "Cutter," so, in "Sir Anthony," has Southerne anticipated Burns. "Of the King's creation," says the supposed Sir Anthony to Count Verola, "you may be; but he who makes a count, never made a man." There is the same sentiment improved in the well-known lines:
"A king may mak' a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Gude faith he canna fa' that."
Southerne was not more famous for the nicety of his costume than "little starched Johnny Crowne" was for his stiff, long cravat; or Dryden for his Norwich drugget suit, or his gayer dress in later days, when, with sword and Chadrieux wig, he paraded the Mulberry Garden with his Mistress Reeve—one of that marvellous company of 1672, which writers with long memories used to subsequently say could never be got together again. Otway's thoughtful eye redeemed his slovenly dress and his fatness, and seemed to warrant the story of his repenting after his carousing. Lee dressed as ill as Otway, but lacked his contemplative eye, yet excelled him in fair looks, and in a peculiar luxuriance of hair.
Shaftesbury, in his "Characteristics," shows us how the play-house authors throned it in coffee-houses, and were worshipped by small wits. There were, however, dramatic authors who never went thither; and of these, the ladies, I have now to speak.
Mrs. Barry and Mr Garrick in "The Wonder."