“Betrays a bottom odious to the sight.”
So we turn to Waller, who is not only “courtly” but “moves our passion,” (what a pity that he died too soon to "rehearse Maria’s charms"!) to Roscommon, who “makes even rules a noble poetry,” and Denham, whose Cooper’s Hill “we must,” of course, not “forget.” “Great Dryden” is then, not unhappily, though not quite adequately, celebrated, and the line on his Muse—
“She wears all dresses, and she charms in all,”
is not only neat, but very largely true. When Dryden shall decay, luckily there is harmonious Congreve: and, if Addison were not tired with rhyming, he would praise (he does so at some length) noble Montague, who directs his artful muse to Dorset,
“In numbers such as Dorset’s self might use,”—
as to which all that can be said is that, if so, either the verses of Montague or the verses of Dorset referred to are not those that have come down to us under the names of the respective authors.
To dwell at all severely on this luckless production of a young University wit would be not only unkind but uncritical. It shows that at this time Addison knew next to nothing[[575]] about the English literature not of his own day, and judged very badly of what he pretended to know.
The prose works of his middle period, the Discourse on Medals and the Remarks on Italy, are very fully illustrated from the Latin poets—the division of literature that Addison knew best—but indulge hardly at all in literary criticism. It was not till the launching of the Tatler, by Steele and Swift, provided him with his natural medium of utterance, that Addison became critical. This periodical itself, and the less known ones that followed the Spectator, all contain exercises in this character: but it is to the Spectator that men look, and look rightly, for Addison’s credentials in the character of a critic. The Spectator criticisms. The Tatler Essays, such as the rather well known papers on Tom Folio and Ned Softly, those in the Guardian, the good-natured puff of Tom D’Urfey, &c., are not so much serious and deliberate literary criticisms, as applications, to subjects more or less literary, of the peculiar method of gently malicious censorship, of laughing castigation in manners and morals, which Addison carried to such perfection in all the middle relations of life. Not only are the Spectator articles far more numerous and far more weighty, but we have his own authority for regarding them as, in some measure at least, written on a deliberate system, and divisible into three groups. The first of these groups consists of the early papers on True and False Wit, and of essays on the stage. The second contains the famous and elaborate criticism of Milton with other things; and the third, the still later, still more serious, and still more ambitious, series on the Pleasures of the Imagination. Addison is looking back from the beginning of this last when he gives the general description,[[576]] and it is quite possible that the complete trilogy was not in his mind when he began the first group. But there is regular development in it, and whether we agree or not with Mr Worsfold’s extremely high estimate of the third division, it is quite certain that the whole collection—of some thirty or forty essays—does clearly exhibit that increasing sense of what criticism means, which is to be observed in almost all good critics. For criticism is, on the one hand, an art in which there are so few manuals or trustworthy short summaries—it is one which depends so much more on reading and knowledge than any creative art—and, above all, it is necessary to make so many mistakes in it before one comes right, that, probably, not one single example can be found of a critic of importance who was not a much better critic when he left off than when he began.
In Group One[[577]] Addison is still animated by the slightly desultory spirit of moral satire, which has been referred to above; and, though fifteen or sixteen years have passed since the Account, he does not seem to be so entirely free as we might wish from the crude sciolism, if not the sheer ignorance, of the earliest period. On True and False Wit. He is often admirable: his own humour, his taste, almost perfect within its own narrow limits, and his good sense, made that certain beforehand. But he has rather overloaded it with somewhat artificial allegory, the ethical temper rather overpowers the literary, and there is not a little of that arbitrary “blackmarking” of certain literary things which is one of the worst faults of neo-classic criticism. The Temple of Dulness is built (of course) “after the Gothic manner,” and the image of the god is dressed “after the habit of a monk.” Among the idolatrous rites and implements are not merely rebuses, anagrams, verses arranged in artificial forms, and other things a little childish, though perfectly harmless, but acrostics—trifles, perhaps, yet trifles which can be made exquisitely graceful, and satisfying that desire for mixing passion with playfulness which is not the worst affection of the human heart.
He had led up to this batch, a few weeks earlier, by some cursory remarks on Comedy, which form the tail of a more elaborate examination of Tragedy, filling four or five numbers.[[578]] On Tragedy. Readers who have already mastered the general drift of the criticism of the time before him, will scarcely need any long précis of his views, which, moreover, are in everybody’s reach, and could not possibly be put more readably. Modern tragedies, he thinks, excel those of Greece and Rome in the intricacy and disposition of the fable, but fall short in the moral. He objects to rhyme (except an end-couplet or two), and, though he thinks the style of our tragedies superior to the sentiment, finds the former, especially in Shakespeare, defaced by “sounding phrases, hard metaphors, and forced expressions.” This is still more the case in Lee. Otway is very “tender”: but it is a sad thing that the characters in Venice Preserved should be traitors and rebels. Poetic justice (this was what shocked Dennis), as generally understood, is rather absurd, and quite unnecessary. And the tragi-comedy, which is the product of the English theatre, is “one of the most monstrous inventions that ever entered into a poet’s thought.” You “might as well weave the adventures of Æneas and Hudibras into one poem” [and, indeed, one might find some relief in this, as far as the adventures of Æneas are concerned]. Tragedies are not even to have a double plot. Rants, and especially impious rants, are bad. Darkened stages, elaborate scenery and dresses, troops of supers, &c., are as bad: bells, ghosts, thunder, and lightning still worse. “Of all our methods of moving pity and terror, there is none so absurd and barbarous as the dreadful butchering of one another,” though all deaths on the stage are not to be forbidden.