We have thus placed before the reader an analysis of this interesting Satirical Romance. The time and space we have occupied sufficiently indicate the favourable sentiments respecting it with which we have been impressed. Of the execution of the satires, from the several extracts we have given, the reader will himself be enabled to judge. This is of course unequal, but generally felicitous. In the personal allusions which occur through the work, the author exhibits, as we have before noticed, a freedom from malice and all uncharitableness, and in many of them has attained that happy desideratum which Dryden considered a matter of so much difficulty:—
"How easy is it," he observes, "to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face, and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing. This is the mystery of that noble trade, which yet no master can teach to his apprentice; he may give the rules, but the scholar is never the nearer in his practice; neither is it true, that this fineness of raillery is offensive. A witty man is tickled, while he is hurt, in this manner, and a fool feels it not: the occasion of an offence may possibly be given, but he cannot take it. If it be granted, that, in effect, this way does more mischief—that a man is secretly wounded, and, though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious world will find it out for him, yet, there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly, was only belonging to her husband."[11]
In conclusion, we must express our regret, that the author should not have added notes to the work—the want of them will be seriously felt by every one; some of the satires, indeed, must escape the reader, unless he pay a degree of attention, which notes would have rendered unnecessary. In his next edition, we trust that this deficiency may be supplied; and we anticipate as much instruction and entertainment, from the wide scope which such an undertaking will afford, as we have derived from the perusal of the text. Cheerfully would we extend to him, if required, the leisure claimed by Spenser, after he had composed the first six books of his "Faerie Queene," provided he would promise us similar conditions:—
"After so long a race as I have run
Through Faery Land, which those six books compile,
Give leave to rest me, being half foredonne,
And gather to myself new breath awhile;
"Then, as a steed refreshed after toyle,
Out of my prison will I break anew,
And stoutly will that second work assoyle,
With strong endeavour, and attention due."
* * * * *
[APPENDIX FOOTNOTES]
[Footnote 1: Scott's Swift, vol. xi. p. 4]
[Footnote 2: Aristoph. in Pace. 130.]
[Footnote 3: Orlando furioso, Canto xxxiv. St. 68 and 69.]