[979] Bouterwek, vi. 157.
German Poetry. 21. The literature of Germany was now more corrupted by bad taste than ever. A second Silesian school, but much inferior to that of Opitz, was founded by Hoffmanswaldau and Lohenstein. The first had great facility, and imitated Ovid and Marini with some success. The second, with worse taste, always tumid and striving at something elevated, so that the Lohenstein swell became a by-word with later critics, is superior to Hoffmanswaldau in richness of fancy, in poetical invention, and in warmth of feeling for all that is noble and great. About the end of the century arose a new style, known by the unhappy name spiritless (geistlos), which, avoiding the tone of Lohenstein, became wholly tame and flat.[980]
[980] Id. vol. x., p. 288. Heinsius. iv. 287. Eichhorn, Geschichte der Cultur, iv. 776.
Sect. III.
ON ENGLISH POETRY.
Waller—Butler—Milton—Dryden—The Minor Poets.
Waller. 22. We might have placed Waller in the former division of the seventeenth century, with no more impropriety than we might have reserved Cowley for the latter; both belong by the date of their writings to the two periods. And perhaps the poetry of Waller bears rather the stamp of the first Charles’s age than of that which ensued. His reputation was great, and somewhat more durable than that of similar poets have generally been; he did not witness its decay in his own protracted life, nor was it much diminished at the beginning of the next century. Nor was this wholly undeserved. Waller has a more uniform elegance, a more sure facility and happiness of expression, and, above all, a greater exemption from glaring faults, such as pedantry, extravagance, conceit, quaintness, obscurity, ungrammatical and unmeaning constructions, than any of the Caroline era with whom he would naturally be compared. We have only to open Carew or Lovelace to perceive the difference; not that Waller is wholly without some of these faults, but that they are much less frequent. If others may have brighter passages of fancy or sentiment, which is not difficult, he husbands better his resources, and though left behind in the beginning of the race, comes sooner to the goal. His Panegyric on Cromwell was celebrated. “Such a series of verses,” it is said by Johnson, “had rarely appeared before in the English language. Of these lines some are grand, some are graceful, and all are musical. There is now and then a feeble verse, or a trifling thought; but its great fault is the choice of its hero.” It may not be the opinion of all, that Cromwell’s actions were of that obscure and pitiful character which the majesty of song rejects, and Johnson has before observed, that Waller’s choice of encomiastic topics in this poem is very judicious. Yet his deficiency in poetical vigour will surely be traced in this composition; if he rarely sinks, he never rises very high, and we find much good sense and selection, much skill in the mechanism of language and metre, without ardour and without imagination. In his amorous poetry, he has little passion or sensibility; but he is never free and petulant, never tedious, and never absurd. His praise consists much in negations; but in a comparative estimate, perhaps negations ought to count for a good deal.
Butler’s Hudibras. 23. Hudibras was incomparably more popular than Paradise Lost; no poem in our language rose at once to greater reputation. Nor can this be called ephemeral, like that of most political poetry. For at least half a century after its publication it was generally read, and perpetually quoted. The wit of Butler has still preserved many lines; but Hudibras now attracts comparatively few readers. The eulogies of Johnson seem rather adapted to what he remembered to have been the fame of Butler, than to the feelings of the surrounding generation; and since his time, new sources of amusement have sprung up, and writers of a more intelligible pleasantry have superseded those of the seventeenth century. In the fiction of Hudibras there was never much to divert the reader, and there is still less left at present. But what has been censured as a fault, the length of dialogue, which puts the fiction out of sight, is, in fact, the source of all the pleasure that the work affords. The sense of Butler is masculine, his wit inexhaustible, and it is supplied from every source of reading and observation. But these sources are often so unknown to the reader that the wit loses its effect through the obscurity of its allusions, and he yields to the bane of wit, a purblind mole-like pedantry. His versification is sometimes spirited, and his rhymes humorous; yet he wants that ease and flow which we require in light poetry.
Paradise Lost—Choice of subject. 24. The subject of Paradise Lost is the finest that has ever been chosen for heroic poetry; it is also managed by Milton with remarkable skill. The Iliad wants completeness; it has an unity of its own, but it is the unity of a part where we miss the relation to a whole. The Odyssey is perfect enough in this point of view; but the subject is hardly extensive enough for a legitimate epic. The Æneid is spread over too long a space, and perhaps the latter books have not that intimate connection with the former that an epic poem requires. The Pharsalia is open to the same criticism as the Iliad. The Thebaid is not deficient in unity or greatness of action; but it is one that possesses no sort of interest in our eyes. Tasso is far superior both in choice and management of his subject to most of these. Yet the Fall of Man has a more general interest than the Crusade.
Open to some difficulties. 25. It must be owned, nevertheless, that a religious epic labours under some disadvantages; in proportion as it attracts those who hold the same tenets with the author, it is regarded by those who dissent from him with indifference or aversion. It is said that the discovery of Milton’s Arianism, in this rigid generation, has already impaired the sale of Paradise Lost. It is also difficult to enlarge or adorn such a story by fiction. Milton has done much in this way; yet he was partly restrained by the necessity of conforming to Scripture.