If you grow tired of the "Arabian Nights," you have no more taste than Bishop Atterbury,[1] who huffed Pope for sending him them (or the "Persian Tales"), and fancied he liked Virgil better, who had no more imagination than Dr. Akenside. Read "Sinbad the Sailor's Voyages," and you will be sick of Aeneas's. What woful invention were the nasty poultry that dunged on his dinner, and ships on fire turned into Nereids! A barn metamorphosed into a cascade in a pantomime is full as sublime an effort of genius. I do not know whether the "Arabian Nights" are of Oriental origin or not: I should think not, because I never saw any other Oriental composition that was not bombast without genius, and figurative without nature; like an Indian screen, where you see little men on the foreground, and larger men hunting tigers above in the air, which they take for perspective. I do not think the Sultaness's narratives very natural or very probable, but there is a wildness in them that captivates. However, if you could wade through two octavos of Dame Piozzi's though's and so's and I trow's, and cannot listen to seven volumes of Scheherezade's narrations, I will sue for a divorce in foro Parnassi, and Boccalini shall be my proctor. The cause will be a counterpart to the sentence of the Lacedaemonian, who was condemned for breach of the peace, by saying in three words what he might have said in two.
[Footnote 1: Atterbury (Pope's "mitred Rochester") was Bishop of Rochester in the reigns of Anne and George I. He was so violent in his Jacobitism, that on the death of Queen Anne he offered to head a procession to proclaim James III. as king at Charing Cross. Afterwards Sir R. Walpole had evidence of his maintaining a treasonable correspondence with the Court of St. Germains, sufficient to have ensured his conviction, but, being always of a merciful disposition, and naturally unwilling to bring a Bishop to the block, he contented himself with passing a Bill of Pains and Penalties to deprive him of his bishopric and banish him for life.]
You are not the first Eurydice[1] that has sent her husband to the devil, as you have kindly proposed to me; but I will not undertake the jaunt, for if old Nicholas Pluto should enjoin me not to look back to you, I should certainly forget the prohibition like my predecessor. Besides, I am a little too close to take a voyage twice which I am so soon to repeat; and should be laughed at by the good folks on the other side of the water, if I proposed coming back for a twinkling only. No; I choose as long as I can
Still with my fav'rite Berrys to remain.
So, you was not quite satisfied, though you ought to have been transported, with King's College Chapel, because it has no aisles, like every common cathedral. I suppose you would object to a bird of paradise, because it has no legs, but shoots to heaven in a trail, and does not rest on earth. Criticism and comparison spoil many tastes. You should admire all bold and unique essays that resemble nothing else; the "Botanic Garden,"[2] the "Arabian Nights," and King's Chapel are above all rules: and how preferable is what no one can imitate, to all that is imitated even from the best models! Your partiality to the pageantry of popery I do approve, and I doubt whether the world would not be a loser (in its visionary enjoyments) by the extinction of that religion, as it was by the decay of chivalry and the proscription of the heathen deities. Reason has no invention; and as plain sense will never be the legislator of human affairs, it is fortunate when taste happens to be regent.
[Footnote 1: The story of Eurydice's death and the descent of Orpheus, her husband, to hell for her recovery, with which Virgil closes the fourth Georgic, is among the most exquisite passages in all Latin poetry. Pope made it the subject of his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; but if Pluto and Proserpine really relented at the doggerel that the English poet puts into the mouth of the half-divine minstrel, they cannot deserve the title of illacrymabiles which Horace gives them. Some of the pedantic scientists (to borrow a new word) have discovered in this tale of true love an allegory about the alternations of Day and Night, Sun and Moon, and what not, for which they deserve the anathema of every scholar and lover of true poetry.]
[Footnote 2: "The Botanic Garden," a poem by Dr. Darwin; chiefly remembered for Mr. Gladstone's favourite "Upas-tree," a plant which has not, and never had, any existence except in the fancy of some traveller, who hoaxed the too-scientific poet with the story, which, years afterwards, hoaxed the orator also.]
DISMISSAL OF NECKER—BARON DE BRETEUIL—THE DUC D'ORLÉANS—MIRABEAU.
TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.
STRAWBERRY HILL, Wednesday night, July 15, 1789.