Letter 283 To John Pinkerton, Esq.(533)
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1784. (page 354)
You have accepted my remarks with great good-humour, Sir: I wish you may not have paid too much regard to them: and I should be glad that you did not rest any alterations on my single judgment, to which I have but little respect myself. I have not thought often on theatric performances, and of late not at all. A chief ground of my observations on your piece proceeded from having taken notice that an English audience is apt to be struck with some familiar sound, though there is nothing, ridiculous in the passage; and fall into a foolish laugh, that often proves fatal to the author. Such was my objection to hot-cockles. You have, indeed, convinced me that I did not enough attend to your piece, as a farce; and, you must excuse me, my regard for you and Your wit made me consider it rather as a short comedy. Very probably too, I have retained the pedantic impression,, of the French, and demanded more observance of their rules than is necessary or just: yet I myself have often condemned their too delicate rigour. Nay, I have wished that farce and speaking harlequins were more encouraged, in order to leave open a wider field of invention to writers for the stage. Of late I have amply had my wish: Mr. O'Keefe has brought our audiences to bear with every extravagance; and, were there not such irresistible humour in his utmost daring, it would be impossible to deny that he has passed even beyond the limits of nonsense. But I confine this approbation to his Agreeable Surprise. In his other pieces there is much more untempered nonsense than humour. Even that favourite performance I wondered that Mr. Colman dared to produce.
Your remark, that a piece full of marked characters would be void of nature, is most just. This is so strongly my opinion, that I thought it a great fault in Miss Burney's Cecilia, though it has a thousand other beauties, that she has laboured far too much to make all her personages talk always in character; whereas, in the present refined or depraved state of human nature, most people endeavour to conceal their real character, not to display it. A professional man, as a pedantic fellow of a college or a seaman, has a characteristic dialect; but that is very different from continually letting out his ruling passion. This brings me, Sir, to the alteration you offer in the personage of Mrs. Winter, whom you wittily propose -to turn into a mermaid. I approve the idea much: I like too the restoration of Mrs. Vernon to a plain reasonable woman. She will be a contrast to the bad characters, and but a gradation to produce Barbara, without making her too glaringly bright without any intermediate shade. In truth, as you certainly may write excellently if you please, I wish you to bestow your utmost abilities on whatever you give to the public. I am wrong when I would have a farce as chaste and sober as a comedy; but I would have a farce made as good as it can be. I do not know how that is to be accomplished; but I believe you do. You are so obliging as to offer to accept a song of mine, if I have one by me. Dear Sir, I have no more talent for writing a song than for writing an ode like Dryden's or Gray's. It is a talent per se; and given, like every other branch of genius, by nature alone. Poor Shenstone was labouring through his whole life to write a perfect song, and, in my opinion at least, never once succeeded; not better than Pope did in a St. Cecilian ode. I doubt whether we have not gone a long, long way beyond the possibility of writing a good song. All the words in the language have been so often employed on simple images (without which such a song cannot be good), and such reams of bad verses have been produced in that kind, that I question whether true simplicity itself could please now. At least we are not likely to have any such thing. Our present choir of poetic virgins write in the other extreme. They colour their compositions so highly with choice and dainty phrases, that their own dresses are not more fantastic and romantic. Their nightingales make as many divisions as Italian singers. But this is wandering from the subject; and, while I only meant to tell you what I could not do myself, I am telling you what others do ill..I will yet hazard one other opinion, though relative to composition in general. There are two periods favourable to poets: a rude age, when a genius may hazard any thing, and when nothing has been forestalled - the other is, when, after ages of barbarism and incorrection, a master or two produces models formed by purity and taste: Virgil, Horace, Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Pope., exploded the licentiousness that reigned before them. What happened? Nobody dared to write in contradiction to the severity established; and very few had abilities to rival their masters. insipidity ensues, novelty is dangerous, and bombast usurps the throne which had been debased by a race of fain`eants. This rhapsody will probably convince you, Sir, how much you was mistaken in setting any value on my judgment.
February will certainly be time enough for your piece to be finished. I again beg you, Sir, to pay no deference to my criticisms, against your own cool reflections. It is prudent to consult others before one ventures on publication; but every single person is as liable to be erroneous as an author. An elderly man, as he gains experience, acquires prejudices too: Day, old age has generally two faults; it is too quick-sighted into the faults of the time being, and too blind to the faults that reigned in his own youth, which, having partaken of or having admired, though injudiciously, he recollects with complacence. A key in writers for I confess, too, that there must be two distinct views of writers 4 the stage, one of which is more allowable to them than to other authors. The one is durable fame; the other, peculiar to dramatic authors, the view of writing to the present taste, (and, perhaps, as you say, to the level of the audience). I do not mean for the sake of profit; but even high comedy must risk a little of its immortality by consulting the ruling taste; and thence comedy always loses some of its beauties, the transient, and some of its intelligibility. Like its harsher sister satire, many of its allusions must vanish, as the objects it aims at correcting ceases to be in vogue; and, perhaps, that cessation, the natural death of fashion, is often ascribed by an author to his own reproofs. Ladies would have left off patching on the Whig or Tory side of their face, though Mr. Addison had not written his excellent Spectator.(534) Probably even they who might be corrected by his reprimand, adopted some new distinction as ridiculous; not discovering that his satire was levelled at their partial animosity, and not at the mode of placing their patches; for, unfortunately, as the world cannot be cured of being foolish, a preacher who eradicates one folly, does but make room for some other.
(533) Now first collected.
(534) The singularly clever and witty paper here alluded to was written by Addison himself; it is No. 81, "Female Party-spirit Discovered by Patches," and was published June 2, 1711-D. T.
Letter 284 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 15, 1784. (page 356)
As I have heard nothing from you, I flatter myself Lady Ailesbury mends, or I think you would have brought her again to the physicians. you will, I conclude, next week, as towards the end of it the ten days they named will be expired. I must be in town myself about Thursday, on some little business of my own.
As I was writing this, my servants called me away to see a balloon. I suppose Blanchard's, that was to be let off from Chelsea this morning. I saw it from the common field before the window of my 'round tower. It appeared about the third of the size of the moon, or less, when setting, something above the tops of the trees on the level horizon. It was then descending; and, after rising and declining a little, it sunk slowly behind the trees, I should think about or beyond Sunbury, at five minutes after one. But you know I am a very inexact guesser at measures and distances, and may be mistaken in many miles; and you know how little I have attended to those airgonaut;. only t'other night I diverted myself with a sort of meditation on future airgonation, supposing that it Will not only be perfected, but will depose navigation. I did not finish it, because I am not skilled, like the gentleman that used to write political ship-news, in that style, which I wanted to perfect my essay -. but in the prelude I observed how ignorant the ancients Were in supposing that Icarus melted the wax of his Wings by too near access to the sun, whereas he would have been frozen to death before he made the first post on that road. Next, I discovered an alliance between Bishop Wilkins's art Of flying, and his plan of an universal language the latter of which he no doubt calculated to prevent the want of an interpreter when he should arrive at the moon.
But I chiefly amused myself with ideas of the change that would be made in the world by the substitution of balloons to ships. I supposed our seaports to become deserted villages; and Salisbury-plain, Newmarhet-heath, (another canvass for alteration of ideas,) and all downs (but the Downs) arising into dock-yards for aerial vessels. Such a field would be ample in furnishing new speculations. But to come to my ship-news:—