Thus much I could not forbear saying on the merit of successful imitation. As to the necessity of the thing, hear the apology of a great Poet, for himself. “All that is left us, says this original writer, is to recommend our productions by the imitation of the ancients: and it will be found true, that, in every age, the highest character for sense and learning has been obtained by those who have been the most indebted to them. For, to say truth, whatever is very good sense, must have been common sense in all times; and what we call learning is but the knowledge of our predecessors. Therefore they who say our thoughts are not our own, because they resemble the ancients, may as well say, our faces are not our own, because they are like our fathers: and indeed it is very unreasonable, that people should expect us to be scholars, and yet be angry to find us so[42].”
He adds, “I fairly confess, that I have served myself all I could by reading:” where the good sense of the practice, is as conspicuous, as the ingenuity, so becoming the greatness of his character, in confessing it. For, when a writer, who, as we have seen, is driven by so many powerful motives to the imitation of preceding models, revolts against them all, and determines, at any rate, to be original, nothing can be expected but an aukward straining in every thing. Improper method, forced conceits, and affected expression, are the certain issue of such obstinacy. The business is to be unlike; and this he may very possibly be, but at the expence of graceful ease and true beauty. For he puts himself, at best, into a convulsed, unnatural state; and it is well, if he be not forced, beside his purpose, to leave common sense, as well as his model, behind him. Like one who would break loose from an impediment, which holds him fast; the very endeavour to get clear of it throws him into uneasy attitudes, and violent contorsions; and, if he gain his liberty at last, it is by an effort, which carries him much further than the point he would wish to stop at.
And, that the reader may not suspect me of asserting this without experience, let me exemplify what has been here said in the case of a very eminent person, who, with all the advantages of art and nature that could be required to adorn the true poet, was ruined by this single error. The person I mean was Sir William D’Avenant; whose Gondibert will remain a perpetual monument of the mischiefs, which must ever arise from this affectation of originality in lettered and polite poets.
The great author, when he projected his plan of an heroic poem, was so far from intending to steer his course by example, that he sets out, in his preface, with upbraiding the followers of Homer, as a base and timorous crew of coasters, who would not adventure to launch forth on the vast ocean of invention. For, speaking of this poet, he observes, “that, as sea marks are chiefly used to coasters, and serve not those who have the ambition of discoverers, that love to sail in untried seas; so he hath rather proved a guide for those, whose satisfied wit will not venture beyond the track of others; than to them, who affect a new and remote way of thinking; who esteem it a deficiency and meanness of mind, to stay and depend upon the authority of example[43].”
And, afterwards, he professedly makes his own merit to consist in “an endeavour to lead truth through unfrequented and new ways, and from the most remote shades; by representing nature, though not in an affected, yet in an unusual dress[44].” These were the principles he went upon: let us now attend to the success of his endeavours.
The METHOD of his work is defective in many respects. To instance in the two following. Observing the large compass of the ancient epic, for which he saw no cause in nature, and which, he supposed, had been followed merely from a blind deference to the authority of the first model, he resolved to construct an heroic poem on the narrower and, as he conceived, juster plan of the dramatic poets. And, because it was their practice, for the purpose of raising the passions by a close accelerated plot, and for the convenience of representation, to conclude their subject in five acts, he affects to restrain himself within the same limits. The event was, that, cutting himself off, by this means, from the opportunity of digressive ornaments, which contribute so much to the pomp of the epic poetry; and, what is more essential, from the advantage of the most gradual and circumstantiated narration, which gives an air of truth and reality to the fable, he failed in accomplishing the proper end of this poem, ADMIRATION; produced by a grandeur of design and variety of important incidents, and sustained by all the energy and minute particularity of description.
2. It was essential to the ancient epos to raise and exalt the fable by the intervention of supernatural agency. This, again, the poet mistook for the prejudice of the affected imitators of Homer, “who had so often led them into heaven and hell, till, by conversation with gods and ghosts, they sometimes deprive us of those natural probabilities in story, which are instructive to human life[45].” Here then he would needs be original; and so, by recording only the affairs of men, hath fairly omitted a necessary part of the epic plan, and that which, of all others, had given the greatest state and magnificence to its construction. Yet here, to do him justice, one thing deserves our commendation. It had been the way of the Italian romancers, who were at that time the best poets, to run very much into prodigy and enchantment. “Not only to exceed the work, but also the possibility of nature, they would have impenetrable armors, inchanted castles, invulnerable bodies, iron men, flying horses, and a thousand other such things, which are easily feigned by them that dare[46].” These conceits, he rightly saw, had too slender a foundation in the serious belief of his age to justify a relation of them. And had he only dropped these, his conduct had been without blame. But, as it is the weakness of human nature, the observation of this extreme determined him to the other, of admitting nothing, however well established in the general opinion, that was supernatural.
And as here he did too much, so in another respect, it may be observed, he did too little. The romancers, before spoken of, had carried their notions of gallantry in ordinary life, as high, as they had done those of preternatural agency, in their marvellous fictions. Yet here this original genius, who was not to be held by the shackles of superstition, suffered himself to be entrapped in the silken net of love and honour. And so hath adopted, in his draught of characters, that elevation of sentiment which a change of manners could not but dispose the reader to regard as fantastic in the Gothic romance, at the same time that he rejected what had the truest grace in the ancient epic, a sober intermixture of religion.
The execution of his poem was answerable to the general method. His SENTIMENTS are frequently forced, and so tortured by an affectation of wit, that every stanza hath the air of an epigram. And the EXPRESSION, in which he cloaths them, is so quaint and figurative, as turns his description almost into a continued riddle.
Such was the effect of a studious affectation of originality in a writer, who, but for this misconduct, had been in the first rank of our poets. His endeavour was to keep clear of the models, in which his youth had been instructed, and which he perfectly understood. And in this indeed he succeeded. But the success lost him the possession of, what his large soul appears to have been full of, a true and permanent glory; which hath ever arisen, and can only arise, from the unambitious simplicity of nature; contemplated in her own proper form, or, by reflexion, in the faithful mirror of those very models, he so much dreaded.