“Quid accommodatius, says he, speaking of your subject, Memory, quàm simulachrorum ingentes copias, tanquàm addictam ubique tibi sacramento militiam, eo inter se nexu ac fide conjunctam cohærentemque habere; ut sive unumquodque separatim, sive confertim universa, sive singula ordinatim in aciem proferre velis; nihil planè in tantâ rerum herbâ turbetur, sed alia procul atque in recessu sita prodeuntibus locum cedant; alia, se tota confestim promant atque in medium certò evocata prosiliant? Hoc tam magno, tam fido domesticorum agmine instructus animus, &c.” Prol. Acad. I.
Common writers know little of the art of preparing their ideas, or believe the very name of an Ode absolves them from the care of art. But, if this uncommon sentiment had been intirely your own, you, I imagine, would have dropped some leading idea to introduce it.
IX. You see with what a suspicious eye, we who aspire to the name of critics, examine your writings. But every poet will not endure to be scrutinized so narrowly.
1. B. Jonson, in his Prologue to the Sad Shepherd, is opening the subject of that poem. The sadness of his shepherd is
For his lost Love, who in the Trent is said
To have miscarried; ’las! what knows the head
Of a calm river, whom the feet have drown’d!
The reflexion in this place is unnecessary and even impertinent. Who besides ever heard of the feet of a river? Of arms, we have. And so it stood in Jonson’s original.
Greatest and fairest Empress, know you this,
Alas! no more than Thames’ calm head doth know
Whose meads his arms drown, or whose corn o’erflow.
Dr. Donne.
The poet is speaking of the corruption of the courts of justice, and the allusion is perfectly fine and natural. Jonson was tempted to bring it into his prologue by the mere beauty of the sentiment. He had a river at his disposal, and would not let slip the opportunity. But “his unnatural use” of it detects his “imitation.”
2. I don’t know whether you have taken notice of a miscarriage, something like this, in the most judicious of all the poets.
Theocritus makes Polypheme say,