In this manner is the sublime too often mingled with the ridiculous. The Dutch seek a shelter for a wealthy fleet: this, surely, needed no illustration; yet they must fly, not like all the rest of mankind on the same occasion, but "like hunted castors;" and they might with strict propriety be hunted; for we winded them by our noses—their perfumes betrayed them. The husband and the lover, though of more dignity than the castor, are images too domestick to mingle properly with the horrours of war. The two quatrains that follow are worthy of the author. The account of the different sensations with which the two fleets retired, when the night parted them, is one of the fairest flowers of English poetry:
The night comes on, we eager to pursue
The combat still, and they asham'd to leave:
Till the last streaks of dying day withdrew,
And doubtful moonlight did our rage deceive.
In th' English fleet each ship resounds with joy,
And loud applause of their great leader's fame:
In fiery dreams the Dutch they still destroy,
And, slumb'ring, smile at the imagin'd flame.
Not so the Holland fleet, who, tir'd and done,
Stretch'd on their decks like weary oxen lie;
Faint sweats all down their mighty members run,
(Vast bulks, which little souls but ill supply.)
In dreams they fearful precipices tread,
Or, shipwreck'd, labour to some distant shore;
Or, in dark churches, walk among the dead:
They wake with horrour, and dare sleep no more.
It is a general rule in poetry, that all appropriated terms of art should be sunk in general expressions, because poetry is to speak an universal language. This rule is still stronger with regard to arts not liberal, or confined to few, and, therefore, far removed from common knowledge; and of this kind, certainly, is technical navigation. Yet Dryden was of opinion, that a seafight ought to be described in the nautical language; "and certainly," says he, "as those, who in a logical disputation keep to general terms, would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical description would veil their ignorance."
Let us then appeal to experience; for by experience, at last, we learn as well what will please as what will profit. In the battle, his terms seem to have been blown away; but he deals them liberally in the dock:
So here some pick out bullets from the side,
Some drive old okum through each seam and rift;
Their left hand does the calking-iron guide,
The rattling mallet with the right they lift.
With boiling pitch another near at hand
(From friendly Sweden brought) the seams in-slops:
Which, well-laid o'er, the salt sea-waves withstand,
And shake them from the rising beak in drops.
Some the gall'd ropes with dauby marling bind,
Or sear-cloth masts with strong tarpawling coats;
To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind,
And one below, their ease or stiffness notes.