This is prosaic enough, and might have been written by a surgical student; but this is better:—
"The artificial wood of spears was wet
With yet warm blood; and trembling in the wind,
Did rattle like the thorns which Nature set
On the rough hide of an armed porcupine;
Or looked like the trees which dropped gore,
Plucked from the tomb of slaughtered Polydore."
So much for Mr. Charles Aleyn.
But it is at the theatre, as you may well believe, that poets live and die most like the blithesome grasshoppers. The poor players, marvellous compounds of tin, feathers, and tiffany, fret but a brief hour; but the playwright, less considered alive, is sooner defunct. I have not Dodsley's Plays by me, but, if my memory does not deceive me, not one of them keeps the stage; nor did dear Charles Lamb make many in love with that huge heap in the British Museum. Alas! all these good people, now grown so rusty, fusty, and forgotten, might have rolled under their tongues, as a sweet morsel, those lines which civil Abraham Cowley sent to Leviathan Hobbes:—
"To things immortal Time can do no wrong;
And that which never is to die forever must be young."
Alas! they had great first nights and glorious third nights,—lords and ladies smiled and the groundlings were affable,—they lived in a paradise of compliment and cash,—and then were no better off than the garreteer who took his damnation comfortably early upon the first night, and ran back to his den to whimper with mortification and to tremble with cold. There is worthy Mr. Shakspeare, of whom an amiable writer kindly said, in 1723,—"There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his comical Humors, and a pleasing and well-distinguished variety in those characters which he thought fit to meddle with. His images are indeed everywhere so lively, that the thing he would represent stands full before you, and you possess every part of it. His sentiments are great and natural, and his expression just, and raised in proportion to the subject and occasion." You may laugh at this as much as you please, Don Bob; but I think it quite as sensible as many of the criticisms of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.,—as that one of his, for instance, upon "Measure for Measure," which I never read without a feeling of personal injury. I should like to know if it is writing criticism to write,—"Of this play, the light or comic part is very natural and pleasing; but the grave scenes, if a few passages be excepted, have more labor than elegance." Now, if old Boltcourt had written instead, as he might have done, if the fit had been on him,—"Of this play, the heavy or tragic part is very natural and pleasing; but the comic scenes, if a few passages be excepted, have more labor than elegance,"—his remark would have been quite as sonorous, and just a little nearer the truth. For my own part, I think there is nothing finer in all Shakspeare than the interview between Angelo and Isabella, in the Second Act, or that exquisite outburst of the latter, afterward, "Not with fond shekels of the tested gold," which is a line the sugar of which you can sensibly taste as you read it. Incledon used to wish that his old music-master could come down from heaven to Norwich, and could take the coach up to London to hear that d—d Jew sing,—referring thus civilly to the respectable John Braham. I have sometimes wished that Shakspeare could make a similar descent, and face his critics. Ah! how much he could tell us over a single bottle of Rosa Solis at some new "Mermaid" extemporized for the occasion! What wild work would he make with the commentators long before we had exhausted the ordinate cups! and how, after we had come to the inordinate, would he be with difficulty prevented from marching at once to break the windows of his latest glossator! If anything could make one sick of "the next age," it would be the shabby treatment which the Avonian has received. I do not wonder that the illustrious authors of "Salmagundi" said,—"We bequeathe our first volume to future generations,—and much good may it do them! Heaven grant they may be able to read it!" Seeing that contemporary fame is the most profitable,—that you can eat it, and drink it, and wear it upon your back,—I own that it is the kind for which I have the most absolute partiality. It is surely better to be spoken well of by your neighbors, who do know you, than by those who do not know you, and who, if they commend, may do so by sheer accident.
You never heard of Mr. Horden, of Charles Knipe, of Thomas Lupon, of Edward Revet? Great men all, in their day! So there was Mr. John Smith,—clarum et venerabile nomen!—who in 1677 wrote a comedy called "Cytherea; or, the Enamoring Girdle." So there was Mr. Swinney, who wrote one play called "The Quacks." So there was Mr. John Tutchin, 1685, who wrote "The Unfortunate Shepherd." So there is Mr. William Smith, Mr. H. Smith, author of "The Princess of Parma," and Mr. Edmund Smith, 1710, author of "Phedra and Hippolytus," who is buried in Wiltshire, under a Latin inscription as long as my arm. There is Thomas Yalden, D.D., 1690, who helped Dryden and Congreve in the translation of Ovid, who wrote a Hymn to Morning, commencing vigorously thus:—
"Parent of Day! whose beauteous beams of light
Sprang from the darksome womb of night!"—
and who was a great friend of Addison, which is the best I know of him. He might have been, like Sir Philip Sidney, "scholar, soldier, lover, saint,"—for Doctors of Divinity have been all four,—but I declare that I have told you all I have learned about him.
It is grievous to me, dear Bobus, a man of notorious gallantry, to find that the ladies, after consenting to smirch their rosy fingers with Erebean ink, are among the first who are discarded. If you will go into the College Library, Mr. Sibley will show you a charming copy of the works of Mrs. Behn, with a roguish, rakish, tempting little portrait of the writer prefixed. Poor Mrs. Behn was a notability as well as a notoriety in her day; and when I have great leisure for the work, I mean to write her life and do her justice. The task would have been worthy of De Foe; but, with a little help from you, I hope to do it passably. Poor Aphra! poet, dramatist, intriguant strumpet! Worthy of no better fate, take my benison of light laughter and of tears! Then there is Mrs. Elizabeth Singer, who was living in 1723, who selected as the subject of her work nothing less than the Creation, and who was a woman of great religion. Her poem commences patronizingly thus:—