Friend. Master Caperwit, before you read, pray tell me,
Have your verses any Adjectives?
Caperwit. Adjectives! would you have a poem without
Adjectives? they’re the flower, the grace of all our language.
A well-chosen Epithet doth give new soul
To fainting Poesy, and makes every verse
A Bride! With Adjectives we bait our lines,
When we do fish for Gentlewomen’s loves,
And with their sweetness catch the nibbling ear
Of amorous ladies; with the music of
These ravishing nouns we charm the silken tribe,
And make the Gallant melt with apprehension
Of the rare Word. I will maintain ’t against
A bundle of Grammarians, in Poetry
The Substantive itself cannot subsist
Without its Adjective.
Friend. But for all that,
Those words would sound more full, methinks, that are not
So larded; and if I might counsel you,
You should compose a Sonnet clean without ’em.
A row of stately Substantives would march
Like Switzers, and bear all the fields before ’em;
Carry their weight; shew fair, like Deeds Enroll’d;
Not Writs, that are first made and after fill’d.
Thence first came up the title of Blank Verse;—
You know, Sir, what Blank signifies?—when the sense,
First framed, is tied with Adjectives like points,
And could not hold together without wedges:
Hang ’t, ’tis pedantic, vulgar Poetry.
Let children, when they versify, stick here
And there these piddling words for want of matter
Poets write Masculine Numbers.
[From the “Guardian,” a Comedy, by Abraham Cowley, 1650. This was the first Draught of that which he published afterwards under the title of the “Cutter of Coleman Street;” and contains the character of a Foolish Poet, omitted in the latter. I give a few scraps of this character, both because the Edition is scarce, and as furnishing no unsuitable corollary to the Critical Admonitions in the preceding Extract.—The “Cutter” has always appeared to me the link between the Comedy of Fletcher and of Congreve. In the elegant passion of the Love Scenes it approaches the former; and Puny (the character substituted for the omitted Poet) is the Prototype of the half-witted Wits, the Brisks and Dapper Wits, of the latter.]
Doggrell, the foolish Poet, described.
Cutter. —— the very Emblem of poverty and poor poetry. The feet are worse patched of his rhymes, than of his stockings. If one line forget itself, and run out beyond his elbow, while the next keeps at home (like him), and dares not show his head, he calls that an Ode. * * *
Tabitha. Nay, they mocked and fleered at us, as we sung the Psalm the last Sunday night.
Cutter. That was that mungrel Rhymer; by this light he envies his brother poet John Sternhold, because he cannot reach his heights. * * *
Doggrell (reciting his own verses.) Thus pride doth still with beauty dwell,
And like the Baltic ocean swell.
Blade. Why the Baltic, Doggrell?
Doggrell. Why the Baltic!—this ’tis not to have
read the Poets. * * *
She looks like Niobe on the mountain’s top.
Cutter. That Niobe, Doggrell, you have used worse than Phœbus did. Not a dog looks melancholy but he’s compared to Niobe. He beat a villainous Tapster ’tother day, to make him look like Niobe.