“Believe me, prince, there’s not an African
That traverses our vast Numidian deserts
In quest of prey, and lives upon his bow,
But better practises these boasted virtues.
Coarse are his meals, the fortune of the chase;
Amidst the running streams he slakes his thirst,
Toils all the day, and at th’ approach of night
On the first friendly bank he throws him down,
Or rests his head upon a rock till morn—
Then rises fresh, pursues his wonted game,
And if the following day he chance to find
A new repast, or an untasted spring,
Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.”
But in all those parts of the poem where action and not ornament is demanded, we seem to perceive the work of a poet who was constantly thinking of what his characters ought to say in the situation, rather than of one who was actually living with them in the situation itself. Take Sempronius’ speech to Syphax, describing the horrors of the conspirator’s position:
“Remember, Syphax, we must work in haste:
Oh think what anxious moments pass between
The birth of plots and their last fatal period.
Oh! ’tis a dreadful interval of time,
Filled up with horror all, and big with death!
Destruction hangs on every word we speak,
On every thought, till the concluding stroke
Determines all, and closes our design.”
Compare with this the language of real tragedy, the soliloquy of Brutus in Julius Cæsar, on which Addison apparently meant to improve:
“Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar
I have not slept.
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.”
These two passages are good examples of the French and English ideals of dramatic diction, though the lines from Cato are more figurative than is usual in that play. Addison deliberately aimed at this French manner. “I must observe,” says he, “that when our thoughts are great and just they are often obscured by the sounding phrases, hard metaphors, and forced expressions in which they are clothed. Shakespeare is often very faulty in this particular.”[60] Certainly he is; but who does not see that, in spite of his metaphoric style, the speech of Brutus just quoted is far simpler and more natural than the elegant “correctness” of Sempronius.
CHAPTER VII.
ADDISON’S QUARREL WITH POPE.