nature or by early habits debarred from it. Nothing is less exhilarating than the ludicrousness of Denham. He does not fail for want of efforts: he is familiar, he is gross; but he is never merry, unless The Speech against peace in the close Committee be excepted'. For grave burlesque however his imitation of Davenant shews him to have been well qualified 2. 23 Of his more elevated occasional poems there is perhaps none that does not deserve commendation. In the verses to Fletcher we have an image that has since been often adopted: 'But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign, Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain 3.' After Denham, Orrery in one of his prologues 'Poets are sultans, if they had their will; And Pope, 'Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, For each of them would all his Prologue to Tryphon, Dramatic 5 Prol. Sat. 1. 198. 'Aristoteles, more Ottomanorum, regnare se haud tuto posse putabat, nisi fratres suos omnes contrucidasset.' BACON, De Aug. Sci. iii. 4; Works, 1803, vii. 191. 'In our own country a man seldom sets up for a poet without attacking the reputation of all his brothers in the art. The ignorance of the moderns, the scribblers of the age, the decay of poetry, are the topics of detractation with which he makes his entrance into the world; but how much more noble is the fame that is built on candour and ingenuity, according to those beautiful lines of Sir John Denham, in his poem on Fletcher's works!' ADDISON, The Spectator, No. 253. But this is not the best of his little pieces; it is excelled by 24 his poem to Fanshaw, and his elegy on Cowley. His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini contains a very 25 spritely and judicious character of a good translator'. 'That servile path thou nobly dost decline, Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords No flight for thoughts, but poorly stick [sticks] at words. To make translations and translators too. They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame, The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they contain was not at that time generally known. His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, and among his 26 shorter works his best performance3: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts are just. Cooper's Hill is the work that confers upon him the rank 27 and dignity of an original author. He seems to have been, at least among us, the author of a species of composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape to be poetically described, with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or incidental meditation. To trace a new scheme of poetry has in itself a very high 28 claim to praise, and its praise is yet more when it is apparently ment; and the whole read together is a very strong proof of what Mr. Waller says:— 66 Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot." [Eng. Poets, xvi. 175.]' POPE, Spence's Anec., p. 282. 'Cooper's Hill, for the majesty of the style, is and ever will be, the exact standard of good writing.' DRYDEN, Works, ii. 137. On this Southey remarks :-'Adulation was so common in Dryden's days that probably he never thought himself degraded by using it.' Southey's Cowper, ii. 133. 29 30 31 copied by Garth and Pope'; after whose names little will be gained by an enumeration of smaller poets, that have left scarce a corner of the island not dignified either by rhyme or blank verse. Cooper's Hill if it be maliciously inspected will not be found without its faults. The digressions are too long, the morality too frequent, and the sentiments sometimes such as will not bear a rigorous enquiry 2. The four verses, which, since Dryden has commended them 3, almost every writer for a century past has imitated, are generally known: 'O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; The lines are in themselves not perfect, for most of the words thus artfully opposed are to be understood simply on one side of the comparison, and metaphorically on the other; and if there be any language which does not express intellectual operations by material images, into that language they cannot ''The design of Windsor Forest is evidently derived from Cooper's Hill, with some attention to Waller's poem on The Park, Post, POPE, 315. For Pope's praise of Cooper's Hill see Windsor Forest, ll. 259-272. Campbell gives the following imitations of Cooper's Hill as 'alone meriting notice':-'Waller's St. James Park [Eng. Poets, xvi. 152]; Pope, in his Iliad, xvi. 466 n, after praising Homer's 'indirect and oblique manner of introducing moral sentences and instructions,' continues:- -It is this particular art that is the very distinguishing excellence of Cooper's Hill! 3I am sure there are few who make verses have observed the sweetness of these two lines in Cooper's Hill-"Though deep, &c."; and there are yet fewer who can find the reason of that sweetness.' DRYDEN, Works, xiv. 207. 'Nor let my votaries show their skill In aping lines from Cooper's Hill; For know I cannot bear to hear The mimicry of deep, yet clear.' SWIFT, Apollo's Edict, Works, xiv. 129. 'Flow, Welsted, flow! like thine inspirer, Beer, Though stale, not ripe; though thin, yet never clear; So sweetly mawkish and so smoothly dull; Heady, not strong; o'erflowing, though not full.' POPE, The Dunciad, iii. 169. For Denham's lines see Eng. Poets, ix. 165. They first appeared in the published edition of the poem in 1655. N.&Q. 7 S. iii. 137. 5 In N. & 2.4 S. xii. 493, is quoted from Ascham's Epistolae, 1590, p. 254, a passage probably imitated by Denham. Ascham describes Osorius in his style as 'sic fluens ut nunquam redundet, sic sonans ut nunquam perstrepat, sic plenus ut nunquam turgescat.' be translated. But so much meaning is comprised in so few words; the particulars of resemblance are so perspicaciously collected, and every mode of excellence separated from its adjacent fault by so nice a line of limitation; the different parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted; and the flow of the last couplet is so smooth and sweet-that the passage however celebrated has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be produced at will by wit and labour, but must arise unexpectedly in some hour propitious to poetry 1. He appears to have been one of the first that understood 32 the necessity of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines and interpreting single words'. How much this servile practice obscured the clearest and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them the works of men well qualified, not only by critical knowledge, but by poetical genius, who yet by a mistaken ambition of exactness degraded at once their originals and themselves. Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with 33 great success 3. His versions of Virgil' are not pleasing, but they taught Dryden to please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on Old Age has neither the clearness of prose, nor the spriteliness of poetry. 6 The 'strength of Denham,' which Pope so emphatically 34 mentions', is to be found in many lines and couplets, which 2 1 Post, ADDISON, 135; POPE, 402. Denham, in the Preface to his Aeneid (ante, DENHAM, 7), says of the translator:-'It is not his business alone to translate language into language, but poesy into poesy.' 3 Ante, COWLEY, 125; post, DRYDEN, 223. 'Denham and Cowley contrived another way of turning authors into our tongue, called, by the latter of them, imitation. ... Denham advised more liberty than he took himself.' DRYDEN, Works, xii. 18, 21. See also The Guardian, No. 164. In The Battle of the Books we read how' with a long spear Homer slew Denham, a stout modern, who from his father's side derived his lineage from Apollo, but his mother was of mortal race. He fell, and bit the earth. The celestial part Apollo took, and made it a star; but the terrestrial lay wallowing upon the ground.' SWIFT, Works, x. 235. Ante, DENHAM, 7; Eng. Poets, ix. 172. 5 Pope, in his Iliad, xii. 387 n., says: This speech of Sarpedon is excellently translated by Denham, and, if I have done it with any spirit, it is partly owing to him.' For the translation see Eng. Poets, ix. 203. 6 Ib. ix. 266. ''And praise the easy vigour of a line Dryden says of the earlier writers: 'They can produce nothing... so 35 convey much meaning in few words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk. On the Thames 1. 'Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, On Strafford 2. 'His wisdom such, at once it did appear Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear; Such was his force of eloquence, to make The hearers more concern'd than he that spake; On Cowley. 'To him no author was unknown, Yet what he wrote was all his own 3; He did not steal, but emulate! And when he would like them appear, Their garb, but not their cloaths, did wear.' As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises from his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to be considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from the observation of a man of judgement naturally right forsaking bad copies by degrees and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more confidence in himself. |