Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub

its self, and greatly discovers our Author's Mr. AddiKnowledge and Researches into Nature.

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, fuffers then
The Nature of an Infurrection.

That nice Critick Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus confeffes, that he could not find those great Strokes, which he calls the terrible Graces, in any of the Historians, which he frequently met with in Homer. I believe, the Success would be the fame likewise, if we fought for them in any other of our Authors befides our British HOMER, Shakespeare. This Description of the Condition of Conspirators has a Pomp and Terror in it, that perfectly aftonishes. Our excellent Mr. Addison, whose Modesty made him sometimes diffident in his own Genius, but whose exquifite Judgment always led him to the safeft Guides, as we may fee by those many fine Strokes in his Cato borrow'd from the Philippics of Cicero, has paraphrafed this fine Description; but we are no longer to expect those terrible Graces, which he could not hinder from evaporating in the Transfufion.

b 2

fon and He compared, on a fimilar Topick

O think, what anxious Moments pass between
The Birth of Plots, and their last fatal Periods.
Oh, 'tis a dreadful Interval of Time,
Fill' d up with Horror all, and bigwith Death.

I shall observe two Things on this fine Imitation: first, that the Subjects of these two Confpiracies being so very different, (the Fortunes of Cafar and the Roman Empire being concern'd in the First; and That of only a few Auxiliary Troops, in the other ;) Mr. Addison could not with Propriety bring in that magnificent Circumstance, which gives the terrible Grace to Shakespeare's Description.

The Genius and the mortal Instruments
Are then in Council.

For Kingdoms, in the poetical Theology, befides their good, have their evil Genius's likewife: represented here with the most daring Stretch of Fancy, as fitting in Council with the Conspirators, whom he calls the mortal Instruments. But this would have been too great an Apparatus to the Rape, and Defertion, of Syphax, and Sempronius. Secondly, The other Thing very obfervable is, that Mr. Addison was so warm'd and affected with the Fire of Shakespeare's Description; that, instead of copying his Author's Sentiments, he has, before he was aware, given us only the Image of his own Impressions on the

reading his great Original. For,

Oh,

Oh, 'tis a dreadful Interval of Time,
Fill'd up with Horror all, and big with Death;

are but the Affections raised by fuch forcible
Images as these;

_ All the Int'rim is Like a Phantasma, or a hideous Dream. the State of Man, Like to a little Kingdom, fuffers then The Nature of an Infurrection.

23

در

23

Comparing the Mind of a Conspirator to an Anarchy, is just and beautiful; but the Interim to a hideous Dream has something in it so wonderfully natural, and lays the human Soul so open, that one cannot but be furpriz'd, that any Poet, who had not himself been, some time or other, engaged in a Confpiracy, could ever have given such Force of Colouring to Truth and Nature.

Shake

bandled

It has been allow'd on all hands, how The Queffar our Author was indebted to Nature; it is tion on not so well agreed, how much he ow'd to fpeare's Languages and acquir'd Learning. The De-Learning cisions on this Subject were certainly fet on Foot by the Hint from Ben Jonson, that he had small Latin and less Greek: And from this Tradition, as it were, Mr. Rowe has thought fit peremptorily to declare, that, " is without Controversy, he had no Knowledge of the Writings of the ancient Poets, " for that in his Works we find no Traces of

[merged small][ocr errors]

"It

any

[ocr errors]

any thing which looks like an Imitation of "the Ancients. For the Delicacy of his "Taste (continues He,) and the natural Bent " of his own great Genius (equal, if not fu

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

perior, to some of the Best of theirs ;) " would certainly have led him to read and study them with so much Pleasure, that " some of their fine Images would naturally have infinuated themselves into, and been " mix'd with, his own Writings: so that his not copying, at least, something from them, may be an Argument of his never having read them." I shall leave it to the Determination of my Learned Readers, from the numerous Passages, which I have occafionally quoted in my Notes, in which our Poet seems closely to have imitated the Claffics, whether Mr. Rowe's Assertion be so abfolutely to be depended on. The Result of the Controversy must certainly, either way, terminate to our Author's Honour: how happily he could imitate them, if that Point be allow'd; or how gloriously he could think like them, without owing any thing to Imitation.

Tho' I should be very unwilling to allow Shakespeare so poor a Scholar, as Many have labour'd to represent him, yet I shall be very cautious of declaring too positively on the other fide of the Question: that is, with regard to my Opinion of his Knowledge in the dead Languages. And therefore the Passages, that

I occafionally quote from the Claffics, fhall not be urged as Proofs that he knowingly imitated those Originals; but brought to shew how happily he has express'd himself upon the fame Topicks. A very learned Critick of our own Nation has declar'd, that a Sameness of Thought and Sameness of Expreffion too, in Two Writers of a different Age, can hardly happen, without a violent Sufpicion of the Latter copying from his Predeceffor. I shall not therefore run any great Risque of a Cenfure, tho' I should venture to hint, that the Resemblance, in Thought and Expreffion, of our Author and an Antient (which we should allow to be Imitation in One, whose Learning was not question'd) may sometimes take its Rise from Strength of Memory, and those Impreffions which he ow'd to the School. And if we may allow a Possibility of This, confidering that, when he quitted the School, he gave into his Father's Profeffion and way of Living, and had, 'tis likely, but a flender Library of Claffical Learning; and confidering what a Number of Translations, Romances, and Legends, started about his Time, and a little before; (most of which, 'tis very evident, he read ;) I think, it may eafily be reconcil'd, why he rather schemed his Plots and Characters from these more latter Informations, than went back to those Fountains, for which he might

[blocks in formation]

N

« IndietroContinua »