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Non equidem insector, delendaque carmina Livî

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Esse reor, memini quæ "plagosum mihi parvo
Orbilium dictare ;

sed emendata videri

Pulcraque, et exactis minimum distantia, miror :

NOTES.

Ver. 104. Bentley] This excellent Critic, who had the fortune to be extravagantly despised and ridiculed by two of the greatest Wits, [P. S.] and as extravagantly feared and flattered by two of the greatest Scholars of his time, [C. H.] will deserve to have that justice done him now, which he never met with while alive.

He was a great Master both of the languages and the learning of polite Antiquity; whose Writings he studied with no other design than to correct the errors of the text. For this he had a strong natural understanding, a great share of penetration, and a sagacity and acumen very uncommon. All which qualities he had greatly improved by long exercise and application. Yet, at the same time, he had so little of that elegance of judgment, we call Taste, that he knew nothing of Style, as it accommodates itself, and is appropriated to, the various kinds of composition. And his reasoning faculty being infinitely better than that of his imagination, the Style of Poetry was what he least understood. So that, that clearness of conception, which so much assisted his critical sagacity, in discovering and reforming errors in books of science, where a philosophical precision, and grammatical exactness of language is employed, served but to betray him into absurd and extravagant conjectures, whenever he attempted to reform the text of a Poet; whose diction he was always for reducing to the prosaic rules of logical severity; and whenever he found what a great master of speech call verbum ardens, he was sure not to leave it till he had thoroughly quenched it in his critical standish. But to make Philology amends, he was a perfect Master of all the mysteries of the ancient Rhythmus.

Not that I'd lop the beauties from his book, Like "slashing Bentley with his desp'rate hook, Or damn all Shakspeare, like th' affected Fool 105 At court, who hates whate'er he read at school.

But for the Wits of either Charles's days, The Mob of Gentlemen who wrote with ease;

NOTES.

The most important of his Works, as a scholar, is his Critique on the Epistles of Phalaris; and the least considerable, his Remarks on the Discourse concerning Freethinking. Yet the first, with all its superiority of learning, argument, and truth, was borne down by the vivacity and clamour of a Party, which (as usual) carried the public along with them: while the other, employed only in the easy and trifling task of exposing a very dull and very ignorant Rhapsodist, was as extravagantly extolled. For it was his odd fortune (as our Poet expresses it) to pass for

"A Wit with Dunces, and a Dunce with Wits :" whereas in truth he was neither one nor the other. The injustice that had been done him in the first case, made him always speak, amongst his friends, of the blind partiality of the public, in the latter, with the contempt it deserved. For however he might sometimes mistake his own force, he was never the Dupe of the public judgment: of which, a learned prelate, now living, gave me this instance: He accidentally met Bentley in the days of Phalaris; and after having complimented him on that noble Piece of Criticism (the Answer to the Oxford writers), he bade him not be discouraged at this run upon him: for though they had got the laughers on their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not hold it out long against a work of so much learning. To which the other replied, " Indeed Dr. S. I am in no pain about the matter. For it is a maxim with me, that no man was ever written out of reputation, but by himself." W.

Ver. 104. his desp'rate hook,] Alluding to the several passages of Milton, which Bentley has reprobated, by including them within hooks; some with judgment, and some without any. W.

Is it possible the commentator could be serious in giving this turn to the word hook?

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Inter quæ verbum emicuit si forte decorum,
Si versus paulo concinnior unus et alter;
Injuste totum ducit venitque poema.

*Indignor quidquam reprehendi, non quia crasse Compositum, illepideve putetur, sed quia nuper; Nec veniam antiquis, sed honorem et præmia posci.

*Recte necne crocum floresque perambulet Attæ Fabula, si dubitem; clament periisse pudorem Cuncti pene patres: ea cum reprehendere coner, Quæ 'gravis Æsopus, quæ doctus Roscius egit.

NOTES.

Ver. 109. Sprat,] Rightly put at the head of the small Wits. He is now known to most advantage as the Friend of Mr. Cowley. His learning was comprised in the well rounding of a period : For, as Seneca said of Triarius, " Compositione verborum belle cadentium multos Scholasticos delectabat, omnes decipiebat." As to the turn of his piety and genius, it is best seen by his last Will and Testament, where he gives God thanks that he, who had been bred neither at Eton nor Westminster, but a little country school by the Churchyard side, should at last come to be a Bishop. -But the honour of being a Westminster School-boy some have at one age, and some at another; and some all their life long. Our grateful Bishop, though he had it not in his youth, yet it came upon him in his old age. W.

Ver. 110. Like twinkling stars] Among the trash that fills those six volumes, called Dryden's Miscellanies, are several copies of verses so dull and despicable, that they would hardly gain admittance in a modern monthly magazine;

"Unfinished things one knows not what to call." Dodsley's six volumes are on the whole superior. Milton, in his Second Defence, has very severely proscribed the common writers of miscellaneous poems. "Poetas equidem vere dictos, et diligo et colo, et audiendo sæpe delector; istos vero versiculorum nugivendos quis non oderit? quo genere nihil stultius, aut vanius, aut corruptius, aut mendacius. Laudant, vituperant, sine delectu, sine discrimine, judicio, aut modo, nunc principes, nunc

Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more

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Has sanctify'd whole poems for an age.

'I lose my patience, and I own it too,

When works are censur'd, not as bad but new;
While if our Elders break all reason's laws,

These fools demand not pardon, but Applause.
"On Avon's bank, where flowers eternal blow,
If I but ask, if any weed can grow?
One Tragic sentence if I dare deride
Which 'Betterton's grave action dignify'd,

115

120

NOTES.

plebeios, doctos juxta atque indoctos, probos an improbos perinde habent; prout Cantharus, aut spes nummuli, aut fatuus ille furor inflat, ac rapit." A sensible French writer makes the very same complaint that our author has done in verse 116. Some shining passages, and a few striking lines, were sufficient to recommend a whole piece. The weakness and meanness of many other lines were excused, on being considered only as made merely for connecting the former, and therefore they were called, as we learn from Marolles's Memoirs, des Vers de Passages. Du Bos, Sect. 7. The reading such works, says Bayle, is like the journey of a caravan over the deserts of Arabia, which often goes twenty or thirty leagues together without finding a single fruit-tree or fountain. This thought has a close resemblance to the 111th line of our Poet.

Ver. 122. Which Betterton's grave action dignify'd,
Or well-mouth'd Booth-]

The epithet gravis, when applied to a Tragedian, signifies dignity of gesture and action; and in this sense the imitator uses the word grave: nothing being more destructive of his character than

Vel quia nil "rectum, nisi quod placuit sibi, ducunt,
Vel quia turpe putant parere minoribus, et, quæ
Imberbi didicere, senes perdenda fateri.
Jam "Saliare Numa carmen qui laudat, et illud,
Quod mecum ignorat, solus vult scire videri;
Ingeniis non ille favet plauditque sepultis,
Nostra sed impugnat, nos nostraque lividus odit.

*Quod si tam Græcis novitas invisa fuisset, Quamnobis; quid nunc esset vetus? aut quid haberet, Quod legeret tereretque viritim publicus usus ?

NGTES.

ranting, the common vice of Stage-Heroes, from which this admirable Actor was entirely free. The epithet well-mouth'd, a term of the chase, here applied to his successor, was not given without a particular design, and to insinuate, that there was as wide a difference between their performances, as there is between scientific music and the harmony of brute sounds, between elocution and vociferation. This compliment was paid to BETTERTON, as the earliest of our Author's friends; whom he no less esteemed (as Cicero did Roscius) for the integrity of his life and manners, than for the excellence of his dramatic performance. Our Author lived to see with pleasure, though after a considerable interruption, these qualities again revive and unite in the person of a third accomplished Actor*: the present ornament of the English Theatre. W.

Ver. 122. Which Betterton's grave] There are few characters drawn with such precision, life, nature, and truth, as what Cibber has given us of Betterton, in the fourth chapter of his life: It required no small mastery of language, and knowledge of the difficult art of acting, to be able to convey to the reader an exact and complete idea of the manner in which Betterton so admirably personated the characters of Othello, Hamlet, Hotspur, Brutus, and Macbeth. It were to be wished the same justice could be done to Mr. Garrick, who perhaps would not suffer much by a comparison with Betterton. It is at least to be lamented that Dr. Johnson should speak so contemptibly, as he has done more

* Mr. Garrick.

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