Our celebrated poet Ben Johnson lived at a time, when turgid conceptions and bombast language were highly relished; and his compositions are in the perfection of that taste, witness the quotations from him in Elements of Criticism(a). He was but too faithfully imitated by Beaumont and Fletcher, and other writers of that age. We owe to Dryden the dawn of a better<212> taste. For though the mode of writing in his time led him to the bombast, yet a just imitation of nature frequently breaks forth, especially in his later compositions. And, as nature will always at last prevail, the copies of nature given by that eminent writer were highly relished, produced many happy imitations, and in time brought about a total revolution of taste, which kept pace with that of government, both equally happy for this nation. Here is a fair deduction of the progress of taste in Britain. But, according to that progress, what shall be said of the immortal Shakespeare, in whose works is displayed the perfection of taste? Was not his appearance at least a century too early? Such events happen sometimes contrary to the ordinary progress. This was the case of Roger Bacon, as well as of Shakespeare: they were blazing stars that gave but a temporary lustre, and left the world as void of light as before.16 Ben Johnson, accordingly, and even Beaumont and Fletcher, were greater national favourites than Shakespeare; and, in the same manner, the age before, Lucan was ranked above Virgil by every critic. By the same bad<213> taste, the true sublime of Milton was little relished for more than half a century after Paradise Lost was published. Ill-fated Shakespeare! who appeared in an age unworthy of him. That divine writer, who, merely by force of genius, so far surpassed his cotemporaries, how far would he have surpassed even himself, had he been animated with the praises so justly bestowed on him in later times?17 We have Dryden’s authority, that taste in his time was considerably refined:
They who have best succeeded on the stage,
Have still conform’d their genius to their age.
Thus Johnston did mechanic humour show,
When men were dull, and conversation low.
Then comedy was faultless, but ’twas coarse:
Cobb’s Tankard was a jest, and Otter’s Horse.
Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped:
And they have kept it since by being dead.
But were they now to write, when critics weigh
Each line and ev’ry word throughout a play,
None of them, no not Johnson in his height,
Could pass without allowing grains for weight.
If love and honour now are higher rais’d,
It’s not the poet, but the age is prais’d:
Wit’s now arriv’d to a more high degree,
Our native language more refin’d and free.
Our ladies and our men now speak more wit
In conversation, than those poets writ.18 <214>
The high opinion Dryden had of himself and of his age, breaks out in every line. Johnson probably had the same opinion of himself and of his age: the present age is not exempted from that bias; nor will the next age be, though probably maturity in taste will be still later. We humble ourselves before the ancients, who are far removed from us; but not to soar above our immediate predecessors, would be a sad mortification. Many scenes in Dryden’s plays, if not lower than Cobb’s Tankard or Otter’s Horse, are more out of place. In the Wild Gallant, the hero is a wretch constantly employed, not only in cheating his creditors, but in cheating his mistress, a lady of high rank and fortune. And how absurd is the scene, where he convinces the father of his mistress, that the devil had got him with child! The character of Sir Martin Marall is below contempt. The scenes in the same play, of a bawd instructing one of her novices how to behave to her gallants, and of the novice practising her lessons, are perhaps not lower than Cobb’s Tankard or Otter’s Horse, but surely they are less innocent.<215>
It is common to see people fond of a new fashion, vainly imagining that taste is greatly improved. Disguised dishes are a sort of bastard wit, like turrets jutting out at the top of a building. Such dishes were lately in high fashion, without having even the slender merit of being a new fashion. They prevailed in the days of Charles II. as we learn from one of Dryden’s plays. “Ay, it look’d like variety, till we came to taste it; there were twenty several dishes to the eye, but in the palate nothing but spices. I had a mind to eat of a pheasant; and, so soon as I got it into my mouth, I found I was chewing a limb of cinnamon; then I went to cut a piece of kid, and no sooner it had touched my lips, but it turn’d to red pepper: at last I began to think myself another kind of Midas, that every thing I had touched should be turned to spice.”19
Portugal was rising in power and splendor when Camoens wrote the Lusiad; and, with respect to the music of verse, it has merit. The author, however, is far from shining in point of taste. He makes a strange jumble of Heathen and Christian Deities. “Gama,” observes Voltaire, <216> “in a storm addresses his prayers to Christ, but it is Venus who comes to his relief.”20 Voltaire’s observation is but too well founded. In the first book, Jove summons a council of the gods, which is described at great length, for no earthly purpose but to show that he favoured the Portuguese. Bacchus, on the other hand, declares against them upon the following account, that he himself had gained immortal glory, as conqueror of the Indies; which would be eclipsed if the Portuguese should also conquer them. A Moorish commander having received Gama with smiles, but with hatred in his heart, the poet brings down Bacchus from heaven to confirm the Moor in his wicked purposes; which would have been perpetrated, had not Venus interposed in Gama’s behalf. In the second canto, Bacchus feigns himself to be a Christian, in order to deceive the Portuguese; but Venus implores her father Jupiter to protect them. And yet, after all, I am loth to condemn an early writer for introducing Heathen Deities as actors in a real history, when, in the age of Lewis XIV. celebrated for refinement of taste, we find French writers, Boileau<217> in particular, guilty sometimes of the same absurdity(a).
At the meeting ann. 1520 near Calais between Francis I. of France and Henry VIII. of England, it is observed by several French writers, that the French nobility displayed more magnificence, the English more taste. If so, the alteration is great since that time: France at present gives the law to the rest of Europe in every matter of taste, gardening alone excepted.21 At the same time, though taste in France is more correct than in any other country, it will bear still some purification. The scene of a clyster-pipe in Moliere is too low even for a farce; and yet to this day it is acted, with a few softenings, before the most polite audience in Europe.*
In Elements of Criticism(a) several cau-<218>ses are mentioned that may retard taste in its progress toward maturity, and that may give it a retrograde motion when it is in maturity. There are many biasses, both natural and acquired, that tend to mislead persons even of the best taste. Of the latter, instances are without number. I select one or two, to show what influence even the slightest circumstances have on taste. The only tree beautiful at all seasons is the holly: in winter, its deep and shining green entitles it to be the queen of the grove: in summer, this colour completes the harmonious mixture of shades, so pleasing in that season! Mrs. D—— is lively and sociable. She is eminent above most of her sex for a correct taste, displayed not only within doors but in the garden and in the field. Having become mistress of a great house by matrimony, the most honourable of all titles, a group of tall hollies, which had long obscured one of the capital rooms, soon attracted her eye. <219> She took an aversion to a holly, and was not at ease till the group was extirpated. Such a bias is perfectly harmless. What follows is not so. The Oxonians disliked the great Newton, because he was educated at Cambridge; and they favoured every book writ against him. That bias, I hope, has not come down to the present time.
Refinement