IV The Second Period
I have taken 1700, the date of Dryden’s death, as that which most fittingly marks the close of the first period and the beginning of the second, for it is very soon after that year that the spirit of the eighteenth century begins to make itself manifest. In the history of literature the eighteenth century stands out distinct as a whole. The literature of the seventeenth century had many characteristics, which, even in the most cursory survey, require attention, and these characteristics were mainly due to the connection of literature with the Court. The pedantic James I. was a patron of learning. His son Charles I., and grandson Charles II., inherited the taste for polite letters, and encouraged or influenced indirectly the authors of their times. But the eighteenth century monarchs were different. They did not concern themselves much with men of letters, and literature went its course comparatively unaffected by fashion. But it was affected by the spirit of the age—the spirit born of gradual recognition of the Renaissance. As David Lloyd in his State Worthies said of the early seventeenth century, “it was the very guise at that time to be learned; the wits of it were so excellent, the helps and assistants of it were so great; printing was so common; the world (by navigation) so open; great experiments so disclosed; the leisure of men so much, the age so peaceable; and His Majesty, after whom all writ, so knowing.” At that time learning was a novelty, and consequently it was fashionable—it was “the very guise.” By the eighteenth century great men had grown accustomed to it; and it was becoming the property of the lesser worthies, who, unable to resist the temptation to “show off,” turned out reams of didactic verse, the substance of which would nowadays hide its light beneath the respectable bushel of the journal of some scientific society. Dryden was perhaps mainly responsible. He had pronounced the dictum: “They cannot be good poets who are not accustomed to argue well.” At any rate, with the eighteenth century the poetry of argument or logic, as distinct from that of inspiration, came into being, and by far the greater part of the poetry of the hundred years that followed Dryden’s death was that of poets who are made rather than poets who are born. The same feeling informs the prose. It is true that the age produced Horace Walpole. But Walpole was a literary trifler, and liked to be thought so, though he was amazingly industrious. The eighteenth century saw much excellent prose, but it is almost always the prose of “will” or “must” rather than that of “can.” It comes rather of fertility of reason than of fertility of fancy. Of such stock are commentators born.
One finds, accordingly, that the principal producers of pure literature, whether prose or verse, were also critics, and most of them turned their attention, sooner or later, to Shakespeare. Prominent figures in the history of Shakespearean criticism in the eighteenth century stand Pope and Johnson. Both are classical scholars in an age of pedants; both are among the foremost advocates of rigid adherence to prescribed rules in literary production; both place imagination below intellect in estimation of genius; and both are honoured by their fellows as arbiters and dictators of literary taste. Each of them is inclined to say unkind things about Shakespeare, and hardly dares. Pope is the more generous of the two. “It will be,” he says, “but fair to allow that most of our author’s faults are less to be ascribed to his wrong judgment as a poet, than to his right judgment as a player.” Which is to say, that Shakespeare, poor soul! must needs trim his boat to suit the current of popular opinion; that the greater part of his audience in the theatres consisted of low fellows who had never heard of Aristotle, and must not be troubled with the unities and such matters, which they could not understand. One has but to continue this line of argument to conclude that Pope thought Shakespeare so much a part and product of the age in which he was born, that had he been born, say, in Pope’s age, he might (which Heaven forbid!) have been a perfect poet according to Pope’s lights—might, in fact, have translated Homer, to supply the sixpenny boxes of second-hand booksellers two centuries later. But Pope certainly thought Shakespeare very great. His greatness was, perhaps, not of quite the right kind in Pope’s estimation; but greatness he undoubtedly thought it. As to Shakespeare’s want of learning, Pope frankly refused to believe in it. He says very wisely:
“There is certainly a vast difference between learning and languages. How far he was ignorant of the latter I cannot determine; but ’tis plain he had much reading at least, if they will not call it learning. Nor is it any great matter, if a man has knowledge, whether he has it from one language or from another.... I am inclined to think this opinion proceeded originally from the zeal of the partizans of our author and Ben Jonson, as they endeavoured to exalt the one at the expense of the other. It is ever the nature of parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so probable as that because Ben Jonson had much the more learning, it was said on the one hand that Shakespeare had none at all; and because Shakespeare had much the most wit and fancy, it was reported on the other that Jonson wanted both. Because Shakespeare borrowed nothing, it was said that Ben Jonson borrowed everything. Because Jonson did not write extempore, he was reproached with being a year about every piece; and because Shakespeare wrote with ease and rapidity, they cried, he never once made a blot. Nay, the spirit of opposition ran so high, that whatever those of the one side objected to in the other, was taken at the rebound and turned into praises; as injudiciously as their antagonists before had made them objections.”
Pope further attributed many of Shakespeare’s errors to the carelessness or ignorance of the first publishers of his works, suggesting that the original copies from which they were printed were no better than the “prompter’s book, or piecemeal parts written out for the use of the actors,” who may be supposed to have made numerous small excisions and additions.
Thus Pope says in effect that Shakespeare would have been perfect if the age and conditions in which he lived had allowed him. He sees many beauties in him, but he also sees many defects; and his edition of Shakespeare’s works is remarkable chiefly for its omissions of passages which the editor deems unworthy of his author.
Dr. Johnson is by no means so ready metaphorically to grasp Shakespeare by the hand. He follows a procession of editors of more or less ability, and he feels that the time has come for the final settlement of Shakespeare’s true position. Rowe, the first editor, hardly realised his responsibilities, and his edition of the plays which appeared in 1709 has few merits from the critic’s point of view. Pope, who followed him in 1725, had a reputation for brilliance to sustain, and his preface is remarkable rather for neatness of expression than for critical discernment. Theobald came after Pope, in 1733, with much common sense, which made him the laughing-stock of his successors. The next editor, Sir Thomas Hanmer, intended his edition as a tribute to Shakespeare, and what was lacking in criticism was supplied in good paper and printing. Warburton succeeded with a pompous self-assertiveness that expressed itself in amusing but ineffective paradoxes.
Johnson accordingly had a due sense of what was expected of him. His critical equipment consisted in a knowledge of the classical drama, and his æsthetic judgment was founded on the rules by which he had succeeded in his own poetical ventures. Still, he did his best to assume a strictly unbiassed judicial attitude. He did not, as Macaulay states, take it for granted that “the kind of poetry which flourished in his own time, which he had been accustomed to hear praised from his childhood, and which he had himself written with success, was the best kind of poetry.” He tried deliberately to approach Shakespeare as he approached the Cock Lane Ghost. He dealt with him as with some mysterious phenomenon which was attracting public attention, and which admitted of explanation. The result was, perhaps, the best balanced common-sense judgment on record. It contained, on the one hand, the most tremendous indictment of Shakespeare that is ever likely to be written; and, on the other, a triumphant defence, coupled with much enthusiastic eulogy. Here are some of the “faults which,” as he puts it, “are sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit”:
“He sacrifices virtue to convenience.”
“His plots are often so loosely formed that a very slight consideration may improve them.”
“In many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected.”
“He had no regard to distinction of time or place.”
“In his comic scenes he is seldom very successful when he engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sarcasm.”
“In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse, as his labour is more.”
“In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few.”
“His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak.”
“It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express and will not reject.”
“What he does best he soon ceases to do.”
“A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures.”
“He neglects the unities—those laws which have been instituted and established by the joint authority of poets and critics.”
Johnson proceeds to defend Shakespeare by an excellent demonstration of the absurdity of the unities, and at the close of it owns himself “almost frighted at his own temerity.” Then he follows Pope in finding Shakespeare to be hampered by the age in which he lived. “The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling to emerge from barbarity.” Having to appeal to immature intellects, he was compelled to base his plays on novels and traditions well known to his audience, “for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama had they not held the thread of the story in their hands.” In reply to Voltaire, who expressed wonder that Shakespeare’s extravagances should be endured by a nation which had seen the tragedy of Cato, Johnson says that “Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shakespeare of men.” He proceeds to deal with Shakespeare’s learning, and Shakespeare emerges from the ordeal credited with rather less than the average board-school boy of the present day. Johnson decides at length that “if much of his praise is paid by perception and judgment, much is likewise given by custom and veneration”; and, finally, he sums up his merits in the following fine sentence:—
“It therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.”[19:1]
It is difficult in the face of these pros and cons to determine what Johnson’s attitude towards Shakespeare really was. Much of his apparent hostility may, perhaps, be attributed to his instinctive argumentativeness. It was his nature to object. If he were in a loquacious mood, you had but to make a bald statement, and he was upon you with an aggressively persuasive “Why, sir!” And here it may be that he felt irresistibly impelled to combat the universal opinion of Shakespeare’s greatness, and that he was hardly sincere in all he wrote. However this may be, it is probable that he left on his readers the impression that the balance of his inclination was against rather than for Shakespeare. The very fact of the judicial attitude would tend to produce such an impression. A judicial attitude towards Shakespeare was not at that period so well understood as to be readily distinguished from unfriendliness. And in estimating the critical attitude of the age towards Shakespeare, it is necessary to bear in mind that Dr. Johnson was a more important person when he lived than he is now. Nothing is gained by speculating what he might have thought. The fact remains that what he wrote carried weight.
Johnson’s opinion was not, however, sufficiently weighty to make his preface, as he intended it to be, the last word in Shakespearean criticism. Other editors followed him. Edward Capell brought much serious and laborious scholarship to the task; and his judgments were frequently sound, though his lack of perspicuity in delivering them detracts somewhat from their value. His edition appeared in 1768. Five years later, in 1773, George Steevens revised Johnson’s edition, and, bringing to the enterprise an unrivalled knowledge of Elizabethan history and literature, embodied many improvements, which he treated with a humour that was frequently malicious and occasionally obscene. To the second edition (1778) of this work was added much valuable material relating to Shakespeare’s biography and the sources of his plots, due to the researches of Edmund Malone, who published an edition of his own in 1790. The well-known “First Variorum” edition appeared in twenty-one volumes in 1803, prepared by Isaac Reed from a 1793 copy of Steevens’, containing many manuscript notes. The “Second Variorum” appeared in 1813; and the “Third Variorum,” arranged by James Boswell, the son of Johnson’s biographer, which appeared in 1821, marks the close of what may be called the eighteenth century period of commentators.
It will be seen, then, that Shakespeare was at this time kept prominently before the eyes of the reading public. He was equally a topic of interest with men of letters who confined themselves to no special branch of literature. The attitude of the eighteenth century essayists toward Shakespeare was essentially one of admiration and respect for his genius. They found fault with his plays, it is true, frequently enough, but almost always apologetically. He was not infrequently held up as a model for modern dramatists to follow. The Connoisseur, for example, printed a paper discussing the sources of the Merchant of Venice; and while elaborating the fact that the plot was borrowed, insisted on the genius displayed in the use which Shakespeare made of it. The Guardian, again, enlarges on the naturalness of Shakespeare’s characters—remarkable at a time when poetry was, above all things, rhetorical and artificial.
Let us glance now at the poetical critics. It will be noticed that many of the pieces printed in the body of this book appear under names that are not very familiar, and that the eighteenth century is responsible for the majority of them. In modern anthologies it is not usual to include selections from the works of such poets; nor, indeed, if literary excellence be the compiler’s object, is it expedient. They are included here not because their effusions appear to me to reach even a modest standard of merit, but because they were accepted as good poets by their contemporaries and by the literary dictator, Dr. Johnson. Johnson, it is true, disclaimed responsibility for the choice of names represented in his edition of British poets, but the repudiation cannot be considered of much importance. Johnson’s name had probably more weight with publishers than that of any other man of his time, and it is hardly likely that his advice in the matter of inclusion or rejection, had he thought it worth while to give it, would have been ignored. So one may feel certain that every name on his list appeared with his approval. The laudatory criticisms embodied in the biographies, which he asserted marked the extent of his commission, prove as much. Take Blackmore, for example, whose Creation was included, on Johnson’s recommendation, in his edition of the poets. “This poem,” he says, “if he had written nothing else, would have transmitted him to posterity among the first favourites of the English Muse.” Posterity, on the whole, has not given the Muse’s favourite much of a welcome, and Blackmore is one of a number of such chosen ones. But even Johnson might have known better. They had their reputations ready made for them by patrons. It was the age of patrons and extravagant compliment, and Shakespeare in the hands of these small poets took a place similar to that of the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome. Poetical flatterers of great men permitted him to fill the position of comparative in the scale of eulogy, the object of their praises being the superlative. Just as the writers of light society compliments made envious Venus second to Clorinda or Chloe or Celia, so Shakespeare stood aside to find himself excelled by Addison or Pope or Dryden, or even, on exceptional occasions, by some patron who scarcely did more than pretend to throw off little trifles in verse. Witness the “Lines to Mr. Addison,” by William Somervile:
“In heaven he [Shakespeare] sings; on earth your muse supplies
Th’ important loss, and heals our weeping eyes.”
Or take these lines by John Hughes, “To Mr. Addison on his Tragedy of Cato”:
“Great Shakespeare’s ghost, the solemn strain to hear
(Methinks I see the laurel’d shade appear!),
Will hover o’er the scene, and wondering view
His favourite Brutus rival’d thus by you.”
If one could suppose this to have been written in an ironic vein, the lines would be satisfactorily pointed; but it is impossible, for Hughes continues:
“Such Roman greatness in each action shines,
Such Roman eloquence adorns your lines,
That sure the Sibyl’s books this year foretold,
And in some mystic leaf was found inroll’d,
Rome, turn thy mournful eyes from Afric’s shore,
Nor in her sands thy Cato’s tomb explore!
When thrice six hundred times the circling sun
His annual race shall through the zodiac run,
An isle remote his monument shall rear,
And every generous Briton pay a tear.”
Or take the following by William Pattison, “To Mr. John Saunders, occasioned by a sight of some of his paintings at Cambridge.” It would be difficult to imagine a more incongruous bracketing of names than that in the sixth line. The italics are my own:
“When Nature, from her unexhausted mine,
Resolves to make some mighty science shine;
Her embryo seeds inform the future birth,
Improve the soul, and animate the earth;
From thence, an Homer, or Apelles rise,
A Shakespeare, or a Saunders, strike our eyes,
And, lo! the promis’d wonder charms my view,
The old Apelles rivall’d in the new!”
One might quote pages of such stuff—torrents of heroic couplets—whose very form, apart from their sentiment, show that Shakespeare was deemed rather out of date. But the mention of his name counts for something. It means that all of these poets felt, as Dr. Johnson felt, that though they were not quite in sympathy with the old Elizabethan playwright, he was still some one to be reckoned with. Indeed, every now and then the truth comes out that he was too much for them. William Whitehead, for one, had a full appreciation of him.
“O for a Shakespeare’s pencil, while I trace
In nature’s breathing paint, the dreary waste
Of Buxton”...
he sighs in An Hymn to the Nymph of Bristol; and, for all the bathos of its expression, the admiration is genuine.
William Hamilton wrote A Soliloquy in Imitation of Hamlet, a paraphrase of the famous speech, almost as bald as that from which Shakespeare copied his. But the effort is doubtless more of a literary exercise than an attempt at improvement of the original, for Hamilton shows at various points in his works a fairly intimate knowledge and real regard for Shakespeare’s genius.
Mallet read his Shakespeare intelligently, as witness his Edwin and Emma, a love ballad, with its text taken from Twelfth Night. And William Shenstone shows the right spirit in this very passable stanza from The Schoolmistress, happily describing a village school:
“Yet nurs’d with skill, what dazzling fruits appear!
Ev’n now sagacious foresight points to show
A little bench of heedless bishops here,
And there a chancellor in embryo,
Or bard sublime, if bard may e’er be so,
As Milton, Shakespeare, names that ne’er shall die!
Though now he crawl along the ground so low,
Nor weeting how the muse shall soar on high,
Wishes, poor starveling elf! his paper kite to fly.”
That is well meaning and temperate enough, but some of these writers erred on the side of enthusiasm. The following passage from Robert Lloyd’s Shakespeare, an Epistle to Mr. Garrick, may be quoted as an example:
“Oh, where’s the bard, who at one view
Could look the whole creation through,
Who travers’d all the human heart,
Without recourse to Grecian art?
He scorn’d the modes of imitation,
Of altering, pilfering, and translation;
Nor painted horror, grief, or rage,
From models of a former age;
The bright original he took,
And tore the leaf from nature’s book.
’Tis Shakespeare, thus, who stands alone.”
It will be noted that this effusion approaches Shakespeare through Garrick; and such is the case with many others that must remain unquoted. The reason is that Garrick occupied, by public consent if not by his own desire, the position of Shakespeare’s patron. He took, for instance, a leading part in organising the Shakespeare jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon. Among his enterprises on this occasion was the issue of a volume of tributes to Shakespeare, containing several poetical pieces by himself, distinguished rather for their enthusiasm than for poetical inspiration. Dr. Johnson opened the book with some light verses, addressed to The Fair in a vein of somewhat elephantine playfulness; and Garrick collected into it a number of extracts from various writers, in verse and prose, in praise of Shakespeare, prefacing the whole with a high-flown effort of his own in heroic couplets, and publishing it in handsome quarto.
In the garden of his house at Hampton, Garrick had a temple dedicated to Shakespeare, and adorned with statuary, of which the chief piece, a fine full-length figure by Roubiliac, is now in the entrance hall of the British Museum. But to do him justice, his efforts, though they carried the manner of the playhouse into private life, were conceived in a spirit of genuine appreciation; and if many of his admirers regarded him almost as the rescuer of Shakespeare from oblivion, he, at any rate, was ready to acknowledge his indebtedness to the dramatist on the presentation of whose characters his well-merited fame rested.
So much for the second period.[26:1] Its literature is like a troubled sea of conflicting opinion, through which the ship of Shakespeare’s genius sails, tossed and buffeted by winds fair and foul, from all points of the compass, and emerges triumphant.