INTRODUCTION BY R. J. MADDEN, C.S.B.

PUBLICATION NUMBER 107-8

WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY

University of California, Los Angeles

1964

[Pg i]

INTRODUCTION

John Oldmixon's Essay on Criticism, like his Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to the Earl of Oxford, about the English Tongue,[1] provides evidence to support Dr. Johnson's description of its author as a "scribbler for a party," and indicates that Oldmixon must have been devoted to gathering examples of what appeared to him to be the good and bad in literature.

The story of the appearance of the Essay on Criticism in 1728 should begin in 1724, when Oldmixon published in one volume his Critical History of England, Ecclesiastical and Civil. Dr. Zachary Grey's criticism of this book was answered by Oldmixon in 1725 in A Review of Dr. Zachary Grey's Defence of our Ancient and Modern Historians. In 1726 a two-volume edition of the Critical History of England appeared with the 1725 edition of the Review of Dr. Zachary Grey's Defence appended to the first volume. In the preface to the second volume of the Critical History Oldmixon referred to the Essay on Criticism, stating that it was ready for the press, but that since it would have made the second volume too large, it would be published at a later date. The Essay, he stated, was to prepare the public for his translation of Abbe Bouhours' La Manière De Bien Penser. It was not, however, until 1728 that the Essay reached the public. Besides appearing separately, it was appended, in place of the now removed answer to Dr. Grey, to the "third" edition of the Critical History.[2] There is no

reference to the addition of the Essay in the preface to the first volume, but its appearance and addition is referred to in the preface to the second volume.

Oldmixon seems to have had more than one purpose for writing the Essay; one of them is made quite clear in the second paragraph:

I shall not, in this Essay, enter into the philosophical Part of Criticism which Corneille complains of, and that Aristotle and his Commentators have treated of Poetry, rather as Philosophers than Poets. I shall not attempt to give Reasons why Thoughts are sublime, noble, delicate, agreeable, and the like, but content my self with producing Examples of every Kind of right Thinking, and leave it to Authors of more Capacity and Leisure, to treat the[Pg ii] Matter à Fond, and teach us to imitate our selves what we admire in others.

The remarks concerning the English need for guidance in "right thinking" are obviously intended to prepare a public for Oldmixon's translation of Bouhours' La Manière De Bien Penser. Following the method of Bouhours, who was in turn following Longinus, Oldmixon gives examples from English literature of the various divisions of "right thinking" and, also like Bouhours, he includes specimens of failures in this art. The bad examples he presents provide ample evidence that the Essay was also serving a Whig polemical purpose, for they are drawn from such writers as Clarendon, Pope and, in particular, Laurence Echard. The tone and nature of Oldmixon's remarks on Echard, whose History he had already criticized at length in the second volume of the Critical History, can be seen in this explanation of his general treatment of that author:

I must sincerely acknowledge, that it was not for Want of Will, that I did not mention what is beautiful in our Historian, but for Want of Opportunity.

Oldmixon's remarks on Pope's Homer are sometimes laudatory, but more often patronizing; the criticism of Pope's Essay on Criticism is quite pointed:

I dare not say any Thing of the last Essay on Criticism in Verse, but that if any more curious Reader has discovered in it something new, which is not in Dryden's Prefaces, Dedications, and his Essay on Dramatick Poetry, not to mention the French Criticks, I should be very glad to have the Benefit of the Discovery.

The rift between Pope and Oldmixon can perhaps be dated from the publication by the latter in 1714 of the "Receipt to make a cuckold" with great apologies for its indecency. Oldmixon continued to tempt satiric fate in the ensuing years, and one wonders if, when seeking a substitute for the Dunciad in the "last" Miscellany of 1728, Pope may not have remembered Oldmixon's announcement in 1726 of his intention to publish an Essay on Criticism which was to be written after[Pg iii] the manner of Bouhours. It is not impossible that this was one of many influences acting upon Pope to organize the "high flights of poetry" he had been collecting over the years for a Scriblerian project. Oldmixon appears, with Gildon and Dennis, among the porpoises in Chapter VI of Peri Bathous, and the presentation of some of the material in the Bathous, although more directly indebted to Longinus, does bring Oldmixon's Essay to mind.

It would seem that Oldmixon felt that more than the porpoises referred to him, for in his translation and adaptation of Bouhours' La Manière De Bien Penser, which he published under the title of The Arts of Logic and Rhetorick later in 1728, the references to Pope are much harsher, and Swift also comes under more pointed attack. Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of A Tub (already censured by Oldmixon in his Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter), the Essay on Criticism, Windsor Forest and the Homer are the objects of bitter criticism. In the concluding pages of The Arts of Logic and Rhetorick Oldmixon wrote:

This delicate Author [Pope] has written a rhiming Essay on Criticism, and made himself merry with his Brethren in a notable Treatise call'd the Art of Sinking, to which he and his Partner S——t, have contributed, more than all the rest of their contemporary writers, if Trifling and Grimace are not in the high Parts of Writing.... What a Precipice is it from Locke's Human Understanding to Swift's Lilliput and Profundity!... there might have been Hopes of rising again; but we sink now like Ships laden with Lead, and must despair of ever recovering the Height from which we have fallen.[3]

As we move from Oldmixon's Essay on Criticism to Pope's Peri Bathous and on to The Arts of Logic and Rhetorick, we perhaps hear the stretching of the spring on a trap, that snapped in the 1735 edition of the Dunciad, in which Oldmixon replaced Dennis as the "Senior" diver "Who but to sink the deeper, rose the higher."[4]

The Essay on Criticism is, however, more than an example of the inter-relation of literature and politics in the eighteenth century; and it is more than a step on the way to its author's immortalizing in lead.[Pg iv] It presents, albeit not very imaginatively, a statement of many of the literary theories and attitudes of the Augustan period. However brief and incomplete, the remarks about the language of poetry and upon the effects of certain literary passages are of interest as imperfect exercises in a type of practical criticism. The material used by Oldmixon and the literary references he makes indicate, as do many of his other writings, that, although he was a "scribbler for a party," he was a man of some literary sense, taste and intelligence.

Robert Madden, C.S.B. St. Michael's College University of Toronto

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NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

1. The Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter was reprinted with an introduction by Louis Landa by the Augustan Reprint Society, no. 15 (1948).

2. The issue which appeared separately is the same as that which was appended to the first volume of the Critical History, save for the price, 1s. 6d, printed on the title page.

3. John Oldmixon, The Arts of Logic and Rhetorick (London, 1728), pp. 416-17.

4. Cf. Dunciad A, II, ll. 271-78, and Dunciad B, II, ll. 283-90, in James Sutherland, ed., The Dunciad in The Poems of Alexander Pope, Vol. V, 2nd ed. (London, 1953). Oldmixon was less prominent in the 1728 edition (Dunciad A, II, ll. 199-202); when he was elevated to a higher level of dullness he was succeeded in his original place by Leonard Welstead (Dunciad B, II, ll. 207-10).

AN

ESSAY

ON

CRITICISM

As it regards

Design, Thought, and Expression,

In Prose and Verse.

By the AUTHOR of the Critical History of England.

LONDON:

Printed for J. Pemberton, at the Golden-Buck in Fleet-Street.

MDCCXXVIII.

1s. 6d.

[Pg 1]

AN

ESSAY

ON

CRITICISM;

As it regards

Design, Thought, and Expression, in Prose and Verse.

I am very far from any Conceit of my own Ability, to treat of so nice a Subject as this, in a Manner worthy of it; but having frequently observed what Errors have been committed by both Writers and Readers for want of a right Judgement, I could not help collecting some loose Hints I had by me, and putting them into a little Form, to shew rather what I would do than what I can do; and to excite some happier Genius, to give us better Lights than we have hitherto been led by, which is said with great Sincerity, and without the least Mixture of Vanity or Affectation.

[Pg 2]I shall not, in this Essay, enter into the philosophical Part of Criticism which Corneille complains of, and that Aristotle and his Commentators have treated of Poetry, rather as Philosophers than Poets. I shall not attempt to give Reasons why Thoughts are sublime, noble, delicate, agreeable, and the like, but content my self with producing Examples of every Kind of right Thinking, and leave it to Authors of more Capacity and Leisure, to treat the Matter a Fond, and teach us to imitate our selves what we admire in others.

Aristotle, Horace, Bossu, Boileau, Dacier, and several other Criticks, have directed us right in the Rules of Epick and Dramatick Poetry, and Rapin has done the same as to History, and other Parts of polite Learning. Several Attempts have been made in England to instruct us, as well as the French have been instructed; but far from striking out any new Lights, our Essays are infinitely short of the Criticisms of our Neighbours. They teach us nothing which is not to be found there, and give us what they take thence curtailed and imperfect. 'Tis true, they have drest up their Rules in Verse, and have succeeded in it very well. There is something so just and beautiful in my Lord Roscommon's Essay and Translation of Horace's Ars Poetica, as excels any Thing in French within the like Compass. I have read the late Duke of Buckingham's Essay very often, but I don't think it such a perfect Piece as Dryden represents it, in his long and tedious Dedication to that noble Lord before the Æneis. There are many Things very well thought in it, and they do not seem to be much the

better for the Poetry; which is so prosaick, that if the Rhimes were pared away, it would be reduced to downright Prose. Indeed Horace's Epistle to the Piso's is not much more poetick; and I do not think, that the modern Criticks, like the Oracles of Old, give the greater Sanction to their Rules, for that they are put into Rhime.

I dare not say any Thing of the last Essay on Criticism in Verse, but that if any more curious Reader has discovered in it something new, which is not in Dryden's Prefaces, Dedications, and his Essay on Dramatick Poetry, not to mention the French Criticks, I should be very glad to have the Benefit of the Discovery.[Pg 3]

I was strangely surprised to meet with such a Passage, as what follows, in the Writings of so good an Author as Sir Robert Howard. Preface to Duke of Lerma: "In the Difference of Tragedy and Comedy, there can be no Determination but by the Taste; and whoever would endeavour to like or dislike by the Rules of others, he will be as unsuccessful as if he should try to be perswaded into a Power of believing, not what he must, but what others direct him to believe."

Thus are Aristotle, Horace, and all that have commented on them; thus are Boileau, the Lord Roscommon, the Duke of Bucks, and all the modern Criticks, confounded with a Word or two, and the Rules of Writing rendered useless and ridiculous.

The Rules laid down by those great Criticks are not to be valu'd, because they are given by Aristotle, Horace, &c. but because they are in Nature and in Truth. Homer, Sophocles, and Euripides, wrote before Aristotle, and the Observations he made upon their Poems, were to shew us how they succeeded by a happy Imitation of Nature, and without such Imitation there can be no Poetry; but according to Sir Robert Howard's Assertion, that only which a Man likes is good; and if you are pleas'd with seeing or hearing any Thing unnatural or even monstruous,

it is preferable to what is just and true, to the Venus of Medicis, or the most perfect Madonna in Italy. Thus a wrong Taste is as good as a right one, and the Smell of a Pole-cat to be preferr'd to that of a Civet, if a Man's Nose is so irregular. After this Rate, there never was a Poet who could write up to the Frenchman's Ladder-dance, or Rich's Harlequin; and whereas Sir Robert says, we may as well believe, because others do, as judge, because Aristotle, Horace, &c. do, there is no Agreement in the Proposition, or it is not rightly stated; for we do not judge so because Aristotle and Horace did so judge; but because it is in Nature and in Truth, and they first shew'd us the Way to find it out.

Criticism is so far from being well understood by us Englishmen, that it is generally mistaken to be an Effect of Envy, Jealousy, and Spleen; an invidious Desire to[Pg 4] find Faults only to discredit the Author, and build a Reputation on the Ruin of his.

One has great Reason to think so, when the Critick looks only on one Side; when he hunts after little Slips and Negligences, and will not, or cannot see, what is beautiful and praise-worthy. If an historical or poetical Performance can no sooner acquire Applause, than he falls upon it without Mercy, neglects every Thing commendable in it, and skims off the Filth that rises on the Top of it; one may be sure his Jealousy is piqu'd, and he is alarm'd for fear every Encrease of Honour to another should be a Diminution of his own Glory; such Sort of Criticism is easily learnt. A Wen or Mole in the Face is sooner perceiv'd than the Harmony of Features, and the fine Proportion of Beauty; or, as Dryden says,

This Thought is borrow'd from the Lord Bacon; who, speaking of Notions and Inferences what may be applied to Families, says, Time is like a River in which Metals and solid Substances sink, while Chaff and Straw swim on the Surface. Such borrowing as Dryden's is highly commendable; he has paid back what he borrowed with Interest, and it can by no Means deserve the Scandal of Plagiarism. I cannot doubt, but Mr. Addison in the sublime Thought, where he represents the Duke of Marlborough in the Heat of the War:

did nor forget these two Lines of Boileau to the King:

I shall all along, through this Discourse, take the Liberty to pass from one Subject to another as the Hint offers, without any Method, according to the Freedom of Essays. Mr. Dryden excuses this Freedom, by the Example of Horace's Epistle to the Piso's, which is immethodical and I must excuse my self by Mr. Dryden's—

The Taste and Appetite of these straw Criticks, may justly be compar'd to Ravens and Crows, who neglecting clean Food, are always searching after Carrion.

[Pg 5]Horace's Rule is very well worth observing, when we are about to give Judgement on a Poem or History, where the Will is not concern'd:

As it is much easier to discern Blemishes than Beauties, so is it to censure than to commend, as the Duke of Buckingham tells us:

Such Criticks need not be in Pain, if a Poem or History makes its Way in the World a little; if it is not good, it will lose Ground of it self faster than it got it. If imperfect Pieces have gain'd Credit, and kept it for some Time, it was not for what was bad in them, but what, if not really good, was at least agreeable. Dryden's Translation of Virgil was generally liked for the Diction and Versification, though it was dislik'd on Account of Equality and Truth; and to have made a Critick upon it, as Milbourn did, without doing justice to his Numbers and Language, shew'd the Spirit of the Man was more engaged in it than his Judgement. All Criticisms on Dryden's Language and Numbers are in Defiance of Horace's Rule above-mention'd, because there is no Body but knows that it was impossible for Dryden to make an ill Verse, or to want an apt and musical Word, if he took the least Care about it. I could very easily mark out a thousand Slips and Negligences of that Kind in his Virgil; yet for all that, there are more good Verses in that Translation

than in any other, if Mr. Pope's Homer is not to be excepted.

It has been often said by very good Judges, that Cato was no proper Subject for a Dramatick Poem: That the[Pg 6] Character of a Cynick Philosopher, is very inconsistent with the Hurry and Tumult of Action and Passion, which are the Soul of Tragedy. That the ingenious Author miscarried in the Plan of his Work, but supported it by the Dignity, the Purity, the Beauty, and the Justness of the Sentiments and the Diction.

This was so much the Opinion of Mr. Maynwaring, who was generally allow'd to be the best Critick of our Time, that he was against bringing the Play upon the Stage, and it lay by unfinish'd many Years. Mr. Maynwaring highly approv'd of the Sentiments and the Diction, but did not fall in with the Design. That it was play'd at last was owing to Mr. Hughes, who wrote the Siege of Damascus, a Tragedy. He had read the Four Acts, which were finished, and rightly thought it would be of Service to the Publick, to have it represented at the latter End of Queen Ann's Reign, when the old English Spirit of Liberty was as likely to be lost as it had ever been since the Conquest. He endeavour'd to bring Mr. Addison into his Opinion, which he did so far as to procure his Consent, that it should be acted if Mr. Hughes would write the last Act, and he offer'd him the Scenary for his Assistance, excusing his not finishing it himself on Account of some other Avocations. He prest Mr. Hughes to do it so earnestly, that he was prevail'd upon and set about it.

But a Week after, seeing Mr. Addison again with an Intention to communicate to him what he had thought of it, he was agreeably surpris'd at his producing some Papers, where near half of the Act was written by the Author himself, who took Fire at the Hint that it would be serviceable, and upon a second Reflection went thorough with the Fifth Act: Not that he was diffident of Mr. Hughes's Ability, but knowing that no Man could have so perfect a Notion of his Design as himself, who had been so long and so carefully thinking of it. I was told this by Mr. Hughes, and I tell it to shew that it was not for the Love Scenes, that Mr. Addison consented to have his Tragedy acted, but to support the old Roman and English Publick Spirit, which was then so near being suppressed by Faction and Bigotry. The most cunning of their Leaders were sensible of it, and therefore very dexterously stole away the Merit of the Poem, by applauding the Poet, and patronizing the Action and Actors. It is there[Pg 7]fore obvious, that a severe Critick may find a Colour for

his Severity, with Respect to the Design of the Play, but that will not hinder its captivating every one that sees or reads it. The Graces and Excellencies, both of Thought and Expression, do much more deserve our Admiration and Applause, than the Deficiency in the Fable deserves Censure. However, as to Dryden's Virgil and Cato, ask those that admire the one or the other what it is that pleases them? And I doubt it will be found to be the very Places, which should have most displeased, where Dryden offended most against the Character of Epick Poetry by imitating Ovid's Softness, and an eternal Jeu des Mots, Playing upon Words, and where Cato suspends the Action and Passion of the Scene to teach the Audience, Philosophy and Morality.