THIRTY LETTERS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.

CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

LETTER XIX.

THERE was never a poet more admired in his life or more despised after his death than Quarles. He was patronized by the best of his age while living, and when dead was first criticised, then contemned, and last of all totally forgotten, unless when some bard wanted a name of one syllable to fill up a list of miserable rhymers. Pope was the last who made this use of him,6 and at the same time, in a note, abused Benlowes for being his patron. I think it is Sir Philip Sidney who says that no piece was ever a favourite of the common people without merit. Now, though every thing I had heard of Quarles was much in his disfavour, I could not help thinking but that he had something good in him, from my never seeing one of his books of emblems that was not worn to rags; a sign of its being read a good deal, unless it may be imagined that it was so used by children in turning over the prints. Be that as it may, I have perused as much of him as a very dirty tattered book would give me leave, and will risque the declaring, that where he is good, I know but7

few poets better. He has a great deal of genuine fire, is frequently happy in similies, admirable in epithets and compound words, very smooth in his versification, so different from the poets of his own age; and possessed that great qualification of keeping you in perpetual alarm, so very different from the elegant writers of the present times.

I have run through his book of emblems to select some passages for your observation—they are buried, it must be confessed, in a heap of rubbish, but are of too much value not to be worth some pains in recovering.—Where Quarles is bad, “he sounds the very base-string of humility”—but this may be said8 of Shakspeare and Milton as well.—I mean not to put him in the same rank with these two poets; he has a much greater proportion of bad to good than is to be found in them, so much indeed as almost to prevent his good from appearing at all. My intention is to clear some of his shining passages of their incumbrances; which may occasion their being noticed, and preserved from oblivion.

What think you of the following similies?

Emb. 11. Book IV.

Emb. 12. Book IV.

Emb. 14. Book IV.

The first, will probably remind you of Shakspeare’s description of the wounded stag in As you like it; which it may do, and not suffer by the comparison. The second, is very original in the expression—the 10 circumstance of

is I believe new, and exquisitely tender. There are others not much inferior to these.

The following verses allude to the print prefixed, where a bubble is represented as heavier than the globe. It is necessary to observe, that the prints were designed first, and the poems are in a great measure explanatory of them.

Emb. 4. Book I.

Tho’ the considering mortality on the gloomy side, is not productive of much happiness, yet there are certain dispositions which feel some gratification in it—Quarles was one of these. He seizes all opportunities of abusing the world; and it must be confessed he has here done it in “choice and elegant terms.”

Sometimes he is more outrageous in his abuse.

Emb. 6. Book I.

Again—

Emb. 5. Book II.

The next quotation is an allusion to the print, where the world is made a mirror.

Emb. 6. Book II.

This is finely wrought up—Quarles perfectly comprehended the effect of the musical crescendo, which is instanced particularly in the last passage.

There is something very dreadful in the 4th line of this stanza.

Emb. 9. Book II.

Dr. Young has some lines on this subject which are by some much admired.—But tho’ the subject be the same, it is differently circumstanced.—Young’s is a general description of the last judgment, Quarles describes its effect on a single being who is supposed to have lived fearless of such an event.

Now to me, all this is a “pestilent congregation of vapour.”——The formidable sons of fire spewing out blazing magazines—and Ruin like a plough-man (or rather plough-woman) driving her plough-share—are mean, incoherent images. How much more sublimely Quarles expresses the same, and indeed some additional ones, in the last three lines?

In the print belonging to the emblem from which the following is taken, is a figure striking a globe with his knuckles.—The motto, Tinnit, inane est.

Emb. 10. Book II.

But that you may not think the good passages of this poet are only scattered unequally through his poems; take some entire ones—or nearly so.

Emb. 15. Book III.

At other times he complains of the shortness of life, and in strains equally pathetic.

Emb. 13. Book III.

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“Read on this dial”—“Behold these lilies”—does not this put you in mind of the same form of expression in Ossian? “His spear was like that blasted fir.”

Quarles was commenting on his print in which the dial and lilies were represented; Ossian saw his images “in his mind’s eye”——but both the poets considered them as really existing—at least, they make them exist to their readers.

“How the shades devour,” &c. Shakspeare has the same figure

it is wonderfully expressive!

In what he calls his hieroglyphics, Quarles compares man to a taper, which furnishes him with a number21 of very striking allusions. It is at first unlighted, then a hand from heaven touches it with fire—the motto, Nescius unde.

Hieroglyph. 2.

The closeness of the reasoning, and the freedom of the verses cannot be enough admired. I believe it would be difficult if not impossible to reason so shortly and yet so clearly in prose. Pope says the thoughts in his Essay on Man are in less compass for their being in verse. The poetical language admits of elisions and other varieties we cannot have in prose. This poem is followed by another, before which is a design of the winds blowing the flame of the taper, with this 24 motto, “The wind passeth over it, and it is gone!”

Hieroglyph. 3.

Tho’ I have purposely omitted pointing out many of the particular beauties of these poems, I would wish you to observe, in this last, the fine effect of compound words in which this author is so happy: also the noble swell in the third26 stanza—the application of his allegory to its meaning, in the fourth, where the expression so admirably suits with both “our peaceful flame, &c.”——if these are not genuine strokes of genius, I must, as a great critic says on a like occasion, acknowledge my ignorance of such subjects. I wish we had some word in our language to express the same idea in poetry as crescendo does in music; swell is applied to so many other purposes, that it has not the effect of an appropriated term.

But for the present I must quit the subject—in a little time expect the remainder of my observations on this poet.

LETTER XX.

EVERY one seems to be satisfied that warm colouring is essential to a good picture: but what is warm colouring is not determined. Some have joined the idea of warmth to yellow, others to red, others to the compound of both, the orange—they also differ in the degrees of each. A warm picture to some, is cold to others; and vice versa. Lambert’s idea of warmth, was to make his pictures appear as if they were behind a yellow glass. Vanbloom’s have a red glass before 28 them. Both’s an orange colour. Each has its admirers, who condemn the rest.

Nature. All these hues are right as particulars, but wrong as universals.

Let us examine the different appearances of light from the dawn to noon. The first break of day is a cold light in the East—this, by degrees, is tinged with purple, which grows redder and redder until the purple is lost in orange—the orange in yellow, and before the sun is two degrees high, the yellow is changed to white. Invert the order of these, and it is the coming on of the evening. All these hues 29 then exist in nature, and one is just as right as the other.

It is necessary to distinguish between the painter’s warmth, and the sensation. A picture, that has most warmth of colouring, represents that time of the day when we feel least. A true representation of noon must have no tinge of yellow or red in the sky; and yet from its being noon, one might be led to imagine it must be warm. It is the critic, and not the artist, which confounds the meaning of these terms. In like manner, summer and winter, in respect to light, are just the same: the sun rises and sets as gorgeously in December, if the weather be clear, as in June. I remember seeing two pictures of 30 Cuyp, companions—one, a cattle piece in summer; the other, winter with figures skaiting. The sky in both was equally warm, for which the painter was much censured by an auction-connoisseur, who declared that it was impossible the sky could be warm in winter.

I believe it is a common mistake to apply the red and purple tints to the morning, and the orange and yellow to the evening. We hear pictures of Claude called mornings and evenings, which may be either. It is really odd enough, that there should not be a single circumstance to distinguish the morning from the evening, unless it be in a view of a particular place—in this case, the reversing of the light shews the 31 difference. In a picture, there is no distinction between going to work, or milking, or returning from it—men ride, drive cattle, are fishing, &c. as well early as late.

These considerations should soften the peremptory style of some judges, and extend their taste, which at present seems much confined. We have seen that there are more natural hues than one or two. I will allow them to say, that a picture is too warm, too cold, too red, too yellow to please them, but let them not deny that these hues are all in nature, and that well-managed they are all pictoresque.

LETTER XXI.

AT the revival of the arts, some evil genius, who was determined to retard the progress of painting, dictated this rule. “A picture should always have its horizon the height of the eye that looks at it—in nature, the eye being always the height of the horizon; therefore a picture will be most like nature that has its horizon the height of the natural eye.” One of the falsest rules that ever was founded on a false principle! and this is the more lamentable, as it has spoiled, 33 in point of perspective, three parts of the historical pictures that have ever been painted.

As it is very difficult to destroy a rooted error, and as this is a most pernicious one, it is necessary to be full and particular.

When I say eye and horizon—the natural eye and horizon are meant. When the terms artificial eye and artificial horizon are used, the eye and the horizon represented in painting are to be understood. We must be clear in this distinction, for it is the confounding of the ideas expressed by these terms which has occasioned the mischief.

The eye, and the horizon, are always of the same height—therefore

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The artificial eye and the artificial horizon must always be so—but

There is no connection between the real eye, and the artificial horizon.

In every picture the artificial eye, or point of sight, is supposed to be at a certain height from the base-line; as high as a human figure would be, represented as standing there. To this point every thing in the picture tends, as every thing in a real view tends to the natural eye. The picture then, as far as this circumstance is concerned, is perfect, if the artificial eye and the artificial horizon go together; for these always bear the same relation to each other, let the picture be placed any where.

Let A be the eye, B the picture (in section) and c the horizon of the picture.—The eye is always the36 apex of the cone; there is constantly the same relation between the parts in every position. It must be observed that there is a defect in this illustration which it was impossible to avoid—for tho’ I have considered A as the eye, yet upon paper, it is artificial as well as the picture B. If you cannot make this distinction, I propose the following demonstration.——Take a landscape and stand it upon a table—hang it up the height of the eye—above the height—put it upon a chair—upon the floor—it still, perspectively considered, is seen equally well—for

The real eye is always the height of the artificial eye, whether the picture be fixed in the cieling or laid upon the floor.

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Indeed if this was not so, how would it be possible to hang one picture over another? and yet this is done, and with the greatest propriety.

I have often lamented the shifts to which painters are reduced, who have followed this rule in opposition to their senses. Laresse was so thoroughly possessed with it, that his idea of fitting up a room with pictures, was to have those which were below the eye to contain nothing but ground, and those which were above, the sky and clouds. But though he was convinced of the rectitude of his principle, he was struck with the oddity of the practice—he therefore recommended that there should be but one38 picture from the floor to the cieling, in which there might be a perfect coincidence of the natural and artificial horizon.

A portrait-painter sets the person he is to draw generally the height of his eye.——Suppose it to be a whole-length with a landscape in the back-ground: the artist considers his picture is to hang above the eye, and for that reason makes his horizon low, about the height of the knees. The consequence is, that there are two points of sight, which supposes an impossibility; for the eye cannot be in two places at the same time. If the eye be supposed on a level with the head of the figure, as it was on drawing the face, then the back-ground is 39 too low; if equal to the horizon of the back-ground, then the figure is too high, unless we suppose it on an eminence, or ourselves in a pit; in that case, instead of seeing the face in front, we must have looked under the chin—but as we do not, the figure always appears to be falling forward.

Raffaele’s horizon is most commonly the height of his figures, so that they stand properly, and seem to be, whether in a print or a picture, the size of human creatures;—on the contrary, when the horizon is low, the figures always appear gigantic. When I was a boy, I had formed so very exalted an idea of the size of running horses, from seeing them drawn with the40 distant hills appearing under their bodies, that the first time I was at a course, it appeared but as a rat-race.

Every whole length picture will furnish you with an instance of this false principle, which would appear more disagreeable, if custom had not in some measure reconciled us to it. I am aware that the practice of so many great men is a strong objection to my argument; but as I conceive, with due submission to such authority, that there is demonstration on my side, I cannot easily retract what I have advanced.

LETTER XXII.

THE commentators of Shakspeare think themselves obliged to find some meaning in his nonsense; and to come at it, twist and turn his words without mercy: never considering, that in his scenes, as in common life, some part must be necessarily unimportant.

Many a passage has been criticised into consequence. The meaning, to use Shakspeare’s words on a like occasion, “is like a grain of wheat hid in a bushel of chaff; you shall seek all day e’er you find it, and 42 when you have it, it is not worth the search.”

An expression of Shallow’s in the second part of Henry the fourth has been the subject of much criticism and hypercriticism. “We will eat a last year’s pippin with a dish of carraways;” and it is certain that there was such a dish, but if Shakspeare had meant it, he would have said, “A dish of last year’s pippins with carraways”—“with a dish, &c.” clearly means something distinct from the pippins. Roasted pippins stuck full of carraways, says one—carraway confect, or comfit well known to children, says another—as if every one did not know what carraway comfits were, says a third, laughing at the second. Dine with43 any of the natural inhabitants of Bath about Christmas, and they probably will give you after dinner a dish of pippins and carraways—which last is the name of an apple as well known in that country as nonpareil is in London, and as generally associated with golden pippins.

“Then am I a sous’d gurnet,” lays Falstaff. This fish has puzzled the commentators as much as the apple did before.—What can it be?—I never heard of such a fish.—There is no such fish. A magazine critic, assured of its non-existence, proposed reading grunt, gurnet, quasi grunet, quasi grunt——well, and what do we get by that? Why, because hogs grunt, and pork is44 the flesh of hogs, sous’d gurnet means pickled pork! Very lately a commentator, who once denied its existence, has discovered in consequence of his great learning, that there is really such a fish——he is really in the right—if he will go to the South coast of Devonshire, he may see plenty of them—but not sous’d.

And now I mention Falstaff, let me explain his copper ring. He complains of being robbed when he was asleep, and “losing a seal-ring of his grandfather’s worth forty marks.” “O Jesu,” says the hostess, “I have heard the prince tell him I know not how oft, that the ring was copper.” Is the appearance of copper so much like gold, that one 45 may be mistaken for the other? Formerly, (about the time of Falstaff’s grandfather) gold was a scarce commodity in England, so scarce that they frequently made rings of copper and plated them thinly with gold; I have seen two or three of them. As the look of both was alike, Falstaff might insist upon its being gold; on the contrary, the prince, from the quality of the wearer and lightness of the ring, might with equal fairness maintain that it was only plated.

Though it is not my intention to make one of the number of Shakspeare’s commentators, I will take this opportunity of restoring a passage in King Lear. In the46 agony of his passion with his daughter, he says (in the modern editions)

In the old editions it is printed exceeding plainly, “Th’ untender woundings, &c.” that is, not tender, or cruel. It would be waste of time to shew its propriety, and that there is no such word as untented. Who first threw out the true reading and substituted the false, I know not. Is it worth while to say, that the word is often used by Shakspeare, and once at least besides in the same play, “so young and so untender?”

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One more and I will release you.—Shylock says,

that is, because they are so affected. These poor lines have been new-worded, new stopped, and all to find the meaning of as plain a passage as can be written. “Some men cannot abide this thing, others have an aversion to another, which sometimes produces strange effects on their bodies, because their imagination is so strongly affected. Masterless passion, suffering, or feeling, compels them to follow the impulse.” The not understanding48 affection and passion in Shakspeare’s quaint sense has occasioned the difficulty.

There are many other corrupted and misunderstood passages that require as little attention, to set them right, as what has been exerted on this occasion, by

Yours sincerely, &c.

LETTER XXIII.

SCARCE a year passes but our language has some new trick played with it.—But let the sufferers speak for themselves.

To the People of Great-Britain.

The Petition of To and The,

Humbly sheweth,

That your Petitioners have, time out of mind, possessed certain places allowed to be their undoubted right, and that they lately have been, vi et armis, thrust from their 50 ancient possessions. Their misfortune being in common, they present their common petition; hoping that the laudable zeal for the reformation of abuses will extend even to them, and that they shall be restored to their pristine use and consequence.