Translated Verse,'" says Dryden," which made Having disentangled himself from the diffi me uneasy, till I tried whether or no I was ca-culties of rhyme, he may justly be expected to pable of following his rules, and of reducing the give the sense of Horace with great exactness, speculation into practice. For many a far pre- and to suppress no subtlety of sentiment for the cept in poetry is like a seeming demonstration difficulty of expressing it. This demand, how in mathematics, very specious in the diagram, ever, his translation will not satisfy; what he but failing in the mechanic operation. I think found obscure, I do not know that he has ever I have generally observed his instructions: I am cleared. sure my reason is sufficiently convinced, both of their truth and usefulness; which, in other words, is to confess no less a vanity than to pretend that I have, at least in some places, made examples to his rules." This declaration of Dryden will, I am afraid, be found little more than one of those cursory civilities which one author pays to another; for when the sum of Lord Roscommon's precepts is collected, it will not be easy to discover how they can qualify their reader for a better performance of translation than might have been attained by his own reflections. He that can abstract his mind from the elegance of the poetry, and confine it to the sense of the precepts, will find no other direction than that the author should be suitable to the translator's genius; that he should be such as may deserve a translation; that he who intends to translate him should endeavour to understand him; that perspicuity should be studied, and unusual and uncouth names sparingly inserted; and that the style of the original should be copied in its elevation and depression. These are the rules that are celebrated as so definite and important; and for the delivery of which to mankind so much honour has been paid. Roscommon has indeed deserved his praises, had they been given with discernment, and bestowed not on the rules themselves, but the art with which they are introduced, and the decorations with which they are adorned. The "Essay," though generally excellent, is not without its faults. The story of the Quack, borrowed from Boileau, was not worth the importation; he has confounded the British and Saxon mythology :: I grant that from some mossy idol oak, In double rhymes, our Thor and Woden spoke. The oak, as I think Gildon has observed, belonged to the British druids, and Thor and Woden were Saxon deities. Of the double rhymes, which he so liberally supposes, he certainly had no knowledge. His interposition of a long paragraph of blank verses is unwarrantably licentious. Latin poets might as well have introduced a series of iambics among their heroics. His next work is the translation of the "Art of Poetry;" which has received, in my opinion, not less praise than it deserves. Blank verse, left merely to its numbers, has little operation either on the ear or mind: it can hardly support itself without bold figures and striking images. A poem frigidly didactic, without rhyme, is so near to prose, that the reader only scorns it for pretending to be verse. Among his smaller works the "Eclogue of Virgil" and the "Dies Irae" are well translated; though the best line in the "Dies Ira" is borrowed from Dryden. In return, succeeding poets have borrowed from Roscommon. In the verses on the Lap-dog, the pronouna thou and you are offensively confounded; and the turn at the end is from Waller. His versions of the two odes of Horace are made with great liberty, which is not recompensed by much elegance or vigour. His political verses are sprightly, and when they were written must have been very popular. Of the scene of "Guarini" and the prologue of “Pompey,” Mrs. Philips, in her letters to Sir Charles Cotterel, has given the history. "Lord Roscommon," says she, "is certainly one of the most promising young noblemen in Ireland. He has paraphrased a psalm admirably; and a scene of "Pastor Fido" very finely, in some places much better than Sir Richard Fanshaw. This was undertaken merely in compliment to me, who happened to say that it was the best scene in Italian, and the worst in English. He was only two hours about it. It be gins thus: "Dear happy groves, and you the dark retreat From these lines, which are since somewhat mended, it appears that he did not think a work of two hours fit to endure the eye of criticism without revisal. When Mrs. Philips was in Ireland, some ladies that had seen her translation of "Pompey," resolved to bring it on the stage at Dublin; and, to promote their design, Lord Roscommon gave them a prologue, and Sir Edward Dering an epilogue; "which," says she, "are the best performances of those kinds I ever saw." If this thought of bringing Caesar and Pompey into is not criticism, it is at least gratitude. The Ireland, the only country over which Cæsar never had any power, is lucky. Of Roscommon's works the judgment of the public seems to be right. He is elegant, but not great; he never labours after exquisite beauties, and he seldom falls into gross faults. His versirhymes are remarkably exact. He improved fication is smooth, but rarely vigorous; and his taste, if he did not enlarge knowledge, and may be numbered among the benefactors to English literature.* This Life was originally written by Dr. Johnson in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for May, 1748. It then had notes, which are now incorporated with the text.-C OTWAY. Of THOMAS OTWAY, one of the first names in | in himself, those whom Otway frequented had the English drama, little is known; nor is there any part of that little which his biographer can take pleasure in relating. He was born at Trottin, in Sussex, March 3, 1651, the son of Mr. Humphry Otway, rector of Woolbeding. From Winchester-school, where he was educated, he was entered, in 1669, a commoner of Christ-church; but left the university without a degree, whether for want of money, or from impatience of academical restraint, or mere eagerness to mingle with the world, is not known. no purpose of doing more for him than to pay his reckoning. They desired only to drink and laugh: their fondness was without benevolence, and their familiarity without friendship. Men of wit, says one of Otway's biographers, received at that time no favour from the great, but to share their riots; "from which they were dismissed again to their own narrow circumstances. Thus they languished in poverty, with out the support of eminence." London in extreme indigence; which Rochester Tom Otway came next, Tom Shadwell's dear zany, Some exception, however, must be made. The Earl of Plymouth, one of King Charles' It seems likely that he was in hope of being natural sons, procured for him a cornet's combusy and conspicuous; for he went to London, mission in some troops then sent into Flanders. and commenced player; but found himself un- But Otway did not prosper in his military cha able to gain any reputation on the stage.* racter: for he soon left his commission behind This kind of inability he shared with Shak-him, whatever was the reason, and came back to speare and Jonson, as he shared likewise some of their excellencies. It seems reasonable to expect that a great dramatic poet should without difficulty become a great actor; that he who can feel, could express; that he who can excite passion, should exhibit with great readiness its external modes: but since experience has fully proved, that of these powers, whatever be their affinity, one may be possessed in a great degree by him who has very little of the other; it must be allowed that they depend upon different faculties, or on different use of the same faculty; that the actor must have a pliancy of mien, a flexibility of countenance, and a variety of tones, which the poet may be easily supposed to want; or that the attention of the poet and the player have been differently employed: the one has been considering thought, and the other action; one has watched the heart, and the other contemplated the face. Though he could not gain much notice as a player, he felt in himself such powers as might qualify for a dramatic author; and in 1675, his twenty-fifth year, produced "Alcibiades," a tragedy; whether from the Alcibiade of Palaprat, have not means to inquire. Langbaine, the great detector of plagiarism, is silent. kill'd. But Apollo had seen his face on the stage, "Don Carlos," from which he is represented in 1675. It appears, by the lampoon, to have as having received so much benefit, was played had great success, and is said to have been it is reasonable to doubt; as so long a continuplayed thirty nights together. This, however, ance of one play upon the stage is a very wide the ardour for theatrical entertainments was not deviation from the practice of that time; when yet diffused through the whole people, and the audience, consisting nearly of the same persons, could be drawn together only by variety. is one of the few plays that keep possession of The "Orphan" was exhibited in 1680. This the stage, and has pleased for almost a century, through all the vicissitudes of dramatic fashion. Of this play nothing new can easily be said. It In 1677, he published "Titus and Berenice," Its whole power is upon the affections; for it is is a domestic tragedy drawn from middle life. translated from Rapin, with the "Cheats of Scapin," from Moliere; and in 1678, "Friend- not written with much comprehension of thought, ship in Fashion," a comedy, which, whatever or elegance of expression. But if the heart is might be its first reception, was, upon its revi-interested, many other beauties may be wanting, val at Drury-lane, in 1749, hissed off the stage yet not be missed. for immorality and obscenity. Want of morals, or of decency, did not in those days exclude any man from the of the wealthy and the gay, if he brought with him any powers of entertainment; and Otway is company said to have been at this time a favourite com panion of the dissolute wits. But as he who desires no virtue in his companion has no virtue In "Roscius Anglicanus," by Downes the prompter. p. 34, we learn that it was the character of the King, in Mrs. Behn's Forced Marriage, or the Jealous Bridegroom," which Mr. Otway attempted to perform, and failed in. This event appears to have happened in the year 1672.-R. The same year produced "The History and Fall of Caius Marius ;" much of which is borrowed from the "Romeo and Juliet" of Shakspeare. In 1683 was published the first, and next year the second, parts of "The Soldier's For tune," two comedies now forgotten; and in 1685§ his last and greatest dramatic work, "Venice Preserved," a tragedy which still con-1 of bread which charity had supplied. He went tinues to be one of the favourites of the public, out, as is reported, almost naked, in the rage of notwithstanding the want of morality in the ori- hunger, and, finding a gentleman in a neighginal design, and the despicable scenes of vile bouring coffee-house, asked him for a shilling. Comedy with which he has diversified his tragic The gentleman gave him a guinea; and Otaction. By comparing this with his "Orphan," way going away bought a roll, and was choked it will appear that his images were by time be-with the first niouthful. All this, I hope, is not come stronger, and his language more energetic. true; and there is this ground of better hope, The striking passages are in every mouth; and that Pope, who lived near enough to be well inthe public seems to judge rightly of the faults formed, relates in Spence's "Memorials," that and excellencies of this play, that it is the work he died of a fever caught by violent pursuit of a of a man not attentive to decency, nor zealous thief that had robbed one of his friends. But for virtue; but of one who conceived forcibly, that indigence, and its concomitants, sorrow and drew originally, by consulting nature in his and despondency, pressed hard upon him, has never been denied, whatever immediate cause might bring him to the grave. own breast. Together with those plays he wrote the poems which are in the present collection, and translated from the French the "History of the Triumvirate." All this was performed before he was thirtyfour years old; for he died April 14, 1685, in a manner which I am unwilling to mention. Having been compelled by his necessities to contract debts, and hunted, as is supposed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a public-house on Tower-hill, where he is said to have died of want; or, as it is related by one of his biographers, by swallowing, after a long fast, a piece *The "despicable scenes of vile comedy" can be no bar to its being a favourite of the public, as they are always omitted in the representation.-J. B. Of the poems which the present collection ad mits, the longest is the "Poet's Complaint of his Muse," part of which I do not understand; and in that which is less obscure, I find little to commend. The language is often gross, and the numbers are harsh. Otway had not much cultivated versification, nor much replenished his mind with general knowledge. His principal power was in moving the passions, to which Drydent in his latter years left an illustrious testimony. He appears by some of his verses to have been a zealous loyalist, and had what was in those times the common reward of loyalty; he lived and died neglected. In his preface to Fresnoy's "Art of Painting.”—Dr. J WALLER. EDMUND WALLER was born on the third of March, 1605, at Colshill, in Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, Esq. of Agmondesham, in Buckinghamshire, whose family was originally a branch of the Kentish Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden in the same county, and sister to Hampden, the zealot of rebellion. His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him a yearly income of three thousand five hundred pounds; which, rating together the value of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than equivalent to ten thousand at the present time. He was educated by the care of his mother, at Eton; and removed afterwards to King's College, in Cambridge. He was sent to parliament in his eighteenth, if not in his sixteenth, year, and frequented the court of James the First, where he heard a very remarkable conversation, which the writer of the Life prefixed to his Works, who seems to have been well informed of facts, though he may sometimes err in chronology, has delivered as indubitably certain :"He found Dr. Andrews, bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neale, bishop of Durham, standing behind his majesty's chair; and there happened something extraordinary," continues this writer, "in the conversation those prelates had with the King, on which Mr. Waller did often reflect. His majcsty asked the bishops, 'My Lords, cannot I take my subjects' money when I want it, without all this formality of parliament " The Bishop of Durham readily answered, 'God forbid, Sir, but you should: you are the breath of our nostrils.' Whereupon the King turned and said to the Bishop of Winchester, Well, my Lord, what say you? Sir,' replied the Bishop, 'I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases.' The King answered, 'No put-offs, my Lord; answer me presently.' 'Then, Sir, said hc, 'I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neale's money; for he offers it.' Mr. Waller said, the company was pleased with this answer, and the wit of it seemed to affect the King, for, a certain lord coming in soon after, his Majesty cried out. 'Oh, my Lord, they say you lig with my lady.' 'No, Sir,' says his Lordship in confusion; but I like her company, because she has so much wit." "Why then,' says the King, 'do you not lig with my Lord of Winchester there?" Waller's political and poetical life began nearly together. In his eighteenth year he wrote the poem that appears first in his works, on the "Prince's Escape at St. Andero :" a piece which justifies the observation made by one of his editors, that he attained, by a felcity like in stinct, a style which, perhaps, will never be obsolete: and that, "were we to judge only by the wording, we could not know what was wrote at twenty, and what at four-score." His versification was, in his first essay, such as it appears in his last performance. By the perusal of Fairfax's translation of "Tasso," to which, as Dryden* relates, he confessed himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, and by his own nicety of observation, he had already formed such a system of metrical harmony as he never afterwards much needed, or much endeavoured to improve. Denham corrected his numbers by experience, and gained ground gradually upon the ruggedness of his age; but what was acquired by Denham was inherited by Waller. The next poem, of which the subject seems to fix the time, is supposed by Mr. Fenton to be the Address to the Queen, which he considers as congratulating her arrival, in Waller's twentieth year. He is apparently mistaken; for the mention of the nation's obligations to her frequent pregnancy, proves that it was written when she had brought many children. We have therefore no date of any other poetical production before that which the murder of the Duke of Buckingham occasioned: the steadiness with which the King received the news in the chapel deserved indeed to be rescued from oblivion. Neither of these pieces that seem to carry their own dates could have been the sudden effusion of fancy. In the verses on the Prince's escape, the prediction of his marriage with the Princess of France must have been written after the event; in the other, the promises of the King's kindness to the descendants of Buckingham, which could not be properly praised till it had appeared by its effects, show that time was taken for revision and improvement. It is not known that they were published till they appeared long afterwards with other poems. wishes, though in vain, to break, and whose presence is wine that inflames to madness. She His acquaintance with this high-born dame gave wit no opportunity of boasting its influ ence; she was not to be subdued by the powers of verse, but rejected his addresses, it is said, with disdain, and drove him away to solace his disappointment with Amoret or Phillis. married, in 1639, the Earl of Sunderland, who died at Newberry in the King's cause; and, in her old age, meeting somewhere with Waller, asked him when he would again write sucli verses upon her: "When you are as young, Madam," said he, "and as handsome as you were then." In this part of his life it was that he was known to Clarendon, among the rest of the men who were eminent in that age for genius and literature; but known so little to his advantage that they who read his character will not much condemin Sacharissa, that she did not descend from her rank to his embraces, nor think every excellence comprised in wit. The lady was, indeed, inexorable; but his uncommon qualifications, though they had no power upon her, recommended him to the scholars and statesmen; and undoubtedly many beauties of that time, however they might receive his love, were proud of his praises. Who they were whom he dignifies with poetical names, cannot now be known. Amoret, according to Mr. Fenton, was the Lady Sophia Murray. Perhaps by traditions preserved in families more may be discovered. From the verses written at Penshurst, it has been collected that he diverted his disappointment by a voyage; and his biographers, from his poem on the Whales, think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas; but it seems much more likely that he should amuse himself with forming an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident as a visit to America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability. From his twenty-eighth to his thirty-fifth year, he wrote his pieces on the reduction of Sallee; on the reparation of St. Paul's; to the King on his Navy; the panegyric on the Queen-mother; the two poems to the Earl of Northumberland; and perhaps others, of which the time cannot be Waller was not one of those idolaters of praise who cultivate their minds at the expense of their fortunes. Rich as he was by inheritance, he took care early to grow richer, by marrying Mrs. Banks, a great heiress in the city, whom the interest of the court was employed to obtain for Mr. Croft. Having brought him a son, who died young, and a daughter, who was afterwards married to Mr. Dormer, of Oxfordshire, she died in childbed, and left him a widower of about five-discovered. and-twenty, gay and wealthy, to please himself with another marriage. Being too young to resist beauty, and probably too vain to think himself resistible, he fixed his heart, perhaps half fondly and half ambitiously, upon the Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated; the name is derived from the Latin appellation of sugar, and implies, if it means any thing, a spiritless mildness, and dull good-nature, such as excites rather tenderness than esteem, and such as, though always treated with kindness, is never honoured or admired. Yet he describes Sacharissa as a sublime predominating beauty, of lofty charms, and imperious influence, on whom he looks with amazement rather than fondness, whose chains he • Preface to his "Fables."-Dr. J. When he had lost all hopes of Sacharissa, he looked round him for an easier conquest, and gained a lady of the family of Bresse, or Breaux. The time of his marriage is not exactly known. It has not been discovered that this wife was won by his poetry; nor is any thing told of her, but that she brought him many children. He doubtless praised some whom he would have been afraid to marry, and perhaps married one whom he would have been ashamed to praise. Many qualities contribute to domestic happiness, upon which poetry has no colours to bestow; and many airs and sallies may delight imagination, which he who flatters them never can approve. There are charms made only for distant admiration. No spectacle is nobler than a blaze. Of this wife, his biographers have recorded that she gave him five sons and eight daughters. During the long interval of parliament, he is represented as living among those with whom it was most honourable to converse, and enjoying an exuberant fortune with that independence | Agmondesham the third time; and was conand liberty of speech and conduct which wealth ought always to produce. He was, however, considered as the kinsman of Hampden, and was therefore supposed by the courtiers not to favour them. When the parliament was called in 1640, it appeared that Waller's political character had not been mistaken. The King's demand of a supply produced one of those noisy speeches which disaffection and discontent regularly dictate; a speech filled with hyperbolical complaints of imaginary grievances: “They," says he, "who think themselves already undone, can never apprehend themselves in danger; and they who have nothing left can never give freely." Political truth is equally in danger from the praises of courtiers, and the exclamation of patriots. He then proceeds to rail at the clergy, being sure at that time of a favourable audience. His topic is such as will always serve its purpose; an accusation of acting and preaching only for preferment: and he exhorts the commons carefully to provide for their protection against pulpit It always gratifies curiosity to trace a sentiment. Waller has in his speech quoted Hooker in one passage; and in another has copied him without quoting. "Religion," says Waller, "ought to be the first thing in our purpose and desires; but that which is first in dignity is not always to precede in order of time; for wellbeing supposes a being; and the first impediment which men naturally endeavour to remove, is the want of those things without which they cannot subsist. God first assigned unto Adam maintenance of life, and gave him a title to the rest of the creatures before he appointed a law to observe." "God first assigned Adam," says Hooker, "maintenance of life, and then appointed him a law to observe.-True it is that the kingdom of God must be the first thing in our purpose and desires; but inasmuch as a righteous life presupposeth life, inasmuch as to live virtuously it is unpossible, except we live; therefore the first impediment which naturally we endeavour to remove is penury, and want of things without which we cannot live."-Book i. Sect. 9. The speech is vehement; but the great position, that grievances ought to be redressed before supplies are granted, is agreeable enough to law and reason: nor was Waller, if his biographer may be credited, such an enemy to the King, as not to wish his distresses lightened; for he relates, "that the King sent particularly to Waller, to second his demand of some subsidies to pay off the army; and Sir Henry Vane objecting against first voting a supply, because the King would not accept unless it came up to his proportion, Mr. Waller spoke earnestly to Sir Thomas Jermyn, comptroller of the household, to save his master from the effects of so bold a falsity: 'for,' he said, 'I am but a country gentleman, and cannot pretend to know the King's mind:' but Sir Thomas durst not contradict the secretary; and his son, the Earl of St. Alban's, afterwards told Mr. Waller, that his father's cowardice ruined the King." In the Long Parliament, which, unhappily for the nation, met Nov. 3, 1640, Waller represented sidered by the discontented party as a man sufficiently trusty and acrimonious to be employed in managing the prosecution of Judge Crawley, for his opinion in favour of ship money; and his speech shows that he did not disappoint their expectations. He was probably the more ardent, as his uncle Hampden had been particularly engaged in the dispute, and, by a sentence which seems generally to be thought unconstitutional, particularly injured. He was not however a bigot to his party, nor adopted all their opinions. When the great question, whether Episcopacy ought to be abolished, was debated, he spoke against the inno vation so coolly, so reasonably, and so firmly, that it is not without great injury to his name that his speech, which was as follows, has been hitherto omitted in his works: "There is no doubt but the sense of what this nation hath suffered from the present bishops hath produced these complaints; and the apprehensions men have of suffering the like in time to come, make so many desire the taking away of Episcopacy: but I conceive it is possible that we may not now take a right measure of the minds of the people by their petitions; for, when they subscribed them, the bishops were armed with a dangerous commission of making new canons, imposing new oaths, and the like; but now we have disarmed them of that power. These petitioners lately did look upon Episcopacy as a beast armed with horns and claws; but now that we have cut and pared them, (and may, if we see cause, yet reduce it into narrower bounds,) it may, perhaps, be more agreeable. However, if they be still in passion. it becomes us soberly to consider the right use and antiquity thereof; and not to comply further with a general desire, than may stand with a general good. "We have already showed, that Episcopacy and the evils thereof are mingled like water and oil; we have also, in part, severed them; but I believe you will find, that our laws and the present government of the church are mingled like wine and water; so inseparable, that the abro gation of, at least, a hundred of our laws is desired in these petitions. I have often heard a noble answer of the Lords commended in this House, to a proposition of like nature, but of less consequence; they gave no other reason of their refusal but this, Nolumus mutare Leges Anglia: it was the bishops who so answered then; and it would become the dignity and wisdom of this House to answer the people now, with a Nolumus mutare. "I see some are moved with a number of hands against the bishops; which, I confess, rather inclines me to their defence; for I look upon Episcopacy as a counterscarp, or outwork: which, if it be taken by this assault of the people, and witha! this mystery once revealed, That we must deny them nothing when they ask it thus in troops,' we may, in the next place, have as hard a task to defend our property, as we have lately had to recover it from the prerogative. If, by multiplying hands and petitions, they prevail for an equality in things eccle *This speech has been retrieved, from a paper printed at that time, by the writers of the Parliamentary Histo ry.-Dr. J. |