The Adventures of David Simple (1904)/Chapter 14
CHAPTER III
which proves memory to be the only qualification necessary to make a modern critick
The next night they went to a tavern, where there were three gentlemen whom Spatter had promised to meet; and as the ceremony is not so difficult to introduce men to each other as women, they soon fell into a freedom of conversation. David remembered his cue, and began to talk of authors; on which the gentleman, whom Spatter had mentioned, presently began as follows: "Homer had undoubtedly the greatest genius of any man who ever writ: there is such a luxuriancy of fancy, such a knowledge of nature, such a penetration into the inmost recesses of all the passions of human kind, displayed in his works as none can equal, and few dare imitate. Virgil certainly is the most correct writer that ever was; but then his invention is not so fruitful, his poem is more of the narrative kind, and his characters are not so much alive as those of his great master. Milton, who imitates the other two, I think, excels the latter, though he does not come up to the former: he certainly can never be enough admired; for nothing can at once be more the object of wonder and delight than his Paradise Lost. Shakespeare, whose name is immortal, had an imagination which had the power of creation, a genius which could form new beings, and make a language proper for them. Ben Johnson, who writ at the same time, had a vast deal of true humour in his comedies, and very fine writing in his tragedies; but then he is a laborious writer, a great many of those beautiful speeches in Sejanus and Catiline are translations from the classicks, and he can by no means be admitted into any competition with Shakespeare. But I think any comparison between them ridiculous; for what Mr. Addison says of Homer and Virgil, that reading the Iliad is like travelling through a country uninhabited, where the fancy is entertained with a thousand savage prospects of vast deserts, wide uncultivated marshes, huge forests, mis-shapen rocks and precipices; on the contrary, the Æneid is like a well-ordered garden, where it is impossible to find out any part unadorned, or to cast our eyes upon a single spot that does not produce some beautiful plant or flower; is equally applicable to Shakespeare and Ben Johnson, so that to say that one or the other writes best, is like saying of a wilderness, that it is not a regular garden; or, of a regular garden, that it does not run out into that wildness which raises the imagination, and is to be found in places where only the hand of nature is to be seen. In my opinion, the same thing will hold as to Corneille and Racine: Corneille is the French Shakepeare, and Racine their Ben Johnson. The genius of Corneille, like a fiery courser, is hard to be restrained; while Racine goes on in a majestick pace, and never turns out of the way, either to the right or the left. The smoothness of Waller's verse resembles a gentle cooling stream, which gives pleasure, and yet keeps the mind in calmness and serenity; while Dryden's genius is like a rapid river, ready to overleap its bounds; which we view with admiration, and find, while we are reading him, our fancy heightened to rove through all the various labyrinths of the human mind. It is a thousand pities he should ever have been forced to write for money; for who that has read his Guiscarda and Sigismunda, could ever have thought he could have penned some other things that go in his name? Prior's excellence lay in telling of stories: and Cowley had a great deal of wit; but his verse is something hobbling. His Pindarick odes have some very fine thoughts in them, although I think, in the main, not much to be admired; for it is my opinion, that manner of writing is peculiar to Pindar himself; and the pretence to imitate him is, as if a dwarf should undertake to step overwide rivers, and stride at once over mountains, because he has seen a giant do it."
Here our gentleman's breath began to fail him, for he had uttered all this as fast as he could speak, as if he was afraid he should lose his thread, and forget all that was to come. When he had ceased, his eyes rolled with more than usual quickness, to view the applause he expected, and thought he so well deserved, and he looked bewildered in his own eloquence.
The two gentlemen who were with him seemed struck with amazement; and yet there was a mixture of uneasiness in their countenances, which plainly proved they were sorry they had not spoke every word he had said. David stared to hear so much good sense thrown away, only by being conveyed through a channel not made by nature for that purpose; whilst his companion diverted himself with the thoughts how ridiculous a figure the man made, at the same time that he fancied he was the object of admiration. They staid at the tavern short time, and concluded the evening at home, as usual, with Spatter's animadversions on the company they had just left. David said, he thought there was no great harm in this sort of vanity; for if a man could make himself happy by imagining himself six foot tall, though he was but three, it certainly would be ill-natured in any one to take that happiness from him. Spatter smiled, and said, he believed he at present spoke without consideration; for nothing hurts a man or his acquaintance more than his possessing himself with the thoughts he is any thing he is not. If, indeed, a short man would think himself tall, without being actuated by that fancy, there would be no great matter in it; but if that whim carries him to be continually endeavouring at things out of his reach, it probably will make him pull them down on his own head, and those of all his companions; and if the looking as if you did not believe he is quite so tall, as he is resolved you shall think him, will turn him from being your friend into your most inveterate enemy, then it becomes hurtful: "And," continued he, "I never yet knew a man who did not hate the person who seemed not to have the same opinion of him as he had of himself; and, as that very seldom happens, I believe it is one of the chief causes of the malignity mankind have against one another. If a man who is mad, and has taken it into his head he is a king, will content himself with mock diadems, and the tawdry robes of honour he can come at, in some it will excite laughter and in others pity, according to the different sorts of men; but if he is afraid that others don't pay him the respect due to the station his own wild brain has placed him in, and for that reason carries daggers and poison under his fancied royal robes, to murder everybody he meets, he will become the pest of society; and, in their own defence, men are obliged to confine him. The three fellows we were with to-night, have an aversion to everybody who do not seem to think them as wise as they think themselves; and, as they have some reason to believe that does not often happen, there are but very few people to whom they would not willingly do any injury in their power: whereas, if they would be contented with being as nonsensical dull blockheads as nature made them, they might pass through the world without doing any mischief; and perhaps, as they have money, they might sometimes do a good action."
David said, he had convinced him he was mistaken, and he was always more ashamed to persist in the wrong, than to own his having been so. His companion asked him if he would spend the next day in relaxing his mind, by being continually in what is called company, and conversing with a set of nobodies. But I shall defer the adventures of the next day to another chapter.