How far he succeeded in imposing upon himself is
indeed a very curious question which can never be fully answered. There
is the strangest mixture of honesty and hypocrisy. Let me, he says, live
my own and die so too--
(To live and die is all I have to do)
Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,
And see what friends and read what books I please!
Well, he was independent in his fashion, and we can at least believe
that he so far believed in himself. But when he goes on to say that he
"can sleep without a poem in his head,
Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead,"
we remember his calling up the maid four times a night in the dreadful
winter of 1740 to save a thought, and the features writhing in anguish
as he read a hostile pamphlet. Presently he informs us that "he thinks a
lie in prose or verse the same"--only too much the same! and that "if he
pleased, he pleased by manly ways." Alas! for the manliness. And yet
again when he speaks of his parents,
Unspotted names and venerable long
If there be force in virtue or in song,
can we doubt that he is speaking from the heart? We should perhaps like
to forget that the really exquisite and touching lines in which he
speaks of his mother had been so carefully elaborated.
Me let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of declining age,
With lenient acts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile and smooth the bed of death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky!
If there are more tender and exquisitely expressed lines in the
language, I know not where to find them; and yet again I should be glad
not to be reminded by a cruel commentator that poor Mrs.
Pages:
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224