Gents Mag 1851 part 1 p.11
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Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 1 p.11
[Per]haps few readers of this poem are aware of a curious mistake on it in a German literary history, "Grosse Lehrbuch einer Algemeiner Litteratur-Gescichte." This poem of Mr. Frere's is inserted among the endeavours to clear up the mystery of the Grosse Artus sage!! Such are the mistakes, even in good books, when they treat on the subject of foreign literature. P.63. "Like Warton, I shall give the poem an historical character (alluding to the Birthday Ode), but shall not do this as well as Warton, who has done it very well. He was a happy, easy-minded, idle man, to whom literature in its turn was as much an amusement as rat-hunting, and who never aimed at anything above such odes."Can it be said with justice that the author of the laborious "History of English Poetry," the editor of "Theocritus," with all its Scholia, &c. in two volumes, 4to., of the "Anthologia," and of various other works, was an idle man? Or can it be properly observed the the author of "The Suicide" never aimed at anything higher than a Birthday Ode? And perhaps to him also the praise is due of having been the first of our poets who introduced into his scenery and descriptions the embellishment of Gothic architecture. In the attack which Mason, the Swan of Cambridge, most unmercifully made on him and his university, a great authority has pronounced the victory to be with the Oxford poet. "The general reader," says Mr. Hallam, "will remember 'The Isis' of Mason, and the 'Triumph of Isis,' by Warton; the one a severe invective, the other an indignant vindication; but, in this instance, notwithstanding the advantage which satire is supposed to have over panegyric, we must accord the laurel to the worst cause, and, what is more extraordinary, to the worst poet!" See Hallam's Constitutional History, iii. p.335. But surely this character of the respective poets is given with too strong an opposition. We doubt if Mason's fame would at the present day stand at all higher than Warton's, did we not recollect the "Heroic Epistle." In Warton's poem there is, at verses 109-128, an elegant character of Dr. King, the public orator of the university, whose Latin orations are well known to scholars:- Hark! he begins, with all a Tully's art, To pen the dictates of a Cato's heart, &c. In Dr. King's Apology for himself, subsequently published, p.14, he says, "I can now justly say that I have been libelled by the worst and celebrated by the best poet in England." Mr. Mant's edition of Warton is very elaborate, without being perfect. He ought to have given the various readings, alterations, and omissions in the impressions of this poem, many of which are interesting: we give two - See Chillingworth the depths of doubt explore, A Selden ope the roles of ancient lore. This couplet is wanting in the first edition. Again - Lo! these the leaders of thy patriot line, A Raleigh, Hampden, and a Sonners shine. In the first edition - Hamden and Hooker, Hyde and Sydney shine. Again - See sacred Hamond, as he treads the field, With godlike arm uprears his heavenly shield. In such an edition as Mr. Mant professed to give, almost cumbrous with illustrations of the text, these variations should not have been omitted; but, what is still more curious, he does not seem to be aware of, for he has never mentioned Tyrwhitt's "Epistle to Florio," printed the same year as Mason's "Lament," though Warton alludes to it in his "Triumph of Isis," and his character of Dr. King is directly opposed to that by Tyrwhitt, as the two lines we have quoted above from Warton seem formed from the couplet in this poem, - Or tyrants foiled by Tully's peaceful tongue, No more we glow with all the Cato thought. As this poem is rare and but little known, we shall extract the latter part fo the character of Dr. King, whom he calls Mezentius: - Go on, vain man, thy empty trophies raise, Still in a schoolboy's labours waste thine age, In fulsome flattery or in pointless rage. Still talk of Virtue which you never knew; Still slander all to her and Freedom true. Though crowded theatres with Ioss shook, And shouting faction hailed her hero's joke, Who but must scorn applause which King receives? Who but must laugh at praise which Oxford gives? |
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