The curling vine her swelling clusters spread: "Yet this tall elm, but for his vine" (he said) бо 65 What nymph could e'er attract such crowds as you? 70 Not she whose beauty urg'd the Centaurs' arms, Ulysses' Queen, nor Helen's fatal charms. Ev'n now, when silent scorn is all they gain, A thousand court you, tho' they court in vain, A thousand sylvans, demigods, and gods, 75 That haunt our mountains and our Alban woods. But if you'll prosper, mark what I advise, Whom age, and long experience render wise, 85 (Far more than e'er can by yourself be guess'd) With youth immortal, and with beauty blest. Shake the light blossoms from their blasted boughs!" This when the various God had urg'd in vain, The Nymph surveys him, and beholds the grace 115 120 IMITATIONS OF ENGLISH POETS. Done by the Author in his Youth. [THESE Imitations, of which the precise date is unknown, besides proving the imitative powers of Pope as a boy show him to have been even at that period. of his life the most facile of versifiers. There is considerable humour, and unfortunately not a little pruriency, in some of these productions. The imitation of Spenser, while hitting a blot of which it would be difficult to deny the presence in some passages of the noblest of English poets, is in spirit unworthy of even the most juvenile parodist. Thomson who in his Castle of Indolence considered that 'the obsolete words, and a simplicity of diction in some of the lines, which borders on the ludicrous, were necessary to make the imitation more perfect,' can hardly be said either to have honoured Spenser's poetic name, or raised his own by that elaborate attempt at a reverential burlesque. Waller was one of the poets who exercised the greatest influence upon Pope's versification; yet the imitations are hardly successful, except as to the treatment of the subject in the lines on a Fan. The Garden (Cowley) is a feeble attempt to reproduce the play of fancy, admirable even in its extravagance, of the most magnificent among the poets of the English Fantastic School. Weeping is perhaps slightly more successful in this direction. In the remaining Imitations Pope found both fairer and easier game. Rochester's triplets on Nothing are happily parodied in those on Silence, so far as in the first part of the former they anticipated the meaningless sonorousness of reflexions equal in value to the famous 'Nought is everything, and everything is nought' but they miss the touch of genuine wit which redeems Rochester's lines towards the close. Dorset's queer mixture of French frivolity and Dutch coarseness is fairly reproduced in Artemisia and Phryne; though an imitation at least equally amusing exists from the hand of Fenton, who among the styles of other poets was so successful in appropriating that of Pope himself. The Happy Life of a Country Parson is in Swift's best vein, and might be easily mistaken for some of the Dean's own verse, differing from prose solely by the quality of being the best and easiest English verse ever written.] I. CHAUCER'. WOMEN ben full of Ragerie, WOM Yet swinken not sans secresie. From Schoole-boy's Tale of fayre Irelond: "Then trust on Mon, whose yerde can talke." And many a Boat soft sliding to and fro. There oft are heard the notes of Infant Woe, 5 The short thick Sob, loud Scream, and shriller Squall: 1[Geoffry Chaucer, born in 1328 died in 1400. The above imitates the style of some of the Canterbury Tales, of which however none is in the metre adopted by Pope, which is that of Chaucer's earlier poems, the Romaunt of the Rose and the House of Fame.] [Edmund Spenser, born in 1553, died in 1599. His Faerie Queene, of which Pope has ventured to parody some of the inferior passages, was published in instalments from the year 1590.] II. And on the broken pavement, here and there, And hens, and dogs, and hogs are feeding by; At ev'ry door are sun-burnt matrons seen, Scolds answer foul-mouth'd scolds; bad neighbourhood I ween. III. The snappish cur, (the passengers' annoy) The whimp'ring girl, and hoarser-screaming boy, Join to the yelping treble shrilling cries; The scolding Quean to louder notes doth rise, And her full pipes those shrilling cries confound; The grunting hogs alarm the neighbours round, And curs, girls, boys, and scolds, in the deep bass are drown'd. IV. Hard by a Sty, beneath a roof of thatch, 10 15 20 25 Dwelt Obloquy, who in her early days Baskets of fish at Billingsgate did watch, 30 Cod, whiting, oyster, mackrel, sprat, or plaice : There learn'd she speech from tongues that never cease. Slander beside her, like a Mag-pie, chatters, With Envy, (spitting Cat) dread foe to peace; 35 And vexing ev'ry wight, tears clothes and all to tatters. V. Her dugs were mark'd by ev'ry Collier's hand, VI. Such place hath Deptford, navy-building town, 40 45 50 Old Mr. Johnston, the retired Scotch Secretary of State, who lived at Twickenham. Carruthers. Ne village is without, on either side, All up the silver Thames, or all adown; Ne Richmond's self, from whose tall front are ey'd F III. OF A LADY SINGING TO HER LUTE. AIR Charmer, cease, nor make your voice's prize, This vocal wood had drawn the Poet too. ON A FAN OF THE AUTHOR'S DESIGN, IN WHICH WAS PAINTED THE STORY OF CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS, C WITH THE MOTTO, AURA VENI. OME gentle Air! th' Eolian shepherd said, At random wounds, nor knows the wound she gives: [Edmund Waller, born in 1605, died in 1687. He has written innumerable pieces, in which the complimentary element overpowers the erotic, and which may have suggested these imitative attempts.] 5 10 [I prefer placing the apostrophe as above, since Waller was in the habit of sounding thee in the pret. and part. ending.] |