appearance at the castle. But his Lordship on this occasion presenting him to the Duke of Ormond, with great importunity prevailed with his Grace that he might resign his post of captain of the guards to his friend; which for about three years the gentleman enjoyed, and upon his death the Duke returned the commission to his generous benefactor." When he had finished his business he returned to London; was made Master of the Horse to the Duchess of York; and married the Lady Frances, daughter of the Earl of Burlington, and widow of Colonel Courteney. He now busied his mind with literary projects, and formed the plan of a society for refining our language and fixing its standard; in imitation, says Fenton, of those learned and polite societies with which he had been acquainted abroad. In this design his friend Dryden is said to have assisted him. The same design, it is well known, was revived by Dr. Swift in the ministry of Oxford; but it has never since been publicly mentioned, though at that time great expectations were formed by some of its establishment and its effects. Such a society might, perhaps, without much difficulty be collected; but that it would produce what is expected from it may be doubted. The Italian Academy seems to have obtained its end. The language was refined, and so fixed that it has changed but little. The French Academy thought that they refined their language, and doubtless thought rightly; but the event has not shown that they fixed it, for the French of the present time is very different from that of the last century. In this country an academy could be expected to do but little. If an academician's place were profitable, it would be given by interest; if attendance were gratuitous, it would be rarely paid, and no man would endure the least disgust. Unanimity is impossible; and debate would separate the assembly. But suppose the philological decree made and promulgated, what would be its authority? In absolute governments there is sometimes a general reverence paid to all that has the sanction of power and the countenance of greatness. How little 1634 ?-1684. BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 203 this is the state of our country needs not to be told. We live in an age in which it is a kind of public sport to refuse all respect that cannot be enforced. The edicts of an English academy would probably be read by many, only that they might be sure to disobey them. That our language is in perpetual danger of corruption cannot be denied; but what prevention can be found? The present manners of the nation would deride authority, and therefore nothing is left but that every writer should criticise himself. All hopes of new literary institutions were quickly suppressed by the contentious turbulence of King James's reign;3 and Roscommon, foreseeing that some violent concussion of the State was at hand, purposed to retire to Rome, alleging that it was best to sit near the chimney when the chamber smoked; a sentence of which the application seems not very clear. His departure was delayed by the gout; and he was so impatient either of hindrance or of pain that he submitted himself to a French empiric, who is said to have repelled the disease into his bowels. At the moment in which he expired he uttered, with an energy of voice that expressed the most fervent devotion, two lines of his own version of Dies Ira: He died in 1684, and was buried [21st January, 1684-5] with great pomp in Westminster Abbey." His poetical character is given by Mr. Fenton : "In his writings," says Fenton, "we view the image of a 3 Into which Lord Roscommon did not live. Roscommon died before the 21st January, 1684-5, and Charles II. on the 6th Feb., 1684-5. 4 Copied from Crashaw, and weakened: My Hope, my Fear, my Judge, my Friend, Take charge of me and of my end. His grave is unmarked. In his will, dated 14th January, 1684-5 (only a few days before he died), he describes himself, "although sick of body, yet of sound and perfect mind." His wife was his sole executrix. mind which was naturally serious and solid-richly furnished and adorned with all the ornaments of learning, and those ornaments unaffectedly disposed in the most regular and elegant order. His imagination might have probably been more fruitful and sprightly if his judgment had been less severe. But that severity (delivered in a masculine, clear, succinct style) contributed to make him so eminent in the didactical manner, that no man, with justice, can affirm he was ever equalled by any of our nation, without confessing at the same time that he is inferior to none. In some other kinds of writing his genius seems to have wanted fire to attain the point of perfection; but who can attain it?" From this account of the riches of his mind, who would not imagine that they had been displayed in large volumes and numerous performances? Who would not, after the perusal of this character, be surprised to find that all the proofs of this genius, and knowledge, and judgment, are not sufficient to form a single book, or to appear otherwise than in conjunction with the works of some other writer of the same petty size? But thus it is that characters are written: we know somewhat, and we imagine the rest. The observation, that his imagination would probably have been more fruitful and sprightly if his judgment had been less severe, may be answered by a remarker somewhat inclined to cavil, by a contrary supposition, that his judgment 6 The best edition of Lord Roscommon's works is that published by Tonson in 8vo., 1717. In this collection of the Earl of Roscommon's Poems, says Tonson to the reader,' "care has been taken to insert all that I could possibly procure that are truly genuine; there have been several things published under his name which were written by others, the authors of which I could set down if it were material." The truth of this is denied by the author of an account of Pomfret, prefixed to his Remains, who asserts that A Prospect of Death' was written by Pomfret many years after Roscommon's decease, and that The Prayer of Jeremy' was by a gentleman of the name of Southcot, who first published it himself in 1717. "I was promised," Tonson continues, "some account of the life and writings of the Earl of Roscommon by a gentleman that was very intimately acquainted with his Lordship and his writings; and but for that expectation this collection had been published some time since." Tonson refers, I believe, to Dr. Knightly Chetwood, whose collections for Roscommon's life are preserved at Cambridge, in vol. 36 of Baker's MSS. 1634 ?-1684. HIS CHARACTER. 205 would probably have been less severe if his imagination had been more fruitful. It is ridiculous to oppose judgment to imagination; for it does not appear that men have necessarily less of one as they have more of the other. We must allow of Roscommon, what Fenton has not mentioned so distinctly as he ought, and what is yet very much to his honour, that he is perhaps the only correct writer in verse before Addison; and that, if there are not so many or so great beauties in his compositions as in those of some contemporaries, there are at least fewer faults. Nor is this his highest praise, for Mr. Pope has celebrated him as the only moral writer of King Charles's reign: "Unhappy Dryden! in all Charles's days 7 8 His great work is his Essay on Translated Verse,' of which Dryden writes thus in the preface to his Miscellanies : "It was my Lord Roscommon's 'Essay on Translated Verse," " says Dryden," which made me uneasy, till I tried whether or no I was capable of following his rules, and of reducing the speculation into practice. For many a fair precept in poetry is like a seeming demonstration in the mathematics, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanic operation. I think I have generally observed his instructions; I am 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 7 An Essay on Translated Verse. By the Earl of Roscommon. London: Tonson, 1684, 4to. 8 Sylvæ, or the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies, 1685, 8vo. Tonson. As the civility was not in print in Lord Roscommon's life-time, we should not take it for more than Johnson is willing to allow it to be worth. 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.10 10 The interposition is not in the first edition. Let me observe here that the alterations are numerous, and in all respects for the better. The famous couplet Immodest words admit of no defence, stands thus in the first edition Immodest words (whatever the pretence) |