40 41 of mankind, and that, as to physick, I expressly affirmed that learning must be joined with native genius to make a physician of the first rank; but if those talents are separated I asserted, and do still insist, that a man of native sagacity and diligence will prove a more able and useful practiser than a heavy notional ' scholar, encumbered with a heap of confused ideas.' He was not only a poet and a physician, but produced likewise a work of a different kind, A true and impartial History of the Conspiracy against King William, of glorious Memory, in the Year 16952. This I have never seen, but suppose it at least compiled with integrity. He engaged likewise in theological controversy, and wrote two books against the Arians: Just Prejudices against the Arian Hypothesis, and Modern Arians unmasked3. Another of his works is Natural Theology, or Moral Duties considered apart from Positive; with some Observations on the Desirableness and Necessity of a supernatural Revelation. This was the last book that he published. He left behind him The accomplished Preacher, or an Essay upon Divine Eloquence, which was printed after his death by Mr. White of Nayland in Essex, the minister who attended his death-bed, and testified the fervent piety of his last hours. He died on the eighth of October, 17295. BLACKMORE by the unremitted enmity of the wits, whom he provoked more by his virtue than his dulness, has been exposed to worse treatment than he deserved; his name was so long used to point every epigram upon dull writers that it became at last a bye-word of contempt : but it deserves observation 'NOTIONAL. Dealing in ideas, not realities.' Johnson's Dict. 2 Published in 1723. 3 Both books in 1721. Neither this work nor Natural Theology is in the British Museum. 5 On Oct. 9 according to Cibber's Lives, v. 184-5, whence the account of Blackmore's death seems to be taken. The University of Oxford had a fortunate escape from a reversionary interest in 1,000 left by him to encourage a student every year to write a poem of 650 lines on a Divine Subject and 'prose pamphlets against the obscene plays and publications of the time. The poems were to be printed.' Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, ii. 265. • Pope attacked him in The Dunciad, i. 104, ii. 259, 302, 370. For other attacks by Pope see ante, BLACKMORE, 5, 11, 14, 31, 36. In The Art of Sinking he is called 'the father of the Bathos, and indeed the Homer of it.' It is 'from his treasury,' the authors of it say, 'that we have drawn all these instances.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), x. 360. Gay, in his Epistle ii, brings in a couplet, slightly altered, from Prince Arthur, Bk. v. l. 152:— 'Then Maurus in his proper sphere might shine, that malignity takes hold only of his writings, and that his life passed without reproach, even when his boldness of reprehension naturally turned upon him many eyes desirous to espy faults, which many tongues would have made haste to publish. But those who could not blame could at least forbear to praise, and therefore of his private life and domestick character there are no memorials. As an author he may justly claim the honours of magnanimity 1. 42 The incessant attacks of his enemies, whether serious or merry, are never discovered to have disturbed his quiet, or to have lessened his confidence in himself; they neither awed him to silence nor to caution; they neither provoked him to petulance nor depressed him to complaint. While the distributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate and degrade him he either despised or defied them, wrote on as he had written before, and never turned aside to quiet them by civility or repress them by confutation. He depended with great security on his own powers, and per- 43 haps was for that reason less diligent in perusing books. His literature was, I think, but small. What he knew of antiquity I suspect him to have gathered from modern compilers; but though he could not boast of much critical knowledge his mind was stored with general principles, and he left minute researches to those whom he considered as little minds. With this disposition he wrote most of his poems. Having 44 formed a magnificent design he was careless of particular and subordinate elegances; he studied no niceties of versification; he waited for no felicities of fancy; but caught his first thoughts in the first words in which they were presented: nor does it appear that he saw beyond his own performances, or had ever elevated his views to that ideal perfection which every genius born to excel is condemned always to pursue, and never overtake. In the first suggestions of his imagination he acquiesced; he thought them good, and did not seek for better. His works may be read 45 46 4.7 a long time without the occurrence of a single line that stands prominent from the rest'. The poem on Creation has, however, the appearance of more circumspection; it wants neither harmony of numbers, accuracy of thought, nor elegance of diction: it has either been written with great care, or, what cannot be imagined of so long a work, with such felicity as made care less necessary. Its two constituent parts are ratiocination2 and description. To reason in verse is allowed to be difficult; but Blackmore not only reasons in verse, but very often reasons poetically; and finds the art of uniting ornament with strength, and ease with closeness. This is a skill which Pope might have condescended to learn from him, when he needed it so much in his Moral Essays3. In his descriptions both of life and nature the poet and the philosopher happily co-operate; truth is recommended by elegance, and elegance sustained by truth. 48 In the structure and order of the poem not only the greater parts are properly consecutive, but the didactick and illustrative paragraphs are so happily mingled that labour is relieved by pleasure, and the attention is led on through a long succession of This last sentence is not in the first edition. 2 The favourite exercise of Dryden's mind was ratiocination.' Ante, DRYDEN, 327. Post, POPE, 202-6. Johnson criticizes also the reasoning in the Essay on Man. Post, POPE, 190, 363-6. Dr. Warton says that 'Dr. Johnson strangely asserts that Pope might have learnt the art of reasoning in verse from Blackmore.' Pope's Works, 1822, vi. 202. 'Pope perhaps did not disdain to study and profit by The Creation.... If Pope condescended to learn anything from Blackmore, which I am inclined to think he did, he should in gratitude, as well as in justice, have bestowed on him a redeeming verse in The Dunciad! SOUTHEY, Cowper's Works, ii. 139. Had the following lines been written after the Essay on Man they would have been called an imitation of Epistle i. 43. 'See how the earth has gained that space, Which, of all others in the boundless You who the Mind and Cause Nor on his aid to form the world Must grant, had perfect wisdom To find through all th' interminable A seat most proper, and which best The earth and sea, it must have been the same.' The Creation, Bk.i.1.68. It may be the case that the similarity comes only from the 'Leibnitzian reasoning [post, POPE, 363] of both poets. Nevertheless other passages in The Creation lead me to agree with Johnson and Southey. See also post, Savage, 119 n. varied excellence to the original position, the fundamental principle of wisdom and of virtue. AS the heroick poems of Blackmore are now little read it is 49 thought proper to insert as a specimen from Prince Arthur the song of Mopas mentioned by Molineux'. 'But that which Arthur with most pleasure heard, And through the secret maze of Nature ran. In harmless fires by night, about the sky. I Ante, BLACKMORE, 9. The song is in Bk. iv. ed. 1695, p. 95. How some in winds blow with impetuous force, That cracks, as if the axis of the world Was broke, and heaven's bright towers were downwards hurl'd. Did in the midst on airy columns stand. |