conventions. He wrote words to Handel's airs in the Serenata of Acis and Galatea. Everybody is familiar with them, if not with the authorship. There is Acis's song: Love in her eyes sits playing, And sheds delicious death; And warbling in her breath; and it is well matched by Polypheme's: O ruddier than the cherry! No lily has such lustre ; Yet hard to tame As raging flame, And fierce as storms that bluster." What grace in each without the least attempt at sense! In the latter respect we might have found relief in emerging upon the ballad on Nelly : Oh! the turn'd neck, and smooth white skin, Of lovely dearest Nelly! For many a swain it well had been Had she ne'er been at Calai. For when as Nelly came to France- Invited by her cousins— Across the Tuilleries each glance Kill'd Frenchmen by whole dozens.10 But unfortunately, though Dr. Johnson assigns it to Gay, probably it is by Arbuthnot, on Miss Nelly Bennett. At all events, Gay touches his high-water mark, for sheer poetic power, inclusive of a sufficiency of coherence, in the ballad of Sweet William's Farewell to Black-eyed Susan, certainly his own : All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd, The streamers waving in the wind, Oh! where shall I my true love find? Rock'd with the billow to and fro, So the sweet lark, high pois'd in air, Shuts close his pinions to his breast- O Susan, Susan, lovely dear, My vows shall ever true remain ; We only part to meet again. Change, as ye list, ye winds; my heart shall be Believe not what the landmen say, Who tempt with doubts thy constant mind. In every port a mistress find: Yes, yes, believe them when they tell thee so, If to far India's coast we sail, Thy eyes are seen in di'monds bright, Thy skin is ivory so white. Thus ev'ry beauteous object that I view, Wakes in my soul some charm of lovely Suc. Though battle call me from thy arms, Love turns aside the balls that round me fly, The boatswain gave the dreadful word, No longer must she stay aboard: They kiss'd, she sigh'd, he hung his head. 11 Excellent! yet by the merit itself testifying how near Gay came to inspiration without being inspired. Songs like this, and the airs of the Opera, even Trivia and the rest of its kind, are so good as to be continually crying out upon him for the contrast between capability and performance. Delightful, intellectually indolent ‘lapdog', as he has been fondly called, he always shunned the particular species of exertion which might have turned the versifier into a poet. He was willing to do much of a high sort of what I must reluctantly call hack work-The Fan, Rural Sports, Fables, and the like. He would not, or he could not, set his fancy on fire. Nor was he, with his nature, likely to try, when without exposing his gifts to so crucial an ordeal, he was assured of admiration and affection. He was content, as was his own age also; and as it happens, posterity has been ready to continue something of the same kindness to his memory. A little less self-satisfaction, or a little more self-dissatisfaction; and literature might have boasted in John Gay a second Herrick. The Poems of Gay (Johnson's Poets, vols. xxxvi and xxxvii), 1790. 1 Rural Sports, Canto i, vv. 265–8. 2 The Fan, Book I, vv. 127–30 and 235-6. 3 Trivia, Book I, v. 62, and Book II, vv. 59–60. 4 The Beggar's Opera, Act i, Sc. 1, Mrs. Peachem. Ibid., Act ii, Sc. 2, Macheath. A Receipt for Stewing Veal. Molly Mog; or, The Fair Maid of the Inn. 8 Acis and Galatea. A Serenata. 9 Ibid., Air. 10 Ballad. Air. 11 Sweet William's Farewell to Black-eyed Susan. EDWARD YOUNG 1683-1765 NOBODY, I suppose, in these days would by choice read Young. His seven Satires have lost the attraction they once exercised through their transparent allusions. As poems they remind too much of Pope, their model, without, though very far from being good-humoured, the zest of the sharp snappings of his vengeful fancy. The Last Day is remarkable chiefly for noise, and the Force of Religion for tedious sentimentality. Of his other considerable productions, the Paraphrase of Part of the Book of Job might impress persons not conversant with the sublime prose of the Authorized Version. In Reflections on the Public Situation of the Kingdom there is as much of the poetical as the title indicates. The Ode on the Death of Queen Anne is as dead as she. As for the deplorable Ocean and Resignation, one in seventy stanzas, the other in four hundred and five, both testify only to the author's utter want of comprehension of the 'spirit' of their form, which he believes himself to have 'hit'. The work on which his reputation depends, Night Thoughts, remains. Several reasons are on the surface for the neglect which has overtaken that formerly illustrious publication. He himself speaks of his exhortations as Truths which at Church, you might have heard in prose.1 A natural comment is, why not then have been satisfied by preaching them there? The remonstrances with gay Lorenzo on undisclosed misdeeds of his pour down like |