Discourses on Satire Epic Poetry | Page 6

John Dryden
and offended
none. Donne alone, of all our countrymen, had your talent, but was not
happy enough to arrive at your versification; and were he translated
into numbers and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of
expression. That which is the prime virtue and chief ornament of Virgil,
which distinguishes him from the rest of writers, is so conspicuous in
your verses that it casts a shadow on all your contemporaries; we
cannot be seen, or but obscurely, while you are present. You equal
Donne in the variety, multiplicity, and choice of thoughts; you excel
him in the manner and the words. I read you both with the same
admiration, but not with the same delight. He affects the metaphysics,
not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where Nature only
should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice
speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts and
entertain them with the softnesses of love. In this (if I may be pardoned
for so bold a truth) Mr. Cowley has copied him to a fault: so great a one,
in my opinion, that it throws his "Mistress" infinitely below his
"Pindarics" and his later compositions, which are undoubtedly the best
of his poems and the most correct. For my own part I must avow it
freely to the world that I never attempted anything in satire wherein I
have not studied your writings as the most perfect model. I have
continually laid them before me; and the greatest commendation which
my own
partiality can give to my productions is that they are copies,
and no farther to be allowed than as they have something more or less
of the original. Some few touches of your lordship, some secret graces
which I have endeavoured to express after your manner, have made

whole poems of mine to pass with approbation: but take your verses all
together, and they are inimitable. If, therefore, I have not written better,
it is because you have not written more. You have not set me sufficient
copy to transcribe; and I cannot add one letter of my own invention of
which I have not the example there.
It is a general complaint against your lordship, and I must have leave to
upbraid you with it, that, because you need not write, you will not.
Mankind that wishes you so well in all things that relate to your
prosperity, have their intervals of wishing for themselves, and are
within a little of grudging you the fulness of your fortune: they would
be more malicious if you used it not so well and with so much
generosity.
Fame is in itself a real good, if we may believe Cicero, who was
perhaps too fond of it; but even fame, as Virgil tells us, acquires
strength by going forward. Let Epicurus give indolency as an attribute
to his gods, and place in it the happiness of the blest: the Divinity
which we worship has given us not only a precept against it, but His
own example to the contrary. The world, my lord, would be content to
allow you a seventh day for rest; or, if you thought that hard upon you,
we would not refuse you half your time: if you came out, like some
great monarch, to take a town but once a year, as it were for your
diversion, though you had no need to extend your territories. In short, if
you were a bad, or, which is worse, an indifferent poet, we would thank
you for our own quiet, and not expose you to the want of yours. But
when you are so great, and so successful, and when we have that
necessity of your writing that we cannot subsist entirely without it, any
more (I may almost say) than the world without the daily course of
ordinary Providence, methinks this argument might prevail with you,
my lord, to forego a little of your repose for the public benefit. It is not
that you are under any force of working daily miracles to prove your
being, but now and then somewhat of extraordinary--that is, anything
of your production--is requisite to refresh your character.
This, I think, my lord, is a sufficient reproach to you, and should I carry
it as far as mankind would authorise me, would be little less than satire.

And indeed a provocation is almost necessary, in behalf of the world,
that you might be induced sometimes to write; and in relation to a
multitude of scribblers, who daily pester the world with their
insufferable stuff, that they might be discouraged from writing any
more. I complain not of their lampoons and libels, though I have been
the public mark for many years. I am vindictive
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