And as they fell she wip'd from either eye 785 The drops (for women, when they list, can cry).. The Knight was touch'd; and in his looks appear'd Signs of remorse, while thus his spouse he cheer'd: Come down, and vex your tender heart no more; Then, Sir, be cautious, nor too rashly deem; 805 seem! Consult your reason, and you soon shall find He hugg'd her close, and kiss'd her o'er and o'er, Disturb'd with doubts and jealousies no more: Both, pleas'd and bless'd, renew'd their mutual Vows, A fruitful wife and a believing spouse. 815 Thus ends our tale, whose moral next to make, Let all wise husbands hence example take; And pray, to crown the pleasure of their lives, To be so well deluded by their wives. THE first dawnings of polite literature in Italy are found in talewriting and fables. To produce, and carry on with probability and decorum, a series of events, is the most difficult work of invention; and if we were minutely to examine the popular stories of every nation, we should be amazed to find how few circumstances have been ever invented. Facts and events have been indeed varied and modified; but totally new facts have not been created. The writers of the old romances, from whom Ariosto and Spenser have borrowed so largely, are supposed to have had copious imaginations; but may they not be indebted, for their invulnerable heroes, their monsters, their enchantments, their gardens of pleasure, their winged steeds, and the like, to the Echidna, to the Circe, to the Medea, to the Achilles, to the Syrens, to the Harpies, to the Phryxus, and the Bellerophon, of the ancients? The cave of Polypheme might furnish out the ideas of their giants, and Andromeda might give occasion for stories of distressed damsels on the point of being devoured by dragons, and delivered at such a critical season by their favourite Knights. Some faint traditions of the ancients might have been kept glimmering and alive during the whole barbarous ages, as they are called; and it is not impossible but these have been the parents of the Genii in the Eastern, and the Fairies in the Western world. To say that Amadis and Sir Tristan have a classical foundation, may, at first sight, appear paradoxical; but if the subject were examined to the bottom, I am inclined to think, that the wildest chimeras in those books of chivalry, with which Don Quixote's library was furnished, would be found to have a close connection with ancient mythology. We of this nation have been remarkably barren in our inventions of facts; we have been chiefly borrowers in this species of composition, as the plots of our most applauded tragedies and comedies may witness, which have generally been taken from the novels of the Italians and Spaniards. Warton. In the art of telling a story in verse, Pope is peculiarly happy; we almost forget the grossness of the subject of this tale, while we are struck by the uncommon ease and readiness of the verse, the suitableness of the expressions, and the spirit and happiness of the whole. I think Dr. Warton injudiciously censures the verse, which appears to me to be very suitably employed. Pope has introduced triplets in many places, no doubt for greater effect, which they certainly have. There is generally two together, ended with an Alexandrine; this is common in Dryden's fables, on which Pope evidently formed his style in these narrative pieces. The mixture of classical and gothic imagery, such as Chaucer uses, in making Pluto and Proserpine (instead of spirits, like Oberon and Titania) the king and queen of the "yellow-skirted Fays," is very common in our early Poets, who derived the combination from the old romances, and Ovid. Jason and Hercules, in Lydgate, are received with all the honours of the old Knights of Chivalry, at the Castle of the King of Colchis: "This mighty man Jason Assigned was by the King anon, For to settle at his own borde, And Hercules, that was so great a Lord, Was sette also by his side." But the most curious assemblage of dissimilar imagery is, where the fairies are introduced in Milton to attend the Personages of Aristotle's ten Categories: "Good luck befriend thee, Son, for at thy birth, The fairy ladies danc'd upon the hearth.” See Warton's Milton, p. 312. |