Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/150

146 and the woman conduct an artificial debate after the mediaeval fashion; he dramatically invents every circumstance that may shake her attachment to him, and she accepts them all,—hunger, misery, and danger; when at last he avows that there waits for him in the greenwood one who is fairer than the Nut-brown Maid, and dearer to his heart, she replies that she will gladly wait on them both as their servant; and the cause is won. The occasion is imaginary, but the sincerity and passion of the pleading have made the poem a monument to the constancy of women. By changing all this into a love-story of real life, Prior destroys the character of the dialogue and of the persons; the man becomes merely brutal, and the woman shameless; so that the naked ugliness of the situation is very ill concealed under the garlands of decayed mythology which are hung about it. The two versions, set side by side in a very short example, will more than vindicate Johnson’s censure. Here is the Nut-brown Maid—

And here is Emma, or a piece of her, for she is terribly long-winded— What is our bliss, that changeth with the moon; And day of life, that darkens ere ’tis noon?