Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/188

Rh the unities, in the hope to gain a laurel by applying the French rules to a species of composition never before made amenable to them, and having compared this thought to the making tea or brewing small beer in chemical nomenclature, is thus rebuked for his doctrine in general and his illustration in particular:

"A most infelicitous illustration! And why might not a novel, and a very good one in its kind, be written on such a plan? I am sure that the ‘Pilgrim,' 'Beggar's Bush,' and several others of B. and F.'s dramas, might be turned into very interesting novels. Had Congreve said that a good novel must be so written, then, indeed, H. might have slapped him."

Our next extract is given mainly to introduce a specimen of the reverend editor's notes upon the notes of his revered sire. Hartley takes occasion to deprecate the once-honoured custom of prefacing plays, &c., with the commendatory verses of obliging friends—observing that "the pride or modesty of a modern writer would revolt" at the practice of printing these panegyrics in tho vestibule of his own book. To this his father thus demurs:

"But why—supposing the verses worth reading for themselves? Would not H. be sorry to miss Barrow's and Marvel's poetic prefaces to the 'Paradise Lost?' I fear that tho jealousy and, still more, the unbrotherhood of modern authors have more to do with it than either pride or modesty."

Mr. Derwent Coleridge, with excellent taste, annexes the following comment on this somewhat splenetic commentary:

"If there be any bitterness in this remark, it is that of a wounded spirit. Alas! there have been misadventures and misunderstandings enough among literary men in every age to make this too natural an expression of feeling on tho part of any one of the number in the decline of life. It is an old complaint—but surely it was not specially true, as applied to the contemporaries of S. T. Coleridge. Pace tanti viri dixerim. The fashion of commendatory verses had gone by, whether for the reason given in tho text, or because among a few good sets there have always been many bad ones, not worth reading, except, perhaps, in after times as literary memorials, or because such praise, like hospitality to a rich neighbour, had lost its value by seeming to invite a return in kind; but there was no want of brotherhood among the poets of that time. It was shown in other ways. Southey brought out his first pieces in conjunction with Lovell; Coleridge himself with Lloyd and Lamb, and afterwards with Wordsworth, whose 'Orphic Song' he heralded—though long before it appeared—by what we may, if we please, call a copy of commendatory verses—and what verses! His memory, however late, has received a full requital. What a monument of brotherhood is the 'Prelude!'

"Again, what Mason did for Gray, Moore has done for Byron, and Talfourd for Lamb, leaving in each case a record of the warmest friendship. He, too, who threw the 'Adonis' on the grave of Keats, would not have grudged to usher in the 'Hyperion' with a similar tribute; and much more might be said to the same effect both of the living and the dead."