FullReads

Here pause, reader, and look back upon the separate reticulations–so as, if possible, to connect them–in this network of hideous extravagance; where as elsewhere it happens, that one villany, hides another, and that the mere depth of the umbrage spread by fraudulent mystifications is the very cause which conceals the extent of those mystifications. Contemplated in a languid mood, or without original interest in the subject, that enormity of falsehood fails to strike, which, under circumstances personally interesting, would seem absolutely incredible. The outrage upon the intellect actually obscures and withdraws the outrage upon the facts. And, inversely, the affronts to historical accuracy obscure the affronts to good sense. Look steadily for a moment at the three points in the array of impeachments :–

I. In the Red-rose invasion of France, Pope assumes, as a matter of notoriety, that the English invading force went from a land of semi-barbarism to a land of literature and refinement: the simple fact being so conspicuously the other way, that, whilst France had no literature at all, consequently could have nothing to give (there being no book extensively diffused in the France of that period, except the ‘De Imitatione Christi,’) [Footnote 13] England, on the other hand, had so bright a jewel to offer, that to this hour the whole of Christendom has not matched it or approached it. Even at present, in the case so often supposed, that a man were marooned, that is, confined (as regarded his residence) to one desert island, and marooned also as to books, confined I mean (as regarded his reading) to one sole book, his choice (if he read English) would probably oscillate between Shakspeare and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Now, the Canterbury Tales had been finished about thirty-five years before Agincourt; so exquisitely false, even in this point, is Pope’s account. Against the nothing of beggarly France was even then to be set a work which has not been rivalled, and probably will not be rivalled, on our planet.

II. In this comparison of the France and England then existing, historically Pope betrays an ignorance which is humiliating. He speaks of France as if that name, of course, covered the same states and provinces that it now covers. But take away from the France of this day the parts then possessed by Burgundy–take away Alsace, and Lorraine, and Franche Compte–take away the alien territories adjacent to Spain and Navarre–take away Avignon, &c.–take; away the extensive duchy of Britanny, &c.–and; what remains of that which constituted the France of Pope’s day? But even that which did remain had no cohesion or unity as regarded any expanded sentiment of nationality, or the possibilities of a common literature. The moral anachronisms of Pope in this case are absolutely frightful–and the physical anachronisms of Pope also; for the simple want of roads, by intercepting all peaceful and pleasurable intercourse, must have intercepted all growth of nationality, unless when a rare community of selfish interest happened to arise, as when the whole was threatened with conquest or with famine through foreign aggression upon a part.

III. That particular section of the French literature through which, Pope pretends to think (for think he does not) that France absolutely created our own, was the drama. Eighteen-penny Pompey belongs to this section. Now, most unhappily, these two broad facts are emblazoned beyond all power of impudence to darken them. The first is, that our English drama was closing,’ or actually had closed, just about the time when the French was opening. Shakspeare notoriously died in 1616, when Corneille [Footnote 14] was yet a child of ten, and the last of Shakspeare’s great contemporary dramatists died, according to my remembrance, in 1636; and, in 1635, one year earlier, was first performed the first successful tragedy (the ‘Medea’) of Corneille. About seven or eight years after that, the Puritans officially suppressed the English drama by suppressing the theatres. At the opening of the Parliamentary war, the elder (that is, the immortal) English drama had finished its career. But Racine, the chief pillar of the French, did not begin until Cromwell was dead and gone, and Charles II. was restored. So, here we have the Asopian fable of the lamb troubling the waters for the wolf; or, in the Greek proverb, ano potamon. The other fact is, that, as no section whatever of the French literature has ever availed to influence, or in the slightest degree to modify, our own, it happens that the dramatic section in particular, which Pope insists on as the galvanizing force operating upon our seers, has been in the most signal repulsion to our own. All the other sections have been simply inert and neutral; but the drama has ever been in murderous antagonism to every principle and agency by which our own lives and moves. [Footnote 15] And to make this outrage upon truth and sense even more outrageous, Pope had not the excuse of those effeminate critics, sometimes found amongst ourselves, who recognise no special divinity in our own drama; that would have been one great crime the more, but it would have been one inconsistency the less. For Pope had been amongst the earliest editors of Shakspeare; he had written a memorable preface to this edition. The edition, it is true, was shocking; and if the preface even was disfigured by concessions to a feeble system of dramatic criticism, rhetorically it was brilliant with the expression of a genuine enthusiasm as to Shakspeare, and a true sympathy with his colossal power.