FullReads

All these complaints are not unfounded; yet, perhaps, it is unjust to expect from an excelling artist all the petty accomplishments of frivolous persons, who have studied no art but that of practising on the weaknesses of their friends. The enthusiastic votary, who devotes his days and nights to meditations on his favourite art, will rarely be found that despicable thing, a mere man of the world. Du Bos has justly observed, that men of genius, born for a particular profession, appear inferior to others when they apply themselves to other occupations. That absence of mind which arises from their continued attention to their ideas, renders them awkward in their manners. Such defects are even a proof of the activity of genius.

It is a common foible with poets to read their verses to friends. Segrais has ingeniously observed, to use his own words, “When young I used to please myself in reciting my verses indifferently to all persons; but I perceived when Scarron, who was my intimate friend, used to take his portfolio and read his verses to me, although they were good, I frequently became weary. I then reflected, that those to whom I read mine, and who, for the greater part, had no taste for poetry, must experience the same disagreeable sensation. I resolved for the future to read my verses only to those who entreated me, and to read but a few at a time. We flatter ourselves too much; we conclude that what please us must please others. We will have persons indulgent to us, and frequently we will have no indulgence for those who are in want of it.” An excellent hint for young poets, and for those old ones who carry odes and elegies in their pockets, to inflict the pains of the torture on their friends.

The affection which a poet feels for his verses has been frequently extravagant. Bayle, ridiculing that parental tenderness which writers evince for their poetical compositions, tells us, that many having written epitaphs on friends whom they believed on report to have died, could not determine to keep them in their closet, but suffered them to appear in the lifetime of those very friends whose death they celebrated. In another place he says, such is their infatuation for their productions, that they prefer giving to the public their panegyrics of persons whom afterwards they satirized, rather than suppress the verses which contain those panegyrics. We have many examples of this in the poems, and even in the epistolary correspondence of modern writers. It is customary with most authors, when they quarrel with a person after the first edition of their work, to cancel his eulogies in the next. But poets and letter-writers frequently do not do this; because they are so charmed with the happy turn of their expressions, and other elegancies of composition, that they perfer the praise which they may acquire for their style to the censure which may follow from their inconsistency.

After having given a hint to young poets, I shall offer one to veterans. It is a common defect with them that they do not know when to quit the muses in their advanced age. Bayle says, “Poets and orators should be mindful to retire from their occupations, which so peculiarly require the fire of imagination; yet it is but too common to see them in their career, even in the decline of life. It seems as if they would condemn the public to drink even the lees of their nectar.” Afer and Daurat were both poets who had acquired considerable reputation, but which they overturned when they persisted to write in their old age without vigour and without fancy.

What crowds of these impenitently bold,
In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,
They run on poets, in a raging rein,
E’en to the dregs and squeezings of the brain:
Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.