36 dignified Alfred (1723) 3 with twelve books. But the opinion of the nation was now settled; a hero introduced by Blackmore was not likely to find either respect or kindness; Alfred " took his place by Eliza' in silence and darkness: benevolence was ashamed to favour, and malice was weary of insulting. Of his four epic poems, the first had such reputation and popularity as enraged the critics ; the second was at least known enough to be ridiculed; the two last had neither friends nor enemies. Contempt is a kind of gangrene, which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. Blackmore, being despised as a poet, was in time neglected as a physician; his practice, which was once invidiously great, forsook him in the latter part of his life; but being by nature, or by principle, averse from idleness, he employed his unwelcome leisure in writing books on physic, and teaching others to cure those whom he could himself cure no `longer. I know not whether I can enumerate all the treatises by which he has endeavoured to diffuse the art of healing; for there is scarcely any distemper, of dreadful name, which he has not taught the reader how to oppose. He has written on the smallpox, with vehement invective against inoculation; on consumptions, the spleen, the gout, the rheumatism, the king's evil, the dropsy, the jaundice, the stone, the diabetes, and the plague. Of those books, if I had read them, it could not be expected that I should be able to give a critical account. I have been told that there is something in them of vexation and discontent, discovered by a perpetual attempt to degrade physic from its sublimity, and to represent it as attainable without much previous or concomitant learning. By the transient glances which I have thrown upon them, I have observed an affected contempt of the ancients, and a supercilious derision of transmitted knowledge. Of this indecent arrogance the following quotation from his preface to the Treatise on the Smallpox' will afford a specimen ; in which, when the reader finds, what I fear is true, that when he was censuring Hippocrates - 36 Alfred, an Epic Poem in Twelve Books. Dedicated to the Illustrious Prince Frederick of Hanover. London, 1723,' 8vo. 37 The Preface to Alfred' is praised by Watts in the Preface to his 'Hora Lyricæ." "I am persuaded," he says, "that many persons who despise the poem would acknowledge the just sentiments of that preface." he did not know the difference between aphorism and apophthegm, he will not pay much regard to his determinations concerning ancient learning. "As for this book of aphorisms, it is like my Lord Bacon's of the same title, a book of jests, or a grave collection of trite and trifling observations; of which, though many are true and certain, yet they signify nothing, and may afford diversion, but no instruction, most of them being much inferior to the sayings of the wise men of Greece, which yet are so low and mean that we are entertained every day with more valuable sentiments at the table-conversation of ingenious and learned men." I am unwilling, however, to leave him in total disgrace, and will therefore quote from another preface a passage less reprehensible. "Some gentlemen have been disingenuous and unjust to me, by wresting and forcing my meaning in the preface to another book, as if I condemned and exposed all learning, though they knew I declared that I greatly honoured and esteemed all men of superior literature and erudition, and that I only undervalued false or superàficial learning, that signifies nothing for the service of mankind; and the that as to physic I expressly affirmed that learning must be joined the with native genius to make a physician of the first rank; but if those talents are separated, I asserted, and do still insist, that a man of native sagacity and diligence will prove a more able and useful practiser than a heavy notional scholar, encumbered with a heap biof confused ideas." He was not only a poet and a physician, but produced [1723] likewise a work of a different kind, 'A True and Impartial History of the Conspiracy against King William of Glorious Memory, in the year 1695.' This I have never seen, but suppose it at least compiled with integrity. He engaged likewise in theological controversy, and wrote two books against the Arians' Just Prejudices against the Arian Hypothesis,' and 'Modern Arians Unmasked.' Another e of his works is Natural Theology, or Moral Duties considered apart from Positive; with some Observations on the Desirableness and Necessity of a Supernatural Revelation.' This was the last book that he published. He left behind him 'The accomplished Preacher, or an Essay upon Divine Eloquence;' which was printed after his death by Mr. White of Nayland, in Essex, the minister who attended his death-bed, and testified the fervent piety of his last hours. He died on the 8th of October 1729.98 Blackmore, by the unremitted enmity of the wits," whom he provoked more by his virtue than his dulness, has been exposed to worse treatment than he deserved; his name was so long used to point every epigram upon dull writers, that it became at last a byword of contempt: but it deserves observation, that malignity takes hold only of his writings, and that his life passed without reproach, even when his boldness of reprehension naturally turned upon him many eyes desirous to espy faults, which many tongues would have made haste to publish. But those who could not blame could at least forbear to praise, and therefore of his private life and domestic character there are no memorials. As an author he may justly claim the honours of magnanimity. To 38 Sir Richard Blackmore, of Boxted, in Essex, made his will in May, 1729. He directs his body to be buried in Boxted Church, near his late wife. His coffin to be plain, covered with a funeral pall, but without pall-bearers. He also directs his burial to take place between eleven and twelve at night, and that no hatchment be put upon his house. His lands he directs to be sold, and the produce invested in Bank or South-Sea Stock. He died childless; and his heirs (then under age) were his nephew, Richard Blackmore Hurst, and a niece. his nephew Hurst he leaves the interest of 2000l., and the sum itself on his attaining the age of twenty-one. Should he die, however, before twenty-one, he then directs the payment of 1000l. to the University of Oxford, to be laid out by the University in land, the yearly produce of which is to be spent in encouraging a student of the University (giving the preference to students of his own College, St. Edmund Hall) to write poems on Divine Subjects; the student sending in 650 lines every half year, and employing part of the other half year in writing prose pamphlets against the obscene plays and publications of the time. The poems were to be printed. As the University never obtained the bequest, the nephew must have attained twenty-one, and thus succeeded in saving the public from many folio and quarto publications of bad verse. There is a fine old mezzotinto portrait of Blackmore by Williams, after Closterman. 39 Dryden attacked him twice in verse: in the Prologue to The Pilgrim,' and in his Epistle to his kinsman, John Dryden of Chesterton; and once in prose, in the Preface to the 'Fables.' Among Wycherley's Posthumous Works' (1728, p. 67) is a poem, 'To a Doctor of Physic on his writing a Satire against Wit. Sedley has a coarse but bitter epigram upon him. Garth introduced some of his rumbling verses into The Dispensary,' and treats them and their author with an air of contempt. Tom Brown has been frequently facetious and illnatured at his expense. Smith has a fling at him in his 'Poem on the Death of John Philips.' and Philips appears to have attacked him, though in what manner is, I believe, unknown. (Letter from Fenton to the father of the two Wartons, dated Jan. 24, 1707. See Wooll's 'Warton,' p 203; Warton's 'Essay on Pope,' ii. 278, ed. 1782.) Gay has a caustic copy of verses to be placed under his picture, "containing a complete catalogue of his works," with some expressions of contempt for each. Swift, in his Rhapsody on Poetry,' assigns to him the leaden crown of Flecknoe and Ned Howard. But his keenest satirist is Pope, in twenty different places. 6 The incessant attacks of his enemies, whether serious or merry, are never discovered to have disturbed his quiet, or to have lessened his confidence in himself; they neither awed him to silence nor to caution; they neither provoked him to petulance, nor depressed him to complaint. While the distributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate and degrade him, he either despised or defied them, wrote on as he had written before, and never turned aside to quiet them by civility, or repress them by confutation. He depended with great security on his own powers, and perhaps was for that reason less diligent in perusing books. His literature was, I think, but small. What he knew of antiquity, I suspect him to have gathered from modern compilers: but, though he could not boast of much critical knowledge, his mind was stored with general principles, and he left minute researches to those whom he considered as little minds. With this disposition he wrote most of his poems. Having formed a magnificent design, he was careless of particular and subordinate elegances; he studied no niceties of versification; he waited for no felicities of fancy; but caught his first thoughts in his first words in which they were presented : nor does it appear that he saw beyond =his own performances, or had ever elevated his ideas to that ideal perfection which every genius born to excel is condemned always to pursue, and never overtake. In the first suggestions of his imagination he acquiesced; he thought them good, and did not seek for betత ter. His works may be read a long time without the occurrence of a single line that stands prominent from the rest. ! 1 The poem on 'Creation' has, however, the appearance of more circumspection; it wants neither harmony of numbers, accuracy of thought, nor elegance of diction: it has either been written with great care, or, what cannot be imagined of so long a work, with such felicity as made care less necessary. Its two constituent parts are ratiocination and description. To reason in verse is allowed to be difficult; but Blackmore not only reasons in verse, but very often reasons poetically, and finds the art of uniting ornament with strength, and ease with closeness. This is a skill which Pope might have condescended to learn from him, when he needed it so much in his Moral Essays. In his descriptions both of life and nature, the poet and the philosopher happily co-operate; truth is recommended by elegance, and elegance sustained by truth. In the structure and order of the poem, not only the greater parts are properly consecutive, but the didactic and illustrative paragraphs are so happily mingled, that labour is relieved by pleasure, and the attention is led on through a long succession of varied excellence to the original position, the fundamental principle of wisdom and of virtue." As the heroic poems of Blackmore are now little read, it is thought proper to insert, as a specimen from 'Prince Arthur,' the song of Mopas, mentioned by Molyneux. "But that which Arthur with most pleasure heard He turn'd their orbs, and polish'd all the stars. 40 As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such scoundrels, that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourne are only distinguished from the crowd by being remembered to their infamy.-DRYDEN: Preface to Fables. Blackmore himself for any grand effort Would drink and dose at Tooting or Earl's Court. POPE: 2nd Ep. of 2nd book of Hor. Blackmore, in 1719, was living at Earl's Court. See Hughes's 'Letters,' i. 225. |