IT is so long since that I sent you the first part of my observations on Quarles that perhaps you have forgot my promise for the remainder.——I will now resume the subject.

Quarles sometimes introduces personages, and makes his poem of the dramatic cast. The sixth hieroglyphic is a dialogue between Time and Death; as usual, alluding to the print, where Death is going to extinguish the taper, but is prevented by Time. There are a few awkward expressions in this, which are easier to be overlooked than omitted.

There is nothing which destroys the reality in a dramatic dialogue more than when the speakers ask questions and reply in an equal quantity of lines. Perhaps the most disgusting instance of this is in Milton’s Mask, where Comus and the Lady have a verse each alternately, for fourteen lines together. We are more sensible of the sameness in quantity where it is so short, and so often repeated, than here in Quarles where it is extended to a stanza, and that repeated for each speaker but once—but even here you begin to feel its bad effect, when it is finely relieved towards the end by the characters growing warmer in their dispute, and, of course, making their speeches shorter. Yet what I here condemn, others admire.——You, who are so fond of the ancients, may easily defend this practice by their example, and if you want any assistance to demolish me, may call in Mr. West and the author of the Origin and Progress of Language.—This passage of the former from his translation of the Iphigenia of Euripedes is quoted by the latter with great commendations——not indeed because the dialogue is in alternate verse, but for its being a fine imitation of the ancient trochaic measure.

It is true that here the reply wants one of having the same number of syllables as the question—but still the constant return of the same quantity for each speaker is disgusting to all unprejudiced ears. You will tell me that it is in the high gusto of the antique, and that the feet are trochaics—I can only reply, that hard words cannot convince me contrary to reason, and if a proper effect is not produced, it is of very little consequence to me whether the authority is brought from Greece or Siberia. Horace’s often-quoted Pallida mors, &c. was perhaps never better translated than at the end of the fourth stanza.

The ninth hieroglyphic will put you in mind of the poems that are squeezed or stretched into the form of axes, altars, and wings——but if you will attend to the matter, and not the form, you will find it excellent——to write this properly requires some care.

Behold
How short a span
Was long enough of old
To measure out the life of man;
In those well-temper’d days, his time was then
Survey’d, cast up, and found but threescore years and ten!

Alas!
And what is that?
They come, and slide, and pass,
Before my pen can tell thee what.
The posts of Time are swift, which having run
Their sev’n short stages o’er, their short-liv’d task is done.

Our days
Begun, we lend
To sleep, to antick plays
And toys, until the first stage end:
12 waining moons, twice 5 times told, we give
To unrecover’d loss: we rather breathe than live.

We spend
A ten years breath
Before we apprehend
What ’tis to live, or fear a Death:
Our childish dreams are fill’d with painted joys
Which please our sense awhile, and waking prove but toys!

How vain
How wretched is
Poor man, that doth remain
A slave to such a state as this!
His days are short, at longest; few at most;
They are but bad at best; yet lavish’d out, or lost.

They be
The secret springs
That make our minutes flee
On wheels more swift than eagle’s wings!
Our Life’s a clock, and ev’ry gasp of breath
Breathes forth a warning grief, till Time shall strike a Death!

How soon
Our new-born light
Attains to full-ag’d noon!
And this, how soon to grey-hair’d night!
We spring, we bud, we blossom and we blast
E’er we can count our days, our days they flee so fast!

They end
When scarce begun;
And e’er we apprehend
That we begin to live, our life is done:
Man count thy days; and if they fly too fast
For thy dull thoughts to count, count ev’ry day the last.

Methinks Quarles’s ghost is at my elbow, which will not be appeased unless I remark that the first lines of each stanza make a verse, being the text on which the poem is a comment.

This is a kind of false wit once much in request. Jarvis, the translator of Don Quixote, calls it glossing—upon what authority I know not. In the first chapter of the second book of the second volume may be found a text and gloss—with this difference from Quarles’s, that the text is introduced at the end of the stanza and not at the beginning.

It is impossible to avoid smiling at the pains he must have taken to preserve the form of the stanza—in the third he is obliged to have the assistance of figures, or his line would have been too long; and after all his trouble there must be some for the reader before he has calculated how much “12 moons, twice 5 times told,” are——in the rest, to say the truth, it is not so apparent. If this pyramidical stanza prevents you from attending to the poetry, it is easily put in another—of the two first lines make one; and the false wit immediately vanishes.—I hope Quarles’s ghost vanished before I proposed the alteration.

I have, like a prudent caterer, reserved the best thing for the last. It is the twelfth emblem of the third book. The subject of the print is a figure trying to escape from the Divine vengeance which is pursuing in thunders: the motto——O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave, that thou wouldst keep me in secret until thy wrath be past! Upon this hint he has produced the following excellent poem.

Six stanzas, which though very good, yet being of less merit than the rest are omitted. It is obvious that he had the 139th psalm in his eye, of which he has made great use. The alarm at the beginning—the searching all nature for shelter—the impossibility of being hid from the author of nature—and the acquiescing at last in what was unavoidable, are grand and natural ideas. The motion of the wings of vengeance—and the recapitulation of the places where protection was fought in vain—are instances of expression rarely met with. But what praise is sufficient for the simile in the eighth stanza? To say only that it is apposite and beautiful, comes very short of my sensations when I read it. Let me confess honestly that I think it one of the noblest instances of the sublime pathetic! As a part of a religious poem it is proper, in a high degree; the scripture frequently considering our connection with the Almighty as that of children with a parent.—As a pictoresque image it is distinct, natural, and affecting.—But to remark all the beauties of this poem would be to comment on every stanza.——You will have more pleasure in finding them out yourself.

Now what think you, is not this rather too good to be lost? Was it from never reading Quarles, or taking his character from common report, that Pope considered his productions as the very bathos of poetry? Poor Quarles! thou hast had many enemies, and art now forgotten. But thou hast at last found a friend—not equal, indeed, to the task of turning a tide that has been flowing for a hundred years against thee—not equal to his wishes for giving thee and every neglected genius his due share of reputation—but barely capable of laying the first stone of thy temple of fame, which he leaves to be compleated by abler and by stronger hands!

Farewel.

P. S. I had forgot to inform you that these emblems were imitated in Latin by one Herman Hugo, a Jesuit. The first edition of them was in 1623, soon after the appearance of Quarles; and the book was reprinted for the ninth time in 1676, which last is the date of the copy in my possession. How many more editions there have been, I know not. He makes no acknowledgement to Quarles, and speaks of his own work as original. As a specimen of his manner, take the following, which is intended as an imitation of “Ah whither shall I fly?”

It reads but poorly after the other, though I have given you the best of it. He afterwards by degrees quits his subject, runs into stuff about Cain and Jonah, and has entirely omitted the simile.

You express an inclination to publish my letters. You should consider that the date of some of them is so far back, that many allusions to passing incidents which might engage attention at the time, now must fail of their effect.——People are spoken of as living, who are dead——and many other objections might be enumerated. However, you are at liberty to do what you please with them. Those which are of a private nature, your prudence will, of course, keep to yourself: and for the others, where some conjectures are hazarded which may be thought different from received opinions; the writer wishes them to be read with the same impartiality they were written——though he is well apprized of the difficulty of dispossessing old opinions.

FINIS.