University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

Various have been the attempts to copy the style and manner of several of our most celebrated Poets; some of them serious, and others avowedly burlesque. The imitations of Spenser, notwithstanding the objections that have been made to his language and stanza, are remarkably numerous (I have seen near thirty different ones, perhaps there are others I have not met with); and many of them very happily executed.

Shakspeare (unless we may except Kenrick's Falstaff's Wedding) has hitherto proved, and it is most likely will continue, inimitable.

The pomp of Milton has been as successfully as humourously assumed by Philips; and the Pipe of Tobacco, written in imitation of six several authors, has been universally applauded and admired.

But none of these, whether well or indifferently performed, either added to, or diminished, the beauty of their Prototype. The various cantos and small

poems written in imitation of Spenser, from Sir Richard Fanshawe, the translator of Il Pastor Fido, and the Lusiad; to Mr. Mickle, who has enriched our libraries with so truly poetical a version of the sublime Camoëns; were never I believe intended to supply the place of any part of the lost, or notwritten Books of the Faerie Queene; the tragedy of Jane Shore, and other professed imitations of our immortal dramatist, were never proposed to be incoporated in any collection or edition of Shakspeare's works: nor do I imagine, though money is so general a succedaneum for happiness, that the Splendid Shilling was ever considered as a supplement to Paradise Lost. The work now submitted to the public stands in a very different predicament from any I have mentioned, or alluded to; for though it can neither help us “to paint the lily,” or “throw a perfume on the violet;” it may, by an humble attendance on, give a consequence to, or by its meanness degrade, the company it has had the temerity to intrude into. Yet is not this arduous attempt to continue and complete the justly-admired Pastoral of the Sad Shepherd arrogantly, but “in trembling hope” annexed to the original Fragment by Jonson; to become, should it be found worthy, his by adoption; or, if “all too mean,” to be rejected, and consigned to its deserved oblivion.

The new part of the third act is written, it is presumed, agreeably to the plan laid down in Jonson's

argument; which, though he did not finish the dialogue for it, appears to contain all the intended business of that act; the remainder is intirely invented: at least there is no other clue transmitted to us, whereby to guess at the Author's ultimate design, than that Reuben, a devout hermit, in the list of persons, is called, The Reconciler; which I have accordingly made him. I am aware that many passages may be thought unnecessarily long and tedious; some even in the original, would, were it not for their great beauty, be deem'd so: but the piece was never intended by me, whatever it might have been by Jonson, for representation; and we often read with attention and delight a length of monologue or dialogue, that would be insufferable on the stage.

The dialect likewise of some of the characters is very uncouth; and not always in the original, as well as copy, correct: in the latter the old Scottish plural, Kie, is twice used in the singular; but it is by the Swine-herd, Lorel, whom we may suppose no very accurate speaker. It may be no improper question to ask, why the Witch, Maudlin, and her family, who are resident near Belvoir Castle, in Leicestershire, are made to speak a Scottish dialect? or, why some of the characters in Jonson's Tale of a Tub, the scene of which was so near London, that it is now almost absorb'd in it, should speak the Somersetshire dialect?

To the former I reply, that Scotland seems to have been more particularly the region of witchcraft; I mean the belief in, and imaginary practice of it; which I could cite many proofs of, were it necessary: and it is no unreasonable supposition that Maudlin (admitting the real existence of such a personage) was originally of that country; banished it for her misdeeds, like Shakspeare's Sycorax from Argier; and now settled in a more southern part of the island.

Scathlock has something of the same mode of speech; but I am apt to think, upon a revision, the dialect of the county where the scene lies would have been more properly appropriated to him; I have nevertheless continued it as I found it.

Jonson has been extremely irregular in his versification in this Pastoral; blank verse and rime being huddled together, with seldom any apparent reason for the mixture or transition. These blemishes, if such I may presume to call them, have been intentionally copied, in the no-doubt-vain endeavour that the whole might appear of a piece. Who cannot copy faults? Dr. Johnson, in his Life of John Philips, very truly says, “Deformity is easily copied.”

It is indeed the fate of most imitators to produce unintentionally, except when done in ridicule, a tolerable likeness of nothing else that can be found in, or is attributed to their chosen archetype. The continuator of The Sad Shepherd is sensible how necessary it is to the whole appearing of a piece, that the

graces of the parts supplied as well as the defects, should be similar to those of the fragment; but it would be a most egregious and unparalleled self-flattery, were he to hope that beauties, however thinly sown, could be found in the copy, comparable to those we are gratified with in almost every line of the admirable, the delightful original. As Jonson not only made no scruple of borrowing from whoever he thought worthy of that honour, but also recommends the practice, if not servilely done, in his Discoveries; and as his imitations of Theocritus, Spenser, Drayton, &c. are evident in what he has left us of his Pastoral; should similarities to these, or any other Poets be perceived in the continuation; not (to use Ben's words) taken in crude, raw, or indigested; but concocted; the sweets of various flowers worked into honey of one relish and savour; should such imitations appear, it is hoped they will meet the same allowance with those in the original fragment.

One passage I must beg particular indulgence for; Æglamour's speech in the third act, on hearing Earine's voice when she sings in the tree, being chiefly borrowed from Jonson himself. In act V. there is a remarkable similitude in the lines beginning with “My coronal composed of, &c.” to part of an Ode by the ingenious Miss Seward, which Ode I believe was not written till after this continuation was finished.

Some few liberties have been taken with Jonson's text of the Sad Shepherd, as exhibited in the folio, 1640, and in Mr. Whalley's excellent edition of The Works of Ben Jonson, 1756, but the notes are copied verbatim from Mr. Whalley; which liberty, as well as some others, it is requested of that gentleman to be so good to excuse: whenever therefore, as is sometimes the case, the text and notes disagree, the reason will be found in the supplemental notes, annexed to the continuation; in which the references are made to Mr. Whalley's edition of the Pastoral, and not to the present one.

The arguments, though in some places, I think inaccurately written, are given as in the former editions; except the substituting Goblin for Daughter in that of the third Act: which alteration is warranted by Jonson's Dialogue. To the two last acts there are no arguments prefixed; for what purpose could they answer, but the bad one of pre-informing the reader of what he should learn in the gradual progress of the poem? and I am of opinion that Jonson, had he lived to have compleated and published his Sylvan Tale, would have suppressed the three arguments handed down to us. As the matter now stands, it is a happy circumstance that, by the completion of the third argument, we are informed of the Poet's design throughout that act; and it were “a consummation devoutly to be wished,” though

the dialogue had been wanting, that we had arguments for the remainder of the Story, as intended by The Maker: the incidents he had, or would have, planned, must (past doubt must) have been productive of much more interesting situations than can be expected in this weak essay to supply his deficience.

Should the same observations undesignedly occur here, and in the supplemental notes; the candid reader I am persuaded will think, if they are in any degree worthy his attention, that they had better be mentioned twice than not at all.

Mr. Whalley, in his elegantly-pathetic lamentation for the loss of the remainder of Jonson's Pastoral, subjoined to his and the present edition, aptly compares what we have of it to the remains of an ancient piece of sculpture.

I will adopt the idea; and in extenuation of the boldness of my undertaking, observe that although part of the celebrated Venus de Medicis is said to be of (comparatively) modern workmanship, and very inferior to that of the antique Statue, to which it is adjoined; yet as, by means of such addition, it now appears without mutilation, and fills the eye and mind with a view and contemplation of a perfect whole; so Jonson's Sad Shepherd having come down to us in nearly the same predicament in which that precious relick of statuary stood, before some venturous hand attempted its completion; I presume to say that however inferiour the modern part now added may, and

inevitably must be, to the exquisite fragment we were before possessed of; yet, if executed at all in the manner and spirit of the original, it will give the work at least a seeming perfectness; though ever so short of that perfection, to which “Rare Ben” himself, had he finished it with an untired hand, would certainly have wrought it.