SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES. TH HE following obfervations are by no means offered as coming from the pen of a critic, poffeffing genius, penetration, or erudition, fufficient to authorize him to enter the lifts of literature with Mr. Whalley; they are only the fimple fuggeftions of an admirer of Jonson, and his claffical commentator; who has been fo much delighted with that poet's unfinished Pastoral, as to attempt the foregoing completion of it; and to add some supplemental notes on the original fragment, as published by Mr. Whalley in his excellent edition of Ben Jonfon's works. Should they affift in the correction or elucidation of any erroneous or obfcure paffage; point out refemblances to other authors hitherto unobferved; or, by collecting the remarks of various writers, in the smallest degree tend to a more pleasurable reading of the Poem, the propofed end in their publication will be fully answered. PROLOGU E. Jonfon, fpeaking therein of his Paftoral, fays, it being a fleece, To match, or those of Sicily, or Greece." Mr. Horne, in a Letter to John Dunning, Esq. 8vo. 1778. p. 11. fays, I agree with its author. [The fad Shepherd paffeth filently over the ftage. original note. It may not be improper to obferve, that from fome paffages in the Paftoral it appears, that glamour wears a wreath of cypress, as mourning for his loft Earine. 'las! what knows the head Of a calm river, whom the feet have drown'd!" Imitated from Donne. See Dr. Hurd (the prefent Bishop of Worcefter) on the marks of imitation. 4th Ed. 1766. p. 191. This elegant writer has not only pointed out, but alfo very juftly criticised the imitation. But as (to fpeak in the phrafe of Antony in Shakspeare's Julius Cæfar) I come to praise Ben Jonfon not to cenfure him, I will only infert the original which Jonfon copied. "Greatest and fairest Empress, know you this? Alas! no more than Thames' calm head doth know, Whose meads his arms drown, or whofe corn o'erflow." "Wherein if we diftafte" Mr. Whalley corrects the 8vo edition, 1716, in which it is printed diflate. It is diftafte in folio, 1640. N. B. The folio which Mr.Whalley quotes in his edition is dated, in the general title-page to the whole volume, 1640, but the pieces contained therein are dated variously; fome fo early as 1631, and others 1640 and 1641, which laft date the Sad Shepherd bears. ‹‹ Whêr "Whêr every piece be perfect in the kind.". In the age of Shakspeare many contractions were used. Ben Jonfon has wher for whether in the prologue of his Sad Shepherd. Mr. Steevens's note in the laft edition of Shakspeare, 1778. Mid. Night's Dream, vol. III. p. 78. In folio 1640, the contraction is wrongly printed "Where every, &c." The critic already quoted, in his Difcourfe on Poetical Imitation, p. 81. fays, "The Paftoral poem may be confidered as a lower fpecies of the Drama. But its fubject being the humble concerns of Shepherds, there feems no room for a tragic Plot; and their characters are too fimple to afford materials for comic drawing." Jonfon was of a different opinion with respect to comic drawing, for he fays in this prologue no fcene more properly affumes The Sock. For whence can port in kind arife Safe on this ground then, we not fear to-day, Notwithstanding this, Mr. Whalley (which I confefs I wonder at) in his Life of Jonson, p. 52. calls the Sad Shepherd a Paftoral Tragedy. This I readily admit; however happily Jonfon might have wound up his Pastoral, it could not, to have been of a piece with what he has left us of it, have been over mirthful. In the Difcourfe on Poetical Imitation, the writer continues. "Their fcene is indeed inchanting to the imagination ;" and in his notes on the Art of Poetry, p. 209. he thus compliments Jonfon. "Ben, though he found no precedent for it among his antients, was caught with the beauty of this novel drama, (Paftoral) and it must be owned, has written above himfelt in the fragment of his Sad Shepherd.” |