Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 28, 2025
It is wonderful what a number and variety of writers, some of them even unknown to him, prevailed on his good-nature to look over their works, and suggest corrections and improvements . My arrival interrupted for a little while the important business of this true representative of Bayes ; upon its being resumed, I found that the subject under immediate consideration was a translation, yet in manuscript, of the Carmen Seculare of Horace, which had this year been set to musick, and performed as a publick entertainment in London, for the joint benefit of Monsieur Philidor and Signer Baretti . When Johnson had done reading, the authour asked him bluntly, 'If upon the whole it was a good translation? Johnson, whose regard for truth was uncommonly strict, seemed to be puzzled for a moment, what answer to make; as he certainly could not honestly commend the performance: with exquisite address he evaded the question thus, 'Sir, I do not say that it may not be made a very good translation . Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked.
I saw him in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of human weakness "a remnant most forlorn of what he was," yet even then his eye would light up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes "was upon the stage nearly throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a bee."
Bayes had of his play, that 'tis the touchstone of sense, and they are to frame their judgment of people's understanding according to what they think of them. "You may have wit, good humour, and good nature, and not like me. I allow a great deal for the inconstancy of mankind in general, and my own want of merit in particular. But 'tis a breach, at least, of the two last, to deceive me.
He was the creature of his age; and whenever he had lived he would have been the creature of his age. Under Charles the First Byron would have been more quaint than Donne. Under Charles the Second the rants of Byron's rhyming plays would have pitted it, boxed it, and galleried it, with those of any Bayes or Bilboa.
And by that I could gather by each mans seuerall relation, I haue drawen a briefe description of the Newfoundland, with the commodities by sea or lande alreadie made, and such also as are in possibilitie and great likelihood to be made: Neuerthelesse the Cardes and plats that were drawing, with the due gradation of the harbors, bayes, and capes, did perish with the Admirall: wherefore in the description following, I must omit the particulars of such things.
Flecknoe's at the players for refusing the piece, bears some resemblance to that of Bayes, when the players went to dinner without his leave. 'How! are the players gone to dinner?
And oh ye high flown quills that soar the Skies, And ever with your prey still catch your praise, If e're you daigne these lowly lines your eyes Give Thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no bayes, This mean and unrefined ure of mine Will make you glistening gold, but more to shine.
His wit is displayed in far-fetched sophistries; his imagination in long-spun similies, awkwardly introduced. All these faults have been ridiculed by the Duke of Buckingham in his comedy of The Rehearsal. Dryden was meant under the name of Bayes, though some features are taken from Davenant and other contemporary writers.
"The Rehearsal" was acted in 1671. The hero, Mr. Bayes, imitated all the personal peculiarities of Dryden, used his cant phrases, burlesqued his style, and exposed, while pretending to defend, his ridiculous points, until the laugh of the town was fairly turned upon the "premier-poet of the realm."
In spite of all the restraints under which the press lay, attacks on his life and writings appeared daily. Sometimes he was Bayes, sometimes Poet Squab. He was reminded that in his youth he had paid to the House of Cromwell the same servile court which he was now paying to the House of Stuart.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking