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It is impossible not to come to the conclusion that we are listening in the one case to a genuine poet of no common order, in the other to a poetaster of considerable learning and great ingenuity, who elected to don the outward habit of a somewhat hypocritical morality.
'All's Well that Ends Well' contains a figure, Parolles, whose peculiarities are too closely akin to those of Ben Jonson to be regarded as a mere fortuitous accident; especially when we find that Jonson, in 'The Poetaster, again tries to ridicule this hit by a characteristic expression. Parolles is a follower of Count Rousillon.
So, read the love-scenes of any dramatist during Shakspeare's period or the heroic passages of any poetaster copying his manner; isn't that Bedlam, my dear Smith? isn't that Hanwell? What do you see in him more indicative of insanity than in any play of Shakspeare you like to name? Not, understand me, that Shakspeare was mad according to the standard of sanity in his own day.
In a man whose name, unfortunately for humanity, must always live in history, it is a childish and unpardonable weakness to pay so profusely for the short and uncertain immortality which some dull or obscure scribbler or poetaster confers on him. During the last Christmas holidays I dined at Madame Remisatu's, in company with Duroc.
Nor is the next author who presents himself any better in this respect, the voluptuary and poetaster C. SILIUS ITALICUS. This laborious compiler and tasteless versifier was born 25 A.D., or according to some 24 A.D., and died by his own act seventy-six years later.
Another poetaster, of the name of Brouet, in a long, dull, disgusting poem, after comparing Bonaparte with all great men of antiquity, and proving that he surpasses them all, tells his countrymen that their Emperor is the deputy Divinity upon earth the mirror of wisdom, a demi-god to whom future ages will erect statues, build temples, burn incense, fall down and adore.
Count Rosenberg took the abbe with him, because he was useful in the capacities of a fool and a pimp-occupations well suited to his morals, though by no means agreeable to his ecclesiastical status. In those days syphilis had not completely destroyed his uvula. I heard that this shameless profligate, this paltry poetaster, had been named poet to the emperor.
Never did the dull imagination of a third-rate scholar and classic poetaster, never did the grotesque solemnity of a pedant fond of his phrases, never did the irritating hardness of the narrow and stubborn devotee display with greater sentimental bombast and more administrative officiousness than in the decrees of the Legislative Corps, in the acts passed by the Directory and in the instructions issued by the ministers Sotin, Letourneur, Lambrechts, Duval and Francois de Neufchateau.
I also said, by way of perfecting the thing, that when in the capacity of foreign minister, I had agreed to correspond with the Courier and Enquirer, which, notwithstanding it was an almost pious newspaper, and edited by not less than two famous generals, and the grandson of a most worthy bishop, who was a poetaster, as well as a man of so much fashion that he had gained an enviable celerity for writing sonnets and eulogistic essays in admiration of fair but very faulty actresses; being the prospective correspondent of this almost pious newspaper, I consoled the landlord with a promise to write numerous puffs of his house.
He receives an evasive answer from the prisoner. In 'Volpone, as we shall see, Jonson answers it very fully. Altogether, there are allusions in 'The Poetaster, and in 'Volpone, to 'All's Well that Ends Well, and to 'What You Will, which we shall have to touch upon in speaking of those plays. The scene of 'The Poetaster' is laid at the court of Augustus Caesar.
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