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“AN AUTHOR’S EVENINGS. FROM THE SHOP OF MESSRS. COLON AND SPONDEE,” The Port Folio, vol. 1 [series 1] (7 February 1801), pp. 44–5; selection p. 44.
[Royall Tyler]
In the early years of the nineteenth century, Hume was a frequent topic in the pages of The Port Folio magazine edited by Joseph Dennie (1768–1812). In this instance, in the series “An Author’s Evenings,” submitted by Dennie’s friend and sometimes-collaborator, the author and jurist Royall Tyler (1757–1826). As a playwright, Tyler is best remembered for The Contrast (first performed in New York in 1787 and published in 1790). The passage from the History referred to below is found in vol. iv, “Appendix III,” where Hume wrote in part: “The tediousness of continued allegory, and that too seldom striking or ingenious has also contributed to render the Fairy Queen peculiarly tiresome; not to mention the too great frequency of its descriptions, and the langour of its stanza. Upon the whole, Spencer maintains his place in the shelves among our English classics: But he is seldom seen on the table; and there is scarcely any one, if he dares to be ingenuous, but will confess, that, notwithstanding all the merit of the poet, he affords an entertainment with which the palate is soon satiated” (p. 386). On Tyler see Jason Shaffer’s entry on him in EAE, vol. 2, pp. 1056–7; and Thomas G. Tanselle, Royall Tyler (Cambridge, 1967).
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FOR THE PORT FOLIO.
AN AUTHOR’S EVENINGS.
FROM THE SHOP OF MESSRS. COLON AND SPONDEE.
——“For you
I tame my youth to philosophic cares,
And grow still paler by the midnight lamps.”
Dr. ARMSTRONG.
I AM sorry to remark among the majority of readers, an indifference to the Faery Queen of Spenser. Mr. HUME, I believe, is responsible for this neglect of the works of an old, but excellent poet. Men were told, in the most popular History of England, that Spenser’s stanza was tiresome, and his allegories task reading. But, we may question the authority of a metaphysician, dogmatizing in criticism, and that criticism too, affecting the works of a poet. The Faery Queen may be confidently recommended. It has a “mint of poetical phrases,” and the allegories, though sometimes tedious, are always vivid, and well supported. Above all, this poem may be highly praised for the excellency of tis sentiments. They are lofty, chivalric, and honourable. They eraze from the heart every thing that is mean and little. They excite the mind, as Sir Philip Sidney once said, like the sound of a trumpet. This poem was written, not in jacobinical times, nor addressed to levellers, nor to philosophers, nor to rebels, nor to farthing misers of the school of Franklin; but it was published in a HIGH TONED AGE, when honour, principle, loyalty, generosity and glory stood in the first rank; and the “rascal rabble” were coerced by the salutary restraints of potent authority. It was dedicated to “men of high erected thoughts, seated in a heart of courtesy.”