Nahum Tate, joint author with Dryden of the Second Part of “Absalom and Achitophel,” was born in Dublin, in 1652, the son of Dr. Faithful Tate, and educated at Trinity College there. He came to London, published in 1677 a volume of “Poems,” and between that date and 1682 had produced the tragedies of “Brutus and Alba” and “The Loyal General; Richard II.; or, the Sicilian Usurper;” an altered version of Shakespeare’s “King Lear;” and an application of “Coriolanus” to court politics of the day, as “The Ingratitude of a Comomnwealth; or, The Fall of Coriolanus.” Tate wrote three other plays before the Revolution. It was not till 1696 that he produced, with Dr. Nicholas Brady (born 1659, died 1726), also an Irishman, and then chaplain to William III., a “New Version of the Psalms of David;” and in 1707 one more tragedy of his was acted, “Injured Love; or, The Cruel Husband.” In 1692, Tate became poet-laureate, and remained laureate during the rest of Dryden’s life, and throughout Queen Anne’s reign.

Personal

  These are to certify that I have sworn and admitted Nahum Tate into ye place and quality of Poet Laureate to Her Majesty in ordinary, to have, hold, and exercise and enjoy the said place, together with all rights, profits, privileges, and advantages thereunto belonging, in as full and ample manner as any Poet Laureate hath formerly held, and of right ought to have held and enjoyed the same. Given under my hand this 24th day of December, in the first year of her Majesty’s reign.

  Tate’s morality was so obtrusive that it gave rise to many bitter satires against him. From choice he mingled little with the wits and dramatists of the time, though with a few chosen companions he was free and jovial. In general society he was, however, taciturn and reserved, showing little trace of brilliancy of mind or ease of manner. His portrait is not extant. He is said to have had a somewhat refined face, with a downcast look, and that in many respects he realised in his personal appearance the drowsy characteristics of his muse.

King Lear

  Though Tate’s alterations are, in many places, mean and unworthy to be placed so near the composition of the best dramatic author, it must be confessed, that, in the conduct of some scenes, whether contrived by himself or hinted to him by his friend Dryden, he is not unhappy.

  Tate has put his hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his followers, the showmen of the scene, to draw the mighty beast about more easily. A happy ending!—as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone through,—the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world’s burden after, why all this pudder and preparation,—why torment us with all this unnecessary sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over again his misused station,—as if at his years, and with this experience, anything was left but to die.

  At the commencement of the eighteenth century the eclipse was total. In 1707, one called Nahum Tate published a “King Lear,” warning his readers “that he had borrowed the idea of it from a play which he had read by chance, the work of some nameless author.” This “nameless author” was Shakespeare.

General

  There is another, called Nahum Tate, who is ready to make oath, that he has caused many reams of verse to be published, whereof both himself and his bookseller (if lawfully required) can still produce authentic copies; and therefore wonders, why the world is pleased to make such a secret of it.

  In the year 1680, Mr. Dryden undertook the poem of “Absalom and Achitophel,” upon the desire of King Charles II. The performance was applauded by every one; and several persons pressing him to write a second part, he, upon declining it himself, spoke to Mr. Tate to write one, and gave him his advise in the direction of it; and that part beginning,

“Next these, a troop of busy spirits press,”

and ending

“To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee,”

containing near two hundred verses, were entirely Mr. Dryden’s composition, besides some touches in other places.

	The Bard whom pilfer’d Pastorals renown,
	Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,
	Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
	And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year;
	He who, still wanting, though he lives on theft,
	Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:
	And He who, now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
	Means not, but blunders round about a meaning;
	And He, whose fustian’s so sublimely bad,
	It is not Poetry, but prose run mad.
	All these, my modest satire, bade translate,
	And own’d that nine such Poets made a Tate.

  He was a man of learning, courteous, and candid, but was thought to possess no great genius, as being deficient in what is its first characteristic, namely, invention.

  One of those second-rate bards, who, by dint of pleonasm and expletive, can find smooth lines if any one will supply them with ideas.

  There is an English word-joiner—author we will not call him—who has had the temerity to accomplish two things, either of which would have been enough to have conferred upon him a bad immortality. Nahum Tate has succeeded, to an extent which defies all competition, in degrading the Psalms of David and the Lear of Shakspere to the condition of being tolerated, and perhaps even admired, by the most dull, gross, and anti-poetical capacity. These were not easy tasks; but Nahum Tate has enjoyed more than a century of honour for his labours; and his new versions of the Psalms are still sung on (like the shepherd in Arcadia piped) as if they would never be old, and his Lear was ever the Lear of the playhouse, until Mr. Macready ventured upon a modern heresy in favour of Shakspere.

  This poor grub of literature…. Mr. Nahum Tate is not of a class of whom it can be safe to say that they are “well known:” they and their desperate tricks are essentially obscure, and good reason he has to exult in the felicity of such obscurity; for else this same vilest of travesties, Mr. Nahum’s “Lear,” would consecrate his name to everlasting scorn. For himself, he belonged to the age of Dryden rather than of Pope: he “flourished,” if we can use such a phrase of one who was always withering, about the era of the Revolution; and his “Lear,” we believe, was arranged in the year 1682. But the family to which he belongs is abundantly recorded in the “Dunciad,” and his own name will be found amongst its catalogues of heroes.

  The greatest merit of Tate’s official odes is their brevity…. A Laureate inferior to many of the race, though very far from being the worst poet, and by no means a vicious one.

  A personal study of Tate’s work results in disappointment. It is wholly lacking in imagination, has no depth of insight or feeling, except as it shows depth in the borrowed thought with which it is pervaded; yet it contains often wit and fancy, and has much beauty of phrase and of versification. His translations from Juvenal and Ovid have many graces of style, and his own poem called “Panacea” has much artistic excellence. The subject is uninteresting to readers now, concerned as it is with the charms of tea, but in Tate’s time tea was a luxury which was very much prized. Tate’s great defect is that he had not only little originality of thought, but that his metaphors and turns of expression are borrowed right and left. As Pope said:

“He steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left.”

Tate’s merit is, that, in an age which enjoyed the coarseness of Dryden and Shadwell, he lived a moral and upright life, and reflected that morality in his later poetry. When first he began to write he catered to the taste of the age by the usual coarse allusions in his plays. But as the profligacy of the Restoration gradually grew less, and virtue and religion began once more to be considered of some importance, Tate of course had the good sense to forecast the future and change his methods. And therefore his later poems are not disfigured by the impurity unhappily so prevalent.

  Several hymns are attributed to him, and some of these are so good that they cover a multitude of shortcomings. For those well-known lines on the lips of almost every boy and girl at Christmastide, “While shepherds watched their flocks by night,” we thank him.