Calamities and Quarrels of Authors
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Title: Calamities and Quarrels of Authors
Author: Isaac Disraeli
Editor: Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli
Release date: December 23, 2009 [eBook #30745]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALAMITIES AND QUARRELS OF AUTHORS ***
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Katherine Ward, and the Online
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CALAMITIES AND QUARRELS
OF
AUTHORS.
BY
ISAAC DISRAELI.
A NEW EDITION
EDITED BY HIS SON
THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.
LONDON:
FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
BEDFORD STREET, STRAND.
LONDON:
BRADBURY, AGNEW & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS.
PREFACE 3
AUTHORS BY PROFESSION:--GUTHRIE AND AMHURST--DRAKE--SMOLLETT 7
THE CASE OF AUTHORS STATED, INCLUDING THE HISTORY OF LITERARY
PROPERTY 15
THE SUFFERINGS OF AUTHORS 22
A MENDICANT AUTHOR, AND THE PATRONS OF FORMER TIMES 25
COWLEY--OF HIS MELANCHOLY 35
THE PAINS OF FASTIDIOUS EGOTISM 42
INFLUENCE OF A BAD TEMPER IN CRITICISM 51
DISAPPOINTED GENIUS TAKES A FATAL DIRECTION BY ITS ABUSE 59
THE MALADIES OF AUTHORS 70
LITERARY SCOTCHMEN 75
LABORIOUS AUTHORS 83
THE DESPAIR OF YOUNG POETS 98
THE MISERIES OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COMMENTATOR 104
THE LIFE OF AN AUTHORESS 106
THE INDISCRETION OF AN HISTORIAN--CARTE 110
LITERARY RIDICULE, ILLUSTRATED BY SOME ACCOUNT OF A LITERARY
SATIRE 114
LITERARY HATRED, EXHIBITING A CONSPIRACY AGAINST AN AUTHOR 130
UNDUE SEVERITY OF CRITICISM 139
A VOLUMINOUS AUTHOR WITHOUT JUDGMENT 146
GENIUS AND ERUDITION THE VICTIMS OF IMMODERATE VANITY 155
GENIUS, THE DUPE OF ITS PASSIONS 168
LITERARY DISAPPOINTMENTS DISORDERING THE INTELLECT 172
THE REWARDS OF ORIENTAL STUDENTS 186
DANGER INCURRED BY GIVING THE RESULT OF LITERARY INQUIRIES 193
A NATIONAL WORK WHICH COULD FIND NO PATRONAGE 200
THE MISERIES OF SUCCESSFUL AUTHORS 202
THE ILLUSIONS OF WRITERS IN VERSE 212
QUARRELS OF AUTHORS.
PREFACE 229
WARBURTON, AND HIS QUARRELS; INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS
LITERARY CHARACTER 233
POPE AND HIS MISCELLANEOUS QUARRELS 278
POPE AND CURLL; OR A NARRATIVE OF THE EXTRAORDINARY
TRANSACTIONS RESPECTING THE PUBLICATION OF POPE'S LETTERS 292
POPE AND CIBBER; CONTAINING A VINDICATION OF THE COMIC WRITER 301
POPE AND ADDISON 313
BOLINGBROKE AND MALLET'S POSTHUMOUS QUARREL WITH POPE 321
LINTOT'S ACCOUNT-BOOK 328
POPE'S EARLIEST SATIRE 333
THE ROYAL SOCIETY 336
SIR JOHN HILL, WITH THE ROYAL SOCIETY, FIELDING, SMART, ETC. 362
BOYLE AND BENTLEY 377
PARKER AND MARVELL 391
D'AVENANT AND A CLUB OF WITS 403
THE PAPER-WARS OF THE CIVIL WARS 415
POLITICAL CRITICISM ON LITERARY COMPOSITIONS 423
HOBBES, AND HIS QUARRELS; INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS
CHARACTER 436
HOBBES'S QUARRELS WITH DR. WALLIS, THE MATHEMATICIAN. 463
JONSON AND DECKER 474
CAMDEN AND BROOKE 490
MARTIN MAR-PRELATE 501
SUPPLEMENT TO MARTIN MAR-PRELATE 523
LITERARY QUARRELS FROM PERSONAL MOTIVES 529
INDEX 541
CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS:
INCLUDING
SOME INQUIRIES RESPECTING THEIR MORAL AND LITERARY CHARACTERS.
"Such a superiority do the pursuits of Literature possess above
every other occupation, that even he who attains but a mediocrity
in them, merits the pre-eminence above those that excel the most
in the common and vulgar professions."--HUME.
PREFACE.
The Calamities of Authors have often excited the attention of the
lovers of literature; and, from the revival of letters to this day,
this class of the community, the most ingenious and the most
enlightened, have, in all the nations of Europe, been the most
honoured, and the least remunerated. Pierius Valerianus, an attendant
in the literary court of Leo X., who twice refused a bishopric that he
might pursue his studies uninterrupted, was a friend of Authors, and
composed a small work, "De Infelicitate Literatorum," which has been
frequently reprinted.[1] It forms a catalogue of several Italian
literati, his contemporaries; a meagre performance, in which the
author shows sometimes a predilection for the marvellous, which
happens so rarely in human affairs; and he is so unphilosophical, that
he places among the misfortunes of literary men those fatal casualties
to which all men are alike liable. Yet even this small volume has its
value: for although the historian confines his narrative to his own
times, he includes a sufficient number of names to convince us that to
devote our life to authorship is not the true means of improving our
happiness or our fortune.
At a later period, a congenial work was composed by Theophilus
Spizelius, a German divine; his four volumes are after the fashion of
his country and his times, which could make even small things
ponderous. In 1680 he first published two volumes, entitled "Infelix
Literatus," and five years afterwards his "Felicissimus Literatus;" he
writes without size, and sermonises without end, and seems to have
been so grave a lover of symmetry, that he shapes his _Felicities_
just with the same measure as his _Infelicities_. These two equalised
bundles of hay might have held in suspense the casuistical ass of
Sterne, till he had died from want of a motive to choose either. Yet
Spizelius is not to be contemned because he is verbose and heavy; he
has reflected more deeply than Valerianus, by opening the moral causes
of those calamities which he describes.[2]
The chief object of the present work is to ascertain some doubtful yet
important points concerning Authors. The title of Author still retains
its seduction among our youth, and is consecrated by ages. Yet what
affectionate parent would consent to see his son devote himself to his
pen as a profession? The studies of a true Author insulate him in
society, exacting daily labours; yet he will receive but little
encouragement, and less remuneration. It will be found that the most
successful Author can obtain no equivalent for the labours of his
life. I have endeavoured to ascertain this fact, to develope the
causes and to paint the variety of evils that naturally result from
the disappointments of genius. Authors themselves never discover this
melancholy truth till they have yielded to an impulse, and adopted a
profession, too late in life to resist the one, or abandon the other.
Whoever labours without hope, a painful state to which Authors are at
length reduced, may surely be placed among the most injured class in
the community. Most Authors close their lives in apathy or despair,
and too many live by means which few of them would not blush to
describe.
Besides this perpetual struggle with penury, there are also moral
causes which influence the literary character. I have drawn the
individual characters and feelings of Authors from their own
confessions, or deduced them from the prevalent events of their lives;
and often discovered them in their secret history, as it floats on
tradition, or lies concealed in authentic and original documents. I
would paint what has not been unhappily called the _psychological_
character.[3]
I have limited my inquiries to our own country, and generally to
recent times; for researches more curious, and eras more distant,
would less forcibly act on our sympathy. If, in attempting to avoid
the naked brevity of Valerianus, I have taken a more comprehensive
view of several of our Authors, it has been with the hope that I was
throwing a new light on their characters, or contributing some fresh
materials to our literary history. I feel anxious for the fate of the
opinions and the feelings which have arisen in the progress and
diversity of this work; but whatever their errors may be, it is to
them that my readers at least owe the materials of which it is formed;
these materials will be received with consideration, as the
confessions and statements of genius itself. In mixing them with my
own feelings, let me apply a beautiful apologue of the Hebrews--"The
clusters of grapes sent out of Babylon implore favour for the
exuberant leaves of the vine; for had there been no leaves, you had
lost the grapes."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A modern writer observes, that "Valeriano is chiefly known to
the present times by his brief but curious and interesting
work, _De Literatorum Infelicitate_, which has preserved many
anecdotes of the principal scholars of the age, not elsewhere
to be found."--ROSCOE'S _Leo X._ vol. iv. p. 175.
[2] There is also a bulky collection of this kind, entitled,
_Analecta de Calamitate Literatorum_, edited by Mencken, the
author of _Charlataneria Eruditorum_.
[3] From the Grecian _Psyche_, or the soul, the Germans have
borrowed this expressive term. They have a _Psychological
Magazine_. Some of our own recent authors have adopted the
term peculiarly adapted to the historian of the human mind.
AUTHORS BY PROFESSION.
GUTHRIE AND AMHURST--DRAKE--SMOLLETT.
A great author once surprised me by inquiring what I meant by "an
Author by Profession." He seemed offended at the supposition that I
was creating an odious distinction between authors. I was only placing
it among their calamities.
The title of AUTHOR is venerable; and in the ranks of national glory,
authors mingle with its heroes and its patriots. It is indeed by our
authors that foreigners have been taught most to esteem us; and this
remarkably appears in the expression of Gemelli, the Italian traveller
round the world, who wrote about the year 1700; for he told all Europe
that "he could find nothing amongst us but our writings to distinguish
us from the worst of barbarians." But to become an "Author by
Profession," is to have no other means of subsistence than such as are
extracted from the quill; and no one believes these to be so
precarious as they really are, until disappointed, distressed, and
thrown out of every pursuit which can maintain independence, the
noblest mind is cast into the lot of a doomed labourer.
Literature abounds with instances of "Authors by Profession"
accommodating themselves to this condition. By vile artifices of
faction and popularity their moral sense is injured, and the literary
character sits in that study which he ought to dignify, merely, as one
of them sings,
To keep his mutton twirling at the fire.
Another has said, "He is a fool who is a grain honester than the times
he lives in."
Let it not, therefore, be conceived that I mean to degrade or vilify
the literary character, when I would only separate the Author from
those polluters of the press who have turned a vestal into a
prostitute; a grotesque race of famished buffoons or laughing
assassins; or that populace of unhappy beings, who are driven to
perish in their garrets, unknown and unregarded by all, for illusions
which even their calamities cannot disperse. Poverty, said an ancient,
is a sacred thing--it is, indeed, so sacred, that it creates a
sympathy even for those who have incurred it by their folly, or plead
by it for their crimes.
The history of our Literature is instructive--let us trace the origin
of characters of this sort among us: some of them have happily
disappeared, and, whenever great authors obtain their due rights, the
calamities of literature will be greatly diminished.
As for the phrase of "Authors by Profession," it is said to be of
modern origin; and GUTHRIE, a great dealer in literature, and a
political scribe, is thought to have introduced it, as descriptive of
a class of writers which he wished to distinguish from the general
term. I present the reader with an unpublished letter of Guthrie, in
which the phrase will not only be found, but, what is more important,
which exhibits the character in its degraded form. It was addressed to
a minister.
_June 3, 1762._
"My Lord,
"In the year 1745-6, Mr. Pelham, then First Lord of the Treasury,
acquainted me, that it was his Majesty's pleasure I should
receive, till better provided for, which never has happened,
200_l._ a-year, to be paid by him and his successors in the
Treasury. I was satisfied with the august name made use of, and
the appointment has been regularly and quarterly paid me ever
since. I have been equally punctual in doing the government all
the services that fell within my abilities or sphere of life,
especially in those critical situations that call for unanimity in
the service of the crown.
"Your Lordship may possibly now suspect that _I am an Author by
Profession_: you are not deceived; and will be less so, if you
believe that I am disposed to serve his Majesty under your
Lordship's _future patronage and protection, with greater zeal, if
possible, than ever_.
"I have the honour to be,
"My Lord, &c.,
"WILLIAM GUTHRIE."
Unblushing venality! In one part he shouts like a plundering
hussar who has carried off his prey; and in the other he bows with
the tame suppleness of the "quarterly" Swiss chaffering his halbert
for his price;--"to serve his Majesty" for--"his Lordship's future
patronage."
Guthrie's notion of "An Author by Profession," entirely derived from
his own character, was twofold; literary taskwork, and political
degradation. He was to be a gentleman convertible into an historian,
at ---- per sheet; and, when he had not time to write histories, he
chose to sell his name to those he never wrote. These are mysteries of
the craft of authorship; in this sense it is only a trade, and a very
bad one! But when in his other capacity, this gentleman comes to hire
himself to one lord as he had to another, no one can doubt that the
stipendiary would change his principles with his livery.[4]
Such have been some of the "Authors by Profession" who have worn the
literary mask; for literature was not the first object of their
designs. They form a race peculiar to our country. They opened their
career in our first great revolution, and flourished during the
eventful period of the civil wars. In the form of newspapers, their
"Mercuries" and "Diurnals" were political pamphlets.[5] Of these, the
Royalists, being the better educated, carried off to their side all
the spirit, and only left the foam and dregs for the Parliamentarians;
otherwise, in lying, they were just like one another; for "the father
of lies" seems to be of no party! Were it desirable to instruct men by
a system of political and moral calumny, the complete art might be
drawn from these archives of political lying, during their flourishing
era. We might discover principles among them which would have humbled
the genius of Machiavel himself, and even have taught Mr. Sheridan's
more popular scribe, Mr. Puff, a sense of his own inferiority.
It is known that, during the administration of Harley and Walpole,
this class of authors swarmed and started up like mustard-seed in a
hot-bed. More than fifty thousand pounds were expended among them!
Faction, with mad and blind passions, can affix a value on the basest
things that serve its purpose.[6] These "Authors by Profession" wrote
more assiduously the better they were paid; but as attacks only
produced replies and rejoinders, to remunerate them was heightening
the fever and feeding the disease. They were all fighting for present
pay, with a view of the promised land before them; but they at length
became so numerous, and so crowded on one another, that the minister
could neither satisfy promised claims nor actual dues. He had not at
last the humblest office to bestow, not a commissionership of wine
licences, as Tacitus Gordon had: not even a collectorship of the
customs in some obscure town, as was the wretched worn-out Oldmixon's
pittance;[7] not a crumb for a mouse!
The captain of this banditti in the administration of Walpole was
Arnall, a young attorney, whose mature genius for scurrilous
party-papers broke forth in his tender nonage. This hireling was "The
Free Briton," and in "The Gazetteer" _Francis Walsingham, Esq._,
abusing the name of a profound statesman. It is said that he received
above ten thousand pounds for his obscure labours; and this patriot
was suffered to retire with all the dignity which a pension could
confer. He not only wrote for hire, but valued himself on it; proud of
the pliancy of his pen and of his principles, he wrote without remorse
what his patron was forced to pay for, but to disavow. It was from a
knowledge of these "Authors by Profession," writers of a faction in
the name of the community, as they have been well described, that our
great statesman Pitt fell into an error which he lived to regret. He
did not distinguish between authors; he confounded the mercenary with
the men of talent and character; and with this contracted view of the
political influence of genius, he must have viewed with awe, perhaps
with surprise, its mighty labour in the volumes of Burke.
But these "Authors by Profession" sometimes found a retribution of
their crimes even from their masters. When the ardent patron was
changed into a cold minister, their pen seemed wonderfully to have
lost its point, and the feather could not any more tickle. They were
flung off, as Shakspeare's striking imagery expresses it, like
An unregarded bulrush on the stream,
To rot itself with motion.
Look on the fate and fortune of AMHURST. The life of this "Author by
Profession" points a moral. He flourished about the year 1730. He
passed through a youth of iniquity, and was expelled from his college
for his irregularities: he had exhibited no marks of regeneration when
he assailed the university with the periodical paper of the _Terrae
Filius_; a witty Saturnalian effusion on the manners and Toryism of
Oxford, where the portraits have an extravagant kind of likeness, and
are so false and so true that they were universally relished and
individually understood. Amhurst, having lost his character, hastened
to reform the morals and politics of the nation. For near twenty years
he toiled at "The Craftsman," of which ten thousand are said to have
been sold in one day. Admire this patriot! an expelled collegian
becomes an outrageous zealot for popular reform, and an intrepid Whig
can bend to be yoked to all the drudgery of a faction! Amhurst
succeeded in writing out the minister, and writing in Bolingbroke and
Pulteney. Now came the hour of gratitude and generosity. His patrons
mounted into power--but--they silently dropped the instrument of their
ascension. The political prostitute stood shivering at the gate of
preferment, which his masters had for ever flung against him. He died
broken-hearted, and owed the charity of a grave to his bookseller.
I must add one more striking example of a political author in the case
of Dr. JAMES DRAKE, a man of genius, and an excellent writer. He
resigned an honourable profession, that of medicine, to adopt a very
contrary one, that of becoming an author by profession for a party. As
a Tory writer, he dared every extremity of the law, while he evaded
it by every subtlety of artifice; he sent a masked lady with his MS.
to the printer, who was never discovered, and was once saved by a flaw
in the indictment from the simple change of an _r_ for a _t_, or _nor_
for _not_;--one of those shameful evasions by which the law, to its
perpetual disgrace, so often protects the criminal from punishment.
Dr. Drake had the honour of hearing himself censured from the throne;
of being imprisoned; of seeing his "Memorials of the Church of
England" burned at London, and his "Historia Anglo-Scotica" at
Edinburgh. Having enlisted himself in the pay of the booksellers,
among other works, I suspect, he condescended to practise some
literary impositions. For he has reprinted Father Parson's famous
libel against the Earl of Leicester in Elizabeth's reign, under the
title of "Secret Memoirs of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1706,"
8vo, with a preface pretending it was printed from an old MS.
Drake was a lover of literature; he left behind him a version of
Herodotus, and a "System of Anatomy," once the most popular and
curious of its kind. After all this turmoil of his literary life,
neither his masked lady nor the flaws in his indictments availed him.
Government brought a writ of error, severely prosecuted him; and,
abandoned, as usual, by those for whom he had annihilated a genius
which deserved a better fate, his perturbed spirit broke out into a
fever, and he died raving against cruel persecutors, and patrons not
much more humane.
So much for some of those who have been "Authors by Profession" in one
of the twofold capacities which Guthrie designed, that of writing for
a minister; the other, that of writing for the bookseller, though far
more honourable, is sufficiently calamitous.
In commercial times, the hope of profit is always a stimulating, but a
degrading motive; it dims the clearest intellect, it stills the
proudest feelings. Habit and prejudice will soon reconcile even genius
to the work of money, and to avow the motive without a blush. "An
author by profession," at once ingenious and ingenuous, declared that,
"till fame appears to be worth more than money, he would always prefer
money to fame." JOHNSON had a notion that there existed no motive for
writing but money! Yet, crowned heads have sighed with the ambition of
authorship, though this great master of the human mind could suppose
that on this subject men were not actuated either by the love of glory
or of pleasure! FIELDING, an author of great genius and of "the
profession," in one of his "Covent-garden Journals" asserts, that "An
author, in a country where there is no public provision for men of
genius, is not obliged to be a more disinterested patriot than any
other. Why is he whose _livelihood is in his pen_ a greater monster in
using it to serve himself, than he who uses his tongue for the same
purpose?"
But it is a very important question to ask, is this "livelihood in the
pen" really such? Authors drudging on in obscurity, and enduring
miseries which can never close but with their life--shall this be
worth even the humble designation of a "livelihood?" I am not now
combating with them whether their taskwork degrades them, but whether
they are receiving an equivalent for the violation of their genius,
for the weight of the fetters they are wearing, and for the entailed
miseries which form an author's sole legacies to his widow and his
children. Far from me is the wish to degrade literature by the
inquiry; but it will be useful to many a youth of promising talent,
who is impatient to abandon all professions for this one, to consider
well the calamities in which he will most probably participate.
Among "Authors by Profession" who has displayed a more fruitful
genius, and exercised more intense industry, with a loftier sense of
his independence, than SMOLLETT? But look into his life and enter into
his feelings, and you will be shocked at the disparity of his
situation with the genius of the man. His life was a succession of
struggles, vexations, and disappointments, yet of success in his
writings. Smollett, who is a great poet, though he has written little
in verse, and whose rich genius composed the most original pictures of
human life, was compelled by his wants to debase his name by selling
it to voyages and translations, which he never could have read. When
he had worn himself down in the service of the public or the
booksellers, there remained not, of all his slender remunerations, in
the last stage of life, sufficient to convey him to a cheap country
and a restorative air on the Continent. The father may have thought
himself fortunate, that the daughter whom he loved with more than
common affection was no more to share in his wants; but the husband
had by his side the faithful companion of his life, left without a
wreck of fortune. Smollett, gradually perishing in a foreign land,[8]
neglected by an admiring public, and without fresh resources from the
booksellers, who were receiving the income of his works, threw out his
injured feelings in the character of _Bramble_; the warm generosity of
his temper, but not his genius, seemed fleeting with his breath. In a
foreign land his widow marked by a plain monument the spot of his
burial, and she perished in solitude! Yet Smollett dead--soon an
ornamented column is raised at the place of his birth,[9] while the
grave of the author seemed to multiply the editions of his works.
There are indeed grateful feelings in the public at large for a
favourite author; but the awful testimony of those feelings, by its
gradual progress, must appear beyond the grave! They visit the column
consecrated by his name, and his features are most loved, most
venerated, in the bust.
Smollett himself shall be the historian of his own heart; this most
successful "Author by Profession," who, for his subsistence, composed
masterworks of genius, and drudged in the toils of slavery, shall
himself tell us what happened, and describe that state between life
and death, partaking of both, which obscured his faculties and
sickened his lofty spirit.
"Had some of those who were pleased to call themselves my friends been
at any pains to deserve the character, and told me ingenuously what I
had to expect in _the capacity of an author, when I first professed
myself of that venerable fraternity_, I should in all probability have
spared myself the _incredible labour and chagrin I have since
undergone_."
As a relief from literary labour, Smollett once went to revisit his
family, and to embrace the mother he loved; but such was the
irritation of his mind and the infirmity of his health, exhausted by
the hard labours of authorship, that he never passed a more weary
summer, nor ever found himself so incapable of indulging the warmest
emotions of his heart. On his return, in a letter, he gave this
melancholy narrative of himself:--"Between friends, I am now convinced
that _my brain was in some measure affected_; for I had a kind of
_Coma Vigil_ upon me from April to November, without intermission. In
consideration of this circumstance, I know you will forgive all my
peevishness and discontent; tell Mrs. Moore that with regard to me,
she has as yet seen nothing but the wrong side of the tapestry." Thus
it happens in the life of authors, that they whose comic genius
diffuses cheerfulness, create a pleasure which they cannot themselves
participate.
The _Coma Vigil_ may be described by a verse of Shakspeare:--
Still-waking sleep! that is not what it is!
Of praise and censure, says Smollett, in a letter to Dr. Moore,
"Indeed I am sick of both, and wish to God my circumstances would
allow me to consign my pen to oblivion." A wish, as fervently repeated
by many "Authors by Profession," who are not so fully entitled as was
Smollett to write when he chose, or to have lived in quiet for what he
had written. An author's life is therefore too often deprived of all
social comfort whether he be the writer for a minister, or a
bookseller--but their case requires to be stated.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] It has been lately disclosed that HOME, the author of "Douglas,"
was pensioned by Lord Bute to answer all the papers and
pamphlets of the Government, and to be a vigilant defender of
the measures of Government.
[5] I have elsewhere portrayed the personal characters of the
hireling chiefs of these paper wars: the versatile and
unprincipled Marchmont Needham, the Cobbett of his day; the
factious Sir Roger L'Estrange; and the bantering and
profligate Sir John Birkenhead.
[6] An ample view of these lucubrations is exhibited in the early
volumes of the _Gentleman's Magazine_.
[7] It was said of this man that "he had submitted to labour at the
press, like a horse in a mill, till he became as blind and as
wretched." To show the extent of the conscience of this class
of writers, and to what lengths mere party-writers can
proceed, when duly encouraged, Oldmixon, who was a Whig
historian, if a violent party-writer ought ever to be
dignified by so venerable a title, unmercifully rigid to all
other historians, was himself guilty of the crimes with which
he so loudly accused others. He charged three eminent persons
with interpolating Lord Clarendon's History; this charge was
afterwards disproved by the passages being produced in his
Lordship's own handwriting, which had been fortunately
preserved; and yet this accuser of interpolation, when
employed by Bishop Kennett to publish his collection of our
historians, made no scruple of falsifying numerous passages in
Daniel's Chronicle, which makes the first edition of that
collection of no value.
[8] Smollett died in a small abode in the neighbourhood of Leghorn,
where he had resided some time in the hope of recovering his
shattered health; and where he wrote his "Humphrey Clinker."
His friends had tried in vain to procure for him the
appointment of consul to any one of the ports of the
Mediterranean. He is buried in the English cemetery at
Leghorn.--ED.
[9] It stands opposite Dalquhurn House, where he was born, near the
village of Renton, Dumbartonshire. Had Smollett lived a few
more years, he would have been entitled to an estate of about
1000_l._ a year. There is also a cenotaph to his memory on the
banks of Leven-water, which he has consecrated in one of his
best poems.--ED.
THE CASE OF AUTHORS STATED,
INCLUDING THE HISTORY OF LITERARY PROPERTY.
JOHNSON has dignified the booksellers as "the patrons of literature,"
which was generous in that great author, who had written well and
lived but ill all his life on that patronage. Eminent booksellers, in
their constant intercourse with the most enlightened class of the
community, that is, with the best authors and the best readers,
partake of the intelligence around them; their great capitals, too,
are productive of good and evil in literature; useful when they carry
on great works, and pernicious when they sanction indifferent ones.
Yet are they but commercial men. A trader can never be deemed a
patron, for it would be romantic to purchase what is not saleable; and
where no favour is conferred, there is no patronage.
Authors continue poor, and booksellers become opulent; an extraordinary
result! Booksellers are not agents for authors, but proprietors of
their works; so that the perpetual revenues of literature are solely
in the possession of the trade.
Is it then wonderful that even successful authors are indigent? They
are heirs to fortunes, but by a strange singularity they are
disinherited at their birth; for, on the publication of their works,
these cease to be their own property. Let that natural property be
secured, and a good book would be an inheritance, a leasehold or a
freehold, as you choose it; it might at least last out a generation,
and descend to the author's blood, were they permitted to live on
their father's glory, as in all other property they do on his
industry.[10] Something of this nature has been instituted in France,
where the descendants of Corneille and Moliere retain a claim on the
theatres whenever the dramas of their great ancestors are performed.
In that country, literature has ever received peculiar honours--it was
there decreed, in the affair of Crebillon, that literary productions
are not seizable by creditors.[11]
The history of literary property in this country might form as
ludicrous a narrative as Lucian's "true history." It was a long while
doubtful whether any such thing existed, at the very time when
booksellers were assigning over the perpetual copyrights of books, and
making them the subject of family settlements for the provision of
their wives and children! When Tonson, in 1739, obtained an injunction
to restrain another bookseller from printing Milton's "Paradise
Lost," he brought into court as a proof of his title an assignment of
the original copyright, made over by the sublime poet in 1667, which
was read. Milton received for this assignment the sum which we all
know--Tonson and all his family and assignees rode in their carriages
with the profits of the five-pound epic.[12]
The verbal and tasteless lawyers, not many years past, with legal
metaphysics, wrangled like the schoolmen, inquiring of each other,
"whether the _style_ and _ideas_ of an author were tangible things; or
if these were a _property_, how is _possession_ to be taken, or any
act of _occupancy_ made on mere intellectual _ideas_." Nothing, said
they, can be an object of property but which has a corporeal
substance; the air and the light, to which they compared an author's
ideas, are common to all; ideas in the MS. state were compared to
birds in a cage; while the author confines them in his own dominion,
none but he has a right to let them fly; but the moment he allows the
bird to escape from his hand, it is no violation of property in any
one to make it his own. And to prove that there existed no property
after publication, they found an analogy in the gathering of acorns,
or in seizing on a vacant piece of ground; and thus degrading that
most refined piece of art formed in the highest state of society, a
literary production, they brought us back to a state of nature; and
seem to have concluded that literary property was purely ideal; a
phantom which, as its author could neither grasp nor confine to
himself, he must entirely depend on the public benevolence for his
reward.[13]
The Ideas, that is, the work of an author, are "tangible things."
"There are works," to quote the words of a near and dear relative,
"which require great learning, great industry, great labour, and great
capital, in their preparation. They assume a palpable form. You may
fill warehouses with them, and freight ships; and the tenure by which
they are held is superior to that of all other property, for it is
original. It is tenure which does not exist in a doubtful title; which
does not spring from any adventitious circumstances; it is not
found--it is not purchased--it is not prescriptive--it is original; so
it is the most natural of all titles, because it is the most simple
and least artificial. It is paramount and sovereign, because it is a
tenure by creation."[14]
There were indeed some more generous spirits and better philosophers
fortunately found on the same bench; and the identity of a literary
composition was resolved into its sentiments and language, besides
what was more obviously valuable to some persons, the print and paper.
On this slight principle was issued the profound award which accorded
a certain term of years to any work, however immortal. They could not
diminish the immortality of a book, but only its reward. In all the
litigations respecting literary property, authors were little
considered--except some honourable testimonies due to genius, from the
sense of WILLES, and the eloquence of MANSFIELD. Literary property was
still disputed, like the rights of a parish common. An honest printer,
who could not always write grammar, had the shrewdness to make a bold
effort in this scramble, and perceiving that even by this last
favourable award all literary property would necessarily centre with
the booksellers, now stood forward for his own body--the printers.
This rough advocate observed that "a few persons who call themselves
_booksellers_, about the number of _twenty-five_, have kept the
_monopoly of books and copies_ in their hands, to the entire exclusion
of all others, but more especially the _printers_, whom they have
always held it a rule never to let become purchasers in _copy_." Not a
word for the _authors_! As for them, they were doomed by both parties
as the fat oblation: they indeed sent forth some meek bleatings; but
what were AUTHORS, between judges, booksellers, and printers? the
sacrificed among the sacrificers!
All this was reasoning in a circle. LITERARY PROPERTY in our nation
arose from _a new state of society_. These lawyers could never
develope its nature by wild analogies, nor discover it in any
common-law right; for our common law, composed of immemorial customs,
could never have had in its contemplation an object which could not
have existed in barbarous periods. Literature, in its enlarged spirit,
certainly never entered into the thoughts or attention of our rude
ancestors. All their views were bounded by the necessaries of life;
and as yet they had no conception of the impalpable, invisible, yet
sovereign dominion of the human mind--enough for our rough heroes was
that of the seas! Before the reign of Henry VIII. great authors
composed occasionally a book in Latin, which none but other great
authors cared for, and which the people could not read. In the reign
of Elizabeth, ROGER ASCHAM appeared--one of those men of genius born
to create a new era in the history of their nation. The first English
author who may be regarded as the founder of our _prose style_ was
Roger Ascham, the venerable parent of our _native literature_. At a
time when our scholars affected to contemn the vernacular idiom, and
in their Latin works were losing their better fame, that of being
understood by all their countrymen, Ascham boldly avowed the design of
setting an example, in his own words, TO SPEAK AS THE COMMON PEOPLE,
TO THINK AS WISE MEN. His pristine English is still forcible without
pedantry, and still beautiful without ornament.[15] The illustrious
BACON condescended to follow this new example in the most popular of
his works. This change in our literature was like a revelation; these
men taught us our language in books. We became a reading people; and
then the demand for books naturally produced a new order of authors,
who traded in literature. It was then, so early as in the Elizabethan
age, that _literary property_ may be said to derive its obscure origin
in this nation. It was protected in an indirect manner by the
_licensers_ of the press; for although that was a mere political
institution, only designed to prevent seditious and irreligious
publications, yet, as no book could be printed without a licence,
there was honour enough in the licensers not to allow other
publishers to infringe on the privilege granted to the first
claimant. In Queen Anne's time, when the office of licensers was
extinguished, a more liberal genius was rising in the nation, and
_literary property_ received a more definite and a more powerful
protection. A limited term was granted to every author to reap the
fruits of his labours; and Lord Hardwicke pronounced this statute "a
universal patent for authors." Yet, subsequently, the subject of
_literary property_ involved discussion; even at so late a period as
in 1769 it was still to be litigated. It was then granted that
originally an author had at common law a property in his work, but
that the act of Anne took away all copyright after the expiration of
the terms it permitted.
As the matter now stands, let us address an arithmetical age--but my
pen hesitates to bring down my subject to an argument fitted to "these
coster-monger times."[16] On the present principle of literary
property, it results that an author disposes of a leasehold property
of twenty-eight years, often for less than the price of one year's
purchase! How many living authors are the sad witnesses of this fact,
who, like so many Esaus, have sold their inheritance for a meal! I
leave the whole school of Adam Smith to calm their calculating
emotions concerning "that unprosperous race of men" (sometimes this
master-seer calls them "unproductive") "commonly called _men of
letters_," who are pretty much in the situation which lawyers and
physicians would be in, were these, as he tells us, in that state when
"_a scholar_ and _a beggar_ seem to have been very nearly _synonymous
terms_"--and this melancholy fact that man of genius discovered,
without the feather of his pen brushing away a tear from his
lid--without one spontaneous and indignant groan!
Authors may exclaim, "we ask for justice, not charity." They would
not need to require any favour, nor claim any other than that
protection which an enlightened government, in its wisdom and its
justice, must bestow. They would leave to the public disposition the
sole appreciation of their works; their book must make its own
fortune; a bad work may be cried up, and a good work may be cried
down; but Faction will soon lose its voice, and Truth acquire one.
The cause we are pleading is not the calamities of indifferent
writers, but of those whose utility or whose genius long survives
that limited term which has been so hardly wrenched from the
penurious hand of verbal lawyers. Every lover of literature, and
every votary of humanity has long felt indignant at that sordid
state and all those secret sorrows to which men of the finest
genius, or of sublime industry, are reduced and degraded in
society. Johnson himself, who rejected that perpetuity of literary
property which some enthusiasts seemed to claim at the time the
subject was undergoing the discussion of the judges, is, however,
for extending the copyright to a _century_. Could authors secure
this, their natural right, literature would acquire a permanent
and a nobler reward; for great authors would then be distinguished
by the very profits they would receive from that obscure multitude
whose common disgraces they frequently participate, notwithstanding
the superiority of their own genius. Johnson himself will serve as
a proof of the incompetent remuneration of literary property. He
undertook and he performed an Herculean labour, which employed him
so many years that the price he obtained was exhausted before the
work was concluded--the wages did not even last as long as the
labour! Where, then, is the author to look forward, when such works
are undertaken, for a provision for his family, or for his future
existence? It would naturally arise from the work itself, were
authors not the most ill-treated and oppressed class of the
community. The daughter of MILTON need not have craved the alms of
the admirers of her father, if the right of authors had been better
protected; his own "Paradise Lost" had then been her better portion
and her most honourable inheritance. The children of BURNS would have
required no subscriptions; that annual tribute which the public pay
to the genius of their parent was their due, and would have been their
fortune.
Authors now submit to have a shorter life than their own celebrity.
While the book markets of Europe are supplied with the writings of
English authors, and they have a wider diffusion in America than at
home, it seems a national ingratitude to limit the existence of works
for their authors to a short number of years, and then to seize on
their possession for ever.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] The following facts will show the value of _literary property_;
immense profits and cheap purchases! The manuscript of
"Robinson Crusoe" ran through the whole trade, and no one
would print it; the bookseller who did purchase it, who, it is
said, was not remarkable for his discernment, but for a
speculative turn, got a thousand guineas by it. How many have
the booksellers since accumulated? Burn's "Justice" was
disposed of by its author for a trifle, as well as Buchan's
"Domestic Medicine;" these works yield annual incomes.
Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield" was sold in the hour of
distress, with little distinction from any other work in that
class of composition; and "Evelina" produced five guineas from
the niggardly trader. Dr. Johnson fixed the price of his
"Biography of the Poets" at two hundred guineas; and Mr.
Malone observes, the booksellers in the course of twenty-five
years have probably got five thousand. I could add a great
number of facts of this nature which relate to living writers;
the profits of their own works for two or three years would
rescue them from the horrors and humiliation of pauperism. It
is, perhaps, useful to record, that, while the compositions of
genius are but slightly remunerated, though sometimes as
productive as "the household stuff" of literature, the latter
is rewarded with princely magnificence. At the sale of the
Robinsons, the copyright of "Vyse's Spelling-book" was sold at
the enormous price of 2200_l._, with an _annuity_ of fifty
guineas to the author!
[11] The circumstance, with the poet's dignified petition, and the
King's honourable decree, are preserved in "Curiosities of
Literature," vol. i. p. 406.
[12] The elder Tonson's portrait represents him in his gown and cap,
holding in his right hand a volume lettered "Paradise
Lost"--such a favourite object was Milton and copyright! Jacob
Tonson was the founder of a race who long honoured literature.
His rise in life is curious. He was at first unable to pay
twenty pounds for a play by Dryden, and joined with another
bookseller to advance that sum; the play sold, and Tonson was
afterwards enabled to purchase the succeeding ones. He and his
nephew died worth two hundred thousand pounds.--Much old
Tonson owed to his own industry; but he was a mere trader. He
and Dryden had frequent bickerings; he insisted on receiving
10,000 verses for two hundred and sixty-eight pounds, and poor
Dryden threw in the finest Ode in the language towards the
number. He would pay in the base coin which was then current;
which was a loss to the poet. Tonson once complained to
Dryden, that he had only received 1446 lines of his
translation of Ovid for his Miscellany for fifty guineas, when
he had calculated at the rate of 1518 lines for forty guineas;
he gives the poet a piece of critical reasoning, that he
considered he had a better bargain with "Juvenal," which is
reckoned "not so easy to translate as Ovid." In these times
such a mere trader in literature has disappeared.
[13] Sir James Burrows' Reports on the question concerning Literary
Property, 4to. London, 1773.
[14] Mirror of Parliament, 3529.
[15] See "Amenities of Literature" for an account of this author.
[16] A coster-monger, or Costard-monger, is a dealer in apples, which
are so called because they are shaped like a _costard_, _i.e._
a man's head. _Steevens._--Johnson explains the phrase
eloquently: "In these times when the prevalence of trade has
produced that meanness, that rates the merit of everything by
money."
THE SUFFERINGS OF AUTHORS.
_The natural rights and properties of AUTHORS_ not having been
sufficiently protected, they are defrauded, not indeed of their fame,
though they may not always live to witness it, but of their
_uninterrupted profits_, which might save them from their frequent
degradation in society. That act of Anne which confers on them some
right of property, acknowledges that works of learned men have been
carried on "too often to the ruin of them and their families."
Hence we trace a literary calamity which the public endure in those
"Authors by Profession," who, finding often too late in life that it
is the worst profession, are not scrupulous to live by some means or
other. "I must live," cried one of the brotherhood, shrugging his
shoulders in his misery, and almost blushing for a libel he had just
printed--"I do not see the necessity," was the dignified reply. Trade
was certainly not the origin of authorship. Most of our great authors
have written from a more impetuous impulse than that of a mechanic;
urged by a loftier motive than that of humouring the popular taste,
they have not lowered themselves by writing down to the public, but
have raised the public to them. Untasked, they composed at propitious
intervals; and feeling, not labour, was in their last, as in their
first page.
When we became a reading people, books were to be suited to popular
tastes, and then that trade was opened that leads to the workhouse. A
new race sprang up, that, like Ascham, "spoke as the common people;"
but would not, like Ascham, "think as wise men." The founders of
"Authors by Profession" appear as far back as in the Elizabethan age.
Then there were some roguish wits, who, taking advantage of the public
humour, and yielding their principle to their pen, lived to write, and
wrote to live; loose livers and loose writers!--like Autolycus, they
ran to the fair, with baskets of hasty manufactures, fit for clowns
and maidens.[17]
Even then flourished the craft of authorship, and the mysteries of
bookselling. ROBERT GREENE, the master-wit, wrote "The Art of
Coney-catching," or Cheatery, in which he was an adept; he died of a
surfeit of Rhenish and pickled herrings, at a fatal banquet of
authors;--and left as his legacy among the "Authors by Profession" "A
Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance." One died of
another kind of surfeit. Another was assassinated in a brothel. But
the list of the calamities of all these worthies have as great variety
as those of the Seven Champions.[18] Nor were the _stationers_, or
_book-venders_, as the publishers of books were first designated, at a
fault in the mysteries of "coney-catching." Deceptive and vaunting
title-pages were practised to such excess, that TOM NASH, an "Author
by Profession," never fastidiously modest, blushed at the title of his
"Pierce Pennilesse," which the publisher had flourished in the first
edition, like "a tedious mountebank." The booksellers forged great
names to recommend their works, and passed off in currency their base
metal stamped with a royal head. "It was an usual thing in those
days," says honest Anthony Wood, "to set a great name to a book or
books, by the sharking booksellers or snivelling writers, to get
bread."
Such authors as these are unfortunate, before they are criminal; they
often tire out their youth before they discover that "Author by
Profession" is a denomination ridiculously assumed, for it is none!
The first efforts of men of genius are usually honourable ones; but
too often they suffer that genius to be debased. Many who would have
composed history have turned voluminous party-writers; many a noble
satirist has become a hungry libeller. Men who are starved in
society, hold to it but loosely. They are the children of Nemesis!
they avenge themselves--and with the Satan of MILTON they exclaim,
Evil, be thou my good!
Never were their feelings more vehemently echoed than by this
Nash--the creature of genius, of famine, and despair. He lived indeed
in the age of Elizabeth, but writes as if he had lived in our own. He
proclaimed himself to the world as _Pierce Pennilesse_, and on a
retrospect of his _literary life_, observes that he had "sat up late
and rose early, contended with the cold, and conversed with
scarcitie;" he says, "all my labours turned to losse,--I was despised
and neglected, my paines not regarded, or slightly rewarded, and I
myself, in prime of my best wit, laid open to povertie. Whereupon I
accused my fortune, railed on my patrons, bit my pen, rent my papers,
and raged."--And then comes the after-reflection, which so frequently
provokes the anger of genius: "How many base men that wanted those
parts I had, enjoyed content at will, and had wealth at command! I
called to mind a cobbler that was worth five hundred pounds; an
hostler that had built a goodly inn; a carman in a leather pilche that
had whipt a thousand pound out of his horse's tail--and have I more
than these? thought I to myself; am I better born? am I better brought
up? yea, and better favoured! and yet am I a beggar? How am I crost,
or whence is this curse? Even from hence, the men that should employ
such as I am, are enamoured of their own wits, though they be never so
scurvie; that a scrivener is better paid than a scholar; and men of
art must seek to live among cormorants, or be kept under by dunces,
who count it policy to keep them bare to follow their books the
better." And then, Nash thus utters the cries of--
A DESPAIRING AUTHOR!
Why is't damnation to despair and die
When life is my true happiness' disease?
My soul! my soul! thy safety makes me fly
_The faulty means_ that might my pain appease;
Divines and dying men may talk of hell;
But in my heart her several torments dwell.
Ah worthless wit, to train me to this woe!
Deceitful arts that nourish discontent!
Ill thrive the folly that bewitch'd me so!
Vain thoughts, adieu! for now I will repent;
And yet my wants persuade me to proceed,
Since none take pity of a scholar's need!--
Forgive me, God, although I curse my birth,
And ban the air wherein I breathe a wretch!
For misery hath daunted all my mirth--
Without redress complains my careless verse,
And Midas' ears relent not at my moan!
In some far land will I my griefs rehearse,
'Mongst them that will be moved when I shall groan!
England, adieu! the soil that brought me forth!
Adieu, unkinde! where skill is nothing worth!
Such was the miserable cry of an "Author by Profession" in the reign
of Elizabeth. Nash not only renounces his country in his despair--and
hesitates on "the faulty means" which have appeased the pangs of many
of his unhappy brothers, but he proves also the weakness of the moral
principle among these men of genius; for he promises, if any Maecenas
will bind him by his bounty, he will do him "as much honour as any
poet of my beardless years in England--but," he adds, "if he be sent
away with a flea in his ear, let him look that I will rail on him
soundly; not for an hour or a day, while the injury is fresh in my
memory, but in some elaborate polished poem, which I will leave to the
world when I am dead, to be a living image to times to come of his
beggarly parsimony." Poets might imagine that CHATTERTON had written
all this, about the time he struck a balance of his profit and loss by
the death of Beckford the Lord Mayor, in which he concludes with "I am
glad he is dead by 3_l._ 13_s._ 6_d._"[19]
FOOTNOTES:
[17] An abundance of these amusing tracts eagerly bought up in their
day, but which came in the following generation to the
ballad-stalls, are in the present enshrined in the cabinets of
the curious. Such are the revolutions of literature! [It is by
no means uncommon to find them realise sums at the rate of a
guinea a page; but it is to be solely attributed to their
extreme rarity; for in many instances the reprints of such
tracts are worthless.]
[18] Poverty and the gaol alternated with tavern carouses or the
place of honour among the wild young gallants at the
playhouses. They were gentlemen or beggars as daily
circumstances ordained. When this was the case with such
authors as Greene, Peele, and Massinger, we need not wonder at
finding "a whole knot" of writers in infinitely worse plight,
who lived (or starved) by writing ballads and pamphlets on
temporary subjects. In a brief tract, called "The Downfall of
Temporising Poets," published 1641, they are said to be "an
indifferent strong corporation, twenty-three of you sufficient
writers, besides Martin Parker," who was the great ballad and
pamphlet writer of the day. The shifts they were put to, and
the difficulties of their living, is denoted in the reply of
one of the characters in this tract, who on being asked if he
has money, replies "Money? I wonder where you ever see poets
have money two days together; I sold a copy last night, and
have spent the money; and now have another copy to sell, but
nobody will buy it."--ED.
[19] Chatterton had written a political essay for "The North Briton,"
which opened with the preluding flourish of "A spirited people
freeing themselves from insupportable slavery:" it was,
however, though accepted, not printed, on account of the Lord
Mayor's death. The patriot thus calculated the death of his
great patron!
L s. d.
Lost by his death in this Essay 1 11 6
Gained in Elegies L2 2
---- in Essays 3 3
---- 5 5 0
---------
Am glad he is dead by L3 13 6
A MENDICANT AUTHOR,
AND THE PATRONS OF FORMER TIMES.
It must be confessed, that before "Authors by Profession" had
fallen into the hands of the booksellers, they endured peculiar
grievances. They were pitiable retainers of some great family.
The miseries of such an author, and the insolence and penuriousness of
his patrons, who would not return the poetry they liked and would not
pay for, may be traced in the eventful life of THOMAS CHURCHYARD, a
poet of the age of Elizabeth, one of those unfortunate men who have
written poetry all their days, and lived a long life to complete
the misfortune. His muse was so fertile, that his works pass all
enumeration. He courted numerous patrons, who valued the poetry,
while they left the poet to his own miserable contemplations. In a
long catalogue of his works, which this poet has himself given, he
adds a few memoranda, as he proceeds, a little ludicrous, but very
melancholy. He wrote a book which he could never afterwards
recover from one of his patrons, and adds, "all which book was in as
good verse as ever I made; an honourable knight dwelling in the
Black Friers can witness the same, because I read it unto him."
Another accorded him the same remuneration--on which he adds, "An
infinite number of other songs and sonnets given where they cannot
be recovered, nor purchase any favour when they are craved." Still,
however, he announces "Twelve long Tales for Christmas, dedicated to
twelve honourable lords." Well might Churchyard write his own sad
life, under the title of "The Tragicall Discourse of the Haplesse
Man's Life."[20]
It will not be easy to parallel this pathetic description of the
wretched age of a poor neglected poet mourning over a youth vainly
spent.
High time it is to haste my carcase hence:
Youth stole away and felt no kind of joy,
And age he left in travail ever since;
The wanton days that made me nice and coy
Were but a dream, a shadow, and a toy--
I look in glass, and find my cheeks so lean
That every hour I do but wish me dead;
Now back bends down, and forwards falls the head,
And hollow eyes in wrinkled brow doth shroud
As though two stars were creeping under cloud.
The lips wax cold, and look both pale and thin,
The teeth fall out as nutts forsook the shell,
The bare bald head but shows where hair hath been,
The lively joints wax weary, stiff, and still,
The ready tongue now falters in his tale;
The courage quails as strength decays and goes....
The thatcher hath a cottage poor you see:
The shepherd knows where he shall sleep at night;
The daily drudge from cares can quiet be:
Thus fortune sends some rest to every wight;
And I was born to house and land by right....
Well, ere my breath my body do forsake
My spirit I bequeath to God above;
My books, my scrawls, and songs that I did make,
I leave with friends that freely did me love....
Now, friends, shake hands, I must be gone, my boys!
Our mirth takes end, our triumph all is done;
Our tickling talk, our sports and merry toys
Do glide away like shadow of the sun.
Another comes when I my race have run,
Shall pass the time with you in better plight,
And find good cause of greater things to write.
Yet Churchyard was no contemptible bard; he composed a national poem,
"The Worthiness of Wales," which has been reprinted, and will be still
dear to his "Fatherland," as the Hollanders expressively denote their
natal spot. He wrote in the "Mirrour of Magistrates," the Life of
Wolsey, which has parts of great dignity; and the Life of Jane Shore,
which was much noticed in his day, for a severe critic of the times
writes:
Hath not Shore's wife, although a light-skirt she,
Given him a chaste, long, lasting memorie?
Churchyard, and the miseries of his poetical life, are alluded to by
Spenser. He is old Palemon in "Colin Clout's come Home again." Spenser
is supposed to describe this laborious writer for half a century,
whose melancholy pipe, in his old age, may make the reader "rew:"
Yet he himself may rewed be more right,
That sung so long untill quite hoarse he grew.
His epitaph, preserved by Camden, is extremely instructive to all
poets, could epitaphs instruct them:--
_Poverty_ and _poetry_ his tomb doth inclose;
Wherefore, good neighbours, be merry in _prose_.
It appears also by a confession of Tom Nash, that an author would
then, pressed by the _res angusta domi_, when "the bottom of his purse
was turned upward," submit to compose pieces for gentlemen who aspired
to authorship. He tells us on some occasion, that he was then in the
country composing poetry for some country squire;--and says, "I am
faine to let my plow stand still in the midst of a furrow, to follow
these Senior Fantasticos, to whose amorous _villanellas_[21] I
prostitute my pen," and this, too, "twice or thrice in a month;" and
he complains that it is "poverty which alone maketh me so unconstant
to my determined studies, trudging from place to place to and fro, and
prosecuting the means to keep me from idlenesse." An author was then
much like a vagrant.
Even at a later period, in the reign of the literary James, great
authors were reduced to a state of mendicity, and lived on alms,
although their lives and their fortunes had been consumed in
forming national labours. The antiquary STOWE exhibits a striking
example of the rewards conferred on such valued authors. Stowe had
devoted his life, and exhausted his patrimony, in the study of
English antiquities; he had travelled on foot throughout the kingdom,
inspecting all monuments of antiquity, and rescuing what he could
from the dispersed libraries of the monasteries. His stupendous
collections, in his own handwriting, still exist, to provoke the
feeble industry of literary loiterers. He felt through life the
enthusiasm of study; and seated in his monkish library, living with
the dead more than with the living, he was still a student of taste:
for Spenser the poet visited the library of Stowe; and the first
good edition of Chaucer was made so chiefly by the labours of our
author. Late in life, worn-out with study and the cares of poverty,
neglected by that proud metropolis of which he had been the historian,
his good-humour did not desert him; for being afflicted with sharp
pains in his aged feet, he observed that "his affliction lay in that
part which formerly he had made so much use of." Many a mile had he
wandered and much had he expended, for those treasures of antiquities
which had exhausted his fortune, and with which he had formed works
of great public utility. It was in his eightieth year that Stowe at
length received a public acknowledgment of his services, which will
appear to us of a very extraordinary nature. He was so reduced in his
circumstances that he petitioned James I. for a _licence to collect
alms_ for himself! "as a recompense for his labours and travel of
_forty-five years_, in setting forth the _Chronicles of England_,
and _eight years_ taken up in the _Survey of the Cities of London
and Westminster_, towards his relief now in his old age; having left
his former means of living, and only employing himself for the
service and good of his country." Letters-patent under the great
seal were granted. After no penurious commendations of Stowe's
labours, he is permitted "to gather the benevolence of well-disposed
people within this realm of England; to ask, gather, and take the
alms of all our loving subjects." These letters-patent were to be
published by the clergy from their pulpits; they produced so
little, that they were renewed for another twelvemonth: one entire
parish in the city contributed seven shillings and sixpence! Such,
then, was the patronage received by Stowe, to be a licensed beggar
throughout the kingdom for one twelvemonth! Such was the public
remuneration of a man who had been useful to his nation, but not to
himself!
Such was the first age of _Patronage_, which branched out in the last
century into an age of _Subscriptions_, when an author levied
contributions before his work appeared; a mode which inundated our
literature with a great portion of its worthless volumes: of these the
most remarkable are the splendid publications of Richard Blome; they
may be called fictitious works; for they are only mutilated
transcripts from Camden and Speed, but richly ornamented, and
pompously printed, which this literary adventurer, said to have been a
gentleman, loaded the world with, by the aid of his subscribers.
Another age was that of _Dedications_,[22] when the author was to
lift his tiny patron to the skies, in an inverse ratio as he lowered
himself, in this public exhibition. Sometimes the party haggled about
the price;[23] or the statue, while stepping into his niche, would
turn round on the author to assist his invention. A patron of Peter
Motteux, dissatisfied with Peter's colder temperament, composed the
superlative dedication to himself, and completed the misery of the
author by subscribing it with Motteux's name![24] Worse fared it when
authors were the unlucky hawkers of their own works; of which I shall
give a remarkable instance in MYLES DAVIES, a learned man maddened by
want and indignation.
The subject before us exhibits one of the most singular spectacles in
these volumes; that of a scholar of extensive erudition, whose life
seems to have passed in the study of languages and the sciences, while
his faculties appear to have been disordered from the simplicity of
his nature, and driven to madness by indigence and insult. He formed
the wild resolution of becoming a mendicant author, the hawker of his
own works; and by this mode endured all the aggravated sufferings, the
great and the petty insults of all ranks of society, and even
sometimes from men of learning themselves, who denied a mendicant
author the sympathy of a brother.
MYLES DAVIES and his works are imperfectly known to the most curious
of our literary collectors. His name has scarcely reached a few; the
author and his works are equally extraordinary, and claim a right to
be preserved in this treatise on the "Calamities of Authors."
Our author commenced printing a work, difficult, from its miscellaneous
character, to describe; of which the volumes appeared at different
periods. The early and the most valuable volumes were the first and
second; they are a kind of bibliographical, biographical, and critical
work, on English Authors. They all bear a general title of "Athenae
Britannicae."[25]
Collectors have sometimes met with a very curious volume, entitled
"Icon Libellorum," and sometimes the same book, under another
title--"A Critical History of Pamphlets." This rare book forms the
first volume of the "Athenae Britannicae." The author was Myles Davies,
whose biography is quite unknown: he may now be his own biographer. He
was a Welsh clergyman, a vehement foe to Popery, Arianism, and
Socinianism, of the most fervent loyalty to George I. and the
Hanoverian succession; a scholar, skilled in Greek and Latin, and in
all the modern languages. Quitting his native spot with political
disgust, he changed his character in the metropolis, for he subscribes
himself "Counsellor-at-Law." In an evil hour he commenced author, not
only surrounded by his books, but with the more urgent companions of a
wife and family; and with that childlike simplicity which sometimes
marks the mind of a retired scholar, we perceive him imagining that
his immense reading would prove a source, not easily exhausted, for
their subsistence.
From the first volumes of his series much curious literary history may
be extracted, amidst the loose and wandering elements of this literary
chaos. In his dedication to the Prince he professes "to represent
writers and writings in a catoptrick view."
The preface to the second volume opens his plan; and nothing as yet
indicates those rambling humours which his subsequent labours
exhibit.
As he proceeded in forming these volumes, I suspect, either that his
mind became a little disordered, or that he discovered that mere
literature found but penurious patrons in "the Few;" for, attempting
to gain over all classes of society, he varied his investigations, and
courted attention, by writing on law, physic, divinity, as well as
literary topics. By his account--
"The avarice of booksellers, and the stinginess of hard-hearted
patrons, had driven him into a cursed company of door-keeping herds,
to meet the irrational brutality of those uneducated mischievous
animals called footmen, house-porters, poetasters, mumpers,
apothecaries, attorneys, and such like beasts of prey," who were, like
himself, sometimes barred up for hours in the menagerie of a great
man's antechamber. In his addresses to Drs. Mead and Freind, he
declares--"My misfortunes drive me to publish my writings for a poor
livelihood; and nothing but the utmost necessity could make any man in
his senses to endeavour at it, in a method so burthensome to the
modesty and education of a scholar."
In French he dedicates to George I.; and in the Harleian MSS. I
discovered a long letter to the Earl of Oxford, by our author, in
French, with a Latin ode. Never was more innocent bribery proffered to
a minister! He composed what he calls _Stricturae Pindaricae_ on the
"Mughouses," then political clubs;[26] celebrates English authors in
the same odes, and inserts a political Latin drama, called "Pallas
Anglicana." Maevius and Bavius were never more indefatigable! The
author's intellect gradually discovers its confusion amidst the loud
cries of penury and despair.
To paint the distresses of an author soliciting alms for a book which
he presents--and which, whatever may be its value, comes at least as
an evidence that the suppliant is a learned man--is a case so
uncommon, that the invention of the novelist seems necessary to fill
up the picture. But Myles Davies is an artist in his own simple
narrative.
Our author has given the names of several of his unwilling customers:--
"Those squeeze-farthing and hoard-penny ignoramus doctors, with
several great personages who formed excuses for not accepting my
books; or they would receive them, but give nothing for them; or else
deny they had them, or remembered anything of them; and so gave me
nothing for my last present of books, though they kept them _gratis et
ingratiis_.
"But his Grace of the Dutch extraction in Holland (said to be akin to
Mynheer Vander B--nck) had a peculiar grace in receiving my present of
books and odes, which, being bundled up together with a letter and ode
upon his Graceship, and carried in by his porter, I was bid to call
for an answer five years hence. I asked the porter what he meant by
that? I suppose, said he, four or five days hence; but it proved five
or six months after, before I could get any answer, though I had writ
five or six letters in French with fresh odes upon his Graceship, and
an account where I lived, and what noblemen had accepted of my
present. I attended about the door three or four times a week all that
time constantly from twelve to four or five o'clock in the evening;
and walking under the fore windows of the parlours, once that time his
and her Grace came after dinner to stare at me, with open windows and
shut mouths, but filled with fair water, which they spouted with so
much dexterity that they twisted the water through their teeth and
mouth-skrew, to flash near my face, and yet just to miss me, though my
nose could not well miss the natural flavour of the orange-water
showering so very near me. Her Grace began the water-work, but not
very gracefully, especially for an English lady of her description,
airs, and qualities, to make a stranger her spitting-post, who had
been guilty of no other offence than to offer her husband some
writings.--His Grace followed, yet first stood looking so wistfully
towards me, that I verily thought he had a mind to throw me a guinea
or two for all these indignities, and two or three months' then
sleeveless waiting upon him--and accordingly I advanced to address his
Grace to remember the poor author; but, instead of an answer, he
immediately undams his mouth, out fly whole showers of lymphatic
rockets, which had like to have put out my mortal eyes."
Still he was not disheartened, and still applied for his bundle of
books, which were returned to him at length unopened, with "half a
guinea upon top of the cargo," and "with a desire to receive no more.
I plucked up courage, murmuring within myself--
'Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.'"
He sarcastically observes,
"As I was still jogging on homewards, I thought that a great many were
called _their Graces_, not for any grace or favour they had truly
deserved with God or man, but for the same reason of contraries, that
the _Parcae_ or Destinies, were so called, because they spared none, or
were not truly the _Parcae, quia non parcebant_."
Our indigent and indignant author, by the faithfulness of his
representations, mingles with his anger some ludicrous scenes of
literary mendicity.
"I can't choose (now I am upon the fatal subject) but make one
observation or two more upon the various rencontres and adventures I
met withall, in presenting my books to those who were likely to accept
of them for their own information, or for that of helping a poor
scholar, or for their own vanity or ostentation.
"Some parsons would hollow to raise the whole house and posse of the
domestics to raise a poor _crown_; at last all that flutter ends in
sending Jack or Tom out to change a guinea, and then 'tis reckoned
over half-a-dozen times before the fatal crown can be picked out,
which must be taken as it is given, with all the parade of almsgiving,
and so to be received with all the active and passive ceremonial of
mendication and alms-receiving--as if the books, printing and paper,
were worth nothing at all, and as if it were the greatest charity for
them to touch them or let them be in the house; 'For I shall never
read them,' says one of the five-shilling-piece chaps; 'I have no time
to look in them,' says another; ''Tis so much money lost,' says a
grave dean; 'My eyes being so bad,' said a bishop, 'that I can scarce
read at all.' 'What do you want with me?' said another; 'Sir, I
presented you the other day with my _Athenae Britannicae_, being the
last part published.' 'I don't want books, take them again; I don't
understand what they mean.' 'The title is very plain,' said I, 'and
they are writ mostly in English.' 'I'll give you a crown for both the
volumes.' 'They stand me, sir, in more than that, and 'tis for a bare
subsistence I present or sell them; how shall I live?' 'I care not a
farthing for that; live or die, 'tis all one to me.' 'Damn my master!'
said Jack, ''twas but last night he was commending your books and your
learning to the skies; and now he would not care if you were starving
before his eyes; nay, he often makes game at your clothes, though he
thinks you the greatest scholar in England.'"
Such was the life of a learned mendicant author! The scenes which are
here exhibited appear to have disordered an intellect which had never
been firm; in vain our author attempted to adapt his talents to all
orders of men, still "To the crazy ship all winds are contrary."
FOOTNOTES:
[20] This author, now little known but to the student of our rarer
early poets, was a native of Shrewsbury, and had served in the
army. He wrote a large number of poetical pieces, all now of
the greatest rarity; their names have been preserved by that
industrious antiquary Joseph Ritson, in his _Bibliographia
Poetica_. The principal one was termed "The Worthiness of
Wales," and is written in laudation of the Principality. He
was frequently employed to supply verses for Court Masques and
Pageantry. He composed "all the devises, pastimes, and plays
at Norwich" when Queen Elizabeth was entertained there; as
well as gratulatory verses to her at Woodstock. He speaks of
his mind as "never free from studie," and his body "seldom
void of toyle"--"and yet both of them neither brought greate
benefits to the life, nor blessing to the soule" he adds, in
the words of a man whose hope deferred has made his heart
sick!--ED.
[21] _Villanellas_, or rather "_Villanescas_, are properly country
rustic songs, but commonly taken for ingenious ones made in
imitation of them."--PINEDA.
[22] This practice of dedications had indeed flourished before; for
authors had even prefixed numerous dedications to the same
work, or dedicated to different patrons the separate
divisions. Fuller's "Church History" is disgraced by the
introduction of twelve title-pages, besides the general one;
with as many particular dedications, and no less than fifty or
sixty inscriptions, addressed to benefactors; for which he is
severely censured by Heylin. It was an expedient to procure
dedication fees; for publishing books by _subscription_ was an
art not then discovered.
[23] The price of the dedication of a play was even fixed, from five
to ten guineas, from the Revolution to the time of George I.,
when it rose to twenty--but sometimes a bargain was to be
struck--when the author and the play were alike indifferent.
Even on these terms could vanity be gratified with the coarse
luxury of panegyric, of which every one knew the price.
[24] This circumstance was so notorious at the time, that it
occasioned a poetical satire in a dialogue between Motteux and
his patron Henningham--preserved in that vast flower-bed or
dunghill, for it is both, of "Poems on Affairs of State," vol.
ii. 251. The patron, in his zeal to omit no possible
distinction that could attach to him, had given one
circumstance which no one but himself could have known, and
which he thus regrets:
"PATRON.
I must confess I was to blame
That one particular to name;
The rest could never have been known,
_I made the style so like thy own_.
POET.
I beg your pardon, Sir, for that!
PATRON.
Why d----e what would you be at?
_I writ below myself_, you sot!
Avoiding figures, tropes, what not;
For fear I should my fancy _raise
Above the level of thy plays_!"
[25] "_Athenae Britannicae_, or a Critical History of the Oxford and
Cambridge Writers and Writings, with those of the Dissenters
and Romanists, as well as other Authors and Worthies, both
Domestic and Foreign, both Ancient and Modern. Together with
an occasional freedom of thought, in criticising and comparing
the parallel qualifications of the most eminent authors and
their performances, both in MS. and print, both at home and
abroad. By M. D. London, 1716." On the first volume of this
series, Dr. Farmer, a bloodhound of unfailing scent in curious
and obscure English books, has written on the leaf "This is
the only copy I have met with." Even the great bibliographer,
Baker, of Cambridge, never met but with three volumes (the
edition at the British Museum is in seven), sent him as a
great curiosity by the Earl of Oxford, and now deposited in
his collection at St. John's College. Baker has written this
memorandum in the first volume: "Few copies were printed, so
the work has become scarce, and for that reason will be
valued. The book in the greatest part is borrowed from modern
historians, but yet contains some things more uncommon, and
not easily to be met with." How superlatively rare must be the
English volumes which the eyes of Farmer and Baker never
lighted on!
[26] These clubs are described in Macky's "Journey through England,"
1724. He says they were formed to uphold the Royalist party
on the accession of King George I. "This induced a set of
gentlemen to establish _Mughouses_ in all the corners of
this great city, for well-affected tradesmen to meet and keep
up the spirit of loyalty to the Protestant succession," and
to be ready to join their forces for the suppression of the
other party. "Many an encounter they had, till at last the
Parliament was obliged by a law to put an end to this city
strife, which had this good effect, that upon the pulling
down of the Mughouse in Salisbury Court, for which some boys
were hanged on this act, the city has not been troubled with
them since." It was the custom in these houses to allow no
other drink but ale to be consumed, which was brought in mugs
of earthenware; a chairman was elected, and he called on the
members of the company for songs, which were generally party
ballads of a strongly-worded kind, as may be seen in the
small collection printed in 1716, entitled "A Collection of
State Songs, Poems, &c., published since the Rebellion, and
sung in the several Mughouses in the cities of London and
Westminster."--ED.
COWLEY.
OF HIS MELANCHOLY.
The mind of COWLEY was beautiful, but a querulous tenderness in his
nature breathes not only through his works, but influenced his habits
and his views of human affairs. His temper and his genius would have
opened to us, had not the strange decision of Sprat and Clifford
withdrawn that full correspondence of his heart which he had carried
on many years. These letters were suppressed because, as Bishop Sprat
acknowledges, "in this kind of prose Mr. Cowley was excellent! They
had a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of familiarity." And
then the florid writer runs off, that, "in letters, where the souls of
men should appear undressed, in that negligent habit they may be fit
to be seen by one or two in a chamber, but not to go abroad into the
streets." A false criticism: which not only has proved to be so since
their time by Mason's "Memoirs of Gray," but which these friends of
Cowley might have themselves perceived, if they had recollected that
the Letters of Cicero to Atticus form the most delightful chronicles
of the heart--and the most authentic memorials of the man. Peck
obtained one letter of Cowley's, preserved by Johnson, and it exhibits
a remarkable picture of the miseries of his poetical solitude. It is,
perhaps, not too late to inquire whether this correspondence was
destroyed as well as suppressed? Would Sprat and Clifford have burned
what they have told us they so much admired?[27]
Fortunately for our literary sympathy, the fatal error of these
fastidious critics has been in some degree repaired by the admirable
genius himself whom they have injured. When Cowley retreated from
society, he determined to draw up an apology for his conduct, and to
have dedicated it to his patron, Lord St. Albans. His death
interrupted the entire design; but his Essays, which Pope so finely
calls "the language of his heart," are evidently parts of these
precious Confessions. All of Cowley's tenderest and undisguised
feelings have therefore not perished. These Essays now form a species
of composition in our language, a mixture of prose and verse--the man
with the poet--the self-painter has sat to himself, and, with the
utmost simplicity, has copied out the image of his soul.
Why has this poet twice called himself _the melancholy Cowley_? He
employed no poetical _cheville_[28] for the metre of a verse which his
own feelings inspired.
Cowley, at the beginning of the Civil War, joined the Royalists at
Oxford; followed the queen to Paris; yielded his days and his nights
to an employment of the highest confidence, that of deciphering the
royal correspondence; he transacted their business, and, almost
divorcing himself from his neglected muse, he yielded up for them the
tranquillity so necessary to the existence of a poet. From his
earliest days he tells us how the poetic affections had stamped
themselves on his heart, "like letters cut into the bark of a young
tree, which, with the tree, will grow proportionably."
He describes his feelings at the court:--
"I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life the nearer I came to
it--that beauty which I did not fall in love with when, for aught I
knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I saw it
was adulterate. I met with several great persons whom I liked very
well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to
be liked or desired. I was in a crowd of good company, in business of
great and honourable trust; I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the
best conveniences that ought to be desired by a man of my condition;
yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's wish, in a
copy of verses to the same effect:--
Well then! I now do plainly see,
This busie world and I shall ne'er agree!"
After several years' absence from his native country, at a most
critical period, he was sent over to mix with that trusty band of
loyalists, who, in secrecy and in silence, were devoting themselves to
the royal cause. Cowley was seized on by the ruling powers. At this
moment he published a preface to his works, which some of his party
interpreted as a relaxation of his loyalty. He has been fully
defended. Cowley, with all his delicacy of temper, wished sincerely to
retire from all parties; and saw enough among the fiery zealots of his
own, to grow disgusted even with Royalists.
His wish for retirement has been half censured as cowardice by
Johnson; but there was a tenderness of feeling which had ill-formed
Cowley for the cunning of party intriguers, and the company of little
villains. About this time he might have truly distinguished himself as
"The melancholy Cowley."
I am only tracing his literary history for the purpose of this work:
but I cannot pass without noticing the fact, that this abused man,
whom his enemies were calumniating, was at this moment, under the
disguise of a doctor of physic, occupied by the novel studies of
botany and medicine; and as all science in the mind of the poet
naturally becomes poetry, he composed his books on plants in Latin
verse.
At length came the Restoration, which the poet zealously celebrated in
his "Ode" on that occasion. Both Charles the First and Second had
promised to reward his fidelity with the mastership of the Savoy; but,
Wood says, "he lost it by certain persons enemies of the muses." Wood
has said no more; and none of Cowley's biographers have thrown any
light on the circumstance: perhaps we may discover this literary
calamity.
That Cowley caught no warmth from that promised sunshine which the
new monarch was to scatter in prodigal gaiety, has been distinctly
told by the poet himself; his muse, in "The Complaint," having
reproached him thus:--
Thou young prodigal, who didst so loosely waste
Of all thy youthful years, the good estate--
Thou changeling then, bewitch'd with noise and show,
Wouldst into courts and cities from me go--
Go, renegado, cast up thy account--
Behold the public storm is spent at last;
The sovereign is toss'd at sea no more,
And thou, with all the noble company,
Art got at last to shore--
But whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see,
All march'd up to possess the promis'd land;
Thou still alone (alas!) dost gaping stand
Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand.
But neglect was not all Cowley had to endure; the royal party seemed
disposed to calumniate him. When Cowley was young he had hastily
composed the comedy of "The Guardian;" a piece which served the cause
of loyalty. After the Restoration, he rewrote it under the title of
"Cutter of Coleman Street;" a comedy which may still be read with
equal curiosity and interest: a spirited picture of the peculiar
characters which appeared at the Revolution. It was not only ill
received by a faction, but by those vermin of a new court, who,
without merit themselves, put in their claims, by crying down those
who, with great merit, are not in favour. All these to a man accused
the author of having written a satire against the king's party. And
this wretched party prevailed, too long for the author's repose, but
not for his fame.[29] Many years afterwards this comedy became
popular. Dryden, who was present at the representation, tells us that
Cowley "received the news of his ill success not with so much firmness
as might have been expected from so great a man." Cowley was in truth
a great man, and a greatly injured man. His sensibility and delicacy
of temper were of another texture than Dryden's. What at that moment
did Cowley experience, when he beheld himself neglected, calumniated,
and, in his last appeal to public favour, found himself still a victim
to a vile faction, who, to court their common master, were trampling
on their honest brother?
We shall find an unbroken chain of evidence, clearly demonstrating the
agony of his literary feelings. The cynical Wood tells us that, "not
finding that preferment he expected, while others for their money
carried away most places, he retired discontented into Surrey." And
his panegyrist, Sprat, describes him as "weary of the vexations and
formalities of an active condition--he had been perplexed with a long
compliance with foreign manners. He was satiated with the arts of a
court, which sort of life, though his virtue made it innocent to him,
yet nothing could make it quiet. These were the reasons that moved him
to follow the violent inclination of his own mind," &c. I doubt if
either the sarcastic antiquary or the rhetorical panegyrist have
developed the simple truth of Cowley's "violent inclination of his own
mind." He does it himself more openly in that beautiful picture of an
injured poet, in "The Complaint," an ode warm with individual feeling,
but which Johnson coldly passes over, by telling us that "it met the
usual fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt
than pity."
Thus the biographers of Cowley have told us nothing, and the poet
himself has probably not told us all. To these calumnies respecting
Cowley's comedy, raised up by those whom Wood designates as "enemies
of the muses," it would appear that others were added of a deeper dye,
and in malignant whispers distilled into the ear of royalty. Cowley,
in an ode, had commemorated the genius of Brutus, with all the
enthusiasm of a votary of liberty. After the king's return, when
Cowley solicited some reward for his sufferings and services in the
royal cause, the chancellor is said to have turned on him with a
severe countenance, saying, "Mr. Cowley, your pardon is your reward!"
It seems that ode was then considered to be of a dangerous tendency
among half the nation; Brutus would be the model of enthusiasts, who
were sullenly bending their neck under the yoke of royalty. Charles
II. feared the attempt of desperate men; and he might have forgiven
Rochester a loose pasquinade, but not Cowley a solemn invocation. This
fact, then, is said to have been the true cause of the despondency so
prevalent in the latter poetry of "the melancholy Cowley." And hence
the indiscretion of the muse, in a single flight, condemned her to a
painful, rather than a voluntary solitude; and made the poet complain
of "barren praise" and "neglected verse."[30]
While this anecdote harmonises with better known facts, it throws some
light on the outcry raised against the comedy, which seems to have
been but an echo of some preceding one. Cowley retreated into
solitude, where he found none of the agrestic charms of the landscapes
of his muse. When in the world, Sprat says, "he had never wanted for
constant health and strength of body;" but, thrown into solitude, he
carried with him a wounded spirit--the Ode of Brutus and the
condemnation of his comedy were the dark spirits that haunted his
cottage. Ill health soon succeeded low spirits--he pined in dejection,
and perished a victim of the finest and most injured feelings.
But before we leave _the melancholy Cowley_, he shall speak the
feelings, which here are not exaggerated. In this Chronicle of
Literary Calamity no passage ought to be more memorable than the
solemn confession of one of the most amiable of men and poets.
Thus he expresses himself in the preface to his "Cutter of Coleman
Street."
"We are therefore wonderful wise men, and have a fine business of it;
we, who spend our time in poetry. I do sometimes laugh, and am often
angry with myself, when I think on it; and if I had a son inclined by
nature to the same folly, I believe I should bind him from it by the
strictest conjurations of a paternal blessing. For what can be more
ridiculous than to labour to give men delight, whilst they labour, on
their part, most earnestly to take offence?"
And thus he closes the preface, in all the solemn expression of
injured feelings:--"This I do affirm, that _from all which I have
written, +I never+ received the least benefit or the least advantage;
but, on the contrary, have felt sometimes the effects of malice and
misfortune_!"
Cowley's ashes were deposited between those of Chaucer and Spenser; a
marble monument was erected by a duke; and his eulogy was pronounced,
on the day of his death, from the lips of royalty. The learned wrote,
and the tuneful wept: well might the neglected bard, in his
retirement, compose an epitaph on himself, living there "entombed,
though not dead."
To this ambiguous state of existence he applies a conceit, not
inelegant, from the tenderness of its imagery:
Hic sparge flores, sparge breves rosas,
Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus;
Herbisque odoratis corona
Vatis adhuc cinerem calentem.
IMITATED.
Here scatter flowers and short-lived roses bring.
For life, though dead, enjoys the flowers of spring;
With breathing wreaths of fragrant herbs adorn
The yet warm embers in the poet's urn.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] My researches could never obtain more than one letter of
Cowley's--it is but an elegant trifle--returning thanks to his
friend Evelyn for some seeds and plants. "The Garden" of
Evelyn is immortalised in a delightful Ode of Cowley's, as
well as by Evelyn himself. Even in this small note we may
discover the touch of Cowley. The original is in Astle's
collection.
MR. ABRAHAM COWLEY TO JOHN EVELYN, ESQ.
"_Barn Elms, March 23, 1663._
"SIR,--There is nothing more pleasant than to see kindness
in a person for whom we have great esteem and respect: no,
not the sight of your garden in May, or even the having
such an one; which makes me more obliged to return you my
most humble thanks for the testimonies I have lately
received of you, both by your letter and your presents. I
have already sowed such of your seeds as I thought most
proper upon a hot-bed; but cannot find in all my books a
catalogue of these plants which require that culture, nor
of such as must be set in pots; which defects, and all
others, I hope shortly to see supplied, as I hope shortly
to see your work of Horticulture finished and published;
and long to be in all things your disciple, as I am in all
things now,
"Sir, your most humble and most obedient Servant,
"A. COWLEY."
[Barn Elms, from whence this letter is dated, was the first
country residence of Cowley. It lies low on the banks of the
Thames, and here the poet was first seized with a fever, which
obliged him to remove; but he chose an equally improper
locality for a man of his temperament, in Chertsey, where he
died from the effects of a severe cold.]
Such were the ordinary letters which passed between two men
whom it would be difficult to parallel for their elegant
tastes and gentle dispositions. Evelyn's beautiful retreat at
Sayes Court, at Deptford, is described by a contemporary as
"a garden exquisite and most boscaresque, and, as it were,
an exemplar of his book of Forest-trees." It was the
entertainment and wonder of the greatest men of those times,
and inspired the following lines of Cowley, to Evelyn and
his lady, who excelled in the arts her husband loved; for she
designed the frontispiece to his version of Lucretius--
"In books and gardens thou hast placed aright
(Things well which thou dost understand,
And both dost make with thy laborious hand)
Thy noble innocent delight;
And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet
Both pleasures more refined and sweet;
The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the wisest books."
[28] A term the French apply to those _botches_ which bad poets use
to make out their metre.
[29] This comedy was first presented very hurriedly for the amusement
of Prince Charles as he passed through Cambridge to York.
Cowley himself describes it, then, as "neither _made_ nor
_acted_, but _rough-drawn_ by him, and _repeated_ by his
scholars" for this temporary purpose. After the Restoration he
endeavoured to do more justice to his juvenile work, by
remodelling it, and producing it at the Duke of York's
theatre. But as many of the characters necessarily retained
the features of the older play, and times had changed; it was
easy to affix a false stigma to the poet's pictures of the old
Cavaliers; and the play was universally condemned as a satire
on the Royalists. It was reproduced with success at the
theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, as long afterwards as the
year 1730.--ED.
[30] The anecdote, probably little known, may be found in "The
Judgment of Dr. Prideaux in Condemning the Murder of
Julius Caesar by the Conspirators as a most villanous act,
maintained," 1721, p. 41.
THE PAINS OF FASTIDIOUS EGOTISM.
I must place the author of "The Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors,"
who himself now ornaments that roll, among those who have participated
in the misfortunes of literature.
HORACE WALPOLE was the inheritor of a name the most popular in
Europe;[31] he moved in the higher circles of society; and fortune had
never denied him the ample gratification of his lively tastes in the
elegant arts, and in curious knowledge. These were particular
advantages. But Horace Walpole panted with a secret desire for
literary celebrity; a full sense of his distinguished rank long
suppressed the desire of venturing the name he bore to the uncertain
fame of an author, and the caprice of vulgar critics. At length he
pretended to shun authors, and to slight the honours of authorship.
The cause of this contempt has been attributed to the perpetual
consideration of his rank. But was this bitter contempt of so early a
date? Was Horace Walpole a Socrates before his time? was he born that
prodigy of indifference, to despise the secret object he languished to
possess? His early associates were not only noblemen, but literary
noblemen; and need he have been so petulantly fastidious at bearing
the venerable title of author, when he saw Lyttleton, Chesterfield,
and other peers, proud of wearing the blue riband of literature? No!
it was after he had become an author that he contemned authorship: and
it was not the precocity of his sagacity, but the maturity of his
experience, that made him willing enough to undervalue literary
honours, which were not sufficient to satisfy his desires.
Let us estimate the genius of Horace Walpole by analysing his talents,
and inquiring into the nature of his works.
His taste was highly polished; his vivacity attained to brilliancy;[32]
and his picturesque fancy, easily excited, was soon extinguished; his
playful wit and keen irony were perpetually exercised in his
observations on life, and his memory was stored with the most
amusing knowledge, but much too lively to be accurate; for his
studies were but his sports. But other qualities of genius must
distinguish the great author, and even him who would occupy that
leading rank in the literary republic our author aspired to fill. He
lived too much in that class of society which is little favourable to
genius; he exerted neither profound thinking, nor profound feeling;
and too volatile to attain to the pathetic, that higher quality of
genius, he was so imbued with the petty elegancies of society that
every impression of grandeur in the human character was deadened in
the breast of the polished cynic.
Horace Walpole was not a man of genius,--his most pleasing, if not his
great talent, lay in letter-writing; here he was without a rival;[33]
but he probably divined, when he condescended to become an author,
that something more was required than the talents he exactly
possessed. In his latter days he felt this more sensibly, which will
appear in those confessions which I have extracted from an unpublished
correspondence.
Conscious of possessing the talent which amuses, yet feeling his
deficient energies, he resolved to provide various substitutes for
genius itself; and to acquire reputation, if he could not grasp at
celebrity. He raised a printing-press at his Gothic castle, by which
means he rendered small editions of his works valuable from their
rarity, and much talked of, because seldom seen. That this is true,
appears from the following extract from his unpublished correspondence
with a literary friend. It alludes to his "Anecdotes of Painting in
England," of which the first edition only consisted of 300 copies.
"Of my new fourth volume I printed 600; but, as they can be had, I
believe not a third part is sold. This is a very plain lesson to me,
that my editions sell for their curiosity, and not for any merit in
them--and so they would if I printed Mother Goose's Tales, and but a
few. If I am humbled as an author, I may be vain as a printer; and
when one has nothing else to be vain of, it is certainly very little
worth while to be proud of that."
There is a distinction between the author of great connexions and the
mere author. In the one case, the man may give a temporary existence
to his books; but in the other, it is the book which gives existence
to the man.
Walpole's writings seem to be constructed on a certain principle, by
which he gave them a sudden, rather than a lasting existence. In
historical research our adventurer startled the world by maintaining
paradoxes which attacked the opinions, or changed the characters,
established for centuries. Singularity of opinion, vivacity of
ridicule, and polished epigrams in prose, were the means by which
Horace Walpole sought distinction.
In his works of imagination, he felt he could not trust to himself--the
natural pathetic was utterly denied him. But he had fancy and
ingenuity; he had recourse to the _marvellous_ in imagination on the
principle he had adopted the _paradoxical_ in history. Thus, "The
Castle of Otranto," and "The Mysterious Mother," are the productions
of ingenuity rather than genius; and display the miracles of art,
rather than the spontaneous creations of nature.
All his literary works, like the ornamented edifice he inhabited,
were constructed on the same artificial principle; an old paper
lodging-house, converted by the magician of taste into a Gothic
castle, full of scenic effects.[34]
"A Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors" was itself a classification
which only an idle amateur could have projected, and only the most
agreeable narrator of anecdotes could have seasoned. These splendid
scribblers are for the greater part no authors at all.[35]
His attack on our peerless Sidney, whose fame was more mature than
his life, was formed on the same principle as his "Historic Doubts" on
Richard III. Horace Walpole was as willing to vilify the truly great,
as to beautify deformity; when he imagined that the fame he was
destroying or conferring, reflected back on himself. All these works
were plants of sickly delicacy, which could never endure the open air,
and only lived in the artificial atmosphere of a private collection.
Yet at times the flowers, and the planter of the flowers, were roughly
shaken by an uncivil breeze.
His "Anecdotes of Painting in England" is a most entertaining
catalogue. He gives the feelings of the distinct eras with regard to
the arts; yet his pride was never gratified when he reflected that he
had been writing the work of Vertue, who had collected the materials,
but could not have given the philosophy. His great age and his good
sense opened his eyes on himself; and Horace Walpole seems to have
judged too contemptuously of Horace Walpole. The truth is, he was
mortified he had not and never could obtain a literary peerage; and he
never respected the commoner's seat. At these moments, too frequent in
his life, he contemns authors, and returns to sink back into all the
self-complacency of aristocratic indifference.
This cold unfeeling disposition for literary men, this disguised malice
of envy, and this eternal vexation at his own disappointments,--break
forth in his correspondence with one of those literary characters
with whom he kept on terms while they were kneeling to him in the
humility of worship, or moved about to fetch or to carry his little
quests of curiosity in town or country.[36]
The following literary confessions illustrate this character:--
"_June, 1778._
"I have taken a thorough dislike to being an author; and, if it
would not look like begging you to compliment one by contradicting
me, I would tell you what I am most seriously convinced of, that I
find what small share of parts I had grown dulled. And when I
perceive it myself, I may well believe that others would not be
less sharp-sighted. _It is very natural_; mine were _spirits_
rather than _parts_; and as time has rebated the one, it must
surely destroy _their resemblance_ to the other."
In another letter:--
"I set very little value on myself; as a man, I am a very faulty
one; and _as an author, a very middling one_, which _whoever
thinks a comfortable rank, is not at all of my opinion_. Pray
convince me that you think I mean sincerely, by not answering me
with a compliment. It is very weak to be pleased with flattery;
the stupidest of all delusions to beg it. From you I should take
it ill. We have known one another almost forty years."
There were times when Horace Walpole's natural taste for his studies
returned with all the vigour of passion--but his volatility and his
desultory life perpetually scattered his firmest resolutions into air.
This conflict appears beautifully described when the view of King's
College, Cambridge, throws his mind into meditation; and the passion
for study and seclusion instantly kindled his emotions, lasting,
perhaps, as long as the letter which describes them occupied in
writing.
"_May 22, 1777._
"The beauty of King's College, Cambridge, now it is restored,
penetrated me with a visionary longing to be a monk in it. Though
my life has been passed in turbulent scenes, in pleasures or other
pastimes, and in much fashionable dissipation, still, books,
antiquity, and virtue kept hold of a corner of my heart: and since
necessity has forced me of late years to be a man of business, my
disposition tends to be a recluse for what remains--but it will
not be my lot; and though there is some excuse for the young doing
what they like, I doubt an old man should do nothing but what he
ought, and I hope doing one's duty is the best preparation for
death. Sitting with one's arms folded to think about it, is a very
long way for preparing for it. If Charles V. had resolved to make
some amends for his abominable ambition by doing good (his duty
as a king), there would have been infinitely more merit than going
to doze in a convent. One may avoid actual guilt in a sequestered
life, but the virtue of it is merely negative; the innocence is
beautiful."
There had been moments when Horace Walpole even expressed the
tenderest feelings for fame; and the following passage, written prior
to the preceding ones, gives no indication of that contempt for
literary fame, of which the close of this character will exhibit an
extraordinary instance.
This letter relates an affecting event--he had just returned from
seeing General Conway attacked by a paralytic stroke. Shocked by his
appearance, he writes--
"It is, perhaps, to vent my concern that I write. It has operated
such a revolution on my mind, as no time, at _my age_, can efface.
It has at once damped every pursuit which my spirits had even now
prevented me from being weaned from, I mean of virtu. It is like a
mortal distemper in myself; for can amusements amuse, if there is
but a glimpse, a vision of outliving one's friends? _I have had
dreams in which I thought I wished for fame--it was not certainly
posthumous fame at any distance; I feel, I feel it was confined to
the memory of those I love._ It seems to me impossible for a man
who has no friends to do anything for fame--and to me the first
position in friendship is, to intend one's friends should survive
one--but it is not reasonable to oppress you, who are suffering
gout, with my melancholy ideas. What I have said will tell you,
what I hope so many years have told you, that I am very constant
and sincere to friends of above forty years."
In a letter of a later date there is a remarkable confession, which
harmonises with those already given.
"My pursuits have always been light, trifling, and tended to
nothing but my casual amusement. I will not say, without a little
vain ambition of showing some parts, but never with industry
sufficient to make me apply to anything solid. My studies, if they
could be called so, and my productions, were alike desultory. In
my latter age I discovered the futility both of my objects and
writings--I felt how insignificant is the reputation of an author
of mediocrity; and that, being no genius, I only added one name
more to a list of writers; but had told the world nothing but what
it could as well be without. These reflections were the best
proofs of my sense; and when I could see through my own vanity,
there is less wonder in my discovering that such talents as I
might have had are impaired at seventy-two."
Thus humbled was Horace Walpole to himself!--there is an intellectual
dignity, which this man of wit and sense was incapable of reaching--and
it seems a retribution that the scorner of true greatness should at
length feel the poisoned chalice return to his own lips. He who had
contemned the eminent men of former times, and quarrelled with and
ridiculed every contemporary genius; who had affected to laugh at
the literary fame he could not obtain,--at length came to scorn himself!
and endured "the penal fires" of an author's hell, in undervaluing his
own works, the productions of a long life!
The chagrin and disappointment of such an author were never less
carelessly concealed than in the following extraordinary letter:--
HORACE WALPOLE TO --------
"_Arlington Street, April 27, 1773._
"Mr. Gough wants to be introduced to me! Indeed! I would see him,
as he has been midwife to Masters; but he is so dull that he
would only be troublesome--and besides, you know I shun
authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to
keep such bad company. They are always in earnest, and think
their profession serious, and dwell upon trifles, and reverence
learning. I laugh at all these things, and write only to laugh
at them and divert myself. None of us are authors of any
consequence, and it is the most ridiculous of all vanities to be
vain of being _mediocre_. A page in a great author humbles me to
the dust, and the conversation of those that are not superior
to myself reminds me of what will be thought of myself. I blush
to flatter them, or to be flattered by them; and should dread
letters being published some time or other, in which they would
relate our interviews, and we should appear like those puny
conceited witlings in Shenstone's and Hughes's correspondence,
who give themselves airs from being in possession of the soil
of Parnassus for the time being; as peers are proud because they
enjoy the estates of great men who went before them. Mr. Gough is
very welcome to see Strawberry-hill, or I would help him to
any scraps in my possession that would assist his publications,
though he is one of those industrious who are only re-burying the
dead--but I cannot be acquainted with him; it is contrary to
my system and my humour; and besides I know nothing of barrows
and Danish entrenchments, and Saxon barbarisms and Phoenician
characters--in short, I know nothing of those ages that knew
nothing--then how should I be of use to modern literati? All the
Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works. I did not read one
of them, because I do not understand what is not understood by
those that write about it; and I did not get acquainted with
one of the writers. I should like to be intimate with Mr.
Anstey, even though he wrote Lord Buckhorse, or with the author
of the Heroic Epistle--I have no thirst to know the rest of my
contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to
the silly Dr. Goldsmith, though the latter changeling has had
bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he
changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me
scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with
Gray.--Adieu!"
Such a letter seems not to have been written by a literary man--it is
the babble of a thoughtless wit and a man of the world. But it is
worthy of him whose contracted heart could never open to patronage or
friendship. From such we might expect the unfeeling observation in the
"Anecdotes of Painting," that "want of patronage is the apology for
want of genius. Milton and La Fontaine did not write in the bask of
court favour. A poet or a painter may want an equipage or a villa, by
wanting protection; they can always afford to buy ink and paper,
colours and pencil. Mr. Hogarth has received no honours, but universal
admiration." Patronage, indeed, cannot convert dull men into men of
genius, but it may preserve men of genius from becoming dull men. It
might have afforded Dryden that studious leisure which he ever wanted,
and which would have given us not imperfect tragedies, and uncorrected
poems, but the regulated flights of a noble genius. It might have
animated Gainsborough to have created an English school in landscape,
which I have heard from those who knew him was his favourite yet
neglected pursuit. But Walpole could insult that genius, which he
wanted the generosity to protect!
The whole spirit of this man was penury. Enjoying an affluent
income he only appeared to patronise the arts which amused his
tastes,--employing the meanest artists, at reduced prices, to
ornament his own works, an economy which he bitterly reprehends in
others who were compelled to practise it. He gratified his avarice
at the expense of his vanity; the strongest passion must prevail.
It was the simplicity of childhood in Chatterton to imagine Horace
Walpole could be a patron--but it is melancholy to record that a
slight protection might have saved such a youth. Gray abandoned
this man of birth and rank in the midst of their journey through
Europe; Mason broke with him; even his humble correspondent Cole,
this "friend of forty years," was often sent away in dudgeon; and
he quarrelled with all the authors and artists he had ever been
acquainted with. The Gothic castle at Strawberry-hill was rarely
graced with living genius--there the greatest was Horace Walpole
himself; but he had been too long waiting to see realised a
magical vision of his hopes, which resembled the prophetic fiction of
his own romance, that "the owner should grow too large for his
house." After many years, having discovered that he still retained his
mediocrity, he could never pardon the presence of that preternatural
being whom the world considered a GREAT MAN.--Such was the feeling
which dictated the close of the above letter; Johnson and Goldsmith
were to be "scorned," since Pope and Gray were no more within the
reach of his envy and his fear.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] He was the youngest son of the celebrated minister, Sir Robert
Walpole.--ED.
[32] In his letters there are uncommon instances of vivacity,
whenever pointed against authors. The following have not yet
met the public eye. What can be more maliciously pungent
than this on Spence? "As I know Mr. J. Spence, I do not
think I should have been so much delighted as Dr. Kippis with
reading his letters. He was a good-natured harmless little
soul, but more like a silver penny than a genius. It was a
neat fiddle-faddle bit of sterling, that had read good books,
and kept good company; but was too trifling for use, and only
fit to please a child."--On Dr. Nash's first volume of
'Worcestershire': "It is a folio of prodigious corpulence, and
yet dry enough; but it is finely dressed with many heads and
views." He characterises Pennant; "_He_ is not one of our
plodders (alluding to Gough); rather the other extreme;
his _corporal_ spirits (for I cannot call them _animal_) do
not allow him to digest anything. He gave a round jump
from ornithology to antiquity, and, as if they had any
relation, thought he understood everything that lay between
them. The report of his being disordered is not true; he has
been with me, and at least is as composed as ever I saw him."
His literary correspondence with his friend Cole abounds
with this easy satirical criticism--he delighted to
ridicule authors!--as well as to starve the miserable artists
he so grudgingly paid. In the very volumes he celebrated the
arts, he disgraced them by his penuriousness; so that he
loved to indulge his avarice at the expense of his vanity!
[33] This opinion on Walpole's talent for letter-writing was
published in 1812, many years before the public had the
present collection of his letters; my prediction has been
amply verified. He wrote a great number to Bentley, the son
of Dr. Bentley, who ornamented Gray's works with some
extraordinary designs. Walpole, who was always proud and
capricious, observes his friend Cole, broke with Bentley
because he would bring his wife with him to Strawberry-hill.
He then asked Bentley for all his letters back, but he
would not in return give Bentley's own.
This whole correspondence abounded with literature, criticism,
and wit of the most original and brilliant composition. This
is the opinion of no friend, but an admirer, and a good judge;
for it was Bentley's own.
[34] This is the renowned Strawberry-hill, a villa still standing on
the banks of the Thames, between Teddington and Twickenham,
but now despoiled of the large collection of pictures,
curiosities, and articles of _vertu_ so assiduously collected
by Walpole during a long life. The ground on which it stands
was originally partially occupied by a small cottage, built by
a nobleman's coachman for a lodging-house, and occupied by a
toy-woman of the name of Chevenix. Hence Walpole says of it,
in a letter to General Conway, "it is a little plaything house
that I got out of Mrs. Chevenix's shop, and is the prettiest
bauble you ever saw."--ED.
[35] Walpole's characters are not often to be relied on, witness his
injustice to Hogarth as a painter, and his insolent calumny of
Charles I. His literary opinions of James I. and of Sidney
might have been written without any acquaintance with the
works he has so maliciously criticised. In his account of
Sidney he had silently passed over the "Defence of Poetry;"
and in his second edition has written this avowal, that "he
had forgotten it; a proof that I at least did not think it
sufficient foundation for so high a character as he acquired."
How heartless was the polished cynicism which could dare to
hazard this false criticism! Nothing can be more imposing than
his volatile and caustic criticisms on the works of James I.,
yet he had probably never opened that folio he so poignantly
ridicules. He doubts whether two pieces, "The Prince's
Cabala," and "The Duty of a King in his Royal Office," were
genuine productions of James I. The truth is that both these
works are nothing more than extracts printed with those
separate titles and drawn from the king's "Basilicon Doron."
He had probably neither read the extracts nor the original.
[36] It was such a person as Cole of Milton, his correspondent of
forty years, who lived at a distance, and obsequious to his
wishes, always looking up to him, though never with a
parallel glance--with whom he did not quarrel, though if
Walpole could have read the private notes Cole made in his
MSS. at the time he was often writing the civilest letters of
admiration,--even Cole would have been cashiered from his
correspondence. Walpole could not endure equality in literary
men.--Bentley observed to Cole, that Walpole's pride and
hauteur were excessive; which betrayed themselves in the
treatment of Gray who had himself too much pride and
spirit _to forgive it_ when matters were made up between them,
and Walpole invited Gray to Strawberry-hill. When Gray came,
he, without any ceremony, told Walpole that though he
waited on him as civility required, yet by _no means would he
ever be there on the terms of their former friendship,
which he had totally cancelled_.--From COLE'S MSS.
INFLUENCE OF A BAD TEMPER IN CRITICISM.
Unfriendly to the literary character, some have imputed the
brutality of certain authors to their literary habits, when it may
be more truly said that they derived their literature from their
brutality. The spirit was envenomed before it entered into the
fierceness of literary controversy, and the insanity was in the
evil temper of the man before he roused our notice by his ravings.
RITSON, the late antiquary of poetry (not to call him poetical),
amazed the world by his vituperative railing at two authors of the
finest taste in poetry, Warton and Percy; he carried criticism, as
the discerning few had first surmised, to insanity itself; the
character before us only approached it.
DENNIS attained to the ambiguous honour of being distinguished as
"The Critic," and he may yet instruct us how the moral influences the
literary character, and how a certain talent that can never mature
itself into genius, like the pale fruit that hangs in the shade,
ripens only into sourness.
As a critic in his own day, party for some time kept him alive; the
art of criticism was a novelty at that period of our literature. He
flattered some great men, and he abused three of the greatest; this
was one mode of securing popularity; because, by this contrivance, he
divided the town into two parties; and the irascibility and satire of
Pope and Swift were not less serviceable to him than the partial
panegyrics of Dryden and Congreve. Johnson revived him, for his minute
attack on Addison; and Kippis, feebly voluminous, and with the cold
affectation of candour, allows him to occupy a place in our literary
history too large in the eye of Truth and Taste.
Let us say all the good we can of him, that we may not be interrupted
in a more important inquiry. Dennis once urged fair pretensions to the
office of critic. Some of his "Original Letters," and particularly the
"Remarks on Prince Arthur," written in his vigour, attain even to
classical criticism.[37] Aristotle and Bossu lay open before him, and
he developes and sometimes illustrates their principles with close
reasoning. Passion had not yet blinded the young critic with rage; and
in that happy moment, Virgil occupied his attention even more than
Blackmore.
The prominent feature in his literary character was good sense; but in
literature, though not in life, good sense is a penurious virtue.
Dennis could not be carried beyond the cold line of a precedent, and
before he ventured to be pleased, he was compelled to look into
Aristotle. His learning was the bigotry of literature. It was ever
Aristotle explained by Dennis. But in the explanation of the obscure
text of his master, he was led into such frivolous distinctions, and
tasteless propositions, that his works deserve inspection, as examples
of the manner of a true mechanical critic.
This blunted feeling of the mechanical critic was at first concealed
from the world in the pomp of critical erudition; but when he trusted
to himself, and, destitute of taste and imagination, became a poet and
a dramatist, the secret of the Royal Midas was revealed. As his evil
temper prevailed, he forgot his learning, and lost the moderate sense
which he seemed once to have possessed. Rage, malice, and dulness,
were the heavy residuum; and now he much resembled that congenial soul
whom the ever-witty South compared to the tailor's goose, which is at
once hot and heavy.
Dennis was sent to Cambridge by his father, a saddler, who imagined a
genius had been born in the family. He travelled in France and Italy,
and on his return held in contempt every pursuit but poetry and
criticism. He haunted the literary coteries, and dropped into a galaxy
of wits and noblemen. At a time when our literature, like our
politics, was divided into two factions, Dennis enlisted himself under
Dryden and Congreve;[38] and, as legitimate criticism was then an
awful novelty in the nation, the young critic, recent from the
Stagirite, soon became an important, and even a tremendous spirit.
Pope is said to have regarded his judgment; and Mallet, when young,
tremblingly submitted a poem, to live or die by his breath. One would
have imagined that the elegant studies he was cultivating, the views
of life which had opened on him, and the polished circle around, would
have influenced the grossness which was the natural growth of the
soil. But ungracious Nature kept fast hold of the mind of Dennis!
His personal manners were characterised by their abrupt violence. Once
dining with Lord Halifax he became so impatient of contradiction, that
he rushed out of the room, overthrowing the sideboard. Inquiring on
the next day how he had behaved, Moyle observed, "You went away like
the devil, taking one corner of the house with you." The wits,
perhaps, then began to suspect their young Zoilus's dogmatism.
The actors refused to perform one of his tragedies to empty houses,
but they retained some excellent thunder which Dennis had invented;
it rolled one night when Dennis was in the pit, and it was applauded!
Suddenly starting up, he cried to the audience, "By G--, they wont act
my tragedy, but they steal my thunder!" Thus, when reading Pope's
"Essay on Criticism," he came to the character of Appius, he suddenly
flung down the new poem, exclaiming, "By G--, he means me!" He is
painted to the life.
_Lo!_ _Appius reddens_ at each word you speak,
And stares tremendous with a threatening eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.
I complete this picture of Dennis with a very extraordinary
caricature, which Steele, in one of his papers of "The Theatre," has
given of Dennis. I shall, however, disentangle the threads, and pick
out what I consider not to be caricature, but resemblance.
"His motion is quick and sudden, turning on all sides, with a
suspicion of every object, as if he had done or feared some
extraordinary mischief. You see wickedness in his meaning, but folly
of countenance, that betrays him to be unfit for the execution of it.
He starts, stares, and looks round him. This constant shuffle of haste
without speed, makes the man thought a little touched; but the vacant
look of his two eyes gives you to understand that he could never run
out of his wits, which seemed not so much to be lost, as to want
employment; they are not so much astray, as they are a wool-gathering.
He has the face and surliness of a mastiff, which has often saved him
from being treated like a cur, till some more sagacious than ordinary
found his nature, and used him accordingly. Unhappy being! terrible
without, fearful within! Not a wolf in sheep's clothing, but a sheep
in a wolf's."[39]
However anger may have a little coloured this portrait, its truth may
be confirmed from a variety of sources. If Sallust, with his
accustomed penetration in characterising the violent emotions of
Catiline's restless mind, did not forget its indication in "his walk
now quick and now slow," it maybe allowed to think that the character
of Dennis was alike to be detected in his habitual surliness.
Even in his old age--for our chain must not drop a link--his native
brutality never forsook him. Thomson and Pope charitably supported the
veteran Zoilus at a benefit play; and Savage, who had nothing but a
verse to give, returned them very poetical thanks in the name of
Dennis. He was then blind and old, but his critical ferocity had no
old age; his surliness overcame every grateful sense, and he swore as
usual, "They could be no one's but that _fool_ Savage's"--an evidence
of his sagacity and brutality![40] This was, perhaps, the last peevish
snuff shaken from the dismal link of criticism; for, a few days after,
was the redoubted Dennis numbered with the mighty dead.
He carried the same fierceness into his style, and commits the same
ludicrous extravagances in literary composition as in his manners. Was
Pope really sore at the Zoilian style? He has himself spared me the
trouble of exhibiting Dennis's gross personalities, by having
collected them at the close of the Dunciad--specimens which show how
low false wit and malignity can get to by hard pains. I will throw
into the note a curious illustration of the anti-poetical notions of a
mechanical critic, who has no wing to dip into the hues of the
imagination.[41]
In life and in literature we meet with men who seem endowed with an
obliquity of understanding, yet active and busy spirits; but, as
activity is only valuable in proportion to the capacity that puts all
in motion, so, when ill directed, the intellect, warped by nature,
only becomes more crooked and fantastical. A kind of frantic
enthusiasm breaks forth in their actions and their language, and often
they seem ferocious when they are only foolish. We may thus account
for the manners and style of Dennis, pushed almost to the verge of
insanity, and acting on him very much like insanity itself--a
circumstance which the quick vengeance of wit seized on, in the
humorous "Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the Frenzy of Mr.
John Dennis, an officer of the Custom-house."[42]
It is curious to observe that Dennis, in the definition of genius,
describes himself; he says--"Genius is caused by a _furious joy_ and
_pride of soul_ on the conception of an extraordinary hint. Many men
have their _hints_ without their motions of _fury and pride of soul_,
because they want fire enough to agitate their spirits; and these we
call cold writers. Others, who have a great deal of fire, but have not
excellent organs, feel the fore-mentioned _motions_, without the
extraordinary _hints_; and these we call fustian writers." His
_motions_ and his _hints_, as he describes them, in regard to cold or
fustian writers, seem to include the extreme points of his own
genius.
Another feature strongly marks the race of the Dennises. With a
half-consciousness of deficient genius, they usually idolize some
chimera, by adopting some extravagant principle; and they consider
themselves as original when they are only absurd.
Dennis had ever some misshapen idol of the mind, which he was
perpetually caressing with the zeal of perverted judgment or monstrous
taste. Once his frenzy ran against the Italian Opera; and in his
"Essay on Public Spirit," he ascribes its decline to its unmanly
warblings. I have seen a long letter by Dennis to the Earl of Oxford,
written to congratulate his lordship on his accession to power, and
the high hopes of the nation; but the greater part of the letter runs
on the Italian Opera, while Dennis instructs the Minister that the
national prosperity can never be effected while this general
corruption of the three kingdoms lies open!
Dennis has more than once recorded two material circumstances in the
life of a true critic; these are his _ill-nature_ and the _public
neglect_.
"I make no doubt," says he, "that upon the perusal of the critical
part of these letters, the _old accusation_ will be brought against
me, and there will be a _fresh outcry_ among thoughtless people that I
am _an ill-natured man_."
He entertained exalted opinions of his own powers, and he deeply felt
their public neglect.
"While others," he says in his tracts, "have been _too much
encouraged_, I have been _too much neglected_"--his favourite system,
that religion gives principally to great poetry its spirit and
enthusiasm, was an important point, which, he says, "has been left to
be treated by _a person who has the honour of being your lordship's
countryman_--your lordship knows that persons _so much and so long
oppressed as I have been_ have been always allowed to _say things
concerning themselves_ which in others might be offensive."
His vanity, we see, was equal to his vexation, and as he grew old he
became more enraged; and, writing too often without Aristotle or Locke
by his side, he gave the town pure Dennis, and almost ceased to be
read. "The oppression" of which he complains might not be less
imaginary than his alarm, while a treaty was pending with France, that
he should be delivered up to the Grand Monarque for having written a
tragedy, which no one could read, against his majesty.
It is melancholy, but it is useful, to record the mortifications of
such authors. Dennis had, no doubt, laboured with zeal which could
never meet a reward; and, perhaps, amid his critical labours, he
turned often with an aching heart from their barren contemplation to
that of the tranquillity he might have derived from an humbler
avocation.
It was not literature, then, that made the mind coarse, brutalising
the habits and inflaming the style of Dennis. He had thrown himself
among the walks of genius, and aspired to fix himself on a throne to
which Nature had refused him a legitimate claim. What a lasting source
of vexation and rage, even for a long-lived patriarch of criticism!
Accustomed to suspend the scourge over the heads of the first authors
of the age, he could not sit at a table or enter a coffee-house
without exerting the despotism of a literary dictator. How could the
mind that had devoted itself to the contemplation of masterpieces,
only to reward its industry by detailing to the public their human
frailties, experience one hour of amenity, one idea of grace, one
generous impulse of sensibility?
But the poor critic himself at length fell, really more the victim of
his criticisms than the genius he had insulted. Having incurred the
public neglect, the blind and helpless Cacus in his den sunk fast into
contempt, dragged on a life of misery, and in his last days, scarcely
vomiting his fire and smoke, became the most pitiable creature,
receiving the alms he craved from triumphant genius.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] It is curious to observe that Kippis, who classifies with the
pomp of enumeration his heap of pamphlets, imagines that, as
Blackmore's Epic is consigned to oblivion, so likewise must be
the criticism, which, however, he confesses he could never
meet with. An odd fate attends Dennis's works: his criticism
on a bad work ought to survive it, as good works have survived
his criticisms.
[38] See in Dennis's "Original Letters" one to Tonson, entitled, "On
the conspiracy against the reputation of Mr. Dryden." It was
in favour of _folly_ against _wisdom_, _weakness_ against
_power_, &c.; _Pope_ against _Dryden_. He closes with a
well-turned period. "Wherever genius runs through a work, I
forgive its faults; and wherever that is wanting, no beauties
can touch me. Being struck by Mr. Dryden's genius, I have no
eyes for his errors; and I have no eyes for his enemies'
beauties, because I am not struck by their genius."
[39] In the narrative of his frenzy (quoted p. 56), his _personnel_
is thus given. "His aspect was furious, his eyes were rather
fiery than lively, which he rolled about in an uncommon
manner. He often opened his mouth as if he would have uttered
some matter of importance, but the sound seemed lost inwardly.
His beard was grown, which they told me he would not suffer to
be shaved, believing the modern dramatic poets had corrupted
all the barbers of the town to take the first opportunity of
cutting his throat. His eyebrows were grey, long, and grown
together, which he knit with indignation when anything was
spoken, insomuch that he seemed not to have smoothed his
forehead for many years."--ED.
[40] There is an epigram on Dennis by Savage, which Johnson has
preserved in his Life; and I feel it to be a very correct
likeness, although Johnson censures Savage for writing an
epigram against Dennis, while he was living in great
familiarity with the critic. Perhaps that was the happiest
moment to write the epigram. The anecdote in the text
doubtless prompted "the fool" to take this fair revenge and
just chastisement. Savage has brought out the features
strongly, in these touches--
"Say what revenge on Dennis can be had,
Too dull for laughter, for reply too mad.
On one so poor you cannot take the law,
On one so old your sword you scorn to draw.
Uncaged then, let the harmless monster rage,
Secure in dulness, madness, want, and age!"
[41] Dennis points his heavy cannon of criticism and thus
bombards that aerial edifice, the "Rape of the Lock." He is
inquiring into the nature of _poetical machinery_, which, he
oracularly pronounces, should be religious, or allegorical,
or political; asserting the "Lutrin" of Boileau to be a
trifle only in appearance, covering the deep political
design of reforming the Popish Church!--With the yard of
criticism he takes measure of the slender graces and tiny
elegance of Pope's aerial machines, as "less considerable
than the _human persons_, which is _without precedent_.
Nothing can be so contemptible as the _persons_ or so
foolish as the understandings of these _hobgoblins_.
Ariel's speech is one continued impertinence. After he has
talked to them of black omens and dire disasters that
threaten his heroine, those bugbears dwindle to the breaking
a piece of china, to staining a petticoat, the losing a
fan, or a bottle of sal volatile--and what makes Ariel's
speech more ridiculous is the _place_ where it is spoken, on
the sails and cordage of Belinda's barge." And then he
compares the Sylphs to the Discord of Homer, whose feet are
upon the earth, and head in the skies. "They are, indeed,
beings so diminutive that they bear the same proportion to
the rest of the intellectual that _Eels in vinegar_ do to
the rest of the material world; the latter are only to be seen
through microscopes, and the former only through the false
optics of a Rosicrucian understanding." And finally, he
decides that "these diminutive beings are only _Sawney_
(that is, Alexander Pope), taking the change; for it is
he, a little lump of flesh, that talks, instead of a little
spirit." Dennis's profound gravity contributes an additional
feature of the burlesque to these heroi-comic poems
themselves, only that Dennis cannot be playful, and will
not be good-humoured.
On the same tasteless principle he decides on the improbability
of that incident in the "Conscious Lovers" of Steele, raised
by Bevil, who, having received great obligations from his
father, has promised not to marry without his consent. On this
Dennis, who rarely in his critical progress will stir a foot
without authority, quotes four formidable pages from Locke's
"Essay on Government," to prove that, at the age of
discretion, a man is free to dispose of his own actions! One
would imagine that Dennis was arguing like a special pleader,
rather than developing the involved action of an affecting
drama. Are there critics who would pronounce Dennis to be a
very _sensible_ brother? It is here too he calls Steele "a
twopenny author," alluding to the price of the "Tatlers"--but
this cost Dennis dear!
[42] "The narrative of the frenzy of Mr. John Dennis," published in
the Miscellanies of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, and said to
have been written by Pope, is a grave banter on his usual
violence. It professes to be the account of the physician who
attended him at the request of a servant, who describes the
first attack of his madness coming on when "a poor simple
child came to him from the printers; the boy had no sooner
entered the room, but he cried out 'the devil was come!'" The
constant idiosyncrasy he had that his writings against France
and the Pope might endanger his liberty, is amusingly hit off;
"he perpetually starts and runs to the window when any one
knocks, crying out ''Sdeath! a messenger from the French King;
I shall die in the Bastile!'"--ED.
DISAPPOINTED GENIUS
TAKES A FATAL DIRECTION BY ITS ABUSE.
How the moral and literary character are reciprocally influenced, may
be traced in the character of a personage peculiarly apposite to these
inquiries. This worthy of literature is ORATOR HENLEY, who is rather
known traditionally than historically.[43] He is so overwhelmed with
the echoed satire of Pope, and his own extravagant conduct for many
years, that I should not care to extricate him, had I not discovered a
feature in the character of Henley not yet drawn, and constituting no
inferior calamity among authors.
Henley stands in his "gilt tub" in the Dunciad; and a portrait of him
hangs in the picture-gallery of the Commentary. Pope's verse and
Warburton's notes are the pickle and the bandages for any Egyptian
mummy of dulness, who will last as long as the pyramid that encloses
him. I shall transcribe, for the reader's convenience, the lines of
Pope:--
Embrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands,
Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands;
How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue!
How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung!
Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain,
While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson, preach in vain.
Oh! great restorer of the good old stage,
Preacher at once, and Zany of thy age![44]
It will surprise when I declare that this buffoon was an indefatigable
student, a proficient in all the learned languages, an elegant poet,
and, withal, a wit of no inferior class. It remains to discover why
"the Preacher" became "the Zany."
Henley was of St. John's College, Cambridge, and was distinguished for
the ardour and pertinacity of his studies; he gave evident marks of
genius. There is a letter of his to the "Spectator," signed _Peter de
Quir_, which abounds with local wit and quaint humour.[45] He had not
attained his twenty-second year when he published a poem, entitled
"Esther, Queen of Persia,"[46] written amid graver studies; for three
years after, Henley, being M.A., published his "Complete Linguist,"
consisting of grammars of ten languages.
The poem itself must not be passed by in silent notice. It is preceded
by a learned preface, in which the poet discovers his intimate
knowledge of oriental studies, with some etymologies from the Persic,
the Hebrew, and the Greek, concerning the name and person of
Ahasuerus, whom he makes to be Xerxes. The close of this preface gives
another unexpected feature in the character of him who, the poet tells
us, was "embrowned with _native_ bronze"--an unaffected modesty!
Henley, alluding to a Greek paraphrase of Barnes, censures his faults
with acrimony, and even apologises for them, by thus gracefully
closing the preface: "These can only be alleviated by one plea, the
youth of the author, which is a circumstance I hope the candid will
consider in favour of the present writer!"
The poem is not destitute of imagination and harmony.
The pomp of the feast of Ahasuerus has all the luxuriance of Asiatic
splendour; and the circumstances are selected with some fancy.
The higher guests approach a room of state,
Where tissued couches all around were set
Labour'd with art; o'er ivory tables thrown,
Embroider'd carpets fell in folds adown.
The bowers and gardens of the court were near,
And open lights indulged the breathing air.
Pillars of marble bore a silken sky,
While cords of purple and fine linen tie
In silver rings, the azure canopy.
Distinct with diamond stars the blue was seen,
And earth and seas were feign'd in emerald green;
A globe of gold, ray'd with a pointed crown,
Form'd in the midst almost a real sun.
Nor is Henley less skilful in the elegance of his sentiments, and in
his development of the human character. When Esther is raised to the
throne, the poet says--
And Esther, though in robes, is Esther still.
And then sublimely exclaims--
The heroic soul, amidst its bliss or woe,
Is never swell'd too high, nor sunk too low;
Stands, like its origin above the skies,
Ever the same great self, sedately wise;
Collected and prepared in every stage
To scorn a courting world, or bear its rage.
But wit which the "Spectator" has sent down to posterity, and poetry
which gave the promise of excellence, did not bound the noble ambition
of Henley; ardent in more important labours, he was perfecting himself
in the learned languages, and carrying on a correspondence with
eminent scholars.
He officiated as the master of the free-school at his native town in
Leicestershire, then in a declining state; but he introduced many
original improvements. He established a class for public elocution,
recitations of the classics, orations, &c.; and arranged a method of
enabling every scholar to give an account of his studies without the
necessity of consulting others, or of being examined by particular
questions. These miracles are indeed a little apocryphal; for they are
drawn from that pseudo-gospel of his life, of which I am inclined to
think he himself was the evangelist. His grammar of ten languages was
now finished; and his genius felt that obscure spot too circumscribed
for his ambition. He parted from the inhabitants with their regrets,
and came to the metropolis with thirty recommendatory letters.
Henley probably had formed those warm conceptions of patronage in
which youthful genius cradles its hopes. Till 1724 he appears,
however, to have obtained only a small living, and to have existed by
translating and writing. Thus, after persevering studies, many
successful literary efforts, and much heavy taskwork, Henley found he
was but a hireling author for the booksellers, and a salaried
"Hyp-doctor" for the minister; for he received a stipend for this
periodical paper, which was to cheer the spirits of the people by
ridiculing the gloomy forebodings of Amhurst's "Craftsman." About this
time the complete metamorphosis of the studious and ingenious John
Henley began to branch out into its grotesque figure; and a curiosity
in human nature was now about to be opened to public inspection. "The
Preacher" was to personate "The Zany." His temper had become brutal,
and he had gradually contracted a ferocity and grossness in his
manners, which seem by no means to have been indicated in his purer
days. His youth was disgraced by no irregularities--it was studious
and honourable. But he was now quick at vilifying the greatest
characters; and having a perfect contempt for all mankind, was
resolved to live by making one half of the world laugh at the other.
Such is the direction which disappointed genius has too often given to
its talents.
He first affected oratory, and something of a theatrical attitude in
his sermons, which greatly attracted the populace; and he startled
those preachers who had so long dozed over their own sermons, and who
now finding themselves with but few slumberers about them, envied
their Ciceronian brothers.
Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands.
It was alleged against Henley, that "he drew the people too much from
their parish churches, and was not so proper for a London divine as a
rural pastor." He was offered a rustication, on a better living; but
Henley did not come from the country to return to it.
There is a narrative of the life of Henley, which, subscribed by another
person's name, he himself inserted in his "Oratory Transactions."[47]
As he had to publish himself this highly seasoned biographical
morsel, and as his face was then beginning to be "embrowned with
bronze," he thus very impudently and very ingeniously apologises for
the panegyric:--
"If any remark of the writer appears favourable to myself, and be
judged apocryphal, it may, however, weigh in the opposite scale to
some things less obligingly said of me; false praise being as
pardonable as false reproach."[48]
In this narrative we are told, that when at college--
"He began to be uneasy that he had not the liberty of thinking,
without incurring the scandal of heterodoxy; he was impatient that
systems of all sorts were put into his hands ready carved out for him;
it shocked him to find that he was commanded to believe against his
judgment, and resolved some time or other to enter his protest against
any person being bred like a slave, who is born an Englishman."
This is all very decorous, and nothing can be objected to the first
cry of this reforming patriot but a reasonable suspicion of its truth.
If these sentiments were really in his mind at college, he deserves at
least the praise of retention: for fifteen years were suffered to pass
quietly without the patriotic volcano giving even a distant rumbling
of the sulphurous matter concealed beneath. All that time had passed
in the contemplation of church preferment, with the aerial perspective
lighted by a visionary mitre. But Henley grew indignant at his
disappointments, and suddenly resolved to reform "the gross impostures
and faults that have long prevailed in the received _institutions_ and
_establishments_ of _knowledge_ and _religion_"--simply meaning that
he wished to pull down the _Church_ and the _University_!
But he was prudent before he was patriotic; he at first grafted
himself on Whiston, adopting his opinions, and sent some queries by
which it appears that Henley, previous to breaking with the church,
was anxious to learn the power it had to punish him. The Arian Whiston
was himself, from pure motives, suffering expulsion from Cambridge,
for refusing his subscription to the Athanasian Creed; he was a pious
man, and no buffoon, but a little crazed. Whiston afterwards
discovered the character of his correspondent, he then requested the
Bishop of London.
"To summon Mr. Henley, the orator, whose vile history I knew so well,
to come and tell it to the church. But the bishop said he could do
nothing; since which time Mr. Henley has gone on for about twenty
years without control every week, as an ecclesiastical mountebank, to
abuse religion."
The most extraordinary project was now formed by Henley; he was to
teach mankind universal knowledge from his lectures, and primitive
Christianity from his sermons. He took apartments in Newport market,
and opened his "Oratory." He declared,
"He would teach more in one year than schools and universities did in
five, and write and study twelve hours a-day, and yet appear as
untouched by the yoke, as if he never bore it."
In his "Idea of what is intended to be taught in the _Week-days'
Universal Academy_," we may admire the fertility, and sometimes the
grandeur of his views. His lectures and orations[49] are of a very
different nature from what they are imagined to be; literary topics
are treated with perspicuity and with erudition, and there is
something original in the manner. They were, no doubt, larded and
stuffed with many high-seasoned jokes, which Henley did not send to
the printer.
Henley was a charlatan and a knave; but in all his charlatanerie and
his knavery he indulged the reveries of genius; many of which have
been realised since; and, if we continue to laugh at Henley, it will
indeed be cruel, for we shall be laughing at ourselves! Among the
objects which Henley discriminates in his general design, were, to
supply the want of a university, or universal school, in this capital,
for persons of all ranks, professions, and capacities;--to encourage a
literary correspondence with great men and learned bodies; the
communication of all discoveries and experiments in science and the
arts; to form an amicable society for the encouragement of learning,
"in order to cultivate, adorn, and exalt the genius of Britain;" to
lay a foundation for an English Academy; to give a standard to our
language, and a digest to our history; to revise the ancient schools
of philosophy and elocution, which last has been reckoned by
Pancirollus among the _artes perditae_. All these were "to bring all
the parts of knowledge into the narrowest compass, placing them in the
clearest light, and fixing them to the utmost certainty." The religion
of the Oratory was to be that of the primitive church in the first
ages of the four first general councils, approved by parliament in the
first year of the reign of Elizabeth. "The Church of England is really
with us; we appeal to her own principles, and we shall not deviate
from her, unless she deviates from herself." Yet his "Primitive
Christianity" had all the sumptuous pomp of popery; his creeds and
doxologies are printed in the red letter, and his liturgies in the
black; his pulpit blazed in gold and velvet (Pope's "gilt tub"); while
his "Primitive Eucharist" was to be distributed with all the ancient
forms of celebrating the sacrifice of the altar, which he says, "are
so noble, so just, sublime, and perfectly harmonious, that the change
has been made to an unspeakable disadvantage." It was restoring the
decorations and the mummery of the mass! He assumed even a higher
tone, and dispersed medals, like those of Louis XIV., with the device
of a sun near the meridian, and a motto, _Ad summa_, with an
inscription expressive of the genius of this new adventurer, _Inveniam
viam aut faciam_! There was a snake in the grass; it is obvious that
Henley, in improving literature and philosophy, had a deeper
design--to set up a new sect! He called himself "a Rationalist," and
on his death-bed repeatedly cried out, "Let my notorious enemies know
I die a Rational."[50]
His address to the town[51] excited public curiosity to the utmost;
and the floating crowds were repulsed by their own violence from
this new paradise, where "The Tree of Knowledge" was said to be
planted. At the succeeding meeting "the Restorer of Ancient
Eloquence" informed "persons in chairs that they must come sooner."
He first commenced by subscriptions to be raised from "persons
eminent in Arts and Literature," who, it seems, were lured by the
seductive promise, that, "if they had been virtuous or penitents, they
should be commemorated;" an oblique hint at a panegyrical puff. In the
decline of his popularity he permitted his door-keeper, whom he
dignifies with the title of _Ostiary_, to take a shilling! But he
seems to have been popular for many years; even when his auditors
were but few, they were of the better order;[52] and in notes
respecting him which I have seen, by a contemporary, he is called
"the reverend and learned." His favourite character was that of a
Restorer of Eloquence; and he was not destitute of the qualifications
of a fine orator, a good voice, graceful gesture, and forcible
elocution. Warburton justly remarked, "Sometimes he broke jests,
and sometimes that bread which he called the Primitive Eucharist." He
would degenerate into buffoonery on solemn occasions. His address to
the Deity was at first awful, and seemingly devout; but, once
expatiating on the several sects who would certainly be damned, he
prayed that the Dutch might be _undamm'd_! He undertook to show the
ancient use of the petticoat, by quoting the Scriptures where the
mother of Samuel is said to have made him "_a little coat_," ergo, a
PETTI-_coat_![53] His advertisements were mysterious ribaldry to
attract curiosity, while his own good sense would frequently
chastise those who could not resist it; his auditors came in
folly, but they departed in good-humour.[54] These advertisements
were usually preceded by a sort of motto, generally a sarcastic
allusion to some public transaction of the preceding week.[55]
Henley pretended to great impartiality; and when two preachers had
animadverted on him, he issued an advertisement, announcing "A
Lecture that will be a challenge to the Rev. Mr. Batty and the Rev.
Mr. Albert. Letters are sent to them on this head, and _a free
standing-place_ is there to be had _gratis_." Once Henley offered
to admit of a disputation, and that he would impartially determine
the merits of the contest. It happened that Henley this time was
overmatched; for two Oxonians, supported by a strong party to awe his
"marrow-boners," as the butchers were called, said to be in the
Orator's pay, entered the list; the one to defend the _ignorance_,
the other the _impudence_, of the Restorer of Eloquence himself. As
there was a door behind the rostrum, which led to his house, the
Orator silently dropped out, postponing the award to some happier
day.[56]
This age of lecturers may find their model in Henley's "Universal
Academy," and if any should aspire to bring themselves down to his
genius, I furnish them with hints of anomalous topics. In the second
number of "The Oratory Transactions," is a diary from July 1726, to
August 1728. It forms, perhaps, an unparalleled chronicle of the
vagaries of the human mind. These archives of cunning, of folly, and
of literature, are divided into two diaries; the one "The Theological
or Lord's days' subjects of the Oratory;" the other, "The Academical
or Week-days' subjects." I can only note a few. It is easy to pick out
ludicrous specimens; for he had a quaint humour peculiar to himself;
but among these numerous topics are many curious for their knowledge
and ingenuity.
"The last Wills and Testaments of the Patriarchs."
"An Argument to the Jews, with a proof that they ought to be
Christians, for the same reason which they ought to be Jews."
"St. Paul's Cloak, Books, and Parchments, left at Troas."
"The tears of Magdalen, and the joy of angels."
"New Converts in Religion." After pointing out the names of "Courayer
and others, the D---- of W----n, the Protestantism of the P----, the
conversion of the Rev. Mr. B----e, and Mr. Har----y," he closes with
"Origen's opinion of Satan's conversion; with the choice and balance
of Religion in all countries."
There is one remarkable entry:--
"Feb. 11. This week all Mr. Henley's writings were seized, to be
examined by the State. _Vide Magnam Chartam_, and _Eng Lib._"
It is evident by what follows that the _personalities_ he made use of
were one means of attracting auditors.
"On the action of Cicero, and the beauty of Eloquence, and on living
characters; of action in the Senate, at the Bar, and in the Pulpit--of
the Theatrical in all men. The manner of my Lord ----, Sir ----, Dr.
----, the B. of ----, being a proof how all life is playing something,
but with different action."
In a Lecture on the History of Bookcraft, an account was given
"Of the plenty of books, and dearth of sense; the advantages of the
Oratory to the booksellers, in advertising for them; and to their
customers, in making books useless; with all the learning, reason, and
wit more than are proper for one advertisement."
Amid these eccentricities it is remarkable that "the Zany" never
forsook his studies; and the amazing multiplicity of the MSS. he left
behind him confirm this extraordinary fact. "These," he says, "are six
thousand more or less, that I value at one guinea apiece; with 150
volumes of commonplaces of wit, memoranda," &c. They were sold for
much less than one hundred pounds; I have looked over many; they are
written with great care. Every leaf has an opposite blank page,
probably left for additions or corrections, so that if his nonsense
were spontaneous, his sense was the fruit of study and correction.
Such was "Orator Henley!" A scholar of great acquirements, and of no
mean genius; hardy and inventive, eloquent and witty; he might have
been an ornament to literature, which he made ridiculous; and the
pride of the pulpit, which he so egregiously disgraced; but, having
blunted and worn out that interior feeling, which is the instinct of
the good man, and the wisdom of the wise, there was no balance in his
passions, and the decorum of life was sacrificed to its selfishness.
He condescended to live on the follies of the people, and his sordid
nature had changed him till he crept, "licking the dust with the
serpent."[57]
FOOTNOTES:
[43] So little is known of this singular man, that Mr. Dibdin, in his
very curious "Bibliomania," was not able to recollect any
other details than those he transcribed from Warburton's
"Commentary on the Dunciad." In Mr. Nichols' "History of
Leicestershire" a more copious account of Henley may be found;
to their facts something is here added. It was, however,
difficult to glean after so excellent a harvest-home. To the
author of the "Life of Bowyer," and other works devoted to our
authors, our literary history is more indebted, than to the
labours of any other contemporary. He is the Prosper Marchand
of English literature.
[44] It is, perhaps, unnecessary to point out this allusion of Pope
to our ancient _mysteries_, where the _Clergy_ were the
_actors_; among which, the _Vice_ or _Punch_ was introduced.
(See "Curiosities of Literature.")
[45] Specimens of Henley's style may be most easily referred to in
the "Spectator," Nos. 94 and 518. The communication on
punning, in the first; and that of judging character by
exteriors, in the last; are both attributed to Henley.--ED.
[46] The title is, "Esther, Queen of Persia, an historical Poem, in
four books; by John Henley, B.A. of St. John's College,
Cambridge. 1714."
[47] Many of the rough drafts of his famed discourses delivered at
the Oratory are preserved in the library of the Guildhall,
London. The advertisements he drew up for the papers,
announcing their subject, are generally exceedingly whimsical,
and calculated to attract popular attention.--ED.
[48] This narrative is subscribed A. Welstede. Warburton maliciously
quotes it as a life of Henley, written by Welsted--doubtless
designed to lower the writer of that name, and one of the
heroes of the Dunciad. The public have long been deceived by
this artifice; the effect, I believe, of Warburton's
dishonesty.
[49] Every lecture is dedicated to some branch of the royal family.
Among them one is on "University Learning," an attack.--"On
the English History and Historians," extremely curious.--"On
the Languages, Ancient and Modern," full of erudition.--"On
the English Tongue," a valuable criticism at that moment when
our style was receiving a new polish from Addison and Prior.
Henley, acknowledging that these writers had raised
_correctness_ of expression to its utmost height, adds,
though, "if I mistake not, something to the detriment of that
_force_ and _freedom_ that ought, with the most concealed art,
to be a perfect copy of nature in all compositions." This is
among the first notices of that artificial style which has
vitiated our native idiom, substituting for its purity an
affected delicacy, and for its vigour profuse ornament. Henley
observes that, "to be perspicuous, pure, elegant, copious, and
harmonious, are the chief good qualities of writing the
English tongue; they are attained by study and practice, and
lost by the contrary: but _imitation_ is to be avoided; they
cannot be made our own but by keeping the force of our
understandings superior to our models; by _rendering our
thoughts the original, and our words the copy_."--"On Wit and
Imagination," abounding with excellent criticism.--"On grave
conundrums and serious buffoons, in defence of burlesque
discourses, from the most weighty authorities."--"A
Dissertation upon Nonsense." At the close he has a fling at
his friend Pope; it was after the publication of the Dunciad.
"Of Nonsense there are celebrated professors; Mr. Pope grows
witty like Bays in the 'Rehearsal,' by selling bargains (his
subscriptions for Homer), praising himself, laughing at his
joke, and making his own works the test of any man's
criticism; but he seems to be in some jeopardy; for the ghost
of Homer has lately spoke to him in Greek, and Shakspeare
resolves to bring him, as he has brought Shakspeare, to a
tragical conclusion. Mr. Pope suggests the last choice of a
subject for writing a book, by making the _Nonsense_ of others
his argument; while his own puts it out of any writer's power
to confute him." In another fling at Pope, he gives the reason
why Mr. Pope adds the dirty dialect to that of the water, and
is in love with the Nymphs of Fleet ditch; and in a lecture on
the spleen he announced "an anatomical discovery, that Mr.
Pope's spleen is bigger than his head!"
[50] Thus he anticipated the term, since become so notorious among
German theologians.
[51] It is preserved in the "Historical Register," vol. xi. for 1726.
It is curious and well written.
[52] "Gentleman's Magazine," vol. lvii. p. 876.
[53] His "Defence of the Oratory" is a curious performance. He
pretends to derive his own from great authority. "St. Paul
is related, Acts 28, to have dwelt _two whole years in his
own hired house_, and to have received all that came in
unto him, teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus
Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him. This
was at _Rome_, and doubtless was his practice in his other
travels, there being the same reason in the thing to produce
elsewhere the like circumstances." He proceeds to show
"the calumnies and reproaches, and the novelty and impiety,
with which Christianity, at its first setting out, was
charged, as a mean, abject institution, not only useless
and unserviceable, but pernicious to the public and its
professors, as the refuse of the world."--Of the false
accusations raised against Jesus--all this he applies to
himself and his oratory--and he concludes, that "Bringing
men to think rightly will always be reckoned a depraving
of their minds by those who are desirous to keep them in a
mistake, and who measure all truth by the standard of their
own narrow opinions, views, and passions. The principles of
this institution are those of right reason: the first ages
of Christianity; true facts, clear criticism, and polite
literature--if these corrupt the mind, to find a place where
the mind will not be corrupted will be impracticable."
Thus speciously could "the Orator" reason, raising himself to
the height of apostolical purity. And when he was accused
that he _did all for lucre_, he retorted, that "some _do
nothing_ for it;" and that "he preached more charity sermons
than any clergyman in the kingdom."
[54] He once advertised an oration on marriage, which drew together
an overflowing assembly of females, at which, solemnly shaking
his head, he told the ladies, that "he was afraid, that
oftentimes, as well as now, they came to church in hopes to
get husbands, rather than be instructed by the preacher;" to
which he added a piece of wit not quite decent. He congregated
the trade of shoemakers, by offering to show the most
expeditious method of making shoes: he held out a boot, and
cut off the leg part. He gave a lecture, which he advertised
was "for the instruction of those who do not like it; it was
on the philosophy, history, and great use of _Nonsense_ to the
learned, political, and polite world, who excel in it."
[55] Dr. Cobden, one of George the Second's chaplains, having, in
1748, preached a sermon at St. James's from these words, "Take
away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be
established in righteousness," it gave so much displeasure,
that the doctor was struck out of the list of chaplains; and
the next Saturday the following parody of his text appeared as
a motto to Henley's advertisement:
"Away with the wicked before the king,
And away with the wicked behind him;
His throne it will bless
With righteousness,
And we shall know where to find him."
CHALMER'S "Biographical Dictionary."
[56] The history of the closing years of Henley's life is thus given
in "The History of the Robin Hood Society," 1764, a political
club, whose debates he occasionally enlivened:--"The Orator,
with various success, still kept up his _Oratory_, _King
George's_, or _Charles's Chapel_, as he differently termed it,
till the year 1759, when he died. At its first establishment
it was amazingly crowded, and money flowed in upon him apace;
and between whiles it languished and drooped: but for some
years before its author's death it dwindled away so much, and
fell into such an hectic state, that the few friends of it
feared its decease was very near. The doctor, indeed, kept it
up to the last, determined it should live as long as he did,
and actually exhibited many evenings to empty benches. Finding
no one at length would attend, he admitted the acquaintances
of his door-keeper, runner, mouth-piece, and some other of his
followers, gratis. On the 13th of October, however, the doctor
died, and the Oratory ceased; no one having iniquity or
impudence sufficient to continue it on."--ED.
[57] Hogarth has preserved his features in the parson who figures so
conspicuously in his "Modern Midnight Conversation." His
off-hand style of discourse is given in the _Gray's-Inn
Journal_, 1753 (No. 18), in an imaginary meeting of the
political Robin Hood Society, where he figures as Orator Bronze,
and exclaims:--"I am pleased to see this assembly--you're a
twig from me; a chip of the old block at Clare Market;--I am
the old block, invincible; _coup de grace_ as yet unanswered.
We are brother rationalists; logicians upon fundamentals! I
love ye all--I love mankind in general--give me some of that
porter."--ED.
THE MALADIES OF AUTHORS.
The practice of every art subjects the artist to some particular
inconvenience, usually inflicting some malady on that member which has
been over-wrought by excess: nature abused, pursues man into his most
secret corners, and avenges herself. In the athletic exercises of the
ancient Gymnasium, the pugilists were observed to become lean from
their hips downwards, while the superior parts of their bodies, which
they over-exercised, were prodigiously swollen; on the contrary, the
racers were meagre upwards, while their feet acquired an unnatural
dimension. The secret source of life seems to be carried forwards to
those parts which are making the most continued efforts.
In all sedentary labours, some particular malady is contracted by
every worker, derived from particular postures of the body and
peculiar habits. Thus the weaver, the tailor, the painter, and the
glass-blower, have all their respective maladies. The diamond-cutter,
with a furnace before him, may be said almost to live in one; the
slightest air must be shut out of the apartment, lest it scatter away
the precious dust--a breath would ruin him!
The analogy is obvious;[58] and the author must participate in the
common fate of all sedentary occupations. But his maladies, from the
very nature of the delicate organ of thinking, intensely exercised,
are more terrible than those of any other profession; they are more
complicated, more hidden in their causes, and the mysterious union
and secret influence of the faculties of the soul over those of the
body, are visible, yet still incomprehensible; they frequently produce
a perturbation in the faculties, a state of acute irritability, and
many sorrows and infirmities, which are not likely to create much
sympathy from those around the author, who, at a glance, could have
discovered where the pugilist or the racer became meagre or monstrous:
the intellectual malady eludes even the tenderness of friendship.
The more obvious maladies engendered by the life of a student arise
from over-study. These have furnished a curious volume to Tissot, in
his treatise "On the Health of Men of Letters;" a book, however, which
chills and terrifies more than it does good.
The unnatural fixed postures, the perpetual activity of the mind, and
the inaction of the body; the brain exhausted with assiduous toil
deranging the nerves, vitiating the digestive powers, disordering its
own machinery, and breaking the calm of sleep by that previous state
of excitement which study throws us into, are some of the calamities
of a studious life: for like the ocean when its swell is subsiding,
the waves of the mind too still heave and beat; hence all the small
feverish symptoms, and the whole train of hypochondriac affections, as
well as some acute ones.[59]
Among the correspondents of the poets Hughes and Thomson, there is a
pathetic letter from a student. Alexander Bayne, to prepare his
lectures, studied fourteen hours a-day for eight months successively,
and wrote 1,600 sheets. Such intense application, which, however, not
greatly exceeds that of many authors, brought on the bodily complaints
he has minutely described, with "all the dispiriting symptoms of a
nervous illness, commonly called vapours, or lowness of spirits."
Bayne, who was of an athletic temperament, imagined he had not paid
attention to his diet, to the lowness of his desk, and his habit of
sitting with a particular compression of the body; in future all these
were to be avoided. He prolonged his life for five years, and,
perhaps, was still flattering his hopes of sharing one day in the
literary celebrity of his friends, when, to use his words, "the same
illness made a fierce attack upon me again, and has kept me in a very
bad state of inactivity and disrelish of all my ordinary amusements:"
those _amusements_ were his serious _studies_. There is a fascination
in literary labour: the student feeds on magical drugs; to withdraw
him from them requires nothing less than that greater magic which
could break his own spells. A few months after this letter was written
Bayne died on the way to Bath, a martyr to his studies.
The excessive labour on a voluminous work, which occupies a long life,
leaves the student with a broken constitution, and his sight decayed
or lost. The most admirable observer of mankind, and the truest
painter of the human heart, declares, "The corruptible body presseth
down the soul, and the earthy tabernacle weigheth down the _mind that
museth on many things_." Of this class was old Randle Cotgrave, the
curious collector of the most copious dictionary of old French and old
English words and phrases. The work is the only treasury of our
genuine idiom. Even this labour of the lexicographer, so copious and
so elaborate, must have been projected with rapture, and pursued with
pleasure, till, in the progress, "the mind was musing on many things."
Then came the melancholy doubt, that drops mildew from its enveloping
wings over the voluminous labour of a laborious author, whether he be
wisely consuming his days, and not perpetually neglecting some higher
duties or some happier amusements. Still the enchanted delver sighs,
and strikes on in the glimmering mine of hope. If he live to complete
the great labour, it is, perhaps, reserved for the applause of the
next age; for, as our great lexicographer exclaimed, "In this gloom of
solitude I have protracted my work, till those whom I wished to please
have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty
sounds;" but, if it be applauded in his own, that praise has come too
late for him whose literary labour has stolen away his sight. Cotgrave
had grown blind over his dictionary, and was doubtful whether this
work of his laborious days and nightly vigils was not a superfluous
labour, and nothing, after all, but a "poor bundle of words." The
reader may listen to the gray-headed martyr addressing his patron,
Lord Burghley:
"I present to your lordship an account of the _expense of many hours_,
which, in your service, and to mine own benefit, _might have been
otherwise employed_. My desires have aimed at more substantial marks;
but _mine eyes_ failed them, and forced me to _spend out their vigour
in this bundle of words_, which may be unworthy of your lordship's
great patience, and, perhaps, _ill-suited to the expectation of
others_."
A great number of young authors have died of over-study. An
intellectual enthusiasm, accompanied by constitutional delicacy, has
swept away half the rising genius of the age. Curious calculators have
affected to discover the average number of infants who die under the
age of five years: had they investigated those of the children of
genius who perish before their thirtieth year, we should not be
less amazed at this waste of man. There are few scenes more
afflicting, nor which more deeply engage our sympathy, than that
of a youth, glowing with the devotion of study, and resolute to
distinguish his name among his countrymen, while death is stealing on
him, touching with premature age, before he strikes the last blow.
The author perishes on the very pages which give a charm to his
existence. The fine taste and tender melancholy of Headley, the
fervid genius of Henry Kirke White, will not easily pass away; but
how many youths as noble-minded have not had the fortune of Kirke
White to be commemorated by genius, and have perished without their
fame! Henry Wharton is a name well known to the student of English
literature; he published historical criticisms of high value; and he
left, as some of the fruits of his studies, sixteen volumes of
MS., preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. These
great labours were pursued with the ardour that only could have
produced them; the author had not exceeded his thirtieth year when
he sank under his continued studies, and perished a martyr to
literature. Our literary history abounds with instances of the sad
effects of an over indulgence in study: that agreeable writer,
Howel, had nearly lost his life by an excess of this nature,
studying through long nights in the depth of winter. This severe study
occasioned an imposthume in his head; he was eighteen days without
sleep; and the illness was attended with many other afflicting
symptoms. The eager diligence of Blackmore, protracting his studies
through the night, broke his health, and obliged him to fly to a
country retreat. Harris, the historian, died of a consumption by
midnight studies, as his friend Hollis mentions. I shall add a
recent instance, which I myself witnessed: it is that of John
Macdiarmid. He was one of those Scotch students whom the golden
fame of Hume and Robertson attracted to the metropolis. He mounted the
first steps of literary adventure with credit; and passed through
the probation of editor and reviewer, till he strove for more
heroic adventures. He published some volumes, whose subjects
display the aspirings of his genius: "An Inquiry into the Nature of
Civil and Military Subordination;" another into "the System of
Military Defence." It was during these labours I beheld this
inquirer, of a tender frame, emaciated, and study-worn, with
hollow eyes, where the mind dimly shone like a lamp in a tomb. With
keen ardour he opened a new plan of biographical politics. When, by
one who wished the author was in better condition, the dangers of
excess in study were brought to his recollection, he smiled, and,
with something of a mysterious air, talked of unalterable confidence
in the powers of his mind; of the indefinite improvement in our
faculties: and, with this enfeebled frame, considered himself
capable of continuous labour. His whole life, indeed, was one
melancholy trial. Often the day cheerfully passed without its meal,
but never without its page. The new system of political biography
was advancing, when our young author felt a paralytic stroke. He
afterwards resumed his pen; and a second one proved fatal. He lived
just to pass through the press his "Lives of British Statesmen," a
splendid quarto, whose publication he owed to the generous temper
of a friend, who, when the author could not readily procure a
publisher, would not see the dying author's last hope disappointed.
Some research and reflection are combined in this literary and
civil history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but it
was written with the blood of the author, for Macdiarmid died of
over-study and exhaustion.
Among the maladies of poor authors, who procure a precarious existence
by their pen, one, not the least considerable, is their old age; their
flower and maturity of life were shed for no human comforts; and old
age is the withered root. The late THOMAS MORTIMER, the compiler,
among other things, of that useful work, "The Student's Pocket
Dictionary," felt this severely--he himself experienced no abatement
of his ardour, nor deficiency in his intellectual powers, at near the
age of eighty;--but he then would complain "of the paucity of literary
employment, and the preference given to young adventurers." Such is
the _youth_, and such the _old age_ of ordinary authors!
FOOTNOTES:
[58] Hawkesworth, in the second paper of the "Adventurer," has
composed, from his own feelings, an elegant description of
intellectual and corporeal labour, and the sufferings of an
author, with the uncertainty of his labour and his reward.
[59] Dr. Fuller's "Medicina Gymnastica, or, a treatise concerning the
power of Exercise, with respect to the Animal OEconomy, fifth
edition, 1718," is useful to remind the student of what he is
apt to forget; for the object of this volume is to _substitute
exercise for medicine_. He wrote the book before he became a
physician. He considers horse-riding as the best and noblest
of all exercises, it being "a mixed exercise, partly active
and partly passive, while other sorts, such as walking,
running, stooping, or the like, require some labour and more
strength for their performance." Cheyne, in his well-known
treatise of "The English Malady," published about twenty years
after Fuller's work, acknowledges that riding on horseback is
the best of all exercises, for which he details his reasons.
"Walking," he says, "though it will answer the same end, yet
is it more laborious and tiresome;" but amusement ought always
to be combined with the exercise of a student; the mind will
receive no refreshment by a solitary walk or ride, unless it
be agreeably withdrawn from all thoughtfulness and anxiety; if
it continue studying in its recreations, it is the sure means
of obtaining neither of its objects--a friend, not an author,
will at such a moment be the better companion.
The last chapter in Fuller's work contains much curious
reading on the ancient physicians, and their gymnastic
courses, which Asclepiades, the pleasantest of all the ancient
physicians, greatly studied; he was most fortunate in the
invention of exercises to supply the place of much physic, and
(says Fuller) no man in any age ever had the happiness to
obtain so general an applause; Pliny calls him the delight of
mankind. Admirable physician, who had so many ways, it
appears, to make physic agreeable! He invented the _lecti
pensiles_, or hanging beds, that the sick might be rocked to
sleep; which took so much at that time, that they became a
great luxury among the Romans.
Fuller judiciously does not recommend the gymnastic courses,
because horse-riding, for persons of delicate constitutions,
is preferable; he discovers too the reason why the ancients
did not introduce this mode of exercise--it arose from the
simple circumstance of their not knowing the use of stirrups,
which was a later invention. Riding with the ancients was,
therefore, only an exercise for the healthy and the robust; a
horse without stirrups was a formidable animal for a
valetudinarian.
LITERARY SCOTCHMEN.
What literary emigrations from the North of young men of genius,
seduced by a romantic passion for literary fame, and lured by the
golden prospects which the happier genius of some of their own
countrymen opened on them. A volume might be written on literary
Scotchmen, who have perished immaturely in this metropolis; little
known, and slightly connected, they have dropped away among us, and
scarcely left a vestige in the wrecks of their genius. Among them some
authors may be discovered who might have ranked, perhaps, in the first
classes of our literature. I shall select four out of as many hundred,
who were not entirely unknown to me; a romantic youth--a man of
genius--a brilliant prose writer--and a labourer in literature.
ISSAC RITSON (not the poetical antiquary) was a young man of genius,
who perished immaturely in this metropolis by attempting to exist by
the efforts of his pen.
In early youth he roved among his native mountains, with the battles
of Homer in his head, and his bow and arrow in his hand; in calmer
hours, he nearly completed a spirited version of Hesiod, which
constantly occupied his after-studies; yet our minstrel-archer did not
less love the severer sciences.
Selected at length to rise to the eminent station of the Village
Schoolmaster,--from the thankless office of pouring cold rudiments
into heedless ears, RITSON took a poetical flight. It was among the
mountains and wild scenery of Scotland that our young Homer, picking
up fragments of heroic songs, and composing some fine ballad poetry,
would, in his wanderings, recite them with such passionate expression,
that he never failed of auditors; and found even the poor generous,
when their better passions were moved. Thus he lived, like some old
troubadour, by his rhymes, and his chants, and his virelays; and,
after a year's absence, our bard returned in the triumph of verse.
This was the most seducing moment of life; RITSON felt himself a
laureated Petrarch; but he had now quitted his untutored but feeling
admirers, and the child of fancy was to mix with the everyday business
of life.
At Edinburgh he studied medicine, lived by writing theses for the
idle and the incompetent, and composed a poem on Medicine, till at
length his hopes and his ambition conducted him to London. But the
golden age of the imagination soon deserted him in his obscure
apartment in the glittering metropolis. He attended the hospitals,
but these were crowded by students who, if they relished the
science less, loved the trade more: he published a hasty version
of Homer's Hymn to Venus, which was good enough to be praised, but
not to sell; at length his fertile imagination, withering over the
taskwork of literature, he resigned fame for bread; wrote the preface
to Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, compiled medical articles for the
Monthly Review; and, wasting fast his ebbing spirits, he retreated to
an obscure lodging at Islington, where death relieved a hopeless
author, in the twenty-seventh year of his life.
The following unpolished lines were struck off at a heat in trying his
pen on the back of a letter; he wrote the names of the Sister Fates,
Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos--the sudden recollection of his own fate
rushed on him--and thus the rhapsodist broke out:--
I wonder much, as yet ye're spinning, Fates!
What threads yet twisted out for me, old jades!
Ah, Atropos! perhaps for me thou spinn'st
Neglect, contempt, and penury and woe;
Be't so; whilst that foul fiend, the spleen,
And moping melancholy spare me, all the rest
I'll bear, as should a man; 'twill do me good,
And teach me what no better fortune could,
Humility, and sympathy with others' ills.
--------------Ye destinies,
I love you much; ye flatter not my pride.
Your mien, 'tis true, is wrinkled, hard, and sour;
Your words are harsh and stern; and sterner still
Your purposes to me. Yet I forgive
Whatever you have done, or mean to do.
Beneath some baleful planet born, I've found,
In all this world, no friend with fostering hand
To lead me on to science, which I love
Beyond all else the world could give; yet still
Your rigour I forgive; ye are not yet my foes;
My own untutor'd will's my only curse.
We grasp asphaltic apples; blooming poison!
We love what we should hate; how kind, ye Fates,
To thwart our wishes! O you're kind to scourge!
And flay us to the bone to make us feel!--
Thus deeply he enters into his own feelings, and abjures his errors,
as he paints the utter desolation of the soul while falling into the
grave opening at his feet.
The town was once amused almost every morning by a series of humorous
or burlesque poems by a writer under the assumed name of _Matthew
Bramble_--he was at that very moment one of the most moving spectacles
of human melancholy I have ever witnessed.
It was one evening I saw a tall, famished, melancholy man enter a
bookseller's shop, his hat flapped over his eyes, and his whole
frame evidently feeble from exhaustion and utter misery. The
bookseller inquired how he proceeded in his new tragedy. "Do not talk
to me about my tragedy! Do not talk to me about my tragedy! I have
indeed more tragedy than I can bear at home!" was the reply, and
the voice faltered as he spoke. This man was Matthew Bramble, or
rather--M'DONALD, the author of the tragedy of Vimonda, at that moment
the writer of comic poetry--his tragedy was indeed a domestic one,
in which he himself was the greatest actor amid his disconsolate
family; he shortly afterwards perished. M'Donald had walked from
Scotland with no other fortune than the novel of "The Independent"
in one pocket, and the tragedy of "Vimonda" in the other. Yet he
lived some time in all the bloom and flush of poetical confidence.
Vimonda was even performed several nights, but not with the
success the romantic poet, among his native rocks, had conceived was
to crown his anxious labours--the theatre disappointed him--and
afterwards, to his feelings, all the world!
LOGAN had the dispositions of a poetic spirit, not cast in a
common mould; with fancy he combined learning, and with eloquence
philosophy.
His claims on our sympathy arise from those circumstances in his life
which open the secret sources of the calamities of authors; of those
minds of finer temper, who, having tamed the heat of their youth by
the patient severity of study, from causes not always difficult to
discover, find their favourite objects and their fondest hopes barren
and neglected. It is then that the thoughtful melancholy, which
constitutes so large a portion of their genius, absorbs and consumes
the very faculties to which it gave birth.
Logan studied at the University of Edinburgh, was ordained in the
Church of Scotland--and early distinguished as a poet by the
simplicity and the tenderness of his verses, yet the philosophy of
history had as deeply interested his studies. He gave two courses of
lectures. I have heard from his pupils their admiration, after the
lapse of many years; so striking were those lectures for having
successfully applied the science of moral philosophy to the history of
nations. All wished that Logan should obtain the chair of the
Professorship of Universal History--but from some point of etiquette
he failed in obtaining that distinguished office.
This was his first disappointment in life, yet then perhaps but
lightly felt; for the public had approved of his poems, and a
successful poet is easily consoled. Poetry to such a gentle being
seems a universal specific for all the evils of life; it acts at the
moment, exhausting and destroying too often the constitution it seems
to restore.
He had finished the tragedy of "Runnymede;" it was accepted at
Covent-garden, but interdicted by the Lord Chamberlain, from some
suspicion that its lofty sentiments contained allusions to the
politics of the day. The Barons-in-arms who met John were conceived to
be deeper politicians than the poet himself was aware of. This was the
second disappointment in the life of this man of genius.
The third calamity was the natural consequence of a tragic poet being
also a Scotch clergyman. Logan had inflicted a wound on the
Presbytery, heirs of the genius of old Prynne, whose puritanic
fanaticism had never forgiven Home for his "Douglas," and now groaned
to detect genius still lurking among them.[60] Logan, it is certain,
expressed his contempt for them; they their hatred of him: folly and
pride in a poet, to beard Presbyters in a land of Presbyterians![61]
He gladly abandoned them, retiring on a small annuity. They had,
however, hurt his temper--they had irritated the nervous system of a
man too susceptible of all impressions, gentle or unkind--his
character had all those unequal habitudes which genius contracts in
its boldness and its tremors; he was now vivacious and indignant, and
now fretted and melancholy. He flew to the metropolis, occupied
himself in literature, and was a frequent contributor to the "English
Review." He
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