The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine
Volumes, by Samuel Johnson
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes
Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II
Author: Samuel Johnson
Release Date: January 8, 2008 [EBook #24218]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE POETS, VOL II ***
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Roger Frank and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
THE
WORKS
OF
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
IN NINE VOLUMES.
VOLUME THE EIGHTH.
[Illustration]
OXFORD,
PUBLISHED BY TALBOYS AND WHEELER;
AND W. PICKERING, LONDON.
MDCCCXXV.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS OF THE EIGHTH VOLUME
THE LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS.
Prior
Congreve
Blackmore
Fenton
Gay
Granville
Yalden
Tickell
Hammond
Somervile
Savage
Swift
Broome
Pope
Pitt
Thomson
Watts
A. Philips
West
Collins
Dyer
Shenstone
Young
Mallet
Akenside
Gray
Lyttelton
[Transcriber's Note: "CONTENTS OF THE EIGHTH VOLUME" list of poets
was not present in the original text.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRIOR.
Matthew Prior is one of those that have burst out from an obscure
original to great eminence. He was born July 21, 1664, according to
some, at Winburn, in Dorsetshire, of I know not what parents; others
say, that he was the son of a joiner of London: he was, perhaps, willing
enough to leave his birth unsettled[1], in hope, like Don Quixote, that
the historian of his actions might find him some illustrious alliance.
He is supposed to have fallen, by his father's death, into the hands of
his uncle, a vintner[2], near Charing-cross, who sent him for some time
to Dr. Busby, at Westminster; but, not intending to give him any
education beyond that of the school, took him, when he was well advanced
in literature, to his own house, where the earl of Dorset, celebrated
for patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, reading
Horace, and was so well pleased with his proficiency, that he undertook
the care and cost of his academical education.
He entered his name in St. John's college, at Cambridge, in 1682, in his
eighteenth year; and it may be reasonably supposed that he was
distinguished among his contemporaries. He became a bachelor, as is
usual, in four years[3]; and two years afterwards wrote the poem on the
Deity, which stands first in his volume.
It is the established practice of that college, to send every year to
the earl of Exeter some poems upon sacred subjects, in acknowledgment of
a benefaction enjoyed by them from the bounty of his ancestor. On this
occasion were those verses written, which, though nothing is said of
their success, seem to have recommended him to some notice; for his
praise of the countess's musick, and his lines on the famous picture of
Seneca, afford reason for imagining that he was more or less conversant
with that family.
The same year, 1688, he published the City Mouse and Country Mouse, to
ridicule Dryden's Hind and Panther, in conjunction with Mr. Montague.
There is a story[4] of great pain suffered, and of tears shed, on this
occasion, by Dryden, who thought it hard that "an old man should be so
treated by those to whom he had always been civil." By tales like these
is the envy, raised by superiour abilities, every day gratified: when
they are attacked, every one hopes to see them humbled; what is hoped is
readily believed; and what is believed is confidently told. Dryden had
been more accustomed to hostilities, than that such enemies should break
his quiet; and if we can suppose him vexed, it would be hard to deny him
sense enough to conceal his uneasiness.
The City Mouse and Country Mouse procured its authors more solid
advantages than the pleasure of fretting Dryden; for they were both
speedily preferred. Montague, indeed, obtained the first notice, with
some degree of discontent, as it seems, in Prior, who, probably, knew
that his own part of the performance was the best. He had not, however,
much reason to complain; for he came to London, and obtained such
notice, that, in 1691, he was sent to the congress at the Hague as
secretary to the embassy. In this assembly of princes and nobles, to
which Europe has, perhaps, scarcely seen any thing equal, was formed
the grand alliance against Lewis, which, at last, did not produce
effects proportionate to the magnificence of the transaction.
The conduct of Prior, in this splendid initiation into publick business,
was so pleasing to king William, that he made him one of the gentlemen
of his bedchamber; and he is supposed to have passed some of the next
years in the quiet cultivation of literature and poetry.
The death of queen Mary, in 1695, produced a subject for all the
writers; perhaps no funeral was ever so poetically attended. Dryden,
indeed, as a man discountenanced and deprived, was silent; but scarcely
any other maker of verses omitted to bring his tribute of tuneful
sorrow. An emulation of elegy was universal. Maria's praise was not
confined to the English language, but fills a great part of the Musæ
Anglicanæ.
Prior, who was both a poet and a courtier, was too diligent to miss this
opportunity of respect. He wrote a long ode, which was presented to the
king, by whom it was not likely to be ever read.
In two years he was secretary to another embassy at the treaty of
Ryswick, in 1697[5]; and next year had the same office at the court of
France, where he is said to have been considered with great distinction.
As he was one day surveying the apartments at Versailles, being shown
the victories of Lewis, painted by Le Brun, and asked whether the king
of England's palace had any such decorations: "The monuments of my
master's actions," said he, "are to be seen every where but in his own
house." The pictures of Le Brun are not only in themselves sufficiently
ostentatious, but were explained by inscriptions so arrogant, that
Boileau and Racine thought it necessary to make them more simple.
He was, in the following year, at Loo with the king; from whom, after a
long audience, he carried orders to England, and upon his arrival became
under-secretary of state in the earl of Jersey's office; a post which he
did not retain long, because Jersey was removed; but he was soon made
commissioner of trade.
This year, 1700, produced one of his longest and most splendid
compositions, the Carmen Seculare, in which he exhausts all his powers
of celebration. I mean not to accuse him of flattery; he probably
thought all that he writ, and retained as much veracity as can be
properly exacted from a poet professedly encomiastick. King William
supplied copious materials for either verse or prose. His whole life had
been action, and none ever denied him the resplendent qualities of
steady resolution and personal courage. He was really, in Prior's mind,
what he represents him in his verses; he considered him as a hero, and
was accustomed to say, that he praised others in compliance with the
fashion, but that in celebrating king William he followed his
inclination. To Prior gratitude would dictate praise, which reason would
not refuse.
Among the advantages to arise from the future years of William's reign,
he mentions a society for useful arts, and, among them,
Some that with care true eloquence shall teach,
And to just idioms fix our doubtful speech;
That from our writers distant realms may know
The thanks we to our monarch owe,
And schools profess our tongue through ev'ry land,
That has invok'd his aid, or bless'd his hand.
Tickell, in his Prospect of Peace, has the same hope of a new academy:
In happy chains our daring language bound,
Shall sport no more in arbitrary sound.
Whether the similitude of those passages which exhibit the same thought,
on the same occasion, proceeded from accident or imitation, is not easy
to determine. Tickell might have been impressed with his expectation by
Swift's Proposal for ascertaining the English Language, then lately
published.
In the parliament that met in 1701, he was chosen representative of East
Grinstead. Perhaps it was about this time that he changed his party; for
he voted for the impeachment of those lords who had persuaded the king
to the partition-treaty, a treaty in which he had himself been
ministerially employed.
A great part of queen Anne's reign was a time of war, in which there was
little employment for negotiators, and Prior had, therefore, leisure to
make or to polish verses. When the battle of Blenheim called forth all
the versemen, Prior, among the rest, took care to show his delight in
the increasing honour of his country, by an epistle to Boileau.
He published, soon afterwards, a volume of poems, with the encomiastick
character of his deceased patron, the duke of Dorset[6]: it began with
the College Exercise, and ended with the Nut-brown Maid.
The battle of Ramilles soon afterwards, in 1706, excited him to another
effort of poetry. On this occasion he had fewer or less formidable
rivals; and it would be not easy to name any other composition produced
by that event which is now remembered.
Everything has its day. Through the reigns of William and Anne no
prosperous event passed undignified by poetry. In the last war, when
France was disgraced and overpowered in every quarter of the globe, when
Spain, coming to her assistance, only shared her calamities, and the
name of an Englishman was reverenced through Europe, no poet was heard
amidst the general acclamation; the fame of our counsellors and heroes
was entrusted to the Gazetteer.
The nation, in time, grew weary of the war, and the queen grew weary of
her ministers. The war was burdensome, and the ministers were insolent.
Harley and his friends began to hope that they might, by driving the
whigs from court and from power, gratify, at once, the queen and the
people. There was now a call for writers, who might convey intelligence
of past abuses, and show the waste of publick money, the unreasonable
conduct of the allies, the avarice of generals, the tyranny of minions,
and the general danger of approaching ruin.
For this purpose a paper, called the Examiner, was periodically
published, written, as it happened, by any wit of the party, and
sometimes, as is said, by Mrs. Manley. Some are owned by Swift; and one,
in ridicule of Garth's verses to Godolphin upon the loss of his place,
was written by Prior, and answered by Addison, who appears to have known
the author either by conjecture or intelligence.
The tories, who were now in power, were in haste to end the war; and
Prior, being recalled, 1710, to his former employment of making
treaties, was sent, July, 1711, privately to Paris with propositions of
peace. He was remembered at the French court; and, returning in about a
month, brought with him the abbé Gaultier, and M. Mesnager, a minister
from France, invested with full powers.
This transaction not being avowed, Mackay, the master of the Dover
packet-boat, either zealously or officiously, seized Prior and his
associates at Canterbury. It is easily supposed that they were soon
released.
The negotiation was begun at Prior's house, where the queen's ministers
met Mesnager, September 20,1711, and entered privately upon the great
business. The importance of Prior appears from the mention made of him
by St. John in his letter to the queen.
"My lord treasurer moved, and all my lords were of the same opinion,
that Mr. Prior should be added to those who are empowered to sign; the
reason for which is, because he, having personally treated with monsieur
de Torcy, is the best witness we can produce of the sense in which the
general preliminary engagements are entered into: besides which, as he
is the best versed in matters of trade of all your majesty's servants
who have been trusted in this secret, if you shall think fit to employ
him in the future treaty of commerce, it will be of consequence that he
has been a party concerned in concluding that convention, which must be
the rule of this treaty."
The assembly of this important night was, in some degree, clandestine,
the design of treating not being yet openly declared, and, when the
whigs returned to power, was aggravated to a charge of high treason;
though, as Prior remarks in his imperfect answer to the report of the
committee of secrecy, no treaty ever was made without private interviews
and preliminary discussions.
My business is not the history of the peace, but the life of Prior. The
conferences began at Utrecht on the 1st of January, 1711-12, and the
English plenipotentiaries arrived on the 15th. The ministers of the
different potentates conferred and conferred; but the peace advanced so
slowly that speedier methods were found necessary; and Bolingbroke was
sent to Paris to adjust differences with less formality; Prior either
accompanied him or followed him, and, after his departure, had the
appointments and authority of an ambassador, though no publick
character.
By some mistake of the queen's orders, the court of France had been
disgusted; and Bolingbroke says in his letter, "Dear Mat, hide the
nakedness of thy country, and give the best turn thy fertile brain will
furnish thee with to the blunders of thy countrymen, who are not much
better politicians than the French are poets."
Soon after, the duke of Shrewsbury went on a formal embassy to Paris. It
is related by Boyer, that the intention was to have joined Prior in the
same commission, but that Shrewsbury refused to be associated with a man
so meanly born. Prior, therefore, continued to act without a title, till
the duke returned, next year, to England, and then he assumed the style
and dignity of ambassador.
But, while he continued in appearance a private man, he was treated with
confidence by Lewis, who sent him with a letter to the queen, written in
favour of the elector of Bavaria. "I shall expect," says he, "with
impatience, the return of Mr. Prior, whose conduct is very agreeable to
me." And while the duke of Shrewsbury was still at Paris, Bolingbroke
wrote to Prior thus: "Monsieur de Torcy has a confidence in you; make
use of it, once for all, upon this occasion, and convince him
thoroughly, that we must give a different turn to our parliament and our
people, according to their resolution at this crisis."
Prior's publick dignity and splendour commenced in August, 1713, and
continued till the August following; but I am afraid that, according to
the usual fate of greatness, it was attended with some perplexities and
mortifications. He had not all that is customarily given to ambassadors;
he hints to the queen, in an imperfect poem, that he had no service of
plate; and it appeared, by the debts which he contracted, that his
remittances were not punctually made.
On the 1st of August, 1714, ensued the downfal of the tories, and the
degradation of Prior. He was recalled; but was not able to return, being
detained by the debts which he had found it necessary to contract, and
which were not discharged before March, though his old friend Montague
was now at the head of the treasury.
He returned then as soon as he could, and was welcomed, on the 25th of
March, 1715, by a warrant, but was, however, suffered to live in his own
house, under the custody of the messenger, till he was examined before a
committee of the privy council, of which Mr. Walpole was chairman, and
lord Coningsby, Mr. Stanhope, and Mr. Lechmere, were the principal
interrogators; who, in this examination, of which there is printed an
account not unentertaining, behaved with the boisterousness of men
elated by recent authority. They are represented as asking questions
sometimes vague, sometimes insidious, and writing answers different from
those which they received. Prior, however, seems to have been
overpowered by their turbulence; for he confesses that he signed what,
if he had ever come before a legal judicature, he should have
contradicted or explained away. The oath was administered by Boscawen,
a Middlesex justice, who, at last, was going to write his attestation
on the wrong side of the paper.
They were very industrious to find some charge against Oxford; and asked
Prior, with great earnestness, who was present when the preliminary
articles were talked of or signed at his house? He told them, that
either the earl of Oxford or the duke of Shrewsbury was absent, but he
could not remember which; an answer which perplexed them, because it
supplied no accusation against either. "Could any thing be more absurd,"
says he, "or more inhuman, than to propose to me a question, by the
answering of which I might, according to them, prove myself a traitor?
And notwithstanding their solemn promise, that nothing which I could say
should hurt myself, I had no reason to trust them; for they violated
that promise about five hours after. However, I owned I was there
present. Whether this was wisely done or no, I leave to my friends to
determine."
When he had signed the paper, he was told by Walpole, that the committee
were not satisfied with his behaviour, nor could give such an account of
it to the commons as might merit favour; and that they now thought a
stricter confinement necessary than to his own house. "Here," says he,
"Boscawen played the moralist, and Coningsby the Christian, but both
very awkwardly." The messenger, in whose custody he was to be placed,
was then called, and very decently asked by Coningsby, "if his house was
secured by bars and bolts?" The messenger answered, "No," with
astonishment. At which Coningsby very angrily said, "Sir, you must
secure this prisoner; it is for the safety of the nation: if he escape,
you shall answer for it."
They had already printed their report; and in this examination were
endeavouring to find proofs.
He continued thus confined for some time; and Mr. Walpole, June 10,
1715, moved for an impeachment against him. What made him so acrimonious
does not appear: he was by nature no thirster for blood. Prior was, a
week after, committed to close custody, with orders that "no person
should be admitted to see him without leave from the speaker."
When, two years after, an act of grace was passed, he was excepted, and
continued still in custody, which he had made less tedious by writing
his Alma. He was, however, soon after discharged.
He had now his liberty, but he had nothing else. Whatever the profit of
his employments might have been, he had always spent it; and, at the age
of fifty-three, was, with all his abilities, in danger of penury, having
yet no solid revenue but from the fellowship of his college, which, when
in his exaltation he was censured for retaining it, he said, he could
live upon at last.
Being, however, generally known and esteemed, he was encouraged to add
other poems to those which he had printed, and to publish them by
subscription. The expedient succeeded by the industry of many friends,
who circulated the proposals[7], and the care of some, who, it is said,
withheld the money from him, lest he should squander it. The price of
the volume was two guineas; the whole collection was four thousand; to
which lord Harley, the son of the earl of Oxford, to whom he had
invariably adhered, added an equal sum for the purchase of Downhall,
which Prior was to enjoy during life, and Harley after his decease.
He had now, what wits and philosophers have often wished, the power of
passing the day in contemplative tranquillity. But it seems that busy
men seldom live long in a state of quiet. It is not unlikely that his
health declined. He complains of deafness; "for," says he, "I took
little care of my ears while I was not sure if my head was my own."
Of any occurrences in his remaining life I have found no account. In a
letter to Swift, "I have," says he, "treated lady Harriot at Cambridge,
(a fellow of a college treat!) and spoke verses to her in a gown and
cap! What, the plenipotentiary, so far concerned in the damned peace at
Utrecht! the man that makes up half the volume of terse prose, that
makes up the report of the committee, speaking verses! Sic est, homo
sum."
He died at Wimpole, a seat of the earl of Oxford, on the 18th of
September, 1721, and was buried in Westminster; where, on a monument,
for which, as the "last piece of human vanity," he left five hundred
pounds, is engraven this epitaph:
Sui temporis historiam meditanti,
Paulatim obrepens febris
Operi simul et vitæ filum abrupit,
Sept. 18, An. Dom. 1721. Ætat. 57.
H.S.E.
Vir eximius
Serenissimis
Regi GULIELMO, reginæque MARIÆ,
In congressione foederatorum
Hagæ anno 1690 celebrata;
Deinde Magnæ Britanniæ legatis;
Tum iis,
Qui anno 1697 pacem RYSWICKI confecerunt;
Tum iis,
Qui apud Gallos annis proximis legationem obierunt;
Eodem etiam anno, 1697, in Hibernia
SECRETARIUS;
Nee non in utroque honorabili consessu
Eorum,
Qui anno 1700 ordinandis commercii negotiis,
Quique anno 1711 dirigendis portorii rebus,
Præsidebant,
COMMISSIONARIUS;
Postremo
Ab ANNA,
Felicissinæ memoriæ regina,
Ad LUDOVICUM XIV. Galliæ regem
Missus anno 1711
De pace stabilienda,
(Pace etiamnum durante
Diuque ut boni jam omnes sperant duratura)
Cum summa potestate legatus;
MATTHÆUS PRIOR, armiger:
Qui
Hos omnes, quibus cumulatus est, titulos
Humanitatis, ingenii, eruditionis laude
Superavit;
Cui enim nascenti faciles arriserant musæ.
Hune puerum schola hie regia perpolivit;
Juvenem in collegio S'ti Johannis
Cantabrigia optimis scientiis instruxit;
Virum denique auxit; et perfecit.
Multa cum viris principibus consuetudo;
Ita natus, ita institutus,
A vatum chioro avelli nunquam potuit,
Sed solebat sæpe rerum civilium gravitatem
Amoeniorum literarum studiis condire:
Et cum omne adeo poetices genus
Haud infeliciter tentaret,
Tum in fabellis concinne lepideque texendis
Mirus artifex
Neminem habuit parem.
Hæc liberalis animi oblectamenta,
Quam nullo illi labore constiterint,
Facile ii perspexere, quibus usus est amici;
Apud quos urbanitatum et leporum plenus
Cum ad rem, quæcunque forte inciderat,
Apte varie copioseque alluderet,
Interea nihil quæsitum, nihil vi expressum
Videbatur,
Sed omnia ultro effluere,
Et quasi jugi e fonte afiatim exuberare,
Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit,
Essetue in scriptis, poeta elegantior,
An in convictu comes jucundior.
Of Prior, eminent as he was, both by his abilities and station, very few
memorials have been left by his contemporaries; the account, therefore,
must now be destitute of his private character and familiar practices.
He lived at a time when the rage of party detected all which it was any
man's interest to hide; and, as little ill is heard of Prior, it is
certain that not much was known. He was not afraid of provoking censure;
for, when he forsook the whigs [8], under whose patronage he first
entered the world, he became a tory, so ardent and determinate, that he
did not willingly consort with men of different opinions. He was one of
the sixteen tories who met weekly, and agreed to address each other by
the title of _brother_; and seems to have adhered, not only by
concurrence of political designs, but by peculiar affection, to the earl
of Oxford and his family. With how much confidence he was trusted has
been already told.
He was, however, in Pope's[9] opinion, fit only to make verses, and less
qualified for business than Addison himself. This was, surely, said
without consideration. Addison, exalted to a high place, was forced into
degradation by the sense of his own incapacity; Prior, who was employed
by men very capable of estimating his value, having been secretary to
one embassy, had, when great abilities were again wanted, the same
office another time; and was, after so much experience of his knowledge
and dexterity, at last sent to transact a negotiation in the highest
degree arduous and important; for which he was qualified, among other
requisites, in the opinion of Bolingbroke, by his influence upon the
French minister, and by skill in questions of commerce above other men.
Of his behaviour in the lighter parts of life, it is too late to get
much intelligence. One of his answers to a boastful Frenchman has been
related; and to an impertinent he made another equally proper. During
his embassy, he sat at the opera by a man, who, in his rapture,
accompanied with his own voice the principal singer. Prior fell to
railing at the performer with all the terms of reproach that he could
collect, till the Frenchman, ceasing from his song, began to expostulate
with him for his harsh censure of a man who was confessedly the ornament
of the stage. "I know all that," says the ambassador, "mais il chante si
haut, que je ne saurais vous entendre."
In a gay French company, where every one sang a little song or stanza,
of which the burden was, "Bannissons la mélancolie;" when it came to his
turn to sing, after the performance of a young lady that sat next him,
he produced these extemporary lines:
Mais cette voix, et ces beaux yeux,
Font Cupidon trop dangereux;
Et je suis triste quand je crie,
Bannissons la mélancolie.
Tradition represents him as willing to descend from the dignity of the
poet and the statesman to the low delights of mean company. His Chloe,
probably, was sometimes ideal; but the woman with whom he cohabited was
a despicable drab[10] of the lowest species. One of his wenches, perhaps
Chloe, while he was absent from his house, stole his plate, and ran
away; as was related by a woman who had been his servant. Of this
propensity to sordid converse I have seen an account so seriously
ridiculous, that it seems to deserve insertion[11].
I have been assured that Prior, after having spent the evening with
Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, would go and smoke a pipe, and
drink a bottle of ale, with a common soldier and his wife, in Long-acre,
before he went to bed; not from any remains of the lowness of his
original, as one said, but, I suppose, that his faculties,
"Strain'd to the height,
In that celestial colloquy sublime,
Dazzled and spent, sunk down, and sought repair."
Poor Prior! why was he so _strained_, and in such _want_ of _repair_,
after a conversation with men, not, in the opinion of the world, much
wiser than himself? But such are the conceits of speculatists, who
_strain_ their _faculties_ to find in a mine what lies upon the surface.
His opinions, so far as the means of judging are left us, seem to have
been right; but his life was, it seems, irregular, negligent, and
sensual.
* * * * *
Prior has written with great variety, and his variety has made him
popular. He has tried all styles, from the grotesque to the solemn, and
has not so failed in any as to incur derision or disgrace.
His works may be distinctly considered, as comprising Tales,
Love-verses, Occasional Poems, Alma, and Solomon.
His Tales have obtained general approbation, being written with great
familiarity and great sprightliness; the language is easy, but seldom
gross, and the numbers smooth without appearance of care. Of these tales
there are only four. The Ladle; which is introduced by a preface,
neither necessary nor pleasing, neither grave nor merry. Paulo Purganti;
which has likewise a preface, but of more value than the tale. Hans
Carvel, not over-decent; and Protogenes and Apelles, an old story,
mingled, by an affectation not disagreeable, with modern images. The
Young Gentleman in Love has hardly a just claim to the title of a tale.
I know not whether he be the original author of any tale which he has
given us. The adventure of Hans Carvel has passed through many
successions of merry wits; for it is to be found in Ariosto's satires,
and is, perhaps, yet older[12]. But the merit of such stories is the art
of telling them.
In his amorous effusions he is less happy; for they are not dictated by
nature or by passion, and have neither gallantry nor tenderness. They
have the coldness of Cowley, without his wit, the dull exercises of a
skilful versifier, resolved, at all adventures, to write something about
Chloe, and trying to be amorous by dint of study. His fictions,
therefore, are mythological. Venus, after the example of the Greek
epigram, asks when she was seen _naked and bathing_. Then Cupid is
_mistaken_; then Cupid is _disarmed_; then he loses his darts to
Ganymede; then Jupiter sends him a summons by Mercury. Then Chloe goes
a-hunting, with _an ivory quiver graceful at her side_; Diana mistakes
her for one of her nymphs, and Cupid laughs at the blunder. All this is,
surely, despicable; and even when he tries to act the lover, without the
help of gods or goddesses, his thoughts are unaffecting or remote. He
talks not "like a man of this world."
The greatest of all his amorous essays is Henry and Emma; a dull and
tedious dialogue, which excites neither esteem for the man, nor
tenderness for the woman. The example of Emma, who resolves to follow an
outlawed murderer wherever fear and guilt shall drive him, deserves no
imitation; and the experiment by which Henry tries the lady's constancy,
is such as must end either in infamy to her, or in disappointment to
himself.
His occasional poems necessarily lost part of their value, as their
occasions, being less remembered, raised less emotion. Some of them,
however, are preserved by their inherent excellence. The burlesque of
Boileau's Ode on Namur has, in some parts, such airiness and levity as
will always procure it readers, even among those who cannot compare it
with the original. The epistle to Boileau is not so happy. The poems to
the king are now perused only by young students, who read merely that
they may learn to write; and of the Carmen Seculare, I cannot but
suspect that I might praise or censure it by caprice, without danger of
detection; for who can be supposed to have laboured through it? Yet the
time has been when this neglected work was so popular, that it was
translated into Latin by no common master.
His poem on the battle of Ramilles is necessarily tedious by the form of
the stanza: an uniform mass of ten lines, thirty-five times repeated,
inconsequential and slightly connected, must weary both the ear and the
understanding. His imitation of Spenser, which consists principally in
_I ween and I weet_, without exclusion of later modes of speech, makes
his poem neither ancient nor modern. His mention of Mars and Bellona,
and his comparison of Marlborough to the eagle that bears the thunder of
Jupiter, are all puerile and unaffecting; and yet more despicable is the
long tale told by Lewis in his despair, of Brute and Troynovante, and
the teeth of Cadmus, with his similes of the raven and eagle, and wolf
and lion. By the help of such easy fictions, and vulgar topicks, without
acquaintance with life, and without knowledge of art or nature, a poem
of any length, cold and lifeless like this, may be easily written on any
subject.
In his epilogues to Phædra and to Lucius he is very happily facetious;
but in the prologue before the queen, the pedant has found his way, with
Minerva, Perseus, and Andromeda.
His epigrams and lighter pieces are, like those of others, sometimes
elegant, sometimes trifling, and sometimes dull; amongst the best are
the Chamelion, and the epitaph on John and Joan.
Scarcely any one of our poets has written so much, and translated so
little: the version of Callimachus is sufficiently licentious; the
paraphrase on St. Paul's Exhortation to Charity is eminently beautiful.
Alma is written in professed imitation of Hudibras, and has, at least,
one accidental resemblance: Hudibras wants a plan, because it is left
imperfect; Alma is imperfect, because it seems never to have had a plan.
Prior appears not to have proposed to himself any drift or design, but
to have written the casual dictates of the present moment.
What Horace said when he imitated Lucilius, might be said of Butler by
Prior; his numbers were not smooth or neat. Prior excelled him in
versification; but he was, like Horace, "inventore minor;" he had not
Butler's exuberance of matter and variety of illustration. The spangles
of wit which he could afford, he know how to polish; but he wanted the
bullion of his master. Butler pours out a negligent profusion, certain
of the weight, but careless of the stamp. Prior has comparatively
little, but with that little he makes a fine show. Alma has many
admirers, and was the only piece among Prior's works of which Pope said
that he should wish to be the author.
Solomon is the work to which he entrusted the protection of his name,
and which he expected succeeding ages to regard with veneration. His
affection was, natural; it had undoubtedly been written with great
labour; and who is willing to think that he has been labouring in vain?
He had infused into it much knowledge and much thought; had often
polished it to elegance, often dignified it with splendour, and
sometimes heightened it to sublimity: he perceived in it many
excellencies, and did not discover that it wanted that without which all
others are of small avail, the power of engaging attention and alluring
curiosity.
Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults; negligences or errours are
single and local, but tediousness pervades the whole; other faults are
censured and forgotten, but the power of tediousness propagates itself.
He that is weary the first hour, is more weary the second; as bodies
forced into motion contrary to their tendency, pass more and more slowly
through every successive interval of space.
Unhappily this pernicious failure is that which an author is least able
to discover. We are seldom tiresome to ourselves; and the act of
composition fills and delights the mind with change of language and
succession of images; every couplet, when produced, is new, and novelty
is the great source of pleasure. Perhaps no man ever thought a line
superfluous when he first wrote it, or contracted his work till his
ebullitions of invention had subsided. And even if he should control his
desire of immediate renown, and keep his work nine years unpublished, he
will be still the author, and still in danger of deceiving himself: and
if he consults his friends, he will, probably, find men who have more
kindness than judgment, or more fear to offend, than desire to instruct.
The tediousness of this poem proceeds not from the uniformity of the
subject, for it is sufficiently diversified, but from the continued
tenour of the narration; in which Solomon relates the successive
vicissitudes of his own mind, without the intervention of any other
speaker, or the mention of any other agent, unless it be Abra; the
reader is only to learn what he thought, and to be told that he thought
wrong. The event of every experiment is foreseen, and, therefore, the
process is not much regarded.
Yet the work is far from deserving to be neglected. He that shall peruse
it will be able to mark many passages, to which he may recur for
instruction or delight; many from which the poet may learn to write, and
the philosopher to reason.
If Prior's poetry be generally considered, his praise will be that of
correctness and industry, rather than of compass of comprehension, or
activity of fancy. He never made any effort of invention: his greater
pieces are only tissues of common thoughts; and his smaller, which
consist of light images, or single conceits, are not always his own. I
have traced him among the French epigrammatists, and have been informed
that he poached for prey among obscure authors. The Thief and the
Cordelier is, I suppose, generally considered as an original production;
with how much justice this epigram may tell, which was written by
Georgius Sabinus, a poet now little known or read, though once the
friend of Luther and Melancthon.
De Sacerdote Furem consolante.
Quidam sacrificus furem comitatus euntem
Huc ubi dat sontes carnificina neci,
Ne sis moestus, ait; summi conviva Tonantis
Jam cum coelitibus (si modo credis) eris.
Ille gemens, si vera mihi solatia praebes,
Hospes apud superos sis meus oro, refert.
Sacrificus contra; mihi non convivia fas est
Ducere, jejunans hac edo luce nihil.
What he has valuable he owes to his diligence and his judgment. His
diligence has justly placed him amongst the most correct of the English
poets; and he was one of the first that resolutely endeavoured at
correctness. He never sacrifices accuracy to haste, nor indulges
himself in contemptuous negligence, or impatient idleness; he has no
careless lines, or entangled sentiments; his words are nicely selected,
and his thoughts fully expanded. If this part of his character suffers
any abatement, it must be from the disproportion of his rhymes, which
have not always sufficient consonance, and from the admission of broken
lines into his Solomon; but, perhaps, he thought, like Cowley, that
hemistichs ought to be admitted into heroick poetry[13].
He had, apparently, such rectitude of judgment as secured him from every
thing that approached to the ridiculous or absurd; but as laws operate
in civil agency not to the excitement of virtue, but the repression of
wickedness, so judgment in the operations of intellect can hinder
faults, but not produce excellence. Prior is never low, nor very often
sublime. It is said by Longinus of Euripides, that he forces himself
sometimes into grandeur by violence of effort, as the lion kindles his
fury by the lashes of his own tail. Whatever Prior obtains above
mediocrity seems the effort of struggle and of toil. He has many
vigorous but few happy lines; he has every thing by purchase, and
nothing by gift; he had no "nightly visitations" of the muse, no
infusions of sentiment or felicities of fancy.
His diction, however, is more his own than that of any among the
successors of Dryden; he borrows no lucky turns, or commodious modes of
language, from his predecessors. His phrases are original, but they are
sometimes harsh; as he inherited no elegancies, none has he bequeathed.
His expression has every mark of laborious study; the line seldom seems
to have been formed at once; the words did not come till they were
called, and were then put by constraint into their places, where they do
their duty, but do it sullenly. In his greater compositions there may be
found more rigid stateliness than graceful dignity.
Of versification he was not negligent: what he received from Dryden he
did not lose; neither did he increase the difficulty of writing by
unnecessary severity, but uses triplets and alexandrines without
scruple. In his preface to Solomon he proposes some improvements, by
extending the sense from one couplet to another, with variety of pauses.
This he has attempted, but without success; his interrupted lines are
unpleasing, and his sense, as less distinct is less striking.
He has altered the stanza of Spenser, as a house is altered by building
another in its place of a different form. With how little resemblance he
has formed his new stanza to that of his master, these specimens will
show:
SPENSER.
She flying fast from heaven's hated face,
And from the world that her discover'd wide,
Fled to the wasteful wilderness apace,
From living eyes her open shame to hide,
And lurk'd in rocks and caves long unespy'd.
But that fair crew of knights, and Una fair,
Did in that castle afterwards abide,
To rest themselves, and weary powers repair,
Where store they found of all, that dainty was and rare.
PRIOR.
To the close rock the frighted raven flies,
Soon as the rising eagle cuts the air:
The shaggy wolf unseen and trembling lies,
When the hoarse roar proclaims the lion near.
Ill-starr'd did we our forts and lines forsake,
To dare our British foes to open fight:
Our conquest we by stratagem should make;
Our triumph had been founded in our flight.
'Tis ours, by craft and by surprise to gain:
'Tis theirs, to meet in arms, and battle in the plain[14].
By this new structure of his lines he has avoided difficulties; nor am I
sure that he has lost any of the power of pleasing; but he no longer
imitates Spenser.
Some of his poems are written without regularity of measure; for, when
he commenced poet, we had not recovered from our Pindarick infatuation;
but he probably lived to be convinced, that the essence of verse is
order and consonance.
His numbers are such as mere diligence may attain; they seldom offend
the ear, and seldom sooth it; they commonly want airiness, lightness,
and facility; what is smooth, is not soft. His verses always roll, but
they seldom flow.
A survey of the life and writings of Prior may exemplify a sentence
which he doubtless understood well, when he read Horace at his uncle's;
"the vessel long retains the scent which it first receives." In his
private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he
exhibited the college. But on higher occasions and nobler subjects, when
habit was overpowered by the necessity of reflection, he wanted not
wisdom as a statesman, nor elegance as a poet.
-----
[Footnote 1: The difficulty of settling Prior's birthplace is great. In
the register of his college he is called, at his admission by the
president, Matthew Prior, of Winburn, in Middlesex; by himself, next
day, Matthew Prior, of Dorsetshire, in which county, not in Middlesex,
Winborn, or Winborne, as it stands in the Villare, is found. When he
stood candidate for his fellowship, five years afterwards, he was
registered again by himself as of Middlesex. The last record ought to be
preferred, because it was made upon oath. It is observable, that, as a
native of Winborne, he is styled filius Georgii Prior, generosi; not
consistently with the common account of the meanness of his birth. Dr.
J.]
[Footnote 2: Samuel Prior kept the Rummer tavern near Charing-cross, in
1685. The annual feast of the nobility and gentry living in the parish
of St. Martin in the Fields was held at his house, Oct. 14, that year.
N.]
[Footnote 3: He was admitted to his bachelor's degree in 1686; and to
his master's, by mandate, in 1700. N.]
[Footnote 4: Spence.]
[Footnote 5: He received, in September, 1697, a present of two hundred
guineas from the lords justices, for his trouble in bringing over the
treaty of peace. N.]
[Footnote 6: It should be the earl of Dorset.]
[Footnote 7: Swift obtained many subscriptions for him in Ireland. II.]
[Footnote: 8 Spence.]
[Footnote: 9 Spence.]
[Footnote 10: Spence; and see Gent. Mag. vol l vii. p. 1039.]
[Footnote 11: Richardsoniana.]
[Footnote 12: It is to be found in Poggii Facetiae. J.B.]
[Footnote 13: The same thought is found in one of Owen's epigrams,
lib. i. epig. 123. and in Poggii Facetiae. J.B.]
[Footnote 14: Prior was not the first inventor of this stanza; for
excepting the alexandrine close, it is to be found in Churchyard's
Worthies of Wales. See his introduction for Brecknockshire. J.B.]
CONGREVE.
William Congreve descended from a family in Staffordshire, of so great
antiquity that it claims a place among the few that extend their line
beyond the Norman conquest; and was the son of William Congreve, second
son of Richard Congreve, of Congreve and Stratton. He visited, once, at
least, the residence of his ancestors; and, I believe, more places than
one are still shown, in groves and gardens, where he is related to have
written his Old Bachelor.
Neither the time nor place of his birth are certainly known: if the
inscription upon his monument be true, he was born in 1672[15]. For the
place; it was said by himself, that he owed his nativity to England, and
by every body else that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him
with sharp censure, as a man that meanly disowned his native country.
The biographers assign his nativity to Bardsa, near Leeds, in Yorkshire,
from the account given by himself, as they suppose, to Jacob.
To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the truth about his own
birth, is, in appearance, to be very deficient in candour; yet nobody
can live long without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or vanity,
falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the
general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and
once uttered are sullenly supported. Boileau, who desired to be thought
a rigorous and steady moralist, having told a petty lie to Lewis the
fourteenth, continued it afterwards by false dates; thinking himself
obliged, _in honour_, says his admirer, to maintain what, when he said
it, was so well received.
Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated first at Kilkenny, and
afterwards at Dublin, his father having some military employment that
stationed him in Ireland: but, after having passed through the usual
preparatory studies, as may be reasonably supposed, with great celerity
and success, his father thought it proper to assign him a profession, by
which something might be gotten; and, about the time of the revolution,
sent him, at the age of sixteen, to study law in the Middle Temple,
where he lived for several years, but with very little attention to
statutes or reports.
His disposition to become an author appeared very early, as he very
early felt that force of imagination, and possessed that copiousness of
sentiment, by which intellectual pleasure can be given. His first
performance was a novel, called Incognita, or Love and Duty reconciled:
it is praised by the biographers, who quote some part of the preface,
that is indeed, for such a time of life, uncommonly judicious. I would
rather praise it than read it.
His first dramatick labour was the Old Bachelor; of which he says, in
his defence against Collier, "that comedy was written, as several know,
some years before it was acted. When I wrote it, I had little thoughts
of the stage; but did it, to amuse myself in a slow recovery from a fit
of sickness. Afterwards, through my indiscretion, it was seen, and in
some little time more it was acted; and I, through the remainder of my
indiscretion, suffered myself to be drawn into the prosecution of a
difficult and thankless study, and to be involved in a perpetual war
with knaves and fools."
There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have
done every thing by chance. The Old Bachelor was written for amusement,
in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with
great elaborateness of dialogue, and incessant ambition of wit. The age
of the writer considered, it is, indeed, a very wonderful performance;
for, whenever written, it was acted, 1693, when he was not more than
twenty-one years old; and was then recommended by Mr. Dryden, Mr.
Southern, and Mr. Maynwaring. Dryden said, that he, never had seen such
a first play; but they found it deficient in some things requisite to
the success of its exhibition, and by their greater experience fitted it
for the stage.
Southern used to relate of one comedy, probably of this, that, when
Congreve read it to the players, he pronounced it so wretchedly that
they had almost rejected it; but they were afterwards so well persuaded
of its excellence, that, for half a year before it was acted, the
manager allowed its author the privilege of the house.
Few plays have ever been so beneficial to the writer; for it procured
him the patronage of Halifax, who immediately made him one of the
commissioners for licensing coaches, and soon after gave him a place in
the pipe-office, and another in the customs, of six hundred pounds a
year. Congreve's conversation must surely have been, at least, equally
pleasing with his writings.
Such a comedy, written at such an age, requires some consideration. As
the lighter species of dramatick poetry professes the imitation of
common life, of real manners, and daily incidents, it apparently
presupposes a familiar knowledge of many characters, and exact
observation of the passing world; the difficulty, therefore, is to
conceive how this knowledge can be obtained by a boy.
But if the Old Bachelor be more nearly examined, it will be found to be
one of those comedies which may be made by a mind vigorous and acute,
and furnished with comick characters by the perusal of other poets,
without much actual commerce with mankind. The dialogue is one constant
reciprocation of conceits, or clash of wit, in which nothing flows
necessarily from the occasion, or is dictated by nature. The characters,
both of men and women, are either fictitious and artificial, as those of
Heartwell, and the ladies; or easy and common, as Wittol, a tam idiot;
Bluff, a swaggering coward; and Fondlewife, a jealous puritan; and the
catastrophe arises from a mistake not very probably produced, by
marrying a woman in a mask.
Yet this gay comedy, when all these deductions are made, will still
remain the work of very powerful and fertile faculties; the dialogue is
quick and sparkling, the incidents such as seize the attention, and the
wit so exuberant, that it "o'er-informs its tenement."
Next year he gave another specimen of his abilities in the Double
Dealer, which was not received with equal kindness. He writes to his
patron, the lord Halifax, a dedication, in which he endeavours to
reconcile the reader to that which found few friends among the audience.
These apologies are always useless: "de gustibus non est disputandum;"
men may be convinced, but they cannot be pleased, against their will.
But, though taste is obstinate, it is very variable; and time often
prevails when arguments have failed.
Queen Mary conferred upon both those plays the honour of her presence;
and when she died, soon after, Congreve testified his gratitude by a
despicable effusion of elegiack pastoral; a composition in which all is
unnatural, and yet nothing is new.
In another year, 1695, his prolifick pen produced Love for Love; a
comedy of nearer alliance to life, and exhibiting more real manners than
either of the former. The character of Foresight was then common. Dryden
calculated nativities; both Cromwell and king William had their lucky
days; and Shaftesbury himself, though he had no religion, was said to
regard predictions. The Sailor is not accounted very natural, but he is
very pleasant.
With this play was opened the new theatre, under the direction of
Betterton the tragedian; where he exhibited, two years afterwards, 1697,
the Mourning Bride, a tragedy, so written as to show him sufficiently
qualified for either kind of dramatick poetry.
In this play, of which, when he afterwards revised it, he reduced the
versification to greater regularity, there is more bustle than
sentiment; the plot is busy and intricate, and the events take hold on
the attention; but, except a very few passages, we are rather amused
with noise, and perplexed with stratagem, than entertained with any true
delineation of natural characters. This, however, was received with more
benevolence than any other of his works, and still continues to be acted
and applauded.
But whatever objections may be made, either to his comick or tragick
excellence, they are lost, at once, in the blaze of admiration, when it
is remembered that he had produced these four plays before he had passed
his twenty-fifth year; before other men, even such as are some time to
shine in eminence, have passed their probation of literature, or presume
to hope for any other notice than such as is bestowed on diligence and
inquiry. Among all the efforts of early genius which literary history
records, I doubt whether any one can be produced that more surpasses the
common limits of nature than the plays of Congreve.
About this time began the long-continued controversy between Collier and
the poets. In the reign of Charles the first the puritans had raised a
violent clamour against the drama, which they considered as an
entertainment not lawful to christians, an opinion held by them in
common with the church of Rome; and Prynne published Histriomastix, a
huge volume, in which stageplays were censured. The outrages and crimes
of the puritans brought afterwards their whole system of doctrine into
disrepute, and from the restoration the poets and the players were left
at quiet; for to have molested them would have had the appearance of
tendency to puritanical malignity.
This danger, however, was worn away by time; and Collier, a fierce and
implacable nonjuror, knew that an attack upon the theatre would never
make him suspected for a puritan; he, therefore, 1698, published a short
View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, I believe
with no other motive than religious zeal and honest indignation. He was
formed for a controvertist; with sufficient learning; with diction
vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect; with
unconquerable pertinacity; with wit, in the highest degree, keen and
sarcastick; and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by just
confidence in his cause.
Thus qualified, and thus incited, he walked out to battle, and assailed,
at once, most of the living writers, from Dryden to d'Urfey. His onset
was violent: those passages, which while they stood single had passed
with little notice, when they were accumulated and exposed together,
excited horrour; the wise and the pious caught the alarm; and the nation
wondered why it had so long suffered irreligion and licentiousness to be
openly taught at the publick charge.
Nothing now remained for the poets but to resist or fly. Dryden's
conscience, or his prudence, angry as he was, withheld him from the
conflict; Congreve and Vanbrugh attempted answers. Congreve, a very
young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air
of confidence and security. His chief artifice of controversy is to
retort upon his adversary his own words: he is very angry, and, hoping
to conquer Collier with his own weapons, allows himself in the use of
every term of contumely and contempt; but he has the sword without the
arm of Scanderbeg; he has his antagonist's coarseness, but not his
strength. Collier replied; for contest was his delight: he was not to be
frighted from his purpose or his prey.
The cause of Congreve was not tenable: whatever glosses he might use for
the defence or palliation of single passages, the general tenour and
tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with
universal conviction, that the perusal of his works will make no man
better; and that their ultimate effect is to represent pleasure in
alliance with vice, and to relax those obligations by which life ought
to be regulated.
The stage found other advocates, and the dispute was protracted through
ten years; but, at last, comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to
see the reward of his labour in the reformation of the theatre.
Of the powers by which this important victory was achieved, a quotation
from Love for Love, and the remark upon it, may afford a specimen:
_Sir Samps_. "Sampson's a very good name; for your Sampsons were strong
dogs from the beginning."
_Angel_. "Have a care---If you remember, the strongest Sampson of your
name pull'd an old house over his head at last."
"Here you have the sacred history burlesqued; and Sampson once more
brought into the house of Dagon, to make sport for the Philistines!"
Congreve's last play was the Way of the World; which, though as he hints
in his dedication it was written with great labour and much thought, was
received with so little favour, that, being in a high degree offended
and disgusted, he resolved to commit his quiet and his fame no more to
the caprices of an audience.
From this time his life ceased to be publick; he lived for himself and
for his friends; and, among his friends, was able to name every man of
his time whom wit and elegance had raised to reputation. It may be,
therefore, reasonably supposed that his manners were polite, and his
conversation pleasing.
He seems not to have taken much pleasure in writing, as he contributed
nothing to the Spectator, and only one paper to the Tatler, though
published by men with whom he might be supposed willing to associate;
and though he lived many years after the publication of his
Miscellaneous Poems, yet he added nothing to them, but lived on in
literary indolence; engaged in no controversy, contending with no rival,
neither soliciting flattery by publick commendations, nor provoking
enmity by malignant criticism, but passing his time among the great and
splendid, in the placid enjoyment of his fame and fortune.
Having owed his fortune to Halifax, he continued always of his patron's
party, but, as it seems, without violence or acrimony; and his firmness
was naturally esteemed, as his abilities were reverenced. His security,
therefore, was never violated; and when, upon the extrusion of the
whigs, some intercession was used lest Congreve should be displaced, the
earl of Oxford made this answer:
"Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni,
Nec tam aversus equos Tyria sol jungit ab urbe."
He that was thus honoured by the adverse party might naturally expect
to be advanced when his friends returned to power; and he was,
accordingly, made secretary for the island of Jamaica[16], a place, I
suppose, without trust or care, but which, with his post in the customs,
is said to have afforded him twelve hundred pounds a year.
His honours were yet far greater than his profits. Every writer
mentioned him with respect; and, among other testimonies to his merit,
Steele made him the patron of his Miscellany, and Pope inscribed to him
his translation of the Iliad.
But he treated the muses with ingratitude; for, having long conversed
familiarly with the great, he wished to be considered rather as a man of
fashion than of wit; and, when he received a visit from Voltaire,
disgusted him by the despicable foppery of desiring to be considered not
as an author but a gentleman; to which the Frenchman replied, "that if
he had been only a gentleman, he should not have come to visit him."
In his retirement he may be supposed to have applied himself to books;
for he discovers more literature than the poets have commonly attained.
But his studies were, in his latter days, obstructed by cataracts in his
eyes, which, at last, terminated in blindness. This melancholy state was
aggravated by the gout, for which he sought relief by a journey to Bath;
but, being overturned in his chariot, complained from that time of a
pain in his side, and died, at his house in Surrey-street, in the
Strand, Jan. 29[17], 1728-9. Having lain in state in the
Jerusalem-chamber, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument
is erected to his memory by Henrietta, duchess of Marlborough, to whom,
for reasons either not known or not mentioned, he bequeathed a legacy of
about ten thousand pounds; the accumulation of attentive parsimony,
which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great
assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time,
by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress.
* * * * *
Congreve has merit of the highest kind; he is an original writer, who
borrowed neither the models of his plot nor the manner of his dialogue.
Of his plays I cannot speak distinctly; for, since I inspected them many
years have passed; but what remains upon my memory is, that his
characters are commonly fictitious and artificial, with very little of
nature, and not much of life. He formed a peculiar idea of comick
excellence, which he supposed to consist in gay remarks and unexpected
answers; but that which he endeavoured, he seldom failed of performing.
His scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion; his
personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to
ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; his wit
is a meteor playing to and fro with alternate coruscations. His comedies
have, therefore, in some degree, the operation of tragedies; they
surprise rather than divert, and raise admiration oftener than
merriment. But they are the works of a mind replete with images, and
quick in combination.
Of his miscellaneous poetry, I cannot say any thing very favourable. The
powers of Congreve seem to desert him when he leaves the stage, as
Antæus was no longer strong than when he could touch the ground. It
cannot be observed without wonder, that a mind so vigorous and fertile
in dramatick compositions should, on any other occasion, discover
nothing but impotence and poverty. He has, in these little pieces,
neither elevation of fancy, selection of language, nor skill in
versification: yet, if I were required to select from the whole mass of
English poetry the most poetical paragraph, I know not what I could
prefer to an exclamation in the Mourning Bride:
ALMERIA.
It was a fancy'd noise; for all is hush'd.
LEONORA.
It bore the accent of a human voice.
ALMERIA.
It was thy fear, or else some transient wind
Whistling thro' hollows of this vaulted isle:
We'll listen--
LEONORA.
Hark!
ALMERIA.
No, all is hush'd and still as death.--'Tis dreadful!
How reverend is the face of this tall pile;
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,
To bear aloft its arch'd and ponderous roof,
By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable,
Looking tranquillity! It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight; the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold,
And shoot a chilness to my trembling heart.
Give me thy hand, and let me hear thy voice;
Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear
Thy voice--my own affrights me with its echoes.
He who reads these lines enjoys, for a moment, the powers of a poet; he
feels what he remembers to have felt before, but he feels it with great
increase of sensibility; he recognises a familiar image, but meets it
again amplified and expanded, embellished with beauty, and enlarged with
majesty.
Yet could the author, who appears here to have enjoyed the confidence of
nature, lament the death of queen Mary in lines like these:
The rocks are cleft, and new-descending rills
Furrow the brows of all th' impending hills.
The water-gods to floods their rivulets turn,
And each, with streaming eyes, supplies his wanting urn.
The fauns forsake the woods, the nymphs the grove,
And round the plain in sad distractions rove:
In prickly brakes their tender limbs they tear,
And leave on thorns their locks of golden hair.
With their sharp nails, themselves the satyrs wound,
And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground.
Lo Pan himself, beneath a blasted oak,
Dejected lies, his pipe in pieces broke.
See Pales weeping too, in wild despair,
And to the piercing winds her bosom bare.
And see yon fading myrtle, where appears
The queen of love, all bath'd in flowing tears;
See how she wrings her hands, and beats her breast,
And tears her useless girdle from her waist!
Hear the sad murmurs of her sighing doves!
For grief they sigh, forgetful of their loves.
And, many years after, he gave no proof that time had improved his
wisdom or his wit; for, on the death of the marquis of Blandford, this
was his song:
And now the winds, which had so long been still.
Began the swelling air with sighs to fill:
The water-nymphs, who motionless remain'd,
Like images of ice, while she complain'd,
Now loos'd their streams; as when descending rains
Roll the steep torrents headlong o'er the plains.
The prone creation, who so long had gaz'd,
Charm'd with her cries, and at her griefs amaz'd,
Began to roar and howl with horrid yell,
Dismal to hear and terrible to tell!
Nothing but groans and sighs were heard around,
And echo multiplied each mournful sound.
In both these funeral poems, when he has _yelled_ out many _syllables_
of senseless _dolour_, he dismisses his reader with senseless
consolation: from the grave of Pastora rises a light that forms a star;
and where Amaryllis wept for Amyntas, from every tear sprung up a
violet.
But William is his hero, and of William he will sing:
The hov'ring winds on downy wings shall wait around,
And catch, and waft to foreign lands, the flying sound.
It cannot but be proper to show what they shall have to catch and carry:
'Twas now, when flow'ry lawns the prospect made,
And flowing brooks beneath a forest shade,
A lowing heifer, loveliest of the herd,
Stood feeding by; while two fierce bulls prepar'd
Their armed heads for fight, by fate of war to prove
The victor worthy of the fair one's love.
Unthought presage of what met next my view;
For soon the shady scene withdrew.
And now, for woods, and fields, and springing flowers,
Behold a town arise, bulwark'd with walls and lofty towers;
Two rival armies all the plain o'erspread,
Each in battalia rang'd, and shining arms array'd;
With eager eyes beholding both from far
Namur, the prize and mistress of the war.
The Birth of the Muse is a miserable fiction. One good line it has,
which was borrowed from Dryden. The concluding verses are these:
This said, no more remain'd. Th' ethereal host
Again impatient crowd the crystal coast.
The father now, within his spacious hands,
Encompass'd all the mingled mass of seas and lands;
And, having heav'd aloft the pond'rous sphere,
He launch'd the world to float in ambient air.
Of his irregular poems, that to Mrs. Arabella Hunt seems to be the best;
his ode for St. Cecilia's Day, however, has some lines which Pope had in
his mind when he wrote his own.
His imitations of Horace are feebly paraphrastical, and the additions
which he makes are of little value. He sometimes retains what were more
properly omitted, as when he talks of _vervain_ and _gums_ to propitiate
Venus.
Of his translations, the satire of Juvenal was written very early, and
may, therefore, be forgiven, though it have not the massiness and vigour
of the original. In all his versions strength and sprightliness are
wanting: his hymn to Venus, from Homer, is, perhaps, the best. His lines
are weakened with expletives, and his rhymes are frequently imperfect.
His petty poems are seldom worth the cost of criticism: sometimes the
thoughts are false, and sometimes common. In his verses on lady Gethin,
the latter part is in imitation of Dryden's ode on Mrs. Killigrew; and
Doris, that has been so lavishly flattered by Steele, has, indeed, some
lively stanzas, but the expression might be mended; and the most
striking part of the character had been already shown in Love for Love.
His Art of Pleasing is founded on a vulgar, but, perhaps, impracticable
principle, and the staleness of the sense is not concealed by any
novelty of illustration or elegance of diction.
This tissue of poetry, from which he seems to have hoped a lasting name,
is totally neglected, and known only as it is appended to his plays.
While comedy, or while tragedy, is regarded, his plays are likely to be
read; but, except what relates to the stage[18], I know not that he has
ever written a stanza that is sung, or a couplet that is quoted. The
general character of his Miscellanies is, that they show little wit, and
little virtue.
Yet to him it must be confessed, that we are indebted for the correction
of a national errour, and for the cure of our Pindarick madness. He
first taught the English writers that Pindar's odes were regular; and
though certainly he had not the fire requisite for the higher species of
lyrick poetry, he has shown us, that enthusiasm has its rules, and that,
in mere confusion, there is neither grace nor greatness.
-----
[Footnote 15: Mr. Malone has ascertained both the place and time of his
birth by the register of Bardsey, which is as follows: "William, the
sonne of Mr. William Congreve of Bardsey Grange, was baptised Febru.
10th, 1669." See Malone's Dryden, vol. i. p. 225. J.B.]
[Footnote 16: Dec. 17, 1714, and May 3, 1718, he received a patent for
the same place for life.]
[Footnote 17: The Historical Register says Jan. 19. aet. 57.]
[Footnote 18: "Except!" Dr. Warton exclaims, "Is not this a high sort of
poetry?" He mentions, likewise, that Congreve's opera, or oratorio, of
Semele, was set to musick by Handel; I believe, in 1743.]
BLACKMORE.
Sir Richard Blackmore is one of those men whose writings have attracted
much notice, but of whose life and manners very little has been
communicated, and whose lot it has been to be much oftener mentioned by
enemies than by friends.
He was the son of Robert Blackmore, of Corsham, in Wiltshire, styled, by
Wood, gentleman, and supposed to have been an attorney. Having been, for
some time, educated in a country school, he was sent, at thirteen, to
Westminster; and, in 1668, was entered at Edmund hall, in Oxford, where
he took the degree of M.A. June 3, 1676, and resided thirteen years; a
much longer time than it is usual to spend at the university; and which
he seems to have passed with very little attention to the business of
the place; for, in his poems, the ancient names of nations or places,
which he often introduces, are pronounced by chance. He afterwards
travelled: at Padua he was made doctor of physick; and, after having
wandered about a year and a half on the continent, returned home.
In some part of his life, it is not known when, his indigence compelled
him to teach a school; an humiliation, with which, though it certainly
lasted but a little while, his enemies did not forget to reproach him,
when he became conspicuous enough to excite malevolence; and let it be
remembered, for his honour, that to have been once a schoolmaster is the
only reproach which all the perspicacity of malice, animated by wit, has
ever fixed upon his private life.
When he first engaged in the study of physick, he inquired, as he says,
of Dr. Sydenham, what authors he should read, and was directed by
Sydenham to Don Quixote; "which," said he, "is a very good book; I read
it still." The perverseness of mankind makes it often mischievous in
men of eminence to give way to merriment; the idle and the illiterate
will long shelter themselves under this foolish apophthegm.
Whether he rested satisfied with this direction, or sought for better,
he commenced physician, and obtained high eminence and extensive
practice. He became fellow of the College of Physicians, April 12, 1687,
being one of the thirty, which, by the new charter of king James, were
added to the former fellows. His residence was in Cheapside[19], and his
friends were chiefly in the city. In the early part of Blackmore's time,
a citizen was a term of reproach; and his place of abode was another
topick to which his adversaries had recourse, in the penury of scandal.
Blackmore, therefore, was made a poet not by necessity but inclination,
and wrote not for a livelihood but for fame; or, if he may tell his own
motives, for a nobler purpose, to engage poetry in the cause of virtue.
I believe it is peculiar to him, that his first publick work was an
heroick poem. He was not known as a maker of verses till he published,
in 1695, Prince Arthur, in ten books, written, as he relates, "by such
catches and starts, and in such occasional uncertain hours, as his
profession afforded, and for the greatest part in coffee-houses, or in
passing up and down the streets." For the latter part of this apology he
was accused of writing "to the rumbling of his chariot-wheels." He had
read, he says, "but little poetry throughout his whole life; and for
fifteen years before had not written an hundred verses, except one copy
of Latin verses in praise of a friend's book[20]."
He thinks, and with some reason, that from such a performance perfection
cannot be expected; but he finds another reason for the severity of his
censurers, which he expresses in language such as Cheapside easily
furnished. "I am not free of the poets' company, having never kissed the
governor's hands: mine is, therefore, not so much as a permission poem,
but a downright interloper. Those gentlemen who carry on their poetical
trade in a joint stock, would, certainly, do what they could to sink and
ruin an unlicensed adventurer, notwithstanding I disturbed none of their
factories, nor imported any goods they had ever dealt in." He had lived
in the city till he had learned its note.
That Prince Arthur found many readers is certain; for in two years it
had three editions; a very uncommon instance of favourable reception, at
a time when literary curiosity was yet confined to particular classes of
the nation. Such success naturally raised animosity; and Dennis attacked
it by a formal criticism, more tedious and disgusting than the work
which he condemns. To this censure may be opposed the approbation of
Locke and the admiration of Molineux, which are found in their printed
letters. Molineux is particularly delighted with the song of Mopas,
which is, therefore, subjoined to this narrative.
It is remarked by Pope, that what "raises the hero, often sinks the
man." Of Blackmore it may be said, that, as the poet sinks, the man
rises; the animadversions of Dennis, insolent and contemptuous as they
were, raised in him no implacable resentment: he and his critick were
afterwards friends; and in one of his latter works he praises Dennis as
"equal to Boileau in poetry, and superior to him in critical abilities."
He seems to have been more delighted with praise than pained by censure,
and, instead of slackening, quickened his career. Having in two years
produced ten books of Prince Arthur, in two years more, 1697, he sent
into the world King Arthur, in twelve. The provocation was now doubled,
and the resentment of wits and criticks may be supposed to have
increased in proportion. He found, however, advantages more than
equivalent to all their outrages; he was this year made one of the
physicians in ordinary to king William, and advanced by him to the
honour of knighthood, with the present of a gold chain and a medal.
The malignity of the wits attributed his knighthood to his new poem;
but king William was not very studious of poetry; and Blackmore,
perhaps, had other merit; for he says, in his dedication to Alfred, that
"he had a greater part in the succession of the house of Hanover than
ever he had boasted."
What Blackmore could contribute to the succession, or what he imagined
himself to have contributed, cannot now be known. That he had been of
considerable use, I doubt not but he believed, for I hold him to have
been very honest; but he might easily make a false estimate of his own
importance: those whom their virtue restrains from deceiving others, are
often disposed, by their vanity, to deceive themselves. Whether he
promoted the succession or not, he at least approved it, and adhered
invariably to his principles and party through his whole life.
His ardour of poetry still continued; and not long after, 1700, he
published a Paraphrase on the book of Job, and other parts of the
scripture. This performance Dryden, who pursued him with great
malignity, lived long enough to ridicule in a prologue.
The wits easily confederated against him, as Dryden, whose favour they
almost all courted, was his professed adversary. He had besides given
them reason for resentment, as, in his preface to Prince Arthur, he had
said of the dramatick writers almost all that was alleged afterwards by
Collier; but Blackmore's censure was cold and general, Collier's was
personal and ardent; Blackmore taught his reader to dislike, what
Collier incited him to abhor.
In his preface to King Arthur he endeavoured to gain, at least, one
friend, and propitiated Congreve by higher praise of his Mourning Bride
than it has obtained from any other critick.
The same year he published a Satire on Wit, a proclamation of defiance
which united the poets almost all against him, and which brought upon
him lampoons and ridicule from every side. This he doubtless foresaw,
and evidently despised; nor should his dignity of mind be without its
praise, had he not paid the homage to greatness which he denied to
genius, and degraded himself by conferring that authority over the
national taste, which he takes from the poets, upon men of high rank and
wide influence, but of less wit, and not greater virtue.
Here is again discovered the inhabitant of Cheapside, whose head cannot
keep his poetry unmingled with trade. To hinder that intellectual
bankruptcy which he affects to fear, he will erect a _bank for wit_.
In this poem he justly censured Dryden's impurities, but praised his
powers; though, in a subsequent edition, he retained the satire, and
omitted the praise. What was his reason I know not; Dryden was then no
longer in his way.
His head still teemed with heroick poetry; and, 1705, he published
Eliza, in ten books. I am afraid that the world was now weary of
contending about Blackmore's heroes; for I do not remember that by any
author, serious or comical, I have found Eliza either praised or blamed.
She "dropped," as it seems, "dead-born from the press." It is never
mentioned, and was never seen by me till I borrowed it for the present
occasion. Jacob says, "it is corrected and revised for another
impression;" but the labour of revision was thrown away.
From this time he turned some of his thoughts to the celebration of
living characters; and wrote a poem on the Kit-cat Club[21], and Advice
to the Poets how to celebrate the Duke of Marlborough; but, on occasion
of another year of success, thinking himself qualified to give more
instruction, he again wrote a poem of Advice to a Weaver of Tapestry.
Steele was then publishing the Tatler; and, looking round him for
something at which he might laugh, unluckily lighted on sir Richard's
work, and treated it with such contempt, that, as Fenton observes, he
put an end to the species of writers that gave _advice to painters_.
Not long after, 1712, he published Creation, a philosophical poem, which
has been, by my recommendation, inserted in the late collection. Whoever
judges of this by any other of Blackmore's performances, will do it
injury. The praise given it by Addison, Spectator, 339, is too well
known to be transcribed; but some notice is due to the testimony of
Dennis, who calls it a "philosophical poem, which has equalled that of
Lucretius in the beauty of its versification, and infinitely surpassed
it in the solidity and strength of its reasoning."
Why an author surpasses himself, it is natural to inquire. I have heard
from Mr. Draper, an eminent bookseller, an account received by him from
Ambrose Philips, "That Blackmore, as he proceeded in this poem, laid his
manuscript, from time to time, before a club of wits with whom he
associated; and that every man contributed, as he could, either
improvement or correction; so that," said Philips, "there are, perhaps,
nowhere in the book thirty lines together that now stand as they were
originally written."
The relation of Philips, I suppose, was true; but when all reasonable,
all credible allowance is made for this friendly revision, the author
will still retain an ample dividend of praise; for to him must always be
assigned the plan of the work, the distribution of its parts, the choice
of topicks, the train of argument, and, what is yet more, the general
predominance of philosophical judgment and poetical spirit. Correction
seldom effects more than the suppression of faults: a happy line, or a
single elegance, may, perhaps, be added; but, of a large work, the
general character must always remain; the original constitution can be
very little helped by local remedies; inherent and radical dulness will
never be much invigorated by extrinsick animation.
This poem, if he had written nothing else, would have transmitted him to
posterity among the first favourites of the English muse; but to make
verses was his transcendent pleasure, and, as he was not deterred by
censure, he was not satiated with praise.
He deviated, however, sometimes into other tracks of literature, and
condescended to entertain his readers with plain prose. When the
Spectator stopped, he considered the polite world as destitute of
entertainment; and, in concert with Mr. Hughes, who wrote every third
paper, published, three times a week, the Lay Monastery, founded on the
supposition that some literary men, whose characters are described, had
retired to a house in the country to enjoy philosophical leisure, and
resolved to instruct the publick, by communicating their disquisitions
and amusements. Whether any real persons were concealed under fictitious
names, is not known. The hero of the club is one Mr. Johnson; such a
constellation of excellence, that his character shall not be suppressed,
though there is no great genius in the design, nor skill in the
delineation.
"The first I shall name is Mr. Johnson, a gentleman that owes to nature
excellent faculties and an elevated genius, and to industry and
application many acquired accomplishments. His taste is distinguishing,
just, and delicate: his judgment clear, and his reason strong,
accompanied with an imagination full of spirit, of great compass, and
stored with refined ideas. He is a critick of the first rank; and, what
is his peculiar ornament, he is delivered from the ostentation,
malevolence, and supercilious temper, that so often blemish men of that
character. His remarks result from the nature and reason of things, and
are formed by a judgment free, and unbiassed by the authority of those
who have lazily followed each other in the same beaten track of
thinking, and are arrived only at the reputation of acute grammarians
and commentators; men, who have been copying one another many hundred
years, without any improvement; or, if they have ventured farther, have
only applied in a mechanical manner the rules of ancient criticks to
modern writings, and, with great labour, discovered nothing but their
own want of judgment and capacity. As Mr. Johnson penetrates to the
bottom of his subject, by which means his observations are solid and
natural, as well as delicate, so his design is always to bring to light
something useful and ornamental; whence his character is the reverse to
theirs, who have eminent abilities in insignificant knowledge, and a
great felicity in finding out trifles. He is no less industrious to
search out the merit of an author, than sagacious in discerning his
errors and defects; and takes more pleasure in commending the beauties,
than exposing the blemishes of a laudable writing; like Horace, in a
long work, he can bear some deformities, and justly lay them on the
imperfection of human nature, which is incapable of faultless
productions. When an excellent drama appears in publick, and by its
intrinsick worth attracts a general applause, he is not stung with envy
and spleen; nor does he express a savage nature, in fastening upon the
celebrated author, dwelling upon his imaginary defects, and passing over
his conspicuous excellencies. He treats all writers upon the same
impartial footing; and is not, like the little criticks, taken up
entirely in finding out only the beauties of the ancient, and nothing
but the errors of the modern writers. Never did any one express more
kindness and good-nature to young and unfinished authors; he promotes
their interests, protects their reputation, extenuates their faults, and
sets off their virtues, and, by his candour, guards them from the
severity of his judgment. He is not like those dry criticks, who are
morose because they cannot write themselves, but is himself master of a
good vein in poetry; and though he does not often employ it, yet he has
sometimes entertained his friends with his unpublished performances."
The rest of the lay monks seem to be but feeble mortals, in comparison
with the gigantick Johnson; who yet, with all his abilities, and the
help of the fraternity, could drive the publication but to forty papers,
which were afterwards collected into a volume, and called, in the title,
a Sequel to the Spectators.
Some years afterwards, 1716 and 1717, he published two volumes of essays
in prose, which can be commended only as they are written for the
highest and noblest purpose, the promotion of religion. Blackmore's
prose is not the prose of a poet; for it is languid, sluggish, and
lifeless; his diction is neither daring nor exact, his flow neither
rapid nor easy, and his periods neither smooth nor strong. His account
of wit, will show with how little clearness he is content to think, and
how little his thoughts are recommended by his language.
"As to its efficient cause, wit owes its production to an extraordinary
and peculiar temperament in the constitution of the possessor of it, in
which is found a concurrence of regular and exalted ferments, and an
affluence of animal spirits, refined and rectified to a great degree of
purity; whence, being endowed with vivacity, brightness, and celerity,
as well in their reflections as direct motions, they become proper
instruments for the sprightly operations of the mind; by which means the
imagination can, with great facility, range the wide field of nature,
contemplate an infinite variety of objects, and, by observing the
similitude and disagreement of their several qualities, single out and
abstract, and then suit and unite, those ideas which will best serve its
purpose. Hence beautiful allusions, surprising metaphors, and admirable
sentiments, are always ready at hand: and while the fancy is full of
images, collected from innumerable objects and their different
qualities, relations, and habitudes, it can at pleasure dress a common
notion in a strange but becoming garb; by which, as before observed, the
same thought will appear a new one, to the great delight and wonder of
the hearer. What we call _genius_ results from this particular happy
complexion in the first formation of the person that enjoys it, and is
nature's gift, but diversified by various specifick characters and
limitations, as its active fire is blended and allayed by different
proportions of phlegm, or reduced and regulated by the contrast of
opposite ferments. Therefore, as there happens in the composition of a
facetious genius a greater or less, though still an inferior degree of
judgment and prudence, one man of wit will be varied and distinguished
from another."
In these essays he took little care to propitiate the wits; for he
scorns to avert their malice at the expense of virtue or of truth.
"Several, in their books, have many sarcastical and spiteful strokes at
religion in general; while others make themselves pleasant with the
principles of the christian. Of the last kind, this age has seen a most
audacious example in the book entitled, a Tale of a Tub. Had this
writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are justly
impatient of all indignity offered to the established religion of their
country, no doubt but the author would have received the punishment he
deserved. But the fate of this impious buffoon is very different; for in
a protestant kingdom, zealous of their civil and religious immunities,
he has not only escaped affronts, and the effects of publick resentment,
but has been caressed and patronised by persons of great figure, and of
all denominations. Violent party-men, who differed in all things
besides, agreed in their turn to show particular respect and friendship
to this insolent derider of the worship of his country, till at last the
reputed writer is not only gone off with impunity, but triumphs in his
dignity and preferment. I do not know that any inquiry or search was
ever made after this writing, or that any reward was ever offered for
the discovery of the author, or that the infamous book was ever
condemned to be burnt in publick; whether this proceeds from the
excessive esteem and love that men in power, during the late reign, had
for wit, or their defect of zeal and concern for the christian religion,
will be determined best by those who are best acquainted with their
character."
In another place he speaks with becoming abhorrence of a "godless
author," who has burlesqued a psalm. This author was supposed to be
Pope, who published a reward for any one that would produce the coiner
of the accusation, but never denied it; and was afterwards the perpetual
and incessant enemy of Blackmore.
One of his essays is upon the Spleen, which is treated by him so much to
his own satisfaction, that he has published the same thoughts in the
same words; first in the Lay Monastery; then in the Essay; and then in
the preface to a Medical Treatise on the Spleen. One passage, which I
have found already twice, I will here exhibit, because I think it better
imagined, and better expressed, than could be expected from the common
tenour of his prose:
"As the several combinations of splenetick madness and folly produce an
infinite variety of irregular understanding, so the amicable
accommodation and alliance between several virtues and vices produce an
equal diversity in the dispositions and manners of mankind; whence it
comes to pass, that as many monstrous and absurd productions are found
in the moral, as in the intellectual world. How surprising is it to
observe, among the least culpable men, some whose minds are attracted by
heaven and earth, with a seeming equal force; some who are proud of
humility; others who are censorious and uncharitable, yet self-denying
and devout; some who join contempt of the world with sordid avarice; and
others who preserve a great degree of piety, with ill-nature and
ungoverned passions! Nor are instances of this inconsistent mixture less
frequent among bad men, where we often, with admiration, see persons at
once generous and unjust, impious lovers of their country, and
flagitious heroes, good-natured sharpers, immoral men of honour, and
libertines who will sooner die than change their religion; and though it
is true that repugnant coalitions of so high a degree are found but in a
part of mankind, yet none of the whole mass, either good or bad, are
entirely exempted from some absurd mixture."
He, about this time, Aug. 22, 1716, became one of the elects of the
College of Physicians; and was soon after, Oct. 1, chosen censor. He
seems to have arrived late, whatever was the reason, at his medical
honours.
Having succeeded so well in his book on Creation, by which he
established the great principle of all religion, he thought his
undertaking imperfect, unless he, likewise, enforced the truth of
revelation; and, for that purpose, added another poem on Redemption. He
had, likewise, written, before his Creation, three books on the Nature
of Man.
The lovers of musical devotion have always wished for a more happy
metrical version than they have yet obtained of the Book of Psalms: this
wish the piety of Blackmore led him to gratify; and he produced, 1721, a
new version of the psalms of David, fitted to the tunes used in
churches; which, being recommended by the archbishops and many bishops,
obtained a license for its admission into publick worship: but no
admission has it yet obtained, nor has it any right to come where Brady
and Tate have got possession. Blackmore's name must be added to those of
many others, who, by the same attempt, have obtained only the praise of
meaning well.
He was not yet deterred from heroick poetry. There was another monarch
of this island, for he did not fetch his heroes from foreign countries,
whom he considered as worthy of the epick muse; and he dignified Alfred,
1723, with twelve books. But the opinion of the nation was now settled;
a hero introduced by Blackmore was not likely to find either respect or
kindness; Alfred took his place by Eliza, in silence and darkness:
benevolence was ashamed to favour, and malice was weary of insulting. Of
his four epick poems, the first had such reputation and popularity as
enraged the criticks; the second was, at least, known enough to be
ridiculed; the two last had neither friends nor enemies.
Contempt is a kind of gangrene, which, if it seizes one part of a
character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. Blackmore, being despised
as a poet, was, in time, neglected as a physician; his practice, which
was once invidiously great, forsook him in the latter part of his life;
but being by nature, or by principle, averse from idleness, he employed
his unwelcome leisure in writing books on physick, and teaching others
to cure those whom he could himself cure no longer. I know not whether I
can enumerate all the treatises by which he has endeavoured to diffuse
the art of healing; for there is scarcely any distemper, of dreadful
name, which he has not taught his reader how to oppose. He has written
on the smallpox, with a vehement invective against inoculation; on
consumptions, the spleen, the gout, the rheumatism, the king's evil, the
dropsy, the jaundice, the stone, the diabetes, and the plague.
Of those books, if I had read them, it could not be expected that I
should be able to give a critical account. I have been told that there
is something in them of vexation and discontent, discovered by a
perpetual attempt to degrade physick from its sublimity, and to
represent it as attainable without much previous or concomitant
learning. By the transient glances which I have thrown upon them, I have
observed an affected contempt of the ancients, and a supercilious
derision of transmitted knowledge. Of this indecent arrogance, the
following quotation, from his preface to the treatise on the smallpox,
will afford a specimen; in which, when the reader finds, what I fear is
true, that, when he was censuring Hippocrates, he did not know the
difference between aphorism and apophthegm, he will not pay much regard
to his determinations concerning ancient learning.
"As for this book of aphorisms, it is like my lord Bacon's of the same
title, a book of jests, or a grave collection of trite and trifling
observations; of which though many are true and certain, yet they
signify nothing, and may afford diversion, but no instruction; most of
them being much inferior to the sayings of the wise men of Greece, which
yet are so low and mean, that we are entertained every day with more
valuable sentiments at the table-conversation of ingenious and learned
men."
I am unwilling, however, to leave him in total disgrace, and will,
therefore, quote, from another preface, a passage less reprehensible.
"Some gentlemen have been disingenuous and unjust to me, by wresting and
forcing my meaning in the preface to another book, as if I condemned and
exposed all learning, though they knew I declared that I greatly
honoured and esteemed all men of superiour literature and erudition; and
that I only undervalued false or superficial learning, that signifies
nothing for the service of mankind; and that, as to physick, I expressly
affirmed that learning must be joined with native genius, to make a
physician of the first rank; but if those talents are separated, I
asserted, and do still insist, that a man of native sagacity and
diligence will prove a more able and useful practiser, than a heavy
notional scholar, encumbered with a heap of confused ideas."
He was not only a poet and a physician, but produced, likewise, a work
of a different kind; a true and impartial History of the Conspiracy
against King William, of glorious memory, in the year 1695. This I have
never seen, but suppose it, at least, compiled with integrity. He
engaged, likewise, in theological controversy, and wrote two books
against the Arians; Just Prejudices against the Arian Hypothesis; and
Modern Arians unmasked. Another of his works is Natural Theology, or
Moral Duties considered apart from Positive; with some observations on
the Desirableness and Necessity of a supernatural Revelation. This was
the last book that he published. He left behind him the Accomplished
Preacher, or an Essay upon Divine Eloquence; which was printed, after
his death, by Mr. White, of Nayland, in Essex, the minister who attended
his deathbed, and testified the fervent piety of his last hours. He
died on the eighth of October, 1729.
Blackmore, by the unremitted enmity of the wits, whom he provoked more
by his virtue than his dulness, has been exposed to worse treatment than
he deserved. His name was so long used to point every epigram upon dull
writers, that it became, at last, a by-word of contempt; but it deserves
observation, that malignity takes hold only of his writings, and that
his life passed without reproach, even when his boldness of reprehension
naturally turned upon him many eyes desirous to espy faults, which many
tongues would have made haste to publish. But those who could not
blame, could, at least, forbear to praise, and, therefore, of his
private life and domestick character there are no memorials.
As an author he may justly claim the honours of magnanimity. The
incessant attacks of his enemies, whether serious or merry, are never
discovered to have disturbed his quiet, or to have lessened his
confidence in himself; they neither awed him to silence nor to caution;
they neither provoked him to petulance, nor depressed him to complaint.
While the distributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate
and degrade him, he either despised or defied them, wrote on as he had
written before, and never turned aside to quiet them by civility, or
repress them by confutation.
He depended with great security on his own powers, and perhaps was, for
that reason, less diligent in perusing books. His literature was, I
think, but small. What he knew of antiquity, I suspect him to have
gathered from modern compilers; but, though he could not boast of much
critical knowledge, his mind was stored with general principles, and he
left minute researches to those whom he considered as little minds.
With this disposition he wrote most of his poems. Having formed a
magnificent design, he was careless of particular and subordinate
elegancies; he studied no niceties of versification; he waited for no
felicities of fancy; but caught his first thoughts in the first words in
which they were presented: nor does it appear that he saw beyond his own
performances, or had ever elevated his views to that ideal perfection,
which every genius, born to excel, is condemned always to pursue, and
never overtake. In the first suggestions of his imagination he
acquiesced; he thought them good, and did not seek for better. His works
may be read a long time without the occurrence of a single line that
stands prominent from the rest.
The poem on Creation has, however, the appearance of more
circumspection; it wants neither harmony of numbers, accuracy of
thought, nor elegance of diction: it has either been written with great
care, or, what cannot be imagined of so long a work, with such felicity
as made care less necessary.
Its two constituent parts are ratiocination and description. To reason
in verse, is allowed to be difficult; but Blackmore not only reasons in
verse, but very often reasons poetically; and finds the art of uniting
ornament with strength, and ease with closeness. This is a skill which
Pope might have condescended to learn from him, when he needed it so
much in his Moral Essays.
In his descriptions, both of life and nature, the poet and the
philosopher happily coöperate; truth is recommended by elegance, and
elegance sustained by truth.
In the structure and order of the poem, not only the greater parts are
properly consecutive, but the didactick and illustrative paragraphs are
so happily mingled, that labour is relieved by pleasure, and the
attention is led on, through a long succession of varied excellence, to
the original position, the fundamental principle of wisdom and of
virtue.
* * * * *
As the heroick poems of Blackmore are now little read, it is thought
proper to insert, as a specimen from Prince Arthur, the song of Mopas,
mentioned by Molineux.
But that which Arthur with most pleasure heard,
Were noble strains, by Mopas sung, the bard
Who to his harp in lofty verse began,
And through the secret maze of nature ran.
He the great spirit sung, that all things fill'd,
That the tumultuous waves of chaos still'd:
Whose nod dispos'd the jarring seeds to peace,
And made the wars of hostile atoms cease.
All beings we in fruitful nature find,
Proceeded from the great eternal mind;
Streams of his unexhausted spring of power,
And cherish'd with his influence, endure.
He spread the pure cerulean fields on high,
And arch'd the chambers of the vaulted sky,
Which he, to suit their glory with their height,
Adorn'd with globes, that reel, as drunk with light.
His hand directed all the tuneful spheres,
He turn'd their orbs, and polish'd all the stars.
He fill'd the sun's vast lamp with golden light,
And bid the silver moon adorn the night.
He spread the airy ocean without shores,
Where birds are wafted with their feather'd oars.
Then sung the bard how the light vapours rise
From the warm earth, and cloud the smiling skies:
He sung how some, chill'd in their airy flight,
Fall scatter'd down in pearly dew by night;
How some, rais'd higher, sit in secret steams
On the reflected points of bounding beams,
Till, chill'd with cold, they shade th' ethereal plain,
Then on the thirsty earth descend in rain;
How some, whose parts a slight contexture show,
Sink hov'ring through the air, in fleecy snow;
How part is spun in silken threads, and clings
Entangled in the grass in gluey strings;
How others stamp to stones, with rushing sound
Fall from their crystal quarries to the ground;
How some are laid in trains, that kindled fly
In harmless fires by night, about the sky;
How some in winds blow with impetuous force,
And carry ruin where they bend their course,
While some conspire to form a gentle breeze,
To fan the air, and play among the trees;
How some, enrag'd, grow turbulent and loud,
Pent in the bowels of a frowning cloud,
That cracks, as if the axis of the world
Was broke, and heav'n's bright tow'rs were downwards
hurl'd.
He sung how earth's wide ball, at Jove's command,
Did in the midst on airy columns stand;
And how the soul of plants, in prison held,
And bound with sluggish fetters, lies conceal'd,
Till with the spring's warm beams, almost releas'd
From the dull weight, with which it lay opprest,
Its vigour spreads, and makes the teeming earth
Heave up, and labour with the sprouting birth:
The active spirit freedom seeks in vain,
It only works and twists a stronger chain;
Urging its prison's sides to break away,
It makes that wider, where 'tis forc'd to stay:
Till, having form'd its living house, it rears
Its head, and in a tender plant appears.
Hence springs the oak, the beauty of the grove,
Whose stately trunk fierce storms can scarcely move.
Hence grows the cedar, hence the swelling vine
Does round the elm its purple clusters twine.
Hence painted flowers the smiling gardens bless,
Both with their fragrant scent and gaudy dress.
Hence the white lily in full beauty grows.
Hence the blue violet, and blushing rose.
He sung how sunbeams brood upon the earth,
And in the glebe hatch such a num'rous birth;
Which way the genial warmth in summer storms
Turns putrid vapours to a bed of worms;
How rain, transform'd by this prolifick power,
Falls from the clouds an animated shower.
He sung the embryo's growth within the womb,
And how the parts their various shapes assume;
With what rare art the wondrous structure's wrought,
From one crude mass to such perfection brought;
That no part useless, none misplac'd we see,
None are forgot, and more would monstrous be.
-----
[Footnote 19: At Saddlers' hall.]
[Footnote 20: The book he alludes to was Nova Hypothesis ad explicanda
febrium intermittentium symptomata, &c. Authore Gulielmo Cole, M.D.
1693.]
[Footnote 21: "The Kit-cat Club," says Horace Walpole, "though generally
mentioned as a set of wits, were, in fact, the patriots who saved
Britain." See, for the history of its origin and name, Addisoniana, i.
120; Ward's complete and humorous account of the remarkable Clubs and
Societies. ED.]
FENTON.
The brevity with which I am to write the account of Elijah Fenton, is
not the effect of indifference or negligence. I have sought intelligence
among his relations in his native county, but have not obtained it.
He was born near Newcastle, in Staffordshire, of an ancient family[22]
whose state was very considerable; but he was the youngest of eleven
children, and being, therefore, necessarily destined to some lucrative
employment, was sent first to school, and afterwards to Cambridge[23],
but with many other wise and virtuous men, who, at that time of discord
and debate, consulted conscience, whether well or ill informed, more
than interest, he doubted the legality of the government, and, refusing
to qualify himself for publick employment by the oaths required, left
the university without a degree; but I never heard that, the enthusiasm
of opposition impelled him to separation from the church.
By this perverseness of integrity he was driven out a commoner of
nature, excluded from the regular modes of profit and prosperity, and
reduced to pick up a livelihood uncertain and fortuitous; but it must be
remembered that he kept his name unsullied, and never suffered himself
to be reduced, like too many of the same sect, to mean arts and
dishonourable shifts. Whoever mentioned Fenton, mentioned him with
honour.
The life that passes in penury must necessarily pass in obscurity. It is
impossible to trace Fenton from year to year, or to discover what means
he used for his support. He was awhile secretary to Charles, earl of
Orrery in Flanders, and tutor to his young son, who afterwards mentioned
him with great esteem and tenderness. He was, at one time, assistant in
the school of Mr. Bonwicke, in Surrey; and at another kept a school for
himself at Sevenoaks, in Kent, which he brought into reputation; but was
persuaded to leave it, 1710, by Mr. St. John, with promises of a more
honourable employment.
His opinions, as he was a nonjuror, seem not to have been remarkably
rigid. He wrote with great zeal and affection the praises of queen Anne,
and very willingly and liberally extolled the duke of Marlborough when
he was, 1707, at the height of his glory.
He expressed still more attention to Marlborough and his family by an
elegiack pastoral on the marquis of Blandford, which could be prompted
only by respect or kindness; for neither the duke nor dutchess desired
the praise, or liked the cost of patronage.
The elegance of his poetry entitled him to the company of the wits of
his time, and the amiableness of his manners made him loved wherever he
was known. Of his friendship to Southern and Pope there are lasting
monuments.
He published, in 1707[24] a collection of poems.
By Pope he was once placed in a station that might have been of great
advantage. Craggs, when he was advanced to be secretary of state, about
1720, feeling his own want of literature, desired Pope to procure him an
instructer, by whose help he might supply the deficiencies of his
education. Pope recommended Fenton, in whom Craggs found all that he was
seeking. There was now a prospect of ease and plenty, for Fenton had
merit, and Craggs had generosity; but the smallpox suddenly put an end
to the pleasing expectation.
When Pope, after the great success of his Iliad, undertook the Odyssey,
being, as it seems, weary of translating, he determined to engage
auxiliaries. Twelve books he took to himself, and twelve he distributed
between Broome and Fenton: the books allotted to Fenton were the first,
the fourth, the nineteenth, and the twentieth. It is observable, that he
did not take the eleventh, which he had before translated into blank
verse; neither did Pope claim it, but committed it to Broome. How the
two associates performed their parts is well known to the readers of
poetry, who have never been able to distinguish their books from those
of Pope.
In 1723 was performed his tragedy of Mariamne; to which Southern, at
whose house it was written, is said to have contributed such hints as
his theatrical experience supplied. When it was shown to Cibber, it was
rejected by him, with the additional insolence of advising Fenton to
engage himself in some employment of honest labour, by which he might
obtain that support which he could never hope from his poetry. The play
was acted at the other theatre; and the brutal petulance of Cibber was
confuted, though, perhaps, not shamed, by general applause. Fenton's
profits are said to have amounted to near a thousand pounds, with which
he discharged a debt contracted by his attendance at court.
Fenton seems to have had some peculiar system of versification.
Mariamne is written in lines of ten syllables, with few of those
redundant terminations which the drama not only admits, but requires, as
more nearly approaching to real dialogue. The tenour of his verse is so
uniform that it cannot be thought casual; and yet upon what principle he
so constructed it, is difficult to discover.
The mention of his play brings to my mind a very trifling occurrence.
Fenton was one day in the company of Broome, his associate, and Ford, a
clergyman[25], at that time too well known, whose abilities, instead of
furnishing convivial merriment to the voluptuous and dissolute, might
have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wise. They
determined all to see the Merry Wives of Windsor, which was acted that
night; and Fenton, as a dramatick poet, took them to the stage-door;
where the door-keeper, inquiring who they were, was told that they were
three very necessary men, Ford, Broome, and Fenton. The name in the
play, which Pope restored to Brook, was then Broome.
It was, perhaps, after his play that he undertook to revise the
punctuation of Milton's poems, which, as the author neither wrote the
original copy, nor corrected the press, was supposed capable of
amendment. To this edition he prefixed a short and elegant account of
Milton's life, written, at once, with tenderness and integrity.
He published, likewise, 1729, a very splendid edition of Waller, with
notes often useful, often entertaining, but too much extended by long
quotations from Clarendon. Illustrations drawn from a book so easily
consulted, should be made by reference rather than transcription.
The latter part of his life was calm and pleasant. The relict of sir
William Trumbull invited him, by Pope's recommendation, to educate her
son; whom he first instructed at home, and then attended to Cambridge.
The lady afterwards detained him with her as the auditor of her
accounts. He often wandered to London, and amused himself with the
conversation of his friends.
He died in 1730[26], at East Hampstead, in Berkshire, the seat of lady
Trumbal; and Pope, who had been always his friend, honoured him with an
epitaph, of which he borrowed the two first lines from Crashaw.
Fenton was tall and bulky, inclined to corpulence, which he did not
lessen by much exercise; for he was very sluggish and sedentary, rose
late, and when he had risen, sat down to his books or papers. A woman
that once waited on him in a lodging, told him, as she said, that he
would "lie a-bed, and be fed with a spoon." This, however, was not the
worst that might have been prognosticated; for Pope says, in his
letters, that "he died of indolence;" but his immediate distemper was
the gout.
Of his morals and his conversation the account is uniform: he was never
named but with praise and fondness, as a man in the highest degree
amiable and excellent. Such was the character given him by the earl of
Orrery, his pupil; such is the testimony of Pope[27]; and such were the
suffrages of all who could boast of his acquaintance.
By a former writer of his life[28], a story is told, which ought not to
be forgotten. He used, in the latter part of his time, to pay his
relations in the country a yearly visit. At an entertainment made for
the family by his elder brother, he observed, that one of his sisters,
who had married unfortunately, was absent, and found, upon inquiry, that
distress had made her thought unworthy of invitation. As she was at no
great distance, he refused to sit at the table till she was called, and,
when she had taken her place, was careful to show her particular
attention.
His collection of poems is now to be considered. The ode to the Sun is
written upon a common plan, without uncommon sentiments; but its
greatest fault is its length.
No poem should be long of which the purpose is only to strike the
fancy, without enlightening the understanding by precept, ratiocination,
or narrative. A blaze first pleases, and then tires the sight.
Of Florelio it is sufficient to say, that it is an occasional pastoral,
which implies something neither natural nor artificial, neither comick
nor serious.
The next ode is irregular, and, therefore, defective. As the sentiments
are pious, they cannot easily be new; for what can be added to topicks
on which successive ages have been employed!
Of the Paraphrase on Isaiah nothing very favourable can be said. Sublime
and solemn prose gains little by a change to blank verse; and the
paraphrast has deserted his original, by admitting images not Asiatick,
at least not Judaical:
Returning peace,
Dove-ey'd, and rob'd in white.
Of his petty poems, some are very trifling, without any thing to be
praised, either in the thought or expression. He is unlucky in his
competitions; he tells the same idle tale with Congreve, and does not
tell it so well. He translates from Ovid the same epistle as Pope; but,
I am afraid, not with equal happiness.
To examine his performances, one by one, would be tedious. His
translation from Homer into blank verse will find few readers, while
another can be had in rhyme. The piece addressed to Lambarde is no
disagreeable specimen of epistolary poetry; and his ode to the lord
Gower was pronounced, by Pope, the next ode in the English language to
Dryden's Cecilia. Fenton may be justly styled an excellent versifier and
a good poet.
Whatever I have said of Fenton is confirmed by Pope in a letter, by
which he communicated to Broome an account of his death:
TO
The Rev'd. Mr. BROOME,
At PULHAM, near HARLESTONE NOR [By BECCLES Bag.] SUFFOLKE
D'r SIR,
I intended to write to you on this melancholy subject, the death of Mr.
Fenton, before y'rs came; but stay'd to have inform'd myself & you of
y'e circumstances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a Gradual Decay,
tho' so early in Life, & was declining for 5 or 6 months. It was not, as
I apprehended, the Gout in his Stomach, but I believe rather a
Complication first of Gross Humours, as he was naturally corpulent, not
discharging themselves, as he used no sort of Exercise. No man better
bore y'e approaches of his Dissolution (as I am told) or with less
ostentation yielded up his Being. The great modesty w'ch you know was
natural to him, and y'e great Contempt he had for all Sorts of Vanity
and Parade, never appeared more than in his last moments: He had a
conscious Satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, in feeling himself
honest, true, & unpretending to more than was his own. So he dyed, as he
lived, with that secret, yet sufficient, Contentment.
As to any Papers left behind him, I dare say they can be but few; for
this reason: He never wrote out of Vanity, or thought much of the
Applause of Men. I know an Instance where he did his utmost to conceal
his own merit that way; and if we join to this his natural Love of Ease,
I fancy we must expect little of this sort: at least I hear of none
except some few further remarks on Waller (w'ch his cautious integrity
made him leave an order to be given to Mr. Tonson) and perhaps, tho'
'tis many years since I saw it, a Translation of ye first Book of
Oppian. He had begun a Tragedy of Dion, but made small progress in it.
As to his other affairs, he died poor, but honest, leaving no Debts, or
Legacies; except of a few p'ds to Mr. Trumbull and my Lady, in token of
respect, Gratefulness, and mutual Esteem.
I shall with pleasure take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet,
deserving, unpretending, Christian and Philosophical character, in his
Epitaph. There Truth may be spoken in a few words: as for Flourish, &
Oratory, & Poetry, I leave them to younger and more lively Writers, such
as love writing for writing sake, & w^d rather show their own Fine
Parts, y^n Report the valuable ones of any other man. So the Elegy I
renounce.
I condole with you from my heart, on the loss of so worthy a man, and a
Friend to us both. Now he is gone, I must tell you he has done you many
a good office, and set your character in y^e fairest light, to some who
either mistook you, or knew you not. I doubt not he has done the same
for me.
Adieu: Let us love his Memory, and profit by his example. I am very
sincerely
D^r SIR,
Your affectionate
& real Servant,
A. POPE.
Aug. 29th 1730.
-----
[Footnote 22: He was born at Shelton, near Newcastle, May 20, 1683; and
was the youngest of eleven children of John Fenton, an attorney-at-law,
and one of the coroners of the county of Stafford. His father died in
1694; and his grave, in the church-yard of Stoke upon Trent, is
distinguished by the following elegant Latin inscription from the pen of
his son:
H.S.E.
JOHANNES FENTON,
de Shelton
antiqua stirpe generosus:
juxta reliquias conjugis
CATHERINÆ
forma, moribus, pietate,
optimo viro dignissimæ:
Qui
intemerata in ecclesiam fide,
et virtutibus intaminatis enituit;
necnon ingenii lepore
bonis artibus expoliti,
ac animo erga omnes benevolo,
sibi suisque jucundus vixit.
Decem annos uxori dilectee superstes
magnum sui desiderium bonis
omnibus reliquit,
anno{salutis humanai 1694,
{ætatis suffi 56.
See Gent. Mag. 1791, vol. lxi. p. 703. N.
]
[Footnote 23: He was entered of Jesus college, and took a bachelor's
degree in 1704: but it appears, by the list of Cambridge graduates, that
he removed, in 1726, to Trinity hall. N.]
[Footnote 24: 1717. M.]
[Footnote 25: Ford was Johnson's relation, his mother's nephew, and is
said to have been the original of the parson in Hogarth's Modern
Midnight Conversation. See Boswell, i. and iii. ED.]
[Footnote 26: July 16.]
[Footnote 27: Spence.]
[Footnote 28: Shiels, Dr. Johnson's amanuensis, who says, in Cibber's
Lives of the Poets, that he received this anecdote from a gentleman
resident in Staffordshire. M.]
GAY.
John Gay, descended from an old family that had been long in possession
of the manor of[29] Goldworthy in Devonshire, was born in 1688, at or
near Barnstaple, where he was educated by Mr. Luck, who taught the
school of that town with good reputation, and, a little before he
retired from it, published a volume of Latin and English verses. Under
such a master he was likely to form a taste for poetry. Being born
without prospect of hereditary riches, he was sent to London in his
youth, and placed apprentice to a silkmercer.
How long he continued behind the counter, or with what degree of
softness and dexterity he received and accommodated the ladies, as he
probably took no delight in telling it, is not known. The report is,
that he was soon weary of either the restraint or servility of his
occupation, and easily persuaded his master to discharge him.
The dutchess of Monmouth, remarkable for inflexible perseverance in her
demand to be treated as a princess, in 1712 took Gay into her service as
secretary: by quitting a shop for such service, he might gain leisure,
but he certainly advanced little in the boast of independence. Of his
leisure he made so good use, that he published, next year, a poem on
Rural Sports, and inscribed it to Mr. Pope, who was then rising fast
into reputation. Pope was pleased with the honour; and when he became
acquainted with Gay, found such attractions in his manners and
conversation, that he seems to have received him into his inmost
confidence; and a friendship was formed between them which lasted to
their separation by death, without any known abatement on either part.
Gay was the general favourite of the whole association of wits; but they
regarded him as a playfellow rather than a partner, and treated him
with more fondness than respect.
Next year he published the Shepherd's Week, six English pastorals, in
which the images are drawn from real life, such as it appears among the
rusticks in parts of England remote from London. Steele, in some papers
of the Guardian had praised Ambrose Philips, as the pastoral writer that
yielded only to Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser. Pope, who had also
published pastorals, not pleased to be overlooked, drew up a comparison
of his own compositions with those of Philips, in which he covertly gave
himself the preference, while he seemed to disown it. Not content with
this, he is supposed to have incited Gay to write the Shepherd's Week,
to show, that if it be necessary to copy nature with minuteness, rural
life must be exhibited such as grossness and ignorance have made it. So
far the plan was reasonable; but the pastorals are introduced by a
Proem, written with such imitation as they could attain of obsolete
language, and, by consequence, in a style that was never spoken nor
written in any age, or in any place.
But the effect of reality and truth became conspicuous, even when the
intention was to show them grovelling and degraded. These pastorals
became popular, and were read with delight, as just representations of
rural manners and occupations, by those who had no interest in the
rivalry of the poets, nor knowledge of the critical dispute.
In 1713 he brought a comedy, called the Wife of Bath, upon the stage,
but it received no applause: he printed it, however, and seventeen years
after, having altered it, and, as he thought, adapted it more to the
publick taste, he offered it again to the town; but, though he was
flushed with the success of the Beggars' Opera, had the mortification to
see it again rejected.
In the last year of queen Anne's life, Gay was made secretary to the
earl of Clarendon, ambassador to the court of Hanover. This was a
station that naturally gave him hopes of kindness from every party; but
the queen's death put an end to her favours, and he had dedicated his
Shepherd's Week to Bolingbroke, which Swift considered as the crime that
obstructed all kindness from the house of Hanover.
He did not, however, omit to improve the right which his office had
given him to the notice of the royal family. On the arrival of the
princess of Wales, he wrote a poem, and obtained so much favour, that
both the prince and princess went to see his What d'ye call it, a kind
of mock tragedy, in which the images were comick, and the action grave;
so that, as Pope relates, Mr. Cromwell, who could not hear what was
said, was at a loss how to reconcile the laughter of the audience with
the solemnity of the scene.
Of this performance the value certainly is but little; but it was one of
the lucky trifles that give pleasure by novelty, and was so much
favoured by the audience, that envy appeared against it in the form of
criticism; and Griffin, a player, in conjunction with Mr. Theobald, a
man afterwards more remarkable, produced a pamphlet, called the Key to
the What d'ye call it; which, says Gay, "calls me a blockhead, and Mr.
Pope a knave."
But fortune has always been inconstant. Not long afterwards, 1717, he
endeavoured to entertain the town with Three Hours after Marriage; a
comedy written, as there is sufficient reason for believing, by the
joint assistance of Pope and Arbuthnot. One purpose of it was to bring
into contempt Dr. Woodward, the fossilist, a man not really or justly
contemptible. It had the fate which such outrages deserve: the scene in
which Woodward was directly and apparently ridiculed, by the
introduction of a mummy and a crocodile, disgusted the audience, and the
performance was driven off the stage with general condemnation.
Gay is represented as a man easily incited to hope, and deeply depressed
when his hopes were disappointed. This is not the character of a hero;
but it may naturally imply something more generally welcome, a soft and
civil companion. Whoever is apt to hope good from others is diligent to
please them: but he that believes his powers strong enough to force
their own way, commonly tries only to please himself.
He had been simple enough to imagine that those who laughed at the What
d'ye call it, would raise the fortune of its author; and, finding
nothing done, sunk into dejection. His friends endeavoured to divert
him. The earl of Burlington sent him, 1716, into Devonshire; the year
after, Mr. Pulteney took him to Aix; and, in the following year, lord
Harcourt invited him to his seat, where, during his visit, the two rural
lovers were killed with lightning, as is particularly told in Pope's
letters.
Being now generally known, he published, 1720, his poems, by
subscription, with such success, that he raised a thousand pounds; and
called his friends to a consultation, what use might be best made of it.
Lewis, the steward of lord Oxford, advised him to intrust it to the
funds, and live upon the interest; Arbuthnot bade him intrust it to
providence, and live upon the principal; Pope directed him, and was
seconded by Swift, to purchase an annuity.
Gay, in that disastrous year[30], had a present from young Craggs of
some south-sea stock, and once supposed himself to be master of twenty
thousand pounds. His friends persuaded him to sell his share; but he
dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own
fortune. He was then importuned to sell as much as would purchase a
hundred a year for life, "which," says Fenton, "will make you sure of a
clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day." This counsel was
rejected: the profit and principal were lost, and Gay sunk under the
calamity so low that his life became in danger.
By the care of his friends, among whom Pope appears to have shown
particular tenderness, his health was restored; and, returning to his
studies, he wrote a tragedy, called the Captives, which he was invited
to read before the princess of Wales. When the hour came, he saw the
princess and her ladies all in expectation, and advancing with
reverence, too great for any other attention, stumbled at a stool, and
falling forward threw down a weighty japan screen. The princess started,
the ladies screamed, and poor Gay, after all the disturbance, was still
to read his play[31].
The fate of the Captives, which was acted at Drury-lane in 1723-4, I know
not[32]; but he now thought himself in favour, and undertook, 1726, to
write a volume of fables for the improvement of the young duke of
Cumberland. For this he is said to have been promised a reward, which he
had, doubtless, magnified with all the wild expectations of indigence
and vanity.
Next year the prince and princess became king and queen, and Gay was to
be great and happy; but, upon the settlement of the household, he found
himself appointed gentleman usher to the princess Louisa. By this offer
he thought himself insulted, and sent a message to the queen, that he
was too old for the place. There seem to have been many machinations
employed afterwards in his favour; and diligent court was paid to Mrs.
Howard, afterwards countess of Suffolk, who was much beloved by the king
and queen, to engage her interest for his promotion; but solicitations,
verses, and flatteries, were thrown away; the lady heard them, and did
nothing.
All the pain which he suffered from the neglect, or, as he, perhaps,
termed it, the ingratitude of the court, may be supposed to have been
driven away by the unexampled success of the Beggars' Opera. This play,
written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was first offered to
Cibber and his brethren at Drury-lane, and rejected; it being then
carried to Rich, had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay
_rich_, and Rich _gay_.
Of this lucky piece, as the reader cannot but wish to know the original
and progress, I have inserted the relation which Spence has given in
Pope's words.
"Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort
of a thing a Newgate pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at
such a thing, for some time; but afterwards thought it would be better
to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the
Beggars' Opera. He began on it; and when first he mentioned it to Swift,
the doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed
what he wrote to both of us, and we now and then gave a correction, or a
word or two of advice; but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was
done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve;
who, after reading it over, said, it would either take greatly, or be
damned confoundedly. We were all, at the first night of it, in great
uncertainty of the event; till we were very much encouraged by
overhearing the duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, 'It
will do--it must do! I see it in the eyes of them.' This was a good
while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon; for that
duke, besides his own good taste, has a particular knack, as any one now
living, in discovering the taste of the publick. He was quite right in
this, as usual; the good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and
stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause."
Its reception is thus recorded in the notes to the Dunciad.
"This piece was received with greater applause than was ever known.
Besides being acted in London sixty-three days, without interruption,
and renewed the next season with equal applause, it spread into all the
great towns of England; was played in many places to the thirtieth and
fortieth time; at Bath and Bristol fifty, &c. It made its progress into
Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was performed twenty-four days
successively. The ladies carried about with them the favourite songs of
it in fans, and houses were furnished with it in screens. The fame of
it was not confined to the author only. The person who acted Polly, till
then obscure, became, all at once, the favourite of the town; her
pictures were engraved, and sold in great numbers; her life written,
books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of
her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England, for that
season, the Italian opera, which had carried all before it for ten
years."
Of this performance, when it was printed, the reception was different,
according to the different opinion of its readers. Swift commended it
for the excellence of its morality, as a piece that "placed all kinds of
vice in the strongest and most odious light;" but others, and among them
Dr. Herring, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, censured it, as giving
encouragement not only to vice, but to crimes, by making a highwayman
the hero, and dismissing him, at last, unpunished. It has been even
said, that, after the exhibition of the Beggars' Opera, the gangs of
robbers were evidently multiplied.
Both these decisions are surely exaggerated. The play, like many others,
was plainly written only to divert, without any moral purpose, and is,
therefore, not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more
speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil.
Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in
any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he
may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage.
This objection, however, or some other, rather political than moral,
obtained such prevalence, that when Gay produced a second part, under
the name of Polly, it was prohibited by the lord chamberlain; and he was
forced to recompense his repulse by a subscription, which is said to
have been so liberally bestowed, that what he called oppression ended in
profit. The publication was so much favoured, that though the first
part gained him four hundred pounds, near thrice as much was the profit
of the second[33].
He received yet another recompense for this supposed hardship in the
affectionate attention of the duke and dutchess of Queensberry, into
whose house he was taken, and with whom he passed the remaining part of
his life. The duke, considering his want of economy, undertook the
management of his money, and gave it to him as he wanted it[34]. But it
is supposed that the discountenance of the court sunk deep into his
heart, and gave him more discontent than the applauses or tenderness of
his friends could overpower. He soon fell into his old distemper, an
habitual colick, and languished, though with many intervals of ease and
cheerfulness, till a violent fit, at last, seized him, and hurried him
to the grave, as Arbuthnot reported, with more precipitance than he had
ever known. He died on the fourth of December, 1732, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey. The letter, which brought an account of his death to
Swift, was laid by, for some days, unopened, because, when he received
it, he was impressed with the preconception of some misfortune.
After his death, was published a second volume of fables, more political
than the former. His opera of Achilles was acted, and the profits were
given to two widow sisters, who inherited what he left, as his lawful
heirs; for he died without a will, though he had gathered three thousand
pounds[35]. There have appeared, likewise, under his name, a comedy,
called the Distrest Wife, and the Rehearsal at Gotham, a piece of
humour.
The character given him by Pope is this, that "he was a natural man,
without design, who spoke what he thought, and just as he thought it;"
and that "he was of a timid temper, and fearful of giving offence to the
great;" "which caution, however," says Pope, "was of no avail[36]."
* * * * *
As a poet, he cannot be rated very high. He was, as I once heard a
female critick remark, "of a lower order." He had not in any great
degree the "mens divinior," the dignity of genius. Much, however, must
be allowed to the author of a new species of composition, though it be
not of the highest kind. We owe to Gay the ballad opera; a mode of
comedy which, at first, was supposed to delight only by its novelty, but
has now, by the experience of half a century, been found so well
accommodated to the disposition of a popular audience, that it is likely
to keep long possession of the stage. Whether this new drama was the
product of judgment or of luck, the praise of it must be given to the
inventor; and there are many writers read with more reverence, to whom
such merit of originality cannot be attributed.
His first performance, the Rural Sports, is such as was easily planned
and executed; it is never contemptible, nor ever excellent. The Fan is
one of those mythological fictions which antiquity delivers ready to the
hand, but which, like other things that lie open to every one's use, are
of little value. The attention naturally retires from a new tale of
Venus, Diana, and Minerva.
His fables seem to have been a favourite work; for, having published one
volume, he left another behind him. Of this kind of fables, the authors
do not appear to have formed any distinct or settled notion. Phædrus
evidently confounds them with tales; and Gay, both with tales and
allegorical prosopopoeias. A fable, or apologue, such as is now under
consideration, seems to be, in its genuine state, a narrative in which
beings irrational, and, sometimes, inanimate, "arbores loquuntur, non
tantum feræ," are, for the purpose of moral instruction, feigned to act
and speak with human interests and passions. To this description the
compositions of Gay do not always conform. For a fable, he gives, now
and then, a tale, or an abstracted allegory; and, from some, by whatever
name they may be called, it will be difficult to extract any moral
principle. They are, however, told with liveliness; the versification is
smooth; and the diction, though, now and then, a little constrained by
the measure or the rhyme, is generally happy.
To Trivia may be allowed all that it claims; it is sprightly, various,
and pleasant. The subject is of that kind which Gay was, by nature,
qualified to adorn; yet some of his decorations may be justly wished
away. An honest blacksmith might have done for Patty what is performed
by Vulcan. The appearance of Cloacina is nauseous and superfluous; a
shoe boy could have been produced by the casual cohabitation of mere
mortals. Horace's rule is broken in both cases; there is no "dignus
vindice nodus," no difficulty that required any supernatural
interposition. A patten may be made by the hammer of a mortal; and a
bastard may be dropped by a human strumpet. On great occasions, and on
small, the mind is repelled by useless and apparent falsehood.
Of his little poems the publick judgment seems to be right; they are
neither much esteemed, nor totally despised. The story of the Apparition
is borrowed from one of the tales of Poggio. Those that please least are
the pieces to which Gulliver gave occasion; for who can much delight in
the echo of an unnatural fiction?
Dione is a counterpart to Aminta, and Pastor Fido, and other trifles of
the same kind, easily imitated, and unworthy of imitation. What the
Italians call comedies, from a happy conclusion, Gay calls a tragedy,
from a mournful event; but the style of the Italians and of Gay is
equally tragical. There is something in the poetical Arcadia so remote
from known reality and speculative possibility, that we can never
support its representation through a long work. A pastoral of a hundred
lines may be endured; but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle
bowers, and purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please
barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life;
but will be, for the most part, thrown away, as men grow wise, and
nations grow learned.
-----
[Footnote 29: Goldworthy does not appear in the Villare. Dr.
J.--Holdsworthy is probably meant.]
[Footnote 30: Spence.]
[Footnote 31: This mishap of Gay's is said to have suggested the story
of the scholar's bashfulness in the 157th Rambler; and to similar
stories in the Adventurer and Repton's Variety. Ed.]
[Footnote 32: It was acted seven nights. The author's third night was by
command of their royal highnesses. R.]
[Footnote 33: Spence.]
[Footnote 34: Ibid.]
[Footnote 35: Ibid.]
[Footnote 36: Ibid.]
GRANVILLE.
Of George Granville, or, as others write, Greenville, or Grenville,
afterwards lord Lansdowne, of Bideford, in the county of Devon, less is
known than his name and high rank might give reason to expect. He was
born about 1667, the son of Bernard Greenville, who was entrusted, by
Monk, with the most private transactions of the restoration, and the
grandson of sir Bevil Greenville, who died, in the king's cause, at the
battle of Lansdowne.
His early education was superintended by sir William Ellis; and his
progress was such, that, before the age of twelve, he was sent to
Cambridge[37], where he pronounced a copy of his own verses to the
princess Mary d'Este, of Modena, then dutchess of York, when she visited
the university.
At the accession of king James, being now at eighteen, he again exerted
his poetical powers, and addressed the new monarch in three short
pieces, of which the first is profane, and the two others such as a boy
might be expected to produce; but he was commended by old Waller, who,
perhaps, was pleased to find himself imitated, in six lines, which
though they begin with nonsense and end with dulness, excited in the
young author a rapture of acknowledgment.
In numbers such as Waller's self might use.
It was probably about this time that he wrote the poem to the earl of
Peterborough, upon his accomplishment of the duke of York's marriage
with the princess of Modena, whose charms appear to have gained a strong
prevalence over his imagination, and upon whom nothing ever has been
charged but imprudent piety, an intemperate and misguided zeal for the
propagation of popery.
However faithful Granville might have been to the king, or however
enamoured of the queen, he has left no reason for supposing that he
approved either the artifices or the violence with which the king's
religion was insinuated or obtruded. He endeavoured to be true, at once,
to the king and to the church.
Of this regulated loyalty he has transmitted to posterity a sufficient
proof, in the letter which he wrote to his father, about a month before
the prince of Orange landed.
"Mar, near Doncaster, Oct. 6, 1688.
"To the honourable Mr. Barnard Granville, at the earl of Bathe's,
St. James's.
"SIR,
"Your having no prospect of obtaining a commission for me, can no
way alter or cool my desire at this important juncture to venture
my life, in some manner or other, for my king and my country.
"I cannot bear living under the reproach of lying obscure and idle
in a country retirement, when every man who has the least sense of
honour should be preparing for the field.
"You may remember, sir, with what reluctance I submitted to your
commands upon Monmouth's rebellion, when no importunity could
prevail with you to permit me to leave the academy: I was too young
to be hazarded; but, give me leave to say, it is glorious at any
age to die for one's country; and the sooner, the nobler the
sacrifice.
"I am now older by three years. My uncle Bathe was not so old when
he was left among the slain at the battle of Newbury; nor you
yourself, sir, when you made your escape from your tutors, to join
your brother at the defence of Scilly.
"The same cause is now come round about again. The king has been
misled; let those who have misled him be answerable for it. Nobody
can deny but he is sacred in his own person; and it is every honest
man's duty to defend it.
"You are pleased to say, it is yet doubtful if the Hollanders are
rash enough to make such an attempt; but, be that as it will, I beg
leave to insist upon it, that I may be presented to his majesty, as
one whose utmost ambition it is to devote his life to his service,
and my country's, after the example of all my ancestors.
"The gentry assembled at York, to agree upon the choice of
representatives for the county, have prepared an address, to assure
his majesty they are ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes
for him upon this and all other occasions; but, at the same time,
they humbly beseech him to give them such magistrates as may be
agreeable to the laws of the land; for, at present, there is no
authority to which they can legally submit.
"They have been beating up for volunteers at York, and the towns
adjacent, to supply the regiments at Hull; but nobody will list.
"By what I can hear, every body wishes well to the king; but they
would be glad his ministers were hanged.
"The winds continue so contrary, that no landing can be so soon as
was apprehended; therefore I may hope, with your leave and
assistance, to be in readiness before any action can begin. I
beseech you, sir, most humbly and most earnestly, to add this one
act of indulgence more to so many other testimonies which I have
constantly received of your goodness; and be pleased to believe me
always, with the utmost duty and submission, sir,
"Your most dutiful son,
"and most obedient servant,
"Geo. Granville."
Through the whole reign of king William he is supposed to have lived in
literary retirement, and indeed had, for some time, few other pleasures
but those, of study in his power. He was, as the biographers observe,
the younger son of a younger brother; a denomination by which our
ancestors proverbially expressed the lowest state of penury and
dependence. He is said, however, to have preserved himself at this time
from disgrace and difficulties by economy, which he forgot or neglected
in life more advanced, and in better fortune.
About this time he became enamoured of the countess of Newburgh, whom he
has celebrated with so much ardour by the name of Mira. He wrote verses
to her, before he was three-and-twenty, and may be forgiven if he
regarded the face more than the mind. Poets are sometimes in too much
haste to praise.
In the time of his retirement it is probable that he composed his
dramatick pieces, the She-Gallants, acted 1696, which he revised, and
called Once a Lover and always a Lover; the Jew of Venice, altered from
Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1698; Heroick Love, a tragedy, 1701;
the British Enchanters, 1706, a dramatick poem; and Peleus and Thetis, a
mask, written to accompany the Jew of Venice.
The comedies, which he has not printed in his own edition of his works,
I never saw; Once a Lover and always a Lover, is said to be, in a great
degree, indecent and gross. Granville could not admire without bigotry;
he copied the wrong, as well as the right, from his masters, and may be
supposed to have learned obscenity from Wycherley, as he learned
mythology from Waller.
In his Jew of Venice, as Rowe remarks, the character of Shylock is made
comick, and we are prompted to laughter, instead of detestation.
It is evident that Heroick Love was written, and presented on the stage,
before the death of Dryden. It is a mythological tragedy, upon the love
of Agamemnon and Chryseis, and, therefore, easily sunk into neglect,
though praised in verse by Dryden, and in prose by Pope.
It is concluded by the wise Ulysses with this speech:
Fate holds the strings, and men like children move
But as they're led; success is from above.
At the accession of queen Anne, having his fortune improved by bequests
from his father, and his uncle the earl of Bath, he was chosen into
parliament for Fowey. He soon after engaged in a joint translation of
the Invectives against Philip, with a design, surely weak and puerile,
of turning the thunder of Demosthenes upon the head of Lewis.
He afterwards, in 1706, had his estate again augmented by an inheritance
from his elder brother, sir Bevil Granville, who, as he returned from
the government of Barbadoes, died at sea. He continued to serve in
parliament; and, in the ninth year of queen Anne, was chosen knight of
the shire for Cornwall.
At the memorable change of the ministry, 1710, he was made secretary at
war, in the place of Mr. Robert Walpole.
Next year, when the violence of party made twelve peers in a day, Mr.
Granville became lord Lansdowne baron Bideford, by a promotion justly
remarked to be not invidious, because he was the heir of a family in
which two peerages, that of the earl of Bath, and lord Granville of
Potheridge, had lately become extinct. Being now high in the queen's
favour, he, 1712, was appointed comptroller of the household, and a
privy counsellor; and to his other honours was added the dedication of
Pope's Windsor Forest. He was advanced, next year, to be treasurer of
the household.
Of these favours he soon lost all but his title; for, at the accession
of king George, his place was given to the earl Cholmondeley, and he was
persecuted with the rest of his party. Having protested against the bill
for attainting Ormond and Bolingbroke, he was, after the insurrection in
Scotland, seized, Sept. 26, 1715, as a suspected man, and confined in
the Tower, till Feb. 8, 1717, when he was at last released, and restored
to his seat in parliament; where, 1719, he made a very ardent and
animated speech against the repeal of the bill to prevent occasional
conformity, which, however, though it was then printed, he has not
inserted into his works.
Some time afterwards, about 1722, being, perhaps, embarrassed by his
profusion, he went into foreign countries, with the usual pretence of
recovering his health. In this state of leisure and retirement, he
received the first volume of Burnet's History, of which he cannot be
supposed to have approved the general tendency, and where he thought
himself able to detect some particular falsehoods. He, therefore,
undertook the vindication of general Monk from some calumnies of Dr.
Burnet, and some misrepresentations of Mr. Echard. This was answered
civilly by Mr. Thomas Burnet, and Oldmixon; and more roughly by Dr.
Colbatch.
His other historical performance is a defence of his relation, sir
Richard Greenville, whom lord Clarendon has shown in a form very
unamiable. So much is urged in this apology to justify many actions that
have been represented as culpable, and to palliate the rest, that the
reader is reconciled for the greater part; and it is made very probable
that Clarendon was by personal enmity disposed to think the worst of
Greenville, as Greenville was also very willing to think the worst of
Clarendon. These pieces were published at his return to England.
Being now desirous to conclude his labours, and enjoy his reputation, he
published, 1732, a very beautiful and splendid edition of his works, in
which he omitted what he disapproved, and enlarged what seemed
deficient.
He now went to court, and was kindly received by queen Caroline; to whom
and to the princess Anne, he presented his works, with verses on the
blank leaves, with which he concluded his poetical labours.
He died in Hanover-square, Jan. 30, 1735, having a few days before
buried his wife, the lady Anne Villiers, widow to Mr. Thynne, by whom he
had four daughters, but no son.
Writers commonly derive their reputation from their works; but there are
works which owe their reputation to the character of the writer. The
publick sometimes has its favourites, whom it rewards for one species of
excellence with the honours due to another. From him whom we reverence
for his beneficence we do not willingly withhold the praise of genius; a
man of exalted merit becomes, at once, an accomplished writer, as a
beauty finds no great difficulty in passing for a wit.
Granville was a man illustrious by his birth, and, therefore, attracted
notice: since he is by Pope styled "the polite," he must be supposed
elegant in his manners, and generally loved: he was, in times of contest
and turbulence, steady to his party, and obtained that esteem which is
always conferred upon firmness and consistency. With those advantages
having learned the art of versifying, he declared himself a poet; and
his claim to the laurel was allowed.
But by a critick of a later generation, who takes up his book without
any favourable prejudices, the praise already received will be thought
sufficient; for his works do not show him to have had much comprehension
from nature, or illumination from learning. He seems to have had no
ambition above the imitation of Waller, of whom he has copied the
faults, and very little more. He is for ever amusing himself with the
puerilities of mythology; his king is Jupiter, who, if the queen brings
no children, has a barren Juno. The queen is compounded of Juno, Venus,
and Minerva. His poem on the dutchess of Grafton's lawsuit, after having
rattled awhile with Juno and Pallas, Mars and Alcides, Cassiope, Niobe,
and the Propetides, Hercules, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, at last concludes
its folly with profaneness.
His verses to Mira, which are most frequently mentioned, have little in
them of either art or nature, of the sentiments of a lover, or the
language of a poet: there may be found, now and then, a happier effort;
but they are commonly feeble and unaffecting, or forced and extravagant.
His little pieces are seldom either sprightly or elegant, either keen or
weighty. They are trifles written by idleness, and published by vanity.
But his prologues and epilogues have a just claim to praise.
The Progress of Beauty seems one of his most elaborate pieces, and is
not deficient in splendour and gaiety; but the merit of original thought
is wanting. Its highest praise is the spirit with which he celebrates
king James's consort, when she was a queen no longer.
The Essay on unnatural Flights in Poetry, is not inelegant nor
injudicious, and has something of vigour beyond most of his other
performances: his precepts are just, and his cautions proper; they are,
indeed, not new, but in a didactick poem novelty is to be expected only
in the ornaments and illustrations. His poetical precepts are
accompanied with agreeable and instructive notes.
The Mask of Peleus and Thetis has here and there a pretty line; but it
is not always melodious, and the conclusion is wretched.
In his British Enchanters he has bidden defiance to all chronology, by
confounding the inconsistent manners of different ages; but the dialogue
has often the air of Dryden's rhyming plays; and the songs are lively,
though not very correct. This is, I think, far the best of his works;
for, if it has many faults, it has, likewise, passages which are, at
least, pretty, though they do not rise to any high degree of excellence.
-----
[Footnote 37: To Trinity college. By the university register it appears,
that he was admitted to his master's degree in 1679; we must, therefore,
set the year of his birth some years back. H.]
YALDEN.
Thomas Yalden, the sixth son of Mr. John Yalden, of Sussex, was born in
the city of Exeter, in 1671. Having been educated in the grammar-school
belonging to Magdalen college in Oxford, he was in 1690, at the age of
nineteen, admitted commoner of Magdalen hall, under the tuition of
Josiah Pullen[38], a man whose name is still remembered in the
university. He became, next year, one of the scholars of Magdalen
college, where he was distinguished by a lucky accident.
It was his turn, one day, to pronounce a declamation; and Dr. Hough, the
president, happening to attend, thought the composition too good to be
the speaker's. Some time after, the doctor finding him a little
irregularly busy in the library, set him an exercise for punishment;
and, that he might not be deceived by any artifice, locked the door.
Yalden, as it happened, had been lately reading on the subject given,
and produced, with little difficulty, a composition which so pleased the
president, that he told him his former suspicions, and promised to
favour him.
Among his contemporaries in the college were Addison and Sacheverell,
men who were in those times friends, and who both adopted Yalden to
their intimacy. Yalden continued, throughout his life, to think, as
probably he thought at first, yet did not forfeit the friendship of
Addison.
When Namur was taken by king William, Yalden made an ode. There was
never any reign more celebrated by the poets than that of William, who
had very little regard for song himself, but happened to employ
ministers who pleased themselves with the praise of patronage.
Of this ode mention is made in a humorous poem of that time, called the
Oxford Laureate; in which, after many claims had been made and rejected,
Yalden is represented as demanding the laurel, and as being called to
his trial, instead of receiving a reward:
His crime was for being a felon in verse,
And presenting his theft to the king;
The first was a trick not uncommon or scarce,
But the last was an impudent thing:
Yet what he had stol'n was so little worth stealing,
They forgave him the damage and cost;
Had he ta'en the whole ode, as he took it piece-mealing,
They had fined him but tenpence at most.
The poet whom he was charged with robbing was Congreve.
He wrote another poem on the death of the duke of Gloucester.
In 1700, he became fellow of the college; and next year, entering into
orders, was presented by the society with a living in Warwickshire[39],
consistent with the fellowship, and chosen lecturer of moral philosophy,
a very honourable office.
On the accession of queen Anne he wrote another poem; and is said, by
the author of the Biographia, to have declared himself of the party who
had the honourable distinction of high-churchmen.
In 1706, he was received into the family of the duke of Beaufort. Next
year he became doctor in divinity, and soon after resigned his
fellowship and lecture; and, as a token of his gratitude, gave the
college a picture of their founder.
He was made rector of Charlton and Cleanville[40], two adjoining towns
and benefices in Hertfordshire; and had the prebends, or sinecures, of
Deans, Hains, and Pendles, in Devonshire. He had before[41] been
chosen, in 1698, preacher of Bridewell Hospital, upon the resignation of
Dr. Atterbury[42].
From this time he seems to have led a quiet and inoffensive life, till
the clamour was raised about Atterbury's plot. Every loyal eye was on
the watch for abetters or partakers of the horrid conspiracy; and Dr.
Yalden, having some acquaintance with the bishop, and being familiarly
conversant with Kelly, his secretary, fell under suspicion, and was
taken into custody.
Upon his examination he was charged with a dangerous correspondence with
Kelly. The correspondence he acknowledged; but maintained that it had no
treasonable tendency. His papers were seized; but nothing was found that
could fix a crime upon him, except two words in his pocketbook,
"thorough-paced doctrine." This expression the imagination of his
examiners had impregnated with treason, and the doctor was enjoined to
explain them. Thus pressed, he told them that the words had lain
unheeded in his pocketbook from the time of queen Anne, and that he was
ashamed to give an account of them; but the truth was, that he had
gratified his curiosity one day, by hearing Daniel Burgess in the
pulpit, and those words were a memorial hint of a remarkable sentence by
which he warned his congregation to "beware of thorough-paced doctrine,
that doctrine, which, coming in at one ear, passes through the head, and
goes out at the other."
Nothing worse than this appearing in his papers, and no evidence arising
against him, he was set at liberty.
It will not be supposed that a man of this character attained high
dignities in the church; but he still retained the friendship, and
frequented the conversation, of a very numerous and splendid set of
acquaintance. He died July 16, 1736, in the 66th year of his age.
Of his poems, many are of that irregular kind, which, when he formed
his poetical character, was supposed to be Pindarick. Having fixed his
attention on Cowley as a model, he has attempted, in some sort, to rival
him, and has written a Hymn to Darkness, evidently as a counterpart to
Cowley's Hymn to Light.
This hymn seems to be his best performance, and is, for the most part,
imagined with great vigour, and expressed with great propriety. I will
not transcribe it. The seven first stanzas are good; but the third,
fourth, and seventh, are the best: the eighth seems to involve a
contradiction; the tenth is exquisitely beautiful; the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth, are partly mythological, and partly
religious, and, therefore, not suitable to each other: he might better
have made the whole merely philosophical.
There are two stanzas in this poem where Yalden may be suspected, though
hardly convicted, of having consulted the Hymnus ad Umbram of Wowerus,
in the sixth stanza, which answers, in some sort, to these lines:
Illa suo præest nocturnis numine sacris--
Perque vias errare novis dat spectra figuris,
Manesque excitos medios ululare per agros
Sub noctem, et questu notos complere penatcs.
And again, at the conclusion:
Illa suo senium secludit corpore toto
Haud numerans jugi fugientia secula lapsu.
Ergo ubi postremum mundi compage soluta
Hanc rerum molem suprema absumpserit hora
Ipsa leves cineres nube amplectetur opaca,
Et prisco imperio rursus dominabitur UMBRA.
His Hymn to Light is not equal to the other. He seems to think that
there is an East absolute and positive, where the morning rises.
In the last stanza, having mentioned the sudden eruption of new-created
light, he says,
Awhile th' Almighty wond'ring stood.
He ought to have remembered that infinite knowledge can never wonder.
All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance.
Of his other poems it is sufficient to say, that they deserve perusal,
though they are not always exactly polished, though the rhymes are
sometimes very ill sorted, and though his faults seem rather the
omissions of idleness than the negligences of enthusiasm.
-----
[Footnote 38: We need not remark to any of our readers, but to those who
are not Oxford men, that Pullen's name is now remembered in the
university, not as a tutor, but by the venerable elm tree which was the
term of his morning walks. "I have the honour to be well known to Mr.
Josiah Pullen, of our hall above-mentioned, (Magdalen hall,) and
attribute the florid old age I now enjoy to my constant morning walks up
Headington lull, in his cheerful company." Guardian, No. 2. ED.]
[Footnote 39: The vicarage of Willoughby, which he resigned in 1708. N.]
[Footnote 40: This preferment was given him by the duke of Beaufort. N.]
[Footnote 41: Not long after.]
[Footnote 42: Dr. Atterbury retained the office of preacher at Bridewell
till his promotion to the bishoprick of Rochester. Dr. Yalden succeeded
him as preacher, in June, 1713. N.]
TICKELL.
Thomas Tickell, the son of the reverend Richard Tickell, was born, in
1686, at Bridekirk, in Cumberland; and in April, 1701, became a member
of Queen's college, in Oxford; in 1708 he was made master of arts; and,
two years afterwards, was chosen fellow; for which, as he did not comply
with the statutes by taking orders, he obtained a dispensation from the
crown. He held his fellowship till 1726, and then vacated it, by
marrying, in that year, at Dublin.
Tickell was not one of those scholars who wear away their lives in
closets; he entered early into the world, and was long busy in publick
affairs; in which he was initiated under the patronage of Addison, whose
notice he is said to have gained by his verses in praise of Rosamond.
To those verses it would not have been just to deny regard; for they
contain some of the most elegant encomiastick strains; and, among the
innumerable poems of the same kind, it will be hard to find one with
which they need to fear a comparison. It may deserve observation, that
when Pope wrote, long afterwards, in praise of Addison, he has copied,
at least has resembled, Tickell.
Let joy salute fair Rosamonda's shade,
And wreaths of myrtle crown the lovely maid.
While now perhaps with Dido's ghost she roves,
And hears and tells the story of their loves,
Alike they mourn, alike they bless their fate,
Since love, which made them wretched, made them great.
Nor longer that relentless doom bemoan,
Which gain'd a Virgil and an Addison. TICKELL.
Then future ages with delight shall see
How Plato's, Bacon's, Newton's, looks agree;
Or in fair series laurell'd bards be shown,
A Virgil there, and here an Addison. POPE.
He produced another piece of the same kind at the appearance of Cato,
with equal skill, but not equal happiness.
When the ministers of queen Anne were negotiating with France, Tickell
published the Prospect of Peace, a poem, of which the tendency was to
reclaim the nation from the pride of conquest to the pleasures of
tranquillity. How far Tickell, whom Swift afterwards mentioned as
_whiggissimus_, had then connected himself with any party, I know not;
this poem certainly did not flatter the practices, or promote the
opinions, of the men by whom he was afterwards befriended.
Mr. Addison, however he hated the men then in power, suffered his
friendship to prevail over his publick spirit, and gave, in the
Spectator, such praises of Tickell's poem, that when, after having long
wished to peruse it, I laid hold on it at last, I thought it unequal to
the honours which it had received, and found it a piece to be approved
rather than admired. But the hope excited by a work of genius, being
general and indefinite, is rarely gratified. It was read at that time
with so much favour, that six editions were sold.
At the arrival of king George he sang the Royal Progress; which, being
inserted in the Spectator, is well known; and of which it is just to
say, that it is neither high nor low.
The poetical incident of most importance in Tickell's life was his
publication of the first book of the Iliad, as translated by himself, an
apparent opposition to Pope's Homer, of which the first part made its
entrance into the world at the same time.
Addison declared that the rival versions were both good; but that
Tickell's was the best that ever was made; and with Addison, the wits,
his adherents and followers, were certain to concur. Pope does not
appear to have been much dismayed; "for," says he, "I have the town,
that is, the mob, on my side." But he remarks, "that it is common for
the smaller party to make up in diligence what they want in numbers; he
appeals to the people as his proper judges; and, if they are not
inclined to condemn him, he is in little care about the highflyers at
Button's."
Pope did not long think Addison an impartial judge; for he considered
him as the writer of Tickell's version. The reasons for his suspicion I
will literally transcribe from Mr. Spence's collection.
"There had been a coldness (said Mr. Pope) between Mr. Addison and me
for some time; and we had not been in company together, for a good
while, any where but at Button's coffee-house, where I used to see him
almost every day. On his meeting me there, one day in particular, he
took me aside, and said he should be glad to dine with me, at such a
tavern, if I staid till those people were gone, (Budgell and Philips.)
We went accordingly; and, after dinner, Mr. Addison said, 'That he had
wanted for some time to talk with me; that his friend Tickell had
formerly, whilst at Oxford, translated the first book of the Iliad; that
he designed to print it, and had desired him to look it over; that he
must, therefore, beg that I would not desire him to look over my first
book, because, if he did, it would have the air of double-dealing.' I
assured him that I did not at all take it ill of Mr. Tickell that he was
going to publish his translation; that he certainly had as much right to
translate any author as myself; and that publishing both was entering on
a fair stage. I then added, that I would not desire him to look over my
first book of the Iliad, because he had looked over Mr. Tickell's; but
could wish to have the benefit of his observations on my second, which I
had then finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon.
Accordingly I sent him the second book the next morning; and Mr.
Addison, a few days after, returned it, with very high commendations.
Soon after it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the
first book of the Iliad, I met Dr. Young in the street; and, upon our
falling into that subject, the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise
at Tickell's having had such a translation so long by him. He said, that
it was inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the
matter; that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they
wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied
in so long a work there, without his knowing something of the matter;
and that he had never heard a single word of it till on this occasion.
The surprise of Dr. Young, together with what Steele has said against
Tickell in relation to this affair, make it highly probable that there
was some underhand dealing in that business; and indeed Tickell himself,
who is a very fair worthy man, has since, in a manner, as good as owned
it to me. [When it was introduced into a conversation between Mr.
Tickell and Mr. Pope, by a third person, Tickell did not deny it; which,
considering his honour, and zeal for his departed friend, was the same
as owning it."]
Upon these suspicions, with which Dr. Warburton hints that other
circumstances concurred, Pope always, in his Art of Sinking, quotes this
book as the work of Addison.
To compare the two translations would be tedious; the palm is now given
universally to Pope; but I think the first lines of Tickell's were
rather to be preferred; and Pope seems to have since borrowed something
from them, in the correction of his own.
When the Hanover succession was disputed, Tickell gave what assistance
his pen would supply. His Letter to Avignon stands high among
party-poems; it expresses contempt without coarseness, and superiority
without insolence. It had the success which it deserved, being five
times printed.
He was now intimately united to Mr. Addison, who, when he went into
Ireland as secretary to the lord Sunderland, took him thither, and
employed him in publick business; and when, 1717, afterwards he rose to
be secretary of state, made him under-secretary. Their friendship seems
to have continued without abatement; for, when Addison died, he left him
the charge of publishing his works, with a solemn recommendation to the
patronage of Craggs.
To these works he prefixed an elegy on the author, which could owe none
of its beauties to the assistance, which might be suspected to have
strengthened or embellished his earlier compositions; but neither he nor
Addison ever produced nobler lines than are contained in the third and
fourth paragraphs; nor is a more sublime or more elegant funeral-poem to
be found in the whole compass of English literature.
He was afterwards, about 1725, made secretary to the lords justices of
Ireland, a place of great honour; in which he continued till 1740, when
he died on the twenty-third of April, at Bath.
Of the poems yet unmentioned, the longest is Kensington Gardens, of
which the versification is smooth and elegant, but the fiction
unskilfully compounded of Grecian deities and Gothick fairies. Neither
species of those exploded beings could have done much; and when they are
brought together, they only make each other contemptible. To Tickell,
however, cannot be refused a high place among the minor poets; nor
should it be forgotten that he was one of the contributors to the
Spectator. With respect to his personal character, he is said to have
been a man of gay conversation, at least a temperate lover of wine and
company, and in his domestick relations without censure.
HAMMOND.
Of Mr. Hammond, though he be well remembered as a man esteemed and
caressed by the elegant and great, I was at first able to obtain no
other memorials than such as are supplied by a book called Cibber's
Lives of the Poets; of which I take this opportunity to testify that it
was not written, nor, I believe, ever seen by either of the Cibbers; but
was the work of Robert Shiels, a native of Scotland, a man of very acute
understanding, though with little scholastick education, who, not long
after the publication of his work, died in London of a consumption. His
life was virtuous, and his end was pious. Theophilus Cibber, then a
prisoner for debt, imparted, as I was told, his name for ten guineas.
The manuscript of Shiels is now in my possession.
I have since found that Mr. Shiels, though he was no negligent inquirer,
has been misled by false accounts; for he relates that James Hammond,
the author of the elegies, was the son of a Turkey merchant, and had
some office at the prince of Wales's court, till love of a lady, whose
name was Dashwood, for a time disordered his understanding. He was
unextinguishably amorous, and his mistress inexorably cruel.
Of this narrative, part is true, and part false. He was the second son
of Anthony Hammond, a man of note among the wits, poets, and
parliamentary orators, in the beginning of this century, who was allied
to sir Robert Walpole by marrying his sister[43]. He was born about
1710, and educated at Westminster-school; but it does not appear that he
was of any university[44]. He was equerry to the prince of Wales, and
seems to have come very early into publick notice, and to have been
distinguished by those whose friendship prejudiced mankind at that time
in favour of the man on whom they were bestowed; for he was the
companion of Cobham, Lyttelton, and Chesterfield. He is said to have
divided his life between pleasure and books; in his retirement
forgetting the town, and in his gaiety losing the student. Of his
literary hours all the effects are here exhibited, of which the elegies
were written very early, and the prologue not long before his death.
In 1741, he was chosen into parliament for Truro, in Cornwall, probably
one of those who were elected by the prince's influence; and died next
year in June, at Stowe, the famous seat of lord Cobham. His mistress
long outlived him, and, in 1779, died unmarried. The character which her
lover bequeathed her was, indeed, not likely to attract courtship.
The elegies were published after his death; and while the writer's name
was remembered with fondness, they were read with a resolution to admire
them.
The recommendatory preface of the editor, who was then believed, and is
now affirmed by Dr. Maty, to be the earl of Chesterfield, raised strong
prejudices in their favour.
But of the prefacer, whoever he was, it may be reasonably suspected that
he never read the poems; for he professes to value them for a very high
species of excellence, and recommends them as the genuine effusions of
the mind, which expresses a real passion in the language of nature. But
the truth is, these elegies have neither passion, nature, nor manners.
Where there is fiction, there is no passion: he that describes himself
as a shepherd, and his Neæra or Delia as a shepherdess, and talks of
goats and lambs, feels no passion. He that courts his mistress with
Roman imagery deserves to lose her; for she may, with good reason,
suspect his sincerity. Hammond has few sentiments drawn from nature, and
few images from modern life. He produces nothing but frigid pedantry. It
would be hard to find in all his productions three stanzas that deserve
to be remembered.
Like other lovers, he threatens the lady with dying; and what then shall
follow?
Wilt thou in tears thy lover's corse attend;
With eyes averted light the solemn pyre,
Till all around the doleful flames ascend,
Then, slowly sinking, by degrees expire?
To sooth the hov'ring soul be thine the care,
With plaintive cries to lead the mournful band;
In sable weeds the golden vase to bear,
And cull my ashes with thy trembling hand:
Panchaia's odours be their costly feast,
And all the pride of Asia's fragrant year,
Give them the treasures of the farthest East,
And, what is still more precious, give thy tear.
Surely no blame can fall upon the nymph who rejected a swain of so
little meaning.
His verses are not rugged, but they have no sweetness; they never glide
in a stream of melody. Why Hammond or other writers have thought the
quatrain of ten syllables elegiack, it is difficult to tell. The
character of the elegy is gentleness and tenuity; but this stanza has
been pronounced by Dryden, whose knowledge of English metre was not
inconsiderable, to be the most magnificent of all the measures which our
language affords.
-----
[Footnote 43: This account is still erroneous. James Hammond, our
author, was of a different family, the second son of Anthony Hammond, of
Somersham-place, in the county of Huntingdon, esq. See Gent. Mag. vol.
lvii. p. 780. R.]
[Footnote 44: Mr. Cole gives him to Cambridge. MSS. Athenae Cantab, in
Mus. Brit.]
SOMERVILE.
Of Mr.[45] Somervile's life I am not able to say any thing that can
satisfy curiosity.
He was a gentleman whose estate was in Warwickshire: his house, where he
was born, in 1692, is called Edston, a seat inherited from a long line
of ancestors; for he was said to be of the first family in his county.
He tells of himself that he was born near the Avon's banks. He was bred
at Winchester-school, and was elected fellow of New college. It does not
appear that in the places of his education he exhibited any uncommon
proofs of genius or literature. His powers were first displayed in the
country, where he was distinguished as a poet, a gentleman, and a
skilful and useful justice of the peace.
Of the close of his life, those whom his poems have delighted will read
with pain the following account, copied from the letters of his friend
Shenstone, by whom he was too much resembled.
"--Our old friend Somervile is dead! I did not imagine I could have been
so sorry as I find myself on this occasion: 'Sublatum quaerimus.' I can
now excuse all his foibles; impute them to age, and to distress of
circumstances: the last of these considerations wrings my very soul to
think on. For a man of high spirit, conscious of having, at least in one
production, generally pleased the world, to be plagued and threatened by
wretches that are low in every sense; to be forced to drink himself into
pains of the body, in order to get rid of the pains of the mind, is a
misery."
He died July 19,1742, and was buried at Wotton, near Henley on Arden.
His distresses need not be much pitied: his estate is said to have been
fifteen hundred a-year, which, by his death, devolved to lord Somervile,
of Scotland. His mother, indeed, who lived till ninety, had a jointure
of six hundred.
It is with regret that I find myself not better enabled to exhibit
memorials of a writer, who, at least, must be allowed to have set a good
example to men of his own class, by devoting part of his time to elegant
knowledge; and who has shown, by the subjects which his poetry has
adorned, that it is practicable to be at once a skilful sportsman, and a
man of letters.
Somervile has tried many modes of poetry; and though, perhaps, he has
not in any reached such excellence as to raise much envy, it may
commonly be said, at least, that "he writes very well for a gentleman."
His serious pieces are sometimes elevated, and his trifles are sometimes
elegant. In his verses to Addison, the couplet which mentions Clio is
written with the most exquisite delicacy of praise; it exhibits one of
those happy strokes that are seldom attained. In his odes to Marlborough
there are beautiful lines; but, in the second ode, he shows that he knew
little of his hero, when he talks of his private virtues. His subjects
are commonly such as require no great depth of thought, or energy of
expression. His fables are generally stale, and, therefore, excite no
curiosity. Of his favourite, the Two Springs, the fiction is unnatural,
and the moral inconsequential. In his tales there is too much
coarseness, with too little care of language, and not sufficient
rapidity of narration.
His great work is his Chase, which he undertook in his maturer age, when
his ear was improved to the approbation of blank verse, of which,
however, his two first lines give a bad specimen. To this poem praise
cannot be totally denied. He is allowed, by sportsmen, to write with
great intelligence of his subject, which is the first requisite to
excellence; and, though it is impossible to interest the common readers
of verse in the dangers or pleasures of the chase, he has done all that
transition and variety could easily effect; and has, with great
propriety, enlarged his plan by the modes of hunting used in other
countries.
With still less judgment did he choose blank verse as the vehicle of
Rural Sports. If blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled
prose; and familiar images, in laboured language, have nothing to
recommend them but absurd novelty, which, wanting the attractions of
nature, cannot please long. One excellence of the Splendid Shilling is,
that it is short. Disguise can gratify no longer than it deceives[46].
-----
[Footnote 45: William.]
[Footnote 46: An allusion of approbation is made to the above in
Nichol's Literary Anecdotes of the eighteenth century, ii. 58. ED.]
SAVAGE[47].
It has been observed, in all ages, that the advantages of nature, or of
fortune, have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and
that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their
capacity, have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often
given any just occasion to envy, in those who look up to them from a
lower station: whether it be that apparent superiority incites great
designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages;
or, that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of
those, whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention, have been
more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and
have, in reality, been only more conspicuous than those of others, not
more frequent, or more severe.
That affluence and power, advantages extrinsick and adventitious, and,
therefore, easily separable from those by whom they are possessed,
should very often flatter the mind with expectations of felicity which
they cannot give, raises no astonishment; but it seems rational to hope,
that intellectual greatness should produce better effects; that minds
qualified for great attainments should first endeavour their own
benefit; and that they, who are most able to teach others the way to
happiness, should with most certainty follow it themselves.
But this expectation, however plausible, has been very frequently
disappointed. The heroes of literary as well as civil history, have been
very often no less remarkable for what they have suffered, than for what
they have achieved; and volumes have been written only to enumerate the
miseries of the learned, and relate their unhappy lives and untimely
deaths.
To these mournful narratives, I am about to add the life of Richard
Savage, a man whose writings entitle him to an eminent rank in the
classes of learning, and whose misfortunes claim a degree of compassion,
not always due to the unhappy, as they were often the consequences of
the crimes of others, rather than his own.
In the year 1697, Anne, countess of Macclesfield, having lived, for same
time, upon very uneasy terms with her husband, thought a publick
confession of adultery the most obvious and expeditious method of
obtaining her liberty; and, therefore, declared, that the child, with
which she was then great, was begotten by the earl Rivers. This, as may
be imagined, made her husband no less desirous of a separation than
herself, and he prosecuted his design in the most effectual manner; for
he applied not to the ecclesiastical courts for a divorce, but to the
parliament for an act, by which his marriage might be dissolved, the
nuptial contract totally annulled, and the children of his wife
illegitimated. This act, after the usual deliberation, he obtained,
though without the approbation of some, who considered marriage as an
affair only cognizable by ecclesiastical judges[48]; and, on March 3rd,
was separated from his wife, whose fortune, which was very great, was
repaid her, and who having, as well as her husband, the liberty of
making another choice, was, in a short time, married to colonel Brett.
While the earl of Macclesfield was prosecuting this affair, his wife
was, on the 10th of January, 1697-8, delivered of a son; and the earl
Rivers, by appearing to consider him as his own, left none any reason to
doubt of the sincerity of her declaration; for he was his godfather, and
gave him his own name, which was, by his direction, inserted in the
register of St. Andrew's parish[49] in Holborn, but, unfortunately, left
him to the care of his mother, whom, as she was now set free from her
husband, he, probably, imagined likely to treat with great tenderness
the child that had contributed to so pleasing an event. It is not,
indeed, easy to discover what motives could be found to overbalance that
natural affection of a parent, or what interest could be promoted by
neglect or cruelty. The dread of shame or of poverty, by which some
wretches have been incited to abandon or to murder their children,
cannot be supposed to have affected a woman who had proclaimed her
crimes and solicited reproach, and on whom the clemency of the
legislature had undeservedly bestowed a fortune, which would have been
very little diminished by the expenses which the care of her child
could have brought upon her. It was, therefore, not likely that she
would be wicked without temptation; that she would look upon her son,
from his birth, with a kind of resentment and abhorrence; and, instead
of supporting, assisting, and defending him, delight to see him
struggling with misery, or that she would take every opportunity of
aggravating his misfortunes, and obstructing his resources, and, with an
implacable and restless cruelty, continue her persecution from the first
hour of his life to the last.
But, whatever were her motives, no sooner was her son born, than she
discovered a resolution of disowning him; and, in a very short time,
removed him from her sight, by committing him to the care of a poor
woman, whom she directed to educate him as her own, and enjoined never
to inform him of his true parents.
Such was the beginning of the life of Richard Savage. Born with a legal
claim to honour and to affluence, he was, in two months, illegitimated
by the parliament, and disowned by his mother, doomed to poverty and
obscurity, and launched upon the ocean of life, only that he might be
swallowed by its quicksands, or dashed upon its rocks.
His mother could not, indeed, infect others with the same cruelty. As it
was impossible to avoid the inquiries which the curiosity or tenderness
of her relations made after her child, she was obliged to give some
account of the measures she had taken; and her mother, the lady Mason,
whether in approbation of her design, or to prevent more criminal
contrivances, engaged to transact with the nurse, to pay her for her
care, and to superintend the education of the child.
In this charitable office she was assisted by his godmother, Mrs. Lloyd,
who, while she lived, always looked upon him with that tenderness which
the barbarity of his mother made peculiarly necessary; but her death,
which happened in his tenth year, was another of the misfortunes of his
childhood; for though she kindly endeavoured to alleviate his loss by a
legacy of three hundred pounds, yet, as he had none to prosecute his
claim, to shelter him from oppression, or call in law to the assistance
of justice, her will was eluded by the executors, and no part of the
money was ever paid[50].
He was, however, not yet wholly abandoned. The lady Mason still
continued her care, and directed him to be placed at a small
grammar-school near St. Alban's, where he was called by the name of his
nurse, without the least intimation that he had a claim to any other.
Here he was initiated in literature, and passed through several of the
classes, with what rapidity or with what applause cannot now be known.
As he always spoke with respect of his master, it is probable that the
mean rank, in which he then appeared, did not hinder his genius from
being distinguished, or his industry from being rewarded; and if in so
low a state he obtained distinction and rewards, it is not likely they
were gained but by genius and industry.
It is very reasonable to conjecture, that his application was equal to
his abilities, because his improvement was more than proportioned to the
opportunities which he enjoyed; nor can it be doubted, that if his
earliest productions had been preserved, like those of happier students,
we might in some have found vigorous sallies of that sprightly humour
which distinguishes the Author to be let, and in others strong touches
of that ardent imagination which painted the solemn scenes of the
Wanderer.
While he was thus cultivating his genius, his father, the earl Rivers,
was seized with a distemper, which, in a short time, put an end to his
life[51]. He had frequently inquired after his son, and had always been
amused with fallacious and evasive answers; but, being now, in his own
opinion, on his deathbed, he thought it his duty to provide for him
among his other natural children, and, therefore, demanded a positive
account of him, with an importunity not to be diverted or denied. His
mother, who could no longer refuse an answer, determined, at least, to
give such as should cut him off for ever from that happiness which
competence affords, and, therefore, declared that he was dead; which is,
perhaps, the first instance of a lie invented by a mother to deprive her
son of a provision which was designed him by another, and which she
could not expect herself, though he should lose it.
This was, therefore, an act of wickedness which could not be defeated,
because it could not be suspected; the earl did not imagine there could
exist in a human form a mother that would ruin her son without enriching
herself, and, therefore, bestowed upon some other person six thousand
pounds, which he had in his will bequeathed to Savage.
The same cruelty which incited his mother to intercept this provision
which had been intended him, prompted her, in a short time, to another
project, a project worthy of such a disposition. She endeavoured to rid
herself from the danger of being at any time made known to him, by
sending him secretly to the American plantations[52].
By whose kindness this scheme was counteracted, or by what interposition
she was induced to lay aside her design, I know not; it is not
improbable that the lady Mason might persuade or compel her to desist,
or, perhaps, she could not easily find accomplices wicked enough to
concur in so cruel an action; for it may be conceived, that those who
had, by a long gradation of guilt, hardened their hearts against the
sense of common wickedness, would yet be shocked at the design of a
mother to expose her son to slavery and want, to expose him without
interest, and without provocation; and Savage might, on this occasion,
find protectors and advocates among those who had long traded in crimes,
and whom compassion had never touched before.
Being hindered, by whatever means, from banishing him into another
country, she formed, soon after, a scheme for burying him in poverty and
obscurity in his own; and, that his station of life, if not the place of
his residence, might keep him for ever at a distance from her, she
ordered him to be placed with a shoemaker in Holborn, that, after the
usual time of trial, he might become his apprentice[53].
It is generally reported, that this project was, for some time,
successful, and that Savage was employed at the awl longer than he was
willing to confess; nor was it, perhaps, any great advantage to him,
that an unexpected discovery determined him to quit his occupation.
About this time his nurse, who had always treated him as her own son,
died; and it was natural for him to take care of those effects which, by
her death, were, as he imagined, become his own: he, therefore, went to
her house, opened her boxes, and examined her papers, among which he
found some letters written to her by the lady Mason, which informed him
of his birth, and the reasons for which it was concealed.
He was no longer satisfied with the employment which had been allotted
him, but thought he had a right to share the affluence of his mother;
and, therefore, without scruple, applied to her as her son, and made use
of every art to awaken her tenderness, and attract her regard. But
neither his letters, nor the interposition of those friends which his
merit or his distress procured him, made any impression upon her mind.
She, still resolved to neglect, though she could no longer disown him.
It was to no purpose that he frequently solicited her to admit him to
see her: she avoided him with the most vigilant precaution, and ordered
him to be excluded from her house, by whomsoever he might be introduced,
and what reason soever he might give for entering it.
Savage was at the same time so touched with the discovery of his real
mother, that it was his frequent practice to walk in the dark
evenings[54] for several hours before her door, in hopes of seeing her
as she might come by accident to the window, or cross her apartment with
a candle in her hand.
But all his assiduity and tenderness were without effect, for he could
neither soften her heart nor open her hand, and was reduced to the
utmost miseries of want, while he was endeavouring to awaken the
affection of a mother. He was, therefore, obliged to seek some other
means of support; and, having no profession, became, by necessity, an
author.
At this time the attention of the literary world was engrossed by the
Bangorian controversy, which filled the press with pamphlets, and the
coffee-houses with disputants. Of this subject, as most popular, he made
choice for his first attempt, and, without any other knowledge of the
question than he had casually collected from conversation, published a
poem against the bishop[55].
What was the success or merit of this performance, I know not; it was
probably lost among the innumerable pamphlets to which that dispute gave
occasion. Mr. Savage was himself in a little time ashamed of it, and
endeavoured to suppress it, by destroying all the copies that he could
collect.
He then attempted a more gainful kind of writing[56], and, in his
eighteenth year, offered to the stage a comedy, borrowed from a Spanish
plot, which was refused by the players, and was, therefore, given by him
to Mr. Bullock, who, having more interest, made some slight
alterations, and brought it upon the stage, under the title of Woman's a
Riddle[57], but allowed the unhappy author no part of the profit.
Not discouraged, however, at his repulse, he wrote, two years
afterwards, Love in a Veil, another comedy, borrowed likewise from the
Spanish, but with little better success than before; for, though it was
received and acted, yet it appeared so late in the year, that the author
obtained no other advantage from it, than the acquaintance of sir
Richard Steele, and Mr. Wilks, by whom he was pitied, caressed, and
relieved.
Sir Richard Steele, having declared in his favour with all the ardour of
benevolence which constituted his character, promoted his interest with
the utmost zeal, related his misfortunes, applauded his merit, took all
the opportunities of recommending him, and asserted, that "the
inhumanity of his mother had given him a right to find every good man
his father[58]."
Nor was Mr. Savage admitted to his acquaintance only, but to his
confidence, of which he sometimes related an instance too extraordinary
to be omitted, as it affords a very just idea of his patron's character.
He was once desired by sir Richard, with an air of the utmost
importance, to come very early to his house the next morning. Mr. Savage
came as he had promised, found the chariot at the door, and sir Richard
waiting for him, and ready to go out. What was intended, and whither
they were to go, Savage could not conjecture, and was not willing to
inquire; but immediately seated himself with sir Richard. The coachman
was ordered to drive, and they hurried, with the utmost expedition, to
Hyde-park corner, where they stopped at a petty tavern, and retired to a
private room. Sir Richard then informed him, that he intended to publish
a pamphlet, and that he had desired him to come thither that he might
write for him. They soon sat down to the work. Sir Richard dictated, and
Savage wrote, till the dinner that had been ordered was put upon the
table. Savage was surprised at the meanness of the entertainment, and,
after some hesitation, ventured to ask for wine, which sir Richard, not
without reluctance, ordered to be brought. They then finished their
dinner, and proceeded in their pamphlet, which they concluded in the
afternoon.
Mr. Savage then imagined his task over, and expected that sir Richard
would call for the reckoning, and return home; but his expectations
deceived him, for sir Richard told him that he was without money, and
that the pamphlet must be sold, before the dinner could be paid for; and
Savage was, therefore, obliged to go and offer their new production to
sale for two guineas, which, with some difficulty, he obtained. Sir
Richard then returned home, having retired that day only to avoid his
creditors, and composed the pamphlet only to discharge his reckoning.
Mr. Savage related another fact equally uncommon, which, though it has
no relation to his life, ought to be preserved. Sir Richard Steele
having one day invited to his house a great number of persons of the
first quality, they were surprised at the number of liveries which
surrounded the table; and after dinner, when wine and mirth had set them
free from the observation of rigid ceremony, one of them inquired of sir
Richard, how such an expensive train of domesticks could be consistent
with his fortune. Sir Richard very frankly confessed, that they were
fellows of whom he would very willingly be rid: and being then asked why
he did not discharge them, declared that they were bailiffs, who had
introduced themselves with an execution, and whom, since he could not
send them away, he had thought it convenient to embellish with liveries,
that they might do him credit while they staid.
His friends were diverted with the expedient, and, by paying the debt,
discharged their attendance, having obliged sir Richard to promise that
they should never again find him graced with a retinue of the same kind.
Under such a tutor Mr. Savage was not likely to learn prudence or
frugality; and, perhaps, many of the misfortunes which the want of those
virtues brought upon him in the following parts of his life, might be
justly imputed to so unimproving an example.
Nor did the kindness of sir Richard end in common favours. He proposed
to have established him in some settled scheme of life, and to have
contracted a kind of alliance with him, by marrying him to a natural
daughter, on whom he intended to bestow a thousand pounds. But, though
he was always lavish of future bounties, he conducted his affairs in
such a manner, that he was very seldom able to keep his promises, or
execute his own intentions; and, as he was never able to raise the sum
which he had offered, the marriage was delayed. In the mean time he was
officiously informed, that Mr. Savage had ridiculed him; by which he was
so much exasperated, that he withdrew the allowance which he had paid
him, and never afterwards admitted him to his house.
It is not, indeed, unlikely that Savage might, by his imprudence, expose
himself to the malice of a talebearer; for his patron had many follies,
which, as his discernment easily discovered, his imagination might
sometimes incite him to mention too ludicrously. A little knowledge of
the world is sufficient to discover that such weakness is very common,
and that there are few who do not sometimes, in the wantonness of
thoughtless mirth, or the heat of transient resentment, speak of their
friends and benefactors with levity and contempt, though, in their
cooler moments, they want neither sense of their kindness, nor reverence
for their virtue: the fault, therefore, of Mr. Savage was rather
negligence than ingratitude. But sir Richard must, likewise, be
acquitted of severity, for who is there that can patiently bear contempt
from one whom he has relieved and supported, whose establishment he has
laboured, and whose interest he has promoted?
He was now again abandoned to fortune, without any other friend than
Mr. Wilks; a man who, whatever were his abilities or skill as an actor,
deserves, at least, to be remembered for his virtues[59], which are not
often to be found in the world, and, perhaps, Jess often in his
profession than in others. To be humane, generous, and candid, is a very
high degree of merit in any case; but those qualities deserve still
greater praise, when they are found in that condition which makes almost
every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant,
selfish, and brutal.
As Mr. Wilks was one of those to whom calamity seldom complained without
relief, he naturally took an unfortunate wit into his protection, and
not only assisted him in any casual distresses, but continued an equal
and steady kindness to the time of his death.
By his interposition Mr. Savage once obtained from his mother[60] fifty
pounds, and a promise of one hundred and fifty more; but it was the
fate of this unhappy man, that few promises of any advantage to him were
performed. His mother was infected, among others, with the general
madness of the South-sea traffick; and, having been disappointed in her
expectations, refused to pay what, perhaps, nothing but the prospect of
sudden affluence prompted her to promise.
Being thus obliged to depend upon the friendship of Mr. Wilks, he was,
consequently, an assiduous frequenter of the theatres; and, in a short
time, the amusements of the stage took such possession of his mind, that
he never was absent from a play in several years.
This constant attendance naturally procured him the acquaintance of the
players; and, among others, of Mrs. Oldfield, who was so much pleased
with his conversation, and touched with his misfortunes, that she
allowed him a settled pension of fifty pounds a year, which was during
her life regularly paid.
That this act of generosity may receive its due praise, and that the
good actions of Mrs. Oldfield may not be sullied by her general
character, it is proper to mention what Mr. Savage often declared, in
the strongest terms, that he never saw her alone, or in any other place
than behind the scenes.
At her death he endeavoured to show his gratitude in the most decent
manner, by wearing mourning, as for a mother; but did not celebrate her
in elegies[61], because he knew that too great profusion of praise would
only have revived those faults which his natural equity did not allow
him to think less, because they were committed by one who favoured him;
but of which, though his virtue would not endeavour to palliate them,
his gratitude would not suffer him to prolong the memory, or diffuse the
censure.
In his Wanderer, he has, indeed, taken an opportunity of mentioning
her; but celebrates her not for her virtue, but her beauty, an
excellence which none ever denied her: this is the only encomium with
which he has rewarded her liberality; and, perhaps, he has, even in
this, been too lavish of his praise. He seems to have thought, that
never to mention his benefactress would have an appearance of
ingratitude, though to have dedicated any particular performance to her
memory would have only betrayed an officious partiality, that, without
exalting her character, would have depressed his own.
He had sometimes, by the kindness of Mr. Wilks, the advantage of a
benefit, on which occasions he often received uncommon marks of regard
and compassion; and was once told, by the duke of Dorset, that it was
just to consider him as an injured nobleman; and that, in his opinion,
the nobility ought to think themselves obliged, without solicitation, to
take every opportunity of supporting him by their countenance and
patronage. But he had generally the mortification to hear, that the
whole interest of his mother was employed to frustrate his applications,
and that she never left any expedient untried, by which he might be cut
off from the possibility of supporting life. The same disposition she
endeavoured to diffuse among all those over whom nature or fortune gave
her any influence; and, indeed, succeeded too well in her design; but
could not always propagate her effrontery with her cruelty; for some of
those, whom she incited against him, were ashamed of their own conduct,
and boasted of that relief which they never gave him.
In this censure I do not indiscriminately involve all his relations; for
he has mentioned, with gratitude, the humanity of one lady, whose name I
am now unable to recollect, and to whom, therefore, I cannot pay the
praises which she deserves, for having acted well, in opposition to
influence, precept, and example.
The punishment which our laws inflict upon those parents who murder
their infants, is well known; nor has its justice ever been contested;
but, if they deserve death who destroy a child in its birth, what pains
can be severe enough for her who forbears to destroy him, only to
inflict sharper miseries upon him; who prolongs his life, only to make
him miserable; and who exposes him, without care and without pity, to
the malice of oppression, the caprices of chance, and the temptations of
poverty; who rejoices to see him overwhelmed with calamities; and, when
his own industry, or the charity of others, has enabled him to rise, for
a short time, above his miseries, plunges him again into his former
distress?
The kindness of his friends not affording him any constant supply, and
the prospect of improving his fortune by enlarging his acquaintance
necessarily leading him to places of expense, he found it necessary[62]
to endeavour, once more, at dramatick poetry, for which he was now
better qualified, by a more extensive knowledge and longer observation.
But having been unsuccessful in comedy, though rather for want of
opportunities than genius, he resolved now to try whether he should not
be more fortunate in exhibiting a tragedy.
The story which he chose for the subject, was that of sir Thomas
Overbury, a story well adapted to the stage, though, perhaps, not far
enough removed from the present age to admit properly the fictions
necessary to complete the plan; for the mind, which naturally loves
truth, is always most offended with the violation of those truths of
which we are most certain; and we, of course, conceive those facts most
certain, which approach nearest to our own time.
Out of this story he formed a tragedy, which, if the circumstances in
which he wrote it be considered, will afford, at once, an uncommon proof
of strength of genius, and evenness of mind, of a serenity not to be
ruffled, and an imagination not to be suppressed.
During a considerable part of the time in which he was employed upon
this performance, he was without lodging, and often without meat; nor
had he any other conveniences for study than the fields or the streets
allowed him: there he used to walk and form his speeches, and,
afterwards, step into a shop, beg for a few moments the use of the pen
and ink, and write down what he had composed, upon paper which he had
picked up by accident.
If the performance of a writer thus distressed is not perfect, its
faults ought, surely, to be imputed to a cause very different from want
of genius, and must rather excite pity than provoke censure.
But when, under these discouragements, the tragedy was finished, there
yet remained the labour of introducing it on the stage; an undertaking,
which, to an ingenuous mind, was, in a very high degree, vexatious and
disgusting; for, having little interest or reputation, he was obliged to
submit himself wholly to the players, and admit, with whatever
reluctance, the emendations of Mr. Cibber, which he always considered as
the disgrace of his performance.
He had, indeed, in Mr. Hill, another critick of a very different class,
from whose friendship he received great assistance on many occasions,
and whom he never mentioned but with the utmost tenderness and regard.
He had been for some time distinguished by him with very particular
kindness, and on this occasion it was natural to apply to him, as an
author of an established character. He, therefore, sent this tragedy to
him, with a short copy of verses[63], in which he desired his
correction. Mr. Hill, whose humanity and politeness are generally known,
readily complied with his request; but, as he is remarkable for
singularity of sentiment, and bold experiments in language, Mr. Savage
did not think his play much improved by his innovation, and had, even at
that time, the courage to reject several passages which he could not
approve; and, what is still more laudable, Mr. Hill had the generosity
not to resent the neglect of his alterations, but wrote the prologue
and epilogue, in which he touches on the circumstances of the author
with great tenderness.
After all these obstructions and compliances, he was only able to bring
his play upon the stage in the summer, when the chief actors had
retired, and the rest were in possession of the house for their own
advantage. Among these, Mr. Savage was admitted to play the part of sir
Thomas Overbury[64], by which he gained no great reputation, the theatre
being a province for which nature seemed not to have designed him; for
neither his voice, look, nor gesture, were such as were expected on the
stage; and he was so much ashamed of having been reduced to appear as a
player, that he always blotted out his name from the list, when a copy
of his tragedy was to be shown to his friends.
In the publication of his performance he was more successful, for the
rays of genius that glimmered in it, that glimmered through all the
mists which poverty and Cibber had been able to spread over it, procured
him the notice and esteem of many persons eminent for their rank, their
virtue, and their wit.
Of this play, acted, printed, and dedicated, the accumulated profits
arose to a hundred pounds, which he thought at that time a very large
sum, having been never master of so much before.
In the dedication[65], for which he received ten guineas, there is
nothing remarkable. The preface contains a very liberal encomium on the
blooming excellencies of Mr. Theophilus Cibber, which Mr. Savage could
not in the latter part of his life see his friends about to read without
snatching the play out of their hands. The generosity of Mr. Hill did
not end on this occasion; for afterwards, when Mr. Savage's necessities
returned, he encouraged a subscription to a Miscellany of Poems in a
very extraordinary manner, by publishing his story in the Plain
Dealer[66], with some affecting lines, which he asserts to have been
written by Mr. Savage upon the treatment received by him from his
mother, but of which he was himself the author, as Mr. Savage afterwards
declared. These lines, and the paper in which they were inserted, had a
very powerful effect upon all but his mother, whom, by making her
cruelty more publick, they only hardened in her aversion.
Mr. Hill not only promoted the subscription to the Miscellany, but
furnished likewise the greatest part of the poems of which it is
composed, and particularly the Happy Man, which he published as a
specimen.
The subscriptions of those whom these papers should influence to
patronise merit in distress, without any other solicitation, were
directed to be left at Button's coffee-house; and Mr. Savage going
thither a few days afterwards, without expectation of any effect from
his proposal, found to his surprise seventy guineas[67], which had been
sent him in consequence of the compassion excited by Mr. Hill's
pathetick representation.
To this Miscellany he wrote a preface, in which he gives an account of
his mother's cruelty in a very uncommon strain of humour, and with a
gaiety of imagination; which the success of his subscription probably
produced.
The dedication is addressed to the lady Mary Wortley Montague, whom he
flatters without reserve, and, to confess the truth, with very little
art[68]. The same observation may be extended to all his dedications:
his compliments are constrained and violent, heaped together without the
grace of order, or the decency of introduction: he seems to have written
his panegyricks for the perusal only of his patrons, and to have
imagined that he had no other task than to pamper them with praises,
however gross, and that flattery would make its way to the heart,
without the assistance of elegance or invention.
Soon afterwards the death of the king furnished a general subject for a
poetical contest, in which Mr. Savage engaged, and is allowed to have
carried the prize of honour from his competitors: but I know not whether
he gained by his performance any other advantage than the increase of
his reputation; though it must certainly have been with further views
that he prevailed upon himself to attempt a species of writing, of which
all the topicks had been long before exhausted, and which was made at
once difficult by the multitudes that had failed in it, and those that
had succeeded.
He was now advancing in reputation, and though frequently involved in
very distressful perplexities, appeared, however, to be gaining upon
mankind, when both his fame and his life were endangered by an event, of
which it is not yet determined, whether it ought to be mentioned as a
crime or a calamity.
On the 20th of November, 1727, Mr. Savage came from Richmond, where he
then lodged, that he might pursue his studies with less interruption,
with an intent to discharge another lodging which he had in Westminster;
and accidentally meeting two gentlemen, his acquaintances, whose names
were Merchant and Gregory, he went in with them to a neighbouring
coffee-house, and sat drinking till it was late, it being in no time of
Mr. Savage's life any part of his character to be the first of the
company that desired to separate. He would willingly have gone to bed in
the same house; but there was not room for the whole company, and,
therefore, they agreed to ramble about the streets, and divert
themselves with such amusements as should offer themselves till morning.
In this walk they happened unluckily to discover a light in Robinson's
coffee-house, near Charing-cross, and, therefore, went in. Merchant,
with some rudeness, demanded a room, and was told that there was a good
fire in the next parlour, which the company were about to leave, being
then paying their reckoning. Merchant, not satisfied with this answer,
rushed into the room, and was followed by his companions. He then
petulantly placed himself between the company and the fire, and soon
after kicked down the table. This produced a quarrel, swords were drawn
on both sides, and one Mr. James Sinclair was killed. Savage, having
likewise wounded a maid that held him, forced his way with Merchant out
of the house; but being intimidated and confused, without resolution
either to fly or stay, they were taken in a back court by one of the
company, and some soldiers, whom he had called to his assistance.
Being secured and guarded that night, they were in the morning carried
before three justices, who committed them to the Gate-house, from
whence, upon the death of Mr. Sinclair, which happened the same day,
they were removed in the night to Newgate, where they were, however,
treated with some distinction, exempted from the ignominy of chains, and
confined, not among the common criminals, but in the press-yard.
When the day of trial came, the court was crowded in a very unusual
manner; and the publick appeared to interest itself, as in a cause of
general concern. The witnesses against Mr. Savage and his friends were,
the woman who kept the house, which was a house of ill fame, and her
maid, the men who were in the room with Mr. Sinclair, and a woman of the
town, who had been drinking with them, and with whom one of them had
been seen in bed. They swore in general, that Merchant gave the
provocation, which Savage and Gregory drew their swords to justify; that
Savage drew first, and that he stabbed Sinclair when he was not in a
posture of defence, or while Gregory commanded his sword; that after he
had given the thrust he turned pale, and would have retired, but that
the maid clung round him, and one of the company endeavoured to detain
him, from whom he broke, by cutting the maid on the head, but was
afterwards taken in a court.
There was some difference in their depositions; one did not see Savage
give the wound, another saw it given when Sinclair held his point
towards the ground; and the woman of the town asserted, that she did not
see Sinclair's sword at all: this difference, however, was very far from
amounting to inconsistency; but it was sufficient to show that the hurry
of the dispute was such, that it was not easy to discover the truth with
relation to particular circumstances, and that, therefore, some
deductions were to be made from the credibility of the testimonies.
Sinclair had declared several times before his death, that he received
his wound from Savage; nor did Savage at his trial deny the fact, but
endeavoured partly to extenuate it, by urging the suddenness of the
whole action, and the impossibility of any ill design, or premeditated
malice; and partly to justify it by the necessity of self-defence, and
the hazard of his own life, if he had lost that opportunity of giving
the thrust: he observed, that neither reason nor law obliged a man to
wait for the blow which was threatened, and which, if he should suffer
it, he might never be able to return; that it was always allowable to
prevent an assault, and to preserve life by taking away that of the
adversary by whom it was endangered.
With regard to the violence with which he endeavoured to escape, he
declared, that it was not his design to fly from justice, or decline a
trial, but to avoid the expenses and severities of a prison; and that he
intended to have appeared at the bar without compulsion.
This defence, which took up more than an hour, was heard by the
multitude that thronged the court with the most attentive and respectful
silence; those who thought he ought not to be acquitted, owned that
applause could not be refused him; and those who before pitied his
misfortunes, now reverenced his abilities.
The witnesses which appeared against him were proved to be persons of
characters which did not entitle them to much credit; a common strumpet,
a woman by whom strumpets were entertained, and a man by whom they were
supported: and the character of Savage was, by several persons of
distinction, asserted to be that of a modest inoffensive man, not
inclined to broils or to insolence, and who had, to that time, been only
known for his misfortunes and his wit.
Had his audience been his judges, he had undoubtedly been acquitted; but
Mr. Page, who was then upon the bench, treated him with his usual
insolence and severity, and when he had summed up the evidence,
endeavoured to exasperate the jury, as Mr. Savage used to relate it,
with this eloquent harangue:
"Gentlemen of the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very
great man, a much greater man than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that
he wears very fine clothes, much finer clothes than you or I, gentlemen
of the jury; that he has abundance of money in his pocket, much more
money than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; but, gentlemen of the jury,
is it not a very hard case, gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Savage
should, therefore, kill you or me, gentlemen of the jury?"
Mr. Savage, hearing his defence thus misrepresented, and the men who
were to decide his fate incited against him by invidious comparisons,
resolutely asserted, that his cause was not candidly explained, and
began to recapitulate what he had before said with regard to his
condition, and the necessity of endeavouring to escape the expenses of
imprisonment; but the judge having ordered him to be silent, and
repeated his orders without effect, commanded that he should be taken
from the bar by force.
The jury then heard the opinion of the judge, that good characters were
of no weight against positive evidence, though they might turn the scale
where it was doubtful; and that though, when two men attack each other,
the death of either is only manslaughter; but where one is the
aggressor, as in the case before them, and, in pursuance of his first
attack, kills the other, the law supposes the action, however sudden, to
be malicious. They then deliberated upon their verdict, and determined
that Mr. Savage and Mr. Gregory were guilty of murder; and Mr. Merchant,
who had no sword, only of manslaughter.
Thus ended this memorable trial, which lasted eight hours. Mr. Savage
and Mr. Gregory were conducted back to prison, where they were more
closely confined, and loaded with irons of fifty pounds' weight: four
days afterwards they were sent back to the court to receive sentence; on
which occasion Mr. Savage made, as far as it could be retained in
memory, the following speech:
"It is now, my lord, too late to offer any thing by way of defence or
vindication; nor can we expect from your lordships, in this court, but
the sentence which the law requires you, as judges, to pronounce against
men of our calamitous condition. But we are also persuaded, that as mere
men, and out of this seat of rigorous justice, you are susceptive of the
tender passions, and too humane not to commiserate the unhappy situation
of those, whom the law sometimes, perhaps--exacts--from you to pronounce
upon. No doubt, you distinguish between offences which arise out of
premeditation, and a disposition habituated to vice or immorality, and
transgressions, which are the unhappy and unforeseen effects of casual
absence of reason, and sudden impulse of passion; we, therefore, hope
you will contribute all you can to an extension of that mercy, which
the gentlemen of the jury have been pleased to show Mr. Merchant, who
(allowing facts as sworn against us by the evidence) has led us into
this our calamity. I hope this will not be construed as if we meant to
reflect upon that gentleman, or remove any thing from us upon him, or
that we repine the more at our fate, because he has no participation of
it: no, my lord; for my part, I declare nothing could more soften my
grief, than to be without any companion in so great a misfortune[69]."
Mr. Savage had now no hopes of life, but from the mercy of the crown,
which was very earnestly solicited by his friends, and which, with
whatever difficulty the story may obtain belief, was obstructed only by
his mother.
To prejudice the queen against him, she made use of an incident, which
was omitted in the order of time, that it might be mentioned together
with the purpose which it was made to serve. Mr. Savage, when he had
discovered his birth, had an incessant desire to speak to his mother,
who always avoided him in publick, and refused him admission into her
house. One evening walking, as it was his custom, in the street that she
inhabited, he saw the door of her house by accident open; he entered it,
and, finding no person in the passage to hinder him, went up stairs to
salute her. She discovered him before he could enter her chamber,
alarmed the family with the most distressful outcries, and, when she had
by her screams gathered them about her, ordered them to drive out of the
house that villain, who had forced himself in upon her, and endeavoured
to murder her. Savage, who had attempted, with the most submissive
tenderness, to soften her rage, hearing her utter so detestable an
accusation, thought it prudent to retire; and, I believe, never
attempted afterwards to speak to her.
But, shocked as he was with her falsehood and her cruelty, he imagined
that she intended no other use of her lie, than to set herself free from
his embraces and solicitations, and was very far from suspecting that
she would treasure it in her memory as an instrument of future
wickedness, or that she would endeavour for this fictitious assault to
deprive him of his life.
But when the queen was solicited for his pardon, and informed of the
severe treatment which he had suffered from his judge, she answered,
that, however unjustifiable might be the manner of his trial, or
whatever extenuation the action for which he was condemned might admit,
she could not think that man a proper object of the king's mercy, who
had been capable of entering his mother's house in the night, with an
intent to murder her.
By whom this atrocious calumny had been transmitted to the queen;
whether she that invented had the front to relate it; whether she found
any one weak enough to credit it, or corrupt enough to concur with her
in her hateful design, I know not; but methods had been taken to
persuade the queen so strongly of the truth of it, that she, for a long
time, refused to hear any of those who petitioned for his life.
Thus had Savage perished by the evidence of a bawd, a strumpet, and his
mother, had not justice and compassion procured him an advocate of rank
too great to be rejected unheard, and of virtue too eminent to be heard
without being believed. His merit and his calamities happened to reach
the ear of the countess of Hertford, who engaged in his support with all
the tenderness that is excited by pity, and all the zeal which is
kindled by generosity; and, demanding an audience of the queen, laid
before her the whole series of his mother's cruelty, exposed the
improbability of an accusation by which he was charged with an intent to
commit a murder that could produce no advantage, and soon convinced her
how little his former conduct could deserve to be mentioned as a reason
for extraordinary severity.
The interposition of this lady was so successful, that he was soon after
admitted to bail, and, on the 9th of March, 1728, pleaded the king's
pardon.
It is natural to inquire upon what motives his mother could prosecute
him in a manner so outrageous and implacable; for what reason she could
employ all the arts of malice, and all the snares of calumny, to take
away the life of her own son, of a son who never injured her, who was
never supported by her expense, nor obstructed any prospect of pleasure
or advantage: why she should endeavour to destroy him by a lie--a lie
which could not gain credit, but must vanish of itself at the first
moment of examination, and of which only this can be said to make it
probable, that it may be observed from her conduct, that the most
execrable crimes are sometimes committed without apparent temptation.
This mother is still alive[70] and may, perhaps, even yet, though her
malice was so often defeated, enjoy the pleasure of reflecting, that the
life, which she often endeavoured to destroy, was, at least, shortened
by her maternal offices; that, though she could not transport her son to
the plantations, bury him in the shop of a mechanick, or hasten the hand
of the publick executioner, she has yet had the satisfaction of
imbittering all his hours, and forcing him into exigencies that hurried
on his death.
It is by no means necessary to aggravate the enormity of this woman's
conduct, by placing it in opposition to that of the countess of
Hertford; no one can fail to observe how much more amiable it is to
relieve, than to oppress, and to rescue innocence from destruction, than
to destroy without an injury.
Mr. Savage, during his imprisonment, his trial, and the time in which he
lay under sentence of death, behaved with great firmness and equality of
mind, and confirmed by his fortitude the esteem of those who before
admired him for his abilities[71]. The peculiar circumstances of his
life ere made more generally known by a short account[72], which was
then published, and of which several thousands were, in a few weeks,
dispersed over the nation; and the compassion of mankind operated so
powerfully in his favour, that he was enabled, by frequent presents, not
only to support himself, but to assist Mr. Gregory in prison; and, when
he was pardoned and released, he found the number of his friends not
lessened.
The nature of the act for which he had been tried was in itself
doubtful; of the evidences which appeared against him, the character of
the man was not unexceptionable, that of the woman notoriously infamous;
she, whose testimony chiefly influenced the jury to condemn him,
afterwards retracted her assertions. He always himself denied that he
was drunk, as had been generally reported. Mr. Gregory, who is now,
1744, collector of Antigua, is said to declare him far less criminal
than he was imagined, even by some who favoured him; and Page himself
afterwards confessed, that he had treated him with uncommon rigour. When
all these particulars are rated together, perhaps the memory of Savage
may not be much sullied by his trial.
Some time after he had obtained his liberty, he met in the street the
woman that had sworn with so much malignity against him. She informed
him, that she was in distress, and, with a degree of confidence not
easily attainable, desired him to relieve her. He, instead of insulting
her misery, and taking pleasure in the calamities of one who had brought
his life into danger, reproved her gently for her perjury; and changing
the only guinea that he had, divided it equally between her and himself.
This is an action which, in some ages, would have made a saint, and,
perhaps, in others a hero, and which, without any hyperbolical
encomiums, must be allowed to be an instance of uncommon generosity, an
act of complicated virtue; by which he at once relieved the poor,
corrected the vitious, and forgave an enemy; by which he at once
remitted the strongest provocations, and exercised the most ardent
charity.
Compassion was, indeed, the distinguishing quality of Savage; he never
appeared inclined to take advantage of weakness, to attack the
defenceless, or to press upon the falling: whoever was distressed, was
certain at least of his good wishes; and when he could give no
assistance to extricate them from misfortunes, he endeavoured to sooth
them by sympathy and tenderness.
But when his heart was not softened by the sight of misery, he was
sometimes obstinate in his resentment, and did not quickly lose the
remembrance of an injury. He always continued to speak with anger of the
insolence and partiality of Page, and a short time before his death
revenged it by a satire[73].
It is natural to inquire in what terms Mr. Savage spoke of this fatal
action, when the danger was over, and he was under no necessity of using
any art to set his conduct in the fairest light. He was not willing to
dwell upon it; and, if he transiently mentioned it, appeared neither to
consider himself as a murderer, nor as a man wholly free from the guilt
of blood[74]. How much and how long he regretted it, appeared in a poem
which he published many years afterwards. On occasion of a copy of
verses, in which the failings of good men were recounted, and in which
the author had endeavoured to illustrate his position, that "the best
may sometimes deviate from virtue," by an instance of murder committed
by Savage in the heat of wine, Savage remarked, that it was no very just
representation of a good man, to suppose him liable to drunkenness, and
disposed in his riots to cut throats.
He was now indeed at liberty, but was, as before, without any other
support than accidental favours and uncertain patronage afforded him;
sources by which he was sometimes very liberally supplied, and which at
other times were suddenly stopped; so that he spent his life between
want and plenty; or, what was yet worse, between beggary and
extravagance; for as whatever he received was the gift of chance, which
might as well favour him at one time as another, he was tempted to
squander what he had, because he always hoped to be immediately
supplied.
Another cause of his profusion was the absurd kindness of his friends,
who at once rewarded and enjoyed his abilities, by treating him at
taverns, and habituating him to pleasures which he could not afford to
enjoy, and which he was not able to deny himself, though he purchased
the luxury of a single night by the anguish of cold and hunger for a
week.
The experience of these inconveniencies determined him to endeavour
after some settled income, which, having long found submission and
entreaties fruitless, he attempted to extort from his mother by rougher
methods. He had now, as he acknowledged, lost that tenderness for her,
which the whole series of her cruelty had not been able wholly to
repress, till he found, by the efforts which she made for his
destruction, that she was not content with refusing to assist him, and
being neutral in his struggles with poverty, but was as ready to snatch
every opportunity of adding to his misfortunes; and that she was to be
considered as an enemy implacably malicious, whom nothing but his blood
could satisfy. He, therefore, threatened to harass her with lampoons,
and to publish a copious narrative of her conduct, unless she consented
to purchase an exemption from infamy, by allowing him a pension.
This expedient proved successful. Whether shame still survived, though
virtue was extinct, or whether her relations had more delicacy than
herself, and imagined that some of the darts which satire might point at
her would glance upon them; lord Tyrconnel, whatever were his motives,
upon his promise to lay aside his design of exposing the cruelty of his
mother, received him into his family, treated him as his equal, and
engaged to allow him a pension of two hundred pounds a year.
This was the golden part of Mr. Savage's life; and, for some time, he
had no reason to complain of fortune; his appearance was splendid, his
expenses large, and his acquaintance extensive. He was courted by all
who endeavoured to be thought men of genius, and caressed by all who
valued themselves upon a refined taste. To admire Mr. Savage, was a
proof of discernment; and to be acquainted with him, was a title to
poetical reputation. His presence was sufficient to make any place of
publick entertainment popular; and his approbation and example
constituted the fashion. So powerful is genius, when it is invested with
the glitter of affluence! Men willingly pay to fortune that regard which
they owe to merit, and are pleased when they have an opportunity at once
of gratifying their vanity, and practising their duty.
This interval of prosperity furnished him with opportunities of
enlarging his knowledge of human nature, by contemplating life from its
highest gradations to its lowest; and, had he afterwards applied to
dramatick poetry, he would, perhaps, not have had many superiours; for,
as he never suffered any scene to pass before his eyes without notice,
he had treasured in his mind all the different combinations of passions,
and the innumerable mixtures of vice and virtue, which distinguish one
character from another; and, as his conception was strong, his
expressions were clear; he easily received impressions from objects, and
very forcibly transmitted them to others.
Of his exact observations on human life he has left a proof, which would
do honour to the greatest names, in a small pamphlet, called the Author
to be let[75], where he introduces Iscariot Hackney, a prostitute
scribbler, giving an account of his birth, his education, his
disposition and morals, habits of life, and maxims of conduct. In the
introduction are related many secret histories of the petty writers of
that time, but sometimes mixed with ungenerous reflections on their
birth, their circumstances, or those of their relations; nor can it be
denied, that some passages are such as Iscariot Hackney might himself
have produced.
He was accused, likewise, of living in an appearance of friendship with
some whom he satirized, and of making use of the confidence which he
gained by a seeming kindness, to discover failings and expose them: it
must be confessed, that Mr. Savage's esteem was no very certain
possession, and that he would lampoon at one time those whom he had
praised at another.
It may be alleged, that the same man may change his principles; and that
he, who was once deservedly commended, may be afterwards satirized with
equal justice; or that the poet was dazzled with the appearance of
virtue, and found the man whom he had celebrated, when he had an
opportunity of examining him more narrowly, unworthy of the panegyrick
which he had too hastily bestowed; and that as a false satire ought to
be recanted, for the sake of him whose reputation may be injured, false
praise ought likewise to be obviated, lest the distinction between vice
and virtue should be lost, lest a bad man should be trusted upon the
credit of his encomiast, or lest others should endeavour to obtain the
like praises by the same means.
But though these excuses may be often plausible, and sometimes just,
they are very seldom satisfactory to mankind; and the writer, who is not
constant to his subject, quickly sinks into contempt, his satire loses
its force, and his panegyrick its value; and he is only considered at
one time as a flatterer, and as a calumniator at another.
To avoid these imputations, it is only necessary to follow the rules of
virtue, and to preserve an unvaried regard to truth. For though it is
undoubtedly possible that a man, however cautious, may be sometimes
deceived by an artful appearance of virtue, or by false evidences of
guilt, such errours will not be frequent; and it will be allowed, that
the name of an author would never have been made contemptible, had no
man ever said what he did not think, or misled others but when he was
himself deceived. The Author to be let was first published in a single
pamphlet, and afterwards inserted in a collection of pieces relating to
the Dunciad, which were addressed by Mr. Savage to the earl of
Middlesex, in a dedication[76] which he was prevailed upon to sign,
though he did not write it, and in which there are some positions, that
the true author would, perhaps, not have published under his own name,
and on which Mr. Savage afterwards reflected with no great satisfaction;
the enumeration of the bad effects of the uncontrouled freedom of the
press, and the assertion that the "liberties taken by the writers of
journals with their superiours were exorbitant and unjustifiable," very
ill became men, who have themselves not always shown the exactest regard
to the laws of subordination in their writings, and who have often
satirized those that at least thought themselves their superiours, as
they were eminent for their hereditary rank, and employed in the highest
offices of the kingdom. But this is only an instance of that partiality
which almost every man indulges with regard to himself: the liberty of
the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others,
and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our
assailants; as the power of the crown is always thought too great by
those who suffer by its influence, and too little by those in whose
favour it is exerted; and a standing army is generally accounted
necessary by those who command, and dangerous and oppressive by those
who support it.
Mr. Savage was, likewise, very far from believing, that the letters
annexed to each species of bad poets in the Bathos were, as he was
directed to assert, "set down at random;" for when he was charged by one
of his friends with putting his name to such an improbability, he had no
other answer to make than that "he did not think of it;" and his friend
had too much tenderness to reply, that next to the crime of writing
contrary to what he thought, was that of writing without thinking.
After having remarked what is false in this dedication, it is proper
that I observe the impartiality which I recommend, by declaring what
Savage asserted; that the account of the circumstances which attended
the publication of the Dunciad, however strange and improbable, was
exactly true.
The publication of this piece, at this time, raised Mr. Savage a great
number of enemies among those that were attacked by Mr. Pope, with whom
he was considered as a kind of confederate, and whom he was suspected of
supplying with private intelligence and secret incidents: so that the
ignominy of an informer was added to the terrour of a satirist.
That he was not altogether free from literary hypocrisy, and that he
sometimes spoke one thing and wrote another, cannot be denied; because
he himself confessed, that, when he lived in great familiarity with
Dennis, he wrote an epigram[77] against him.
Mr. Savage, however, set all the malice of all the pygmy writers at
defiance, and thought the friendship of Mr. Pope cheaply purchased by
being exposed to their censure and their hatred; nor had he any reason
to repent of the preference, for he found Mr. Pope a steady and
unalienable friend almost to the end of his life.
About this time, notwithstanding his avowed neutrality with regard to
party, he published a panegyrick on sir Robert Walpole, for which he was
rewarded by him with twenty guineas, a sum not very large, if either
the excellence of the performance, or the affluence of the patron, be
considered; but greater than he afterwards obtained from a person of yet
higher rank, and more desirous in appearance of being distinguished as a
patron of literature.
As he was very far from approving the conduct of sir Robert Walpole, and
in conversation mentioned him sometimes with acrimony, and generally
with contempt; as he was one of those who were always zealous in their
assertions of the justice of the late opposition, jealous of the rights
of the people, and alarmed by the long-continued triumph of the court;
it was natural to ask him what could induce him to employ his poetry in
praise of that man, who was, in his opinion, an enemy to liberty, and an
oppressor of his country? He alleged, that he was then dependent upon
the lord Tyrconnel, who was an implicit follower of the ministry, and
that, being enjoined by him, not without menaces, to write in praise of
his leader, he had not resolution sufficient to sacrifice the pleasure
of affluence to that of integrity.
On this, and on many other occasions, he was ready to lament the misery
of living at the tables of other men, which was his fate from the
beginning to the end of his life; for I know not whether he ever had,
for three months together, a settled habitation, in which he could claim
a right of residence.
To this unhappy state it is just to impute much of the inconstancy of
his conduct; for though a readiness to comply with the inclination of
others was no part of his natural character, yet he was sometimes
obliged to relax his obstinacy, and submit his own judgment, and even
his virtue, to the government of those by whom he was supported: so
that, if his miseries were sometimes the consequences of his faults, he
ought not yet to be wholly excluded from compassion, because his faults
were very often the effects of his misfortunes.
In this gay period[78] of his life, while he was surrounded by
affluence and pleasure, he published the Wanderer, a moral poem, of
which the design is comprised in these lines:
I fly all publick care, all venal strife,
To try the still, compar'd with active life;
To prove, by these, the sons of men may owe
The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe;
That e'en calamity, by thought refin'd,
Inspirits and adorns the thinking mind.
And more distinctly in the following passage:
By woe, the soul to daring action swells;
By woe, in plaintless patience it excels:
From patience, prudent clear experience springs,
And traces knowledge through the course of things!
Thence hope is form'd, thence fortitude, success,
Renown--whate'er men covet and caress.
This performance was always considered by himself as his masterpiece;
and Mr. Pope, when he asked his opinion of it, told him, that he read it
once over, and was not displeased with it; that it gave him more
pleasure at the second perusal, and delighted him still more at the
third. It has been generally objected to the Wanderer, that the
disposition of the parts is irregular; that the design is obscure and
the plan perplexed; that the images, however beautiful, succeed each
other without order; and that the whole performance is not so much a
regular fabrick, as a heap of shining materials thrown together by
accident, which strikes rather with the solemn magnificence of a
stupendous ruin, than the elegant grandeur of a finished pile.
This criticism is universal, and, therefore, it is reasonable to believe
it, at least, in a great degree, just; but Mr. Savage was always of a
contrary opinion, and thought his drift could only be missed by
negligence or stupidity, and that the whole plan was regular, and the
parts distinct.
It was never denied to abound with strong representations of nature, and
just observations upon life; and it may easily be observed, that most
of his pictures have an evident tendency to illustrate his first great
position, "that good is the consequence of evil." The sun that burns up
the mountains, fructifies the vales: the deluge that rushes down the
broken rocks, with dreadful impetuosity, is separated into purling
brooks; and the rage of the hurricane purifies the air.
Even in this poem he has not been able to forbear one touch upon the
cruelty of his mother, which, though remarkably delicate and tender, is
a proof how deep an impression it had upon his mind.
This must be at least acknowledged, which ought to be thought equivalent
to many other excellencies, that this poem can promote no other purposes
than those of virtue, and that it is written with a very strong sense of
the efficacy of religion.
But my province is rather to give the history of Mr. Savage's
performances than to display their beauties, or to obviate the
criticisms which they have occasioned; and, therefore, I shall not dwell
upon the particular passages which deserve applause; I shall neither
show the excellence of his descriptions, nor expatiate on the terrifick
portrait of suicide, nor point out the artful touches, by which he has
distinguished the intellectual features of the rebels, who suffer death
in his last canto. It is, however, proper to observe, that Mr. Savage
always declared the characters wholly fictitious, and without the least
allusion to any real persons or actions.
From a poem so diligently laboured, and so successfully finished, it
might be reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable
advantage; nor can it, without some degree of indignation and concern,
be told, that he sold the copy for ten guineas, of which he afterwards
returned two, that the two last sheets of the work might be reprinted,
of which he had, in his absence, intrusted the correction to a friend,
who was too indolent to perform it with accuracy.
A superstitious regard to the correction of his sheets was one of Mr.
Savage's peculiarities: he often altered, revised, recurred to his first
reading or punctuation, and again adopted the alteration; he was dubious
and irresolute without end, as on a question of the last importance, and
at last was seldom satisfied: the intrusion or omission of a comma was
sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an errour of a single
letter as a heavy calamity. In one of his letters relating to an
impression of some verses, he remarks, that he had, with regard to the
correction of the proof, "a spell upon him;" and indeed the anxiety,
with which he dwelt upon the minutest and most trifling niceties,
deserved no other name than that of fascination.
That he sold so valuable a performance for so small a price, was not to
be imputed either to necessity, by which the learned and ingenious are
often obliged to submit to very hard conditions; or to avarice, by which
the booksellers are frequently incited to oppress that genius by which
they are supported; but to that intemperate desire of pleasure, and
habitual slavery to his passions, which involved him in many
perplexities. He happened, at that time, to be engaged in the pursuit of
some trifling gratification, and, being without money for the present
occasion, sold his poem to the first bidder, and, perhaps, for the first
price that was proposed; and would, probably, have been content with
less, if less had been offered him.
This poem was addressed to the lord Tyrconnel, not only in the first
lines, but in a formal dedication, filled with the highest strains of
panegyrick, and the warmest professions of gratitude, but by no means
remarkable for delicacy of connexion or elegance of style.
These praises, in a short time, he found himself inclined to retract,
being discarded by the man on whom he had bestowed them, and whom he
then immediately discovered not to have deserved them. Of this quarrel,
which every day made more bitter, lord Tyrconnel and Mr. Savage assigned
very different reasons, which might, perhaps, all in reality concur,
though they were not all convenient to be alleged by either party. Lord
Tyrconnel affirmed, that it was the constant practice of Mr. Savage to
enter a tavern with any company that proposed it, drink the most
expensive wines with great profusion, and, when the reckoning was
demanded, to be without money: if, as it often happened, his company
were willing to defray his part, the affair ended without any ill
consequences; but if they were refractory, and expected that the wine
should be paid for by him that drank it, his method of composition was,
to take them with him to his own apartment, assume the government of the
house, and order the butler, in an imperious manner, to set the best
wine in the cellar before his company, who often drank till they forgot
the respect due to the house in which they were entertained, indulged
themselves in the utmost extravagance of merriment, practised the most
licentious frolicks, and committed all the outrages of drunkenness.
Nor was this the only charge which lord Tyrconnel brought against him.
Having given him a collection of valuable books, stamped with his own
arms, he had the mortification to see them, in a short time, exposed to
sale upon the stalls, it being usual with Mr. Savage, when he wanted a
small sum, to take his books to the pawnbroker.
Whoever was acquainted with Mr. Savage easily credited both these
accusations; for having been obliged, from his first entrance into the
world, to subsist upon expedients, affluence was not able to exalt him
above them; and so much was he delighted with wine and conversation, and
so long had he been accustomed to live by chance, that he would, at any
time, go to the tavern without scruple, and trust for the reckoning to
the liberality of his company, and frequently of company to whom he was
very little known. This conduct, indeed, very seldom drew upon him those
inconveniencies that might be feared by any other person; for his
conversation was so entertaining, and his address so pleasing, that few
thought the pleasure which they received from him dearly purchased, by
paying for his wine. It was his peculiar happiness, that he scarcely
ever found a stranger, whom he did not leave a friend; but it must
likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long, without obliging
him to become a stranger.
Mr. Savage, on the other hand, declared, that lord Tyrconnel[79]
quarrelled with him, because he would not subtract from his own luxury
and extravagance what he had promised to allow him, and that his
resentment was only a plea for the violation of his promise. He
asserted, that he had done nothing that ought to exclude him from that
subsistence which he thought not so much a favour, as a debt, since it
was offered him upon conditions which he had never broken; and that his
only fault was, that he could not be supported with nothing.
He acknowledged, that lord Tyrconnel often exhorted him to regulate his
method of life, and not to spend all his nights in taverns, and that he
appeared very desirous that he would pass those hours with him, which he
so freely bestowed upon others. This demand Mr. Savage considered as a
censure of his conduct, which he could never patiently bear, and which,
in the latter and cooler part of his life, was so offensive to him, that
he declared it as his resolution, "to spurn that friend who should
presume to dictate to him;" and it is not likely, that, in his earlier
years, he received admonitions with more calmness.
He was, likewise, inclined to resent such expectations, as tending to
infringe his liberty, of which he was very jealous, when it was
necessary to the gratification of his passions; and declared, that the
request was still more unreasonable, as the company to which he was to
have been confined, was insupportably disagreeable. This assertion
affords another instance of that inconsistency of his writings with his
conversation, which was so often to be observed. He forgot how lavishly
he had, in his dedication to the Wanderer, extolled the delicacy and
penetration, the humanity and generosity, the candour and politeness of
the man, whom, when he no longer loved him, he declared to be a wretch
without understanding, without good-nature, and without justice; of
whose name he thought himself obliged to leave no trace in any future
edition of his writings; and, accordingly, blotted it out of that copy
of the Wanderer which was in his hands.
During his continuance with the lord Tyrconnel, he wrote the Triumph of
Health and Mirth, on the recovery of lady Tyrconnel from a languishing
illness. This performance is remarkable, not only for the gaiety of the
ideas, and the melody of the numbers, but for the agreeable fiction upon
which it is formed. Mirth, overwhelmed with sorrow for the sickness of
her favourite, takes a flight in quest of her sister health, whom she
finds reclined upon the brow of a lofty mountain, amidst the fragrance
of perpetual spring, with the breezes of the morning sporting about her.
Being solicited by her sister mirth, she readily promises her
assistance, flies away in a cloud, and impregnates the waters of Bath
with new virtues, by which the sickness of Belinda is relieved.
As the reputation of his abilities, the particular circumstances of his
birth and life, the splendour of his appearance, and the distinction
which was, for some time, paid him by lord Tyrconnel, entitled him to
familiarity with persons of higher rank than those to whose conversation
he had been before admitted; he did not fail to gratify that curiosity,
which induced him to take a nearer view of those whom their birth, their
employments, or their fortunes, necessarily place at a distance from the
greatest part of mankind, and to examine whether their merit was
magnified or diminished by the medium through which it was contemplated;
whether the splendour with--which they dazzled their admirers was
inherent in themselves, or only reflected on them by the objects that
surrounded them; and whether great men were selected for high stations,
or high stations made great men.
For this purpose he took all opportunities of conversing familiarly
with those who were most conspicuous at that time for their power or
their influence; he watched their looser moments, and examined their
domestick behaviour, with that acuteness which nature had given him, and
which the uncommon variety of his life had contributed to increase, and
that inquisitiveness which must always be produced in a vigorous mind,
by an absolute freedom from all pressing or domestick engagements.
His discernment was quick, and, therefore, he soon found in every
person, and in every affair, something that deserved attention; he was
supported by others, without any care for himself, and was, therefore,
at leisure to pursue his observations.
More circumstances to constitute a critick on human life could not
easily concur; nor indeed could any man, who assumed from accidental
advantages more praise than he could justly claim from his real merit,
admit an acquaintance more dangerous than that of Savage; of whom,
likewise, it must be confessed, that abilities really exalted above the
common level, or virtue refined from passion, or proof against
corruption, could not easily find an abler judge, or a warmer advocate.
What was the result of Mr. Savage's inquiry, though he was not much
accustomed to conceal his discoveries, it may not be entirely safe to
relate, because the persons whose characters he criticised are powerful;
and power and resentment are seldom strangers; nor would it, perhaps, be
wholly just, because what he asserted in conversation might, though true
in general, be heightened by some momentary ardour of imagination, and,
as it can be delivered only from memory, may be imperfectly represented;
so that the picture at first aggravated, and then unskilfully copied,
may be justly suspected to retain no great resemblance of the original.
It may, however, be observed, that he did not appear to have formed very
elevated ideas of those to whom the administration of affairs, or the
conduct of parties, has been entrusted; who have been considered as the
advocates of the crown, or the guardians of the people; and who have
obtained the most implicit confidence, and the loudest applauses. Of one
particular person, who has been at one time so popular as to be
generally esteemed, and, at another, so formidable as to be universally
detested, he observed, that his acquisitions had been small, or that his
capacity was narrow, and that the whole range of his mind was from
obscenity to politicks, and from politicks to obscenity.
But the opportunity of indulging his speculations on great characters
was now at an end. He was banished from the table of lord Tyrconnel, and
turned again adrift upon the world, without prospect of finding quickly
any other harbour. As prudence was not one of the virtues by which he
was distinguished, he had made no provision against a misfortune like
this. And though it is not to be imagined but that the separation must,
for some time, have been preceded by coldness, peevishness, or neglect,
though it was undoubtedly the consequence of accumulated provocations on
both sides; yet every one that knew Savage will readily believe, that to
him it was sudden as a stroke of thunder; that, though he might have
transiently suspected it, he had never suffered any thought so
unpleasing to sink into his mind, but that he had driven it away by
amusements, or dreams of future felicity and affluence, and had never
taken any measures by which he might prevent a precipitation from plenty
to indigence.
This quarrel and separation, and the difficulties to which Mr. Savage
was exposed by them, were soon known both to his friends and enemies;
nor was it long before he perceived, from the behaviour of both, how
much is added to the lustre of genius by the ornaments of wealth.
His condition did not appear to excite much compassion; for he had not
always been careful to use the advantages he enjoyed with that
moderation which ought to have been with more than usual caution
preserved by him, who knew, if he had reflected, that he was only a
dependant on the bounty of another, whom he could expect to support him
no longer than he endeavoured to preserve his favour by complying with
his inclinations, and whom he, nevertheless, set at defiance, and was
continually irritating by negligence or encroachments.
Examples need not be sought at any great distance to prove, that
superiority of fortune has a natural tendency to kindle pride, and that
pride seldom fails to exert itself in contempt and insult; and if this
is often the effect of hereditary wealth, and of honours enjoyed only by
the merit of others, it is some extenuation of any indecent triumphs to
which this unhappy man may have been betrayed, that his prosperity was
heightened by the force of novelty, and made more intoxicating by a
sense of the misery in which he had so long languished, and, perhaps, of
the insults which he had formerly borne, and which he might now think
himself entitled to revenge. It is too common for those who have
unjustly suffered pain, to inflict it, likewise, in their turn, with the
same injustice, and to imagine that they have a right to treat others as
they have themselves been treated.
That Mr. Savage was too much elevated by any good fortune, is generally
known; and some passages of his introduction to the Author to be let,
sufficiently show, that he did not wholly refrain from such satire, as
he afterwards thought very unjust when he was exposed to it himself;
for, when he was afterwards ridiculed in the character of a distressed
poet, he very easily discovered that distress was not a proper subject
for merriment, or topick of invective. He was then able to discern, that
if misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill
fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it
is, perhaps, itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was
produced. And the humanity of that man can deserve no panegyrick, who is
capable of reproaching a criminal in the hands of the executioner.
But these reflections, though they readily occurred to him in the first
and last parts of his life, were, I am afraid, for a long time
forgotten; at least they were, like many other maxims, treasured up in
his mind rather for show than use, and operated very little upon his
conduct, however elegantly he might sometimes explain, or however
forcibly he might inculcate them.
His degradation, therefore, from the condition which he had enjoyed with
such wanton thoughtlessness, was considered by many as an occasion of
triumph. Those who had before paid their court to him without success,
soon returned the contempt which they had suffered; and they who had
received favours from him, for of such favours as he could bestow he was
very liberal, did not always remember them. So much more certain are the
effects of resentment than of gratitude: it is not only to many more
pleasing to recollect those faults which place others below them, than
those virtues by which they are themselves comparatively depressed; but
it is, likewise, more easy to neglect, than to recompense; and though
there are few who will practise a laborious virtue, there will never be
wanting multitudes that will indulge an easy vice.
Savage, however, was very little disturbed at the marks of contempt
which his ill fortune brought upon him, from those whom he never
esteemed, and with whom he never considered himself as levelled by any
calamities; and though it was not without some uneasiness that he saw
some, whose friendship he valued, change their behaviour; he yet
observed their coldness without much emotion, considered them as the
slaves of fortune and the worshippers of prosperity, and was more
inclined to despise them, than to lament himself.
It does not appear that, after this return of his wants, he found
mankind equally favourable to him, as at his first appearance in the
world. His story, though in reality not less melancholy, was less
affecting, because it was no longer new; it, therefore, procured him no
new friends; and those that had formerly relieved him, thought they
might now consign him to others. He was now, likewise, considered by
many rather as criminal, than as unhappy; for the friends of lord
Tyrconnel, and of his mother, were sufficiently industrious to publish
his weaknesses, which were indeed very numerous; and nothing was
forgotten that might make him either hateful or ridiculous.
It cannot but be imagined, that such representations of his faults must
make great numbers less sensible of his distress; many, who had only an
opportunity to hear one part, made no scruple to propagate the account
which they received; many assisted their circulation from malice or
revenge; and, perhaps, many pretended to credit them, that they might,
with a better grace, withdraw their regard, or withhold their
assistance.
Savage, however, was not one of those who suffered himself to be injured
without resistance, nor was less diligent in exposing the faults of lord
Tyrconnel; over whom he obtained at least this advantage, that he drove
him first to the practice of outrage and violence; for he was so much
provoked by the wit and virulence of Savage, that he came, with a number
of attendants, that did no honour to his courage, to beat him at a
coffee-house. But it happened that he had left the place a few minutes;
and his lordship had, without danger, the pleasure of boasting how he
would have treated him. Mr. Savage went next day to repay his visit at
his own house; but was prevailed on, by his domesticks, to retire
without insisting upon seeing him.
Lord Tyrconnel was accused by Mr. Savage of some actions, which scarcely
any provocations will be thought sufficient to justify; such as seizing
what he had in his lodgings, and other instances of wanton cruelty, by
which he increased the distress of Savage, without any advantage to
himself.
These mutual accusations were retorted on both sides, for many years,
with the utmost degree of virulence and rage; and time seemed rather to
augment than diminish their resentment. That the anger of Mr. Savage
should be kept alive, is not strange, because he felt every day the
consequences of the quarrel; but it might reasonably have been hoped,
that lord Tyrconnel might have relented, and at length have forgot
those provocations, which, however they might have once inflamed him,
had not, in reality, much hurt him.
The spirit of Mr. Savage, indeed, never suffered him to solicit a
reconciliation; he returned reproach for reproach, and insult for
insult; his superiority of wit supplied the disadvantages of his
fortune, and enabled him to form a party, and prejudice great numbers in
his favour.
But, though this might be some gratification of his vanity, it afforded
very little relief to his necessities; and he was very frequently
reduced to uncommon hardships, of which, however, he never made any mean
or importunate complaints, being formed rather to bear misery with
fortitude, than enjoy prosperity with moderation.
He now thought himself again at liberty to expose the cruelty of his
mother; and, therefore, I believe, about this time, published the
Bastard, a poem remarkable for the vivacious sallies of thought in the
beginning, where he makes a pompous enumeration of the imaginary
advantages of base birth; and the pathetick sentiments at the end, where
he recounts the real calamities which he suffered by the crime of his
parents.
The vigour and spirit of the verses, the peculiar circumstances of the
author, the novelty of the subject, and the notoriety of the story to
which the allusions are made, procured this performance a very
favourable reception; great numbers were immediately dispersed, and
editions were multiplied with unusual rapidity.
One circumstance attended the publication, which Savage used to relate
with great satisfaction: his mother, to whom the poem was with "due
reverence" inscribed, happened then to be at Bath, where she could not
conveniently retire from censure, or conceal herself from observation;
and no sooner did the reputation of the poem begin to spread, than she
heard it repeated in all places of concourse; nor could she enter the
assembly-rooms, or cross the walks, without being saluted with some
lines from the Bastard.
This was, perhaps, the first time that she ever discovered a sense of
shame, and on this occasion the power of wit was very conspicuous; the
wretch who had, without scruple, proclaimed herself an adulteress, and
who had first endeavoured to starve her son, then to transport him, and
afterwards to hang him, was not able to bear the representation of her
own conduct; but fled from reproach, though she felt no pain from guilt,
and left Bath with the utmost haste, to shelter herself among the crowds
of London.
Thus Savage had the satisfaction of finding, that, though he could not
reform his mother, he could punish her, and that he did not always
suffer alone.
The pleasure which he received from this increase of his poetical
reputation, was sufficient, for some time, to overbalance the miseries
of want, which this performance did not much alleviate; for it was sold
for a very trivial sum to a bookseller, who, though the success was so
uncommon that five impressions were sold, of which many were,
undoubtedly, very numerous, had not generosity sufficient to admit the
unhappy writer to any part of the profit.
The sale of this poem was always mentioned by Savage with the utmost
elevation of heart, and referred to by him as an incontestable proof of
a general acknowledgment of his abilities. It was, indeed, the only
production of which he could justly boast a general reception.
But though he did not lose the opportunity which success gave him, of
setting a high rate on his abilities, but paid due deference to the
suffrages of mankind when they were given in his favour, he did not
suffer his esteem of himself to depend upon others, nor found any thing
sacred in the voice of the people, when they were inclined to censure
him; he then readily showed the folly of expecting that the publick
should judge right, observed how slowly poetical merit had often forced
its way into the world; he contented himself with the applause of men of
judgment, and was somewhat disposed to exclude all those from the
character of men of judgment who did not applaud him.
But he was at other times more favourable to mankind than to think them
blind to the beauties of his works, and imputed the slowness of their
sale to other causes; either they were published at a time when the town
was empty, or when the attention of the publick was engrossed by some
struggle in the parliament, or some other object of general concern; or
they were, by the neglect of the publisher, not diligently dispersed, or
by his avarice not advertised with sufficient frequency. Address, or
industry, or liberality, was always wanting; and the blame was laid
rather on any person than the author.
By arts like these, arts which every man practises in some degree, and
to which too much of the little tranquillity of life is to be ascribed,
Savage was always able to live at peace with himself. Had he indeed only
made use of these expedients to alleviate the loss or want of fortune or
reputation, or any other advantages which it is not in man's power to
bestow upon himself, they might have been justly mentioned as instances
of a philosophical mind, and very properly proposed to the imitation of
multitudes, who, for want of diverting their imaginations with the same
dexterity, languish under afflictions which might be easily removed.
It were, doubtless, to be wished, that truth and reason were universally
prevalent; that every thing were esteemed according to its real value;
and that men would secure themselves from being disappointed in their
endeavours after happiness, by placing it only in virtue, which is
always to be obtained; but, if adventitious and foreign pleasures must
be pursued, it would be, perhaps, of some benefit, since that pursuit
must frequently be fruitless, if the practice of Savage could be taught,
that folly might be an antidote to folly, and one fallacy be obviated by
another.
But the danger of this pleasing intoxication must not be concealed; nor
indeed can any one, after having observed the life of Savage, need to
be cautioned against it. By imputing none of his miseries to himself, he
continued to act upon the same principles, and to follow the same path;
was never made wiser by his sufferings, nor preserved by one misfortune
from falling into another. He proceeded, throughout his life, to tread
the same steps on the same circle; always applauding his past conduct,
or, at least, forgetting it to amuse himself with phantoms of happiness,
which were dancing before him; and willingly turned his eyes from the
light of reason, when it would have discovered the illusion, and shown
him, what he never wished to see, his real state.
He is even accused, after having lulled his imagination with those ideal
opiates, of having tried the same experiment upon his conscience; and,
having accustomed himself to impute all deviations from the right to
foreign causes, it is certain that he was, upon every occasion, too
easily reconciled to himself, and that he appeared very little to regret
those practices which had impaired his reputation. The reigning errour
of his life was, that he mistook the love for the practice of virtue,
and was, indeed, not so much a good man as the friend of goodness.
This, at least, must be allowed him, that he always preserved a strong
sense of the dignity, the beauty, and the necessity of virtue; and that
he never contributed deliberately to spread corruption amongst mankind.
His actions, which were generally precipitate, were often blameable; but
his writings, being the productions of study, uniformly tended to the
exaltation of the mind, and the propagation of morality and piety.
These writings may improve mankind, when his failings shall be
forgotten; and, therefore, he must be considered, upon the whole, as a
benefactor to the world; nor can his personal example do any hurt, since
whoever hears of his faults will hear of the miseries which they brought
upon him, and which would deserve less pity, had not his condition been
such as made his faults pardonable. He may be considered as a child
exposed to all the temptations of indigence, at an age when resolution
was not yet strengthened by conviction, nor virtue confirmed by habit; a
circumstance which, in his Bastard, he laments in a very affecting
manner:
No mother's care
Shielded my infant innocence with pray'r:
No father's guardian hand my youth maintain'd,
Call'd forth my virtues, or from vice restrain'd.
The Bastard, however it might provoke or mortify his mother, could not
be expected to melt her to compassion, so that he was still under the
same want of the necessaries of life; and he, therefore, exerted all the
interest which his wit, or his birth, or his misfortunes, could procure,
to obtain, upon the death of Eusden, the place of poet laureate, and
prosecuted his application with so much diligence, that the king
publickly declared it his intention to bestow it upon him; but such was
the fate of Savage, that even the king, when he intended his advantage,
was disappointed in his schemes; for the lord chamberlain, who has the
disposal of the laurel, as one of the appendages of his office, either
did not know the king's design, or did not approve it, or thought the
nomination of the laureate an encroachment upon his rights, and,
therefore, bestowed the laurel upon Colley Cibber.
Mr. Savage, thus disappointed, took a resolution of applying to the
queen, that, having once given him life, she would enable him to support
it, and, therefore, published a short poem on her birthday, to which he
gave the odd title of Volunteer Laureate. The event of this essay he has
himself related in the following letter, which he prefixed to the poem,
when he afterwards reprinted it in the Gentleman's Magazine, from whence
I have copied it entire, as this was one of the few attempts in which
Mr. Savage succeeded.
"Mr. URBAN,--In your magazine for February you published the
last Volunteer Laureate, written on a very melancholy occasion,
the death of the royal patroness of arts and literature in
general, and of the author of that poem in particular; I now
send you the first that Mr. Savage wrote under that title. This
gentleman, notwithstanding a very considerable interest, being,
on the death of Mr. Eusden, disappointed of the laureate's
place, wrote the before-mentioned poem; which was no sooner
published, but the late queen sent to a bookseller for it. The
author had not at that time a friend either to get him
introduced, or his poem presented at court; yet such was the
unspeakable goodness of that princess, that, notwithstanding
this act of ceremony was wanting, in a few days after
publication, Mr. Savage received a bank bill of fifty pounds,
and a gracious message from her majesty, by the lord North and
Guildford, to this effect: 'That her majesty was highly pleased
with the verses; that she took particularly kind his lines there
relating to the king; that he had permission to write annually
on the same subject; and that he should yearly receive the like
present, till something better (which was her majesty's
intention) could be done for him.' After this, he was permitted
to present one of his annual poems to her majesty, had the
honour of kissing her hand, and met with the most gracious
reception.
"Yours, &c."
Such was the performance[80], and such its reception; a reception,
which, though by no means unkind, was yet not in the highest degree
generous: to chain down the genius of a writer to an annual panegyrick,
showed in the queen too much desire of hearing her own praises, and a
greater regard to herself than to him on whom her bounty was conferred.
It was a kind of avaricious generosity, by which flattery was rather
purchased than genius rewarded.
Mrs. Oldfield had formerly given him the same allowance with much more
heroick intention: she had no other view than to enable him to prosecute
his studies, and to set himself above the want of assistance, and was
contented with doing good without stipulating for encomiums.
Mr. Savage, however, was not at liberty to make exceptions, but was
ravished with the favours which he had received, and probably yet more
with those which he was promised: he considered himself now as a
favourite of the queen, and did not doubt but a few annual poems would
establish him in some profitable employment.
He, therefore, assumed the title-of volunteer laureate, not without some
reprehensions from Cibber, who informed him, that the title of laureate
was a mark of honour conferred by the king, from whom all honour is
derived, and which, therefore, no man has a right to bestow upon
himself; and added, that he might with equal propriety style himself a
volunteer lord or volunteer baronet. It cannot be denied that the remark
was just; but Savage did not think any title, which was conferred upon
Mr. Cibber, so honourable as that the usurpation of it could be imputed
to him as an instance of very exorbitant vanity, and, therefore,
continued to write under the same title, and received every year the
same reward.
He did not appear to consider these encomiums as tests of his abilities,
or as any thing more than annual hints to the queen of her promise, or
acts of ceremony, by the performance of which he was entitled to his
pension, and, therefore, did not labour them with great diligence, or
print more than fifty each year, except that for some of the last years
he regularly inserted them in the Gentleman's Magazine, by which they
were dispersed over the kingdom.
Of some of them he had himself so low an opinion, that he intended to
omit them in the collection of poems, for which he printed proposals,
and solicited subscriptions; nor can it seem strange, that, being
confined to the same subject, he should be at some times indolent, and
at others unsuccessful; that he should sometimes delay a disagreeable
task till it was too late to perform it well; or that he should
sometimes repeat the same sentiment on the same occasion, or at others
be misled by an attempt after novelty to forced conceptions and
far-fetched images.
He wrote, indeed, with a double intention, which supplied him with some
variety; for his business was, to praise the queen for the favours which
he had received, and to complain to her of the delay of those which she
had promised: in some of his pieces, therefore, gratitude is
predominant, and in some discontent; in some, he represents himself as
happy in her patronage; and, in others, as disconsolate to find himself
neglected.
Her promise, like other promises made to this unfortunate man, was never
performed, though he took sufficient care that it should not be
forgotten. The publication of his Volunteer Laureate procured him no
other reward than a regular remittance of fifty pounds.
He was not so depressed by his disappointments as to neglect any
opportunity that was offered of advancing his interest. When the
princess Anne was married, he wrote a poem upon her departure, only, as
he declared, "because it was expected from him," and he was not willing
to bar his own prospects by any appearance of neglect[81].
He never mentioned any advantage gained by this poem, or any regard that
was paid to it; and, therefore, it is likely that it was considered at
court as an act of duty, to which he was obliged by his dependence, and
which it was, therefore, not necessary to reward by any new favour: or,
perhaps, the queen really intended his advancement, and, therefore,
thought it superfluous to lavish presents upon a man whom she intended
to establish for life.
About this time not only his hopes were in danger of being frustrated,
but his pension likewise of being obstructed, by an accidental calumny.
The writer of the Daily Courant, a paper then published under the
direction of the ministry, charged him with a crime, which, though not
very great in itself, would have been remarkably invidious in him, and
might very justly have incensed the queen against him. He was accused by
name of influencing elections against the court, by appearing at the
head of a tory mob; nor did the accuser fail to aggravate his crime, by
representing it as the effect of the most atrocious ingratitude, and a
kind of rebellion against the queen, who had first preserved him from an
infamous death, and afterwards distinguished him by her favour, and
supported him by her charity. The charge, as it was open and confident,
was likewise, by good fortune, very particular. The place of the
transaction was mentioned, and the whole series of the rioter's conduct
related. This exactness made Mr. Savage's vindication easy; for he never
had in his life seen the place which was declared to be the scene of his
wickedness, nor ever had been present in any town when its
representatives were chosen. This answer he, therefore, made haste to
publish, with all the circumstances necessary to make it credible; and
very reasonably demanded, that the accusation should be retracted in the
same paper, that he might no longer suffer the imputation of sedition
and ingratitude. This demand was likewise pressed by him in a private
letter to the author of the paper, who, either trusting to the
protection of those whose defence he had undertaken, or having
entertained some personal malice against Mr. Savage, or fearing lest, by
retracting so confident an assertion, he should impair the credit of his
paper, refused to give him that satisfaction.
Mr. Savage, therefore, thought it necessary, to his own vindication, to
prosecute him in the King's Bench; but as he did not find any ill
effects from the accusation, having sufficiently cleared his innocence,
he thought any further procedure would have the appearance of revenge;
and, therefore, willingly dropped it.
He saw, soon afterwards, a process commenced in the same court against
himself, on an information in which he was accused of writing and
publishing an obscene pamphlet.
It was always Mr. Savage's desire to be distinguished; and, when any
controversy became popular, he never wanted some reason for engaging in
it with great ardour, and appearing at the head of the party which he
had chosen. As he was never celebrated for his prudence, he had no
sooner taken his side, and informed himself of the chief topicks of the
dispute, than he took all opportunities of asserting and propagating his
principles, without much regard to his own interest, or any other
visible design than that of drawing upon himself the attention of
mankind.
The dispute between the bishop of London and the chancellor is well
known to have been, for some time, the chief topick of political
conversation; and, therefore, Mr. Savage, in pursuance of his character,
endeavoured to become conspicuous among the controvertists with which
every coffee-house was filled on that occasion. He was an indefatigable
opposer of all the claims of ecclesiastical power, though he did not
know on what they were founded; and was, therefore, no friend to the
bishop of London. But he had another reason for appearing as a warm
advocate for Dr. Rundle; for he was the friend of Mr. Foster and Mr.
Thomson, who were the friends of Mr. Savage.
Thus remote was his interest in the question, which, however, as he
imagined, concerned him so nearly, that it was not sufficient to
harangue and dispute, but necessary likewise to write upon it.
He, therefore, engaged with great ardour in a new poem, called by him,
the Progress of a Divine; in which he conducts a profligate priest, by
all the gradations of wickedness, from a poor curacy in the country to
the highest preferments of the church; and describes, with that humour
which was natural to him, and that knowledge which was extended to all
the diversities of human life, his behaviour in every station; and
insinuates, that this priest, thus accomplished, found at last a patron
in the bishop of London.
When he was asked by one of his friends, on what pretence he could
charge the bishop with such an action, he had no more to say than that
he had only inverted the accusation; and that he thought it reasonable
to believe, that he who obstructed the rise of a good man without
reason, would, for bad reasons, promote the exaltation of a villain.
The clergy were universally provoked by this satire; and Savage, who, as
was his constant practice, had set his name to his performance, was
censured in the Weekly Miscellany[82] with severity, which he did not
seem inclined to forget.
But a return of invective was not thought a sufficient punishment. The
court of King's Bench was, therefore, moved against him; and he was
obliged to return an answer to a charge of obscenity. It was urged in
his defence, that obscenity was criminal when it was intended to promote
the practice of vice; but that Mr. Savage had only introduced obscene
ideas, with the view of exposing them to detestation, and of amending
the age, by showing the deformity of wickedness. This plea was admitted;
and sir Philip Yorke, who then presided in that court, dismissed the
information with encomiums upon the purity and excellence of Mr.
Savage's writings. The prosecution, however, answered in some measure
the purpose of those by whom it was set on foot; for Mr. Savage was so
far intimidated by it, that, when the edition of his poem was sold, he
did not venture to reprint it; so that it was in a short time forgotten,
or forgotten by all but those whom it offended.
It is said that some endeavours were used to incense the queen against
him: but he found advocates to obviate, at least, part of their effect;
for, though he was never advanced, he still continued to receive his
pension.
This poem drew more infamy upon him than any incident of his life; and,
as his conduct cannot be vindicated, it is proper to secure his memory
from reproach, by informing those whom he made his enemies, that he
never intended to repeat the provocation; and that, though, whenever he
thought he had any reason to complain of the clergy, he used to threaten
them with a new edition of the Progress of a Divine, it was his calm
and settled resolution to suppress it for ever.
He once intended to have made a better reparation for the folly or
injustice with which he might be charged, by writing another poem,
called the Progress of a Freethinker, whom he intended to lead through
all the stages of vice and folly, to convert him from virtue to
wickedness, and from religion to infidelity, by all the modish sophistry
used for that purpose; and, at last, to dismiss him by his own hand into
the other world.
That he did not execute this design is a real loss to mankind; for he
was too well acquainted with all the scenes of debauchery to have failed
in his representations of them, and too zealous for virtue not to have
represented them in such a manner as should expose them either to
ridicule or detestation.
But this plan was, like others, formed and laid aside, till the vigour
of his imagination was spent, and the effervescence of invention had
subsided; but soon gave way to some other design, which pleased by its
novelty for awhile, and then was neglected like the former.
He was still in his usual exigencies, having no certain support but the
pension allowed him by the queen, which, though it might have kept an
exact economist from want, was very far from being sufficient for Mr.
Savage, who had never been accustomed to dismiss any of his appetites
without the gratification which they solicited, and whom nothing but
want of money withheld from partaking of every pleasure that fell within
his view.
His conduct, with regard to his pension, was very particular. No sooner
had he changed the bill, than he vanished from the sight of all his
acquaintances, and lay, for some time, out of the reach of all the
inquiries that friendship or curiosity could make after him. At length
he appeared again penniless as before, but never informed even those
whom he seemed to regard most, where he had been; nor was his retreat
ever discovered.
This was his constant practice during the whole time that he received
the pension from the queen: he regularly disappeared and returned. He,
indeed, affirmed that he retired to study, and that the money supported
him in solitude for many months; but his friends declared, that the
short time in which it was spent sufficiently confuted his own account
of his conduct.
His politeness and his wit still raised him friends, who were desirous
of setting him at length free from that indigence by which he had been
hitherto oppressed; and, therefore, solicited sir Robert Walpole in his
favour with so much earnestness, that they obtained a promise of the
next place that should become vacant, not exceeding two hundred pounds a
year. This promise was made with an uncommon declaration, "that it was
not the promise of a minister to a petitioner, but of a friend to his
friend." Mr. Savage now concluded himself set at ease for ever, and, as
he observes in a poem written on that incident of his life, trusted and
was trusted; but soon found that his confidence was ill-grounded, and
this friendly promise was not inviolable. He spent a long time in
solicitations, and, at last despaired and desisted.
He did not indeed deny, that he had given the minister some reason to
believe that he should not strengthen his own interest by advancing him,
for he had taken care to distinguish himself in coffee-houses as an
advocate for the ministry of the last years of queen Anne, and was
always ready to justify the conduct, and exalt the character of lord
Bolingbroke, whom he mentions with great regard in an Epistle upon
Authors, which he wrote about that time, but was too wise to publish,
and of which only some fragments have appeared, inserted by him in the
magazine after his retirement.
To despair was not, however, the character of Savage; when one patronage
failed, he had recourse to another. The prince was now extremely
popular, and had very liberally rewarded the merit of some writers, whom
Mr. Savage did not think superiour to himself, and, therefore, he
resolved to address a poem to him.
For this purpose he made choice of a subject which could regard only
persons of the highest rank and greatest affluence, and which was,
therefore, proper for a poem intended to procure the patronage of a
prince; and, having retired, for some time, to Richmond, that he might
prosecute his design in full tranquillity, without the temptations of
pleasure, or the solicitations of creditors, by which his meditations
were in equal danger of being disconcerted, he produced a poem on
Publick Spirit, with regard to Publick Works.
The plan of this poem is very extensive, and comprises a multitude of
topicks, each of which might furnish matter sufficient for a long
performance, and of which some have already employed more eminent
writers; but as he was, perhaps, not fully acquainted with the whole
extent of his own design, and was writing to obtain a supply of wants
too pressing to admit of long or accurate inquiries, he passes
negligently over many publick works, which, even in his own opinion,
deserved to be more elaborately treated.
But, though he may sometimes disappoint his reader by transient touches
upon these subjects, which have often been considered, and, therefore,
naturally raise expectations, he must be allowed amply to compensate his
omissions, by expatiating, in the conclusion of his work, upon a kind of
beneficence not yet celebrated by any eminent poet, though it now
appears more susceptible of embellishments, more adapted to exalt the
ideas, and affect the passions, than many of those which have hitherto
been thought most worthy of the ornaments of verse. The settlement of
colonies in uninhabited countries, the establishment of those in
security, whose misfortunes have made their own country no longer
pleasing or safe, the acquisition of property without injury to any, the
appropriation of the waste and luxuriant bounties of nature, and the
enjoyment of those gifts which heaven has scattered upon regions
uncultivated and unoccupied, cannot be considered without giving rise to
a great number of pleasing ideas, and bewildering the imagination in
delightful prospects; and, therefore, whatever speculations they may
produce in those who have confined themselves to political studies,
naturally fixed the attention, and excited the applause, of a poet. The
politician, when he considers men driven into other countries for
shelter, and obliged to retire to forests and deserts, and pass their
lives, and fix their posterity, in the remotest corners of the world, to
avoid those hardships which they suffer or fear in their native place,
may very properly inquire, why the legislature does not provide a remedy
for these miseries, rather than encourage an escape from them. He may
conclude that the flight of every honest man is a loss to the community;
that those who are unhappy without guilt ought to be relieved; and the
life, which is overburdened by accidental calamities, set at ease by the
care of the publick; and that those, who have by misconduct forfeited
their claim to favour, ought rather to be made useful to the society
which they have injured, than driven from it. But the poet is employed
in a more pleasing undertaking than that of proposing laws which,
however just or expedient, will never be made; or endeavouring to reduce
to rational schemes of government societies which were formed by chance,
and are conducted by the private passions of those who preside in them.
He guides the unhappy fugitive, from want and persecution, to plenty,
quiet, and security, and seats him in scenes of peaceful solitude, and
undisturbed repose. Savage has not forgotten, amidst the pleasing
sentiments which this prospect of retirement suggested to him, to
censure those crimes which have been generally committed by the
discoverers of new regions, and to expose the enormous wickedness of
making war upon barbarous nations because they cannot resist, and of
invading countries because they are fruitful; of extending navigation
only to propagate vice, and of visiting distant lands only to lay them
waste. He has asserted the natural equality of mankind, and endeavoured
to suppress that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the
consequence of power.
His description of the various miseries which force men to seek for
refuge in distant countries, affords another instance of his proficiency
in the important and extensive study of human life; and the tenderness
with which he recounts them, another proof of his humanity and
benevolence.
It is observable, that the close of this poem discovers a change which
experience had made in Mr. Savage's opinions. In a poem written by him
in his youth, and published in his Miscellanies, he declares his
contempt of the contracted views and narrow prospects of the middle
state of life, and declares his resolution either to tower like the
cedar, or be trampled like the shrub; but in this poem, though addressed
to a prince, he mentions this state of life as comprising those who
ought most to attract reward, those who merit most the confidence of
power, and the familiarity of greatness; and, accidentally mentioning
this passage to one of his friends, declared, that, in his opinion, all
the virtue of mankind was comprehended in that state.
In describing villas and gardens, he did not omit to condemn that absurd
custom which prevails among the English, of permitting servants to
receive money from strangers for the entertainment that they receive,
and, therefore, inserted in his poem these lines:
But what the flow'ring pride of gardens rare,
However royal, or however fair,
If gates, which to access should still give way,
Ope but, like Peter's paradise, for pay?
If perquisited varlets frequent stand,
And each new walk must a new tax demand?
What foreign eye but with contempt surveys?
What muse shall from oblivion snatch their praise?
But before the publication of his performance he recollected, that the
queen allowed her garden and cave at Richmond to be shown for money; and
that she so openly countenanced the practice, that she had bestowed the
privilege of showing them as a place of profit on a man, whose merit
she valued herself upon rewarding, though she gave him only the liberty
of disgracing his country.
He, therefore, thought, with more prudence than was often exerted by
him, that the publication of these lines might be officiously
represented as an insult upon the queen, to whom he owed his life and
his subsistence: and that the propriety of his observation would be no
security against the censures which the unseasonableness of it might
draw upon him; he, therefore, suppressed the passage in the first
edition, but after the queen's death thought the same caution no longer
necessary, and restored it to the proper place.
The poem was, therefore, published without any political faults, and
inscribed to the prince: but Mr. Savage, having no friend upon whom he
could prevail to present it to him, had no other method of attracting
his observation than the publication of frequent advertisements, and,
therefore, received no reward from his patron, however generous on other
occasions.
This disappointment he never mentioned without indignation, being, by
some means or other, confident that the prince was not ignorant of his
address to him; and insinuated, that if any advances in popularity could
have been made by distinguishing him, he had not written without notice,
or without reward.
He was once inclined to have presented his poem in person, and sent to
the printer for a copy with that design; but either his opinion changed,
or his resolution deserted him, and he continued to resent neglect
without attempting to force himself into regard.
Nor was the publick much more favourable than his patron; for only
seventy-two were sold, though the performance was much commended by some
whose judgment in that kind of writing is generally allowed. But Savage
easily reconciled himself to mankind, without imputing any defect to his
work, by observing, that his poem was unluckily published two days after
the prorogation of the parliament, and, by consequence, at a time when
all those who could be expected to regard it were in the hurry of
preparing for their departure, or engaged in taking leave of others upon
their dismission from publick affairs.
It must be, however, allowed, in justification of the publick, that this
performance is not the most excellent of Mr. Savage's works; and that,
though it cannot be denied to contain many striking sentiments,
majestick lines, and just observations, it is, in general, not
sufficiently polished in the language, or enlivened in the imagery, or
digested in the plan.
Thus his poem contributed nothing to the alleviation of his poverty,
which was such as very few could have supported with equal patience; but
to which, it must likewise be confessed, that few would have been
exposed, who received punctually fifty pounds a year; a salary which,
though by no means equal to the demands of vanity and luxury, is yet
found sufficient to support families above want, and was, undoubtedly,
more than the necessities of life require.
But no sooner had he received his pension, than he withdrew to his
darling privacy, from which he returned, in a short time, to his former
distress, and, for some part of the year, generally lived by chance,
eating only when he was invited to the tables of his acquaintances, from
which the meanness of his dress often excluded him, when the politeness
and variety of his conversation would have been thought a sufficient
recompense for his entertainment.
He lodged as much by accident as he dined, and passed the night
sometimes in mean houses, which are set open at night to any casual
wanderers, sometimes in cellars, among the riot and filth of the meanest
and most profligate of the rabble; and sometimes, when he had not money
to support even the expenses of these receptacles, walked about the
streets till he was weary, and lay down in the summer upon a bulk, or in
the winter, with his associates in poverty, among the ashes of a
glass-house.
In this manner were passed those days and those nights which nature had
enabled him to have employed in elevated speculations, useful studies,
or pleasing conversation. On a bulk, in a cellar, or in a glass-house,
among thieves and beggars, was to be found the author of the Wanderer;
the man of exalted sentiments, extensive views, and curious
observations; the man whose remarks on life might have assisted the
statesman, whose ideas of virtue might have enlightened the moralist,
whose eloquence might have influenced senates, and whose delicacy might
have polished courts.
It cannot but be imagined that such necessities might sometimes force
him upon disreputable practices; and it is probable that these lines in
the Wanderer were occasioned by his reflections on his own conduct:
Though misery leads to happiness, and truth,
Unequal to the load, this languid youth,
(O, let none censure, if, untried by grief,
If, amidst woe, untempted by relief,)
He stoop'd reluctant to low arts of shame,
Which then, e'en then, he scorn'd and blush'd to name.
Whoever was acquainted with him was certain to be solicited for small
sums, which the frequency of the request made in time considerable; and
he was, therefore, quickly shunned by those who were become familiar
enough to be trusted with his necessities; but his rambling manner of
life, and constant appearance at houses of publick resort, always
procured him a new succession of friends, whose kindness had not been
exhausted by repeated requests; so that he was seldom absolutely without
resources, but had in his utmost exigencies this comfort, that he always
imagined himself sure of speedy relief.
It was observed, that he always asked favours of this kind without the
least submission or apparent consciousness of dependence, and that he
did not seem to look upon a compliance with his requst, as an obligation
that deserved any extraordinary acknowledgments; but a refusal was
resented by him as an affront, or complained of as an injury; nor did he
readily reconcile himself to those who either denied to lend, or gave
him afterwards any intimation that they expected to be repaid.
He was sometimes so far compassionated by those who knew both his merit
and distresses, that they received him into their families; but they
soon discovered him to be a very incommodious inmate; for, being always
accustomed to an irregular manner of life, he could not confine himself
to any stated hours, or pay any regard to the rules of a family, but
would prolong his conversation till midnight, without considering that
business might require his friend's application in the morning; and,
when he had persuaded himself to retire to bed, was not, without equal
difficulty, called up to dinner; it was, therefore, impossible to pay
him any distinction without the entire subversion of all economy, a kind
of establishment which, wherever he went, he always appeared ambitious
to overthrow.
It must, therefore, be acknowledged, in justification of mankind, that
it was not always by the negligence or coldness of his friends that
Savage was distressed, but because it was in reality very difficult to
preserve him long in a state of ease. To supply him with money was a
hopeless attempt; for no sooner did he see himself master of a sum
sufficient to set him free from care for a day, than he became profuse
and luxurious. When once he had entered a tavern, or engaged in a scheme
of pleasure, he never retired till want of money obliged him to some new
expedient. If he was entertained in a family, nothing was any longer to
be regarded there but amusements and jollity; wherever Savage entered,
he immediately expected that order and business should fly before him,
that all should thenceforward be left to hazard, and that no dull
principle of domestick management should be opposed to his inclination,
or intrude upon his gaiety.
His distresses, however afflictive, never dejected him; in his lowest
state he wanted not spirit to assert the natural dignity of wit, and was
always ready to repress that insolence which superiority of fortune
incited, and to trample on that reputation which rose upon any other
basis than that of merit: he never admitted any gross familiarities, or
submitted to be treated otherwise than as an equal. Once, when he was
without lodging, meat, or clothes, one of his friends, a man not indeed
remarkable for moderation in his prosperity, left a message, that he
desired to see him about nine in the morning. Savage knew that his
intention was to assist him; but was very much disgusted that he should
presume to prescribe the hour of his attendance, and, I believe, refused
to visit him, and rejected his kindness.
The same invincible temper, whether firmness or obstinacy, appeared in
his conduct to the lord Tyrconnel, from whom he very frequently
demanded, that the allowance which was once paid him should be restored;
but with whom he never appeared to entertain, for a moment, the thought
of soliciting a reconciliation, and whom he treated, at once, with all
the haughtiness of superiority, and all the bitterness of resentment. He
wrote to him, not in a style of supplication or respect, but of
reproach, menace, and contempt; and appeared determined, if he ever
regained his allowance, to hold it only by the right of conquest.
As many more can discover that a man is richer than that he is wiser
than themselves, superiority of understanding is not so readily
acknowledged as that of fortune; nor is that haughtiness, which the
consciousness of great abilities incites, borne with the same submission
as the tyranny of affluence; and, therefore, Savage, by asserting his
claim to deference and regard, and by treating those with contempt whom
better fortune animated to rebel against him, did not fail to raise a
great number of enemies in the different classes of mankind. Those who
thought themselves raised above him by the advantages of riches, hated
him, because they found no protection from the petulance of his wit.
Those who were esteemed for their writings feared him as a critick, and
maligned him as a rival, and almost all the smaller wits were his
professed enemies.
Among these Mr. Miller so far indulged his resentment as to introduce
him in a farce, and direct him to be personated on the stage, in a
dress like that which he then wore; a mean insult, which only insinuated
that Savage had but one coat, and which was, therefore, despised by him
rather than resented: for, though he wrote a lampoon against Miller, he
never printed it; and as no other person ought to prosecute that revenge
from which the person who was injured desisted, I shall not preserve
what Mr. Savage suppressed; of which the publication would indeed have
been a punishment too severe for so impotent an assault.
The great hardships of poverty were to Savage not the want of lodging or
of food, but the neglect and contempt which it drew upon him. He
complained that, as his affairs grew desperate, he found his reputation
for capacity visibly decline; that his opinion in questions of criticism
was no longer regarded, when his coat was out of fashion; and that those
who, in the interval of his prosperity, were always encouraging him to
great undertakings, by encomiums on his genius and assurances of
success, now received any mention of his designs with coldness, thought
that the subjects on which he proposed to write were very difficult, and
were ready to inform him, that the event of a poem was uncertain, that
an author ought to employ much time in the consideration of his plan,
and not presume to sit down to write in confidence of a few cursory
ideas, and a superficial knowledge; difficulties were started on all
sides, and he was no longer qualified for any performance but the
Volunteer Laureate.
Yet even this kind of contempt never depressed him; for he always
preserved a steady confidence in his own capacity, and believed nothing
above his reach, which he should at any time earnestly endeavour to
attain. He formed schemes of the same kind with regard to knowledge and
to fortune, and flattered himself with advances to be made in science,
as with riches, to be enjoyed in some distant period of his life. For
the acquisition of knowledge he was, indeed, far better qualified than
for that of riches; for he was naturally inquisitive, and desirous of
the conversation of those from whom any information was to be obtained,
but by no means solicitous to improve those opportunities that were
sometimes offered of raising his fortune; and he was remarkably
retentive of his ideas, which, when once he was in possession of them,
rarely forsook him; a quality which could never be communicated to his
money.
While he was thus wearing out his life in expectation that the queen
would some time recollect her promise, he had recourse to the usual
practice of writers, and published proposals for printing his works by
subscription, to which he was encouraged by the success of many who had
not a better right to the favour of the publick; but, whatever was the
reason, he did not find the world equally inclined to favour him; and he
observed, with some discontent, that though he offered his works at
half-a-guinea, he was able to procure but a small number in comparison
with those who subscribed twice as much to Duck.
Nor was it without indignation that he saw his proposals neglected by
the queen, who patronised Mr. Duck's with uncommon ardour, and incited a
competition among those who attended the court, who should most promote
his interest, and who should first offer a subscription. This was a
distinction to which Mr. Savage made no scruple of asserting, that his
birth, his misfortunes, and his genius, gave him a fairer title, than
could be pleaded by him on whom it was conferred.
Savage's applications were, however, not universally unsuccessful; for
some of the nobility countenanced his design, encouraged his proposals,
and subscribed with great liberality. He related of the duke of Chandos
particularly, that, upon receiving his proposals, he sent him ten
guineas.
But the money which his subscriptions afforded him was not less volatile
than that which he received from his other schemes; whenever a
subscription was paid him, he went to a tavern; and, as money so
collected is necessarily received in small sums, he never was able to
send his poems to the press, but, for many years, continued his
solicitation, and squandered whatever he obtained.
The project of printing his works was frequently revived; and, as his
proposals grew obsolete, new ones were printed with fresher dates. To
form schemes for the publication, was one of his favourite amusements;
nor was he ever more at ease than when, with any friend who readily fell
in with his schemes, he was adjusting the print, forming the
advertisements, and regulating the dispersion of his new edition, which
he really intended, some time, to publish; and which, as long experience
had shown him the impossibility of printing the volume together, he, at
last, determined to divide into weekly or monthly numbers, that the
profits of the first might supply the expenses of the next.
Thus he spent his time in mean expedients and tormenting suspense,
living, for the greatest part, in the fear of prosecutions from his
creditors, and, consequently, skulking in obscure parts of the town, of
which he was no stranger to the remotest corners. But, wherever he came,
his address secured him friends, whom his necessities soon alienated; so
that he had, perhaps, a more numerous acquaintance than any man ever
before attained, there being scarcely any person eminent on any account
to whom he was not known, or whose character he was not, in some degree,
able to delineate.
To the acquisition of this extensive acquaintance every circumstance of
his life contributed. He excelled in the arts of conversation, and,
therefore, willingly practised them. He had seldom any home, or even a
lodging, in which he could be private; and, therefore, was driven into
publick-houses for the common conveniences of life and supports of
nature. He was always ready to comply with every invitation, having no
employment to withhold him, and often no money to provide for himself;
and, by dining with one company, he never failed of obtaining an
introduction into another.
Thus dissipated was his life, and thus casual his subsistence; yet did
not the distraction of his views hinder him from reflection, nor the
uncertainty of his condition depress his gaiety. When he had wandered
about without any fortunate adventure by which he was led into a tavern,
he sometimes retired into the fields, and was able to employ his mind in
study, or amuse it with pleasing imaginations; and seldom appeared to be
melancholy, but when some sudden misfortune had just fallen upon him,
and even then, in a few moments, he would disentangle himself from his
perplexity, adopt the subject of conversation, and apply his mind wholly
to the objects that others presented to it.
This life, unhappy as it may be already imagined, was yet imbittered, in
1738, with new calamities. The death of the queen deprived him of all
the prospects of preferment, with which he so long entertained his
imagination; and, as sir Robert Walpole had before given him reason to
believe that he never intended the performance of his promise, he was
now abandoned again to fortune.
He was, however, at that time, supported by a friend; and as it was not
his custom to look out for distant calamities, or to feel any other pain
than that which forced itself upon his senses, he was not much afflicted
at his loss, and, perhaps, comforted himself that his pension would be
now continued without the annual tribute of a panegyrick.
Another expectation contributed likewise to support him: he had taken a
resolution to write a second tragedy upon the story of sir Thomas
Overbury, in which he preserved a few lines of his former play, but made
a total alteration of the plan, added new incidents, and introduced new
characters; so that it was a new tragedy, not a revival of the former.
Many of his friends blamed him for not making choice of another subject;
but, in vindication of himself, he asserted, that it was not easy to
find a better; and that he thought it his interest to extinguish the
memory of the first tragedy, which he could only do by writing one less
defective upon the same story; by which he should entirely defeat the
artifice of the booksellers, who, after the death of any author of
reputation, are always industrious to swell his works, by uniting his
worst productions with his best.
In the execution of this scheme, however, he proceeded but slowly, and
probably only employed himself upon it when he could find no other
amusement; but he pleased himself with counting the profits, and perhaps
imagined, that the theatrical reputation which he was about to acquire
would be equivalent to all that he had lost by the death of his
patroness.
He did not, in confidence of his approaching riches, neglect the
measures proper to secure the continuance of his pension, though some of
his favourers thought him culpable for omitting to write on her death;
but, on her birthday, next year, he gave a proof of the solidity of his
judgment, and the power of his genius. He knew that the track of elegy
had been so long beaten, that it was impossible to travel in it without
treading in the footsteps of those who had gone before him; and that,
therefore, it was necessary, that he might distinguish himself from the
herd of encomiasts, to find out some new walk of funeral panegyrick.
This difficult task he performed in such a manner that his poem may be
justly ranked among the best pieces that the death of princes has
produced. By transferring the mention of her death to her birthday, he
has formed a happy combination of topicks, which any other man would
have thought it very difficult to connect in one view, but which he has
united in such a manner, that the relation between them appears natural;
and it may be justly said, that what no other man would have thought on,
it now appears scarcely possible for any man to miss.
The beauty of this peculiar combination of images is so masterly, that
it is sufficient to set this poem above censure; and, therefore, it is
not necessary to mention many other delicate touches which may be found
in it, and which would deservedly be admired in any other performance.
To these proofs of his genius may be added, from the same poem, an
instance of his prudence, an excellence for which he was not so often
distinguished; he does not forget to remind the king, in the most
delicate and artful manner, of continuing his pension.
With regard to the success of this address, he was, for some time, in
suspense, but was in no great degree solicitous about it; and continued
his labour upon his new tragedy with great tranquillity, till the
friend, who had for a considerable time supported him, removing his
family to another place, took occasion to dismiss him. It then became
necessary to inquire more diligently what was determined in his affair,
having reason to suspect that no great favour was intended him, because
he had not received his pension at the usual time.
It is said, that he did not take those methods of retrieving his
interest, which were most likely to succeed; and some of those who were
employed in the exchequer cautioned him against too much violence in his
proceedings: but Mr. Savage, who seldom regulated his conduct by the
advice of others, gave way to his passion, and demanded of sir Robert
Walpole, at his levee, the reason of the distinction that was made
between him and the other pensioners of the queen, with a degree of
roughness, which, perhaps, determined him to withdraw what had been only
delayed.
Whatever was the crime of which he was accused or suspected, and
whatever influence was employed against him, he received, soon after, an
account that took from him all hopes of regaining his pension; and he
had now no prospect of subsistence but from his play, and he knew no way
of living for the time required to finish it.
So peculiar were the misfortunes of this man, deprived of an estate and
title by a particular law, exposed and abandoned by a mother, defrauded
by a mother of a fortune which his father had allotted him, he entered
the world without a friend; and though his abilities forced themselves
into esteem and reputation, he was never able to obtain any real
advantage, and whatever prospects arose, were always intercepted as he
began to approach them. The king's intentions in his favour were
frustrated; his dedication to the prince, whose generosity on every
other occasion was eminent, procured him no reward; sir Robert Walpole,
who valued himself upon keeping his promise to others, broke it to him
without regret; and the bounty of the queen was, after her death,
withdrawn from him, and from him only.
Such were his misfortunes, which yet he bore, not only with decency, but
with cheerfulness; nor was his gaiety clouded even by his last
disappointments, though he was, in a short time, reduced to the lowest
degree of distress, and often wanted both lodging and food. At this time
he gave another instance of the insurmountable obstinacy of his spirit:
his clothes were worn out; and he received notice, that at a
coffee-house some clothes and linen were left for him: the person who
sent them did not, I believe, inform him to whom he was to be obliged,
that he might spare the perplexity of acknowledging the benefit; but
though the offer was so far generous, it was made with some neglect of
ceremonies, which Mr. Savage so much resented, that he refused the
present, and declined to enter the house till the clothes that had been
designed for him were taken away.
His distress was now publickly known, and his friends, therefore,
thought it proper to concert some measures for his relief; and one of
them wrote a letter to him, in which he expressed his concern "for the
miserable withdrawing of his pension;" and gave him hopes, that, in a
short time, he should find himself supplied with a competence, "without
any dependence on those little creatures which we are pleased to call
the great."
The scheme proposed for this happy and independent subsistence was, that
he should retire into Wales, and receive an allowance of fifty pounds a
year, to be raised by a subscription, on which he was to live privately
in a cheap place, without aspiring any more to affluence, or having any
further care of reputation.
This offer Mr. Savage gladly accepted, though with intentions very
different from those of his friends; for they proposed that he should
continue an exile from London for ever, and spend all the remaining part
of his life at Swansea; but he designed only to take the opportunity,
which their scheme offered him, of retreating for a short time, that he
might prepare his play for the stage, and his other works for the press,
and then to return to London to exhibit his tragedy, and live upon the
profits of his own labour.
With regard to his works, he proposed very great improvements, which
would have required much time, or great application; and, when he had
finished them, he designed to do justice to his subscribers, by
publishing them according to his proposals.
As he was ready to entertain himself with future pleasures, he had
planned out a scheme of life for the country, of which he had no
knowledge but from pastorals and songs. He imagined that he should be
transported to scenes of flowery felicity, like those which one poet has
reflected to another; and had projected a perpetual round of innocent
pleasures, of which he suspected no interruption from pride, or
ignorance, or brutality.
With these expectations he was so enchanted, that when he was once
gently reproached by a friend for submitting to live upon a
subscription, and advised rather by a resolute exertion of his abilities
to support himself, he could not bear to debar himself from the
happiness which was to be found in the calm of a cottage, or lose the
opportunity of listening, without intermission, to the melody of the
nightingale, which he believed was to be heard from every bramble, and
which he did not fail to mention as a very important part of the
happiness of a country life.
While this scheme was ripening, his friends directed him to take a
lodging in the liberties of the Fleet, that he might be secure from his
creditors, and sent him, every Monday, a guinea, which he commonly spent
before the next morning, and trusted, after his usual manner, the
remaining part of the week to the bounty of fortune.
He now began very sensibly to feel the miseries of dependence. Those by
whom he was to be supported began to prescribe to him with an air of
authority, which he knew not how decently to resent, nor patiently to
bear; and he soon discovered, from the conduct of most of his
subscribers, that he was yet in the hands of "little creatures."
Of the insolence that he was obliged to suffer, he gave many instances,
of which none appeared to raise his indignation to a greater height than
the method which was taken of furnishing him with clothes. Instead of
consulting him, and allowing him to send a tailor his orders for what
they thought proper to allow him, they proposed to send for a tailor to
take his measure, and then to consult how they should equip him.
This treatment was not very delicate, nor was it such as Savage's
humanity would have suggested to him on a like occasion; but it had
scarcely deserved mention, had it not, by affecting him in an uncommon
degree, shown the peculiarity of his character. Upon hearing the design
that was formed, he came to the lodging of a friend with the most
violent agonies of rage; and, being asked what it could be that gave him
such disturbance, he replied, with the utmost vehemence of indignation,
"that they had sent for a tailor to measure him."
How the affair ended was never inquired, for fear of renewing his
uneasiness. It is probable that, upon recollection, he submitted with a
good grace to what he could not avoid, and that he discovered no
resentment where he had no power.
He was, however, not humbled to implicit and universal compliance; for
when the gentleman, who had first informed him of the design to support
him by a subscription, attempted to procure a reconciliation with the
lord Tyrconnel, he could by no means be prevailed upon to comply with
the measures that were proposed.
A letter was written for him[83] to sir William Lemon, to prevail upon
him to interpose his good offices with lord Tyrconnel, in which he
solicited sir William's assistance "for a man who really needed it as
much as any man could well do;" and informed him, that he was retiring
"for ever to a place where he should no more trouble his relations,
friends, or enemies;" he confessed, that his passion had betrayed him to
some conduct, with regard to lord Tyrconnel, for which he could not but
heartily ask his pardon; and as he imagined lord Tyrcounel's passion
might be yet so high that he would not "receive a letter from him,"
begged that sir William would endeavour to soften him; and expressed his
hopes that he would comply with his request, and that "so small a
relation would not harden his heart against him."
That any man should presume to dictate a letter to him, was not very
agreeable to Mr. Savage; and, therefore, he was, before he had opened
it, not much inclined to approve it. But when he read it, he found it
contained sentiments entirely opposite to his own, and, as he asserted,
to the truth, and, therefore, instead of copying it, wrote his friend a
letter full of masculine resentment and warm expostulations. He very
justly observed, that the style was too supplicatory, and the
representation too abject, and that he ought, at least, to have made him
complain with "the dignity of a gentleman in distress." He declared that
he would not write the paragraph in which he was to ask lord Tyrconnel's
pardon; for "he despised his pardon, and, therefore, could not heartily,
and would not hypocritically, ask it." He remarked, that his friend made
a very unreasonable distinction between himself and him; for, says he,
when you mention men of high rank "in your own character," they are,
"those little creatures whom we are pleased to call the great;" but when
you address them "in mine," no servility is sufficiently humble. He
then, with great propriety, explained the ill consequences which might
be expected from such a letter, which his relations would print in their
own defence, and which would for ever be produced as a full answer to
all that he should allege against them; for he always intended to
publish a minute account of the treatment which he had received. It is
to be remembered, to the honour of the gentleman by whom this letter was
drawn up, that he yielded to Mr. Savage's reasons, and agreed that it
ought to be suppressed.
After many alterations and delays, a subscription was at length raised,
which did not amount to fifty pounds a year, though twenty were paid by
one gentleman; such was the generosity of mankind, that what had been
done by a player without solicitation, could not now be effected by
application and interest; and Savage had a great number to court and to
obey for a pension less than that which Mrs. Oldfield paid him without
exacting any servilities. Mr. Savage, however, was satisfied, and
willing to retire, and was convinced that the allowance, though scanty,
would be more than sufficient for him, being now determined to commence
a rigid economist, and to live according to the exactest rules of
frugality; for nothing was, in his opinion, more contemptible, than a
man, who, when he knew his income, exceeded it; and yet he confessed
that instances of such folly were too common, and lamented that some men
were not to be trusted with their own money.
Full of these salutary resolutions, he left London in July, 1739, having
taken leave, with great tenderness, of his friends, and parted from the
author of this narrative with tears in his eyes. He was furnished with
fifteen guineas, and informed that they would be sufficient, not only
for the expense of his journey, but for his support in Wales for some
time; and that there remained but little more of the first collection.
He promised a strict adherence to his maxims of parsimony, and went away
in the stagecoach; nor did his friends expect to hear from him till he
informed them of his arrival at Swansea.
But, when they least expected, arrived a letter dated the fourteenth day
after his departure, in which he sent them word, that he was yet upon
the road and without money; and that he, therefore, could not proceed
without a remittance. They then sent him the money that was in their
hands, with which he was enabled to reach Bristol, from whence he was to
go to Swansea by water.
At Bristol he found an embargo laid upon the shipping, so that he could
not immediately obtain a passage; and being, therefore, obliged to stay
there some time, he, with his usual felicity, ingratiated himself with
many of the principal inhabitants, was invited to their houses,
distinguished at their publick feasts, and treated with a regard that
gratified his vanity, and, therefore, easily engaged his affection. He
began, very early after his retirement, to complain of the conduct of
his friends in London, and irritated many of them so much by his
letters, that they withdrew, however honourably, their contributions;
and it is believed, that little more was paid him than the twenty pounds
a year, which were allowed him by the gentleman who proposed the
subscription.
After some stay at Bristol he retired to Swansea, the place originally
proposed for his residence, where he lived about a year, very much
dissatisfied with the diminution of his salary; but contracted, as in
other places, acquaintance with those who were most distinguished in
that country, among whom he has celebrated Mr. Powell and Mrs. Jones, by
some verses which he inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine[84].
Here he completed his tragedy, of which two acts were wanting when he
left London; and was desirous of coming to town, to bring it upon the
stage. This design was very warmly opposed; and he was advised, by his
chief benefactor, to put it into the hands of Mr. Thomson and Mr.
Mallet, that it might be fitted for the stage, and to allow his friends
to receive the profits, out of which an annual pension should be paid
him.
This proposal he rejected with the utmost contempt. He was by no means
convinced that the judgment of those, to whom he was required to
submit, was superiour to his own. He was now determined, as he expressed
it, to be "no longer kept in leading-strings," and had no elevated idea
of "his bounty, who proposed to pension him out of the profits of his
own labours."
He attempted in Wales to promote a subscription for his works, and had
once hopes of success; but, in a short time afterwards, formed a
resolution of leaving that part of the country, to which he thought it
not reasonable to be confined, for the gratification of those who,
having promised him a liberal income, had no sooner banished him to a
remote corner, than they reduced his allowance to a salary scarcely
equal to the necessities of life.
His resentment of this treatment, which, in his own opinion, at least,
he had not deserved, was such, that he broke off all correspondence with
most of his contributors, and appeared to consider them as persecutors
and oppressors; and, in the latter part of his life, declared that their
conduct toward him since his departure from London "had been
perfidiousness improving on perfidiousness, and inhumanity on
inhumanity."
It is not to be supposed, that the necessities of Mr. Savage did not
sometimes incite him to satirical exaggerations of the behaviour of
those by whom he thought himself reduced to them. But it must be
granted, that the diminution of his allowance was a great hardship, and
that those who withdrew their subscriptions from a man, who, upon the
faith of their promise, had gone into a kind of banishment, and
abandoned all those by whom he had been before relieved in his
distresses, will find it no easy task to vindicate their conduct.
It may be alleged, and perhaps justly, that he was petulant and
contemptuous; that he more frequently reproached his subscribers for not
giving him more, than thanked them for what he received; but it is to be
remembered, that his conduct, and this is the worst charge that can be
drawn up against him, did them no real injury, and that it, therefore,
ought rather to have been pitied than resented; at least, the
resentment it might provoke ought to have been generous and manly;
epithets which his conduct will hardly deserve, that starves the man
whom he has persuaded to put himself into his power.
It might have been reasonably demanded by Savage, that they should,
before they had taken away what they promised, have replaced him in his
former state; that they should have taken no advantages from the
situation to which the appearance of their kindness had reduced him, and
that he should have been recalled to London before he was abandoned. He
might justly represent, that he ought to have been considered as a lion
in the toils, and demand to be released before the dogs should be loosed
upon him.
He endeavoured, indeed, to release himself, and, with an intent to
return to London, went to Bristol, where a repetition of the kindness
which he had formerly found invited him to stay. He was not only
caressed and treated, but had a collection made for him of about thirty
pounds, with which it had been happy if he had immediately departed for
London; but his negligence did not suffer him to consider, that such
proofs of kindness were not often to be expected, and that this ardour
of benevolence was, in a great degree, the effect of novelty, and might,
probably, be every day less; and, therefore, he took no care to improve
the happy time, but was encouraged by one favour to hope for another,
till, at length, generosity was exhausted, and officiousness wearied.
Another part of his misconduct was the practice of prolonging his visits
to unseasonable hours, and disconcerting all the families into which he
was admitted. This was an errour in a place of commerce, which all the
charms of his conversation could not compensate; for what trader would
purchase such airy satisfaction by the loss of solid gain, which must be
the consequence of midnight merriment, as those hours which were gained
at night were generally lost in the morning?
Thus Mr. Savage, after the curiosity of the inhabitants was gratified,
found the number of his friends daily decreasing, perhaps, without
suspecting for what reason their conduct was altered; for he still
continued to harass, with his nocturnal intrusions, those that yet
countenanced him, and admitted him to their houses.
But he did not spend all the time of his residence at Bristol, in visits
or at taverns; for he sometimes returned to his studies, and began
several considerable designs. When he felt an inclination to write, he
always retired from the knowledge of his friends, and lay hid in an
obscure part of the suburbs, till he found himself again desirous of
company, to which it is likely that intervals of absence made him more
welcome.
He was always full of his design of returning to London, to bring his
tragedy upon the stage; but, having neglected to depart with the money
that was raised for him, he could not afterwards procure a sum
sufficient to defray the expenses of his journey; nor, perhaps, would a
fresh supply have had any other effect than by putting immediate
pleasures in his power, to have driven the thoughts of his journey out
of his mind.
While he was thus spending the day in contriving a scheme for the
morrow, distress stole upon him by imperceptible degrees. His conduct
had already wearied some of those, who were at first enamoured of his
conversation; but he might, perhaps, still have devolved to others, whom
he might have entertained with equal success, had not the decay of his
clothes made it no longer consistent with their vanity to admit him to
their tables, or to associate with him in publick places. He now began
to find every man from home at whose house he called; and was,
therefore, no longer able to procure the necessaries of life, but
wandered about the town, slighted and neglected, in quest of a dinner,
which he did not always obtain.
To complete his misery, he was pursued by the officers, for small debts
which he had contracted; and was, therefore, obliged to withdraw from
the small number of friends from whom he had still reason to hope for
favours. His custom was to lie in bed the greatest part of the day, and
to go out in the dark with the utmost privacy, and after having paid his
visit, return again before morning to his lodging, which was in the
garret of an obscure inn.
Being thus excluded on one hand, and confined on the other, he suffered
the utmost extremities of poverty, and often fasted so long, that he was
seized with faintness, and had lost his appetite, not being able to bear
the smell of meat, till the action of his stomach was restored by a
cordial.
In this distress, he received a remittance of five pounds from London,
with which he provided himself a decent coat, and determined to go to
London, but unhappily spent his money at a favourite tavern. Thus was he
again confined to Bristol, where he was every day hunted by bailiffs. In
this exigence he once more found a friend, who sheltered him in his
house, though at the usual inconveniencies with which his company was
attended; for he could neither be persuaded to go to bed in the night,
nor to rise in the day.
It is observable, that in these various scenes of misery, he was always
disengaged and cheerful: he at some times pursued his studies, and at
others continued or enlarged his epistolary correspondence; nor was he
ever so far dejected as to endeavour to procure an increase of his
allowance by any other methods than accusations and reproaches.
He had now no longer any hopes of assistance from his friends at
Bristol, who, as merchants, and by consequence sufficiently studious of
profit, cannot be supposed to have looked with much compassion upon
negligence and extravagance, or to think any excellence equivalent to a
fault of such consequence, as neglect of economy. It is natural to
imagine, that many of those, who would have relieved his real wants,
were discouraged from the exertion of their benevolence, by observation
of the use which was made of their favours, and conviction that relief
would only be momentary, and that the same necessity would quickly
return.
At last he quitted the house of his friend, and returned to his lodging
at the inn, still intending to set out in a few days for London; but on
the 10th of January, 1742-3, having been at supper with two of his
friends, he was, at his return to his lodgings, arrested for a debt of
about eight pounds, which he owed at a coffee-house, and conducted to
the house of a sheriff's officer. The account which he gives of this
misfortune, in a letter to one of the gentlemen, with whom he had
supped, is too remarkable to be omitted.
"It was not a little unfortunate for me, that I spent yesterday's
evening with you; because the hour hindered me from entering on my new
lodging; however, I have now got one, but such an one as I believe
nobody would choose.
"I was arrested at the suit of Mrs. Read, just as I was going up stairs
to bed, at Mr. Bowyer's; but taken in so private a manner, that I
believe nobody at the White Lion is apprised of it; though I let the
officers know the strength, or rather weakness, of my pocket, yet they
treated me with the utmost civility; and even when they conducted me to
confinement, it was in such a manner, that I verily believe I could have
escaped, which I would rather be ruined than have done, notwithstanding
the whole amount of my finances was but threepence halfpenny.
"In the first place, I must insist, that you will industriously conceal
this from Mrs. S----s, because I would not have her good-nature suffer
that pain which, I know, she would be apt to feel on this occasion.
"Next, I conjure you, dear sir, by all the ties of friendship, by no
means to have one uneasy thought on my account; but to have the same
pleasantry of countenance, and unruffled serenity of mind, which (God be
praised!) I have in this, and have had in a much severer calamity.
Furthermore, I charge you, if you value my friendship as truly as I do
yours, not to utter, or even harbour, the least resentment against Mrs.
Read. I believe she has ruined me, but I freely forgive her; and (though
I will never more have any intimacy with her) I would, at a due
distance, rather do her an act of good, than ill will. Lastly, (pardon
the expression,) I absolutely command you not to offer me any pecuniary
assistance, nor to attempt getting me any from any one of your friends.
At another time, or on any other occasion, you may, dear friend, be well
assured, I would rather write to you in the submissive style of a
request, than that of a peremptory command.
"However, that my truly valuable friend may not think I am too proud to
ask a favour, let me intreat you to let me have your boy to attend me
for this day, not only for the sake of saving me the expense of porters,
but for the delivery of some letters to people whose names I would not
have known to strangers.
"The civil treatment I have thus far met from those whose prisoner I am,
makes me thankful to the Almighty, that, though he has thought fit to
visit me (on my birth-night) with affliction, yet (such is his great
goodness!) my affliction is not without alleviating circumstances. I
murmur not; but am all resignation to the divine will. As to the world,
I hope that I shall be endued by heaven with that presence of mind, that
serene dignity in misfortune, that constitutes the character of a true
nobleman; a dignity far beyond that of coronets; a nobility arising from
the just principles of philosophy, refined and exalted by those of
Christianity."
He continued five days at the officer's, in hopes that he should be able
to procure bail and avoid the necessity of going to prison. The state in
which he passed his time, and the treatment which he received, are very
justly expressed by him in a letter which he wrote to a friend: "The
whole day," says he, "has been employed in various people's filling my
head with their foolish chimerical systems, which has obliged me coolly
(as far as nature will admit) to digest, and accommodate myself to,
every different person's way of thinking; hurried from one wild system
to another, till it has quite made a chaos of my imagination, and
nothing done--promised--disappointed--ordered to send, every hour, from
one part of the town to the other."
When his friends, who had hitherto caressed and applauded, found that to
give bail and pay the debt was the same; they all refused to preserve
him from a prison at the expense of eight pounds; and, therefore, after
having been for some time at the officer's house, "at an immense
expense," as he observes in his letter, he was at length removed to
Newgate.
This expense he was enabled to support by the generosity of Mr. Nash, at
Bath, who, upon receiving from him an account of his condition,
immediately sent him five guineas, and promised to promote his
subscription at Bath with all his interest.
By his removal to Newgate, he obtained at least a freedom from suspense,
and rest from the disturbing vicissitudes of hope and disappointment; he
now found that his friends were only companions, who were willing to
share his gaiety, but not to partake of his misfortunes; and, therefore,
he no longer expected any assistance from them.
It must, however, be observed of one gentleman, that he offered to
release him by paying the debt; but that Mr. Savage would not consent, I
suppose, because he thought he had before been too burdensome to him. He
was offered by some of his friends that a collection should be made for
his enlargement; but he "treated the proposal," and declared[85] "he
should again treat it, with disdain". As to writing any mendicant
letters, he had too high a spirit, and determined only to write to some
ministers of state, to try to regain his pension.
He continued to complain[86] of those that had sent him into the
country, and objected to them, that he had "lost the profits of his
play, which had been finished three years:" and in another letter
declares his resolution to publish a pamphlet, that the world might know
how "he had been used."
This pamphlet was never written; for he, in a very short time,
recovered his usual tranquillity, and cheerfully applied himself to more
inoffensive studies. He, indeed, steadily declared, that he was promised
a yearly allowance of fifty pounds, and never received half the sum; but
he seemed to resign himself to that as well as to other misfortunes, and
lose the remembrance of it in his amusements and employments.
The cheerfulness with which he bore his confinement appears from the
following letter, which he wrote, January the 30th, to one of his
friends in London.
"I now write to you from my confinement in Newgate, where I have been
ever since Monday last was se'nnight, and where I enjoy myself with much
more tranquillity than I have known for upwards of a twelve-month past;
having a room entirely to myself, and pursuing the amusement of my
poetical studies, uninterrupted, and agreeable to my mind. I thank the
Almighty, I am now all collected in myself; and, though my person is in
confinement, my mind can expatiate on ample and useful subjects with all
the freedom imaginable. I am now more conversant with the Nine than
ever, and if, instead of a Newgate-bird, I may be allowed to be a bird
of the muses, I assure you, sir, I sing very freely in my cage;
sometimes, indeed, in the plaintive notes of the nightingale; but at
others in the cheerful strains of the lark."
In another letter he observes, that he ranges from one subject to
another, without confining himself to any particular task; and that he
was employed one week upon one attempt, and the next upon another.
Surely the fortitude of this man deserves, at least, to be mentioned
with applause; and, whatever faults may be imputed to him, the virtue of
suffering well cannot be denied him. The two powers which, in the
opinion of Epictetus, constituted a wise man, are those of bearing and
forbearing; which cannot indeed be affirmed to have been equally
possessed by Savage; and, indeed, the want of one obliged him very
frequently to practise the other.
He was treated by Mr. Dagge, the keeper of the prison, with great
humanity; was supported by him at his own table, without any certainty
of recompense; had a room to himself, to which he could at any time
retire from all disturbance; was allowed to stand at the door of the
prison, and sometimes taken out into the fields[87]; so that he suffered
fewer hardships in prison than he had been accustomed to undergo in the
greatest part of his life.
The keeper did not confine his benevolence to a gentle execution of his
office, but made some overtures to the creditor for his release, though
without effect; and continued, during the whole time of his
imprisonment, to treat him with the utmost tenderness and civility.
Virtue is undoubtedly most laudable in that state which makes it most
difficult; and, therefore, the humanity of a gaoler certainly deserves
this publick attestation; and the man, whose heart has not been hardened
by such an employment, may be justly proposed as a pattern of
benevolence. If an inscription was once engraved, "to the honest
toll-gatherer," less honours ought not to be paid "to the tender
gaoler."
Mr. Savage very frequently received visits, and sometimes presents, from
his acquaintances; but they did not amount to a subsistence, for the
greater part of which he was indebted to the generosity of this keeper;
but these favours, however they might endear to him the particular
persons from whom he received them, were very far from impressing upon
his mind any advantageous ideas of the people of Bristol, and,
therefore, he thought he could not more properly employ himself in
prison, than in writing a poem, called London and Bristol
delineated[88].
When he had brought this poem to its present state, which, without
considering the chasm, is not perfect, he wrote to London an account of
his design, and informed his friend[89], that he was determined to print
it with his name; but enjoined him not to communicate his intention to
his Bristol acquaintance. The gentleman, surprised at his resolution,
endeavoured to dissuade him from publishing it, at least from prefixing
his name; and declared, that he could not reconcile the injunction of
secrecy with his resolution to own it at its first appearance. To this
Mr. Savage returned an answer agreeable to his character, in the
following terms:
"I received yours this morning; and not without a little surprise at the
contents. To answer a question with a question, you ask me concerning
London and Bristol, Why will I add _delineated_? Why did Mr. Wollaston
add the same word to his Religion of Nature? I suppose that it was his
will and pleasure to add it in his case; and it is mine to do so in my
own. You are pleased to tell me, that you understand not why secrecy is
enjoined, and yet I intend to set my name to it. My answer is--I have my
private reasons, which I am not obliged to explain to any one. You doubt
my friend Mr. S----[90] would not approve of it--And what is it to me
whether he does or not? Do you imagine that Mr. S---- is to dictate to
me? If any man who calls himself my friend should assume such an air, I
would spurn at his friendship with contempt. You say, I seem to think so
by not letting him know it.--And suppose I do, what then? Perhaps I can
give reasons for that disapprobation, very foreign from what you would
imagine. You go on in saying, suppose I should not put my name to it--My
answer is, that I will not suppose any such thing, being determined to
the contrary: neither, sir, would I have you suppose, that I applied to
you for want of another press: nor would I have you imagine, that I owe
Mr. S---- obligations which I do not."
Such was his imprudence, and such his obstinate adherence to his own
resolutions, however absurd! A prisoner! supported by charity! and,
whatever insults he might have received during the latter part of his
stay in Bristol, once caressed, esteemed, and presented with a liberal
collection, he could forget, on a sudden, his danger and his
obligations, to gratify the petulance of his wit, or the eagerness of
his resentment, and publish a satire, by which he might reasonably
expect that he should alienate those who then supported him, and provoke
those whom he could neither resist nor escape.
This resolution, from the execution of which it is probable that only
his death could have hindered him, is sufficient to show how much he
disregarded all considerations that opposed his present passions, and
how readily he hazarded all future advantages for any immediate
gratifications. Whatever was his predominant inclination, neither hope
nor fear hindered him from complying with it; nor had opposition any
other effect than to heighten his ardour, and irritate his vehemence.
This performance was, however, laid aside, while he was employed in
soliciting assistance from several great persons; and one interruption
succeeding another hindered him from supplying the chasm, and, perhaps,
from retouching the other parts, which he can hardly be imagined to have
finished in his own opinion: for it is very unequal, and some of the
lines are rather inserted to rhyme to others, than to support or improve
the sense; but the first and last parts are worked up with great spirit
and elegance.
His time was spent in the prison, for the most part, in study, or in
receiving visits; but sometimes he descended to lower amusements, and
diverted himself in the kitchen with the conversation of the criminals:
for it was not pleasing to him to be much without company; and, though
he was very capable of a judicious choice, he was often contented with
the first that offered: for this he was sometimes reproved by his
friends, who found him surrounded with felons; but the reproof was on
that, as on other occasions, thrown away; he continued to gratify
himself, and to set very little value on the opinion of others.
But here, as in every other scene of his life, he made use of such
opportunities as occurred of benefiting those who were more miserable
than himself, and was always ready to perform any office of humanity to
his fellow-prisoners.
He had now ceased from corresponding with any of his subscribers except
one, who yet continued to remit him the twenty pounds a year which he
had promised him, and by whom it was expected that he would have been in
a very short time enlarged, because he had directed the keeper to
inquire after the state of his debts.
However, he took care to enter his name according to the forms of the
court[91], that the creditor might be obliged to make him some
allowance, if he was continued a prisoner, and, when on that occasion he
appeared in the hall, was treated with very unusual respect.
But the resentment of the city was afterwards raised by some accounts
that had been spread of the satire; and he was informed that some of the
merchants intended to pay the allowance which the law required, and to
detain him a prisoner at their own expense. This he treated as an empty
menace; and, perhaps, might have hastened the publication, only to show
how much he was superiour to their insults, had not all his schemes been
suddenly destroyed.
When he had been six months in prison, he received from one of his
friends[92], in whose kindness he had the greatest confidence, and on
whose assistance he chiefly depended, a letter, that contained a charge
of very atrocious ingratitude, drawn up in such terms as sudden
resentment dictated. Henley, in one of his advertisements, had mentioned
"Pope's treatment of Savage." This was supposed, by Pope, to be the
consequence of a complaint made by Savage to Henley, and was, therefore,
mentioned by him with much resentment. Mr. Savage returned a very solemn
protestation of his innocence, but, however, appeared much disturbed at
the accusation. Some days afterwards he was seized with a pain in his
back and side, which, as it was not violent, was not suspected to be
dangerous; but, growing daily more languid and dejected, on the 25th of
July he confined himself to his room, and a fever seized his spirits.
The symptoms grew every day more formidable, but his condition did not
enable him to procure any assistance. The last time that the keeper saw
him was on July the 31st, 1743; when Savage, seeing him at his bedside,
said, with an uncommon earnestness, "I have something to say to you,
sir;" but, after a pause, moved his hand in a melancholy manner; and,
finding himself unable to recollect what he was going to communicate,
said, "'Tis gone!" The keeper soon after left him; and the next morning
he died. He was buried in the church-yard of St. Peter, at the expense
of the keeper.
Such were the life and death of Richard Savage, a man equally
distinguished by his virtues and vices; and at once remarkable for his
weaknesses and abilities.
He was of a middle stature, of a thin habit of body, a long visage,
coarse features, and melancholy aspect; of a grave and manly deportment,
a solemn dignity of mien, but which, upon a nearer acquaintance,
softened into an engaging easiness of manners. His walk was slow, and
his voice tremulous and mournful. He was easily excited to smiles, but
very seldom provoked to laughter.
His mind was in an uncommon degree vigorous and active. His judgment was
accurate, his apprehension quick, and his memory so tenacious, that he
was frequently observed to know what he had learned from others, in a
short time, better than those by whom he was informed; and could
frequently recollect incidents, with all their combination of
circumstances, which few would have regarded at the present time, but
which the quickness of his apprehension impressed upon him. He had the
peculiar felicity, that his attention never deserted him; he was present
to every object, and regardful of the most trifling occurrences. He had
the art of escaping from his own reflections, and accommodating himself
to every new scene.
To this quality is to be imputed the extent of his knowledge, compared
with the small time which he spent in visible endeavours to acquire it.
He mingled in cursory conversation with the same steadiness of attention
as others apply to a lecture; and, amidst the appearance of thoughtless
gaiety, lost no new idea that was started, nor any hint that could be
improved. He had, therefore, made in coffee-houses the same proficiency
as others in their closets: and it is remarkable, that the writings of a
man of little education and little reading have an air of learning
scarcely to be found in any other performances, but which, perhaps, as
often obscures as embellishes them.
His judgment was eminently exact, both with regard to writings and to
men. The knowledge of life was indeed his chief attainment; and it is
not without some satisfaction that I can produce the suffrage of Savage
in favour of human nature, of which he never appeared to entertain such
odious ideas as some, who, perhaps, had neither his judgment nor
experience, have published, either in ostentation of their sagacity,
vindication of their crimes, or gratification of their malice.
His method of life particularly qualified him for conversation, of which
he knew how to practise all the graces. He was never vehement or loud,
but at once modest and easy, open and respectful; his language was
vivacious and elegant, and equally happy upon grave or humorous
subjects. He was generally censured for not knowing when to retire; but
that was not the defect of his judgment, but of his fortune: when he
left his company, he was frequently to spend the remaining part of the
night in the street, or at least was abandoned to gloomy reflections,
which it is not strange that he delayed as long as he could; and
sometimes forgot that he gave others pain to avoid it himself.
It cannot be said, that he made use of his abilities for the direction
of his own conduct: an irregular and dissipated manner of life had made
him the slave of every passion that happened to be excited by the
presence of its object, and that slavery to his passions reciprocally
produced a life irregular and dissipated. He was not master of his own
motions, nor could promise any thing for the next day.
With regard to his economy, nothing can be added to the relation of his
life. He appeared to think himself born to be supported by others, and
dispensed from all necessity of providing for himself; he therefore
never prosecuted any scheme of advantage, nor endeavoured even to secure
the profits which his writings might have afforded him. His temper was,
in consequence of the dominion of his passions, uncertain and
capricious; he was easily engaged, and easily disgusted; but he is
accused of retaining his hatred more tenaciously than his benevolence.
He was compassionate both by nature and principle, and always ready to
perform offices of humanity; but when he was provoked (and very small
offences were sufficient to provoke him) he would prosecute his revenge
with the utmost acrimony till his passion had subsided.
His friendship was, therefore, of little value; for, though he was
zealous in the support or vindication of those whom he loved, yet it was
always dangerous to trust him, because he considered himself as
discharged, by the first quarrel, from all ties of honour or gratitude;
and would betray those secrets which, in the warmth of confidence, had
been imparted to him. This practice drew upon him an universal
accusation of ingratitude: nor can it be denied that he was very ready
to set himself free from the load of an obligation; for he could not
bear to conceive himself in a state of dependence, his pride being
equally powerful with his other passions, and appearing in the form of
insolence at one time, and of vanity at another. Vanity, the most
innocent species of pride, was most frequently predominant: he could not
easily leave off, when he had once begun to mention himself or his
works; nor ever read his verses without stealing his eyes from the page,
to discover, in the faces of his audience, how they were affected with
any favourite passage.
A kinder name than that of vanity ought to be given to the delicacy
with which he was always careful to separate his own merit from every
other man's, and to reject that praise to which he had no claim. He did
not forget, in mentioning his performances, to mark every line that had
been suggested or amended; and was so accurate, as to relate that he
owed three words in the Wanderer to the advice of his friends.
His veracity was questioned, but with little reason; his accounts,
though not indeed always the same, were generally consistent. When he
loved any man, he suppressed all his faults; and, when he had been
offended by him, concealed all his virtues; but his characters were
generally true, so far as he proceeded; though it cannot be denied, that
his partiality might have sometimes the effect of falsehood.
In cases indifferent, he was zealous for virtue, truth, and justice; he
knew very well the necessity of goodness to the present and future
happiness of mankind; nor is there, perhaps, any writer, who has less
endeavoured to please by flattering the appetites, or perverting the
judgment.
As an author, therefore, and he now ceases to influence mankind in any
other character, if one piece which he had resolved to suppress be
excepted, he has very little to fear from the strictest moral or
religious censure. And though he may not be altogether secure against
the objections of the critick, it must, however, be acknowledged, that
his works are the productions of a genius truly poetical; and, what many
writers who have been more lavishly applauded cannot boast, that they
have an original air, which has no resemblance of any foregoing writer,
that the versification and sentiments have a cast peculiar to
themselves, which no man can imitate with success, because what was
nature in Savage would in another be affectation. It must be confessed
that his descriptions are striking, his images animated, his fictions
justly imagined, and his allegories artfully pursued; that his diction
is elevated, though sometimes forced, and his numbers sonorous and
majestick, though frequently sluggish and encumbered. Of his style, the
general fault is harshness, and its general excellence is dignity: of
his sentiments, the prevailing beauty is simplicity, and uniformity the
prevailing defect.
For his life, or for his writings, none, who candidly consider his
fortune, will think an apology either necessary or difficult. If he was
not always sufficiently instructed in his subject, his knowledge was, at
least, greater than could have been attained by others in the same
state. If his works were sometimes unfinished, accuracy cannot
reasonably be expected from a man oppressed with want, which he has no
hope of relieving but by a speedy publication. The insolence and
resentment of which he is accused were not easily to be avoided by a
great mind, irritated by perpetual hardships, and constrained hourly to
return the spurns of contempt, and repress the insolence of prosperity;
and vanity may surely be readily pardoned in him, to whom life afforded
no other comforts than barren praises, and the consciousness of
deserving them.
Those are no proper judges of his conduct, who have slumbered away their
time on the down of plenty; nor will any wise man presume to say, "Had I
been in Savage's condition, I should have lived or written better than
Savage."
This relation will not be wholly without its use, if those, who languish
under any part of his sufferings, shall be enabled to fortify their
patience, by reflecting that they feel only those afflictions from which
the abilities of Savage did not exempt him; or if those, who, in
confidence of superiour capacities or attainments, disregard the common
maxims of life, shall be reminded, that nothing will supply the want of
prudence, and that negligence and irregularity, long continued, will
make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.
-----
[Footnote 47: The first edition of this interesting narrative, according
to Mr. Boswell, was published in 1744, by Roberts. The second, now
before me, bears date 1748, and was published by Cave. Very few
alterations were made by the author, when he added it to the present
collection. The year before publication, 1743, Dr. Johnson inserted the
following notice of his intention in the Gentleman's Magazine.
"MR. URBAN
"As your collections show how often you have owed the ornaments of your
poetical pages to the correspondence of the unfortunate and ingenious
Mr. Savage, I doubt not but you have so much regard to his memory, as to
encourage any design that may have a tendency to the preservation of it
from insults or calumnies; and, therefore, with some degree of
assurance, intreat you to inform the publick, that his life will
speedily be published by a person who was favoured with his confidence,
and received from himself an account of most of the transactions which
he proposes to mention, to the time of his retirement to Swansea, in
Wales.
"From that period to his death in the prison of Bristol, the account
will be continued from materials still less liable to objection; his own
letters and those of his friends; some of which will be inserted in the
work, and abstracts of others subjoined in the margin.
"It may be reasonably, imagined that others may have the same design,
but as it is not credible that they can obtain the same materials, it
must be expected that they will supply from invention the want of
intelligence, and that under the title of the Life of Savage, they will
publish only a novel, filled with romantick adventures and imaginary
amours. You may, therefore, perhaps, gratify the lovers of truth and
wit, by giving me leave to inform them, in your magazine, that my
account will be published, in octavo, by Mr. Roberts, in Warwick-lane."]
[Footnote 48: This year was made remarkable by the dissolution of a
marriage solemnized in the face of the church. Salmon's Review.
The following protest is registered in the books of the house of lords:
Dissentient: Because we conceive that this is the first bill of that
nature that hath passed, where there was not a divorce first obtained in
the spiritual court; which we look upon as an ill precedent, and may be
of dangerous consequence in the future. HALIFAX. ROCHESTER.]
[Footnote 49: See Mr. Boswell's doubts on this head; and the point,
fully discussed by Malone, and Bindley in the notes to Boswell. Edit.
1816. i. 150, 151. ED.]
[Footnote 50: On this circumstance, Boswell founds one of his strongest
arguments against Savage's being the son of lady Macclesfield. "If there
was such a legacy left," says Boswell, "his not being able to obtain
payment of it, must be imputed to his consciousness that he was not the
real person. The just inference should be, that, by the death of lady
Macclesfield's child before its godmother, the legacy became lapsed;
and, therefore, that Johnson's Savage was an impostor. If he had a title
to the legacy, he could not have found any difficulty in recovering it;
for had the executors resisted his claim, the whole costs, as well as
the legacy, must have been paid by them, if he had been the child to
whom it was given." With respect for the legal memory of Boswell, we
would venture to urge, that the forma pauperis is not the most available
mode of addressing an English court; and, therefore, Johnson is not
clearly proved wrong by the above argument brought against him. ED.]
[Footnote 51: He died August 18th, 1712 R.]
[Footnote 52: Savage's preface to his Miscellany.]
[Footnote 53: Savage's preface to his Miscellany.]
[Footnote 54: See the Plain Dealer.]
[Footnote 55: The title of this poem was the Convocation, or a Battle of
Pamphlets, 1717. J. B.]
[Footnote 56: Jacob's Lives of the Dramatick Poets. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 57: This play was printed first in 8vo.; and afterwards in
12mo. the fifth edition. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 58: Plain Dealer, Dr. J.]
[Footnote 59: As it is a loss to mankind when any good action is
forgotten, I shall insert another instance of Mr. Wilks's generosity,
very little known. Mr. Smith, a gentleman educated at Dublin, being
hindered by an impediment in his pronunciation from engaging in orders,
for which his friends designed him, left his own country, and came to
London in quest of employment, but found his solicitations fruitless,
and his necessities every day more pressing. In this distress he wrote a
tragedy, and offered it to the players, by whom it was rejected. Thus
were his last hopes defeated, and he had no other prospect than of the
most deplorable poverty. But Mr. Wilks thought his performance, though
not perfect, at least worthy of some reward, and, therefore, offered him
a benefit. This favour he improved with so much diligence, that the
house afforded him a considerable sum, with which he went to Leyden,
applied himself to the study of physick, and prosecuted his design with
so much diligence and success, that, when Dr. Boerhaave was desired by
the czarina to recommend proper persons to introduce into Russia the
practice and study of physick, Dr. Smith was one of those whom he
selected. He had a considerable pension settled on him at his arrival,
and was one of the chief physicians at the Russian court. Dr. J.
A letter from Dr. Smith, in Russia, to Mr. Wilks, is printed in
Chetwood's History of the Stage. R.]
[Footnote 60: "This," says Dr. Johnson, "I write upon the credit of the
author of his life, which was published in 1727;" and was a small
pamphlet, intended to plead his cause with the publick while under
sentence of death "for the murder of Mr. James Sinclair, at Robinson's
coffee-house, at Charing-cross, price 6d. Roberts." Savage sent a copy
of it to Mrs. Carter, with some corrections and remarks. See his letter
to that lady in Mrs. Carter's life by Mr. Pennington, vol. i. p. 58.]
[Footnote 61: Chetwood, however, has printed a poem on her death, which
he ascribes to Mr. Savage. See History of the Stage, p. 206]
[Footnote 62: In 1724.]
[Footnote 63: Printed in the late collection of his poems.]
[Footnote 64: It was acted only three nights, the first on June 12,1723.
When the house opened for the winter season it was once more performed
for the author's benefit, Oct. 2. R.]
[Footnote 65: To Herbert Tryst, esq. of Herefoulshire. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 66: The Plain Dealer was a periodical paper, written by Mr.
Hill and Mr. Bond, whom Savage called the two contending powers of light
and darkness. They wrote, by turns, each six essays; and the character
of the work was observed regularly to rise in Mr. Hill's weeks, and fall
in Mr. Bond's. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 66: The Plain Dealer was a periodical paper, written by Mr.
Hill and Mr. Bond, whom Savage called the two contending powers of light
and darkness. They wrote, by turns, each six essays; and the character
of the work was observed regularly to rise in Mr. Hill's weeks, and fall
in Mr. Bond's. Dr. J.
[Footnote 67: The names of those who so generously contributed to his
relief having been mentioned in a former account, ought not to be
omitted here. They were the dutchess of Cleveland, lady Cheyney, lady
Castlemain, lady Gower, lady Lechmere, the dutchess dowager and dutchess
of Rutland, lady Strafford, the countess dowager of Warwick, Mrs. Mary
Floyer, Mrs. Sofuel Noel, duke of Rutland, lord Gainsborough, lord
Milsington, Mr. John Savage. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 68: This the following extract from it will prove:--"Since our
country has been honoured with the glory of your wit, as elevated and
immortal as your soul, it no longer remains a doubt whether your sex
have strength of mind in proportion to their sweetness. There is
something in your verses as distinguished as your air. They are as
strong as truth, as deep as reason, as clear as innocence, and as smooth
as beauty. They contain a nameless and peculiar mixture of force and
grace, which is at once so movingly serene, and so majestically lovely,
that it is too amiable to appear any where but in your eyes and in your
writings."
"As fortune is not more my enemy than I am the enemy of flattery, I know
not how I can forbear this application to your ladyship, because there
is scarce a possibility that I should say more than I believe, when I am
speaking of your excellence." Dr. J.]
[Footnote 69: Mr. Savage's life.]
[Footnote 70: She died October 11, 1753, at her house in Old Bond
street, aged above fourscore. R.]
[Footnote 71: It appears that during his confinement he wrote a letter
to his mother, which he sent to Theophilus Cibber, that it might be
transmitted to her through the means of Mr. Wilks. In his letter to
Cibber he says: "As to death, I am easy, and dare meet it like a
man--all that touches me is the concern of my friends, and a
reconcilement with my mother. I cannot express the agony I felt when I
wrote the letter to her: if you can find any decent excuse for showing
it to Mrs. Oldfield, do; for I would have all my friends (and that
admirable lady in particular) be satisfied I have done my duty towards
it. Dr. Young to-day sent me a letter most passionately kind." R.]
[Footnote 72: Written by Mr. Beckingham and another gentleman. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 73: Printed in the late collection.]
[Footnote 74: In one of his letters he styles it "a fatal quarrel, but
too well known." Dr. J.]
[Footnote 75: Printed in his works, vol. ii. p. 231.]
[Footnote 76: See his works, vol. ii. p. 233.]
[Footnote 77: This epigram was, I believe, never published:
"Should Dennis publish you had stabb'd your brother,
Lampoon'd your monarch, or debauch'd your mother;
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,
Uncag'd then, let the harmless monster rage,
Secure in dullness, madness, want, and age."
Dr. J.]
[Footnote 78: 1729.]
[Footnote 79: His expression, in one of his letters, was, "that lord
Tyrconnel had involved his estate, and, therefore, poorly sought an
occasion to quarrel with him," Dr. J.]
[Footnote 80: This poem is inserted in the late collection.]
[Footnote 81: Printed in the late collection.]
[Footnote 82: A short satire was, likewise, published in the same paper,
in which were the following lines:
For cruel murder doom'd to hempen death,
Savage, by royal grace, prolong'd his breath.
Well might you think he spent his future years
In pray'r, and fasting, and repentant tears.
--But, O vain hope!--the truly Savage cries,
"Priests, and their slavish doctrines, I despise.
Shall I----
Who, by free-thinking to free action fir'd.
In midnight brawls a deathless name acquir'd,
Now stoop to learn of ecclesiastic men?
No, arm'd with rhyme, at priests I'll take my aim.
Though prudence bids me murder but their fame."
Weekly Miscellany.
An answer was published in the Gentleman's Magazine, written by an
unknown hand, from which the following lines are selected:
Transform'd by thoughtless rage, and midnight wine,
From malice free, and push'd without design;
In equal brawl if Savage lung'd a thrust,
And brought the youth a victim to the dust;
So strong the hand of accident appears,
The royal hand from guilt and vengeance clears.
Instead of wasting "all thy future years,
Savage, in pray'r and vain repentant tears,"
Exert thy pen to mend a vitious age,
To curb the priest, and sink his high-church rage;
To show what frauds the holy vestments hide,
The nests of av'rice, lust, and pedant pride:
Then change the scene, let merit brightly shine,
And round the patriot twist the wreath divine;
The heav'nly guide deliver down to fame;
In well-tun'd lays transmit a Foster's name;
Touch ev'ry passion with harmonious art,
Exalt the genius, and correct the heart.
Thus future times shall royal grace extol;
Thus polish'd lines thy present fame enrol.
----But grant----
----Maliciously that Savage plung'd the steel,
And made the youth its shining vengeance feel;
My soul abhors the act, the man detests,
But more the bigotry in priestly breasts.
Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1735. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 83: By Mr. Pope. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 84: Reprinted in the late collection.]
[Footnote 85: In a letter after his confinement. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 86: Letter, Jan. 15.]
[Footnote 87: See this confirmed, Gent. Mag. vol. lvii. 1140. N.]
[Footnote 88: The author preferred this title to that of London and
Bristol compared; which, when he began the piece, he intended to prefix
to it. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 89: This friend was Mr. Cave, the printer. N.]
[Footnote 90: Mr. Strong, of the post-office. N.]
[Footnote 91: See Gent. Mag. vol. lvii. 1040. N.]
[Footnote 92: Mr. Pope. See some extracts of letters from that gentleman
to and concerning Mr. Savage, in Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 502. R.]
SWIFT.
An account of Dr. Swift has been already collected, with great diligence
and acuteness, by Dr. Hawkesworth, according to a scheme which I laid
before him in the intimacy of our friendship. I cannot, therefore, be
expected to say much of a life, concerning which I had long since
communicated my thoughts to a man capable of dignifying his narrations
with so much elegance of language and force of sentiment.
Jonathan Swift was, according to an account said to be written by
himself[93], the son of Jonathan Swift, an attorney, and was born at
Dublin, on St. Andrew's day, 1667: according to his own report, as
delivered by Pope to Spence, he was born at Leicester, the son of a
clergyman, who was minister of a parish in Herefordshire[94]. During his
life the place of his birth was undetermined. He was contented to be
called an Irishman by the Irish; but would occasionally call himself an
Englishman. The question may, without much regret, be left in the
obscurity in which he delighted to involve it.
Whatever was his birth, his education was Irish. He was sent, at the age
of six, to the school at Kilkenny, and in his fifteenth year, 1682, was
admitted into the university of Dublin.
In his academical studies he was either not diligent or not happy. It
must disappoint every reader's expectation, that, when at the usual time
he claimed the bachelorship of arts, he was found by the examiners too
conspicuously deficient for regular admission, and obtained his degree,
at last, by _special favour_; a term used in that university to denote
want of merit.
Of this disgrace it may easily be supposed that he was much ashamed,
and shame had its proper effect in producing reformation. He resolved,
from that time, to study eight hours a day, and continued his industry
for seven years, with what improvement is sufficiently known. This part
of his story well deserves to be remembered; it may afford useful
admonition and powerful encouragement to men whose abilities have been
made for a time useless by their passions or pleasures, and who, having
lost one part of life in idleness, are tempted to throw away the
remainder in despair.
In this course of daily application he continued three years longer at
Dublin; and in this time, if the observation and memory of an old
companion may be trusted, he drew the first sketch of his Tale of a Tub.
When he was about one-and-twenty, 1688, being, by the death of Godwin
Swift, his uncle, who had supported him, left without subsistence, he
went to consult his mother, who then lived at Leicester, about the
future course of his life; and by her direction solicited the advice and
patronage of sir William Temple, who had married one of Mrs. Swift's
relations, and whose father, sir John Temple, master of the Rolls in
Ireland, had lived in great familiarity of friendship with Godwin Swift,
by whom Jonathan had been to that time maintained.
Temple received with sufficient kindness the nephew of his father's
friend, with whom he was, when they conversed together, so much pleased,
that he detained him two years in his house. Here he became known to
king William, who sometimes visited Temple when he was disabled by the
gout, and, being attended by Swift in the garden, showed him how to cut
asparagus in the Dutch way.
King William's notions were all military; and he expressed his kindness
to Swift by offering to make him a captain of horse.
When Temple removed to Moor-park, he took Swift with him; and when he
was consulted by the earl of Portland about the expedience of complying
with a bill then depending for making parliaments triennial, against
which king William was strongly prejudiced, after having in vain tried
to show the earl that the proposal involved nothing dangerous to royal
power, he sent Swift for the same purpose to the king. Swift, who
probably was proud of his employment, and went with all the confidence
of a young man, found his arguments, and his art of displaying them,
made totally ineffectual by the predetermination of the king; and used
to mention this disappointment as his first antidote against vanity.
Before he left Ireland he contracted a disorder, as he thought, by
eating too much fruit. The original of diseases is commonly obscure.
Almost every boy eats as much fruit as he can get, without any great
inconvenience. The disease of Swift was giddiness with deafness, which
attacked him from time to time, began very early, pursued him through
life, and, at last, sent him to the grave, deprived of reason.
Being much oppressed at Moor-park by this grievous malady, he was
advised to try his native air, and went to Ireland; but, finding no
benefit, returned to sir William, at whose house he continued his
studies, and is known to have read, among other books, Cyprian and
Irenaeus. He thought exercise of great necessity, and used to run half a
mile up and down a hill every two hours.
It is easy to imagine that the mode in which his first degree was
conferred, left him no great fondness for the university of Dublin, and,
therefore, he resolved to become a master of arts at Oxford. In the
testimonial which he produced, the words of disgrace were omitted[94];
and he took his master's degree July 5, 1692, with such reception and
regard as fully contented him.
While he lived with Temple, he used to pay his mother, at Leicester, a
yearly visit. He travelled on foot, unless some violence of weather
drove him into a wagon; and at night he would go to a penny lodging,
where he purchased clean sheets for sixpence. This practice lord Orrery
imputes to his innate love of grossness and vulgarity: some may ascribe
it to his desire of surveying human life through all its varieties; and
others, perhaps, with equal probability, to a passion which seems to
have been deeply fixed in his heart, the love of a shilling.
In time he began to think that his attendance at Moor-park deserved some
other recompense than the pleasure, however mingled with improvement, of
Temple's conversation; and grew so impatient, that, 1694, he went away
in discontent.
Temple, conscious of having given reason for complaint, is said to have
made him deputy-master of the rolls, in Ireland; which, according to his
kinsman's account, was an office which he knew him not able to
discharge. Swift, therefore, resolved to enter into the church, in which
he had at first no higher hopes than of the chaplainship to the factory,
at Lisbon; but being recommended to lord Capel, he obtained the prebend
of Kilroot, in Connor, of about a hundred pounds a year.
But the infirmities of Temple made a companion like Swift so necessary,
that he invited him back, with a promise to procure him English
preferment in exchange for the prebend, which he desired him to
resign[95]. With this request Swift complied, having, perhaps, equally
repented their separation, and they lived on together with mutual
satisfaction; and, in the four years that passed between his return and
Temple's death, it is probable that he wrote the Tale of a Tub, and the
Battle of the Books.
Swift began early to think, or to hope, that he was a poet, and wrote
Pindarick odes to Temple, to the king, and to the Athenian society, a
knot of obscure men[96], who published a periodical pamphlet of answers
to questions, sent, or supposed to be sent, by letters. I have been told
that Dryden, having perused these verses, said, "Cousin Swift, you will
never be a poet;" and that this denunciation was the motive of Swift's
perpetual malevolence to Dryden.
In 1699 Temple died, and left a legacy with his manuscripts to Swift,
for whom he had obtained, from king William, a promise of the first
prebend that should be vacant at Westminster or Canterbury.
That this promise might not be forgotten, Swift dedicated to the king
the posthumous works with which he was intrusted; but neither the
dedication, nor tenderness for the man whom he once had treated with
confidence and fondness, revived in king William the remembrance of his
promise. Swift awhile attended the court; but soon found his
solicitations hopeless.
He was then invited by the earl of Berkeley to accompany him into
Ireland, as his private secretary; but, after having done the business
till their arrival at Dublin, he then found that one Bush had persuaded
the earl that a clergyman was not a proper secretary, and had obtained
the office for himself. In a man like Swift, such circumvention and
inconstancy must have excited violent indignation.
But he had yet more to suffer. Lord Berkeley had the disposal of the
deanery of Derry, and Swift expected to obtain it; but by the
secretary's influence, supposed to have been secured by a bribe, it was
bestowed on somebody else; and Swift was dismissed with the livings of
Laracor and Rathbeggin, in the diocese of Meath, which together did not
equal half the value of the deanery.
At Laracor he increased the parochial duty by reading prayers on
Wednesdays and Fridays, and performed all the offices of his profession
with great decency and exactness.
Soon after his settlement at Laracor, he invited to Ireland the
unfortunate Stella; a young woman, whose name was Johnson, the daughter
of the steward of sir William Temple, who, in consideration of her
father's virtues, left her a thousand pounds[97]. With her came Mrs.
Dingley, whose whole fortune was twenty-seven pounds a year for her
life. With these ladies he passed his hours of relaxation, and to them
he opened his bosom; but they never resided in the same house, nor did
he see either without a witness. They lived at the parsonage when Swift
was away; and, when he returned, removed to a lodging, or to the house
of a neighbouring clergyman.
Swift was not one of those minds which amaze the world with early
pregnancy: his first work, except his few poetical essays, was the
Dissensions in Athens and Rome, published, 1701, in his thirty-fourth
year. After its appearance, paying a visit to some bishop, he heard
mention made of the new pamphlet that Burnet had written, replete with
political knowledge. When he seemed to doubt Burnet's right to the work,
he was told, by the bishop, that he was "a young man;" and, still
persisting to doubt, that he was "a very positive young man."
Three years afterwards, 1704, was published the Tale of a Tub: of this
book charity may be persuaded to think, that it might be written by a
man of a peculiar character, without ill intention; but it is certainly
of dangerous example. That Swift was its author, though it be
universally believed, was never owned by himself, nor very well proved
by any evidence; but no other claimant can be produced, and he did not
deny it when archbishop Sharpe and the dutchess of Somerset, by showing
it to the queen, debarred him from a bishoprick.
When this wild work first raised the attention of the publick,
Sacheverell, meeting Smalridge, tried to flatter him, by seeming to
think him the author; but Smalridge answered, with indignation: "Not
all that you and I have in the world, nor all that ever we shall have,
should hire me to write the Tale of a Tub."
The digressions relating to Wotton and Bentley must be confessed to
discover want of knowledge, or want of integrity; he did not understand
the two controversies, or he willingly misrepresented them. But wit can
stand its ground against truth only a little while. The honours due to
learning have been justly distributed by the decision of posterity.
The Battle of the Books is so like the Combat des Livres, which the same
question concerning the ancients and moderns had produced in France,
that the improbability of such a coincidence of thoughts, without
communication, is not, in my opinion, balanced by the anonymous
protestation prefixed, in which all knowledge of the French book is
peremptorily disowned[98].
For some time after Swift was probably employed in solitary study,
gaining the qualifications requisite for future eminence. How often he
visited England, and with what diligence he attended his parishes, I
know not. It was not till about four years afterwards that he became a
professed author; and then, one year, 1708, produced the Sentiments of a
Church of England Man; the ridicule of astrology, under the name of
Bickerstaff; the Argument against abolishing Christianity, and the
Defence of the Sacramental Test.
The Sentiments of a Church of England Man is written with great
coolness, moderation, ease, and perspicuity. The Argument against
abolishing Christianity is a very happy and judicious irony. One passage
in it deserves to be selected.
"If christianity were once abolished, how could the freethinkers, the
strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning, be able to find
another subject so calculated, in all points, whereon to display their
abilities? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of
from those, whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned
upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would, therefore,
never be able to shine, or distinguish themselves, upon any other
subject! We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us,
and would take away the greatest, perhaps the only, topick we have left.
Who would ever have suspected Asgill for a wit, or Toland for a
philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of christianity had not been at
hand to provide them with materials? What other subject, through all art
or nature, could have produced Tindal for a profound author, or
furnished him with readers? It is the wise choice of the subject that
alone adorns and distinguishes the writer. For, had an hundred such pens
as these been employed on the side of religion, they would have
immediately sunk into silence and oblivion."
The reasonableness of a test is not hard to be proved; but, perhaps, it
must be allowed, that the proper test has not been chosen.
The attention paid to the papers published under the name of
Bickerstaff, induced Steele, when he projected the Tatler, to assume an
appellation which had already gained possession of the reader's notice.
In the year following he wrote a Project for the Advancement of
Religion, addressed to lady Berkeley; by whose kindness it is not
unlikely that he was advanced to his benefices. To this project, which
is formed with great purity of intention, and displayed with
sprightliness and elegance, it can only be objected, that, like many
projects, it is, if not generally impracticable, yet evidently hopeless,
as it supposes more zeal, concord, and perseverance, than a view of
mankind gives reason for expecting.
He wrote, likewise, this year, a Vindication of Bickerstaff; and an
explanation of an ancient Prophecy; part written after the facts, and
the rest never completed, but well planned to excite amazement.
Soon after began the busy and important part of Swift's life. He was
employed, 1710, by the primate of Ireland, to solicit the queen for a
remission of the first fruits and twentieth parts to the Irish clergy.
With this purpose he had recourse to Mr. Harley, to whom he was
mentioned as a man neglected and oppressed by the last ministry, because
he had refused to coöperate with some of their schemes. What he had
refused has never been told; what he had suffered was, I suppose, the
exclusion from a bishoprick by the remonstrances of Sharpe, whom he
describes as "the harmless tool of others' hate," and whom he represents
as afterwards "suing for pardon[99]."
Harley's designs and situation were such as made him glad of an
auxiliary so well qualified for his service; he, therefore, soon
admitted him to familiarity, whether ever to confidence, some have made
a doubt; but it would have been difficult to excite his zeal, without
persuading him that he was trusted, and not very easy to delude him by
false persuasions.
He was certainly admitted to those meetings in which the first hints and
original plan of action are supposed to have been formed; and was one of
the sixteen ministers, or agents of the ministry, who met weekly at each
other's houses, and were united by the name of _brother_.
Being not immediately considered as an obdurate tory, he conversed
indiscriminately with all the wits, and was yet the friend of Steele;
who, in the Tatler, which began in April, 1709, confesses the advantages
of his conversation, and mentions something contributed by him to his
paper. But he was now immerging into political controversy; for the year
1710 produced the Examiner, of which Swift wrote thirty-three papers. In
argument he may be allowed to have the advantage; for where a wide
system of conduct, and the whole of a publick character, is laid open
to inquiry, the accuser having the choice of facts, must be very
unskilful if he does not prevail; but, with regard to wit, I am afraid
none of Swift's papers will be found equal to those by which Addison
opposed him[100].
He wrote, in the year 1711, a Letter to the October Club, a number of
tory gentlemen sent from the country to parliament, who formed
themselves into a club, to the number of about a hundred, and met to
animate the zeal and raise the expectations of each other. They thought,
with great reason, that the ministers were losing opportunities; that
sufficient use was not made of the ardour of the nation; they called
loudly for more changes, and stronger efforts; and demanded the
punishment of part, and the dismission of the rest, of those whom they
considered as publick robbers.
Their eagerness was not gratified by the queen, or by Harley. The queen
was probably slow because she was afraid; and Harley was slow because he
was doubtful: he was a tory only by necessity, or for convenience; and,
when he had power in his hands, had no settled purpose for which he
should employ it; forced to gratify, to a certain degree, the tories who
supported him, but unwilling to make his reconcilement to the whigs
utterly desperate, he corresponded at once with the two expectants of
the crown, and kept, as has been observed, the succession undetermined.
Not knowing what to do, he did nothing; and, with the fate of a
double-dealer, at last he lost his power, but kept his enemies.
Swift seems to have concurred in opinion with the October Club; but it
was not in his power to quicken the tardiness of Harley, whom he
stimulated as much as he could, but with little effect. He that knows
not whither to go, is in no haste to move. Harley, who was perhaps not
quick by nature, became yet more slow by irresolution; and was content
to hear that dilatoriness lamented as natural, which he applauded in
himself as politick.
Without the tories, however, nothing could be done; and, as they were
not to be gratified, they must be appeased; and the conduct of the
minister, if it could not be vindicated, was to be plausibly excused.
Early in the next year he published a Proposal for correcting,
improving, and ascertaining the English Tongue, in a letter to the earl
of Oxford; written without much knowledge of the general nature of
language, and without any accurate inquiry into the history of other
tongues. The certainty and stability which, contrary to all experience,
he thinks attainable, he proposes to secure by instituting an academy;
the decrees of which every man would have been willing, and many would
have been proud to disobey, and which, being renewed by successive
elections, would, in a short time, have differed from itself.
Swift now attained the zenith of his political importance: he published,
1712, the Conduct of the Allies, ten days before the parliament
assembled. The purpose was to persuade the nation to a peace; and never
had any writer more success. The people, who had been amused with
bonfires and triumphal processions, and looked with idolatry on the
general and his friends, who, as they thought, had made England the
arbitress of nations, were confounded between shame and rage, when they
found that "mines had been exhausted, and millions destroyed," to secure
the Dutch, or aggrandize the emperour, without any advantage to
ourselves; that we had been bribing our neighbours to fight their own
quarrel; and that amongst our enemies, we might number our allies.
That is now no longer doubted, of which the nation was then first
informed, that the war was unnecessarily protracted to fill the pockets
of Marlborough; and that it would have been continued without end, if he
could have continued his annual plunder. But Swift, I suppose, did not
yet know what he has since written, that a commission was drawn which
would have appointed him general for life, had it not become
ineffectual by the resolution of lord Cowper, who refused the seal.
"Whatever is received," say the schools, "is received in proportion to
the recipient." The power of a political treatise depends much upon the
disposition of the people; the nation was then combustible, and a spark
set it on fire. It is boasted, that between November and January eleven
thousand were sold; a great number at that time, when we were not yet a
nation of readers. To its propagation certainly no agency of power or
influence was wanting. It furnished arguments for conversation, speeches
for debate, and materials for parliamentary resolutions.
Yet, surely, whoever surveys this wonder-working pamphlet with cool
perusal, will confess that its efficacy was supplied by the passions of
its readers; that it operates by the mere weight of facts, with very
little assistance from the hand that produced them.
This year, 1712, he published his Reflections on the Barrier Treaty,
which carries on the design of his Conduct of the Allies, and shows how
little regard in that negotiation had been shown to the interest of
England, and how much of the conquered country had been demanded by the
Dutch.
This was followed by Remarks on the Bishop of Sarum's Introduction to
his third volume of the History of the Reformation; a pamphlet which
Burnet published as an alarm, to warn the nation of the approach of
popery. Swift, who seems to have disliked the bishop with something more
than political aversion, treats him like one whom he is glad of an
opportunity to insult.
Swift, being now the declared favourite and supposed confidant of the
tory ministry, was treated by all that depended on the court with the
respect which dependants know how to pay. He soon began to feel part of
the misery of greatness; he that could say he knew him, considered
himself as having fortune in his power. Commissions, solicitations,
remonstrances crowded about him; he was expected to do every man's
business, to procure employment for one, and to retain it for another.
In assisting those who addressed him, he represents himself as
sufficiently diligent; and desires to have others believe, what he
probably believed himself, that by his interposition many whigs of
merit, and among them Addison and Congreve, were continued in their
places. But every man of known influence has so many petitions which he
cannot grant, that he must necessarily offend more than he gratifies,
because the preference given to one affords all the rest a reason for
complaint. "When I give away a place," said Lewis the fourteenth, "I
make a hundred discontented, and one ungrateful."
Much has been said of the equality and independence which he preserved
in his conversation with the ministers, of the frankness of his
remonstrances, and the familiarity of his friendship. In accounts of
this kind a few single incidents are set against the general tenour of
behaviour. No man, however, can pay a more servile tribute to the great,
than by suffering his liberty in their presence to aggrandize him in his
own esteem. Between different ranks of the community there is
necessarily some distance; he who is called by his superiour to pass the
interval, may properly accept the invitation; but petulance and
obtrusion are rarely produced by magnanimity; nor have often any nobler
cause than the pride of importance, and the malice of inferiority. He
who knows himself necessary may set, while that necessity lasts, a high
value upon himself; as, in a lower condition, a servant eminently
skilful may be saucy; but he is saucy only because he is servile. Swift
appears to have preserved the kindness of the great when they wanted him
no longer; and, therefore, it must be allowed, that the childish
freedom, to which he seems enough inclined, was overpowered by his
better qualities.
His disinterestedness has been likewise mentioned; a strain of heroism,
which would have been in his condition romantick and superfluous.
Ecclesiastical benefices, when they become vacant, must be given away;
and the friends of power may, if there be no inherent disqualification,
easonably expect them. Swift accepted, 1713, the deanery of St.
Patrick, the best preferment that his friends could venture[101] to give
him. That ministry was, in a great degree, supported by the clergy, who
were not yet reconciled to the author of the Tale of a Tub, and would
not, without much discontent and indignation, have borne to see him
installed in an English cathedral.
He refused, indeed, fifty pounds from lord Oxford; but he accepted,
afterwards, a draught of a thousand upon the exchequer, which was
intercepted by the queen's death, and which he resigned, as he says
himself, "multa gemens," with many a groan[102].
In the midst of his power and his politicks, he kept a journal of his
visits, his walks, his interviews with ministers, and quarrels with his
servant, and transmitted it to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, to whom he
knew that whatever befell him was interesting, and no accounts could be
too minute. Whether these diurnal trifles were properly exposed to eyes
which had never received any pleasure from the presence of the dean, may
be reasonably doubted: they have, however, some odd attraction; the
reader finding frequent mention of names which he has been used to
consider as important, goes on in hope of information; and, as there is
nothing to fatigue attention, if he is disappointed he can hardly
complain. It is easy to perceive, from every page, that though ambition
pressed Swift into a life of bustle, the wish for a life of ease was
always returning.
He went to take possession of his deanery as soon as he had obtained it;
but he was not suffered to stay in Ireland more than a fortnight, before
he was recalled to England, that he might reconcile lord Oxford and lord
Bolingbroke, who began to look on one another with malevolence, which
every day increased, and which Bolingbroke appeared to retain in his
last years.
Swift contrived an interview, from which they both departed
discontented: he procured a second, which only convinced him that the
feud was irreconcilable: he told them his opinion, that all was lost.
This denunciation was contradicted by Oxford; but Bolingbroke whispered
that he was right.
Before this violent dissension had shattered the ministry, Swift had
published, in the beginning of the year 1714, the publick Spirit of the
Whigs, in answer to the Crisis, a pamphlet for which Steele was expelled
from the house of commons. Swift was now so far alienated from Steele,
as to think him no longer entitled to decency, and, therefore, treats
him sometimes with contempt, and sometimes with abhorrence.
In this pamphlet the Scotch were mentioned in terms so provoking to that
irritable nation, that resolving "not to be offended with impunity," the
Scotch lords, in a body, demanded an audience of the queen, and
solicited reparation. A proclamation was issued, in which three hundred
pounds were offered for the discovery of the author. From this storm he
was, as he relates, "secured by a sleight;" of what kind, or by whose
prudence, is not known; and such was the increase of his reputation,
that the Scottish "nation applied again that he would be their friend."
He was become so formidable to the whigs, that his familiarity with the
ministers was clamoured at in parliament, particularly by two men,
afterwards of great note, Aislabie and Walpole.
But, by the disunion of his great friends, his importance and designs
were now at an end; and seeing his services at last useless, he retired,
about June, 1714, into Berkshire, where, in the house of a friend, he
wrote what was then suppressed, but has since appeared under the title
of Free Thoughts on the present State of Affairs.
While he was waiting in this retirement for events which time or chance
might bring to pass, the death of the queen broke down at once the whole
system of tory politicks; and nothing remained but to withdraw from the
implacability of triumphant whiggism, and shelter himself in unenvied
obscurity.
The accounts of his reception in Ireland, given by lord Orrery and Dr.
Delany, are so different, that the credit of the writers, both
undoubtedly veracious, cannot be saved, but by supposing, what I think
is true, that they speak of different times. When Delany says, that he
was received with respect, he means for the first fortnight, when he
came to take legal possession; and when lord Orrery tells that he was
pelted by the populace, he is to be understood of the time when, after
the queen's death, he became a settled resident.
The archbishop of Dublin gave him at first some disturbance in the
exercise of his jurisdiction; but it was soon discovered, that between
prudence and integrity he was seldom in the wrong; and that, when he was
right, his spirit did not easily yield to opposition.
Having so lately quitted the tumults of a party, and the intrigues of a
court, they still kept his thoughts in agitation, as the sea fluctuates
awhile when the storm has ceased. He, therefore, filled his hours with
some historical attempts, relating to the change of the ministers, and
the conduct of the ministry. He, likewise, is said to have written a
history of the four last years of queen Anne, which he began in her
lifetime, and afterwards laboured with great attention, but never
published. It was after his death in the hands of lord Orrery and Dr.
King. A book under that title was published with Swift's name, by Dr.
Lucas; of which I can only say, that it seemed by no means to correspond
with the notions that I had formed of it, from a conversation which I
once heard between the earl of Orrery and old Mr. Lewis.
Swift now, much against his will, commenced Irishman for life, and was
to contrive how he might be best accommodated in a country where he
considered himself as in a state of exile. It seems that his first
recourse was to piety. The thoughts of death rushed upon him, at this
time, with such incessant importunity, that they took possession of his
mind, when he first waked, for many years together.
He opened his house by a publick table two days a week, and found his
entertainments gradually frequented by more and more visitants of
learning among the men, and of elegance among the women. Mrs. Johnson
had left the country, and lived in lodgings not far from the deanery. On
his publick days she regulated the table, but appeared at it as a mere
guest, like other ladies.
On other days he often dined, at a stated price, with Mr. Worral, a
clergyman of his cathedral, whose house was recommended by the peculiar
neatness and pleasantry of his wife. To this frugal mode of living, he
was first disposed by care to pay some debts which he had contracted,
and he continued it for the pleasure of accumulating money. His avarice,
however, was not suffered to obstruct the claims of his dignity; he was
served in plate, and used to say, that he was the poorest gentleman in
Ireland that ate upon plate, and the richest that lived without a coach.
How he spent the rest of his time, and how he employed his hours of
study, has been inquired with hopeless curiosity. For who can give an
account of another's studies? Swift was not likely to admit any to his
privacies, or to impart a minute account of his business or his leisure.
Soon after, 1716, in his forty-ninth year, he was privately married to
Mrs. Johnson, by Dr. Ashe, bishop of Clogher, as Dr. Madden told me, in
the garden. The marriage made no change in their mode of life; they
lived in different houses, as before; nor did she ever lodge in the
deanery but when Swift was seized with a fit of giddiness. "It would be
difficult," says lord Orrery, "to prove that they were ever afterwards
together without a third person."
The dean of St. Patrick's lived in a private manner, known and regarded
only by his friends; till, about the year 1720, he, by a pamphlet,
recommended to the Irish the use, and, consequently, the improvement of
their manufacture. For a man to use the productions of his own labour is
surely a natural right, and to like best what he makes himself is a
natural passion. But to excite this passion, and enforce this right,
appeared so criminal to those who had an interest in the English trade,
that the printer was imprisoned; and, as Hawkesworth justly observes,
the attention of the publick being, by this outrageous resentment,
turned upon the proposal, the author was by consequence made popular.
In 1723 died Mrs. Van Homrigh, a woman made unhappy by her admiration of
wit, and ignominiously distinguished by the name of Vanessa, whose
conduct has been already sufficiently discussed, and whose history is
too well known to be minutely repeated. She was a young woman fond of
literature, whom Decanus, the dean, called Cadenus by transposition of
the letters, took pleasure in directing and instructing; till, from
being proud of his praise, she grew fond of his person. Swift was then
about forty-seven, at an age when vanity is strongly excited by the
amorous attention of a young woman. If it be said that Swift should have
checked a passion which he never meant to gratify, recourse must be had
to that extenuation which he so much despised, "men are but men:"
perhaps, however, he did not at first know his own mind, and, as he
represents himself, was undetermined. For his admission of her
courtship, and his indulgence of her hopes, after his marriage to
Stella, no other honest plea can be found than that he delayed a
disagreeable discovery from time to time, dreading the immediate bursts
of distress, and watching for a favourable moment. She thought herself
neglected, and died of disappointment; having ordered, by her will, the
poem to be published, in which Cadenus had proclaimed her excellence,
and confessed his love. The effect of the publication upon the dean and
Stella is thus related by Delany:
"I have good reason to believe that they both were greatly shocked and
distressed (though it may be differently) upon this occasion. The dean
made a tour to the south of Ireland, for about two months, at this time,
to dissipate his thoughts, and give place to obloquy. And Stella
retired, upon the earnest invitation of the owner, to the house of a
cheerful, generous, good-natured friend of the dean's, whom she also
much loved and honoured. There my informer often saw her; and, I have
reason to believe, used his utmost endeavours to relieve, support, and
amuse her, in this sad situation.
"One little incident he told me of on that occasion, I think I shall
never forget. As her friend was an hospitable, open-hearted man,
well-beloved and largely acquainted, it happened one day that some
gentlemen dropped in to dinner, who were strangers to Stella's
situation; and as the poem of Cadenus and Vanessa was then the general
topick of conversation, one of them said, 'Surely that Vanessa must be
an extraordinary woman, that could inspire the dean to write so finely
upon her.' Mrs. Johnson smiled, and answered, 'that she thought that
point not quite so clear; for it was well known the dean could write
finely upon a broomstick.'"
The great acquisition of esteem and influence was made by the Drapier's
Letters, in 1724. One Wood, of Wolverhampton, in Staffordshire, a man
enterprising and rapacious, had, as is said, by a present to the
dutchess of Munster, obtained a patent, empowering him to coin one
hundred and eighty thousand pounds of halfpence and farthings for the
kingdom of Ireland, in which there was a very inconvenient and
embarrassing scarcity of copper coin; so that it was possible to run in
debt upon the credit of a piece of money; for the cook or keeper of an
alehouse could not refuse to supply a man that had silver in his hand,
and the buyer would not leave his money without change.
The project was therefore plausible. The scarcity, which was already
great, Wood took care to make greater, by agents who gathered up the old
halfpence; and was about to turn his brass into gold, by pouring the
treasures of his new mint upon Ireland; when Swift, finding that the
metal was debased to an enormous degree, wrote letters, under the name
of M. B. Drapier, to show the folly of receiving, and the mischief that
must ensue by giving gold and silver for coin worth, perhaps, not a
third part of its nominal value.
The nation was alarmed; the new coin was universally refused; but the
governors of Ireland considered resistance to the king's patent as
highly criminal; and one Whitshed, then chief justice, who had tried the
printer of the former pamphlet, and sent out the jury nine times, till,
by clamour and menaces, they were frighted into a special verdict, now
presented the Drapier, but could not prevail on the grand jury to find
the bill.
Lord Carteret and the privy council published a proclamation, offering
three hundred pounds for discovering the author of the fourth letter.
Swift had concealed himself from his printers, and trusted only his
butler, who transcribed the paper. The man, immediately after the
appearance of the proclamation, strolled from the house, and staid out
all night, and part of the next day. There was reason enough to fear
that he had betrayed his master for the reward; but he came home, and
the dean ordered him to put off his livery, and leave the house; "for,"
says he, "I know that my life is in your power, and I will not bear, out
of fear, either your insolence or negligence." The man excused his fault
with great submission, and begged that he might be confined in the house
while it was in his power to endanger his master; but the dean
resolutely turned him out, without taking farther notice of him, till
the term of information had expired, and then received him again. Soon
afterwards he ordered him and the rest of the servants into his
presence, without telling his intentions, and bade them take notice that
their fellow-servant was no longer Robert the butler; but that his
integrity had made him Mr. Blakeney, verger of St. Patrick's; an officer
whose income was between thirty and forty pounds a year: yet he still
continued, for some years, to serve his old master as his butler[103].
Swift was known, from this time, by the appellation of _the dean_. He
was honoured by the populace as the champion, patron, and instructor of
Ireland; and gained such power as, considered both in its extent and
duration, scarcely any man has ever enjoyed without greater wealth or
higher station.
He was, from this important year, the oracle of the traders, and the
idol of the rabble, and by consequence was feared and courted by all to
whom the kindness of the traders or the populace was necessary. The
Drapier was a sign; the Drapier was a health; and which way soever the
eye or the ear was turned, some tokens were found of the nation's
gratitude to the Drapier.
The benefit was indeed great; he had rescued Ireland from a very
oppressive and predatory invasion; and the popularity which he had
gained he was diligent to keep, by appearing forward and zealous on
every occasion, where the publick interest was supposed to be involved.
Nor did he much scruple to boast his influence; for when, upon some
attempts to regulate the coin, archbishop Boulter, then one of the
justices, accused him of exasperating the people, he exculpated himself
by saying, "If I had lifted up my finger, they would have torn you to
pieces."
But the pleasure of popularity was soon interrupted by domestick misery.
Mrs. Johnson, whose conversation was to him the great softener of the
ills of life, began in the year of the Drapier's triumph to decline;
and, two years afterwards, was so wasted with sickness, that her
recovery was considered as hopeless.
Swift was then in England, and had been invited by lord Bolingbroke to
pass the winter with him in France, but this call of calamity hastened
him to Ireland; where, perhaps, his presence contributed to restore her
to imperfect and tottering health.
He was now so much at ease, that, 1727, he returned to England; where he
collected three volumes of Miscellanies, in conjunction with Pope, who
prefixed a querulous and apologetical preface.
This important year sent likewise into the world, Gulliver's Travels; a
production so new and strange, that it filled the reader with a mingled
emotion of merriment and amazement. It was received with such avidity,
that the price of the first edition was raised before the second could
be made; it was read by the high and the low, the learned and
illiterate. Criticism was for awhile lost in wonder; no rules of
judgment were applied to a book written in open defiance of truth and
regularity. But when distinctions came to be made, the part which gave
the least pleasure was that which describes the Flying island, and that
which gave most disgust must be the history of the Houyhnhnms.
While Swift was enjoying the reputation of his new work, the news of the
king's death arrived; and he kissed the hands of the new king and queen
three days after their accession.
By the queen, when she was princess, he had been treated with some
distinction, and was well received by her in her exaltation; but whether
she gave hopes which she never took care to satisfy, or he formed
expectations which she never meant to raise, the event was, that he
always afterwards thought on her with malevolence, and particularly
charged her with breaking her promise of some medals which she engaged
to send him.
I know not whether she had not, in her turn, some reason for complaint.
A letter was sent her, not so much entreating, as requiring her
patronage of Mrs. Barber, an ingenious Irishwoman, who was then begging
subscriptions for her poems. To this letter was subscribed the name of
Swift, and it has all the appearances of his diction and sentiments; but
it was not written in his hand, and had some little improprieties. When
he was charged with this letter, he laid hold of the inaccuracies, and
urged the improbability of the accusation; but never denied it; he
shuffles between cowardice and veracity, and talks big when he says
nothing[104].
He seemed desirous enough of recommencing courtier, and endeavoured to
gain the kindness of Mrs. Howard, remembering what Mrs. Masham had
performed in former times: but his flatteries were like those of other
wits, unsuccessful; the lady either wanted power, or had no ambition of
poetical immortality.
He was seized not long afterwards by a fit of giddiness, and again heard
of the sickness and danger of Mrs. Johnson. He then left the house of
Pope, as it seems, with very little ceremony, finding "that two sick
friends cannot live together;" and did not write to him till he found
himself at Chester.
He turned to a home of sorrow: poor Stella was sinking into the grave,
and, after a languishing decay of about two months, died in her
forty-fourth year, on January 28, 1728. How much he wished her life, his
papers show; nor can it be doubted that he dreaded the death of her whom
he loved most, aggravated by the consciousness that himself had hastened
it.
Beauty and the power of pleasing, the greatest external advantages that
woman can desire or possess, were fatal to the unfortunate Stella. The
man whom she had the misfortune to love was, as Delany observes, fond of
singularity, and desirous to make a mode of happiness for himself,
different from the general course of things and order of providence.
From the time of her arrival in Ireland he seems resolved to keep her in
his power, and, therefore, hindered a match sufficiently advantageous,
by accumulating unreasonable demands, and prescribing conditions that
could not be performed. While she was at her own disposal he did not
consider his possession as secure; resentment, ambition, or caprice,
might separate them; he was, therefore, resolved to make "assurance
doubly sure," and to appropriate her by a private marriage, to which he
had annexed the expectation of all the pleasures of perfect friendship,
without the uneasiness of conjugal restraint. But with this state poor
Stella was not satisfied; she never was treated as a wife, and to the
world she had the appearance of a mistress. She lived sullenly on, in
hope that in time he would own and receive her; but the time did not
come till the change of his manners and depravation of his mind made her
tell him, when he offered to acknowledge her, that "it was too late."
She then gave up herself to sorrowful resentment, and died under the
tyranny of him, by whom she was in the highest degree loved and
honoured.
What were her claims to this eccentrick tenderness, by which the laws of
nature were violated to retain her, curiosity will inquire; but how
shall it be gratified? Swift was a lover; his testimony may be
suspected. Delany and the Irish saw with Swift's eyes, and, therefore,
add little confirmation. That she was virtuous, beautiful, and elegant,
in a very high degree, such admiration from such a lover makes it very
probable: but she had not much literature, for she could not spell her
own language; and of her wit, so loudly vaunted, the smart sayings which
Swift himself has collected afford no splendid specimen.
The reader of Swift's Letter to a Lady on her Marriage, may be allowed
to doubt whether his opinion of female excellence ought implicitly to be
admitted; for, if his general thoughts on women were such as he
exhibits, a very little sense in a lady would enrapture, and a very
little virtue would astonish him. Stella's supremacy, therefore, was,
perhaps, only local; she was great, because her associates were little.
In some remarks lately published on the Life of Swift, this marriage is
mentioned as fabulous, or doubtful; but, alas! poor Stella, as Dr.
Madden told me, related her melancholy story to Dr. Sheridan, when he
attended her as a clergyman to prepare her for death; and Delany
mentions it not with doubt, but only with regret. Swift never mentioned
her without a sigh. The rest of his life was spent in Ireland, in a
country to which not even power almost despotick, nor flattery almost
idolatrous, could reconcile him. He sometimes wished to visit England,
but always found some reason of delay. He tells Pope, in the decline of
life, that he hopes once more to see him; "but if not," says he, "we
must part as all human beings have parted."
After the death of Stella, his benevolence was contracted, and his
severity exasperated; he drove his acquaintance from his table, and
wondered why he was deserted. But he continued his attention to the
publick, and wrote, from time to time, such directions, admonitions, or
censures, as the exigency of affairs, in his opinion, made proper; and
nothing fell from his pen in vain.
In a short poem on the presbyterians, whom he always regarded with
detestation, he bestowed one stricture upon Bettesworth, a lawyer
eminent for his insolence to the clergy, which, from very considerable
reputation, brought him into immediate and universal contempt.
Bettesworth, enraged at his disgrace and loss, went to Swift, and
demanded whether he was the author of that poem? "Mr. Bettesworth,"
answered he, "I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers, who,
knowing my disposition to satire, advised me, that if any scoundrel or
blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, 'Are you the author of this
paper?' I should tell him that I was not the author; and, therefore, I
tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these lines."
Bettesworth was so little satisfied with this account, that he publickly
professed his resolution of a violent and corporal revenge; but the
inhabitants of St. Patrick's district embodied themselves in the dean's
defence. Bettesworth declared in parliament, that Swift had deprived him
of twelve hundred pounds a year.
Swift was popular awhile by another mode of beneficence. He set aside
some hundreds to be lent in small sums to the poor, from five shillings,
I think, to five pounds. He took no interest, and only required that, at
repayment, a small fee should be given to the accomptant; but he
required that the day of promised payment should be exactly kept. A
severe and punctilious temper is ill qualified for transactions with the
poor: the day was often broken, and the loan was not repaid. This might
have been easily foreseen; but for this Swift had made no provision of
patience or pity. He ordered his debtors to be sued. A severe creditor
has no popular character; what then was likely to be said of him who
employs the catchpoll under the appearance of charity? The clamour
against him was loud, and the resentment of the populace outrageous; he
was, therefore, forced to drop his scheme, and own the folly of
expecting punctuality from the poor[105].
His asperity continually increasing, condemned him to solitude; and his
resentment of solitude sharpened his asperity. He was not, however,
totally deserted; some men of learning, and some women of elegance,
often visited him; and he wrote, from time to time, either verse or
prose; of his verses he willingly gave copies, and is supposed to have
felt no discontent when he saw them printed. His favourite maxim was,
"Vive la bagatelle;" he thought trifles a necessary part of life, and,
perhaps, found them necessary to himself. It seems impossible to him to
be idle, and his disorders made it difficult or dangerous to be long
seriously studious, or laboriously diligent. The love of ease is always
gaining upon age, and he had one temptation to petty amusements peculiar
to himself; whatever he did, he was sure to hear applauded; and such was
his predominance over all that approached, that all their applauses were
probably sincere. He that is much flattered, soon learns to flatter
himself: we are commonly taught our duty by fear or shame, and how can
they act upon the man who hears nothing but his own praises?
As his years increased, his fits of giddiness and deafness grew more
frequent, and his deafness made conversation difficult; they grew
likewise more severe, till in 1736, as he was writing a poem called the
Legion Club, he was seized with a fit so painful and so long continued,
that he never after thought it proper to attempt any work of thought or
labour.
He was always careful of his money, and was, therefore, no liberal
entertainer; but was less frugal of his wine than of his meat. When his
friends of either sex came to him, in expectation of a dinner, his
custom was to give every one a shilling, that they might please
themselves with their provision. At last his avarice grew too powerful
for his kindness; he would refuse a bottle of wine, and in Ireland no
man visits where he cannot drink.
Having thus excluded conversation, and desisted from study, he had
neither business nor amusement; for, having by some ridiculous
resolution, or mad vow, determined never to wear spectacles, he could
make little use of books in his later years; his ideas, therefore, being
neither renovated by discourse, nor increased by reading, wore gradually
away, and left his mind vacant to the vexations of the hour, till, at
last, his anger was heightened into madness.
He, however, permitted one book to be published, which had been the
production of former years; Polite Conversation, which appeared in 1738.
The Directions for Servants was printed soon after his death. These two
performances show a mind incessantly attentive, and, when it was not
employed upon great things, busy with minute occurrences. It is
apparent, that he must have had the habit of noting whatever he
observed; for such a number of particulars could never have been
assembled by the power of recollection.
He grew more violent, and his mental powers declined, till, 1741, it was
found necessary that legal guardians should be appointed of his person
and fortune. He now lost distinction. His madness was compounded of rage
and fatuity. The last face that he knew was that of Mrs. Whiteway; and
her he ceased to know in a little time. His meat was brought him cut
into mouthfuls; but he would never touch it while the servant staid,
and, at last, after it had stood perhaps an hour, would eat it walking;
for he continued his old habit, and was on his feet ten hours a day.
Next year, 1742, he had an inflammation in his left eye, which swelled
it to the size of an egg, with biles in other parts; he was kept long
waking with the pain, and was not easily restrained by five attendants
from tearing out his eye.
The tumour at last subsided; and a short interval of reason ensuing, in
which he knew his physician and his family, gave hopes of his recovery;
but in a few days he sunk into a lethargick stupidity, motionless,
heedless, and speechless. But it is said, that, after a year of total
silence, when his house-keeper, on the 30th of November, told him that
the usual bonfires and illuminations were preparing to celebrate his
birthday, he answered, "It is all folly; they had better let it alone."
It is remembered, that he afterwards spoke now and then, or gave some
intimation of a meaning; but at last sunk into perfect silence, which
continued till about the end of October, 1745, when, in his
seventy-eighth year, he expired without a struggle.
* * * * *
When Swift is considered as an author, it is just to estimate his powers
by their effects. In the reign of queen Anne he turned the stream of
popularity against the whigs, and must be confessed to have dictated,
for a time, the political opinions of the English nation. In the
succeeding reign he delivered Ireland from plunder and oppression; and
showed that wit, confederated with truth, had such force as authority
was unable to resist. He said truly of himself, that Ireland "was his
debtor." It was from the time when he first began to patronise the
Irish, that they may date their riches and prosperity. He taught them
first to know their own interest, their weight, and their strength, and
gave them spirit to assert that equality with their fellow-subjects to
which they have ever since been making vigorous advances, and to claim
those rights which they have at last established. Nor can they be
charged with ingratitude to their benefactor; for they reverenced him as
a guardian, and obeyed him as a dictator.
In his works he has given very different specimens both of sentiment
and expression. His Tale of a Tub has little resemblance to his other
pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and rapidity of mind, a copiousness of
images, and vivacity of diction, such as he afterwards never possessed,
or never exerted. It is of a mode so distinct and peculiar, that it must
be considered by itself; what is true of that, is not true of any thing
else which he has written.
In his other works is found an equable tenour of easy language, which
rather trickles than flows. His delight was in simplicity. That he has
in his works no metaphor, as has been said, is not true; but his few
metaphors seem to be received rather by necessity than choice. He
studied purity; and though, perhaps, all his strictures are not exact,
yet it is not often that solecisms can be found; and whoever depends on
his authority may generally conclude himself safe. His sentences are
never too much dilated or contracted; and it will not be easy to find
any embarrassment in the complication of his clauses, any inconsequence
in his connexions, or abruptness in his transitions.
His style was well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtilised by
nice disquisitions, decorated by sparkling conceits, elevated by
ambitious sentences, or variegated by far-sought learning. He pays no
court to the passions; he excites neither surprise nor admiration: he
always understands himself; and his reader always understands him: the
peruser of Swift wants little previous knowledge; it will be sufficient
that he is acquainted with common words and common things; he is neither
required to mount elevations, nor to explore profundities; his passage
is always on a level, along solid ground, without asperities, without
obstruction.
This easy and safe conveyance of meaning it was Swift's desire to
attain, and for having attained he deserves praise, though, perhaps, not
the highest praise. For purposes merely didactick, when something is to
be told that was not known before, it is the best mode; but against that
inattention by which known truths are suffered to lie neglected, it
makes no provision; it instructs, but does not persuade.
By his political education he was associated with the whigs; but he
deserted them when they deserted their principles, yet without running
into the contrary extreme; he continued throughout his life to retain
the disposition which he assigns to the Church of England Man, of
thinking commonly with the whigs of the state, and with the tories of
the church.
He was a churchman rationally zealous; he desired the prosperity, and
maintained the honour of the clergy; of the dissenters he did not wish
to infringe the toleration, but he opposed their encroachments.
To his duty as dean he was very attentive. He managed the revenues of
his church with exact economy; and it is said by Delany, that more money
was, under his direction, laid out in repairs, than had ever been in the
same time since its first erection. Of his choir he was eminently
careful; and, though he neither loved nor understood musick, took care
that all the singers were well qualified, admitting none without the
testimony of skilful judges.
In his church he restored the practice of weekly communion, and
distributed the sacramental elements in the most solemn and devout
manner with his own hand. He came to church every morning, preached
commonly in his turn, and attended the evening anthem, that it might not
be negligently performed.
He read the service, "rather with a strong, nervous voice, than in a
graceful manner; his voice was sharp and high-toned, rather than
harmonious."
He entered upon the clerical state with hope to excel in preaching; but
complained, that, from the time of his political controversies, "he
could only preach pamphlets." This censure of himself, if judgment be
made from those sermons which have been published, was unreasonably
severe.
The suspicions of his irreligion proceeded, in a great measure, from
his dread of hypocrisy; instead of wishing to seem better, he delighted
in seeming worse than he was. He went in London to early prayers, lest
he should be seen at church; he read prayers to his servants every
morning with such dexterous secrecy, that Dr. Delany was six months in
his house before he knew it. He was not only careful to hide the good
which he did, but willingly incurred the suspicion of evil which he did
not. He forgot what himself had formerly asserted, that hypocrisy is
less mischievous than open impiety. Dr. Delany, with all his zeal for
his honour, has justly condemned this part of his character.
The person of Swift had not many recommendations. He had a kind of muddy
complexion, which, though he washed himself with oriental scrupulosity,
did not look clear. He had a countenance sour and severe, which he
seldom softened by any appearance of gaiety. He stubbornly resisted any
tendency to laughter.
To his domesticks he was naturally rough; and a man of a rigorous
temper, with that vigilance of minute attention which his works
discover, must have been a master that few could bear. That he was
disposed to do his servants good, on important occasions, is no great
mitigation; benefaction can be but rare, and tyrannick peevishness is
perpetual. He did not spare the servants of others. Once, when he dined
alone with the earl of Orrery, he said of one that waited in the room,
"That man has, since we sat to the table, committed fifteen faults."
What the faults were, lord Orrery, from whom I heard the story, had not
been attentive enough to discover. My number may, perhaps, not be exact.
In his economy he practised a peculiar and offensive parsimony, without
disguise or apology. The practice of saving being once necessary, became
habitual, and grew first ridiculous and at last detestable. But his
avarice, though it might exclude pleasure, was never suffered to
encroach upon his virtue. He was frugal by inclination, but liberal by
principle; and if the purpose to which he destined his little
accumulations be remembered, with his distribution of occasional
charity, it will, perhaps, appear, that he only liked one mode of
expense better than another, and saved, merely that he might have
something to give. He did not grow rich by injuring his successors, but
left both Laracor and the deanery more valuable than he found them. With
all this talk of his covetousness and generosity, it should be
remembered that he was never rich. The revenue of his deanery was not
much more than seven hundred a year.
His beneficence was not graced with tenderness or civility; he relieved
without pity, and assisted without kindness; so that those who were fed
by him could hardly love him.
He made a rule to himself to give but one piece at a time, and,
therefore, always stored his pocket with coins of different value.
Whatever he did, he seemed willing to do in a manner peculiar to
himself, without sufficiently considering, that singularity, as it
implies a contempt of the general practice, is a kind of defiance which
justly provokes the hostility of ridicule; he, therefore, who indulges
peculiar habits, is worse than others, if he be not better.
Of his humour, a story told by Pope[106] may afford a specimen.
"Dr. Swift has an odd, blunt way, that is mistaken by strangers for
ill-nature. 'Tis so odd, that there's no describing it but by facts. I'll
tell you one that first comes into my head. One evening, Gay and I went
to see him: you know how intimately we were all acquainted. On our
coming in, 'Heyday, gentlemen, (says the Doctor,) what's the meaning of
this visit? How came you to leave all the great lords that you are so
fond of, to come hither to see a poor dean?' 'Because we would rather
see you than any of them.' 'Aye, any one that did not know so well as I
do might believe you. But since you are come, I must get some supper for
you, I suppose.' 'No, doctor, we have supped already.' 'Supped already?
that's impossible! why, 'tis not eight o'clock yet. That's very strange;
but if you had not supped, I must have got something for you. Let me
see, what should I have had? A couple of lobsters; aye, that would have
done very well; two shillings--tarts, a shilling: but you will drink a
glass of wine with me, though you supped so much before your usual time
only to spare my pocket?' 'No, we had rather talk with you than drink
with you.' 'But, if you had supped with me, as in all reason you ought
to have done, you must then have drunk with me. A bottle of wine, two
shillings--two and two is four, and one is five: just two and sixpence
apiece. There, Pope, there's half a crown for you, and there's another
for you, sir; for I won't save any thing by you, I am determined.' This
was all said and done with his usual seriousness on such occasions; and,
in spite of every thing we could say to the contrary, he actually
obliged us to take the money."
In the intercourse of familiar life, he indulged his disposition to
petulance and sarcasm, and thought himself injured if the licentiousness
of his raillery, the freedom of his censures, or the petulance of his
frolicks was resented or repressed. He predominated over his companions
with very high ascendency, and, probably, would bear none over whom he
could not predominate. To give him advice was, in the style of his
friend Delany, "to venture to speak to him." This customary superiority
soon grew too delicate for truth; and Swift, with all his penetration,
allowed himself to be delighted with low flattery.
On all common occasions, he habitually affects a style of arrogance, and
dictates rather than persuades. This authoritative and magisterial
language he expected to be received as his peculiar mode of jocularity:
but he, apparently, flattered his own arrogance by an assumed
imperiousness, in which he was ironical only to the resentful, and to
the submissive sufficiently serious.
He told stories with great felicity, and delighted in doing what he knew
himself to do well; he was, therefore, captivated by the respectful
silence of a steady listener, and told the same tales too often.
He did not, however, claim the right of talking alone; for it was his
rule, when he had spoken a minute, to give room, by a pause, for any
other speaker. Of time, on all occasions, he was an exact computer, and
knew the minutes required to every common operation.
It may be justly supposed that there was in his conversation, what
appears so frequently in his letters, an affectation of familiarity with
the great, an ambition of momentary equality sought and enjoyed by the
neglect of those ceremonies which custom has established as the barriers
between one order of society and another. This transgression of
regularity was, by himself and his admirers, termed greatness of soul.
But a great mind disdains to hold any thing by courtesy, and, therefore,
never usurps what a lawful claimant may take away. He that encroaches on
another's dignity, puts himself in his power; he is either repelled with
helpless indignity, or endured by clemency and condescension.
Of Swift's general habits of thinking, if his letters can be supposed to
afford any evidence, he was not a man to be either loved or envied. He
seems to have wasted life in discontent, by the rage of neglected pride,
and the languishment of unsatisfied desire. He is querulous and
fastidious, arrogant and malignant; he scarcely speaks of himself but
with indignant lamentations, or of others but with insolent superiority
when he is gay, and with angry contempt when he is gloomy. From the
letters that pass between him and Pope it might be inferred that they,
with Arbuthnot and Gay, had engrossed all the understanding and virtue
of mankind; that their merits filled the world; or that there was no
hope of more. They show the age involved in darkness, and shade the
picture with sullen emulation.
When the queen's death drove him into Ireland, he might be allowed to
regret, for a time, the interception of his views, the extinction of his
hopes, and his ejection from gay scenes, important employment, and
splendid friendships; but when time had enabled reason to prevail over
vexation, the complaints which at first were natural, became ridiculous,
because they were useless. But querulousness was now grown habitual, and
he cried out when he probably had ceased to feel. His reiterated
wailings persuaded Bolingbroke that he was really willing to quit his
deanery for an English parish; and Bolingbroke procured an exchange,
which was rejected; and Swift still retained the pleasure of
complaining.
The greatest difficulty that occurs, in analyzing his character, is to
discover by what depravity of intellect he took delight in revolving
ideas, from which almost every other mind shrinks with disgust. The
ideas of pleasure, even when criminal, may solicit the imagination; but
what has disease, deformity, and filth, upon which the thoughts can be
allured to dwell? Delany is willing to think that Swift's mind was not
much tainted with this gross corruption before his long visit to Pope.
He does not consider how he degrades his hero, by making him at
fifty-nine the pupil of turpitude, and liable to the malignant influence
of an ascendant mind. But the truth is that Gulliver had described his
yahoos before the visit; and he that had formed those images had nothing
filthy to learn.
I have here given the character of Swift as he exhibits himself to my
perception; but now let another be heard who knew him better. Dr.
Delany, after long acquaintance, describes him to lord Orrery in these
terms:
"My lord, when you consider Swift's singular, peculiar, and most
variegated vein of wit, always intended rightly, although not always so
rightly directed; delightful in many instances, and salutary even where
it is most offensive: when you consider his strict truth, his fortitude
in resisting oppression and arbitrary power; his fidelity in friendship;
his sincere love and zeal for religion; his uprightness in making right
resolutions, and his steadiness in adhering to them; his care of his
church, its choir, its economy, and its income; his attention to all
those that preached in his cathedral, in order to their amendment in
pronunciation and style; as also his remarkable attention to the
interest of his successors, preferably to his own present emoluments;
his invincible patriotism, even to a country which he did not love; his
very various, well-devised, well-judged, and extensive charities,
throughout his life; and his whole fortune (to say nothing of his
wife's) conveyed to the same christian purposes at his death; charities,
from which he could enjoy no honour, advantage, or satisfaction of any
kind in this world; when you consider his ironical and humorous, as well
as his serious schemes, for the promotion of true religion and virtue;
his success in soliciting for the first-fruits and twentieths, to the
unspeakable benefit of the established church of Ireland; and his
felicity (to rate it no higher) in giving occasion to the building of
fifty new churches in London:
"All this considered, the character of his life will appear like that of
his writings; they will both bear to be reconsidered and reexamined with
the utmost attention, and always discover new beauties and excellencies
upon every examination.
"They will bear to be considered as the sun, in which the brightness
will hide the blemishes; and whenever petulant ignorance, pride, malice,
malignity, or envy, interposes to cloud or sully his fame, I take upon
me to pronounce, that the eclipse will not last long.
"To conclude--No man ever deserved better of any country, than Swift did
of his; a steady, persevering, inflexible friend; a wise, a watchful,
and a faithful counsellor, under many severe trials and bitter
persecutions, to the manifest hazard both of his liberty and fortune.
"He lived a blessing, he died a benefactor, and his name will ever live
an honour to Ireland."
* * * * *
In the poetical works of Dr. Swift, there is not much upon which the
critick can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always
light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions,
easiness and gaiety.
They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is
correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom
occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all his
verses exemplify his own definition of a good style, they consist of
"proper words in proper places."
To divide this collection into classes, and show how some pieces are
gross, and some are trifling, would be to tell the reader what he knows
already, and to find faults of which the author could not be ignorant,
who certainly wrote often not to his judgment, but his humour.
It was said, in a preface to one of the Irish editions, that Swift had
never been known to take a single thought from any writer, ancient or
modern. This is not literally true; but, perhaps, no writer can easily
be found that has borrowed so little, or that, in all his excellencies
and all his defects, has so well maintained his claim to be considered
as original.
-----
[Footnote 92: Mr. Sheridan, in his Life of Swift, observes, that this
account was really written by the dean, and now exists in his own
handwriting in the library of Dublin college. R.]
[Footnote 93: Spence's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 273.]
[Footnote 94: The words _speciali gratia_, or _per specialem gratium_,
were used in the record of his degree in the college of Dublin; but were
never entered in any _testimonium_, which merely states the fact of a
degree having been taken, and, therefore, the account that they were
omitted as a favour to Swift is incorrect.]
[Footnote 95: The affecting and amiable circumstances attending this
resignation are not mentioned by Johnson, but may be seen in Sheridan's
Life of Swift, p. 21, 22.]
[Footnote 96: The publisher of this collection was John Dunton. R.]
[Footnote 97: How does it appear that Stella's father was steward to sir
William Temple? In his will he does not say one word of her father's
services, and did not leave Esther Johnson a thousand pounds, but a
lease. His bequest runs thus: "I leave the lease of some lands I have in
Morris-town, in the county of Wicklow, in Ireland, to Esther Johnson,
_servant_ to my sister Gifford." M.]
[Footnote 98: See Sheridan's Life, edit. 1784, p. 525; where are some
remarks on this passage. R.]
[Footnote 99: The whole story of this bishoprick is a very blind one.
That it was ever intended for Swift, or that Sharpe and the dutchess of
Somerset ever dissuaded queen Anne from promoting him, is not
ascertained by any satisfactory evidence. M.]
[Footnote 100: Mr. Sheridan, however, says, that Addison's last Whig
Examiner was published October 12, 1711; and Swift's first Examiner, on
the 10th of the following November. R.]
[Footnote 101: This emphatic word has not escaped the watchful eye of
Dr. Warton, who has placed a nota bene at it.]
[Footnote 102: See this affair very differently represented in Swift's
Panegyrist, Sheridan, p. 530.]
[Footnote 103: An account somewhat different from this is given by Mr.
Sheridan, in his Life of Swift, p. 511. R.]
[Footnote 104: It is but justice to the dean's memory, to refer to Mr.
Sheridan's defence of him from this charge. See the Life of Swift, p.
458. R.]
[Footnote 105: This account is contradicted by Mr. Sheridan, who, with
great warmth, asserts, from his own knowledge, that there was not one
syllable of truth in this whole account from the beginning to the end.
See Life of Swift, edit. 1784, p. 532. R.]
[Footnote 106: Spence.]
BROOME.
William Broome was born in Cheshire, as is said, of very mean parents.
Of the place of his birth, or the first part of his life, I have not
been able to gain any intelligence. He was educated upon the foundation
at Eton, and was captain of the school a whole year, without any
vacancy, by which he might have obtained a scholarship at King's
college. Being, by this delay, such as is said to have happened very
rarely, superannuated, he was sent to St. John's college, by the
contributions of his friends, where he obtained a small exhibition.
At his college he lived for some time in the same chamber with the
well-known Ford, by whom I have formerly heard him described as a
contracted scholar and a mere versifier, unacquainted with life, and
unskilful in conversation. His addiction to metre was then such, that
his companions familiarly called him poet. When he had opportunities of
mingling with mankind, he cleared himself, as Ford likewise owned, from
great part of his scholastick rust.
He appeared early in the world as a translator of the Iliads into prose,
in conjunction with Ozell and Oldisworth. How their several parts were
distributed is not known. This is the translation of which Ozell boasted
as superiour, in Toland's opinion, to that of Pope: it has long since
vanished, and is now in no danger from the criticks.
He was introduced to Mr. Pope, who was then visiting sir John Cotton, at
Madingley, near Cambridge, and gained so much of his esteem, that he was
employed, I believe, to make extracts from Eustathius for the notes to
the translation of the Iliad; and, in the volumes of poetry published by
Lintot, commonly called Pope's Miscellanies, many of his early pieces
were inserted.
Pope and Broome were to be yet more closely connected. When the success
of the Iliad gave encouragement to a version of the Odyssey, Pope,
weary of the toil, called Fenton and Broome to his assistance; and,
taking only half the work upon himself, divided the other half between
his partners, giving four books to Fenton, and eight to Broome. Fenton's
books I have enumerated in his life; to the lot of Broome fell the
second, sixth, eighth, eleventh, twelfth, sixteenth, eighteenth, and
twenty-third, together with the burden of writing all the notes.
As this translation is a very important event in poetical history, the
reader has a right to know upon what grounds I establish my narration.
That the version was not wholly Pope's, was always known: he had
mentioned the assistance of two friends in his proposals, and, at the
end of the work, some account is given by Broome of their different
parts, which, however, mentions only five books as written by the
coadjutors; the fourth and twentieth by Fenton; the sixth, the eleventh,
and the eighteenth, by himself; though Pope, in an advertisement
prefixed afterwards to a new volume of his works, claimed only twelve. A
natural curiosity after the real conduct of so great an undertaking,
incited me once to inquire of Dr. Warburton, who told me, in his warm
language, that he thought the relation given in the note "a lie;" but
that he was not able to ascertain the several shares. The intelligence
which Dr. Warburton could not afford me, I obtained from Mr. Langton, to
whom Mr. Spence had imparted it.
The price at which Pope purchased this assistance was three hundred
pounds paid to Fenton, and five hundred to Broome, with as many copies
as he wanted for his friends, which amounted to one hundred more. The
payment made to Fenton I know not but by hearsay; Broome's is very
distinctly told by Pope, in the notes to the Dunciad.
It is evident, that, according to Pope's own estimate, Broome was
unkindly treated. If four books could merit three hundred pounds, eight,
and all the notes, equivalent, at least, to four, had certainly a right
to more than six.
Broome probably considered himself as injured, and there was, for some
time, more than coldness between him and his employer. He always spoke
of Pope as too much a lover of money; and Pope pursued him with avowed
hostility; for he not only named him disrespectfully in the Dunciad, but
quoted him more than once in the Bathos, as a proficient in the Art of
Sinking; and in his enumeration of the different kinds of poets
distinguished for the profound, he reckons Broome among "the parrots who
repeat another's words in such a hoarse odd tone as makes them seem
their own." I have been told that they were afterwards reconciled; but I
am afraid their peace was without friendship.
He afterwards published a Miscellany of Poems, which is inserted, with
corrections, in the late compilation.
He never rose to a very high dignity in the church. He was some time
rector of Sturston, in Suffolk, where he married a wealthy widow; and
afterwards, when the king visited Cambridge, 1728, became doctor of
laws. He was, in August, 1728, presented by the crown to the rectory of
Pulham, in Norfolk, which he held with Oakley Magna, in Suffolk, given
him by the lord Cornwallis, to whom he was chaplain, and who added the
vicarage of Eye, in Suffolk; he then resigned Pulham, and retained the
other two.
Towards the close of his life he grew again poetical, and amused himself
with translating Odes of Anacreon, which he published in the Gentleman's
Magazine, under the name of Chester.
He died at Bath, November 16,1745, and was buried in the abbey church.
Of Broome, though it cannot be said that he was a great poet, it would
be unjust to deny that he was an excellent versifier; his lines are
smooth and sonorous, and his diction is select and elegant. His rhymes
are sometimes unsuitable; in his Melancholy, he makes _breath_ rhyme to
_birth_ in one place, and to _earth_ in another. Those faults occur but
seldom; and he had such power of words and numbers as fitted him for
translation; but, in his original works, recollection seems to have been
his business more than invention. His imitations are so apparent, that
it is part of his reader's employment to recall the verses of some
former poet. Sometimes he copies the most popular writers, for he seems
scarcely to endeavour at concealment; and sometimes he picks up
fragments in obscure corners. His lines to Fenton,
Serene, the sting of pain thy thoughts beguile,
And make afflictions objects of a smile,
brought to my mind some lines on the death of queen Mary, written by
Barnes, of whom I should not have expected to find an imitator;
But thou, O muse! whose sweet nepenthean tongue
Can charm the pangs of death with deathless song,
Canst _stinging plagues_ with easy _thoughts beguile_,
_Make_ pains and tortures _objects of a smile_.
To detect his imitations were tedious and useless. What he takes he
seldom makes worse; and he cannot be justly thought a mean man, whom
Pope chose for an associate, and whose coöperation was considered by
Pope's enemies as so important, that he was attacked by Henley with this
ludicrous distich:
Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say
Broome went before, and kindly swept the way[107].
-----
[Footnote 107: Henley's joke was borrowed. In a copy of verses, entitled
the Time Poets, preserved in a miscellany called Choice Drollery, 1656,
are these lines:
Sent by Ben Jonson, as some authors say,
Broom went before, and kindly swept the way.
J. B.]
POPE.
Alexander Pope was born in London, May 22, 1688, of parents whose rank
or station was never ascertained: we are informed that they were of
"gentle blood;" that his father was of a family of which the earl of
Downe was the head; and that his mother was the daughter of William
Turner, esquire, of York, who had, likewise, three sons, one of whom had
the honour of being killed, and the other of dying, in the service of
Charles the first; the third was made a general officer in Spain, from
whom the sister inherited what sequestrations and forfeitures had left
in the family.
This, and this only, is told by Pope; who is more willing, as I have
heard observed, to show what his father was not, than what he was. It is
allowed that he grew rich by trade; but whether in a shop or on the
exchange was never discovered till Mr. Tyers told, on the authority of
Mrs. Racket, that he was a linendraper in the Strand. Both parents were
papists.
Pope was, from his birth, of a constitution tender and delicate; but is
said to have shown remarkable gentleness and sweetness of disposition.
The weakness of his body continued through his life[108]; but the
mildness of his mind, perhaps, ended with his childhood[109]. His voice,
when he was young, was so pleasing, that he was called, in fondness,
"the little nightingale."
Being not sent early to school, he was taught to read by an aunt; and
when he was seven or eight years old, became a lover of books. He first
learned to write by imitating printed books; a species of penmanship in
which he retained great excellence through his whole life, though his
ordinary hand was not elegant[110].
When he was about eight, he was placed in Hampshire, under
Taverner[111], a Romish priest, who, by a method very rarely practised,
taught him the Greek and Latin rudiments together. He was now first
regularly initiated in poetry by the perusal of Ogilby's Homer, and
Sandys's Ovid. Ogilby's assistance he never repaid with any praise; but
of Sandys he declared, in his notes to the Iliad, that English poetry
owed much of its present beauty to his translations. Sandys very rarely
attempted original composition.
From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was considerable,
he was removed to a school at Twyford, near Winchester, and again to
another school about Hyde-park Corner; from which he used sometimes to
stroll to the playhouse: and was so delighted with theatrical
exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play from Ogilby's Iliad, with
some verses of his own intermixed, which he persuaded his schoolfellows
to act, with the addition of his master's gardener, who personated Ajax.
At the two last schools he used to represent himself as having lost part
of what Taverner had taught him; and on his master at Twyford he had
already exercised his poetry in a lampoon. Yet under those masters he
translated more than a fourth part of the Metamorphoses. If he kept the
same proportion in his other exercises, it cannot be thought that his
loss was great.
He tells of himself, in his poems, that, "he lisp'd in numbers;" and
used to say that he could not remember the time when he began to make
verses. In the style of fiction it might have been said of him as of
Pindar, that when he lay in his cradle, "the bees swarmed about his
mouth."
About the time of the revolution, his father, who was undoubtedly
disappointed by the sudden blast of Popish prosperity, quitted his
trade, and retired to Binfield, in Windsor forest, with about twenty
thousand pounds; for which, being conscientiously determined not to
entrust it to the government, he found no better use than that of
locking it up in a chest, and taking from it what his expenses required;
and his life was long enough to consume a great part of it, before his
son came to the inheritance.
To Binfield Pope was called by his father, when he was about twelve
years old; and there he had, for a few months, the assistance of one
Deane, another priest, of whom he learned only to construe a little of
Tully's Offices. How Mr. Deane could spend, with a boy who had
translated so much of Ovid, some months over a small part of Tully's
Offices, it is now vain to inquire.
Of a youth so successfully employed, and so conspicuously improved, a
minute account must be naturally desired: but curiosity must be
contented with confused, imperfect, and, sometimes, improbable
intelligence. Pope, finding little advantage from external help,
resolved, thenceforward, to direct himself, and at twelve formed a plan
of study, which he completed with little other incitement than the
desire of excellence.
His primary and principal purpose was to be a poet, with which his
father accidentally concurred, by proposing subjects, and obliging him
to correct his performances by many revisals; after which the old
gentleman, when he was satisfied, would say, "these are good rhymes."
In his perusal of the English poets he soon distinguished the
versification of Dryden, which he considered as the model to be studied,
and was impressed with such veneration for his instructor, that he
persuaded some friends to take him to the coffee-house which Dryden
frequented, and pleased himself with having seen him.
Dryden died May 1, 1701, some days before Pope was twelve[112]; so early
must he, therefore, have felt the power of harmony, and the zeal of
genius. Who does not wish that Dryden could have known the value of the
homage that was paid him, and foreseen the greatness of his young
admirer?
The earliest of Pope's productions is his Ode on Solitude, written
before he was twelve, in which there is nothing more than other forward
boys have attained, and which is not equal to Cowley's performances at
the same age.
His time was now wholly spent in reading and writing. As he read the
classicks, he amused himself with translating them; and, at fourteen,
made a version of the first book of the Thebais, which, with some
revision, he afterwards published. He must have been, at this time, if
he had no help, a considerable proficient in the Latin tongue.
By Dryden's Fables, which had then been not long published, and were
much in the hands of poetical readers, he was tempted to try his own
skill in giving Chaucer a more fashionable appearance, and put January
and May, and the Prologue of the Wife of Bath, into modern English. He
translated, likewise, the epistle of Sappho to Phaon, from Ovid, to
complete the version which was before imperfect; and wrote some other
small pieces, which he afterwards printed.
He sometimes imitated the English poets, and professed to have written
at fourteen, his poem upon Silence, after Rochester's Nothing. He had
now formed his versification, and in the smoothness of his numbers
surpassed the original: but this is a small part of his praise; he
discovers such acquaintance both with human life and publick affairs, as
is not easily conceived to have been attainable by a boy of fourteen in
Windsor forest.
Next year he was desirous of opening to himself new sources of
knowledge, by making himself acquainted with modern languages; and
removed, for a time, to London, that he might study French and Italian,
which, as he desired nothing more than to read them, were, by diligent
application, soon despatched. Of Italian learning he does not appear to
have ever made much use in his subsequent studies.
He then returned to Binfield, and delighted himself with his own poetry.
He tried all styles, and many subjects. He wrote a comedy, a tragedy, an
epick poem, with panegyricks on all the princes of Europe; and, as he
confesses, "thought himself the greatest genius that ever was."
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings. He,
indeed, who forms his opinion of himself in solitude, without knowing
the powers of other men, is very liable to errour; but it was the
felicity of Pope to rate himself at his real value.
Most of his puerile productions were, by his maturer judgment,
afterwards destroyed; Alcander, the epick poem, was burnt by the
persuasion of Atterbury. The tragedy was founded on the legend of St.
Genevieve. Of the comedy there is no account.
Concerning his studies it is related, that he translated Tully on Old
Age; and that, besides his books of poetry and criticism, he read
Temple's Essays and Locke on Human Understanding. His reading, though
his favourite authors are not known, appears to have been sufficiently
extensive and multifarious; for his early pieces show, with sufficient
evidence, his knowledge of books.
He that is pleased with himself easily imagines that he shall please
others. Sir William Trumbull, who had been ambassador at Constantinople,
and secretary of state, when he retired from business, fixed his
residence in the neighbourhood of Binfield. Pope, not yet sixteen, was
introduced to the statesman of sixty, and so distinguished himself, that
their interviews ended in friendship and correspondence. Pope was,
through his whole life, ambitious of splendid acquaintance; and he seems
to have wanted neither diligence nor success in attracting the notice
of the great; for, from his first entrance into the world, and his
entrance was very early, he was admitted to familiarity with those whose
rank or station made them most conspicuous.
From the age of sixteen the life of Pope, as an author, may be properly
computed. He now wrote his Pastorals, which were shown to the poets and
criticks of that time; as they well deserved, they were read with
admiration, and many praises were bestowed upon them and upon the
preface, which is both elegant and learned in a high degree: they were,
however, not published till five years afterwards.
Cowley, Milton, and Pope, are distinguished among the English poets by
the early exertion of their powers; but the works of Cowley alone were
published in his childhood, and, therefore, of him only can it be
certain that his puerile performances received no improvement from his
maturer studies.
At this time began his acquaintance with Wycherley, a man who seems to
have had among his contemporaries his full share of reputation, to have
been esteemed without virtue, and caressed without good-humour. Pope was
proud of his notice; Wycherley wrote verses in his praise, which he was
charged by Dennis with writing to himself, and they agreed for awhile to
flatter one another. It is pleasant to remark how soon Pope learned the
cant of an author, and began to treat criticks with contempt, though he
had yet suffered nothing from them.
But the fondness of Wycherley was too violent to last. His esteem of
Pope was such, that he submitted some poems to his revision; and when
Pope, perhaps proud of such confidence, was sufficiently bold in his
criticisms, and liberal in his alterations, the old scribbler was angry
to see his pages defaced, and felt more pain from the detection than
content from the amendment of his faults. They parted; but Pope always
considered him with kindness, and visited him a little time before he
died.
Another of his early correspondents was Mr. Cromwell, of whom I have
learned nothing particular, but that he used to ride a hunting in a
tie-wig. He was fond, and perhaps vain, of amusing himself with poetry
and criticism; and sometimes sent his performances to Pope, who did not
forbear such remarks as were now and then unwelcome. Pope, in his turn,
put the juvenile version of Statius into his hands for correction.
Their correspondence afforded the publick its first knowledge of Pope's
epistolary powers; for his letters were given by Cromwell to one Mrs.
Thomas; and she, many years afterwards, sold them to Curll, who inserted
them in a volume of his miscellanies.
Walsh, a name yet preserved among the minor poets, was one of his first
encouragers. His regard was gained by the Pastorals, and from him Pope
received the counsel by which he seems to have regulated his studies.
Walsh advised him to correctness, which, as he told him, the English
poets had hitherto neglected, and which, therefore, was left to him as a
basis of fame; and being delighted with rural poems, recommended to him
to write a pastoral comedy, like those which are read so eagerly in
Italy; a design which Pope probably did not approve, as he did not
follow it.
Pope had now declared himself a poet; and thinking himself entitled to
poetical conversation, began, at seventeen, to frequent Will's, a
coffee-house on the north side of Russel-street in Covent-garden, where
the wits of that time used to assemble, and where Dryden had, when he
lived, been accustomed to preside.
During this period of his life, he was indefatigably diligent, and
insatiably curious; wanting health for violent, and money for expensive
pleasures, and having excited in himself very strong desires of
intellectual eminence, he spent much of his time over his books; but he
read only to store his mind with facts and images, seizing all that his
authors presented with undistinguishing voracity, and with an appetite
for knowledge too eager to be nice. In a mind like his, however, all
the faculties were at once involuntarily improving. Judgment is forced
upon us by experience. He that reads many books must compare one opinion
or one style with another; and, when he compares, must necessarily
distinguish, reject, and prefer. But the account given by himself of his
studies was, that from fourteen to twenty he read only for amusement,
from twenty to twenty-seven for improvement and instruction; that in the
first part of this time he desired only to know, and in the second he
endeavoured to judge.
The Pastorals, which had been, for some time, handed about among poets
and criticks, were at last printed, 1709, in Tonson's Miscellany, in a
volume which began with the Pastorals of Philips, and ended with those
of Pope.
The same year was written the Essay on Criticism; a work which displays
such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such
acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern
learning, as are not often attained by the maturest age and longest
experience. It was published about two years afterwards; and, being
praised by Addison in the Spectator[113] with sufficient liberality, met
with so much favour as enraged Dennis, "who," he says, "found himself
attacked, without any manner of provocation on his side, and attacked in
his person, instead of his writings, by one who was wholly a stranger to
him, at a time when all the world knew he was persecuted by fortune; and
not only saw that this was attempted in a clandestine manner, with the
utmost falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was done by a
little affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time
but truth, candour, friendship, good-nature, humanity, and magnanimity."
How the attack was clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how his
person is depreciated; but he seems to have known something of Pope's
character, in whom may be discovered an appetite to talk too frequently
of his own virtues.
The pamphlet is such as rage might be expected to dictate. He supposes
himself to be asked two questions; whether the essay will succeed, and
who or what is the author.
Its success he admits to be secured by the false opinions then
prevalent: the author he concludes to be "young and raw."
"First, because he discovers a sufficiency beyond his little ability,
and hath rashly undertaken a task infinitely above his force. Secondly,
while this little author struts, and affects the dictatorian air, he
plainly shows, that at the same time he is under the rod; and, while he
pretends to give laws to others, is a pedantick slave to authority and
opinion. Thirdly, he hath, like schoolboys, borrowed both from living
and dead. Fourthly, he knows not his own mind, and frequently
contradicts himself. Fifthly, he is almost perpetually in the wrong."
All these positions he attempts to prove by quotations and remarks; but
his desire to do mischief is greater than his power. He has, however,
justly criticised some passages: in these lines,
There are whom heav'n has bless'd with store of wit,
Yet want as much again to manage it;
For wit and judgment ever are at strife--
is apparent, that _wit_ has two meanings; and that what is wanted,
though called _wit_, is, truly, judgment. So far Dennis is undoubtedly
right; but, not content with argument, he will have a little mirth, and
triumphs over the first couplet in terms too elegant to be forgotten.
"By the way, what rare numbers are here! Would not one swear that this
youngster had espoused some antiquated muse, who had sued out a divorce
on account of impotence from some superannuated sinner; and, having been
p--xed by her former spouse, has got the gout, in her decrepit age,
which makes her hobble so damnably?" This was the man who would reform
a nation sinking into barbarity.
In another place Pope himself allowed, that Dennis had detected one of
those blunders, which are called "bulls." The first edition had this
line:
What is this wit--
Where wanted, scorn'd; and envied, where acquir'd?
"How," says the critick, "can wit be scorn'd where it is not? Is not
this a figure frequently employed in Hibernian land? The person that
wants this wit may, indeed, be scorned, but the scorn shows the honour
which the contemner has for wit." Of this remark Pope made the proper
use, by correcting the passage.
I have preserved, I think, all that is reasonable in Dennis's criticism;
it remains, that justice be done to his delicacy. "For his
acquaintance," says Dennis, "he names Mr. Walsh, who had by no means the
qualification which this author reckons absolutely necessary to a
critick, it being very certain that he was, like this essayer, a very
indifferent poet; he loved to be well dressed; and I remember a little
young gentleman, whom Mr. Walsh used to take into his company, as a
double foil to his person and capacity. Inquire, between Sunninghill and
Oakingham, for a young, short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the god
of love, and tell me, whether he be a proper author to make personal
reflections? He may extol the ancients, but he has reason to thank the
gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of Grecian parents,
and his father, consequently, had, by law, had the absolute disposal of
him, his life had been no longer than that of one of his poems, the life
of half a day. Let the person of a gentleman of his parts be never so
contemptible, his inward man is ten times more ridiculous; it being
impossible that his outward form, though it be that of a downright
monkey, should differ so much from human shape, as his unthinking,
immaterial part does from human understanding." Thus began the hostility
between Pope and Dennis, which, though it was suspended for a short
time, never was appeased. Pope seems, at first, to have attacked him
wantonly; but, though he always professed to despise him, he discovers,
by mentioning him very often, that he felt his force or his venom.
Of this essay Pope declared, that he did not expect the sale to be
quick, because "not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education,
could understand it." The gentlemen, and the education of that time,
seem to have been of a lower character than they are of this. He
mentioned a thousand copies as a numerous impression.
Dennis was not his only censurer: the zealous papists thought the monks
treated with too much contempt, and Erasmus too studiously praised; but
to these objections he had not much regard.
The essay has been translated into French by Hamilton, author of the
Comte de Grammont, whose version was never printed, by Robotham,
secretary to the king for Hanover, and by Resnel; and commented by Dr.
Warburton, who has discovered in it such order and connexion as was not
perceived by Addison, nor, as is said, intended by the author.
Almost every poem, consisting of precepts, is so far arbitrary and
immethodical, that many of the paragraphs may change places with no
apparent inconvenience: for of two or more positions, depending upon
some remote and general principle, there is seldom any cogent reason why
one should precede the other. But for the order in which they stand,
whatever it be, a little ingenuity may easily give a reason. "It is
possible," says Hooker, "that, by long circumduction, from any one truth
all truth may be inferred." Of all homogeneous truths, at least of all
truths respecting the same general end, in whatever series they may be
produced, a concatenation by intermediate ideas may be formed, such as,
when it is once shown, shall appear natural; but if this order be
reversed, another mode of connexion equally specious may be found or
made. Aristotle is praised for naming fortitude first of the cardinal
virtues, as that without which no other virtue can steadily be
practised; but he might, with equal propriety, have placed prudence and
justice before it; since without prudence, fortitude is mad; without
justice, it is mischievous.
As the end of method is perspicuity, that series is sufficiently regular
that avoids obscurity; and where there is no obscurity, it will not be
difficult to discover method.
In the Spectator was published the Messiah, which he first submitted to
the perusal of Steele, and corrected in compliance with his criticisms.
It is reasonable to infer, from his letters, that the verses on the
Unfortunate Lady were written about the time when his Essay was
published. The lady's name and adventures I have sought with fruitless
inquiry[114].
I can, therefore, tell no more than I have learned from Mr. Ruffhead,
who writes with the confidence of one who could trust his information.
She was a woman of eminent rank and large fortune, the ward of an uncle,
who, having given her a proper education, expected, like other
guardians, that she should make, at least, an equal match; and such he
proposed to her, but found it rejected in favour of a young gentleman of
inferiour condition.
Having discovered the correspondence between the two lovers, and finding
the young lady determined to abide by her own choice, he supposed that
separation might do what can rarely be done by arguments, and sent her
into a foreign country, where she was obliged to converse only with
those from whom her uncle had nothing to fear.
Her lover took care to repeat his vows; but his letters were intercepted
and carried to her guardian, who directed her to be watched with still
greater vigilance, till of this restraint she grew so impatient, that
she bribed a woman servant to procure her a sword, which she directed to
her heart.
From this account, given with evident intention to raise the lady's
character, it does not appear that she had any claim to praise, nor
much to compassion. She seems to have been impatient, violent, and
ungovernable. Her uncle's power could not have lasted long; the hour of
liberty and choice would have come in time. But her desires were too hot
for delay, and she liked self-murder better than suspense.
Nor is it discovered that the uncle, whoever he was, is with much
justice delivered to posterity as "a false guardian;" he seems to have
done only that for which a guardian is appointed: he endeavoured to
direct his niece till she should be able to direct herself. Poetry has
not often been worse employed than in dignifying the amorous fury of a
raving girl.
Not long after, he wrote the Rape of the Lock, the most airy, the most
ingenious, and the most delightful of all his compositions, occasioned
by a frolick of gallantry, rather too familiar, in which lord Petre cut
off a lock of Mrs. Arabella Fermor's hair. This, whether stealth or
violence, was so much resented, that the commerce of the two families,
before very friendly, was interrupted. Mr. Caryl, a gentleman who, being
secretary to king James's queen, had followed his mistress into France,
and who, being the author of Sir Solomon Single, a comedy, and some
translations, was entitled to the notice of a wit, solicited Pope to
endeavour a reconciliation by a ludicrous poem, which might bring both
the parties to a better temper. In compliance with Caryl's request,
though his name was for a long time marked only by the first and last
letters, C----l, a poem of two cantos was written, 1711, as is said, in
a fortnight, and sent to the offended lady, who liked it well enough to
show it; and, with the usual process of literary transactions, the
author, dreading a surreptitious edition, was forced to publish it.
The event is said to have been such as was desired, the pacification and
diversion of all to whom it related, except sir George Brown, who
complained, with some bitterness, that, in the character of sir Plume,
he was made to talk nonsense. Whether all this be true I have some
doubt; for at Paris, a few years ago, a niece of Mrs. Fermor, who
presided in an English convent, mentioned Pope's work with very little
gratitude, rather as an insult than an honour; and she may be supposed
to have inherited the opinion of her family.
At its first appearance it was termed, by Addison, "merum sal." Pope,
however, saw that it was capable of improvement; and, having luckily
contrived to borrow his machinery from the Rosicrucians, imparted the
scheme with which his head was teeming to Addison, who told him that his
work, as it stood, was "a delicious little thing," and gave him no
encouragement to retouch it.
This has been too hastily considered as an instance of Addison's
jealousy; for, as he could not guess the conduct of the new design, or
the possibilities of pleasure comprised in a fiction, of which there had
been no examples, he might very reasonably and kindly persuade the
author to acquiesce in his own prosperity, and forbear an attempt which
he considered as an unnecessary hazard.
Addison's counsel was happily rejected. Pope foresaw the future
efflorescence of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved to spare
no art, or industry of cultivation. The soft luxuriance of his fancy was
already shooting, and all the gay varieties of diction were ready at his
hand to colour and embellish it.
His attempt was justified by its success. The Rape of the Lock stands
forward, in the classes of literature, as the most exquisite example of
ludicrous poetry. Berkeley congratulated him upon the display of powers
more truly poetical than he had shown before; with elegance of
description and justness of precepts, he had now exhibited boundless
fertility of invention.
He always considered the intermixture of the machinery with the action
as his most successful exertion of poetical art. He, indeed, could never
afterwards produce any thing of such unexampled excellence. Those
performances, which strike with wonder, are combinations of skilful
genius with happy casualty; and it is not likely that any felicity,
like the discovery of a new race of preternatural agents, should happen
twice to the same man.
Of this poem, the author was, I think, allowed to enjoy the praise for a
long time without disturbance. Many years afterwards Dennis published
some remarks upon it, with very little force, and with no effect: for
the opinion of the publick was already settled, and it was no longer at
the mercy of criticism.
About this time he published the Temple of Fame, which, as he tells
Steele in their correspondence, he had written two years before; that
is, when he was only twenty-two years old, an early time of life for so
much learning and so much observation as that work exhibits.
On this poem Dennis afterwards published some remarks, of which the most
reasonable is, that some of the lines represent motion, as exhibited by
sculpture[115].
Of the epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, I do not know the date. His first
inclination to attempt a composition of that tender kind arose, as Mr.
Savage told me, from his perusal of Prior's Nut-brown Maid. How much he
has surpassed Prior's work it is not necessary to mention, when,
perhaps, it may be said with justice, that he has excelled every
composition of the same kind. The mixture of religious hope and
resignation gives an elevation and dignity to disappointed love, which
images merely natural cannot bestow. The gloom of a convent strikes the
imagination with far greater force than the solitude of a grove.
This piece was, however, not much his favourite in his latter years,
though I never heard upon what principle he slighted it[116].
In the next year, 1713, he published Windsor Forest; of which, part
was, as he relates, written at sixteen, about the same time as his
pastorals; and the latter part was added afterwards: where the addition
begins, we are not told. The lines relating to the peace, confess their
own date. It is dedicated to lord Lansdowne, who was then high in
reputation and influence among the tories; and it is said, that the
conclusion of the poem gave great pain to Addison, both as a poet and a
politician. Reports like this are often spread with boldness very
disproportionate to their evidence. Why should Addison receive any
particular disturbance from the last lines of Windsor Forest? If
contrariety of opinion could poison a politician, he would not live a
day: and, as a poet, he must have felt Pope's force of genius much more
from many other parts of his works.
The pain that Addison might feel it is not likely that he would confess;
and it is certain that he so well suppressed his discontent, that Pope
now thought himself his favourite; for having been consulted in the
revisal of Cato, he introduced it by a prologue; and when Dennis
published his remarks, undertook, not indeed to vindicate, but to
revenge his friend, by a Narrative of the Frensy of John Dennis.
There is reason to believe that Addison gave no encouragement to this
disingenuous hostility; for, says Pope, in a letter to him, "indeed your
opinion, that 'tis entirely to be neglected, would be my own in my own
case; but I felt more warmth here than I did when I first saw his book
against myself, (though indeed in two minutes it made me heartily
merry.") Addison was not a man on whom such cant of sensibility could
make much impression. He left the pamphlet to itself, having disowned it
to Dennis, and, perhaps, did not think Pope to have deserved much by his
officiousness.
This year was printed in the Guardian the ironical comparison between
the Pastorals of Philips and Pope; a composition of artifice, criticism,
and literature, to which nothing equal will easily be found. The
superiority of Pope is so ingeniously dissembled, and the feeble lines
of Philips so skilfully preferred, that Steele, being deceived, was
unwilling to print the paper, lest Pope should be offended. Addison
immediately saw the writer's design; and, as it seems, had malice enough
to conceal his discovery, and to permit a publication which, by making
his friend Philips ridiculous, made him for ever an enemy to Pope.
It appears that about this time Pope had a strong inclination to unite
the art of painting with that of poetry, and put himself under the
tuition of Jervas. He was near-sighted, and, therefore, not formed by
nature for a painter: he tried, however, how far he could advance, and
sometimes persuaded his friends to sit. A picture of Betterton, supposed
to be drawn by him, was in the possession of lord Mansfield[117]: if
this was taken from the life, he must have begun to paint earlier; for
Betterton was now dead. Pope's ambition of this new art produced some
encomiastick verses to Jervas, which certainly show his power as a poet;
but I have been told that they betray his ignorance of painting.
He appears to have regarded Betterton with kindness and esteem; and
after his death published, under his name, a version into modern English
of Chaucer's prologues, and one of his tales, which, as was related by
Mr. Harte, were believed to have been the performance of Pope himself by
Fenton, whe made him a gay offer of five pounds, if he would show them
in the hand of Betterton.
The next year, 1713, produced a bolder attempt, by which profit was
sought as well as praise. The poems which he had hitherto written,
however they might have diffused his name, had made very little addition
to his fortune. The allowance which his father made him, though,
proportioned to what he had, it might be liberal, could not be large;
his religion hindered him from the occupation of any civil employment;
and he complained that he wanted even money to buy books[118].
He, therefore, resolved to try how far the favour of the publick
extended, by soliciting a subscription to a version of the Iliad, with
large notes.
To print by subscription was, for some time, a practice peculiar to the
English. The first considerable work, for which this expedient was
employed, is said to have been Dryden's Virgil[119]; and it had been
tried again with great success when the Tatlers were collected into
volumes.
There was reason to believe that Pope's attempt would be successful. He
was in the full bloom of reputation, and was personally known to almost
all whom dignity of employment or splendour of reputation had made
eminent; he conversed indifferently with both parties, and never
disturbed the publick with his political opinions; and it might be
naturally expected, as each faction then boasted its literary zeal, that
the great men, who on other occasions practised all the violence of
opposition, would emulate each other in their encouragement of a poet
who had delighted all, and by whom none had been offended.
With those hopes, he offered an English Iliad to subscribers, in six
volumes in quarto, for six guineas; a sum, according to the value of
money at that time, by no means inconsiderable, and greater than I
believe to have been ever asked before. His proposal, however, was very
favourably received; and the patrons of literature were busy to
recommend his undertaking, and promote his interest. Lord Oxford,
indeed, lamented that such a genius should be wasted upon a work not
original; but proposed no means by which he might live without it.
Addison recommended caution and moderation, and advised him not to be
content with the praise of half the nation, when he might be universally
favoured.
The greatness of the design, the popularity of the author, and the
attention of the literary world, naturally raised such expectations of
the future sale, that the booksellers made their offers with great
eagerness; but the highest bidder was Bernard Lintot, who became
proprietor on condition of supplying, at his own expense, all the copies
which were to be delivered to subscribers, or presented to friends, and
paying two hundred pounds for every volume.
Of the quartos it was, I believe, stipulated that none should be printed
but for the author, that the subscription might not be depreciated; but
Lintot impressed the same pages upon a small folio, and paper, perhaps,
a little thinner; and sold exactly at half the price, for half-a-guinea
each volume, books so little inferiour to the quartos, that by a fraud
of trade, those folios, being afterwards shortened by cutting away the
top and bottom, were sold as copies printed for the subscribers.
Lintot printed two hundred and fifty on royal paper in folio, for two
guineas a volume; of the small folio, having printed seventeen hundred
and fifty copies of the first volume, he reduced the number in the other
volumes to a thousand.
It is unpleasant to relate that the bookseller, after all his hopes and
all his liberality, was, by a very unjust and illegal action, defrauded
of his profit[120]. An edition of the English Iliad was printed in
Holland in duodecimo, and imported clandestinely for the gratification
of those who were impatient to read what they could not yet afford to
buy. This fraud could only be counteracted by an edition equally cheap
and more commodious; and Lintot was compelled to contract his folio at
once into a duodecimo, and lose the advantage of an intermediate
gradation. The notes, which in the Dutch copies were placed at the end
of each book, as they had been in the large volumes, were now subjoined
to the text in the same page, and are, therefore, more easily consulted.
Of this edition two thousand five hundred were first printed, and five
thousand a few weeks afterwards; but, indeed, great numbers were
necessary to produce considerable profit.
Pope, having now emitted his proposals, and engaged not only his own
reputation, but, in some degree, that of his friends who patronised his
subscription, began to be frighted at his own undertaking; and finding
himself at first embarrassed with difficulties, which retarded and
oppressed him, he was for a time timorous and uneasy, had his nights
disturbed by dreams of long journeys through unknown ways, and wished,
as he said, "that somebody would hang him[121]."
This misery, however, was not of long continuance; he grew, by degrees,
more acquainted with Homer's images and expressions, and practice
increased his facility of versification. In a short time he represents
himself as despatching regularly fifty verses a day, which would show
him, by an easy computation, the termination of his labour.
His own diffidence was not his only vexation. He that asks a
subscription soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not encourage
him, defame him. He that wants money will rather be thought angry than
poor; and he that wishes to save his money conceals his avarice by his
malice. Addison had hinted his suspicion that Pope was too much a tory;
and some of the tories suspected his principles, because he had
contributed to the Guardian, which was carried on by Steele.
To those who censured his politicks were added enemies yet more
dangerous, who called in question his knowledge of Greek, and his
qualifications for a translator of Homer. To these he made no publick
opposition; but in one of his letters escapes from them as well as he
can. At an age like his, for he was not more than twenty-five, with an
irregular education, and a course of life of which much seems to have
passed in conversation, it is not very likely that he overflowed with
Greek. But when he felt himself deficient he sought assistance; and what
man of learning would refuse to help him? Minute inquiries into the
force of words are less necessary in translating Homer than other poets,
because his positions are general, and his representations natural, with
very little dependence on local or temporary customs, or those
changeable scenes of artificial life, which, by mingling original with
accidental notions, and crowding the mind with images which time
effaces, produce ambiguity in diction, and obscurity in books. To this
open display of unadulterated nature it must be ascribed, that Homer has
fewer passages of doubtful meaning than any other poet either in the
learned or in modern languages. I have read of a man, who being, by his
ignorance of Greek, compelled to gratify his curiosity with the Latin
printed on the opposite page, declared that from the rude simplicity of
the lines literally rendered, he formed nobler ideas of the Homeric
majesty, than from the laboured elegance of polished versions.
Those literal translations were always at hand, and from them he could
easily obtain his author's sense with sufficient certainty; and among
the readers of Homer the number is very small of those who find much in
the Greek more than in the Latin, except the musick of the numbers.
If more help was wanting, he had the poetical translation of Eobanus
Hessus, an unwearied writer of Latin verses; he had the French Homers of
la Valterie and Dacier, and the English of Chapman, Hobbes, and Ogilby.
With Chapman, whose work, though now totally neglected, seems to have
been popular almost to the end of the last century, he had very frequent
consultations, and, perhaps, never translated any passage till he had
read his version, which, indeed, he has been sometimes suspected of
using instead of the original.
Notes were likewise to be provided; for the six volumes would have been
very little more than six pamphlets without them. What the mere perusal
of the text could suggest, Pope wanted no assistance to collect or
methodise; but more was necessary; many pages were to be filled, and
learning must supply materials to wit and judgment. Something might be
gathered from Dacier; but no man loves to be indebted to his
contemporaries, and Dacier was accessible to common readers. Eustathius,
was, therefore, necessarily consulted. To read Eustathius, of whose work
there was then no Latin version, I suspect Pope, if he had been willing,
not to have been able; some other was, therefore, to be found, who had
leisure as well as abilities; and he was doubtless most readily employed
who would do much work for little money.
The history of the notes has never been traced. Broome, in his preface
to his poems, declares himself the commentator "in part upon the Iliad;"
and it appears from Fenton's letter, preserved in the Museum, that
Broome was at first engaged in consulting Eustathius; but that after a
time, whatever was the reason, he desisted: another man, of Cambridge,
was then employed, who soon grew weary of the work; and a third, that
was recommended by Thirlby, is now discovered to have been Jortin, a man
since well known to the learned world, who complained that Pope, having
accepted and approved his performance, never testified any curiosity to
see him, and who professed to have forgotten the terms on which he
worked. The terms which Fenton uses are very mercantile: "I think, at
first sight, that his performance is very commendable, and have sent
word for him to finish the seventeenth book, and to send it with his
demands for his trouble. I have here enclosed the specimen; if the rest
come before the return, I will keep them till I receive your order."
Broome then offered his service a second time, which was, probably,
accepted, as they had afterwards a closer correspondence. Parnell
contributed the Life of Homer, which Pope found so harsh, that he took
great pains in correcting it; and by his own diligence, with such help
as kindness or money could procure him, in somewhat more than five years
he completed his version of the Iliad, with the notes. He began it in
1712, his twenty-fifth year; and concluded it in 1718, his thirtieth
year.
When we find him translating fifty lines a day, it is natural to
suppose that he would have brought his work to a more speedy conclusion.
The Iliad, containing less than sixteen thousand verses, might have been
despatched in less than three hundred and twenty days by fifty verses in
a day. The notes, compiled with the assistance of his mercenaries, could
not be supposed to require more time than the text.
According to this calculation, the progress of Pope may seem to have
been slow; but the distance is commonly very great between actual
performances and speculative possibility. It is natural to suppose, that
as much as has been done to-day, may be done to-morrow; but on the
morrow some difficulty emerges, or some external impediment obstructs.
Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure, all take their turns of
retardation; and every long work is lengthened by a thousand causes that
can, and ten thousand that cannot be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and
multifarious performance was ever effected within the term originally
fixed in the undertaker's mind. He that runs against time has an
antagonist not subject to casualties.
The encouragement given to this translation, though report seems to have
overrated it, was such as the world has not often seen. The subscribers
were five hundred and seventy-five. The copies, for which subscriptions
were given, were six hundred and fifty-four; and only six hundred and
sixty were printed. For these copies Pope had nothing to pay; he,
therefore, received, including the two hundred pounds a volume, five
thousand three hundred and twenty pounds four shillings without
deduction, as the books were supplied by Lintot.
By the success of his subscription Pope was relieved from those
pecuniary distresses with which, notwithstanding his popularity, he had
hitherto struggled. Lord Oxford had often lamented his disqualification
for publick employment, but never proposed a pension. While the
translation of Homer was in its progress, Mr. Craggs, then secretary of
state, offered to procure him a pension, which, at least during his
ministry, might be enjoyed with secrecy. This was not accepted by Pope,
who told him, however, that, if he should be pressed with want of money,
he would send to him for occasional supplies. Craggs was not long in
power, and was never solicited for money by Pope, who disdained to beg
what he did not want.
With the product of this subscription, which he had too much discretion
to squander, he secured his future life from want, by considerable
annuities. The estate of the duke of Buckingham was found to have been
charged with five hundred pounds a year, payable to Pope, which,
doubtless, his translation enabled him to purchase.
It cannot be unwelcome to literary curiosity, that I deduce thus
minutely the history of the English Iliad. It is, certainly, the noblest
version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and its publication
must, therefore, be considered as one of the great events in the annals
of learning.
To those who have skill to estimate the excellence and difficulty of
this great work, it must be very desirable to know how it was performed,
and by what gradations it advanced to correctness. Of such an
intellectual process the knowledge has very rarely been attainable; but,
happily, there remains the original copy of the Iliad, which, being
obtained by Bolingbroke, as a curiosity, descended, from him, to Mallet,
and is now, by the solicitation of the late Dr. Maty, reposited in the
Museum.
Between this manuscript, which is written upon accidental fragments of
paper, and the printed edition, there must have been an intermediate
copy, that was, perhaps, destroyed as it returned from the press.
From the first copy I have procured a few transcripts, and shall
exhibit, first, the printed lines: then, in a smaller print, those of
the manuscripts, with all their variations. Those words in the small
print, which are given in italicks, are cancelled in the copy, and the
words placed under them adopted in their stead.
[Transcriber's Note: the "smaller print" of the original noted in
the preceeding paragraph is the doubly-indented block in the following
section.]
The beginning of the first book stands thus:
The wrath of Peleus' son, the direful spring
Of all the Grecian woes, O goddess, sing;
That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain.
The stern Pelides' _rage_, O goddess, sing,
wrath
Of all the woes of Greece the fatal spring.
Grecian
That strew'd with _warriors_ dead the Phrygian plain,
heroes
And _peopled the dark hell with heroes_ slain;
fill'd the shady hell with chiefs untimely.
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore,
Since great _Achilles_ and _Atrides_ strove;
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove.
Whose limbs, unburied on the hostile shore,
Devouring dogs and greedy vultures tare,
Since first _Atrides_ and _Achilles_ strove;
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove.
Declare, O muse, in what ill-fated hour
Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power?
Latona's son a dire contagion spread,
And heap'd the camp with mountains of the dead;
The king of men his reverend priest defy'd,
And for the king's offence the people dy'd.
Declare, O goddess, what offended power
Enflam'd their _rage_, in that _ill-omen'd_ hour;
anger, fatal, hapless
Phoebus himself the _dire_ debate procur'd,
fierce
T' avenge the wrongs his injur'd priest endur'd;
For this the god a dire infection spread,
And heap'd the camp with millions of the dead:
The king of men the sacred sire defy'd,
And for the king's offence the people dy'd.
For Chryses sought with costly gifts to gain
His captive daughter from the victor's chain;
Suppliant the venerable father stands,
Apollo's awful ensigns grace his hands,
By these he begs, and, lowly bending down,
Extends the sceptre and the laurel crown.
For Chryses sought by _presents to regain_
costly gifts to gain
His captive daughter from the victor's chain;
Suppliant the venerable father stands,
Apollo's awful ensigns grac'd his hands,
By these he begs, and, lowly bending down
_The golden sceptre_ and the laurel crown,
Presents the sceptre
_For these as ensigns of his god he bare,
The god that sends his golden shafts afar_;
Then low on earth, the venerable man,
Suppliant before the brother kings began.
He sued to all, but chief implor'd for grace
The brother kings of Atreus' royal race;
Ye kings and warriors, may your vows be crown'd,
And Troy's proud walls lie level with the ground;
May Jove restore you, when your toils are o'er,
Safe to the pleasures of your native shore.
To all he sued, but chief implor'd for grace
The brother kings of Atreus' royal race.
Ye _sons of Atreus_, may your vows be crown'd,
Kings and warriors
_Your labours, by the gods be all your labours crown'd;
So may the gods your arms with conquest bless,
And_ Troy's proud walls _lie_ level with the ground:
_Till_ _laid_
_And crown your labours with deserv'd success_
May Jove restore you, when your toils are o'er,
Safe to the pleasures of your native shore.
But, oh! relieve a wretched parent's pain,
And give Chryseis to these arms again;
If mercy fail, yet let my present move,
And dread avenging Phoebus, son of Jove.
But, oh! relieve a hapless parent's pain,
And give my daughter to these arms again;
_Receive my gifts_; if mercy fails, yet let my present move,
And fear _the god that deals his darts around_,
avenging Phosbus, son of Jove.
The Greeks, in shouts, their joint assent declare
The priest to reverence, and release the fair.
Not so Atrides; he, with kingly pride,
Repuls'd the sacred sire, and thus reply'd.
He said, the Greeks their joint assent declare,
_The father said, the gen'rons Greeks relent,_
T' accept the ransom, and release the fair:
_Revere the priest, and speak their joint assent:_
Not so the _tyrant_, he, with kingly pride,
Atrides,
Repuls'd the sacred sire, and thus replied.
[Not so the tyrant. DRYDEN.]
Of these lines, and of the whole first book, I am told that there was yet
a former copy, more varied, and more deformed with interlineations.
The beginning of the second book varies very little from the printed
page, and is, therefore, set down without a parallel; the few differences
do not require to be elaborately displayed.
Now pleasing sleep had seal'd each mortal eye;
Stretch'd in their tents the Grecian leaders lie;
Th' immortals slumber'd on their thrones above,
All but the ever-watchful eye of Jove.
To honour Thetis' son he bends his care,
And plunge the Greeks in all the woes of war.
Then bids an empty phantom rise to sight,
And thus _commands_ the vision of the night:
directs
Fly hence, delusive dream, and, light as air,
To Agamemnon's royal tent repair;
Bid him in arms draw forth th' embattled train,
March all his legions to the dusty plain.
_Now tell the king_ 'tis given him to destroy
Declare ev'n now
The lofty _walls_ of wide-extended Troy;
tow'rs
For now no more the gods with fate contend,
At Juno's suit the heavenly factions end.
Destruction _hovers_ o'er yon devoted wall,
hangs
And nodding Ilium waits th' impending fall.
Invocation to the catalogue of ships:
Say, virgins, seated round the throne divine,
All-knowing goddesses! immortal nine!
Since earth's wide regions, heaven's unmeasur'd height,
And hell's abyss, hide nothing from your sight,
(We, wretched mortals! lost in doubts below,
But guess by rumour, and but boast we know,)
Oh! say what heroes, fir'd by thirst of fame,
Or urg'd by wrongs, to Troy's destruction came!
To count them all demands a thousand tongues,
A throat of brass and adamantine lungs.
Now, virgin goddesses, immortal nine!
That round Olympus' heavenly summit shine,
Who see through heaven and earth, and hell profound,
And all things know, and all things can resound!
Relate what armies sought the Trojan land,
What nations follow'd, and what chiefs command;
(For doubtful fame distracts mankind below,
And nothing can we tell, and nothing know,)
Without your aid, to count th' unnumber'd train,
A thousand mouths, a thousand tongues, were vain.
Book v. _v_. 1.
But Pallas now Tydides' soul inspires,
Fills with her force, and warms with all her fires;
Above the Greeks his deathless fame to raise,
And crown her hero with distinguish'd praise.
High on his helm celestial lightnings play,
His beamy shield emits a living ray;
Th' unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies.
Like the red star that fires th' autumnal skies.
But Pallas now Tydides' soul inspires,
Fills with her _rage_, and warms with all her fires;
force,
O'er all the Greeks decrees his fame to raise,
Above the Greeks her _warrior's_ fame to raise,
his deathless
And crown her hero with _immortal_ praise:
distinguish'd
_Bright from_ his beamy _crest_ the lightnings play,
High on helm
From his broad buckler flash'd the living ray;
High on his helm celestial lightnings play,
His beamy shield emits a living ray.
The goddess with her breath the flame supplies,
Bright as the star whose fires in autumn rise;
Her breath divine thick streaming flames supplies,
Bright as the star that fires th' autumnal skies:
Th' unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies,
Like the red star that fires th' autumnal skies.
When first he rears his radiant orb to sight,
And, bath'd in ocean, shoots a keener light.
Such glories Pallas on the chief bestow'd,
Such from his arms the fierce effulgence flow'd;
Onward she drives him, furious to engage,
Where the fight burns, and where the thickest rage.
When fresh he rears his radiant orb to sight,
And gilds old ocean with a blaze of light,
Bright as the star that fires th' autumnal skies;
Fresh from the deep, and gilds the seas and skies;
Such glories Pallas on her chief bestow'd,
Such sparkling rays from his bright armour flow'd;
Such from his arms the fierce effulgence flow'd;
Onward she drives him _headlong_ to engage,
furious
Where the _war bleeds_, and where the _fiercest_ rage,
fight burns, thickest
The sons of Dares first the combat sought,
A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault;
In Vulcan's fane the father's days were led,
The sons to toils of glorious battle bred.
There liv'd a Trojan--Dares was his name,
The priest of Vulcan, rich, yet void of blame;
The sons of Dares first the combat sought,
A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault.
_Conclusion of Book_ viii. _v_. 687.
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole;
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays;
The long reflections of the distant fires
Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires.
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field.
Pull fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose umber'd arms by fits thick flashes send;
Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn.
As when in stillness of the silent night,
As when the moon, in all her lustre bright;
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heav'n's _clear_ azure _sheds_ her _silver_ light;
pure spreads sacred
As still in air the trembling lustre stood,
And o'er its golden border shoots a flood;
When _no loose gale_ disturbs the deep serene,
not a breath
And _no dim_ cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
not a
Around her silver throne the planets glow,
And stars unnumber'd trembling beams bestow:
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole;
Clear gleams of light o'er the dark trees are seen,
o'er the dark trees a yellow sheds,
O'er the dark trees a yellower _green_ they shed,
gleam
verdure
And tip with silver all the _mountain_ heads
forest
And tip with silver every mountain's head.
The valleys open, and the forests rise,
The vales appear, the rocks in prospect rise,
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise.
All nature stands reveal'd before our eyes;
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.
The conscious shepherd, joyful at the sight,
Eyes the blue vault, and numbers every light.
The conscious _swains rejoicing at the_ sight,
shepherds gazing with delight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the _vivid_ light,
glorious
useful
So many flames before _the navy_ blaze,
proud Ilion
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays;
Wide o'er the fields to Troy extend the gleams,
And tip the distant spires with fainter beams;
The long reflections of the distant fires
Gild the high walls, and tremble on the spires;
Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires;
A thousand fires at distant stations bright,
Gild the dark prospect, and dispel the night.
Of these specimens every man who has cultivated poetry, or who delights
to trace the mind from the rudeness of its first conceptions to the
elegance of its last, will naturally desire a greater number; but most
other readers are already tired, and I am not writing only to poets and
philosophers.
The Iliad was published volume by volume, as the translation proceeded:
the four first books appeared in 1715. The expectation of this work was
undoubtedly high, and every man who had connected his name with
criticism, or poetry, was desirous of such intelligence as might enable
him to talk upon the popular topick. Halifax, who, by having been first
a poet, and then a patron of poetry, had acquired the right of being a
judge, was willing to hear some books while they were yet unpublished.
Of this rehearsal Pope afterwards gave the following account[122]:
"The famous lord Halifax was rather a pretender to taste, than really
possessed of it. When I had finished the two or three first books of my
translation of the Iliad, that lord desired to have the pleasure of
hearing them read at his house. Addison, Congreve, and Garth, were there
at the reading. In four or five places, lord Halifax stopped me very
civilly, and with a speech each time of much the same kind, 'I beg your
pardon, Mr. Pope; but there is something in that passage that does not
quite please me. Be so good as to mark the place, and consider it a
little at your leisure. I'm sure you can give it a little turn.' I
returned from lord Halifax's with Dr. Garth, in his chariot: and, as we
were going along, was saying to the doctor, that my lord had laid me
under a great deal of difficulty by such loose and general observations;
that I had been thinking over the passages almost ever since, and could
not guess what it was that offended his lordship in either of them.
Garth laughed heartily at my embarrassment; said, I had not been long
enough acquainted with lord Halifax, to know his way yet; that I need
not puzzle myself about looking those places over and over when I got
home. 'All you need do,' says he, 'is to leave them just as they are;
call on lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind
observations on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I
have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the
event.' I followed his advice; waited on lord Halifax some time after;
said, I hoped he would find his objections to those passages removed;
read them to him exactly as they were at first; and his lordship was
extremely pleased with them, and cried out, 'Aye, now they are perfectly
right: nothing can be better[123].'"
It is seldom that the great or the wise suspect that they are despised
or cheated. Halifax, thinking this a lucky opportunity of securing
immortality, made some advances of favour and some overtures of
advantage to Pope, which he seems to have received with sullen coldness.
All our knowledge of this transaction is derived from a single letter,
Dec. 1,1714, in which Pope says, "I am obliged to you, both for the
favours you have done me, and those you intend me. I distrust neither
your will nor your memory, when it is to do good; and if I ever become
troublesome or solicitous, it must not be out of expectation, but out
of gratitude. Your lordship may cause me to live agreeably in the town,
or contentedly in the country, which is really all the difference I set
between an easy fortune and a small one. It is, indeed, a high strain of
generosity in you to think of making me easy all my life, only because I
have been so happy as to divert you some few hours; but, if I may have
leave to add, it is because you think me no enemy to my native country,
there will appear a better reason; for I must of consequence be very
much, as I sincerely am, yours, &c."
These voluntary offers, and this faint acceptance, ended without effect.
The patron was not accustomed to such frigid gratitude: and the poet fed
his own pride with the dignity of independence. They probably were
suspicious of each other. Pope would not dedicate till he saw at what
rate his praise was valued; he would be "troublesome out of gratitude,
not expectation." Halifax thought himself entitled to confidence; and
would give nothing, unless he knew what he should receive. Their
commerce had its beginning in hope of praise on one side, and of money
on the other, and ended because Pope was less eager of money than
Halifax of praise. It is not likely that Halifax had any personal
benevolence to Pope; it is evident that Pope looked on Halifax with
scorn and hatred[124].
The reputation of this great work failed of gaining him a patron; but it
deprived him of a friend. Addison and he were now at the head of poetry
and criticism; and both in such a state of elevation, that, like the two
rivals in the Roman state, one could no longer bear an equal, nor the
other a superiour. Of the gradual abatement of kindness between friends,
the beginning is often scarcely discernible by themselves, and the
process is continued by petty provocations, and incivilities sometimes
peevishly returned, and sometimes contemptuously neglected, which would
escape all attention but that of pride, and drop from any memory but
that of resentment. That the quarrel of these two wits should be
minutely deduced, is not to be expected from a writer to whom, as Homer
says, "nothing but rumour has reached, and who has no personal
knowledge."
Pope doubtless approached Addison, when the reputation of their wit
first brought them together, with the respect due to a man whose
abilities were acknowledged, and who, having attained that eminence to
which he was himself aspiring, had in his hands the distribution of
literary fame. He paid court with sufficient diligence by his prologue
to Cato, by his abuse of Dennis, and with praise yet more direct, by his
poem on the Dialogues on Medals, of which the immediate publication was
then intended. In all this there was no hypocrisy; for he confessed that
he found in Addison something more pleasing than in any other man.
It may be supposed, that as Pope saw himself favoured by the world, and
more frequently compared his own powers with those of others, his
confidence increased, and his submission lessened; and that Addison felt
no delight from the advances of a young wit, who might soon contend with
him for the highest place. Every great man, of whatever kind be his
greatness, has among his friends those who officiously or insidiously
quicken his attention to offences, heighten his disgust, and stimulate
his resentment. Of such adherents Addison doubtless had many; and Pope
was now too high to be without them.
From the emission and reception of the proposals for the Iliad, the
kindness of Addison seems to have abated. Jervas, the painter, once
pleased himself, Aug. 20, 1714, with imagining that he had reestablished
their friendship; and wrote to Pope that Addison once suspected him of
too close a confederacy with Swift, but was now satisfied with his
conduct. To this Pope answered, a week after, that his engagements to
Swift were such as his services in regard to the subscription demanded,
and that the tories never put him under the necessity of asking leave to
be grateful. "But," says he, "as Mr. Addison must be the judge in what
regards himself, and has seemed to be no just one to me, so I must own
to you I expect nothing but civility from him." In the same letter he
mentions Philips, as having been busy to kindle animosity between them;
but in a letter to Addison, he expresses some consciousness of
behaviour, inattentively deficient in respect.
Of Swift's industry in promoting the subscription there remains the
testimony of Kennet, no friend to either him or Pope.
"Nov. 2, 1713, Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house, and had a bow from
every body but me, who, I confess, could not but despise him. When I
came to the ante-chamber to wait, before prayers, Dr. Swift was the
principal man of talk and business, and acted as master of requests.
Then he instructed a young nobleman, that the _best poet in England_ was
Mr. Pope, a papist, who had begun a translation of Homer into English
verse, for which _he must have them all subscribe_; for, says he, the
author _shall not_ begin to print till _I have_ a thousand guineas for
him."
About this time it is likely that Steele, who was, with all his
political fury, good-natured and officious, procured an interview
between these angry rivals, which ended in aggravated malevolence. On
this occasion, if the reports be true, Pope made his complaint with
frankness and spirit, as a man undeservedly neglected or opposed; and
Addison affected a contemptuous unconcern, and, in a calm even voice,
reproached Pope with his vanity, and, telling him of the improvements
which his early works had received from his own remarks and those of
Steele, said, that he, being now engaged in publick business, had no
longer any care for his poetical reputation, nor had any other desire,
with regard to Pope, than that he should not, by too much arrogance,
alienate the publick.
To this Pope is said to have replied with great keenness and severity,
upbraiding Addison with perpetual dependance, and with the abuse of
those qualifications which he had obtained at the publick cost, and
charging him with mean endeavours to obstruct the progress of rising
merit. The contest rose so high, that they parted at last without any
interchange of civility.
The first volume of Homer was, 1715, in time published; and a rival
version of the first Iliad, for rivals the time of their appearance
inevitably made them, was immediately printed, with the name of Tickell.
It was soon perceived that, among the followers of Addison, Tickell had
the preference, and the criticks and poets divided into factions. "I,"
says Pope, "have the town, that is, the mob, on my side; but it is not
uncommon for the smaller party to supply by industry what it wants in
numbers. I appeal to the people as my rightful judges, and while they
are not inclined to condemn me, shall not fear the highfliers at
Button's." This opposition he immediately imputed to Addison, and
complained of it in terms sufficiently resentful to Craggs, their common
friend.
When Addison's opinion was asked, he declared the versions to be both
good, but Tickell's the best that had ever been written; and sometimes
said, that they were both good, but that Tickell had more of Homer.
Pope was now sufficiently irritated; his reputation and his interest
were at hazard. He once intended to print together the four versions of
Dryden, Maynwaring, Pope, and Tickell, that they might be readily
compared, and fairly estimated. This design seems to have been defeated
by the refusal of Tonson, who was the proprietor of the other three
versions.
Pope intended, at another time, a rigorous criticism of Tickell's
translation, and had marked a copy, which I have seen, in all places
that appeared defective. But, while he was thus meditating defence or
revenge, his adversary sunk before him without a blow; the voice of the
publick was not long divided, and the preference was universally given
to Pope's performance.
He was convinced, by adding one circumstance to another, that the other
translation was the work of Addison himself; but, if he knew it in
Addison's lifetime, it does not appear that he told it. He left his
illustrious antagonist to be punished by what has been considered as
the most painful of all reflections, the remembrance of a crime
perpetrated in vain.
The other circumstances of their quarrel were thus related by Pope[125].
"Philips seemed to have been encouraged to abuse me in coffee-houses,
and conversations: and Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley, in which he
had abused both me and my relations very grossly. Lord Warwick himself
told me one day, that it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with
Mr. Addison; that his jealous temper would never admit of a settled
friendship between us; and, to convince me of what he had said, assured
me, that Addison had encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and
had given him ten guineas after they were published. The next day, while
I was heated with what I had heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison, to
let him know that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his;
that if I was to speak severely of him in return for it, it should be
not in such a dirty way; that I should rather tell him, himself, fairly
of his faults, and allow his good qualities; and, that it should be
something in the following manner: I then adjoined the first sketch of
what has since been called my satire on Addison. Mr. Addison used me
very civilly ever after[126]."
The verses on Addison, when they were sent to Atterbury, were considered
by him as the most excellent of Pope's performances; and the writer was
advised, since he knew where his strength lay, not to suffer it to
remain unemployed.
This year, 1715, being, by the subscription, enabled to live more by
choice, having persuaded his father to sell their estate at Binfield, he
purchased, I think, only for his life, that house at Twickenham, to
which his residence afterwards procured so much celebration, and
removed thither with his father and mother.
Here he planted the vines and the quincunx which his verses mention;
and, being under the necessity of making a subterraneous passage to a
garden on the other side of the road, he adorned it with fossile bodies,
and dignified it with the title of a grotto, a place of silence and
retreat, from which he endeavoured to persuade his friends and himself
that cares and passions could be excluded.
A grotto is not often the wish or pleasure of an Englishman, who has
more frequent need to solicit than exclude the sun; but Pope's
excavation was requisite as an entrance to his garden, and, as some men
try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from an
inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a
passage. It may be frequently remarked of the studious and speculative,
that they are proud of trifles, and that their amusements seem frivolous
and childish; whether it be that men, conscious of great reputation,
think themselves above the reach of censure, and safe in the admission
of negligent indulgences, or that mankind expect from elevated genius an
uniformity of greatness, and watch its degradation with malicious
wonder; like him who, having followed with his eye an eagle into the
clouds, should lament that she ever descended to a perch.
While the volumes of his Homer were annually published, he collected his
former works, 1717, into one quarto volume, to which he prefixed a
preface, written with great sprightliness and elegance, which was
afterwards reprinted, with some passages subjoined that he at first
omitted; other marginal additions of the same kind he made in the later
editions of his poems. Waller remarks, that poets lose half their
praise, because the reader knows not what they have blotted. Pope's
voracity of fame taught him the art of obtaining the accumulated honour,
both of what he had published, and of what he had suppressed.
In this year his father died suddenly, in his seventy-fifth year, having
passed twenty-nine years in privacy. He is not known but by the
character which his son has given him. If the money with which he
retired was all gotten by himself, he had traded very successfully in,
times when sudden riches were rarely attainable.
The publication of the Iliad was at last completed in 1720. The
splendour and success of this work raised Pope many enemies, that
endeavoured to depreciate his abilities. Burnet, who was afterwards a
judge of no mean reputation, censured him in a piece called Homerides,
before it was published. Ducket, likewise, endeavoured to make him
ridiculous. Dennis was the perpetual persecutor of all his studies. But,
whoever his criticks were, their writings are lost; and the names which
are preserved are preserved in the Dunciad.
In this disastrous year, 1720, of national infatuation, when more riches
than Peru can boast were expected from the South-sea, when the contagion
of avarice tainted every mind, and even poets panted after wealth, Pope
was seized with the universal passion, and ventured some of his money.
The stock rose in its price; and for awhile he thought himself the lord
of thousands. But this dream of happiness did not last long; and he
seems to have waked soon enough to get clear with the loss only of what
he once thought himself to have won, and perhaps not wholly of that.
Next year he published some select poems of his friend Dr. Parnell, with
a very elegant dedication to the earl of Oxford; who, after all his
struggles and dangers, then lived in retirement, still under the frown
of a victorious faction, who could take no pleasure in hearing his
praise.
He gave the same year, 1721, an edition of Shakespeare. His name was now
of so much authority, that Tonson thought himself entitled, by annexing
it, to demand a subscription of six guineas for Shakespeare's plays, in
six quarto volumes; nor did his expectation much deceive him; for, of
seven hundred and fifty which he printed, he dispersed a great number at
the price proposed. The reputation of that edition, indeed, sunk
afterwards so low, that one hundred and forty copies were sold at
sixteen shillings each.
On this undertaking, to which Pope was induced by a reward of two
hundred and seventeen pounds twelve shillings, he seems never to have
reflected afterwards without vexation; for Theobald, a man of heavy
diligence, with very slender powers, first, in a book called Shakespeare
Restored, and then in a formal edition, detected his deficiencies with
all the insolence of victory; and as he was now high enough to be feared
and hated, Theobald had from others all the help that could be supplied,
by the desire of humbling a haughty character.
From this time Pope became an enemy to editors, collators, commentators,
and verbal criticks; and hoped to persuade the world, that he miscarried
in this undertaking, only by having a mind too great for such minute
employment.
Pope in his edition undoubtedly did many things wrong, and left many
things undone; but let him not be defrauded of his due praise. He was
the first that knew, at least the first that told, by what helps the
text might be improved. If he inspected the early editions negligently,
he taught others to be more accurate. In his preface, he expanded, with
great skill and elegance, the character which had been given of
Shakespeare by Dryden; and he drew the publick attention upon his works,
which, though often mentioned, had been little read.
Soon after the appearance of the Iliad, resolving not to let the general
kindness cool, he published proposals for a translation of the Odyssey,
in five volumes, for five guineas. He was willing, however, now to have
associates in his labour, being either weary with toiling upon another's
thoughts, or having heard, as Ruffhead relates, that Fenton and Broome
had already begun the work, and liking better to have them confederates
than rivals.
In the patent, instead of saying that he had "translated" the Odyssey,
as he had said of the Iliad, he says, that he had "undertaken" a
translation; and in the proposals, the subscription is said to be not
solely for his own use, but for that of "two of his friends, who have
assisted him in this work."
In 1723, while he was engaged in this new version, he appeared before
the lords at the memorable trial of bishop Atterbury, with whom he had
lived in great familiarity, and frequent correspondence. Atterbury had
honestly recommended to him the study of the popish controversy, in hope
of his conversion; to which Pope answered in a manner that cannot much
recommend his principles, or his judgment[127]. In questions and
projects of learning they agreed better. He was called at the trial to
give an account of Atterbury's domestick life and private employment,
that it might appear how little time he had left for plots. Pope had but
few words to utter, and in those few he made several blunders.
His letters to Atterbury express the utmost esteem, tenderness, and
gratitude; "perhaps," says he, "it is not only in this world that I may
have cause to remember the bishop of Rochester." At their last interview
in the Tower, Atterbury presented him with a bible[128].
Of the Odyssey, Pope translated only twelve books; the rest were the
work of Broome and Fenton: the notes were written wholly by Broome, who
was not over-liberally rewarded. The publick was carefully kept ignorant
of the several shares; and an account was subjoined at the conclusion,
which is now known not to be true. The first copy of Pope's books, with
those of Fenton, are to be seen in the Museum. The parts of Pope are
less interlined than the Iliad; and the latter books of the Iliad less
than the former. He grew dexterous by practice, and every sheet enabled
him to write the next with more facility. The books of Fenton have very
few alterations by the hand of Pope. Those of Broome have not been
found; but Pope complained, as it is reported, that he had much trouble
in correcting them.
His contract with Lintot was the same as for the Iliad, except that only
one hundred pounds were to be paid him for each volume. The number of
subscribers was five hundred and seventy-four, and of copies eight
hundred and nineteen; so that his profit, when he had paid his
assistants, was still very considerable. The work was finished in 1725;
and from that time he resolved to make no more translations.
The sale did not answer Lintot's expectation; and he then pretended to
discover something of fraud in Pope, and commenced or threatened a suit
in Chancery.
On the English Odyssey a criticism was published by Spence, at that time
prelector of poetry at Oxford; a man whose learning was not very great,
and whose mind was not very powerful. His criticism, however, was
commonly just; what he thought, he thought rightly; and his remarks were
recommended by his coolness and candour. In him Pope had the first
experience of a critick without malevolence, who thought it as much his
duty to display beauties as expose faults; who censured with respect,
and praised with alacrity.
With this criticism Pope was so little offended, that he sought the
acquaintance of the writer, who lived with him, from that time, in great
familiarity, attended him in his last hours, and compiled memorials of
his conversation. The regard of Pope recommended him to the great and
powerful; and he obtained very valuable preferments in the church.
Not long after, Pope was returning home, from a visit, in a friend's
coach, which, in passing a bridge, was overturned into the water; the
windows were closed, and being unable to force them open, he was in
danger of immediate death, when the postillion snatched him out by
breaking the glass, of which the fragments cut two of his fingers in
such a manner, that he lost their use.
Voltaire, who was then in England, sent him a letter of consolation. He
had been entertained by Pope at his table, where he talked with so much
grossness, that Mrs. Pope was driven from the room. Pope discovered, by
a trick, that he was a spy for the court, and never considered him as a
man worthy of confidence.
He soon afterwards, 1727, joined with Swift, who was then in England, to
publish three volumes of Miscellanies, in which, amongst other things,
he inserted the Memoirs of a Parish Clerk, in ridicule of Burnet's
importance in his own history, and a Debate upon Black and White Horses,
written in all the formalities of a legal process by the assistance, as
is said, of Mr. Fortescue, afterwards master of the Rolls. Before these
Miscellanies is a preface signed by Swift and Pope, but apparently
written by Pope; in which he makes a ridiculous and romantick complaint
of the robberies committed upon authors by the clandestine seizure and
sale of their papers. He tells, in tragick strains, how "the cabinets of
the sick and the closets of the dead have been broke open and
ransacked;" as if those violences were often committed for papers of
uncertain and accidental value, which are rarely provoked by real
treasures; as if epigrams and essays were in danger, where gold and
diamonds are safe. A cat hunted for his musk is, according to Pope's
account, but the emblem of a wit winded by booksellers.
His complaint, however, received some attestation; for, the same year,
the letters written by him, to Mr. Cromwell, in his youth, were sold by
Mrs. Thomas to Curll, who printed them.
In these Miscellanies was first published the Art of Sinking in Poetry,
which, by such a train of consequences as usually passes in literary
quarrels, gave, in a short time, according to Pope's account, occasion
to the Dunciad.
In the following year, 1728, he began to put Atterbury's advice in
practice; and showed his satirical powers by publishing the Dunciad, one
of his greatest and most elaborate performances, in which he endeavoured
to sink into contempt all the writers by whom he had been attacked, and
some others whom he thought unable to defend themselves.
At the head of the _dunces_ he placed poor Theobald, whom he accused of
ingratitude; but whose real crime was supposed to be that of having
revised Shakespeare more happily than himself. This satire had the
effect which he intended, by blasting the characters which it touched.
Ralph[129], who, unnecessarily interposing in the quarrel, got a place
in a subsequent edition, complained that, for a time, he was in danger
of starving, as the booksellers had no longer any confidence in his
capacity.
The prevalence of this poem was gradual and slow; the plan, if not
wholly new, was little understood by common readers. Many of the
allusions required illustration; the names were often expressed only by
the initial and final letters, and, if they had been printed at length,
were such as few had known or recollected. The subject itself had
nothing generally interesting, for whom did it concern to know that one
or another scribbler was a dunce? If, therefore, it had been possible
for those who were attacked to conceal their pain and their resentment,
the Dunciad might have made its way very slowly in the world.
This, however, was not to be expected: every man is of importance to
himself, and, therefore, in his own opinion, to others; and, supposing
the world already acquainted with all his pleasures and his pains, is,
perhaps, the first to publish injuries or misfortunes, which had never
been known unless related by himself, and at which those that hear them
will only laugh; for no man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.
The history of the Dunciad is very minutely related by Pope himself, in
a dedication which he wrote to lord Middlesex in the name of Savage.
"I will relate the war of the _dunces_, (for so it has been commonly
called,) which began in the year 1727, and ended in 1730."
"When Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope thought it proper, for reasons specified
in the preface to their Miscellanies, to publish such little pieces of
theirs as had casually got abroad, there was added to them the treatise
of the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. It happened that, in one
chapter of this piece, the several species of bad poets were ranged in
classes, to which were prefixed almost all the letters of the alphabet;
(the greatest part of them at random;) but such was the number of poets
eminent in that art, that some one or other took every letter to
himself: all fell into so violent a fury, that, for half a year or more,
the common newspapers (in most of which they had some property, as being
hired writers) were filled with the most abusive falsehoods and
scurrilities they could possibly devise; a liberty no way to be wondered
at in those people, and in those papers, that, for many years, during
the uncontrouled license of the press, had aspersed almost all the great
characters of the age, and this with impunity, their own persons and
names being utterly secret and obscure.
"This gave Mr. Pope the thought that he had now some opportunity of
doing good, by detecting and dragging into light these common enemies of
mankind; since to invalidate this universal slander, it sufficed to show
what contemptible men were the authors of it. He was not without hopes
that, by manifesting the dulness of those who had only malice to
recommend them, either the booksellers would not find their account in
employing them, or the men themselves, when discovered, want courage to
proceed in so unlawful an occupation. This it was that gave birth to the
Dunciad; and he thought it an happiness, that, by the late flood of
slander on himself, he had acquired such a peculiar right over their
names as was necessary to this design.
"On the 12th of March, 1729, at St. James's, that poem was presented to
the king and queen (who had before been pleased to read it) by the right
honourable sir Robert Walpole; and, some days after, the whole
impression was taken and dispersed by several noblemen, and persons of
the first distinction.
"It is, certainly, a true observation, that no people are so impatient
of censure as those who are the greatest slanderers, which was
wonderfully exemplified on this occasion. On the day the book was first
vended, a crowd of authors besieged the shop; entreaties, advices,
threats of law and battery, nay, cries of treason, were all employed to
hinder the coming out of the Dunciad; on the other side, the booksellers
and hawkers made as great efforts to procure it. What could a few poor
authors do against so great a majority as the publick? There was no
stopping a torrent with a finger; so out it came.
"Many ludicrous circumstances attended it. The _dunces_ (for by this
name they were called) held weekly clubs, to consult of hostilities
against the author; one wrote a letter to a great minister, assuring him
Mr. Pope was the greatest enemy the government had; and another bought
his image in clay, to execute him in effigy; with which sad sort of
satisfaction the gentlemen were a little comforted.
"Some false editions of the book having an owl in their frontispiece,
the true one, to distinguish it, fixed in its stead an ass laden with
authors. Then another surreptitious one being printed with the same ass,
the new edition in octavo returned, for distinction, to the owl again.
Hence arose a great contest of booksellers against booksellers, and
advertisements against advertisements; some recommending the edition of
the owl, and others the edition of the ass; by which names they came to
be distinguished, to the great honour also of the gentlemen of the
Dunciad."
Pope appears, by this narrative, to have contemplated his victory over
the _dunces_ with great exultation; and such was his delight in the
tumult which he had raised, that for awhile his natural sensibility was
suspended, and he read reproaches and invectives without emotion,
considering them only as the necessary effects of that pain which he
rejoiced in having given.
It cannot, however, be concealed that, by his own confession, he was the
aggressor; for nobody believes that the letters in the Bathos were
placed at random; and it may be discovered that, when he thinks himself
concealed, he indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in
those distinctions which he had affected to despise. He is proud that
his book was presented to the king and queen by the right honourable sir
Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud
that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first
distinction.
The edition of which he speaks was, I believe, that which, by telling in
the text the names, and in the notes the characters, of those whom he
had satirized, was made intelligible and diverting. The criticks had now
declared their approbation of the plan, and the common reader began to
like it without fear; those who were strangers to petty literature, and,
therefore, unable to decipher initials and blanks, had now names and
persons brought within their view; and delighted in the visible effect
of those shafts of malice, which they had hitherto contemplated, as shot
into the air.
Dennis, upon the fresh provocation now given him, renewed the enmity
which had, for a time, been appeased by mutual civilities; and published
remarks, which he had till then suppressed, upon the Rape of the Lock.
Many more grumbled in secret, or vented their resentment in the
newspapers by epigrams or invectives.
Ducket, indeed, being mentioned as loving Burriet with "pious passion,"
pretended that his moral character was injured, and, for some time,
declared his resolution to take vengeance with a cudgel. But Pope
appeased him, by changing "pious passion" to "cordial friendship;" and
by a note, in which he vehemently disclaims the malignity of meaning
imputed to the first expression.
Aaron Hill, who was represented as diving for the prize, expostulated
with Pope in a manner so much superiour to all mean solicitation, that
Pope was reduced to sneak and shuffle sometimes to deny, and sometimes
to apologize; he first endeavours to wound, and is then afraid to own
that he meant a blow.
The Dunciad, in the complete edition, is addressed to Dr. Swift: of the
notes, part were written by Dr. Arbuthnot; and an apologetical letter
was prefixed, signed by Cleland, but supposed to have been written by
Pope.
After this general war upon dulness, he seems to have indulged himself
awhile in tranquillity; but his subsequent productions prove that he was
not idle. He published, 1731, a poem on Taste, in which he very
particularly and severely criticises the house, the furniture, the
gardens, and the entertainments, of Timon, a man of great wealth and
little taste. By Timon he was universally supposed, and by the earl of
Burlington, to whom the poem was addressed, was privately said, to mean
the duke of Chandos; a man, perhaps, too much delighted with pomp and
show, but of a temper kind and beneficent, and who had, consequently,
the voice of the publick in his favour.
A violent outcry was, therefore, raised against the ingratitude and
treachery of Pope, who was said to have been indebted to the patronage
of Chandos for a present of a thousand pounds, and who gained the
opportunity of insulting him by the kindness of his invitation.
The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publickly denied; but from the
reproach which the attack on a character so amiable brought upon him, he
tried all means of escaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in
an apology, by which no man was satisfied; and he was at last reduced to
shelter his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that
disbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote an
exculpatory letter to the duke, which was answered with great
magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing his
professions. He said, that to have ridiculed his taste, or his
buildings, had been an indifferent action in another man; but that in
Pope, after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged between
them, it had been less easily excused.
Pope, in one of his letters, complaining of the treatment which his poem
had found, "owns that such criticks can intimidate him, nay, almost
persuade him to write no more, which is a compliment this age
deserves." The man who threatens the world is always ridiculous; for the
world can easily go on without him, and, in a short time, will cease to
miss him. I have heard of an idiot, who used to revenge his vexatious by
lying all night upon the bridge. "There is nothing," says Juvenal, "that
a man will not believe in his own favour." Pope had been flattered till
he thought himself one of the moving powers in the system of life. When
he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him entreated and
implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went
away and laughed.
The following year deprived him of Gay, a man whom he had known early,
and whom he seemed to love with more tenderness than any other of his
literary friends. Pope was now forty-four years old; an age at which the
mind begins less easily to admit new confidence, and the will to grow
less flexible; and when, therefore, the departure of an old friend is
very acutely felt.
In the next year he lost his mother, not by an unexpected death, for she
had lasted to the age of ninety-three; but she did not die unlamented.
The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and
exemplary; his parents had the happiness of living till he was at the
summit of poetical reputation, till he was at ease in his fortune, and
without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of his respect or
tenderness. Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and
whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has, among
its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better to give than such a
son.
One of the passages of Pope's life, which seems to deserve some inquiry,
was a publication of letters between him and many of his friends, which
falling into the hands of Curll, a rapacious bookseller of no good fame,
were by him printed and sold. This volume containing some letters from
noblemen, Pope incited a prosecution against him in the house of lords
for a breach of privilege, and attended himself to stimulate the
resentment of his friends. Curll appeared at the bar, and, knowing
himself in no great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence.
"He has," said Curll, "a knack at versifying, but in prose I think
myself a match for him." When the orders of the house were examined,
none of them appeared to have been infringed; Curll went away
triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy.
Curll's account was, that one evening a man in a clergy-man's gown, but
with a lawyer's band, brought and offered to sale a number of printed
volumes, which he found to be Pope's Epistolary Correspondence; that he
asked no name, and was told none, but gave the price demanded, and
thought himself authorised to use his purchase to his own advantage.
That Curll gave a true account of the transaction it is reasonable to
believe, because no falsehood was ever detected[130] and when, some
years afterwards, I mentioned it to Lintot, the son of Bernard, he
declared his opinion to be, that Pope knew better than any body else how
Curll obtained the copies, because another parcel was at the same time
sent to himself, for which no price had ever been demanded, as he made
known his resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal
with a nameless agent.
Such care had been taken to make them publick, that they were sent at
once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely to seize them as a
prey; and to Lintot, who might be expected to give Pope information of
the seeming injury. Lintot, I believe, did nothing; and Curll did what
was expected. That to make them publick was the only purpose, may be
reasonably supposed, because the numbers offered to sale by the private
messengers showed that hope of gain could not have been the motive of
the impression.
It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his letters, and not
knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this
country been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of compulsion;
that, when he could complain that his letters were surreptitiously
published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself.
Pope's private correspondence, thus promulgated, filled the nation with
praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his
purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship. There were some letters
which a very good or a very wise man would wish suppressed; but, as they
had been already exposed, it was impracticable now to retract them.
From the perusal of those letters, Mr. Allen first conceived the desire
of knowing him; and with so much zeal did he cultivate the friendship
which he had newly formed, that, when Pope told his purpose of
vindicating his own property by a genuine edition, he offered to pay the
cost.
This, however, Pope did not accept; but, in time, solicited a
subscription for a quarto volume, which appeared, 1737, I believe, with
sufficient profit. In the preface he tells, that his letters were
reposited in a friend's library, said to be the earl of Oxford's, and
that the copy thence stolen was sent to the press. The story was
doubtless received with differe at degrees of credit. It may be
suspected that the preface to the Miscellanies was written to prepare
the publick for such an incident; and to strengthen this opinion, James
Worsdale, a painter, who was employed in clandestine negotiations, but
whose veracity was very doubtful, declared that he was the messenger who
carried, by Pope's direction, the books to Curll.
When they were thus published and avowed, as they had relation to recent
facts, and persons either then living or not yet forgotten, they may be
supposed to have found readers; but as the facts were minute, and the
characters, being either private or literary, were little known, or
little regarded, they awakened no popular kindness or resentment; the
book never became much the subject of conversation; some read it as
contemporary history, and some, perhaps, as a model of epistolary
language; but those who read it did not talk of it. Not much, therefore,
was added by it to fame or envy; nor do I remember that it produced
either publick praise or publick censure.
It had, however, in some degree, the recommendation of novelty. Our
language had few letters, except those of statesmen. Howel, indeed,
about a century ago, published his letters, which are commended by
Morhoff, and which alone, of his hundred volumes, continue his memory.
Loveday's letters were printed only once; those of Herbert and Suckling
are hardly known. Mrs. Phillips's (Orinda's) are equally neglected. And
those of Walsh seem written as exercises, and were never sent to any
living mistress or friend. Pope's epistolary excellence had an open
field; he had no English rival, living or dead.
Pope is seen in this collection as connected with the other contemporary
wits, and certainly suffers no disgrace in the comparison; but it must
be remembered, that he had the power of favouring himself; he might have
originally had publication in his mind, and have written with care, or
have afterwards selected those which he had most happily conceived, or
most diligently laboured; and I know not whether there does not appear
something more studied and artificial[131] in his productions than the
rest except one long letter by Bolingbroke, composed with all the skill
and industry of a professed author. It is, indeed, not easy to
distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously formed a
style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease. Pope may be said to
write always with his reputation in his head; Swift, perhaps, like a man
who remembered he was writing to Pope; but Arbuthnot, like one who lets
thoughts drop from his pen as they rise into his mind.
Before these letters appeared, he published the first part of what he
persuaded himself to think a system of ethicks, under the title of an
Essay on Man; which, if his letter to Swift, of Sept. 14, 1725, be
rightly explained by the commentator, had been eight years under his
consideration, and of which he seems to have desired the success with
great solicitude. He had now many open, and, doubtless, many secret
enemies. The _dunces_ were yet smarting with the war; and the
superiority which he publickly arrogated, disposed the world to wish his
humiliation.
All this he knew, and against all this he provided. His own name, and
that of his friend to whom the work is inscribed, were in the first
editions carefully suppressed; and the poem, being of a new kind, was
ascribed to one or another, as favour determined, or conjecture
wandered; it was given, says Warburton, to every man, except him only
who could write it. Those who like only when they like the author, and
who are under the dominion of a name, condemned it; and those admired it
who are willing to scatter praise at random, which, while it is
unappropriated, excites no envy. Those friends of Pope, that were
trusted with the secret, went about lavishing honours on the new-born
poet, and hinting that Pope was never so much in danger from any former
rival.
To those authors whom he had personally offended, and to those whose
opinion the world considered as decisive, and whom he suspected of envy
or malevolence, he sent his essay as a present before publication, that
they might defeat their own enmity by praises, which they could not
afterwards decently retract.
With these precautions, in 1733, was published the first part of the
Essay on Man. There had been, for some time, a report that Pope was busy
upon a system of morality; but this design was not discovered in the new
poem, which had a form and a title with which its readers were
unacquainted. Its reception was not uniform; some thought it a very
imperfect piece, though not without good lines. While the author was
unknown, some, as will always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and
some censured him as an intruder; but all thought him above neglect;
the sale increased, and editions were multiplied[132]
The subsequent editions of the first epistle exhibited two memorable
corrections. At first, the poet and his friend,
Expatiate freely o'er this scene of man,
A mighty maze _of walks without a plan_.
For which he wrote afterwards,
A mighty maze, _but not without a plan_:
for, if there were no plan, it were in vain to describe or to trace the
maze.
The other alteration was of these lines:
And spite of pride, _and in thy reason's spite_,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right;
but having afterwards discovered, or been shown, that the "truth" which
subsisted "in spite of reason" could not be very "clear," he
substituted,
And spite of pride, _in erring reason's spite_.
To such oversights will the most vigorous mind be liable, when it is
employed at once upon argument and poetry.
The second and third epistles were published; and Pope was, I believe,
more and more suspected of writing them; at last, in 1734, he avowed the
fourth, and claimed the honour of a moral poet.
In the conclusion it is sufficiently acknowledged, that the doctrine of
the Essay on Man was received from Bolingbroke, who is said to have
ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his confidence, as having
adopted and advanced principles of which he did not perceive the
consequence, and as blindly propagating opinions contrary to his own.
That those communications had been consolidated into a scheme regularly
drawn, and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only transformed
from prose to verse, has been reported, but can hardly be true. The
essay plainly appears the fabrick of a poet: what Bolingbroke supplied
could be only the first principles; the order, illustration, and
embellishments, must all be Pope's.
These principles it is not my business to clear from obscurity,
dogmatism, or falsehood; but they were not immediately examined;
philosophy and poetry have not often the same readers; and the essay
abounded in splendid amplifications, and sparkling sentences, which were
read and admired with no great attention to their ultimate purpose; its
flowers caught the eye, which did not see what the gay foliage
concealed, and, for a time, flourished in the sunshine of universal
approbation. So little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as
innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety.
Its reputation soon invited a translator. It was first turned into
French prose, and afterwards, by Resnel, into verse. Both translations
fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had the version in
prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards reprinted Resnel's
version, with particular remarks upon every paragraph.
Crousaz was a professor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatise of
logick, and his Examen de Pyrrhonisme; and, however little known or
regarded here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of those in
which philosophy and piety are happily united. He was accustomed to
argument and disquisition, and, perhaps, was grown too desirous of
detecting faults; but his intentions were always right, his opinions
were solid, and his religion pure.
His incessant vigilance for the promotion of piety disposed him to look
with distrust upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and all schemes
of virtue and happiness purely rational; and, therefore, it was not long
before he was persuaded that the positions of Pope, as they terminated,
for the most part, in natural religion, were intended to draw mankind
away from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things as a
necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality; and it is undeniable,
that in many passages a religious eye may easily discover expressions
not very favourable to morals, or to liberty.
About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first
ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and
vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited inquiry, with wonderful
extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not oppressed his
imagination, nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a
memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original
combinations, and, at once, exerted the powers of the scholar, the
reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be
always exact, and his pursuits too eager to be always cautious. His
abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal
or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his
adversaries with such contemptuous superiority, as made his readers
commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of
some who favoured the cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman
emperour's determination, "oderint dum metuant;" he used no allurements
of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade.
His style is copious without selection, and forcible without neatness;
he took the words that presented themselves: his diction is coarse and
impure, and his sentences are unmeasured.
He had, in the early part of his life, pleased himself with the notice
of inferiour wits, and corresponded with the enemies of Pope. A
letter[133] as produced, when he had, perhaps, himself forgotten it, in
which he tells Concanen, "Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of
leisure, and Pope for want of genius; Milton out of pride, and Addison
out of modesty." And when Theobald published Shakespeare, in opposition
to Pope, the best notes were supplied by Warburton.
But the time was now come when Warburton was to change his opinion; and
Pope was to find a defender in him who had contributed so much to the
exaltation of his rival.
The arrogance of Warburton excited against him every artifice of
offence, and, therefore, it may be supposed that his union with Pope was
censured as hypocritical inconstancy; but surely to think differently,
at different times, of poetical merit, may be easily allowed. Such
opinions are often admitted, and dismissed, without nice examination.
Who is there that has not found reason for changing his mind about
questions of greater importance?
Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook, without solicitation, to
rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the
imputation of favouring fatality, or rejecting revelation; and from
month to month continued a vindication of the Essay on Man, in the
literary journal of that time, called the Republick of Letters.
Pope, who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own work, was glad
that the positions, of which he perceived himself not to know the full
meaning, could, by any mode of interpretation, be made to mean well. How
much he was pleased with his gratuitous defender, the following letter
evidently shows:
"April 11, 1732.
"Sir,--I have just received from Mr. R. two more of your
letters. It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write
this; but I cannot help thanking you in particular for your
third letter, which is so extremely clear, short, and full, that
I think Mr. Crousaz ought never to have another answer, and
deserved not so good an one. I can only say, you do him too much
honour, and me too much right, so odd as the expression seems;
for you have made my system as clear as I ought to have done,
and could not. It is, indeed, the same system as mine, but
illustrated with a ray of your own, as they say our natural body
is the same still when it is glorified. I am sure I like it
better than I did before, and so will every man else. I know I
meant just what you explain; but I did not explain my own
meaning so well as you. You understand me as well as I do
myself; but you express me better than I could express myself.
Pray accept the sincerest acknowledgments. I cannot but wish
these letters were put together in one book, and intend (with
your leave) to procure a translation of part at least, or of all
of them, into French; but I shall not proceed a step without
your consent and opinion, &c."
By this fond and eager acceptance of an exculpatory comment, Pope
testified that, whatever might be the seeming or real import of the
principles which he had received from Bolingbroke, he had not
intentionally attacked religion; and Bolingbroke, if he meant to make
him, without his own consent, an instrument of mischief, found him now
engaged, with his eyes open, on the side of truth.
It is known that Bolingbroke concealed from Pope his real opinions. He
once discovered them to Mr. Hooke, who related them again to Pope, and
was told by him that he must have mistaken the meaning of what he heard;
and Bolingbroke, when Pope's uneasiness incited him to desire an
explanation, declared that Hooke had misunderstood him.
Bolingbroke hated Warburton, who had drawn his pupil from him; and a
little before Pope's death they had a dispute, from which they parted
with mutual aversion.
From this time Pope lived in the closest intimacy with his commentator,
and amply rewarded his kindness and his zeal; for he introduced him to
Mr. Murray, by whose interest he became preacher at Lincoln's inn; and
to Mr. Allen, who gave him his niece and his estate, and, by
consequence, a bishoprick. When he died, he left him the property of
his works; a legacy which may be reasonably estimated at four thousand
pounds.
Pope's fondness for the Essay on Man appeared by his desire of its
propagation. Dobson, who had gained reputation by his version of Prior's
Solomon, was employed by him to translate it into Latin verse, and was,
for that purpose, some time at Twickenham; but he left his work,
whatever was the reason, unfinished; and, by Benson's invitation,
undertook the longer task of Paradise Lost. Pope then desired his friend
to find a scholar who should turn his essay into Latin prose; but no
such performance has ever appeared.
Pope lived at this time "among the great," with that reception and
respect to which his works entitled him, and which he had not impaired
by any private misconduct or factious partiality. Though Bolingbroke was
his friend, Walpole was not his enemy; but treated him with so much
consideration as, at his request, to solicit and obtain from the French
minister an abbey for Mr. Southcot, whom he considered himself as
obliged to reward, by this exertion of his interest, for the benefit
which he had received from his attendance in a long illness.
It was said, that, when the court was at Richmond, queen Caroline had
declared her intention to visit him. This may have been only a careless
effusion, thought on no more: the report of such notice, however, was
soon in many mouths; and, if I do not forget or misapprehend Savage's
account, Pope, pretending to decline what was not yet offered, left his
house for a time, not, I suppose, for any other reason than lest he
should be thought to stay at home in expectation of an honour which
would not be conferred. He was, therefore, angry at Swift, who
represents him as "refusing the visits of a queen," because he knew that
what had never been offered had never been refused.
Beside the general system of morality, supposed to be contained in the
Essay on Man, it was his intention to write distinct poems upon the
different duties or conditions of life; one of which is the epistle to
lord Bathurst, 1733, on the Use of Riches, a piece on which he declared
great labour to have been bestowed[134].
Into this poem some incidents are historically thrown, and some known
characters are introduced, with others of which it is difficult to say
how far they are real or fictitious; but the praise of Kyrl, the man of
Ross, deserves particular examination, who, after a long and pompous
enumeration of his publick works and private charities, is said to have
diffused all those blessings from "five hundred a year." Wonders are
willingly told, and willingly heard. The truth is, that Kyrl was a man
of known integrity and active benevolence, by whose solicitation the
wealthy were persuaded to pay contributions to his charitable schemes;
this influence he obtained by an example of liberality exerted to the
utmost extent of his power, and was thus enabled to give more than he
had. This account Mr. Victor received from the minister of the place:
and I have preserved it, that the praise of a good man, being made more
credible, may be more solid. Narrations of romantick and impracticable
virtue will be read with wonder, but that which is unattainable is
recommended in vain; that good may be endeavoured, it must be shown to
be possible.
This is the only piece in which the author has given a hint of his
religion, by ridiculing the ceremony of burning the pope, and by
mentioning, with some indignation, the inscription on the monument.
When this poem was first published, the dialogue, having no letters of
direction, was perplexed and obscure. Pope seems to have written with no
very distinct idea; for he calls that an Epistle to Bathurst, in which
Bathurst is introduced as speaking.
He afterwards, 1734, inscribed to lord Cobham his Characters of Men,
written with close attention to the operations of the mind and
modifications of life. In this poem he has endeavoured to establish and
exemplify his favourite theory of the "ruling passion," by which he
means an original direction of desire to some particular object; an
innate affection, which gives all action a determinate and invariable
tendency, and operates upon the whole system of life, either openly, or
more secretly by the intervention of some accidental or subordinate
propension.
Of any passion, thus innate and irresistible, the existence may
reasonably be doubted. Human characters are by no means constant; men
change by change of place, of fortune, of acquaintance; he who is at one
time a lover of pleasure, is at another a lover of money. Those, indeed,
who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit: for
excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. But to the particular
species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or
predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early
conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and
emulation.
It must be, at least, allowed, that this "ruling passion," antecedent to
reason and observation, must have an object independent on human
contrivance; for there can be no natural desire of artificial good. No
man, therefore, can be born, in the strict acceptation, a lover of
money; for he may be born where money does not exist: nor can he be
born, in a moral sense, a lover of his country; for society, politically
regulated, is a state contradistinguished from a state of nature; and
any attention to that coalition of interests which makes the happiness
of a country, is possible only to those whom inquiry and reflection have
enabled to comprehend it.
This doctrine is, in itself, pernicious, as well as false; its tendency
is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination, or
overruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it is
prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall
excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful
dominion of nature, in obeying the resistless authority of his "ruling
passion[135]."
Pope has formed his theory with so little skill, that, in the examples
by which he illustrates and confirms it, he has confounded passions,
appetites, and habits.
To the Characters of Men, he added soon after, in an epistle supposed to
have been addressed to Martha Blount, but which the last edition has
taken from her, the Characters of Women. This poem, which was laboured
with great diligence, and in the author's opinion with great success,
was neglected at its first publication, as the commentator supposes,
because the publick was informed, by an advertisement, that it contained
"no character drawn from the life;" an assertion which Pope probably did
not expect or wish to have been believed, and which he soon gave his
readers sufficient reason to distrust, by telling them, in a note, that
the work was imperfect, because part of his subject was "vice too high"
to be yet exposed.
The time, however, soon came, in which it was safe to display the
dutchess of Marlborough under the name of Atossa; and her character was
inserted with no great honour to the writer's gratitude.
He published, from time to time, between 1730 and 1740, imitations of
different poems of Horace, generally with his name, and once, as was
suspected, without it. What he was upon moral principles ashamed to own,
he ought to have suppressed. Of these pieces it is useless to settle the
dates, as they had seldom much relation to the times, and, perhaps, had
been long in his hands.
This mode of imitation, in which the ancients are familiarized, by
adapting their sentiments to modern topicks, by making Horace say of
Shakespeare what he originally said of Ennius, and accommodating his
satires on Pantolabus and Nomentanus to the flatterers and prodigals of
our own time, was first practised in the reign of Charles the second, by
Oldham and Rochester, at least I remember no instances more ancient. It
is a kind of middle composition between translation and original design,
which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable, and the
parallels lucky. It seems to have been Pope's favourite amusement; for
he has carried it farther than any former poet.
He published, likewise, a revival, in smoother numbers, of Dr. Donne's
satires, which was recommended to him by the duke of Shrewsbury and the
earl of Oxford. They made no great impression on the publick. Pope seems
to have known their imbecility, and, therefore, suppressed them while he
was yet contending to rise in reputation, but ventured them when he
thought their deficiencies more likely to be imputed to Donne than to
himself.
The epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which seems to be derived, in its first
design, from Boileau's Address _à son Esprit_, was published in January,
1735, about a month before the death of him to whom it is inscribed. It
is to be regretted, that either honour or pleasure should have been
missed by Arbuthnot; a man estimable for his learning, amiable for his
life, and venerable for his piety.
Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession,
versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to
animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a
scholar with great brilliancy of wit; a wit, who, in the crowd of life,
retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.
In this poem Pope seems to reckon with the publick. He vindicates
himself from censures; and with dignity, rather than arrogance, enforces
his own claims to kindness and respect.
Into this poem are interwoven several paragraphs which had been before
printed as a fragment, and among them the satirical lines upon Addison,
of which the last couplet has been twice corrected. It was at first,
Who would not smile if such a man there be?
Who would not laugh if Addison were he?
Then,
Who would not grieve if such a man there be?
Who would not laugh if Addison were he?
At last it is,
Who but must laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?
He was at this time at open war with lord Hervey, who had distinguished
himself as a steady adherent to the ministry; and, being offended with a
contemptuous answer to one of his pamphlets[136], had summoned Pulteney
to a duel. Whether he or Pope made the first attack, perhaps, cannot now
be easily known: he had written an invective against Pope, whom he
calls, "Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure;" and hints that his
father was a _hatter_[137]. To this Pope wrote a reply in verse and
prose; the verses are in this poem; and the prose, though it was never
sent, is printed among his letters; but to a cool reader of the present
time exhibits nothing but tedious malignity.
His last satires, of the general kind, were two dialogues, named, from
the year in which they were published, Seventeen Hundred and
Thirty-eight. In these poems many are praised, and many are reproached.
Pope was then entangled in the opposition; a follower of the prince of
Wales, who dined at his house, and the friend of many who obstructed and
censured the conduct of the ministers. His political partiality was too
plainly shown: he forgot the prudence with which he passed, in his
earlier years, uninjured and unoffending, through much more violent
conflicts of faction.
In the first dialogue, having an opportunity of praising Allen of Bath,
he asked his leave to mention him as a man not illustrious by any merit
of his ancestors, and called him in his verses "low-born Allen." Men are
seldom satisfied with praise introduced or followed by any mention of
defect. Allen seems not to have taken any pleasure in his epithet, which
was afterwards softened[138] into "humble Allen."
In the second dialogue he took some liberty with one of the Foxes, among
others; which Fox, in a reply to Lyttelton, took an opportunity of
repaying, by reproaching him with the friendship of a lampooner, who
scattered his ink without fear or decency, and against whom he hoped the
resentment of the legislature would quickly be discharged.
About this time Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned before the
lords for a poem called Manners, together with Dodsley, his publisher.
Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, skulked and escaped; but
Dodsley's shop and family made his appearance necessary. He was,
however, soon dismissed; and the whole process was probably intended
rather to intimidate Pope, than to punish Whitehead.
Pope never afterwards attempted to join the patriot with the poet, nor
drew his pen upon statesmen. That he desisted from his attempts of
reformation is imputed, by his commentator, to his despair of prevailing
over the corruption of the time. He was not likely to have been ever of
opinion, that the dread of his satire would countervail the love of
power or of money; he pleased himself with being important and
formidable, and gratified sometimes his pride, and sometimes his
resentment; till, at last, he began to think he should be more safe, if
he were less busy.
The Memoirs of Scriblerus, published about this time, extend only to the
first book of a work projected in concert by Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot,
who used to meet in the time of queen Anne, and denominated themselves
the Scriblerus Club. Their purpose was to censure the abuses of learning
by a fictitious life of an infatuated scholar. They were dispersed; the
design was never completed; and Warburton laments its miscarriage, as an
event very disastrous to polite letters.
If the whole may be estimated by this specimen, which seems to be the
production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches, perhaps, by Pope, the want
of more will not be much lamented; for the follies which the writer
ridicules are so little practised, that they are not known; nor can the
satire be understood but by the learned: he raises phantoms of
absurdity, and then drives them away. He cures diseases that were never
felt.
For this reason this joint production of three great writers has never
obtained any notice from mankind; it has been little read, or when read
has been forgotten, as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by
remembering it.
The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides its general
resemblance to Don Quixote, there will be found in it particular
imitations of the History of Mr. Ouffle.
Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with hints for
his travels; and with those the world might have been contented, though
the rest had been suppressed.
Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to have
been explored by many other of the English writers; he had consulted the
modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors whom Boileau
endeavoured to bring into contempt, and who are too generally neglected.
Pope, however, was not ashamed of their acquaintance, nor ungrateful for
the advantages which he might have derived from it. A small selection
from the Italians, who wrote in Latin, had been published at London,
about the latter end of the last century, by a man[139] who concealed
his name, but whom his preface shows to have been well qualified for his
undertaking. This collection Pope amplified by more than half, and,
1740, published it in two volumes, but injuriously omitted his
predecessor's preface. To these books, which had nothing but the mere
text, no regard was paid; the authors were still neglected, and the
editor was neither praised nor censured. He did not sink into idleness;
he had planned a work, which he considered as subsequent to his Essay on
Man, of which he has given this account to Dr Swift:
"March 25, 1736.
"If ever I write any more epistles in verse, one of them shall
be addressed to you. I have long concerted it, and begun it; but
I would make what bears your name as finished as my last work
ought to be, that is to say, more finished than any of the rest.
The subject is large, and will divide into four epistles, which
naturally follow the Essay on Man; viz. 1. Of the extent and
limits of human reason and science. 2. A view of the useful,
and, therefore, attainable, and of the unuseful, and, therefore,
unattainable, arts. 3. Of the nature, ends, application, and
use, of different capacities. 4. Of the use of learning, of the
science of the world, and of wit. It will conclude with a satire
against the misapplication of all these, exemplified by
pictures, characters, and examples."
This work in its full extent, being now afflicted with an asthma, and
finding the powers of life gradually declining, he had no longer courage
to undertake; but, from the materials which he had provided, he added,
at Warburton's request, another book to the Dunciad, of which the design
is to ridicule such studies as are either hopeless or useless, as either
pursue what is unattainable, or what, if it be attained, is of no use.
When this book was printed, 1742, the laurel had been, for some time,
upon the head of Cibber; a man whom it cannot be supposed that Pope
could regard with much kindness or esteem, though, in one of the
imitations of Horace, he has liberally enough praised the Careless
Husband. In the Dunciad, among other worthless scribblers, he had
mentioned Cibber; who, in his Apology, complains of the great poet's
unkindness as more injurious, "because," says he, "I never have offended
him."
It might have been expected, that Pope should have been, in some degree,
mollified by this submissive gentleness, but no such consequence
appeared. Though he condescended to commend Cibber once, he mentioned
him afterwards contemptuously in one of his satires, and again in his
epistle to Arbuthnot: and, in the fourth book of the Dunciad, attacked
him with acrimony, to which the provocation is not easily discoverable.
Perhaps he imagined, that, in ridiculing the laureate, he satirized
those by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious
petulance, with which he affected to insult the great.
The severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience. He had
confidence enough in his own powers to believe, that he could disturb
the quiet of his adversary, and, doubtless, did not want instigators,
who, without any care about the victory, desired to amuse themselves by
looking on the contest. He, therefore, gave the town a pamphlet, in
which he declares his resolution, from that time, never to bear another
blow without returning it, and to tire out his adversary by
perseverance, if he cannot conquer him by strength.
The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes to a very
distant cause. After the Three Hours after Marriage had been driven off
the stage, by the offence which the mummy and crocodile gave the
audience, while the exploded scene was yet fresh in memory, it happened
that Cibber played Bayes in the Rehearsal; and, as it had been usual to
enliven the part by the mention of any recent theatrical transactions,
he said, that he once thought to have introduced his lovers disguised in
a mummy and a crocodile. "This," says he, "was received with loud claps,
which indicated contempt of the play." Pope, who was behind the scenes,
meeting him as he left the stage, attacked him, as he says, with all the
virulence of a "wit out of his senses;" to which he replied, "that he
would take no other notice of what was said by so particular a man, than
to declare, that, as often as he played that part, he would repeat the
same provocation."
He shows his opinion to be, that Pope was one of the authors of the play
which he so zealously defended; and adds an idle story of Pope's
behaviour at a tavern. The pamphlet was written with little power of
thought or language, and, if suffered to remain without notice, would
have been very soon forgotten. Pope had now been enough acquainted with
human life to know, if his passion had not been too powerful for his
understanding, that, from a contention like his with Cibber, the world
seeks nothing but diversion, which is given at the expense of the higher
character. When Cibber lampooned Pope, curiosity was excited; what Pope
would say of Cibber, nobody inquired, but in hope that Pope's asperity
might betray his pain and lessen his dignity.
He should, therefore, have suffered the pamphlet to flutter and die,
without confessing that it stung him. The dishonour of being shown as
Cibber's antagonist could never be compensated by the victory. Cibber
had nothing to lose; when Pope had exhausted all his malignity upon him,
he would rise in the esteem both of his friends and his enemies. Silence
only could have made him despicable; the blow which did not appear to be
felt would have been struck in vain.
But Pope's irascibility prevailed, and he resolved to tell the whole
English world that he was at war with Cibber; and, to show that he
thought him no common adversary, he prepared no common vengeance; he
published a new edition of the Dunciad[140], in which he degraded
Theobald from his painful preeminence, and enthroned Cibber in his
stead. Unhappily the two heroes were of opposite characters, and Pope
was unwilling to lose what he had already written; he has, therefore,
depraved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books, the cold pedantry,
and the sluggish pertinacity of Theobald.
Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest, to make another change,
and introduced Osborne contending for the prize among the booksellers.
Osborne was a man entirely destitute of shame, without sense of any
disgrace but that of poverty. He told me, when he was doing that which
raised Pope's resentment, that he should be put into the Dunciad; but he
had the fate of Cassandra. I gave no credit to his prediction, till, in
time, I saw it accomplished. The shafts of satire were directed equally
in vain against Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable
impudence of one, and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other.
Pope confessed his own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those
who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by
transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed its
efficacy; for by showing that what he had said of one he was ready to
say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own
magpie, who, from his cage, calls cuckold at a venture.
Cibber, according to his engagement, repaid the Dunciad with another
pamphlet[141], which, Pope said, "would be as good as a dose of
hartshorn to him;" but his tongue and his heart were at variance. I have
heard Mr. Richardson relate, that he attended his father, the painter,
on a visit, when one of Cibber's pamphlets came into the hands of Pope,
who said, "these things are my diversion." They sat by him while he
perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish; and young
Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be
preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope.
From this time, finding his diseases more oppressive, and his vital
powers gradually declining, he no longer strained his faculties with any
original composition, nor proposed any other employment for his
remaining life than the revisal and correction of his former works; in
which he received advice and assistance from Warburton, whom he appears
to have trusted and honoured in the highest degree.
He laid aside his epick poem, perhaps without much loss to mankind; for
his hero was Brutus the Trojan, who, according to a ridiculous fiction,
established a colony in Britain. The subject, therefore, was of the
fabulous age: the actors were a race upon whom imagination has been
exhausted, and attention wearied, and to whom the mind will not easily
be recalled, when it is invited in blank verse, which Pope had adopted
with great imprudence, and, I think, without due consideration of the
nature of our language. The sketch is, at least in part, preserved by
Ruffhead; by which it appears that Pope was thoughtless enough to model
the names of his heroes with terminations not consistent with the time
or country in which he places them.
He lingered through the next year; but perceived himself, as he
expresses it, "going down the hill." He had, for at least five years,
been afflicted with an asthma, and other disorders, which his physicians
were unable to relieve. Towards the end of his life he consulted Dr.
Thomson, a man who had, by large promises, and free censures of the
common practice of physick, forced himself up into sudden reputation.
Thomson declared his distemper to be a dropsy, and evacuated part of the
water by tincture of jalap; but confessed that his belly did not
subside. Thomson had many enemies, and Pope was persuaded to dismiss
him.
While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as he was one
day sitting in the air with lord Bolingbroke and lord Marchmont, he saw
his favourite Martha Blount at the bottom of the terrace, and asked lord
Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. Bolingbroke, not liking his errand,
crossed his legs and sat still; but lord Marchmont, who was younger and
less captious, waited on the lady, who, when he came to her, asked,
"What, is he not dead yet[142]?" She is said to have neglected him, with
shameful unkindness, in the latter time of his decay; yet, of the little
which he had to leave she had a very great part. Their acquaintance
began early; the life of each was pictured on the other's mind; their
conversation, therefore, was endearing, for when they met, there was an
immediate coalition of congenial notions. Perhaps he considered her
unwillingness to approach the chamber of sickness as female weakness, or
human frailty; perhaps he was conscious to himself of peevishness and
impatience, or, though he was offended by her inattention, might yet
consider her merit as overbalancing her fault; and if he had suffered
his heart to be alienated from her, he could have found nothing that
might fill her place; he could have only shrunk within himself; it was
too late to transfer his confidence or fondness.
In May, 1744, his death was approaching[143]; on the 6th, he was all day
delirious, which he mentioned four days afterwards as a sufficient
humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing
things as through a curtain, and in false colours; and one day, in the
presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came out from the wall.
He said that his greatest inconvenience was inability to think.
Bolingbroke sometimes wept over him in this state of helpless decay; and
being told by Spence, that Pope, at the intermission of his
deliriousness, was always saying something kind either of his present or
absent friends, and that his humanity seemed to have survived his
understanding, answered, "It has so." And added, "I never in my life
knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or
more general friendship for mankind." At another time he said, "I have
known Pope these thirty years, and value myself more in his friendship
than"--His grief then suppressed his voice.
Pope expressed undoubting confidence of a future state. Being asked by
his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die like his father
and mother, and whether a priest should not be called; he answered, "I
do not think it essential, but it will be very right; and I thank you
for putting me in mind of it."
In the morning, after the priest had given him the last sacraments, he
said, "There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship,
and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue."
He died in the evening of the thirtieth day of May, 1744, so placidly,
that the attendants did not discern the exact time of his expiration. He
was buried at Twickenham, near his father and mother, where a monument
has been erected to him by his commentator, the bishop of Gloucester.
He left the care of his papers to his executors; first to lord
Bolingbroke[144], and, if he should not be living, to the earl of
Marchmont; undoubtedly expecting them to be proud of the trust, and
eager to extend his fame. But let no man dream of influence beyond his
life. After a decent time, Dodsley, the bookseller, went to solicit
preference as the publisher, and was told that the parcel had not been
yet inspected; and, whatever was the reason, the world has been
disappointed of what was "reserved for the next age."
He lost, indeed, the favour of Bolingbroke, by a kind of posthumous
offence. The political pamphlet, called the Patriot King, had been put
into his hands that he might procure the impression of a very few
copies, to be distributed, according to the author's direction, among
his friends, and Pope assured him that no more had been printed than
were allowed; but, soon after his death, the printer brought and
resigned a complete edition of fifteen hundred copies, which Pope had
ordered him to print, and to retain in secret. He kept, as was observed,
his engagement to Pope, better than Pope had kept it to his friend; and
nothing was known of the transaction, till, upon the death of his
employer, he thought himself obliged to deliver the books to the right
owner, who, with great indignation, made a fire in his yard, and
delivered the whole impression to the flames.
Hitherto nothing had been done which was not naturally dictated by
resentment of violated faith; resentment more acrimonious, as the
violator had been more loved or more trusted. But here the anger might
have stopped; the injury was private, and there was little danger from
the example.
Bolingbroke, however, was not yet satisfied; his thirst of vengeance
excited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his
last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell
the tale to the publick with all its aggravations. Warburton, whose
heart was warm with his legacy, and tender by the recent separation,
thought it proper for him to interpose; and undertook, not indeed to
vindicate the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal,
but to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot be
denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the
motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have
induced Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his vanity by
usurping the work, which, though not sold in shops, had been shown to a
number more than sufficient to preserve the author's claim; he could not
gratify his avarice, for he could not sell his plunder till Bolingbroke
was dead: and even then, if the copy was left to another, his fraud
would be defeated, and if left to himself, would be useless.
Warburton, therefore, supposes, with great appearance of reason, that
the irregularity of his conduct proceeded wholly from his zeal for
Bolingbroke, who might, perhaps, have destroyed the pamphlet, which Pope
thought it his duty to preserve, even without its author's approbation.
To this apology an answer was written in a Letter to the most impudent
Man living.
He brought some reproach upon his own memory by the petulant and
contemptuous mention made in his will of Mr. Allen, and an affected
repayment of his benefactions. Mrs. Blount, as the known friend and
favourite of Pope, had been invited to the house of Allen, where she
comported herself with such indecent arrogance, that she parted from
Mrs. Allen in a state of irreconcilable dislike, and the door was for
ever barred against her. This exclusion she resented with so much
bitterness as to refuse any legacy from Pope, unless he left the world
with a disavowal of obligation to Allen. Having been long under her
dominion, now tottering in the decline of life, and unable to resist the
violence of her temper, or, perhaps, with a prejudice of a lover,
persuaded that she had suffered improper treatment, he complied with her
demand, and polluted his will with female resentment. Allen accepted
the legacy, which he gave to the hospital at Bath, observing that Pope
was always a bad accomptant, and that, if to 150_l_. he had put a cipher
more, he had come nearer to the truth[145].
The person of Pope is well known not to have been formed on the nicest
model. He has, in his account of the Little Club, compared himself to a
spider, and, by another, is described as protuberant behind and before.
He is said to have been beautiful in his infancy; but he was of a
constitution originally feeble and weak; and, as bodies of a tender
frame are easily distorted, his deformity was, probably, in part the
effect of his application. His stature was so low, that to bring him to
a level with common tables, it was necessary to raise his seat. But his
face was not displeasing, and his eyes were animated and vivid.
By natural deformity, or accidental distortion, his vital functions were
so much disordered, that his life was a "long disease." His most
frequent assailant was the headache, which he used to relieve by
inhaling the steam of coffee, which he very frequently required.
Most of what can be told concerning his petty peculiarities was
communicated by a female domestick of the earl of Oxford, who knew him,
perhaps, after the middle of life. He was then so weak as to stand in
perpetual need of female attendance; extremely sensible of cold, so that
he wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of very coarse warm linen
with fine sleeves. When he rose, he was invested in a bodice made of
stiff canvass, being scarcely able to hold himself erect till they were
laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted.
His legs were so slender, that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of
stockings, which were drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able
to dress or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without
help. His weakness made it very difficult for him to be clean.
His hair had fallen almost all away; and he used to dine sometimes with
lord Oxford, privately, in a velvet cap. His dress of ceremony was
black, with a tie-wig and a little sword.
The indulgence and accommodation which his sickness required, had taught
him all the unpleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetudinary man. He
expected that every thing should give way to his ease or humour; as a
child, whose parents will not hear her cry, has an unresisted dominion
in the nursery:
C'est que l'enfant toujours est homme;
C'est que i'homme est toujours enfant.
When he wanted to sleep he "nodded in company;" and once slumbered at
his own table while the prince of Wales was talking of poetry.
The reputation which his friendship gave procured him many invitations;
but he was a very troublesome inmate. He brought no servant, and had so
many wants that a numerous attendance was scarcely able to supply them.
Wherever he was, he left no room for another, because he exacted the
attention, and employed the activity of the whole family. His errands
were so frequent and frivolous, that the footmen, in time, avoided and
neglected him; and the earl of Oxford discharged some of the servants
for their resolute refusal of his messages. The maids, when they had
neglected their business, alleged that they had been employed by Mr.
Pope. One of his constant demands was of coffee in the night, and to the
woman that waited on him in his chamber, he was very burdensome; but he
was careful to recompense her want of sleep; and lord Oxford's servant
declared, that in a house where her business was to answer his call, she
would not ask for wages.
He had another fault easily incident to those who, suffering much pain,
think themselves entitled to whatever pleasures they can snatch. He was
too indulgent to his appetite: he loved meat highly seasoned and of
strong taste; and at the intervals of the table amused himself with
biscuits and dry conserves. If he sat down to a variety of dishes, he
would oppress his stomach with repletion; and though he seemed angry
when a dram was offered him, did not forbear to drink it. His friends,
who knew the avenues to his heart, pampered him with presents of luxury,
which he did not suffer to stand neglected. The death of great men is
not always proportioned to the lustre of their lives. Hannibal, says
Juvenal, did not perish by the javelin or the sword; the slaughters of
Cannae were revenged by a ring. The death of Pope was imputed, by some
of his friends, to a silver saucepan, in which it was his delight to
heat potted lampreys.
That he loved too well to eat, is certain; but that his sensuality
shortened his life, will not be hastily concluded, when it is
remembered that a conformation so irregular lasted six-and-fifty years,
notwithstanding such pertinacious diligence of study and meditation.
In all his intercourse with mankind, he had great delight in artifice,
and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and unsuspected
methods. "He hardly drank tea without a stratagem." If, at the house of
his friends, he wanted any accommodation, he was not willing to ask for
it in plain terms, but would mention it remotely as something
convenient; though, when it was procured, he soon made it appear for
whose sake it had been recommended. Thus he teased lord Orrery till he
obtained a screen. He practised his arts on such small occasions, that
lady Bolingbroke used to say, in a French phrase, that "he played the
politician about cabbages and turnips." His unjustifiable impression of
the Patriot King, as it can be imputed to no particular motive, must
have proceeded from his general habit of secrecy and cunning; he caught
an opportunity of a sly trick, and pleased himself with the thought of
outwitting Bolingbroke[146].
In familiar or convivial conversation, it does not appear that he
excelled. He may be said to have resembled Dryden, as being not one that
was distinguished by vivacity in company. It is remarkable, that so near
his time, so much should be known of what he has written, and so little
of what he has said: traditional memory retains no sallies of raillery,
nor sentences of observation; nothing either pointed or solid, either
wise or merry. One apophthegm only stands upon record. When an
objection, raised against his inscription for Shakespeare, was defended
by the authority of Patrick, he replied, "horresco referens"--that, "he
would allow the publisher of a dictionary to know the meaning of a
single word, but not of two words put together."
He was fretful and easily displeased, and allowed himself to be
capriciously resentful. He would sometimes leave lord Oxford silently,
no one could tell why, and was to be courted back by more letters and
messages than the footmen were willing to carry. The table was, indeed,
infested by lady Mary Wortley, who was the friend of lady Oxford, and
who, knowing his peevishness, could by no entreaties be restrained from
contradicting him, till their disputes were sharpened to such asperity,
that one or the other quitted the house.
He sometimes condescended to be jocular with servants or inferiours; but
by no merriment, either of others or his own, was he ever seen excited
to laughter.
Of his domestick character, frugality was a part eminently remarkable.
Having determined not to be dependent, he determined not to be in want,
and, therefore, wisely and magnanimously rejected all temptations to
expense unsuitable to his fortune. This general care must be universally
approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony,
such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters,
as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which, perhaps, in
five years five shillings were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his
friends, and scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in
his house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and,
having himself taken two small glasses, would retire, and say,
"Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine." Yet he tells his friends, that
"he has a heart for all, a house for all, and, whatever they may think,
a fortune for all."
He sometimes, however, made a splendid dinner, and is said to have
wanted no part of the skill or elegance which such performances require.
That this magnificence should be often displayed, that obstinate
prudence with which he conducted his affairs would not permit; for his
revenue, certain and casual, amounted only to about eight hundred pounds
a year, of which, however, he declares himself able to assign one
hundred to charity[147].
Of this fortune, which, as it arose from publick approbation, was very
honourably obtained, his imagination seems to have been too full: it
would be hard to find a man, so well entitled to notice by his wit, that
ever delighted so much in talking of his money. In his letters, and in
his poems, his garden and his grotto, his quincunx and his vines, or
some hints of his opulence, are always to be found. The great topick of
his ridicule is poverty; the crimes with which he reproaches his
antagonists are their debts, their habitation in the Mint, and their
want of a dinner. He seems to be of an opinion not very uncommon in the
world, that to want money is to want every thing.
Next to the pleasure of contemplating his possessions, seems to be that
of enumerating the men of high rank with whom he was acquainted, and
whose notice he loudly proclaims not to have been obtained by any
practices of meanness or servility; a boast which was never denied to be
true, and to which very few poets have ever aspired. Pope never set his
genius to sale, he never flattered those whom he did not love, or
praised those whom he did not esteem. Savage, however, remarked, that he
began a little to relax his dignity when he wrote a distich for his
Highness's dog.
His admiration of the great seems to have increased in the advance of
life. He passed over peers and statesmen, to inscribe his Iliad to
Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise had been complete, had
his friend's virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen for so
great an honour, it is not now possible to know; there is no trace in
literary history of any particular intimacy between them. The name of
Congreve appears in the letters among those of his other friends, but
without any observable distinction or consequence.
To his latter works, however, he took care to annex names dignified with
titles, but was not very happy in his choice; for, except lord
Bathurst, none of his noble friends were such as that a good man would
wish to have his intimacy with them known to posterity; he can derive
little honour from the notice of Cobham, Burlington, or Bolingbroke.
Of his social qualities, if an estimate be made from his letters, an
opinion too favourable cannot easily be formed; they exhibit a perpetual
and unclouded effulgence of general benevolence and particular fondness.
There is nothing but liberality, gratitude, constancy, and tenderness.
It has been so long said as to be commonly believed, that the true
characters-of men may be found in their letters, and that he who writes
to his friend, lays his heart open before him. But the truth is, that
such were the simple friendships of the Golden Age, and are now the
friendships only of children. Very few can boast of hearts which they
dare lay open to themselves, and of which, by whatever accident exposed,
they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and, certainly, what we
hide from ourselves we do not show to our friends. There is, indeed, no
transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and
sophistication than epistolary intercourse. In the eagerness of
conversation, the first emotions of the mind often burst out before they
are considered; in the tumult of business, interest and passion have
their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and deliberate
performance in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and
surely no man sits down to depreciate by design his own character.
Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom can a man so
much wish to be thought better than he is, as by him whose kindness he
desires to gain or keep? Even in writing to the world there is less
constraint; the author is not confronted with his reader, and takes his
chance of approbation among the different dispositions of mankind; but a
letter is addressed to a single mind, of which the prejudices and
partialities are known; and must, therefore, please, if not by favouring
them, by forbearing to oppose them.
To charge those favourable representations which men give of their own
minds with the guilt of hypocritical falsehood, would show more severity
than knowledge. The writer commonly believes himself. Almost every man's
thoughts, while they are general, are right; and most hearts are pure
while temptation is away. It is easy to awaken generous sentiments in
privacy; to despise death when there is no danger; to glow with
benevolence when there is nothing to be given. While such ideas are
formed, they are felt; and self-love does not suspect the gleam of
virtue to be the meteor of fancy.
If the letters of Pope are considered merely as compositions, they seem
to be premeditated and artificial. It is one thing to write, because
there is something which the mind wishes to discharge; and another to
solicit the imagination, because ceremony or vanity requires something
to be written. Pope confesses his early letters to be vitiated with
"affectation and ambition:" to know whether he disentangled Himself from
these perverters of epistolary integrity, his book and his life must be
set in comparison.
One of his favourite topicks is contempt of his own poetry. For this, if
it had been real, he would deserve no commendation; and in this he was
certainly not sincere, for his high value of himself was sufficiently
observed; and of what could he be proud but of his poetry? He writes, he
says, when "he has just nothing else to do;" yet Swift complains that he
was never at leisure for conversation, because he had "always some
poetical scheme in his head." It was punctually required that his
writing-box should be set upon his bed before he rose; and lord Oxford's
domestick related, that, in the dreadful winter of forty, she was called
from her bed by him four times in one night, to supply him with paper,
lest he should lose a thought.
He pretends insensibility to censure and criticism, though it was
observed, by all who knew him, that every pamphlet disturbed his quiet,
and that his extreme irritability laid him open to perpetual vexation;
but he wished to despise his criticks, and, therefore, hoped that he
did despise them.
As he happened to live in two reigns when the court paid little
attention to poetry, he nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of kings,
and proclaims that "he never sees courts." Yet a little regard shown him
by the prince of Wales melted his obduracy; and he had not much to say
when he was asked by his royal highness, "How he could love a prince
while he disliked kings."
He very frequently professes contempt of the world, and represents
himself as looking on mankind, sometimes with gay indifference, as on
emmets of a hillock, below his serious attention; and sometimes with
gloomy indignation, as on monsters more worthy of hatred than of pity.
These were dispositions apparently counterfeited. How could he despise
those whom he lived by pleasing, and on whose approbation his esteem of
himself was super-structed? Why should he hate those to whose favour he
owed his honour and his ease? Of things that terminate in human life,
the world is the proper judge; to despise its sentence, if it were
possible, is not just; and if it were just, is not possible. Pope was
far enough from this unreasonable temper: he was sufficiently "a fool to
fame," and his fault was, that he pretended to neglect it. His levity
and his sullenness were only in his letters; he passed through common
life, sometimes vexed, and sometimes pleased, with the natural emotions
of common men.
His scorn of the great is too often repeated to be real; no man thinks
much of that which he despises; and, as falsehood is always in danger of
inconsistency, he makes it his boast, at another time, that he lives
among them.
It is evident that his own importance swells often in his mind. He is
afraid of writing, lest the clerks of the post-office should know his
secrets; he has many enemies; he considers himself as surrounded by
universal jealousy: "after many deaths, and many dispersions, two or
three of us" says he, "may still be brought together, not to plot, but
to divert ourselves, and the world too, if it pleases:" and they can
live together, and "show what friends wits may be, in spite of all the
fools in the world." All this while it was likely that the clerks did
not know his hand; he certainly had no more enemies than a publick
character like his inevitably excites; and with what degree of
friendship the wits might live, very few were so much fools as ever to
inquire.
Some part of this pretended discontent he learned from Swift, and
expresses it, I think, most frequently in his correspondence with him.
Swift's resentment was unreasonable, but it was sincere; Pope's was the
mere mimickry of his friend, a fictitious part which he began to play
before it became him. When he was only twenty-five years old, he related
that "a glut of study and retirement had thrown him on the world," and
that there was danger lest "a glut of the world should throw him back
upon study and retirement." To this Swift answered with great propriety,
that Pope had not yet either acted or suffered enough in the world to
have become weary of it. And, indeed, it must be some very powerful
reason that can drive back to solitude him who has once enjoyed the
pleasures of society.
In the letters, both of Swift and Pope, there appears such narrowness of
mind, as makes them insensible of any excellence that has not some
affinity with their own, and confines their esteem and approbation to so
small a number, that whoever should form his opinion of the age from
their representation, would suppose them to have lived amidst ignorance
and barbarity, unable to find, among their contemporaries, either virtue
or intelligence, and persecuted by those that could not understand them.
When Pope murmurs at the world, when he professes contempt of fame, when
he speaks of riches and poverty, of success and disappointment, with
negligent indifference, he certainly does not express his habitual and
settled sentiments, but either wilfully disguises his own character, or,
what is more likely, invests himself with temporary qualities, and
sallies out in the colours of the present moment. His hopes and fears,
his joys and sorrows, acted strongly upon his mind; and, if he differed
from others, it was not by carelessness; he was irritable and resentful;
his malignity to Philips, whom he had first made ridiculous, and then
hated for being angry, continued too long. Of his vain desire to make
Bentley contemptible, I never heard any adequate reason. He was
sometimes wanton in his attacks; and, before Chandos, lady Wortley, and
Hill, was mean in his retreat.
The virtues which seem to have had most of his affection were liberality
and fidelity of friendship, in which it does not appear that he was
other than he describes himself. His fortune did not suffer his charity
to be splendid and conspicuous; but he assisted Dodsley with a hundred
pounds, that he might open a shop; and, of the subscription of forty
pounds a year, that he raised for Savage, twenty were paid by himself.
He was accused of loving money; but his love was eagerness to gain, not
solicitude to keep it.
In the duties of friendship he was zealous and constant; his early
maturity of mind commonly united him with men older than himself, and,
therefore, without attaining any considerable length of life, he saw
many companions of his youth sink into the grave; but it does not appear
that he lost a single friend by coldness or by injury; those who loved
him once, continued their kindness. His ungrateful mention of Allen, in
his will, was the effect of his adherence to one whom he had known much
longer, and whom he naturally loved with greater fondness. His violation
of the trust reposed in him by Bolingbroke, could have no motive
inconsistent with the warmest affection; be either thought the action so
near to indifferent that he forgot it, or so laudable, that he expected
his friend to approve it.
It was reported, with such confidence as almost to enforce belief, that
in the papers intrusted to his executors was found a defamatory life of
Swift, which he had prepared as an instrument of vengeance, to be used
if any provocation should be ever given. About this I inquired of the
earl of Marchmont, who assured me, that no such piece was among his
remains.
The religion in which he lived and died was that of the church of Rome,
to which, in his correspondence with Racine, he professes himself a
sincere adherent. That he was not scrupulously pious in some part of his
life, is known by many idle and indecent applications of sentences taken
from the scriptures; a mode of merriment which a good man dreads for its
profaneness, and a witty man disdains for its easiness and vulgarity.
But to whatever levities he has been betrayed, it does not appear that
his principles were ever corrupted, or that he ever lost his belief of
revelation. The positions, which he transmitted from Bolingbroke, he
seems not to have understood; and was pleased with an interpretation,
that made them orthodox.
A man of such exalted superiority, and so little moderation, would
naturally have all his delinquencies observed and aggravated; those who
could not deny that he was excellent, would rejoice to find that he was
not perfect.
Perhaps it may be imputed to the unwillingness with which the same man
is allowed to possess many advantages, that his learning has been
depreciated. He certainly was, in his early life, a man of great
literary curiosity; and, when he wrote his Essay on Criticism, had, for
his age, a very wide acquaintance with books. When he entered into the
living world, it seems to have happened to him, as to many others, that
he was less attentive to dead masters; he studied in the academy of
Paracelsus, and made the universe his favourite volume. He gathered his
notions fresh from reality, not from the copies of authors, but the
originals of nature. Yet, there is no reason to believe, that literature
ever lost his esteem; he always professed to love reading; and Dobson,
who spent some time at his house, translating his Essay on Man, when I
asked him what learning he found him to possess, answered, "More than I
expected." His frequent references to history, his allusions to various
kinds of knowledge, and his images, selected from art and nature, with
his observations on the operations of the mind, and the modes of life,
show an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and
diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it.
From this curiosity arose the desire of travelling, to which he alludes
in his verses to Jervas; and which, though he never found an opportunity
to gratify it, did not leave him till his life declined.
Of his intellectual character, the constituent and fundamental principle
was good sense, a prompt and intuitive perception of consonance and
propriety. He saw immediately, of his own conceptions, what was to be
chosen, and what to be rejected; and, in the works of others, what was
to be shunned, and what was to be copied.
But good sense alone is a sedate and quiescent quality, which manages
its possessions well, but does not increase them; it collects few
materials for its own operations, and preserves safety, but never gains
supremacy. Pope had, likewise, genius; a mind active, ambitious, and
adventurous, always investigating, always aspiring; in its widest
searches still longing to go forward, in its highest flights still
wishing to be higher; always imagining something greater than it knows,
always endeavouring more than it can do.
To assist these powers, he is said to have had great strength and
exactness of memory. That which he had heard or read was not easily
lost; and he had before him not only what his own meditation suggested,
but what he had found in other writers that might be accommodated to his
present purpose.
These benefits of nature he improved by incessant and unwearied
diligence; he had recourse to every source of intelligence, and lost no
opportunity of information; he consulted the living as well as the dead;
he read his compositions to his friends, and was never content with
mediocrity, when excellence could be attained. He considered poetry as
the business of his life; and, however he might seem to lament his
occupation, he followed it with constancy; to make verses was his first
labour, and to mend them was his last.
From his attention to poetry he was never diverted. If conversation
offered any thing that could be improved, he committed it to paper; if a
thought, or, perhaps, an expression more happy than was common, rose to
his mind, he was careful to write it; an independent distich was
preserved for an opportunity of insertion, and some little fragments
have been found containing lines, or parts of lines, to be wrought upon
at some other time.
He was one of those few whose labour is their pleasure: he was never
elevated to negligence, nor wearied to impatience; he never passed a
fault unamended by indifference, nor quitted it by despair. He laboured
his works, first to gain reputation, and afterwards to keep it.
Of composition there are different methods. Some employ at once memory
and invention, and, with little intermediate use of the pen, form and
polish large masses by continued meditation, and write their productions
only when, in their own opinion, they have completed them. It is related
of Virgil, that his custom was to pour out a great number of verses in
the morning, and pass the day in retrenching exuberances and correcting
inaccuracies. The method of Pope, as may be collected from his
translation, was to write his first thoughts in his first words, and
gradually to amplify, decorate, rectify, and refine them.
With such faculties, and such dispositions, he excelled every other
writer in poetical prudence: he wrote in such a manner as might expose
him to few hazards. He used almost always the same fabrick of verse;
and, indeed, by those few essays which he made of any other, he did not
enlarge his reputation. Of this uniformity the certain consequence was
readiness and dexterity. By perpetual practice, language had, in his
mind, a systematical arrangement; having always the same use for words,
he had words so selected and combined as to be ready at his call. This
increase of facility he confessed himself to have perceived in the
progress of his translation.
But what was yet of more importance, his effusions were always
voluntary, and his subjects chosen by himself. His independence secured
him from drudging at a task, and labouring upon a barren topick: he
never exchanged praise for money, nor opened a shop of condolence or
congratulation. His poems, therefore, were scarcely ever temporary. He
suffered coronations and royal marriages to pass without a song; and
derived no opportunities from recent events, nor any popularity from the
accidental disposition of his readers. He was never reduced to the
necessity of soliciting the sun to shine upon a birthday, of calling the
graces and virtues to a wedding, or of saying what multitudes have said
before him. When he could produce nothing new, he was at liberty to be
silent.
His publications were, for the same reason, never hasty. He is said to
have sent nothing to the press till it had lain two years under his
inspection: it is at least certain, that he ventured nothing without
nice examination. He suffered the tumult of imagination to subside, and
the novelties of invention to grow familiar. He knew that the mind is
always enamoured of its own productions, and did not trust his first
fondness. He consulted his friends, and listened with great willingness
to criticism; and, what was of more importance, he consulted himself,
and let nothing pass against his own judgment.
He professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an
opportunity was presented, he praised through his whole life with
unvaried liberality; and, perhaps, his character may receive some
illustration, if he be compared with his master.
Integrity of understanding, and nicety of discernment, were not allotted
in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's
mind was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical
prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged numbers.
But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgment that he had. He
wrote, and professed to write, merely for the people; and when he
pleased others, he contented himself. He spent no time in struggles to
rouse latent powers; he never attempted to make that better which was
already good, nor often to mend what he must have known to be faulty. He
wrote, as he tells us, with very little consideration; when occasion or
necessity called upon him, he poured out what the present moment
happened to supply, and, when once it had passed the press, ejected it
from his mind; for, when he had no pecuniary interest, he had no further
solicitude.
Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and, therefore,
always endeavoured to do his best: he did not court the candour, but
dared the judgment of his reader, and, expecting no indulgence from
others, he showed none to himself. He examined lines and words with
minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with
indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven.
For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he
considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be supposed
to have been written with such regard to the times as might hasten their
publication, were the two satires of Thirty-eight; of which Dodsley told
me, that they were brought to him by the author, that they might be
fairly copied. "Almost every line," he said, "was then written twice
over; I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent some time afterwards
to me for the press, with almost every line written twice over a second
time."
His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their
publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never
abandoned them; what he found amiss in the first edition, he silently
corrected in those that followed. He appears to have revised the Iliad,
and freed it from some of its imperfections; and the Essay on Criticism
received many improvements after its first appearance. It will seldom be
found that he altered, without adding clearness, elegance, or vigour.
Pope had, perhaps, the judgment of Dryden; but Dryden certainly wanted
the diligence of Pope.
In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose
education was more scholastick, and who, before he became an author, had
been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His
mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations
from a more extensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man
in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of
Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by
minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and
more certainty in that of Pope.
Poetry was not the sole praise of either: for both excelled likewise in
prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style
of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of Pope is cautious and
uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his
mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and
rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a
natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied
exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by
the sithe, and levelled by the roller.
Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without
which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which
collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with
some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred, that of
this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more;
for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of
Dryden it must be said, that, if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not
better poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by
some external occasion, or extorted by domestick necessity; he composed
without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind
could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he
sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him
to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate
all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the flights of
Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of
Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular
and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls
below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with
perpetual delight.
This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found just;
and, if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some
partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily
condemn me; for meditation and inquiry, may, perhaps, show him the
reasonableness of my determination.
* * * * *
The works of Pope are now to be distinctly examined, not so much with
attention to slight faults, or petty beauties, as to the general
character and effect of each performance.
It seems natural for a young poet to initiate himself by pastorals,
which, not professing to imitate real life, require no experience; and,
exhibiting only the simple operation of unmingled passions, admit no
subtile reasoning or deep inquiry. Pope's pastorals are not, however,
composed but with close thought; they have reference to the times of the
day, the seasons of the year, and the periods of human life. The last,
that which turns the attention upon age and death, was the author's
favourite. To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness
of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a
delicious employment of the poets. His preference was probably just, I
wish, however, that his fondness had not overlooked a line in which the
zephyrs are made "to lament in silence."
To charge these pastorals with want of invention, is to require what was
never intended. The imitations are so ambitiously frequent, that the
writer evidently means rather to show his literature, than his wit. It
is surely sufficient for an author of sixteen, not only to be able to
copy the poems of antiquity with judicious selection, but to have
obtained sufficient power of language, and skill in metre, to exhibit a
series of versification, which had in English poetry no precedent, nor
has since had an imitation.
The design of Windsor Forest is evidently derived from Cooper's Hill,
with some attention to Waller's poem on the Park; but Pope cannot be
denied to excel his masters in variety and elegance, and the art of
interchanging description, narrative, and morality. The objection made
by Dennis is the want of plan, of a regular subordination of parts
terminating in the principal and original design. There is this want in
most descriptive poems, because, as the scenes, which they must exhibit
successively, are all subsisting at the same time, the order in which
they are shown must by necessity be arbitrary, and more is not to be
expected from the last part than from the first. The attention,
therefore, which cannot be detained by suspense, must be excited by
diversity, such as his poem offers to its reader.
But the desire of diversity may be too much indulged; the parts of
Windsor Forest which deserve least praise, are those which were added to
enliven the stillness of the scene, the appearance of Father Thames, and
the transformation of Lodona. Addison had in his Campaign derided the
rivers that "rise from their oozy beds" to tell stories of heroes; and
it is, therefore, strange that Pope should adopt a fiction not only
unnatural but lately censured. The story of Lodona is told with
sweetness; but a new metamorphosis is a ready and puerile expedient;
nothing is easier than to tell how a flower was once a blooming virgin,
or a rock an obdurate tyrant.
The Temple of Fame has, as Steele warmly declared, "a thousand
beauties." Every part is splendid; there is great luxuriance of
ornaments; the original vision of Chaucer was never denied to be much
improved; the allegory is very skilfully continued, the imagery is
properly selected, and learnedly displayed; yet, with all this
comprehension of excellence, as its scene is laid in remote ages, and
its sentiments, if the concluding paragraph be excepted, have little
relation to general manners or common life, it never obtained much
notice, but is turned silently over, and seldom quoted or mentioned with
either praise or blame.
That the Messiah excels the Pollio, is no great praise, if it be
considered from what original the improvements are derived.
The Verses on the unfortunate Lady have drawn much attention by the
illaudable singularity of treating suicide with respect; and they must
be allowed to be written, in some parts, with vigorous animation, and,
in others, with gentle tenderness; nor has Pope produced any poem in
which the sense predominates more over the diction. But the tale is not
skilfully told; it is not easy to discover the character of either the
lady or her guardian. History relates that she was about to disparage
herself by a marriage with an inferiour; Pope praises her for the
dignity of ambition, and yet condemns the uncle to detestation for his
pride; the ambitious love of a niece may be opposed by the interest,
malice, or envy of an uncle, but never by his pride. On such an occasion
a poet may be allowed to be obscure, but inconsistency never can be
right[148].
The Ode for St. Cecilia's Day was undertaken at the desire of Steele:
in this the author is generally confessed to have miscarried, yet he has
miscarried only as compared with Dryden; for he has far outgone other
competitors. Dryden's plan is better chosen; history will always take
stronger hold of the attention than fable: the passions excited by
Dryden are the pleasures and pains of real life, the scene of Pope is
laid in imaginary existence; Pope is read with calm acquiescence, Dryden
with turbulent delight; Pope hangs upon the ear, and Dryden finds the
passes of the mind.
Both the odes want the essential constituent of metrical compositions,
the stated recurrence of settled numbers. It may be alleged that Pindar
is said by Horace to have written "numeris lege solutis:" but as no such
lax performances have been transmitted to us, the meaning of that
expression cannot be fixed; and, perhaps, the like return might properly
be made to a modern Pindarist, as Mr. Cobb received from Bentley, who,
when he found his criticisms upon a Greek exercise, which Cobb had
presented, refuted one after another by Pindar's authority, cried out,
at last, "Pindar was a bold fellow, but thou art an impudent one."
If Pope's ode be particularly inspected, it will be found that the first
stanza consists of sounds well chosen indeed, but only sounds.
The second consists of hyperbolical commonplaces, easily to be found,
and, perhaps, without much difficulty to be as well expressed.
In the third, however, there are numbers, images, harmony, and vigour,
not unworthy the antagonist of Dryden. Had all been like this--but every
part cannot be the best.
The next stanzas place and detain us in the dark and dismal regions of
mythology, where neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow, can be
found: the poet, however, faithfully attends us: we have all that can be
performed by elegance of diction, or sweetness of versification; but
what can form avail without better matter?
The last stanza recurs again to commonplaces. The conclusion is too
evidently modelled by that of Dryden; and it may be remarked that both
end with the same fault: the comparison of each is literal on one side,
and metaphorical on the other.
Poets do not always express their own thoughts; Pope, with all this
labour in the praise of musick, was ignorant of its principles, and
insensible of its effects.
One of his greatest, though of his earliest works, is the Essay on
Criticism, which, if he had written nothing else, would have placed him
among the first criticks and the first poets, as it exhibits every mode
of excellence that can embellish or dignify didactick composition,
selection of matter, novelty of arrangement, justness of precept,
splendour of illustration, and propriety of digression. I know not
whether it be pleasing to consider that he produced this piece at
twenty, and never afterwards excelled it: he that delights himself with
observing that such powers may be so soon attained, cannot but grieve to
think that life was ever after at a stand.
To mention the particular beauties of the essay would be unprofitably
tedious; but I cannot forbear to observe, that the comparison of a
student's progress in the sciences with the journey of a traveller in
the Alps, is, perhaps, the best that English poetry can show. A simile,
to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject; must show
it to the understanding in a clearer view, and display it to the fancy
with greater dignity; but either of these qualities may be sufficient to
recommend it. In didactick poetry, of which the great purpose is
instruction, a simile may be praised which illustrates, though it does
not ennoble; in heroicks, that may be admitted which ennobles, though it
does not illustrate. That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit,
independently of its references, a pleasing image; for a simile is said
to be a short episode. To this antiquity was so attentive, that
circumstances were sometimes added, which, having no parallels, served
only to fill the imagination, and produced what Perrault ludicrously
called "comparisons with a long tail." In their similes the greatest
writers have sometimes failed; the ship-race, compared with the
chariot-race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandized; land and water
make all the difference: when Apollo, running after Daphne, is likened
to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing gained; the ideas of
pursuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a god and the
daughter of a god are not represented much to their advantage by a hare
and dog. The simile of the Alps has no useless parts, yet affords a
striking picture by itself; it makes the foregoing position better
understood, and enables it to take faster hold on the attention; it
assists the apprehension, and elevates the fancy.
Let me, likewise, dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph, in which
it is directed that "the sound should seem an echo to the sense;" a
precept which Pope is allowed to have observed beyond any other English
poet.
This notion of representative metre, and the desire of discovering
frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense, have produced, in my
opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties. All that can furnish
this representation are the sounds of the words considered singly, and
the time in which they are pronounced. Every language has some words
framed to exhibit the noises which they express, as _thump, rattle,
growl, hiss_. These, however, are but few, and the poet cannot make them
more, nor can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned. The
time of pronunciation was, in the dactylick measures of the learned
languages, capable of considerable variety; but that variety could be
accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion
were, perhaps, expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention
of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy; but our
language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in
their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely
from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation
between a _soft_ line and a _soft_ couch, or between _hard_ syllables
and _hard_ fortune.
Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified; and yet it may be
suspected that even in such resemblances the mind often governs the ear,
and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of the most
successful attempts has been to describe the labour of Sisyphus:
With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.
Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll
violently back? But set the same numbers to another sense:
While many a merry tale, and many a song,
Cheer'd the rough road, we wish'd the rough road long.
The rough road then, returning in a round,
Mock'd our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground.
We have now, surely, lost much of the delay, and much of the rapidity.
But, to show how little the greatest master of numbers can fix the
principles of representative harmony, it will be sufficient to remark
that the poet, who tells us, that
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow:
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main;
when he had enjoyed, for about thirty years, the praise of Camilla's
lightness of foot, tried another experiment upon _sound_ and _time_, and
produced this memorable triplet:
Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestick march, and energy divine.
Here are the swiftness of the rapid race, and the march of slow-paced
majesty, exhibited by the same poet in the same sequence of syllables,
except that the exact prosodist will find the line of _swiftness_ by one
time longer than that of _tardiness_.
Beauties of this kind are commonly fancied; and, when real, are
technical and nugatory, not to be rejected, and not to be solicited.
To the praises which have been accumulated on the Rape of the Lock by
readers of every class, from the critick to the waiting-maid, it is
difficult to make any addition. Of that which is universally allowed to
be the most attractive of all ludicrous compositions, let it rather be
now inquired from what sources the power of pleasing is derived.
Dr. Warburton, who excelled in critical perspicacity, has remarked that
the preternatural agents are very happily adapted to the purposes of the
poem. The heathen deities can no longer gain attention: we should have
turned away from a contest between Venus and Diana. The employment of
allegorical persons always excites conviction of its own absurdity; they
may produce effects, but cannot conduct actions; when the phantom is put
in motion, it dissolves; thus Discord may raise a mutiny, but Discord
cannot conduct a march, or besiege a town. Pope brought into view a new
race of beings, with powers and passions proportionate to their
operation. The sylphs and gnomes act, at the toilet and the tea-table,
what more terrifick and more powerful phantoms perform on the stormy
ocean, or the field of battle; they give their proper help, and do their
proper mischief.
Pope is said, by an objector, not to have been the inventer of this
petty nation; a charge which might, with more justice, have been brought
against the author of the Iliad, who, doubtless, adopted the religious
system of his country; for what is there, but the names of his agents,
which Pope has not invented? Has he not assigned them characters and
operations never heard of before? Has he not, at least, given them their
first poetical existence? If this is not sufficient to denominate his
work original, nothing original ever can be written.
In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most engaging
powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things
are made new. A race of aërial people, never heard of before, is
presented to us in a manner so clear and easy, that the reader seeks for
no further information, but immediately mingles with his new
acquaintance, adopts their interests, and attends their pursuits, loves
a sylph, and detests a gnome.
That familiar things are made new, every paragraph will prove. The
subject of the poem is an event below the common incidents of common
life; nothing real is introduced that is not seen so often as to be no
longer regarded; yet the whole detail of a female day is here brought
before us invested with so much art of decoration, that, though nothing
is disguised, every thing is striking, and we feel all the appetite of
curiosity for that from which we have a thousand times turned
fastidiously away.
The purpose of the poet is, as he tells us, to laugh at "the little
unguarded follies of the female sex." It is, therefore, without justice
that Dennis charges the Rape of the Lock with the want of a moral, and
for that reason sets it below the Lutrin, which exposes the pride and
discord of the clergy. Perhaps neither Pope nor Boileau has made the
world much better than he found it; but if they had both succeeded, it
were easy to tell who would have deserved most from publick gratitude.
The freaks, and humours, and spleen, and vanity of women, as they
embroil families in discord, and fill houses with disquiet, do more to
obstruct the happiness of life in a year than the ambition of the clergy
in many centuries. It has been well observed, that the misery of man
proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small
vexations continually repeated.
It is remarked by Dennis likewise, that the machinery is superfluous;
that, by all the bustle of preternatural operation, the main event is
neither hastened nor retarded. To this charge an efficacious answer is
not easily made. The sylphs cannot be said to help or to oppose; and it
must be allowed to imply some want of art, that their power has not been
sufficiently intermingled with the action. Other parts may, likewise, be
charged with want of connexion; the game at _ombre_ might be spared;
but, if the lady had lost her hair while she was intent upon her cards,
it might have been inferred that those who are too fond of play will be
in danger of neglecting more important interests. Those, perhaps, are
faults; but what are such faults to so much excellence?
The epistle of Eloise to Abelard is one of the most happy productions of
human wit: the subject is so judiciously chosen, that it would be
difficult, in turning over the annals of the world, to find another
which so many circumstances concur to recommend. We regularly interest
ourselves most in the fortune of those who most deserve our notice.
Abelard and Eloise were conspicuous in their days for eminence of merit.
The heart naturally loves truth. The adventures and misfortunes of this
illustrious pair are known from undisputed history. Their fate does not
leave the mind in hopeless dejection; for they both found quiet and
consolation in retirement and piety. So new and so affecting is their
story, that it supersedes invention, and imagination ranges at full
liberty without straggling into scenes of fable.
The story, thus skilfully adopted, has been diligently improved. Pope
has left nothing behind him, which seems more the effect of studious
perseverance and laborious revisal. Here is particularly observable the
"curiosa felicitas," a fruitful soil and careful cultivation. Here is no
crudeness of sense, nor asperity of language.
The sources from which sentiments, which have so much vigour and
efficacy, have been drawn, are shown to be the mystick writers by the
learned author of the Essay on the Life and Writings of Pope; a book
which teaches how the brow of criticism may be smoothed, and how she may
be enabled, with all her severity, to attract and to delight.
The train of my disquisition has now conducted me to that poetical
wonder, the translation of the Iliad, a performance which no age or
nation can pretend to equal. To the Greeks translation was almost
unknown; it was totally unknown to the inhabitants of Greece. They had
no recourse to the barbarians for poetical beauties, but sought for
every thing in Homer, where, indeed, there is but little that they might
not find.
The Italians have been very diligent translators; but I can hear of no
version, unless, perhaps, Anguillara's Ovid may be excepted, which is
read with eagerness. The Iliad of Salvini every reader may discover to
be punctiliously exact; but it seems to be the work of a linguist
skilfully pedantick; and his countrymen, the proper judges of its power
to please, reject it with disgust.
Their predecessors, the Romans, have left some specimens of translation
behind them, and that employment must have had some credit in which
Tully and Germanicus engaged; but, unless we suppose, what is perhaps
true, that the plays of Terence were versions of Menander, nothing
translated seems ever to have risen to high reputation. The French, in
the meridian hour of their learning, were very laudably industrious to
enrich their own language with the wisdom of the ancients; but found
themselves reduced, by whatever necessity, to turn the Greek and Roman
poetry into prose. Whoever could read an author, could translate him.
From such rivals little can be feared.
The chief help of Pope in this arduous undertaking was drawn from the
versions of Dryden. Virgil had borrowed much of his imagery from Homer,
and part of the debt was now paid by his translator. Pope searched the
pages of Dryden for happy combinations of heroick diction; but it will
not be denied that he added much to what he found. He cultivated our
language with so much diligence and art, that he has left in his Homer a
treasure of poetical elegancies to posterity. His version may be said to
have tuned the English tongue; for, since its appearance, no writer,
however deficient in other powers, has wanted melody. Such a series of
lines, so elaborately corrected, and so sweetly modulated, took
possession of the publick ear; the vulgar was enamoured of the poem, and
the learned wondered at the translation.
But in the most general applause discordant voices will always be
heard. It has been objected, by some who wish to be numbered among the
sons of learning, that Pope's version of Homer is not Homerical; that it
exhibits no resemblance of the original and characteristick manner of
the father of poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless
grandeur, his unaffected majesty[149]. This cannot be totally denied;
but it must be remembered that "necessitas quod cogit defendit;" that
may be lawfully done which cannot be forborne. Time and place will
always enforce regard. In estimating this translation, consideration
must be had of the nature of our language, the form of our metre, and,
above all, of the change which two thousand years have made in the modes
of life and the habits of thought. Virgil wrote in a language of the
same general fabrick with that of Homer, in verses of the same measure,
and in an age nearer to Homer's time by eighteen hundred years; yet he
found, even then, the state of the world so much altered, and the demand
for elegance so much increased, that mere nature would be endured no
longer; and, perhaps, in the multitude of borrowed passages, very few
can be shown which he has not embellished.
There is a time when nations, emerging from barbarity, and falling into
regular subordination, gain leisure to grow wise, and feel the shame of
ignorance and the craving pain of unsatisfied curiosity. To this hunger
of the mind plain sense is grateful; that which fills the void removes
uneasiness, and to be free from pain for awhile is pleasure; but
repletion generates fastidiousness; a saturated intellect soon becomes
luxurious, and knowledge finds no willing reception till it is
recommended by artificial diction. Thus it will be found, in the
progress of learning, that in all nations the first writers are simple;
and that every age improves in elegance. One refinement always makes way
for another; and what was expedient to Virgil, was necessary to Pope.
I suppose many readers of the English Iliad, when they have been touched
with some unexpected beauty of the lighter kind, have tried to enjoy it
in the original, where, alas! it was not to be found. Homer, doubtless,
owes to his translator many Ovidian graces not exactly suitable to his
character; but to have added can be no great crime, if nothing be taken
away. Elegance is surely to be desired, if it be not gained at the
expense of dignity. A hero would wish to be loved, as well as to be
reverenced.
To a thousand cavils one answer is sufficient; the purpose of a writer
is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of
pleasing must be blown aside. Pope wrote for his own age and his own
nation: he knew that it was necessary to colour the images and point the
sentiments of his author; he, therefore, made him graceful, but lost him
some of his sublimity.
The copious notes with which the version is accompanied, and by which it
is recommended to many readers, though they were undoubtedly written to
swell the volumes, ought not to pass without praise: commentaries which
attract the reader by the pleasure of perusal have not often appeared;
the notes of others are read to clear difficulties, those of Pope to
vary entertainment.
It has, however, been objected, with sufficient reason, that there is in
the commentary too much of unseasonable levity and affected gaiety; that
too many appeals are made to the ladies, and the ease which is so
carefully preserved is, sometimes, the ease of a trifler. Every art has
its terms, and every kind of instruction its proper style; the gravity
of common criticks may be tedious, but is less despicable than childish
merriment.
Of the Odyssey, nothing remains to be observed: the same general praise
may be given to both translations, and a particular examination of
either would require a large volume. The notes were written by Broome,
who endeavoured, not unsuccessfully, to imitate his master.
Of the Dunciad, the hint is confessedly taken from Dryden's Mac
Flecknoe; but the plan is so enlarged and diversified, as justly to
claim the praise of an original, and affords the best specimen that has
yet appeared of personal satire ludicrously pompous.
That the design was moral, whatever the author might tell either his
readers or himself, I am not convinced. The first motive was the desire
of revenging the contempt with which Theobald had treated his
Shakespeare, and regaining the honour which he had lost, by crushing his
opponent. Theobald was not of bulk enough to fill a poem, and,
therefore, it was necessary to find other enemies with other names, at
whose expense he might divert the publick.
In this design there was petulance and malignity enough; but I cannot
think it very criminal. An author places himself uncalled before the
tribunal of criticism, and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace.
Dulness or deformity are not culpable in themselves, but may be very
justly reproached when they pretend to the honour of wit or the
influence of beauty. If bad writers were to pass without reprehension,
what should restrain them? "impune diem consumpserit ingens Telephus;"
and upon bad writers only will censure have much effect. The satire
which brought Theobald and Moore into contempt, dropped impotent from
Bentley, like the javelin of Priam.
All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as
useful when it rectifies errour and improves judgment; he that refines
the publick taste is a publick benefactor.
The beauties of this poem are well known; its chief fault is the
grossness of its images. Pope and Swift had an unnatural delight in
ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with
unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention.
But even this fault, offensive as it is, may be forgiven for the
excellence of other passages; such as the formation and dissolution of
Moore, the account of the traveller, the misfortune of the florist, and
the crowded thoughts and stately numbers which dignify the concluding
paragraph.
The alterations which have been made in the Dunciad, not always for the
better, require that it should be published, as in the present
collection, with all its variations.
The Essay on Man was a work of great labour and long consideration, but
certainly not the happiest of Pope's performances. The subject is,
perhaps, not very proper for poetry, and the poet was not sufficiently
master of his subject; metaphysical morality was to him a new study; he
was proud of his acquisitions, and, supposing himself master of great
secrets, was in haste to teach what he had not learned. Thus he tells
us, in the first epistle, that from the nature of the supreme being may
be deduced an order of beings such as mankind, because infinite
excellence can do only what is best. He finds out that these beings must
be "somewhere;" and that "all the question is, whether man be in a wrong
place." Surely if, according to the poet's Leibnitzian reasoning, we may
infer that man ought to be, only because he is, we may allow that his
place is the right place, because he has it. Supreme wisdom is not less
infallible in disposing than in creating. But what is meant by
"somewhere" and "place," and "wrong place," it had been vain to ask
Pope, who, probably, had never asked himself.
Having exalted himself into the chair of wisdom, he tells us much that
every man knows, and much that he does not know himself; that we see but
little, and that the order of the universe is beyond our comprehension;
an opinion not very uncommon: and that there is a chain of subordinate
beings "from infinite to nothing," of which himself and his readers are
equally ignorant. But he gives us one comfort, which, without his help,
he supposes unattainable, in the position "that though we are fools, yet
God is wise."
This essay affords an egregious instance of the predominance of genius,
the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers of
eloquence. Never were penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so
happily disguised. The reader feels his mind full, though he learns
nothing; and, when he meets it in its new array, no longer knows the
talk of his mother and his nurse. When these wonder-working sounds sink
into sense, and the doctrine of the essay, disrobed of its ornaments, is
left to the powers of its naked excellence, what shall we discover? That
we are, in comparison with our creator, very weak and ignorant; that we
do not uphold the chain of existence; and that we could not make one
another with more skill than we are made. We may learn yet more: that
the arts of human life were copied from the instinctive operations of
other animals; that if the world be made for man, it may be said that
man was made for geese. To these profound principles of natural
knowledge are added some moral instructions equally new; that
self-interest, well understood, will produce social concord; that men
are mutual gainers by mutual benefits; that evil is sometimes balanced
by good; that human advantages are unstable and fallacious, of uncertain
duration and doubtful effect; that our true honour is, not to have a
great part, but to act it well; that virtue only is our own; and that
happiness is always in our power.
Surely a man of no very comprehensive search may venture to say that he
has heard all this before; but it was never till now recommended by such
a blaze of embellishment, or such sweetness of melody. The vigorous
contraction of some thoughts, the luxuriant amplification of others, the
incidental illustrations, and sometimes the dignity, sometimes the
softness of the verses, enchain philosophy, suspend criticism, and
oppress judgment by overpowering pleasure.
This is true of many paragraphs; yet if I had undertaken to exemplify
Pope's felicity of composition before a rigid critick, I should not
select the Essay on Man; for it contains more lines unsuccessfully
laboured, more harshness of diction, more thoughts imperfectly
expressed, more levity without elegance, and more heaviness without
strength, than will easily be found in all his other works.
The Characters of Men and Women are the product of diligent speculation
upon human life: much labour has been bestowed upon them, and Pope very
seldom laboured in vain. That his excellence may be properly estimated,
I recommend a comparison of his Characters of Women with Boileau's
Satire; it will then be seen with how much more perspicacity female
nature is investigated, and female excellence selected; and he surely is
no mean writer to whom Boileau shall be found inferiour. The Characters
of Men, however, are written with more, if not with deeper, thought, and
exhibit many passages exquisitely beautiful. The Gem and the Flower will
not easily be equalled. In the women's part are some defects: the
character of Atossa is not so neatly finished as that of Clodio; and
some of the female characters may be found, perhaps, more frequently
among men; what is said of Philomede was true of Prior.
In the epistles to lord Bathurst and lord Burlington, Dr. Warburton has
endeavoured to find a train of thought which was never in the writer's
head, and, to support his hypothesis, has printed that first which was
published last. In one, the most valuable passage is, perhaps, the Elogy
on good Sense; and the other, the End of the Duke of Buckingham.
The epistle to Arbuthnot, now arbitrarily called the Prologue to the
Satires, is a performance consisting, as it seems, of many fragments
wrought into one design, which, by this union of scattered beauties,
contains more striking paragraphs than could, probably, have been
brought together into an occasional work. As there is no stronger
motive to exertion than self-defence, no part has more elegance, spirit,
or dignity, than the poet's vindication of his own character. The
meanest passage is the satire upon Sporus.
Of the two poems which derived their names from the year, and which are
called the Epilogue to the Satires, it was very justly remarked by
Savage, that the second was, in the whole, more strongly conceived, and
more equally supported, but that it had no single passages equal to the
contention in the first for the dignity of vice, and the celebration of
the triumph of corruption.
The imitations of Horace seem to have been written as relaxations of his
genius. This employment became his favourite by its facility; the plan
was ready to his hand, and nothing was required but to accommodate, as
he could, the sentiments of an old author, to recent facts or familiar
images; but what is easy is seldom excellent; such imitations cannot
give pleasure to common readers; the man of learning may be sometimes
surprised and delighted by an unexpected parallel; but the comparison
requires knowledge of the original, which will likewise often detect
strained applications. Between Roman images and English manners, there
will be an irreconcilable dissimilitude, and the work will be generally
uncouth and party-coloured; neither original nor translated, neither
ancient nor modern[150].
Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each other, all the
qualities that constitute genius. He had invention, by which new trains
of events are formed, and new scenes of imagery displayed, as in the
Rape of the Lock; and by which extrinsick and adventitious
embellishments and illustrations are connected with a known subject, as
in the Essay on Criticism. He had imagination, which strongly impresses
on the writer's mind, and enables him to convey to the reader, the
various forms of nature, incidents of life, and energies of passion, as
in his Eloisa, Windsor Forest, and Ethick Epistles. He had judgment,
which selects from life or nature what the present purpose requires, and
by separating the essence of things from its concomitants, often makes
the representation more powerful than the reality: and he had colours of
language always before him, ready to decorate his matter with every
grace of elegant expression, as when he accommodates his diction to _the
wonderful multiplicity_ of Homer's sentiments and descriptions.
Poetical expression includes sound as well as meaning; "Musick," says
Dryden, "is inarticulate poetry;" among the excellencies of Pope,
therefore, must be mentioned the melody of his metre. By perusing the
works of Dryden, he discovered the most perfect fabrick of English
verse, and habituated himself to that only which he found the best; in
consequence of which restraint, his poetry has been censured as too
uniformly musical, and as glutting the ear with unvaried sweetness. I
suspect this objection to be the cant of those who judge by principles
rather than perception; and who would even themselves have less pleasure
in his works, if he had tried to relieve attention by studied discords,
or affected to break his lines and vary his pauses.
But, though he was thus careful of his versification, he did not oppress
his powers with superfluous rigour. He seems to have thought, with
Boileau, that the practice of writing might be refined till the
difficulty should overbalance the advantage. The construction of his
language is not always strictly grammatical; with those rhymes, which
prescription had conjoined, he contented himself, without regard to
Swift's remonstrances, though there was no striking consonance; nor was
he very careful to vary his terminations, or to refuse admission, at a
small distance, to the same rhymes.
To Swift's edict, for the exclusion of alexandrines and triplets, he
paid little regard; he admitted them, but, in the opinion of Fenton, too
rarely; he uses them more liberally in his translation than his poems.
He has a few double rhymes; and always, I think, unsuccessfully, except
once in the Rape of the Lock.
Expletives he very early ejected from his verses; but he now and then
admits an epithet rather commodious than important. Each of the six
first lines of the Iliad might lose two syllables with very little
diminution of the meaning; and sometimes, after all his art and labour,
one verse seems to be made for the sake of another. In his latter
productions the diction is sometimes vitiated by French idioms, with
which Bolingbroke had, perhaps, infected him.
I have been told, that the couplet by which he declared his own ear to
be most gratified, was this:
Lo, where Mæotis sleeps, and hardly flows
The freezing Tanais through a waste of snows.
But the reason of this preference I cannot discover.
It is remarked by Watts, that there is scarcely a happy combination of
words, or a phrase poetically elegant, in the English language, which
Pope has not inserted into his version of Homer. How he obtained
possession of so many beauties of speech, it were desirable to know.
That he gleaned from authors, obscure as well as eminent, what he
thought brilliant or useful, and preserved it all in a regular
collection, is not unlikely. When, in his last years, Hall's Satires
were shown him, he wished that he had seen them sooner.
New sentiments, and new images, others may produce; but to attempt any
further improvement of versification will be dangerous. Art and
diligence have now done their best, and what shall be added will be the
effort of tedious toil and needless curiosity.
After all this, it is, surely, superfluous to answer the question that
has once been asked, whether Pope was a poet? otherwise than by asking
in return, if Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found? To
circumscribe poetry by a definition, will only show the narrowness of
the definer, though a definition, which shall exclude Pope, will not
easily be made. Let us look round upon the present time, and back upon
the past; let us inquire to whom the voice of mankind has decreed the
wreath of poetry; let their productions be examined, and their claims
stated, and the pretensions of Pope will be no more disputed. Had he
given the world only his version, the name of poet must have been
allowed him: if the writer of the Iliad were to class his successors, he
would assign a very high place to his translator, without requiring any
other evidence of genius.
* * * * *
The following Letter, of which the original is in the hands of lord
Hardwicke, was communicated to me by the kindness of Mr. Jodrell.
"To Mr. BRIDGES, at the bishop of London's, at Fulham.
"Sir,--The favour of your letter, with your remarks, can never
be enough acknowledged; and the speed with which you discharged
so troublesome a task, doubles the obligation.
"I must own, you have pleased me very much by the commendations
so ill bestowed upon me; but, I assure you, much more by the
frankness of your censure, which I ought to take the more kindly
of the two, as it is more advantageous to a scribbler to be
improved in his judgment, than to be soothed in his vanity. The
greater part of those deviations from the Greek, which you have
observed, I was led into by Chapman and Hobbes; who are, it
seems, as much celebrated for their knowledge of the original,
as they are decried for the badness of their translations.
Chapman pretends to have restored the genuine sense of the
author, from the mistakes of all former explainers, in several
hundred places; and the Cambridge editors of the large Homer, in
Greek and Latin, attributed so much to Hobbes, that they confess
they have corrected the old Latin interpretation, very often by
his version. For my part, I generally took the author's meaning
to be as you have explained it; yet their authority, joined to
the knowledge of my own imperfectness in the language, overruled
me. However, sir, you may be confident I think you in the right,
because you happen to be of my opinion: for men (let them say
what they will) never approve any other's sense, but as it
squares with their own. But you have made me much more proud of,
and positive in, my judgment, since it is strengthened by yours.
I think your criticisms, which regard the expression, very just,
and shall make my profit of them: to give you some proof that I
am in earnest, I will alter three verses on your bare objection,
though I have Mr. Dryden's example for each of them. And this, I
hope, you will account no small piece of obedience, from one,
who values the authority of one true poet above that of twenty
criticks or commentators. But, though I speak thus of
commentators, I will continue to read carefully all I can
procure, to make up, that way, for my own want of critical
understanding in the original beauties of Homer. Though the
greatest of them are certainly those of the invention and
design, which are not at all confined to the language: for the
distinguishing excellencies of Homer are (by the consent of the
best criticks of all nations) first in the manners, (which
include all the speeches, as being no other than the
representations of each person's manners by his words;) and then
in that rapture and fire, which carries you away with him, with
that wonderful force, that no man, who has a true poetical
spirit, is master of himself, while he reads him. Homer makes
you interested and concerned before you are aware, all at once;
whereas, Virgil does it by soft degrees. This, I believe, is
what a translator of Homer ought, principally, to imitate; and
it is very hard for any translator to come up to it, because the
chief reason, why all translations fall short of their originals
is, that the very constraint they are obliged to, renders them
heavy and dispirited.
"The great beauty of Homer's language, as I take it, consists in
that noble simplicity which runs through all his works; (and yet
his diction, contrary to what one would imagine consistent with
simplicity, is, at the same time, very copious.) I don't know
how I have run into this pedantry in a letter, but I find I have
said too much, as well as spoken too inconsiderately; what
farther thoughts I have upon this subject, I shall be glad to
communicate to you, for my own improvement, when we meet; which
is a happiness I very earnestly desire, as I do likewise some
opportunity of proving how much I think myself obliged to your
friendship, and how truly I am, sir,
"Your most faithful, humble servant,
"A. POPE."
The criticism upon Pope's epitaphs, [151] which was printed in the
Universal Visiter, is placed here, being too minute and particular to be
inserted in the life.
Every art is best taught by example. Nothing contributes more to the
cultivation of propriety, than remarks on the works of those who have
most excelled. I shall, therefore, endeavour, at this _visit_, to
entertain the young students in poetry with an examination of Pope's
epitaphs.
To define an epitaph is useless; every one knows that it is an
inscription on a tomb. An epitaph, therefore, implies no particular
character of writing, but may be composed in verse or prose. It is,
indeed, commonly panegyrical; because we are seldom distinguished with a
stone but by our friends; but it has no rule to restrain or modify it,
except this, that it ought not to be longer than common beholders may
be expected to have leisure and patience to peruse.
I.
_On_ CHARLES, _earl of_ DORSET, _in the church of Wythyham, in Sussex_.
Dorset, the grace of courts, the muse's pride,
Patron of arts, and judge of nature, dy'd,--
The scourge of pride, though sanctify'd or great,
Of fops in learning, and of knaves in state;
Yet soft in nature, though severe his lay,
His anger moral, and his wisdom gay.
Blest satirist! who touch'd the mean so true,
As show'd, vice had his hate and pity too.
Blest courtier! who could king and country please,
Yet sacred kept his friendship, and his ease.
Blest peer! his great forefather's every grace
Reflecting, and reflected on his race;
Where other Buckhursts, other Dorsets shine,
And patriots still, or poets, deck the line.
The first distich of this epitaph contains a kind of information which
few would want, that the man for whom the tomb was erected, _died_.
There are, indeed, some qualities worthy of praise ascribed to the dead,
but none that were likely to exempt him from the lot of man, or incline
us much to wonder that he should die. What is meant by "judge of
nature," is not easy to say. Nature is not the object of human judgment;
for it is vain to judge where we cannot alter. If by nature is meant
what is commonly called _nature_ by the criticks, a just representation
of things really existing, and actions really performed, nature cannot
be properly opposed to _art_; nature being, in this sense, only the best
effect of _art_.
The scourge of pride--
Of this couplet, the second line is not, what is intended, an
illustration of the former. _Pride_ in the _great_, is, indeed, well
enough connected with _knaves in state_, though _knaves_ is a word
rather too ludicrous and light; but the mention of _sanctified_ pride
will not lead the thoughts to _fops in learning_, but rather to some
species of tyranny or oppression, something more gloomy and more
formidable than foppery.
Yet soft his nature--
This is a high compliment, but was not first bestowed on Dorset by
Pope[152]. The next verse is extremely beautiful.
Blest satirist!
In this distich is another line of which Pope was not the author. I do
not mean to blame these imitations with much harshness; in long
performances they are scarcely to be avoided; and in shorter they may be
indulged, because the train of the composition may naturally involve
them, or the scantiness of the subject allow little choice. However,
what is borrowed is not to be enjoyed as our own; and it is the business
of critical justice to give every bird of the muses his proper feather.
Blest courtier!
Whether a courtier can properly be commended for keeping his _ease
sacred_, may, perhaps, be disputable. To please king and country,
without sacrificing friendship to any change of times, was a very
uncommon instance of prudence or felicity, and deserved to be kept
separate from so poor a commendation as care of his ease. I wish our
poets would attend a little more accurately to the use of the word
_sacred_, which surely should never be applied in a serious composition,
but where some reference may be made to a higher being, or where some
duty is exacted, or implied. A man may keep his friendship sacred,
because promises of friendship are very awful ties; but, methinks, he
cannot, but in a burlesque sense, be said to keep his ease _sacred_.
Blest peer!
The blessing ascribed to the _peer_ has no connexion with his peerage;
they might happen to any other man whose ancestors were remembered, or
whose posterity are likely to be regarded.
I know not whether this epitaph be worthy either of the writer or of the
man entombed.
II
_On sir_ WILLIAM TRUMBULL, one of the principal secretaries of state to
king William the third, who, having resigned his place, died in his
retirement at Easthamstead, in Berkshire, 1716.
A pleasing form; a firm, yet cautious mind;
Sincere, though prudent; constant, yet resign'd;
Honour unchang'd, a principle profest,
Fix'd to one side, but mod'rate to the rest:
An honest courtier, yet a patriot too;
Just to his prince, and to his country true;
Fill'd with the sense of age, the fire of youth,
A scorn of wrangling, yet a zeal for truth;
A gen'rous faith, from superstition free;
A love to peace, and hate of tyranny;
Such this man was; who now, from earth remov'd,
At length enjoys that liberty he lov'd.
In this epitaph, as in many others, there appears, at the first view, a
fault which, I think, scarcely any beauty can compensate. The name is
omitted. The end of an epitaph is to convey some account of the dead;
and to what purpose is any thing told of him whose name is concealed? An
epitaph, and a history of a nameless hero, are equally absurd, since the
virtues and qualities so recounted in either are scattered at the mercy
of fortune to be appropriated by guess. The name, it is true, may be
read upon the stone; but what obligation has it to the poet, whose
verses wander over the earth, and leave their subject behind them, and
who is forced, like an unskilful painter, to make his purpose known by
adventitious help?
This epitaph is wholly without elevation, and contains nothing striking
or particular; but the poet is not to be blamed for the defects of his
subject. He said, perhaps, the best that could be said. There are,
however, some defects which were not made necessary by the character in
which he was employed. There is no opposition between an _honest
courtier_ and a _patriot_; for, an _honest courtier_ cannot but be a
_patriot_.
It was unsuitable to the nicety required in short compositions, to close
his verse with the word _too_: every rhyme should be a word of emphasis;
nor can this rule be safely neglected, except where the length of the
poem makes slight inaccuracies excusable, or allows room for beauties
sufficient to overpower the effects of petty faults.
At the beginning of the seventh line the word filled is weak and
prosaick, having no particular adaptation to any of the words that
follow it.
The thought in the last line is impertinent, having no connexion with
the foregoing character, nor with the condition of the man described.
Had the epitaph been written on the poor conspirator[153] who died
lately in prison, after a confinement of more than forty years, without
any crime proved against him, the sentiment had been just and
pathetical; but why should Trumbull be congratulated upon his liberty,
who had never known restraint?
III.
_On the honourable_ SIMON HARCOURT, _only son of the lord chancellor_
HARCOURT, _at the church of Stanton-Harcourt, in Oxfordshire_, 1720.
To this sad shrine, whoe'er thou art, draw near,
Here lies the friend most lov'd, the son most dear:
Who ne'er knew joy, but friendship might divide,
Or gave his father grief but when he died.
How vain is reason, eloquence how weak!
If Pope must tell what Harcourt cannot speak.
Oh! let thy once-lov'd friend inscribe thy stone,
And with a father's sorrows mix his own!
This epitaph is principally remarkable for the artful introduction of
the name, which is inserted with a peculiar felicity, to which chance
must concur with genius, which no man can hope to attain twice, and
which cannot be copied but with servile imitation.
I cannot but wish that, of this inscription, the two last lines had been
omitted, as they take away from the energy what they do not add to the
sense.
IV.
ON JAMES CRAGGS, ESQ.
_In Westminster Abbey._
JACOBVS CRAGGS,
REGI MAGNÆ BRITANNIAE A SECRETIS
ET CONSILIIS SANCTIORIBVS
PRINCIPIS PARITER AC POPVLI AMOR ET DELICIÆ
VIXIT TITVLIS ET INVIDIA MAJOR,
ANNOS HEV PAVCOS, XXXV.
OB. FEB. XVI. MDCCXX.
Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honour clear!
Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end,
Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend;
Ennobled by himself, by all approv'd,
Prais'd, wept, and honour'd, by the muse he lov'd.
The lines on Craggs were not originally intended for an epitaph; and,
therefore, some faults are to be imputed to the violence with which they
are torn from the poem that first contained them. We may, however,
observe some defects. There is a redundancy of words in the first
couplet: it is superfluous to tell of him, who was _sincere, true_, and
_faithful_, that he was _in honour clear_.
There seems to be an opposition intended in the fourth line, which is
not very obvious: where is the relation between the two positions, that
he _gained no title_ and _lost no friend_?
It may be proper here to remark the absurdity of joining, in the same
inscription, Latin and English, or verse and prose. If either language
be preferable to the other, let that only be used; for no reason can be
given why part of the information should be given in one tongue, and
part in another, on a tomb, more than in any other place, or any other
occasion; and to tell all that can be conveniently told in verse, and
then to call in the help of prose, has always the appearance of a very
artless expedient, or of an attempt unaccomplished. Such an epitaph
resembles the conversation of a foreigner, who tells part of his meaning
by words, and conveys part by signs.
V.
INTENDED FOR MR. ROWE.
_In Westminster Abbey_[154].
Thy reliques, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust,
And, sacred, place by Dryden's awful dust;
Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies,
To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes.
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest!
Blest in thy genius, in thy love, too, blest!
One grateful woman to thy fame supplies
What a whole thankless land to his denies.
Of this inscription the chief fault is, that it belongs less to Rowe,
for whom it is written, than to Dryden, who was buried near him; and,
indeed, gives very little information concerning either.
To wish "Peace to thy shade," is too mythological to be admitted into a
Christian temple: the ancient worship has infected almost all our other
compositions, and might, therefore, be contented to spare our epitaphs.
Let fiction, at least, cease with life, and let us be serious over the
grave.
VI.
ON MRS. CORBET,
_Who died of a cancer in her breast_[155].
Here rests a woman, good without pretence,
Blest with plain reason, and with sober sense:
No conquest she, but o'er herself, desir'd;
No arts essay'd, but not to be admir'd.
Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,
Convinc'd that virtue only is our own.
So unaffected, so compos'd a mind,
So firm, yet soft, so strong, yet so refin'd,
Heav'n, as its purest gold, by tortures try'd;
The saint sustain'd it, but the woman dy'd.
I have always considered this as the most valuable of all Pope's
epitaphs; the subject of it is a character not discriminated by any
shining or eminent peculiarities; yet that which really makes though not
the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every wise man will
choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor of age, in the
quiet of privacy, when he departs weary and disgusted from the
ostentatious, the volatile, and the vain. Of such a character, which the
dull overlook, and the gay despise, it was fit that the value should be
made known, and the dignity established. Domestick virtue, as it is
exerted without great occasions, or conspicuous consequences, in an even
unnoted tenour, required the genius of Pope to display it in such a
manner as might attract regard, and enforce reverence. Who can forbear
to lament that this amiable woman has no name in the verses?
If the particular lines of this inscription be examined, it will appear
less faulty than the rest. There is scarcely one line taken from
commonplaces, unless it be that in which _only virtue_ is said to be our
own. I once heard a Jady of great beauty and excellence object to the
fourth line, that it contained an unnatural and incredible panegyrick.
Of this let the ladies judge.
VII.
_On the monument of the honourable_ ROBERT DIGBY, _and of his sister
MARY, erected by their father the lord_ DIGBY, _in the church of
Skerborne, in Dorsetshire, 1727._
Go! fair example of untainted youth,
Of modest wisdom, and pacific truth:
Compos'd in sufferings, and in joy sedate,
Good without noise, without pretension great.
Just of thy word, in ev'ry thought sincere,
Who knew no wish but what the world might hear:
Of softest manners, unaffected mind,
Lover of peace, and friend of human kind:
Go, live! for heav'n's eternal year is thine;
Go, and exalt thy mortal to divine.
And thou, blest maid! attendant on his doom,
Pensive hast follow'd to the silent tomb,
Steer'd the same course to the same quiet shore,
Not parted long, and now to part no more!
Go, then, where only bliss sincere is known!
Go, where to love and to enjoy are one!
Yet take these tears, mortality's relief,
And, till we share your joys, forgive our grief:
These little rites, a stone, a verse receive,
'Tis all a father, all a friend can give!
This epitaph contains of the brother only a general indiscriminate
character, and of the sister tells nothing but that she died. The
difficulty in writing epitaphs is to give a particular and appropriate
praise. This, however, is not always to be performed, whatever be the
diligence or ability of the writer; for, the greater part of mankind
_have no character at all_, have little that distinguishes them from
others equally good or bad, and, therefore, nothing can be said of them
which may not be applied with equal propriety to a thousand more. It is,
indeed, no great panegyrick, that there is inclosed in this tomb one who
was born in one year, and died in another; yet many useful and amiable
lives have been spent, which yet leave little materials for any other
memorial. These are, however, not the proper subjects of poetry; and
whenever friendship, or any other motive, obliges a poet to write on
such subjects, he must be forgiven if he sometimes wanders in
generalities, and utters the same praises over different tombs.
The scantiness of human praises can scarcely be made more apparent, than
by remarking how often Pope has, in the few epitaphs which he composed,
found it necessary to borrow from himself. The fourteen epitaphs, which
he has written, comprise about a hundred and forty lines, in which there
are more repetitions than will easily be found in all the rest of his
works. In the eight lines which make the character of Digby, there is
scarce any thought, or word, which may not be found in the other
epitaphs.
The ninth line, which is far the strongest and most elegant, is borrowed
from Dryden. The conclusion is the same with that on Harcourt, but is
here more elegant and better connected.
VIII.
ON SIR GODFREY KNELLER.
_In Westminster Abbey, 1723._
Kneller, by heav'n, and not a master, taught,
Whose art was nature, and whose pictures thought;
Now for two ages, having snatch'd from fate
Whate'er was beauteous, or whate'er was great,
Lies crown'd with princes' honours, poets' lays,
Due to his merit, and brave thirst of praise.
Living, great nature fear'd he might outvie
Her works; and dying, fears herself may die.
Of this epitaph the first couplet is good, the second not bad, the third
is deformed with a broken metaphor, the word _crowned_ not being
applicable to the _honours_ or the _lays_; and the fourth is not only
borrowed from the epitaph on Raphael, but of very harsh construction.
IX.
ON GENERAL HENRY WITHERS.
_In Westminster Abbey_, 1723.
Here, Withers, rest! thou bravest, gentlest mind, Thy country's
friend, but more of human kind. O! born to arms! O! worth in
youth approv'd! O! soft humanity in age belov'd! For thee the
hardy vet'ran drops a tear, And the gay courtier feels the sigh
sincere.
Withers, adieu! yet not with thee remove Thy martial spirit, or
thy social love! Amidst corruption, luxury and rage, Still leave
some ancient virtues to our age: Nor let us say (those English
glories gone) The last true Briton lies beneath this stone.
The epitaph on Withers affords another instance of commonplaces, though
somewhat diversified, by mingled qualities, and the peculiarity of a
profession.
The second couplet is abrupt, general, and unpleasing; exclamation
seldom succeeds in our language; and, I think, it may be observed, that
the particle O! used at the beginning of a sentence, always offends.
The third couplet is more happy; the value expressed for him, by
different sorts of men, raises him to esteem; there is yet something of
the common cant of superficial satirists, who suppose that the
insincerity of a courtier destroys all his sensations, and that he is
equally a dissembler to the living and the dead[156].
At the third couplet I should wish the epitaph to close, but that I
should be unwilling to lose the two next lines, which yet are dearly
bought if they cannot be retained without the four that follow them.
X.
ON MR. ELIJAH FENTON.
_At Easthamstead, in Berkshire, 1730._
This modest stone, what few vain marbles can,
May truly say, here lies an honest man:
A poet, blest beyond the poet's fate,
Whom heav'n kept sacred from the proud and great:
Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease,
Content with science in the vale of peace.
Calmly he look'd on either life, and here
Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear;
From nature's temp'rate feast rose satisfy'd,
Thank'd heav'n that he liv'd, and that he dy'd.
The first couplet of this epitaph is borrowed from Crashaw. The four
next lines contain a species of praise, peculiar, original, and just.
Here, therefore, the inscription should have ended, the latter part
containing nothing but what is common to every man who is wise and good.
The character of Fenton was so amiable, that I cannot forbear to wish
for some poet or biographer to display it more fully for the advantage
of posterity. If he did not stand in the first rank of genius, he may
claim a place in the second; and, whatever criticism may object to his
writings, censure could find very little to blame in his life.
XI.
ON MR. GAY.
_In Westminster Abbey, 1732._
Of manners gentle, of affections mild;
In wit, a man; simpicity, a child;
With native humour temp'ring virtuous rage,
Form'd to delight at once and lash the age;
Above temptation, in a low estate;
And uncorrupted e'en among the great:
A safe companion and an easy friend,
Unblam'd through life, lamented in thy end;
These are thy honours! not that here thy bust
Is mix'd with heroes, or with kings thy dust;
But that the worthy and the good shall say,
Striking their pensive bosoms--Here lies Gay!
As Gay was the favourite of our author, this epitaph was probably
written with an uncommon degree of attention; yet it is not more
successfully executed than the rest, for it will not always happen that
the success of a poet is proportionate to his labour. The same
observation may be extended to all works of imagination, which are often
influenced by causes wholly out of the performer's power, by hints of
which he perceives not the origin, by sudden elevations of mind which he
cannot produce in himself, and which sometimes rise when he expects them
least.
The two parts of the first line are only echoes of each other; _gentle
manners_ and _mild affections_, if they mean any thing, must mean the
same.
That Gay was a _man in wit_ is a very frigid commendation; to have the
wit of a man, is not much for a poet. The _wit of a man_[157], and the
_simplicity of a child_, make a poor and vulgar contrast, and raise no
ideas of excellence, either intellectual or moral.
In the next couplet _rage_ is less properly introduced after the mention
of _mildness_ and _gentleness_ which are made the constituents of his
character; for a man so _mild_ and _gentle_ to _temper_ his _rage_, was
not difficult.
The next line is inharmonious in its sound, and mean in its conception;
the opposition is obvious, and the word _lash_ used absolutely, and
without any modification, is gross and improper.
To be _above temptation_ in poverty, and _free from corruption among
the great_, is, indeed, such a peculiarity as deserved notice. But to be
a _safe companion_ is praise merely negative, arising not from the
possession of virtue, but the absence of vice, and one of the most
odious.
As little can be added to his character, by asserting that he was
_lamented in his end_. Every man that dies is, at least, by the writer
of his epitaph, supposed to be lamented; and, therefore, this general
lamentation does no honour to Gay.
The first eight lines have no grammar; the adjectives are without any
substantive, and the epithets without a subject.
The thought in the last line, that Gay is buried in the bosoms of the
_worthy_ and the _good_, who are distinguished only to lengthen the
line, is so dark that few understand it; and so harsh, when it is
explained, that still fewer approve[158].
XII.
INTENDED FOR SIR ISAAC NEWTON.
_In Westminster Abbey_.
ISAACUS NEWTONIUS:
Quem immortalem
Testantur, _tempus, natura, coelum_:
Mortalem
Hoc marmor fatetur.
Nature, and nature's law, lay hid in night:
God said, _Let Newton be_! And all was light.
Of this epitaph, short as it is, the faults seem not to be very few. Why
part should be Latin, and part English, it is not easy to discover. In
the Latin the opposition of _immortalis_ and _mortalis_, is a mere
sound, or a mere quibble; he is not _immortal_ in any sense contrary to
that in which he is _mortal_.
In the verses the thought is obvious, and the words _night_ and _light_
are too nearly allied.
XIII.
_On_ EDMUND _duke of_ BUCKINGHAM, _who died in the nineteenth year of his
age_, 1735.
If modest youth, with cool reflection crown'd,
And ev'ry op'ning virtue blooming round,
Could save a parent's justest pride from fate,
Or add one patriot to a sinking state;
This weeping marble had not ask'd thy tear,
Or sadly told how many hopes lie here!
The living virtue now had shone approv'd,
The senate heard him, and his country lov'd.
Yet softer honours, and less noisy fame,
Attend the shade of gentle Buckingham:
In whom a race, for courage fam'd and art,
Ends in the milder merit of the heart:
And, chiefs or sages long to Britain giv'n,
Pays the last tribute of a saint to heav'n.
This epitaph Mr. Warburton prefers to the rest; but I know not for what
reason. To _crown_ with _reflection_ is surely a mode of speech
approaching to nonsense. _Opening virtues blooming round,_ is something
like tautology; the six following lines are poor and prosaick _Art_ is,
in another couplet, used for _arts_, that a rhyme may be had to _heart._
The six last lines are the best, but not excellent.
The rest of his sepulchral performances hardly deserve the notice of
criticism. The contemptible Dialogue between He and She should have been
suppressed for the author's sake.
In his last epitaph on himself, in which he attempts to be jocular upon
one of the few things that make wise men serious, he confounds the
living man with the dead:
Under this stone, or under this sill,
Or under this turf, &c.
When a man is once buried, the question, under what he is buried, is
easily decided. He forgot that though he wrote the epitaph in a state of
uncertainty, yet it could not be laid over him till his grave was made.
Such is the folly of wit when it is ill employed.
The world has but little new; even this wretchedness seems to have been
borrowed from the following tuneless lines:
Ludovici Areosti humantur ossa
Sub hoc marmore, vel sub hac humo, seu
Sub quicquid voluit benignus hæres,
Sive hærede benignior comes, seu
Opportunius incidens viator;
Nam scire haud potuit futura, sed nec
Tanti erat vacuum sibi cadaver
Ut urnam cuperet parare vivens;
Vivens ista tamen sibi paravit,
Quæ inscribi voluit suo sepulchro
Olim siquod haberet is sepulchrum.
Surely Ariosto did not venture to expect that his trifle would have ever
had such an illustrious imitator.
-----
[Footnote 108: This weakness was so great that he constantly wore stays,
as I have been assured by a waterman at Twickenham, who, in lifting him
into his boat, had often felt them. His method of taking the air on the
water was to have a sedan chair in the boat, in which he sat with the
glasses down. H.]
[Footnote 109: This opinion is warmly controverted by Roscoe, in his
Life of Pope; and, perhaps, with justice; for, to adopt the words of
D'Israeli, "Pope's literary warfare was really the wars of his poetical
ambition more, perhaps, than of the petulance and strong irritability of
his temper." See also sir Walter Scott's Swift, i. 316. ED.]
[Footnote 110: This is incorrect; his ordinary hand was certainly neat
and elegant. I have some of it now before me. M.]
[Footnote 111: Pope's first instructor is repeatedly mentioned by Spence
under the name of Banister, and described as the family priest. Spence's
Anecd. 259. 283. Singer's edit. Roscoe's Pope, i. 11. ED.]
[Footnote 112: Dryden died May 1, 1700, a year earlier than Johnson
supposed. M.]
[Footnote 113: No. 253. But, according to Dr. Warton, Pope was
displeased at one passage, in which Addison censures the admission of
"some strokes of ill-nature."]
[Footnote 114: See Gent. Mag. vol. li. p. 314. N. See the subject very
fully discussed in Roscoe's Life of Pope, i. 86, and following pages.]
[Footnote 115: What eye of taste ever beheld the dancing fawn or the
immortal Canova's dancing girl, and doubted of this power? Pindar long
ago assigned this to sculpture, and was never censured for his poetic
boldness:[Greek: Erga de zooisin erpon--tessi th' omoia kelenthoi
pheron.] Olym. vii. 95. ED.]
[Footnote 116: Pope never felt with Eloisa, and, therefore, slighted his
own affected effusions. He had little intense feeling himself, and all
the passionate parts of the epistle are manifestly borrowed from
Eloisa's own Latin letters. ED.]
[Footnote 117: It is still at Caen Wood. N.]
[Footnote 118: Spence.]
[Footnote 119: Earlier than this, viz. in 1688, Milton's Paradise Lost
had been published with great success by subscription, in folio, under
the patronage of Mr. (afterwards lord) Somers. R.]
[Footnote 120: This may very well be doubted. The interference of the
Dutch booksellers stimulated Lintot to publish cheap editions, the
greater sale of which among the people probably produced his large
profits. ED.]
[Footnote 121: Spence.]
[Footnote 122: Spence.]
[Footnote 123: As this story was related by Pope himself, it was most
probably true. Had it rested on any other authority, I should have
suspected it to have been, borrowed from one of Poggio's Tales. De
Jannoto Vicecomite. J.B.]
[Footnote 124: On this point, see notes on Halifax's life in this
edition.]
[Footnote 125: Spence.]
[Footnote 126: See, however, the Life of Addison in the Biographia
Britannica, last edition. R.]
[Footnote 127: See the letter containing Pope's answer to the bishop's
arguments in Roscoe's life, i. 212.]
[Footnote 128: The late Mr. Graves, of Claverton, informs us, that this
bible was afterwards used in the chapel of Prior-park. Dr. Warburton
probably presented it to Mr. Allen.]
[Footnote 129: See note to Adventurer, No. 138.]
[Footnote 130: Mr. D'Israeli has discussed the whole of this affair in
his Quarrels of Authors, i. 176. Mr. Roscoe likewise, in his Life of
Pope, examines very fully all the evidence to be gathered on the point,
and comes to a conclusion much less reputable to Curll, than that to be
inferred from Dr. Johnson's arguments. ED.]
[Footnote 131: These letters were evidently prepared for the press by
Pope himself. Some of the originals, lately discovered, will prove this
beyond all dispute; in the edition of Pope's works, lately published by
Mr. Bowles.]
[Footnote 132: Ayre, in his Life of Pope, ii. 215, relates an amusing
anecdote on this occasion. "Soon after the appearance of the first
epistle," he observes, "a gentleman who had attempted some things in the
poetical way, called on Pope, who inquired from him, what news there was
in the learned world, and what new pieces were brought to light? The
visiter replied, that there was little or nothing worthy notice; that
there was, indeed, a thing called an Essay on Man, shocking poetry,
insufferable philosophy, no coherence, no connexion. Pope could not
repress his indignation, and instantly avowed himself the author. This
was like a clap of thunder to the mistaken bard, who took up his hat and
never ventured to show his unlucky face there again." It is generally
supposed that Mallet was this luckless person. ED.]
[Footnote 133: This letter is in Mr. Malone's Supplement to Shakespeare,
vol. i. p. 223.]
[Footnote 134: Spence.]
[Footnote 135: It has been admitted by divines, even that some sins do
more especially beset particular individuals. Mr. Roscoe enters into a
long vindication of Pope's doctrine against the imputations of Dr.
Johnson; the most satisfactory parts of which are the refutations drawn
from Pope's own essay.
The business of reason is shown to be,
to rectify, not overthrow,
And treat this passion more as friend than foe.
Essay on Man, ep. ii. 164.
Th' eternal art, educing good from ill,
Grafts on this passion our best principle;
'Tis thus the mercury of man is fix'd:
Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix'd.
Ib. ii. 175.
As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care,
On savage stocks inserted learn to bear,
The surest virtues thus from passions shoot,
Wild nature's vigour working at the root,
What crops of wit and honesty appear
From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear, &c.
Ib. ii. 181.
"And thus," concludes Mr. Roscoe, "the injurious consequences which
Johnson supposes to be derived from Pope's idea of the ruling passion,
are not only obviated, but _that passion_ itself is shown to be
conducive to our highest moral improvement." ED.]
[Footnote 136: Entitled, Sedition and Defamation displayed. 8vo. 1733.
R.]
[Footnote 137: Among many manuscripts, letters, &c. relating to Pope,
which I have lately seen, is a lampoon in the bible style, of much
humour, but irreverent, in which Pope is ridiculed as the son of a
_hatter_.]
[Footnote 138: On a hint from Warburton. There is, however, reason to
think, from the appearance of the house in which Allen was born at Saint
Blaise, that he was not of a _low_, but of a _decayed_ family.]
[Footnote 139: Since discovered to have been Atterbury, afterwards
bishop of Rochester.
See the collection of that prelate's Epistolary Correspondence, vol. iv.
p. 6. N. This I believe to be an error. Mr. Nichols has ascribed this
preface to Atterbury on the authority of Dr. Walter Harte, who, in a
manuscript note on a copy of Pope's edition, expresses his surprise that
Pope should there have described the former editor as anonymous, as he
himself had told Harte fourteen years before his own publication, that
this preface was by Atterbury. The explication is probably this; that
during that period he had discovered that he had been in a mistake. By a
manuscript note in a copy presented by Crynes to the Bodleian library,
we are informed that the former editor was Thomas Power, of Trinity
college, Cambridge. Power was bred at Westminster, under Busby, and was
elected off to Cambridge in the year 1678. He was author of a
translation of Milton's Paradise Lost; of which only the first book was
published, in 1691. J.B.]
[Footnote 140: In 1743.]
[Footnote 141: In 1744.]
[Footnote 142: Mr. Roscoe, with good reason, doubts the accuracy of this
inconsistent and improbable story. See his Life of Pope, 556.]
[Footnote 143: Spence.]
[Footnote 144: This is somewhat inaccurately expressed. Lord Bolingbroke
was not an executor: Pope's papers were left to him specifically, or, in
case of his death, to lord Marchmont.]
[Footnote 145: This account of the difference between Pope and Mr. Allen
is not so circumstantial as it was in Johnson's power to have made it.
The particulars communicated to him concerning it he was too indolent to
commit to writing; the business of this note is to supply his omissions.
Upon an invitation, in which Mrs. Blount was included, Mr. Pope made a
visit to Mr. Allen, at Prior-park, and having occasion to go to Bristol
for a few days, left Mrs. Blount behind him. In his absence Mrs. Blount,
who was of the Romish persuasion, signified an inclination to go to the
popish chapel at Bath, and desired of Mr. Allen the use of his chariot
for the purpose; but he being at that time mayor of the city, suggested
the impropriety of having his carriage seen at the door of a place of
worship, to which, as a magistrate, he was at least restrained from
giving a sanction, and might be required to suppress, and, therefore,
desire to be excused. Mrs. Blount resented this refusal, and told Pope
of it at his return, and so infected him with her rage that they both
left the house abruptly[1].
An instance of the like negligence may be noted in his relation of
Pope's love of painting, which differs much from the information I gave
him on that head. A picture of Betterton, certainly copied from Kneller
by Pope[2], lord Mansfield once showed me at Kenwood-house, adding, that
it was the only one he ever finished, for that the weakness of his eyes
was an obstruction to his use of the pencil. H.
(Footnote 1: This is altogether wrong. Pope kept up his friendship with
Mr. Allen to the last, as appears by his letters, and Mrs. Blount
remained in Mr. Allen's house some time after the coolness took place
between her and Mrs. Allen. Allen's conversation with Pope on this
subject, and his letters to Mrs. Blount, all whose quarrels he was
obliged to share, will be found in Mr. Bowles's edition of Pope's works.
C.--See further and more minute information on this affair in Roscoe's
Pope, i. 526, and following pages. Ed.)
(Footnote 2: See p. 249.)]
[Footnote 146: But see this matter explained by facts more creditable to
Pope, in his life, Biographical Dictionary, vol. xxv.]
[Footnote 147: Part of it arose from an annuity of two hundred pounds a
year, which he had purchased either of the late duke of Buckinghamshire,
or the dutchess, his mother, and which was charged on some estate of
that family. [See p. 256.] The deed by which it was granted was some
years in my custody. H.]
[Footnote 148: The account herein before given of this lady and her
catastrophe, cited by Johnson from Ruffhead, with a kind of acquiescence
in the truth thereof, seems no other than might have been extracted from
the verses themselves. I have in my possession a letter to Dr. Johnson,
containing the name of the lady; and a reference to a gentleman well
known in the literary world for her history. Him I have seen; and, from
a memorandum of some particulars to the purpose, communicated to him by
a lady of quality, he informs me, that the unfortunate lady's name was
Withinbury[1], corruptly pronounced Winbury; that she was in love with
Pope, and would have married him; that her guardian, though she was
deformed in person, looking upon such a match as beneath her, sent her
to a convent; and that a noose, and not a sword, put an end to her life.
H. (Footnote 1: According to Warton, the lady's name was Wainsbury.
ED.)]
[Footnote 149: Bentley was one of these. He and Pope, soon after the
publication of Homer, met at Dr. Mead's at dinner; when Pope, desirous
of his opinion of the translation, addressed him thus: "Dr. Bentley, I
ordered my bookseller to send you your books: I hope you received them."
Bentley, who had purposely avoided saying any thing about Homer,
pretended not to understand him, and asked, "Books! books! what
books?"--" My Homer," replied Pope, "which you did me the honour to
subscribe for."--"Oh," said Bentley, "aye, now I recollect--your
translation:--it is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope; but you must not call it
Homer." H.
Some good remarks on Pope's translation may be found in the work of
Melmoth, entitled Fitzosborne's Letters. ED.]
[Footnote 150: In one of these poems is a couplet, to which belongs a
story that I once heard the reverend Dr. Ridley relate:
"Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage;
Hard words, or hanging, if your judge be ...,"
Sir Francis Page, a judge well known in his time, conceiving that his
name was meant to fill up the blank, sent his clerk to Mr. Pope, to
complain of the insult. Pope told the young man that the blank might be
supplied by many monosyllables, other than the judge's name:--"but,
sir," said the clerk, "the judge says that no other word will make sense
of the passage."--"So then it seems," says Pope "your master is not only
a judge but a poet; as that is the case, the odds are against me. Give
my respects to the judge, and tell him, I will not contend with one that
has the advantage of me, and he may fill up the blank as he pleases."
H.]
[Footnote 151: See note, by Gifford, on Johnson's criticism here in
Massinger's works.]
[Footnote 152: Johnson, I imagine, alludes to a well-known line by
Rochester:
The best good man with the worst-natur'd muse. ]
[Footnote 153: Major Bernardi, who died in Newgate, Sept. 20, 1736. See
Gent. Mag. vol. 1. p. 125. N.]
[Footnote 154: This was altered much for the better, as it now stands on
the monument in the abbey, erected to Rowe and his daughter. WARB. See
Bowles's edition of Pope's works, ii. 416.]
[Footnote 155: In the north aisle of the parish church of St. Margaret,
Westminster. H.]
[Footnote 156: The thought was, probably, borrowed from Carew's
Obsequies to the lady Anne Hay:
I heard the virgins sigh, I saw the sleek
And polish'd courtier channel his fresh cheek
_With real tears_.
J.B.]
[Footnote 157: Her _wit_ was more than _man_, her _innocence a child_.
DRYDEN, on Mrs. Killigrew.]
[Footnote 158: The same thought is found in George Whetstone's epitaph
on the good lord Dyer, 1582:
Et semper bonus ille bonis fuit, ergo bonorum
Sunt illi demum pectora sarcophagus.
J.B.]
PITT.
Christopher Pitt, of whom whatever I shall relate, more than has been
already published, I owe to the kind communication of Dr. Warton, was
born, in 1699, at Blandford, the son of a physician much esteemed.
He was, in 1714, received as a scholar into Winchester college, where he
was distinguished by exercises of uncommon elegance, and, at his removal
to New college, in 1719, presented to the electors, as the product of
his private and voluntary studies, a complete version of Lucan's poem,
which he did not then know to have been translated by Rowe.
This is an instance of early diligence which well deserves to be
recorded. The suppression of such a work, recommended by such uncommon
circumstances, is to be regretted. It is, indeed, culpable to load
libraries with superfluous books; but incitements to early excellence
are never superfluous, and, from this example, the danger is not great
of many imitations.
When he had resided at his college three years, he was presented to the
rectory of Pimpern, in Dorsetshire, 1722, by his relation, Mr. Pitt, of
Stratfield Say, in Hampshire; and, resigning his fellowship, continued
at Oxford two years longer, till he became master of arts, 1724.
He probably about this time translated Vida's Art of Poetry, which
Tristram's splendid edition had then made popular. In this translation
he distinguished himself, both by its general elegance, and by the
skilful adaptation of his numbers to the images expressed; a beauty
which Vida has, with great ardour, enforced and exemplified.
He then retired to his living, a place very pleasing by its situation,
and, therefore, likely to excite the imagination of a poet; where he
passed the rest of his life, reverenced for his virtue, and beloved for
the softness of his temper and the easiness of his manners. Before
strangers he had something of the scholar's timidity or distrust; but
when he became familiar he was, in a very high degree, cheerful and
entertaining. His general benevolence procured general respect; and he
passed a life placid and honourable, neither too great for the kindness
of the low, nor too low for the notice of the great.
At what time he composed his Miscellany, published in 1727, it is not
easy or necessary to know: those which have dates appear to have been
very early productions, and I have not observed that any rise above
mediocrity.
The success of his Vida animated him to a higher undertaking; and in his
thirtieth year he published a version of the first book of the Æneid.
This being, I suppose, commended by his friends, he, some time
afterwards, added three or four more; with an advertisement, in which he
represents himself as translating with great indifference, and with a
progress of which himself was hardly conscious. This can hardly be true,
and, if true, is nothing to the reader.
At last, without any farther contention with his modesty or any awe of
the name of Dryden, he gave us a complete English Æneid, which I am
sorry not to see, joined in this publication with his other poems[159].
It would have been pleasing to have an opportunity of comparing the two
best translations that, perhaps, were ever produced by one nation of the
same author.
Pitt, engaging as a rival with Dryden, naturally observed his failures,
and avoided them; and, as he wrote after Pope's Iliad, he had an example
of an exact, equable and splendid versification. With these advantages
seconded by great diligence, he might successfully labour particular
passages, and escape many errours. If the two versions are compared,
perhaps the result would be that Dryden leads the reader forward by his
general vigour and sprightliness, and Pitt often stops him to
contemplate the excellence of a single couplet; that Dryden's faults are
forgotten in the hurry of delight, and that Pitt's beauties are
neglected in the languor of a cold and listless perusal; that Pitt
pleases the criticks, and Dryden the people; that Pitt is quoted, and
Dryden read.
He did not long enjoy the reputation which this great work deservedly
conferred; for he left the world in 1748, and lies buried under a stone
at Blandford, on which is this inscription:
In memory of
CHR. PITT, clerk, M.A.
Very eminent
for his talents in poetry;
and yet more
for the universal candour of
his mind, and the primitive
simplicity of his manners.
He lived innocent;
and died beloved,
Apr. 13, 1748,
aged 48.
-----
[Footnote 159: It has since been added to the collection. R.]
THOMSON.
James Thomson, the son of a minister well esteemed for his piety and
diligence, was born September 7, 1700, at Ednam, in the shire of
Roxburgh, of which his father was pastor. His mother, whose name was
Hume[160], inherited, as coheiress, a portion of a small estate. The
revenue of a parish in Scotland is seldom large; and it was, probably,
in commiseration of the difficulty with which Mr. Thomson supported his
family, having nine children, that Mr. Riccarton, a neighbouring
minister, discovering in James uncommon promises of future excellence,
undertook to superintend his education, and provide him books.
He was taught the common rudiments of learning at the school of Jedburg,
a place which he delights to recollect in his poem of Autumn; but was
not considered by his master as superiour to common boys, though, in
those early days, he amused his patron and his friends with poetical
compositions; with which, however, he so little pleased himself, that,
on every new-year's day, he threw into the fire all the productions of
the foregoing year.
From the school he was removed to Edinburgh, where he had not resided
two years when his father died, and left all his children to the care of
their mother, who raised, upon her little estate, what money a mortgage
could afford, and, removing with her family to Edinburgh, lived to see
her son rising into eminence.
The design of Thomson's friends was to breed him a minister. He lived at
Edinburgh, as at school, without distinction or expectation, till, at
the usual time, he performed a probationary exercise by explaining a
psalm. His diction was so poetically splendid, that Mr. Hamilton, the
professor of divinity, reproved him for speaking language
unintelligible to a popular audience; and he censured one of his
expressions as indecent, if not profane[161].
This rebuke is reported to have repressed his thoughts of an
ecclesiastical character, and he probably cultivated, with new
diligence, his blossoms of poetry, which, however, were in some danger
of a blast; for, submitting his productions to some who thought
themselves qualified to criticise, he heard of nothing but faults; but,
finding other judges more favourable, he did not suffer himself to sink
into despondence.
He easily discovered, that the only stage on which a poet could appear,
with any hope of advantage, was London; a place too wide for the
operation of petty competition and private malignity, where merit might
soon become conspicuous, and would find friends as soon as it became
reputable to befriend it. A lady, who was acquainted with his mother,
advised him to the journey, and promised some countenance, or
assistance, which, at last, he never received; however, he justified his
adventure by her encouragement, and came to seek, in London, patronage
and fame.
At his arrival he found his way to Mr. Mallet, then tutor to the sons of
the duke of Montrose. He had recommendations to several persons of
consequence, which he had tied up carefully in his handkerchief; but as
he passed along the street, with the gaping curiosity of a new-comer,
his attention was upon every thing rather than his pocket, and his
magazine of credentials was stolen from him.
His first want was a pair of shoes. For the supply of all his
necessities, his whole fund was his Winter, which for a time could find
no purchaser; till, at last, Mr. Millan was persuaded to buy it at a low
price; and this low price he had, for some time, reason to regret[162];
but, by accident, Mr. Whatley, a man not wholly unknown among authors,
happening to turn his eye upon it, was so delighted that he ran from
place to place celebrating its excellence. Thomson obtained, likewise,
the notice of Aaron Hill, whom, being friendless and indigent, and glad
of kindness, he courted with every expression of servile adulation.
Winter was dedicated to sir Spencer Compton, but attracted no regard
from him to the author; till Aaron Hill awakened his attention by some
verses addressed to Thomson, and published in one of the newspapers,
which censured the great for their neglect of ingenious men. Thomson
then received a present of twenty guineas, of which he gives this
account to Mr. Hill:
"I hinted to you in my last, that on Saturday morning I was with sir
Spencer Compton. A certain gentleman, without my desire, spoke to him
concerning me; his answer was, that I had never come near him. Then the
gentleman put the question, if he desired that I should wait on him: he
returned, he did. On this, the gentleman gave me an introductory letter
to him. He received me in what they commonly call a civil manner; asked
me some commonplace questions; and made me a present of twenty guineas.
I am very ready to own that the present was larger than my performance
deserved; and shall ascribe it to his generosity, or any other cause,
rather than the merit of the address."
The poem, which, being of a new kind[163], few would venture at first
to like, by degrees gained upon the publick; and one edition was very
speedily succeeded by another.
Thomson's credit was now high, and every day brought him new friends;
among others Dr. Rundle, a man afterwards unfortunately famous, sought
his acquaintance, and found his qualities such, that he recommended him
to the lord chancellor Talbot.
Winter was accompanied, in many editions, not only with a preface and a
dedication, but with poetical praises by Mr. Hill, Mr. Mallet, (then
Malloch,) and Mira, the fictitious name of a lady once too well known.
Why the dedications are, to Winter and the other seasons, contrarily to
custom, left out in the collected works, the reader may inquire.
The next year, 1727, he distinguished himself by three publications; of
Summer, in pursuance of his plan; of a Poem on the Death of sir Isaac
Newton, which he was enabled to perform as an exact philosopher by the
instruction of Mr. Gray; and of Britannia, a kind of poetical invective
against the ministry, whom the nation then thought not forward enough in
resenting the depredations of the Spaniards. By this piece he declared
himself an adherent to the opposition, and had, therefore, no favour to
expect from the court.
Thomson, having been some time entertained in the family of the lord
Binning, was desirous of testifying his gratitude by making him the
patron of his Summer; but the same kindness which had first disposed
lord Binning to encourage him, determined him to refuse the dedication,
which was, by his advice, addressed to Mr. Dodington, a man who had more
power to advance the reputation and fortune of a poet.
Spring was published next year, with a dedication to the countess of
Hertford; whose practice it was to invite every summer some poet into
the country, to hear her verses, and assist her studies. This honour was
one summer conferred on Thomson, who took more delight in carousing with
lord Hertford and his friends than assisting her ladyship's poetical
operations, and, therefore, never received another summons.
Autumn, the season to which the Spring and Summer are preparatory, still
remained unsung, and was delayed till he published, 1730, his works
collected.
He produced in 1727 the tragedy of Sophonisba, which raised such
expectation, that every rehearsal was dignified with a splendid
audience, collected to anticipate the delight that was preparing for the
publick. It was observed, however, that nobody was much affected, and
that the company rose as from a moral lecture.
It had upon the stage no unusual degree of success. Slight accidents
will operate upon the taste of pleasure. There is a feeble line in the
play:
O, Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O!
This gave occasion to a waggish parody:
O, Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, O!
which for awhile was echoed through the town.
I have been told by Savage, that of the prologue to Sophonisba, the
first part was written by Pope, who could not be persuaded to finish it;
and that the concluding lines were added by Mallet.
Thomson was not long afterwards, by the influence of Dr. Rundle, sent to
travel with Mr. Charles Talbot, the eldest son of the chancellor. He was
yet young enough to receive new impressions, to have his opinions
rectified, and his views enlarged; nor can he be supposed to have wanted
that curiosity which is inseparable from an active and comprehensive
mind. He may, therefore, now be supposed to have revelled in all the
joys of intellectual luxury; he was every day feasted with instructive
novelties; he lived splendidly without expense; and might expect, when
he returned home, a certain establishment.
At this time a long course of opposition to sir Robert Walpole had
filled the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man felt the
want, and with care for liberty, which was not in danger. Thomson in his
travels on the continent, found or fancied so many evils arising from
the tyranny of other governments, that he resolved to write a very long
poem, in five parts, upon liberty.
While he was busy on the first book, Mr. Talbot died; and Thomson, who
had been rewarded for his attendance by the place of secretary of the
briefs, pays in the initial lines a decent tribute to his memory.
Upon this great poem two years were spent, and the author congratulated
himself upon it as his noblest work; but an author and his reader are
not always of a mind. Liberty called in vain upon her votaries to read
her praises and reward her encomiast: her praises were condemned to
harbour spiders, and to gather dust; none of Thomson's performances were
so little regarded.
The judgment of the publick was not erroneous; the recurrence of the
same images must tire in time; an enumeration of examples to prove a
position which nobody denied, as it was from the beginning superfluous,
must quickly grow disgusting.
The poem of Liberty does not now appear in its original state; but, when
the author's works were collected after his death, was shortened by sir
George Lyttelton, with a liberty, which, as it has a manifest tendency
to lessen the confidence of society, and to confound the characters of
authors, by making one man write by the judgment of another, cannot be
justified by any supposed propriety of the alteration, or kindness of
the friend. I wish to see it exhibited as its author left it.
Thomson now lived in ease and plenty, and seems, for awhile, to have
suspended his poetry; but he was soon called back to labour by the death
of the chancellor, for his place then became vacant[164]; and though the
lord Hardwicke delayed, for some time, to give it away, Thomson's
bashfulness, or pride, or some other motive, perhaps not more laudable,
withheld him from soliciting; and the new chancellor would not give him
what he would not ask.
He now relapsed to his former indigence; but the prince of Wales was at
that time struggling for popularity, and, by the influence of Mr.
Lyttelton, professed himself the patron of wit: to him Thomson was
introduced, and being gaily interrogated about the state of his affairs,
said, "that they were in a more poetical posture than formerly;" and had
a pension allowed him of one hundred pounds a year.
Being now obliged to write, he produced, 1738[165], the tragedy of
Agamemnon, which was much shortened in the representation. It had the
fate which most commonly attends mythological stories, and was only
endured, but not favoured. It struggled with such difficulty through the
first night, that Thomson, coming late to his friends with whom he was
to sup, excused his delay by telling them how the sweat of his distress
had so disordered his wig, that he could not come till he had been
refitted by a barber.
He so interested himself in his own drama, that, if I remember right, as
he sat in the upper gallery, he accompanied the players by audible
recitation, till a friendly hint frighted him to silence. Pope
countenanced Agamemnon, by coming to it the first night, and was
welcomed to the theatre by a general clap; he had much regard for
Thomson, and once expressed it in a poetical epistle sent to Italy, of
which, however, he abated the value, by transplanting some of the lines
into his epistle to Arbuthnot.
About this time the act was passed for licensing plays, of which the
first operation was the prohibition of Gustavus Vasa[166], a tragedy of
Mr. Brooke, whom the publick recompensed by a very liberal subscription;
the next was the refusal of Edward and Eleonora, offered by Thomson. It
is hard to discover why either play should have been obstructed.
Thomson, likewise, endeavoured to repair his loss by a subscription, of
which I cannot now tell the success.
When the publick murmured at the unkind treatment of Thomson, one of the
ministerial writers remarked, that "he had taken a _liberty_ which was
not agreeable to _Britannia_ in any _season_."
He was soon after employed, in conjunction with Mr. Mallet, to write the
mask of Alfred, which was acted before the prince at Cliefden-house.
His next work, 1745, was Tancred and Sigismunda, the most successful of
all his tragedies; for it still keeps its turn upon the stage. It may be
doubted whether he was, either by the bent of nature or habits of study,
much qualified for tragedy. It does not appear that he had much sense of
the pathetick; and his diffusive and descriptive style produced
declamation rather than dialogue.
His friend Mr. Lyttelton was now in power, and conferred upon him the
office of surveyor-general of the Leeward Islands; from which, when his
deputy was paid, he received about three hundred pounds a year.
The last piece that he lived to publish was the Castle of Indolence,
which was many years under his hand, but was, at last, finished with
great accuracy. The first canto opens a scene of lazy luxury that fills
the imagination.
He was now at ease, but was not long to enjoy it; for, by taking cold on
the water between London and Kew, he caught a disorder, which, with
some careless exasperation, ended in a fever that put an end to his
life, August 27, 1748. He was buried in the church of Richmond, without
an inscription; but a monument has been erected to his memory in
Westminster Abbey.
Thomson was of stature above the middle size, and "more fat than bard
beseems," of a dull countenance, and a gross, unanimated, uninviting
appearance; silent in mingled company, but cheerful among select
friends, and by his friends very tenderly and warmly beloved[167].
He left behind him the tragedy of Coriolanus, which was, by the zeal of
his patron, sir George Lyttelton, brought upon the stage for the benefit
of his family, and recommended by a prologue, which Quin, who had long
lived with Thomson in fond intimacy, spoke in such a manner as showed
him "to be," on that occasion, "no actor." The commencement of this
benevolence is very honourable to Quin; who is reported to have
delivered Thomson, then known to him only for his genius, from an arrest
by a very considerable present; and its continuance is honourable to
both; for friendship is not always the sequel of obligation. By this
tragedy a considerable sum was raised, of which part discharged his
debts, and the rest was remitted to his sisters, whom, however removed
from them by place or condition, he regarded with great tenderness, as
will appear by the following letter, which I communicate with much
pleasure, as it gives me, at once, an opportunity of recording the
fraternal kindness of Thomson, and reflecting on the friendly assistance
of Mr. Boswell, from whom I received it.
"Hagley in Worcestershire, Oct. 4th, 1747.
"MY DEAR SISTER,--I thought you had known me better than to
interpret my silence into a decay of affection, especially as
your behaviour has always been such as rather to increase than
diminish it. Don't imagine, because I am a bad correspondent,
that I can ever prove an unkind friend and brother. I must do
myself the justice to tell you, that my affections are naturally
very fixed and constant; and if I had ever reason of complaint
against you, (of which, by the by, I have not the least shadow,)
I am conscious of so many defects in myself, as dispose me to be
not a little charitable and forgiving.
"It gives me the truest heartfelt satisfaction to hear you have
a good, kind husband, and are in easy, contented circumstances;
but were they otherwise, that would only awaken and heighten my
tenderness towards you. As our good and tender-hearted parents
did not live to receive any material testimonies of that highest
human gratitude I owed them, (than which nothing could have
given me equal pleasure,) the only return I can make them now is
by kindness to those they left behind them. Would to God poor
Lizy had lived longer, to have been a further witness of the
truth of what I say, and that I might have had the pleasure of
seeing once more a sister who so truly deserved my esteem and
love! But she is happy, while we must toil a little longer here
below: let us, however, do it cheerfully and gratefully,
supported by the pleasing hope of meeting yet again on a safer
shore, where to recollect the storms and difficulties of life
will not, perhaps, be inconsistent with that blissful state. You
did right to call your daughter by her name; for you must needs
have had a particular tender friendship for one another,
endeared as you were by nature, by having passed the
affectionate years of your youth together; and by that great
softener and engager of hearts, mutual hardship. That it was in
my power to ease it a little, I account one of the most
exquisite pleasures of my life. But enough of this melancholy,
though not unpleasing strain.
"I esteem you for your sensible and disinterested advice to Mr.
Bell, as you will see by my letter to him: as I approve entirely
of his marrying again, you may readily ask me why I don't marry
at all. My circumstances have, hitherto, been so variable and
uncertain in this fluctuating world, as induce to keep me from
engaging in such a state: and now, though they are more settled,
and of late (which you will be glad to hear) considerably
improved, I begin to think myself too far advanced in life for
such youthful undertakings, not to mention some other petty
reasons that are apt to startle the delicacy of difficult old
bachelors. I am, however, not a little suspicious that, was I to
pay a visit to Scotland, (which I have some thoughts of doing
soon,) I might, possibly, be tempted to think of a thing not
easily repaired if done amiss. I have always been of opinion
that none make better wives than the ladies of Scotland; and
yet, who more forsaken than they, while the gentlemen are
continually running abroad all the world over? Some of them, it
is true, are wise enough to return for a wife. You see I am
beginning to make interest already with the Scots ladies. But no
more of this infectious subject. Pray let me hear from you now
and then; and though I am not a regular correspondent, yet,
perhaps, I may mend in that respect. Remember me kindly to your
husband, and believe me to be
"Your most affectionate brother,
"JAMES THOMSON."
(Addressed) "To Mrs. Thomson, in Lanark."
The benevolence of Thomson was fervid, but not active: he would give, on
all occasions, what assistance his purse would supply; but the offices
of intervention or solicitation he could not conquer his sluggishness
sufficiently to perform. The affairs of others, however, were not more
neglected than his own. He had often felt the inconveniencies of
idleness, but he never cured it; and was so conscious of his own
character, that he talked of writing an eastern tale of the Man who
loved to be in Distress.
Among his peculiarities was a very unskilful and inarticulate manner of
propounding any lofty or solemn composition. He was once reading to
Dodington, who, being himself a reader eminently elegant, was so much
provoked by his odd utterance, that he snatched the paper from his
hand, and told him that he did not understand his own verses.
The biographer of Thomson has remarked, that an author's life is best
read in his works: his observation was not well-timed. Savage, who lived
much with Thomson, once told me, he heard a lady remarking that she
could gather from his works three parts of his character, that he was "a
great lover, a great swimmer, and rigorously abstinent;" but, said
Savage, he knows not any love but that of the sex; he was, perhaps,
never in cold water in his life; and he indulges himself in all the
luxury that comes within his reach. Yet Savage always spoke with the
most eager praise of his social qualities, his warmth and constancy of
friendship, and his adherence to his first acquaintance when the
advancement of his reputation had left them behind him.
As a writer he is entitled to one praise of the highest kind: his mode
of thinking, and of expressing his thoughts, is original. His blank
verse is no more the blank verse of Milton, or of any other poet, than
the rhymes of Prior are the rhymes of Cowley. His numbers, his pauses,
his diction, are of his own growth, without transcription, without
imitation. He thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man
of genius; he looks round on nature and on life with the eye which
nature bestows only on a poet; the eye that distinguishes, in every
thing presented to its view, whatever there is on which imagination can
delight to be detained, and with a mind that at once comprehends the
vast, and attends to the minute. The reader of the Seasons wonders that
he never saw before what Thomson shows him, and that he never yet has
felt what Thomson impresses.
His is one of the works in which blank verse seems properly used.
Thomson's wide expansion of general views, and his enumeration of
circumstantial varieties, would have been obstructed and embarrassed by
the frequent intersection of the sense, which are the necessary effects
of rhyme.
His descriptions of extended scenes and general effects bring before us
the whole magnificence of nature, whether pleasing or dreadful. The
gaiety of spring, the splendour of summer, the tranquillity of autumn,
and the horrour of winter, take, in their turns, possession of the mind.
The poet leads us through the appearances of things as they are
successively varied by the vicissitudes of the year, and imparts to us
so much of his own enthusiasm, that our thoughts expand with his
imagery, and kindle with his sentiments. Nor is the naturalist without
his part in the entertainment; for he is assisted to recollect and to
combine, to arrange his discoveries, and to amplify the sphere of his
contemplation.
The great defect of the Seasons is want of method; but for this I know
not that there was any remedy. Of many appearances subsisting all at
once, no rule can be given why one should be mentioned before another;
yet the memory wants the help of order, and the curiosity is not excited
by suspense or expectation.
His diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant, such as may
be said to be to his images and thoughts, "both their lustre and their
shade:" such as invest them with splendour, through which, perhaps, they
are not always easily discerned. It is too exuberant, and sometimes may
be charged with filling the ear more than the mind.
These poems, with which I was acquainted at their first appearance, I
have since found altered and enlarged by subsequent revisals[168], as
the author supposed his judgment to grow more exact, and as books or
conversation extended his knowledge and opened his prospects. They are,
I think, improved in general; yet I know not whether they have not lost
part of what Temple calls their "race;" a word which, applied to wines,
in its primitive sense, means the flavour of the soil.
Liberty, when it first appeared, I tried to read, and soon desisted. I
have never tried again, and, therefore, will not hazard either praise or
censure.
The highest praise which he has received ought not to be suppressed; it
is said by lord Lyttelton, in the prologue to his posthumous play, that
his works contained
No line which, dying, he could wish to blot.
-----
[Footnote 160: According to the Biographical Dictionary the name of
Thomson's mother was Beatrix Trotter. Hume was the name of his
grandmother. ED.]
[Footnote 161: See the Life of Beattie, by sir William Forbes, for some
additional anecdotes. ED.]
[Footnote 162: Warton was told by Millan that the book lay a long time
unsold on his stall. ED.]
[Footnote 163: "It was at this time that the school of Pope was giving
way: addresses to the head rather than to the heart, or the fancy; moral
axioms and witty observations, expressed in harmonious numbers, and with
epigrammatick terseness; the _limae labor_, all the artifices of a
highly polished style, and the graces of finished composition, which had
long usurped the place of the more sterling beauties of the imagination
and sentiment, began first to be lessened in the public estimation by
the appearance of Thomson's Seasons, a work which constituted a new era
in our poetry." Censura Literaria, iv. 280.]
[Footnote 164: An interesting anecdote respecting Thomson's deportment
before a commission, instituted in 1732, for an inquiry into the state
of the public offices under the lord chancellor, is omitted by Johnson
and all the poet's biographers. We extract it from the nineteenth volume
of the Critical Review, p. 141. "Mr. Thomson's place of secretary of the
briefs fell under the cognizance of this commission; and he was summoned
to attend it, which he accordingly did, and made a speech, explaining
the nature, duty, and income of his place, in terms that, though very
concise, were so perspicuous and elegant, that lord chancellor Talbot,
who was present, publicly said he preferred that single speech to the
best of his poetical compositions." The above praise is precisely such
as we might anticipate that an old lawyer would give, but it, at all
events, exempts the poet's character from the imputation of listless
indolence, advanced by Murdoch, and leaves lord Hardwicke little excuse
for _his_ conduct. ED.]
[Footnote 165: It is not generally known that in this year an edition of
Milton's Areopagitiea was published by Millar, to which Thomson wrote a
preface.]
[Footnote 166: See vol. v. p. 329 of this edition, and Mr. Roscoe's Life
of Pope, for some anecdotes respecting Gay's Beggars' Opera and Polly,
illustrative of the efficacy of a lord-chamberlain's interference with
the stage. ED.]
[Footnote 167: Several anecdotes of Thomson's personal appearance and
habits are scattered over the volumes of Boswell. ED.]
[Footnote 168: For an interesting collection of the various readings of
the successive editions of the Seasons, see vols. ii. in. and iv. of the
Censura Literaria. Thomson's own preface to the second edition of Winter
may be found in vol. ii. p. 67, of the above-quoted work. ED.]
WATTS.
The poems of Dr. Watts were, by my recommendation, inserted in the late
collection; the readers of which are to impute to me whatever pleasure
or weariness they may find in the perusal of Blackmore, Watts, Pomfret,
and Yalden.
Isaac Watts was born July 17, 1674, at Southampton, where his father, of
the same name, kept a boarding-school for young gentlemen, though common
report makes him a shoemaker. He appears, from the narrative of Dr.
Gibbons, to have been neither indigent nor illiterate.
Isaac, the eldest of nine children, was given to books from his infancy;
and began, we are told, to learn Latin when he was four years old, I
suppose, at home. He was afterwards taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, by
Mr. Pinhorn, a clergyman, master of the free-school at Southampton, to
whom the gratitude of his scholar afterwards inscribed a Latin ode.
His proficiency at school was so conspicuous, that a subscription was
proposed for his support at the university; but he declared his
resolution of taking his lot with the dissenters. Such he was as every
Christian church would rejoice to have adopted.
He, therefore, repaired, in 1690, to an academy taught by Mr. Rowe,
where he had for his companions and fellow-students Mr. Hughes the poet,
and Dr. Horte, afterwards archbishop of Tuam. Some Latin essays,
supposed to have been written as exercises at this academy, show a
degree of knowledge, both philosophical and theological, such as very
few attain by a much longer course of study.
He was, as he hints in his Miscellanies, a maker of verses from fifteen
to fifty, and, in his youth, appears to have paid attention to Latin
poetry. His verses to his brother, in the _glyconick_ measure, written
when he was seventeen, are remarkably easy and elegant. Some of his
other odes are deformed by the Pindarick folly then prevailing, and are
written with such neglect of all metrical rules, as is without example
among the ancients; but his diction, though, perhaps, not always exactly
pure, has such copiousness and splendour, as shows that he was but a
very little distance from excellence.
His method of study was to impress the contents of his books upon his
memory by abridging them, and by interleaving them to amplify one system
with supplements from another.
With the congregation of his tutor Mr. Rowe, who were, I believe,
independents, he communicated in his nineteenth year.
At the age of twenty he left the academy, and spent two years in study
and devotion at the house of his father, who treated him with great
tenderness; and had the happiness, indulged to few parents, of living to
see his son eminent for literature, and venerable for piety.
He was then entertained by sir John Hartopp five years, as domestick
tutor to his son: and in that time particularly devoted himself to the
study of the holy scriptures; and, being chosen assistant to Dr.
Chauncey, preached the first time on the birthday that completed his
twenty-fourth year; probably considering that as the day of a second
nativity, by which he entered on a new period of existence.
In about three years he succeeded Dr. Chauncey; but, soon after his
entrance on his charge, he was seized by a dangerous illness, which sunk
him to such weakness, that the congregation thought an assistant
necessary, and appointed Mr. Price. His health then returned gradually;
and he performed his duty till, 1712, he was seized by a fever of such
violence and continuance, that from the feebleness which it brought upon
him he never perfectly recovered.
This calamitous state made the compassion of his friends necessary, and
drew upon him the attention of sir Thomas Abney, who received him into
his house; where, with a constancy of friendship and uniformity of
conduct not often to be found, he was treated for thirty-six years with
all the kindness that friendship could prompt, and all the attention
that respect could dictate. Sir Thomas died about eight years
afterwards; but he continued with the lady and her daughters to the end
of his life. The lady died about a year after him.
A coalition like this, a state in which the notions of patronage and
dependence were overpowered by the perception of reciprocal benefits,
deserves a particular memorial; and I will not withhold from the reader
Dr. Gibbon's representation; to which regard is to be paid, as to the
narrative of one who writes what he knows, and what is known likewise to
multitudes besides.
"Our next observation shall be made upon that remarkably kind providence
which brought the doctor into sir Thomas Abney's family, and continued
him there till his death, a period of no less than thirty-six years. In
the midst of his sacred labours for the glory of God, and good of his
generation, he is seized with a most violent and threatening fever,
which leaves him oppressed with great weakness, and puts a stop, at
least, to his publick services for four years. In this distressing
season, doubly so to his active and pious spirit, he is invited to sir
Thomas Abney's family, nor ever removes from it till he had finished his
days. Here he enjoyed the uninterrupted demonstrations of the truest
friendship. Here, without any care of his own, he had every thing which
could contribute to the enjoyment of life, and favour the unwearied
pursuits of his studies. Here he dwelt in a family, which for piety,
order, harmony, and every virtue, was an house of God. Here he had the
privilege of a country recess, the fragrant bower, the spreading lawn,
the flowery garden, and other advantages, to sooth his mind, and aid his
restoration to health; to yield him, whenever he chose them, most
grateful intervals from his laborious studies, and enable him to return
to them with redoubled vigour and delight. Had it not been for this most
happy event, he might, as to outward view, have feebly, it may be
painfully, dragged on through many more years of languor, and inability
for publick service, and even for profitable study, or, perhaps, might
have sunk into his grave under the overwhelming load of infirmities in
the midst of his days; and thus the church and world would have been
deprived of those many excellent sermons and works, which he drew up and
published during his long residence in this family. In a few years after
his coming hither, sir Thomas Abney dies; but his amiable consort
survives, who shows the doctor the same respect and friendship as
before, and most happily for him and great numbers besides; for, as her
riches were great, her generosity and munificence were in full
proportion; her thread of life was drawn out to a great age, even beyond
that of the doctor's; and thus this excellent man, through her kindness,
and that of her daughter, the present Mrs. Elizabeth Abney, who in a
like degree esteemed and honoured him, enjoyed all the benefits and
felicities he experienced at his first entrance into this family, till
his days were numbered and finished; and, like a shock of corn in its
season, he ascended into the regions of perfect and immortal life and
joy."
If this quotation has appeared long, let it be considered that it
comprises an account of six-and-thirty years, and those the years of Dr.
Watts.
From the time of his reception into this family, his life was no
otherwise diversified than by successive publications. The series of his
works I am not able to deduce; their number and their variety show the
intenseness of his industry, and the extent of his capacity.
He was one of the first authors that taught the dissenters to court
attention by the graces of language. Whatever they had among them
before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and
blunted by coarseness, and inelegance of style. He showed them, that
zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished diction.
He continued to the end of his life the teacher of a congregation; and
no reader of his works can doubt his fidelity or diligence. In the
pulpit, though his low stature, which very little exceeded five feet,
graced him with no advantages of appearance, yet the gravity and
propriety of his utterance made his discourses very efficacious. I once
mentioned the reputation which Mr. Foster had gained by his proper
delivery, to my friend Dr. Hawkesworth, who told me, that in the art of
pronunciation he was far inferiour to Dr. Watts.
Such was his flow of thoughts, and such his promptitude of language,
that in the latter part of his life he did not precompose his cursory
sermons, but having adjusted the heads, and sketched out some
particulars, trusted for success to his extemporary powers.
He did not endeavour to assist his eloquence by any gesticulations; for,
as no corporeal actions have any correspondence with theological truth,
he did not see how they could enforce it.
At the conclusion of weighty sentences he gave time, by a short pause,
for the proper impression.
To stated and publick instruction he added familiar visits, and personal
application, and was careful to improve the opportunities which
conversation offered of diffusing and increasing the influence of
religion.
By his natural temper he was quick of resentment; but, by his
established and habitual practice, he was gentle, modest, and
inoffensive. His tenderness appeared in his attention to children and to
the poor. To the poor, while he lived in the family of his friend, he
allowed the third part of his annual revenue, though the whole was not a
hundred a year; and for children he condescended to lay aside the
scholar, the philosopher, and the wit, to write little poems of
devotion, and systems of instruction, adapted to their wants and
capacities, from the dawn of reason, through its gradations of advance
in the morning of life. Every man acquainted with the common principles
of human action, will look with veneration on the writer, who is at one
time combating Locke, and at another making a catechism for children in
their fourth year. A voluntary descent from the dignity of science is,
perhaps, the hardest lesson that humility can teach.
As his mind was capacious, his curiosity excursive, and his industry
continual, his writings are very numerous, and his subjects various.
With his theological works I am only enough acquainted to admire his
meekness of opposition, and his mildness of censure. It was not only in
his book, but in his mind, that orthodoxy was united with charity.
Of his philosophical pieces, his Logick has been received into the
universities, and, therefore, wants no private recommendation; if he
owes part of it to Le Clerc, it must be considered that no man, who
undertakes merely to methodise or illustrate a system, pretends to be
its author.
In his metaphysical disquisitions, it was observed by the late learned
Mr. Dyer, that he confounded the idea of _space_ with that of _empty
space_, and did not consider, that though space might be without matter,
yet matter, being extended, could not be without space.
Few books have been perused by me with greater pleasure than his
Improvement of the Mind, of which the radical principles may, indeed, be
found in Locke's Conduct of the Understanding; but they are so expanded
and ramified by Watts, as to confer upon him the merit of a work, in the
highest degree, useful and pleasing. Whoever has the care of instructing
others, may be charged with deficience in his duty if this book is not
recommended.
I have mentioned his treatises of theology as distinct from his other
productions; but the truth is, that whatever he took in hand was, by his
incessant solicitude for souls, converted to theology. As piety
predominated in his mind, it is diffused over his works: under his
direction it may be truly said, "theologiae philosophia ancillatur,"
philosophy is subservient to evangelical instruction: it is difficult to
read a page without learning, or at least wishing, to be better. The
attention is caught by indirect instruction, and he that sat down only
to reason is, on a sudden, compelled to pray.
It was, therefore, with great propriety that, in 1728, he received from
Edinburgh and Aberdeen an unsolicited diploma, by which he became a
doctor of divinity. Academical honours would have more value, if they
were always bestowed with equal judgment.
He continued many years to study and to preach, and to do good by his
instruction and example: till at last the infirmities of age disabled
him from the more laborious part of his ministerial functions, and,
being no longer capable of publick duty, he offered to remit the salary
appendant to it; but his congregation would not accept the resignation.
By degrees his weakness increased, and at last confined him to his
chamber and his bed; where he was worn gradually away without pain, till
he expired, Nov. 25, 1748, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.
Few men have left behind such purity of character, or such monuments of
laborious piety. He has provided instruction for all ages, from those
who are lisping their first lessons, to the enlightened readers of
Malbranche and Locke; he has left neither corporeal nor spiritual nature
unexamined; he has taught the art of reasoning, and the science of the
stars.
His character, therefore, must be formed from the multiplicity and
diversity of his attainments, rather than from any single performance;
for it would not be safe to claim for him the highest rank in any single
denomination of literary dignity; yet, perhaps, there was nothing in
which he would not have excelled, if he had not divided his powers to
different pursuits.
As a poet, had he been only a poet, he would probably have stood high
among the authors with whom he is now associated. For his judgment was
exact, and he noted beauties and faults with very nice discernment; his
imagination, as the Dacian Battle proves, was vigorous and active, and
the stores of knowledge were large by which his fancy was to be
supplied. His ear was well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and
copious. But his devotional poetry is, like that of others,
unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual
repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of
figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than
others what no man has done well.
His poems on other subjects seldom rise higher than might be expected
from the amusements of a man of letters, and have different degrees of
value as they are more or less laboured, or as the occasion was more or
less favourable to invention.
He writes too often without regular measures, and too often in blank
verse; the rhymes are not always sufficiently correspondent. He is
particularly unhappy in coining names expressive of characters. His
lines are commonly smooth and easy, and his thoughts always religiously
pure; but who is there that, to so much piety and innocence, does not
wish for a greater measure of sprightliness and vigour? He is, at least,
one of the few poets with whom youth and ignorance may be safely
pleased; and happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his
verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his nonconformity, to
copy his benevolence to man, and his reverence to God.
A. PHILIPS.
Of the birth, or early part of the life, of Ambrose Philips, I have not
been able to find any account. His academical education he received at
St. John's college, in Cambridge[169], where he first solicited the
notice of the world by some English verses, in the collection, published
by the university, on the death of queen Mary.
From this time, how he was employed, or in what station he passed his
life, is not yet discovered. He must have published his Pastorals before
the year 1708, because they are, evidently, prior to those of Pope.
He afterwards, 1709, addressed to the universal patron, the duke of
Dorset, a poetical Letter from Copenhagen, which was published in the
Tatler, and is, by Pope, in one of his first letters, mentioned with
high praise, as the production of a man "who could write very nobly."
Philips was a zealous whig, and, therefore, easily found access to
Addison and Steele; but his ardour seems not to have procured him any
thing more than kind words; since he was reduced to translate the
Persian Tales for Tonson, for which he was afterwards reproached, with
this addition of contempt, that he worked for half-a-crown. The book is
divided into many sections, for each of which, if he received
half-a-crown, his reward, as writers then were paid, was very liberal;
but half-a-crown had a mean sound.
He was employed in promoting the principles of his party, by epitomising
Hacket's Life of Archbishop Williams. The original book is written with
such depravity of genius, such mixture of the fop and pedant, as has not
often appeared. The epitome is free enough from affectation, but has
little spirit or vigour[170].
In 1712, he brought upon the stage the Distrest Mother, almost a
translation of Racine's Andromaque. Such a work requires no uncommon
powers; but the friends of Philips exerted every art to promote his
interest. Before the appearance of the play, a whole Spectator, none,
indeed, of the best, was devoted to its praise; while it yet continued
to be acted, another Spectator was written, to tell what impression it
made upon sir Roger; and, on the first night, a select audience, says
Pope[171], was called together to applaud it.
It was concluded with the most successful epilogue that was ever yet
spoken on the English theatre. The three first nights it was recited
twice; and not only continued to be demanded through the run, as it is
termed, of the play, but, whenever it is recalled to the stage, where,
by peculiar fortune, though a copy from the French, it yet keeps its
place, the epilogue is still expected, and is still spoken.
The propriety of epilogues in general, and, consequently, of this, was
questioned by a correspondent of the Spectator, whose letter was
undoubtedly admitted for the sake of the answer, which soon followed,
written with much zeal and acrimony. The attack and the defence equally
contributed to stimulate curiosity and continue attention. It may be
discovered, in the defence, that Prior's epilogue to Phædra had a little
excited jealousy; and something of Prior's plan may be discovered in the
performance of his rival. Of this distinguished epilogue the reputed
author was the wretched Budgel, whom Addison used to denominate[172]
"the man who calls me cousin;" and when he was asked, how such a silly
fellow could write so well, replied, "the epilogue was quite another
thing when I saw it first." It was known in Tonson's family, and told to
Garrick, that Addison was himself the author of it, and that, when it
had been at first printed with his name, he came early in the morning,
before the copies were distributed, and ordered it to be given to
Budgel, that it might add weight to the solicitation which he was then
making for a place.
Philips was now high in the ranks of literature. His play was applauded;
his translations from Sappho had been published in the Spectator; he was
an important and distinguished associate of clubs, witty and political;
and nothing was wanting to his happiness, but that he should be sure of
its continuance.
The work which had procured him the first notice from the publick, was
his Six Pastorals, which, flattering the imagination with Arcadian
scenes, probably found many readers, and might have long passed as a
pleasing amusement, had they not been, unhappily, too much commended.
The rustick poems of Theocritus were so highly valued by the Greeks and
Romans, that they attracted the imitation of Virgil, whose eclogues seem
to have been considered as precluding all attempts of the same kind;
for, no shepherds were taught to sing by any succeeding poet, till
Nemesian and Calphurnius ventured their feeble efforts in the lower age
of Latin literature.
At the revival of learning in Italy, it was soon discovered, that a
dialogue of imaginary swains might be composed with little difficulty;
because the conversation of shepherds excludes profound or refined
sentiment; and, for images and descriptions, satyrs and fawns, and
naiads and dryads, were always within call; and woods and meadows, and
hills and rivers, supplied variety of matter, which; having a natural
power to sooth the mind, did not quickly cloy it.
Petrarch entertained the learned men of his age with the novelty of
modern pastorals in Latin. Being not ignorant of Greek, and finding
nothing in the word _eclogue_, of rural meaning, he supposed it to be
corrupted by the copiers, and, therefore, called his own productions
_oeglogues_, by which he meant to express the talk of goatherds, though
it will mean only the talk of goats. This new name was adopted by
subsequent writers, and, amongst others, by our Spenser.
More than a century afterwards, 1498, Mantuan published his Bucolicks
with such success, that they were soon dignified by Badius with a
comment, and, as Scaliger complained, received into schools, and taught
as classical; his complaint was vain, and the practice, however
injudicious, spread far, and continued long. Mantuan was read, at least
in some of the inferiour schools of this kingdom, to the beginning of
the present century. The speakers of Mantuan carried their disquisitions
beyond the country, to censure the corruptions of the church; and from
him Spenser learned to employ his swains on topicks of controversy.
The Italians soon transferred pastoral poetry into their own language:
Sannazaro wrote Arcadia in prose and verse: Tasso and Guarini wrote
Favole Boschareccie, or sylvan dramas; and all nations of Europe filled
volumes with Thyrsis and Damon, and Thestylis and Phyllis.
Philips thinks it somewhat strange to conceive "how, in an age so
addicted to the muses, pastoral poetry never comes to be so much as
thought upon." His wonder seems very unseasonable; there had never, from
the time of Spenser, wanted writers to talk occasionally of Arcadia and
Strephon; and half the book, in which he first tried his powers,
consists of dialogues on queen Mary's death, between Tityrus and
Corydon, or Mopsus and Menalcas. A series or book of pastorals, however,
I know not that any one had then lately published.
Not long afterwards, Pope made the first display of his powers in four
pastorals, written in a very different form. Philips had taken Spenser,
and Pope took Virgil for his pattern. Philips endeavoured to be natural,
Pope laboured to be elegant.
Philips was now favoured by Addison, and by Addison's companions, who
were very willing to push him into reputation. The Guardian gave an
account of pastoral, partly critical, and partly historical; in which,
when the merit of the moderns is compared, Tasso and Guarini are
censured for remote thoughts and unnatural refinements; and, upon the
whole, the Italians and French are all excluded from rural poetry; and
the pipe of the pastoral muse is transmitted, by lawful inheritance,
from Theocritus to Virgil, from Virgil to Spenser, and from Spenser to
Philips.
With this inauguration of Philips, his rival Pope was not much
delighted; he, therefore, drew a comparison of Philips's performance
with his own, in which, with an unexampled and unequalled artifice of
irony, though he has himself always the advantage, he gives the
preference to Philips. The design of aggrandizing himself he disguised
with such dexterity, that, though Addison discovered it, Steele was
deceived, and was afraid of displeasing Pope by publishing his paper.
Published, however, it was, (Guardian, 40,) and from that time Pope and
Philips lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence.
In poetical powers, of either praise or satire, there was no proportion
between the combatants; but Philips, though he could not prevail by wit,
hoped to hurt Pope with another weapon, and charged him, as Pope
thought, with Addison's approbation, as disaffected to the government.
Even with this he was not satisfied; for, indeed, there is no appearance
that any regard was paid to his clamours. He proceeded to grosser
insults, and hung up a rod at Button's, with which he threatened to
chastise Pope, who appears to have been extremely exasperated; for, in
the first edition of his letters, he calls Philips "rascal," and in the
last still charges him with detaining, in his hands, the subscriptions
for Homer, delivered to him by the Hanover club.
I suppose it was never suspected that he meant to appropriate the money;
he only delayed, and with sufficient meanness, the gratification of him
by whose prosperity he was pained.
Men sometimes suffer by injudicious kindness; Philips became ridiculous,
without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his friends, who
decorated him with honorary garlands, which the first breath of
contradiction blasted.
When upon the succession of the house of Hanover every whig expected to
be happy, Philips seems to have obtained too little notice; he caught
few drops of the golden shower, though he did not omit what flattery
could perform. He was only made a commissioner of the lottery, 1717,
and, what did not much elevate his character, a justice of the peace.
The success of his first play must naturally dispose him to turn his
hopes towards the stage: he did not, however, soon commit himself to the
mercy of an audience, but contented himself with the fame already
acquired, till after nine years he produced, 1722, the Briton, a tragedy
which, whatever was its reception, is now neglected; though one of the
scenes, between Vanoc, the British prince, and Valens, the Roman
general, is confessed to be written with great dramatick skill, animated
by spirit truly poetical.
He had not been idle, though he had been silent: for he exhibited
another tragedy the same year, on the story of Humphry, duke of
Gloucester. This tragedy is only remembered by its title.
His happiest undertaking was of a paper, called the Freethinker, in
conjunction with associates, of whom one was Dr. Boulter, who, then only
minister of a parish in Southwark, was of so much consequence to the
government, that he was made, first, bishop of Bristol, and, afterwards,
primate of Ireland, where his piety and his charity will be long
honoured.
It may easily be imagined that what was printed under the direction of
Boulter would have nothing in it indecent or licentious; its title is to
be understood as implying only freedom from unreasonable prejudice. It
has been reprinted in volumes, but is little read; nor can impartial
criticism recommend it as worthy of revival.
Boulter was not well qualified to write diurnal essays; but he knew how
to practise the liberality of greatness and the fidelity of friendship.
When he was advanced to the height of ecclesiastical dignity, he did not
forget the companion of his labours. Knowing Philips to be slenderly
supported, he took him to Ireland, as partaker of his fortune; and,
making him his secretary[173], added such preferments, as enabled him to
represent the county of Armagh in the Irish parliament.
In December, 1726, he was made secretary to the lord chancellor; and in
August, 1733, became judge of the prerogative court.
After the death of his patron he continued some years in Ireland; but at
last longing, as it seems, for his native country, he returned, 1748, to
London, having, doubtless, survived most of his friends and enemies, and
among them his dreaded antagonist, Pope. He found, however, the duke of
Newcastle still living, and to him he dedicated his poems, collected
into a volume.
Having purchased an annuity of four hundred pounds, he now certainly
hoped to pass some years of life in plenty and tranquillity; but his
hope deceived him; he was struck with a palsy, and died June 18, 1749,
in his seventy-eighth year[174].
Of his personal character, all that I have heard is, that he was eminent
for bravery and skill in the sword, and that in conversation he was
solemn and pompous. He had great sensibility of censure, if judgment may
be made by a single story which I heard long ago from Mr. Ing, a
gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire. "Philips," said he, "was
once at table, when I asked him, how came thy king of Epirus to drive
oxen, and to say 'I'm goaded on by love?' After which question he never
spoke again[175]."
Of the Distrest Mother, not much is pretended to be his own, and,
therefore, it is no subject of criticism: his other two tragedies, I
believe, are not below mediocrity nor above it. Among the poems
comprised in the late collection, the Letter from Denmark may be justly
praised; the Pastorals, which, by the writer of the Guardian, were
ranked as one of the four genuine productions of the rustick muse,
cannot surely be despicable. That they exhibit a mode of life which does
not exist, nor ever existed, is not to be objected: the supposition of
such a state is allowed to pastoral. In his other poems he cannot be
denied the praise of lines sometimes elegant; but he has seldom much
force, or much comprehension. The pieces that please best are those
which from Pope and Pope's adherents procured him the name of _Namby
Pamby_, the poems of short lines, by which he paid his court to all ages
and characters, from Walpole, "the steerer of the realm," to Miss
Pulteney in the nursery. The numbers are smooth and sprightly, and the
diction is seldom faulty. They are not loaded with much thought, yet, if
they had been written by Addison, they would have had admirers: little
things are not valued but when they are done by those who can do
greater.
In his translations from Pindar, he found the art of reaching all the
obscurity of the Theban bard, however he may fall below his sublimity;
he will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have more smoke.
He has added nothing to English poetry, yet, at least, half his book
deserves to be read: perhaps he valued most himself that part which the
critick would reject.
-----
[Footnote 169: He took his degrees, A. B. 1696, A. M. 1700.]
[Footnote 170: This ought to have been noticed before. It was published
in 1700, when he appears to have obtained a fellowship of St. John's.]
[Footnote 171: Spence.]
[Footnote 172: Ibid.]
[Footnote 173: The archbishop's letters, published in 1760, (the
originals of which are now in Christ-church library, Oxford,) were
collected by Mr. Philips.]
[Footnote 174: At his house in Hanover-street, and was buried in Audley
chapel.]
[Footnote 175: Mr. Ing's eminence does not seem to have been derived
from his wit. That the _men_ who drive _oxen_ are goaded, seems to be a
custom peculiar to Staffordshire. J.B.]
WEST.
Gilbert West is one of the writers of whom I regret my inability to give
a sufficient account; the intelligence which my inquiries have obtained
is general and scanty.
He was the son of the reverend Dr. West; perhaps[176] him who published
Pindar, at Oxford, about the beginning of this century. His mother was
sister to sir Richard Temple, afterwards lord Cobham. His father,
purposing to educate him for the church, sent him first to Eton, and
afterwards to Oxford; but he was seduced to a more airy mode of life, by
a commission in a troop of horse, procured him by his uncle.
He continued some time in the army; though it is reasonable to suppose
that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love, or much
neglected the pursuit, of learning; and, afterwards, finding himself
more inclined to civil employment, he laid down his commission, and
engaged in business under the lord Townshend, then secretary of state,
with whom he attended the king to Hanover.
His adherence to lord Townshend ended in nothing but a nomination, May,
1729, to be clerk extraordinary of the privy council, which produced no
immediate profit; for it only placed him in a state of expectation and
right of succession, and it was very long before a vacancy admitted him
to profit.
Soon afterwards he married, and settled himself in a very pleasant house
at Wickham, in Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and to piety.
Of his learning, the late collection exhibits evidence, which would have
been yet fuller, if the dissertations which accompany his version of
Pindar had not been improperly omitted. Of his piety, the influence has,
I hope, been extended far by his Observations on the Resurrection,
published in 1747, for which the university of Oxford created him a
doctor of laws by diploma, March 30,1748, and would, doubtless, have
reached yet further, had he lived to complete what he had for some time
meditated, the Evidences of the Truth of the New Testament. Perhaps it
may not be without effect to tell, that he read the prayers of the
publick liturgy every morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening
he called his servants into the parlour, and read to them first a
sermon, and then prayers. Crashaw is now not the only maker of verses to
whom may be given the two venerable names of poet and saint.
He was very often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they were
weary of faction and debates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a
decent table, and literary conversation. There is at Wickham a walk made
by Pitt; and, what is of far more importance, at Wickham, Lyttelton
received that conviction which produced his Dissertation on St. Paul.
These two illustrious friends had for awhile listened to the
blandishments of infidelity; and when West's book was published, it was
bought by some who did not know his change of opinion, in expectation of
new objections against christianity; and as infidels do not want
malignity, they revenged the disappointment by calling him a methodist.
Mr. West's income was not large; and his friends endeavoured, but
without success, to obtain an augmentation. It is reported, that the
education of the young prince was offered to him, but that he required a
more extensive power of superintendence than it was thought proper to
allow him.
In time, however, his revenue was improved; he lived to have one of the
lucrative clerkships of the privy council, 1752: and Mr. Pitt at last
had it in his power to make him treasurer of Chelsea hospital.
He was now sufficiently rich; but wealth came too late to be long
enjoyed; nor could it secure him from the calamities of life: he lost,
1755, his only son; and the year after, March 26, a stroke of the palsy
brought to the grave one of the few poets to whom the grave might be
without its terrours.
Of his translations, I have only compared the first Olympick Ode with
the original, and found my expectation surpassed, both by its elegance
and its exactness. He does not confine himself to his author's train of
stanzas: for he saw that the difference of the languages required a
different mode of versification. The first strophe is eminently happy:
in the second he has a little strayed from Pindar's meaning, who says,
"if thou, my soul, wishest to speak of games, look not in the desert sky
for a planet hotter than the sun; nor shall we tell of nobler games than
those of Olympia." He is sometimes too paraphrastical. Pindar bestows
upon Hiero an epithet, which, in one word, signifies "delighting in
horses;" a word which, in the translation, generates these lines:
Hiero's royal brows, whose care
Tends the courser's noble breed,
Pleas'd to nurse the pregnant mare,
Pleas'd to train the youthful steed.
Pindar says of Pelops, that "he came alone in the dark to the White
Sea;" and West,
Near the billow-beaten side
Of the foam-besilver'd main,
Darkling, and alone, he stood:
which, however, is less exuberant than the former passage.
A work of this kind must, in a minute examination, discover many
imperfections; but West's version, so far as I have considered it,
appears to be the product of great labour and great abilities.
His Institution of the Garter, 1742, is written with sufficient
knowledge of the manners that prevailed in the age to which it is
referred, and with great elegance of diction; but, for want of a process
of events, neither knowledge nor elegance preserve the reader from
weariness.
His Imitations of Spenser are very successfully performed, both with
respect to the metre, the language, and the fiction; and being engaged
at once by the excellence of the sentiments, and the artifice of the
copy, the mind has two amusements together. But such compositions are
not to be reckoned among the great achievements of intellect, because
their effect is local and temporary; they appeal not to reason or
passion, but to memory, and pre-suppose an accidental or artificial
state of mind. An imitation of Spenser is nothing to a reader, however
acute, by whom Spenser has never been perused. Works of this kind may
deserve praise, as proofs of great industry, and great nicety of
observation; but the highest praise, the praise of genius, they cannot
claim. The noblest beauties of art are those of which the effect is
coextended with rational nature, or, at least, with the whole circle of
polished life; what is less than this can be only pretty, the plaything
of fashion, and the amusement of a day.
* * * * *
There is, in the Adventurer, a paper of verses given to one of the
authors as Mr. West's, and supposed to have been written by him. It
should not be concealed, however, that it is printed with Mr. Jago's
name in Dodsley's collection, and is mentioned as his in a letter of
Shenstone's. Perhaps West gave it without naming the author; and
Hawkesworth, receiving it from him, thought it his; for his he thought
it, as he told me, and as he tells the publick.
-----
[Footnote 176: Certainly him. It was published in 1697.]
COLLINS.
William Collins was born at Chichester, on the 25th of December, about
1720. His father was a hatter of good reputation. He was, in 1733, as
Dr. Warton has kindly informed me, admitted scholar of Winchester
college, where he was educated by Dr. Burton. His English exercises were
better than his Latin.
He first courted the notice of the publick by some verses to a Lady
Weeping, published in the Gentleman's Magazine.
In 1740, he stood first in the list of the scholars to received in
succession at New college, but unhappily there was no vacancy. This was
the original misfortune of his life. He became a commoner of Queen's
college, probably with a scanty maintenance; but was, in about half a
year, elected a demy of Magdalen college, where he continued till he had
taken a bachelor's degree, and then suddenly left the university; for
what reason I know not that he told.
He now, about 1744, came to London a literary adventurer, with many
projects in his head, and very little money in his pocket. He designed
many works; but his great fault was irresolution; or the frequent calls
of immediate necessity broke his schemes, and suffered him to pursue no
settled purpose. A man doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a
creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote
inquires. He published proposals for a History of the Revival of
Learning; and I have heard him speak with great kindness of Leo the
tenth, and with keen resentment of his tasteless successour. But
probably not a page of the history was ever written. He planned several
tragedies, but he only planned them. He wrote now and then odes and
other poems, and did something, however little.
About this time I fell into his company. His appearance was decent and
manly; his knowledge considerable, his views extensive, his conversation
elegant, and his disposition cheerful. By degrees I gained his
confidence; and one day was admitted to him when he was immured by a
bailiff, that was prowling in the street. On this occasion recourse was
had to the booksellers, who, on the credit of a translation of
Aristotle's Poeticks, which he engaged to write with a large commentary,
advanced as much money as enabled him to escape into the country. He
showed me the guineas safe in his hand. Soon afterwards his uncle, Mr.
Martin, a lieutenant-colonel, left him about two thousand pounds; a sum
which Collins could scarcely think exhaustible, and which he did not
live to exhaust. The guineas were then repaid, and the translation
neglected.
But man is not born for happiness. Collins, who, while he _studied to
live_, felt no evil but poverty, no sooner _lived to study_ than his
life was assailed by more dreadful calamities, disease and insanity.
Having formerly written his character[177], while, perhaps, it was yet
more distinctly impressed upon my memory, I shall insert it here.
"Mr. Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous
faculties. He was acquainted not only with the learned tongues,
but with the Italian, French, and Spanish languages. He had
employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction, and subjects of
fancy; and, by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was
eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass
the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only
by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved
fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove
through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence
of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of elysian
gardens.
"This was, however, the character rather of his inclination than
his genius; the grandeur of wildness, and the novelty of
extravagance, were always desired by him, but not always
attained. Yet, as diligence is never wholly lost, if his efforts
sometimes caused harshness and obscurity, they likewise
produced, in happier moments, sublimity and splendour. This idea
which he had formed of excellence, led him to oriental fictions
and allegorical imagery, and, perhaps, while he was intent upon
description, he did not sufficiently cultivate sentiment. His
poems are the productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor
unfurnished with knowledge either of books or life, but somewhat
obstructed in its progress by deviation in quest of mistaken
beauties.
"His morals were pure, and his opinions pious; in a long
continuance of poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it
cannot be expected that any character should be exactly uniform.
There is a degree of want, by which the freedom of agency is
almost destroyed; and long association with fortuitous
companions will, at last, relax the strictness of truth, and
abate the fervour of sincerity. That this man, wise and virtuous
as he was, passed always unentangled through the snares of life,
it would be prejudice and temerity to affirm; but it may be said
that at least he preserved the source of action unpolluted, that
his principles were never shaken, that his distinctions of right
and wrong were never confounded, and that his faults had nothing
of malignity or design, but proceeded from some unexpected
pressure, or casual temptation.
"The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity
and sadness. He languished some years under that depression of
mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and
leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of
pursuing it. These clouds which he perceived gathering on his
intellects, he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed
into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his
malady, and returned. He was, for some time, confined in a house
of lunaticks, and afterwards retired to the care of his sister
in Chichester, where death, in 1756, came to his relief[178].
"After his return from France, the writer of this character paid
him a visit at Islington, where he was waiting for his sister,
whom he had directed to meet him: there was then nothing of
disorder discernible in his mind by any but himself; but he had
withdrawn from study, and travelled with no other book than an
English testament, such as children carry to the school: when
his friend took it into his hand, out of curiosity, to see what
companion a man of letters had chosen, 'I have but one book,'
said Collins, 'but that is the best.'"
Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to converse,
and whom I yet remember with tenderness.
He was visited at Chichester, in his last illness, by his learned
friends, Dr. Warton and his brother; to whom he spoke with
disapprobation of his Oriental Eclogues, as not sufficiently expressive
of Asiatick manners, and called them his Irish Eclogues. He showed them,
at the same time, an ode inscribed to Mr. John Hume, on the
superstitions of the Highlands; which they thought superiour to his
other works, but which no search has yet found[179].
His disorder was not alienation of mind, but general laxity and
feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than intellectual powers.
What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few minutes
exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a
short cessation restored his powers, and he was again able to talk with
his former vigour.
The approaches of this dreadful malady he began to feel soon after his
uncle's death; and, with the usual weakness of men so diseased, eagerly
snatched that temporary relief, with which the table and the bottle
flatter and seduce.
But his health continually declined, and he grew more and more
burdensome to himself.
To what I have formerly said of his writings may be added, that his
diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously
selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival;
and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with
some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to
write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded
with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be
loved, so the poetry of Collins may, sometimes, extort praise when it
gives little pleasure.
* * * * *
Mr. Collins's first production is added here from the Poetical Calendar.
TO MISS AURELIA C----R,
ON HER WEEPING AT HER SISTER'S WEDDING.
Cease, fair Aurelia, cease to mourn;
Lament not Hannah's happy state;
You may be happy in your turn,
And seize the treasure you regret.
With love united hymen stands,
And softly whispers to your charms,
"Meet but your lover in my bands,
You'll find your sister in his arms."
-----
[Footnote 177: In the Poetical Calendar, a collection of poems by Fawkes
and Woty, in several volumes, 1763, &c.]
[Footnote 178: A monument of exquisite workmanship, by Flaxman, is
erected in Chichester to Collins's memory.]
[Footnote 179: It is printed in the late collection.]
DYER.
John Dyer, of whom I have no other account to give than his own letters,
published with Hughes's correspondence, and the notes added by the
editor, have afforded me, was born in 1700, the second son of Robert
Dyer, of Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire, a solicitor of great capacity
and note.
He passed through Westminster school under the care of Dr. Freind, and
was then called home to be instructed in his father's profession. But
his father died soon, and he took no delight in the study of the law;
but having always amused himself with drawing, resolved to turn painter,
and became pupil to Mr. Richardson, an artist then of high reputation,
but now better known by his books than by his pictures.
Having studied awhile under his master, he became, as he tells his
friend, an itinerant painter, and wandered about South Wales, and the
parts adjacent; but he mingled poetry with painting, and, about 1727,
printed Grongar Hill in Lewis's Miscellany.
Being, probably, unsatisfied with his own proficiency, he, like other
painters, travelled to Italy; and coming back in 1740, published the
Ruins of Rome.
If his poem was written soon after his return, he did not make much use
of his acquisitions in painting, whatever they might be; for decline of
health and love of study determined him to the church. He, therefore,
entered into orders; and, it seems, married, about the same time, a lady
of the name of "Ensor, whose grandmother," says he, "was a Shakespeare,
descended from a brother of every body's Shakespeare;" by her, in 1756,
he had a son and three daughters living.
His ecclesiastical provision was, for a long time, but slender. His
first patron, Mr. Harper, gave him, in 1741, Calthorp, in
Leicestershire, of eighty pounds a year, on which he lived ten years,
and then exchanged it for Belchford, in Lincolnshire, of seventy-five.
His condition now began to mend. In 1751, sir John Heathcote gave him
Coningsby, of one hundred and forty pounds a year; and, in 1755, the
chancellor added Kirkby, of one hundred and ten. He complains that the
repair of the house at Coningsby, and other expenses, took away the
profit. In 1757 he published the Fleece, his greatest poetical work; of
which I will not suppress a ludicrous story. Dodsley, the bookseller,
was one day mentioning it to a critical visiter, with more expectation
of success than the other could easily admit. In the conversation the
author's age was asked; and being represented as advanced in life, "He
will," said the critick, "be buried in woollen."
He did not, indeed, long survive that publication, nor long enjoy the
increase of his preferments; for in 1758 (July 24th,) he died.
Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient to require an elaborate
criticism. Grongar Hill is the happiest of his productions: it is not,
indeed, very accurately written; but the scenes which it displays are so
pleasing, the images which they raise are so welcome to the mind, and
the reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense or
experience of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again.
The idea of the Ruins of Rome strikes more but pleases less, and the
title raises greater expectation than the performance gratifies. Some
passages, however, are conceived with the mind of a poet; as when, in
the neighbourhood of dilapidating edifices, he says,
The pilgrim oft
At dead of night, mid his orison hears
Aghast the voice of time, disparting tow'rs,
Tumbling all precip'tate down, dash'd,
Rattling around, loud thund'ring to the moon.
Of the Fleece, which never became popular, and is now universally
neglected, I can say little that is likely to recall it to attention.
The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that
an attempt to bring them together is to _couple the serpent with the
fowl_. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by
interesting his reader in our native commodity, by interspersing rural
imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great
words, and by all the writer's arts of delusion, the meanness naturally
adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and
manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust
which blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an
unpleasing subject, soon repels the reader, however willing to be
pleased.
Let me, however, honestly report whatever may counterbalance this weight
of censure. I have been told, that Akenside, who, upon a poetical
question, has a right to be heard, said, "That he would regulate his
opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer's Fleece; for if that
were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable to
expect fame from excellence."
SHENSTONE.
William Shenstone, the son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Pen, was born in
November, 1714, at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, one of those insulated
districts which, in the division of the kingdom, was appended, for some
reason, not now discoverable, to a distant county; and which, though
surrounded by Warwickshire and Worcestershire, belongs to Shropshire,
though, perhaps, thirty miles distant from any other part of it.
He learned to read of an old dame, whom his poem of the Schoolmistress
has delivered to posterity; and soon received such delight from books,
that he was always calling for fresh entertainment, and expected that,
when any of the family went to market, a new book should be brought him,
which, when it came, was in fondness carried to bed and laid by him. It
is said, that, when his request had been neglected, his mother wrapped
up a piece of wood of the same form, and pacified him for the night.
As he grew older, he went for awhile to the grammar-school in
Hales-Owen, and was placed afterwards with Mr. Crumpton, an eminent
schoolmaster at Solihul, where he distinguished himself by the quickness
of his progress.
When he was young, June, 1724, he was deprived of his father, and soon
after, August, 1726, of his grandfather; and was, with his brother, who
died afterwards unmarried, left to the care of his grandmother, who
managed the estate.
From school he was sent, in 1732, to Pembroke college, in Oxford, a
society which, for half a century, has been eminent for English poetry
and elegant literature. Here it appears that he found delight and
advantage; for he continued his name in the book ten years, though he
took no degree. After the first four years he put on the civilian's
gown, but without showing any intention to engage in the profession.
About the time when he went to Oxford, the death of his grandmother
devolved his affairs to the care of the reverend Mr. Dolman, of Brome,
in Staffordshire, whose attention he always mentioned with gratitude.
At Oxford he employed himself upon English poetry; and, in 1737,
published a small miscellany, without his name.
He then for a time wandered about to acquaint himself with life, and was
sometimes at London, sometimes at Bath, or any other place of publick
resort; but he did not forget his poetry. He published, in 1741, his
Judgment of Hercules, addressed to Mr. Lyttelton, whose interest he
supported with great warmth at an election: this was next year followed
by the Schoolmistress.
Mr. Dolman, to whose care he was indebted for his ease and leisure, died
in 1745, and the care of his own fortune now fell upon him. He tried to
escape it awhile, and lived at his house with his tenants, who were
distantly related; but finding that imperfect possession inconvenient,
he took the whole estate into his own hands, more to the improvement of
its beauty, than the increase of its produce.
Now was excited his delight in rural pleasures, and his ambition of
rural elegance: he began, from this time, to point his prospects, to
diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters;
which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made his little
domain the envy of the great, and the admiration of the skilful; a place
to be visited by travellers, and copied by designers. Whether to plant a
walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where
there is an object to catch the view; to make water run where it will be
heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to leave intervals where
the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is
something to be hidden; demands any great powers of mind, I will not
inquire: perhaps a surly and sullen speculator may think such
performances rather the sport than the business of human reason. But it
must be at least confessed, that to embellish the form of nature is an
innocent amusement; and some praise must be allowed, by the most
supercilious observer, to him who does best what such multitudes are
contending to do well.
This praise was the praise of Shenstone; but, like all other modes of
felicity, it was not enjoyed without its abatements. Lyttelton was his
neighbour and his rival, whose empire, spacious and opulent, looked with
disdain on the _petty state_ that _appeared behind it_. For awhile the
inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little
fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when, by degrees,
the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the
curiosity which they could not suppress, by conducting their visitants
perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them, at the
wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone
would heavily complain. Where there is emulation there will be vanity;
and where there is vanity there will be folly[180].
The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye: he valued what he valued
merely for its looks; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if
there were any fishes in his water.
His house was mean, and he did not improve it; his care was of his
grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floors
flooded by a shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money
for its reparation.
In time his expenses brought clamours about him, that overpowered the
lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and his groves were haunted by
beings very different from fawns and fairies[181]. He spent his estate
in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties.
He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing[182]. It is said, that if he
had lived a little longer, he would have been assisted by a pension:
such bounty could not have been ever more properly bestowed; but that it
was ever asked is not certain; it is too certain that it never was
enjoyed.
He died at the Leasowes, of a putrid fever, about five on Friday
morning, February 11, 1763; and was buried by the side of his brother in
the church-yard of Hales-Owen.
He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady, whoever
she was, to whom his Pastoral Ballad was addressed. He is represented,
by his friend Dodsley, as a man of great tenderness and generosity, kind
to all that were within his influence: but, if once offended, not easily
appeased; inattentive to economy, and careless of his expenses; in his
person he was larger than the middle size, with something clumsy in his
form; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his grey
hair in a particular manner; for he held that the fashion was no rule of
dress, and that every man was to suit his appearance to his natural
form[183].
His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no
value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated.
His life was unstained by any crime; the Elegy on Jesse, which has been
supposed to relate an unfortunate and criminal amour of his own, was
known by his friends to have been suggested by the story of Miss
Godfrey, in Richardson's Pamela.
What Gray thought of his character, from the perusal of his letters, was
this:
"I have read, too, an octavo volume of Shenstone's letters. Poor man! he
was always wishing for money, for fame, and other distinctions; and his
whole philosophy consisted in living against his will in retirement, and
in a place which his taste had adorned, but which he only enjoyed when
people of note came to see and commend it; his correspondence is about
nothing else but this place and his own writings, with two or three
neighbouring clergymen, who wrote verses too."
His poems consist of elegies, odes, and ballads, humorous sallies, and
moral pieces.
His conception of an elegy he has in his preface very judiciously and
discriminately explained. It is, according to his account, the effusion
of a contemplative mind, sometimes plaintive, and always serious, and,
therefore, superiour to the glitter of slight ornaments. His
compositions suit not ill to this description. His topicks of praise are
the domestick virtues, and his thoughts are pure and simple; but,
wanting combination, they want variety. The peace of solitude, the
innocence of inactivity, and the unenvied security of an humble station,
can fill but a few pages. That of which the essence is uniformity will
be soon described. His elegies have, therefore, too much resemblance of
each other.
The lines are, sometimes, such as elegy requires, smooth and easy; but
to this praise his claim is not constant; his diction is often harsh,
improper, and affected: his words ill-coined, or ill-chosen; and his
phrase unskilfully inverted.
The lyrick poems are almost all of the light and airy kind, such as trip
lightly and nimbly along, without the load of any weighty meaning. From
these, however, Rural Elegance has some right to be excepted. I once
heard it praised by a very learned lady; and, though the lines are
irregular, and the thoughts diffused with too much verbosity, yet it
cannot be denied to contain both philosophical argument and poetical
spirit.
Of the rest I cannot think any excellent: the Skylark pleases me best,
which has, however, more of the epigram than of the ode.
But the four parts of his Pastoral Ballad demand particular notice. I
cannot but regret that it is pastoral: an intelligent reader, acquainted
with the scenes of real life, sickens at the mention of the _crook_, the
_pipe_, the _sheep_, and the _kids_, which it is not necessary to bring
forward to notice, for the poet's art is selection, and he ought to show
the beauties without the grossness of the country life. His stanza seems
to have been chosen in imitation of Rowe's Despairing Shepherd.
In the first part are two passages, to which if any mind denies its
sympathy, it has no acquaintance with love or nature:
I priz'd ev'ry hour that went by,
Beyond all that had pleas'd me before;
But now they are past, and I sigh,
And I grieve that I priz'd them no more.
When forc'd the fair nymph to forego,
What anguish I felt in my heart!
Yet I thought (but it might not be so)
'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
She gaz'd, as I slowly withdrew;
My path I could hardly discern;
So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.
In the second, this passage has its prettiness, though it be not equal
to the former:
I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the woodpigeons breed;
But let me that plunder forbear,
She will say 'twas a barbarous deed:
For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I lov'd her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.
In the third, he mentions the commonplaces of amorous poetry with some
address:
'Tis his with mock passion to glow!
'Tis his in smooth tales to unfold,
How her face is as bright as the snow,
And her bosom, be sure, is as cold;
How the nightingales labour the strain.
With the notes of his charmer to vie;
How they vary their accents in vain,
Repine at her triumphs and die.
In the fourth, I find nothing better than this natural strain of hope:
Alas! from the day that we met,
What hope of an end to my woes,
When I cannot endure to forget
The glance that undid my repose?
Yet time may diminish the pain:
The flow'r, and the shrub, and the tree,
Which I rear'd for her pleasure in vain,
In time may have comfort for me.
His Levities are, by their title, exempted from the severities of
criticism; yet it may be remarked, in a few words, that his humour is
sometimes gross, and seldom sprightly.
Of the moral poems, the first is the Choice of Hercules, from Xenophon.
The numbers are smooth, the diction elegant, and the thoughts just; but
something of vigour is still to be wished, which it might have had by
brevity and compression. His Fate of Delicacy has an air of gaiety, but
not a very pointed general moral. His blank verses, those that can read
them may, probably, find to be like the blank verses of his neighbours.
Love and Honour is derived from the old ballad, "Did you not hear of a
Spanish Lady?"--I wish it well enough to wish it were in rhyme.
The Schoolmistress, of which I know not what claim it has to stand among
the moral works, is surely the most pleasing of Shenstone's
performances. The adoption of a particular style, in light and short
compositions, contributes much to the increase of pleasure: we are
entertained at once with two imitations, of nature in the sentiments, of
the original author in the style, and between them the mind is kept in
perpetual employment.
The general recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and simplicity; his
general defect is want of comprehension and variety. Had his mind been
better stored with knowledge, whether he could have been great, I know
not; he could certainly have been agreeable[184].
-----
[Footnote 180: This charge against the Lyttelton family has been denied,
with some degree of warmth, by Mr. Potter, and since by Mr. Graves. The
latter says, "The truth of the case, I believe, was, that the Lyttelton
family went so frequently with their family to the Leasowes, that they
were unwilling to break in upon Mr. Shenstone's retirement on every
occasion, and, therefore, often went to the principal points of view
without waiting for any one to conduct them regularly through the whole
walks. Of this Mr. Shenstone would sometimes peevishly complain; though,
I am persuaded, he never really suspected any ill-natured intention in
his worthy and much-valued neighbours." R.]
[Footnote 181: Mr. Graves, however, expresses his belief that this is a
groundless surmise. "Mr. Shenstone," he adds, "was too much respected in
the neighbourhood to be treated with rudeness; and though his works,
(frugally as they were managed) added to his manner of living, must
necessarily have made him exceed his income, and, of course, he might
sometimes be distressed for money, yet he had too much spirit to expose
himself to insults from trifling sums, and guarded against any great
distress, by anticipating a few hundreds; which his estate could very
well bear, as appeared by what remained to his executors after the
payment of his debts, and his legacies to his friends, and annuities of
thirty pounds a year to one servant, and six pounds to another, for his
will was dictated with equal justice and generosity." R.]
[Footnote 182: We may, however, say with the Grecian orator, [Greek:
hoti apollymeyos euphrainei], he gives forth a fragrance as he wastes
away. ED.]
[Footnote 183: "These," says Mr. Graves, "were not precisely his
sentiments, though he thought, right enough, that every one should, in
some degree, consult his particular shape and complexion in adjusting
his dress; and that no fashion ought to sanctify what was ungraceful,
absurd, or really deformed."]
[Footnote 184: Mr. D'Israeli's remarks on Shenstone and his writings,
may be profitably compared with Johnson's life. See last edition of the
Curiosities of Literature. ED.]
YOUNG.
The following life was written, at my request, by a gentleman who had
better information than I could easily have obtained; and the publick
will, perhaps, wish that I had solicited and obtained more such favours
from him[185].
"DEAR SIR,--In consequence of our different conversations about
authentick materials for the life of Young, I send you the
following detail.
"Of great men, something must always be said to gratify curiosity.
Of the illustrious author of the Night Thoughts much has been told
of which there never could have been proofs; and little care
appears to have been taken to tell that, of which proofs, with
little trouble, might have been procured."
Edward Young was born at Upham, near Winchester, in June, 1681. He was
the son of Edward Young, at that time fellow of Winchester college, and
rector of Upham; who was the son of Jo. Young, of Woodhay, in Berkshire,
styled by Wood, _gentleman_. In September, 1682, the poet's father was
collated to the prebend of Gillingham Minor, in the church of Sarum, by
bishop Ward. When Ward's faculties were impaired through age, his duties
were necessarily performed by others. We learn from Wood, that at a
visitation of Sprat's, July the 12th, 1686, the prebendary preached a
Latin sermon, afterwards published, with which the bishop was so
pleased, that he told the chapter he was concerned to find the preacher
had one of the worst prebends in their church. Some time after this, in
consequence of his merit and reputation, or of the interest of lord
Bradford, to whom, in 1702, he dedicated two volumes of sermons, he was
appointed chaplain to king William and queen Mary, and preferred to the
deanery of Sarum. Jacob, who wrote in 1720, says, "He was chaplain and
clerk of the closet to the late queen, who honoured him by standing
godmother to the poet." His fellowship of Winchester he resigned in
favour of a gentleman of the name of Harris, who married his only
daughter. The dean died at Sarum, after a short illness, in 1705, in the
sixty-third year of his age. On the Sunday after his decease, bishop
Burnet preached at the cathedral, and began his sermon with saying,
"Death has been of late walking round us, and making breach upon breach
upon us, and has now carried away the head of this body with a stroke;
so that he, whom you saw a week ago distributing the holy mysteries, is
now laid in the dust. But he still lives in the many excellent
directions he has left us, both how to live and how to die."
The dean placed his son upon the foundation at Winchester college, where
he had himself been educated. At this school Edward Young remained till
the election after his eighteenth birthday, the period at which those
upon the foundation are superannuated. Whether he did not betray his
abilities early in life, or his masters had not skill enough to discover
in their pupil any marks of genius for which he merited reward, or no
vacancy at Oxford afforded them an opportunity to bestow upon him the
reward provided for merit by William of Wykeham; certain it is, that to
an Oxford fellowship our poet did not succeed. By chance, or by choice,
New college cannot claim the honour of numbering among its fellows him
who wrote the Night Thoughts.
On the 13th of October, 1703, he was entered an independent member of
New college, that he might live at little expense in the warden's
lodgings, who was a particular friend of his father, till he should be
qualified to stand for a fellowship at All Souls. In a few months the
warden of New college died. He then removed to Corpus college. The
president of this society, from regard also for his father, invited him
thither, in order to lessen his academical expenses. In 1708, he was
nominated to a law-fellowship at All Souls by archbishop Tenison, into
whose hands it came by devolution. Such repeated patronage, while it
justifies Burnet's praise of the father, reflects credit on the conduct
of the son. The manner in which it was exerted, seems to prove that the
father did not leave behind him much wealth.
On the 23rd of April, 1714, Young took his degree of bachelor of civil
laws, and his doctor's degree on the 10th of June, 1719.
Soon after he went to Oxford, he discovered, it is said, an inclination
for pupils. Whether he ever commented tutor is not known. None has
hitherto boasted to have received his academical instruction from the
author of the Night Thoughts.
It is probable that his college was proud of him no less as a scholar
than as a poet; for in 1716, when the foundation of the Codrington
library was laid, two years after he had taken his bachelor's degree,
Young was appointed to speak the Latin oration. This is, at least,
particular for being dedicated in English, "To the ladies of the
Codrington family." To these ladies he says, "that he was unavoidably
flung into a singularity, by being obliged to write an epistle
dedicatory void of commonplace, and such a one as was never published
before by any author whatever; that this practice absolved them from any
obligation of reading what was presented to them, and that the
bookseller approved of it, because it would make people stare, was
absurd enough, and perfectly right."
Of this oration there is no appearance in his own edition of his works;
and prefixed to an edition by Curll and Tonson, 1741, is a letter from
Young to Curll, if we may credit Curll, dated December the 9th, 1739,
wherein he says, that he has not leisure to review what he formerly
wrote, and adds, "I have not the Epistle to lord Lansdowne. If you will
take my advice, I would have you omit that, and the oration on
Codrington. I think the collection will sell better without them."
There are who relate, that, when first Young found himself independent,
and his own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and
morality which he afterwards became.
The authority of his father, indeed, had ceased, some time before, by
his death; and Young was certainly not ashamed to be patronised by the
infamous Wharton. But Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the poet,
and particularly the tragedian. If virtuous authors must be patronised
only by virtuous peers, who shall point them out?
Yet Pope is said, by Ruffhead, to have told Warburton, that "Young had
much of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his
genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into
bombast. This made him pass a _foolish youth_, the sport of peers and
poets: but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the
clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency, and
afterwards with honour."
They who think ill of Young's morality in the early part of his life
may, perhaps, be wrong; but Tindal could not err in his opinion of
Young's warmth and ability in the cause of religion. Tindal used to
spend much of his time at All Souls. "The other boys," said the atheist,
"I can always answer, because I always know whence they have their
arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is
continually pestering me with something of his own."[186]
After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcilable. Young
might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life, in which
his natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long. If this were
so, he has left behind him not only his evidence in favour of virtue,
but the potent testimony of experience against vice.
We shall soon see that one of his earliest productions was more serious
than what comes from the generality of unfledged poets.
Young, perhaps, ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the Poem to His
Majesty, presented, with a copy of verses, to Somers; and hoped that he
also might soar to wealth and honour on wings of the same kind. His
first poetical flight was when queen Anne called up to the house of
lords the sons of the earls of Northampton and Aylesbury, and added, in
one day, ten others to the number of peers. In order to reconcile the
people to one, at least, of the new lords, he published, in 1712, an
Epistle to the right honourable George lord Lansdowne. In this
composition the poet pours out his panegyrick with the extravagance of a
young man, who thinks his present stock of wealth will never be
exhausted.
The poem seems intended also to reconcile the publick to the late peace.
This is endeavoured to be done by showing that men are slain in war, and
that in peace "harvests wave, and commerce swells her sail." If this be
humanity, for which he meant it; is it politicks? Another purpose of
this epistle appears to have been, to prepare the publick for the
reception of some tragedy he might have in hand. His lordship's
patronage, he says, will not let him "repent his passion for the stage;"
and the particular praise bestowed on Othello and Oroonoko looks as if
some such character as Zanga was even then in contemplation. The
affectionate mention of the death of his friend Harrison, of New
college, at the close of this poem, is an instance of Young's art, which
displayed itself so wonderfully, some time afterwards, in the Night
Thoughts, of making the publick a party in his private sorrow.
Should justice call upon you to censure this poem, it ought, at least,
to be remembered, that he did not insert it in his works; and that in
the letter to Curll, as we have seen, he advises its omission. The
booksellers, in the late body of English poetry, should have
distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the respective
authors[187].This I shall be careful to do with regard to Young. "I
think," says he, "the following pieces in _four_ volumes to be the most
excusable of all that I have written; and I wish _less apology_ was
needful for these. As there is no recalling what is got abroad, the
pieces here republished I have revised and corrected, and rendered them
as _pardonable_ as it was in my power to do."
Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners?
When Addison published Cato, in 1713, Young had the honour of prefixing
to it a recommendatory copy of verses. This is one of the pieces which
the author of the Night Thoughts did not republish.
On the appearance of his Poem on the Last Day, Addison did not return
Young's compliment; but the Englishman of October 29, 1713, which was
probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem. The Last
Day was published soon after the peace. The vicechancellor's
_imprimatur_, for it was printed at Oxford, is dated May the 19th, 1713.
From the exordium, Young appears to have spent some time on the
composition of it. While other bards "with Britain's hero set their
souls on fire," he draws, he says, a deeper scene. Marlborough _had
been_ considered by Britain as her hero; but, when the Last Day was
published, female cabal had blasted, for a time, the laurels of
Blenheim. This serious poem was finished by Young as early as 1710,
before he was thirty; for part of it is printed in the Tatler[188] It
was inscribed to the queen, in a dedication, which, for some reason, he
did not admit into his works. It tells her, that his only title to the
great honour he now does himself, is the obligation which he formerly
received from her royal indulgence.
Of this obligation nothing is now known, unless he alluded to her being
his godmother. He is said, indeed, to have been engaged at a settled
stipend as a writer for the court. In Swift's Rhapsody on Poetry are
these lines, speaking of the court:
Whence Gay was banish'd in disgrace,
Where Pope will never show his face,
Where Y---- must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
That Y---- means Young seems clear from four other lines in the same
poem:
Attend, ye Popes and Youngs and Gays,
And tune your harps and strew your bays;
Your panegyricks here provide;
You cannot err on flatt'ry's side.
Yet who shall say, with certainty, that Young was a pensioner? In all
modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been
regularly called hirelings, and on the other patriots?
Of the dedication, the complexion is clearly political. It speaks in the
highest terms of the late peace; it gives her majesty praise, indeed,
for her victories, but says, that the author is more pleased to see her
rise from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first
and second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind her; nor will he
lose her there, he says, but keep her still in view through the
boundless spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey towards
eternal bliss, till he behold the heaven of heavens open, and angels
receiving and conveying her still onward from the stretch of his
imagination, which tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth.
The queen was soon called away from this lower world, to a place where
human praise or human flattery, even less general than this, are of
little consequence. If Young thought the dedication contained only the
praise of truth, he should not have omitted it in his works. Was he
conscious of the exaggeration of party? Then he should not have written
it. The poem itself is not without a glance towards politicks,
notwithstanding the subject. The cry that the church was in danger, had
not yet subsided. The Last Day, written by a layman, was much approved
by the ministry, and their friends.
Before the queen's death, the Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love, was
sent into the world. This poem is founded on the execution of lady Jane
Grey, and her husband lord Guildford, 1554, a story, chosen for the
subject of a tragedy by Edmund Smith, and wrought into a tragedy by
Rowe. The dedication of it to the countess of Salisbury does not appear
in his own edition. He hopes it may be some excuse for his presumption,
that the story could not have been read without thoughts of the countess
of Salisbury, though it had been dedicated to another. "To behold," he
proceeds, "a person _only_ virtuous, stirs in us a prudent regret; to
behold a person _only_ amiable to the sight, warms us with a religious
indignation; but to turn our eyes on a countess of Salisbury gives us
pleasure and improvement; it works a sort of miracle, occasions the bias
of our nature to fall off from sin, and makes our very senses and
affections converts to our religion, and promoters of our duty." His
flattery was as ready for the other sex as for ours, and was, at least,
as well adapted.
August the 27th, 1714, Pope writes to his friend Jervas that he is just
arrived from Oxford; that every one is much concerned for the queen's
death, but that no panegyricks are ready yet for the king. Nothing like
friendship had yet taken place between Pope and Young; for, soon after
the event which Pope mentions, Young published a poem on the queen's
death, and his majesty's accession to the throne. It is inscribed to
Addison, then secretary to the lords justices. Whatever were the
obligations, which he had formerly received from Anne, the poet appears
to aim at something of the same sort from George. Of the poem, the
intention seems to have been to show, that he had the same extravagant
strain of praise for a king as for a queen. To discover, at the very
outset of a foreigner's reign, that the gods bless his new subjects in
such a king, is something more than praise. Neither was this deemed one
of his _excusable pieces_. We do not find it in his works.
Young's father had been well acquainted with lady Anne Wharton, the
first wife of Thomas Wharton, esq. afterwards marquis of Wharton; a lady
celebrated for her poetical talents by Burnet and by Waller.
To the dean of Sarum's visitation sermon, already mentioned, were added
some verses "by that excellent poetess Mrs. Anne Wharton," upon its
being translated into English, at the instance of Waller, by Atwood.
Wharton, after he became ennobled, did not drop the son of his old
friend. In him, during the short time he lived, Young found a patron,
and in his dissolute descendant a friend and a companion. The marquis
died in April, 1715. In the beginning of the next year the young marquis
set out upon his travels, from which he returned in about a
twelve-month. The beginning of 1717 carried him to Ireland; where, says
the Biographia, "on the score of his extraordinary qualities, he had the
honour done him of being admitted, though under age, to take his seat in
the house of lords."
With this unhappy character, it is not unlikely that Young went to
Ireland. From his letter to Richardson, on Original Composition, it is
clear he was, at some period of his life, in that country. "I remember,"
says he, in that letter, speaking of Swift, "as I and others were taking
with him an evening walk, about a mile out of Dublin, he stopped short:
we passed on; but perceiving he did not follow us, I went back and found
him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing upward at a noble elm, which
in its uppermost branches was much withered and decayed. Pointing at it,
he said, 'I shall be like that tree, I shall die at top.'" Is it not
probable, that this visit to Ireland was paid when he had an opportunity
of going thither with his avowed friend and patron[189]?
From the Englishman, it appears that a tragedy by Young was in the
theatre so early as 1713. Yet Busiris was not brought upon Drury-lane
stage till 1719. It was inscribed to the duke of Newcastle, "because the
late instances he had received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon
favour, in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had
taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron." The dedication he
afterwards suppressed.
Busiris was followed, in the year 1721, by the Revenge. He dedicated
this famous tragedy to the duke of Wharton. "Your grace," says the
dedication, "has been pleased to make yourself accessory to the
following scenes, not only by suggesting the most beautiful incident in
them, but by making all possible provision for the success of the
whole."
That his grace should have suggested the incident to which he alludes,
whatever that incident might have been, is not unlikely. The last mental
exertion of the superannuated young man, in his quarters at Lerida, in
Spain, was some scenes of a tragedy on the story of Mary queen of Scots.
Dryden dedicated Marriage à-la-Mode to Wharton's infamous relation,
Rochester, whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry,
but as the promoter of his fortune. Young concludes his address to
Wharton thus: "My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care;
which I will venture to say will be always remembered to his honour,
since he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit,
though through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears him so
sincere a duty and respect, I happen to receive the benefit of it." That
he ever had such a patron as Wharton, Young took all the pains in his
power to conceal from the world, by excluding this dedication from his
works. He should have remembered that he, at the same time, concealed
his obligation to Wharton for _the most beautiful incident_ in what is
surely not his least beautiful composition. The passage just quoted is,
in a poem afterwards addressed to Walpole, literally copied:
Be this thy partial smile from censure free!
'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.
While Young, who, in his Love of Fame, complains grievously how often
"dedications wash an Aethiop white," was painting an amiable duke of
Wharton in perishable prose, Pope was, perhaps, beginning to describe
the "scorn and wonder of his days" in lasting verse.
To the patronage of such a character, had Young studied men as much as
Pope, he would have known how little to have trusted. Young, however,
was certainly indebted to it for something material; and the duke's
regard for Young, added to his "lust of praise," procured to All Souls'
college a donation, which was not forgotten by the poet when he
dedicated the Revenge.
It will surprise you to see me cite second Atkins, case 136, Stiles
_versus_ the Attorney General, March 14; 1740, as authority for the life
of a poet. But biographers do not always find such certain guides as the
oaths of the persons whom they record. Chancellor Hardwicke was to
determine whether two annuities, granted by the duke of Wharton to
Young, were for legal considerations. One was dated the 24th of March,
1719, and accounted for his grace's bounty in a style princely and
commendable, if not legal--"considering that the publick good is
advanced by the encouragement of learning and the polite arts, and being
pleased therein with the attempts of Dr. Young, in consideration
thereof, and of the love I bear him," &c. The other was dated the 10th
of July, 1722.
Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and
refused an annuity of 100_l_. which had been offered him for life if he
would continue tutor to lord Burleigh, upon the pressing solicitations
of the duke of Wharton, and his grace's assurances of providing for him
in a much more ample manner. It also appeared, that the duke had given
him a bond for 600_l_. dated the 15th of March, 1721, in consideration
of his taking several journeys, and being at great expenses, in order to
be chosen member of the house of commons, at the duke's desire, and in
consideration of his not taking two livings of 200_l_. and 400_l_. in
the gift of All Souls' college, on his grace's promises of serving and
advancing him in the world.
Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any account.
The attempt to get into parliament was at Cirencester, where Young stood
a contested election. His grace discovered in him talents for oratory,
as well as for poetry. Nor was this judgment wrong. Young, after he took
orders, became a very popular preacher, and was much followed for the
grace and animation of his delivery. By his oratorical talents he was
once in his life, according to the Biographia, deserted. As he was
preaching in his turn at St. James's he plainly perceived it was out of
his power to command the attention of his audience. This so affected the
feelings of the preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit, and burst into
tears. But we must pursue his poetical life.
In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter addressed to their
common friend Tickell. For the secret history of the following lines, if
they contain any, it is now vain to seek:
_In joy once join'd_, in sorrow, now, for years--
Partner in grief, and brother of my tears,
Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due.
From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used to
"communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote even to the least
things."
In 1719 appeared a Paraphrase on part of the book of Job. Parker, to
whom it is dedicated, had not long, by means of the seals, been
qualified for a patron. Of this work the author's opinion may be known
from his letter to Curll: "You seem, in the collection you propose, to
have omitted what I think may claim the first place in it; I mean 'a
translation from part of Job,' printed by Mr. Tonson." The dedication,
which was only suffered to appear in Mr. Tonson's edition, while it
speaks with satisfaction of his present retirement, seems to make an
unusual struggle to escape from retirement. But every one who sings in
the dark does not sing from joy. It is addressed, in no common strain of
flattery, to a chancellor, of whom he clearly appears to have had no
kind of knowledge.
Of his satires it would not have been possible to fix the dates, without
the assistance of first editions, which, as you had occasion to observe
in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found. We must then have
referred to the poems, to discover when they were written. For these
internal notes of time we should not have referred in vain. The first
satire laments, that "Guilt's chief foe in Addison is fled." The second,
addressing himself, asks:
Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,
Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
A fool at _forty_ is a fool indeed.
The Satires were originally published separately, in folio, under the
title of the Universal Passion. These passages fix the appearance of the
first to about 1725, the time at which it came out. As Young seldom
suffered his pen to dry, after he had once dipped it in poetry, we may
conclude that he began his satires soon after he had written the
Paraphrase on Job. The last satire was certainly finished in the
beginning of the year 1726. In December, 1725, the king, in his passage
from Helvoetsluys, escaped, with great difficulty, from a storm by
landing at Rye; and the conclusion of the Satire turns the escape into a
miracle, in such an encomiastick strain of compliment, as poetry too
often seeks to pay to royalty.
From the sixth of these poems we learn,
Midst empire's charms, how Carolina's heart
Glow'd with the love of virtue and of art:
since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,
Her favour is diffus'd to that degree,
Excess of goodness! it has dawn'd on me.
Her majesty had stood godmother, and given her name, to the daughter of
the lady whom Young married in 1731; and had, perhaps, shown some
attention to lady Elizabeth's future husband.
The fifth satire, on Women, was not published till 1727; and the sixth
not till 1728.
To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one publication, he
prefixed a preface; in which he observes, that "no man can converse much
in the world, but at what he meets with he must either be insensible or
grieve, or be angry or smile. Now to smile at it, and turn it into
ridicule," he adds, "I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least,
and gives vice and folly the greatest offence. Laughing at the
misconduct of the world, will, in a great measure, ease us of any more
disagreeable passion about it. One passion is more effectually driven
out by another than by reason, whatever some teach." So wrote, and so of
course thought, the lively and witty satirist at the grave age of almost
fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote the Last Day. After all,
Swift pronounced of these satires, that they should either have been
more angry or more merry.
Is it not somewhat singular that Young preserved, without any
palliation, this preface, so bluntly decisive in favour of laughing at
the world, in the same collection of his works which contains the
mournful, angry, gloomy Night Thoughts?
At the conclusion of the preface he applies Plato's beautiful fable of
the Birth of Love to modern poetry, with the addition, "that poetry,
like love, is a little subject to blindness, which makes her mistake her
way to preferments and honours; and that she retains a dutiful
admiration of her father's family; but divides her favours, and
generally lives with her mother's relations." Poetry, it is true, did
not lead Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not something
like blindness in the flattery which he sometimes forced her, and her
sister prose, to utter? She was always, indeed, taught by him to
entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but surely Young, though
nearly related to poetry, had no connexion with her whom Plato makes the
mother of love. That he could not well complain of being related to
poverty, appears clearly from the frequent bounties which his gratitude
records, and from the wealth which he left behind him. By the Universal
Passion he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than three thousand pounds.
A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South sea. For
this loss he took the vengeance of an author. His muse makes poetical
use more than once of a South sea dream.
It is related by Mr. Spence, in his manuscript anecdotes, on the
authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his
Universal Passion, received from the duke of Grafton two thousand
pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, "two thousand
pounds for a poem!" he said it was the best bargain he ever made in his
life, for the poem was worth four thousand.
This story may be true; but it seems to have been raised from the two
answers of lord Burghley and sir Philip Sidney in Spenser's Life.
After inscribing his satires, not perhaps without the hopes of
preferment and honours, to such names as the duke of Dorset, Mr.
Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, lady Elizabeth Germaine, and sir Robert
Walpole, he returns to plain panegyrick. In 1726, he addressed a poem to
sir Robert Walpole, of which the title sufficiently explains the
intention. If Young must be acknowledged a ready celebrator, he did not
endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting one. The Instalment is
among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his _excusable
writings_. Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the
power of bestowing immortality:
Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
In deep eternity to launch thy name!
The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly
increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the poet thought he
deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his
acknowledgment, would now, perhaps, never have been known:
My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The streams of royal bounty, turn'd by thee,
Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must,
at least, be confessed he was a grateful one.
The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with Ocean, an Ode.
The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended the
increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be
"invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the
service of their country;" a plan which humanity must lament that policy
has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution.
Prefixed to the original publication were an Ode to the King, Pater
Patriae, and an Essay on Lyrick Poetry. It is but justice to confess,
that he preserved neither of them; and that, the ode itself, which in
the first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas,
in the author's own edition is reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted
passages is a Wish, that concluded the poem, which few would have
suspected Young of forming; and of which few, after having formed it,
would confess something like their shame by suppression.
It stood originally so high in the author's opinion, that he entitled
the poem, Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish. This wish consists of
thirteen stanzas. The first runs thus:
O may I _steal_
Along the _vale_
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere,
My judgment clear,
And gentle business my repose!
The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but,
altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:
Prophetic schemes,
And golden dreams,
May I, unsanguine, cast away!
Have what I _have_,
And live, not _leave_,
Enamour'd of the present day!
My hours my own!
My faults unknown!
My chief revenue in content!
Then leave one _beam_
Of honest _fame_!
And scorn the labour'd monument!
Unhurt my urn
Till that great TURN
When mighty nature's self shall die;
Time cease to glide,
With human pride,
Sunk in the ocean of eternity!
It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix
upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said,
in his Essay on Lyrick Poetry, prefixed to the poem: "For the more
_harmony_ likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me
under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome, give grace and
pleasure. Nor can I account for the _pleasure of rhyme in general_, (of
which the moderns are too fond,) but from this truth." Yet the moderns
surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by his own
confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony.
The next paragraph in his essay did not occur to him when he talked of
"that great turn" in the stanza just quoted. "But then the writer must
take care that the difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme
consist with as perfect sense and expression, as could be expected if he
was perfectly free from that shackle."
Another part of this essay will convict the following stanza of, what
every reader will discover in it, "involuntary burlesque:"
"The northern blast
The shatter'd mast,
The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock.
The breaking spout,
The _stars gone out_,
The boiling strait, the monster's shock."
But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes, if all their
productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each
particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?
If Young be not a lyrick poet, he is, at least, a critick in that sort
of poetry; and, if his lyrick poetry can be proved bad, it was first
proved so by his own criticism. This surely is candid.
Milbourne was styled, by Pope, "the fairest of criticks," only because
he exhibited his own version of Virgil to be compared with Dryden's,
which he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in
his power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair of poets
for prefixing to a lyrick composition an essay on lyrick poetry, so just
and impartial as to condemn himself.
We shall soon come to a work, before which we find, indeed, no critical
essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest
critick; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it
contain some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the
language.
Soon after the appearance of Ocean, when he was almost fifty, Young
entered into orders. In April, 1728[190] not long after he had put on
the gown, he was appointed chaplain to George the second.
The tragedy of the Brothers, which was already in rehearsal, he
immediately withdrew from the stage. The managers resigned it, with some
reluctance, to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The epilogue to the
Brothers, the only appendage to any of his three plays which he added
himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an
historical epilogue. Finding that "Guilt's dreadful close his narrow
scene denied," he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the epilogue,
and relates how Rome revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished
Perseus "for this night's deed."
Of Young's taking orders something is told by the biographer of Pope,
which places the easiness and simplicity of the poet in a singular
light. When he determined on the church, he did not address himself to
Sherlock, to Atterbury, or to Hare, for the best instructions in
theology; but to Pope, who, in a youthful frolick, advised the diligent
perusal of Thomas Aquinas. With this treasure Young retired from
interruption to an obscure place in the suburbs. His poetical guide to
godliness hearing nothing of him during half a year, and apprehending he
might have carried the jest too far, sought after him, and found him
just in time to prevent what Ruffhead calls "an irretrievable
derangement."
That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet the
surest guide to his new profession, left him little doubt whether poetry
was the surest path to its honours and preferments. Not long, indeed,
after he took orders, he published, in prose, 1728, a true Estimate of
Human Life, dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin quotations with which
it abounds, to the queen; and a sermon preached before the house of
commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of king Charles, entitled, an Apology
for Princes, or the Reverence due to Government. But the Second
Discourse, the counterpart of his Estimate, without which it cannot be
called a _true_ Estimate, though, in 1728, it was announced as "soon to
be published," never appeared; and his old friends the muses were not
forgotten. In 1730 he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world,
Imperium Pelagi, a naval lyrick, written in imitation of Pindar's
Spirit, occasioned by his majesty's return from Hanover, September,
1729, and the succeeding peace. It is inscribed to the duke of Chandos.
In the preface we are told, that the ode is the most spirited kind of
poetry, and that the Pindarick is the most spirited kind of ode. "This I
speak," he adds, "with sufficient candour, at my own very great peril.
But truth has an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to
suffer by it." Behold, again, the fairest of poets. Young's Imperium
Pelagi was ridiculed in Fielding's Tom Thumb; but let us not forget that
it was one of his pieces which the author of the Night Thoughts
deliberately refused to own.
Not long after this Pindarick attempt, he published two epistles to
Pope, concerning the Authors of the Age, 1730. Of these poems, one
occasion seems to have been an apprehension lest, from the liveliness of
his satires, he should not be deemed sufficiently serious for promotion
in the church.
In July, 1730, he was presented, by his college, to the rectory of
Welwyn, in Hertfordshire. In May, 1731, he married lady Elizabeth Lee,
daughter of the earl of Lichfield, and widow of colonel Lee. His
connexion with this lady arose from his father's acquaintance, already
mentioned, with lady Anne Wharton, who was coheiress of sir Henry Lee,
of Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. Poetry had lately been taught by Addison to
aspire to the arms of nobility, though not with extraordinary happiness.
We may naturally conclude, that Young now gave himself up, in some
measure, to the comforts of his new connexion, and to the expectations
of that preferment, which he thought due to his poetical talents, or, at
least, to the manner in which they had so frequently been exerted.
The next production of his muse was the Sea-piece, in two odes.
Young enjoys the credit of what is called an Extempore Epigram on
Voltaire; who, when he was in England, ridiculed, in the company of the
jealous English poet, Milton's allegory of Sin and Death:
You are so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin.
From the following passage, in the poetical dedication of his Sea-piece
to Voltaire, it seems, that this extemporaneous reproof, if it must be
extemporaneous (for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved
any reproof,) was something longer than a distich, and something more
gentle than the distich just quoted:
No stranger, sir, though born in foreign climes.
On _Dorset_ downs, when Milton's page
With Sin and Death provok'd thy rage,
Thy rage provok'd, who sooth'd with _gentle_ rhymes?
By Dorset downs, he probably meant Mr. Dodington's seat. In Pitt's poems
is an Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, on the
Review at Sarum, 1722.
While with your Dodington retir'd you sit,
Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit, &c.
Thomson in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat
of the muses,
Where, in the secret bow'r and winding walk,
For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.
The praises Thompson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the
second
Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse,
With British freedom sing the British song,
added to Thomson's example and success, might, perhaps, induce Young, as
we shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.
In 1734 he published the Foreign Address, or the best Argument for
Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the Posture of Affairs.
Written in the character of a sailor. It is not to be found in the
author's four volumes.
He now appears to have given up all hopes of overtaking Pindar, and,
perhaps, at last resolved to turn his ambition to some original species
of poetry. This poem concludes with a formal farewell to Ode, which few
of Young's readers will regret:
My shell, which Clio gave, which _kings applaud_,
Which Europe's bleeding genius call'd abroad,
Adieu!
In a species of poetry altogether his own, he next tried his skill, and
succeeded.
Of his wife, he was deprived in 1741. Lady Elizabeth had lost, after her
marriage with Young, an amiable daughter, by her former husband, just
after she was married to Mr. Temple, son of lord Palmerston. Mr. Temple
did not long remain after his wife, though he was married a second time
to a daughter of sir John Barnard, whose son is the present peer. Mr.
and Mrs. Temple have generally been considered as Philander and
Narcissa. From the great friendship which constantly subsisted between
Mr. Temple and Young, as well as from other circumstances, it is
probable that the poet had both him and Mrs. Temple in view for these
characters; though, at the same time, some passages respecting Philander
do not appear to suit either Mr. Temple or any other person with whom
Young was known to be connected or acquainted, while all the
circumstances relating to Narcissa have been constantly found applicable
to Young's daughter-in-law.
At what short intervals the poet tells us he was wounded by the deaths
of the three persons particularly lamented, none that has read the Night
Thoughts (and who has not read them?) needs to be informed.
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn.
Yet how is it possible that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and lady Elizabeth Young
could be these three victims, over whom Young has hitherto been pitied
for having to pour the Midnight Sorrows of his religious poetry; Mrs.
Temple died in 1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards, in 1740; and the
poet's wife seven months after Mr. Temple, in 1741. How could the
insatiate archer thrice slay his peace, in these three persons, "ere
thrice the moon had fill'd her horn?"
But, in the short preface to the Complaint, he seriously tells us, "that
the occasion of this poem was real, not fictitious; and that the facts
mentioned did naturally pour these moral reflections on the thought of
the writer." It is probable, therefore, that in these three
contradictory lines, the poet complains more than the father-in-law, the
friend, or the widower.
Whatever names belong to these facts, or, if the names be those
generally supposed, whatever heightening a poet's sorrow may have given
the facts; to the sorrow Young felt from them, religion and morality are
indebted for the Night Thoughts. There is a pleasure sure in sadness
which mourners only know!
Of these poems, the two or three first have been perused, perhaps more
eagerly and more frequently than the rest. When he got as far as the
fourth or fifth, his original motive for taking up the pen was answered;
his grief was naturally either diminished or exhausted. We still find
the same pious poet; but we hear less of Philander and Narcissa, and
less of the mourner whom he loved to pity.
Mrs. Temple died of a consumption at Lyons, in her way to Nice, the year
after her marriage; that is, when poetry relates the fact, "in her
bridal hour." It is more than poetically true, that Young accompanied
her to the Continent:
I flew, I snatch'd her from the rigid north, And bore her nearer to the
sun.
But in vain. Her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in
such animated colours in Night the Third. After her death, the remainder
of the party passed the ensuing winter at Nice.
The poet seems, perhaps, in these compositions, to dwell with more
melancholy on the death of Philander and Narcissa, than of his wife. But
it is only for this reason. He who runs and reads may remember, that in
the Night Thoughts Philander and Narcissa are often mentioned and often
lamented. To recollect lamentations over the author's wife, the memory
must have been charged with distinct passages. This lady brought him one
child, Frederick, now living, to whom the prince of Wales was
godfather.
That domestick grief is, in the first instance, to be thanked for these
ornaments to our language, it is impossible to deny. Nor would it be
common hardiness to contend, that worldly discontent had no hand in
these joint productions of poetry and piety. Yet am I by no means sure
that, at any rate, we should not have had something of the same colour
from Young's pencil, notwithstanding the liveliness of his satires. In
so long a life, causes for discontent and occasions for grief must have
occurred. It is not clear to me that his muse was not sitting upon the
watch for the first which happened. Night thoughts were not uncommon to
her, even when first she visited the poet, and at a time when he himself
was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess. In his Last Day,
almost his earliest poem, he calls her the Melancholy Maid,
Whom dismal scenes delight,
Frequent at tombs and in the realms of night.
In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he
says--
Oh! permit the gloom of solemn night
To sacred thought may forcibly invite.
Oh! how divine to tread the milky way,
To the bright palace of eternal day!
When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is said by Spence to have sent
him a human skull, with a candle in it, as a lamp; and the poet is
reported to have used it.
What he calls the _true_ Estimate of Human Life, which has already been
mentioned, exhibits only the wrong side of the tapestry; and, being
asked why he did not show the right, he is said to have replied that he
could not. By others it has been told me that this was finished; but
that, before there existed any copy, it was torn in pieces by a lady's
monkey.
Still, is it altogether fair to dress up the poet for the man, and to
bring the gloominess of the Night Thoughts to prove the gloominess of
Young, and to show that his genius, like the genius of Swift, was, in
some measure, the sullen inspiration of discontent.
From them who answer in the affirmative it should not be concealed,
that, though "Invisibilia non decipiunt" appeared upon a deception in
Young's grounds, and "Ambulantes in horto audiêrunt vocem Dei" on a
building in his garden, his parish was indebted to the good humour of
the author of the Night Thoughts for an assembly and a bowling-green.
Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous "De mortuis nil
nisi bonum" always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than
of manly reason. He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead,
who, if they cannot defend themselves, are, at least, ignorant of his
abuse, will not hesitate, by the most wanton calumny, to destroy the
quiet, the reputation, the fortune, of the living. Yet censure is not
heard beneath the tomb, any more than praise. "De mortuis nil nisi
verum--De vivis nil nisi bonum," would approach much nearer to good
sense. After all, the few handfuls of remaining dust which once composed
the body of the author of the Night Thoughts feel not much concern
whether Young pass now for a man of sorrow, or for a "fellow of infinite
jest." To this favour must come the whole family of Yorick. His immortal
part, wherever that now dwells, is still less solicitous on this head.
But to a son of worth and sensibility it is of some little consequence
whether contemporaries believe, and posterity be taught to believe, that
his debauched and reprobate life cast a Stygian gloom over the evening
of his father's days, saved him the trouble of feigning a character
completely detestable, and succeeded, at last, in bringing his "grey
hairs with sorrow to the grave."
The humanity of the world, little satisfied with inventing perhaps a
melancholy disposition for the father, proceeds next to invent an
argument in support of their invention, and chooses that Lorenzo should
be Young's own son. The Biographia and every account of Young pretty
roundly assert this to be the fact; of the absolute impossibility of
which the Biographia itself, in particular dates, contains undeniable
evidence. Readers I know there are of a strange turn of mind, who will
hereafter peruse the Night Thoughts with less satisfaction; who will
wish they had still been deceived; who will quarrel with me for
discovering that no such character as their Lorenzo ever yet disgraced
human nature, or broke a father's heart. Yet would these admirers of the
sublime and terrible be offended, should you set them down for cruel and
for savage.
Of this report, inhuman to the surviving son, if it be true, in
proportion as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to
find the proof? Perhaps it is clear from the poems.
From the first line to the last of the Night Thoughts no one expression
can be discovered which betrays any thing like the father. In the Second
Night I find an expression which betrays something else; that Lorenzo
was his friend; one, it is possible, of his former companions; one of
the duke of Wharton's set. The poet styles him "gay friend;" an
appellation not very natural from a pious incensed father to such a
being as he paints Lorenzo, and that being his son.
But let us see how he has sketched this dreadful portrait, from the
sight of some of whose features the artist himself must have turned away
with horrour. A subject more shocking, if his only child really sat to
him, than the crucifixion of Michael Angelo; upon the horrid story told
of which, Young composed a short poem of fourteen lines in the early
part of his life, which he did not think deserved to be republished.
In the First Night, the address to the poet's supposed son is,
Lorenzo, fortune makes her court to thee.
In the Fifth Night;
And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime
Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?
Is this a picture of the son of the rector of Welwyn?
Eighth Night;
In foreign realms (for thou hast travell'd far;)
which even now does not apply to his son.
In Night Five;
So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate;
Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes;
And dy'd to give him, orphan'd in his birth!
At the beginning of the Fifth Night we find;
Lorenzo! to recriminate is just;
I grant the man is vain who writes for praise.
But, to cut short all inquiry; if any one of these passages, if any
passage in the poems, be applicable, my friend shall pass for Lorenzo.
The son of the author of the Night Thoughts was not old enough, when
they were written, to recriminate, or to be a father. The Night Thoughts
were begun immediately after the mournful event of 1741. The first
Nights appear, in the books of the company of Stationers, as the
property of Robert Dodsley, in 1742. The preface to Night Seven is dated
July 7th, 1744. The marriage, in consequence of which the supposed
Lorenzo was born, happened in May, 1731. Young's child was not born till
June, 1733. In 1741 this Lorenzo, this finished infidel, this father to
whose education vice had for some years put the last hand, was only
eight years old.
An anecdote of this cruel sort, so open to contradiction, so impossible
to be true, who could propagate? Thus easily are blasted the reputations
of the living and of the dead.
Who, then, was Lorenzo? exclaim the readers I have mentioned. If we
cannot be sure that he was his son, which would have been finely
terrible, was he not his nephew, his cousin?
These are questions which I do not pretend to answer. For the sake of
human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the creation of the
poet's fancy: like the Quintus of Anti-Lucretius, "quo nomine," says
Polignac, "quemvis Atheum intellige." That this was the case, many
expressions in the Night Thoughts would seem to prove, did not a
passage in Night Eight appear to show that he had something in his eye
for the groundwork, at least, of the painting. Lovelace or Lorenzo may
be feigned characters; but a writer does not feign a name of which he
only gives the initial letter:
Tell not Calista. She will laugh thee dead,
Or send thee to her hermitage with L----.
The Biographia, not satisfied with pointing out the son of Young, in
that son's lifetime, as his father's Lorenzo, travels out of its way
into the history of the son, and tells of his having been forbidden his
college at Oxford, for misbehaviour. How such anecdotes, were they true,
tend to illustrate the life of Young, it is not easy to discover. Was
the son of the author of the Night Thoughts, indeed, forbidden his
college for a time, at one of the universities? The author of Paradise
Lost is by some supposed to have been disgracefully ejected from the
other. From juvenile follies who is free? But, whatever the Biographia
chooses to relate, the son of Young experienced no dismission from his
college, either lasting or temporary.
Yet, were nature to indulge him with a second youth, and to leave him at
the same time the experience of that which is past, he would probably
spend it differently--who would not?--he would certainly be the occasion
of less uneasiness to his father. But, from the same experience, he
would as certainly, in the same case, be treated differently by his
father.
Young was a poet: poets, with reverence be it spoken, do not make the
best parents. Fancy and imagination seldom deign to stoop from their
heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low level of common duties.
Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight beyond the ken of
mortals, and descend not to earth but when compelled by necessity. The
prose of ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets.
He who is connected with the author of the Night Thoughts, only by
veneration for the poet and the christian, may be allowed to observe,
that Young is one of those, concerning whom, as you remark in your
account of Addison, it is proper rather to say "nothing that is false,
than all that is true."
But the son of Young would almost sooner, I know, pass for a Lorenzo,
than see himself vindicated, at the expense of his father's memory, from
follies which, if it may be thought blamable in a boy to have committed
them, it is surely praiseworthy in a man to lament, and certainly not
only unnecessary but cruel in a biographer to record.
Of the Night Thoughts, notwithstanding their author's professed
retirement, all are inscribed to great or to growing names. He had not
yet weaned himself from earls and dukes, from speakers of the house of
commons, lords commissioners of the treasury, and chancellors of the
exchequer.
In Night Eight the politician plainly betrays himself:
Think no post needful that demands a knave:
When late our civil helm was shifting hands,
So P---- thought; think better if you can.
Yet it must be confessed, that at the conclusion of Night Nine, weary,
perhaps, of courting earthly patrons, he tells his soul,
Henceforth
Thy _patron_ he, whose diadem has dropt
Yon gems of heaven; eternity thy prize;
And leave the racers of the world their own.
The Fourth Night was addressed, by a "much-indebted muse," to the
honourable Mr. Yorke, now lord Hardwicke; who meant to have laid the
muse under still greater obligation, by the living of Shenfield in
Essex, if it had become vacant.
The First Night concludes with this passage:
Dark, though not blind, like thee, Meonides:
Or Milton, thee. Ah! could I reach your strain;
Or his who made Meonides our own!
Man too he sung. Immortal man I sing.
Oh! had he prest his theme, pursu'd the track
Which opens out of darkness into day!
Oh! had he mounted on his wing of fire,
Soar'd, where I sink, and sung immortal man--
How had it blest mankind, and rescu'd me!
To the author of these lines was dedicated, in 1756, the first volume of
an Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, which attempted, whether
justly or not, to pluck from Pope his "wing of fire," and to reduce him
to a rank at least one degree lower than the first class of English
poets. If Young accepted and approved the dedication, he countenanced
this attack upon the fame of him whom he invokes as his muse.
Part of "paper-sparing" Pope's third book of the Odyssey, deposited in
the Museum, is written upon the back of a letter signed "E. Young,"
which is clearly the handwriting of our Young. The letter, dated only
May the 2nd, seems obscure; but there can be little doubt that the
friendship he requests was a literary one, and that he had the highest
literary opinion of Pope. The request was a prologue, I am told.
"May the 2nd.
"DEAR SIR,--Having been often from home, I know not if you have
done me the favour of calling on me. But, be that as it will, I
much want that instance of your friendship I mentioned in my last;
a friendship I am very sensible I can receive from no one but
yourself. I should not urge this thing so much but for very
particular reasons; nor can you be at a loss to conceive how a
'trifle of this nature' may be of serious moment to me; and while I
am in hopes of the great advantage of your advice about it, I shall
not be so absurd as to make any further step without it. I know you
are much engaged, and only hope to hear of you at your entire
leisure.
"I am, sir, your most faithful,
"and obedient servant,
"E. YOUNG."
Nay, even after Pope's death, he says, in Night Seven,
Pope, who couldst make immortals, art thou dead?
Either the Essay, then, was dedicated to a patron, who disapproved its
doctrine, which I have been told by the author was not the case; or
Young appears, in his old age, to have bartered for a dedication, an
opinion entertained of his friend through all that part of life when he
must have been best able to form opinions.
From this account of Young, two or three short passages, which stand
almost together in Night Four, should not be excluded. They afford a
picture by his own hand, from the study of which my readers may choose
to form their own opinion of the features of his mind, and the
complexion of his life:
Ah me! the dire effect
Of loit'ring here, of death defrauded long;
Of old so gracious (and let that suffice)
_My very master knows me not_.
I've been so long remember'd, I'm forgot.
When in his courtiers' ears I pour my plaint,
They drink it as the nectar of the great;
And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow.
Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy,
Court-favour, yet untaken, I _besiege_.
If this song lives, posterity shall know
One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred,
Who thought e'en gold might come a day too late;
Nor on his subtle deathbed plann'd his scheme
For future vacancies in church or state.
Deduct from the writer's age "twice told the period spent on stubborn
Troy," and you will still leave him more than forty when he sat down to
the miserable siege of court-favour. He has before told us,
A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
After all, the siege seems to have been raised only in consequence of
what the General thought his "deathbed."
By these extraordinary poems, written after he was sixty, of which I
have been led to say so much, I hope, by the wish of doing justice to
the living and the dead, it was the desire of Young to be principally
known. He entitled the four volumes which he published himself, the
Works of the Author of the Night Thoughts. While it is remembered that
from these he excluded many of his writings, let it not be forgotten
that the rejected pieces contained nothing prejudicial to the cause of
virtue, or of religion. Were every thing that Young ever wrote to be
published, he would only appear, perhaps, in a less respectable light as
a poet, and more despicable as a dedicator; he would not pass for a
worse christian, or for a worse man. This enviable praise is due to
Young. Can it be claimed by every writer? His dedications, after all, he
had, perhaps, no right to suppress. They all, I believe, speak, not a
little to the credit of his gratitude, of favours received, and I know
not whether the author, who has once solemnly printed an acknowledgment
of a favour, should not always print it.
Is it to the credit or to the discredit of Young, as a poet, that of his
Night Thoughts the French are particularly fond?
Of the Epitaph on lord Aubrey Beauclerk, dated 1740, all I know is, that
I find it in the late body of English poetry, and that I am sorry to
find it there.
Notwithstanding the farewell which he seemed to have taken in the Night
Thoughts of every thing which bore the least resemblance to ambition, he
dipped again in politicks. In 1745 he wrote Reflections on the publick
Situation of the Kingdom, addressed to the duke of Newcastle; indignant,
as it appears, to behold
A pope-bred princeling crawl ashore,
And whistle cut-throats, with those swords that scrap'd
Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance,
To cut his passage to the British throne.
This political poem might be called a Night Thought. Indeed it was
originally printed as the conclusion of the Night Thoughts, though he
did not gather it with his other works.
Prefixed to the second edition of Howe's Devout Meditations, is a
letter from Young, dated January 19, 1752, addressed to Archibald
Macaulay, esq. thanking him for the book, which he says "he shall never
lay far out of his reach; for a greater demonstration of a sound head
and a sincere heart he never saw."
In 1753, when the Brothers had lain by him above thirty years, it
appeared upon the stage. If any part of his fortune had been acquired by
servility of adulation, he now determined to deduct from it no
inconsiderable sum, as a gift to the society for the propagation of the
Gospel. To this sum he hoped the profits of the Brothers would amount.
In his calculation he was deceived; but by the bad success of his play
the society was not a loser. The author made up the sum he originally
intended, which was a thousand pounds, from his own pocket.
The next performance which he printed was a prose publication, entitled,
the Centaur not fabulous, in six Letters to a Friend on the Life in
Vogue. The conclusion is dated November 29, 1754. In the third letter is
described the deathbed of the "gay, young, noble, ingenious,
accomplished, and most wretched Altamont." His last words were, "my
principles have poisoned my friend, my extravagance has beggared my boy,
my unkindness has murdered my wife!" Either Altamont and Lorenzo were
the twin production of fancy, or Young was unlucky enough to know two
characters who bore no little resemblance to each other in perfection of
wickedness. Report has been accustomed to call Altamont lord Euston.
The Old Man's Relapse, occasioned by an epistle to Walpole, if written
by Young, which I much doubt, must have been written very late in life.
It has been seen, I am told, in a miscellany published thirty years
before his death. In 1758, he exhibited the Old Man's Relapse, in more
than words, by again becoming a dedicator, and publishing a sermon
addressed to the king.
The lively letter in prose, on Original Composition, addressed to
Richardson, the author of Clarissa, appeared in 1759. "Though he
despairs of breaking through the frozen obstructions of age and care's
incumbent cloud, into that flow of thought and brightness of expression,
which subjects so polite require;" yet is it more like the production of
untamed, unbridled youth, than of jaded fourscore. Some sevenfold
volumes put him in mind of Ovid's sevenfold channels of the Nile at the
conflagration:
----ostia septem
Pulverulenta vocant, septem sine flumine valles.
Such leaden labours are like Lycurgus's iron money, which was so much
less in value than in bulk, that it required barns for strong boxes, and
a yoke of oxen to draw five hundred pounds.
If there is a famine of invention in the land, we must travel, he says,
like Joseph's brethren, far for food; we must visit the remote and rich
ancients. But an inventive genius may safely stay at home: that, like
the widow's cruise, is divinely replenished from within, and affords us
a miraculous delight. He asks why it should seem altogether impossible,
that heaven's latest editions of the human mind may be the most correct
and fair? And Jonson, he tells us, was very learned, as Sampson was very
strong, to his own hurt. Blind to the nature of tragedy, he pulled down
all antiquity on his head, and buried himself under it.
Is this "care's incumbent cloud," or "the frozen obstructions of age?"
In this letter Pope is severely censured for his "fall from Homer's
numbers, free as air, lofty and harmonious as the spheres, into childish
shackles and tinkling sounds; for putting Achilles into petticoats a
second time:" but we are told that the dying swan talked over an epick
plan with Young a few weeks before his decease.
Young's chief inducement to write this letter was, as he confesses, that
he might erect a monumental marble to the memory of an old friend. He,
who employed his pious pen, for almost the last time, in thus doing
justice to the exemplary deathbed of Addison, might, probably, at the
close of his own life, afford no unuseful lesson for the deaths of
others.
In the postscript, he writes to Richardson, that he will see in his next
how far Addison is an original. But no other letter appears.
The few lines which stand in the last edition, as "sent by lord Melcombe
to Dr. Young, not long before his lordship's death," were, indeed, so
sent, but were only an introduction to what was there meant by "the
muse's latest spark." The poem is necessary, whatever may be its merit,
since the preface to it is already printed. Lord Melcombe called his
Tusculum, La Trappe.
"Love thy country, wish it well,
Not with too intense a care;
'Tis enough that, when it fell,
Thou its ruin didst not share.
Envy's censure, flatt'ry's praise,
With unmov'd indiff'rence view;
Learn to tread life's dang'rous maze,
With unerring virtue's clew.
Void of strong desire and fear,
Life's wide ocean trust no more;
Strive thy little bark to steer
With the tide, but near the shore.
Thus prepar'd, thy shorten'd sail
Shall, whene'er the winds increase,
Seizing each propitious gale.
Waft thee to the port of peace.
Keep thy conscience from offence,
And tempestuous passions free;
So, when thou art call'd from hence,
Easy shall thy passage be;
Easy shall thy passage be,
Cheerful thy allotted stay,
Short th' account 'twixt God and thee:
Hope shall meet thee on the way:
Truth shall lead thee to the gate,
Mercy's self shall let thee in,
Where its never-changing state
Full perfection shall begin."
The poem was accompanied by a letter.
"La Trappe, the 27th of Oct. 1761.
"DEAR SIR,--You seemed to like the ode I sent you for your
amusement: I now send it you as a present. If you please to accept
of it, and are willing that our friendship should be known when we
are gone, you will be pleased to leave this among those of your own
papers that may possibly see the light by a posthumous publication.
God send us health while we stay, and an easy journey!
"My dear Dr. Young,
"yours, most cordially,
"MELCOMBE."
In 1762, a short time before his death, Young published Resignation.
Notwithstanding the manner in which it was really forced from him by the
world, criticism has treated it with no common severity. If it shall be
thought not to deserve the highest praise, on the other side of
fourscore, by whom, except by Newton and by Waller, has praise been
merited?
To Mrs. Montagu, the famous champion of Shakespeare, I am indebted for
the history of Resignation. Observing that Mrs. Boscawen, in the midst
of her grief for the loss of the admiral, derived consolation from the
perusal of the Night Thoughts, Mrs. Montagu proposed a visit to the
author. From conversing with Young, Mrs. Boscawen derived still further
consolation; and to that visit she and the world were indebted for this
poem. It compliments Mrs. Montagu in the following lines:
Yet write I must. A lady sues:
How shameful her request!
My brain in labour with dull rhyme,
Hers teeming with the best!
And again;
A friend you have, and I the same,
Whose prudent, soft address
Will bring to life those healing thoughts
Which dy'd in your distress.
That friend, the spirit of thy theme
Extracting for your ease,
Will leave to me the dreg, in thoughts
Too common; such as these.
By the same lady I am enabled to say, in her own words, that Young's
unbounded genius appeared to greater advantage in the companion than
even in the author; that the christian was in him a character still more
inspired, more enraptured, more sublime, than the poet; and that, in his
ordinary conversation,
Letting down the golden chain from high,
He drew his audience upward to the sky.
Notwithstanding Young had said, in his Conjectures on original
Composition, that "blank verse is verse unfallen, uncurst; verse
reclaimed, reinthroned in the true language of the gods,"
notwithstanding he administered consolation to his own grief in this
immortal language, Mrs. Boscawen was comforted in rhyme.
While the poet and the Christian were applying this comfort, Young had
himself occasion for comfort, in consequence of the sudden death of
Richardson, who was printing the former part of the poem. Of
Richardson's death he says,
When heav'n would kindly set us free,
And earth's enchantment end;
It takes the most effectual means,
And robs us of a friend.
To Resignation was prefixed an apology for its appearance; to which more
credit is due than to the generality of such apologies, from Young's
unusual anxiety that no more productions of his old age should disgrace
his former fame. In his will, dated February, 1760, he desires of his
executors, "in a particular manner," that all his manuscript books and
writings whatever might be burned, except his book of accounts.
In September, 1764, he added a kind of codicil, wherein he made it his
dying intreaty to his house-keeper, to whom he left 100_l_. "that all
his manuscripts might be destroyed, as soon as he was dead, which would
greatly oblige her deceased _friend_."
It may teach mankind the uncertainty of worldly friendships, to know
that Young, either by surviving those he loved, or by outliving their
affections, could only recollect the names of two _friends_, his
house-keeper and a hatter, to mention in his will; and it may serve to
repress that testamentary pride, which too often seeks for sounding
names and titles, to be informed, that the author of the Night Thoughts
did not blush to leave a legacy to "his friend Henry Stevens, a hatter
at the Temple-gate." Of these two remaining friends, one went before
Young. But, at eighty-four, "where," as he asks in the Centaur, "is that
world into which we were born?"
The same humility which marked a hatter and a house-keeper for the
friends of the author of the Night Thoughts had before bestowed the same
title on his footman, in an epitaph in his Church-yard upon James
Barker, dated 1749; which I am glad to find in the late collection of
his works.
Young and his house-keeper were ridiculed, with more ill-nature than
wit, in a kind of novel published by Kidgell, in 1755, called the Card,
under the names of Dr. Elwes and Mrs. Fusby.
In April, 1765, at an age to which few attain, a period was put to the
life of Young.
He had performed no duty for three or four years, but he retained his
intellects to the last.
Much is told in the Biographia, which I know not to have been true, of
the manner of his burial; of the master and children of a
charity-school, which he founded in his parish, who neglected to attend
their benefactor's corpse; and of a bell which was not caused to toll so
often as upon those occasions bells usually toll. Had that humanity,
which is here lavished upon things of little consequence either to the
living or to the dead, been shown in its proper place to the living, I
should have had less to say about Lorenzo. They who lament that these
misfortunes happened to Young, forget the praise he bestows upon
Socrates, in the preface to Night Seven, for resenting his friend's
request about his funeral.
During some part of his life Young was abroad, but I have not been able
to learn any particulars.
In his seventh Satire he says,
When, after battle, I the field have SEEN
Spread o'er with ghastly shapes which once were men.
It is known also, that from this, or from some other field, he once
wandered into the enemy's camp, with a classick in his hand, which he
was reading intently; and had some difficulty to prove that he was only
an absent poet, and not a spy.
The curious reader of Young's life will naturally inquire to what it was
owing, that though he lived almost forty years after he took orders,
which included one whole reign, uncommonly long, and part of another, he
was never thought worthy of the least preferment. The author of the
Night Thoughts ended his days upon a living which came to him from his
college, without any favour, and to which he probably had an eye when he
determined on the church. To satisfy curiosity of this kind is, at this
distance of time, far from easy. The parties themselves know not often,
at the instant, why they are neglected, or why they are preferred. The
neglect of Young is by some ascribed to his having attached himself to
the prince of Wales, and to his having preached an offensive sermon at
St. James's. It has been told me, that he had two hundred a year in the
late reign, by the patronage of Walpole; and that, whenever any one
reminded the king of Young, the only answer was, "he has a pension."
All the light thrown on this inquiry, by the following letter from
Seeker, only serves to show at what a late period of life the author of
the Night Thoughts solicited preferment.
"Deanery of St. Paul's, July 8, 1758.
"GOOD DR. YOUNG,--I have long wondered, that more suitable notice
of your great merit hath not been taken by persons in power. But
how to remedy the omission I see not. No encouragement hath ever
been given me to mention things of this nature to his majesty. And
therefore, in all likelihood, the only consequence of doing it
would be weakening the little influence which else I may possibly
have on some other occasions. Your fortune and your reputation set
you above the need of advancement; and your sentiments, above that
concern for it, on your own account, which, on that of the publick,
is sincerely felt by
"Your loving brother,
"THO. CANT."
At last, at the age of fourscore, he was appointed, in 1761, clerk of
the closet to the princess dowager.
One obstacle must have stood not a little in the way of that preferment,
after which his whole life seems to have panted. Though he took orders,
he never entirely shook off politicks. He was always the lion of his
master Milton, "pawing to get free his hinder parts." By this conduct,
if he gained some friends, he made many enemies.
Again: Young was a poet; and again, with reverence be it spoken, poets
by profession, do not always make the best clergymen. If the author of
the Night Thoughts composed many sermons, he did not oblige the publick
with many.
Besides, in the latter part of life, Young was fond of holding himself
out for a man retired from the world. But he seemed to have forgotten
that the same verse which contains "oblitus meorum," contains also
"obliviscendus et illis." The brittle chain of worldly friendship and
patronage is broken as effectually, when one goes beyond the length of
it, as when the other does. To the vessel which is sailing from the
shore, it only appears that the shore also recedes; in life it is truly
thus. He who retires from the world will find himself, in reality,
deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world. The publick is not to be
treated as the coxcomb treats his mistress; to be threatened with
desertion, in order to increase fondness.
Young seems to have been taken at his word. Notwithstanding his frequent
complaints of being neglected, no hand was reached out to pull him from
that retirement of which he declared himself enamoured. Alexander
assigned no palace for the residence of Diogenes, who boasted his surly
satisfaction with his tub.
Of the domestick manners and petty habits of the author of the Night
Thoughts, I hoped to have given you an account from the best authority:
but who shall dare to say, to-morrow I will be wise or virtuous, or
to-morrow I will do a particular thing? Upon inquiring for his
house-keeper, I learned that she was buried two days before I reached
the town of her abode.
In a letter from Tscharner, a noble foreigner, to count Haller,
Tscharner says, he has lately spent four days with Young at Welwyn,
where the author tastes all the ease and pleasure mankind can desire.
"Every thing about him shows the man, each individual being placed by
rule. All is neat without art. He is very pleasant in conversation, and
extremely polite."
This, and more, may possibly be true; but Tscharner's was a first visit,
a visit of curiosity and admiration, and a visit which the author
expected.
Of Edward Young, an anecdote which wanders among readers is not true,
that he was Fielding's Parson Adams. The original of that famous
painting was William Young, who was a clergyman. He supported an
uncomfortable existence by translating for the booksellers from Greek;
and, if he did not seem to be his own friend, was, at least, no man's
enemy. Yet the facility with which this report has gained belief in the
world argues, were it not sufficiently known, that the author of the
Night Thoughts bore some resemblance to Adams.
The attention which Young bestowed upon the perusal of books, is not
unworthy imitation. When any passage pleased him, he appears to have
folded down the leaf. On these passages he bestowed a second reading.
But the labours of man are too frequently vain. Before he returned to
much of what he had once approved, he died. Many of his books, which I
have seen, are by those notes of approbation so swelled beyond their
real bulk, that they will hardly shut.
What though we wade in wealth, or soar in fame!
Earth's highest station ends in, _Here he lies!_
And _dust to dust_ concludes her noblest song!
The author of these lines is not without his _hic jacet._
By the good sense of his son, it contains none of that praise which no
marble can make the bad or the foolish merit; which, without the
direction of a stone or a turf, will find its way, sooner or later, to
the deserving.
M. S.
Optimi parentis
EDVARDI YOUNG, LL.D.
hujus ecclesiae rect.
Et Elizabethae
faem. praenob.
Conjugis ejus amantissimae,
pio et gratissimo animo
hoc marmor posuit
F. Y.
Filius superstes.
Is it not strange that the author of the Night Thoughts has inscribed no
monument to the memory of his lamented wife? Yet, what marble will
endure as long as the poems?
Such, my good friend, is the account which I have been able to collect
of the great Young. That it may be long before any thing like what I
have just transcribed be necessary for you, is the sincere wish of,
Dear sir,
Your greatly obliged friend,
HERBERT CROFT, Jun.
Lincoln's Inn, Sept. 1780.
P.S. This account of Young was seen by you in manuscript, you know, sir;
and, though I could not prevail on you to make any alteration, you
insisted on striking out one passage, because it said, that, if I did
not wish you to live long, for your sake, I did for the sake of myself
and of the world. But this postscript you will not see before the
printing of it; and I will say here, in spite of you, how I feel myself
honoured and bettered by your friendship: and that, if I do credit to
the church, after which I always longed, and for which I am now going to
give in exchange the bar, though not at so late a period of life as
Young took orders, it will be owing, in no small measure, to my having
had the happiness of calling the author of the Rambler my friend[191].
H.C.
Oxford, Oct. 1782.
Of Young's poems it is difficult to give any general character; for he
has no uniformity of manner: one of his pieces has no great resemblance
to another. He began to write early, and continued long; and at
different times had different modes of poetical excellence in view. His
numbers are sometimes smooth, and sometimes rugged; his style is
sometimes concatenated, and sometimes abrupt; sometimes diffusive, and
sometimes concise. His plan seems to have started in his mind at the
present moment; and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes
adverse, and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment.
He was not one of those writers whom experience improves, and who,
observing their own faults, become gradually correct. His poem on the
Last Day, his first great performance, has an equability and propriety,
which he afterwards either never endeavoured or never attained. Many
paragraphs are noble, and few are mean, yet the whole is languid: the
plan is too much extended, and a succession of images divides and
weakens the general conception; but the great reason why the reader is
disappointed is, that the thought of the Last Day makes every man more
than poetical, by spreading over his mind a general obscurity of sacred
horrour, that oppresses distinction, and disdains expression.
His story of Jane Grey was never popular. It is written with elegance
enough; but Jane is too heroick to be pitied.
The Universal Passion is, indeed, a very great performance. It is said
to be a series of epigrams; but, if it be, it is what the author
intended; his endeavour was at the production of striking distichs and
pointed sentences; and his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment,
and his points the sharpness of resistless truth.
His characters are often selected with discernment, and drawn with
nicety; his illustrations are often happy, and his reflections often
just. His species of satire is between those of Horace and Juvenal; and
he has the gaiety of Horace without his laxity of numbers, and the
morality of Juvenal, with greater variation of images. He plays, indeed,
only on the surface of life; he never penetrates the recesses of the
mind, and, therefore, the whole power of his poetry is exhausted by a
single perusal; his conceits please only when they surprise.
To translate he never condescended, unless his Paraphrase on Job may be
considered as a version; in which he has not, I think, been
unsuccessful; he, indeed, favoured himself, by choosing those parts
which most easily admit the ornaments of English poetry.
He had least success in his lyrick attempts, in which he seems to have
been under some malignant influence: he is always labouring to be great,
and at last is only turgid.
In his Night Thoughts he has exhibited a very wide display of original
poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a
wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers
of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which
blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The
wild diffusion of the sentiments, and the digressive sallies of
imagination, would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to
rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness, but copiousness;
particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole; and
in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese
plantations, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity.
His last poem was Resignation; in which he made, as he was accustomed,
an experiment of a new mode of writing, and succeeded better than in his
Ocean or his Merchant. It was very falsely represented as a proof of
decaying faculties. There is Young in every stanza, such as he often was
in his highest vigour.
His tragedies, not making part of the collection, I had forgotten, till
Mr. Steevens recalled them to my thoughts by remarking, that he seemed
to have one favourite catastrophe, as his three plays all concluded with
lavish suicide; a method by which, as Dryden remarked, a poet easily
rids his scene of persons whom he wants not to keep alive. In Busiris
there are the greatest ebullitions of imagination: but the pride of
Busiris is such as no other man can have, and the whole is too remote
from known life to raise either grief, terrour, or indignation. The
Revenge approaches much nearer to human practices and manners, and,
therefore, keeps possession of the stage: the first design seems
suggested by Othello; but the reflections, the incidents, and the
diction, are original. The moral observations are go introduced, and so
expressed, as to have all the novelty that can be required. Of the
Brothers I may be allowed to say nothing, since nothing was ever said of
it by the publick.
It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in thought, but
without much accuracy or selection. When he lays hold of an
illustration, he pursues it beyond expectation, sometimes happily, as in
his parallel of Quicksilver with Pleasure[192] which I have heard
repeated at the approbation by a lady, of whose praise he would have
been justly proud, and which is very ingenious, very subtile, and almost
exact: but sometimes he is less lucky, as when, in his Night Thoughts,
having it dropped into his mind, that the orbs floating in space might
be called the _cluster_ of creation, he thinks of a cluster of grapes,
and says, that they all hang on the great vine, drinking the "nectareous
juice of immortal life."
His conceits are sometimes yet less valuable. In the Last Day he hopes
to illustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body at
the "trump of doom" by the collection of bees into a swarm at the
tinkling of a pan.
The prophet says of Tyre, that "her merchants are princes." Young says
of Tyre, in his Merchant,
Her merchants princes, and each _deck a throne_.
Let burlesque try to go beyond him.
He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance
of Britain, "Climes were paid down." Antithesis is his favourite: "They
for kindness hate;" and, "because she's right, she's ever in the wrong."
His versification is his own: neither his blank nor his rhyming lines
have any resemblance to those of former writers; he picks up no
hemistichs, he copies no favourite expressions; he seems to have laid
up no stores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous
suggestions of the present moment. Yet I have reason to believe that,
when once he had formed a new design, he then laboured it with very
patient industry; and that he composed with great labour and frequent
revisions.
His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in
his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have
studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear.
But, with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.
-----
[Footnote 185: See Gent. Mag. vol. lxx. p. 225. N.]
[Footnote 186: As my great friend is now become the subject of
biography, it should be told, that every time I called upon Johnson
during the time I was employed in collecting materials for this life and
putting it together, he never suffered me to depart without some such
farewell as this: "Don't forget that rascal Tindal, sir. Be sure to hang
up the atheist." Alluding to this anecdote, which Johnson had mentioned
to me.]
[Footnote 187: Dr. Johnson, in many cases, thought and directed
differently, particularly in Young's works. J.N.]
[Footnote 188: Not in the Tatler, but in the Guardian, May 9, 1713.]
[Footnote 189: See a letter from the duke of Wharton to Swift, dated
1717, in Swift's works, in which he mentions Young being then in
Ireland. J.B.N.]
[Footnote 190: Davies, in his life of Garrick, says 1720, and that it
was produced thirty-three years after.]
[Footnote 191: Mr. Boswell discovered in this heavy piece of biography a
successful imitation of Johnson's style. An eminent literary character
exclaimed, "No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all
his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak without
its strength." Endeavouring to express himself still more in Johnsonian
phrase, he added, "It has all the contortions of the Sybil, without the
inspiration." See Boswell, iv. According to Malone, this eminent person
was Burke, and the observation is assigned to him, without hesitation,
in Prin's Life. It has sometimes been attributed to G. Stevens. ED.]
[Footnote 192: See Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, 162.]
MALLET.
Of David Mallet, having no written memorial, I am able to give no other
account than such as is supplied by the unauthorised loquacity of common
fame, and a very slight personal knowledge.
He was, by his original, one of the Macgregors, a clan that became,
about sixty years ago, under the conduct of Robin Roy, so formidable and
so infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was annulled by a
legal abolition; and when they were all to denominate themselves anew,
the father, I suppose, of this author, called himself Malloch.
David Malloch was, by the penury of his parents, compelled to be janitor
of the high school at Edinburgh; a mean office, of which he did not
afterwards delight to hear. But he surmounted the disadvantages of his
birth and fortune; for, when the duke of Montrose applied to the college
of Edinburgh for a tutor to educate his sons, Malloch was recommended;
and I never heard that he dishonoured his credentials.
When his pupils were sent to see the world, they were entrusted to his
care; and, having conducted them round the common circle of modish
travels, he returned with them to London, where, by the influence of the
family in which he resided, he naturally gained admission to many
persons of the highest rank, and the highest character; to wits, nobles,
and statesmen.
Of his works, I know not whether I can trace the series. His first
production was William and Margaret[193] of which, though it contains
nothing very striking or difficult, he has been envied the reputation;
and plagiarism has been boldly charged, but never proved.
Not long afterwards he published the Excursion, 1728; a desultory and
capricious view of such scenes of nature as his fancy led him, or his
knowledge enabled him, to describe. It is not devoid of poetical spirit.
Many of the images are striking, and many of the paragraphs are elegant.
The cast of diction seems to be copied from Thomson, whose Seasons were
then in their full blossom of reputation. He has Thomson's beauties and
his faults.
His poem on Verbal Criticism, 1733, was written to pay court to Pope, on
a subject which he either did not understand, or willingly
misrepresented; and is little more than an improvement, or rather
expansion, of a fragment which Pope printed in a Miscellany long before
he engrafted it into a regular poem. There is in this piece more
pertness than wit, and more confidence than knowledge. The versification
is tolerable, nor can criticism allow it a higher praise.
His first tragedy was Eurydice, acted at Drury-lane in 1731; of which I
know not the reception nor the merit, but have heard it mentioned as a
mean performance. He was not then too high to accept a prologue and
epilogue from Aaron Hill, neither of which can be much commended.
Having cleared his tongue from his native pronunciation so as to be no
longer distinguished as a Scot, he seems inclined to disencumber himself
from all adherences of his original, and took upon him to change his
name from Scotch _Malloch_ to English Mallet, without any imaginable
reason of preference which the eye or ear can discover. What other
proofs he gave of disrespect to his native country, I know not; but it
was remarked of him, that he was the only Scot, whom Scotchmen did not
command.
About this time Pope, whom he visited familiarly, published his Essay on
Man, but concealed the author; and, when Mallet entered one day, Pope
asked him slightly, what there was new. Mallet told him, that the newest
piece was something called an Essay on Man, which he had inspected idly,
and seeing the utter inability of the author, who had neither skill in
writing nor knowledge of the subject, had tossed it away. Pope, to
punish his self-conceit, told him the secret[194]
A new edition of the works of Bacon being prepared, 1750, for the press,
Mallet was employed to prefix a life, which he has written with
elegance, perhaps with some affectation; but with so much more knowledge
of history than of science, that, when he afterwards undertook the life
of Marlborough, Warburton remarked, that he might, perhaps, forget that
Marlborough was a general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a
philosopher.
When the prince of Wales was driven from the palace, and, setting
himself at the head of the opposition, kept a separate court, he
endeavoured to increase his popularity by the patronage of literature,
and made Mallet his under-secretary, with a salary of two hundred pounds
a year: Thomson, likewise, had a pension; and they were associated in
the composition of the Mask of Alfred, which, in its original state, was
played at Cliefden in 1740; it was afterwards almost wholly changed by
Mallet, and brought upon the stage at Drury-lane in 1751, but with no
great success.
Mallet, in a familiar conversation with Garrick, discoursing of the
diligence which he was then exerting upon the life of Marlborough, let
him know, that in the series of great men quickly to be exhibited, he
should _find a niche_ for the hero of the theatre. Garrick professed to
wonder by what artifice he could be introduced: but Mallet let him know,
that, by a dexterous anticipation, he should fix him in a conspicuous
place. "Mr. Mallet," says Garrick, in his gratitude of exultation, "have
you left off to write for the stage?" Mallet then confessed that he had
a drama in his hands. Garrick promised to act it; and Alfred was
produced.
The long retardation of the life of the duke of Marlborough shows, with
strong conviction, how little confidence can be placed in posthumous
renown. When he died, it was soon determined that his story should be
delivered to posterity; and the papers, supposed to contain the
necessary information, were delivered to lord Molesworth, who had been
his favourite in Flanders. When Molesworth died the same papers were
transferred, with the same design, to sir Richard Steele, who, in some
of his exigencies, put them in pawn. They then remained with the old
dutchess who, in her will, assigned the task to Glover and Mallet, with
a reward of a thousand pounds, and a prohibition to insert any verses.
Glover rejected, I suppose, with disdain, the legacy, and devolved the
whole work upon Mallet; who had from the late duke of Marlborough a
pension to promote his industry, and who talked of the discoveries which
he had made; but left not, when he died, any historical labours behind
him.
While he was in the prince's service he published Mustapha, with a
prologue by Thomson, not mean, but far inferiour to that which he had
received from Mallet, for Agamemnon. The epilogue, said to be written by
a friend, was composed in haste by Mallet, in the place of one promised,
which was never given. This tragedy was dedicated to the prince his
master. It was acted at Drury-lane, in 1739, and was well received, but
was never revived.
In 1740, he produced, as has been already mentioned, the Mask of Alfred,
in conjunction with Thomson.
For some time afterwards he lay at rest. After a long interval, his next
work was Amyntor and Theodora, 1747, a long story in blank verse; in
which it cannot be denied that there is copiousness and elegance of
language, vigour of sentiment, and imagery well adapted to take
possession of the fancy. But it is blank verse. This he sold to Vaillant
for one hundred and twenty pounds. The first sale was not great, and it
is now lost in forgetfulness.
Mallet, by address or accident, perhaps by his dependance on the prince,
found his way to Bolingbroke; a man whose pride and petulance made his
kindness difficult to gain, or keep, and whom Mallet was content to
court by an act, which, I hope, was unwillingly performed. When it was
found that Pope had clandestinely printed an unauthorised number of the
pamphlet called the Patriot King, Bolingbroke, in a fit of useless fury,
resolved to blast his memory, and employed Mallet, 1749, as the
executioner of his vengeance. Mallet had not virtue, or had not spirit,
to refuse the office; and was rewarded, not long after, with the legacy
of lord Bolingbroke's works.
Many of the political pieces had been written during the opposition to
Walpole, and given to Franklin, as he supposed, in perpetuity. These,
among the rest, were claimed by the will. The question was referred to
arbitrators; but when they decided against Mallet, he refused to yield
to the award; and, by the help of Millar the bookseller, published all
that he could find, but with success very much below his expectation.
In 1755, his Mask of Britannia was acted at Drury-lane; and his tragedy
of Elvira in 1763; in which year he was appointed keeper of the book of
entries for ships in the port of London.
In the beginning of the last war, when the nation was exasperated by ill
success, he was employed to turn the publick vengeance upon Byng, and
wrote a letter of accusation under the character of a Plain Man. The
paper was, with great industry, circulated and dispersed; and he, for
his seasonable intervention, had a considerable pension bestowed upon
him, which he retained to his death.
Towards the end of his life he went with his wife to France; but after
awhile, finding his health declining, he returned alone to England, and
died in April, 1765.
He was twice married, and by his first wife had several children. One
daughter, who married an Italian of rank, named Cilesia, wrote a tragedy
called Almida, which was acted at Drury-lane. His second wife was the
daughter of a nobleman's steward, who had a considerable fortune, which
she took care to retain in her own hands.
His stature was diminutive, but he was regularly formed; his
appearance, till he grew corpulent, was agreeable, and he suffered it to
want no recommendation that dress could give it. His conversation was
elegant and easy. The rest of his character may, without injury to his
memory, sink into silence.
As a writer he cannot be placed in any high class. There is no species
of composition in which he was eminent. His dramas had their day, a
short day, and are forgotten: his blank verse seems, to my ear, the echo
of Thomson. His Life of Bacon is known, as it is appended to Bacon's
volumes, but is no longer mentioned. His works are such as a writer,
bustling in the world, showing himself in publick, and emerging
occasionally, from time to time, into notice, might keep alive by his
personal influence; but which, conveying little information, and giving
no great pleasure, must soon give way, as the succession of things
produces new topicks of conversation and other modes of amusement.
-----
[Footnote 193: Mallet's William and Margaret was printed in Aaron Hill's
Plain Dealer, No. 36, July 24,1724 In its original state it was very
different from what it is in the last edition of his works. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 194: See note on this passage of Pope's life in the present
edition.]
AKENSIDE.
Mark Akenside was born on the 9th of November, 1721, at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His father, Mark, was a butcher, of the
Presbyterian sect; his mother's name was Mary Lumsden. He received the
first part of his education at the grammar-school of Newcastle; and was
afterwards instructed by Mr. Wilson, who kept a private academy.
At the age of eighteen he was sent to Edinburgh, that he might qualify
himself for the office of a dissenting minister, and received some
assistance from the fund which the dissenters employ in educating young
men of scanty fortune. But a wider view of the world opened other
scenes, and prompted other hopes; he determined to study physick, and
repaid that contribution, which, being received for a different purpose,
he justly thought it dishonourable to retain.
Whether, when he resolved not to be a dissenting minister, he ceased to
be a dissenter, I know not. He certainly retained an unnecessary and
outrageous zeal for what he called, and thought, liberty; a zeal which
sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind which
it possesses, an envious desire of plundering wealth or degrading
greatness; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and
anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to subvert and confound, with very
little care what shall be established.
Akenside was one of those poets who have felt very early the motions of
genius, and one of those students who have very early stored their
memories with sentiments and images. Many of his performances were
produced in his youth; and his greatest work, the Pleasures of
Imagination, appeared in 1744. I have heard Dodsley, by whom it was
published, relate, that when the copy was offered him, the price
demanded for it, which was a hundred and twenty pounds, being such as he
was not inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to Pope,
who, having looked into it, advised him not to make a niggardly offer;
for "this was no every-day writer."
In 1741 he went to Leyden, in pursuit of medical knowledge; and three
years afterwards, May 16, 1744, became doctor of physick, having,
according to the custom of the Dutch universities, published a thesis or
dissertation. The subject which he chose was the Original and Growth of
the Human Foetus; in which he is said to have departed, with great
judgment, from the opinion then established, and to have delivered that
which has been since confirmed and received.
Akenside was a young man, warm with every notion that by nature or
accident had been connected with the sound of liberty, and, by an
eccentricity which such dispositions do not easily avoid, a lover of
contradiction, and no friend to any thing established. He adopted
Shaftesbury's foolish assertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the
discovery of truth. For this he was attacked by Warburton, and defended
by Dyson: Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the end of his
dedication to the Freethinkers.
The result of all the arguments, which have been produced in a long and
eager discussion of this idle question, may easily be collected. If
ridicule be applied to any position, as the test of truth, it will then
become a question whether such ridicule be just; and this can only be
decided by the application of truth, as the test of ridicule. Two men,
fearing, one a real and the other a fancied danger, will be for awhile
equally exposed to the inevitable consequences of cowardice,
contemptuous censure, and ludicrous representation; and the true state
of both cases must be known, before it can be decided whose terrour is
rational, and whose is ridiculous; who is to be pitied, and who to be
despised. Both are for awhile equally exposed to laughter, but both are
not, therefore, equally contemptible.
In the revisal of his poem, though he died before he had finished it,
he omitted the lines which had given occasion to Warburton's objections.
He published, soon after his return from Levden, 1745, his first
collection of odes; and was impelled, by his rage of patriotism, to
write a very acrimonious epistle to Pulteney, whom he stigmatizes, under
the name of Curio, as the betrayer of his country.
Being now to live by his profession, he first commenced physician at
Northampton, where Dr. Stonehouse then practised with such reputation
and success, that a stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him.
Akenside tried the contest awhile; and, having deafened the place with
clamours for liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he resided more than
two years, and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man
of accomplishments like his.
At London he was known as a poet, but was still to make his way as a
physician; and would, perhaps, have been reduced to great exigencies,
but that Mr. Dyson, with an ardour of friendship that has not many
examples, allowed him three hundred pounds a year. Thus supported, he
advanced gradually in medical reputation, but never attained any great
extent of practice, or eminence of popularity. A physician in a great
city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation
is, for the most part, totally casual; they that employ him know not his
excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute
observer, who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for
half a century, a very curious book might be written on the Fortune of
Physicians[195]
Akenside appears not to have been wanting to his own success: he placed
himself in view by all the common methods; he became a fellow of the
Royal Society; he obtained a degree at Cambridge; and was admitted into
the College of Physicians; he wrote little poetry, but published, from
time to time, medical essays and observations; he became physician to
St. Thomas's hospital; he read the Gulstonian lectures in anatomy; but
began to give, for the Crounian lecture, a history of the revival of
learning, from which he soon desisted; and, in conversation, he very
eagerly forced himself into notice by an ambitious ostentation of
elegance and literature.
His Discourse on the Dysentery, 1764, was considered as a very
conspicuous specimen of Latinity, which entitled him to the same height
of place among the scholars as he possessed before among the wits; and
he might, perhaps, have risen to a greater elevation of character, but
that his studies were ended with his life, by a putrid fever, June 23,
1770, in the forty-ninth year of his age[196].
Akenside is to be considered, as a didactick and lyrick poet. His great
work is the Pleasures of Imagination; a performance which, published as
it was, at the age of twenty-three, raised expectations that were not
very amply satisfied. It has undoubtedly a just claim to very particular
notice, as an example of great felicity of genius, and uncommon
amplitude of acquisitions, of a young mind stored with images, and much
exercised in combining and comparing them.
With the philosophical or religious tenets of the author, I have nothing
to do; my business is with his poetry. The subject is well chosen, as it
includes all images that can strike or please, and thus comprises every
species of poetical delight. The only difficulty is in the choice of
examples and illustrations; and it is not easy, in such exuberance of
matter, to find the middle point between penury and satiety. The parts
seem artificially disposed, with sufficient coherence, so as that they
cannot change their places without injury to the general design.
His images are displayed with such luxuriance of expression, that they
are hidden, like Butler's Moon, by a "veil of light;" they are forms
fantastically lost under superfluity of dress. "Pars minima est ipsa
puella sui." The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly
perceived; attention deserts the mind, and settles in the ear. The
reader wanders through the gay diffusion, sometimes amazed, and
sometimes delighted; but, after many turnings in the flowery labyrinth,
comes out as he went in. He remarked little, and laid hold on nothing.
To his versification, justice requires that praise should not be denied.
In the general fabrication of his lines he is, perhaps, superiour to any
other writer of blank verse: his flow is smooth, and his pauses are
musical; but the concatenation of his verses is commonly too long
continued, and the full close does not recur with sufficient frequency.
The sense is carried on through a long inter-texture of complicated
clauses, and, as nothing is distinguished, nothing is remembered.
The exemption which blank verse affords from the necessity of closing
the sense with the couplet, betrays luxuriant and active minds into such
self-indulgence, that they pile image upon image, ornament upon
ornament, and are not easily persuaded to close the sense at all. Blank
verse will, therefore, I fear, be too often found in description
exuberant, in argument loquacious, and in narration tiresome.
His diction is certainly poetical as it is not prosaick, and elegant as
it is not vulgar. He is to be commended as having fewer artifices of
disgust than most of his brethren of the blank song. He rarely either
recalls old phrases, or twists his metre into harsh inversions. The
sense, however, of his words is strained, when "he views the Ganges from
Alpine heights;" that is, from mountains like the Alps: and the pedant
surely intrudes, (but when was blank verse without pedantry?) when he
tells how "planets _absolve_ the stated round of time."
It is generally known to the readers of poetry that he intended to
revise and augment this work, but died before he had completed his
design. The reformed work as he left it, and the additions which he had
made, are very properly retained in the late collection. He seems to
have somewhat contracted his diffusion; but I know not whether he has
gained in closeness what he has lost in splendour. In the additional
book, the Tale of Solon is too long.
One great defect of his poem is very properly censured by Mr. Walker,
unless it may be said, in his defence, that what he has omitted was not
properly in his plan. "His picture of man is grand and beautiful, but
unfinished. The immortality of the soul, which is the natural
consequence of the appetites and powers she is invested with, is
scarcely once hinted throughout the poem. This deficiency is amply
supplied by the masterly pencil of Dr. Young; who, like a good
philosopher, has invincibly proved the immortality of man, from the
grandeur of his conceptions, and the meanness and misery of his state;
for this reason, a few passages are selected from the Night Thoughts,
which, with those from Akenside, seem to form a complete view of the
powers, situation, and end of man." Exercises for Improvement in
Elocution, p. 66.
His other poems are now to be considered; but a short consideration will
despatch them. It is not easy to guess why he addicted himself so
diligently to lyrick poetry, having neither the ease and airiness of the
lighter, nor the vehemence and elevation of the grander ode. When he
lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp, his former powers seem to desert
him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expression, nor variety of
images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet such was his
love of lyricks, that, having written, with great vigour and poignancy,
his Epistle to Curio, he transformed it afterwards into an ode
disgraceful only to its author.
Of his odes nothing favourable can be said; the sentiments commonly want
force, nature, or novelty; the diction is sometimes harsh and uncouth,
the stanzas ill-constructed and unpleasant, and the rhymes dissonant, or
unskilfully disposed, too distant from each other, or arranged with too
little regard to established use, and, therefore, perplexing to the ear,
which, in a short composition, has not time to grow familiar with an
innovation.
To examine such compositions singly cannot be required; they have,
doubtless, brighter and darker parts; but, when they are once found to
be generally dull, all further labour may be spared: for to what use can
the work be criticised that will not be read?
-----
[Footnote 195: Johnson entertained a very high idea of the varied
learning and science necessarily connected with the character of an
accomplished physician, and often affirmed of the physicians of this
island, that "they did more good to mankind without a prospect of
reward, than any profession of men whatever." His friendship for Dr.
Bathurst, and the most eminent men in the medical line of his day, is
well known. See an epistle to Dr. Percival, developing the wide field of
knowledge over which a physician should expatiate, prefixed to
Observations on the Literature of the Primitive Christian Writers. ED.]
[Footnote 196: A most curious and original character of Akenside is
given by George Hardinge, in vol. viii. of Nichols's Literary Anecdotes.
ED.]
GRAY.
Thomas Gray, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born
in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at
Eton, under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother, then
assistant to Dr. George; and when he left school, in 1734, entered a
pensioner at Peterhouse, in Cambridge.
The transition from the school to the college is, to most young
scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty,
and happiness; but Gray seems to have been very little delighted with
academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of
life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly on to the time when
his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to
profess the common law, he, took no degree.
When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole,
whose friendship he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him
as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's
letters contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey.
But unequal friendships are easily dissolved: at Florence they
quarrelled and parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told
that it was by his fault. If we look, however, without prejudice on the
world, we shall find that men, whose consciousness of their own merit
sets them above the compliances of servility, are apt enough, in their
association with superiours, to watch their own dignity with troublesome
and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact
that attention which they refuse to pay. Part they did, whatever was the
quarrel; and the rest of their travels was, doubtless, more unpleasant
to them both. Gray continued his journey in a manner suitable to his own
little fortune, with only an occasional servant.
He returned to England in September, 1741, and in about two months
afterwards buried his father, who had, by an injudicious waste of money
upon a new house, so much lessened his fortune, that Gray thought
himself too poor to study the law. He, therefore, retired to Cambridge,
where he soon after became bachelor of civil law; and where, without
liking the place or its inhabitants, or professing to like them, he
passed, except a short residence at London, the rest of his life.
About this time he was deprived of Mr. West, the son of a chancellor of
Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have set a high value, and who
deserved his esteem by the powers which he shows in his letters, and in
the Ode to May, which Mr. Mason has preserved, as well as by the
sincerity with which, when Gray sent him part of Agrippina, a tragedy
that he had just begun, he gave an opinion which probably intercepted
the progress of the work, and which the judgment of every reader will
confirm. It was certainly no loss to the English stage that Agrippina
was never finished.
In this year, 1742, Gray seems first to have applied himself seriously
to poetry; for in this year were produced the Ode to Spring, his
Prospect of Eton, and his Ode to Adversity. He began likewise a Latin
poem, De Principiis Cogitandi.
It may be collected from the narrative of Mr. Mason, that his first
ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry: perhaps it were
reasonable to wish that he had prosecuted his design; for, though there
is at present some embarrassment in his phrase, and some harshness in
his lyrick numbers, his copiousness of language is such as very few
possess; and his lines, even when imperfect, discover a writer whom
practice would quickly have made skillful.
He now lived on at Peterhouse, very little solicitous what others did or
thought, and cultivated his mind and enlarged his views without any
other purpose than of improving and amusing himself; when Mr. Mason,
being elected fellow of Pembroke hall, brought him a companion who was
afterwards to be his editor, and whose fondness and fidelity has kindled
in him a zeal of admiration, which cannot be reasonably expected from
the neutrality of a stranger, and the coldness of a critick.
In this retirement he wrote, 1747, an ode on the Death of Mr. Walpole's
Cat; and the year afterwards attempted a poem, of more importance, on
Government and Education, of which the fragments which remain have many
excellent lines.
His next production, 1750, was his far-famed Elegy in the Church-yard,
which, finding its way into a magazine, first, I believe, made him known
to the publick.
An invitation from lady Cobham, about this time, gave occasion to an odd
composition called a Long Story, which adds little to Gray's character.
Several of his pieces were published, 1753, with designs by Mr. Bentley;
and, that they might in some form or other make a book, only one side of
each leaf was printed. I believe the poems and the plates recommended
each other so well, that the whole impression was soon bought. This year
he lost his mother.
Some time afterwards, 1756, some young men of the college, whose
chambers were near his, diverted themselves with disturbing him by
frequent and troublesome noises, and, as is said, by pranks yet more
offensive and contemptuous. This insolence, having endured it awhile, he
represented to the governours of the society, among whom, perhaps, he
had no friends; and, finding his complaint little regarded, removed
himself to Pembroke hall.
In 1757 he published the Progress of Poetry, and the Bard, two
compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to
gaze in mute amazement. Some that tried them confessed their inability
to understand them, though Warburton said that they were understood as
well as the works of Milton and Shakespeare, which it is the fashion to
admire. Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise. Some hardy champions
undertook to rescue them from neglect; and, in a short time, many were
content to be shown beauties which they could not see.
Gray's reputation was now so high, that, after the death of Cibber, he
had the honour of refusing the laurel, which was then bestowed on Mr.
Whitehead.
His curiosity, not long after, drew him away from Cambridge to a lodging
near the Museum, where he resided near three years, reading and
transcribing; and, so far as can be discovered, very little affected by
two odes on Oblivion and Obscurity, in which his lyrick performances
were ridiculed with much contempt and much ingenuity.
When the professor of modern history at Cambridge died, he was, as he
says, "cockered and spirited up," till he asked it of lord Bute, who
sent him a civil refusal; and the place was given to Mr. Brocket, the
tutor of sir James Lowther.
His constitution was weak, and believing that his health was promoted by
exercise and change of place, he undertook, 1765, a journey into
Scotland, of which his account, so far as it extends, is very curious
and eleg'ant; for, as his comprehension was ample, his curiosity
extended to all the works of art, all the appearances of nature, and all
the monuments of past events. He naturally contracted a friendship with
Dr. Beattie, whom he found a poet, a philosopher, and a good man. The
Mareschal college at Aberdeen offered him the degree of doctor of laws,
which, having omitted to take it at Cambridge, he thought it decent to
refuse.
What he had formerly solicited in vain was at last given him without
solicitation. The professorship of history became again vacant, and he
received, 1768, an offer of it from the duke of Grafton. He accepted,
and retained it to his death; always designing lectures, but never
reading them; uneasy at his neglect of fluty, and appeasing his
uneasiness with designs of reformation, and with a resolution which he
believed himself to have made of resigning the office, if he found
himself unable to discharge it.
Ill health made another journey necessary, and he visited, 1769,
Westmorland and Cumberland. He that reads his epistolary narration,
wishes, that to travel, and to tell his travels, had been more of his
employment; but it is by studying at home that we must obtain the
ability of travelling with intelligence and improvement.
His travels and his studies were now near their end. The gout, of which
he had sustained many weak attacks, fell upon his stomach, and, yielding
to no medicines, produced strong convulsions, which, July 30, 1771,
terminated in death.
His character I am willing to adopt, as Mr. Mason has done, from a
letter written to my friend Mr. Boswell, by the reverend Mr. Temple,
rector of St. Gluvias, in Cornwall; and am as willing as his warmest
well-wisher to believe it true.
"Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe. He was equally
acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that not
superficially, but thoroughly. He knew every branch of history, both
natural and civil; had read all the original historians of England,
France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysicks,
morals, politicks, made a principal part of his study; voyages and
travels of all sorts were his favourite amusements; and he had a fine
taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund
of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and
entertaining; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity.
There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think
the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather
effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his
inferiours in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which
disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value
others chiefly according to the progress that they had made in
knowledge, yet he could not bear to be considered himself merely as a
man of letters; and, though without birth, or fortune, or station, his
desire was to be looked upon as a private independent gentleman, who
read for his amusement. Perhaps it may be said, what signifies so much
knowledge, when it produced so little? Is it worth taking so much pains
to leave no memorial but a few poems? But let it be considered, that Mr.
Gray was, to others at least, innocently employed, to himself certainly
beneficially. His time passed agreeably; he was every day making some
new acquisition in science; his mind was enlarged, his heart softened,
his virtue strengthened; the world and mankind were shown to him without
a mask; and he was taught to consider every thing as trifling, and
unworthy of the attention of a wise man, except the pursuit of knowledge
and practice of virtue, in that state wherein God hath placed us."
To this character Mr. Mason has added a more particular account of
Gray's skill in zoology. He has remarked, that Gray's effeminacy was
affected most "before those whom he did not wish to please;" and that he
is unjustly charged with making knowledge his sole reason of preference,
as he paid his esteem to none whom he did not likewise believe to be
good.
What has occurred to me from the slight inspection of his letters, in
which my undertaking has engaged me, is, that his mind had a large
grasp; that his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgment cultivated;
that he was a man likely to love much where he loved at all; but that he
was fastidious and hard to please. His contempt, however, is often
employed, where I hope it will be approved, upon skepticism and
infidelity. His short account of Shaftesbury I will insert.
"You say you cannot conceive how lord Shaftesbury came to be a
philosopher in vogue; I will tell you: first, he was a lord; secondly,
he was as vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to
believe what they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe any
thing at all, provided they are under no obligation to believe it;
fifthly, they love to take a new road, even when that road leads
nowhere; sixthly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seems always to
mean more than he said. Would you have any more reasons? An interval of
above forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm. A dead lord ranks
with commoners; vanity is no longer interested in the matter; for a new
road has become an old one."
Mr. Mason has added, from his own knowledge, that, though Gray was poor,
he was not eager of money; and that, out of the little that he had, he
was very willing to help the necessitous.
As a writer he had this peculiarity, that he did not write his pieces
first rudely, and then correct them, but laboured every line as it arose
in the train of composition; and he had a notion, not very peculiar,
that he could not write but at certain times, or at happy moments; a
fantastick foppery, to which my kindness for a man of learning and
virtue wishes him to have been superiour.
* * * * *
Gray's poetry is now to be considered; and I hope not to be looked on as
an enemy to his name, if I confess that I contemplate it with less
pleasure than his life. His ode on Spring has something poetical, both
in the language and the thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and
the thoughts have nothing new. There has, of late, arisen a practice of
giving to adjectives derived from substantives, the termination of
participles; such as the _cultured_ plain, the _daisied_ bank; but I was
sorry to see, in the lines of a scholar like Gray, the _honied_ spring.
The morality is natural, but too stale; the conclusion is pretty.
The poem on the Cat was, doubtless, by its author, considered as a
trifle; but it is not a happy trifle. In the first stanza, "the azure
flowers that blow" show resolutely a rhyme is sometimes made when it
cannot easily be found. Selima, the cat, is called a nymph, with some
violence both to language and sense; but there is no good use made of it
when it is done: for of the two lines,
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish?
The first relates merely to the nymph, and the second only to the cat.
The sixth stanza contains a melancholy truth, that "a favourite has no
friend;" but the last ends in a pointed sentence of no relation to the
purpose; if _what glistered_ had been _gold_, the cat would not have
gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been drowned.
The Prospect of Eton College suggests nothing to Gray which every
beholder does not equally think and feel. His supplication to father
Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball, is useless
and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than
himself[197] His epithet, "buxom health," is not elegant; he seems not
to understand the word. Gray thought his language more poetical as it
was more remote from common use; finding in Dryden "honey redolent of
spring," an expression that reaches the utmost limits of our language,
Gray drove it a little more beyond common apprehension, by making
"gales" to be "redolent of joy and youth."
Of the Ode on Adversity, the hint was, at first, taken from "O Diva,
gratum quæ regis Antium;" but Gray has excelled his original by the
variety of his sentiments, and by their moral application. Of this
piece, at once poetical and rational, I will not, by slight objections,
violate the dignity.
My process has now brought me to the _wonderful wonder of wonders_, the
two sister odes; by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common
sense at first universally rejected them, many have been since persuaded
to think themselves delighted. I am one of those that are willing to be
pleased, and, therefore, would gladly find the meaning of the first
stanza of the Progress of Poetry.
Gray seems, in his rapture, to confound the images of "spreading sound"
and "running water." A "stream of musick," may be allowed; but where
does "musick," however "smooth and strong," after having visited the
"verdant vales, roll down the steep amain," so as that "rocks and
nodding groves rebellow to the roar!" If this be said of musick, it is
nonsense; if it be said of water, it is nothing to the purpose.
The second stanza, exhibiting Mars' car and Jove's eagle, is unworthy of
further notice. Criticism disdains to chase a schoolboy to his
commonplaces.
To the third it may likewise be objected, that it is drawn from
mythology, though such as may be more easily assimilated to real life.
Idalia's "velvet green" has something of cant. An epithet or metaphor
drawn from nature ennobles art: an epithet or metaphor drawn from art
degrades nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded.
"Many-twinkling" was formerly censured as not analogical; we may say
"many-spotted," but scarcely "many-spotting." This stanza, however, has
something pleasing.
Of the second ternary of stanzas, the first endeavours to tell
something, and would have told it, had it not been crossed by Hyperion:
the second describes well enough the universal prevalence of poetry; but
I am afraid that the conclusion will not arise from the premises. The
caverns of the north and the plains of Chili are not the residences of
"Glory and generous shame." But that poetry and virtue go always
together is an opinion so pleasing, that I can forgive him who resolves
to think it true.
The third stanza sounds big with "Delphi," and "Egean," and "Ilissus,"
and "Meander," and "hallowed fountains," and "solemn sound;" but in all
Gray's odes there is a kind of cumbrflus splendour which we wish away.
His position is at last false: in the time of Dante and Petrarch, from
whom he derives our first school of poetry, Italy was overrun by "tyrant
power" and "coward vice;" nor was our state much better when we first
borrowed the Italian arts.
Of the third ternary, the first gives a mythological birth of
Shakespeare. What is said of that mighty genius is true; but it is not
said happily: the real effects of this poetical power are put out of
sight by the pomp of machinery. Where truth is sufficient to fill the
mind, fiction is worse than useless; the counterfeit debases the
genuine. His account of Milton's blindness, if we suppose it caused by
study in the formation of his poem, a supposition surely allowable, is
poetically true, and happily imagined. But the car of Dryden, with his
_two coursers_, has nothing in it peculiar; it is a car in which any
other rider may be placed.
The Bard appears, at the first view, to be, as Algarotti and others have
remarked, an imitation of the prophecy of Nereus. Algarotti thinks it
superiour to its original; and, if preference depends only on the
imagery and animation of the two poems, his judgment is right. There is
in the Bard more force, more thought, and more variety. But to copy is
less than to invent, and the copy has been unhappily produced at a wrong
time. The fiction of Horace was to the Romans credible; but its revival
disgusts us with apparent and unconquerable falsehood. Incredulus odi.
To select a singular event, and swell it to a giant's bulk by fabulous
appendages of spectres and predictions, has little difficulty; for he
that forsakes the probable may always find the marvellous. And it has
little use; we are affected only as we believe; we are improved only as
we find something to be imitated or declined. I do not see that the Bard
promotes any truth, moral or political. His stanzas are too long,
especially his epodes; the ode is finished before the ear has learned
its measures, and, consequently, before it can receive pleasure from
their consonance and recurrence.
Of the first stanza, the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but
technical beauties can give praise only to the inventor. It is in the
power of any man to rush abruptly upon his subject, that has read the
ballad of Johnny Armstrong:
Is there ever a man in all Scotland.
The initial resemblances, or alliterations, "ruin, ruthless, helm or
hauberk," are below the grandeur of a poem that endeavours at sublimity.
In the second stanza, the Bard is well described; but in the third we
have the puerilities of obsolete mythology. When we are told that
"Cadwallo hush'd the stormy main," and that "Modred made huge Plinlimmon
bow his cloud-topp'd head," attention recoils from the repetition of a
tale that, even when it was first heard, was heard with scorn.
The _weaving_ of the _winding sheet_ he borrowed, as he owns, from the
Northern Bards; but their texture, however, was very properly the work
of female powers, as the act of spinning the thread of life in another
mythology. Theft is always dangerous; Gray has made weavers of
slaughtered bards by a fiction outrageous and incongruous. They are then
called upon to "weave the warp, and weave the woof," perhaps, with no
great propriety; for it is by crossing the _woof_ with the _warp_ that
men _weave_ the _web_ or piece; and the first line was dearly bought by
the admission of its wretched correspondent, "give ample room and verge
enough[198]." He has, however, no other line as bad.
The third stanza of the second ternary is commended, I think, beyond its
merit. The personification is indistinct. _Thirst_ and _hunger_ are not
alike; and their features, to make the imagery perfect, should have been
discriminated. We are told, in the same stanza, how _towers_ are _fed_.
But I will no longer look for particular faults; yet let it be observed,
that the ode might have been concluded with an action of better example;
but suicide is always to be had without expense of thought.
These odes are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful
ornaments; they strike, rather than please; the images are magnified by
affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the
writer seems to work with unnatural violence. "Double, double, toil and
trouble." He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on
tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too
little appearance of ease and nature[199].
To say that he has no beauties, would be unjust; a man like him, of
great learning and great industry, could not but produce something
valuable. When he pleases least, it can only be said that a good design
was ill-directed.
His translations of Northern and Welsh poetry deserve praise; the
imagery is preserved, perhaps often improved; but the language is unlike
the language of other poets.
In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common
reader; for, by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary
prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of
learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours. The
Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and
with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas
beginning "Yet even these bones," are to me original: I have never seen
the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here persuades
himself that he has always felt them. Had Gray written often thus, it
had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him.
-----
[Footnote 197: We shall, in comparison with this criticism, quote a
passage from Rasselas, and deduce no inference: "As they were sitting
together, the princess cast her eyes on the river that flowed before
her: answer, said she, great father of waters, thou that rollest thy
floods through eighty nations, to the invocation of the daughter of thy
native king. Tell me, if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single
habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint." Ed.]
[Footnote 198:
I have a soul, that like an _ample_ shield
Can take in all; and _verge enough_ for more.
Dryden's Sebastian.]
[Footnote 199: Lord Orford used to assert, that Gray "never wrote any
thing easily, but things of humour;" and added, that humour was his
natural and original turn.
For a full examination of Johnson's strange and capricious strictures on
the poetry of Gray, we, with much satisfaction, refer our readers to the
life prefixed to, and the notes that accompany, an elegant edition of
Gray's works, 2 vols. 8vo. Oxford, 1825. Much that is both elegant and
useful will be found in that publication. ED.]
LYTTELTON.
George Lyttelton, the son of sir Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley in
Worcestershire, was born in 1709. He was educated at Eton, where he was
so much distinguished, that his exercises were recommended as models to
his schoolfellows.
From Eton he went to Christ-church, where he retained the same
reputation of superiority, and displayed his abilities to the publick in
a Poem on Blenheim.
He was a very early writer, both in verse and prose. His Progress of
Love, and his Persian Letters, were both written when he was very young;
and, indeed, the character of a young man is very visible in both. The
verses cant of shepherds and flocks, and crooks dressed with flowers;
and the letters have something of that indistinct and headstrong ardour
for liberty, which a man of genius always catches when he enters the
world, and always suffers to cool as he passes forward.
He staid not long at Oxford; for, in 1728, he began his travels, and saw
France and Italy. When he returned, he obtained a seat in parliament,
and soon distinguished himself among the most eager opponents of sir
Robert Walpole, though his father, who was a commissioner of the
admiralty, always voted with the court.
For many years the name of George Lyttelton was seen in every account of
every debate in the house of commons. He opposed the standing army; he
opposed the excise; he supported the motion for petitioning the king to
remove Walpole. His zeal was considered by the courtiers not only as
violent, but as acrimonious and malignant; and, when Walpole was at last
hunted from his places, every effort was made by his friends, and many
friends he had, to exclude Lyttelton from the secret committee.
The prince of Wales, being, 1737, driven from St. James's, kept a
separate court, and opened his arms to the opponents of the ministry.
Mr. Lyttelton became his secretary, and was supposed to have great
influence in the direction of his conduct. He persuaded his master,
whose business it was now to be popular, that he would advance his
character by patronage. Mallet was made under-secretary, with two
hundred pounds; and Thomson had a pension of one hundred pounds a year.
For Thomson, Lyttelton always retained his kindness, and was able, at
last, to place him at ease.
Moore courted his favour by an apologetical poem, called the Trial of
Selim; for which he was paid with kind words, which, as is common,
raised great hopes, that were at last disappointed.
Lyttelton now stood in the first rank of opposition; and Pope, who was
incited, it is not easy to say how, to increase the clamour against the
ministry, commended him among the other patriots. This drew upon him the
reproaches of Fox, who, in the house, imputed to him, as a crime, his
intimacy with a lampooner so unjust and licentious. Lyttelton supported
his friend; and replied, that he thought it an honour to be received
into the familiarity of so great a poet.
While he was thus conspicuous, he married, 1741, Miss Lucy Fortescue, of
Devonshire, by whom he had a son, the late lord Lyttelton, and two
daughters, and with whom he appears to have lived in the highest degree
of connubial felicity; but human pleasures are short; she died in
child-bed about five years afterwards; and he solaced his grief by
writing a long poem to her memory.
He did not, however, condemn himself to perpetual solitude and sorrow;
for, after awhile, he was content to seek happiness again by a second
marriage with the daughter of sir Robert Rich: but the experiment was
unsuccessful.
At length, after a long struggle, Walpole gave way, and honour and
profit were distributed among his conquerors. Lyttelton was made, 1744,
one of the lords of the treasury; and from that time was engaged in
supporting the schemes of the ministry.
Politicks did not, however, so much engage him, as to withhold his
thoughts from things of more importance. He had, in the pride of
juvenile confidence, with the help of corrupt conversation, entertained
doubts of the truth of Christianity; but he thought the time now come
when it was no longer fit to doubt or believe by chance, and applied
himself seriously to the great question. His studies, being honest,
ended in conviction. He found that religion was true; and what he had
learned he endeavoured to teach, 1747, by Observations on the Conversion
of St. Paul; a treatise to which infidelity has never been able to
fabricate a specious answer. This book his father had the happiness of
seeing, and expressed his pleasure in a letter which deserves to be
inserted:
"I have read your religious treatise with infinite pleasure and
satisfaction. The style is fine and clear, the arguments close,
cogent, and irresistible. May the King of kings, whose glorious
cause you have so well defended, reward your pious labours, and
grant that I may be found worthy, through the merits of Jesus
Christ, to be an eye-witness of that happiness which I don't
doubt he will bountifully bestow upon you. In the mean time, I
shall never cease glorifying God, for having endowed you with
such useful talents, and giving me so good a son.
"Your affectionate father,
"THOMAS LYTTELTON."
A few years afterwards, 1751, by the death of his father, he inherited a
baronet's title with a large estate, which, though, perhaps, he did not
augment, he was careful to adorn by a house of great elegance and
expense, and by much attention to the decoration of his park.
As he continued his activity in parliament, he was gradually advancing
his claim to profit and preferment; and accordingly was made, in time,
1754, cofferer and privy counsellor: this place he exchanged next year
for the great office of chancellor of the exchequer; an office, however,
that required some qualifications which he soon perceived himself to
want.
The year after, his curiosity led him into Wales; of which he has given
an account, perhaps rather with too much affectation of delight, to
Archibald Bower, a man of whom he had conceived an opinion more
favourable than he seems to have deserved, and whom, having once
espoused his interest and fame, he was never persuaded to disown. Bower,
whatever was his moral character, did not want abilities; attacked as he
was by an universal outcry, and that outcry, as it seems, the echo of
truth, he kept his ground: at last, when his defences began to fail him,
he sallied out upon his adversaries, and his adversaries retreated.
About this time Lyttelton published his Dialogues of the Dead, which
were very eagerly read, though the production rather, as it seems, of
leisure than of study: rather effusions than compositions. The names of
his persons too often enable the reader to anticipate their
conversation; and, when they have met, they too often part without any
conclusion. He has copied Fénélon more than Fontenelle.
When they were first published, they were kindly commended by the
Critical Reviewers; and poor Lyttelton, with humble gratitude, returned,
in a note which I have read, acknowledgments which can never be proper,
since they must be paid either for flattery or for justice.
When, in the latter part of the last reign, the inauspicious
commencement of the war made the dissolution of the ministry
unavoidable, sir George Lyttelton, losing, with the rest, his
employment, was recompensed with a peerage; and rested from political
turbulence in the house of lords.
His last literary production was his History of Henry the second,
elaborated by the searches and deliberations of twenty years, and
published with such anxiety as only vanity can dictate.
The story of this publication is remarkable. The whole work was printed
twice over, a great part of it three times, and many sheets four or five
times. The booksellers paid for the first impression; but the charges
and repeated operations of the press were at the expense of the author,
whose ambitious accuracy is known to have cost him, at least, a thousand
pounds. He began to print in 1755. Three volumes appeared in 1764; a
second edition of them in 1767; a third edition in 1768; and the
conclusion in 1771.
Andrew Reid, a man not without considerable abilities, and not
unacquainted with letters or with life, undertook to persuade Lyttelton,
as he had persuaded himself, that he was master of the secret of
punctuation; and, as fear begets credulity, he was employed, I know not
at what price, to point the pages of Henry the second. The book was at
last pointed and printed, and sent into the world. Lyttelton took money
for his copy, of which, when he had paid the pointer, he probably gave
the rest away; for he was very liberal to the indigent.
When time brought the history to a third edition, Reid was either dead
or discarded; and the superintendence of typography and punctuation was
committed to a man originally a comb-maker, but then known by the style
of doctor. Something uncommon was probably expected, and something
uncommon was at last done; for to the doctor's edition is appended, what
the world had hardly seen before, a list of errours in nineteen pages.
But to politicks and literature there must be an end. Lord Lyttelton had
never the appearance of a strong or of a healthy man; he had a slender,
uncompacted frame, and a meagre face: he lasted, however, sixty years,
and was then seized with his last illness. Of his death a very affecting
and instructive account has been given by his physician[200] which will
spare me the task of his moral character.
"On Sunday evening the symptoms of his lordship's disorder, which for a
week past had alarmed us, put on a fatal appearance, and his lordship
believed himself to be a dying man. From this time he suffered by
restlessness rather than pain; though his nerves were apparently much
fluttered, his mental faculties never seemed stronger, when he was
thoroughly awake.
"His lordship's bilious and hepatick complaints seemed alone not equal
to the expected mournful event; his long want of sleep, whether the
consequence of the irritation in the bowels, or, which is more probable,
of causes of a different kind, accounts for his loss of strength, and
for his death, very sufficiently.
"Though his lordship wished his approaching dissolution not to be
lingering, he waited for it with resignation. He said, 'It is a folly, a
keeping me in misery, now to attempt to prolong life;' yet he was easily
persuaded, for the satisfaction of others, to do or take any thing
thought proper for him. On Saturday he had been remarkably better, and
we were not without some hopes of his recovery.
"On Sunday, about eleven in the forenoon, his lordship sent for me, and
said he felt a great hurry, and wished to have a little conversation
with me, in order to divert it. He then proceeded to open the fountain
of that heart, from whence goodness had so long flowed as from a copious
spring. 'Doctor,' said he, 'you shall be my confessor: when I first set
out in the world, I had friends who endeavoured to shake my belief in
the Christian religion. I saw difficulties which staggered me; but I
kept my mind open to conviction. The evidences and doctrines of
Christianity, studied with attention, made me a most firm and persuaded
believer of the Christian religion. I have made it the rule of my life,
and it is the ground of my future hopes. I have erred and sinned; but
have repented, and never indulged any vitious habit. In politicks, and
publick life, I have made publick good the rule of my conduct. I never
gave counsels which I did not at the time think the best. I have seen
that I was sometimes in the wrong; but I did not err designedly. I have
endeavoured, in private life, to do all the good in my power, and never
for a moment could indulge malicious or unjust designs upon any person
whatsoever.'
"At another time he said, 'I must leave my soul in the same state it was
in before this illness; I find this a very inconvenient time for
solicitude about any thing.'
"On the evening, when the symptoms of death came on, he said, 'I shall
die; but it will not be your fault.' When lord and lady Valentia came to
see his lordship, he gave them his solemn benediction, and said, 'Be
good, be virtuous, my lord; you must come to this.' Thus he continued
giving his dying benediction to all around him. On Monday morning a
lucid interval gave some small hopes, but these vanished in the evening;
and he continued dying, but with very little uneasiness, till Tuesday
morning, August 22, when, between seven and eight o'clock, he expired,
almost without a groan."
His lordship was buried at Hagley; and the following inscription is cut
on the side of his lady's monument:
This unadorned stone was placed here
by the particular desire and express
directions of the right honourable
GEORGE LORD LYTTELTON,
Who died August 22, 1773, aged 64.
Lord Lyttelton's poems are the works of a man of literature and
judgment, devoting part of his time to versification. They have nothing
to be despised, and little to be admired. Of his Progress of Love, it is
sufficient blame to say that it is pastoral. His blank verse in Blenheim
has neither much force nor much elegance. His little performances,
whether songs or epigrams, are sometimes sprightly and sometimes
insipid. His epistolary pieces have a smooth equability, which cannot
much tire, because they are short, but which seldom elevates or
surprises. But from this censure ought to be excepted his Advice to
Belinda, which, though for the most part written when he was very young,
contains much truth and much prudence, very elegantly and vigorously
expressed, and shows a mind attentive to life, and a power of poetry
which cultivation might have raised to excellence.
-----
[Footnote 200: Dr. Johnstone, of Kidderminster.]
END OF VOL. VIII.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in
Nine Volumes, by Samuel Johnson
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE POETS, VOL II ***
***** This file should be named 24218-8.txt or 24218-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/2/1/24218/
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Roger Frank and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
https://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at https://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit https://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
https://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
