THE PASSION for rare books 
 which flourishes in this covin- 
 try has called for a new edition 
 of these studies on the history and 
 contents of certain famous or curious 
 books, the original editions of all of 
 which form part of Mr. Gosse's priv- 
 ate library. It was originally written 
 by this famous English author spe- 
 cially for American readers, and to 
 the new edition he has added for 
 America only, an essay on White's 
 Selborne, a book which grows stead- 
 ily in value and interest, and which 
 is particularly often oflfered in a 
 mutilated or " faked " condition. 
 
 
 <:^<^ 
 
 Nn. 
 
 iatr 
 
 %MU.i(0.
 
 From the HoUywood ofj^:< ch' 
 
 HARVEY TAYLOIi 
 
 // AUTHORS' REPRESENTATIVE 
 NEW YORK -:- HOLLYWOOD 
 
 *'^*-~ 1822 North Gramei^y Place 
 - Bollywood 63 3 f
 
 GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY
 
 O blessed Letters, that combine in one 
 t/tll ages past, and make one live with all: 
 'By you we doe co?iferre zvith who are gone, 
 tdnd the dead- living unto c ounce II call: 
 By you th'' unborne shall have communion 
 Of what we feele, and what doth us befall, 
 
 Sam. Daniel: MusopMius. 1601
 
 Gossip in a Library 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE 
 
 From the Holhiwood of fin , o 
 
 ^harvey'taylos 
 
 // AUTHORS' REPnj&SSNTATIVB 
 X^HrU? YORK -:- HOLLYY/OOL 
 
 "^ 1822 North Gramcrey Pkiv.' 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1901
 
 Copyright, I go I, 
 By Dodd, Mead and Company. 
 
 PRESSWORK BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 , , UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 7-^ SANTA BARBARA COLLEGE LIBE 
 
 ro 
 
 MV FRIEND 
 
 CHARLES B. FOOTE 
 
 of Neiv York 
 BIBLIOPHILE 
 
 tbeae pages are De61catc&
 
 TREFACE 
 
 TO THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION 
 
 This volume kas the peculiarity of having been written by 
 an English author at the suggestion of an American editor^ 
 and specially for American readers. Five years ago my 
 lamented friend, Mr. John Eliot Bowen, who was then 
 conducting The Independent of New York, asked me to 
 contribute to that paper a series of short studies on the history 
 and contents of certain farnous or curious books, the original 
 editions of all of which should happen to form part of my 
 private library. The idea struck me as a novel one. 
 The book-collector was to deliver ten-minute sermons on 
 his books to a select audience, gathered, in imagination, 
 within the room in which those books were kept. The 
 cases were to be thrown open at random, a volume taken 
 out here or there, and passed from hand to hand, while the 
 owner chatted familiarly about its personal character and
 
 VIU 
 
 Preface 
 
 adventures. It seemed an undertaking no less easy than 
 delightful. 
 
 The task, however, did not turn out to be quite so simple as 
 it appeared. It proved difficult to make a selection among so 
 many silent friends. Then, as the preacher prepared his 
 little discourse on the book finally chosen, he found that he 
 was led aside into many dangerous paths of biography, of 
 criticism, of bibliography. Allusions, so slight that the 
 audience would scarcely observe them, had to be verified ; 
 lines of suggestion followed up ; even, in not a few cases, a 
 certain amount of original investigation entered upon. The 
 reader, I fear and yet hope, in reading these little chapters, 
 will not guess how much time and trouble has been expended 
 on the writing of them. This is my sole excuse for having 
 been so long in composing so small a volume. But the delay 
 is the more melancholy to me, because the result of it has 
 been that the solitary reader of whose approval I could be 
 assured, " the onlie begetter of these ensuing " pages, Mr. 
 ^Qwen, will never hold them in his hand. 
 
 There is a certain satisfaction in addressing American 
 readers on the subject of rare books. Gradually, almost
 
 Preface ix 
 
 imperceptibly, the great home of splendid private libraries 
 is ceasing to be north-tuestern Europe, and is beco?ning the 
 
 United States. We in the East are amazed at those 
 singular laws which injlict a severe punishment on the 
 
 American citizen who is guilty of introducing what is beauti- 
 ful and distinguished into his own country. Yet there are some 
 objects zohich the most paternal protective tariff will never 
 cause to be produced in a nezv cojnmunity. First editions of 
 Milton or of Moliere will scarcely be manufactured in the 
 
 United States, in spite of all the Mc Kinky s, or, if they are, 
 the interference of the police will be desirable. Even the ecce?i- 
 tricities of the Custom-house, hozvever, do not tend at present 
 to check that stream of emigration which einpties the libraries 
 of Europe, and creates new and more warmly appreciated 
 ones in America. There is every reason that the Americans 
 should become ideal booksellers. If Dibdin was right when 
 he said that civility, quickness, a7id intelligence were the chief 
 requisites of a bibliopole, America ought to have no dificul.'y 
 in supplying these qualities. She possesses already, in the 
 Grolier Club, a standard of formal excellence in bibliography 
 higher and more exacting than any now existing in Europe.
 
 X Preface 
 
 To my friends, then, in America, knozvn and unknozvn, 
 zoho love rare and beautiful books, I present this little 
 volujne as a mere suggestion of the endless entertainment 
 which these indulgent companions of our solitude can supply, 
 if we only appeal to them for it. I have dipped a child's 
 bucket in the ocean of bibliography , and am eager that 
 others should enjoy the sight of what firmed and starry things it 
 has brought up. But I am not suffering under the illusion 
 that these are exceptionally rich or rare. Let my readers dip 
 for themselvesy and they shall have nobler sport, 
 
 London, November j8gi.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TO THE AMERICAN EDITION OF igoi 
 
 It is with a great deal of pleasure that I learn that the 
 passion for rare booh still flourishes in America, and that 
 a new edition of this little book is called for. In order to 
 give it a certain character of freshness, I have added, for 
 America only, an essay on a volume which grows steadily^ 
 and almost year by year, in value and interest. Perhaps 
 the bibliographical data which I have given may prevent 
 some ardent bibliophile from adding to his library an incom- 
 plete copy of White'' s Selborne, a book which is par- 
 ticularly often offered in a mutilated or 'faked^^ condition. 
 
 E. G. 
 London, February 1901. 
 
 From the HoUywood offk': 
 
 .PARVEY TAYLCL 
 
 J^y AUTHORS' EEPnt:S3NTATIVE 
 i^S^yORK -:- ' EOLLYWOO: 
 
 ^"""^ 1832 North Gramcifcy Pbc.-^ 
 - FQilTVOOti i>'3-
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Intrtductory 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 Camden's " "Britannia " 
 
 
 
 
 
 II 
 
 A Mirror for Magistrates . 
 
 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 A Toet in Prison 
 
 
 
 
 
 39 
 
 Death's Duel . 
 
 
 
 
 
 53 
 
 Gerard's Herbal . 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^5 
 
 Pharamond . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 79 
 
 A Volume of Old Plays 
 
 
 
 
 
 93 
 
 A Censor of Poets 
 
 
 
 
 
 107 
 
 Laay Wine hike a' s Poems 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 119 
 
 Amasia 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 133 
 
 Love and Business 
 
 
 
 
 
 145 
 
 What Ann Lang Read . 
 
 
 
 
 
 159 
 
 Cats 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 171 
 
 Smart's Poems , , 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 183
 
 XIV 
 
 Contents 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Pompey the Little .... 
 
 . 20I 
 
 The Life of John Buncle . 
 
 . 21Z 
 
 Beau Nash ..... 
 
 . 227 
 
 The Diary of a Lover of Literature . 
 
 • 239 
 
 Peter Belt and his Tormentors 
 
 . 25T 
 
 The Fancy ...... 
 
 . 269 
 
 Ultra-crepidarius .... 
 
 . 283 
 
 The Duke of Rutland'' s Poems 
 
 • 293 
 
 lonica ...... 
 
 • 305 
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat . . , . 
 
 • 319 
 
 The Natural History of Selborne 
 
 . 331 
 
 Index 
 
 343
 
 From the Hollywood offic-^ o. 
 
 PARVEY TAYLOK 
 
 // AUTHORS' REP!l|iS3NTATIVB 
 I^El^yORK.- -:- HOLLYWOCI 
 
 ^^'^^ ISai North Gra!me5^y Placo 
 
 ^ PQll-rrood h -^ ? 
 
 GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY 
 
 Introductory 
 
 It is curious to reflect that the hbrary, in our 
 customary sense, is quite a modern institution. 
 Three hundred years ago there were no public 
 libraries in Europe. The Ambrosian, at Milan, 
 dates from 1608 ; the Bodleian, at Oxford, from 
 16 1 2. To these Angelo Rocca added his in 
 Rome, in 1620. But private collections of books 
 always existed, and these v/ere the haunts of 
 learning, the little glimmering hearths over which 
 knowledge spread her cold fingers, in the darkest 
 ages of the world. To-day, although national 
 and private munificence has increased the number 
 of public libraries so widely that almost every 
 reader is within reach of books, the private 
 
 A
 
 Gossip in a Library 
 
 library still flourishes. There are men all 
 through the civilised world to whom a book is a 
 jewel — an individual possession of great price. 
 I have been asked to gossip about my books, for 
 I also am a bibliophile. But when I think of 
 the great collections of fine books, of the libraries 
 of the magnificent, I do not know whether I dare 
 admit any stranger to glance at mine. The Mayor 
 of Queenborough feels as though he were a very 
 important personage till Royalty drives through 
 his borough without noticing his scarf and his 
 cocked hat ; and then, for the first time, he 
 observes how small the Queenborough town- 
 hall is. But if one is to gossip about books, it 
 is, perhaps, as well that one should have some 
 limits. I Avill leave the masters of bibliography 
 to sing of greater matters, and will launch 
 upon no more daring voyage than one aittour de 
 ma pauvre bibliotheqiie. 
 
 I have heard that the late Mr. Edward Solly, 
 a very pious and worshipful lover of books, 
 under several examples of whose book-plate I 
 have lately reverently placed my own, was so 
 anxious to fly all outward noise that he built
 
 Introductory 3 
 
 himself a library in his garden. I have been 
 told that the books stood there in perfect order, 
 with the rose-spray flapping at the window, and 
 great Japanese vases exhaling such odours as 
 most annoy an insect-nostril. The very bees 
 would come to the window, and sniff, and boom 
 indignantly away again. The silence there was 
 perfect. It must have been in such a secluded 
 library that Christian Mentzelius was at work 
 when he heard the male book-worm flap his 
 wings, and crow like a cock in calling to his 
 mate. I feel sure that even Mentzelius, a very 
 courageous writer, would hardly pretend that he 
 could hear such a " shadow of all sound " else- 
 where. That is the library I should like to have. ' 
 In my sleep, " where dreams are multitude," I « \ 
 sometimes fancy that one day I shall have a \ '■ 
 library in a garden. The phrase seems to con- 
 tain the whole felicity of man — " a library in a 
 garden ! " It sounds like having a castle in 
 Spain, or a sheep-walk in Arcadia, and I suppose 
 that merely to wish for it is to be what indignant 
 journalists call " a faddling hedonist." In the 
 meanwhile, my books are scattered about in cases
 
 Gossip in a Library 
 
 in different parts of a double sitting-room, where 
 the cats carouse on one side, and the hurdy- 
 gurdy man girds up his loins on the other. A 
 friend of Boethius had a library lined with slabs 
 of ivory and pale green marble. I like to think 
 of that when I am jealous of Mr. Frederick 
 Locker-Lampson, as the peasant thinks of the 
 White Czar when his master's banqueting hall 
 dazzles him. If I cannot have cabinets of ebony 
 and cedar, I may just as well have plain deal, 
 with common glass doors to keep the dust out. 
 I detest your Persian apparatus. 
 
 It is a curious reflection, that the ordinary 
 private person who collects objects of a modest 
 luxury, has nothing about him so old as his 
 books. If a wave of the rod made everything 
 around him disappear that did not exist a century 
 ago, he v.'ould suddenly find himself with one or 
 two sticks of furniture, perhaps but otherwise 
 alone with his books. Let the work of another 
 century pass, and certainly nothing but these 
 little brown volumes Avould be left, so many 
 caskets full of passion and tenderness, dis- 
 appointed ambition, fruitless hope, self-torturing
 
 Introductory 5 
 
 envy, conceit aware, in maddening lucid moments, 
 of its own folly. I think if Mentzelius had been 
 worth his salt, those ears of his, which heard the 
 book-worm crow, might have caught the echo of 
 a sigh from beneath many a pathetic vellum cover. 
 There is something awful to me, of nights, and 
 when I am alone, in thinking of all the souls im- 
 prisoned in the ancient books around me. Not 
 one, I suppose, but was ushered into the world 
 with pride and glee, with a flushed cheek and 
 heightened pulse ; not one enjoyed a career that 
 in all points justified those ample hopes and flat- 
 tering promises. 
 
 The outward and visible mark of the citizen- 
 ship of the book-lover is his book-plate. There 
 are many good bibliophiles who abide in the 
 trenches, and never proclaim their loyalty by a 
 book-plate. They are with us, but not of us ; 
 they lack the courage of their opinions ; they 
 collect with timidity or carelessness ; they have 
 no heed for the morrow. Such a man is liable 
 to great temptations. He is brought face to face 
 with that enemy of his species, the borrower, and 
 dares not speak with him in the gate. If he had
 
 Gossip in a Library 
 
 a book-plate he would say, " Oh ! certainly I will 
 lend you this volume, if it has not my book- 
 plate in it ; of course, one makes a rule never to 
 lend a book that has." He would say this, and 
 feign to look inside the volume, knowing right 
 well that this safeguard against the borrower is 
 there already. To have a book-plate gives a 
 collector great serenity and self-confidence. We 
 have laboured in a far more conscientious spirit 
 since we had ours than we did before. A living 
 poet, Lord De Tabley, wrote a fascinating 
 volume on book-plates, some years ago, with 
 copious illustrations. There is not, however, 
 one specimen in his book which I would 
 exchange for mine, the work and the gift of 
 one of the most imaginative of American 
 artists, Mr. Edwin A. Abbey. It represents a 
 very fine gentleman of about 1610, walking in 
 broad sunlight in a garden, reading a little book 
 of verses. The name is coiled around him, with 
 the motto, Gravis cantantibiis umbra. I will 
 not presume to translate this tag of an eclogue, 
 and I only venture to mention such a very un- 
 interesting matter, that my indulgent readers
 
 Introductory 7 
 
 may have a more vivid notion of what I call my 
 library. Mr. Abbey's fine art is there, always 
 before me, to keep my ideal high. 
 
 To possess few books, and those not too rich 
 and rare for daily use, has this advantage, that 
 the possessor can make himself master of them 
 all, can recollect their peculiarities, and often 
 remind himself of their contents. The man that 
 has two or three thousand books can be familiar 
 with them all ; he that has thirty thousand can 
 hardly have a speaking acquaintance with more 
 than a few. The more conscientious he is, the 
 more he becomes hke Lucian's amateur, who 
 was so much occupied in rubbing the bindings oi 
 his books with sandal-wood and saffron, that he 
 had no time left to study the contents. After 
 all, with every due respect paid to " states " and 
 editions and bindings and tall copies, the inside 
 of the volume is really the essential part of it. 
 
 The excuses for collecting, however, are more 
 than satire is ready to admit. The first edition 
 represents the author's first thought ; in it we 
 read his words as he sent them out to the v/orld 
 in his first heat, v/ith the type he chose, and with
 
 8 Gossip in a Library 
 
 such peculiarities of form as he selected to do 
 most justice to his creation. We often discover 
 little individual points in a first edition, which 
 never occur again. And if it be conceded that 
 there is an advantage in reading a book in the 
 form which the author originally designed for it, 
 then all the other refinements of the collector 
 become so many acts of respect paid to this first 
 virgin apparition, touching and suitable homage 
 of cleanness and fit adornment. It is only when 
 this homage becomes mere eye-service, when a 
 book radically unworthy of such dignity is too 
 delicately cultivated, too richly bound, that a 
 poor dilettantism comes in between the reader 
 and what he reads. Indeed, the best of volumes 
 may, in my estimation, be destroyed as a pos- 
 session by a binding so sumptuous that no fingers 
 dare to open it for perusal. To the feudal 
 splendours of Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, a ten- 
 penny book in a ten-pound binding, I say fie. 
 Perhaps the ideal library, after all, is a small 
 one, where the books are carefully selected 
 and thoughtfully arranged in accordance with 
 one central code of taste, and intended to be
 
 Introductory 9 
 
 respectfully consulted at any moment by the 
 master of their destinies. If fortune made me 
 possessor of one book of excessive value, I 
 should hasten to part with it. In a little 
 working library, to hold a first quarto of 
 Hamlet, would be like entertaining a reigning 
 monarch in a small farmhouse at harvesting. 
 
 Much has of late been written, however, and 
 pleasantly written, about the collecting and pre- 
 serving of books. It is not my intention here 
 to add to this department of modern litera- 
 ture. But I shall select from among my 
 volumes some which seem less known in de- 
 tail to modern readers than they should be, 
 and I shall give brief " retrospective reviews " 
 of these as though they were new discoveries. 
 In other cases, where the personal history of a 
 well-known book seems worth detaching from 
 our critical estimate of it, that shall be the 
 subject of my lucubration. Perhaps it may 
 not be an unwelcome novelty to apply to old 
 books the test we so familiarly apply to new 
 ones. They will bear it well, for in their 
 case there is no temptation to introduce an^
 
 lo Gossip in a Library 
 
 element of prejudice. Mr. Bludyer himself does 
 not fly into a passion over a squat volume 
 published two centuries ago, even when, as in 
 the case of the first edition of Harrington's 
 Oceana, there is such a monstrous list of errata 
 that the writer has to tell us, by way of excuse, 
 that a spaniel has been " questing " among his 
 papers. 
 
 These scarce and neglected books are full 
 of interesting things. Voltaire never made a 
 more unfortunate observation than when he said 
 that rare books were worth nothing, since, if they 
 were worth anything, they would not be rare. 
 We know better nowadays ; we know how much 
 there is in them which may appeal to only one 
 man here and there, and yet to him with a voice 
 like a clarion. There are books that have Iain 
 silent for a century, and then have spoken with 
 the trumpet of a prophecy. We shall disdain 
 nothing ; we shall have a little criticism, a little 
 anecdote, a Httle bibliography ; and our old book 
 shall go back to the shelves before it has had 
 time to be tedious in its babbling.
 
 CAMDEN'S "BRITANNIA"
 
 Camden's " Britannia " 
 
 Britain : or a chorographkall description of the most jlaurishinglQvgdomes, 
 England, Scotland and Ireland, and the Hands adioyning, out of the 
 depth of •uhitiquitie : heautifed with <iPlIappes of the se'verall Shires of 
 England : Written first in Latine by tViUiam Camden, Clarenceux 
 K^. of tA. Translated newly into English by Philemon Holland, 
 Lotidini, Impcnsis Q'eorgii 'Bishop & Joannis ^oiton, c^I.DC.X. 
 
 There is no more remarkable example of the 
 difference between the readers of our Hght and 
 hurrying age and those who obeyed " Ehza and 
 our James," than the fact that the book we have 
 before us at this moment, a foho of some eleven 
 hundred pages, adorned, like a fighting elephant, 
 with all the weightiest panoply of learning, was 
 one of the most popular works of its time. It 
 went through six editions, this vast antiquarian 
 itinerary, before the natural demand of the vulgar 
 released it from its Latin austerity ; and the 
 title-page v/e have quoted is that of the earliest
 
 14 Gossip in a Library 
 
 English edition, specially translated, under the 
 author's eye, by Dr. Philemon Holland, a laborious 
 phj^sician of Coventry. Once open to the general 
 public, although then at the close of its first 
 quarter of a century, the Britannia flourished 
 with a new lease of life, and continued to bloom, 
 like a literary magnolia, all down the seventeenth 
 century. It is now as little read as other famous 
 books of uncompromising size. The bookshelves 
 of to-day are not fitted for the reception of these 
 heroic folios, and if we want British antiquities 
 now, we find them in terser form and more 
 accurately, or at least more plausibly, annotated 
 in the writings of later antiquaries. Giant 
 Camden moulders at his cave's mouth, a huge 
 and reverend form seldom disturbed by puny 
 passers-by. But his once popular folio was the 
 life work of a particularly interesting and human 
 person ; and without affecting to penetrate to the 
 darkest corners of the cavern, it may be instruc- 
 tive to stand a little while on the threshold. 
 
 When this first English edition of the Britannia 
 was published, Camden was one of the most 
 famous of living English writers. For one man
 
 Camden's " Britannia " 1 5 
 
 of position who had heard of Shakespeare, there 
 would be twenty, at least, who were quite familiar 
 with the claims of the Head-master of West- 
 minster and Clarenceux King of Arms. Camden 
 was in his sixtieth year, in i6ro; he had 
 enjoyed slow success, violent detraction, and 
 final triumph. His health was poor, but he con- 
 tinued to write history, eager, as he says, to show 
 that " though I have been a studious admirer of 
 venerable antiquity, yet have I not been altogether 
 an incurious spectator of modern occurrences." 
 He stood easily first among the historians of his 
 time ; he was respected and adored by the 
 Court and by the Universities, and that his fame 
 might be completed by the chrism of detraction, 
 his popularity was assured from year to year by 
 the dropping fire of obloquy which the Papists 
 scattered from their secret presses. It had not 
 been without a struggle that Camden had attained 
 this pinnacle ; and the Britannia had been his 
 alpenstock. 
 
 This first English edition has the special 
 interest of representing Camden's last thoughts. 
 It is nominally a translation of the sixth Latin
 
 1 6 Gossip in a Library 
 
 edition, but it has a good deal of additional 
 matter supplied to Philemon Holland by the 
 author, whereas later English issues containing 
 fresh material are believed to be so far spurious. 
 The Britannia grew with the life of Camden. 
 He tells us that it was when he was a young 
 man of six-and-twenty, lately started on his 
 professional career as second master in West- 
 minster School, that the famous Dutch geographer, 
 Abraham Ortelius, " dealt earnestly with me that 
 I would illustrate this isle of Britain." This 
 was no light task to undertake in 1577. The 
 authorities were few, and these in the highest 
 degree occasional or fragmentary. It was not a 
 question of compiling a collection of topographical 
 antiquities. The whole process had to be gone 
 through " from the &ZZ-^ 
 
 As a youth at Oxford, Camden had turned 
 all his best attention to this branch of study, 
 and what the ancients had written about Eng- 
 land was intimately known to him. Any one 
 who looks at his book will see that the first 
 180 pages of the Britannia could be written 
 by a scholar without stirring from his chair
 
 Camden's "Britannia" 17 
 
 at Westminster. But when it came to the 
 minute description of the counties there was 
 nothing for it but personal travel ; and accord- 
 ingly Camden spent what holidays he could 
 snatch from his labours as a schoolmaster in 
 making a deliberate survey of the divisions of 
 England. We possess some particulars of one 
 of these journeys, that which occupied 1582, in 
 which he started by Suffolk, through Yorkshire, 
 and returned through Lancashire. He was a 
 very rapid worker, he spared no pains, and in 
 1586, nine years after Ortelius set him going, his 
 first draft was issued from the press. In later 
 times, and when his accuracy had been cruelly 
 impeached, he set forth his claims to attention 
 with dignity. He said : " I have in no wise 
 neglected such things as are most material to 
 search and sift out the truth. I have attained 
 to some skill of the most ancient British and 
 Anglo-Saxon tongues ; I have travelled over all 
 England for the most part, I have conferred with 
 
 most skilful observers in each county I 
 
 have been dihgent in the records of this realm. 
 I have looked into most libraries, registers and 
 
 B
 
 1 8 Gossip in a Library 
 
 memorials of churches, cities and corporations, 
 I have pored upon many an old roll and evidence 
 .... that the honour of verity might in no 
 wise be impeached." 
 
 It was no shght task to undertake such a 
 work on such a scale. And when the first 
 Latin edition appeared, it was hailed as a first 
 glory in the diadem of Elizabeth. Specialists 
 in particular counties found that Camden knew 
 more about their little circle than they them- 
 selves had taken all their lives to learn. Lom- 
 bard, the great Kentish antiquary, said that he 
 never knew Kent properly till he read of it in 
 the Britannia. But Camden was not content to 
 rest on his laurels. Still, year by year, he made 
 his painful journe3-s through the length and 
 breadth of the land, and still, as new editions 
 were called for, the book grew from octavo into 
 folio. Suddenly, about twelve years after its first 
 unchallenged appearance, there was issued, like a 
 bolt out of the blue, a very nasty pamphlet, called 
 Discovery of certain Errors Published in the much- 
 commended Britannia, which created a fine storm 
 in the antiquarian teapot. This attack was the
 
 Camden's "Britannia'* 19 
 
 work of a man who would otherwise be forgotten, 
 Ralph Brooke, the York Herald. He had 
 formerly been an admirer of Camden's, his 
 " humble friend," he called himself ; but when 
 Camden was promoted over his head to be 
 Clarenceux King of Anns, it seemed to Ralph 
 Brooke that it became his duty to denounce the 
 too successful antiquary as a charlatan. He 
 accordingly fired off the unpleasant little gun 
 already mentioned, and, for the moment, he hit 
 Camden rather hard. 
 
 The author of the Britannia^ to justify 
 his new advancement, had introduced into a 
 fresh edition of his book a good deal of in- 
 formation regarding the descent of barons and 
 other noble families. This was York Herald's 
 own subject, and he was able to convict 
 Camden of a startHng number of negligences, 
 and what he calls " many gross mistakings." 
 The worst part of it was that York Herald 
 had privately pointed out these blunders to 
 Camden, and that the latter had said it was 
 too much trouble to alter them. This, at least, 
 is what the enemy states in his attack and if
 
 20 Gossip in a Library 
 
 this be true, it can hardly be doubted that 
 Camden had sailed too long in fair weather, or 
 that he needed a squall to recall him to the 
 duties of the helm. He answered Brooke, who 
 replied with increased contemptuous tartness. 
 It is admitted that Camden was indiscreet in his 
 manner of reply, and that some genuine holes 
 had been picked in his heraldry. But the 
 Britannia lay high out of the reach of fatal 
 pedantic attack, and this little cloud over the 
 reputation of the book passed entirely av/ay, and 
 is remembered now only as a curiosity of 
 literature. 
 
 In the preface the author quaintly admits that 
 " many have found a defect in this work that 
 maps were not adjoined, which do allure the 
 eyes by pleasant portraitures, .... yet my 
 ability could not compass it." They must, then, 
 have been added at the last by a generous after- 
 thought, for this book is full of maps. The 
 maritime ones are adorned with ships in full 
 sail, and bold sea-monsters with curly tails ; 
 the inland ones are speckled with trees and spires 
 and hillocks. In spite of these old-fashioned
 
 Camden's "Britannia" 21 
 
 oddities, the maps are remarkably accurate. 
 They are signed by John Norden and William 
 Kip, the master map-makers of that reign. The 
 book opens with an account of the first inhabitants 
 of Britain, and their manners and customs ; how 
 the Romans fared, and what antiquities they left 
 behind, with copious plates of Roman coins. 
 By degrees v/e come down, through Saxons and 
 Normans, to that work which was peculiarly 
 Camden's, the topographical antiquarianism. 
 He begins with Cornwall, " that region which, 
 according to the geographers, is the first of all 
 Britain," and then proceeds to what he calls 
 " Denshire " and we Devonshire, a county, as he 
 remarks, " barbarous on either side." 
 
 With page 822 he finds himself at the end of 
 his last English county, Northumberland, looking 
 across the Tweed to Berwick, " the strongest hold 
 in all Britain," where it is " no marvel that soldiers 
 without other light do play here all night long at 
 dice, considering the side light that the sun- 
 beams cast all night long." This rather ex- 
 aggerated statement is evidently that of a man 
 accustomed to look unon Berwick as the northern-
 
 22 Gossip in a Library 
 
 most point of his country, as we shall all do, no 
 doubt, when Scotland has secured Home Rule. 
 We are, therefore, not surprised to find Scotland 
 added, in a kind of hurried appendix, in special 
 honour to James I. or VI. The introduction to 
 the Scottish section is in a queer tone of banter ; 
 Camden knows little and cares less about the 
 " commonwealth of the Scots," and ' withall will 
 lightly pass over it." In point of fact, he gets 
 to Duncansby Head in fifty-two pages, and not 
 without some considerable slips of information. 
 Ireland interests him more, and he finally closes 
 with a sheet of learned gossip about the out- 
 lying islands. 
 
 The scope of Camden's work did not give 
 Philemon Holland much opportunity for spread- 
 ing the wings of his style. Anxious to present 
 Camden fairly, the translator is curiously uneven 
 in manner, now stately, now slipshod, weaving 
 melodious sentences, but forgetting to tie them 
 up with a verb. He is commonly too busy 
 with hard facts to be a Euphuist. But here 
 is a pretty and ingenious passage about Cam- 
 bridge, unusually popular in manner, and ex-
 
 Camden's "Britannia" 23 
 
 ceedingly handsome in the mouth of an Oxford 
 man : 
 
 "On this side the bridge, where standeth the 
 greater part by far of the City, you have a 
 pleasant sight everywhere to the eye, what of 
 fair streets orderly ranged, what of a number 
 of churches, and of sixteen colleges, sacred 
 mansions of the Muses, wherein a number of 
 great learned men are maintained, and wherein 
 the knowledge of the best arts, and the sk'U in 
 tongues, so flourish, that they may rightly be 
 counted the fountains of literature, religion and 
 all knowledge whatsoever, who right sweetly 
 bedew and sprinkle, with most wholesome waters, 
 the gardens of the Church and Commonwealth 
 through England. Nor is there wanting any- 
 thing here, that a man may require in a most 
 flourishing University, were it not that the air is 
 somewhat unhealthful, arising as it doth out of a 
 fenny ground hard by. And yet, peradventure, 
 they that first founded a University in that place, 
 allowed of Plato's judgment. For he, being of 
 a very excellent and strong constitution of body, 
 chose out the Academia, an unwholesome place
 
 24 Gossip in a Library 
 
 of Attica, for to study in, and so the superfluous 
 rankness of body which might overlay the mind, 
 might be kept under by the distemperature of 
 the place." 
 
 The poor scholars in the mouldering garrets of 
 Clare, looking over waste land to the oozy Cam, 
 no doubt wished that their foundress had been 
 less Spartan. Very little of the domestic archi- 
 tecture that Camden admired in Cambridge is 
 now left ; and yet probably it and Oxford are 
 the two places of all which he describes that it 
 would give him least trouble to identify if he 
 came to life again three hundred years after the 
 first appearance of his famous Britannia.
 
 From the Hollywood office Oj 
 
 PARVEY TAYLCE 
 
 // AUTHORS' EEPRfcSSNTATIVB 
 NEW YORK -:- HOLLYWOOl 
 
 ^ 182B North GramcAjy Piaco 
 
 A MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES
 
 A Mirror for Magistrates 
 
 A MiROVR FOR Magistrates : being a true Chronicle Historie of the 
 •vntimely falles of such -unfortunate Princes and men of note, as haue 
 happened since the first entrance of Brute into this Hand, -vntill this 
 our latter Age, Nevjly enlarged luith a last part, called A Winter 
 Nights Vision, being an addition of such Tragedies, especially 
 famous, as are exempted in the former Historie, luith a Toem annexed, 
 called England's Eliza. At London. Imprinted by Felix 
 Kyngston, 161O. 
 
 1 HIS huge quarto of 875 pages, all in verse, is 
 the final form, though far from the latest impres- 
 sion, of a poetical miscellany which had been 
 swelling and spreading for nearly sixty years 
 without ever losing its original character. We 
 may obtain some imperfect notion of the Mirror 
 for Magistrates if we imagine a composite poem 
 planned by Sir Walter Scott, and contributed to 
 by Wordsworth and Southey, being still issued, 
 generation after generation, with additions by the
 
 28 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 youngest versifiers of to-day. The Mirror for 
 Magistrates was conceived when Mary's proto- 
 martyrs were burning at Smithfield, and it was 
 not finished until James I. had been on the 
 throne seven years. From first to last, at least 
 sixteen writers had a finger in this pie, and the 
 youngest of them was not born when the eldest 
 of them died. 
 
 It is commonly said, even by such exact critics 
 as the late Dean Church, that the Mirror for 
 Magistrates was planned by the most famous of 
 the poets who took part in its execution, Thomas 
 Sackville, Lord Buckhurst. If a very clever 
 man is combined in any enterprise with people 
 of less prominence, it is ten to one that he gets 
 all the credit of the adventure. But the evi- 
 dence on this point goes to prove that it was not 
 until the work was well advanced that Sackville 
 contributed to it at all. The inventor of the 
 Mirror for Magistrates seems, rather, to have 
 been George Ferrers, a prominent lawyer and poli- 
 tician, who was master of the King's Revels at 
 the very close of Henry VIII. 's reign. Ferrers 
 was ambitious to create a drama in England, and
 
 A Mirror for Magistrates 29 
 
 lacked only genius to be the British ^schylus. 
 The time was not ripe, but he was evidently very 
 anxious to set the world tripping to his goatherd's 
 pipe. He advertised for help in these designs, 
 and the list of persons he v^anted is an amusing 
 one ; he was willing to engage " a divine, a 
 philosopher, an astronomer, a poet, a physician, 
 an apothecary, a master of requests, a civilian, a 
 clown, two gentlemen ushers, besides jugglers, 
 tumblers, fools, friars, and such others." For- 
 tune sent him, from Oxford, one William Baldwin, 
 who was most of these things, especially divine 
 and poet, and who became Ferrers' confidential 
 factotum. The master and assistant-master of 
 Revels were humming merrily on at their masques 
 and triumphs, when the King expired. Under 
 Queen Mary, revels might not flourish, but the 
 friendship between Ferrers and Baldwin did not 
 cease. They planned a more doleful but more 
 durable form of entertainment, and the Mirror 
 for Magistrates was started. Those who claim 
 for Sackville the main part of this invention, 
 forget that he is not mentioned as a contributor 
 till what was really the third edition, and that,
 
 30 Gossip in a Library 
 
 when the first went to press, he was only eighteen 
 years of age. 
 
 Ferrers well comprehended the taste of his 
 age when he conceived the notion of a series of 
 poems, in which famous kings and nobles should 
 describe in their own persons the frailty and in- 
 stability of worldly prosperity, even in those 
 whom Fortune seems most highly to favour. 
 One of the most popular books of the preceding 
 century had been Lydgate's version of Boccaccio's 
 poems on the calamities of illustrious men, a vast 
 monody in nine books, all harping on that single 
 chord of the universal mutability of fortune. 
 Lydgate's Fall of Princes had, by the time that 
 Mary ascended the throne, existed in popular 
 esteem for a hundred years. Its language and 
 versification were now so antiquated as to be 
 obsolete ; it was time that princes should fall to 
 a more modern measure. 
 
 The first edition of Baldwin and Ferrers' 
 book went to press early in 1555, but of 
 this edition only one or two fragments exist. 
 It was "hindered by the Lord Chancellor 
 that then was," Stephen Gardiner, and was
 
 A Mirror for Magistrates 31 
 
 entirely suppressed. The leaf in the British 
 Museum is closely printed in double columns, 
 and suggests that Baldwin and Ferrers meant 
 to make a huge volume of it. The death of 
 Mary removed the embargo, and before Eliza- 
 beth had been Queen for many months, the 
 second (or genuine first) edition of the Myrroure 
 for Magistrates made its appearance, a thin 
 quarto, charmingly prmted in two kinds of type. 
 This contained twenty lives — Haslewood, the 
 only critic who has described this edition, says 
 nineteen, but he overlooked Ferrers' tale of 
 " Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester " — and was 
 the work, so Baldwin tells us, of seven persons 
 besides himself. 
 
 The first story in the book, a story which 
 finally appears at p. 276 of the edition before us, 
 recounts the " Fall of Robert Tresilian, Chief 
 Justice of England, and other of his fellows, for 
 misconstruing the laws and expounding them to 
 serve the Prince's affections, Anno 1388." The 
 manner in which this story is presented is a good 
 example of the mode adopted throughout the 
 miscellany. The corrupt judge and his fellow-
 
 32 Gossip in a Library. 
 
 lawyers appear, as in a mirror, or like personages 
 behind the illuminated sheet at the " Chat Noir," 
 and lamentably recount their woes in chorus. The 
 story of Tresilian was written by Ferrers, but the 
 persons who speak it address his companion : 
 
 Baldwin, we beseech thee with our names to begin 
 
 — which support Baldwin's claim to be looked 
 upon as the editor of the whole book. It is 
 very dreary doggerel, it must be confessed, 
 but no worse than most of the poetry indited in 
 England at that uninspired moment in the national 
 history. A short example — a flower culled from 
 any of these promiscuous thickets — will suffice 
 to give a general notion of the garden. Here is 
 part of the lament of ** The Lord Clifford " : — 
 
 'Because my father Lord John Clifford died^ 
 Slain at St. Albans, in his princess aid, 
 
 .Against the Duke my heart for malice f red. 
 So that I could from wreck no way be stayed^ 
 'But, to avenge my fat her'' s death, assayed 
 
 All means I might the Duke of Yor\ to annoy, 
 
 And all his kin and friends for to destroy.
 
 A Mirror for Magistrates 33 
 
 This made me with my bloody dagger wound 
 His guiltless son, that never 'gainst me stored j 
 
 His father's body lying dead on ground 
 
 To pierce with spear, eke with my cruel sword 
 To part his neck, and with his head to board. 
 
 Invested with a royal paper crown, 
 
 From place to place to bear it up and dotun. 
 
 But cruelty can never ''scape the scourge 
 Of shame, of horror, or of sudden death ; 
 
 Repentance self that other sins may purge 
 
 Doth fly from this, so sore the soul it slayeth ; 
 Despair dissolves the tyrant's bitter breath. 
 
 For sudden vengeance suddenly alights 
 
 On cruel deeds to quit their bloody spites. 
 
 The only contribution to this earliest form 
 of the Mirror which is attributed to an eminent 
 writer, is the " Edward IV." of Skelton, and 
 this is one of the most tuneless of all. It 
 reminds the ear of a whining ballad snuffled out 
 in the street at night by some unhappy minstrel 
 that has got no work to do. As Baldwin pro- 
 fesses to quote it from memory, Skelton being 
 then dead, perhaps its versification suffered in 
 his hands. 
 
 This is not the place to enter minutely into 
 
 c
 
 34 Gossip in a Library 
 
 the history of the building up of this curious 
 book. The next edition, that of 1563, was en- 
 riched by Sackville's splendid " Induction " and 
 the tale of " Buckingham," both of which are 
 comparatively known so well, and have been so 
 often reprinted separately, that I need not dwell 
 upon them here. They occupy pp. 255—271 and 
 433—455 of the volume before us. In 1574 a 
 very voluminous contributor to the constantly 
 swelling tide of verse appears. Thomas Blener 
 Hasset, a soldier on service in Guernsey Castle» 
 thought that the magisterial ladies had been 
 neglected, and proceeded in 1578 to sing the 
 fall of princesses. It is needless to continue the 
 roll of poets, but it is worth while to point out 
 the remarkable fact that each new candidate held 
 up the mirror to the magistrates so precisely in 
 the manner of his predecessors, that it is difficult 
 to distinguish Newton from Baldwin, or Church- 
 yard from Niccols. 
 
 Richard Niccols, who is responsible for the 
 collection in its final state, was a person of ad- 
 venture, who had fought against Cadiz in the 
 Ark, and understood the noble practice of the
 
 A Mirror for Magistrates 35 
 
 science of artillery. By the time it came down 
 to him, in 16 10, the Mirror for Magistrates had 
 attained such a size that he was obliged to omit 
 what had formed a pleasing portion of it, the 
 prose dialogues which knit the tales in verse 
 together, such pleasant familiar chatter between 
 the poets as ** Ferrers, said Baldwin, take you 
 the chronicles and mark them as they come," 
 and the like. It was a pity to lose all this, but 
 Niccols had additions of his own verse to make ; 
 ten new legends entitled "A Winter Night's 
 Vision," and a long eulogy upon Queen Elizabeth, 
 " England's Eliza." He would have been more 
 than human if he had not considered all this far 
 more valuable than the old prose babbling in 
 black letter. This copy of mine is of the greatest 
 rarity, for it contains two dedicatory sonnets 
 by Richard Niccols, one addressed to Lady 
 Elizabeth Clere and the other to the Earl of 
 Nottingham, which seem to have been instantly 
 suppressed, and are only known to exist in this 
 and, I believe, one or two other examples of the 
 book. These are, perhaps, worth reprinting for 
 their curiosity. The first runs as follows : —
 
 36 Gossip in a Library 
 
 {My {Muse, that whilom waiPd those 'Briton kings ^ 
 
 IV ho unto her in vision did appear, 
 
 Craves leave to strengthen her night-weathered wings 
 In the warm sunshine of your golden Clere [clear'\ ; 
 Where she, fair Lady, tuning her chaste lays 
 
 Of England^ s Empress to her hy?nnic string 
 For your affect, to hear that virgin's praise, 
 
 CMa\es choice of your chaste self to hear her singj 
 Whose royal worth, {true virtue's paragon^ 
 
 Here made me dare to engrave your worthy name^ 
 In hope that unto you the same alone 
 
 Will so excuse me of presumptuous blame. 
 That graceful entertain my [Muse may find 
 And even bear such grace in thankful mind. 
 
 The sonnet to the Earl of Nottingham, the 
 famous admiral and quondam rival of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, is more interesting : — 
 
 As once that dove {true honour's aged Lord,") 
 
 Hovering with wearied wings about your ark. 
 When Cadiz, towers did fall beneath your sword. 
 
 To rest herself did single out that bark. 
 So my meek [Muse, — from all that conquering routy 
 
 Conducted through the seds wild wilderness 
 'By your great self, to grave their names about 
 
 The Iberian pillars of Jove's Hercules, — 
 {JAost humbly craves your lordly lion's aid 
 
 ' Gainst monster en'^y, yihile she tells her story
 
 A Mirror for Magistrates 37 
 
 Of 'Britaiiis princes, and that royal I maid 
 
 In whose chaste hymn her QUo sings your glory, ■ 
 Which if, great Lord, you grant, my Muse shall frame 
 (Mirrors most worthy your renowned name. 
 
 But apparently the " great Lord " would not 
 grant permission, and so the sonnet had to be 
 rigorously suppressed. 
 
 The Mirror for Magistrates has ceased to be 
 more than a curiosity and a collector's rarity, but 
 it once assumed a very ambitious function. It 
 was a serious attempt to build up, as a cathedral 
 is built by successive architects, a great national 
 epic, the work of many hands. In a gloomy 
 season of English history, in a violent age of 
 tyranny, fanaticism, and legalised lawlessness, it 
 endeavoured to present, to all whom it might 
 concern, a solemn succession of discrowned 
 tyrants and law-makers smitten by the cruel laws 
 they had made. Sometimes, in its bold and not 
 very delicate way, the Mirror for Magistrates is 
 impressive still from its lofty moral tone, its 
 gloomy fatalism, and its contempt for temporary 
 renown. As we read its sombre pages we see 
 the wheel of fortune revolving ; the same motion
 
 38 Gossip in a Library 
 
 which makes the tiara glitter one moment at the 
 summit, plunges it at the next into the pit of 
 pain and oblivion. Steadily, uniformly, the 
 unflinching poetasters grind out in their monoto- 
 nous rime royal how "Thomas Wolsey fell into 
 great disgrace," and how " Sir Anthony Wood- 
 ville, Lord Rivers, was causeless imprisoned and 
 cruelly wounded"; how "King Kimarus was 
 devoured by wild beasts," and how " Sigebert, for 
 his wicked life, was thrust from his throne and 
 miserably slain by a herdsman." It gives us a 
 strange feeling of S3'mpathy to realise that the 
 immense popularity of this book must have been 
 mainly due to the fact that it comforted the 
 multitudes who groaned under a harsh and 
 violent despotism to be told over and over again 
 that cruel kings and unjust judges habitually 
 came at last to a bad end.
 
 A POET IN PRISON
 
 A Poet in Prison 
 
 The Shepheards Hunting : being Certain Eglogues toritten during the 
 time of the Authors hnprnowi.ent in the Marshaliey. By Qeorge 
 Wyther, Qentleman. London, printed by JV. White for Cfeorge 
 Norton, and are to be sold at the signe of the red- Bull neere Temple- 
 harre. 1615. 
 
 If ever a man needed resuscitation in our 
 antiquarian times it was George Wither. When 
 most of the Jacobean poets sank into comfortable 
 oblivion, which merely meant being laid with a 
 piece of camphor in cotton-wool to keep fresh 
 for us, Wither had the misfortune to be recol- 
 lected. He became a byword of contempt, and 
 the Age of Anne persistently called him Withers, 
 a name, I believe, only possessed really by one 
 distinguished person, Cleopatra Skewton's page- 
 boy. Swift, in The Battle of the Books, brings 
 in this poet as the meanest common trooper that 
 he can mention in his modern army. Pope
 
 42 Gossip in a Library 
 
 speaks of him with the utmost freedom as 
 " wretched Withers." It is true that he hved 
 too long and wrote too much — a great deal too 
 much. Mr. Hazlitt gives the titles of more than 
 one hundred of his publications, and some of 
 them are wonderfully unattractive. I should not 
 like to be shut up on a rainy day with his Salt 
 upon Sail, which seems to have lost its savour, 
 nor do I yearn to blow upon his Tuba Padfica, 
 although it was " disposed of rather for love than 
 money." The truth is that good George Wither 
 lost his poetry early, was an upright, honest, and 
 patriotic man who unhappily developed into a 
 scold, and got into the bad habit of pouring out 
 " precautions," " cautional expressions," " pro- 
 phetic phrensies," " epistles at random," " per- 
 sonal contributions to the national humiliation," 
 " passages," " raptures," and " allarums," until he 
 really became the greatest bore in Christendom. 
 It was Charles Lamb who swept away this whole 
 tedious structure of Wither's later writings and 
 showed us what a lovely poet he was in his youth. 
 When the book before us was printed, George 
 Wither was aged twenty-seven. He had just
 
 A Poet in Prison 43 
 
 stepped gingerly out of the Marshalsea Prison, 
 and his poems reveal an amusing mixture of 
 protest against having been put there at all and 
 deprecation of being put there again. Let no 
 one waste the tear of sensibility over that shell 
 of the Marshalsea Prison, which still, I believe, 
 exists. The family of the Dorrits languished 
 in quite another place from the original Marshalsea 
 of Wither's time, although that also lay across 
 the water in Southwark. It is said that the 
 prison was used to confine persons in who had 
 spoken lewdly of dignitaries about the Court. 
 Wither, as we shall see, makes a great parade 
 of telHng us why he was imprisoned ; but his 
 language is obscure. Perhaps he was afraid 
 to be explicit. In 16 13 he had published a 
 little volume of satires, called Abuses stript and 
 whipt. This had been very popular, running 
 into six or seven editions within a short time, 
 and some one in office, no doubt, had fitted on 
 the fool's cap. Five years later the poor poet 
 would have had a chance of being shipped straight 
 off to Virginia, as a " debauched person " ; as it 
 was, the Marshalsea seems to have been tolerably
 
 44 Gossip in a Libraiy 
 
 unpleasant. We gather, however, that he en- 
 joyed some alleviations. He could say, like 
 Leigh Hunt, " the visits of my friends were the 
 bright side of my captivity ; I read verses with- 
 out end, and wrote almost as many." The 
 poems we have before us were written in the 
 Marshalsea. The book itself is very tiny and 
 pretty, with a sort of leafy trellis-work at the 
 top and bottom of every page, almost suggesting 
 a little posy of wild-flowers thrown through the 
 iron bars of the poet's cage, and pressed between 
 the pages of his manuscript. Nor is there any 
 book of Wither's which breathes more deeply of the 
 perfume of the fields than this which was written 
 in the noisome seclusion of the Marshalsea. 
 
 Although the title-page assures us that these 
 " eglogues " were written during the author's 
 imprisonment, we may have a suspicion that 
 the first three were composed just after his re- 
 lease. They are very distinct from the rest in 
 form and character. To understand them we 
 must remember that in 1614, just before the 
 imprisonment, Wither had taken a share with 
 his bosom friend, William Browne, of the Inner
 
 A Poet in Prison 45 
 
 Temple, in bringing out a little volume of 
 pastorals, called The Shcpherd^s Pipe. Browne, 
 a poet who deserves well of all Devonshire men, 
 was two years younger than Wither, and had 
 just begun to come before the public as the 
 author of that charming, lazy, Virgilian poem of 
 Britannia's Pastorals. There was something of 
 Keats in Browne, an artist who let the world 
 pass him by ; something of Shelley in Wither, 
 a prophet who longed to set his seal on human 
 progress. In the ShephercTs Pipe Willy (William 
 Browne) and Roget (Geo-t-r) had been the 
 interlocutors, and Christopher Brooke, another 
 rhyming friend, had written an eclogue under 
 the mame of Cutty. These personages reappear 
 in The Shepherd's Hunting, and give us a glimpse 
 of pleasant personal relations. In the first 
 ** eglogue," W^illy comes to the Marshalsea one 
 afternoon to condole with Roget, but finds him 
 very cheerful. The prisoner poet assures his 
 rriend that 
 
 This barren place yields somewhat to relieve. 
 
 For I have found sufficient to content me, 
 
 t/ind more true blijs than ever freedom lent me i
 
 46 Gossip in a Library 
 
 and Willy goes away, when it is growing dark, 
 rejoiced to find that " the cage doth some birds 
 good." Next morning he returns and brings 
 Cutty, or Cuddy, with him, for Cuddy has news 
 to tell the prisoner, that all England is taking an 
 interes in him, and that this adversity has made 
 him much more popular than he was before. 
 But Willy and Cuddy are extremely anxious to 
 know what it was that caused Roget's imprison- 
 ment, and at last he agrees to tell them. 
 Hitherto the poem has been written in ottava 
 rima, a form which is sufficiently uncommon in 
 our early seventeenth-century poetry to demand 
 special notice in this case. In a prose post- 
 script to this book Wither tells us that the title, 
 The Shepherd's Hunting, which he seems to feel 
 needs explanation, is due to the stationer, or, as 
 we should say now, to the publisher. But 
 perhaps this was an after-thought, for in the 
 account he gives to Willy and Cuddy he certainly 
 suggests the title himself. He represents him- 
 self as the shepherd given up to the delights of 
 hunting the human passions through the soul ; 
 the simile seems a little confused, because he
 
 A Poet in Prison 47 
 
 represents these qualities not as the quarry, but 
 as the hounds, and so the story of Actason is 
 reversed ; instead of the hounds pursuing their 
 master, the master hunts his dogs. At all 
 events, the result is that he " dips his staff in 
 blood, and onwards leads his thunder to the 
 wood," where he is ignominiously captured by 
 his Majesty's gamekeeper. But the allegory 
 hardly runs upon all-fours. 
 
 The next " eglogue " represents again another 
 visit to the prisoner, and this tihie Willy and 
 Cuddy bring Alexis with them ; perhaps Alexis 
 is John Davics, of Hereford, another contributor 
 to The Shepherd's Pipe. Roget starts his alle- 
 gory again, in the same mild, satiric manner he 
 had adopted, to his hurt, in Abuses stript and 
 whipt. Wither becomes quite delightful again, 
 when cheerfulness breaks through this satirical 
 philosophy, and when he tells us : 
 
 'But though that all the world's delight forsake me, 
 I have a S\Iuse, and she shall music mal{e me ; 
 Whose aery notes, in spite of closest cages, 
 Shall give content to me and after ages. 
 
 They all felt certain of immortality, these cheer-
 
 48 Gossip in a Library 
 
 fill poets of Elizabeth and James, and Prince 
 Posterity has seen proper to admit the claim in 
 more instances than might well have been ex- 
 pected. 
 
 But the delightful part of The Shepherd's 
 Hunting has yet to come. With the fourth 
 " eglogue " the caged bird begins to sing like a lark 
 at Heaven's gate, and it is the prisoned man — 
 who ought to be in doleful dumps — that rallies 
 his free friend Browne on his low spirits. It is 
 time, he says, to be merry : 
 
 Coridon, with his hold rout^ 
 Hath already been about ^ 
 For the elder shepherds' dole. 
 And fetched in the summer pole ; 
 Whilst the rest have built a bower 
 To defend them from a shower. 
 Sealed so close, with boughs all green^ 
 Titan cannot pry between ; 
 V^w the dairy-wenches dream 
 Of their Jlr aw berries and cream, 
 tdyid each doth herself advance. 
 To be ta\en in to dance. 
 
 What summer thoughts are these to come 
 from a pale prisoner in the hot and putrid
 
 A Poet in Prison 49 
 
 Marshalsea ! They are either symptoms of 
 acute nostalgia, or proofs of a cheerfuhiess that 
 lifts their author above a mortal pitch. But 
 Willy declines to join the Lady of the May at 
 her high junketings ; he also has troubles, and 
 prefers to whisper them through Roget's iron 
 bars. There are those who " my Music do 
 contemn," who will none of the poetry of Master 
 William Browne of the Inner Temple. It is 
 useless for him to wrestle with brown shepherds 
 
 for the 
 
 C^ps of turned mnple-root, 
 Whereupon the skilful man 
 Hath engraved the Loves of "Pan, 
 
 or contend for the " fine napkin wrought with 
 blue," if those base clowns called critics are busy 
 with his detraction. But Roget instructs him 
 that Verse is its own high reward, that the songs 
 of a true poet will naturally arise like the moon 
 out of and beyond all racks of envious cloud, 
 and that the last thing he should do is to despair. 
 He rises to his own greatest and bcLt work in 
 this encouragement of a brother-poet, and no 
 one who reads such noble verses as these dare
 
 50 Gossip in a Library 
 
 question Wither's claim to a faiiteuil in the 
 Academy of Parnassus : 
 
 If thy Uerse do bravely tower 
 tAs she ma\es wing, she gets power. 
 Yet the higher she doth soar. 
 She's affronted still the more ; 
 Till she to the highest hath past, 
 Then she rests with Fame at last. 
 Let nought therefore thee affright. 
 But fnake forward in th"^ flight ; 
 For if I could match thy rhyme 
 To the very stars I'd climb. 
 There begin again, and fly 
 Till I reached Eternity. 
 
 In the fifth " eglogue " Roget and Alexis 
 compare notes about their early happiness in 
 phrases of an odd commixture. The pastoral 
 character of the poetry has to be carried out, 
 and so we read of how Roget on a great occasion 
 played a match at football, " having scarce twenty 
 Satyrs on his side," against some of " the best 
 tried Ruffians in the land." Great Pan presided 
 at that match by the banks of Thames, and 
 though the satyrs and their laureate leader were 
 worsted, the moral victory, as people call it,
 
 A Poet in Prison 51 
 
 remained with the latter. All this is an allegory ; 
 and indeed we walk in the very shadow of 
 innuendo all through The Shepherd's Hunting. 
 
 The moral of the whole thing is that eternal 
 ditty of tuneful youth : All for Verse and the 
 World well lost. The enemy is around them on 
 all sides, jailers of the Marshalsea and envious 
 critics, the evil shepherds that preside over grates 
 of steel and noisome beds of straw, but Youth 
 has its mocking answer to all these : 
 
 Let them disaain and fret till they are weary ! 
 We in ourselves have that shall make us merry ; 
 Which he that wants and had the power to know it, 
 Would give his life that he might die a poet. 
 
 It was no small thing to be suffering for 
 Apollo's sake in 16 14. Shakespeare might hear 
 of it at Stratford, and talk of the prisoner as he 
 strolled with some friend on the banks of Avon. 
 A greater than Shakespeare — as most men 
 thought in those days — Ben Jonson himself, 
 might talk the matter over " at those lyric feasts. 
 Made at the Sun, The Dog, the triple Tun " ; 
 for had not he himself languished in a worse
 
 52 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 dungeon and under a heavier charge than Wither ? 
 To be seven-and-twenty, to be in trouble with 
 the Government about one's verses, and to have 
 other young poets, in a ferment of enthusiasm, 
 clinging like swallows to the prison-bars — how 
 delicious a torment ! And to know that it will 
 soon be over, and that the sweet, pure meadows 
 lie just outside the reek of South wark, that 
 summer lingers still and that shepherds pipe and 
 play, that Fame is sitting by her cheerful fountain 
 with a garland for the weary head, and that 
 lasses, " who more excell Than the sweet-voic'd 
 Philomel," are ready to cluster round the interest- 
 ing captive, and lead him away in daisy-chains 
 — what could be more consolatory ! And we 
 close the little dainty volume, with its delicate 
 perfume of friendship and poetry and hope.
 
 DEATH'S DUEL
 
 Death's Duel 
 
 Death's Dvell ; or, A Consolation to the Souk, against the dying Life, 
 and Uuing Death of the "Hody. T)e/iuered in a Sermon at White 
 Hall, before the King''s c^lfaiesty, in the beginning of Lent, 1 6 30. 
 'By that late learned and ^euerend 'Diuine, John T>onne, Dr. in 
 Di'uinity, &" Deane of S. Tauls, London. "Being his last Sermon, 
 and called by his Maiesties household The Tloctor^s oivne Funerall 
 Sermon. London, Printed by Thomas Harper, for ^^Jchard %edmer 
 and 'Benjamin Fisher, and are to be sold at the signe of the Talbot in 
 ^Iders-gate Street. MDCXXXIL 
 
 The value of this tiny quarto with the enormous 
 title depends entirely, so far as the collector is 
 concerned, on whether or no it possesses the 
 frontispiece. So many people, not having the 
 fear of books before their eyes, have divorced the 
 latter from the former, that a perfect copy of 
 DeatKs Duel is quite a capture over which the 
 young bibliophile may venture to glory ; but let 
 him not fancy that he has a prize if his copy 
 does not possess the portrait-plate. One has
 
 56 Gossip in a Library 
 
 but to glance for a moment at this frontispiece 
 to see that there is here something very much 
 out of the common. It is engraved in the best 
 seventeenth-century style, and represents, appa- 
 rently, the head and bust of a dead man wrapped 
 in a winding-sheet. The eyes are shut, the 
 mouth is drawn, and nothing was ever seen more 
 ghastly. 
 
 Yet it is not really the picture of a dead 
 man : it represents the result of one of the 
 grimmest freaks that ever entered into a pious 
 mind. In the early part of March 1 630 (163 1), 
 the great Dr. Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, being 
 desperately ill, and not likely to recover, called a 
 wood-carver in to the Deanery, and ordered a 
 small urn, just large enough to hold his feet, and a 
 board as long as his body, to be produced. When 
 these articles were ready, they were brought into 
 his study, which was first warmed, and then the 
 old man stripped off his clothes, wrapped himself 
 in a winding-sheet which was open only so far as 
 to reveal the face and beard, and then stood up- 
 right in the little wooden urn, supported by leaning 
 against the board. His limbs were arranged like
 
 Death's Duel ^y 
 
 those of dead persons, and when his eyes had 
 been closed, a painter was introduced into the 
 room, and desired to make a full-length and full- 
 size picture of this terrific object, this solemn 
 theatrical presentment of life in death. The 
 frontispiece of Death's Duel gives a reproduction 
 of the upper part of this picture. It was said 
 to be a remarkably truthful portrait of the great 
 poet and divine, and it certainly agrees in all its 
 proportions with the accredited portrait of Donne 
 as a young man. 
 
 It appears (for Walton's account is not pre- 
 cise) that it was after standing for this grim 
 picture, but before its being finished, that the 
 Dean preached his last sermon, that which is 
 here printed. He had come up from Essex in 
 great physical weakness in order not to miss his 
 appointment to preach in his cathedral before the 
 King on the first Friday in Lent. He entered 
 the pulpit with so emaciated a frame and a face 
 so pale and haggard, and spoke with a voice so 
 faint and hollow, that at the end the King him- 
 self turned to one of his suite, and whispered, 
 "The Dean has preached his own funeral
 
 58 Gossip in a Library 
 
 sermon ! " So, indeed, it proved to be ; for he 
 presently withdrew to his bed, and summoned 
 his friends around to take a solemn farewell. 
 He died very gradually after about a fortnight, 
 his last words being, not in distress or anguish, 
 but as it would seem in visionary rapture : " I 
 were miserable if I might not die." All this 
 fortnight and to the moment of his death, the 
 terrible life-sized portrait of himself in his 
 winding-sheet stood near his bedside, where it 
 could be the " hourly object " of his attention. 
 So one of the greatest Churchmen of the seven- 
 teenth century, and one of the greatest, if the 
 most eccentric, of its lyrical poets passed away 
 in the very pomp of death, on the 31st of March 
 1631. 
 
 There was something eminently calculated to 
 arrest and move the imagination in such an end 
 as this, and people were eager to read the dis- 
 course which the " sacred authority " of his 
 Majesty himself had styled the Dean's funeral 
 sermon. It was therefore printed in 1632. As 
 sermons of the period go it is not long, yet it 
 takes a full hour to read it slowly aloud, and we
 
 Death's Duel 59 
 
 may thus estimate the strain which it must have 
 given to the worn-out voice and body of the 
 Dean to deliver it. The present writer once 
 heard a very eminent Churchman, who was also 
 a great poet, preach his last sermon, at the age of 
 ninety. This was the Danish bishop Grundtvig. 
 But in that case the effort of speaking, the ex- 
 traction, as it seemed, of the sepulchral voice 
 from the shrunken and ashen face, did not last 
 more than ten minutes. But the English divines 
 of the Jacobean age, like their Scottish brethren 
 of to-day, were accustomed to stupendous efforts 
 of endurance from their very diaconate. 
 
 The sermon is one of the most " creepy " 
 fragments of theological literature it would be 
 easy to find. It takes as its text the words 
 from the sixty-eighth Psalm : " And unto God 
 the Lord belong the issues of death." In long, 
 stern sentences of sonorous magnificence, adorned 
 with fine similes and gorgeous words, as the 
 funeral trappings of a king might be with gold 
 lace, the dying poet shrinks from no physical 
 horror and no ghostly terror of the great crisis 
 which he was himself to be the first to pass
 
 6o Gossip in a Library 
 
 through. " That which we call life," he says, 
 and our blood seems to turn chilly in our veins 
 as we listen, " is but Hebdomada mortium, a 
 week of death, seven days, seven periods of our 
 life spent in dying, a dying seven times over, 
 and there is an end. Our birth dies in infancy, 
 and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and 
 rest die in age, and age also dies and determines 
 all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or 
 age out of youth, arise so as a Phoenix out of 
 the ashes of another Phoenix formerly dead, but 
 as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion or as a 
 snake out of dung." We can comprehend how 
 an audience composed of men and women whose 
 ne'er-do-weel relatives went to the theatre to be 
 stirred by such tragedies as those of Marston 
 and Cyril Tourneur would themselves snatch a 
 sacred pleasure from awful language of this kind 
 in the pulpit. There is not much that we should 
 call doctrine, no pensive or consolatory teaching, 
 no appeal to souls in the modern sense. The 
 effect aimed at is that of horror, of solemn 
 preparation for the advent of death, as by one 
 who fears, in the flutter of mortality, to lose
 
 Death's Duel 6i 
 
 some peculiarity of the skeleton, some jag of 
 the vast crooked scythe of the spectre. The 
 most ingenious of poets, the most subtle of 
 divines, whose life had been spent in examining 
 Man in the crucible of his own alchemist fancy, 
 seems anxious to preserve to the very last his 
 powers of unflinching spiritual observation. The 
 Dean of St. Paul's, whose reputation for learned 
 sanctity had scarcely sufficed to shelter him 
 from scandal on the ground of his fantastic 
 defence of suicide, was familiar with the idea of 
 Death, and greeted him as a welcome old friend 
 whose face he was glad to look on long and 
 closely. 
 
 The leaves at the end of this little book are 
 filled up with two copies of funeral verses on 
 Dean Donne. These are unsigned, but we know 
 from other sources to whom to attribute them. 
 Each is by an eminent man. The first was written 
 by Dr. Henry King, then the royal chaplain, and 
 afterward Bishop of Chichester, to whom the 
 Dean had left, besides a model in gold of the 
 Synod of Dort, that painting of himself in the 
 winding-sheet of which we have already spoken.
 
 62 Gossip in a Library 
 
 This portrait Dr. King put into the hands of a 
 sculptor, who made a reproduction of it in white 
 marble, with the little urn concealing the feet. 
 This long remained in St. Paul's Cathedral, of 
 which King was chief residentiary, but it no 
 longer exists. His elegy is very prosy in start- 
 ing, but improves as it goes along, and is most 
 ingenious throughout. These are the words in 
 which Dr. King refers to the appearance of the 
 dying preacher in the pulpit : 
 
 Thou (like the dying Swan) diast lately sing 
 Thy mournful dirge in audience of the King; 
 When pale looks, and wea\ accents of thy breath 
 Tresented so to life that piece of death, 
 That it was feared and prophesied by all 
 Thou thither canCst to preach thy funeral. 
 
 The other elegy was written by a young 
 man of twenty-one, who was modestly and 
 enthusiastically seeking the company of the most 
 famous London wits. This was Edward Hyde, 
 thirty years later to become Earl of Clarendon, 
 and finally to leave behind him manuscripts which 
 should prove him the first great English historian.
 
 Death's Duel 63 
 
 His verses here bespeak his good intention, but 
 no facility in rhyming. 
 
 It was left for the riper disciples of the great 
 divine to sing his funerals in more effective 
 numbers. Of the crowd of poets who attended 
 him with music to the grave, none expressed his 
 merits in such excellent verses or with so much 
 critical judgment as Thomas Carew, the king's 
 sewer in ordinary. It is not so well known but 
 that we quote some lines from it : — 
 
 The fire 
 That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic choir, 
 Which, kindlea first by thy Tromethean breath, 
 Glo'Wd here awhile, lies quench' d now in thy death. 
 The SVLuses^ garden, with pedantic "needs 
 O'erspread, was purged by thee, the lazy seeds 
 Of servile imitation thrown away, 
 t^nd fresh invention pla?ited ; thou didst pay 
 The debts of our penurious bankrupt age. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Whatsoever wrojig 
 'By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, 
 Thou hast redeemed, and opened us a mine 
 Of rich and pregnant fancy, drawn a line 
 Of masculine expression, tfhich, had good 
 Old Orpheus seen., or all the ancient brood
 
 64 Gossip in a Library. 
 
 Our superstitious fools admire, and hold 
 
 Their lead more precious than thy burnisHd gold. 
 
 Thou hadst been their exchequer 
 
 Let others carve the rest ; it viill suffice 
 
 I on thy grave this epitaph incise : — 
 
 Here lies a Kijig, that ruled as he thought Jit 
 
 The universal monarchy of wit ; 
 
 Here lies two Flamens, and both these the best, — 
 
 z^pollos first, at last the True (jods priest. 
 
 The materials for a Life of Dr. Donne are 
 fairly copious, but no good memoir of him exists, 
 none better than the garrulous and amiable 
 narrative of Izaak Walton. To chronicle the 
 career of this extraordinary man, with all its 
 hot and cold fits, its rage of lyrical amativeness, 
 its Roman passion, the high and cloudy serenity 
 of its final Anglicanism, would be a fine piece 
 of work for a writer of leisure and enthusiasm. 
 Donne is one of the most fascinating, in some 
 ways one of the most inscrutable, figures in our 
 literature, and we would fain see his portrait 
 drawn from his first wild escapade into the 
 Azores down to his voluntary penitence in the 
 pulpit and the winding-sheet.
 
 GERARD'S HERBAL
 
 Gerard's Herbal 
 
 The Herball or general Histork of Tlantes, fathered by John 
 Qerarde, of London, cPlfuster in C/iir-vrgerie. Very much enlarged 
 and amended by Ihomas yohnson, citizen and apot hecarye of London. 
 London, Pi inted by tAdam blip, yoke Norton, and '^chard Wh'ua- 
 ken. iAnno 1633. 
 
 The proverb says that a door must be either 
 open or shut. The bibhophile is apt to think 
 that a book should be either little or big. For 
 my own part, I become more and more attached 
 to " dumpy twelves " ; but that does not preclude 
 a certain discreet fondness for folios. If a man 
 collects books, his library ought to contain a 
 Herbal ; and if he has but room for one, that 
 should be the best. The luxurious and sufficient 
 thing, I think, is to possess what booksellers call 
 " the right edition of Gerard " ; that is to say, 
 the volume described at the head of this paper. 
 There is no handsomer book to be found, none
 
 68 Gossip in a Library 
 
 more stately or imposing, than this magnificent 
 folio of sixteen hundred pages, with its close, elabo- 
 rate letterpress, its innumerable plates, and John 
 Payne's fine frontispiece in compartments, with 
 Theophrastus and Dioscorides facing one another, 
 and the author below them, holding in his right 
 hand the new-found treasure of the potato plant. 
 This edition of 1633 is the final development 
 of what had been a slow growth. The sixteenth 
 century witnessed a great revival, almost a 
 creation of the science of botany. People began 
 to translate the great Materia Medica of the Greek 
 physician, Dioscorides of Anazarba, and to com- 
 ment upon it. The Germans were the first to 
 append woodcuts to their botanical descrip- 
 tions, and it is Otto Brunfelsius, in 1530, who 
 has the credit of being the originator of such 
 figures. In 1554 there was published the first 
 great Herbal, that of Rembertus Dodonaeus, 
 body-physician to the Emperor Maximilian II., 
 who wrote in Dutch. An English translation 
 of this, brought out in I578> by Lyte, was 
 the earliest important Herbal in our lan- 
 guage. Five years later, in 1583, a certain
 
 Gerard's Herbal 69 
 
 Dr. Priest translated all the botanical works of 
 Dodonaeus, with much greater fulness than Lyte 
 had done, and this volume was the germ of 
 Gerard's far more famous production. John 
 Gerard was a Cheshire man, born in 154S, who 
 came up to London, and practised with much 
 success as a surgeon. According to his editor 
 and continuator, Thomas Johnson, who speaks 
 of Gerard with startling freedom, this excellent 
 man was by no means well equipped for the task 
 of compiling a great Herbal. He knew so little 
 Latin, according to this too candid friend, that 
 he imagined Leonard Fuchsius, who was a Ger- 
 man contemporary of his own, to be one of the 
 ancients. But Johnson is a little too zealous 
 in magnifying his own office. He brings a worse 
 accusation against Gerard, if I understand him 
 rightly to charge him with using Dr. Priest's 
 manuscript collections after his death, without 
 giving that physician the credit of his labours. 
 When Johnson made this accusation, Gerard had 
 been dead twenty-six years. In any case it seems 
 certain that Gerard's original Herbal, which, be- 
 yond question, surpassed all its predecessors
 
 'JO Gossip in a Library 
 
 when it was printed in folio in 1597, was built 
 up upon the ground-work of Priest's translation of 
 Dodonaeus. Nearly forty years later, Thomas 
 Johnson, himself a celebrated botanist, took up 
 the book, and spared no pains to reissue it in 
 perfect form. The result is the great volume 
 before us, an elephant among books, the noblest 
 of all the English Herbals. Johnson was 
 seventy-two years of age when he got this 
 gigantic work off his hands, and he lived eleven 
 years longer to enjoy his legitimate success. 
 
 The great charm of this book at the present 
 time consists in the copious woodcuts. Of these 
 there are more than two thousand, each a careful 
 and original study from the plant itself. In the 
 course of two centuries and a half, with all the 
 advance in appliances, we have not improved a 
 whit on the original artist of Gerard's and John- 
 son's time. The drawings are all in strong 
 outline, with very little attempt at shading, but 
 the characteristics of each plant are given with 
 a truth and a simplicity which are almost Japan- 
 ese, In no case is this more extraordinary 
 than in that of the orchids, or " satyrions," as
 
 Gerard's Herbal 71 
 
 they were called in the days of the old herbalist. 
 Here, in a succession of little figures, each not 
 more than six inches high, the peculiarity of 
 every portion of a full-grown flowering specimen 
 of each species is given with absolute perfection, 
 without being slurred over on the one hand, or 
 exaggerated on the other. For instance, the 
 little variety called " ladies' tresses " \_Spiranlhes^, 
 which throws a spiral head of pale green blossoms 
 out of dry pastures, appears here with small bells 
 hanging on a twisted stem, as accurately as the 
 best photograph could give it, although the pro- 
 cess of woodcutting, as then practised in England, 
 was very rude, and although almost all other 
 Enghsh illustrations of the period are rough 
 and inartistic. It is plain that in every instance 
 the botanist himself drew the form, with which 
 he was already intelligently familiar, on the block, 
 with the living plant lying at his side. 
 
 The plan on which the herbalist lays out his 
 letterpress is methodical in the extreme. He 
 begins by describing his plant, then gives its 
 habitat, then discusses its nomenclature, and 
 ends with a medical account of its nature and
 
 72 Gossip in a Library 
 
 virtues. It is, of course, to be expected that 
 we should find the fine old names of plants 
 enshrined in Gerard's pages. For instance, he 
 gives to the deadly nightshade the name, which 
 now only lingers in a corner of Devonshire, the 
 "dwale." As an instance of his style, I may 
 quote a passage from what he has to say about 
 the virtues, or rather vices, of this plant : 
 
 " Banish it from your gardens and the use of 
 it also, being a plant so furious and deadly ; for 
 it bringeth such as have eaten thereof into a 
 dead sleep wherein many have died, as hath been 
 often seen and proved by experience both in 
 England and elsewhere. But to give you an 
 example hereof it shall not be amiss. It came 
 to pass that three boys of Wisbeach, in the Isle 
 of Ely, did eat of the pleasant and beautifu4 
 fruit hereof, two whereof died in less than eight 
 hours after they had eaten of them. The third 
 child had a quantity of honey and water mixed 
 together given him to drink, causing him to 
 vomit often. God blessed this means, and the 
 child recovered. Banish, therefore, these per- 
 nicious plants out of your gardens, and all
 
 Gerard's Herbal 73 
 
 places near to your houses where children do 
 resort." 
 
 Gerard has continually to stop his description 
 that he may repeat to his readers some anecdote 
 which he remembers. Now it is how " Master 
 Cartwright, a gentleman of Gray's Inn, who was 
 grievously wounded into the lungs," was cured 
 with the herb called " Saracen's Compound," 
 "and that, by God's permission, in short space." 
 Now it is to tell us that he has found yellow 
 archangel growing under a sequestered hedge 
 " on the left hand as you go from the village of 
 Hampstead, near London, to the church," or that 
 " this amiable and pleasant kind of primrose " 
 (a sort of oxlip) was first brought to light by 
 Mr. Hesketh, " a diligent searcher after simples," 
 in a Yorkshire wood. While the groundlings 
 were crowding to see new plays by Shirley and 
 Massinger, the editor of this volume was ex- 
 amining fresh varieties of auricula in " the 
 gardens of Mr. Tradescant and Mr. Tuggie." 
 It is wonderful how modern the latter statement 
 sounds, and how ancient the former. But the 
 garden seems the one spot on earth where
 
 74 Gossip in a Library 
 
 history does not assert itself, and, no doubt, 
 when Nero was fiddling over the blaze of Rome, 
 there were florists counting the petals of rival 
 roses at Paestum as peacefully and conscientiously 
 as any gardeners of to-day. 
 
 The herbalist and his editor write from per- 
 sonal experienee, and this gives them a great 
 advantage in dealing with superstitions. If there 
 was anything which people were certain about 
 in the early part of the seventeenth century, it 
 was that the mandrake only grew under a 
 gallows, where the dead body of a man had 
 fallen to pieces, and that when it was dug up it 
 gave a great shriek, which was fatal to the 
 nearest living thing. Gerard contemptuously 
 rejects all these and other tales as " old wives' 
 dreams." He and his servants have often digged 
 up mandrakes, and are not only still alive, but 
 listened in vain for the dreadful scream. It 
 might be supposed that such a statement, from 
 so eminent an authority, would settle the point, 
 but we find Sir Thomas Browne, in the next 
 generation, battling these identical popular errors 
 in the pages of his Pseudodoxia Epidemica,
 
 Gerard's Herbal y^ 
 
 In the like manner, Gerard's botanical evidence 
 seems to have been of no use in persuading the 
 public that mistletoe was not generated out of 
 birdlime dropped by thrushes into the boughs 
 of trees, or that its berries were not desperately 
 poisonous. To observe and state the truth is 
 not enough. The ears of those to whom it is 
 proclaimed must be ready to accept it. 
 
 Our good herbalist, however, cannot get 
 through his sixteen hundred accurate and solemn 
 pages without one slip. After accompanying 
 him dutifully so far, we double up with uncon- 
 trollable laughter on p. 1587, for here begins 
 the chapter which treats " of the Goose Tree, 
 Barnacle Tree, or the Tree bearing Geese." But 
 even here the habit of genuine observation clings 
 to him. The picture represents a group of 
 stalked barnacles — those shrimps fixed by their 
 antennce, which modern science, I believe, calls 
 Lepas anatifera ; by the side of these stands 
 a little goose, and the suggestion of course is 
 that the latter has slipped out of the former, 
 although the draughtsman has been far too con- 
 scientious to represent the occurrence. Yet the
 
 76 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 letterpress is confident that in the north parts 
 of Scotland there are trees on which grow white 
 shells, which ripen, and then, opening, drop little 
 living geese into the waves below. Gerard 
 himself avers that from Guernsey and Jersey he 
 brought home with him to London shells, like 
 limpets, containing little feathery objects, "which, 
 no doubt, were the fowls called Barnacles." It 
 is almost needless to say that these objects really 
 were the plumose and flexible cirri which the 
 barnacles throw out to catch their food with, and 
 which lie, like a tiny feather-brush, just within 
 the valves of the shell, when the creature is 
 dead. Gerard was plainly unable to refuse cre- 
 dence to the mass of evidence which presented 
 itself to him on this subject, yet he closes with 
 a hint that this seems rather a " fabulous breed" 
 of geese. 
 
 With the Barnacle Goose Tree the Herbal 
 proper closes, in these quaint words : 
 
 " And thus having, through God's assistance, 
 discoursed somewhat at large of grasses, herbs, 
 shrubs, trees and mosses, and certain excres- 
 cences of the earth, with other things moe,
 
 Gerard's Herbal 77 
 
 incident to the history thereof, we conclude, and 
 end our present volume with this wonder of 
 England. For the which God's name be ever 
 honoured and praised." 
 
 And so, at last, the Goose Tree receives the 
 highest sanction-
 
 PHARAMOND
 
 Pharamond 
 
 Pharamond; or. The History of France. tA C^eiu ^mance. In four 
 farts. fVritten originally in French, by the Author of Cassandra and 
 Cleopatra : and noio elegantly rendred into English. London : 
 Trinted by J a : Cottrell, for Samuel Speed, at the '^I{ain-Bo'w in 
 Fleetstreet, near the Inner Temple-Qate, [Folio.) 1662. 
 
 There is no better instance of the fact that 
 books will not live by good works alone than is 
 offered by the utterly neglected heroic novels of 
 the seventeenth century. At the opening of the 
 reign of Louis XIV. in France, several writers, 
 in the general dearth of prose fiction, began to 
 supply the public in Paris with a series of long 
 romances, which for at least a generation ab- 
 sorbed the attention of the ladies and reigned 
 unopposed in every boudoir. I wonder whether 
 my lady readers have ever attempted to realise 
 how their sisters of two hundred years ago spent 
 their time ? In an English country-house of 
 
 F
 
 82 Gossip m a Library 
 
 1650, there were no magazines, no newspapers, 
 no lawn tennis or croquet, no afternoon-teas or 
 glee-concerts, no mothers' meetings or zenana 
 missions, no free social intercourse with neigh- 
 bours, none of the thousand and one agreeable 
 diversions with which the life of a modern girl 
 is diversified. On the other hand, the ladies of 
 the house had their needlework to attend to, 
 they had to " stitch in a clout," as it was called ; 
 they had to attend to the duties of a house- 
 keeper, and, when the sun shone, they tended 
 the garden. Perhaps they rode or drove, in a 
 stately fashion. But through long hours they 
 sat over their embroidery frames or mended the 
 solemn old tapestries which lined their walls, 
 and during these sedate performances they re- 
 quired a long-winded, polite, unexciting, stately 
 book that might be read aloud by turns. The 
 heroic novel, as provided by Gombreville, 
 Calprenede, and Mile, de Scudery supplied this 
 want to perfection. 
 
 The sentiments in these novels were of the 
 most elevated class, and tedious as they seem 
 nowadays to us, it was the sentiments, almost
 
 Pharamond 83 
 
 more than the action, which fascinated contem- 
 porary opinion. Madame de Sevigne herself, 
 the brightest and wittiest of women, confessed 
 herself to be a fly in the spider's web of their 
 attractions. " The beauty of the sentiments," 
 she writes, " the violence of the passions, the 
 grandeur of the events, and the miraculous 
 success of their redoubtable swords, all draw me 
 on as though I were still a little girl." In these 
 modern days of success, we may still start to 
 learn that the Parisian publisher of Le Grand 
 Cyrus made I00,000 crowns by that work, from 
 the appearance of its first volume in 1649 to its 
 close in 1653. The qualities so admirably 
 summed up by Madame de Sevigne were those 
 which appealed most directly to public feeling in 
 France. There really were heroes in that day, 
 the age of chivalric passions had not passed, 
 great loves, great hates, great emotions of all 
 kinds, were conceivable and within personal 
 experience. When La Rochefoucauld wrote to 
 Madame de Longueville the famous lines which 
 may be thus translated :
 
 84 Gossip in a Library 
 
 To win that wonder of the world, 
 
 A smile from her bright eyes, 
 I fought my King, and would have hurled 
 
 The gods out of their skies, 
 
 he was breathing the very atmosphere of the 
 heroic novels. Their extraordinary artificial 
 elevation of tone was partly the spirit of the age ; 
 it was also partly founded on a new literary 
 ideal, the tone of Greek romance. No book 
 had been read in France with greater avidity 
 than the sixteenth-century translation of the old 
 novel Heliodorus ; and in the Polexandres and 
 Clelies we see what this Greek spirit of romance 
 could blossom into when grafted upon the stock 
 of Louis XIV. 
 
 The vogue of these heroic novels in England 
 has been misstated, for the whole subject has but 
 met with neglect from successive historians of 
 literature. It has been asserted that they were 
 not read in England until after the Restoration. 
 Nothing is further from the truth. Charles I. 
 read Cassandra in prison, while we find Dorothy 
 Osborne, in her exquisite letters to Sir William 
 Temple, assiduously studying one heroic novel
 
 Pnaramoiid 85 
 
 after another through the central years of Crom- 
 well's rule. She reads Le Grand Cyrus while 
 she has the ague ; she desires Temple to tell 
 her " which aniant you have most compassion 
 for, when you have read what each one says 
 for himself." She and the King read them in 
 the original, but soon there arrived English 
 translations and imitations. These began to 
 appear a good deal sooner than bibliographers 
 have been prepared to admit. Of the Astree of 
 D'Urfe — which, however, is properly a link 
 between the Arcadia of Sidney and the genuine 
 heroic novel — there was an English version as 
 early as 1620. But, of the real thing, the tirst 
 importation was Polexandre, in 1647, followed 
 by Cassandra and Ibrahim in 1652, Artamenes in 
 1653, Cleopatra in 1654—8, and Cle'lie in 1656, 
 all, it will be observed, published in England 
 before the close of the Commonwealth. 
 
 Dorothy Osborne, who had studied the French 
 originals, turned up her nose at these translations. 
 She says that they were " so disguised that I, 
 whu am their old acquaintance, hardly knew 
 them." They had, moreover, changed their form.
 
 86 Gossip in a Library 
 
 In France they had come out in an infinite 
 number of small, manageable tomes. For in- 
 stance, Calprenede published his Cleopatre in 
 twenty-three volumes ; but the English Cleopatra 
 is all contained in one monstrous elephant 
 folio. Artamcnes, the English translation of Le 
 Grav.d Cyrus, is worse still, for it is comprised 
 in five such folios. Many of the originals 
 were translated over and over again, so popular 
 were they ; and as the heroic novels of any 
 eminence in France were limited in num.ber, it 
 would be easy, by patiently hunting the trans- 
 lations up in old libraries, to make a pretty 
 complete list of them. The principal heroic 
 novels were eight in all ; of these there is but 
 one, the Alnw.hide of Mile, de Scud^r}^, which we 
 have not already mentioned, and the original 
 publication of the whole school is confined within 
 less than thirty years. 
 
 The best master in a bad class of lumbering 
 and tiresome fiction was the author of the book 
 which is the text of this chapter. La Calprendde, 
 whose full name was nothing less than Gautier 
 de Costes de la Calprenede, was a Gascon gentle-
 
 Pharamond 87 
 
 man of the Guards, of whose personal history 
 the most notorious fact is that he had the temerity 
 to marry a woman who had already buried five 
 husbands. Some historians relate that she 
 proceeded to poison number six, but this 
 does not appear to be certain, while it does 
 appear that Calprenede lived in the married state 
 for fifteen yeaTS, a longer respite than the 
 antecedents of madame gave him any right to 
 anticipate. He made a great fame with his two 
 huge Roman novels, Cassandra and Cleopatra, 
 and then, some 3rears later, he produced a third, 
 Pharamond, which was taken out of early French 
 history. The translator, in the version before 
 us, says of this book that it " is not a romance, 
 but a history adorned with some excellent 
 flourishes of language and loves, in which you 
 may delightfully trace the author's learned pen 
 through all those historians who wrote of the 
 times he treats of." In other words, while 
 Gombreville — with his King of the Canaries, and 
 his Vanishing Islands, and his necromancers, and 
 his dragons — canters through pure fairyland, and 
 while Mile, de Scudery elaborately builds up a
 
 88 Gossip in a Library 
 
 romantic picture of her own times (in Clelie, for 
 instance, where the three hundred and seventy 
 several characters introduced are said to be all 
 acquaintances of the author), Calprenede at- 
 tempted to produce something like a proper 
 historical novel, introducing invention, but em- 
 broidering it upon some sort of genuine frame- 
 work of fact. 
 
 To describe the plot of Pharamond, or of any 
 other heroic novel, would be a desperate task. 
 The great number of personages introduced in 
 pairs, the intrigues of each couple forming a 
 separate thread wound into the complex web of 
 the plot, is alone enough to make any following 
 of the story a great difficulty. On the fly-leaf 
 of a copy of Cleopatra which lies before me, some 
 dear lady of the seventeenth century has very 
 conscientiously written out " a list of the Pairs 
 of Lovers," and there are thirteen pairs. Phara- 
 mond begins almost in the same manner as a 
 novel by the late Mr. G. P. R. James might. 
 When the book opens we discover the amorous 
 Marcomine and the valiant Genebaud sallying 
 forth along the bank of a river on two beautiful
 
 Pharamond 89 
 
 horses of the best jennet-race. Throughout 
 the book all the men are valiant, all the ladies 
 are passionate and chaste. The heroes enter 
 the lists covered with rubies, loosely embroidered 
 over surcoats of gold and silk tissue ; their heads 
 " shine with gold, enamel and precious stones, 
 with the hinder part covered with an hundred 
 plumes of different colours." They are mounted 
 upon horses " whose whiteness might outvie the 
 purest snow upon the frozen Alps." They 
 pierce into woodland dells, where they by chance 
 discover renoAvned princesses, nonpareils of 
 beauty, in imminent danger, and release them. 
 They attack hordes of deadly pirates, and scatter 
 their bodies along the shore ; and yet, for all 
 their warlike fire and force, they are as gentle 
 as marmozets in a lady's boudoir. They are 
 especially admirable in the putting forth of 
 sentiments, in glozing over a subtle difficulty in 
 love, in tying a knot of silk or fastening a lock 
 of hair to their bonnet. They will steal into a 
 cabinet so softly that a lady who is seated there, 
 in a reverie, will not perceive them ; they are so 
 adroit that they will seize a paper on which she
 
 90 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 has sketched a couplet, will complete it, pass 
 away, and she not know whence the poetical 
 miracle has come. In valour, in courtesy, in 
 magnificence they have no rival, just as the 
 ladies whom they court are unique in beauty, 
 in purity, in passion, and in self-denial. Some- 
 times they correspond at immense length ; in 
 Pharainond the letters which pass between the 
 Princess Hunnimonde and Prince Balamir would 
 form a small volume by themselves, an easy 
 introduction to the art of polite letter-writing. 
 Mile, de Scudery actually perceived this, and 
 published a collection of model correspondence 
 which was culled bodily from the huge store- 
 house of her own romances, from Le Grand Cyrus 
 and Clelie. These interchanges of letters were 
 kept up by the severity of the heroines. It was 
 not thought proper that the lady should yield 
 her hand until the gentleman had exhausted the 
 resources of language, and had spent years of 
 amorous labour on her conquest. When Roger 
 Boyle, in 1654, published his novel oi Parthenissa, 
 Dorothy Osborne objected to the ease with which
 
 Pharamond 9 1 
 
 the hero succeeded ; she complains " the ladies 
 are all so kind they make no sport." 
 
 This particular 1662 translation of Pharamond 
 appears to be very rare, if not unique. At all 
 events I find it in none of the bibliographies, 
 nor has the British Museum Library a copy of it. 
 The preface is signed J. D., and the version is 
 probably therefore from the pen of John Davies, 
 who helped Loveday to finish his enormous 
 translation of Cleopatra in 1665. In 1677 there 
 came out another version of Pharamond, by John 
 Phillips, and this is common enough. Some da}'', 
 perhaps, these elephantine old romances may 
 come into fashion again, and we may obtain a 
 precise list of them. At present no corner of 
 our literary history is more thoroughly neglected.* 
 
 * Since this was written, a French critic of eminence, M. Jusse- 
 rand, has made (in The English D{vvel in the Time of Shakespeare, I^go) 
 a delighti'ul contribution to this portion of our literary history. The 
 earlier part of the last chapter of that volume may be recommended 
 to all readers curious about the vogue of the heroic novel. But M. 
 Jusserand does not hajipen to mention Pnaramond, nor to cover the 
 exact ground of my little study.
 
 A VOLUME OF OLD PLAYS
 
 A Volume of Old Plays 
 
 In his Ballad of the Book-Hunter, Mr. Andrew 
 Lang describes how, in breeches baggy at the 
 knees, the bibhophile hunts in all weathers : 
 
 0^0 dismal stall escapes his eye ; 
 
 He turns der tomes of low degrees i 
 There soiled romanticists may lie, 
 
 Or Restoration comedies. 
 
 That speaks straight to my heart ; for of all my 
 weaknesses the weakest is that weakness of 
 mine for Restoration plays. From 1660 down 
 to 17 10 nothing in dramatic form comes amiss, 
 and I have great schemes, like the boards on 
 which people play the game of solitaire, in 
 which space is left for every drama needed to 
 make this portion of my library complete. It 
 is scarcely literature, I confess ; it is a sport, a
 
 96 Gossip in a Library 
 
 long game which I shall probably be still playing 
 at, with three mouldy old tragedies and one opera 
 yet needed to complete my set, when the Reaper 
 comes to carry me where there is no amassing 
 nor collecting. It would hardly be credited how 
 much pleasure I have drained out of these 
 dramas since I began to collect them judiciously 
 fifteen years ago. I admit only first editions ; but 
 that is not so rigorous as it sounds, since at 
 least half of the poor old things never went into 
 a second. 
 
 As long as it is Congreve and Dryden and 
 Otway, of course it is literature, and of a very 
 high order ; even Shadwell and Mrs. Behn and 
 Southerne are literature ; Settle and Ravenscroft 
 may pass as legitimate literary curiosity. But 
 there are depths below this where there is no 
 excuse but sheer collectaneomania. Plays by 
 people who never got into any schedule of 
 English letters that ever was planned, dramatic 
 nonentities, stage innocents massacred in their 
 cradles, if only they were published in quarto I 
 find room for them. I am not quite so pleased 
 to get these anonymities, I must confess, as I
 
 A Volume of Old Plays 97 
 
 am to get a clean, tall editio princeps of The 
 Orphan or of Love for Love. But I neither 
 reject nor despise them ; each of them counts 
 one ; each serves to fill a place on my solitaire 
 board, each hurries on that dreadful possible 
 time coming when my collection sliall be 
 complete, and I shall have nothing to do but 
 break my collecting rod and bury it fathoms 
 deep. 
 
 A volume has just come in which happens to 
 have nothing in it but those forgotten plays, 
 whose very names are unknown to the historians 
 of literature. First comes The Roman Em- 
 press, by William Joyner, printed in 1671. 
 Joyner was an Oxford man, a fellow of Magdalen 
 College. The little that has been recorded about 
 him makes one wish to know more. He became 
 persuaded of the truth of the Catholic faith, and 
 made a voluntary resignation of his Oxford 
 fellowship. He had to do something, and so he 
 wrote this tragedy, which he dedicated to Sir 
 Charles Sedley, the poet, and got acted at the 
 Theatre Royal. The cast contains two good 
 actors' names, Mohun and Kynaston, and it seems 
 
 G
 
 98 Gossip in a Library 
 
 that it enjo3'ed a considerable success. But 
 doubtless the stage was too rough a field for the 
 gentle Oxford scholar. He retired into a seques- 
 tered country village, where he lingered on foi 
 nearly forty years. But Joyner was none of the 
 worst of poets. Here is a fragment of The 
 Royal Empress, which is by no means despic- 
 ably versed : 
 
 O thu bright, glorious morning, 
 Thou Oriental spring-time of the day, 
 Who with thy mixed vermilion colours faintest 
 The sky, these hills and plains ! thou dost return 
 In thy accustomed manner, but with thee 
 Shall ne'er return my wonted happiness. 
 
 Through his Roman tragedy there runs a 
 pensive vein of sadness, as though the poet were 
 thinking less of his Aurelia and his Valentius than 
 of the lost common-room and the arcades of 
 Magdalen to be no more revisited. 
 
 Our next play is a worse one, but much more 
 pretentions. It is the Usurper, of 1668, the 
 first of four dramas published by the Hon. 
 Edward Howard, one of Dryden's aristocratic 
 brothers-in-law. Edward Howard is memorable
 
 A Volume of Old Plays 99 
 
 for a couplet constantly quoted from his ep'c 
 poem of The British Princes: 
 
 A vest as adinired IJorUger had on, 
 
 Winch from a naked Tlct his grand sire won. 
 
 Poor Howard has received the laughter of genera- 
 tions for representing Vortiger's grandsire as thus 
 having stripped one who was bare already. But 
 this is the wickedness of some ancient wag, 
 perhaps of Dryden himself, who loved to laugh at 
 his brother-in-law. At all events, the first (and, 
 I suppose, only) edition of The British Princes is 
 before me at this moment, and the second of 
 these lines certainly runs : 
 
 Which from this island'' s foes his grandsire zvon. 
 
 Thus do the critics, leaping one after another, 
 like so many sheep, follow the same wrong track, 
 in this case for a couple of centuries. The 
 Usurper is a tragedy, in which a Parasite, " a 
 most perfidious villain," plays a mysterious 
 part. He is led off to be hanged at last, much 
 to the reader's satisfaction, who murmairs, in the 
 words of Mr. R. L. Stevenson, " There's an end 
 of that."
 
 loo Gossip in a Library 
 
 But though the Usurper is dull, we reach 
 a lower depth and muddier lees of wit in the 
 Carnival, a comedy by Major Thomas Porter, of 
 1664. It is odd, however, that the very worst 
 production, if it be more than two hundred 
 years old, is sure to contain some little thing 
 interesting to a modern student. The Carnival 
 has one such peculiarity. Whenever any of 
 the characters is left alone on the stage, he begins 
 to soliloquise in the stanza of Gray's Churchyard 
 Elegy. This is a very quaint innovation, and 
 one which possibly occurred to brave Major Porter 
 in one of the marches and counter-marches of the 
 Civil War. 
 
 But the man who perseveres is always 
 rewarded, and the fourth play in our volume 
 really repays us for pushing on so far. Here is 
 a piece of wild and ghostly poetry that is well 
 worth digging out of the Duke of Newcastle's 
 Humorous Lovers : 
 
 tAt curfew-titne, and at the dead of night, 
 I will appear, thy conscious soul to fright, 
 £!\iake signs, and beckon thee my ghost to follow 
 To sadder grcves, and churchyards, where we'll hollo
 
 A Volume of Old Plays loi 
 
 To darl^er caves and solitary woods, 
 
 To fatal whirlpools and consuming floods ; 
 
 Til tempt thee to pass by the unlucky ewe, 
 
 Blasted with cursed droppings ef mildew ; 
 
 Under an oak, that ne'er bore leaf, my moans 
 
 Shall there be told thee by the mandrake's groans i 
 
 The winds shall sighing tell thy cruelty, 
 
 t4nd how thy want of love did ?nurder me; 
 
 t/fnd when the cock, ^hall crow, and day grew near. 
 
 Then in a flash of fire Til disappear. 
 
 But I cannot persuade myself that his Grace 
 of Newcastle wrote those lines himself. Pub- 
 lished in 1677, they were as much of a portent 
 as a man in trunk hose and a slashed doublet. 
 The Duke had died a month or two before the 
 play was published ; he had grown to be, in 
 extreme old age, the most venerable figure of 
 the Restoration, and it is possible that the 
 Humorous Lovers may have been a relic of his 
 Jacobean youth. He might very well have 
 written it, so old was he, in Shakespeare's life- 
 time. But the Duke of Newcastle was never a 
 very skilful poet, and it is known that he paid 
 James Shirley to help him with his plays. I 
 feel convinced that if all men had their own, the 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA COLLEGE UBRARl
 
 102 Gossip in a Library 
 
 invocation I have just quoted would fly back 
 into the works of Shirley, and so, no doubt, 
 would the following quaintest bit of conceited 
 fancy. It is part of a fantastical feast which 
 Boldman promises to the Widow of his heart : 
 
 The twinkling stars shall to our zvish 
 S^al^e a grand salad in a dish ; 
 Snow for our sugar shall not fail. 
 Fine candied ice, comfits of hail ; 
 For oranges, gilt clouds we'll squeeze ; 
 The S\Iilky Way we'll turn to cheese ; 
 Sunbeams we'' II catch, shall stand in place 
 Of hotter ginger, nutmegs, mace ; 
 Sun-setting clouds for roses sweet, 
 And violet s\ies strewed for our feet ; 
 The spheres shall for our music play. 
 While spirits dance the time away. 
 
 This is extravagant enough, but surely very 
 picturesque. I seem to see the supper-room of 
 some Elizabethan castle after an elaborate royal 
 masque. The Duchess, who has been dancing, 
 richly attired in sky-coloured silk, with gilt wings 
 on her shoulders, is attended to the refreshments 
 by the florid Duke, personating the river Tha-
 
 A Volume of Old Plays 103 
 
 mesis, with a robe of cloth of silver around 
 him. It seems the sort of thing a poet so 
 habited might be expected to say between a 
 galliard and a coranto. 
 
 At first sight we seem to have reached a 
 really good rhetorical play when we arrive at 
 Bancroft's tragedy of Sertoriiis, published in 
 1679, and so it would be if Dryden and Lee had 
 never written. But its seeming excellence is 
 greatly lessened when we recollect that All 
 for Love and Mithridates, two great poems 
 which are almost good plays, appeared in 1678, 
 and inspired our poor imitative Bancroft. Scr- 
 torius is written in smooth and well-sustained 
 blank verse, which is, however, nowhere quite 
 good enough to be quoted. I suspect that John 
 Bancroft was a very interesting man. He was 
 a surgeon, and his practice lay particularly in 
 the theatrical and literary world. He acquired, 
 it is said, from his patients " a passion for the 
 Muses," and an inclination to follow in the steps 
 of those whom he cured or killed. The dramatist 
 Ravenscroft wrote an epilogue to Sertorius, in 
 which he says that —
 
 I04 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Our Toet to learmd critics does submit, 
 But scorns those little vermin of the pit, 
 Who noise and nonsense vent instead of wit, 
 
 and no doubt Bancroft had aims more professional 
 than the professional playwrights themselves. He 
 wrote three plays, and lived until 1696. One 
 fancies the discreet and fervent poet-surgeon, 
 laden with his secrets and his confidences. Why 
 did he not write memoirs, and tell us what it 
 was that drove Nat Lee mad, and how Otway 
 really died, and what Dryden's habits were ? 
 Why did he not purvey magnificent indiscretions 
 whispered under the great periwig of Wycherle^'-, 
 or repeat that splendid story about Etheredge 
 and my Lord Mulgrave ? Alas ! we would have 
 given a wilderness of Sertoriuses for such a 
 series of memoirs. 
 
 The volume of plays is not exhausted. Here 
 is Weston's Amazon Queen, of 1667, written 
 in pompous rhymed heroics ; here is The For~ 
 time Hunters, a comedy of 1689, the only play 
 of that brave fellow, James Carlisle, who, being 
 brought up an actor, preferred " to be rather
 
 A Volume of Old Plays 105 
 
 than \.o personate a hero," and died in gallant fight 
 for William of Orange, at the battle of Aughrim ; 
 here is Mr. Anthony, a comedy written by the 
 Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery, and printed 
 in 1690, a piece never republished among the 
 Earl's works, and therefore of some special 
 interest. But I am sure my reader is exhausted, 
 even if the volume is not, and I spare him any 
 further examination of these obscure dramas, 
 lest he should say, as Peter Pindar did of Dr. 
 Johnson, that I 
 
 Set wheels on wheels in motion — such a clatter! 
 To force up one poor nipper kin of water ; 
 'Bid ocean labour with tremendous roar 
 To heave a cochje-shell upon the shore. 
 
 I will close, therefore, with one suggestion to the 
 special student of comparative literature — namely, 
 that it is sometimes in the minor writings of an 
 age, where the bias of personal genius is not 
 strongly felt, that the general phenomena of the 
 time are most clearly observed. TJic Amazon 
 Queen is in rhymed verse, because in 1667 
 this was the fashionable form for dramatic
 
 io6 Gossip in a Library 
 
 poetry ; Sertorius is in regular and somewhat re- 
 strained blank verse, because in 1679 the fashion 
 had once more chopped round. What in Dryden 
 or Otway might be the force of originality may 
 be safely taken as the drift of the age in these 
 imitative and floating nonentities.
 
 From ^ Hollywood offkp^ 0/ 
 
 .PARVEY TAYLOR 
 
 >|/ AUTHORS' BEPRlJSENTATlVE 
 
 JflBSfyORK -:- ' EOLLYWOO: 
 
 ^""^ 182B North Grameitey Place 
 ^QUywood 6^3 
 
 A CENSOR OF POETS
 
 A Censor of Poets 
 
 The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets, or the Honour of 
 Tarnassus ; in a '\Brief Essay of the Wori;s and Writings of abo-ve 
 Tivo Hundred of them, from the Time of f^. PFilUam the Conqueror, to 
 the ^eign of His Tresent ^Majesty tying James II. Written by 
 William Winstanley. Licensed fune i6, 1686. London, Printed 
 by H. Clark, for Samuel zManship at the Sign of the 'Black 'Bull in 
 Cornhil, 1687. 
 
 A MAXIM which it would be well for ambitious 
 critics to chalk up on the walls of their work- 
 shops is this : never mind whom you praise, but 
 be very careful whom you blame. Most critical 
 reputations have struck on the reef of some poet 
 or novelist whom the great censor, in his proud 
 old age, has thought he might disdain with im- 
 punity. Who recollects the admirable treatises 
 of John Dennis, acute, learned, sympathetic ? 
 To us he is merely the sore old bear, who was 
 too stupid to perceive the genius of Pope. The
 
 1 1 o Gossip in a Library 
 
 grace and discrimination, lavished by Francis 
 Jeffrey over a thousand pages, weigh like a 
 feather beside one sentence about Wordsworth's 
 Excursion, and one tasteless sneer at Charles 
 Lamb. Even the mighty figure of Sainte Beuve 
 totters at the whisper of the name Balzac. 
 Even Matthew Arnold would have been wiser to 
 have taken counsel with himself before he 
 laughed at Shelley. And the very unimportant 
 but sincere and interesting writer, whose book 
 occupies us to-day, is in some respects the 
 crowning instance of the rule. His literary 
 existence has been sacrificed by a single out- 
 burst of petulant criticism, which was not even 
 literary, but purely political. 
 
 The only passage of Winstanley's Lives of the 
 English Poets which is ever quoted is the para- 
 graph which refers to Milton, who, when it 
 appeared, had been dead thirteen years. It runs 
 thus : 
 
 "John Milton was one whose natural parts 
 might deservedly give him a place amongst the 
 principal of our English Poets, having written two 
 Heroick Poems and a Tragedy, namely Paradice
 
 A Censor of Poets 1 1 1 
 
 Lost, Paradice Regatii'd, and Sampson Agomsta. 
 But his Fame is gone out like a Candle in a 
 Snuff, and his Memory will always stink, which 
 might have ever lived in honourable Repute, 
 had not he been a notorious Traytor, and most 
 impiously and villanously bely'd that blessed 
 Martyr, King Charles the First." 
 
 Mr. Win Stanley does not leave us in any 
 doubt of his own political bias, and his mode is 
 simply infamous. It is the roughest and most 
 unpardonable expression now extant of the pre- 
 judice generally felt against Milton in London, 
 after the Restoration — a prejudice which even 
 Dryden, who in his heart knew better, could not 
 v/holly resist. This one sentence is all that 
 most readers of seventeenth-century literature 
 know about Winstanley, and it is not sur- 
 prising that it has created an objection to him. 
 I forget who it was, among the critics of 
 the beginning of this century, who was accus- 
 tomed to buy copies of the Lives of the English 
 Poets wherever he could pick them up, and burn 
 them, in piety to the angry spirit of Milton. 
 This was certainly more sensible conduct than
 
 1 1 2 Gossip in a Library 
 
 that of the Italian nobleman, who used to build 
 MSS. of Marti'al into little pyres, and consume 
 them with spices, to express his admiration of 
 Catullus. But no one can wonder that the 
 world has not forgiven Winstanley for that 
 atrocious phrase about Milton's fame having 
 " gone out like a candle in a snuff, so that his 
 memory will always stink." No, Mr. William 
 Winstanley, it is your own name that — smells so 
 very unpleasantly. 
 
 Yet I am paradoxical enough to believe that 
 poor Winstanley never wrote these sentences 
 which have destroyed his fame. To support my 
 theory, it is needful to recount the very scanty 
 knowledge we possess of his life. He is said 
 to have been a barber, and to have risen by his 
 exertions with the razor ; but, against that 
 legend, is to be posed the fact that on the titles 
 of his earliest books, dedicated to public men 
 who must have known, he styles himself " Gent." 
 The dates of his birth and death are, I believe, 
 not even conjectured. But the Lives of the 
 English Poets is the latest of his books, and the 
 earliest was published in 1660. This is his
 
 A Censor of Poets 1 1 3 
 
 England's Worthies, a group of what we should 
 call to-day " biographical studies." The longest 
 and the most interesting of these is one on 
 Oliver Cromwell, the tone of which is almost 
 grossly laudatory, although published at the very 
 moment of Restoration. Now, it is a curious, 
 and, at first sight, a very disgraceful fact, that 
 in 1684, when the book of England's Worthies 
 was re-issucd, all the praise of republicans was 
 cancelled, and abuse substituted for it. And 
 then, in 1687, came the Lives of the English Poets, 
 with its horrible attack on Milton. The character 
 of Winstanley seems to be as base as any on 
 literary record. I have come to the conclusion, 
 however, that Winstanley was guilty, neither of 
 retracting what he said about Cromwell, nor of 
 slandering Milton. The black woman excused 
 her husband for not answering the bell, " 'Cause 
 he's dead," and the excuse was considered vaUd. 
 I believe that when these interpolations were 
 made, poor Winstanley was dead. 
 
 Any one who reads the Lives of the English 
 Poets carefully, will be impressed with two facts : 
 first, that the author had an acquaintance wilh 
 
 H
 
 114 Gossip in a Library 
 
 the early versifiers of Great Britain, which was 
 quite extraordinary, and which can hardly be 
 found at fault by our modern knowledge ; while, 
 secondly, that he shows a sudden and unaccount- 
 able ignorance of his immediate contemporaries 
 of the younger school. Except Campion, who is 
 a discovery of our own day, not a single Eliza- 
 bethan or Jacobean rhymster of the second or 
 third rank escapes his notice. Among the 
 writers of a still later generation, I miss no 
 names save those of Vaughan, who was very 
 obscure in his own lifetime, and Marvell, who 
 would be excluded by the same prejudice which 
 mocked at Milton. But among Poets of the 
 Restoration, men and women who were in their 
 full fame in 1687, the omissions are quite start- 
 liiig. Not a word is here about Otway, Lee, or 
 Crowne ; Butler is not mentioned, nor the 
 Matchless Orinda, nor Roscommon, nor Sir 
 Charles Sedley. A careful examination of the 
 dates of works which Winstanley refers to, pro- 
 duces a curious result. There is not mentioned, 
 so far as I can trace, a single poem or play 
 which was pubHshed later than 1675, although
 
 A Censor of Poets 115 
 
 the date on the title-page of the Lives of the 
 English Poets is 1687. Rather an elaborate list 
 of Dryden's publications is given, but it stops at 
 Amboyna (1673). On this I think it is not too 
 bold to build a theory, which may last until 
 Winstanley's entry of burial is discovered in 
 some country church, that he died soon after 
 1675. If this were the case, the recantations in 
 his English Worthies of 1684 would be so many 
 posthumous outrages committed on his blameless 
 tomb, and the infamous sentence about Milton 
 may well have been foisted into a posthumous 
 volume by the same wicked hand. If we could 
 think that Samuel Manship, at the Sign of the 
 Black Bull, was the obsequious rogue who did it, 
 that would be one more sin to be numbered 
 against the sad race of publishers. 
 
 In studying old books about the poets, it 
 sometimes occurs to us to wonder whether the 
 readers of two hundred years ago appreciated 
 the same qualities in good verse which are now 
 admired. Did the ringing and romantic cadences 
 of Shakespeare affect their senses as they do 
 ours ? We know that they praised Carew and
 
 1 1 6 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Suckling, but was it "Ask me no more where 
 June bestows," and " Hast thou seen the down 
 in the air," which gave them pleasure ? It 
 would sometimes seem, from the phrases they 
 use and the passages they quote, that if poetry 
 was the same two centuries ago, its readers had 
 very different ears from ours. Of Herrick 
 Winstanley says that he was " one of the 
 Scholars of Apollo of the middle Form, yet 
 something above George Withers, in a pretty 
 Flowry and Pastoral Gale of Fancy, in a vernal 
 Prospect of some Hill, Cave, Rock, or Fountain ; 
 which but for the interruption of other trivial 
 Passages, might have made up none of the 
 worst Poetick Landskips," and then he quotes, as 
 a sample of Herrick, a tiresome " epigram," in 
 the poet's worst style. This is not delicate or 
 acute criticism, as we judge nowadays ; but I 
 would give a good deal to meet Winstanley at a 
 coffee-house, and go through the Hesperides with 
 him over a dish of chocolate. It would be won- 
 derfully interesting to discover which passages 
 in Herrick really struck the contemporary mind 
 as "flowery," and which as " trivial." But this
 
 A Censor of Poets 1 1 7 
 
 is just what all seventeenth-century criticism, 
 even Drj^den's, omits to explain to us. The 
 personal note in poetical criticism, the appeal to 
 definite taste, to the experience of eye and ear, 
 is not met with, even in suggestion, until we 
 reach the pamphlets of John Dennis. 
 
 The particular copy of Winstanley which lies 
 before me is a valuable one ; I owe it to the 
 generosity of a friend in Chicago, who hoards 
 rare books, and yet has the greatness of soul 
 sometimes to part with them. It is interleaved, 
 and the blank pages are rather densely mscribed 
 with notes in the handwriting of Dr. Thomas 
 Percy, the poetical Bishop of Dromore. From 
 his hands it passed into those of John Bowyer 
 Nichols, the antiquary. Percy's notes are little 
 more than references to other authorities, memo- 
 randa for one of his ov.^n useful compilations, yet 
 it is pleasant to have even a slight personal relic 
 of so admirable a man. Mr. Riviere has bound 
 the volume for me, and I suppose that poor re- 
 jected Winstanley exists nowhere else in so 
 elegant a shape.
 
 LADY WINCHILSEA'S POEMS
 
 Lady Winchilsea's Poems 
 
 MiccELLANY PoEMs. With Tivo Tltjys. 'By tArdella. 
 
 I never list presume to Tarr.ass hill, 
 'But piping loiv, i" shade of loivly gror-e, 
 I play to please myself, albeit ill. 
 
 Spenier Shep. Cal. yune, 
 e^anuscript in folio. Circa 1 696. 
 
 1 HERE is no other book in my library to 
 which I feel that I possess so dear a presump- 
 tive right as to this manuscript. Other rare 
 volumes would more fitly adorn the collections 
 of bibliophiles more learned, more ingenious, 
 more elegant, than I. But if there is any person 
 in the two hemispheres who has so fair a claim 
 upon the ghost of Ardelia, let that man stand 
 forth. Ardelia was uncultivated and unsung 
 v^hen I constituted myself, years ago, her 
 champion. With the exception of a noble frag- 
 ment of laudation from Wordsworth, no dis-
 
 122 Gossip in a Library 
 
 criminating praise from any modern critic had 
 stirred the ashes of her name. I made it my 
 business to insist in many places on the talent 
 of Ardelia. I gave her, for the first time, a 
 chance of challenging public taste, by presenting to 
 readers of Mr. Ward's English Poets many pages 
 of extracts from her writings ; and I hope it is 
 not indiscreet to say that, when the third volum.e 
 of that compilation appeared, Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 told me that its greatest revelation to himself 
 had been the singular merit of this lady. Such 
 being my claim on the consideration of Ardelia, 
 no one will, I think, grudge me the possession 
 of this unknown volume of her works in manu- 
 script. It came into my hands by a strange 
 coincidence. In his brief life of Anne Finch, 
 Countess of Winchilsea — for that was Ardelia's 
 real name — Theophilus Cibber says, " A great 
 number of our authoress' poems still continue 
 unpublished, in the hands of the Rev. Mr. 
 Creake." In 1884 I saw advertised, in an 
 obscure book-list, a folio volume of old manu- 
 script poetry. Something excited my curiosity, 
 and I sent for it. It proved to be a vast collec-
 
 Lady Winchilsea's Poems 123 
 
 tion of the poems of my beloved Anne Finch. I 
 immediately communicated with the bookseller, 
 and asked him whence it came. He replied that 
 it had been sold, with furniture, pictures and 
 books, at the dispersing of the effects of a family 
 of the name of Creake. Thank you, divine Ar- 
 delia ! It was well done ; it was worthy of you. 
 Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, is not a 
 commanding figure in literary history, but she is 
 an isolated and a well-defined one. She is what 
 one of the precursors of Shakespeare calls "a 
 diminutive excelsitude.'' She was entirely out 
 of sympathy with her age, and her talent was 
 hampered and suppressed by her conditions. 
 She was the solitary writer of actively developed 
 romantic tastes between Marvell and Gray, and 
 she was not strong enough to create an atmo- 
 sphere for herself within the vacuum in which 
 she languished. The facts of her life are ex- 
 tremely scanty, although they may now be con- 
 siderably augmented by the help of my folio. 
 She was born about 1660, the daughter of a 
 Hampshire baronet. She was maid of honour to 
 Mary of Modena, Duchess of York, and at Court
 
 124 Gossip in a Library 
 
 she met Heneage Finch, who was gentleman 
 of the bed-chamber to the Duke. They married 
 in 1685, probably on the occasion of the en- 
 thronement of their master and mistress, and 
 when the crash came in 1688, they fled together 
 to the retirement of Eastwell Park. They in- 
 habited this mansion for the rest of their lives, 
 although it was not until the death of his nephew, 
 in 17 1 2, that Heneage Finch became fourth Earl 
 of Winchelsea. In 17 13 Anne was at last per- 
 suaded to publish a selection of her poems, and 
 in 1720 she died. The Earl survived her until 
 1726. 
 
 My manuscript was written, I think, in or 
 about the year 1696 — that is to say, when Mrs. 
 Finch was in retirement from the Court. She 
 has adopted the habit of writing, 
 
 *Betra'':ed by solitude to try 
 tAmuse'inents, which the prosperous jly. 
 
 But her exile from the world gives her no 
 disquietude. It seems almost an answer to her 
 prayer. Years before, when she was at the 
 centre of fashion 'n the Court of James II., she
 
 Lady Winchilsea's Poems 125 
 
 had written in an epistle to the Countess of 
 Thanet : 
 
 (^if'e me, O indulgent Fate, 
 Qiz'e me yet, before I die, 
 A szveet, but absolute retreat, 
 '{Mongst paths so lost, and trees so high, 
 That the world may ne'er invade, 
 Through such windings and such shade, 
 S^ly unshaken liberty. 
 
 This was a sentiment rarely expressed and 
 still more rarely felt by English ladies at the 
 close of the seventeenth century. What their 
 real opinion usually was is clothed in crude and 
 ready language by the heroines of Wycherley and 
 Shadwell. Like Lucia, in the comedy of Epsom 
 Wells, to live out of London was to live in a 
 wilderness, with bears and wolves as one's com- 
 panions. Alone in that age Anne Finch truly 
 loved the country, for its own sake, and had an 
 eye to observe its features. 
 
 She had one trouble, constitutional low spirits : 
 she was a terrible sufferer from what was then 
 known as " The Spleen." She wrote a long 
 pindaric Ode on the Spleen, which was printed
 
 126 Gossip in a Library 
 
 in a miscellany in 1701, and was her first intro- 
 duction to the public. She talks much about her 
 melancholy in her verses, but with singular good 
 sense, she recognised that it was physical, and 
 she tried various nostrums. Neither tea, nor 
 cofTee, nor ratafia did her the least service : — 
 
 In vain to chase thee every art I try, 
 
 In vain all remedies apply, 
 
 In vain the Indian leaf infuse. 
 
 Or the parch' d" eastern herry bruise, 
 
 Or pass, in vain, those hounds, and nobler liquors use. 
 
 It threw a cloud over her waking hours, and 
 took sleep from her eyelids at night : — 
 
 How shall I zooo thee, gentle %est, 
 To a sad mind, with cares oppressed? 
 Ijy what soft means shall I invite 
 Thy powers into my soul to-night ? 
 Yet, gentle Sleep, if thou wilt come, 
 Such darkness shall prepare the room 
 tAs thy own palace overspreads, — 
 Thy palace stored with peaceful beds, — 
 tAnd Silence, too, shall on thee wait 
 T)eep, as in the Turkish State ; 
 Whilst, still as death, I will be found, 
 S^Iy arms by one another bound,
 
 Lady WInchilsea's Poems 127 
 
 t^nd my dull limbs so closed shall be 
 tAs if already seaPd by thee. 
 
 She tried a course of the waters at Tunbridge 
 Wells, but without avail. When the abhorred fit 
 came on, the world was darkened to her. Only 
 two things could relieve her — the soothing influ- 
 ence of sohtude with nature and the Muses, or 
 the sympathetic presence of her husband. She 
 disdained the little feminine arts of her age : — 
 
 iKjr iuill in fading sil\s compose 
 
 Faintly the illimitable rose, 
 
 Fill up an ill-drawn bird, or paint on glass 
 
 "The Sovereign s blurrd and indistinguished face, 
 
 The threatening angel and the speahjng ass. 
 
 But she will wander at sundown through the 
 exquisite woods of Eastwell, and will watch the 
 owlets in their downy nest or the nightingale 
 silhouetted against the fading sky. Then her 
 constitutional depression passes, and she is able 
 once more to be happy : — 
 
 ur sighs are then but vernal air^ 
 Tjut April-drops our tears, 
 
 as she says in delicious numbers that might be
 
 128 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Wordsworth's own. In these dehghtful moments, 
 released from the burden of her t3Tant malady, 
 her eyes seem to have been touched with the 
 herb euphrasy, and she has the gift, denied to 
 the rest of her generation, of seeing nature and 
 describing what she sees. In these moods, this 
 contemporary of Dryden and Congreve gives us 
 such accurate transcripts of country hfe as the 
 following : — 
 
 When the loosed horse now, as his pasture leads. 
 Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads^ 
 Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear ^ 
 Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear ; 
 When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food^ 
 t^nd unmolested kine rechew the cud : 
 When curlews cry beneath the village-walls, 
 And to her straggling brood the partridge calls. 
 
 In Eastwell Park there was a hill, called Par- 
 nassus, to which she was particularly partial, and 
 to this she commonly turned her footsteps. 
 
 Melancholy as she was, however, and devoted to 
 reverie, she could be gay enough upon occasion, 
 and her sprightly poems have a genuine sparkle. 
 Here is an anacreontic — written " for my
 
 Lady Winchilsea's Poems 129 
 
 brother Leslie Finch " — which has never before 
 been printed : — 
 
 From the Park, and the Play, 
 
 ^nd Whitehall, come away 
 To the Tunch-bowl by far more inviting ; 
 
 To the fops and the beaux 
 
 Leave those dull empty shozcs, 
 t^nd see here what is truly delighting. 
 
 The half globe Uis in figure, 
 
 tAnd would it were bigger, 
 Tet here^s the whole universe floating ; 
 
 Here's titles and places, 
 
 %ich lands ^ and fair faces, 
 t^nd all that is worthy our doting, 
 
 ' Twas a world U\e to this 
 
 The hot Grecian did miss. 
 Of whom histories keep such a pother ; 
 
 To the bottotn he sunk, 
 
 Jtnd when he had drun\, 
 (jrew maudlin, and wept for another. 
 
 At another point, Anne Finch bore very Httle 
 likeness to her noisy sisterhood of fashion. In 
 an age when it was the height of ill-breeding for 
 a wife to admit a partiality for her husband, 
 Ardelia was not ashamed to confess that Daphnis 
 
 I
 
 130 Gossip in a Library 
 
 — for so she styled the excellent Heneage Finch 
 — absorbed every corner of her mind that was not 
 occupied by the Muses. It is a real pleasure to 
 transcribe, for the first time since they were 
 written on the 2nd of April 1685, these honest 
 couplets : — 
 
 This, to the crown and blessing of my life, 
 The much- loved husband of a happy wife ; 
 To him whose constant passion found the art 
 To win a stubborn and ungrateful heart ; 
 t^nd to the world by tender est proof discovers 
 They err who say that husbands can't be lovers. 
 With such return of passion as is due, 
 Daphnis I love, Daphnis my thoughts pursue, 
 Daphnis, my hopes, my joys are bounded all in you I 
 
 Nearly thirty years later the same accent is 
 audible, thinned a little by advancing years, and 
 subdued from passion to tenderness, yet as 
 genuine as at first. When at length the Earl 
 began to suffer from the gout, his faithful family 
 songster recorded that also in her amiable verse, 
 and prayed that "the bad disease" 
 
 iMay you but brief unfrequent visits find 
 To prove you patient, your tdrdelia kind.
 
 Lady Winchilsea's Poems 131 
 
 No one can read her sensitive verses, and not 
 be sure that she was the sweetest and most 
 soothing of bed-side visitants. 
 
 It was a quiet hfe which Daphnis and Ardelia 
 spent in the recesses of Eastwell Park. They 
 saw httle company and paid few visits. There 
 was a stately excursion now and then, to the 
 hospitable Thynnes at Longleat, and Anne Finch 
 seldom omitted to leave behind her a metrical 
 tribute to the beauties of that mansion. They 
 seem to have kept up little connection with the 
 Court or with London. There is no trace of 
 literary society in this volume. Nicholas Rowe 
 twice sent down for their perusal translations 
 which he had made ; and from another source 
 we learn that Lady Winchilsea had a brisk 
 passage of compliments with Pope. But these 
 were rare incidents. We have rather to think 
 of the long years spent in the seclusion of East- 
 well, by these gentle impoverished people of 
 quality, the husband occupied with his mathema- 
 tical studies, his painting, the care of his garden ; 
 the wife studying further afield in her romantic 
 reverie, watching the birds in wild corners of
 
 132 Gossip in a Library 
 
 her park, carrying her Tasso, hidden in a fold 
 of her dress, to a dell so remote that she forgets 
 the way back, and has to be carried home " in 
 a Water-cart driven by one of the Under-keepers 
 in his green Coat, with a Hazle-bough for a 
 Whip," It is a little oasis of delicate and pen- 
 sive refinement in that hot close of the seven- 
 teenth century, when so many unseemly monsters 
 were bellowing in the social wilderness.
 
 AMASIA
 
 Amasia 
 
 Amasia : or, The Works of the cM'uses. eA Collection of Toems, In 
 three -vclumes. 'By c^r. John Hopkins. London : Printed by 
 Tho. Warren, for liennet 'Banbury, at t'le 'Blue-tAnchor, in the 
 Lonver-Walk of the CJ^iv-Sxchange, 1700. 
 
 It has often been remarked that if the author 
 of the poorest collection of minor verse would 
 accurately relate in his quavering numbers what 
 his personal observations and adventures have 
 been, his book would not be entirely without 
 value. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred, 
 this is precisely what he cannot do. His rhymes 
 carry him whither he would not, and he is lost 
 in a fog of imitated phrases and spurious sen- 
 sations. The very odd and very rare set of 
 three little volumes, which now come before 
 us, offer a curious exception to this rule. The 
 author of Amasia was no poet, but he possessed 
 the faculty of writing with exactitude about
 
 136 Gossip in a Library 
 
 himself. He prattled on in heroic couplets from 
 hour to hour, recording the tiny incidents of his 
 life. At first sight, his voluble miscellany seems 
 a mere wilderness of tame verses, but when we 
 examine it closely a story gradually evolves. 
 We come to know John Hopkms, and hve in 
 the intimacy of his circle. His poems contain 
 a novelette in solution. So far as I can dis- 
 cover, nothing whatever is known of him save 
 what he reveals of himself, and no one, I think, 
 has ever searched his three uninviting volumes. 
 In the following paragraphs I have put together 
 his story as it is to be found in the pages of 
 Amasta. 
 
 By a single allusion to the Epistolary Poems 
 cf Charles Hopkins, " very well perform'd by my 
 Brother," in 1694, we are able to identify the 
 author of Amasia with certainty. He was the 
 second son of the Right Rev. Ezekiel Hopkins, 
 Lord Bishop of Derry. The elder brother whom 
 we have mentioned, Charles, was considerably 
 his senior; for six years the latter occupied a 
 tolerably prominent place in London literary 
 society, was the intimate friend of Dryden and
 
 Amasia 1 37 
 
 Congreve, published three or four plays not with- 
 out success, and possessed a name which is pretty 
 frequently met with in books of the time. But to 
 John Hopkins I have discovered scarcely an allu- 
 sion. He does not seem to have moved in his 
 brother's circle, and his society was probably more 
 courtly than literary. If we may trust his own 
 account the author of A jn asm was born, doubtless 
 at Londonderry, on the ist of January, 1675. He 
 was, therefore, only twent3'-five when his poems 
 were published, and the exquisitely affected 
 portrait which adorns the first volume must 
 represent him as younger still, since it was 
 executed by the Dutch engraver, F. H. van Hove, 
 who was found murdered in October, 1698. 
 
 Pause a moment, dear reader, and obser\'e 
 Mr. John Hopkins, alias Sylvius, set out with 
 all the artillery of ornament to storm the heart 
 of Amasia. Notice his embroidered silken coat, 
 his splendid lace cravat, the languishment of his 
 large foolish eyes, the indubitable touch of 
 Spanish red on those smooth cheeks. But, 
 above all contemplate the wonders of his vast 
 peruke. He has a name, be sure, for every
 
 138 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 portion of that killing structure. Those sausage- 
 shaped curls, close to the ears, are confidants; 
 those that dangle round the temples, /az;onV^sy 
 the sparkling lock that descends alone over the 
 right eyebrow is the passagere ; and, above all, 
 the gorgeous knot that unites the curls and 
 descends on the left breast, is aptly named the 
 meurtriere. If he would but turn his head, we 
 should see his crcve-ccciir's, the two delicate 
 curled locks at the nape of his neck. The es- 
 cutcheon below his portrait bears, very suitably, 
 three loaded muskets rampant. Such was 
 Sylvius, conquering but, alas ! not to conquer. 
 
 The youth of John Hopkins was passed in 
 the best Irish society. His father, the Bishop, 
 married — apparently in second nuptials, for 
 John speaks not of her as a man speaks of his 
 mother — the daughter of the Earl of Radnor. 
 Lady Araminta Hopkins seems to have been a 
 friend of Isabella, Duchess of Grafton, the 
 exquisite girl who, at the age of five, had married 
 a bridegroom of nine, and at twenty-three was 
 left a widow, to be the first toast in English 
 society. The poems of John Hopkins are
 
 Amasia 139 
 
 dedicated to this Dowager-duchess, who, when 
 they were published, had already for two years 
 been the wife of Sir Thomas Hanmer. At the 
 age of tv/elve, and probably in Dublin, Hopkins 
 met the mysterious lady who animates these 
 volumes under the name of Amasia. Who was 
 Amasia ? That, alas ! even the volubility of 
 her lover does not reveal. But she was Irish, 
 the daughter of a wealthy and perhaps titled 
 personage, and the intimate companion for many 
 years of the beautiful Duchess of Grafton. 
 
 Love did not begin at first sight. Sylvius 
 played with Amasia when they both were children, 
 and neither thought of love. Later on, in early 
 youth, the poet was devoted only to a male 
 friend, one Martin. To him ecstatic verses are 
 inscribed : — 
 
 O SVLartin ! Martin ! let the grateful sound 
 
 Reach to that Heaven which has our Friendship crowtid, 
 
 eAnd, li\e our endless Friendships meet no bound. 
 
 But alas ! one day Martin came back, after a 
 long absence, and, although he still 
 
 With generous, kind, continued Friendship burned.
 
 140 Gossip in a Library 
 
 he found Sylvius entirely absorbed by Amasia. 
 Martin knew better than to show temper ; he 
 accepted the situation, and 
 
 the lov^d Amasids Health few round ^ 
 Jlmasids Health the Golden Goblets crowned. 
 
 Now began the first and happiest portion of 
 the story. Amasia had no suspicion of the feel- 
 ings of the poet, and he was only too happy to be 
 permitted to watch her movements. He records, 
 in successive copies of verses, the various things 
 she did. He seems to have been on terms of 
 delightful intimacy with the lady, and he calls 
 all sorts of people of the highest position to 
 witness how he suffered. To Lady Sandwich 
 are dedicated poems on " Amasia, drawing her 
 own Picture," on "Amasia, playing with a 
 Clouded Fan," on " Amasia, singing, and stick- 
 ing pins in a Red Silk Pincushion," We are 
 told how Amasia "looked at me through a 
 Multiplying-Glass," how she was troubled with a 
 redness in her eyes, how she danced before a 
 looking-glass, how her flowered muslin night- 
 gown (or " night-rail," as he calls it) took fire,
 
 Amasia 141 
 
 and how, though she promised to sing, yet she 
 never performed. We have a poem on the 
 circumstance that Amasia, " having prick'd me 
 with a Pin, accidentally scratch'd herself with 
 it;" and another on her "asking me if I slept 
 well after so tempestuous a night." But perhaps 
 the most intimate of all is a poem "To Amasia, 
 tickling a Gentleman," It was no perfunctory 
 tickling that Amasia administered :^ 
 
 While round his sides your nimble Fingers played^ 
 With pleasing softness did they swiftly rove. 
 While, at each touch, they made his Heart-strings move, 
 t/is round his 'Breast, his ravish' d Breast they crowd. 
 We hear their 3^usic\ when he laughs aloud. 
 
 This is probably the only instance in literature 
 in which a gentleman has complacently celebrated 
 in verse the fact that his lady-love has tickled 
 some other gentleman. 
 
 But this generous simplicity was not long to 
 last. In 1690 Hopkins's father, the Bishop, had 
 died. We may conjecture that Lady Araminta 
 took charge of the boy, and that his home, in 
 vacation time, was with her in Dublin or London. 
 He writes like a youth who has always been
 
 142 Gossip in a Library 
 
 petted ; the frou-frou of fine ladies' petticoats is 
 heard in all his verses. But he had no fortune 
 and no prospects ; he was utterly, he confesses, 
 without ambition. The stern papa of Amasia 
 had no notion of bestowing her on the penniless 
 Sylvius, and when the latter began to court her 
 in earnest, she rebuffed him. She tore up his 
 love-letters, she teased him by sending her black 
 page to the window when he was ogling for her 
 in the street below, she told him he was too 
 young for her, and although she had no objection 
 to his addressing verses to her, she gave him no 
 serious encouragement. She was to be married, 
 he hints, to some one of her own rank — some 
 rich "country booby." 
 
 At last, early in 1698, in company with 
 the Duchess of Grafton, and possibly on the 
 occasion of the second marriage of the 
 latter, Amasia was taken off to France, and 
 Hopkins never saw her again. A year later 
 he received news of her death, and his little 
 romance was over. He became ill, and Dr. 
 Gibbons, the great fashionable physician of the 
 day, was called in to attend him. The third
 
 Amasia 143 
 
 volume closes by his summoning the faithful and 
 unupbraiding Martin back to his heart : 
 
 Love lives in Sun- Shine, or that Storm, T)espair, 
 ^ut gentler Friendship breathes a [Mod' rate Air. 
 
 And so Sylvius, with all his galaxy of lovely 
 Irish ladies, his fashionable Muses, and his trite 
 and tortured fancy, disappears into thin air. 
 
 The only literary man whom he mentions as 
 a friend is George Farquhar, himself a native of 
 Londonderry, and about the same age as Hopkins. 
 This playwright seems to be sometimes alluded 
 to as Daphnis, sometimes under his own name. 
 Before the performance of Love and a Bottle, 
 Hopkins prophesied for the author a place where 
 
 Congreve, X)anbroo\, and Wicherlej must sit, 
 The great Triumvirate of Comicf^ Wit, 
 
 and later on he thought that even Collier himself 
 ought to commend the Constant Couple, or A Trip 
 to the Jubilee. At the first performance of this 
 play, towards the close of 1699, Hopkins was 
 greatly perturbed by the presence of a lady who 
 reminded him of Amasia, and when he visited the
 
 144 Gossip in a Library 
 
 theatre next he was less pleased with the play. 
 These are the only traces of literary bias. In other 
 respects Hopkins is interested in nothing more 
 serious than a lock of Amasia's hair ; the china 
 cup she had, " round the sides of which were 
 painted Trees, and at the bottom a Naked Woman 
 Weeping ; " her box of patches, in which she 
 finds a silver penny ; or the needlework em- 
 broidered on her gown. When Amasia died 
 there was no reason why Sylvius should con- 
 tinue to exist, and he fades out of our vision 
 like a ghost,
 
 LOVE AND BUSINESS
 
 Love and Business 
 
 Love and Business : iti a Collection of occasionary Verse and elphtolary 
 Trose, not hitherto published. "By e^r. Qeorge Farquhar. En 
 Orenge il n'y a point d'oranges. London, printed for 'B. Lintott, 
 at the Tost-House, in the cPlIiddle Teinple-Cfate, Fleetstreet. 1 702. 
 
 There are some books, like some people, of 
 whom we form an indulgent opinion without 
 finding it easy to justify our liking. The young 
 man who went to the life-insurance office and 
 reported that his father had died of no par- 
 ticular disease, but just of " plain death," would 
 sympathise with the feeling I mention. Some- 
 times we like a book, not for any special merit, 
 but just because it is what it is. The rare, 
 and yet not celebrated, miscellany of which I 
 am about to write has this character. It is 
 not instructive, or very high-toned, or excep- 
 tionally clever, but if it were a man, all people
 
 148 Gossip in a Library 
 
 that are not prigs would say that it was a very 
 good sort of fellow. If it be, as it certainly is, 
 a literary advantage for a nondescript collection 
 of trifles to reproduce minutely the personality 
 of its writer, then Love and Business has 
 one definite merit. Wherever we dip into its 
 pages we may use it as a telephone, and hear 
 a young Englishman of the year 1700, talking to 
 himself and to his friends in the most unaffected 
 accents. 
 
 Captain George Farquhar, in 1702, was four- 
 and-twenty years of age. He was a smart, 
 soldier-like Irishman, of " a splenetic and amo- 
 rous complexion," half an actor, a quarter a 
 poet, and altogether a very honest and gallant 
 gentleman. He had taken to the stage kindly 
 enough, and at twenty, had written Love and 
 a Bottle. Since then, two other plays, The 
 Constant Couple and Sir Harry Wildair, had 
 proved that he had wit and fancy, and knew how 
 to knit them together into a rattling comedy. 
 But he was poor, always in pursuit of that timid 
 wild-fowl, the occasional guinea, and with no 
 sort of disposition to settle down into a heavy
 
 Love and Business 149 
 
 citizen. In order to bring down a few brace of 
 golden game, he shovels into Lintott's hands his 
 stray verses of all kinds, a bundle of letters he 
 wrote from Holland, a dignified essay or dis- 
 course upon Comedy, and, with questionable 
 taste perhaps, a set of copies of the love-letters 
 he had addressed to the lady who became his 
 wife. All this is not very praiseworthy, and 
 as a contribution to literature it is slight indeed ; 
 but, then, how genuine and sincere, how guileless 
 and picturesque is the self-revelation of it ! 
 There is no attempt to make things better than 
 they are, nor any pandering to a cynical taste by 
 making them worse. Why should he conceal 
 or falsify ? The town knows what sort of a 
 fellow George Farquhar is. Here are some 
 letters and some verses ; the beaux at White's 
 may read them if they will, and then throw 
 them away. 
 
 As we turn the desultory pages, the figure of 
 the author rises before us, good-natured, easy- 
 going, high-coloured, not bad-looking, with an air 
 of a gentleman in spite of his misfortunes. We 
 do not know the exact details of his military
 
 150 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 honours. We may think of him as swaggering 
 in scarlet regimentals, but we have his own word 
 for it that he was often in mufti. His mind is 
 generally dressed, he says, like his body, in 
 black ; for though he is so brisk a spark in 
 company, he suffers sadly from the spleen when 
 he is alone. We can follow him pretty closely 
 through his day. He is a queer mixture of 
 profanity and piety, of coarseness and loyalty, 
 of cleverness and density ; we do not breed this 
 kind of beau nowadays, and yet we might do 
 worse, for this specimen is, with all his faults, a 
 man. He dresses carefully in the morning, in 
 his uniform or else in his black suit. When he 
 wants to be specially smart, as, for instance, 
 when he designs a conquest at a birthday-party, 
 he has to ferret among the pawnbrokers for 
 scraps of finery, or secure on loan a fair, full- 
 bottom wig. But he is not so impoverished that 
 he cannot on these occasions give his valet and 
 his barber plenty of work to do preparing his 
 face with razors, perfumes and washes. He 
 would like to be Sir Fopling Flutter, if he could 
 afford it, and gazes a little enviously at that
 
 Love and Business 151 
 
 noble creature in his French clothes, as he 
 lounges luxuriantly past him in his coach with 
 six before and six behind. 
 
 Poor Captain Farquhar begins to expect that 
 he himself will never be " a first-rate Beau." 
 So, on common mornings, a little splenetic, he 
 wanders down to the coffee-houses and reads 
 the pamphlets, those which find King William 
 glorious, and those that rail at the watery 
 Dutch. He will even be a little Jacobitish for 
 pure foppery, and have a fling at the Church, 
 but in his heart he is with the Ministry. He 
 meets a friend at White's, and they adjourn 
 presently to the Fleece Tavern, where the 
 drawer brings them a bottle of New French 
 and a neat's tongue, over which they discuss 
 the doctrine of predestination so hotly that two 
 mackerel-vendors burst in, mistaking their lifted 
 voices for a cry for fish. His friend has busi- 
 ness in the city, and so our poet strolls off to 
 the Park, and takes a turn in the Mall with his 
 hat in his hand, prepared for an adventure or a 
 chat with a friend. Then comes the play, the 
 inevitable early play, still, even in 1700, apt to
 
 152 Gossip in a Library 
 
 be so rank-lipped that respectable ladies could 
 only appear at it in masks. It was the transition 
 period, and poor Comedy, who was saying good- 
 bye to literature, was just about to console herself 
 with modesty. 
 
 However, a domino may slip aside, and 
 Mr. George Farquhar notices a little lady in 
 a deep mourning mantua, whose eyes are not 
 to be forgotten. She goes, however ; it is 
 useless to pursue her ; but the music raises his 
 soul to such a pitch of passion that he is almost 
 melancholy. He strolls out into Spring Garden, 
 but there, " with envious eyes, I saw every Man 
 pick up his Mate, whilst I alone walked like 
 solitary Adam before the Creation of his Eve ; 
 but the place was no Paradise to me ; nothing I 
 found entertaining but the Nightingale." So 
 that in those sweet summer evenings of 1700, 
 over the laced and brocaded couples promenading 
 in Spring Garden, as over good Sir Roger twelve 
 years later, the indulgent nightingale still poured 
 her notes. To-day you cannot hear the very 
 bells of St. Martin's for the roar of the traffic. 
 So lonely, and too easily enamoured, George has
 
 Love and Business 153 
 
 to betake himself to the tavern, and a passable 
 Burgundy. There is no ideahsm about him. 
 He is very fit for repentance next morning. 
 " The searching Wine has sprung the Rheuma- 
 tism in my Right Hand, my Head aches, my 
 Stomach pukes." Our poor, good-humoured beau 
 has no constitution for this mode of life, and we 
 know, though happily he dreams not of it, that 
 he is to die at thirty-one. 
 
 This picture of Farquhar's life is nowhere 
 given in the form just related, but not one touch 
 in the portrait but is to be found somewhere in 
 the frank and easy pages of Love and Business. 
 The poems are of their age and kind. There 
 is a " Pindarick," of course ; it was so easy to 
 write one, and so reputable. There are compli- 
 ments in verse to one of the female wits who were 
 writing then for the stage, Mrs. Trotter, author 
 of the Fatal Friendship ; there are amatory ex- 
 planations of all kinds. When he fails to keep 
 an appointment with a lady on account of the rain 
 — for there were no umbrellas in those days — he 
 likens himself to Leander, wistful on the Sestian 
 shore. He is not always very discreet ; Damon's
 
 154 Gossip in a Library 
 
 thoughts when " Night's black Curtain o'er the 
 World was spread " were very innocent, but such 
 as we have decided nowadays to say nothing 
 about. It was the fashion of the time to be 
 outspoken. There is no value, however, in the 
 verse, except that it is graphic now and then. 
 The letters are much more interesting. Those 
 sent from Holland in the autumn of 1700 are 
 very good reading. I make bold to quote one 
 passage from the first, describing the storm he 
 encountered in crossing. It depicts our hero to 
 the life, with all his inconsistencies. He says : 
 " By a kind of Poetical Philosophy I bore up 
 pretty well under my Apprehensions ; though 
 never worse prepared for Death, I must confess, 
 for I think I never had so much Money about 
 me at a time. We had some Ladies aboard, 
 that were so extremely sick, that they often 
 wished for Death, but were damnably afraid of 
 being drown'd. But, as the Scripture says, 
 * Sorrow may last for a Night, but Joy cometh 
 in the Morning,' " and so on. The poor fellow 
 means no harm by all this, as Hodgson once 
 said of certain remarks of Byron's.
 
 Love and Business 155 
 
 The love-letters are very curious. It is be- 
 lieved that the sequel of them was a very 
 unhappy marriage. Captain Farquhar was of a 
 loving disposition, and as inflammable as a hay- 
 rick. He cannot have been much more than 
 twenty-one when he described what he desired 
 in a wife. " O could I find," he said — 
 
 O could I find {Qrant, Heaven, that o/ice I may /) 
 
 jl Nymph fair, kind, poetical and gay. 
 
 Whose Love should blaze, unsullied and divine^ 
 
 Lighted at first by the bright Lamp ofmitie, 
 
 Free as a ^listress, faithful as a wife. 
 
 And one that lov'd a Fiddle as her Life, 
 
 Free from all sordid Ends, from Interest free. 
 
 For my own Sake affecting only me. 
 
 What a blest Union should our Souls combine / 
 
 / hers alojie, and she be only mine I 
 
 It does not seem a very exacting ideal, but the 
 poor poet missed it. Whether Mrs. Farquhar 
 loved a fiddle as her life is not recorded, but she 
 certainly was not free from all sordid ends and 
 unworthy tricks. The little lady in the mourn- 
 ing mantua soon fell in love with our gallant 
 spark, and when he made court to her, she 
 represented herself as very wealthy. The
 
 156 Gossip in a Library 
 
 deed accomplished, Mrs. Farquhar turned out to 
 be penniless ; and the poet, like a gentleman as 
 he was, never reproached her, but sat down 
 cheerfully to a double poverty. In Love and 
 Business the story does not proceed so far. 
 
 He receives Miss Penelope V 's timid advances, 
 
 describes himself to her, is soon as much in love 
 with his little lady as she with him, and is 
 making broad demands and rich-blooded confi- 
 dences in fine style, no offence taken where no 
 harm is meant. In one of the letters to Penelope 
 we get a very interesting glance at a famous, 
 and, as it happens, rather obscure, event — the 
 funeral of the great Dryden, in May 1700. 
 Farquhar says : 
 
 " I come now from Mr. Dry den's Funeral, 
 where we had an Ode in Horace sung, instead 
 of David's Psalms ; whence you may find that 
 we don't think a Poet. worth Christian Burial; 
 the Pomp of the Ceremony was a kind of Rhap- 
 sody, and fitter, I think, for Hudibras than him ; 
 because the Cavalcade was mostly Burlesque ; 
 but he was an extraordinary Man, and bury'd 
 after an extraordinary Fashion ; for I believe
 
 Love and Business 157 
 
 there was never such another Burial seen ; the 
 Oration indeed was great and ingenious, worthy 
 the Subject, and like the Author [Dr. Garth], 
 whose Prescriptions can restore the Living, and 
 his Pen embalm the Dead. And so much for 
 Mr. Dryden, whose Burial was the same with 
 his Life, — Variety, and not of a Piece. The 
 Quality and Mob, Farce and Heroicks, the Sub- 
 lime and Ridicule mixt in a Piece, great Cleopatra 
 in a Hackney Coach."
 
 From the Hollywood Q^%fi fff 
 
 HARVEY TAYLOR 
 
 // AUTHORS' EEPRESENTATIVE 
 inSIT? YORK - -:- HOLLYWOOD 
 
 '"^'*^ l&^ North GraineA^ Place 
 -V Jigilywood 6?3. 
 
 WHAT ANN LANG READ
 
 What Ann Lang Read 
 
 Who was Ann Lang ? Alas ! I am not sure ; 
 but she flourished one hundred and sixty years 
 ago, under his glorious Majesty, George I., and 
 I have become the happy possessor of a portion 
 of her library. It consists of a number of cheap 
 novels, all published in 1723 or 1724, when Ann 
 Lang probably bought them ; and each carries, 
 written on the back of the title, ** ann Lang book 
 1727," which is doubtless the date of her lending 
 them to some younger female friend. The 
 letters of this inscription are round and 
 laboriously shaped, while the form is always the 
 same, and never " Ann Lang, her book," which 
 is what one would expect. It is not the hand 
 of a person of quality : I venture to conclude 
 that she who wrote it was a milliner's apprentice 
 or a servant-girl. There are five novels in this 
 
 L
 
 1 62 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 little collection, and a play, and a pamphlet of 
 poems, and a bundle of love-letters, all signed 
 upon their title-pa^es by the Ouida of the period, 
 the great Eliza Haywood. 
 
 No one who has not dabbled among old books 
 knows how rare have become the strictly popular 
 publications of a non-literary kind which a gene- 
 ration of the lower middle class has read and 
 thrown away. Eliza Haywood lives in the minds 
 of men solely' through one very coarse and cruel 
 allusion to her made by Pope in the Dunciad. 
 She was never recognised among people of intel- 
 lectual quality ; she ardently desired to belong to 
 literature, but her wish was never seriously grati- 
 fied, even by her friend Aaron Hill. Yet she 
 probably numbered more readers, for a year or 
 two, than any other person in the British realm. 
 She poured forth what she called " little Per- 
 formances " from a tolerably respectable press ; 
 and the wonder is that in these days her abundant 
 writings are so very seldom to be met with. Tne 
 secret doubtless is that her large public consisted 
 almost wholly of people like Ann Lang, Eliza 
 was read by servants in the kitchen, by seam-
 
 What Ann Lang Read 163 
 
 stresses, by basket-women, by 'prentices of all 
 sorts, male and female, but mostly the latter. 
 For girls of this sort there was no other reading 
 of a light kind in 1724. It was Ehza Haywood 
 or nothing. The men of the same class read 
 Defoe ; but he, with his cynical severity, his 
 absence of all pity for a melting mood, his 
 savagery towards women, was not likely to be 
 preferred by " stragghng nymphs." The footman 
 might read Roxana, and the hackney-writer sit 
 up after his toll over AIo// Flanders ; there was 
 much in these romances to interest men. But 
 what had Ann Lang to do with stories so cold 
 and harsh ? She read Eliza Haywood. 
 
 But most of her sisters, of Eliza's great clienlek, 
 did not know how to treat a book. They read 
 it to tatters, and they threw it away. It may be 
 news to some readers that these early novels 
 were very cheap. Ann Lang bought Love in 
 Excess, which is quite a thick volume, for two 
 shillings ; and the first volume of Idalia (for 
 Eliza was Ouidesque even in her titles) only 
 cost her eighteen-pence. She seems to have 
 been a clean girl. She did not drop warm lard
 
 164 Gossip in a Library 
 
 on the leaves. She did not tottle up her milk- 
 scores on the bastard-title. She did not scribble 
 in the margin " Emanuella is a foul wench." 
 She did not dog's-ear her little library, or stain 
 it, or tear it. I owe it to that rare and fortunate 
 circumstance of her neatness that her beloved 
 books have come into my possession after the 
 passage of so many generations. It must be 
 recollected that Eliza Haywood lived in the very 
 twilight of English fiction. Sixteen years were 
 to pass, in 1724, before the British novel properly 
 began to dawn in Pamela, twenty-five years 
 before it broke in the full splendour of Tom 
 Jones. Eliza Haywood simply followed where, 
 two generations earlier, the redoubtable Mrs. 
 Aphra Behn had led. She preserved the old 
 romantic manner, a kind of corruption of the 
 splendid Scudery and Calprenede folly of the 
 middle of the seventeenth century. All that dis- 
 tinguished her was her vehement exuberance and 
 the emptiness of the field. Ann Lang was young, 
 and instinctively attracted to the study of the pas- 
 sion of love. She must read something, and there 
 was nothing but Eliza Haywood for her to read.
 
 What Ann Lang Read 165 
 
 The heroines of these old stories were all 
 palpitating with sensibility, although that name 
 had not yet been invented to describe their con- 
 dition. When they received a letter beginning 
 "To the divine Lassellia," or "To the incom- 
 parable Donna Emanuella," they were thrown 
 into the most violent disorder ; ** a thousand 
 different Passions succeeded one another in their 
 turns," and as a rule "'twas all too sudden to 
 admit disguise." When a lady in Eliza Ha}^- 
 wood's novels receives a note from a gentleman, 
 " all her Limbs forget their Function, and she 
 sinks fainting on the Bank, in much the same 
 posture as she was before she rais'd herself a 
 little to take the Letter." I am positive than Ann 
 Lang practised this series of attitudes in the soli- 
 tude of her garret. 
 
 There is no respite for the emotions from 
 Eliza's first page to her last. The implacable 
 Douxmoure (for such was her singular name) 
 " continued for some time in a Condition 
 little different from Madness ; but when Reason 
 had a little recovered its usual Sway, a deadly 
 Melancholy succeeded Passion." When Bevillia
 
 1 66 Gossip In a Library- 
 
 tried to explain to her cousin that Emilius was 
 no fit suitor for her hand, the young lady swooned 
 twice before she seized Bevillia's " cruel mean- 
 ing ; " and then — ah ! then — " silent the stormy 
 Passions roll'd in her tortured Bosom, disdaining 
 the mean Ease of raging or complaining. It was 
 a considerable time before she utter'd the least 
 Syllable ; and when she did, she seem'd to start 
 as from some dreadful Dream, and cry'd, ' It is 
 enough — in knowing one I know the whole 
 deceiving Sex ' ; " and she began to address an 
 imaginary Women's Rights Meeting. 
 
 Plot was not a matter about which Eliza Hay- 
 wood greatly troubled herself. A contemporary 
 admirer remarked, with justice — 
 
 ^Tis Love Elizas soft Jff'ecticfis f.res ; 
 
 Bliza writes, but Love alone inspires ; 
 
 ^Tis Love that gives U Elmont his manly ^/-^rz^j, 
 
 tdnd tears Amena from her Father's Ar7ns. 
 
 These last-named persons are the hero and 
 heroine oi Love in Excess; or The Fatal Inquiry, 
 which seems to have been the most popular of 
 the whole series. This novel might be called
 
 What Ann Lang Read 167 
 
 Love through a Window; for it almost entirely 
 consists of a relation of how the gentleman 
 prowled by moonlight in a garden, while the 
 lady, in an a-;itated disorder, peeped out of her 
 lattice in " a most charming Dishabillee." Alas ! 
 there was a lock to the door of a garden stair- 
 case, and while the lady " was paying a Compli- 
 ment to the Recluse, he was dextrous enough 
 to slip the Key out of the Door unperceived." 
 Ann Lang ! — " a sudden cry of Murder, and the 
 noise of clasliing Swords," come none too soon 
 to save those blushes which, we hope, you had 
 in readiness for the turning of the page ! Eliza 
 Haywood assures us, in Idalia, that her object in 
 writing is that "the Warmth and Vigour of 
 Youth may be temper'd by a due Consideration ; '' 
 yet the moralist must complain that she goes a 
 strange way about it. Idalia herself was " a lovely 
 Inconsiderate " of Venice, who escaped in a " Gon- 
 dula" up "the River Brent," and set all Vicenza 
 by the ears through her "stock of Haughtiness, 
 which nothing could surmount." At last, after 
 adventures which can scarcely have edified Ann 
 Lang, Idalia abruptly " remember'd to have heard
 
 1 68 Gossip in a Library 
 
 of a Monastery at Verona," and left Vicenza at 
 break of day, taking her " unguarded languish- 
 ments " out of that city and out of the novel. It 
 is true that Ann Lang, for 2s., bought a continua- 
 tion of the career of IdaLa ; but we need not 
 follow her. 
 
 The perusal of so many throbbing and melting 
 rom.ances must necessarily have awakened in the 
 breast of female readers a desire to see the 
 creator of these tender scenes. I am happy to 
 inform my readers that there is every reason to 
 believe that Ann Lang gratified this innocent 
 wish. At all events, there exists among her 
 volumes the little book of the play sold at the 
 doors of Drury Lane Theatre, when, in the 
 summer of 1724, Eliza Haywood's new comedy 
 of A Wife to be Lett was acted there, with the 
 author performing in the part of Mrs. Graspall. 
 The play itself is wretched, and tradition says 
 that it owed what little success it enjoyed to the 
 eager desire which the novelist's readers felt to 
 gaze upon her features. She was about thirty 
 years of age at the time ; but no one says that 
 she was handsome, and she was undoubtedly a
 
 What Ann Lang Read 169 
 
 bad actress. I think the disappointment that 
 evening at the Theatre Royal opened the eyes 
 of Ann Lang. Perhaps it was the appearance of 
 Eliza in the flesh which prevented her old admirer 
 from buying The Secret History of Clcomina, stip- 
 pos'd dead, which I miss from the collection. 
 
 If Ann Lang lived on until the publication of 
 Pamela — especially if during the interval she 
 had bettered her social condition — with what 
 ardour must she have hailed the advent of what, 
 with all its shortcomings, was a book worth gold. 
 Perhaps she went to Vauxhall with it in her 
 muff, and shook it triumphantly at some middle- 
 aged lady of her acquaintance. Perhaps she 
 lived long enough to see one great novel after 
 another break forth to lighten the darkness of 
 life. She must have looked back on the pom- 
 pous and lascivious pages of Eliza Haywood, 
 with their long-drawn palpitating intrigues, with 
 positive disgust. The English novel began in 
 1740, and after that date there was always some- 
 thing wholesome for Ann Lang and her sisters 
 to read.
 
 CATS
 
 Cats 
 
 Les Chats. eA '^ctterdam, chez Jean Daniel 'Bemany 
 <:MT>CCXXFIII. 
 
 An accomplished lady of my acquaintance tells 
 me that she is preparing an anthology of the 
 cat. This announcement has reminded me of 
 one of the oddest and most entertaining 
 volumes in my library. People who collect 
 prints of the eighteenth century know an en- 
 graving which represents a tom-cat, rampant, 
 holding up an oval portrait of a gentleman and 
 standing, in order to do so, on a volume. The 
 volume is Les Chats, the book before us, and 
 the portrait is that of the author, the amiable 
 and amusing Augustin Paradis de Moncrif. He 
 was the son of English, or more probably of 
 Scotch parents settled in Paris, where he was 
 born in 1687. All we know of his earlier
 
 174 Gossip in a Library 
 
 3^cars is to be found in a single sparkling page 
 of d'Alembert, who makes Moncrif float out of 
 obscurity like the most elegant of iridescent 
 bubbles. He was handsome and seductive, 
 turned a copy of verses with the best of gentle- 
 men, but was particularly distinguished by the 
 art with which he purveyed li'tle dramas for 
 the amateur stage, then so much in fashion in 
 France. Somebody said of him, when he was 
 famous as the laureate of the cats, that he had 
 risen in life by never scratching, by always 
 having velvet paws, and by never putting up his 
 back, even when he was startled. Voltaire 
 called him " my very dear Sylph," and he was 
 the ideal of all that was noiseless, graceful, 
 good-humoured, and well-bred. He slipped 
 unobtrusively into the French Academy, and 
 lived to be eighty-three, dying at last, like 
 Anacreon, in the midst of music and dances 
 and fair nymphs of the Opera, affecting to be 
 a sad old rogue to the very last. 
 
 This book on Cats, the only one by which 
 he is now remembered, was the sole production 
 of his lifetime which cost him any annoyance.
 
 Cats 175 
 
 He was forty years of age when it appeared, 
 and the subject was considered a little frivo- 
 lous, even for such a petit conteur as Moncrif. 
 People continued to tease him about it, and the 
 only rough thing he ever did was the result 
 of one such twitting. The poet Roy made an 
 epigram about "cats" and "rats," in execrable 
 taste, no doubt ; this stung our S3dph to such 
 an excess that he waited outside the Palais 
 Royal and beat Roy with a stick when he came 
 out. The poet was, perhaps, not much hurt ; 
 at all events, he had the presence of mind to 
 retort, " Patte de velours, patte de velours, 
 Minon-minet ! " It was six years after this that 
 Moncrif was elected into the French Academy, 
 and then the shower of epigrams broke out 
 cgain. He wished to be made historiographer; 
 " Oh, nonsense," the wits cried, " he must mean 
 historiogriffe," and they invited him, on nights 
 v/hen the Academy met, to climb on to the roof 
 and miau from the chimney-pots. He had the 
 weakness to apologise for his charming book, 
 and to withdraw it from circulation. His pas- 
 toral tales and heroic ballets, his Zclindors and
 
 176 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Zelo'ides and Erosines, which to us seem utterly 
 vapid and frivolous, never gave him a mo- 
 ment's uneasiness. His crumpled rose-leaf 
 was the book by which his name lives in litera- 
 ture. 
 
 The book of cats is written in the form of 
 
 eleven letters to Madame la Marquise de B . 
 
 The anonymous author represents himself as too 
 much excited to sleep, after an evening spent in 
 a fashionable house, where the company was 
 abusing cats. He was unsupported ; where was 
 the Marquise, who would have brought a thou- 
 sand arguments to his assistance, founded on her 
 own experience of virtuous pussies ? Instead 
 of going to bed he will sit up and indite the 
 panegyric of the feline race. He is still sore 
 at the prejudice and injustice of the people he 
 has just left. It culminated in the conduct of 
 a lady who declared that cats were poison, and 
 who, " when pussy appeared in the room, had 
 the presence of mind to faint." These people 
 had rallied him on the absurdity of his enthu- 
 siasm ; but, as he says, the Marquise well 
 knows, " how many women have a passion for
 
 Cats 177 
 
 cats, and how many men are women in this 
 respect." 
 
 So he starts away on his dissertation, with all 
 its elegant pedantry, its paradoxical wit, its 
 genuine touches of observation and its constant 
 sparkle of anecdote. He is troubled to account 
 for the existence of the cat. An Ottoman 
 legend relates that when the animals were in the 
 Ark, Noah gave the lion a great box on the ear, 
 which made him sneeze, and produce a cat out 
 of his nose. But the author questions this 
 origin, and is more inclined to agree with a 
 Turkish Minister of Religion, sometime Ambas- 
 sador to France, that the ape, " weary of a 
 sedentary life " in the Ark, paid his attentions 
 to a very agreeable young lioness, whose infide- 
 lities resulted in the birth of a Tom-cat and a 
 Puss-cat, and that these, combining the qualities 
 of their parents, spread through the Ark im esprit 
 de ccquctterie — which lasted during the whole of 
 the sojourn there. Moncrif has no difficulty in 
 showing that the East has always been devoted 
 to cats, and he tells the story of Mahomet, who, 
 being consulted one day on a point of piety, 
 
 M
 
 178 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 preferred to cut off his sleeve, on which his 
 favourite pussy was asleep, rather than wake 
 her violently by rising. 
 
 From the French poets, Moncrif collects a 
 good many curious tributes to the " harmless, 
 necessary cat." I am seized with an ambition 
 to put some fragments of these into English 
 verse. Most of them are highly complimentary. 
 It is true that Ronsard was one of those who 
 could not appreciate a " matou." He sang or 
 said : — 
 
 There is no man now living anywhere 
 
 Who hates cats with a deeper hate than I ; 
 
 I hate their eyes, their heads, the way they stare, 
 t/ind when I see one come, I turn and fly. 
 
 But among the pre'cieuses of the seventeenth 
 century there was much more appreciation. 
 Mme. Deshoulieres wrote a whole series of 
 songs and couplets about her cat, Grisette. In 
 a letter to her husband, referring to the atten- 
 tions she herself receives from admirers, she 
 adds : — 
 
 Deshoulieres cares not for the smart 
 Her bright eyes cause, disdainful hussy,
 
 Cats 179 
 
 ^ut, like a mouse, her idle heart 
 Is captured by a pussy. 
 
 Much better than these is the sonnet on the 
 cat of the Duchess of Lesdiguieres, with its 
 admirable line : — 
 
 Chatte pour tout le monde, et pour les chats tigresse, 
 
 A fugitive epistle by Scarron, delightfully 
 turned, is too long to be quoted here, nor can I 
 pause to cite the rondeau which the Duchess of 
 Maine addressed to her favourite. But she sup- 
 plemented it as follows : — 
 
 {My pretty puss, 7?iy solace and delight^ 
 
 To celebrate thy loveliness aright 
 
 I ought to call to life the bard who sung 
 
 Of Lesbids sparrow with so sweet a tongue ; 
 
 But 'tis in vain to summon here to me 
 
 So famous a dead personage as he. 
 
 Ana you must ta\e contentedly to-day 
 
 This poor rondeau that C^pid wafts your way. 
 
 When this cat died the Duchess was too much 
 affected to write its epitaph herself, and accord- 
 ingly it was done for her, in the following style, 
 by La Mothe le Vayer, the author of the Dia- 
 logues : —
 
 i8o Gossip in a Library 
 
 Puss passer-by, within this simple tomb 
 
 Lies one whose life fell ^tropos hath shred ; 
 The happiest cat on earth hath heard her doom. 
 
 And sleeps for ever in a marble bed. 
 Alas ! what long delicious days Tve seen ! 
 
 O cats of Egypt, my illustrious sires, 
 Tou tvho on altars, bound with garlands green. 
 
 Have melted hearts, and kindled fond desires, — 
 Hymns in your praise were paid, and offerings too, 
 
 "But Vm not jealous of those rights divine. 
 Since Ludovisa loved me, close and true, 
 
 Tour ancient glory was less proud than mine. 
 To live a simple pussy by her side 
 Was nobler far than to be deifed. 
 
 To these and other tributes Moncrif adds 
 idyls and romances of his own, while regret- 
 ting that it never occurred to Theocritus to 
 write a bergerie de chats. He tells stories of 
 blameless pussies beloved by Fontanelle and La 
 Fontaine, and quotes Marot in praise of " the 
 green-eyed Venus." But he tears himself away 
 at last from all these historical reminiscences, 
 and in his eleventh letter he deals with cats as 
 they are. We hasten as lightly as possible 
 over a story of the disinterestedness of a feline 
 Heloise, which is too pathetic for a nineteenth-
 
 Cats 1 8 1 
 
 century ear. But we may repeat the touching 
 anecdote of Bayle's friend, Mile, Dupuy. This 
 lady excelled to a surprising degree in playing 
 the harp, and she attributed her excellence in 
 this accomplishment to her cat, whose critical 
 taste was only equalled by his close attention 
 to Mile. Dupuy's performance. She felt that 
 she owed so much to this cat, under whose 
 care her reputation for skill on the harp had 
 become universal, that when she died she left 
 him, in her will, one agreeable house in town 
 and another in the country. To this bequest 
 she added a revenue sufficient to supply all the 
 requirements of a well-bred tom-cat, and at the 
 same time she left pensions to certain persons 
 whose duty it should be to wait upon him. 
 Her ignoble family contested the will, and 
 there was a long suit. Moncrif gives a hand- 
 some double-plate illustration of this incident. 
 Mile. Dupuy, sadly wasted by illness, is seen 
 in bed, with her cat in her arms, dictating her 
 will to the family lawyer in a periwig ; her 
 physician is also present. 
 
 This leads me to speak of the illustrations to
 
 1 82 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Les Chats, which greatly add to its value. They 
 were engraved by Otten from original drawings 
 by Co3^pel. In another edition the same draw- 
 ings are engraved by Count Caylus. Some of 
 them are of a charming absurdity. One, a 
 double plate, represents a tragedy acted by cats 
 on the roof of a fashionable house. The actors 
 are tricked out in the most magnificent feathers 
 and furbelows, but the audience consists of 
 common cats. Cupid sits above, with his bow 
 and fluttering wings. Another plate shows the 
 mausoleum of the Duchess of Lesdiguieres' cat, 
 with a marble pussy of heroic size, upon a 
 marble pillow, in a grove of poplars. Another 
 is a medal to "Chat Noir premier, ne en 1725," 
 with the proud inscription, " Knowing to whom 
 I belong, I am aware of my value." The profile 
 within is that of as haughty a tom as ever shook 
 out his whiskers in a lady's boudoir.
 
 SMART'S POEMS
 
 Smart's Poems 
 
 Poems on Several Occasions. By Christopher Smart, y^.M., Felloiv 
 of Pembro\_e-Hall, Cambridge. London : Printed for the Author., 
 by W. Strahan ; And sold by J . Neivbery, at the Bible and Sun, in 
 St. PauPs Churchyard. <:MDCCLII. 
 
 The third section of Mr. Browning's Par- 
 leyings with certain People of Importance in 
 their Day has drawn general attention to a 
 Cambridge poet of whom little has hitherto been 
 known, Christopher Smart, once fellow of Pem- 
 broke College. It may be interesting, therefore, 
 to supply some sketch of the events of his life, 
 and of the particular poem which Mr. Browning 
 has aptly compared to a gorgeous chapel lying 
 perdue in a dull old commonplace mansion. No 
 one can afford to be entirely indifferent to the 
 author of verses which one of the greatest of 
 modern writers has declared to be unequalled of 
 their kind between Milton and Keats.
 
 1 86 Gossip in a Library 
 
 What has hitherto been known of the facts of 
 Smari's life has been founded on the anonymous 
 biography prefixed to the two- volume Reading 
 edition of his works, published in 1791. The 
 copy of this education in Trinity Library be- 
 longed to Dr. Farmer, and contains these words 
 in his handwriting " From the Editor, Francis 
 Newbery, Esq. ; the Life by Mr. Hunter." As 
 this Newbery was the son of Smart's half- 
 brother-in-law and literary employer, it may be 
 taken for granted that the information given in 
 these volumes is authoritative. We may there- 
 fore believe it to be correct that Smart was born 
 (as he himself tells us, in The Hop Garden) 
 at Shipbourne, in Kent, on the nth of April 
 1722, that his father was steward to the noble- 
 man who afterwards became Earl of Darlington, 
 and that he was " discerned and patronised " by 
 the Duchess of Cleveland. This great lady, we 
 are left in doubt for what reason, carried her 
 complaisance so far as to allow the future poet 
 ;^40 a year until her death. In a painfully ful- 
 some ode to another member of the Raby Castle 
 family, Smart records the generosity of the dead
 
 Smart's Poems 187 
 
 in order to stimulate that of the living, and oddly 
 remarks that 
 
 dignity itself restrains 
 'By condescension s sil\en reins. 
 
 While you the lowly [Muse upraise. 
 
 Smart passed, already " an infant bard," from 
 what he calls " the splendour in retreat " of Raby 
 Castle, to Durham School, and in his eighteenth 
 year was admitted of Pembroke Hall, October 
 30> 1739- His biographer expressly states 
 that his allowance from home was scanty, and 
 that his chief dependence, until he derived an 
 income from his college, was on the bounty of 
 the Duchess of Cleveland. 
 
 From this point I am able to supply a certain 
 amount of information with regard to the poet's 
 college life which is entirely new, and which is 
 not, I think, without interest. My friend Mr. R. A. 
 Neil has been so kind as to admit me to the 
 Treasury at Pembroke, and in his company I 
 have had the advantage of searching the con- 
 temporary records of the college. What we 
 were lucky enough to discover may here be briefly 
 summarised. The earliest mention of Smart is
 
 1 88 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 dated 1740, and refers to the rooms assigned to 
 him as an undergraduate. In January 1743, we 
 find him taking his B.A., and in Jul}- of the 
 same year he is elected scholar. As is correctly 
 stated in his Life he became a fellow of Pem- 
 broke on the 3rd of July 1745. That he 
 showed no indication as yet of that disturbance 
 of brain and instability of character which so 
 painfully distinguished him a little later on, is 
 proved by the fact that on the loth of October 
 1745, Smart was chosen to be Praelector in 
 Philosophy, and Keeper of the Common Chest. 
 In 1746 he was re-elected to those offices, and 
 also made Preelector in Rhetoric. In 1747 he 
 was not chosen to hold any such college situa- 
 tions, no doubt from the growing extravagance 
 of his conduct. 
 
 In November 1747, Smart was in parlous 
 case. Gray complains of his "lies, impertinence 
 and ingratitude," and describes him as confined 
 to his room, lest his creditors should snap him 
 up. He gives a melancholy impression of 
 Smart's moral and physical state, but hastens to 
 add ** not that I, nor any other mortal, pity him."
 
 Smart's Poems 189 
 
 The records of the Treasury at Pembroke supply 
 evidence that the members of the college now 
 made a great effort to restore one of whose talents 
 it is certain they were proud. In 1748 we find 
 Smart proposed for catechist, a proof that he had, 
 at all events for the moment, turned over a new 
 leaf. Probably, but for fresh relapses, he would 
 now have taken orders. His allusions to college 
 life are singularly ungracious. He calls Pembroke 
 
 this servile cell, 
 Where discipline and dulness dwell, 
 
 and commiserates a captive eagle as being doomed 
 in the college courts to watch 
 
 scholastic pride 
 Take his precise, pedantic stride ; 
 
 words which painfully remind us of Gray's re- 
 ported manner of enjoying a constitutional. It 
 is certain that there was considerable friction 
 between these two men of genius, and Gray 
 roundly prophesied that Smart would find his 
 way to gaol or to Bedlam. Both alternatives of 
 this prediction were fulfilled, and in October 
 1751, Gray curtly remarks : "Smart sets out for
 
 190 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Bedlam." Of this event we find curious evi- 
 dence in the Treasury. "October 12, 1751 — 
 Ordered that Mr. Smart, being obliged to be 
 absent, there will be allowed him in lieu of 
 commons for the year ended Michaelmas, 175 1, 
 the sum of ;i^iO." There can be little question 
 that Smart's conduct and condition became more 
 and more unsatisfactory. This particular visit 
 to a madhouse was probably brief, but it was 
 possibly not the first and was soon repeated ; 
 for in 1749 and in 1752 there are similar entries 
 recording the fact that " Mr. Smart, being obliged 
 to be absent," certain allowances were paid by 
 the college " in consideration of his circum- 
 stances." The most curious discovery, however, 
 which we have been able to make is recorded in 
 the following entry : — 
 
 "Nov. 27, 1753 — Ordered that the divi- 
 dend assigned to Mr. Smart be deposited in the 
 Treasury till the Society be satisfied that he has 
 a right to the same ; it being credibly reported 
 that he has been married for some time, and that 
 notice be sent to Mr. Smart of his dividend 
 being detained."
 
 Smart's Poems 191 
 
 As a matter of fact, Smart was by this time 
 married to a relative of Newbery, the pub- 
 lisher, for whom he was doing hack work in 
 London. He had, however, formed the habit of 
 writing the Seatonian prize poem, which he had 
 ah-eady gained four times, in 1750, 175 1, 1752, 
 and 1753. He seems to have clutched at the 
 distinction which he brought on his college by 
 these poems as the last straw by which to keep 
 his fellowship, and, singular to say, he must 
 have succeeded ; for on the l6:h of January 
 1754, this order was recorded : 
 
 " That Mr. Smart have leave to keep his 
 name in the college books wiLhout any expense, 
 so long as he continues to write for the premium 
 left by Mr. Seaton." 
 
 How long this inexpensive indulgence lasted 
 does not seem to be known. Smart gained the 
 Seatonian prize in 1755, having apparently failed 
 in 1754, and then appears no more in Pembroke 
 records. 
 
 The circumstance of his having made Cam- 
 bridge too hot to hold him seems to have pulled 
 Smart's loose faculties together. The next five
 
 192 Gossip In a Library 
 
 years were probably the sanest and the busiest 
 in his life. He had collected his scattered odes 
 and ballads, and published them, with his am- 
 bitious georgic, The Hop Garden^ in the hand- 
 some quarto before us. Among the seven 
 hundred subscribers to this venture we find 
 " Mr. Voltaire, historiographer of France," and 
 M. Roubilliac, the great statuary, besides such 
 English celebrities as Gray, Collins, Richard- 
 son, Savage, Charles Avison, Garrick, and 
 Mason. The kind reception of this work 
 awakened in the poet an inordinate vanity, which 
 found expression, in 1753, in that extraordinary 
 effusion, The Hilliad, an attempt to present Dr. 
 John Hill in such amber as Pope held at the 
 command of his satiric passion. But these 
 efforts, and an annual Seatcnian, were ill adapted 
 to support a poet who had recently appended a wife 
 and family to a phenomenal appetite for strong 
 waters, and who, moreover, had just been de- 
 prived of his stipend as a fellow. Smart 
 descended into Grub Street, and bound himself 
 over, hand and foot, to be the serf of such men 
 as the publisher Newbery, who was none the
 
 Smart's Poems 193 
 
 milder master for being his relative. It was not 
 long after, doubtless, that Smart fell lower still, 
 and let himself out on a lease for ninety-nine 
 years, to toil for a set pittance in the garrets of 
 Gardner's shop ; and it was about this time, 1754, 
 that the Rev. T. Tyers vv^as introduced to Smart by 
 a friend who had more sympathy with his frailties 
 than Gray had, namely. Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
 
 After a world of vicissitudes, which are very 
 uncomfortable reading, about 1761 Smart be- 
 came violently insane once more and was shut 
 up again in Bedlam. Dr. Johnson, commenting 
 on this period of the poet's life, told Dr. Burney 
 that Smart grew fat when he was in the mad- 
 house, where he dug in the garden, and Johnson 
 added: "I did not think he ought to be shut 
 up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. 
 He insisted on people praying with him ; and I'd 
 as lief pray with Kit Smart as with any one 
 else. Another charge was that he did not love 
 clean linen ; and I have no passion for it." 
 When Boswell paid Johnson his memorable first 
 visit in 1763, Smart had recently been released 
 from Bedlam, and Johnson naturally spoke of him. 
 
 N
 
 194 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 He said : " My poor friend Smart showed the 
 disturbance of his mind by falling upon his 
 knees and saying his prayers in the street, or in 
 any other unusual place." Gray about the same 
 time reports that money is being collected to 
 help " poor Smart," not for the first time, since 
 in January 1759, Gray had written : " Poor 
 Smart is not dead, as was said, and Mcrope is 
 acted for his benefit this week," with the Guar- 
 dian, a farce which Garrick had kindly composed 
 for that occasion. 
 
 It was in 1763, immediately after Smart's 
 release, that the now famous Song to David was 
 published. A long and interesting letter in the 
 correspondence of Hawkesworth, dated October 
 1764, gives a pleasant idea of Smart restored to 
 cheerfulness and placed " with very decent people 
 in a house, most delightfully situated, with a ter- 
 race that overlooks St. James's Park." But this 
 relief was only temporary; Smart fell back pre- 
 sently into drunkenness and debt, and was happily 
 relieved b}^ death in 1770, in his forty- eighth year, 
 at the close of a career as melancholy as any 
 recorded in the chronicles of literature.
 
 Smart's Poems 195 
 
 Save for one single lyric, that glows with all 
 the flush and bloom of Eden, Smart would take 
 but a poor place on the English Parnassus. His 
 odes and ballads, his psalms and satires, his 
 masques and his georgics, are not bad, but they 
 are mediocre. Here and there the very careful 
 reader may come across lines and phrases that 
 display the concealed author of the Sojjg to 
 David, such as the following, from an excessively 
 tiresome ode to Dr. Webster : 
 
 W^e?7 IsraeFs host, with all their stores, 
 
 Tassed through the ruby-tinctured crystal shores, 
 
 The wilderness of waters and of land. 
 
 But these are rare. His odes are founded upon 
 those of Gray, and the best that can be said of 
 them is that if they do not quite rise to the 
 frozen elegance of Akenside, they seldom sink 
 to the flaccidity of Mason. Never, for one con- 
 secutive stanza or stroke, do they approach Collins 
 or Gray in delicacy or power. But the Sojig to 
 David — the lyric in 516 lines which Smart is so 
 absurdly fabled to have scratched with a key on 
 the white-washed walls of his cell — this was a
 
 196 Gossip in a Library 
 
 portent of beauty and originality. Strange to 
 say, it was utterly neglected when it appeared, 
 and the editor of the 1791 edition of Smart's 
 v/orks expressly omitted to print it on the ground 
 that it bore too many " melEncholy proofs of the 
 estrangement of Smart's mind " to be fit for re- 
 publication. It became rare to the very verge of 
 extinction, and is now scarcely to be found in its 
 entirety save in a pretty reprint of 18 19, itself 
 now rare, due to the piety of a Rev. R. Harvey. 
 It is obvious that Smart's contemporaries and 
 immediate successors looked upon the Song to 
 David as the work of a hopelessly deranged 
 person. In 1763 poetry had to be very sane 
 indeed to be attended to. The year preceding 
 had welcomed the Shipivreck of Falconer, the 
 year to follow would welcome Goldsmith's Travel- 
 ler and Grainger's Sugar Cane, works of various 
 merit, but all eminently sane. In 1763 Shenstone 
 v/as dying and Rogers was being born. The 
 tidy, spruce and discreet poetry of the eighteenth 
 century was passing into its final and most pro- 
 nounced stage. The Song to David, with its 
 bold mention of unfamiliar things, its warm and
 
 Smart's Poems 197 
 
 highly coloured phraseology, its daring adjectives 
 and unexampled adverbs, was an outrage upon 
 taste, and one which was best accounted for by 
 the tap of the forefinger on the forehead. No 
 doubt the poem presented and still may present 
 legitimate difficulties. Here, for instance, is a 
 stanza which it is not for those who run to 
 read : 
 
 Increasing days their reign exalty 
 tJ^or in the pin\ and mottled vault 
 
 The opposing spirits tilt ; 
 t^nd, by the coasting reader spfd^ 
 The silverlings and crusions glide 
 
 For Adoration gilt. 
 
 This is charming ; but if it were in one of the 
 tongues of the heathen we sho'uld get Dr. Verrall 
 to explain it away. Poor Mr. Harvey, the editor 
 of 1819, being hopelessly puzzled by "silver- 
 lings," the only dictionary meaning of which is 
 " shekels," explained " crusions " to be some 
 other kind of money, from Kpovaig. But " cru- 
 sions " are golden carp, and when I was a child 
 the Devonshire fishermen used to call the long 
 white fish with argent stripes (whose proper
 
 198 Gossip in a Library 
 
 name, I think, is the launce) a silveriing. The 
 " coasting reader " is the courteous reader when 
 walking along the coast, and what he sees are 
 silver fish and gold fish, adoring the Lord by the 
 beauty of their scales. The Song to David is 
 cryptic to a very high degree, but I think there 
 are no lines in it which patient reflection will not 
 solve. On every page are stanzas the verbal 
 splendour of which no lover of poetry will ques- 
 tion, and lines which will always, to me at least, 
 retain an echo of that gusto with which I have 
 heard Mr. Browning's strong voice recite them : 
 
 The wealthy crops of whitening rice 
 ^(Mongst thyine woods and groves of spice ^ 
 
 For Adoration grow ; 
 And, mar s hair d in the fenced land, 
 The peaches and pomegranates stand. 
 
 Where wild carnations blow. 
 
 The laurels with the winter strive ; 
 The crocus burnishes alive 
 
 Upon the snow -clad earth ; 
 * * * * o 
 
 For Adoration ripening canes 
 tdnd cocoa s purest milk detains 
 
 The "western pilgrim's staff ;
 
 Smart's Poems 199 
 
 Where rain in clasping boughs inclosed, 
 jlnd vines with oranges disposd^ 
 Embower the social laugh. 
 
 For Adoration, beyond match, 
 The scholar buljinch aims to catch 
 
 The soft flute's ivory touch ; 
 t4nd, careless on the hazle spray. 
 The daring redbreast keeps at bay 
 
 The damsePs greedy clutch. 
 
 To quote at further length from so fascinating, so 
 divine a poem, would be " purpling too much my 
 mere grey argument." Mr. Browning's praise 
 ought to send every one to the original. But 
 here is one more stanza that I cannot resist 
 copying, because it seems so pathetically ap- 
 plicable to Smart himself as a man, and to the 
 one exquisite poem which was " the more than 
 Abishag of his age " : 
 
 His muse, bright angel of his verse, 
 Gives balm for all the thorns that pierce. 
 
 For all the pangs that rage ; 
 Tilest light, still gaining on the gloom, 
 The more than [Michal of his bloom. 
 
 The Abishag of his age.
 
 POMPEY THE LITTLE
 
 Pompey the Little 
 
 The History of Pomfey the Little ; or, the Life and ^Adventures of 
 a Lap-'T>og, London : Trinted for <iM. Cooper, at the Qlobe in 
 Taternoster '2^ot», oM'DCCLI. 
 
 In February 175 1 the town, which had been 
 suffering from rather a dreary spell since the 
 acceptable publication of Tom Jones, was re- 
 freshed and enlivened by the simultaneous issue 
 of two delightfully scandalous productions, emi- 
 nently well adapted to occupy the polite conver- 
 sation of ladies at drums and at the card-table. 
 Of these one was The Memoirs of a Lady of 
 Quality, so oddly foisted by Smollett into the 
 third volume of his Peregrine Pickle. This was 
 recognised at once as being the work of the frail 
 and adventurous Lady Vane, about whom so 
 many strange stories were already current in 
 society. The other puzzled the gossips much
 
 204 Gossip In a Library 
 
 longer, and it seems to have been the poet 
 Gray who first discovered the authorship of 
 Pompey the Little. Gray wrote to tell Horace 
 Walpole who had written the anonymous book 
 that everybody was talking about, adding that 
 he had discovered the secret through the 
 author's own carelessness, three of the charac- 
 ters being taken from a comedy shown him by 
 a young clergyman at Magdalen College, 
 Cambridge. This was the Rev. Francis Coven- 
 try, then some twenty-five years of age. The 
 discovery of the authorship made Coventry a nine- 
 days hero, while his book went into a multitude 
 of editions. It was one of the most successful 
 jeux cCesprit of the eighteenth century. 
 
 The copy of the first edition of Pompey the 
 Little, which lies before me, contains an excellent 
 impression of the frontispiece by Louis Boitard, 
 the fashionable engraver-designer, whose print 
 of the Ranelagh Rotunda is so much sought 
 after by amateurs. It represents a curtain 
 drawn aside to reveal a velvet cushion, on 
 which sits a graceful little Italian lap-dog, with 
 pendant silky ears and sleek sides spotted like
 
 Pompey the Little 205 
 
 the pard. This is Pompey the Little, whose 
 life and adventures the book proceeds to re- 
 count. " Pompey, the son of Julio and Phyllis, 
 was born a.d. 1735, at Bologna in Italy, a place 
 famous for lap-dogs and sausages," At an early 
 age he was carried away from the boudoir of his 
 Italian mistress by Hillario, an English gentle- 
 man illustrious for his gallantries, who brought 
 him to London. The rest of the history is really 
 a chain of social episodes, each closed by the 
 incident that Pompey becomes the property of 
 some fresh person. In this way we find our- 
 selves in a dozen successive scenes, each strongly 
 contrasted with the others. It is the art of the 
 author that he knows exactly how much to tell 
 us without wearying our attention, and is able to 
 make the transition to the next scene a plausible 
 one. 
 
 There is low life as well as high life in 
 Pompey the Little, sketches after Hogarth, no 
 less than studies a la Watteau. But the high 
 life is by far the better described. Francis 
 Coventry was the cousin of the Earl of that 
 name, he who married the beautiful and silly
 
 2o6 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Maria Gunning. When he painted the ladies 
 of quality at their routs and drums, masque- 
 rades, and hurly-burlies, he knew what he was 
 talking about, for this was the life he himself 
 led, when he was not at college. Even at 
 Cambridge, he was under the dazzling influence 
 of his famous and fashionable cousin, Henry 
 Coventry, fellow of the same college of Mag- 
 dalen, author of the polite Philemon to Hydaspes 
 dialogues, and the latest person who dressed well 
 in the University. The embroidered coats of 
 Henry Coventry, stiff with gold lace, his 
 " most prominent Roman nose " and air of being 
 much a gentleman, were not lost on the younger 
 member of the family, who seems to paint him 
 slyly in his portrait of Mr. Williams. 
 
 The great charm of Pompey the Little to con- 
 temporaries was, of course, the fact that it was 
 supposed to be a roman a clef. The Countess 
 of Bute hastened to send out a copy of it to 
 her mother in Italy, and Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu did not hesitate to discover the like- 
 nesses of various dear friends of hers. She 
 found it impossible to go to bed till she had
 
 Pompey the Little 207 
 
 finished it. She was charmed, and she tells 
 Lady Bute, what the curious may now read 
 with great satisfaction, that it was " a real and 
 exact representation of life, as it is now acted in 
 London." What is odd is that Lady Mary 
 identified, with absolute complacency, the por- 
 trait of herself, as Mrs. Qualmsick, that hysterical 
 lady with whom " it was not unusual for her to 
 fancy herself a Glass bottle, a Tea-pot, a Hay- 
 rick, or a Field of Turnips." Instead of being 
 angry. Lady Mary screamed with laughter at the 
 satire of her own whimsies, of how " Red was 
 too glaring for her Eyes ; Green put her in 
 Mind of Willows, and made her melancholic ; 
 Blue remembered her of her dear Sister, who 
 had died ten Years before in a blue Bed." In 
 fact, all this fun seems, for the moment at least, 
 to have cured the original Mrs. Qualmsick of 
 her whimsies, and her remarks on Pompey the 
 Little are so good-natured that we may well 
 forgive her for the pleasure with which she 
 recognised Lady Townshend in Lady Tempest 
 and the Countess of Orford in the pedantic and 
 deistical Lady Sophister, who rates the phy-
 
 2o8 Gossip in a Library 
 
 sicians for their theology, and will not be bled 
 by any man who accepts the doctrine of the 
 immortality of the soul. 
 
 Coventry's romance does not deserve the 
 entire neglect into which it has fallen. It is 
 sprightly and graceful from the first page to 
 the last. Not written, indeed, by a man of 
 genius, it is yet the work of a very refined ob- 
 server, who has been modern enough to catch 
 the tone of the new school of novelists. The 
 writer owes much to Fielding, who yet does not 
 escape without a flap from one of Pompey's 
 silken ears. Coventry's manner may be best 
 exemplified by one of his own bright passages 
 of satire. This notion of a man of qualit}'', 
 that no place can be full that is not crowded 
 with people of fashion, is not new, but it is 
 deliciously expressed. Aurora has come back 
 from Bath, and assures the Count that she has 
 had a pleasant season there : 
 
 " You amaze me," cries the Count ; " Impos- 
 sible, Madam ! How can it be, Ladies ? I had 
 Letters from Lord Monkeyman and Lady Betty 
 Scornful assuring me that, except yourselves,
 
 Pompey the Little 209 
 
 there were not three human Creatures in the 
 Place. Let me see, I have Lady Bettys Letter 
 in my Pocket, I beheve, at this Moment. Oh 
 no, upon Recollection, I put it this Morning into 
 my Cabinet, where I preserve all my Letters of 
 Quality." Aurora, smothering a Laugh as well 
 as she could, said she was extremely obliged 
 to Lord Monkcyman and Lady Betty, for vouch- 
 safing to rank her and her Sister in the Catalogue 
 of human Beings. "But, surely," added she, "they 
 must have been asleep, both of them, when they 
 wrote their Letters ; for the Bath was extremely 
 full." " Full ! " cries the Count, interrupting 
 her ; " Oh, Madam, that is very possible, and 
 yet there might be no Company — that is, none 
 of us ; No-body that one knows. For as to all 
 the Tramontanes that come by the cross Post, 
 we never reckon them as anything but Monsters 
 in human Shape, that serve to fdl up the Stage 
 of Life, like Cyphers in a play. For Instance, 
 you often see an awkward Girl, who has sewed 
 a Tail to a Gown, and pinned two Lappits to a 
 Night-cap, come running headlong into the 
 Rooms with a wild, frosty Face, as if she was 
 
 o
 
 2IO Gcssip in a Library 
 
 just come from feeding Poultry in her Father's 
 Chicken-Yard. Or 3'^ou see a Booby Squire, 
 with a Head resembling a Stone ball over a 
 Gate-post. Nov.', it would be the most ridicu- 
 lous Thing in Life to call such People Company. 
 'Tis the Want of Titles, and not the Want of 
 Faces, that makes a Place empty." 
 
 There are indications, which I think have 
 escaped the notice of Goldsmith's editors, that 
 the author of the Citizen of the World conde- 
 scended to take some of his ideas from Pompey 
 the Little. In Count Tag, the impoverished 
 little fop who fancies himself a man of quality, 
 and who begs pardon of people who accost him 
 in the Park — " but really, Lady Betty or Lady 
 Mary is just entering the Mall," — we have the 
 direct protot3'pe of Beau Tibbs ; while Mr. 
 Rhymer, the starving poet, whose furniture 
 consists of " the first Act of a Comedy, a Pair 
 of yellow Stays, two political Pamphlets, a plate 
 of Bread-and-butter, three dirty Night-caps, and 
 a Volume of Miscellany'- Poems," is a figure 
 wonderfully like that of Goldsmith himself, as 
 Dr. Percy found him eight years later, in that
 
 Pompey the Little 2 1 1 
 
 " wretched, dirty room," at the top of Breakneck 
 Steps, Green Arbour Court. The whole concep- 
 tion of that Dickens-like scene, in which it is 
 described how Lady Frippery had a drum in 
 spite of all local difficulties, is much more in 
 the humour of Goldsmith than in that of any of 
 Coventry's immediate contemporaries. 
 
 Strangely enough, in spite of the great success of 
 his one book, the author oi Pompey the Little never 
 tried to repeat it. He became perpetual curate 
 of Edgware, and died in the neighbouring 
 village of Stanmore Parva a few years after 
 the publication of his solitary book ; I have, 
 however, searched the registers of that parish 
 in vain for any record of the fact. Francis 
 Coventry had gifts of wit and picturesqueness 
 which deserved a better fate than to amuse a 
 few dissipated women over their citron-waters, 
 and then to be forgotten.
 
 THE LIFE OF JOHN BUNGLE
 
 The Life of John Buncle 
 
 The Life of John Buncle, Esq_., containing 'various obsewations and 
 reflections made in several parts of the loorld ; and many extraordi- 
 nary relations, London : Printed for jf. J^on, at the White Hart in 
 Cheapside, near the Poultry, oMDCCLVI. 
 
 [yol. II. London : Printed for J. Johnson and B. Da'venport, 
 at the Globe, in Pater-Noster %ow, MDCCLX^L] 
 
 IN the year 1756, there resided in the Barbican, 
 where the great John Milton had lived before 
 him, a funny elderly personage called Mr. 
 Thomas Amory, of whom not nearly so much 
 is recorded as the lovers of literary anecdote 
 would like to possess. He was sixty-five j^ears 
 of age ; he was an Irish gentleman of means, 
 and he was an ardent Unitarian. Some un- 
 kind people have suggested that he was out of 
 his mind, and he had, it is certain, many 
 peculiarities. One was, that he never left his 
 house, or ventured into the streets, save " like
 
 2t6 Gossip in a Library 
 
 a bat, in the dusk of the evening." He was, 
 in short, what is called a " crank," and he 
 gloried in his eccentricity. He desired that it 
 might be written on his tombstone, " Here lies 
 an Odd Man." For sixty years he had made 
 no effort to attract popular attention, but in 
 1755 he had published a sort of romance, 
 called Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, 
 and now he succeeded it by the truly extra- 
 ordinary work, the name of which stands at the 
 head of this article. Ten years later there 
 would appear another volume oi John Buncle, and 
 then Amory disappeared again. All we know 
 is, that he died in 1788, at the very respectable 
 age of ninety- seven. So little is known about 
 him, so successfully did he hide "like a bat" 
 through the dusk of nearly a century, that we 
 may be glad to eke out the scanty information 
 given above by a passage of autobio»,Taphy from 
 the preface of the book before us : — 
 
 " I was born in London, and carried an 
 infant to Ireland, where I learned the Irish 
 language, and became intimatel}"^ acquainted with 
 its original inhabitants. I was not onl}'^ a lover
 
 The Life of John Buncle 217 
 
 of books from the time I could spell them to 
 this hour, but read with an extraordinary plea- 
 sure, before I was twenty, the works of several 
 of the Fathers, and all the old romances ; which 
 tinged my ideas w'th a certain piety and extra- 
 vagance that rendered my virtues as well as my 
 
 imperfections particularly mine The dull, 
 
 the formal, and the visionary, the hard-honest 
 man, and the poor-liver, are a people I have had 
 no connection with ; but have always kept com- 
 pany with the polite, the generous, the lively, 
 the rational, and the brightest freethinkers of 
 this age. Besides all this, I was in the days 
 of my youth, one of the most active men in 
 the world at every exercise ; and to a degree of 
 rashness, often venturesome, when there was no 
 necessity for running any hazards ; in diebus illis, 
 I have descended head- foremost, from a high 
 cliff into the ocean, to swim, when I could, and 
 ought, to have gone off a rock not a yard from 
 the surface of the deep. I have swam near a 
 mile and a half out in the sea to a ship that 
 lay off, gone on board, got clothes from the 
 mate of the vessel, and proceeded with them
 
 21 8 Gossip in a Library 
 
 to the next port ; while my companion I left 
 on the beach concluded me drowned, and related 
 my sad fate in the town. I have taken a cool 
 thrust over a bottle, without the least animosity 
 on either side, but both of us depending on our 
 skill in the. small swcrd for preservation from 
 mischief. Such things as these I now call 
 wrong." 
 
 If this is not a person of whom we would 
 like to know more, I know not what the romance 
 of biography is. Thomas Amory's life must 
 have been a streak of crimson on the grey 
 surface of the eighteenth century. It is really 
 a misfortune that the red is almost all washed 
 off. 
 
 No odder book than John Buncle was pub- 
 lished in England throughout the long life of 
 Amory. Romances there were, like Gulliver's 
 Travels and Peter Wilkins, in which the in- 
 cidents were much more incredible, but there 
 was no supposition that these would be treated 
 as real history. The curious feature of John 
 Buncle is that the story is told with the strictest 
 attention to realism and detail, and yet is em-
 
 The Life of John Buncle 219 
 
 broidered all over with the impossible. There 
 can be no doubt that Amory, who belonged 
 to an older school, was affected by the form 
 of the new novels which were the fashion in 
 1756. He wished to be as particular as Mr. 
 Richardson, as manly as Captain Fielding, as 
 breezy and vigorous as Dr. Smollett, the three 
 new writers who were all the talk of the town. 
 But there was a twist in his brain which made 
 his pictures of real life appear like scenes 
 looked at through flawed glass. 
 
 The memoirs of John Buncle take the form of 
 an autobiography, and there has been much 
 discussion as to how much is, and how much 
 is not, the personal history of Amory. I confess 
 I cannot see why we should not suppose all of 
 it to be invented, although it certainly is odd to 
 relate anecdotes and impressions of Dr. Swift, 
 a propos of nothing at all, unless they formed 
 part of the author's experience. For one thing, 
 the hero is represented as being born about 
 thirteen years later than Amory was — if, inaeed, 
 we possess the true date of our worthy's birth. 
 Buncle goes to college and becomes an earnest
 
 220 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Unitarian. The incidents of his life are all 
 intellectual, until one "glorious first of August," 
 when he sallies forth from college with his gun 
 and dog, and after four hours' walk discovers that 
 he has lost his way. He is in the midst of 
 splendid mountain scenery — which leads us to 
 wonder at which English University he was 
 studying — and descends through woody ravines 
 and cliffs that overhang torrents, till he suddenly 
 comes in sight of a " little harmonic building 
 that had every charm and proportion architec- 
 ture could give it." Finding one of the garden 
 doors open, and being very hungry, the adven- 
 turous Buncle strolls in, and finds himself in ** a 
 grotto or shell-house, in which a politeness of 
 fancy hnd produced and blended the greatest 
 beauties of nature and decoration." (There are 
 more grottos in the pages of Amory than exist 
 in the whole of the British Islands.) This shell- 
 house opened into a library, and in the library 
 a beauteous object was sitting and reading. 
 She was studying a Hebrew Bible, and making 
 philological notes on a small desk. She raised 
 her eyes and approached the stranger, " to know
 
 The Life of John Buncle 221 
 
 who I wanted " (for Buncle's style, though pic- 
 turesque, is not always grammatically irreproach- 
 able). 
 
 Before he could answer, a venerable gentleman 
 was at his side, to whom the young sportsman 
 confessed that he was dying of hunger and had 
 lost his way. Mr. Noel, a patriarchal widower 
 of vast wealth, was inhabiting this mansion in 
 the sole company of his only daughter, the lovely 
 being just referred to. Mr. Buncle was imme- 
 diately " stiffened by enchantment " at the beauty 
 of Miss Harriot Noel, and could not be induced 
 to leave when he had eaten his breakfast. This 
 difficulty was removed by the old gentleman 
 asking him to stay to dinner, until the time of 
 which meal Miss Noel should entertain him. 
 At about 10 A.M. Mr. Buncle offers his hand to 
 the astonished Miss Noel, who, with great pro- 
 priety, bids him recollect that he is an entire 
 stranger to her. They then have a long con- 
 versation about the Chaldeans, and the " pri- 
 maevity " of the Hebrew language, and the 
 extraordinary longevity of the Antediluvians ; 
 at the close of which (circa I1.15 a.m.) Buncle
 
 222 Gossip in a Library 
 
 proposes again. " You force me to smile (the 
 illustrious Miss Noel replied), and oblige me 
 to call you an odd compound of a man," and 
 to distract his thoughts, she takes him round 
 her famous grotto. The conversation, all re- 
 peated at length, turns on conchology and on 
 the philosophy of Epictetus until it is time for 
 dinner, when Mr. Noel and young Buncle drink 
 a bottle of old Alicant, and discuss the gallery of 
 Verres and the poetry of Catullus. Left alone at 
 last, Buncle still does not go away, but at 5 p.m. 
 proposes for the third time, " over a pot of tea." 
 Miss Noel says that the conversation will have 
 to take some other turn, or she must leave the 
 room. They therefore immediately " consider 
 the miracle at Babel," and the argument of 
 Hutchinson on the Hebrew word Shephah, until, 
 while Miss Noel is in the very act of explaining 
 that " the Aramitish was the customary language 
 of the line of Shem," young Buncle (circa 7.30) 
 " could not help snatching this beauty to my 
 arms, and without thinking what I did, im- 
 pressed on her balmy mouth half a dozen kias£;5. 
 This was wrong, and gave offence," but then
 
 The Life of John Buncle 223 
 
 papa returning, the trio sat down peacefully to 
 cribbage and a little music. Of course Miss 
 Noel is ultimately won, and this is a very fair 
 specimen of the conduct of the book. 
 
 A fortnight before the marriage, however, 
 "the small-pox steps in, and in seven days' time 
 reduced the finest human frame in the universe 
 to the most hideous and offensive block," and 
 Miss Harriot Noel dies. If this dismal occur- 
 rence is rather abruptly introduced, it is because 
 Buncle has to be betrothed, in succession, to six 
 other lively and delicious young females, all of 
 them beautiful, all of them learned, and all of 
 them earnestly convinced Unitarians. If they 
 did not rapidly die off, how could they be seven ? 
 Buncle mourns the decease of each, and then 
 hastily forms an equally violent attachment to 
 another. It must be admitted that he is a 
 sad wife-waster. Azora is one of the most 
 delightful of these deciduous loves. She " had 
 an amazing collection of the most rational 
 philosophical ideas, and she delivered them in 
 the most pleasing dress." She resided in a 
 grotto within a romantic dale in Yorkshire, in
 
 224 Gossip in a Library 
 
 a " little female republic " of one hundred souls, 
 all of them "straight, clean, handsome girls." 
 In this glen there is only one man, and he a 
 fossil. Miss Melmoth, who would discuss the 
 paulo-post futurum of a Greek verb with the 
 utmost careand politeness, and had studied " the 
 Minerva of Sanctius and Hickes' Northern The- 
 saurus," was another nice young lady, though 
 rather free in her manner with gentlemen. But 
 they all die, sacrificed to the insatiable fate of 
 Buncle. 
 
 Here the reader may like to enjoy a sample of 
 Buncle as a philosopher. It is a characteristic 
 passage : — 
 
 " Such was the soliloquy I spoke, as I gazed 
 on the skeleton of John Orton; and just as I had 
 ended, the boys brought in the wild turkey, which 
 they had very ingeniously roasted, and with some 
 of Mrs. Burcot's fine ale and bread, I had an ex- 
 cellent supper. The bones of the penitent Orton 
 I removed to a hole I had ordered my lad to dig 
 for them ; the skull excepted, which I kept, and 
 still keep on my table for a memento mori ; and 
 that I may never forget the good lesson which
 
 The Life of John Buncle 225 
 
 the percipient who once resided in it had eiven. 
 It is often the subject of my meditation. When 
 I am alone of an evening, in my closet, which is 
 often my case, I have the scull of John Orton 
 before me, and as I smoke a philosophic pipe, 
 with my eyes fastened on it, I learn more from 
 the solemn object than I could from the most 
 philosophical and laboured speculations. What 
 a wild and hot head once — how cold and still 
 now ; poor scull, I say : and what was the end 
 of all thy daring, frolics and gambols — thy licen- 
 tiousness and impiety — a severe and bitter repent- 
 ance. In piety and goodness John Orton found 
 at last that happiness the world could not give 
 him." 
 
 Hazlitt has said that " the soul of Rabelais 
 passed into John Amory." His name was 
 Thomas, not John, and there is very little that 
 is Rabelaisian in his spirit. One sees what 
 Hazlitt meant — the voluble and diffuse learning, 
 the desultory thread of narration, the mixture 
 of religion and animalism. But the resemblance 
 is very superficial, and the parallel too compli- 
 mentary to Amory. It is difficult to think of the 
 
 p
 
 226 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 soul of Rabelais in connection with a pedantic 
 and uxorious Unitarian. To lovers of odd books, 
 John Biincle will always have a genuine attrac- 
 tion. Its learning would have dazzled Dr. 
 Primrose, and is put on in glittering spars and 
 shells, like the ornaments of the many grottoes 
 that it describes. It is diversified by descrip- 
 tions of natural scenery, which are often exceed- 
 ingly felicitous and original, and it is quickened 
 by the human v/armth and flush of the love 
 passages, which, with all their quaintness, are 
 extremely human. It is essentially a " healthy " 
 book, as Charles Lamb, with such a startling 
 result, assured the Scotchman. Amory was a 
 fervid admirer of womankind, and he favoured a 
 rare type, the learned lady who bears her learning 
 lightly and can discuss " the quadrations of curvi- 
 linear spaces " without ceasing to be " a bouncing, 
 dear, delightful girl," and adroit in the prepara- 
 tion of toasts and chocolate. The style of the 
 book is very careless and irregular, but rises in 
 its best pages to an admirable picturesqueness.
 
 BEAU NASH
 
 Beau Nash 
 
 The Life of Richard Nash, Esq.; late cM'aster of the Ceremonies at 
 'Bath. Extracted principally from hh Original Tapen. The Second 
 Edition. London : J. Newbery. 1 762. 
 
 1 HERE are cases, not known to every col- 
 lector of books, where it is not the first which is 
 the really desirable edition of a work, but the 
 second. One of these rare examples of the 
 exception which proves the rule is the second 
 edition of Goldsmith's Life of Beau Nash. Dis- 
 appointment awaits him who possesses only the 
 first ; it is in the second that the best things 
 originally appeared. The story is rather to be 
 divined than told as history, but we can see 
 pretty plainly how the lines of it must have run. 
 In the early part of 1762, Oliver Goldsmith, 
 at that time still undistinguished, but in the 
 very act of blossoming into fame, received a
 
 230 Gossip in a Library 
 
 commission of fourteen guineas to write for 
 Nevvbery a life of the strange old beau, Mr. Nash, 
 who had died in 1761. On the same day, 
 1/vhich was March 5th, he gave a receipt to the 
 publisher for three other publications, written 
 or to be written, so that very probably it was 
 not expected that he should immediately supply 
 all the matter sold. In the summer he seems 
 to have gone down to Bath on a short visit, 
 and to have made friends with the Beau's 
 executor, Mr. George Scott. It has even 
 been said that he cultivated the Mayor and 
 Aldermen of Bath with such success that they 
 presented him with yet another fifteen guineas. 
 But of this, in itself highly improbable in- 
 stance of municipal benefaction, the archives of 
 the city yield no proof. At least Mr. Scott gave 
 him access to Nash's papers, and with these he 
 seems to have betaken himself back to London. 
 
 It is a heart-rending delusion and a cruel 
 snare to be paid for your work before 3'ou 
 accomplish it. As soon as once 3'our work is 
 finished you ought to be promptly paid ; but to 
 receive your lucre one minute before it is due, is
 
 Beau Nash 231 
 
 to tempt Providence to make a Micawber of you. 
 Goldsmith, of course, without any temptation 
 being needed, was the very ideal Micawber of 
 letters, and the result of paying him before- 
 hand v/as that he had, simply, to be popped 
 into the mill by force, and the copy ground 
 out of him.. It is evident that in the case of 
 the first edition of the Life of Beau Nash, the 
 grinding process was too mercifully applied, 
 and the book when it appeared was short 
 measure. It has no dedication, no " advertise- 
 ment," and very few notes, while it actually 
 omits many of the best stories. The wise 
 bibliophile, therefore, will eschew it, and will 
 try to get the second edition issued a few 
 weeks later in the same year, which Newbery 
 evidently insisted that Goldsmith should send 
 out to the public in proper order. 
 
 Goldsmith treats Nash with very much the 
 same sort of indulgent and apologetic sympathy 
 with which M. Barbey d'Aurevilly treats Brum- 
 mell. He does not affect to think that the world 
 calls for a full-length statue of such a fantastic 
 hero ; but he seems to claim leave to execute a
 
 232 Gossip in a Library 
 
 statuette in terra-cotta for a cabinet of curio- 
 sities. From that point of view, as a queer 
 object of vertii, as a specimen of the bric-a-brac 
 of manners, both the one and the other, the 
 King of Beaux and the Emperor of Dandies, are 
 welcome to amateurs of the odd and the enter- 
 taining. At the head of Goldsmith's book stands 
 a fine portrait of Nash, engraved by Anthony 
 Walker, one of the best and rarest of early 
 English line-engravers, after an oil-picture by 
 William Hoare, presently to be one of the foun- 
 dation-members of the Royal Academy, and now 
 and throughout his long life the principal repre- 
 sentative of the fine arts at Bath. Nash is here 
 represented in his famous white hat — galero albo, 
 as his epitaph has it; the ensign of his rule at 
 Bath, the more than coronet of his social sway. 
 
 The breast of his handsome coat is copiously 
 trimmed with rich lace, and his old, old eyes, 
 with their wrinkles and their crow's feet, look 
 demurely out from under an incredible wig, an 
 umbrageous, deep-coloured ramilie of early 
 youth. It is a wonderfully hard-featured, 
 serious, fatuous face, and it lives for us under
 
 Beau Nash 233 
 
 the delicate strokes of Anthony Walker's graver. 
 The great Beau looks as he must have looked when 
 the Duchess of Queensbury dared to appear at the 
 Assembly House on a ball night with a white 
 apron on. It is a pleasant story, and only told 
 properly in our second edition. King Nash had 
 issued an edict forbidding the wearing of aprons. 
 The Duchess dared to disobey. Nash walked 
 up to her and deftly snatched her apron from 
 her, throwing it on to the back benches where the 
 ladies' women sat. What a splendid moment ! 
 Imagine the excitement of all that fashion- 
 able company — the drawn battle between the 
 Majesty of Etiquette and the Majesty of Beauty ! 
 The Beau remarked, with sublime calm, that 
 " none but Abigails appeared in white aprons." 
 The Duchess hesitated, felt that her ground had 
 slipped from under her, gave way with the most 
 admirable tact, and " with great good sense and 
 humour, begged his Majesty s pardon." 
 
 Aprons were not the only red rags to the bull 
 of ceremony. He was quite as unflinching an 
 enemy to top-boots. He had already banished 
 swords from the assembly-room, because their
 
 2 34 Gossip in a Library 
 
 clash frightened the ladies, and their scabbards 
 tore people's dresses. But boots were not so 
 easily banished. The county squires liked to 
 ride into the city, and, leaving their horses at a 
 stable, walk straight into the dignity of the 
 minuet. Nash, who had a genius for propriety, 
 saw how hateful this was, and determined to put 
 a stop to it. He slew top-boots and aprons at 
 the same time, and with the shaft of Apollo. 
 He indited a poem on the occasion, and a very 
 good example of satire by irony it is. It is 
 short enough to quote entire : 
 
 FRONTINELLA'S INVITATION TO THE ASSEMBLY. 
 
 Come, one and all, 
 
 To Hoyden Hall, 
 For there's th' Assembly to-night. 
 
 Ch(jne but prude fools 
 
 Chlind manners and rules. 
 We Hoydens do decency slight. 
 
 Come, Trollops and Slatterns, 
 
 Cocked hats and white aprons. 
 This best our modest"^ suits ; 
 
 For why should not we 
 
 In dress be as free 
 tAs Hogs- Norton squires in boots?
 
 Beau Nash 235 
 
 Why, indeed ? But the Hogs-Norton squires, 
 as is their wont, were not so easily pierced 
 to the heart as the noble slatterns. Nash 
 turned Aristophanes, and depicted on a little 
 stage a play in which Mr. Punch, under very 
 disgraceful circumstances, excused himself for 
 wearing boots by quoting the practice of the 
 pump-room beaux. This seems to have gone 
 to the conscience of Hogs-Norton at last ; but 
 what really gave the death-blow to top-boots, 
 as a part of evening dress, was the incident 
 of Nash's going up to a gentleman, who had 
 made his appearance in the ball-room in this 
 unpardonable costume, and remarking, " bow- 
 inr; in an arch manner," that he appeared to 
 have " forgotten his horse." 
 
 It had not been without labour and a long 
 struggle that Nash had* risen to this position 
 of unquestioned authority at Bath. His majes- 
 tic rule was the result of more than half a 
 century of painstaking. H^e had been born far 
 back in the seventeenth century, so far back 
 that, incredible as it sounds, a love adventure 
 of his early youth had supplied Vanbrugh, in
 
 236 Gossip in a Library 
 
 1695, with an episode for his comedy of JEsop. 
 But after trying many forms of life, and weary 
 of his own affluence, he came to Bath just at 
 the moment when the fortunes of that ancient 
 centre of social pleasure were at their lowest 
 ebb. Queen Anne had been obliged to divert 
 herself, in 1703, with a fiddle and a hautboy, 
 and with country dances on the bowling-green. 
 The lodgings were dingy and expensive, the 
 pump-house had no director, the nobility had 
 haughtily withdrawn from such vulgar enter- 
 tainments as the city now alone afforded. The 
 famous and choleric physician. Dr. Radcliffe, in 
 revenge for some slight he had endured, had 
 threatened to "throw a toad into King Bla- 
 dud's Well," by writing a pamphlet against the 
 medicinal efficacy of the waters. 
 
 The moment was critical ; the greatness of Bath, 
 which had been slowly declining since the days of 
 Elizabeth, was threatened with extinction when 
 Nash came to it, wealthy, idle, patient, with a 
 genius for organisation, and in half a century he 
 made it what he left it when he died in his eighty- 
 ninth year, the most elegant and attractive of
 
 Beau Nash 237 
 
 the smaller social resorts of Europe. Such a 
 man, let us be certain, was not wholly ridi- 
 culous. There must have been something more 
 in him than in a mere idol of the dandies, 
 like Brummell, or a mere irresistible buck and 
 lady-killer, like Lauzun. In these latter men 
 the force is wholly destructive ; they are ani- 
 mated by a fehne vanity, a tiger-spirit of egotism. 
 Against the story of Nash and the Duchess of 
 Queensbury, so wholesome and humane, we put 
 that frightful anecdote that Saint-Simon tells of 
 Lauzun's getting the hand of another duchess 
 under his high heel, and pirouetting on it to 
 make the heel dig deeper into the flesh. In all 
 the repertory of Nash's extravagances there is 
 not one story of this kind, not one that reveals a 
 wicked force. He was fatuous, but beneficent ; 
 silly, but neither cruel nor corrupt. 
 
 Goldsmith, in this second edition at least, has 
 taken more pains with his life of Nash than he 
 ever took again in a biography. His Parnell, 
 his Bolingbroke, his Voltaire, are not worthy of 
 his name and fame ; not all the industry of 
 annotators can ever make them more than they
 
 238 Gossip in a Library 
 
 were at first — pot-boilers, turned out with no 
 care or enthusiasm, and unconscientiously pre- 
 pared. But this subtle figure of a Master of 
 Ceremonial ; this queer old presentment of a 
 pump-room king, crowned with a white hat, 
 waiting all day long in his best at the bow- 
 window of the Smyrna Coffee-House to get a 
 bow from that other, and alas ! better accre- 
 dited royalty, the Prince of Wales ; this picture, 
 of an old beau, with his toy-shop of gold 
 snuflf-boxes, his agate-rings, his senseless 
 obelisk, his rattle of faded jokes and blunted 
 stories — all this had something very attractive 
 to Goldsmith both in its humour and its pathos ; 
 and he has left us, in his Life of Nash, a 
 study which is far too little known, but which 
 deserves to rank among the best-read produc- 
 tions of that infinitely sympathetic pen, which 
 has bequeathed to posterity Mr. Tibbs and Moses 
 Primrose and Tony Lumpkin.
 
 THE DIARY OF A LOVER OF 
 LITERATURE
 
 The Diary of a Lover of 
 Literature 
 
 Extracts from the Diary or a Lover of Literature. Ipiivich : 
 Printed and sold by John "^aio ; sold also by Lor.gman, Hurst, %ees, 
 and Orme, Paternoster '^tv, London. 181O. 
 
 IT may be that, save by a few elderly people 
 and certain lovers of old Gentlemati s Magazines, 
 the broad anonymous quarto known as The Diary 
 of a Lover of Literature is no longer much ad- 
 mired or even recollected. But it deserves to 
 be recalled to memory, if only in that it was, in 
 some respects, the first, and in others, the last 
 of a long series of publications. It was the 
 first of those diaries of personal record of the 
 intellectual life, which have become more and 
 more the fashion and have culminated at length 
 in the ultra-refinement of Amiel and the con- 
 scious self-analysis of Marie Bashkirtseff. It 
 
 Q
 
 242 Gossip in a Library 
 
 was less definitely, perhaps, the last, or one of 
 the last, expressions of the eighteenth century 
 sentiment, undiluted by any tincture of romance, 
 any suspicion that fine literature existed before 
 Dryden, or could take any form unknown to 
 Burke. 
 
 It was under a strict incognito that The Diary 
 of a Lover of Literature appeared, and it was 
 attributed by conjecture to various famous people. 
 The real author, however, was not a celebrated 
 man. His name was Thomas Green, and he 
 was the grandson of a wealthy Suffolk soap- 
 boiler, who had made a fortune during the reign 
 of Queen Anne. The Diarist's father had been 
 an agreeable amateur in letters, a pamphleteer, 
 and a champion of the Church of England against 
 Dissent. Thomas Green, who was born in 1769, 
 found himself at twent3'-five in possession of the 
 ample family estates, a library of good books, a 
 vast amount of leisure, and a hereditary faculty 
 for reading. His health was not very solid, and 
 he was debarred by it from sharing the pleasures 
 o* his neighbour squires. He determined to make 
 books and music the occupation of his life, and
 
 Diary of a Lover of Literature 243 
 
 in 1796, on his twenty-seventh birthday, he began 
 to record in a diary his impressions of what he read. 
 He went on very quietly and luxuriantly, living 
 among his books in his house at Ipswich, and 
 occasionally rolling in his post-chaise to vale- 
 tudinarian baths and " Spaws." 
 
 When he had kept his diary for fourteen 
 3''ears, it seemed to a pardonable vanity so 
 amusing, that he persuaded himself to give part 
 of it to the world. The experiment, no doubt, 
 was a very dubious one. After much hesitation, 
 and in an evil hour, perhaps, he wrote : " I am 
 induced to submit to the indulgence of the public 
 the idlest work, probably, that ever was com- 
 posed ; but, I could wish to hope, not absolutely 
 the most unentertaining or unprofitable." The 
 welcome his volume received must speedily have 
 reassured him, but he had pledged himself to 
 print no more, and he kept his promise, though 
 he went on writing his Diary until he died in 
 1825. His MSS. passed into the hand of John 
 Mitford, who amused the readers of The Gentk' 
 man^s Magazine with fragments of them for 
 several years. Green has had many admirers
 
 244 Gossip in a Library 
 
 in the past, amongst whom Edward FitzGerald 
 was not the least distinguished. But he was 
 always something of a local worthy, author of 
 one anon3'mous book, and of late he has been little 
 mentioned outside the confines of Suffolk. 
 
 It would be difficult to find an example more 
 striking than the Diary of a Lover of Literature 
 of exclusive absorption in the world of books. 
 It opens in a gloomy year for British politics, 
 but there is found no allusion to current events. 
 There is a victory ofT Cape St. Vincent in 
 February 1797, but Green is attacking Bentley's 
 annotations on Horace. Bonaparte and his 
 army are buried in the sands of Egypt ; our 
 Diarist takes occasion to be buried in Shaftes- 
 bury's Enquiry Concerning Virtue. Europe rings 
 with Hohenlinden, but the news does not reach 
 Mr. Thomas Green, nor disturb him in his 
 perusal of Soame Jenyns' View of Christianity. 
 The fragment of the Diary here preserved runs 
 from September 1796 to June 1800. No one 
 would guess, from any word between cover and 
 cover, that these were not halcyon years, an
 
 Diary of a Lover of Literature 245 
 
 epoch of complete European tranquillity. War 
 upon war might wake the echoes, but the river 
 ran softly by the Ipswich garden of this gentle 
 enthusiast, and not a murmur reached him 
 through his lilacs and laburnums. 
 
 I have said that this book is one of the latest 
 expressions of unadulterated eighteenth-century 
 sentiment. For form's sake, the Diarist men- 
 tions now and again, very superficially, Shake- 
 speare, Bacon, and Milton; but in reality, the 
 garden of his study is bounded by a thick hedge 
 behind the statue of Dryden. The classics o£ 
 Greece and Rome, and the limpid reasonable 
 writers of England from the Restoration down- 
 wards, these are enough for him. Writing in 
 1800 he has no suspicion of a new age prepar- 
 ing. We read these stately pages, and we rub 
 our eyes. Can it be that when all this was 
 written, Wordsworth and Coleridge had issued 
 Lyrical Ballads, and Keats himself was in the 
 world ? Almost the only touch which shows 
 consciousness of a suspicion that romantic litera- 
 ture existed, is a reference to the rival transla-
 
 246 Gossip in a Library 
 
 tions of Burger's Lenore in 1797. Sir Walter 
 Scott, as we know, was one of the anonymous 
 translators ; it was, however, in all probability 
 not his, but Taylor's, that Green mentions with 
 special approbation. 
 
 In one hundred years a mighty change has 
 come over the tastes and fashions of literary life. 
 When The Diary of a Lover of Literature was 
 written. Dr. Hurd, the pompous and offensive 
 Bishop of Worcester, was a dreaded martinet of 
 letters, carrying on the tradition of his yet more 
 formidable master Warburton. As people now- 
 adays discuss Verlaine and Ibsen, so they argued 
 in those days about Godwin and Home Tooke, 
 and shuddered over each fresh incarnation of Mrs. 
 Radcliffe. Soame Jenyns was dead, indeed, in 
 the flesh, but his influence stalked at nights 
 under the lamps and where disputants w»ere 
 gathered together in country rectories. Dr. Parr 
 affected the Olympian nod, and crowned or 
 check-mated reputations. "A flattering message 
 
 from Dr. P " sends our Diarist into ecstacies 
 
 so excessive that a reaction sets in, and the 
 *' predominant and final effect upon my mind has
 
 Diary of a Lover of Literature 247 
 
 been depression rather than elevation." We 
 think of 
 
 The yarns Jack Hall i?jvented, and the songs 'Jem 
 
 Roper sung, 
 And where are now Jem Roper and Jac\ Hall? 
 
 Who cares now for Parr's praise or Soame 
 Jenyns' censure ? Yet in our Diarist's pages 
 these take equal rank with names that time has 
 spared, with Robertson and Gibbon, Burke and 
 Re3'nolds. 
 
 Thomas Green was more ready for experiment 
 in art than in literature. He was " particularly 
 struck " at the Royal Academy of 1797 with a 
 sea view by a painter called Turner : — 
 
 " Fishing vessels coming in with a heavy 
 swell in apprehension of a tempest, gathering in 
 the distance, and casting as it advances a night 
 of shade, while a parting glow is spread with fine 
 effect upon the shore ; the whole composition 
 bold in design and masterly in execution. I am 
 entirely unacquainted with the artist, but if he 
 proceeds as he has begun, he cannot fail to 
 become the first in his department."
 
 248 Gossip In a Library 
 
 A remarkable prophecy, and one of the earliest 
 notices we possess of the effect which the youth- 
 ful Turner, then but twenty-two years of age, 
 made on his contemporaries. 
 
 As a rule, except when he is travelling, our 
 Diarist almost entirely occupies himself with a 
 discussion of the books he happens to be reading. 
 His opinions are not always in concert with the 
 current judgment of to-day ; he admires Warbur- 
 ton much more than we do, and Fielding much 
 less. But he never fails to be amusing, because 
 so independent within the restricted bounds of 
 his intellectual domain. He is shut up in his 
 eighteenth century like a prisoner, but inside its 
 wall his liberty of action is complete. Some- 
 times his judgments are sensibly in advance of 
 his age. It was the fashion in 1798 to denounce 
 the Letters of Lord Chesterfield as frivolous and 
 immoral. Green takes a wider view, and in a 
 thoughtful anal3'sis points out their judicious 
 merits and their genuine parental assiduity. 
 When Green can for a moment lift his e3fes from 
 his books, he shows a sensitive quality of obser- 
 vation which might have been cultivated to general
 
 Diary of a Lover of Literature 249 
 
 advantage. Here is a reflection which seems to 
 be as novel as it is happy : — 
 
 " Looked afterwards into the Roman Cathoh'c 
 Chapel in Duke Stre::t. The thrilling tinkle of 
 the little bell at the elevation of the Host is per- 
 haps the finest example that can be given of the 
 sublime by association — nothing so poor and 
 trivial in itself, nothing so transcendently awful, 
 as indicating the sudden change in the conse- 
 crated Elements, and the instant presence of the 
 Redeemer." 
 
 Much of the latter part of the Diary, as we 
 hold it, is occupied with the description of a tour 
 in England and Wales. Here Green is lucid, 
 graceful and refined : producing one after another 
 little vignettes in prose, which remind us of the 
 simple drawings of the water-colour masters of 
 the age, of Girtin or Cozens or Glover. The 
 volume, which opened with some remarks on Sir 
 William Temple, closes with a disquisition on 
 Warton's criticism of the poets. The curtain 
 rises for three years on a smooth stream of intel- 
 lectual reflection, unruffled by outward incident, 
 and then falls again before we are weary of the
 
 250 Gossip in a Library 
 
 monotonous flow of undiluted criticism. The 
 Diary of a Lover of Literature is at once the 
 pleasing record of a cultivated mind, and a monu- 
 ment to a species of existence that is as obsolete 
 as nankeen breeches or a tie-vvisr. 
 
 Isaac D'Israeli said that Green had humbled 
 all modern authors to the dust, and that he 
 earnestly wished for a dozen volumes of The 
 Diary, At Green's death material for at least 
 so many supplements were placed in the hands 
 of John Mitford, who did not venture to produce 
 them. From January 1834 to May 1843, how- 
 ever, Mitford was incessantly contributing to The 
 Gentleman s Magazine unpublished extracts from 
 this larger Diary. These have never been col- 
 lected, but my friend, Mr. W. Aldis Wright, 
 possesses a very interesting volume, into which 
 the whole mass of them has been carefully and 
 consecutively pasted, with copious illustrative 
 matter, by the hand of Edward FitzGerald, whose 
 interest in and curiosity about Thomas Green 
 were unflagging.
 
 PETER BELL AND HIS TORMENTORS
 
 Peter Bell and his Tormentors 
 
 Peter Bell : ^A Tale in Uerse, by William Wbrdstvorth. London : 
 Trinted by Strahan and Spottisivoode, Trinters-Street : fm- Longman^ 
 Hunt, %eei, Orme and 'Bro'zvn, Taternoster ^iv. 1819. 
 
 None of Wordsworth's productions are better 
 known by name than Pefcr Bell, and yet few, 
 probably, are less familiar, even to convinced 
 Wordsworthians. The poet's biographers and 
 critics have commonly shirked the responsibility 
 of discussing this poem, and when the Primrose 
 stanza has been quoted, and the Parlour stanza 
 smiled at, there is usually no more said about 
 Peter Bell. A puzzling obscurity hangs around 
 its history. We have no positive knowledge 
 why its publication was so long delayed ; nor, 
 having been delayed, why it was at length de- 
 termined upon. Yet a knowledge of this poem is 
 not merely an important, but, to a thoughtful critic, 
 an essential element in the comprehension of
 
 254 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Wordsworth's poetry. No one who examines 
 that body of Hterature with sympathetic attention 
 should be content to overlook the piece in which 
 Wordsworth's theories are pushed to their 
 furthest extremity. 
 
 When Peter Bell was published in April 1819, 
 the author remarked that it had " nearly survived 
 its minority ; for it saw the light in the summer 
 of 1798." It was therefore composed at Alfoxden, 
 that plain stone house in West Somersetshire, 
 which Dorothy and William Wordsworth rented 
 for the sum of £2}^ for one year, the rent cover- 
 ing the use of " a large park, with seventy head 
 of deer." 
 
 Thanks partly to its remoteness from a rail- 
 way, and partly also to the peculiarities of its 
 family history, Alfoxden remains singularly un- 
 altered. The lover of Wordsworth who follows 
 its deep umbrageous drive to the point where 
 the house, the park around it, and the Quan- 
 tocks above them suddenly break upon the 
 view, sees to-day very much what Wordsworth's 
 visitors saw when they trudged up from Stowey 
 to commune with him in 1797. The barrier of
 
 Peter Bell and his Tormentors 255 
 
 ancient beech-trees running up into the moor, 
 Kilve twinkling below, the stretch of fields and 
 woods descending northward to the expanse of 
 the yellow Severn Channel, the plain white fagade 
 of Alfoxden itself, with its eas}' right of way 
 across the fantastic garden, the tumultuous path- 
 way down to the glen, the poet's favourite parlour 
 at the end of the house — all this presents an 
 impression which is probably less transformed, 
 remains more absolutely intact, than any other 
 which can be identified with the early or even the 
 middlelifeof the poet. That William and Dorothy, 
 in their poverty, should have rented so noble a 
 country property seems at first sight inexplicable, 
 and the contrast between Alfoxden and Coleridge's 
 squalid pot-house in Nether Stowey can never 
 cease to be astonishing. But the sole object of 
 the trustees in admitting Wordsworth to Alfox- 
 den was, as Mrs. Sandford has discovered, " to 
 keep the house inhabited during the minority of 
 the owner " ; it was let to the poet on the 14th 
 of July 1797. 
 
 It was in this delicious place, under the shadow 
 of " smooth Quantock's airy ridge," that
 
 256 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Wordsworth's genius came of age. It was 
 during the twelve months spent here that 
 Wordsworth lost the final traces of the old tra- 
 dional accent of poetry. It was here that the 
 best of the Lyrical Ballads were written, and 
 from this house the first volume of that epoch- 
 making collection was forwarded to the press. 
 Among the poems written at Alfoxden Peter Bell 
 was prominent, but we hear little of it except 
 from Hazlitt, who, taken over to the Words- 
 worths by Coleridge from Nether Stowey, was 
 on a first visit permitted to read " the sybilline 
 leaves," and on a second had the rare pleasure 
 of hearing Wordsworth himself chant Peter Bell, 
 in his " equable, sustained, and internal " manner 
 of recitation, under the ash-trees of Alfoxden 
 Park. I do not know whether it has been noted 
 that the landscape of Peter Bell, although local- 
 ised in Yorkshire by the banks of the River 
 Swale, is yet pure Somerset in character. The 
 poem was composed, without a doubt, as the poet 
 tramped the grassy heights of the Quantock 
 Hills, or descended at headlong pace, mouthing 
 and murmuring as he went, into one sylvan
 
 Peter Bell and his Tormentors 257 
 
 combe after another. To give it its proper place 
 among the writings of the school, we must re- 
 member that it belongs to the same group as 
 Tintern Abbey and The Ancient Mariner. 
 
 Why, then, was it not issued to the world 
 with these ? Why was it locked up in the poet's 
 desk for twenty-one years, and shown during 
 that time, as we gather from its author's language 
 to Southey, to few, even of his close friends ? 
 To these questions we find no reply vouchsafed, 
 but perhaps it is not difficult to discover one. 
 Every revolutionist in literature or art produces 
 some composition in which he goes further than 
 in any other in his defiance of recognised rules 
 and conventions. It was Wordsworth's central 
 theory that no subject can be too simple and no 
 treatment too naked for poetic purposes. His 
 poems written at Alfoxden are precisely those in 
 which he is most audacious in carrying out his 
 principle, and nothing, even of his, is quite so 
 simple or quite so naked as Peter Bell. Hazlitt, 
 a very young man, strongly prejudiced in favour 
 of the new ideas, has given us a notion of the 
 amazement with which he listened to these pieces 
 
 R
 
 258 Gossip in a Library 
 
 of Wordsworth, although he was " not critically 
 nor sceptically inclined." Others, we know, 
 were deeply scandalised. I have little doubt 
 that Wordsworth himself considered that, in 
 1798, his own admirers were scarcely ripe for 
 the publ'cation of Peter Bell, while, even so late 
 as June 18 12, when Crabb Robinson borrowed 
 the MS. and lent it to Charles Lamb, the latter 
 " found nothing good in it." Robinson seems to 
 have been the one admirer of Peter Bell at that 
 time, and he was irritated at Lamb's indifference. 
 Yet his own opinion became modified when the 
 poem was published, and (May 3, 18 19) he calls 
 it "this unfortunate book."* In another place 
 (June 12, 1820) Crabb Robinson says that he 
 implored Wordsworth, before the book was 
 printed, to omit " the party in a parlour," and 
 also the banging of the ass's bones, but, of 
 course, in vain. 
 
 In 18 19 much was changed. The poet was 
 now in his fiftieth year. The epoch of his true 
 
 * The word unfortunate is omitted by Sadler, perhaps in deference 
 to the feelings of Wordsworth's descendants.
 
 Peter Bell and his Tormentors 259 
 
 productiveness was closed ; all his best works, 
 except The Prelude, were before the public, and 
 although Wordsworth was by no means widely 
 or generally recognised yet as a great poet, there 
 was a considerable audience ready to receive 
 with respect whatever so interesting a person 
 should put forward. Moreover, a new genera- 
 tion had come to the front ; Scott's series of 
 verse-romances was closed ; Byron was in mid- 
 career ; there were young men of extraordinary 
 and somewhat disquieting talent — Shelley, Keats, 
 and Leigh Hunt — all of whom were supposed 
 to be, although characters of a very reprehensible 
 and even alarming class, yet distinctly respectful 
 in their attitude towards Mr. Wordsworth. It 
 seemed safe to publish Peter Bell. 
 
 Accordingly, the thin octavo described at the 
 head of this chapter duly appeared in April 18 19. 
 It W'fls so tiny that it had to be eked out with 
 the Sonnets written to W. Westall's Views, and 
 it was adorned by an engraving of Bromley's, 
 after a drawing specially made by Sir George 
 Beaumont to illustrate the poem. A letter to 
 Beaumont, unfortunately without a date, in wliich
 
 26o Gossip in a Library 
 
 this frontispiece is discussed, seems to suggest 
 that the engraving was a gift from the artist 
 to the poet ; Wordsworth, " in sorrow for the 
 sickly taste of the public in verse," opining that he 
 cannot afford the expense of such a frontispiece 
 as Sir George Beaumont suggests. In accord- 
 ance with these fears, no doubt, an edition of 
 only 500 was published ; but it achieved a 
 success which Wordsworth had neither antici- 
 pated or desired. There was a general guffaw 
 of laughter, and all the copies were immediately 
 sold ; within a month a ribald public received 
 a third edition, only to discover, with disappoint- 
 ment, that the funniest lines were omitted. 
 
 No one admired Peter Bell. The inner circle 
 was silent. Barron Field wrote on the title-page 
 of his copy, which now belongs to Mr. J. Dykes 
 Campbell, " And his carcass was cast in the 
 wa3', and the Ass stood by it." Sir Walter 
 Scott openly lamented that Wordsworth should 
 exhibit himself " crawling on all fours, when 
 God has given him so noble a countenance 
 to lift to heaven." Byron mocked aloud, and, 
 worse than all, the young men from whom
 
 Peter Bell and his Tormentors 261 
 
 so much had been expected, ks jeimes fe'roces, 
 leaped on the poor uncomplaining Ass like 
 so many hunting-leopards. The air was 
 darkened by hurtling parodies, the arrangement 
 of which is still a standing crux to the biblio- 
 graphers. 
 
 It was Keats's friend, John Hamilton Reynolds, 
 who opened the attack. His parody {Peter Bell : 
 a Lyrical Ballad. London, Taylor and Hessey, 
 1 8 19) was positively in the field before the 
 original. It was said, at the time, that Words- 
 worth, feverishly awaiting a specimen copy of 
 his own Peter Bell from town, seized a packet 
 which the mail brought him, only to find that 
 it was the spurious poem which had anticipated 
 Simon Pure. The Times protested that the two 
 poems must be from the same pen. Reynolds had 
 probably glanced at proofs of the genuine poem ; 
 his preface is a close imitation of Wordsworth's 
 introduction, and the stanzaic form in which the 
 two pieces are written is identical. On the other 
 hand, the main parody is made up of allusions 
 to previous poems by Wordsworth, and shows 
 no acquaintance with the story of Pcler Bell.
 
 262 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Reynolds's whole pamphlet — preface, text, and 
 notes — is excessively clever, and touches up the 
 bard at a score of tender points. It catches the 
 sententious tone of Wordsworth deliciously, and 
 it closes with this charming stanza : 
 
 He quits that moonlight yard of skulls^ 
 
 Jl7id still he feels right glad, and smiles 
 
 With moral joy at that old tomb ; 
 
 'Peter's cheek recalls its bloom, 
 
 t4nd as he creepeth by the tiles, 
 
 He mutters ever — " W. W, 
 
 S^ver ?nore will trouble you, trouble you^'' 
 
 Peter Bell the Second, as it is convenient, though 
 not strictly accurate, to call Reynolds's "ante- 
 natal Peter," was more popular than the original. 
 By May a third edition had been called for, 
 and this contained fresh stanzas and additional 
 notes. 
 
 Another parody, which ridiculed the affection 
 for donkeys displayed both by Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge^ wis called The Dead Asses : A Lyrical 
 Ballad; and an elaborate production, the author 
 of which I have not been able to discover, was 
 published later on in the year, Benjamin the
 
 Peter Bell and his Tormentors 263 
 
 Waggoner (Baldwin, Craddock and Joy, 18 19), 
 which, although the title suggests The Waggoner 
 of Wordsworth, is entirely taken up with making- 
 fun of Peter Bell. This parody — and it is cer- 
 tainly neither pointless nor unskilful — chiefly 
 deals with the poet's fantastic prologue. Then, 
 no less a person than Slielley, writing to Leigh 
 Hunt from Florence in November of the same 
 year, enclosed a Peter Bell the Third which he 
 desired should be printed, yet so as to completely 
 conceal the name of the author. Perhaps Hunt 
 thought it indiscreet to publish this not very 
 amusing skit, and it did not see the light till long 
 after Shelley's death. Finally, as though the 
 very spirit of parody danced in the company of 
 this strange poem, Wordsworth himself chronicli-d 
 its ill-fate in a sonnet imitated from Milton's 
 defence of " Tetrachordon," singing how, on the 
 appearance of Peter Bell, 
 
 a harpy brood 
 On Bard and Hero clamourous ly fell. 
 
 Of the poem which enjoyed so singular a fate, 
 Lord Houghton has quietly remarked that it
 
 264 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 could not have been written by a man with a 
 strong sense of humour. This is true of every 
 part of it, of the stiff and self-sufficient preface, 
 and of the grotesque prologue, both of which in 
 all probability belong to 18 19, no less than of 
 the story itself, in its three cantos or parts, 
 which bear the stamp of Alfoxden and 1798. 
 The tale is not less improbable than uninterest- 
 ing. In the first part, a very wicked potter or 
 itinerant seller of pots, Peter Bell, being lost in 
 the woodland, comes to the borders of a river, 
 and thinks to steal an ass which he finds pen- 
 sively hanging its head over the water ; Peter 
 Bell presently discovers that the dead body of 
 the master of the ass is floating in the river just 
 below. (The poet, as he has nawely recorded, 
 read this incident in a newspaper.) In the 
 second part Peter drags the dead man to land, 
 and starts on the ass's back to find the survivors. 
 In the third part a vague spiritual chastisement 
 falls on Peter Bell for his previous wickedness. 
 Plot there is no more than this, and if proof 
 were wanted of the inherent innocence of Words- 
 worth's mind, it is afforded by the artless
 
 Peter Bell and his Tormentors 265 
 
 struggles which he makes to paint a very wicked 
 man. Peter B-^ll has had twelve wives, he is 
 indifferent to primroses upon a river's bnm, and 
 be beats asses when they refuse to stir. This is 
 really all the evidence brought against one who 
 is described, vaguely, as combining all vices that 
 '* the cruel city breeds." 
 
 That which close students of the genius of 
 Wordsworth will always turn to seek in Peter 
 Bell is the sincere sentiment of nature and the 
 studied simplicity of language which inspire its 
 best stanzas. The narrative is clumsy in the 
 extreme, and the attempts at wit and sarcasm 
 ludicrous. Yet Peter Bell contains exquisite 
 things. The Piimrose stanza is known to every 
 one ; this is not so familiar : — 
 
 T/:e dragon's whig^ the magic ring., 
 I shall not covet for my dower y 
 If I along that lozvly way 
 With sympathetic heart may stray 
 cAnd with a soul of power. 
 
 Nor this, with its characteristic simplicity, its 
 descriptive accent of 1798 :—
 
 266 Gossip in a Library 
 
 / see a blooming Wood-Lo-j there, 
 Jlnd, if I bud the pozuer to say 
 How sorrozuful the wanderer- is, 
 Your heart would be as sad as his 
 Till you had kiss'd his tears away / 
 
 Holding a hawthorn branch in hand, 
 J II bright with berries ripe and red ; 
 Into the cavern's fnouth he peeps — 
 Thence back into the tnoonlight creeps j 
 What seeks the bo'^ ? — the silent dead ! 
 
 It is when he wishes to describe how Peter Bell 
 became aware of the dead body floating under 
 the nose of the patient ass that Wordsworth loses 
 himself in uncouth similes, Peter thinks it is the 
 moon, then the reflection of a cloud, then a gal- 
 lows, a coffin, a shroud, a stone idol, a ring of 
 fairies, a fiend. Last of all the poet makes the 
 Potter, who is gazing at the corpse, exclaim : — 
 
 Is it a party in a parlour ? 
 
 Crammd just as they on earth were cra'inm'd — 
 
 Some sipping punch, some sipping tea, 
 
 'But, as you by their faces see, 
 
 Jll silent and all damnd /
 
 Peter Bell and his Tormentors 267 
 
 So deplorable is the waggishness of a person, 
 however gifted, who has no sense of humour! 
 This simile was too much for the gravity even of 
 intimate friends like Southey and Lamb, and 
 after the second edition it disappeared.
 
 THE FANCY
 
 The Fancy 
 
 Thi Fancy t eA Selection from the Toetkal Remains of the late Peter 
 Corcoran^ of Qrafs Inn, student at latv. With a brief i^Icmosr of 
 his Ufe. London : printed for Taylor &f Hessey, Fleet Street, 
 1820. 
 
 The themes of tlie poets run in a very narrow 
 channel. Since the old heroic times when the 
 Homers and the Gunnlaugs sang of battle with 
 the sleet of lances hurtling around them, a great 
 calm has settled down upon Parnassus. Genera- 
 tion after generation pipes the same tune of love 
 and Nature, of the liberal arts and the illiberal 
 philosophies; the same imagery, the same metres, 
 meander within the same polite margins of con- 
 ventional subject. Ever and anon some one 
 attempts to break out of the groove. In the 
 eighteenth century they made a valiant effort to 
 sing of The Art of Preserving Health, and of The
 
 272 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Fleece and of The Sugar-Cane, but the innovators 
 lie stranded, like cumbrous whales, on the shore 
 of the ocean of Poesy. Flaubert's friend, Louis 
 Bouilhet, made a manful attempt to tune the 
 stubborn lyre to music of the birthday of the 
 world, to battles of the ichthyosaurus and the 
 plesiosaurus, to loves of the mammoth and the 
 mastodon. But the public would have none of 
 it, though ensphered in faultless verse, and the 
 poets fled back to their flames and darts, and 
 to the primrose at the river's brim. There is, 
 however, something pathetic, and something that 
 pleasantly reminds us of the elasticity of the 
 human intellect in these failures ; and the book 
 before us is an amusing example of such eccentric 
 efforts to enlarge the sphere of the poetic 
 activity. 
 
 This little volume is called The Fancy, and 
 it does not appear to me certain that the 
 virtuous American conscience know wlmt that 
 means. If the young ladies from Vv'^ells or 
 Wellesley inquire ingenuously, " Tell us where 
 is Fancy bred ? " we should have to reply, 
 with a jingle. In the fists, not in the head.
 
 The Fancy 273 
 
 The poet himself, in a fit of unusual candour, 
 
 says : 
 
 Fa?!cys a ter?n for every blackguardism, 
 
 though this is much too severe. But rats, and they 
 who catch them, badgers, and they who bait them, 
 cocks, and they who fight them, and, above all, men 
 with fists, who professionally box with them, come 
 under the category of the Fancy. This, then, is 
 the theme which the poet before us, living under 
 the genial sway of the First Gentleman of Europe, 
 undertook to place beneath the special patronage 
 of Apollo. The attractions, however, of The 
 Learned Ring, set all other pleasures in the 
 shade, and the name, Peter Corcoran, which is 
 a pseudonym, is, I suppose, chosen merely 
 because the initials are those of the then famous 
 Pugilistic Club. The poet is, in short, the 
 laureate of the P. C, and his book stands in the 
 same relation to Boxiana that Campbell's lyrics 
 do to Nelson's despatches. To understand the 
 poet's position, we ought to be dressed as he 
 was ; we ought 
 
 to wear a rough drab coat 
 With large pearl buttons all afioat 
 
 S
 
 274 Gossip in a Library 
 
 Upon the waves of plush ; to tie 
 tA kerchief of the king-cup dye 
 (WInte-spotted with a small bird's eye) 
 tAround the neck, — and from the nape 
 Let fall an easy, fan-like cape, 
 
 and, in fact, to belong to that incredible com- 
 pany of Tom and Jerry over whom Thackeray 
 let fall so delightfully the elegiac tear. 
 
 Anthologies are not edited in a truly catholic 
 spirit, or they would contain this very remarkable 
 sonnet : 
 
 ON THE NONPAREIL. 
 
 •* D^ne but himself can be his parallel.'''' 
 
 With marble-coloured shoulders, — and keen eyes, 
 ^Protected by a forehead broad and white, — 
 tAnd hair cut close lest it impede the sight, 
 
 eAnd clenched hands, firm, and of punishing size, — 
 
 Steadily held, or motion' d wary-wise 
 
 To hit or stop, — and kerchief too drawn tight 
 O'er the unyielding loins, to keep from flight 
 
 The inconstajit wind, that all too often flies, — 
 
 The Nonpareil stands ! Fame, whose bright eyes 
 run o'er 
 With joy to see a Chicken of her own, 
 T>ips her rich pen in claret, and writes down
 
 The Fancy 275 
 
 Ufider the letter R, first on the score, 
 
 " %andall, — Jolni, — Irish Taretits, — age not 
 known, — 
 Good with both hands, and only ten stone four I " 
 
 Be not too hard on this piece of barbarism, 
 virtuous reader ! Virtue is well revenged by 
 the inevitable question : " Who was John 
 Randall?" In 1820 it was said : " Of all the 
 great men in this age, in poetry, philosophy or 
 pugilism, there is no one of such transcendent 
 talent as Randall, no one who combines the 
 finest natural powers with the most elegant and 
 finished acquired ones." Now, if his memory 
 be revived for a moment, this master of science, 
 who doubled up an opponent as if he were pluck- 
 ing a flower, and whose presence turned Moulsey 
 Hurst into an Olympia, is in danger of being con- 
 founded with the last couple of drunken Irish- 
 women who have torn out each other's hair in 
 handfuls in some Whitechapel courtyard. The 
 mighty have fallen, the stakes and ring are gone 
 forever, and Virtue is avenged. The days of 
 George IV. are so long, long gone past that a
 
 276 Gossip in a Library 
 
 paradoxical creature may be forgiven for a sigh 
 over the ashes of the glory of John Randall. 
 
 It is strange how much genuine poetry lingers 
 in this odd collection of verses in praise of prize- 
 fighting. There are lines and phrases that recall 
 Keats himself, though truly the tone of the book 
 is robust enough to satisfy the most impassioned 
 of Tory editors. As it happens, it was written 
 by Keats's dearest friend, by John Hamilton 
 Reynolds, whom the great poet mentions so 
 affectionately in the latest of all his letters. 
 Reynolds has been treated with scant con- 
 sideration by the critics. His verses, I protest, 
 are no whit less graceful or sparkling than those 
 of his more eminent companions, Leigh Hunt 
 and Barry Cornwall. His Garden of Florence is 
 worthy of the friend of Keats. We have seen 
 how his Peter Bell, which was Peter Bell the First, 
 took the Avind out of Shelley's satiric sails and 
 fluttered the dove-cotes of the Lakeists. He was 
 as smart as he could be, too clever to live, in 
 fact, too light a weight for a grave age. In 
 The Fancv, which Keats seems to refer to in a 
 letter dated January 13th, 1820, Reynolds appears
 
 The Fancy 277 
 
 to have been inspired by Tom Moore's Tom Crib, 
 but if so, he vastly improves on that rather 
 vulgar original. He takes as his motto, with 
 adroit impertinence, some lines of Wordsworth, 
 and persuades us 
 
 nor need we blame the licensed jo^s, 
 Though false to Nature s quiet equipoise : 
 Frank are the sports, the stains are fugitive. 
 
 We can fancy the countenance of the Cumbrian 
 sage at seeing his words thus nimbly adapted to 
 be an apology for prize-fighting. 
 
 The poems are feigned to be the remains of 
 one Peter Corcoran, student at law. A simple 
 and pathetic memoir — v/hich deserved to be as 
 successful as that most felicitous of all such 
 hoaxes, the life of the supposed Italian poet, 
 Lorenzo Stecchetti — introduces us to the un- 
 fortunate young Irishman, who was innocently 
 engaged to a charming lady, when, on a certain 
 August afternoon, he strayed by chance into the 
 Fives Court, witnessed a " sparring-exhibition " 
 by two celebrated pugilists, and was thencetorth 
 a lost character. From that moment nothing
 
 2^3 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 interested him except a favourite hit or a scientific 
 parry, and his only topic of conversation became 
 the noble art of self-defence. To his disgusted 
 lady-love he took to writing eulogies of the 
 Chicken and the Nonpareil. On one occasion he 
 appeared before her with two black eyes, for he 
 could not resist the temptation of taking part in 
 the boxing, and "it is known that he has parried 
 the difficult and ravaging hand of Randall him.- 
 self." The attachment of the young lady had 
 long been declining, and she took this oppor- 
 tunity of forbidding him her presence for the 
 future. He felt this abandonment bitterly, but 
 could not surrender the all-absorbing passion 
 which was destroying him. He fell into a decline, 
 and at last died " without a struggle, just after 
 writing a sonnet to IVcsf-Coiaifry Dick" 
 
 The poems so ingeniously introduced, consist 
 of a kind of sporting opera called Ki)ig Tims the 
 First, which is the tragedy of an emigrant 
 butcher ; an epic fragment in ottava rima, called 
 The Fields of Tothill, in which the author rambles 
 on in the Byronic manner, and ceases, fatigued 
 with his task, before he has begun to get his
 
 The Fancy 279 
 
 story under weigh ; and miscellaneous pieces. 
 Some of these latter are simply lyrical exercises, 
 and must have been written in Peter Corcoran's 
 earlier days. The most characteristic and the 
 best deal, however, with the science of fisticuffs. 
 Here are the lines sent by the poet to his 
 mistress on the painful occasion which we have 
 described above, " after a casual turn up " : — 
 
 Forgive me, — and never, oh, never again, 
 ril cultivate light blue or brown inebriety v* 
 
 Til give up all chance of a fracture or sprain, 
 
 tAnd part, worst of all, with Pierce Egans\ society. 
 
 Forgive me, — and mufflers Fll carefully pull 
 
 O'er my knuckles hereafter, to make them well bred ; 
 
 To mollify digs in the kidneys with wool, 
 
 And temper with leather a punch of the head. 
 
 Jtnd, Kate I — if youUl fib frotn your forehead that frown^ 
 And spar with a lighter and prettier tone ; — 
 
 Fll look, — if the swelling should ever go dozun, 
 
 And these eyes look again, — upon you, love, alone ! 
 
 It must be confessed that a less " fancy" vocabulary 
 
 * "Heavy brown with a dash of blue in it" was the fancy phiase 
 for stout mixed with gin. 
 t The author of Buxiana.
 
 280 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 would here have shown a juster sense of Peter's 
 position. Sometimes there is no burlesque inten- 
 tion apparent, but, in their curious way, the verses 
 seem to express a genuine enthusiasm. It is 
 neither to be expected nor to be feared that an}^ 
 one nowadays will seriously attempt to resusci- 
 tate the most barbarous of pastimes, and there- 
 fore, without conscientious scruples, we may 
 venture to admit that these are very fine and 
 very thrilling verses in their own unexampled 
 class : 
 
 Oh, it is life ! to see a proud 
 
 tAnd dauntless man step, full of hopes ^ 
 
 Up to the !P. C. stakes and ropes, 
 
 Throzo in his hat, and with a spring 
 
 (jet gallantly within the ring ; 
 
 Eye the zvide crowd, and walJ(_ awhile 
 
 Taking all cheerings with a smile ; 
 
 To see him strip, — his zvell-trained form^. 
 
 White, glowing, muscular, and warm, 
 
 iAll beautiful in conscious power, 
 
 'Relaxed and quiet, till the hour ; 
 
 His glossy and transparent frame. 
 
 In radiant plight to strive for fame ! 
 
 To loo\ upon the clean-shafd limb 
 
 In sil\ andfannel clothed trim ;—
 
 The Fancy 281 
 
 While round the waist the kerchief tied 
 flakes the fiesh glow in richer pride. 
 ' Tis more than life, to watch him hold 
 His hand forth, tremulous yet bold^ 
 Over his second's, and to clasp 
 His rival's in a quiet grasp ; 
 To watch the noble attitude 
 He takes, — the crowd in breathless mood,— 
 Jtnd then to see, with adamant start. 
 The muscles set, — a?!d the great heart 
 Hurl a courageous, splendid light 
 Into the eye, — and then — the FlQWt, 
 
 This is like a lithograph out of one of Pierce 
 Egan's books, only much more spirited and pic- 
 turesque, and displaying a far higher and more 
 Hellenic sense of the beauty of athletics. Rey- 
 nolds' little volume, however, enjoyed no success. 
 The genuine amateurs of the prize-ring did not 
 appreciate being celebrated in good verses, and 
 The Fancy has come to be one of the rarest of 
 literary curiosities.
 
 ULTRA-CREPIDARIUS
 
 Ultra-crepldarius 
 
 Ultra-crepidarius ; a Satire on fFi/liam Qifford. 'By Leigh Hunt 
 London, 1823 ; printed for John Hunt, 22, Old 'Bond Street, and 
 38, Tawstock Street, Cb-vent Qarden, 
 
 ;. F the collector of first editions requires an 
 instance from which to justify the faith which is 
 in him against those who cry out that bibliography 
 is naught, Leigh Hunt is a good example to his 
 hand. This active and often admirable writer, 
 during a busy professional life, issued a long 
 series of works in prose and verse which are of 
 every variety of commonness and scarcity, but 
 which have never been, and probably never will 
 be, reprinted as a whole. Yet not to possess 
 the works of Leigh Hunt is to be ill-equipped for 
 the minute study of literary history at the begin- 
 ning of the century. The original i8i6 edition 
 of Rimini, for instance, is of a desperate rarity,
 
 286 Gossip in a Library 
 
 yet not to be able to refer to it in the grotesque- 
 ness of this its earliest form is to miss a most curi- 
 ous proof of the crude taste of the young school out 
 of which Shelley and Keats were to arise. The 
 scarcest of all Leigh Hunt's poetical pamphlets, 
 but by no means the least interesting, is that 
 whose title stands at the head of this chapter. Of 
 Ultra-crepidarius, which was " printed for John 
 Hunt" in 1823, it is believed that not half a 
 dozen copies are in existence, and it has never 
 been reprinted. It is a rarity, then, to which 
 the most austere despisers of first editions may 
 allow a special interest. 
 
 From internal evidence we find that Ultra- 
 crepidarius ; a Satire on William Gifford, was sent 
 to press in the summer of 1823, from Maiano, 
 soon after the break-up of Hunt's household in 
 Genoa, and Byron's departure for Greece. The 
 poem is the " stick " which had been recently 
 mentioned in the third number of the Liberal : — 
 
 Have I, these Jive years, spared the dog a sticky 
 Cut for his special use, and reasonably thick ? 
 
 It had been written in 18 18, in consequence of
 
 Ultra-crepidarius 287 
 
 the famous review in the Quarterly of Keats's 
 Endymion, a fact which the biographers of Keats 
 do not seem to have observed. Why did Hunt not 
 immediately print it ? Perhaps because to have 
 done so would have been worse than useless in 
 the then condition of public taste and temper. 
 What led Hunt to break through his intention of 
 suppressing the poem it might be difficult to dis- 
 cover. At all events, in the summer of 1823 he 
 suddenly sent it home for publication ; whether 
 it was actually published is doubtful, it was pro- 
 bably only circulated in private to a handful of 
 sympathetic Tory-hating friends. 
 
 Ultra-crepidarius is written in the same ana- 
 paestic measure as The Feast of the Poets, but is 
 somewhat longer. As a satire on William Gififord 
 it possessed the disadvantage of coming too late 
 in the day to be of any service to anybody. At 
 the close of 1823 Gifford, in failing health, was 
 resigning the editorial chair of the Quarterly^ which 
 he had made so formidable, and was retiring into 
 private life, to die in 1826. The poem probably 
 explains, however, what has always seemed a 
 little difficult to comprehend, the extreme personal
 
 288 Gossip in a Library 
 
 bitterness with which Gifford, at the close of his 
 career, regarded Hunt, since the slayer of the 
 Delia Cruscans was not the man to tolerate being 
 treated as though he were a Delia Cruscan himself. 
 However narrow the circulation oiUltra-crepidarius 
 may have been, care was no doubt taken that the 
 editor of the Quarterly Review should receive ©ne 
 copy at his private address, and Leigh Hunt 
 returned from Italy in time for that odd incident 
 to take place at the Roxburgh sale, when Barron 
 Field called his attention to the fact that " a little 
 man, with a warped frame, and a countenance 
 between the querulous and the angry, was 
 gazing at me with all his might." Hunt tells 
 this story in the Autobiography , from which, hov/- 
 ever, he omits all allusion to his satire. 
 
 The latter opens with the statement that — 
 
 ' lis now about ffty or sixty years since 
 
 (The date of a charming old boy of a Prince) — 
 
 Mercury was in a state of rare fidget from the 
 discovery that he had lost one of his precious 
 winged shoes, and had in consequence dawdled 
 away a whole week in company with Venus, not
 
 Ultra-crepidarius 289 
 
 having dreamed that it was that crafty goddess 
 herself, who, wishing for a pair Hke them, had 
 sent one of Mercury's shoes down to Ashburton 
 for a pattern. Venus confesses her peccadillo, 
 and offers to descend to the Devonshire borough 
 with her lover, and see what can have become of 
 the ethereal shoe. As they reach the ground, 
 they meet with an ill-favoured boot of leather, 
 which acknowledges that it has ill-treated the deli- 
 cate slipper of Mercury. This boot, of course, is 
 Gifford, who had been a shoemaker's apprentice in 
 Ashburton. Mercury curses this unsightly object, 
 and part of his malediction may here be quoted : 
 
 I hear some one say " S^urrain take him, the ape ! " 
 ^nd so (Murrain shall, in a bookseller's shape ; 
 t/fn evil-eyed elf, in a down-looking flurry. 
 Who'd fain be a coxcomb, and calls himself Murray. 
 Jldorn thou his door, like the sign of the Shoe, 
 For court-understrappers to congregate to ; 
 For Southey to come, in his dearth of invention, 
 t^nd eat his own words for mock-praise and a pension ; 
 For Croker to lurl^ with his spider-like limb in, 
 t/fnd stoc\ his lean bag with waylaying the women ; 
 tAnd fove only knozvs for zvhat creatures beside 
 To shelter their envy and dust-liking pride, 
 
 T
 
 290 Gossip in a Library 
 
 ^ndfeed on corruption, like bats, who at flights, 
 
 In the darJ^ take their shuffles, which they call their flights ; 
 
 'Be these the court-critics and vamp a Review. 
 
 tAnd by a poor figure, and therefore a true, 
 
 For it suits with thy nature, both shoe-like and slaughterly 
 
 'Be its hue leathern, and title the Quarterly, 
 
 ^luch misconduct ; and see that the others 
 
 (Misdeem, and misconstrue, like miscreant brothers ; 
 
 (Misquote, and misplace, and mislead, and misstate, 
 
 ([lisapply, fnisinterpret, misreckon, misdate, 
 
 (Misinform, misconjecture, misargue ; in short, 
 
 (Miss all that is good, that ye miss not the Court. 
 
 t^nd finally, thou, my old soul of the tritical, 
 0{jting, translating, high slavish, hot critical, 
 ^/nrterly-scutcheon' d, great heir to each dunce, 
 'Be Tibbald, Cook, Arnall, and Dennis at once. 
 
 At the end, Mercury dooms the ugly boot to take 
 the semblance of a m.an, and the satire closes 
 with its painful metamorphosis into Gifford. The 
 poem is not without cleverness, but it is chief!}' 
 remarkable for a savage tone which is not, we 
 think, repeated elsewhere throughout the writings 
 of Hunt. The allusions to Gifford's relations, 
 nearly half a century earlier, to that Earl Grosve-
 
 Ultra-crepidarius 291 
 
 nor who first rescued him from poverty, the 
 well-deserved scorn of his intolerable sneers at 
 Perdita Robinson's crutches — 
 
 Hate Woman ^ thou block in the path of fair feet ; 
 If Fate want a hand to distress them, thine be it ; 
 When the (jreat, and their flourishing vices, are mentioned 
 Say people " impute " Vw, and show thou art pension' d ; 
 'But meet with a "Prince's old mistress discarded, 
 aind then let the world see how vice is rewarded — 
 
 the indications of the satirist's acquaintance with 
 the private life of his victim, all these must have 
 stung the editor of the Quarterly to the quick, and 
 are very little in Hunt's usual manner, though he 
 had examples for them in Peter Pindar and others. 
 There is a very early allusion to " Mr. Keats and 
 Mr. Shelley," where, " calm, up above thee, they 
 soar and they shine" This was written imme- 
 diately after the review of Endymion in the 
 Quarterly, At the close is printed an extremely 
 vigorous onslaught of Hazlitt's upon GifTord, 
 which is better known than the poem which it 
 illustrates. In itself, in its preface, and in its 
 notes alike this very rare pamphlet presents us 
 with a genuine curiosity of literature.
 
 THE DUKE OF RUTLAND'S POEMS
 
 The Duke of Rutland's Poems 
 
 England's Trust and Other Poems. 'By Lord John cM'attners. 
 London : printed for J. Q. & J. %i-vliigton, St. Taul's Qhurch 
 Tard, and Watfloo Place, Pall Mall. 1841. 
 
 JVlY newspaper informed me this morning that 
 Lord John Manners took his seat last night, in 
 the Upper House, as the Duke of Rutland. 
 These little romantic surprises are denied to 
 Americans, who do not find that old friends get 
 new names, which are very old names, in the 
 course of a night. My Transatlantic readers will 
 never have to grow accustomed to speak of Mr. 
 Lowell as the Earl of Mount Auburn, and I firmly 
 believe that Mr. Howells would consider it a chas- 
 tisement to be hopelessly ennobled. But my 
 thoughts went wandering back at my breakfast 
 to-day to those far-away times, the fresh memory 
 of which was still reverberating about my child-
 
 296 Gossip in a Library 
 
 hood, when the last new Duke was an ardent 
 and ingenuous young patriot, who never dreamed 
 of being a peer, and who hoped to refashion his 
 country to the harp of Amphion. So I turned, 
 with assuredly no feehng of disrespect, to that 
 corner of my hbrary where the peche's de jeunesse 
 stand — the little books of early verses which the 
 respectable authors of the same would destroy if 
 they could — and I took down England's Trust. 
 
 Fifty years ago a group of young men, all of 
 them fresh from Oxford and Cambridge, most of 
 them more or less born in the purple of good 
 families, banded themselves together to create a 
 sort of aristocratic democracy. They called 
 themselves " Young England," and the chronicle 
 of them — is it not patent to all men in the pages 
 of Disraeli's Coningsby? In the hero of that 
 novel people saw a portrait of the leader of the 
 group, the Hon. George Percy Sydney Smythe, 
 to whom also the poems now before us, parvus 
 non parvcB pigniis amicitics, were dedicated in 
 a warm inscription. The Sidonia of the story 
 was doubtless only echoing what Smythe had 
 laid down as a dogma when he said : " Man is
 
 The Duke of Rutland's Poems 297 
 
 only truly great when he acts from the passions, 
 never irresistible but when he appeals to the 
 imagination." It was the theory of Young Eng- 
 land that the historic memory must be awakened 
 in the lower classes ; that utilitarianism was 
 sapping the very vitals of society, and that 
 ballads and May-poles and quaint festivities and 
 processions of a loyal peasantry were the proper 
 things for politicians to encourage. It was all 
 very young, and of course it came to nothing. 
 But I do not know that the Primrose League is 
 any improvement upon it, and I fancy that when 
 the Duke of Rutland looks back across the half- 
 century he sees something to smile at, but 
 nothing to blush for. 
 
 One of the notions that Young England had 
 got hold of was that famous saying of Fletcher 
 of Saltoun's friend about making the ballads of a 
 people. So they set themselves verse-making, 
 and a quaint little collection of books it was that 
 they produced, all smelling alike at this time of 
 day, with a faint, faded perfume of the hay-stack, 
 countrified and wild. Mr. Smythe, who pre- 
 sently became Lord Strangford and one of the
 
 298 Gossip in a Library 
 
 wittiest of Morning Chroniclers, only to die 
 bitterly lamented at the age of forty, wrote 
 Historic Fancies. Mr. Faber, then a fellow of 
 University College, Oxford, and afterwards a 
 leading spirit among English Catholics, published 
 The Cherwell Water-Lily , in 1840, and on the 
 heels of this discreet volume came the poems of 
 Lord John Manners, 
 
 When England's Trust appeared, its author 
 had just left Cambridge. Almost immediately 
 afterward, it was decided that Young England 
 ought to be represented in Parliament, where its 
 Utopian chivalries, it was believed, needed only 
 to be heard to prevail. Accordingly Lord John 
 Manners presented himself, in June 1841, as one 
 of the Conservative candidates for the borough 
 of Newark. He was elected, and so was the 
 other Tory candidate, a man already distin- 
 guished, and at present known to the entire 
 world as Mr. W. E. Gladstone. On the hust- 
 ings, Lord John Manners was a good deal 
 heckled, and in particular he was teased exces- 
 sively about a certain couplet in Englands Trust. 
 I am not going to repeat that couplet here, for
 
 The Duke of Rutland's Poems 299 
 
 after nearly half a century the Duke of Rutland 
 has a right to be forgiven that extraordinary 
 indiscretion. If any of my readers turn to the 
 volume for themselves, which, of course, I have 
 no power to prevent their doing, they will pro- 
 bably exclaim : " Was it the Duke of Rutland 
 who wrote that ?" for if frequency of quotation is 
 the hall-mark of popularity, his Grace must be 
 one of the most popular of our living poets. 
 
 There is something exceedingly pathetic in 
 this little volume. Its weakness as verse, for it 
 certainly is weak, has nothing ignoble about it, 
 and what is weak without being in the least base 
 has already a negative distinction. The author 
 hopes to be a Lovelace or a Montrose, equally 
 ready to do his monarch service with sword or 
 pen. The Duke of Rutland has not quite been 
 a Montrose, but he has been something less 
 brilliant and much more useful, a faithful servant 
 of his country, through an upright and laborious 
 life. The young poet of 1841, thrilled by the 
 Tractarian enthusiasm of the moment, looked for 
 a return of the high festivals of the Church, for a 
 victory of faith over all its Paynim foes. " The
 
 300 Gossip in a Library 
 
 worst evils," he writes, " from which we are now 
 suffering, have arisen from our ignorant contempt 
 or neglect of the rules of the Church." He was 
 full of Newman and Pusey, of the great Oxford 
 movement of 1837, of the wind of fervour blow- 
 ing through England from the common-room of 
 Oriel. Now all is changed past recognition, and 
 with, perhaps, the solitary exception of Cardinal 
 Newman, preserved in extreme old age, Hke 
 some precious exotic, in his Birmingham cloister, 
 the Duke of Rutland may look through the length 
 and breadth of England without recovering one 
 of those lost faces that fed the pure passion of 
 his youth. 
 
 The hand which brought the flame from Oriel 
 to the Cambridge scholar, was tliat of the Rev. 
 Frederick William Faber, and a great number of 
 the poems in England's Trust are dedicated to him 
 openly or secretly. Here is a sonnet addressed 
 to Faber, which is very pleasant to read : — 
 
 ^ear Friend ! thou askest me to sing our loves ^ 
 ^nd sing them fain would I ; but I do fear 
 
 To mar so soft a theme ; a thetne that moves 
 ^y heart unto its core. O friend most dear l
 
 The Duke of Rutland's Poems 301 
 
 ^J\^c light request is thine ; albeit it proves 
 Thy gentleness and love, that do appear 
 When absent thus, and in soft looks when near. 
 
 Surely, if ever two fond hearts were twined 
 In a most holy, mystic knot, so now 
 
 tiire ours ; not common are the ties that bind 
 S\iy soul to thine ; a dear Apostle thou, 
 
 I a young Neophyte that -yearns to find 
 
 The sacred truth, and stamp upon his ( "ow 
 The Cross, dread sign of his baptisjnal vow / 
 
 The Apostle was only twelve months older 
 than the Neophyte, who was in his twenty-third 
 year, but he was a somewhat better as well as 
 stronger poet. The Cherwell Water-Lily is 
 rr.ther a rare book now, and I may perhaps be 
 allowed to give an example of Faber's style. It 
 is from one of many poems in which, with some- 
 thing borrowed too consciously from Wordsworth, 
 who was the very Apollo of Young England, 
 there is yet a rendering of the beauty and 
 mystery of Oxford, and of the delicate sylvan 
 scenery which surrounds it, which is wholly 
 original : 
 
 There is a well, a wilhw- shaded spot.. 
 Cool in the noon-tide gleam,
 
 302 Gossip in a Library 
 
 With rushes nodding in the little stream^ 
 t/fnd blue forget-me-not 
 
 Set in thick tufts along the bushy marge 
 
 With big bright eyes of gold ; 
 
 ^nd glorious water-plants, li\e fans, unfold 
 Their blossoms strange and large. 
 
 That wandering boy, young Hylas, did not find 
 
 Tieauties so rich and rare, 
 
 Where swallow-wort and pale-bright maiden'' s hair 
 ,J^nd dog-grass richly twined. 
 
 t/i sloping bank ran round it like a crown, 
 
 Whereon a purple cloud 
 
 Of dar\ zuild hyacinths, a fairy crowd. 
 Had settled softly down. 
 
 t^nd dreamy sounds of never-ending bells 
 
 From Oxford's holy towers 
 
 Came down the stream, and went among the 
 flowers, 
 t/ind died in little swells. 
 
 These two extracts give a fair notion of the 
 Tractarian poetry, with its purity, its idealism, 
 its love of Nature and its unreal conception of 
 life. Faber also wrote an England's Trust, be- 
 fore Lord John Manners published his ; and in
 
 The Duke of Rutland's Poems 303 
 
 this he rejoices in the passing away of all the 
 old sensual confidence, and in the coming of a 
 new age of humility and spirituality. Alas ! it 
 never came ! There was a roll in the wave of 
 thought, a few beautiful shells were thrown up 
 on the shore of literature, and then the little 
 eddy of Tractarianism was broken and spent, and 
 lost in the general progress of mankind. We 
 touch with reverend pity the volumes without 
 which we should scarcely know that Young 
 England had ever existed, and we refuse to 
 believe that all the enthusiasm and piety and 
 courage of which they are the mere ashes, have 
 wholly passed away. They have become spread 
 over a wide expanse of effort, and no one knows 
 who has been graciously affected by them. Who 
 shall say that some distant echo of the Cherwell 
 harp was not sounding in the heart of Gordon 
 when he went to his African martyrdom ? It is 
 her adventurers, whether of the pen or of the 
 sword, that have made England what she is. 
 But if every adventurer succeeded, where would 
 the adventure be ? 
 
 The Duke of Rutland soon repeated his first
 
 304 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 little heroic expedition into the land of verses. 
 He published a volume of English Ballads ; but 
 this has not the historical interest which makes 
 ^England's Trust a curiosity. He has written 
 about Church Rates, and the Colonies, and the 
 Importance of Literature to Men of Business, 
 but never again of his reveries in Neville's Court 
 nor of his determination to emulate the virtues of 
 King Charles the Martyr. No matter ! If all 
 our hereditary legislators were as high-minded 
 and single-hearted as the new Duke of Rutland, 
 the reform of the House of Lords would scarcely 
 be a burning question. 
 
 1888.
 
 lONiCA
 
 lonica 
 
 loNiCA. Smith, Elder & Qo-, 65 C°^nhill. 1858. 
 
 CjOOD poetry seems to be almost as inde- 
 structible as diamonds. You throw it out of 
 window into the roar of London, it disappears 
 in a deep brown slush, the omnibus and the 
 growler pass over it, and by and by it turns up 
 again somewhere uninjured, with all the pure fire 
 lambent in its facets. No doubt thoroughly 
 good specimens of prose do get lost, dragged 
 down the vortex of a change of fashion, and 
 never thrown back again to light. But the 
 quantity of excellent verse produced in any 
 generation is not merely limited, but keeps very 
 fairly within the same proportions. The verse- 
 market is never really glutted, and while popular 
 masses of what Mr. Browning calls " deciduous
 
 :> 
 
 o8 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 trash " survive their own generation, only to be 
 carted away, the little excellent, unnoticed book 
 gradually pushes its path up silently into fame. 
 
 These reflections are not inappropriate in deal- 
 ing with the small volume of Ii6 pages called 
 lom'ca, ushered into the world thirty-three years 
 ago, so silently that its publication did not cause 
 a single ripple on the sea of literature. Gradually 
 this book has become first a rarity and then a 
 famous possession, so that at the present moment 
 there is perhaps no volume of recent English verse 
 so diminutive which commands so high a price 
 among collectors. When the library of Mr. Henry 
 Bradshaw was dispersed in November 1886, book- 
 buyers thought that they had a chance of securing 
 this treasure at a reasonable price, for it was 
 known that the late Librarian of Cambridge 
 University, an old friend of the author, had no 
 fewer than three copies. But at the sale two of 
 these copies went for three pounds fifteen and 
 tnree pounds ten, respectively, and the third 
 was knocked down for a guinea, because it was 
 discovered to lack the title-page and the 
 index. I do not myself think it right to
 
 lonica 309 
 
 encourage the sale of imperfect books, and would 
 not have spent half a crown on the rarest of 
 volumes if I could not have the title-page. But 
 this is only an aside, and does not interfere with 
 the value of lonica. 
 
 The little book has no name on the title-page, 
 but it is known that the author is Mr. William 
 Johnson, formerly a master at Eton and a fellow 
 of King's College, Cambridge. It is understood 
 that this gentleman was born about 1823, and is 
 still alive ; but tliat on coming into property, as 
 I have heard, in the west of England, he took 
 the name of Cory. So that he is doubly con- 
 cealed as a poet, the anonymous-pseudonymous. 
 As Mr. William Cory he writes history, but there 
 is but slight trace there of the author of lonica. 
 In face of the extreme rarity of his early book, 
 I am told that friends have urged upon Mr. Cory 
 its republication, and that he has consented. 
 Probably he would have done well to refuse, for 
 the book is rather delicate and exquisite than for- 
 cible, and to reprint it is to draw public attention 
 to its inequality. Perhaps I speak with the narrow- 
 mindedness of the collector who possesses a
 
 3IO Gossip in a Library 
 
 treasure ; but I think the appreciators of lonica 
 will always be few in number, and it seems 
 good for those few to have some difficulties 
 thrown in the way of their delights. 
 
 Since lonica appeared great developments have 
 taken place in English verse. In 1858 there was 
 no Rossetti, no Swinburne ; we may say that, as 
 far as the general public was concerned, there 
 was no Matthew Arnold and no William Morris. 
 This fact has to be taken into consideration in 
 dealing with the tender humanism of Mr. John- 
 son's verses. They are less coruscating and 
 flamboyant than what we have since become 
 accustomed to. The tone is extremely pensive, 
 sensitive and melancholy. But where the author 
 is at his best, he is not only, as it seems to me, 
 very original, but singularly perfect, with the 
 perfection of a Greek carver of gems. The 
 book is addressed to and intended for scholars, 
 and the following piece, although really a trans- 
 lation, has no statement to that effect. Before 
 I quote it, perhaps I may remind the ladies that 
 the original is an epigram in the Greek Anthology, 
 •and that it was written by the great Alexandrian
 
 lonica 311 
 
 poet Callimachus on hearing the news that the 
 poet Heraclitus — not to be confounded with the 
 philosopher — was dead. 
 
 Tkey told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead ; 
 They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. 
 I wept, as I remembered, hozv often you and I 
 Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. 
 
 eAnd now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, 
 ,A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest. 
 Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake ; 
 For Death, he taketh all away, but these he cannot take. 
 
 No translation ever smelt less of the lamp, 
 and more of the violet than this. It is an 
 exquisite addition to a branch of English literature, 
 which is already very rich, the poetry of elegiacal 
 regret. I do not know where there is to be 
 found a sweeter or tenderer expression of a poet's 
 grief at the death of a poet-friend, grief mitigated 
 only by the knowledge that the dead man's songs, 
 his ** nightingales," are outliving him. It is the 
 requiem of friendship, the reward of one who, in 
 Keats's wonderful phrase, has left " great verse 
 unto a little clan," the last service for the dead 
 to v/hom it was enough to be " unheard, save of
 
 312 Gossip in a Library 
 
 the quiet primrose, and the span of heaven, and 
 few ears." To modern vulgarity, whose ideal of 
 Parnassus is a tap-room of howling politicians, 
 there is nothing so offensive, as there is nothing 
 so incredible, as the notion that a poet may hold 
 his own comrade something dearer than the 
 public. The author of lonica would desen^e well 
 of his country if he had done no more than draw 
 this piece of aromatic calamus-root from the 
 Greek waters. 
 
 Among the lyrics which are entirely original, 
 there are several not less exquisite than this 
 memory of Callimachus. The author is not very 
 safe on modern ground. I confess that I shudder 
 when I read — 
 
 " Oh^ loo\ at his jacket, I know him afar ; 
 How nice" cry the ladies, " looks yonder HiiuarP* 
 
 It needs a peculiar lightness of hand to give 
 grace to these colloquial numbers, and the author 
 of lonica is more at home in the dryad-haunted 
 forest with Comatas. In combining classic senti- 
 ment with purely English landscape he is wonder- 
 fully happy.
 
 lonica 313 
 
 There is not a jarring image or discordant 
 syllable to break the glassy surface of this pla'n- 
 tive Dirge :■ — 
 
 (N^/iiad, kid beneath the bank 
 
 'T>y the willozvy river-side, 
 Where Narcissus gently savh, 
 
 Where unmarried Echo died. 
 Unto thy serene repose 
 Waft the stricken Anteros. 
 
 Where the tranquil swan is homey 
 
 Imaged in a watery glass. 
 Where the sprays of fresh pin\ thorn 
 
 Stoop to catch the boats that pass, 
 Where the earliest orchis grows, 
 'Bury thou fair Anteros. 
 
 On a flickering zuave we gaze, 
 
 D^ot upon his answering eyes : 
 Flower and bird we scarce can praise, 
 
 Having lost his sweet replies : 
 Cold and mute the river flows 
 With our tears for Jlnteros. 
 
 We know well where this place of burial is to 
 be. Not in some glade of Attica or by Sicilian 
 streams, but where a homelier river gushes 
 through the swollen lock at Bray, or shaves the
 
 314 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 long pastoral meadows at Boveney, where 
 Thames begins to draw a longer breath for his 
 passage between Eton and Windsor, 
 
 The prevailing sentiment of these poems is a 
 wistful clinging to this present life, a Pagan op- 
 timism which finds no fault with human existence 
 save that it is so brief. It gains various expres- 
 sion in words that seem hot on a young man's lips, 
 and warm on the same lips even when no longer 
 young : 
 
 Til borrow life, and not grow old ; 
 
 And nightingales and trees 
 Shall keep me, though the veins be cold., 
 
 tAs young as Sophocles. 
 
 And again, in poignant notes : 
 
 Tou promise heavens free from strife, 
 Ture truth, and perfect change of will ; 
 
 'But sweet, sweet is this human life, 
 
 So sweet, I fain would breathe it still ; 
 
 Your chilly stars I can forego, 
 
 This warm, kind world is all I know. 
 
 This last quotation is from the poem called 
 MimnetDius in Church. In this odd title he 
 seems to refer to elegies of the Colophonian poet,
 
 lonica 315 
 
 who was famous in antiquity for the plaintive 
 stress which he laid on the necessity of extracting 
 from life all it had to offer, since there was 
 nothing beyond mortal love, which was the life 
 of life. The author of lonica seems to bring the 
 old Greek fatalist to modern England, and to 
 conduct him to church upon a Sunday morning. 
 But Mimnermus is impenitent. He confesses that 
 the preacher is right when he says that all earthly 
 pleasures are fugitive. He has always confessed 
 as much at home under the olive tree ; it was be- 
 cause they were fugitive that he clung to them : 
 
 e//// beauteous things by which we live 
 
 'By laws of time and space decay, 
 'But oh I the very reason why 
 I clasp them is because they die. 
 
 There is perhaps no modern book of verse in 
 which a certain melancholy phase of ancient 
 thought is better reproduced than in lonica, and 
 this gives its slight verses their lasting charm. 
 We have had numerous resuscitations of ancient 
 manners and landscape in modern poetry since 
 the days of Keats and Andre Chenicr. Many 
 of these have been so brilliantly successful that
 
 3i6 Gossip In a Library- 
 
 only pedantry would deny their value. But 
 in lonica something is given which the others 
 have not known how to give, the murmur of 
 antiquity, the sigh in the grass of meadows 
 dedicated to Persephone. It seems to help 
 us to comprehend the little rites and playful 
 superstitions of the Greeks ; to see why Myro 
 built a tomb for the grasshopper she loved and 
 lost ; why the shining hair of Lysidice, when 
 she was drowned, should be hung up wilh songs 
 of pity and reproach in the dreadful vestibule of 
 Aphrodite. The nois}^ blasphemers of the newest 
 Paris strike the reader as Christian fanatics turned 
 inside out ; for all their vehemence they can 
 never lose the experience of their religious birth. 
 The same thing is true of the would-be Pagans 
 of a milder sensuous type. The Cross prevailed at 
 their nativity, and has thrown its shadow over 
 their conscience. But in the midst of the throng 
 there walks this plaintive poet of the lonica, the 
 one genuine Pagan, absolutely untouched by the 
 traditions of the Christian past. I do not com- 
 mend the fact ; I merely note it as giving a strange 
 interest to these forlorn and unpopular pccms.
 
 lonica 317 
 
 Twenty years after the publication of lonica, 
 and when that little book had become famous 
 among the elect, the author printed at Cambridge 
 a second part, without a title-page, and without 
 punctuation, one of the most eccentric looking 
 pamphlets I ever saw. The enthusiastic amateur 
 will probably regard his collection incomplete 
 without lonica II., but he must be prepared for a 
 disappointment. There is a touch of the old skill 
 here and there, as in such stanzas as this : 
 
 With half a rnoon^ and clouds rose-pi n\, 
 
 The water-lilies just in bud, 
 With iris on the river-brink, 
 
 tA/id white weed-garlands on the mud, 
 tAnd roses thin and pale as dreams, 
 
 JInd happy cygnets born in May, 
 CN^o wonder if our country seems 
 
 ^Dressed out for Freedom's natal day. 
 
 Or these : 
 
 Teace lit upon a f uttering vein, 
 
 tAnd self-forgetting on the brain ; 
 
 On rifts by passion wrought again 
 
 Splashed from the sky of childhood rain^ 
 tAnd rid of afterthought were we 
 jInd from foreboding sweetly free.
 
 318 Gossip in a Library 
 
 S^w falls the apple, bleeds the vine^ 
 tA/id, moved by some autumnal sign^ 
 I who in spring was glad repine 
 e4nd ache without my anodyne ; 
 
 Oh ! things that were ! Oh I things that are I 
 
 Oh I setting of my double star ! 
 
 But these are rare, and the old unique lonica of 
 thirty years ago is not repeated.
 
 THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat. eAn Arabian Entertainment. By C/eorge 
 c^faedlth. Chapman and Hall. 1 856, 
 
 It is more than twenty years since I first heard 
 of The Shaving of Shagpat. I was newly come, 
 in all my callow ardour, into the covenant of 
 Art and Letters, and I was moving about, still 
 bewildered, in a new world. In this new world, 
 one afternoon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, standing in 
 front of his easel, remarked to all present whom 
 it should concern, that The Shaving of Shagpat 
 was a book which Shakespeare might have been 
 glad to write. I now understand that in the 
 warm Rossetti-language this did not mean that 
 there was anything specially reminiscent of the 
 Bard of Avon in this book, but simply that it 
 was a monstrous fine production, and worthy 
 
 X
 
 322 Gossip In a Library 
 
 of all attention. But at the time I expected, 
 rom such a title, something in the way of a 
 belated Midsummer Nighfs Dream or Love's 
 Labour Lost. I was fully persuaded that it must 
 be a comedy, and as the book even then was 
 rare, and as I was long pursuing the loan of 
 it, I got this dramatic notion upon my mind, 
 and to this day do still clumsily connect it with 
 the idea of Shakespeare. But in truth The 
 Shaving of Shagpat has no other analogy with 
 those plays, which Bacon would have written 
 if he had not been so plaguily occupied, than 
 that it is excellent in quality and of the finest 
 literary flavour. 
 
 The ordinary small library of varieties has 
 no room for three- volume novels, those signs- 
 manual of our British dulness and crafty dis- 
 dain for literature. One or two of these simu- 
 lacra, these sham-semblances of books, I pos- 
 sess, because honoured friends have given them 
 to me ; even so, I would value the gift more 
 in the decency of a single volume. The dear 
 little dumpy twelves of the last century, o 
 course, are welcome in a library. That was a
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 323 
 
 happy day, when by the discovery of a Ferdi- 
 nand Count Fathom, I completed my set of 
 Smollett in the original fifteeen volumes. But 
 after the first generation of novelists, the sham 
 system began to creep in. With Fanny Burney, 
 novels grow too bulky, and it is a question 
 whether even Scott or Jane Austen should be 
 possessed in the original form. Of the moderns, 
 only Thackeray is bibliographically desirable. 
 Hence even of Mr. George Meredith's fiction I 
 make no effort to possess first editions ; yet The 
 Shaving of Shagpat is an exception. I toiled 
 long to secure it, and, now that I hold it, may 
 its modest vermilion cover shine always like a 
 lamp upon my shelves ! It is not fiction to a 
 bibliophile ; it is worthy of all the honour done 
 to verse. 
 
 Within the last five or six years we have had 
 the great pleasure of seeing tardy justice done 
 at length to the genius of Mr. George Meredith. 
 I like to think that, after a long and noble strug- 
 gle against the inattention of the public, after 
 the pouring of high music for two generations 
 into ears whose owners seemed to have wilfully
 
 324 Gossip in a Library 
 
 sealed them with wax, so that only the most 
 staccato and least happy notes ever reached their 
 dulness, Mr. Meredith has, before the age of 
 sixty, reaped a little of his reward. I am told 
 that the movement in favour of him began in 
 America ; if so, more praise to American readers, 
 who had to teach us to appreciate De Quincey 
 and Praed before we knew the value of those 
 men. Yet is there much to do. Had Mr. George 
 Meredith been a Frenchman, what monographs 
 had ere this been called forth by his work ; in 
 Germany, or Italy, or Denmark even, such gifts 
 as his would long ago have found their classic 
 place above further discussion. But England is 
 a Gallio, and in defiance of Mr. Le Gallienne, 
 cares little for the things of literature. 
 
 If a final criticism of Mr. George Meredith ex- 
 isted, where in it would The Shaving of Shagpat 
 find Its place ? There is fear that in competition 
 with the series of analytical studies of modern 
 life that stretches from Tlie Ordeal of Richard 
 Feverel to One of our Conquerors, it might chance 
 to be pushed away with a few lines of praise. 
 Now, I would not seem so paradoxical as to say
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 325 
 
 that when an extravaganza is held up to me in 
 one hand, and a masterpiece of morality like 
 The Egoist in the other, I can doubt which is 
 the greater book ; but there are moods in which 
 I am jealous of the novels, and wish to be left 
 alone with my Arabian Entertainment. Delicious 
 in this harsh world of reality to fold a mist 
 around us, and out of it to evolve the yellow 
 domes and black cypresses, the silver fountains 
 and marble pillars, of the fabulous city of Shag- 
 pat. I do not know any later book than The 
 Shaving in which an Englishman has allowed his 
 fancy, untrammelled by any sort of moral or intel- 
 lectual subterfuge, to go a-roaming by the light 
 of the moon. We do this sort of thing no 
 longer. We are wholly given up to realism ; we 
 are harshly pressed upon on all sides by the 
 importunities of excess of knowledge. If we talk 
 of gryphons, the zoologists are upon us ; of Oolb 
 or Aklis, the geographers flourish their maps at 
 us in defiance. But the author of The Shaving of 
 Shagpat, in the bloom of his happy youthful genius, 
 defied all this pedantry. In a little address which 
 has been suppressed in later editions he said 
 (December 8, 1855) :
 
 326 Gossip in a Library 
 
 " It has seemed to me that the only way to 
 tell an Arabian Story was by imitating the style 
 and manner of the Oriental Story-tellers. But 
 such an attempt, whether successful or not, may 
 read like a translation : I therefore think it 
 better to prelude this Entertainment by an avowal 
 that it springs from no Eastern source, and is in 
 every respect an original Work." 
 
 If one reader of The Shaving of Shagpat were 
 to confess the truth he would say that to him at 
 least the other, the genuine Oriental tales, appear 
 the imitation, and not a very good imitation. 
 The true genius of the East breathes in Mr. 
 Meredith's pages, and the Arabian Nights, at all 
 events in the crude literality of Sir Richard 
 Burton, pale before them like a mirage. The 
 variety of scenes and images, the untiring evolu- 
 tion of plot, the kaleidoscopic shifting of har- 
 monious colours, all these seem of the very 
 essence of Arabia, and to coil directly from some 
 bottle of a genie. Ah ! what a bottle ! As we 
 whirl along in the vast and glowing bacchanal, 
 we cry, like Sganarelle :
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 327 
 
 ^'ils sont doux — 
 
 Tiouteille jolie — 
 
 ^uils sont doux 
 
 Vos petit s glou-glous ; 
 
 lAh ! Bouteille, ma mie ; 
 
 Tourquoi vous videx-vous? 
 
 Ah ! why indeed ? For TJie Shaving of Sliagpat 
 is one of those very rare modern books of 
 which it is certain that they are too short, and 
 even our excitement at the Mastery of the Event 
 is tamed by a sense that the show is closing, 
 and that Shibli Bagarsg has been too promptly 
 successful in smiting through the Identical. But 
 perhaps of all gifts there is none more rare than 
 this of clearing the board and leaving the reader 
 still hungry. 
 
 Who shall say, in dealing with such a book, 
 what passage in it is best or worst ? Either the 
 fancy, carried away utterly captive, follows the 
 poet whither he will, or the whole conception is 
 a failure. Perhaps, after the elemental splen- 
 dour and storm of the final scene, what clings 
 most to the memory is how Shibli Bagarag, 
 hard beset in the Cave of Chrysolites, touched
 
 328 Gossip in a Library 
 
 the great lion with the broken sapphire hair 
 of Garraveen ; or again, how on the black coast 
 of the enchanted sea, wandering by moonlight, 
 he found the sacred Lily, and tore it up, and 
 lo ! its bulb was a palpitating heart of human 
 flesh ; or how Bhanavar called the unwilling 
 serpents too often, and failed to win her beauty 
 back, till, at an awful price she once more, and 
 for the last time, contrived to call her body-guard 
 of snakes hissing and screaming around her. 
 
 There is surely no modern book so unsullied 
 as this is by the modern spirit, none in which 
 the desire to teach a lesson, to refer knowingly 
 to topics of the day, or worst of all, to be incon- 
 tinently funny, interferes less with the tender 
 magic of Oriental fancy, or with the childlike, 
 earnest faith in what is utterly outside the 
 limits of experience. It belongs to that infancy 
 of the world, when the happy guileless human 
 being still holds that somewhere there is a 
 flower to be plucked, a lamp to be rubbed, or 
 a form of words to be spoken which will reverse 
 the humdrum laws of Nature, call up unwilling 
 spirits bound to incredible services, and change
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 329 
 
 all this brown life of ours to scarlet and azure 
 and mother-of-pearl. Little by little, even our 
 children are losing this happy gift of believing 
 the incredible, and that class of writing which 
 seems to require less effort than any other, and 
 to be a mere spinning of gold thread out of 
 the poet's inner consciousness, is less and less 
 at command, and when executed gives less and 
 less satisfaction. The gnomes of Pope, the 
 fays and " trilbys " of Nodier, even the fairy- 
 world of Doyle, are breathed upon by a race 
 that has grown up habituated to science. But 
 even for such a race it must be long before 
 the sumptuous glow and rich triumphant humour 
 of The Shaving of Shagpat have lost all their 
 attraction.
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF 
 SELBORNE
 
 The Natural History of Selborne 
 
 The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, in the 
 County or Southampton ; ivith Engra'vings, and an Ap- 
 pendix. London : Printed by T. Bens/ey, for B. White and 
 Son, at Horace's Head, Fleet Street. MDCCLXXXIX. 
 
 It is not always the most confidently conducted 
 books, or those best preceded by blasts on the 
 public trumpet, which are eventually received 
 with highest honours into the palace of literature. 
 No more curious incident of this fact is to be 
 found than is presented by the personal history 
 of that enchanting classic. White's Selborne. If 
 ever an author hesitated and reflected, dipped 
 his toe into the bath of publicity, and hastily 
 withdrew it again, loitered on the brink and 
 could not be induced to plunge, it was the Rev. 
 Gilbert White. This man of singular genius was 
 not to be persuaded that the town would toler-
 
 334 Gossip in a Library 
 
 ate his lucubrations. He was ready to make a 
 present of them to any one who would father 
 them, he allowed his life to slip by until his 
 seventieth year was reached, before he would 
 print them, and when they appeared, he could 
 not find the courage to put his name on the 
 title-page. Not one of his own titlarks or sedge- 
 warblers could be more shy of public observa- 
 tion. Even the fact that his own brother was 
 a publisher gave him no real confidence in 
 printer's ink. 
 
 Gilbert White was already a middle-aged man 
 when he was drawn into correspondence by 
 Thomas Pennant, a naturalist younger than him- 
 self, who had undertaken to produce, in four 
 volumes folio, a work on British Zoology for the 
 production of which he was radically unfitted. 
 It has been severely, but justly, pointed out that 
 wherever Pennant rises superior, either in style 
 or information, to his own dead level of pompous 
 inexactitude, he is almost certainly quoting from 
 a letter of Gilbert White's. Yet no acknowledg- 
 ment of the Selborne parson is v^ouchsafed; 
 " even in the account of the harvest-mouse,"
 
 The Natural History of Selborne 335 
 
 says Professor Bell, " there is no mention of its 
 discoverer." Nevertheless, so rudimentary was 
 scientific knowledge one hundred and thirty 
 years ago, that Pennant's pretentious book was 
 received with acclamation. The patient man at 
 Selborne sat and smiled, even courteously join- 
 ing with mild congratulations in the rounds of 
 applause. Fortunately Pennant did not remain 
 his only correspondent. The Hon. Daines Har- 
 rington was a man of another stamp, not pro- 
 found, indeed, but enthusiastic, a genuine lover 
 of research, and a gentleman at heart. He 
 quoted Gilbert White in his writings, but never 
 without full acknowledgment. Other friends 
 followed, and the recluse of Selborne became 
 the correspondent of Sir Joseph Banks, of Dr. 
 Chandler, and of many other great ones of that 
 day now decently forgotten. 
 
 Meanwhile, he was growing old. Any sharp 
 winter might have cut him off, as he trudged 
 along through the deep lanes of his rustic par- 
 ish. Early in 1770 Daines Barrington, tired of 
 seeing his friend the mere valet to so many other 
 pompous intellects, had proposed to him to
 
 33^ Gossip in a Library 
 
 " draw up an account of the animals of Sel- 
 borne." Gilbert White put the fascinating no- 
 tion from him. " It is no small undertaking," he 
 replied, " for a man unsupported and alone to 
 begin a natural history from his own autopsia." 
 Pennant seems to have joined in the suggestion 
 of Barrington, for White says (in a letter, dated 
 'July 19, 1 77 1, which did not see the light for 
 more than a century after it was written) : — 
 
 " As to any publication in this way of my 
 own, I look upon it with great diffidence, find- 
 ing that I ought to have begun it twenty years 
 ago ; but if I was to attempt anything, it should 
 be something of a Nat : history of my native 
 parish, an Annus historico-natiiralis, comprising 
 a journal of one whole year, and illustrated with 
 large notes and observations. Such a beginning 
 might induce more able naturalists to write the 
 history of various districts, and might in time 
 occasion the production of a work so much to 
 be wished for, a full and compleat nat : history 
 of these kingdoms." 
 
 Three years later he was still thinking of doing 
 something, but putting off the hour of action.
 
 The Natural History of Selborne 337 
 
 In 1776 he was suddenly spurred to decide by 
 the circumstance that Barrington had written to 
 propose a joint work on natural history. " If I 
 publish at all," said Gilbert White to his nephew, 
 "I shall come forth by myself." In 1780 he is 
 still unready: "Were it not for want of a good 
 amanuensis, I think I should make more prog- 
 ress." He was now sixty years of age. Eight 
 years later he was preparing the Index, and at 
 last, in the autumn of 1789, the volume positively 
 made its appearance, in the maiden author's 
 seventieth year. Few indeed, if any, among 
 English writers of high distinction, have been 
 content to delay so long before testing the 
 popular estimate of their work. His book was 
 warmly welcomed, but the delightful author sur- 
 vived its publication less than four years, dying 
 in the parish which he was to make so famous. 
 Gilbert White was, in a very peculiar sense, a 
 man of one book. 
 
 Countless as have been the reprints of The 
 Natural History of Selborne, its original form is 
 no longer, perhaps, familiar to many readers. 
 The first edition, which is now before me, is a 
 
 r
 
 338 Gossip in a Library- 
 
 very handsome quarto. Benjamin White, the 
 pubHsher, who was the younger brother of 
 Gilbert, issued most of the standard works on 
 natural history which appeared in London dur- 
 ing the second half of the century, and his ex- 
 perience enabled him to do adequate justice to 
 The History of Selborne. The frontispiece is a 
 large folding plate of the village from the Short 
 Lythe, an ambitious summer landscape, repre- 
 senting the church, White's own house, and a 
 few cottages against the broad sweep of the 
 hangar. On a terrace in the foreground are 
 portrait figures of three gentlemen standing, and 
 a lady seated. Of the former, one is a clergy- 
 man, and it has often been stated that this is 
 Gilbert White himself; erroneously, since no 
 portrait of him was ever executed ; the figure is 
 that of the Rev. Robert Yalden, vicar of Newton- 
 Valence. The frontispiece is unsigned, and I find 
 no record of the artist's name. It is not to be 
 doubted, however, that the original was painted 
 by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, the Swiss water- 
 color draughtsman, who sketched so many topo- 
 graphical views in the South of England.
 
 The Natural History of Selborne 339 
 
 The remaining illustrations to this first edi- 
 tion, are an oval landscape vignette on the 
 title-page, engraved by Daniel Lerpiniere ; a 
 full-page plate of some fossil shells ; an extra- 
 sized plate of the himantopus that was shot at 
 Frensham Pond, straddling with an immense 
 excess of shank ; and four engravings, now of 
 remarkable interest, displaying the village as it 
 then stood, from various points of view. 
 They are engraved by Peter Mazell, after draw- 
 ings of Grimm's, and give what is evidently a 
 most accurate impression of what Selborne was 
 a century ago. In these days of reproductions, 
 it is rather strange that no publisher has issued 
 facsimiles of these beautiful illustrations to the 
 original edition of what has become one of the 
 most popular English works. For the use of 
 book-collectors, I may go on to say that any one 
 who is offered a copy of the edition of The His- 
 tory of Selborne of 1789, should be careful to see 
 that not merely the plates I have mentioned are 
 in their places, but that the engraved sub-title, 
 with a print of the seal of Selborne Priory, occurs 
 opposite the blank leaf which answers to page 306.
 
 34° Gossip in a Library 
 
 It is impossible for a bibliographer who writes 
 on Gilbert White to resist the pleasure of men- 
 tioning the name of his best editor and biogra- 
 pher. It was unfortunate that Thomas Bell, who 
 was born eight months before the death of 
 Gilbert White, and who quite early in life began 
 to entertain an enthusiastic reverence for that 
 writer, did not find an opportunity of studying 
 Selborne on the spot until the memories of 
 White were becoming very vague and scattered 
 there. I think it was not until about 1865 that, 
 retiring from a professional career, he made 
 Selborne — and the Wakes, the very house of 
 Gilbert White — his residence. Here he lived, 
 however, for fifteen years, and here it was his 
 delight to follow up every vestige of the great 
 naturalist's sojourn in the parish. White be- 
 came the passion of Professor Bell's existence, 
 and I well recollect him when he was eighty-five 
 or eighty-six years of age, and no longer strong 
 enough in body to quit his room with ease, sit- 
 ting in his arm-chair at the bedroom window, 
 and directing my attention to points of Whiteish 
 interest, as I stood in the garden below. It was
 
 The Natural History of Selborne 341 
 
 as difficult for Mr. Bell to conceive that his an- 
 notations of White were complete, as it had been 
 for White himself to pluck up courage to pub- 
 lish; and it was not until 1877, when the author 
 was eighty-five years of age, that his great and 
 final edition in two thick volumes was issued. 
 He lived, however, to be nearly ninety, and died 
 in the Wakes at last, in the very room, and if I 
 mistake not, the very spot in the room, where 
 his idol had passed away in 1793. 
 
 As long as Professor Bell was alive the house 
 preserved, in all essentials, the identical charac- 
 ter which it had maintained under its famous 
 tenant. Overgrown with creepers to the very 
 chimneys, divided by the greenest and most 
 velvety of lawns from a many-coloured furnace of 
 flower-beds, scarcely parted by lush paddocks 
 from the intense green wall of the coppiced 
 hill, the Wakes has always retained for my 
 memory an impression of rural fecundity and 
 summer glow absolutely unequalled. The gar- 
 den seemed to burn like a green sun, with crim- 
 son stars and orange meteors to relieve it. All, 
 I believe, has since then been altered. Selborne,
 
 342 Gossip in a Library 
 
 they tell me, has ceased to bear any resemblance 
 to that rich nest in which Thomas Bell so piously 
 guarded the idea of Gilbert White. If it be so, 
 we must live content with : — 
 
 The memory of what has been. 
 And never more may be.
 
 I N D E X 
 
 Abbey, Mr. Edwin A., 6 
 Abuses stript and whipt, 43, 47 
 d'Alembert, 174 
 Alfoxden, Wordsworth at, 254-6, 
 
 257, 264 
 All for Love, Dryden's, 103 
 Almahide, Mile, de Scudery's, 86 
 Amasia, John Hopkins', 135-44 
 Amazon Queen, Weston's, 104, 
 
 Amboyna, Dryden's, 115 
 Amory's Life of John Buncle, 
 
 Thomas, 215-226 
 Anthony, Earl of Orrery's Mr., 
 
 105 
 
 Arcadia, Sidney's, 85 
 Ardelia's(LadyWinchjlsea)/'t?fOT5, 
 
 121-32 
 Arnold, Matthew, no, 122 
 Artamenes, 85, 86 
 Asses: A Lyrical Ballad, The 
 
 Dead, 262 
 AsMe, D'Urfes, 85 
 d'Aurevilly, M. Barbey, 231 
 
 Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, 
 288 
 
 Baldwin, William, 29-35 
 Ballad of the Book-Hunter, Lang's, 
 
 95 
 Bancroft's Sertorius, John, 103, 
 
 104 
 Barnacle Goose Tree, The, 75-7 
 Bayle, 181 
 Beaumont, Peter Bell and Sir 
 
 George, 259-60 
 Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 96, 164 
 Benjamin the IVagt^oner, 262-3. 
 Blener Hasset, Thomas, 34 
 Boccaccio, 30 
 Boethius, 4 
 Boitard, Louis, 204 
 Book-plates, 5-6 
 Boswell, James, 193 
 Bonilhet, Louis, 272 
 Boxiana, Egan's, 273, 279 
 Boyle's Parthenissa, Roger, 90 
 Bradshaw, Library of Henry, 30S
 
 344 
 
 Index 
 
 Britannia, Brooke's Discovery of 
 
 Cleomina^ Eliza Haywood's Secret 
 
 Errors in, i8 
 
 History of, 169 
 
 Britannia, Camden's, 13-24 
 
 Cobden-Sander.son, Mr. 8 
 
 British Princes, Howard's, 99 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 245, 255, 256, 
 
 Brooke, Christopher, 45 
 
 262 
 
 Brooke, Ralph, 19, 20 
 
 Congreve, William, 96, 136 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 74 
 
 Constant Couple, Farquhar's, 143, 
 
 Browne, William, 44, 45, 49 
 
 148 
 
 Browning, Robert, 185, 198, 199 
 
 Corcoran, Peter, i e. J. H. Rey- 
 
 Brammell, Beau, 231, 237 
 
 nold's, 273, 279 
 
 Branfelsius, Otto, 68 
 
 Cornwall, Barry, 276 
 
 Buncle, Amory's Life of John, 
 
 Cory. William see Johnson, 
 
 215-26 
 
 William 
 
 Burg'-r's Lenore, 246 
 
 Coventry, Henry, 206 
 
 Bumey, Fanny, 323 
 
 Coventry, Rev. Francis, 204-11 
 
 Byron, 259, 260, 286 
 
 Coypel, Drawings by, 182 
 
 
 Croker, J. W., 289 
 
 Callimachus, 311, 312 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 113 
 
 Calprenede, La, 82-88, 164 
 
 "Crusions," 197 
 
 Cambridge described by Camden, 
 
 Cyrus, Le Grand, 83 
 
 23 
 Camden's Britannia, 13-24 
 
 David, Smart's Song to, 194, 195- 
 
 Campbell, Mr. J, Dykes, 260 
 
 99 
 
 Campion, Thomas, 114 
 
 Davies of Hereford, John, 47, 91 
 
 Carew, Thomas, 115 
 
 Death's Duel, 55-63 
 
 Carlisle, James, 104 
 
 Defoe, Daniel, 163 
 
 Carnival, Porter's, 100 
 
 Dennis, John, 109, 117 
 
 Cassandra, LaCalprehMe's,84,85 
 
 Deshouli^re, Mme., 178 
 
 Cats, 173-182, 
 
 DeTabley, Lord, 6 
 
 Caylus, Count, 182 
 
 Dialogues, La Mothe le Vayer's, 
 
 Cherwell Water Lily, Faber's, 
 
 179 
 
 The, 298, 301 
 
 Diary of a Lover of Literature, 
 
 Cibber, TheophiUis, 122 
 
 Green's, 241-50 
 
 CUlie, Mile, de Scudery's, 85, 88, 
 
 Dioscorides of Anazarba, 68 
 
 90 
 
 Disraeli's Coningsby, 296 
 
 Cleopatra, La Calpren^de's, 85, 86, 
 
 Dodonoeiis, Rembertus, 68, 69 
 
 88, 91 
 
 Donne, Dr. John, 55-63
 
 Index 
 
 345 
 
 Dryden, John, 96, 98, 99, 103, 
 104, 106, III, 115, 117, 136, 
 
 24s 
 Dryden, John, Funeral of, 
 
 156-7 
 Dunciad, Pope's, 162 
 Dupuy, Mile., 181 
 D'Urfe's Astr^e, 85 
 "Dwale" (nightshade), 72 
 
 Egan's Boxiana, Pierce, 373, 279, 
 281 
 
 Ej^oisf, Meredith's, The, 325 
 
 England s Trust, Lord John Man- 
 ners', 395-304 
 
 Ens^lmd's Worthies, Winstan- 
 ley's, 113, 115 
 
 English Ballads, Lord John Man- 
 ners', 304 
 
 English Poets, Winstanley's Lives 
 of, 109-17 
 
 English Poets, Ward's, 122 
 
 Epistolary Poems of C. Hopkins, 
 136 
 
 Epsom Wells, Shadwell's, 125 
 
 Excursion, Wordsworth's, no 
 
 Faber, Rev. Frederick William, 
 
 300, 301, 302 
 Fall of Princes, Lydgate's, 30 
 Fancy, The, J. H. Reynold's, 
 
 271-81 
 Farmer, Dr., 186 
 Farquhar, George, 143, 148-57 
 Fatal Friendship, Mrs. Trotter's, 
 
 153 
 Feast of the Poets, The, 287 
 
 Ferrers, George, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 
 
 35 
 Field, Barron, 260, 2S8 
 Fielding, Henry, 208, 248 
 Finch, Poems of Anne (Lady Win- 
 
 chilsea), 121-32 
 Finch, Heneage, Earl of Win- 
 
 chilsea, 124, 130 
 First editions, attractions of, 7-8 
 FitzGerald, Edward, 2.(4 250 
 Fortune Htinters, The, 104 
 Fuchsius, Leonard, 69 
 
 Garden of Florence, Reynold's, 
 
 276 
 Gardiner, Lord Chancellor Stephen , 
 
 30 
 
 Garrick, David, 194 
 
 Garth, Dr., 157 
 
 Gerard, John, 67-77 
 
 Gibbons, Dr., 142 
 
 Gifford, William, 285, 287-91 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 298 
 
 Goldsmith, 01iver,2io, 211,229-38 
 
 Gombreville, 82, 87 
 
 Goose Tree, The, 75 
 
 Grafton, Isabella, Duchess of, 138, 
 142 
 
 Gray, Thomas, 123, 188, 189, 192, 
 193. 194, 204 
 
 Green, Thomas, 242-250 
 
 Green's Diary of a Lover of Litera- 
 ture, 241-250 
 
 Grundtvig, Bishop, 59 
 
 Harrington's Oceana, 10 
 Harvey, Rev. R. 196, 197
 
 34^ 
 
 Index 
 
 Haslewood, 31 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, 44, 259, 263, 276 
 
 Hawkesworth. John, 194 
 
 285-291 
 
 Haywood, Eliza, 162-9 
 
 Hurd, Bishop of Worcester, 246 
 
 Hazlitt, William, 42, 225, 256, 
 
 Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 
 
 257, 291 
 
 62 
 
 Heliodonis, 84 
 
 
 Heraclitus, Alexandrian poet, 311 
 
 Ibrahim, Mile, de Scudery's, 85 
 
 Herbal, Gerard's, 67-77 
 
 Idalia, Eliza Haywood's, 163, 167 
 
 Lyte's translation of Dodo- 
 
 lonica, Mr. William Johnson's, 
 
 noeiis, 68, 69 
 
 307-17 
 
 Dr. Priest's translation, of 
 
 lonica //., 317 
 
 Dodonosus, 69 
 
 
 Herrick, Robert, 116 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis, no, 
 
 Hesketh, Yorkshire botanist, Mr., 
 
 Jenyns, Soame, 244, 240, 247 
 
 73 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 193 
 
 Hesperides, Herrick's, 116 
 
 Johnson, Thomas, 69, 70 
 
 Hill, Aaron, 162 
 
 Johnson, Mr. William, 309-17 
 
 Hill, Dr. John, 192 
 
 lonica, 307-17 
 
 Hilliad, Smart's The, 192 
 
 Jonson, Ben, i;i 
 
 Historic Fancies, Lord Sirang- 
 
 Joyner, William, 97, 98 
 
 ford's, 298 
 
 Jusserand, J. J., English Novel in 
 
 Hoare, William, 232 
 
 the Time of Shakespeare, 91 
 
 Holland, Dr. Philemon, 14, 22 
 
 
 Hop Garden, Smart's 7/ze,i86,i92 
 
 Keats, John, 276, 287, 291, 311 
 
 Hopkins, Ezekiel, Bishop of 
 
 King, Dr. Henry, 61, 62 
 
 Derry, 136, 138, 141 
 
 Kip, Wilham, 21 
 
 Hopkins, Charles, 136 
 
 
 Hopkins, John, 136-144 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 42, no, 258, 267 
 
 Amasia, 135-144 
 
 Lang, Mr. Andrew, 95 
 
 Hopkins, Lady Araminta; 138, 
 
 La Rochefoucauld, 83 
 
 141 
 
 Lauzun, 237 
 
 Houghton on Peter Bell, Lord, 
 
 Le Gallienne, Mr. Richard, 324 
 
 263-4 
 
 Lee, Nathaniel, 103, 104 
 
 Hove, F. H. van, (engraver), 137 
 
 Le Grand Cyrus, 85, 86, 90 
 
 Howard, Hon. Edward, 98 
 
 Lenore, Burger's, 246 
 
 Humorous Lovers, Duke of New- 
 
 Les Chats, Moncrifs, 173-182 
 
 castle's, 100, lOI 
 
 Lesdigui^res, Duchess of, 179, 182
 
 Index 
 
 347 
 
 Letters of Lord Chesterfield, 248 
 
 Liberal, The, 286 
 
 Literature, Diary of a Lover of, 
 
 241-250 
 Locker-Lampson, Mr. F. 4 
 Lombard, the antiquary, 18 
 Longueville, Madame de, 83 
 Loveday, 91 
 Love and a Bottle, Farquhar's, 
 
 143, 148 
 Love and Business, Farquhar's, 
 
 147-157 
 Love in Excess, Eliza Haywood's, 
 
 163, 166-7 
 
 Manners, Lord John, see Rut- 
 land, Duke of, 
 Marot, Clement, 180 
 Marshalsea Prison, 43 
 Marvell, Andrew, 114, 123 
 Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, 
 
 203 
 Memoirs of Several Ladies of 
 
 Great Britain, Amory's 216 
 Mentzelius, Christian, 3, 5 
 Meredith, George, 323-29 
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat, 
 
 32T-29 
 Milton, John, iio-ii, 113, 114, 115 
 Mimnermus in Church, Johnson's 
 
 314 
 Minvr for Magistrates, A, 27-38 
 Miscellany Poctns, Ardelia's, 121- 
 
 132 
 Mitford, John, 243 
 Mithridatcs, Lee's, 103 
 Xi II Flanders, Defoe's, 163 
 
 Moncrif, Augustin Paradis de, 
 
 173-182 
 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 
 
 206, 207 
 Moore's Tom Crib, Thomas, 277 
 Murray, John, 289 
 
 Nash, Beau, 229-238 
 Neil, Mr. R. A., 187 
 Newbery, the publisher, 186, 191, 
 
 230, 231 
 Newcastle's Hutnorous Lovers, 
 
 Duke of, 100, loi 
 Newman, Cardinal, 300 
 Niccols, Robert, 34, 35 
 Nichols, John Bowyer, 117 
 Norden, John, 21 
 Nottingham, Sonnet to the Earl 
 
 of, 36 
 
 Oceana, Harrington's, 10 
 Orford, Countess of, Pompey the 
 
 Little, 207 
 Orrery, Earl of, 105 
 Ortelius, Abraham, 16, 17 
 Osborne, Dorothy, 84, 85, 90 
 Otten, engraver, 182 
 Otway, Thomas, 96, 105, 106 
 
 Pamela, Richardson's, 164, 169 
 Parleyings, Browning's, 185 
 Parr, Dr. Samuel, 246, 247 
 Parthcnissa, Boyle's, 90 
 Payne, John, 68 
 
 Percy, Bishop of Dromore, Dr. 
 Thomas, X17
 
 348 
 
 Index 
 
 Peter Bell: A Tale in Verse, 
 
 Wordsworth's, 253-67 
 Peter Bell: A Lyrical Ballad, 
 
 Hamilton's, 261, 262, 276 
 Peter Bell the Third, Shelley's, 
 
 263, 276 
 " Peter Corcoran," 273, 277, 279 
 P/iaramond, La Calpren^de's, 
 
 81-92 
 Philemon to Hydaspes, Coventry's, 
 
 206 
 Phillips, John, 91 
 Pindar, Peter, 105 
 Plays, A volume of old, 95-106 
 Poems of Anne Finch, Lady 
 
 Winchilsea, 121-32 
 Poems of Christopher Smart, 185, 
 
 200 
 Poems of Duke of Rutland, (Lord 
 
 John Manners), 285-304 
 Poet in Prison, A, ( The Shcpheari s 
 
 Hunting), 41-52 
 Poets, A Censor of, 109-117 
 Poets, Winstanley's Lives of 
 
 English, 109-117 
 Polexandre, Gomberville's, 84, 
 
 85 
 Pompey the Little, F. Coventry's 
 
 203-11 
 Pope, Alexander, 42, 131, 162, 
 
 192 
 Porter, Major Thomas, 100 
 Prelude, Wordsworth's The, 259 
 Priest, Dr., 69, 70 
 
 QuEEXSBURV, Duchess of, 233, 
 
 237 
 
 Rabelais, 225 
 
 Radcliffe, Dr., 236 
 
 Randall, John, 275, 278 
 
 Ravenscroft, Edward, 96, 103 
 
 Reynolds, Peter Bell, John Hamil- 
 ton, 261, 262, 276 
 
 The Fancy, 2y6-8i 
 
 Pimini, Leigh Hunt's, 285 
 
 Robinson, Henry Crabb, 258 
 
 Robinson, Perdita, 291 
 
 Rocca, Angelo, i 
 
 Roman Empress, Joyner's, 97, 98 
 
 Ronsard, 178 
 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 321 
 
 Roubilliac, 192 
 
 Rowe, Nicholas, 131 
 
 Roy, 175 
 
 Rutland, Poems of John Manners, 
 Duke of, 295-304 
 
 Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, 
 Thomas, 28, 29 
 
 Sadler, 258 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, no 
 
 Sandford, Mrs., 255 
 
 Scarron, 179 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 246, 259, 260 
 
 Scudery, Mile, de, 82, 86, 87, 90- 
 164 
 
 Sedley, Sir Charles, 97 
 
 Sertorius, Bancroft's, 103, 104, 106 
 
 Settle, Elkanah, 96 
 
 Sevigne, Madame de, 83 
 
 Shadvvell, Thomas, 96, 125 
 
 Shaving of Shagpat, George Mere- 
 dith's, 321-29 
 
 Shelley, no, 263, 276, 291
 
 Index 
 
 349 
 
 Shepheard's Hunting, Wither's, 
 
 Usurper, Howard's, 98, 99 
 
 The, 41-52 
 
 
 Shirley, James, lor, 102 
 
 Vanbrugh's ^-Esop, 236 
 
 Sir Harry Wildair, Farquhar's, 
 
 Vane, Lady, 203 
 
 148 
 
 Vaughan, Henry, 114 
 
 Skelton's contribution to Mirror 
 
 Vayer, La Mothe le, 179 
 
 for Magistrates, 33 
 
 Verrall, Dr. A W., 197 
 
 Smart, Christopher, 185-199 
 
 Voltaire, 174, 192 
 
 Smollett, Tobias, 203 
 
 
 Solly, Edward, 2 
 
 Waggoner, Wordsworth's, The, 
 
 Southerne, Thomas, 96 
 
 263 
 
 Southey, Robert, 257, 267, 289 
 
 Waggoner, Benjamin the, 262-3 
 
 Spleen, Ode on the, 125 
 
 Walker, engraver, Anthony, 232, 
 
 Stecchetti, Lorenzo, 277 
 
 233 
 
 Strangford, Lord, 296, 297, 298 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 204 
 
 Suckhng, Sir John, ii6 
 
 Walton, Izaak, 57, 63 
 
 Swift, Dean, 41, 219 
 
 Warburton, 246, 248 
 
 
 Weston's Amazon Queen, 104 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., 274 
 
 What Ann Lang Read, 161-9 
 
 Tom Crib, Moore's, 277 
 
 Wife to be Lett, Eliza Haywood's 
 
 Tom Jones, Fielding's, 164, 203 
 
 A, 168 
 
 Tradescant, John, 73 
 
 Winchilsea, Anne, Lady, 121-32 
 
 Trotter's Fatal Friendship, Cathe- 
 
 Winstanley, William, 109, 1 10-17 
 
 rine, 153 
 
 Wither, George, 41-52, 116 
 
 Turner, J. M. W., 247, 248 
 
 Wordsworth, William, no, 121, 
 
 Tyers, Rev. T., 193 
 
 128, 253-67 
 
 
 — Lyrical Ballads, 245, 256 
 
 Ultra-crepiddrius, Leigh Hunt's, 
 
 Wycherley, William, 104, 125 
 
 285-91 
 
 ' Young England, ' 296-7, 298
 
 GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY. 
 
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 AthencBum. — "There is a touch of Leigh Hunt in this picture of 
 the book-lover among his books, and the volume is one that Leigh 
 
 Hunt would have delighted in Mr. Gosse has the uncommon 
 
 merit of stopping so soon that his readers are left with the agree- 
 able desire for more But how cleverly and amusingly Mr. 
 
 Gosse revives for us, on a momentary stage, that brilliant, exquisite, 
 artificial period of the beaux, and the wits, when George Farquhar 
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 cellent manner." 
 
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 the introductory note prefi.xeo to the present volume discourses lov- 
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 .... We must content ourselves with recording our hiejh opinion of 
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 ing it to that popular approval to which it cannot be doubted that 
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 will be sure to add this one to their collection, alike from its external 
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 for his shelves have been filled with care. He gives to each a few 
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 self says, of a little criticism, a little anecdote, and a little biblio- 
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