Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN THE WORKS ISAAC DISRAELI. THE CALAMITIES AND QUARRELS AUTHORS: SOME INQUIRIES RESPECTING THEIR MORAL AND LITERARY CHARACTERS, irs for otrr ^fiierarg fjisiorg. BY ISAAC DISRAELI. EDITION, EDITED BY HIS SON, THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI, CHANCELLOR OF HER MAJESTY'S EXCHEQUER. LONDON: ROUTLEDGE, WARNES, AND ROUTLEDGE, FARRINGDON STREET. NEW YOBK : 18, BEEKMAN STREET. 1859. {The Author reiervet the right of Translation.] LONDON : SAVILL AMD BDWAKDS, PBINIERS, CHANDO8 SIBJSEI. Annex CONTENTS. CALAMITIES OF AUTHOKS. PAGE PREFACE 3 AUTHORS BT PROFESSION: GUTHRIE AND AMHURST DRAKE SMOLLETT 7 THE CASE OF AUTHORS STATED, INCLUDING THE HISTORY OF LITE- RARY PROPERTY 15 THE SUFFERINGS OF AUTHORS 22 A MENDICANT AUTHOR, AND THE PATRONS OF FORMER TIMES ... 25 COWLEY OF HIS MELANCHOLY 35 THE PAINS OF FASTIDIOUS EGOTISM 42 INFLUENCE OF A BAD TEMPER IN CRITICISM 51 DISAPPOINTED GENIUS TAKES A FATAL DIRECTION BY ITS ABUSE . . 59 THE MALADIES OF AUTHORS 70 LITERARY SCOTCHMEN 75 LABORIOUS AUTHORS 83 THE DESPAIR OF YOUNG POETS 98 THE MISERIES OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COMMENTATOR 104 THE LIFE OF AN AUTHORESS 106 INDISCRETION OF AN HISTORIAN CARTE 110 LITERARY RIDICULE, ILLUSTRATED BY SOME ACCOUNT OF A LITERARY SATIRE 114 LITERARY HATRED, EXHIBITING A CONSPIRACY AGAINST AN AUTHOR . 130 vi Contents. PAGE UNDUE SEVERITY OF CRITICISM 139 A VOLUMINOUS AUTHOR WITHOUT JUDGMENT 146 GENIUS AND ERUDITION THE VICTIMS OP IMMODERATE VANITY . .152 GENIUS, THE DUPE OP ITS PASSIONS 168 LITERARY DISAPPOINTMENTS DISORDERING THE INTELLECT .... 172 REWARDS OS 1 ORIENTAL STUDENTS 186 DANGER INCURRED BY GIVING THE RESULT OP LITERARY INQUIRIES . 193 A NATIONAL WORK WHICH COULD FIND NO PATRONAGE 200 MISERIES OF SUCCESSFUL AUTHORS 202 THE ILLUSIONS OF WRITERS IN VERSE . . 212 QUAEEELS OF AUTHOES. PREFACE 229 WARBURTON AND HIS QUARRELS J INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS LITERARY CHARACTER 233 POPE AND HIS MISCELLANEOUS QUARRELS 278 POPE AND OURLL; OR A NARRATIVE OF THE EXTRAORDINARY TRANSACTIONS RESPECTING THE PUBLICATION OF POPE'S LETTERS 292 POPE AND CIBBER J CONTAINING A VINDICATION OF THE COMIC WRITER 301 POPE AND ADDISON 313 BOLINGBROKE AND MALLET'S POSTHUMOUS QUARREL WITH POPE . . 321 LINTOT'S ACCOUNT-BOOK 328 POPE'S EARLIEST SATIRE 333 THE ROYAL SOCIETY 336 SIR JOHN HILL, WITH THE ROYAL SOCIETY, FIELDING, SMART, ETC. . 363 BOYLE AND BENTLEY . . 377 Contents. vii PAGK PARKER AND MARVELL 391 D'AVENANT AND A CLUB OP WITS 403 THE PAPER WARS OP THE CIVIL WARS 414 POLITICAL CRITICISM ON LITERARY COMPOSITIONS 423 HOBBES AND HIS QUARRELS ; INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATION OP HIS CHARACTER 437 HOBBES'S QUARRELS WITH DR. WALLIS, THE MATHEMATICIAN . . . 463 JONSON AND DECKEB 474 CAMDEN AND BROOKE . 491 MARTIN MAR-PRELATE 501 SUPPLEMENT TO MARTIN MAR- PRELATE 525 LITERARY QUARRELS FROM PERSONAL MOTIVES 531 INDEX .541 CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS: INCLUDING SOME INQUIEIES RESPECTING THEIR MOEAL AND LITEEAEY CHAEACTERS. " Such a superiority do the pursuits of Literature possess above every other occu- pation, that even he who attains but a mediocrity in them, merits the pre-eminence above those that excel the most in the common and vulgar professions." HUME. PREFACE. THE Calamities of Authors have often excited the attention of the lovers of literature ; and, from the revival of letters to this day, this class of the community, the most ingenious and the most enlightened, have, in all the nations of Europe, heen the most honoured, and the least remunerated. Pierius Vale- rianus, an attendant in the literary court of Leo X., who twice refused a bishopric that he might pursue his studies uninter- rupted, was a friend of Authors, and composed a small work, " De Infelicitate Literatorum," which has been frequently re- printed.* It forms a catalogue of several Italian literati, his contemporaries ; a meagre performance, in which the author shows sometimes a predilection for the marvellous, which happens so rarely in human affairs ; and he is so unphiloso- phical, that he places among the misfortunes of literary men those fatal casualties to which all men are alike liable. Yet even this small volume has its value: for although the his- torian confines his narrative to his own times, he includes a sufficient number of names to convince us that to devote our life to authorship is not the true means of improving our happiness or our fortune. At a later period, a congenial work was composed by Theo- philus Spizelius, a German divine ; his four volumes are after the fashion of his country and his times, which could make even small things ponderous. In 1680 he first published two * A modern writer observes, that "Valeriano is chiefly known to the present times by his brief but curious and interesting work, De Literatorum Infelicitate, which has preserved many anecdotes of the principal scholars of the age, not elsewhere to be found." ROSCOE'S Leo X. vol. iv. p. 175.. B2 4 Preface. volumes, entitled "Infelix Literatus," and five years after- wards his " Felicissimus Literatus ;" he writes without size, and sermonises without end, and seems to have been so grave a lover of symmetry, that he shapes his Felicities just with the same measure as his Infelicities. These two equalised bundles of hay might have held in suspense the casuistical ass of Sterne, till he had died from want of a motive to choose either. Yet Spizelius is not to be con- temned because he is verbose and heavy ; he has reflected more deeply than Valerianus, by opening the moral causes of those calamities which he describes.* The chief object of the present work is to ascertain some doubtful yet important points concerning Authors. The title of Author still retains its seduction among our youth, and is consecrated byages. Yet what affectionate parent would consent to see his son devote himself to his pen as a profession ? The studies of a true Author insulate him in society, exacting daily labours ; yet he will receive but little encouragement, and less remuneration. It will be found that the most suc- cessful Author can obtain no equivalent for the labours of his life. I have endeavoured to ascertain this fact, to de- velope the causes and to paint the variety of evils that natu- rally result from the disappointments of genius. Authors themselves never discover this melancholy truth till they have yielded to an impulse, and adopted a profession, too late in life to resist the one, or abandon the other. Whoever labours without hope, a painful state to which Authors are at length reduced, may surely be placed among the most injured class in the community. Most Authors close their lives in apathy or despair, and too many live by means which few of them would not blush to describe. Besides this perpetual struggle with penury, there are also * There is also a bulky collection of this kind, entitled, Analecta de Calamitate Literatorum, edited by Mencken, the author of C'harlataneria Eruditorum. Preface. 5 moral causes which influence the literary character. I have drawn the individual characters and feelings of Authors from their own confessions, or deduced them from the prevalent events of their lives ; and often discovered them in their secret history, as it floats on tradition, or lies concealed in authentic and original documents. I would paint what has not heen unhappily called the psychological character.* I have limited my inquiries to our own country, and gene- rally to recent times ; for researches more curious, and eras more distant, would less forcibly act on our sympathy. If, in attempting to avoid the naked brevity of Valerianus, I have taken a more comprehensive view of several of our Authors, it has been with the hope that I was throwing a new light on their characters, or contributing some fresh materials to our literary history. I feel anxious for the fate of the opinions and the feelings which have arisen in the pro- gress and diversity of this work ; but whatever their errors may be, it is to them that my readers at least owe the mate- rials of which it is formed ; these materials will be received with consideration, as the confessions and statements of genius itself. In mixing them with my own feelings, let me apply a beautiful apologue of the Hebrews " The clusters of grapes sent out of Babylon implore favour for the exuberant leaves of the vine ; for had there been no leaves, you had lost the grapes." * From the Grecian Psyche, or the soul, the Germans have borrowed this expressive term. They have a Psychological Magazine. Some of our own recent authors have adopted the term peculiarly adapted to the historian of the human mind. THE CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS. AUTHORS BY PROFESSION. QUTHEIK AND AMHURST DRAKE SMOLLETT. A GREAT author once surprised me by inquiring what I meant by "an Author by Profession." He seemed offended at the supposition that I was creating an odious distinction between authors. I was only placing it among their calamities. The title of ATTTHOB is venerable; and in the ranks of national glory, authors mingle with its heroes and its patriots. It is indeed by our authors that foreigners have been taught most to esteem us ; and this remarkably appears in the ex- pression of Gemelli, the Italian traveller round the world, who wrote about the year 1700 ; for he told all Europe that ' he could find nothing amongst us but our writings to dis- tinguish us from the worst of barbarians." But to become an " Author by Profession," is to have no other means of subsistence than such as are extracted from the quill ; and no one believes these to be so precarious as they really are, until disappointed, distressed, and thrown out of every pursuit which can maintain independence, the noblest mind is cast into the lot of a doomed labourer. Literature abounds with instances of " Authors by Profes- sion" accommodating themselves to this condition. By vile artifices of faction and popularity their moral sense is injured, and the literary character sits in that study which he ought to dignify, merely, as one of them sings, To keep his mutton twirling at the fire. Another has said, " He is a fool who is a grain honester than the times he lives in." Let it not, therefore, be conceived that I mean to degrade or vilify the literary character, when I would only separate 8 Calamities of Authors. the Author from those polluters of the press who have turned a vestal into a prostitute ; a grotesque race of famished buffoons or laughing assassins ; or that populace of unhappy beings, who are driven to perish in their garrets, unknown and unregarded by all, for illusions which even their calamities cannot disperse. Poverty, said an ancient, is a sacred thing it is, indeed, so sacred, that it creates a sympathy even for those who have incurred it by their folly, or plead by it for their crimes. The history of our Literature is instructive let us trace the origin of characters of this sort among us : some of them have happily disappeared, and, whenever great authors obtain their due rights, the calamities of literature will be greatly diminished. As for the phrase of " Authors by Profession," it is said to be of modern origin ; and GUTHEIE, a great dealer in litera- ture, and a political scribe, is thought to have introduced it, as descriptive of a class of writers which he wished to distin- guish from the general term. I present the reader with an unpublished letter of Guthrie, in which the phrase will not only be found, but, what is more important, which exhibits the character in its degraded form. It was addressed to a minister. " MY LOED, June 3, 1762. " In the year 1745-6, Mr. Pelham, then First Lord of the Treasury, acquainted me, that it was his Majesty's pleasure I should receive, till better provided for, which never has hap- pened, 200?. a-year, to be paid by him and his successors in the Treasury. I was satisfied with the august name made use of, and the appointment has been regularly and quarterly paid me ever since. I have been equally punctual in doing the government all the services that fell within my abilities or sphere of life, especially in those critical situations that call for unanimity in the service of the crown. " Your Lordship may possibly now suspect that 1 am an Author by Profession : you are not deceived ; and will be less so, if you believe that I am disposed to serve his Majesty under your Lordship's future patronage and protection, icith greater zeal, if possible, than ever. " I have the honour to be, " My Lord, Ac., "WILLIAM GUTHEIE." Authors by Profession. 9 Unblushing venality ! In one part he shouts like a plun- dering hussar who has carried off his prey ; and in the other he bows with the tame suppleness of the "quarterly" Swiss chaffering his halbert for his price ; " to serve his Majesty " for "his Lordship's future patronage." Guthrie's notion of " An Author by Profession," entirely derived from his own character, was twofold ; literary task- work, and political degradation. He was to be a gentleman convertible into an historian, at per sheet ; and, when he had not time to write histories, he chose to sell his name to those he never wrote. These are mysteries of the craft of authorship ; in this sense it is only a trade, and a very bad one ! But when in his other capacity, this gentleman comes to hire himself to one lord as he had to another, no one can doubt that the stipendiary would change his principles with his livery.* Such have been some of the "Authors by Profession " who have worn the literary mask ; for literature was not the first object of their designs. They form a race peculiar to our country. They opened their career in our first great revolu- tion, and flourished during the eventful period of the civil wars. In the form of newspapers, their " Mercuries " and " Diurnals " were political pamphlets.f Of these, the Royalists, being the better educated, carried off to their side all the spirit, and only left the foam and dregs for the Parlia- mentarians ; otherwise, in lying, they were just like one another ; for " the father of lies " seems to be of no party ! Were it desirable to instruct men by a system of political and moral calumny, the complete art might be drawn from these archives of political lying, during their flourishing era. We might discover principles among them which would have humbled the genius of Machiavel himself, and even have taught Mr. Sheridan's more popular scribe, Mr. Puff, a sense of his own inferiority. It is known that, during the administration of Harley and Walpole, this class of authors swarmed and started up like mustard-seed in a hot-bed. More than fifty thousand pounds * It has been lately disclosed that HOMK, the author of "Douglas," was pensioned by Lord Bute to answer all the papers and pamphlets of the Government, and to be a vigilant defender of the measures of Government. + I have elsewhere portrayed the personal characters of the hireling chiefs of these paper wars : the versatile and unprincipled Marchmont Needham, the Cobbett of his day ; the factious Sir Roger L'Estrange ; and the bantering and profligate Sir John Birkenhead. 10 Calamities of Authors. were expended among them ! Faction, with mad and blind passions, can affix a value on the basest things that serve its purpose. * These " Authors by Profession " wrote more assiduously the better they were paid ; but as attacks only produced replies and rejoinders, to remunerate them was heightening the fever and feeding the disease. They were all fighting for present pay, with a view of the promised land before them ; but they at length became so numerous, and so crowded on one another, that the minister could neither satisfy promised claims nor actual dues. He had not at last the humblest office to bestow, not a commissionership of wine licences, as Tacitus Gordon had : not even a collectorship of the customs in some obscure town, as was the wretched worn- out Oldmixon's pittance ;t not a crumb for a mouse ! The captain of this banditti in the administration of Walpole was Arnall, a young attorney, whose mature genius for scurrilous party-papers broke forth in his tender nonage. This hireling was " The Free Briton," and in " The Gazetteer" Francis Walsingham, Esq., abusing the name of a profound statesman. It is said that he received above ten thousand pounds for his obscure labours ; and this patriot was suffered to retire with all the dignity which a pension could confer. He not only wrote for hire, but valued himself on it ; proud of the pliancy of his pen and of his principles, he wrote with- out remorse what his patron was forced to pay for, but to disavow. It was from a knowledge of these " Authors by Profession," writers of a faction in the name of the community, as they have been well described, that our great statesman Pitt fell into an error which he lived to regret. He did not * An ample view of these lucubrations is exhibited in the early volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine. f It was said of this man that "he had submitted to labour at the press, like a horse in a mill, till he became as blind and as wretched." To show the extent of the conscience of this class of writers, and to what lengths mere party- writers can proceed, when duly encouraged, Oldmixon, who was a Whig historian, if a violent party-writer ought ever to be dignified by so venerable a title, unmercifully rigid to all other historians, was himself guilty of the crimes with which he so loudly accused others. He charged three eminent persons with interpolating Lord Clarendon's History ; this charge was afterwards disproved by the passages being pro- duced in his Lordship's own handwriting, which had been fortunately preserved ; and yet this accuser of interpolation, when employed by Bishop Kennett to publish his collection of our historians, made no scruple of falsi- fying numerous passages in Daniel's Chronicle, which makes the first edition of that collection of no value. Authors by Profession. 11 distinguish between authors ; he confounded the mercenary with the men of talent and character ; and with this con- tracted view of the political influence of genius, he nrnst have viewed with awe, perhaps with surprise, its mighty labour in the volumes of Burke. But these " Authors by Profession " sometimes found a retribution of their crimes even from their masters. When the ardent patron was changed into a cold minister, their pen seemed wonderfully to have lost its point, and the feather could not any more tickle. They were flung off 1 , as Shak- speare's striking imagery expresses it, like An unregarded bulrush on the stream, To rot itself with motion. Look on the fate and fortune of AMHURST. The life of this " Author by Profession" points a moral. He flourished about the year 1730. He passed through a youth of iniquity, and was expelled his college for his irregularities : he had exhibited no marks of regeneration when he assailed the university with the periodical paper of the Terrae Filius ; a witty Saturnalian effusion on the manners and Toryism of Oxford, where the portraits have an extravagant kind of like- ness, and are so false and so true that they were universally relished and individually understood. Amhurst, having lost his character, hastened to reform the morals and politics of the nation. For near twenty years he toiled at " The Crafts- man," of which ten thousand are said to have been sold in one day. Admire this patriot ! an expelled collegian becomes an outrageous zealot for popular reform, and an intrepid Whig can bend to be yoked to all the drudgery of a faction ! Am- hurst succeeded in writing out the minister, and writing in Bolingbroke and Pulteney. Now came the hour of gratitude and generosity. His patrons mounted into power but they silently dropped the instrument of their ascension. The political prostitute stood shivering at the gate of preferment, which his masters had for ever flung against him. He died broken-hearted, and owed the charity of a grave to his book- seller. I must add one more striking example of a political author in the case of Dr. JAMES DRAKE, a man of genius, and an excellent writer. He resigned an honourable profession, that of medicine, to adopt a very contrary one, that of becoming an author by profession for a party. As a Tory writer, he 12 Calamities of Authors. dared every extremity of the law, while he evaded it hy every subtlety of artifice ; he sent a masked lady with his MS. to the printer, who was never discovered, and was once saved hy a flaw in the indictment from the simple change of an r for a t, or nor for not ; one of those shameful evasions by which the law, to its perpetual disgrace, so often protects the crimi- nal from punishment. Dr. Drake had the honour of hearing himself censured from the throne ; of being imprisoned ; of seeing his " Memorials of the Church of England " burned at London, and his "Historia Anglo-Scotica " at Edinburgh. Having enlisted himself in the pay of the booksellers, among other works, I suspect, he condescended to practise some literary impositions. For he has reprinted Father Parson's famous libel against the Earl of Leicester in Elizabeth's reign, under the title of " Secret Memoirs of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1706," 8vo, with a preface pretending it was printed from an old MS. Drake was a lover of literature ; he left behind him a ver- sion of Herodotus, and a " System of Anatomy," once the most popular and curious of its kind. After all this turmoil of his literary life, neither his masked lady nor the flaws in his indictments availed him. Government brought a writ of error, severely prosecuted him ; and, abandoned, as usual, by those for whom he had annihilated a genius which deserved a better fate, his perturbed spirit broke out into a fever, and he died raving against cruel persecutors, and patrons not much more humane. So much for some of those who have been " Authors by Profession " in one of the twofold capacities which Guthrie designed, that of writing for a minister ; the other, that of writing for the bookseller, though far more honourable, is sufficiently calamitous. In commercial times, the hope of profit is always a stimu- lating, but a degrading motive ; it dims the clearest intellect, it stills the proudest feelings. Habit and prejudice will soon reconcile even genius to the work of money, and to avow the motive without a blush. " An author by profession," at once ingenious and ingenuous, declared that, " till fame appears to be worth more than money, he would always prefer money to fame." JOHNSON had a notion that there existed no motive for writing but money ! Yet, crowned heads have sighed with the ambition of authorship, though this great master of the Authors by Profession. 13 human mind could suppose that on this subject men were not actuated either by the love of glory or of pleasure ! FIELDING, an author of great genius and of " the profession," in one of his " Covent-garden Journals " asserts, that " An author, in a country where there is no public provision for men of genius, is not obliged to be a more disinterested patriot than, any other. Why is he whose livelihood is in his pen a greater monster in using it to serve himself, than he who uses his tongue for the same purpose ?" But it is a very important question to ask, is this " live- lihood in the pen " really such ? Authors drudging on in obscurity, and enduring miseries which can never close but with their life shall this be worth even the humble designa- tion of a " livelihood ?" I am not now combating with them whether their taskwork degrades them, but whether they are receiving an equivalent for the violation of their genius, for the weight of the fetters they are wearing, and for the entailed miseries which form an author's sole legacies to his widow and his children. Far from me is the wish to degrade literature by the inquiry ; but it will be useful to many a youth of pro- mising talent, who is impatient to abandon all professions for this one, to consider well the calamities in which he will most probably participate. Among " Authors by Profession " who has displayed a more fruitful genius, and exercised more intense industry, with a loftier sense of his independence, than SMOLLETT ? But look into his life and enter into his feelings, and you will be shocked at the disparity of his situation with the genius of the man. His life was a succession of struggles, vexatious, and disappointments, yet of success in his writings. Smollett, who is a great poet, though he has written little in verse, and whose rich genius composed the most original pictures of human life, was compelled by his wants to debase his name by selling it to voyages and translations, which he never could have read. When he had worn himself down in the service of the public or the booksellers, there remained not, of all his slender remunerations, in the last stage of life, sufficient to convey him to a cheap country and a restorative air on the Continent. The father may have thought himself fortunate, that the daughter whom he loved with more than common aifection was no more to share in his wants ; but the husband had by his side the faithful companion of his life, left without 14 Calamities of Authors. a wreck of fortune. Smollett, gradually perishing in a foreign land,* neglected by an admiring public, and without fresh resources from the booksellers, who were receiving the income of his works, threw out his injured feelings in the character of Bramble; the warm generosity of his temper, but not his genius, seemed fleeting with his breath. In a foreign land his widow marked by a plain monument the spot of his burial, and she perished in solitude ! Yet Smollett dead soon an ornamented column is raised at the place of his birth,f while the grave of the author seemed to multiply the editions of his works. There are indeed grateful feelings in the public at large for a favourite author ; but the awful testimony of those feelings, by its gradual progress, must appear beyond the grave ! They visit the column consecrated by his name, and his features are most loved, most venerated, in the bust. Smollett himself shall be the historian of his own heart ; this most successful " Author by Profession," who, for his subsistence, composed masterworks of genius, and drudged in the toils of slavery, shall himself tell us what happened, and describe that state between life and death, partaking of both, which obscured his faculties and sickened his lofty spirit. " Had some of those who were pleased to call themselves my friends been at any pains to deserve the character, and told me ingenuously what I had to expect in the capacity of an author, when I first professed myself of that venerable fra- ternity, I should in all probability have spared myself the incredible labour and chagrin I have since undergone." As a relief from literary labour, Smollett once went to revisit his family, and to embrace the mother he loved ; but such was the irritation of his mind and the infirmity of his health, exhausted by the hard labours of authorship, that he never passed a more weary summer, nor ever found himself so incapable of indulging the warmest emotions of his heart. * Smollett died in a small abode in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, where he had resided some time in the hope of recovering his shattered health ; and where he wrote his " Humphrey Clinker." His friends had tried in vain to procure for him the appointment of consul to any one of the ports of the Mediterranean. He is buried in the English cemetery at Leghorn. ED. t It stands opposite Dalquhurn House, where he was born, near the village of Renton, Dumbartonshire. Had Smollett lived a few more years, he would have been entitled to an estate of about 1000J. a year. There is also a cenotaph to his memory on the banks of Leven-water, which he has consecrated in one of his best poems. ED. The Case of Authors stated. 15 On his return, in a letter, he gave this melancholy narrative of himself : " Between friends, I am now convinced that my brain ivas in some measure affected ; for I had a kind of Coma Vigil upon me from April to November, without intermission. In consideration of this circumstance, I know you will forgive all my peevishness and discontent ; tell Mrs. Moore that with regard to me, she has as yet seen nothing but the wrong side of the tapestry." Thus it happens in the life of authors, that they whose comic genius diffuses cheerfulness, create a pleasure which they cannot themselves participate. The Coma Vigil may be described by a verse of Shak- speare : Still-waking sleep ! that is not what it is ! Of praise and censure, says Smollett, in a letter to Dr. Moore, " Indeed I am sick of both, and wish to God my circumstances would allow me to consign my peri to oblivion." A wish, as fervently repeated by many " Authors by Pro- fession," who are not so fully entitled as was Smollett to write when he chose, or to have lived in quiet for what he had written. An author's life is therefore too often deprived of all social comfort whether he be the writer for a minister, or a bookseller but their case requires to be stated. THE CASE OF AUTHORS STATED, INCLUDING THE HISTORY OF LITERARY PROPERTY. JOHNSON has dignified the booksellers as "the patrons of literature," which was generous in that great author, who had written well and lived but ill all his life on that patronage. Eminent booksellers, in their constant intercourse with the most enlightened class of the community, that is, with the best authors and the best readers, partake of the intelligence around them ; their great capitals, too, are productive of good and evil in literature ; useful when they carry on great works, and pernicious when they sanction indifferent ones. Yet are they but commercial men. A trader can never be deemed a patron, for it would be romantic to purchase what is not sale- able ; and where no favour is conferred, there is no patronage. Authors continue poor, and booksellers become opulent ; an extraordinary result ! Booksellers are not agents for authors, 16 Calamities of Authors. out proprietors of their works ; so that the perpetual revenues of literature are solely in the possession of the trade. Is it then wonderful that even successful authors are indi- gent ? They are heirs to fortunes, but by a strange singu- larity they are disinherited at their birth ; for, on the publi- cation of their works, these cease to be their own property. Let that natural property be secured, and a good book would be an inheritance, a leasehold or a freehold, as you choose it ; it might at least last out a generation, and descend to the author's blood, were they permitted to live on their father's glory, as in all other property they do on his industry.* Something of this nature has been instituted in France, where the descendants of Corneille and Moliere retain a claim on the theatres whenever the dramas of their great ancestors are performed. In that country, literature has ever received peculiar honours it was there decreed, in the affair of Cre- billon, that literary productions are not seizable by creditors.f The history of literary property in this country might form as ludicrous a narrative as Lucian's " true history." It was a long while doubtful whether any such thing existed, at the very time when booksellers were assigning over the perpetual copyrights of books, and making them the subject of family settlements for the provision of their wives and children ! When Tonson, in 1739, obtained an injunction to restrain * The following facts will show the value of literary property ; immense profits and cheap purchases ! The manuscript of ' ' Robinson Crusoe " ran through the whole trade, and no one would print it ; the bookseller who did purchase it, who, it is said, was not remarkable for his discernment, but for a speculative turn, got a thousand guineas by it. How many have the booksellers since accumulated ? Burn's "Justice" was disposed of by its author for a trifle, as well as Buchan's "Domestic Medicine ;" these works yield annual incomes. Goldsmith's " Vicar of Wakefield " was sold in the hour of distress, with little distinction from any other work in that class of composition; and "Evelina" produced five guineas from the niggardly trader. Dr. Johnson fixed the price of his " Biography of the Poets" at two hundred guineas ; and Mr. Malone observes, the booksellers in the course of twenty-five years have probably got five thousand. I could add a great number of facts of this nature which relate to living writers ; the profits of their own works for two or three years would rescue them from the horrors and humiliation of pauperism. It is, perhaps, useful to record, that, while the compositions of genius are but slightly remunerated, though sometimes as productive as "the household stuff" of literature, the latter is rewarded with princely magnificence. At the sale of the Robinsons, the copyright of " Vyse's Spelling-book " was sold at the enormous price of 22001., with an annuity of fifty guineas to the author ! t The circumstance, with the poet's dignified petition, and the King's honourable decree, are preserved in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 406. The Case of Authors stated. 17 another bookseller from printing Milton's " Paradise Lost," he brought into court as a proof of his title an assignment of the original copyright, made over by the sublime poet in 1667, which was read. Milton received for this assignment the sum which we all know Tonson and all his family and assignees rode in their carriages with the profits of the five- pound epic.* The verbal and tasteless lawyers, not many years past, with legal metaphysics, wrangled like the schoolmen, inquiring of each other, " whether the style and ideas of an author were tangible things ; or if these were a property, how is possession to be taken, or any act of occupancy made on mere intel- lectual ideas." Nothing, said they, can be an object of pro- perty but which has a corporeal substance ; the air and the light, to which they compared an author's ideas, are common to all ; ideas in the MS. state were compared to birds in a cage; while the author confines them in his own dominion, none but he has a right to let them fly ; but the moment he allows the bird to escape from his hand, it is no violation of property in any one to make it his own. And to prove that there existed no property after publication, they found an analogy in the gathering of acorns, or in seizing on a vacant piece of ground ; and thus degrading that most refined piece of art formed in the highest state of society, a literary pro- duction, they brought us back to a state of nature ; and seem to have concluded' that literary property was purely ideal ; a phantom which, as its author could neither grasp nor confine * The elder Tonson's portrait represents him in his gown and cap, hold- ing in his right hand a volume lettered " Paradise Lost " such a favourite object was^Iilton and copyright ! Jacob Tonson was the founder of a race who long honoured literature. His rise in life is curious. He was at first unable to pay twenty pounds for a play by Dryden, and joined with another bookseller to advance that sum ; the play sold, and Tonson was afterwards enabled to purchase the succeeding ones. He and his nephew died worth two hundred thousand pounds. Much old Tonson owed to his own in- dustry ; but he was a mere trader. He and Drydeu had frequent bicker- ings ; he insisted on receiving 10,000 verses for two hundred and sixty -eight pounds, and poor Dryden threw in the finest Ode in the language towards the number. He would pay in the base coin which was then current ; which was a loss to the poet. Tonson once complained to Dryden, that he had only received 1446 lines of his translation of Ovid for his Miscellany for fifty guineas, when he had calculated at the rate of 1518 lines for forty guineas ; he gives the poet a piece of critical reasoning, that he considered he had a better bargain with " Juvenal," which is reckoned " not so easy to translate as Ovid." In these times such a mere trader in literature has disappeared. C 18 Calamities of Authors. to himself, he must entirely depend on the public benevolence for his reward.* The Ideas, that is, the work of an author, are " tangible things." " There are works," to quote the words of a near and dear relative, " which require great learning, great in- dustry, great labour, and great capital, in their preparation. They assume a palpable form. You may fill warehouses with them, and freight ships ; and the tenure by which they are held is superior to that of all other property, for it is original. It is tenure which does not exist in a doubtful title ; which does not spring from any adventitious circumstances; it is not found it is not purchased it is not prescriptive it is original ; so it is the most natural of all titles, because it is the most simple and least artificial. It is paramount and sovereign, because it is a tenure by creation. "f There were indeed some more generous spirits and better philosophers fortunately found on the same bench ; and the identity of a literary composition was resolved into its senti- ments and language, besides what was more obviously valuable to some persons, the print and paper. On this slight prin- ciple was issued the profound award which accorded a certain term of years to any work, however immortal. They could not diminish the immortality of a book, but only its reward. In all the litigations respecting literary property, authors were little considered except some honourable testimonies due to genius, from the sense of WILLES,' and the eloquence of MANSFIELD. Literary property was still disputed, like the rights of a parish common. An honest printer, who could not always write grammar, had the shrewdness to make a bold effort in this scramble, and perceiving that even by this last favourable award all literary property would necessarily centre with the booksellers, now stood forward for his own body the printers. This rough advocate observed that " a few persons who call themselves booksellers, about the number of twenty-Jive, have kept the monopoly of books and copies in their hands, to the entire exclusion of all others, but more especially the printers, whom they have always held it a rule never to let become purchasers in copy." Not a word for the authors ! As for them, they were doomed by both parties as the fat oblation : they indeed sent forth some meek bleat- * Sir James Burrows' Reports on the question concerning Literary Pro- perty, 4to. London, 1773. t Mirror of Parliament, 3529. The Case of Authors stated. 19 ings ; but what were AUTHOBS, between judges, booksellers, and printers ? the sacrificed .among the sacrificers ! All this was reasoning in a circle. LITEBABY PBOPEBTY in our nation arose from a new state of society. These lawyers could never develope its nature by wild analogies, nor dis- cover it in any common-law right; for our common law, composed of immemorial customs, could never have had in its contemplation an object which could not have existed in barbarous periods. Literature, in its enlarged spirit, certainly never entered into the thoughts or attention of our rude an- cestors. All their views were bounded by the necessaries of life ; and as yet they had no conception of the impalpable, invisible, yet sovereign dominion of the human mind enough for our rough heroes was that of the seas ! Before the reign of Henry VIII. great authors composed occasionally a book in Latin, which none but other great authors cared for, and which the people could not read. In the reign of Elizabeth, ROGEB ASCHAM appeared one of those men of genius born to create a new era in the history of their nation. The first English author who may be regarded as the founder of our prose style was Roger Ascham, the venerable parent of our native literature. At a time when our scholars affected to contemn the vernacular idiom, and in their Latin works were losing their better fame, that of being understood by all their countrymen, Ascham boldly avowed the design of setting an example, in his own words, TO SPEAK AS THE COMMON PEOPLE, TO THINK AS WISE MEN. His pristine English is still forcible without pedantry, and still beautiful without ornament.* The illustrious BACON condescended to follow this new example in the most popular of his works. This change in our literature was like a revelation ; these men taught us our language in books. We became a reading people ; and then the demand for books naturally produced a new order of authors, who traded in literature. It was then, so early as in the Elizabethan age, that literary property may be said to derive its obscure origin in this nation. It was protected in an indirect manner by the licensers of the press ; for although that was a mere political institution, only designed to prevent seditious and irreligious publications, yet, as no book could be printed without a licence, there was honour enough in the licensers not to allow other publishers * See "Amenities of Literature" for an account of this author. c2 20 Calamities of Authors. to infringe on the privilege granted to the first claimant. In Queen Anne's time, when the office of licensers was extin- guished, a more liberal genius was rising in the nation, and literary property received a more definite and a more power- ful protection. A limited term was granted to every author to reap the fruits of his labours ; and Lord Hardwicke pro- nounced this statute " a universal patent for authors." Yet, subsequently, the subject of literary property involved dis- cussion ; even at so late a period as in 1769 it was still to be litigated. It was then granted that originally an author had at common law a property in his work, but that the act of Anne took away all copyright after the expiration of the terms it permitted. As the matter now stands, let us address an arithmetical age but my pen hesitates to bring down my subject to an argument fitted to " these coster-monger times."* On the present principle of literary property, it results that an author disposes of a leasehold property of twenty-eight years, often for less than the price of one year's purchase ! How many living authors are the sad witnesses of this fact, who, like so many Esaus, have sold their inheritance for a meal ! I leave the whole school of Adam Smith to calm their calculating emotions concerning " that unprosperous race of men" (some- times this master-seer calls them "unproductive") "com- monly called men of letters" who are pretty much in the situation which lawyers and physicians would be in, were these, as he tells us, in that state when " a scholar and a beggar seem to have been very nearly synonymous terms" and this melancholy fact that man of genius discovered, without the feather of his pen brushing away a tear from his lid without one spontaneous and indignant groan ! Authors may exclaim, " we ask for justice, not charity." They would not need to require any favour, nor claim any other than that protection which an enlightened government, in its wisdom and its justice, must bestow. They would leave to the public disposition the sole appreciation of their works ; their book must make its own fortune ; a bad work may be cried up, and a good work may be cried down ; * A coster- monger, or .Costard-monger, is a dealer in apples, which are so called because they are shaped like a costard, i. e. a man's head. Steevens. Johnson explains the phrase eloquently : "In these times when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness, that rates the merit of everything by money." The Case of Authors stated. 21 but Faction will soon lose its voice, and Truth acquire one. The cause we are pleading is not the calamities of indifferent writers, but of those whose utility or whose genius long survives that limited term which has been so hardly wrenched from the penurious hand of verbal lawyers. Every lover of literature, and every votary of humanity has long felt indignant at that sordid state and all those secret sorrows to which men of the finest genius, or of sublime industry, are reduced and degraded in society. Johnson himself, who rejected that perpetuity of literary property which some enthusiasts seemed to claim at the time the subject was undergoing the discussion of the judges, is, however, for extending the copyright to a cen- tury. Could authors secure this, their natural right, litera- ture would acquire a permanent and a nobler reward ; for great authors would then be distinguished by the very profits they would receive from that obscure multitude whose com- mon disgraces they frequently participate, notwithstanding the superiority of their own genius. Johnson himself will serve as a proof of the incompetent remuneration of literary property. He undertook and he performed an Herculean labour, which employed him so many years that the price he obtained was exhausted before the work was concluded the wages did not even last as long as the labour ! Where, then, is the author to look forward, when such works are undertaken, for a provision for his family, or for his future existence ? It would naturally arise from the work itself, were authors not the most ill-treated and oppressed class of the community. The daughter of MILTON need not have craved the alms of the admirers of her father, if the right of authors had been better protected ; his own " Paradise Lost" had then been her better portion and her most honourable inheritance. The children of BURNS would have required no subscriptions ; that annual tribute which the public pay to the genius of their parent was their due, and would have been their fortune. Authors now submit to have a shorter life than their own celebrity. While the book markets of Europe are supplied with the writings of English authors, and they have a wider diffusion in America than at home, it seems a national ingrati- sude to limit the existence of works for their authors to a short number of years, and then to seize on their possession for ever. 22 THE SUFFERINGS OF AUTHORS. THE natural rights and properties of ATTTHOBS not having been sufficiently protected, they are defrauded, not indeed of their fame, though they may not always live to witness it, but of their uninterrupted profits, which might save them from their frequent degradation in society. That act of Anne which confers on them some right of property, ac- knowledges that works of learned men have been carried on "too often to the ruin of them and their families." Hence we trace a literary calamity which the public endure in those "Authors by Profession," who, finding often too late in life that it is the worst profession, are not scru- pulous to live by some means or other. " I must live," cried one of the brotherhood, shrugging his shoulders in his misery, and almost blushing for a libel he had just printed " I do not see the necessity," was the dignified reply. Trade was certainly not the origin of authorship. Most of our great authors have written from a more impetuous impulse than that of a mechanic ; urged by a loftier motive than that of humouring the popular taste, they have not lowered themselves by writing down to the public, but have raised the public to them. Untasked, they composed at propitious intervals; and feeling, not labour, was in their last, as in their first page. When we became a reading people, books were to be suited to popular tastes, and then that trade was opened that leads to the workhouse. A new race sprang up, that, like Ascham, "spoke as the common people;" but would not, like Ascham, "think as wise men." The founders of " Authors by Profession" appear as far back as in the Eliza- bethan age. Then there were some roguish wits, who, taking advantage of the public humour, and yielding their principle to their pen, lived to write, and wrote to live ; loose livers and loose writers ! like Autolycus, they ran to the fair, with baskets of hasty manufactures, fit for clowns and maidens.* * An abundance of these amusing tracts eagerly bought up in their day, but which came in the following generation to the ballad-stalls, are in the present enshrined in the cabinets of the curious. Such are the revolutions of literature ! [It is by no means uncommon to find them realise sums at the rate of a guinea a page ; but it is to be solely attributed to their extreme rarity 5 for in many instances the reprints of such tracts are worthless.] The Svfferings of Authors. 23 Even then flourished the craft of authorship, and the mysteries of bookselling. ROBERT GREENE, the master-wit, wrote "The Art of Coney-catching," or Cheatery, in which he was an adept ; he died of a surfeit of Rhenish and pickled herrings, at a fatal banquet of authors ; and left as his legacy among the "Authors by Profession" " A Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance." One died of another kind of surfeit. Another was assassinated in a brothel. But the list of the calamities of all these worthies have as great variety as those of the Seven Champions.* Nor were the stationers, or book-venders, as the publishers of books were first designated, at a fault in the mysteries of "coney-catching." Deceptive and vaunting title-pages were practised to such excess, that TOM NASH, an " Author by Profession," never fastidiously modest, blushed at the title of his " Pierce Pennilesse," which the publisher had flourished in the first edition, like " a tedious mountebank." The booksellers forged great names to recommend their works, and passed off in currency their base metal stamped with a royal head. " It was an usual thing in those days," says honest Anthony Wood, " to set a great name to a book or books, by the sharking booksellers or snivelling writers, to get bread." Such authors as these are unfortunate, before they are cri- minal ; they often tire out their youth before they discover that " Author by Profession" is a denomination ridiculously assumed, for it is none ! The first efforts of men of genius are usually honourable ones ; but too often they suffer that genius to be debased. Many who would have composed history have turned voluminous party-writers ; many a noble satirist has become a hungry libeller. Men who are starved * Poverty and the gaol alternated with tavern carouses or the place of honour among the wild young gallants at the playhouses. They were gentlemen or beggars as daily circumstances ordained. When this was the case with such authors as Greene, Peele, and Massinger, we need not wonder at finding "a whole knot" of writers in infinitely worse plight, who lived (or starved) by writing ballads aud pamphlets on temporary subjects. In a brief tract, called " The Downfall of Temporising Poets," published 1641, they are said to be "an indifferent strong corporation, twenty-three of you sufficient writers, besides Martin Parker," who was the great ballad and pamphlet writer of the day. The shifts they were put to, and the difficul- ties of their living, is denoted in the reply of one of the characters in this tract, who on being asked if he has money, replies " Money ? I wonder where you ever see poets have money two days together ; I sold a copy last night, and have spent the money ; and now have another copy to sell, but nobody will buy it." ED. 24 Calamities of Authors. in society, hold to it but loosely. They are the children of Nemesis ! they avenge themselves and with the Satan of MILTON they exclaim, Evil, be thou my good ! Never were their feelings more vehemently echoed than by this Nash the creature of genius, of famine, and despair. He lived indeed in the age of Elizabeth, but writes as if he had lived in our own. He proclaimed himself to the world as Pierce Pennilesse, and on a retrospect of his literary life, observes that he had " sat up late and rose early, contended with the cold, and conversed with scarcitie ;" he says, " all my labours turned to losse, I was despised and neglected, my paines not regarded, or slightly rewarded, and I myself, in prime of my best wit, laid open to povertie. Whereupon I accused my fortune, railed on my patrons, bit my pen, rent my papers, and raged." And then comes the after-reflection, which so frequently provokes the anger of genius : " How many base men that wanted those parts I had, enjoyed con- tent at will, and had wealth at command ! I called to mind a cobbler that was worth five hundred pounds ; an hostler that had built a goodly inn ; a carman in a leather pilche that had whipt a thousand pound out of his horse's tail and have I more than these ? thought I to myself ; am I better born ? am I better brought up ? yea, and better favoured ! and yet am I a beggar ? How am I crost, or whence is this curse ? Even from hence, the men that should employ such as I am, are enamoured of their own wits, though they be never so scurvie ; that a scrivener is better paid than a scholar ; and men of art must seek to live among cormorants, or be kept under by dunces, who count it policy to keep them bare to follow their books the better." And then, Nash thus utters the cries of A DESPAIRING AUTHOR ! Why is't damnation to despair and die When life is my true happiness' disease ? My soul ! my soul ! thy safety makes me fly Tke faulty means that might my pain appease ; Divines and dying men may talk of hell ; But in my heart her several torments dwell. Ah worthless wit, to train me to this woe ! Deceitful arts that nourish discontent ! Ill thrive the folly that bewitch'd me so ! Vain thoughts, adieu ! for now I will repent ; And yet my wants persuade me to proceed, Since none take pity of a scholar's need ! A Mendicant Author. 25 Forgive me, God, although I curse my birth, And ban the air wherein I breathe a wretch ! For misery hath daunted all my mirth Without redress complains my careless verse, And Midas' ears relent not at my moan ! In some far land will I my griefs rehearse, 'Mongst them that will be moved when I shall groan ! England, adieu ! the soil that brought me forth ! Adieu, unkinde ! where skill is nothing worth ! Such was the miserable cry of an " Author by Profession" in the reign of Elizabeth. Nash not only renounces his country in his despair and hesitates on " the faulty means" which have appeased the pangs of many of his unhappy bro- thers, but he proves also the weakness of the moral principle among these men of genius ; for he promises, if any Maecenas will bind him by his bounty, he will do him " as much honour as any poet of my beardless years in England but," he adds, " if he be sent away with a flea in his ear, let him look that I will rail on him soundly ; not for an hour or a day, while the injury is fresh in my memory, but in some elaborate polished poem, which I will leave to the world when I am dead, to be a living image to times to come of his beggarly parsimony." Poets might imagine that CHATTEBTON had written all this, about the time he struck a balance of his profit and loss by the death of Beckford the Lord Mayor, in which he concludes with " I am glad he is dead by 31. 13s. 6J."* A MENDICANT AUTHOR, AND THE PATRONS OP FORMER TIMES. IT must be confessed, that before "Authors by Profession" had fallen into the hands of the booksellers, they endured peculiar grievances. They were pitiable retainers of some * Chatterton had written a political essay for "The North Briton," which opened with the preluding flourish of " A spirited people freeing themselves from insupportable slavery :" it was, however, though accepted, not printed, on account of the Lord Mayor's death. The patriot thus cal- culated the death of his great patron ! *. d. Lost by his death in this Essay . . . 1 11 6 Gained in Elegies . . 22 in Essays . . 33 550 Am glad he is dead by . . . . 3 13 6 26 Calamities of Authors. great family. The miseries of such an author, and the inso- lence and penuriousness of his patrons, who would not return the poetry they liked and would not pay for, may be traced in the eventful life of THOMAS CHURCHYARD, a poet of the age of Elizabeth, one of those unfortunate men who have written poetry all their days, and lived a long life to complete the misfortune. His muse was so fertile, that his works pass all enumeration. He courted numerous patrons, who valued the poetry, while they left the poet to his own miserable contem- plations. In a long catalogue of his works, which this poet has himself given, he adds a few memoranda, as he proceeds, a little ludicrous, but very melancholy. He wrote a book which he could never afterwards recover from one of his patrons, and adds, " all which book was in as good verse as ever I made; an honourable knight dwelling in the Black Friers can witness the same, because I read it unto him." Another accorded him the same remuneration on which he adds, " An infinite number of other songs and sonnets given where they cannot be recovered, nor purchase any favour when they are craved." Still, however, he announces " Twelve long Tales for Christmas, dedicated to twelve honourable lords." Well might Churchyard write his own sad life, under the title of " The Tragicall Discourse of the Haplesse Man's Life."* It will not be easy to parallel this pathetic description of the wretched age of a poor neglected poet mourning over a youth vainly spent. High time it is to haste my carcase hence : Youth stole away and felt no kind of joy, And age he left in tiavail ever since; The wanton days that made me nice and coy Were but a dream, a shadow, and a toy * This author, now little known but to the student of our rarer early poets, was a native of Shrewsbury, and had served in the army. He wrote a large number of poetical pieces, all now of the greatest rarity ; their names have been preserved by that industrious antiquary Joseph Ritson, in hia Bittiographia, Poetica,. The principal one was termed " The Worthi- ness of Wales," and is written in laudation of the Principality. He was frequently employed to supply verses for Court Masques and Pageantry. He composed " all the devises, pastimes, and plays at Norwich " when Queen Elizabeth was entertained there ; as well as gratulatory verses to her at Woodstock. He speaks of his mind as "never free from studie," and his body "seldom void of toyle " "and yet both of them neither brought greate benefits to the life, nor blessing to the soule" he adds, in the words of a man whose hope deferred has made his heart sick ! ED. A Mendicant Author. 27 I look in glass, and find my cheeks so lean That every hour I do but wish me dead ; Now back bends down, and forwards falls the head, And hollow eyes in wrinkled brow doth shrond As though two stars were creeping under cloud. The lips wax cold, and look both pale and thin, The teeth fall out as nutts forsook the shell, The bare bald head but shows where hair hath been, The lively joints wax weary, stiff, and still, The ready tongue now falters in his tale ; The courage quails as strength decays and goes. . . . The thatcher hath a cottage poor you see : The shepherd knows where he shall sleep at night ; The daily drudge from cares can quiet be : Thus fortune sends some rest to every wight ; And I was born to house and hind by right. . . . Well, ere my breath my body do forsake My spirit I bequeath to God above ; My books, my scrawls, and songs that I did make, I leave with friends that freely did me love. . . . Now, friends, shake hands, I must be gone, my boys ! Our mirth takes end, our triumph all is done ; Our tickling talk, our sports and merry toys Do glide away like shadow of the sun. Another comes when I my race have run, Shall pass the time with you in better plight, And find good cause of greater things to write. Yet Churchyard was no contemptible bard ; he composed a national poem, " The Worthiness of Wales," which has been reprinted, and will be still dear to his " Fatherland," as the Hollanders expressively denote their natal spot. He wrote in the " Mirrour of Magistrates," the Life of Wolsey, which has parts of great dignity ; and the Life of Jane Shore, which was much noticed in his day, for a severe critic of the times writes : Hath not Shore's wife, although a light-skirt she, Given him a chaste, long, lasting memorie ? Churchyard, and the miseries of his poetical life, are alluded to by Spenser. He is old Palemon in " Colin Clout's come Home again." Spenser is supposed to describe this laborious writer for half a century, whose melancholy pipe, in his old age, may make the reader " rew :" Yet he himself may rewed be more right, That sung so long untill quite hoarse he grew. 28 Calamities of Authors. His epitaph, preserved by Camden, is extremely instructive to all poets, could epitaphs instruct them : Poverty and poetry his tomb doth inclose ; Wherefore, good neighbours, be merry in prose. It appears also by a confession of Tom Nash, that an author would then, pressed by the res angusta dorni, when " the bottom of his purse was turned upward," submit to compose pieces for gentlemen who aspired to authorship. He tells us on some occasion, that he was then in the country composing poetry for some country squire ; and says, " I am faine to let my plow stand still in the midst of a furrow, to follow these Senior Fantasticos, to whose amorous vil- lanellas* I prostitute my pen," and this, too, " twice or thrice in a month;" and he complains that it is " poverty which alone maketh me so unconstant to my determined studies, trudging from place to place to and fro, and prosecuting the means to keep me from idlenesse." An author was then much like a vagrant. Even at a later period, in the reign of the literary James, great authors were reduced to a state of mendicity, and lived on alms, although their lives and their fortunes had been con- sumed in forming national labours. The antiquary STOWE exhibits a striking example of the rewards conferred on such valued authors. Stowe had devoted his life, and exhausted his patrimony, in the study of English antiquities ; he had travelled on foot throughout the kingdom, inspecting all mo- numents of antiquity, and rescuing what he could from the dispersed libraries of the monasteries. His stupendous col- lections, in his own handwriting, still exist, to provoke the feeble industry of literary loiterers. He felt through life the enthusiasm of study ; and seated in his monkish library, living with the dead more than with the living, he was still a student of taste : for Spenser the poet visited the library of Stowe ; and the first good edition of Chaucer was made so chiefly by the labours of our author. Late in life, worn-out with study and the cares of poverty, neglected by that proud metropolis of which he had been the historian, his good- humour did not desert him ; for being afflicted with sharp pains in his aged feet, he observed that " his affliction lay in that part which formerly he had made so much use of." * Villanellas, or rather " Villanescas, are properly country rustic Bongs, but commonly taken for ingenious ones made in imitation of them." PINEDA. A Mendicant Author. 29 Many a mile had he wandered and much had he expended, for those treasures of antiquities which had exhausted his for- tune, and with which he had formed works of great public utility. It was in his eightieth year that Stowe at length received a public acknowledgment of his services, which will appear to us of a very extraordinary nature. He was so re- duced in his circumstances that he petitioned James I. for a licence to collect alms for himself! "as a recompense for his labours and travel of forty-Jive years, in setting forth the Chronicles of England, and eight years taken up in the Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, towards his relief now in his old age ; having left his former means of living, and only employing himself for the service and good of his country." Letters-patent under the great seal were granted. After no penurious commendations of Stowe's labours, he is permitted " to gather the benevolence of well-disposed people within this realm of England ; to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects." These letters-patent were to be published by the clergy from their pulpits ; they produced so little, that they were renewed for another twelvemonth : one entire parish in the city contributed seven shillings and six- pence ! Such, then, was the patronage received by Stowe, to be a licensed beggar throughout the kingdom for one twelve- month ! Such was the public remuneration of a man who had been useful to his nation, but not to himself! Such was the first age of Patronage, which branched out in the last century into an age of Subscriptions, when an author levied contributions before his work appeared ; a mode which inundated our literature with a great portion of its worthless volumes : of these the most remarkable are the splendid publications of Richard Blome ; they may be called fictitious works ; for they are only mutilated transcripts from Camden and Speed, but richly ornamented, and pompously printed, which this literary adventurer, said to have been a gentleman, loaded the world with, by the aid of his sub- scribers. Another age was that of Dedications* when the * This practice of dedications had indeed flourished before ; for authors had even prefixed numerous dedications to the same work, or dedicated to different patrons the separate divisions. Fuller's "Church History" is disgraced by the introduction of twelve title-pages, besides the general one ; with as many particular dedications, and no less than fifty or sixty inscrip- tions, addressed to benefactors ; for which he is severely censured by Heylin. It was an expedient to procure dedication fees ; for publishing books by subscription was an art not then discovered. 30 Calamities of Authors. author was to lift his tiny patron to the skies, in an inverse ratio as he lowered himself, in this public exhibition. Some- times the party haggled about the price;* or the statue, while stepping into his niche, would turn round on the author to assist his invention. A patron of Peter Motteux, dissa- tisfied with Peter's colder temperament, composed the super- lative dedication to himself, and completed the misery of the author by subscribing it with Motteux's name !f Worse fared it when authors were the unlucky hawkers of their own works ; of which I shall give a remarkable instance in MTLES DAYIES, a learned man maddened by want and indignation. The subject before us exhibits one of the most singular spectacles in these volumes ; that of a scholar of extensive erudition, whose life seems to have passed in the study of languages and the sciences, while his faculties appear to have been disordered from the simplicity of his nature, and driven to madness by indigence and insult. He formed the wild re- solution of becoming a mendicant author, the hawker of his own works ; and by this mode endured all the aggravated sufferings, the great and the petty insults of all ranks of society, * The price of the dedication of a play was even fixed, from five to ten guineas, from the Revolution to the time of George I., when it rose to twenty but sometimes a bargain was to be struck when the author and the play were alike indifferent. Even on these terms could vanity be gratified with the coarse luxury of panegyric, of which every one knew the price. + This circumstance was so notorious at the time, that it occasioned a poetical satire in a dialogue between Motteux and his patron Henningliam preserved in that vast flower-bed or dunghill, for it is both, of " Poems on Affairs of State," vol. ii. 251. The patron, in his zeal to omit no pos- sible distinction that could attach to him, had given one circumstance which no one but himself could have known, and which he thus regrets : " PATRON. I must confess I was to blame That one particular to name ; The rest could never have been known, / made the style so like thy own. POET. I beg your pardon, Sir, for that ! PATRON. Why d e what would you be at ? / writ below myself, you sot ! Avoiding figures, tropes, what not ; For fear I should my fancy raise Above the level of thy plays /" A Mendicant Author. 31 and even sometimes from men of learning themselves, who denied a mendicant author the sympathy of a brother. MTLES DAVIES and his works are imperfectly known to the most curious of our literary collectors. His name has scarcely reached a few ; the author and his works are equally extraordinary, and claim a right to be preserved in this trea- tise on the " Calamities of Authors." Our author commenced printing a work, difficult, from its miscellaneous character, to describe ; of which the volumes appeared at different periods. The early and the most valuable volumes were the first and second ; they are a kind of biblio- graphical, biographical, and critical work, on English Authors. They all bear a general title of " Athenae Britannic*."* Collectors have sometimes met with a very curious volume, entitled " Icon Libellorum," and sometimes the same book, under another title "A Critical History of Pamphlets." This rare book forms the first volume of the " Athense Bri- tannicae." The author was Myles Davies, whose biography is quite unknown : he may now be his own biographer. He was a Welsh clergyman, a vehement foe to Popery, Arianism, and Socinianism, of the most fervent loyalty to George I. and the Hanoverian succession ; a scholar, skilled in Greek and Latin, and in all the modern languages. Quitting his native spot with political disgust, he changed his character in the metropolis, for he subscribes himself " Counsellor-at-Law." In an evil hour he commenced author, not only surrounded by his books, but with the more urgent companions of a wife * " Atlience Britannicce, or a Critical History of the Oxford and Cam- bridge Writers and Writings, with those of the Dissenters and Romanists, as well as other Authors and Worthies, both Domestic and Foreign, both Ancient and Modern. Together with an occasional freedom of thought, in criticising and comparing the parallel qualifications of the most eminent authors and their performances, both in MS. and print, both at home and abroad. By M. D. London, 1716." On the first volume of this series, Dr. Farmer, a bloodhound of unfailing scent in curious and obscure English books, has written on the leaf " This is the only copy I have met with." Even the great bibliographer, Baker, of Cambridge, never met but with three volumes (the edition at the British Museum is in seven), sent him as a great curiosity by the Earl of Oxford, and now deposited in his collection at St. John's College. Baker has written this memorandum in the first volume : " Few copies were printed, so the work has become scarce, and for that reason will be valued. The book in the greatest part is borrowed from modern historians, but yet contains some things more uncommon, and not easily to be met with." How superlatively rare must be the English volumes which the eyes of Farmer and Baker never lighted on ! 32 Calamities of Authors. and family; and with that childlike simplicity which some- times marks the mind of a retired scholar, we perceive him imagining that his immense reading would prove a source, not easily exhausted, for their subsistence. From the first volumes of his series much curious literary history may be extracted, amidst the loose and wandering elements of this literary chaos. In his dedication to the Prince he professes " to represent writers and writings in a catoptrick view." The preface to the second volume opens his plan ; and no- thing as yet indicates those rambling humours which his sub- sequent labours exhibit. A.S he proceeded in forming these volumes, I suspect, either that his mind became a little disordered, or that he discovered that mere literature found but penurious patrons in " the Few ;" for, attempting to gain over all classes of society, he varied his investigations, and courted attention, by writing on law, physic, divinity, as well as literary topics. By his account " The avarice of booksellers, and the stinginess of hard- hearted patrons, had driven him into a cursed company of door-keeping herds, to meet the irrational brutality of those uneducated mischievous animals called footmen, house-porters, poetasters, mumpers, apothecaries, attorneys, and such like beasts of prey," who were, like himself, sometimes barred up for hours in the menagerie of a great man's antechamber. In his addresses to Drs. Mead and Freind, he declares " My misfortunes drive me to publish my writings for a poor live- lihood ; and nothing but the utmost necessity could make any man in his senses to endeavour at it, in a method so burthensome to the modesty and education of a scholar." In French he dedicates to George I. ; and in the Harleian MSS. I discovered a long letter to the Earl of Oxford, by our author, in French, with a Latin ode. Never was more inno- cent bribery proffered to a minister ! He composed what he calls Strictures Pindaricce on the " Mughouses," then poli- tical clubs;* celebrates English authors in the same odes, * These clubs are described in Mack y's "Journey through England," 1724. He says they were formed to uphold the Royalist party on the accession of King George I. " This induced a set of gentlemen to establish Mughouses in all the corners of this great city, for well-affected tradesmen to meet and keep up the spirit of loyalty to the Protestant succession," and to be ready to join their forces for the suppression of the other party. "Many an encounter they had, till at last the Parliament was obliged by a law to put A Mendicant Author. 33 and inserts a political Latin drama, called " Pallas Anglicana." Maevius and Bavius were never more indefatigable ! The author's intellect gradually discovers its confusion amidst the loud cries of penury and despair. To paint the distresses of an author soliciting alms for a book which he presents and which, whatever may be its value, comes at least as an evidence that the suppliant is a learned man is a case so uncommon, that the invention of the novelist seems necessary to fill up the picture. But Myles Davies is an artist in his own simple narrative. Our author has given the names of several of his unwilling customers : " Those squeeze-farthing and hoard-penny ignoramus doc- tors, with several great personages who formed excuses for not accepting my books ; or they would receive them, but give nothing for them ; or else deny they had them, or re- membered anything of them ; and so gave me nothing for my last present of books, though they kept them gratis et ingratiis. " But his Grace of the Dutch extraction in Holland (said to be akin to Mynheer Vander B nek) had a peculiar grace in receiving my present of books and odes, which, being bundled up together with a letter and ode upon his Graceship, and carried in by his porter, I was bid to call for an answer five years hence. I asked the porter what he meant by that ? I suppose, said he, four or five days hence ; but it proved five or six months after, before I could get any answer, though I had writ five or six letters in French with fresh odes upon his Graceship, and an account where I lived, and what noble- men had accepted of my present. I attended about the door three or four times a week all that time constantly from twelve to four or five o'clock in the evening; and walking under the fore windows of the parlours, once that time his and her Grace came after dinner to stare at me, with open an end to this city strife, which had this good effect, that upon the pulling down of the Mughouse in Salisbury Court, for which some boys were hanged on this act, the city has not been troubled with them since." It was the custom in these houses to allow no other drink but ale to be con- sumed, which was brought in mugs of earthenware ; a chairman was elected, and he called on the members of the company for songs, which were gene- rally party ballads of a strongly-worded kind, as may be seen in the small collection printed in 1716, entitled " A Collection of State Songs, Poems, &c., published since the Rebellion, and sung in the several Mughouses in the cities of London and Westminster." ED. D 34 Calamities of Authors. windows and shut mouths, hut filled with fair water, which they spouted with so much dexterity that they twisted the water through their teeth and mouth-skrew, to flash near my face, and yet just to miss me, though my nose could not well miss the natural flavour of the orange-water showering so very near me. Her Grace began the water-work, but not very gracefully, especially for an English lady of her description, airs, and qualities, to make a stranger her spitting-post, who had been guilty of no other offence than to offer her husband some writings. His Grace followed, yet first stood looking so wistfully towards me, that I verily thought he had a mind to throw me a guinea or two for all these indignities, and two or three months' then sleeveless waiting upon him and accord- ingly 1 advanced to address his Grace to remember the poor author ; but, instead of an answer, he immediately undams his mouth, out fly whole showers of lymphatic rockets, which had like to have put out my mortal eyes." Still he was not disheartened, and still applied for his bundle of books, which were returned to him at length un- opened, with "half a guinea upon top of the cargo," and " with a desire to receive no more. I plucked up courage, murmuring within myself ' Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.' " He sarcastically observes, " As I was still jogging on homewards, I thought that a great many were called their Graces, not for any grace or favour they had truly deserved with God or man, but for the same reason of contraries, that the Parcae or Destinies, were so called, because they spared none, or were not truly the Parcee, quia non parcebant." Our indigent and indignant author, by the faithfulness of his representations, mingles with his anger some ludicrous scenes of literary mendicity. " I can't choose (now I am upon the fatal subject) but make one observation or two more upon the various rencon- tres and adventures I met withall, in presenting my books to those \yho were likely to accept of them for their own in- formation, or for that of helping a poor scholar, or for their own vanity or ostentation. " Some parsons would hollow to raise the whole house and posse of the domestics to raise a poor crown ; at last all that flutter ends in sending Jack or Tom out to change a guinea, Cowley of his Melancholy, 35 and then 'tis reckoned over half-a-dozen times before the fatal crown can be picked out, which must be taken as it is given, with all the parade of almsgiving, and so to be re- ceived with all the active and passive ceremonial of mendica- tion and alms-receiving as if the books, printing and paper, were worth nothing at all, and as if it were the greatest charity for them to touch them or let them be in the house ; ' For I shall never read them,' says one of the five-shilling- piece chaps ; ' I have no time to look in them,' says another ; ' "Pis so much money lost,' says a grave dean ; ' My eyes being so bad,' said a bishop, ' that I can scarce read at all.' ' What do you want with me ?' said another ; ' Sir, I pre- sented you the other day with my Athene Britannicoe, being the last part published.' ' I don't want books, take them again ; I don't understand what they mean.' ' The title is very plain,' said I, ' and they are writ mostly in English.' ' I'll give you a crown for both the volumes.' ' They stand me, sir, in more than that, and 'tis for a bare subsistence I present or sell them ; how shall I live ?' ' I care not a far- thing for that ; live or die, 'tis all one to me.' ' Damn my master !' said Jack, ' 'twas but last night he was commend- ing your books and your learning to the skies ; and now he would not care if you were starving before his eyes ; nay, he often makes game at your clothes, though he thinks you the greatest scholar in England.' " Such was the life of a learned mendicant author ! The scenes which are here exhibited appear to have disordered an intellect which had never been firm ; in vain our author at- tempted to adapt his talents to all orders of men, still " To the crazy ship all winds are contrary." COWLEY. OF HIS MELANCHOLY. THE mind of COWLET was beautiful, but a querulous ten- derness in his nature breathes not only through his works, but influenced his habits and his views of human affairs. His temper and his genius would have opened to us, had not the strange decision of Sprat and Clifford withdrawn that full correspondence of his heart which he had carried on many years. These letters were suppressed because, as Bishop Sprat acknowledges, " in this kind of prose Mr. D2 36 Calamities of Authors. Cowley was excellent ! They had a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of familiarity." And then the florid writer runs off, that, " in letters, where the souls of men should appear undressed, in that negligent habit they may be fit to be seen by one or two in a chamber, but not to go abroad into the streets." A false criticism : which not only has proved to be so since their time by Mason's " Memoirs of Gray," but which these friends of Cowley might have themselves perceived, if they had recollected that the Letters of Cicero to Atticus form the most delightful chronicles of the heart and the most authentic memorials of the man. Peck obtained one letter of Cowley's, preserved by Johnson, and it exhibits a remarkable picture of the miseries of his poetical solitude. It is, perhaps, not too late to inquire whether this correspondence was destroyed as well as sup- pressed ? Would Sprat and Clifford have burned what they have told us they so much admired ?* * My researches could never obtain more than one letter of Cowley's it is but an elegant trifle returning thanks to his friend Evelyn for some seeds and plants. " The Garden " of Evelyn is immortalised in a delightful Ode of Cowley's, as well as by Evelyn himself. Even in this small note we may discover the touch of Cowley. The original is in Astle's collection. MK. ABRAHAM COWLEY TO JOHN EVELYN, ESQ. " Bam Elms, March 23, 1663. " SIR, There is nothing more pleasant than to see kindness ina person for whom we have great esteem and respect : no, not the sight of your garden in May, or even the having such an one ; which makes me more obliged to return you my most humble thanks for the testimonies I have lately received of you, both by your letter and your presents. I have already sowed such of your seeds as I thought most proper upon a hot -bed ; but cannot find in all my books a catalogue of these plants which require that culture, nor of such as must be set in pots ; which defects, and all others, I hope shortly to see supplied, as I hope shortly to see your work of Horti- culture finished and published ; and long to be in all things your disciple, as I am in all things now, " Sir, your most humble and most obedient Servant, " A. COWLEY." [Barn Elms, from whence this letter is dated, was the first country resi- dence of Cowley. It lies low on the banks of the Thames, and here the poet was first seized with a fever, which obliged him to remove ; but he chose an equally improper locality for a man of his temperament, in Chertsey, where he died from the effects of a severe cold.] Such were the ordinary letters which passed between two men whom it would be difficult to parallel for their elegant tastes and gentle dispositions. Evelyn's beautiful retreat at Sayes Court, at Deptford, is described by a contemporary as " a garden exquisite and most boscaresque, and, as it were, an exemplar of his book of Forest-trees." It was the entertainment and Cowley of his Melancholy. 37 Fortunately for our literary sympathy, the fatal error of these fastidious critics has been in some degree repaired by the admirable genius himself whom they have injured. When Cowley retreated from society, he determined to draw up an apology for his conduct, and to have dedicated it to his patron, Lord St. Albans. His death interrupted the entire design ; but his Essays, which Pope so finely calls " the lan- guage of his heart," are evidently parts of these precious Confessions. All of Cowley's tenderest and undisguised feelings have therefore not perished. These Essays now form a species of composition in our language, a mixture of prose and verse the man with the poet the self-painter has sat to himself, and, with the utmost simplicity, has copied out the image of his soul. Why has this poet twice called himself the melancholy Cowley ? He employed no poetical cheville* for the metre of a verse which his own feelings inspired. Cowley, at the beginning of the Civil War, joined the Royalists at Oxford ; followed the queen to Paris ; yielded his days and his nights to an employment of the highest con- fidence, that of deciphering the royal correspondence ; he transacted their business, and, almost divorcing himself from his neglected muse, he yielded up for them the tranquillity so necessary to the existence of a poet. From his earliest days he tells us how the poetic affections had stamped themselves on his heart, " like letters cut into the bark of a young tree, which, with the tree, will grow proportionably." He describes his feelings at the court : " I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life the nearer I came to it that beauty which I did not fall in love with when, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or wonder of the greatest men of those times, and inspired the following lines of Cowley, to Evelyn and his lady, who excelled in the arts her husband loved ; for she designed the frontispiece to his version of Lucretius "In books and gardens thou hast placed aright (Things well which thou dost understand, And both dost make with thy laborious hand) Thy noble innocent delight ; And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet Both pleasures more refined and sweet ; The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the wisest books." * A term the French apply to those botches which bad poets use to make out their metre. 38 Calamities of Authors. entice me when I saw it was adulterate. I met with seve- ral great persons whom I liked very well, but could not per- ceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or de- sired. I was in a crowd of good company, in business of great and honourable trust ; I eat at the best table, and en- joyed the best conveniences that ought to be desired by a man of my condition ; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect : Well then ! I now do plainly see, This busie world and I shall ne'er agree !" After several years' absence from his native country, at a most critical period, he was sent over to mix with that trusty band of loyalists, who, in secrecy and in silence, were devoting themselves to the royal cause. Cowley was seized on by the ruling powers. At this moment he published a preface to his works, which some of his party interpreted as a relaxation of his loyalty. He has been fully defended. Cowley, with all his delicacy of temper, wished sincerely to retire from all parties ; and saw enough among the fiery zealots of his own, to grow disgusted even with Royalists. His wish for retirement has been half censured as cowardice by Johnson ; but there was a tenderness of feeling which had ill-formed Cowley for the cunning of party in- triguers, and the company of little villains. About this time he might have truly distinguished himself as " The melan- choly Cowley." I am only tracing his literary history for the purpose of this work : but I cannot pass without noticing the fact, that this abused man, whom his enemies were calumniating, was at this moment, under the disguise of a doctor of physic, occupied by the novel studies of botany and medicine ; and as all science in the mind of the poet naturally becomes poetry, he composed his books on plants in Latin verse. At length came the Restoration, which the poet zealously celebrated in his " Ode" on that occasion. Both Charles the First and Second had promised to reward his fidelity with the mastership of the Savoy ; but, Wood says, " he lost it by certain persons enemies of the muses." Wood has said no more; and none of Cowley's biographers have thrown any light on the circumstance: perhaps we may discover this literary calamity. That Cowley caught no warmth from that promised sun- Cowley of his Melancholy. 39 shine which the new monarch was to scatter in prodigal gaiety, has been distinctly told by the poet himself; his muse, in " The Complaint," having reproached him thus : Thou young prodigal, who didst so loosely waste Of all thy youthful years, the good estate Thou changeling then, bewitch'd with noise and show, Wouldst into courts and cities from me go Go, renegado, east up thy account Behold the public storm is spent at last ; The sovereign is toss'd at sea no more, And thou, with all the noble company, Art got at last to shore But whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see, All march'd up to possess the promis'd land ; Thou still alone (alas !) dost gaping stand Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand. But neglect was not all Cowley had to endure ; the royal party seemed disposed to calumniate him. When Cowley was young he had hastily composed the comedy of " The Guar- dian ;" a piece which served the cause of loyalty. After the Eestoration, he rewrote it under the title of " Cutter of Cole- man Street ;" a comedy which may still be read with equal curiosity and interest : a spirited picture of the peculiar characters which appeared at the Revolution. It was not only ill received by a faction, but by those vermin of a new court, who, without merit themselves, put in their claims, by crying down those who, with great merit, are not in favour. All these to a man accused the author of having written a satire against the king's party. And this wretched party prevailed, too long for the author's repose, but not for his fame.* Many years afterwards this comedy became popular. Dryden, who was present at the representation, tells us that Cowley " received the news of his ill success not with so much firm- ness as might have been expected from so great a man." Cowley was in truth a great man, and a greatly injured man. * This comedy was first presented very hurriedly for the amusement of Prince Charles as he passed through Cambridge to York. Cowley himself describes it, then, as " neither made nor acted, but rough-drawn by him, and repeated by his scholars " for this temporary purpose. After the Restora- tion he endeavoured to do more justice to his juvenile work, by remodelling it, and producing it at the Duke of York's theatre. But as many of the characters necessarily retained the features of the older play, and times had changed ; it was easy to affix a false stigma to the poet's pictures of the old Cavaliers ; and the play was universally condemned as a satire on the Bx>yalists. It was reproduced with success at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, as long afterwards as the year 1730. ED. 40 Calamities of Authors. His sensibility and delicacy of temper were of another texture than Dryden's. What at that moment did Covvley expe- rience, when he beheld himself neglected, calumniated, and, in his last appeal to public favour, found himself still a victim to a vile faction, who, to court their common master, were trampling on their honest brother ? We shall find an unbroken chain of evidence, clearly de- monstrating the agony of his literary feelings. The cynical Wood tells us that, " not finding that preferment he expected, while others for their money carried away most places, he retired discoritentd into Surrey." And his panegyrist, Sprat, describes him as " weary of the vexations and formalities of an active condition he had been perplexed with a long com- pliance with foreign manners. He was satiated with the arts of a court, which sort of life, though his virtue made it innocent to him, yet nothing could make it quiet. These were the reasons that moved him to follow the violent incli- nation of his own mind," &c. I doubt if either the sarcastic antiquary or the rhetorical panegyrist have developed the simple truth of Cowley's " violent inclination of his own mind." He does it himself more openly in that beautiful picture of an injured poet, in " The Complaint," an ode warm with individual feeling, but which Johnson coldly passes over, by telling us that " it met the usual fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than pity." Thus the biographers of Cowley have told us nothing, and the poet himself has probably not told us all. To these calumnies respecting Cowley's comedy, raised up by those whom Wood designates as " enemies of the muses," it would appear that others were added of a deeper dye, and in malig- nant whispers distilled into the ear of royalty. Covvley, in an ode, had commemorated the genius of Brutus, with all the enthusiasm of a votary of liberty. After the king's return, when Cowley solicited some reward for his sufferings and services in the royal cause, the chancellor is said to have turned on him with a severe countenance, saying, " Mr. Cowley, your pardon is your reward!" It seems that ode was then considered to be of a dangerous tendency among half the nation ; Brutus would be the model of enthusiasts, who were sullenly bending their neck under the yoke of royalty. Charles II. feared the attempt of desperate men ; and he might have forgiven .Rochester a loose pasquinade, but not Cowley a solemn invo- cation. This fact, then, is said to have been the true cause Cowley of his Melancholy. 41 of the despondency so prevalent in the latter poetry of " the melancholy Cowley." And hence the indiscretion of the muse, in a single flight, condemned her to a painful, rather than a voluntary solitude ; and made the poet complain of " barren praise " and " neglected verse."* While this anecdote harmonises with better known facts, it throws some light on the outcry raised against the comedy, which seems to have been but an echo of some preceding one. Cowley retreated into solitude, where he found none of the agrestic charms of the landscapes of his muse. When in the world, Sprat says, " he had never wanted for constant health and strength of body ;" but, thrown into solitude, he carried with him a wounded spirit the Ode of Brutus and the con- demnation of his comedy were the dark spirits that haunted his cottage. Ill health soon succeeded low spirits he pined in dejection, and perished a victim of the finest and most injured feelings. But before we leave the melancholy Cowley, he shall speak the feelings, which here are not exaggerated. In this Chro- nicle of Literary Calamity no passage ought to be more memorable than the solemn confession of one of the most amiable of men and poets. Thus he expresses himself in the preface to his " Cutter of Coleman Street." " We are therefore wonderful wise men, and have a fine business of it ; we, who spend our time in poetry. I do some- times laugh, and am often angry with myself, when I think on it ; and if I had a son inclined by nature to the same folly, I believe I should bind him from it by the strictest con- jurations of a paternal blessing. For what can be more ridiculous than to labour to give men delight, whilst they labour, on their part, most earnestly to take offence ?" And thus he closes the preface, in all the solemn expression of injured feelings : " This I do affirm, that from all which I have written, I never received the least benefit or the least advantage ; but, on the contrary, have felt sometimes the effects of malice and misfortune /" Cowley's ashes were deposited between those of Chaucer and Spenser ; a marble monument was erected by a duke ; and his eulogy was pronounced, on the day of his death, from * The anecdote, probably little known, may be found in " The Judgment of Dr. Prideaux in Condemning the Murder of Julius Caesar by the Con- spirators as a most villanous act, maintained," 1721, p. 41. 42 Calamities of Authors. the lips of royalty. The learned wrote, and the tuneful wept : well might the neglected bard, in his retirement, com- pose an epitaph on himself, living there "entombed, though not dead." To this ambiguous state of existence he applies a conceit, not inelegant, from the tenderness of its imagery : Hie sparge flores, sparge breves rosas, Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus ; Herbisque odoratis corona Vatis adhuc cinerem calentem. Here scatter flowers and short-lived roses bring. For life, though dead, enjoys the flowers of spring ; With breathing wreaths of fragrant herbs adorn The yet warm embers in the poet's urn. THE PAINS OF FASTIDIOUS EGOTISM. I MUST place the author of " The Catalogue of Koyal and Noble Authors," who himself now ornaments that roll, among those who have participated in the misfortunes of literature. HORACE WALPOLE was the inheritor of a name the most popular in Europe ;* he moved in the higher circles of society ; and fortune had never denied him the ample gratifi- cation of his lively tastes in the elegant arts, and in curious knowledge. These were particular advantages. But Horace Walpole panted with a secret desire for literary celebrity ; a full sense of his distinguished rank long suppressed the desire of venturing the name he bore to the uncertain fame of an author, and the caprice of vulgar critics. At length he pre- tended to shun authors, and to slight the honours of author- ship. The cause of this contempt has been attributed to the perpetual consideration of his rank. But was this bitter con- tempt of so early a date ? Was Horace Walpole a Socrates before his time ? was he born that prodigy of indifference, to despise the secret object he languished to possess ? His early associates were not only noblemen, but literary noblemen ; and need he have been so petulantly fastidious at bearing the venerable title of author, when he saw Lyttleton, Chester- * He -was the youngest son of the celebrated minister, Sir Robert Walpole. ED. The Pains of Fastidious Egotism. 43 field, and other peers, proud of wearing the blue riband of literature ? No ! it was after he had become an author that he contemned authorship : and it was not the precocity of his sagacity, but the maturity of his experience, that made him willing enough to undervalue literary honours, which were not sufficient to satisfy his desires. Let us estimate the genius of Horace Walpole by analysing his talents, and inquiring into the nature of his works. His taste was highly polished ; his vivacity attained to brilliancy ;* and his picturesque fancy, easily excited, was soon extinguished ; his playful wit and keen irony were perpetually exercised, in his observations on life, and his memory was stored with the most amusing knowledge, but much too lively to be accurate ; for his studies were but his sports. But other qualities of genius must distinguish the great author, and even him who would occupy that leading rank in the literary republic our author aspired to fill. He lived too much in that class of society which is little favourable to genius ; he exerted neither profound thinking, nor profound feeling ; and too volatile to attain to the pathetic, that higher quality of genius, he was so imbued with the petty elegancies of society that every impression of grandeur in the human character was deadened in the breast of the polished cynic. Horace Walpole was not a man of genius, his most pleas- ing, if not his great talent, lay in letter-writing ; here he was * In his letters there are uncommon instances of vivacity, whenever pointed against authors. The following have not yet met the public eye. What can be more maliciously pungent than this on Spence ? " As I know Mr. J. Spence, I do not think I should have been so much delighted as Dr. Kippis with reading his letters. He was a good-natured harmless little soul, but more like a silver penny than a genius. It was a neat fiddle- faddle bit of sterling, that had read good books, and kept good company ; but was too trifling for use, and only fit to please a child." On Dr. Nash's first volume of ' Worcestershire* : "It is a folio of prodigious corpulence, and yet dry enough ; but it is finely dressed with many beads and views." He characterises Pennant ; "ZTc is not one of our plodders (alluding to Gough) ; rather the other extreme ; his corporal spirits (for I cannot call them animal) do not allow him to digest anything. He gave a round jump from ornithology to antiquity, and, as if they had any relation, thought he understood everything that lay between them. The report of his being disordered is not true ; he has been with me, and at least is as composed as ever I saw him." His literary correspondence with his friend Cole abounds with this easy satirical criticism he delighted to ridicule authors ! as well as to starve the miserable artists he so grudgingly paid. In the very volumes he celebrated the arts, he disgraced them by his penuriousness ; so that he loved to indulge his avarice at the expense of his vanity ! 44 Calamities of Authors. without a rival ;* but he probably divined, when he conde- scended to become an author, that something more was re- quired than the talents he exactly possessed. In his latter days he felt this more sensibly, which will appear in those confessions which I have extracted from an unpublished cor- respondence. Conscious of possessing the talent which amuses, yet feel- ing his deficient energies, he resolved to provide various sub- stitutes for genius itself ; and to acquire reputation, if he could not grasp at celebrity. He raised a printing-press at his Gothic castle, by which means he rendered small editions of his works valuable from their rarity, and much talked of, be- cause seldom seen. That this is true, appears from the fol- lowing extract from his unpublished correspondence with a literary friend. It alludes to his " Anecdotes of Painting in England," of which the first edition only consisted of 300 copies. " Of my new fourth volume I printed 600 ; but, as they can be had, I believe not a third part is sold. This is a very plain lesson to me, that my editions sell for their curiosity, and not for any merit in them and so they would if I printed Mother Goose's Tales, and but a few. If I am humbled as an author, I may be vain as a printer ; and when one has nothing else to be vain of, it is certainly very little worth while to be proud of that." There is a distinction between the author of great con- nexions and the mere author. In the one case, the man may give a temporary existence to his books ; but in the other, it is the book which gives existence to the man. Walpole's writings seem to be constructed on a certain principle, by which he gave them a sudden, rather than a lasting existence. In historical research our adventurer star- tled the world by maintaining paradoxes which attacked the * This opinion on Walpole's talent for letter-writing was published in 1812, many years before the public had the present collection of his letters ; my prediction has been amply verified. He wrote a great number to Bentley, the son of Dr. Bentley, who ornamented Gray's works with sojie extraordinary designs. Walpole, who was always proud and capricious, observes his friend Cole, broke with Bentley because he would bring his wife with him to Strawberry-hill. He then asked Bentley for all his letters back, but he would not in return give Bentley's own. This whole correspondence abounded with literature, criticism, and wit of the most original and brilliant composition. This is the opinion of no friend, but an admirer, and a good judge ; for it was Bentley's own. The Pains of Fastidious Egotism. 45 opinions, or changed the characters, established for centuries. Singularity of opinion, vivacity of ridicule, and polished epi- grams in prose, were the means by which Horace Walpole sought distinction. In his works of imagination, he felt he could not trust to himself the natural pathetic was utterly denied him. But he had fancy and ingenuity ; he had recourse to the marvel- lous in imagination on the principle he had adopted the para- doxical in history. Thus, "The Castle of Otranto," and " The Mysterious Mother," are the productions of ingenuity rather than genius ; and display the miracles of art, rather than the spontaneous creations of nature. All his literary works, like the ornamented edifice he inha- bited, were constructed on the same artificial principle ; an old paper lodging-house, converted by the magician of taste into a Grothic castle, full of scenic effects.* " A Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors" was itself a classification which only an idle amateur could have projected, and only the most agreeable narrator of anecdotes could have seasoned. These splendid scribblers are for the greater part no authors at all.f His attack on our peerless Sidney, whose fame was more * This is the renowned Strawberry-hill, a villa still standing on the banks of the Thames, between Teddington and Twickenham, but now- despoiled of the large collection of pictures, curiosities, and articles of vertu so assiduously collected by Walpole during a long life. The ground on which it stands was originally partially occupied by a small cottage, built by a nobleman's coachman -for a lodging-house, and occupied by a toy- woman of the name of Chevenix. Hence Walpole says of it, in a letter to General Conway, "it is a little plaything house that I got out of Mrs. Chevenix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw." ED. f Walpole's characters are not often to be relied on, witness his injustice to Hogarth as a painter, and his insolent calumny of Charles I. His literary opinions of James I. and of Sidney might have been written with- out any acquaintance with the works he has so maliciously criticised. In his account of Sidney he had silently passed over the " Defence of Poetry ;" and in his seeond edition has written this avowal, that ' ' he had forgotten it ; a proof that I at least did not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he acquired." How heartless was the polished cynicism which could dare to hazard this false criticism ! Nothing can be more im- posing than his volatile and caustic criticisms on the works of James I., yet he had probably never opened that folio he so poignantly ridicules. He doubts whether two pieces, " The Prince's Cabala," and " The Duty of a King in his Royal Office," were genuine productions of James I. The truth is that both these works are nothing more than extracts printed with those separate titles and drawn from the king's " Basilicon Doron." He had probably neither read the extracts nor the original. 46 Calamities of Authors. mature than his life, was formed on the same principle as his " Historic Doubts" on Richard III. Horace Walpole was as willing to vilify the truly great, as to beautify deformity ; when he imagined that the fame he was destroying or confer- ring, reflected back on himself. All these works were plants of sickly delicacy, which could never endure the open air, and only lived in the artificial atmosphere of a private collection. Yet at times the flowers, and the planter of the flowers, were roughly shaken by an uncivil breeze. His " Anecdotes of Painting in England" is a most enter- taining catalogue. He gives the feelings of the distinct eras with regard to the arts ; yet his pride was never gratified when he reflected that he had been writing the work of Vertue, who had collected the materials, but could not have given the philosophy. His great age and his good sense opened his eyes on himself; and Horace Walpole seems to have judged too contemptuously of Horace Walpole. The truth is, he was mortified he had not and never could obtain a literary peerage ; and he never respected the commoner's seat. At these moments, too frequent in his life, he contemns authors, and returns to sink back into all the self-complacency of aris- tocratic indifference. This cold unfeeling disposition for literary men, this dis- guised malice of envy, and this eternal vexation at his own disappointments, break forth in his correspondence with one of those literary characters with whom he kept on terms while they were kneeling to him in the humility of worship, or moved about to fetch or to carry his little quests of curio- sity in town or country.* The following literary confessions illustrate this character: * It was such a person as Cole of Milton, his correspondent of forty years, who lived at a distance, and obsequious to his wishes, always looking up to him, though never with a parallel glance with whom he did not quarrel, though if Walpole could have read the private notes Cole made in his MSS. at the time he was often writing the civilest letters of admiration, even Cole would have been cashiered from his correspondence. Walpole could not endure equality in literary men. Bentley observed to Cole, that Walpole' s pride and hauteur were excessive ; which betrayed themselves in the treatment of Gray who had himself too much pride and spirit to for- give it when matters were made up between them, and Walpole invited Gray to Strawberry-hill. When Gray came, he, without any ceremony, told Walpole that though he waited on him as civility required, yet "by no means would he ever be there on the terms of their former friendship, which Jte had totally cancelled. From COLE'S MSS. The Pains of Fastidious Egotism. 47 " June, 1778. "I have taken a thorough dislike to being an author; and, if it would not look like begging you to compliment one by contradicting me, I would tell you what I am most seriously convinced of, that I find what small share of parts I had grown dulled. And when I perceive it myself, I may well believe that others would not be less sharp-sighted. It is very natural ; mine were spirits rather than parts; and as time has rebated the one, it must surely destroy their resemblance to the other." In another letter: " I set very little value on myself ; as a man, I am a very faulty one ; and as an author, a very middling one, which who- ever thinks a comfortable rank, is not at all of my opinion. Pray convince me that you think I mean sincerely, by not answering me with a compliment. It is very weak to be pleased with flattery; the stupidest of all delusions to beg it. From you I should take it ill. We have known one another almost forty years." There were times when Horace Walpole's natural taste for his studies returned with all the vigour of passion but his volatility and his desultory life perpetually scattered his firmest resolutions into air. This conflict appears beautifully described when the view of King's College, Cambridge, throws his mind into meditation ; and the passion for study and seclu- sion instantly kindled his emotions, lasting, perhaps, as long as the letter which describes them occupied in writing. "May 22, 1777. " The beauty of King's College, Cambridge, now it is restored, penetrated me with a visionary longing to be a monk in it. Though my life has been passed in turbulent scenes, in pleasures or other pastimes, and in much fashionable dissi- pation, still, books, antiquity, and virtue kept hold of a corner of my heart : and since necessity has forced me of late years to be a man of business, my disposition tends to be a recluse for what remains but it will not be my lot ; and though there is some excuse for the young doing what they like, I doubt an old mau should do nothing but what he ought, and I hope doing one's duty is the best preparation for death. Sitting with one's arms folded to think about it, is a very long way for preparing for it. If Charles V. had resolved to make some amends for his abominable ambition by doing 48 Calamities of Authors. good (his duty as a king), there would have been infinitely more merit than going to doze in a convent. One may avoid actual guilt in a sequestered life, but the virtue of it is merely negative; the innocence is beautiful." There had been moments when Horace Walpole even ex- pressed the tenderest feelings for fame; and the following passage, written prior to the preceding ones, gives no indica- tion of that contempt for literary fame, of which the close of this character will exhibit an extraordinary instance. This letter relates an affecting event he had just returned from seeing General Conway attacked by a paralytic stroke. Shocked by his appearance, he writes " It is, perhaps, to vent my concern that I write. It has operated such a revolution on my mind, as no time, at my age, can efface. It has at once damped every pursuit which my spirits had even now prevented me from being weaned from, I mean of virtu. It is like a mortal distemper in my- self ; for can amusements amuse, if there is but a glimpse, a vision of outliving one's friends ? I have had dreams in which I thought 1 wished for fame it was not certainly posthumous fame at any distance ; I feel, I feel it was con- fined to the memory of those I love. It seems to me impos- sible for a man who has no friends to do anything for fame and to me the first position in friendship is, to intend one's friends should survive one but it is not reasonable to oppress you, who are suffering gout, with my melancholy ideas. What I have said will tell you, what I hope so many years have told you, that I am very constant and sincere to friends of above forty years." In a letter of a later date there is a remarkable confession, which harmonises with those already given. " My pursuits have always been light, trifling, and tended to nothing but my casual amusement. I will not say, with- out a little vain ambition of showing some parts, but never with industry sufficient to make me apply to anything solid. My studies, if they could be called so, and my productions, were alike desultory. In my latter age 1 discovered the futility both of my objects and writings I felt how insig- nificant is the reputation of an author of mediocrity ; and that, being no genius, I only added one name more to a list of writers; but had told the world nothing but what it The Pains of Fastidious Egotism. 49 could as well be without. These reflections were the best proofs of my sense ; and when I could see through my own vanity, there is less wonder in my discovering that such talents as I might have had are impaired at seventy -two." Thus humbled was Horace Walpole to himself ! there is an intellectual dignity, which this man of wit and sense was incapable of reaching and it seems a retribution that the scorner of true greatness should at length feel the poisoned chalice return to his own lips. He who had contemned the eminent men of former times, and quarrelled with and ridi- culed every contemporary genius ; who had affected to laugh at the literary fame he could not obtain, at length came to scorn himself! and endured "the penal fires" of an author's hell, in undervaluing his own works, the productions of a long life ! The chagrin and disappointment of such an author were never less carelessly concealed than in the following extraor- dinary letter : HOBA.CE WALPOLE TO " Arlington Street, April 27, 1773. " Mr. Gough wants to be introduced to me ! Indeed ! I would see him, as he has been midwife to Masters ; but he is so dull that he would only be troublesome and besides, you know I shun authors, and would never have been one my- self, if it obliged me to keep such bad company. They are always in earnest, and think their profession serious, and dwell upon trifles, and reverence learning. I laugh at all these things, and write only to laugh at them and divert myself. None of us are authors of any consequence, and it is the most ridiculous of all vanities to be vain of being me- diocre. A page in a great author humbles me to the dust, and the conversation of those that are not superior to myself reminds me of what will be thought of myself. I blush to flatter them, or to be flattered by them ; and should dread letters being published some time or other, in which they would relate our interviews, and we should appear like those puny conceited witlings in Shenstone's and Hughes's corres- pondence, who give themselves airs from being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time being ; as peers are proud because they enjoy the estates of great men who went before them. Mr. Gough is very welcome to see Strawberry - E 50 Calamities of Authors. hill, or I would help him to any scraps in my possession that would assist his publications, though he is one of those in- dustrious who are only re-burying the dead but I cannot be acquainted with him ; it is contrary to my system and my humour ; and besides I know nothing of barrows and Danish entrenchments, and Saxon barbarisms and Phoenician cha- racters in short, I know nothing of those ages that knew nothing then how should I be of use to modern literati ? All the Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works. I did not read one of them, because I do not understand what is not understood by those that write about it ; and I did not get acquainted with one of the writers. I should like to be intimate with Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Gold- smith, though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recol- lect that I have seen Pope, and lived with Gray. Adieu !" Such a letter seems not to have been written by a literary man it is the babble of a thoughtless wit and a man of the world. But it is worthy of him whose contracted heart could never open to patronage or friendship. Prom such we might expect the unfeeling observation in the " Anecdotes of Painting," that " want of patronage is the apology for want of genius. Milton and La Fontaine did not write in the bask of court favour. A poet or a painter may want an equipage or a villa, by wanting protection ; they can always afford to buy ink and paper, colours and pencil. Mr. Ho- garth has received no honours, but universal admiration." Patronage, indeed, cannot convert dull men into men of genius, but it may preserve men of genius from becoming dull men. It might have afforded Dryden that studious leisure which he ever wanted, and which would have given us not imperfect tragedies, and uncorrected poems, but the regulated flights of a noble genius. It might have animated Gainsborough to have created an English school in landscape, which I have heard from those who knew him was his fa- vourite yet neglected pursuit. But Walpole could insult that genius, which he wanted the generosity to protect ! The whole spirit of this man was penury. Enjoying an Influence of a Bad Temper in Criticism. 51 affluent income he only appeared to patronise the arts which amused his tastes, employing the meanest artists, at reduced prices, to ornament his own works, an economy which he bitterly reprehends in others who were compelled to practise it. He gratified his avarice at the expense of his vanity ; the strongest passion must prevail. It was the simplicity of childhood in Chatterton to imagine Horace Walpole could be a patron but it is melancholy to record that a slight pro- tection might have saved such a youth. Gray abandoned this man of birth and rank in the midst of their journey through Europe ; Mason broke with him ; even his humble correspondent Cole, this " friend of forty years," was often sent away in dudgeon ; and he quarrelled with all the authors and artists he had ever been acquainted with. The Gothic castle at Strawberry-hill was rarely graced with living genius there the greatest was Horace Walpole him- self; but he had been too long waiting to see realised a ma- gical vision of his hopes, which resembled the prophetic fiction of his own romance, that " the owner should grow too large for his house." After many years, having dis- covered that he still retained his mediocrity, he could never pardon the presence of that preternatural being whom the world considered a GBEAT MAN. Such was the feeling which dictated the close of the above letter ; Johnson and Gold- smith were to be " scorned," since Pope and Gray were no more within the reach of his envy and his fear. INFLUENCE OF A BAD TEMPER IN CRITICISM. UNFRIENDLY to the literary character, some have imputed the brutality of certain authors to their literary habits, when it may be more truly said that they derived their literature from their brutality. The spirit was envenomed before it entered into the fierceness of literary controversy, and the insanity was in the evil temper of the man before he roused our notice by his ravings. RITSON, the late antiquary of poetry (not to call him poetical), amazed the world by his vituperative railing at two authors of the finest taste -in poetry, Warton and Percy ; he carried criticism, as the dis- cerning few had first surmised, to insanity itself ; the cha- racter before us only approached it. attained to the ambiguous honour of being dis- E 2 52 Calamities of Authors. tinguished as " The Critic," and he may yet instruct us how the moral influences the literary character, and how a certain talent that can never mature itself into genius, like the pale fruit that hangs in the shade, ripens only into sourness. As a critic in his own day, party for some time kept him alive ; the art of criticism was a novelty at that period of our literature. He flattered some great men, and he abused three of the greatest ; this was one mode of securing popu- larity ; because, by this contrivance, he divided the town into two parties ; and the irascibility and satire of Pope and Swift were not less serviceable to him than the partial panegyrics of Dry den and Congreve. Johnson revived him, for his minute attack on Addison ; and Kippis, feebly volu- minous, and with the cold affectation of candour, allows him to occupy a place in our literary history too large in the eye of Truth and Taste. Let us say all the good we can of him, that we may not be interrupted in a more important inquiry. Dennis once urged fair pretensions to the office of critic. Some of his " Original Letters," and particularly the " Remarks on Prince Arthur," written in his vigour, attain even to clas- sical criticism.* Aristotle and Bossu lay open before him, and he developes and sometimes illustrates their principles with close reasoning. Passion had not yet blinded the young critic with rage ; and in that happy moment, Virgil occupied his attention even more than Blackmore. The prominent feature in his literary character was good sense ; but in literature, though not in life, good sense is a penurious virtue. Dennis could not be carried beyond the cold line of a precedent, and before he ventured to be pleased, he was compelled to look into Aristotle. His learning \v;i* the bigotry of literature. It was ever Aristotle explained by Dennis. But in the explanation of the obscure text of his master, he was led into such frivolous distinctions, and taste- less propositions, that his works deserve inspection, as ex- amples of the manner of a true mechanical critic. This blunted feeling of the mechanical critic was at first It is curious to observe that Kippis, who classifies with the pomp of enumeration his heap of pamphlets, imagines that, as Blackmore's Epic is consigned to oblivion, so likewise must be the criticism, which, however, he confesses he could never meet with. An odd fate attends Dennis's works : his criticism on a bad work ought to survive it, as good works have survived his criticisms. Influence of a Bad Temper in Criticism. 53 concealed from the world in the pomp of critical erudition ; but when he trusted to himself, and, destitute of taste and imagination, became a poet and a dramatist, the secret of the Koyal Midas was revealed. As his evil temper prevailed, he forgot his learning, and lost the moderate sense which he seemed once to have possessed. Rage, malice, and dulness, were the heavy residuum ; and now he much resembled that congenial soul whom the ever-witty South compared to the tailor's goose, which is at once hot and heavy. Dennis was sent to Cambridge by his father, a saddler, who imagined a genius had been born in the family. He travelled in France and Italy, and on his return held in contempt every pursuit but poetry and criticism. He haunted the literary coteries, and dropped into a galaxy of wits and noblemen. At a time when our literature, like our politics, was divided into two factions, Dennis enlisted himself under Dryden and Congreve ;* and, as legitimate criticism was then an awful novelty in the nation, the young critic, recent from the Stagirite, soon became an important, and even a tremendous spirit. Pope is said to have regarded his judgment ; and Mallet, when young, tremblingly submitted a poem, to live or die by his breath. One would have imagined that the elegant studies he was cultivating, the views of life which had opened on him, and the polished circle around, would have influenced the grossness which was the natural growth of the soil. But ungracious Nature kept fast hold of the mind of Dennis ! His personal manners were characterised by their abrupt violence. Once dining with Lord Halifax he became so im- patient of contradiction, that he rushed out of the room, overthrowing the sideboard. Inquiring on the next day how he had behaved, Moyle observed, " You went away like the devil, taking one corner of the house with you." The wits, perhaps, then began to suspect their young Zoilus's dogmatism. The actors refused to perform one of his tragedies to empty houses, but they retained some excellent thunder which * See in Dennis's "Original Letters" one to Tonson, entitled, "On the conspiracy against the reputation of Mr. Dryden." It was in favour of folly against wisdom, weakness against power, &c. ; Pope against Dryden. He closes with a well-turned period. " Wherever genius runs through a work, I forgive its faults ; and wherever that is wanting, no beauties can, touch me. Being struck by Mr. Dryden's genius, I have no eyes for his errors ; and I have no eyes for his enemies' beauties, because I am not struck by their genius." 54 Calamities of Authors. Dennis had invented ; it rolled one night when Dennis was in the pit, and it was applauded ! Suddenly starting up, he cried to the audience, " By Gr , they wont act my tragedy, but they steal my thunder!" Thus, when reading Pope's " Essay on Criticism," he came to the character of Appius, he suddenly flung down the new poem, exclaiming, " By G , he means me !" He is painted to the life. Lo I Appius reddens at each word you speak, And stares tremendous with a threatening eye, Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry. I complete this picture of Dennis with a very extraordinary caricature, which Steele, in one of his papers of " The Theatre," has given of Dennis. I shall, however, disentangle the threads, and pick out what I consider not to be caricature, but resemblance. " His motion is quick and sudden, turning on all sides, with a suspicion of every object, as if he had done or feared some extraordinary mischief. You see wickedness in his meaning, but folly of countenance, that betrays him to be unfit for the execution of it. He starts, stares, and looks round him. This constant shuffle of haste without speed, makes the man thought a little touched ; but the vacant look of his two eyes gives you to understand that he could never run out of his wits, which seemed not so much to be lost, as to want employment; they are not so much astray, as they are a wool-gathering. He has the face and surliness of a mastiff, which has often saved him from being treated like a cur, till some more saga- cious than ordinary found his nature, and used him accord- ingly. Unhappy being! terrible without, fearful within! Not a wolf in sheep's clothing, but a sheep in a wolf's."* However anger may have a little coloured this portrait, its truth may be confirmed from a variety of sources. If Sallust, with his accustomed penetration in characterising the violent emotions of Catiline's restless mind, did not forget its indi- In the narrative of his frenzy (quoted p. 56), his personnel is thus given. "His aspect was furious, his eyes were rather fiery than lively, which he rolled about in an uncommon manner. He often opened his mouth as if he would have uttered some matter of importance, but the sound seemed lost inwardly. His beard was grown, which they told me he would not suffer to be shaved, believing the modern dramatic poets had corrupted all the barbers of the town to take the first opportunity of cutting his throat. His eyebrows were grey, long, and grown together, which he knit with indignation when anything was spoken, insomuch that he seemed not to have smoothed his forehead for many years." ED. Influence of a Bad Temper in Criticism. 55 cation in " his walk now quick and now slow," it may be allowed to think that the character of Dennis was alike to be detected in his habitual surliness. Even in his old age for our chain must not drop a link his native brutality never forsook him. Thomson and Pope charitably supported the veteran Zoilus at a benefit play ; and Savage, who had nothing but a verse to give, returned them very poetical thanks in the name of Dennis. He was then blind and old, but his critical ferocity had no old age ; his surliness overcame every grateful sense, and he swore as usual, " They could be no one's but that fool Savage's" an evidence of his sagacity and brutality !* This was, perhaps, the last peevish snuff shaken from the dismal link of criti- cism ; for, a few days after, was the redoubted Dennis num- bered with the mighty dead. He carried the same fierceness into his style, and commits the same ludicrous extravagances in literary composition as in his manners. Was Pope really sore at the Zoilian style ? He has himself spared me the trouble of exhibiting Dennis's gross personalities, by having collected them at the close of the Dunciad specimens which show how low false wit and malignity can get to by hard pains. I will throw into the note a curious illustration of the anti-poetical notions of a mechanical critic, who has no wing to dip into the hues of the imagination.t * There is an epigram on Dennis by Savage, which Johnson has preserved in his Life ; and I feel it to be a very correct likeness, although Johnson censures Savage for writing an epigram against Dennis, while he was living in great familiarity with the critic. Perhaps that was the happiest moment to write the epigram. The anecdote in the text doubtless prompted " the fool" to take this fair revenge and just chastisement. Savage has brought out the features strongly, in these touches " Say what revenge on Dennis can be had, Too dull for laughter, for reply too mad. On one so poor you cannot take the law, On one so old your sword you scorn to draw. Uncaged then, let the harmless monster rage, Secure in dulness, madness, want, and age !" f 1 Dennis points his heavy cannon of criticism and thus bombards that aerial edifice, the " Rape of the Lock." He is inquiring into the nature of poetical machinery, which, he oracularly pronounces, should be religious, or allegorical, or political ; asserting the ' ' Lutrin " of Boileau to be a trifle only in appearance, covering the deep political design of reforming the Popish Church ! With the yard of criticism he takes measure of the slender graces and tiny elegance of Pope's aerial machines, as "less con- siderable than the human persons, which is withvut precedent. Nothing 56 Calamities of Authors. In life and in literature we meet with men who seem en- dowed with an obliquity of understanding, yet active and busy spirits ; but, as activity is only valuable in proportion to the capacity that puts all in motion, so, when ill directed, the intellect, warped by nature, only becomes more crooked and fantastical. A kind of frantic enthusiasm breaks forth in their actions and their language, and often they seem ferocious when they are only foolish. We may thus account for the manners and style of Dennis, pushed almost to the verge of insanity, and acting on him very much like insanity itself a circumstance which the quick vengeance of wit seized on, in the humorous " Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, con- cerning the Frenzy of Mr. John Dennis, an officer of the Custom-house."* can be so contemptible as the persons or so foolish as the understandings of these hobgoblins. Ariel's speech is one continued impertinence. After he has talked to them of black omens and dire disasters that threaten his heroine, those bugbears dwindle to the breaking a piece of china, to stain- ing a petticoat, the losing a fan, or a bottle of sal volatile and what makes Ariel's speech more ridiculous is the place where it is spoken, on the sails and cordage of Belinda's barge." And then he compares the Sylphs to the Discord of Homer, whose feet are upon the earth, and head in the skies. " They are, indeed, beings so diminutive that they bear the same propor- tion to the rest of the intellectual that Eels in vinegar do to the rest of the material world ; the latter are only to be seen through microscopes, and the former only through the false optics of a Rosicrucian understanding." And finally, he decides that " these diminutive beings are only Sawney (that is, Alexander Pope), taking the change ; for it is he, a little lump of flesh, that talks, instead of a little spirit." Dennis's profound gravity con- tributes an additional feature of the burlesque to these heroi-comic poems themselves, only that Dennis cannot be playful, and will not be good- humoured. On the same tasteless principle he decides on the improbability of that incident in the "Conscious Lovers" of Steele, raised by Bevil, who, having received great obligations from his father, has promised not to marry with- out his consent. On this Dennis, who rarely in his critical progress will stir a foot without authority, quotes four formidable pages from Locke's " Essay on Government," to prove that, at the age of discretion, a man is free to dispose of his own actions ! One would imagine that Dennis was arguing like a special pleader, rather than developing the involved action of an affecting drama. Are there critics who would pronounce Dennis to be a very sensible brother? It is here too he calls Steele "a twopenny author, " alluding to the price of the ' ' Tatlers " but this cost Dennis dear ! " The narrative of the frenzy of Mr. John Dennis," published in the Miscellanies of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, and said to have been written by Pope, is a grave banter on his usual violence. It professes to be the ac- count of the physician who attended him at the request of a servant, who describes the first attack of his madness coming on when ' ' a poor simple child came to him from the printers ; the boy had no sooner entered the Influence of a Bad Temper in Criticism. 57 It is curious to observe that Dennis, in the definition of genius, describes himself ; he says " Genius is caused by a furious joy and pride of soul on the conception of an extra- ordinary hint. Many men have their hints without their motions of fury and pride of soul, because they want fire enough to agitate their spirits ; and these we call cold writers. Others, who have a great deal of fire, but have not excellent organs, feel the fore-mentioned motions, without the extra- ordinary hints; and these we call fustian writers." His motions and his hints, as he describes them, in regard to cold or fustian writers, seem to include the extreme points of his own genius. Another feature strongly marks the race of the Dennises. With a half-consciousness of deficient genius, they usually idolize some chimera, by adopting some extravagant principle ; and they consider themselves as original when they are only absurd. Dennis had ever some misshapen idol of the mind, which he was perpetually caressing with the zeal of perverted judg- ment or monstrous taste. Once his frenzy ran against the Italian Opera; and in his "Essay on Public Spirit," he ascribes its decline to its unmanly warblings. I have seen a long letter by Dennis to the Earl of Oxford, written to congratulate his lordship on his accession to power, and the high hopes of the nation ; but the greater part of the letter runs on the Italian Opera, while Dennis instructs the Minis- ter that the national prosperity can never be effected while this general corruption of the three kingdoms lies open ! Dennis has more than once recorded two material circum- stances in the life of a true critic ; these are his ill-nature and the public neglect. " I make no doubt," says he, " that upon the perusal of the critical part of these letters, the old accusation will be brought against me, and there will be a fresh outcry among thoughtless people that I am an ill-natured man." He entertained exalted opinions of his own powers, and he deeply felt their public neglect. " While others," he says in his tracts, " have been too much room, but he cried out ' the devil was come !' " The constant idiosyncrasy he had that his writings against France and the Pope might endanger his liberty, is amusingly hit off ; "he perpetually starts and runs to the window when any one knocks, crying out ' 'Sdeath ! a messenger from the French King ; I shall die in the Bastile !' " ED. 58 Calamities of Authors. encouraged, I have been too much neglected" his favourite system, that religion gives principally to great poetry its spirit and enthusiasm, was an important point, which, he says, " has been left to be treated by a person who has the honour of being your lordship's countryman your lordship knows that persons so much and so long oppressed as I have been have been always allowed to say things concerning them- selves which in others might be offensive." His vanity, we see, was equal to his vexation, and as he grew old he became more enraged ; and, writing too often without Aristotle or Locke by his side, he gave the town pure Dennis, and almost ceased to be read. " The oppression" of which he complains might not be less imaginary than his alarm, while a treaty was pending with France, that he should be delivered up to the Grand Monarque for having written a tragedy, which no one could read, against his majesty. It is melancholy, but it is useful, to record the mortifica- tions of such authors. Dennis had, no doubt, laboured with zeal which could never meet a reward ; and, perhaps, amid his critical labours, he turned often with an aching heart from their barren contemplation to that of the tranquillity he might have derived from an humbler avocation. It was not literature, then, that made the mind coarse, brutalising the habits and inflaming the style of Dennis. He had thrown himself among the walks of genius, and aspired to fix himself on a throne to which Nature had refused him a legitimate claim. What a lasting source of vexation and rage, even for a long-lived patriarch of criticism ! Accustomed to suspend the scourge over the heads of the first authors of the age, he could not sit at a table or enter a coffee-house without exerting the despotism of a literary dictator. How could the mind that had devoted itself to the contemplation of masterpieces, only to reward its industry by detailing to the public their human frailties, experience one hour of amenity, one idea of grace, one generous impulse of sensibility ? But the poor critic himself at length fell, really more the victim of his criticisms than the genius he had insulted. Having incurred the public neglect, the blind and helpless Cacus in his den sunk fast into contempt, dragged on a life of misery, and in his last days, scarcely vomiting his fire and smoke, became the most pitiable creature, receiving the alms he craved from triumphant genius. 59 DISAPPOINTED GENIUS TAKES A FATAL DIRECTION BT ITS ABUgE. How the moral and literary character are reciprocally influ- enced, may be traced in the character of a personage pecu- liarly apposite to these inquiries. This worthy of literature is OBA.TOE HENLEY, who is rather known traditionally than historically.* He is so overwhelmed with the echoed satire of Pope, and his own extravagant conduct for many years, that I should not care to extricate him, had I not discovered a feature in the character of Henley not yet drawn, and con- stituting no inferior calamity among authors. Henley stands in his " gilt tub" in the Dunciad; and a portrait of him hangs in the picture-gallery of the Commen- tary. Pope's verse and Warburton's notes are the pickle and the bandages for any Egyptian mummy of dulness, who will last as long as the pyramid that encloses him. I shall transcribe, for the reader's convenience, the lines of Pope : Embrown'd with native bronze, lo ! Henley stands, Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands ; How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue ! How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung ! Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain, While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson, preach in vain. Oh ! great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once, and Zany of thy age ! f It will surprise when I declare that this buffoon was an indefatigable student, a proficient in all the learned languages, an elegant poet, and, withal, a wit of no inferior class. It remains to discover why " the Preacher" became " the Zany." Henley was of St. John's College, Cambridge, and was dis- tinguished for the ardour and pertinacity of his studies ; he gave evident marks of genius. There is a letter of his to the * So little is known of this singular man, that Mr. Dibdin, in his very curious "Bibliomania," was not able to recollect any other details than those he transcribed from Warburton's "Commentary on the Dunciad." In Mr. Nichols' "History of Leicestershire" a more copious account of Henley may be found ; to their facts something is here added. It was, however, difficult to glean after so excellent a harvest-home. To the author of the " Life of Bowyer," and other works devoted to our authors, our literary history is more indebted, than to the labours of any other contem- porary. He is the Prosper Marchand of English literature. + It is, perhaps, unnecessary to point out this allusion of Pope to our ancient mysteries, where the Ckrgy were the actors ; among which, the Vice or Punch was introduced. (See " Curiosities of Literature.") 60 Calamities of Authors. " Spectator," signed Peter de Quir, which abounds with local wit and quaint humour.* He had not attained his twenty- second year when he published a poem, entitled " Esther, Queen of Persia,"f written amid graver studies; for three years after, Henley, heing M.A., published his " Complete Linguist," consisting of grammars often languages. The poem itself must not be passed by in silent notice. It is preceded by a learned preface, in which the poet dis- covers his intimate knowledge of oriental studies, with some etymologies from the Persic, the Hebrew, and the Greek, concerning the name and person of Ahasuerus, whom he makes to be Xerxes. The close of this preface gives another unexpected feature in the character of him who, the poet tells us, was "embrowned with native bronze" an unaffected modesty ! Henley, alluding to a Greek paraphrase of Barnes, censures his faults with acrimony, and even apologises for them, by thus gracefully closing the preface : " These can only be alleviated by one plea, the youth of the author, which is a circumstance I hope the candid will consider in favour of the present writer!" The poem is not destitute of imagination and harmony. The pomp of the feast of Ahasuerus has all the luxuriance of Asiatic splendour ; and the circumstances are selected with some fancy. The higher guests approach a room of state, Where tissued couches all around were set Labour'd with art ; o'er ivory tables thrown, Embroider'd carpets fell in folds adown. The bowers and gardens of the court were near, And open lights indulged the breathing .ir. Pillars of marble bore a silken sky, While cords of purple and fine linen tie In silver rings, the azure canopy. Distinct with diamond stars the blue was seen, And earth and seas were feign'd in emerald green ; A globe of gold, ray'd with a pointed crown, Form'd in the midst almost a real sun. Nor is Henley less skilful in the elegance of his sentiments, * Specimens of Henley's style may be most easily referred to in the "Spectator, " Nos. 94 and 518. The communication on punning, in the first ; and that of judging character by exteriors, in the last : are both attributed to Henley. ED. t The title is, "Esther, Queen of Persia, an historical Poem, in four books ; by John Henley, B. A. of St. John's College, Cambridge. 1714." Disappointed Genius. 61 and in his development of the human character. When Esther is raised to the throne, the poet says And Esther, though in robes, is Esther still. And then sublimely exclaims The heroic soul, amidst its bliss or woe, Is never swell'd too high, nor sunk too low ; Stands, like its origin above the skies, Ever the same great self, sedately wise ; Collected and prepared in every stage To scorn a courting world, or bear its rage. But wit which the " Spectator" has sent down to pos- terity, and poetry which gave the promise of excellence, did not bound the noble ambition of Henley ; ardent in more important labours, he was perfecting himself in the learned languages, and carrying on a correspondence with eminent scholars. He officiated as the master of the free-school at his native town in Leicestershire, then in a declining state ; but he introduced many original improvements. He established a class for public elocution, recitations of the classics, orations, &c. ; and arranged a method of enabling every scholar to give an account of his studies without the necessity of consulting others, or of being examined by particular questions. These miracles are indeed a little apocryphal ; for they are drawn from that pseudo-gospel of his life, of which I am inclined to think he himself was the evangelist. His grammar of ten languages was now finished ; and his genius felt that obscure spot too circumscribed for his ambition. He parted from the inhabitants with their regrets, and came to the metropolis with thirty recommendatory letters. Henley probably had formed those warm conceptions of patronage in which youthful genius cradles its hopes. Till 1724 he appears, however, to have obtained only a small living, and to have existed by translating and writing. Thus, after persevering studies, many successful literary efforts, and much heavy taskwork, Henley found he was but a hireling author for the booksellers, and a salaried " Hyp-doctor" for the minister; for he received a stipend for this periodical paper, which was to cheer the spirits of the people by ridi- culing the gloomy forebodings of Amhurst's " Craftsman." About this time the complete metamorphosis of the studious and ingenious John Henley began to branch out into its grotesque figure ; and a curiosity in human nature was now 62 Calamities of Authors. about to be opened to public inspection. "The Preacher" was to personate " The Zany." His temper had become brutal, and he had gradually contracted a ferocity and gross- ness in his manners, which seem by no means to have been indicated in his purer days. His youth was disgraced by no irregularities it was studious and honourable. But he was now quick at vilifying the greatest characters ; and having a perfect contempt for all mankind, was resolved to live by making one half of the world laugh at the other. Such is the direction which disappointed genius has too often given to its talents. He first affected oratory, and something of a theatrical attitude in his sermons, which greatly attracted the populace ; and he startled those preachers who had so long dozed over their own sermons, and who now finding themselves with but few slumberers about them, envied their Ciceronian brother, Tuning his voice, and balancing bis hands. It was alleged against Henley, that " he drew the people too much from their parish churches, and was not so proper for a London divine as a rural pastor." He was offered a rustication, on a better living ; but Henley did not come from the country to return to it. There is a narrative of the life of Henley, which, sub- scribed by another person's name, he himself inserted in his " Oratory Transactions."* As he had to publish himself this highly seasoned biographical morsel, and as his face was then beginning to be "embrowned with bronze," he thus very impudently and very ingeniously apologises for the pane- gyric : " If any remark of the writer appears favourable to myself, and be judged apocryphal, it may, however, weigh in the opposite scale to some things less obligingly said of me ; false praise being as pardonable as false reproach. "f Many of the rough drafts of his famed discourses delivered at the Oratory are preserved in the library of the Guildhall, London. The advertisements he drew up for the papers, announcing their subject, are generally exceedingly whimsical, and calculated to attract popular attention. ED. t This narrative is subscribed A. Welstede. Warburton maliciously quotes it as a life of Henley, written by Welsted doubtless designed to lower the writer of that name, and one of the heroes of the Dunciad. The public have long been deceived by this artifice ; the effect, I believe, of Warburton's dishonesty. Disappointed Genius. 63 In this narrative we are told, that when at college " He began to be uneasy that he had not the liberty of thinking, without incurring the scandal of heterodoxy ; he was impatient that systems of all sorts were put into his hands ready carved out for him ; it shocked him to find that he was commanded to believe against his judgment, and resolved some time or other to enter his protest against any person being bred like a slave, who is born an Englishman." This is all very decorous, and nothing can be objected to the first cry of this reforming patriot but a reasonable suspicion of its truth. If these sentiments were really in his mind at college, he deserves at least the praise of retention : for fifteen years were siifFered to pass quietly without the patriotic volcano giving even a distant rumbling of the sulphurous matter concealed beneath. All that time had passed in the contemplation of church preferment, with the aerial perspec- tive lighted by a visionary mitre. But Henley grew indignant at his disappointments, and suddenly resolved to reform " the gross impostures and faults that have long prevailed in the received institutions and establishments of knowledge and religion " simply meaning that he wished to pull down the Church and the University ! But he was prudent before he was patriotic ; he at first grafted himself on Whiston, adopting his opinions, and sent some queries by which it appears that Henley, previous to breaking with the church, was anxious to learn the power it had to punish him. The Arian Whistou was himself, from pure motives, suffering expulsion from Cambridge, for refusing his subscription to the Athanasian Creed ; he was a pious man, and no buffoon, but a little crazed. Whiston afterwards dis- covered the character of his correspondent, he then requested the Bishop of London " To summon Mr. Henley, the orator, whose vile history I knew so well, to come and tell it to the church. But the bishop said he could do nothing ; since which time Mr. Hen- ley has gone on for about twenty years without control every week, as an ecclesiastical mountebank, to abuse religion." The most extraordinary project was now formed by Henley ; he was to teach mankind universal knowledge from his lec- tures, and primitive Christianity from his sermons. He took apartments in Newport market, and opened his " Oratory." He declared, " He would teach more in one year than schools and uni- 64 Calamities of Authors. versities did in five, and write and study twelve hours a-day, and yet appear as untouched by the yoke, as if he never bore it." In his " Idea of what is intended to be taught in the Week-days' Universal Academy" we may admire the fertility, and sometimes the grandeur of his views. His lectures and orations* are of a very different nature from what they are imagined to be ; literary topics are treated with perspicuity and with erudition, and there is something original in the manner. They were, no doubt, larded and stuffed with many high-seasoned jokes, which Henley did not send to the printer. Henley was a charlatan and a knave ; but in all his charla- tanerie and his knavery he indulged the reveries of genius ; * Every lecture is dedicated to some branch of the royal family. Among them one is on "University Learning," an attack. "On the English History and Historians," extremely curious. "On the Languages, Ancient and Modern," full of erudition. "On the English Tongue," a valuable criticism at that moment when our style was receiving a new polish from Addison and Prior. Henley, acknowledging that these writers had raised correctness of expression to its utmost height, adds, though, " if I mistake not, something to the detriment of that force and freedom that ought, with the most concealed art, to be a perfect copy of nature in all compositions." This is among the first notices of that artificial style which has vitiated our native idiom, substituting for its purity an affected delicacy, and for its vigour profuse ornament. Henley observes that, " to be perspicuous, pure, elegant, copious, and harmonious, are the chief good qualities of writing the English tongue ; they are attained by study and practice, and lost by the contrary : but imitation is to be avoided ; they cannot be made our own but by keeping the force of our understandings superior to our models ; by rendering our thoughts the original, and our words the copy." " On Wit and Imagination," abounding with excellent criticism. " On grave conun- drums and serious buffoons, in defence of burlesque discourses, from the most weighty authorities." "A Dissertation upon Nonsense." At the close he has a fling at his friend Pope ; it was after the publication of the Dunciad. ' ' Of Nonsense there are celebrated professors ; Mr. Pope grows witty like Bays in the 'Rehearsal,' by selling bargains (his subscriptions for Homer), praising himself, laughing at his joke, and making his own works the test of any man's criticism ; but he seems to be in some jeopardy ; for the ghost of Homer has lately spoke to him in Greek, and Shakspeare resolves to bring him, as he has brought Shakspeare, to a tragical conclu- sion. Mr. Pope suggests the hist choice of a subject for writing a book, by making the Nonsense of others his argument ; while his own puts it out of any writer's power to confute him." In another fling at Pope, he gives the reason why Mr. Pope adds the dirty dialect to that of the water, and is in love with the Nymphs of Fleet ditch ; and in a lecture on the spleen he announced " an anatomical discovery, that Mr. Pope's spleen is bigger than his head!" Disappointed Genius. 65 many of which have been realised since ; and, if we continue to laugh at Henley, it will indeed be cruel, for we shall be laughing at ourselves ! Among the objects which Henley discriminates in his general design, were, to supply the want of a university, or universal school, in this capital, for persons of all ranks, professions, and capacities ; to encourage a lite- rary correspondence with great men and learned bodies ; the communication of all discoveries and experiments in science and the arts ; to form an amicable society for the encourage- ment of learning, " in order to cultivate, adorn, and exalt the genius of Britain ;" to lay a foundation for an English Academy ; to give a standard to our language, and a digest to our history ; to revise the ancient schools of philosophy and elocution, which last has been reckoned by Pancirollus among the artes perditce. All these were " to bring all the parts of knowledge into the narrowest compass, placing them in the clearest light, and fixing them to the utmost certainty." The religion of the Oratory was to be that of the primitive church in the first ages of the four first general councils, approved by parliament in the first year of the reign of Elizabeth. " The Church of England is really with us ; we appeal to her own principles, and we shall not deviate from her, unless she deviates from herself." Yet his " Primitive Christianity " had all the sumptuous pomp of popery ; his creeds and doxolo- gies are printed in the red letter, and his liturgies in the black ; his pulpit blazed in gold and velvet (Pope's " gilt tub ") ; while his " Primitive Eucharist " was to be dis- tributed with all the ancient forms of celebrating the sacrifice of the altar, which he says, " are so noble, so just, sublime, and perfectly harmonious, that the change has been made to an unspeakable disadvantage." It was restoring the decora- tions and the mummery of the mass ! He assumed even a higher tone, and dispersed medals, like those of Louis XIV., with the device of a sun near the meridian, and a motto, Ad sunima, with an inscription expressive of the genius of this new adventurer, Inveniam viam out faciam ! There was a snake in the grass ; it is obvious that Henley, in improving literature and philosophy, had a deeper design to set up a new sect ! He called himself "a Rationalist," and on his death-bed repeatedly cried out, " Let my notorious enemies know I die a Rational."* * Thus he anticipated the term, since become so notorious among German theologians. F 66 Calamities of Authors. His address to the town* excited public curiosity to the utmost ; and the floating crowds were repulsed by their own violence from this new paradise, where "The Tree of Knowledge" was said to be planted. At the succeeding meeting " the Restorer of Ancient Eloquence" informed " persons in chairs that they must come sooner." He first commenced by subscriptions to be raised from " persons emi- nent in Arts and Literature," who, it seems, were lured by the seductive promise, that, " if they had been virtuous or penitents, they should be commemorated ;" an oblique hint at a panegyrical puff. In the decline of his popularity he permitted his doorkeeper, whom he dignifies with the title of Ostiary, to take a shilling ! But he seems to have been po- pular for many years ; even when his auditors were but few, they were of the better order ;t and in notes respecting him which I have seen, by a contemporary, he is called " the reverend and learned." His favourite character was that of a Restorer of Eloquence ; and he was not destitute of the qualifications of a fine orator, a good voice, graceful gesture, and forcible elocution. Warburton justly remarked, " Some- times he broke jests, and sometimes that bread which he called the Primitive Eucharist." He would degenerate into buffoonery on solemn occasions. His address to the Deity was at first awful, and seemingly devout ; but, once expa- tiating on the several sects who would certainly be damned, he prayed that the Dutch might be undamm'd ! He under- took to show the ancient use of the petticoat, by quoting the Scriptures where the mother of Samuel is said to have made him "a little coat," ergo, a VTZTTi-coat !^ His advertise- * It is preserved in the "Historical Register," vol. xi. for 1726. It is curious and well written. t "Gentleman's Magazine," vol. Ivii. p. 876. J His "Defence of the Oratory" is a curious performance. He pretends to derive his own from great authority. " St. Paul is related, Acts 28, to have dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and to have received all that came in unto him, teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him. This was at Rome, and doubtless was his practice in his other travels, there being the same reason in the thing to produce elsewhere the like circumstances." He proceeds to show ' ' the calumnies and reproaches, and the novelty and impiety, with which Christianity, at its first setting out, was charged, as a mean, abject institution, not only useless and unserviceable, but pernicious to the public and its professors, as the refuse of tha world." Of the false accusations raised against Jesus all this he applies to himself and his Disappointed Genius. 67 merits were mysterious ribaldry to attract curiosity, while his own good sense would frequently chastise those who could not resist it ; his auditors came in folly, but they de- parted in good-humour.* These advertisements were usually preceded by a sort of motto, generally a sarcastic allusion to some public transaction of the preceding week.f Henley pretended to great impartiality ; and when two preachers had animadverted on him, he issued an advertisement, an- nouncing " A Lecture that will be a challenge to the Rev. Mr. Batty and the Rev. Mr. Albert. Letters are sent to them on this head, and a free standing-place is there to be had gratis" Once Henley offered to admit of a disputation, and that he would impartially determine the merits of the contest. It happened that Henley this time was over- oratory and he concludes, that "Bringing men to think rightly will always be reckoned a depraving of their minds by those who are desirous to keep them in a mistake, and who measure all truth by the standard of their own narrow opinions, views, and passions. The principles of this institution are those of right reason : the first ages of Christianity ; true facts, clear criticism, and polite literature if these corrupt the mind, to find a place where the mind will not be corrupted will be impracticable." Thus speciously could "the Orator" reason, raising himself to the height of apostolical purity. And when he was accused that he did all for lucre, he retorted, that "some do nothing for it ;" and that "he preached more charity sermons than any clergyman in the kingdom." * He once advertised an oration on marriage, which drew together an overflowing assembly of females, at which, solemnly shaking his head, he told the ladies, that " he was afraid, that oftentimes, as well as now, they came to church in hopes to get husbands, rather than be instructed by the preacher ;" to which he added a piece of wit not quite decent. He congre- gated the trade of shoemakers, by offering to show the most expeditious method of making shoes : he held out a boot, and cut off the leg part. He gave a lecture, which he advertised was " for the instruction of those who do not like it ; it was on the philosophy, history, and great use of Nonsense to the learned, political, and polite world, who excel in it." 1* Dr. Cobden, one of George the Second's chaplains, having, in 1748, preached a sermon at St. James's from these words, "Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness," it gave so much displeasure, that the doctor was struck out of the list of chaplains ; and the next Saturday the following parody of his text appeared as a motto to Henley's advertisement : " Away with the wicked before the king, And away with the wicked behind him ; His throne it will bless With righteousness, And we shall know where to find him. " CHALMERS'S "Biographical Dictionary." F2 68 Calamities of Authors. matched ; for two Oxonians, supported by a strong party to awe his " marrow-boners," as the butchers were called, said to be in the Orator's pay, entered the list ; the one to defend the ignorance, the other the impudence, of the Eestorer of Eloquence himself. As there was a door behind the rostrum, which led to his house, the Orator silently dropped out, postponing the award to some happier day.* This age of lecturers may find their model in Henley's "Universal Academy," and if any should aspire to bring themselves down to his genius, I furnish them with hints of anomalous topics. In the second number of " The Oratory Transactions," is a diary from July 1726, to August 1728. It forms, perhaps, an unparalleled chronicle of the vagaries of the human mind. These archives of cunning, of folly, and of literature, are divided into two diaries ; the one " The Theo- logical or Lord's days' subjects of the Oratory ;" the other, " The Academical or Week-days' subjects." I can only note a few. It is easy to pick out ludicrous specimens ; for he had a quaint humour peculiar to himself; but among these numerous topics are many curious for their knowledge and ingenuity. " The last Wills and Testaments of the Patriarchs." " An Argument to the Jews, with a proof that they ought to be Christians, for the same reason which they ought to be Jews." " St. Paul's Cloak, Books, and Parchments, left at Troas." " The tears of Magdalen, and the joy of angels." " New Converts in Religion." After pointing out the names of " Courayer and others, the D of W n, the Pro- * The history of the closing years of Henley's life is thus given in " The History of the Robin Hood Society," 1764, a political club, whose debates he occasionally enlivened : "The Orator, with various success, still kept up his Oratory, King George's, or Cfiarles's Cfiapel, as he differently termed it, till the year 1759, when he died. At its first establishment it was amazingly crowded, and money flowed in upon him apace ; and between whiles it languished and drooped : but for some years before its author's death it dwindled away so much, and fell into such an hectic state, that the few friends of it feared its decease was very near. The doctor, indeed, kept it up to the last, determined it should live as long as he did, and actually exhibited many evenings to empty benches. Finding no one at length would attend, he admitted the acquaintances of his door-keeper, runner, mouth-piece, and some other of his followers, gratis. On the 13th of October, however, the doctor died, and the Oratory ceased ; no one having iniquity or impudence sufficient to continue it on." ED. Disappointed Genius. 69 testantism of the P , the conversion of the Rev. Mr. B e, and Mr. Har y," he closes with " Origen's opi- nion of Satan's conversion ; with the choice and balance of Keligion in all countries." There is one remarkable entry : " Feb. 11. This week all Mr. Henley's writings were seized, to be examined by the State. Vide Magnam Char- tarn, and Eng Lib." It is evident by what follows that the personalities he made use of were one means of attracting auditors. " On the action of Cicero, and the beauty of Eloquence, and on living characters ; of action in the Senate, at the Bar, and in the Pulpit of the Theatrical in all men. The manner of my Lord , Sir , Dr. , the B. of , being a proof how all life is playing something, but with different action." In a Lecture on the History of Bookcraft, an account was given " Of the plenty of books, and dearth of sense ; the advan- tages of the Oratory to the booksellers, in advertising for them ; and to their customers, in making books useless ; with all the learning, reason, and wit more than are proper for one advertisement." Amid these eccentricities it is remarkable that " the Zany" never forsook his studies ; and the amazing multi- plicity of the MSS. he left behind him confirm this extra- ordinary fact. " These," he says, " are six thousand more or less, that I value at one guinea apiece ; with 150 volumes of commonplaces of wit, memoranda," &c. They were sold for much less than one hundred pounds ; I have looked over many ; they are written with great care. Every leaf has an opposite blank page, probably left for additions or corrections, so that if his nonsense were spontaneous, his sense was the fruit of study and correction. Such was " Orator Henley !" A scholar of great acquire- ments, and of no mean genius ; hardy and inventive, elo- quent and witty ; he might have been an ornament to litera- ture, which he made ridiculous ; and the pride of the pulpit, which he so egregiously disgraced ; but, having blunted and worn out that interior feeling, which is the instinct of the good man, and the wisdom of the wise, there was no balance in his passions, and the decorum of life was sacrificed to its 70 Calamities of Authors. selfishness. He condescended to live on the follies of the people, and his sordid nature had changed him till he crept, "licking the dust with the serpent."* THE MALADIES OF AUTHORS. THE practice of every art subjects the artist to some par- ticular inconvenience, usually inflicting some malady on that member which has been over-wrought by excess : nature abused, pursues man into his most secret corners, and avenges herself. In the athletic exercises of the ancient Gymnasium, the pugilists were observed to become lean from their hips downwards, while the superior parts of their bodies, which they over-exercised, were prodigiously swollen ; on the con- trary, the racers were meagre upwards, while their feet ac- quired an unnatural dimension. The secret source of life seems to be carried forwards to those parts which are making the most continued efforts. In all sedentary labours, some particular malady is con- tracted by every worker, derived from particular postures of the body and peculiar habits. Thus the weaver, the tailor, the painter, and the glass-blower, have all their respective maladies. The diamond-cutter, with a furnace before him, may be said almost to live in one ; the slightest air must be shut out of the apartment, lest it scatter away the precious dust a breath would ruin him ! The analogy is obvious ;f and the author must participate in the common fate of all sedentary occupations. But his maladies, from the very nature of the delicate organ of thinking, intensely exercised, are more terrible than those of any other profession ; they are more complicated, more hidden * Hogarth has preserved his features in the parson who figures so con- spicuously in his "Modern Midnight Conversation." His off-hand style of discourse is given in the Gray's- Inn Journal, 1753 (No. 18), in an imaginary meeting of the political Robin Hood Society, where he figures as Orator Bronze, and exclaims : " I am pleased to see this assembly you're a twig from me ; a chip of the old block at Clare Market ; I am the old block, invincible ; coup de grace as yet unanswered. We are brother rationalists ; logicians upon fundamentals ! I love ye all I love mankind in general give me some of that porter." ED. t Hawkesworth, in the second paper of the "Adventurer," has com- posed, from his own feelings, an elegant description of intellectual and corporeal labour, and the sufferings of an author, with the uncertainty of his labour and his reward. The Maladies of Authors. 71 in their causes, and the mysterious union and secret influence of the faculties of the soul over those of the body, are visible, yet still incomprehensible ; they frequently produce a perturbation in the faculties, a state of acute irritability, and many sorrows and infirmities, which are not likely to create much sympathy from those around the author, who, at a glance, could have discovered where the pugilist or the racer became meagre or monstrous : the intellectual malady eludes even the tenderness of friendship. The more obvious maladies engendered by the life of a student arise from over-study. These have furnished a curious volume to Tissot, in his treatise " On the Health of Men of Letters ;" a book, however, which chills and terrifies more than it does good. The unnatural fixed postures, the perpetual activity of the mind, and the inaction of the body ; the brain exhausted with assiduous toil deranging the nerves, vitiating the digestive powers, disordering its own machinery, and breaking the calm, of sleep by that previous state of excitement which study throws us into, are some of the calamities of a studious life : for like the ocean when its swell is subsiding, the waves of the mind too still heave and beat ; hence all the small feverish symptoms, and the whole train of hypochondriac affections, as well as some acute ones.* * Dr. Fuller's "Medicina Gyinnastica, or, a treatise concerning the power of Exercise, with respect to the Animal (Economy, fifth edition, 1718," is useful to remind the student of what he is apt to forget ; for the object of this volume is to substitute exercise for medicine. He wrote the book before he became a physician. He considers horse-riding as the best and noblest of all exercises, it being "a mixed exercise, partly active and partly passive, while other sorts, such as walking, running, stooping, or the like, require some labour and more strength for their performance." Cheyne, in his well-known treatise of "The English Malady," published about twenty years after Fuller's work, acknowledges that riding on horse- back is the best of all exercises, for which he details his reasons. "Walk- ing," he says, "though it will answer the same end, yet is it more laborious and tiresome ;" but amusement ought always to be combined with the exercise of a student ; the mind will receive no refreshment by a solitary walk or ride, unless it be agreeably withdrawn from all thoughtfulness and anxiety ; if it continue studying in its recreations, it is the sure means of obtaining neither of its objects a friend, not an author, will at such a moment be the better companion. The last chapter in Fuller's work contains much curious reading on the ancient physicians, and their gymnastic courses, which Asclepiades, the pleasantest of all the ancient physicians, greatly studied ; he was most fortunate in the invention of exercises to supply the place of much physic, and (says Fuller) no man in any age ever had the happiness to obtain so 72 Calamities of Authors. Among the correspondents of the poets Hughes and Thom- son, there is a pathetic letter from a student. Alexander Bayne, to prepare his lectures, studied fourteen hours a-day for eight months successively, and wrote 1,600 sheets. Such intense application, which, however, not greatly exceeds that of many authors, brought on the bodily complaints he has minutely described, with " all the dispiriting symptoms of a nervous illness, commonly called vapours, or lowness of spirits." Bayne. who was of an athletic temperament, imagined he had not paid attention to his diet, to the lowness of his desk, and his habit of sitting with a particular compression of the body ; in future all these were to be avoided. He prolonged his life for five years, and, perhaps, was still flattering his hopes of sharing one day in the literary celebrity of his friends, when, to use his words, " the same illness made a fierce attack upon me again, and has kept me in a very bad state of inactivity and disrelish of all my ordinary amusements :" those amusements were his serious studies. There is a fasci- nation in literary labour : the student feeds on magical drugs ; to withdraw him from them requires nothing less than that greater magic which could break his own spells. A few months after this letter was written Bayne died on the way to Bath, a martyr to his studies. The excessive labour on a voluminous work, which occupies a long life, leaves the student with a broken constitution, and his sight decayed or lost. The most admirable observer of mankind, and the truest painter of the human heart, declares, " The corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthy tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth on many things." Of this class was old Randle Cotgrave, the curious collector of the most copious dictionary of old French and old English words and phrases. The work is the only treasury of our genuine idiom. Even this labour of the lexicographer, general an applause ; Pliny calls him the delight of mankind. Admirable physician, who had so many ways, it appears, to make physic agreeable ! He invented the lecti pensiles, or hanging beds, that the sick might be rocked to sleep ; which took so much at that time, that they became a great luxury among the Romans. Fuller judiciously does not recommend the gymnastic courses, because horse-riding, for persons of delicate constitutions, is preferable ; he discovers too the reason why the ancients did not introduce this mode of exercise it arose from the simple circumstance of their not knowing the use of stirrups, which was a later invention. Hiding with the ancients was, therefore, only an exercise for the healthy and the robust ; a horse without stirrups was a formidable animal for a valetudinarian. The Maladies of Authors. 73 so copious and so elaborate, must have been projected with rapture, and pursued with pleasure, till, in the progress, "the mind was musing on many things." Then came the melan- choly doubt, that drops mildew from its enveloping wings over the voluminous labour of a laborious author, whether he be wisely consuming his days, and not perpetually neglecting some higher duties or some happier amusements. Still the enchanted delver sighs, and strikes on in the glimmering mine of hope. If he live to complete the great labour, it is, per- haps, reserved for the applause of the next age ; for, as our great lexicographer exclaimed, " In this gloom of solitude I have protracted my work, till those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds;" but, if it be applauded in his own, that praise has come too late for him whose literary labour has stolen away his sight. Cotgrave had grown blind over his dictionary, and was doubtful whether this work of his laborious days and nightly vigils was not a superfluous labour, and nothing, after all, but a "poor bundle of words." The reader may listen to the gray-headed martyr addressing his patron, Lord Burghley : " I present to your lordship an account of the expense of many hours, which, in your service, and to mine own benefit, might have been otherwise employed. My desires have aimed at more substantial marks ; but mine eyes failed them, and forced me to spend out their vigour in this bundle of words, which may be unworthy of your lordship's great patience, and, perhaps, ill-suited to the expectation of others" A great number of young authors have died of over-study. An intellectual enthusiasm, accompanied by constitutional delicacy, has swept away half the rising genius of the age. Curious calculators have affected to discover the average num- ber of infants who die under the age of five years : had they investigated those of the children of genius who perish before their thirtieth year, we should not be less amazed at this waste of man. There are few scenes more afflicting, nor which more deeply engage our sympathy, than that of a youth, glowing with the devotion of study, and resolute to distin- guish his name among his countrymen, while death is stealing on him, touching with premature age, before he strikes the last blow. The author perishes on the very pages which give a charm to his existence. The fine taste and tender melan- choly of Headley, the fervid genius of Henry Kirke White, 74 Calamities of Authors. will not easily pass away ; but how many youths as noble- minded have not had the fortune of Kirke White to be com- memorated by genius, and have perished without their fame ! Henry Wharton is a name well known to the student of English literature ; he published historical criticisms of high value ; and he left, as some of the fruits of his studies, sixteen volumes of MS., preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. These great labours were pursued with the ardour that only could have produced them ; the author had not ex- ceeded his thirtieth year when he sank under his continued studies, and perished a martyr to literature. Our literary history abounds with instances of the sad effects of an over indulgence in study : that agreeable writer, Howel, had nearly lost his life by an excess of this nature, studying through long nights in the depth of winter. This severe study occasioned an imposthume in his head ; he was eighteen days without sleep ; and the illness was attended with many other afflicting symptoms. The eager diligence of Blackmore, protracting his studies through the night, broke his health, and obliged him to fly to a country retreat. Harris, the historian, died of a consumption by midnight studies, as his friend Hollis mentions. I shall add a recent instance, which I myself wit- nessed : it is that of John Macdiarmid. He was one of those Scotch students whom the golden fame of Hume and Robertson attracted to the metropolis. He mounted the first steps of literary adventure with credit ; and passed through the probation of editor and reviewer, till he strove for more heroic adventures. He published some volumes, whose sub- jects display the aspirings of his genius: "An Inquiry into the Nature of Civil and Military Subordination ;" another into " the System of Military Defence." It was during these labours I beheld this inquirer, of a tender frame, emaciated, and study-worn, with hollow eyes, where the mind dimly shone like a lamp in a tomb. With keen ardour he opened a new plan of biographical politics. When, by one who wished the author was in better condition, the dangers of excess in study were brought to his recollection, he smiled, and, with something of a mysterious air, talked of unalterable confi- dence in the powers of his mind ; of the indefinite improve- ment in our faculties : and, with this enfeebled frame, con- sidered himself capable of continuous labour. His whole life, indeed, was one melancholy trial. Often the day cheer- fully passed without its meal, but never without its page. Literary Scotchmen. 75 The new system of political biography was advancing, when our young author felt a paralytic stroke. He afterwards resumed his pen ; and a second one proved fatal. He lived just to pass through the press his " Lives of British States- men," a splendid quarto, whose publication he owed to the generous temper of a friend, who, when the author could not readily procure a publisher, would not see the dying author's last hope disappointed. Some research and reflection are com- bined in this literary and civil history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; but it was written with the blood of the author, for Macdiarmid died of over-study and exhaustion. Among the maladies of poor authors, who procure a pre- carious existence by their pen, one, not the least considerable, is their old age ; their flower and maturity of life were shed for no human comforts ; and old age is the withered root. The late THOMAS MOBTIMER, the compiler, among other things, of that useful work, "The Student's Pocket Dic- tionary," felt this severely he himself experienced no abate- ment of his ardour, nor deficiency in his intellectual powers, at near the age of eighty; but he then would complain "of the paucity of literary employment, and the preference given to young adventurers." Such is the youth, and such the old age of ordinary authors ! LITERARY SCOTCHMEN. WHAT literary emigrations from the North of young men of genius, seduced by a romantic passion for literary fame, and lured by the golden prospects which the happier genius of some of their own countrymen opened on them. A volume might be written on literary Scotchmen, who have perished immaturely in this metropolis; little known, and slightly connected, they have dropped away among us, and scarcely left a vestige in the wrecks of their genius. Among them some authors may be discovered who might have ranked, perhaps, in the first classes of our literature. I shall select four out of as many hundred, who were not entirely unknown to me ; a romantic youth a man of genius a brilliant prose writer and a labourer in literature. ISAAC RITSOX (not the poetical antiquary) was a young man of genius, who perished immaturely in this metropolis by attempting to exist by the efforts of his pen. 76 Calamities of Authors. In early youth he roved among his native mountains, with the battles of Homer in his head, and his bow and arrow in his hand ; in calmer hours, he nearly completed a spirited version of Hesiod, which constantly occupied his after-studies ; yet our minstrel-archer did not less love the severer sciences. Selected at length to rise to the eminent station of the Village Schoolmaster, from the thankless office of pouring cold rudiments into heedless ears, RJLTSON took a poetical flight. It was among the mountains and wild scenery of Scotland that our young Homer, picking up fragments of heroic songs, and composing some fine ballad poetry, would, in his wanderings, recite them with such passionate expres- sion, that he never failed of auditors ; and found even the poor generous, when their better passions were moved. Thus lie lived, like some old troubadour, by his rhymes, and his chants, and his virelays ; and, after a year's absence, our bard returned in the triumph of verse. This was the most seducing moment of life ; RITSON felt himself a laureated Petrarch ; but he had now quitted his untutored but feeling admirers, and the child of fancy was to mix with the everyday business of life. At Edinburgh he studied medicine, lived by writing theses for the idle and the incompetent, and composed a poem on Medicine, till at length his hopes and his ambition conducted him to London. But the golden age of the imagination soon deserted him in his obscure apartment in the glittering metro- polis. He attended the hospitals, but these were crowded by students who, if they relished the science less, loved the trade more : he published a hasty version of Homer's Hymn to Venus, which was good enough to be praised, but not to sell ; at length his fertile imagination, withering over the taskwork of literature, he resigned fame for bread ; wrote the preface to Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, compiled medical articles for the Monthly Review ; and, wasting fast his ebbing spirits, he retreated to an obscure lodging at Islington, where death relieved a hopeless author, in the twenty-seventh year of his life. The following unpolished lines were struck off at a heat in trying his pen on the back of a letter ; he wrote the names of the Sister Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos the sud- den recollection of his own fate rushed on him and thus the rhapsodist broke out : I wonder much, as yet ye're spinning, Fates ! What threads yet twisted out for me, old jades ! Literary Scotchmen. 77 Ah, Atropos ! perhaps for me thou spinn'st Neglect, contempt, and penury and woe ; Be't so ; whilst that foul fiend, the spleen, And moping melancholy spare me, all the rest I'll bear, as should a man ; 'twill do me good, And teach me what no better fortune could, Humility, and sympathy with others' ills. Ye destinies, I love you much ; ye flatter not my pride. Your mien, 'tis true, is wrinkled, hard, and sour ; Your words are harsh and stern ; and sterner still Your purposes to me. Yet I forgive Whatever you have done, or mean to do. Beneath some baleful planet born, I've found, In all this world, no friend with fostering hand To lead me on to science, which I love Beyond all else the world could give ; yet still Your rigour I forgive ; ye are not yet my foes ; My own untutor'd will's my only curse. We grasp asphaltic apples ; blooming poison ! We love what we should hate ; how kind, ye Fates, To thwart our wishes ! you're kind to scourge ! And flay us to the bone to make us feel ! Thus deeply he enters into his own feelings, and abjures his errors, as he paints the utter desolation of the soul while falling into the grave opening at his feet. The town was once amused almost every morning by a series of humorous or burlesque poems by a writer under the assumed name of Matthew Bramble he was at that very moment one of the most moving spectacles of human melan- choly I have ever witnessed. It was one evening I saw a tall, famished, melancholy man enter a bookseller's shop, his hat flapped over his eyes, and his whole frame evidently feeble from exhaustion and utter misery. The bookseller inquired how he proceeded in his new tragedy. " Do not talk to me about my tragedy ! Do not talk to me about my tragedy ! I have indeed more tragedy than I can bear at home !" was the reply, and the voice faltered as he spoke. This man was Matthew Bramble, or rather M'DoNALD, the author of the tragedy of Vimonda, at that moment the writer of comic poetry his tragedy was indeed a domestic one, in which he himself was the greatest actor amid his disconsolate family; he shortly afterwards perished. M'Donald had walked from Scotland with no other fortune than the novel of " The Independent" in one pocket, and the tragedy of " Vimonda" in the other. Yet he lived some time in all the bloom and flush of poetical confidence. Vimonda was even 78 Calamities of Authors. performed several nights, but not with the success the romantic poet, among his native rocks, had conceived was to crown his anxious labours the theatre disappointed him and after- wards, to his feelings, all the world ! LOGAN had the dispositions of a poetic spirit, not cast in a common mould ; with fancy he combined learning, and with eloquence philosophy. His claims on our sympathy arise from those circumstances in his life which open the secret sources of the calamities of authors ; of those minds of finer temper, who, having tamed the heat of their youth by the patient severity of study, from causes not always difficult to discover, find their favourite objects and their fondest hopes barren and neglected. It is then that the thoughtful melancholy, which constitutes so large a portion of their genius, absorbs and consumes the very faculties to which it gave birth. Logan studied at the University of Edinburgh, was ordained in the Church of Scotland and early distinguished as a poet by the simplicity and the tenderness of his verses, yet the philosophy of history had as deeply interested his studies. He gave two courses of lectures. I have heard from his pupils their admiration, after the lapse of many years ; so striking were those lectures for having successfully applied the science of moral philosophy to the history of nations. All wished that Logan should obtain the chair of the Professorship of Universal History but from some point of etiquette he failed in obtaining that distinguished office. This was his first disappointment in life, yet then perhaps but lightly felt ; for the public had approved of his poems, and a successful poet is easily consoled. Poetry to such a gentle being seems a universal specific for all the evils of life ; it acts at the moment, exhausting and destroying too often the constitution it seems to restore. He had finished the tragedy of " Runnymede ;" it was accepted at Covent-garden, but interdicted by the Lord Cham- berlain, from some suspicion that its lofty sentiments con- tained allusions to the politics of the day. The Barons-in- arms who met John were conceived to be deeper politicians than the poet himself was aware of. This was the second disappointment in the life of this man of genius. The third calamity was the natural consequence of a tragic poet being also a Scotch clergyman. Logan had inflicted a wound on the Presbytery, heirs of the genius of old Prynne, Literary Scotchmen. 79 whose puritanic fanaticism had never forgiven Home for his " Douglas," and now groaned to detect genius still lurking among them.* Logan, it is certain, expressed his contempt for them ; they their hatred of him : folly and pride in a poet, to beard Presbyters in a land of Presbyterians !f He gladly abandoned them, retiring on a small annuity. They had, however, hurt his temper they had irritated the nervous system of a man too susceptible of all impressions, gentle or unkind his character had all those unequal habi- tudes which genius contracts in its boldness and its tremors ; he was now vivacious and indignant, and now fretted and melancholy. He flew to the metropolis, occupied himself in literature, and was a frequent contributor to the " English Review." He published " A Review of the Principal Charges against Mr. Hastings." Logan wrestled with the genius of Burke and Sheridan ; the House of Commons ordered the publisher Stockdale to be prosecuted, but the author did not live to rejoice in the victory obtained by his genius. This elegant philosopher has impressed on all his works the seal of genius ; and his posthumous compositions became even popular ; he who had with difficulty escaped excommunication by Presbyters, left the world after his death two volumes of sermons, which breathe all that piety, morality, and eloquence admire. His unrevised lectures, published under the name of a person, one Rutherford, who had purchased the MS., were given to the world in " A View of Ancient History." But one highly-finished composition he had himself published ; it is a philosophical review of Despotism : had the name of Gibbon been affixed to the title-page, its authenticity had not been suspected.^ * Home was at the time when he wrote " Douglas " a clergyman in the Scottish Church ; the theatre was then looked upon by the religious Scotsmen with the most perfect abhorrence. Many means were taken to deter the performance of the play ; and as they did not succeed, others were tried to annoy the author, until their persevering efforts induced him to withdraw himself entirely from the clerical profession. ED. f The objection to his tragedy was made chiefly by his parishioners at South Leith, who were strongly opposed to their minister being in any way connected with the theatre. He therefore resigned his appointment, and settled in London, which he never afterwards abandoned, dying there in 1788. ED. J This admirable little work is entitled "A Dissertation on the Govern- ments, Manners, and Spirit of Asia ; Murray, 1787." It is anonymous ; but the publisher informed me it was written by Logan. His "Elements of the Philosophy of History" are valuable. His "Sermons" have been repnblished. 80 Calamities of Authors. From one of his executors, Mr. Donald Grant, who wrote the life prefixed to his poems, I heard of the state of his numerous MSS. ; the scattered, yet warm embers of the unhappy bard. Several tragedies, and one on Mary Queen of Scots, abounding with all that domestic tenderness and poetic sensibility which formed the soft and natural feature of his muse ; these, with minor poems, thirty lectures on the Eoman History, and portions of a periodical paper, were the wrecks of genius ! He resided here, little known out of a very private circle, and perished in his fortieth year, not of penury, but of a broken heart. Such noble and well-founded expectations of fortune and fame, all the plans of literary ambition overturned: his genius, with all its delicacy, its spirit, and its elegance, became a prey to that melancholy which constituted so large a portion of it. Logan, in his " Ode to a Man of Letters," had formed this lofty conception of a great author : Won from neglected wastes of time, Apollo hails his fairest clime, The provinces of mind ; An Egypt with eternal towers ; * See Montesquieu redeem the hours From Louis to mankind. No tame remission genius knows, No interval of dark repose, To quench the ethereal flame ; From Thebes to Troy, the victor hies, And Homer with his hero vies, In varied paths to Fame. Our children will long repeat his " Ode to the Cuckoo," one of the most lovely poems in our language ; magical stanzas of picture, melody, and sentiment.f These authors were undoubtedly men of finer feelings, who all perished immaturely, victims in the higher department of literature ! But this article would not be complete without furnishing the reader with a picture of the fate of one who, with a pertinacity of industry not common, having undergone * The finest provinces of Egypt gained from a neglected waste, f- An attempt has been made to deprive Logan of the authorship of this poem. He had edited (very badly) the poems of a deceased friend, Michael Bruce ; and the friends of the latter claimed this poem as one of them. In the words of one who has examined the evidence it may be sufficient to say, " his claim is not only supported by internal evidence, but the charge was never advanced against him while he was alive to repel it." ED. Literary Scotchmen. 81 regular studies, not very injudiciously deemed that the life of a man of letters could provide for the simple wants of a philosopher. This man was the late ROBERT HERON, who, in the follow- ing letter, transcribed from the original, stated his history to the Literary Fund. It was written in a moment of extreme bodily suffering and mental agony in the house to which he had been hurried for debt. At such a moment he found eloquence in a narrative, pathetic from its simplicity, and valuable for its genuineness, as giving the results of a life of literary industry, productive of great infelicity and disgrace ; one would imagine that the author had been a criminal rather than a man of letters. " The Case of a Man of Letters, of regular education, living by honest literary industry. " Ever since I was eleven years of age I have mingled with my studies the labour of teaching or of writing, to support and educate myself. " During about twenty years, while I was in constant or occasional attendance at the University of Edinburgh, I taught and assisted young persons, at all periods, in the course of education ; from the Alphabet to the highest branches of Science and Literature. " I read a course of Lectures on the Law of Nature, the Law of Nations ; the Jewish, the Grecian, the Roman, and the Canon Law ; and then on the Feudal Law ; and on the several forms of Municipal Jurisprudence established in Modern Europe. I printed a Syllabus of these Lectures, which was approved. They were intended as introductory tp the professional study of Law, and to assist gentlemen who did not study it professionally, in the understanding of History. " I translated ' Fourcroy's Chemistry' twice, from both the second and the third editions of the original ; ' Fourcroy's Philosophy of Chemistry;' ' Savary's Travels in Greece;' ' Dumourier's Letters;' ' Gessner's Idylls' in part ; an ab- stract of ' Zimmerman on Solitude,' and a great diversity of smaller pieces. " I wrote a ' Journey through the Western Parts of Scot- land,' which has passed through two editions ; a ' History of Scotland,' in six volumes 8vo ; a ' Topographical Account of Scotland,' which has been several times reprinted ; a nuni- e 82 Calamities of Authors. ber of communications in the ' Edinburgh Magazine ;' many Prefaces and Critiques ; a ' Memoir of the Life of Burns the Poet,' which suggested and promoted the subscription for his family has been many times reprinted, and formed the basis of Dr. Currie's Life of him, as I learned by a letter from the doctor to one of his friends ; a variety of Jeux d* Esprit in verse and prose ; and many abridgments of large works. " In the beginning of 1799 I was encouraged to come to London. Here I have written a great multiplicity of articles in almost every branch of science and literature ; my educa- tion at Edinburgh having comprehended them all. The ' London Review,' the ' Agricultural Magazine,' the ' Anti- Jacobin Review,' the ' Monthly Magazine,' the ' Universal Magazine,' the ' Public Characters,' the ' Annual Necro- logy,' with several other periodical works, contain many of my communications. In such of those publications as have been reviewed, I can show that my anonymous pieces have been distinguished with very high praise. I have written also a short system of Chemistry, in one volume 8vo ; and I published a few weeks since a small work called ' Comforts of Life,'* of which the first edition was sold in one week, and the second edition is now in rapid sale. " In the Newspapers the Oracle, the Porcupine when it existed, the General Evening Post, the Morning Post, the British Press, the Courier, &c., I have published many Reports of Debates in Parliament, and, I believe, a greater variety of light fugitive pieces than I know to have been written by any one other person. " I have written also a variety of compositions in the Latin and the French languages, in favour of which I have been honoured with the testimonies of liberal approbation. " I have invariably written to serve the cause of religion, morality, pious Christian education, and good order, in the most direct manner. I have considered what I have written as mere trifles ; and have incessantly studied to qualify my- self for something better. I can prove that I have, for many years, read and written, one day with another, from twelve to sixteen hours a day. As a human being, I have not been free * "The Comforts of Life" were written in prison; "The Miseries" (by Jas. Beresford) necessarily in a drawing-room. The works of authors are often in contrast with themselves ; melancholy authors are the most jocular, and the most humorous the most melancholy. Laborious Authors. 83 from follies and errors. But the tenor of my life has been temperate, laborious, humble, quiet, and, to the utmost of my power, beneficent. I can prove the general tenor of my writings to have been candid, and ever adapted to exhibit the most favourable views of the abilities, dispositions, and exer- tions of others. " For these last ten months I have been brought to the very extremity of bodily and pecuniary distress. " I shudder at the thought of perishing in a gaol. "92, Chancery-lane, Feb. 2, 1807. " (In confinement)." The physicians reported that Robert Heron's health was such " as rendered him totally incapable of extricating him- self from the difficulties in which he was involved, by the indiscreet exertion of his mind, in protracted and incessant literary labours" About three months after, Heron sunk under a fever, and perished amid the walls of Newgate. We are disgusted with this horrid state of pauperism ; we are indignant at beholding an author, not a contemptible one, in this last stage of human wretchedness ! after early and late studies after having read and written from twelve to sixteen hours a day ! 0, ye popu- lace of scribblers ! before ye are driven to a garret, and your eyes are filled with constant tears, pause recollect that few of you possess the learning or the abilities of Heron. The fate of Heron is the fate of hundreds of authors by profession in the present day of men of some literary talent, who can never extricate themselves from a degrading state of poverty. LABORIOUS AUTHORS. THIS is one of the groans of old BCBTOK over his laborious work, when he is anticipating the reception it is like to meet with, and personates his objectors. He says : " This is a thinge of meere industrie a collection without wit or invention a very toy ! So men are valued ! their labours vilified by fellowes of no worth themselves, as things of nought ; who could not have done as much." There is, indeed, a class of authors who are liable to forfeit all claims to genius, whatever their genius may be these are the laborious writers of voluminous works ; but they are G2 84 Calamities of Authors. farther subject to heavier grievances to be undervalued or neglected by the apathy or the ingratitude of the public. Industry is often conceived to betray the absence of intel- lectual exertion, and the magnitude of a work is imagined necessarily to shut out all genius. Yet a laborious work has often had an original growth and raciness in it, requiring a genius whose peculiar feeling, like invisible vitality, is spread through the mighty body. Feeble imitations of such labo- rious works have proved the master's mind that is in the original. There is a talent in industry which every indus- trious man does not possess ; and even taste and imagination may lead to the deepest studies of antiquities, as well as mere un discerning curiosity and plodding dulness. But there are other more striking characteristics of intel- lectual feeling in authors of this class. The fortitude of mind which enables them to complete labours of which, in many instances, they are conscious that the real value will only be appreciated by dispassionate posterity, themselves rarely living to witness the fame of their own work established, while they endure the captiousness of malicious cavillers. It is said that the Optics of NEWTON had no character or credit here till noticed in France. It would not be the only instance of an author writing above his own age, and anticipating its more advanced genius. How many works of erudition might be adduced to show their author's disappointments ! PBIDEAUX'S learned work of the " Connexion of the Old and New Testa- ment," and SHUCKFOBD'S similar one, were both a long while before they could obtain a publisher, and much longer before they found readers. It is said Sir WALTEE RALEIGH burned the second volume of his History, from the ill success the first had met with. PBINCE'S " Worthies of Devon" was so unfavourably received by the public, that the laborious and patriotic author was so discouraged as not to print the second volume, which is said to have been prepared for the press. FABNEWOBTH'S elaborate Translation, with notes and disser- tations, of Machiavel's works, was hawked about the town ; and the poor author discovered that he understood Machiavel better than the public. After other labours of this kind, he left his family in distressed circumstances. Observe, this excellent book now bears a high price! The fate of the " Biographia Britannica," in its first edition, must be noticed : the spirit and acuteness of CAMPBELL, the curious industry of OLDYB, and the united labours of very able writers, could "not Laborious Authors. 85 secure public favour ; this treasure of our literary history was on the point of being suspended, when a poem by Gilbert West drew the public attention to that elaborate work, which, however, still languished, and was hastily concluded. GBANGEB says of his admirable work, in one of his letters " On a fair state of my account, it would appear that my labours in the improvement of my work do not amount to half the pay of a scavenger ! " He received only one hundred pounds to the times of Charles I., and the rest to depend on public favour for the continuation. The sale was sluggish ; even Walpole seemed doubtful of its success, though he pro- bably secretly envied the skill of our portrait-painter. It was too philosophical for the mere collector, and it took near ten years before it reached the hands of philosophers ; the author derived little profit, and never lived to see its popu- larity established ! We have had many highly valuable works suspended for their want of public patronage, to the utter disappointment, and sometimes the ruin of their authors ; such are OLDTS'S " British Librarian," MOEGAN'S " Phoenix Britannicus," Dr. BERKENHOUT'S " Biographia Literaria," Professor MAETYN'S and Dr. LETTICE'S " Antiquities of Herculaneum :" all these are first volumes, there are no seconds! They are now rare, curious, and high priced! Ungrateful public ! Unhappy authors ! That noble enthusiasm which so strongly characterises genius, in productions whose originality is of a less ambiguous nature, has been experienced by some of these laborious authors, who have sacrificed their lives and fortunes to their beloved studies. The enthusiasm of literature has often been that of heroism, and many have not shrunk from the forlorn hope. EUSHWOETH and KTMEE, to whose collections our history stands so deeply indebted, must have strongly felt this lite- rary ardour, for they passed their lives in forming them ; till Rymer, in the utmost distress, was obliged to sell his books and his fifty volumes of MS. which he could not get printed j and Rushworth died in the King's Bench of a broken heart. Many of his papers still remain unpublished. His ruling passion was amassing state matters, and he voluntarily neglected great opportunities of acquiring a large fortune for this entire devotion of his life. The same fate has awaited the similar labours of many authors to whom the history of our country lies under deep obligations. AETHUE COLLINS, the historiographer of our Peerage, and the curious collector of 86 Calamities of Authors. the valuable " Sydney Papers," and other collections, passed his life in rescuing these works of antiquity, in giving au- thenticity to our history, or contributing fresh materials to it ; but his midnight vigils were cheered by no patronage, nor his labours valued, till the eye that pored on the mutilated MS. was for ever closed. Of all those curious works of the late Mr. STRUTT, which are now bearing such high prices, all were produced by extensive reading, and illustrated by his own drawings, from the manuscripts of different epochs in our his- tory. What was the result to that ingenious artist and author, who, under the plain simplicity of an antiquary, con- cealed a fine poetical mind, and an enthusiasm for his beloved pursuits to which only we are indebted for them ? Strutt, living in the greatest obscurity, and voluntarily sacrificing all the ordinary views of life, and the trade of his burin, solely attached to national antiquities, and charmed by calling them into a fresh existence under his pencil, I have witnessed at the British Museum, forgetting for whole days his miseries, in sedulous research and delightful labour ; at times even doubt- ful whether he could get his works printed ; for some of which he was not regaled even with the Roman supper of "a radish and an egg." How he left his domestic affairs, his son can tell ; how his works have tripled their value, the book- sellers. In writing on the calamities attending the love of literary labour, Mr. JOHN NICHOLS, the modest annalist of the literary history of the last century, and the friend of half the departed genius of our country, cannot but occur to me. He zealously published more than fifty works, illustrating the literature and the antiquities of the country ; labours not given to the world without great sacrifices. Bishop Hurd, with friendly solicitude, writes to Mr Nichols on some of his own publications, " While you are enriching the Antiquarian world " (and, by the Life of Bowyer, may be added the Lite- rary), " I hope you do not forget yourself. The profession of an author, I know from experience, is not a lucrative one. I only mention this because I see a large catalogue of your publications." At another time the Bishop writes, " You are very good to excuse my freedom with you ; but, as times go, almost any trade is better than that of an author," &e. On these notes Mr. Nichols confesses, " I have had some occasion to regret that I did not attend to the judicious suggestions." We owe to the late THOMAS DAVIES, the author of " Gar- rick's Life," and other literary works, beautiful editions of Laborious Authors. 87 some of our elder poets, which are now eagerly sought after, yet, though all his publications were of the hest kinds, and are now of increasing value, the taste of Tom Davies twice ended in bankruptcy. It is to be lamented for the cause of literature, that even a bookseller may have too refined a taste for his trade ; it must always be his interest to float on the current of public taste, whatever that may be ; should he have an ambition to create it, he will be anticipating a more culti- vated curiosity by half a century ; thus the business of a bookseller rarely accords with the design of advancing our literature. The works of literature, it is then but too evident, receive no equivalent ; let this be recollected by him who would draw his existence from them. A young writer often resembles that imaginary author whom Johnson, in a humorous letter in "The Idler" (No. 55), represents as having composed a work " of universal curiosity, computed that it would call for many editions of his book, and that in five years he should gain fifteen thousand pounds by the sale of thirty thousand copies." There are, indeed, some who have been dazzled by the good fortune of GIBBON, ROBEBTSON, and HUME ; we are to consider these favourites, not merely as authors, but as possessing, by their situation in life, a certain independence which preserved them from the vexations of the authors I have noticed. Observe, however, that the uncommon sum Gibbon received for copyright, though it excited the astonishment of the philosopher himself, was for the continued labour of a whole life, and probably the library he had purchased for his work equalled at least in cost the produce of his pen ; the tools cost the workman as much as he obtained for his work. Six thousand pounds gained on these terms will keep an author indigent. Many great labours have been designed by their authors even to be posthumous, prompted only by their love of study and a patriotic zeal. Bishop KENNETT'S stupendous " Register and Chronicle," volume I., is one of those astonishing la- bours which could only have been produced by the pleasure of study urged by the strong love of posterity.* It is a diary * Kennett was characterised throughout life by a strong party feeling, which he took care to display on every occasion. He was born at Dover in 1660, and his first publication, at the age of twenty, gave great offence to the Whig party ; it was in the form of a letter from a Student at Oxford to a friend in the country, concerning the approaching parliament. He scarcely 88 Calamities of Authors. in which the bishop, one of our most studious and active authors, lias recorded every matter of fact, " delivered in the words of the most authentic hooks, papers, and records." The design was to preserve our literary history from the Restoration. This silent labour he had been pursuing all his life, and published the first volume in his sixty-eighth year, the very year he died. But he was so sensible of the coyness of the public taste for what he calls, in a letter to a literary friend, "a tedious heavy book," that he gave it away to the publisher. " The volume, too large, brings me no profit. In good truth, the scheme was laid for conscience' sake, to re- store a good old principle that history should be purely matter of fact, that every reader, by examining and comparing, may make out a history by his own judgment. I have collections transcribed for another volume, if the bookseller will run the hazard of printing." This volume has never appeared, and the bookseller probably lost a considerable sum by the one published, which valuable volume is now procured with difficulty.* These laborious authors have commenced their literary life with a glowing ardour, though the feelings of genius have been obstructed by those numerous causes which occur too frequently in the life of a literary man. Let us listen to STKTJTT, whom we have just noticed, and let us learn what he proposed doing in the first age of fancy. Having obtained the first gold medal ever given at the Royal Academy, he writes to his mother, and thus thanks her and his friends for their deep interest in his success : " I will at least strive to the utmost to give my benefac- tors no reason to think their pains thrown away. If I should ever published a sermon without so far mixing party matters in it as to obtain replies and rejoinders ; the rector of Whitechapel employed an artist to place his head on Judas's shoulders in the picture of the Last Supper done for that church, and to make the figure unmistakeable, placed the patch on the forehead which Kennett wore, to conceal a scar he got by the bursting of a gun. His diligence and application through life was extraor- dinary. He assisted Anthony Wood in collecting materials for his " Athense Oxonienses ;" and, like Oldys, was continually employed in noting books, or in forming manuscript collections on various subjects, all of which were purchased by the Earl of Shelburne, afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne, and were sold with the rest of his manuscripts to the British Museum. He died in 1714, of a fever he had contracted in a journey to Italy. ED. * See Bishop Kennett's Letter in Nichols's " Life of Bowyer," vol i. p. 383. Laborious Authors. 89 not be able to abound in riches, yet, by God's help, I will strive to pluck that palm which the greatest artists of fore- going ages have done before me ; I will strive to leave my name behind me in the world, if not in the splendour that some have, at least with some marks of assiduity and study; which, I can assure you, shall never be wanting in me. Who can bear to hear the names of Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, &c., the most famous of the Italian masters, in the mouth of every one, and not wish to be like them ? And to be like them, we must study as they have done, take such pains, and labour continually like them ; the which shall not be wanting on my side, I dare affirm ; so that, should I not succeed, I may rest contented, and say I have done my utmost. God has blessed me with a mind to undertake. You, dear madam, will excuse my vanity ; you know me, from my child- ish days, to have been a vain boy, always desirous to execute something to gain me praises from every one; always scheming and imitating whatever I saw done by anybody." And when Strutt settled in the metropolis, and studied at the British Museum, amid all the stores of knowledge and art, his imagination delighted to expatiate in its future pros- spects. In a letter to a friend he has thus chronicled his feelings : " I would not only be a great antiquary, but a refined thinker ; I would not only discover antiquities, but would, by explaining their use, render them useful. Such vast funds of knowledge lie hid in the antiquated remains of the earlier ages ; these I would bring forth, and set in their true light." Poor Strutt, at the close of life, was returning to his own first and natural energies, in producing a work of the imagi- nation. He had made considerable progress in one, and the early parts which he had finished bear the stamp of genius ; it is entitled " Queenhoo-hall, a Romance of ancient times," full of the picturesque manners, and costume, and characters of the age, in which he was so conversant ; with many lyrical pieces, which often are full of poetic feeling but he was called off from the work to prepare a more laborious one. " Queenhoo-hall" remained a heap of fragments at his death ; except the first volume, and was filled up by a stranger hand. The stranger was Sir Walter Scott, and " Queenhoo-hall" was the origin of that glorious series of romances where antiquarianism has taken the shape of ima- gination. 90 Calamities of Authors. Writing on the calamities attached to literature, I must notice one of a more recondite nature, yet perhaps few lite- rary agonies are more keenly felt. I would not excite an undue sympathy for a class of writers who are usually con- sidered as drudges ; but the present case claims our sym- pathy. There are men of letters, who, early in life, have formed some favourite plan of literary labour, which they have un- remittingly pursued, till, sometimes near the close of life, they either discover their inability to terminate it, or begin to depreciate their own constant labour. The literary architect has grown gray over his edifice ; and, as if the black wand of enchantment had waved over it, the colonnades become interminable, the pillars seem to want a foundation, and all the rich materials he had collected together, lie before him in all the disorder of ruins. It may be urged that the reward of literary labour, like the consolations of virtue, must be drawn with all their sweetness from itself; or, that if the author be incompetent, he must pay the price of his incapa- city. This may be Stoicism, but it is not humanity. The truth is, there is always a latent love of fame, that prompts to this strong devotion of labour ; and he who has given a long life to that which he has so much desired, and can never enjoy, might well be excused receiving our insults, if he can- not extort our pity. A remarkable instance occurs in the fate of the late Rev. WILLIAM COLE;* he was the college friend of Walpole, * The best account of the Rev. Wm. Cole is to be found in Nichols's ' ' Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, " vol. i. His life was eventless, and passed in studious drudgery. He had all that power of continuous ap- plication which will readily form immense manuscript collections. In this way his life was passed, occasionally aiding from his enormous stores the labours of others. He was an early and intimate acquaintance of Horace Walpole's, and they visited France together in 1765. Browne Willis, the antiquary, gave him the rectory of Blecheley, in Buckinghamshire, and he was afterwards presented to the vicarage of Burnham, near Eton. He died in 1782, in the 68th year of his age, having chiefly employed a long life in noting on all subjects, until his manuscripts became a small library of themselves, which he bequeathed to the British Museum, with an order that they should not be opened for twenty years. They are correctly characterised by Nichols : he says, " many of the volumes exhibit striking traits of Mr. Cole's own character ; and a man of sufficient leisure might pick out of them abundance of curious matter." He left a diary behind him which for puerility could not be exceeded, and of which Nichols gives several ridiculous specimens. If his parrot died, or his man-servant was bled ; if he sent a loin of pork to a friend, and got a quarter of lamb Laborious Authors. 91 Mason, and Gray ; a striking proof how dissimilar habits and opposite tastes and feelings can associate in literary friend- ship ; for Cole, indeed, the public had informed him that his friends were poets and men of wit ; and for them, Cole's pa- tient and curious turn was useful, and, by its extravagant trifling, must have been very amusing. He had a gossip's ear, and a tatler's pen and, among better things, wrote down every grain of literary scandal his insatiable and minute curiosity could lick up ; as patient and voracious as an ant-eater, he stretched out his tongue till it was covered by the tiny creatures, and drew them all in at one digestion. All these tales were registered with the utmost simplicity, as the reporter received them ; but, being but tales, the exactness of his truth made them still more dangerous lies, by being per- petuated ; in his reflections he spared neither friend nor foe ; yet, still anxious after truth, and usually telling lies, it is very amusing to observe, that, as he proceeds, he very laudably contradicts, or explains away in subsequent memoranda what he had before registered. Walpole, in a correspondence of forty years, he was perpetually flattering, though he must imperfectly have relished his fine taste, while he abhorred his more liberal principles, to which sometimes he addressed a submissive remonstrance. He has at times written a letter coolly, and, at the same moment, chronicled his suppressed feelings in his diary, with all the flame and sputter of his strong prejudices. He was expressly nicknamed Cardinal Cole. These scandalous chronicles, which only show the violence of his prejudices, without the force of genius, or the acuteness of penetration, were ordered not to be opened till twenty years after his decease; he wished to do as little mischief as he could, but loved to do some. I well remem- ber the cruel anxiety which prevailed in the nineteenth year of these inclosures ; it spoiled the digestions of several of our literati who had had the misfortune of Cole's intimate friendship, or enmity. One of these was the writer of the Life of Thomas Baker, the Cambridge Antiquary, who prog- nosticated all the evil he among others was to endure ; and, writhing in fancy under the whip not yet untwisted, justly enough exclaims in his agony, " The attempt to keep these in return; "drank coffee with Airs. Willis," or "sent two French wigs to a London barber," all is faithfully recorded. It is a true picture of a lover of labour, whose constant energy must be employed, and will write even if the labour be worthless. ED. 92 Calamities of Authors. characters from the public till the subjects of them shall be no more, seems to be peculiarly cruel and ungenerous, since it is precluding them from vindicating themselves from such injurious aspersions, as their friends, perhaps however willing, may at that distance of time be incapable of removing." With this author, Mr. Masters, Cole had quarrelled so often, that Masters writes, " I am well acquainted with the fickle- ness of his disposition for more than forty years past." When the lid was removed from this Pandora's box, it happened that some of his intimate friends were alive to perceive in what strange figures they were exhibited by their quondam admirer I COLE, however, bequeathed to the nation, among his un- published works, a vast mass of antiquities and historical collections, and one valuable legacy of literary materials. When I turned over the papers of this literary antiquary, I found the recorded cries of a literary martyr. COLE had passed a long life in the pertinacious labour of forming an " Athene Cantabrigienses," and other literary collections designed as a companion to the work of Anthony Wood. These mighty labours exist in more than fifty folio volumes in his own writing. He began these col- lections about the year 1745 ; in a fly-leaf of 1777 I found the following melancholy state of his feelings and a literary confession, as forcibly expressed as it is painful to read, when we consider that they are the wailings of a most zealous votary : "In good truth, whoever undertakes this drudgery of an ' Athena? Cantabrigienses' must be contented with no pros- pect of credit and reputation to himself, and with the mor- tifying reflection that after all his pains and study, through life, he must be looked upon in a humble light, and only as a journeyman to Anthony Wood, whose excellent book of the same sort will ever preclude any other, who shall follow him in the same track, from all hopes of fame ; and will only re- present him as an imitator of so original a pattern. For, at this time of day, all great characters, both Cantabrigians and Oxonians, are already published to the world, either in his book, or various others ; so that the collection, unless the same characters are reprinted here, must be made up of second-rate persons, and the refuse of authorship. However, as I have begun, and made so large a progress in this under- taking, it is death to think of leaving it off] though, from the Laborious Authors. 93 former considerations, so little credit is to be expected from it." Such were the fruits, and such the agonies, of nearly half a century of assiduous and zealous literary labour ! Cole urges a strong claim to be noticed among our literary cala- mities. Another of his miseries was his uncertainty in what manner he should dispose of his collections : and he has put down this naive memorandum " I have long wavered how to dispose of all my MS. volumes ; to give them to King^s College, would be to throw them into a horsepond ; and I had as lieve do one as the other ; they are generally so conceited of their Latin and Greek, that all other studies are barbarism."* The dread of incompleteness has attended the life-labours (if the expression may be allowed) of several other authors who have never published their works. Such was the learned Bishop LLOYD, and the Rev. THOMAS BAKEB, who was first engaged in the same pursuit as Cole, and carried it on to the extent of about forty volumes in folio. Lloyd is described by Burnet as having " many volumes of materials upon all subjects, so that he could, with very little labour, write on any of them, with more life in his imagination, and a truer judgment, than may seem consistent with such a laborious course of study ; but he did not lay out his learn- ing with the same diligence as he laid it in." It is mortify- ing to learn, in the words of Johnson, that " he was always hesitating and inquiring, raising objections, and removing them, and waiting for clearer light and fuller discovery." Many of the labours of this learned bishop were at length consumed in the kitchen of his descendant. " Baker (says Johnson), after many years passed in biography, left his manuscripts to be buried in a library, because that was im- perfect which could never be perfected." And to complete the absurdity, or to heighten the calamity which the want of these useful labours makes every literary man feel, half of the collections of Baker sleep in their dust in a turret of the University ; while the other, deposited in our national library at the British Museum, and frequently used, are rendered imperfect by this unnatural divorce. I will illustrate the character of a laborious author by that of ANTHONY WOOD. * Cole's collection, ultimately bequeathed by him to the British Museum, is comprised in 92 volumes, and is arranged among the additional manu- scripts there, of which it forms Nos. 5798 to 5887. ED. 94 Calamities of Authors. WOOD'S " Athena? Oxonienses" is a history of near a thousand of our native authors ; he paints their characters, and enters into the spirit of their writings. But authors of this complexion, and works of this nature, are liable to be slighted ; for the fastidious are petulant, the volatile inexpe- rienced, and those who cultivate a single province in lite- rature are disposed, too often, to lay all others under a state of interdiction. WARBUBTON, in a work thrown out in the heat of un- chastised youth, and afterwards withdrawn from public in- quiry, has said of the " Athense Oxonienses" " Of all those writings given us by the learned Oxford antiquary, there is not one that is not a disgrace to letters ; most of them are so to common sense, and some even to human nature. Yet how set out ! how tricked ! how adorned ! how extolled !"* The whole tenor of Wood's life testifies, as he himself tells us, that " books and MSS. formed his Elysium, and he wished to be dead to the world." This sovereign passion marked him early in life, and the image of death could not disturb it. When young, " he walked mostly alone, was given much to thinking and melancholy." The deliciae of his life were the more liberal studies of painting and music, intermixed with those of antiquity ; nor could his family, who checked such unproductive studies, ever check his love of them. With what a firm and noble spirit he says " When he came to full years, he perceived it was his na- tural genie, and he could not avoid them they crowded on him he could never give a reason why he should delight in those studies, more than in others, so prevalent was nature, mixed with a generosity of mind, and a hatred to all that was servile, sneaking, or advantageous for lucre-sake." These are not the roundings of a period, but the pure ex- pressions of a man who had all the simplicity of childhood in his feelings. Could such vehement emotions have been ex- cited in the unanimated breast of a clod of literature ? Thus early Anthony Wood betrayed the characteristics of genius ; nor did the literary passion desert him in his last moments. With his dying hands he still grasped his beloved papers, and his last mortal thoughts dwelt on his AtJienae Oxonienses.^ * In his " Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies." t This, his most valuable work, has been most carefully edited, with Laborious Authors. 95 It is no common occurrence to view an author speechless in the hour of death, yet fervently occupied by his posthumous fame. Two friends went into his study to sort that vast multitude of papers, notes, letters his more private ones he had ordered not to he opened for seven years ; about two bushels full were ordered for the fire, which they had lighted for the occasion. " As he was expiring, he expressed both his knowledge and approbation of what was done by throwing out his hands." Turn over his Herculean labour ; do not admire less his fearlessness of danger, than his indefatigable pursuit of truth. He wrote of his contemporaries as if he felt a right to judge of them, and as if he were living in the succeeding age ; courtier, fanatic, or papist, were much alike to honest An- thony ; for he professes himself " such an universal lover of all mankind, that he wished there might be no cheat put upon readers and writers in the business of commendations. And (says he) since every one will have a double balance, one for his own party, and another for his adversary, all he could do is to amass together what every side thinks will make best weight for themselves. Let posterity hold the scales." Anthony might have added, "I have held them." This uninterrupted activity of his spirits was the action of a sage, not the bustle of one intent merely on heaping up a book. " He never wrote in post, with his body and thoughts in a hurry, but in a fixed abode, and with a deliberate pen. And he never concealed an ungrateful truth, nor flourished over a weak place, but in sincerity of meaning and expression." Anthony Wood cloistered an athletic mind, a hermit critic abstracted from the world, existing more with posterity than amid his contemporaries. His prejudices were the keener from the very energies of the mind that produced them ; but, as he practises no deception on his reader, we know the causes of his anger or his love. And, as an original thinker creates a style for himself, from the circumstance of not attending to style at all, but to feeling, so Anthony Wood's has all the peculiarity of the writer. Critics of short views have at- tempted to screen it from ridicule, attributing his uncouth style to the age he lived in. But not one in his own time nor since, has composed in the same style. The austerity numerous additions by Dr. Bliss, and is the great authority for laves of Oxford men. Its author, bora at Oxford in 1632, died there in 1695, having devoted his life strictly to study. ED. 96 Calamities of Authors. and the quickness of his feelings vigorously stamped all their roughness and vivacity on every sentence. He describes his own style as " an honest, plain English dress, without flou- rishes or affectation of style, as hest becomes a history of truth and matters of fact. It is the first (work) of its na- ture that has ever been printed in our own, or in any other mother-tongue." It is, indeed, an honest Montaigne-like simplicity. Acri- monious and cynical, he is always sincere, and never dull. Old Anthony to me is an admirable character-painter, for anger and love are often picturesque. And among our lite- rary historians he might be compared, for the effect he pro- duces, to Albert Durer, whose kind of antique rudeness has a sharp outline, neither beautiful nor flowing ; and, without a genius for the magic of light and shade, he is too close a copier of Nature to affect us by ideal forms. The independence of his mind nerved his ample volumes, his fortitude he displayed in the contest with the University itself, and his firmness in censuring Lord Clarendon, the head of his own party. Could such a work, and such an original manner, have proceeded from an ordinary intellect ? Wit may sparkle, and sarcasm may bite ; but the cause of lite- rature is injured when the industry of such a mind is ranked with that of "the hewers of wood, and drawers of water:" ponderous compilers of creeping commentators. Such a work as the " Athense Oxonienses" involved in its pursuits some of the higher qualities of the intellect ; a voluntary devotion of life, a sacrifice of personal enjoyments, a noble design com- bining many views, some present and some prescient, a clear vigorous spirit equally diffused over a vast surface. But it is the hard fate of authors of this class to be levelled with their inferiors ! Let us exhibit one more picture of the calamities of a labo- rious author, in the character of JOSHUA BARNES, editor of Homer, Euripides, and Anacreon, and the writer of a vast number of miscellaneous compositions in history and poetry. Besides the works he published, he left behind him nearly fifty unfinished ones ; many were epic poems, all intended to be iu twelve books, and some had reached their eighth ! His folio volume of " The History of Edward III." is a labour of valu- able research. He wrote with equal facility in Greek, Latin, and his own language, and he wrote all his days ; and, in a word, having little or nothing but his Greek professorship, Laborious Authors. 97 not exceeding forty pounds a year, Barnes, who had a great memory, a little imagination, and no judgment, saw the close of a life, devoted to the studies of humanity, settle around him in gloom and despair. The great idol of his mind was the edition of his Homer, which seems to have completed his ruin ; he was haunted all his days with a notion that he was persecuted by envy, and much undervalued in the world ; the sad consolation of the secondary and third-rate authors, who often die persuaded of the existence of ideal enemies. To be enabled to publish his Homer at an enormous charge, he wrote a poem, the design of which is to prove that Solomon was the author of the Iliad ; and it has been said that this was done to interest his wife, who had some property, to lend her aid towards the publication of so divine a work. This happy pun was applied for his epitaph : JOSHUA BAKNES, Felicis memoriae, judicium expectans. Here lieth JOSHUA BARNES, Of happy memory, awaitbg judgment ! The year before he died he addressed the following letter to the Earl of Oxford, which I transcribe from the original. It is curious to observe how the veteran and unhappy scribbler, after his vows of retirement from the world of letters, thoroughly disgusted with " all human learning," gently hints to his patron, that he has ready for the press, a singular variety of contrasted works ; yet even then he did not ven- ture to disclose one-tenth part of his concealed treasures ! " TO THE EAEL OF OXFOED. " MY HON. LOED, Oct. 16, 1711. " This, not in any doubt of your goodness and high respect to learning, for I have fresh instances of it every day; but because I am prevented in my design of waiting per- sonally on you, being called away by my business for Cambridge, to read Greek lectures this term ; and my circum- stances are pressing, being, through the combination of book- sellers, and the meaner arts of others, too much prejudiced in the sale. I am not neither sufficiently ascertained whether my Homer and letters came to your honour ; surely the vast charges of that edition has almost broke my courage, there being much more trouble in putting off the impression, and H 98 Calamities of Authors. contending with a subtle and unkind world, than in all the study and management of the press. " Others, my lord, are younger, and their hopes and helps are fresher ; I have done as much in the way of learning as any man living, but have received less encouragement than any, having nothing but my Greek professorship, which is but forty pounds per annum, that I can call my own, and more than half of that is taken up by my expenses of lodging and diet in terme time at Cambridge. " I was obliged to take up three hundred and fifty pounds on interest towards this last work, whereof I still owe two hundred pounds, and two hundred more for the printing ; the whole expense arising to about one thousand pounds. I have lived in the university above thirty years, fellow of a college now above forty years' standing, and fifty-eight years of age ; am bachelor of divinity, and have preached before kings ; but am now your honour's suppliant, and would fain retire from the study of humane learning, which has been so little beneficial to me, if I might have a little prebend, or sufficient anchor to lay hold on ; only I have two or three matters ready for the press an ecclesiastical history, Latin ; an heroic poem of the Black Prince, Latin ; another of Queen Anne, English, finished ; a treatise of Columnes, Latin ; and an accurate treatise about Homer, Greek, Latin, &c. I would fain be permitted the honour to make use of your name in some one, or most of these, arid to be, &c., " JOSHTJA BARNES."* He died nine months afterwards. Homer did not improve in sale ; and the sweets of patronage were not even tasted. This, then, is the history of a man of great learning, of the most pertinacious industry, but somewhat allied to the family of the Scribleri. THE DESPAIR OF YOUNG POETS. WILLIAM PATTISON was a young poet who perished in his twentieth year ; his character and his fate resemble those of Chatterton. He was one more child of that family of genius, whose passions, like the torch, kindle but to consume them- selves. * Harleian MSS. 7523. The Despair of Young Poets. 99 The youth of Pattison was that of a poet. Many become irrecoverably poets by local influence; and Beattie could hardly have thrown his " Minstrel" into a more poetical solitude than the singular spot which was haunted by our young bard. His first misfortune was that of having an anti-poetical parent ; his next was that of having discovered a spot which confirmed his poetical habits, inspiring all the melancholy and sensibility he loved to indulge. This spot, which in his fancy resembled some favourite description in Cowley, he called " Covvley's Walk." Some friend, who was himself no common painter of fancy, has delineated the whole scenery with minute touches, and a freshness of colouring, warm with reality. Such a poetical habitation becomes a part of the poet himself, reflecting his character, and even descriptive of his manners. " On one side of ' Cowley's Walk' is a huge rock, grown over with moss and ivy climbing on its sides, and in some parts small trees spring out of the crevices of the rock ; at the bottom are a wild plantation of irregular trees, in every part looking aged and venerable. Among these cavities, one larger than the rest was the cave he loved to sit in : arched like a canopy, its rustic borders were edged with ivy hanging down, overshadowing the place, and hence he called it (for poets must give a name to every object they love) ' Hede- rinda,' bearing ivy. At the foot of this grotto a stream of water ran along the walk, so that its level path had trees and water on one side, and a wild rough precipice on the other. In winter, this spot looked full of horror the naked trees, the dark rock, and the desolate waste ; but in the spring, the singing of the birds, the fragrancy of the flowers, and the murmuring of the stream, blended all their enchant- ment." Here, in the heat of the day, he escaped into the " Hede- rinda," and shared with friends his rapture and his solitude ; and here through summer nights, in the light of the moon, he meditated and melodised his verses by the gentle fall of the waters. Thus was Pattison fixed and bound up in the strongest spell the demon of poetry ever drew around a sus- ceptible and careless youth. He was now a decided poet. At Sidney College, in Cam- bridge, he was greatly loved ; till, on a quarrel with a rigid tutor, he rashly cut his name out of the college book, and quitted it for ever in utter thoughtlessness and gaiety, leaving H2 100 Calamities of Authors. his gown behind, as his locum tenens, to make his apology, by pinning on it a satirical farewell. Whoever gives himself the pains to stoop, And take my venerable tatters up, To his presuming inquisition I, In loco Pattisoni, thus reply : " Tired with the senseless jargon of the gown, My master left the college for the town, And scorns his precious minutes to regale With wretched college-wit and college-ale." He flew to the metropolis to take up the trade of a poet. A translation of Ovid's " Epistles" had engaged his atten- tion during two years ; his own genius seemed inexhaustible ; and pleasure and fame were awaiting the poetical emigrant. He resisted all kind importunities to return to college ; he could not endure submission, and declares " his spirit cannot bear control." One friend " fears the innumerable temptations to which one of his complexion is liable in such a populous place." Pattison was much loved ; he had all the generous impetuosity of youthful genius ; but he had resolved on run- ning the perilous career of literary glory, and he added one more to the countless thousands who perish in obscurity. His first letters are written with the same spirit that dis- tinguishes Chattel-ton's ; all he hopes he seems to realise. He mixes among the wits, dates from Button's, and drinks with Concanen healths to college friends, till they lose their own ; more dangerous Muses condescend to exhibit themselves to the young poet in the park ; and he was to be introduced to Pope. All is exultation ! Miserable youth ! The first thought of prudence appears in a resolution of soliciting subscriptions from all persons, for a volume of poems. His young friends at college exerted their warm patronage ; those in his native North condemn him, and save their crowns ; Pope admits of no interview, but lends his name, and bestows half-a-crown for a volume of poetry, which he did not want ; the poet wearies kindness, and would extort charity even from brother-poets ; petitions lords and ladies ; and, as his wants grow on him, his shame decreases. How the scene has changed in a few months ! He acknow- ledges to a friend, that " his heart was broke through the misfortunes he had fallen under;" he declares "he feels him- self near the borders of death." In moments like these he probably composed the following lines, awfully addressed, The Despair of Young Poets. 101 AD CCELUM ! Good heaven ! this mystery of life explain, Nor let me think I bear the load in vain ; Lest, with the tedious passage cheerless grown, Urged by despair, I throw the burden down. But the torture of genius, when all its passions are strained on the rack, was never more pathetically expressed than in the following letter : " SIB, If you was ever touched with a sense of humanity, consider my condition : what / am, my proposals will inform you ; what I have been, Sidney College, in Cambridge, can witness ; hut what I shall be some few hours hence, I tremble to think ! Spare my blushes ! I have not enjoyed the com- mon necessaries of life for these two days, and can hardly hold to subscribe myself, "Yours, &c." The picture is finished it admits not of another stroke. Such was the complete misery which Savage, Boyse, Chat- terton, and more innocent spirits devoted to literature, have endured but not long for they must perish in their youth ! HEXBY CABET was one of our most popular poets; he, indeed, has unluckily met with only dictionary critics, or what is as fatal to genius, the cold and undistinguishing com- mendation of grave men on subjects of humour, wit, and the lighter poetry. The works of Carey do not appear in any of our great collections, where Walsh, Duke, and Yalden slumber on the shelf. Yet Carey was a true son of the Muses, and the most suc- cessful writer in our language. He is the author of several little national poems. In early life he successfully burlesqued the affected versification of Ambrose Philips, in his baby poems, to which he gave the fortunate appellation of " Namby Pamby, a panegyric on the new versification ;" a term descrip- tive in sound of those chiming follies, and now become a tech- nical term in modern criticism. Carey's " Namby Pamby" was at first considered by Swift as the satirical effusion of Pope, and by Pope as tbe humorous ridicule of Swift. His ballad of " Sally in our Alley" was more than once commended for its nature by Addison, and is sung to this day. Of the national song, " God save the King," it is supposed he was the author 102 Calamities of Authors. both of the words and of the music.* He was very successful on the stage, and wrote admirable burlesques of the Italian Opera, in " The Dragon of Wantley," and " The Dragoness;" and the mock tragedy of " Chrononhotonthologos" is not forgotten. Among his Poems lie still concealed several ori- ginal pieces ; those which have a political turn are particu- larly good, for the politics of Carey were those of a poet and a patriot. I refer the politician who has any taste for poetry and humour to " The Grumbletonians, or the Dogs without doors, a Fable," very instructive to those grown-up folks, " The Ins and the Outs." " Carey's Wish" is in this class ; and, as the purity of election remains still among the desi- derata of every true Briton, a poem on that subject by the patriotic author of our national hymn of " God save the King" may be acceptable. CAREY'S WISH. Cursed be the wretch that's bought and sold, And barters liberty for gold ; For when election is not free, In vain we boast of liberty : And he who sells his single right, Would sell his country, if he might. When liberty is put to sale For wine, for money, or for ale, The sellers must be abject slaves, The buyers vile designing knaves ; A proverb it has been of old, The devil's bought but to be sold. This maxim in the statesman's school Is always taught, divide and rule. All parties are to him a joke : While zealots foam, he fits the yoke. Let men their reason once resume ; 'Tis then the statesman's turn to fume. * The late Richard Clark, of the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, published in 1823 "An Account of the National Anthem, entitled God save the King," in which he satisfactorily proves "that Carey neither had, nor could have had, any claim at all to this composition," which he traces back to the celebrated composer, Dr. John Bull, who he believes composed it for the entertainment given by the Merchant Taylors Company to King James I., in 1607. Ward, in his "Lives of the Gresham Professors," gives a list of Bull's compositions, then in the possession of Dr. Pepusch (who arranged the music for the Beggar's Opera), and Art. 56 is "God save the King." At the Doctor's death, his manuscripts, amounting to two cartloads, were scattered or sold for waste-paper, and this was one of the number. Clark ultimately recovered this MS. Ei>. The Despair of Young Poets. 103 Learn, learn, ye Britons, to unite ; Leave off the old exploded bite ; Henceforth let Whig and Tory cease, And turn all party rage to peace ; Rouse and revive your ancient glory ; Unite, and drive the world before you. To the ballad of " Sally in our Alley" Carey has prefixed an argument so full of nature, that the song may hereafter derive an additional interest from its simple origin. The author assures the reader that the popular notion that the subject of his ballad had been the noted Sally Salisbury, is perfectly erroneous, he being a stranger to her name at the time the song was composed. " As innocence and virtue were ever the boundaries of his Muse, so in this little poem he had no other view than to set forth the beauty of a chaste and disinterested passion, even in the lowest class of human life. The real occasion was this : A shoemaker's 'prentice, making holiday with his sweetheart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the puppet-shows, the flying-chairs, and all the elegancies of Moorfields ; from whence, proceeding to the Farthing Pye-house, he gave her a collation of buns, cheesecakes, gammon of bacon, stuffed beef, and bot- tled ale ; through all which scenes the author dodged them (charmed with the simplicity of their courtship), from whence he drew this little sketch of Nature ; but, being then young and obscure, he was very much ridiculed for this perform- ance ; which, nevertheless, made its way into the polite world, and amply recompensed him by the applause of the divine Addison, who was pleased (more than once) to mention it with approbation." In " The Poet's Resentment " poor Carey had once for- sworn " the harlot Muse :" Far, far away then chase the harlot Muse, Nor let her thus thy noon of life abuse ; Mix with the common crowd, unheard, unseen, And if again thou tempt'st the vulgar praise, Mayst thou be crown'd with birch instead of bays ! Poets make such oaths in sincerity, and break them in rapture. At the time that this poet could neither walk the streets nor be seated at the convivial board, without listening to his own songs and his own music for, in truth, the whole nation was echoing his verse, and crowded theatres were applauding 104 Calamities of Authors. his wit and humour while this very man himself, urged by his strong humanity, founded a " Fund for decayed Musi- cians " he was so broken-hearted, and his own common com- forts so utterly neglected, that in despair, not waiting for nature to relieve him from the burden of existence, he laid violent hands on himself; and when found dead, had only a halfpenny in his pocket ! Such was the fate of the author of some of the most popular pieces in our language. He left a son, who inherited his misery, and a gleam of his genius. THE MISERIES OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COMMENTATOR. DE. ZACHAEI GREY, the editor of " Hudibras," is the father of our modern commentators.* His case is rather peculiar ; I know not whether the father, by an odd anticipation, was doomed to suffer for the sins of his children, or whether his own have been visited on the third generation ; it is certain that never was an author more overpowered by the attacks he received from the light and indiscriminatiug shafts of ignorant wits. He was ridiculed and abused for having assisted us to comprehend the wit of an author, which, without that aid, at this day would have been nearly lost to us ; and whose singu- lar subject involved persons and events which required the very thing he gave, historical and explanatory notes. A first thought, and all the danger of an original invention, which is always imperfectly understood by the superficial, was poor Dr. Grey's merit. He was modest and laborious, and he had the sagacity to discover what Butler wanted, and what the public required. His project was a happy thought, to commentate on a singular work which has scarcely a parallel in modern literature, if we except the " Satyre Menippee " of the French, which is, in prose, the exact counterpart of "Hudibras" in rhyme; for our rivals have had the same state revolution, in which the same dramatic personages passed * Dr. Zacbary Grey was throughout a long life a busy contributor to literature. The mere list of his productions, in divinity and history, occupy some pages of our biographical dictionaries. He was born 1687, and died at Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, in 1766. In private he was noted for mild and pleasing manners. His "Hudibras," which was first pub- lished in 1744, in two octavo volumes, is now the standard edition. ED. The Miseries of the First English Commentator. 105 over their national stage, with the same incidents, in the civil wars of the ambitious Guises, and the citizen-reformers. They, too, found a Butler, though in prose, a Grey in Duchat, and, as well as they could, a Hogarth. An edition, which appeared in 1711, might have served as the model of Grey's Hubidras. It was, however, a happy thought in our commentator, to turn over the contemporary writers to collect the events and discover the personages alluded to by Butler ; to read what the poet read, to observe what the poet observed. This was at once throwing himself and the reader back into an age, of which even the likenesshad disappeared, and familiarising us with distant objects, which had been lost to us in the haze and mists of time. For this, not only a new mode of travelling, but a new road was to be opened ; the secret history, the fugitive pamphlet, the obsolete satire, the ancient comedy such were the many curious volumes whose dust was to be cleared away, to cast a new radiance on the fading colours of a moveable picture of manners ; the wittiest ever exhibited to mankind. This new mode of research, even at this moment, is imperfectly comprehended, still ridiculed even by those who could never have understood a writer who will only be immortal in the degree he is comprehended and whose wit could not have been felt but for the laborious curiosity of him whose " read- ing " has been too often aspersed for " such reading " As was never read. Grey was outrageously attacked by all the wits, first by Warburton, in his preface to Shakspeare, who declares that " he hardly thinks there ever appeared so execrable a heap of nonsense under the name of commentaries, as hath been lately given us on a certain satyric poet of the last age." It is odd enough, Warburton had himself contributed towards these very notes, but, for some cause which has not been discovered, had quarrelled with Dr. Grey. I will venture a conjecture on this great conjectural critic. Warburton was always medi- tating to give an edition of his own of our old writers, and the sins he committed against Shakspeare he longed to practise on Butler, whose times were, indeed, a favourite period of his researches. Grey had anticipated him, and though Warburton had half reluctantly yielded the few notes he had prepared, his proud heart sickened when he beheld the ]06 Calamities of Authors. amazing subscription Grey obtained for his first edition of "Hudibras ;" he received for that work 1500Z.* a proof that this publication was felt as a want by the public. Such, however, is one of those blunt, dogmatic censures in which Warburton abounds, to impress his readers with th weight of his opinions ; this great man wrote more for effect than any other of our authors, as appears by his own or some friend's confession, that if his edition of Shakspeare did no honour to that bard, this was not the design of the commen- tator which was only to do honour to himself by a display of his own exuberant erudition. The poignant Fielding, in his preface to his " Journey to Lisbon," has a fling at the gravity of our doctor. " The laborious, much-read Dr. Z. Grey, of whose redundant notes on ' Hudibras' I shall only say that it is, I am confident, the single book extant in which above 500 authors are quoted, not one of which could be found in the collection of the late Dr. Mead." Mrs. Montague, in her letters, severely characterises the miserable father of English commentators ; she wrote in youth and spirits, with no knowledge of books, and before even the unlucky commentator had published his work, but wit is the bolder by anticipation. She observes that " his dul- ness may be a proper ballast for doggrel ; and it is better that his stupidity should make jest dull than serious and sacred things ridiculous ;" alluding to his numerous theological tracts. Such then are the hard returns which some authors are doomed to receive as the rewards of useful labours from those who do not even comprehend their nature ; a wit should not be admitted as a critic till he has first proved by his gravity, or his dulness if he chooses, that he has some knowledge ; for it is the privilege and nature of wit to write fastest and best on what it least understands. Knowledge only encumbers and confines its flights. THE LIFB OF AN AUTHORESS. OF all the sorrows in which the female character may partici- pate, there are few more affecting than those of an authoress ; often insulated and unprotected in society with all the sensibility of the sex, encountering miseries which break the * Cole's MSS. The Life of an Authoress. 107 spirits of men ; with the repugnance arising from that delicacy which trembles when it quits its retirement. My acquaintance with an unfortunate lady of the name of ELIZA RYYES, was casual and interrupted ; yet I witnessed the bitterness of " hope deferred, which maketh the heart sick." She sunk, by the slow wastings of grief, into a grave which probably does not record the name of its martyr of literature. She was descended from a family of distinction in Ireland ; but as she expressed it, " she had been deprived of her birth- right by the chicanery of law." In her former hours of tran- quillity she had published some elegant odes, had written a tragedy and comedies all which remained in MS. In her distress she looked up to her pen as a source of existence ; and an elegant genius and a woman of polished manners com- menced the life of a female trader in literature. Conceive the repulses of a modest and delicate woman in her attempts to appreciate the value of a manuscript with its purchaser. She has frequently returned from the booksellers to her dreadful solitude to hasten to her bed in all the bodily pains of misery, she has sought in uneasy slumbers a tempo- rary forgetfulness of griefs which were to recur on the morrow. Elegant literature is always of doubtful acceptance with the public, and Eliza Ryves came at length to try the most masculine exertions of the pen. She wrote for one news- paper much political matter ; but the proprietor was too great a politician for the writer of politics, for he only praised the labour he never paid ; much poetry for another, in which, being one of the correspondents of Delia Crusca, in payment of her verses she got nothing but verses ; the most astonish- ing exertion for a female pen was the entire composition of the historical and political portion of some Annual Register. So little profitable were all these laborious and original efforts, that every day did not bring its " daily bread." Yet even in her poverty her native benevolence could make her generous; for she has deprived herself of her meal to provide with one an unhappy family dwelling under the same roof. Advised to adopt the mode of translation, and being igno- rant of the French language, she retired to an obscure lodging at Islington, which she never quitted till she had produced a good version of Rousseau's "Social Compact," Raynal's " Letter to the National Assembly," and finally translated De la Croix's " Review of the Constitutions of the principal 108 Calamities of Authors. States in Europe," in two large volumes with intelligent notes. All these works, so much at variance with her taste, left her with her health much broken, and a mind which might be said to have nearly survived the body. Yet even at a moment so unfavourable, her ardent spirit engaged in a translation of Froissart. At the British Museum I have seen her conning over the magnificent and voluminous MS. of the old chronicler, and by its side Lord Berners' ver- sion, printed in the reign of Henry VIII. It was evident that his lordship was employed as a spy on Froissart, to inform her of what was going forward in the French camp ; and she soon perceived, for her taste was delicate, that it required an ancient lord and knight, with all his antiquity of phrase, to break a lance with the still more ancient chivalric Frenchman. The familiar elegance of modern style failed to preserve the picturesque touches and the naive graces of the chronicler, who wrote as the mailed knight combated roughly or gracefully, as suited the tilt or the field. She vailed to Lord Berners ; while she felt it was here necessary to understand old French, and then to write it in old English.* During these profitless labours hope seemed to be whispering in her lonely study. Her comedies had been in possession of the managers of the theatres during several years. They had too much merit to be rejected, perhaps too little to be acted. Year passed over year, and the last still repeated the treacherous promise of its brother. The mys- terious arts of procrastination are by no one so well system- atised as by the theatrical manager, nor its secret sorrows so deeply felt as by the dramatist. One of her comedies, The Debt of Honour, had been warmly approved at both theatres where probably a copy of it may still be found. To the honour of one of the managers, he presented her with a hundred pounds on his acceptance of it. Could she avoid then flattering herself with an annual harvest ? But even this generous gift, which involved in it such golden promises, could not for ten years preserve its delusion. "I feel," said Eliza Ryves, "the necessity of some powerful patronage, to bring my comedies forward to the world \dth eclat, and secure them an admiration which, should it even be deserved, is seldom bestowed, unless some leading judge of literary merit gives the sanction of his applause ; and then TLis version of Lord Berners has been reprinted. The Life of an Authoress. 109 the world will chime in with his opinion, without taking the trouble to inform themselves whether it be founded injustice or partiality." She never suspected that her comedies were not comic ! but who dare hold an argument with an ingenious mind, when it reasons from a right principle, with a wrong application to itself? It is true that a writer's connexions have often done a great deal for a small author, and enabled some favourites of literary fashion to enjoy a usurped reputa- tion ; but it is not so evident that Eliza Eyves was a comic writer, although, doubtless, she appeared another Menander to herself. And thus an author dies in a delusion of self- flattery ! The character of Eliza Eyves was rather tender and melan- choly, than brilliant and gay ; and like the bruised perfume breathing sweetness when broken into pieces. She traced her sorrows in a work of fancy, where her feelings were at least as active as her imagination. It is a small volume, en- titled " The Hermit of Snowden." Albert, opulent and fashionable, feels a passion for Lavinia, and meets the kindest return ; but, having imbibed an ill opinion of women from his licentious connexions, he conceived they were slaves of pas- sion, or of avarice. He wrongs the generous nature of Lavinia, by suspecting her of mercenary views ; hence arise the perplexities of the hearts of both. Albert affects to be ruined, and spreads the report of an advantageous match. Lavinia feels all the delicacy of her situation ; she loves, but " she never told her love." She seeks for her existence in her literary labours, and perishes in want. In the character of Lavinia, our authoress, with all the melancholy sagacity of genius, foresaw and has described her own death ! the dreadful solitude to which she was latterly condemned, when in the last stage of her poverty ; her frugal mode of life ; her acute sensibility; her defrauded hopes ; and her exalted fortitude. She has here formed a register of all that occurred in her solitary existence. I will give one scene to me it is pathetic for it is like a scene at which I was present : " Lavinia's lodgings were about two miles from town, in an obscure situation. I was showed up to a mean apartment, where Lavinia was sitting at work, and in a dress which in- dicated the greatest economy. I inquired what success she had met with in her dramatic pursuits. She waved her head, and, with a melancholy smile, replied, ' that her hopes 110 Calamities of Authors. of ever bringing any piece on the stage were now entirely over ; for she found that more interest was necessary for the purpose than she could command, and that she had for that reason laid aside her comedy for ever !' While she was talk- ing, caine in a favourite dog of Lavinia's, which I had used to caress. The creature sprang to my arms, and I received him with my usual fondness. Lavinia endeavoured to conceal a tear which trickled down her cheek. Afterwards she said, ' Now that I live entirely alone, I show Juno more attention than I had used to do formerly. The heart wants something to be kind to ; and it consoles us for the loss of society, to see even an animal derive happiness from the endearments we bestow upon it.' " Such was Eliza Ey ves ! not beautiful nor interesting in her person, but with a mind of fortitude, susceptible of all the delicacy of feminine softness, and virtuous amid her despair.* THE INDISCRETION OP AN HISTORIAN. THOMAS CAKTE. " CARTE," says Mr. Hallam, " is the most exact historian we have;" and Daines Barrington prefers his authority to that of any other, and many other writers confirm this opinion. Yet had this historian been an ordinary compiler, he could not have incurred a more mortifying fate ; for he was com- pelled to retail in shilling numbers that invaluable history which we have only learned of late times to appreciate, and which was the laborious fruits of self-devotion. Carte was the first of our historians who had the sagacity and the fortitude to ascertain where the true sources of our history lie. He discovered a new world beyond the old one of our research, and not satisfied in gleaning the res historica from its original writers a merit which has not always been possessed by some of our popular historians Carte opened those subterraneous veins of secret history from whence even the original writers of our history, had they possessed them, * Those who desire to further investigate the utter misery of female authorship may be referred to Whyte's vivid description of an interview with Mrs. Clarke (the daughter of Colley Gibber), about the purchase of a novel. It is appended to an edition of his own poems, printed at Dublin, 1792; and has been reproduced in Hone's " Table Book," vol. i. ED. The Indiscretion of an Historian. 1 ] 1 might have drawn fresh knowledge and more ample views. Our domestic or civil history was scarcely attempted till Carte planned it ; while all his laborious days and his literary travels on the Continent were absorbed in the creation of a History of England and of a Public Library in the metro- polis, for we possessed neither. A diligent foreigner, Eapin, had compiled our history, and had opportunely found in the vast collection of Rymer's " Fcedera" a rich accession of knowledge ; but a foreigner could not sympathise with the feelings, or even understand the language, of the domestic story of our nation ; our rolls and records, our state-letters, the journals of parliament, and those of the privy-council ; an abundant source of private memoirs ; and the hidden treasures in the state-paper office, the Cottonian and Harleian libraries ; all these, and much besides, the sagacity of Carte contem- plated. He had further been taught by his own examina- tion of the true documents of history, which he found preserved among the ancient families of France, who with a warm patriotic spirit, worthy of imitation, " often carefully preserved in their families the acts of their ancestors ;" and the tresor des chartes and the depot pour les affaires etr anger es (the state- paper office of France), that the history of our country is interwoven with that of its neighbours, as well as with that of our own countrymen.* Carte, with these enlarged views, and firm with diligence which never paused, was aware that such labours both for the expense and assistance they demand exceeded the powers of a private individual ; but " what a single man cannot do," he said, " may be easily done by a society, and the value of an opera subscription would be sufficient to patronise a History of England." His valuable " History of the Duke of Ormond" had sufficiently announced the sort of man who solicited this necessary aid ; nor was the moment unpropitious to his fondest hopes, for a Society for the Encouragement of Learning had been formed, and this impulse of public spirit, however weak, had, it would seem, roused into action some unexpected quarters. When Carte's project was made known, a large subscription was raised to defray the expense of transcripts, and afford a sufficient independence to the historian ; many of the nobility and the gentry subscribed ten or twenty guineas * It is much to the honour of Carte, that the French acknowledge that his publication of the "Holies Gascognes" gave to them the first idea of their learned work, the "Notice des Diplomes." 112 Calamities of Authors. annually, and several of the corporate bodies in the city honourably appeared as the public patrons of the literature of their nation. He had, perhaps, nearly a thousand a year subscribed, which he employed on the History. Thus every- thing promised fair both for the history and for the historian of our fatherland, and about this time he zealously published another proposal for the erection of a public library in the Mansion-house. " There is not," observed Carte, " a great city in Europe so ill-provided with public libraries as London." He enters into a very interesting and minute narrative of the public libraries of Paris.* He then also suggested the pur- chase of ten thousand manuscripts of the Earl of Oxford, which the nation now possess in the Harleian collection. Though Carte failed to persuade our opulent citizens to purchase this costly honour, it is probably to his suggestion that the nation owes the British Museum. The ideas of the literary man are never thrown away, however vain at the moment, or however profitless to himself. Time preserves without injuring the image of his mind, and a following age often performs what the preceding failed to comprehend. It was in 1743 that this work was projected, in 1747 the first volume appeared. One single act of indiscretion, an un- lucky accident rather than a premeditated design, overturned in a moment this monument of history ; for it proved that our Carte, however enlarged were his views of what history ought to consist, and however experienced in collecting its most authentic materials, and accurate in their statement, was infected by a superstitious jacobitism, which seemed likely to spread itself through his extensive history. Carte indeed was no philosopher, but a very faithful historian. Having unhappily occasion to discuss whether the King of England had, from the time of Edward the Confessor, the power of healing inherent in him before his unction, or whether the gift was conveyed by ecclesiastical hands, to show the efficacy of the royal touch, he added an idle story, which had come under his own observation, of a person who appeared to have been so healed. Carte said of this unlucky personage, so unworthily introduced five hundred years before he was born, that he had been sent to Paris to be touched by " the eldest lineal descendant of a race of kings who had indeed for a long succession of ages cured that distemper by * This paper, which is a great literary curiosity, is preserved by Mr. Nichols in his "Literary History," vol. ii. The Indiscretion of an Historian. 113 the royal touch." The insinuation was unquestionably in favour of the Pretender, although the name of the prince was not avowed, and was a sort of promulgation of the right divine to the English throne. The first news our author heard of his elaborate history was the discovery of this unforeseen calamity ; the public indignation was roused, and subscribers, public and private, hastened to withdraw their names. The historian was left forlorn and abandoned amid his extensive collections, and Truth, which was about to be drawn out of her well by this robust labourer, was no longer imagined to lie concealed at the bottom of the waters. Thunderstruck at this dreadful reverse to all his hopes, and witnessing the unrequited labour of more than thirty years withered in an hour, the unhappy Carte drew up a faint appeal ; rendered still more weak by a long and improbable tale, that the objectionable illustration had been merely a private note which by mistake had been printed, and only designed to show that the person who had been healed im- properly attributed his cure to the sanative virtue of the regal unction ; since the prince in question had never been anointed. But this was plunging from Scylla into Cha- rybdis, for it inferred that the Stuarts inherited the heavenly- gifted touch by descent. This could not avail ; yet heavy was the calamity ! for now an historian of the utmost pro- bity and exactness, and whose labours were never equalled for their scope and extent, was ruined for an absurd but not peculiar opinion, and an indiscretion which was more ludi- crous than dishonest. This shock of public opinion was met with a fortitude which only strong minds experience ; Carte was the true votary of study, by habit, by devotion, and by pleasure, he persevered in producing an invaluable folio every two years ; but from three thousand copies he was reduced to seven hundred and fifty, and the obscure patronage of the few who knew how to appreciate them. Death only arrested the his- torian's pen in the fourth volume. We have lost the im- portant period of the reign of the second Charles, of which Carte declared that he had read " a series of memoirs from the beginning to the end of that reign which would have laid open all those secret intrigues which Burnet with all his genius for conjecture does not pretend to account for." So precious were the MS. collections Carte left behind I 114 Calamities of Authors. him, that the proprietor valued them at 1500Z. ; Philip Earl of Hardwicke paid 200/. only for the perusal, and Macpher- son a larger sum for their use ; and Hume, without Carte, would scarcely have any authorities. Such was the cala- mitous result of Carte's historical labours, who has left others of a more philosophical cast, and of a finer taste in composition, to reap the harvest whose soil had been broken by his hand. LITERARY RIDICULE. ILLUSTRATED BY SOME ACCOUNT OF A LITERARY SATIRE. RIDICULE may be considered as a species of eloquence ; it has all its vehemence, all its exaggeration, all its power of diminution ; it is irresistible ! Its business is not with truth, but with its appearance ; and it is this similitude, in perpetual comparison with the original, which, raising con- tempt, produces the ridiculous. There is nothing real in ridicule ; the more exquisite, the more it borrows from the imagination. When directed to- wards an individual, by preserving a unity of character in all its parts, it produces a fictitious personage, so modelled on the prototype, that we know not to distinguish the true one from the false. Even with an intimate knowledge of the real object, the ambiguous image slides into our mind, for we are at least as much influenced in our opinions by our imagina- tion as by our judgment. Hence some great characters have come down to us spotted with the taints of indelible wit ; and a satirist of this class, sporting with distant resem- blances and fanciful analogies, has made the fictitious accom- pany for ever the real character. Piqued with Akenside for some reflections against Scotland, Smollett has exhibited a man of great genius and virtue as a most ludicrous person- age ; and who can discriminate, in the ridiculous physician in " Peregrine Pickle," what is real from what is fictitious ?* * Of AKENSIDE few particulars have been recorded, for the friend who best knew him was of so cold a temper with regard to public opinion, that he has not, in his account, revealed a solitary feature in the character of the poet. Yet Akenside's mind and manners were of a fine romantic cast, drawn from the moulds of classical antiquity. Such was the charm of his converse, that he even heated the cold and sluggish mind of Sir John Haw- kins, who has, with unusual vivacity, described a day spent with him in the country. As I have mentioned the fictitious physician in " Peregrine Literary Ridicule. 115 The banterers and ridiculers possess this provoking advan- tage over sturdy honesty or nervous sensibility their amu- sing fictions affect the world more than the plain tale that would put them down. They excite our risible emotions, while they are reducing their adversary to contempt other- wise they would not be distinguished from gross slanderers. When the wit has gained over the laughers on his side, he has struck a blow which puts his adversary hors de combat. A grave reply can never wound ridicule, which, assuming all forms, has really none. "Witty calumny and licentious rail- lery are airy nothings that float about us, invulnerable from their very nature, like those chimeras of hell which the sword of .~E have often come under the eye of the reader ; but it is even now difficult to discover his real character ; for Prynne stood so completely insulated amid all parties, that he was ridiculed by his friends, and execrated by his enemies. The exuberance of his fertile pen, the strangeness and the manner of his subjects, and his pertinacity in voluminous publication, are known, and are nearly unparalleled in literary history. Could the man himself be separated from the author, A Voluminous Author without Judgment. 147 Prjnne would not appear ridiculous ; but the unlucky author of nearly two hundred works,* and who, as Wood quaintly computes, " must have written a sheet every day of his life, reckoning from the time that he came to the use of reason and the state of man," has involved his life in his authorship ; the greatness of his character loses itself in his voluminous works ; and whatever Prynne may have been in his own age, and remains to posterity, he was fated to endure all the cala- mities of an author who has strained learning into absurdity, and abused zealous industry by chimerical speculation. Yet his activity, and the firmness and intrepidity of his character in public life, were as ardent as they were in his study his soul was Roman ; and Eachard says, that Charles II., who could not but admire his earnest honesty, his copious learning, and the public persecutions he suffered, and the ten imprisonments he endured, inflicted by all parties, dignified him with the title of " the Cato of the Age ;" and one of his own party facetiously described him as " William the Con- queror," a title he had most hardly earned by his inflexible and invincible nature. Twice he had been cropped of his ears ; for at the first time the executioner having spared the two fragments, the inhuman judge on his second trial disco- vering them with astonishment, ordered them to be most un- mercifully cropped then he was burned on his cheek, and ruinously fined and imprisoned in a remote solitude, f but * That all these works should not be wanting to posterity, Prynne de- posited the complete collection in the library of Lincoln's-Inn, about forty volumes in folio and quarto. Noy, the Attorney-General, Prynne's great adversary, was provoked at the society's acceptance of these ponderous volumes, and promised to send them the voluminous labours of Taylor the water-poet, to place by their side ; he judged, as Wood says, that "Prynne's books were worth little or nothing ; that his proofs wer.e no arguments, and his affirmations no testimonies." But honest Anthony, in spite of his pre- judices against Prynne, confesses, that though " by the generality of scholars they are looked upon to be rather rhapsodical and confused than polite or concise, yet, for antiquaries, critics, and sometimes for divines, they are useful." Such erudition as Prynne's always retains its value the author who could quote a hundred authors on "the unloveliness of love-locks," will always make a good literary chest of drawers, well filled, for those who can make better use of their contents than himself. + Prynne seems to have considered being debarred from pen, ink, and books as an act more barbarous than the loss of his ears. See his curious book of " A New Discovery of the Prelate's Tyranny ;" it is a complete col- lection of everything relating to Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton ; three political fanatics, who seem impatiently to have courted the fate of Marsyas. Prynne, in his voluminous argument, proving the illegality of the sentences L2 148 Calamities of Authors. had they torn him limb by limb, Prynne had been in his mind a very polypus, which, cut into pieces, still loses none of its individuality. His conduct on the last of these occasions, when sentenced to be stigmatised, and to have his ears cut close, must be noticed. Turning to the executioner, he calmly invited him to do his duty " Come, friend, come, bum me 1 cut me ! I fear not ! I have learned to fear the fire of hell, and not what man can do unto me ; come, scar me ! scar me !" In Prynne this was not ferocity, but heroism ; Bastwick was intrepid out of spite, and Burton from fanaticism. The executioner had been urged not to spare his victims, and he performed his office with extraordinary severity, cruelly heating his iron twice, and cutting one of Prynne's ears so close, as to take away a piece of the cheek. Prynne stirred not in the torture ; and when it was done, smiled, observing, " The more I am he had suffered, in his ninth point thus gives way to all the feelings of Martinus Scriblerus : "Point 9th, that the prohibiting of me pen, ink, paper, and books, is against law." He employs an argument to prove that the abuse of any lawful thing never takes away the use of it ; therefore the law does not deprive gluttons or drunkards of necessary meat and drink ; this analogy he applies to his pen, ink, and books, of which they could not deprive him, though they might punish him for their abuse. He asserts that the popish prelates, in the reign of Mary, were the first who invented this new torture of depriving a scribbler of pen and ink. He quotes a long passage from Ovid's Tristia, to prove that, though exiled to the Isle of Pontus for his wanton books of love, pen and ink were not denied him to compose new poems ; that St. John, banished to the Isle of Patmos by the persecuting Domitian, still was allowed pen and ink, for there he wrote the Revelation and he proceeds with similar facts. Prynne's books abound with uncommon facts on common topics, for he had no discernment ; and he seems to have written to convince himself, and not the public. But to show the extraordinary perseverance of Prynne in his love of scribbling, I transcribe the following title of one of his extraordinary works. He published ' ' Comfortable Cordial against Discomfortable Fears of Imprisonment, containing some Latin verses, sentences and tex; Scripture, written by Mr. Wm. Prynne on his chamber-walls in the Tower of London during his imprisonment there ; translated by him into English verse," 1641. Prynne literally verifies Pope's description " Is there who lock'd from ink and paper, scrawls With desperate charcoal round his darken'd walls f ' We have also a catalogue of printed books written by Wm. Prynne, of Lincoln' s-Inn, Esq., in these classes Before I During { , his imprisonment, with the motto Jucundi acti lalorcs. 1643. Since ) A Voluminous Author without Judgment. 149 beaten down, the more I am lift up." After this punishment, in going to the Tower hy water, he composed the following verses on the two letters branded on his cheek, S. L., for schismatical libeller, but which Prynne chose to translate " Stigmata Laudis," the stigmas of his enemy, the Archbishop Laud. Stigmata maxillis referens insignia LAUDIS, Exultans remeo, victima grata Deo. The heroic man, who could endure agony and insult, and even thus commemorate his sufferings, with no unpoetical conception, almost degrades his own sublimity when the poetaster sets our teeth on edge by his verse. Bearing Laud's stamps on my cheeks I retire Triumphing, God's sweet sacrifice by fire. The triumph of this unconquered being was, indeed, signal. History scarcely exhibits so wonderful a reverse of fortune, and so strict a retribution, as occurred at this eventful period. He who had borne from the archbishop and the lords in the Star Chamber the most virulent invectives, wishing them at that instant seriously to consider that some who sat there on the bench might } r et stand prisoners at the bar, and need the favour they now denied, at- length saw the prediction com- pletely verified. What were the feelings of Laud, when Prynne, returning from his prison of Mount Orgueil in triumph, the road strewed with boughs, amid the acclama- tions of the people, entered the apartment in the Tower which the venerable Laud now in his turn occupied. The unsparing Puritan sternly performed the office of rifling his papers,* and persecuted the helpless prelate till he led him to * The interesting particulars of this interview have been preserved by the Archbishop himself and it is curious to observe how Laud could now utter the same tones of murmur and grief to which Prynne himself had recently given way. Studied insult in these cases accompanies power in the 'hands of a faction. I collect these particulars from " The History of the Troubles and Tryal of Archbishop Laud," and refer to Vicars's "God in the Mount, or a Parliamentarie Chronicle," p. 344, for the Puritanic triumphs. "Aly implacable enemy, Mr. Pryn, was picked out as a man whose malice might be trusted to make the search upon me, and he did it exactly. The manner of the search upon me was thus : Mr. Prvn came into the Tower so soon as the gates were open commanded the Warder to open my door he came into my chamber, and found me in bed Mr. Pryn seeing me safe in bed, falls first to my pockets to rifle them it was expressed in the warrant that he should search my pockets. Did they remember, when 150 Calamities of Authors. the block. Prynne, to use his own words, for he 'could be eloquent when moved by passion, " had struck proud Can- terbury to the heart ; and had undermined all his prelatical designs to advance the bishops' pomp and power ;"* Prynne triumphed but, even this austere Puritan soon grieved over the calamities he had contributed to inflict on the nation ; and, with a humane feeling, he once wished, that " when they had cut off his ears, they had cut off his head." He closed his political existence by becoming an advocate for the Restoration ; but, with his accustomed want of judgment and intemperate zeal, had nearly injured the cause by his premature activity. At the Restoration some difficulty occurred to dispose of " busie Mr. Pryn," as Whitelocke calls him. It is said he wished to be one of the Barons of the they gave this warrant, how odious it was to Parliaments, and some of them- selves, to have the pockets of men searched ? I rose, got my gown upon my shoulders, and he held me in the search till past nine in the morning (he had come in betimes in the morning in the month of May). He took from me twenty-one bundles of papers which I had prepared for my defence, &c., a little book or diary, containing all the occurrences of my life, and my book of private devotions ; both written with my own hand. Nor could I get him to leave this last ; he must needs see what passed between God and me. The last place he rifled was a trunk which stood by my bed- side ; in that he found nothing but about forty pounds in money, for my necessary expenses, which he meddled not with, and a bundle of some gloves. This bundle he was so careful to open, as that he caused each glove to be looked into ; upon this I tendered him one pair of the gloves, which he refusing, I told him he might take them, and fear no bribe, for he had already done me all the mischief he could, and I asked no favour of him ; so he thanked me, took the gloves, and bound up my papers, and went his way." Prynne had a good deal of cunning in his character, as well as fortitude. He had all the subterfuges and quirks which, perhaps, form too strong a feature in the character of "an utter Barrister of Lincoln's Inn." His great artifice was secretly printing extracts from the diary of Laud, and placing a copy in the hands of every member of the House, which was a sudden stroke on the Archbishop, when at the bar, that at the mo- ment overcame him. Once when Prynne was printing one of his libels, he attempted to deny being the author, and ran to the priuting-house to listribute the forms, but it was proved he had corrected the proof and the revise. Another time, when he had written a libellous letter to the Arch- bishop, Noy, the Attorney-General, sent for Prynne from his prison, and demanded of him whether the letter was of his own handwriting. Prynne said he must see and read the letter before he could determine ; and when Noy gave it to him, Prynne tore it to pieces, and threw the fragments out of the window, that it might not be brought in evidence against him. >y had preserved a copy, but that did not avail him, as Prynne well .new that the misdemeanour was in the letter itself; and Noy a\e up the prosecution, as there was now no remedy. Breviate of the Bishop's intolerable usurpations, p. 35. A Voluminous Author without Judgment. 151 Exchequer, but he was made the Keeper of the Becords in the Tower, " purposely to employ his head from scribbling against the state and bishops ;" where they put him to clear the Augean stable of our national antiquities, and see whe- ther they could weary out his restless vigour. Prynne had, indeed, written till he found no antagonist would reply ; and now he rioted in leafy folios, and proved himself to be one of the greatest paper-worms which ever crept into old books and mouldy records.* The literary character of Prynne is described by the happy epithet which Anthony Wood applies to him, " Voluminous Prynne." His great characteristic is opposed to that axiom of Hesiod so often quoted, that " half is better than the whole ;" a secret which the matter-of-fact men rarely dis- cover. Wanting judgment, and the tact of good sense, these detailers 'have no power of selection from their stores, to make one prominent fact represent the hundred minuter ones that may follow it. Voluminously feeble, they imagine ex- pansion is stronger than compression ; and know not to generalise, while they only can deal in particulars. Prynne's speeches were just as voluminous as his writings ; always deficient in judgment, and abounding in knowledge he was always wearying others, but never could himself. He once made a speech to the House, to persuade them the king's concessions were sufficient ground for a treaty ; it contains a complete narrative of all the transactions between the king, the Houses, and the army, from the beginning of the parlia- ment ; it takes up 140 octavo pages, and kept the house so long together, that the debates lasted from Monday morning till Tuesday morning ! Prynne's literary character may be illustrated by his sin- gular book, " Histriomastix," where we observe how an author's exuberant learning, like corn heaped in a granary, grows rank and musty, by a want of power to ventilate and stir about the heavy mass. This paper-worm may first be viewed in his study, as * While Keeper of the Records, he set all the great energies of his nature to work upon the national archives. The result appeared in three folio volumes of the greatest value to the historian. They were published irregularly, and at intervals of time thus the second volume was issued in 1665 ; the first in 1666 ; and the third in 1670. The first two volumes are of the utmost rarity, nearly all the copies having been destroyed in the great fire of London. ED. 152 Calamities of Authors. painted by the picturesque Anthony Wood ; an artist in the Flemish school : " His custom, when he studied, was to put on a long quilted cap, which came an inch over his eyes, serving as an umbrella to defend them from too much light, and seldom eating any dinner, would be every three hours maunching a roll of bread, and now and then refresh his exhausted spirits with ale brought to him by his servant ;" a custom to which Butler alludes, Thou that with ale, or viler liquors, Didst inspire Withers', Prynne, and Vicars, And force them, though it were in spite Of nature, and their stars, to write. The " HISTEIOMASTIX, the Player's Scourge, or Actor's Tragedie," is a ponderous quarto, ascending to about 1100 pages ; a Puritan's invective against plays and players, ac- cusing them of every kind of crime, including libels against Church and State ;* but it is more remarkable for the incal- culable quotations and references foaming over the margins. Prynne scarcely ventures on the most trivial opinion, without calling to his aid whatever had been said in all nations and in all ages; and Cicero, and Master Stubbs, Petrarch and Minutius Felix, Isaiah and Froissart's Chronicle, oddly asso- ciate in the ravings of erudition. Who, indeed, but the author " who seldom dined," could have quoted perhaps a thousand writers in one volume ?t A wit of the times re- marked of this Helluo librorum, that " Nature makes ever the dullest beasts most laborious, and the greatest feeders ;" and Prynne has been reproached with a weak digestion, for " returning things unaltered, which is a symptom of a feeble stomach." When we examine this volume, often alluded to, the birth of the monster seems prodigious and mysterious ; it combines two opposite qualities; it is so elaborate in its researches among the thousand authors quoted, that these required years to accumulate, and yet the matter is often temporary, Hume, in his History, has given some account of this enormous quarto ; which I refer the reader, vol. vi. chap. lii. t Milton admirably characterises Prynne's absurd learning as well as ter in his treatise on " The likeliest means to remove hirelings Church," as "a late hot querist for tythes, whom ye may know nfe l-nng ever beside him in the margin, to be ever beside his wits ext. A fierce Reformer once ; now rankled with a contrary heat." A Voluminous Author without Judgment. 153 and levelled at fugitive events and particular persons ; thus the very formation of this mighty volume seems paradoxical. The secret history of this book is as extraordinary as the book itself, and is a remarkable evidence how, in a work of immense erudition, the arts of a wily sage involved himself, and whoever was concerned in his book, in total ruin. The author was pilloried, fined, and imprisoned ; his publisher condemned in the penalty of five hundred pounds, and barred for ever from printing and selling books, and the licenser re- moved and punished. Such was the fatality attending the book of a man whose literary voracity produced one of the most tremendous indigestions, in a malady of writing. It was on examining Prynne's trial I discovered the secret history of the " Histriomastix." Prynne was seven years in writing this work, and, what is almost incredible, it was near four years passing through the press. During that interval the eternal scribbler was daily gorging himself with volu- minous food, and daily fattening his cooped-up capon. The temporary sedition and libels were the gradual Mosaic inlay- ings through this shapeless mass. It appears that the volume of 1100 quarto pages originally consisted of little more than a quire of paper ; but Prynne found insuperable difficulties in procuring a licenser, even for this infant Hercules. Dr. Goode deposed that " About eight years ago Mr. Prynne brought to him a quire of paper to license, which he refused ; and he recol- lected the circumstance by having held an argument with Prynne on his severe reprehension on the unlawfulness of a man to put on women's apparel, which, the good-humoured doctor asserted was not always unlawful ; for suppose Mr. Prynne yourself, as a Christian, was persecuted by pagans, think you not if you disguised yourself in your maid's apparel, you did well ? Pryune sternly answered that he thought himself bound rather to yield to death than to do so." Another licenser, Dr. Harris, deposed, that about seven years ago " Mr. Prynne came to him to license a treatise concerning stage-plays; but he would not allow of the same;" and adds, " So this man did deliver this book when it was young and tender, and would have had it then printed ; but it is since grown seven times bigger, and seven times worse." Prynne not being able to procure these licensers, had 154 Calamities of Authors. recourse to another, Buekner, chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was usual for the licenser to examine the MS. before it went to the press ; but Prynne either tampered with Buekner, or so confused his intellects by keeping his multifarious volume in the press for four years ; and some- times, I suspect, by numbering folios for pages, as appears in the work, that the examination of the licenser gradually relaxed; and he declares in his defence that he had only licensed part of it. The bookseller, Sparks, was indeed a noted publisher of what was then called " Unlawful and un- licensed books ;" and he had declared that it was " an excel- lent book, which would be called in, and then sell well." He confesses the book had been more than three years in the press, and had cost him three hundred pounds. The speech of Noy, the Attorney-General, conveys some notion of the work itself ; sufficiently curious as giving the feelings of those times against the Puritans. " Who he means by his modern innovators in the church, and by cringing and ducking to altars, a fit term to bestow on the church ; he learned it of the canters, being used among them. The musick in the church, the charitable term he giveth it, is not to be a noise of men, but rather a Heating of brute leasts ; choristers bellow the tenor, as it were oxen ; bark a counterpoint as a kennel of dogs ; roar out a treble like a sort of bulls ; grunt out a bass, as it were a number of hogs. Bishops he calls the silk and satin divines ; says Christ was a Puritan, in his Index. He falleth on those things that have not relation to stage-plays, musick in the church, dancing, new-years' gifts, &c., then upon altars, images, hair of men and women, bishops and bonfires. Cards and tables do offend him, and perukes do fall within the compass of his theme. His end is to persuade the people that we are returning back again to paganism, and to persuade them to go and serve God in another country, as many are gone already, and set up new laws and fancies among themselves. Consider what may come of it!" The decision of the Lords of the Star Chamber was dictated by passion as much as justice. Its severity exceeded the crime of having produced an unreadable volume of indigested erudition ; and the learned scribbler was too hardly used, scam.ly rs.-aping with life. Lord Cottington, amazed* at the mighty volume, too bluntly affirmed that Prynne did not wnte this book alone ; " he either assisted the devil, or was Genius and Erudition the Victims of Vanity. 155 assisted by the devil." But secretary Cooke delivered a sensi- ble and temperate speech ; remarking on all its false erudition that, " By this vast book of Mr. Prynne's, it appeareth that he hath read more than he hath studied, and studied more than he hath considered. He calleth his book ' Histriomastix ;' but therein he showeth himself like unto Ajax Anthropomas- tix, as the Grecians called him, the scourge of all mankind, that is, the whipper and the whip." Such is the history of a man whose greatness of character was clouded over and lost in a fatal passion for scribbling ; such is the history of a voluminous author whose genius was such that he could write a folio much easier than a page ; and " seldom dined " that he might quote " squadrons of authorities."* GENIUS AND ERUDITION THE VICTIMS OF IMMODERATE VANITY. THE name of TOLAKD is more familiar than his character, yet his literary portrait has great singularity ; he must be classed among the " Authors by Profession," an honour secured by near fifty publications ; and we shall discover that he aimed to combine with the literary character one peculiarly his own.f * The very expression Prynne himself uses, see p. 668 of the Histrio- mastix ; where having gone through " three squadrons," he commences a fresh chapter thus : ' ' The fourth squadron of authorities is the venerable troope of 70 several renowned ancient fathers ;" and he throws in more than he promised, all which are quoted volume and page, as so many "play-confounding arguments." He has quoted perhaps from three to four hundred authors on a single point. f Toland was born in Ireland, in 1669, of Roman Catholic parents, but became a zealous opponent of that faith before he was sixteen ; after which he finished his education at Glasgow and Edinburgh ; he retired to study at Leyden, where he formed the acquaintance of Leibnitz and other learned men. His first book, published in 1696, and entitled "Christianity not Mysterious," was met by the strongest denunciation from the pulpit, was " presented" by the grand jury of Middlesex, and ordered to be burnt by the common hangman by the Parliament of Ireland. He was henceforth driven for employ to literature ; and in 1699 was engaged by the Duke of Newcastle to edit the "Memoirs of Denzil, Lord Hollis ;" and afterwards by the Earl of Oxford on a new edition of Harrington's " Oceana." He then visited the Courts of Berlin and Hanover. He published many works on politics and religion, the latter all remarkable for their deistical tendencies, and died in March, 1722, at the age of 53. Eu. 156 Calamities of Authors. With higher talents and more learning than have been con- ceded to him, there ran in his mind an original vein of think- ing. Yet his whole life exhibits in how small a degree great intellectual powers, when scattered through all the forms which Vanity suggests, will contribute to an author's social comforts, or raise him in public esteem. Toland was fruitful in his productions, and still more so in his projects ; yet it is mortifying to estimate the result of all the intense activity of the life of an author of genius, which terminates in being placed among these Calamities. Toland's birth was probably illegitimate ; a circumstance which influenced the formation of his character. Baptised in ridicule, he had nearly fallen a victim to Mr. Shandy's system of Christian names, for he bore the strange ones of Janus Juntas, which, when the school-roll was called over every morning, afforded perpetual merriment, till the master blessed him with plain John, which the boy adopted, and lived in quiet. I must say something on the names themselves, per- haps as ridiculous ! May they not have influenced the character of Toland, since they certainly describe it ? He had all the shiftings of the double-faced Janus, and the revolutionary politics of the ancient Junius. His godfathers sent him into the world in cruel mockery, thus to remind their Irish boy of the fortunes that await the desperately bold : nor did Toland forget the strong-marked designations ; for to his most objectionable work, the Latin tract entitled Panfheisticon, descriptive of what some have considered as an atheistical society, he subscribes these appropriate names, which at the time were imagined to be fictitious. Toland ran away from school and Popery. When in after- life he was reproached with native obscurity, he ostentatiously produced a testimonial of his birth and family, hatched up at a convent of Irish Franciscans in Germany, where the good Fathers subscribed, with their ink tinged with their Ehenish, to his.most ancient descent, referring to the Irish history ! which they considered as a parish register, fit for the suspected son of an Irish Priest ! Toland, from early life, was therefore dependent on patrons ; illegitimate birth creates strong and determined characters, Toland had all the force and originality of self-indepen - lence. He was a seed thrown by chance, to grow of itself wherever it falls. This child of fortune studied at four Universities ; at Glas- Genius and Erudition the Victims of Vanity. 157 gow, Edinburgh, and Lcyden ; from the latter he passed to Oxford, and, in the Bodleian Library, collected the materials for his after-studies. He loved study, and even at a later period declares that " no employment or condition of life shall make me disrelish the lasting entertainment of books." In his " Description of Epsom," he observes that the taste for retirement, read- ing, and contemplation, promotes the true relish for select company, and says, " Thus I remove at pleasure, as I grow weary of the country or the town, as I avoid a crowd or seek company. Here, then, let me have books and bread enough without dependence ; a bottle of hermitage and a plate of olives for a select friend ; with an early rose to present a young lady as an emblem of discretion no less than of beauty." At Oxford appeared that predilection for paradoxes and over-curious speculations, which formed afterwards the mark- ing feature of his literary character. He has been unjustly contemned as a sciolist ; he was the correspondent of Leib- nitz, Le Clerc, and Bayle, and was a learned author when scarcely a man. He first published a Dissertation on the strange tragical death of Regulus, and proved it a Roman legend. A greater paradox might have been his projected speculation on Job, to demonstrate that only the dialogue was genuine ; the rest being the work of some idle Rabbin, who had invented a monstrous story to account for the extraordi- nary afflictions of that model of a divine mind. Speculations of so much learning and ingenuity are uncommon in a young man ; but Toland was so unfortunate as to value his own merits before those who did not care to hear of them. Hardy vanity was to recompense him, perhaps he thought, for that want of fortune and connexions, which raised duller spirits above him. Vain, loquacious, inconsiderate, and daring, he assumed the dictatorship of a coffee-house, and obtained easy conquests, which he mistook for glorious ones, over the graver fellows, who had for many a year awfully petrified their own colleges. He gave more violent offence by his new opinions on religion. An anonymous person addressed two letters to this new Heresiarch, solemn and monitory.* Toland's answer is as honourable as that of his monitor's. This passage is forcibly conceived : * These letters will interest every religious person ; they may be found in Toland's posthumous works, vol. ii. p. 295. 158 Calamities of Authors. " To what purpose should I study here or elsewhere, were I an atheist or deist, for one of the two you take me to be ? "What a condition to mention virtue, if I believed there was no God, or one so impotent that could not, or so malicious that would not, reveal himself! Nay, though I granted a Deity, yet, if nothing of me subsisted after death, what laws could bind, what incentives could move me to common honesty ? Annihilation would be a sanctuary for all my sins, and put an end to my crimes with myself. Believe me I am not so indifferent to the evils of the present life, but, without the expectation of a better, I should soon suspend the mechanism of my body, and resolve into inconscious atoms." This early moment of his life proved to be its crisis, and the first step he took decided his after-progress. His first great work of "Christianity not Mysterious," produced im- mense consequences. Toland persevered in denying that it was designed as any attack on Christianity, but only on those sub- tractions, additions, and other alterations, which have corrupted that pure institution. The work, at least, like its title, is " Mys- terious."* Toland passed over to Ireland, but his book having got there before him, the author beheld himself anathema- tized ; the pulpits thundered, and it was dangerous to be seen conversing with him. A jury who confessed they could not comprehend a page of his book, condemned it to be burned. Toland now felt a tenderness for his person ; and the humane Molyneux, the friend of Locke, while he censures the impru- dent vanity of our author, gladly witnessed the flight of " the poor gentleman." But South, indignant at our English moderation in his own controversy with Sherlock on some doc- trinal points of the Trinity, congratulates the Archbishop of Dublin on the Irish persecution ; and equally witty and into- lerant, he writes on Toland, " Your Parliament presently sent him packing, and without the help of a fagot, soon made the kingdom too hot for him." 'Toland pretends to prove that "there is nothing in the Christian Religion, not only which is contrary to reason, but even which is above it." He made use of some arguments (says Le Clerc) that were drawn from Locke's Treatise on the Human Understanding. I have seen in MS. a finished treatise by Locke on Religion, addressed to Lady Shaftesbury ; Locke gives it as a translation from the French. I regret my account is so imperfect ; but the possessor may, perhaps, be induced to give it to the public. The French philosophers have drawn their first waters from English authors ; and Toland, Tindale, and Woolston, with Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Locke, were among their earliest acquisitions. Genius and Erudition the Victims of Vanity. 159 Toland was accused of an intention to found a sect, as South calls them, of " Mahometan-Christians." Many were stig- matised as Tolandists ; but the disciples of a man who never procured for their prophet a bit of dinner or a new wig, for he was frequently wanting both, were not to be feared as enthu- siasts. The persecution from the church only rankled in the breast of Toland, and excited unextinguishable revenge. He now breathed awhile from the bonfire of theology ; and our Janus turned his political face. He edited Milton's volu- minous politics, and Harrington's fantastical " Oceana," and, as his " Christianity not Mysterious" had stamped his reli- gion with something worse than heresy, so in politics he was branded as a Commonwealth' s-man. Toland had evidently strong nerves ; for him opposition produced controversy, which he loved, and controversy produced books, by which he lived. But let it not be imagined that Toland affected to be consi- dered as no Christian, or avowed himself as a Republican. "Civil and religious toleration" (he says) " have been the two main objects of all my writings." He declares himself to be only a primitive Christian, and a pure Whig. But an author must not be permitted to understand himself so much more clearly than he has enabled his readers to do. His mysterious conduct may be detected in his want of moral integrity. He had the art of explaining away his own words, as in his first controversy about the word mystery in religion, and he exults in his artifice ; for, in a letter, where he is soliciting the minister for employment, he says : " The church is much exasperated against me ; yet as that is the heaviest article, so it is undoubtedly the easiest conquered, and I know the infal- lible method of doing it." And, in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he promises to reform his religion to that pre- late's liking ! He took the sacrament as an opening for the negotiation. What can be more explicit than his recantation at the close of his Vindicius Liberius ? After telling us that he had withdrawn from sale, after the second edition, his " ' Chris- tianity not Mysterious,' when I perceived what real or pre- tended offence it had given," he concludes thus : " Being now arrived to years that will not wholly excuse inconsiderate- ness in resolving, or precipitance in acting, I firmly hope that my persuasion and practice will show me to be a true Chris- tian ; that my due conformity to the public worship may 160 Calamities of Authors. prove me to be a good Churchman ; and that my untainted loyalty to King William will argue me to be a staunch Com- monwealth's-man. That I shall continue all my life a friend to religion, an enemy to superstition, a supporter of good kings, and a deposer of tyrants." Observe, this Vindicius Liberius was published on his re- turn from one of his political tours in Germany. His views were then of a very different nature from those of con- troversial divinity ; but it was absolutely necessary to allay the storm the church had raised against him. We begin now to understand a little better the character of Toland. These literary adventurers, with heroic pretensions, can practise the meanest artifices, and shrink themselves into nothing to creep out of a hole. How does this recantation agree with the " Nazarenus," and the other theological works which Toland was publishing all his life ? Posterity only can judge of men's characters ; it takes in at a glance the whole of a life ; but contemporaries only view a part, often apparently uncon- nected and at variance, when in fact it is neither. This recantation is full of the spirit of Janus Junius Toland. But we are concerned chiefly with Toland's literary cha- racter. He was so confirmed an author, that he never pub- lished one book without promising another. He refers to others in MS. ; and some of his most curious works are posthumous. He was a great artificer of title-pages, covering them with a promising luxuriance ; and in this way recom- mended his works to the booksellers. He had an odd taste for running inscriptions of whimsical crabbed terms ; the gold- dust of erudition to gild over a title ; such as " Tetradymus, Hodegus, Clidopharus ;" " Adeisidaemon, or the Unsupersti- tious." He pretends these affected titles indicated their several subjects ; but the genius of Toland could descend to literary quackery. He had the art of propagating books ; his small Life of Milton produced several ; besides the complacency he felt in extracting long passages from Milton against the bishops. In this Life, his attack on the authenticity of the Eikon Basi- like of Charles I. branched into another on supposititious writings ; and this included the spurious gospels. Associa- tion of ideas is a nursing mother to the fertility of authorship. The spurious gospels opened a fresh theological campaign, and produced his "Amyntor." There was no end in pro- voking an author, who, in writing the life of a poet, could Genius and Erudition the Victims of Vanity. 161 contrive to put the authenticity of the Testament to the proof. Amid his philosophical labours, his vanity induced him to seize on all temporary topics to which his facility and inge- nuity gave currency. The choice of his subjects forms an amusing catalogue ; for he had "Remarks" and "Projects" as fast as events were passing. He wrote on the " Art of Governing by Parties," on " Anglia Liberia," "Reasons for Naturalising the Jews," on " The Art of Canvassing at Elec- tions," " On raising a National Bank without Capital," " The State Anatomy," " Dunkirk or Dover," &c. &c. These, and many like these, set off with catching titles, proved to the author that a man of genius may be capable of writing on all topics at all times, and make the country his debtor without benefiting his own creditors.* There was a moment in Toland's life when he felt, or thought he felt, fortune in his grasp. He was then floating on the ideal waves of the South Sea bubble. The poor author, elated with a notion that he was rich enough to print at his own cost, dispersed copies of his absurd " Pantheisticon." He describes a society of Pantheists, who worship the uni- verse as God ; a mystery much greater than those he attacked in Christianity. Their prayers are passages from Cicero and Seneca, and they chant long poems instead of psalms ; so that in their zeal they endured a little tediousness. The next objectionable circumstance in this wild ebullition of philoso- phical wantonness is the apparent burlesque of some liturgies ; and a wag having inserted in some copies an impious prayer to Bacchus, Toland suffered for the folly of others as well as his own.f With the South Sea bubble vanished Toland's desire * In examining the original papers of Toland, which are preserved, I found some of his agreements with booksellers. For his description of Epsom he was to receive only four guineas in case 1000 were sold. He received ten guineas for his pamphlet on Naturalising the Jews, and ten guineas more in case Bernard Lintott sold 2000. The words of this agreement run thus : "Whenever Mr. Toland calls for ten guineas, after the first of February next, I promise to pay them, if I cannot show that 200 of the copies remain unsold." What a sublime person is an author ! What a misery is authorship ! The great philosopher who creates systems that are to alter the face of his country, must stand at the counter to count out 200 unsold copies ! f Des Maiseaux frees Toland from this calumny, and hints at his own personal knowledge of the author but he does not know what a foreign writer authenticates, that this blasphemous address to Bacchus is a parody of a prayer in the Roman ritual, written two centuries before by a very proper society of Pantheists, a club of drunkards ! M 162 Calamities of Authors. of printing books at his own risk ; and thus relieved the world from the weight of more Pantheisticons ! With all this bustle of authorship, amidst temporary pub- lications which required such prompt ingenuity, and elaborate works which matured the fruits of early studies, Toland was still not a sedentary writer. I find that he often travelled on the continent ; but how could a guinealess author so easily transport himself from Flanders to Germany, and appear at home in the courts of Berlin, Dresden, and Hanover ? Per- haps we may discover a congealed feature in the character of our ambiguous philosopher. In the only Life we have of Toland, by Des Maiseaux, pre- fixed to his posthumous works, he tells us, that Toland was at the court of Berlin, but " an incident, too ludicrous to be mentioned, obliged him to leave that place sooner than he expected." Here is an incident in a narrative clearly marked out, but never to be supplied ! Whatever this incident was, it had this important result, that it sent Toland away in. haste ; but why was he there ? Our chronological biographer,* "good easy man," suspects nothing more extraordinary when he tells us Toland was at Berlin or Hanover, than when he finds him at Epsom ; imagines Toland only went to the Elec- toral Princess Sophia, and the Queen of Prussia, who were "ladies of sublime genius," to entertain them by vexing some grave German divines, with philosophical conferences, and paradoxical conundrums ; all the ravings of Toland's idleness.f This secret history of Toland can only be picked out by fine threads. He professed to be a literary character he had opened a periodical " literary correspondence," as he terms it, with Prince Eugene; such as we have witnessed in our days by Grimm and La Harpe, addressed to some northern princes. He was a favourite with the Electoral Warburton has well described Des Maiseaux : "All the Life- writers we have had are, indeed, strange insipid creatures. The verbose tasteless Frenchman seems to lay it down as a principle that every life must be a book, and what is worse, it proves a book without a life ; for what do we know of Boileau, after all his tedious stuff?" + One of these philosophical conferences has been preserved by Beausobre, who was indeed the party concerned. He inserted it in the "Bibliotheque Germanique," a curious literary journal, in 50 volumes, written by L'Enfant, Beausobre, and Formey. It is very copious, and very curious, and is preserved in the General Dictionary, art. Toland. The parties, after a warm contest, were very wisely interrupted by the Queen, when she discovered they had exhausted their learning, and were beginning to rail at each other. Genius and Erudition the Victims of Vanity. 163 Princess Sophia and the Queen of Prussia, to whom he addressed his " Letters to Serena." Was he a political agent ? Yet how was it that Toland was often driven home by distressed circumstances ? He seems not to have been a practical politician, for he managed his own affairs very ill. Was the political intriguer rather a suspected than a confi- dential servant of all his masters and mistresses ? for it is evident no one cared for him ! The absence of moral in- tegrity was probably never disguised by the loquacious vanity of this literary adventurer. In his posthumous works are several " Memorials" for the Earl of Oxford, which throw a new light over a union of political espionage with the literary character, which finally concluded in producing that extraordinary one which the political imagination of Toland created in all the obscurity and heat of his reveries. In one of these " Memorials," forcibly written and full of curiosity, Toland remonstrates with the minister for his marked neglect of him ; opens the scheme of a political tour, where, like Guthrie, he would be content with his quarterage. He defines his character ; for the independent Whig affects to spurn at the office, though he might not shrink at the duties of a spy. " Whether such a person, sir, who is neither minister nor spy, and as a lover of learning will be welcome everywhere, may not prove of extraordinary use to my Lord Treasurer, as well as to his predecessor Burleigh, who employed such, I leave his lordship and you to consider." Still this character, whatever title may designate it, is inferior in dignity and importance to that which Toland afterwards projected, and which portrays him where his life- writer has not given a touch from his brush ; it is a political curiosity. " I laid an honester scheme of serving my country, your lordship, and myself; for, seeing it was neither convenient for you, nor a thing at all desired by me, that / should appear in any public post, I sincerely proposed, as occasions should offer, to communicate to your lordship my observations on the temper of the ministry, the dispositions of the people, the condition of our enemies or allies abroad, and what I might think most expedient in every conjuncture; which advice you were to follow in whole, or in part, or not at all, as your own superior wisdom should direct. My general acquaint- M2 164 Calamities of Authors. ance, the several languages I speak, the experience I have acquired in foreign affairs, and being engaged in no interest at home, besides that of the public, should qualify me in some measure for this province. ALL WISE MINISTERS HAVE EVEB HAD SUCH PRIVATE MONITORS. As much as I thought my- self fit, or was thought so by others, for such general obser- vations, so much have I ever abhorred, my lord, those par- ticular observers we call SPIES ; but I despise the calumny no less than I detest the thing. Of such general observa- tions, you should have perused a far greater number than I thought fit to present hitherto, had I discovered, by due effects, that they were acceptable from me; for they must unavoidably be received from somebody, unless a minister were omniscient yet I soon had good reason to believe I was not designed for the man, whatever the original sin could be that made me incapable of such a trust, and which I now begin to suspect. Without direct answers to my pro- posals, how could I know whether I helped my friends else- where, or betrayed them contrary to my intentions ! and accordingly I have for some time been very cautious and reserved. But if your lordship will enter into any measures with me to procure the good of my country, I shall be more ready to serve your lordship in this, or in some becoming capacity, than any other minister. They who confided to my management affairs of a higher nature have found me exact as well as secret. My impenetrable negociation at Vienna (hid under the pretence of curiosity) was not only applauded by the prince that employed me, but also propor- tionably rewarded. And here, my lord, give me leave to say that I have found England miserably served abroad since this change; and our ministers at home are sometimes as great strangers to the genius as to the persons of those with whom they have to do. At you have placed the most unacceptable man in the world one that lived in a scan- dalous misunderstanding with the minister of the States at another court one that has been the laughing-stock of all courts, for his senseless haughtiness and most ridiculous airs and one that can never judge aright, unless by accident, in anything." The discarded, or the suspected private monitor of tlte Minister warms into the tenderest language of political amour, and mourns their rupture but as the quarrels of lovers. Genius and Erudition the Victims of Vanity. 165 " I cannot, from all these considerations, but in the nature of a lover, complain of your present neglect, and be solicitous for your future care." And again, " I have made use of the simile of a lover, and as such, indeed, I thought fit, once for all, to come to a thorough explanation, resolved, if my affec- tion be not killed by your unkindness, to become indissolubly yours." Such is the nice artifice which colours, with a pretended love of his country, the sordidness of the political intriguer, giving clean names to filthy things. But this view of the political face of our Janus is not complete till we discover the levity he could carry into politics when not disguised by more pompous pretensions. I shall give two extracts from letters composed in a different spirit. " I am bound for Germany, though first for Flanders, and next for Holland. I believe I shall be pretty well accommo- dated for this voyage, which I expect will be very short. Lord ! how near was my old woman being a queen ! and your humble servant being at his ease." His old woman was the Electoral Princess Sophia ; and his ease is what patriots distinguish as the love of their country ! Again " The October Club,* if rightly managed, will be rare stuff to work the ends of any party. I sent such an account of these wights to an old gentlewoman of my acquaintance, as in the midst of fears (the change of mniistrv) will make her laugh." After all his voluminous literature, and his refined politics, Toland lived and died the life of an Author by Profession, iu an obscure lodging at a country carpenter's, in great distress. He had still one patron left, who was himself poor, Lord Molesworth, who promised him, if he lived, " Bare necessaries. These are but cold comfort to a man of your spirit and desert ; but 'tis all I dare promise ! 'Tin an ungrateful age, and we must bear with it the best we may till we can mend it." And his lordship tells of his unsuccessful application to some Whig lord for Toland ; and concludes, * A political society which obtained its name from the malt liquors con- sumed at its meetings, and which was popularly termed October from the month when it was usually brewed. This club advocated the claims of the House of Hanover, and may have originated the Mughouses noted in p. 32. ED. 1 66 Calamities of Authors. " 'Tis a sad monster of a man, and not worthy of further notice." I have observed that Toland had strong nerves ; he neither feared controversies, nor that which closes all. Having examined his manuscripts, I can sketch a minute picture of the last days of our " author by profession." At the car- penter's lodgings he drew up a list of all his books they were piled on four chairs, to the amount of 155 most of them works which evince the most erudite studies ; and as Toland's learning has been very lightly esteemed, it may be worth notice that some of his MSS. were transcribed in Greek.* To this list he adds " I need not recite those in the closet with the unbound books and pamphlets ; nor my trunk, wherein are all my papers and MSS." I perceive he circulated his MSS. among his friends, for there is a list by him as he lent them, among which are ladies as well as gentlemen, esprits forts ! Never has author died more in character than Toland ; he may be said to have died with a busy pen in his hand. Having suffered from an unskilful physician, he avenged him- self in his own way ; for there was found on his table an " Essay on Physic without Physicians." The dying patriot- trader was also writing a preface for a political pamphlet on the danger of mercenary Parliaments; and the philosopher * I subjoin, for the gratification of the curious, the titles of a few of these books. " Spanhemii Opera ;" " Clerici Pentateuchus ;" ' ' Constantini Lexicon Graeco-Latinum ;" " Fabricii Codex Apocryph us Vet. etNov. Test.;" "Synesius de Regno ;" " Historia Imaginum Ccelestium Gosselini," 16 volumes ; "Caryophili Dissertationes ;" " Vonde Hardt Ephemerides Phi- lologies ;" " Trismegisti Opera ;" " Eecoldus, et alia Mahomedica ;" all the Works of Bnxtorf ; " Salviani Opera ;" " Reland de Relig. Mahomedica ;" ( 'GalliOpuscula Mythologica ;" "Apollodori Bibliotheca ;" " Palingenius ;" ' Apuleius ;" and every classical author of antiquity. As he was then em- ployed in his curious history of the Druids, of which only a specimen is preserved, we may trace his researches in the following books : " Luydii Archaeologia Britannica ;" "Old Irish Testament," &c. ; "Maccurtin's listory of Ireland ;" " 0' Flaherty's Ogygia ;" " Epistolarum Hibernica- Usher's Religion of the ancient Irish ;" "Brand's Isles of Orkney and Zetland ;" " Pezron's Antiquites des Celtes." There are some singular papers among these fragments. One title of a Pnesthood without Priestcraft ; or Superstition distinguished jion, Dominion from Order, and Bigotry from Reason, in the most 1 Controversies about Church government, which at present divide leform Christianity." He has composed " A Psalm before Sermon in M of Asuuty. There are other singular titles and works in the mass Genius and Erudition the Victims of Vanity. 167 was composing his own epitaph one more proof of the ruling passion predominating in death ; but why should a Pantheist be solicitous to perpetuate his genius and his fame ! I shall transcribe a few lines ; surely they are no evidence of Atheism ! Omnium Literarum excnltor, ac linguarum plus decem sciens ; Veritatis propugnator, Libertatis assertor ; nullus auteni sectator aut cliens, nee minis, nee mails est inflezus, quin quam elegit, viam perageret ; utili honestum anteferens. Spiritus cum aethereo patre, a quo prodiit olim, conjnngitur ; corpus item, Naturae cedens, in materno gremio reponitur. Ipse vero seternnm est resurrecturus, at idem futurus TOLAHDUS nunquam.* One would have imagined that the writer of his own panegyrical epitaph would have been careful to have trans- mitted to posterity a copy of his features ; but I know of no portrait of Toland. His patrons seem never to have been generous, nor his disciples grateful ; they mortified rather than indulged the egotism of his genius. There appeared, indeed, an elegy, shortly after the death of Toland, so inge- niously contrived, that it is not clear whether he is eulogised or ridiculed. Amid its solemnity these lines betray the sneer. " Has," exclaimed the eulogist of the ambiguous philosopher, Each jarring element gone angry home ? And Master Toland a Non-ens become ? LOCEE, with all the prescient sagacity of that clear un- * A lover of all literature, and knowing more than ten languages ; a champion for truth, an assertor of liberty, but the follower or dependant of no man ; nor could menaces nor fortune bend him ; the way he had chosen he pursued, preferring honesty to his interest. His spirit is joined with its ethereal father from whom it originally proceeded ; his body likewise, yielding to Nature, is again laid in the lap of its mother : but he is about to rise again in eternity, yet never to be the same TOLASD more. 168 Calamities of Authors. derstanding which penetrated under the secret folds of the human heart, anticipated the life of Toland at its commence- ment. He admired the genius of the man ; but, while he valued his parts and learning, he dreaded their result. In a letter I find these passages, which were then so prophetic, and are now so instructive : " If his exceeding great value of himself do not deprive the world of that usefulness that his parts, if rightly con- ducted, might be of, I shall be very glad. The hopes young men give of what use they will make of their parts is, to me, the encouragement of being concerned for them ; but, if vanity increases with age, I always fear whither it will lead a man." GENIUS THE DUPE OF ITS PASSIONS. POPE said that STEELE, though he led a careless and vicious life, had nevertheless a love and reverence for virtue. The life of Steele was not that of a retired scholar ; hence his moral character becomes more instructive. He was one of those whose hearts are the dupes of their imaginations, and who are hurried through life by the most despotic voli- tion. He always preferred his caprices to his interests ; or, according to his own notion, very ingenious, but not a little absurd, " he was always of the humour of preferring the state of his mind to that of his fortune." The result of this principle of moral conduct was, that a man of the most ad- mirable abilities was perpetually acting like a fool, and, with a warm attachment to virtue, was the frailest of human beings. In the first act of his life we find the seed that developed itself in the succeeding ones. His uncle could not endure a hero for his heir : but Steele had seen a marching regiment ; a sufficient reason with him to enlist as a private in the horse-guards : cocking his hat, and putting on a broad-sword, jack-boots, and shoulder-belt, with the most generous feelings he forfeited a very good estate. At length Ensign Steele's frank temper and wit conciliated esteem, and extorted admi- ration, and the ensign became a favourite leader in all the lissipations of the town. All these were the ebullitions of genius, which had not yet received a legitimate direction. Amid these orgies, however, it was often pensive, and forming Genius the Dupe of its Passions. 169 itself ; for it was in the height of these irregularities that Steele composed his " Christian Hero," a moral and religious treatise, which the contritions of every morning dictated, and to which the disorders of every evening added another peni- tential page. Perhaps the genius of Steele was never so / ardent and so pure as at this period ; and in his elegant letter to his commander, the celebrated Lord Cutts, he gives an in- teresting account of the origin of this production, which none but one deeply imbued with its feelings could have so forcibly described. " Tower Guard, March 23, 1701. " MY LORD, The address of the following papers is so very much due to your lordship, that they are but a mere report of what has passed upon my guard to my commander ; for they were writ upon duty, when the mind was perfectly disengaged, and at leisure, in the silent watch of the night, to run over the busy dream of the day ; and the vigilance which obliges us to suppose an enemy always near us, has awakened a sense that there is a restless and subtle one which constantly at- tends our steps, and meditates our ruin."* To this solemn and monitory work he prefixed his name, from this honourable motive, that it might serve as " a standing testimony against himself, and make him ashamed of understanding, and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and living so quite contrary a life." Do we not think- that no one less than a saint is speaking to us ? And yet he is still nothing more than Ensign Steele ! He tells us that this grave work made him considered, who had been no unde- lightful companion, as a disagreeable fellow and " The Christian Hero," by his own words, appears to have fought off several fool-hardy geniuses who were for " trying their valour on him," supposing a saint was necessarily a poltroon. Thus " The Christian Hero," finding himself slighted by his loose companions, sat down and composed a most laughable comedy, "The Funeral;" and with all the frankness of a man who cares not to hide his motives, he tells us, that after his religious work he wrote the comedy because " nothing can make the town so fond of a man as a successful play."t * Mr. Nichols's " Epistolary Correspondence of Sir Richard Steele," vol. i. p. 77. t Steele has given a delightful piece of self -biography towards the end of his " Apology for Himself and his Writings," p. 80, 4 to. ]70 Calamities of Authors. The historian who had to record such strange events, follow- ing close on each other, as an author publishing a book of piety, and then a farce, could never have discovered the secret motive of the versatile writer, had not that writer possessed the most honest frankness. Steele was now at once a man of the town and its censor, and wrote lively essays on the follies of the day in an enor- mous black peruke which cost him fifty guineas ! He built an elegant villa, but, as he was always inculcating economy, he dates from " The Hovel." He detected the fallacy of the South Sea scheme, while he himself invented projects, neither inferior in magnificence nor in misery. He even turned alchemist, and wanted to coin gold, merely to distribute it. The most striking incident in the life of this man of voli- tion, was his sudden marriage with a young lady who at- tended his first wife's funeral struck by her angelical beauty, if we trust to his raptures. Yet this sage, who would have written so well on the choice of a wife, united himself to a character the most uncongenial to his own ; cold, reserved, and most anxiously prudent in her attention to money, she was of a temper which every day grew worse by the perpetual imprudence and thoughtlessness of his own. He calls her " Prue" in fondness and reproach ; she was Prudery itself! His adoration was permanent, and so were his complaints ; and they never parted but with bickerings yet he could not suffer her absence, for he was writing to her three or four passionate notes in a day, which are dated from his office, or his bookseller's, or from some friend's house he has risen in the midst of dinner to despatch a line to " Prue," to assure her of his affection since noon.* Her presence or her absence was equally painful to him. * In the " Epistolary Correspondence of Sir Richard Steele," edition of 1809, are preserved these extraordinary love-despatches ; "Prue" used poor Steele at times very ill ; indeed Steele seems to have conceived that his warm affections were all she required, for Lady Steele was usually left whole days in solitude, and frequently in want of a guinea, when Steele could not raise one. He, however, sometimes remonstrates with her very feelingly. The following note is an instance : " DEAK WIFE, I have been in great pain of body and mind since I ame out. You are extremely crael to a generous nature, which has a ten- derness for you that renders your least diskumour insupportably afflicting. After short starts of passion, not to be inclined to reconciliation, is what is against all rules of Christianity and justice. When I come home, I beg to be kindly received ; or this will have as ill an effect upon my fortune, as on my mind and body." Genius the Dupe of its Passions. 171 Yet Steele, gifted at all times with the susceptibility of genius, was exercising the finest feelings of the heart ; the same generosity of temper which deluded his judgment, and invigorated his passions, rendered him a tender and pathetic dramatist ; a most fertile essayist ; a patriot without private views ; an enemy whose resentment died away in raillery ; and a friend, who could warmly press the hand that chas- tised him. Whether in administration, or expelled the House ; whether affluent, or flying from his creditors ; in the fulness of his heart he, perhaps, secured his own happiness, and lived on, like some wits, extempore. But such men, with all their virtues and all their genius, live only for themselves. Steele, in the waste of his splendid talents, had raised sudden enmities and transient friendships. The world uses such men as Eastern travellers do fountains ; they drink their waters, and when their thirst is appeased, turn their backs on them. Steele lived to be forgotten. He opened his career with folly ; he hurried through it in a tumult of existence ; and he closed it by an involuntary exile, amid the wrecks of his fortune and his mind. Steele, in one of his numerous periodical works, the twelfth number of the " Theatre," has drawn an exquisite contrast In a postscript to another billet, he thus "sneers at Lady Steele 's exces- sive attention to money " : "Your man Sam owes me threepence, which must be deducted in the account between you and me ; therefore, pray take care to get it in, or stop it." Such despatches as the following were sent off three or four times in a day : " I beg of you not to be impatient, though it be an hour before you see "Your obliged husband, R. STEELE." " DEAR PRUE, Don't be displeased that I do not come home till eleven o'clock. Yours, ever." " DEAR PRUE, Forgive me dining abroad, and let Will carry the papers to Buckley's. Your fond devoted R. S." "DEARPRUE, I am very sleepy and tired, but could not think of closing my eyes till I had told you I am, dearest creature, your most affec- tionate, faithful husband, R. STEELE. " From the Press, One in the morning." It would seem by the following note that this hourly account of himself was in consequence of the connubial mandate of his fair despot : " DEAR PRCE, It is a strange thing, because you are handsome, that you will not behave yourself with the obedience that people of worse features do but that I must be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of my time. I send this to tell you I am waiting to be sent for again when my Lord Wharton is stirring." 172 Calamities of Authors. between himself and his friend Addison : it is a cabinet pic- ture. Steele's careful pieces, when warm with his subject, had a higher spirit, a richer flavour, than the equable softness of Addison, who is only beautiful. " There never was a more strict friendship than between these gentlemen ; nor had they ever any difference but what proceeded from their different way of pursuing the same thing : the one, with patience, foresight, and temperate ad- dress, always waited and stemmed the torrent ; while the other often plunged himself into it, and was as often taken out by the temper of him who stood weeping on the bank for his safety, whom he could not dissuade from leaping into it. Thus these two men lived for some years last past, shun- ning each other, but still preserving the most passionate con- cern for their mutual welfare. But when they met, they were as unreserved as boys ; and talked of the greatest affairs, upon which they saw where they differed, without pressing (what they knew impossible) to convert each other." If Steele had the honour of the invention of those periodical papers which first enlightened the national genius by their popular instruction, he is himself a remarkable example of the moral and the literary character perpetually contending in the man of volition. LITERARY DISAPPOINTMENTS DISORDERING THE INTELLECT, LKLANU AND COLLINS. THIS awful calamity may be traced in the fate of LELAKD and COLLINS : the one exhausted the finer faculties of his mind in the grandest views, and sunk under gigantic tasks ; the other enthusiast sacrificed his reason and his happiness to his imagination. LELAND, the father of our antiquaries, was an accomplished scholar, and his ample mind had embraced the languages of antiquity, those of his own age, and the ancient ones of his own country : thus he held all human learning by its three vast chains. He travelled abroad ; and he cultivated poetry ith the ardour he could even feel for the acquisition of words. On his return home, among other royal favours, he was appointed by Henry VIII. the king's antiquary, a title honourably created for Leland ; for with him it became ex- ict. By this office he was empowered to search after Disappointments Disordering the Intellect. 173 English antiquities ; to review the libraries of all the reli- gious institutions, and to bring the records of antiquity " out of deadly darkness into lively light." This extensive power fed a passion already formed by the study of our old rude historians ; his elegant taste perceived that they wanted those graces which he could lend them. Six years were occupied, by uninterrupted travel and study, to survey our national antiquities ; to note down everything observable for the history of the country and the honour of the nation. What a magnificent view has he sketched of this learned journey! In search of knowledge, Leland wan- dered on the sea-coasts and in the midland ; surveyed towns and cities, and rivers, castles, cathedrals, and monasteries ; tumuli, coins, and inscriptions ; collected authors ; transcribed MSS. If antiquarianism pored, genius too meditated in this sublime industry. Another six years were devoted to shape and to polish the immense collections he had amassed. All this untired labour and continued study were rewarded by Henry VIII. It is delightful, from its rarity, to record the gratitude of a pa- tron : Henry was worthy of Leland ; and the genius of the author was magnificent as that of the monarch who had created it. Nor was the gratitude of Leland silent : he seems to have been in the habit of perpetuating his spontaneous emotions in elegant Latin verse. Our author has fancifully expressed his gratitude to the king : "Sooner," he says, "shall the seas float without their si- lent inhabitants ; the thorny hedges cease to hide the birds ; the oak to spread its boughs ; and Flora to paint the meadows with flowers ; Quam Rex dive, tuum labatur pectore nostro Nomen, quod studiis portus et aura meis. Than thou, great King, my bosom cease to hail, Who o'er my studies breath' st a favouring gale. Leland was, indeed, alive to the kindness of his royal patron ; and among his numerous literary projects, was one of writing a history of all the palaces of Henry, in imitation of Procopius, who described those of the Emperor Justinian. He had already delighted the royal ear in a beautiful effusion of fancy and antiquarianism, in his Cygnea Cantio, the Song of the Swans. The swan of Leland, melodiously floating 174 Calamities of Authors. down the Thames, from Oxford to Greenwich, chants, as she passes along, the ancient names and honours of the towns, the castles, and the villages. Leland presented his "Strena, or a New Year's Gift," to the king. It consists of an account of his studies ; and sketches, with a fervid and vast imagination, his magnificent labour, which he had already inscribed with the title De Antiquitate Britannica, and which was to be divided into as many books as there were shires. All parts of this address of the King's Antiquary to the king bear the stamp of his imagination and his taste. He opens his intention of im- proving, by the classical graces of composition, the rude labours of our ancestors ; for, " Except Truth be delicately clothed in purpure, her written very tees can scant find a reader." Our old writers, he tells his sovereign, had, indeed, " From time to time preserved the acts of your prede- cessors, and the fortunes of your realm, with great diligence, and no less faith ; would to God with like eloquence !" An exclamation of fine taste, when taste was yet a stranger in the country. And when he alludes to the knowledge of British affairs scattered among the Eoman, as well as our own writers, his fervid fancy breaks forth with an image at once simple and sublime : " I trust," says Leland, " so to open the window, that the light shall be seen so long, that is to say, by the space of a whole thousand years stopped up, and the old glory of your Britain to re-flourish through the world."* And he pathetically concludes " Should I live to perform those things that are already begun, I trust that your realm shall so well be known, once painted with its native colours, that it shall give place to the glory of no other region." The grandeur of this design was a constituent part of the genius of Leland, but not less, too, was that presaging melan- choly which even here betrays itself, and even more frequently in his verses. Everything about Leland was marked by his Leland, in his magnificent plan, included several curious departments. Jealous of the literary glory of the Italians, whom he compares to the Greeks for accounting all nations barbarous and unlettered, he had composed four books "De Viris Illustribus," on English Authors, to force them to acknowledge the illustrious genius, and the great men of Britain. Three De Nobilitate Britannica," were to be " as an ornament and a right comely garland. Disappointments Disordering the Intellect. 175 own greatness ; his country and his countrymen were ever present ; and, by the excitement of his feelings, even his humbler pursuits were elevated into patriotism. Henry died the year after he received the " New Year's Gift." From that moment, in losing the greatest patron for the greatest work, Leland appears to have felt the staff which he had used to turn at pleasure for his stay, break in his hands. He had new patrons to court, while engaged in labours for which a single life had been too short. The melancholy that cherishes genius may also destroy it. Leland, brooding over his voluminous labours, seemed to love and to dread, them ; sometimes to pursue them with rapture, and sometimes to shrink from them with despair. His generous temper had once shot forwards to posterity ; but he now calms his strug- gling hopes and doubts, and confines his literary ambition to his own country and his own age. POSTEK1TATIS AMOK DUBITS. Posteritatis amor mihi perblanditur, et nltro Prcmittit libris secuk multa meis. At non tarn facile est oculato imponere, nosco Quam non sim tali Jignus honore frui. Graecia magniloquos vates desiderat ipsa, Roma suos etiain disperiisse dolet. Exemplis quum sim claris edoctus ab istis, Qui sperem Masas yivere posse meas ? Certe ml sat erit prsesenti scribere sseclo, Auribos et patrise complacuisse meae. IMITATED. Posterity, thy soothing love I feel, That o'er my yolnmes many an age may steal : Bat hard it is the well-clear' d eye to cheat With honours undeserved, too fond deceit ! Greece, greatly eloquent, and full of fame, Sighs for the want of many a perish'd name ; And Borne o'er her illustrious children mourns, Their fame departing with their mouldering urns. How can I hope, by such examples shown, More than a transient day, a passing son ? Enough for me to win the present age, And please a brother with a brother's page. By other verses, addressed to Cranmer, it would appear that Leland was experiencing anxieties to which he had not been accustomed, and one may suspect, by the opening image of his " Supellex," that his pension was irregular, and that he began, as authors do in these hard cases, to value " the fur- niture" of his mind above that of his house. ] 76 Calamities of Authors. AJ> THOMAM CRANMKKUM, CANT. ARCHIEPISOOP. Est congests mihi domi Supellex Iniiens, aurea, nobilis, venusta, Qua totus studeo Britanniarum Vero reddere gloriam nitori. Sed Fortuna meis noverca cceptis Jam felicibus invidet maligna. Quare, ne pereant brevi vel bora Multarum mibi noctium labores Omnes, et patriae simul decora Ornamenta cadant, &c. &c. The furnitures that fill my house, The vast and beautiful disclose, All noble, and the store is gold ; Our ancient glory here unroll'd. But fortune checks my daring claim, A step-mother severe to fame. A smile malignantly she throws Just at the story's prosperous close. And thus must the unfinish'd tale, And all my many vigils fail, And must my country's honour fall ; In one brief hour must perish all ? But, conscious of the greatness of his labours, he would obtain the favour of the Archbishop, by promising a share of his own fame pretium sequetur amplum Sic nomen tibi litters elegantes Recte perpetuum dabunt, suosque Partim vel titulos tibi receptos Concedet memori Britannus ore : Sic te posteritas amabit omnis, Et farna super sethera innotesces. IMITATED. But take the ample glorious meed, To letter'd elegance decreed, When Britain's mindful voice shall bend, And with her own thy honours blend, As she from thy kind hands receives Her titles drawn on Glory's leaves, And back reflects them on thy name, Till time shall love thy mounting fame. Thus was Leland, like the melancholic, withdrawn entirely into the world of his own ideas ; his imagination delighting in reveries, while his industry was exhausting itself in labour. His manners were not free from haughtiness, his meagre Disappointments Disordering the Intellect. 177 and expressive physiognomy indicates the melancholy and the majesty of his mind ; it was not old age, but the premature wrinkles of those nightly labours he has himself recorded. All these characteristics are so strongly marked in the bust of Leland, that Lavater had triumphed had he studied it.* Labour had been long felt as voluptuousness by Leland ; and this is among the Calamities of Literature, and it is so with all those studies which deeply busy the intellect and the fancy. There is a poignant delight in study, often subversive of human happiness. Men of genius, from their ideal state, drop into the cold formalities of society, to encounter its evils, its disappointments, its neglect, and perhaps its persecu- tions. When such minds discover the world will only become a friend on its own terms, then the cup of their wrath over- flows ; the learned grow morose, and the witty sarcastic ; but more indelible emotions in a highly-excited imagination often produce those delusions, which Darwin calls hallucinations, and which sometimes terminate in mania. The haughtiness, the melancholy, and the aspiring genius of Leland, were tending to a disordered intellect. Incipient insanity is a mote floating in the understanding, escaping all observation, when the mind is capable of observing itself, but seems a constituent part of the mind itself when that is completely covered with its cloud. Leland did not reach even the maturity of life, the period at which his stupendous works were to be executed. He was seized by frenzy. The causes of his insanity were never known. The Papists declared he went mad because he had embraced the new religion; his malicious rival Polydore Vergil, because he had promised what he could not perform ; duller prosaists because his poetical turn had made him conceited. The grief and melancholy of a fine genius, and perhaps an irregular pension, his enemies have not noticed. The ruins of Leland's mind were viewed in his library ; volumes on volumes stupendously heaped together, and masses of notes scattered here and there ; all the vestiges of his genius, and its distraction. His collections were seized on by honest and dishonest hands ; many were treasured, but some were stolen. Hearne zealously arranged a series of volumes * What reason is there to suppose with Granger that his bust, so admirably engraven by Grignion, is supposititious f Probably struck by the premature old age of a man who died in his fortieth year, he condemned it by its appearance ; but not with the eye of the physiognomist. 178 Calamities of Authors. from the fragments ; but the "Britannia" of Camden, the " London " of Stowe, and the " Chronicles " of Holinshed, are only a few of those public works whose waters silently welled from the spring of Leland's genius ; and that nothing might be wanting to preserve some relic of that fine imagi- nation which was always working in his poetic soul, his own description of his learned journey over the kingdom was a spark, which, falling into the inflammable mind of a poet, produced the singular and patriotic poem of the "Polyolbion" of Drayton. Thus the genius of Leland has come to us diffused through a variety of other men's; and what he intended to produce it has required many to perform. A singular inscription, in which Leland speaks of himself, in the style he was accustomed to use, and which Weever tells us was affixed to his monument, as he had heard by tradition, was probably a relic snatched from his general wreck for it could not with propriety have been composed after his death.* Quantum Rhenano debet Germania docto Tantum debebit terra Britanna mihi. Hie suse gentis ritus et nomina prisca JEstivo fecit lucidiora die. Ipse antiquarum rerum quoque magnus amator Ornabo patriae lamina clara mese. Quae cum prodierint niveis inscripta tabellis, Turn testes nostrse sedulitatis erunt. IHITATED. What Germany to learn'd Rhenanus owes, That for my Britain shall my toil unclose ; His volumes mark their customs, names, and climes, And brighten, with a summer's light, old times. I also, touch'd by the same love, will write, To ornament my country's splendid light, Which shall, inscribed on snowy tablets, be Full many a witness of my industry. Another example of literary disappointment disordering the intellect may be contemplated in the fate of the poet COLLINS. Several interesting incidents may be supplied to Johnson's narrative of the short and obscure life of this poet, who, more than any other of our martyrs to the lyre, has thrown over all his images and his thoughts a tenderness of mind, and breathed a freshness over the pictures of poetry, which the mighty Ancient Funerall Monuments, p. 692. Disappointments Disordering the Intellect. 179 Milton has not exceeded, and the laborious Gray has not attained. But he immolated happiness, and at length reason, to his imagination ! The incidents most interesting in the life of Collins would he those events which elude the ordinary biographer ; that invisible train of emotions which were gradually passing in his mind; those passions which first moulded his genius, and which afterwards broke it ! But who could record the vacillations of a poetic temper, its early hope and its late despair, its wild gaiety and its settled frenzy, but the poet himself? Yet Collins has left behind no memorial of the wanderings of his alienated mind but the errors of his life ! At college he published his " Persian Eclogues," as they were first called, to which, when he thought they were not distinctly Persian, he gave the more general title of " Oriental." The publication was attended with no success ; but the first misfortune a poet meets will rarely deter him from incurring more. He suddenly quitted the university, and has been censured for not having consulted his friends when he rashly resolved to live by the pen. But he had no friends ! His father had died in embarrassed circumstances ; and Collins was residing at the university on the stipend allowed him by his uncle, Colonel Martin, who was abroad. He was indignant at a repulse he met with at college ; and alive to the name of author and poet, the ardent and simple youth imagined that a nobler field of action opened on him in the metropolis than was presented by the flat uniformity of a collegiate life. To whatever spot the youthful poet flies, that spot seems Par- nassus, as applause seems patronage. He hurried to town, and presented himself before the cousin who paid his small allowance from his uncle in a fashionable dress with a feather in his hat. The graver gentleman did not succeed in his attempt at sending him back, with all the terror of his infor- mation, that Collins had not a single guinea of his own, and was dressed in a coat he could never pay for. The young bard turned from his obdurate cousin as " a dull fellow ;" a usual phrase with him to describe those who did not think as he would have them. That moment was now come, so much desired, and scarcely yet dreaded, which was to produce those effusions of fancy and learning, for which Collins had prepared himself by pre- vious studies. About this time Johnson* has given a finer * In a letter to Joseph Warton. N2 180 Calamities of Authors. picture of the intellectual powers and the literary attainments of Collins than in the life he afterwards composed. " Collins was acquainted not only with the learned tongues, but with the Italian, French, and Spanish languages ; full of hopes and full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy, and strong in retention." Such was the language of Johnson, when, warmed by his own imagination, he could write like Longinus ; at that after-period, when assuming the austerity of critical discussion for the lives of poets, even in the cold- ness of his recollections, he describes Collins as " a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties." A chasm of several years remains to be filled. He was projecting works of labour, and creating productions of taste ; and he has been reproached for irresolution, and even for indolence. Let us catch his feelings from the facts as they rise together, and learn whether Collins must endure censure or excite sympathy. When he was living loosely about town, he occasionally wrote many short poems in the house of a friend, who wit- nesses that he burned as rapidly as he composed. His odes were purchased by Millar, yet though but a slight pamphlet, all the interest of that great bookseller could never introduce them into notice. Not an idle compliment is recorded to have been sent to the poet. When we now consider that among these odes was one the most popular in the language, with some of the most exquisitely poetical, it reminds us of the difficulty a young writer without connexions experiences in obtaining the public ear ; and of the languor of poetical con- noisseurs who sometimes suffer poems, that have not yet grown up to authority, to be buried on the shelf. What the outraged feelings of the poet were, appeared when some time afterwards he became rich enough to express them. Having obtained some fortune by the death of his uncle, he made good to the publisher the deficiency of the unsold odes, and, in his haughty resentment at the public taste, consigned the impres- sion to the flames ! Who shall now paint the feverish and delicate feelings of a young poet such as Collins, who had twice addressed the public, and twice had been repulsed ? He whose poetic temper Johnson has finely painted, at the happy moment when he felt its influence, as " delighting to rove through the meadows of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, and repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens !" Disappointments Disordering the Intellect. 181 It cannot be doubted, and the recorded facts will demon- strate it, that the poetical disappointments of Collins were secretly preying on his spirit, and repressing his firmest exer- tions. With a mind richly stored with literature, and a soul alive to the impulses of nature and study, he projected a " History of the Eevival of Learning," and a translation of "Aristotle's Poetics," to be illustrated by a large com- mentary. But " his great fault," says Johnson, " was his irresolu- tion ; or the frequent calls of immediate necessity broke his schemes, and suffered him to pursue no settled purpose." Col- lins was, however, not idle, though without application ; for, when reproached with idleness by a friend, he showed in- stantly several sheets of his version of Aristotle, and many embryos of some lives he had engaged to compose for the " Biographia Britannica ;" he never brought either to perfec- tion ! What then was this irresolution but the vacillations of a mind broken and confounded ? He had exercised too constantly the highest faculties of fiction, and he had preci- pitated himself into the dreariness of real life. None but a poet can conceive, for none but a poet can experience, the secret wounds inflicted on a mind of romantic fancy and tenderness of emotion, which has staked its happiness on its imagination ; for such neglect is felt as ordinary men would feel the sensation of being let down into a sepulchre, and buried alive. The mind of Tasso, a brother in fancy to Collins, became disordered by the opposition of the critics, but perpetual neglect injures it not less. The HOPE of the ancients was represented holding some flowers, the promise of the spring, or some spikes of corn, indicative of approaching harvest but the HOPE of Collins had scattered its seed, and they remained buried in the earth. The oblivion which covered our poet's works appeared to him eternal, as those works now seem to us immortal. He had created HOPE with deep and enthusiastic feeling ! With eyes so fair Whispering promised pleasure, And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail ; And Hope, enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair ! The few years Collins passed in the metropolis he was subsisting with or upon his friends ; and, being a pleasing companion, he obtained many literary acquaintances. It was at this period that Johnson knew him, and thus describes 182 Calamities of Authors. him : " His appearance was decent, and his knowledge con- siderable ; his views extensive, and his conversation elegant." He was a constant frequenter at the literary resorts of the Bedford and Slaughter's ; and Armstrong, Hill, Grarrick, and Foote, frequently consulted him on their pieces before they appeared in public. From his intimacy with Grarrick he ob- tained a free admission into the green-room ; and probably it was at this period, among his other projects, that he planned several tragedies, which, however, as Johnson observes, " he only planned." There is a feature in Collins's character which requires attention. He is represented as a man of cheerful dispositions ; and it has been my study to detect only a melancholy, which was preying on the very source of life itself. Collins was, indeed, born to charm his friends ; for fancy and elegance were never absent from his susceptible mind, rich in its stores, and versatile in its emotions. He himself indicates his own character, in his address to " Home :" Go ! nor, regardless while these numbers boast My short-lived bliss, forget my social name. Johnson has told us of his cheerful dispositions ; and one who knew him well observes, that "in the green-room he made diverting observations on the vanity and false conse- quence of that class of people, and his manner of relating them to his particular friends was extremely entertaining :" but the same friend acknowledges that " some letters which he received from Collins, though chiefly on business, have in them some flights which strongly mark his character, and for which reason I have preserved them." We cannot decide of the temper of a man viewed only in a circle of friends, who listen to the ebullitions of wit or fancy ; the social warmth for a moment throws into forgetfulness his secret sorrow. The most melancholy man is frequently the most delightful companion, and peculiarly endowed with the talent of sati- rical playfulness and vivacity of humour.* But what was * Burton, the author of " The Anatomy of Melancholy," offers a striking istance. Bishop Kennett, in his curious "Register and Chronicle," has 'reserved the following particulars of this author. "In an interval of vapours he would be extremely pleasant, and raise laughter in any com- 'ny. Yet I have heard that nothing at last could make him laugh but ;omg down to the Bridge-foot at Oxford, and hearing the bargemen scold torm and swear at one another ; at which he would set his hands to des, and laugh most profusely ; yet in his chamber so mute and mopish, Disappointments Disordering the Intellect. 183 the true life of Collins, separated from its adventitious cir- cumstances ? It was a life of want, never chequered by hope, that was striving to elude its own observation by hur- rying into some temporary dissipation. But the hours of melancholy and solitude were sure to return ; these were marked on the dial of his life, and, when they struck, the gay and lively Collins, like one of his own enchanted beings, as surely relapsed into his natural shape. To the perpetual re- collection of his poetical disappointments are we to attribute this unsettled state of his mind, and the perplexity of his studies. To these he was perpetually reverting, which he showed when after a lapse of several years, he could not rest till he had burned his ill-fated odes. And what was the result of his literary life ? He returned to his native city of Chichester in a state almost of nakedness, destitute, diseased, and wild in despair, to hide himself in the arms of a sister. The cloud had long been gathering over his convulsed in- tellect ; and the fortune he acquired on the death of his uncle served only for personal indulgences, which rather acce- lerated his disorder. There were, at times, some awful pauses in the alienation of his mind but he had withdrawn it from study. It was in one of these intervals that Thomas War- ton told Johnson that when he met Collins travelling, he took up a book the poet carried with him, from curiosity, to see what companion a man of letters had chosen it was an English Testament. " I have but one book," said Collins, " buc that is the best." This circumstance is recorded on his tomb. He join'd pure faith to strong poetic powers, And in reviving reason's lucid hours, Sought on one book his troubled mind to rest, And rightly deem'd the book of God the best. At Chichester, tradition has preserved some striking and affecting occurrences of his last days ; he would haunt the aisles and cloisters of the cathedral, roving days and nights together, loving their Dim religious light. that he was suspected to be/eio de se." With what a fine strain of poetic feeling has a modern bard touched this subject ! " As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow, While the tide runs in darkness and coldness below, So the cheek may be tinged with a warm sunny smile, Though the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while." MOORE'S "Irish Melodies." 184 Calamities of Authors, And, when the choristers chanted their anthem, the listening and bewildered poet, carried out of himself by the solemn strains, and his own too susceptible imagination, moaned and shrieked, and awoke a sadness and a terror most affecting amid religious emotions ; their friend, their kinsman, and their poet, was before them, an awful image of human misery and ruined genius ! This interesting circumstance is thus alluded to on his monument : Ye walls that echoed to his frantic moan, Guard the due record of this grateful stone : Strangers to him, enamour'd of his lays, This fond memorial of his talents raise. A voluntary subscription raised the monument to Collins. The genius of Flaxman has thrown out on the eloquent marble all that fancy would consecrate ; the tomb is itself a poem. There Collins is represented as sitting in a reclining pos- ture, during a lucid interval of his afflicting malady, with a calm and benign aspect, as if seeking refuge from his misfor- tunes in the consolations of the Gospel, which lie open before him, whilst his lyre, and " The Ode on the Passions," as a scroll, are thrown together neglected on the ground. Upon the pediment on the tablet are placed in relief two female figures of LOVE and PITY, entwined each in the arms of the other ; the proper emblems of the genius of his poetry. Langhorne, who gave an edition of Collins's poems with all the fervour of a votary, made an observation not perfectly correct: "It is observable," he says, "that none of his poems bear the marks of an amorous disposition ; and that he is one of those few poets who have sailed to Delphi without touching at Cjthera. In the ' Ode to the Pas- sions,' Love has been omitted." There, indeed, Love does not form an important personage ; yet, at the close, Love makes his transient appearance with Joy and Mirth " a gaj fantastic round." And, amidst his frolic play, As if he would the charming air repay, Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings. It is certain, however, that Collins considered the amatory passion as unfriendly to poetic originality ; for he alludes to the whole race of the Provengal poets, by accusing them of only employing LOTC, only love, her forceless numbers mean. Disappointments Disordering the Intellect. 185 Collins affected to slight the urchin ; for he himself had been once in love, and his wit has preserved the history of his passion ; he was attached to a young lady who was born the day before him, and who seems not to have been very poetically tempered, for she did not return his ardour. On that occasion he said " that he came into the world a day after the fair" Langhorne composed two sonnets, which seem only pre- served in the " Monthly Review," in which he was a writer, and where he probably inserted them ; they bear a particular re- ference to the misfortunes of our poet. In one he represents Wisdom, in the form of Addison, reclining in " the old and honoured shade of Magdalen," and thus addressing The poor shade of Collins, wandering by ; The tear stood trembling in his gentle eye, With modest grief reluctant, while he said " Sweet bard, belov'd by every muse in vain ! With pow'rs, whose fineness wrought their own decay; Ah ! wherefore, thoughtless, didst thou yield the rein To fancy's will, and chase the meteor ray ? Ah ! why forget thy own Hyblsean strain, Peace rules the breast, where Reason rules the day." The last line is most happily applied ; it is a verse by the unfortunate bard himself, which heightens the contrast with his forlorn state ! Langhorne has feelingly painted the fatal indulgences of such a character as Collins. Of fancy's too prevailing power beware ! Oft has she bright on life's fair morning shone ; Oft seated Hope on Reason's sovereign throne, Then closed the scene, in darkness and despair. Of all her gifts, of all her powers possest, Let not her flattery win thy youthful ear, Nor vow long faith to such a various guest, False at the last, tho' now perchance full dear; The casual lover with her charms is blest, But woe to them her magic bauds that wear ! The criticism of Johnson on the poetry of Collins, that " as men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure," might almost have been furnished by the lum- bering pen of old Dennis. But Collins from the poetical never extorts praise, for it is given spontaneously; he is much more loved than esteemed, for he does not give little pleasure. Johnson, too, describes his " lines as of slow 186 Calamities of Authors. motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants." Even this verbal criticism, though it appeals to the eye, and not to the ear, is false criticism, since Collins is certainly the most musical of poets. How could that lyrist be harsh in his diction, who almost draws tears from our eyes, while his melodious lines and picturing epithets are remembered by his readers ? He is devoured with as much enthusiasm by one party as he is imperfectly relished by the other. Johnson has given two characters of this poet ; the one composed at a period when that great critic was still suscep- tible of the seduction of the imagination ; but even in this portrait, though some features of the poet are impressively drawn, the likeness is incomplete, for there is not even a slight indication of the chief feature in Collins's genius, his tenderness and delicacy of emotion, and his fresh and pic- turesque creative strokes. Nature had denied to Johnson's robust intellect the perception of these poetic qualities. He was but a stately ox in the fields of Parnassus, not the animal of nature. Many years afterwards, during his poetical bio- graphy, that long Lent of criticism, in which he mortified our poetical feeling by accommodating his to the populace of critics so faint were former recollections, and so imperfect were even those feelings which once he seemed to have pos- sessed that he could then do nothing but write on Collins with much less warmth than he has written on Blackmore. Johnson is, indeed, the first of critics, when his powerful logic investigates objects submitted to reason ; but great sense is not always combined with delicacy of taste ; and there is in poetry a province which Aristotle himself may never have entered. THE REWARDS OF ORIENTAL STUDENTS. AT a time when oriental studies were in their infancy in this country, SIMON OCKLEY, animated by the illustrious example of Pococke and the laborious diligence of Prideaux, devoted his life and his fortune to these novel researches, which necessarily involved both. With that enthusiasm which the ancient votary experienced, and with that patient suffer- ing the modern martyr has endured, he pursued, till he accom- plished, the useful object of his labours. He, perhaps, was the first who exhibited to us other heroes than those of Koine The Rewards of Oriental Students. 187 and Greece ; sages as contemplative, and a people more mag- nificent even than the iron masters of the world. Among other oriental productions, his most considerable is " The History of the Saracens." The first volume appeared in 1708, and the second ten years afterwards. In the preface to the last volume, the oriental student pathetically counts over his sorows, and triumphs over his disappointments ; the most remarkable part is the date of the place from whence this preface was written he triumphantly closes his labours in the confinement of Cambridge Castle for debt ! Ockley, lamenting his small proficiency in the Persian studies, resolves to attain to them " How often have I endeavoured to perfect myself in that language, but my malignant and envious stars still frustrated my attempts ; but they shall sooner alter their courses than extinguish my resolution of quenching that thirst which the little I have had of it hath already excited." And he states the deficiencies of his history with the most natural modesty " Had I not been forced to snatch everything that I have, as it were, out of the fire, our Saracen history should have been ushered into the world after a different manner." He is fearful that something would be ascribed to his indolence or negligence, that " ought more justly to be attributed to the influence of inexorable necessity, could I have been master of my own time and circumstances." Shame on those pretended patrons who, appointing " a professor of the oriental languages," counteract the purpose of the professorship by their utter neglect of the professor, whose stipend cannot keep him on the spot where only he ought to dwell. And Ockley complains also of that hypo- critical curiosity which pretends to take an interest in things it cares little about ; perpetually inquiring, as soon as a work is announced, when it is to come out. But these Pharisees of literature, who can only build sepulchres to ancient prophets, never believe in a living one. Some of these Ockley met with on the publication of his first volume: they run it down as the strangest story they had ever heard ; they had never met with such folks as the Arabians ! " A reverend dignitary asked me if, when I wrote that book, I had not lately been reading the history of Oliver Cromwell?" Such was the plaudit the oriental student received, and returned to grow pale over his MSS. But when Petis de la Croix, observes 188 Calamities of Authors. Ockley, was pursuing the same track of study, in the patron- age of Louis XIV., he found books, leisure, and encourage- ment ; and when the great Colbert desired him to compose the life of Genkis Chan, he considered a period of ten years not too much to be allowed the author. And then Ockley proceeds " But my unhappy condition hath always been widely dif- ferent from anything that could admit of such an exactness. Fortune seems only to have given me a taste of it out of spite, on purpose that I might regret the loss of it." He describes his two journeys to Oxford, for his first volume ; but in his second, matters fared worse with him " Either my domestic affairs were grown much worse, or I less able to bear them ; or what is mere probable, both." Ingenuous confession ! fruits of a life devoted in its struggles to important literature ! and we murmur when genius is irri- table, and erudition is morose! But let us proceed with Ockley : " I was forced to take the advantage of the slumber of my cares, that never slept when I was awake ; and if they did not incessantly interrupt my studies, were sure to succeed them with no less constancy than night doth the day." This is the cry of agony. He who reads this without sympathy, ought to reject these volumes as the idlest he ever read, and honour me with his contempt. The close of Ockley's preface shows a love-like tenderness for his studies ; although he must quit life without bringing them to perfec- tion, he opens his soul to posterity and tells them, in the language of prophecy, that if they will bestow encourage- ment on our youth, the misfortunes he has described will be remedied. He, indeed, was aware that these students " Will hardly come in upon the prospect of finding leisure, in a prison, to transcribe those papers for the press which they have collected with indefatigable labour, and oftentimes at the expense of their rest, and all the other conveniences of life, for the service of the public." Yet the exulting martyr of literature, at the moment he is fast bound to the stake, does not consider a prison so dreadful a reward for literary labours " I can assure them, from my own experience, that I have enjoyed more true liberty, more happy leisure, and more solid repose in six months here, than in thrice the same number of years before. Evil is the condition of that historian who The Rewards of Oriental Students. 189 undertakes to write the lives of others hefore he knows how to live himself. Yet I have no just reason to be angry with the world ; I never stood in need of its assistance in my life, hut I found it always very liberal of its advice ; for which I am so much the more beholden to it, by how much the more I did always in my judgment give the possession of wisdom the preference to that of riches."* Poor Ockley, always a student, and rarely what is called a man of the world, once encountered a literary calamity which frequently occurs when an author finds himself among the vapid triflers and the polished cynics of the fashionable circle. Something like a patron he found in Harley, the Earl of Oxford, and once had the unlucky honour of dining at the table of my Lord Treasurer. It is probable that Ockley, from retired habits and severe studies, was not at all accom- plished in thesuaviter in modo, of which greater geniuses than Ockley have so surlily despaired. How he behaved I cannot narrate : probably he delivered himself with as great sim- plicity at the table of the Lord Treasurer as on the wrong * Dr. Edmund Castell offers a remarkable instance to illustrate our pre- sent investigation. He more than devoted his life to his " Lexicon Hepta- glotton." It is not possible, if there are tears that are to be bestowed on the afflictions of learned men, to read his pathetic address to Charles II., and forbear. He laments the seventeen years of incredible pains, during which he thought himself idle when he had not devoted sixteen or eighteen hours a day to this labour ; that he had expended all his inheritance (it is said more than twelve thousand pounds) ; that it had broken his constitu- tion, and left him blind as well as poor. When this invaluable Polyglott was published, the copies remained unsold in his hands ; for the learned Castell had anticipated the curiosity and knowledge of the public by a full century. He had so completely devoted himself to oriental studies, that they had a very remarkable consequence, for he had totally forgotten his own language, and could scarcely spell a single word. This appears in some of his English Letters, preserved by Mr. Nichols in his valuable "Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century," vol. iv. Five hundred of these Lexicons, unsold at the time of his death, were placed by Dr. Castell's niece in a room so little regarded, that scarcely one complete copy escaped the rats, and "the whole load of learned rags sold only for seven pounds." The work at this moment would find purchasers, I believe, at forty or fifty pounds. The learned SALE, who first gave the world a genuine version of the Koran, and who had so zealously laboured in form- ing that " Universal History" which was the pride of our country, pursued his studies through a life of want and this great orientalist (I grieve to degrade the memoirs of a man of learning by such mortifications), when he quitted his studies too often wanted a change of linen, and often wandered in the streets in search of some compassionate friend who would supply him with the meal of the day ! 190 Calamities of Authors. side of Cambridge Castle gate. The embarrassment this sim- plicity drew him into is very fully stated in the following copious apology he addressed to the Earl of Oxford, which I have transcribed from the original ; perhaps it may be a use- ful memorial to some men of letters as little polished as the learned Ockley : " Cambridge, July 15, 1714. "MY LORD, I was so struck with horror and amazement two days ago, that I cannot possibly express it. A friend of mine showed me a letter, part of the contents of which were, ' That Professor Ockley had given such extreme offence by some uncourtly answers to some gentlemen at my Lord Treasurer's table that it would be in vain to make any further application to him.' " My Lord, it is impossible for me to recollect, at this dis- tance of time. All that I can say is this : that, as on the one side for a man to come to his patron's table with a design to affront either him or his friends supposes him a perfect natural, a mere idiot ; so on the other side it would be extreme severe, if a person whose education was far distant from the politeness of a court, should, upon the account of an unguarded expression, or some little inadvertency in his behaviour, suffer a capital sentence. "Which is my case, if I have forfeited your Lordship's favour ; which God forbid ! That man is involved in double ruin that is not only forsaken by his friend, but, which is the unavoidable consequence, exposed to the malice and contempt not only of enemies, but, what is still more grievous, of all sorts of fools. " It is not the talent of every well-meaning man to converse with his superiors with due decorum; for, either when he reflects upon the vast distance of their station above his own, he is struck dumb and almost insensible ; or else their conde- scension and courtly behaviour encourages him to be too fami- liar. To steer exactly between these two extremes requires not only a good intention, but presence of mind, and long custom. " Another article in my friend's letter was, ' That some- body had informed your 'Lordship that I was a very sot.' When first I had the honour to be known to your Lordship, I could easily foresee that there would be persons enough that would envy me upon that account, and do what in them lay The Rewards of Oriental Students. 191 to traduce me. Let Hainan enjoy never so much himself, it is all nothing, it does him no good, till poor Mordecai is hanged out of his way. " But I never feared the being censured upon that account. Here in the University I converse with none but persons of the most distinguished reputations both for learning and virtue, and receive from them daily as great marks of respect and esteem, which 1 should not have if that imputation were true. It is most certain that I do indulge myself the freedom of drinking a cheerful cup, at proper seasons, among my friends ; but no otherwise than is done by thousands of honest men, who never forfeit their character by it. And whoever doth no more than so, deserves no more to be called a sot, than a man that eats a hearty meal would be willing to be called a glutton. " As for those detractors, if I have but the least assurance of your Lordship's favour, I can very easily despise them. They are Nati consumere fruges. They need not trouble themselves about what other people do ; for whatever they eat and drink, it is only robbing the poor. Kesigning myself entirely to your Lordship's goodness and pardon, I conclude this necessary apology with like provocation. That / would be content he should take my character from any person that had a good one of his own. 11 1 am, with all submission, My Lord, " Your Lordship's most obedient, &c., " SIMON OCKLEY." To the honour of the Earl of Oxford, this unlucky piece of awkwardness at table, in giving " uncourtly answers," did not interrupt his regard for the poor oriental student ; for several years afterwards the correspondence of Ockley was still accept- able to the Earl. If the letters of the widows and children of many of our eminent authors were collected, they would demonstrate the great fact, that the man who is a husband or a father ought not to be an author. They might weary with a monotonous cry, and usually would be dated from the gaol or the garret. I have seen an original letter from the widow of Ockley to the Earl of Oxford, in which she lays before him the deplorable situation of her affairs; the debts of the Professor being beyond what his effects amounted to, the severity of the credi- 192 Calamities of Authors. tors would not even suffer the executor to make the best of his effects ; the widow remained destitute of necessaries, in- capable of assisting her children.* Thus students have devoted their days to studies worthy of a student. They are public benefactors, yet find no friend in the public, who cannot yet appreciate their value Ministers of State know it, though they have rarely protected them. Ockley, by letters I have seen, was frequently employed by Bolingbroke to translate letters from the Sovereign of Mo- rocco to our court ; yet all the debts for which he was impri- soned in Cambridge Castle did not exceed two hundred pounds. The public interest is concerned in stimulating such enthu- siasts; they are men who cannot be salaried, who cannot be created by letters-patent ; for they are men who infuse their soul into their studies, and breathe their fondness for them in their last agonies. Yet such are doomed to feel their life pass away like a painful dream ! Those who know the value of LIGHTFOOT'S Hebraic studies, may be startled at the impediments which seem to have annihilated them. In the following effusion he confides his secret agitation to his friend Buxtorf : " A few years since I prepared a little commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, in the same style and manner as I had done that on Matthew. But it laid by me two years or more, nor can I now publish it, but at my own charges, and to my great damage, which I felt enough and too much in the edition of my book upon Mark. Some progress I have made in the gospel of St. Luke, but I can print nothing but at my own cost : thereupon I wholly give myself to reading, scarce thinking of writing more ; for booksellers and printers have dulled my edge, who will print no book, especially Latin, unless they have au assured and considerable gain." These writings and even the fragments have been justly * The following are extracts from Ockley's letters to the Earl of Oxford, which I copy from the originals : " Cambridge Castle, May 2, 1717. " I am here in the prison for debt, which must needs be an unavoidable consequence of the distractions in my family. I enjoy more repose, indeed, here, than I have tasted these many years, but the circumstance of a family obliges me to go out as soon as I can." "Cambridge, Sept. 7, 1717. "I have at last found leisure in my confinement to finish my Saracen history, which I might Lave hoped for in vain in my perplexed circum- itaaow." Danger of the Result of Literary Inquiries. 193 appreciated by posterity, and a recent edition of all Lightfoot's works in many volumes have received honours which their despairing author never contemplated. DANGER INCURRED BY GIVING THE RESULT OF LITERARY INQUIRIES. AN author occupies a critical situation, for, while he is pre- senting the world with the result of his profound studies and his honest inquiries, it may prove pernicious to himself. By it he may incur the risk of offending the higher powers, and witnessing his own days embittered. Liable, by his modera- tion or his discoveries, by his scruples or his assertions, by his adherence to truth, or by the curiosity of his speculations, to be persecuted by two opposite parties, even when the accusa- tions of the one necessarily nullify the other ; such an author will be fortunate to be permitted to retire out of the circle of the bad passions ; but he crushes in silence and voluntary ob- scurity all future efforts and thus the nation loses a valued author. This case is exemplified by the history of Dr. COWEL'S curious work " The Interpreter." The book itself is a trea- sure of our antiquities, illustrating our national manners. The author was devoted to his studies, and the merits of his work recommended him to the Archbishop of Canterbury ; in the Ecclesiastical Court he practised as a civilian, and became there eminent as a judge.* Cowel gave his work with all the modesty of true learning ; for who knows his deficiencies so well in the subject on which he has written as that author who knows most ? It is de- lightful to listen to the simplicity and force with whichan author in the reign of our first James opens himself without reserve. " My true end is the advancement of knowledge ; and * Cowers book, " The Interpreter," though professedly a mere explana- tion of law terms, was believed to contain allusions or interpretations of law entirely adapted to party feeling. Cowel was blamed by both parties, and his book declared to infringe the royal prerogative or the liberties of the subject. It was made one of the articles against Laud at his trial, that he had sanctioned a new edition of this work to countenance King Charles in his measures. Cowel had died long before this (October, 1611) ; he had retired again to collegiate life as soon as he got free of his political persecutions. ED. O 194 Calamities of Authors. therefore have I published this poor work, not only to impart the good thereof to those young ones that want it, but also to draw from the learned the supply of my defects. Whosoever will charge these my travels [labours] with many oversights, he shall need no solemn pains to prove them. And upon the view taken of this book sithence the impression, I dare assure them that shall observe most faults therein, that I, by glean- ing after him, will gather as many omitted by him, as he shall show committed by me. What a man saith well is not, how- ever, to be rejected because he hath some errors ; reprehend who will, in God's name, that is, with sweetness and without reproach. So shall he reap hearty thanks at my hands, and thus more soundly help in a few months, than I, by tossing and tumbling my books at home, could possibly have done in many years." This extract discovers Cowel's amiable character as an author. But he was not fated to receive " sweetness without reproach." Cowel encountered an unrelenting enemy in Sir Edward Coke, the famous Attorney-General of James I., the commen- tator of Littleton. As a man, his name ought to arouse our indignation, for his licentious tongue, his fierce brutality, and his cold and tasteless genius. He whose vileness could even ruffle the great spirit of Rawleigh, was the shameless perse- cutor of the learned Cowel. Coke was the oracle of the common law, and Cowel of the civil ; but Cowel practised at Westminster Hall as well as at Doctors' Commons. Coke turned away with hatred from an advocate who, with the skill of a great lawyer, exerted all the courage. The Attorney-General sought every occasion to degrade him, and, with puerile derision, attempted to fasten on Dr. Cowel the nickname of Dr. Cowheel. Coke, after having written in his " Reports " whatever he could against our author, with no effect, started a new project. Coke well knew his master's jealousy on the question of his prerogative ; and he touched the King on that nerve. The Attorney- General suggested to James that Cowel had discussed " too nicely the mysteries of his monarchy, in some points deroga- tory to the supreme power of his crown ; asserting that the royal prerogative was in some cases limited." So subtly the serpent whispered to the feminine ear of a monarch, whom this vanity of royalty startled with all the fears of a woman. This suggestion had nearly occasioned the ruin of Cowel it Danger of the Result of Literary Inquiries. 195 verged on treason ; and if the conspiracy of Coke now failed, it was through the mediation of the archbishop, who influenced the King ; but it succeeded in alienating the royal favour from Cowel. When Coke found he could not hang Cowel for treason, it was only a small disappointment, for he had hopes to secure his prey by involving him in felony. As physicians in despe- rate cases sometimes reverse their mode of treatment, so Coke now operated on an opposite principle. He procured a party in the Commons to declare that Cowel was a betrayer of the rights and liberties of the people ; that he had asserted the King was independent of Parliament, and that it was a favour to admit the consent of his subjects in giving of subsidies, &c. ; and, in a word, that he drew his arguments from the Roman Imperial Code, and would make the laws and customs of Rome and Constantinople those of London and York. Passages were wrested to Coke's design. The prefacer of Cowel' s book very happily expresses himself when he says, " When a suspected book is brought to the torture, it often confesseth all, and more than it knows." The Commons proceeded criminally against Cowel ; and it is said his life was required, had not the king interposed. The author was imprisoned, and the book was burnt. On this occasion was issued " a proclamation touching Dr. Cowel's book called ' The Interpreter.' " It may be classed among the most curious documents of our literary history. I do not hesitate to consider this proclamation as the compo- sition of James I.- I will preserve some passages from this proclamation, not merely for their majestic composition, which may still be admired, and the singularity of the ideas, which may still be applied but for the literary event to which it gave birth iu the appointment of a royal licenser for the press. Proclama- tions and burning of books are the strong efforts of a weak government, exciting rather than suppressing public atten- tion. " This later age and times of the world wherein we are fallen is so much given to verbal profession, as well of religion as of all commendable royal virtues, but wanting the actions and deeds agreeable to so specious a profession ; as it hath bred such an unsatiable curiosity in many men's spirits, and such an itching in the tongues and pens of most men, as nothing is left uusearched to the bottom both in talking and o 2 196 Calamities of Authors. writing. For from the very highest mysteries in the God- head and the most inscrutable counsels in the Trinity, to the very lowest pit of hell and the confused actions of the devils there, there is nothing now unsearched into by the curiosity of men's brains. Men, not being contented with the know- ledge of so much of the will of God as it hath pleased him to reveal, but they will needs sit with him in his most private closet, and become privy of his most inscrutable counsels. And, therefore, it is no wonder that men in these our days do not spare to wade in all the deepest mysteries that belong to the persons or state of kings and princes, that are gods upon earth ; since we see (as we have already said) that they spare not God himself. And this licence, which every talker or writer now assumeth to himself, is come to this abuse ; that many Phormios will give counsel to Hannibal, and many men that never went of the compass of cloysters or colleges, will freely wade, by their writings, in the deepest mysteries of monarchy and politick government. Whereupon it cannot otherwise fall out but that when men go out of their element and meddle with things above their capacity, them- selves shall not only go astray and stumble in darkness, but will mislead also divers others with themselves into many mis- takings and errors ; the proof whereof we have lately had by a book written by Dr. Cowel, called 'The Interpreter.'" The royal reviewer then in a summary way shows how Cowel had, " by meddling in matters beyond his reach, fallen into many things to mistake and deceive himself." The book is therefore " prohibited ; the buying, uttering, or reading it ;" and those " who have any copies are to deliver the same presently upon this publication to the Mayor of London," &c., and the proclamation concludes with instituting licensers of the press : " Because that there shall be better oversight of books of all sorts before they come to the press, we have resolved to make choice of commissioners, that shall look more narrowly into the nature of all those things that shall be put to the press, and from whom a more strict account shall be yielded unto us, than hath been used heretofore." What were the feelings of our injured author, whose integrity was so firm, and whose love of study was so warm, when he reaped for his reward the displeasure of his sove- reign, and the indignation of his countrymen accused at Danger of the Result of Literary Inquiries. 197 once of contradictory crimes, lie could not be a betrayer of the rights of the people, and at the same time limit the sove- reign power. Cowel retreated to his college, and, like a wise man, abstained from the press; he pursued his private studies, while his inoffensive life was a comment on Coke's inhu- manity more honourable to Cowel than any of Coke's on Littleton. Thus Cowel saw, in his own life, its richest labour thrown aside ; and when the author and his adversary were no more, it became a treasure valued by posterity ! It was printed in the reign of Charles I., under the administration of Crom- well, and again after the Restoration. It received the honour of a foreign edition. Its value is still permanent. Such is the history of a book, which occasioned the disgrace of its author, and embittered his life. A similar calamity was the fate of honest STOWE, the Chronicler. After a long life of labour, and having exhausted his patrimony in the study of English antiquities, from a reverential love to his country, poor Stowe was ridiculed, calumniated, neglected, and persecuted. One cannot read without indignation and pity what Howes, his continuator, tells us in his dedication. Howes had observed that " No man would lend a helping hand to the late aged painful Chronicler, nor, after his death, prosecute his work. He applied himself to several persons of dignity and learning, whose names had got forth among the public as likely to be the continuators of Stowe ; but every one persisted in denying this, and some imagined that their secret enemies had men- tioned their names with a view of injuring them, by incurring the displeasure of their superiors and risking their own quiet. One said, ' I will not flatter, to scandalise my posterity ;' another, ' I cannot see how a man should spend his labour and money worse than in that which acquires no regard nor reward except backbiting and detraction.' One swore a great oath and said, ' I thank God that I am not yet so mad to waste my time, spend two hundred pounds a-year, trouble myself and all my friends, only to give assurance of endless reproach, loss of liberty, and bring all my days in question.' " Unhappy authors ! are such then the terrors which silence eloquence, and such the dangers which environ truth ? Pos- terity has many discoveries to make, or many deceptions to endure ! But we are treading on hot embers. 198 Calamities of Authors. Such too was the fate of REGINALD SCOT, who, in an elaborate and curious volume,* if he could not stop the torrent of the popular superstitions of witchcraft, was the first, at least, to break and scatter the waves. It is a work which forms an epoch in the history of the human mind in our country ; but the author had anticipated a very remote period of its enlargement. Scot, the apostle of humanity, and the legislator of reason, lived in retirement, yet persecuted by religious credulity and legal cruelty. SELDEN, perhaps the most learned of our antiquaries, was often led, in his curious investigations, to disturb his own peace, by giving the result of his inquiries. James I. and the Court party were willing enough to extol his profound autho- rities and reasonings on topics which did not interfere with their system of arbitrary power ; but they harassed and per- secuted the author whom they would at other times eagerly quote as their advocate. Selden, in his " History of Tithes," had alarmed the clergy by the intricacy of his inquiries. He pretends, however, to have only collected the opposite opinions of others, without delivering his own. The book was not only suppressed, but the great author was further disgraced by subscribing a gross recantation of all his learned investiga- tions and was compelled to receive in silence the insults of courtly scholars, who had the hardihood to accuse him of plagiarism, and other literary treasons, which more sensibly hurt Selden than the recantation extorted from his hand by "the Lords of the High Commission Court." James I. would not suffer him to reply to them. When the king desired Selden to show the right of the British Crown to the dominion of the sea, this learned author having made proper collections, Selden, angried at an imprisonment he had un- dergone, refused to publish the work. A great author like Selden degrades himself when any personal feeling, in lite- rary disputes, places him on an equality with any king ; the duty was to his country. But Selden, alive to the call of rival genius, when Grotius published, in Holland, his Mare 'The Discoverie of Witchcraft, necessary to be known for the undeceiv- expenses _ nety-two pounds, fourteen shillings, Scots. The" unfortunate old woman two trees, and employed two men to watch her closely for thirty days ! ught to recollect the past follies of humanity, to detect, perhaps, ome existing ones. Danger of the Result of Literary Inquiries. 199 liberum, gave the world his Mare clausum ; when Selden had to encounter Grotius, and to proclaim to the universe " the Sovereignty of the Seas," how contemptible to him appeared the mean persecutions of a crowned head, and how little his own meaner resentment ! To this subject the fate of Dr. HAWKESWOBTH is somewhat allied. It is well known that this author, having distin- guished himself by his pleasing compositions in the " Adven- turer," was chosen to draw up the narrative of Cook's discoveries in the South Seas. The pictures of a new world, the description of new manners in an original state of society, and the incidents arising from an adventure which could find no parallel in the annals of mankind, but under the solitary genius of Columbus all these were conceived to offer a history, to which the moral and contemplative powers of Hawkesworth only were equal. Our author's fate, and that of his work, are known : he incurred all the danger of giving the result of his inquiries ; he indulged his imagination till it burst into pruriency, and discussed moral theorems till he ceased to be moral. The shock it gave to the feelings of our author was fatal ; and the error of a mind, intent on in- quiries which, perhaps, he thought innocent, and which the vorld condemned as criminal, terminated in death itself. Hawkesworth was a vain man, and proud of having raised himself by his literary talents from his native obscurity : of no learning, he drew all his science from the Cyclopaedia ; and, I have heard, could not always have construed the Latin mottos of his own paper, which were furnished by Johnson ; tut his sensibility was abundant and ere his work was given to the world, he felt those tremblings and those doubts which anticipated his fate. That he was in a state of mental agony respecting the reception of his opinions, and some other parts of his^ work, will, I think, be discovered in the following letter, hitherto unpublished. It was addressed, with his MSS., to a peer, to be examined before they were sent to the press an occupation probably rather too serious for the noble critic: "London, March 2, 1761. " I think myself happy to be permitted to put my MSS. into your Lordship's hands, because, though it increases my anxiety and my fears, yet it will at least secure me from what I should think afar greater misfortune than any other that can attend my performance, the danger of addressing to 200 Calamities of Authors. tlie King any sentiment, allusion, or opinion, that could make such an address improper. I have now the honour to submit the work to your Lordship, with the dedication ; from which the duty I owe to his Majesty, and, if I may be permitted to add anything to that, the duty I owe to myself, have con- curred to exclude the servile, extravagant, and indiscriminate adulation which has so often disgraced alike those by whom it has been given and received. " I remain, &c. &c." This elegant epistle justly describes that delicacy in style which has been so rarely practised by an indiscriminate dedi- cator ; and it not less feelingly touches on that " far greater misfortune than any other," which finally overwhelmed the fortitude and intellect of this unhappy author ! A NATIONAL WORK WHICH COULD FIND NO PATRONAGE. THE author who is now before us is DE LOLME ! I shall consider as an English author that foreigner, who flew to our country as the asylum of Europe, who composed a noble work on our Constitution, and, having imbibed its spirit, acquired even the language of a free country. I do not know an example in our literary history that so loudly accuses our tardy and phlegmatic feeling respecting authors, as the treatment De Lolme experienced in this country. His book on our Constitution still enters into the studies of an English patriot, and is not the worse for flatter- ing and elevating the imagination, painting everything beau- tiful, to encourage our love as well as our reverence for the most perfect system of governments. It was a noble as well as ingenious effort in a foreigner it claimed national atten- tionbut could not obtain even individual patronage. The fact is mortifying to record, that the author who wanted every aid, received less encouragement than if he had solicited subscriptions for a raving novel, or an idle poem. De Lolme was compelled to traffic with booksellers for this work ; and, as he was a theoretical rather than a practical politician, he was a bad trader, and acquired the smallest remuneration. B lived, in the country to which he had rendered a national service, in extreme obscurity and decay ; and the walls of the * leet too often enclosed the English Montesquieu. He never A Work which could find no Patronage. 201 appears to have received a solitary attention,* and became so disgusted with authorship, that he preferred silently to en- dure its poverty rather than its other vexations. He ceased almost to write. Of De Lolme I have heard little re- corded but his high-mindedness ; a strong sense that he stood degraded beneath that rank in society which his book entitled him to enjoy. The cloud of poverty that covered him only veiled without concealing its object ; with the manners and dress of a decayed gentleman, he still showed the few who met him that he cherished a spirit perpetually at variance with the adversity of his circumstances. Our author, in a narrative prefixed to his work, is the proud historian of his own injured feelings ; he smiled in bit- terness on his contemporaries, confident it was a tale reserved for posterity. After having written the work whose systematic principles refuted those political notions which prevailed at the era of the American revolution, and whose truth has been so fatally demonstrated in our own times, in two great revolutions, which have shown all the defects and all the mischief of nations rushing into a state of freedom before they are worthy of it, the author candidly acknowledges he counted on some sort of encouragement, and little expected to find the mere publication had drawn him into great inconvenience. " When my enlarged English edition was ready for the press, had I acquainted ministers that I was preparing to boil my tea-kettle with it, for want of being able to afford the expenses of printing it ;" ministers, it seems, would not have considered that he was lighting his fire with " myrrh, and cassia, and precious ointment." In the want of encouragement from great men, and even from booksellers, De Lolme had recourse to a subscription ; and his account of the manner he was received, and the in- dignities he endured, all which are narrated with great sim- plicity, show that whatever his knowledge of our Constitution might be, " his knowledge of the country was, at that time, very incomplete." At length, when he shared the profits of his work with the booksellers, they were " but scanty and slow." After all, our author sarcastically congratulates him- self, that he * Except by the hand of literary charity ; he was more than once relieved by the Literary Fund. Such are the authors only whom it is wise to patronise. 202 Calamities of Authors. " Was allowed to carry on the above business of selling my book, without any objection being formed against me, from my not having served a regular apprenticeship, and without being molested by the Inquisition." And further he adds " Several authors have chosen to relate, in writings pub- lished after death, the personal advantages by which their performances had been followed ; as for me, I have thought otherwise and I will see it printed while I am yet living." This, indeed, is the language of irritation ! and De Lolme degrades himself in the loudness of his complaint. But if the philosopher lost his temper, that misfortune will not take away the dishonour of the occasion that produced it. The country's shame is not lessened because the author who had raised its glory throughout Europe, and instructed the nation in its best lesson, grew indignant at the ingra- titude of his pupil. De Lolme ought not to have congra- tulated himself that he had been allowed the liberty of the press unharassed by an inquisition : this sarcasm is senseless! or his book is a mere fiction ! THE MISERIES OF SUCCESSFUL AUTHORS. HUME is an author so celebrated, a philosopher so serene, and a man so extremely amiable, if not fortunate, that we may be surprised to meet his name inscribed in a catalogue of literary calamities. Look into his literary life, and you will discover that the greater portion was mortified and angried ; and that the stoic so lost his temper, that had not circumstances intervened which did not depend on himself, Hume had abandoned his country and changed his name ! " The first success of most of my writings was not such as to be an object of vanity." His " Treatise of Human Na- ture" fell dead-born from the press. It was cast anew with another title, and was at first little more successful. The following letter to Des Maiseaux, which I believe is now first published, gives us the feelings of the youthful and modest philosopher : "DAVID HUME TO DES MAISEAUX. ' SIR, Whenever you see rny name, you'll readily imagine the subject of my letter. A young author can scarce forbear The Miseries of Successful Authors. 203 speaking of his performance to all the world ; but when he meets with one that is a good judge, and whose instruction and advice he depends on, there ought some indulgence to be given him. You were so good as to promise me, that if you could find leisure from your other occupations, you would look over my system of philosophy, and at the same time ask the opinion of such of your acquaintance as you thought proper judges. Have you found it sufficiently intelligible ? Does it appear true to you ? Do the style and language seem tolerable ? These three questions comprehend everything ; and I beg of you to answer them with the utmost freedom and sincerity. I know 'tis a custom to flatter poets on their performances, but I hope philosophers may be exempted ; and the more so that their cases are by no means alike. When we do not approve of anything in a poet we commonly can give no reason for our dislikes but our particular taste ; which not being convincing, we think it better to conceal our sen- timents altogether. But every error in philosophy can be distinctly markt and proved to be such ; and this is a favour I flatter myself you'll indulge me in with regard to the per- formance I put into your hands. I am, indeed, afraid that it would be too great a trouble for you to mark all the errors you have observed ; I shall only insist upon being informed of the most material of them, and you may assure yourself will consider it as a singular favour. I am, with great esteem " Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant, "AprileG, 1739. "DAVID HUME. " Please direct to me at Ninewells, near Berwick-upon- Tweed." Hume's own favourite " Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals" came unnoticed and unobserved in the world. When he published the first portion of his " History," which made even Hume himself sanguine in his expectations, he tells his own tale : " I thought that I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices ; and, as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment ! All classes of men and readers united in their rage against him who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of 204- Calamities of Authors. Strafford." "What was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink into oblivion, and in a twelvemonth not more than forty-five copies were sold." Even Hume, a stoic hitherto in his literary character, was struck down, and dismayed he lost all courage to proceed and, had the war not prevented him, " he had resolved to change his name, and never more to have returned to his native country." But an author, though born to suffer martyrdom, does not always expire ; he may be flayed like St. Bartholomew, and yet he can breathe without a skin ; stoned, like St. Stephen, and yet write on with a broken head ; and he has been even known to survive the flames, notwithstanding the most pre- cious part of an author, which is obviously his book, has been burnt in an auto da fe. Hume once more tried the press in " The Natural History of Religion." It proved but another martyrdom ! Still was the fall (as he terms it) of the first volume of his History haunting his nervous imagination, when he found himself yet strong enough to hold a pen in his hand, and ventured to produce a second, which " helped to buoy up its unfortunate brother." But the third part, containing the reign of Elizabeth, was particularly obnox- ious, and he was doubtful whether he was again to be led to the stake. But Hume, a little hardened by a little success, grew, to use his own words, " callous against the impressions of public folly," and completed his History, which was now received "with tolerable, and but tolerable, success." At length, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, our author began, a year or two before he died, as he writes, to see " many symptoms of my literary reputation breaking out at last with additional lustre, though I know that I can have but few years to enjoy it." What a provoking consolation for a philosopher, who, according to the result of his own system, was close upon a state of annihilation ! To Hume, let us add the illustrious name of DRTDEX. [t was after preparing a second edition of Virgil, that the great Dryden, who had lived, and was to die in harness, found himself still obliged to seek for daily bread. Scarcely relieved from one heavy task, he was compelled to hasten to another ; and his efforts were now stimulated by a domestic feeling, the expected return of his son in ill-health from Kome. In a letter to his bookseller he pathetically writes -f it please God that / must die of overstudy, I cannot The Miseries of Successful Authors. 205 spend my life better than in preserving his." It was on this occasion, on the verge of his seventieth year, as he describes himself in the dedication of his Virgil, that, " worn out with study, and oppressed with fortune," he contracted to supply the bookseller with 10,000 verses at sixpence a line ! What was his entire dramatic life but a series of vexation and hostility, from his first play to his last ? On those very boards whence Dryden was to have derived the means of his existence and his fame, he saw his foibles aggravated, and his morals aspersed. Overwhelmed by the keen ridicule of Buckingham, and maliciously mortified by the triumph which Settle, his meanest rival, was allowed to obtain over him, and doomed still to encounter the cool malignant eye of Langbaine, who read poetry only to detect plagiarism. Contemporary genius is inspected with too much familiarity to be felt with reverence ; and the angry prefaces of Dryden only excited the little revenge of the wits. How could such sympathise with injured, but with lofty feelings ? They spread two reports of him, which may not be true, but which hurt him with the public. It was said that, being jealous of the success of Creech, for his version of Lucretius, he advised him to attempt Horace, in which Dryden knew he would fail and a contemporary haunter of the theatre, in a curious letter* on The Winter Diversions, says of Congreve's angry preface to the Double Dealer, that " The critics were severe upon this play, which gave the author occasion to lash them in his epistle dedicatory so that 'tis generally thought he has done his business and lost himself; a thing he owes to Mr. Dryden's treacherous friendship, who being jealous of the applause he had got by his Old Bachelor deluded him into a foolish imitation of his own way of writing angry prefaces." This lively critic is still more vivacious on the great Dryden, who had then produced his Love Triumphant, which, the critic says, " Was damned by the universal cry of the town, nemine contradicente but the conceited poet. He says in his pro- logue that ' this is the last the town must expect from, him ;' he had done himself a kindness had he taken his leave before." He then describes the success of Southerne's Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery, and concludes, * A letter found among the papers of the late Mr. Windham, which Mr. Malone has preserved. 206 Calamities of Authors. " This kind usage will encourage desponding minor poets, and vex huffing Dryden and Congreve to madness." I have quoted thus much of this letter, that we may have before us a true image of those feelings which contemporaries entertain of the greater geniuses of their age ; how they seek to level them ; and in what manner men of genius are doomed to be treated slighted, starved, and abused. Dry- den and Congreve ! the one the finest genius, the other the most exquisite wit of our nation, are to be vexed to madness ! their failures are not to excite sympathy, but contempt or ridicule! How the feelings and the language of contem- poraries differ from that of posterity ! And yet let us not exult in our purer and more dignified feelings ice are, in- deed, the posterity of Dryden and Congreve ; but we are the contemporaries of others who must patiently hope for better treatment from our sous than they have received from the fathers. Dryden was no master of the pathetic, yet never were compositions more pathetic than the Prefaces this great rnan has transmitted to posterity ! Opening all the feelings of his heart, we live among his domestic sorrows. Johnson censures Dryden for saying Tie has Jew thanks to pay his stars that he was horn among Englishmen* We have just seen that Hume went farther, and sighed to fly to a retreat be- yond that country which knew not to reward genius. What, if Dryden felt the dignity of that character he sup- ported, dare we blame his frankness ? If the age be unge- nerous, shall contemporaries escape the scourge of the great author, who feels he is addressing another age more favour- able to him ? Johnson, too, notices his " Self-commendation ; his dili- gence in reminding the world of his merits, and expressing, with very little scruple, his high opinion of his own powers." Dryden shall answer in his own words ; with all the simplicity of Montaigne, he expresses himself with the dignity that would have become Milton or Gray : " It is a vanity common to all writers to overvalue their own productions ; and it is better for me to own this failing in myself, than the world to do it for me. For what other There is an affecting remonstrance of Dryden to Hyde, Earl of Rochester, on the state of his poverty and neglect in which is this re- markable passage: "It is enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and starved Mr. Butler." The Miseries of Successful Authors. 207 reason have I spent my life in such an unprofitable study ? Why am I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as fame 1 The same parts and application which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown, which are often given to men of as little learning, and less honesty, than myself." How feelingly Whitehead paints the situation of Dryden in his old age : Yet lives the man, how wild soe'er his aim, Would madly barter fortune's smiles for fame ? Well pleas'd to shine, through each recording page, The hapless Dryden of a shameless age ! Ill-fated bard ! where'er thy name appears, The weeping verse a sad memento bears ; Ah ! what avail'd the enormous blaze between Thy dawn of glory and thy closing scene ! When sinking nature asks our kind repairs, Unstrung the nerves, and silver'd o'er the hairs ; When stay'd reflection came uncall'd at last, And gray experience counts each folly past ! MICKLE' aversion of the Lusiad offers an affecting instance of the melancholy fears which often accompany the progress of works of magnitude, undertaken by men of genius. Five years he had buried himself in a farm-house, devoted to the solitary labour ; and he closes his preface with the fragment of a poem, whose stanzas have perpetuated all the tremblings and the emotions, whose unhappy influence the author had experienced through the long work. Thus pathetically he addresses the Muse : Well thy meed repays thy worthless toil ; Upon thy houseless head pale want descends In bitter shower ; and taunting scorn still rends And wakes thee trembling from thy golden dream : In vetchy bed, or loathly dungeon ends Thy idled life And when, at length, the great and anxious labour was completed, the author was still more unhappy than under the former influence of his foreboding terrors. The work is dedi- cated to the Duke of Buccleugh. Whether his Grace had been prejudiced against the poetical labour by Adam Smith, who had as little comprehension of the nature of poetry as becomes a political economist, or from whatever cause, after possessing it for six weeks the Duke had never condescended to open the volume. It is to the honour of Mickle that the 208 Calamities of Authors. Dedication is a simple respectful inscription, in which the poet had not compromised his dignity, and that in the second edition he had the magnanimity not to withdraw the dedica- tion to this statue-like patron. Neither was the critical recep- tion of this splendid labour of five devoted years grateful to the sensibility of the author : he writes to a friend " Though my work is well received at Oxford, I will honestly own to you, some things have hurt me. A few grammatical slips in the introduction have been mentioned ; and some things in the notes about Virgil, Milton, and Homer, have been called the arrogance of criticism. But the greatest offence of all is, what I say of blank verse." He was, indeed, after this great work was given to the public, as unhappy as at any preceding period of his life ; and Mickle, too, like Hume and Dryden, could feel a wish to for- sake his native land ! He still found his "head houseless ;" and " the vetchy bed" and " loathly dungeon" still haunted his dreams. " To write for the booksellers is what I never will do," exclaimed this man of genius, though struck by poverty. He projected an edition of his own poems by sub- scription. " Desirous of giving an edition of my works, in which I shall bestow the utmost attention, which, perhaps, will be my final farewell to that blighted spot (worse than the most bleak mountains of Scotland) yclept Parnassus ; after this labour is finished, if Governor Johnstone cannot or does not help me to a little independence, I will certainly bid adieu to Europe, to unhappy suspense, and perhaps also to the chagrin of soul which 2 feel to accompany it" Such was the language which cannot now be read without exciting our sympathy for the author of the version of an epic, which, after a solemn devotion of no small portion of the most valuable years of life, had been presented to the world, with not sufficient remuneration or notice of the author to create even hope in the sanguine temperament of a poet. Mickle was more honoured at Lisbon than in his own country. So imperceptible are the gradations of public favour to the feelings of genius, and so vast an interval separates that author who does not immediately address the tastes or the fashions of his age, from the reward or the enjoyment of his studies. We cannot account, among the lesser calamities of litera- ture, that of a man of genius, who, dedicating his days to the The Miseries of Successful Authors. 209 composition of a voluminous and national work, when that labour is accomplished, finds, on its publication, the hope of fame, and perhaps other hopes as necessary to reward past toil, and open to future enterprise, all annihilated. Yet this work neglected or not relished, perhaps even the sport of witlings, afterwards is placed among the treasures of our language, when the author is no more ! but what is posthumous grati- tude, could it reach even the ear of an angel ? The calamity is unavoidable ; but this circumstance does not lessen it. New works must for a time be submitted to popular favour ; but posterity is the inheritance of genius. The man of genius, however, who has composed this great work, calculates his vigils, is best acquainted with its merits, and is not without an anticipation of the future feeling of his country ; he But weeps the more, because he weeps in vain. Such is the fate which has awaited many great works ; and the heart of genius has died away on its own labours. I need not go so far back as the Elizabethan age to illustrate a cala- mity which will excite the sympathy of every man of letters ; but the great work of a man of no ordinary genius presents itself on this occasion. This great work is " The Polyolbion" of MICHAEL DRAY- TON ; a poem unrivalled for its magnitude and its character.* The genealogy of poetry is always suspicious ; yet I think it owed its birth to Leland's magnificent view of his intended work on Britain, and was probably nourished by the " Bri- tannia" of Camden, who inherited the mighty industry, with- out the poetical spirit, of Leland ; Dray ton embraced both. This singular combination of topographical erudition and poetical fancy constitutes a national work a union that some may conceive not fortunate, no more than "the slow length" of its Alexandrine metre, for the purposes of mere delight. * The author explains the nature of his book in his title-page when he calls it "A Chorographicall Description of tracts, rivers, mountaines, forests, and other parts of this renowned Isle of Great Britaine, with intermixture of the most reinarquahle stories, antiquities, wonders, rarityes, pleasures, and commodities of the same ; digested in a Poem." The maps with which it is illustrated are curious for the impersonations of the nymphs of wood and water, the sylvan gods, and other characters of the poem ; to which the learned Selden supplied notes. Ellis calls it "a wonderful work, exhibiting at once the learning of an historian, an antiquary, a naturalist, and a geo- grapher, and embellished by the imagination of a poet." ED. P 210 Calamities of Authors. Yet what theme can be more elevating than a hard chanting to his " Fatherland," as the Hollanders called their country ? Our tales of ancient glory, our worthies who must not die, our towns, our rivers, and our mountains, all glancing before the picturesque eye of the naturalist and the poet ! It is, indeed, a labour of Hercules ; but it was not unaccompanied by the lyre of Apollo. This national work was ill received ; and the great author dejected, never pardoned his contemporaries, and even lost his temper.* Drayton and his poetical friends beheld indignantly the trifles of the hour overpowering the neglected Polyolbion. One poet tells us that they prefer The fawning lines of every pamphleter. GEO. WITHERS. And a contemporary records the utter neglect of this great poet : Why lives Drayton when the times refuse Both means to live, and matter for a muse, Only without excuse to leave us quite, And tell us, durst we act, he durst to write ? W. BROWNE. Drayton published his Polyolbion first in eighteen parts ; and the second portion afterwards. In this interval we have a letter to Drummond, dated in 1619 : " I thank you, my dear sweet Drummond, for your good opinion of Polyolbion. I have done twelve books more, that is, from the 18th book, which was Kent (if you note it), all the east parts and north to the river of Tweed ; but it lieih by me, for the booksellers and I are in terms ; they are a company of base knaves, whom I scorn and kick at." The vengeance of the poet had been more justly wreaked on the buyers of books than on the sellers, who, though knavery has a strong connexion with trade, yet, were they knaves, they would be true to their own interests. Far from impeding a successful author, booksellers are apt to hurry his labours ; for they prefer the crude to the mature fruit, when- ever the public taste can be appeased even by an unripened dessert. * In the dedication of the first part to Prince Henry, the author says of his work, "it cannot want envie : for even in the birth it alreadie finds that." ED. The Miseries of Successful Authors. 211 These " knaves," however, seem to have succeeded in forcing poor Drayton to observe an abstinence from the press, which must have convulsed all the feelings of authorship. The second part was not published till three years after this letter was written ; and then without maps. Its preface is remark- able enough ; it is pathetic, till Drayton loses the dignity of genius in its asperity. In is inscribed, in no good humour " TO ANT THAT WILL BEAD IT ! " When I first undertook this poem, or, as some have pleased to term it, this Herculean labour, I was by some vir- tuous friends persuaded that I should receive much comfort and encouragement ; and for these reasons : First, it was a new clear way, never before gone by any ; that it contained all the delicacies, delights, and rarities of this renowned isle, interwoven with the histories of the Britons, Saxons, Nor- mans, and the later English. And further, that there is scarcely any of the nobility or gentry of this land, but that he is some way or other interested therein. " But it hath fallen out otherwise ; for instead of that com- fort which my noble friends proposed as my due, I have met with barbarous ignorance and base detraction ; such a cloud hath the devil drawn over the world's judgment. Some of the stationers that had the selling of the first part of this poem, because it went not so fast away in the selling as some of their beastly and abominable trash (a shame both to our language and our nation), have despightfully left out the epistles to the readers, and so have cousened the buyers with imperfected books, which those that have undertaken the second part have been forced to amend in the first, for the small number that are yet remaining in their hands. " And some of our outlandish, unnatural English (I know not how otherwise to express them) stick not to say that there is nothing in this island worth studying for, and take a great pride to be ignorant in anything thereof. As for these cattle, odi profanum vulgus, et arceo ; of which I account them, be they never so great." Yet, as a true poet, whose impulse, like fate, overturns all opposition, Drayton is not to be thrown out of his avocation ; but intrepidly closes by promising " they shall not deter me from going on with Scotland, if means and time do not hinder me to perform as much as I have promised in my first song." Who could have imagined that such bitterness of style, and P2 212 Calamities of Authors. such angry emotions, could have been raised in the breast of a poet of pastoral elegance and fancy ? Whose bounding muse o'er ev'ry mountain rode, And every river warbled as it flow'd. KIRKPATRIOK. It is melancholy to reflect that some of the greatest works in our language have involved their authors in distress and anxiety : and that many have gone down to their grave insen- sible of that glory which soon covered it. THE ILLUSIONS OF WRITERS IN VERSE. WHO would, with the awful severity of Plato, banish poets from the Republic ? But it may be desirable that the Re- public should not be banished from poets, which it seems to be when an inordinate passion for writing verses drives them from every active pursuit. There is no greater enemy to domestic quiet than a confirmed versifier ; yet are most of them much to be pitied : it is the mediocre critics they first meet with who are the real origin of a populace of mediocre poets. A young writer of verses is sure to get flattered by those who affect to admire what they do not even under- stand, and by those who, because they understand, imagine they are likewise endowed with delicacy of taste and a critical judgment. What sacrifices of social enjoyments, and all the business of life, are lavished with a prodigal's ruin in an em- ployment which will be usually discovered to be a source of early anxiety, and of late disappointment !* I say nothing of the ridicule in which it involves some wretched Maevius, but of the misery that falls so heavily on him, and is often * An elegant poet of our times alludes, with due feeling, to these per- sonal sacrifices. Addressing Poetry, he exclaims " In devotion to thy heavenly charms, I clasp'd thy altar with ray infant arms ; For thee neglected the wide field of wealth ; The toils of interest, and the sports of health." How often may we lament that poets are too apt "to clasp the altar with infant arms." Goldsmith was near forty when he published his popular poems and the greater number of the most valued poems were produced in mature life. When the poet begins in "infancy," he too often contracts a habit of writing verses, and sometimes, in all his life, never reaches poetry. The Illusions of Writers in Verse. 213 entailed on his generation. Whitehead has versified an admirable reflection of Pope's, in the preface to his works : For wanting wit be totally undone, And barr'd all arts, for having fail'd in one ? The great mind of BLA.CKSTONE never showed him more a poet than when he took, not without affection, " a farewell of the Muse," on his being called to the bar. DBUMMOND, of Hawthornden, quitted the bar from his love of poetry ; yet he seems to have lamented slighting the profession which his father wished him to pursue. He perceives his error, he feels even contrition, but still cherishes it : no man, not in his senses, ever had a more lucid interval : I changed countries, new delights to find ; Bat ah ! for pleasure I did find new pain ; Enchanting pleasure so did reason blind, That father's love and words I scorn' d as vain. I know that all the Muses' heavenly lays, With toil of spirit which are so dearly bought, As idle sounds of few or none are sought, That there is nothing lighter than vain praise ; Enow what I list, this all cannot me move, But that, alas ! I both must write and love ! Thus, like all poets, who, as Goldsmith observes, "are fond of enjoying the present, careless of the future," he talks like a man of sense, and acts like a fool. This wonderful susceptibility of praise, to which poets seem more liable than any other class of authors, is indeed their common food ; and they could not keep life in them without this nourishment. NAT. LEE, a true poet in all the excesses of poetical feelings for he was in such raptures at times as to lose his senses expresses himself in very ener- getic language on the effects of the praise necessary for poets : " Praise," says Lee, " is the greatest encouragement we chamelions can pretend to, or rather the manna that keeps soul and body together ; we devour it as if it were angels' food, and vainly think we grow immortal. There is nothing transports a poet, next to love, like commending in the right place." This, no doubt, is a rare enjoyment, and serves to strengthen his illusions. But the same fervid genius else- where confesses, when reproached for his ungoverned fancy, that it brings with itself its own punishment : 214 Calamities of Authors. " I cannot be," says this great and unfortunate poet, " so ridiculous a creature to any man as I am to myself ; for who should know the house so well as the good man at home ? who, when his neighbour comes to see him, still sets the best rooms to view ; and, if he be not a wilful ass, keeps the rub- bish and lumber in some dark hole, where nobody comes but himself, to mortify at melancholy hours." Study the admirable preface of POPE, composed at that matured period of life when the fever of fame had passed away, and experience had corrected fancy. It is a calm statement between authors and readers ; there is no imagi- nation that colours by a single metaphor, or conceals the real feeling which moved the author on that solemn occasion, of collecting his works for the last time. It is on a full review of the past that this great poet delivers this remarkable sentence : " / believe, if any one, early in Ms life, should contem- plate the dangerous fate of ATJTHOES, Jie would scarce be of their number on any consideration. The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth; and to pretend to serve the learned world in any way, one must have the constancy of a martyr, and a resolution to suffer for its sake." All this is so true in literary history, that he who affects to suspect the sincerity of Pope's declaration, may flatter his sagacity, but will do no credit to his knowledge. If thus great poets pour their lamentations for having de- voted themselves to their art, some sympathy is due to the querulousness of a numerous race of provincial bards, whose situation is ever at variance with their feelings. These usually form exaggerated conceptions of their own genius, from the habit of comparing themselves with their contracted circle. Kestless, with a desire of poetical celebrity, their heated imagination views in the metropolis that fame and fortune denied them in their native town ; there they be- come half-hermits and half-philosophers, darting epigrams which provoke hatred, or pouring elegies, descriptive of their feelings, which move derision : their neighbours find it much easier to ascertain their foibles than comprehend their genius ; and both parties live in a state of mutual persecu- tion. Such, among many, was the fate of the poet HEREICK; his vein was pastoral, and he lived in the elysium of the west, which, however, he describes by the sullen epithet, Dull Devonshire," where "he is still sad." Strange that The Illusions of Writers in Verse. 215 such a poet should have resided near twenty years in one of our most beautiful counties in a very discontented humour. When he quitted his village of " Deanbourne," the petulant poet left behind him a severe " farewell," which was found still preserved in the parish, after a lapse of more than a century. Local satire has been often preserved by the very objects it is directed against, sometimes from the charm of the wit itself, and sometimes from the covert malice of attacking our neighbours. Thus he addresses " Dean- bourne, a rude river in Devonshire, by which, sometime, he lived :" Dean-bourn, farewell ! Thy rockie bottom that doth tear thy streams, And makes them frantic, e'en to all extremes. Rockie thou art, and rockie we discover Thy men, men ! manners ! people currish, churlish as their seas " He rejoices he leaves them, never to return till " rocks shall turn to rivers." When he arrives in London, From the dull confines of the drooping west, To see the day-spring from the pregnant east, he, " ravished in spirit," exclaims, on a view of the metro- polis place ! people ! manners form'd to please All nations, customs, kindreds, languages ! But he fervently entreats not to be banished again : For, rather than Til to the west return, I'll beg of thee first, here to have mine urn. The Devonians were avenged ; for the satirist of the English Arcadia was condemned again to reside by " its rockie side," among " its rockie men." Such has been the usual chant of provincial poets ; and, if the " silky- soft Favonian gales" of Devon, with its "Worthies," could not escape the anger of such a poet as Herrick, what county may hope to be saved from the invective of querulous and dissatisfied poets ? In this calamity of authors I will show that a great poet felicitated himself that poetry was not the business of his life; and afterwards I will bring forward an evidence that the immoderate pursuit of poetry, with a very moderate 216 Calamities of Authors. genius, creates a perpetual state of illusion ; and pursues grey-headed folly even to the verge of the grave. Pope imagined that PBIOE was only fit to make verses, and less qualified for business than Addison himself. Had Prior lived to finish that history of his own times he was writing, we should have seen how far the opinion of Pope was right. Prior abandoned the Whigs, who had been his first patrons, for the Tories, who were now willing to adopt the political apostate. This versatility for place and pension rather shows that Prior was a little more "qualified for business than Addison." Johnson tells us " Prior lived at a time when the rage of party detected all which was any man's interest to hide ; and, as little ill is heard of Prior, it is certain that not much was known :" more, however, than Johnson supposes. This great man came to the pleasing task of his poetical bio- graphy totally unprepared, except with the maturity of his genius, as a profound observer of men, and an invincible dogmatist in taste. In the history of the times, Johnson is deficient, which has deprived us of that permanent instruction and delight his intellectual powers had poured around it. The character and the secret history of Prior are laid open in the " State Poems ;"* a bitter Whiggish narrative, too particular to be entirely fictitious, while it throws a new light on John- son's observation of Prior's " propensity to sordid converse, and the low delights of mean company," which Johnson had imperfectly learned from some attendant on Prior. A vintner's boy, the wretch was first preferr'd To wait at Vice's gates, and pimp for bread ; To hold the candle, and sometimes the door, Let in the drunkard, and let out . But, as to villains it has often chanc'd, Was for his wit and wickedness advanc'd. Let no man think his new behaviour strange, No metamorphosis can nature change ; Effects are chain' d to causes ; generally, The rascal born will like a rascal die. His Prince's favours follow'd him in vain ; They chang'd the circumstance, but not the man. While out of pocket, and his spirits low, He'd beg, write panegyrics, cringe, and bow ; But when good pensions had his labours crown'd, His panegyrics into satires turn'd ; * Vol. ii. p. 355. The Illusions of Writers in Verse. 217 what assiduous pains does Prior take To let great Dorset see he could mistake ! Dissembling nature false description gave, Show'd him the poet, but conceal'd the knave. To us the poet Prior is better known than the placeman Prior ; yet in his own day the reverse often occurred. Prior was a State Proteus ; Sunderland, the most ambiguous of politicians, was the Erie Robert to whom he addressed his Mice ; and Prior was now Secretary to the Embassy at Ryswick and Paris ; independent even of the English am- bassador now a Lord of Trade, and, at length, a Minister Plenipotentiary to Louis XIV. Our business is with his poetical feelings. Prior declares he was chiefly " a poet by accident ;" and hints, in collecting his works, that " some of them, as they came singly from the first impression, have lain long and quietly in Mr. Tonson's shop." When his party had their downfall, and he was confined two years in prison, he com- posed his " Alma," to while away prison hours ; and when, at length, he obtained his freedom, he had nothing remaining but that fellowship which, in his exaltation, he had been censured for retaining, but which he then said he might have to live upon at last. Prior had great sagacity, and too right a notion of human affairs in politics, to expect his party would last his time, or in poetry, that he could ever derive a revenue from rhymes ! I will now show that that rare personage, a sensible poet, in reviewing his life in that hour of solitude when no passion is retained but truth, while we are casting up the amount of our past days scrupulously to ourselves, felicitated himself that the natural bent of his mind, which inclined to poetry, had been checked, and not indulged, throughout his whole life. Prior congratulated himself that he had been only " a poet by accident," not by occupation. In a manuscript by Prior, consisting of "An Essay on Learning," I find this curious and interesting passage entirely relating to the poet himself: " I remember nothing farther in life than that I made verses ; I chose Guy Earl of Warwick for my first hero, and killed Colborne the giant before I was big enough for West- minster School. But I had two accidents in youth which hindered me from being quite possessed with the Muse. I was bred in a college where prose was more in fashion than 218 Calamities of Authors. verse, and, as soon as I had taken my first degree, I was sent the King's Secretary to the Hague ; there I had enough to do in studying French and Dutch, and altering my Teren- tian and Virgilian style into that of Articles and Conven- tions ; so that poetry, which by the bent of my mind might have become the business of my life, was, by the happiness of my education, only the amusement of it ; and in this, too, having the prospect of some little fortune to be made, and friendships to be cultivated with the great men, I did not launch much into satire, which, however agreeable for the present to the writers and eucouragers of it, does in time do neither of them good ; considering the uncertainty of for- tune, and the various changes of Ministry, and that every man, as he resents, may punish in his turn of greatness and power." Such is the wholesome counsel of the Solomon of Bards to an aspirant, who, in his ardour for poetical honours, becomes careless of their consequences, if he can but possess them. I have now to bring forward one of those unhappy men of rhyme, who, after many painful struggles, and a long que- rulous life, have died amid the ravings of their immortality one of those miserable bards of mediocrity whom no beadle- critic could ever whip out of the poetical parish. There is a case in Mr. Haslam's " Observations on In- sanity," who assures us that the patient he describes was insane, which will appear strange to those who have watched more poets than lunatics ! " This patient, when admitted, was very noisy, and im- portunately talkative reciting passages from the Greek and Roman poets, or talking of his own literary importance. He became so troublesome to the other madmen, who were suf- ficiently occupied with their own speculations, that they avoided and excluded him from the common room ; so that he was at last reduced to the mortifying situation of being the sole auditor of his own compositions. He conceived himself very nearly related to Anacreon, and possessed of the peculiar vein of that poet." Such is the very accurate case drawn up by a medical writer. I can conceive nothing in it to warrant the charge of insanity ; Mr. Haslam, not being a poet, seems to have mistaken the common orgasm of poetry for insanity itself. Of such poets, one was the late PEECITA.L STOCKDALE, who, with the most entertaining simplicity, has, in "The The Illusions of Writers in Verse. 219 Memoirs of his Life and Writings," presented us with a full- length figure of this class of poets ; those whom the per- petual pursuits of poetry, however indifferent, involve in a perpetual illusion ; they are only discovered in their profound obscurity by the piteous cries they sometimes utter ; they live on querulously, which is an evil for themselves, and to no purpose of life, which is an evil to others. I remember in my youth Percival Stockdale as a con- demned poet of the times, of whom the bookseller Plexney complained that, whenever this poet came to town, it cost him twenty pounds. Flexney had been the publisher of Churchill's works ; and, never forgetting the time when he published " The Kosciad," which at first did not sell, and afterwards became the most popular poem, he was specu- lating all his life for another Churchill, and another quarto poem. Stockdale usually brought him what he wanted and Flexney found the workman, but never the work. Many a year had passed in silence, and Stockdale could hardly be considered alive, when, to the amazement of some curious observers of our literature, a venerable man, about his eightieth year, a vivacious spectre, with a cheerful voice, seemed as if throwing aside his shroud in gaiety to come to assure us of the immortality of one of the worst poets of the time. To have taken this portrait from the life would have been difficult ; but the artist has painted himself, and manufac- tured his own colours ; else had our ordinary ones but faintly copied this Chinese grotesque picture the glare and the glow must be borrowed from his own palette. Our self-biographer announces his " Life" with prospective rapture, at the moment he is turning a sad retrospect on his " Writings ;" for this was the chequered countenance of his character, a smile while he was writing, a tear when he had published! "I know," he exclaims, "that this book will live and escape the havoc that has been made of my literary fame" Again " Before I die, I think my literary fame may be fixed on an adamantine foundation" Our old acquaint- ance, Bias of Santillane, at setting out on his travels, con- ceived himself to be la huitieme merveille du monde; but here is one, who, after the experience of a long life, is writing a large work to prove himself that very curious thing. What were these mighty and unknown works ? Stock- dale confesses that all his verses have been received with 220 Calamities of Authors. negligence or contempt ; yet their mediocrity, the absolute poverty of his genius, never once occurred to the poetical patriarch. I have said that the frequent origin of bad poets is owing to bad critics; and it was the early friends of Stockdale, who, mistaking his animal spirits for genius, by directing them into the walks of poetry, bewildered him for ever. It was their hand that heedlessly fixed the bias in the rolling bowl of his restless mind. He tells us that while yet a boy of twelve years old, one day talking with his father at Branxton, where the battle of Flodden was fought, the old gentleman said to him with great emphasis " You may make that place remarkable for your birth, if you take care of yourself. My father's understanding was clear and strong, and he could penetrate human nature. He already saw that / had natural advantages above those of common men." But it seems that, at some earlier period even than his twelfth year, some good-natured Pythian had predicted that Stockdale would be "a poet." This ambiguous oracle was still listened to, after a lapse of more than half a century, and the decree is still repeated with fond credulity : " Not- withstanding," he exclaims, " all that is past, O thou god of my mind ! (meaning the aforesaid Pythian) I still hope that my future fame will decidedly warrant the prediction /" Stockdale had, in truth, an excessive sensibility of temper, without any control over it he had all the nervous contor- tions of the Sybil, without her inspiration ; and shifting, in his many-shaped life, through all characters and all pursuits, " exalting the olive of Minerva with the grape of Bacchus," as he phrases it, he was a lover, a tutor, a recruiting officer, a reviewer, and, at length, a clergyman ; but a poet eternally ! His mind was so curved, that nothing could stand steadily upon it. The accidents of such a life he describes with such a face of rueful simplicity, and mixes up so much grave drol- lery and merry pathos with all he says or does, and his ubi- quity is so wonderful, that he gives an idea of a character, of whose existence we had previously no conception, that of a sentimental harlequin.* * My old favourite cynic, with all his rough honesty and acute discri- mination, Anthony Wood, engraved a sketch of Stockdale when he etched nth his aqua-fortis the personage of a brother : " This Edward Water- The Illusions of Writers in Verse. 221 In the early part of his life, Stockdale undertook many poetical pilgrimages ; he visited the house where Thomson was born ; the coffee-room where Dryden presided among the wits, &c. Recollecting the influence of these local asso- ciations, he breaks forth, " Neither the unrelenting coldness, nor the repeated insolence of mankind, can prevent me from thinking that something like this enthusiastic devotion may hereafter be paid to ME." Perhaps till this appeared it might not be suspected that any unlucky writer of verse could ever feel such a magical conviction of his poetical stability. Stockdale, to assist this pilgrimage to his various shrines, has particularised all the spots where his works were composed ! Posterity has many shrines to visit, and will be glad to know (for perhaps it may excite a smile) that " ' The Philosopher,' a poem, was written in Warwick Court, Holborn, in 1769," "'The Life of Waller,' in Bound Court, in the Strand." A good deal he wrote in "May's Buildings, St. Martin's Lane," &c., but " In my lodgings at Portsmouth, in St. Mary's Street, I wrote my ' Elegy on the Death of a Lady's Linnet.' It will not be uninteresting to sensibility, to thinking and elegant minds. It deeply interested me, and therefore produced not one of my weakest and worst written poems. It was directly opposite to a noted house, which was distinguished by the name of the green rails ; where the riotous orgies of Naxos and Cythera contrasted with my quiet and purer occupations." I would not, however, take his own estimate of his own poems ; because, after praising them outrageously, he seems at times to doubt if they are as exquisite as he thinks them ! He has composed no one in which some poetical excellence does not appear and yet in each nice decision he holds with difficulty the trepidations of the scales of criticism for he tells us of "An Address to the Supreme Being," that "it is distinguished throughout with a natural and fervid piety ; it is flowing and poetical ; it is not without its pathos." And yet, notwithstanding all this condiment, the confection is evidently good for nothing ; for he discovers that " this flowing, fervid, and poetical address " is " not animated with that vigour which gives dignity and impression to poetry." house wrote a rhapsodical, indigested, whimsical work ; and not in the least to be taken into the hand of any sober scholar, unless it be to make him laugh or wonder at the simplicity of some people. He was a cock- brained man, and afterwards took orders." 222 Calamities of Authors. One feels for such unhappy and infected authors they would think of themselves as they wish at the moment that truth and experience come in upon them and rack them with the most painful feelings. Stockdale once wrote a declamatory life of Waller. When Johnson's appeared, though in his biography, says Stockdale, " he paid a large tribute to the abilities of Goldsmith and Hawkesworth, yet he made no mention of my name." It is evident that Johnson, who knew him well, did not care to remember it. When Johnson was busied on the Life of Pope, Stockdale wrote a pathetic letter to him earnestly imploring "a generous tribute from his authority." Johnson was still obdurately silent ; and Stockdale, who had received many acts of humane kindness from him, adds with fretful naivete, " In his sentiments towards me he was divided between a benevolence to my interests, and a coldness to my fame," Thus, in a moment, in the perverted heart of the scribbler, will ever be cancelled all human obligation for acts of benevo- lence, if we are cold to his fame ! And yet let us not too hastily condemn these unhappy men, even for the violation of the lesser moral feelings it is often but a fatal effect from a melancholy cause ; that hallucination of the intellect, in which, if their genius, as they call it, sometimes appears to sparkle like a painted bubble in the buoyancy of their vanity, they are also condemned to see it sinking in the dark horrors of a disappointed author, who has risked his life and his happiness on the miserable productions of his pen. The agonies of a disappointed author cannot, indeed, be contemplated without pain. If they can instruct, the following quotation will have its use. Among the innumerable productions of Stockdale, was a " History of Gibraltar," which might have been interesting, from his having resided there : in a moment of despair, like Medea, he immolated his unfortunate offspring. " When I had arrived at within a day's work of its conclu- sion, in consequence of some immediate and mortifying acci- dents, my literary adversity, and all my other misfortunes, took fast hold of my mind ; oppressed it extremely ; and reduced it to a stage of the deepest dejection and despondency. In this unhappy view of life, I made a sudden resolution never more to prosecute the profession of an author; to retire altogether from the world, and read only for consolation and amusement. I committed to the flames my History of Gib- The Illusions of Writers in Verse. 223 raltar and my translation of Marsollier^s Life of Cardinal Ximenes ; for which the bookseller had refused to pay me the fifty guineas, according to agreement." This claims a tear ! Never were the agonies of literary dis- appointment more pathetically told. But as it is impossible to have known poor deluded Stock- dale, and not to have laughed at him more than to have wept for him so the catastrophe of this author's literary life is as finely in character as all the acts. That catastrophe, of course, is his last poem. After many years his poetical demon having been chained from the world, suddenly broke forth on the reports of a French invasion. The narrative shall proceed in his own inimitable manner. " My poetical spirit excited me to write my poem of ' The Invincible Island.' I never found myself in a happier disposi- tion to compose, nor ever wrote with more pleasure. I pre- sumed warmly to hope that unless inveterate prejudice and malice were as invincible as our island itself, it would have the diffusive circulation which I earnestly desired. " Flushed with this idea borne impetuously along by am- bition and by hope, though they had often deluded me, I set off in the mail-coach from Durham for London, on the 9th of December, 1797, at midnight, and in a severe storm. On my arrival in town my poem was advertised, printed, and published with great expedition. It was printed for Clarke in New Bond-street. For several days the sale was very promising ; and my bookseller as well as myself entertained sanguine hopes ; but the demand for the poem relaxed gradually I From this last of many literary misfortunes, I inferred that prejudice and malignity, in my fate as an author, seemed, indeed, to be invincible." The catastrophe of the poet is much better told than any- thing in the poem, which had not merit enough to support that interest which the temporary subject had excited. Let the fate of Stockdale instruct some, and he will not have written in vain the " Memoirs of his Life and Writings." I have only turned the literary feature to our eye ; it was com- bined with others, equally striking, from the same mould in which that was cast. Stockdale imagined he possessed an intuitive knowledge of human nature. He says, " everything that constituted my nature, my acquirements, my habits, and my fortune, conspired to let in upon me a complete knowledge 224 Calamities of Authors. of human nature." A most striking proof of this knowledge is his parallel, after the manner of Plutarch, between Charles XII. and himself! He frankly confesses there were some points in which he and the Swedish monarch did not exactly resemble each other. He thinks, for instance, that the King of Sweden had a somewhat more fervid and original genius than himself, and was likewise a little more robust in his person but, subjoins Stockdale, " Of our reciprocal fortune, achievements, and conduct, some parts will be to his advantage, and some to mine." Yet in regard to Fame, the main object between him and Charles XII., Stockdale imagined that his own " Will not probably take its fixed and immoveable station, and shine with its expanded and permanent splendour, till it consecrates his ashes, till it illumines his tomb !" POPE hesitated at deciding on the durability of his poetry-. PRIOR congratulates himself that he had not devoted all his days to rhymes. STOCKDALE imagines his fame is to com- mence at the very point (the tomb) where genius trembles its own may nearly terminate ! To close this article, I could wish to regale the poetical Stockdales with a delectable morsel of fraternal biography ; such would be the life, and its memorable close, of ELKANAH SETTLE, who imagined himself to be a great poet, when he was placed on a level with Dryden by the town-wits, (gentle spirits !) to vex genius. Settle's play of The Empress of Morocco was the very first " adorned with sculptures."* However, in due time, the * It was published in quarto in 1673, and has engravings of the prin- cipal scene in each act, and a frontispiece representing the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens, where it was first acted publicly ; it had been played twice at court before this, by noble actors, " persons of such birth and honour," says Settle, "that they borrowed no greatness from the characters they acted." The prologues were written by Lords Mulgrave and Rochester, and the utmost tclat given to the five long acts of rhyming bombast, which was declared superior to any work of Dryden's. As City Poet afterwards, Settle composed the pageants, speeches, and songs for the Lord Mayor's Shows from 1691 to 1708. Towards the close of his career he became im- poverished, and wrote from necessity on all subjects. One of his plays, com- posed for Mrs. Mynns' booth in Bartholomew Fair, has been twice printed, though both editions are now uncommonly rare. It is called the ' ' Siege of Troy ;" and its popularity is attested by Hogarth's print of Southwark Fair, where outside of Lee and Harper's great theatrical booth is exhibited a painting of the Trojan horse, and the announcement " The Siege of Troy is here." ED. The Illusions of Writers in Verse. 225 Whigs despising his rhymes, Settle tried his prose for the Tories ; but he was a magician whose enchantments never charmed. He at length obtained the office of the city poet, when lord mayors were proud enough to have laureates in their annual pageants. When Elkanah Settle published any party poem, he sent copies round to the chiefs of the party, accompanied with addresses, to extort pecuniary presents. He had latterly one standard Elegy and Epithalamium printed off with blanks, which, by the ingenious contrivance of filling up with the names of any considerable person who died or was married, no one who was going out of life or entering it could pass scot-free from the tax levied by his hacknied muse. The fol- lowing letter accompanied his presentation copy to the D\ike of Somerset, of a poem, in Latin and English, on the Hanover succession, when Elkanah wrote for the Whigs, as he had for the Tories : " SIR, Nothing but the greatness of the subject could encourage my presumption in laying the enclosed Essay at your Grace's feet, being, with all profound humility, your Grace's most dutiful servant, " E. SETTLE." In the latter part of his life Settle dropped still lower, and became the poet of a booth at Bartholomew Fair, and composed drolls, for which the rival of Dryden, it seems, had a genius ! but it was little respected for two great personages, " Mrs. Mynns and her daughter, Mrs. Leigh," approving of their great poet's happy invention in one of his own drolls, " St. George for England," of a green dragon, as large as life, in- sisted, as the tyrant of old did to the inventor of the brazen bull, that the first experiment should be made on the artist himself, and Settle was tried in his own dragon ; he crept in with all his genius, and did " act the dragon, enclosed in a case of green leather of his own invention." The circumstance is recorded in the lively verse of Young, in his " Epistle to Pope concerning the authors of the age." Poor Elkanah, all other changes past, For bread in Smithfield dragons hiss'd at last, Spit streams of fire to make the batchers gape, And found his manners suited to his shape ; Such is the fate of talents misapplied, So lived your prototype, and so he died. Q QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; OR, SOME MEMOIRS FOR OUR LITERARY HISTORY. "The use and end of this Work I do not so much design for curiosity, or satis- faction of those that are the lovers of learning, but chiefly for a more grave and serious purpose : which is, that it will make learned men true in the use and admi- nistration of learning." LORD BACON, " Of Learning." PREFACE. THE QTJABBELS or AUTHOBS may be considered as a con- tinuation of the CALAMITIES OF ATJTHOBS ; and both, as some Memoirs for Literary History. These Quarrels of Authors are not designed to wound the Literary Character, but to expose the secret arts of calumny, the malignity of witty ridicule, and the evil prepossessions of unjust hatreds. The present, like the preceding work, includes other subjects than the one indicated by the title, and indeed they are both subservient to a higher purpose that of our Literary History. There is a French work, entitled " Querelles Litteraires," quoted in " Curiosities of Literature," many years ago. Whether I derive the idea of the present from the French source I cannot tell. I could point out a passage in the great Lord BACON which might have afforded the hint. But I am inclined to think that what induced me to select this topic was the interest which JOHNSON has given to the literary quarrels between Dryden and Settle, Dennis and Addison, &c. ; and which Sir WAI/TEB SCOTT, who, amid the fresh creations of fancy, could delve for the buried truths of research, has thrown into his narrative of the quarrel of Dryden and Luke Melbourne. From the French work I could derive no aid ; and my plan is my own. I have fixed on each literary controversy to illustrate some principle, to portray some character, and to investigate some topic. Almost every controversy which occurred opened new views. With the subject, the character 230 Preface. of the author connected itself ; and with the character were associated those events of his life which reciprocally act on each other. I have always considered an author as a human being, who possesses at once two sorts of lives, the intellec- tual and the vulgar : in his books we trace the history of his mind, and in his actions those of human nature. It is this combination which interests the philosopher and the man of feeling ; which provides the richest materials for reflection ; and all those original details which spring from the constituent principles of man. JOHNSON'S passion for literary history, and his great knowledge of the human heart, inspired at once the first and the finest model in this class of com- position. The Philosophy of Literary History was indeed the crea- tion of BAYLE. He was the first who, by attempting a criti- cal dictionary, taught us to think, and to be curious and vast in our researches. He ennobled a collection of facts by his reasonings, and exhibited them with the most miscellaneous illustrations ; and thus conducting an apparently humble pur- suit with a higher spirit, he gave a new turn to our studies. It was felt through Europe; and many celebrated authors studied and repeated BAYLE. This father of a numerous race has an English as well as a French progeny. JOHNSON wrote under many disadvantages; but, with scanty means, he has taught us a great end. Dr. BIRCH was the contemporary of JOHNSON. He excelled his predecessors ; and yet he forms a striking contrast as a literary historian. BIECH was no philosopher, and I adduce him as an instance how a writer, possessing the most ample knowledge, and the most vigilant curiosity one practised in all the secret arts of literary research in public repositories and in private collec- tions, and eminently skilled in the whole science of biblio- graphymay yet fail with the public. The diligence of BIRCH has perpetuated his memory by a monument of MSS., but his touch was mortal to genius ! He palsied the character Preface. 231 which could never die ; heroes sunk pusillanimously under his hand ; and in his torpid silence, even MILTON seemed suddenly deprived of his genius. I have freely enlarged in the notes to this work ; a practice which is objectionable to many, but indispensable perhaps in this species of literary history. The late Mr. CUMBERLAND, in a conversation I once held with him on this subject, triumphantly exclaimed, " You will not find a single note through the whole volume of my ' Life.' I never wrote a note. The ancients never wrote notes ; but they introduced into their text all which was proper for the reader to know." I agreed with that elegant writer, that a fine piece of essay- writing, such as his own " Life," required notes no more than his novels and his comedies, among which it may be classed. I observed that the ancients had no literary history; this was the result of the discovery of printing, the institution of national libraries, the general literary intercourse of Europe, and some other causes which are the growth almost of our own times. The ancients have written history without pro- ducing authorities. Mr. CUMBERLAND was then occupied on a review of Fox's History ; and of CLARENDON, which lay open before him, he had been complaining, with all the irritable feelings of a dramatist, of the frequent suspensions, and the tedious minute- ness of his story. T observed that notes had not then been discovered. Had Lord CLARENDON known their use, he had preserved the unity of design in his text. His Lordship has unskilfully filled it with all that historical furniture his diligence had collected, and with those minute discussions which his anxiety for truth, and his lawyer-like mode of scrutinising into facts and sub- stantiating evidence, amassed. Had these been cast into notes, and were it now possible to pass them over in the pre- sent text, how would the story of the noble historian clear up ! 232 Preface. The greatness of his genius will appear when disencumbered of its unwieldy and misplaced accompaniments. If this observation be just, it will apply with greater force to literary history itself, which, being often the mere history of the human mind, has to record opinions as well as events to discuss as well as to narrate to show how accepted truths become suspicious or to confirm what has hitherto rested in obscure uncertainty, and to balance contending opinions and opposite facts with critical nicety. The multiplied means of our knowledge now opened to us, have only rendered our curiosity more urgent in its claims, and raised up the most diversified objects. These, though accessories to the leading one of our inquiries, can never melt together in the continuity of a text. It is to prevent all this disorder, and to enjoy all the usefulness and the pleasure of this various knowledge, which has produced the invention of notes in literary history. All this forms a sort of knowledge peculiar to the present more enlarged state of literature. Writers who delight in curious and rare extracts, and in the discovery of new facts and new views of things, warmed by a fervour of research which brings everything nearer to our eye and close to our touch, study to throw contemporary feelings in their page. Such rare extracts and such new facts BATLE eagerly sought, and they delighted JOHNSON ; but all this luxury of literature can only be produced to the public eye in the variegated forms of notes. WARBURTON, AND HIS QUARRELS; INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATION OP HIS LITERARY CHARACTER. The name of Warburton more familiar to us than his Works declared to be "a Colossus" by a Warburtonian, who afterwards shrinks the image into "a human size" Lowth's caustic retort on his Attorneyship motives for the change to Divinity his first literary mischances War- burton and his Welsh Prophet his Dedications his mean flatteries his taste more struck by the monstrous than the beautiful the effects of his opposite studies the SECRET PRINCIPLE which conducted Warburton through all his Works the curious argument of his Alliance between Church and State the bold paradox of his Divine Legation the de- monstration ends in a conjecture Warburton lost in the labyrinth he had ingeniously constructed confesses the harassed state of his mind attacked by Infidels and Christians his SECRET PRINCIPLE turns the poetical narrative of tineas into the Eleusinian Mysteries Hurd attacks Jortin ; his Attic irony translated into plain English Warburton's para- dox on Eloquence ; his levity of ideas renders his sincerity suspected Leland refutes the whimsical paradox Hurd attacks Leland Leland's noble triumph Warburton's SECRET PRINCIPLE operating in Modern Literature : on Pope's Essay on Man Lord Bolingbroke the author of the Essay Pope received Warburton as his tutelary genius Warburton's systematic treatment of his friends and rival editors his literary artifices and little intrigues his Shakspeare the whimsical labours of Warbur- ton on Shakspeare annihilated by Edwards's "Canons of Criticism" Warburton and Johnson Edwards and Warburton's mutual attacks the concealed motive of his edition of Shakspeare avowed in his justifica- tion his SECRET PRINCIPLE further displayed in Pope's Works attacks Akenside ; Dyson's generous defence correct Ridicule is a test of Truth, illustrated by a well-known case Warburton a literary revolutionist ; aimed to be a perpetual dictator the ambiguous tendency of his specu- lations the Warburtonian School supported by the most licentious prin- ciples specimens of its peculiar style the use to which Warburton applied the Dunciad his party : attentive to raise recruits the active and subtle Hurd his extreme sycophancy Warburton, to maintain his usurped authority, adopted his system of literary quarrels. THE name of WAEBURTON is more familiar to us than his works : thus was it early,* thus it continues, and thus it will * One of his lively adversaries, the author of the " Canons of Criticism," observed the difficulty of writing against an author whose reputation so 234 Quarrels of Authors. be with posterity ! The cause may be worth our inquiry. Nor is there, in the whole compass of our literary history, a character more instructive for its greatness and its failures ; none more adapted to excite our curiosity, and which can more completely gratify it. Of great characters, whose actions are well known, and of those who, whatever claim they may have to distinction, are not so, AEISTOTLE has delivered a precept with his accustomed sagacity. If Achilles, says the Stagirite, be the subject of our inquiries, since all know what he has done, we are simply to indicate his actions, without stopping to detail ; but this would not serve for Critias ; for whatever relates to him must be fully told, since he is known to few ;* a critical precept, which ought to be frequently applied in the compo- sition of this work. The history of Warburton is now well known, the facts lie dispersed in the chronological biographer ;f but the secret connexion which exists between them, if there shall be found to be any, has not yet been brought out; and it is my busi- ness to press these together ; hence to demonstrate prin- ciples, or to deduce inferences. The literary fame of Warburton was a portentous meteor : it seemed unconnected with the whole planetary system through which it rolled, and it was imagined to be darting amid new creations, as the tail of each hypothesis blazed with idle fancies.]; Such extraordinary natures cannot be looked on with calm admiration, nor common hostility ; all is the tumult of wonder about such a man ; and his adversaries, as well as his friends, though differently affected, are often over- come by the same astonishment. To a Warburtonian, the object of his worship looks indeed of colossal magnitude, in the glare thrown about that hal- much exceeded the knowledge of his works. " It is my misfortune," says EDWARDS, " in this controversy, to be engaged with a person who is better known by his name than his works ; or, to speak more properly, whose works are more known than read." Preface to the Canons of Criticism. " Aristotle's Rhetoric, B. III. c. 16. t The materials for a " Life of Warburton " have been arranged by Mr. NICHOLS with his accustomed fidelity. See his Literary Anecdotes. + It is probable I may have drawn my meteor from our volcanic author himself, who had his lucid moments, even in the deliriums of his imagina- tion. Warburton has rightly observed, in his " Divine Legation," p. 203, that "Systems, Schemes, and Hypotheses, all bred of heat, in the warm regions of Controversy, like meteors in a troubled sky, have each its turn to blaze and/y away." Warburton. 235 lowed spot ; nor is the divinity of common stature ; but the light which makes him appear so great, must not be suffered to conceal from us the real standard by which only his great- ness can be determined :* even literary enthusiasm, delightful to all generous tempers, may be too prodigal of its splendours, wasting itself while it shines; but truth remains behind! Truth, which, like the asbestos, is still unconsumed and un- altered amidst these glowing fires. The genius of Warburton has called forth two remarkable * It seems, even by the confession of a Warburtonian, that his master was of " a human size ;" for when Bishop LOWTH rallies the Warburtonians for their subserviency and credulity to their master, he aimed a gentle stroke at Dr. BROWN, who, in his "Essays on the Characteristics," had poured forth the most vehement panegyric. In his " Estimate of Manners of the Times, " too, after a long tirade of their badness in regard to taste and learning, he thus again eulogizes his mighty master : " Himself is abused, and his friends insulted for his sake, by those who never read his writings ; or, if they did, could neither taste nor comprehend them ; while every little aspiring or despairing scribbler eyes him as Cassius did Caesar : and whispers to his fellow ' Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus ; and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves.' No wonder, then, if the malice of the Lilliputian tribe be bent against this dreaded GULLIVER ; if they attack him with poisoned arrows, whom they cannot subdue by strength." On this Lowth observes, that "this Lord Paramount in his pretensions doth bestride the narrow world of literature, and has cast out his shoe over all the regions of science." This leads to a ludicrous comparison of Warburton, with King Pichrochole and his three ministers, who, in URQU- HART'S admirable version of the French wit, are Count Merdaille, the Duke of Smalltrash, and the Earl Swashbuckler, who set up for universal monarchy, and made an imaginary expedition through all the quarters of the world, as Rabelais records, and the bishop facetiously quotes. Dr. Brown afterwards seemed to repent his panegyric, and contrives to make his gigantic hero shrink into a moderate size. " I believe still, every little aspiring fellow continues thus to eye him. For myself, I have ever con- sidered him as a man, yet considerable among his species, as the following part of the paragraph clearly demonstrates. I speak of him here as a Gulliver indeed ; yet still of no more than human size, and only appre- hended to be of colossal magnitude by certain of his Lilliputian enemies." Thus subtilely would poor Dr. Brown save appearances ! It must be con- fessed that, in a dilemma, never was a giant got rid of so easily ! The plain truth, however, was, that Brown was then on the point of quarrelling with Warburton ; for he laments, in a letter to a friend, that " he had not avoided all personal panegyric. I had thus saved myself the trouble of setting right a character which I far over-painted." A part of this letter is quoted in the "Biographia Britannica." 236 Quarrels of Authors. anonymous criticisms in one, all that the most splendid eloquence can bring to bear against this chief and his adherents ;* and in the other, all that taste, warmed by a spark of Warburtonian fire, can discriminate in an impartial decision. t Mine is a colder and less grateful task. I am but a historian ! I have to creep along in the darkness of human events, to lay my hand cautiously on truths so diffi- cult to touch, and which either the panegyrist or the writer of an invective cover over, and throw aside into corners. * " Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian, not admitted into the collections of their respective works," itself a collection which our shelves could ill spare, though maliciously republished by Dr. PARR. The dedica- tion by Parr stands unparalleled for comparative criticism. It is the eruption of a volcano ; it sparkles, it blazes, and scatters light and destruc- tion. How deeply ought we to regret that this Nazarite suffered his strength to be shorn by the Delilahs of spurious fame. Never did this man, with his gifted strength, grasp the pillars of a temple, to shake its atoms over Philistines ; but pleased the child- like simplicity of his mind by palling down houses over the heads of their unlucky inhabitants. He consumed, in local and personal literary quarrels, a genius which might have made the next age his own. With all the stores of erudition, and all the eloquence of genius, he mortified a country parson for his politics, and a London accoucheur for certain obstetrical labours performed on Horace ; and now his collected writings lie before us, volumes unsaleable and unread. His insatiate vanity was so little delicate, as often to snatch its sweetmeat from a foul plate ; it now appears, by the secret revelations in Griffith's own copy of his "Monthly Review," that the writer of a very elaborate article on the works of Dr. Parr, was no less a personage than the Doctor him- self. His egotism was so declamatory, that it unnaturalized a great mind, by the distortions of Johnsonian mimicry ; his fierceness, which was pushed on to brutality on the unresisting, retreated with a child's terrors when resisted ; and the pomp of petty pride in table triumphs and evening circles, ill compensated for the lost century be might have made his own ! Lord o'er the greatest, to the least a slave, Half- weak, half-strong, half-timid, and half -brave ; To take a compliment of too much pride, And yet most hurt when praises are denied. Thou art so deep discerning, yet so blind, So learn' d, so ignorant, cruel, yet so kind ; So good, so bad, so foolish, and so wise ; By turns I love thee, and by turns despise. MS. ANON, (said to be by the late Dr. HOMER.) t The "Quarterly Review," vol. vii. p. 383. So masterly a piece of criticism has rarely surprised the public in the leaves of a periodical publi- cation. It comes, indeed, with the feelings of another age, and the remi- niscences of the old and vigorous school. I cannot implicitly adopt all the sentiments of the critic, but it exhibits a highly-finished portrait, enamelled by the love of the artist. This article was written by the late Dr. Whitaker, the historian of Craven, &c. Warburton. 237 Much of the moral, and something too of the physical dis- positions of the man enter into the literary character ; and, moreover, there are localities the place where he resides, the circumstances which arise, and the habits he contracts ; to all these the excellences and the defects of some of our great literary characters may often be traced. With this clue we may thread our way through the labyrinth of Genius. Warburton long resided in an obscure provincial town, the articled clerk of a country attorney,* and then an unsuc- * When Warburton, sore at having been refused academical honours at Oxford, which were offered to Pope, then his fellow-traveller, and who, in consequence of this refusal, did himself not accept them in his controversy with Lowth (then the Oxford Professor), gave way to his angry spirit, and struck at the University itself, for its political Jesuitism, being a place where men "were taught to distinguish between de facto and de jure," caustic was the retort. Lowth, by singular felicity of application, touched on Warburton's original designation, in a character he hit on in Clarendon. After remonstrating with spirit and dignity on this petulant attack, which was not merely personal, Lowth continues : "Had I not your lordship's example to justify me, I should think it a piece of extreme impertinence to inquire where YOU were bred ; though one might justly plead, in excuse for it, a natural curiosity to know where and how such a phenomenon was pro- duced. It is commonly said that your lordship's education was of that particular kind, concerning which it is a remark of that great judge of men and manners, Lord Clarendon (on whom you have, therefore, with a won- derful happiness of allusion, justness of application, and elegance of expres- sion, conferred 'the unrivalled title of the Chancellor of Human Nature'), that it peculiarly disposes men to be proud, insolent, and pragmatical." Lowth, in a note, inserts Clarendon's character of Colonel Harrison : "He had been bred up in the place of a clerk, under a lawyer of good account in those parts ; which kind of education introduces men into the language and practice of business ; and if it be not resisted by the great ingenuity of the person, inclines young men to more pride than any other kind of breeding, and disposes them to be pragmatical and insolent." "Now, my lord (Lowth continues), as you have in your whole behaviour, and in all your writings, remarkably distinguished yourself by your humility, lenity, meek- ness, forbearance, candour, humanity, civility, decency, good manners, good temper, moderation with regard to the opinions of others, and a modest diffidence of your own, this unpromising circumstance of your edu- cation is so far from being a disgrace to you, that it highly redounds to your praise." LowiKs Letter to the Author of the D, L. p. 63. Was ever weapon more polished and keen ? This Attic style of contro- versy finely contrasts with the tasteless and fierce invective of the Warbur- tonians, although one of them is well known to have managed too adroitly the cutting instrument of irony ; but the frigid malignancy of Hurd diminishes the pleasure we might find in his skill. Warburton ill concealed his vexation in the contempt he vented in a letter to Hurd on this occasion. " All you say about Lowth s pamphlet breathes the purest spirit of friend- ship. His wit and his reasoning, Grod knows, and I also, (as a certain 238 Quarrels of Authors. cessful practising one. He seems, too, once to have figured as " a wine-merohant in the Borough," and rose into notice as " the orator of a disputing club ;" but, in all his shapes, still keen in literary pursuits, without literary connexions ; struggling with all the defects of a desultory and self-taught education, but of a bold aspiring character, he rejected, either in pride or in despair, his little trades, and took Deacon's orders to exchange a profession, unfavourable to continuity of study, for another more propitious to its indulgence.* In critic said once in a matter of the like great importance), are much below the qualities that deserve those names." He writes too of "this man's boldness in publishing his letters. " "If he expects an answer, he will certainly find himself disappointed ; though I believe I could make as good sport with this devil of a vice, for the public diversion, as ever was made with him in the old Moralities." But Warburton did reply ! Had he ever possessed one feeling of taste, never would he have figured the elegant Lowth as this grotesque personage. He was, however, at that moment sharply stung ! This circumstance of Attorneyship was not passed over in Mallet's " Familiar Epistle to the Most Impudent Man Living." Comparing, in the spirit of "familiarity," Arnall, an impudent scribbling attorney and poli- tical scribe, with Warburton, he says, " You have been an attorney as well as he, but a little more impudent than he was ; for Arnall never presumed to conceal his turpitude under the gown and the scarf." But this is mere invective ! * I have given a tempered opinion of his motive for this sudden conver- sion from Attorneyship to Divinity ; for it must not be concealed, in our inquiry into Warburton's character, that he has frequently been accused of a more worldly one. He was so fierce an advocate for some important causes he undertook, that his sincerity has been liable to suspicion ; the pleader, in some points, certainly acting the part of a sophist. Were we to decide by the early appearances of his conduct, by the rapid change of his profession, by his obsequious servility to his country squire, and by what have been termed the hazardous "fooleries in criticism, and outrages in controversy," which he systematically pursued, he looks like one not in earnest, and more zealous to maintain the character of his own genius, than the cause he had espoused. Leland once exclaimed, " What are we to think of the writer and his intentions ? Is he really sincere in his reasonings ?" Certain it is, his paradoxes often alarmed his friends, to repeat the words of a great critic, by "the absurdity of his criticism, the heterodoxy of his tenets, and the brutality of his invectives." Our Juvenal, who, whatever might be the vehemence of his declamation, reflected always those opinions which floated about him, has drawn a full-length figure. He accounts for Warburton's early motive in taking the cassock, as being 11 thereto drawn By some faint omens of the Lawn, And on the truly Christian plan, To make himself a gentleman ; Warburton. 239 a word, he set off as a literary adventurer, who was to win his way by earning it from patronage. His first mischances were not of a nature to call forth that intrepidity which afterwards hardened into the leading feature of his character. Few great authors have begun their A title, in which Form arrayed him, Tho' Fate ne'er thought of when she made him. To make himself a man of note, He in defence of Scripture wrote : So long he wrote, and long about it, That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it. He wrote too of the Holy Ghost ; Of whom, no more than doth a post, He knew ; nor, should an angel show him, Would he or know, or choose to know him." CHURCHILL'S "Duellist." I would not insinuate that Warburton is to be ranked among the class he so loudly denounced, that of "Free-thinkers;" his mind, warm with imagination, seemed often tinged with credulity. But from his want of sober-mindedness, we cannot always prove his earnestness in the cause he advocated. He often sports with his fancies ; he breaks out into the most familiar levity ; and maintains, too broadly, subtile and refined principles, which evince more of the political than the primitive Christian. It is cer- tain his infidelity was greatly suspected ; and Hurd, to pass over the stigma of Warburton's sudden conversion to the Church, insinuates that " an early seriousness of mind determined him to the ecclesiastical profession." "It may be so," says the critic in the " Quarterly Review," no languid admirer of this great man ; " but the symptoms of that seriousness were very equivocal afterwards; and the certainty of an early provision, from a generous patron in the country, may perhaps be considered by those who are disposed to assign human conduct to ordinary motives, as quite adequate to the effect." Dr. Parr is indignant at such surmises ; but the feeling is more honour- able than the decision ! In an admirable character of Warburton in the "Westminster Magazine" for 1779, it is acknowledged, "at his outset in life he was suspected of being inclined to infidelity ; and it was not till many years had elapsed, that the orthodoxy of his opinions was generally assented to." On this Dr. Parr observes, "Why Dr. Warburton was ever suspected of secret infidelity I know not. What he was inclined to think on subjects of religion, before, perhaps, he had leisure or ability to exa- mine them, depends only upon obscure surmise, or vague report." The words inclined to think seems a periphrase for secret infidelity. Our critic attributes these reports to "an English dunce, whose blunders and calumnies are now happily forgotten, and repeated by a French buffoon, whose morality is not commensurate with his wit." Tracts by Warburton, &c., p. 186. "The English Dunce" I do not recollect; of this sort there are so many ! Voltaire is ' ' the French buffoon ;" who, indeed, compares War- burton in his bishopric, to Peachum in the Beggar's Opera who, as Keeper of Newgate, was for hanging all his old accomplices ! 240 Quarrels of Authors. race with less auspicious omens, though an extraordinary event in the life of an author happened to Warburton he had secured a patron before he was an author. The first publication of his which we know, was his "Translations in Prose and Verse from Roman Poets, Orators, and Historians." 1724. He was then about twenty-five years of age. The fine forms of classic beauty could never be cast in so rough a mould as his prose ; and his turgid unmusical verses betrayed qualities of mind incompatible with the delicacy of poetry. Four years afterwards he repeated another bolder attempt, in his " Critical and Philosophical Inquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles." After this publication, I wonder Warburton was ever suspected of infidelity or even scepticism.* So radically deficient in War- * Warburton was far more extravagant in a later attempt which he made to expound the odd visions of a crack-brained Welshman, a prophesying knave ; a knave by his own confession, and a prophet by Warburton's. This commentary, inserted in Jortin's " Remarks on Ecclesiastical His- tory," considerably injured the reputation of Jortin. The story of War- burton and his Welsh Prophet would of itself be sufficient to detect the shiftings and artifices of his genius. RICE or AKISE EVANS ! was one of the many prophets who rose up in Oliver's fanatical days ; and Warburton had the hardihood to insert, in Jortin's learned work, a strange commentary to prove that Arise Evans, in Cromwell's time, in his " Echo from Heaven," had manifestly prophesied the Hanoverian Succession! The Welshman was a knave by his own account in subscribing with his right hand the con- fession he calls his prophecy, before a justice, and with his left, that which was his recantation, signed before the recorder, adding, "I know the bench and the people thought I recanted ; but, alas ! they were deceived ;" and this Warburton calls " an uncommon fetch of wit," to save the truth of the prophecy, though not the honour of the prophet. If Evans meant anything, he meant what was then floating in all men's minds, the probable restoration of the Stuarts. By this prelude of that inventive genius which afterwards commented, in the same spirit, on the Jineid of Virgil, and the "Divine Legation, itself," and made the same sort of discoveries, he fixed himself in this dilemma : either Wai burton was a greater impostor than Arise Evans, or he was more credulous than even any follower of the Welsh prophet, if he really had any. But the truth is, that Warburton was always writing for a present purpose, and believed, and did not believe, as it happened. " Ordinary men believe one side of a contradiction at a time, whereas his lordship" (says his admirable antagonist) "frequently be- lieves, or at least defends both. So that it would have been no great wonder if he should maintain that Evans was both a real prophet and an impostor." Yet this is not the only awkward attitude into which Warburton has here thrown himself. To strain the vision of the raving Welshman to events of which he could have no notion, Warburton has plunged into the most ludicrous difficulties, all which ended, as all his discoveries have done, in making the fortune of an adversary who, like the Momus of Homer, Warburton. 241 burton was that fine internal feeling which we call taste, that through his early writings he acquired not one solitary charm of diction,* and scarcely betrayed, amid his impurity of taste, that nerve and spirit which afterwards crushed all rival force. His translations in imitation of Milton's style betray his utter want of ear and imagination. He attempted to suppress both these works during his lifetime. When these unlucky productions were republished by Dr. Parr, the Dedications were not forgotten ; they were both addressed to the same opulent baronet, 'not omitting " the virtues" o.f his lady the Countess of Sunderland, whose mar- riage he calls " so divine a union." Warburton had shown no want of judgment in the choice of his patrons ; for they had more than one living in their gift and perhaps, knowing his patrons, none in the dedications themselves. They had, however, this absurdity, that in freely exposing the servile practices of dedicators, the writer was himself indulging in that luxurious sin, which he so forcibly terms " Public Pros- titution." This early management betrays no equivocal symptoms of that traffic in Dedications, of which he has been has raised through the skies "inextinguishable laughter," in the amusing tract of "Confusion worse Confounded, Rout on Rout, or the Bishop of G 's Commentary on Arise Evans ; by ludignatio." 1772. The writer was the learned Henry Taylor, the author of Ben Mordecai's Apology. * The correct taste of Lowth with some humour describes the last sen- tence of the "Enquiry on Prodigies" as "the Musa Pedestris got on horseback in a high prancing style." He printed it in measured lines, without, however, changing the place of a single word, and it produced blank verse. Thus it reads " Methinks I see her like the mighty Eagle renewing her immortal youth, and purging her opening sight at the unobstructed beams of our benign meridian Sun," &c. Such a glowing metaphor, in the uncouth prose of Warburton, startled Lowth's classical ear. It was indeed "the Musa Pedestris who had got on horseback in a high prancing style ;" for as it has since been pointed out, it is a well-known passage towards the close of the Areopagitica of Milton, whose prose is so often purely poetical. See Birch's Edition of Milton's Prose Works, I. 158. Warburton was familiarly conversant with our great vernacular writers at a time when their names generally were better known than their works, and when it was considered safe to pillage their most glorious passages. Warbnrton has been convicted of snatching their purple patches, and sewing them into his coarser web, without any acknowledgment ; he did this in the present remarkable instance, and at a later day, in the preface to his " Julian," he laid violent hands on one of Raleigh's splendid metaphors. B 242 Quarrels of Authors. so severely accused,* and of that paradoxical turn and hardy effrontery which distinguished his after-life. These dedications led to preferment, and thus hardily was laid the foundation- stone of his aspiring fortunes. * When Warburton was considered as a Colossus of literature, RALPH, the political writer, pointed a severe allusion to the awkward figure he makes in these Dedications. "The Colossus himself creeps between the legs of the late Sir Robert Sutton ; in what posture, or for what purpose, need not be explained." CHURCHILL has not passed by unnoticed Warburton's humility, even to weakness, combined with pride which could rise to haughtiness. "He was so proud, that should lie meet The twelve apostles in the street, He'd turn his nose up at them all, And shove his Saviour from the wall." Yet this man ' ' Fawned through all his life For patrons first, then for a wife ; Wrote Dedications, which must make The heart of every Christian quake." The Duellist. It is certain that the proud and supercilious Warburton long crouched and fawned. MALLET, at least, well knew all that passed between War- burton and Pope. In the " Familiar Epistle" he asserts that Warburton was introduced to Pope by his "nauseous flattery." A remarkable in- stance, besides the dedications we have noticed, occurred in his correspon- dence with Sir Thomas Hanrner. He did not venture to attack " The Oxford Editor," as he sarcastically distinguishes him, without first de- manding back his letters, which were immediately returned, from Sir Thomas's high sense of honour. Warburton might otherwise have been shown strangely to contradict himself, for in these letters he had been most lavish of his flatteries and encomiums on the man whom he covered with ridicule in the preface to his Shakspeare. See "An Answer to certain Passages in Mr. W.'s Preface to Shakspeare," 1748. His dedication to the plain unlettered Ralph Allen of Bath, his greatest of patrons, of his "Commentary on Pope's Essay on Man," is written in the same spirit as those to Sir Robert Sutton ; but the former unlucky gen- tleman was more publicly exposed by it. The subject of this dedication turns on " the growth and progress of Fate, divided into four principal branches !" There is an episode about Free-will and Nature and Grace, and ' ' a con- trivance of Leibnitz about Fatalism." Ralph Allen was a good Quaker- like man, but he must have lost his temper if he ever read the dedication ! Let us not, however, imagine that Warburton was at all insensible to this violation of literary decorum ; he only sacrificed propriety to what he con- sidered a more urgent principle his own personal interest. No one had a juster conception of the true nature of dedications ; for he says in the famous one "to the Free-thinkers :" " I could never r.pprove the custom of dedicating books to men whose professions made them strangers to the sub- ject. A Discourse on the Ten Predicaments to a Leader of Armies, or a System of Casuistry to a Minister of State, always appeared to me a high absurdity." All human characters are mixed true ! yet still we feel indignant to dis- Warburton. 243 Till his thirtieth year, Warburton evinced a depraved taste, but a craving appetite for knowledge. His mind was consti- tuted to be more struck by the Monstrous than the Beautiful, much like that Sicilian prince who furnished his villa with the most hideous figures imaginable :* the delight resulting from harmonious and delicate forms raised emotions of too weak a nature to move his obliquity of taste ; roused, how- ever, by the surprise excited by colossal ugliness. The disco- very of his intellectual tastes, at this obscure period of his life, besides in those works we have noticed, is confirmed by one of the most untoward accidents which ever happened to a literary man ; it was the chance-discovery of a letter he had written to one of the heroes of the Dunciad, forty years be- cover some of the greatest often combining the most opposite qualities ; and then they are not so much mixed as the parts are naturally joined together. Could one imagine that so lofty a character as Warburton could have been liable to have incurred even the random stroke of the satirist ? whether true or false, the events of his life, better known at this day than in his own, will show. Churchill says that 1 ' He could cringe and creep, be civil, And hold a stirrup to the devil, If, in a, journey to his mind, He'd let him mount, and ride behind." The author of the "Canons of Criticism," with all his sprightly sar- casm, gives a history of Warburton's later Dedications. "The first edi- tion of ' The Alliance' came out without a dedication, but was presented to the bishops ; and when nothing came of that, the second was addressed to both the Universities ; and when nothing came of that, the third was dedicated to a noble Earl, and nothing has yet come of that." Appendix to " Canons of Criticism," seventh edit. 261. * The palace here alluded to is fully described in a volume of " Travels through Sicily and Malta," by P. Brydone, F.R.S., in 1770. He describes it as belonging to ' ' the Prince of Palermo, a man of immense fortune, who has devoted his whole life to the study of monsters and chimeras, greater and more ridiculous than ever entered into the imagination of the wildest writers of romance and knight-errantry." He tells us this palace was surrounded by an army of statues, "not one made to represent any object in nature. He has put the heads of men to the bodies of every sort of animal, and the heads of every other animal to the bodies of men. Sometimes he makes a compound of five or six animals that have no sort of resemblance in nature. He puts the head of a lion on the neck of a goose, the body of a lizard, the legs of a goat, the tail of a fox ; on the back of this monster he puts another, if possible still more hideous, with five or six heads, and a bush of horns. There is no kind of horn in the world he has not collected, and his pleasure is to see them all flourish- ing upon the same head." The interior of the house was decorated in the same monstrous style, and the description, unique of its kind, occupies seve- ral pages of Mr. Brydone's book. ED. 244 Quarrels of Authors. fore. At the time that letter was written, his literary con- nexions were formed with second-rate authors ; he was in strict intimacy with Concanen and Theobald, and other " in- genious gentlemen who made up our last night's conversa- tion," as he expresses himself.* This letter is full of the heresies of taste : one of the most anomalous is the comment on that well-known passage in Shakspeare, on " the genius and the mortal instruments;" Warburton's is a miraculous specimen of fantastical sagacity and critical delirium, or the art of discovering meanings never meant, and of illustrations the author could never have known. Warburton declares to "the ingenious gentlemen," (whom afterwards with a Pharaoh's heart he hanged by dozens to posterity in the "Dunciad,") that " Pope borrowed for want of genius ;" that poet, who, when the day arrived, he was to comment on as the first of poets ! His insulting criticisms on the popular writings of Addisou, his contempt for what Young calls " sweet elegant Virgilian prose," show how utterly insen- sible he was to that classical taste in which Addison had constructed his materials. But he who could not taste the delicacy of Addison, it may be imagined might be in raptures with the rant of Lee. There is an unerring principle in the false sublime : it seems to be governed by laws, though they * This letter was written in 1726, and first found by Dr. Knight in 1750, in fitting up a house where Concanen had probably lodged. It was suppressed, till Akenside, in 1766, printed it in a sixpenny pamphlet, entitled "An Ode to Mr. Edwards." He preserved the curiosity, with "all its peculiarities of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. " The insulted poet took a deep revenge for the contemptuous treatment he had received from the modern Stagirite. The "peculiarities" betray most evident marks of the self-taught lawyer ; the orthography and the double letters were minted in the office. [Thus he speaks of Addison as this "exact Mr. of propriety," and of his own studies of the English poets "to trace them to their sources ; and observe what oar, as well as what slime and gravel they brought down with them."] When I looked for the letter in Aken- side' s Works, I discovered that it had been silently dropped. Some interest, doubtless, had been made to suppress it, for Warburton was humbled when reminded of it. Malone, fortunately, has preserved it in his Shakspeare, where it may be found, in a place not likely to be looked into for it, at the close of Julius Ctesar : this literary curiosity had otherwise been lost for posterity ; its whole history is a series of wonderful escapes. By this document we became acquainted with the astonishing fact, that Warburton, early in life, was himself one of those very dunces whom he has so unmercifully registered in their Doomsday-book ; one who admired the genius of his brothers, and spoke of Pope with the utmost contempt ! [Thus he says, "Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of leisure, and Pope for want of genius !"] Warburton. 245 are not ours ; and we know what it will like, that is, we know what it will mistake for what ought not to be liked, as surely as we can anticipate what will delight correct taste. Warburton has pronounced one of the raving passages of poor Nat " to contain not only the most sublime, but the most judicious imagery that poetry could conceive or paint." JOSEPH WABTON, who indignantly rejects it from his edition of Pope, asserts that " we have not in our language a more striking example of true turgid expression, and genuine fustian and bombast."* Yet such was the man whom ill-fortune (for the public at least) had chosen to become the commen- tator of our greater poets ! Again Churchill throws light on our character : He, with an all-sufficient air Places himself in the critic's chair, And wrote, to advance his Maker's praise, Comments on rhymes, and notes on plays A judge of genius, though, confest, With not one spark of genius blest : Among the first of critics placed, Though free from every taint of taste. Not encouraged by the reception his first literary efforts received, but having obtained some preferment from his patron, we now come to a critical point in his life. He re- treated from the world, and, during a seclusion of near twenty years, persevered in uninterrupted studies. The force of his character placed him in the first order of thinking beings. This resolution no more to court the world for literary favours, but to command it by hardy preparation for mighty labours, displays a noble retention of the appetite for fame ; Warburton scorned to be a scribbler ! Had this great man journalised his readings, as Gibbon has * Lee introduces Alexander the Great, saying, "When oHory, like the dazzling eagle, stood Perch'd on my beaver in the Uranic flood, When Fortune's self my standard trembling bore, And the pale Fates stood frighted on the shore ; When the Immortals on the billows rode, And I myself appear'd the leading god !" In the province of taste Warburton was always at sea without chart or compass, and was as unlucky in his panegyric on Milton as on Lee. He calls the " Paradise Regained" "a charming poem, nothing inferior in the poetry and the sentiments to the Paradise Lost." Such extravagance could only have proceeded from a critic too little sensible to the essential requisites of poetry itself. 2 lf> Quarrels of Authors. done, we should perhaps be more astonished at his miscella- neous pursuits. He read everything, and, I suspect, with little distinction, and equal delight.* Curiosity, even to its delirium, was his first passion ; which produced those new systems of hypothetical reasoning by which he startled the world ; and his efforts to save his most ingenious theories from absurdity resembled, to use his own emphatic words applied to the philosophy of Leibnitz, " a contrivance against Fatalism," for though his genius has given a value to the wildest paradoxes, paradoxes they remain. * Such opposite studies shot themselves into the most fantastical forms in his rocket- writings, whether they streamed in " The Divine Legation," or sparkled in "The Origin of Romances," or played about in giving double senses to Virgil, Pope, and Shakspeare. CHURCHILL, with a good deal of ill-nature and some truth, describes them : " A curate first, he read and read, And laid in, while he should have fed The souls of his neglected flock, Of reading, such a mighty stock, That he o'ercharged the weary brain With more than she could well contain ; More than she was with spirit fraught To turn and methodise to thought ; And which, like ill-digested food, To humours turrid, and not to blood. 1 ' The opinion of BENTLEY, when he saw "The Divine Legation," was a sensible one. " This man," said he, " has a monstrous appetite, with a very bad digestion." The Warburtonians seemed to consider his great work, as the Bible by which all literary men were to be sworn. LOWTH ridicules their credulity. ' ' The Divine Legation,' it seems, contains in it all knowledge, divine and human, ancient and modern : it is a perfect Encyclopaedia, including all history, criticism, divinity, law, politics, from the law of Moses down to the Jew bill, and from Egyptian hieroglyphics to modern Rebus-writing, &c." " In the 2014 pages of the unfinished ' Divine Legation,' " observes the sarcastic GIBBON, "four hundred authors are quoted, from St. Austin down to Scarron and Rabelais !" Yet, after all that satire and wit have denounced, listen to an enlight- ened votary of Warburton. He asserts that "The ' Divine Legation' has taken its place at the head, not to say of English theology, but almost of English literature. To the composition of this prodigious performance, HOOKER and STILLINOFLEET could have contributed the erudition, CHILLING- WORTH and LOCKE the acuteness, TAYLOR an imagination even more wild and copious, SWIFT, and perhaps, EACHARD, the sarcastic vein of wit ; but what power of understanding, except WARBURTOS'S, could first have amassed all these materials, and then compacted them into a bulky and elaborate work, so consistent and harmonious." Quarterly Review, rol. vii. Warburton. 247 But if Warburton read so much, it was not to enforce opinions already furnished to his hands, or with cold scepti- cism to reject them, leaving the reader in despair. He read that he might write what no one else had written, and which at least required to be refuted before it was condemned. He hit upon a SECRET PRINCIPLE, which prevails through all his works, and this was INVENTION ; a talent, indeed, somewhat dangerous to introduce in researches where Truth, and not Fancy, was to be addressed. But even with all this origi- nality he was not free from imitation, and has even been accused of borrowing largely without hinting at his obliga- tions. He had certainly one favourite model before him : Warburton has delineated the portrait of a certain author with inimitable minuteness, while he caught its general effect; we feel that the artist, in tracing the resemblance of another, is inspired by all the flattery of a self-painter he perceived the kindred features, and he loved them ! This author was BATLE ! And I am unfolding the cha- racter of Warburton, in copying the very original portrait : "Mr. Bayle is of a quite different character from these Italian sophists : a writer, whose strength and clearness of reasoning can be equalled only by the gaiety, easiness, and delicacy of his wit ; who, pervading human nature with a glance, STRUCK INTO THE PKOVINCE OP PARADOX, a* an exercise for the restless vigour of his mind : who, with a soul superior to the sharpest attacks of fortune, and a heart practised to the best philosophy, had not yet enough of real greatness to overcome that last foible of superior geniuses, the temptation of honour, which the ACADEMIC EXERCISE OF WIT is con- ceived to bring to its professors."* Here, then, we discover the SECEET PRINCIPLE which conducted Warburton through all his works, although of the most opposite natures. I do not give this as an opinion to be discussed, but as a fact to be demonstrated. The faculties so eminent in Bayle were equally so in War- burton. In his early studies he had particularly applied himself to logic ; and was not only a vigorous reasoner, but * " The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated," vol. i. sec. iv. Ob- serve the remarkable expression, "that last foible of superior genius." He had evidently running in his mind Milton's line on Fame " That last infirmity of noble minds." In such an exalted state was Warburton's mind when he was writing this, his own character. 248 Quarrels of Authors. one practised in all the finesse of dialectics. He had wit, fertile indeed, rather than delicate ; and a vast body of eru- dition, collected in the uninterrupted studies of twenty years. But it was the SECEET PRINCIPLE, or, as he calls it, " the Academic exercise of Wit" on an enlarged system, which carried him so far in the new world of INVENTION he was creating. This was a new characteristic of investigation ; it led him on to pursue his profounder inquiries beyond the clouds of antiquity ; for what he could not discover, he CONJECTURED and ASSEKTED. Objects, which in the hands of other men were merely matters resting on authentic researches, now received the stamp and lustre of original invention. Nothing was to be seen in the state in which others had viewed it ; the hardiest paradoxes served his purpose best, and this licentious principle produced unlooked-for discoveries. He humoured his taste, always wild and unchastised, in search of the monstrous and the extravagant ; and, being a wit, he delighted in finding resemblances in objects which to more regulated minds had no similarity whatever. Wit may ex- ercise its ingenuity as much in combining tilings unconnected with each other, as in its odd assemblage of ideas ; and Warburton, as a literary antiquary, proved to be as witty in his combinations as BUTLER and CONGREVE in their comic images. As this principle took full possession of the mind of this man of genius, the practice became so familiar, that it is possible he might at times have been credulous enough to have confided in his own reveries. As he forcibly expressed himself on one of his adversaries, Dr. STEBBING, " Thus it is to have to do with a head whose sense is all run to system." "His Academic Wit" now sported amid whimsical theories, pursued bold but inconclusive arguments, marked out subtile distinctions, and discovered incongruous resemblances ; but they were maintained by an imposing air of conviction, fur- nished with the most prodigal erudition, and they struck out many ingenious combinations. The importance or the curio- sity of the topics awed or delighted his readers ; the prin- ciple, however licentious, by the surprise it raised, seduced the lovers of novelties. Father HARDOUIN had studied as hard as Warburton, rose as early, and retired to rest as late, and the obliquity of his intellect resembled that of War- burton but he was a far inferior genius ; he only discovered that the classical works of antiquity, the finest compositions Warburton. 249 of the human mind, in ages of its utmost refinement, had been composed by the droning monks of the middle ages ; a discovery which only surprised by its tasteless absurdity but the absurdities of Warburton had more dignity, were more delightful, and more dangerous: they existed, as it were, in a state of illusion, but illusion which required as much genius and learning as his own to dissipate. His spells were to be disturbed only by a magician, great as him- self. Conducted by this solitary principle, Warburton un- dertook, as it were, a magical voyage into antiquity. He passed over the ocean of time, sailing amid rocks, and half lost on quicksands ; but he never failed to raise up some terra incognita; or point at some scene of the Fata Morgana, some earthly spot, painted in the heaven one knows not how. In this secret principle of resolving to invent what no other had before conceived, by means of conjecture and assertion, and of maintaining his theories with all the pride of a sophist, and all the fierceness of an inquisitor, we have the key to all the contests by which this great mind so long supported his literary usurpations. The first step the giant took showed the mightiness of his stride. His first great work was the famous " Alliance be- tween Church and State." It surprised the world, who saw the most important subject depending on a mere curious argument, which, like all political theories, was liable to be overthrown by writers of opposite principles.* The term " Alliance" seemed to the dissenters to infer that the Church was an independent power, forming a contract with the State, and not acknowledging that it is only an integral part, * The author of " The Canons of Criticism" addressed a severe sonnet to Warburton ; and alludes to the " Alliance" : " Reign he sole king in paradoxal land, And for Utopia plan his idle schemes Of visionary leagues, alliance vain 'Twixt Will and Warburton' On which he adds this note, humorously stating the grand position of the work : " The whole argument by which the alliance between Church and State is established, Mr. Warburton founds upon this supposition ' That people, considering themselves in a religious capacity, may contract with themselves, considered in a civil capacity.' The conceit is ingenious, but is not his own. Scrub, in the Beaux Stratagem, had found it out long ago : he considers himself as acting the different parts of all the servants in the family ; and so Scrub, the coachman, ploughman, or justice's clerk, might contract with Scrub, the butler, for such a quantity of ale as the other assumed character demanded." Appendix, p. 261. 250 Quarrels of Authors. like that of the army or the navy.* Warburton had not probably decided, at that time, on the principle of ecclesias- tical power : whether it was paramount by its divine origin, as one party asserted ; or whether, as the new philosophers, Hobbes, Selden, and others, insisted, the spiritual was secon- dary to the civil power, t The intrepidity of this vast genius appears in the plan of his greater work. The omission of a future state of reward and punishment, in the Mosaic writings, was perpetually urged as a proof that the mission was not of divine origin : the ablest defenders strained at obscure or figurative pas- sages, to force unsatisfactory inferences ; but they were looking after what could not be found. Warburton at once boldly acknowledged it was not there ; at once adopted all the objections of the infidels : and roused the curiosity of both parties by the hardy assertion, that this very omission was a demonstration of its divine origin. J * "Monthly Review," vol. xvi. p. 324, the organ of the dissenters. t See article HOBBES, for his system. The great Selden was an Eras- tian ; a distinction extremely obscure. Erastus was a Swiss physician of little note, who was for restraining the ecclesiastical power from all tem- poral jurisdiction. Selden did him the honour of adopting his principles. Selden wrote against the divine right of tithes, but allowed the legal right, which gave at first great offence to the clergy, who afterwards perceived the propriety of his argument, as Wotton has fully acknowledged. J It does not always enter into the design of these volumes to examine those great works which produced literary quarrels. But some may be glad to find here a word on this original project. The grand position of the Divine Legation is, that the knowledge of the immortality of the soul, or a future state of reward and punishment, is absolutely necessary in the moral government of the universe. The author shows how it has been inculcated by all good legislators, so that no religion could ever exist without it ; but the Jewish could, from its peculiar govern- ment, which was theocracy a government where the presence of God him- self was perpetually manifested by miracles and new ordinances ; and hence temporal rewards and punishments were sufficient for that people, to whom the unity and power of the Godhead were never doubtful. As he pro- ceeded, he would have opened a new argument, viz., that the Jewish religion was only the part of a revelation, showing the necessity of a further one for its completion, which produced Christianity. When Warburton was in good spirits with his great work (for he was not always so), he wrote thus to a friend : " You judge right, that the next volume of the D. L. will not be the last. I thought I had told you that I had divided the work into three parts : the first gives you a view of Paganism ; the second, of Judaism ; and the third, of Christianity. You will wonder how this last inquiry can come into so simple an argument as that which I undertake to enforce. I have not room to tell you more than this that after I have proved a future state not to be, in fact, Warburton. 251 The first idea of this new project was bold and delightful, and the plan magnificent. Paganism, Judaism, and Chris- tianity, the three great religions of mankind, were to be marshalled in all their pomp, and their awe, and their mys- tery. But the procession changed to a battle ! To maintain one great paradox, he was branching out into innumerable ones. This great work was never concluded : the author wearied himself, without, however, wearying his readers ; and, as his volumes appeared, he was still referring to his argument, " as far as it is yet advanced." The demonstration appeared in great danger of ending in a conjecture ; and this work, always beginning and never ending, proved to be the glory and misery of his life.* In perpetual conflict with in the Mosaic dispensation, I next show that, if Christianity be true, it could not possibly be there ; and this necessitates me to explain the nature of Christianity, with which the whole ends. But this inter nos. If it be known, I should possibly have somebody writing against this part too before it appears." Nichols's "Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 551. Thus he exults in the true tone, and with all the levity of a sophist. It is well that a true feeling of religion does not depend on the quirks and quibbles of human reasonings, or, what are as fallible, on masses of fanciful erudition. * Warburton lost himself in the labyrinth he had so ingeniously con- structed. This work harassed his days and exhausted his intellect. Ob- serve the tortures of a mind, even of so great a mind as that of Warburton' s, when it sacrifices all to the perishable vanity of sudden celebrity. Often he flew from his task in utter exhaustion and despair. He had quitted the smooth and even line of truth, to wind about and split himself on all the crookedness of paradoxes. He paints his feelings in a letter to Birch. He says " I was so disgusted with an old subject, that I had deferred it from month to month and year to year." He had recourse to " an expedient ;" which was, ' ' to set the press on work, and so oblige himself to supply copy." Such is the confession of the author of the " Divine Legation !" this "encyclopaedia" of all ancient and modern lore all to proceed from " a simple argument !" But when he describes his sufferings, hard is the heart of that literary man who cannot sympathise with such a giant caught in the toils ! I give his words : "Distractions of various kinds, insepa- rable from human life, joined with a naturally melancholy habit, contribute greatly to increase my indolence. This makes my reading wild and desul- tory ; and I seek refuge from the uneasiness of thought, from any book, let it be what it will. By my manner of writing upon subjects, you would naturally imagine they afford me pleasure, and attach me tho- roughly. I will assure you, No !" Nichols's " Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 562. Warburton had not the cares of a family they were merely literary ones. The secret cause of his "melancholy," and his "indolence," and that " want of attachment and pleasure to his subjects," which his friends " naturally imagined" afforded him so much, was the controversies he had kindled, and the polemical battles he had raised about him. However 252 Quarrels of Authors. those numerous adversaries it roused, Warburton often shifted his ground, and broke into so many divisions, that when he cried out, Victory ! his scattered forces seemed rather to be in flight than in pursuit.* The same SECRET PRINCIPLE led him to turn the poetical narrative of ^Eneas in the infernal regions, an episode evi- dently imitated by Virgil from his Grecian master, into a minute description of the initiation into the Eleusinian Mys- teries. A notion so perfectly new was at least worth a commonplace truth. Was it not delightful to have so many particulars detailed of a secret transaction, which even its contemporaries of two thousand years ago did not presume to know anything about ? Father Hardouin seems to have opened the way for Warburton, since he had discovered that the whole ./Eneid was an allegorical voyage of St. Peter to Rome ! When Jortin, in one of his " Six Dissertations," modestly illustrated Virgil by an interpretation inconsistent with Warburton's strange discovery, it produced a memorable quarrel. Then Hurd, the future shield, scarcely the sword, boldly he attacked in return, his heart often sickened in privacy ; for how often must he have beheld his noble and his whimsical edifices built on sands, which the waters were perpetually eating into ! At the last interview of Warburton with Pope, the dying poet exhorted him to proceed with "The Divine Legation." " Your reputation," said he, " as well as your duty, is concerned in it. People say you can get no farther in your proof. Nay, Lord Bolingbroke himself bids me expect no such thing." This anecdote is rather extraordinary ; for it appears in " Owen Ruffhead's Life of Pope," p. 497, a work written under the eye of Warburton himself ; and in which I think I could point out some strong touches from his own hand on certain important occasions, when he would not trust to the creeping dulness of Ruffhead. * His temerity had raised against him not only infidels, but Christians. If any pious clergyman now wrote in favour of the opinion that God's people believed in the immortality of the soul which can we doubt they did ? and which Manasseh Ben Israel has written his treatise, " De Resurrectione Mortuorum," to prove it was a strange sight to behold a bishop seeming to deny so rational and religious a creed ! Even Dr. Balguy confessed to Warburton, that " there was one thing in the argument of the ' Divine Legation' that stuck more with candid men than all the rest how a religion without a future state could be worthy of God !" This Warburton promised to satisfy, by a fresh appendix. His volatile genius, however, was condemned to " the pelting of a merciless storm." Lowth told him " You give yourself out as demonstrator of the divine legation of Moses ; it has been often demonstrated before ; a young student in theology might undertake to give a better that is, a more satisfactory and irrefragable demonstration of it in five pages than you have done in five volumes." Lowth's " Letter to Warburton," p. 12. Warburton. 253 of Warburton, made his first sally; a dapper, subtle, and cold-blooded champion, who could dexterously turn about the polished weapon of irony.* So much our Itailleur admired the volume of Jortin, that he favoured him with " A Seventh Dissertation, addressed to the Author of the Sixth, on the Delicacy of Friendship," one of the most malicious, but the keenest pieces of irony. It served as the foundation of a new School of Criticism, in which the arrogance of the master was to be supported by the pupil's contempt of men often his superiors. To interpret Virgil differently from the modern Stagirite, was, by the aggravating art of the ridi- culer, to be considered as the violation of a moral feeling.f * Hurd was the son of a Staffordshire farmer, and was placed by him at Rugely, from whence he was removed to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. At the age of twenty-six he published a pamphlet entitled " Remarks on a late Book entitled ' An Inquiry into the Rejection of the Christian Miracles by the Heathens, by William Weston,'" which met with consider- able attention. In 1749, on the occasion of publishing a commentary on Horace's "Ars Poetica," he complimented Warburton so strongly as to ensure his favour. Warburton returned it by a puff for Hurd in his edition of Pope, and the two became fast friends. It was a profitable connexion to Hurd, for by the intercession of Warburton he was appointed one of the Whitehall preachers, a preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and Archdeacon of Glou- cester. He repaid Warburton by constant praises in print, and so far suc- ceeded with that vain man, that when he read the dedication he made to him of his " Commentary on the Epistle to Augustus," he wrote to him with mock humility " I will confess to you how much satisfaction the groundless part of it, that which relates to myself, gave me." When Dr. Jortin very properly spoke of Warburton with less of subserviency than the overbearing bishop desired, Hurd at once came forward to fight for War- burton in print, in a satirical treatise on "The Delicacy of Friendship," which highly delighted his patron, who at once wrote to Dr. Lowth, stating him to be "a man of very superior talents, of genius, learning, and virtue ; indeed, a principal ornament of the age he lives in." Hurd was made Bishop of Lichfield in 1775, and of Winchester in 1779. He died in the year 1808. ED. t The Attic irony was translated into plain English, in "Remarks on Dr. Warburton's Account of the Sentiments of the Early Jews," 1757 ; and the following rules for all who dissented from Warburton are deduced : " You must not write on the same subject that he does. You must not glance at his arguments, even without naming him or so much as referring to him. If you find his reasonings ever so faulty, you must not presume to furnish him with better of your own, even though you prove, and are desirous to support his conclusions. When you design him a compliment, you must express it in full form, and with all the circumstance of pane- gyrical approbation, without impertinently qualifying your civilities by assigning a reason why you think he deserves them, as this might possibly be taken for a hint that you know something of the matter he is writing about as well as himself. You must never call any of his discoveries by 254 Quarrels of Authors, Jortin bore the slow torture and the teasing of Kurd's dis- secting- knife in dignified silence. At length a rising genius demonstrated how Virgil could not have described the Eleusinian Mysteries in the sixth book of the j 3 16 6 To the Author of a Poem called Succcsrio . . ) 23 Feb. 1712-13. Windsor Forest 32 5 23 July, 1713. Ode on St. Cecilia's day 15 20th Feb. 1713-14. Additions to the Rape 15 1 Feb. 1714-15. Temple of Fame 32 5 30 April, 1715. Key to the Lock 10 15 17 July, 1716. Essay on Criticismf 1500 13 Dec. 1721. Parnell's Poems 15 23 March, 1713. Homer, vol. i. 215 650 books on royal paper .... 176 * " Miscellaneous Poems and Translations, by several Hands," 1712. The second edition appeared in 1714 ; and in the title-page are enumerated the poems mentioned in this account, and Pope's name affixed, as if he were the actual editor an idea which Mr. Nichols thought he affected to discountenance. It is probable that Pope was the editor. We see, by this account, that he was paid for his contributions. f This was a new edition, published conjointly by Lintot and Lewis, the Catholic bookseller and early friend of Pope, of whom, and of the first edition, 1711, I have preserved an anecdote, p. 280. 330 Quarrels of Authors. 9 Feb. 1715-16. s. d. Homer, vol. ii 215 7 May, 1716. 650 royal paper 150 This article is repeated to the sixth volume of Homer. To which is to be added another sum of 840Z., paid for an assignment of all the copies. The whole of this part of the account amount- ing to 3203 4 Copy-moneys for the Odyssey, vols. i. ii. iii., and 750 of each vol. royal paper, 4to. . . . . 615 6 Ditto for the vols. iv. v. and 750 do. . . . 425 18 7 4244 8 MB. GAT. 12 May, 1713. s. d. Wife of Bath ....... 25 11 Nov. 1714. Letter to a Lady ....... 576 14 Feb. 1714. The What d'ye call it ? ...... 16 2 6 22 Dec. 1715. Trivia ......... 43 Epistle to the Earl of Burlington . . . . 10 15 4 May, 1717. Battle of the Frogs ...... 1626 8 Jan. 1717. Three Hours after Marriage ..... 4326 The Mohocks, a Farce, 21. 10s. (Sold the Mohocks to him again. *) Revival of the Wife of Bath ..... 75 234 10 * The late Isaac Eeed, in the Biog. Dramatica, was uncertain whether Gay was the author of this unacted drama. It is a satire on the inhuman frolics of the bucks and bloods of those days, who imitated the savageness of the Indians whose name they assumed. 1 Why Gay repurchased " The 1 The brutal amusements of these "Mohocks," and the helpless terror of London, is scarcely credible in modern days. Wild bands of drunken men nightly infested the streets, attacking and ill-using every passer-by. A favourite pastime was to surround their victim with drawn swords, prick- ing him on every side as he endeavoured to escape. Many persons were maimed and dangerously wounded. Gay, in his Trivia, has noted some of their more innocent practical jokes ; and asks " Who has not trembled at the Mohock's name ? Was there a watchman took his hourly rounds, Safe from their blows or new invented wounds ?" Swift, in his notes to Stella, has expressed his dread, while in London, of being maimed, or perhaps killed, by them. ED. Lintofs Account-Book. 331 MR. DENNIS. Feb. 24, 1703-4. g. d. Liberty Asserted, one half share* . . . .730 10 Nov. 1708. Appius and Virginia . . . . . . 21 10 25 April, 1711. Essay on Public Spirit 2 12 6 6 Jan. 1711. Remarks on Pope's Essay 2 12 6 Dennis must have sold himself to criticism from ill-nature, and not for pay. One is surprised that his two tragedies should have been worth a great deal more than his criticism. Criticism was then worth no more than too frequently it deserves ; Dr. Sewel, for his " Observations on the Tragedy of Jane Shore," received only a guinea. I had suggested a doubt whether Theobald attempted to translate from the original Greek : one would suppose he did by the following entry, which has a line drawn through it, as if the agreement had not been executed. Perhaps Lintot submitted to pay Theobald for not doing the Odyssey when Pope undertook it. MR. THEOBALD. 23 May, 1713. . d. Plato's Phsedon 576 For rfsculus's Trag 116 being part of Ten Guineas. 12 June, 1714. La Motte's Homer 346 April 21, 1714. Articles signed by Mr. Theobald, to translate for B. Liutot the 24 books of Homer's Odyssey into English blank verse. Also the four Tragedies of Sophocles, called (Edipus Tyrannus, (Edipus Colo- neus, Trachiniae, and Philoctetes, into English blank Terse, with Expla- Mohocks," remains to be discovered. Was it another joint production with Pope ? The literary co-partnership between Pope and Gay has never been opened to the curious. It is probable that Pope was consulted, if not concerned, in writing ' ' The What d'ye call it ?" which, Jacob says in his " Poetical Register," " exposes several of our eminent poets." Jacob pub- lished while Gay was living, and seems to allude to this literary co-part- nership ; for, speaking of Gay, he says : "that having an inclination to poetry, by the strength of his own genius, and the conversation of Mr. Pope, he has made some progress in poetical writings." This tragi-comical farce of "The Mohocks" is satirically dedicated to Dennis, "as a horrid and tremendous piece, formed on the model of hia own ' Appius and Virginia.' " This touch seems to come from the finger of Pope. It is a mock-tragedy, for the Mohocks themselves rant in blank verse ; a feeble performance, far inferior to its happier predecessor, " The What d'ye call it <" * Bought of Mr. George Strahan, bookseller. 332 Quarrels of Authors. natory Notes to the twenty-four Books of the Odyssey, and to the four Tragedies. To receive, for translating every 450 Greek verses, with Ex- planatory Notes thereon, the sum of 21. 10s. To translate likewise the Satires and Epistles of Horace into English rhyme. For every 120 Latin lines so translated, the sum of 11. Is. 6d. These Articles to be performed, according to the time specified, under the penalty of fifty pounds, payable by either party's default in perform- ance. Paid in hand, 21. 10s. It appears that Toland never got above 5Z., 10Z., or 201., for his publications. See his article in " Calamities of Authors," p. 155. I discovered the humiliating conditions that attended his publications, from an examination of his original papers. All this author seems to have reaped from a life devoted to literary enterprise, and philosophy, and patriotism, appears not to have exceeded 2001. Here, too, we find that the facetious Dr. King threw away all his sterling wit for five miserable pounds, though " The Art of Cookery," and that of " Love," obtained a more honourable price. But a mere school-book probably inspired our lively genius with more real facetiousness than any of those works which communicate so much to others. PR. KING. 18 Feb. 1707-8. s. d. Paid for Art of Cookery 32 5 16 Feb. 1708-9. Paid for the First Part of Transactions . . .500 Paid for his Art of Love 32 5 23 June, 1709. Paid for the Second Part of the Transactions* . .500 4 March, 1709-10. Paid for the History of Cajamai . . . .500 10 Nov. 1710. Paid for King's Gods 50 1 July, 1712. Useful Miscellany, Part 1 116 Paid for the Useful Miscellany . . . .300 Lintot utters a groan over " The Duke of Buckingham's Works" (Sheffield), for " having been jockeyed of them by Alderman Barber and Tonson." Who can ensure literary celebrity ? No bookseller would no to regret being jockeyed out of his Grace's works ! The history of plays appears here somewhat curious : tragedies, then the fashion able dramas, obtained a considerable For an account of these humorous pieces, see the following article on "The Royal Society." Pope's Earliest Satire. 333 price; for though Dennis's luckier one reached only to 211. , Dr. Young's Busiris acquired 841. Smith's Phaedra and Hippolytus, 501. ; Howe's Jane Shore, 501. 15s ; and Jane Gray, 751. 5s. Gibber's Nonjuror obtained 1051. for the copyright. Is it not a little mortifying to observe, that among all these customers of genius whose names enrich the ledger of the bookseller, Jacob, that " blunderbuss of law," while his law- books occupy in space as much as Mr Pope's works, the amount of his account stands next in value, far beyond many a name which has immortalised itself! POPE'S EAELIEST SATIRE. WE find by the first edition of Lintot's " Miscellaneous Poems," that the anonymous lines "To the Author of a Poem called Successio" was a literary satire by Pope, written when he had scarcely attained his fourteenth year. This satire, the first probably he wrote for the press, and in which he has succeeded so well, that it might have induced him to pursue the bent of his genius, merits preservation. The juve- nile composition bears the marks of his future excellences : it has the tune of his verse, and the images of his wit. Thirty years afterwards, when occupied by the Dunciad, he trans- planted and pruned again some of the original images. The hero of this satire is Elkanah Settle. The subject is one of those Whig poems, designed to celebrate the happiness of an uninterrupted "Succession" in the Crown, at the time the Act of Settlement passed, which transferred it to the Hanoverian line. The rhymer and his theme were equally contemptible to the juvenile Jacobite poet. The hoarse and voluminous Codrus of Juvenal aptly desig- nates this eternal verse-maker ; one who has written with such constant copiousness, that no bibliographer has presumed to form a complete list of his works.* When Settle had outlived his temporary rivalship with Dryden, and was reduced to mere Settle, he published party- poems, in folio, composed in Latin, accompanied by his own translations. These folio poems, uniformly bound, except that the arms of his patrons, or rather his purchasers, richly * The fullest account we have of Settle, a busy scribe in his day, is in Mr. Nichols's "Literary Anecdotes," vol. i. p. 41. Quarrels of Authors. gilt, emblazon the black morocco, may still be found. These presentation-copies were sent round to the chiefs of the party, with a mendicant's petition, of which some still exist. To have a clear conception of the present views of some politicians, it is necessary to read their history backwards. In 1702, when Settle published " Successio," he must have been a Whig. In 1685 he was a Tory, commemorating, by a heroic poem, the coronation of James II., and writing periodically against the Whigs. In 1680 he had left the Tories for the Whigs, and conducted the whole management of burning the Pope, then a very solemn national ceremony.* A Whig, a pope-burner, and a Codrus, afforded a full draught of inspira- tion to the nascent genius of our youthful satirist. Settle, in his latter state of wretchedness, had one standard elegy and epithalamium printed off with blanks. By the in- genious contrivance of inserting the name of any considerable person who died or was married, no one who had gone out of the world or was entering into it but was equally welcome to this dinnerless livery-man of the draggled-tailed Muses. I have elsewhere noticed his last exit from this state of poetry and of pauperism, when, leaping into a green dragon which his own creative genius had invented, in a theatrical booth, Codrus, in hissing flames and terrifying-morocco folds, disco- vered "the fate of talents misapplied!" TO THE AUTHOR OF A POEM ENTITLED " SUCCESSIO." Begone, ye critics, and restrain your spite ; Codrus writes on, and will for ever write. The heaviest Muse the swiftest course has gone, As clocks run fastest when most lead is on.f * It was the custom when party feeling ran high on the subject of papacy, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, to get up these solemn mock-processions of the Pope and Cardinals, accompanied with figures to represent Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, and other subjects well adapted to heat popular feelings, and parade them through the streets of London. The day chosen for this was the anniversary of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth (Nov. 17), and when the procession reached Temple-bar, the figure of the Pope was tossed from his chair by one dressed as the Devil into a great bonfire made opposite the statue of Queen Elizabeth, on the city side of Temple-bar. Two rare tracts describe these "solemn mock- processions," as they are termed, in 1679 and 1680. Prints were also published depicting the whole proceedings, and descriptive pamphlets from the pen of Settle, who arranged these shows. ED. t Thus altered in the Dunciad, book i., ver. 183 " As clocks to weight their nimble motions owe, The wheels above urged by the load below." Pope's Earliest Satire. 335 What though no bees around yonr cradle flew, Nor on your lips distill'd their golden dew ; Yet have we oft discover* d in their stead, A swarm of drones that buzz'd about your head. When you, like Orpheus, strike the warbling lyre, Attentive blocks stand round you, and admire. Wit past through thee no longer is the same, As meat digested takes a different name ; * But sense must sure thy safest plunder be, Since no reprisals can be made on thee. Thus thou mayst rise, and in thy daring flight (Though ne'er so weighty) reach a wondrous height : So, forced from engines, lead itself can fly, And pond'rous slugs move nimbly through the sky.+ Sure Bavius copied Msevius to the full, And CHJERILUS taught CODECS to be dull ; Therefore, dear frieud, at my advice give o'er This needless labour, and contend no more To prove & dull Succession to be true, Since 'tis enough we find it so in you. * This original image a late caustic wit (Home Tooke), who probably had never read this poem, employed on a certain occasion. Godwin, who had then distinguished himself by his genius and by some hardy paradoxes, was pleading for them as hardily, by showing that they did not originate in him that they were to be found in Helvetius, in Rousseau, and in other modern philosophers. " Ay," retorted the cynical wit ; " so you eat at my table venison and turtle, but from you the same things come quite changed !" The original, after all, is in Donne, long afterwards versified by our poet. See Warton's edition, vol. iv. p. 257. Pope must have been an early reader of Donne. f< Thus altered in the Dunciad, book i. ver. 181 "As, forced from wind-guns, lead itself can fly, And pond'rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky." Perhaps, by Chcerilut, the juvenile satirist designated Flfd-nof, or Shadwell, who had received their immortality of dnlness from his master, catholic in poetry and opinions, Dryden. THE ROYAL SOCIETY. THE ROYAL SOCIETY at first opposed from various quarters their Experi- mental Philosophy supplants the Aristotelian methods suspected of being the concealed Advocates of Popery, Arbitrary Power, and Atheism disappointments incurred by their promises the simplicity of the early Inquirers ridiculed by the Wits and others Narrative of a quarrel between a Member of the Royal Society and an Aristotelian Glanvill writes his "Plus Ultra," to show the Improvements of Modern Knowledge Character of Stubbe of Warwick his Apology, from him- self opposes the "Plus Ultra" by the "Plus Ultra reduced to a Nonplus" his "Campanella revived" the Political Projects of Cam- panella Stubbe persecuted, and menaced to be publicly whipped ; his Roman spirit his "Legends no Histories" his "Censure on some Passages of the History of the Royal Society" Harvey's ambition to be considered the Discoverer of the Circulation of the Blood, which he demonstrates Stubbe describes the Philosophy of Science attacks Sprat's Dedication to the King The Philosophical Transactions published by Sir Hans Sloane ridiculed by Dr. King his new Species of Literary Burlesque King's character these attacks not ineffectually renewed by Sir John Hill. THE KOTAL SOCIETY, on its first establishment, at the era of the Restoration, encountered fierce hostilities ; nor, even at later periods, has it escaped many wanton attacks. A great revolution in the human mind was opening with that esta- blishment ; for the spirit which had appeared in the recent political concussion, and which had given freedom to opinion, and a bolder scope to enterprise, had now reached the literary and philosophical world ; but causes of the most opposite natures operated against this institution of infant science. In the first place, the new experimental philosophy, full of inventions and operations, proposed to supplant the old scho- lastic philosophy, which still retained an obscure jargon of terms, the most frivolous subtilties, and all those empty and artificial methods by which it pretended to decide on all topics. Too long it had filled the ear with airy speculation, while it starved the mind that languished for sense and knowledge. But this emancipation menaced the power of the followers of Aristotle, who were still slumbering in their undisputed autho- The Royal Society. 337 rity, enthroned in our Universities. For centuries the world had been taught that the philosopher of Stagira had thought on every subject : Aristotle was quoted as equal authority with St. Paul, and his very image has been profanely looked on with the reverence paid to Christ. BACON had fixed a new light in Europe, and others were kindling their torches at his flame. When the great usurper of the human under- standing was once fairly opposed to Nature, he betrayed too many symptoms of mere humanity. Yet this great triumph was not obtained without severe contention ; and upon the Continent even blood has been shed in the cause of words. In our country, the University of Cambridge was divided by a party who called themselves Trojans, from their antipathy to the Greeks, or the Aristotelians ; and once the learned Eichard Harvey, the brother of Gabriel, the friend of Spenser, stung to madness by the predominant powers, to their utter dismay set up their idol on the school-gates, with his heels upwards, and ass's ears on his head. But at this later period, when the Royal Society was established, the war was more open, and both parties more inveterate. Now the world seemed to think, so violent is the reaction of public opinion, that they could reason better without Aristotle than with him : that he had often taught them nothing more than self- evident propositions, or had promoted that dangerous idleness of maintaining paradoxes, by quibbles and other captious sub- til ties. The days had closed of the " illuminated," the " pro- found," and the " irrefragable," titles, which the scholastic heroes had obtained ; and the Aristotelian four modes, by which all things in nature must exist, of materialiter, forma- Htcr,fundamentaliter, and eminenter, were now considered as nothing more than the noisy rattles, or chains of cherry- stones, which had too long detained us in the nursery of the human mind.* The world had been cheated with words * Some may be curious to have these monkish terms defined. Causes are distinguished by Aristotle into four kinds : The material cause, ex qua, out of which things are made ; the formal cause, per quam, by which a thing is that which it is, and nothing else ; the efficient cause, a qua, by the agency of which anything is produced ; and the final cause, propter quam, the end for which it is produced. Such are his notions in his Phys. 1. ii. c. iii., referred to by Brucker and Formey in their Histories of Philosophy. Of the Scholastic Metaphysics, Sprat, the historian of the Koyal Society, observes, "that the lovers of that cloudy knowledge boast that it is an excellent instrument to refine and make subtle the minds of men. But there may be a greater excess in the subtlety of men's wits z 338 Quarrels of Authors. instead of things ; and the new experimental philosophy in sisted that men should be less loquacious, but more laborious. Some there were, in that unsettled state of polities and religion, in whose breasts the embers of the late Revolution were still hot : they were panic-struck that the advocates of popery and arbitrary power were returning on them, dis- guised as natural philosophers. This new terror had a very ludicrous origin : it arose from some casual expressions, in which the Royal Society at first delighted, and by which an air of mystery was thrown over its secret movements : such was that " Universal Correspondence" which it affected to boast of; and the vaunt to foreigners of its " Ten Secretaries," when, in truth, all these magnificent declarations were only objects of their wishes. Another fond but singular expres- sion, which the illustrious BOYLE had frequently applied to it in its earliest state, when only composed of a few friends, calling it " The Invisible College," all concurred to make the than in their thickness ; as we see those threads, which are of too fine a spinning, are found to be more useless than those which are homespun and gross." History of the Royal Society, p. 326. In the history of human folly, often so closely connected with that of human knowledge, some of the schoolmen (the commentators on Aquinas and others) prided themselves, and were even admired for their impene- trable obscurity ! One of them, and our countryman, is singularly com- mended by Cardan, for that "only one of his arguments was enough to puzzle all posterity ; and that, when he had grown old, he wept because he could not understand his own books." Baker, in his Reflections upon Learning, who had examined this schoolman, declares that his obscurity is such, as if he never meant to be understood. The extravagances of the schoolmen are, however, not always those of Aristotle. Pope, and the wits of that day, like these early members of the Royal Society, decried Aristotle, who did not probably fall in the way of their studies. His great imperfections are in natural philosophy ; but he still preserves his eminence for his noble treatises of Ethics, and Politics, and Poetics, not- withstanding the imperfect state in which these have reached us. Dr. Copleston and Dr. Gillies have given an energetic testimony to their per- petual value. Pope, in satirising the University as a nest of dunces, con- sidered the followers of Aristotle as so many stalled oxen, "/< bulls of .Beware." " A hundred head of Aristotle's friends." D0NCIAD. Swift has drawn an allegorical personage of Aristotle, by which he describes the nature of his works. ' ' He stooped much, and made use of a staff; his visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow ;" descriptive of his abrupt conciseness, his harsh style, the obscu- rities of his dilapidated text, and the deficiency of feeling, which his studied compression, his deep sagacity, and his analytical genius, so frequently exhibit. The Royal Society. 339 Royal Society wear the appearance of a conspiracy against the political freedom of the nation. At a time, too, when, according to the historian of the Eoyal Society, " almost every family was widely disagreed among themselves on matters of religion," they believed that this "new experi- mental philosophy was subversive of the Christian faith !"* and many mortally hated the newly-invented optical glasses, the telescope and the microscope, as atheistical inventions, which perverted our sight, and made everything appear in a new and false light ! Sprat wrote his celebrated " History of the Royal Society," to show that experimental philosophy was neither designed for the extinction of the Universities, nor of the Christian religion, which were really imagined to be in danger. Others, again, were impatient for romantic discoveries ; miracles were required, some were hinted at, while some were promised. In the ecstasy of imagination, they lost their soberness, forgetting that they were but the historians of nature, and not her prophets. t But amid these dreams of * Sprat makes an ingenious observation on the notion of those who de- clared that "the most learned ages are still the most atheistical, and the ignorant the most devout." He says this had become almost proverbial, but he shows that piety is little beholden to those who make this distinction. " The Jewish law forbids us to oifer up to God a sacrifice that has a blemish ; but these men bestow the most excellent of men on the devil, and only assign to religion those men and those times which have the greatest blemish of human nature, even a defect in their knowledge and understanding." History of the Royal Society, p. 356. ( Science, at its birth, is as much the child of imagination as curiosity ; and, in rapture at the new instrument it has discovered, it impatiently magnifies its power. To the infant, all improvements are wonders ; it chronicles even its dreams, and has often described what it never has seen, delightfully deceived ; the cold insults of the cynics, the wits, the dull, and the idle, maliciously mortify the infant in its sports, till it returns to slow labour and patient observation. It is rather curious, however, that when science obtains a certain state of maturity, it is liable to be attacked by the same fits of the marvellous which affected its infancy ; and the following extract from one of the enthusiastic Virtuosi in the infancy of science, rivals the visions of "the perfectibility of man" of which we hear so much at this late period. Some, perhaps, may consider these strong tendencies of the imagination, breaking out at these different periods in the history of science, to indicate results, of which the mind feels a conscious- ness, which the philosopher should neither indulge nor check. "Should these heroes go on (the Royal Society) as they have happily begun, they will fill the world with wonders ; and posterity will find many things that are now but rumours, verified into practical realities. It may be, some ages hence, a voyage to the southern unknown tracts, yea, possibly the Moon, will not be more strange than one to America. To them that come 340 Quarrels of Authors. hope and fancy, the creeping experimentalist was still left boasting of improvements, so slow that they were not per- ceived, and of novelties so absurd that they too often raised the laugh against their grave and unlucky discoverers. The philosophers themselves seemed to have been fretted into the impatient humour which they attempted to correct ; and the amiable Evelyn becomes an irritated satirist, when he at- tempts to reply to the repeated question of that day, " What have they done?"* But a source of the ridicule which was perpetually flowing after us, it may be as ordinary to buy a pair of wings to fly into remotest regions, as now a pair of boots to ride a journey. And to confer at the distance of the Indies, by sympathetic conveyances, may be as usual to future times, as to us in a literary correspondence. The restoration of grey hairs to juvenility, and renewing the exhausted marrow, may at length be effected without a miracle ; and the turning the now comparative desert world into a paradise, may not improbably be expected from late agriculture. " Those that judge by the narrowness of former principles and successes, will smile at these paradoxical expectations. But the great inventions of latter ages, which altered the face of all things, in their naked proposals and mere suppositions, were to former times as ridiculous. To have talked of a new earth to have been discovered, had been a romance to antiquity ; and to sail without sight of stars or shores, by the guidance of a mineral, a story more absurd than the flight of Dsedalus. That men should speak after their tongues were ashes, or communicate with each other in differing hemispheres, before the invention of letters, could not but have been thought a fiction. Antiquity would not have believed the almost incredible force of our cannons, and would as coldly have entertained the wonders of the telescope." GLANVILL, Scepsis Scienti/ca, p. 133. * Evelyn, whose elegant mind, one would have imagined, had been little susceptible of such vehement anger, in the preface to his "Sylva," scolds at no common rate : " Well-meaning people are led away by the noise of a few ignorant and comical buffoons, who, with an insolence suitable to their understanding, are still crying out, Wliat have the Society done ?" He attributes all the opposition and ridicule the Society encountered to a per- sonage not usual to be introduced into a philosophical controversy " The Enemy of Mankind." But it was well to denounce the devil himself, as the Society had nearly lost the credit of fearing him. Evelyn insists that "next to the propagation of our most holy faith," that of the new philo- sophy was desirable both for the kiug and the nation; "for," he adds, "it will survive the triumphs of the proudest conquerors ; since, when all their pomp and noise is ended, they are those tinti- ///in;/* in bluck, whom now in scorn they term philosophers and fops, to whom they must be obliged for making their names outlast the pyramids, whose founders aiv known as the heads of the Nile." Why Evelyn designates the philosophers H.H little th'uii/s in black, requires explanation. Did they affect a dress of .ur in the reign of Charles II., or does he allude to the dingy appearance of the chemists ? The Royal Society. 341 against the Royal Society, was the almost infantine simplicity of its earliest members, led on by their honest zeal ; and the absence of all discernment in many trifling and ludicrous re- searches, which called down the malice of the wits ;* there was, too, much of that unjust contempt between the parties, which students of opposite pursuits and tastes so liberally bestow on each other. The researches of the Antiquarian Society were sneered at by the Eoyal, and the antiquaries * It is not easy to credit the simplicity of these early inquirers. In a Memorial in Sprat's History, entitled, "Answers returned by Sir Philli- berto Vernatti to certain Inquiries sent by order of the Royal Society ; " among some of the most extraordinary questions and descriptions of non- entities, which must have fatigued Sir Philliberto, who then resided in Batavia, I find the present: " Qy. 8. What ground there may be for that relation concerning horns taking root, and growing about Goa?" It seems the question might as well have been asked at London, and answered by some of the members themselves ; for Sir Philliberto gravely replied " Inquiring about this, a friend laughed, and told me it was a jeer put upon the Portuguese, because the women of Goa are counted none of the chastest." Inquiries of this nature, and often the most trivial objects set off with a singular minuteness of description, tempted the laugh of the scoffers. Their great adversary, Stubbe, ridiculing their mode of giving instructions for inquiries, regrets that the paper he received from them had been lost, otherwise he would have published it. "The great Mr. Boyle, when he brought it, tendered it with blushing and disorder," at the simplicity of the Royal Society ! And indeed the royal founder himself, who, if he was something of a philosopher, was much more of a wit, set the example. The Royal Society, on the day of its creation, was the whet- stone of the wit of their patron. When Charles II. dined with the mem- bers on the occasion of constituting them a Royal Society, towards the close of the evening he expressed his satisfaction in being the first English monarch who had laid a foundation for a society who proposed that their sole studies should be directed to the investigation of the arcana of nature ; and added with that peculiar gravity of countenance he usually wore on such occasions, that among such learned men he now hoped for a solution to a question which had long perplexed him. The case he thus stated : " Suppose two pails of water were fixed in two different scales that were equally poised, and which weighed equally alike, and that two live bream, or small fish, were put into either of these pails, he wanted to know the reason why that pail, with such addition, should not weigh more than the other pail which stood against it." Every one was ready to set at quiet the royal curiosity ; but it appeared that every one was giving a different opinion. One, at length, offered so ridiculous a solution, that another of the members could not refrain from a loud laugh ; when the King, turning to him, insisted that he should give his sentiments as well as the rest. This he did without hesitation, and told his majesty, in plain terms, that he denied the fact ! On which the King, in high mirth, exclaimed " Odds fish, brother, you are in the right !" The jest was not ill designed. The story was often useful, to cool the enthusiasm of the scientific visionary, who is apt often to account for what never has existed. 342 Quarrels of Authors. avenged themselves by their obstinate incredulity at the pro- digies of the naturalists ; the student of classical literature was equally slighted by the new philosophers ; who. leaving the study of words and the elegancies of rhetoric for the study merely of things, declared as the cynical ancient did of metaphors, " Poterimus vivere sine illis" We can do very well without them ! The ever-witty South, in his oration at Oxford, made this poignant reflection on the Royal Society "Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos, et seipsos." They can admire nothing except fleas, lice, and themselves ! And even Hobbes so little comprehended the utility of these new pur- suits, that he considered the Royal Society merely as so many labourers, who, when they had washed their hands after their work, should leave to others the polishing of their discourses. He classed them, in the. way they were proceeding, with apothecaries, and gardeners, and mechanics, who might now " all put in for, and get the prize." Even at a later period, Sir William Temple imagined the virtuosi to be only so many Sir Nicholas Gimcracks ; and contemptuously called them, from the place of their first meeting, " the Men. of Gresham !" doubtless considering them as wise as " the Men of Gotham!" Even now, men of other tempers and other studies are too apt to refuse the palm of philosophy to the patient race of naturalists.* Wotton, who wrote so zealously at the com- mencement of the last century in favour of modern know- ledge, is alarmed lest the effusions of wit, in his time, should " deaden the industry of the philosophers of the next age ; for," he adds, "nothing wounds so effectually as a jest; and when men once become ridiculous, their labours will be slighted, and they will find few imitators." The alarm shows his zeal, but not his discernment : since curiosity in hidden causes is a passion which endures with human nature. " The * Pope was severe in his last book of the Dunciad on the students of insects, flowers, &c. ; and K. 0. Cambridge followed out the idea of a mad virtuoso in his " Scribleriad," which he has made up from the absurd or trifling parts of natural history and philosophy. His hero is " A much-enduring man, whose curious soul Bore him with ceaseless toil from pole to pole ; Insatiate endless knowledge to obtain, Thro 1 woes by land, thro' dangers on the main." He collects curiosities from all parts of the world ; studies occult and natural sciences ; and is at last beatified by electrical glories at a meeting of hermetical philosophers. This poem is elucidated by notes, which point the allusions to the works or doings of the old philosophers. ED. The Royal Society. 343 philosophers of the next age" have shown themselves as per- severing as their predecessors, and the wits as malicious. The contest between men of meditation and men of experi- ment, is a very ancient quarrel ; and the " divine" Socrates was no friend to, and even a ridiculer of, those very pursuits for which the Royal Society was established.* In founding this infant empire of knowledge, a memorable literary war broke out between Grlanvill, the author of the treatise on " Witches," &c., and Stubbe, a physician, a man of great genius. It is the privilege of genius that its con- troversies enter into the history of the human mind ; what is but temporary among the vulgar of mankind, with the curious and the intelligent become monuments of lasting interest. The present contest, though the spark of contention flew out of a private quarrel, at length blazed into a public contro- versy. The obscure individual who commenced the fray, is for- gotten in the boasted achievements of his more potent ally; he was a clergyman named Cross, the Vicar of Great Chew, in Somersetshire, a stanch Aristotelian. Glanvill, a member of the Royal Society, and an enthusiast for the new philosophy, had kindled the anger of the peri- * Evelyn, who could himself be a wit occasionally, was, however, much, annoyed by the scorners. He applies to these wits a passage in Nehemiah ii. 19, which describes those who laughed at the builders of Jerusalem. " These are the Sanballats, the Horonites, who disturb our men upon the wall ; but let us rise up and build I" He describes these Horonites of wit as " magnificent fops, whose talents reach but to the adjusting of their perukes." But the Royal Society was attacked from other quarters, which ought to have assisted them. Evelyn, in his valuable treatise on forest- trees, had inserted a new project for making cider ; and Stubbe insisted, that in consequence "much cider had been spoiled within these three years, by following the directions published by the commands of the Royal Society. " They afterwards announced that they never considered them- selves as answerable for their own memoirs, which gave Stubbe occasion to boast that he had forced them to deny what they had written. A pas- sage in Hobbes's "Considerations upon his Reputation, &c.," is as re- markable for the force of its style as for that of sense, and may be appli- cable to some at this day, notwithstanding the progress of science, and the importance attached to their busy idleness. "Everyman that hath spare money can get furnaces, and buy coals. Every man that hath spare money can be at the charge of making great moulds, &c., and so may have the best and greatest telescopes. They can get engines made, recipients made, and try conclusions ; but they are never the more philosophers for all this. 'Tis laudable to bestow money on curious or useful delights, but that is none of the praises of a philoso- pher." p. 53. 344 Quarrels of Authors. patetic, who was his neighbour, and who had the reputation of being the invincible disputant of his county.* Some, who had in vain contended with Glanvill, now contrived to in- veigle the modern philosopher into an interview \\ith this redoubted champion. When Glanvill entered the house, he perceived that he was to begin an acquaintance in a quarrel, which was not the happiest way to preserve it. The Vicar of Great Chew sat amid his congregated admirers. The peripatetic had pro- mised them the annihilation of the new-fashioned virtuoso, and, like an angry boar, had already been preluding by whetting his tusks. Scarcely had the first cold civilities passed, when Glanvill found himself involved in single combat with an assailant armed with the ten categories of Aristotle. Cross, with his Quodam modo, and his Modo quodam, with his UM and his Quando, scattered the ideas of the simple experimentalist, who, confining himself to a simple recital of facts and a description of things, was referring, not to the logic of Aristotle, but to the works of nature. The impe- rative Aristotelian was wielding weapons, which, says Glanvill, " were nothing more than like those of a cudgel-player, or fencing-master, "f * Glanvill was a learned man, but evidently superstitious, particularly in all that related to witchcraft and apparitions ; the reality of both being insisted on by him in a series of books which he published at various periods of his life, and which he continually worked upon with new argu- ments and instances, in spite of all criticism or opposition. He was a member of the Royal Society, prebend of Worcester, and rector of Bath, where he died, October 4, 1680. EH. t The ninth chapter in the " Plus Ultra," entitled " The Credit of Optic Glasses vindicated against a disputing man, who is afraid to believe his eyes against Aristotle," gives one of the ludicrous incidents of this philosophical visit. The disputer raised a whimsical objection against the science of optics, insisting that the newly-invented glasses, the telescope, the microscope, &c., were all deceitful and fallacious ; for, said the Aris- totelian, "take two spectacles, use them at the same time, and you will not see so well as with one singly ergo, your microscopes and telescopes are impostors." How this was forced into a syllogism does not appear ; but still the conclusion ran, " We can see better through one pair than two, therefore all perspectives are fallacious ! " One proposition for sense, And t'other for convenience, will make a tolerable syllogism for a logician in despair. The Aristotelian was, however, somewhat puzzled by a problem which he had himself raised "\Miy we cannot see with two pair of spectacles better than with one singly ?" for the man of axioms observed, " Vis unita fortior" " United The Royal Society. 345 The last blow was still reserved, when Cross asserted that Aristotle had more opportunities to acquire knowledge than the Royal Society, or all the present age had, or could have, for this definitive reason, " because Aristotle did, totam pera- grare Asiam." Besides, in the Chew philosophy, where novelty was treason, improvements or discoveries could never exist. Here the Aristotelian made his stand ; and at length, gently hooking Grlanvill between the horns of a dilemma, the entrapped virtuoso threw himself into an unguarded affirma- tion ; at which the Vicar of Great Chew, shouting in triumph, with a sardonic grin, declared that Glanvill and his Royal Society had now avowed themselves to be atheistical ! This made an end of the interview, and a beginning of the quarrel.* Glanvill addressed an expostulatory letter to the inhuman Aristotelian, who only replied by calling it a recantation, asserting that the affair had finished with the conviction. On this, Glanvill produced his " Plus Ultra,"f on the strength is stronger." It is curious enough, in the present day, to observe the sturdy Aristotelian denying these discoveries, and the praises of optics, and "the new glasses," by Glanvill. "If this philosopher," says the member of the Royal Society, " had spared some of those thoughts to the profitable doctrine of optics which he hath spent upon genus and species, we had never heard of this objection." And he replies to the paradox which the Aristotelian had raised by "Why cannot he write better with two pens than with a single one, since Vis unita fortior 1 When he hath answered this Quaere, he hath resolved his own. The reason he gave why it should be so, is the reason why 'tis not." Such are the squabbles of infantine science, which cannot as yet discover causes, although it has ascertained effects. * This appears in chap, xviii. of the "Plus Ultra." With great sim- plicity Glanvill relates : "At this period of the conference, the disputer lost all patience, and with sufficient spite and rage told me ' that I was an atheist ! that he had indeed desired my acquaintance, but would have no more on't,' and so turned his back and went away, giving me time only to answer that ' I had no great reason to lament the loss of an acquaintance that could be so easily forfeited.'" The following chapter vindicates the Eoyal Society from the charge of atheism ! to assure the world they were not to be ranked "among the black conspirators against Heaven !" We see the same objections again occurring in the modern system of geology. + This book was so scarce in 1757, that the writer in the " Biographia Britannica" observes that this "small but elegant treatise is still very much esteemed by the curious, being become so scarce as not to be met with in other hands." Oldys, in 1738, had, in his "British Librarian," selected this work among the scarce and valuable books of which he has presented us with so many useful analyses. The history of books is often curious. At one period a book is scarce and valuable, and at another is neither one nor the other. This does not always depend on the caprice of the public, or what may be called literary 3 1C Quarrels of Authors. modern improvements of knowledge. The quaint title referred to that Asian argument which placed the boundaries of know- ledge at the ancient limits fixed by Aristotle, like the pillars of Hercules, on which was inscribed Ne plus ultra, to mark the extremity of the world. But Glanvill asserted we might advance still further plus ultra ! To this book the Aristo- telian replied with such rancour, that he could not obtain a licence for the invective either at Oxford or London. Glanvill contrived to get some extracts, and printed a small number of copies for his friends, under the sarcastic title of " The Chew Gazette," a curiosity, we are told, of literary scolding, and which might now, among literary trinkets, fetch a Roxburgh prize. Cross, maddened that he could not get his bundle of peri- patetic ribaldries printed, wrote ballads, which he got sung as it chanced. But suppressed invectives and eking rhymes could but ill appease so fierce a mastiff: he set on the poor F.R.S. an animal as rabid, but more vigorous than himself both of them strangely prejudiced against the modern improvements of knowledge ; so that, like mastiffs in the dark, they were only the fiercer. This was Dr. Henry Stubbe, a physician of Warwick one of those ardent and versatile characters, strangely made up of defects as strongly marked as their excellences. He was one of those authors who, among their numerous remains, leave little of permanent value ; for their busy spirits too keenly delight in temporary controversy, and they waste the efforts of a mind on their own age, which else had made the next their own. Careless of worldly opinions, these extraor- dinary men, with the simplicity of children, are mere beings of sensation ; perpetually precipitated by their feelings, with slight powers of reflection, and just as sincere when they act in contradiction to themselves, as when they act in contradic- tion to others. In their moral habits, therefore, we are often struck with strange contrasts ; their whole life is a jumble of actions ; and we are apt to condemn their versatility of prin- ciples as arising from dishonest motives ; yet their temper has often proved more generous, and their integrity purer, than those who have crept up in one unvarying progress to an eminence which they quietly possess, without any of the fashions. Glanvill's "Plus Ultra" is probably now of easy occurrence; like a prophecy fully completed, the uncertain event being verified, the prophet has ceased to be remembered. The Royal Society. 347 ardour of these original, perhaps whimsical, minds. The most tremendous menace to a man of this class would be to threaten to write the history of his life and opinions. When Stubbe attacked the Royal Society, this threat was held out against him. But menaces never startled his intrepid genius ; he roved in all his wild greatness; and, always occupied more by present views than interested by the past events of his life, he cared little for his consistency in the high spirit of his independence. The extraordinary character of Stubbe produced as uncom- mon a history. Stubbe had originally been a child of fortune, picked up at Westminster school by Sir Henry Vane the younger, who sent him to Oxford ; where this effervescent genius was, says Wood, " kicked, and beaten, and whipped."* But if these little circumstances marked the irritability and boldness of his youth, it was equally distinguished by an entire devotion to his studies. Perhaps one of the most anomalous of human characters was that of his patron, Sir Henry Vane the younger (whom Milton has immortalised in one of the noblest of sonnets), the head of the Independents, who combined with the darkest spirit of fanaticism the clear views of the most sagacious politician. The gratitude of Stubbe lasted through all the changeful fortunes of the chief of a faction a long date in the records of human affection ! Stubbe had written against monarchy, the church, the univer- sity, &c. ; for which, after the Restoration, he was accused by * His early history is given by Wood in his usual style. His father had been a Lincolnshire parson, who was obliged to leave his poor curacy be- cause " anabaptistically inclined," and fled to Ireland, whence his mother and her children were obliged to return on the breaking out of the rebellion of 1641, and landed at Liverpool ; afterward, says Wood, "they all beated it on the hoof thence to London, where she, gaining a comfortable sub- sistence by her needle, sent her son Henry, being then ten years of age, to the collegiate school at Westminster. At that time Mr. Richard Busbie was the chief master, who finding the boy have pregnant parts to a miracle, did much favour and encourage him. At length Sir Henry Vane, junior (the same who was beheaded on Tower Hill, 1662), coming casually into the school with Dr. Lambert Osbaldiston, he did, at the master's motion, take a kind- ness to the said boy, and gave him the liberty to resort to his house, and to fill that belly which otherwise had no sustenance but what one penny could purchase for his dinner : and as for his breakfast, he had none, except he got it by making somebody's exercise. Soon after, Sir Henry got him to be a king's scholar ; and his master perceiving him to be beyond his years in proficiency, he gave him money to buy books, clothes, and his teaching for nothing." Such was the humble beginning of a learned man, who lived to be a formidable opponent to the whole body of the Royal Society. ED. 348 Quarrels of Authors. his antagonists. He exults in the reproach ; he replies with all that frankness of simplicity, so beautiful amid our artificial manners. He denies not the charge ; he never trims, nor glosses over, nor would veil, a single part of his conduct. He wrote to serve his patrons, hut never himself. I preserve the whole of this noble passage in the note.* Wood bears witness * When Sprat and Glanvill, and others, had threatened to write his life, Stubbe draws this apology for it, while he shows how much, in a time of revolutions, the Royal Society might want one for themselves. " I was so far from being daunted at those rumours and threats, that I enlarged much this book thereupon, and resolved to charge the enemy home when I saw how weak a resistance I should meet with. I knew that recriminations were no answers. I understood well that the passages of a life like mine, spent in different places with much privacy and ob- scurity, was unknown to them ; that even those actions they would fix their greatest calumnies upon, were such as that they understood not the grounds, nor had they learning enough and skill to condemn. I was at Westminster School when the late king was beheaded. I never took covenant nor engage- ment. In sum, 7 served my patron. I endeavoured to express my grati- tude to him who had relieved me, being a child, and in great poverty (the rebellion in Ireland having deprived my parents of all means wherewith to educate me) ; who made me a king's scholar ; preferred me to Christchurch College, Oxon. ; and who often supplied me with money when my tender years gave him little hopes of any return ; and who protected me amidst the Presbyterians, and Independents, and other sects. With none thereof did I contract any relation or acquaintance ; my familiarity never engird me with ten of that party ; and my genius and humour inclined me to fewer. I neither enriched, nor otherwise advanced myself, during the late troubles ; and shared the common odium and dangers, not prosperity, with my benefactor. I believe no generous man, who hath the least sense of bravery, will condemn me ; and I profess I am ashamed rather to have done so little, than that I have done so much, for him that so frankly obliged a stranger and a child. When Gracchus was put to death for sedition, that faithful friend and accomplice of his was dismissed, and mentioned with honour by all posterity, who, when he was impeached, justified his treason by the avowing a friendship so great that, whatever Gracchus had commanded him, he would not have declined it. And being further questioned, whether he would have burned the capitol at his bidding ? he replied again, that he should have done it ; but Gracchus would not bid such a thing. They that knew me heretofore, know I have a thousand times thus apologised for myself ; adding, that in vassals and slaves, and persons transcendently obliged, their fidelity exempted them from all ignominy, though the principal lords, masters, &nd patrons, might be accounted traitors. My youth and other circumstances incapacitated me from rendering him any great services ; but all that I did, and all that I writ, had no other aim than his interest ; nor do I care how much any man can inodiate my former writings, as long as they were subservient to him. " Having made this declaration, let them (or more able men than they) write the life of a man who hath some virtues of the most celebrated times, and hath preserved himself free from the vices of these. My reply shall be a scornful silence." Preface to Stubbe's " Legends no Histories," 1670. The Royal Society. 349 to his perfect disinterestedness. He never partook of the prosperity of his patron, nor mixed with any parties, loving the retirement of his private studies ; and if he scorned and hated one party, the Presbyterians, it was, says Wood, because his high generous nature detested men " void of generous souls, sneaking, snivelling, &c." Stubbe appears to have car- ried this philosophical indifference towards objects of a higher interest than those of mere profit ; for, at the Restoration, he found no difficulty in conforming to the Church* and to the Government. The king bestowed on him the title of his physician ; yet, for the sake of making philosophical experi- ments, Stubbe went to Jamaica, and intended to have pro- ceeded to Mexico and Peru, pursuing his profession, but still an adventurer. At length Stubbe returned home ; established himself as a physician at Warwick, where, though he died early, he left a name celebrated. f The fertility of his pen appears in a great number of philosophical, political, and medical publications. But all his great learning, the facility of his genius, his poignant wit, his high professional character, his lofty independence, his scorn of practising the little mys- terious arts of life, availed nothing ; for while he was making himself popular among his auditors, he was eagerly depre- ciated by those who would not willingly allow merit to a man who owned no master, and who feared no rival. Literary coteries were then held at coffee-houses ;J and there presided the voluble Stubbe, with " a big and magiste- rial voice, while his mind was equal to it," says the charac- terising Wood ; but his attenuated frame seemed too delicate * His reasons for conformity on these important objects are given with his usual simplicity. " I have at length removed all the umbrages I ever lay under. I have joined myself to the Church of England, not only upon account of its being publicly imposed (which in things indifferent is no small consideration, as I learned from the Scottish transactions at Perth), but because it is the least defining, and consequently the most comprehen- sive and fitting to be national." t He died at Bath in 1676, where he had gone in attendance upon several of his patients from the neighbourhood of Warwick, where he for a long time practised as a physician. His old antagonist Glanvill was at that time rector of the Abbey Church in which he was buried, and so be- came the preacher of his funeral sermon. Wood says he " said no great matter of him." ED. J Pope said to Spence, "It was Dryden who made Will's coffee-house the great resort for the wits of his time. After his death Addison trans- ferred it to Button's, who had been a servant of his." Will's coffee-house was at the corner of Bow-street, Covent-garden, and Button's close by in Itussell-street. ED. 350 Quarrels of Authors. to hold long so unbroken a spirit. It was an accident, how- ever, which closed this life of toil and hurry and petulent genius. Going to a patient at night, Stubbe was drowned iu a very shallow river, " his head (adds our cynic, who had generously paid the tribute of his just admiration with his strong peculiarity of style) being then intoxicated with bib- bing,-but more with talking and snuffing of powder." Such was the adversary of the Royal Society ! It is quite in character that, under the government of Cromwell, he himself should have spread a taste for what was then called "The New Philosophy " among our youth and gentlemen, with the view of rendering the clergy contemptible ; or, as he says, " to make them appear egregious fools in matters of common discourse." He had always a motive for his actions, however opposite they were ; pretending that he was never moved by caprice, but guided by principle. One of his adver- saries, however, has reason to say, that judging him by his "printed papers, he was a man of excellent contradictory parts." After the Restoration, he furnished as odd, but as forcible a reason, for opposing the Royal Society. At that time the nation, recent from republican ardours, was often panic-struck by papistical conspiracies, and projects of arbi- trary power ; and it was on this principle that he tcok part against the Society. Influenced by Dr. Fell and others, he suffered them to infuse these extravagant opinions into his mind. No private ends appear to have influenced his change- able conduct ; and in the present instance he was sacrificing his personal feelings to his public principles ; for Stubbe was then in the most friendly correspondence with the illustrious Boyle, the father of the Royal Society, who admired the ardour of Stubbe, till he found its inconvenience.* * " Some years after the king's restoration he took pet against the Royal Society, (for which before he had a great veneration,) and being en- couraged by Dr. Jo. Fell, no admirer of that society, became in his writings an inveterate enemy against it for several pretended reasons : among which were, first, that the members thereof intended to bring a contempt upon ancient and solid learning, upon Aristotle, to undermine the universities, and reduce them to nothing, or at least to be very inconsiderable. Se- condly, that at long running to destroy the established religion, and involve the nation in popery, and I know not what, &c. So dexterous was his pen, whether pro or con, that few or none could equal, answer, or come near him. He was a person of most admirable parts, had a most pro- digious memory, though his enemies would not acknowledge it, but said he read indexes ; was the most noted Latinist and Grecian of his age ; and after he had been put upon it, was so great an enemy to the virtaoni of his The Royal Society. 351 Stubbe opened his formidable attacks, for they form a series, by replying to the "Plus Ultra" of Glanvill, with a title as quaint, " The Plus Ultra reduced to a Non-plus, in animadversions on Mr. Glanvill and the Virtuosi." For a pretence for this violent attack, he strained a passage in Glanvill ; insisting that the honour of the whole faculty of which he was a member was deeply concerned to refute Glanvill' s assertion, that " the ancient physicians could not cure a cut finger." This Glanvill denied he had ever affirmed or thought ; * but war once resolved on, a pretext as slight as the present serves the purpose ; and so that an odium be raised against the enemy, the end is obtained before the injustice is acknowledged. This is indeed the history of other wars than those of words. The present was protracted with an hostility unsubduing and unsubdued. At length the malicious in- genuity, or the heated fancy, of Stubbe, hardly sketched a political conspiracy, accusing the ROYAL SOCIETY of having adopted the monstrous projects of CAMPANELLA ; an anomalous . genius, who was confined by the Inquisition the greater part of his life, and who, among some political reveries, projected the establishment of a universal empire, though he was for shaking off the yoke of authority in the philosophical world. He was for one government and one religion through- time, I mean those of the Royal Society, that, as he saith, they alarmed him with dangers and troubles even to the hazard of his life and fortunes." Wood. * The aspersed passage in Glanvill is this : " The philosophers of elder times, though their wits were excellent, yet the way they took was not like to bring much advantage to knowledge, or any of the uses of human life, being, for the most part, that of Notion and Dispute, which still runs round in a labyrinth of talk, but advanceth nothing. These methods, in so many centuries, never brought the world so much practical beneficial knowledge as could help towards the cure of a cut finger." Plus Ultra, p. 7. Stubbe, with all the malice of a wit, drew his inference, and turned the point unfairly against his adversary ! I shall here observe how much some have to answer, in a literary court of conscience, when they unfairly depreciate the works of a contempo- rary ; and how idly the literary historian performs his task, whenever he adopts the character of a writer from another who is his adversary. This may be particularly shown in the present instance. MORHOFF, in his Polyhistor Litteraria, censures the Plus Ultra of Glanvill, conceiving that he had treated with contempt all ages and nations but his own. The German bibliographer had never seen the book, but took its character from Stubbe and Meric Casaubon. The design of the Plus Ultra, however, differs little from the other works of Glanvill, which Morhoff had seen, and has highly commended. 352 Quarrels of Authors. out Europe, but in other respects he desired to leave the minds of men quite free. Campanella was one of the new lights of the age ; and his hardy, though wild genius much more resembled our Stubbe, who denounced his extrava- gancies, than any of the Eoyal Society, to whom he was so artfully compared. This tremendous attack appeared in Stubbe's " Campanella Revived, or an Enquiry into the History of the Royal Society ; whether the Virtuosi there do not pursue the projects of Campanella, for reducing England into Popery ; relating the quarrel betwixt H. S. and the K. S., &c. 1670."* * The political reverie of Campanella was even suspected to cover very opposite designs to those he seemed to be proposing to the world. He at- tempted to turn men's minds from all inquiries into politics and religion, to mere philosophical ones. He wished that the passions of mankind might be so directed, as to spend their force in philosophical discussions, and in improvements in science. He therefore insisted on a uniformity on those great subjects which have so long agitated modern Europe ; for the an- cients seem to have had no wars merely for religion, and perhaps none for modes of government. One may discover an enlightened principle in the project ; but the character of Campanella was a jumble of sense, subtlety, and wildness. He probably masked his real intentions. He appears an advocate for the firm establishment of the papal despotism ; yet he aims to give an enlightened principle to regulate the actions of mankind. The in- tentions of a visionary are difficult to define. If he were really an advo- cate fur despotism, what occasioned an imprisonment for the greater part of his days ? Did he lay his project much deeper than the surface of things ? Did Campanella imagine that, if men were allowed to philosophise with the utmost freedom, the despotism of religion and politics would dissolve away in the weakness of its quiescent state ? The project is a chimera but, according to the projector, the political and religious freedom of England formed its greatest obstacle. Part of his plan, therefore, includes the means of weakening the Insular heretics by intestine divisions a mode not seldom practised by the continental powers of France and Spain. The political project of this fervid genius was, that his " Prince," the Spanish king, should be the mightiest sovereign in Europe. For this, he was first to prohibit all theological controversies from the Transalpine schools, those of Germany, &c. "A controversy," he observes, "always shows a kind of victory, and may serve as an authority to a bad cause." He would therefore admit of no commentaries on the Bible, to prevent all diversity of opinion. He would have revived the ancient philosophical sects, instead of the modern religious sects. The Greet; and the Hebrew languages were not to be taught ! for the republican freedom of the ancient Jews and Grecians had often proved de- structive of monarchy. Hobbes, in the bold scheme of his Leviathan, seems to have been aware of this fatality. Cainpanella would substitute for these ancient languages the study of the Arabic tongue ! The trou- blesome Transalpine wits might theu employ themselves in confuting the The Royal Society. 353 Such was the dread which his reiterated attacks caused the Eoyal Society, that they employed against him all the petty persecutions of power and intrigue. "Thirty legions," says Stubbe, alluding to the famous reply of the philosopher, who Turks, rather than in vexing the Catholics ; so closely did sagacity and extravagance associate in the mind of this wild genius. But Mathema- tical and Astronomical schools, and other institutions for the encourage- ment of the mechanical arts, and particularly those to which the northern genius is most apt, as navigation, &c. , were to occupy the studies of the people, divert them from exciting fresh troubles, and withdraw them from theological factions. Campanella thus would make men great in science, having first made them slaves in politics ; a philosophical people were to be the subjects of despots not an impossible event ! His plan, remarkable enough, of weakening the English, I give in his words : "No better way can possibly be found than by causing divisions and dissensions among them, and by continually keeping up the same ; which will furnish the Spaniard and the French with advantageous op- portunities. As for their religion, which is a moderated Calvinism, that cannot be so easily extinguished and rooted out there, unless there were some schools set up in Flanders, where the English have great commerce, by means of which there may be scattered abroad the seeds of schism and division. These people being of a nature which is still desirous of novel- ties and change, they are easily wrought over to anything." These schools were tried at Douay in Flanders, and at Valladolid in Spain, and other places. They became nests of rebellion for the English Catholics ; or for any one, who, being discontented with government, was easily converted to any religion which aimed to overturn the British Constitution. The secret history of the Roman Catholics in England remains yet to be told : they indeed had their martyrs and their heroes ; but the public effects appear in the frequent executions which occurred in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. Stubbe appears to have imagined that the ROYAL SOCIETY was really formed on the principle of Campanella ; to withdraw, the people from in- termeddling with politics and religion, by engaging them merely in philo- sophical pursuits. The reaction of the public mind is an object not always sufficiently indicated by historians. The vile hypocrisy and mutual perse- cutions of the numerous fanatics occasioned very relaxed and tolerant principles of religion at the Restoration ; as, the democratic fury having spent itself, too great an indulgence was now allowed to monarchy. Stubbe was alarmed that, should Popery be established, the crown of England would become feudatory to foreign power, and embroil the nation in the restitution of all the abbey lands, of which, at the Reformation, the Church had so zealously been plundered. He was still further alarmed that the virtuosi would influence the education of our youth to these pur- poses ; "an evil," says he, "which has been guarded against by our an- cestors in founding free-schools, by uniformity of instruction cementing men's minds." We now smile at these terrors ; perhaps they were some- times real. The absolute necessity of strict conformity to the prevalent religion of Europe was avowed in that unrivalled scheme of despotism, which menaced to efface every trace of popular freedom, and the inde- pendence of nations, under the dominion of Napoleon. A A 354 Quarrels of Authors. would not dispute with a crowned head, " were to be called to aid you against a young country physician, who had so long discontinued studies of this nature." However, he announces that he has finished three more works against the Royal Society, and has a fourth nearly ready, if it be necessary to prove that the rhetorical history of the Society by Sprat must be bad, because " no eloquence can be complete if the subject-matter be foolish !" His adversaries not only threatened to write his life,* but they represented him to the king as a libeller, who ought to be whipped at a cart's tail ; a circumstance which Stubbe records with the indignation of a Roman spirit.f They stopped his work several times, and by some stratagem they hindered him from correcting the press ; but nothing could impede the career of his fearless genius. * To this threat of writing his life, we have already noticed the noble apology he has drawn up for the versatility of his opinions. See p. 347. At the moment of the Restoration it was unwise for any of the parties to reproach another for their opinions or their actions. In a nationa.l revolu- tion, most men are implicated in the general reproach ; and Stubbe said, on this occasion, that " he had observed worse faces in the society than his own." Waller, and Sprat, and Cowley had equally commemorated the protectorship of Cromwell and the restoration of Charles. Our satirist insidiously congratulates himself that "he had never compared Oliver the regicide to Moses, or his son to Joshua ;" nor that he had ever written any Pindaric ode, "dedicated to the happy memory of the most renowned Prince Oliver, Lord Protector :" nothing to recommend " the sacred urn" of that blessed spirit to the veneration of posterity ; as if " His/ame, like men, the elder it doth grow, Will of itself turn whiter too, Without what needless art can do." These lines were, I think, taken from Sprat himself ! Stubbe adds, it would be " imprudent in them to look beyond the act of indemnity and oblivion, which was more necessary to the Royal Society than to me, who joined with no party, &c." Preface to " Legends no Histories.''' t He has described this intercourse of his enemies at court with the king, where, when this punishment was suggested, " a generous person- age, altogether unknown to me, being present, bravely and frankly inter- posed, saying, that 'whatever I was, I was a Roman; that Englishmen were not so precipitously to be condemned to so exemplary a punishment ; that representing that book to be a libel against the king was too remote a consequence to be admitted of in a nation free-born, and governed by laws, and tender of ill precedents.' " It was a noble speech, in the relaxed politics of the court of Charles II. He who made it deserved to have had his name more explicitly told : he is designated as " that excellent Eng- lishman, the great ornament of this age, nation, and House of Commons ; he whose single worth balanceth much of" the debaucheries, follies, and impertinences of the kingdom." A Reply unto the Letter written to Mr. Jlenry Stubbf, Oxford, 1671, p. 20. The Royal Society. 355 He treated with infinite ridicule their trivial or their mar- vellous discoveries in his "Legends no Histories," and his " Censure on some Passages of the History of the Koyal Society." But while he ridiculed, he could instruct them; often contributing new knowledge, which the Royal Society had certainly been proud to have registered in their history. In his determination of depreciating the novelties of his day, he disputes even the honour of HARVEY to the discovery of the circulation of the blood : he attributes it to ANDREAS C^ESALPINUS, who not only discovered it, but had given it the name of Circulatio Sanguinis.* Stubbe was not only himself a man of science, but a caustic satirist, who blends much pleasantry with his bitterness. In * Stubbe gives some curious information on this subject. Harvey pub- lished his Treatise at Frankfort, 1628, but Csesalpinus's work had ap- peared in 1593. Harvey adopted the notion, and more fully and perspi- cuously proved it. I shall give what Stubbe says. " Harvey, in his two Answers to Riolan, nowhere asserts the invention so to himself, as to deny that he had the intimation or notion from Csesalpinus ; and his silence I take for a tacit confession. His ambition of glory made him willing tn be ihowjht the author of a paradox he had so illustrated, and brought upon the stage, where it lay unregarded, and in all probability buried in obli- vion ; yet such was his modesty, as not to vindicate it to himself by tell- ing a lie." STUBBE'S Censure, &c., p. 112. I give this literary anecdote, as it enters into the history of most dis- coveries, of which the improvers, rather than the inventors, are usually the most known to the world. Bayle. who wrote much later than Stubbe, asserts the same, and has preserved the entire passage, art. Ccesalpinus. It is said Harvey is more expressly indebted to a passage in Servetus, which Wotton has given in the preface to his "Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning," edition 1725. The notion was probably then afloat, and each alike contributed to its development. Thus it was disputed with Copernicus, whether his great discovery of a fixed sun, and the earth wheeling round that star, was his own ; others had certainly observed it ; yet the invention was still Copernican : for that great genius alone cor- rected, extended, and gave perfection to a hint, till it expanded to a system. So gradual have often been the great inventions of genius. What others conjectured, and some discovered, Harvey demonstrated. The fate of Harvey's discovery is a curious instance of that patience and fortitude which genius must too often exert in respect to itself. Though Harvey lived to his eightieth year, he hardly witnessed his great discovery esta- blished before he died ; and it has been said, that he was the only one of his contemporaries who lived to see it in some repute. No physician adopted it ; and when it got into vogue, they then disputed whether he was the inventor ! Sir William Temple denied not only the discovery, but the doctrine of the Circulation of the Blood. " Sense can hardly allow it ; which," says he, "in this dispute must be satisfied as well as reason, before mankind will concur." A A 2 356 Quarrels of Authors. the first ardour of philosophical discovery, the Society, de- lighted by the acquisition of new facts, which, however, rarely proved to be important, and were often ludicrous in their detail, appear to have too much neglected the arts of reason- ing ; they did not even practise common discernment, or what we might term philosophy in its more enlarged sense.* Stubbe, with no respect for " a Society," though dignified by the addition of " Royal," says, " a cabinet of virtuosi are but pitiful reasoners. Ignorance is infectious ; and 'tis possible for men to grow fools by contact. I will speak to the virtuosi in the language of the Romish Saint Francis (who, in the wil- derness, so humbly addressed his only friends.) ' Salvete, fratres asini ! Salvete, fratres lupi /' " As for their Trans- actions and their History, he thinks " they purpose to grow famous, as the Turks do to gain Paradise, by treasuring up all the waste paper they meet with" He rallies them on some ridiculous attempts, such as " An Art of Flying ;" an art, says Stubbe, in which they have not so much as effected the most facile part of the attempt, which is to break their necks ! Sprat, in his dedication to the king, had said that " the establishment of the Royal Society was an enterprise equal to the most renowned actions of the best princes." One would imagine that the notion of a monarch founding a society for the cultivation of the sciences could hardly be * Stubbe has an eloquent passage, which describes the philosophy of science. The new Experimental School had perhaps too wholly rejected some virtues of the old one; the cultivation of the human understanding, as well as the mere observation on the facts that they collected ; an error which has not been entirely removed. " That art of reasoning by which the prudent are discriminated from fools, which methodiseth and facilitates our discourses, which informs us of the validity of consequences and the probability of arguments, and mani- fests the fallacies of impostors ; that art which gives life to solid eloquence, and which renders Statesmen, Divines, Physicians, and Lawyers accom- plished ; how is this cried down and vilified by the ignoramuses of these days ! What contempt is there raised upon the disputative Ethics of Aris- totle and the Stoics ; and those moral instructions, which have produced the Alexanders and the Ptolemies, the Pompeys and the Ciceroes, are now slighted in comparison of day-labouring I Did we live at Sparta, where the daily employments were the exercises of substantial virtue and gal- lantry, and men, like setting dogs, were rather bred up unto, than taught reason and worth, it were a more tolerable proposal (though the different policy of these times would not adrifit of it) ; but this working, so recom- mended, is but the feeding of carp in the air, &c. As for the study of Politics, and all critical learning, these are either pedantical, or tedious, to those who have a shorter way of studying men." Preface to ' ' Legends no Histories." The Royal Society. 357 made objectionable ; but, in literary controversy, genius has the power of wresting all things to its purpose by its own. peculiar force, and the art of placing every object in the light it chooses, and can thus obtain our attention in spite of our conviction. I will add the curious animadversion of Stubbe on Sprat's compliment to the king: " Never Prince acquired the fame of great and good by any knickknacks but by actions of political wisdom, cou- rage, justice," &c. Stubbe shows how Dionysius and Nero had been depraved by these mechanic philosophers that " An Aristotelian would never pardon himself if he com- pared this heroical enterprise with the actions of our Black Prince or Henry V.; or with Henry VIII. in demolishing abbeys and rejecting the papal authority ; or Queen Eliza- beth's exploits against Spain ; or her restoring the Protestant religion, putting the Bible into English, and supporting the Protestants beyond sea. But the reason he (Sprat) gives why the establishment of the Royal Society of experimen- tators equals the most renowned actions of the best princes, is such a pitiful one as Guzman de Alfarache never met with in the whole extent of the Hospital of Fools ' To increase the power, by new arts, of conquered nations !' These con- sequences are twisted like the cordage of Ocnus, the God of Sloth,, in hell, which are fit for nothing but to fodder asses with. If our historian means by every little invention to in- crease the powers of mankind, as an enterprise of such renown, he is deceived ; this glory is not due to such as go about with a dog and a hoop, nor to the practicers of leger- demain, or upon the high or low rope ; not to every mounte- bank and his man Andrew ; all which, with many other mechanical and experimental philosophers, do in some sort increase the powers of mankind, and differ no more from some of the virtuosi, than a cat in a hole doth from a cat out of a hole; betwixt which that inquisitive person ASDRYASDUST TOSSOFFACAN found a very great resemblance. 'Tis not the in- creasing of the powers of mankind by a pendulum watch, nor spectacles whereby divers may see under water, nor the new ingenuity of apple-roasters, nor every petty discovery or in- strument, must be put in comparison, much less preferred, belore the protection and enlargement of empires."* * "Legends no Histories," p. 5. 358 Quarrels of Authors. Had Stubbe's death not occurred, this warfare had probably continued. He insisted on a complete victory. He had forced the Royal Society to disclaim their own works, by an an- nouncement that they were not answerable, as a body, for the various contributions which they gave the world : an adver- tisement which has been more than once found necessary to be renewed. As for their historian Sprat, our intrepid Stubbe very unexpectedly offered to manifest to the parliament that this courtly adulator, by his book, was chargeable with high treason ; if they believed that the Royal Society were really engaged so deeply as he averred in the portentous Cajsarean Popery of Campanella. Glanvill, who had " insulted all university learning," had been immolated at the pedestal of Aristotle. " I have done enough," he adds, " since my anim- adversions contain more than they all knew ; and that these have shown that the virtuosi are very great impostors, or men of little reading;" alluding to the various discoveries which they promulgated as novelties, but which Stubbe had asserted were known to the ancients and others of a later period. This forms a perpetual accusation against the inventors and discoverers, who may often exclaim, " Perish those who have done our good works before us !" " The Dis- coveries of the Ancients and Moderns" by Dutens, had this book been then published, might have assisted our keen inves- tigator ; but our combatant ever proudly met his adversaries single-handed. The " Philosophical Transactions" were afterwai'ds accused of another kind of high treason, against grammar and com- mon sense. It was long before the collectors of facts prac- tised the art of writing on them ; still later before they could philosophise, as well as observe : Bacon and Boyle were at first only imitated in their patient industry. When Sir HANS SLOANE was the secretary of the Royal Society, he, and most of his correspondents, wrote in the most confused manner imaginable. A wit of a very original cast, the face- tious Dr. KING,* took advantage of their perplexed and often * Dr. King was allied to the families of Clarendon and Rochester ; he took a degree as Doctor of Civil Law, and soon got into great practice. "He afterwards went with the /Earl of Pembroke, Lord -Lieutenant, to Ireland, where he became Judge Advocate, Sole Commissioner of the Prizes, Keeper of the Records, Vicar-General to the Lord Primate of Ireland ; was countenanced by persons of the highest rank, and might have made a fortune. But so far was he from heaping up riches, that he returned to England with no other treasure than a few merry poems and humorous The Royal Society. 359 unintelligible descriptions ; of the meanness of their style, which humbled even the great objects of nature ; of their credulity that heaped up marvels, and their vanity that prided itself on petty discoveries, and invented a new species of satire. SLOANE, a name endeared to posterity, whose life was that of an enthusiast of science, and who was the founder of a national collection ; and his numerous friends, many of whose names have descended with the regard due to the votaries of knowledge, fell the victims. Wit is an unsparing leveller. The new species of literary burlesque which King seems to have invented, consists in selecting the very expressions and absurd passages from the original he ridiculed, and framing out of them a droll dialogue or a grotesque narrative, he adroitly inserted his own remarks, replete with the keenest irony, or the driest sarcasm.* Our arch wag says, " The bulls and blunders which Sloane and his friends so naturally essays, and returned to his student's place in Christ Church." Enc. Brit. He was assisted by Bolingbroke ; but when his patronage failed, Swift procured him the situation of editor to "Barber's Gazette." He ultimately took to drinking; Lintot the bookseller, told Pope, "Ire- member Dr. King could write verses in a tavern three hours after he could not speak." His last patron was Lord Clarendon, and he died in apart- ments he had provided for him in London, Dec. 25, 1712, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey at the expense of his lordship. Ku. * Sloane describes Clark, the famous posture-master, "Phil. Trans." No. 242, certainly with the wildest grammar, but with many curious parti- culars ; the gentleman in one of Dr. King's Dialogues inquires the secre- tary's opinion of the causes of this man's wouderful pliability of limbs ; a question which Sloane had thus solved, with colloquial ease : it depended upon " bringing the body to it, by using himself to it." In giving an account of " a child born without a brain"--" Had it lived long enough," said King, "it would have made an excellent publisher of Philosophical Transactions !" iSloaue presented the Royal Society with "a figure of a Chinese, repre- senting one of that nation using an ear-picker, and expressing great satis- faction therein." " Whatever pleasure," said that learned physician, "the Chinese may take in thus picking their ears, I am certain most people in these parts, who have had their hearing impaired, have had snch misfortune first come to them by picking their ears too much." He is carious, says King, that the secretary took as much satisfaction in looking upon the ear-picker, as the Chinese could do in picking heir ears j ^ But "What drowning is" that " Hanging is only apoplexy ! " Men catnot swallow when they are dead !" that " No fish die of fevers ! that "Hogs s t soap, and cows s t fire !" that the secretary 1 "Shells, called Elackmoor' s-teeth, I suppose from their whitene**!^ and the learned KAY'S, that grave naturalist, incredible description of a very curious little instrument !" I leave to the reader and Dr. King. 360 Quarrels of Authors. pour forth cannot be misrepresented, so careful I am in pro- ducing them." King still moves the risible muscles of his readers. "The Voyage to Cajamai," a travestie of Sloane's valuable " History of Jamaica," is still a peculiar piece of humour ; and it has been rightly distinguished as " one of the severest and merriest satires that was ever written in prose."* The author might indeed have blushed at the labour bestowed on these drolleries ; he might have dreaded that humour so voluminous might grow tedious ; but King, often with a LUCIANIC spirit, with Hashes of RABELAIS, and not seldom with the causticity of his friend Swift, dissipated life in literary idleness, with parodies and travesties on most of his contemporaries ; and he made these little things often more exquisite at the cost of consuming on them a genius capable of better. A parodist or a burlesquer is a wit who is perpetually on the watch to catch up or to disguise an author's words, to swell out his defects, and pick up his blun- ders to amuse the public ! King was a wit, who lived on the highway of literature, appropriating, for his own purpose, the property of the most eminent passengers, by a dextrous mode no other had hit on. What an important lesson the labours of King offer to real genius ! Their temporary hu- mour lost with their prototypes becomes like a paralytic limb, which, refusing to do its office, impedes the action of the vital members. WOTTON, in summing up his " Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning," was doubtful whether knowledge would improve in the next age proportion ably as it had done in his own. " The humour of the age is visibly altered," he says, " from what it had been thirty years ago. Though the * Sir Hans Sloane was unhappily not insensible to these ludicrous assaults, and in the preface to his "History of Jamaica," 1707, a work so highly prized for its botanical researches, absolutely anticipated this fatal facetiousness, for thus he delivers himself: " Those who strive to make ridiculous anything of this kind, and think themselves great wits, but are very ignorant, and understand nothing of the argument, these, if one were afraid of them, and consulted his own ease, might possibly hinder the publication of any such work, the efforts to be expected from them, making possibly some impression upon persons of equal dispositions ; but considering that I have the approbation of others, whose judgment, know- ledge, &c., I have great reason to value; and considering that these sorts of men have been in all ages ready to do the like, not only to ordinary persons and their equals, but even to abuse their prince and blaspheme their Maker, I shall, as I have ever since I seriously considered this matter, think of and treat them with the greatest contempt." The Royal Society. 361 Koyal Society has weathered the rude attacks of Stubbe," yet "the sly insinuations of the Men of Wit" with "the public ridiculing of all who spend their time and fortunes in scientific or curious researches, have so taken off the edge of those who have opulent fortunes and a love to learning, that these studies begin to be contracted amongst physicians and mechanics." He treats King with good-humour. "A man is got but a very little way (in philosophy) that is concerned as often as such a merry gentleman as Dr. King shall think fit to make himself sport." * * Dr. King's dispersed works have fortunately been collected by Mr. Nichols, with ample illustrations, in three vols. 8vo, 1776. The " Useful Transactions in Philosophy and other sorts of Learning," form a collection, of ludicrous dissertations of Antiquarianism, Natural Philosophy, Criticism, &c. , where his own peculiar humour combines with his curious reading. [In this he burlesqued the proceedings of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies with some degree of spirit and humour. By turning vulgar lines into Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon, a learned air is given to some papers on childish subjects. One learned doctor communicates to another "an, Essay proving, by arguments philosophical, that millers, falsely so reputed, are not thieves, with an interesting argument that taylors likewise are not so." A Welsh schoolmaster sends some "natural observations" made in Wales, in direct imitation of the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1707, and with humorous love for genealogy, reckons that in his school, "since the flood, there have been 466, and I am the 467th master : before the flood, they living long, there were but two Rice ap Evan Dha the good, and Davie ap Shones Gonnah the naught, in whose time the flood came." The first paper of the collection is an evident jest on John Bagford and his gather- ings for the history of printing, now preserved among the manuscripts of the British Museum. It purports to be "an Essay on the invention of samplers, communicated by Mrs. Judith Bagford, with an account of her collections for the same :" and written in burlesque of a paper in the " Philosophical Transactions" for April, 1697. It is a most elaborate per- formance, deducing with mock-seriousness the origin of samplers from the ancient tales of Arachne, who "set forth the whole story of her wrongs in needlework, and sent it to her sister ;" and our author adds, with much humour, " it is very remarkable that the memory of this story does at present continue, for there are no samplers, which proceed in any mea- sure beyond the first rudiments, but have a tree and a nightingale sitting on it." Such were the jests of the day against the Royal philosophers.] He also invented satirical and humorous indexes, not the least facetious parts of his volumes. King had made notes on more than 20,000 books and MSS., and his Adversaria, of which a portion has been preserved, is not inferior in curiosity to the literary journals of Gibbon, though it wants the investigating spirit of the modern philosopher. SIR JOHN HILL, THE ROYAL SOCIETY, FIELDING, SMART, &c. A Parallel between Orator HENLEY and Sir JOHN HILL his love of the Science of Botany, with the fate of his " Vegetable System" ridicules scientific Collectors; his "Dissertation on Royal Societies," and his "Review of the Works of the Royal Society" compliments himself that he is NOT a Member successful in his attacks on the Experi- mentalists, but loses his spirit in encountering the Wits "The Inspector" a paper war with FIELDING a literary stratagem battles with SMART and WOODWARD HILL appeals to the Nation for the Office of Keeper of the Sloane Collection closes his life by turning Empiric Some Epigrams on HILL his Miscellaneous Writings. IN the history of literature we discover some who have opened their career with noble designs, and with no deficient powers, yet unblest with stoic virtues, having missed, in their honourable labours, those rewards they had anticipated, they have exhibited a sudden transition of character, and have It-it only a name proverbial for its disgrace. Our own literature exhibits two extraordinary characters, indelibl} r marked by the same traditional odium. The wit and acuteness of Orator HENLEY, and the science and vivacity of the versatile Sir JOHN HILL, must separate them from those who plead the same motives for abjuring all moral restraint, without having ever furnished the world with a single instance that they were capable of forming nobler views. This orator and this knight would admit of a close parallel ;* both as modest an their youth as afterwards remarkable for their effrontery. Their youth witnessed the same devoted- ness to study, with the same inventive and enterprising genius. Hill projected and pursued a plan of botanical travels, to form a collection of rare plants : the patronage he received was too * The moral and literary character of Henley has been developed in "Calamities of Authors." Sir John Hill. 303 limited, and he suffered the misfortune of having anticipated the national taste for the science of botany by half a century. Our young philosopher's valuable " Treatise on Gems," from Theophrastus, procured for him the warm friendship of the eminent members of the Royal Society. To this critical period of the lives of Henley and of Hill, their resemblance is striking ; nor is it less from the moment the surprising revo- lution in their characters occurred. Pressed by the wants of life, they lost its decencies. Henley attempted to poise himself against the University ; Hill against the Royal Societ}'. Rejected by these learned bodies, both these Cains of literature, amid their luxuriant ridicule of eminent men, still evince some claims to rank among them. The one prostituted his genius in his "Lectures;" the other, in his "Inspectors." Never two authors were more constantly pelted with epigrams, or buffeted in literary quarrels. They have met with the same fate; covered with the same odium. Yet Sir John Hill, this despised man, after all the fertile absurdities of his literary life, performed more for the improvement of the " Philosophi- cal Transactions," and was the cause of diffusing a more general taste for the science of botany, than any other con- temporary. His real ability extorts that regard which his misdirected ingenuity, instigated by vanity, and often by more worthless motives, had lost for him in the world.* * The twenty-six folios of his "Vegetable System," with many others, testify his love and his labour. It contains 1600 plates, representing 26,000 different figures of plants from nature only. This publication ruined the author, whose widow (the sister of Lord Ranelagh) published "An Address to the Public, by the Hon. Lady Hill, setting forth the con- sequences of the late Sir John Hill's acquaintance with the Earl of Bute," 1787. I should have noticed it in the "Calamities of Authors." a sad and mortifying lesson to the votary of science who aspires to a noble enterprise. Lady Hill complains of the patron; bat a patron, however great, cannot always raise the public taste to the degree required to afioi the only true patronage which can animate and reward an author. Her detail is impressive : "Sir John Hill had just wrote a book of great elegance 1 called 'Exotic Botany' which he wished to have presented to the king, and therefore named it to Lord Bute. His lordship waived that, saying that ' he had a greater object to propose ;' and shortly after laid b. a plan of the most voluminous, magnificent, and costly work that ever man attempted. I tremble when I name its title because I think the severe application which it required killed him ; and lam sure the expense ruined his fortune-' The Vegetable System.' This work was to cons twenty-six volumes folio, containing sixteen hundred copper- plates, the 364 Quarrels of Authors. At the time that Hill was engaged in several large compila- tions for the booksellers, his employers were desirous that the honours of an F.R.S. should ornament his title-page. This versatile genius, however, during these graver works, had sud- denly emerged from his learned garret, and, in the shape of a fashionable lounger, rolled in his chariot from the Bedford to Ranelagh ; was visible at routs ; and sate at the theatre a tremendous arbiter of taste, raising about him tumults and divisions ;* and in his " Inspectors," a periodical paper which he published in the London Daily Advertiser, retailed all the great matters relating to himself, and all the little matters he collected in his rounds relating to others. Among other personalities, he indulged his satirical fluency on the scientific collectors. The Antiquarian Society were twitted as medal- scrapers and antediluvian knife-grinders ; conchologists were turned into cockleshell merchants ; and the naturalists wore made to record pompous histories of stickle-backs and cock- chafers. Cautioned by Martin Folkes, President of the Iloyal Society ,f not to attempt his election, our enraged comic philo- engraving of each cost four guineas ; the paper was of the most expensive kind ; the drawings by the first hands. The printing was also a very weighty concern ; and many other articles, with which I am unacquainted. Lord Bute said that 'the expense had been considered, and that Sir John Hill might rest assured his circumstances should not be injured.' Thus he entered upon and finished his destruction. The sale bore no proportion to the expense. After 'The Vegetable System' was completed, Lord Bute proposed another volume to be added, which' Sir John strenuously opposed ; but his lordship repeating his desire, Sir John complied, lest his lordship should find a pretext to cast aside repeated promises of ample provision for himself and family. But this was the crisis of his fate he died." Lady Hill adds: " He was a character on which every virtue was impressed." The domestic partiality of the widow cannot alter the truth of the narrative of " The Vegetable System," and its twenty-six tomes. * His apologist forms this excuse for one then affecting to be a student and a rake : " Though engaged in works which required the attention of a whole life, he was so exact an economist of his time that he scarcely ever missed a public amusement for many years ; and this, as he somewhere observes, was of no small service to him ; as, without indulging in these respects, he could not have undergone the fatigue and study inseparable from the execution of his vast designs." Short Account of the "Life, "Writings, and Character of the late Sir John Hill, M.D." Edinburgh : 1779. t Hogarth has painted a portrait of Folkes, which is still hanging in the rooms of the Koyal Society. He was nominated vice-president by the great Sir Isaac Newton, and succeeded him as president. He wrote a work on the "English Silver Coinage, 1 ' and died at the age of sixty-four, 1754* ED. Sir John Hill. 365 sopher, who had preferred his jests to his friends, now disco- vered that he had lost three hundred at once. Hill could not obtain three signatures to his recommendation. Such was the real, but, as usual, not the ostensible, motive of his for- midable attack on the Royal Society. He produced his " Dissertation on Royal Societies, in a letter from a Sclavonian nobleman to his friend," 1751 ; a humorous prose satire, exhibiting a ludicrous description of a tumultuous meeting at the Royal Society, contrasted with the decorum observed in the French Academy; and moreover, he added a conversazione in a coffee-house between some of the members. Such was the declaration of war, in a first act of hostility ; but the pitched-battle was fought in "A Review of the Works of the Royal Society, in eight parts," 1751. This literary satire is nothing less than a quarto volume, resembling, in its form and manner, the Philosophical Transactions themselves; printed as if for the convenience of members to enable them to bind the "Review" with the work reviewed. Voluminous pleasantry incurs the censure of that tedious trifling which it designs to expose. In this literary facetia, however, no in- considerable knowledge is interspersed with the ridicule. Perhaps Hill might have recollected the successful attempts of Stubbe on the Royal Society, who contributed that curious knowledge which he pretended the Royal Society wanted ; and with this knowledge he attempted to combine the humour of Dr. King.* Hill's rejection from the Royal Society, to another man would have been a puddle to step over ; but he tells a story, and cleanly passes on, with impudent adroitness.f * Hill planned his Review with good sense. He says : " If I am merry in some places, it ought to be considered that the subjects are too ridiculous for serious criticism. That the work, however, might not be without its real use, an Error is nowhere exposed without establishing a Truth in its place." He has incidentally thrown out much curious knowledge such as his plan for forming a Hortus Siccus, &c. The Review itself may still be considered both as curious and entertaining. t In exposing their deficiencies, as well as their redundancies, Hill only wishes, as he tells us, that the Society may by this means become ashamed of what it has been, and that the world may know that he i NOT a mmfcr of it till it is an honour to a man to be sol This was telling the world, with some ingenuity, and with no little impudence, that the Royal Society would not admit him as a member. He pretends to give a secret anecdote to explain the cause of this rejection. Hill, in every critical conjuncture of his affairs, and they were frequent ones, had always a story to tell, or an evasion, which served its momentary purpose. When caned by an Irish 366 Quarrels of Authors. Hill, however, though he used all the freedom of a satirist, by exposing many ridiculous papers, taught the Royal Society a more cautious selection. It could, however, obtain no for- giveness from the parties it offended; and while the respectable men whom Hill had the audacity to attack, Martin Folkes, the friend and successor of Newton, and Henry Baker, the naturalist, were above his censure, his own reputation re- mained in the hands of his enemies. While Hill was gaining over the laughers on his side, that volatile populace soon dis- covered that the fittest object to be laughed at was our literary Proteus himself. The most egregious egotism alone could have induced this gentleman at Ranelagh, and his personal courage, rather than his stoicism, was suspected, he published a story of his having once caned a person whom he called Mario ; on which a wag, considering Hill as a Prometheus, wrote " To beat one man great Hill was fated. What man ? a man whom he created !" We shall see the story he turned to his purpose, when pressed hard by Fielding. In the present instance, in a letter to a foreign correspondent, who had observed his name on the list of the Correspondents of the Royal Society, Hill said " You are to know that I have the honour NOT to be a member of the Royal Society of London." This letter lay open on his table when a member, upon his accustomed visit, came in, and in his absence read it. "And we are not to wonder," says Hill, "that he who could obtain intelligence in this manner could also divulge it. Hinc illce lachrymce! Hence all the animosities that have since disturbed this philosophic world." While Hill insolently congratulates himself that he is not a member of the Royal Society, he has most evidently shown that he had no objection to be the member of any society which would enrol his name among them. He obtained his medical degree from no honourable source ; and another title, which he aifected, he mysteriously contracted into barbaric dissonance. Hill entitled himself Acad. Reg. Scient. Surd. artie8 on both their papers ; and the project succeeded beyond all expectation ; for I have been told that the former narrowly missed getting an estate by it." p. 32. B B 370 Quarrels of Authors. During his inspectorship, he invented a whimsical literary stratagem, which ended in his receiving a castigation more lasting than the honours performed on him at Banelagh by the cane of a warm Hibernian. Hill seems to have been desirous of abusing certain friends whom he had praised in the Inspectors ; so volatile, like the loves of coquettes, are the literary friendships of the " Scribleri." As this could not be done with any propriety there, he published the first number of a new paper, entitled The Impertinent. Having thus relieved his private feelings, he announced the cessation of this new enterprise in his Inspectors, and congratulated the public on the ill reception it had given to the Imperti- nent, applauding them for their having shown by this that " their indignation was superior to their curiosity." With impudence all his own, he adds " It will not be easy to say too much in favour of the candour of the town, which has despised a piece that cruelly and unjustly attacked Mr. Smart the poet." What innocent soul could have imagined that The Impertinent and The Inspector were the same indivi- dual ? The style is a specimen of persiflage ; the thin sparkling thought ; the pert vivacity, that looks like wit without wit ; the glittering bubble, that rises in emptiness ; even its author tells us, in The Inspector, it is " the most pert, the most pretending," &c.* * Isaac Reed, in his ' ' Repository of Fugitive Pieces of "Wit and Hu- mour," vol. iv., in republishing " The Ililliad," has judiciously preserved the offending " Impertinent" and the abjuring " Inspector." The style of " The Impertinent" is volatile and poignant. His four classes of authors are not without humour. " There are men who write because they have wit ; there are those who write because they are hungry ; there are some of the modern authors who have a constant fund of both these causes ; and there are who will write, although they are not instigated either by the one or by the other. The first are all spirit ; the second are all earth ; the third disclose more life, or more vapidity, as the one or the other cause prevails ; and for the last, having neither the one nor the other principle for the cause, they show neither the one nor the other character in the effect ; but begin, continue, and end, as if they had neither begun, con- tinued, nor ended at all." The first class he instances by Fielding ; the second by Smart. Of the third he says : " The mingled wreath belongs to Hill," that is himself; and the fourth he illustrates by the absurd Sir William Browne. " Those of the first rank are the most capricious and lazy of all animals. The monkey genius would rarely exert itself, if even idleness innate did not give way to the superior love of mischief. The ass (that is Smart), which characters the second, is as laborious as he is empty ; he wears a ridiculous comicalness of aspect (which was, indeed, the physiognomy of Sir John Hill. 371 Smart, in return for our Janus-faced critic's treatment, balanced the amount of debtor and creditor with a pungent Dunciad The Hilliad. Hill, who had heard of the rod in pickle, anticipated the blpw, to break its strength ; and, ac- cording to his adopted system, introduced himself and Smart, with a story of his having recommended the bard to his book- seller, " who took him into salary on my approbation. I betrayed him into the profession, and having starved upon it, he has a right to abuse me." This story was formally denied by an advertisement from Newbery, the bookseller. " The Hilliad " is a polished and pointed satire. The hero is thus exhibited on earth, and in heaven. On earth, "a tawny sibyl," with "an old striped curtain " And tatter'd tapestry o'er her shoulders hung Her loins with patchwork cincture were begirt, That more than spoke diversity of dirt. Twain were her teeth, and single was her eye Cold palsy shook her head with " moon-struck madness," awards him all the wealth and fame she could afford him for sixpence; and closes her orgasm with the sage admonition The chequer 5 d world's before thee ; go, farewell ! Beware of Irishmen ; and learn to spell ! But in heaven, among the immortals, never was an unfor- tunate hero of the vindicative Muses so reduced into nothing- ness ! Jove, disturbed at the noise of this thing of wit, exclaims, that nature had never proved productive in vain before, but now, On mere privation she bestow'd a frame, And dignified a nothing with a name ; A wretch devoid of use, of sense, of grace, The insolvent tenant of incumber'd space 1 Pallas hits off the style of Hill, as The neutral nonsense, neither false nor true Should Jove himself, in calculation mad, Still negatives to blank negations add ; How could the barren ciphers ever breed ; But nothing still from nothing would proceed. Raise, or depress, or magnify, or blame, Inanity will ever be the same. the poor poet), that makes people smile when they see him at a distance. His mouth opens, because he must be fed, while we laugh at the insensi- bility and obstinacy that make him prick his lips with th rtles. 372 Quarrels of Authors. But Phoebus shows there may still be something produced from inanity. E'en blank privation has its use and end From emptiness, bow sweetest music flows ! How absence, to possession adds a grace, And modest vacancy, to all gives place. So from Hillario, some effect may spring ; E'en him that slight penumbra of a thing ! The careless style of the fluent Inspectors, beside their audacity, brought Hill into many scrapes. He called Wood- ward, the celebrated harlequin, " the meanest of all charac- ters." This Woodward resented in a pamphlet-battle, in which. Hill was beaten at all points.* But Hill, or the Monthly Reviewer, who might be the same person, for that journal writes with the tenderness of a brother of whatever relates to our hero, pretends that the Inspector only meant, that " the character of Harlequin (if a thing so unnatural and ridiculous ought to be called a character) was the meanest on the stage ! "t * Woodward humorously attributes Hill's attack on him to his jealousy of his successful performance of Harlequin, and opens some of the secret history of Hill, by which it appears that early in life he trod the thea- trical boards. He tells us of the extraordinary pains the prompter had taken with Hill, in the part of Oroonoko : though, "if he had not quite forgotten it, to very little purpose." He reminds Hill of a dramatic anec- dote, which he no doubt had forgotten. It seems he once belonged to a strolling company at May-fair, where, in the scene between Altamont and Lothario, the polite audience of that place all chorused, and agreed with him, when dying he exclaimed, "Oh, Altamont, thy genius is the stronger." He then shows him off as the starved apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, in one of his botanic peregrinations to Chelsea Garden ; from whence, it is said, he was expelled for "culling too many rare plants" " I do remember an apothecary, Culling of simples ." Hill, who was often so brisk in his attack on the wits, had no power of retort ; so that he was always buffeting and always buffeted. f He was also satirised in a poem termed " The Pasquinade," published in 1752, in which the goddesses of Pertness and Dulness join to praise him as their favourite reflex. "Pertness saw her form distinctly shine In none, immortal Hill ! so full as thine." Dulness speaks of him thus rapturously : " See where my son, who gratefully repays Whate'er I lavish'd on his younger days ; "Whom still my arm protects to brave the town Secure from Fielding, Machiavel, or Brown ; Sir John Hill. 373 I will here notice a characteristic incident in Hill's literary life, of which the boldness and the egotism is scarcely paral- leled, even hy Orator Henley. At the time the Sloane Col- lection of Natural History was purchased, to form a part of our grand national establishment, the British Museum, Hill offered himself, by public advertisement, in one of his In- spectors, as the properest person to be placed at its head. The world will condemn him for his impudence. The most reason- able objection against his mode of proceeding would be, that the thing undid itself; and that the very appearance, by public advertisement, was one motive why so confident an offer should be rejected. Perhaps, after all, Hill only wanted to advertise himself. But suppose that Hill was the man he represents himself to be, and he fairly challenges the test, his conduct only appears eccentric, according to routine. Unpatronised and unfriended men are depressed, among other calamities, with their quiescent modesty ; but there is a rare spirit in him who dares to claim favours, which he thinks his right, in the most public manner. I preserve, in the note, the most striking passages of this extraordinary appeal.* Whom rage nor sword e'er mortally shall hurt, Chief of a hundred chiefs o'er all the pert ! Rescued an orphan babe from common sense, I gave his mother's milk to Confidence ; She with her own ambrosia bronz'd his face, And changed his skin to monumental brass. * Hill addresses the Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Speaker, on Sir Hans Sloane's Collection of Natural History, proposing himself as a candidate for nomination in the principal office, by whatever name that shall be called : "I deliver myself with humility ; but con- scious also that I possess the liberties of a British subject, I shall speak with freedom." He says that the only means left for a Briton is to ad- dress his sovereign and the public. "That foreigners will resort to this collection is certain, for it is the most considerable in the world ; and that oar own people will often visit it is as sure, because it may be made the means of much useful as well as curious knowledge. One and the other will expect a person in that office who has sufficient knowledge : he must be able to give account of every article, freely and fluently, not only in his own, but in the Latin and French languages. " This the world, and none in it better than your lordship, sees is not a place that any one can execute : it requires knowledge in a peculiar and uncommon kind of study knowledge which very few possess ; and in which, my lord, the bitterest of my enemies (and I have thousands, al- though neither myself nor they know why) will not say I am deficient . "My lord, the eyes of all Europe are upon this transaction. What title 374 Quarrels of Authors. At length, after all these literary quarrels, Hill survived his literary character. He had written himself down to so low a degree, that whenever he had a work for publication, his em- ployers stipulated, in their contracts, that the author should conceal his name ; a circumstance not new among a certain race of writers.* But the genius of Hill was not annihilated I have to your lordship's favour, those books which I have published, and with which (pardon the necessary boast) all Europe is acquainted, declare. Many may dispute by interest with me ; but if there be one who would prefer himself, by his abilities, I beg the matter may be brought to trial. The collection is at hand ; and I request, my lord, such person and myself may be examined by that test, together. It is an amazing store of know- ledge ; and he has most, in this way, who shall show himself most ac- quainted with it. " What are my own abilities it very ill becomes me thus to boast ; but did they not qualify me for the trust, my lord, I would not ask it. As to those of any other, unless a man be conjured from the dead, I shall not fear to say there is not any one whoever that is able so much as to call the parts of the collection by their names. " I know I shall be accused of ostentation in giving to myself this pre- ference ; and I am sorry for it : but those who have candour will know it could not be avoided. " Many excel, my lord, in other studies : it is my chance to have be- stowed the labour of my life on this : those labours may be of some use to others. This appears the only instance in which it is possible that they should be rewarded ." In a subsequent Inspector, he treated on the improvement of botany by raising plants, and reading lectures on them at the British Museum, with the living plants before the lecturer and his auditors. Poor Sir John ! he was born half a century too early ! He would, in this day, have made his lectures fashionable ; and might have secured at the opera every night an elegant audience for the next morning in the gardens of the Museum. * It would be difficult to form a list of his anonymous works or com- pilations, among which many are curious. Tradition lias preserved his name as the writer of Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, and of several novels. There is a very curious work, entitled " Travels in the East," 2 vols. 8vo, of which the author has been frequently and in vain inquired after. These travels are attributed to a noble lord ; but it now appears that they are a very entertaining narrative manufactured by Hill. Whiston, the book- seller, had placed this work in his MS. catalogue of Hill's books. There is still another production of considerable merit, entitled "Ob- servations on the Greek and Roman Classics," 1753. A learned friend re- collects, when young, that this critical work was said to be written by Hill. It excels Blackwell and Fen ton ; and aspires to the numerous com- position of prose. The sentimental critic enters into the feelings of the great authors whom he describes with spirit, delicacy of taste, and some- times with beautiful illustration. It only wants a chastening hand to be- come a manual for the young classical student, by which he might acquire those vivid emotions, which many college tutors may not be capable of communicating. I suspect, too, he is the author of this work, from a passage which Sir John Hill. 375 by being thrown down so violently on his mother earth ; like Anthaeus, it rose still fresh ; and like Proteus, it assumed new forms.* Lady Hill and the young Hills were claimants on his industry far louder than the evanescent epigrams which darted around him : these latter, however, were more numerous than ever dogged an author in his road to literary celebrity .f His science, his ingenuity, and his impudence once more practised on the credulity of the public, with the innocent quackery of attributing all medicinal virtues to British herbs. Smart quotes, as a specimen of Hill's puffing himself, and of those smart short periods which look like wit, without being witty. In a letter to himself, as we are told, Hill writes : " You have discovered many of the beauties of the ancients they are obliged to you ; we are obliged to you : were they alive, they would thank you ; we who are alive do thank you." If Hill could discriminate the most hidden beauties of the ancients, the tact must have been formed at his leisure in his busy hours he never copied them ; but when had he leisure ? Two other works, of the most contrasted character, display the versa- tility and dispositions of this singular genius, at different eras. When "The Inspector" was rolling in his chariot about the town, appeared " Letters from the Inspector to a Lady," 1752. It is a pamphlet, con- taining the amorous correspondence of Hill with a reigning beauty, whom he first saw at Ranelagh. On his first ardent professions he is contemp- tuously rejected ; he perseveres in high passion, and is coldly encouraged ; at length he triumphs ; and this proud and sullen beauty, in her turn, presents a horrid picture of the passions. Hill then becomes the reverse of what he was ; weary of her jealousy, sated with the intercourse, he stu- diously avoids, and at length rejects her ; assigning for his final argument his approaching marriage. The work may produce a moral effect, while it exhibits a striking picture of all the misery of illicit connexions : but the scenes are coloured with Ovidian warmth. The original letters were shown at the bookseller's : .Hill's were in his own handwriting, and the lady's in a female hand. But whether Hill was the publisher, as an at- tempt at notoriety or the lady admired her own correspondence, which is often exquisitely wrought, is not known. Hill, in his serious hours, published a large quarto volume, entitled " Thoughts Concerning God and Nature," 1755. This work, the result of his scientific knowledge and his moral reasoning, was never undertaken fo the purpose of profit. He printed it with the certainty of a consideral loss, from its abstract topics, not obvious to general readers ; at a ; time, too, when a guinea quarto was a very hazardous enterprise, it purely from conscientious and religious motives ; a circumstance u tioned in that Apology of his Life which we have noticed. The mor closely the character of Hill is scrutinised, the more extraordinary appe this man, so often justly contemned, and so often unjustly depreci Through the influence of Lord Bute he became connected with Boyal Gardens at Kew ; and his lordship also assisted him in pubh his botanical works. See note, p. 363. h It would occupy pages to transcribe epigrams on Hill. One o ' alludes to his philosophical as well as his literary character :- 376 Quarrels of Authors. He made many walk out, who were too sedentary : they were delighted to cure headaches by feverfew tea ; hectic fevers by the daisy ; colics by the leaves of camomile, and agues by its flowers. All these were accompanied by plates of the plants, with the Linnaean names.* This was preparatory to the Essences of Sage, Balsams of Honey, and Tinctures of Valerian. Simple persons imagined they were scientific botanists in their walks, with Hill's plates in their hands. But one of the newly-discovered virtues of British herbs was, undoubtedly, that of placing the discoverer in a chariot. In an Apology for the character of Sir John Hill, published after his death, where he is painted with much beauty of colouring, and elegance of form, the eruptions and excrescences of his motley physiognomy, while they are indicated for they were too visible to be entirely omitted in anything pre- tending to a resemblance are melted down, and even touched into a grace. The Apology is not unskilful, but the real pur- pose appears in the last page ; where we are informed that Lady Hill, fortunately for the world, possesses all his valuable recipes and herbal remedies ! " Hill puffs himself ; forbear to chide ! An insect vile and mean Must first, he knows, be magnified Before it can be seen." Garrick's happy lines are well known on his farces : " For physic and farces his equal there scarce is His farces are physic, his physic a farce is." Another said ".The worse that we wish thee, for all thy vile crimes, Is to take thy own physic, and read thy own rhymes." The rejoinder would reverse the wish " For, if he takes his physic first, He'll never read his rhymes." * Hill says, in his pamphlet on the "Virtues of British Herbs" : "It will be happy if, by the same means, the knowledge of plants also becomes more general. The study of them is pleasant, and the exercise of it health- ful. He who seeks the herb for its cure, will find it half effected by the walk ; and when he is acquainted with the useful kinds, he may be more people's, besides his own, physician. " BOYLE AND BENTLEY. A Faction of Wits at Oxford the concealed movers of this Controversy Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE'S opinions the ostensible cause ; Editions of classical Authors by young Students at Oxford the probable one BOYLE'S first attack in the Preface to his "Phalaris" BENTLEY, after a silence of three years, betrays his feelings on the literary calumny of BOYLE BOYLE replies by the "Examination of Bentley's Dissertation" BENTLEY re- joins by enlarging it the effects of a contradictory Narrative at a distant time BENTLEY'S suspicions of the origin of the "Phalaris," and "The Examination," proved by subsequent facts BENTLEY'S dignity when stung at the ridicule of Dr. KING applies a classical pun, and nicknames his facetious and caustic Adversary KING invents an extraordinary Index to dissect the character of BENTLEY specimens of the Controversy ; BOYLE'S menace, anathema, and ludicrous humour BENTLEY'S sarcastic reply not inferior to that of the Wits. TIIE splendid controversy between BOYLE and BENTLEY was at times a strife of gladiators, and has been regretted as tbe opprobrium of our literature ; but it should be perpetuated to its honour ; for it may be considered, on one side at least, as a noble contest of heroism. The ostensible cause of the present quarrel was inconsider- able ; the concealed motive lies deeper ; and the party feelings of the haughty Aristarchus of Cambridge, and a faction of wits at Oxford, under the secret influence of Dean Aldrich, provoked this fierce and glorious contest. Wit, ridicule, and invective, by cabal and stratagem, obtained a seeming triumph over a single individual, but who, like the Farnesian Hercules, personified the force and resistance of in- comparable strength. " The Bees of Christchurch," as this conspiracy of wits has been called, so musical and so angry, rushed in a dark swarm about him, but only left their fine stings in the flesh they could not wound. He only put out his hand in contempt, never in rage. The Christchurch men, as if doubtful whether wit could prevail against learning, had recourse to the maliciousness of personal satire. They amused an idle public, who could even relish sense and Greek, seasoned as they were with wit and satire, while Boyle was 378 Quarrels of Authors. showing how Bentley wanted wit, and Bentley was proving how Boyle wanted learning. To detect the origin of the controversy, we must find the seed-plot of Bentley's volume in Sir William Temple's ' Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning," which he inscribed to his alma mater, the University of Cambridge. Sir William, who had caught the contagion of the prevalent literary con- troversy of the times, in which the finest geniuses in Europe had entered the lists, imagined that the ancients possessed a greater force of genius, with some peculiar advantages that the human mind was in a state of decay and that our know- ledge was nothing more than scattered fragments saved out of the general shipwreck. He writes with a premeditated design to dispute the improvements or undervalue the inven- tions of his own age. Wotton, the friend of Bentley, replied by his curious volume of " Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning." But Sir William, in his ardour, had thrown out an unguarded opinion, which excited the hostile contempt of Bentley. " The oldest books," he says, " we have, are still in their kind the best : the two most ancient that I know of, in prose, are ' ^Esop's Fables ' and ' Phalaris's Epistles.' " The "Epistles," he insists, exhibit every excellence of "a statesman, a soldier, a wit, and a scholar." That ancient author, who Bentley afterwards asserted was only "some dreaming pedant, with his elbow on his desk." Bentley, bristled over with Greek, perhaps then considered that to notice a vernacular and volatile writer ill assorted with the critic's Fastus. But about this time Dean Aldrich had set an example to the students of Christchurch of pub- lishing editions of classical authors. Such juvenile editor- ships served as an easy admission into the fashionable litera- ture of Oxford. Alsop had published the "JSsop;" and Boyle, among other "young gentlemen," easily obtained the favour of the dean, " to desire him to undertake an edition of the ' Epistles of Phalaris.' " Such are the modest terms Boyle employs in his reply to Bentley, after he had discovered the unlucky choice he had made of an author. For this edition of " Phalaris " it was necessary to collate a MS. in the king's library ; and Bentley, about this time, had become the royal librarian. Boyle did not apply directly to Bentley, but circuitously, by his bookseller, with whom the doctor was not ou terms. Some act of civility, or a Mercury more " formose," to use one of his latinisrns, was probably Boyle and Bentley. 379 expected. The MS. was granted, but the collator was negli- gent ; in six days Bentley reclaimed it, " four hours " had been sufficient for the purpose of collation. When Boyle's " Phalaris " appeared, he made this charge in the preface, that having ordered the Epistles to be collated with the MS. in the king's library, the collator was prevented perfecting the collation by the singular humanity of the library -keeper, who refused any further use of the MS. ; pro singulari sud humanitate negavit : an expression that sharply hit a man marked by the haughtiness of his manners.* Bentley, on this insult, informed Boyle of what had passed. He expected that Boyle would have civilly cancelled the page; though he tells us he did not require this, because, " to have insisted on the cancel, might have been forcing a gentleman to too low a submission ;" a stroke of delicacy which will surprise some to discover in the strong character of Bentley. But he was also too haughty to ask a favour, and too con- scious of his superiority to betray a feeling of injury. Boyle replied, that the bookseller's account was quite different from the doctor's, who had spoken slightingly of him. Bentley said no more. Three years had nearly elapsed, when Bentley, in a new edition of his friend Wotton's book, published " A Disserta- tion on the Epistles of the Ancients;" where, reprehending the false criticism of Sir William Temple, he asserted that the " Fables of JEsop " and the " Epistles of Phalaris " were alike spurious. The blow was levelled at Christchurch, and all "the bees" were brushed down in the warmth of their summer-day. It is remarkable that Bentley kept so long a silence; indeed, he had considered the affair so trivial, that he had pre- served no part of the correspondence with Boyle, whom no doubt he slighted as the young editor of a spurious author. But Boyle's edition came forth, as Bentley expresses it, "with * Haughtiness was the marking feature of Bentley's literary character ; and his Wolseyan style and air have been played on by the wits. Bentley happened to express himself on the King's MS. of Phalaris in a manner their witty malice turned against him. " 'Twas a surprise (he said) to find that OUR MS. was not perused." "OUR MS. (they proceed) that is, his Majesty's and mine ! He speaks out now ; 'tis no longer the King's, but otiR M.S., i. e. Dr. Bentley's and the King's in common, Ego et Rex ineus much too familiar for a library-keeper !" It has been said Bentley used the same Wolseyan egotism on Pope's publications : " This man is always abusing me or the King I" 1 380 Quarrels of Authors. a sting in its mouth." This, at first, was like a cut finger he breathed on it, and would have forgotten it ; but the nerve was touched, and the pain raged long after the stroke. Even the great mind of Bentley began to shrink at the touch of literary calumny, so different from the vulgar kind, in its extent and its duration. He betrays the soreness he would wish to conceal, when he complains that " the false story has been spread all over England." The statement of Bentley produced, in reply, the famous book of Boyle's "Examination of Bentley's Dissertation." It opens with an imposing narrative, highly polished, of the whole transaction, with the extraordinary furniture of docu- ments, which had never before entered into a literary contro- versy depositions certificates affidavits and private letters. Bentley now rejoined by his enlarged " Dissertation on Phalaris," a volume of perpetual value to the lovers of ancient literature, and the memorable preface of which, itself a volume, exhibits another Narrative, entirely differing from Boyle's, These produced new replies and new rejoinders. The whole controversy became so perplexed, that it has frightened away all who have attempted to adjust the par- ticulars. With unanimous consent they give up the cause, as one in which both parties studied only to contradict each other. Such was the fate of a Narrative, which was made out of the recollections of the parties, with all their passions at work, after an interval of three years. In each, the memory seemed only retentive of those passages which best suited their own purpose, and which were precisely those the other party was most likely to have forgotten. What was forgotten, was denied ; what was admitted, was made to refer to something else ; dialogues were given which appear never to have been spoken ; and incidents described which are declared never to have taken place ; and all this, perhaps, without any purposed violation of truth. Such were the dangers and misunderstandings which attended a Narrative framed out of the broken or passionate recollections of the parties on the watch to confound one another.* Bentley, in one place, having to give a positive contradiction to the statement of the bookseller, rising in all his dignity and energy, exclaims, "\\hat can be done in this case? Here are two contrary affirmations ; and the matter being done in private, neither of us have any witness. I might plead, as JEmilius Scaurus did against one Varius, of Sucro. Varius Sucronensis ait, Jlmilius Scaurus negat. Utri creditis Quirites }" p. 21. Boyle and Bentley. 381 Bentley's Narrative is a most vigorous production : it heaves with the workings of a master-spirit ; still reasoning with such force, and still applying with such happiness the stores of his copious literature, had it not been for this lite- rary quarrel, the mere English reader had lost this single opportunity of surveying that commanding intellect. Boyle's edition of " Phalaris" was a work of parade, de- signed to confer on a young man, who bore an eminent name, some distinction in the literary world. But Bentley seems to have been well-informed of the secret transactions at Christchurch. In his first attack he mentions Boyle as "the young gentleman of great hopes, whose name is set to the edition ;" and asserts that the editor, no more than his own " Phalaris," has written what was ascribed to him. He per- sists in making a plurality of a pretended unity, by multi- plying Boyle into a variety of little personages, of " new- editors," our " annotators," our " great geniuses."* Boyle, The story is told by Valerius Maximus, lib. iii. c. 7. Scaurus was insolently accused by one Varius, a Sucronian, that he had taken bribes from Mithridates : Scaurus addressed the Roman people. "He did not think it just that a man of his age should defend himself against accusations, and before those who were not born when he filled the offices of the republic, nor witnessed the actions he had performed. Varius, the Sucronian, says that Scaurus, corrupted by gold, would have betrayed the republic ; Scaurus replies, It is not true. Whom will you believe, fellow-Romans ?' This appeal to the people produced all the effect imaginable, and the ridiculous accuser was silenced. Bentley points the same application, with even more self-consciousness of his worth, in another part of his preface. It became necessary to praise himself, to remove the odium Boyle and his friends had raised on him it was a difficulty overcome. " I will once more borrow the form of argument that ^Emilius Scaurus used against Varins Sucronensis. Mr. Spanheim and Mr. Graevius give a high character of Dr. B.'s learning : Mr. Boyle gives the meanest that malice can furnish himself with. Utri creditis, Quirites? Whether of the characters will the present age or posterity believe F* p. 82. It was only a truly great mind which could bring itself so close to posterity. * It was the fashion then to appear very unconcerned about one's literary reputation ; but then to be so tenacious about it when once obtained as not to suffer, with common patience, even the little finger of criticism to touch it. Boyle, after defending what he calls his "honesty," adds, * ' the rest only touches my learning. This will give me no concern, though it may put me to some little trouble. I shall enter upon this with the indifference of a gamester who plays but for a trijle" On this affected indifference, Bentley keenly observes : " This was entering on his work a little ominously ; for a gamester who plays with indifference never plays his game well. Besides that, by this odd comparison, he seems to give warning, and is as good as his word, that he will put the dice upon his readers as often as he can. But what is worse than all, this comparison 382 Quarrels of Authors. touched at these reflections, declared " they were levelled at a learned society, in which I had the happiness to be edu- cated ; as if ' Phalaris' had been made up by contributions from several hands." Pressed by Bentley to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. John Freind, Boyle confers on him the ambiguous title of " The Director of Studies." Bentley links the Bees together Dr. Freind and Dr. Alsop. " The Director of Studies, who has lately set out Ovid's ' Metamor- phoses,' with a paraphrase and notes, is of the same size for learning with the late editor of the ^Esopian Fables. They bring the nation into contempt abroad, and themselves into it at home ;" and adds to this magisterial style, the morti- fication of his criticism on Freind's Ovid, as on Alsop's ^Esop. But Boyle assuming the honours of an edition of " Pha- laris," was but a venial offence, compared with that com- mitted by the celebrated volume published in its defence. If Bentley's suspicions were not far from the truth, that "the 'Phalaris' had been made up by contributions" they approached still closer when they attacked " The Examina- tion of his Dissertation." Such was the assistance which Boyle received from all " the Bees," that scarcely a few ears of that rich sheaf fall to his portion. His efforts hardly reach to the mere narrative of his transactions with Bentley. All the varied erudition, all the Attic graces, all the inexhaus- tible wit, are claimed by others ; so that Boyle was not materially concerned either in his " Phalaris," or in the more memorable work.* puts one in mind of a general rumour, that there's another set of gamesters who play him in his dispute while themselves are safe behind the curtain." BENTLEY'S Dissertation on Phalaris, p. 2. Rumours and conjectures are the lot of contemporaries ; truth seems reserved only for posterity ; and, like the fabled Minerva, she is born of age at once. The secret history of this volume, which partially appeared, has been more particularly opened in one of Warburton's letters, who received it from Pope, who had been "let into the secret." Boyle wrote the Narrative, "which, too, was corrected for him." Freind, who wrote the entire Dissertation on Jisop in that volume, wrote also, with Atter- bury, the body of the Criticisms ; King, the droll argument, proving that Bentley was not the author of his own Dissertation, and the extraordinary index which I shall shortly notice. In Atterbury's " Epistolary Correspon- dence" is a letter, where, with equal anger and dignity, Atterbury avows his having written about half, and planned the whole of Boyle's attack upon Bentley ! With these facts before us, can we read without surprise, Boyle and Bentley. 383 The Christchuvch party now formed a literary conspiracy against the great critic ; and as treason is infectious when, the faction is strong, they were secretly engaging new asso- ciates. Whenever any of the party published anything them- if not without indignation, the passage I shall now quote from the book to which the name of Boyle is prefixed. In raising an artful charge against Bentley, of appropriating to himself some MS. notes of Sir Edward Sher- burn, Boyle, replying to the argument of Bentley, that " Phalaris" was the work of some sophist, says : " The sophists are everywhere pelted by Dr. Bentley, for putting out what they wrote in other men's names ; but I did not expect to hear so loudly of it from one that has so far outdone them ; for / think ''tis much worse to take the honour of another man's book to one's self, than to entitle one's own book to another man." p. 16. I am surprised Bentley did not turn the point of his antagonist's sword on himself, for this flourish was a most unguarded one. But Bentley could not then know so much of the book, " made up by contributions," as our- selves. Partial truths flew about in rumours at the time ; but the friends of a young nobleman, and even his fellow-workmen, seemed concerned that his glory should not be diminished by a ruinous division. Kymer, in his "Essay concerning Curious and Critical Learning," judiciously surmised its true origin. ' ' I fancy this book was written (as most public compo- sitions in that college are) by a select club. Every one seems to have thrown in a repartee or so in his turn ; and the most ingenious Dr. Aldrich (he does not deserve the epithet in its most friendly sense) no doubt at their head, smoked and punned plentifully on this occasion." The arro- gance of Aldrich exceeded even that of Bentley. Eymer tells further, that Aldrich was notorious for thus employing his " young inexperienced stu- dents;" that he "betrayed Mr. Boyle into the controversy, and is still involving others in the quarrel." Thus he points at the rival chieftains ; one of whom never appeared in public, but was the great mover behind the curtain. These lively wits, so deeply busied among the obscurest writers of antiquity, so much against their will, making up a show of learning against the formidable array of Bentley, exhilarated themselves in their dusty labours by a perpetual stimulus of keen humour, playful wit, and angry invective. No doubt they were often enraged at bearing the yoke about their luxuriant manes, ploughing the darkest and heaviest soil of antiquity. They had been reared " Insultare solo, et gressus glomerare superbos." " Georg." Lib. iii. 117. " To insult the ground, and proudly pace the plain." TRAPP. Swift, in " The Battle of the Books," who, under his patron, Sir William Temple, was naturally in alliance with " the Bees," with ingenious ambi- guity alludes to the glorious manufacture. "Boyle, clad in a suit of armour, which had been given him by all the GODS." Still the truth was only floating in rumours and surmises ; and the little that Boyle had done was not yet known. Lord Orrery, his son, had a difficulty to overcome to pass lightly over this allusion. The literary honour of the family was at 384 Quarrels of Authors. selves, they had sworn to have always "a fling at Bentley," and intrigued with their friends to do the same. They procured Keil, the professor of astronomy, in so grave a work as "The Theory of the Earth," to have a fling at Bentley's boasted sagacity in conjectural criticism. Wotton, in a dignified reproof, administered a spirited correction to the party-spirit ; while his love of science induced him gene- rously to commend Keil, and intimate the advantages the world may derive from his studies, " as he grows older." Even Garth and Pope struck in with the alliance, and con- descended to pour out rhymes more lasting than even the prose of " the Bees." But of all the rabid wits who, fastening on their prey, never drew their fangs from the noble animal, the facetious Dr. King seems to have been the only one who excited Bentley's anger. Persevering malice, in the teasing shape of caustic banter, seems to have affected the spirit even of Bentley. At one of those conferences which passed between Bentley and the bookseller, King happened to be present ; and being called on by Boyle to bear his part in the drama, he per- formed it quite to the taste of "the Bees." He addressed a letter to Dean Aldrich, in which he gave one particular : and, to make up a sufficient dose, dropped some corrosives. He closes his letter thus : " That scorn and contempt which I have naturally for pride and insolence, makes me remember that which otherwise I might have forgotten." Nothing touched Bentley more to the quick than reflections on " his pride and insolence." Our defects seem to lose much of their character, in reference to ourselves, by habit and natural dis- position ; yet we have always a painful suspicion of their existence ; and he who touches them with no tenderness is never pardoned. The invective of King had all the bitterness stake, and his filial piety was exemplary to a father, who had unfortu- nately, in passion, deprived his lordship of the family library a stroke from which his sensibility never recovered, and which his enemies ungene- rously pointed against him. Lord Orrery, with all the tenderness of a son, and the caution of a politician, observes on " the armour given by the Gods" " I shall not dispute about the gift of the armour. The Gods never bestowed celestial armour except upon heroes, whose courage and superior strength distinguished them from the rest of mankind." Most ingeniously he would seem to convert into a classical fable what was de- signed as a plain matter of fact ! It does credit to the discernment of Bentley, whose taste was not very lively in English composition, that he pronounced Boyle was not the author of the " Examination," from the variety of styles in it. p. 107. Boyle and Bentley. 385 of truth. Bentley applied a line from Horace ; which showed that both Horace and Bentley could pun in anger : Prescript! Regis Rupili pus atqae venenum.* Sat. i. 7. The filth and Tenom of Rupilius King. The particular incident which King imperfectly recollected, made afterwards much noise among the wits, for giving them a new notion of the nature of ancient MSS. King relates that Dr. Bentley said" If the MS. were collated, it would be worth nothing for the future." Bentley, to mortify the pertness of the bookseller, who would not send his publica- tions to the Koyal Library, had said that he ought to do so, were it but to make amends for the damage the MS. would sustain by his printing the various readings ; " for," added Bentley, " after the various lections were once taken and printed, the MS. would be like a squeezed orange, and little worth for the future" This familiar comparison of a MS. with a squeezed orange provoked the epigrammatists. Bent- ley, in retorting on King, adds some curious facts concerning the fate of MSS. after they have been printed ; but is aware, he says, of what little relish or sense the Doctor has of MSS., who is better skilled in " the catalogue of ales, his Humty- Dumty, Hugmatee, Three-threads, and the rest of that glo- rious list, than in the catalogue of MSS." King, in his banter on Dr. Lister's journey to Paris, had given a list of these English beverages. It was well known that he was in too constant an intercourse with them all. Bentley nick- names King through the progress of his Controversy, for his tavern-pleasures, Humty-Dumty, and accuses him of writing more in a tavern than in a study. He little knew the injus- tice of his charge against a student who had written notes on 22,000 books and MSS. ; but they were not Greek ones. All this was not done with impunity. An irritated wit only finds his adversary cutting out work for him. A second letter, more abundant with the same pungent qualities, fell on the head of Bentley. King says of the arch-critic " He thinks meanly, I find, of my reading ; yet for all that, I dare say I have read more than any man in England besides him * This short and pointed satire of Horace is merely a pleas&nt story about a low wretch of the name of King ; and Brutus, under whose com- mand he was, is entreated to get rid of him, from hia hereditary hatred to all kings. I suppose this pun must be considered legitimate, otherwise Horace was an indifferent punster. C C 386 Quarrels of Authors. and me; for I have read his book all over."* Nor was this all ; " Humty-Dumty" published eleven " Dialogues of the Dead," supposed to be written by a student at Padua, con- cerning " one Bentivoglio, a very troublesome critic in the world ;" where, under the character of " Signior Moderno," Wotton falls into his place. Whether these dialogues morti- fied Bentley, I know not : they ought to have afforded him very high amusement. But when a man is at once tickled and pinched, the operation requires a gentler temper than Bentley's. " Humty-Dumty," indeed, had Bentley too often before him. There was something like inveteracy in his wit ; but he who invented the remarkable index to Boyle's book, must have closely studied Bentley's character. He has given it with all its protuberant individuality.f Bentley, with his peculiar idiom, had censured " all the * A keen repartee ! Yet King could read this mighty volume as "a vain confused performance," but the learned DODWELL declared to ''the Bees of Christchurch," who looked up to him, that " he had never learned so much from any book of the size in his life." King was as unjust to Bentley, as Beutley to King. Men of genius are more subject to " unna- tural civil war" than even the blockheads whom Pope sarcastically re- proaches with it. The great critic's own notion of his volume seems equally modest and just. " To undervalue this dispute about ' Phalaris,' because it does not suit one's own studies, is to quarrel with a circle be- cause it is not a square. If the question be not of vulgar use, it was writ therefore for a few ; for even the greatest performances, upon the most important subjects, are no entertainment at all to the many of the world." p. 107. f This index, a very original morsel of literary pleasantry, is at once a satirical character of the great critic, and what it professes to be. I pre- serve a specimen among the curiosities I am collecting. It is entitled "A Short Account of Dr. BENTLEY, by way of Index. " Dr. Bentley's true story proved false, by the testimonies of, &c., p. " His civil language, p. "His nice taste, in wit, p. in style, p. in Greek, p. in Latin, p. in English, p. " His modesty and decency in contradicting great men" a very long list of authors, concluding with 'Everybody,' p. " His familiar acquaintance with books he never saw," p. And lastly, "his profound skill in criticism from beginning to THE END." Which thus terminates the volume. Boyle and Bentley. 387 stiffness and stateliness, and operoseness of style, quite alien from the character of ' Phalaris,' a man of business and de- spatch." Boyle keenly turns his own words on Bentley. " Stiffness and stateliness, and operoseness of style, is indeed quite alien from the character of a man of business; and being but a library-keeper, it is not over-modestly done, to oppose his judgment and taste to that of Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE, who knows more of these things than Dr. Bentley does of Hesychius and Suidas. Sir William Temple has spent a good part of his life in transacting affairs of state : he has written to kings, and they to him ; and this has qualified him to judge how kings should write, much better than the library -keeper at St. James's.'" This may serve as a specimen of the Attic style of the controversy. Hard words some- times passed. Boyle complains of some of the similes which Bentley employs, more significant than elegant. For the new readings of " Phalaris," " he likens me to a bungling tinker mending old kettles." Correcting the faults of the version, he says, "The first epistle cost me four pages in scouring ;" and, " by the help of a Greek proverb, he calls me downright ass." But while Boyle complains of these sprinklings of ink, he himself contributes to Bentley's " Col- lection of Asinine Proverbs," and " throws him in one out of Aristophanes," of " an ass carrying mysteries :" " a pro- verb," says Erasmus, (as 'the Bees' construe him,) "applied to those who were preferred to some place -they did not de- serve, as when a dunce was made a library-keeper." Some ambiguous threats are scattered in the volume, while others are more intelligible. When Bentley, in his own de- fence, had referred to the opinions which some learned foreigners entertained of him they attribute these to " the foreigners, because they are foreigners we, that have the happiness of a nearer conversation with him, know him better ; and we may perhaps take an opportunity of setting these mistaken strangers right in their opinions." They threaten him with his character, " in a tongue that will last longer, and go further, than their own;" and, in the impe- rious style of Festus, add : " Since Dr. Bentley has ap- pealed to foreign universities, to foreign universities he must go." Yet this is light, compared with the odium they would raise against him by the menace of the resentments of a whole society of learned men. " Single adversaries die and drop off; but societies are im- o o 2 388 Quarrels of Authors. mortal : their resentments are sometimes delivered down from hand to hand ; and when once they have begun with a man, there is no knowing when they will leave him." In reply to this literary anathema, Bentley was furnished, by his familiarity with his favourite authors, with a fortunate application of a term, derived from Phalaris himself. Cicero had conveyed his idea of Caesar's cruelty by this term, which he invented from the very name of the tyrant.* " There is a certain temper of mind that Cicero calls Phalarism ; a spirit like Phalaris's. One would be apt to imagine that a portion of it had descended upon some of his translators. The gentleman has given a broad hint more than once in his book, that if I proceed further against Pha- laris, I may draw, perhaps, a duel, or a stab upon myself; a generous threat to a divine, who neither carries arms nor principles fit for that sort of controversy. I expected such usage from the spirit of Phalarism." In this controversy, the amusing fancy of " the Bees " could not pass by Phalaris without contriving to make some use of that brazen bull by which he tortured men alive. Not satisfied in their motto, from the Earl of Eoscommon, with wedging " the great critic, like Milo, in the timber he strove to rend," they gave him a second death in their finis, by throwing Bentley into Phalaris's bull, and flattering their vain imaginations that they heard him " bellow." "He has defied Phalaris, and used him very coarsely, under the assurance, as he tells us, that ' he is out of his reach.' Many of Phalaris's enemies thought the same thing, and repented of their vain confidence afterwards in his bull. Dr. Bentley is perhaps, by this time, or will be suddenly, satisfied that he also has presumed a little too much upon his distance; but it will be too late to repent when he begins to bellow. "f Bentley, although the solid force of his mind was not favourable to the lighter sports of wit, yet was not quite destitute of those airy qualities ; nor does he seem insensible to the literary merits of "that odd work," as he calls Boyle's volume, which he conveys a very good notion of: "If his * Cicero ad Atticum, Lib. vii., Epist. xii. t No doubt this idea was the origin of that satirical Capriccio, which closed in a most fortunate pun a literary caricature, where the doctor is represented in the hands of Phalaris's attendants, who are putting him into the tyrant's bull, while Bentley exclaims, "I had rather be roasted than oyled." Boyle and Bentley. 389 book shall happen to be preserved anywhere as an useful commonplace book for ridicule, banter, and all the topics of calumny." With equal dignity and sense he observes on the ridicule so freely used by both parties" I am content that what is the greatest virtue of his book should be counted the greatest fault of mine." His reply to " Milo's fate," and the tortures he was sup- posed to pass through when thrown into Phalaris's bull, is a piece of sarcastic humour which will not suffer by comparison with the volume more celebrated for its wit. " The facetious examiner seems resolved to vie with Pha- laris himself in the science of Phalarism ; for his revenge is not satisfied with one single death of his adversary, but he will kill me over and over again. He has slain me twice by two several deaths ! one, in the first page of his book ; and another, in the last. In the title-page I die the death of Milo, the Crotonian : Remember Milo's end, Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend. " The application of which must be this : That as Milo, after his victories at six several Olympiads, was at last con- quered and destroyed in wrestling with a tree, so I, after I had attained to some small reputation in letters, am to be quite baffled and run down by wooden antagonists. But in the end of his book he has got me into Phalaris's bull, and he has the pleasure of fancying that he hears me begin to bellow. Well, since it is certain that I am in the bull, I have performed the part of a sufferer. For as the cries of the tormented in old Phalaris's bull, being conveyed through pipes lodged in the machine, were turned into music for the entertainment of the tyrant, so the complaints which my torments express from me, being conveyed to Mr. Boyle by this answer, are all dedicated to his pleasure and diversion. But yet, methinks, when he was setting up to be Phalaris junior, the very omen of it might have deterred him. As the old tyrant himself at last bellowed in his own bull, his imitators ought to consider that at long run their own actions may chance to overtake them." p. 43. Wit, however, enjoyed the temporary triumph ; not but that some, in that day, loudly protested against the award.* * Sir Richard Blackmore, in his bold attempt at writing "A Satire against Wit," in utter defiance of it, without any, however, conveys some 390 Quarrels of Authors. " The Episode of Bentley and Wotton," in " The Battle of the Books," is conceived with all the caustic imagination of the first of our prose satirists. There Bentley's great quali- ties are represented as " tall, without shape or comeliness ; large, without strength or proportion." His various erudi- tion, as "armour patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces ;" his book, as " the sound " of that armour, " loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of lead from the roof of some steeple ;" his haughty intrepidity, as "a vizor of brass, tainted by his breath, corrupted into copperas, nor wanted gall from the same fountain ; so that, whenever provoked by anger or labour, an atramentous quality of most malignant nature was seen to distil from his lips." Wotton is " heavy-armed and slow of foot, lagging behind." They perish together in one ludicrous death. Boyle, in his celestial armour, by a stroke of his weapon, transfixes both "the lovers," "as a cook trusses a brace of woodcocks, with iron skewer piercing the tender sides of both. Joined in their lives, joined in their death, so closely joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half his fare." Such is the candour of wit ! The great qualities of an ad- versary, as in Bentley, are distorted into disgraceful attitudes ; while the suspicious virtues of a friend, as in Boyle, not passed over in prudent silence, are ornamented with even spurious panegyric. Garth, catching the feeling of the time, sung And to a Bentley 'tis we owe a Boyle. Posterity justly appreciates the volume of Bentley for its stores of ancient literature ; and the author, for that peculiar sagacity in emending a corrupt text, which formed his dis- tinguishing characteristic as a classical critic ; and since his book but for this literary quarrel had never appeared, reverses the names in the verse of the " Satirist." opinions of the times. He there paints the great critic, "crowned with applause," seated amidst " the spoils of ruined wits :" " Till his rude strokes had thresh'd the empty sheaf, Methought there had been something else than chaff." Boyle, not satisfied with the undeserved celebrity conceded to his volume, ventured to write poetry, in which no one appears to have suspected the aid of ' 'The Bees" " See a fine scholar sunk by wit in Boyle ! After his foolish rhymes, both friends and foes Conclude they know who did not write his prose." A Satire against Wit. PARKER AND MARVELL. MARYELL the founder of "a newly-refined art of jeering buffoonery" his knack of nicknaming his adversaries PARKER'S Portrait PARKER sud- denly changes his principles his declamatory style MARVKLL prints his anonymous letter as a motto to "The Rehearsal Transprosed" describes him as an " At-all" MARVELL'S ludicrous description of the whole posse of answers summoned together by PARKER KARTELL'S cautious allusion to MILTON his solemn invective against PARKER anecdote of MARVELL and PARKER PARKER retires after the second part of "The Rehearsal Transprosed" The Recreant, reduced to silence, distils his secret ven- geance in a posthumous libel. ONE of the legitimate ends of satire, and one of the proud triumphs of genius, is to unmask the false zealot ; to beat back the haughty spirit that is treading clown all ; and if it cannot teach modesty, and raise a blush, at least to inflict terror and silence. It is then that the satirist does honour to the office of the executioner. As one whose whip of steel can with a lash Imprint the characters of shame so deep, Even in the brazen forehead of proud Sin, That not eternity shall wear it out.* The quarrel between PAEKEB and MAEVELL is a striking example of the efficient powers of genius, in first humbling, and then annihilating, an unprincipled bravo, who had placed himself at the head of a faction. Marvell, the under-secretary and the bosom-friend of Milton, whose fancy he has often caught in his verse, was one of the greatest wits of the luxuriant age of Charles II. ; he was a master in all the arts of ridicule ; and his inexhaustible spirit only required some permanent subject to have rivalled the causticity of Swift, whose style, in neatness and vivacity, seems to have been modelled on his.f But Marvell placed * Randolph's Muses' Looking-rjlass. Act 1, Scene 4. t Swift certainly admired, if he did not imitate Marvell : for in hia " Tale of a Tub" he says, " We still read Marvell's answer to Parker with pleasure, though the book it answers be sunk long ago." 392 Quarrels of Authors. the oblation of genius on a temporary altar, and the sacrifice sunk with it ; he wrote to the times, and with the times his writings have passed away ; yet something there is incorrup- tible in wit, and wherever its salt has fallen, that part is still preserved. Such are the vigour and fertility of Marvell's writings, that our old Chronicler of Literary History, Anthony Wood, con- siders him as the founder of " the then newly-refined art (though much in mode and fashion almost ever since) of sportive and jeering buffoonery;"* and the crabbed humorist describes " this pen-combat as briskly managed on both sides ; a jerking flirting way of writing entertaining the reader, by seeing two such right cocks of the game so keenly engaging with sharp and dangerous weapons." Burnett calls Marvell " the liveliest droll of the age, who writ in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar and entertaining a conduct, that from the king to the tradesman, his books were read with great pleasure." Charles II. was a more polished judge than these uncouth critics; and, to the credit of his impartiality, for that * This is a curious remark of Wood's : How came raillery and satire to be considered as " a newly- refined art ?" Has it not, at all periods, been prevalent among every literary people ? The remark is, however, more founded on truth than it appears, and arose from AVood's own feelings. Wit and Raillery had been so strange to us during the gloomy period of the fanatic Commonwealth, that honest Anthony, whose prejudices did not run in favour of Marvell, not only considers him as the " restorer of this newly- refined art," but as one "hugely versed in it," and acknowledges all its efficacy in the complete discomfiture of his haughty rival. Besides this, a small book of controversy, such as Marvell's usually are, was another novelty the "aureoli libelli," as one fondly calls his precious books, were in the wretched taste of the times, rhapsodies in folio. The reader has doubtless heard of Caryll's endless "Commentary on Job," consisting of 2400 folio pages ! in small type. Of that monument of human perseverance, which commenting on Job's patience, inspired what few works do to who- ever read them, the exercise of the virtue it inculcated, the publisher, in his advertisement in Clavel's Catalogue of Books, 1681, announces the two folios in 600 sheets each ! these were a republication of the first edition, in twelve volumes quarto ! he apologises "that it hath been so long a doing, to the great vexation and loss of the proposer." He adds, "indeed, some few lines, no more than what may be contained in a quarto page, are expunged, they not relating to the Exposition, which nevertheless some, by malicious prejudice, have so unjustly aggravated, as if the whole work had been disordered." He apologises for curtailing a few lines from 2400 folio pages ! and he considered that these few lines were the only ones that did not relate to the Exposition ! At such a time, the little books of Marvell must have been considered as relishing morsels after such indigestible surfeits. Parker and Marvell. 393 witty monarch and his dissolute court were never spared by Marvell, who remained inflexible to his seduction he deemed Marvell the best prose satirist of the age. But Marvell had other qualities than the freest humour and the finest wit in this " newly -refined art," which seems to have escaped these grave critics a vehemence of solemn reproof, and an elo- quence of invective, that awes one with the spirit of the modern Junius,* and may give some notion of that more ancient satirist, whose writings are said to have so completely answered their design, that, after perusal, their victim hanged himself on the first tree ; and in the present case, though the delinquent did not lay violent hands on himself, he did what, for an author, may be considered as desperate a course, " withdraw from the town, and cease writing for some years."f The celebrated work here to be noticed is Marvell's " Re- hearsal Transprosed ; " a title facetiously adopted from Bayes in "The Rehearsal Transposed" of the Duke of Bucking- ham. It was written against the works and the person of Dr. Samuel Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, whom he designates under the character of Bayes, to denote the inco- herence and ridiculousness of his character. Marvell had a peculiar knack of calling names, it consisted in appropria- * The severity of his satire on Charles's court may be well understood by the following lines : "A colony of French possess the court, Pimps, priests, buffoons, in privy-chamber sport ; Such slimy monsters ne'er approached a throne Since Pharaoh's days, nor so defil'd a crown ; In sacred ear tyrannick arts they croak, Pervert his mind, and good intentions choak. " "The Historical Poem," given in the poems on State affairs, is so per- sonal in its attacks on the vices of Charles, that it is marvellous bow^its author escaped punishment. " Hodge's Vision from the Monument w equally strong, while the "Dialogue between two Horses' (that of ihe statue of Charles I. at Charing cross, and Charles II., then in the city), has these two strong lines of regret : to see Deo Gratia* writ on the throne, And the king's wicked life say God there is none." The satire ends with the question : " But canst thon devise when things will be mended f Which is thus answered : " When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended !" ED. f So Burnet tells us. 394 Quarrels of Authors. ting a ludicrous character in some popular comedy, and dubbing his adversaries with it. In the same spirit he ridi- culed Dr. Turner, of Cambridge, a brother-genius to Parker, by nicknaming him " Mr. Smirk, the Divine in Mode," the name of the Chaplain in Etherege's "Man of Mode," and thus, by a stroke of the pen, conveyed an idea of " a neat, starched, formal, and forward divine." This application of a fictitious character to a real one, this christening a man with ridicule, though of no difficult invention, is not a little hazardous to inferior writers ; for it requires not less wit than Marvell's to bring out of the real character the ludicrous features which mark the factitious prototype. Parker himself must have his portrait, and if the likeness be justly hit off, some may be reminded of a resemblance. Mason applies the epithet of "Mitred Dullness " to him: but although he was at length reduced to railing and to menaces, and finally mortified into silence, this epithet does not suit so hardy and so active an adventurer. The secret history of Parker may be collected in Marvell,* and his more public one in our honest chronicler, Anthony Wood. Parker was originally educated in strict sectarian principles; a starch Puritan, " fasting and praying with the Presbyterian students weekly, and who, for their refection feeding only on thin broth made of oatmeal and water, were* commonly called Gruellers" Among these, says Marvell, " it was observed that he was wont to put more graves than all the rest into his porridge, and was deemed one of the preciousest\ young men in the University." It seems that these mortified saints, both the brotherhood and the sister- hood, held their chief meetings at the house of " Bess Hamp- ton, an old and crooked maid that drove the trade of laundry, who, being from her youth very much given to the godly party, as they call themselves, had frequent meetings, es- pecially for those that were her customers." Such is the dry humour of honest Anthony, who paints like the Ostade of literary history. But the age of sectarism and thin gruel was losing all its coldness in the sunshine of the Restoration ; and this " pre- ciousest young man," from praying and caballing against * See " The Rehearsal Transprosed, the second part," p. 76. f One of the canting terms used by the saints of those days, and not obsolete in the dialect of those who still give themselves out to be saints in the present. Parker and Marvell. 395 episcopacy, suddenly acquainted the world, in one of his dedi- cations, that Dr. Ralph Bathurst had " rescued him from the chains and fetters of an unhappy education," and, without any intermediate apology, from a sullen sectarian turned a flaming highflyer for the "supreme dominion" of the Church.* It is the after-conduct of Parker that throws light on this rapid change. On speculative points any man may be sud- denly converted ; for these may depend on facts or arguments which might never have occurred to him before. But when we watch the weathercock chopping with the wind, so pliant to move, and so stiff when fixed when we observe this " pre- ciousest grueller" clothed in purple, and equally hardy in the most opposite measures become a favourite with James II., and a furious advocate for arbitrary power ; when we see him railing at and menacing those, among whom be had com- mitted as many extravagances as any of them ;f cau we * Marvell admirably describes Parker's journey to London at the Re- storation, where "he spent a considerable time in creeping into all corners and companies, horoscoping up and down concerning the duration of the government." This term, so expressive of his political doubts, is from "Judicial Astrology," then a prevalent study. "Not considering anything as best, but as most lasting and most profitable ; and after having many times cast a figure, he at last satisfied himself that the episcopal govern- ment would endure as long as this king lived, and from thenceforwards cast about to find the highway to preferment. To do this, he daily en- larged not only his conversation but his conscience, and was made free of some of the town vices ; imagining, like Muleasses, King of Tunis (for I take witness that on all occasions I treat him rather above his quality than otherwise), that by hiding himself among the onions he should escape being traced by his perfumes." The narrative proceeds with a curious detail of all his sycophantic attempts at seducing useful patrons, among whom was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Then began "those pernicious books," says Marvell, ' ' in which he first makes all that he will to be law, and then whatsoever is law, to be divinity." Parker, in his "Ecclesiastical Polity," came at length to promulgate such violent principles as these, "He openly declares his submission to the government of a Nero and a Caligula, rather than suffer a dissolution of it." He says, "it is abso- lutely necessary to set up a more severe government over men's consciences and religious persuasions than over their vices and immoralities ;" and that " men's vices and debaucheries may be more safely indulged than their consciences." Is it not difficult to imagine that this man had once been an Independent, the advocate for every congregation being independent of a bishop or a synod ? f Parker's father was a lawyer, and one of Oliver's most submissive sub-committee men, who so long pillaged the nation and spilled its blood, " not in the hot and military way (which diminishes always the offence), but in the cooler blood and sedentary execution of an high court of jus- tice." He wrote a very remarkable book (after he had been petitioned 396 Quarrels of Authors. hesitate to decide that this bold, haughty, and ambitious man was one of those who, having neither religion nor morality for a casting weight, can easily fly off to opposite extremes ? and whether a puritan or a bishop, we must place his zeal to the same side of his religious ledger that of the profits of barter ! The quarrel between Parker and Marvell originated in a preface,* written by Parker, in which he had poured down his contempt and abuse on his old companions, the Non- conformists. It was then Marvell clipped his wings with his " Rehearsal Transprosed ;" his wit and humour were finely contrasted with Parker's extravagances, set off in his de- clamatory style ; of which Marvell wittily describes " the volume and circumference of the periods, which, though he takes always to be his chiefest strength, yet, indeed, like too great a line, weakens the defence, and requires too many men to make it good." The tilt was now opened, and certain masqued knights appeared in the course ; they attempted to grasp the sharp and polished weapon of Marvell, to turn it on himself, f But Marvell, with malicious ingenuity, sees Parker in them all they so much resembled their master ! "There were no less," says the wit, " than six scaramouches together on the stage, all of them of the same gravity and behaviour, the same tone, the same habit, that it was impos- sible to discern which was the true author of the 'Ecclesiasti- against for a misdemeanour) in defence of that usurped irregular state called " The Government of the People of England." It had "a most hieroglyph ical title" of several emblems : two hands joined, and beneath a sheaf of arrows, stuffed about with half-a-dozen mottoes, "enough," says Marvell, " to have supplied the mantlings and achievement of this (godly) family." An anecdote in this secret history of Parker is probably true. " He shortly afterwards did inveigh against his father's memory, and in his mother's presence, before witnesses, for a couple of whining fanatics." Rehearsal Transprosed, second part, p. 75. * This preface was prefixed to Bishop Bramhall's "Vindication of the Bishops from the Presbyterian Charge of Popery." + As a specimen of what old Anthony calls " a jerking flirting way of writing," I transcribe the titles of these answers which Marvell received. As Marvell had nicknamed Parker, Bayes, the quaint humour of one en- titled his reply, "Rosemary and Bayes;" another, "The Transproser Rehearsed, or the Fifth Act of Mr. Bayes's Play ;" another, " Gregory Father Greybeard, with his Vizard off ;" another formed "a Commonplace Book out of the Rehearsal, digested under heads ;" and lastly, "Stoo him Bayes, or some Animadversions on the Humour of writing Rehearsals. "- Biog. Brit. p. 3055. This was the very Bartlemy-fair of wit ! Parker and MarvelL 397 cal Polity. 1 I believe he imitated the wisdom of some other princes, who have sometimes been persuaded by their servants to disguise several others in the regal garb, that the enemy might not know in the battle whom to single." Parker, in fact, replied to Marvell anonymously, by " A Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed," with a mild exhortation to the magistrate to crush with the secular arm the pestilent wit, the servant of Cromwell, and the friend of Milton. But this was not all ; something else, anonymous too, was despatched to Marvell : it was an extraordinary letter, short enough to have been an epigram, could Parker have written one ; but short as it was, it was more in character, for it was only a threat of assassination ! It concluded with these words : "If thou darest to print any lie or libel against Dr. Parker, by the Eternal (rod I will cut thy throat." Marvell replied to "the Reproof," which he calls a printed letter, by the second part of " the Rehearsal Transprosed ;" and to the unprinted letter, by publishing it on his own title-page. Of two volumes of wit and broad humour, and of the most galling invective, one part flows so much into another, that the volatile spirit would be injured by an analytical process. But Marvell is now only read by the curious lovers of our literature, who find the strong, luxuriant, though not the delicate, wit of the wittiest age, never obsolete : the reader shall not, however, part from Marvell without some slight transplantations from a soil whose rich vegetation breaks out in every part. Of the pleasantry and sarcasm, these may be considered as specimens. Parker was botli author and licenser of his own work on " Ecclesiastical Polity ;" * and it appears he got the licence for printing Marvell's first Rehearsal recalled. The Church appeared in danger when the doctor discovered he was so furiously attacked. Marvell sarcastically rallies him on his dual capacity : " He is such an At-all, of so many capacities, that he would excommunicate any man who should have presumed to inter- meddle with any one of his provinces. Has he been an author ? he is too the licenser. Has he been a father ? he will stand too for godfather. Had he acted Pyramu*, he * The title will convey some notion of its intolerant principles : " A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity, wherein the authority of the Civil Ma- gistrate over the Comciencts of Subjects, in matters of external Beligion, is asserted." 398 Quarrels of Authors. would have been Moonshine too, and the Hole in the Watt. That first author of ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' (such as his) Nero, was of the same temper. He could not be contented with the Roman empire, unless he were too his own precentor; and lamented only the detriment that mankind must sustain at his death, in losing so considerable a fiddler." The satirist describes Parker's arrogance for those whom Parker calls the vulgar, and whom he defies as " a rout of wolves and tigers, apes and buffoons;" yet his personal fears are oddly contrasted with his self-importance: " If he chance but to sneeze, he prays that the foundations of the earth be not shaken. Ever since he crept up to be but the weather- cock of a steeple, he trembles and cracks at every puff of wind that blows about him, as if the Church of England were fall- ing." Parker boasted, in certain philosophical " Tentamina." or essays of his, that he had confuted the atheists : Marvell declares, " If he had reduced any atheist by his book, he can only pretend to have converted them (as in the old Florentine wars) by mere tiring them out, and perfect weariness." A pleasant allusion to those mock fights of the Italian mercena- ries, who, after parading all day, rarely unhorsed a single cavalier. Marvell blends with a ludicrous description of his answerers great fancy : " The whole Posse Archidiaconatus was raised to repress me ; and great rising there was, and sending post every way to pick out the ablest ecclesiastical droles to prepare an answer. Never was such a hubbub made about a sorry book. One flattered himself with being at least a surrogate ; another was so modest as to set up with being but a paritor ; while the most generous hoped only to be graciously smiled upon at a good dinner ; but the more hungry starvelings generally looked upon it as an immediate call to a benefice ; and he that could but write an answer, whatsoever it were, took it for the most dexterous, cheap, and legal way of simony. As is usual on these occasions, there arose no small competition and mutiny among the pretenders." It seems all the body had not impudence enough, and had too nice consciences, and could not afford an extraordinary expense in wit for the occasion. It was then " The author of the ' Ecclesiastical Polity ' altered his lodgings to a calumny-office, and kept open chamber for all comers, that he might be supplied himself, or supply others, Parker and Marvett. 399 as there was occasion. But the information came in so slen- derly, that he was glad to make use of anything rather than sit out ; and there was at last nothing so slight, but it grew material ; nothing so false, but he resolved it should go for truth ; and what wanted in matter, he would make out with invention and artifice. So that he and his remaining com- rades seemed to have set up a glass-house, the model of which he had observed from the height of his window in the neigh- bourhood, and the art he had been initiated into ever since from the manufacture (he will criticise because not orifacture) of soap-bubbles, he improved by degrees to the mystery of making glass-drops, and thence, in running leaps, mounted by these virtues to be Fellow of the Royal Society, Doctor of Divinity, Parson, Prebend, and Archdeacon. The furnace was so hot of itself, that there needed no coals, much less any one to blow them. One burnt the weed, another calcined the flint, a third melted down that mixture; but he himself fashioned all with his breath, and polished with his style, till, out of a mere jelly of sand and ashes, he had furnished a whole cupboard of things, so brittle and incoherent, that the least touch would break them again in pieces, and so trail s parent, that every man might see through them." Parker had accused Marvell with having served Cromwell, and being the friend of Milton, then living, at a moment when such an accusation not only rendered a man odious, but put his life in danger.* Marvell, who now perceived that Milton, whom he never looked on but with the eyes of reve- rential awe, was likely to be drawn into his quarrel, touches on this subject with infinite delicacy and tenderness, but not with diminished energy against his malignant adversary, whom he shows to have been an impertinent intruder in Milton's house, where indeed he had first known him. He cautiously alludes to our English Homer by his initials : at that moment the very name of Milton would have tainted the page ! " J. M. was, and is, a man of great learning and sharpness of wit, as any man. It was his misfortune, living in a * Milton had become acquainted with Marvell when travelling in Italy, where he had gone to perfect his studies. Ue returned to England in 1653, and was connected with the Cromwellian party, through the intro- duction of Milton, in 1657. The great poet was at that time secretary to Cromwell, and he became his assistant-secretary. He afterwards repre- sented his native town of Hull in Parliament. El). 400 Quarrels of Authors. tumultuous time, to be tossed on the wrong side ; and he writ, flagrante bello, certain dangerous treatises. But some of his books, upon which you take him at advantage, were of no other nature than that one writ by your own father ; only with this difference, that your father's, which I have by me, was written with the same design, but with much less wit or judgment, for which there was no remedy, unless you will supply his judgment with his high Court of Justice. At his Majesty's happy return, J. M. did partake, even as you your- self did, for all your huffing, of his royal clemency, and has ever since expiated himself in a retired silence. Whether it were my foresight, or my good fortune, I never contracted any friendship or confidence with you ; but then it was you frequented J. M. incessantly, and haunted his house day by day. What discourses you there used, he is too generous to remember. But for you to insult over his old age, to traduce him by your scaramouches, and in your own person, as a schoolmaster, who was born and hath lived more ingenuously and liberally than yourself!" Marvell, when he lays by his playful humour and fertile fancy for more solemn remonstrances, assumes a loftier tone, and a severity of invective, from which, indeed,Parker neverrecovered. Accused by Parker of aiming to degrade the clerical cha- racter, Marvell declares his veneration for that holy vocation, and that he reflected even on the failings of the men, from whom so much is expected, with indulgent reverence : " Their virtues are to be celebrated with all encourage- ment ; and if their vices be not notoriously palpable, let the eye, as it defends its organ, so conceal the object by conni- vance." But there are cases when even to write satirically against a clergyman may be not only excusable, but neces- sary : " The man who gets into the church by the belfry or the window, ought never to be borne in the pulpit ; and so the man who illustrates his own corrupt doctrines with as ill a conversation, and adorns the lasciviousness of his life with an equal petulancy of style and language." In such a con- currence of misdemeanors, what is to be done ? The example and the consequence so pernicious! which could not be, "if our great pastors but exercise the wisdom of common shep- herds, by parting with one to stop the infection of the whole flock, when his rottenness grows notorious. Or if our clergy would but use the instinct of other creatures, and chastise the blown deer out of their herd, such mischiefs might easily be Parker and Marvell. 401 remedied. In this case it is that I think a clergyman is laid open to the pen of any one that knows how to manage it ; and that every person who has either wit, learning, or so- briety, is licensed, if debauched, to curb him ; if erroneous, to catechise him ; and if foul-mouthed and biting, to muzzle him. Such an one would never have come into the church, but to take sanctuary ; rattier wheresoever men shall find the footing of so wanton a satyr out of his own bounds, the neigh- bourhood ought, notwithstanding all his pretended capering divinity, to hunt him through the woods, with hounds and horse, home to his harbour." And he frames an ingenious apology for the freedom of his humour, in this attack on the morals and person of his ad- versary: " To write against him (says Marvell) is the odiousest task that ever I undertook, and has looked to me all the while like the cruelty of a living dissection ; which, however it may tend to public instruction, and though I have picked out the noxious creature to be anatomised, yet doth scarce excuse the offensiveness of the scent and fouling of my fingers : there- fore, I will here break off abruptly, leaving many a vein not laid open, and many a passage not searched into. But if I have undergone the drudgery of the most loathsome part already (which is his personal character), I will not defraud myself of what is more truly pleasant, the conflict with, if it may be so called, his reason." It was not only in these "pen-combats" that this Literary Quarrel proceeded ; it seems also to have broken out in the streets ; for a tale has been preserved of a rencontre, which shows at once the brutal manners of Parker, and the exquisite wit of Marvell. Parker meeting Marvell in the streets, the bully attempted to shove him from the wall : but, even there, Marvell's agility contrived to lay him sprawling in the ken- nel ; and looking on him pleasantly, told him to " lie there for a son of a whore !" Parker complained to the Bishop of Kochester, who immediately sent for Marvell, to reprimand him ; but he maintained that the doctor had so called himself, in one of his recent publications ; and pointing to the preface, where Parker declares " he is ' a true son of his mother, the Church of England :' and if you read further on, my lord, you find he says : ' The Church of England has spawned two bastards, the Presbyterians and the Congregationists ;' ergo, my lord, he expressly declares that he is the son of a whore!" D D 402 Quarrels of Authors. Although Parker retreated from any further attack, after the second part of " The Rehearsal Transprosed," he in truth only suppressed passions to which he was giving vent in secrecy and silence. That, indeed, was not discovered till a post- humous work of his appeared, in which one of the most striking parts is a most disgusting caricature of his old anta- gonist. Marvell was, indeed, a republican, the pupil of M\lton, and adored his master : but his morals and his man- ners were Roman he lived on the turnip of Curtius, and he would have bled at Philippi. We do not sympathise with the fierce republican spirit of those unhappy times that scalped the head feebly protected by a mitre or a crown. But the private virtues and the rich genius of such a man are pure from the taint of party. We are now to see how far private hatred can distort, in its hideous vengeance, the re- semblance it affects to give after nature. Who could imagine that Parker is describing Marvell in these words ? " Among these insolent revilers of great fame for ribaldry was one Marvell. From his youth he lived in all manner of wickedness ; and thus, with a singular petulancy from nature, he performed the office of a satirist for the faction, not so much from the quickness of his wit, as from the sourness of his temper. A vagabond, ragged, hungry poetaster, beaten at every tavern, where he daily received the rewards of his impudence in kicks and blows.* By the interest of Milton, to whom he was somewhat agreeable for his malignant wit, he became the under-secretary to Cromwell's secretary." And elsewhere he calls him " a drunken buffoon," and asserts that " he made his conscience more cheap than he had for- merly made his reputation ;" but the familiar anecdote of Marvell's political honesty, when, wanting a dinner, he de- clined the gold sent to him by the king, sufficiently replies to the calumniator. Parker, then in his retreat, seems not to have been taught anything like modesty by his silence, as Burnet conjectured; who says, "That a face of brass must grow red when it is burnt as his was." It was even then that the recreant, in silence, was composing the libel, which his cowardice dared not publish, but which his invincible malice has sent down to posterity. * Vanus, pannosus, et fatnelicus poetaster cenopolis quovis vapulans, fuste et calce indies petulantise poenas tulit are the words in Parker's " De Rebus sui Temporia Commentariorum," p. 275. D'AVENANT AND A CLUB OF WITS. CALAMITIES of Epic Poets Character and Anecdotes of D'AVENAHT at- tempts a new vein of invention the Critics marshalled against each other on the "Gondibert" D'AvENANT'ssublimefeelingsof Literary Fame attacked by a Club of Wits in two books of Verses the strange misconception hitherto given respecting the Second Part various speci- mens of the Satires on Gondibert, the Poet, and his Panegyrist HOBBES the Poet's silence ; and his neglect of the unfinished Epic, while the Philosoper keenly retorts on the Club, and will not allow of any autho- rity in WIT. THE memoirs of epic poets, in as far as they relate to the history of their own epics, would be the most calamitous of all the suitors of the Muses, whether their works have reached us, or scarcely the names of the poets. An epic, which has sometimes been the labour of a life, is the game of the wits and the critics. One ridicules what is written ; the other censures for what has not been written : and it has happened, in some eminent instances, that the rudest assail- ants of him 'who "builds the lofty rhyme," have been his ungenerous contemporaries. Men, whose names are now en- deared to us, and who have left their KTHMA E2 AEI, which HOBBES so energetically translates "a possession for ever- lasting," have bequeathed an inheritance to posterity, of which they have never been in the receipt of the revenue. " The first fruits" of genius have been too often gathered to place upon its tomb. Can we believe that MILTON did not endure mortification from the neglect of "evil days," as cer- tainly as Tasso was goaded to madness by the systematic frigidity of his critics ? He who is now before us had a mind not less exalted than Milton or Tasso ; but was so effectually ridiculed, that he has only sent us down the fragment of a great work. One of the curiosities in the history of our poetry, is the GONDIBERT of D'AVENAST ; and the fortunes and the fate of this epic are as extraordinary as the poem itself. Never has DD2 404 Quat~rels of Authors. an author deserved more copious memoirs than the fertility of this man's genius claims. His life would have exhibited a moving picture of genius in action and in contemplation. With all the infirmities of lively passions, he had all the redeeming virtues of magnanimity and generous affections ; but with the dignity and the powers of a great genius, falling among an age of wits, he was covered by ridicule. D'Ave- nant was a man who had viewed human life in all its shapes, and had himself taken them. A poet and a wit, the creator of the English stage with the music of Italy and the scenery of France; a soldier, an emigrant, a courtier, and a politician: he was, too, a state-prisoner, awaiting death with his immortal poem in his hand ;* and at all times a philosopher ! That hardiness of enterprise which had conducted him through life, brought the same novelty, and conferred on him the same vigour in literature. D'Avenant attempted to open a new vein of invention in * D'Avenant commenced his poem during his exile at Paris. The pre- face is dated from the Louvre ; the postscript from Cowes Castle, in the Isle of Wight, where he was then confined, expecting his immediate exe- cution. The poem, in the first edition, 1651, is therefore abruptly con- cluded. There is something very affecting and great in his style on this occasion. " I am here arrived at the middle of the third book. But it is high time to strike sail and cast anchor, though I have run but half my course, when at the helm I am threatened with death ; who, though he can visit us but once, seems troublesome ; and even in the innocent may beget such a gravity, as diverts the music of verse. Even in a worthy design, I shall ask leave to desist, when I am interrupted by so great an experiment as dying ; and 'tis an experiment to the most experienced ; for no man (though his mortifications may be much greater than mine) can say he has already died." D'Avenant is said to have written a letter to Hobbes about this time, giving some account of his progress in the third book. " But why (said he) should I trouble you or myself with these thoughts, when I am pretty certain I shall be hanged next week ?' A stroke of the gaiety of temper of a very thoughtful mind ; for D'Avenant, with all his wit and fancy, has made the profoundest reflections on human life. The reader may be interested to know, that after D'Avenant's removal from Cowes to the Tower, to be tried, his life was saved by the gratitude of two aldermen of York, whom he had obliged. It is delightful to be- lieve the story told by Bishop Newton, that D'Avenant owed his life to Milton ; Wood, indeed, attributes our poet's escape to both ; at the Re- storation D'Avenant interposed, and saved Milton. Poets, after all, envious as they are to a brother, are the most generously-tempered of men : they libel, but they never hang ; they will indeed throw out a sar- casm on the man whom they saved from being hanged. " Please your Majesty," said Sir John Denhain, " do not hang George Withers that it may not be said I am the worst poet alive." D'Avenant and a Club of Wits. 405 narrative poetry ; which not to call epic, he termed heroic ; and which we who have more completely emancipated our- selves from the arbitrary mandates of Aristotle and Bossu, have since styled romantic. Scott, Southey, and Byron have taught us this freer scope of invention, but characterised by a depth of passion which is not found in D'Avenant. In his age, the title which he selected to describe the class of his poetical narrative, was a miserable source of petty criticism. It was decreed that every poem should resemble another poem, on the plan of the ancient epic. This was the golden age of " the poet-apes," till they found that it was easier to produce epic writers than epic readers. But our poet, whose manly genius had rejected one great absurdity, had the folly to adopt another. The first reformers are always more heated with zeal than enlightened by sagacity. The four-and-twenty chapters of an epic, he per- ceived, were but fantastical divisions, and probably, originally, but accidental ; yet he proposed another form as chimerical ; he imagined that by having only five he was constructing his poem on the dramatic plan of five acts. He might with equal propriety have copied the Spanish comedy which I once read, in twenty-five acts, and in no slender folio. " Sea-marks (says D'Avenant, alluding to the works of antiquity) are chiefly useful to coasters, and serve not those who have the ambition of discoverers, that love to sail in untried sett;" and yet he was attempting to turn an epic poem into a mon- strous drama, from the servile habits he had contracted from his intercourse with the theatre ! This error of the poet has, however, no material influence on the "Gondibert," as it has come down to us ; for, discouraged and ridiculed, our adventurer never finished his voyage of discovery. He who had so nobly vindicated the freedom of the British Muse from the meanness of imitation, and clearly defined what such a narrative as he intended should be, " a perfect glass of nature, which gives us a familiar and easy view of ourselves," did not yet perceive that there is no reason why a poetical narrative should be cast into any particular form, or be longer or shorter than the interest it excites will allow. More than a century and a half have elapsed since the first publication of " Gondibert," and its merits are still a subject of controversy ; and indubitable proof of some inherent excel- lence not willingly forgotten. The critics are marshalled on each side, one against the other, while between these formidable 406 Quarrels of Authors. lines stands the poet, with a few scattered readers ;* but what is more surprising in the history of the " Gondibert," the poet is a great poet, the work imperishable ! The "Gondibert" has poetical defects fatal for its popularity; the theme was not happily chosen ; the quatrain has been discovered by capricious ears to be unpleasing, though its * It would form a very curious piece of comparative criticism, were the opinions and the arguments of all the critics those of the time and of the present day thrown into the smelting-pot. The massiness of some opi- nions of great authority would be reduced to a thread of wire ; and even what is accepted as standard ore might shrink into "a gilt sixpence." On one side, the condemners of D'Avenant would be Rymer, Black wall, Granger, Knox, Hurd, and Hayley ; and the advocates would be Hobbes, Waller, Cowley, Dr. Aikin, Headley, &c. Rymer opened his Aristotelian text-book. He discovers that the poet's first lines do not give any light into his design (it is probable D'Avenant would have found it hard to have told it to Mr. Rymer) ; that it has neither proposition nor invocation (Rymer might have filled these up himself) ; so that " he chooses to enter into the top of the house, because the mortals of mean and satisfied minds go in at the door ;" and then "he has no hero or action so illustrious that the name of the poem prepared the reader for its reception." D'Avenant had rejected the marvellous from his poem that is, the machinery of the epic : he had resolved to compose a tale of human beings for men. "This was," says Blackwall, another of the classical flock, "like lopping off a man's limb, and then putting him upon running races." Our formal critics are quite lively in their dulness on our "adventurer." But poets, in the crisis of a poetical revolution, are more legitimate judges than all such critics. Waller and Cowley applaud D'Avenant for this very omission of the epical machinery in this new vein of invention : " Here no bold tales of gods or monsters swell, But human passions such as with us dwell ; Man is thy theme, his virtue or his rage, Drawn to the life in each elaborate page. " WALLER. " Methinks heroic poesy, till now, Like some fantastic fairy-land did show, And all but man, in mans best work had place." COWLET. Hurd's discussion on " Gondibert," in his " Commentaries," is the most important piece of criticism ; subtle, ingenious, and exquisitely analytical. But he holds out the fetter of authority, and he decides as a judge who expounds laws ; not the best decision, when new laws are required to abrogate obsolete ones. And what laws invented by man can be immu- table ? D'Avenant was thus tried by the laws of a country, that of Greece or Rome, of which, it is said, he was not even a denizen. It is remarkable that all the critics who condemn D'Avenant could not but be struck by his excellences, and are very particular in expressing their admiration of his genius. I mean all the critics who have read the poem : some assuredly have criticised with little trouble. jyAvenant and a Club of Wits. 407 solemnity was felt by Dryden.* The style is sometimes harsh and abrupt, thougb often exquisite ; and the fable is deficient in that rapid interest which the story-loving readers of all times seem most to regard. All these are diseases which would have long since proved mortal in a poem less vital ; but our poet was a commanding genius, who redeemed his bold errors by his energetic originality. The luxuriancy of his fancy, the novelty of his imagery, the grandeur of his views of human life ; his delight in the new sciences of his age ; these are some of his poetical virtues. But, above all, we dwell on the impressive solemnity of his philosophical reflections, and his condensed epigrammatic thoughts. The work is often more ethical than poetical ; yet, while we feel ourselves becoming wiser at every page, in the fulness of our minds we still perceive that our emotions have been seldom stirred by passion. The poem falls from our hands ! yet is there none of which we wish to retain so many single verses. D'Avenant is a poetical Rochefoucault; the sententious force of his maxims on all human affairs could only have been composed by one who had lived in a constant intercourse with man- kind.f * It is written in the long four-lined stanzas, which Dryden adopted for his Annus Mirabilis ; nearly 2000 of such stanzas are severe trials for the critical reader. ED. + I select some of these lines as examples. Of Care, who only " seals her eyes in cloisters," he says, " She visits cities, buthe dwells in thrones." Of learned Curiosity, eager, but not to be hurried the student is " Hasty to know, though not by haste beguiled." He calls a library, with sublime energy, , " The monument of vanish'd minds." Never has a politician conveyed with such force a most important precept : " The laws, Men from themselves, but not from power, secure." Of the Court he says, " There prosperous power sleeps long, though suitors wake. ' " Be bold, for number cancels bashfulness ; Extremes, from which a King would blushing shrink, Unblushing senates act as no excess." And these lines, taken as they occur : " Truth's a discovery made by travelling minds." " Honour's the moral conscience of the great." " They grow so certain as to need no hope." " Praise is devotion fit for mighty minds." I conclude with one complete stanza, of the same cast of reflection. It 408 Quarrels of Authors. A delightful invention in this poem is "the House of Astragon," a philosophical residence. Every great poet is affected by the revolutions of his age. The new experimental philosophy had revived the project of Lord Bacon's learned retirement, in his philosophical romance of the Atalantis; and subsequently in a time of civil repose after civil war, Milton, Cowley, and Evelyn attempted to devote an abode to science itself. These tumults of the imagination subsided in the establishment of the Royal Society. D'Avenant antici- pated this institution. On an estate consecrated to philosophy stands a retired building on which is inscribed," Great Na- ture's Office," inhabited by sages, who are styled "Nature's Re- gisters," busily recording whatever is brought to them by "a throng of Intelligencers," who make "patient observations" in the field, the garden, the river, on every plant, and " every fish, and fowl, and beast." Near at hand is " Nature's Nursery," a botanical garden. We have also " a Cabinet of Death," " the Monument of Bodies," an anatomical collection, which leads to "the Monument of vanished Minds," as the poet finely describes the library. Is it riot striking to find, says Dr. Aikin, so exact a model of the school of Linneeus ? This was a poem to delight a philosopher ; and Hobbes, in a curious epistle prefixed to the work, has strongly marked its distinct beauties. " Gkmdibert " not only came forth with the elaborate panegyric of Hobbes, but was also accompanied by the high commendatory poems of Waller and Cowley ; a cause which will sufficiently account for the provocations it inflamed among the poetical crew ; and besides these accompaniments, there is a preface of great length, stamped with all the force and originality of the poet's own mind ; and a postscript, as sublime from the feelings which dictated it as from the time and place of its composition. In these, this great genius pours himself out with all that " glory of which his large soul appears to have been full," as Hurd has nobly expressed it.* Such a conscious dignity of may be inscribed in the library of the student, in the studio of the artist, in every place where excellence can only be obtained by knowledge. " Rich are the diligent, who can command Time, nature's stock ! and, could his hour-glass fall, Would, as for seed of stars, stoop for the sand, And by incessant labour gather all !" * Can one read such passages as these without catching some of the sym- pathies of a great genius that knows itself ? " He who writes an heroic poem leaves an estate entailed, and he gives D'Avenant and a Club of Wits. 409 character struck the petulant wits with a provoking sense of their own littleness. A club of wits caballed and produced a collection of short poems sarcastically entitled " Certain Verses written by several of the Author's Friends, to be reprinted in the Second Edition of ' Grondibert,' " 1653. Two years after appeared a brother volume, entitled " The Incomparable Poem of Gondibert vin- dicated from the Wit-Combats of Four Esquires ; Clinias, Dametas, Sancho and Jack Pudding ;"* with these mottoes : Korku nai doiSoe aoiStp. Vatum quoque gratia, rara est. Anglice, One wit-brother Envies another. a greater gift to posterity than to the present age ; for a public benefit is best measured in the number of receivers ; and our contemporaries are but few when reckoned with those who shall succeed. " If thou art a malicious reader, thou wilt remember my preface boldly confessed, that a main motive to the undertaking was a desire of fame ; and thou may est likewise say, I may very possibly not live to enjoy it. Truly, I have some years ago considered that Fame, like Time, only gets a reve- rence by long running ; and that, like a river, 'tis narrowest where 'tis bred, and broadest afar off. " If thou, reader, art one of those who have been warmed with poetic fire, I reverence thee as my judge ; and whilst others tax me with vanity, I appeal to thy conscience whether it be more than such a necessary assur- ance as thou hast made to thyself in like undertakings ? For when I ob- serve that writers have many enemies, such inward assurance, methinks, resembles that forward confidence in men of arms, which makes them pro- ceed in great enterprise ; since the right examination of abilities begins with inquiring whether we doubt ourselves." Such a composition is injured by mutilation. He here also alludes to his military character : " Nor could I sit idle and sigh with such as mourn to hear the drum ; for if the age be not quiet enough to be taught virtue a pleasant way, the next may be at leisure ; nor could I (like men that have civilly slept till they are old in dark cities) think war a novelty." Shak- speare could not have expressed his feelings, in hia own style, more elo- quently touching than D'Avenant. * It is said there were four writers. The Clinias and Dametas were probably Sir John Dcnham and Jo. Donne ; Sir Allan Broderick and Will Crofts, who is mentioned by the clubs as one of their fellows, appear to be the Sancho and Jack Pudding. Will Crofta was a favourite with Charles II : he had been a skilful agent, as appears in Clarendon. [In the accounts of moneys disbursed for secret services in the reign of Charles II., published by the Camden Society, his name appears for 200/., but that of his wife repeatedly figures for large sums, " as of free guift." In this way she receives 7001. with great regularity for a series of years, until the death of Charles II.] Howell has a poem " On some who, blending their brains together, plotted how to bespatter one of the Muses' choicest sons, Sir William D'Avenant. " 410 Quarrels of Authors. Of these rare tracts, we are told by Anthony Wood and all subsequent literary historians, too often mere transcribers of title-pages, that the second was written by our author him- self. Would not one imagine that it was a real vindication, or at least a retort-courteous on these obliging friends. The irony of the whole volume has escaped their discovery. The second tract is a continuation of the satire : a mock defence, where the sarcasm and the pretended remonstrance are some- times keener than the open attack. If, indeed, D'Avenant were the author of a continuation of a satire on himself, it is an act of felo de se no poet ever committed ; a self-flagella- tion by an iron whip, where blood is drawn at every stroke, the most penitent bard never inflicted on himself. Would D'Avenant have bantered his proud labour, by calling it " in- comparable?" And were it true, that he felt the strokes of their witty malignity so lightly, would he not have secured his triumph by finishing that "Gondibert," "the monument of his mind ?" It is too evident that this committee of wits hurt the quiet of a great mind. As for this series of literary satires, it might have been expected, that since the wits clubbed, this committee ought to have been more effective in their operations. Many of their papers were, no doubt, more blotted with their wine than their ink. Their variety of attack is playful, sarcastic, and malicious. They were then such exuberant wits, that they could make even ribaldry and grossness witty. My business with these wicked trifles is only as they concerned the feelings of the great poet, whom they too evidently hurt, as well as the great philosopher who condescended to notice these wits, with wit more digni- fied than their own. Unfortunately for our "jeered Will," as in their usual court- style the} r call him, he had met with "a foolish mischance," well known among the collectors of our British portraits. There was a feature in his face, or rather no feature at all, that served as a perpetual provocative : there was no precedent of such a thing, says Suckling, in "The Sessions of the Poets "- In all their records, in verse or in prose, There was none of a Laureat who wanted a nose. Besides, he was now doomed Nor could old Hobbes Defend him from dry bobbs. The preface of "Gondibert," the critical epistle of Hobbes, lyAvenant and a Club of Wits. 411 and the poems of the two greatest poets in England, were first to be got rid of. The attack is brisk and airy. UPON THE PREFACE. Room for the best of poets heroic, If you'll believe two wite and a Stoic. Down go the Iliads, down go the JBneidos : All must give place to the Gondiberteidos. For to Homer and Virgil he has a just pique, Because one's writ in Latin, the other in Greek ; Besides an old grudge (our critics they say so) With Ovid, because his sirname was Ncuo. If fiction the fame of a poet thus raises, What poets are you that have writ his praises ? But we justly quarrel at this our defeat ; You give us a stomach, he gives us no meat. A preface to no book, a porch to no house ; Here is the mountain, but where is the mouse I This stroke, in the mock defence, is thus warded off, with a slight confession of the existence of " the mouse." Why do you bite, you men of fangs (That is, of teeth that forward hangs), And charge my dear Ephestion With want of meat? you want digestion. We poets use not so to do, To find men meat and stomach too. You have the book, you have the house, And mum, good Jack, and catch the mouse. Among the personal foibles of D'Avenant appears a desire to disguise his humble origin ; and to give it an air of lineal descent, he probably did not write his name as his father had done. It is said he affected, at the cost of his mother's honour, to insinuate that he was the son of Shakspeare, who used to bait at his father's inn.* These humorists first reduce D'Avenant to " Old Daph." * The story was current in D'Avenant's time, and it is certain he encouraged the believers in its truth. Anthony Wood speaks of the lady as " a very beautiful woman, of a good wit and conversation, in which she was imitated by none of her children but by this William." He also notes Shakspeare's custom to lodge at the Crown Inn, Oxford, kept by her hus- band, " in his journies between Warwickshire and London." Aubrey tells the same tale, adding that D'Avenant " would sometimes, when he was pleasant over a glass of wine with his most intimate friends, e. g. Sam. Butler (author of " Hudibras," &c.,) say, that it seemed to him that he writ with the very same spirit that Shakspeare did, and was contented enough to be thought his son ;" he adds that " his mother had a very light report." It was Pope who told Oldys the jesting story he had obtained from Betterton, of little Will running from school to meet Shakspeare, in one of his visits 412 Quarrels of Authors. Denham, come help me to laugh, At old Daph, Whose fancies are higher than chaff. Daph swells afterwards into " Daphne ;" a change of sex inflicted on the poet for making one of his heroines a man ; and this new alliance to Apollo becomes a source of perpetual allusion to the bays Cheer up, small wits, now you shall crowned be, Daphne himself is turn'd into a tree. One of the club inquires about the situation of Avenant where now it lies, Whether in Lombard,* or the skies. Because, as seven cities disputed for the birth of Homer, so after ages will not want towns claiming to be Avenant Some say by A venant no place is meant, And that our Lombard is without descent ; And as, by Bilk, men mean there's nothing there, So come from Avenant, means from no where. Thus Will, intending I? Avenant to grace, Has made a notch in's name like that in's face. D'Avenant had been knighted for his good conduct at the siege of Gloucester, and was to be tried by the Parliament, but procured his release without trial. This produces the fol- lowing sarcastic epigram : UPON FIGHTING WILL. The King knights Will for fighting on his side ; Yet when Will comes for fighting to be tried, There is not one in all the armies can Say they e'er felt, or saw, this fighting man. Strange, that the Knight should not be known i' th' field; A face well charged, though nothing in his shield. Sure fighting Will like basilisk did ride Among the troops, and all that saw Will died ; Else how could Will, for fighting, be a Knight, And none alive that ever saw Will fight ? Of the malignancy of their wit, we must preserve one specimen. They probably harassed our poet with anonymous to Oxford, and being asked where he was running, by an old townsman, replied, to " see my godfather Shakspeare." " There's a good boy," said the old gentleman, " but have a care that you don't take God's name in vain." ED. * The scene where the story of " Gondibert" is placed, which the wits sometimes pronounced Lumber and Lumberv. 413 despatches from the Club : for there appears another poem on U Avenant's anger on such an occasion : A LETTER SENT TO THE GOOD KNIOHT. Thou hadst not been thus long neglected, But we, thy four best friends, expected, Ere this time, thou hadst stood corrected. But since that planet governs still, That rules thy tedious fustain quill 'Gainst nature and the Muses' will ; When, by thy friends' advice and care, 'Twas hoped, in time, thou wouldst despair To give ten pounds to write it fair ; Lest thou to all the world would show it, We thought it fit to let thee know it : Thou art a dainn'd insipid poet ! These literary satires contain a number of otjier " pasquils," burlesquing the characters, the incidents, and the stanza, of the GONDIBERT : some not the least witty are the most gross, and must not be quoted ; thus the wits of that day were poetical suicides, who have shortened their lives by their folly. D'Avenant, like more than one epic poet, did not tune to his ear the names of his personages. They have added, to show that his writings are adapted to an easy musical singer, the names of his heroes and heroines, in these verses : Hurgonil, Astolpho, Borgia, Qoltha, Tibalt, Astragon, Hermogild, Dlfinor, Orgo, Thula. And " epithets that will serve for any substantives, either in this part or the next." Such are the labours of the idlers of genius, envious of the nobler industry of genius itself! How the great author's spirit was nourished by the restoratives of his other friends, after the bitter decoctions prescribed by these " Four," I fear we may judge by the unfinished state in which " Gondibert " has come down to us. D'Avenant seems, however, to have guarded his dignity by his silence ; but Hobbes took an op- portunity of delivering an exquisite opinion on this Club of Wits, with perfect philosophical indifference. It is in a letter to the Hon. EDWARD HOWARD, who requested to have his sentiments on another heroic poem of his own, " The British Princes." " My judgment in poetry hath, you know, been once already censured, by very good wits, for commending " Gondibert;" but yet they have not, I think, disabled my testimony. For, 41 4 Quarrels of Authors. what authority is there in wit? A jester may have it; a man in drink may have it, and be fluent over-night, and wise and dry in the morning. What is it ? or who can tell whether it be better to have it, or be without it, especially if it be a pointed wit ? I will take my liberty to praise what I like, as well as they do to reprehend what they do not like." The stately "Gkmdibert " was not likely to recover favour in the court of Charles the Second, where man was never re- garded in his true greatness, but to be ridiculed ; a court where the awful presence of Clarendon became so irksome, that the worthless monarch exiled him ; a court where nothing was listened to but wit at the cost of sense, the injury of truth, and the violation of decency ; where a poem of magni- tude with new claims was a very business for those volatile arbiters of taste ; an epic poem that had been travestied and epigrammed, was a national concern with them, which, next to some new state-plot, that occurred oftener than a new epic, might engage the monarch and his privy council. These were not the men to be touched by the compressed reflections and the ideal virtues personified in this poem. In the court of the laughing voluptuary the manners as well as the morals of these satellites of pleasure were so little heroic, that those of the highest rank, both in birth and wit, never mentioned each other but with the vulgar familiarity of nicknames, or the coarse appellatives of Dick, Will, and Jack ! Such was the era when the serious " Gondibert " was produced, and such were the judges who seem to have decided its fate. THE PAPER- WARS OF THE CIVIL WARS. The "Mercuries" and "Diurnals," archives of political fictions "The Diurnals," in the pay of the Parliament, described by BUTLER and CLEVELAND Sir JOHN BIRKENHEAD excels in sarcasm, with specimens of his " Mercurins Aulicus" how he corrects his own lies Specimens of the Newspapers on the side of the Commonwealth. AMONG these battles of logomachy, in which so much ink has been spilt, and so many pens have lost their edge at a very solemn period in our history, when all around was dis- tress and sorrow, stood forwards the facetious ancestors of that numerous progeny who still flourish among us, and who, with- out a suspicion of their descent, still bear the features of their progenitors, and inherit so many of the family humours. These were the MEECUEIES and DITTHNALS the newspapers of our Civil Wars. The distinguished heroes of these Paper- Wars, Sir John Birkenhead, Marchmont Needham, and Sir Roger L'Estrange, I have elsewhere portrayed.* We have had of late correct lists of these works ; but no one seems as yet to have given any clear notion of their spirit and their manner. The London Journals in the service of the Parliament were usually the Diurnals. These politicians practised an artifice which cannot be placed among " the lost inventions." As these were hawked about the metropolis to spur curiosity, often languid from over-exercise, or to wheedle an idle spec- tator into a reader, every paper bore on its front the inviting heads of its intelligence. Men placed in the same circum- stances will act in the same manner, without any notion of imitation ; and the passions of mankind are now addressed by the same means which our ancestors employed, by those who do not suspect they are copying them. These Diurnals have been blasted by the lightnings of * " Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 158 (last edition). 416 Quarrels of Authors. Butler and Cleveland. Hudibras is made happy at the idea that he may be Eegister'd by fame eternal, In deathless pages of DIURNAL. But Cleveland has left us two remarkable effusions of his satiric and vindictive powers, in his curious character of " A Diurnal Maker," and " A London Diurnal." He writes in the peculiar vein of the wit of those times, with an originality of images, whose combinations excite surprise, and whose abundance fatigues our weaker delicacy. " A Diurnal-Maker is the Sub- Almoner of History ; Queen Mab's Kegister ; one whom, by the same figure that a North- country pedler is a merchantman, you may style an author. The silly countryman who, seeing an ape in a scarlet coat, blessed his young worship, and gave his landlord joy of the hopes of his house, did not slander his compliment with worse application than he that names this shred an historian. To call him an Historian is to knight a Mandrake ; 'tis to view him through a perspective, and, by that gross h} r perbole, to give the reputation of an engineer to a maker of mousetraps. When these weekly fragments shall pass for history, let the poor man's box be entitled the Exchequer, and the alms- basket a Magazine. Methinks the Turke should license Diurnals, because he prohibits learning and books." He characterises the Diurnal as " a puny chronicle, scarce pin- feathered with the wings of time ; it is a history in sippets ; the English Iliads in a nutshell; the Apocryphal Parliament's Book of Maccabees in single sheets." But Cleveland tells us that these Diurnals differ from a Mercurius Aulicus (the paper of his party), "as the Devil and his Exorcist, or as a black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments." The Mercurius Aulicus was chiefly conducted by Sir JOHN BLRKENHEAD, at Oxford, " communicating the intelligence and affairs of the court to the rest of the kingdom." Sir John was a great wag, and excelled in sarcasm and invective ; his facility is equal to repartee, and his spirit often reaches to wit : a great forger of tales, who probably considered that a romance was a better thing than a newspaper.* The royal * There is a small poem, published in 1643, entitled " The Great Assizes holden in Parnassus," in the manner of a later work, " The Ses- sions of the Poets, " in which all the Diurnals and Mercuries are arraigned The Paper- Wars of the Civil Wars. 417 party were so delighted with his witty buffoonery, that Sir John was recommended to be Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. Did political lying seem to be a kind of moral philosophy to the feelings of a party ? The originality of Birkenhead's happy manner consists in his adroit use of sar- casm : he strikes it off by means of a parenthesis. I shall give, as a specimen, one of his" summaries of what the Parlia- mentary Journals had been detailing during the week. " The Londoners in print this week have been pretty copious. They say that a troop of the Marquess of New- castle's horse have submitted to the Lord Fairfax. (They were part of the German horse which came over in the Danish fleet.)* That the Lord Wilmot hath been dead five weeks, but the Cavaliers concealed his death. (Remember this !) That Sir John I7rrey\ is dead and buried at Oxford. (He died the same day with the Lord Wilmot.) That the and tried. An impartial satire on them all ; and by its good sense and heavy versification, is so much in the manner of GEORGE WITHER, that some have conjectured it to be that singular author's. Its rarity gives it a kind of value. Of such verses as Wither' s, who has been of late extolled too highly, the chief merit is their sense and truth ; which, if he were not tedious, might be an excellence in prose. Antiquaries, when they find a poet adapted for their purposes, conjecture that he is an excellent one. This prosing satirist, strange to say, in some pastoral poetry, has opened the right vein. Aulicus is well characterized : " hee, for wicked ends, Had the Castalian spring defiled with gall, And changed by Witchcraft most satyricall, The bayes of Helicon and myrtles mild, To pricking hawthornes and to hollies wild. with slanders false, With forged fictitious calumnies and tales He added fewel to the direful flame Of civil discord ; and domestic blowes, By the incentives of malicious prose. For whereas he should have composed his inke Of liquors that make flames expire, and shrink Into their cinders He laboured hard for to bring in The exploded doctrines of the Florentine, And taught that to dissemble and to lie Were vital parts of human policie." Alluding to a ridiculous rumour, that the King was to receive foreign troops by a Danish fleet. t Col. Urrey, alias Hurrey, deserted the Parliament, and went orer to the King ; afterwards deserted the King, and discovered to the Parliament all he knew of the King's forces. See Clarendon. E 418 Quarrels of Authors. Cavaliers, before they Jiave done, will HUEEET all men into misery. (This quibble hath been six times printed, and nobody would take notice of it ; now let's hear of it no more !) That all the Cavaliers which Sir William Waller took prisoners (besides 500) tooke the National Covenant. (Yes, all he took (besides 500) tooke the Covenant.) That 2000 Irish Rebels landed 'in Wales. (You called them English Protestants till you cheated them of their money.) That Sir William Brereton left 140 good able men in Hawarden Castle. ('Tis the better for Sir Michael Earnley, who hath taken the Castle.) That the Queen hath a great deafnesse. (Thou hast a great blister on thy tongue.) That the Cavaliers burned all the suburbs of Chester, that Sir William Brereton might find no shelter to besiedge it. (There was no haj'rick, and Sir William cares for no other shelter.)* The SCOTTISH DOVE says (there are Doves in Scotland !) that Hawarden Castle had but forty men in it when the Cavaliers took it. (Andther told you there were 140 lusty stout fellows in it : for sharne, gentlemen ! conferre Notes !) That Colonel Nor- ton at Bumsey took 200 prisoners. (I saw them counted : they were just two millions.) Th.enthe.Dowe hath this sweetpas- sage : O Aulicus, thou profane wretch, that darest scandalize GOD'S saints, darest thou call that loyal subject Master Pym a * This Sir William Brereton, or, as Clarendon writes the name, Bruer- ton, was the famous Cheshire knight, whom Cleveland characterizes as one of those heroes whose courage lies in their teeth. " Was Brereton," says the loyal satirist, "to fight with his teeth, as he in all other things resembles the beast, he would have odds of any man at this weapon. He's a terrible slaughterman at a Thanksgiving dinner. Had he been cannibal enough to have eaten those he vanquished, his gut would have made him valiant." And in " Loyal Songs" his valiant appetite is noticed : "But, oh ! take heed lest he do eat The Hump all at one dinner !" And Aulicus, we see, accuses him of concealing his bravery in a hayrick. It is always curious and useful to confer the writers of intemperate times one with another. Lord Clarendon, whose great mind was incapable of descending to scurrility, gives a very diiferent character to this pot-valiant and hayrick runaway; for he says, " It cannot be denied but Sir William Brereton, and the other gentlemen of that party, albeit their educa- tions and course of life had been very different from their present engage- ments, and for the most part very unpromising in matters of war, and therefore were too much contemned enemies, executed their commands with notable sobriety and indefatigable industry (virtues not so well prac- tised in the King's quarters), insomuch as the best soldiers who encoun- tered with them had no cause to despise them." Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 147. The Paper-Wars of the Civil Wars. 419 traitor? (Yea, pretty Pigeon* he was charged with six articles by his Majesty's Atturney G-enerall.) Next he says, that Master Pym died like Moses upon the Mount. (He did not die upon the mount, but should have done.) Then he says Master Pym died in a good old age, like Jacob in Egypt. (Not likje Jacob, yet just as those died in Egypt in the days of Pharaoh.")f As Sir John was frequently the propagator of false intelli- gence, it was necessary at times to seem scrupulous, and to correct some slight errors. He does this very adroitly, with- out diminishing his invectives. " We must correct a mistake or two in our two last weeks. We advertised you of certain money speeches made by Master John Sedgwick : on better information, it was not John, but Obadiah, Presbyter of Bread-street, who in the pulpit in hot weather used to unbutton his doublet, which John, who wanteth a thumbe, forbears to practise. And when we told you last week of a committee of Lawyers appointed to put their new Scale in execution, we named, among others, Master George Peard.^ I confess this was no small errour to reckon * " The Scotch Dove" seems never to have recovered from this meta- morphosis, but ever after, among the newsmen, was known to be only a Widgeon. His character is not very high in " The Great Assizes." 1 ' The innocent Scotch Dove did then advance, Full sober in his wit and countenance : And, though his book contain'd not mickle scence, Yet his endictment shew'd no great offence. Great wits to perils great, themselves expose Oft-times ; but the Scotch Dove was none of those. In many words he little matter drest, And did laconick brevity detest. But while his readers did expect some Newes, They found a Sermon " The Scotch Dove desires to meet the classical Aulicus in the duel of tho pen : " to turn me loose, A Scottish Dove against a Roman Goose." "The Scotch Dove" is condemned " to cross the seas, or to repasse the Tweede." They all envy him his " easy mulct," but he wofully exclaims at the hard sentence, " For if they knew that home as well as he, They'd rather die than there imprison'd be !" f This stroke alludes to a rumour of the times, noticed also by Clarendon, that Pym died of the morbus pediculosus. J " Peard, a bold lawyer of little note." Clarendon. BE 2 420 Quarrels of Authors. Master Peard among the Lawyers, because he now lies sicke, and so farre from being their new Lord Keeper, that he now despairs to become their Door Keeper, which office he per- formed heretofore. But since Master Peard has become desperately sick; and so his vote, his law, and haire have all forsook him, his corporation of Barnstable have been in per- fect health and loyalty. The town of Barnstable having submitted to the King, this will no doubt be a special cordial for their languishing Burgess. And yet the man may grow hearty again when he hears of the late defeat given to his Majesty's forces in Lincolnshire." This paper was immediately answered by MAECHMONT NEEDHAM, in his " Mercurius Britannicus," who cannot boast the playful and sarcastic bitterness of Sir John ; yet is not the dullest of his tribe. He opens his reply thus : " Aulicus will needs venture his soule upon the other Jialf- sheet ; and this week he lies, as completely as ever he did in two full sheets ; full of as many scandals and fictions, full of as much stupidity and ignorance, full of as many tedious untruths as ever. And because he would recrute the reputation of his wit, he falls into the company of our Diurnals very furiously, and there lays about him in the midst of our weekly pamphlets; and he casts in the few squibs, and the little wildfire he hath, dashing out his con- ceits ; and he takes it ill that the poore scribblers should tell a story for their living ; and after a whole week spent at Oxford, in inke and paper, to as little purpose as Maurice spent his shot and powder at Plimouth, he gets up, about Saturday, into a jingle or two, for he cannot reach to a i'ull jest ; and I am informed that the three-quarter conceits in the last leafe of his Diurnall cost him fourteen pence in aqua vittf." Sir John never condescends formally to reply to Needham, for which he gives this singular reason : " As for this libeller, we are still resolved to take no notice till we find him able to spell his own name, which to this hour BRITAN- NICUS never did." In the next number of Needham, who had always written it Srittanicus, the correction was silently adopted. There was no crying down the etymology of an Oxford malignant. I give a short narrative of the political temper of the times, in their unparalleled gazettes. At the first breaking out of the parliament's separation from the royal party, when the public mind, full of conster- The Paper-Wars of the Civil Wars. 421 nation in that new anarchy, shook with the infirmity of childish terrors, the most extravagant reports were as eagerly caught up as the most probable, and served much better the purposes of their inventors. They had daily discoveries of new conspiracies, which appeared in a pretended correspon- dence written from Spain, France, Italy, or Denmark : they had their amusing literature, mixed with their grave politics ; and a dialogue between " a Dutch mariner and an English ostler," could alarm the nation as much as the last letter from their " private correspondent." That the wildest rumours were acceptable appears from their contemporary Fuller. Armies were talked of, concealed under ground by the king, to cut the throats of all the Protestants in a night. He as- sures us that one of the most prevailing dangers among the Londoners was " a design laid for a mine of powder under the Thames, to cause the river to drown the city." This desperate expedient, it seems, was discovered just in time to prevent its execution ; and the people were devout enough to have a public thanksgiving, and watched with a little more care that the Thames might not be blown up. However, the plot was really not so much at the bottom of the Thames as at the bottom of their purses. Whenever they wanted 100,000/. they raised a plot, they terrified the people, they appointed a thanksgiving-day, and while their ministers ad- dressed to God himself all the news of the week, and even reproached him for the rumours against their cause, all ended, as is usual at such times, with the gulled multitude contri- buting more heavily to the adventurers who ruled them than the legal authorities had exacted in their greatest wants. 'TheDiurnals" had propagated thirty -nine of these "Treasons, or new Taxes," according to one of the members of the House of Commons, who had watched their patriotic designs. These " Diurnals" sometimes used such language as the following, from The Weekly Accompt, January, 1643 : " This day afforded no newes at all, but onely what was heavenly and spiritual;" and he gives an account of the public fast, and of the grave divine Master Henderson's ser- mon, with his texts in the morning ; and in the afternoon, another of Master Strickland, with his texts and of their spiritual effect over the whole parliament !* * These divines were as ready with the sword as the pen ; thus, we are told in "The Impartial Scout" for July, 1650 "The ministers are now as active in the military discipline as formerly they were in the 422 Quarrels of Authors. Such news as the following was sometimes very agree- able : " From Oxford it is informed, that on Sunday last was fortnight in the evening, Prince Eupert, accompanied with some lords, and other cavaliers, danced through the streets openly, with music before them, to one of the colleges ; where, after they had stayed ahout half an houre, they returned back again, dancing with the same music ; and immediately there followed a pack of women, or curtizans, as it may be sup- posed, for they were hooded, and could not be knowne ; and this the party who related affirmed he saw with his own eyes." On this the Diurnal-maker pours out severe anathemas and one with a note, that " dancing and drubbing are insepa- rable companions, and follow one another close at the heels." He assures his readers, that the malignants, or royalists, only fight like sensual beasts, to maintain their dancing and drab- bing ! Such was the revolutionary tone here, and such the arts of faction everywhere. The matter was rather peculiar to our country, but the principle was the same as practised in Prance. Men of opposite characters, when acting for the same concealed end, must necessarily form parallels. gospel profession, Parson Ennis, Parson Brown, and about thirty other ministers having received commissions to be majors and captains, who now hold forth the Bible in one hand, and the sword in the other, telling the soldiery that they need not fear what man can do against them that God is on their side and that He hath prepared an engine in heaven to break and blast the designs of all covenant-breakers." ED. OH LITERAKY COMPOSITIONS. ANTHONY WOOD and LOCKE MILTON and SPRAT BURNBT and his History PRIOR and ADDISOH SWIM and STEELS WAGSTAFFE and STEELE STEELE and ADDISON HOOKE and MIDDLETOX GILBERT WAK.KFIBLD MARVEL and MILTON CLARENDON and MAT. VOLTA.IBE, in his letters on our nation, has hit off a marked feature in our national physiognomy. "So violent did I find parties in London, that I was assured by several that the Duke of MAELBOROUOH was a coward, "and Mr. POPE a fool." A foreigner indeed could hardly expect that in collecting the characters of English authors by English authors (a labour which has long afforded me pleasure often interrupted by in- dignation) in a word, that a class of literary history should turn out a collection of personal quarrels. Would not this modern Baillet, in his new Jugemens des Scavang,so ingeniously inquisitive but so infinitely confused, require to be initiated into the mysteries of that spirit of party peculiar to our free country ! All that boiling rancour which sputters against the thoughts, the style, the taste, the moral character of an author, is often nothing more than practising what, to give it a name, we may call Political Criticism in Literature ; where an author's literary character is attacked solely from the accidental circumstance of his differing in opinion from his critics on subjects unconnected with the topics he treats of. Could Anthony Wood, had he not been influenced by this political criticism, have sent down LOCKE to us as " a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented, prating and troublesome?"* But Locke was the antagonist of FILMER, that advocate of arbitrary power ; and Locke is * A forcible description of Locke may be found in the curious " Life of Wood," written by himself. I shall give the passage where Wood acknow- 424 Quarrels of Authors. described " as bred under a fanatical tutor," and when in Holland, as one of those who under the Earl of Shaf'tesbury " stuck close to him when discarded, and carried on the trade of faction beyond and within the seas several years after." In the great original genius, born, like BACON and NEWTON, to create a new era in the history of the human mind, this political literary critic, who was not always deficient in his perceptions of genius, could only discover " a trader in fac- tion," though in his honesty he acknowledges him to be "a noted writer." A more illustrious instance of party-spirit operating against works of genius is presented to us in the awful character of MILTON. From earliest youth to latest age endowed with all the characteristics of genius ; fervent with all the inspira- tions of study ; in all changes still the same great literary character as Velleius Paterculus writes of one of his heroes " Aliquando fortuna, semper animo maximus :" while in his own day, foreigners, who usually anticipate posterity, were inquiring after Milton, it is known how utterly disregarded he lived at home. The divine author of the " Paradise Lost" was always connected with the man for whom a reward was offered in the London Gazette. But in their triumph, the lovers of monarchy missed their greater glory, in not sepa- rating for ever the republican Secretary of State from the rival of Homer. That the genius of Milton pined away in solitude, and that all the consolations of fame were denied him during his life, from this political criticism on his works, is generally known ; but not perhaps that this spirit propagated itself far beyond the poet's tomb. I give a remarkable instance. Bishop Sprat, who surely was capable of feeling the poetry of Milton, yet from political antipathy retained such an abhorrence of his name, that when the writer of the Latin Inscription on the poet JOHN PHILIPS, in describing his versification, applied to it the term Miltono, Sprat ordered it to be erased, as ledges his after celebrity, at the very moment the bigotry of his feelings is attempting to degrade him. Wood belonged to a club with Locke and others, for the purpose of hear- ing chemical lectures. " John Locke of Christchurch was afterwards a noted writer. This John Locke was a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented. The club wrote and took notes from the mouth of their master, who sat at the upper end of a table, but the said John Locke scorned to do it ; so that while every man besides of the club were writing, he would be prating and troublesome. " Political Criticism on Literary Composition. 425 polluting a monument raised in a church.* A mere critical opinion on versification was thus sacrificed to political feeling: a stream indeed which in its course has hardly yet worked itself clear. It could only have been the strong political feel- ing of Warton which could have induced him to censure the prose of Milton with such asperity, while he closed his criti- cal eyes on its resplendent passages, which certainly he wanted not the taste to feel, for he caught in his own pages, occa- sionally, some of the reflected warmth. This feeling took full possession of the mind of Johnson, who, with all the rage of political criticism on subjects of literature, has condemned the finest works of Milton, and in one of his terrible paroxysms has demonstrated that the Samson Agonistes is " a tragedy which ignorance has admired and bigotry applauded." Had not Johnson's religious feelings fortunately interposed between Milton and his "Paradise," we should have wanted the pre- sent noble effusion of his criticism ; any other Epic by Milton * This anecdote deserves preservation. I have drawn it from the MSS. of Bishop KENNET. " In the Epitaph on JOHN PHILIPS occurs this line on his metre, that ' Uni in hoc laudis gen ere Miltono secundus, Primoque pene par.' These lines were ordered to be razed out of the monument by Dr. Sprat, Bishop of .Rochester. The word Miltono being, as he said, not fit to be in a Christian church ; but they have since been restored by Dr. ATTEKBCRY, who succeeded him as Bishop of Kochester, and who wrote the epitaph jointly with Dr. FREIND." Lansdowue MSS., No. 908, p. 162. The anecdote has appeared, but without any authority. Dr. SYMMONS, in his " Life of Milton," observing on what he calls Dr. Johnson's " bio- graphical libel on Milton," that Dr. Johnson has mentioned this fact, seems to suspect its authenticity; for, if true, "it would cover the respectable name of Sprat with eternal dishonour." Of its truth the above gives sufficient authority ; but at all events the prejudices of Sprat must be pardoned, while I am showing that minds far greater than his have shared in the same unhappy feeling. Dr. Symmons himself bears no light stain for his slanderous criticism on the genius of THOMAS WARTON, from the motive we are discussing ; though Warton, as my text shows, was too a sinner ! I recollect in my youth a more extraordinary instance than any other which relates to Milton. A woman of no education, who had retired from the business of life, became a very extraordinary reader ; accident had thrown into her way a large library composed of authors who wrote in the reigns of the two Charleses. She turned out one of the malig- nant party, and an abhorrer of the Commonwealth's men. Her opinion of CROMWKLL and MILTON may be given. She told me it was no wonder that the rebel who had been secretary to the usurper should have been able to have drawn so finished a character of SATAN, and that the Pandaemonium, with all the oratorical devils, was only such as he had himself viewed at Oliver's council-board. 426 Quarrels of Authors. had probably sunk beneath his vigorous sophistry, and his tasteless sarcasm. Lauder's attack on Milton was hardily projected, on a prospect of encouragement, from this political criticism on the literary character of Milton ; and he succeeded as long as he could preserve the decency of the delusion. The Spirit of Party has touched with its plague-spot the character of Burnet ; it has mildewed the page of a powerful mind, and tainted by its suspicions, its rumours, and its cen- sures, his probity as a man. Can we forbear listening to all the vociferations which faction has thrown out ? Do we not fear to trust ourselves amid the multiplicity of his facts ? And when we are familiarised with the variety of his historical portraits, are we not startled when it is suggested that " they are tinged with his own passions and his own weaknesses ?" Burnet has indeed made " his humble appeal to the great God of Truth " that he has given it as fully as he could find it ; and he has expressed his abhorrence of " a lie in history," so much greater a sin than a lie in common discourse, from its lasting and universal nature. Yet these hallowing protesta- tions have not saved him! A cloud of witnesses, from different motives, have risen up to attaint his veracity and his candour ; while all the Tory wits have ridiculed his style, impatiently inaccurate, and uncouthly negligent, and would sink his vigour and ardour, while they expose the meanness and poverty of his genius. Thus the literary and the moral character of no ordinary author have fallen a victim to party- feeling.* * I throw into this note several curious notices respecting BURNET, and chiefly from contemporaries. Burnet has been accused, after a warm discussion, of returning home in a passion, and then writing the character of a person. But as his feelings were warm, it is probable he might have often practised the reverse. An anecdote of the times is preserved in " The Memoirs of Grub-street," vol. ii. p. 291. "A noble peer now living declares he stood with a very ill grace in the history, till he had an opportunity put into his hands of obliging the bishop, by granting a favour at court, upon which the bishop told a friend, within an hour, that he was mistaken in such a lord, and must go and alter his whole character ; and so he happens to have a pretty good one." In this place I also find this curious extract from the MS. " Memoirs of the M of H ." " Such a day Dr. B 1 told me King William was an obstinate, conceited man, that would take no advice ; and on this day King William told me that Dr. B 1 was a troublesome, impertinent man, whose company he could not endure. " These anecdotes are very probable, and lead one to reflect. Some political tergiversation has been laid to his charge ; Swift accused him of having once been an advocate for passive obedience and absolute power. He has been re- Political Criticism on Literary Composition. 427 But this victim to political criticism on literature was him- self criminal, and has wreaked his own party feelings on the Papist Dryden, and the Tory Prior ; Drydeii he calls, in the preached with the deepest ingratitude, for the purpose of gratifying his darling passion of popularity, in his conduct respecting the Duke of Lau- derdale, his former patron. If the following piece of secret history be true, he showed too much of a compliant humour, at the cost of his honour. I find it in Bishop Kennet's MSS. " Dr. Burnet having over night given in some important depositions against the Earl of Lauderdale to the House of Commons, was, before morning, by the intercession of the D , made king's chaplain and preacher at the Rolls ; so he was bribed to hold the peace." Lansdowne MSS., 990. This was quite a politician's short way to preferment ! An honest man cannot leap up the ascent, however he may try to climb. There was something morally wrong in this transaction, because Burnet notices it, and acknowledges " I was much blamed for what I had done." The story is by no means refuted by the naive apology. Burnet's character has been vigorously attacked, with all the nerve of satire, in " Faction Displayed," attributed to Shippen, whom Pope cele- brates " And pour myself as plain As honest Shippen or as old Montaigne." Shippen was a Tory. In " Faction Displayed," Burnet is represented with his Cabal (so some party nicknames the other), on the accession of Queen Anne, plotting the disturbance of her government. " Black Aris's fierce- ness," that is Burnet, is thus described : " A Scotch, seditious, unbelieving priest, The brawny chaplain of the calves' -head feast, Who first his patron, then his prince betray'd, And does that church he's sworn to guard, invade, Warm with rebellious rage, he thus began," &c. One hardly suspects the hermit Parnell capable of writing rather harsh verses, yet stinging satire ; they are not in his works ; but he wrote the following lines on a report of a fire breaking out in Bui-net's library, which had like to have answered the purpose some wished of condemning the author and his works to the flames " He talks, and writes, that Popery will return, And we, and he, and all his works will burn ; And as of late he meant to bless the age With flagrant prefaces of party rage, O'ercome with passion and the subject's weight, Lolling he nodded in his elbow-seat ; Down fell the candle ! Grease and zeal conspire, Heat meets with heat, and pamphlets burn their sire ; Here crawls a preface on its half-burn'd maggots, And there an introduction brings its fagots ; Then roars the prophet of the northern nation, Scorch'd by a flaming speech on moderation." Thomas Warton smiles at Burnet for the horrors of Popery which per- petually haunted him, in his "Life of Sir T. Pope," p. 53. But if we 428 Quarrels of Authors. most unguarded language, " a monster of immodesty and im- purity of all sorts." There had been a literary quarrel between Dryden and Burnet respecting a translation of Varillas' " History of Heresies ;" Burnet had ruined the credit of the papistical author while Dryden was busied on the translation ; and as Burnet says, " he has wreaked his malice on me for spoiling his three months' labour." In return, he kindly informs Dryden, alluding to his poem of " The Hind and the Panther," "that he is the author of the worst poem the age has produced;" and that as for "his morals, it is scarce possible to grow a worse man than he was" a personal style not to be permitted in any controversy, but to bring this passion on the hallowed ground of history, was not "casting away his shoe" in the presence of the divinity of truth.* It could only have been the spirit of party which substitute the term arbitrary power for popery, no Briton will join in the abuse Burnet has received on this account. A man of Burnet's fervid temper, whose foible was strong vanity and a passion for popularity, would often rush headlong into improprieties of conduct and language ; his enemies have taken ample advantage of his errors ; but many virtues his friends have recorded ; and the elaborate and spirited character which the Marquis of Halifax has drawn of Burnet may soothe his manes, and secure its repose amid all these disturbances around his tomb. This fine character is pre- served in the " Biographia Britannica." Burnet is not the only instance of the motives of a man being honourable, while his actions are frequently the reverse, from his impetuous nature. He has been reproached for a want of that truth which he solemnly protests he scrupulously adhered to ; yet, of many circumstances which were at the time condemned as " lies," when Time drew aside the mighty veil, Truth was discovered beneath. Tovey, with his usual good humour, in his " Anglia Judaica," p. 277, notices " that pleasant copious imagination which will for ever rank our English Burnet with the Grecian Heliodorus." Eoger North, in his " Examen," p. 413, calls him "a busy Scotch parson." Lord Orford sneers at his hasty epithets, and the colloquial carelessness of his style, in his " Historic Doubts," where, in a note, he mentions "one Burnet" tells a ridiculous story, mimicking Burnet's chit-chat, and concludes surprisingly with, " So the Prince of Orange mounted the throne." After reading this note, how would that learned foreigner proceed, who I have supposed might be projecting the " Judgments of the Learned" on our English authors ? Were he to condemn Burnet as an historian void of all honour and authority, he would not want for documents. It would require a few minutes to explain to the foreigner the nature of political criticism. * Dryden was very coarsely satirised in the political poems of his own day ; and among the rest, in " The Session of the Poets," a general onslaught directed against the writers of the time, which furnishes us with many examples of unjust criticism on these literary men, entirely originating in political feeling. One example may suffice : Political Criticism on Literary Composition. 429 induced Burnet, in his History, to mention with contempt and pretended ignorance so fine a genius as " one Prior, who had been Jersey's secretary." It was the same party-feeling in the Tory Prior, in his elegant " Alma," where he has inter* woven so graceful a wreath for Pope, that could sneer at the fine soliloquy of the Roman Cato of the Whig Addison : I hope you would not have me die Like simple Cato in the play, For anything that he can say. It was the same spirit which would not allow that Garth was the author of his celebrated poem Garth did not write his own Dispensary, as Pope ironically alludes to the story of the times : a con- temporary wit has recorded this literary injury, by repeating it.* And Swift, who once exclaimed to Pope, " The deuce take party !" was himself the greatest sinner of them all. He, once the familiar friend of Steele till party divided them, not only emptied his shaft of quivers against his literary charac- ter, but raised the horrid yell of the war-whoop in his in- human exultation over the unhappy close of the desultory life of a man of genius. Bitterly has he written From perils of a hundred jails, Withdrew to starve, and die in Wales. When Steele published "The Crisis," Swift attacked the author in so exquisite a piece of grave irony, that I am, tempted to transcribe his inimitable parallels of a triumvirate composed of the writer of the Flying Post, Dunton the literary projector, and poor Steele : the one, the Iscariot of hackney scribes ; the other a crack-brained scribbling book- seller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, fancied he had " Then in came Denham, that limping old bard, Whose fame on the Sophy and Cooper's-hitt stands, And brought many stationers, who swore very hard That nothing sold better except 'twere his lands. But Apollo advised him to write something more, To clear a suspicion which possessed the Court, That Cooper 1 's-hill, so much bragg'd on before, Was writ by a vicar, who had forty pounds for't." * Dr. Wagstaffe, in his " Character of Steele," alludes to the rumour which Pope has sent down to posterity in a single verse : "I should have thought Mr. Steele might have the example of his friend before his eyes, who had the reputation of being the author of The Dupentary, till, by two or three unlucky after-claps, he proved himself incapable of writing it." WAGSTAFFK'S Misc. Works, p. 136. 430 Quarrels of Authors. methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he exe- cuted. The following is a specimen of that powerful irony in which Swift excelled all other writers ; that fine Cervantic humour, that provoking coolness which Swift preserves while he is panegyrising the objects of his utter contempt. " Among the present writers on the Whig side, I can recol- lect but three of any great distinction, which are the Flying Post, Mr. Dunton, and the Author of " The Crisis." The first of these seems to have been much sunk in reputation since the sudden retreat of the only true, genuine, original author, Mr. Kidpath, who is celebrated by the Dutch Gazetteer as one of the lest pens in England. Mr. Dunton hath been longer and more conversant in books than any of the three, as well as more voluminous in his productions : however, having em- ployed his studies in so great a variety of other subjects, he hath, 1 think, but lately turned his genius to politics. His famous tract entitled " Neck or Nothing " must be allowed to be the shrewdest piece, and written with the most spirit of any which hath appeared from that side since the change of the ministry. It is indeed a most cutting satire upon the Lord Treasurer and Lord Bolingbroke ; and I wonder none of our friends ever undertook to answer it. I confess I was at first of the same opinion with several good judges, who from the style and manner suppose it to have issued from the sharp pen of the Earl of Nottingham ; and I am still apt to think it might receive his lordship's last hand. The third and principal of this triumvirate is the author of " The Crisis," who, although he must yield to the Flying Post in knowledge of the world and skill in politics, and to Mr. Dunton in keen- ness of satire and variety of reading, hath yet other qualities enough to denominate him a writer of a superior class to either, provided he would a little regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the grammatical part, and get some information on the subject he intends to handle."* * I know not how to ascertain the degree of political skill which Steele reached in his new career he was at least a spirited Whig, but the ministry was then under the malignant influence of the concealed adherents to the Stuarts, particularly of Bolingbroke, and such as Atterbury, whose secret history is now much better known than in their own day. The terrors of the Whigs were not unfounded. Steele in the House disappointed his friends ; from his popular Essays, it was expected he would have been a fluent orator ; this was no more the case with him than Addison. On this De Foe said he had better have continued the Spectator than the Taller. LANSDUWNE'S MSS. 1097. Political Criticism on Literary Composition. 431 So far this fine ironical satire may be inspected as a model ; the polished weapon he strikes with so gracefully, is allowed by all the laws of war ; but the political criticism on the literary character, the party feeling which degrades a man of genius, is the drop of poison on its point. Steele had declared in the " Crisis " that he had always maintained an inviolable respect for the clergy. Swift (who perhaps was aimed at in this instance, and whose character, since the publication of "The Tale of a Tub," lay under a suspicion of an opposite tendency) turns on Steele with all the vigour of his wit, and all the causticity of retort : " By this he would insinuate that those papers among the Tatlers and Spectators, where the whole order is abused, were not his own. I will appeal to all who know the flatness of his style, and the barrenness of his invention, whether he doth not grossly prevaricate ? Was he ever able to walk with- out his leading-strings, or swim without bladders, without being discovered by his hobbling or his sinking ?" Such was the attack of Swift, which was pursued in the Examiner, and afterwards taken up by another writer. This is one of the evils resulting from the wantonness of genius : it gives a contagious example to the minor race ; its touch opens a new vein of invention, which the poorer wits soon break into ; the loose sketch of a feature or two from its rapid hand is sufficient to become a minute portrait, where not a hair is spared by the caricaturist. This happened to Steele, whose literary was to be sacrificed to his political character ; and this superstructure was confessedly raised on the malicious hints we have been noticing. That the Examiner was the seed-plot of " The Character of Kichard St le, Esq.," appears by its opening " It will be no injury, I am persuaded, to the Examiner to borrow him a little (Steele), upon promise of returning him safe, as children do their playthings, when their mirth is over, and they have done with them." The author of the " Character of Richard St le, Esq.," was Dr. Wagstaffe, one of those careless wits* who lived to * Wagstaffe's "Miscellaneous Works," 1726, have been collected into a volume. They contain satirical pieces of humour, accompanied by some Hogarthian prints. His "Comment upon the History of Tom Thumb," ridicules Addison's on the old ballad of " Chevy Chase," who had declared " it was full of the majestic simplicity which we admire in the greatest of the ancient poets," and quoted passages which he paralleled with several in the JEneid. Wagstafle tells us he has found " in the library of a school- boy, among other undiscovered valuable authors, one more proper to adorn 432 Quarrels of Authors. repent a crazy life of wit, fancy, and hope, and an easy, indo- lent one, whose genial hours force up friends like hot-house plants, that bloom and flower in the spot where they are raised, but will not endure the change of place and season this wit caught the tone of Swift, and because, as his editor tells us, " he had some friends in the ministry, and thought he could not take a better way to oblige them than by show- ing his dislike to a gentleman who had so much endeavoured to oppose them," he sat down to write a libel with all the best humour imaginable ; for, adds this editor, " he was so far from having any personal pique or enmity against Mr. Steele, that at the time of his writing he did not so much as know him, even by sight." This principle of "having some friends in the ministry," and not " any knowledge " of the character to be attacked, has proved a great source of inven- tion to our political adventurers ; thus Dr. Wagstaffe was fully enabled to send down to us a character where the moral and literary qualities of a genius, to whom this country owes so much as the father of periodical papers, are immolated to his political purpose. This severe character passed through several editions. However the careless Steele might be willing to place the elaborate libel to the account of party writings, if he did not feel disturbed at reproaches and accusations, which are confidently urged, arid at critical animadversions, to which the negligence of his style sometimes laid him too open, his insensibility would have betrayed a depravity in his morals and taste which never entered into his character.* the shelves of Bodley or the Vatican than to be confined to the obscurity of a private study." This little Homer is the chanter of Tom Thumb. He performs his office of " a true commentator," proving the congenial spirit of the poet of Thumb with that of the poet of ^Eneas. Addison got himself ridiculed for that fine natural taste, which felt all the witchery of our ballad-Enniuses, whose beauties, had Virgil lived with Addison, he would have inlaid into his mosaic. The bigotry of classical taste, which is not always accompanied by a natural one, and rests securely on prescribed opinions and traditional excellence, long contemned our vernacular genius, spurning at the minstrelsy of the nation ; Johnson's ridicule of "Percy's Re- liques" had its hour, but the more poetical mind of Scott has brought us back to home feelings, to domestic manners, and eternal nature. * I shall content myself with referring to ' ' The Character of Richard St le, Esq.," in Dr. Wagstaffe's Miscellaneous Works, 1726. Considering that he had no personal knowledge of his victim, one may be well surprised at his entering so deeply into his private history ; but of such a character as Steele, the private history is usually too public a mass of scandal for the select curious. Poor Steele, we are told, was "arrested for the main- tenance of his bastards, and afterwards printed a proposal that the public Political Criticism on Literary Composition. 433 Steele was doomed even to lose the friendship of Addison amid political discords ; but on that occasion Steele showed that his taste for literature could not he injured hy political ani- mosity. It was at the close of Addison's life, and on occa- sion of the Peerage Bill, Steele published " The Plebeian," a cry against enlarging the aristocracy. Addison replied with " The Old Whig ," Steele rejoined without alluding to the person of his opponent. But " The Old Whig " could not restrain his political feelings, and contemptuously described "little Dicky, whose trade it was to write pamphlets." should take care of them ;" got into the House " not to be arrested ;" " his set speeches there, which he designs to get extempore to speak in the House." For his literary character we are told that " Steele was a jay who borrowed a feather from the peacock, another from the bullfinch, and another from the magpye ; so that Dick is made up of borrowed colours ; he borrowed his humour from Estcourt, criticism of Addison, his poetry of Pope, and his politics of Ridpath ; so that his qualifications as a man of genius, like Mr. T s, as a member of Parliament, lie in thirteen parishes." Such are the pillows made up for genius to rest its head on ! Wagstaffe has sometimes delicate humour ; Steele, who often wrote in haste, necessarily wrote incorrectly. Steele had this sentence : " And ALL, as one man, will join in a common indignation against ALL who would per- plex our obedience :" on which our pleasant critic remarks " Whatever contradiction there is, as some suppose, in all joininy against all, our author has good authority for what he says ; and it may be proved, in spite of Euclid or Sir Isaac, that everything consists of two alls, that these alls are capable of being divided and subdivided into as many alls as you please, and so ad infinitum. The following lines may serve for an illustration : 1 Three children sliding on the ice Upon a summer's day ; As it fell out, they all fell in ; The rest they ran away.' " Though this polite author does not directly say there are two alls, yet he implies as much ; for I would ask any reasonable man what can be understood by the rest they ran away, but the other all we have been speaking of ? The world may see that I can exhibit the beauties, as well as quarrel with the faults, of his composition, but I hope he will not value himself on his hasty productions ." Poor Steele, with the best humour, bore these perpetual attacks, not, however, without an occasional groan, just enough to record his feelings. In one of his wild, yet well-meant projects, of the invention of " a Fish-pool, or Vessel for Importing Fish Alive," 1718, he complains of calumnies and impertinent observations on him, and seems to lay some to the account of his knighthood : " While he was pursuing what he believed might conduce to the common good, he gave the syllables Richard Steele to the publick, to be used and treated as they should think fit ; he must go on in the same indtference, and allow the TOWN their usual liberty with his namt, which I find they think they have much more room to sport with than formerly, as it is lengthened with the monosyllable SIB." F F 434 Quarrels of Authors. Steele replied with his usual warmth ; but indignant at the charge of " vassalage," he says, " I will end this paper, by firing every free breast with that noble exhortation of the tragedian Remember, my friends ! the laws, the rights, The generous plan of power deliver' d down From age to age, &c. Thus delicately he detects the anonymous author, and thus energetically commends, while he reproves him! Hooke (a Catholic), after he had written his " Roman History," published " Observations on Vertot, Middleton, &c., on the Roman Senate," in which he particularly treated Dr. Middleton with a disrespect for which the subject gave no occasion : this was attributed to the Doctor's offensive letter from Rome. Spelman, in replying to this concealed motive of the Catholic, reprehends him with equal humour and bitter- ness for his desire of roasting a Protestant parson. Our taste, rather than our passions, is here concerned ; but the moral sense still more so. The malice of faction has long produced this literary calamity ; yet great minds have not always degraded themselves ; not always resisted the impulse of their finer feelings, by hardening them into insensibility, or goading them in the fury of a misplaced revenge. How delightful it is to observe Marvell, the Presbyterian and Republican wit, with that generous temper that instantly dis- covers the alliance of genius, warmly applauding the great work of Butler, which covered his own party with odium and ridicule. " He is one of an excellent wit," says Marvell, " and whoever dislikes the choice of his subject, cannot but com- mend the performance."* Clarendon's profound genius could not expand into the same liberal feelings. He highly commends May for his learning, his wit and language, and for his Supplement to Lucan, which he considered as " one of the best epic poems in the English language ;" but this great spirit sadly winces in the soreness of his feelings when he alludes to May's " History of the Parliament;" then we discover that this late " ingenious per- son " performed his part " so meanly, that he seems to have lost his wit when he left his honesty." Behold the political criticism in literature ! However we may incline to respect the feelings of Clarendon, this will not save his judgment nor * "Rehearsal Transprosed," p. 45. Political Criticism on Literary Composition. 435 his candour. We read May now, as well as Clarendon ; nor is the work of May that of a mau who " had lost his wits," nor is it " meanly performed." Warburton, a keen critic of the writers of that unhappy and that glorious age for both parties, has pronounced this " History " to be " a just com- position, according to the rules of history ; written with much judgment, penetration, manliness, and spirit, and with a can- dour that will greatly increase your esteem, when you under- stand that he wrote by order of his masters the Parliament." Thus have authors and their works endured the violations of party feelings ; a calamity in our national literature which has produced much false and unjust criticism.* The better spirit of the present times will maintain a safer and a more honourable principle, the true objects of LITEHATURE, the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, stand entirely un- connected with POLITICS and RELIGION, let this be the imprescriptible right of an author. In our free country unhappily they have not been separated they run together, and in the ocean of human opinions, the salt and bitterness of these mightier waves have infected the clear waters from the springs of the Muses. I once read of a certain river that ran through the sea without mixing with it, preserving its crys- talline purity and all its sweetness during its course ; so that it tasted the same at the Line as at the Poles. This stream indeed is only to be found in the geography of an old romance ; literature should be this magical stream ! * The late Gilbert Wakefield is an instance where the political and theo- logical opinions of a recluse student tainted his pure literary works. Con- demned as an enraged Jacobin by those who were Unitarians in politics, and rejected because he was a Unitarian in religion by the orthodox, poor Wake- field's literary labours were usually reduced to the value of waste-paper. We smile, but half in sorrow, in reading a letter, where he says, "I medi- tate a beginning, during the winter, of my criticisms on all the ancient Greek and Latin authors, by small piecemeals, on the cheapest possible paper, and at the least possible expense of printing. As I can never do more than barely indemnify myself, I shall print only 250 copies." He half-ruined himself by his splendid edition of Lucretius, which could never obtain even common patronage from the opulent friends of classical litera- ture. Since his death it has been reprinted, and is no doubt now a market- able article for the bookseller ; so that if some authors are not successful for themselves, it is a comfort to think how useful, in a variety of shapes, they are made so to others. Even Gilbert's "contracted scheme of publi- cation" he was compelled to abandon ! Yet the classic erudition of Wake- field was confessed, and is still remembered. No one will doubt that we have lost a valuable addition to our critical stores by this literary persecu- tion, were it only in the present instance ; but examples are too numerous ! F F 2 HOBBES, AND HIS QUARRELS; AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS CHARACTER. WHY HOBBES disguised his sentiments why his philosophy degraded him of the sect of the HOBBJSTS his LEVIATHAN ; its principles adapted to existing circumstances the author's difficulties on its first appearance the system originated in his fears, and was a contrivance to secure the peace of the nation its duplicity and studied ambiguity illustrated by many facts the advocate of the national religion accused of atheism HOBBE'S religion his temper too often tried attacked by opposite par- ties Bishop FELL'S ungenerous conduct makes HOBBES regret that juries do not consider the quarrels of authors of any moment the mysterious panic which accompanied him through life its probable cause he pretends to recant his opinions he is speculatively bold, and practically timorous an extravagant specimen of the anti-social philo- sophy the SELFISH of HOBBES his high sense of his works, in regard to foreigners and posterity his montrous egotism his devotion to his literary pursuits the despotic principle of the LEVIATHAN of an inno- cent tendency the fate of systems of opinions. THE history of the philosopher of Malmesbury exhibits a large picture of literary controversy, where we may observe how a persecuting spirit in the times drives the greatest men to take refuge in the meanest arts of subterfuge. Compelled to disguise their sentiments, they will not, however, sup- press them ; and hence all their ambiguous proceedings, all that ridicule and irony, and even recantation, with which in- genious minds, when forced to their employ, have never failed to try the patience, or the sagacity, of intolerance.* * Shaftesbury has thrown out, on this head, some important truths : " If men are forbid to speak their minds seriously, they will do it ironi- cally. If they find it dangerous to do so, they will then redouble their disguise, involve themselves into mysteriousness, and talk so as hardly to be understood. The persecuting spirit has raised the bantering one. The higher the slavery, the more exquisite the buffoonery." Vol. i. p. 71. The subject of our present inquiry is a very remarkable instance of "in- volving himself into mysteriousness." To this cause we owe the strong raillery of Marvell ; the cloudy " Oracles of Reason" of Blount ; and the formidable, though gross burlesque, of Hickeringill, the rector of All- Hobbes. 437 The character of Hobbes will, however, serve a higher moral design. The force of his intellect, the originality of his views, and the keenest sagacity of observation, place him in the first order of minds ; but he has mortified, and then degraded man into a mere selfish animal. From a cause we shall discover, he never looked on human nature but in terror or in contempt. The inevitable consequence of that mode of thinking, or that system of philosophy, is to make the philo- sopher the abject creature he has himself imagined ; and it is then he libels the species from his own individual experience.* Saints, in Colchester. " Of him (says the editor of his collected works, 1716), the greatest writers of our times trembled at his pen ; and as great a genius as Sir Roger L'Estrange's was, it submitted to his superior way of reasoning" that is, to a most extraordinary burlesque spirit in po- litics and religion. But even he who made others tremble felt the terrors he inflicted ; for he complains that " some who have thought his pen too sharp and smart, those who have been galled, sore men where the skin's off, have long lain to catch for somewhat to accuse me upon such touchy subjects, a man had need have the dexterity to split a hair, to handle them pertinently, usefully, and yet safely and warily." Such men, however, cannot avoid their fate : they will be persecuted, however they succeed in "splitting a hair ;" and it is then they have recourse to the most absurd subterfuges, to which our Hobbes was compelled. Thus also it happened to Woolston, who wrote in a ludicrous way "Blasphemies" against the miracles of Christ ; calling them " tales and rodomontados." He rested his defence on this subterfuge, that "it was meant to place the Christian religion on a better footing," &c. But the Court answered, that "if the author of a treasonable libel should write at the conclusion, God save the Icing I it would not excuse him." * The moral axiom of Solon "KNOW THYSELF" (Nosce teipsum), ap- plied by the ancient sage as a corrective for our own pride and vanity, Hobbes contracts into a narrow principle, when, in his introduction to " The Leviathan," he would infer that, by this self-inspection, ,we are enabled to determine on the thoughts and passions of other men ; and thus he would make the taste, the feelings, the experience of the individual decide for all mankind. This simple error has produced all the dogmas of cynicism ; for the cynic is one whose insulated feelings, being all of the selfish kind, can imagine no other stirrer of even our best affections, and strains even our loftiest virtues into pitiful motives. Two noble authors, men of the most dignified feelings, have protested against this principle. Lord Shaftesbury keenly touches the characters of Hobbes and Rochester : " Sudden courage, says our modern philosopher (Hobbes), is anger. If so, courage, considered as constant, and belonging to a character, must, in his account, be defined constant anger, or anger constantly recurring. All men, says a witty poet (Rochester), would be cowards, if they durst : that the poet and the philosopher both were cowards, may be yielded, perhaps, without dispute ! they may have spoken the best of their knowledge." SHAFTESBORY, vol. i. p. 119. With an heroic spirit, that virtuous statesman, Lord Clarendon, rejects the degrading notion of Hobbes. When he looked into his own breast, he 438 Quarrels of Authors. More generous tempers, men endowed with warmer imagina- tions, awake to sympathies of a higher nature, will indig- nantly reject the system, which has reduced the unlucky system-maker himself to such a pitiable condition. Hobbes was one of those original thinkers who create a new era in the philosophical history of their nation, and per- petuate their name by leaving it to a sect.* found that courage was a real virtue, which had induced him, had it been necessary, to have shed his blood as a patriot. But death, in the judgment of Hobbes, was the most terrible event, and to be avoided by any means. Lord Clarendon draws a parallel between a ' ' man of courage" and one of the disciples of Hobbes, "brought to die together, by a judgment they cannot avoid." "How comes it to pass, that one of these undergoes death, with no other concernment than as if he were going any otheiv journey ; and the other with such confusion and trembling, that he is even without life before he dies ; if it were true that all men fear alike upon the like occasion?'' Survey of the Leviathan, p. 14. * They were distinguished as ffobbists, and the opinions as Jlobbianism. Their chief happened to be born on a Good Friday ; and in the metrical history of his own life he seems to have considered it as a remarkable event. An atom had its weight in the scales by which his mighty egotism weighed itself. He thus marks the day of his birth, innocently enough : " Natus erat noster Servator Homo-Deus annos Mille et quingentos, octo quoque undecies." But the Hobbists declared more openly (as Wood tells us), that "as our Saviour Christ went out of the world on that day to save the men of the world, so another saviour came into the world on that day to save them !" That the sect spread abroad, as well as at home, is told us by Lord Cla- rendon, in the preface to his "Survey of the Leviathan." The qualities of the author, as well as the book, were well adapted for proselytism ; for Clarendon, who was intimately acquainted with him, notices his con- fidence in conversation his never allowing himself to be contradicted bis bold inferences the novelty of his expressions and his probity, and a life free from scandal. ' ' The humour and inclination of the time to all kind of paradoxes," was indulged by a pleasant clear style, an appearance of order and method, hardy paradoxes, and accommodating principles to exist- ing circumstances. Who were the sect composed of? The monstrous court of Charles II. the grossest materialists ! The secret history of that court could scarcely find a Suetonius among us. But our author was frequently in the hands of those who could never have comprehended what they pretended to admire ; this appears by a publication of the times, intituled, " Twelve Ingenious Characters, &c." 1686, where, in that of a town-fop, who, "for genteel breeding, posts to town, by his mother's indulgence, three or four wild companions, half-a-dozen bottles of Burgundy, two leaves of Leviathan,' 1 '' and some few other obvious matters, shortly make this young philosopher nearly lose his moral and physical existence. " He will not confess him- self an Atheist, yet he boasts aloud that he holds his gospel from the Apostle of Malmeitbury, though it is more than probable he never read, at Hobbes. 439 The eloquent and thinking Madame de Stael has asserted that "Hobbes was an Atheist and a Slave." Yet I still think that Hobbes believed, and proved, the necessary exis- tence of a Deity, and that he loved freedom, as every sage desires it. It is now time to offer an apology for one of those great men who are the contemporaries of all ages, and, by fer- vent inquiry, to dissipate that traditional cloud which hangs over one of " those monuments of the mind" which Genius has built with imperishable materials. The author of the far-famed " Leviathan" is considered as a vehement advocate for absolute monarchy. This singular production may, however, be equally adapted for a republic ; and the monstrous principle may be so innocent in its nature, as even to enter into our own constitution, which presumes to be neither.* least understood, ten leaves of that unlucky author." If such were his wretched disciples, Hobbes was indeed "an unlucky author," for their morals and habits were quite opposite to those of their master. EACHARD, in the preface to his Second Dialogue, 1673, exhibits a very Lucianic ar- rangement of his disciples Hobbes' "Pit, Box, and Gallery Friends." The Pit-friends were sturdy practicants who, when they hear that ' ' Ill- nature, Debauchery, and Irreligion were Mathematics and Demonstration, clap and shout, and swear by all that comes from Malmesbury." The Gallery are "a sort of small, soft, little, pretty, fine gentlemen, who having some little wit, some little modesty, some little remain of conscience and country religion, could not hector it as the former, but quickly learnt to chirp and giggle when t'other clapt and shouted." But "the Don- admirers, and.Bo.r-/newdsofMr. Hobbes are men of gravity and reputation, who will scarce simper in favour of the philosopher, but can make shift to nod and nod again." Even amid this wild satire we find a piece of truth in a dark corner ; for the satirist confesses that " his Gallery-friends, who were such resolved practicants in ffobtnanism (by which the satirist means all kinds of licentiousness) would most certainly have been so, had there never been any such man as Mr. Hobbes in the world." Why then place to the account of the philosopher those gross immoralities which he never sanctioned ? The life of Hobbes is without a stain ! He had other friends besides these " Box, Pit, and Gallery" gentry the learned of Europe, and many of the great and good men of his own country. * Hobbes, in defending Thucydides, whom he has so admirably trans- lated, from the charge of some obscurity in his design, observes that "Marcellinus saith he was obscure, on purpose that the common people might not understand him ; and not unlikely, for a wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men), that wise men only should be able to commend him." Thus early in life Hobbes had determined on a principle which produced all his studied ambiguity, involved him in so much controversy, and, in some respects, preserved him in an inglorious security. 440 Quarrels of Authors, As " The Leviathan" produced the numerous controversies of Hobbes, a history of this great moral curiosity enters into our subject. Hobbes, living in times of anarchy, perceived the necessity of re-establishing authority with more than its usual force. But how were the divided opinions of men to melt together, and where in the State was to be placed absolute power ? for a remedy of less force he could not discover for that disordered state of society which he witnessed. Was the sovereign or the people to be invested with that mighty power which was to keep every other quiescent ? a topic which had been discussed for ages, and still must be, as the humours of men incline was, I believe, a matter perfectly indifferent to our philosopher, provided that whatever might be the government, absolute power could somewhere be lodged in it, to force men to act in strict conformity. He discovers his perplexity in the dedi- cation of his work. " In a way beset with those that con- tend on one side for too great liberty, on the other side for too much authority, 'tis hard to pass between the points of both unwounded." It happened that our cynical Hobbes had no respect for his species ; terrified at anarchy, he seems to have lost all fear when he flew to absolute power a sove- reign remedy unworthy of a great spirit, though convenient for a timid one like his own. Hobbes considered men merely as animals of prey, living in a state of perpetual hostility, and his solitary principle of action was self-preservation at any price. He conjured up a political phantom, a favourite and fanciful notion, that haunted him through life. He imagined that the many might be more easily managed by making them up into an artificial One, and calling this wonderful political unity the Commonwealth, or the Civil Power, or the Sove- reign, or by whatever name was found most pleasing ; he per- sonified it by the image of " Leviathan." * * Hobbes explains the image in his Introduction. He does not disguise his opinion that Men may be converted into A utomatons ; and if he were not very ingenious we might lose our patience. He was so delighted with this whimsical fancy of his "artificial man," that he carried it on to government itself, and employed the engraver to impress the monstrous personification on our minds, even clearer than by his reasonings. The curious design forms the frontispiece of " The Leviathan." He borrowed the name from that sea-monster, that mightiest of powers, which Job has told is not to be compared with any on earth. The sea-monster is here, however, changed into a colossal man, entirely made up of little men from Hobbes. 441 At first sight the ideal monster might pass for an innocent conceit; and there appears even consummate wisdom in erecting a colossal power for our common security; but Hobbes assumed that Authority was to be supported to its extreme pitch. Force with him appeared to constitute right, and unconditional submission then became a duty: these were consequences quite natural to one who at his first step de- graded man by comparing him to a watch, and who would not have him go but with the same nicety of motion, wound up by a great key. To be secure, by the system of Hobbes, we must at least lose the glory of our existence as intellectual beings. He would persuade us into the dead quietness of a commonwealth of puppets, while he was consigning into the grasp of his "Leviathan," or sovereign power, the wire that was to com- municate a mockery of vital motion a principle of action without freedom. The system was equally desirable to the Protector Cromwell as to the regal Charles. A conspiracy against mankind could not alarm their governors : it is not therefore surprising that the usurper offered Hobbes the office of Secretary of State ; and that he was afterwards pensioned by the monarch. A philosophical system, moral or political, is often nothing more than a temporary expedient to turn aside the madness of the times by substituting what offers an appearance of relief; nor is it a little influenced by the immediate conve- nience of the philosopher himself; his personal character enters a good deal into the system. The object of Hobbes in all the classes of society, bearing in the right hand the sword, and in the left the crosier. The compartments are full of political allegories. An expression of Lord Clarendon's in the preface to his " Survey of the Levi- athan," shows our philosopher's infatuation to this "idol of the Den," as Lord Bacon might have called the intellectual illusion of the philosopher. Hobbes, when at Paris, showed a proof-sheet or two of his work to Cla- rendon, who, he soon discovered, could not approve of the hardy tenets. " He frequently came to me," says his lordship, "and told me his book (which he would call LEVIATHAN) was then printing in England. He said, that he knew when I read his book I would not like it, and men- tioned some of his conclusions : upon which I asked him, why he would publish such doctrine ; to which, after a discourse, between jttt and earnest, he said, The truth it, I have a mind to go home /" Some philo- sophical systems have, probably, been raised " between jest and earnest ;" yet here was a text-book for the despot, as it is usually accepted, delibe- rately given to the world, for no other purpose than that the philowplwr was desirous of changing his lodgings at Paris for his old apartments in London I 442 Quarrels of Authors. his "Leviathan" was always ambiguous, because it was, in truth, one of these systems of expediency, conveniently adapted to what has been termed of late "existing circumstances." His sole aim was to keep all things in peace, by creating one mightiest power in the State, to suppress instantly all other powers that might rise in insurrection. In his times, the establishment of despotism was the only political restraint he could discover of sufficient force to chain man down, amid the turbulence of society; but this concealed end he is per- petually shifting and disguising ; for the truth is, no man loved slavery less.* * The duplicity of the system is strikingly revealed by Burnet, who tells of Hobbes, that " he put all the law in the will of the prince or the people; for he writ his book at first in favour of absolute monarchy, but turned it afterwards to gratify the republican party. These were his true principles, though he had disguised them for deceiving unwary readers." It is certain Hobbes became a suspected person among the royalists. They were startled at the open extravagance of some of his political paradoxes ; such as his notion of the necessity of extirpating all the Greek and Latin authors, "by reading of which men from their childhood have gotten a habit of licentious controuling the actions of their sovereigns." p. 111. But the doctrines of liberty were not found only among the Greeks and .Romans ; the Hebrews were stern republicans ; and liberty seems to have had a nobler birth in the North among our German ancestors, than per- haps in any other part of the globe. It is certain that the Puritans, who warmed over the Bible more than the classic historians, had their heads full of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea ; the hanging of the five kings of Joshua ; and the fat king of the Moabites, who in his summer- room received a present, and then a dagger, from the left-handed Jewish Jacobin. Hobbes curiously compares " Tl/e tyrannophobia, or fear of being strongly governed," to the hydrophobia. " When a monarchy is once bitten to the quick by those democratical writers, and, by their poison, rnen seem to be converted, into dogs," his remedy is, "a strong monarch," or "the exercise of entire sovereignty," p. 171 ; and that the authority he would establish should be immutable, he hardily asserts that "the ruling power cannot be punished for mal-administration. " Yet in this elaborate system of despotism are interspersed some strong republican axioms, as The safety of the people is the supreme law, The public good to be preferred to that of the individual : and that God made the one for the many, and not the many for the one. The effect the LEVIATHAN produced on the royal party was quite unexpected by the author. His hardy principles were considered as a satire on arbitrary power, and Hobbes himself as a concealed favourer of democracy. This has happened more than once with such vehement advo- cates. Our philosopher must have been thunderstruck at the insinuation, for he had presented the royal exile, as Clarendon in his "Survey" informs us, with a magnificent copy of " The Leviathan," written on vellum ; this beautiful specimen of caligraphy may still be seen, as we learn from the Gen- t/i- man's Magazine for January, 1813, where the curiosity is fully described. The suspicion of Hobbes's principles was so strong, that it produced hi Hobbes, 443 The system of Hobbes could not be limited to politics : he knew that the safety of the people's morals required an Established Religion. The alliance between Church and State had been so violently shaken, that it was necessary to cement them once more. As our philosopher had been terrified in his politics by the view of its contending factions, so, in reli- gion, he experienced the same terror at the hereditary rancours of its multiplied sects. He could devise no other means than to attack the mysteries and dogmas of theologians, those after-inventions and corruptions of Christianity, by which the artifices of their chiefs had so long split them into perpetual sudden dismissal from the presence of Charles II. when at Paris. The king, indeed, said he believed Hobbes intended him no hurt ; and Hobbes said of the king, "that his majesty understood his writings better than his accusers. " However, happy was Hobbes to escape from France, where the officers were in pursuit of him, amid snowy roads and nipping blasts. The lines in his metrical life open a dismal winter scene for an old man on a stumbling horse : " Frigus erat, nix alta, senex ego, ventus acerbus, Vexat equus sternax, et salebrosa via " A curious spectacle ! to observe, under a despotic government, its vehe- ment advocate in flight ! The ambiguity of "The Leviathau" seemed still more striking, whenHobbes came, at length, to place the right of government merely in what he terms "the Seat of Power," a wonderful principle of expediency; for this was equally commodious to the republicans and to the royalists. By this prin- ciple, the republicans maintained the right of Cromwell, since his authority was established, while it absolved the royalists from their burdensome allegiance ; for, according to " The Leviathan," Charles was the English monarch only when in a condition to force obedience ; and, to calm tender consciences, the philosopher further fixed on that precise point of time, " when a subject may obey an unjust conqueror." After the Restoration, it was subtilely urged by the Hobbists, that this very principle had greatly served the royal cause ; for it afforded a plea for the emigrants to return, by compounding for their estates, and joining with those royalists who had remained at home in an open submission to the established government ; and thus they were enabled to concert their measures in common, for rein- stating the old monarchy. Had the Restoration never taken place, Hobbes would have equally insisted on the soundness of his doctrine ; he would have asserted the title of Richard Cromwell to the Protectorate, if Richard had bad the means to support it, as zealously as he afterwards did that of Charles II. to the throne, when the king had firmly re-established it. The philosophy of Hobbes, therefore, is not dangerous in any government ; its sole aim is to preserve it from intestine divisions ; but for this purpose, be was for reducing men to mere machines. With such little respect he treated the species, and with such tenderness the individual ! I will give Hobbes's own justification, after the Restoration of Charles II., when accused by the great mathematician, Dr. Wallis, a republican under Cromwell, of having written his work in defence of Oliver's government* 444 Quarrels of Authors. factions :* he therefore asserted that the religion of the people ought to exist, in strict conformity to the will of the State.f When Hohbes wrote against mysteries, the mere polemics sent forth a cry of his impiety ; the philosopher was branded with Atheism ; one of those artful calumnies, of which, after Hobbes does not deny that " he placed the right of government whereso- ever should be the strength." Most subtilely he argues, how this very principle "was designed in behalf of the faithful subjects of the king," after they had done their utmost to defend his rights and person. The government of Cromwell being established, these found themselves without the protection of a government of their own, and therefore might lawfully promise obedience to their victor for the saving of their lives and fortunes ; and more, they ought even to protect that authority in war by which they were themselves protected in peace. But this plea, which he so ably urged in favour of the royalists, will not, however, justify those who, like Wallis, voluntarily submitted to Cromwell, because they were always the enemies of the king ; so that this submission to Oliver is allowed only to the royalists a most admirable political paradox ! The whole of the argument is managed with infinite dexterity, and is thus unexpectedly turned against his accusers themselves. The principle of "self- preservation" is carried on through the entire system of Hobbes. Considerations upon the Reputa- tion, Loyalty,- //, as with wholesome pills for the sick, which, swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure; but, chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect. Hobbes is often a wit : he was much pleased with this thought, for he had it in his De Give; which, in the English translation, bears the title of " Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society," 1651. There he calls "the wholesome pills," "bitter." He translated the De Give himself ; a circumstance which was not known till the recent appearance of Aubrey's papers. f* Warburton has most acutely distinguished between the intention of Hobbes and that of some of his successors. The bishop does not consider Hobbes as an enemy to religion, not even to the Christian ; and even doubts whether he has attacked it in "The Leviathan." At all events, he has "taken direct contrary measures from those of Bayle, Collins, Tindal, Bolingbroke, and all that school. They maliciously endeavoured to show the Gospel was unreasonable ; Hobbes, as reasonable as his admirable wit could represent it: they contended for the most unbounded toleration, Hobbes for the most rigorous conformity." See the "Alliance between Church and State," book i. c. v. It is curious to observe the noble disciple of Hobbes, Lord Bolingbroke, a strenuous advocate for his political and moral opinions, enraged at what he calls his " High Church notions." Trenchard and Gordon, in their Independent Whij firing his magazine upon the first assault, make his own weapons fight against him. Not contented herewith, they enter the breach, and pursue the rout through his Logics, Physics, Metaphysics, Theology, where they find all in confusion." This invective and irony from this celebrated mathematician, so much out of the path of his habitual studies, might have proved a tremendous blow ; but the genius of Hobbes was invulnerable to mere human opposition, unless accompanied by the supernatural terrors of penal fires or perpetual dungeons. Our hero received the whole discharge of this battering train, and stood invulnerable, while he returned the fire in " Con- siderations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, and Religion of Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury, written by way of Letter to a learned person, Dr. Wallis," 1662. It is an extraordinary production. His lofty indignation retorts on the feeble irony of his antagonist with keen and caustic accusations ; and the green strength of youth was still seen in the old man whose head was covered with snows. From this spirited apology for himself I shall give some passages. Hobbes thus replied to Dr. Wallis, who affected to consider the old man as a fit object for commiseration. " You would make him contemptible, and move Mr. Boyle to pity him. This is a way of railing too much beaten to be thought witty : besides, 'tis no argument of your contempt to spend upon him so many angry lines, as would have fur- nished you with a dozen of sermons. If you had in good earnest despised him, you would have let him alone, as he does Dr. Ward, Mr. Baxter, Pike, and others, that have reviled him as you do. As for his reputation beyond the seas, it fades not yet ; and because, perhaps, you have no means to know it, I will cite you a passage of au epistle written by a learned French- Hobbes's Mathematical War. 471 man to an eminent person in France, in a volume of epistles." Hobbes quotes the passage at length, in which his name appears joined with Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Gassendi. In reply to Wallis' sarcastic suggestion that an idle person should collect together Hobbes's arrogant and supercilious speeches applauding himself, under one title, Robbiw de se, he says " Let your idle person do it ; Mr. Hobbes shall acknowledge them under his hand, and be commended for it, and you scorned. A certain Roman senator having propounded some- thing in the assembly of the people, which they, misliking, made a noise at, boldly bade them hold their peace, and told them he knew better what was good for the commonwealth than all they ; and his words are transmitted to us as an argument of his virtue; so much do truth and vanity alter the complexion of self-praise. You can have very little skill in morality, that cannot see the justice of commending a man's self, as well as of anything else, in his own defence ; and it was want of prudence in you to constrain him to a thing that would so much displease you. " When you make his age a reproach to him, and show no cause that might impair the faculties of his mind, but only age, I admire how you saw not that you reproached all old men in the world as much as him, and warranted all young men, at a certain time which they themselves shall define, to call you fool ! Your dislike of old age you have also otherwise suffi- ciently signified, in venturing so fairly as you have done to escape it. But that is no great matter to one that hath so many marks upon him of much greater reproaches. By Mr. Hobbes's calculation, that derives prudence from experience, and experience from age, you are a very young man ; but, by your own reckoning, you are older already than Methuselah." " During the late trouble, who made both Oliver and the people mad but the preachers of your principles ? But besides the wickedness, see the folly of it. You thought to make them mad, but just to such a degree as should serve your own turn ; that is to say, mad, and yet just as wise as yourselves. Were you not very imprudent to think to govern madness ?" p. 15. " The king was hunted as a partridge in the mountains, and though the hounds have been hanged, yet the hunters were as guilty as they, and deserved no less punishment. 472 Quarrels of Authors. And the decypherers (Wallis had decyphered the royal letters),* and all that blew the horn, are to be reckoned among the hunters. Perhaps you would not have had the prey killed, but rather have kept it tame. And yet who can tell ? I have read of few kings deprived of their power by their own subjects that have lived any long time after it, for reasons that every man is able to conjecture." He closes with a very odd image of the most cynical contempt : " Mr. Hobbes has been always far from provoking any man, though, when he is provoked, you find his pen as sharp as yours. All you have said is error and railing ; that is, stink- ing ivind, such as a jade lets fly when he is too hard girt upon a full belly. I have done. I have considered you now, but will riot again, whatsoever preferment any of your friends shall procure you." These were the pitched battles ; but many skirmishes occa- sionally took place. Hobbes was even driven to a ruse de guerre. When he found his mathematical character in the utmost peril, there appeared a pamphlet, entitled " Lux Mathematica, &e., or, Mathematical Light struck out from the clashings between Dr. John Wallis, Professor of Geometry in the celebrated University of Oxford (celeber- rima Academia), and Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury ; augmented with many and shining rays of the Author, R. R." 1672. Here the victories of Hobbes are trumpeted forth, but the fact is, that R. R. should have been T. H. It was Hobbes's own composition ! R. R. stood for Roseti Repertor, that is, the Finder of the Rosary, one of the titles of Hobbes's mathe- matical discoveries. Wallis asserts that this R. R. may still serve, for it may answer his own book, " Roseti Refutator, or, the Refuter of the Rosary." Poor Hobbes gave up the contest reluctantly ; if, indeed, the controversy may not be said to have lasted all his life. He acknowledges he was writing to no purpose ; and that the medicine was obliged to yield to the disease. Sed nil profeci, magnis authoribus Error Fultus erat, cessit sic Medicina malo. * Found in the king's tent at Naseby, and which were written to the queen on important political subjects, in a cypher of which they only had the key. They were afterwards published in a quarto pamphlet, and did much mischief to the royal cause. ED. Hobbes's Mathematical War. 473 He seems to have gone down to the grave, in spite of all the reasonings of the geometricians on this side of it, with a firm conviction that its superficies had both depth and thick- ness.* Such were the fruits of a great genius, entering into a province out of his own territories ; and, though a most energetic reasouer, so little skilful in these new studies, that he could never know when he was confuted and refuted.f * The strange conclusions some mathematicians have deduced from their principles concerning the real quantity of matter, and the reality of space, have been noticed by Pope, in the Dunciad : " Mad Mathfsis alone was unconfined, Too inad for mere material chains to bind : Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare ; Now running round the circle, finds its square." Dunciad, Book iv. ver. 31. t When all animosities had ceased, after the death of Hobbes, I find Dr. Wallis, in a very temperate letter to Tenison, exposing the errors of Hobbes in mathematical studies ; Wallis acknowledges that philology had never entered into his pursuits, in this be had never designed to oppose his superior genius : but it was Hobbes who had too often turned his ma- thematical into a philological controversy. Wallis has made a just obser- vation on the nature of mathematical truths : "Hobbes's argumentations are destructive in one part of what is said in another. This is more con- vincingly evident, and more unpardonable, in mathematics than in other discourses, which are things capable of cogent demonstration, and so evi- dent, that though a good mathematician may be subject to commit an error, yet one who understands but little of it cannot but see a fault when it is showed him." Wallis was an eminent genius in scientific pursuits. His art of decy- phering letters was carried to amazing perfection ; and among other phe- nomena he discovered was that of teaching a young man, born deaf and dumb, to speak plainly. He humorously observes, in one of his letters : " I am now employed upon another work, as hard almost as to make Mr. Hoboes understand mathematics. It is to teach a person dumb and deaf to speak, and to understand a language." JONSON AND DECKER. BEN JONSON appears to have carried his military spirit into the literary re- public his gross convivialities, with anecdotes of the prevalent taste in that age for drinking-bouts his " Poetaster" a sort of Dunciad, be- sides a personal attack on the frequenters of the theatres, with anecdotes his Apologetical Dialogue, which was not allowed to be repeated cha- racters of DECKER and of MAKSTON DECKER'S Satiromastix, a parody on JONSON'S "Poetaster" BEN exhibited under the character of "Horace Junior" specimens of that literary satire ; its dignified remonstrance, and the honourable applause bestowed on the great bard -some foibles in the literary habits of BEN, alluded to by DECKER JONSON'S noble reply to his detractors and rivals. THIS quarrel is a splendid instance how genius of the first order, lavishing its satirical powers on a number of contem- poraries, may discover, among the crowd, some individual who may return with a right aim the weapon he has himself used, and who will not want for encouragement to attack the common assailant : the greater genius is thus mortified by a victory conceded to the inferior, which he himself had taught the meaner one to obtain over him. JONSON, in. his earliest productions, " Every Man in his Humour," and " Every Man out of his Humour," usurped that dictatorship, in the Literary Republic, which he so sturdily and invariably maintained, though long and hardily disputed. No bard has more courageously foretold that pos- terity would be interested in his labours ; and often with very dignified feelings he casts this declaration into the teeth of his adversaries : but a bitter contempt for his brothers and his contemporaries was not less vehement than his affections for those who crowded under his wing. To his " sons" and his admirers he was warmly attached, and no poet has left be- hind him, in MS., so many testimonies of personal fondness, in the inscriptions and addresses, in the copies of his works which he presented to friends : of these I have seen more than one fervent and impressive. D&TJldCOBD of Hawthornden, who perhaps carelessly and imperfectly minuted down the heads of their literary confer. Jonson and Decker. 475 ence on the chief authors of the age, exposes the severity of criticism which Ben exercised on some spirits as noble as his own. The genius of Jonson was rough, hardy, and invincible, of which the frequent excess degenerated into ferocity ; and by some traditional tales, this ferocity was still inflamed by large potations : for Drummond informs us, " Drink was the element in which he lived."* Old Ben had given, on two * The gross convivialities of the times, from the age of Elizabeth, were remarkable for several circumstances. Hard-drinking was a foreign vice, imported by our military men on their return from the Netherlands : and the practice, of whose prevalence Camden complains, was even brought to a kind of science. They had a dialect peculiar to their orgies. See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 294 (last edition). Jonson's inclinations were too well suited to the prevalent taste, and he gave as largely into it as any of his contemporaries. Tavern-habits were then those of our poets and actors. Ben's Humours, at "the Mermaid." and at a later period, his Leges Convivales at "the Apollo," the club-room of "the Devil," were doubtless one great cause of a small personal un- happiness, of which he complains, and which had a very unlucky effect in rendering a mistress so obdurate, who ' ' through her eyes had stopt her ears." This was, as his own verse tells us, " His mountain-belly and his rocky face." He weighed near twenty stone, according to his own avowal an Ele- phant-Cupid ! One of his " Sons," at the " Devil," seems to think that his Catiline could not fail to be a miracle, by a certain sort of inspiration which Ben used on the occasion. "With strenuous sinewy words that Catiline swells, I reckon it not among men-miracles. How could that poem heat and vigour lack, When each line oft cost BKN a cap of sack ?" R. BARON'S Pocula Castalia, p. 113, 1650. Jonson, in the Bacchic phraseology of the day, was "a Canary-bird." " He would (says Aubrey) many times exceed in drink ; canary was his beloved liquor ; then be would tumble home to bed ; and when he had thoroughly perspired, then to study." Tradition, too, has sent down to us several tavern-tales of " Rare Ben." A good-humoured one has been preserved of the first interview between Bishop Corbet, when a young man, and our great bard. It occurred at a tavern, where Corbet was sitting alone. Ben, who had probably jnst drank up to the pitch of good fellowship, desired the waiter to take to the gentleman "a quart of raw wine ; and tell him," he added, *' I sacrifice my service to him." "Friend," replied Corbet, "I thank him for his love ; but tell him, from me, that he is mistaken ; for sacrifices are always burned." This pleasant allusion to the mulled wine of the time by the young wit could not fail to win the affection of the master-wit himself. Harl. MSS. 6395. Ben is not viewed so advantageously, in an unlucky fit of ebriety re- corded by Oldys, in his MS. notes on Langbaine ; but his authority is not to me of a suspicious nature : he had drawn it from a MS. collection of 476 Quarrels of Authors. occasions, some remarkable proofs of his personal intrepidity. When a soldier, in the face of both armies, he had fought single- handed with his antagonist, had slain him, and carried off his arms as trophies. Another time he killed his man in a duel. Jonson appears to have carried the same military spirit into the Literary Republic. Such a genius would become more tyrannical by success, and naturally provoked opposition, from the proneness of man- kind to mortify usurped greatness, when they can securely do it. The man who hissed the poet's play had no idea that he might himself become one of the dramatic personages. Ben then produced his " Poetaster," which has been called the Dunciad Oldisworth's, who appears to have been a curious collector of the history of his times. He was secretary to that strange character, Philip, Earl of Pembroke. It was the custom of those times to form collections of little traditional stories and other good things ; we have had lately given to us by the Camden Society an amusing one, from the L'Estrange family, and the MS. already quoted is one of them. There could be no bad motive in re- cording a tale, quite innocent in itself, and which is further confirmed by Isaac Walton, who, without alluding to the tale, notices that Jdnson parted from Sir Walter Raleigh and his son "not in cold blood." Mr. Gifford, in a MS. note on this work, does not credit this story, it not being accor- dant with dates. Such stories may not accord with dates or persons, and yet may be founded on some substantial fact. I know of no injury to Ben's poetical character, in showing that he was, like other men, quite in- capable of taking care of himself, when he was sunk in the heavy sleep of drunkenness. It was an age when kings, as our James I. and his majesty of Denmark, were as often laid under the table as their subjects. My motive for preserving the story is the incident respecting carrying men in baskets : it was evidently a custom, which perhaps may have suggested the memorable adventure of Falstaff. It was a convenient mode of conveyance for those who were incapable of taking care of themselves before the in- vention of hackney coaches, which was of later date, in Charles the First's reign. Camden recommended Jonson to Sir Walter Raleigh as a tutor to his son, whose gay humours not brooking the severe studies of Jonson, took ad- vantage of his foible, to degrade him in the eyes of his father, who, it seems, was remarkable for his abstinence from wine : though, if another tale be true, he was no common sinner in "the true Virginia." Young Raleigh contrived to give Ben a surfeit, which threw the poet into a deep slumber ; and then the pupil maliciously procured a buck-basket, and a couple of men, who carried our Ben to Sir Walter, with a message that "their young master had sent home his tutor." There is nothing impro- bable in the story ; for the circumstance of carrying drunken men in bas- kets was a usual practice. In the Harleian MS. quoted above, I find more than one instance ; I will give one. An alderman, carried in a porter's basket, at his own door, is thrown out of it in a qualmish state. The man, to frighten away the passengers, and enable the grave citizen to creep in unobserved, exclaims, that the niaii had the falling sickness/ Jonson and Decker. 477 of those times ; but it is a Dunciad without notes. The per- sonages themselves are now only known by their general resemblance to nature, with the exception of two characters, those of Crispinus and Demetrius.* In " The Poetaster," Ben, with flames too long smothered, burst over the heads of all rivals and detractors. His enemies seem to have been among all classes ; personages recognised * These were Marston and Decker, but as is usual with these sort of caricatures, the originals sometimes mistook their likenesses. They were both town-wits, and cronies, of much the same stamp ; by a careful perusal of their works, the editor of Jonson has decided that Marston was Crispinus. With him Jonson had once lived on the most friendly terms : afterwards the great poet quarrelled with both, or they with him. Dryden, in the preface to his " Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco," in his quarrel with Settle, which has been sufficiently nar- rated by Dr. Johnson, felt, when poised against this miserable rival, who had been merely set up by a party to mortify the superior genius, as Jonson had felt when pitched against Crispinus. It is thus that literary history is so interesting to authors. How often, in recording the fates of others, it reflects their own 1 "I knew indeed (says Dryden) that to write against him was to do him too great an honour ; but I considered JJen Jonson had done it before to Decker, our author's predecessor, whom he chastised in his Poetaster, under the character of Cri-npinus." Langbaine tells us the subject of the " Satiromastix" of Decker, which I am to notice, was "the witty Ben Jonson ;" and with this agree all the notices I have hitherto met with respecting "the Horace Junior" of Decker's Satiro- mastix. Mr. Gilchrist has published two curious pamphlets on Jonson ; and in the last, p. 56, he has shown that Decker was " the poet-ape of Jonson," and that he avenged himself under the character of Crispinus in his " Satiromastix ;" to which may be added, that the Fanning, in the same satirical comedy, is probably his friend Marston. Jonson allowed himself great liberty in personal satire, by which, doubt- less, he rung an alarum to a waspish host ; he lampooned Inirjo Jones, the great machinist and architect. The lampoons are printed in Jonson's works [but not in their entirety. The great architect had sufficient court influence to procure them to be cancelled ; and the character of In-and-in Medley, in " The Tale of a Tub," has come down to us with no other satirical personal traits than a few fantastical expressions] ; and I have in MS. an answer by luigo Jones, in versa, so pitiful that I have not printed it. That he condescended to bring obscure individuals on the stage, appears by his character of Carlo Buffoon, in Every Man out of his Humour. He calls this "a second untruss," and was censured for having drawn it from personal revenge. The Aubrey Papers, recently published, have given us the character of this Carlo Buffoon, " one Charles Chester, a bold impertinent fellow ; and they could never be at quiet for him ; a perpetual talker, and made a noise like a drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him, and seals up his mouth ; f. t., his upper and uether beard, with hard wax." p. 514. Such a character was DO unfitting object for dramatic satire. Mr. Gilchrist's pamphlets de- fended Jonson from the frequent accusations raised against him for the 478 Quarrels of Authors. on the scene as soon as viewed ; poetical, military, legal, and histrionic. It raised a host in arms. Jonson wrote an apolo- getical epilogue, breathing a firm spirit, worthy of himself; but its dignity was too haught} r to be endured lay contempo- raries, whom genius must soothe by equality. This apologetical dialogue was never allowed to be repeated ; now we may do it with pleasure. Writings,likepictures,require a particular light and distance to be correctly judged and inspected, without any personal inconvenience. One of the dramatic personages in this epilogue inquires : I never saw the play breed all this tumult. What was there in it could so deeply offend, And stir so many hornets ? The author replies : I never writ that piece More innocent, or empty of offence ; Some salt it had, but neither tooth nor gall. Why, they say you tax'd The law and lawyers, captains, and the players, By their particular names. It is not so : I used no names. My books have still been taught To spare the persons, and to speak the vices. And he proceeds to tell us, that to obviate this accusation, he had placed his scenes in the age of Augustus. To show that Virgil, Horace, and the rest Of those great master-spirits, did not want Detractors then, or practisers against them : And by this line, although no parallel, I hoped at last they would sit down and blush. But instead of their " sitting down and blushing," we find That they fly buzzing round about my nostrils ; And, like so many screaming grasshoppers Held by the wings, fill every ear with noise. Names were certainly not necessary to portraits, where every day the originals were standing by their side. This freedom of his muse, in such portraits after the life. Yet even our poet himself does not deny their truth, while he excuses himself. In the dedi- cation of "The Fox," to the two Universities, he boldly asks, "Where have I been particular ? Where personal ? Except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, buffoon, creatures (for their insoleucies) worthy to be taxed." The mere list he here furnishes us with would serve to crowd one of the " two- penny audiences" in the small theatres of that day. Jonson and Decker. 479 is the studied pleading of a poet, who knows he is concealing the truth. There is a passage in the play itself where Jonson gives the true cause of "the tumult" raised against him. Picturing himself under the character of his favourite Horace, he makes the enemies of Horace thus describe him, still, however, pre- serving the high tone of poetical superiority. " Alas, sir, Horace is a mere sponge. Nothing but humours and observations he goes up and down sucking from every society, and when he comes home squeezes himself dry again. He will pen all he knows. He will sooner lose his best friend than his least jest. What he once drops upon paper against a man, lives eternally to upbraid him." Such is the true picture of a town-wit's life ! The age of Augustus was much less present to Jonson than his own ; and Ovid, Tibullus, and Horace were not the personages he cared so much about, as " that society in which," it was said, " he went up and down sucking in and squeezing himself dry :" the formal lawyers, who were cold to his genius ; the sharking captains, who would not draw to save their own swords, and would cheat "their friend, or their friend's friend," while they would bully down Ben's genius ; and the little sycophant histrionic, " the twopenny* tear-mouth, copper-laced scoun- drel, stiff-toe, who used to travel with pumps full of gravel after a blind jade and a hamper, and stalk upon boards and barrel-heads to an old crackt trumpet ;" and who all now made a party with some rival of Jonson. All these personages will account for " the tumult " which excites the innocent astonishment of our author. These only resisted him by " filling every ear with noise." But one of the " screaming grasshoppers held by the wings," boldly turned on the holder with a scorpion's bite ; and Decker, who had been lashed in " The Poetaster," produced his "Satiromas- tix, or the un trussing of the humorous Poet." Decker was a subordinate author, indeed ; but, what must have been very galling to Jonson, who was the aggressor, indignation proved such an inspirer, that Decker seemed to have caught some * portion of Jonson' s own genius, who had the art of' making even Decker popular ; while he discovered that his own laurel- wreath had been dexterously changed by the " Satiromastix" into a garland of " stinging nettles." * Alluding, no doubt, to the price of seats at some of the minor theatres. 480 Quarrels of Authors. In "The Poetaster," Crispinus is the picture of one of those impertinent fellows who resolve to become poets, having an equal aptitude to become anything that is in fashionable request. When Hermogenes, the finest singer in Rome, refused to sing, Crispinus gladly seizes the occasion, and whispers the lady near him " Entreat the ladies to entreat me to sing, I beseech you." This character is marked by a ludicrous peculiarity which, turning on an individual charac- teristic, must have assisted the audience in the true applica- tion. Probably Decker had some remarkable head of hair,* and that his locks hung not like " the curls of Hyperion ;" for the jeweller's wife admiring among the company the per- sons of Ovid, Tibullus, &c., Crispinus acquaints her that they were poets, and, since she admires them, promises to become a poet himself. The simple lady further inquires, " if, when he is a poet, his looks will change ? and particularly if his hair will change, and be like those gentlemen's?" "A man," observes Crispinus, " may be a poet, and yet not change his hair." " Well!" exclaims the simple jeweller's wife, "we shall see your cunning ; yet if you can change your hair, I pray do it." In two elaborate scenes, poor Decker stands for a full-length. Resolved to be a poet, he haunts the company of Horace : he meets him in the street, and discovers all the variety of his nothingness : he is a student, a stoic, an architect : everything by turns, "and nothing long." Horace impatiently attempts to escape from him, but Crispinus foils him at all points. This affectionate admirer is even willing to go over the world with him. He proposes an ingenious project, if Horace will introduce him to Maecenas. Crispinus oft'ers to become " his assistant," assuring him that " he would be content with the next place, not envying thy reputation with thy patron ;" and he thinks that Horace and himself " would soon lift out of favour Virgil, Varius, and the best of them, and enjoy them wholly to ourselves." The restlessness of Horace to extricate himself from this " Hydra of Discourse," the passing friends whom he calls on to assist him, and the glue-like pertinacity of Crispinus, are richly coloured. A ludicrous and exquisitely satirical scene occurs at the trial * It was the fashion with the poets connected with the theatre to wear longhair. Nashe censures Greene "for his fond (foolish) disguising of a Master of Arts (which was Greene's degree) with ruffianly hair." ED. Jonson and Decker. 481 of Orifpinus and his colleagues. Jonson has here introduced an invention, which a more recent satirist so happily applied to our modern Lexiphanes, Dr. Johnson, for his immeasurable polysyllables. Horace is allowed by Augustus to make Crispinus swallow a certain pill ; the light vomit discharges a great quantity of hard matter, to clear His brain and stomach of their tumorous heats. These consist of certain affectations in style, and adultera- tion of words, which offended the Horatian taste : " the basin " is called quickly for and Crispinus gets rid easily of some, but others were of more difficult passage : ' Magnificate !' that came tip somewhat hard ! Crixpinus. ' barmy froth ' Augustus. What's that ? Crispinus. ' Inflate ! Turgidous ! and Ventositous' Horace. ' Barmy froth, inflate, turgidous, and ventosity are come up. Fibullus. terrible windy words ! Gallus. A sign of a windy brain. But all was not yet over : " Prorumpt" made a terrible rumbling, as if his spirit was to have gone with it ; and there were others which required all the kind assistance of the Horatian " light vomit." This satirical scene closes with some literary admonitions from the grave Virgil, who details to Crispinus the wholesome diet to be observed after his sur- feits, which have filled His blood and brain thus full of crudities. Virgil's counsels to the vicious neologist, who debases the purity of English diction by affecting new words or phrases, may too frequently be applied. You must not hunt for wild outlandish terms To stuff out a peculiar dialect ; But let your matter run before your words. And if at any time you chance to meet Some Gallo-Belgick phrase, you shall not straight Rack your poor verse to give it entertainment, But let it pass ; and do not think yourself Much damnified, if you do leave it out When not the sense could well receive it. Virgil adds something which breathes all the haughty spirit of Ben : he commands Crispinus : I i 482 Quarrels of Authors. Henceforth, learn To bear yourself more humbly, nor to swell Or breathe your insolent and idle spite On him whose laughter can your worst affright : and dismisses him To some dark place, removed from company ; He will talk idly else after his physic. " The Satiromastix." may be considered as a parody on " The Poetaster." Jonson, with classical taste, had raised his scene in the court of Augustus : Decker, with great unhap- piness, places it in that of William Kufus. The interest of the piece arises from the dexterity with which Decker has accommodated those very characters which Jonson has sati- rised in his "Poetaster." This gratified those who came every day to the theatre, delighted to take this mimetic re- venge on the arch bard. In Decker's prefatory address " To the World," he observes, " Horace haled his Poetasters to the bar ;* the Poetasters untrussed Horace : Horace made himself believe that his Burgonian witf might desperately challenge all comers, and that none durst take up the foils against him." But Decker is the Earl Rivers ! He had been blamed for the personal attacks on Jonson ; for " whipping his fortunes and condition of life ; where the more noble reprehension had been of his mind's deformity :" but for this he retorts on Ben. Some censured Decker for barrenness of invention, in bringing on those characters in his own play whom Jonson had stig- matised ; but " it was not improper," he says, " to set the same dog upon Horace, whom Horace had set to worry others." Decker warmly concludes with defying the Jon- sonians. " Let that mad dog Detraction bite till his teeth be worn to the stumps ; Envy, feed thy snakes so fat with poison till they burst ; World, let all thy adders shoot out their Hydra- headed forked stings ! I thank thee, thou true Venusian Horace, for these good words thou givest me. Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo." The whole address is spirited. Decker was a very popular * Alluding to the trial of the Poetasters, which takes place before Augustus and his poetical jury of Virgil, Ovid, Tibullus, &c., in Ben's play. t Decker alludes here to the bastard of Burgundy, who considered him- self unmatchable, till he was overthrown in Smithfield by Woodville, Earl .Rivers. Jonson and Decker. 483 writer, whose numerous tracts exhibit to posterity a more detailed narrative of the manners of the town in the Eliza- bethan age than is elsewhere to be found. In Decker's Satiromastix, Horace junior is first exhibited in his study, rehearsing to himself an ode : suddenly the Pin- daric rapture is interrupted by the want of a rhyme ; this is satirically applied to an unlucky line of Ben's own. One of his " sons," Asinius Bubo, who is blindly worshipping his great idol, or " his Ningle," as he calls him, amid his admi- ration of Horace, perpetually breaks out into digressive ac- counts of what sort of a man his friends take him to be. For one, Horace in wrath prepares an epigram : and for Cris- pinus and Fannius, brother bards, who threaten " they'll bring your life and death on the stage, as a bricklayer in a play," he says, "I can bring a prepared troop of gallants, who, for my sake, shall distaste every unsalted line in their fly-blown comedies." "Ay," replies Asinius, "and all men of my rank!" Crispinus, Horace calls "a light voluptuous reveller," and Fannius " the slightest cobweb-lawn piece of a poet." Both enter, and Horace receives them with all friendship. The scene is here conducted not without skill. Horace complains that When I dip my pen In distill'd roses, and do strive to drain Out of mine ink all gall Mine enemies, with sharp and searching eyes, Look through and through me. And when my lines are measured out as straight As even parallels, 'tis strange, that still, Still some imagine that they're drawn awry. The error is not mine, but in their eye, That cannot take proportions. To the querulous satirist, Crispinus replies with dignified gravity Horace ! to stand within the shot of galling tongues Proves not your guilt ; for, could we write on paper Made of these turning leaves of heaven, the clouds, Or speak with angels' tongues, yet wise men know That some would shake the head, though saints should sing ; Some snakes must hiss, because they're born with stings. Be not you grieved If that which you mould fair, upright, and smooth, Be screw'd awry, made crooked, lame, and vile, By racking comments. n2 484 Quarrels of Authors. So to be bit it rankles not, for Innocence May with a feather brush off the foul wrong. But when your dastard wit will strike at men In corners, and in riddles fold the rices Of your best friends, you must not take to heart If they take off all gilding from their pills, And only offer you the bitter core. At this the galled Horace winces. Crispinus continues, that it is in vain Horace swears, that He puts on The office of an executioner, Only to strike off the swoln head of sin, Where'er you find it standing. Say you swear, And make damnation, parcel of your oath, That when your lashing jests make all men bleed, Yet you whip none court, city, country, friends, Foes, all must smart alike. Fannius, too, joins, and shows Ben the absurd oaths he takes, when he swears to all parties, that he does not mean them. How, then, of five hundred and four, five hundred Should all point with their fingers in one instant, At one and the same man ? Horace is awkwardly placed between these two friendly remonstrants, to whom he promises perpetual love. Captain Tucca, a dramatic personage in Jouson's Poetaster, and a copy of his own Bobadil, whose original the poet had found at " Powles," the fashionable lounge of that day, is here continued with the same spirit ; and as that character permitted from the extravagance of its ribaldry, it is now made the vehicle for those more personal retorts, exhibiting the secret history of Ben, which perhaps twitted the great bard more than the keenest wit, or the most solemn admoni- tion which Decker could ever attain. Jonson had cruelly touched on Decker being out at elbows, and made himself too merry with the histrionic tribe : he, who was himself a poet, and had been a Thespian ! The blustering captain thus attacks the great wit : " Do'st stare, my Saracen's head at Newgate ? I'll march through thy Dunkirk guts, for shoot- ing jests at me." He insists that as Horace, " that sly knave, whose shoulders were once seen lapp'd in a player's old cast cloak," and who had reflected on Crispinus' s satin doublet being ravelled out ; that he should wear one of Crispinus 's Jonson and Decker. 485 "old cast sattin suits," and that Fannius should write a couple of scenes for his own " strong garlic comedies," and Horace should swear that they were his own he would easily bear " the guilt of conscience." " Thy Muse is but a hagler, and wears clothes upon best be trust (a humorous Deckerian phrase) thou'rt great in somebody's books for this !" Did it become Jonson to gibe at the histrionic tribe, who is himself accused of "treading the stage, as if he were treading mortar."* He once put up " a supplication to be a poor journeyman player, and hadst been still so, but that thou couldst not set a good face upon't. Thou hast forget how thou ambled'st in leather-pilch, by a play-waggon in the highway ; and took'st mad Jeronimo's part, to get service among the mimics," &c. Ben's person was, indeed, not gracious in the playfulness of love or fancy. A female, here, thus delineates Ben : " That same Horace has the most ungodly face, by my fan ; it looks for all the world like a rotten russet-apple, when 'tis bruised. It's better than a spoonful of cinnamon-water next my heart, for me to hear him speak ; he sounds it so i' th' nose, and talks and rants like the poor fellows under Lud- gate to see his face make faces, when he reads his songs and sonnets." Again, we have Ben's face compared with that of his favourite, Horace's " You staring Leviathan ! look on the sweet visage of Horace ; look, parboil'd face, look he has not his face punchtfull of eyelet-holes, like the cover of a warm- ing-pan." Joseph Warton has oddly remarked that most of our poets were handsome men. Jonson, however, was not poetical on that score ; though his bust is said to resemble Menander's. Such are some of the personalities with which Decker recriminated. Horace is thrown into many ludicrous situations. He is told that " admonition is good meat." Various persons bring forward their accusations ; and Horace replies that they envy him, Because I hold more worthy company. The greatness of Ben's genius is by no means denied by * Horace acknowledges he played Zulziman at Paris-garden. " Sir Vaughan : Then, master Horace, you played the part of an honest man ' Tucca exclaims : " Death of Hercules ! he could never play that part well in's life !" 486 (Quarrels of Authors. his rivals ; and Decker makes Fannius reply, with noble feel- ings, and in an elevated strain of poetry: Good Horace, no ! my cheeks do blush for thine, As often as thou speakst so ; where one true And nobly virtuous spirit, for thy best part Loves thee, I wish one, ten ; even from my heart ! I make account, I put up as deep share In any good man's love, which thy worth earns, As thou thyself ; we envy not to see Thy friends with bays to crown thy poesy. No, here the gall lies ; We, that know what stuff Thy very heart is made of, know the stalk On which thy learning grows, and can give life To thy, once dying, baseness ; yet must we Dance anticke on yonr paper . But were thy warp'd soul put in a new mould, I'd wear thee as a jewel set in gold. To which one adds, that "jewels, master Horace, must be hanged, you know." This " Whip of Men," with Asinius his admirer, are brought to court, transformed into satyrs, and bound together : " not lawrefied, but nettle-fied ;" crowned with a wreath of nettles. With stinging-nettles crown his stinging wit. Horace is called on to swear, after Asinius had sworn to give up his " Ningle." " Now, master Horace, you must be a more horrible swearer ; for your oath must be, like your wits, of many colours ; and like a broker's book, of many parcels." Horace offers to swear till his hairs stand up on end, to be rid of this sting. " Oh, this sting !" alluding to the nettles. " 'Tis riot your sting of conscience, is it ?" asks one. In the inventory of his oaths, there is poignant satire, with strong humour ; and it probably exhibits some foibles in the literary habits of our bard. He swears " Not to hang himself, even if he thought any man could write plays as well as himself; not to bombast out a new play with the old linings of jests stolen from the Temple's Bevels ; not to sit in a gallery, when your comedies have entered their actions, and there make vile and bad faces at every line, to make men have an eye to you, and to make players afraid ; not to venture on the stage, when your play is ended, and exchange courtesies and compliments with gal- lants, to make all the house rise and cry ' That's Horace Jonson and Decker. 487 that's he that pens and purges humours.' When you hid all your friends to the marriage of a poor couple, that is to say, your Wits and Necessities alias, a poet's Whitsun-ale you shall swear that, within three days after, you shall not abroad, in bookbinders' shops, brag that your viceroys, or tributary- kings, have done homage to you, or paid quarterage. More- over, when a knight gives you his passport to travel in and out to his company, and gives you money for God's sake you will swear not to make scald and wry-mouthed jests upon his knighthood. When your plays are misliked at court, you shall not cry Mew ! like a puss-cat, and say, you are glad you write out of the courtier's element ; and in brief, when you sup in taverns, amongst your betters, you shall swear not to dip your manners in too much sauce ; nor, at table, to fling epigrams or play-speeches about you." The king observes, that He whose pen Draws both corrupt and clear blood from all men Careless what vein he pricks ; let him not rave When his own sides are struck ; blows, blows do crave. Such were the bitter apples which Jonson, still in his youth, plucked from the tree of his broad satire, that branched over all ranks in society. That even his intrepidity and hardiness felt the incessant attacks he had raised about him, appears from the close of theApologetical Epilogueto "The Poetaster;" where, though he replies with all the consciousness of genius, and all its haughtiness, he closes with a determination to give over the composition of comedies ! This, however, like all the vows of a poet, was soon broken ; and his masterpieces were subsequently produced. Friend. Will you not answer then the libels ? A uthor. No. Friend . Nor the Untrussers ? Author, Neither. Friend. You are undone, then. Author. With whom? Friend. The world. Author. The bawd! Friend. It will be taken to be stupidity or tameness in you. Author. But they that have incensed me, can in soul Acquit me of that guilt. They know I dare To spurn or baffle them ; or squirt their eyes With ink or urine : or I could do worse, Arm'd with Archilochus' fury, write iambicks, Would make the desperate lashers hang themselves. 488 Quarrels of Authors. His Friend tells him that he is accused that "all his writing is mere railing;" which Jonson nobly compares to " the salt in the old corned}-- ;" that they say, that he is slow, and " scarce brings forth a play a year." Author. "Tis true, I would they could not say that I did that. He is angry that their Base and beggarly conceits Should cany it, by the multitude of voices, Against the most abstracted work, opposed To the stufft nostrils of the drunken rout. And then exclaims with admirable enthusiasm this would make a learn'd and liberal soul To rive bis stained quill up to the back, And damn his long-watch'd labours to the fire ; Things, that were born, when none but the still night, And the dumb candle, saw his pinching throes. And again, alluding to these mimics This 'tis that strikes me silent, seals my lips, And apts me rather to sleep out my time, Than I would waste it in contemned strifes With these vile Ibides, these unclean birds, That make their mouths their clysters, and still purge From their hot entrails.* But I leave the monsters To their own fate. And since the Comic Muse Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try If Tragedy have a more kind aspect. Leave me ! There's something come into my thought That must and shall be sung, high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof. Friend. I reverence these raptures, and obey them. * Among those arts of imitation which man has derived from the prac- tice of animals, naturalists assure us that he owes the use of clysters to the Egyptian Ibis. There are some who pretend this medicinal invention comes from the stork. The French are more like Ibises than we are : Us e donnent des lavements eux-mlmes. But as it is rather uncertain what the Egyptian Ibis is ; whether, as translated in Leviticus xi. 17, the cor- morant^ or a species of stork, or only "a great owl," as we find in Calmet ; it would be safest to attribute the invention to the unknown bird. I recollect, in Wickliffe's version of the Pentateuch, which I once saw in MS. in the possession of my valued friend Mr. Douce, that that venerable translator interpolates a little, to tell us that the Ibis " giveth to herself a purge." Jonson and Decker. 489 Such was the noble strain in which Jonson replied to his detractors in the town and to his rivals about him. Yet this poem, composed with all the dignity and force of the bard, was not suffered to be repeated. It was stopped by authority. But Jonson, in preserving it in his works, sends it " TO POSTEEITY, that it may make a difference between their manners that provoked me then, and mine that neglected them ever." CAMDEN AND BROOKE. LITERARY, like political history, is interested in the cause of an obscure individual, when deprived of his just rights character of CAMDEN BROOKE'S "Discovery of Errors" in the "Britannia" his work dis- turbed in the printing afterwards enlarged, but never suffered to be published whether BROOKE'S motive was personal rancour ! the per- secuted author becomes vindictive his keen reply to CAMDEN CAM- BEN'S beautiful picture of calumny BROOKE furnishes a humorous com- panion-piece CAMDEN'S want of magnanimity and justice when great authors are allowed to suppress the works of their adversary, the public receives the injury and the insult. IN the literary as well as the political commonwealth, the cause of an obscure individual violently deprived of his just rights is a common one. We protest against the power of genius itself, when it strangles rather than wrestles with its adversary, or combats in mail against a naked man. The general interests of literature are involved by the illegitimate suppression of a work, of which the purpose is to correct another, whatever may be the invective which accompanies the correction : nor are we always to assign to malignant motives even this spirit of invective, which, though it betrays a contracted genius, may also show the earnestness of an honest one. The quarrel between CAMDEN, the great author of the " Britannia," and BROOKE, the " York Herald," may illus- trate these principles. It has hitherto been told to the shame of the inferior genius ; but the history of Brooke was im- perfectly known to his contemporaries. Crushed by oppres- sion, his tale was marred in the telling. A century sometimes passes away before the world can discover the truth even of a private history. Brooke is aspersed as a man of the meanest talents, insen- sible to the genius of Camden, rankling with envy at his fame, and correcting the "Britannia" out of mere spite. When the history of Brooke is known, and his labours fairly estimated, we shall blame him much less than he has been blamed ; and censure Camden, who has escaped all cen. Camden and Brooke. 491 sure, and whose conduct, in the present instance, was destitute of magnanimity and justice. The character of the author of " Britannia " is great, and this error of his feelings, now first laid to his charge, may be attributed as much to the weakness of the age as to his own extreme timidity, and perhaps to a little pride. Conscious as was Camden of enlarged views, we can easily pardon him for the contempt he felt, when he compared them with the subordinate ones of his cynical adversary. Camden possessed one of those strongly directed minds which early in life plan some vast labour, while their imagi- nation and their industry feed on it for many successive years ; and they shed the flower and sweetness of their lives in the preparation of a work which at its maturity excites the gratitude of their nation. His passion for our national antiquities discovered itself even in his school-days, grew up with him at the University ; and, when afterwards engaged in his public duties as master at Westminster school, he there composed his " Britannia," " at spare hours, and on festival days." To the perpetual care of his work, he voluntarily sacrificed all other views in life, and even drew himself away from domestic pleasures ; for he refused marriage and prefer- ments, which might interrupt his beloved studies ! The work at length produced, received all the admiration due to so great an enterprise ; and even foreigners, as the work was composed in the universal language of learning, could sympathise with Britons, when they contemplated the stupendous labour. Camden was honoured by the titles (for the very names of illustrious genius become such), of the Varro, the Strabo, and the Pausanias of Britain. While all Europe admired the "Britannia," a cynical genius, whose mind seemed bounded by his confined studies, detected one error amidst the noble views the mighty volume embraced ; the single one perhaps he could perceive, and for which he stood indebted to his office as " York Herald." Camden, in an appendage to the end of each county, had committed numerous genealogical errors, which he afterwards affected, in his defence, to consider as trivial matters in so great a history, and treats his adversary with all the con- tempt and bitterness he could inflict on him ; but Ralph Brooke entertained very high notions of the importance of heraldical studies, and conceived that the " Schoolmaster" Camdeu, as he considered him, had encroached on the rights 492 Quarrels of Authors. and honours of his College of Heralds. When particular oh- jects engage our studies, we are apt to raise them in the scale of excellence to a degree disproportioned to their real value ; and, are thus liable to incur ridicule. But it should be con- sidered that many useful students are not philosophers, and the pursuits of their lives are never ridiculous to them. It is not the interest of the public to degrade this class too low. Every species of study contributes to the perfection of human knowledge, by that universal bond which connects them all in a philosophical mind. Brooke prepared " A Discovery of Certain Errors in the Much-commended Britannia." When we consider Brooke's character, as headstrong with heraldry as Don Quixote's with romances of chivalry, we need not attribute his motives (as Camden himself, with the partial feelings of an author, does, and subsequent writers echo) to his envy at Camden' s pro- motion to be Clarencieux King of Arms ; for it appears that Brooke began his work before this promotion. The indecent excesses of his pen, with the malicious charges of plagiarism he brings against Camden for the use he made of LeWnd's collections, only show the insensibility of the mere heraldist to the nobler genius of the historian. Yet Brooke had no ordinary talents : his work is still valuable for his own pecu- liar researches ; but his naive shrewdness, his pointed preci- sion, the bitter invective, and the caustic humour of his cynical pen, give an air of originality, if not of genius, which no one has dared to notice. Brooke's first work against Camden was violently disturbed in its progress, and hurried, in a mutilated state, into the world, without licence or a publisher's name. Thus impeded, and finally crushed, the howl of persecution followed his name ; and subsequent writers servilely traced his character from their partial pre- decessors. But Brooke, though denied the fair freedom of the press, and a victim to the powerful connexions of Camden, calmly pursued his silent labour with great magnanimity. He wrote his " Second Discovery of Errors," an enlargement of the first. This he carefully finished for the press, but could never get published. The secret history of the controversy may be found there.* * This work was not given to the public till 1724, a small quarto, with a fine portrait of Brooke. More than a century had elapsed since its forcible suppression. Anstis printed it from the fair MS. which Brooke Camden and Brooke. 493 Brooke had been loudly accused of indulging a personal rancour against Camden, and the motive of his work was attributed to envy of his great reputation ; a charge con- stantly repeated. Yet this does not appear, for when Brooke first began his " Discovery of Errors," he did not design its publication ; for he liberally offered Camden his Observations and Collections. They were fastidiously, perhaps haughtily, rejected ; on this pernicious and false principle, that to correct his errors in genealogy might discredit the whole work. On which absurdity Brooke shrewdly remarks " As if healing the sores would have maimed the body." He speaks with more humility on this occasion than an insulted, yet a skilful writer, was likely to do, who had his labours considered, as he says, " worthy neither of thanks nor acceptance." " The rat is not so contemptible but he may help the lion, at a pinch, out of those nets wherein his strength is ham- pered ; and the words of an inferior may often carry matter in them to admonish his superior of some important con- sideration ; and surely, of what account soever I might have seemed to this learned man, yet, in respect to my profession and courteous offer, (I being an officer-of-arms, and he then but a schoolmaster), might well have vouchsafed the perusal of my notes." When he published, our herald stated the reasons of writing against Camden with good-humour, and rallies him on his " incongruity in his principles of heraldry for which I challenge him ! for depriving some nobles of issue to succeed them, who had issue, of whom are descended many worthy families : denying barons and earls that were, and making barons and earls of others that were not ; mistaking the son for the father, and the father for the son ; affirming legitimate children to be illegitimate, and illegitimate to be legitimate ; and framing incestuous and unnatural marriages, making the father to marry the son's wife, and the son his own mother." He treats Camden with the respect due to his genius, while he judiciously distinguishes where the greatest ought to know when to yield. " The most abstruse arts I profess not, but yield the palm and victory to mine adversary, that great learned Mr. Camden, had left behind him. The author's paternal affection seemed fondly to imagine its child might be worthy of posterity, though calumniated by its contemporaries. 494 Quarrels of Authors. with whom, yet, a long experimented navigator may contend about his chart and compass, about havens, creeks, and sounds ; so I, an ancient herald, a little dispute, without im- putation of audacity, concerning the honour of arms, and the truth of honourable descents." Brooke had seen, as he observes, in four editions of the " Britannia," a continued race of errors, in false descents, &c., and he continues, with a witty allusion : " Perceiving that even the brains of many learned men beyond the seas had misconceived and miscarried in the travail and birth of their relations, being gotten, as it were, with child (as Diomedes's mares) by the blasts of his erro- neous puffs ; I could not but a little question the original father of their absurdities, being so far blown, with the trumpet of his learning and fame, into foreign lands." He proceeds with instances of several great authors on the Continent having been misled by the statements of Camden. Thus largely have I quoted from Brooke, to show, that at first he never appears to have been influenced by the mean envy, or the personal rancour, of which he is constantly accused. As he proceeded in his work, which occupied him several years, his reproaches are whetted with a keener edge, and his accusations are less generous. But to what are we to attribute this ? To the contempt and persecution Brooke so long endured from Camden : these acted on his vexed and degraded spirit, till it burst into the excesses of a man heated with injured feelings. When Camden took his station in the Herald's College with Brooke, whose offers of his notes he had refused to accept, they soon found what it was for two authors to live under the same roof, who were impatient to write against each other. The cynical York, at first, would twit the new king-of-arms, perpetually affirming that " his predecessor was a more able herald than any who lived in this age :" a truth, indeed, acknowledged by Dugdale. On this occasion, once the king-of-arms gave malicious York "the lie!" reminding the crabbed herald of " his own learning ; who, as a scholar, was famous through all the provinces of Christendom." " So that (adds Brooke) now I learnt, that before him, when we speak in commendation of any other, to say, I must always except Plato." Camden would allow of no private communi- cation between them ; and in Sermonibus Convivalibtis, in his table-talk, " the heat and height of his spirit " often scorched Camden and Brooke. 495 the contemned Yorkist, whose rejected " Discovery of Errors" had no doubt been too frequently enlarged, after such rough convivialities. Brooke now resolved to print ; but, in printing the work, the press was disturbed, and his house was entered by " this learned man, his friends, and the stationers." The latter were alarmed for the sale of the " Britannia," which might have been injured by this rude attack. The work was therefore printed in an unfinished state : part was intercepted; and the author stopped, by authority, from proceeding any further. Some imperfect copies got abroad. The treatment the exasperated Brooke now incurred was more provoking than Camden's refusal of his notes, and the haughtiness of his "Sermonibus Convivalibus." The imper- fect work was, however, laid before the public, so that Camden could not refuse to notice its grievous charges. He composed an angry reply in Latin, addressed ad Lectoremt and never mentioning Brooke by name, contemptuously alludes to him only by a Quidam and Iste (a certain person, and He !) " He considers me (cries the mortified Brooke, in his second sup- pressed work) as an Individuum vagum, and makes me but a Quidam in his pamphlet, standing before him as a school-boy, while he whips me. Why does he reply in Latin to an English accusation ? He would disguise himself in his school- rhetoric; wherein, like the cuttle-fish, being stricken, he thinks to hide and shift himself away in the ink of his rhetoric. I will clear the waters again." He fastens on Camden's former occupation, virulently accusing him of the manners of a pedagogue : " A man may perceive an immoderate and eager desire of vainglory grow- ing in hand, ever since he used to teach and correct children for these things, according to the opinion of some, in mores et naturam abeunt" He complains of "the school-hyper- boles" which Camden exhausts on him, among which BroDke is compared to " the strumpet Leontion," who wrote against "the divine Theophrastus." To this Brooke keenly replies : " Surely, had Theophrastus dealt with women's matters, a woman, though mean, might in reason have contended with him. A king must be content to be laughed at if he come into Apelles's shop, and dispute about colours and portraiture. I am not ambitious nor envious to carp at matters of higher learning than matters of heraldry, which I profess : that is the slipper, wherein I know a slip when I find it. But see your cunning ; you can, with the blur of your pen, dipped in 496 Quarrels of Authors. copperas and gall, make me learned and unlearned ; nay, you can almost change my sex, and make me a whore, like Leontion ; and, taking your silver pen again, make yourself the divine Theophrastus." At the close of Camden's answer, he introduced the alle- gorical picture of Calumny, that elegant invention of the Grecian fancy of Apelles, painted by him when suffering under the false accusations of a rival. The picture is de- scribed by Lucian ; but it has received many happy touches from the classical hand of the master of Westminster School. As a literary satire, he applies it with great dignity. I give here a translation, but I preserve the original Latin in the note, as Camden's reply to Brooke is not easily to be procured. " But though I am not disposed to waste more words on these, and this sort of men, yet I cannot resist the tempta- tion of adding a slight sketch, for I cannot give that vivacity of colouring of the picture of the great artist Apelles that our Antiphilus and the like, whose ears are ever open to calumny, may, in contemplating it, find a reflection of themselves. " On the right hand sits a man, who, to show his credu- lity, is remarkable for his prodigious ears, similar to those of Midas. He extends his hand to greet Calumny, who is ap- proaching him. The two diminutive females around him are Ignorance and Suspicion. Opposite to them, Calumny advances, betraying in her countenance and gesture the savage rage and anger working in her tempestuous breast : her left hand holds a flaming torch ; while with her right she drags by the hair a youth, who, stretching his uplifted hands to Heaven, is call- ing on the immortal powers to bear testimony to his inno- cence. She is preceded by a man of a pallid and impure appearance, seemingly wasting away under some severe disease, except that his eye sparkles, and has not the dulness usual to such. That Envy is here meant, you readily conjecture. Some diminutive females, frauds and deceits, attend her as com- panions, whose office is to encourage and instruct, and stu- diously to adorn their mistress. In the background, llepent- ance, sadly arrayed in a mournful, worn-out, and ragged gar- ment, who, with averted head, with tears and shame, acknow- ledges and prepares to receive Truth, approaching from a dis- tance."* * " Verum enimvero de bis et hoc genere hominum ne verbum amplius addam, tabellam tamen summi illius artificis Apellis, ctim colorum vivaci- tate depingere non possim, verbis leviter adumbrabo et proponam, ut Anti- Camden and Brooke. 497 This elegant picture, so happily introduced into a piece of literary controversy, appears to have only slightly affected, the mind of Brooke, which was probably of too stout a grain to take the folds of Grecian drapery. Instead of sympathis- ing with its elegance, he breaks out into a horse-laugh ; and, what is quite unexpected among such grave inquiries into a ludicrous tale in verse, which, though it has not Grecian fancy, has broad English humour, where he maliciously in- sinuates that Camden had appropriated to his own use, or " new-coated his ' Britannia'" with Leland's MSS., and dis- guised what he had stolen. " Now, to show himself as good a painter as he is a herald, he propounded, at the end of his book, a table (i. e. a picture) of his own invention, being nothing comparable to " Apelles," as he himself confesseth, and we believe him ; for, like the rude painter that was fain to write, ' This is a Horse,' upon his painted horse, he writes upon his picture the names of all that furious rabble therein expressed which, for to requite him, I will return a tale of John Fletcher (some time of Oxford) and his horse. Neither can this fable be any dis- paragement to his table, being more ancient and authenticall, and for more conceipted than his envious picture. And thus it was : A TALE (NOT OF A ROASTED) BUT OP A PAINTED HORSE. JOHN FLETCHER, famous, and a man well known, But using not his sirname's trade alone,* Did hackney out poor jades for common hii-e, Not fit for any pastime but to tire. philus noster, suique similes, et qui calumniis credunt, hanc, et in hac seipsos semel simulque intueantur. "Ad dextram sedet quidain, quia credulus, auribus prselongis insignia, quales fere illse Midse feruntur. Manum porrigit procul accedenti Calurn- nite. Circumstant eum mulierculse duse, Ignorautia ac Suspicio. Adit aliunde propius Calumnia eximie compta, vultu ipso et gestu corporis effe- rens rabtern, et iram sestuanti conceptam pectore pne se ferens : sinistra facem tenens flammantem, dextra secum adolescentem capillis arreptum, manus ad superos tendentem, obtestantemque immortalium deoruin fidem, trahit. Anteit vir pallidus, in specium impurus, acie oculorum minimd hebeti, cseterum plane iis similis, qui gravi aliquo morbo contabuerunt. Hie Hvor est, ut facile 1 conjicias. Quin, et mulierculae aliquot Insidice et Pallatise ut comites Caluinniam comitantur. Harum- est munus, dominain hortari, instruere, comere, et subornare. A tergo, habitu lugubri, pullato, laceroque Poenitentia subsequitur, qua capite in tergum deflexo, cum lachrymis, ac pudore procul venieutem Veritatem agnoscit, et excipit." * A Fletcher is a maker of bows and arrows. Asii. K K 498 Quarrels of Authors. His conscience, once, surveying his jade's stable, Prick'd him, for keeping horses so unable. " Oh why should I," saith John, " by scholars thrive, For jades that will not carry, lead, nor drive ?" To mend the matter, out he starts, one night, And having spied a palfrey somewhat white, He takes him up, and up he mounts his back, Rides to his house, and there he turns him black ; Marks him in forehead, feet, in rump, and crest, As coursers mark those horses which are best. So neatly John had coloured every spot, That the'right owner sees him, knows him not. Had he but feather'd his new-painted breast, He would have seemed Pegasus at least. Who but John Fletcher's horse, in all the town, Amongst all hackneys, purchased this renown? But see the luck ; John Fletcher's horse, one night, By rain was wash'd Again almost to white. His first right owner, seeing such a change, Thought he should know him, but his hue was strange ! But eyeing him, and spying out his steed, By flea-bit spots of his now washed weed, Seizes the horse ; so Fletcher was attainted, And did confess the horse he stole and painted. To close with honour to Brooke ; in his graver moments he warmly repels the accusation Camden raised against him, as an enemy to learning, and appeals to many learned scholars, who had tasted of his liberality at the Universities, towards their maintenance ; but, in an elevated tone, he asserts his right to deliver his animadversions as York Herald. " I know (says Brooke) the great advantage my adversary has over me, in the received opinion of the world. If some will blame me for that my writings carry some characters of spleen against him, men of pure affections, and not partial, will think reason that he should, by ill hearing, lose the plea- sure he conceived by ill speaking. But since I presume not to understand above that which is meet for me to know, I must not be discouraged, nor fret myself, because of the malicious ; for I find myself seated upon a rock, that is sure from tempest and waves, from whence I have a prospect into his errors and waverings. I do confess his great worth arid merit, and that we Britons are in some sort beholding to him ; and might have been much more, if God had lent him Camden and Brooke. 499 the grace to have played the faithful steward, in the talent committed to his trust and charge." Such was the dignified and the intrepid reply of Ralph Brooke, a man whose name is never mentioned without an epithet of reproach ; and who, in his own day, was hunted down, and not suffered, vindictive as he was no doubt, to relieve his bitter and angry spirit, by pouring it forth to the public eye.* But the story is not yet closed. Camden, who wanted the magnanimity to endure with patient dignity the corrections of an inferior genius, had the wisdom, with the meanness, silently to adopt his useful corrections, but would never con- fess the hand which had brought them.f Thus hath 'Ralph Brooke told his own tale undisturbed, and, after the lapse of more than a century, the press has been opened to him. Whenever a great author is suffered to gag the mouth of his adversary, Truth receives the insult. But there is another point more essential to inculcate in literary controversy. Ought we to look too scrupulously into the motives which may induce an inferior author to detect the errors of a greater ? A man from no amiable motive may pert form a proper action : Ritson was useful after Warton ; nor have we a right to ascribe it to any concealed motives, which, after all, may be doubtful. In the present instance, our mucht abused Ralph Brooke first appears to have composed his ela- * Brooke died at the old mansion opposite the Roman town of Reculver in Kent. The house is still known as Brooke-farm ; and the original gateway of decorative brickwork still exists. He was buried in Reculver Church, now destroyed, where a mural monument was erected to his me- mory, having a rhyming inscription, which told the reader : ' ' Fifteenth October he was last alive, One thousand six hundred and twenty-five, Seaventy-three years bore he fortune's harms, And forty-five an officer of armes." Brooke was originally a painter-stainer. His enmity to Camden appears to have originated in the appointment of the latter to the office of Claren- cieux on the death of Richard Lee ; he believing himself to be qualified for the place by greater knowledge, and by his long connexion with the College of Arms. His mode of righting himself lacked judgment, and he was twice suspended from his office, and was even attempted to be expelled therefrom. ED. f In Anstis's edition of " A Second Discoverie of Errors in the Much- commended ' Britannia,' &c.," 1724, the reader will find all the pas- sages in the "Britannia" of the edition of 1594 to which Brooke made exceptions, placed column-wise with the following edition of it in 1600. It is, as Anstis observes, a debt to truth, without making any reflections. K K2 500 Quarrels of Authors. borate work from the most honourable motives : the offer he made of his Notes to Camden seems a sufficient evidence. The pride of a great man first led Camden into an error, and that error plunged him into all the barbarity of persecution ; thus, by force, covering his folly. Brooke over-valued his studies : it is the nature of those peculiar minds adapted to excel in such contracted pursuits. He undertook an ungracious office, and he has suffered by being placed by the side of the illustrious genius with whom he has so skilfully combated in his own province ; and thus he has endured contempt, without being contemptible. The public are not less the debtors to such unfortunate, yet intrepid authors.* * There is a sensible observation in the old " Biographia Britannica" on Brooke. " From the splenetic attack originally made by ilafe Brooke upon the "Britannia" arose very great advantages to the public, by the shift- ing and bringing to light as good, perhaps a better and more authentic ac- count of our nobility, than had been given at that time of those in any other country of Europe." p. 1135. MARTIN MAR-PRELATE. OP the two prevalent factions in the reign of Elizabeth, the Catholics and the Puritans Elizabeth's philosophical indifference offends both Maun- sell's Catalogue omits the books of both parties of the Puritans, " the mild and moderate, with the fierce and fiery, " a great religious body covering a political one Thomas Cartwright, the chief of the Puritans, and his rival Whitgift attempts to make the Ecclesiastical paramount to the Civil Power his plan in dividing the country into comitial, pro- vincial, and national assemblies, to be concentrated under the secret head at Warwick, where Cartwright was elected " perpetual Moderator !" after the most bitter controversies, Cartwright became very compliant to his old rival Whitgift, when Archbishop of Canterbury of MARTIN MAR-PRELATK his sons-r-specimens of their popular ridicule and invec- tive Cartwright approves of this mode of controversy better counter- acted by the wits than by the grave admonishers specimens of the ANTI-MARTIX MAS-PRBLATBS of the authors of these surreptitious publications. THE Reformation, or the new Religion, as it was then called, under Elizabeth, was the most philosophical she could form, and therefore the most hateful to the zealots of all parties. It was worthy of her genius, and of a better age ! Her sole object was, a deliverance from the Papal usurpation. Her own supremacy maintained, she designed to be the great sove- reign of a great people ; and the Catholic, for some time, was called to her council-board, and entered with the Reformer into the same church. But wisdom itself is too weak to re- gulate human affairs, when the passions of men rise up in obstinate insurrection. Elizabeth neither won over the Re- formers nor the Catholics. An excommunicating bull, preci- pitated by Papal Machiavelism, driving on the brutalised obe- dience of its slaves, separated the friends. This was a political error arising from a misconception of the weakness of our government ; and when discovered as such, a tolerating dis- pensation was granted " till better times ;" an unhealing ex- pedient, to join again a dismembered nation ! It would sur- prise many, were they aware how numerous were our ancient families and our eminent characters who still remained 502 Quarrels of Authors. Catholics.* The country was then divided, and Englishmen who were heroic Romanists fell the terrible victims. On the other side, the national evil took a new form. It is probable that the Queen, regarding the mere ceremonies of religion, now venerable with age, as matters of indifference, and her fine taste perhaps still lingering amid the solemn gorgeousness of the Roman service, and her senses and her emotions excited by the religious scenery, did not share in that abhorrence of the paintings and the images, the chant and the music, the censer and the altar, and the pomp of the prelatical habits, which was prompting many well-intentioned Reformers to reduce the ecclesiastical state into apostolical nakedness and primitive rudeness. She was slow to meet this austerity of feeling, which in this country at length extirpated those arts which exalt our nature, and for this these pious Vandals nicknamed the Queen " the untamed heifer ;" and the fierce Knox expressly wrote his " First Blast Against the Monstrous Government of Women." Of these Reformers, many had imbibed the republican notions of Calvin. In their hatred of Popery, they imagined that they had not gone far enough in their wild notions of reform, for they viewed it, still shadowed out in the new hierarchy of the bishops. The fierce Calvin, in his little church at Geneva, presumed to rule a great nation on the scale of a parish insti- tution ; copying the apostolical equality at a time when the Church (say the Episcopalians) had all the weakness of in- fancy, and could live together in a community of all things, from a sense of their common poverty. Be this as it may, the dignified ecclesiastical order was a vulnerable institution, which could do no greater injury, and might effect as much public good as any other order in the state. f My business * The Church History by Dodd, a Catholic, fills three vols. folio : it is very rare and curious. Much of our own domestic history is interwoven in that of the fugitive papists, and the materials of this work are fre- quently drawn from their own archives, preserved in their seminaries at Douay, Valladolid, &c., which have not been accessible to Protestant writers. Here I discovered a copious nomenclature of eminent persons, and many literary men, with many unknown facts, both of a private and public nature. It is useful, at times, to know whether an English author was a Catholic. t I refer the reader to Selden's " Table Talk" for many admirable ideas on " Bishops." That enlightened genius, who was no friend to the eccle- siastical temporal power, acknowledges the absolute necessity of this order in a great government. The preservers of our literature and our morals they ought to be, and many have been. When the political reformers Martin Mar-Prelate. 503 is not with this discussion. I mean to show how the repub- lican system of these Reformers ended in a political struggle which, crushed in the reign of Elizabeth, and beaten down in that of James, so furiously triumphed under Charles. Their history exhibits the curious spectacle of a great religious body covering a political one such as was discovered among the Jesuits, and such as may again distract the empire, in some new and unexpected shape. Elizabeth was harassed by the two factions of the in- triguing Catholic and the disguised Eepublican. The age abounded with libels.* Many a Benedicite was handed to ejected the bishops out of the house, what did they gain ? a more vulgar prating race, but even more lordly! Selden says "The bishops being put out of the house, whom will they lay the fault upon now ? When the dog is beat out of the room, where will they lay the stink ?" * The freedom of the press hardly subsisted in Elizabeth's reign ; and yet libels abounded ! A clear demonstration that nothing is really gained by those violent suppressions and expurgatory indexes which power in its usurpation may enforce. At a time when they did not dare even to publish the titles of such libels, yet were they spread about, and even hoarded. The most ancient catalogue of our vernacular literature is that by Andrew Maunsell, published in 1595. It consists of Divinity, Mathematics, Medi- cine, &c. ; but the third part which he promised, and which to us would have been the most interesting, of " Rhetoric, History, Poetry, and Policy," never appeared. In the Preface, such was the temper of the times, and of Elizabeth, we discover that he has deprived us of a catalogue of the works alluded to in our text, for he thus distinctly points at them : " The books written by the fugitive papistes, as also those that are written against the present government (meaning those of the Puritans), I doe not think meete for me to meddle withall." In one part of his catalogue, however, he contrived to insert the following passage ; the burden of the song seems to have been chorused by the ear of our cautious Maunsell. He is noticing a Pierce Plowman in prose. "I did not see the beginning of this booke, but it ended thus : " God save the king, and speed the plough, And send the prclats care inough, Inough, inough, inough." p. 80. Few of our native productions are so rare as the Martin Mar-Prelate publications. I have not found them in the public repositories of our national literature. There they have been probably rejected with indig- nity, though their answerers have been preserved ; yet even these are almost of equal rarity and price. They were rejected in times less en- lightened than the present. In a national library every book deserves preservation. By the rejection of these satires, however absurd or infa- mous, we have lost a link in the great chain of our National Literature and History. [Since the above was written, many have beeii added to our library ; and the Eev. William Maskell, M. A., has published his " History of the Martin Mar-Prelate Controversy." It is a most careful summary of 504 Quarrels of Authors. her from the Catholics ; but a portentous personage, masked, stepped forth from a club of PURITANS, and terrified the nation by continued visitations, yet was never visible till the instant of his adieus " starting like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons!" Men echo the tone of their age, yet still the same unvary- ing human nature is at work ; and the Puritans,* who in the the writings and proceedings of all connected with this important event, and is worthy the attentive perusal of such as desire accurate information in this chapter of our Church history.] * We know them by the name of Puritans, a nickname obtained by their affecting superior sanctity ; but I find them often distinguished by the more humble appellative of Precisians. As men do not leap up, but climb on rocks, it is probable they were only precise before they were pure. A satirist of their day, in " Rythmes against Martin Marre- Prelate," melts their attributes into one verse : " The sacred sect, and perfect pure precise." A more laughing satirist, " Pasquill of England to Martin Junior," per- sists in calling them Puritans, a pruritu! for their perpetual itching, or a desire to do something. Elizabeth herself only considered them as " a troublesome sort of people :" even that great politician could not detect the political monster in a mere chrysalis of reform. I find, however, in a poet of the Elizabethan age, an evident change in the public feeling respect- ing the Puritans, who being always most active when the government was most in trouble, their political views were discovered. Warner, in his " Albion's England," describes them : " If ever England will in aught prevent her own mishap, Against these Skommes (no terme too gross) let England shut the gap ; With giddie heads Their countrie's foes they helpt, and most their country harm'd. If Hypocrites why Puritaines we term, be asked, in breefe, 'Tis but an ironised terme : good -fellow so spells theefe ! " The gentle-humoured FULLER, in his "Church History," felt a tender- ness for the name of Puritan, which, after the mad follies they had played during the Commonwealth, was then held in abhorrence. He could not venture to laud the good men of that party, without employing a new term to conceal the odium. In noticing, under the date of 1563, that the bishops urged the clergy of their dioceses to press uniformity, &c., he adds " Such as refused were branded with the name of Puritans a name which in this nation began in this year, subject to several senses, and various in the acceptions. Puritan was taken for the opposers of hierarchy and church service, as resenting of superstition. But the nickname was quickly im- proved by profane mouths to abuse pious persons. We will decline the word to prevent exceptions, which, if casually slipping from our pen, the reader knoweth that only nonconformists are intended," lib. ix. p. 76. Fuller, however, divided them into classes "the mild and moderate, and the fierce and fiery." HEYLIN, in his "History of the Presbyterians," blackens them as so many political devils ; and NEALE, in his " History of the Puritans," blanches them into a sweet and almond whiteness. Let us be thankful to these PURITANS for a political lesson. They began Martin Mar-Prelate. 505 reign of Elizabeth imagined it was impossible to go too far in the business of reform, were the spirits called Sound- heads under Charles, and who have got another nickname in our da} r s. These wanted a Reformation of a Reformation they aimed at reform, but they designed Revolution ; and they would not accept of toleration, because they had deter- mined on predominance.* Of this faction, the chief was THOMAS CABTWBIGHT, a person of great learning, and doubtless of great ambition. their quarrels on the most indifferent matters. They raised disturbances about the " Romish Rags," by which they described the decent surplice as well as the splendid scarlet chimere 1 thrown over the white linen rochet, with the square cap worn by the bishops. The scarlet robe, to please their sullen fancy, was changed into black satin ; but these men soon resolved to deprive the bishops of more than a scarlet ro.be. The affected niceties of these PRECISIANS, dismembering our images, and scratching at our paint- ings, disturbed the uniformity of the religious service. A clergyman in a surplice was turned out of the church. Some wore square caps, some round, some abhorred all caps. The communion-table placed in the East was considered as an idolatrous altar, and was now dragged into the middle of the church, where, to show their contempt, it was always made the filthiest seat in the church. They used to kneel at the sacrament ; now they would sit, because that was a proper attitude for a supper ; then they would not sit, but stand : at length they tossed the elements about, because the bread was wafers, and not from a loaf. Among their preciseness was a qualm at baptism : the water was to be taken from a basin, and not from a fount ; then they would not name their children, or if they did, they would neither have Grecian, nor Roman, nor Saxon names, but Hebrew ones, which they ludicrously translated into English, and which, as Heylin observes, " many of them when they came of age were ashamed to own" such as "Accepted, Ashes, Fight-the-good Fight-of- Faith, Joy -again, Kill-sin, &c." Who could have foreseen that some pious men quarreling about the square caps and the rochets of bishops should at length attack bishops them- selves ; and, by an easy transition, passing from bishops to kings, finally close in levellers ! * The origin of the controversy may be fixed about 1588. " A far less easy task," says the Rev. Mr. Maskell, "is it to guess at the authors. The tracts on the Mar-Prelate side have been usually attributed to Penry, Throgmorton, Udal, and Fenner. Very considerable information may be obtained about these writers in Wood's ' Athenae,' art. Penry; in Collier, Strype, and Herbert's edition of ' Ames,' to whom I would refer. After a careful examination of these and other authorities on the subject, the question remains, in my judgment, as obscure as before ; and I think that it is very far from clear that either one of the three last-named was actually concerned in the authorship of any of the pamphlets." ED, 1 So Heylin writes the word ; but in the " Rythmes against Martin," a contemporary production, the term is Chiver. It is not in Cotgrave. 506 Quarrels of Authors. Early in life a disappointed man, the progress was easy to a disaffected subject. At a Philosophy Act, in the University of Cambridge, in the royal presence, the queen preferred and rewarded his opponent for the slighter and more attractive elegances in which the learned Cartwright was deficient. He felt the wound rankle in his ambitious spirit. He began, as Sir George Paul, in his " Life of Archbishop Whitgift," ex- presses it, " to kick against her Ecclesiastical Government." He expatriated himself several years, and returned fierce with the republican spirit he had caught among the Calvinists at Geneva, which aimed at the extirpation of the bishops. It was once more his fate to be poised against another rival, Whitgift, the Queen's Professor of Divinity. Cartwright, in some lectures, advanced his new doctrines ; and these innova- tions soon raised a formidable party, " buzzing their conceits into the green heads of the University."* Whitgift regularly preached at Cartwright, but to little purpose ; for when Cartwright preached at St. Mary's they were forced to take down the windows. Once our sly polemic, taking advantage of the absence of Whitgift, so powerfully operated, in three sermons on one Sunday, that in the evening his victory de- clared itself, by the students of Trinity College rejecting their surplices, as Papistical badges. Cartwright was now to be confuted by other means. The University refused him his degree of D.D. ; condemned the lecturer to silence ; and at length performed that laat feeble act of power, expulsion. In a heart already alienated from the established authorities, this could only envenom a bitter spirit. Already he had felt a personal disliketo royalty, and now he had received an in- sult from the University : these were motives which, though concealed, could not fail to work in a courageous mind, whose new forms of religion accorded with his political feelings. The " Degrees" of {he University, which he now declared to be "unlawful," were to be considered "as limbs of Anti- christ." The whole hierarchy was to be exterminated for a republic of Presbyters ; till, through the church, the repub- * In the "Just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior" (circse 1589), we are told : " There is Cartwright, too v at Warwick ; he hath got him such a company of disciples, both of the worshipfull and other of the poorer sort, as wee have no cause to thank him. Never tell me that he is too grave to trouble himself with Martin's conceits. Cartwright seeks the peace of the Church no otherwise than his platform may stand." He was accused be- fore the commissioners in 1590 of knowing who wrote and printed these Squibs, which he did not deny. ED. Martin Mar-Prelate. 507 lican, as we shall see, discovered a secret passage to the Cabinet of his Sovereign, where he had many protectors. Such is my conception of the character of Cartwright. The reader is enabled to judge for himself by the note.* * I give a remarkable extract from the writings of Cartwright. It will prove two points. First, that the religion of those men became a cover for a political design ; which was to raise the ecclesiastical above the civil power. Just the reverse of Hobbes's after scheme ; but while theorists thus differ and seem to refute one another, they in reality work for a"n iden- tical purpose. Secondly, it will show the not uncommon absurdity of man ; while these nbrconformists were affecting to annihilate the hierarchy of England as a remains of the Romish supremacy, they themselves were de- signing one according to their own fresher scheme. It was to be a state or re- public of Presbyters, in which all Sovereigns were to hold themselves, to use their style, as ' ' Nourisses, or servants under the Church ; the Sovereigns were to be as subjects ; they were to vail their sceptres and to offer their crowns as the prophet speaketh, to lick the dust of the feet of the Church." These are Cartwright's words, in his "Defence of the Admonition." But he is still bolder, in a joint production with Travers. He insists that "the Monarchs of the World should give up their sceptres and crowns unto him (Jesus Christ) who is represented by the Officers of the Church." See "A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline," p. 185. One would imagine he was a disguised Jesuit, and an advocate for the Pope's supre- macy. But observe how these saintly Republicans would govern the State. Cartwright is explicit, and very ingenious. " The world is now deceived that thinketh that the Church must be framed according to the Commonwealth, and the Church Government according to the Civil Government, which is as much as to say, as if a man should fashion his house according to his hang- ings ; whereas, indeed, it is clean contrary. That as the hangings are made fit for the house, so the Commonwealth must be made to agree with the Church, and the government thereof with her government ; for, as the house is be- fore the hangings, therefore the hangings, which come after, must be framed to the house, which was before ; so the Church being before there was a commonwealth, and the commonwealth coming after, must be fashioned and made suitable to the Church ; otherwise, God is made to give place to men, heaven to earth." CAKTWRIGHT'S Defence of the Admonition, p. 181. Warburton's "Alliance between Church and State," which was in his time considered as a hardy paradox, is mawkish in its pretensions, com- pared with this sacerdotal republic. It is not wonderful that the wisest of our Sovereigns, that great politician Elizabeth, should have punished with death these democrats : but it is wonderful to discover that these inveterate enemies to the Church of Rome were only trying to transfer its absolute power into their own hands ! They wanted to turn the Church into a de- mocracy. They fascinated the people by telling them that there would be no beggars were there no bishops ; that every man would be a governor by Betting up a Presbytery. From the Church, I repeat, it is scarcely a single step to the Cabinet. Yet the early Puritans come down to us as persecuted saints. Doubtless, there were a few honest saints among them ; but they were as mad politicians as their race afterwards proved to be, to whom they left so many fatal legacies. Cartwright uses the very language a certain cast of political reformers have recently done. He declares " An estab- 508 Quarrels of Authors. But Cartwright, chilled by an imprisonment, and witness- ing some of his party condemned, and some executed, after having long sustained the most elevated and rigid tone, sud- denly let his alp of ice dissolve away in the gentlest thaw that ever occurred in political life. Ambitious he was, but not of martyrdom ! His party appeared once formidable,* and his protection at Court sure. I have read several letters of the Earl of Leicester, in MS., that show he always shielded Cartwright, whenever in danger. Many of the mi- nisters of Elizabeth were Puritans ; but doubtless this was before their state policy had detected the politicians in mask. When some of his followers had dared to do what he had only thought, he appears to have forsaken them. They re- proached him for this left-handed policy, some of the boldest of them declaring that they had neither acted nor written anything but what was warranted by his principles. I do lishment may be made without the magistrate ;" and told the people that "if every hair of their head was a life, it ought to be offered for such a cause." Another of this faction is for " registering the names of the fittest and hottest brethren without lingering for Parliament ;" and another exults that " there are a hundred thousand hands ready," Another, that "we may overthrow the bishops and all the government in one day." Such was the style, and such the confidence in the plans which the lowest orders of revolutionists promulgated during their transient exhibition in this country. More in this strain may be found in "Maddox's Vindication Against Neale,'' the advocate for the Puritans, p. 255 ; and in an admirable letter of that great politician, Sir Francis Walsingham, who, with many others of the ministers of Elizabeth, was a favourer of the Puritans, till he detected their secret object to subvert the government. This letter is preserved in "Collier's Eccl. Hist." vol. ii. 607. They had begun to divide the whole country into classes, provincial synods, &c. They kept registers, which re- corded all the heads of their debates, to be finally transmitted to the secret head of the Classis of Warwick, where Cartwright governed as the perpetual moderator.' Heylirfs Hist, of Presbyt. p. 277. These violent advocates for the freedom of the press had, however, an evident intention to mono- polise it ; for they decreed that " no book should be put in print but by consent of the Classes." Sir G. PAUL'S Life of Wltityift, p. 65. The very Star-Chamber they justly protested against, they were for raising among themselves ! * Under the denomination of Barrowisls and Brownists. I find Sir Walter Raleigh declaring, in the House of Commons, on a motion for re- ducing disloyal subjects, that " they are worthy to be rooted out of a Com- monwealth." He is alarmed at the danger, "for it is to be feared that men not guilty will be included in the law about to be passed. I am sorry for it. I am afraid there is near twenty thousand of them in England ; and when they be gone (that is, expelled) who shall maintain their wives and children ?' Sin SIMOSDS D'EwEs' Journal, p. 517. Martin Mar-Prelate. 509 not know many political ejaculations more affecting than that of Henry Barrow, said to have been a dissipated youth, when Cart-wright refused, before Barrow's execution, to allow of a conference. The deluded man, after a deep sigh, said : " Shall I be thus forsaken by him ? Was it not he that brought me first into these briars ? and will he now leave me in the same ? Was it not from him alone that I took my grounds ? Or did I not, out of such premises as he pleased to give me, infer those propositions, and deduce those conclusions, for which I am now kept in these bonds ?" He was soon after executed, with others. Then occurred one of those political spectacles at which the simple-minded stare, and the politic smile ; when, after the most cruel civil war of words,* Cartwright wrote very compliant letters to his old rival, Whitgift, now Archbishop of Canterbury ; while the Archbishop was pleading with the Queen in favour of the inveterate Republican, declaring that had Cartwright not so far engaged himself in the beginning, he thought he would have been, latterly, drawn into con- formity. To clear up this mysterious conduct, we must ob* serve that Cartwright seems to have graduated his political ambition to the degree the government touched of weakness or of strength ; and besides, he was now growing prudent as he was growing rich. For it seems that he who was for scrambling for the Church revenues, while telling the people of the Apostles, silver and gold they had none, was himself " feeding too fair and fat " for the meagre groaning state of a pretended reformation. He had early in life studied that part of the law by which he had learned the marketable price of * The controversies of Whitgift and Cartwright were of a nature which could never close, for toleration was a notion which never occurred to either. These rivals from early days wrote with such bitterness against each other, that at length it produced mutual reproaches. Whitgift complains to Cart- w-rijjht : "If you were writing against the veriest Papist, or the ignorantest dolt, you could not be mqre spiteful and malicious." And Cartwright re- plies : "If peace had been so precious unto you as you pretend, you would not have brought so many hard words and bitter reproaches, as it were sticks and coals, to double and treble the heat of contention." After this it is curious, even to those accustomed to such speculations, to observe some men changing with the times, and furious rivals converted into brothers. Whitgift, whom Elizabeth, as a mark of her favour, called " her black husband," soliciting Cartwright' s pardoa from the Queen ; and the proud Presbyter Cartwright styling Whitgift his Lord the Archbishop's Grace of Canterbury, and visiting him ! 510 Quarrels of Authors. landed property ; and as the cask still retains its old flavour, this despiser of bishops was still making the best interest for his money by land-jobbing.* One of the memorable effects of this attempted innovation was that continued stream of libels which ran throughout the nation,under the portentous name of Martin Mar-Prelate. f This extraordinary personage, in his collective form, for he is to be splitted into more than one, long terrified Church and State. He walked about the kingdom invisibly, dropping here a libel, and there a proclamation for sedition ; but wherever Martinism was found, Martin was not. He prided himself in what he calls "Pistling the Bishops." Sometimes he hints to his pursuers how they may catch him, for he prints, " within two furlongs of a bouncing priest," or " in Europe ;" while he acquaints his friends, who were so often uneasy for his safety, that " he has neither wife nor child," . and prays " they may not be anxious for him, for he wishes that his head might not go to the grave in peace." " I come, with the rope about my neck, to save you, howsoever it goeth with me." His press is interrupted, he is silent, and Lambeth seems to breathe in peace. But he has " a son ; nay, five hundred sons !" and Martin Junior starts up ! He inquires * Sir George Paul, a contemporary, attributes his wealth " to the benevo- lence and bounty of his followers." Dr. Sutcliffe, one of his adversaries, sharply upbraids him, that " in the persecution he perpetually complained of, he was grown rich." A Puritan advocate reproves Dr. Sutclifl'e for always carping at Cartwright's purchases : " Why may not Cartwright sell the lands he had from his father, and buy others with the money, as well as some of the bishops, who by bribery, simony, extortion, racking of rents, wasting of woods, and such like stratagems, wax rich, and purchase great lordships for their posterity ?" To this Sutcliffe replied : " I do not carpe alway, no, nor once, at Master Cartwright's purchase. I hinder him not ; I envy him not. Only thus much I must tell him, that Thomas Cartwright, a man that hath more landes of his own in possession than any bishop that I know, and that fareth daintily every day, and feedeth. fayre and fatte, and lyeth as soft as any tenderling of that brood, and hath wonne much wealth in short time, and will leave more to his posterity than any bishop, should not cry out either of persecution or of excess of bishop's livinges." SUTCLIFFE'S Ansicer to Certain Calumnious Petitions. f- " The author of these libels," says Bishop Cooper, in his "Admoni- tion to the People of England," 1589, " calleth himself by a feigned namej Martin Mar-Prelate, a very fit name undoubtedly. But if this outrage- ous spirit of boldness be not stopped speedily, I fear he will prove him- self to be, not only Mar- Prelate, but Mar- Prince, Mar-State, Mar- Law, Mar-Magistrate, and altogether, until he bring it to an Anabaptistical equality and community." ED. Martin Mar-Prelate. 511 " Where his father is ; he who had studied the art of pistle- making ? Why has he been tongue-tied these four or five months? Good Nuncles (the bishops), have you closely murthered the gentleman in some of your prisons ? Have you choaked him with a fat prebend or two ? I trow my father will swallow down no such pills, for he would thus soon purge away all the conscience he hath. Do you mean to have the keeping of him ? What need that ? he hath five hundred sons in the land. My father would be sorry to put you to any such cost as you intend to be at with him. A meaner house, and less strength than the Tower, the Fleet, or Newgate, would serve him well enough. He is not of that ambitious vein that many of his brethren the bishops are, in seeking for more costly houses than even his father built for him." This same " Martin Junior," who, though he is but young, as he says, " has a pretty smattering gift in this pistle- making ; and I fear, in a while, I shall take a pride in it." He had picked up beside a bush, where it had dropped from some- body, an imperfect paper of his father's : " Theses Martinianse set forth as an after-birth of, the noble gentleman himselfe, by a pretty stripling of his, Martin Junior, and dedicated by him to his good nuncka, Maister John Cankerbury (i.e. Canterbury). Printed without a sly privilege of the Cater Caps" (i.e. the square caps the bishops wore). But another of these five hundred sons, who declares him- self to be his " reverend and elder brother, heir to the renowned Martin Mar-Prelate the Great," publishes " The just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior ; where, lest the Springall should be utterly discouraged in his good meaning, you shall finde that he is not bereaved of his due commendation." Martin Senior, after finding fault with Martin Junior for "his rash and indiscreet headiness," notwithstanding agrees with everything he had said. He confirms all, and cheers him ; but charges him, " Should he meet their father in the street, never to ask his blessing, but walke smoothly and circumspectly; and if anie offer to talk with thee of Martin, talke thou straite of the voyage into Portugal, or of the happie death of the Duke of Guise, or some such accident ; but meddle not with thy father. Only, if thou have gathered anie thing in visitation for thy father, intreate him to signify, in some secret printed 512 Quarrels of Authors. pistle, where a will have it lefte. I feare least some of us should fall into John Canterburie's hand." Such were the mysterious personages who, for a long time, haunted the palaces of the bishops and the vicarages of the clergy, disappearing at the moment they were suddenly per- ceived to be near. Their slanders were not only coarse buffooneries, but the hottest effusions of hatred, with an un- paralleled invective of nicknames.* Levelled at the bishops, even the natural defects, the personal infirmities, the domestic privacies, much more the tyranny, of these now " petty popes," now "bouncing priests," now "terrible priests," were the inexhaustible subjects of these popular invectives.f Those * Cartwright approved of them, and well knew the concealed writers, who frequently consulted him: this appears by Sir Gr. Paul's "Life of Whitgift," p. 65. Being asked his opinion of such books, he said, that " since the bishops, and others there touched, would not amend by grave books, it was therefore meet they should be dealt withal to their farther reproach ; and that some books must be earnest, some more inild <:_1 CU-1^U nn/1 HMMMfl hi* Vf>nQftIlG6 this opposition to Bishop Sherlock, and wreaked his ve by publishing his "Animadversions upon Sher ock . s on Prophecy." The book had been long published, and 1 passed through successive editions; but Middleton pretended f .1 !._*_ . ~**A f~r\m thia funp l.:mit>rt 1- he had never seen them before, and from this time Lambeth- house was a strong provocative for his vindictwefc-mper 53.2 Quarrels of Authors. Nor was the other great adversary of Middleton, he who so long affected to be the lord paramount, the Suzerain in the feudal empire, rather than the republic of letters Warburton himself less easily led on to these murderous acts of personal rancour. A pamphlet of the day has preserved an anecdote of this kind. Dr. Taylor, the Chancellor of Lincoln, once threw out in company an opinion derogatory to the scholar- ship of Warburton, who seems to have had always some choice spirits of his legion as spies in the camp of an enemy, and who sought their tyrant's grace by their violation of the social compact. The tyrant himself had an openness, quite in con- trast with the dark underworks of his satellites. He boldly interrogated our critic, and Taylor replied, undauntedly and more poignantly than Warburton might have suspected, that " he did not recollect ever saying that Dr. Warburton was no scholar, but that indeed he had always thought so." To this intrepid spirit the world owes one of the remarkable prefaces to the "Divine Legation" in which the Chancellor of Lincoln, intrepid as he was, stands like a man of straw, to be buffeted and tossed about with all those arts of distortion which the wit and virulence of Warburton almost every day was prac- tising at his "established places of execution," as his prefaces and notes have been wittily termed. Even Warburton himself, who committed so many personal injuries, has, in his turn, most eminently suffered from the same motive. The personal animosity of a most ingenious man was the real cause of the utter destruction of Warbur- ton's critical reputation. Edwards, the author of the " Canons of Criticism," when young and in the army, was a visitor at Allen's of Prior-park, the patron of Warburton ; and in those literary conversations which usually occupied their evenings, Warburton affected to show his superiority in his acquaint- ance with the Greek writers, never suspecting that a red coat covered more Greek than his own which happened unluckily to be the case. Once, Edwards in the library, taking down a Greek author, explained a passage in a manner which did not suit probably with some new theory of the great inventor of so many ; a contest arose, in which Edwards discovered how Warburton came by his illegitimate knowledge of Greek authors : Edwards attempted to convince him that he really did not understand Greek, and that his knowledge, such as it was, was derived from French translations a provoking act of literary kindness, which took place in the presence of Kalph Literary Quarrels from Personal Motives. 533 , ..._,.. -..^j vumu not stand as res did as witnesses. An incurable breach took place between the part.es, and from this trifling altercation, EdJard! produced the bitter "Canons of Criticism," and Warburton those foaming notes in the Dunciad. Such is the implacable nature of literary irascibility ! Men so tenderly alive to intellectual sensibility, find even the lightest touch profoundly enter into the morbid constitution the literary temper ; and even minds of a more robust nature have given proof of a sickly delicacy hanging about them quite unsuspected. Swift is a remarkable instance of this kind : the foundation of the character of this great wit was his excellent sense. Yet having, when young, composed one of the wild Pindarics of the time, addressed to the Athe- nian Society, and Dryden judiciously observing that " cousin Jonathan would never be a poet," the enraged wit, after he had reached the maturity of his own admirable judgment, and must have been well aware of the truth of the friendly prediction, could never forgive it. He has indtdged the utmost licentiousness of personal rancour; he even puns minerably on his name to degrade him as the emptiest of writers. His spirited translation of Virgil, which was admired even by Pope, he levels by the most grotesque sarcastic images to mark the poet's diminutive genius he says this version-maker is so lost in Virgil, that he is like " the lady in a lobster; a mouse under a canopy of state ; a shrivelled beau within the pent- house of a full-bottomed perriwig." He never was generous enough to contradict his opinion, and persisted in it to the last. Some critic, about Swift's own time, astonished at his treatment of Dryden, declares he must have been biassed by some prejudice the anecdote here recorded, not then pro- bably known, discovers it. What happened to Pope on the publication of his Homer shows all the anxious temper of the author. Being in com- pany with Bentley, the poet was very desirous of obtaining the doctor's opinion of it, which Bentley contrived to parry as well as he could ; but in these matters an author who cal- culates on a compliment, will risk everything to obtain it. The question was more plainly put, and the answer was as plainly given. Bentley declared that " the verses were good verses, but the work is not Homer it is Spondanus !" From this interview posterity derives from the mortified poet the full- 534 Quarrels of Authors. length figure of " the slashing Bentley," in the fourth book of the Dunciad : The mighty Scholiast, whose unwearied pains Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains. When Bentley was told by some officious friend that Pope had abused him, he only replied, " Ay, like enough ! I spoke against his Homer, and the portentous cub never forgives!" Part of Pope's severe criticism only is true ; but to give full effect to their severity, poets always infuse a certain quantity of fiction. This is an artifice absolutely necessary to practise ; so I collect from a great master in the arts of satire, and who once honestly avowed that no satire could be composed unless it was personal ; and no personalities would sufficiently adorn a poem without lies. This great satirist was Rochester. Burnet details a curious conversation between himself and his lordship on this subject. The bishop tells us that " he would often go into the country, and be for some months wholly employed in study, or the sallies of his wit chiefly directed to satire. And this he often defended to me by say- ing, there were some people that could not be kept in order, or admonished, but in this way." Burnet remonstrated, and Rochester replied "A man could not write with life unless he were heated by revenge ; for to make a satire without resentments, upon the cold notions of philosophy, was as if a man would, in cold blood, cut men's throats who had never offended him. And he said, the lies in these libels came often in as ornaments, that could not be spared without spoiling the beauty of the poem." It is as useful to know how the materials of satire are put together ; as thus the secret of pulling it to pieces more readily may sometimes be obtained. These facts will sufficiently establish this disgraceful prin- ciple of the personal motives which have influenced the quarrels of authors, and which they have only disguised by giving them a literary form. Those who are conversant in literary history can tell how many works, and some consider- able ones, have entirely sprung out of the vengeance of authors. Johnson, to whom the feelings of the race were so well known, has made a curious observation, which none but an author could have made : " The best advice to authors would be, that they should keep out of the way of one another." He says this in the "Life of Rowe," on the Literary Quarrels from Personal Motives. 535 occasion of Addison's Observations on Rowe's Charac- ter.^ Rovve had expressed his happiness to Pope at Addi- son s promotion ; and Pope, who wished to conciliate Addison towards Eowe, mentioned it, adding, that he believed Eowe was sincere. Addison replied, " That he did not suspect Howe feigned ; but the levity of his heart i such, that he is struck with any new adventure : and it would affect him just in the same manner as if he heard I was gong to be hanged." Warburton adds that Pope said he could not deny but Addison understood Rowe well. Such is the fact on which Johnson throws out an admirable observation : " This censure tune has not left us the power of con finning or refuting ; but observation daily shows that much stress is not to be laid on hyperbolical accusations and pointed sentences, which even he that utters them desires to be applauded, rather than credited. Addison can hardly be supposed to have meant all that he said. Few characters can bear the microscopic scrutiny ofvrn quickened by ANGER." I could heap up facts to demonstrate this severe truth. Even of Pope's best friends, some of their severities, if they ever reached him, must have given the pain he often inflicted. His friend Atterbury, to whom he was so partial, dropped an expression, in the heat of conversation, which Pope could never have for- given ; that our poet had "a crooked mind in a crooked body." There was a rumour, after Pope's death, that he had left behind him a satirical " Life of Dean Swift." Let genius, whose faculty detects the foibles of a brother, remember he is a rival, and be a generous one. In that extraordinary morsel of literary history, the " Conversations of Ben Jonson with his friend Drummond of Hawthornden," preserving his opinions of his contemporaries, if I err not in my recollection, I believe that he has not spoken favourably of a single indi- vidual ! The personal motives of an author, influencing his literary conduct, have induced him to practise meannesses andsubta fuges. One remarkable instance of this nature is that of Sir John Hawkins, who indeed had been hardly used by the caustic pleasantries of George Steevens. Sir John, in his edition o Johnson, with ingenious malice contrived to supprMl * acknowledgment made by Johnson to Steevens o gence and sagacity, at the close of his preface to Sharpen To preserve the panegyric of Steevens mortihed Hawki beyond endurance ; yet, to suppress it openly, his clu 536 Quarrels of Authors. as an editor did not permit. In this dilemma he pretended he reprinted the preface from the edition of 1765 ; which, as it appeared before Johnson's acquaintance with Steevens, could not contain the tender passage. However, this was unluckily discovered to be only a subterfuge, to get rid of the offensive panegyric. On examination, it proved not true ; Hawkins did not reprint from this early edition, but from the latest, for all the corrections are inserted in his own. " If Sir John were to be tried at Hicks's Hall (long the seat of that justice's glory), he would be found guilty of clipping" archly remarks the periodical critic. A fierce controversial author may become a dangerous neighbour to another author : a petulant fellow, who does not write, may be a pestilent one ; but he who prints a book against us may disturb our life in endless anxieties. There was once a dean who actually teased to death his bishop, wore him out in journeys to London, and at length drained all his faculties by a literary quarrel from personal motives. Dr. THOMAS PIERCE, Dean of Sarum a perpetual con- troversialist, and to whom it was dangerous to refuse a re- quest, lest it might raise a controversy wanted a prebend of Dr. WARD, Bishop of Salisbury, for his son Robert. He was refused ; and now, studying revenge, he opened a con- troversy with the bishop, maintaining that the king had the right of bestowing all dignities in all cathedrals in the king- dom, and not the bishops. This required a reply from the bishop, who had been formerly an active controversialist himself. Dean Pierce renewed his attack with a folio volume, entitled " A Vindication of the King's Sovereign Right, &c.," 1683. Thus it proceeded, and the web thick- ened around the bishop in replies and rejoinders. It cost him many tedious journeys to London, through bad roads, fretting at "the King's Sovereign Right" all the way; and, in the words of a witness, " in unseasonable times and weather, that by degrees his spirits were exhausted, his memory quite gone, and he was totally unfitted for business."* Such was the fatal disturbance occasioned by Dean Pierce's folio of " The King's Sovereign Right," and his sou Bob being left without a prebend ! I shall close this article with a very ludicrous instance of a literary quarrel from personal motives. This piece of secret * Lansdowne MSS. 10421316. Literary Quarrels from Personal Motives. 537 history had been certainly lost, had not Bishop Lowth con- descended to preserve it, considering it as necessary to assign a sufficient reason for the extraordinary libel it produced. Bohun, an antiquarian lawyer, in a work entitled " The English Lawyer," in 1732, in illustrating the origin of the Act of Scandalum Magnatum, which arose in the time of William of Wykeham, the chancellor and bishop of Edward III. and the founder of New College, in Oxford ; took that opportunity of committing the very crime on the venerable manes of Wykehara himself. He has painted this great man in the darkest colours. Wykeham is charged with having introduced " Alice Piers, his niece or," &c., for the truth is he was uncertain who she was, to use his peculiar language, "into the king's bosom;" to have joined her in excluding the Black Prince from all power in the state ; and- he hints at this hero having been poisoned by them; of Wykeham's em- bezzling a million of the public money, and, when chancellor, of forging an Act of Parliament to indemnify himself, and thus passing his own pardon. It is a singularity in this libellous romance, that the contrary of all this only is true. But Bohun has so artfully interwoven his historical patches of misrepresentations, surmises, and fictions, that he suc- ceeded in framing an historical libel. Not satisfied with this vile tissue, in his own obscure volume, seven years afterwards, being the editor of a work of high reputation, Nathaniel Bacon's " Historical and Political Discourse of the Laws and Government of England," he further satiated his frenzy by contriving to preserve hia libel in a work which he was aware would outlive his own. Whence all this persevering malignity ? Why this quarrel of Mr. Bohun, of the Middle Temple, with the long-departed William of Wykeham ? What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba T He took all these obscure pains, and was moved with this perpetual rancour against William of Wykeham, merely to mortify the Wykehamiats ; and slandered their founder, with the idea that the odium might be reflected on New College. Bohun, it seems, had a quarrel with them concerning a lee on which he had advanced money ; but the holder had con- trived to assign it to the well-known Eustace Budget! college confirmed the assignment. At an interview before 538 Qucrn-eh of Authors. the warden, high words had arisen hetween the parties : the warden withdrew, and the wit gradually shoved the antiquary off the end of the bench on which they were sitting : a blow was struck, and a cane broken. Bohun brought an action, and the Wykehamites travelled down to give bail at West- minster Hall, where the legal quarrel was dropped, and the literary one then began. Who could have imagined that the venerable bishop and chancellor of Edward III. was to be involved in a wretched squabble about a lease with an anti- quary and a wit? "Fancying," says Bishop Lowth, "he could inflict on the Society of New College a blow which would affect them more sensibly by wounding the reputation of their founder, he set himself to collect everything he could v O meet with that was capable of being represented to his dis- credit, and to improve it with new and horrible calumnies of his own invention." Thus originated this defamatory attack on the character of William of Wykeham! And by arts which active writers may practise, and innocent readers can- not easily suspect, a work of the highest reputation, like that of Nathaniel Bacon's, may be converted into a vehicle of personal malignity, while the author himself disguises his real purpose under the specious appearance of literature ! The present case, it must be acknowledged, is peculiar, where a dead person was attacked with a spirit of rancour to which the living only appear subject ; but the author was an anti- quary, who lived as much with the dead as the living : his personal motive was the same as those already recorded, and here he was acting with a double force on the dead and the living ! But here I stop my hand, my list would else be too com- plete. Great names are omitted Whitaker and Gibbon ;* Pope and Lord Hervey ;t Wood and South ; J Rowe, Mores, and Ames ; and George Steevens and Gough.|| This chapter is not honourable to authors ; but historians are only Lord Chief Justices, who must execute the laws, even on their intimate friends, when standing at the bar. The chapter is not honourable but it may be useful ; and * GIBBON'S Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. 243, f WALPOLK'S Memoirs, vol. iii. 40. The Life of Wood, by GUTCH, vol. i. NICHOLS'S Literary Anecdotes. I! " Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 303 4. Literary Quarrels from Personal Motives. 539 that is a quality not less valuable to the public. It lets in their readers to a kind of knowledge, which opens a necessary comment on certain works, and enlarges our comprehension of their spirit. If in the heat of controversy authors imprudently attack each other with personalities, they are only scattering mud and hurling stones, and will incur the ridicule or the contempt of those who, unfriendly to the literary character, feel a secret pleasure in its degradation ; but let them learn, that to open a literary controversy from mere personal motives ; thus to con- ceal the dagger of private hatred under the mantle of litera- ture, is an expedient of short duration, for the secret history is handed down with the book ; and when once the dignity of the author's character sinks in the meanness of his motive*, powerful as the work may be, even Genius finds its lustre diminished, and Truth itself becomes suspicious. INDEX. ADDISON, quarrels with Pope . 313 disapproves of his sa- tire on Dennis . . . 315 aids a rival version of Homer 31 6 satirized by Pope aa Atticus, n 317 his nervous fear of cri- ticism 817 his last interview with Pope . . . .318 320 quarrels with Steele on political grounds . .438 his disbelief in Bowe . 635 AKENSIDE exhibited as a ludi- crous personage by Smollett ; his real character cast in the mould of antiquity, n. . .114 severely criticised by Warburton .... 264 ALDRICH, Dean, secretly fosters the attacks on Bentley 378, n. 383 AMHURST, a political author, his history 11 ARXAJ.L, a great political scribe 10 ASCHAM, Roger, the founder of English Prose . . .19 ATHEN.E BKITANNICJB, one of the rarest works, account of, n. 31 ATHENE OXONLEJCSES, -an apo- logy for 89 ATTEBBCBY, Bp., on terrors of conscience . . .4(1 . severe remarks on Pope 535 AUBRET gives the real reason for the fears of Hobbes the philo- sopher, 458 minutely narrates the mode in which he composed his " Leviathan," . . . 459 AUTHORS by profession, a phrase of modern origin . . 8 . original letter to a Minister from one . ib. Fielding's AUTHORS, Horace Walpole *//**" fecU to despite them their maladies . case of, stated . incompetent remune- ration of. who wrote above the genius of their own age . ill reception from the public of their valuable works M who have sacrificed their fortunes to their studies A. who commenced their literary life with ardour, and found their genius obstructed by numerous cause* who have never pub- lished their works . provincial, liable to bad pas*ions 4 78 U SI 84 87 m ** AYRE'S Memoirs of Pope,*. 318. Jit BAKER and his microscopical discoveries, n. . . 166 S67 Ker.Tbomas, his collec- tion j BALGUT, Dr. Tbos., . . . tit BARNES, Joshua, wrote a poem to prove Solomon was the au- thor of the " Iliad,- and why his pathetic letter d- : criptive of his literary cala- mities ..... At -- hints at the vart num- ber of his unpublished work* 98 BATI.E. his use of paradox . JiT hit theory of appari- tion*. n. .... Mi BAT ME. Alexander, died of to. tense application . . . IS BEHTLET. Dr., his controversy with Boyle . . . 878, 390 apology for them M ....... m his dissertation on " Phalaris* . . .880 542 Index, PAGE BENTLEY satirized by Dr. Mid- dleton 631 BIOGKAPHIA BEITANNICA in danger of being left unfinished 84 BIRKENHEAD, Sir J., a news- paper-writer . . . .416 BLACKSTONE investigates the quarrel between Pope and Addison 314 BOHUN, his unjustifiable attack on William of Wykeham . 537 BOLINGBROKE, his share in Pope's " Essay on Man," . 256 ^ quarrel with Pope 321328 his " Patriot King" secretly printed by Pope . 321 his hatred of Warburton . . 323 328 BOOKSELLERS in the reign of Elizabeth . . . .23 why their interest is rarely combined with the advancement of literature, n. 87 why they prefer the crude to the matured fruit .... 210 BOYLE, his controversy with Bentley .... 378 390 hia edition of " Pha- laris" .... 378381 his literary aids, n. . 3 SI BRAMHALL opposes Hobbes' philosophy .... 449 BHERETON, Sir W., characterised by Clarendon and Cleveland, n. ' 418 BROOKE attacks errors in Cam- den's " Britannia" . . . 492 his work unfairly sup- pressed . ... 495 his severe remarks on Camden .... ib. humorous rhymes on a horse 497 his self-defence . .498 his real motives vindi- cated 499 #>. biographical note BROWN, Dr., his panegyric on Warburton, and his sorrow for writing it, n 235 account of, n. . .273 BROWN, Kobt., founder of a sect of Puritans n. . . .518 BURNET, Bp., his character at- tacked . . . .426 PAGE BCRTON, his laborious work . S3 his constitutional me- lancholy, n 182 C^SALPINUS, originally the pro- pounder of a theory of the circulation of the blood . . 335 CALVIN'S opinions on govern- ment, n. .... 447 CALVIN, his narrowed sectarian- ism 502 CAMDEN recommends Jonson to Raleigh, n 476 his industry, and his great work the " Britannia" . 491 Brooke points out its errors 492 his works suppressed through Camden's interest . 495 his exasperation ib. his powerful picture of calumny ... 496 his quiet adoption of Brooke's corrections . . 499 CAMPANELLA and his political works . . . .351 352 CAREY, Henry, inventor of " Namby Paiuby" . . .101 " Carey's Wish," a patrio- tic song on the Freedom of Election, by the author of " God save the King," n. . 102 " Sally in our Alley," a popular ballad, its curious origin 103 author of several of our national poems . . .104 his miserable .end . . ib. CARTE, Thomas, his valuable history .... 110111 the first proposer of public libraries . . .111 its fate from his indiscretion . . . .11? CARTWRIGHT, Thomas, chief of the Puritan faction . . 505 progress of his opi- nions ..... SOS his great popu- larity . . . . . ib. forsakes his party 508509 CARYLL'S voluminous commen- tary on Job, n. . . . 392 CASTELL, Dr., ruined in health and fortune by the publication of his Polyglott, n. . . . 189 Index. :> \:\ 2:, CHARLES THE SECOND'S jest at the Royal Society, . . .311 an ad- mirer of Hobbes's ability in disputation, n. 443 CHATTEKTON, his balance-sheet on the Lord Mayor's death, n. CHURCHILL'S satire on Warbur- ton . . 2*0, 242, 243, 246 CHURCHYARD, Thomas, an un- happy poet, describes his patrons 26 his pa- thetic description of his wretched old age . . . ib. CIBBER, his easy good-nature . 306 his reasonable defence of himself, n. . . . 805 307 his " Essay on Cicero," n. 806 apology for his Life . 207 attacks on himself, 305, 308 unjustly degraded .312 CLARENDON, Lord, his prejudice against May . . . 434 ^ ^ his opinion of Hobbes's philosophy, n. . . 438 CLERGY fight in the great civil wars, n. .... 422 CLELAND, biographical note on 282 CLEVELAND'S character of a jour- nal-maker .... 416 COLE, Rev. William, his charac- ter 90 his melan- choly confession on his length- ened literary labours . . 92 his anxiety how best to dispose of his col- lections . . . . . COLLINS, Arthur, historian of the Peerage .... COLLINS, AV'm., the poet, quits the university suddenly with romantic hopes of becoming an author .... .publishes his "Odes" without success, and after- wards indignantly bunw the edition ..... _. defended from some re- proaches of irresolution, made by Johnson . . anecdote of his life in the metropolis. _ anecdotes of, when under the influence of a dis- ordered intellect . 1T1 183 Ma COLLINS, his monument described 184 two sonnets descriptive of Collins . . . .i 8ft his poetical character defended i ... CONTEMPORARIES, how they *eek to level genius . . . JOC COOPER, author of " Life of Socrates," attacked by War- burton, n. . . . . J7j COOPER. UUhop, attacked by Mar-Prolate*, n. . 613, iU COPYRIGHTS, Liu tot's payment* for .... 328 JJ3 CORBET, his humorous introduc- tion to Ben Jonson, n. . . 475 COTURAVE, Handle, fall* blind in the labour of hi* " Diction- ary" 71 COURT of Charles II. satirted by Marvell ..... 193 it* charac- teristic* . . . .414 COWEL incur* by hi* curion* work " The Interpreter * the cen- *~ sure of the King and the Com- mon* on oppoMtc principle* . IBS COWLEY, original letter from. *. 3 hi* essay* form a part of hi* confession* . . .17 describe* hi* feeling* at court A. bio melancholy attributed to his ' Ode to Itrutiit," by which he incurred the dUjtrace of the court .... hi* remarkable lamenta- i tion for having written poetry hi* Epitaph compoied by II II himself CRITIC, poetical, without My taste, how he contrived to criti- cise poem* . . . H ' CRITICISMS. Illiberal, come of It* consequence* tat*d . 140 CROSS attack* the Koyal Society 944 146 CBOCSAZ dittect* Pope'* M Ewiy on Man" . . . . CLBLL, and hi* publication at Pope'* letter* . -.''-' D-A vKMA.vr.hJ* poem of " OomU- bert" - history of It* com- position, . . . 544 Index. PAGE D'AVENANT, its merits and de- fects . . . 405408 a club of wits sa- tirize it 409 and its author . 412 and occasion it to be left unfinished . . .413 DAVIES, Myles, a mendicant au- thor, his life .... 30 DECKER quarrels with Ben Jon- son for his arrogance 475 487 ridicules him in his " Satiromastix" . 482487 DEDICATION, composed by a pa- tron to himself, n. DEDICATIONS, used in an ex- traordinary way, n. DE LOLME'S work on the Consti- tution could find no patronage, and the author's bitter com- plaints 30 30 200 relieved by the Literary Fund, n. . . . 201 DENHAM falsely satirized, n. .429 DENNIS, John, distinguished as " The Critic" . . . .52 his " Original Letters " and " Remarks on Prince Arthur," his best pro- ductions ..... anecdotes of his 52 brutal vehemence . curious caricature of his personal manners . a specimen of his anti-poetical notions, n. his frenzy on the Italian Opera acknowledges that 57 he is considered as ill-natured, and complains of public neglect ib. more the victim of his criticisms than the genius he insulted , . . .58 his insatiable vengeance toward Pope . 286 his attack on Addison's "Cato" 315 his account with the bookseller Lintot . . .331 DRAKE, Dr. John, a political writer, his miserable life . 11 DRAYTON'S national work, " The Polyolbion," ill received, and the author greatly dejected . 210 angry preface ad- dressed " To any that will read it" 211 PAGE DRUMMOND of Hawthornden, his love of poetry . . .213 conversation with Jonson 475 DRYDEN, in his old age, com- plains of dying of over-study 204 his dramatic life a series of vexations . . . 205 regrets he was born among Englishmen . . 206 ' remarkable confession of the poet . . . . ib. vilified by party spirit 427 compares his quarrel with Settle to that of Jonson with Decker, n. . . .477 DUNCIAD, Pope's collections for . 278 early editions of, n. . 283 rage of persons sa- tirized in, n 284 satire on naturalists in' 342 DUNTON the bookseller satirized by Swift . . . .430 DYSON defends Akenside . . 265 EACHARD'S satire on Hobbes and his sect, n 439 EDWARDS, Thomas, author of " Canons of Criticism" .261 biographical notice, n. 532 anecdotes of his cri- tical sagacity, n. . 262 263 origin of his " Canons of Criticism" .... 532 EVANS, Arise, a fanatical Welsh prophet, patronised by War- burton, n 240 EVELYN defends theRoyal Society 340 EXERCISE, to be substituted for medicine by literary men, and which is the best, n. . . 68 FALSE rumours in the great Civil War . . . .421 FARNEWORTH'S Translation of Machiavel . . . .84 FELL, Dr., an opponent of the Royal Society . . . 350 ungenerous to Hobbes 450 rhymes descriptive of his unpopularity . . .451 FIELDING attacks Sir John Hill, 368369 FILMER, Sir R., writes to esta- blish despotism, n. . . . 449 FOLKES, Martin, President of the Royal Society, . . . . 364 Index. 545 FOLKES attacked by Sir John Hill, n 366 FULLER'S "Medicina Gyinnas- tica," n 71 GARTH, Dr., and his Dispensary 429 GAY acts as mediator with Pope and Addison . . . 320 his account with Lintot the bookseller .... 330 GIBBON, Ed., price of his copy- right . . . GILDEN supposed by Pope to have been employed by Addi- son to write against him .310 GLANVILL a defender of the Royal Society . . . . 344 GLOVEB, Leonidas, declines to write a Life of Marlborough, n. 325 GOLDSMITH'S remonstrance on illiberal criticism, from which the law gives no protection . 142 GKANGER'S complaint of not re- ceiving half the pay of a sca- venger 85 GBEENE, Bobert, a town wit, his poverty and death . . . ss awful satirical address to, n. . . .119 GREY, Dr. Zachary, the father of our commentators, ridiculed and abused .... 104 the probable origin of his new mode of il- lustrating Hudibras . . ft. Warburton's double-dealing with him, n. . 259 GUTHRIE offers his services as a hackney-writer to a minister 8 HACRETT executed for attacks on the church n. . . . gig HANMER, Sir T., his edition of Shakspeare, n. . . 242, n. 258 HARDOUIN supposes the classics composed by monks in the Middle Ages . . . 249 252 HARRINGTON and his " Oceana" 449 HARVEV, Dr., and his discovery of the circulation of the blood 835 HARVEY, Gabriel, his character 117 his device against his antagonist, n. .119 _ his portrait . 121 severely sati- rised by Nash for his prolix periods 122 HABVEY, Gabriel, cannot be en- dured to be considered as the son of a rope-maker ~ his pretended sordid manners - his affectation of Italian fashions ~.. ~ his friends ri- diculed . MCI . t , - his pedantic taste for hexameter verses, Ac. 127 ~ -- his curious re- monstrance with Nash . . m - -- his lamenta- tion on invectives . . his books, and Nash's. suppressed by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury for their mutual virulence HAWKSWOHTH, Dr., letter on presenting his MS. of Cook 1 * Voyages for examination, the publication of which over- whelmed his fortitude and intellect HENLEY, Orator, this buffoon an indefatigable student, an ele- gant poet, and wit . -- hit poem of " Esther, Queen of Persia* . - - sudden change in his character - seenu to have attempted to pull down the Church and the University . - - some idea of hi* lectures, n. 120 bis project* to supply a Universal School . fl. *pedrou of hi* buffoonery on *olemn occasions M hi* -Defence of the Oratory," . . once found his match in two disputant*) specimen of the diary of his " Oratory Tran*. action** reer, n. clows of hit c*. hi* character . - parallel bet' him and Sir John Hill . . HENRY, Dr., the Historian, the tale of his work, on which he had expended most of his for- tune and his life, stopped, and JT X 546 Index. PAGE himself ridiculed, by a conspi- racy raised against him . 136 HENRY, Dr., caustic review of his history, n ib. HERON, Robert, draws up the dis- tresses of a man of letters living by literary industry, in the con- finement of a sponging-house, from his original letter . .81 HERRICK, Robert, petulant in- vective against Devonshire . 215 HILL, Aaron, and his quarrel with Pope . . . .290 HILX, Sir John . . .362 396 parallel between him and Orator Henley . . 383 his great work on Botany, n. his personalities . 364 attacks the Royal Society 365 his Inspector . 367 war of wit with Fielding and Smart . 370372 attacks Wood- ward, who replies with some ridiculous anecdotes, n. . .372 - proposes himself as keeper of the Sloane collec- tion 374 manufactures Travels, n 374 -his death . . 375 HOBBES contemns the Royal So- ciety 342 praises D'Avenant's poem of'Gondibert" . .408412 his quarrels . . .436 peculiarities of his cha- racter 437 . his sect .... 438 his real opinions . . 439 his " Leviathan " .440 448 feared and suspected by both parties, n. 442 no atheist, n. . . 445 his continual disputations 448450 his terror of death . . 451 the real solution of his fears 452 his disciples in litera- ture, n 455 his pride . . . 456 his mode of composi- tion, n 459 PAGE HOBBES his contented poverty, and consistent conduct . . ib. characteristics of his writ- ings 461 his passion for mathe- matics 461 leads to a quarrel with Dr. Wallia . . . 465 473 HOME and his tragedy of " Dou- glas" 79 HOWEL, nearly lost his life by excessive study . . .74 HUME, his literary life mortified with disappointments . .202 wished to change his name and his country . . .204 his letter to Des Maiseaux requesting his opinion of his philosophy .... 202 HURD, Bishop, biographical note on 253 imitates Warburton's style, n 269 Icon Libellorum. See A thence Dri- tannicw. JOHNSON, Dr., his aversion to Milton's politics . . . 425 JONES, Inigo, ridiculed by Ben Jonson, n 477 JONSON, Ben, his quarrel with Decker 475 his conversation with Drummond of Haw- thornden . . . 475, 535 his general con- viviality, n 475 his play ' The Poetaster" . . .476 481 his powerful satire on Decker . . .482 487 his bitter allu- sions to his enemies . 487 488 KENNET'S, Bishop, Register and Chronicle . . . .87 KENRICK, Dr., a caustic critic, treats our great authors with the most amusing arrogance . 141 an epigram on himself, by himself, n. . . 142 KING, Dr., his payments as an author ..... 332 biographical notice of, n. 358 ridicules the Transac- tions of the Royal Society 358, 361 Index. 517 384 KING, Dr., aids in attacking - his satirical Index to Bentley's Characteristics, n. LAWSON, Dame, a noted female Puritan, . . . . 519. 525 -LOEE, Nat., his love of praise .213 LELAND, the antiquary, an ac- complished scholar . . . i 72 his " Strena," or New Year's Gift to Henry VIII. ; an account of his studies, and his magnificent projects . .17* doubts that his labours will reach posterity . .175 he values "the furni- ture " of his mind ... ft, ; his bust striking from its physiognomy . . .177 the ruins of hig mind discovered in his library . ib. the inscription on his tomb probably had been com- posed by himself, before his insanity . . . . .178 thoughts on Eloquence 255 LIBELS abounded in the age of Elizabeth .... 503 LIGHTFOOT could not procure the printing of his work . .182 LINTOT'S account-book . 828 333 LITERARY PROPERTY, difficulties to ascertain its nature . . 1 history of ib. value of, n. ib. LITERARY quarrels from personal motives .... 529 539 LLOYD'S, Bishop, collections and their fate . . . .98 LOGAN, the history of his literary disappointments . . .78 dies broken-hearted . <6. his poetic genius . . 80 Lowrn, Bishop, attack on preten- . sions of Warburton, n. . 235246 n. 262268 M'DoNALD, or Matthew Bramble, his tragical reply to an inquiry after his tragedy . . .77 MACDIARMID, John, died of over- study and exhaustion . . 74 MALLET, his knowledge of Pope and Warburton, n. . . . 242 . his attacks on Warbur- ton, 271 MALLET employed by Bollng.'* * broke to libel Pope . . ft. ' anecdote of his egotism 324 employed by the Duchew of Marlborough on a Life of the Duke, n. . , . ... M-MAHON and his anti-social phi- losophy, . MEKASSAR. Ben Israel, his trea- tise " De Remrrectiooe Mortuo- rnm,"*. US MiCKLEl pathetic addrws to his muse *07 ' his dlMppotataMMto after the publication of the " Lnsiad " induce him to wish to abandon his native country >08 MIDDLETON. Dr. Conyers, quarrel with Bentlejr . . . -. 810 ____________ and with V.'arburton . . .88* 548 Index. PAGE MILTON'S works the favourite prey of booksellers . .17 vilified by party spirit .... 424 425 MORTIMER, Thomas, his com- plaint in old age of the prefer- ence given to young adven- turers 75 MOTTEUX, Peter, and his patron 30 MUGHOUSE, political clubs, n. . 32 NASH, Tom, the misery of hig literary life . . . .23 threatens his patrons 24 silences Mar- Prelate with his own weapons . . 116 his character as a Lucianic satirist . . .120 his " Have with you to Saffron Walden," a singular literary invective against Ga- briel Harvey . . . -120 NEEDHAM, Marchmont, a news- paper writer in the great Civil War . . . .420 NEWSPAPERS of the great Civil War .... 415,422 NEWTON, of a fearful temper in criticism n 140 NEWTON'S " Optics" first favour- ably noticed in France . . 84 OCKLEY, Simon, among the first of our authors who exhibited a great nation in the East in his " History of the Saracens" 163 his sufferings ex- pressed in a remarkable pre- face dated from gaol . .187 dines with the Earl of Oxford ; an original letter of apology for his un- courtly behaviour . . . 189 exults in prison for the leisure it affords for study n. . . . . . ib. neglected, but employed by ministers . . 196 OLDMIXON asserts Lord Claren- don's " History" to have been interpolated, while himself fal- sifies Daniel's "Chronicle," n. 10 PALERMO, Prince of; and his Palace of Monsters, n. . . 243 PAPER-WARS of the Civil Wars .... 415,422 PAGE PARKER, Bishop of Oxford, his early career . . . 394 395 the intolerance of his style attacks Milton and Marvell in the 397 399 streets 401 his posthumous portrait of Marvell .... 402 PARR, Dr., his talent and his egotism, n 236 his defence of War- burton, n 239 in revenge for Bishop Kurd's criticism, publishes his early works of irony . .531 PATIN, Guy, his account of Hobbes, n 445 PATTISON, a young poet, his col- lege career . . . .98 his despair in an ad- dress to Heaven, and a pathe- tic letter . . . .101 PENRY, one of the writers of Mar- Prelate tracts n. 505, n. 51S his career . . . 520 his execution . .521 his petit ion and protest, n. 521 rhymes on his death . ib. PHALAKIS, Epistles of . . 378 PHILLIPS asperses Pope . .316 PLEKCE, Dr. T., his controversies 537 POETS, mediocre Critics are the real origin of mediocre . .212 Nat. Lee describes their wonderful susceptibility of praise 213 provincial, their situa- tion at variance with their feel- ings 214 POPE, Alex., his opinion of" the Dangerous Fate of Authors" . 214 the Poet Prior . 216 POPE, Alexander, his high esti- mation of Warburton . 257, 273 Warburton's edition of his works . 263,270 his miscel- laneous quarrel . . 278, 291 collects libels on himself, n. ... 278 literary stra- tagems 280 early neglect of his " Essay on Criticism," n. 280 -the real author of the " Key to the Lock," n. . 280 Index. 549 POPE, Alexander, hostilities be- tween him and others . . 282 ~ the finest character-painter, n. . . 283 his personal sufferings on Gibber's satire . 285 his first in- troduction to Dennis, n. .286 1 narrative of the publication of his letter to C urU .... 292,300 his attacks on Cibber . . . 301, 312 his con- demned comedy, . . 301, 307 quarrels with Addison . . . .313 urges an attack on his Cato, n. . .315 - believes him to have employed adverse critics, n. . . .316 317 satirizes Ad- dison as Atticns, n. . .317 his last inter- view with Addison . 318,320 surreptitiously prints Bolingbroke's " Patriot King" 821 his book- selling account with Lintot . 329 his earliest satire .... 833 335 hia satires and their effects . . . 636 PRIDE AUX'S " Connection of Old and New Testament" . . 84 PRIMCE'S " Worthies of Devon" &. PRIOR, curious character of, from a Whig satire . . . 218 felicitated himself that his natural inclination for poetry had been checked .217 attacked for bis political creed 429 PROCLAMATION issued by James I. against Cowel's book, " The Interpreter," a curious docu- ment in literary history . 19S PHYNNE, a voluminous author without judgment, but the cha- racter of the man not so ridi- culous as the author . .146 his intrepid character 147 . his curious argument against being debarred from pen and ink, n. . . . 14S PHYWNE, his interview with Laud*"* in the Tower, n. . H9 had a good deal of cun- ning in his character, n. .140 grieved for the Revo- lution in which he himself had been so conspicuous a leader . us his speeches as volu- minous as his writings, n. . m seldom dined, . . 143 account of his famous " Histriomastix" ... ft. Milton admirably cha- racterises Prynne's absurd learning, n. . . . .to. how the " Histriomasl tix" was at once an elaborate work of many years, and yet a temporary satire the secret history of the book being a* extraordinary as the book It- elf in PURITANS, origin of their name, * 604 RALEIGH, Sir W., an opposer of Puritanism, n. . . . 40$ REFORMATION, the, under Eliza- beth 501 RIDICULE described . . .in it creates a fictitious personage .... ft. a test of truth . S64, J67 RITSON. Joseph, the late poetical antiquary, carried criticism to insanity 41 RITSON, Isaac, a young Scotch writer, perishes by attempting it by the efforts of hit n to exist Pen his extemporary rhapsody descriptive of his melancholy late . . .78 ROYAL SOCIETY, the . . IS*, Ml opposition when first estab- lished . .... a. RurraEADl Lift. of Pope. . Jto Rt sa WORTH die* of a broken heart,' having Deflected his own affairs for hit M Historical Collections' . . . . as BTMKB'I distress in forming hk RVVES, Eliza, her extraordinary literary exertions and melan- choly end .... 10T 550 Index. PAGE SALE, the learned, often wanted a meal while translating the Koran, n 189 SAVAGE the Poet employed by Pope to collect materials for notes to the Dunciad, n. . . 279 SCOT, Reginald, persecuted for his work against Witchcraft . 198 SCOTT, of Amwell, the Quaker and poet, offended at being compared to Capt. Macheath by the affected witticism of a Reviewer .... 143 his extraordinary ''Letter to the Critical Reviewers," in which he enumerates his own poetical beauties . . . ib. SELDEN compelled to recant his opinions, and not suffered to reply to his calumniators . 198 refuses James I. to pub- lish his defence of the " Sove- reignty of the Seas" till Gro- tius provoked his reply . . ib. opinions on bishops, n. . 502 SETTLE, Elkanah, the ludicrous close of a scribbler's life . . 146 the hero of Pope's earliest satire . . 333 manages Pope burnings . . . .334 SHAFTESBURT, Lord, on the origin of irony, n. . . . 436 his character of Hobbes, n 437 his conversa- tion with Hobbes in Paris on his work, " The Leviathan," n. 441 SHCCKFORD, " Sacred and Pro- fane History Connected" . 85 SLOANE, Sir Hans, his peculiari- ties of style . . .358360 SMART and his satire, " The Hilliad" . . .371372 SMOLLETT confesses the incre- dible labour and chagrin he had endured as an author . 13 SOCRATES ridiculed by Aristo- phanes 266 SOUTH'S poignant reflection on the Royal Society ... . 342 SPRAT'S History of the Royal Society .... 337 339 his aversion to Milton . 424 STEELE, his paradoxical charac- ter 168 satirized by Swift . 429 431 PAGE STEELE, why he wrote a laugh- able comedy after his " Chris- tian Hero" .... 169 his ill choice in a wife of an uncongenial character . 170 specimens of his " Love Despatches," n. ib. finely contrasts his own character with that of Addi- son, n 172 introduces Pope to Ad- dison 314 manages a friendly inter- view between them after a long disseverance . . .319 his political creed loses him Addison's friendship . .433 STEEVENS, G., satirizes Sir John Hawkins .... 535 STILLINGFLEET, Bishop, his end supposed to have been has- tened by Locke's confutation of his metaphysical notions, n. 140 STOCKDALE, Perceval, his cha- racter an extraordinary in- stance of the illusions of writers in verse 218 draws a parallel be- tween Charles XII. and him- self 224 STOWE, the chronicler, petitions to be a licensed beggar . STRUTT, the antiquary, a man of genius and imagination - his spirited letters on com- mencing his career of author- ship ..... STUART, Dr. Gilbert, his envious character ; desirous of destroy- ing the literary works of his countrymen 20 131 projects the " Edinburgh Magazine and Review ; " its de- sign ib. his horrid feelings ex- cited by his disappointments . 132 raises a literary con- spiracy against Dr. Henry . 135 dies miserably . . 139 STUBBE and his attacks on the Royal Society. . . .346 his early history . . 347 influenced by Dr. Fell in his attacks, n. . specimens of them . 350 356 SYSTEMS of Opinions, often fal- lacies in practice . . .461 Index. 551 PAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS once inundated our literature with worthless works ..... 39 TEMPLE, Sir W., Essay on Learning .... 378 THEOBALD, his payments from, and literary arrangements with Lintot .... 331332 TICKELL'S Homer . . .816 TOLAND, a lover of study . . 167 - defends himself from the aspersion of atheism or deism ..... 150 - accused of an intention to found a sect . . 189 had the art of explain- 166 ing away his own words - - a great artificer of title- pages ..... - his " Pantheisticon " . - projects a new office of a private monitor to the minister ..... -- of the books he read and his MSS. n. - - his panegyrical epitaph composed by himself . . 167 - . Locke's admirable fore- sight of his character . 168 . _ _ the miserable payment for his life of literary labour . 832 TONSON, Jacob, bickerings with Dryden, ..... 171 _ . his bookselling career i&. UD ALL, JOHN, a writer in the Mar- Prelate controversy n. 505, n. 518 __ _ his character and career . . 631-623 WAGSTAFTE, Dr., his character of Steele, n. . * 29 ' _____ _ , his satirical works, n. . 4>1 WAKEFIELD, Gilbert, his works unsuccessful because of his poli- tics, n ...... * 36 WALLIS, Dr., his curious narr tive of a dialogue between Hobbes and the Countess of Devonshire, n. __ _ . his quarrel witn Hobbes . 4 5 ____ his power of decipnei ing secret writing . 41 PABI WALLIS, Dr., his real opinion of Hobbes, n ..... 479 WALPOLE, Horace, his literary character . . . . 41 instance! of his pointed vivacity against authors, n ..... why he at- tacked the fame of Sydney, and defended Richard HI. . 46 his literary mortifications, acknowledged by himself from his original letters 47 bow Gray treated him when invited to Strawberry-hill, n. extraordi- M nary letter of, expressing Us contempt of his most celebrated contemporaries . . .49 WALSINOIIAM , Sir Francis, origi- nally favours the Puritans, n 508 WABBCHTON, dishonest criticism on Gray's " Hudibras* . . 106 and his quar- rels. .... 238277 his early career . 239 his traffic In dedica- tions 241 . his contemptuous criticism on Pope and Addison 241 . his miscellaneous reading .... 245. 246 his lore of conjecture 247 Divine Legation. n. .... 260. 2T . unhappy In his la- bours, n. .... 262 - his coarsene** of in- vective n. . 224. M8 his contemptuous criticisms . . conjectural criiicUm on Shakupeare . . 20 _ his edition of Pope . . . . . . 21 his literary rpcrnlu 274 defends Tope ig ainrt Dolingbroke . Influenced Pop* through his religion . . his opinion of I lobbe* . 414 offends Edwards In . 632 552 Index. PAGB WARD, Dr. Seth, his double opi- nion of Hobbes" Works n. .465 WARD, Dr., his quarrel with Dr. Pierce 536 WHARTON, Henry, sunk under his historical studies . .74 WHITGIFT, Archbishop, his con- troversies with Cartwright the Puritan, and ultimate friend- ship with him, n. . . . 509 WILLIAM of WTKEHAM attacked byBohun . . . .537 WOOD, Anthony, his character 94 an apology for the " Athena Oxonienses" 92 WOOD, Anthony, the writers of a party whom he abhorred fre- quently refer to him in their own favour . . . .99 defines Mar- veil's style .... 392 gives Bishop Parker's early history . .394 his prejudice against Lake . . . .423 WOODWARD the actor attacked by Hill . . . 372, and note WORKS, valuable, not completed from deficient encouragement 84 WOTTON'S reflections on learning 378 THE END. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. '