WORKS BY AUSTIN DOBSON Crown SvOf buckram^ ds. each, FOUR FRENCHWOMEN. With Four Portraits. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIG- NETTES. In Three Series, crown 8vo, buckram, 6j. each; also Fine-paper Editions of theTHREE Series, pott 8vo, cloth, 2s. net each ; leather, 3^. net each. A PALADIN OF PHILANTHROPY, AND OTHER PAPERS. With Two Illustrations. SIDE-WALK STUDIES. With Five Illustrations. London : Chatto & Windus OLD KENSINGTON PALACE AND OTHER PAPERS c c t t o c CC' C C t € t * * jean-baptiste cant-hanet (otherwise clery) [see CLfiRY S * journal WL^'jnv..j.'.>,jiH > ^->..- : .'. ^^vi'-t... V,;. .:■.■■ ' ■■ ' " ,7, ' .. v OLD KENSINGTON PALACE AND OTHER PAPERS BY AUSTIN DOBSON Nimium nee laudare nee laedere J % ' ',> « LONDON CHATTO & V/INDUS 1910 CHtsW^K PRESS <■ ^THARJ-B* \yHrrTINGHAM AND CO TOOKS COURT, c'hANCERV LANE, LONDON. TO L. J, MAXSE EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL REVIEW THESE PAPERS UNDERTAKEN MAINLY AT HIS INSTANCE ARE NOW WITH ALL GOOD WISHES INSCRIBED 252450 ► PRE FA TOR Y NO TE As implied in the Dedication^ nine out of the following essays appeared in the ''National Review ' during 1 909- 1 o. The remaining paper ^ * Clery's fournal^ which was published in the ' Quarterly Review' for fuly 1909, is included by the kind permission of Mr. fohn Murray, In a few places the text of the book has been modified or expanded; and several notes ^ with- held in periodical form ^ are here added. Austin Dobson. August 1910. ILLUSTRATIONS Jean-Baptiste Cant-Hanet, otherwise Clery. After the portrait by H. Danloux, engraved in 1798 by Philip Audinet* Frontispiece Old Kensington Palace. From J. B. Homann's print of 1725 (?) to face page 4 The Prison of the Temple. From Clery's * Journal ' to face page 29 1 Plan of the Second Floor of the Towers. From Clery's * Journal' to face page 293 Plan of the Third Floor of the Towers. From Clery's * Journal ' to face page 295 Facsimile Letters. From Clery's * Journal' to face page 297 ^ Reproduced from Lenotre's * Last Days of Marie Antoinette,* 1907, by permission of Mr. William Heinemann. I CONTENTS PAGE Old Kensington Palace i Percy and Goldsmith a8 Mr. Cradock of Gumley 53 Madame Vig6e-Lebrun 82 Sir John Hawkins, Knight .... 112 Laureate Whitehead 140 Lyttelton as Man of Letters . . . 173 Chambers the Architect 207 Clery's Journal 238 The Oxford Thackeray 271 Appendix A (The Prison of the Temple) . 291 Appendix B (The Last Messages) . . . 297 Index 299 OLD KENSINGTON PALACE ONE of the many projects of that indefatigable philanthropist, Mr. John Evelyn, of Sayes Court, Deptford, was a scheme for suppressing London smoke. Walking in the Palace at White- hall, not long after the Restoration, in order to refresh himself with the sight of his Royal Master's illustrious presence (the expression is his own), he was sorely disturbed by the presumptuous vapours which, issuing from certain tunnels or chimneys in the neighbourhood of Northumberland House and Scotland Yard, did 'so invade the court,^ that all the rooms, galleries, and places about it were fill'd and infested with it; and that to such a degree, as men could hardly discern one another for the clowd, and none could support.' Indeed that high and mighty Princess, the King's only sister, * Madame ' herself, accustomed as she had been to the purer air of Paris, was grievously offended, both in her breast and lungs, by this ^ i.e., the open space at the back of the Banqueting House (now the United Service Museum). B 2 Old Kensington Palace ' prodigious annoyance,' which not only sullied the glory of his Majesty's imperial seat, but en- dangered the health of his subjects. These 'funest' circumstances set busy Mr. Evelyn a- thinking; and presently gave rise to his learned tractate * Fumifugium ; or, the Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London dissipated,* which he in- scribed to King Charles II, and in which he dealt summarily with the ' hellish and dismal cloud of sea-coal,' by recommending that all brewers, dyers, lime-burners, soap-boilers and the like inordinate consumers of such fuel, should be dismissed to a competent distance from the city, and moreover — as might be anticipated from the future author of *Sylva' — that every available vacant space should at once be planted with sweet-smelling trees, shrubs and flowers. ' Our august Charles ' — always a compliant monarch — highly approved these opportune suggestions, and a Bill was drafted accordingly. But there the matter rested. A century later, when Evelyn's pamphlet was re- printed, nothing had been done : while numerous glass-houses, foundries and potteries had added their baleful tribute to the ' black catalogue.' Nor can it be affirmed even now that the evil is entirely of the past, since, not many months ago, the London County Council were still assiduously Old Kensington Palace 3 concerting measures for what Evelyn terms the ' melioration of the aer.' ^ To the reader who recalls the title of this paper, the connection of Kensington Palace with the smoke of London must seem as remote as the legendary relations between Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands. Yet the Whitehall nuisance was^ as a matter of fact, the proximate cause of the Palace at Kensington. If the state of things which incommoded Henrietta of Orleans had not been equally objectionable to the * asthmatic skeleton' who succeeded James II, William of Orange would never have bought Nottingham House from his Secretary of State. He could not draw breath in the * fuliginous and filthy ' atmosphere of Westminster; he was unable to *lie in Town ' ; and he was only too willing, shortly after his accession to the throne of England, to give Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham, the modest ransom of eighteen thousand guineas for a less murky ' Retirement ' in what was then the rural hamlet of Kensington. From its salu- brious gravel-pits, when he was minded to go farther afield, he could easily ride on Saturdays to his other palace by the, Thames at Hampton; and for his greater easement and solace in the ^ * Times/ 26th May 1909. 4 Old Kensington Palace conduct of State business, he immediately set about constructing that *high Causey,' or gravelled private road through the parks to Whitehall, of whose unwonted glories the old topographers are so full. 'Three coaches may pass' — says Celia Fiennes — 'and on Each side are Rowes of posts on w°^ are Glasses — Cases for Lamps w°^ are Lighted in y^ Evening and appeares very fine as well as safe for y® passenger.' To latter-day ideas, this scarcely implies blinding excess ; but ' autres temps^ autres flambeaux,^ Ralph Thoresby, the antiquary, writing under Anne, considered the illumination of a thoroughfare a matter so excep- tional as to demand a special entry in his * Diary.' King William's improvements, however, were not confined to the approaches to his abode. Sir Christopher Wren, his Surveyor-Generalof Works, added another story to Nottingham House, and considerably enlarged the upper floor; thereby — in Evelyn's opinion — converting the whole, al- though still 'a very sweete villa,' into no more than *a patch'd building,' which latter characteristic, in spite of subsequent extensions by George I and George II, it still retains. The King also appro- priated for its gallery, all the best canvases from the other royal houses, including sundry Titians, Raphaels, Correggios, Holbeins and Van Dycks. Old Kensington Palace 5 In addition, he made — or perhaps it should be Queen Mary made — 'a great collection of porce- lain/ and brought together *a pretty private library.' ^ Under George London, the famous gardener (a pupil of Charles the Second's Rose, who in his turn had studied with Andr6 le Notre), and London's partner, Henry Wise, the adjacent grounds towards Kensington High Street were laid out in the reigning Franco-Dutch fashion of trimmed hedging, figured flower-beds, and formal walks. North of the building, the improvements eventually extended to the Oxford, or, as it is now called, the Bayswater Road, occupying most of the site of the present Palace Gardens, while to the south-west was an olitory or potager for herbs and kitchen stuffs. All these things, how- ever, were more or less modified by the subsequent occupants of the Palace, no fewer than five of whom died within its walls — namely. King William and Queen Mary; Prince George of Denmark (Anne's husband); Queen Anne her- self; and George H. With the last-named, as a royal residence, its vogue ended; and it was little resorted to by George HL Consequently, apart from topography, the historic interest of the building clusters chiefly round the period from * Evelyn, * Diary/ 23rd April 1696. 6 Old Kensington Palace William and Mary to George II; and to this period these pages are restricted. The earlier years are not fruitful of anecdote; and, in addition to the references in Queen Mary's letters to her husband when in Ireland as to the progress of the works; the record of a fire which took place when they were finished; and the different functions and Drawing Rooms, there are no very vivid traces of Dutch William's occupation. Even the readily-stimulated fancy of Leigh Hunt, who lived so long in the neigh- bourhood, can but people its solitudes with spec- tral may-have-beens, since of the Temples and Burnets, Congreves and Sheffields, Priors and Dorsets, who assuredly must once have traversed its pleached alleys and tapestried chambers, or chatted in its alcoves and summer-houses, no trustworthy traditions survive. One personage alone emerges crudely from a shadowy environ- ment, and that is his 'Zarish Majesty,' Peter the Great. We know for a certainty that when he was not working as a shipwright at Deptford, or drinking peppered brandy with the Marquess of Carmarthen, or ' urging his wild career ' on a wheelbarrow through Evelyn's five-foot holly hedge, he must often — by a back door and the disguise of a hackney coach — have visited at Old Kensington Palace y Kensington the friend and admirer who paid all his expenses in England. ' The Czar is highly caressed by the King/ says a contemporary letter- writer; and it was from Kensington Palace that William carried his guest 'unbeknown' to West- minster, in order that he might survey the House of Lords through a skylight — much to the diver- sion of that august assembly. At Kensington, too, the bashful barbarian was also allowed to inspect privately, from a masked lurking-place (like the historical * Lugg ' or ' Ear ' of King James of learned memory), the evolutions of a distinguished company assembled in the King's Gallery for the birthday-ball of the Princess Anne. To the King's Gallery, then panelled with oak, and still, in part, elaborately carved by Grinling Gibbons, William had moved most of the works of art already mentioned — master- pieces, according to Macaulay, absolutely without significance to the autocrat of all the Russias. On the other hand, Peter's practical instincts were profoundly stirred by the ingenuity of the still-existing dial surrounding Norden's map of North-Western Europe over the chimney-piece, which was so contrived as to show by a pointer the direction of the wind ; and was probably as much an object of solicitude to his pulmonic host 8 Old Kensington Palace as the weather-cock at Whitehall had been to James II. One pretty story of these days remains, which we must borrow from Leigh Hunt, as it exhibits the gentler side of that volcan sous la neige whom so many of his contemporaries found frigid and inaccessible. Once, when William was hard at work with his secretary, a timid tap was heard at the door. (We must imagine it to have been rather low down on the panels.) 'Who is there?' asked the King. 'Lord Buck,' replied a clear, childish treble, so the door was opened. The intruder was little Lord Buckhurst — a four-year- old son of the Lord High Chamberlain, the Earl of Dorset — who was anxious for his Majesty to be horse to his coach. ' I've wanted you a long time,* explained this small petitioner. And there- upon the hooknosed and saturnine hero of the Boyne and Namur, to the surprise of his com- panion, < taking the string of the toy in his hand, dragged it up and down the Long Gallery, till his playfellow was satisfied.'^ In such an incident one recognizes to the full the dual personality of the man who poured out all the more lovable side of his character in his familiar correspondence ^ Wraxall, in his • Memoirs,' gives a different and less picturesque version of this story. Old Kensington Palace 9 with his faithful friend, Bentinck, and who was carried insensible from the deathbed of the wife he mourned so intensely as to make those about him tremble for his understanding. 'There is no hope of the Queen,' he cried despairingly to Burnet J and 'from being the happiest, he was now going to be the miserablest creature upon Earth.' In the whole course of their marriage, he declared, 'he had never known one single fault in her.' . . . ' During her Sickness, he was in an Agony ' . . . ' fainting often, and breaking out into most violent Lamentations; When she died, his Spirits sunk so low, that there was great reason to apprehend, that he was following her; For some Weeks after, he was so little Master of himself, that he was not capable of minding business, or of seeing Company.' Seven years later his own end came, and when they laid him out, 'it was found that he wore next to his skin a small piece of black silk ribbon. ... It contained a gold ring and a lock of the hair of Mary.' ^ And this was he whom those who were not his intimates regarded as ' the most cold-blooded of mankind! ' Queen Mary's figure is one of the more attrac- tive shadows of old Kensington. But not many ' These words, quoted from Macaulay, have the addi- tional interest of being the last in his History. lO Old Kensington Palace memories of this excellent woman and magnani- mous wife haunt her former habitation. In the Gallery which still goes by her name, now piously restored to its ancient aspect and appointments, you shall see Kneller's portraits of herself and her husband, together with the same artist's whole- length presentment of William's northern visitor, a Hkeness scarcely as prepossessing as the Nattier at Versailles, for all that it is alleged to render faithfully ' his stately form, his intellectual fore- head, his piercing black eyes, and his Tartar nose and mouth.' Hard by is the narrow Closet where, when the Queen thought death at hand, she shut herself up to burn and sort her papers, which — we know from Evelyn — were in faultless order, ' to the very least of her debts, which were very small, and everything in that exact method, as seldom is found in any private person.' Like Miranda, in Law's * Serious Call,' 'she never inquired of what opinions they were, who were objects of charity'; and Evelyn adds that she left special injunctions — unfortunately discovered too late — that there should be no * extraordinary expense at her funeral.' In his assertion that she, if possible, outdid Queen Elizabeth, there is some- thing of the * full voice which circles round the grave 'j but Burnet, whose opportunities of study- Old Kensington Palace 1 1 "a ing her character had been exceptional, scarcely falls behind, when he affirms that 'she was the most universally lamented Princess, and deserved the best to be so, of any in our Age, and in our History/ The * Queen's Closet,' once reduced to the rank of a kitchen, but now re-decorated and * extra-illustrated ' by a series of pictures of Old London, together with the adjoining ' Queen's Private Dining Room ' and ' Queen's Privy Chamber,' are as closely connected with Queen Anne as with her sister. Indeed, it needs no great stretch of imagination to decide that in one or other of these apartments must have taken place that final engagement of 1710 between ' Mrs. Morley ' and * Mrs. Freeman,' in which the beleaguered Queen succeeded in vanquishing her past friend and present antipathy by the simple process of repeating mechanically, ' You desired no answer, and you shall have none ! ' — an irreducible verbal rampart against which tears, taunts, and expostulations were equally ineffectual. Whether it was here also that ' Atossa's ' husband actually went down on his knees (if he ever did so!) imploring his Royal Mistress to take back his imperious consort into favour, is not easy to say, the precise data not being forthcoming. And 1 2 Old Kensington Palace at this point one may interpose a consideration not always present with those who write glibly on the glories of the so-called 'Augustan Age.* Queen Anne's epoch and Queen Anne's domestic economy are two different things — the one amply exhibited, quivering with light and colour and movement; the other resourceless, monotonous, and very imperfectly chronicled. While the Ring in Hyde Park was filled with the circling chariots of the beau-monde ; while Sir Plume was gallant- ing Belinda ; while the coffee-houses were buzzing with the latest essays of Mr. Spectator, and the ' Gazettes ' daily bringing tidings of new victories by Marlborough; while Swift and Pope were writing, and Oxford and Bolingbroke were wrang- ling ^ — when, in short, the ' Age of Anne ' was in full swing and activity, the royal figure-head her- self — the * Anna Augusta ' of the official Muse — whose tastes were the table, and whose books were cards, must often have been yawning wearily behind her fansticks at St. James's, or nursing her hereditary gout in a dreary isolation at Kensington. At Kensington, which she much affected, her existence, especially during her widowhood, can ^ They sometimes wrangled in her Majesty's presence, but the exception proves the rule. Old Kensington Palace 13 certainly not be described as animated. Indeed, one observer, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, who visited her betv^reen 1706 and 1708, vi'hen the Union vv^as a- making, and ^ Est-il-possiblef was still alive, goes so far as to speak of the place even then as 'a perfect solitude.* . . . *No Court Attenders ever came near her,' he says. * I never saw anybody attending there but some of her Guards in the outer Rooms, with one at most [or more?] of the Gentlemen of her Bedchamber. Her frequent fits of sickness, and the distance of the place from London, did not admit of what are commonly called Drawing-Room nights, so that I had many occasions to think that few Houses in England belonging to persons of Quality were keept in a more privat way than the Queen's Royal Palace of Kensington.* This is, no doubt, the testimony of a solitary witness, but it is not the result of a solitary experience; and since Clerk was at least thrice admitted to in- formal audiences, he must have seen her Majesty — as, indeed, his account makes clear — in all the uncomely disarray of mental lassitude and physical infirmity.^ We may therefore fairly conclude that, taking her periodic attacks of illness into consideration, his report does not inaccurately ^ * Memoirs,' 1892, 72, 62. 14 Old Kensington Palace describe her dull, unvaried life. For this reason, the records are scanty from which one can draw any definite deductions. That she touched Johnson for the evil (without effect) we know ; but this was probably at Whitehall. That in 17 13 she held an installation of Knights of the Garter at Kensington, we have the evidence of the picture by Peter Angelis, now hanging in the Private Dining Room. We know also that she laid out the upper, or northern garden, achieving such a transformation of the ' unsightly Hollow ' of the Bayswater gravel-pit, as won the approval of Addison. * To give this particular Spot of Ground the greater Effect,' he says, * they [Lon- don and Wise] have made a very pleasing Con- trast, for as on one side of the Walk you see this hollow Basin, with its several little Plantations lying so conveniently under the Eye of the Be- holder, on the other side of it there appears a seeming Mount, made up of Trees rising one higher than another in proportion as they approach the Center.' ^ The most memorable existing relic of Queen Anne's residence, however, is the stately red and yellow ' Orangerie, or artificial Green- house,' which Wren built for her to the north- Spectator,' No. 477. The Mount and Gravel-pit are shown on Rocque's plan of 1754. Old Kensington Palace 1 5 east of the Palace ; and which, after years of dis- use and neglect, is now restored to something of its earlier beauty. That it was occasionally used for balls and suppers is a discredited tradition but it is not unreasonable to assume, with Mr. Law's very helpful * Historical Guide,* that if Her Majesty did not actually * take counsel ' on its stone terrace, she sometimes ' took tea * there, while she watched her gardeners at work on the geometric plots which then occupied the space in front.^ Of late years, this space was encumbered by unsightly glass-houses and forcing- frames ; but these have now given way to a neat Dutch garden on the Hampton Court model, duly equipped with fish-tank, dwarf walls, flagged footways and birds in box.^ Another addition which Queen Anne owed to Wren was the red brick and marble alcove, now re-erected at Marl- borough Gate. Like the Orangery, it bears the Queen's monogram; and it was long a familiar 1 See frontispiece. ^ Anne, it appears, did not share her brother-in-law's ultra-Batavian tastes, for she pulled up all the boxwork which London had planted for King William at Hampton. London himself also fell out of her good graces ; and his partner, Wise, became her horticulturist-in-chief. (Blom- field and Thomas, 'Formal Garden in England,' 1892, pp. 78, 76.) 1 6 Old Kensington Palace landmark on its first site at the foot of the Dial Walk, with its back to the High Street, and its face to the south front of the Palace. In his valuable book on Kensington, Mr. W. J. Loftie repeats a tradition that the alcove * was used by the French refugees as a kind of altar for the celebration of an open-air mass during the Revolu- tion, the numbers of the congregation being so great that no building available was large enough to receive them.' ' The Delight of her Friends and Allies, and the Terror of her Enemies,' as Anne is loyally styled in a contemporary broadside, quitted this life at Kensington early on the morning of Sunday, 1st August 1 71 4. The same * authority' gives her ' last Dying Words,' as follow : * Being ask'd on her Death-bed (by the Dutchess of Somerset) how she found herself; [she] reply'd, ^ Never worscy I am going; but my hearty Prayers are for the Prosperity of this poor Nation: and at the same time the Tears trickled down her Cheeks.' And so she died. In the afternoon George Louis, Elector of Brunswick-LUneburg, was proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland, thus beginning his thirteen years' reign. His unfortunate wife had been locked up in the Castle of Ahlden since 1694; but when he ascended what he was made Old Kensington Palace 17 to describe in his first speech as ' the throne of his ancestors,' he brought with him a sufficient assort- mentof his faithful Hanoverians — male and female — to make that arduous Alpine feat supportable. * England was too big' for this * honest, dull, Ger- man gentleman,' as (with an indulgence which is purely conventional) my Lord Chesterfield calls him. ' His views and affections were singly con- fined to the narrow compass of his Electorate.' He cared little for his English subjects, and did not even trouble to learn their tongue. 'He knew nothing, and desired to know nothing,' said Dr. Johnson : ' did nothing, and desired to do nothing.' Consequently, he contributed nothing to the legend of the Palace in which he dwelt. If, during his reign, the grounds at Kensington be- came more favoured as a Saturday promenade, where, in Tickell's deathless lines : Each walk, with robes of various dyes bespread. Seems from afar a moving tulip-bed, Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow. And chintz, the rival of the showery bow, — this was due, not to him, but to ^Madame la Princesse^ his clever daughter-in-law, Caroline of Ansbach, the poet's ' darling of the land,' who popularized the place by resorting to it with her maids of honour. c 1 8 Old Kensington Palace But though his Majesty failed to enliven the site, he materially enlarged the structure. Up to his time, the South Front with its pilasters and Portland vases, which Wren had erected for William and Mary, had been, and remains, its most prominent architectural feature ; but under George the First, William Kent added that Eastern facade, whose louring pediment frowns across the Round Pond towards the distant Serpentine. For the same monarch Kent also designed and ornamented the Drawing Room, the Cupola Room, and the King's Drawing Room and Privy Chamber. It is customary to regard the protege of Burlington and the hete-noire of Hogarth as a legitimate laughing-stock; but in some respects he has been laughed at overmuch, a fate which has befallen others of his con- temporaries. In any case his work (he also re- decorated Wren's Grand Staircase and added its popular painted figures) can now be better seen than of yore: and it may well be that modern criticism will do him greater justice. He was more successful as a decorator than as an architect; and he suffers by contrast with Wren, whom he supplanted. He is at his gaudiest in the niches and statues and ceiling of the Cupola Room. Many of the pictures now hanging in the various Old Kensington Palace 19 state apartments, and recruited from Hampton Court and elsewhere to illustrate the history of the Palace, are — it should be added — of the highest interest. Here, long assigned to Greuze, is the Pompadour of Vanloo's pupil, Drouais, a Pom- padour of fading charms and weary grace, but still retaining a certain porcelain delicacy ; here are the four Louis's— XIV, XV, XVI, and XVIII — the last substituted, we fancy, for a former full-length portrait of the great Frederick (with an appropriate battle in the background) by his court painter, Antoine Pesne; and here are the flower-pieces of Queen Mary's favourite, Jean- Baptiste Monnoyer. Here, again, is a replica of that * Death of Wolfe' by West, which Nelson could never pass in a print-shop window ; here is * dear Mrs. Delany,' by Opie; here also is West's funny apotheosis of the sons of George III, the Princes Octavius and Alfred (the little Octavius is being introduced to his departed brother by an angel !), of which its engraver. Sir Robert Strange, gave a proof to Mrs. Delany's friend, Fanny Burney. The visitor will, however, seek in vain for those famous performances which, in Thackeray's story, roused the enthusiasm of George Warrington, when he was carried by his time-serving uncle to make his bow at Court: — the * Venus' or 20 Old Kensington Palace Titian; the *St. Francis adoring the infant Saviour,' by Rubens ; Van Dyck's * Charles I,' and the ' Esther before Ahasuerus ' of Tintoretto. The last 'noble picture' in which, says Thackeray, *all the figures are dressed in the magnificent Venetian habit,' you may still study at Hampton Court ; while King Charles, in black and silver, and Henrietta, in amber, have their harbourage at Windsor.^ But the other two — unless by the Titian is intended the copy of that in the Uffizi, also at Hampton — have been removed to other resting-places. The author of * The Virginians ' had no doubt good contemporary warranty for locating these masterpieces at Kensington in 1757,^ as pictures were freely translated from palace to palace. Of this Hervey's malicious ' Memoirs ' afford a fa- miliar illustration. In the Great Drawing Room there hung a * monstrous Venus,' attributed in- differently to Michelangelo, Jacobo da Pontormo, and Sebastiano del Piombo, which was a special 1 Pepys saw them, in 1667, in the Matted Gallery at Whitehall. * Probably he relied on Dodsley's * London and its En- virons,' 1761, iii, 271-3, where these four pictures are men- tioned as decorating the ' Great Drawing Room ' and the * Painted Gallery.' Old Kensington Palace 21 target of opprobrium to Hogarth and the oppon- ents of the ' Black Masters.' During one of the King's annual absences from England, Queen Caroline, whose taste in art was more refined than her husband's, succeeded, with the conniv- ance of her Vice-Chamberlain, Hervey, in smug- gling some of the more objectionable decorations of this particular apartment to Windsor and Hampton, and in replacing them by more attrac- tive subjects. King George, who had returned from his Electoral distractions in an extremely bad temper, at once commanded that all the old pictures should be brought back. Partly to please the Queen, partly in the interests of art, Hervey ventured to expostulate, and was incontinently snubbed in the roundest royal manner. The King preferred his own taste ; and did not choose that the Queen and the Vice-Chamberlain should pull his palace to pieces in his absence. * Would his Majesty,' interjected Hervey insidiously, *have the gigantic fat Venus restored too ? ' ' Yes, my Lord,' was the reply. ' I am not so nice as your Lordship. I like my fat Venus better than any- thing you have given me instead of her.' To which, if there were more than one pertinent re- joinder, there was none expedient to a politic Court official. Eventually, with much difficulty, 22 Old Kensington Palace the pictures were reinstated ; and the ' monstrous Venus' still figures in Dodsley and the other authorities as one of the glories of the Great Drawing Room. It is also permissible to regard it as identical with the ' Venus and Cupid ' which at present hangs in the Prince of Wales's Drawing Room at Hampton, and is supposed to be a copy from Michelangelo by his imitator, Bronzino. The incident of the Venus occurred in 1735, when King George II had been eight years King of England. In 1 737 Queen Caroline, that as- tute and devoted helpmate who ruled her lord by professing to be ruled by him, died at St. James's; and for nearly twenty-three years more her hus- band continued to reign, bereaved but not incon- solable. No one can possibly contend that his Majesty was a very worshipful sovereign, even if we admit that he was abler than his father ; that he was not ill-educated; that he had some good instincts, and that he spoke English correctly, though ' with a bluff Westphalian accent.' In a frigid, constrained way he was well-bred, and he had the minor virtues of method and punctuality. Avarice seems to have been his ruling passion. Whether he was bad-hearted at bottom, whether he was really brave — are still open questions. * // est fou^ said his father, who hated him, ' mats Old Kensington Palaee 23 il est honnete homme^ This is Hervey's version, but in Horace Walpole's ' Reminiscences,' the word is ^fougueuxy and whether the second syl- lable was omitted by the one or added by the other, is a further matter of debate. For the rest, King George was selfish, self-satisfied, unsym- pathetic and uninteresting. It may be that he would have appeared to greater advantage in the never-published ' Memoirs ' of Bolingbroke and Carteret ; but it is unlikely. He himself did not expect laudation from either quarter. The fore- going characteristics are mainly derived from Chesterfield, who painted him after * a forty years' sitting'; and who, though his Royal Master dubbed him ' a little tea-table scoundrel,' and a * dwarf-baboon ' ^ (terms which indicate gifts of vituperation not hitherto scheduled), was, never- theless, a keen and truthful delineator. These things being so, it is needless here to lard the lean record of his private life, dignified or undignified, by petty details from the ' Suffolk Correspondence,' 1 Hervey's portrait of Chesterfield is not more com- plimentary. * He was very short, disproportioned, thick, and clumsily madej had a broad, rough-featured, ugly face, with black teeth, and a head big enough for a Polyphemus' ('Memoirs ofthe Reign of George II,' 1848, i, 96). One scarcely recognizes him whom Johnson called the ' 'vainqueur de la terre ' ! 24 Old Kensington Palace or the chronique scandaleuse of * coffin-faced * John Hervey — that * Curll of Court,' as Pope calls him among other things, not without reason. Leigh Hunt light-heartedly fills his barren spaces with irrelevant gossip of the Georgian maid of honour — of Pitt's sister Anne,' as like him as ^ deux gouttes de feu ' ; of the charming and sensible Molly Lepel, to whom Hervey was already married; of the two handsome Bellendens, Madge and Mary; of Miss Hobart (afterwards Lady Suffolk) and all that * lieta Brigata ' whom John Gay sings so lustily in his cheery * Wel- come to Pope from Greece.* The author of the ' Old Court Suburb ' also manages to spin a long chapter out of the cruelly-clever 'Kensington drama ' in which Hervey depicts the effect of a report of his own death upon the little Court circle — a document wholly admirable in its re- morseless analysis of character, and its disclosure of Court perfidies, banalities, formalities, but far too long for our present purpose, which, after all, is no more than to describe the now vacant scene of action. The structural additions made by Kent for the first George were continued under the second, and consisted mainly of a west wing intended as a nursery. But the alterations in the surrounding Old Kensington Palace 25 grounds, due in great measure to the initiative of Caroline of Ansbach, were more radical and more extensive. After William's London and Anne's Wise, came the Bridgeman and Kent of their successors, under whose auspices stretches of lawn were substituted for * scroUed-work ' parterres, and groves and avenues took the place of * verdant sculptures ' and * square precision.' Although Bridgeman still clipped his hedges, it was ' with a difference'; and he adopted, if he did not originate, the 'ha-ha' and sunk fence, the pic- torial effect of which was practically to annex the outlying country to the enclosure. With Kent and the next regime. Queen Anne's trim gardens to the north and south successively disappeared; while to the east, tree-shaded walks and vistas into the park, began to open in all directions. Slopes were softened; hollows gently lifted; where now towers the Albert Memorial, a revolving tem- ple rose from its 'specular Mount'; the Round Pond was evolved; the string of West Bourne Pools became the Serpentine (which, a literal bard remarks, is not ' serpentine '), and the Broad Walk was laid. Thus, by gradual and almost im- perceptible degrees, came into existence those full-leaved and umbrageous Kensington Gardens, of whose ' lone open glade ' and ' air-stirred forest. u,^- 26 Old Kensington Palace fresh and clear,' Arnold in the sixties found it possible to sing: In the huge world, which roars hard by. Be others happy if they can! But in my helpless cradle I Was breathed on by the rural Pan, lines that are as far removed from Tickell's ' glossy damasks ' and ' showery bow ' as the landscape garden is from the formal, or the romantic school from the classical. But Matthew Arnold and the sixties are also a hundred years away from the death of George II, the date at which this paper ends. It would be easy to speak of some of the later tenants of the place — of the Duke of Sussex, who here as- sembled his fine library ; of ill-starred Caroline of Brunswick, who, for a brief space, aired her peculiarities in its precincts; and of Queen Victoria's parents, the Duke and Duchess of Kent. To Queen Victoria herself, who was born in one of its rooms on the south-east, underneath the King's Gallery, we owe its present con- dition and partial accessibility. Her late Majesty determined that the house in which she first saw the light should not be allowed to fall to pieces, as, not so very long ago, seemed only too probable; and at her Diamond Jubilee, it was Old Kensington Palace 27 decided by Parliament that it should be properly put in order, and that its state apartments, which since October 1760, when King George II died, had been closed and unoccupied, should be opened to the public. The repairs and restora- tions, which were most conscientiously and judi- ciously effected, completely realize the intention of the work, namely, the creation of * an object- lesson in history and art.' These words are taken from the Preface to the ' Kensington Palace ' of Mr. Ernest Law — an unpretentious little hand- book which supplies, from official sources, not only much indispensable information as to the develop- ment of the building, but a full and interesting description of its present appearance and contents. PERCY AND GOLDSMITH * T) RELATE and Poet' — these are the allitera- X tive titles with which the Rev. Thomas Percy is dignified by his latest biographer, Miss Alice C. C. Gaussen. That he was a prelate may perhaps be held to * explain itself — as Goldsmith would say — since he died Bishop of Dromore. But it cannot be pretended that, either as priest or theologian, he was a prelate of marked distinc- tion. No doubt, with many of his day, he was an accomplished scholar. He prepared a key to the New Testament; and he re-translated the * Song of Solomon.' But he left no monumental work on the scale of Lowth or Butler ; he printed but few sermons ; and as in Overton and Relton's ' History of the Church in the Eighteenth Cen- tury' he is not even mentioned, it must be assumed that he took no conspicuous part either in Church affairs or in the Evangelical revival. As a poet pure and simple, his reputation — never very high — is now depressed. His 'famous' lyric *0 Nancy, wilt thou go with me?' — of which the motive is 28 Percy and Goldsmith 29 to be found in Nat. Lee, and the opening couplet echoes Allan Ramsay — even if it were more original, could scarcely be held to rank as high as the pastorals of his friend Shenstone. In reality — for all that Burns called it a * charming song ' — it is not much better than the generality of those Orphic ditties which were nightly quavered or warbled, by Beard or Mrs. Bland, from the * bloom-coloured' orchestra at Vauxhall. Of the * Hermit of Warkworth,' a later and more aca- demic efiFort, it is sufficient to quote the verdict of Wordsworth, certainly an unprejudiced critic, who condemned its diction as scarcely distinguish- able from the glossy and unfeeling language of its day — a condemnation which must be held to be confirmed by Johnson's doubtful praise of it as * pretty enough.' With regard to the ' Friar of Orders Gray,' familiar in most anthologies as Percy's most individual imitation, it has not only the ill-fortune to come after Goldsmith's * Edwin and Angelina,' which it resembles; but it shares with that now somewhat discredited masterpiece the disadvantage of being neither completely freed from the old formal vocabulary, nor wholly sur- rendered to the unlessoned utterance of natural emotion. In addition to which, it is, as its author allows, and as Goldsmith calls it, a * cento.' 30 Percy and Goldsmith To what then, it will be asked, is Percy's un- questioned position in English literature to be attributed? The answer is, that it must in large measure be traced to the singularly opportune ap- pearance in 1765 of his 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.' It was not alone that this collec- tion — based primarily on a ragged MS. book, rescued from a fire-lighting housemaid — consisted of fragments of hitherto unknown ballad min- strelsy, for these of themselves might have proved unmarketable: but coming as it did between the visions of Macpherson and the forgeries of Chat- terton, and being moreover cleverly adapted to eighteenth-century tastes by its editor's connect- ing links and continuations, it supplied precisely what many of the public were thirsting to receive. Tired of the conventional cup of Pope, they were yet unfitted for Castalian over-proof, and the Percy infusion cheered without inebriating. To Johnson's sturdy conservatism, it is true, the new- fangled fashion of archaic artlessness seemed — in spite of his friendship for Percy — no better than ' lifeless imbecility ' ; but to the coming genera- tion, aflame with new ideas — to Coleridge and Southey, to Wordsworth and Scott, the 'Reliques,' even in their * ballad -an d-water ' stage, offered by their opposition to almost every canon of the Percy and Goldsmith 31 reigning but not ruling Muse, a new and un- travelled world of imaginative song. Listen to Scott as a boy: * I overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all who would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, I could scrape a few shillings to- gether, I bought unto myself a copy of these be- loved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book so frequently, or with half the enthusiasm.' Since Scott so wrote, the original ' Percy folio ' has been published,^ with considerable readjust- ment of the Bishop's reputation, inasmuch as it is now generally admitted that the older frag- ments are immeasurably superior to the editorial restorations. Nevertheless, as critics have pointed out with perfect justice, it may be doubted if, without Percy's contemporary' medium ' — to usea studio term — these fragments would have secured their eighteenth-century currency. Whether they establish or do not establish Percy's personal poetic claim, their influence at a critical moment upon the study of our ancient English poetry, and the part they played in the preliminary stages of the subsequent revival inaugurated by the 'Lyrical Ballads,' cannot now be questioned or gainsaid. ^ * Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript,' edited by John W. Hales and the late F. J. Furnivall, four vols., 1867-68. 32 Percy and Goldsmith This may appear a grudging estimate of the book that Sir George Douglas, in his brief ' Pre- face * to Miss Gaussen's labours, rightly terms an epoch-making work. Yet it may be observed that even Percy himself could hardly have been dis- turbed by it, since, either out of real modesty or false pride, he seems never to have cared greatly to be regarded as w^hat M. Alceste in the * Misan- thrope ' calls a miserable auteur. From the first he shrank shyly from needless publicity. His earliest efforts were studiously anonymous; and, at all events in later life, he professed to attach but slender importance to his more secular labours of the pen, the *Reliques' in particular. The Bishop OF Dromore, he told the advocates of that an- thology in 1784, must not be connected with the 'sins and follies of his youth.' The Mitre had displaced the Muse; and he had come to doubt whether he had not wasted his time 'in bestow- ing any attention on a parcel of old ballads.' ^ ^ This is confirmed by Miss L. M. Hawkins, who writes that when her father pressed the bishop to revise the * Reliques,' he declined, saying * that he had infinitely more pleasure in his success in having obtained from the Government, money to build two churches in his diocese, than he could ever derive from the reception of his "Reliques."' ('Anecdotes,' etc., 1822, i, 314.) Percy and Goldsmith 33 These are pronouncements which should find scant favour with those who believe the literary calling to be to the full as reputable, and even as responsible, as the clerical; and they would be more persuasive, if we did not know that the Bishop was quite contented that his son and nephew should devote their energies to following his lead. But this episcopal attitude on his part leaves us free — before entering on our immediate purpose — to limit ourselves to some preliminary account of him as a person of importance in his day, as an associate of persons of importance, and, minor foibles excepted, as a very worthy, learned, and dignified gentleman. He was born at Bridgnorth in Shropshire, in a picturesque old house at the bottom of the Cart- way — his grandfather and father being grocers. No less he claimed to be descended from the ancient Earls of Northumberland, and * had his claims allow'd ' by the family. After being edu- cated at the local grammar-school, he obtained an exhibition, and matriculated at Christ Church. While at Oxford he became known to Gray, whose earliest English production, the * Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,' was printed by Dodsley in 1 747, during the first year of Percy's Oxford residence. He seems even to have begun 34 Percy aud Goldsmith recollectionsof Gray which, however, got no farther than a few lines; and, like the story in * Hudibras,' broke off abruptly — in the middle of the Peter- house water episode. At this date, from a note of Gray, Percy appears to have called himself Piercy. B.A. in 1750, and M. A. in 1753, he was presented by his College in the latter year to the living of Easton Maudit in Northamptonshire, to which, three years later, his neighbour Lord Sussex added the living of Wilby, both of which benefices he held until 1782, when he became Bishop of Dromore. At Easton Maudit, where {like Sterne and the ' Vicar of Wakefield') he had a thatched parsonage, and a pleasant garden to boot, with a turnpike-road hard by leading straight to London, he took up his abode in 1756, intending to divide his time, in the true ^'id-dulcius-otio-litterato spirit, ' between books and pleasure.' As yet, the ' peculiar chosen female ' — for he uses the objec- tionable term favoured, among others, by Borrow and the excellent Mr. Collins of * Pride and Pre- judice ' — had not revealed herself; and a bachelor life seemed more desirable than marriage. But one cannot with impunity play at hay-making with the *fair sex' (here he would have come under the condemnation of Swift!) in vicarage closes; and in April 1759, he married the Nancy Percy and Goldsmith 35 of his choice, Miss Anne Gutteridge, a very amiable, and, from her portrait, not unprepossess- ing young lady, who made him an excellent wife of the Mrs. Primrose type, albeit she did not com- plete the programme of his song by ' receiving his parting breath,' since he survived her for some years. This, however, is to anticipate. At Easton Maudit six children were born ; and, in spite of an admitted incompatibility between the Muses and matrimony, he dabbled in literature. At the end of 1 76 1 he put forth 'Hau Kiou Choaun,' a translation of a Chinese novel which he dedicated to the Countess of Sussex; in 1762 succeeded ' Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the Chinese ' ; and in 1763 some versions of Runic Poetry. He also occupied himself in editions, never issued, of Buckingham and Surrey, — the latter a duty sub- sequently undertaken by Dr. Nott. In the sum- mer of 1764 he was visited at Easton Maudit by Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Williams. At this time Percy was meditating the ' Reliques,' and tradi- tion represents him as pacing a little terrace since known as ' Dr. Johnson's Walk ' and discussing with his illustrious, but not entirely sympathetic, friend the publication of the collection. Johnson stayed several months at Easton Maudit, occupy- 36 Percy and Goldsmith ing himself, among other things, in reading right through Ubeda's * Felixmarte of Hircania ' — the ' stiff and dry ' style of which can scarcely have increased the liveliness of his environment — and in feeding Mrs. Percy's ducks. He liked the lady, who, in a tempestuous moment, he declared had more sense than her husband ; and he left behind him, as a memento, an ink-horn which is still preserved by Percy's descendants. With 1765 came the first edition of * Reliques,' already sufficiently dealt with. This led to the compiler's introduction to Sir Hugh Smithson, created, in the next year, first Duke of North- umberland. He had married Lady Betty Seymour, daughter of Lord Hertford, a very breezy, un- conventional, and good-humoured grande dame^ for whose amusement Goldsmith privately printed his * Edwin and Angelina,' and who herself figures in Walpole's ' Titled Authors ' as the gifted composer of some bouts-rim^s on Lady Miller's Batheaston muffins. Percy later became tutor to the Duke's younger son, Lord Algernon Percy, and was subsequently appointed chaplain to the family. This * unexpected favour from Heaven ' must have sadly interrupted the Easton Maudit domesticities. For upwards of six months every year during fifteen years or more, he was absent at Percy and Goldsmith 37 Alnwick or Northumberland House on duty, and when, in 1769, he became chaplain to George III, this period was increased by enforced attendance at St. James's. Mrs. Percy herself was made nurse to Queen Victoria's father, the little Duke of Kent, which no doubt brought her to Kew; but, in the main, she cannot have seen much of the husband who continued to assure her (by letter) that she was ' the most beautiful and worthiest of women, the most excellent manager, and the friend of the poor and whole human race.' At Alnwick the duties of Dr. Percy, as we may now call him, for he took his D.D. degree at Cambridge in 1770, were as multifarious as those of Scrub in the 'Beaux' Stratagem.' Besides being chaplain and tutor, he was librarian, secre- tary, genealogist, political agent, landscape gar- dener, art-collector, and ballad-maker-general. His functions must often have carried him to London, where, in 1768, he had been made a member of the famous * Club,' and, though occasionally 'tossed and gored ' by Johnson, he appears, on more than one occasion, to have succeeded in being as rude to Johnson as Johnson was rude to him. At the chaplain's table at St. James's he was frequently able to entertain his friends; and his name often occurs in contemporary memoirs as being 38 Percy and Goldsmith present at dinners and social gatherings. But through all his activities he still kept his eye on preferment, his enforced separation from his wife and children causing him, in his own words, * innocently to make use of such human means as prudence suggested for the establishment of himself and his family in a more independent position ' — a roundabout utterance which may be roughly translated into working the interest of his Ducal patron for all it was worth. His efforts were crowned with success in 1778, when he became Dean of Carlisle. Of his residence at Carlisle few memories survive, although Johnson was told that he was ' very populous ' ; and its chief event was the death from consumption of his only son Henry, a youth of much charm and promise. Then, in 1782, he was transferred to the see of Dromore in Down — 'the smallest independent diocese in Ireland,' but notable from the fact that one of his predecessors had been Jeremy Taylor. In 1770 he had followed up his early tastes by translating, still anonymously, Mallet's ' Northern Antiquities.' This, to which the poem of the ' Hermit of Warkworth' succeeded in the ensuing year, constitutes his last important literary work, for during the long period of his Irish episcopate, he published nothing but a sermon, and an ' Essay Percy and Goldsmith 39 on the Origin of the English Stage, particularly on the Historical Plays of Shakespeare,' 1793. His biographer's pages for this date are pleasantly sprinkled with gossip respecting * Peep-of-Day- Boys ' and ' Defenders,' and the excursions and alarms of French invasion. Through all these things, the Bishop's figure flits fitfully, if not vividly ; and the record is varied by visits to Bath, to Brighton, and to London, where, in the last- named year, he sat a silent member of the ' Club ' at its first meetmg after the execution of Louis XVI, when, out of fifteen, Charles Fox was the only one unmoved. In 1795 his eldest daughter, Barbara, was married to Mr. Isted of Ecton, a delightful Northampton house, to which Percy often retired from distressful Ireland. Six years later a second daughter, Elizabeth, became the wife of the Hon. Pierce Meade, a son of Lord Clanwilliam. At Dromore, we must imagine the Bishop feeding his swans, gardening a la Shen- stone, playing with his dogs, or, in the absence of Mrs. Percy, erecting a coloured bust of her in the garden, which by night became an enchanted, or illuminated statue. In 1806 she died; and two years afterwards also died the nephew who had succeeded to his son's place in Percy's affections. By this time the Bishop's eyesight, long failing. 40 Percy and Goldsmith had gone altogether, and in a few years more, on 30th September 181 1, he passed away suddenly in the eighty-third year of his age. He was buried by the side of his wife under the transept of Dromore Cathedral. Looking at Sir Joshua's portrait of Thomas Percy, in nightcap, gown, and bands, pressing the famous folio to his breast — a keen, lean, handsome face, reminding one not a little of Richardson's Prior — it is difficult to seize upon any definite traits beyond intelligence and refinement. As to the clerical characteristics suggested by the cos- tume, no very explicit report is forthcoming. There is nothing of parish work in his North- ampton cure; nothing of his ministrations as chaplain at Alnwick Castle; nothing at Carlisle but a praiseworthy intervention in the sale of objectionable books; nothing at Dromore but pastoral benevolence and a tolerant spirit, to which we may subjoin from his epitaph, as probably in- controvertible, that he discharged his duties ' with vigilance and zeal, instructing the ignorant, reliev- ing the necessitous, and comforting the distressed ' — in short that he was an exemplary specimen of the well-bred and well-to-do Georgian clergyman, with a considerable leaven of the courtier and diplomatist. In his social aspect he seems to have Percy and Goldsmith 41 been urbane and accessible ; but it is not recorded that he shone as a raconteur or diseur de bons mots, Fanny Burney, an acute observer, who met him at Bath in 1791, found him * perfectly easy and unassuming, very communicative and, though not very entertaining, because too prolix . . . other- v^rise intelligent and of good commerce.' ^ That he had a hot temper is admitted ; and it is also to be inferred that he was distinctly master in his own house — a fact which helps to explain his adoration of his wife. For the rest, he was a scholar and book-lover, with a fine taste and con- siderable imitative faculty, added to a special in- clination towards genealogy and antiquarian studies. On the whole, what detaches itself most permanently from the review of his 'highly re- spectable' personality, is his compilation of the ' Reliques' and his friendship with Goldsmith and Johnson. As regards Johnson, beyond what has been said, Boswell has told us all that is needful. But Goldsmith's name reminds us that our attention was first drawn to the new biography of Percy by the hope that it might include fresh particulars concerning his other great con- * * Diary and Letters,' 1905, v. 31. Fanny thought Mrs. Percy * uncultivated and ordinary/ but * a good creature.' 42 Percy and Goldsmith temporary. Nor have we been altogether disap- pointed, although our first note must be one of dissent. In 1761, as already stated, Percy pub- lished his maiden literary efFort, the anonymous version, partly by himself and partly by 'a Mr. Wilkinson,' of a four-volume Chinese novel, w^hich — after the fashion of those eighteenth-century scholars v^ho took their Greek from Madame Dacier — had been * done into English ' from the Portuguese. Forster, w^riting perhaps less cauti- ously than usual, thought that Goldsmith's old interest in the flovs^ery people had been revived by the performance upon vv^hich * his dignified acquaintance Mr. Percy ' had been engaged. But as three-fourths of Goldsmith's * Chinese Letters ' appeared in the 'Public Ledger' in 1760, Miss Gaussen is driven to the conclusion that * the idea was suggested to him (Goldsmith) ' by reading Percy's book in manuscript. He may even have seen it in type, for Shenstone says in September 176I5 that it had been 'printed months ago, but [was] not to be published before winter.' ^ Our point, however, is, that it is quite unnecessary to connect Goldsmith's labours with Percy's in any ^ Nichols's * Illustrations,' etc., 1848, vii, p. 222. As a matter of fact, * Hau Kiou Choaun^ or the Pleasing His- Percy and Goldsmith 43 way. For as early as 14th August 1758, three years before, Goldsmith had written to his friend Bob Bryanton of Ballymulvey, touching Chinese matters in general, and a particular Chinaman whom he should soon make * talk like an English- man'; and it is admitted that Goldsmith only met Percy for the first time on 21st February 1759. Dates are stubborn things ! There is, in truth, no reason why 'The Citizen of the World ' should have been set in motion by any English predecessor. Goldsmith most probably and reasonably had in mind the ' Lettres Persanes ' of Montesquieu. But more than nineteen years ago, we ventured to indicate, as a plausible causa causans for the * Chinese Letters,' that sprightly epistle which, in 1757, Horace Walpole published through Graham, * from Xo Ho [Soho?], a Chinese philosopher at London, to his friend Lien Chi^ at Peking.' This, which rapidly went through several editions, was noticed very briefly in the'Monthly Review' for May 1757, at which date, by an odd coincidence. Goldsmith was actually working for its pro- tory,' appeared late in 1761 (* Gentleman's Magazine, xxxi, 605), after all Goldsmith's Chinese letters had been published in the * Public Ledger,' — the last being dated 14th August in that year. 44 Percy and Goldsmith prietor, Ralph GriflRths ; and Lien Chi Altangi is one of Goldsmith's Orientals. 'May 1757' has, besides, the advantage of being before, instead of after, August 1758, when Goldsmith wrote to Bob Bryanton, Such things, of course, are but 'trifles at best,' — as Goldsmith said of a later comparison with Percy. Still, whether it be ours or another's, in these hasty biographical days, a false inference cannot be killed too soon; and we decline to believe that Forster really held that Goldsmith owed anything to Percy. On the con- trary, in the opening chapter of his second book, Forster distinctly suggests that the major part of Percy's works, 'Reliques ' and all, may have originated in a remark made by Goldsmith in his very first effort in the 'Monthly Review* for April 1757. On the next point we must express our grati- tude to Miss Gaussen. One of the illustrations of her volume is a rare portrait of Goldsmith. It is not indeed unprocurable, as we ourselves possess a copy. There is at least another in the British Museum; and it occasionally appears in second-hand catalogues. But Miss Gaussen's fac- simile is usefully authenticated in Percy's very legible script, as ' a Charicature of Dr. Goldsmith etched by Mr. Bunbury.' To Bunbury it has Percy and Goldsmith 45 usually been attributed, but without evidence. It is now plain that this is one of what the ' Jessamy Bride ' described to Prior as her brother-in-law's ' caricatures.' There are two other known sketches of Goldsmith by Bunbury, both etched by James Bretherton; and the question remaining to be decided is, which of these constitutes that like- ness which the above-mentioned Mrs. Gwyn also referred to as giving Goldsmith's head * with ad- mirable fidelity, as he actually lived among us.' One, a square plate, shows a stolid, inanimate, and bourgeois face ; the other, in the ' Haunch of Venison' — though no doubt grotesquely treated — is, despite its bulbous forehead, long upper lip, and receding chin, instinct with character, viva- city, and eager good-humour. Forster, who knew nothing — or at all events says nothing — about the other sketches, triumphantly contrasts this latter with Sir Joshua's ideaHzed portrait as an instance of * the distinction between truth and a caricature of it.' But a slight caricature is often more veracious than a flattering likeness; and we cannot help believing that the 'Haunch of Venison' drawing presents the authentic and everyday Goldsmith familiar to his friends. In any case, it is much better known than Brether- ton's other etching; and it is given besides on 46 Percy and Goldsmith Kearsly's title-page, not as a burlesque, but as a ' head.' Percy's first meeting with Goldsmith in Feb- ruary 1759 took place at the old Temple Ex- change CofFee-house, near Temple Bar, whence, by the way. Goldsmith had written his letter to Bob Bryanton of Ballymulvey. Here they were both guests of Percy's early friend, Dr. James Grainger of the * Sugar Cane,' Goldsmith's col- league on the 'Monthly Review.' They met again at Dodsley's on the 26th ; and in a day or two (3rd March) Percy paid that historical call at 12, Green Arbour Court, Little Old Bailey, which is in all the biographies. Two years later, on 25th May 1761, Percy visited Goldsmith at 6, Wine Office Court (which by a slip of the pen he calls Wine Licence Court) ; and they afterwards inspected the paintings at the Great Room in Spring Garden, where they must have seen Hogarth's famous ' Sigismunda ' and ' Gate of Calais.' Percy is also alleged to have given Goldsmith some material for a maga- zine he was editing. But it can scarcely have been, as suggested, the 'Monthly Review,' which he never edited, and had long ceased to write in; and it must have been either the 'British' or the 'Lady's Magazine,' with which Percy and Goldsmith 47 he was at this date connected. Six days later (31st May) both Percy and Johnson visited Goldsmith together. Here again the meeting is historical; and Percy adds to his memorandum of the incident: 'N.B. — This is the first visit Johnson ever made to Goldy.' It is further stated that during June 1761 Percy frequently saw Goldsmith, 'who was then engaged in writing his "Vicar of Wakefield." ' If there is Percy's warranty for this last particular, it is a material confirmation of the conclusion, already arrived at by internal evidence, that Goldsmith's novel was being composed in 1 761-2, in the October of which latter year a third share in it was sold to Benjamin Collins, the Salisbury printer. Miss Gaussen prints two unpublished letters from Goldsmith to the Percys. One, undated, but obviously written in or after 1768, is a simple notelet asking Mrs. Percy for two masquerade tickets, in which his eagerness leads him into grammatical confusion; the other precedes a projected visit to Easton Maudit, Percy's North- ampton vicarage, a visit which, most probably, was never paid. They must have offered him the use of a room in their absence, for he asks whether there are any prying, troublesome neigh- 48 Percy and Goldsmith hours; whether there is a coach down, and the fare; whether he can take his books (which looks as if he was engaged on the 'Animated Nature'); whether he can get milk, meat, tea, and coals in the place — and so forth. In 1763-4-5 Percy sees him frequently at Islington, and in his first lodgings on the Library Staircase in the Temple. In 1768 Percy is at the first night (29th January) of 'The Good Natur'd Man,' and he was also at the ninth, or third author's night. Then a passing estrangement took place between them over the Chatterton forgeries, in which Goldsmith fer- vently believed. We get glimpses again of Percy's visiting Goldsmith at Edgware, where he was writing his Natural History, and at his last home in Brick Court. Here, on 21st September 1772, Percy found him very ill in bed, and already resorting to Dr. James's Fever Powders. He was present, in January 1773, when Goldsmith read *She Stoops to Conquer ' to the Club, the play then bearing the name of *The Old House, a New Inn ' ; and he subsequently attended not only a rehearsal, but also that famous first night, for an account of which his biographer, we think, relies perhaps too exclusively on the romanced recollections of Richard Cumberland. He went again on the Percy and Goldsmith 49 fourth night, having a seat in the Northumber- land box. Here are the last of Percy's Goldsmith memoranda : Thursday, loth March [1774]. 'Dr. Gold- smith called on me — we dined together at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street: tete-a-tete^ 'Monday, 28th March, I called on Dr. Gold- smith whom I found ill of a fever.' * Sunday, 3rd April, I saw poor Dr. Gold- smith, who was dangerously ill. He just knew me.' ' Monday, 4th April, I went into Sussex. Poor Dr. Goldsmith died this day: having been in convulsions all night. On my return, on Satur- day, 9th April, I saw poor Goldsmith's coffin; he was buried that day at five o'clock in the Temple Church.' In the foregoing brief recapitulation of the re- lations of Percy and Goldsmith, one incident has been designedly reserved for this place. After Chatterton's death in 1770, Goldsmith 'one rainy day' called on Percy at Northumberland House, and begged him to become his biographer. He dictated to Percy ' many interesting particulars relating to his life,' with dates, and he subse- quently handed to him several pieces in manu- script ' among a parcel of letters and papers, some 50 Percy and Goldsmith written by himself, and some addressed to him, with not much explanation.' What ensued must always be regarded as a painful story of dilatory dealing. For one reason or another, at Goldsmith's death, four years later, Percy had done nothing. Next came a scheme for a Life by Johnson, and an edition of Goldsmith's works. Difficulties however arose concerning the inclusion of ' She Stoops to Conquer.' Johnson, obstructed at the outset, speedily forgot all about the matter; and what was worse, lost many of the papers lent to him by Percy. Malone, who jackalled for him, lost others. Ten years afterwards, under a galvanic impulse of compassion for Goldsmith's starving relatives, Percy hastily issued proposals for an edition of Goldsmith's ' Miscellaneous Writings.' In the leisurely collection of material more time elapsed; but nothing was effected towards the preparation of a biography. Then Dr. Thomas Campbell, rector of Clones in Monaghan, offered his services as editor of what had been brought together. From the spring of 1790 to the autumn of 1 79 1 he was engaged on his task. His outline memoir was then submitted to the Bishop, who decorated it with copious notes, which were afterwards worked into the text by his chaplain, Dr. Henry Boyd, the translator of Dante, Percy and Goldsmith 5 1 who also touched up Campbell's style. This took two more years. In 1795 Campbell died; vexa- tious disputes arose with the trade as to the exact proportion of the profits which were to go to Goldsmith's representatives; and 1796 arrived * with everything still unsettled.' By this date Goldsmith had been dead for more than one and twenty years ! When at length an unsatisfactory arrangement was made with the booksellers, to whom (in the words of George Steevens) Gold- smith's works had all along been * staple com- modities,' and a new editor had been appointed in the person of Cowper's friend, Samuel Rose, fresh complications took place. Finally Percy, who now discovered that he *had particular reasons for not being himself Goldsmith's oiten- sible biographer,' withdrew altogether from the scheme ; and in 1801 the much-manipulated * Memoir' was issued, without his concurrence, at the head of four volumes of Goldsmith's 'Miscellaneous Works.' The gain to Goldsmith's relatives, few of whom were then alive, proved not only belated, but contemptible. That Percy and Johnson should have so mis- managed and neglected a labour of love which either could have performed with special advant- ages, is deplorable. But there are compensations. 52 Percy and Goldsmith We can scarcely regret the circumstances which prompted the conscientious labours of Prior and Forster, and attracted the kindred pen of Wash- ington Irving. To-day we probably know a great deal more of Oliver Goldsmith than was ever known to the editor of the *R cliques' or the author of 'Rasselas.' MR. CRADOCK OF GUMLEY *T^ELASSONS-NOUS un peu a parler de -L^ M. de Pontmartin,' says Sainte-Beuve, at the outset of a causer ie. Not that there is any connection between M. de Pontmartin and the subject of this paper ; nor — let us hasten to add — between its writer and the keenest and finest of French literary critics. But 'Mr. Cradock of Gumley ' has been continually turning up of late — in Boswell, in Forster's * Goldsmith,' in Miss Gaussen's *■ Percy,' with an air that indirectly in- vites recognition ; and to ' relax oneself a little ' seems the proper spirit in which to approach an individuality more curious than instructive — more amiable than illustrious. For Cradock, it must be confessed, was not a person of supreme distinction in letters. To have adapted a tragedy by Voltaire, which Voltaire himself came to stigmatize as ' un ouvrage fort mediocre '; to have written an ' epis- tolary novel ' on the lines of the ' Vicar of Wake- field,' with digressions about landscape gardening ; and to have compassed sundry prologues, epi- logues and occasional verses, none very remark- 53 54 ^^' Cradock of Gumley able: — these things are scarcely qualifications for a trip in Goldsmith's * Fame Machine,' even though it should be added that their author, in his eighty-third year, published 'with a most flattering reception,' a five-act historical play ' on the subject of the Czar.' But if he w^as not the rose, he had lived in her vicinity. A country gentleman of good fortune and a local magnate; Hberally educated; of cultivated tastes; a mu- sician, a clever amateur actor, and a traveller in France before the Revolution, he also took an enthusiastic interest in the notabihties of his day. He knew^ Johnson and most of his circle; he was well acquainted with Garrick and Foote — with Mrs. Yates and Mrs. Gibber; he had mixed with people as different from each other as Bishop Hurd and * Jemmy Twitcher' — as Otaheitan Omai and Laurence Shirley, Earl Ferrers. Con- cerning not a few of these he has left anecdotes in his ' Memoirs,' anecdotes which have found a permanent place in several authoritative bio- graphies. It is therefore a permissible, and even a pardonable delassement to linger for a moment among the very miscellaneous recollections of ' Mr. Cradock of Gumley.' His 'Memoirs,' which were printed in 1826-8, make four volumes, two published in his life- Mr. Cradock of Guinley 55 time, two posthumous. The first, which is auto- biographical, and the last, which supplements and illustrates the first, are the most interesting, the intermediate numbers being mainly occupied by his works and travels.^ He was born on 9th January 1742, at Leicester, and went to the grammar school there. He lost his mother early; and when he was about seventeen, his father also died, leaving him ample means. As a boy he had been taken in his holidays to Bath and other places, where he had already developed a native taste for the stage; and in a later visit to Scar- borough during his minority, he made the ac- quaintance of Sterne and the Gibbers. Then, as a preliminary to the University, he was placed at Mackworth in Derby with a private tutor, who was secretly a red-hot Jacobite. Soon after the Coronation of George III (22nd September 1 761), of which he was a spectator, he went into residence at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His turn was for declamation (or ' spouting ' as it was called) rather than mathematics ; and he had little ^ A fuller edition in four volumes, with a Memoir by one of Cradock's executors, John Bowyer Nichols, the printer and antiquary, was issued in 1828. By the kindness of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, we have been favoured with a copy of this, to which many MSS., illustrations, etc., have been added. 56 Mr. Cradock of Gumley hope of his bachelor's degree when he left the University for London, where, in 1765, he was married at St. George's, Bloomsbury, to Miss Anna Francesca Stratford, a young lady of War- wickshire, at that time resident with her grand- mother in Great Ormond Street. This event was almost immediately succeeded by the gift from the Duke of Newcastle, Chancellor of the University, of a Royal Degree of Master of Arts. Cradock's town residence was in Dean Street, Soho, an accident which later procured him, in absentia^ the further distinction of having his windows broken by the mob in consequence of his neglect to illuminate on Wilkes's birthday (17th October).^ For this expensive privilege, which piled his drawing-room with broken glass and cobble-stones, he consoled himself by com- posing a brief biography of the popular dema- gogue ' in the manner of Plutarch ' — ayVw d'' esprit which was promptly communicated to theDuke of Grafton, and (we are informed mysteriously) was * not ungraciously received in a higher quarter.' 1 These were apparently not * birthday honours' alone. * Here were . . . most of the windows in town broke, that had no lights /or Wilkes and Liberty, who were thought to be inseparable' (Chesterfield's 'Letters,' 1774, ii, 529> under date of 12th April 1768). Mr. Cradock of Gumley 57 A disregard for dates is the natural corollary to a dislike for mathematics. When Cradock went to live in Dean Street, we are not told; but he must have been some years in London in 1773, when a second edition of the Wilkes pamphlet was published. During this period he was no doubt assiduously cultivating his taste for music and the drama; assembling what ultim- ately grew into a splendid library, and improving his Leicestershire property. He tells us that after the above occurrence, he surrendered the lease of his town house, though but for the date 1773, we should have no inkling when. We hear vaguely of his being Sheriff of Leicester ; of his organizing musical performances as steward of Leicester Infirmary; and he was also Deputy Lieutenant for the county. In these circum- stances, it will be most convenient to set down at once the leading events of his life subsequent to his marriage, and afterwards to group under their respective classes a selection from the more in- teresting of his records. In 1768 he became an F.S.A.; and in 1769 took part in the Stratford Jubilee. 'Zobeide,' his Voltaire tragedy, was produced in 1771; his Richardson-cum-Gold- smith novelette, 'Village Memoirs,' in 1774. He travelled in North Wales in 1776-7; in $8 Mr. Cradock of Gumley 1783-6, in France and Holland. His wife died in 1 8 16. In 1821 he published 'Fidelia; or, The Prevalence of Fashion,' another tale against duelling and gaming. Two years later his estate having become encumbered, and his means being reduced to a moderate annuity, he settled in London, where, after printing * The Czar,' and preparing the first two volumes of his ' Memoirs ' for the press, he died on 15th December 1826, in his eighty-fifth year, and was buried in the vault of St. Mary-le-Strand, near which he had spent his latter days. Mr. Cradock's bias, even as a boy, had been stagewards, and with his theatrical reminiscences we may begin. Of some of the older luminaries, however, he could say no more than vidi tantum. Quin, for example, he had met once or twice at Bath in company with that actor's close ally, the parodist Hawkins Browne. But Quin, who died in 1766, the year after Cradock's marriage, had then long retired from the stage; and was sub- sisting in the Queen of the West chiefly upon his social qualities. In 1766, too, died another member of the old regime, Mrs. Gibber. Cradock greatly appreciated this actress, whom Garrick reckoned the rightful queen of tragedy, and he adds his testimony to her supremacy. ' She was Mr. Cradock of Gumley 59 charming in every part she undertook,' he says ; ' but she appeared to be identified with the melancholy fair Ophelia' — a sentiment which after her death he enforced in verse. He seems also to have known her accomplished and ec- centric brother, Dr. Arne, of whose catch, 'Buzz, quoth the Blue Fly,' he was an ardent admirer. Mrs. Clive, who, in 1769, like the lady in the *Bab Ballads' *grew bulky, and quitted the stage,' he mentions, but cannot have known intimately. His chief acquaintances, on coming to town, were the members of the Theatrical Club which then met at Wright's CoiFee House, in York Street, Covent Garden. Among these he speaks of Charles Holland, whom Churchill called ' Garrick at second hand,' and William Powell, who, but for his premature death, promised really to rival the same great man. Closer, however, for a time than with either of these were his relations with Samuel Foote, soon to be manager of the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, once memorable for the satiric successes of Fielding. Cradock claims to have called the attention of Foote to a story in the ' Diable Boiteux ' of Lesage ' as a good sub- ject for stage buffoonery.' Foote at first ridiculed Lesage and the suggestions but subsequently re- 6o Mr. Cradock of Gumley membered both in one of his most popular and most lucrative efforts, 'The Devil upon Two Sticks.' Cradock, in some sort, may be said to have returned the compliment, since he makes the maleficent influence in his ' Village Memoirs * one of those Indian parvenus whom Foote pre- sently pilloried so successfully in the comedy of 'The Nabob.' Not very many months before the appearance of ' The Nabob,' Cradock himself, by the good offices of Mrs. Yates, had made his debut as a dramatist. In 1767, Voltaire, then a septuagen- arian, had produced, in his little private theatre at Ferney, a five-act tragedy called * Les Scythes,' which he had written very rapidly, and acted in himself.^ It was no great success, for his powers were manifestly declining; and he was wise enough not to attempt to re-model it. When he printed it, however, he spoke of it in his ' Preface ' as a sketch which some younger man might work up. Cradock, into whose hands it came, under- ^ Gibbon has described Voltaire's acting four years earlier. He thought hira *a very ranting unnatural per- former' j but adds, * Perhaps I was too much struck with the ridiculous figure of Voltaire at seventy, acting a Tartar Conqueror with a hollow broken voice, and making love to a very ugly niece of about fifty.' (*Corr.,' 1896, i, 43.) Mr. Cradock of Gumley 6i took this venture. He translated it; altered it considerably throughout, especially in the fourth and fifth acts, and changed the title to * Zobeide ' — Voltaire's heroine being Obeide. He showed it to Mrs. Yates, who expressed a desire to under- take the leading female character. Thereupon the flattered and politic author promptly offered her the piece for her benefit, with the result that it was brought out at Covent Garden in the December of 177 1. It was acted thirteen nights, which may be regarded as a success — at all events cCestime, To analyse the plot — or, as Arthur Murphy put it in his Epilogue — to Ramble with Voltaire to Eastern climes, To Scythian laws and antiquated times, is needless. The Prologue was supplied by Goldsmith, who took care to accentuate the fact that the author was no ' mercenary trader.' But the crown of Cradock's satisfaction must have been the acknowledgment which reached him, two years later, from the only begetter of the piece, to whom he sent a printed copy : 90 gbre 1773, a ferney. S' Thanks to y"" muse a foreign copper shines Turn'd in to gold, and coin'd in sterling lines. 62 Mr. Cradock of Gumley You have done to much honour to an old sick man of eighty. I am vith the most sincere esteem and gratitude, Sr yr ob*** Serv* Voltaire. Cradock should have known Mrs. Yates pretty well, for he speaks of having, at Lady Rochford*s, acted Jaffier to her Belvidera in 'Venice Pre- serv'd.' With the exception of the aforementioned ' Czar,' ' Zobeide ' seems to have been his soli- tary essay as a playwright. ' Zobeide,' however, brings us back again to Foote, in whose ' Piety in Pattens ' both Mrs. Yates and Cradock were burlesqued. As the libretto of Foote's * primitive puppet-show' was never printed, it is difficult to say exactly in what the oral burlesque con- sisted, though, according to Cradock, it found no favour with the audience. Yet regarded as a happy contribution to the campaign against Sentimental Comedy, that ' mawkish drab of spurious breed,' ^ imported from France, whom * Not many weeks before. Goldsmith had defined senti- mental comedy as * a kind of mulish production, with all the defects of its opposite parents, and marked with sterility.'' Like others of his good things, this seems to be no more than a neat resetting of an earlier dictum. Vol- taire (Preface to *Nanine') calls Romanesque comedy * une espece hatarde . . . nee de Vimpuissance de faire une comedie et une tragedie 'veritable" (i6 June 1749). Mr. Cradock of Gumley 63 Kelly and Cumberland had made popular, and Goldsmith had combated in the * Good-Natur'd Man,' Footers entertainment deserves to be re- membered. Modelled on the popular Panton Street marionettes, it was acted entirely by wooden puppets — 'not much larger than Gar- rick,' Foote maliciously told an inquisitive lady of quality ; and it purported to exhibit the for- tunes of a 'handsome housemaid,' a combination of Pamela and Mrs. Yates, 'who, by" the mere effects of morality and virtue, raised herself to riches and honours.' Foote emphasized his at- tack on the reigning ' moral essay in dialogue ' by a humorous preliminary address in which he made his purpose clear; and this has fortunately been preserved. After sketching the origin and progress of puppet shows, he wound up by saying that the audience would not discover much wit and humour in his new piece, since ' his brother authors had all agreed that it was highly improper, and beneath the dignity of a mixed assembly, to show any signs of joyful satisfaction ; and that creating a laugh was forcing the higher order of an audience to a vulgar and mean use of their muscles ' — for which reason, he explained, he had, like them, given up the sensual for the senti- mental style. The first representation of the 64 Mr. Cradock of Gumley * primitive puppet show' took place on 15th February, just a month before Goldsmith's 'She Stoops to Conquer ' came out at Covent Garden ; and to Foote therefore belongs the credit of having effectively * scotched ' the sentimental snake, upon which Goldsmith and Sheridan were to do further, if not final, execution. According to Cradock, both Goldsmith and Johnson were earmarked for burlesque in Foote's entertainment; but a timely announcement by the ' Leviathan of Literature ' in Tom Davies's back parlour touching his fixed intention to provide himself with a retributive big stick, eiFectually averted the proposed indignity. To Cradock Foote made some doubtful apology; but either by accident or design, they met no more. With Garrick — who, by the way, did not wholly escape the lash of the English Aristophanes — Cradock was fairly familiar. He was introduced to him as early as 1761, when he was acting, or preparing to act, the part of Oakly, the husband in Colman's ' Jealous Wife,' a play which, bor- rowing some details from Fielding, deserves the credit of partially anticipating ' The Clandestine Marriage ' in its attempt to retain those old comic constituents of comedy which the sentimental craze was thrusting into the background. On the Mr. Cradock of Gumley 65 strength of this introduction, Cradock, a year or two later, persuaded Garrick and his wife to visit him at Gumley, on which occasion he offered up a pair of ancestral carp to his distinguished guests. When, in 1766, 'The Clandestine Marriage' was produced, the part of Lord Ogleby, which Garrick affirmed he had taken from a Norfolk original, was — as is well known — admirably presented by that prince of stage old men, Thomas King. Garrick, nevertheless, while doing full justice to King's reading, protested privately that it was not his {i,e,y the author's) Lord Ogleby ; and proposed that the play should be acted in the provinces, when Cradock, who somewhat resembled him in face and figure, and of whose histrionic abilities he had satisfied him- self, was to double ^ the character of the pert valet Brush with that of Sir John Melvil, while he (Roscius, to wit) gave the true copy of the super- 1 In another part of his record, Cradock says he was to take three characters, and the place of acting was to be the first Lord Holland's * Formian Villa ' at Kingsgate in Kent. This was burned down soon after, prompting the (for Gray) ferocious impromptu, beginning : * Old, and abandoned by each venal friend, Here Holland formed the pious resolution To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend A broken character and constitution.' 66 Mr. Cradock of Gumley annuated beau. The comedy was to alternate with a tragedy, ' Hamlet,' in which Cradock was to assume the title-role, and Garrick was to take the Ghost, as he had done for Holland's benefit. All this, for obscure reasons, came to naught. But Cradock's contemplated functions in the scheme certainly justify his recording (in capitals) that * Garrick spoke with great satisfaction of my acting,' which — it should perhaps be added — was, like Holland's and Powell's, closely imitated from Garrick's own. ' From frequently reading with, and attending Garrick (says Cradock), I became a very exact copyist '; and he goes on to say that another frustrate scheme was that, in honour of Garrick and Johnson, he should play Archer in the * Beaux' Stratagem ' at Lichfield, where the scene of the comedy is laid. This — according to Cradock — was the historic occasion on which Goldsmith expressed a desire to act the part of Scrub. Cradock, as we have said, attended the Stratford Jubilee in 1769, when, in the guise of Garter King-at-Arms, he had the honour of dancing a minuet with Mrs. Garrick. He was also present at some of Garrick's farewell performances — e.g,^ of 'Lear' and of 'Richard IIL' The actor's health was then failing, and his physical infirmities made Mr, Cradock of Gumley 6y the latter assumption especially trying. * I dread the fight and the fall,' he said. *I am afterwards in agonies.' But he had ' gained his fame by Richard,* and was determined 'to end with it.' Nevertheless, though he astonished King George by the activity with which he ran about the field, he was eventually obliged to make his adieux in the less arduous part of Don Felix in ' The Wonder.' This Cradock did not see. Cradock tells a good many other anecdotes of Garrick, but we can only find room for one, which, besides being character- istic of an amiable weakness, is also less known than some of the rest. Once, when Cradock was a guest at St. James's CofFee-house — it was on the memorable occasion when Johnson, retorting to Burke's unwelcome comment on his appetite, said, ' There is a time of life, Sir, when a man requires the repairs of a table ' — Garrick arrived very late. He * came in, full dressed, made many apologies for being so much later than he intended, but he had been unexpectedly detained at the House of Lords, and Lord Camden had absolutely insisted upon setting him down at the door of the hotel in his own carriage. Johnson said nothing, but he looked a volume.' A passage in Boswell effectively supports this little story, both as regards Garrick's relations to 68 Mr. Cradock of Gumley Camden, and Johnson's attitude to each. Garrick had invited Boswell to breakfast, and on his arrival said to him : ' Pray now, did you — did you meet a little lawyer turning the corner, eh?' 'No, Sir' (said Boswell). * Pray what do you mean by the question ?' ' Why' (replied Garrick, with affected indifference, * yet as if standing on tiptoe'), * Lord Camden has this moment left me. We have had a long walk together.' Boswell, of course, hastened to retail this to Johnson, whose remorseless com- ment was : ' Well, Sir, Garrick talked very pro- perly. Lord Camden was a little lawyer to be associating so familiarly with a player.' Camden and Garrick were, however, genuinely attached to one another; and when Garrick was nearing his last days, the Lord Chancellor wrote warmly of their long connection, and of his continued re- gard for his theatrical friend. Tried by the rigid chronological tests of Dr. Birkbeck Hill, Cradock's octogenarian recollec- tions do not always emerge victoriously. One story of Percy's preaching a charity sermon, based on the fourth of Johnson's * Idlers,' and then sending Cradock to Johnson to explain matters, is certainly discredited if, according to Dr. Hill, the sermon was preached seven years before Cradock first met Johnson at all. As to that first meeting, we have Mr. Cradock of Gumley 6g fortunately the corroborative testimony of Bos- well, who gives us what Cradock does not, the precise date — 1 2th April 1776. Like Boswell's own first interview, it took place at Davies the bookseller's in Russell Street, and Boswell was present. Cradock had been thoughtfully fore- warned of Johnson's peculiarities, and particularly cautioned not to commit the heinous error of quitting the dinner-table prematurely for the play. The talk ran upon tragedy and Aristotle. Johnson was unusually brilliant — so brilliant that (we learn from Boswell) Cradock whispered to his neigh- bour, * O that his words were written in a book ! ' But, under opposition, he began to ' rear ' and wax ' loud,' until Cradock judiciously saved the situation by taking a deferential tone, as a conse- quence of which he had the satisfaction of being assured in a whisper, either by Davies or Boswell, that he was safely * landed ' in the Doctor's good graces. Fortunately, many of Cradock's anecdotes are not affected by the time-touchstone, and being besides in agreement with Johnson's known habit of mind, are less open to suspicion. The great man's barbarous treatment of books, for example, is no controverted thing. Once Cradock, going to Bolt Court with Percy, found him ' rolling upon the 70 Mr. Cradock of Gumley floor,' surrounded by volumes, which had just been brought to him — an incident which suggests the ardour of the student rather than the reverence of the bibliophile. On this occasion he was ab- sorbed by *a Runic bible,' which must also have interested Percy. Readers of Mme. D'Arblay will recall how speedily Garrick's priceless ' Petrarca ' pounced over the Doctor's head during a fit of abstraction ; and another story here relates to some works perhaps equally dear to their possessor. Calling once on Garrick in Southampton Street, Johnson strayed by mischance into a private cabinet adjoining the study, which was filled with elegantly-clad presentation copies of novels and light literature. He ' read first a bit of one, then another, and threw all down ; so that before the host arrived, the floor was strewed with splendid octavos.' Garrick, as may be guessed, was ' ex- ceedingly angry'; but Johnson, always pitiless to the petty side of his old pupil, only said magis- terially : ' I was determined to examine some of your valuables, which I find consist of three sorts — stuffs trashy and nonsense,'' In his old age, from ill-health and the growing habit of procrastination, it became hazardous to entrust him with anything rare or valuable. This was the case with a volume of MSS., * magnificently bound,' which contained Mr, Cradock of Gumley 71 poems by James I, and of which Cradock had pro- cured the loan from Lord Harborough. Writing about the book shortly afterwards, he was dis- mayed to find that Johnson had no recollection of receiving it. But George Steevens, whom Cradock nervously consulted (and who rated him soundly for lending it), suggested that it might be lying perdu in a mysterious sealed packet then, to his knowledge, under Johnson's inkstand. And so, indeed, it proved. When Johnson died, Cradock promptly applied to the executors; and the precious consignment was forthwith discovered, unopened, exactly where Steevens had detected it two years earlier. At Johnson's death, Cradock was on the Con- tinent, as he wrote from Marseilles. When start- ing on his travels in October 1783, he had taken leave of his old friend, who was visibly touched. * I wish I could accompany you,' he had said, ' for I dread the effects of this climate during the ensuing winter.' Cradock had always found him civil ; and ' had derived from him numerous ad- vantages.' 'Of all men I ever knew' — he says elsewhere — ' Dr. Johnson was the most instruct- ive.' But he can only have known him in the later years of his life, if he first made his acquaint- ance at Davies' in 1776. 72 Mr. Cradock of Gumley There are but two more references to Johnson that need be borrowed from Cradock's budget. Johnson, it will be remembered, writing to Lang- ton of Percy's ' Hermit of Warkworth' in March 1 77 1, had faintly commended it as * pretty enough.' This could not, however, prevent him from mimicking its adoption of the ballad manner, made popular by the * Reliques ' : I put my hat upon my head, And walked into the Strand, And there I met another man, With his hat in his hand. ' Modern imitations of ancient ballads,' says Bos- well, always roused his ridicule; but that this quatrain was directly prompted by Percy is clear from a letter of Garrick to Cradock, asking him whether he had seen Johnson's criticism on the ' Hermit.' ' It is already over half the town ' — adds this irrepressible scandal-monger. Another Cradock anecdote is preserved, not indeed by Cra- dock himself, but in a note of his friend Nichols. Once Cradock and George Steevens accompanied Johnson to Marybone Gardens where they saw * La Serva Padrona ' (' The Maid Mistress '), a popular musical entertainment translated from the Italian of Paisiello by Storace. Steevens thought the scheme — an old fellow cheated and deluded Mr. Cradock of Gumley 73 by his servant — 'quite foolish and unnatural.' Johnson instantly replied, ' Sir, it is not unnatural^ it is a scene that is acted in my family every day of my life.' His hearers understood him to refer, not so much to the despotic heroine of the bur- letta, as to the perpetual w^rangling of his two housekeepers and pensioners at Bolt Court — his rival Roxana and Statira, as he grimly styled them after Nat. Lee's termagants — Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins. ' To-day Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins had a scold' — he tells Mrs. Thrale in October 1778 — 'Williams was going away, but I bid her not turn tally and she came back, and rather got the upper hand.' During his connection with Johnson, Cradock could never have known Goldsmith, since Gold- smith died before that connection began. And he knew Goldsmith for even a shorter time than Johnson. But Cradock was only twelve years junior to the author of the ' Deserted Village ' ; and their relations were probably more uncon- strained. Most of Cradock's anecdotes have been adopted by Goldsmith's biographers. It is from Cradock that we get the oft-cited lament : ' While you are nibbling about elegant phrases, I am obliged to write half a volume ' ; the complacent : ' As to my " Hermit " that poem, Cradock, can- 74 ^^- Cradock of Gumley not be amended'; and, above all, the delightful proposition for improving Gray's * Elegy ' by putting out ' an idle word in every line.' As thus: The curfew tolls the knell of day. The lowing herd winds o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his way, — and so forth. In an excellent article in the ' Edinburgh Review,' ^ Lord Lytton ingeniously exploded this piece of profanation by shearing down Shakespeare's * gaudy, babbling, and re- morseless day,' on the same principle, to a bare 'the day.' What is oddest — perhaps one should add, most human — about Goldsmith's criticism is, that his own ' Hermit ' above-mentioned is itself by no means exempt from those decorative superfluities which — to distinguish them from more inevitable adjuncts — are usually known as "gradus" epithets. It is Cradock also who is re- sponsible for what, if not the only, is perhaps the most unvarnished statement about Goldsmith's unhappy tendency to gaming. ' The greatest fault of Dr. Goldsmith,' he says, ' was, that if he had thirty pounds in his pocket, he would go into certain companies in the country, and in hopes of doubling the sum, would generally return to town without any part of it.' ^ Vol. 88 (1848), p. 205. Mr. Cradock of Gumley 75 Whether Cradock first made Goldsmith's ac- quaintance through the Yates's, or through Gold- smith's friend, Lord Clare of the * Haunch of Venison,' we know not. But the acquaintance seems to have been cemented, if not commenced, by the prologue to ' Zobeide,' which was origin- ally written for Yates, and was sent to Lord Clare's Essex seat of Gosfield Hall, where Cradock was staying. A few weeks later, we find Goldsmith and Cradock collaborating upon another work which may perhaps owe its origin to Lord Clare, the ' Threnodia Augustalis ' in memory of his lordship's * old political mistress and patron,' the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Cradock apparently rendered Goldsmith some vague services in the musical adaptation of this very occasional performance, which Chalmers first reprinted in 1 8 10 from a copy given by its author to Cradock. Cradock also claims to have * altered ' * She Stoops to Conquer ' — a pretension which must be taken with a qualifying grain of salt. But he undoubtedly saw it before it was in type, for in returning it to the author he subjoined *a ludicrous address to the Town by Tony Lumpkin,' which — much abridged — Goldsmith added to the printed play with the note, ' This came too late to be Spoken.' Cradock, however, describes it as a mere^Vw^^j/r/V, 76 Mr. Cradock of Gumley not intended for the public. Whether Goldsmith ever actually visited Cradock in his Leicester home is uncertain. He undoubtedly proposed to do so. * I am determined,' he said, * to come down into the country, and make some stay with you, and I will build you an ice-house.* To the visit, Cradock readily assented; but met the rest of the suggestion by a polite circumlocution. Upon another occasion Cradock relates how Goldsmith, unwilling to return prematurely from Windsor, enlisted his services and those of Percy to correct some proofs for ' Animated Nature.' Neither of them knew anything of birds, Percy declaring that he could scarce tell a goose from a swan ; but they managed to accomplish their task respectably. Cradock's most interesting memories, however, refer to a period not long before Gold- smith's death, when his health was broken, and his growing embarrassments were preying on his spirits. Already, as we learn from Percy, he had been seriously ill in September 1772. In the autumn of the year following, Cradock came to London, and saw him frequently in the mornings. He found him much changed, ' and at times very low.' He endeavoured to induce him to publish ' The Traveller ' and ' The Deserted Village ' by subscription, with notes — the object being to ob- Mr. Cradock of Gumley jy tain some immediate and much needed monetary- relief for the author — a proposition which, he says, Goldsmith rather suffered than encouraged. Goldsmith showed him at this time the now lost prospectus of his projected ' Dictionary of Arts and Sciences,' an effort which he himself regarded as belonging to his best work, and which, if we may believe Cradock, must have been characterized by all the * inspired common-sense' which dis- tinguishes the ' Preface ' to the ' Survey of Ex- perimental Philosophy.' The day before Cradock left town, Goldsmith dined with him in his Norfolk Street lodging; but took little of the ' neat repast ' which had been sent in from the famous ' Crown and Anchor ' in the Strand. * He endeavoured to talk and remark, as usual, but all was force.' When they parted at midnight by the Temple Gate it was for the last time, for Goldsmith's death was not far off. But with the Temple is connected the only other Goldsmith anecdote we shall reproduce from his Leicester- shire friend. There were two poor Miss Gunns, sisters and milliners, at the corner of Temple Lane, who had the strongest confidence in their Brick Court customer. *0 Sir!' — they told Cradock ' most feelingly ' — ' sooner persuade him to let us work for him, gratis, than suffer him to 78 Mr. Cradock of Gtimley apply to any other; we are sure that he will pay us if he can.' Well might Johnson exclaim: * Was ever poet so trusted before ! ' The Goldsmith and Johnson stories form the bulk of Cradock's literary recollections, and his references to other contemporary writers are few and unimportant. Sterne, it has been said, he had met as a boy at Scarborough. But in London he could have seen little of him, for Sterne died in 1768, and is only once mentioned again. 'He never possessed any equal spirits,' writes Cradock of Yorick, ' he was always either in the cellar or the garret.' Knowing that Garrick had a real regard for him, Cradock said to him at Drury Lane Theatre that he was surprised he had not undertaken to write a Comedy. Sterne * seemed quite struck, and after a pause, with tears in his eyes, replied, " I fear I do not possess the proper talent for it, and I am utterly unacquainted with the business of the stage." ' As Cradock adds that, at this time, Sterne was in difficulties, we may assume the date to have been 1766, when he had not yet recruited his fortunes with the last volume of 'Tristram Shandy,' and the publication, by subscription, of a fresh instalment of his sermons. Apropos of ' Tristram,' Cradock tells the follow- ing, which he says he told to Sterne. A gentleman. Mr, Cradock of Gumley 79 asking for an amusing book, was recommended to try the philological ' Hermes ' of Fielding's friend, James Harris of Salisbury. Conceiving it to be a novel, he could make no more of it than the old ladywrho found the story in Johnson's' Dictionary' disconnected : and he returned it with the cold comment that he thought ' all these imitations of " Tristram Shandy " fell short of the original ! ' The mention of Fielding reminds us that Cradock contributes yet one more item to the * Tom Jones ' legend. Fielding, he tells us, was intimate with the Boothbys of Tooley Park, in Leicestershire; 'and it is supposed that more than one character in his excellent novel of" Tom Jones " was drawn from thence.' After this, we are not surprised to hear that the beauty of this family, Mrs. Boothby, was the model for Sophia Western, a suggestion which shows that the book must already have been more talked about than read, since Fielding's heroine, upon his own show- ing, was his first wife.^ Of Gibbon, Cradock says nothing worth repeating ; and of Gray little ^ These relations of Fielding with the Boothbys gain a certain piquancy from the fact that, in some />oj^-Richard- sonian editions of ' Pamela,' some one has ingeniously filled in *Mr. B's' name on several occasions as *Mr. Boothby.' Fielding, it will be remembered, had completed it in * Joseph Andrews ' as ' Mr. Booby/ 8o Mr. Cradock of Gumley beyond the fact that he (Cradock) was present when Gray's last poetical composition, the Ode written for the installation of the Duke of Grafton (Augustus Henry Fitzroy) as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge — an effort which was Gray's spontaneous return to the Duke for making him Professor of Modern History — was performed in the Senate House. Cradock adds that he gave a number of anecdotes of Gray to Johnson for his ' Lives of the Poets.' Unhappily, the Doctor was tired of his task ; and like other contributions of the kind, they were either neglected or lost. But Cradock on Literature and the Drama alone has exhausted our space ; and we must pass over Hackman and Miss Ray, Lord Sandwich and Her Grace of Kingston, Bishop Hurd and Dr. Parr, with half a dozen other notorieties we had marked for comment. The * Travels,' again, deserve more than casual mention, since the most cursory inspection reveals seductive references to Cagliostro and the ' Diamond Necklace,' ^ Beau- i * As we left Paris for Flanders and Holland, the dis- consolate Cardinal [de Rohan] was pointed out to us, as an object of the last despair, leaning over the battlements of the ever-to-be-abhorred Bastille.' ('Memoirs,' 1826, ii, 282.) Louis-Ren^, Prince de Rohan, was a leading actor in the * Affaire du Collier.' Mr. Cradock of Gumley 8 1 marchais and the * Mariage de Figaro,' Choiseul, Lauzun, Buffon, galley-slaves, improvisatori, scara- mouches and a host of subjects equally delectable. We have, however, sufficiently fulfilled our pur- pose, which was mainly to direct attention to a record now wellnigh forgotten. Had Cradock written it at fifty instead of eighty, he might perhaps have escaped the charges of confusion and inaccuracy which Forster (who nevertheless uses his material) lays at his door. But, even as they stand, his Memoirs are probably as trustworthy as many more pretentious chronicles. MME. VIGEE-LEBRUN THE ' Souvenirs ' of Mme. Louise-Elizabeth Vig6e-Lebrun were published in 1835-37, when she was more than eighty. One of her English reviewers, who, though unacquainted with her himself, must have known those who knew her, describes her as a ' most delightful old lady.' * She is still,' he says — quoting a common friend — * gifted with all the qualities of her youth; her conversation is rendered still more interesting from having read and seen a great deal, and she is one of the happiest specimens of those good times, when grace, affability, and polished manners were appreciated in society.' The words suggest a type more familiar a hundred years ago than now. One thinks instinctively of Mme. du Deifand and Lady Hervey, of the Miss Berrys, of Mme. D'Arblay and her venerable friend Mrs. Delany. The type, it is true, is more French than English;^ but it is always distinguishable ^ It may be noted that, of the English ladies here named, four had been especially susceptible to French influences. H. F. Chorley frankly compared the Berrys to * ancient Frenchwomen.' Gibbon speaks of Lady Hervey's * prefer- 82 Mme. Vig^e-Lebrun 83 for its good breeding and good nature, its social charm, and its fund of anecdote. To this class Mme. Lebrun belongs — with a difference which is in her favour. For while the ladies specified, with the exception of Mme. D'Arblay, relied ex- clusively upon their conversational talents and traditions, Mme, Lebrun was also a portrait- painter of note, whose works are numerous and well-esteemed. Her picture of herself and her daughter, and her delightful 'Girl with the Muff,' both in the Louvre, are among the classics of the studio; her ' La Paix qui ram^ne TAbondance,* in the same collection, is a triumph in its allegorical kind; and her 'Chapeau de Paille,' at the National Gallery, no unworthy pendant to the famous Rubens by which it was prompted.^ Her personal charms, as it shows, were considerable; and she had marked ability as a musician, a vocalist, and an amateur actor. She is moreover a most attractive memoir writer. She has plenty to say, and says it in an easy and unpretentious way. Her style im- ence and even affectation of the manners, the language, and the literature of France'} and Fanny Barney married a Frenchman. ^ Susanna Fourment, also at Trafalgar Square. It may- be added that Mme. Lebrun's is a true chapeau de paille-^ that in the Rubens is obvious felt {poilF). 84 Mme. VigSe-Lebrun presses you with its sincerity; and if occasionally she speaks of herself, her egotism is not the self- conscious complacency of Mme. de Genlis, but rather the frank expression of a candour which has nothing to conceal. Her recollections, which at first take the form of letters to her ^hien bonne amie^ Princess Kourakin, and, after that lady's death, are continued as * Souvenirs,' begin with her childhood. Born at Paris, in the Rue Coquilliere, on the i6th April 1755, she was the only daughter of Louis Vig^e, a painter of modest pretensions, and of his wife Jeanne Maissin. Of Louis Vig6e, a follower at some distance of Watteau and the pastellist Latour, only twp anecdotes remain, of which one is popular enough to have been attributed to others. Noticing, with some impatience, that a lady sitter was grimacing vigorously to make her mouth seem smaller, he observed drily that, if she preferred it, he could depict her without any mouth at all. Another thing his daughter records is of graver significance. Returning on one occasion from a dinner party where he had met Diderot, d'Alembert and Helv^tius, he ob- served despondingly to his wife, that from all he could gather, 'the world would soon be turned upside down.' This depressing forecast, which Mme. Vigee-Lebrun 85 Mme. Lebrun was afterwards so painfully to verify, must have been uttered before 1768, for in the May of that year he died. He left his family, which included a son born ten years before, so ill-provided for that his widow, a handsome woman, felt constrained to marry again (" se vit obligee de se remarier ") ; and she married disastrously. Her second husband, sup- posed a rich jeweller, proved a miserable skinflint, who, not content with denying the necessaries of Hfe to those dependent on him, put the crown to his sordid economies by wearing his prede- cessor's clothes, without even altering them to fit him. His step-daughter, by this time thirteen or fourteen, and already becoming remarkable for her natural artistic gifts, seems to have felt this latter indignity even more acutely than the fact that he also remorselessly impounded her earnings. Nor was this all. Conceiving (like the Arnolphe he was !) that his wife and step-daughter were too attractive to thQ fidneurs of the Champs Elysees, he transported them for the week-ends to a dilapidated bicoque^ or shanty, at Chaillot, where, had it not been for the compassionate friends who occasionally took her on expeditions to Sceaux, Marly-le-Roi and other show-places in the neighbourhood, Mile. Vig^e must have 86 Mme. Vigee-Lebrun died of dullness. By the time she was twenty she had painted several portraits; and a well-timed presentation to the French Academy of post- humous likenesses of La Bruyere and the Abbe Fleury procured her not only the official thanks of that body, but a personal visit from its secre- tary, d'Alembert — 'a dry and cold little man, exquisitely polite.' Five months later, and moved thereto mainly by the desire to escape from her ' vilain beau-pere^ she married, almost as unfortu- nately as her mother. Her husband, a son of Pierre Lebrun, and himself a painter picture- dealer, was, it is true, not unpleasing. But he was also a man of dissolute habits, and a gambler besides, in which latter capacity he squandered his wife's earnings with so little compunction that, when she quitted France a dozen years afterwards — although, in the interval, she had made more than a million of francs — she could scarcely command an income of twenty. The pair had one daughter, born in February 1780, and often painted by her mother. There was not much romance in all this; but with such sentiment- alities Mme. Lebrun had, luckily for herself, been unfamiliar, since it was not until after her marriage that she was allowed to read her first novel, Richardson's * Clarissa.' Mme. Vigee-Lebrun 8/ ^-^ 1776, the year of that marriage, she had nevertheless become well known as an artist, and her modest atelier in the large house where M. Lebrun had his showrooms, was often crowded by aristocratic sitters and visitors. Her husband, greedy of further gain, persuaded her to take pupils. She was, however, far too young to manage students often much older than herself, and the scheme did not succeed. By and by royalty added itself to her distinguished clients. In this same year 1776 one of her sitters was ' Monsieur,' the King's brother, afterwards Louis XVI 11, who, in addition to the small talk in which he excelled, was wont to enliven his seances by singing, much out of tune, songs that were sometimes as much out of taste. ' How do you think I sing, Mme. Lebrun ? ' he one day in- quired. 'Like a Prince, Monseigneur! ' was the discreet and admirable reply. As time went on, Mme. Lebrun painted all the royal family, with the exception of M. d'Artois. But her favourite and most frequent model was the Queen, who first sat to her in 1779. Her description of that unfortunate lady, then in the full splendour of her youth and beauty, is doubly valuable, not only as the report of a sympathetic admirer, but also of an ' expert ' observer : 88 Mine. Vig^e-Lebrun * Marie-Antoinette was tall, admirably pro- portioned, and plump without being too much so. Her arms were superb; her hands small and perfectly formed ; her feet charming. She walked better than any woman in France, carrying her head very high, with a majesty that announced a sovereign in the midst of her court, and yet without in any way by that majesty modifying her habitually gentle and benevolent aspect. . . . Her features were not at all regular; she inherited from her family the long and narrow oval peculiar to the Austrian nation. Her eyes were by no means large; their colour was almost blue; her expression was mild and agreeable; her nose clear-cut and pretty; and her mouth was not too large, though the lips were somewhat full. But the most remarkable thing in her face, was her magnificent complexion. Never have I seen any so brilliant, and brilliant is the word, for her skin was so transparent that it took no shade. . , . As to her conversation, it would be difficult for me to give an idea of all its grace, and all its amenity; I do not think Queen Marie-Antoinette ever missed an opportunity of saying something agreeable to those who had the honour to approach her." At one of these sittings, Mme. Lebrun ven- Mme. Vigh-Lebrun 89 tured to observe upon the advantage in dignity w^hich the Queen enjoyed from her manner of holding her head — a compliment which drew from her the smiling answer, *If I were not Queen, they would say I had an insolent air — would they not?' Upon another occasion, the artist endeavoured to persuade her to part her hair in the middle, so as to lessen the exceptional height of her forehead — a device which had been successfully adopted by the beautiful Duchesse de Grammont-Caderousse. But Marie Antoinette laughingly refused. * I should be the last to follow this fashion,' she said, * for I do not wish it to be reported that I invented it to hide my high fore- head.' Mme. Lebrun often painted her subse- quently, the best-known example being the group now at Versailles, in which she appears with Mme. Royale, the first Dauphin, and the baby Due de Normandie, later the ill-fated Louis XVII. After the Dauphin's death in 1789, the Queen could not endure to look at the picture; and it was put out of sight, a circumstance to which, in the troublous times to come, it probably owed its preservation, as it would certainly have been slashed to ribbons by one mob or another. Mme. Lebrun's last likeness of the Queen was post- humous, being a memory-portrait which she 00 Mme. Vig^e-Lebrun sent from St. Petersburg in 1800 to the Duchesse d'Angouleme.' But we must return to Mme. Lebrun herself. In 1782 her husband carried her to Flanders, where at Brussels she visited the famous gallery of the Prince de Ligne, and where her studies of Rubens set her upon emulating the afore-mentioned 'Cha- peau de Paille,' which had not then left Antwerp for its English home. In 1783, Joseph Vernet, who, after her father's death, had always been her friend and counsellor, proposed her as a Member of the Academy of Painting ; and after some slight op- position, she was elected, her diploma picture being that 'La Paix qui ramene TAbondance' in the Louvre, to which reference has already been made. In September of the same year she was one of the favoured few who witnessed, in M. de Vaudreuil's great room at Gennevilliers, the preliminary per- formance of the afterwards celebrated ' Mariage de Figaro ' — a work which, looking to the random shafts it levelled at the Court, no good courtier could regard as other than " ill-conceived." And this bringsustoanotheraspectofher abilities. Long before, her growing social reputation had earned her a visit of curiosity from that mere des philosophes ^ See * Clary's Journal,' />oj/, p. ^SS. Mme, Vigie-Lebrun 91 and rival of Mme. de Deffand, Mme. GeofFrin; and by this date she had practically a salon of her own — a j before that of the Empress wore only steel j and the assassins of Peter III, by his son's order, were compelled to bear his pall. Paul followed the procession on foot, bare-headed, with his wife, and the entire court, who were very numerous, and in deep mourning. The ladies had long trains, and were enveloped in huge black veils. In this guise, they had to walk through the snow, in bitter weather, to the fortress [and cathedral], which is a long way oflF, on the other side of the Neva. At the return, some of the ladies I saw were nearly dying of cold and fatigue.' The accession of Paul made little difference in Mme. Lebrun's plans, and she continued to reside in Russia, where she had opulent clients. The St, Petersburg Academy elected her to its body, a circumstance which incidentally acquaints us with the rather extraordinary costume adopted by lady members. This, she says, consisted of a riding-habit [^ habit df ama%Qne\ a little violet vest, a yellow petticoat, and a black-feathered hat. But about this time she suffered her worst mis- fortune since her marriage. Her daughter, whom she idolized as Mme. de Sevigne did Mme. de Grignan, fell in love with an entirely second-rate and penniless M. Nigris. After exhausting all arguments against the match, the consent of Mme, Vigee-Lebrun 103 M. Lebrun, then in Paris, was obtained, and the marriage portion swallowed up the bulk of Mme. Lebrun's Russian savings. As she had feared, the union was not happy. In 1800, to restore her shattered health, she went to Moscow. Four months later, returning to St. Petersburg, she heard of the assassination of the Emperor Paul. His son and successor, Alexander I, was well disposed to her, and fortune seemed again in sight. But while she always regarded Russia as her ' second country,' she was hungering for her first country, France. She had been struck off the Ksi: of emigres ; and, after pausing at Berlin and Dresden, she turned at last towards Paris. It was in the autumn of iSoi, after a twelve years' exile, that Mme. Lebrun arrived at her house. No. 4, Rue du Gros-Chenet, where she was welcomed with tears by her brother and M. Lebrun. The latter, whom she had freely financed during her absence, had pleasingly decorated her appartement^ a delicate, if costly, attention which was no less than her due. Nothing could however detract from the delight of once more touching her natal soil, notwithstanding the sombre traces of revolution — the liberie^ fraternite^ ou la mort on every wall, the new fashion of separating the men and women in the soirees^ and the funereal 104 Mme. Vigee-Lebrun * black coats and black hair,' which contrasted so gloomily with the powder and parti-colour she remembered in the past. But old friends soon rallied round her. Greuze and M^nageot called upon her. The urgent need of a ball-dress was happily adjusted by making up an embroidered Indian muslin which had once been given to her by Mme. Du Barry; the Com^die fran^aise put her on their free list; and Mme. Bonaparte brought her an invitation to breakfast with the First Consul, — one of whose grand parades on the Place du Louvre she witnessed. Besides meet- ing former acquaintances, such as Mme. Campan, now transferred to the Bonapartes, and Delille, blind and feeble, but still a delightful companion, she made fresh ones — Ducis, the adapter of Shake- speare ; Gerard, the painter of Mme. R^camier ; the beautiful Mme. R6camier herself, and her rival, the equally beautiful Spaniard, Th^resia Cabarrus, then the wife of Tallien, and later, by a third marriage, Princesse de Chimay. For a time the old pre-revolutionary suppers were revived, at which Gerard, replacing Cubieres, sang Malbrouk — 'like a Prince.' Plays also were occasionally acted in M. Lebrun's gallery. But as time went on, Mme. Lebrun found the Paris of the Consulate too thickly haunted by melancholy memories, and Mme. Vigie-Lebrun 105 she took refuge in a country house at Meudon, much to the advantage of her health. A return to the capital, however, brought back all her depression, and she resolved to dissipate it entirely by travel. In April 1 8o2 she left Paris for London with a companion, but without knowing a word of English, a defect which she endeavoured to ob- viate by engaging an English maid. But the English maid did nothing all day but eat bread and butter, and was promptly dispensed with. After travelling from Dover with her diamonds in her stockings for fear of highwaymen, she went to Brunet's Hotel in Leicester Square. Thence she moved into lodgings in Beck (? Beak) Street, and finally settled in Maddox Street. Her first impressions of England were not favourable. She had a passion for fresh air, and consequently disliked the foggy climate; the natives distressed her by their frigid taciturnity ; she was frightened by the frequent ' boxing' in the streets; and ap- palled by the tedium of the * routs * to which she was at once invited, where she was stifled in a standing crowd without ever getting within measurable distance of the hostess. Yet she must have grown gradually reconciled to her environ- ment, for she stayed here three years, making io6 Mme. Vig^e-Lebrun many excursions to Bath, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Matlock, and so forth. In the Isle of Wight, which she visited with the Margravine of Ansbach (Lady Craven), she could almost have settled down. Nor did she neglect the environs of London; she went to Hampton Court; she watched George III promenading the terrace at Windsor; she visited at Twickenham her old friend of Gennevilliers, M. de Vaudreuil. Vau- dreuil introduced her to the Due d'Orleans, Louis Philippe, then living at Orleans House with his brothers, the Comte de Beaujolais and the Due de Montpensier. With the last-named, who died at Twickenham in 1807, ^^ sometimes went sketching. But her memory must have failed her when she says that, showing her the view from Richmond Hill, he also showed her, in a neighbouring ^ prairie^ the trunk of a tree under which Milton sat when he composed ' Paradise Lost.' Other members of the French Royal Family whom she met in England were M. d'Artois and his son, the Due de Berri. She was at the theatre when, in March 1804, the news arrived of Bonaparte's murder at Vincennes of the last of the Cond6s, the Due d'Enghien ; and she was afterwards visited by his inconsolable father, the Due de Bourbon. Mme, Vigie-Lebrun 107 In 1802, Reynolds had been ten years dead. But Mme. Lebrun had ample opportunities of studying his pictures, which she greatly admired, particularly the ' Infant Samuel,' perhaps all the more because of an anecdote which was reported to her. When her portrait of Calonne had come to England, Reynolds went to see it at the Custom House, and to some one who commented upon its reported price, ;f 3,200,^ had generously replied that he himself could not have done it so well if they had given him ^4,000. In default of Sir Joshua, Mme. Lebrun visited West, then in the height of his popularity. Fox called upon her, but she missed him. She was more fortunate with Mrs. Siddons whom she had seen as ' Mrs. Beverley* in Moore's * Gamester,' and with whose beautiful voice and expressive silences she was charmed. As at Paris, she contrived, in her damp Maddox Street rooms, to have soirees, to which the beautiful Mme. Grassini (whom she painted)^ and Mrs. Billington, then the two best singers of English opera, lent the music of their voices. ^ She does not correct this; but she elsewhere says that Calonne only gave her 4,000 francs, in a box worth about 26 louis. — ('Seventh Letter to the Princess Kourakin.') ' This portrait is now in the Museum at Avignon, to which the artist left it by will. io8 Mme, Vig^e-Lebrun These entertainments must have been a success, for that eminent cognoscente^ the Prince of Wales, was good enough to say that * he looked in else- where ; but there he stayed,' — which reads like a recollection of a line of Prior.^ The Prince seems to have appreciated Mme. Lebrun, who painted a three-quarters picture of him for Mrs. Fitz- herbert. His patronage was very useful to her, for when the other emigres, who had not lived more than a year in England, were hurried back to France at the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens, he obtained the King's permission for Mme. Lebrun to remain in this country and travel where she liked. No wonder that she dilates upon his handsome presence and becoming Apollo wig ! It is time, however, to abridge the account, not only of Mme. Lebrun's English experiences, but also of her further career. Shortly after Bonaparte had been proclaimed Emperor, she returned to France to meet her daughter, who had arrived from Russia — without her husband. Mme. Catalani, whose portrait Mme. Lebrun painted, was then the rage in Paris; and she found a fresh interest in a new exponent of Racine, Mile. Duchesnois, to whom her brother had given lessons in declama- ^ *They were but my Visits; but Thou art my Home.' * A Better Answer (/.^., to Cloe, Jealous.).' Mme, Vigee-Lebrun 109 tion. She also painted Bonaparte's sister Caroline (Mme. Murat) by command of the Emperor — a task not without tracas^ owing to the vagaries of the sitter. In 1808-9 ^^^ visited Switzerland, commemorating her travels in a sequence of letters to the Countess Potocka. Save for the fact that she visited Voltaire's house at Ferney, and painted Mme. de Stael at Coppet as ' Corinne,' these re- cords are only mildly interesting. When she got back, she bought a little country house at Louve- ciennes, a village on the Seine, not far from the familiar Marly Woods, and that now wrecked and ruined Pavilion where she had formerly painted Mme. Du Barry. Here she usually spent eight months of the year. In 18 13 M. Lebrun died. In 18 1 4 she was plundered by the Allies; but with the later overthrow of Bonaparte and the restoration of the Bourbons, her life no longer touches history. In 181 9, she lost her daughter; in 1820, her brother. After this, she made her last voyage of recuperation — to Bordeaux; and the close of her memories discovers her living in tranquillity, tended carefully by two nieces, one of whom, Mme. J.Tripier-Le Franc, was an artist like herself. Mme, Lebrun's * Souvenirs' proper, as dis- tinguished from her earlier letters to the Princess no Mme, Vigee-Lebrun Kourakin, must have been written subsequent to 1 83 1, when the Princess died. Probably they belong to 1834-35, since they refer to the death, in June of the latter year, of the artist Gros, a life- long friend, whom in his childhood she had painted. In 1835 she was eighty. She still practised her calling, for she had passed that age when she de- picted the legitimist Poujoulat. But her powers were waning. Jean Gigoux, the popular illustrator of * Gil Bias,' says in his ' Causeries ' that her work had lost much of its ancient charm; but that she herself had retained all the grace, and even the gay vivacity of her youth. As an octo- genarian she still resembled her picture of more than forty years before. Her salon continued to be assiduously frequented by beautiful women and distinguished men, to whom she never wearied in talking of Marie Antoinette. Once Gigoux heard her exchanging reminiscences of Danton and Philippe-Egalit6 with the elder Berryer (who was also writing his rather dull ' Memoirs '), as if they were speaking of yesterday. An editorial postscript to the * Souvenirs ' gives a few further particulars. She died at Paris, in her eighty-eighth year, in the Rue Saint-Lazare; and she was buried at Louve- ciennes, to the old thirteenth-century church of which she had presented a picture of St. Genevieve, Mme. Vig^e-Lebrun in which procured for her a metrical tribute from Mme. de Genlis. Not many of her six hundred and sixty portraits had gained harbourage in the public galleries of France during her chequered lifetime; and it was by the pious generosity of her heirs that her own likeness, and the * Girl with the MufF/ found their final resting-place in the Louvre. SIR JOHN HAWKINS, KNIGHT IF, to quote a rough-and-ready definition, an ' agreeable ' man is a man that agrees with you, then Sir John Hawkins, otherwise known as *the Knight,' must have been exceptionally ill-qualified for any such characterization. Unless he is grossly belied, in neither of the accepted senses of the term can he be said to have ' agreed ' with his contemporaries. Johnson, using a word which, like * derange,' he excluded from his * Dictionary,' spoke of him to Mrs. Thrale and Fanny Burney in 1778 as 'most uncluhahW — such being the exact opposite of the caressing epithet he coined for Hawkins's rival, Boswell. He further described him fantastically as follows: ' I believe him to be an honest man at the bottom; but to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that cannot easily be defended.' The charge of meanness. Miss Burney explains, seems to have been based upon Hawkins's refusal, when a member of a club to 112 Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 113 which he and Johnson had formerly belonged, to pay his share of the common supper on the ground that he never ate it. Johnson was, how- ever, by far the most indulgent of ' the Knight's ' critics. In a letter to Twining, Dr. Burney roundly accuses Hawkins of burying Johnson in the cheapest possible manner. And Malone, in the * Maloniana,* collects a larger chaplet of dis- praise. Percy, he tells us, * concurred with every other person I have heard speak of Hawkins, in saying that he was a most detestable fellow.' Samuel Dyer, another witness, declared that Hawkins was *a man of the most mischievous, uncharitable, and malignant disposition'; while Sir Joshua [apud Malone) regarded him as one who, ' though he assumed great outward sanctity, was not only mean and grovelling in disposition, but absolutely dishonest.' Reynolds also strongly condemned his behaviour as Johnson's executor, particularly his shabbiness in charging his coach hire when attending the meetings. Last comes Boswell, who, though he admits that, in conse- quence of Hawkins's death, he had suppressed much that he could — ' an he would ' — have said, still lays stress on his * malevolence,' and the rigid formality of his character. At this date, to refute such a body of adverse I 1 14 Sir John Hawkins y Knight testimony would be difficult, even were it de- sirable. But, in the spirit of that charitable teaching which enjoins us to comprehend rather than condemn, it is only fair to note that most of the witnesses cited were by no means un- prejudiced. Johnson, moreover, was humorously exaggerating. ' We all laughed, as he meant we should,' says Miss Burney, in chronicling his words; and Mrs. Thrale had previously bracketed Hawkins with Garrick as one of those whom Johnson suffered nobody to abuse but himself — certainly an indirect, if embarrassing, evidence of his regard. Dyer disliked Hawkins as a precisian, and Hawkins disliked Dyer as a materialist. Percy's account was mere hearsay from Dyer. Reynolds, a generous but unbusinesslike man, had, with Hawkins, been Johnson's executor; and he had fretted over Hawkins's ultra-legal con- duct of affairs. Boswell was not merely a rival biographer, but his vanity had been sorely wounded by the curt way in which Hawkins, in his ' Life *of Johnson,' had spoken of him as * Mr. James Boswell, a native of Scotland,* — a compliment which he had been at pains to return by calling Hawkins, when later enumerating the members of the Ivy Lane Club, no more than *Mr, John Hawkins, an attorney.' Probably Sir John Hawkins, Knight 115 Hawkins's gravest sins are summed up in John- son's epithet. It is clear that he never can have been what Goldsmith styles a ' choice spirit.' Parsimony and pomposity find no favour at con- vivial meetings; nor 'when the Rose reigns' is the part of ' rigid Cato ' a popular impersonation. Nevertheless, the fact that Hawkins was elected an original member both of the *Club' and of its Ivy Lane predecessor must be allowed as proof of the possession on his part of some modicum at least of those intellectual qualities which Johnson regarded as indispensable in his companions. And he was clearly not lacking in ability, as even Percy admits. Besides being a creditable citizen and an excellent magistrate, he was well and accurately informed on many sub- jects.^ As an enthusiastic fisherman, he prepared and annotated what is virtually the 'pioneer' ^ *I remember his [Percy's] saying, when he had joined us one morning in St. James's Park, "I love to ask you a question. Sir John, for if you cannot tell me what I want to know, you can always tell me where to search for it." ' (* Anecdotes' etc. by Laetitia Maria Hawkins, 1822, p. 3 1 5). This book, and the two subsequent volumes of ' Memoirs,' etc., 1 824., are full of interesting, if somewhat spiteful, ana. Miss Hawkins lived many years at 2, Sion Row, Twicken- ham, where she died in November 1835, aged 75. There is a tablet to her memory in Twickenham Church. Ii6 Sir John Hawkins ^ Knight edition of Walton and Cotton's 'Angler'; as a lover of music, he compiled a history of that art, which is a storehouse of laboriously collected in- formation; and finally, as Johnson's sometime associate and executor, he wrote a life of the Doctor which, in spite of the supreme and over- shadowing effect of Bos well's later book, is still worth reading for the out of the way particulars it preserves concerning the seamier side of eight- eenth century life and letters. If it is not possible, on general grounds, to make a very sympathetic study of its author, it should not be difficult to do him rather more justice than has hitherto fallen to his share. The Hawkinses claimed direct descent from that bluflP old Elizabethan admiral whom Kingsley, at the close of ' Westward Ho! ' shows us, in the Pelican Inn at Plymouth, testifying vigorously against croakers — a hearty English practice which, it is to be hoped, will not be suffered to die out. But the family must have declined since the Armada days, for in March 17 19, when our Sir John Hawkins was born, his father, like Richard- son's, was a house-carpenter, who, however, after- wards rose to be a surveyor and builder. His son, who had been taught by Hoppus (of the * Measurer '), intended at first to follow in his Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 117 footsteps. But he had acquired some knowledge of Latin, and was eventually articled to John Scott, a Bishopsgate attorney — 'a hard task- master and a penurious housekeeper,' who must, if we believe Malone and the rest, have com- municated some of his idiosyncrasy to his sub- ordinate. Under what Miss Hawkins calls ' the variegated tyranny' of this employer,^ Hawkins continued his self-education; and eventually began to dabble in letters, sending papers and verses to Sylvanus Urban. Moralist from the outset, his earliest prose effort is said to have been an untraced essay on ' Swearing.' His next, on ' Honesty,' appeared in the ' Gentleman's ' for March 1739, to which Johnson was contributing his life of the Dutch savant Boerhaave; and it is characteristic of the argumentative spirit attri- buted to Hawkins that it provoked a controversy, * continued through the magazines for several succeeding months.' Music next attracted his attention. He became a member of the Madrigal Society, and the earlier Academy of Ancient Music; and he began to write cantatas for Vauxhall and Ranelagh, which were set by John Stanley, the Wind organist of the Temple Church. In 1749, being by that time fairly well known ^ * Anecdotes,' etc., by L. M. Hawkins, 1822, p. 125. Ii8 Sir John Hawkins^ Knight as a lawyer and a man of taste, he was invited by- Johnson, whose acquaintance he must have made in connection with Cave's magazine, to join the club then held at the King's Head in Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row. Four years later he married a * fortune,' in the person of Miss Sidney Storer, of Highgate — a fortune subsequently much in- creased by the death of his brother-in-law. Boswell maliciously alleged that Miss Storer was an old woman, whose money was her attraction. This is untrue; for she was not only very pretty, but several years younger than Hawkins, who was thirty-four. His marriage made him com- fortably independent. Selling his business in Austin Friars, he bought a spacious country- house at Twickenham which included a concert- room ; leased a town residence in Hatton Garden (then overlooking the pleasant plains of Penton- villel); and settled down to devote himself per- manently to his two hobbies, music and fishing. That in such circumstances he should return to letters was perhaps inevitable, as also that his first considerable effort should be an edition of Walton, who was then not so well known as now. Ten years earlier a certain egregious Moses Browne, a Clerkenwell * pen-cutter,' author of 'Piscatory Eclogues' and later Vicar of Olney, Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 119 had put forth an ' Angler * on the old arrogant eighteenth-century lines. In other words, he had freely ' edited ' it, chopping and suppressing, pruning and improving, to suit his own fancy and the fashion of George 11. He brought out a fresh edition just a year before Hawkins entered the field in 1760. Hawkins, however, in advance of his age, adopted the wiser method of sticking closely to his text. What Browne had omitted he restored. He added a painstaking life of Walton, procured from Oldys another of Walton's adopted son Cotton, decorated his pages with designs by Hayman's pupil, Samuel Wale, and altogether achieved a compilation — in Johnson's words — *very diligently collected and very elegantly composed.' As might have been anticipated, it involved him in acrimonious controversy with Browne, who accused him — much as Prior accused John Forster in the matter of Gold- smith — of plagiarism and borrowing of material. But, like Forster, Hawkins eventually effaced his predecessor, as he deserved to do. In a later issue he substituted a new life of Cotton by him- self for that drawn up by Oldys, and made other improvements. That he was originally attracted to his task by Browne is not unlikely; but in the opinion of the late Thomas Westwood, whom I20 Sir John Hawkins^ Knight Walton himself must assuredly have regarded as a competent judge, the first credit of worthily- reviving Walton's masterpiece, and of making the first serious attempt at a biography of its author, belongs to Hawkins.^ Many editors — too many editors — have now- followed in this field, and a large literature has grown up around the book which Charles Lamb declared would ' sweeten a man's temper at any time to read.' And it was not, as might be sup- posed, with Richard Harriot's original octavo of 1653, t>ut with Hawkins's version that Lamb was most familiar. Interspersed among the old Titian and Leonardo prints that hung round the little sitting-room in his Enfield lodgings, came a sequence of India ink copies from Wale's de- signs'" by Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma Isola. Lamb also possessed a battered early copy of Hawkins himself, which he had picked up — not ^ * Chronicle of the " Compleat Angler " of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton,' 1864, pp. 25, 28. 2 Wale's designs were first engraved by the unfortunate Ryland, who was hanged for forgery in 1783. Miss Isola's copies of them were from Baxter's reprint, for which they were re-engraved by Philip Audinet. Where are these relics now ? The pleasant account of Emma Isola by Ellen Moxon, in the 'Bookman' for December 1909, contains nothing on the subject. Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 121 so much of a pennyworth as he expected — in * some ramshackled repository of marine stores.' The quoted words are Westwood's, who, as a boy, was for a space Lamb's housemate at En- field,' with free right of access to his 'ragged regiment' of books. The Hawkins of 1760 was a special favourite with young Westwood, who was wont to read it ' on the forked branch of an ancient apple-tree, in the little overgrown orchard' at the back of the house, whence he was just high enough to watch below him Elia's ' quaint, schol- astic figure,' pacing backwards and forwards, on what Hood called 'almost immaterial legs'; while, by craning his neck, he could dimly catch in the distance the marshy levels of Walton's river Lea. One owes a lasting debt of gratitude to 'the Knight' for originating such a memory! In 1760 Hawkins had been a year at Twicken- ham, and had made the acquaintance, at Straw- berry Hill, of his virtuoso neighbour, Horace Walpole, who does not seem to have felt for him the repugnance manifested by some of the author- ities already quoted, although Horace himself was as opposed to angling as Byron and Leigh Hunt. Writing to Sir David Dalrymple, in June, he refers to the new edition of Walton 'by Mr. ^ His father was Lamb's landlord. 122 Sir John Hawkins^ Knight Hawkins, a very worthy gentleman in my neigh- bourhood, who, I could wish, did not think angling so very innocent an amusement,* In the following year, upon the recommendation of an- other Twickenham resident, Paul Whitehead, Hawkins was made a Justice of Peace for Middle- sex, and immediately became an active magistrate. According to Walpole, although ' a very honest moral man,' he was extremely ' obstinate and con- tentious,' qualities which made him 'hated by the lower class ' and ' troublesome to the gentry.' But about his judicial capacity there can be no doubt. He wrote a pamphlet on the highways, coupling with it a suggested Bill, which later be- came law ; and he afterwards successfully opposed a scheme for penalizing the county in order to pay for the rebuilding of Newgate, an exploit which led to his being chosen (like Fielding be- fore him) Chairman of Quarter Sessions at Hicks's Hall. Like Fielding again, he wrote a memorable Charge to the Grand Jury ; and he showed such energy and decision in dealing with the Wilkes riots of 1768-9 — especially at Brentford and Moorfields — that he was subsequently knighted by George HI. On this occasion he was intro- duced to his Majesty by the Earl of Rochford, then Secretary of State for the Northern Depart- Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 123 mentj as 'the best magistrate in the kingdom' — a recommendation which may perhaps be held to preclude any great popularity. But petty litigation, the suppression of disorder, and the glories of going to Hicks's Hall in a coach and four, do not seem to have entirely diverted Hawkins from the cultivation of the severer Muses. Shortly after the appearance of the edition of the ' Complete Angler,' Walpole had suggested to him that he should undertake the ' History of Music' — a subject then very much in the air both at home and abroad. For this task he was not without rudimentary qualifications. He was a painstaking inquirer j he had — as we have seen — been an early member of the Madrigal Society; he was interested in the Academy of Ancient Music, and he had known one of its founders, the learned theorist John Christopher Pepusch, organist of the Charterhouse, and husband of the famous singer, Margarita de I'Epine. Indeed a great deal of Hawkins's material was derived from the collections he had formerly purchased from Pepusch, and transferred in after years to the British Museum. He was also largely indebted to that canorous minor canon, the Rev. William Gostling of Canterbury, who turned Hogarth's ' Five Days' Tour ' into Hudibrastics. His 124 Sir John Hawkins^ Knight labours must have begun as early as January 1 76 1, in which month Walpole writes to Mann at Florence for a number of Italian books on music, specially intended for his Twickenham neighbour. Hawkins worked assiduously at his task for several years, continuing it with increased ardour after his knighthood, when he visited the Bodleian and other libraries, copying portraits and consulting authorities. In 1776 the book at last appeared, in five quarto volumes, and in December of that year Walpole thus writes of it to Lady Ossory : ' I have been three days at Strawberry, and have not seen a creature but Sir John Hawkins's five volumes, the two last of which, thumping as they are, I literally did read in two days. They are old books to all intents and purposes, very old books ; and what is new, is hke old books, too, that is, full of minute facts that delight antiquaries ; nay, if there had never been such things as parts and taste, this work would please everybody. The first volume is extremely worth looking at^ for the curious facsimiles of old music and old instru- ments, and so is the second. The third is very heavy; the two last will amuse you, I think, ex- ceedingly, at least they do me.' And then, in his light but penetrating way, he goes on to touch Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 125 upon some of Sir John's ' anfractuosities ' : * My friend, Sir John, is a matter-of-fact man, and does now and then stoop very low in quest of game. Then he is so exceedingly religious and grave as to abhor mirth, except if it is printed in the old black letter, and then he calls the most vulgar ballad pleasant and full of humour. He thinks nothing can be sublime but an anthem, and Handel's choruses heaven upon earth. How- ever, he writes with great moderation, temper, and good sense, and the book is a very valuable one. I have begged his austerity to relax on one point, for he ranks comedy with farce and panto- mime. Now I hold a perfect comedy to be the perfection of human composition, and believe firmly that fifty " Iliads " and "iEneids " could be written sooner than such a character as FalstaiFs. Sir John says that Dr. Wallis discovered that they who are not charmed with music want a nerve in their brain. This would be dangerous anatomy. I should swear Sir John wants the comic nerve. . , .' * There is more in this of Hawkins's character than in all Malone's anthology of abuse. In a letter of six days later to Cole the anti- quary, Walpole predicts that the book would not ^ Toynbee's ' Walpole's Letters/ ix (1904), pp. 44.5-6. 126 Sir John Hawkins^ Knight sell rapidly, and it did not. Its bulk was against it, as much as its style ; and it was * cruelly and unwarrantably' attacked in the 'St. James's Chronicle ' by that scourge of authors, * the asp, George Steevens.' Moreover, as in the case of the Walton, there was another Richmond in the field. In the same year appeared the first volume of Dr. Burney's ' General History of Music,' which was strong where Hawkins was weak. Dr. Burney, besides being the * clever dog' that Johnson called him, was a professional; and he was a far better writer than his rival, though he was hasty in his judgments, and not always thorough. But he had a bustling, genial person- ality; and, for the time, the popular voice put the first instalment of the work above the completed labours of Hawkins. A contemporary rhymester contrasted the pair as follows: Have you Sir John Hawkins' histr'y? Some folks think it quite a myst'ry. Music filled his wondrous brain j How d'ye like him ? Is it plain ? Both I've read, and must agree, That Burney's Hist'ry pleases me. Sir John Hawkins, — Sir John Hawkins, How d'ye like him? how d'ye like him? Burney's Hist'ry — Burney's Hist'ry, Burney's Hist'ry pleases me. Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 127 Report affirmed that these artless verses, in which, as the sagacious reader will perceive, ' Burney's History ' must be read as Burn his [i.e. Hawkins's) History^ ruined the sale of the rival book. But Report, as frequently, is at fault. Whenever they were written, they were not set by Dr. Callcott as a 'Glee for three Voices' until 1789, when Burney's book was finished.^ They then obtained the prize of the Catch Club. In the event, how- ever, the tortoise won the race. Burney's brilliant volumes never passed into a second edition, while Hawkins was reprinted by Novello as late as 1875. During the years covered by the compiling of the * History of Music,' Hawkins's only other literary occupation, except some notes contributed to the Shakespeare of Johnson and Steevens, which bear his name,^ was an anonymous ' Account of the Acad- emy of Ancient Music,' undertaken and circulated ^ So indeed the verses imply by their *Both I've read' (see * Early Diary of Frances Burney,' 1907, ii, p. 29 a.). ^ These secured his admission into that pack of * black- letter-dogs ' who, under guise of commentators, hunt Actaeon- Shakespeare to death in the first part of the * Pursuits of Literature': * Asbolus Hawkins, a grim shaggy hound, In musick growls, and beats the bushes round.' A note saysthat the last four words are * descriptive of Sir John Hawkins's " History of Musick " j in which, however, there 128 Sir John Hawkins^ Knight to prevent the dissolution of that institution. The most important event of this period, however, v^ras his brief connection w^ith the famous ' Club ' later known as the Literary Club, established in 1764, of which he was one of the nine original members, the others being Reynolds (the founder), Johnson, Burke, Dr. Nugent (Burke's father-in-law). Gold- smith, Chamier, Beauclerk, and Langton. To these was afterwards added Samuel Dyer, a former member of the Ivy Lane Club. They met on Mondays at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho. ' Our discourse,' — writes Hawkins in his 'Life of Johnson' — *was miscellaneous, but chiefly literary. Politics, the most vulgar of all topics [I], were alone excluded. On that subject most of us w^ere of the same opinion. The British lion was licking his wounds [this was after the Seven Years' War], and we drank to the peace of old England.' Hawkins's membership, like Dyer's, was no doubt primarily due to his earlier relations with the Ivy Lane gathering; but his attendances seem speedily to have grown irregular. * Hawkins is remiss,' is much valuable information, as in all his other works, so unjustly censured in my opinion. Sir John's principal fault was digression from his subject ; but if you excuse that, you are well repaid by the information you receive' (p. 98, tenth ed. 1799). Sir John Hawkins y Knight 1 29 writes Johnson two years later to Langton ; and in 1768 he ceased to attend altogether. Percy, who succeeded to the vacancy, and whose account is confirmed by Reynolds, asserts that * the Knight ' displeased the members by discourtesy to Burke, and that they testified their sense of this in such a way as to bring about his resignation. Hawkins, of course, professes to have withdrawn of his own accord ; and the * oeconomy of his family,' to a man living part of the year at Twickenham, might well have been incompatible with the unseasonable hours, though he also hints darkly (in his second edition) at the threatened subversion of the society by un- desirable accessions to its numbers. According to his daughter, he also resented the monopolizing of the conversation by Burke and Johnson ; and, as was perhaps to be expected from a very magisterial magistrate and man of means, regarded the former, at this date, as no more than an ' Irish adventurer.' But whether he * seceded ' fi-om, or whether he was turned out of the Gerrard Street community, the conflicting constructions placed on that mishap by those concerned, present an odd kind of resem- blance to the inimitable but unpublished chapter of * Edwin Drood ' which recounts ' How Mr. Sapsea ceased to be a member of the Eight Club.' ^ ^ Forster's 'Life of Dickens,' Bk. XI, ch. ii. K 130 Sir John Hawkins ^ Knight If these things affected his relations with John- son, the fact has not been recorded. Boswell, who only became known to the great man in 1763, says : ' I never saw Sir John Hawkins in Dr. John- son's company, I think, but once, and I am sure not above twice.' Boswell manifestly does not choose to believe they were ever really intimate, an opinion which is echoed by Malone. But there are plenty of evidences of Johnson's visits to Hawkins, and of Hawkins's visits to Johnson. No doubt few let- ters passed between them, if we are to judge by the small number which have been preserved. Johnson's friendship with * the Knight,' however, went back to 1 749, and perhaps much earlier, when they were both contributors to Cave's magazine; and the Ivy Lane Club itself was established more than fifteen years before Boswell first saw Johnson in Davies' shop. Hawkins, too, was one of those members of the Ivy Lane Club who, at Johnson's instance, had celebrated the success of Mrs. Le- nox's ' Harriot Stuart ' in 1751 by an all-night sit- ting at the Devil Tavern to the accompaniment of hot apple-pie and bay-leaves, and there is no record that he was either expelled or withdrew from the association before it broke up in 1756. In 1783, long after he had left the Literary Club, we find Johnson still writing to him kindly to pro- Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 131 pose that the surviving members of the Ivy Lane Club should dine together *for old sake's sake'; and they did in effect so dine more than once, break- ing up, however, far too early for the sick and solitary old man. A year later, when Johnson was visibly failing, and Boswell, whose vanity had been wounded by some reproof, was sulking in Scotland, Johnson wrote again to Hawkins from Lichfield, begging him to visit him at Bolt Court, 'and give him the benefit of his advice and the consolation of his company.' In the following month he died, before Boswell, unfortunately for himself, had re- gained his equanimity. It was consequently Haw- kins who was prominently about Johnson in his last days; Hawkins, who eventually induced him to make his will ; and Hawkins, who became the most active of his three executors. For those who credit all the bedside gossip, some of ' the Knight's ' exertions in this capacity must have been — to say the least — ' obnoxious to cen- sure.' He was suspected, among other things, of surreptitiously appropriating a quarto manuscript volume containing some valuable autobiographical recollections by Johnson, an act which was at once officiously reported to the invalid, who was much disturbed by it. But Hawkins promptly justified himself by so adroit a penitential letter explaining 132 Sir John Hawkins^ Knight he had simply intended to preserve the volume from a possible depredator (who is understood to have been George Steevens),that Johnson not only unreservedly accepted his explanation, but praised the manner of ittoLangton. The occurrence, how- ever, maliciously heightened, gave great amusement to the quidnuncs.^ Another incident, probably also transformed by tittle-tattle, took place in con- nection with Johnson's watch, — a rather valuable tortoise-shell timekeeper by Mudge and Dutton, for which in 1768 the Doctor had paid seventeen guineas. This relic, Malone asserts, Hawkins wished to secure as a solatium for his services as executor; and, no doubt, he meant to pay for it. But his colleagues regarded it as properly reverting to the residuary legatee, Johnson's servant, Francis Barber, a black man, to whom, rather against Hawkins's judgment, Johnson had left the bulk of his property. Hawkins naturally says nothing of this matter; and Barber got the watch, which he sold later to a Lichfield canon. The story, how- ^ It may be added that the volume, or volumes, for there were two, were objects of much anxious solicitude to the Doctor's friends. Boswell himself confessed to Johnson that he had been sorely tempted to steal them, and never see him more. * Upon my enquiring how this would have affected him, " Sir '' (said he), " I believe I should have gone mad." ' The books were apparently destroyed. Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 133 ever, decorated to fancy, went abroad ; and Porson later made it the theme of a witty but now for- gotten squib in the ' Gentleman's Magazine.' Another charge, already referred to, is that Haw- kins caused Johnson, from motives of economy, to be * unworthily interred ' in the Abbey by omitting the anthem and choral service at his funeral, a thing for which the Dean and Chapter were subsequently blamed in the public prints. But here Hawkins could scarcely have acted with- out the concurrence of his co-executors, Reynolds and Scott ; and, as we are expressly informed, the expenses amounted to more than j^200.^ According to Miss Hawkins, Sir John, having resolved soon after the death of Johnson to write his biography, was almost simultaneously invited, on behalf of the London booksellers, to undertake that task as an introduction to an edition of the Doctor's complete works. For this he was to re- ceive two hundred pounds. He accepted the pro- posal, and began forthwith. As in the cases of the Walton and the ' History of Music,' his theme was occupying, or had recently occupied, other persons, who were all of them unlikely to be well disposed to an executor with special privileges. Mrs. Thrale was preparing her lively, if not very trustworthy, ^ * Gentleman's Magazine,' 1785, p. 86. 134 Sir John Hawkins^ Knight * Anecdotes '; Boswell, his 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides,' with its admirable conversations ; and further, with Malone's aid and counsel, he was making way with that larger * Life * he had announced as in progress. Cook, Tyers, Shaw, and Towers had all their turns and advocates. Added to these things, Hawkins, with obvious ad- vantages, had obvious defects. He had no con- structive power. He was terribly discursive; and his discursiveness was aggravated by the old cus- tom of unbroken narrative. Anything sent him ofF the track. As the * Monthly Review ' said, with more vivacity than usually belonged to Mr. Griffiths's meritorious publication, * he talks at large ... of music, politics, legal decisions, and the arches of Blackfriars bridge.' It was surely needless, even as an illustration of Johnson's De- mosthenic manner, to fill twenty pages with the reprint of speeches that were never spoken ; or to reproduce long extracts from the Harleian Cata- logue which were not by Johnson at all. Also, it was equally irrelevant, apropos of Chesterfield, to discuss at length the morality of the famous * Let- ters.' Then, it must be admitted, * the Knight' has an unhappy knack of saying uncomfortable things. 'Souvent j usque sur le trottoir II donne ses coups de boutoir.' No doubt his utterances express his Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 135 honest opinion, or what he regarded as his righteous indignation; and, from his point of view, they are, if arguable, intelligible. But ' nunc non erat his locus ' — as his classic contemporaries complained: it is ' not honesty to have them thus set down/ He oflFended some readers at the outset, by subserviently referring, in his Dedication to the King, to the royal bounty which had raised Johnson from in- digence, whereas George III only honoured him- self by bestowing it. To speak of the * feebleness and inanity' of Addison's style, with whatever unction of compliment to his sentiments and humour, is sheer stupidity ; to talk of Pitt's * yelp- ing pertinacity,' eight years after Lord Chatham had been laid in an honourable grave, is a clumsily gratuitous instance of ' nil nisi malum.' Nor was it necessary, in the interests of propriety^ to run amuck through the great fiction ists of the time. All this tended to increase the hostihty of the critics, with the result that the book was more mercilessly anatomized than any volume of its kind. The ' Monthly Review,' to which the au- thor had been a contributor, gave it four articles ; and throughout the whole of 1787 the * Gentle- man's' kept up a dropping fire of criticism, in- cluding the already mentioned paper by Porson. But at this time of day, apart from merits or 136 Sir John Hawkins ^ Knight demerits, there is no doubt the * Life of Johnson * was not fairly treated. That much of its material was unassailable, the ' Monthly Review,* by omitting the digressions, sufficiently demonstrated. It contrived to construct from Hawkins a con- tinuous Memoir which, even now, gives an excellent account of its subject. If Hawkins made mistakes, they have long ago been cor- rected ; and all his competitors made mistakes at the outset. It is not, however, with Hawkins's * Hfe ' that we are at present so much concerned. The abiding and original side of his labours is just those divagations and superfluities which disturbed the orderly eighteenth century spirit. Even Boswell, shaking a rival wig over the * un- pardonable inaccuracies,' is forced to admit that the book * contains a collection of curious anec- dotes and observations, which few men but its author could have brought together.' It is to these 'curious anecdotes' that the reader, who knows all that he cares to know about Johnson, now turns. He likes to hear of Dodd and Savage and Cave ; of Boyse and Amhurst and Ralph and the other * authors by profession ' ; of Clubs and Taverns, of Mrs. Cornelys and the Cock Lane Ghost, of Bookshops and Booksellers; of the rivalry of the ' Gentleman's ' and the ' London ' Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 137 magazines; and he may even bring himself to bear, in pliant moments, with ' instances of learned men who have been taken into the families of the Great,' or disquisitions on the architecture of the bridges of London. And if ' the Knight ' has his arid tracts, he has also his occasional flower-knots. This is his account of Johnson's conception of that parliamentary oratory under the second George which, from his Exeter Street garret, he reported but never heard: 'The characteristic of the one assembly we know is Dignity: the privilege of the other Freedom of Expression. To speak of the first, when a member thereof endowed with wisdom, gravity, and ex- perience, is made to rise, the stile which Johnson gives him is nervous, his matter weighty, and his arguments convincing; and when a mere popular orator takes up a debate, his eloquence is by him represented in a glare of false rhetoric, specious reasoning, an affectation of wit, and a disposition to trifle with subjects the most inter- esting.' One rubs one's eyes as one reads, and wonders whether the senatorial standards of ' that enlightened age in which we live' really differ materially from those of the ' Hurgoes ' and 'CHnabs' of Johnson's Magna Lilliputia! A second edition of the 'Life,' modified to 138 Sir John Hawkins^ Knight some extent, followed at the close of 1787. Scarcely any of it was sold — says Malone. In 1784, a fire at the house in Queen Square, Westminster (once Admiral Vernon's), to which Hawkins had moved from Hatton Garden, de- stroyed his library, and for a space interrupted his labours. After a temporary sojourn in Orchard Street, he took up his abode in the Broad Sanctuary. Here, in May 1789, he died of an apoplectic seizure, and was buried in the Abbey Cloisters, under a stone which, by his express wish, bore no more than his initials, his age, and the date of his death. In Chalmers's biographical sketch of him, whence these last particulars are derived, there follows a very laudatory summary of character, which, unfortunately, is somewhat discounted from its having been communicated by the family. That, in addition to the ordinary lapidary epithets, he was * a sincere Christian (as, notwithstanding the calumnies of his enemies, can be abundantly testified by the evidence of many persons now living),' there is no need to doubt; or further that he was — to quote another writer — a person of unquestioned worth and integrity. But these things, when accompanied by difficulties of manner, are much affected by the point of view. The man who, in the grave Sir John Hawkins^ Knight 139 atmosphere of the then growing ' Clapham Sect,' would seem a pattern, might, to the Literary Club, be simply insupportable. His dignity, par- ticularly if it were emphasized by the drawling speech indicated in the popular epitaph,^ might easily be mistaken for pomposity; his thrift, for meanness ; his rectitude, for austerity ; his sanc- tity, for sanctimoniousness. Yet, with all this, he could still — as Johnson said — be 'an honest man at the bottom.' His worst fault, probably, lay, not so much in his frigid Puritanism and hide-bound temperament, as in his * plentiful lack' of that saving solvent in social intercourse — a sense of humour. His clever neighbour at Straw- berry was right in suspecting that he 'wanted the comic nerve.' There is no cure for such cases ; and no consolation save the wise caution of Johnson : ' Never believe extraordinary char- acters which you hear of people. Depend upon it. Sir, they are exaggerated.' That is worth bearing in mind, even if the Doctor, who was a humourist himself, should contradict it flatly within twenty-four hours. 1 * Here lies Sir John Hawkins In his shoes and staukins^ LAUREATE WHITEHEAD SENSITIVE Mr. James Boswell,'whose vanity was wounded by the inadequate mention made of his name in Hawkins's ' Life of Johnson,' seems to have been equally annoyed at a 'sneer- ing observation ' in Mason's 'Memoirs' of White- head. What the observation in question was, he does not vouchsafe to tell usj^ but from his con- text he must have considered that Mason had in- directly disparaged the importance, in biography, of letters and conversations. These last were Boswell's strong point ; and as he had said in the ' Dedication ' of the ' Tour to the Hebrides,' he regarded them as ' the most valuable part ' of his work. 'Mason's Life of Gray' — he wrote to Temple in February 1788 — ' is excellent, because it is interspersed with letters which show us the man. His Life of Whitehead is not a life at all, for there is neither a letter nor a saying from first to last. I am absolutely certain that my mode of ' Nor is it easy to trace it in Mason himself, whose main attack seems directed at Johnson's * Life of Gray.' 140 Laureate Whitehead 141 biography, which gives not only a History of Johnson's visible progress through the world, and of his publications, but a view of his mind in his letters and conversations, is the most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a Life than any work that has ever yet appeared.* Three years later, in the opening pages of that Life, he returns to the same idea : * That the conversation of a celebrated man, if his talents have been exerted in conversation, will best display his character, is, I trust, too well established in the judgment of mankind, to be at all shaken by the sneering ob- servation of Mr. Mason, in his ' Memoirs of Mr. William Whitehead,' in which there is literally no Life^ but a mere dry narrative of facts. I do not think it was quite necessary to attempt a de- preciation of what is universally esteemed, because it was not to be found in the immediate object of the ingenious writer's pen ; for in truth, from a man so still and so tame, as to be contented to I pass many years as the domestick companion or a superannuated lord and lady [which is Boswell's disrespectful description of the third Earl and Countess of Jersey], conversation worth recording could no more be expected, than from a Chinese mandarin on a chimney-piece, or the fantastick figures on a gilt leather skreen.' 142 Laureate Whitehead BoswelPs attitude is Boswellian, and not a little undignified, since he has by far the best of the argument. His conception of biography is un- assailable; and where to epistolary material is added the material of conversation, the combina- tion cannot fail to succeed. It is true that the reproduction of conversation, when not steno- graphic, has its suspected side, as the lynx-eyed Croker, with whom distrust was congenital, dis- covered in reviewing theZJ/^ry of Mme.D'Arblay. He doubted her ability * to give, verbatim, all the details of long conversations — sometimes many days old — which the readiest pen and the quickest apprehension could not have done even on the instant'; and it may be conceded, notwithstand- ing Dr. Burney's declaration that his daughter ' carried bird-lime in her brains,' that one some- times hesitates a little at those lengthy 'theatri- calized ' dialogues, to which, as xxv a play, the names of the speakers are prefixed. But with Boswell, the case is otherwise. His memory was to the full as retentive as Fanny Burney's. He had extraordinary mimetic power; and could prob- ably have reproduced Johnson's deliberate sonority and strongly-marked characteristics as effectively as Garrick. He had attentively studied his model's peculiarities of manner; and from the memoranda Laureate Whitehead 143 of a dinner party or a night's intercourse (for he wrote no shorthand), could reconstruct a con- densed record, which in its main lines should be vivid enough to deceive, by its absolute veri- similitudej even those who had been present. That he did not profess to make it literal, is clear from his repeated attempts — as he became gradually * impregnated with the Johnsonian aether ' — to Johnsonize it more exactly. In short, the man and the material had met. Mason, writing of Whitehead with meagre data, and with no corre- spondence, could naturally only depreciate methods of which he was unable to avail himself. But though his subject was a small one, it was not without interest; and if not ample enough for an extended biography, is still not too minute for a brief paper, particularly as the laureates of the eighteenth century, perhaps by reason of their office, have not always received the modest recog- nition which, as literary figures, they sometimes merit. William Whitehead, here to be considered, whose quiet and unobtrusive personality must not be confused with that of his far less worshipful namesake, Paul Whitehead, the crony of Wilkes and Monk of Medmenham, was of humble origin, even humbler origin than Richardson and Sir John 144 Laureate Whitehead Hawkins. He was born in 1715, his father being a baker of St. Botolph's Parish, Cambridge, who served Pembroke Hall. He must have been well- to-do, for he gave his elder son a liberal educa- tion. By the interest of Lord Montfort (then Mr. Bromley), he obtained for his second son, born fifteen years later, a nomination to Win- chester. Two years afterwards he died, in em- barrassed circumstances, having frittered away his means in the fantastic decoration of a country house in the neighbouring village of Grantchester, which long went by the name of * Whitehead's Folly.' His son William nevertheless continued at Win- chester, then under Dr. Burton, who seems to have appreciated his pupil's early metrical exer- cises so much that he eventually came to * speak of them with rapture.' From poetry the boy turned to the drama, producing at sixteen an entire comedy. He is also said to have acted a female part in the ' Andria ' of Terence, and certainly played Marcia in a school representation of Addison's ' Cato ' — roles which may be held to imply something of that gentle and effeminate character which is attributed to him. In 1733, when Peterborough, then seventy-five, and within two years of his end, visited Winchester from Bevis Mount with Pope, he gave ten guineas to Laureate Whitehead 145 the boys for prizes ; and Pope suggested that they should take ' Mordanto's ' own exploits in the Peninsula as a theme for a * copy of verses.' This must have been a time when at Winchester, in Whitehead's later words — *the Muses revell'd most,' for no fewer than six of the competitors took guinea prizes, Whitehead being one. The remainder of the money was laid out in subscrip- tions for other boys to * Friar Pine's ' incised 'Horace,' then beginning to be issued. At William of Wykeham's College Whitehead also attained a respectable, though not an extraordinary facility as a writer of Latin verse, and he was even com- missioned by Pope to try his skill at a translation of the first Epistle of the * Essay on Man.' But although the task was performed, there is no record that it rivalled Johnson's rendering of the ' Messiah.' Perhaps it was less easy to interpret what the author himself had failed to comprehend. Whitehead's record at Winchester is that of a rather delicate boy, fonder of the poets and Mrs. De la Riviere Manley's 'New Atalantis,' than of ' urging the flying ball ' of Gray, while either from delicacy or prudence (his biographer is not sure which), he sought his companions among the more refined and better-born of his schoolmates. When, in September 1735, the L 146 Laureate Whitehead time came for his election to New College, Ox- ford, although he had been school tutor to a nobleman's son and a prepositor, his name, * through the force of superior interest,' was placed so low upon the list that it was impossible for him to succeed. He consequently left Winchester with no greater advantage than a good education. At this point, however, the accident of his birth stood him in stead. Some scholarships specially open to the orphan sons of bakers had been founded at Clare Hall by a certain Thomas Pyke, who had himself been what Derrick called a ' Master of the Rolls,' and one of these scholarships White- head's mother obtained. It was worth but four shillings a week, which, though it meant more than it does now, was still far from making him easy. Yet it is to his credit that his narrow cir- cumstances seem never to have affected his popu- larity. As a versifier whom Pope had praised, he was still memorable; and his address and amiability speedily recommended him to many prominent persons. Charles Townsend, Ogden of the ' Sermons,' Hurd, afterwards the Bishop, Mason's uncle. Dr. Balguy, are among the names of those who not only noticed him at this date, but remained his friends for life ; and when, in 1736, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was married to Laureate Whitehead 147 his clever wife, the Princess Augusta, Whitehead was one of the choir of academic singing-birds — a choir including Gray and West and Horace Walpole — which burst into loyal jubilation. Three years later, he graduated B.A. and in 1742 he became a Fellow of his College. Whitehead printed his contribution to the 'Gratulatio' in his first volume, but he after- wards withdrew it from publication. Of the verses which roused the facile plaudits of Dr. Burton nothing seems to have survived save a passable ' Vision of Solomon ' in ten-line stanzas; and an address to his mother, obviously inspired, as Mason points out, by Pope's birthday offering to Martha Blount. Pope, indeed, at this date, was very much in Whitehead's thoughts. His first published production at Cambridge was a sequence of Popesque heroics on * The Danger of Writing Verse.' It contains mildly aphoristic lines such as What 's born in leisure men of leisure read (which by the way is arguable); and couplets such as Or, deeply vers'd in flatt'ry's wily ways, Flow in full reams of undistinguish'd praise, which happily reflect their admired model, while 148 Laureate Whitehead there is a commendable energy in the ensuing outburst over licence : Curs'd be their verse, and blasted all their bays, Whose sensual lure th' unconscious ear betrays j Wounds the young breast, ere Virtue spreads her shield, And takes, not wins, the scarce disputed field. Though specious rhet'ric each loose thought refine. Though music charm in every labour'd line. The dangerous verse, to full perfection grown, Bavius might blush, and Quarles disdain to own. The last words show that Whitehead followed his master in disdaining Quarles, with whom both were probably but imperfectly acquainted. But he scarcely attained the admirable perspicuity of Pope; and if, as alleged. Pope praised *The Danger of Writing Verse,' it must have been that he recognized in its author a creditable pupil rather than a dangerous rival. In Whitehead's next effort, a versification of the Atys and Adrastus episode in Herodotus (Atys, it should be mentioned, was accidentally killed by Adrastus in hunting the Mysian boar), Pope still dominates the writer; and in a third performance, *Ann Boleyn to Henry VlUth,' based upon her famous last letter from the Tower, as printed by Addison in the * Spectator,' ' Eloisa to Abelard ' is plainly in his mind. But it was a bold attempt to dilute Laureate Whitehead 149 in verse what Shakespeare {^ace Mr. Addison) could scarcely have bettered for truth and un- feigned poignancy; and it is ill reading the rhymed paraphrase after the prose original. Whitehead is far more at home in another poem 'On Ridicule,' published in the same year, which has several telling passages on the nice conduct of that risible faculty which, we are assured by the author of 'Horae Subsecivae,' constitutes, with the possession of a chin and the convolution of the brain known as the hippocampus minor^ our chief distinction from the brute creation. Here is an easily recognizable class of laughers : Fond of one art, most men the rest forgo j And all 's ridiculous, but what they know. Freely they censure lands they ne'er explore, With tales they learn'd from coasters on the shore. As Afric's petty kings, perhaps, who hear Of distant states from some weak traveller, Imperfect hints with eager ears devour, And sneer at Europe's fate, and Britain's power. And here is a wise warning, even now, — 'Tis dangerous, too, in these licentious times, Howe'er severe the smile, to sport with crimes . . . When Tully's tongue the Roman Clodius draws. How laughing satire weakens MiLO's cause! Each pictur'd vice so impudently bad, The crimes turn frolics, and the villain madj 150 Laureate Whitehead Rapes, murders, incest, treasons, mirth create, And Rome scarce hates the author of her fate. It is consolatory, too, to find that Whitehead does not share the views of Sir John Hawkins as to the 'feebleness and inanity' of Addison's style. See, with what grace instructive satire flows Politely keen, in Clio's ^ numbered prose! That great example should our zeal excite, And censors learn from Addison to write. In the first version of this poem. Whitehead included Lucian and Cervantes as legitimate models in the art of ridicule, but he withdrew them afterwards, as well as some other masters, in order that Addison might reign alone. A poem to Lord Ashburnham on * Nobility ' completes Whitehead's academic output; and his next function was that of tutor to a son of the third Earl of Jersey. As his fellowship was not prejudiced by such an employment, he removed in 1 745 to his patron's house in Berkeley Square. Besides his pupil. Viscount Villiers, he had the education of a friend of the family named Stephens. But his duties left him ample leisure to cultivate an already-formed taste for the stage, * C. L. I. O. — were initials which Addison appended to his * Spectators.' Laureate Whitehead 151 and he promptly set about a ballad-farce called the * Edinburgh Ball,' based on the '45, and ridi- culing the Pretender. This, however, despite its manifest 'actuality,' was neither printed nor per- formed. Two years afterwards he was evidently preluding to more serious efforts. He must have become known to Dr. Benjamin Hoadly, on whose * Suspicious Husband,' which Garrick had popularized by his rendering of 'Ranger,' he wrote some commendatory verses; and he also ad- dressed an octosyllabic epistle to 'Roscius' him- self, who had just been appointed joint patentee with Lacy of Drury Lane. Both Thalia and Melpomene are made to combine in praising Garrick ; and both seem needlessly preoccupied by their recollections of Pope on Swift.^ 'O thou' — says Melpomene — O thou, whom Nature taught the art To pierce, to cleave, to tear the heart, Whatever name delight thy ear, Othello, Richard, Hamlet, Lear j — to which Thalia replies — O thou, where'er thou fix thy praise, Brute, Drugger, Fribble, Ranger, Bays! O thou ! whatever Title please thine ear, Dean, Drapier, BickerstafF, or Gulliver! (* Dunciad,' i, 20.) 152 Laureate Whitehead O join with her ^ in my behalf, And teach an audience when to laugh. So shall buffoons with shame repair To draw in fools at Smithfield fair, And real humour charm the age. Though Falstaff should forsake the stage. — the last line being a palpable reference to the approaching retirement of Quin to Bath, where he was to enter on his closing vocation of wit and bon-vivant. But Whitehead is nothing if not didactic, and he winds up with an appeal to the all-powerful manager to purify the stage. A nation's taste depends on you: — Perhaps a nation's virtue too, — he is reminded; and he is diplomatically en- joined to Consult your own good sense in all, Be deaf to fashion's fickle call, Nor e'er descend from reason's laws To court, what you command, applause. If, with this admonition, we cannot positively connect the subsequent production at Drury Lane of Whitehead's first play, ' The Roman Father,' we must at least admit that ' it followed hard upon.' ^ The Roman Father ' was a careful academic adaptation of the story of the Horatii ^ Mrs. Pritchard. Laureate Whitehead 153 and Curiatii which Corneille had taken from Livy, with omissions and extensions to suit the English cast, greater prominence being given to the father of the hero, a part which was sustained by Garrick, Horatia, his daughter, being played by Mrs. Pritchard, who had also been thought- fully eulogized in the Garrick epistle. The piece was produced in February 1750, and had a succes d^estime. But Whitehead is his own severest critic in his 'Prologue,' spoken by * silver-tongued' Barry, the handsome interpreter of young Horatius: — Our bard has play'd a most adventurous part, And turn'd upon himself the critic's art : Stripp'd each luxuriant plume from Fancy's wings. And torn up similes Hke vulgar things : Nay even each moral, sentimental^ stroke. Where not the character, but poet spoke, He lopp'd, as foreign to his chaste design, Nor spar'd an useless, tho' a golden line. It is hazardous for an author to suggest to his public an obvious objection; and in Whitehead's case, his classic restraint and economy of rhe- torical ornament were not redeemed by any exceptional vigour of expression. In a second tragedy, 'Creusa, Queen of Athens,' adapted from the * Ion ' of Euripides, and brought out 154 Laureate Whitehead at Drury Lane four years later, he achieved a greater literary, if a less popular triumph. Garrick again took a leading character, Mrs. Pritchard was the Queen, and Miss Macklin the boy Ilyssus, who had been substituted for the Ion of the model. Concerning the acting merits of ' Creusa,' Garrick's two biographers, Murphy and Davies, are at issue. It may be mentioned, however, that Walpole — not always so con- temptible a judge as Macaulay supposes — had no doubts. * It is the only new tragedy ' — Horace tells Chute — *that I ever saw and really liked. The plot is most interesting, and though so complicated, quite clear and natural. The cir- cumstance of so much distress being brought on by characters, every one good, yet acting con- sistently with their principles towards the mis- fortunes of the drama, is quite new and pleasing.' To-day, perhaps, what is most vital about the play is the second or occasional epilogue spoken by Mrs. Pritchard, and written by the author at the general election which followed the death, in March 1754, of Henry Pelham. It sketches a feminine House of Commons, where, placed for once ' in good St, Stephen s pews,' women should straightway proceed to enforce early marriages, ^ Toynbee's * Walpole's Letters/ iii (1903), 2*8-9. Laureate Whitehead 155 prohibit gaming, double-tax wine, and take the duty off all imports of ' blonds and laces, French hoops, French silks, French cambricks, and — French faces.' 'Creusa ' and *The Roman Father' were Whitehead's only acted offerings to Mel- pomene ; and with the record that they brought him enough to pay his father's still outstanding debts, we may dismiss his contributions to ' the buskin'd stage.' But, as we shall find later, he made a further essay in comedy. Up to the period now reached, and despite the distractions of stagecraft, his pen had not been idle in other ways, and had exercised itself in various directions. Of verses that can be dated, the chief is an highly ornate * Ode to the Nymph of Bristol Spring ' (St. Vincent's Well), an at- tempt, in Thomsonian blank verse, to emulate the hymns of Homer and Callimachus. Another piece, on ' Friendship,' attracted the commenda- tion of Gray, though more for its execution than its theme, in which the critic discovered a latent note of satire. A third piece, 'The Sweepers,' recalls the ' Splendid Shilling ' of Philips, but is more a memory of Gay's ' Trivia ' than a parody of Milton. These things, however, with * La Fontaine ' tales, epistles in octosyllabics, and the rest, serve to prove that the writer was more IJ0 Laureate Whitehead capable than some of his contemporaries, of vary- ing, not only his measures, but his matter. He also contributed three papers to Moore's just established 'World,' which exhibit a pleasing facility in that 'other harmony of prose.' One is levelled at the stupidity and obscenity of the contemporary novel — charges from which he is careful to exempt both Richardson and Fielding. Another is a sensible protest against the effeminacy of male beauty ; a third rallies agreeably the then fashionable ' Chinese manner ' in building and furniture, which was apparently^ already ^up- planting pseudo-Gothic. In 1754 Whitehead collected his verses into a volume ; and in June of the same year left England in the capacity of * Governor ' or travelling tutor to his pupil. Lord Villiers, and Lord Harcourt's son. Lord Nuneham. Making their way through Flanders, the trio paused for a while at Rheims (like Gray and Walpole before them) in order to study French ; and next moving to Leipzig, devoted seven months to ' Droit Publique ' under Professor Mascou, then very old, but still capable of reading his ^ We say * apparently,' because at this date, 1753, the apostle of Gothic, Horace Walpole, was still continuing, by slow stages, to convert Mrs. Chenevix's little country- box at Twickenham into a * Gothic castle." Laureate Whitehead 157 lectures. From Leipzig they went on to Dresden, reaching Hanover in 1755, at the very time when George II was paying his last visit to his beloved Electorate before the Seven Years' War. At Hanover they happened upon Whitehead's future biographer, Mason, who was domestic chaplain to the Earl of Holdernesse, Secretary of State for the Northern Department. To this connection belongs a poetical address by Whitehead to Mason, in which the former, rather unexpectedly, con- sidering his antecedents, enjoins his friend not to * loiter life away,' but to devote himself to an active career. From Hanover the party passed to Vienna, and finally entered Italy. The declaration of war prevented their traversing France on their homeward journey; but after crossing the Alps, and visiting Switzerland, Germany, and Holland, they finally landed at Harwich in September 1756.^ Their experiences exhibit the 'Grand Tour' at its best — not as the ' premature, and indigested TraveV against which the excellent Dr. Brown inveighs in his 'inestimable Estimate'' \ but ^ In Mr. Ralph Straus's opportune and interesting study of * Robert Dodsley,' Lane, 1909, are printed two letters from Wliitehead to the bookseller. From one of these, sent from Leipzig in April 1755, it appears that Garrick had revived ' Creusa/ 158 Laureate Whitehead rather — as conceived by Sidney and John Evelyn — in the light of an apprenticeship to the business of life. Whitehead w^as an ideal ' Governor '; and his companions were docile and genuinely attached to him. One result of their wanderings was, perhaps of necessity, the production on the tutor's part of poetical impressions de voyage. There is an opening * Ode to the Tiber ' on entering the Campagna; but the majority of the pieces are elegies after the model of Gray, a circumstance which has perhaps led to their being more neglected than they deserve to be. One of these last, written on the Mausoleum of Augustus (then a garden belonging to the Marchese di Corre), in which young Lord Villiers is invited to emulate Marcellus, has a stanza that faintly suggests a quatrain of the Rubdiydt : In every shrub, in every flow'ret's bloom, That paints with different hues yon smiling plain, Some Hero's ashes issue from the tomb. And live a vegetative life again. Is not this Omar's I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled j That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head ? In another elegy, also written at Rome, White- Laureate Whitehead 159 head addresses his other pupil, Lord Nuneham; and in his final lines indicates the true function of a patrician man of taste : — Whate'er of Greece in sculptur'd brass survives, Whate'er of Rome in mould'ring arcs remains, Whate'er of Genius on the canvass lives, Or flows in polish'd verse, or airy strains, Be these thy leisure j to the chosen few. Who dare excel, thy fost'ring aid afford j Their arts, their magic powers, with honours due Exalt; but he thyself what they record. It was quite in accordance with these useful precepts, that while he was at Rome, Whitehead was appointed, by the good offices of his noble patrons, to 'two genteel patent places, usually united,' namely, those of Secretary and Register of the Order of the Bath. He was thus removed sufficiently beyond the necessity of pleasing in order to live ; and shortly afterwards, when Colley Gibber died, he became also Poet Laureate. The vacancy had first been oflfered, through Lord John Cavendish, the Lord Chamberlain's brother, to Gray, by whom it was declined. * I hope' — his biographer Mason makes him say — *I hope you couched my refusal to Lord John Cavendish in as respectful terms as possible, and with all due acknowledgments to the Duke [of l6o Laureate Whitehead Devonshire].' This is an excellent example of the latitude of eighteenth-century editing ; for Gray did not utter a single word that has been quoted. On the contrary, he wrote a very Gray-like and rather petulant letter to Mason. He *knew very well,' he said, 'the bland emollient saponaceous qualities both of sack and silver,' but while he did not pretend to blame any one else that had * not the same sensations,' he would ' rather be sergeant trumpeter or pin-maker to the palace.' ... * The office itself,' he added, ' has always humbled the professor hitherto, . . . if he were a poor writer by making him more conspicuous, and if he were a good one by setting him at war with the little fry of his own profession, for there are poets little enough to envy even a poet laureate.' Looking to Gibber, and the Eusdens and Tates who had preceded him, Gray's attitude is intelligible. But Whitehead had 'not the same sensations,' nor had some of his friends. Richard Owen Cam- bridge, indeed, in a congratulatory poem, declared that ' every envious voice was hushed ' — Tho' by prescriptive right prepar'd To libel the selected bard — an ideal condition of things which is surely too good to be true. Be this as it may, Whitehead set himself * to play the game.' He had not, like Laureate Whitehead i6i Gray, been proflFered exemption from the duties, and he manfully disregarded Mason's advice to employ an occasional * ghost.' From November 1758 to the end of his life he continued to produce his * quit-rent odes ' and ' pepper-corns of praise ' vvrith exemplary industry ; and it must be honestly admitted, despite the verdict of Johnson (who thought the difference between bad and good in these matters too trifling for discrimination), with far greater ability than had characterized the per- functory efforts of his forerunners. As Gray had predicted, and as Cambridge had really expected, he did not escape the hostility of the ' little fry,' who, however amiable they may have seemed at the outset, were unwearied in denouncing his performances in office. To such assaults he was not careful to reply. But in some verses entitled 'A Pathetic Apology for all Laureates, past, present, and to come,' composed not long before his death, he shows that he fully appreciated the tribulations of those whose — Muse, obliged by sack and pension, Without a subject, or invention — Must certain words in order set, As innocent as a Gazette; Must some half-meaning half disguise. And utter neither truth nor lies. — M 1 62 Laureate Whitehead a definition which, if it can scarcely be said to magnify his office, has, at all events, the authority of prolonged experience.^ When he returned to England from the Con- tinent, Whitehead had reached that middle-age beyond which, in ordinary circumstances, a new career is not embarked upon. For many years to come he lived with Lord Jersey, no longer as a tutor, but as a companion to his pupil's father and mother, now advanced in years. The difficulties which in other cases have arisen from such an arrangement were materially modified by White- head's own tact and amiability, and by the perfect taste and delicacy with which he was treated by the * superannuated lord and lady ' at whom Boswell thought it necessary to jeer. Lord Har- court also gave him a standing invitation to Nuneham. It must have been either at Nuneham or Middleton Park that he prepared his solitary comedy, the * School for Lovers,' based upon Fontenelle's unacted ' Le Testament. ' Perhaps ^ Gray was more generous to Whitehead than some of his contemporaries. * Do you know I like both White- head's Odes' — he writes to Mason in January 1759 — *i^ great measure, but nobody else does.' Elsewhere he says, *■ they are far better than anything he ever wrote.' He also liked the verses to Garrick. Laureate Whitehead 163 because of Whitehead's repudiation of sentiment- ality in the Prologue to the ' Roman Father,' Mason shrank from classing the piece with the comedie larmoyante already established in France,^ and soon to be transferred to this country. But Whitehead's admission in his own never-spoken ' Prologue ' is here conclusive. His work, he says, professes to ' play politely with your hopes and fears, And sometimes smiles provoke, and some- times tears * — a distinction which plainly indicates a leaning to the new comedie mixte, rather than that elder manner which relied exclusively upon the ridicule of vice and folly. As in the ' Roman Father,' he also aimed at 'pure simplicity.' His plot, turning on the time-honoured embarrass- ments of ward and guardian, is almost bald ; his pathos is not infectious; his humour (in which he was by no means deficient) is * polite ' to the vanishing point. Consequently his Dorilants and Caelias, his Modelys and Aramintas are not more exhilarating than the superfine puppets later set ^ In Dialogue XIV of the 'Dialogues of theDead'(i76o), Lyttelton makes Pope say: * It is a wonderful thing, that in France the ' Comick Muse ' should be ' the gravest lady in the nation . . . Now she weeps over vice instead of showing it to mankind, as I think she generally ought to do, in ridiculous lights' (* Works,' 1776, ii, 199). 164 Laureate Whitehead in motion by Kelly and Cumberland. But Garrick, who when he chose could float or finesse any- thing, played once more the leading part, being excellently seconded by Palmer and O'Brien, while for women there were Mrs. Gibber (acting at fifty a girl of fifteen!), Mrs. Clive, and Mrs. Yates, any one of whom, by herself, could have secured attention to any piece not absolutely contemptible. And 'contemptible ' the ' School for Lovers ' could not be called. It had literary style, good manners, and good sense. But it was undeniably tame. It wanted the historical piano which Mr. Harry Foker's prototype maliciously recommended to Thackeray. And it is not difficult to understand why, when Garrick a few years later proposed Whitehead as final arbiter in the matter of the production of * The Good-Natur'd Man,' Gold- smith indignantly refused to submit his work to a critic whose views of comedy differed so funda- mentally from his own.' Concurrently with the appearance in book form 1 Garrick mentions the * School for Lovers ' in the 'Farmer's Return from Town,' 1762, a bright little inter- lude he wrote for Mrs. Pritchard's benefit. * The " Crat- ticks " grumbled,' says the farmer j — * I'll tell you for whoy. They wanted to laugh — and were ready to croy.' Descant- ing delightfully, in * A Drawing of Garrick,' on the fron- Laureate Whitehead 165 of the 'School for Lovers' — that is to say, in March 1762 — Whitehead published a * Charge to the Poets,' which is, in some sort, a sequel to his earlier * Danger of Writing Verse.' Considering the traditional irritability of the class addressed, the title was not tactful, especially from a laureate; nor was it extenuated by the motto, * ^asi ex cathedra loquitur,^ But the poem is far better than its predecessor, more skilfully versified, more con- nected in thought, and full of excellent things, many of which are as true to-day as they were under George III. * To you,' the poet cries : To you, ye guardians of the sacred fount, Deans and Archdeacons of the double mount. That thro' our realms intestine broils may cease. My first, and last advice is, * Keep the peace ! ' What is't to you, that half the Town admire False sense, false strength, false softness, or false fire? Through Heav'n's void concave let the meteors blaze, He hurts his own, who wounds another's bays. What is't to you, that numbers place your name First, fifth, or twentieth, in the lists of fame ? tispiece which Hogarth designed for his friend's play, Mr. Sidney Colvin takes an opportunity of making some valu- able references to Whitehead and his works (* Fasciculus Johanni Willis Clark dicatus,' 1909, pp. 4.1 2-41 8). 1 66 Laureate Whitehead Old Time will settle all your claims at once, Record the genius, and forget the dunce. Again, of critics : If fools traduce you, and your works decry. As many fools will rate your worth too high j Then balance the account, and fairly take The cool report which men of judgment make. In writing, as in life, he foils the foe. Who, conscious of his strength, forgives the blow. They court the insult who but seem afraid : And then, by answering, you promote the trade, And give them, what their own weak claims deny, A chance for future laughter, or a sigh. And again : A life of writing, unless wondrous short. No wit can brace, no genius can support. Some soberer province for your business choose. Be that your helmet, and your plume the Muse — which are prettier metaphors than Sir Walter's staft and crutch, and briefer than Coleridge's amplification.^ Other passages show a catholic toleration for varieties of taste. The conclusion of 1 ' Let literature be an honourable augmentation to your arms, but not constitute the coat, or fill the escutcheon ! ' (' Biographia Literaria,' ch. xi). Coleridge must have read the ' Charge,' for in the same chapter he speaks of it as perhaps the best of Whitehead's works. Laureate Whitehead 167 the poet is * That Verse and Virtue are their own reward ' — a sentiment which, with the change of * literature ' for ' verse,' has been attributed to the arch-pessimist Chesterfield. The ' Charge to the Poets ' brought upon Whitehead the reckless and indiscriminate cudgel of Churchill. In his desultory * Ghost,' the second part of which appeared simultaneously with the ^ Charge,' he had glanced incidentally at * placid Whitehead.' In the third book, published some nine months later, he attacked him in force. But the blustering octosyllabics of the * Ghost ' do not show the 'Bruiser' at his best. He hits, fairly enough, some of Whitehead's obvious character- istics — his deference to tradition, his dislike of emphasis, his lack of vigour, and so forth — all of which, of course, have harsher names in the satirist's haphazard invective. It is easy, for in- stance, to transform judicious reticence into a kind of * letting-I-dare-not-w^ait-upon-I-would ' sort of timidity by representing the poet as one who — Champion swore in Virtue's cause, 'Gainst Vice his tiny bodkin draws. But to no part of Prudence stranger, First blunts the point for fear of danger. Much, however, that Churchill says, is mere 'rhyme and rattle'; and it is quite possible that 1 68 Laureate Whitehead but for the mention of ' subject Bards ' in the * Charge,' and the appearance of Whitehead as a writer of serious comedy, he would have neglected him altogether. Acting upon his own precept, Whitehead did not * promote the trade ' by replying to Churchill's diatribe,^ although after his death some fragment- ary couplets on the subject were found among his papers which show that he recognized both the strength and the weakness of his short-lived assailant. He himself continued to write, pro- ducing in 1770 'A Trip to Scotland,' an an- onymous farce, which had not only considerable humour, but considerable success at Drury Lane. In 1774 he took a conventional farewell to the Muse with a new edition of his works. But the most popular of his pieces with the anthologist, a ' tale for married people ' entitled ' Variety,' fol- lowed two years later. This, in the manner of Prior, or Gay, is a neatly finished and cleverly constructed little contey of which the moral is ex- cellent and the style irreproachable. To this, again, succeeded * The Goat's Beard,' an elabora- ^ In spite of statements to the contrary, it was never repeated. Churchill mentions Whitehead's name once or twice, and gives him and his comedy a couplet in * The Journey,' But that is all. Laureate Whitehead 169 tion of a very compact fable of Phaedrus turning on the rivalry of the sexes. It is more learned and more laboured, but scarcely so happy. Both these pieces appeared without his name. His last publication was an address to the Duchess of Queensberry, Prior's ever-green * Kitty,' then more than seventy. At her Grace's desire, in a metre that dances like Prior's own, it gaily satirizes the enormities of feminine costume. Failing quotation from the longer efforts mentioned above, here is its description of the contemporary coiffure : Don't let your curls fall with that natural bend, But stretch them up tight till each hair stands on end. One, two, nay three cushions, like Cybele's towers j Then a few ells of gauze, and some baskets of flow'rs. These bottles of nectar will serve for perfumes. Go pluck the fledg'd Cupids, and bring me their plumes. If that 's not enough, you may strip all the fowls, My doves, Juno's peacocks, and Pallas's owls j And stay, from Jove's eagle, if napping you take him, You may snatch a few quills — but be sure you don't wake him. This is no caricature of the 'heads' of 1775. Its author went on with his official Odes for ten years longer, and, in fact, was engaged on one of them in his last hours. For some time he had, by 170 Laureate Whitehead his own desire, withdrawn from Lord Jersey's household, with which, however, he still preserved the friendliest relations ; and he was living in lodgings in Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, when he died suddenly on 14th April 1785, in his seventieth year. He was buried in South Audley Street Chapel, where lie also the remains of Wilkes and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. There is a portrait of him by W. Doughty in the Dyce Collection at South Kensington. In a contemptuous list of the chief writers in the ' World,' drawn up as a corrective to Horace Walpole's praise of some of its contributors, Macaulay speaks of Whitehead (whom he calls Whithed) as ' the most accomplished tuft-hunter of his time.' He also reproaches him with being forgotten. This is surely too severe. To be a tuft-hunter — although no social recommendation — need not disqualify a man for poetry. As for being forgotten, that has happened to many estim- able persons, and will doubtless happen to many more. Whitehead was, of course, in no sense 'strenuous' — possibly he was constitutionally of languid vitality. He liked ease and quiet. He liked refined and well-bred people; he liked the leisurely amenity and the large air of great houses in the country. In middle-age he was fortunate Laureate Whitehead 171 enough to find an asylum with noble friends to whom he could be agreeable without subserviency, and by whom he was esteemed without being patronized. He was probably a delightful com- panion to his ' superannuated lord and lady,' and to all their circle. Being a bachelor, he injured no one by his lack of ambition. In regard to his verses, what is most observable is the extent of his qualifications, and the moderate standard of his achievement. He was a good classical scholar; he had travelled intelligently; he was apparently well-read in Continental literature. He could write heroics like Pope's, blank-verse like Thom- son's, anapaests like Prior's, elegies like Gray's. He had considerable humour, and a convenient gift of epigram. Dull he certainly was not — whatever Churchill might say. But he seems always to have been afi^aid to depart from tradition — to let himself go. He imitates where he should originate. He is * always good and never better.' His facility is great, his taste cultivated, and his tone — for his time — exceptionally discreet. Why, with this equipment, he did not do greater things, may safely be left to the Timothy Tittles and Dick Minims of criticism who are always lamenting that a sunflower is not a rose — or the converse. Meanwhile, it is satisfactory to think sympathetic- 172 Laureate Whitehead ally of that placid, sauntering, summer-day life in the gardens of Middleton Park or Nuneham, where * Farmer George's ' Laureate sometimes meditated a birthday ode, and sometimes turned an inscription for an urn or a sundial. LYTTELTON AS MAN OF LETTERS READERS who are accustomed to the milder methods of modern criticism would be interested to consult the ' Quarterly Review ' for 1847 on the 'Memoirs and Correspondence of George, Lord Lyttelton.' Macaulay, it may be remembered, was in the habit of robustiously * dusting the jackets ' of some of those who were submitted to his regime in the 'Edinburgh.' But the fashion of his rival in the bufF organ — it was, of course, the redoubtable and Right Honourable John Wilson Croker — wellnigh warrants the em- ployment of a more ferocious transatlantic figure. He 'just wipes the floor' with his unfortunate victim, whose minutest errors seem to have been inspected through a magnifier of what Sam Weller calls 'hextra power.' 'Loose and incoherent style,' 'blunder, ignorance, misstatement, and bad taste,' ' slovenly piece of biography,' ' most imbecile and bungling of compilations ' — these are some of the flowers of speech which the terrible ' Rigby ' scatters benigno cornu. Whether the 173 174 Lyttelton as Man of Letters ' Memoirs ' suffered materially from this barbarous usage, we know not. But there are no traces of a second edition in the British Museum Catalogue; and as the book not only contains much valuable material but apparently constitutes the only life of Lyttelton, it may be pardonable to revert to its subject. Perhaps it would be more exact to say a part of its subject, since Lyttelton, as a political figure, would now be difficult to revive. It is true that he was the sometime favourite of Frederick, Prince of Wales; the friend and con- nection of the elder Pitt; the 'declared enemy' of Sir Robert Walpole. But he was neither an eminent speaker nor a great administrator (as Chancellor of the Exchequer he was admittedly over-parted): and when, at seven-and-forty, he 'rested' — as Johnson says — 'from political turbu- lence in the House of Lords,' he had added no memorable name to the annals of English state- craft. Luckily — in Johnson's words once more — ' politicks did not so much engage him as to with- hold his thoughts from things of more importance.' He wrote ' Persian Letters ' (after Montesquieu) ; he wrote * Dialogues of the Dead ' (after Lucian); both of which found an honourable place in Harrison's ' British Classicks.' He wrote a com- pact and closely-reasoned pamphlet on the ' Con- Lyttelton as Man of Letters 175 version of St. Paul ' ; he wrote an extraordinarily conscientious and laborious ' History of Henry II.' He also composed a sufficient number of minor poems to secure his admission to those wonderful * Lives of the Poets ' which tolerated Stepney and Fenton while they gave grudging praise to Milton and Gray. He was the patron and friend of Fielding and Thomson ; he was ' ironed ' by Chesterfield, and he was libelled by Smollett. These things — it is submitted — are distinctions which should serve to justify some passing inquiry into his personality as a man of letters. The eldest of the six sons of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, Bart., of Hagley, in Worcestershire, he was born on 17th January 1709, his mother being a daughter of Sir Richard Temple of Stowe, afterwards Pope's Lord Cobham. Hewaseducated at Eton, where he was an oppidan, which means that the books contain no records of him. But as we now know his contemporary Fielding was there in 172 1-2, it is probable that, being some- what younger, he began to attend about this date. Other of his contemporaries were William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, whose elder brother, Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc, eventually married Lyttelton's sister j Charles Hanbury, later Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and Henry Fox, first 1^6 Lyttelton as Man of Letters Lord Holland. Gilbert West, Lyttelton's cousin, had probably quitted Eton before Lyttelton arrived there, as West matriculated at Christ Church in 1722. According to Johnson, Lyttelton was early distinguished for ability, so much so that his exercises were ' recommended as models to his schoolfellows.' He is also stated to have sketched, if not elaborated, at Eton some of his best verses, the * Soliloquy of a Beauty in the Country,' which certainly exhibits unusual precocity for a lad of seventeen, his age when he went up to Oxford. It has obvious affinities with Pope's earlier epistle to Teresa Blount on leaving Town. * Ah, what avails it,' sighs the heroine, ' to be young and fair: To move with negligence, to dress with care? ' With every grace of nature or of art, We cannot break one stubborn country heart j The brutes, insensible, our powers defy : To love, exceeds a *squire*s capacity. She is evidently terribly bored : In stupid indolence my life is spent, Supinely calm, and dully innocent : Unblest I wear my useless time awayj Sleep (wretched maid!) all night, and dream all dayj Now with mamma at tedious whist I playj Now without scandal drink insipid teaj Or in the garden breathe the country air. Secure from meeting any tempter there ! Lyttelton as Man of Letters 177 all of which unmistakably indicates what has been felicitously called the 'intolerable ennui of a waveless calm'; and from one of the author's later letters to his father, perhaps not inaccurately reproduces some of the domestic routine of Hagley. But though headed in his works 'Written at Eaton School,' the verses were not printed till long afterwards, and were doubtless revised in the interval. Lyttelton matriculated at Christ Church in February 1726. There is no record of his uni- versity life; and he left Oxford in a couple of years, without taking a degree. It is possible that many of his poems belong to this procreant time ; but the only published piece, ' Blenheim,' that is, the palace not the battle, appeared in 1728. Its Miltonic blank verse has no particular merit, and it neither rivals Addison nor Philips. But it pleased the ' terrible Old Sarah,' whom it indirectly likened to Eve, which may certainly be accepted as evidence of imagination. By the time it was in type the author was already well advanced in the regulation Grand Tour. His first tarrying- place was Lun6ville in the then independent Duchy of Lorraine. But despite letters of intro- duction from Sir Robert Walpole to the Prince de Craon, and despite the civilities of the reigning N 178 Lyttelton as Man of Letters Duke, Lyttelton speedily wearied of his environ- ment. In the leading amusements, hunting and the interminable quadrille, he took no part; the English residents were an ' unimproving society ' who would not let him learn French, while the scrupulous punctilio of a petty court was intoler- able to one who by nature was unusually absorbed and absent. He consequently obtained his father's leave to move to Soissons, where a congress was then engaged in the negotiations which, a year later, ended in the Treaty of Seville. One of the English plenipotentiaries was Stephen Poyntz, formerly Envoy to Sweden, with whom he be- came domesticated, and to some extent instructed in matters diplomatic. What was more, he began to make rapid progress in French, writing fre- quently in that language to his father. He was in Paris at the general jubilation for the birth of the Dauphin on 4th September 1729. 'The ex- pressions of their [the Parisians'] joy,' he says, 'are admirable: one fellow gives notice to the publick, that he designs to draw teeth for a week together on the Pont Neuf gratis.' ^ From Soissons he passed in the following October to Geneva, stopping on his way, like every one else, at the Convent of the Chartreuse. Then he went on to 1 Letter of 8th September [1729]. Lyttelton as Man of Letters 179 Turin, Genoa, Venice, and Rome, from which place his last letter is dated in May 1730. His correspondence has little of the incidents of travel — indeed, he specially disclaims the keeping of a journal and the copying of inscriptions. But one of his letters, written from Lyons in October 1729, contains a careful summary of the state of France under the young King Louis XV and his minister Cardinal Fleury — a sketch which, by its references to the abject slavery of the people, the swarms of idle ecclesiastics, the demands of mili- tary service, the chimerical class distinctions, and the grinding poverty of the country in general, seems, even at this early date, to anticipate and presage the coming storm of revolution/ In a rhymed epistle written from Paris to Dr. Ayscough, Lyttelton had already not inaptly sketched the contemporary French characteristics : ^ Twenty-four years later comes a more definite note from Chesterfield : * All the symptoms, which I have ever met with in history, previous to great changes and revolu- tions in government, now exist, and daily increase, in France.' (Letter to his Son, 25th December 1753.) Later, July 1760, things were slowly growing worse. *The French,' said Goldsmith, . . . 'are imperceptibly vindicating themselves into freedom. ... I cannot help fancying that the genius of freedom has entered that kingdom in disguise. If they have but three weak monarchs more, successively i8o Lyttelton as Man of Letters A nation here I pity and admire, Whom noblest sentiments of glory fire, Yet taught, by custom's force, and bigot fear. To serve with pride, and boast the yoke they bear : Whose nobles, born to cringe, and to command. In courts a mean, in camps a generous bandj From each low tool of power, content receive Those laws, their dreaded arms to Europe give: Whose people (vain in want, in bondage blest j Though plunder'd, gay; industrious, though opprest) With happy follies rise above their fate. The jest and envy of each wiser state.^ This was not the writer's only production in verse during the Grand Tour. In the same year he addressed a commendatory epistle to his friend Mr. Poyntz ; and from Rome he sent, through his father, another to Pope. In this, after some prefatory compliment, the spirit of Virgil is in- voked to dissuade Pope from Satire — ' the least attractive' of the Muses. Upon this matter on the throne, the mask will be laid aside, and the country will certainly once more be free.' (' Citizen of the World,' letter Ivi.) There was but one weak monarch, and yet it was twenty-nine years to the taking of the Bastille. ^ After transcribing this passage in its place it was pleasant to find that it had been chosen for commendation by no less a personage than Voltaire. * These verses,' he wrote to Lyttelton in May 1750,* deserve a good translator, and they should be learn'd by every frenchman.' Lyttelton as Man of Letters i8i Lyttelton had already delivered himself in an earlier letter. *I am sorry he wrote the "Dunciad,"' he says ; and in sending the poem to Sir Thomas, he refers to *the good piece of advice' he has ventured to give, he hopes opportunely. If not taken, it v^^as, at all events, not taken amiss, for Pope made several subsequent references to his young friend, all of them kind. Moreover, he even condescended to correct four eclogues which, under the title of the * Progress of Love,' Lyttel- ton printed in 1732. But they are not their poet's masterpieces; and belong distinctly — as much as their model, Pope's own ' Pastorals ' — to the arti- ficial growths of Parnassus. One can well imagine old Johnson blinking scornfully into that sham Arcadia, with its Delias and Damons. They 'cant,' he says, 'of shepherds and flocks, and crooks dressed with flowers ' — things which, to be sure, were never to be encountered in Fleet Street. Lyttelton is far better in the ' Advice to a Lady,' of a year earlier. This is full of good sense, although the superior tone assumed by ' mere man,' if approved by Dorothy Osborne or Mary Evelyn, would scarcely commend itself in the present day: Let e'en your prudence wear the pleasing dress Of care for him, and anxious tenderness. 1 82 Lyttelton as Man of Letters From kind concern about his weal or woe, Let each domestick duty seem to flow. The household sceptre if he bids you bear, Make it your pride his ser'vant to appear : Endearing thus the common acts of life. The mistress still shall charm him in the nxjifcy And wrinkled age shall unobserved come on, Before his eye perceives one beauty gone j E'en o'er your cold, your ever-sacred urn. His constant flame shall unextinguish'd burn. From the last couplet the poet evidently ex- pected the pattern spouse to predecease her hus- band, an arrangement which would scarcely have found favour with Mrs. Bennet of ' Pride and Prejudice.' Johnson justly praises the * Advice to a Lady,' but it is not difficult to understand how its somewhat tutorial note prompted the witty summary, or ' pocket version,' of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu : Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet : In short, my deary, kiss me and be quiet. Unless we class Lyttelton's letters as prose works, his earliest published effort in this way was a * little treatise ' entitled * Observations on the Life of Cicero,' which appeared in 1731, and passed through two editions. Joseph Warton, who knew the author, thought highly of this essay; and indeed, preferred its 'dispassionate Lyttelton as Man of Letters 183 and impartial character of Tully ' to those later and more pretentious volumes of Conyers Middle- ton which Lord Hervey so carefully purged of * low words and collegiate phrases,'^ But Lyttel- ton's first prose production of importance is the ' Letters from a Persian in England to his Friend at Ispahan.' These, some of which, from a sentence in his opening letter to his father, must have been sketched before he went abroad, are avowed imi- tations of Montesquieu, whom he had known in England previous to 1734, and to this date the majority of them probably belong. According to Warton, in later life their author felt they con- tained 'principles and remarks which he wished to retract and alter,' and he would willingly have withdrawn them from his works. But not lightly is the written word recalled: and the booksellers did not let them die, for all their evidences of that * spirit of Whiggism ' which his continental ex- periences of arbitrary power had confirmed, and which made him, on his return, the favourite of the Prince of Wales and the sworn foe of his father's patron, Walpole. In general, they present much ^ Acting upon a polite suggestion of Middleton, Lyttel- ton afterwards returned to this subject in some * Observa- tions on the Roman History' which are included in vol. iof the third edition of his ' Works,' 1776. 184 Lyttelton as Man of Letters the samefeaturesasmostof the imitations prompted by Montesquieu's famous book. The author visits the various places of amusement, marvels at the sensuous effeminacy of the Italian Opera, the brutalities of the bear-garden, the forlorn condition of the poor debtor, the craze for cards, the pre- valence of intrigue, the immorality of stage plays — and so forth. Other letters deal with political corruption, the humours of elections, the inequal- ity of Parliamentary representation, the apathy of the clergy. Some of the points raised are still in debate, as the functions of the House of Lords and the shortcomings of a too-exclusively-classical education. In the thirty-eighth letter there is an illustration, w^hich, whether borrowed or not, has become popular. Speaking of the supplies granted by the Commons to the Government, it is said * that when these gifts are most liberal, they have a natural tendency, like plentiful exhalations drawn from the earth, to fall again upon the place from whence they came.' Elsewhere, there is a compliment to Pope : * We have a very great poet now al'tve^ who may boast of one glory to which no member of the French Academy can pretend, viz., that he never flattered any man in power^ but has bestowed immortal praises upon those whom, for fear of offending men in powery if they Lyttelton as Man of Letters 185 had lived in France, under the same circumstances, no poet would have dared to praise.' Pope must have recollected this when, two years later, he spoke, in the ' Imitations of Horace,' of ' young Lyttelton ' as * still true to Virtue and as warm as true.' It is perhaps a natural thing to contrast the ' Persian Letters ' with the later ' Citizen of the World '; and to wonder why one is forgotten and the other remembered. The reason is not far to seek. If Goldsmith's book had been no more than the ordinary observations of an intelli- gent and educated spectator, it would scarcely be the classic it remains. But the 'Citizen' has humour and fancy and genius, of which there is nothing in Lyttelton. His portraits of his father (letter xxxvi), and of Bishop Hough of Worcester (letter Ivi), already celebrated in the ' Epistle to Ayscough, are filial and friendly; but they are not the ' Man in Black,' or the unapproachable ' Beau Tibbs.' The most to be said of the ' Persian Letters ' is, that they are common-sense comments on contemporary ethics, politics, and philosophy ; and that, for so young a man, they are exception- ally mature. The 'Persian Letters' appeared in 1735; and up to that date Lyttelton's metrical productions, subsequent to the ' Advice to a Lady,' had been 1 86 Lyttelton as Man of Letters confined to versions of Horace and TibuUus, and conventional invocations of a real or imaginary ' Delia,* one of which last w^ith the burden ' Tell me, my heart, if this be love?' should have been popular as a song.^ To this period also belongs an epigram — in the Greek sense — which has found its way into some of the anthologies : None without hope e'er lovM the brightest fair : But Love can hope, where Reason would despair. From 1735, however, until his marriage seven years later to Miss Lucy Fortescue, most of his poetry was addressed to this lady, and several of the pieces, though purely occasional, have a grace which seems born of genuine impulse. A little octave, too, of this date, addressed to Gilbert West, of Wickham, is justly commended by Mr. Courthope as exhibiting something of the simpli- city which was to be a leading feature of the com- ing Nature-worship. Lyttelton's wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, died in January 1747; and what was generally accounted his best poem is the long monody he consecrated to her memory. 1 Hood, at ajl events, remembered it in one of his queer little sketches for * Whims and Oddities.' Another song, * The heavy hours are almost past,' is said to have been a favourite with Fox. (Rogers's * Table Talk,' 1856, p. 95.) Lyttelton as Man of Letters 187 Of this, the best latter-day report must be that, like the obsequious curate's egg, it is * excellent in parts.' Gray, a critic from whom, in any age, it is difficult to differ, regarded it as at times * too stiflFand poetical,' by which latter epithet he no doubt meant to deprecate the employment, in a piece aiming above all at unfeigned expression, of classical accessory and conventional ornament. * Nature and sorrow, and tenderness, are the true genius of such things ' — he wrote unanswerably to Walpole; and these he found in some degree, particularly in the fourth stanza, which every one consequently quotes after him. But that which immediately follows, its awkward closing couplet excepted, is nearly as good : O shades of Hagley, where is now your boast ? Your bright inhabitant is lost. You she preferred to all the gay resorts Where female vanity might wish to shine, The pomp of cities, and the pride of courts. Her modest beauties shunn'd the publick eye : To your sequester'd dales And flower-embroider'd vales From an admiring world she chose to fly : With Nature there retir'd, and Nature's God, The silent paths of wisdom trod, And banish'd every passion from her breast. But those, the gentlest and the best. 1 88 Lyttelton as Man of Letters Whose holy flames with energy divine The virtuous heart enliven and improve, The conjugal and the maternal love. With the death of Mrs. Lyttelton has some- times been connected her husband's next prose work, the pamphlet entitled ' Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul'; and it is perhaps not an unreasonable con- jecture that his bereavement should have turned his thoughts in more serious directions. But from a letter vi^hich he addressed to Thomson the poet in May 1747, it is clear that the 'Observations' vi^ere composed several months before Mrs. Lyttelton died. *I writt it' (the pamphlet), he says, 'in Kew^ Lane [where Thom- son lived] last year, and I writt it with a parti- cular view to your satisfaction. You have there- fore a double right to it, and I wish to God it may appear to you as convincing as it does to me, and bring you to add the faith to the heart of a Christian.' This is not inconsistent with the statement made in the opening lines that the ' Observations ' arose out of a late discussion with Gilbert West, in which Lyttelton had con- tended that the conversion and apostleship of St. Paul alone, taken by themselves, were sufficient to prove Christianity a divine revelation, though Lyttelton as Man of Letters 189 it perhaps supports Johnson's allegation in West's life that ' at Wickham, Lyttelton received that conviction which produced his "Dissertation on St. Paul.'" What seems to have happened is this. Both West and his cousin, having come in early life under the influence of Bolingbroke and Lord Cobham, had felt difficulties of belief. West, indeed, admitted that for a season he had actually gone over to the hostile camp ; but Lyttelton, he declared, had made * little or no progress in those pernicious principles.' However, about 1746 they had both been attentively studying the * evidences and doctrines of Christianity.' In West's case these investigations produced his * Observations on the Resurrection,' which ap- peared in December 1746, and were followed in 1747 by Lyttelton's ' Observations on the Con- version of St. Paul.' Both works long retained a distinguished place in theological literature, but it is with Lyttelton's that we are here most concerned.^ Warburton thought it ' the noblest and most masterly argument for the truth of Christianity that any age had produced'; while ^ The author of the 'Pursuits of Literature,' loth ed., 1799, p. 203, includes Lyttelton, along with Butler and Paley, in a list of eight books indispensable to students of Theology. 190 Lyttelton as Man of Letters Johnson declared, with equal fervour, that it was * a treatise to which infideHty had never been able to fabricate a specious answer.' West's far bulkier volume procured him an Oxford Doc- torate of Laws; and from Spence's * Anecdotes' we learn that Lyttelton was concurrently offered a similar distinction. He however declined it on the ground that his work was anonymous, con- tenting himself with the commendations of his friends, and the heartfelt gratification of his father. By his father's death in 1751 he became Sir George; and five years later, with the break-up of the Newcastle ministry, he was created Baron Lyttelton of Frankley, near Hagley. This ends his official life as a politician ; and his chief literary productions during the seventeen years which remained to him were three in number. The first is a couple of letters, included in the third volume of his works, describing a visit to Wales in 1756, and addressed to that notorious Archi- bald Bower whose dishonest * History of the Popes ' was exposed by Goldsmith's * scourge of impostors,' Dr. Douglas. Lyttelton, however, if he did not believe Bower, seems to have thought better of him than most people, and could never be induced to disown him. The chief merit of the letters is their note of genuine enthusiasm Lyttelton as Man of Letters 191 for natural beauty. The * Dialogues of the Dead,' his next work, is avowedly reminiscent of Lucian, F^nelon and Fontenelle ; but it is his best effort, for all that Walpole profanely called it * Dead Dialogues,' and despite Landor and the admir- able 'New Lucian ' of the late Henry DufFTraill, may still be read with interest. What particular faint praise Johnson intended to convey by saying that the dialogues are * rather effusions than compositions ' must depend on some subtle dis- tinction between pouring and mixing which escapes us; but they are certainly fluent and clear, and could only have been ' effused ' by a writer of exceptional taste and scholarship. To- day some of the shades evoked are more than shadowy. But it is still good to read of the *Roi Soleil ' discoursing with Peter the Great on their relative systems of sovereignty; to listen to staunch old Chancellor Oxenstiern upbraiding Christina of Sweden for abdicating the throne of Gustavus Adolphus in order to consort with a parcel of painters and poetasters; or to admire at Apicius and the epicure Dartineuf (Dodsley's master and Pope's ham-pie ' Darty ') comparing the merits of Juvenal's muraena with those of the Severn lamprey, and smacking ghostly lips over the 'apolaustic gulosities' of Lucullus and^Esopus 192 Lyttelton as Man of Letters the player. Dartineuf and Apicius are finally lamenting that they had lived too early for West Indian turtle, when they are roughly recalled by Mercury to the virtues of Spartan 'black broth ' and an appetite. As might be expected, several of the dialogues turn upon literary topics. There is an edifying discourse between ' Dr. Swift ' and *Mr. Addison,' touching the curious freak of fortune which made one a divine and the other a minister of State, with some collateral digression on their relative forms of humour; there is another between Locke the dogmatizer and Bayle the doubter. Virgil and Horace interchange compliments until they are interrupted by the creaking pedantries of Scaliger, who has to be summarily put in his proper place by a reminder from the wand of the shepherd of souls. But the longest and ablest colloquy is between Boileau and Pope, who review the literature of their re- spective countries. This was a theme in which Lyttelton was at home. What is said of Shake- speare and Moliere, of Milton and Pope's 'Homer,' of the true function of history, of the new French comidie mixte^ is undeniable, while the senti- ment with which Pope winds up might stand for a definition of intellectual entente cordiale: ' I would have them [the French] be perpetual Lyttelton as Man of Letters 193 competitors with the English in manly wit and substantial learning. But let the competition be friendly. There is nothing which so contracts and debases the mind as national envy. True wit, like true virtue, naturally loves it own image, in whatever place it is found.' ^ One result of the * Dialogues of the Dead,' was to embroil the author with some of the living. Voltaire, on receipt of the volume — and writing in English — warmly contested the allegation placed in the mouth of Pope (' Dialogue ' xiv, p. 134) that he had been ban- ished France on account of his doctrines. He pointed out with much ill-concealed irritation that, although he enjoyed * a little country house near Geneva^ his manors (of Ferney and Tourney) were situate in France; and that he had never been exiled.^ He signed himself * Gentleman of the King's Chamber,' and dated from * my castle of Tornex [Tourney] in Burgundy.' Lyttelton replied in conciliatory terms; and Voltaire — this 1 Walpole says that by Pericles, Lyttelton figured Pittj and by Penelope, his first wife, Lucy Fortescue. ^ Technically this was true } but he could not return to Paris. He had astutely purchased land on either side of the frontier near Geneva, and thus secured to himself retreats both in France and Switzerland. O 194 Lyttelton as Man of Letters time from his * castle of Ferney ' — rejoined by asking that a contradiction should be printed, in terms which he suggested. The offending passage, however, disappeared entirely from Lyttelton's edition of 1765. But as *Sylvanus Urban,' re- producing the correspondence, did not fail to observe, Voltaire's tenacious insistence on his social status and possessions contrasted oddly with his former censure of Congreve's vanity in wishing to be regarded as a gentleman rather than a writer.^ Another objector, at a later date, was John Wesley, who, although he professed himself in hearty agreement with great part of Lyttelton's book, was much exercised by the statement of Mercury, in the dialogue between Addison and Swift, that the Methodists, Moravians and Hut- chinsonians were a strange brood spawned by ' Martin ' — that is, Martin Luther — in Swift's ' Tale of a Tub.' * Is this language,' he asks in- dignantly in his 'Diary' for August 1770, 'for a nobleman or a porter?' And he goes on to question whether his lordship really knew any more of the matter than he had learned from the caricatures of Bishops Lavington and Warburton. His anger was pardonable, though Lyttelton ^ 'Letters Concerning the English Nation,' 1733, pp. 188-9. Lyttelton as Man of Letters 195 would probably have explained that he spoke dramatically, and was not responsible for Mer- cury's bad manners. As a matter of fact, he was suspected of being more in favour of Methodism than against it. Lyttelton's magnum opus — great by its quantity rather than its quality — was his long-incubated ' History of Henry IL' Originally designed for the service of the Prince of Wales, he had been collecting material for it as early as 1741, but his progress, being interrupted by politics, was in- termittent. * The little leisure I have at present for writing [he informs Doddridge six years later] will, I believe, be taken up in finishing my history of King Henry the Second, of which four books are already written, and I have two more to write. ... I am far from thinking, I have writt it so well as it might be written, but of this I am sure — that I have done it more justice than they [* our historians '], were it only in the pains I have taken to get all the information that contemporary authors could give me upon the subject, which as yet no others have done.' So much pains did he take, that it was eight years more before he managed to go to press; and even then the whole book 'was printed twice over, a great part of it three times, and many sheets 196 Lyttelton as Man of Letters four or five times/ What Johnson calls his 'am- bitious accuracy ' made him employ a ' pointer ' or punctuating expert, at increased cost to him- self, and with the astounding result that the third edition comprised no fewer than nineteen pages of errata. It may be that some of this meticulous desire to be correct was prompted by fear of Smollett and the 'Critical Review'; but it was obviously subversive of spontaneity, and could not fail to attract the persiflage of mockers like Wal- pole. * His [Lyttelton's] " Henry H " raises no more passion than Burn's *' Justice of Peace," * this reader said ; and he had earlier expressed the opinion that the dread of present and future critics rendered Lyttelton's works ' so insipid that he had better not have written them at all.' To Lyttelton, nevertheless, he praised the first in- stalment. In 1 77 1 the book was finished, the first three volumes having then gone into three editions, which indicates a certain popularity. The two leading historians, however, were not enthusiastic. Hume sneered at it; and Gibbon, who reviewed it in the ' M6moires litt6raires de la Grande Bretagne,' says in his 'Autobiography' that it was * not illuminated by a ray of genius.* But m his published notice, while refusing to the author the praise due to Robertson and Hume, Lyttelton as Man of Letters 197 he gives him the credit of being a ^hon citoyen^ a * savant tres eclaire ' and an ' ecrivain exact et im- partial.^ Possibly the modern school of historians would do greater justice to Lyttelton's minute and painstaking method. Hallam quotes ' Henry II ' repeatedly; and the author of the 'Short History of England ' calls it a ' full and sober account of the time.* As a politician and statesman, Lyttelton was naturally well known to many prominent con- temporaries. But to speak here of Pitt or Boling- broke — of Warburton or Horace Walpole — would occupy too large a space; and it must suffice in this connection to single out three or four exclu- sively literary figures to whom he stood in the special light either of intimate or patron. With Pope, who praised him more than once in print, he had been acquainted before the Grand Tour; and Pope, as we have seen, had corrected his 'Pastorals.' When later Lyttelton, succeeding Bubb Dodington, became the Prince of Wales's secretary. Pope was gradually drawn into the Leicester House circle. Both the secretary and his royal master made frequent visits to Twicken- ham; and there were records, on urns and garden seats, of Pope's sojourns at Hagley. One of these described him as ' the sweetest and most elegant 198 Lyttelton as Man of Letters of English poets, the severest chastiser of vice, and the most persuasive teacher of wisdom.' As far as one can gauge Pope's complex nature, he seems to have been genuinely attracted to his young admirer. ' Few have or ought to have so great a share of me' he writes in 1736; and Lyttelton retorting four years later in the House of Commons to Henry Fox's taunt that he con- sorted with an ' unjust and licentious lampooner,' replied proudly that he regarded Pope's friendship as an honour. It was to Lyttelton that Pope said on his death-bed : ' Here am I dying of a hundred good symptoms"} and to Lyttelton he left by will four marble busts of poets which the Prince had given him in 1739 for his library. These, representing Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dry den, were still at Hagley when Carruthers wrote Pope's life. Another visitor to Lyttelton's Worcestershire home was the genial and indolent^ author of ' The Seasons,' for whom he cherished a regard even greater than that which linked him to the pontiff of the eighteenth-century Parnassus. He ^ There is a delightful illustration of this in the * Malo- niona/ Dr. Burney, finding Thomson in bed at two o'clock, asked him how he came to lie so long. He answered, in his Scottish fashion, * Because he had no mot-ti've to rise/ Lyttelton as Man of Letters 199 must have known Thomson for some years pre- vious to his first appearance at Hagley, for he had already secured him a small pension from the Prince of Wales. But in August 1743 we find Thomson domiciled at Hagley, rejoicing in its ' quite enchanting ' park, and in the superiority of the ' Muses of the great simple country ' to the * little fine-lady Muses* of his own Rich- mond Hill. With Lyttelton's aid he corrected * The Seasons ' for the new edition of 1 744, adding, in 'Spring,' a description of Hagley, an address to Lyttelton, and references to that ' loved Lucinda,' whom, two years earlier, Lyttelton had brought home to his father's house. Lyttelton it was who procured for Thomson the sinecure appointment of Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands; and, as we have seen, it was under Thomson's roof that the * Conversion of St. Paul ' was penned. Whether Lyttelton was re- sponsible for eight out of the nine lines describing Thomson in the 'Castle of Indolence' is doubtful; but it is certain that the poet depicted his Hagley host in the stanza beginning Another guest ^ there was, of sense refined, Who felt each worth, for every worth he had; That is — at the Castle of Indolence. 200 Lyttelton as Man of Letters Serene yet warm, humane yet firm his mind. As little touched as any man's with bad: Him through their inmost walks the Muses lad, To him the sacred love of nature lent, And sometimes would he make our valley glad — though he could not persuade himself to reside there permanently. Poor, perspiring Thomson, 'more fat' — in his own words — 'than bard beseems,' did not survive his best poem many months. But his friend's regard followed him beyond the grave; and in Lyttelton's prologue to Thomson's posthumous tragedy of ' Corio- lanus' occurs the oft-quoted couplet crediting its author with Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, One line which dying he could wish to blot.^ To a third poet, who also contributed his ' melodious tear ' to Thomson's memory, both Lyttelton and Thomson occasionally paid visits. In Halesowen parish, not many miles away, lived Shenstone, whose 'Judgment of Hercules' had been addressed to Lyttelton, and who was gradu- ally turning his paternal farm at the Leasowes ^ The question of Lyttelton's literary relations with Thomson is exhaustively and conclusively treated in Mr. G. C. Macaulay's excellent monograph on Thomson in the ' Men of Letters ' series, 1908. Lyttelton as Man of Letters 201 into a paradise of landscape gardening and cows (like Walpole's) coloured to fancy. Indeed, if we are to believe contemporary tittle-tattle, the laurels of the Leasowes affected the sleep of Hagley. But we care nothing for gossip in this instance. Shenstone, moreover — whose likings have been described as ' tepid ' — seems to have been more a neighbourly acquaintance than a close intimate; and we turn from his to another name with which that of Lyttelton is more definitely connected. Fielding, as short-lived as Thomson, had been Lyttelton's school-mate at Eton. Yet save for a reference to Lyttelton in Fielding's 'True Greatness,' until the period which followed the first Mrs. Fielding's death, we hear little of their relations, although Fielding expressly, both in a letter congratulating Lyttelton on his second marriage,^ and in the ' Dedication ' of * Tom Jones,' makes reference to Lyttelton's past good offices. ' To you, sir,' he writes, * it is owing that this History was ever begun. It was by your Desire that I first thought of such a Composition ... I partly owe to you my Existence during great Part of the Time which I have employed in composing it.' It is also ^ Lyttelton married again j but, as Johnson says curtly, * the experiment was unsuccessful.' 202 Lyttelton as Man of Letters known that Lyttelton was instrumental in ob- taining for him that office of Middlesex magis- trate in which he ended his days. Whether he was much at Hagley cannot be directly affirmed, though he probably stayed there occasionally during the progress of his masterpiece. But the only positive evidence of his commerce with its owner outside London is the record of the reading of ' Tom Jones ' in manuscript to Lyttelton, Pitt (afterwards Lord Chatham), and Sanderson Miller the architect, at Radway Gange, the house of the last-named, near Edge Hill, in Warwickshire.^ Lyttelton's benefactions to Fielding were ac- knowledged by their recipient with all the gener- osity of gratitude that characterized him. But Lyttelton was not equally fortunate in every case where he desired to assist. Smollett, for example, arriving from Glasgow in all the ardour of youthful talent with a tragedy in its pocket, applied to him for his interest. To get 'The ^ * Rambles Round Edge Hills,"" by the Rev. George Miller, 1896, pp. 16-17. Sanderson Miller, it is here stated, designed the alterations made by Lyttelton at Hagley in 1759-60. He was also responsible for an earlier * mined castle ' In the park, which (according to Walpole) had *the true rust of the Barons' Wars.* (Toynbee's * Walpole's Letters,' iii (1903), p. 186.) Lyttelton as Man of Letters 203 Regicide ' acted, however, was beyond the power of patronage; and though Lyttelton doubtless did what he could, he was unsuccessful. In revenge, the disappointed author brought him into * Rode- rick Random ' as Earl Sheerwit, * a Maecenas in the nation ' — an indignity subsequently aggra- vated by the portrait of Gosling Scrag, patron of letters, in * Peregrine Pickle.' What was worse still, in the same novel Smollett allowed himself to perpetrate a very miserable parody of the 'Monody,' which had certainly enough of sin- cerity to deserve the respect due to its theme. For these and other exhibitions of bad temper, Smollett's better judgment eventually made apology, both in the later editions of ' Pickle,' and in his ' History ' — apology which now serves chiefly to authenticate the original offence. Another person, befriended by Lyttelton, was Edward Moore of the * Fables for the Fair Sex,' who had courted Lyttelton's attention by an ingenious complimentary poem entitled *The Trial of Selim the Persian for Divers High Crimes and Misdemeanours ' — Selim being the Selim of the * Persian Letters,' whom it was de- signed to defend against certain contemporary pamphleteers. Johnson, whose utterances about Lyttelton have always a note of acerbity, says 204 Lyttelton as Man of Letter's that Moore was 'paid with kind words' alone; but it was nevertheless owing greatly to Lyttel- ton 's exertions that Moore was launched on his most successful enterprise, * The World,' for it was Lyttelton who obtained him most of the aristocratic contributors who ensured its circula- tion. Finally, it was probably through the media- tion of Lyttelton that David Mallet received his Under-Secretaryship to the Prince of Wales — a service which Mallet is assumed to have repaid by loosing upon Lyttelton as a suitor his excitable and vindictive compatriot, Mr. Tobias George Smollett. In his portrait at the National Portrait Gallery, Lyttelton, although a little gaunt and angular, is represented as dignified and sufficiently person- able. He has not fared so well at the hands of the literary artists. Hervey's sketch is in his usual malevolent manner: Walpole's is a witty caricature. ' With the figure of a spectre, and the gesticulations of a puppet' — writes Horace — 'he talked heroics through his nose, made declama- tions at a visit, and played at cards with scraps of history or sentences of Pindar.' Neither of these presentments should matter much; but they have been in some measure supported by the discussion which has finally identified Lyttelton as Man of Letters 205 Lyttelton with the * respectable Hottentot'^ whom his relative, Lord Chesterfield, held up as an awful warning to that other awful warning, Philip Stanhope the younger. It is a portentous picture — from the Chesterfield point of view — of physical ungainliness, personal gaucherie, and habitual absence of mind. That it is purposely heightened there is little doubt; but that it had a kind of basis in truth, must be inferred from the fact that friendly Mr. Poyntz, writing from France to the elder Lyttelton as early as 1729, ^ It is refreshing to think that the impeccable Croker went wrong here. * It was certainly meant for Johnson,' he says. Some of young Stanhope's bevuesy it appears, had to be concealed from his affectionate parent. *He was . . . even in his riper days,' writes Lord Charlemont, 'a perfect Tony Lumpkin,' and he goes on to relate an anecdote told him by Lord Eliott, an eye-witness, which has a further connection with Goldsmith. Once at Berne^ in his boyhood, young Stanhope tied the periwigs of a number of grave and reverend Swiss senators to the backs of their chairs, and then lustily cried 'Fire!' on which they all bounced up affrighted and bald-headed. (Charle- mont Corr., Hist. MSS. Comm., i, 1891, 327.) This is precisely the trick which the hero of * She Stoops to Conquer "" is said, in Act I, to have played on Mr. Hard- castle, and which is usually supposed to have been practised on Goldsmith himself by Lord Clare's daughter, after- wards Marchioness of Buckingham. 2o6 Lyttelton as Man of Letters notes his son's already confirmed habits of ab- straction, * even at meals,' which he charitably attributes to dyspepsia. It is said besides that his voice w^as disagreeable, and his utterance monotonous. But if we allow his external dis- abilities to have been exaggerated by unsympa- thetic report, there can be no question as to his mental endowments. He may not have been a great orator; but he was capable and, on set occasions, impressive. He * spoke well when he had studied his speeches,' says Walpole, who was also kind enough to allow that he was not wanting in ability, and that he loved ' to reward and pro- mote merit in others.' Chesterfield also sets out by testifying to his * moral character, deep learn- ing, and superior parts.' As to his absolute honesty and integrity, both in life and politics, there is no diversity of opinion. Nor will those who read his physician's plain account of his last hours hesitate to credit his own dying declaration that he was 'a most firm and persuaded believer of the Christian religion.' If he is to be remembered apart from the literary performances treated in this paper, it must be, not as the * respectable Hottentot ' of the high priest of the Graces, but as the model, with Ralph Allen, of Fielding's *Mr. Allworthy.' CHAMBERS THE ARCHITECT A T the summit of Richmond Hill, near the end of the Terrace, and not far from the tra- ditional glories of the famous * Star and Garter,' once stood a wayside ale-house known as the * Bull's Head.' Its position must have been unique, since it not only faced the road entering the Park, and thus offered timely refreshment for travellers too modest to seek shelter in the neighbouring resort of the nobility and gentry, but at the back it must have afforded an equal, if not superior, prospect of the winding, shining Thames, with the Twickenham and Petersham meadows, and — away to the misty sky-line — that 'vast, lus- cious landscape,' whose very exuberance made Thackeray, out of pure reaction, long for *a couple of cows, or a donkey, and a few yards of common.' Not without reason was it that, close to the site of this humble house of call. Sir Joshua Reynolds erected the country villa to which, when he could tear himself from Leicester Fields and the * human face' he loved better than Nature 207 2o8 Chambers the Architect herself, he was accustomed to retire. Within its walls he welcomed Fanny Burney, still fluttered by the success of ' Evelina,' and the great Burke, and the orotund Gibbon; from its drawing-room window, he painted one of his few landscapes — a masterpiece which afterwards passed into the pos- session of Samuel Rogers. But its chief interest here is, that it was designed for Reynolds by his friend and colleague of the Royal Academy, Sir William Chambers, * Knight of the Order of the Polar Star' of Sweden, and further known to Fame as the layer-out of the grounds at Kew Palace and the architect of the present Somerset House. He was also the apostle of Oriental Gardening and the butt of the once popular ' Heroic Epistle.' To Chambers we propose to devote this paper. In the commune of the Landes in France, by odd accident, had been established in the seven- teenth century certain settlers of Scottish descent named Chalmers. They dwelt on the river Midouze, in the Calvin istic town of Tartas, of which they were barons. From this family, some members afterwards migrated to Ripon in York- shire; and the head of the branch, a wealthy merchant having much business in Sweden, had also the unprofitable privilege of advancing large Chambers the Architect 209 sums to Charles XII for munitions of war — ad- vances which were either not repaid at all, or re- paid in exceptionally base coin. To prosecute outstanding claims the more effectually, his son re- sided for many years in Stockholm, where, in 1726, his grandson, William Chambers — to which the family name was now changed — was born. Two years later the boy was brought to England, and eventually went to school at Ripon. At the early age of sixteen he became a supercargo on a ship in the employ of the Swedish East India Company. His elder brother was already ac- quiring a fortune in the East Indies, and it was no doubt expected that the younger son should follow so hopeful an example. In his capacity of supercargo, Chambers made one, or perhaps two, voyages to China. Whether he also made money is not related ; but he became extremely interested in the manners and customs of the 'Flowery Land' and particularly in its buildings and cos- tumes. He visited Canton and other places ; and being already an excellent amateur draughtsman, managed to execute numerous sketches of houses, temples, and the like. As he was youthful and impressionable, he never lost the fascination of these first experiences. The cask — as Horace says — remembers its first wine; and it must have p 2IO Chambers the Architect been long before he ceased to care for hunch- backed bridges, cannon-ball trees, and all the willow-pattern vagaries of Lamb's * world before perspective.' Like Lamb, he probably, to the end of his days, privately preferred the china-closet to the picture gallery. Meanwhile his Chinese travels had the effect of determining his vocation; and he began to study diligently as an architect. What interval elapsed between his giving up a commercial career for his new profession, and how long he worked in London, must be left to conjecture. But like every other student of those days, he seems to have speedily gravitated to Italy, not only to measure the monuments of Roman antiquity, but also to make minute and prolonged study of the more recent works and methods of such later masters of the Classic Style as Michelangelo and Palladio, Scamozzi and Vignola, Peruzzi, San- micheli, and the much-vaunted Chevalier Bernini — artists who, while following the principles of the antique, had contrived to combine with the best tradition something of their own originality and initiative. Chambers also devoted consider- able attention to French architecture, as mani- fested in the works of that devotee of Vitruvius, Claude Perrault, the designer of the Louvre ; Chambers the Architect 211 and of the Grand Monarque's favourite, Jules Mansard, of Versailles and Marly. His particular master at Paris was the preternaturally facile draughtsman, Charles Louis Clerisseau,^ who afterwards accompanied Robert Adam to England. When Chambers first left this country on what amount to his Wanderjahre is obscure; but as he is understood to have returned with Joseph Wilton the sculptor in 1755, when they, too, brought back with them Cipriani (whose drawings his countryman Bartolozzi afterwards did so much to popularize), there can be no doubt as to the ter- mination of his long Continental course. At this date Reynolds had completed his Italian travels; but it is just possible that, either at Rome or Florence, Chambers had made the acquaintance of his future colleague. In any case, when he returned to London, he must have been remarkably well-equipped for a calling in which, under George II, there were few ^ Of Clerisseau's rapidity it is related that once, at Rome, for a wager, he executed sixty different drawings * between the morning and evening of the same day/ They are de- clared to have shown * great merit and variety.' But in these matters of tours de force ^ one is a little tempted to recall Piron's verdict on the versatility of Voltaire : * Et la besogne est-elle bonne ? . . . Oh ! non ! ' 212 Chambers the Architect formidable rivals. Wren, the last great Anglo- Italian, had died three years before Chambers was born, and none had yet arisen to take his place. Chambers set up his tent in Russell Street, Covent Garden, next door to 'Tom's' famous coffee- house, and prepared to receive what Fate might bring to him. Being without means, his outlook was vague in the extreme. Fortunately he found a friend in John Carr, of York, the architect of many English country seats. It so happened that Lord Bute, the principal adviser of the widowed Princess Augusta, was casting about for some one to act as architectural drawing master to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George III, and Carr recommended Chambers. Discreet, courtly, and already of much experience in men, he speedily became a favourite with his royal pupil and his royal pupil's mother. How far he inspired the future monarch with his Oriental tastes we know not; but following the then prevailing craze for the * Sharawaggi^ or Chinese want of symmetry ' of which Walpole wrote, and which had moved the ridicule of Whitehead in the ' World,' ^ he set ^ *World,'No. iz,22nd March 1753. * Every gate to a cow-yard' — says the writer — *is in T's and Z's, and every hovel for the cows has bells hanging at the corners.' Walpole says that the founder of this taste was Richard Bateman, Chambers the A rchitect 213 himself to foster the fashion by an elaborate series of * Designs for Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines and Utensils.' These, which were dedicated to his pupil, and appeared in 1757, were based mainly upon his early Chinese sketches. Effectively engraved by Grignion and others, they enjoyed considerable vogue, especially as they in- cluded a lengthy introduction. One thing which they established was that the author must already have made the acquaintance of Johnson, among whose 'acknowledged works,' according to Bos- well, figure the first two paragraphs of Chambers's preface. It may be also that Chambers is intended by the ' Mr. Freeze ' who makes early appearance in Goldsmith's ' Citizen of the World,' and whose * Chinese Temple' is found to be wholly un- recognizable by the outspoken and incorruptible Lien Chi Altangi. Chambers, however, was too clever to trust entirely to a merely fugitive freak of the popular taste ; and it was not for the * Sharawaggi ' style of architecture that he had given his days and nights to the study of Palladio and Sanmicheli. In 1759 he published his * Treatise on the De- brother of the first Viscount Bateman, whom he (Walpole) susequently converted *from a Chinese to a Goth.' (Toyn- bee's * Walpole's Letters,' xii (1904), 11.) 214 Chambers the Architect corative Part of Civil Architecture,' the work on which his reputation as a writer still rests. Wal- pole declared in his ' Anecdotes of Painting ' that it was *the most sensible book, and the most exempt from prejudices, that ever was written on its subject.' And if it be retorted that Walpole wrote in the architectural dark ages of 1762, it may be added that Chambers's pupil and bio- grapher Hardwick, and his editor Gwilt, both brothers of the craft, also bear testimony to its merits. The latter, who supplemented it in 1825 by an examination of Grecian Architecture, a part of Chambers's theme which he had more or less neglected, nevertheless speaks of it even then * as the only text-book in our language which has yet appeared worthy of being placed in the hands of the student.' The subject is too large for a layman; but it was doubtless owing to Chambers's popularity with his pupil, and his proficiency in architecture and Chinese gardening, that he was chosen by the Princess Augusta to improve and decorate the grounds at Kew House, which, after the death of her husband, was still occupied by her as a residence. With a flat site, poor soil, and neither wood nor water, the task cannot have been an easy one ; but the ingenuity of Chambers victoriously overcame these obstacles, and his Chambers the A rchitect 2 1 5 clever alternation of Chinese structures with Classic temples made the spot ' the delight of the native, and the admiration of the foreigner.' ^ In a sumptuous folio issued in 1763, at the royal command and cost, vf'xxh the title of ' Plans, Ele- vations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew, in Surry, the seat of Her Royal Highness the Princess Dowager of Wales,' Chambers pictorially perpetuated his labours. The book is still a desideratum to the topographical collector, not only for its historical and intrinsic interest, but as exemplifying the best illustrative and chalcographic art of the day. Cipriani contributed the figures ; Kirby, Thomas Sandby, and William Marlow the ' views ' ; while Paul Sandby, Woollett, Grignion, Major, Rooker, and others, took charge of the transference of the designs to copper. ^ M. Pierre-Jean Grosley, who visited this country in 1765, writes enthusiastically in his*Londres'of the*jardins & le pare que le Princesse de Galles a depuis peu formes a Kiow.' He praises their infinite variety, their temples and pagoda; their verdant lawns — Me plus beau vert qui soit dans la nature,' to which his attention had been specially directed by the pastellist Latour. ('Londres,' 1771, iii, 125- 132.) Evidently Latour did not agree with his compatriot Boucher, who thought that Nature could be *trop verte,' 2i6 Chambers the Architect The majority of the plans and architectural drawings were by Chambers himself} and from his own account it is clear that his operations must have begun rather earlier than is supposed by some of his biographers; and also that he was not solely responsible for all the much-discussed ' Chinoiseries.' For example, there was already in existence a two-storeyed 'House of Confucius,' de- vised years before by Joseph Goupy (who had also been drawing-master to George III), the walls and ceilings of which were painted with scenes from the life of the great Oriental law-giver, and also *with several transactions of the Christian Missions in China.' Chambers's earliest effort seems to have been the ' Gallery of Antiques,' which dates from 1757. In the year after came the Doric 'Temple of the God Pan,' imitated from the Theatre of Marcellus at Rome ; and the still existent ' Temple of Arethusa.' After these followed the ' Temple of Victory ' commemor- ating Minden and the defeat of Marshal de Con- tades by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick; the ' Ruin,' a realistic reproduction of classical an- tiquity in hona-fide brick and mortar, and not painted like its historical prototypes at Vaux- hall or Rueil; the 'Temple of Bellona'; the * Mosque,' with its edifying Arabic mottoes from Chambers the Architect 217 the Koran ;^ the 'Temple of the Sun'; the Orangery or Green-house (now Museum No. Ill) and the Great Pagoda. The latest erection at the date of publication of the book was a temple in honour of the Peace which ended the Seven Years* War. From the above it will be seen that Cham- bers varied his inventions considerably, and was not exclusively concerned with Classic and Chi- nese architecture. One of the buildings unenu- merated in the Hst was the ' Alhambra,' which anticipated Owen Jones by essaying the Moresque manner; the 'Mosque' was naturally Turkish, while the ' Temple of the Sun,' which stands not far from the old Orangery, borrowed hints from Baalbek. It may be added that the ' Temple of Victory' — for which, with many of the older bridges and the like, the visitor will now vainly seek — either from its shape or its rapid construction, was popularly known as the ' Mushroom Temple' ; while the Temple of - 342- 51. In 1793 the * Berlin Hogarth,' Daniel Chodowiecki, executed two engravings for the * Historisch-genealogischer Almanach,' representing the arrest of Louis XVI at St. Menehould in June 1 791, and his subsequent acceptance of the Constitution. Chodowiecki must later have made Clery's acquaintance, for in 1799 he etched a plate of Clery's children, then resident in the artist's house in the Behrenstrasse at Berlin. (Engelmann's * Catalogue of Chodowiecki,' 1857, p. 494.) Cliry^s Journal 267 meminisse horret.' The King also sent to C16ry in England the Order of St. Louis, with a holo- graph letter of commendation. ' You have shown ' (he wrote) * no less courage in the prison of the Temple than the warrior who braves death on the field of honour; and in awarding to you the decoration which serves him as a recompense I do no wrong to the spirit of this noble institution. In London Cl^ry lodged at 29, Great Pulteney Street, Golden Square, where he speedily found patrons and a publisher. The English version of his book, prepared, as its title-page proclaims, from *the original manuscript,' was by R.C. Dallas, subsequently the translator of many Revolutionary records, including Hue's 'Memoirs,' but now remembered chiefly by what Moore calls his * most authentic and trustworthy ' ' Recollections ' of his relative. Lord Byron. The 'Journal ' must have appeared in the middle of 1798, as a note to its list of subscribers is dated 25th May. There was also a French edition.^ The subscription list, which is headed by the whole of the English royal family, runs to thirty-two closely-printed columns, and includes many illustrious sym- ^ A further translation by John Bennett appeared in i8a8j and, during the progress of this yolume through the press, a third has been published. 268 Clary's Journal pathizers with the Temple captives. Pitt is there, and Dundas; but neither Sheridan nor Fox.^ * Scott — Esq.' and * Rogers — Esq.' may mean Walter Scott and Samuel Rogers. But Scott, who had as yet published nothing, did not pay his first visit to London until 1799. That he then, or later, met Cl^ry is plain from a note to his 'Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,' ch. xiii: ' Cl^ry ' (he says) * we have seen and known, and the form and manners of that model of pristine faith and loyalty can never be forgotten. Gentle- manlike and complaisant in his manners, his deep gravity and melancholy features announced that the sad scenes, in which he had acted a part so honour- able, were never for a moment out of his memory.' There was another person who undoubtedly saw Clery in London, and helped him to sub- scribers, although, by admitted misadventure, his name does not appear in the roll. This was Mme. D'Arblay's father, bustling Dr. Charles Burney of St. Martin's Street, who at once hurried oflF an account of his new acquaintance to his daughter and her French husband in Surrey. M. D'Arblay had been adjutant-general to La- fayette; and both he and his clever little wife were naturally ardent Royalists. Shortly after- ^ Cf. * Percy and Goldsmith,' p. 39. Clery's Journal 269 wards the < Journal ' arrives at Camilla Cottage, and ' half-kills ' its readers. * The deepest tragedy they have yet met with is slight to it/ 'The extreme plainness and simplicity of the style, the clearness of the detail, the unparading yet evident worth and feeling of the writer, make it a thousand times more affecting than if it had been drawn out with the most striking eloquence.' Mme. D'Arblay asks for more; she 'wants a second part.* What of the remaining members of the royal family? What of the tokens intended for the Queen and the Dauphin? As to the other prisoners, Clery, as already explained, at the time of writing, had probably no further particulars to give; but respecting the tokens, which duly reached their destination by other hands, he prints a note at the end of his volume. This Mme. D'Arblay must have overlooked,^ 1 The tokens were a seal, intended for the Dauphin, and a ring for the Queen. They were sent by Marie Antoinette to her husband's brothers, and Clery apparently saw them at Blankenburg, with the notes which had ac- companied them, of which he was allowed to print fac- similes. (See Appendix B.) Mme. D'Arblay would have been delighted to know, what she probably died without learning, that * Camilla' and 'Evelina' were among the books asked for by the Queen and Mme. Elizabeth during their imprisonment. 270 Clery's Journal There is little more to say of this emphatically Meal serviteur.' The 'Journal' was printed secretly in France in 1799, and it was translated into most European languages. As might perhaps have been expected, its authenticity was hotly questioned and defended. Under the Directory, much to its writer's indignation, it was garbled and falsified; and later he was coolly invited, as a preliminary to a fresh French edition, to append a postscript in praise of the existing Government. Napoleon, always anxious to surround himself by the old servants of Louis XVI, offered him the post of seniorchamberlain to Josephine ; but he declined it, thereby seriously offending the First Consul. Finally, in 1 809, in his fifty-first year, broken by constant vexations, intrigues, and journeyings to and fro, Clery died at Hietzing, a suburb of Vienna, close to the park of Schonbrunn. Upon his tombstone is the simple inscription, * Ci-git le fidele C16ry.' In 1 81 7 Louis XVIII gave letters of nobility to his daughter. THE OXFORD THACKERAY SINCE the appearance, some years ago, of Thackeray's works in the ' Biographical ' Edition, which, from Lady Ritchie's introduc- tions, must always retain a distinctive and special value, there have been several competitive, if not rival, issues. There is, for instance, that of Messrs. Macmillan, reproducing, wholly or chiefly, the text of the first editions; there is also a pretty 'Temple' edition, with notes by Mr. Walter Jerrold. And now Mr. Henry Frowde has added to these another, which, besides the happy acci- dent of its being the latest, may fairly lay claim to particular merits of its own. It is excellently printed and produced ; and it is extremely moder- ate in price. You may get it thick or thin, according to your fancy — that is to say, you may have it on ordinary paper, or on that frail- looking but durable Oxford India tissue, which compresses the thousand pages of 'The New- comes ' to a width of three-quarters of an inch. You can also obtain it bound in a style as simple as that of Southey's 'Cottonian ' library, or sump- 271 272 The Oxford Thackeray tuous enough for the shelves of the most fastidious book-lover. It claims to be the fullest in the market, and its arrangement, as that of such col- lections should be, is in the main chronological. It has also an admirable and exhaustive index. These are definite and praiseworthy charac- teristics ^ but — as will be shown — the Oxford Thackeray has some others which are equally ex- ceptional. In the first place, it is very liberally illustrated. There is a noble gallery of Thackeray portraits, from Devile's bust in the National Portrait Gallery, to the less-known drawing by Goodwyn Lewis in the Public Library at Kensington. There are admirable facsimiles of Thackeray's beautiful neat script — pages of ' The Newcomes,' from the Museum at Charterhouse ; pages of ' Esmond,' from the original MS. at Trinity College, Cambridge. But it is in the reproduction, which the multiplied processes now make so easy, of the earlier illustrations that these volumes are richest. Here are all the etchings and woodcuts of Cruikshank to *A Legend of the Rhine' and the 'Fatal Boots'; here are Dicky Doyle's designs to * The Newcomes ' and * Rebecca and Rowena'; here are those of Fred Walker to * Philip ' and ' Denis Duval,' and of Kenny Meadows to the * Heads of the People.' The Oxford Thackeray 273 Also there are the illustrations of the author him- self to ' Vanity Fair,' to * Pendennis,' to the ' Vir- ginians,' to the *Rose and the Ring,' and the rest. In addition to these, there is a 'vast' of specimens, from ' Punch ' and other sources, of what Thackeray pleasantly called his * own can- dles.' As to the merit of this side of his talent, opinion has been somewhat divided. But com- pared, as they can in this connection be com- pared, with the leading comic art of Thackeray's day, we see little to choose between the artist and his contemporaries. Indeed, we find no reason for putting him much below Doyle; and, in the matter of initial letters, we hold the pair — in invention, at all events — to have been nearly equal; while if Thackeray cannot be regarded as rivalling Cruikshank in occasional tragic power (and we are not sure that he does not so rival him in the picture of ' Sir Pitt's Last Stage '), he seldom declines, as the artist of the ' Fatal Boots ' does sometimes decline, into sheer broad-grin and horse-collar hilarity. It may, of course, be urged that some of the ' Punch ' illustrations are of the most fugitive kind, and that the Lardner boutades^ and a few others, were scarcely worth reviving. But, when all is said and done, these sketches, whatever their technical merits or demerits, are T 2/4 "^^ Oxford Thackeray part of the author's intellectual output, and, where they illustrate his writings, represent, more nearly than it would be possible for any second person to represent, what he wished to convey to his readers.^ These illustrations, then — there are said to be nearly two thousand of them — form a feature of the new edition which cannot be overrated. But * Thackeray has been accused of conscious caricature, even in his gravest graphic efforts; and it may be admitted that, with every primarily humorous artist, the grotesque will often assert itself inopportunely. M. Taine, who re- garded Peggy O'Dowd and M. Alcide Mirobolant as literary caricatures, would probably not object to their being artistically presented as such. But there is an anec- dote in the Roundabout Paper ' De Finibus ' which oppor- tunely vindicates Thackeray both as artist and author. He had, he tells us, invented Captain Costigan of *Pen- dennis' 'out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends of charac- ters.' Years after, he was * smoking in a tavern parlour one night — and this Costigan came into the room alive — the very man: the most remarkable resemblance of the printed sketches of the many of the rude dratuings in nuhich I had depicted him. [The italics are ours.] He had the same little coat, the same battered hat, cocked on one eye, the same twinkle in that eye.' He spoke with an Irish broguej he had been in the army; and he completed the likeness by accepting a glass of brandy-and-water and volunteering a song. In the same paper Thackeray says parenthetically and significantly that Walker's Philip Firmin is not his Philip. The Oxford Thackeray 275 that edition is also fortunate in another respect — it is admirably edited and arranged. Mr. Saints- bury, to whom this office has fallen, requires no commendation at our hands. His reputation as a critic and man of letters is not a matter of yester- day, or the day before. Yet, in this particular instance, it may be pertinent to observe that few scholars of our time would seem to be better equipped. As the historian of both English and French literature ; as the intimate student of the rise and development of the novel j as the editor of Fielding and Sterne — of Balzac and Merim6e, he has manifestly initial qualifications not often to be found combined in one and the same person. What is still more to the point, he is a fervent and faithful devotee of the writer of ' Esmond ' and ' Vanity Fair.' His study of his theme, he says in his * Preface,' ' has at least one justifica- tion — it is of an author who has been, for more than forty years, more frequently in the hands, and more constantly in the head and heart of the student, than any other in prose and almost than any other in rhyme.' In other words, he is him- self, as he says of Thackeray's old friend, the late Sir Frederick Pollock — * vir Thackeraianissimus.' ' For more than forty years,' also reminds us thac, although Mr. Saintsbury neither knew nor (to the 276 The Oxford Thackeray best of his belief) ever saw his author, he is to some extent of that author's day — no slight recom- mendation in this epoch of short memories and shorter-lived notorieties. If — as he observes else- where — he can recall the * green covers ' of ' Bleak House ' in the booksellers' windows, he must also recall the yellow covers of * The Newcomes ' and * The Virginians.' Nor can he have forgotten the first volumes of the ' Cornhill Magazine'; and that mournful sixth column in the * Times ' of Christmas 1863, which told those who had fretted a little over the langueurs of * Philip ' that ' Denis Duval' would never be finished, since, for its inventor, 'Finis itself had come to an end, and the Infinite had begun.' To call the Oxford Thackeray complete would not be strictly accurate. Although it may fairly be described as ' the fullest,' there have been omis- sions of set purpose. For instance, in spite of the opinion of some ' eminent hands,' Mr. Saintsbury has not scrupled to leave out ' Elizabeth Brown- rigge — that notorious malefactor, who, in Can- ning's parody of Southey — whipp'd two female 'prentices to death And hid them in the coal-hole. Notwithstanding that, like 'Catherine,' it is plainly prompted by the monstrosities of 'Eugene The Oxford Thackeray 277 Aram ' and the Bulwer school, the editor can find no evidence that Thackeray is responsible for the Brownrigge epopee. One cannot, of course, be certain. But that a writer who, from youth to maturity, revealed himself at all times and every- where, does not so reveal himself in an anonymous piece which is attributed to him, is a very sufficient ground for not preserving such a piece, except in some supplementary limbo of doubtful per- formances. Thackeray's fame can do without * Elizabeth Brownrigge.' On the other hand it will occasionally happen that papers, such as the semi-political letters of ' Our Own Correspond- ent ' from Paris to the * Constitutional,' though manifestly authentic, may, from the writer's lack of sympathy with his task, represent him at his worst and weakest; and in this case, too, a sound editorial faculty has no option but to pronounce sentence of banishment. For these, and other excluded things, Mr. Saintsbury gives very ex- cellent and categorical explanation in the seven- teen 'Introductions' which accompany the volumes and which, indeed, would almost make a volume — and a most interesting volume — by themselves. From the chronological arrangement which has with certain modifications been adopted, they take the form of a sequence of connected chapters, 2/8 The Oxford Thackeray rather than detached essays, and so constitute a body of Thackeray criticism, which, by its close insight and trained ability, its happily-remem- bered illustrations, and its opulence of informa- tion, cannot safely be neglected by any student in the future. With the first and last of these ' Introductions ' is included a sufficient array of biographical facts to satisfy any reader as yet un- acquainted with the somewhat scanty material of the existing lives. What strikes one most forcibly in turning over the pages of the earlier volumes is the inordinate amount of preliminary work done by Thackeray before he finally ' rang the bell ' with ' Vanity Fair.' This is the more notable because it is not difficult (after the event) to detect many indications of his coming triumphs in these only partially successful or wholly unsuccessful ' prolusions ' of his probationary epoch. In ' Catherine ' and ' The Luck of Barry Lyndon ' there is much of * Esmond ' and 'The Virginians' ; the reviews in the 'Times' and elsewhere anticipate something of 'The Humourists ' and ' The Four Georges ': there are premonitions in essays like the ' Curate's Walk ' of the inimitable 'Roundabout Papers'; the famous Quadrilateral of novels has its first fore- shadowings in the ' Shabby Genteel Story,' the The Oxford Thackeray 2'jg * Great Hoggarty Diamond ' and so forth ; while the * Burlesques,' the ' Ballads,' the * Prize Novel- ist,' the *Snob Papers,' and the 'Sketch- and Christmas-Books ' are everywhere strewn full- handed with the first fruits of the wit, satire, humour, grasp of character, happy phrasing, and unflagging vis viva which go to make up the later efforts of the Master. Yet no fewer than ten volumes of Mr. Saintsbury's seventeen have been exhausted, and the writer has reached his mid-literary career, before the little pilot-boat of ' Mrs. Perkins' Ball,' the unequal ' Snob Papers,' and the novel of 'Vanity Fair' (the last only gradually), at length usher him into his inheritance of previously unfulfilled renown. In the ' Introduction ' to ' Vanity Fair,' Mr. Saintsbury so exactly ' places ' that masterpiece, and so scientifically defines its precise function in the evolution of English fiction, that, even at the risk of a prolonged quotation, we venture to re- produce his words: ' A succession of great novelists from Richard- son onwards had been endeavouring to bring the novel proper — the prose fiction which depends upon ordinary life and character only — into com- plete being. Fielding had very nearly done it: but what was ordinary life in his time had ceased 28o TJte Oxford Thackeray to be ordinary. Miss Austen had quite done it : but she had deliberately restricted her plan. In the thirty years between her death and the ap- pearance of 'Vanity Fair' attempts at it had multiplied enormously in number : but the mag- nificent success of Scott in another line had drawn off the main body of attention and attempt — to no great profit. The really distinguished novels since Scott, had been sports of eccentric talent like Peacock's ; specialist studies like Marryat's ; medleys of genius and failure of genius like Bul- wer's and Disraeli's ; brilliant but fantastic, and not poetically fantastic, nondescripts like the work of Dickens. ' After, or rather amid all this chase of rather wandering fires, there came forward once more, * the proper study of mankind,' unerringly con- ducted as such, but also serving as occasion for consummate work in art. The old, old contrast of substance and shadow is almost the only one for Thackeray's figures and those of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries. In comparison (though by no means always positively) they walk and act while the others flit and gesticulate ; they speak with the voice fji^spoTrcov avOpcoTrcovy while the others squeak and gibber; they live and move and have being, while the others dance the dance The Oxford Thackeray 281 of puppets and execute the manoeuvres of ombres chinoises, ... As always — because a writer of this kind is rather the first articulate prophet of a new revelation than its monopolist — something of the same quality was soon diffused,^ But he was the first prophet : and to this day he is the greatest.' Mr. Saintsbury has other things to say of * Vanity Fair': but to these we must refer the reader. We observe, however, with pleasure, that he is not prepared to endorse M. Taine's prefer- ence for Valerie MarnefFe as a conception over Becky Sharp. While he is at one with the French critic in considering Thackeray hard upon Becky, he holds that — Beatrix Esmond excepted — * there is no woman so great in English literature out of Shakespeare.' And, as an editor of Balzac, he is entitled to his opinion. The reference to Beatrix reminds us there have been recent indications that modern criticism, seeking vaguely after originality, may come at length to assert that 'Esmond' in reality y^/A to revive the eighteenth century, and that its author did not^ as he fondly believed, ' copy the language of Queen Anne.' So, somewhile the pendulum swings! In the meantime, Mr. Saintsbury is ^ Its influence is to be traced in Dickens. 282 The Oxford Thackeray worth listening to. The function of Thackeray in the historical novel was: *Not merely to dis- cuss or moralize, but to represent the period as it was, without forfeiting the privilege of regarding it from a point of view which it had not itself reached. . , . Thackeray, with the conveniences of the novel, and the demands of his audience, dichotomizes the presentation while observing a certain unity in the fictitious person, now of Henry Esmond, now of William Makepeace Thackeray himself. If anybody does not like the result, there is nothing to be said. But there are those who regard it as one of the furthest explora- tions that we yet possess of human genius — one of the most extraordinary achievements of that higher imagination which Coleridge liked to call esenoplastic} That a man should have the faculty of reproducing contemporary or general life is wonderful; that he should have the faculty of reproducing past life is wonderful still more. But that he should thus revive the past and preserve the present — command and provide at once theatre and company, audience and performance — this is the highest wizardry of all. And this, as it seems to me, is what Thackeray had attempted, and * * Biographia Literaria/ ch. x. Coleridge says he coined it from sif h 7r^ATT«tv, — to shape into one. The Oxford Thackeray 283 more, what he has done, in the History of Henry Esmond.^ A good illustration and confirmation of this fine and discriminating criticism would be to contrast the history of Queen Anne's Colonel with — let us say — such a book as Sala's ' Adven- tures of Captain Dangerous,' also an attempt at historical construction in old-fashioned language. Its author had a wonderful verbal memory, great descriptive power, and an unrivalled faculty for what he called the stocktaking of detail. But although his theme was perhaps suggested by ' Esmond,' he did not possess that higher imagi- nation which is prefigured by the epithet of Coleridge; and his work in consequence remains rather the costume and tongue of the time than the time itself. Nevertheless, * Captain Danger- ous' is a very respectable and unduly neglected pasticho in the manner of Defoe, with a dash of Tom Brown and the ' London Spy/ ^ In the matter of those kindred volumes to ' Esmond,' the 'English Humourists' and the 'Four Georges,' * The attempt of Damiens on Louis XV j the story of 'Mother Drum/ the female soldier j and the picture of London in the '4.5, with the tragical episode of Shenstone's Jemmy Dawson, are favourable examples of the Sala manner. 284 The Oxford Thackeray Mr. Saintsbury is, as it seems to us, equally sound. He admits that, in the former instance, fuller knowledge may have modified some of the traits; and he admits also a certain severity of attitude to Sterne and Svi'ift. But he rightly lays stress on the extraordinary vitality and stimulating quality of the general criticism as things in their kind more material than an unreasoned sympathy, and more important than a too curious attention to the mere cocked hat and buttons of fact. In the same vi^ay, as regards the ' Four Georges,' he is conscious of an undue undervaluing of George III, and even of a sort of injustice to his unpopu- lar successor; but here again he insists on the value of the volume as a quintessential extract of the contemporary social life of the day, as revealed in its memoirs and correspondence. In short, vv^hile he professes that he is by no means a *Thackeray-right-or-wrong' man, he is, *on this side idolatry,' an indulgent admirer, verbose critical motto might be those wise words of Mr. Burchell in the 'Vicar of Wakefield': 'The reputation of books is raised, not by their freedom from de- fect; but the greatness of their beauties.' A novel and an interesting feature of the latest Thackeray is the Appendixes which preserve the passages rejected by the author in his final revisions. The Oxford Thackeray 285 These have often given trouble to readers perplexed by the absence of something vaguely recollected. Mr. Saintsbury's edition sets all this right. In * Vanity Fair,' for example, he reprints at the end a long extract from the first version of the Vaux- hall chapter (chapter vi), showing how that in- cident might have been treated in the ' genteel ' or the * terrible ' style — for which we should doubt- less read Bulweror Ainsworth. It is clever, as the author is always, but it is obviously irrelevant, as he himself decided. From * Pendennis,' whose even tenor was interrupted by illness, the omissions are of necessity more numerous, and uniformly judicious. The most important of these deal with the idle Clavering chatter concerning Helen Pen- dennis and Pen's tutor, Mr. Smirke, the curate ; and with certain traits in the character of the hero's evil genius at Oxbridge,' Captain Macheath,' otherwise Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell. Another with- drawal — which M. Taine, working on the first edition, has, oddly enough, selected for special com- ment — is that relating to Blanche Amory and her tyrannous usage of her poor little tiring-maid, Pin- cott ; and indeed it is difficult to guess why the author condemned it, seeing that it is quite in keeping with the 'Sylphide's' other feline character- istics. A passage relating to the educational short- 286 The Oxford Thackeray comings of the Fotheringay may perhaps have been left out because, in addition to repetition of things said previously, it included a joke about Dante's having been born at Algiers, already assigned, in the ' Book of Snobs,' to the Pontos' governess, Miss Wirt. Another large excision in chapter xlv deals with Love and Mr. Foker. There are also endless minor readjustments and corrections which prove how carefully a writer, who is sometimes accused of negligence, revised his utterances. As the tale of novels lengthens, the suppressions grow fewer Little that is material is taken from * Esmond'; and beyond a high-life anecdote, also in the * Book of Snobs,' telling rather against Miss Ethel, not much from ' The Newcomes.' In ' The Virginians' the cutting is confined to sundry digressive addresses, there more frequent than elsewhere. But no at- tentive reader will wish to be without knowledge of these and other matters, or of the minute and even microscopic evidence they afford of the pains which Thackeray devoted to the text of his more serious productions. Although Mr. Saintsbury has been careful to furnish each work with its needful bibliographical foreword, he has not thought it desirable, nor was it within his commission, to append illustrative notes to his text. For this, apart from the mere The Oxford Thackeray 287 printer's argument that they spoil the page, there are of course sufficient reasons; and moreover, from an editor who has given so much, it would be grasping to ask for more. But the re-reading of Thackeray to-day brings forcibly to mind the dictum of Johnson that ' in sixty or seventy years, or less, all works which describe manners, require notes.' He might have said * places ' as well as ' manners.' Who now knows, for example, the site of Old Slaughter's Coffee-house, whence George Osborne went forth, in a blue coat and bufFwaist- coat, to marry the infatuated Amelia; and how many can recollect Pendennis's ' Back Kitchen ' — the Cider Cellars in Maiden Lane ! We should not be sorry to have a note — not a footnote, but a note at the end of the book like the longer notes to Scott's novels — giving some record of that * mur- murous ' old supper-haunt, with, if possible, a copy of the design from Doyle's * Mr. Pips hys Diary,' representing a stance just * sixty years since.' And the ham-and-beef shop in St. Martin's Court ! This, too, has long vanished. But the fact that it figures in chapter i of * Catherine,' where it is as much a symbol of sempiternity as Matthew Arnold's * crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street ' — surely this warrants a passing comment, especially when it is remembered that, even on the top of Skiddaw, 288 The Oxford Thackeray Charles Lamb found it necessary to recall it in order to rectify his over-strained sensations ! Then, in another way, there is ' The Rose and the Ring,' of which delectable extravaganza Mr. Saintsbury writes with becoming enthusiasm. Lady Ritchie has recently told us that the first scheme included a malevolent Fairy Hopstick, afterwards discarded.^ This is perhaps too minute a matter for the kind of annotation we have in mind, though it is worth mention. We were thinking rather of those pleasant verses which, in 1864, the late Frederick Locker composed about the writing of the book, and the ' nice little Story ' connected with it — to wit, the invalid daughter of the American sculptor, W. W. Story, to whom, at Rome, the author read his manuscript as it progressed, and to whom also he subsequently presented a copyof the printedvolume with a * comical little croquis ' : A sketch of a rather droll couple, She 's pretty, he 's quite t'other thing! He begs (with a spine vastly supple) She will study * The Rose and the Ring.' In the illustrated edition of London Lyrics,' there is a picture by Doyle of the * kind wizard ' at the sick child's sofa, holding his paper close to his eyes * *Blackstick Papers,' 1908, p. 2. The Oxford Thackeray 289 as he does in the portrait by Samuel Laurence. But these and other cognate memorabilia were not part of Mr. Saintsbury's plan, and must of necessity fall to his successors. It is all he has left them to do ! U i ^ \wmm\ I -tin. THE PRISON OF THE TEMPLE (FROM CLERY's 'journal') APPENDIX A The Prison of the Temple THE locality at Paris known as the Temple was so called from the Knights Templars, to whom it originally belonged ; and from whom, on their sup- pression by Philip of Valois in 13 12, it was handed over to the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jeru- salem, later known as the Knights of Malta. In August 1792 it consisted of a heterogeneous group of buildings, which, roughly speaking, occupied the angle formed by the present Boulevard du Temple and the Rue du Temple. These comprised a Palace which, up to 1789, had been occupied by the King's brother, the Comte d'Artois, in his capacity of Grand Prior of the Knights of Malta; a Church, shortly to be demolished ; a large Rotunda or Market, and the Tower, or more accurately Towers, sub- sequently used by the Commune as the prison of Louis XVI and his family. The larger or Great Tower had been originally intended as a keep or fortress for the adjacent property; the lesser or Little Tower, which abutted upon it to the left, 291 292 Appendix A was a much more recent construction. Both struc- tures had been employed in different ways to the outbreak of the Revolution, at which date the Great Tower was out of repair, and the Little Tower was tenanted by the archivist of the Order, who vacated it when it was requisitioned as a place of confine- ment. The royal family occupied it from 1 3th August 1792 until they were moved to the Great Tower. Here is Clery's account, which his two plans and general view, not always included in reprints of his book, make easily intelligible. The version is that of Dallas, slightly modified : ' It [the Little Tower] stood with its back against the Great Tower, without any interior communi- cation, and formed a long square, flanked by two turrets. In one of these turrets, there was a narrow staircase that led from the first floor to a gallery on the platform : in the other were small rooms answer- ing to each story of the Tower. * The body of the building was four stories high. The first consisted of an antechamber, a dining- room, and a small room in the turret, where there was a library containing from twelve to fifteen hun- dred volumes. * The second story (A) was divided nearly in the same manner. The largest room was the Queen's bed-chamber, in which the Dauphin also slept ; the second, which was separated from the Queen's by a Appendix A 293 small antechamber almost without light, was occupied by Madame Royale and Madame Elizabeth. . . . *The King's apartments were on the third story (B). He slept in the great room, and made a study of the turret-closet. There was a kitchen separated from the King's chamber by a small dark room, which had been successively occupied by M. de Chamilly and M. Hue\ and on which the seals were now fixed. The fourth story was shut up ; and on the ground floor there were kitchens, of which no use was made.'^ As the previous occupier had been obliged to leave his belongings behind, when he received orders to quit from the Municipality, the above apartments were fairly furnished. The King remained in them until the 29th September 1792, when he was trans- ferred to the Great Tower. At the end of October the Queen and her family followed him. Clery gives a minute account of the 'new habitation ' as follows; the figures between brackets being references to the plans at pp. 293 and 295 : * The great Tower is about a hundred and fifty feet high, and consists of four stories arched, and sup- ported by a great pillar from the bottom to the top. The area within the walls was about thirty feet square. 'The second and third stories allotted to the ^ The meals of the prisoners were brought from the kitchens of the Palace of the Temple. 294 Appendix A Royal Family, being, as were all the other stories, single rooms, they were now each divided into four chambers by partitions of board. The ground floor was for the use of the Municipal Officers ; the first story was kept as a guard room, and the King was lodged in the second. ' The first room of his apartments was an ante- chamber (i), from which three doors led to three separate rooms. Opposite the entrance was the King's chamber (2), in which a bed was placed for the Dauphin ; mine was on the left (3) ; so was the dining-room (4) which was divided from the ante- chamber by a glazed partition. There was a chimney in the King's chamber : the other rooms were warmed by a great stove in the antechamber. The light was admitted into each of these rooms by windows, but those were blocked up with great iron bars, and slanting screens on the outside [see plate, p. 291], which prevented a free circulation of the air: the embrasures of the windows were nine feet thick. * Every story of the great Tower communicated with four turrets, built at the angles. *In one of those turrets was a staircase (5) that went up as far as the battlements, and on which wickets were placed at certain distances to the num- ber of seven. This staircase opened on every floor through two gates : the first of oak, very thick and studded with nails, the second of iron. Appendix A 295 'Another of the turrets (6) formed a closet to the King's chambei; the third served for a *^ garderobe" (7), and in the fourth (8) was kept the fire-wood, where also the temporary beds, on which the Muni- cipal Officers slept near the King, were deposited in the day time. ' The four rooms, of which the King's apartments consisted, had a false ceiling of cloth \toile], and the partitions were hung with a coloured paper. The antechamber had the appearance of the interior of a jail, and on one of the panels was hung the De- claration of the Rights of Man,^ in verylarge characters with a tri-coloured frame. A chest of drawers, a small bureau, four chairs with cushions, an armed chair, a few rush-bottomed chairs, a table, a glass over the chimney, and a green damask bed, were all the furniture of the King's chamber : these articles as well as what was in the other rooms, were taken from the Temple Palace. The King's bed was that in which the Count eTArtois' Captain of the Guard used to sleep. * The Queen occupied the third story, which was distributed in much the same manner as the King's. The bed-chamber for the Queen (9) and Madame Royale was above his Majesty's: in the turret (10) was their dressing-room. Madame Elizabeth's room ^ Upon which the King's comment was : ' That would be very fine if it were practicable ' (Goret's Narrati've). 2g6 Appendix A (i i) was over mine [Clery's]. The entrance served for an antechamber (12) where the Municipal Officers watched by day and slept at night. Tison and his wife were lodged over the King's dining-room (13). 'The fourth story was not occupied. A gallery ran all along within the battlements which sometimes served as a walk. The embrasures were stopt up with blinds, to prevent the Family from being seen.' It was in the little dining-room, No. 4 on the second story, that the King spent his last hours with his family on the night of the 20th January 1793 ; but the final parting pictured by Clery for Mme. Lebrun, and referred to at p. 265, must have taken place in the adjoining antechamber (No. i). (-i) frert tf ami cc "clever ^^/i «, jfeuT ttrc carvA teu. rmtu c^ur. m.r. stit^ O^CU ■ . FACSIMILE OF THE NOTE TO THE COMTE (from CLI (2) a-uctitf troui^f e^HAut On ntotjCii 3/ c^ti/ier (^ FACSIMILE OF THE NOTE TO THE COM' (FROM CL] PROVENCE WHICH ACCOMPANIED THE SEAL s 'journal') tit 7ii Cei/^^^^^ Cendre /rj/^^ /^^ae/uj^ V^ffttJ ^n/ra/u a* /*%0rt ckeg' *"**, I'ltn ptre •*« p0H€^tf^ tup r^^ uh ac »/t/5 yu^ J4lt J0i*fiff- ftOttr *»#«t^/ 1*1*. ^.kJ %>.«»t«/**^ '_/ D'aRTOIS which ACCOMPANIED THE RING s 'journal') APPENDIX B The Last Messages THE ring and seal referred to at p. 269 ». were accompanied by joint notes from the senders, of which the accompanying are Clery's facsimiles. The encircling line indicates the limits of the scraps of paper on which they were written. The first, to the Comte de Provence, which went with the seal, was signed by the Queen, Mme Royale, the Dauphin, and the Princess Elizabeth; the other, to the Comte d'Artois, was signed by Marie Antoinette alone, though part of it is in the autograph of her sister-in- law. The following is Dallas's translation of these documents: ' Having a faithful being, on whom we can rely, I make use of the occasion to send my dear brother and friend this charge, which can only be trusted to his hands ; the bearer will tell you by what a miracle we have been able to get possession of these precious pledges. I reserve it to myself to tell you one day the name of him who is so useful to us. The im- possibility we have hitherto experienced of being able to send you any tidings, and the excess of our 297 298 Appendix B misfortunes, make us feel still more deeply our cruel separation — may it not be long ! I salute you in the mean time as I love you, and that you know is with all my heart. M.A. I am charged for my brother and myself to say we love you with all our hearts, M. T. — Louis. I enjoy by anticipation the pleasure you will experience in receiving this token of friend- ship and confidence. To be reunited with you, and to see you happy, is all I wish. You know whether I love you or not. I salute you with all my heart. E. M.' The other (with the ring) runs as follows : 'Having at last found a means of confiding to our brother one of the only pledges we have remaining of the being whom we cherish, and for whom we all weep, I thought you would be pleased to have something that comes from him. Keep it in token of the most tender friendship with which from my heart I salute you. M. A. What a happiness it is to me, my dear friend, my brother, that I am able after so long an in- terval of time, to tell you all the pangs I have suffered for you ! A time will come I hope when I shall be able to embrace you, and tell you that you will never find a truer or tenderer friend than I am : I hope you don't doubt it.' These notes must have been written at some date between the King's death in January, and that of the Queen, i6th October 1793. GENERAL INDEX N.B. — The titles of articles are in capitals Abercorn, Lord, 230. AbrahamSjMr. Aleck, 2 3 1 n. Academy of Ancient Music, Hawkins on, 127. Adam, Robert, 211. Addison, Joseph, 14, 135, 148, 149, 150. Advice to a Lady^ Lyttel- ton's, 181, 182. Albert Memorial, 25. Alcove( Marlborough Gate), Alexander I, Emperor, loi. Alexandrina, Grand Duch- ess, lOI. Allen, Ralph, 206. Almon of Piccadilly, 227. Anecdotes, Miss L. M. Haw- kins's, 115 n, 1 17 n. Anecdotes of Fainting^ Wal- pole's, 214. Angelisj Peter de, 14, Angouleme, Duchesse d', 90. 266. Animated 'Nature, Gold- smith's, 48. Ann Boleyn to Henry VIII, Whitehead's, 148. Anne, Queen, 5, 7, 11-16. Ansbach, Margravine of (Lady Craven), 106. Appendix A (The Prison of the Temple), 291-6. Appendix B (The Last Messages), 297-8. Arne, Dr., 59. Arnold, Matthew, 26, 287. Arnold's Kensington Gar- dens, 26. Artois, M. d' (Charles X), 87, 106, 291, 295, 297. **Atossa,"(Duchessof Marl- borough), 1 1 . Atys and Adrastus, White- head's, 148. Audinet, Philip, viii, 120 n. Augusta, Princess, 212, 214. 299 300 General Index Autobiography^ Gibbon's, 196. Austen, Jane, 280. Ayscough, Dr., 179, 185. Bacon, John, 236. Balguy, Dr., 146. Balzac, Honore de, 281. Banqueting House at White- hall, I n. Barber, Francis, 132. Baretti, Joseph, 220, 231 n., 237. Bariy, Spranger, 153. Bartolozzi, Francis, 211. Bateman, Richard, 212 n. Batz, Baron de, 256. Beauclerk, Topham, 128. Beaujolais, Comte de, io6. Beaux' Stratagem, Farqu- har's, 66. Bellenden, Madge, 24. Bellenden, Mary, 24. Bentinck, William, 9. Bernini, Chevalier, 210. Berri, Due de, io6. Berryer the Elder, no. Berrys, The Miss, 82. Bessborough, Earl of, 230. Bessborough House, 218. Billington, Mrs., 107. Biographia Literaria, Cole- ridge's, 166, 282, 283. Bishop of Dromore (Percy), 28, 32. Blackstick Papers, Lady Ritchie's, 288 n. Blenheim, Lyttelton's, 177. Bolingbroke, 12, 23. Bonaparte, Mme., 104. Boothbys of Tooley Park, The, 79. Borrow, George, 34. Boswell, James, 69, 113,1 14, 130, I32n.,i34,i36,226. Boucher, Frangois, 215 n. 'Boulanger' and * Bou- langere,' 96. Bourbon, Due de, 106. Boutin, M., 93. Boyd, Dr. Henry, 50. Bretherton, James, 45. Bridgeman, 25. Bristol Spring, Ode to, White- head's, 155. Broad Walk at Kensington, Brown, Lancelot, 221, 225. Browne, Hawkins, 58. Browne, Moses, 118, Bryanton, Bob (of Bally- mulvey), 43, 44, 46. Buckhurst, Lord, 8. General Index 301 Bulwer, E. L., i']']^ 280. Bunbury, H. W., 45. Burke, Edmund, 128, 129, 208, 231. Burnet, Bishop, 9, 10. Burney, Dr. Charles, 113, 126, 198 n., 236, 268. Burney, Fanny (Mme. D' Arblay),i9,4.i,ii2, 114, 142, 268, 269. Burns, Robert, 29. Burton, Dr., 144, 147. Callcott, Dr. J. W., 127. Calonne, C. A., the Con- troleur General, 94, 107. Cambridge, Richard Owen, 160. Camden, Lord, 68. Camilla^ Burney's, 269 n. Campan, Mme., 104. Campbell, Dr. Thomas, 50, Canning, George, 276. Captain Dangerous^ Sala's, 283. Carmarthen, Marquess of, 6. Caroline of Ansbach, 17, 21, 22. Caroline of Brunswick, 26. Carr, John, 212. Carrington House, 230 n. Carteret, Lord, 23. I Castle of Indolence^ Thom- son's, 199. Catalani, Mme., 108. Catharine II, 99, 100, loi. Cavendish, Lord John, 159. Chambers, Lady, 237. Chambers,SirWilliam,207- 37- Chambers the Archi- tect, 207-37. Chamier, Andrew, 128. Champcenetz, Chevalier de, 91. Chapeau de Faille^ Mme. Lebrun's, 83, 90. Chapeau de Faille (Foil), Rubens' s, 83, 90. Charge to the Poets^ White- head's, 165, 167. Charlemont, James Coul- field. Earl of, 205 n., 219, 230, 237. Charles II, i, 2. Chatterton, Thomas, 30, 48, 49. Chenevix, Mrs., i56n. Chesterfield, Lord, 17, 23, 56n.,i34,i67,i79n.,2o6. Chinese fashion. The, 156. ! Chinese Letters, Goldsmith's, 4-2,43- 302 General Index Chodowiecki, Daniel, 266 n. Choiseul-Gouffier, Comte de, 1 00. Chorley, H. F., 82 n. Churchill, Charles, 167,168. Gibber, Mrs., 54, 58, 164. Cibbers, The, 55. CtcerOy Observations on the Life ofy Lyttelton's, 182. Cider Cellars, 287. Cipriani, J. B., 211, 215. Citi%en of the World, Gold- smith's, 43, 185. Cinjil Architecture, Cham- bers's, 213. Clandestine Marriage, Col- man and Garrick's, 64, 65. Clare, Lord, 75. Clerisseau, Charles- Louis, 211, Clerk, Sir John,of Penicuik, 13. Clery (Jean-Baptiste Cant- Hanet), 238-270. Clery, Mme., 248, 257, 262. Clary's Journal, 238- 270. Clive, Lord, 221. Clive, Mrs., 164. Club, The, 37, 39, 128. Cole, The antiquary, 125. Coleridge, S. T., 30, 166, 282. Collins, Benjamin, 47. Colvin, Mr. Sidney, i64n. Come die larmoy ante, 163. Comedie mixte, 163. Compleat Angler, Chronicle of the J Westwood's, 120. Complot sous la Terreur^Gaxi- lot's, 257. Congreve, William, 194. Con'version of St. Paul, Lyt- telton's, 174, 199. Cook, William, 134. Costigan, Captain, 274 n. Cotton, Charles, 116, 119. Coucy-le-Chateau, 253-4. Coucy, Raoul de, 253 n. Courthope, Mr. W. J., 186. Cradock, Joseph, 53-81. Cramer, the Elder, 91. Craven, Lady, 106. Croker, J. W., 142, 173. Cruikshank, George, 272, 273. Cubieres, Dor at-, ^t,, 250-1. Cubieres, Marquisde, 9 3,94. Cumberland, Richard, 63. Cupola Room at Kensing- ton, 18. D'Alembert, 86. General Index 303 Dallas, R. C, 267. Danger of Writing Verses, Whitehead's, 14.7, 14.8, 165. Danjou, J. P. A., 244. D'Arblay, Mme., 70, 82, 142, 268, 269. Daujon, 244, 245, 246, 247. Dauphin,The (Louis XVII), 240, 258. Davies, Thomas, 64, 69, 71, 154- Death of Leonardo, Mena- geot's, 95. DefFand, Mme. du, 82, Delany, Mrs., 19, 82. Delille, Abbe, 91, 104. Designs of Chinese Buildings, Chambers's, 213. Desmoulins, Mrs., 73. De^vil upon Tivo Sticks, Foote's, 60. Devonshire, Duke of, 160. Dial Walk at Kensington, 16. Dialogues of the Dead, Lyttel- ton's, 163 n, 174, 191-3. Dilettanti Club, 220, 237. Disraeli, Benjamin, 280. Doddridge, Philip, 195. Dodington, Bubb, 197. Dodsley, Robert, 46. Dodsley'sZo«^o«,etc.,2o n., 22. Dorset, Earl ot(Lord Cham- berlain), 8. Doughty, William, 170. Douglas, Sir George, 32. Doyle, Richard, 272, 273. Drawing Room at Kensing- ton, 18. Drouais, Jean-Germain, 97. Du Barry, Mme., 104, 109. Duchesnois, Mile., 108. Ducis, Jean-Fran9ois, 104. Duck, Stephen, 225. Dyer, Samuel, 113, 114, 128. Edgeworth, Abbe, 262. Edinburgh Ball, White- head's, 151. Ednvin and Angelina, Gold- smith's, 29, 36, 73, 74. Edivin Drood, Dickens's, 129. Elegy, Gray's, improved, 74. Elizabeth Bro'-wnrigge , 276- 7- Elizabeth, Grand Duchess, lOI. Elizabeth, Princess, 241, 253. 304 General Inde:\^ Enghien, Due d', io6. English Garden^ Mason's, 221. if/OTOw^, Thackeray's, 28 2-3 . Essay on the Origin of the English Stage, Percy's, 39- Esterhazy, 99, 100. « Est-il-possibUP " (George of Denmark), 13. Estimate y Brown's, 157. E'velina, Burney's, 269 n. Evelyn, John, 1,4, 6, 10. Farmer's Return^ Garrick's, i64n. "Fame Machine," Gold- smith's, 54. Fasciculus Johanni W. Clark dicatus, i65n. Felixmarte of Hircania, Ubeda's, 36. Fergusson, James, 232. Ferrers, Earl, Laurence Shirley, 54. Fidelia-, or, the Pre'valence of Fashion, 58. Fielding,Henry, 1 75, 201-2, 279. Fiennes, Celia, 4. Finch, Daniel, Earl of Not- tingham, 3. i Fitzgerald, Mr. Percy, 55 n. i Fitzgerald, Pamela, 95. ; Fitz Herbert, Mrs., 108. ' Fleury, Abbe, 86, 179. \ Foote, Samuel, 54, 59, 64, i Formal Garden, Blomfield and Thomas's, 1 5 n. : Formian Villa at Kings- I gate, Lord Holland's,65n. I Forster, John, 42, 44, 45, I 53» "9- j Fortescue, Miss Lucy (Mrs. I Lyttelton), 186, 193 n. ' Fourment, Susanna, 83 n. i Fox, C. J., 39, 107, 186 n., 268. ' Frederick, Prince of Wales, 198. ; Frederick the Great, 19. : "Freeman, Mrs.," 11. I '■^ Friar of Orders Gray^^ Percy's, 29. Friendship, Whitehead's, '55- Frowde, Mr. Henry, 271. Fumifugium, Evelyn's, 2. Furnivall, F. J., 32 n. Gamester, Moore's, 107. Garat, 91. Garrick, David, 54, 63, 64. 68,70,72,154,164,236. General Index 305 Gartick, Epistle to. White- head's, 151. Garrick, Mrs., 66. Gaussen, Miss Alice C. C, 28, 32, 42, 44, 47, 53. Gay, John, 24. Genlis, Mme. de, 84, in. GeofFrin, Mme., 91, 92 n. George I, 4, 16, 17, 18. George II, 4, 5, 6, 22, 26. George III, 5, 212, 227. George of Denmark, Prince, 5, 13- Georgian oratory, 137. Gerard, Francois, 104. Gibbon, Edward, 79, 196, 208. Gibbons, Grinling, 7. Gigoux, Jean, no. Girl ^with the Muff, Mme. Lebrun's, 83, in. Girodet, A. L,, 97. Goafs Beard, Whitehead's, 168. Gobeau, 26. Goldsmith and Percy, 28- 52. Goldsmith Memoir, The, 49-52. Goldsmith, Oliver, 41-52, 61, 62 n., 66, 73-8, i79n., *i3, 227, 237. Good Naturd Man, 48, 63, 164. Goret, Charles, 252-6. Gostling, Rev. W., 123. Gothic fashion, The, 156. Goupy, Joseph, 216. Gower, Earl, 230. Grainger, Dr. James, 46. Grammont - Caderousse, Duchesse de, 89. Grand Staircase at Kens- ington, 18. Grassini, Mme., 107. Gray, Memoir of. Mason's, 140. Gray, Thomas, 33, 34, 80, 147, 159, 160, 187. Great Drawing Room at Kensington, 20, 22. * Greek Supper,' Mme. Le- brun's, 92. Green, J. R., 197. Gretry, A. R. M., 91. Greuze, Jean-Baptiste, 19, 104. Griffiths, Ralph, 44. Gros, Baron, J. B. L., no. Grosley, Pierre-Jean, 21 5 n. Gunns, The Miss, jy. Gutteridge, Miss Anne (Mrs. Percy), 35. Gwilt, Joseph, 214, 232. 306 General Index *Ha-Ha,'The, 25, 223. Hales, Mr. John W., 31 n. Hallam, Henry, 197. Hamilton, Lady, 98. Hamilton, Sir William, 98. Hampton Court, 3, 15. Hampton, Prince of Wales's Drawing Room at, 22. Hanbury, Charles, 175. Hanbury - Williams, Sir Charles, 175. Harcourt, Lord, 156, 162. Hardwick, Thomas, 214., 230. Hare, Augustus, 253 n. Harley, Robert, 12. Harriot Stuart^ Mrs. Len- ox's, 131. Hart, Emma (Lady Hamil- ton), 98. Hau Kiou Choaun^ Percy's, Haunch of Venisotiy Gold- smith's, 45. Hawkins, Admiral, 116. Hawkins, Miss L. M., 32 n., 115 n., 117, 133. Hawkins, Sir John, 112- 139. Hawkins's Life of Johnson^ 134-8. Hayman, Frank, 119. Hubert, Jacques Rene, 258. Helen, Grand Duchess, 1 01. Henrietta of Orleans, 1,3. Henry H, History of, Lyttel- ton's, 195. Henry of Prussia, 91. HermeSf Harris's, 79. Hermitage, The, at Rich- mond Lodge, 225. Hjrmit of fFarktJuorth, Per- cy's, 29, 38, 72. Heroic Epistle, Familiar Epistle to the Author of the, 228. Heroic Epistle, Postscript to the, 228. Heroic Epistle to Sir IFilliam Chambers, 222. Hervey, Lady, 82. Hervey, Lord, 20, 21, 23, 24, 183, 204. Hill, Dr. Birkbeck, 68. Hill, Dr. John, 223. History of Henry II, Lyttel- ton's, 175, 195. History of Music, Burney's, 126, 127. History of Music, Hawkinses, 123-7. History of the Church in the Eighteenth Century, Over- ton and Belton's, 28. General Index 307 Hobart, Miss (Lady Suf- folk), 24. Hogarth, William, 18, 21, 16411. Hohenlohe, Princess, 26411. Holland, Charles, 59, dd. Holland, Lord, 65 n., 175. Home, John, 224. Hood, Thomas, 121, 186. Horace^ Pine's, 145. Hough, Bishop, of Wor- cester, 185. Hue (or Hue), Frangois, 241, 293. HuUmandel, 91. Hume, David, 196, 224. Hunt, Leigh, 6, 8, 24. Hunt's Old Court Suburb, 24. Hurd, Bishop, 54, 146. Idler ^ Johnson's, 68. Installation Ode, Gray's, 80. Ionian Antiquities^ 220. Isola, Emma, 129. Isted of Ecton, Mr., 39. Ivy Lane Club, 115, 118, 130. James I, Poems by, 71. James II, 8. Jarjayes, Chevalier de, 257. Jeabus Wife, Colman's, 64. Jerrold, Mr. Walter, 271. Jersey, Earl of, 150, 162. Jersey, Lord and Lady, 141, 162, 171. * Jessamy Bride,* The (Mrs. Gwyn), 45. Johmon, Life of, Hawkins's, 116. Johnson, Samuel, 17, 29, 3 o^ 35>37,4i>47, 50*64, 70, 7i,72»73, ii3»"4, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 137, 139, 181, 182, 189, 191, 213, 219, 223, 236. Jones, Owen, 217. Journal of Occurrences at the Temple, etc., Clary's, 239. Kauffmann, Angelica, 97. Kearsly, George, 46. Kelly, Hugh, 63. Kensington Palace, Old, 1-27. Kent, Duke and Duchess of, 26, 37. Kent, William, 18, 25, 224, Kew Temples, The, 216-7. King, Thomas, 65. 3o8 General Index King's Drawing Room at Kensington, i8. King's Gallery at Kensing- ton, 7, 26. King's Privy Chamber at Kensington, 18. Knights of the Garter, In- stallation of, Angelis', 14.. Kourakin, Princess, 84. La Bruyere, Jean de, 86. Lafayette, Marquis de, 263. Lamb, Charles, 120, 288. Lamballe, Princesse de,242, 243, 245. Landor, W. S., 191. Langton, Bennet, 128, 129, 132. Latour, the pastellist, 84, 2i5n. Laureate Whitehead, 140-172. Law, Mr. Ernest, 15, 27. Lebrun, M., 86. Lehrun- Pindar e, 91, 93. Lee, Nat., 29. Lekain, H. L., 91. Le Notre, Andre, 5. Lenotre, M. G., 238, 244, 247, *49» 25*, 254- Lenox, Mrs. Charlotte, 130. Lepel, Molly, 24. Lepitre, Jacques-Frangois, 254, 256, 257. Lequeux, the architect, 2 54. Lesage, Alain Ren^, 59. Letter from Xo Ho, Wal- pole's, 43. Letters from a Persian in England to his Friend at Ispahan^ Ly ttelton's, 183. Lettres Persanes, Montes- quieu's, 43. Lichtenstein, Princess of, 99. Ligne, Prince de, 90. Literary Club, 37, 39, 128. Literature as a profession, 166. Little Dauphin, Miss Welch's, 239. Li'ves of the i'of/j, Johnson's, 175- Loftie, Mr. W. J., 16. London, George, 5, 14, 25, London Lyrics, Locker's, 288. London smoke, i, 2. Long, or King's Gallery, at Kensington, 8. Louis XIV, XV, XVI, and XVIII, 19. Louis XV, 179. Louis XVI, 238, 239, 240, 247, 253» 260-3. General Index 309 Louis XVIII (Comfe de Provenct), 264, 270, 297. Louis Philippe, 106. Lubomirski, Prince, 94. Lucian, The Nenv^ Traill's, 191. Lyttelton as Man of Letters, 173-206. Lyttelton, Lord, 1630., 173- 206. Lyttelton, Mrs,, 186. Lyttelton, Sir Thomas, 175. Lyrical Ballads^ Coleridge and Wordsworth's, 31. Lytton, Lord, on Gold- smith, 74.. Macaulay, Lord, 7, 9 n., 173- Macklin, Miss, 1 54.. Macpherson, James, 30, 224. * Madame ' (Henrietta of Orleans), i, 3. Madame Royale (Duchesse d'Angouleme), 238, 240, 263. Madame Vigee-Lebrun, 82-111. Maissin, Jeanne (Mme. Vig^e), 84. Malesherbes, Lamoignon de, 255. Malone, Edmund, 50, 113, 125, 130, 132. Mansard, Jules, 211. Manage de Figaro^ Beau- marchais', 81, 90. Marie Antoinette, 88, 238, 240, 243, 266. Marie Antoinette, Last Days oJ\ Lenotre's, 244 n. Marius at Minturna, Drou- ais', 97. Marlborough, Duke of, 11, 12. Marlborough, Sarah, Duch- ess of, II, 177. Marmontel, Jean-Fran9ois, 92 n. Marryat, Frederick, 280. Mary, Queen, 5, 6, 9. Mason, William, 140, 141, 14-3, i57> i59» i62n., 221, 226. Mathey the porter of the Temple, 254, 263. Meade, Hon. Pierce, 39. Meadows, Kenny, 272. Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne, Gib- bon's, 196. Memoirs, Miss L. M. Haw- kins's, 115 n. Memoir sof Lor dLyttehon^ 173. 310 General Index Menageot, 95, 97, 104. Merlin's Cave, 225. Michelangelo, 210. Michelangelo's Ventis^ 20- 22. Middleton, Conyers, 183. Miller, Lady, of Batheaston, 36. Miller, Sanderson, 202. Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the Chinese^ Percy's, 35. Mr. Cradock of Gum- ley, 53-81. Mr. Pips hys Diary , Doyle's, 287. Moelle, Claud, 257-8. Monnoyer, Jean-Baptiste, 19. Monody on Mrs. Lyttelton, Lyttelton's, 187. * Monsieur' (Louis XVIII), 87, 297. 'Monsieur' (Charles X), 87, 106, 297. Montfort, Lord (Mr. Brom- ley), 1+4. Montpensier, Due de, 106. Moore, Edward, 203. * Morley, Mrs.', 11. Murat, Mme. (Caroline Bonaparte), 109. Murphy, Arthur, 61, 154. Nabob J TAe, Foote's, 60. Nanine, Voltaire's, 62. Ne^ AtaLzntis, Mrs. Man- ley's, 145. Newcastle, Duke of, 56. Nichols, John Bowyer, 55 n. Nigris, M., 102. Noailles, Marshal de, 92. Nobility y Whitehead's, 150. Nollekens, Joseph, 236. Norden's Map at Kensing- ton, 7. Northern Antiquities, Mal- let's, 38. North Garden at Kensing- ton, 14. Northumberland, Duke of (Hugh Smithson), 36. Northumberland House, i, 4-9. Nott, Dr., 35. Nottingham House, 3, 4. Nugent, Dr., 128. Nuneham, Lord, 156, 159. O'Brien, 164. Odesj Whitehead's Roman, 158. Ogden, Samuel, 146. Ogleby, Lord, 65. OldKensington Palace, 1-27. General Index 3" Old Slaughter's CofFee House, 287. Oldys, William, 119. Omai of Otaheite, 54. Omar Khayyam, 158. On Ridicule^ Whitehead, 149. Opie's Mrs. Delany^ 19. Orangery, The, at Kensing- ton, 15. Oriental Gardeningj ZP/jj^r- ?^/zo«o«, Chambers's, 221, 224 n., 229. Orleans, Due d', 106. Ossory, Lady, 124. Paisiello, Giovanni, 98. Paix qui ramene PAbond- ancBj Mme. Lebrun's, 83, 90. Palladio, Andrea, 210. Palmer, John, 164. Pamela, Richardson's, 63, 79 n. Panton Street Marionettes, The, 63. Papworth, J. B., 233. Parliament, The Ladies', 154. Pathetic Apology for all Laureates, Whitehead's, 161. Paul, Emperor, loi. Peacock, T. L., 280. Pembroke, Lord, 230. Pepusch, J. C, 123. Percy and Goldsmith, 28-52. Percy Folio, The, 31. Percy, Henry, 38. Percy, Lord Algernon, 36. Percy,Mrs.,35,36,39,4in., 47- Percy, Thomas, 28-52, 68, 69* 76, 113, 114, ii5> 129. Perrault, Claude, 210. Persian Letters, Lyttelton's, 174, 183-5. Pesne, Antoine, 19. Peterborough, Lord, 144. Peter the Great, 6-8, 10. Peter HI, loi, 102. Piety in Pattens, Foote's, 62. Piron, Alexis, 211 n. Pitt, Anne, 24. Pitt, Thomas, 175. Pitt, William (Lord Chat- ham), 135, 175, 193 n., 202. Plans, Ek'vations, etc., of Keiu Gardens, Cham- bers's, 215. Polignac, Duchesse de, 98. 312 General Index Pollock, Sir Frederick, 275. Pompadour, Mme. de, 19. Pontmartin, M. de, 53. Pope, Alexander, 12, 30, 145,176,184,185,197-8. Porporati, Carlo Antonio, 96. Person, Richard, 133, 135. Powell, William, 59, dd. Poyntz, Stephen, 178, 180. Princesse de Lamballe^ Miss B. C. Hardy's, 239. Prior, James, 119. Pritchard, Mrs., i52n., 153, 154, i64n. Privy Chamber at Kensing- ton, 18. Progress ofLonje, Ly ttelton's, 181. Provence, Comte de (Louis XVIII), 264, 270,297. Puppet-show, Foote's, 62, 63. Pursuits of Literature^ Ma- thias's, 127 n., 189 n., 227 n. Quarles, John, 148. Queen Mary's Gallery at Kensington, 10. Queensberry, Duchess of 169. Queen's Closet at Kensing- ton, 10, II. Queen's Privy Chamber at Kensington, 11. Queen's Private Dining Room at Kensington, 11. Quin, James, 58. Rambles round Edge HiUs, George Miller's, 202. Ramsay, Allan, 29. Recamier, Mme., 104. Reliques of Ancient Poetry^ Percy's, 30, 32, 36, Resurrection^ Obser'vations on the. West's, 189. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 45, 107, 113, 114, 129, 207, 211, 219, 236. Ritchie, Lady, 271, 288. Robespierre, M.-M.-I. de, 263. Robinson, William, 231. Roihford, Earl of, 122. Rochford, Lady, 62. Rohan, Louis-Ren^, Prince and Cardinal de, 80 n. Roman F/?/^^r,Whitehead's, 152, 163. Roman History^ Observations on the, Lyttelton's, 183 n. General Index 313 Rose and the Ring, Thack- eray's, 287. Rose, Charles ll's gardener, 5. Rose, Samuel, 51. Round Pond at Kensington, 18,25. Roux, Jaques, 260. Royal Academy, Cham- bers's, 218. Rubens's St. Francis, 20. Runic Poetry, Fersions of, Percy's, 35. Ryland, W. W., 120 n. Sacchini, A. M. G., 91. St. James's Palace, 12. St. Paul, Obser'vations on the Cowversion of, Lyttelton's, 188. St. Peter and St. Paul, Cathedral and Fortress of, 102. Sainte-Beuve, C. A., 53. Saintsbury, Mr. George, 275-284. Sandwich Lord (" Jimmy Twitcher "), 54. Sanmicheli, 213. Santerre, 260. School for Louvers, White- head's, 162. Schwellenbergen, Mrs., 226. Scotland Yard, 1. Scott, 223. Scott, John, 117. Scott, Sir Walter, 30, 31, 166, 268, 280. Scythes, Les, Voltaire's, 60. Seasons, Thomson's, 199. Sentimental Comedy, 62. Serious Call, Law's, 10. Serpentine, The, 25. Ser