Yale University Library

IMPLE PLAN

39002007791537

CHAUNCEY B. TINKER

CROSS
CAMPUS LIBRARY

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Presented by the Author

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THE LOUIS CLARK VANUXEM FOUNDATION
LECTURES FOR 1922

THE LOUIS CLABK VANUXEM FOUNDATION
OF PBINCETON UNIVEESITY
was established in 1912 with a bequest of $25,000 under the will
of Louis Clark Vanuxem, of the Class of 1879. By direction of
the executors of Mr. "Vanuxem 's estate, the income of the Foun
dation is to be used for a series of public lectures delivered
in Princeton annually, at least one half of which shall be on sub
jects of current scientific interest. The lectures are to be pub
lished and distributed among schools and libraries generally.
The following lectures have been published:
The Theory of Permutable Functions, by Vito Volterra.
Lectures delivered in Princeton in connection with the dedica
tion of the Graduate College of Princeton University, by Emile
Boutroux, Alois Eiehl, A. D. Godley, and Arthur Shipley.
Romance, by Sir Walter Raleigh.
A Critique of the Theory of Evolution, by Thomas Hunt Mor
gan. Platonism, by Paul Elmer More.
Human Efficiency and Levels of Intelligence, by Henry Herbert
Goddard. Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle Ages, by Maurice
De Wulf .
The Defective Delinquent and Insane, by Henry A. Cotton.

Omai, the South Sea Islander.
From an engraving by John Jacobs, after a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Louis Clark Vanuxem Foundation
NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
A PHASE OF RADICAL THOUGHT IN THE
MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

BY

CHAUNCEY BREWSTER TINKER
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN
YALE UNIVERSITY

PRINCETON
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1922

Copyright, 1922
Princeton University Press

Published, 1922
Printed in the United States of America

T5

PREFATORY NOTE
In this study of the theory of simplicity — the
way of Nature — in the England of 1770, I have
begun with an essay intended to set forth the gen
eral conviction that civilisation had somehow or
other failed of its goal — was at least on the de
cline — and that primitive man, in his savage or
even animal state, was better off than the citi
zens of Europe. The dream of a finer nation,
conceived in simplicity and liberty, in which the
arts, and particularly poetry, might flourish as
in their native soil, is the subject of the paper on
Corsica which forms the second essay.
But simplicity is not of the future only. There
must have been a time, far back in the childhood
of the nation, when untutored genius sang forth
its passion unrestrained by the doctrines of the
schools and the narrowing influence of caste;
perhaps even now such bards may be found in
some remote island. The third essay is therefore
entitled Ancient Bard and Gentle Savage. Per
haps, untrained by schools and free from the
trammels of a conscious art, which is ever grow
ing more artificial, native genius may even now
be seeking expression in poetry rude but wildly

vi PREFATORY NOTE
sweet. This is the subject of the last essay on
the Inspired Peasant.
The phrase, 'Nature's simple plan,' is from an
anonymous poem on Otaheite, published in 1774,
a phrase which was evidently part of the literary
jargon of the day. As late as Wordsworth we
find 'Nature's holy plan' (Lines written in Early
Spring) and 'simple plan' (Rob Roy). Numer
ous eighteenth century parallels might be cited.
My choice of such a theme at this particular
moment hardly requires comment. C.B.T.
London, January 11, 1922.

NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN

THE STATE OF NATURE
The difference between the savage and civi
lised state of man has been much considered of
late years, since so many discoveries of distant
regions and new nations have been made under
his present majesty's patronage, and since an
eloquent writer upon the continent and even a
learned judge who is an author in our own island
have thought fit to maintain the superiority of
the former. — Boswell, Hypochondriacs:. ,
In the spring of the year 1773, four of the
most distinguished gentlemen of their day, who
had met together at dinner, were engaged in dis
cussing a topic of current and vital interest. The
four men were General Oglethorpe (the host),
Dr. Samuel Johnson, James Boswell and Ohver
Goldsmith; and the theme of their conversation
was the menace of luxury. On this perennially
engaging topic each of the four men had the
1

2 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
clearest convictions, but neither on this occasion
nor in subsequent discussions did they discover a
common ground of agreement. Had it looked,
at any moment, as though they might attain to
an easy or courteous unanimity of opinion, Bos
well would probably have thwarted them; for
unanimity puts an end to discussion, and it was
BoswelFs office to keep the talk going. Johnson,
of course, would listen to no denunciation of the
age in which he lived; but Goldsmith had no such
loyalty. He expatiated on the degeneracy of the
nation, and assigned as the cause of the general
decline the insidious vice of luxury. To this
Johnson at once demurred, contending that not
only were there as many tall men in England as
ever — proof that the national stature was not on
the decline — but also, since luxury could reach
but few persons, it was no real menace. 'Lux
ury,' he said, 'so far as it reaches the poor, will do
good to the race of the people : it will strengthen
and multiply them, Sir, no nation was ever hurt
by luxury.'
The words of General Oglethorpe on this oc
casion are not recorded, but in a subsequent con
versation he remarked, as an old soldier might
have been expected to do, that, inasmuch as what
we call the best in life depends upon our own at
titude of mind, it is obviously wrong to overesti-

THE STATE OF NATURE 3
mate the physical comforts of civilisation. There
upon he quoted Addison's description of the Nu-
midian savage, in Cato :
Coarse are his meals, the fortune of the chase,
Amid the running stream he slakes his thirst,
Toils all the day, and at the approach of night,
On the first friendly bank he throws him down,
Or rests his head upon a rock till morn ;
And if the following day he chance to find
A new repast or an untasted spring,
Blesses his stars, and thinks it's luxury.1
On this occasion, however, it was Goldsmith who
denounced modern luxury and the 'degenerate
times of shame' in which he lived. This had, in
truth, become his characteristic vein, though per
haps not his genuine conviction. Three years be
fore, he had pubhshed The Deserted Village, in
which, to use his own words, he 'inveighed against
luxury,' and in which he had proceeded to the
melancholy conclusion that the rural virtues were
deserting England. Piety, Loyalty and faithful
Love — to make use of those allegorical capitals
which the age affected — were departing with the
emigrants to America; and along with them —
also to America — was going the Muse of Poetry,
to whom, at the end, the author addresses an elo
quent though mournful farewell. In the new
i The lines are quoted as given in the Life of Johnson (Hill's
ed.), vol. 3, p. 282.

4 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
world, the Muse, if she try her voice, is admon
ished to teach erring man a lesson (of the need
of which the poet seems to have had a prophetic
realisation) — to spurn 'the rage of gain.'
Teach him that states of native strength
possest
Though very poor, may still be very blest.
Perhaps, as I have intimated, Goldsmith was less
concerned about this vice of luxury than he
himself was aware, for, as a matter of fact, he
cared not at all for the primitive blessings of
rocky pillow and untasted spring so dear to Cato
and Oglethorpe. He loved the good things of
civilisation quite as well as did his friend John
son, and, in truth, sometimes snatched at those
beyond his reach. Nevertheless he was presum
ably sincere in his view that poetry flourishes only
in a civilisation much simpler than any which he
had known. Men Hke Johnson and Goldsmith
might, one would suppose, dismiss the decline of
civilisation from their fears if it concerned noth
ing more alarming than a reduction in the num
ber of tall men or an increase in the consumption
of tea and spirits ; but it was a vital problem in
deed if the production of poetry and the arts was
to be hindered by the national love of luxury.
Was poetry dechning? Had it become artificial
and false? Did it flourish better in 'a state of

THE STATE OF NATURE 5
nature' ? These were the really important aspects
of the question. Could it be that the arts are not
subject to human control, but spring up natur
ally in a youthful civihsation? If so, we are
forced back once more to the original question, Is
civihsation so far corrupted that art no longer
springs naturally into hfe?
To these questions no simple reply could be
given. To follow nature is obviously desirable.
A 'return to Nature,' if peradventure we have
got away from nature, is also desirable; but what
is the state of nature, and how, in the name of
all that is reasonable, are we to return to it?
There's the rub. But, surely, people may move
in the direction of simplicity by renouncing the
soft indulgences of civihsation that have proved
most perilous? Savages, peasants, animals even,
may serve to show us how far we have departed
from the norm. To such questions the world of
1770 addressed no slight or casual attention.
Unrivalled opportunities were now offered for
a comparison of savage and civilised hfe. The
accession of George III had been marked by a
sudden development of the geographical and
ethnographical sciences. The single decade of
the 'sixties had seen the expeditions of Commo
dore Byron, Captain Cartwright, James Bruce,
Captain Tobias Furneaux, Captain Wallis, and

6 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
Lieutenant (later Captain) Cook. In 1764 By
ron set sail for the southwest. He brought home
stories of a race of splendid giants in Patagonia,
who had been seen by the sailors as they were
entering the Straits of MageUan. Captain Sam
uel Wallis rediscovered the South Sea Isles, and
named the one which has since been called Ota-
heite and Tahiti, 'King George Ill's Island.'
Captain George Cartwright, who hved for six
teen years in Labrador, made six voyages out and
back during that time, and brought home with
him the first Esquimaux who ever visited Eng
land. James Bruce penetrated into Abyssinia,
and made a valuable study of its primitive cul
ture. To this series of brilliant explorations the
voyages of Captain Cook, which began in 1768,
formed the splendid climax.
Along with the interest in these voyages there
grew up the desire to see and study man in his
primitive state. It was recalled that Peter the
Wild Boy (known to Swift and Arbuthnot) who
had been caught in the woods near Hanover a
generation earlier, was still hving in England.
He was sought out and catechised respecting the
state of nature; but, as he had never learned to
articulate a score of words, not much of value
was discovered. There was a Savage Girl, too,
who had been found years before in the woods of

THE STATE OF NATURE 7
Champagne, and who was still hving in France.
She went by the name of Mile. Le Blanc; but
this sobriquet, though elegant, was a httle inap
propriate, for the account of her relates that
when she was caught, at the age of nine, she
'seemed black; but it soon appeared after wash
ing her several times, that she was naturally
white, as she still continues.' The girl was gen
erally thought to be an Esquimau, who, having
been sold into slavery, escaped from her captors
or was abandoned by them, and ran wild in the
woods, until by chance she reached the banks of
the Mame, where she was finally caught by some
French peasants. She must have sojourned in
the wilderness for a long time, probably for sev
eral years, since, when she was discovered, she
had lost all use of language and could give no
rational account of herself. When found, she
was hving hke a wild cat in a tree. The account
of her, pubhshed by M. de la Condamine, was
translated into Enghsh under the supervision of
the Scottish philosopher, Lord Monboddo, and
pubhshed, with a preface from his own pen, in
the year 1768. It is a readable httle book, though
it was intended by the editor merely as a docu
ment for the investigation of the state of nature.
He laments that, when he saw Mile. Le Blanc in
1765, she was 'in a poor state of health, having

8 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
lost all her extraordinary bodily faculties [such
as incredibly sharp sight, agility in swimming,
and speed in running] and retaining nothing of
the savage but a certain wildness in her look and
a very great stomach' ; nevertheless his Lordship
says she is proof that 'the philosopher will dis
cover a state of nature very different from what
is commonly known by that name.' He himself
used her as an example of his new and startling
doctrine that mankind has passed through many
stages, 'from the mere animal to the savage, and
from the savage to the civilised man.'1*
But the supreme excitement was caused by
the appearance in London of Omai or Omiah, a
South Sea Island savage, who had been brought
home by Captain Furneaux after Cook's second
voyage to the Pacific. Omai was gentle, court
eous, likable — almost, as we shall see later,
'genteel,' — and there was a widespread desire to
regard his as the true state of nature. The
British reception in the South Seas had been,
on the whole, remarkably cordial. The Tongan
Islands, for example, had been named by Cap
tain Cook the Friendly Islands. Whether they
stood more in need of the blessings of civihsation
or civihsation more in need of the lessons of the
South Seas was a question which could now be
i* An Account of a Savage Girl, Edinburgh, 1768, p. xviii.

THE STATE OF NATURE 9
seriously debated. Horace Walpole, who sneered
at everything, despised the 'forty dozen of is
lands,' picked up the Lord knows where, which so
far as he could see, had nothing of more in
trinsic interest about them than 'new sorts of
fleas and crickets,' or hogs and red feathers.
However, he opined that, if properly husbanded,
they might produce forty more wars.2 But his
was a lonely voice from the seat of the scornful.
The British imagination decked the new islands
in the glowing colours of romance. Here was a
land of perpetual summer, where man was nour
ished without toil by the indulgence of Nature.
Bread grew on trees and a natural milk flowed
from the cocoanut. Under the palm-tree lay the
child of the South Seas, 'as free as Nature first
made man,' who ever and anon burst into
snatches of song as he paid his passionate court
to the dusky mistress at his side. Ah, here was
Paradise enow!
Does the account seem extravagant? Listen
2 Letters, August 23, 1772; December 2, 1784. The conception
of Tahitan as superior to European civilisation is as old as the
discovery of the island, and the vitality of the notion is shown
by the ever-increasing literature of the South Seas. Of the in
fluence of Tahiti on the character of Torquil and his companions,
Byron says in The Island (2.268) that it
Tamed each rude wanderer to the sympathies
Of those who were more happy if less wise,
Did more than Europe's discipline had done,
And civilised Civilisation's son.

10 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
to the voice of the poet who in 1774 put forth
anonymously, a poem entitled Otaheite:
But Fancy leads us o'er yon Isle to rove,
The Cyprus of the South, the Land of Love.
Here ceaseless the returning seasons wear
Spring's verdant robes and smile through
out the year.
Refreshing zephyrs cool the noontide ray,
And plantane groves impervious shades dis
play.
The gen'rous soil exacts no tiller's aid
To tum the Glebe and watch the infant blade.
Nature their vegetable bread supphes,
And high in air luxurious harvests rise.
No annual toil the f oodful plants demand,
But unrenewed to rising ages stand;
From sire to son the long succession trace,
And lavish forth their gifts from race to race.
Beneath their shades the gentle tribes repose ;
Each bending branch their frugal Feast
bestows.
For them the Cocoa yields its milky flood3
To slake their thirst, and feed their temp'rate
blood.
No ruddy nectar their pure bev'rage stains,
Foams in their bowl, and swells their kind
ling veins.
Their ev'ning hours successive sports pro
long,
The wanton dance, the love-inspiring song.
a Cf. Byron, The Island, 2.256 ff.

THE STATE OF NATURE 11
Impetuous wishes no concealment know,
As the heart prompts the melting members
flow.
Each Oberea4 feels the lawless flame
Nor checks desires she does not blush to
name.No boding presage haunts them through
the night,
No cares revive with early dawn of light.
Each happy day ghdes thoughless as the last,
JJnknown the jhture^ unrecalied the past.
Should momentary clouds, with envious
shade,
Blot the gay scene and bid its colours fade,
As the next hour a gleam of joy supplies,
Swift o'er their minds the passing sunshine
flies.
No more the tear of transient sorrow flows,
Ceased are the lover's pangs, the orphan's
woes.5
All this is not merely a poet's dream. Many
took such statements literally. Lord Monboddo,^
in a serious scientific work, asserted in so many
words, that the Golden Age yet lingered in the
islands of the South Seas,6 'where the inhabitants
* Oberea was queen of Otaheite.
6 From Otaheite, London, 1774, an anonymous poem. My friend,
Professor Collins of Princeton calls my attention to the fact that
a selection from this poem appeared in the Pennsylvania Maga
zine for March, 1775.
« Origin and Progress of Language, Second ed., 1774; l.i
390 n.

U NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
live without toil or labour upon the bounty of
Nature.' In Otaheite, he says, 'the inhabitants
pull bread off trees, which grow with no culture,
for about nine months of the year, and when this
food fails, it is supphed by nuts and other wild
fruits.' Boswell, who knew Captain Cook, expressed a
wish to go and hve for three years in Otaheite, in
order to meet with people so different from any
that had yet been known, 'and be satisfied what
nature can do for man.' 7
We have reached this point without mention
of Rousseau. It would, perhaps, be possible to
avoid it altogether, for, in truth, Rousseau was
not at this time widely read or generally popular
in England. Important as was his later influ
ence, it was slight in comparison with the im
press made upon the national mind by Captain
Cook in the decade of the 'seventies. Neverthe
less, Great Britain had her student and critic
of Rousseau. James Burnet, more generally
known by his judicial title, Lord Monboddo, may
be called the Scottish Rousseau,8 for he held the
* Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, vol. 3, p. 59.
s Among other references to Rousseau, see his Origin of Lan
guage 2d ed. 1.403 and 41'4 n, and Antient Metaphysicks, 3.233.
Chapter XII in the first volume of the former work is avowedly
an attempt to solve 'Mons, Rousseau's great difficulty with respect
to the invention of language.' In the preface to the History of

THE STATE OF NATURE 13
savage mode of existence superior to civilised hfe.
It was he who first apphed to the study of the
'state of nature' the historical or evolutionary
method as opposed to the older philosophic or
'systematic' method. Monboddo' s chief claim to
remembrance — a recognition which science has
not even grudgingly accorded him — is his doc
trine of a gradual progression of living things
from a rudimentary to a more developed state.
In his study of this progression he anticipated
some important conclusions of the nineteenth
century: fin all najurjjjthings,' he wrote, '.there.
is., a progress from, an imperfect state to that
_sta±e_ol. perfection. fox which, by nature, the thing
is_intended.- This is so evident to me that, from
theory only, though it could not be proved by
facts, I should beheve that man was a mere ani
mal before he was an intelligent being, and that
there was a progression in the species such as we
are sure there is in the individual.'9
The man who wrote those words might, I
should suppose, fairly be reckoned among the
the Wild Girl Monboddo says that Rousseau is the 'only philoso
pher of our time' who has conceived the magnum opus of philoso
phy to be 'to inquire whether, by the improvement of our facul
ties, we have mended our condition and become happier as well
as wiser.' But, he adds, though Rousseau had the idea, none has
executed it.
9 Antient Metaphysics, vol. 3, p. 282.

14 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
forerunners of Herbert Spencer; but when he is
referred to at all, Monboddo is called a predeces
sor of Darwin. lMsJ^ecm3§Jie£aDimid^thai
Jhej^rjn^outaiig^ mh^s primitive state.
This in itself was sufficient to draw upon him the
ridicule of his contemporaries; for though they
were eager to assert the essential nobihty of the
savage, they had no disposition to extend their
admiration to the animal kingdom and dwell on
the simple dignity of orang-outangs. Yet Mon
boddo, it would seem, might have expected to
receive recognition from a later generation to
whose habit of thought his own was more natur
ally related. Two of his contemporaries, it is
true, interested themselves in his theories if they
did not actually accept them — Robertson the his
torian and Sir Joseph Banks the botanist, who
sailed in Cook's first expedition, and had seen
man in his natural state.
But Monboddo had certain faults which ex
posed him to the derision of his readers, and, in
deed, impaired the entire value of his books. He
had, for one thing, the credulity of a child, with
respect to anything which he wished to beheve.
Since he had no real acquaintance with primitive
man, save what visits to Peter the Wild Boy and
Mile. Le Blanc had given him, this was a ruinous
defect. Much of the evidence which he seriously

THE STATE OF NATURE 15
presents for the study of historians and scientists
would have disgraced a book written two hundred
years before, and some of the more amusing
anecdotes would adorn the hghter pages of Ghd-
Uver's Travels. Monboddo must have been de
liberately gulled by practical jokers, returned
travellers, and yarn-spinning sailors. He be
lieved nearly everything he was told and all that
he found in print. He quoted from Cardinal
Polignac the account of an animal in the Ukraine
called the baubacis, which inhabits caverns under
ground, makes wars, takes other animals into
slavery, and lays up provisions for itself :
They make those slaves lie down upon their
back, and hold up their legs, and then they pack
the hay upon them, which their legs keep to
gether, and having thus loaded these living carts,
as our author calls them, they drag them along
by the tail. I think it can hardly be doubted that
this animal, with so much sagacity, if it had hke
wise the organs of speech would in process of
time, invent a language.10
But the most famous of his heresies was his be
hef in the existence of men with tails. His other
lapses from common sense might have been for
gotten in time, but his perpetual emphasis on the
caudal appendage put all his readers in hysterics :
10 Origin of Language, 1.423.

16 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
I could produce legal evidence by witnesses
yet living of a man in Inverness, one Barber, a
teacher of mathematics, who had a tail about half
a foot long which he carefully concealed during
his life; but was discovered after his death, which
happened about twenty years ago.11
In Monboddo's theory the existence of a tail
was all-important because it would demonstrate
man's relation to the speechless brute.12 To Mon
boddo, you see, it was the missing link. Hence
his eagerness to discover a man, or, better still,
a tribe of men with this useful member. It is re
lated that when James Bruce, the explorer, re
turned to Scotland from Abyssinia, he went into
a court-room where Lord Monboddo was sitting
as judge, and that he at once received a note
from the noble Lord requesting to be immediate
ly informed if he had encountered any men with
tails. Such men, he believed,13 existed in the
Dutch East Indies, where they waved their tails
hke cats — to the edification of an occasional
11 Origin of Language, 1.262 n.
12 'I have dwelt thus long upon the orang-outang because if I
make him out to be a man, I prove by fact as well as by argu
ment, this fundamental proposition, upon which my whole theory
hangs, that language is not natural to man. And, secondly, I
likewise prove that a natural state of man, such as I suppose it,
is not a mere hypothesis, but a state which at present actually
exists.' {Origin of Language, vol. 1, p. 358.)
is Origin of Language, vol. 1, p. 258.

THE STATE OF NATURE 17
sailor. What might not Burnet have found in
Abyssinia? Contemporaries of Monboddo made
merry over this tender pre-occupation of his. An
anonymous satirist wrote at some length about
the spiritual dangers which might arise from too
vain a regard for tails — if we had them:
This rigid Nature, to restrain our pride,
To monkies granted, but to men denyed."
Dr. Johnson, who had met the judge in Scot
land as well as in London, said of him: 'Other
people have strange notions, but they conceal
them. If they have tails, they hide them; but
Monboddo is as jealous of his tail as a squirrel.'
There is a famous passage in the Descent of
Man where Darwin describes one of our pre
sumptive simian ancestors with an eloquence of
admiration which scientists usually deny them
selves. A somewhat similar enthusiasm was
Monboddo's. The satirist quoted above calls him
the baboon's 'gen'rous friend,' who 'when brutes
can rise no more, makes us descend.' Monboddo
convinced himself that orang-outangs live to
gether in society, and frequently act in concert,
particularly in attacking elephants, that they
build huts to defend themselves against the
weather, and 'no doubt practise other arts, both
i* From An Heroick Epistle from Omiah to the Queen of
Otaheite, London, 1775. Embryology might have aided Monboddo.

18 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
for sustenance and defence.' The animal, he
said, is 'of human form both outside and inside,'
walks upright, makes slaves of men whom he
captures, and (by way of climax) plays the
flute.15 In disposition he is docile and even af
fectionate, naturally attached to his master and
to his mate. He is even capable of remorse and
of sensitiveness. Once an orang-outang served as
a sailor on board a Jamaican ship trading to the
Slave Coast. He messed with the crew, and per
formed the duties of a sailor. He also served
the captain as cabin-boy. One day he had the
misfortune to break a china bowl, and 'the cap
tain,' says our author, 'beat him, which the ani
mal took so much to heart that he abstained from
food, and died.' In short, the orang-outang can
do everything but talk, but even this limitation
of his abihties was not, in Monboddo's eyes, suffi
cient ground for excluding him from the genus
homo. Who can prove that language is natural
is See, Origin of Language, vol. 1, p. 268, and Antient Meta-
physicks, vol. 3, pp. 41 ff. Monboddo refused human dignity to
the monkey and even the ape: 'Though I hold the orang-outang
to be of our species, it must not be supposed that I think the
monkey or ape, with or without a tail, participates of our nature.'
(Origin, of Language, vol. 1, p. 311.)
Goldsmith attacks Monboddo's theory in his History of Ani
mated Nature (1774), vol. 4, p. 204, where he says of the orang
outang: 'All its boasted wisdom was merely of our own making.'
He provides an engraving of the animal, which shows him stick
in hand, with two of his sheds or huts in the middle distance.

THE STATE OF NATURE 19
to man? Monboddo beheved that it was not,
and wrote a treatise on language in three vol
umes to defend and estabhsh his view.
Monboddo wrangled with Johnson about the
comparative fehcity of a savage and a London
shop-keeper, and espoused the cause of the for
mer. Although my acquaintance in both groups
is, unhappily, restricted, I should, if pressed to
a decision, choose as did Monboddo.16 The
learned judge, you see, preferred the estate which
had the longer and richer future before it. The
London shop-keeper, considered as typical of
modern civilisation, was, he held, facing extinc
tion. The impoverished life, physical and men
tal, which he endured in the metropohs, was
but an index of the inevitable disaster which
was to befall him and the social world that had
made him. .For Mjonjjpjddo, unlike some later
. evolutionists, dipped into the future, where lie.
. discovered no happy lot for mflriTgnrT Civilisa
tion has arrived at the abyss. Modern ma" —
such as the shop-keeper — is a paltry creature
who, in the general decay, physical and spiritual,
.has already reached a stage below that of the
orang-outang. The popularity of such figures as
Mowgli and Tarzan shows that there is a large
i« Johnson confessed to Mrs. Thrale that at another time he
might very probably have argued for the savage.

20 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
section of the community — in which, no doubt,
are several representatives of the shop-keeping
class — who, in sentiment and imagination at
least, are not unwilling to revert to a savage
state. Monboddo contended that the savage's
perfect knowledge of certain facts, such as con
cern hunting and warfare, more than repays him
for his ignorance of general principles.17 His
senses are more acute; he has a variety of exact
information derived from instinct, which gives
him a foreknowledge of everything necessary to
his well-being. He is incredibly stronger than
civilised man, and can endure more pain and fa
tigue. He brings to all his enterprises a patience
and perseverance of which modern man is in
capable. As for civihsation, the long story is nearing an
end. The decline is now so rapid as to be al
most visible, and its stages may be traced from
age to age. Warfare alone is enough to make
away with us : 'The destruction of modern war
is so prodigious by the great armies brought into
the field and which are hkewise kept up in time
of peace, and by the extraordinary waste of
men, by fatigue, disease and unwholesome pro
visions, more than by the sword, while the in
ternal pohcy of Europe at present is so httle
n Antient Metaphysicks, vol. 2, pp. 157, 313.

THE STATE OF NATURE 21
fitted to supply such destruction that, unless the
princes either fall upon some other way of de
ciding their quarrels or provide better for the
multiplication of people, Europe is in the ut
most hazard of being again depopulated, as it
once was under the Romans, but without the re
source which it then had of barbarous nations to
repeople it.'18 Other causes of decline analysed
by Monboddo19 were commerce (Goldsmith's
bete noir) and depopulation or emigration (Bos-
well's) and their result is exhibited in the decreas
ing stature of man, feebler health, and shorter
life.20 In the rapid development of science and
the mechanic arts Monboddo took no comfort,
since he regarded the natural philosophy of his
day as conversant merely with facts and as sel
dom rising above 'the air-pump and the alembic'.
The science of universals as developed by the
Greeks was the only true source of scientific prin-
18 Origin of Language, vol. 1, p. 430.
19 Monboddo's incomplete MSS. contain an outline for an essay
on the Degeneracy of Man in a State of Society. See W. Knight,
Lord Monboddo and his Contemporaries, p. 276.
20 This general attitude is also attacked by Goldsmith in his
History of Animated Nature. 'Man,' he says, 'was scarce formed
when he began to deplore an imaginary decay.' He concludes, on
the evidence of antiquities and the fine arts, that men have been
in all ages 'much of the same size that they are at present.' He
admits, however, that our ancestors excel us in the poetic art,
'as they had the first rising of all the striking images of Na
ture.' To this belief I return in my third essay.

22 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
ciples, and its neglect by the new experimental
school condemned them to minister to the merely
physical needs of man and thus to that softening
of fibre which was at once the cause and the symp
tom of decay.
There is a gusto, a passionate indignation, a
satiric force in some of Monboddo's denunciations
of the race which point us forward to the style of
a later Scot who was also enamoured of invec
tive: If Momus, quitting his sportive vein, should
assume a tone of keen satire and virulent invec
tive, and if M. Rousseau should lend him words,
he would say that man is the most mischievous
animal that God has made, that he has already
almost depopulated the earth, having in many
countries destroyed whole specieses [sic] of ani
mals, and continuing daily to destroy those that
remain, not only to gratify his luxury and vanity,
but for mere sport and pastime. 'What attone-
ment [sic], most pernicious biped or quadruped
or whatever other title most offends thine ear,
what attonement canst thou make for this so
great abuse of thy superior faculties and this de
struction of the creatures of God? None other
except to destroy thyself next, and so avenge the
rest of the animal race. This thou art doing as
fast as possible, and for this only I commend
thee. When this work is accomplished, then shall
the true state of nature be restored, and the real

THE STATE OF NATURE 28
gold£n_^e_xgtijrji. Then shall Astraea visit the
earth again, whose latest footsteps are now no
longer to be seen. So shall the rest of the ani
mal creation, freed from a tyrannical and capri
cious master, live the life which nature has des
tined for them and accomplish the end of their
being. So shall even man himself, if any of the
¦WTPtr'riPrI ra^p ygt remain, acquit providenc&-Qf
the imputations he has thrown upon it..^nd_shew
that he was made upright? t1wup$LAeJimi&Jmwd
out many inventinnsJJ1
In all the annals of modern nihilism it would
be difficult to cite a destructive mania more ex
travagant than this; it is, indeed, the climax of
the author's pessimism. Yet in the man him
self there was nothing of the Ishmaelite. He was
given to self -discipline. In an age of overeating
his meals were light and frugal. He had a most
undemocratic love of baths, which he took cold,
at the unheard-of hour of six in the morning, and
at a 'bower' near a running stream. He sat
naked in the open air in order to harden himself,
and to protest against the luxury which was lull
ing the age into effeminacy and decay. He
eschewed all modern 'conveniences.' Even when
going to London he would not make use of a
coach or chaise, but rode all the way on horse
back.22 His estates at Monboddo fell into decay,
21 Origin of Language, vol. 1, page 414 n.
22 In this respect he was but practising the precepts of Rous-

24 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
but, as they had been good enough for his an
cestors, who were better men than he, he left
them unrepaired. He might be condemned by
fortune to live in an era of decay, but he could at
least rise superior to the self-indulgence all about
him. In commenting on Lord Monboddo's system,
Boswell remarked that if savage life were truly
desirable, the felicity might be enjoyed by many,
since a man might betake himself to the woods
whenever he pleased.23 Boswell had visited
Rousseau in his 'wild retreat' in the Val de
Travers, where, however, he seems to have found
a measure of savage simplicity still lacking. He
spoke to Johnson of a man of whom Lord Mon
boddo knew, who had lived for some time in the
wilds of America, and who was wont to reflect:
'Here am I, free and unrestrained, amidst the
rude magnificence of nature, with this Indian
woman by my side and this gun with which I
can procure food when I want it. What more
can be desired for human happiness'? Johnson
retorted: 'It is sad stuff. It is brutish. If a
bull could speak, he might as well exclaim, "Here
seau. The latter philosopher proposed to have no carriages what
ever in Corsica. Ladies and priests might ride in two-wheeled
chaises; but 'les lai'ques, de quelques rangs qu'ils soient, ne pour
ront voyager qu'a pied ou a cheval.' Streckeisen-Moultou, Oeuvres
inedites de Rousseau, p. 119.
2s In his Hypoahondriack, No. 51, London Magazine.

THE STATE OF NATURE 25
am I with this cow and this grass; what being
can enjoy greater felicity" '?
Tiie-jlifferenc^JetweAncivihsed and savage
Jif r may-be. measured, either by sojoum among
barbaric peoples or by fringing savages into the.
.hgarjt of mpjderji^civilisation.. In the representa
tives of a ruder hfe brought suddenly into the
midst of metropolitan life, the world of 1770 dis
played an absorbing and a somewhat naive in
terest. In the_:ajiLumnijf 1772, Captain Cart
wright, the Labrador explorer, brought a family
-QJLfive Esquiniaux_-on--a~yisit, to- London. The
head of this family was Attuiock, who, in his own
country, held the rank of priest; he was accom
panied by his youngest wife and her httle daugh
ter not yet four years old, his younger brother
and the latter's wife, named Caubvick. These,
ppnplfj arrayed in skins and accompanied by an
Esquimau dog and a 'beautiful eagle,' cau,sed,a.
x^nvjilsion-jof-jexdtement in the streets of Lon
don. Captain Cartwright was so overrun with
visitors at his lodgings in Leicester Street that
he was obliged to change his residence, and to de
vote two days a week to exhibiting the Esqui
maux. On these days the crowd at his door was
so great as to fill up the street in which the house
was situated. Among the visitors was James
Boswell who went and tried to converse with

26 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
Attuiock by signs; this he did by way of testing
Monboddo's theory that it was possible to carry
on a considerable conversation without spoken
words. The Esquimaux saw King George review some
of his troops. The king glanced at the strangers,
took off his hat, and smiled. Later they were
presented at Court, as well as to 'several of the
nobility and people of fashion.' They were taken
to the opera and to the play. Colman gave a
special performance of Cymbeline for them, at
which they occupied the royal box. But they
lacked the power of response to all these oppor
tunities. Once, after a walk from Westminster
Bridge to Hyde Park, Attuiock cried out, 'Oh,
I am tired: here are too many houses, too much
smoke, too many people. Labrador is very good.
Seals are plentiful there. I wish I was back
again.' As the days passed, there was some shght ad
vance in their appreciation of the things about
them, but, Cartwright says, no intelhgent un
derstanding of their origin or use, any more than
'one of the brute creation' might have. Struct
ures like London Bridge and St. Paul's Cathe
dral they took for natural objects of gigantic
size such as their own ice-cliffs, and even after
examination, could hardly believe them to be the

THE STATE OF NATURE 27
work of human hands. In the country — Cart
wright removed them to Nottinghamshire in
February — they were happier, for there the men
took naturally to fox-hunting and the women to
dancing. 'The land is all made' was their com
ment on the Enghsh scene.2*
When Cartwright embarked again for Labra
dor in May, 1773, the Esquimaux were all well-
pleased at the prospect of going home. But the
poor creatures had not yet finished with civihsa
tion. On the return voyage they fell ill, appar
ently with small-pox, and all died except Cau-
bvick, who, bald and emaciated, was restored to
her wailing countrywomen. She, more than any
other in the httle group, had seemed to appre
ciate the comfort and luxury to which she had
been introduced; she is said to have become a
graceful dancer. But she resumed her native
mode of living with a complacency which oc
casioned Cartwright, when he saw her again,
great surprise.
Omai, the South Sea Islander, who was
brought to London in the autumn of the next
year, was received with no less enthusiasm than
the Esquimaux had been. He, too, was pre-
V 2* The best account of the Esquimaux in London is found in
C. W. Townsend's Captain Cartwright and his Labrador Journal,
Boston, 1911. See the entry for October 22, 1772, et seq.

28 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
sented at court; the artists of the day vied with
one another in reproducing his features, he be
came the favourite of Lady Sandwich; and all
that the gay and fashionable world could do to
pleasure a visitor was done for Omai. He was a
much more agreeable person than Attuiock, and
showed an appreciation of civihsation that was,
superficially, as keen as Attuiock's had been dull.
But, when the time came for him to return to his
home, the general feeling was that he had gained
nothing of lasting worth, and that it would have
been better for him if he had been left in his
island. The mantle of civihsation shpped easily
from the brown shoulders of Omai; but he was
never again what he had been before. The touch
of the western world, which had not been able to
transform him into the image of civilised man,
had yet spoiled him for life among his kind.
Those who beheved Enghsh civihsation to be
corrupt found in its effect upon Omai and the
Esquimaux plentiful evidence of their conten
tion. Material comforts seemed to them to be
shown in their true character as more of a curse
than a blessing. But those who took a saner
view saw that it was not a question of measuring
civihsation by its material possessions, but rather
of testing men by their capacity to make a proper
use of such 'blessings.' In the last analysis, it is

THE STATE OF NATURE 29
this capacity which distinguishes an Omai from
a Pericles, a Caubvick from an Aspasia. I know
of no better conclusion regarding the matter than
that given by Ohver Goldsmith in a passage now
almost forgotten in tbe History nf th,p. TZnsrth an A
Ajjimaied~Matii^e-.2S It represents, I think, his
reasoned conclusion on this subject of ours, and
though it differs radically from the superficial
views which he expressed in the conversation
quoted at the beginning of this paper, it is none
the less characteristic of him — characteristic,
moreover, of that finer thought which is always
found in his books as distinct from his conversa
tion: We shall never know whether the things of
this world have been made for our use; but we
very well know that we have been made to enjoy
them. Let us then boldly affirm that the earth
and all its wonders are ours; since we are fur
nished with powers to force them into our ser
vice. Man is the lord of all the sublunary crea
tion; the howhng savage, the winding serpent,
with all the untamable and rebellious offspring
of nature are destroyed in the contest or driven
at a distance from his habitations. The exten
sive and tempestuous ocean, instead of limiting
or dividing his power, only serves to assist his
industry and enlarge the sphere of his enjoy
ments. Its billows and its monsters, instead of
20 Ed. 1774; vol. 1, chapter 15.

30 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
presenting a scene of terror, only call up the
courage of this intrepid httle being; and the
greatest dangers that man now fears on the deep
is [sic] from his fellow-creatures. Indeed, when
I consider the human race as Nature has formed
them, there is but very httle of the habitable
globe that seems made for them. But when I
consider them as accumulating the experience of
ages, in commanding the earth, there is nothing
so great or so terrible. What a poor, contemp
tible being is the naked savage, standing on the
beach of the ocean and trembling at its tumults!
How httle capable is he of converting its terrors
into benefits or of saying, "Behold an element
made wholly for my enjoyment!" He considers
it as an angry deity, and pays it the homage of
submission. But it is very different when he has
exercised his mental powers ; when he has learned
to find his own superiority and to make it sub
servient to his commands. It is then that his dig
nity begins to appear, and that the true Deity is
justly praised for having been mindful of man;
for having given him the earth for his habitation
and the sea for an inheritance.26
26 Compare the opening sentences of the book: The world may
be considered as one vast mansion where man has been admitted
to enjoy, to admire, and to be grateful. The first desires of
savage nature are merely to gratify the importunities of sensual
appetite and to neglect the contemplation of things, barely satis
fied with their enjoyment: the beauties of nature and all the
wonders of creation have but little charms for a being taken up
in obviating the wants of the days, and anxious for precarious
subsistence.'

THE STATE OF NATURE 31
If a man finds civihsation a menace to the
spirit, he would, no doubt, do well to renounce it
and retire into a monastery or even to a lodge in
some vast wilderness. Such retirement is of ob
vious value, and the regular hfe is a genuine need
of civihsation in every age. But to renounce the
things of civihsation as well for others as for one
self, or, worse still, for the community at large,
is to make the perilous assertion that there is but
one way to grow in grace. If thine eye offend
thee, pluck it out, but do so with a rational recol
lection that an eye does not, naturally, cause
offence, and that it may be well for others to keep
their eyes.
The consideration of Nature's simple plan was
carried over into the Romantic Movement, and
may be traced in some of its lovehest manifesta
tions in the work of Wordsworth and of Byron,
of LongfeUow and of Thoreau ; and the doctrine
of repudiation, limitation, and prohibition, has,
as we are all aware, remained an essential feature
of it. Yet history has, I believe, no outstanding
example of a great civihsation based upon re
nunciations, except, perhaps, that of Sparta, and
the civilisation of Sparta, when all is said, was
not conspicuous for its art.

II

A NEW NATION
'How end all our victories? In debts and a
wretched peace.' — Horace Walpole.
Since man, by nature, consorts with his kind,
Nature's simple plan must be apphcable to men
in society; there must be, in other words, a 'state
of nature' for peoples as well as for individuals.
Throughout the century the characteristic marks
of such a society were the subject of profound
study and brilliant speculation. But where was
the model to be found? Some, hke Rousseau,
despaired of discovering it anywhere in the mod
ern world, could not be certain that such a group
had ever existed in the past, and were obhged to
admit that the state which was the subject of
their inquiries might be merely ideal. Neverthe
less it was an ideal possible of attainment and,
indeed, as natural and of as much authority in
governing the conduct and the pohtical ventures
of men as though its existence were actual.
On one characteristic of such a society of men,
32

A NEW NATION 88
all were agreed. It must be free. Of hberty and
the natural rights of man the philosophers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wrote with
an eloquence that has never been surpassed. It
is not my intention to review their conclusions.
For the purposes of this paper it is sufficient to
say that one of their chief problems was to recon
cile the existence of personal freedom with that
quantum of authority which is necessary in order
to hold any state together. Concession of some
kind there must be, an equal concession from all
the contracting parties. Equahty inJlie-sigfat jof
ihe.IajiE_is^.prerequisite io-any such, conception, of
liberty. Moreover, anyjQniiQri~joiLequalii^
iajnjudthjnJJML^d^ and
thus the group becomes a family, self -governed,
the members of which owe allegiance to an ab
straction, a 'state' or 'commonwealth,' whose only
'rights' are those which the component individ
uals have surrendered to it.
But where 'was such a model nation to be
found? 'There is,' wrote Rousseau in his Social Con
tract, 'one country still capable of legislation —
the island of Corsica. The courage and con
stancy with which that brave people have re
covered and defended their liberty deserves the
reward of having some wise man teach them how

34 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
to preserve it. I have a presentiment that this
little island will one day astonish Europe.'1
Rousseau was not the only author who had eulo
gised the Corsicans. King Frederick of Prussia
had already written of them a sentence which
Rousseau may have known, and in which this 'ht
tle handful of brave men' were cited to prove
how much courage and natural virtue the love of
liberty bestowed upon men.2
The words of Rousseau were especially grate
ful to the Corsicans, insomuch that Buttafuoco, a
native Corsican resident on the Continent, wrote
to Rousseau in 1761, suggesting to him that he
should draw up a plan of government to be used
when Corsica should have established her inde
pendence. Rousseau, though he did not accept
at once, soon made it clear that he would un
dertake the work. It is difficult to see how he
could have declined the offer, once made — the
wonder is that it was made at all — for it was a
unique opportunity to translate into fact the
theory of government stated in the Social Con
tract. But unfortunately Rousseau knew nothing
of Corsica; he had never been to the island, and
had, at the moment, no desire to go. He shrank
from the exertion of such a trip, and complained
i Book 2, chapter 10.
2 An/i-Machiavel, chapter 20.

A NEW NATION 35
of the amount of baggage which he and the faith
ful Therese would have to carry — linen, books,
kitchen utensils, and even paper on which to
draft the constitution! In order to spare him
self, therefore, he wrote to Buttafuoco and de
manded all kinds of information, a map, a sketch
of the topography, flora, and fauna of the island,
its history and culture, and an account of the
character of the people. On the basis of what he
learned he began work on the constitution,3
which, however, he never completed. It is in
many ways a curiously modern document. Its
references to the sot orgueil des bourgeois, its
glorification of manual labour, and its repudia
tion of money (which is to be tolerated only till
that happy day when it will be worthless) , might
have been written yesterday. Liberty, says the
preface or Consideration Generale, such as it is
conceived in other European countries, is a
travesty. England, for example, loves hberty
not for itself but only as an opportunity for mak
ing money. But what is true hberty? The con
stitution of Corsica shall answer. On assuming
his rank as a Corsican, every citizen shall swear
the following oath, in the open air, with his hand
s See M. G. Streckeisen-Moultou, Oeuvres inedites de Rousseau,
Paris, 1861.

36 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
upon a copy of the Gospels,4 and in the presence
of his equals:
Je m'unis de corps, de biens, de volonte et de
toute ma puissance a la nation corse, pour lui ap-
partenir en toute propriete, moi et tout ce qui
depend de moi. Je jure de vivre et mourir pour
elle, d'observer toutes ses lois et d'obeir a ses
chefs et magistrats legitimes en tout ce qui sera
conforme aux lois. Ainsi Dieu me soit en aide
en cette vie, et fasse misericorde a mon ame.
Vivent a jamais la liberte, la justice, et la Repub
lique des Corses. Amen. Et tous, tenant la
main droite elevee, repondront, Amen.
The poverty of Corsica was one of its attrac
tions to Rousseau, for he wished to attach the
people to the soil. The sole method of keeping
a state independent, he asserted, was by cultivat
ing its soil. He hoped that the population of
Corsica might so increase that every fertile inch
of the island should be under cultivation. The
object was to turn the Corsicans into a nation of
farmers, and very literally to beat swords into
plough-shares. The island was to be self-sup
porting and independent of commerce with its
neighbours. 'Le seul moyen,' wrote Rousseau,
'de maintenir un Etat dans l'independance des
*The one restriction laid upon Rousseau in his work was that
he should not tamper with the Corsican religion. So Paoli told
Andrew Burnaby. See the latter's Journal of a Tour to Corsica.

A NEW NATION 37
autres est l'agriculture.' For this reason his en
tire plan is a 'systeme rustique.' Trades and all
forms of traffic were to be discouraged, as fit
only for the bourgeois with their stupid pride.
Indeed the bourgeois 'only disparage and dis
hearten the laborer.' They congregate naturally
in cities, and cities in the systeme rustique are
noxious. People are either producers or idlers.
As for money and the financial system, they must
for a time be tolerated; but presently, if the
cultivation of the land is successful, money will
become useless. At best it is but a mark and
symbol of inequality, and the less it circulates in
the island, the more will abundance reign.
Inasmuch as there will be no great fortunes to
be made, men will not wish either to desert the
farm for the city, or to increase the size of their
holdings. Severe penalties were fixed to en
courage the people to remain at home. No one
was to be allowed to hold land outside his own
parish, or pibve; and any one who moved to an
other district was to be penahzed by the loss of
his citizenship. The duty of a Corsican was to
stay at home and propagate his kind. With the
extirpation of luxury would come health, happi
ness, tranquillity and large famihes.
In contrast to this vision of peace and agri
culture, we may tum to another account:

38 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
Corsica is a vast assemblage of mountains,
crowned with primaeval forests and furrowed
with deep valleys. At the bottom of these val
leys is a little productive soil [terre vegetaLe~\,
with a few scattered groups of half savage peo
ple, subsisting on chestnuts. These people have
not the look of a society of men, but rather seem
hke a group of hermits, drawn together only by
their needs. Thus, though poor, they are not
greedy. They think of only two things: taking
vengeance on their enemy and courting their mis
tress. They are replete with a sense of honor,
and it must be admitted that it is a more sensible
honour than that of 18th century Paris. But on
the other hand, their vanity is almost as easily
piqued as that of a bourgeois in a village. If,
while on a certain road, one of their enemies
sounds a cowherd's horn from the top of the
neighboring mount, it is no time for hesitation.
That man must be killed.5
It was estimated that eight hundred Corsicans
were lost every year by assassmation alone. To
Chesterfield, who reflected the view of the diplo
mats of Europe, the people were a 'parcel of
cruel and perfidious rascals'; and even Boswell
was shocked by their vendettas. Yet the imagi
nation of the hberals idealised Corsica as a land
of 'iron and soldiers,' and saw in a turbulent and
vindictive generation the aspiring children of
Liberty. Mrs. Barbauld wrote of the island,
o Stendhal, Vie de Napolion, I.

A NEW NATION 89
Liberty,
The mountain goddess, loves to range at large
Amid such scenes, and on the iron soil
Prints her majestic step.
Tc- such the Corsicans were the modern Lacede
monians, the sons of Nature, the disciples of
asceticism. The poet proclaims that they are
'true to their high descent,' which is from no less
a stock than 'Sparta's sad remains.' The British,
in particular, were fond of comparing Corsica to
their own island,
By nature destined the retreat of peace
And smiling Freedom; like Britannia, girt
With guardian waves ; thy vales and watered
plains
To persevering toil and culture yield
Abundance; not spontaneously profuse
To pamper sloth, but fertile to reward
The arts of industry.8
Rousseau, however, would not promise fame
to the Corsicans, but only happiness; he under
stood very well that his system was one of re
nunciation: La nation ne sera point illustre, mais elle sera
heureuse. On ne parlera pas d'elle; elle aura
peu de consideration au dehors; mais elle aura
l'abondance, la paix et la hberte dans son sein.
6 From Corsica, a Poetical Address, Glasgow, 1769. Anonymous.

40 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
In this land of peace and hberty there was to
be the most careful regulation of marriage. A
man who married before the age of twenty, or
who married a girl less than fifteen, or a widow
whose age differed from his own by more than
twenty years, was to lose his citizenship. No
bachelor was permitted to make a will or other
wise dispose of his property. All was confiscate
to the state. Any bachelor who remamed unmar
ried until the age of forty was to lose his rights
of citizenship in perpetuity. On the other hand,
a young woman who mated with a Corsican was
to be dowered by the state, but only with land;
of this, however, there was to be enough to enable
the man, by industry, to rise to the primary rank
of citizenship. If a man had more than five
children, the state was to assist in supporting the
sixth child and all subsequent children; but only
resident offspring might be counted, and those
absent from the island for more than a year might
never be reckoned as belonging to the family,
whether or not they returned. This last pro
vision was aimed at the evil of depopulation,
which, we have seen, had been assigned by many
as one of the great causes of modem degeneracy.
Such are some of the provisions which Rous
seau made for the ideal state. The system was
never completed, and the experiment never tried.

A NEW NATION 41
Corsica was at the moment in a state of insur
rection agamst her sovereign mistress, the repub
lic of Genoa. Corsica had been in such a state,
time out of mind. But her affairs were now
rapidly approaching a climax, and it seemed as
though she might succeed in gaining her inde
pendence from Genoa, and in establishing a re
public which the powers would be able to recog
nise. There was already a provisional govern
ment, at the head of which was the Generahssimo
of the Corsican armies, Pasquale Paoli, perhaps
the greatest man that the island had yet pro
duced. A man of noble ideals and gentle man
ners, he had united the factions of the island,
guided their destinies with a firm hand, and en
abled his people to make head against their ene
mies. By all representatives of liberal thought
in Europe, except perhaps by Rousseau himself,
who feared that in the new order of things, Paoh
might not be willing to sink into the role of
citizen-farmer, he was regarded not only as the
founder of a new race — an Aeneas, a Lycurgus,
an Epaminondas, a Solon, the father and legis
lator of his people — but also as the symbol and
the morning star of a new era. Believers in the
new theories of the rights of men, visionaries, and
doctrinaires, turned eyes of hope and patient
scrutiny towards Corsica and Paoh. When later

42 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
Paoh crossed the Continent, an admirer wrote:
'In Holland the Prince Statholder did him all
the honours in his power; and the Dutch seemed,
in his presence, to recover their ancient spirit
by which they threw off the Spanish yoke. He
passed through the Belgic hemisphere hke a
planet of Liberty, warming every soul in his
progress.'7 The name of a town in Pennsylvania
commemorates the interest which was felt in the
Corsican patriot by the colonists of America. To
Paoli, after the ruin of the Corsican hopes, Vit-
torio Alfieri dedicated Timoleone, his 'tragedy
of hberty,' as to one who, even in the degenerate
days of eighteenth century Italy, would be able
to read the tragedy aright.
In Corsica itself Paoli's authority was at a far
remove from the simplicities of the eighteenth
century system-makers. Burnaby found Paoli's
power unlimited, and says it was high treason
even to speak against him. 'Lo! a species of
despotism,' he adds, 'founded contrary to the
principles of Montesquieu upon love and affec
tion.' Boswell found the devotion to the gen
eralissimo so ardent that he was regarded as
'above humanity.' It was commonly beheved
that he would in time extend the Corsican con-
? From an anonymous pamphlets A Review of the Conduct of
Pascal Paoli, London, 1770.

A NEW NATION 43
quests beyond the limits of the island. He had
already captured the island of Capraja, and he
was expected to make a descent on Genoa itself.
He was revered by his people for his founding of
a university at Corte, as well as for his attention
to the humbler needs of the community in his in
troduction of the potato. But in all his manifold
activity there was no suggestion of such a confi
dence in his people as would lead him to the adop
tion of the views of a Rousseau. In this, as in
other famihar instances, the radical theories
were the offspring of the philosopher and doc
trinaire, not of the experienced statesman.
But Rousseau was not the only person who
devised a system of government for Corsica.
Mrs. Catharine Macaulay, Johnson's 'repubh
can' friend, whom Horace Walpole called 'a
brood-hen of faction,' addressed a pamphlet to
Paoh, entitled A Short Sketch of a Democrati-
cal Form of Government.6 Long ere this she had
boldly declared that all forms of government
which have been 'imposed on credulous man'
have been defective, since they have not estab
lished the 'full and impartial security of the
rights of nature,' but have been rather 'formid-
8 London, 1767; it is a portion of a larger pamphlet entitled,
Loose Remarks on Mr. Hobbes's Philosophical Rudiments of Gov
ernment.

44 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
able and dangerous cabals against the peace,
happiness and dignity of society.'9 In her epistle
to Paoh she asserted that any system of depend
ence was destructive of the virtues inherent in
mankind. The 'democratical' form of a repubhc
is the only system that can hope to shun this peril.
Mrs. Macaulay explains to the General that she
has studied 'free establishments' with care, and
it is clear that she feels competent to construct
the ideal government of the free. The plan,
which is less extreme than that of Rousseau, need
not detain us, save to mention her proposal, set
down almost in so many words, that the govern
ment of Corsica ought to consist of a senate and
a house of representatives, the make-up of which
should be changed, by gradual degrees, every
three years, so as to avoid the development of
any privileged or governing class.
What Paoh thought of such theories of gov
ernment it would be interesting to know. I am
not aware that he ever paid any attention to Mrs.
Macaulay; but he certainly wrote a letter to say
that he would be glad to have Rousseau come to
the island, and he certainly gave Buttafuoco per
mission to use his name in requesting Rousseau
to draw up the constitution wliich has been de-
» Observations on 'Thoughts on the Present Discontents,' Lon
don, 1770; p. 8.

A NEW NATION 45
scribed. But there is not the shghtest reason to
suppose that he would have regarded himself as
bound by any such documents. Paoli had every
thing to gain, not by securing ideal constitutions
from European philosophers, but by drawing the
attention of European authors and statesmen to
the present condition of his island. He seems
to have said something of the kind to Andrew
Burnaby who visited the island in 1766, and who
wrote :
I am persuaded that General Paoli had no in
tention, when he sent an invitation to Monsieur
Rousseau, to suffer him, an entire stranger to the
country, the people, the customs, and almost
everything necessary to be known by a legislator,
to form an ideal system of laws and then impose
them upon the people. He was aware of the im
propriety of this on several accounts ; principally
on that of their not being in a state ripe for the
reception of any entire code of laws, whatsoever.
He knew that their manners were to be greatly
changed before they could be brought to such a
temperament; that they were to be prepared
gradually; were to be formed first for one law,
then for another; each separate law laying a
foundation for some future one, and by these
means to be brought imperceptibly to the point
he was desirous of. All he proposed from the
presence of Rousseau was to avail himself of any
hints he might be able to furnish him with; and

46 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
that he might farther have the use of his pen to
describe those many great and heroic actions
which have been performed by the Corsicans, and
which none but the pen of a Rousseau seems
worthy of describing.10
But the most famous of all visitors to the
island was James Boswell. Although he tells us
that he had heard of Corsica ever since he was a
boy, he probably had no great interest in Corsica
until his visit to Rousseau. This occurred just
at the close of the year 1764, at the moment when
the philosopher was meditating on the laws which
he would draw up for the new nation. He filled
Boswell with admiration for the brave islanders,
and fired his imagination with descriptions of
Corsica as the cradle of hberty. The first word
in the Account of Corsica, which Boswell put
forth three years after his visit, is liberty. Lib
erty, he says, is indispensably necessary to our
happiness, whether as individuals or as members
of society. Indeed, 'everything worthy arises
from it.' When he came into the presence of
Paoli, he paid him a compliment which would
have been fulsome, had it not expressed the set
tled conviction of hberal Europe: 'Sir, I am
upon my travels, and have lately visited Rome.
10 Journal of a Tour to Corsica in the year 1766, by the Revd.
A. Burnaby. London, 1804.

A NEW NATION 47
I am come from seeing the ruins of one brave and
free people: I now see the rise of another.'
Boswell was the first Briton to visit Corsica.
His impudence in presenting himself, at the age
of twenty-five, to General Paoli has been more
often dwelt upon than his intrepidity in going to
the island at all.' About the same time, Rousseau
confesses, he himself was deterred from going
among the Corsicans by the frightful accounts
wliich he received of the people. But Boswell,
who was somewhat bored by his study of antiqui
ties in Italy, desired to do and see something
unique during his travels, and was not to be
deterred. He proceeded to Corsica, then, in the
autumn of 1765, during a lull in the fighting and
at a time when the Genoese had been all but
driven out of the island. A few towns had been
garrisoned by French troops, but the French had
promised to hmit their occupancy to four years.
There were, at the moment, therefore, no hostili
ties; nevertheless there was grave danger of
Boswell's being mistaken for a spy, for the future
was still uncertain. Indeed, as Paoh later told
Fanny Burney,11 he was at first convinced that
Boswell was a spy, (or, as he pronounced the
word, an espy) , because the young fellow at once
began taking notes of his conversation. When
uDiary of Mme. D'Arblay, October 15, 1782.

48 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
this unhappy delusion was dispelled, Paoli made
much of his visitor. Perhaps he thought
him a person of more distinction and power than
was really the case; perhaps since he had failed to
draw Rousseau to the island, he was fain to put
up with this young Scotsman as a substitute, and
get what advertisement and influence he could in
England through him; but, however all this be,
certain it is that the two became fast friends. It
was for no merely international reasons that the
General placed Boswell next him at dinner, per
mitted him to ride on his own horse with its trap
pings of crimson and gold, and presented him
with his own pistols. Boswell himself says that
the attention shown him as a subject of Great
Britain was noised abroad in Italy and confirmed
the notion that he was an envoy. The peasants
and soldiers called him the ambasciadore inglese.
But though Boswell was not an Enghsh envoy
to Corsica, he did his best to act the part of Cor
sican envoy to England when he returned. Paoli
well knew that Boswell intended to plead the
Corsican cause. 'When I asked him what I
could possibly do in return for all his goodness
to me, he replied, Solamente disingannate il suo
corte. Only undeceive your court. Tell them
what you have seen here. They will be curious to
ask you. A man come from Corsica will be hke

A NEW NATION 49
a man come from the Antipodes. I expressed
such hopes as a man of sensibility would in my
situation naturally form. He saw at least one
Briton devoted to his cause. I threw out many
flattering ideas of future pohtical events, imaged
the British and the Corsicans strictly united both
in commerce and in war, and described the blunt
kindness and admiration with which the hearty,
generous common people of England would treat
the brave Corsicans.'
It has been customary among critics to laugh
at Boswell's efforts on behalf of Corsica as a
specimen of his characteristic presumption. His
efforts have indeed their comic aspect, and it is,
moreover, clear that in all his activity he was
more than willing to acquire a personal renown
as 'James Boswell, Esq., the Corsican traveller.'
What traveller has not exaggerated the signifi
cance of his journeyings? And yet, when due al
lowance has been made for all this, there remain
a generous devotion to a cause and an eagerness
to serve a friend which it would be both foolish
and cynical to deny. Boswell very ardently
wished the success of the Corsican cause, and pro
posed to do what he could to promote it.
He took back with him a suit of Corsican at
tire by means of which he hoped to stimulate pub
hc interest and to call attention to himself. He

50 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
contrived to get a friend to present him to the
Prime Minister, and actually called on Lord
Chatham, wearing this Corsican costume. He
had much to say on behalf of Paoh to the Prime
Minister. Had not Paoh called Chatham the
Pericles of Great Britain? Could not Great
Britain save Corsica by a nod of the ministerial
head? This interview was a success — at least
Boswell was pleased with it — and a remark about
Paoh made by the Minister was carefully treas
ured: 'It may be said of Paoh as the Cardinal
de Retz said of the great Montrose, "C'est un de
ces hommes qu'on ne trouve plus que dans les
Vies de Plutarque." '
Boswell wore this. same costume when he went
to the Shakesperian jubilee at Stratford in the
autumn of 1769. He pubhshed an account of the
festivities in the London Magazine, together
with a print of himself wearing this now famous
costume. The account which accompanies it
contains the following paragraph:
Of the most remarkable masks upon this oc
casion was James Boswell, Esqr., in the dress of
an armed Corsican chief. He entered the amphi
theatre about twelve o'clock. On the front of his
cap was embroidered in gold letters, Viva la
Liberia, — and on one side of it was a handsome
blue feather and cockade, so that it had an ele-

A NEW NATION 51
gant as well as a warhke appearance. He wore
no mask, saying that it was not proper for a gal
lant Corsican. So soon as he came into the
room, he drew universal attention.
In Ireland, whither he went a-wooing in the
spring of 1769, he had laid the cause of the Cor
sicans before the Lord Lieutenant, and had made
many friends for the 'gallant islanders.' Let us
hope that on this occasion, too, he wore his cos
tume. But his aid was also of a highly practical sort.
He raised a subscription of £700 in Scotland,12
and purchased ordnance of the Carron Company
for shipment to Corsica. Besides his Accoimt of
Corsica, which included his Journal of a Tour to
Corsica, he superintended the collection and pub
lication of a series of essays, entitled British Es-
12 The following letter to the Gentleman's Magazine for Novem
ber, 1768, is almost certainly by Boswell, bearing on its face the
mark of his familiar style. He was fond of addressing letters to
the magazine.
Mr. Urban,
The generosity of his grace the Duke of Devonshire, Lord
Algernon Piercy, and Sir Watkins Williams Wynne, now on their
travels at Florence, in favour of the deserted Corsicans, deserves
a place in your valuable Magazine; these young travellers, on the
first news of the French invasion, remitted to Paoli the sum of
2000 1. each, by which seasonable supply he has been enabled to
make those brave efforts for the preservation of the liberty of
his country that have astounded all Europe.
E. Y.
P.S. It is remarkable that among the lovers of liberty in
Scotland contributions have been raised for the brave Corsicans,
while in England the people have only wished their success.

52 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
says in behalf of the Brave Corsicans, by several
hands.13 These were all directed to a very prac
tical end, British intervention to save Corsica
from being swallowed up by France. The en
graved frontispiece shows an allegorical figure of
Corsica, accompanied by a dog, the symbol of
fidelity, fleeing to Britannia for protection from
France, who pursues her in a menacing attitude.
This frontispiece is the redeeming feature in a
very dull volume. There is much in the book
about the rights of man and Corsica as the for
tress of hberty, but the mark of 'propaganda' is
upon the essays one and all, so that they can
hardly lay claim to any hterary character what
soever. Inasmuch as it was necessary to pubhsh
the volume anonymously, as voicing the mind of
a large though unidentified public, it necessarily
lacked that personal touch which distinguishes
everything else that Boswell ever wrote, and
which makes even his proof -corrections dehghtful
reading. It was necessary, if anything were to be done
for Corsica, to act and act quickly. England
decided not to act. The cause of Corsican inde
pendence was lost for ever and the French ob
is So far as I know, no effort has been made to discover the
authorship of these various essays. Most of them, I fear, were
from Boswell's own hand, although his friend Sir Alexander Dick
and one or two others certainly lent assistance.

A NEW NATION 58
tained a foothold in the Mediterranean. It had
been necessary for Genoa to appeal for aid to
France, and the negotiations ended by the treaty
of 1769, in which Genoa ceded the island to the
crown of France. For a time Paoli struggled;
but sank at last under the enormous superiority
of the enemy. The neutrality of the British be
came a theme for scornful hberals. 'Sympathy
for Corsica,' writes G. O, Trevelyan," 'was as
much the fashion with the English Whigs as
sympathy for America became seven years later,
among the! more enlightened members of the
French nobility. . . . The theory that British
interests would suffer by our acquiescence in the
subjugation of Corsica — a theory backed by the
high authority of Frederick the Great — was
warmly urged by Shelburne in the Cabinet, and
would have prevailed but for the strenuous oppo
sition of the Bedfords.'
Great was the dismay when it was learned that
the Government proposed to leave Corsica to her
fate. Many regarded it as a new indication of
the fatal luxury of the times. The anonymous
poet who printed Corsica, a Poetical Address, in
1769, attributed the base neutrahty to
'The lust of power, the sordid thirst of gain,'
i* Early History of O. J. Fox, chap. IV.

54 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
as well as to 'pleasure's poisonous draught.'
England was disinclined to go to war. 'Foolish
as we are,' said Lord Holland, 'we cannot be so
foolish as to go to war because Mr. Boswell has
been in Corsica, and yet, believe me, no better
reason can be given for siding with the vile in
habitants of one of the vilest islands in the world,
who are not less free than all the rest of their
neighbours, and whose island will enable the
French to do no more harm than they may do us
at any time from Toulon.'15
The British received Paoh with all cordiality
when he came as a refugee to London. The king
granted him an audience, and a pension of a
thousand a year from the exchequer. Paoh seems
to have reconciled himself to hfe in England,
which Boswell took care to make dehghtful for
him. He resided in London for the next twenty
years, until the French Revolution brought him
once more to pohtical prominence. Corsica, too,
consented to live, though the threat had been
made that she would shed every drop of her dear
blood before she would consent to be again a
slave. Peace doth recant vows made in war. In
time Corsica was able to console herself for her
slavery by producing a man who was to reign as
emperor over these French enslavers; for one of
is From G. O. Trevelyan's Early History of Fox, chap. IV.

A NEW NATION 55
the indirect results of the sale of the island to
France was that Napoleon Bonaparte was born
a French citizen. Baron Stendhal places near
the beginning of his Life of Napoleon a compari
son of Paoli and Bonaparte. 'Paoh,' he says, 'fut
comme le type et l'image de toute la vie future de
Napoleon.' But all this is far from our theme. The grief
that followed the collapse of the Corsican hopes
was more than that occasioned by the mere defeat
of a gallant httle people. The generous-minded
had looked to Corsica as something more than a
group of patriots desirous of changing their
form of government. It had been more than a
repubhc that was being founded; it was an ideal
that was being put into a world of reality, a hope
that burned in the minds of men, a behef that it
might yet be possible to purify the hearts and
moderate the passions of mankind, until brother
ly love should replace national rivalries, and put
an end to war. Liberty, equality, fraternity— the
words are commonplace and tawdry enough to
day; but in 1769 they were, at least in their prac
tical application to the life of nations, as fresh as
an April dawn and as full of promise.
The promise faded and the hope decayed;
only to revive in the next decade — in a form
which needs no reference here. But, for the

56 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
moment, hearts were embittered, for boundless
had been the hopes of what mankind might
accomphsh in a state of freedom. And now the
spirit of man had made its great refusal. It was
not to be released from the 'meagre, stale, forbid
ding ways of custom, law, and statute.' It had
failed in the testing hour.
And with these high hopes fell the behef that
a new era had opened for poetry and the arts.
The dawn had seemed to be breaking. The sons
of a rugged island had risen in native, God-cre
ated majesty, and soon might be expected to sing
a new song to the world.
Th' immortal Muse,
Fired by the voice of Freedom, soars sublime,
said the poet of Corsica. Miss Aikin, too, had
felt the fire of prophecy descend upon her:
Then shall the shepherd's pipe, the muse's
lyre,
On Cyrnus' shores be heard. Her grateful
sons
With loud acclaim and hymns of cordial
praise
Shall hail their high deliverers.
Paoh himself had not been untouched by some
of these high hopes, for he told Boswell that arts
and sciences were not to be expected from Cor
sica at once; but that in twenty or thirty years'

A NEW NATION 57
time, the island would be able to display them. —
But now the dream was over, and Corsica had
sunk back into slavery.
Corsica may, perhaps, have been in the mind
of Boswell on those numerous occasions when he
led Johnson to talk about the nature of govern
ment. High hopes of social regeneration were
no characteristic of Johnson's Tory soul, and he
enjoined Boswell to clear his head of Corsica.
As for himself, he would not give half a guinea
to hve under one form of government rather than
another. It would be an agreeable shifting of responsi
bihty if we could adopt the theory that human
happiness and a florescence of the arts depend
upon the form of government under which we
hve. In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or king can cause or
cure.
A poet may of course be less contented under
one form of government than another, and the
pubhc indifference to his art may receive point
and emphasis from the indifference of king or
minister; but it is difficult to discover what all
this coldness has to do with the poet's smging

58 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
voice. A government can neither bestow that
nor take it away. When all else fails, when
patrons betray and the guardians of the pubhc
trust capitulate, when virtue goes over to the
world and truth is crushed to earth, it is the poet's
hour. Let him sing of his broken heart.
Upon this subject Lord Chesterfield had ex
pressed himself with characteristic sanity some
years before. His words, though not eloquent,
have a certain value, especially as coming from
one who was generally regarded as belonging to
the old order of things :
It is a general prejudice and has been propa
gated for these sixteen hundred years that arts
and sciences cannot flourish under an absolute
government, and that genius must necessarily be
cramped where freedom is restrained. This
sounds plausible, but is false in fact. Mechanic
arts, as agriculture, manufactures, etc., will in
deed be discouraged where the profits and prop
erty are, from the nature of a government, in
secure. But why the despotism of a government
should cramp the genius of a mathematician, an
astronomer, a poet, or an orator, I confess I
never could discover. It may indeed deprive the
poet or the orator of the hberty of treating cer
tain subjects in the manner they would wish;
but it leaves them subjects enough to exert gen
ius upon, if they have it.18
i« Letters to his Son, February 7, 1749.

A NEW NATION 59
What, pray, was to prevent the Corsicans from
singing, — except, indeed, a lack of bards? If
there had been potential singers, ready to break
into song in the hour of victory, why might they
not, with garland and singing robes about them,
have grown lyrical upon the subject of their
wrongs? Most wretched men are cradled into poetry
by wrong:
They leam in suffering what they teach in ,
song.
A rebirth of poetry was to occur in England in
the next decade, that of the 'eighties. It saw the
emergence of Wilham Cowper and Wilham
Blake, of George Crabbe and Robert Burns.
Think for a moment whether the reign of
George III, which we of America have been
prone to describe as tyrannous, exercised any
chilling or restraining influence upon these men.
Can it, on the other hand, be said to account for
their inspiration? None of them was perhaps
wholly uninterested in the government under
which he lived; but none of them, so far as I am
aware, dreamed of awaiting the perfection of
that government before beginning to sing. Two
of them became passionately interested in the
French Revolution (which has long done service
in accounting for the inspiration of Enghsh

60 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
poets) ; but the Revolution was undreamed of
when these men made their definitive appearance
in the poetic world. Three of the poets sang in
spite of a poverty bitter enough to have chilled the
ardour of any man; and the fourth spoke from a
heart heavy with the dread of approaching mad
ness. And yet, in spite of all the wrong and the
woe which they knew so well, they were the her
alds of the dawn, the symbols of a new order.
But the explanation of their representative posi
tion is not found in either the restraint or the
extension of their personal hberty or that of the
nation to which they belonged ; for the dayspring
of poetry, whether it appear in Corsica or in
England, in Paris or in Princeton, is from on
high.

Ill
ANCIENT BARD AND GENTLE
SAVAGE
But heed, ye bards, that for the sign of onset
Ye sownd the antientest of all your rhymes,
Whose birth Tradition notes not, nor who fram'd
Its lofty strains. — Mason, Caractacus.
The leading Enghsh poet of the mid-eight
eenth century, the man who was most tremulous
ly responsive to its changing manner and enlarg
ing thought, lived in almost complete retirement
from the world. To his contemporaries Thomas
Gray must have seemed detached from every
thing that could reveal the true literary move
ment of the day — a fatally isolated and academic
figure. In 1750 he had finally pubhshed, after
incredible elaboration, a poem which became at
once the most popular in the language, the fa
mous Elegy. But of all poets then hving Gray
was perhaps the least fitted to enjoy the promi
nence and popularity which he had achieved; he
was not only shy, but like most shy people, some
what cynical as well, hurt by censure yet uncon-
61

62 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
vinced by praise, self-conscious when he should
have been self-assertive, and with a large con
tempt for the vulgar, even when they united in
his praise. Any other poet than Gray would
have been profoundly influenced by the success
of the Elegy; it would have fixed the character
of his literary production for many years. But
Gray never made a second attempt. His eager
and changeful interests had passed on to a type
of poetry as different from the Elegy as may
easily be conceived. Four years after the pro
duction of his masterpiece he began the composi
tion, in his hesitant fashion, of two Pindaric
odes, cast, to be sure in an antique mould, but
filled with new themes, and in the most remark
able manner prophetic of the literary movement
of the next two decades. It has long been com
mon to remark that in Gray's poetry we have an
epitome of that of his age. This reputation,
surprising enough for a poet so essentially
academic as Gray, is the more unusual be
cause of his lack of one of the fundamental
poetic qualities. Gray lacked passion, and he
knew it. He was by nature pensive, melan
choly, scholastic; there was none of that 'wild
dedication of himself so characteristic of ro
manticism. Poetry needed, he knew, not only
'the master's hand,' which was already his, but

ANCIENT BARD 68
'the prophet's fire,' which was by no means his.
This lack he felt not only in himself, but, quite
properly, in the poetry (so-called) which was be
ing produced all about him.1 The more he dwelt
upon the lack, the more he came to feel that this
prophetic fire which had deserted poetry had once
been its most characteristic sign, and had, in
deed, inspired the very origins of the art. The
farther back one went in poetic history, the more
intense was this passionate utterance, which now
the age had lost. Therefore, for the Pindaric
odes, he selected subjects which permitted him to
return, at least in imagination, to the intenser
passion of these earlier ages ; perhaps they would
touch his lips as with a hving coal. The Prog
ress of Poesy is a typically eighteenth century
theme, in which the tradition of poetry is fol
lowed from ancient Greece down to Thomas
Gray himself, but the poem contains very re
markable novelties and, if not passion, at least
i But not to one in this benighted age
Is that diviner inspiration giv'n
That burns in Shakespeare's or in Milton's page —
The pomp and prodigality of heav'n.
In his essay on Lydgate, Gray says:
'I fear the quickness and the delicate impatience of these poU
ished times in which we live are but the forerunners of the de
cline of all those beautiful arts which depend upon the imagina
tion.' He uses both 'pomp' and 'imagination' of the Ossianic
poetry (infra, p. 66).

64 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
more abandon than Gray had yet permitted him
self. I desire in particular to direct your attention
to one of the stanzas which is conspicuous for its
romantic subject-matter:
In chmes beyond jhe solar road,.
Where shaggy forms o'er ice- built moun-
tains roam,
The Muse has broke the twilight gloom
To chear the shiv'ring Native's dull
abode.
And oft, beneath the od'rous shade
Of Chili's boundless forests laid,
She deigns to hear the savage Youth repeat
In loose numbers wildly sweet
Their feather-cinctured chiefs and
dusky loves.
Lapland and Chili in 1754! All this, we may
well remind ourselves, is nearly twenty years be
fore that renewal of interest in primitive man
which ensued upon the explorations of the 'six
ties, and which was discussed in the first of these
lectures. But Gray's digest of the passage in
the annotations makes it still more worthy of
analysis. 'Extensive influence of poetic genius
over the remotest and most uncivilised nations:
its connection with liberty and the virtues that
naturally attend on it.' Liberty, it appears,
therefore, is as much the need of poetry as of

ANCIENT BARD 65
nations. In particular Liberty brings into
poetry romantic passion (since the verse is to be
'wildly sweet') and 'loose numbers.' Liberty is
opposed to the restraints of society, the inhibi
tions of culture, and encourages that wild dedi
cation of .oneself to dusky love and feather-cinc
tured chief, which lends a vivid passion to the
verses. And the 'loose numbers'? — or, translat
ing into French, shall we say vers libres?. Clear
ly, the poetry of the Chilian savage boy will not
be in the Pindaric form! Perhaps it will be
found not to respect the bonds of metre, but to
pour its ecstasy in some lawless though eloquent
mode, while Liberty stands smiling by. Perhaps,
our poet may have felt, the language of passion
is inconsistent with the regular harmonies and
fixed rhythm of eighteenth century verse. Poets
were abandoning the heroic couplet for blank
verse, for 'ode and elegy, and sonnet'; would a
perfect obedience to the law of Liberty compel
them to abandon metre entirely?
Gray's other Pindaric ode, The Bard, is, by
common consent, the more romantic of the two.
I will not analyse so famihar a poem, but only
point out that in it we encounter, as the poet's
chief creation, the figure of the ancient bard him
self. The author no longer writes about primi
tive song, but gives us the primitive singer.

66 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
There he stands upon the slopes of Snowdon, and
sings forth the story of his woe, while the cruel
troops of Edward I pass through the valley at
his feet.
A few years later, under the influence of Os
sian, Gray wrote, as though summarising all his
earher views: 'Imagination dwelt many hun
dred years ago in all her pomp on the cold and
barren mountains of Scotland. The truth (I be
lieve) is that, without respect of climates, she
reigns in all nascent societies of men, where the
necessities of life force everyone to think and act
much for himself.'2
This theory of Gray's was amusingly set forth
in Lloyd and Colman's burlesque of The Bard:
Shall not applauding critics hail the vogue?
Whether the Muse the style of Cambria's sons,
Or the rude gabble of the Huns,
Or the broader dialect
Of Caledonia she affect,
Or take, Hibernia, thy still ranker brogue?
With Gray's these satirists coupled the name
of a contemporary poet and dear friend, Wil
liam Mason, who is still remembered for two
verse-tragedies in the Greek style, Elfrida and
Caractacus. The second of them is closely con
nected with the present subject because it was
2 Gray to Brown, February 8, 1763.

ANCIENT BARD 67
composed under the influence of Gray and with
his careful assistance and criticism. Indeed, the
drama itself is plainly inspired by The Bard;
only instead of a single minstrel, with harp and
streaming beard, we have a whole chorus of them,
who sing strophic odes antiphonally, and com
ment on the action of the piece after the manner
of the chorus in a Greek tragedy. The life of
these minstrels is well described by one of the
characters of the drama :
Yonder grots
Are tenanted by bards, who nightly thence,
Robed in their flowing vests of innocent white,
Descend with harps that ghtter to the moon,
Hymning immortal strains.
The subject of this tragedy is the betrayal and
capture of Caractacus, the aged British leader,
and the slaughter in battle of Arviragus, his only
son, the great general of the Britons. Arviragus
is himself, one of the tribe of heroic savages ; ex
cept for colour, he is cousin-german to Oroonoko,
for he is animated by all the generous impulses
and nobility of soul that distinguish the genus.
The action of the piece passes in the sacred grove
of the Druids, in the midst of which stands an
altar surrounded by a Druid circle of stones;
there is the usual background of brawling stream,
cliffs, and yawning chasms. The Principal

68 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
Druid speaks for the British nation, and his at
tendant bards sing the odes.
These lyrical passages are certainly the best
poetry Mason ever wrote. Gray admired them
intensely. They were afterwards excerpted from
the drama, and made into an oratorio,3 for which
Dr. Arne wrote the music. Of the many odes
which the play contains this is, perhaps, the best.
It bears some shght resemblance to the lyrics in
Byron's Manfred:
Mona on Snowdon calls :
Hear, thou king of mountains, hear;
Hark, she speaks from all her strings ;
Hark, her loudest echo rings ;
King of mountains, lend thine ear,
Send thy spirits, send them soon,
Now when Midnight and the Moon
Meet upon thy front of snow:
See, their gold and ebon rod,
Where the sober sisters nod,
And greet in whispers sage and slow.
Snowdon, mark! 'tis Magic's hour.
To the already numerous bards in our midst
there is now added a further company of phan
tom bards :
Snowdon has heard the strain:
Hark, amid the wondering grove,
Other harpings answer clear,
s The Lyrical Part of Caractacus, London, 1776.

ANCIENT BARD 69
Other voices meet our ear;
Pinions flutter, shadows move,
Busy murmurs hum around,
Rustling vestments brush the ground;
Round and round and round they go,
Thro' the twilight, thro' the shade,
Mount the oak's majestic head,
And gild the tufted mistletoe.
Cease ye ghttering race of light,
Close your wings, and check your flight.
Here arranged in order due,
Spread your robes of saffron hue ;
For lo, with more than mortal fire,
Mighty Mador smites the lyre:
Hark, he sweeps the master-strings.
Whatever you may think of Mason's verses, you
will observe that he has outdone Gray in
depicting the life of the bard, not of course be
cause he has multiplied the number of singers,
but because he has aspired to show the bard at
what he conceived to be the bardic task of guid
ing the destinies of a people. His was the 'mas
ter's hand, the prophet's fire' in ancient Britain.
The entire picture is highly idealised of course,
as are the 'loose numbers' of the bard, which
he often permits in
unbridled course to rush
Thro' dissonance to concord, sweetest then
Ev'n when expected harshest.

70 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
Mason seems to have felt that he could best give
an impression of free verse by exchanging the
regularities of iambic rhythm for the continual
variations of the strophic ode. We are not of
course to assume that he supposed that the an
cient bards actually sang anything hke them.
The use of a strophic form was as far as Mason,
who was in no sense an original person, dared to
go. Gray had chosen this as the most fitting
modern medium for the bardic chant, and Mason
instinctively followed the lead of his master.
The real step in the direction of 'loose numbers'
was to be taken by Mason's successor who, aban
doning fixed metres altogether, represented the
bard as singing rhythmic, or, if you will, poly
phonic, prose.
The bardic figure had now reached a high de
gree of imaginative development — so high, in
deed, that a need was felt for something more
substantial than a poet's dream of what a bard
might have sung. Oh, for the song itself, the
very words of the minstrel of Nature, as he sang
them to the British warrior thirteen hundred
years ago!
And pat it came — just at the moment when
the public was prepared to receive it, in the line
of direct descent from Mason and from Gray —
the poems of Ossian, son of Fingal, ancient Brit-

I N G A L.
A N
ANCIENT EPIC POEM,
In S I X BOOKS?
Together with feveral other POEMS, compofed by
OSSIAN the Son of FIN GA L.
Tranflated from the Galic Language,
By JAMES MACPHERSON.
Fortia fatta fatrum, Virgil.

L O N D O ¦ N j
fririKd for T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, in tbe Strand.
M DCC LXIIt

ANCIENT BARD 71
ish bard of the third century A.D., filled with the
prophet's fire, sung in loose numbers wildly
sweet, in honour of the chieftains of old, passion
ate, sad as the wind that sobbed over Morven,
the joy of heroes, the consolation of the bereaved.
The dream of Gray come true! The highly-
coloured imaginings of Mason outstripped by the
authentic facts of history! But were they au
thentic? Caractacus was published in the spring
of 1759, the first volume of Ossianic poetry in the
autumn of 1760. The sequence was suspicious.
Ossian, when one thought it all out in cool blood,
had come a little too pat. There is no necessity
of rehearsing here the well-known history of the
publication — within four short years — of the Os
sianic epics and lyric fragments, which are, now
known to have, been almost entirely the work o£a
young Scots clergyman, James ..Macpherson,
with a gift for making vague sublimities moan
through polyphonic prose. On the title-page of
the epic, Fingal (Macpherson's second Ossianic
'discovery'), is a beautiful engraving of the bard
himself, exactly as the bard had been conceived
in the previous decade. The blind harper, clad
in flowing robes, 'with beard that rests on his
bosom,' sits before the caves and crags, already
dear to the romantic heart, and sings a tale of
the olden time.

72 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
The essential similarity between the creations
of Gray and of Macpherson is attested by the
immediate interest which the former poet took
in the Ossianic publications and his eagerness to
have their authenticity proved. In the end, he
seems to have accepted them as genuine.
No less important than the influence of Ossian
upon the literatures of Europe was the counter
effect of the bardic tradition in getting specimens
of genuinely primitive poetry brought to pubhc
attention. Temora, the last of Macpherson's Os
sianic forgeries, appeared in 1763, the same year
in which Percy put forth his Five Pieces of
Runic Poetry from the Icelandic. In the next
year Evan Evans pubhshed his Specimens of the
Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards, which was
followed in 1765 by Percy's Reliques of Ancient
English Poesy. It is, perhaps, correct to say
that the Ossianic forgeries could have been suc
cessfully published only in the decade of the 'six
ties; for ten years earlier there would have been
no demand for them, and ten years later too much
was known about the nature of early narrative
poetry — at least that of the north — to permit of
so general a hoax.
But what of the south? In The Bard, it will
be recalled, Gray described the Muse as listening

ANCIENT BARD 78
not only to the Icelandic or Lapland peasant,
but also to the savage youth of the boundless for
ests of Chih. With this figure it was far more
difficult to deal than with the ancient bard be
cause there was a total lack of acquaintance with
the rehgion, folk-lore, and customs of the Malay,
the African, and the American. The idealisa
tion of the redskin belongs to a later generation.4
Smollett's description of the Indians in Hum
phry Clinker is the most extravagant burlesque
— the humour of the comic supplement — except
where, by way of sneering at the French Jesuits,
he represents the Indian's religion of Nature as
superior to Catholicism.
The negro was a somewhat more popular fig
ure, though the full tide of sympathy was de
layed for ten years or so. Nevertheless Dr.
* I have of course not attempted even a sketch of the long and
fascinating history of the sentimentalised savage, whether red or
black, Icelandic or Malay. J am concerned only with the sudden
. revival of interest in_him whieh.._as _I__have said before, is con
nected with the explorations of the eighteenth- century navigators.
To trace the origin of the idealised redskin would take one back
at least to Lope da Vega, who in the second act of El Nuevo
Mundo represents a group of Indians as singing an antiphonal
chant to the Sun, which contains allusions to Phoebus and Diana.
[This reference I owe to my friend Professor StolL] In Eng
land the tradition is at least as old as Florio.
The tendency to idealise the Indian was undoubtedly furthered
by the missionaries who desired to put the Indian character in
the best possible light.

74 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
Hawkesworth's version of Oroonoko, which re
vived, in a disinfected form, Southeme's old
tragedy, (which was itself a dramatisation of
Aphra Behn's novel), was acted in 1775 with
some success. In this the noble black man ap
peared in his usual role of ethical grandeur.
This version of Hawkesworth's contains, as an
addition of his own, a song supposed to be sung
by the slaves on a West Indian plantation. It
has, to be sure, a somewhat operatic ring about it.
Come, let us be gay, to repine is in vain,
When our loss we forget, what we lose we
retain;
Our toils with the day are all ended at last ;
Let us drown in the present all thoughts of
the past,
All the future commit to the Powers above
Come, give us a smile as an earnest of Love.
Ah no — it will not, cannot be ;
Love, Love, and Joy must still be free,
The toils of day indeed are past,
And gentle Evening comes at last;
But gentle Evening comes in vain
To soothe the slave from sense of pain.
In vain the Song and Dance invite
To lose reflection in dehght;
Thy voice thy anxious heart belies,
I read thy bondage in thy eyes :
Does not thy heart with mine agree?

ANCIENT BARD 75
Man. Yes, Love and Joy must both
be free.
Woman. Must both be free, for both dis
dain
The sounding scourge and gall
ing chain.
Man. 'Tis true, alas ! they both disdain
The sounding scourge and gall
ing chain.
Interest in the passionate children of the south
was vastly heightened by the arrival in England
of Omai, or Omiah, a native of Uhtea (now
Raiatea), brought from the Society Islands by
Captain Furneaux in the autumn of 1774. Omai,
unlike the Esquimaux described in a previous
lecture, knew how to make himself agreeable to
the persons he met, and displayed an enthusiastic
appreciation of civilisation. Everyone who came
into contact with him seems to have liked him,
for he possessed what a contemporary called the
'unsuspecting good-nature of childhood,' a re
spectful and even genteel manner, and a naive
te that delighted everybody. Omai's exact
age was not known, but he was somewhere in his
twenties. He is described as 'tawny,' with the
flat nose, and thick lips of the Polynesian. His
hands and fingers were tattooed. He had long
black hair flowing over his shoulders. His ex-

76 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
pression of countenance was intelhgent, yet
placid and kindly.
Omai's portrait was drawn several times while
he was in England. The best picture of him is,
in my opinion, that of Nathaniel Dance, which
was engraved by the Bartolozzi in October, 1774.
Dance has not only indicated the sweet temper
of the savage, but has produced a picture of use
as a document and a record. Omai is shown with
his long hair loose over his shoulders, and with
tattoo-marks visible on his hands in which he holds
an Otaheitan stool or seat, a bag, and a fan. He
is arrayed in a long robe, elaborately wound
about his shoulders and waist, so as to cover his
body, with the exception of his forearms, feet,
and ankles, which are bare. This, I suppose, was
the contemporary notion of the way a savage
should be represented in art. His is certainly not
the Tahitan costume, of the simplicities of which
we are, perhaps, sufficiently informed, and which
would not serve in the rigors of a London
autumn; neither is it the costume which Omai
wore in England as a rule, for it was found more
convenient for him to don the conventional
clothes of the day; so he appeared regularly in a
reddish brown coat, white waistcoat, breeches,
and sword — a costume which pleased him and the
century well enough.

Omai.
From an engraving by Bartolozzi, after a drawing by Nathaniel Dance.

ANCIENT BARD 77
Sir Joshua Reynolds gives a different picture
of Omai.5 He was impressed by the dignity of
the young savage, and therefore posed him in a
heroic attitude against a fanciful Otaheitan land
scape, which is perhaps the first attempt in the
history of English art to depict the scenery of
Tahiti. He wears the flowing robes and also a
turban. Every trace of barbarousness, except
the bare feet, is carefully omitted by Reynolds,
who has succeeded in lending to the Polynesian
savage the poise and regal aloofness of an Arab.
Nothing could reveal more adequately the traits
which were sought for in the gentle savage. Yet
Reynolds's picture is true to one side of Omai,
for all the testimony with regard to him — and we
have a great deal — constantly emphasizes his
courtesy and self-restraint under the strange and
difficult conditions into which he had been thrust.
Boswell uses the word elegance to describe his be
haviour, and says that Johnson accounted for it
on the ground that Omai had passed his time,
while in England, only in the best company.8
Mrs. Thrale invited Omai to her home at Streat
ham, where he was introduced to Johnson, who
gave the following account to Boswell: 'Sir,
Lord Mulgrave and he dined one day at Streat-
' See the frontispiece to this book.
'Life, Hill's ed., vol. 3, p. 8.

78 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
ham ; they sat with their backs to the light front
ing me, so that I could not see distinctly; and
there was so httle of the savage in Omai, that I
was afraid to speak to either, lest I should mis
take one for the other.'
Mrs. Thrale tells us that when Omai beat
Baretti at chess, everybody admired the savage's
good-breeding and the European's impatience —
a subject on which Johnson delighted to tease
Baretti/ H ' i ^
Omai passed a large part of his time with
Lord and Lady Sandwich at Hinchinbroke, and
there is said to have been woe in the heart of the
peeress when the savage left her. Omai was pre
sented at court, and given an allowance by
George III, whom he addressed by the delight
ful and appropriate name of King Tosh* The
author of the anonymous satire entitled, Omiah' s
Farewell, inscribed to the Ladies of London,9
calls Omai 'the courteous Indian,'10 and asserts
that 'the first personages of the kingdom' were
'assiduous to do him favours.' In truth, Omai
developed a very real preference for fine society,
and showed marked indifference to the lower
7 Collison-Morley, Baretti and his Friends, p. 220 et. seq. Cf.
Hill, Johnsonian Miscellanies, vol. 2, p. 292.
» Tosh, his attempt to pronounce 'George.'
• London, 1776.
io».#., 'Savage.'

ANCIENT BARD 79
classes, a characteristic which the enthusiastic be
lievers in equality and fraternity among men in
a state of nature might have studied to their con
siderable enlightenment.
A very human and charming side of Omai is
revealed by George Colman in his Random
Recollections. Colman, when a little boy, met
Omai during an expedition of Sir Joseph Banks,
the botanist, who had gone into Yorkshire to
gather herbs. Omai, who was hving with Banks
at the moment, took a fancy to 'Tosh,' as he called
the boy George. The savage and the youngster
went in swimming together, and Omai carried
George on his back, to his alternate fear and de
light, for the boy had never been in the sea be
fore. Omai entertained the whole party ; gave an
exhibition of Otaheitan cooking; stalked a covey
of partridges and caught one in his hands — to the
horror of British sportsmanship ; seized a gallop
ing horse by the tail and allowed himself to be
dragged along by the terrified animal, while he
gave an exhibition of agility in shunning the
flying hoofs. He and the boy made up a lingo
for themselves, half Otaheitan, half Enghsh, in
which they contrived to jabber to their mutual
enlightenment. What boy could ask for a bet
ter companion?
Very little was done to improve Omai's mind

80 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
while he was in England. It was even roundly
asserted that Banks preferred to keep him in a
state of primitive ignorance as an object of curi
osity." Omai himself wished to learn to write,
but no steps were taken to teach him. He ap
pears to have had no regular instruction after
leaving his first teacher, James Burney, who
could speak Otaheitan. He was obhged to 'pick
up' what English he could — with the usual de
plorable results of that process. Nevertheless
his untutored efforts to express himself are more
interesting than any real mastery of the language
could have been, since they are at once pointed,
picturesque, and, often, adequate. Though they
convulsed people with laughter, they beautifully
illustrate the indebtedness of language to meta
phor and, indeed, reveal the essentially poetic
mind of the savage. Ice, for example, which he
had never seen before, he called, appropriately
enough, stone-water.12 Snow was similarly
'white rain.' He assumed that a person who used
snuff was satisfying an appetite, and therefore in
declining the offer of a pinch, said simply, 'No
tank you, Sir, me nose be no hungry.'13 He even
11 Sir Joseph Cullum's notes, first published by Edward Smith
in his Life of Banks (1911), p. 41.
12 Walpole's Letters, January 28, 1776.
13 Cumberland Letters, October 10, 1774.

ANCIENT BARD 81
experienced difficulty in referring to the famihar
domestic animals, since, as a Tahitan, the only
quadrupeds he knew were the hog, the dog, and
the rat. Therefore he instinctively called a horse
a 'big hog.' For a bull in a field he early ac
quired a respect, and referred, 'reverentially,' as
Colman puts it, to a 'man-cow.' \/
Fanny Bumey, who thought that Omai's gra
cious manner 'shamed Education,' and expatiated
on his greatness of soul, gives a good account of
his conversation14 in all its strangeness. She was
vastly amused at it, though she found it difficult
to understand. She also had the privilege of
hearing Omai sing a native song, and though she
was not pleased, her account may be given in
full. It may serve to bring us back to the sub
ject of primitive poetry:
My father, who fortunately came in during his
visit, asked him very much to favour us with a
song of his own country, which he had heard him
sing at Hinchinbrooke. He seemed to be quite
ashamed; but we all joined and made the request
so earnestly, that he could not refuse us. But
he was either so modest, that he blushed for his
own performance, or his residence here had made
him so conscious of the barbarity of the South
Sea Islands' music, that he could hardly prevail
with himself to comply with our request; and
i* Early Diary, 2.132.

82 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
when he did, he began two or three times, before
he could acquire voice or firmness to go on.
Nothing can be more curious or less pleasing
than his singing voice; he seems to have none;
and tune or air hardly seem to be aimed at; so
queer, wild, strange a rumbling of soimds never
did I before hear ; and very contentedly can I go
to the grave, if I never do again. His song is
the only thing that is savage belonging to him.
The story that the words told, was laughable
enough, for he took great pains to explain to us
the English of the song. It appeared to be a
sort of trio between an old woman, a young wo
man, and a young man. The two latter are en
tertaining each other with praises of their merits
and protestations of their passions, when the old
woman enters, and endeavours to faire Vaimable
to the youth; but, as she cannot boast of her
charms, she is very earnest in displaying her
dress, and making him observe and admire her
taste and fancy. Omiah, who stood up to act the
scene, was extremely droll and diverting by the
grimaces, minauderies, and affectation he as
sumed for this character, examining and regard
ing himself and his dress with the most conceited
self-complacency. The youth then avows his
passion for the nymph; the old woman sends her
away, and;, to use Omiah's own words, coming
forward to offer herself, says, 'Come! marry me!'
The young man starts as if he had seen a viper,
then makes her a bow, begs to be excused, and
runs off.

ANCIENT BARD 88
Though the singing of Omy is so barbarous, his
actions, the expression he gives to each character,
are so original and so diverting, that they did not
fail to afford us very great entertainment of the
risible kind.
Now anyone experienced in the collection of
folk-lore could have explained to Fanny and her
father that they had gone about their business in
a singularly unhappy way. They had first made
the singer self-conscious, and had then permitted
him to apologise for the barbarity of his song.
Just what effect Omai expected to produce I
of course, cannot say; but I feel certain that,
during the singing, the Burney girls must fre
quently have been giggling — or choking down
their giggles — when they should have found
something of a truly serious import. In short,
if Miss Burney despised Omai's song, it was be
cause she did not know how to listen to it. She
was a true daughter of the century. Had Omai
sung in a minor key something vaguely sublime
and wildly passionate — had he somehow or other
happened to recall Ossian to her mind — she
would have been transported with dehght. But
there was no hint of the heroic in what he sang —
no note of primitive passion. He was not the
minstrel of the tropics singing of dusky loves and
feather-cinctured chiefs, and his piece was in no

84 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
way like The Bard or the odes of Mason. It was
something quite different in kind from the poetry
that Miss Burney knew, something that had to
be explained to her, something queer and gro
tesque, like the decorations on an Indian pot, of
which, naturaUy, she had never heard. But the
loose numbers, the wild sweetness, the bursting
heart, the rude eloquence of Nature — these were
not in it, for these things belong to romanticism,
and not to primitive poetry.
The little scrap of folk-lore from the South
Seas which found its final resting-place in the
vivacious diary of Miss Bumey bears upon it
several of the characteristic marks of primitive
poetry. It blends poetry, music, and dramatic
action into a single product, in which no one of
the three component elements is quite 'distin
guishable from the others. The acting and the
grimaces of Omai, we may be sure, were not as
sumed for the mere purpose of making his song
intelligible to the company, but were vitally nec
essary to the piece as he had received it from tra
dition. When Banks was first in Tahiti, he heard some
native songs,15 which he must have considered
trivial enough, since he did not take the trouble
to record them:
ib Journal, June 12, 1769.

ANCIENT BARD 85
'There was a large concourse of people round
the band, which consisted of two flutes and three
drums, the drummers accompanying their music
with their voices. They sang many songs, gen
erally in praise of us, for these gentlemen, like
Homer of old, must be poets as well as musi
cians.' It would be interesting to know what the Poly
nesian Homer sang when first the white shad
ows appeared in the South Seas. Banks was not
sufficiently interested to find out and write down
even the verses about himself, but was content
to record that the songs were short and not with
out rime and metre. Such songs are frequently
improvisatorial and close to the event or person
that they celebrate or describe. Had the poetry
been recorded for us, we should have found it
simple indeed, and its singers untutored; but we
should not have found it easy to understand or
valuable as a model. Indeed it could not have
been successfully imitated, any more than Dr.
Burney, with all his music, could have blown a
tune on an Otaheitan flute. AU imitation of
primitive verse is a tour de force. It may be,
hke one of Chatterton's Rowley poems or one of
Rossetti's imitations of a popular ballad, ex
ceedingly beautiful; but it is a new thing with
qualities of its own and of its age. The fabrica-

86 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
tions of Macpherson and his disciple Chatterton
have no doubt their own peculiar charm, but it
is not the charm of the centuries which they pro
fess, respectively, to represent.
Before the movement had spent itself, there
arose a poet in England who united much of the
new romantic fashions of his day with the com
mon sense, the chilly and prosaic sense, that had
long characterised the age. This was WiUiam
Cowper. He himself had written a poem in
which an ancient bard was represented as speak
ing to Queen Boadicea prophetic words
Pregnant with celestial fire,
Bending as he swept the chords
Of his sweet but awful lyre.
He felt and gave poetic expression to the new
emotions about mankind and the equaUy new
emotions about animals. He felt pity for poor
Africans shut up in the hold of a slave-trader
and pity for poor prisoners shut up in the Bas
tille. Yet he never reaUy surrendered himself to
the ecstasies of romanticism, and therefore in his
lines of fareweU to Omai, (for after a year or
two, the courteous savage was taken back to the
Society Islands), Cowper displays that sanity
and that calmness which have been so noticeably

ANCIENT BARD 87
absent from aU the utterances regarding primi-
tivism which we have studied. The lines are, Hke
much that Cowper wrote, prim and drab, but not
without a certain interest to those who have fol
lowed Omai's career. He is speaking — indeed,
Cowper is usuaUy speaking — of hfe in the coun-
try." Here virtue thrives as in her proper soil;
Not rude and surly and beset with thorns,
And terrible io sight as when she springs
(If e'er she springs spontaneous) in remote
And barbarous climes, where violence prevails
And strength is lord of all . . .
War and the chase engross the savage whole.
The man who wrote those lines had not forgot
ten the search for the golden age and the inter
est in the gentle savage that had characterised
the previous decade. The hard condition of the
life the savage leads 'binds all his faculties,' and
this is true of Esquimau and Patagonian alike.
And then a sudden reference to the South Seas:
Even the favoured isles
So lately found, although the constant sun
Cheer all their seasons with a grateful smile,
Can boast but little virtue.
Therefore he can but pity them, but more than
all the rest he pities Omai:
is The Task, book 1, 11. 600 ff.

88 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
Thou hast found again
Thy cocoas and bananas, palms and yams,
And homestaU, thatched with leaves. But
hast thou found
Their former charms? And having seen our
state,
Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp
Of equipage, our gardens and our sports,
And heard our music, are thy simple friends,
Thy simple fare, and aU thy plain dehghts
As dear to thee as once?
The poet's fancy shows him the savage climbing
to a mountain-top to scan the ocean for the sight
of an English sail: Every speck
Seen in the dim horizon, turns thee pale
With conflict of contending hopes and fears.
But comes at last the dull and dusky eve,
And sends thee to thy cabin well prepared
To dream all night of what the day denied.
Alas! expect it not.
But poor Omai had died long before17 Cowper
wrote these verses.
Omai had come to England as an ideal savage ;
he returned to the South Seas a mere man. The
'noble savage' was the offspring of the rationalism
of the Deist philosophers, who, in their attack
upon the Christian doctrine of the fall of man,
it It is said that a later navigator to the South Seas, who in
quired for Omai, learned that he had died about 1780.

ANCIENT BARD 89
had idealised the child of Nature. Man in a state
of nature, the Indian with untutored mind, was,
they held, a noble creature — indeed, the noblest
work of God. Take him untouched by the finger
of civihsation, and you would find in him a po
tential perfection. Among his endowments there
must be of course an artistic sense which would
put to shame the artificialities of civilisation.
Omai, when brought to this large test, had proved
to be a pleasant person, but not (poor soul) the
ideal man. What the age learned from its em
pirical test of men in the savage state was pre
cisely what every age must learn about its fel
lows in another stage of existence — that they
are, mutatis mutandis, very hke ourselves, good
and bad, glorious and inglorious, and that the
state of perfection is placed before man for his
inspiration and not as a beautiful dream of what
existed long ago or, perchance, still exists in some
unsuspected isle of the far seas.

IV
THE INSPIRED PEASANT
Here and there a cotter's babe is royal born by
right divine. — Tennyson.
I read somewhere, not long ago, in an ill-
tempered review of a volume of modern verse, the
arresting assertion that America would have a
poetry of its own, when the stockyards should
have become lyrical. What our poetry needs to
give it life, this critic seemed to feel, was the
vigor of simplicity, emancipation from the ht
erary tradition, especiaUy, it appeared, from
Tennyson and the Victorians. I shudder a ht
tle — doubtless I was meant to shudder — at the
lyrical stockyards and the oblation of blood and
offal which this critic would have us bring to the
Muse. His figure of speech seems to me vigor
ous but unhappy. Yet I flatter myself that I
can grasp his meaning; there is, when you look
into it, nothing new in it. The master workman,
who is also a poet, singing as he labors, lord not
only of his hands but of the lyre as well — this
90

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 91
figure has about him a perennial fascination.
Thomas Gray, for example, had meditated upon
him. The poet is born, not made by the schools ;
the darling of the Muse may be the rude son of
toil. Accidents of course may keep him silent,
for birth and fortune affect the minstrel as truly
as the warrior, and many a cotter's boy must have
squandered his genius while ploughing his
father's acres ; many a Highland Girl must have
poured out her voice to the unresponsive hills
when there was no Wordsworth by to catch its
passing loveliness.
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial
fire,
Hands that the rod of empire might have
swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
Some Hampden or some Cromwell, to whom oc
casion never offered the one opportunity by which
he might have issued into greatness, may be ly
ing in Stoke Poges churchyard, or even some
mute inglorious Milton, some inhibited genius
whose fire smouldered and burned inward until
the divine spark finally died. But must it al
ways be so? Might not some one fetch us up the
pearl which the dark unfathomed caves of ocean
bear? May not the rustic Milton be sought out,

92 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
and wooed out of his silence, till he is no longer
inglorious because he is no longer mute? The
eighteenth century has often been charged with
chiUing poets into silence ; but, if so, it was from
no conscious indifference to poetry, no unwilling
ness to lend an ear to young aspirants. England
awaited the advent of a poet with impatience,
and even sought for poetic genius in the most un
likely places. It was surely no fault of hers if
any rustic Milton remained mute and inglorious
in the eighteenth century.
When Gray wrote his lines about the poet
whose lack of education had prevented him from
releasing the fiery genius which resided in his
breast, some reminiscence may have crossed his
mind of the homespun and pathetic figure of
.Stephen Djjgjk Throughout the century Duck
was the great exemplar of the inglorious Mil-
tons, and the name was, indeed, specially applic
able to him, since he attributed much of his abil
ity in writing verse to the study of Paradise Lost,
the meaning of which he hammered out in the
days of his obscurity with the aid of a small Eng
lish Dictionary. The career of Duck is adequate
ly recorded on the title-page of the edition of his
poems as they appeared in 1753:
The Bedutiful Works of the Reverend Mr.
Stephen Duck, (ihe Wiltshire Bard), Who

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 93
was many Years a poor Thresher in a Barn at
Charleton in the County of Wilts., at the
Wages of four Shillings and Six-pence per
Week, 'till taken Notice of by Her late Majesty,
Queen Caroline; who, on Account of his great
Genius, gave him an Apartment at Kew, near
Richmond, in Surry, and a Salary of Thirty
Pounds per Annum ; after which he studied the
learned Languages, took Orders, and is now a
dignified Clergyman. 'Honest Duck,' as he was
called by his contemporaries, had a certain facil
ity in rhyming, but he acquired at once all the
characteristic vices of poetic style which marked
the age. Still, he did have one thing to say,
which perhaps no other could have said with
equal sincerity. The poet Crabbe remembered
him for it when he wrote The Village half a cen
tury later. Duck, soon after he began to woo the
Muse, produced some verses entitled JThe.
ThTfifthfir' * T..nhniiv.t in which he inveighed against
the popular notion that manual labour has a joy
and dignity all its own. It has not. None of the
trappings of pastoral poetry are really found in
the country as the peasant knows it:
'Tis all a gloomy, melancholy scene,
Fit only to provoke the Muse's spleen.
If Duck had any trace of genius — which I doubt
— he wasted it by attempting to acquire the airs

94 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
of a courtier and live up to the reputation which
.Caroline had thrust upon him. At last his mind
gave way, and he drowned himself in the Thames.
Walpole said that Duck had not genius enough
to supply what he had seemed to promise, and
was 'only a wonder at first.'1 He intimates that
his example was pernicious, since, as a result of
it, 'twenty artisans and labourers turned poets
and starved.' One of these was Mary QU"^-
th^uJEojetkal-Was^hfeiwomaiLjaf^Pxteifield, who,
in 1739, printed a poem entitled Xh^-Wjajnaa^s.
JLahoiix^ Mary's poem, with some additions,
was reprinted in 1762, with a short preface in
M'hich she gave a melancholy sketch of her life.
Her instinctive gloom is no doubt explained by
the fact that she read Josephus in her youth and
Duck in her maturity. The poem called The
Woman's Labour was addressed to Duck, and
was a spirited protest against the thresher's slight
estimate of female toil. The following lines,
which sum up what she has to say, are based on
corresponding lines at the close of Duck's poem :
While you to Sysiphus [sic~\ yourselves com
pare,
With Danaus' Daughters we may claim a
Share ;
i To Hannah More, November 13, 1784.
2 There is a. copy of this rare pamphlet in the Yale Library.

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 95
For while he labours hard against the Hill,
Bottomless Tubs of Water they must fill.
Perhaps with some hope of rivaling Duck's
career, poor Mary addressed verses to young
King George; but neither king nor fortune
smiled upon her. At the end of her account of
herself, she says:
'Now I have retired to a Garret (The Poor
Poet's Fate) in Alton, where I am endeavouring
to pass the Relict of my days in Piety, Purity,
Peace, and an Old Maid.'
The fame of Duck the Poetical Thresher was
for a time eclipsed by that of Hpniy -Tones, the
Poetjeal "RnVklayer, He was perhaps the only
one of the inglorious Miltons who achieved, for
a time, a measure of metropolitan popularity.
Jones was an Irishman, of some slight education,
who made verses while he laid bricks. He hap
pened to be employed in Dublin when Chester-
¦field arrived there as Lord Lieutenant of Ire
land. To him the bricklayer addressed a poem,
On his Excellency the Earl of Chesterfield's Ar
rival in Ireland, which, by great good fortune,
came into the peer's hands, and was read by him.
He at once took Jones under his patronage, and
when he left Ireland, after a brief term in office,
advised Jones to follow him to England. The

96 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
advice pleased the poet — bricklayer no longer —
and he had thereafter, in England, a seat at
Chesterfield's table whenever he cared to claim it.
Jones revised the old play, The Earl of Essex,
and produced what is in fact a new tragedy —
at least it has always ranked as his own.
In a letter to the Baron of Kreuningen, writ
ten in the spring of 1753, Chesterfield speaks
with some enthusiasm of Jones as 'un poete j'ai
[sic] deterre a Dubhn, qui etait macon et qui ne
savoit pas un seul mot de Grec ou de Latin, mais
a qui Dieu seul avait donne un genie veritable-
ment poetique. Je crois que la poesie vous plaira.'
The Earl of Essex was produced with success,
was several times revived, and at last found a
place in Bell's British Theatre. But success was
too much for poor Jones. The strain of asso
ciation with gentlemen, who expected him %o
keep up the dignity of a poet, was so great that
he sought relief in lower company. He took to
drink, and wasted his money. He lost the favour
of Chesterfield by borrowing from one of his
flunkeys. He languished in spunging houses,
where many stories were told of his ingenuity in
escaping from the fangs of the bailiffs. On one
occasion he is said to have won the favour of a
bailiff's daughter by an apt poem on her beauty ;
whereupon she incontinently, like Lucy in the

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 97
Beggar's Opera, set her lover at liberty. At the
age of fifty Jones was run over in Saint Mar
tin's Lane, while in a state of drunkenness, and
was very dreadfully injured. He died a few
days later in the parish workhouse. He left be
hind him a score of different pubhcations, some
of which had passed through many editions, but
all of which, except the Earl of Essex, were in
stantly forgotten when the novelty of a brick
layer turning poet had worn itself out.
The misery in which these poets ended, was
escaped byJj^LesJffi&gdhoju^J&fiJ^
maker^ When a young man, Woodhouse
brought himself to attention by an ode addressed
to the poet Shenstone, who undertook the now
famihar task of introducing another peasant-
poet to the world of readers. In the course of
this initial contact with fine society, Woodhouse
became the humble instrument by which two fa
mous friends were first brought together. Mrs.
Thrale tells us that Samuel Johnson was first in
vited to her house for the purpose of meeting
Woodhouse, about whom everybody was talking.
It was Woodhouse whom Johnson advised (the
advice is repeated in the Lives of the Poets)
to give his days and nights to Addison. But
Johnson did not share the general conviction
that Woodhouse was a poet. He described the

98 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
public interest as being 'all vanity and childish
ness' : 'They had better,' Johnson told Dr. Max
well, 'furnish the man with good implements for
his trade than raise subscriptions for his poems.
He may make an excellent shoemaker, but can
never make a good poet.'3
I cannot see that Woodhouse's verses are visi
bly better than those of his predecessors, al
though his productive period lasted somewhat
longer and his complete works have been re
printed in our own day. His long-winded poems
are full of the same classicism that all these hum
ble minstrels thought it compulsory to assume.
He, too, delights in verse-epistles to the Great.
The 'obsequious Muse' addresses the 'judicious
Shenstone' or classic Lyttelton, or even soars to
the glorious contemplation of Royalty itself.
With all their paraded humility these homespun
singers seldom write of the people and the life
they know, but exhaust themselves in the attempt
to become worthy to associate — though always
deferentially — with the wits and bluestockings of
London. Says Woodhouse in reference to the
life which he would choose, were it in his power
to choose:
s Boswell's Life of Johnson, Hill's ed., vol. 2, p. 127. The edi
tor of the complete edition of Woodhouse's Works (London,
1896), says that Johnson later modified this judgment; but of
this there is no evidence.

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 99
Nor should my table smoak with dainty meats,
But clean and wholesome be my cheerful
treats ;
With faithful friends encircled there I'd sit,
To scan with judgment works of taste and
wit.4
But despite such ambitions, Woodhouse had the
sense, if not to stick to his last, at any rate to
continue at some kind of labour. He advertised
to the world, in the preface to his first coUection
of verses, his devotion to industry: 'He gener
ally sits at his work with a pen and ink by him,
and when he has made a couplet, he writes them
down on his knee, so that he may not thereby ne
glect the duties of a good husband and kind
father.'5 Woodhouse was afterwards steward to
Mrs  Elizabeth Montagu, who disapproved of
certain of his political and religious views. Who
would desire the services of a steward with
'views'? Thereafter he supported himself by
keeping a little shop, and died at the age of
eighty-five, having long since outlived his fame.
But though the bluestockings cared little for
the poetical shoemaker, they were confident
enough regarding their own great discovery, .iJie.
£oetkaLMilk-wonmn^jaiisfcQl
* The Leasowes. a poem.
s Clearly this was written before Woodhouse had begun to de
vote his days and nights to Addison.

100 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
In 1783 Hannah More discovered that AfiB.
Yegrsley. the milk-woman6 who caUed daily at
her house in Bristol for kitchen refuse with which
to feed her pig, was accustomed to employ her
leisure moments in the composition of verses.
She at once took the woman in charge, taught
her spelhng and the simplest 'rules' of rhetoric,
and after a lapse of some months felt that her
pupil had made such progress that she might
safely submit her verses to bluestocking judg
ment. The enthusiasm with which Mrs. Montagu
and her friends received them is significant both
of their eagerness to assist the development of
poetry and of their unfitness for the task. Mrs.
Montagu had made nothing of the poetical shoe
maker, but a female Chatterton — from Bristol,
too — made more appeal. She wrote to Miss
More: 'Let me come to the wondrous story of the
milk-woman. Indeed she is one of Nature's
miracles. What force of imagination! What
harmony of numbers ! In Pagan times one could
have supposed Apollo had f aUen in love with her
rosy cheek, snatched her to the top of Mt. Par
nassus, given her a glass of his best Helicon to
6 1 have taken my account of Mrs. Yearsley from my Salon and
English Letters, from which the Macmillan Company courteously
permit me to quote.

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 101
drink, and ordered the nine Muses to attend
her call.'
This hypothesis is unsuitable to a Christian
age, and so Mrs. Montagu suggests that the
Scriptures, the Psalms and the Book of Job in
particular, may have taught the artless numbers
to flow; whereupon she herself indulges in a
flight: 'Avaunt! grammarians; stand away! logicians;
far, far away aU heathen ethics and mythology,
geometry and algebra, and make room for the
Bible and Milton when a poet is to be made.
The proud philosopher ends far short of whab
has been revealed to the simple in our religion.
Wonder not, therefore, if our humble dame rises
above Pindar, or steps beyond Aeschylus.'7
Mrs. Montagu joyfuUy promises her support.
The rest of the Blues were hardly less enthusi
astic. Old Mrs. Delany circulated the milk-
woman's proposals to print ; Mrs. Boscawen sent
in a 'handsome hst of subscribers'; the Duchess
of Beaufort requested a visit from Mrs. Years-
ley; the Duchess of Portland sent a twenty-
pound bank-note. Walpole gave her money and
the works of Hannah More. The Duchess of
Devonshire presented her with an edition of the
English Poets. All social London and half lit-
7 Roberts's Memoirs of Hannah More, vol. 1, p. 363 ; 1784.

102 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
erary London put its name on the list of sub
scribers. When, in 1785, the volume appeared,
it was prefaced by a letter from Hannah More
to Mrs. Montagu, telling Mrs. Yearsley's story
and recommending her to the good attentions of
the Queen of the Bluestockings, whose delight
'in protecting real genius' is well known. Mrs.
Montagu's name was indeed writ large in the
volume. In the address To Stella — SteUa being
the milk-woman's name for Hannah More — Mrs.
Montagu is referred to as
That bright fair who decks a Shakespeare's urn
With deathless glories.
Similar adulation is diffused through some sev
enty lines of a blank verse poem, On Mrs. Mon
tagu. Mrs. Yearsley, like the other lyrical la
bourers, was not loth to address the Great in
verse. Mr. Raikes of Manchester, the founder of
Sunday Schools, the Duchess of Portland, and
the author of The Castle of Otranto (deferenti
ally referred to as 'the Honourable H  e
W  e') were all commemorated. Their in
fluential patronage and sad Lactilla's melancholy
tale made the book an immediate success, so that
it passed into a fourth edition in 1786.
Lactilla might, however, have been happier,
had she been less successful. There had come to

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 103
her, after the publication of her book, the not in
considerable sum of £350, which Hannah More
held in trust for her. One is not surprised to
learn that Miss More was cautious in paying out
this money to Mrs. Yearsley, nor that this caution
impressed the owner of the money as mere nig
gardliness. A sharp quarrel ensued, which was
fully aired by both women — by Hannah More in
her letters to Mrs. Montagu and by the poetess
in her preface to her next volume of verses. It
cost the poor milk-woman all her fine friends and
the fine reputation which they had blown up for
her. She sank graduaUy from view, and when
she died in 1806, was probably as obscure as when
she was 'discovered' some twenty years before.
Had she been of a philosophical temper, she
might perhaps have extracted some comfort from
the cynical reflection that her fall had been well-
nigh as humiliating to her discoverers and pat
rons as to herself. Walpole chuckled for months
over the coUapse of her reputation, asserting
that, if wise, she would now put gin in her milk,
and kill herself by way of attaining to an immor
tality hke Chatterton's; but the bluestockings
were glad to forget the poor creature and the
mischief they had done her, and the pathos of her
latter state moved them only to passionate de
scriptions of her ingratitude.

104 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
And then, suddenly, near the close of the cen
tury, without warning and without the patron
age of the great, the gift was bestowed. Eng
land had sought for its peasant-poet with the pa
tience of Job. And suddenly the Lord answered
Job out of the whirlwind, and the voice of God
was that of the ploughman of Ayrshire^ In l&gi-
ert Burns the labourer became not merely vocal
but lyrical. He had the divine fire for which
Gray had longed and a Satanic pride which kept
him from licking the boots of his patrons. The
fine friends which the Kilmarnock edition of 1786
made for him in Edinburgh — bluestockings and
professors — tried their best to spoil him by mak
ing him over into a Thomson or a Beattie. He
was expected to be obsequious, to emulate the
Irish Jones or the English Woodhouse. But his
well-wishers could not harness the whirlwind.
Soaring at a single bound above the mute and the
inglorious, he took at once and with ease that
consummate position in the literature which he
has held ever since.
What does the career of Burns show us about
the movement we have been studying and its
search for a new art and a rejuvenated poetry?
For 'the new poetry' all who care for literature
must be, in all ages, constantly in search. What
the advent of Burns showed in 1786 was that

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 105
such an art nouveau could come into existence
without any contemptuous spirit of contradiction
or rejection. For one thing, Bums's career
shows us that force or passion or genius — call it
what you will — is not destroyed or even imper
illed by education. Burns, though not highly,
was respectably well educated. Like many an
other Scots peasant, he wanted and he got all the
education he could come at. He knew and said
that learning could not make a poet, but never,
so far as I have noticed, is there a hint that such
education is in any way silencing or restraining
him as he sings of his rustic loves and his rustic
hatreds. He never says that he was a better poet
when he was ignorant, or praised others merely
because they were 'untutored,' and therefore gen
uine. Moreover, the literary tradition was in no sense
repressive to Burns. His most popular poems
have their sources in the poetry of his immediate
predecessors. 'Burns,' says Dr. Neilson, 'belongs
to the literary history of Britain as a legitimate
descendant of easily- traced ancestors.' The in
fluence of the popular song of Scotland, of Ram
say, and of Fergusson, has been repeatedly stud
ied and fully stated ; but his indebtedness to Eng
lish literature has been more grudgingly admit
ted. Yet the plain fact is that his work teems

106 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
with references to his English contemporaries
and their forerunners. It is not rash to say that
his acquaintance with the literature of his cen
tury was thorough. He had drunk deep of the
poetry of Pope, Young, Robert Blair, Collins,
Gray, Shenstone, Thomson, Beattie, and Gold
smith, and the influence of most of them is plain
ly discernible in his first volume. He was an
ardent believer in Ossian, whom he called 'prince
of poets.' Two years after the appearance of
The Task he was reading Cowper with delight.8
He proclaimed Goldsmith his favourite poet, and
drew a line from The Deserted Villege to serve
as the conclusion of the epitaph which he en
graved upon his father's tomb. Goldsmith was
reigning over the poet's mind when he wrote, in
the Cotter's Saturday Night, of the
youthful, loving modest pair
[Who] in other's arms breathe out the
tender tale
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the
ev'ning gale.
What language, pray, is this? And whose is this
imagery? Is there no hint in it of the style of the
s Those who wish to examine farther into Burns's indebtedness
to his predecessors may consult Heinrich Molenaar's Robert
Bums' Beziehungen zur Litteratur, Erlangen, 1899. Worthless
as a general treatment of the subject, lacking even an adequate
conception of the problems involved, the book contains, never
theless, a great deal of valuable evidence.

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 107
Deserted Village, and its 'pastoral' background,
prominent in which is the 'hawthorn bush for
whisp 'ring lovers made'? Burns took as a text
for the Cotter's Saturday Night one of the most
famous passages in Gray's Elegy. And the low
ing herd, in the opening stanzas of the poem
itself, the weary plowman plodding his home
ward way at evening, the children who run to
hsp their sire's return, the blazing hearth, and
the busy housewife — whence are all these?
Bums loved the fiction of his century no less
warmly than its poetry. With the possible ex
ception of The Castle of Otrantp and the works
of Miss Burney, he had read every novel of the
period that can be said to have had any marked
influence in the development of fiction. After
reading Zeluco, he wrote to its author, Dr.
Moore, I have gravely planned a comparative view of
you, Fielding, Richardson and Smollet [sic~\ in
your different quahties and merits as novel-
writers. He sketches the outlines of this essay a few
weeks later. The author of Zeluco is compared
with Fielding, whom Burns apparently regarded
as the supreme novelist of the age. Richardson
he held to be distinctly inferior to Fielding in
truth to human nature, and his characters, as it

108 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
were, 'beings from another sphere.' It is remark
able that the sentimental passages did not please
him, but the truth is that Burns's taste caUed for
sentimentalism of a more pungent flavour.
His favourite sentimentahsts were Steme and
Mackenzie. Mackenzie was, he said, the 'first of
men' ; but he found a richer nature and a better
source for imitation in the tears and flirtations
of Yorick Sterne. He couples Tristram Shandy
and the Man of Feeling as his 'bosom favourites.'
David SiUar, in his reminiscences of the poet,
records a truly sentimental scene, in which we
detect at once the lackadaisical and self-conscious
emotionalism of Yorick rather than the genuine,
though feeble, tenderness of Mackenzie:
In one of my visits to Lochlie in time of a
sowen supper, he was so intent on reading, I
think, Tristram Shandy, that, his spoon faUing
out of his hand, made him exclaim, in a tone
scarcely imitable, 'Alas, poor Yorick' !
It was not in Burns to catch Yorick's playful
and amused observation of his own extrava
gances. Burns's passions ran too deep to beget
the froth and flummery that fill even the most
delightful pages of Tristram and the Sentimental
Journey; but, for all that he had a try at the col
loquial manner and the broken-backed humour
of Shandyism:

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 109
'The clock,' he writes to Archibald Lawrie, 'is
just striking, one, two, three, four, — , — ¦, — , — ,
— , — , — , twelve forenoon ; and here I sit, in the
attic story, alias the garret, with a friend on the
right of my standish— a friend whose kindness I
shall experience at the close of this hne — there —
thank you — a friend, my dear Mr. Lawrie, whose
kindness often makes me blush. ... I have so
high a veneration, or rather idolatorisation of the
cleric character, that even a little futurum esse
vel fuisse Priestling in his Penna, pennae, pen-
nae, &c, throws an awe over my mind in his
presence, and shortens my sentences into single
ideas.' It seems odd that more has not been made of
Sterne's influence upon Burns, for it is not mere
ly a matter of occasional stylistic imitation.
Burns emulated Sterne's philandering, too.9
Sterne's career gave, as it were, the sanction of
the genteel and literary world to a state of di
vided allegiance into which Burns's wayward
emotions had already plunged him, and made his
Clarinda seem to him the Scottish counterpart
of Sterne's Eliza.
As Burns responded to the fashions and
trusted the literary traditions of his day, so he
was content with the technique of verse as he
learned it from his Scotch and Enghsh prede-
» He himself compared Jean Lorimer to Eliza Draper.

110 NATURE'S SIMPLE PLAN
cessors. He invented no new manner of speech.
He did not feel, as it were, the necessity of dis
carding the diatonic scale. He did not write
prose and call it verse; he did not even use the
'loose numbers,' which had been so generally ex
pected, though his songs were indeed wildly
sweet. He himself has told us of the labour
which he expended upon a song, untU by contin
ual polishing he brought it to that finished state
which his instinct demanded. Like a true artist,
he loved his technique, and, without pursuing it
as an end in itself, yet gladly underwent the dis
cipline of it all, rejoicing as a strong man to run
his race. 'There is no such thing,' said Swin
burne, 'as a dumb poet or a handless painter.
The essence of an artist is that he should be ar
ticulate.' To adopt for a moment the figure of
speech beloved in the eighteenth century, we may
say that Burns caught the lyre from the hands
of his forerunners. He did not fling it aside, and
fashion an instrument that should be aU his own,
but seized and mastered it. .Thus. was_±o-be-fuL-
sfiUedJthe. dream which. Gray had dreamed of an
Jns^exLj^sjanjLwho jshoukL wake_±a ecstasy the
living lyre.
I have no desire to leave with you the impres
sion that I consider art to be mere tradition,
without capacity for expansion, or indeed for

THE INSPIRED PEASANT 111
new and amazing manifestations. Least of all
do I wish to give the impression that Robert
Burns walked dutifully in the path marked out
by the multitude who had preceded him. But it
has seemed to me useful, perhaps even oppor
tune, to reassert the truth that art, in its uni
versal response to human needs, has the power
of focussing and carrying on what is best in the
past. It may and does gain by reaction; but it
is not its normal state to be consciously or for
ever in revolt, to be ever repudiating the work of
its rude forefathers, or to be constantly scatter
ing what has been gathered in the past.

INDEX
Addison, Joseph, Cato, 3; mentioned, 97, 99n
Aikin, Mus, 56; and see Barbauld.
Alfieri, Vittorio, 42.
America, poetry in, 90.
Arne, Thomas A., 68.
Attuiock, Esquimau, 25, 26, 28.
Banks, Sir Joseph, 14, 79, 80, 84, 85.
Barbauld, Mrs. Anna Letitia, 38, 39, 56.
Baretti, Giuseppe, 78.
Bartolozzi, Francesco, 76.
Baubacis, the, 15.
Beattie, James, 104, 106.
Beaufort, Duchess of, 101
Benn, Aphra, Oroonoko, 74.
Beyle, Marie Henri. See Stendhal.
Blair, Robert, 106.
Blake, WilUam, 59.
Boscawen, Mrs., 101.
Boswell, James, Hypochondriack, 24; and the Esquimaux, 25, 26;
visits Corsica, 46-48; Account of Corsica, 46, 51; and Paoli,
47, 48, 49-54; his efforts to aid Corsica, 49; in Corsican garb,
49-51, 51 n.; mentioned, 1, 2, 12, 38, 42, 56, 57, 77.
British Essays in Favour of the Brave Corsicans, 51, 52.
Bruee, James, 5, 6, 16.
Burnaby, Andrew, Journal of a Tow to Corsica, 42, 45, 46; men
tioned 36».
Burnet, James, Lord Monboddo. See Monboddo.
Burney, Eanny, on Omai, 81,83; mentioned, 47, 107.
Burney, James, 79, 81, 83, 85.
Burns, Robert, 104 #\
Buttafuoco, M., Corsican, 34, 35, 44.
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, The Island, 9n., 10 n.; Manfred, 68;
mentioned, 31.
Byron, John, 5, 6.
Caroline, Queen, 93, 94.
Cartwright, George, brings Esquimaux to London, 25; mentioned,
5, 6.
Caubvick, Esquimau, 25, 27, 29. 113

114 INDEX
Chatham, Lord, 50.
Chatterton, Thomas, "Rowley" poems, 85, 86; mentioned, 103,
Chesterfield, Lord, Letters, quoted, 58; and Henry Jones, 95, 96;
mentioned, 38.
Civilisation, decline of, in England, Goldsmith, on, 3, 4; Mon
boddo on, 19 ff.; renunciation of, 31; and the noble savage, 89.
Collier, Mary, the "Poetical Washerwoman," 94, 95.
Collins, William, 106.
Colman, George, 26, 66.
Colman, George, the younger, Random "Recollections, quoted, 79, 81.
Cook, James, 6, 8.
Corsica, Rousseau quoted on, 33, 34; Rousseau's incomplete scheme
of government for, 34jj\; poverty of, 36; Stendhal in, 38; in
rebellion against Genoa, 41; Mrs. Macaulay 's pamphlet on,
43, 44; Boswell 's visit to, 46 ff.; his efforts in cause of, 49 ff.
occupied by French, 47, 52; England refuses to aid, 51, 52
ceded to Prance by Genoa, 53, 54, 55; effect of her failure to
win independence, 55, 56, 59.
Corsica, a Poetical Address, 39, 53, 54.
Cowper, William, character of his poetry, 86, 87; his farewell
to Omai, 86-88; mentioned, 59, 106.
Crabbe, George, 59, 93.
Cullum, Sir Joseph, 80 n.
Dance, Nathaniel, his portrait by Omai, 76.
Darwin, Charles, Descent of Man, 17.
Delany, Mary G., 101.
Devonshire, Duchess of, 101.
Dick, Sir Alexander, 52 n.
Draper, Eliza, 109 and n.
Duek, Stephen, the "Poetical Thresher," 92-94.
Esquimaux, brought to England by Cartwright, 6, 25 ff. And see
Attuiock, Caubvick.
Evans, Evan, the Ancient Welsh Bards, 72.
Fergusson, Robert, 105.
Fielding, Henry, 107.
Florio, John, 73 m.
Frederick the Great, Anti-Machiavel, 34; mentioned, 53.
Freedom, personal, and authority, 33. And see Liberty.
French Revolution, 59, 60.
Friendly Islands, 8.
Fumeaux, Tobias, brings Omai to England, 8, 75; mentioned, 5.
Genoa, cedes Corsica to France, 53.
Gentleman 's Magazine, letter of Boswell to, 51 n.

INDEX 115
George III, 4, 26, 54, 59, 78, 94.
Goldsmith, OUver, on luxury, 2, 3, 4; The Deserted Village, 3, 106,
107; History of the Earth and Animated Natwe, 18 n., 21,
29, 30 and n.; mentioned, 1, 21.
Gray, Thomas, character of, and of his poetry, 61^.; the Elegy,
61, 62, 91, 107; the Progress of Poesy, 63-65; Essay on
Lydgate, 63 m.; the Bard, 65, 66, 67, 72, 73, 84; mentioned,
68, 69, 70, 71, 91, 92,. 104, 106, 110.
Hawkesworth, Dr. John, Oroonoko, 74, 75,
Heroick Epistle, An, from Omiah, etc., 17.
HoUand, Lord, 54.
Ireland, BosweU in, 51.
Johnson, Samuel, on luxury, 2, 4; on Omai, 77, 78; mentioned,
1, 19 and n., 24, 43, 57, 97, 98 and n.
Jones, Henry, the "Poetical Bricklayer," 95-97; The Earl of
Essex, 96; mentioned, 104.
Kreuningen, Baron of, 96.
La Condamine, M. de, 7.
Lactilla. See Yearsley, Ann.
Le Blanc, MUe, the Savage Girl, 6, 7, 8, 14.
Le Vasseur, Therese, 35.
Liberty, and Poetry, 64, 65.
Lloyd, Robert, 66.
London, Esquimaux in, 25 ff. ; Omai in, 8, 27, 28, 75 ff.
LongfeUow, Henry W., 31.
Lope de Vega, El Nuevo Mundo, 73 n.
Lorimer, Jean, 109 n.
Luxury, the menace of, 1 ff.
Lyttelton, George, Baron, 98.
Macaulay, Catharine, advises Paoli concerning government of
Corsica, 43, 44.
Mackenzie, Henry, The Man of Feeling, 108.
Macpherson, James, author of the Ossianic poems, 71, 72; Fingal,
71; Temora, 72; mentioned, 86.
Mason, WiUiam, Caractacus, 66, 70, 71; mentioned, 84.
MaxweU, Dr., 98.
Milton, John, Paradise Lost, 91.
Model Nation, necessary elements of, 33.
Monboddo, Lord, and Mile. Le Blanc, 7, 8; Origin and Progress
of Language, 10, 11, 12 ra., 15, 16 and n.; 18, 20, 21; History
of the Wild Girl, 12 n., the ' ' Scottish Rousseau, " 12 ; his
chief claim to remembrance, 13; Ancient Metaphysics, 13, 18;

116 INDEX
his character and opinions considered, 13 ff. ; beUeves in
existence of men with taUs, 15 ff.; on the orang-outang, 17,
18 and «.; on the advantages of savage life, 19, 20; on the
decline of civilization, 19 ff.; on the human race, 22, 23;
mentioned, 24, 26.
Montagu, Elizabeth, and Ann Yearsley, 100 Jf.; mentioned, 99.
Montesquieu, Baron de, 42.
Moore, John, Zeluco, 107.
More, Hannah, letter of Walpole to, 94; and Ann Yearsley, 100,
102, 103.
Mulgrave, Lord, 77.
Napoleon I, 54, 55.
Nature, return to, 5. And see State of Nature.
NeUson, WiUiam A., quoted, 105.
Oglethorpe, James, on luxury, 1, 2, 3, 4.
Omai, South Sea Islander, in London, 8, 27, 28, 75 ff. ; portraits of,
76, 77; no attempt to educate, 79; his "poetic mind," 80,
81; his singing, 82-84; return to South Seas, 86; death,
88 and ft.; not the ideal man, 89.
Omiah. See Omai.
Omiah' s Farewell, 78.
Orang-outang, Monboddo on the, 16«., 17, 18 and n.
Ossian, poems of, 66, 71, 100. And see Macpherson, James.
Otaheite, 6, 12.
Otaheite (poem), 10, 11.
Paoli, Pasquale, his character, and position in Corsica, 41, 42;
and Mrs.. Macaulay 's pamphlet, 43, 44; Burnaby, quoted, on
his projects, 45; and Boswell, 47 ff., 54; struggles in vain
against French, 53; a refugee in England, 54; and Napoleon,
55; mentioned, 36 n., 56.
Percy, Thomas, Five Pieces of Rimic Poetry, 72; Reliques of An
cient Poetry, 72.
Peter the WUd Boy, 6, 14.
Poetry, and civilisation, 3-5; and the Corsican coUapse, 56 ff.; in
Mid-Eighteenth Century, 62, 63; and Uberty, 64, 65.
PoUgnac, Cardinal, 15.
Pope, Alexander, 106.
Portland, Duchess of, 101, 102.
Raikes, Robert, 102.
Ramsay, Allan, 105.
Retz, Cardinal de, 49.
Review of the Conduct of Pasquale Paoli, A., 42.
Reyolds, Sir Joshua, portrait of Omai, 77; and frontispiece.
Richardson, Samuel, 107.

INDEX 117
Bights of man, Natural, 33.
Robertson, WiUiam, 14.
Romantic Movement, the, 31.
Rossetti, Dante G., 85.
Rousseau, Jean Jaeques, influence of, in England, 12, 13; Social
Contract, 33, 34; his unfinished scheme of government for
Corsica, Biff., 39, 40; mentioned, 22, 23 n., 24, 32, 41, 43, 44,
45, 46, 47, 48.
Sandwich, Countess of, 28, 78.
Sandwich, Earl of, 78.
Savages, revival of interest in the, 73 n.; the ideal, 88, 89.
Savage Girl, the. See Le Blanc, MUe.
Savage Ufe, Monboddo on, 19, 20; BosweU on, 24; and eivUised
life, difference between, 5, 8, 9 and n., 13, 25 ff .
Shenstone, WilUam, 97, 98, 106.
Smith, Edward, Life of Sir J. Banks, 80 n.
SmoUett, Tobias, Hwmphry Clmker, 73; mentioned, 107.
South Sea Islands, Sff.
Southerne, Thomas, Oroonoko, 74.
Spencer, Herbert, 14.
State of Nature, 5, 8, 13, 31.
Stendhal, De, Vie de NapolSon, 38, 55.
Sterne, Laurence, Tristram Shandy, 108, 109.
Swinburne, Algernon C, quoted, 110.
Tahitan music, 84, 85.
Tahiti. See Othaheite.
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 90.
Thomson, James, 104, 106.
Thoreau, Henry D., 31.
Thrale, Hester Lynch, entertains Omai, 77, 78; mentioned, 19 n., 97.
Tongan Islands, 8.
Townsend, C. W., Captain Cartwright, etc., 27 n.
Trevelyan, Sir George O., Early History of C. J. Fox, 53, 54.
Wallis, Samuel, 5, 6.
Walpole, Horace, quoted, 9, 43, 94, 103; The Castle of Otranto,
107; mentioned, 101, 102.
Woodhouse, James, the "Poetical Shoemaker," 97-99, 104.
Wordsworth, WiUiam, 31, 91.
Yearsley, Ann, the "Poetical Milk- woman," 99-103.
Young, Edward, 106.