respected, and trusted? Then ignore the likes and dislikes of man in
regard to your actions; leave their love for God’s, taking Him only.
You will find that as you do so men will like you; they may despise
some things in you, but they will lean on you, and trust you, and
He will give you the spirit of comforting them. But try to please
men and ignore God, and you will fail miserably and get nothing but
disappointment.’
All those who have not yet read these journals, and prefer doing so in
English, should get Miss Blind’s volumes. There they will find this
‘human document’ most vigorously translated into their native tongue.
It, perhaps, sounds better in French.
One remembers George Eliot’s tale of the lady who tried to repeat in
English the pathetic story of a French mendicant--‘J’ai vu le sang
de mon père’--but failed to excite sympathy, owing to the hopeless
realism of Saxon speech. But though better in French, the journal is
interesting in English. Whether, like the dreadful Dean, you regard man
as an odious race of vermin, or agree with an erecter spirit that he is
a being of infinite capacity, you will find food for your philosophy,
and texts for your sermons, in the ‘Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff.’
SIR JOHN VANBRUGH.
Jeremy Collier begins his famous and witty, though dreadfully overdone,
‘Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage’
with the following spirited words:
‘The business of Plays is to recommend Virtue and discountenance Vice;
to show the Uncertainty of Human Greatness, the sudden turns of Fate,
and the unhappy conclusions of Violence and Injustice; ’tis to expose
the singularities of Pride and Fancy, to make Folly and Falsehood
contemptible, and to bring everything that is ill under Infamy and
Neglect.’
He then adds: ‘This design has been oddly pursued by the English
Stage;’ and so he launches his case.
Sir John Vanbrugh, who fared very badly at the doctor’s hands,
replied--and, on the whole, with great spirit and considerable
success--in a pamphlet entitled ‘A Short Vindication of “The Relapse”
and “The Provok’d Wife” from Immorality and Profaneness.’ In this reply
he strikes out this bold apophthegm:
‘The business of Comedy is to show people what they should do, by
representing them upon the stage, doing what they should not.’
He continues with much good sense:
‘Nor is there any necessity a philosopher should stand by, like
an interpreter at a puppet-show, to explain the moral to the
audience. The mystery is seldom so deep but the pit and boxes
can dive into it, and ’tis their example out of the playhouse
that chiefly influences the galleries. The stage is a glass for
the world to view itself in; people ought, therefore, to see
themselves as they are; if it makes their faces too fair, they
won’t know they are dirty, and, by consequence, will neglect to
wash them. If, therefore, I have showed “Constant” upon the stage
what generally the thing called a fine gentleman is off it, I
think I have done what I should do. I have laid open his vices
as well as his virtues; ’tis the business of the audience to
observe where his flaws lessen his value, and, by considering the
deformity of his blemishes, become sensible how much a finer thing
he would be without them.’
It is impossible to improve upon these instructions; they are
admirable. The only pity is that, as, naturally enough, Sir John wrote
his plays first, and defended them afterwards, he had not bestowed
a thought upon the subject until the angry parson gave him check.
Vanbrugh, like most dramatists of his calibre, wrote to please the
town, without any thought of doing good or harm. The two things he
wanted were money and a reputation for wit. To lecture and scold him as
if he had degraded some high and holy office was ridiculous. Collier
had an excellent case, for there can be no doubt that the dramatists
he squinted at were worse than they had any need to be. But it is
impossible to read Collier’s two small books without a good many pishes
and pshaws! He was a clericalist of an aggressive type. You cannot
withhold your sympathy from Vanbrugh’s remark:
‘The reader may here be pleased to take notice what this gentleman
would construe profaneness if he were once in the saddle with a good
pair of spurs upon his heels.’
Now that Evangelicalism has gone out of fashion, we no longer hear
denunciations of stage-plays. High Church parsons crowd the Lyceum, and
lead the laughter in less dignified if more amusing resorts. But, for
all that, there is a case to be made against the cheerful playhouse,
but not by me.
As for Sir John Vanbrugh, his two well-known plays, ‘The Relapse’
and ‘The Provok’d Wife,’ are most excellent reading, Jeremy Collier
notwithstanding. They must be read with the easy tolerance, the amused
benignity, the scornful philosophy of a Christian of the Dr. Johnson
type. You must not probe your laughter deep; you must forget for awhile
your probationary state, and remember that, after all, the thing is
but a play. Sir John has a great deal of wit of that genuine kind which
is free from modishness. He reads freshly. He also has ideas. In ‘The
Provok’d Wife,’ which was acted for the first time in the early part
of 1697, there appears the Philosophy of Clothes (thus forestalling
Swift), and also an early conception of Carlyle’s stupendous image of a
naked House of Lords. This occurs in a conversation between Heartfree
and Constant, which concludes thus:
_Heartfree._ Then for her outside--I consider it merely as an
outside--she has a thin, tiffany covering over just such stuff as
you and I are made on. As for her motion, her mien, her air, and
all those tricks, I know they affect you mightily. If you should
see your mistress at a coronation, dragging her peacock’s train,
with all her state and insolence, about her, ’twould strike you
with all the awful thoughts that heaven itself could pretend
to from you; whereas, I turn the whole matter into a jest, and
suppose her strutting in the selfsame stately manner, with nothing
on but her stays and her under, scanty-quilted petticoat.
_Constant._ Hold thy profane tongue! for I’ll hear no more.
‘The Relapse’ must, I think, be pronounced Vanbrugh’s best comedy. Lord
Foppington is a humorous conception, and the whole dialogue is animated
and to the point. One sees where Sheridan got his style. There are more
brains, if less sparkle, in Vanbrugh’s repartees than in Sheridan’s.
_Berenthia._ I have had so much discourse with her, that I
believe, were she once cured of her fondness to her husband, the
fortress of her virtue would not be so impregnable as she fancies.
_Worthy._ What! she runs, I’ll warrant you, into that common
mistake of fond wives, who conclude themselves virtuous because
they can refuse a man they don’t like when they have got one they
do.
_Berenthia._ True; and, therefore, I think ’tis a presumptuous
thing in a woman to assume the name of virtuous till she has
heartily hated her husband and been soundly in love with somebody
else.
A handsome edition of Vanbrugh’s Plays has recently appeared, edited
by Mr. W. C. Ward (Lawrence and Bullen), who has prepared an excellent
Life of his author.
Vanbrugh was, as all the world knows, the architect of Blenheim
Palace, as he also was of Castle Howard. He became Comptroller of Works
in the reign of Queen Anne, and was appointed by King George Surveyor
of the Works at Greenwich Hospital, in the neighbourhood of which he
had property of his own. His name is still familiar in the ears of the
respectable inhabitants of Blackheath. But what is mysterious is how
and where he acquired such skill as he possessed in his profession. His
father, Giles Vanbrugh, had nineteen children, of whom thirteen appear
to have lived for some length of time, and of John’s education nothing
precise is known. When nineteen he went into France, where he remained
some years.
During this period, observes Mr. Ward, ‘it may be presumed he laid the
foundation of that skill in architecture he afterwards so eminently
displayed; at least, there is no subsequent period of his life to
which we can, with equal probability, ascribe his studies in that art.’
Later on, Mr. Ward says:
‘The year 1702 presents our author in a new character. Of his
architectural studies we know absolutely nothing, unless we may
accept Swift’s account, who pretends that Vanbrugh acquired the
rudiments of the art by watching children building houses of cards
or clay. But this was probably ironical. However he came by his
skill, in 1702 he stepped into sudden fame as the architect of
Castle Howard.’
It is indeed extraordinary that a man should have undertaken such big
jobs as Castle Howard and Blenheim without leaving any trace whatever
of the means by which he became credited with the power to execute
them. Mr. Pecksniff got an occasional pupil and premium, but, so far
as I know, he never designed so much as a parish pump. Blenheim is
exposed to a good deal of criticism, but nobody can afford to despise
either it or Castle Howard, and it seems certain that the original
plans and elevations of both structures were prepared by the author of
‘The Relapse’ and ‘The Provok’d Wife’ himself. Of course, there may
have been a ghost, but if there had been, the Duchess of Marlborough,
who was soon at loggerheads with her architect, would probably have
dragged it into the light of day.
The wits made great fun of their distinguished colleague’s feats
in brick and mortar. It was not usually permissible for a literary
gentleman to be anything else, unless, indeed, a divine like Dr. Swift,
whose satirical verses on the small house Vanbrugh built for himself
in Whitehall are well known. They led to a coolness, and no one need
wonder. After the architect’s death the divine apologized and expressed
regret.
The well-known epigram--
‘Under this stone, reader, survey
Dead Sir John Vanbrugh’s house of clay
Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he
Laid many heavy loads on thee’--
is the composition of another doctor of divinity--Dr. Abel Evans--and
was probably prompted by envy.
Amongst other things, Vanbrugh was a Herald, and in that capacity
visited Hanover in 1706, and helped to invest the Electoral Prince,
afterwards George II., with the Order of the Garter. Vanbrugh’s
personality is not clearly revealed to us anywhere, but he appears
to have been a pleasant companion and witty talker. He married late
in life, and of three children only one survived, to be killed at
Fontenoy. He himself died in 1726, in his sixty-third year, of a
quinsy. His widow survived him half a century, thus affording another
proof, if proof be needed, that no man is indispensable.
JOHN GAY.
The first half of the eighteenth century was in England the poet’s
playground. These rhyming gentry had then a status, a claim upon
private munificence and the public purse which has long since been
hopelessly barred. A measure of wit, a tincture of taste, and a
perseverance in demand would in those days secure for the puling Muse
slices of solid pudding whilst in the flesh, and (frequently) sepulture
in the Abbey when all was over.
What silk-mercer’s apprentice in these hard times, finding a place
behind Messrs. Marshall and Snelgrove’s counter not jumping with his
genius, dare hope by the easy expedient of publishing a pamphlet on
‘The Present State of Wit’ to become domestic steward to a semi-royal
Duchess, and the friend of Mr. Lewis Morris and Mr. Lecky, who are,
I suppose, our nineteenth-century equivalents for Alexander Pope
and Jonathan Swift? Yet such was the happy fate of Gay, who, after
an idle life of undeserved good-fortune and much unmanly repining,
died of an inflammation, in spite of the skilled care of Arbuthnot
and the unwearying solicitude of the Duchess of Queensberry, and was
interred like a peer of the realm in Westminster Abbey, having for his
pall-bearers the Earl of Chesterfield, Viscount Cornbury, the Hon. Mr.
Berkeley, General Dormer, Mr. Gore, and Mr. Pope. Such a recognition of
the author of ‘Fables’ and ‘The Beggars’ Opera’ must make Mr. Besant’s
mouth water. Nor did Gay, despite heavy losses in the South Sea
Company, die a pauper; he left £6,000 behind him, which, as he was wise
enough to die intestate, was divided equally between his two surviving
sisters.
Gay’s good luck has never forsaken him. He enjoys, if, indeed, the
word be not the hollowest of mockeries, an eternity of fame. It is
true he is not read much, but he is always read a little. He has been
dead more than a century and a half, so it seems likely that a hundred
and fifty years hence he will be read as much as he is now, and, like
a cork, will be observed bobbing on the surface of men’s memories.
Better men and better poets than he have been, and will be, entirely
submerged; but he was happy in his hour, happy even in his name (which
lent itself to rhyme), happy in his nature; and so (such at least is
our prognostication) new editions of Gay’s slender remains will at long
intervals continue to appear and to attract a moment’s attention, even
as Mr. Underhill’s admirable edition of the poems has lately done;
new anthologies will contain his name, the biographical dictionaries
will never quite forget him, his tomb in the Abbey will be stared at
by impressionable youngsters, Pope’s striking epitaph will invite the
fault-finding of the critical, and his own jesting couplet incur the
censure of the moralist, until the day dawns when men cease to forget
themselves in trifles. As soon as they do this, Gay will be forgotten
once and for ever.
Gay’s one real achievement was ‘The Beggars’ Opera,’ which sprang
from a sprout of Swift’s great brain. A ‘Newgate pastoral might make
an odd, pretty sort of thing,’ so the Dean once remarked to Gay;
and as Mr. Underhill, in his admirable Life of our poet, reminds
us, Swift repeated the suggestion in a letter to Pope: ‘What think
you of a Newgate pastoral among the whores and thieves there?’ But
Swift’s ‘Beggars’ Opera’ would not have hit the public taste between
wind and water as did Gay’s. It would have been much too tremendous
a thing--its sincerity would have damned it past redemption. Even in
Gay’s light hands the thing was risky--a speculation in the public
fancy which could not but be dangerous. Gay knew this well enough,
hence his quotation from Martial (afterwards adopted by the Tennysons
as the motto for ‘Poems by Two Brothers’), _Nos hæc novimus esse
nihil_. Congreve, resting on his laurels, declared it would either take
greatly, or be damned confoundedly. It took, and, indeed, we cannot
wonder. There was a foretaste of Gilbert about it quite enough to make
its fortune in any century. Furthermore, it drove out of England, so
writes an early editor, ‘for that season, the Italian opera, which had
carried all before it for several years.’ It was a triumph for the
home-bred article, and therefore dear to the souls of all true patriots.
The piece, though as wholly without sincerity as a pastoral by Ambrose
Philips, a thing merely of the footlights, entirely shorn of a single
one of the rays which glorify lawlessness in Burns’s ‘Jolly Beggars,’
yet manages through the medium of the songs to convey a pleasing though
absurd sentimentality; and there is, perhaps, noticeable throughout a
slight--a very slight--flavour of what is cantingly but conveniently
called ‘the Revolution,’ which imparts a slender interest.
‘The Beggars’ Opera’ startled the propriety of that strange
institution, the Church of England--a seminary of true religion which
had left the task of protesting against the foulness of Dryden and
Wycherley and the unscrupulous wit of Congreve and Vanbrugh to the
hands of non-jurors like Collier and Law, but which, speaking, we
suppose, in the interests of property, raised a warning voice when a
comic opera made fun, not of marriage vows, but of highway robbery.
Dr. Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, plucked up courage
to preach against ‘The Beggars’ Opera’ before the Court, but the Head
of the Church paid no attention to the divine, and, with the Queen and
all the princesses, attended the twenty-first representation. The piece
brought good luck all round. ‘Everybody,’ so Mr. Underhill assures us,
‘connected with the theatre (Lincoln’s Inn Fields), from the principal
performer down to the box-keepers, got a benefit,’ and Miss Lavinia
Fenton, who played Polly Peachum, lived to become Duchess of Bolton;
whilst Hogarth painted no less than three pictures of the celebrated
scene, ‘How happy could I be with either--were t’other dear charmer
away.’
Dr. Johnson, in his ‘Life of Gay,’ deals scornfully with the absurd
notion that robbers were multiplied by the popularity of ‘The Beggars’
Opera.’ ‘It is not likely to do good,’ says the Doctor, ‘nor can it be
conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be
productive of much evil.’ The Church of England might as well have held
its tongue.
Gay, flushed with success, was not long in producing a sequel called
‘Polly,’ which, however, as it was supposed to offend, not against
morality, which it undoubtedly did, but against Sir Robert Walpole,
was prohibited. ‘Polly’ was printed, and, being prohibited, had a
great sale. It is an exceedingly nasty piece, not unworthy of one of
the three authors who between them produced that stupidest of farces,
‘Three Hours after Marriage.’
Gay’s third opera, ‘Achilles,’ was produced at Covent Garden after his
death. One does not need to be a classical purist to be offended at the
sight of ‘Achilles’ upon a stage, singing doggerel verses to the tune
of ‘Butter’d Pease,’ or at hearing Ajax exclaim:
‘Honour called me to the task,
No matter for explaining,
’Tis a fresh affront to ask
A man of honour’s meaning.’
This vulgar and idiotic stuff ran twenty nights.
Gay’s best-known poetical pieces are his ‘Fables,’ and his undoubtedly
interesting, though intrinsically dull ‘Trivia; or, The Art of Walking
the Streets of London,’ though for our own part we would as lief read
his ‘Shepherds’ Week’ as anything else Gay has ever written.
The ‘Fables’ are light and lively, and might safely be recommended
to all who are fond of an easy quotation. To lay them down is never
difficult, and if, after having done so, Swift’s ‘Confession of the
Beasts’ is taken up, how vast the difference! There are, we know, those
in whose nature there is too much of the milk of human kindness to
enable them to enjoy Swift when he shows his teeth; but however this
may be, we confess, if we are to read at all, we must prefer Swift’s
‘Beasts’ Confession’ to all the sixty-five fables of Gay put together.
‘The Swine with contrite heart allow’d
His shape and beauty made him proud
In diet was perhaps too nice,
But gluttony was ne’er his vice;
In every turn of life content
And meekly took what fortune sent.
Inquire through all the parish round,
A better neighbour ne’er was found.
His vigilance might some displease;
’Tis true he hated sloth like pease.
‘The Chaplain vows he cannot fawn,
Though it would raise him to the lawn.
He passed his hours among his books,
You find it in his meagre looks.
He might if he were worldly wise
Preferment get and spare his eyes;
But owns he has a stubborn spirit
That made him trust alone to merit;
Would rise by merit to promotion.
Alas! a mere chimeric notion.’
Gay was found pleasing by his friends, and had, we must believe, a kind
heart. Swift, who was a nice observer in such matters, in his famous
poem on his own death, assigns Gay a week in which to grieve:
‘Poor Pope would grieve a month, and Gay
A week, and Arbuthnot a day;
St. John himself will scarce forbear
To bite his pen and drop a tear;
The rest will give a shrug and cry,
“I’m sorry, but we all must die.”’
It is a matter of notoriety that Gay was very fat and fond of eating. He
is, as we have already said, buried in Westminster Abbey, over against
Chaucer. When all the rubbish is carted away from the Abbey to make
room for the great men and women of the twentieth century, Gay will
probably be accounted just good enough to remain where he is. He always
was a lucky fellow, though he had not the grace to think so.
ROGER NORTH’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
The Cambridge wit who some vast amount of years ago sang of Bohn’s
publications, ‘so useful to the student of Latin and Greek,’ hit with
unerring precision the main characteristic of those very numerous
volumes. Utility was the badge of all that tribe, save, indeed, of
those woeful ‘Extra Volumes’ which are as much out of place amongst
their grave brethren as John Knox at a ballet. There was something
in the binding of Messrs. Bohn’s books which was austere, and even
forbidding; their excellence, their authority, could not be denied by
even a youthful desperado, but reading them always wore the stern
aspect of duty. The binding had undoubtedly a good deal to do with
this. It has now been discarded by Messrs. George Bell and Sons, the
present proprietors, in favour of brighter colours. The difference thus
effected is enormous. The old binding is kept in stock because, so we
are told, ‘it is endeared to many book-lovers by association.’ The
piety of Messrs. Bell has misled them. No book-lover, we feel certain,
ever held one of Messrs. Bohn’s publications in his hands except to
read it.
A valuable addition has lately been made to the ‘Standard Library’ by
the publication--in three bright and cheerful volumes--of Roger North’s
well-known ‘Lives of the Norths,’ and also--and this practically for
the first time--of Roger North’s Autobiography, a book unknown to
Macaulay, and which he would have read with fierce interest, bludgeon
in hand, having no love for the family.
Dr. Jessopp, who edits the volumes with his accustomed skill, mentions
in the Preface how the manuscript of the Autobiography belonged to
the late Mr. Crossley, of Manchester, and was sold after the death of
that bibliophile, in 1883, and four years later printed for private
circulation. It now comes before the general public. It is not long,
and deserves attention. The style is gritty and the story far from
exciting, but the book is interesting, particularly for lawyers, a
deserving class of readers for whose special entertainment small care
is usually taken.
Roger North was born at Tostock, in Suffolk, in 1653--the youngest of
his brothers. Never was man more of a younger brother than he. This
book of his might be called ‘The Autobiography of a Younger Brother.’
The elder brother was, of course, Francis, afterwards Lord Guilford, a
well-hated man, both in his own day and after it, but who at all events
looked well after Roger, who was some sixteen years his junior.
In 1669 Roger North was admitted a student of the Middle Temple,
Francis being then a Bencher of that learned society. Roger had
chambers on the west side of Middle Temple Lane, and £10 wherewith to
furnish them and buy a gown, and other necessaries. He says it was not
enough, but that he managed to make it serve. His excellent mother,
though she had some ten children and a difficult husband, produced £30,
with which he bought law books. His father allowed him £40 a year, and
he had his big brother at hand to help him out of debt now and again.
He was, we feel as we read, a little uneasy under his brother’s eye.
The elder North had a disagreeable fashion of putting ‘little contempts
upon his brother,’ and a way of raising his own character by depressing
Roger’s, which was hard to bear. But Roger North bore it bravely; he
meant sticking to his brother, and stick he did. In five years he saw
Francis become King’s Counsel, Solicitor, and Attorney-General. ‘If he
should die, writes Roger, ‘I am lost.’ But Francis did not die, which
was as well, for he was much better suited for this world than the next.
Roger North was no great student of the law. He was fond of
mathematics, optics, mechanics, architecture, music, and of sailing a
small yacht--given him by Mr. Windham, of Felbrigge--on the Thames; and
he gives in his Autobiography interesting accounts of these pastimes.
He was very anxious indeed to get on and make money, but he relied more
upon his brother than upon either his own brains or his own industry.