It was in the summer of 1844, a few days after the interment in
Westminster Abbey of Thomas Campbell, the poet, author of the
“Pleasures of Hope” and many other celebrated poems, that I received
an invitation to breakfast with Samuel Rogers, to meet the Rev. Dr.
Milman, the officiating clergyman on that solemn occasion. There were
two other guests besides myself; the Rev. Alexander Dyce, well known
as a commentator on Shakespeare, and Mr. Thomas Miller—originally a
basket-maker—who had acquired considerable reputation as a poet and
novelist and a hard-working man of letters.
Dr. Milman was at the time rector of St. Margaret’s—the little church
that stands close to Westminster Abbey and interferes greatly with the
view of that noble cathedral. He was afterwards Dean of St. Paul’s, and
was known to fame as the author of the successful tragedy of “Fazio,”
of many poetical volumes of no great merit, and of a “History of the
Jews” and a “History of Christianity,” both of which still retain their
reputation.
The conversation turned principally on the funeral of the poet, at
which both Mr. Dyce and myself had been present. The pall-bearers were
among the most distinguished men of the time, for their rank, their
talent, and their high literary and political positions. They included
Sir Robert Peel, Lord Brougham, Lord Campbell, the Duke of Argyll,
the Earl of Strangford, and the Duke of Buccleuch, the last named the
generous nobleman—noble in nature as well as in rank—who had offered,
when a lad in his teens, to pay the debts of his illustrious namesake,
Sir Walter Scott, when the great novelist had fallen upon evil days
in the full flush of his fame and popularity. A long procession of
authors, sculptors, artists, and other distinguished men followed the
coffin to the grave. Many Polish exiles were conspicuous among them. As
Dr. Milman pronounced the affecting words of the burial service, “ashes
to ashes, dust to dust,” a Polish gentleman made his way through the
ranks of mourners, and drawing a handful of earth from a little basket
which he carried, exclaimed in a clear voice, “This is Polish earth for
the tomb of the friend of Poland,” and sprinkled it upon the coffin.
This dramatic incident recalled to my mind, as it no doubt did to that
of other spectators, Campbell’s unwearied exertions in the cause of
Poland, and of the indignant lines in the “Pleasures of Hope,”
Hope for a season bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shriek’d when Kosciusko fell.
Mr. Rogers, reminded, perhaps, of a grievance by the presence at the
breakfast table of Dr. Milman, seemed to brood over an injustice that
he thought had been done him with reference to the late poet. When
Campbell, under the pressure of some pecuniary difficulty, complained
of the scanty rewards of literature, and especially of poetry, Mr.
Rogers was reported to have recommended him to endeavor to procure
employment as a clerk. This was thought to be very unfeeling; but
on this occasion Mr. Rogers explained to the whole company that he
had been misunderstood, and that he had not meant any unkindness. “I
myself,” he said, “was a clerk in my early days, and never had to
depend upon poetry for my bread; and I only suggested that in Mr.
Campbell’s ‘case,’ and in that of every other literary man, it would be
much better if the writing of poetry were an amusement only and not a
business.”
“No doubt,” said Mr. Dyce, “but men of genius are not always the
masters of their own youth, and cannot invariably choose their careers
or make choice of a profession which requires means and time to qualify
for it. You, for instance, Mr. Rogers, when a clerk, were clerk to your
father, and qualified yourself under his auspices for partnership in,
or succession to the management of, his prosperous bank. Mr. Campbell
had no such chances.”
“It is a large question,” said Dr. Milman. “The love of literature in
a man of genius, rich or poor—especially if poor, is an all-absorbing
passion; and shapes his life, regret it as we may. Literature has
rewards more pleasant than those of money, pleasant though money
undoubtedly is. If money were to be the ‘be-all’ and ‘end-all’ of life,
it would be better to be a rich cheesemonger or butcher than a poor
author. But no high-spirited, intelligent, and ambitious youth could be
of this opinion and shape his life by it. Sensitive youths drift into
poetry, as prosaic and adventurous youths drift into the army or the
navy.”
“The more’s the pity,” replied Mr. Rogers, “as by drifting into poetry
they too often drift into poverty and misery. I trust, however, you
will all understand that the idle and the malevolent gossips did, and
do me, gross unjustice when they say that I recommended Campbell to
accept a clerkship rather than continue to rely upon poetry. I never
thought of doing so. I merely expressed a general wish that every man
of genius, not born to wealth, should have a profession to rely upon
for his daily bread.”
“A wish that all men would agree in,” said Mr. Dyce, “and that after
all had no particular or exclusive reference to Mr. Campbell. He did
not find the literature which he adorned utterly unprofitable. He
made money by his poetry and by his literary labor generally, besides
gaining a pension of three hundred pounds per annum on the Civil List,
and the society of all the most eminent men of his time, which he could
not have done as a cheesemonger or a butcher, however successful he
might have become in these pursuits.”
“These are all truisms,” said Mr. Rogers, somewhat sharply, as if
annoyed. “What I complain of is that the world, the very ill-natured
world, should have spread abroad the ridiculous story that I
recommended Mr. Campbell, in his declining years, to apply for a
clerkship.”
“I think no one believes that you did so,” said Dr. Milman, “or that
you could have done so. Your sympathy with men of letters is well known
and has been proved too often, not by mere words only, but by generous
deeds, for such a story to obtain credence.”
“Falsehoods,” replied Mr. Rogers, still with a tone of bitterness,
“are not cripples. They run fast, and have more legs than a centipede.
I saw it stated in print the other day that I depreciate Shakespeare
and think him to have been over-rated. I know of no other foundation
for the libel than that I once quoted the opinion expressed of him by
Ben Jonson, his dearest friend and greatest admirer. Though Ben Jonson
called Shakespeare ‘the Swan of Avon,’
Soul of the age,
The applause, delight, and wonder of the stage,
and affirmed that:
He was not for an age, but for all Time,
he did not hesitate to express the wish, in answer to one who boasted
that Shakespeare had never blotted a line, ‘would to Heaven he had
blotted a thousand.’ Ben Jonson saw the spots on the glorious face of
the sun of Shakespeare’s genius, and was not accused of desecrating his
memory because he did so; but because _I_ quoted that very saying and
approved of it, I have been accused of an act of treason against the
majesty of the great poet. Surely my offence was no greater than that
of Ben Jonson! If there were treason in the thought, it was treason
that I shared with him who had said he loved Shakespeare with as much
love as was possible to feel on this side of idolatry.”
“I think,” remarked Dr. Milman, “that such apparently malevolent
repetitions of a person’s remarks are the results of careless ignorance
or easy-going stupidity, rather than of positive ill-nature or a wilful
perversion of the truth.”
“It is very curious,” said Mr. Dyce, “how very few people can repeat
correctly what they hear, and that nine people out of ten cannot repeat
a joke without missing the point or the spirit of it.”
“And what a widely prevalent tendency there is to exaggerate,
especially in numbers. If some people see a hundred of anything, they
commonly represent the hundred as a thousand and the thousand as ten
thousand.”
“Not alone in numbers,” interposed Mr. Rogers, “but in anything. If I
quoted Ben Jonson’s remark in relation to Shakespeare once only, the
rumor spreads that I quoted it frequently; and so the gossip passes
from mouth to mouth with continual accretion. Perhaps I shall go down
to posterity as an habitual reviler and depreciator of Shakespeare.”
“Perhaps you won’t go down to posterity at all,” said Mr. Dyce,
good-naturedly.
“Perhaps not,” replied Mr. Rogers, “but if my name should happen to
reach that uncertain destination I trust I may be remembered, as Ben
Jonson is, as a true lover of Shakespeare. But great as Shakespeare is,
I don’t think that our admiration should ever be allowed to degenerate
into slavish adoration. We ought neither to make a god of him nor a
fetish. And I ask you, Mr. Dyce, as a diligent student of his works and
an industrious commentator upon them, whether you do not think that
very many passages in them are unworthy of his genius. If Homer nods,
why not Shakespeare?”
“I grant all that,” replied Mr. Dyce, “nay more! I assert that many of
the plays attributed to him were not written by him at all. And more
even than that. Several of his plays were published surreptitiously,
and without his consent, and never received his final corrections or
any revision whatever. The faults and obscurities that are discoverable
even in the masterpieces of his genius, were not due to him at all,
but to ignorant and piratical booksellers, who gave them to the world
without his authority, and traded upon his name. Some also must be
attributed to the shorthand writers who took down the dialogue as
repeated by the actors on the stage. It is curious to reflect how
indifferent Shakespeare was to his dramatic fame. He never seems to
have cared for his plays at all, and to have looked at them, to use the
slang of the artists of our days, as mere ‘_pot-boilers_,’ compositions
that brought him in money, and enabled him to pay his way, but in which
he took no personal pride whatever.”
“His heart was in his two early poems—‘Venus and Adonis,’ and the
‘Rape of Lucrece,’” said Dr. Milman, “the only compositions, it should
be observed, that were ever published by his authority, and to which he
appended his name. His sonnets, which some people admire so much—an
admiration in which I do not share—were published surreptitiously,
without his consent, and probably more than one-half of them were not
written by him. Some of them are undoubtedly by Marlowe, and some by
authors of far inferior ability. Shakespeare’s name was popular at the
time; there was no law of copyright, and booksellers did almost what
they pleased with the names and works of celebrated men; and what seems
extraordinary in our day, the celebrated men made no complaint—most
probably because there was no redress to be obtained for them if they
had done so. The real law of copyright only dates from the eighth
year of the reign of Queen Anne, 1710, or nearly a century after
Shakespeare’s death.”
“But authors in those early days, even in the absence of a well-defined
law of copyright,” said Mr. Miller, “received payment for their works;
witness the receipt of John Milton for five pounds on account of
‘Paradise Lost’—now in the possession of our host—and which we have
all seen.”
“But that was long after the death of Shakespeare,” said Mr. Dyce, “and
it does not appear that Shakespeare ever received a shilling for the
copyright of any of his works. Perhaps he received gratuities from the
Earls of Southampton and Pembroke, and the other rich young men about
town, for whom it is supposed that he wrote many of his sonnets. That
he also must have received considerable sums for his representation of
his plays at the Globe Theatre is evident from the well-ascertained
fact that he retired from theatrical business with a competent fortune
and lived the life for some years of a prosperous country gentleman.”
As it has been asserted in my presence by an eminent literary
man, within a month of the present writing, that Samuel Rogers
systematically depreciated Shakespeare, and that he was above all
things a cynic, I think it right, in justice to his memory, to repeat
the conversation above recorded. Though it took place nearly forty
years ago, I wrote down the heads of it in my notebook on the very
day when it occurred; and by reperusal of it I have refreshed my memory
so as to be certain of its accuracy. Mr. Rogers doubtless said very
pungent and apparently ill-natured things in his time; no professed
wit, such as he was, can always, or indeed very often, refrain from
shooting a barbed dart either to raise a laugh and to strengthen an
argument, or to dispense with one; but there was no malevolence in the
heart, though there might appear to be some on the tongue, of Samuel
Rogers. To love literature, and to excel in poetical composition, were
unfailing passports to his regard, his esteem, and if necessary, his
purse. One of the guests of the morning on which these conversations
took place, and who bore his part in them, was a grateful recipient
and witness of his beneficence. Thomas Miller, who began life as a
journeyman basket-maker, working for small daily wages in the fens
of Lincolnshire, excited the notice of his neighbors by his poetical
genius, or it may have been only talent, and by their praises of his
compositions, filled his mind with the desire to try his literary
fortune in the larger sphere of London. He listened to the promptings
of his ambition, came to the metropolis, launched his little skiff on
the wide ocean of literary life, and by dint of hard work, indomitable
perseverance, unfailing hope, and incessant struggles, managed to earn
a modest subsistence. He speedily found that poetry failed to put money
in his purse, and prudently resorted to prose. When prose in the shape
of original work—principally fiction—just enabled him to live from
day to day, he took refuge in the daily drudgery of reviewing in the
_Literary Gazette_, then edited by Mr. Jerdan, a very bad paymaster.
He had not been long in London before he made the acquaintance or Mr.
Rogers, and after a period of more or less intimacy, received from that
gentleman the good, though old, and as it often happens, the unwelcome
advice that he should cease to rely wholly upon literature for his
daily bread. As poor Miller could not return to basket-making—except
as an employer of other basket-makers, for which he had not sufficient,
or indeed any, capital—and as, moreover, he had no love for any
pursuits but those of literature, he resolved, if he could manage it,
to establish himself as a bookseller and publisher. Mr. Rogers, to
whom he confided his wish, approved of it, and generously aided him to
accomplish it, by the advance without security of the money required
for the purpose. The basket-maker carried on the business for a few
years with but slight success, and once informed me that he had made
more money by the sale of note paper, of sealing-wax, of ink, and of
red-tape, than he had made by the sale of his own works, or those of
anybody else.
Mr. Rogers established another poet in the bookselling and publishing
business, but with far greater success than attended his efforts in the
case of the basket-maker. Mr. Edward Moxon, a clerk or shopman in the
employ of Messrs. Longman, who wrote in his early manhood a little book
of sonnets that attracted the notice of Mr. Rogers, to whom they had
been sent by the author with a modest letter, became by the pecuniary
aid and constant patronage of the “Bard of Memory,” one of the most
eminent publishers of the time. He was known to fame as “the Poet’s
publisher,” and issued the works not only of Mr. Rogers himself, but
of Campbell, Wordsworth, Southey, Savage, Landor, Coleridge, and many
other poetical celebrities. He also published the works of Ben Jonson,
Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, Peele, and other noted dramatists of
the Elizabethan era.
The friendly assistance, delicately and liberally administered in the
hour of need, by Samuel Rogers to the illustrious Richard Brinsley
Sheridan is fully recorded in the life of the latter by Thomas Moore;
that which was administered, though under less pressing circumstances,
to Thomas Campbell, has found a sympathetic historian in Dr. William
Beattie. Rogers, in spite of the baseless libel concerning Shakespeare,
had not a particle of literary envy in his composition. His dislike
to Lord Byron was not literary but personal, and is adequately
explained—and almost justified—by the gross and unprovoked attacks
which Byron directed against him.—_Gentleman’s Magazine._