"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past"--
is one of the delights of existence, and I am never tired of answering
questions about them, or gossiping of my own free will as to their
every-day life and manners.
If I were to call the little collection in this diminutive house a
_Gallery of Pictures_, in the usual sense of that title, many would
smile and remind me of what Foote said with his characteristic sharpness
of David Garrick, when he joined his brother Peter in the wine trade:
"Davy lived with three quarts of vinegar in the cellar, calling himself
a wine merchant."
My friends have often heard me in my "garrulous old age" discourse of
things past and gone, and know what they bring down on their heads when
they request me "to run over," as they call it, the faces looking out
upon us from these plain unvarnished frames.
Let us begin, then, with the little man of Twickenham, for that is his
portrait which hangs over the front fireplace. An original portrait of
Alexander Pope I certainly never expected to possess, and I must relate
how I came by it. Only a year ago I was strolling in my vagabond way up
and down the London streets, and dropped in to see an old
picture-shop,--kept by a man so thoroughly instructed in his calling
that it is always a pleasure to talk with him and examine his collection
of valuables, albeit his treasures are of such preciousness as to make
the humble purse of a commoner seem to shrink into a still smaller
compass from sheer inability to respond when prices are named. At No. 6
Pall Mall one is apt to find Mr. Graves "clipp'd round about" by
first-rate canvas. When I dropped in upon him that summer morning he had
just returned from the sale of the Marquis of Hastings's effects. The
Marquis, it will be remembered, went wrong, and his debts swallowed up
everything. It was a wretched stormy day when the pictures were sold,
and Mr. Graves secured, at very moderate prices, five original
portraits. All the paintings had suffered more or less decay, and some
of them, with their frames, had fallen to the floor. One of the best
preserved pictures inherited by the late Marquis was a portrait of Pope,
painted from life by Richardson for the Earl of Burlington, and even
that had been allowed to drop out of its oaken frame. Horace Walpole
says, Jonathan Richardson was undoubtedly one of the best painters of a
head that had appeared in England. He was pupil of the celebrated Riley,
the master of Hudson, of whom Sir Joshua took lessons in his art, and it
was Richardson's "Treatise on Painting" which inflamed the mind of
young Reynolds, and stimulated his ambition to become a great painter.
Pope seems to have had a real affection for Richardson, and probably sat
to him for this picture some time during the year 1732. In Pope's
correspondence there is a letter addressed to the painter making an
engagement with him for a several days' sitting, and it is quite
probable that the portrait before us was finished at that time. One can
imagine the painter and the poet chatting together day after day, in
presence of that canvas. During the same year Pope's mother died, at the
great age of ninety-three; and on the evening of June 10th, while she
lay dead in the house, Pope sent off the following heart-touching letter
from Twickenham to his friend the painter:--
"As you know you and I mutually desire to see one another, I hoped
that this day our wishes would have met, and brought you hither. And
this for the very reason which possibly might hinder your coming,
that my poor mother is dead. I thank God, her death was as easy as
her life was innocent; and as it cost her not a groan, or even a
sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an expression of
tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure, that it is even amiable to
behold it. It would afford the finest image of a saint expired that
ever painting drew; and it would be the greatest obligation which
even that obliging art could ever bestow on a friend, if you could
come and sketch it for me. I am sure, if there be no very prevalent
obstacle, you will leave any common business to do this; and I hope
to see you this evening, as late as you will, or to-morrow morning
as early, before this winter flower is faded. I will defer her
interment till to-morrow night. I know you love me, or I could not
have written this; I could not (at this time) have written at all.
Adieu! May you die as happily!"
Several eminent artists of that day painted the likeness of Pope, and
among them Sir Godfrey Kneller and Jervas, but I like the expression of
this one by Richardson best of all. The mouth, it will be observed, is
very sensitive and the eyes almost painfully so. It is told of the poet,
that when he was a boy "there was great sweetness in his look," and
that his face was plump and pretty, and that he had a very fresh
complexion. Continual study ruined his constitution and changed his
form, it is said. Richardson has skilfully kept out of sight the poor
little decrepit figure, and gives us only the beautiful head of a man of
genius. I scarcely know a face on canvas that expresses the poetical
sense in a higher degree than this one. The likeness must be perfect,
and I can imagine the delight of the Rev. Joseph Spence hobbling into
his presence on the 4th of September, 1735, after "a ragged boy of an
ostler came in with a little scrap of paper not half an inch broad,
which contained the following words: 'Mr. Pope would be very glad to see
Mr. Spence at the Cross Inn just now.'"
English literature is full of eulogistic mention of Pope. Thackeray is
one of the last great authors who has spoken golden words about the
poet. "Let us always take into account," he says, "that constant
tenderness and fidelity of affection which pervaded and sanctified his
life."
What pluck and dauntless courage possessed the "gallant little cripple"
of Twickenham! When all the dunces of England were aiming their
poisonous barbs at him, he said, "I had rather die at once, than live in
fear of those rascals." A vast deal that has been written about him is
untrue. No author has been more elaborately slandered on principle, or
more studiously abused through envy. Smarting dullards went about for
years, with an ever-ready microscope, hunting for flaws in his character
that might be injuriously exposed; but to-day his defamers are in bad
repute. Excellence in a fellow-mortal is to many men worse than death;
and great suffering fell upon a host of mediocre writers when Pope
uplifted his sceptre and sat supreme above them all.
Pope's latest champion is John Ruskin. Open his Lectures on Art,
recently delivered before the University of Oxford, and read passage
number seventy. Let us read it together, as we sit here in the presence
of the sensitive poet.
"I want you to think over the relation of expression to character in
two great masters of the absolute art of language, Virgil and Pope.
You are perhaps surprised at the last named; and indeed you have in
English much higher grasp and melody of language from more
passionate minds, but you have nothing else, in its range, so
perfect. I name, therefore, these two men, because they are the two
most accomplished _artists_, merely as such, whom I know, in
literature; and because I think you will be afterwards interested in
investigating how the infinite grace in the words of the one, the
severity in those of the other, and the precision in those of both,
arise wholly out of the moral elements of their minds,--out of the
deep tenderness in Virgil which enabled him to write the stories of
Nisus and Lausus, and the serene and just benevolence which placed
Pope, in his theology, two centuries in advance of his time, and
enabled him to sum the law of noble life in two lines which, so far
as I know, are the most complete, the most concise, and the most
lofty expression of moral temper existing in English words:--
'Never elated, while one man's oppressed;
Never dejected, while another's blessed.'
I wish you also to remember these lines of Pope, and to make
yourselves entirely masters of his system of ethics; because,
putting Shakespeare aside as rather the world's than ours, I hold
Pope to be the most perfect representative we have, since Chaucer,
of the true English mind; and I think the Dunciad is the most
absolutely chiselled and monumental work 'exacted' in our country.
You will find, as you study Pope, that he has expressed for you, in
the strictest language and within the briefest limits, every law of
art, of criticism, of economy, of policy, and, finally, of a
benevolence, humble, rational, and resigned, contented with its
allotted share of life, and trusting the problem of its salvation to
Him in whose hands lies that of the universe."
Glance up at the tender eyes of the poet, who seems to have been eagerly
listening while we have been reading Ruskin's beautiful tribute. As he
is so intent upon us, let me gratify still further the honest pride of
"the little nightingale," as they used to call him when he was a child,
and read to you from the "Causeries du Lundi" what that wise French
critic, Sainte-Beuve, has written of his favorite English poet:--
"The natural history of Pope is very simple: delicate persons, it
has been said, are unhappy, and he was doubly delicate, delicate of
mind, delicate and infirm of body; he was doubly irritable. But what
grace, what taste, what swiftness to feel, what justness and
perfection in expressing his feeling!... His first masters were
insignificant; he educated himself: at twelve years old he learned
Latin and Greek together, and almost without a master; at fifteen he
resolved to go to London, in order to learn French and Italian
there, by reading the authors. His family, retired from trade, and
Catholic, lived at this time upon an estate in the forest of
Windsor. This desire of his was considered as an odd caprice, for
his health from that time hardly permitted him to move about. He
persisted, and accomplished his project; he learned nearly
everything thus by himself, making his own choice among authors,
getting the grammar quite alone, and his pleasure was to translate
into verse the finest passages he met with among the Latin and Greek
poets. When he was about sixteen years old, he said, his taste was
formed as much as it was later.... If such a thing as literary
temperament exist, it never discovered itself in a manner more
clearly defined and more decided than with Pope. Men ordinarily
become classic by means of the fact and discipline of education; he
was so by vocation, so to speak, and by a natural originality. At
the same time with the poets, he read the best among the critics,
and prepared himself to speak after them.
* * * * *
"Pope had the characteristic sign of literary natures, the faithful
worship of genius.... He said one day to a friend: 'I have always
been particularly struck with this passage of Homer where he
represents to us Priam transported with grief for the loss of
Hector, on the point of breaking out into reproaches and invectives
against the servants who surrounded him and against his sons. It
would be impossible for me to read this passage without weeping over
the disasters of the unfortunate old king.' And then he took the
book, and tried to read aloud the passage, 'Go, wretches, curse of
my life,' but he was interrupted by tears.
* * * * *
"No example could prove to us better than his to what degree the
faculty of tender, sensitive criticism is an active faculty. We
neither feel nor perceive in this way when there is nothing to give
in return. This taste, this sensibility, so swift and alert, justly
supposes imagination behind it. It is said that Shelley, the first
time he heard the poem of 'Christabel' recited, at a certain
magnificent and terrible passage, took fright and suddenly fainted.
The whole poem of 'Alastor' was to be foreseen in that fainting.
Pope, not less sensitive in his way, could not read through that
passage of the Iliad without bursting into tears. To be a critic to
that degree, is to be a poet."
Thanks, eloquent and judicious scholar, so lately gone from the world of
letters! A love of what is best in art was the habit of Sainte-Beuve's
life, and so he too will be remembered as one who has kept the best
company in literature,--a man who cheerfully did homage to genius,
wherever and whenever it might be found.
I intend to leave as a legacy to a dear friend of mine an old faded
book, which I hope he will always prize as it deserves. It is a
well-worn, well-read volume, of no value whatever as an _edition_,--but
_it belonged to Abraham Lincoln_. It is his copy of "The Poetical Works
of Alexander Pope, Esq., to which is prefixed the life of the author by
Dr. Johnson." It bears the imprint on the title-page of J.J. Woodward,
Philadelphia, and was published in 1839. Our President wrote his own
name in it, and chronicles the fact that it was presented to him "by his
friend N.W. Edwards." In January, 1861, Mr. Lincoln gave the book to a
very dear friend of his, who honored me with it in January, 1867, as a
New-Year's present. As long as I live it will remain among my books,
specially treasured as having been owned and read by one of the noblest
and most sorely tried of men, a hero comparable with any of
Plutarch's,--
"The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American."