I that hate books, such as come daily out
By public license to the reading rout,
A due religion yet observe to this;
And here assert, if any thing's amiss,
It can be only the compiler's fault,
Who has ill-drest the charming author's thought,--
That was all right: her beauteous looks were join'd
To a no less admired excelling mind.
But, oh! this glory of frail Nature's dead,
As I shall be that write, and you that read.[142]
Once, to be out of fashion, I'll conclude
With something that may tend to public good;
I wish that piety, for which in heaven
The fair is placed--to the lawn sleeves were given:
Her justice--to the knot of men, whose care
From the raised millions is to take their share.
W.C.
The book claimed all the praise the finest genius could bestow on it.
But let us hear the editor.--He tells us, that "It is a vast
disadvantage to authors to publish their _private undigested thoughts_,
and _first notions hastily set down_, and designed only as materials for
a future structure." And he adds, "That the work may not come short of
that great and just expectation which the world had of her whilst she
was alive, and still has of everything that is the genuine product of
her pen, they must be told that this _was written for the most part in
haste_, were her _first conceptions_ and overflowings of her luxuriant
fancy, noted with _her pencil at spare hours_, or _as she was dressing_,
as her Πἁρεργον only; and _set down just as they came into her mind_."
All this will serve as a memorable example of the cant and mendacity of
an editor! and that total absence of critical judgment that could assert
such matured reflection, in so exquisite a style, could ever have been
"first conceptions, just as they came into the mind of Lady Gethin, as
she was dressing."
The truth is, that Lady Gethin may have had little concern in all these
"Reliquiæ Gethinianæ." They indeed might well have delighted their
readers; but those who had read Lord Bacon's Essays, and other writers,
such as Owen Feltham and Osborne, from whom these relics are chiefly
extracted, might have wondered that Bacon should have been so little
known to the families of the Nortons and the Gethins, to whom her
ladyship was allied; to Congreve and to the editor; and still more
particularly to subsequent compilers, as Ballard in his Memoirs, and
lately the Rev. Mark Noble in his Continuation of Granger; who both,
with all the innocence of Criticism, give specimens of these "Relics,"
without a suspicion that they were transcribing literally from Lord
Bacon's Essays! Unquestionably Lady Gethin herself intended no
imposture; her mind had all the delicacy of her sex; she noted much from
the books she seems most to have delighted in; and nothing less than the
most undiscerning friends could have imagined that everything written by
the hand of this young lady was her "first conceptions;" and _apologise_
for some of the finest thoughts, in the most vigorous style which the
English language can produce. It seems, however, to prove that Lord
Bacon's Essays were not much read at the time this volume appeared.
The marble book in Westminster Abbey must, therefore, lose most of its
leaves; but it was necessary to discover the origin of this miraculous
production of a young lady. What is Lady Gethin's, or what is not hers,
in this miscellany of plagiarisms, it is not material to examine. Those
passages in which her ladyship speaks in her own person probably are of
original growth; of this kind many evince great vivacity of thought,
drawn from actual observation on what was passing around her; but even
among these are intermixed the splendid passages of Bacon and other
writers.
I shall not crowd my pages with specimens of a very suspicious author.
One of her subjects has attracted my attention; for it shows the corrupt
manners of persons of fashion who lived between 1680 and 1700. To find a
mind so pure and elevated as Lady Gethin's unquestionably was,
discussing whether it were most advisable to have for a husband a
general lover, or one attached to a mistress, and deciding by the force
of reasoning in favour of the dissipated man (for a woman, it seems, had
only the alternative), evinces a public depravation of morals. These
manners were the wretched remains of the court of Charles the Second,
when Wycherley, Dryden, and Congreve seem to have written with much less
invention, in their indecent plots and language, than is imagined.
I know not which is worse, to be wife to a man that is
continually changing his _loves_, or to an husband that hath
but one mistress whom he loves with a constant passion. And if
you keep some measure of civility to her, he will at least
esteem you; but he of the roving humour plays an hundred
frolics that divert the town and perplex his wife. She often
meets with her husband's mistress, and is at a loss how to
carry herself towards her. 'Tis true the constant man is ready
to sacrifice, every moment, his whole family to his love; he
hates any place where she is not, is prodigal in what concerns
his love, covetous in other respects; expects you should be
blind to all he doth, and though you can't but see, yet must
not dare to complain. And though both, he who lends his heart
to whosoever pleases it, and he that gives it entirely to one,
do both of them require the exactest devoir from their wives,
yet I know not if it be not better to be wife to an inconstant
husband (provided he be something discreet), than to a constant
fellow who is always perplexing her with his inconstant humour.
For the unconstant lovers are commonly the best humoured; but
let them be what they will, women ought not to be unfaithful
for Virtue's sake and their own, nor to offend by example. It
is one of the best bonds of charity and obedience in the wife
if she think her husband wise, which she will never do if she
find him jealous.
"Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age,
and old men's nurses."
The last degrading sentence is found alas! in the Moral Essays of Bacon.
Lady Gethin, with an intellect superior to that of the women of that
day, had no conception of the dignity of the female character, the
claims of virtue, and the duties of honour. A wife was only to know
obedience and silence: however, she hints that such a husband should not
be jealous! There was a sweetness in revenge reserved for some of these
married women.