amber:--"Nobody cares about the fly; the only question is--How the
devil did it get there? Nor do I attack him," continues Sydney, "from
the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts
a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood a province. When he is
jocular, he is strong; when he is serious, he is like Samson in a wig.
Call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of
a great nation, and it seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly were to
teach bees to make honey. That he is an extraordinary writer of small
poetry, and a diner-out of the highest metre, I do most readily admit.
After George Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell, there has been no such man
for the last half-century." Lord Brougham, however, asserts that Mr.
Canning was not, by choice a diner-out.
Canning said of Grattan's eloquence that, for the last two years, his
public exhibitions were a complete failure, and that you saw all the
mechanism of his oratory without its life. It was like lifting the flap
of a barrel-organ, and seeing the wheels; you saw the skeleton of his
sentences without the flesh on them; and were induced to think that
what you had considered flashes, were merely primings kept ready for
the occasion.
Lord Byron, in his _Age of Bronze_, thus characterises Canning:--
"Something may remain, perchance, to chime
With reason; and, what's stranger still, with rhyme.
Even this thy genius, Canning! may permit,
Who, bred a statesman, still was born a wit,
And never, even in that dull house could tame
To unleavened prose thine own poetic flame.
Our last, our best, our only orator,
Even I can praise thee--Tories do no more.
Nay, not so much; they hate thee, man, because
Thy spirit less upholds them than it awes!"
Peter Pindar.--Dr. Wolcot.
This sarcastic versifier was a native of Devonshire, born about the
year 1738. His father was a substantial yeoman, and sent him to
Kingsbridge Free School; and after his father's death, young Wolcot
was removed to the Grammar School at Bodmin. He is described as a
clumsy, but arch-looking boy. He, at this early period, showed a degree
of quickness in repartee and sarcastic jokes, which was the first
dawning of that satiric humour which he afterwards displayed. He was
not remarkable at school for anything so much as negligence of his
dress and person. He described himself in after-life as having been a
dull scholar, but as having showed even at that early age a turn for
versifying.
On leaving school, he was removed to Fowey, in Cornwall, to the house
of an uncle, who was a medical practitioner, whose apprentice he became
for seven years. He completed his medical education in London, and
applied himself with sufficient diligence to obtain a knowledge of
his future profession; but he much annoyed his uncle and two aunts by
cultivating his talents for versifying and painting. Some of his chalk
drawings have been preserved, and are remarkable for their peculiarity.
When seen near the eye, they seem to be composed only of random
scratches and masses of black chalk, of different densities and depths,
with here and there a streak and blot of white, and others of red.
There does not appear to be any defined objects, such as a tree, house,
figure, &c.; but when viewed as a whole, at a distance hanging on the
wall of the room, each of them appears to be a landscape representing
morning and evening, in which the dark and light of the sky, and the
foreground, hills, trees, towers, &c., could be made out by the fancy,
in the smallest space of time allowed for the imagination to come into
play; and then the effect is surprisingly good. Wolcot became fond of
art, eminently critical and learned in its elements, sketched many
favourite places in Devonshire and Cornwall, and dabbled occasionally
in oils.
He settled in London, obtained a Scotch diploma of M.D., and began
to practise as a physician. In 1767, Sir William Trelawney was
appointed Governor of Jamaica, and Wolcot, who had some connection
with the family, accompanied him to that island as his physician, and
he was appointed Physician-General. The Governor's regard for his
lively medical friend was so great, that he intended to procure his
appointment as Governor of the Mosquito territory; but the retirement
from office of his best friend, Lord Shelburne, prevented its
accomplishment.
Wolcot's practice in Jamaica was not extensive; the whites were not
numerous, and the coloured could not pay. Governor Trelawney, however,
thinking he could promote Wolcot's interest more effectually by his
patronage in the Church, having then a valuable living in his gift
likely to become vacant by the severe illness of the incumbent, he
recommended his client to return to England, enter holy orders, and
return and take possession. Although the Governor had no very sublime
ideas of priesthood, it was the only way he had of serving the wit.
"Away, then," he said, "to England, get yourself japanned. But
remember not to return with the hypocritical solemnity of a priest.
I have just bestowed a good living on a parson, who believes not all
he preaches, and what he really believes he is afraid to preach. You
may very conscientiously declare," said the _conscientious_ Governor
to his admiring pupil, "that you have an internal call, as the same
expression will equally suit a hungry stomach and the soul." Having
accomplished this praiseworthy object, the rev. (M.D.) doctor returned
to his patron for induction; but "between the cup and the lip there
is many a slip," for the ailing incumbent, whose _living_ the doctor
sought, became convalescent, proved a very incumbrance in his path, and
the japanned _medico_ was fain to take up with the living of Vere, a
congregation exclusively of blacks, which he handed over to a curate,
his real employment being master of ceremonies to the Governor. On his
death, Wolcot returned to England with Lady Trelawney; and to carry on
the metaphor, the black lobster was boiled, and came out in scarlet and
gold.--(_Notes and Queries_, 2nd Series, vol. vii. pp. 381-383.)
The next twelve years of Wolcot's life were spent in attempting to
establish himself as a physician in Cornwall, in which he failed,
apparently on account of his invincible propensity to live as a
practical humorist, and satirize his neighbours. He humorously tells
us that the clinking of the bell-metal pestle and mortar seemed to
him to say, "Kill 'em again, kill 'em again," and so frightened him
from the profession. During his residence at Truro, some songs of
his composition were set to music by Mr. W. Jackson, of Exeter, and
first introduced him to general notice. In 1778, he published his
first composition in that peculiar style which not long after obtained
for him such a high and continued popularity--_The Epistle to the
Reviewers_. At Truro, Wolcot discovered the genius of the self-taught
artist, Opie, and with him came to London in 1780, they agreeing to
share the joint profits of their adventure for one year. They did so
for that term, when Opie told Wolcot he might return to the country,
as he could now do for himself. Wolcot appears not to have contributed
anything to the joint profits. There was now a split between the poet
and the brushman. Opie would not, for he could not, praise Wolcot's
sketches and paintings. "I tell ee, ye can't paint," said the blunt
and honest Opie; "stick to the pen." This advice was too much for "the
distant relation of the Poet of Thebes" to receive from "a painting
ape," and the feud was never healed. The Doctor scarified and lanced,
but Opie, in a more quiet way, was quite a match for the satirist, who,
as he said:--
"Sons of the brush, I'm here again,
At times a _Pindar_, a _Fontaine_,
Casting poetic pearl (I fear) to swine."
Wolcot was the friend and pupil of Wilson, our great landscape painter,
whose style he used to imitate not unsuccessfully. In his addenda to
Pilkington's _Dictionary of Painters_, he pays due honour to the memory
of his old friend, Wilson.
Wolcot now betook himself to his pen for support. His satirical and
artistic tastes suggested his first publication, "_Lyric Odes to the
Royal Academicians for 1782_, by Peter Pindar Esq., a distant relation
of the Poet of Thebes, and Laureate to the Royal Academy," which took
the town by surprise, by the reckless daring of their personalities and
quaintness of style. Thus he flayed the R.A.'s--from West to Dance, and
from Chambers to Wyatt--not forgetting their Royal patron, King George
III. In Ode III. of the second series, entitled _More Odes to the Royal
Academicians_, after complaining that Gainsborough had kicked Dame
Nature out of doors, he turns from the picture he censures to another,
and exclaims:--
"Speak, Muse, who form'd that matchless head?
The Cornish boy,[43] in tin-mines bred;
Whose native genius, like his diamonds, shone
In secret, till chance brought him to the sun.[44]
'Tis Jackson's portrait--put the laurel on it,
Whilst to that tuneful swan I pour a sonnet."
[43] Opie.
[44] Peter here meant himself, which is in part true.
Peter then drops the lash, resumes his neglected lyre, and pours out
a sonnet to "Jackson of Exeter," worthy of the twain--the "enchanting
harmonist and the lyric bard."
Peter's poems were very dear to the purchaser, being printed in thin
quarto pamphlets, at 2_s._ 6_d._ each, and very little letter-press for
the money. After the Royal Academicians, Peter attacked King George
III. In 1785, Wolcot produced no less than twenty-three odes. In 1786,
he published the _Lousiad, a Heroic Comic Poem_, founded on the fact
that an obnoxious insect (either of the garden or the body) had been
discovered on the King's plate of some green peas, which produced
a solemn decree that all the servants in the Royal kitchen were to
have their heads shaved. In the hands of an unscrupulous satirist,
like Wolcot, this ridiculous incident was a stinging theme. He also
mercilessly quizzed Boswell, the biographer of Johnson. Sir Joseph
Banks was another subject of his satire:--
"A President, on butterflies profound,
Of whom all insect-mongers sing the praises,
Went on a day to catch the game profound,
On violets, dunghills, violet-tops, and daisies," &c.
From 1778 to 1808, above sixty of these political pamphlets were issued
by Wolcot. So formidable was he considered, that the Ministry, as he
alleged, endeavoured to bribe him to silence; he also boasted that his
writings had been translated into six different languages. His ease and
felicity, both of expression and illustration, are remarkable. In the
following terse and lively lines, we have a good caricature sketch of
Dr. Johnson's style.
"I own I like not Johnson's turgid style,
That gives an inch the importance of a mile;
Casts of manure a wagon-load around,
To raise a simple daisy from the ground.
Uplifts the club of Hercules--for what?
To crush a butterfly or brain a gnat!
Creates a whirlwind from the earth, to draw
A goose's feather, or exalt a straw!
Sets wheels on wheels in motion--such a clatter,
To force up one poor nipperkin of water!
Bids ocean labour with tremendous roar,
To heave a cockle-shell upon the shore;
Alike in every theme his pompous art,
Heaven's awful thunder or a rumbling cart."
Sometimes Peter himself got castigated for his satire on the sovereign.
Here is an amusing instance. Those who recollect the figure of the
satirist in his robust upright state, and the diminutive appearance of
Mr. Nollekens, the sculptor, can readily picture to themselves their
extreme contrast, when the former accosted the latter one evening at
his gate in Tichfield Street, nearly in the following manner:--"Why,
Nollekens, you never speak to me now; pray what is the reason?"
_Nollekens._--"Why you have published such lies of the King, and had
the impudence to send them to me; but Mrs. Nollekens burnt them, and
I desire you'll send no more. The royal family are very good to me,
and are great friends to all artists, and I don't like to hear anybody
say anything against them." Upon which the Doctor put his cane upon
the sculptor's shoulders, and exclaimed, "Well said, little Nolly; I
like the man who sticks to his friends; you shall make a bust of me
for that!" "I'll see you d--d first," answered Nollekens; "and I can
tell you this besides--no man in the Royal Academy but Opie would have
painted your picture; and you richly deserved the broken head you got
from Gifford in Wright's shop. Mr. Cook, of Bedford Square, showed me
his handkerchief dipped in your blood; and so now you know my mind.
Come in, Cerberus, come in." His dog then followed him in, and he left
the Doctor at the gate, which he barred up for the night.
A severer castigation he received from a brother author. It appears
that William Gifford had wielded his galled pen against the morals
and poetry of Wolcot. It was so stringent and caustic that the Doctor
sought his lampooner in the shop of Mr. Wright, a political publisher
in Piccadilly, opposite Old Bond Street. Thither Peter repaired with
a stout cudgel in hand, determined to inflict a summary and severe
chastisement on his literary opponent. Gifford was a small and weak
person; Wolcot was large and strengthened by passion; but he was a
coward, and after a short personal struggle, was turned into the street
by two or three persons then in the shop. Gifford afterwards wrote
and printed _An Epistle to Peter Pindar_, in which he dealt out a
most virulent tirade against the Doctor, who replied in _A Cut at the
Cobbler_. Gifford had been apprenticed to a shoemaker.
As each published his own story of the transaction, the one in his
own name, the other by his aide-de-camp, Mr. Wright, it may not be
unamusing to recapitulate the different statements of the transaction:--
_Peter Pindar._--"Determined to punish a R---- that dared to propagate
a report the most atrocious, the most opprobrious, and the most
unfounded, I repaired to Mr. Wright's shop in Piccadilly to _catch
him_, as I understood that he paid frequent visits to his worthy friend
and publisher. On opening the shop-door I saw several people, and among
the rest, as I thought, Gyffard. I immediately asked him if his name
was Gyffard? Upon his reply in the affirmative, without any further
ceremony, I began to cane him. Wright and his customers and his shopmen
immediately surrounded me, and wrested the cane from my hand. I then
had recourse to the fist, and really was doing ample and easy justice
to my cause, when I found my hands all on a sudden confined behind
me, particularly by a tall Frenchman. Upon this Gyffard had time to
run round, and with his own stick, a large one too, struck me several
blows on the head. I was then hustled out of the shop, and the door was
locked against me. I entreated them to let me in, but in vain. Upon the
tall Frenchman's coming out of the shop, I told him that he was one of
the fellows that held my hands. I have been informed that his name was
Peltier. Gyffard has given out as a matter of triumph that he possesses
my cane, and that he means to preserve it as a trophy. Let me recommend
an inscription for it:--'The cane of Justice, with which I, William
Gyffard, late cobbler of Ashburton, have been soundly drubbed for my
infamy.'--I am, Sir, &c., J. WOLCOT."
_Mr. Wright._--"Whoever is acquainted with the miscreant calling
himself 'Peter Pindar,' needs not be informed, that his disregard and
hatred of truth are habitual. He will not, therefore, be surprised to
learn that the account this Peter has published in a morning paper is a
shameless tissue of falsehoods from beginning to end.
"I was not in the shop when it happened; but I am _authorized_, by
the only two witnesses of it, to lay before the public the following
statement:--
"Mr. Giffard was sitting by the window with a newspaper in his hand,
when Peter Pindar came into the shop, and saying, 'Is not your name
Giffard?' without waiting for an answer, raised a stick he had brought
for the purpose, and levelled a blow at his head with all his force.
Mr. Giffard fortunately caught the stick in his left hand, and quitting
his chair, wrested it instantly from the cowardly assassin, and gave
him two severe blows with it; one of which made a dreadful impression
on Peter's skull. Mr. Giffard had raised the stick to strike him a
third time, but seeing one of the gentlemen present about to collar the
wretch, he desisted, and coolly said, 'Turn him out of the shop.' This
was _literally and truly all_ that passed.
"After Peter was turned into the street, the spectacle of his bleeding
head attracted a mob of hackney-coachmen, watermen, paviours, &c., to
whom he told his lamentable case, and then, with a troop of boys at
his heels, proceeded to a surgeon's in St. James's Street, to have his
wounds examined, after which he slunk home.--J. WRIGHT."
Peter used to boast that he was the only author that ever outwitted
or took in a publisher. His works were very popular, and produced the
writer a large annual income. Walker, his publisher, in Paternoster
Row, was disposed to purchase the copyrights, and print a collected
edition. He first made the author a handsome offer in cash, and then an
annuity. The poet drove a hard bargain for the latter, and said that
"as he was very old and in a dangerous state of health, with a d--d
asthma and stone in the bladder, he could not last long." The publisher
offered 200_l._ a year; the Doctor required 400_l._ and every time the
Doctor visited the Row, he coughed violently, breathed apparently in
much pain, and acted the incurable invalid in danger so effectively
that the publisher at last agreed to pay him 250_l._ annually for
life. A collected edition of his works was printed in 1812, but it is
defective, for they were so numerous that the author could not retain
them all in his memory. An imperfect list in the _Annual Biography_ for
1819 enumerates no less than sixty-four works. One of the portraits
of the Doctor was published as a separate print, which did not sell
to any extent; but its publisher derived a great profit by taking out
the name of Peter Pindar and substituting that of "Renwick Williams
the Monster," who was infamous for stabbing women in the street. This
incident was told to Mr. Britton by Wolcot himself.
There is a fashion in the burlesque poetry of every age that is
palatable to the public of that age only. The subjects of Wolcot's
verses were ephemeral, and are now mostly forgotten. But his
popularity was not entirely earned by his audacious personalities.
His versification is nervous, his language racy and idiomatic, his
wit often genuine; and through all his puns and quaintnesses there
runs a strain of strong manly sense. Wolcot was equal to Churchill as
a satirist, as ready and versatile in his powers, and possessed of
a quick sense of the ludicrous, as well as a rich vein of fancy and
humour. Some of his songs and effusions are tender and pleasing. Burns
greatly admired his ballad of "Lord Gregory," and wrote another on the
same subject. After all his biting satires on George III. and Pitt,
he accepted a pension from the administration of which Pitt was the
head--not to laud it, but to vituperate its opponents. He had a shrewd
intellect, and his literary compositions have the finish of an artist;
but he was utterly selfish, and was a self-indulgent voluptuary.
Peter lived to the age of eighty-one, much to the annoyance of his
publisher, Walker. His last abode was in a small house in Montgomery's
nursery-gardens, which occupied the site of the north side of Euston
Square. Here he dwelt in a secluded, cheerless manner, the victim of
an asthma, very deaf, and almost entirely blind, with only a female
servant to attend him. His mind, however, retained its full power. He
lived only for himself; declined dinner invitations, "to avoid the
danger of loading his stomach with more than Nature required;" lay in
bed the greater part of his time, because "it would be folly in him
to be groping around his drawing-room," and because, "when up and in
motion he was obliged to carry a load of eleven or twelve stone, while
here he had only a few ounces of blanket to support." When out of bed,
he amused himself with his violin, or examining, as well as his sight
permitted, his crayons and pictures. He showed no aversion to "receive
notoriety-hunters," who came to see and hear "Peter Pindar," but
evinced no desire for society.
John Britton, who lived in Burton Street, often went to see Peter on a
Saturday afternoon, and there met Mr. John Taylor, editor of the _Sun_
newspaper. This gentleman was an inveterate and reckless punster, and
often teased Peter by some pointless puns. At one of these visits, on
taking leave, Taylor exclaimed, pointing to Peter's head and rusty wig,
"Adieu! I leave thee without hope, for I see _Old Scratch_ has thee
in his claws." Peter died in the above house, January 14th, 1810, and
was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul, Covent Garden, close to the
grave of Butler. He left a considerable property to his relations. In
early life he lived in the same parish, at No. 13, Tavistock Row; and
in the garret of this house he wrote many of his invectives against
George III. and the Royal Academicians. In 1807, he lodged in the first
floor of a house in Pratt Place, Camden Town, rented by a Mr. and Mrs.
Knight. The husband was a sea-faring man, seldom at home; and the
Doctor, who was not over-scrupulous, is said to have seduced the wife's
affections. Knight brought an action against the Doctor, but the jury
very properly acquitted him of the charge.--_See Cunningham's London_,
p. 409.
Peter was not emulous to shine as a wit in his colloquial intercourse,
either with strangers or his most intimate associates. Indeed, his
usual manner exhibited so little of that character which strangers had
imagined of the writer of his lively satires, that they were commonly
disappointed. The wife of a player, at whose house Wolcot often passed
an evening, used to say that "his wit seems to lie in the bowl of a
teaspoon." Angelo, in his _Reminiscences_, tells us that he could not
guess the riddle, until one evening he observed that each time Peter
replenished his glass goblet with brandy-and-water, in breaking the
sugar, the corners of his lips were curled into a satisfactory smile,
and he began some quaint story, as if, indeed, the new libation begot
a new thought. To prove the truth of the discovery, one night, after
supper, at his own home in Bolton Row, Angelo made the experiment.
One of the party being in the secret, and fond of practical joking,
came provided with some small square pieces of alabaster. Peter's
glass waning fast, the joker contrived to slip the alabaster into a
sugar-basin provided for the purpose; when the Doctor, reaching the hot
water, and pouring in the brandy, the sugar-tongs were handed to him,
and then the advanced basin of alabaster. "Thank you, my boy," said
Peter, putting in five or six pieces, and taking his teaspoon, began
stirring as he commenced his story. Unsuspicious of the trick, Peter
proceeded, "Well, sirs,--and so the old parish priest. What I tell you
(then his spoon was at work) happened when I was in that infernally hot
place, Jamaica (then another stir). Sir, he was the fattest man on the
island (then he pressed the alabaster); yes, d----, sir, and when the
thermometer, at ninety-five, was dissolving every other man, this old
slouching, drawling son of the church got fatter and fatter, until,
sir--(curse the sugar! some devil-black enchanter has bewitched it.)
By ----, sir, this sugar is part and parcel of that old pot-bellied
parson--it will never melt;" and he threw the contents of the tumbler
under the grate. The whole party burst into laughter, and the joke cut
short the story. The mock sugar was slipped out of the way, and the
Doctor, taking another glass, never suspected the frolic.
Peter, on seeing West's picture of Satan in the Exhibition, broke out
in the following couplet:--
"Is this the mighty potentate of evil?
'Tis damn'd enough, indeed, but not the Devil."
The Author of "Dr. Syntax."