"I LOVE the memory of Vinny Bourne," said Cowper in a letter to Newton
in 1781, thirty-four years after Bourne's death. "I think him," he went
on, "a better Latin poet than Tibullus, Propertius, Ausonius, or any of
the writers in his way, except Ovid, and not at all inferior to him."
Landor, in 1847, thought this criticism of Cowper's an unintelligent
one; he could not conceive how a poet so great as Cowper came to pass
such a judgment. The truth is that Landor was a better scholar than
Cowper, and was thinking more of Bourne's Latinity than of his choice of
subjects or mode of treatment. Cowper was not, it appears, a very acute
Latinist, and his renderings of Vincent Bourne's poems, as we shall see,
proved that he cared little for the simple terseness of Bourne's
elegiacs. What is remarkable in Cowper's criticism is his preference of
Ovid to Propertius. Ovid must almost have thought in pentameters; he had
from boyhood an incredible facility in verse; "_Et quod tentabam dicere,
versus erat_," he says, in that interesting autobiographical poem about
his boyhood and youth; "I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." Ovid
was a perfect master of his craft; he is one of the least amateurish of
poets; he had the power of producing with luminous precision the exact
effect that he intended, and as often as he intended. As a narrator he
is perhaps without a rival; but his scope is limited, and his metrical
scheme is, like Pope's, without variety. But if Ovid appears in his
verse as a somewhat placid egotist, Propertius is full of unchastened
fire and passion. His writing, like that of Catullus, bears the
undefined stamp of something which can only be named genius. Bourne is
more Ovidian perhaps than Propertian; and if his verses have not the
easy and lucid movement of Ovid, this is amply compensated for by their
originality of subject and treatment.
And we may now call into court a still better critic than either Cowper
or Landor, the surefooted Charles Lamb, who in his innumerable
appreciations of writers both in verse and prose, hardly ever makes a
false step, save from some affectionate bias of the heart, hardly ever
pronounces a judgment that has not been cordially endorsed by posterity.
Writing to Wordsworth in 1815, he says, "Since I saw you, I have had a
treat in the reading way, which comes not every day, the Latin poems of
Vincent Bourne, which were quite new to me. What a heart that man had,
all laid out upon town schemes, a proper counterpoise to _some people's_
rural extravaganzas! Why I mention him is that your 'Power of Music'
reminded me of his poem of 'The Ballad-Singer in the Seven Dials.' Do
you remember his epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the ABC,
which, after all, he says, he hesitates not to call Newton's Principia?
I was lately fatiguing myself by going through a volume of fine words by
Lord Thurlow; excellent words; and if the heart could live by words
alone, it could desire no better regales; but what an aching vacuum of
matter! I don't stick at the madness of it, for that is only a
consequence of shutting his eyes, and thinking he is in the age of the
old Elizabeth poets. From thence I turned to Bourne. What a sweet,
unpretending, pretty-mannered, _matterful_ creature! Sucking from every
flower, making a flower of everything, his diction all Latin and his
thoughts all English. Bless him! Latin wasn't good enough for him. Why
was he not content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote in?" And
again, in one of the "Essays of Elia," "A Complaint of the Decay of
Beggars in the Metropolis," he says: "Well fare the soul of unfastidious
Vincent Bourne, most classical, and, at the same time, most English of
the Latinists, who has treated of this human and quadrupedal alliance,
this dog-and-man friendship, in the sweetest of his poems, the
'Epitaphium ad Canem,' or 'Dog's Epitaph.' Reader, peruse it; and say if
customary sights, which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were
of a nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the passengers
through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis." Here, of
course, Lamb is really speaking of the spirit of the poems; his own
Latinity, as shown by the Latin letters which he was fond of
intermingling with his correspondence, was more copious than correct.
Lamb, it is true, saw poetry in Bernard Barton, but that, as we have
said, was an affair of the heart; if he could write as he did of Vincent
Bourne, we may be sure that his words are worth attention.
The biographical facts of Bourne's life are of the simplest. He was born
in 1695, educated at Westminster and proceeded to Trinity College,
Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow in 1720. His earliest published
poetical effort seems to have been a copy of congratulatory verses
addressed to Addison on his recovery from a severe illness in 1717. In
1721 he edited _Carmina Comitialia_, containing Tripos verses, satirical
poems on local events, and miscellaneous poems. From Cambridge he
returned to Westminster as a master, and there he remained till his
death in 1747. In 1734 he was appointed, perhaps through the influence
of the Duke of Newcastle, who had been a boy at Westminster with him,
and to whom he dedicated the first edition of his poems, Housekeeper and
Deputy Serjeant-at-Arms to the House of Commons.
As a teacher he seems to have been wholly without energy or practical
power. He made no attempt to preserve discipline, and Cowper, who was in
his form for a time, says that he remembers seeing the Duke of Richmond,
then a boy at the school, set fire to his greasy locks and box his ears
to put the conflagration out. He does not even appear to have
stimulated, as absent-minded, unpractical teachers often do, the keener
and more ardent minds among his pupils. "I lost more than I got by him,"
says Cowper, "for he made me as idle as himself." Cowper also says that
he was so inattentive to his pupils, and so utterly indifferent whether
they brought him good or bad exercises, that "he seemed determined, as
he was the best, so to be the last, Latin poet of the Westminster line."
As to his good-nature, however, there appear to have been two opinions,
as can be seen from a trenchant entry in Nichol's _Literary Anecdotes_.
"Vincent Bourne was usher to the Fourth Form at Westminster, and
remarkably fond of me. I never heard much of the goodness of heart. T.
F." He was noted, too, for extreme slovenliness in attire. Cowper says:
"He was such a sloven, as if he had trusted to his genius as a cloak for
everything that could disgust you in his person; and indeed in his
writings, he has almost made amends for all." And again to Mr. Rose, in
1788, he writes: "I shall have great pleasure in taking now and then a
peep at my old friend Vincent Bourne, the neatest of all men in his
versification, though, when I was under his ushership at Westminster,
the most slovenly in his person."
So Vincent Bourne lived his shabby, unpretending life, the _secretum
iter, et fallentis semita vitae_. Every one must have known some one of
this kind,--good-natured, easy-going, murmuring a phantom music in his
head, indifferent to what went on about him, without ambition or
personal dignity. His patron, the Duke of Newcastle, was anxious to
benefit him, but Vinny could not be coerced into taking Orders, and so
the Prebend at Westminster and the Canonry at Christchurch, which were
destined for him, went elsewhere. And yet he seems to have had some
obscure visions of preferment, founded on a promise given by Dr.
Arbuthnot, the friend of Pope. Bourne wrote in a copy of Arbuthnot's
work on Coins: "[As] to the reputation of Dr. Arbuthnot, I never met
with less honour and generosity than I have received from him; I scorn
to charge that upon his country which he has been guilty of in his
private character; he should have remembered his promise, and would have
done it, if he had not been a courtier;" and there is a preceding
passage, which looks as if Bourne had given Arbuthnot literary
assistance which had neither been acknowledged nor repaid.
Bourne, in a curious letter to his wife, written shortly before and in
anticipation of his death, gives her the reasons which prevented him
from taking orders; he says that the importance of so great a charge,
joined with a mistrust of his own sufficiency, made him fearful of
undertaking it. And he adds, "If I have not in that capacity assisted in
the salvation of souls, I have not been the means of losing any; if I
have not brought reputation to the function by any merit of mine, I have
the comfort of this reflection, I have given no scandal to it by my
meanness and unworthiness." This letter shows that he considered the
pastoral office in a different light from most of his contemporaries, as
one of great personal responsibility; and the whole letter breathes a
spirit of intense contrition and pathetic humility at the thought of the
opportunities he has missed and the idleness and vanity of his life. He
does not however write as if with any sense of his shortcomings as a
teacher, for he says that his one desire has been to be humbly
serviceable in his quiet sphere of duty. But the most touching part of
the letter is the vague dismay which, in spite of his deep and sincerely
Christian hope, he finds in the thought of dissolution; the terrors of
the grave lie very hard upon him, as they would upon a man of
imagination and sensibility who had lived a thoughtless and easy-going
life. The whole letter is a singular contrast to another rhetorical
epistle which has been preserved, addressed to a young lady on the
thoughts suggested by a graveyard, in which he says with a pretentious
philosophy that the more human document belies, that "the frequent
perusal of gravestones and monuments, and the many walks I have taken in
a churchyard, have given me so great a distaste for life." Poor Vinny!
When he came to die he had little of the philosopher about him, but
shivered and cried at the dark passage.
It may be a matter of wonder how Bourne found time or inclination to
marry; but he did so, and the maiden's name was Lucia. He even begat
children, of whom one was a Lieutenant of Marines, and left some vague
property, a house in Westminster and land in Bungay. The poet's death
took place in 1747, not unexpected by himself, as I have said, and by a
disease which, he records with grateful thankfulness, left him in full
and calm possession of his faculties. He had written his own epitaph,
which may be thus rendered: _Vincent Bourne, of unfeigned piety and
utter humility, who in no place forgot his God or forgot himself,
descends into the silence which he loved_. It is a touching estimate,
and shows, in its anxiety to deal only with essentials, how incidental
his work was to his character; he forms no pompous appreciation of the
value of his writings, but leaves them, like Sibylline leaves, for the
wind to whirl away, the only testimony to his quiet and observant eye,
his love of simple things, his intense interest in nature and humanity.
_Qui bene latuit, bene vixit_, he might have said.
Cowper wrote to Newton in 1781, in reply to a letter suggesting that he
should translate Vincent Bourne's Latin poems, and offering literary
assistance. It appears to have been one of the few occasions on which
Newton gave Cowper sensible advice. Cowper replies that he is much
obliged for the offer of help: "It is but seldom, however, and never,
except for my amusement, that I translate; because I find it impossible
to work by another man's pattern. I should at least be sure to find it
so in a business of any length. Again, that is epigrammatic and witty in
Latin which would be perfectly insipid in English, and a translator of
Bourne would frequently find himself obliged to supply what is called
the _turn_.... If a Latin poem is neat, elegant, and musical, it is
enough; but English readers are not so easily satisfied. To quote
myself, you will find, on comparing 'The Jackdaw' with the original,
that I was obliged to sharpen a point, which, though smart enough in the
Latin, would in English have appeared as plain and blunt as the tag of a
lace.... Vincent Bourne's humour is entirely original; he can speak of a
magpie or a cat in terms so exquisitely appropriated to the character he
draws, that one would suppose him animated by the spirit of the creature
he describes. And with all his drollery, there is a mixture of rational
and even religious reflection at times, and always an air of pleasantry,
good-nature, and humanity, that makes him in my mind one of the most
amiable writers in the world. It is not common to meet with an author
who can make you smile, and yet at nobody's expense, who is always
entertaining and yet always harmless; and who, though always elegant and
classical to a degree not always found in the classics themselves,
charms more, by the simplicity and playfulness of his ideas, than by the
neatness and purity of his verse."
To turn to the poems in detail, almost the first thing that strikes one
is the originality of his subjects. Nothing was common or unclean to our
poet, at a time when poetry, except in Cowper's hands, was grandiose and
affected to an uncommon degree. Vincent Bourne may be held to have been
in a remote connection the parent of the poetry of common life, for he
undoubtedly exerted a strong influence on Cowper. I do not think it is
too much to say that Cowper's best contributions to literature, his
exquisite lyrics on birds and hares and dogs, which will live when "The
Task" and "Tirocinium" have gone down to the dust, would never have been
written had it not been for Vincent Bourne. In the year 1750, the future
of English poetry was dark; there were only two considerable writers at
work, Gray and Collins. There was, it is true, a certain respectful
attitude to nature prevalent, but it was a conventional attitude.
Cowper, as I believe inspired by Bourne, was the first to make it
unconventional. Then came the sweet notes of Burns across the border,
and the victory was won.
Let me now give a few instances of Bourne. First must come "The
Jackdaw," and I have given Cowper's rendering; but I have also ventured
to subjoin a version of my own, not because I challenge even the most
distant comparison with Cowper's sparkling and graceful lyric, but
because Cowper's is in no sense a translation. It is a poem of which the
line of thought is suggested by Bourne, and at a few points touches the
Latin poem; but the turn, the colouring is Cowper's own. In my own
translation, though I have several times sacrificed verbal accuracy, I
have endeavoured to keep as closely to the Latin as is consistent with
writing English at all.