Unfriendly to the literary character, some have imputed the
brutality of certain authors to their literary habits, when it may
be more truly said that they derived their literature from their
brutality. The spirit was envenomed before it entered into the
fierceness of literary controversy, and the insanity was in the
evil temper of the man before he roused our notice by his ravings.
RITSON, the late antiquary of poetry (not to call him poetical),
amazed the world by his vituperative railing at two authors of the
finest taste in poetry, Warton and Percy; he carried criticism, as
the discerning few had first surmised, to insanity itself; the
character before us only approached it.
DENNIS attained to the ambiguous honour of being distinguished as
"The Critic," and he may yet instruct us how the moral influences the
literary character, and how a certain talent that can never mature
itself into genius, like the pale fruit that hangs in the shade,
ripens only into sourness.
As a critic in his own day, party for some time kept him alive; the
art of criticism was a novelty at that period of our literature. He
flattered some great men, and he abused three of the greatest; this
was one mode of securing popularity; because, by this contrivance, he
divided the town into two parties; and the irascibility and satire of
Pope and Swift were not less serviceable to him than the partial
panegyrics of Dryden and Congreve. Johnson revived him, for his minute
attack on Addison; and Kippis, feebly voluminous, and with the cold
affectation of candour, allows him to occupy a place in our literary
history too large in the eye of Truth and Taste.
Let us say all the good we can of him, that we may not be interrupted
in a more important inquiry. Dennis once urged fair pretensions to the
office of critic. Some of his "Original Letters," and particularly the
"Remarks on Prince Arthur," written in his vigour, attain even to
classical criticism.[37] Aristotle and Bossu lay open before him, and
he developes and sometimes illustrates their principles with close
reasoning. Passion had not yet blinded the young critic with rage; and
in that happy moment, Virgil occupied his attention even more than
Blackmore.
The prominent feature in his literary character was good sense; but in
literature, though not in life, good sense is a penurious virtue.
Dennis could not be carried beyond the cold line of a precedent, and
before he ventured to be pleased, he was compelled to look into
Aristotle. His learning was the bigotry of literature. It was ever
Aristotle explained by Dennis. But in the explanation of the obscure
text of his master, he was led into such frivolous distinctions, and
tasteless propositions, that his works deserve inspection, as examples
of the manner of a true mechanical critic.
This blunted feeling of the mechanical critic was at first concealed
from the world in the pomp of critical erudition; but when he trusted
to himself, and, destitute of taste and imagination, became a poet and
a dramatist, the secret of the Royal Midas was revealed. As his evil
temper prevailed, he forgot his learning, and lost the moderate sense
which he seemed once to have possessed. Rage, malice, and dulness,
were the heavy residuum; and now he much resembled that congenial soul
whom the ever-witty South compared to the tailor's goose, which is at
once hot and heavy.
Dennis was sent to Cambridge by his father, a saddler, who imagined a
genius had been born in the family. He travelled in France and Italy,
and on his return held in contempt every pursuit but poetry and
criticism. He haunted the literary coteries, and dropped into a galaxy
of wits and noblemen. At a time when our literature, like our
politics, was divided into two factions, Dennis enlisted himself under
Dryden and Congreve;[38] and, as legitimate criticism was then an
awful novelty in the nation, the young critic, recent from the
Stagirite, soon became an important, and even a tremendous spirit.
Pope is said to have regarded his judgment; and Mallet, when young,
tremblingly submitted a poem, to live or die by his breath. One would
have imagined that the elegant studies he was cultivating, the views
of life which had opened on him, and the polished circle around, would
have influenced the grossness which was the natural growth of the
soil. But ungracious Nature kept fast hold of the mind of Dennis!
His personal manners were characterised by their abrupt violence. Once
dining with Lord Halifax he became so impatient of contradiction, that
he rushed out of the room, overthrowing the sideboard. Inquiring on
the next day how he had behaved, Moyle observed, "You went away like
the devil, taking one corner of the house with you." The wits,
perhaps, then began to suspect their young Zoilus's dogmatism.
The actors refused to perform one of his tragedies to empty houses,
but they retained some excellent thunder which Dennis had invented;
it rolled one night when Dennis was in the pit, and it was applauded!
Suddenly starting up, he cried to the audience, "By G--, they wont act
my tragedy, but they steal my thunder!" Thus, when reading Pope's
"Essay on Criticism," he came to the character of Appius, he suddenly
flung down the new poem, exclaiming, "By G--, he means me!" He is
painted to the life.
_Lo!_ _Appius reddens_ at each word you speak,
And stares tremendous with a threatening eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.
I complete this picture of Dennis with a very extraordinary
caricature, which Steele, in one of his papers of "The Theatre," has
given of Dennis. I shall, however, disentangle the threads, and pick
out what I consider not to be caricature, but resemblance.
"His motion is quick and sudden, turning on all sides, with a
suspicion of every object, as if he had done or feared some
extraordinary mischief. You see wickedness in his meaning, but folly
of countenance, that betrays him to be unfit for the execution of it.
He starts, stares, and looks round him. This constant shuffle of haste
without speed, makes the man thought a little touched; but the vacant
look of his two eyes gives you to understand that he could never run
out of his wits, which seemed not so much to be lost, as to want
employment; they are not so much astray, as they are a wool-gathering.
He has the face and surliness of a mastiff, which has often saved him
from being treated like a cur, till some more sagacious than ordinary
found his nature, and used him accordingly. Unhappy being! terrible
without, fearful within! Not a wolf in sheep's clothing, but a sheep
in a wolf's."[39]
However anger may have a little coloured this portrait, its truth may
be confirmed from a variety of sources. If Sallust, with his
accustomed penetration in characterising the violent emotions of
Catiline's restless mind, did not forget its indication in "his walk
now quick and now slow," it maybe allowed to think that the character
of Dennis was alike to be detected in his habitual surliness.
Even in his old age--for our chain must not drop a link--his native
brutality never forsook him. Thomson and Pope charitably supported the
veteran Zoilus at a benefit play; and Savage, who had nothing but a
verse to give, returned them very poetical thanks in the name of
Dennis. He was then blind and old, but his critical ferocity had no
old age; his surliness overcame every grateful sense, and he swore as
usual, "They could be no one's but that _fool_ Savage's"--an evidence
of his sagacity and brutality![40] This was, perhaps, the last peevish
snuff shaken from the dismal link of criticism; for, a few days after,
was the redoubted Dennis numbered with the mighty dead.
He carried the same fierceness into his style, and commits the same
ludicrous extravagances in literary composition as in his manners. Was
Pope really sore at the Zoilian style? He has himself spared me the
trouble of exhibiting Dennis's gross personalities, by having
collected them at the close of the Dunciad--specimens which show how
low false wit and malignity can get to by hard pains. I will throw
into the note a curious illustration of the anti-poetical notions of a
mechanical critic, who has no wing to dip into the hues of the
imagination.[41]
In life and in literature we meet with men who seem endowed with an
obliquity of understanding, yet active and busy spirits; but, as
activity is only valuable in proportion to the capacity that puts all
in motion, so, when ill directed, the intellect, warped by nature,
only becomes more crooked and fantastical. A kind of frantic
enthusiasm breaks forth in their actions and their language, and often
they seem ferocious when they are only foolish. We may thus account
for the manners and style of Dennis, pushed almost to the verge of
insanity, and acting on him very much like insanity itself--a
circumstance which the quick vengeance of wit seized on, in the
humorous "Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the Frenzy of Mr.
John Dennis, an officer of the Custom-house."[42]
It is curious to observe that Dennis, in the definition of genius,
describes himself; he says--"Genius is caused by a _furious joy_ and
_pride of soul_ on the conception of an extraordinary hint. Many men
have their _hints_ without their motions of _fury and pride of soul_,
because they want fire enough to agitate their spirits; and these we
call cold writers. Others, who have a great deal of fire, but have not
excellent organs, feel the fore-mentioned _motions_, without the
extraordinary _hints_; and these we call fustian writers." His
_motions_ and his _hints_, as he describes them, in regard to cold or
fustian writers, seem to include the extreme points of his own
genius.
Another feature strongly marks the race of the Dennises. With a
half-consciousness of deficient genius, they usually idolize some
chimera, by adopting some extravagant principle; and they consider
themselves as original when they are only absurd.
Dennis had ever some misshapen idol of the mind, which he was
perpetually caressing with the zeal of perverted judgment or monstrous
taste. Once his frenzy ran against the Italian Opera; and in his
"Essay on Public Spirit," he ascribes its decline to its unmanly
warblings. I have seen a long letter by Dennis to the Earl of Oxford,
written to congratulate his lordship on his accession to power, and
the high hopes of the nation; but the greater part of the letter runs
on the Italian Opera, while Dennis instructs the Minister that the
national prosperity can never be effected while this general
corruption of the three kingdoms lies open!
Dennis has more than once recorded two material circumstances in the
life of a true critic; these are his _ill-nature_ and the _public
neglect_.
"I make no doubt," says he, "that upon the perusal of the critical
part of these letters, the _old accusation_ will be brought against
me, and there will be a _fresh outcry_ among thoughtless people that I
am _an ill-natured man_."
He entertained exalted opinions of his own powers, and he deeply felt
their public neglect.
"While others," he says in his tracts, "have been _too much
encouraged_, I have been _too much neglected_"--his favourite system,
that religion gives principally to great poetry its spirit and
enthusiasm, was an important point, which, he says, "has been left to
be treated by _a person who has the honour of being your lordship's
countryman_--your lordship knows that persons _so much and so long
oppressed as I have been_ have been always allowed to _say things
concerning themselves_ which in others might be offensive."
His vanity, we see, was equal to his vexation, and as he grew old he
became more enraged; and, writing too often without Aristotle or Locke
by his side, he gave the town pure Dennis, and almost ceased to be
read. "The oppression" of which he complains might not be less
imaginary than his alarm, while a treaty was pending with France, that
he should be delivered up to the Grand Monarque for having written a
tragedy, which no one could read, against his majesty.
It is melancholy, but it is useful, to record the mortifications of
such authors. Dennis had, no doubt, laboured with zeal which could
never meet a reward; and, perhaps, amid his critical labours, he
turned often with an aching heart from their barren contemplation to
that of the tranquillity he might have derived from an humbler
avocation.
It was not literature, then, that made the mind coarse, brutalising
the habits and inflaming the style of Dennis. He had thrown himself
among the walks of genius, and aspired to fix himself on a throne to
which Nature had refused him a legitimate claim. What a lasting source
of vexation and rage, even for a long-lived patriarch of criticism!
Accustomed to suspend the scourge over the heads of the first authors
of the age, he could not sit at a table or enter a coffee-house
without exerting the despotism of a literary dictator. How could the
mind that had devoted itself to the contemplation of masterpieces,
only to reward its industry by detailing to the public their human
frailties, experience one hour of amenity, one idea of grace, one
generous impulse of sensibility?
But the poor critic himself at length fell, really more the victim of
his criticisms than the genius he had insulted. Having incurred the
public neglect, the blind and helpless Cacus in his den sunk fast into
contempt, dragged on a life of misery, and in his last days, scarcely
vomiting his fire and smoke, became the most pitiable creature,
receiving the alms he craved from triumphant genius.