DR. ZACHARY GREY, the editor of "Hudibras," is the father of our
modern commentators.[74] His case is rather peculiar; I know not
whether the father, by an odd anticipation, was doomed to suffer
for the sins of his children, or whether his own have been visited
on the third generation; it is certain that never was an author
more overpowered by the attacks he received from the light and
indiscriminating shafts of ignorant wits. He was ridiculed and abused
for having assisted us to comprehend the wit of an author, which,
without that aid, at this day would have been nearly lost to us; and
whose singular subject involved persons and events which required the
very thing he gave,--historical and explanatory notes.
A first thought, and all the danger of an original invention, which is
always imperfectly understood by the superficial, was poor Dr. Grey's
merit. He was modest and laborious, and he had the sagacity to
discover what Butler wanted, and what the public required. His project
was a happy thought, to commentate on a singular work which has
scarcely a parallel in modern literature, if we except the "Satyre
Menippee" of the French, which is, in prose, the exact counterpart of
"Hudibras" in rhyme; for our rivals have had the same state
revolution, in which the same dramatic personages passed over their
national stage, with the same incidents, in the civil wars of the
ambitious Guises, and the citizen-reformers. They, too, found a
Butler, though in prose, a Grey in Duchat, and, as well as they could,
a Hogarth. An edition, which appeared in 1711, might have served as
the model of Grey's Hudibras.
It was, however, a happy thought in our commentator, to turn over the
contemporary writers to collect the events and discover the personages
alluded to by Butler; to read what the poet read, to observe what the
poet observed. This was at once throwing himself and the reader back
into an age, of which even the likeness had disappeared, and
familiarising us with distant objects, which had been lost to us in
the haze and mists of time. For this, not only a new mode of
travelling, but a new road was to be opened; the secret history, the
fugitive pamphlet, the obsolete satire, the ancient comedy--such were
the many curious volumes whose dust was to be cleared away, to cast a
new radiance on the fading colours of a moveable picture of manners;
the wittiest ever exhibited to mankind. This new mode of research,
even at this moment, is imperfectly comprehended, still ridiculed even
by those who could never have understood a writer who will only be
immortal in the degree he is comprehended--and whose wit could not
have been felt but for the laborious curiosity of him whose "reading"
has been too often aspersed for "such reading"
As was never read.
Grey was outrageously attacked by all the wits, first by Warburton, in
his preface to Shakspeare, who declares that "he hardly thinks there
ever appeared so execrable a heap of nonsense under the name of
commentaries, as hath been lately given us on a certain satyric poet
of the last age." It is odd enough, Warburton had himself contributed
towards these very notes, but, for some cause which has not been
discovered, had quarrelled with Dr. Grey. I will venture a conjecture
on this great conjectural critic. Warburton was always meditating to
give an edition of his own of our old writers, and the sins he
committed against Shakspeare he longed to practise on Butler, whose
times were, indeed, a favourite period of his researches. Grey had
anticipated him, and though Warburton had half reluctantly yielded the
few notes he had prepared, his proud heart sickened when he beheld
the amazing subscription Grey obtained for his first edition of
"Hudibras;" he received for that work 1500_l._[75]--a proof that this
publication was felt as a want by the public.
Such, however, is one of those blunt, dogmatic censures in which
Warburton abounds, to impress his readers with the weight of his
opinions; this great man wrote more for effect than any other of our
authors, as appears by his own or some friend's confession, that if
his edition of Shakspeare did no honour to that bard, this was not the
design of the commentator--which was only to do honour to himself by a
display of his own exuberant erudition.
The poignant Fielding, in his preface to his "Journey to Lisbon," has
a fling at the gravity of our doctor. "The laborious, much-read Dr. Z.
Grey, of whose redundant notes on 'Hudibras' I shall only say that it
is, I am confident, the single book extant in which above 500 authors
are quoted, not one of which could be found in the collection of the
late Dr. Mead." Mrs. Montague, in her letters, severely characterises
the miserable father of English commentators; she wrote in youth and
spirits, with no knowledge of books, and _before_ even the unlucky
commentator had published his work, but wit is the bolder by
anticipation. She observes that "his dulness may be a proper ballast
for doggrel; and it is better that his stupidity should make jest dull
than serious and sacred things ridiculous;" alluding to his numerous
theological tracts.
Such then are the hard returns which some authors are doomed to
receive as the rewards of useful labours from those who do not even
comprehend their nature; a wit should not be admitted as a critic till
he has first proved by his gravity, or his dulness if he chooses, that
he has some knowledge; for it is the privilege and nature of wit to
write fastest and best on what it least understands. Knowledge only
encumbers and confines its flights.