HUME is an author so celebrated, a philosopher so serene, and a man so
extremely amiable, if not fortunate, that we may be surprised to meet
his name inscribed in a catalogue of literary calamities. Look into
his literary life, and you will discover that the greater portion was
mortified and angried; and that the stoic so lost his temper, that had
not circumstances intervened which did not depend on himself, Hume had
abandoned his country and changed his name!
"The first success of most of my writings was not such as to be an
object of vanity." His "Treatise of Human Nature" fell dead-born from
the press. It was cast anew with another title, and was at first
little more successful. The following letter to Des Maiseaux, which I
believe is now first published, gives us the feelings of the youthful
and modest philosopher:--
"DAVID HUME TO DES MAISEAUX.
"SIR,--Whenever you see my name, you'll readily imagine the
subject of my letter. A young author can scarce forbear
speaking of his performance to all the world; but when he
meets with one that is a good judge, and whose instruction and
advice he depends on, there ought some indulgence to be given
him. You were so good as to promise me, that if you could find
leisure from your other occupations, you would look over my
system of philosophy, and at the same time ask the opinion of
such of your acquaintance as you thought proper judges. Have you
found it sufficiently intelligible? Does it appear true to you?
Do the style and language seem tolerable? These three questions
comprehend everything; and I beg of you to answer them with the
utmost freedom and sincerity. I know 'tis a custom to flatter
poets on their performances, but I hope philosophers may be
exempted; and the more so that their cases are by no means alike.
When we do not approve of anything in a poet we commonly can give
no reason for our dislikes but our particular taste; which not
being convincing, we think it better to conceal our sentiments
altogether. But every error in philosophy can be distinctly
markt and proved to be such; and this is a favour I flatter
myself you'll indulge me in with regard to the performance I put
into your hands. I am, indeed, afraid that it would be too great
a trouble for you to mark all the errors you have observed; I
shall only insist upon being informed of the most material of
them, and you may assure yourself will consider it as a singular
favour. I am, with great esteem
"Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
"_Aprile 6, 1739._
"DAVID HUME.
"Please direct to me at Ninewells, near Berwick-upon-Tweed."
Hume's own favourite "Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals"
came unnoticed and unobserved in the world. When he published the
first portion of his "History," which made even Hume himself sanguine
in his expectations, he tells his own tale:--
"I thought that I was the only historian that had at once neglected
present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular
prejudices; and, as the subject was suited to every capacity, I
expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment!
All classes of men and readers united in their rage against him who
had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and
the Earl of Strafford." "What was still more mortifying, the book
seemed to sink into oblivion, and in a twelvemonth not more than
forty-five copies were sold."
Even Hume, a stoic hitherto in his literary character, was struck
down, and dismayed--he lost all courage to proceed--and, had the war
not prevented him, "he had resolved to change his name, and never more
to have returned to his native country."
But an author, though born to suffer martyrdom, does not always
expire; he may be flayed like St. Bartholomew, and yet he can breathe
without a skin; stoned, like St. Stephen, and yet write on with a
broken head; and he has been even known to survive the flames,
notwithstanding the most precious part of an author, which is
obviously his book, has been burnt in an _auto da fe_. Hume once
more tried the press in "The Natural History of Religion." It proved
but another martyrdom! Still was the _fall_ (as he terms it) of
the first volume of his History haunting his nervous imagination,
when he found himself yet strong enough to hold a pen in his hand,
and ventured to produce a second, which "helped to buoy up its
unfortunate brother." But the third part, containing the reign of
Elizabeth, was particularly obnoxious, and he was doubtful whether he
was again to be led to the stake. But Hume, a little hardened by a
little success, grew, to use his own words, "callous against the
impressions of public folly," and completed his History, which was
now received "with tolerable, and but tolerable, success."
At length, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, our author began, a
year or two before he died, as he writes, to see "many _symptoms_ of
my literary reputation breaking out _at last_ with additional lustre,
though I know that I can have but few years to enjoy it." What a
provoking consolation for a philosopher, who, according to the result
of his own system, was close upon a state of annihilation!
To Hume, let us add the illustrious name of DRYDEN.
It was after preparing a second edition of Virgil, that the great
Dryden, who had lived, and was to die in harness, found himself still
obliged to seek for daily bread. Scarcely relieved from one heavy
task, he was compelled to hasten to another; and his efforts were now
stimulated by a domestic feeling, the expected return of his son in
ill-health from Rome. In a letter to his bookseller he pathetically
writes--"If it please God that _I must die of over-study_, I cannot
spend my life better than in preserving his." It was on this occasion,
on the verge of his seventieth year, as he describes himself in the
dedication of his Virgil, that, "worn out with study, and oppressed
with fortune," he contracted to supply the bookseller with 10,000
verses at sixpence a line!
What was his entire dramatic life but a series of vexation and
hostility, from his first play to his last? On those very boards
whence Dryden was to have derived the means of his existence and his
fame, he saw his foibles aggravated, and his morals aspersed.
Overwhelmed by the keen ridicule of Buckingham, and maliciously
mortified by the triumph which Settle, his meanest rival, was allowed
to obtain over him, and doomed still to encounter the cool malignant
eye of Langbaine, who read poetry only to detect plagiarism.
Contemporary genius is inspected with too much familiarity to be felt
with reverence; and the angry prefaces of Dryden only excited the
little revenge of the wits. How could such sympathise with injured,
but with lofty feelings? They spread two reports of him, which may not
be true, but which hurt him with the public. It was said that, being
jealous of the success of Creech, for his version of Lucretius, he
advised him to attempt Horace, in which Dryden knew he would fail--and
a contemporary haunter of the theatre, in a curious letter[133] on
_The Winter Diversions_, says of Congreve's angry preface to the
_Double Dealer_, that--
"The critics were severe upon this play, which gave the author
occasion to lash them in his epistle dedicatory--so that 'tis
generally thought _he has done his business and lost himself_; a thing
he owes to Mr. Dryden's _treacherous friendship_, who being _jealous
of the applause_ he had got by his _Old Bachelor deluded him_ into a
foolish imitation of his own way of writing angry prefaces."
This lively critic is still more vivacious on the great Dryden, who
had then produced his _Love Triumphant_, which, the critic says,
"Was damned by the universal cry of the town, _nemine contradicente_
but the _conceited poet_. He says in his prologue that 'this is the
last the town must expect from him;' he had done himself a kindness
had he taken his leave before." He then describes the success of
Southerne's _Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery_, and
concludes, "This kind usage will encourage desponding minor poets,
and _vex huffing Dryden and Congreve to madness_."
I have quoted thus much of this letter, that we may have before us
a true image of those feelings which contemporaries entertain of the
greater geniuses of their age; how they seek to level them; and in
what manner men of genius are doomed to be treated--slighted,
starved, and abused. Dryden and Congreve! the one the finest genius,
the other the most exquisite wit of our nation, are to be _vexed to
madness_!--their failures are not to excite sympathy, but contempt
or ridicule! How the feelings and the language of contemporaries
differ from that of posterity! And yet let _us_ not exult in our purer
and more dignified feelings--_we_ are, indeed, the _posterity_ of
Dryden and Congreve; but we are the _contemporaries_ of others who
must patiently hope for better treatment from our sons than they
have received from the fathers.
Dryden was no master of the pathetic, yet never were compositions more
pathetic than the Prefaces this great man has transmitted to
posterity! Opening all the feelings of his heart, we live among his
domestic sorrows. Johnson censures Dryden for saying _he has few
thanks to pay his stars that he was born among Englishmen_.[134] We
have just seen that Hume went farther, and sighed to fly to a retreat
beyond that country which knew not to reward genius.--What, if Dryden
felt the dignity of that character he supported, dare we blame his
frankness? If the age be ungenerous, shall contemporaries escape the
scourge of the great author, who feels he is addressing another age
more favourable to him?
Johnson, too, notices his "Self-commendation; his diligence in
reminding the world of his merits, and expressing, with very little
scruple, his high opinion of his own powers." Dryden shall answer in
his own words; with all the simplicity of Montaigne, he expresses
himself with the dignity that would have become Milton or Gray:--
"It is a vanity common to all writers to overvalue their own
productions; and it is better for me to own this failing in myself,
than the world to do it for me. _For what other reason have I spent
my life in such an unprofitable study? Why am I grown old in seeking
so barren a reward as fame?_ The same parts and application which have
made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown, which
are often given to men of as little learning, and less honesty, than
myself."
How feelingly Whitehead paints the situation of Dryden in his old
age:--
Yet lives the man, how wild soe'er his aim,
Would madly barter fortune's smiles for fame?
Well pleas'd to shine, through each recording page,
The hapless Dryden of a shameless age!
Ill-fated bard! where'er thy name appears,
The weeping verse a sad memento bears;
Ah! what avail'd the enormous blaze between
Thy dawn of glory and thy closing scene!
When sinking nature asks our kind repairs,
Unstrung the nerves, and silver'd o'er the hairs;
When stay'd reflection came uncall'd at last,
And gray experience counts each folly past!
MICKLE'S version of the Lusiad offers an affecting instance of the
melancholy fears which often accompany the progress of works of
magnitude, undertaken by men of genius. Five years he had buried
himself in a farm-house, devoted to the solitary labour; and he closes
his preface with the fragment of a poem, whose stanzas have
perpetuated all the tremblings and the emotions, whose unhappy
influence the author had experienced through the long work. Thus
pathetically he addresses the Muse:--
----Well thy meed repays thy worthless toil;
Upon thy houseless head pale want descends
In bitter shower; and taunting scorn still rends
And wakes thee trembling from thy golden dream:
In vetchy bed, or loathly dungeon ends
Thy idled life----
And when, at length, the great and anxious labour was completed, the
author was still more unhappy than under the former influence of his
foreboding terrors. The work is dedicated to the Duke of Buccleugh.
Whether his Grace had been prejudiced against the poetical labour by
Adam Smith, who had as little comprehension of the nature of poetry as
becomes a political economist, or from whatever cause, after
possessing it for six weeks the Duke had never condescended to open
the volume. It is to the honour of Mickle that the Dedication is a
simple respectful inscription, in which the poet had not compromised
his dignity,--and that in the second edition he had the magnanimity
not to withdraw the dedication to this statue-like patron. Neither was
the critical reception of this splendid labour of five devoted years
grateful to the sensibility of the author: he writes to a friend--
"Though my work is well received at Oxford, I will honestly own to
you, some things have hurt me. A few grammatical slips in the
introduction have been mentioned; and some things in the notes about
Virgil, Milton, and Homer, have been called the arrogance of
criticism. But the greatest offence of all is, what I say of blank
verse."
He was, indeed, after this great work was given to the public, as
unhappy as at any preceding period of his life; and Mickle, too, like
Hume and Dryden, could feel a wish to forsake his native land! He
still found his "head houseless;" and "the vetchy bed" and "loathly
dungeon" still haunted his dreams. "To write for the booksellers is
what I never will do," exclaimed this man of genius, though struck by
poverty. He projected an edition of his own poems by subscription.
"Desirous of giving an edition of my works, in which I shall bestow
the utmost attention, which, perhaps, will be my final farewell to
that blighted spot (worse than the most bleak mountains of Scotland)
yclept Parnassus; after this labour is finished, if Governor Johnstone
cannot or does not help me to a little independence, _I will certainly
bid adieu to Europe, to unhappy suspense, and perhaps also to the
chagrin of soul which I feel to accompany it_."
Such was the language which cannot now be read without exciting our
sympathy for the author of the version of an epic, which, after a
solemn devotion of no small portion of the most valuable years
of life, had been presented to the world, with not sufficient
remuneration or notice of the author to create even hope in the
sanguine temperament of a poet. Mickle was more honoured at Lisbon
than in his own country. So imperceptible are the gradations of
public favour to the feelings of genius, and so vast an interval
separates that author who does not immediately address the tastes
or the fashions of his age, from the reward or the enjoyment of
his studies.
We cannot account, among the lesser calamities of literature, that of
a man of genius, who, dedicating his days to the composition of a
voluminous and national work, when that labour is accomplished, finds,
on its publication, the hope of fame, and perhaps other hopes as
necessary to reward past toil, and open to future enterprise, all
annihilated. Yet this work neglected or not relished, perhaps even the
sport of witlings, afterwards is placed among the treasures of our
language, when the author is no more! but what is posthumous
gratitude, could it reach even the ear of an angel?
The calamity is unavoidable; but this circumstance does not lessen it.
New works must for a time be submitted to popular favour; but
posterity is the inheritance of genius. The man of genius, however,
who has composed this great work, calculates his vigils, is best
acquainted with its merits, and is not without an anticipation of the
future feeling of his country; he
But weeps the more, because he weeps in vain.
Such is the fate which has awaited many great works; and the heart of
genius has died away on its own labours. I need not go so far back as
the Elizabethan age to illustrate a calamity which will excite the
sympathy of every man of letters; but the great work of a man of no
ordinary genius presents itself on this occasion.
This great work is "The Polyolbion" of MICHAEL DRAYTON; a poem
unrivalled for its magnitude and its character.[135] The genealogy of
poetry is always suspicious; yet I think it owed its birth to
Leland's magnificent view of his intended work on Britain, and was
probably nourished by the "Britannia" of Camden, who inherited the
mighty industry, with out the poetical spirit, of Leland; Drayton
embraced both. This singular combination of topographical erudition
and poetical fancy constitutes a national work--a union that some may
conceive not fortunate, no more than "the slow length" of its
Alexandrine metre, for the purposes of mere delight. Yet what
theme can be more elevating than a bard chanting to his "Fatherland,"
as the Hollanders called their country? Our tales of ancient glory,
our worthies who must not die, our towns, our rivers, and our
mountains, all glancing before the picturesque eye of the naturalist
and the poet! It is, indeed, a labour of Hercules; but it was not
unaccompanied by the lyre of Apollo.
This national work was ill received; and the great author dejected,
never pardoned his contemporaries, and even lost his temper.[136]
Drayton and his poetical friends beheld indignantly the trifles of the
hour overpowering the neglected Polyolbion.