For, rather than I'll to the west return,
I'll beg of thee first, here to have mine urn.
The Devonians were avenged; for the satirist of the _English Arcadia_
was condemned again to reside by "its rockie side," among "its rockie
men."
Such has been the usual chant of provincial poets; and, if the
"silky-soft Favonian gales" of Devon, with its "Worthies," could not
escape the anger of such a poet as Herrick, what county may hope to be
saved from the invective of querulous and dissatisfied poets?
In this calamity of authors I will show that a great poet felicitated
himself that poetry was not the business of his life; and afterwards I
will bring forward an evidence that the immoderate pursuit of poetry,
with a very moderate genius, creates a perpetual state of illusion;
and pursues grey-headed folly even to the verge of the grave.
Pope imagined that PRIOR was only fit to make verses, and less
qualified for business than Addison himself. Had Prior lived to finish
that history of his own times he was writing, we should have seen how
far the opinion of Pope was right. Prior abandoned the Whigs, who had
been his first patrons, for the Tories, who were now willing to adopt
the political apostate. This versatility for place and pension rather
shows that Prior was a little more "qualified for business than
Addison."
Johnson tells us "Prior lived at a time when the rage of party
detected all which was any man's interest to hide; and, as little ill
is heard of Prior, it is certain that not much was known:" more,
however, than Johnson supposes. This great man came to the pleasing
task of his poetical biography totally unprepared, except with the
maturity of his genius, as a profound observer of men, and an
invincible dogmatist in taste. In the history of the times, Johnson is
deficient, which has deprived us of that permanent instruction and
delight his intellectual powers had poured around it. The character
and the secret history of Prior are laid open in the "State
Poems;"[138] a bitter Whiggish narrative, too particular to be
entirely fictitious, while it throws a new light on Johnson's
observation of Prior's "propensity to sordid converse, and the low
delights of mean company," which Johnson had imperfectly learned from
some attendant on Prior.
A vintner's boy, the wretch was first preferr'd
To wait at Vice's gates, and pimp for bread;
To hold the candle, and sometimes the door,
Let in the drunkard, and let out----.
But, as to villains it has often chanc'd,
Was for his wit and wickedness advanc'd.
Let no man think his new behaviour strange,
No metamorphosis can nature change;
Effects are chain'd to causes; generally,
The rascal born will like a rascal die.
His Prince's favours follow'd him in vain;
They chang'd the circumstance, but not the man.
While out of pocket, and his spirits low,
He'd beg, write panegyrics, cringe, and bow;
But when good pensions had his labours crown'd,
His panegyrics into satires turn'd;
O what assiduous pains does Prior take
To let great Dorset see he could mistake!
Dissembling nature false description gave,
Show'd him the poet, but conceal'd the knave.
To us the poet Prior is better known than the placeman Prior; yet in
his own day the reverse often occurred. Prior was a State Proteus;
Sunderland, the most ambiguous of politicians, was the _Erle Robert_
to whom he addressed his _Mice_; and Prior was now Secretary to the
Embassy at Ryswick and Paris; independent even of the English
ambassador--now a Lord of Trade, and, at length, a Minister
Plenipotentiary to Louis XIV.
Our business is with his poetical feelings.
Prior declares he was chiefly "a poet by accident;" and hints, in
collecting his works, that "some of them, as they came singly from the
first impression, have lain long and quietly in Mr. Tonson's shop."
When his party had their downfall, and he was confined two years in
prison, he composed his "Alma," to while away prison hours; and when,
at length, he obtained his freedom, he had nothing remaining but that
fellowship which, in his exaltation, he had been censured for
retaining, but which he then said he might have to live upon at last.
Prior had great sagacity, and too right a notion of human affairs in
politics, to expect his party would last his time, or in poetry, that
he could ever derive a revenue from rhymes!
I will now show that that rare personage, a sensible poet, in
reviewing his life in that hour of solitude when no passion is
retained but truth, while we are casting up the amount of our past
days scrupulously to ourselves, felicitated himself that the natural
bent of his mind, which inclined to poetry, had been checked, and not
indulged, throughout his whole life. Prior congratulated himself that
he had been only "a poet by accident," not by occupation.
In a manuscript by Prior, consisting of "An Essay on Learning," I find
this curious and interesting passage entirely relating to the poet
himself:--
"I remember nothing farther in life than that I made verses; I chose
Guy Earl of Warwick for my first hero, and killed Colborne the giant
before I was big enough for Westminster School. But I had two
accidents in youth which hindered me from being quite possessed with
the Muse. I was bred in a college where prose was more in fashion
than verse,--and, as soon as I had taken my first degree, I was sent
the King's Secretary to the Hague; there I had enough to do in
studying French and Dutch, and altering my Terentian and Virgilian
style into that of Articles and Conventions; so that _poetry, which by
the bent of my mind might have become the business of my life, was, by
the happiness of my education, only the amusement of it_; and in this,
too, having the prospect of some little fortune to be made, and
friendships to be cultivated with the great men, I did not launch much
into _satire_, which, however agreeable for the present to the writers
and encouragers of it, does in time do neither of them good;
considering the uncertainty of fortune, and the various changes of
Ministry, and that every man, as he resents, may punish in his turn of
greatness and power."
Such is the wholesome counsel of the Solomon of Bards to an aspirant,
who, in his ardour for poetical honours, becomes careless of their
consequences, if he can but possess them.
I have now to bring forward one of those unhappy men of rhyme, who,
after many painful struggles, and a long querulous life, have died
amid the ravings of their immortality--one of those miserable bards of
mediocrity whom no beadle-critic could ever whip out of the poetical
parish.
There is a case in Mr. Haslam's "Observations on Insanity," who
assures us that the patient he describes was insane, which will appear
strange to those who have watched more poets than lunatics!
"This patient, when admitted, was very noisy, and importunately
talkative--reciting passages from the Greek and Roman poets, or
talking of his own literary importance. He became so troublesome to
the other madmen, who were sufficiently occupied with their own
speculations, that they avoided and excluded him from the common room;
so that he was at last reduced to the mortifying situation of being
the sole auditor of his own compositions. He conceived himself very
nearly related to Anacreon, and possessed of the peculiar vein of that
poet."
Such is the very accurate case drawn up by a medical writer. I can
conceive nothing in it to warrant the charge of insanity; Mr. Haslam,
not being a poet, seems to have mistaken the common orgasm of poetry
for insanity itself.
Of such poets, one was the late PERCIVAL STOCKDALE, who, with the most
entertaining simplicity, has, in "The Memoirs of his Life and
Writings," presented us with a full-length figure of this class of
poets; those whom the perpetual pursuits of poetry, however
indifferent, involve in a perpetual illusion; they are only discovered
in their profound obscurity by the piteous cries they sometimes utter;
they live on querulously, which is an evil for themselves, and to no
purpose of life, which is an evil to others.
I remember in my youth Percival Stockdale as a condemned poet of the
times, of whom the bookseller Flexney complained that, whenever this
poet came to town, it cost him twenty pounds. Flexney had been the
publisher of Churchill's works; and, never forgetting the time when he
published "The Rosciad," which at first did not sell, and afterwards
became the most popular poem, he was speculating all his life for
another Churchill, and another quarto poem. Stockdale usually brought
him what he wanted--and Flexney found the workman, but never the
work.
Many a year had passed in silence, and Stockdale could hardly be
considered alive, when, to the amazement of some curious observers of
our literature, a venerable man, about his eightieth year, a vivacious
spectre, with a cheerful voice, seemed as if throwing aside his shroud
in gaiety--to come to assure us of the immortality of one of the worst
poets of the time.
To have taken this portrait from the life would have been difficult;
but the artist has painted himself, and manufactured his own colours;
else had our ordinary ones but faintly copied this Chinese grotesque
picture--the glare and the glow must be borrowed from his own
palette.
Our self-biographer announces his "Life" with prospective rapture, at
the moment he is turning a sad retrospect on his "Writings;" for this
was the chequered countenance of his character, a smile while he was
writing, a tear when he had published! "I know," he exclaims, "that
this book will live and _escape the havoc that has been made of my
literary fame_." Again--"Before I die, I _think my literary fame may
be fixed on an adamantine foundation_." Our old acquaintance, Blas of
Santillane, at setting out on his travels, conceived himself to be _la
huitieme merveille du monde_; but here is one, who, after the
experience of a long life, is writing a large work to prove himself
that very curious thing.
What were these mighty and unknown works? Stockdale confesses that all
his verses have been received with negligence or contempt; yet their
mediocrity, the absolute poverty of his genius, never once occurred to
the poetical patriarch.
I have said that the frequent origin of bad poets is owing to bad
critics; and it was the early friends of Stockdale, who, mistaking his
animal spirits for genius, by directing them into the walks of poetry,
bewildered him for ever. It was their hand that heedlessly fixed the
bias in the rolling bowl of his restless mind.
He tells us that while yet a boy of twelve years old, one day talking
with his father at Branxton, where the battle of Flodden was fought,
the old gentleman said to him with great emphasis--
"You may make that place remarkable for your birth, if you take care
of yourself. My father's understanding was clear and strong, and he
could penetrate human nature. He already saw that _I had natural
advantages above those of common men_."
But it seems that, at some earlier period even than his twelfth year,
some good-natured Pythian had predicted that Stockdale would be "a
poet." This ambiguous oracle was still listened to, after a lapse of
more than half a century, and the decree is still repeated with fond
credulity:--"Notwithstanding," he exclaims, "_all that is past_, O
thou god of my mind! (meaning the aforesaid Pythian) I still hope that
my future fame will decidedly _warrant the prediction_!"
Stockdale had, in truth, an excessive sensibility of temper, without
any control over it--he had all the nervous contortions of the Sybil,
without her inspiration; and shifting, in his many-shaped life,
through all characters and all pursuits, "exalting the olive of
Minerva with the grape of Bacchus," as he phrases it, he was a lover,
a tutor, a recruiting officer, a reviewer, and, at length, a
clergyman; but a poet eternally! His mind was so curved, that nothing
could stand steadily upon it. The accidents of such a life he
describes with such a face of rueful simplicity, and mixes up so much
grave drollery and merry pathos with all he says or does, and his
ubiquity is so wonderful, that he gives an idea of a character, of
whose existence we had previously no conception, that of a sentimental
harlequin.[139]
In the early part of his life, Stockdale undertook many poetical
pilgrimages; he visited the house where Thomson was born; the
coffee-room where Dryden presided among the wits, &c. Recollecting the
influence of these local associations, he breaks forth, "Neither the
unrelenting coldness, nor the repeated insolence of mankind, can
prevent me from thinking that _something like this enthusiastic
devotion may hereafter be paid to ME_."
Perhaps till this appeared it might not be suspected that any unlucky
writer of verse could ever feel such a magical conviction of his
poetical stability. Stockdale, to assist this pilgrimage to his
various shrines, has particularised all the spots where his works were
composed! Posterity has many shrines to visit, and will be glad to
know (for perhaps it may excite a smile) that "'The Philosopher,' a
poem, was written in Warwick Court, Holborn, in 1769,"--"'The Life of
Waller,' in Round Court, in the Strand."--A good deal he wrote in
"May's Buildings, St. Martin's Lane," &c., but
"In my lodgings at Portsmouth, in St. Mary's Street, I wrote my 'Elegy
on the Death of a Lady's Linnet.' It will not be uninteresting to
sensibility, to thinking and elegant minds. It deeply interested me,
and therefore produced not one of my weakest and worst written poems.
It was directly opposite to a noted house, which was distinguished by
the name of _the green rails_; where the riotous orgies of Naxos and
Cythera contrasted with my quiet and purer occupations."
I would not, however, take his own estimate of his own poems; because,
after praising them outrageously, he seems at times to doubt if they
are as exquisite as he thinks them! He has composed no one in which
some poetical excellence does not appear--and yet in each nice
decision he holds with difficulty the trepidations of the scales of
criticism--for he tells us of "An Address to the Supreme Being," that
"it is distinguished throughout with a natural and fervid piety; it is
flowing and poetical; it is not without its pathos." And yet,
notwithstanding all this condiment, the confection is evidently good
for nothing; for he discovers that "this flowing, fervid, and poetical
address" is "not animated with that vigour which gives dignity and
impression to poetry." One feels for such unhappy and infected
authors--they would think of themselves as they wish at the moment
that truth and experience come in upon them and rack them with the
most painful feelings.
Stockdale once wrote a declamatory life of Waller. When Johnson's
appeared, though in his biography, says Stockdale, "he paid a large
tribute to the abilities of Goldsmith and Hawkesworth, yet _he made no
mention of my name_." It is evident that Johnson, who knew him well,
did not care to remember it. When Johnson was busied on the Life of
Pope, Stockdale wrote a pathetic letter to him _earnestly imploring_
"a generous tribute from his authority." Johnson was still obdurately
silent; and Stockdale, who had received many acts of humane kindness
from him, adds with fretful _naivete_,
"In his sentiments towards me he was divided between a benevolence to
my interests, and a _coldness to my fame_."
Thus, in a moment, in the perverted heart of the scribbler, will ever
be cancelled all human obligation for acts of benevolence, if we are
_cold to his fame_!
And yet let us not too hastily condemn these unhappy men, even for the
violation of the lesser moral feelings--it is often but a fatal effect
from a melancholy cause; that hallucination of the intellect, in
which, if their genius, as they call it, sometimes appears to sparkle
like a painted bubble in the buoyancy of their vanity, they are also
condemned to see it sinking in the dark horrors of a disappointed
author, who has risked his life and his happiness on the miserable
productions of his pen. The agonies of a disappointed author cannot,
indeed, be contemplated without pain. If they can instruct, the
following quotation will have its use.
Among the innumerable productions of Stockdale, was a "History of
Gibraltar," which might have been interesting, from his having resided
there: in a moment of despair, like Medea, he immolated his
unfortunate offspring.
"When I had arrived at within a day's work of its conclusion, in
consequence of some immediate and mortifying accidents, _my literary
adversity_, and all my other misfortunes, took _fast hold of my mind;
oppressed it extremely; and reduced it to a stage of the deepest
dejection and despondency_. In this unhappy view of life, I made a
sudden resolution--_never more to prosecute the profession of an
author_; to retire altogether from the world, and read only for
consolation and amusement. _I committed to the flames my History of
Gibraltar and my translation of Marsollier's Life of Cardinal
Ximenes_; for which the bookseller had refused to pay me the fifty
guineas, according to agreement."
This claims a tear! Never were the agonies of literary disappointment
more pathetically told.
But as it is impossible to have known poor deluded Stockdale, and not
to have laughed at him more than to have wept for him--so the
catastrophe of this author's literary life is as finely in character
as all the acts. That catastrophe, of course, is his last poem.
After many years his poetical demon having been chained from the
world, suddenly broke forth on the reports of a French invasion. The
narrative shall proceed in his own inimitable manner.
"My poetical spirit excited me to write my poem of 'The Invincible
Island.' I never found myself in a happier disposition to compose, nor
ever wrote with more pleasure. I presumed warmly to hope that unless
_inveterate prejudice and malice_ were as invincible as our island
itself, it would have _the diffusive circulation_ which I earnestly
desired.
"Flushed with this idea--borne impetuously along _by ambition and by
hope, though they had often deluded me_, I set off in the mail-coach
from Durham for London, on the 9th of December, 1797, at midnight, and
in a severe storm. On my arrival in town my poem was advertised,
printed, and published with great expedition. It was printed for
Clarke in New Bond-street. For several days the sale was very
promising; and my bookseller as well as myself entertained sanguine
hopes; _but the demand for the poem relaxed gradually_! From this last
of many literary misfortunes, I inferred that _prejudice_ and
_malignity_, in my fate as an _author_, seemed, indeed, to be
invincible."
The catastrophe of the poet is much better told than anything in the
poem, which had not merit enough to support that interest which the
temporary subject had excited.
Let the fate of Stockdale instruct some, and he will not have written
in vain the "Memoirs of his Life and Writings." I have only turned the
literary feature to our eye; it was combined with others, equally
striking, from the same mould in which that was cast. Stockdale
imagined he possessed an intuitive knowledge of human nature. He says,
"everything that constituted my nature, my acquirements, my habits,
and my fortune, conspired to let in upon me a complete knowledge of
human nature." A most striking proof of this knowledge is his
parallel, after the manner of Plutarch, between Charles XII. and
himself! He frankly confesses there were some points in which he and
the Swedish monarch did not exactly resemble each other. He thinks,
for instance, that the King of Sweden had a somewhat more fervid and
original genius than himself, and was likewise a little more robust in
his person--but, subjoins Stockdale,
"Of our reciprocal fortune, achievements, and conduct, some parts will
be to _his_ advantage, and some to _mine_."
Yet in regard to _Fame_, the main object between him and Charles XII.,
Stockdale imagined that his own
"Will not probably take its fixed and immoveable station, and shine
with its expanded and permanent splendour, till it consecrates his
ashes, till it illumines his tomb!"
POPE hesitated at deciding on the durability of his poetry. PRIOR
congratulates himself that he had not devoted all his days to rhymes.
STOCKDALE imagines his fame is to commence at the very point (the
tomb) where genius trembles its own may nearly terminate!
To close this article, I could wish to regale the poetical Stockdales
with a delectable morsel of fraternal biography; such would be the
life, and its memorable close, of ELKANAH SETTLE, who imagined himself
to be a great poet, when he was placed on a level with Dryden by the
town-wits, (gentle spirits!) to vex genius.
Settle's play of _The Empress of Morocco_ was the very first "adorned
with sculptures."[140] However, in due time, the Whigs despising his
rhymes, Settle tried his prose for the Tories; but he was a magician
whose enchantments never charmed. He at length obtained the office of
the city poet, when lord mayors were proud enough to have laureates in
their annual pageants.
When Elkanah Settle published any _party poem_, he sent copies round
to the chiefs of the party, accompanied with addresses, to extort
pecuniary presents. He had latterly one standard _Elegy_ and
_Epithalamium_ printed off with blanks, which, by the ingenious
contrivance of filling up with the names of any considerable person
who died or was married, no one who was going out of life or entering
it _could pass scot-free_ from the _tax levied by his hacknied muse_.
The following letter accompanied his presentation copy to the Duke of
Somerset, of a poem, in Latin and English, on the Hanover succession,
when Elkanah wrote for the Whigs, as he had for the Tories:--
"SIR,--Nothing but the greatness of the subject could encourage my
presumption in laying the enclosed Essay at your Grace's feet,
being, with all profound humility, your Grace's most dutiful
servant,
"E. SETTLE."
In the latter part of his life Settle dropped still lower, and became
the poet of a booth at Bartholomew Fair, and composed drolls, for
which the rival of Dryden, it seems, had a genius!--but it was little
respected--for two great personages, "Mrs. Mynns and her daughter,
Mrs. Leigh," approving of their great poet's happy invention in one of
his own drolls, "St. George for England," of a green dragon, as large
as life, insisted, as the tyrant of old did to the inventor of the
brazen bull, that the first experiment should be made on the artist
himself, and Settle was tried in his own dragon; he crept in with all
his genius, and did "act the dragon, enclosed in a case of green
leather of his own invention." The circumstance is recorded in the
lively verse of Young, in his "Epistle to Pope concerning the authors
of the age."
Poor Elkanah, all other changes past,
For bread in Smithfield dragons hiss'd at last,
Spit streams of fire to make the butchers gape,
And found his manners suited to his shape;
Such is the fate of talents misapplied,
So lived your prototype, and so he died.