Literary, like political history, is interested in the cause of an
obscure individual, when deprived of his just rights--character of
CAMDEN--BROOKE'S "Discovery of Errors" in the "Britannia"--his
work disturbed in the printing--afterwards enlarged, but never
suffered to be published--whether BROOKE'S motive was personal
rancour!--the persecuted author becomes vindictive--his keen reply
to CAMDEN--CAMDEN'S beautiful picture of calumny--BROOKE furnishes
a humorous companion-piece--CAMDEN'S want of magnanimity and
justice--when great authors are allowed to suppress the works of
their adversary, the public receives the injury and the insult.
In the literary as well as the political commonwealth, the cause of an
obscure individual violently deprived of his just rights is a common
one. We protest against the power of genius itself, when it strangles
rather than wrestles with its adversary, or combats in mail against a
naked man. The general interests of literature are involved by the
illegitimate suppression of a work, of which the purpose is to correct
another, whatever may be the invective which accompanies the
correction: nor are we always to assign to malignant motives even this
spirit of invective, which, though it betrays a contracted genius, may
also show the earnestness of an honest one.
The quarrel between CAMDEN, the great author of the "Britannia," and
BROOKE, the "York Herald," may illustrate these principles. It has
hitherto been told to the shame of the inferior genius; but the
history of Brooke was imperfectly known to his contemporaries. Crushed
by oppression, his tale was marred in the telling. A century sometimes
passes away before the world can discover the truth even of a private
history.
Brooke is aspersed as a man of the meanest talents, insensible to the
genius of Camden, rankling with envy at his fame, and correcting the
"Britannia" out of mere spite.
When the history of Brooke is known, and his labours fairly estimated,
we shall blame him much less than he has been blamed; and censure
Camden, who has escaped all censure, and whose conduct, in the
present instance, was destitute of magnanimity and justice.
The character of the author of "Britannia" is great, and this error of
his feelings, now first laid to his charge, may be attributed as much
to the weakness of the age as to his own extreme timidity, and perhaps
to a little pride. Conscious as was Camden of enlarged views, we can
easily pardon him for the contempt he felt, when he compared them with
the subordinate ones of his cynical adversary.
Camden possessed one of those strongly directed minds which early in
life plan some vast labour, while their imagination and their industry
feed on it for many successive years; and they shed the flower and
sweetness of their lives in the preparation of a work which at its
maturity excites the gratitude of their nation. His passion for our
national antiquities discovered itself even in his school-days, grew
up with him at the University; and, when afterwards engaged in his
public duties as master at Westminster school, he there composed his
"Britannia," "at spare hours, and on festival days." To the perpetual
care of his work, he voluntarily sacrificed all other views in life,
and even drew himself away from domestic pleasures; for he refused
marriage and preferments, which might interrupt his beloved studies!
The work at length produced, received all the admiration due to so
great an enterprise; and even foreigners, as the work was composed in
the universal language of learning, could sympathise with Britons,
when they contemplated the stupendous labour. Camden was honoured by
the titles (for the very names of illustrious genius become such), of
the Varro, the Strabo, and the Pausanias of Britain.
While all Europe admired the "Britannia," a cynical genius, whose
mind seemed bounded by his confined studies, detected one error
amidst the noble views the mighty volume embraced; the single one
perhaps he could perceive, and for which he stood indebted to his
office as "York Herald." Camden, in an appendage to the end of
each county, had committed numerous genealogical errors, which he
afterwards affected, in his defence, to consider as trivial
matters in so great a history, and treats his adversary with all the
contempt and bitterness he could inflict on him; but Ralph Brooke
entertained very high notions of the importance of heraldical
studies, and conceived that the "Schoolmaster" Camden, as he
considered him, had encroached on the rights and honours of his
College of Heralds. When particular objects engage our studies, we
are apt to raise them in the scale of excellence to a degree
disproportioned to their real value; and are thus liable to incur
ridicule. But it should be considered that many useful students
are not philosophers, and the pursuits of their lives are never
ridiculous to them. It is not the interest of the public to degrade
this class too low. Every species of study contributes to the
perfection of human knowledge, by that universal bond which connects
them all in a philosophical mind.
Brooke prepared "A Discovery of Certain Errors in the Much-commended
Britannia." When we consider Brooke's character, as headstrong with
heraldry as Don Quixote's with romances of chivalry, we need not
attribute his motives (as Camden himself, with the partial feelings
of an author, does, and subsequent writers echo) to his envy at
Camden's promotion to be Clarencieux King of Arms; for it appears
that Brooke began his work before this promotion. The indecent
excesses of his pen, with the malicious charges of plagiarism he
brings against Camden for the use he made of Leland's collections,
only show the insensibility of the mere heraldist to the nobler
genius of the historian. Yet Brooke had no ordinary talents: his
work is still valuable for his own peculiar researches; but his
_naive_ shrewdness, his pointed precision, the bitter invective, and
the caustic humour of his cynical pen, give an air of originality,
if not of genius, which no one has dared to notice. Brooke's first
work against Camden was violently disturbed in its progress, and
hurried, in a mutilated state, into the world, without licence or a
publisher's name. Thus impeded, and finally crushed, the howl of
persecution followed his name; and subsequent writers servilely traced
his character from their partial predecessors.
But Brooke, though denied the fair freedom of the press, and a victim
to the powerful connexions of Camden, calmly pursued his silent labour
with great magnanimity. He wrote his "Second Discovery of Errors," an
enlargement of the first. This he carefully finished for the press,
but could never get published. The secret history of the controversy
may be found there.[396]
Brooke had been loudly accused of indulging a personal rancour against
Camden, and the motive of his work was attributed to envy of his great
reputation; a charge constantly repeated.
Yet this does not appear, for when Brooke first began his "Discovery
of Errors," he did not design its publication; for he liberally offered
Camden his Observations and Collections. They were fastidiously, perhaps
haughtily, rejected; on this pernicious and false principle, that to
correct his errors in genealogy might discredit the whole work. On
which absurdity Brooke shrewdly remarks--"As if healing the sores would
have maimed the body." He speaks with more humility on this occasion
than an insulted, yet a skilful writer, was likely to do, who had his
labours considered, as he says, "worthy neither of thanks nor
acceptance."
"The rat is not so contemptible but he may help the lion, at a pinch,
out of those nets wherein his strength is hampered; and the words of
an inferior may often carry matter in them to admonish his superior of
some important consideration; and surely, of what account soever I
might have seemed to this learned man, yet, in respect to my
profession and courteous offer, (I being an officer-of-arms, and he
then but a schoolmaster), might well have vouchsafed the perusal of my
notes."
When he published, our herald stated the reasons of writing against
Camden with good-humour, and rallies him on his "incongruity in his
principles of heraldry--for which I challenge him!--for depriving some
nobles of issue to succeed them, who had issue, of whom are descended
many worthy families: denying barons and earls that were, and making
barons and earls of others that were not; mistaking the son for the
father, and the father for the son; affirming legitimate children to
be illegitimate, and illegitimate to be legitimate; and framing
incestuous and unnatural marriages, making the father to marry the
son's wife, and the son his own mother."
He treats Camden with the respect due to his genius, while he
judiciously distinguishes where the greatest ought to know when to
yield.
"The most abstruse arts I profess not, but yield the palm and victory
to mine adversary, that great learned Mr. Camden, with whom, yet, a
long experimented navigator may contend about his chart and compass,
about havens, creeks, and sounds; so I, an ancient herald, a little
dispute, without imputation of audacity, concerning the honour of
arms, and the truth of honourable descents."
Brooke had seen, as he observes, in four editions of the "Britannia,"
a continued race of errors, in false descents, &c., and he continues,
with a witty allusion:--
"Perceiving that even the brains of many learned men beyond the seas
had misconceived and miscarried in the travail and birth of their
relations, being gotten, as it were, with child (as Diomedes's mares)
by the blasts of his erroneous puffs; I could not but a little
question the original father of their absurdities, being so far blown,
with the trumpet of his learning and fame, into foreign lands."
He proceeds with instances of several great authors on the Continent
having been misled by the statements of Camden.
Thus largely have I quoted from Brooke, to show, that at first he
never appears to have been influenced by the mean envy, or the
personal rancour, of which he is constantly accused. As he proceeded
in his work, which occupied him several years, his reproaches are
whetted with a keener edge, and his accusations are less generous. But
to what are we to attribute this? To the contempt and persecution
Brooke so long endured from Camden: these acted on his vexed and
degraded spirit, till it burst into the excesses of a man heated with
injured feelings.
When Camden took his station in the Herald's College with Brooke,
whose offers of his notes he had refused to accept, they soon found
what it was for two authors to live under the same roof, who were
impatient to write against each other. The cynical York, at first,
would twit the new king-of-arms, perpetually affirming that "his
predecessor was a more able herald than any who lived in this age:" a
truth, indeed, acknowledged by Dugdale. On this occasion, once the
king-of-arms gave malicious York "the lie!" reminding the crabbed
herald of "his own learning; who, as a scholar, was famous through all
the provinces of Christendom." "So that (adds Brooke) now I learnt,
that before him, when we speak in commendation of any other, to say, I
must always except Plato." Camden would allow of no private
communication between them; and in _Sermonibus Convivalibus_, in his
table-talk, "the heat and height of his spirit" often scorched the
contemned Yorkist, whose rejected "Discovery of Errors" had no doubt
been too frequently enlarged, after such rough convivialities. Brooke
now resolved to print; but, in printing the work, the press was
disturbed, and his house was entered by "this learned man, his
friends, and the stationers." The latter were alarmed for the sale of
the "Britannia," which might have been injured by this rude attack.
The work was therefore printed in an unfinished state: part was
intercepted; and the author stopped, by authority, from proceeding any
further. Some imperfect copies got abroad.
The treatment the exasperated Brooke now incurred was more provoking
than Camden's refusal of his notes, and the haughtiness of his
"Sermonibus Convivalibus." The imperfect work was, however, laid
before the public, so that Camden could not refuse to notice its
grievous charges. He composed an angry reply in Latin, addressed _ad
Lectorem_! and never mentioning Brooke by name, contemptuously alludes
to him only by a _Quidam_ and _Iste_ (a certain person, and He!)--"He
considers me (cries the mortified Brooke, in his second suppressed
work) as an _Individuum vagum_, and makes me but a _Quidam_ in his
pamphlet, standing before him as a schoolboy, while he whips me. Why
does he reply in Latin to an English accusation? He would disguise
himself in his school-rhetoric; wherein, like the cuttle-fish, being
stricken, he thinks to hide and shift himself away in the ink of his
rhetoric. I will clear the waters again."
He fastens on Camden's former occupation, virulently accusing him of
the manners of a pedagogue:--"A man may perceive an immoderate and
eager desire of vainglory growing in hand, ever since he used to
teach and correct children for these things, according to the opinion
of some, _in mores et naturam abeunt_." He complains of "the
school-hyperboles" which Camden exhausts on him, among which Brooke
is compared to "the strumpet Leontion," who wrote against "the divine
Theophrastus." To this Brooke keenly replies:
"Surely, had Theophrastus dealt with women's matters, a woman, though
mean, might in reason have contended with him. A king must be content
to be laughed at if he come into Apelles's shop, and dispute about
colours and portraiture. I am not ambitious nor envious to carp at
matters of higher learning than matters of heraldry, which I profess:
that is the slipper, wherein I know a slip when I find it. But see
your cunning; you can, with the blur of your pen, dipped in copperas
and gall, make me learned and unlearned; nay, you can almost change my
sex, and make me a whore, like Leontion; and, taking your silver pen
again, make yourself the divine Theophrastus."
At the close of Camden's answer, he introduced the allegorical picture
of Calumny, that elegant invention of the Grecian fancy of Apelles,
painted by him when suffering under the false accusations of a rival.
The picture is described by Lucian; but it has received many happy
touches from the classical hand of the master of Westminster School.
As a literary satire, he applies it with great dignity. I give here a
translation, but I preserve the original Latin in the note as Camden's
reply to Brooke is not easily to be procured.
"But though I am not disposed to waste more words on these, and this
sort of men, yet I cannot resist the temptation of adding a slight
sketch, for I cannot give that vivacity of colouring of the picture of
the great artist Apelles that our Antiphilus and the like, whose ears
are ever open to calumny, may, in contemplating it, find a reflection
of themselves.
"On the right hand sits a man, who, to show his credulity, is
remarkable for his prodigious ears, similar to those of Midas. He
extends his hand to greet Calumny, who is approaching him. The two
diminutive females around him are Ignorance and Suspicion. Opposite to
them, Calumny advances, betraying in her countenance and gesture the
savage rage and anger working in her tempestuous breast: her left hand
holds a flaming torch; while with her right she drags by the hair a
youth, who, stretching his uplifted hands to Heaven, is calling on the
immortal powers to bear testimony to his innocence. She is preceded by
a man of a pallid and impure appearance, seemingly wasting away under
some severe disease, except that his eye sparkles, and has not the
dulness usual to such. That Envy is here meant, you readily
conjecture. Some diminutive females, frauds and deceits, attend her as
companions, whose office is to encourage and instruct, and studiously
to adorn their mistress. In the background, Repentance, sadly arrayed
in a mournful, worn-out, and ragged garment, who, with averted head,
with tears and shame, acknowledges and prepares to receive Truth,
approaching from a distance."[397]
This elegant picture, so happily introduced into a piece of literary
controversy, appears to have only slightly affected the mind of
Brooke, which was probably of too stout a grain to take the folds of
Grecian drapery. Instead of sympathising with its elegance, he breaks
out into a horse-laugh; and, what is quite unexpected among such grave
inquiries into a ludicrous tale in verse, which, though it has not
Grecian fancy, has broad English humour, where he maliciously
insinuates that Camden had appropriated to his own use, or "new-coated
his 'Britannia'" with Leland's MSS., and disguised what he had
stolen.
Now, to show himself as good a painter as he is a herald, he
propounded, at the end of his book, a table (_i.e._ a picture) of
his own invention, being nothing comparable to "Apelles," as he
himself confesseth, and we believe him; for, like the rude painter
that was fain to write, 'This is a Horse,' upon his painted horse,
he writes upon his picture the names of all that furious rabble
therein expressed--which, for to requite him, I will return a tale of
John Fletcher (some time of Oxford) and his horse. Neither can this
fable be any disparagement to his table, being more ancient and
authenticall, and far more conceipted than his envious picture. And
thus it was:--