Peter Heylin was one of the popular writers of his times, like Fuller
and Howell, who, devoting their amusing pens to subjects which deeply
interested their own busy age, will not be slighted by the curious.[143]
We have nearly outlived their divinity, but not their politics.
Metaphysical absurdities are luxuriant weeds which must be cut down by
the scythe of Time; but the great passions branching from the tree of
life are still "growing with our growth."
There are two biographies of our Heylin, which led to a literary quarrel
of an extraordinary nature; and, in the progress of its secret history,
all the feelings of rival authorship were called out.
Heylin died in 1662. Dr. Barnard, his son-in-law, and a scholar,
communicated a sketch of the author's life to be prefixed to a
posthumous folio, of which Heylin's son was the editor. This Life was
given by the son, but anonymously, which may not have gratified the
author, the son-in-law.[144]
Twenty years had elapsed when, in 1682, appeared "The Life of Dr. Peter
Heylin, by George Vernon." The writer, alluding to the prior Life
prefixed to the posthumous folio, asserts that, in borrowing something
from Barnard, Barnard had also "Excerpted passages out of _my papers_,
the very words as well as matter, when he had them in his custody, as
any reader may discern who will be at the pains of comparing the Life
now published with what is extant before the _Keimalea Ecclesiastica_;"
the quaint, pedantic title, after the fashion of the day, of the
posthumous folio.
This strong accusation seemed countenanced by a dedication to the son
and the nephew of Heylin. Roused now into action, the indignant Barnard
soon produced a more complete Life, to which he prefixed "A necessary
Vindication." This is an unsparing castigation of Vernon, the literary
pet whom the Heylins had fondled in preference to their learned
relative.[145] The long-smothered family grudge, the suppressed
mortifications of literary pride, after the subterraneous grumblings of
twenty years, now burst out, and the volcanic particles flew about in
caustic pleasantries and sharp invectives; all the lava of an author's
vengeance, mortified by the choice of an inferior rival.
It appears that Vernon had been selected by the son of Heylin, in
preference to his brother-in-law, Dr. Barnard, from some family
disagreement. Barnard tells us, in describing Vernon, that "No man,
except himself, who was totally ignorant of the doctor, and all the
circumstances of his life, would have engaged in such a work, which was
never primarily laid out for him, but by reason of some unhappy
differences, as usually fall out in families; and he, who loves to put
his oar in troubled waters, instead of closing them up, hath made them
wider."
Barnard tells his story plainly. Heylin the son, intending to have a
more elaborate Life of his father prefixed to his works, Dr. Barnard,
from the high reverence in which he held the memory of his
father-in-law, offered to contribute it. Many conferences were held, and
the son entrusted him with several papers. But suddenly his caprice,
more than his judgment, fancied that George Vernon was worth John
Barnard. The doctor affects to describe his rejection with the most
stoical indifference. He tells us--"I was satisfied, and did patiently
expect the coming forth of the work, not only term after term, but year
after year--a very considerable time for such a tract. But at last,
instead of the Life, came a letter to me from a bookseller in London,
who lived at the sign of the Black Boy, in Fleet-street."[146]
Now, it seems that he who lived at the Black Boy had combined with
another who lived at the Fleur de Luce, and that the Fleur de Luce had
assured the Black Boy that Dr. Barnard was concerned in writing the Life
of Heylin--this was a strong recommendation. But lo! it appeared that
"one Mr. Vernon, of Gloucester," was to be the man! a gentle,
thin-skinned authorling, who bleated like a lamb, and was so fearful to
trip out of its shelter, that it allows the Black Boy and the Fleur de
Luce to communicate its papers to any one they choose, and erase or add
at their pleasure.[147]
It occurred to the Black Boy, on this proposed arithmetical criticism,
that the work required addition, subtraction, and division; that the
fittest critic, on whose name, indeed, he had originally engaged in the
work, was our Dr. Barnard; and he sent the package to the doctor, who
resided near Lincoln.
The doctor, it appears, had no appetite for a dish dressed by another,
while he himself was in the very act of the cookery; and it was suffered
to lie cold for three weeks at the carrier's.
But entreated and overcome, the good doctor at length sent to the
carrier's for the life of his father-in-law. "I found it, according to
the bookseller's description, most lame and imperfect; ill begun, worse
carried on, and abruptly concluded." The learned doctor exercised that
plenitude of power with which the Black Boy had invested him--he very
obligingly showed the author in what a confused state his materials lay
together, and how to put them in order--
Nec facundia deseret hunc, nec lucidus ordo.
If his rejections were copious, to show his good-will as well as his
severity, his additions were generous, though he used the precaution of
carefully distinguishing by "distinct paragraphs" his own insertions
amidst Vernon's mass, with a gentle hint that "He knew more of Heylin
than any man now living, and ought therefore to have been the
biographer." He returned the MS. to the gentleman with great civility,
but none he received back! When Vernon pretended to ask for
improvements, he did not imagine that the work was to be improved by
being nearly destroyed; and when he asked for correction, he probably
expected all might end in a compliment.
The narrative may now proceed in Dr. Barnard's details of his doleful
mortifications, in being "altered and mangled" by Mr. Vernon.
"Instead of thanks from him (Vernon), and the return of common civility,
he disfigured my papers, that no sooner came into his hands, but he fell
upon them as a lion rampant, or the cat upon the poor cock in the fable,
saying, _Tu hodie mihi discerperis_--so my papers came home miserably
clawed, blotted, and blurred; whole sentences dismembered, and pages
scratched out; several leaves omitted which ought to be
printed,--shamefully he used my copy; so that before it was carried to
the press, he swooped away the second part of the Life wholly from
it--in the room of which he shuffled in a preposterous conclusion at the
last page, which he printed in a different character, yet could not keep
himself honest, as the poet saith,
_Dicitque tua pagina, fur es._
MARTIAL.
For he took out of my copy Dr. Heylin's dream, his sickness, his last
words before his death, and left out the burning of his surplice. He so
mangled and metamorphosed the whole Life I composed, that I may say as
Sosia did, _Egomet mihi non credo, ille alter Sosia me malis mulcavit
modis_--PLAUT."
Dr. Barnard would have "patiently endured these wrongs;" but the
accusation Vernon ventured on, that Barnard was the plagiary, required
the doctor "to return the poisoned chalice to his own lips," that
"himself was the plagiary both of words and matter." The fact is, that
this reciprocal accusation was owing to Barnard having had a prior
perusal of Heylin's papers, which afterwards came into the hands of
Vernon: they both drew their water from the same source. These papers
Heylin himself had left for "a rule to guide the writer of his life."
Barnard keenly retorts on Vernon for his surreptitious use of whole
pages from Heylin's works, which he has appropriated to himself without
any marks of quotation. "I am no such excerptor (as he calls me); he is
of the humour of the man who took all the ships in the Attic haven for
his own, and yet was himself not master of any one vessel."