not know the world and the nature of mankind, give me, who know them to
be exceedingly material, very great concern. I have long distrusted you,
and therefore frequently admonished you upon these articles; and I tell
you plainly, that I shall not be easy till I hear a very different
account of them. I know of no one thing more offensive to a company,
than that inattention and _distraction_. It is showing them the utmost
contempt; and people never forgive contempt. No man is _distrait_ with
the man he fears, or the woman he loves; which is a proof that every man
can get the better of that _distraction_ when he thinks it worth his
while to do so; and, take my word for it, it is always worth his while.
For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with
an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he
shows me no contempt; whereas the absent man, silently indeed, but very
plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.
Besides, can an absent man make any observations upon the characters,
customs, and manners of the company? No. He may be in the best companies
of his lifetime (if they will admit him, which, if I were they, I would
not), and never be one jot the wiser. I never will converse with an
absent man; one may as well talk with a deaf one. It is, in truth, a
practical blunder, to address ourselves to a man, who we see plainly
neither hears, minds, nor understands us. Moreover, I aver that no man
is, in any degree, fit for either business or conversation, who cannot,
and does not, direct and command his attention to the present object, be
that what it will.
You know, by experience, that I grudge no expense in your education, but
I will positively not keep you a flapper. You may read, in Dr. Swift,
the description of these flappers, and the use they were of to your
friends the Laputans; whose minds (Gulliver says) are so taken up with
intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the
discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon
the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those people who are
able to afford it, always keep a flapper in their family, as one of
their domestics, nor ever walk about, or make visits, without him. This
flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his
walks, and, upon occasion, to give a soft flap upon his eyes; because he
is always so wrapt up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of
falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post,
and, in the streets, of jostling others, or being jostled into the
kennel himself. If _Christian_ will undertake this province into the
bargain, with all my heart; but I will not allow him any increase of
wages upon that score.
In short, I give you fair warning, that when we meet, if you are absent
in mind, I will soon be absent in body; for it will be impossible for me
to stay in the room; and if at table you throw down your knife, plate,
bread, etc., and hack the wing of a chicken for half an hour, without
being able to cut it off, and your sleeve all the time in another dish,
I must rise from table to escape the fever you would certainly give me.
Good God! How I should be shocked if you came into my room, for the
first time, with two left legs, presenting yourself with all the graces
and dignity of a tailor, and your clothes hanging upon you like those in
Monmouth Street, upon tenter-hooks! Whereas I expect, nay require, to
see you present yourself with the easy and gentle air of a man of
fashion who has kept good company. I expect you not only well dressed,
but very well dressed; I expect a gracefulness in all your motions, and
something particularly engaging in your address. All this I expect, and
all these it is in your power, by care and attention, to make me find;
but, to tell you the plain truth, if I do not find it, we shall not
converse very much together; for I cannot stand inattention and
awkwardness; it would endanger my health.
You have often seen, and I have as often made you observe, L[yttelton]'s
distinguished inattention and awkwardness. Wrapped up like a Laputan in
intense thought, and possibly sometimes in no thought at all--which, I
believe, is very often the case with absent people--he does not know his
most intimate acquaintance at sight, or answers them as if they were at
cross purposes. He leaves his hat in one room, his sword in another, and
would leave his shoes in a third, if his buckles, although awry, did not
save them; his legs and arms, by his awkward management of them, seem to
have undergone the _question extraordinaire_; and his head, always
hanging upon one or other of his shoulders, seems to have received the
first stroke upon a block. I sincerely value and esteem him for his
parts, learning, and virtue; but, for the soul of me, I cannot love him
in company. This will be universally the case, in common life, of every
inattentive awkward man, let his real merit and knowledge be ever so
great.
When I was of your age, I desired to shine, as far as I was able, in
every part of life; and was as attentive, to my manners, my dress, and
my air, in company on evenings, as to my books, and my tutor in the
mornings. A young fellow should be ambitious to shine in everything;
and, of the two, rather overdo than underdo. These things are by no
means trifles; they are of infinite consequence to those who are to be
thrown into the great world, and who would make a figure or a fortune in
it. It is not sufficient to deserve well, one must please well too.
Awkward, disagreeable merit, will never carry anybody far. Wherever you
find a good dancing master, pray let him put you upon your haunches; not
so much for the sake of dancing, as for coming into a room and
presenting yourself genteelly and gracefully. Women, whom you ought to
endeavour to please, cannot forgive a vulgar and awkward air and
gestures; _il leur faut du brillant_. The generality of men are pretty
like them, and are equally taken by the same exterior graces.
I am very glad that you have received the diamond buckles safe: All I
desire in return for them, is, that they may be buckled even upon your
feet, and that your stockings may not hide them. I should be sorry you
were an egregious fop; but I protest that, of the two, I would rather
have you a fop than a sloven. I think negligence in my own dress, even
at my age, when certainly I expect no advantages from my dress, would be
indecent with regard to others. I have done with fine clothes; but I
will have my plain clothes fit me, and made like other people's. In the
evenings I recommend to you the company of women of fashion, who have a
right to attention, and will be paid it. Their company will smooth your
manners, and give you a habit of attention and respect; of which you
will find the advantage among men.
My plan for you, from the beginning, has been to make you shine, equally
in the learned and in the polite world; The former part is almost
completed to my wishes, and will, I am persuaded, in a little time more,
be quite so. The latter part is still in your power to complete; and I
flatter myself that you will do it, or else the former part will avail
you very little; especially in your deportment, where the exterior
address and graces do half the business; they must be harbingers of your
merit, or your merit will be very coldly received: all can, and do judge
of the former, few of the latter.
Mr. Harte tells me that you have grown very much since your illness: if
you get up to five feet ten, or even nine inches, your figure will,
probably, be a good one; and if well dressed and genteel, will probably
please; which is a much greater advantage to a man than people commonly
think. Lord Bacon calls it a letter of recommendation.
I would wish you to be an _omnis homo_, _l'homme universel_. You are
nearer it, if you please, than ever anybody was at your age; and if you
will but, for the course of this next year only, exert your whole
attention to your studies in the morning, and to your address, manners,
air, and _tournure_ in the evenings, you will be the man I wish you, and
the man that is rarely seen.
Our letters go, at best, so irregularly and so often miscarry totally,
that, for greater security, I repeat the same things. So, though, I
acknowledged by last post Mr Harte's letter of the 8th September, N.S.,
I acknowledge it again by this to you. If this should find you still at
Verona, let it inform you, that I wish you to set out soon for Naples;
unless Mr. Harte should think it better for you to stay at Verona, or
any other place on this side Rome, till you go there for the Jubilee.
Nay, if he likes it better, I am very willing that you should go
directly from Verona to Rome; for you cannot have too much of Rome,
whether upon account of the language, the curiosities, or the company.
My only reason for mentioning Naples, is for the sake of the climate,
upon account of your health; but, if Mr. Harte thinks your health is now
so well restored as to be above climate, he may steer your course
wherever he thinks proper; and, for aught I know, your going directly to
Rome, and consequently staying there so much the longer, may be as well
as anything else. I think you and I cannot put our affairs into better
hands than in Mr. Harte's; and I will take his infallibility against the
Pope's, with some odds on his side. _A propos_ of the Pope; remember to
be presented to him before you leave Rome, and go through the necessary
ceremonies for it, whether of kissing his slipper or...; for I would
never deprive myself of anything I wanted to do or see, by refusing to
comply with an established custom. When I was in Catholic countries, I
never declined kneeling in their churches at the elevation, nor
elsewhere, when the Host went by. It is a complaisance due to the custom
of the place, and by no means, as some silly people have imagined, an
implied approbation of their doctrine. Bodily attitudes and situations
are things so very indifferent in themselves, that I would quarrel with
nobody about them. It may indeed be improper for Mr. Harte to pay that
tribute of complaisance, upon account of his character.
This letter is a very long, and possibly a very tedious one; but my
interest for your perfection is so great, and particularly at this
critical and decisive period of your life, that I am only afraid of
omitting, but never of repeating, or dwelling too long upon anything
that I think may be of the least use to you. Have the same anxiety for
yourself that I have for you, and all will do well. Adieu, my dear
child!
GEORGE BALLARD (1706-1755)
The extreme wickedness of reviewers has been a conviction
with many authors--who have sometimes, it would seem,
succumbed to it themselves and retaliated in reviewing
others. The following letter to Dr. Lyttelton, Dean of
Exeter, is a very early (1753) and not unamusing example of
this conviction: and is given as such, though the writer has
no wide fame. His history is, however, interesting and
shows, among other things, how entirely erroneous is the
idea that till recently (and even now to some extent)
opportunities of showing themselves able to profit by
education were and are denied to the "lower classes" in
England. Ballard was apprenticed to a staymaker
("habit-maker" as others say) at Chipping-Campden, but
betook himself in his leisure hours to the study of
Anglo-Saxon. Hearing of which fact the gentlemen of the
local hunt (the boozy squire-tyrants of popular tradition)
subscribed for an annuity of L100 a year to him, but he
would only accept L60. With this he went up to Oxford to
enjoy the Bodleian, was made a "clerk" at Magdalen and later
an esquire-bedell to the University. He did much good work
of the antiquarian kind, and died a year or two after
writing this letter, having (one hopes) relieved himself by
his protest and been consoled by a kind answer from
Lyttelton.[106]
19. TO DR. LYTTELTON, DEAN OF EXETER
A DEFENCE OF THE HISTORY OF LEARNED LADIES
Revd. and Hond. Sir,
My best acknowledgments are due for the favour of two epistles; the
first of which I received a few minutes after my last set forward for
Exeter. I would have answered it immediately, but that I thought a
little respite might be agreeable, before I gave you the trouble of
another long letter.
The day before I received your first epistle, a Gent. of my acquaintance
brought me the _Monthly Review_ for February, that I might see what the
candid and genteel authors of that work had said of mine. They observe
to the publick, that _I have said_ C. Tishem was so skilled in the Greek
Tongue, that she could read Galen in its original, which very few
Physicians are able to do. Whether this was done maliciously, in order
to bring the wrath of the AEsculapians upon me, or inadvertently, I
cannot say: but I may justly affirm, that they have used me very ill in
that affair; since if they had read with attention, which they ought to
have done before they attempted to give a character of the Book, they
must have known that the whole account of that lady (which is but one
page) is not mine, but borrowed with due acknowledgment from the
_General Dictionary_. They are likewise pleased to inform the world
that I have been rather too industrious in the undertaking, having
introduced several women who hardly deserved a place in the work. I did
not do this for want of materials; neither did I do it rashly, without
advising with others of superior judgment in those affairs, of which
number Mr. Professor Ward was one. But those pragmatical Censors seem to
have but little acquaintance with those studies, or otherwise they might
have observed that all our general Biographers, as Leland, Bale, Pits,
Wood, and Tanner, have trod the very same steps; and have given an
account of all the authors they could meet with, good and bad, just as
they found them: and yet, I have never heard of anyone that had courage
or ill-nature enough, to endeavour to expose them for it. While I was
ruminating on these affairs, three or four letters came to my hands, and
perceiving one of them come from my worthy friend the Dean of Exeter, I
eagerly broke it open, and was perfectly astonished to find myself
charged with _party zeal_ in my book; and that from thence the most
candid reader might conclude the author to be both a Church and State
Tory. But after having thoroughly considered all the passages objected
to, and not finding the least tincture of either Whig or Tory principles
contained in them, I began to cheer up my drooping spirits, in hopes
that I might possibly out-live my supposed crime; but, alas! to my still
greater confusion! when I opened my next letter from a Tory
acquaintance, I was like one thunderstruck at the contents of it. He
discharges his passionate but ill-grounded resentment upon me most
furiously. He tells me, he did not imagine Magdalen College could have
produced such a rank Whig. He reproaches me with want of due esteem for
the Stuart Family, to whom he says I have shewn a deadly hatred, and he
gives me, as he imagines, three flagrant instances of it. 1. That I have
unseasonably and maliciously printed a letter of Queen Elizabeth's, in
order to blacken the memory of Mary Queen of Scots, and that too, at a
time when her character began to shine as bright as the Sun. 2dly. That
I have endeavoured to make her memory odious, by representing her as
wanting natural affection to her only son, in my note at p. 162, where
he says I have printed part of a Will, &c. And 3dly, tho' she was cut
off in such a barbarous and unprecedented manner, yet she has fallen
unlamented by me. I am likewise charged with having an affection to
Puritanism; the reasons for which are, my giving the Life of a Puritan
Bishop's Lady, which it seems need not have been done by me, had I not
had a particular regard for her, since it had been done before by
Goodwin who reprinted her Devotions. And not content with this, I have
blemished my book with the memoirs of a Dissenting teacher's wife, and
have been kind enough to heighten even the character given her by her
indulgent husband: and that I am very fond of quoting Fox and Burnet
upon all occasions. These are thought strong indications of the
above-mentioned charge. It may be thought entirely unnecessary to answer
any of the objections from Exeter, after having given you this Summary
of my kind Friend's Candid Epistle; but to you, Sir, to whom I could
disclose the very secrets of my soul, I will endeavour to say a word or
two upon this subject, and make you my Confessor upon this occasion; and
I will do it with as much sincerity, as if I lay on my death-bed. Before
I was fourteen years old, I read over Fox's Acts and Monuments of the
Church, and several of the best books of Polemical Divinity, which
strongly fortified me in the Protestant Religion; and gave me the
greatest abhorrence to Popery. And soon after I perused Mercurius
Rusticus, The Eleventh Persecution, Lloyd, Walker's Sufferings of the
Clergy, and many others, which gave me almost as bad an opinion of the
Dissenters. But then I learned in my childhood _to live in Charity with
all Men_, and I have used my best endeavours to put this doctrine in
practice all my life long. I never thought ill, or quarrelled with any
man merely because he had been educated in principles different to mine;
and yet I have been acquainted with many papists, dissenters, &c. and if
I found any of them learned, ingenuous, and modest, I always found my
heart well-disposed for contracting a firm friendship with them: and
notwithstanding that, I dare believe that all those people will, with
joint consent, vouch for me, that I have ever been steady in my own
principles.
I can truly affirm that never any one engaged in such a work, with an
honester heart, or executed it with more unbiassed integrity, than I
have done. And indeed, I take the unkind censures passed upon me by the
furious uncharitable zealots of both parties, to be the strongest proof
of it. And after all, I dare challenge any man, whether Protestant,
Papist, or Dissenter, Whig or Tory, (and I have drawn up and published
memoirs of women who professed all those principles) to prove me guilty
of partiality, or to shew that I have made any uncharitable reflections
on any person, and whenever that is done, I will faithfully promise to
make a public recantation. I wish, Sir, you would point out to me any
one unbecoming word or expression which has fell from me on Bishop
Burnet. Had I had the least inclination to have lessened his character,
I did not want proper materials to have done it. I have in my possession
two original letters from Bishop Gibson and Mr Norris of Bemerton, to
Dr Charlett, which, if published, would lessen your too great esteem for
him. And what, I beseech you, Sir, have I said in praise of Mrs Hopton
and her pious and useful labours, which they do not well deserve, and
which can possibly give any just offence to any good man? I dare not
censure or condemn a good thing merely because it borders upon the
Church of Rome. I rather rejoice that she retains any thing I can fairly
approve. Should I attempt to do this, might I not condemn the greater
part of our Liturgy, &c.? and should I not stand self-condemned for so
doing? I cannot for my life perceive that I have said any thing of that
excellent woman, which she does not merit; and I must beg leave to say
that I think her letter to F. Turbeville deserves to be wrote in letters
of gold, and ought to be carefully read and preserved by all
Protestants. Mary Queen of Scots fell under my notice, no otherwise than
as a learned woman. The affairs you mention would by no means suit my
peaceable temper. I was too well acquainted with the warm disputes, and
fierce engagement both of domestic and foreign writers on that head,
once to touch upon the subject. And indeed, unless I had been the happy
discoverer of some secret springs of action which would have given new
information to the public, it would have been excessive folly in me to
intermeddle in an affair of so tender a nature, and of so great
importance.
I have often blamed my dear friend Mr. Brome for destroying his valuable
collections, but I now cease to wonder at it. He spent his leisure hours
pleasantly and inoffensively, and when old age came on, which not only
abates thirst, but oftentimes gives a disrelish to these and almost all
other things, which do not help to make our passage into eternity more
easy, he then destroyed them (I dare believe) in order to prevent the
malicious reflections of an ill-natured world.
I have always been a passionate lover of History and Antiquity,
Biography, and Northern Literature: and as I have ever hated idleness,
so I have in my time filled many hundred sheets with my useless
scribble, the greater part of which I will commit to the flames shortly,
to prevent their giving me any uneasiness in my last moments.[107]
[May 22, 1753.]
FOOTNOTES:
[106] Ballard's _Memoirs of Learned Ladies of Great Britain who have
been celebrated for their writings or skill in the Learned Languages
Arts & Sciences_, appeared at Oxford in 4to (1752) and 8vo (1775). It
contains some sixty lives, the most noteworthy names being those of
Queens Elizabeth and Mary of Scotland, Lady Jane Grey, Margaret Countess
of Richmond (_the_ "Lady Margaret"), the Duchess of Newcastle, Lady
Winchelsea, the two Countesses of Pembroke ("Sidney's sister" and Anne
Clifford), Dame Juliana Barnes or Berners, Dryden's Anne Killigrew,
Dorothy Pakington (the alleged author of _The Whole Duty of Man_), and
"the matchless Orinda."
[107] Perhaps a note should be added on "Mrs. Hopton" and "F.
Turbe(r)ville." The former, born Susanna Harvey (1627-1709), was the
wife of a Welsh judge, and wrote devotional works. The latter, Henry T.
(d. 1678: the "F" of text is of course "Father"), was a writer of
doctrinal and controversial manuals on the Roman side.
THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771)
The chief thing to add to what has been said of Gray in the
Introduction is something that may draw attention to a
curious feature of his letters, not there distinctly
noticed. Letters, it must be sufficiently seen even from
this little book, have a curious _variety_ of relation to
the characters, personal and literary, of their writers.
Sometimes they show us phases entirely or almost entirely
concealed in the published works; sometimes again, without
definitely revealing new aspects, they complete and enforce
the old; while, in yet a third, though perhaps the smallest,
class of instances, they are as it were results of the same
governing formula as that of the published works themselves,
the difference lying almost wholly in the subjects and in
the methods and circumstances of treatment. Gray belongs to
this last division. There is not, of course, in his letters
the same severity of discipline and restriction of
utterance, that we find in his poems. But that, in letters,
was impossible--at least in letters that should supply
tolerable reading. Yet the same general principle, which was
somewhat exaggerated in the phrase about his "never speaking
out," appears in them. There is always a certain restraint
(at least in all that have been published) and it would
probably have extended in proportion to others, however
little their subject might seem compatible with it. In what
we have it gives a curious _seasoning_--something which
preserves as well as flavours like salt or vinegar. Of those
which follow the first is an early one. Mason's apologetic
note is to the effect that it "may appear whimsical" but it
gives him an opportunity of remarking that Mr. Gray was
"extremely skilled in the customs of the ancient Romans,"
both utterances being characteristic, to some extent of the
time but to a greater of the writer. The second letter, to
Gray's most intimate friend Dr. Wharton, and more than a
quarter of a century later, is a good example of the
_variety_ of these epistles--scenery, literature, politics,
science, gossip and what not, being all dealt with.
20. TO RICHARD WEST [EXTRACT]
ROME, May, 1740.