Dear Sir
I am again your petitioner, in behalf of that great CHAM of literature,
Samuel Johnson. His black servant, whose name is Francis Barber, has
been pressed on board the Stag frigate, Captain Angel, and our
lexicographer is in great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad, of
a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat,
which renders him very unfit for His Majesty's service. You know what
matter of animosity the said Johnson has against you: and I dare say you
desire no other opportunity of resenting it, than that of laying him
under an obligation. He was humble enough to desire my assistance on
this occasion, though he and I were never cater-cousins; and I gave him
to understand that I would make application to my friend Mr. Wilkes,
who, perhaps, by his interest with Dr. Hay and Mr. Elliot, might be able
to procure the discharge of his lacquey. It would be superfluous to say
more on this subject, which I leave to your own consideration; but I
cannot let slip this opportunity of declaring that I am, with the most
inviolable esteem and attachment, dear Sir, your affectionate, obliged,
humble servant,
T. SMOLLETT.
WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800)
It was necessary to say a good deal about Cowper's letters
in the Introduction, but it would hardly do to stint him of
some further comment. It will be a most unfortunate evidence
of degradation in English literary taste if he ever loses
the position there assigned to him, and practically
acknowledged by all the best judges for the last century.
For there is certainly no other epistoler who has displayed
such consummate (if also such unconscious) art in making the
most out of the least. Of course people who must have noise,
and bustle, and "importance" of matter, and so forth, may be
dissatisfied. But their dissatisfaction convicts not Cowper
but themselves: and the conviction is not for want of Art,
but for want of appreciation of Art. Now this last is one of
the most terrible faults to be found in any human creature.
Not everybody can be an artist: but everybody who is not
deficient to this or that extent in sense--to use that word
in its widest and best interpretation, for understanding and
feeling both--can enjoy an artist's work. Nor is there any
more important function of the often misused word
"education" than "bringing out" this sense when it is
dormant, and training and developing it when it is brought
out. And few things are more useful for exercise in this way
than the under-current of artistry in Cowper's "chit-chat."
His letters are so familiar that it is vain to aim at any
great originality in selecting them. The following strikes
me as an excellent example. What more trite than references
to increased expense of postage (rather notably topical just
now though!) and remarks on a greenhouse? And what less
trite--except to tritical tastes and intellects--than this
letter?
25. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON
Sept. 18. 1784.
My dear Friend,
Following your good example, I lay before me a sheet of my largest
paper. It was this moment fair and unblemished but I have begun to blot
it, and having begun, am not likely to cease till I have spoiled it. I
have sent you many a sheet that in my judgment of it has been very
unworthy of your acceptance, but my conscience was in some measure
satisfied by reflecting, that if it were good for nothing, at the same
time it cost you nothing, except the trouble of reading it. But the case
is altered now. You must pay a solid price for frothy matter, and though
I do not absolutely pick your pocket, yet you lose your money, and, as
the saying is, are never the wiser; a saying literally fulfilled to the
reader of my epistles.
My greenhouse is never so pleasant as when we are just upon the point of
being turned out of it. The gentleness of the autumnal suns, and the
calmness of this latter season, make it a much more agreeable retreat
than we ever find it in summer; when, the winds being generally brisk,
we cannot cool it by admitting a sufficient quantity of air, without
being at the same time incommoded by it. But now I sit with all the
windows and the door wide open, and am regaled with the scent of every
flower in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it. We
keep no bees, but if I lived in a hive I should hardly hear more of
their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of
mignonette, opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they get
out of it by a hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to
my ear as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that nature utters
are delightful,--at least in this country. I should not perhaps find the
roaring of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleasing; but I
know no beast in England whose voice I do not account musical, save and
except always the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and
fowls please me, without one exception. I should not indeed think of
keeping a goose in a cage, that I might hang him up in the parlour for
the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common, or in a farmyard, is
no bad performer; and as to insects, if the black beetle, and beetles
indeed of all hues, will keep out of my way, I have no objection to any
of the rest; on the contrary, in whatever key they sing, from the gnat's
fine treble to the bass of the humble bee, I admire them all. Seriously
however it strikes me as a very observable instance of providential
kindness to man, that such an exact accord has been contrived between
his ear, and the sounds with which, at least in a rural situation, it is
almost every moment visited. All the world is sensible of the
uncomfortable effect that certain sounds have upon the nerves, and
consequently upon the spirits:--and if a sinful world had been filled
with such as would have curdled the blood, and have made the sense of
hearing a perpetual inconvenience, I do not know that we should have had
a right to complain. But now the fields, the woods, the gardens have
each their concert, and the ear of man is for ever regaled by creatures
who seem only to please themselves. Even the ears that are deaf to the
Gospel, are continually entertained, though without knowing it, by
sounds for which they are solely indebted to its author. There is
somewhere in infinite space a world that does not roll within the
precincts of mercy, and as it is reasonable, and even scriptural, to
suppose that there is music in Heaven, in those dismal regions perhaps
the reverse of it is found; tones so dismal, as to make woe itself more
insupportable, and to acuminate[113] even despair. But my paper
admonishes me in good time to draw the reins, and to check the descent
of my fancy into deeps, with which she is but too familiar.
Our best love attends you both, with yours,
_Sum ut semper, tui studiossimus_,
W. C.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] "Acuminate" = "sharpen," is a perfectly good word in itself, but
perhaps does not so perfectly suit "despair," which crushes rather than
pierces.
SYDNEY SMITH (1771-1845)
It has been said of Sydney Smith that he was not only a
humourist, but a "good-humourist," and this is undoubtedly
true. Politics, indeed, according to their usual custom,
sometimes rather acidulated his good humour; but anybody
possessed of the noun, with the least allowance of the
adjective, should be propitiated by the way in which the
almost Radical reformer of _Peter Plymley's Letters_ in 1807
became the almost Tory and wholly conservative maintainer of
ecclesiastical rights in those to Archdeacon Singleton
thirty years later.
Both, however, were "Letters" of the sophisticated kind: but
we have plenty of perfectly genuine correspondence, also
agreeable and sometimes extremely amusing. Whether Sydney
(his friends always abbreviated him thus, and he accepted
the Christian name) describes the makeshifts of his
Yorkshire parish or the luxuries of his Somerset one;
whether he discusses the effect of a diet of geraniums on
pigs or points out that as Lord Tankerville has given him a
whole buck "this takes up a great deal of my time"--he is
always refreshing. He has no great depth, but we do not go
to him for that: and he is not shallow in the offensive
sense of the word. His gaiety does not get on one's nerves
as does that of some--perhaps most--professional jokers:
neither, as is too frequently the case with them, does it
bore. His letters are not the easiest to select from: for
they are usually short and their excellence lies rather in
still shorter _flashes_ such as those glanced at above; as
the grave proposition that "the information of very plain
women is so inconsiderable that I agree with you in setting
no store by it;" or as this other (resembling a short
newspaper paragraph) "The Commissioner will have hard work
with the Scotch atheists: they are said to be numerous this
season and in great force, from the irregular supply of
rain." But the following specimens are fairly
representative. They were written at an interval of about
ten years: the first from Foston, the second from Combe
Florey. "Miss Berry," the elder of the famous sisters who
began by fascinating Horace Walpole and ended by charming
Thackeray: "Donna Agnes" was the younger. "Lady Rachel," the
famous wife of the person who suffered for the Rye House
plot (Lady Rachel Wriothesley, of Rachel Lady Russell, but
Miss Berry had written a _Life_ of her under her maiden
name). Sydney's politics show in his allusion to the
assassination of the Duc de Berri, son of Charles X. of
France (who had, however, not then come to the throne); in
his infinitely greater sorrow for the dismissal of the
mildly Liberal minister Decazes; and in his spleen at the
supporters of the English Tory government of Lord Liverpool.
(The "little plot" was Thistlewood's). In the second letter
the "hotel" is his new parsonage in Somerset: "Bowood," Lord
Lansdowne's Wiltshire house, a great Whig rallying place. I
suppose "Sea-shore Calcott" is Sir A. W. Calcott the
painter. "Luttrell" (Henry), a talker and versifier very
well known in his own day, but of less enduring reputation
than some others. "Napier's Book," the brilliant if somewhat
partisan _History of the Peninsular War_. I am not quite
certain in which of two senses Sydney uses the word
_caractere_. As ought to be well known this does not exactly
correspond to our "character"--but most commonly means
"temper" or "disposition." It has, however, a peculiar
technical meaning of "official description" or "estimate"
which would suit Sir William Napier well. The Napiers were
"kittle cattle" from the official point of view.
26. TO MISS BERRY
FOSTON, Feb 27th, 1820.
I thank you very much for the entertainment I have received from your
book. I should however have been afraid to marry such a woman as Lady
Rachel; it would have been too awful. There are pieces of china very
fine and beautiful, but never intended for daily use....
I have hardly slept out of Foston since I saw you. God send I may be
still an animal, and not a vegetable! but I am a little uneasy at this
season for sprouting and rural increase, for I fear I should have
undergone the metamorphose so common in country livings. I shall go to
town about the end of March; it will be completely empty, and the drugs
that remain will be entirely occupied about hustings and
returning-officers.
Commerce and manufacturers are still in a frightful state of stagnation.
No foreign barks in British ports are seen,
Stuff'd to the water's edge with velveteen,
Or bursting with big bales of bombazine;
No distant climes demand our corduroy,
Unmatch'd habiliment for man and boy;
No fleets of fustian quit the British shore,
The cloth-creating engines cease to roar,
Still is that loom which breech'd the world before.
I am very sorry for the little fat Duke de Berri, but infinitely more so
for the dismissal of De Cases,--a fatal measure.
I must not die without seeing Paris. Figure to yourself what a horrid
death,--to die without seeing Paris! I think I could make something of
this in a tragedy, so as to draw tears from Donna Agnes and yourself.
Where are you going to? When do you return? Why do you go at all? Is
Paris more agreeable than London?
We have had a little plot here in a hay-loft. God forbid anybody should
be murdered! but, if I were to turn assassin, it should not be of five
or six Ministers, who are placed where they are by the folly of the
country gentlemen, but of the hundred thousand squires, to whose
stupidity and folly such an Administration owes its existence.
Ever your friend,
SYDNEY SMITH.
27. TO N. FAZAKERLY, ESQ.
COMBE FLOREY, October, 1829.
Dear Fazakerly,
I don't know anybody who would be less affronted at being called
hare-brained than our friend who has so tardily conveyed my message, and
I am afraid now he has only given you a part of it. The omission appears
to be, that I had set up an hotel on the Western road, that it would be
opened next spring, and I hoped for the favour of yours and Mrs.
Fazakerly's patronage. "Well-aired beds, neat wines, careful drivers,
etc. etc."
I shall have very great pleasure in coming to see you, and I quite agree
in the wisdom of postponing that event till the rural Palladios and
Vitruvii are chased away; I have fourteen of them here every day. The
country is perfectly beautiful, and my parsonage the prettiest place in
it.
I was at Bowood last week: the only persons there were seashore Calcott
and his wife,--two very sensible, agreeable people. Luttrell came over
for the day; he was very agreeable, but spoke too lightly, I thought, of
veal soup. I took him aside, and reasoned the matter with him, but in
vain; to speak the truth, Luttrell is not steady in his judgments on
dishes. Individual failures with him soon degenerate into generic
objections, till, by some fortunate accident, he eats himself into
better opinions. A person of more calm reflection thinks not only of
what he is consuming at the moment, but of the soups of the same kind he
has met with in a long course of dining, and which have gradually and
justly elevated the species. I am perhaps making too much of this; but
the failures of a man of sense are always painful.
I quite agree about Napier's book. I do[114] not think that any[114] man
would venture to write so true, bold, and honest a book; it gave me a
high idea of his understanding, and makes me very anxious about his
_caractere_
Ever yours,
SYDNEY SMITH.
FOOTNOTES:
[114] One would expect either "did" or "other": but the actual
combination is a very likely slip of pen or press.
SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832)
Since this little book was undertaken it has been announced,
truly or not, that the bulk of Scott's autograph letters has
been bought by a fortunate and wise man of letters for the
sum of L1500. Neither life nor literature can ever be
expressed in money value: but if one had L1500 to spend on
something not directly necessary, it is possible to imagine
a very large number of less satisfactory purchases. For as
was briefly suggested in the Introduction, Scott's
letters--while saturated with that singular humanity and
nobility of character in which he has hardly a rival among
authors of whom we know much--are distinctly remarkable from
the purely literary point of view. His published work, both
in verse and prose, has been accused (with what amount of
justice we will not here trouble ourselves to discuss)--of
carelessness in style and art. No such charge could possibly
be brought against his letters, which hit the happy mean
between slovenliness and artificial elaboration in a fashion
that could hardly be bettered. The great variety of his
correspondents, too, provides an additional attraction: for
letters indited to the same person are apt to show a certain
monotony. And Scott is equal to any and every occasion. Here
as elsewhere the "Diary" drains off a certain proportion of
matter: but chiefly for the latest period and in
circumstances scarcely happy enough for letters themselves.
The following letter was selected because of its admirable
treatment of a theme--the behaviour, responsibility, and
general _status_ of Authors as objects of public
judgment--on which an infinite amount of deplorable and
disgusting nonsense has been talked and written. It starts,
as will be seen, with the quarrel between Lord and Lady
Byron--and then generalises. Not many things show Scott's
golden equity and fairness better. He is perhaps "a little
kind" to Campbell, who was, one fears, an extra-irritable
specimen of the irritable race: but this is venial. And
probably he did not mean the stigma which might be inferred
from the conjunction of "Aphra _and_ Orinda." They were
certainly both of Charles II.'s time: but while poor Aphra
was, if not wholly vicious, far from virtuous, the
"matchless Orinda" (Katherine Philips) bears no stain on her
character.
28. TO JOANNA BAILLIE
(End of April 1816)
My dear friend,
I am glad you are satisfied with my reasons for declining a direct
interference with Lord B[yron]. I have not, however, been quite idle,
and as an old seaman have tried to go by a side wind when I had not the
means of going before it, and this will be so far plain to you when I
say that I have every reason to believe the good intelligence is true
that a separation is signed between Lord and Lady Byron. If I am not as
angry as you have good reason to expect every thinking and feeling man
to be, it is from deep sorrow and regret that a man possessed of such
noble talents should so utterly and irretrievably lose himself. In
short, I believe the thing to be as you state it, and therefore Lord
Byron is the object of anything rather than indignation. It is a cruel
pity that such high talents should have been joined to a mind so wayward
and incapable of seeking control where alone it is to be found, in the
quiet discharge of domestic duties and filling up in peace and affection
his station in society. The idea of his ultimately resisting that which
should be fair and honourable to Lady B. did not come within my view of
his character--at least of his natural character; but I hear that, as
you intimated, he has had execrable advisers. I hardly know a more
painful object of consideration than a man of genius in such a
situation; those of lower minds do not feel the degradation, and become
like pigs, familiarised with the filthy elements in which they grovel;
but it is impossible that a man of Lord Byron's genius should not often
feel the want of that which he has forfeited--the fair esteem of those
by whom genius most naturally desires to be admired and cherished.
I am much obliged to Mrs. Baillie for excluding me in her general
censure of authors; but I should have hoped for a more general spirit of
toleration from my good friend, who had in her own family and under her
own eye such an exception to her general censure--unless, indeed (which
may not be far from the truth), she supposes that female genius is more
gentle and tractable, though as high in tone and spirit as that of the
masculine sex. But the truth is, I believe, we will find a great
equality when the different habits of the sexes and the temptations they
are exposed to are taken into consideration. Men early flattered and
coaxed, and told they are fitted for the higher regions of genius and
unfit for anything else,--that they are a superior kind of automaton and
ought to move by different impulses than others,--indulge their friends
and the public with freaks and caprioles like those of that worthy
knight of La Mancha in the Sierra Morena. And then, if our man of genius
escapes this temptation, how is he to parry the opposition of the
blockheads who join all their hard heads and horns together to butt him
out of the ordinary pasture, goad him back to Parnassus, and "bid him
on the barren mountain starve." It is amazing how far this goes, if a
man will let it go, in turning him out of the ordinary course of life
into the stream of odd bodies, so that authors come to be regarded as
tumblers, who are expected to go to church in a summerset, because they
sometimes throw a Catherine-wheel for the amusement of the public. A man
even told me at an election, thinking I believe he was saying a severe
thing, that I was a poet, and therefore that the subject we were
discussing lay out of my way. I answered as quietly as I could, that I
did not apprehend my having written poetry rendered me incapable of
speaking common sense in prose, and that I requested the audience to
judge of me not by the nonsense I might have written for their
amusement, but by the sober sense I was endeavouring to speak for their
information, and only expected [of] them, in case I had ever happened to
give any of them pleasure, in a way which was supposed to require some
information and talent, [that] they would not, for that sole reason,
suppose me incapable of understanding or explaining a point of the
profession for which I had been educated. So I got a patient and very
favourable hearing. But certainly these great exertions of friends and
enemies have forced many a poor fellow out of the common paths of life,
and obliged him to make a trade of what can only be gracefully executed
as an occasional avocation. When such a man is encouraged in all his
freaks and follies, the bit is taken out of his mouth, and, as he is
turned out upon the common, he is very apt to deem himself exempt from
all the rules incumbent on those who keep the king's highway. And so
they play fantastic tricks before high heaven.
The lady authors are not exempt from these vagaries, being exposed to
the same temptations; and all I can allow Mrs. Baillie in favour of the
fair sex is that since the time of the Aphras and Orindas of Charles
II's time, the authoresses have been ridiculous only, while the authors
have too often been both absurd and vicious. As to our leal friend Tom
Campbell, I have heard stories of his morbid sensibility chiefly from
the Minto family, with whom he lived for some time, and I think they all
turned on little foolish points of capricious affectation, which perhaps
had no better foundation than an ill-imagined mode of exhibiting his
independence. But whatever I saw of him myself--and we were often
together, and sometimes for several days--was quite composed and manly.
Indeed, I never worried him to make him get on his hind legs and spout
poetry when he did not like it. He deserves independence well; and if
the dog which now awakens him to the recollection of his possessing it,
happened formerly to disturb the short sleep that drowned his
recollection of so great a blessing, there is good reason for enduring
the disturbance with more patience than before.
But surely, admitting all our temptations and irregularities there are
men of genius enough living to restrain the mere possession of talent
from the charge of disqualifying the owner for the ordinary occupation
and duties of life. There never were better men, and especially better
husbands, fathers, and real patriots, than Southey and Wordsworth; they
might even be pitched upon as most exemplary characters. I myself, if I
may rank myself in the list, am, as Hamlet says, indifferent honest, and
at least not worse than an infidel in loving those of my own house. And
I think that generally speaking, authors, like actors, being rather
less commonly believed to be eccentric than was the faith fifty years
since, do conduct themselves as amenable to the ordinary rules of
society.
This tirade was begun a long time since, but is destined to be finished
at Abbotsford. Your bower is all planted with its evergreens, but must
for seven years retain its original aspect of a gravel pit.
(Rest lost.)
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)