'All a rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.'
He is not, indeed, deficient, as the excerpt given shows, in dignity and
weightiness, but neither there nor elsewhere has he any of the finer
qualities of style, his rhythm being harsh and unmusical, his diction
cumbrous and diffuse.
The excerpt which comes next in this miscellany is by the author of that
treatise which is, with the exceptions, perhaps, of George Puttenham's
_Art of English Poesie_ and Ben Jonson's _Discoveries_, the most precious
contribution to criticism made in the Elizabethan age; but, indeed, the
_Defence of Poesie_ stands alone: alone in originality, alone in
inspiring eloquence. The letter we print is taken from Arthur Collins's
_Sydney Papers_, vol. i. pp. 283-5, and was written by Sir Philip Sidney
to his brother Robert, afterwards (August 1618) second Earl of Leicester,
then at Prague. From letters of Sir Henry Sidney in the same collection
(see letters dated March 25th and October 1578) we learn that Robert,
then in his eighteenth year, had been sent abroad to see the world and to
acquire foreign languages, that he was flighty and extravagant, and had in
consequence greatly annoyed his father, who had threatened to recall him
home. 'Follow,' Sir Henry had written, 'the direction of your most loving
brother. Imitate his virtues, exercyses, studyes and accyons, hee ys a
rare ornament of thys age.' This letter was written at a critical time in
Sidney's life. With great courage and with the noblest intentions, though
with extraordinary want of tact, for he was only in his twenty-sixth
year, he had presumed to dissuade Queen Elizabeth from marrying the Duke
of Anjou. The Queen had been greatly offended, and he had had to retire
from Court. The greater part of the year 1580 he spent at Wilton with his
sister Mary, busy with the _Arcadia_. In August he had, through the
influence of his uncle Leicester, become reconciled with the Queen, and a
little later took up his residence at Leicester House, from which this
letter is dated. It is a mere trifle, yet it illustrates very strikingly
and even touchingly Sidney's serious, sweet, and beautiful character. The
admirable remarks on the true use of the study of history, such as 'I
never require great study in Ciceronianism, the chief abuse of Oxford,
_qui dum verba sectantur, res ipsas negligunt_,' remind us of the author
of the _Defence_; while the 'great part of my comfort is in you,' 'be
careful of yourself, and I shall never have cares,' and the 'I write this
to you as one that for myself have given over the delight in the world,'
show that he had estimated royal reconciliations at their true value, and
anticipate the beautiful and pathetic words with which he is said to have
taken leave of the world. Short and hurried as this letter is, we feel it
is one of those trifles which, as Plutarch observes, throw far more light
on character than actions of importance often do.
Between 1580 and the appearance of Meres's work in 1598 there was much
activity in critical literature. Five years before the date of Sidney's
letter George Gascogne had published his _Certayne Notes of Instruction
concerning the makyng of Verse in Rhyme_. This was succeeded in 1584 by
James I.'s _Ane Short Treatise conteining some rewles and cautelis to be
observit_. Then came William Webbe's _Discourse of English Poesie_, 1586,
which had been preceded by Sidney's charming _Defence of Poetry_, composed
in or about 1579, but not published till 1593. This and Puttenham's
elaborate treatise, _The Art of English Poesie contrived into three
books_ (1589), had indeed marked an epoch in the history of criticism.
Memorable, too, in this branch of literature is Harington's _Apologie for
Poetry_ (1591), prefixed to his translation of the _Orlando Furioso_. But
it was not criticism only which had been advancing. The publication of
the first part of Lyly's _Euphues_ and of Spenser's _Shepherd's Calendar_
in 1579 may be said to have initiated the golden age of our literature.
The next twenty years saw Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Kyd, Shakespeare,
Chapman, Decker, and Ben Jonson at the head of our drama; Spenser,
Warner, Daniel, and Drayton leading narrative poetry; the contributors to
_England's Helicon_, published a year later, at the head of our sonneteers
and lyric poets; and Sidney, Lyly, Greene, and Hooker in the van of our
prose literature. The history of Meres's work, a dissertation from which
is here extracted, is curious. In or about 1596, Nicholas Ling and John
Bodenham conceived the idea of publishing a series of volumes containing
proverbs, maxims, and sententious reflections on religion, morals, and
life generally. Accordingly in 1597 appeared a small volume containing
various apothegms, extracted principally from the Classics and the
Fathers, compiled by Nicholas Ling and dedicated to Bodenham. It was
entitled _Politeuphuia_: _Wits Commonwealth_. In the following year
appeared '_Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury_: _Being the Second Part of Wits
Commonwealth_. By Francis Meres, Maister of Arts in both Universities.' On
the title-page is the motto '_Vivitur ingenio, cetera mortis erunt_.' It
was printed by P. Short for Cuthbert Burbie. From the address to the
reader, which does not appear in the first edition, though it was
apparently intended for that edition, we learn that it had been
undertaken because of the extraordinary popularity of _Wits
Commonwealth_, which 'thrice within one year had runne thorough the
Presse.' Meres's work differs importantly from _Wits Commonwealth_. It is
not merely a compilation, but contains original matter, generally by way
of commentary. The extracts are much fuller, many being taken from modern
writers, notably Robert Greene, Lyly, Warner, and Sir Philip Sidney. In
1634 the work was re-issued under another title, _Wits Commonwealth, The
Second Part: A Treasurie of Divine, Moral, and Phylosophical Similes and
Sentences generally useful. But more particular published for the Use of
Schools_. In 1636 it was again reprinted. The only part of Meres's work
which is of interest now is what is here reprinted. It belongs to that
portion of his compilation which treats of studies and reading, the
preceding sections discussing respectively of 'books,' of 'reading of
books,' of 'choice to be had in reading of books,' of 'the use of reading
many books,' of 'philosophers,' of 'poetry,' of 'poets,' consisting for
the most part of remarks compiled from Plutarch, and in one or two
instances from Sir Philip Sidney's _Defence of Poetry. A portion of the
passage which immediately precedes the _Discourse_ may be transcribed
because of its plain speaking about the indifference of Elizabeth and her
ministers to the fortune of poets; though this, with curious
inconsistency, is flatly contradicted, probably for prudential reasons,
in the _Discourse_ itself--
'As the Greeke and Latin Poets have wonne immortal credit to their
native speech, being encouraged and graced by liberal patrones and
bountiful benefactors; so our famous and learned Lawreate masters
of England would entitle our English to far greater admired
excellency, if either the Emperor Augustus or Octavia his sister
or noble Maecenas were alive to reward and countenance them; or if
witty Comedians and stately Tragedians (the glorious and goodlie
representers of all fine witte, glorified phrase and great action)
bee still supported and uphelde, by which meanes (O ingrateful and
damned age) our Poets are soly or chiefly maintained, countenanced
and patronized.'
Of the author of this work, Francis Meres or Meers, comparatively little
is known. He sprang from an old and highly respectable family in
Lincolnshire, and was born in 1565, the son of Thomas Meres, of Kirton in
Holland in that county. After graduating from Pembroke College, Cambridge,
in 1587, proceeding M.A. in 1591 at his own University, and subsequently
by _ad eundem_ at Oxford, he settled in London, where in 1597, having
taken orders, he was living in Botolf Lane. He was presented in July 1602
to the rectory of Wing in Rutland, keeping a school there. He remained at
Wing till his death, in his eighty-first year, January 29, 1646-7. As
Charles FitzGeoffrey, in a Latin poem in his _Affaniae_ addressed to
Meres, speaks of him as '_Theologus et poeta_', it is possible that the
'F.M.' who was a contributor to the _Paradise of Dainty Devices_ is to be
identified with Meres. In addition to the _Palladis Tamia_, Meres was the
author of a sermon published in 1597, a copy of which is in the Bodleian,
and of two translations from the Spanish, neither of which is of any
interest.
Meres's _Discourse_ is, like the rest of his work, mainly a compilation,
with additions and remarks of his own. Much of it is derived from the
thirty-first chapter of the first book of Puttenham; with these
distinctions, that Meres's includes the poets who had come into
prominence between 1589 and 1598, and instituted parallels, biographical
and critical, between them and the ancient Classics. It is the notices of
these poets, and more particularly the references to Shakespeare's
writings, which make this treatise so invaluable to literary students.
Thus we are indebted to Meres for a list of the plays which Shakespeare
had produced by 1598, and for a striking testimony to his eminence at
that date as a dramatic poet, as a narrative poet, and as a writer of
sonnets. The perplexing reference to _Love's Labour's Won_ has never
been, and perhaps never will be, satisfactorily explained. To assume that
it is another title for _All's Well that Ends Well_ in an earlier form is
to cut rather than to solve the knot. It is quite possible that it refers
to a play that has perished. The references to the imprisonment of Nash
for writing the _Isle of Dogs_, to the unhappy deaths of Peele, Greene,
and Marlowe, and to the high personal character of Drayton are of great
interest. Meres was plainly a man of muddled and inaccurate learning, of
no judgment, and of no critical power, a sort of Elizabethan Boswell
without Boswell's virtues, and it is no paradox to say that it is this
which gives his _Discourse_ its chief interest. It probably represents
not his own but the judgments current on contemporary writers in
Elizabethan literary circles. And we cannot but be struck with their
general fairness. Full justice is done to Shakespeare, who is placed at
the head of the dramatists; full justice is done to Spenser, who is
styled divine, and placed at the head of narrative poets; to Sidney, both
as a prose writer and as a poet; to Drayton, to Daniel, and to Hall,
Lodge, and Marston, as satirists. We are surprised to find such a high
place assigned to Warner, 'styled by the best wits of both our
universities the English Homer,' and a modern critic would probably
substitute different names, notably those of Lodge and Campion, for those
of Daniel and Drayton in a list of the chief lyric poets then in activity.
In Meres's remarks on painters and musicians, there is nothing to detain
us.
Of a very different order is the important critical treatise which comes
next, Dryden's _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, to which are prefixed as
prolegomena Dryden's _Dedicatory Epistle to The Rival Ladies_, Sir Robert
Howard's _Preface to Four New Plays_, and, as supplementary, Howard's
_Preface to The Duke of Lerma_, and Dryden's _Defence of the Essay of
Dramatic Poesy_. As Dryden's _Essay_, like almost all his writings, both
in verse and prose, was of a more or less occasional character, it will
be necessary to explain at some length the origin of the controversy out
of which it sprang, as well as the immediate object with which it was
written.
The Restoration found Dryden a literary adventurer, with a very slender
patrimony and with no prospects. Poetry was a drug in the market;
hack-work for the booksellers was not to his taste; and the only chance
of remunerative employment open to him was to write for the stage. To
this he accordingly betook himself. He began with comedy, and his comedy
was a failure. He then betook himself to a species of drama, for which
his parts and accomplishments were better fitted. Dryden had few or none
of the qualifications essential in a great dramatist; but as a
rhetorician, in the more comprehensive sense of the term, he was soon to
be unrivalled. In the rhymed heroic plays, as they were called, he found
just the sphere in which he was most qualified to excel. The taste for
these dramas, which owed most to France and something to Italy and Spain,
had come in with the Restoration. Their chief peculiarities were the
complete subordination of the dramatic to the rhetorical element, the
predominance of pageant, and the substitution of rhymed for blank verse.
Dryden's first experiment in this drama was the _Rival Ladies_, in which
the tragic portions are composed in rhyme, blank verse being reserved for
the parts approaching comedy. In his next play, the _Indian Queen_,
written in conjunction with Howard, blank verse is wholly discarded. The
dedication of the _Rival Ladies_ to Orrery is appropriate. Roger Boyle,
Baron Broghill, and first Earl of Orrery, was at this time Lord President
of Munster, and it was he who had revived these rhymed plays in his _Henry
V._, which was brought out in the same year as Dryden's comedy. Whoever
has read this drama and Orrery's subsequent experiments, _Mustapha_
(1665), the _Black Prince_ (1667), _Tryphon_ (1668), will be able to
estimate Dryden's absurd flattery at its proper value.
But these dramatic innovations were sure not to pass without protest,
though the protest came from a quarter where it might least have been
expected. Sir Robert Howard was the sixth son of Thomas, first Earl of
Berkshire. He had distinguished himself on the Royalist side in the Civil
War, and had paid the penalty for his loyalty by an imprisonment in
Windsor Castle during the Commonwealth. At the Restoration he had been
made an Auditor of the Exchequer. Dryden seems to have made his
acquaintance shortly after arriving in London. In 1660 Howard published a
collection of poems and translations, to which Dryden prefixed an address
'to his honoured friend' on 'his excellent poems.' Howard's rank and
position made him a useful friend to Dryden, and Dryden in his turn was
no doubt of much service to Howard. Howard introduced him to his family,
and in December 1663 Dryden married his friend's eldest sister, the Lady
Elizabeth Howard. In the following year Dryden assisted his
brother-in-law in the composition of the _Indian Queen_. There had
probably been some misunderstanding or dispute about the extent of the
assistance which Dryden had given, which accounts for what follows. In
any case Howard published in 1665, professedly under pressure from
Herringman, four plays, two comedies, _The Surprisal_ and _The
Committee_, and two tragedies, the _Vestal Virgin_ and _Indian Queen_;
and to the volume he prefixed the preface, which is here reprinted. It
will be seen that though he makes no reference to Dryden, he combats all
the doctrines laid down in the preface to the _Rival Ladies_. He exalts
the English drama above the French, the Italian, and the Spanish; and
vindicates blank verse against rhymed, making, however, a flattering
exception of Orrery's dramas. If Dryden was not pleased, he appears to
have had the grace to conceal his displeasure. For he passed the greater
part of 1666 at his father-in-law's house, and dedicated to Howard his
_Annus Mirabilis_. But Howard was to have his answer. In the _Essay of
Dramatic Poesy_ he is introduced in the person of Crites, and in his
mouth are placed all the arguments advanced in the _Preface_ that they
may be duly refuted and demolished by Dryden in the person of Neander. At
this mode of retorting Howard became really angry; and in the _Preface to
the Duke of Lerma_, published in the middle of 1668, he replied in a tone
so contemptuous and insolent that Dryden, in turn, completely lost his
temper. The sting of Howard's _Preface_ lies, it will be seen, in his
affecting the air of a person to whom as a statesman and public man the
points in dispute are mere trifles, hardly worth consideration, and in
the patronising condescension with which he descends to a discussion with
one to whom as a mere _litterateur_ such trifles are of importance. The
_Defence of the Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ Dryden prefixed to the second
edition of the _Indian Emperor_, one of the best of his heroic plays. The
seriously critical portion of this admirable little treatise deals with
Howard's attacks on the employment of rhyme in tragedy, on the observance
of strict rules in dramatic composition, and on the observance of the
unities. But irritated by the tone of Howard's tract, Dryden does not
confine himself to answering his friend's arguments. He ridicules, what
Shadwell had ridiculed before, Howard's coxcombical affectation of
universal knowledge, makes sarcastic reference to an absurdity of which
his opponent had been guilty in the House of Commons, mercilessly exposes
his ignorance of Latin, and the uncouthness and obscurity of his English.
The brothers-in-law afterwards became reconciled, and in token of that
reconciliation Dryden cancelled this tract.
The _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ was written at Charleton Park in the latter
part of 1665, and published by Herringman in 1668. It was afterwards
carefully revised, and republished with a dedication to Lord Buckhurst in
1684. Dryden spent more pains than was usual with him on the composition
of this essay, though he speaks modestly of it as 'rude and indigested,'
and it is indeed the most elaborate of his critical disquisitions. It
was, he said, written 'chiefly to vindicate the honour of our English
writers from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the French before
them.' Its more immediate and particular object was to regulate dramatic
composition by reducing it to critical principles, and these principles
he discerned in a judicious compromise between the licence of romantic
drama as represented by Shakespeare and his School, and the austere
restraints imposed by the canons of the classical drama. Assuming that a
drama should be 'a just and lively image of human nature, representing
its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is
subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind,' it is shown that
this end can only be attained in a drama founded on such a compromise;
that the ancient and modern classical drama fails in nature; that the
Shakespearian drama fails in art. At the conclusion of the essay he
vindicates the employment of rhyme, a contention which he afterwards
abandoned. The dramatic setting of the essay was no doubt suggested by
the Platonic _Dialogues_, or by Cicero, and the essay itself may have
been suggested by Flecknoe's short _Discourse of the English Stage_,
published in 1664.
The _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ may be said to make an era in the history
of English criticism, and to mark an era in the history of English prose
composition. It was incomparably the best purely critical treatise which
had hitherto appeared in our language, both synthetically in its
definition and application of principles, and particularly in its lucid,
exact, and purely discriminating analysis. It was also the most striking
and successful illustration of what may be called the new prose style, or
that style which, initiated by Hobbes and developed by Sprat, Cowley, and
Denham[1] blended the ease and plasticity of colloquy with the solidity
and dignity of rhetoric, of that style in which Dryden was soon to become
a consummate master.
The _Advice to a Young Reviewer_ brings us into a very different sphere
of criticism, and has indeed a direct application to our own time. It was
written by Edward Copleston, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's and Bishop of
Llandaff. Born in February 1776 at Offwell, in Devonshire, Copleston
gained in his sixteenth year a scholarship at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford. After carrying off the prize for Latin verse, he was elected in
1795 Fellow of Oriel. In 1800, having been ordained priest, he became
Vicar of St. Mary's. In 1802 he was elected Professor of Poetry, in which
capacity he delivered the lectures subsequently published under the title
of _Praelectiones Academicae_--a favourite book of Cardinal Newman's. In
1814 he succeeded Dr. Eveleigh as Provost of Oriel. In 1826 he was made
Dean of Chester, in 1828 Bishop of Llandaff and Dean of St. Paul's. He
died at Llandaff, on October 14th, 1849. Copleston is one of the fathers
of modern Oxford, and from his provostship date many of the reforms which
transformed the University of Gibbon and Southey into the University of
Whateley, of Newman, of Keble, and of Pusey. The brochure which is
printed here was written when Copleston was Fellow and Tutor of Oriel. It
was immediately inspired, not, as is commonly supposed, by the critiques
in the _Edinburgh Review_, but by the critiques in the _British Critic_,
a periodical founded in 1793, and exceedingly influential between that
time and about 1812. Archbishop Whateley, correcting a statement in the
_Life_ of Copleston by W.J. Copleston, says that it was occasioned by a
review of Mant's poems in the _British Critic_[2]. But on referring to
the review of these poems, which appeared in the November number of 1806,
plainly the review referred to, we find nothing in it to support
Whateley's assertion. That the reviews in the _British Critic_ are,
however, what Copleston is parodying in the critique of _L'Allegro_ is
abundantly clear, but what he says about voyages and travels and about
science and recondite learning appear to have reference to articles
particularly characteristic of the _Edinburgh Review_. It was not,
however, till after the date of Copleston's parody that the _Edinburgh
Review_ began conspicuously to illustrate what Copleston here satirises;
it was not till a time more recent still that periodical literature
generally exemplified in literal seriousness what Copleston intended as
extravagant irony. It is interesting to compare with Copleston's remarks
what Thackeray says on the same subjects in the twenty-fourth chapter of
_Pendennis_, entitled 'The Pall Mall Gazette.' This brochure is evidently
modelled on Swift's 'Digression Concerning Critics' in the third section
of the _Tale of a Tub_, and owes something also to the _Treatise on the
Bathos_ in Pope's and Swift's _Miscellanies_, as the title may have been
suggested by Shaftesbury's _Advice to an Author_. The _Advice_ itself and
the supplementary critique of Milton are clever and have good points, but
they will not bear comparison with the satire of Swift and Pope.
The excerpt which comes next in this Miscellany links with the name of
the author of the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ the name of the most
illustrious of his contemporaries. The difference, indeed, between Milton
and Dryden is a difference not in degree merely, but in kind, so
immeasurably distant and alien is the sphere in which they moved and
worked both as men and as writers. It has sometimes been questioned
whether Dryden is a poet. Few would dispute that Milton divides with
Shakespeare the supremacy in English poetry. In Dryden as a man there is
little to attract or interest us. In character and in private life he
appears to have been perfectly commonplace. We close his biography, and
our curiosity is satisfied. With Milton it is far otherwise. We feel
instinctively that he belongs to the demi-gods of our race. We have the
same curiosity about him as we have about Homer, Aeschylus, and
Shakespeare, so that the merest trifles which throw any light on his
personality assume an interest altogether out of proportion to their
intrinsic importance. Our debt to Ellwood is, it must be admitted, much
less than it might have been, if he had thought a little more of Milton
and a little less of his somewhat stupid self and the sect to which he
belonged. But, as the proverb says, we must not look a gift-horse in the
mouth, and we are the richer for the Quaker's reminiscences. With
Ellwood's work, the _History of Thomas Ellwood, written by Himself_, we
are only concerned so far as it bears on his relation with Milton. Born
in 1639, the son of a small squire and justice of the peace at Crowell in
Oxfordshire, Ellwood had, in 1659, been persuaded by Edward Burrough, one
of the most distinguished of Fox's followers, to join the Quakers. He was
in his twenty-fourth year when he first met Milton. Milton was then living
in Jewin Street, having removed from his former lodging in Holborn, most
probably in the autumn of 1661. The restoration had terminated his work
as a controversialist and politician. For a short time his life had been
in peril, but he had received a pardon, and could at least live in peace.
He could no longer be of service as a patriot, and was now occupied with
the composition of _Paradise Lost_. Since 1650 he had been blind, and for
study and recreation was dependent on assistance. Having little domestic
comfort as a widower, he had just married his third wife.
Ellwood's narrative tells its own story. What especially strikes us in
it, and what makes it particularly interesting, is that it presents
Milton in a light in which he is not presented elsewhere. Ellwood seems
to have had the same attraction for him as Bonstetten had for Gray. No
doubt the simplicity, freshness, and enthusiasm of the young Quaker
touched and interested the lonely and world-wearied poet who, when
Ellwood first met him, had entered on his fifty-fifth year; he had no
doubt, too, the scholar's sympathy with a disinterested love of learning.
In any case, but for Ellwood, we should never have known the softer side
of Milton's character, never have known of what gentleness, patience, and
courtesy he was capable. And, indeed, when we remember Milton's position
at this time, as tragical as that of Demosthenes after Chaeronea, and of
Dante at the Court of Verona, there is something inexpressibly touching
in the picture here given with so much simplicity and with such evident
unconsciousness on the part of the painter of the effect produced. There
is one passage which is quite delicious, and yet its point may be, as it
commonly is, easily missed. It illustrates the density of Ellwood's
stupidity, and the delicate irony of the sadly courteous poet. Milton had
lent him, it will be seen, the manuscript of _Paradise Lost_; and on
Ellwood returning it to him, 'he asked me how I liked it, and what I
thought of it, which I modestly but freely told him, and after some
further discourse about it I pleasantly said to him, "Thou has said much
here of Paradise Lost, but what has thou to say of Paradise Found?"' Now
the whole point and scope of Paradise Lost is Paradise Found--the
redemption--the substitution of a spiritual Eden within man for a
physical Eden without man, a point emphasised in the invocation, and
elaborately worked out in the closing vision from the Specular Mount. It
is easy to understand the significance of what follows: 'He made me no
answer, but sat sometime in a muse; then broke off that discourse, and
fell upon another subject.' The result no doubt of that 'muse' was the
suspicion, or, perhaps, the conviction, that the rest of the world would,
in all probability, be as obtuse as Ellwood; and to that suspicion or
conviction we appear to owe _Paradise Regained_. The Plague over, Milton
returned to London, settling in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields. 'And when
afterwards I went to wait on him there ... he shewed me his second poem,
called _Paradise Regained_, and in a pleasant tone said to me, "This is
owing to you, for you put it into my head by the question you put to me
at Chalfont, which before I had not thought of."' In 'the pleasant tone'
more, and much more, is implied, of that we may be very sure, than meets
the ear. We should like to have seen the expression on Milton's face both
on this occasion and also when, on Dryden requesting his permission to
turn _Paradise Lost_ into an opera, he replied; 'Oh, certainly, you may
tug my verses if you please, Mr. Dryden.' It may be added that _Paradise
Lost_ was not published till 1667, and _Paradise Regained_ did not see
the light till 1671. Ellwood seems to imply that _Paradise Regained_ was
composed between the end of August or the beginning of September 1665,
and the end of the autumn of the same year, which is, of course,
incredible and quite at variance with what Phillips tells us. Ellwood is,
no doubt, expressing himself loosely, and his 'afterwards' need not
necessarily relate to his first, or to his second, or even to his third
visit to Milton after the poet's return to Artillery Walk, but refers
vaguely to one of those 'occasions which drew him to London.' When he
last saw Milton we have no means of knowing. He never refers to him
again. His autobiography closes with the year 1683.
For the rest of his life Ellwood was engaged for the most part in
fighting the battles of the Quakers-esoterically in endeavouring to
compose their internal feuds, exoterically in defending them and their
tenets against their common enemies--and in writing poetry, which it is
to be hoped he did not communicate to his 'master.' After the death of
his father in 1684 he lived in retirement at Amersham. His most important
literary service was his edition of George Fox's _Journal_, the manuscript
of which he transcribed and published. He died at his house on Hunger
Hill, Amersham, in March 1714, and lies with Penn in the Quaker's
burying-ground at New Jordan, Chalfont St. Giles.
We have now arrived at the pamphlets in our Miscellany bearing on the
reign of Queen Anne. First come the Partridge tracts. The history of the
inimitable hoax of which they are the record is full of interest. In
November 1707 Swift, then Vicar of Laracor, came over to England on a
commission from Archbishop King. His two satires, the _Battle of the
Books_ and the _Tale of a Tub_, published anonymously three years before,
had given him a foremost place among the wits, for their authorship was an
open secret. Though he was at this time principally engaged in the cause
of the Established Church, in active opposition to what he considered the
lax latitudinarianism of the Whigs on the one hand and the attacks of the
Freethinkers on the other, he found leisure for doing society another
service. Nothing was more detestable to Swift than charlatanry and
imposture. From time immemorial the commonest form which quackery has
assumed has been associated with astrology and prophecy. It was the
frequent theme or satire in the New Comedy of the Greeks and in the
Comedy of Rome; it has fallen under the lash of Horace and Juvenal;
nowhere is Lucian more amusing than when dealing with this species of
roguery. Chaucer with exquisite humour exposed it and its kindred alchemy
in the fourteenth century, and Ben Jonson and the author of _Albumazar_ in
the seventeenth. Nothing in _Hudibras_ is more rich in wit and humour than
the exposure of Sidrophel, and one of the best of Dryden's comedies is the
_Mock Astrologer_. But it was reserved for Swift to produce the most
amusing satire which has ever gibbeted these mischievous mountebanks.
John Partridge, whose real name is said to have been Hewson, was born on
the 18th of January 1644. He began life, it appears, as a shoemaker; but
being a youth of some abilities and ambition, had acquired a fair
knowledge of Latin and a smattering of Greek and Hebrew. He had then
betaken himself to the study of astrology and of the occult sciences.
After publishing the _Nativity of Lewis XIV._ and an astrological essay
entitled _Prodromus_, he set up in 1680 a regular prophetic almanac,
under the title of _Merlinus Liberatus_. A Protestant alarmist, for such
he affected to be, was not likely to find favour under the government of
James II., and Partridge accordingly made his way to Holland. On his
return he resumed his Almanac, the character of which is exactly
described in the introduction to the _Predictions_, and it appears to
have had a wide sale. Partridge, however, was not the only impostor of
his kind, but had, as we gather from notices in his Almanac and from his
other pamphlets, many rivals. He was accordingly obliged to resort to
every method of bringing himself and his Almanac into prominence, which
he did by extensive and impudent advertisements in the newspapers and
elsewhere. In his Almanac for 1707 he issues a notice warning the public
against impostors usurping his name. It was this which probably attracted
Swift's attention and suggested his mischievous hoax.
The pamphlets tell their own tale, and it is not necessary to tell it
here. The name, Isaac Bickerstaff, which has in sound the curious
propriety so characteristic of Dickens's names, was, like so many of the
names in Dickens, suggested by a name on a sign-board, the name of a
locksmith in Long Acre. The second tract, purporting to be written by a
revenue officer, and giving an account of Partridge's death, was, of
course, from the pen of Swift. The verses on Partridge's death appeared
anonymously on a separate sheet as a broadside. It is amusing to learn
that the tract announcing Partridge's death, and the approaching death of
the Duke of Noailles, was taken quite seriously, for Partridge's name was
struck off the rolls of Stationers' Hall, and the Inquisition in Portugal
ordered the tract containing the treasonable prediction to be burned. As
Stationers' Hall had assumed that Partridge was dead--a serious matter
for the prospects of his Almanac--it became necessary for him to
vindicate his title to being a living person. Whether the next tract,
_Squire Bickerstaff Detected_, was, as Scott asserts, the result of an
appeal to Rowe or Yalden by Partridge, and they, under the pretence of
assisting him, treacherously making a fool of him, or an independent
_j'eu d'esprit_, is not quite clear. Nor is it easy to settle with any
certainty the authorship. In the Dublin edition of Swift's works, it is
attributed to Nicholas Rowe; Scott assigns it to Thomas Yalden, the
preacher of Bridewell and a well-known poet. Congreve is also said to
have had a hand in it. It would have been well for Partridge had he
allowed matters to rest here, but unhappily he inserted in the November
issue of his Almanac another solemn assurance to the public that he was
still alive; and was fool enough to add, that he was not only alive at
the time he was writing, but was also alive on the day on which
Bickerstaff had asserted that he was dead. Swift saw his opportunity, and
in the most amusing of this series of tracts proceeded to prove that
Partridge, under whatever delusions as to his continued existence he
might be labouring, was most certainly dead and buried.
The tracts here printed by no means exhaust the literature of the
Partridge hoax, but nothing else which appeared is worth reviving. It is
surprising that Scott should include in Swift's works a vapid and
pointless contribution attributed to a 'Person of Quality.' The effect of
all this on poor Partridge was most disastrous; for three years his
Almanac was discontinued. When it was revived, in 1714, he had discovered
that his enemy was Swift. What comments he made will be found at the end
of these tracts. Partridge did not long survive the resuscitation of his
Almanac. What had been fiction became fact on June 24th, 1715, and his
virtues and accomplishments, delineated by a hand more friendly than
Swift's, were long decipherable, in most respectable Latin, on his tomb
in Mortlake Churchyard.
The Partridge hoax has left a permanent trace in our classical
literature. When, in the spring of 1709, Steele was about to start the
_Tatler_, he thought he could best secure the ear of the public by
adopting the name with which Englishmen were then as familiar as a
century and a half afterwards they became with the name of Pickwick. It
was under the title of the _Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff_ that the
essays which initiated the most attractive and popular form of our
periodical literature appeared.
The next tract, Gay's _Present State of Wit_, takes up the history of our
popular literature during the period which immediately succeeded the
discomfiture of poor Partridge. Its author, John Gay, who is, as we need
scarcely add, one of the most eminent of the minor poets of the Augustan
age, was at the time of its appearance almost entirely unknown. Born in
September 1685, at Barnstaple, of a respectable but decayed family, he
had received a good education at the free grammar school of that place.
On leaving school he had been apprenticed to a silk mercer in London. But
he had polite tastes, and employed his leisure time in scribbling verses
and in frequenting with his friend, Aaron Hill, the literary
coffee-houses. In 1708 he published a vapid and stupid parody, suggested
by John Philip's _Splendid Shilling_ and _Cider_, entitled _Wine_. His
next performance was the tract which is here printed, and which is dated
May 3rd, 1711. It is written with skill and sprightliness, and certainly
shows a very exact and extensive acquaintance with the journalistic world
of those times. And it is this which gives it its value. The best and most
useful form, perhaps, which our remarks on it can take will be to furnish
it with a running commentary explaining its allusions both to
publications and to persons. It begins with a reference to the unhappy
plight of Dr. King. This was Dr. William King, who is not to be
confounded with his contemporaries and namesakes, the Archbishop of
Dublin or the Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, but who may be best,
perhaps, described as the Dr. William King 'who could write verses in a
tavern three hours after he could not speak.' He had long been a
prominent figure among wits and humorists. His most important recent
performances had been his _Art of Cookery_ and his _Art of Love_,
published respectively in 1708 and in 1709. In the latter year he had,
much to the disgust of Sir John Soames, issued some very amusing parodies
of the _Philosophical Transactions_, which he entitled _Useful
Transactions in Philosophy and other sorts of Learning_, to be continued
as long as it could find buyers. It ceased apparently to find buyers, and
after reaching three numbers had collapsed. When the _Examiner_ was
started in August 1710, King was one of the chief contributors. Latterly,
however, things had been going very badly with this 'poor starving wit,'
as Swift called him. He was either imprisoned or on the point of being
imprisoned in the Fleet, but death freed him from his troubles at the end
of 1712. John Ozell was, perhaps, the most ridiculous of the scribblers
then before the public, maturing steadily for the _Dunciad_, where, many
years afterwards, he found his proper place. He rarely aspired beyond
'translations,' and the _Monthly Amusement_ referred to is not, as might
be supposed, a periodical, but simply his frequent appearances as a
translator. Gay next passes to periodicals and newspapers. De Foe is
treated as he was always treated by the wits. Pope's lines are well
known, and the only reference to him in Swift is: 'The fellow who was
pilloried--I forget his name.' Posterity has done him more justice. The
'poor _Review_' is of course the _Weekly Review_, started by De Foe in
1704, the first number of which appeared on Saturday, February 19th of
that year. It had been continued weekly, and still continued, till 1712,
extending to nine volumes, eight of which are extant.[3] The
_Observator_, which is also described as in its decline, had been set up
by John Tutchin in imitation of the paper issued by Sir Roger L'Estrange
in 1681, its first number appearing April 1st, 1702. Tutchin, dying in
1707, the paper was continued for the benefit of his widow, under the
management of George Ridpath, the editor of the _Flying Post_, and it
continued to linger on till 1712, when it was extinguished by the Stamp
Tax. The first number of the _Examiner_ appeared on the 3rd of August
1710, and it was set up by the Tories to oppose the _Tatler_, the chief
contributors to it being Dr. King, Bolingbroke, then Henry St. John,
Prior, Atterbury, and Dr. Freind. With No. 14 (Thursday, October 26th,
1710), Swift assumed the management, and writing thirty-two papers
successively, made it the most influential political journal in the
kingdom. The 'Letter to Crassus' appeared on February 1st, 1711, and was
written by Swift. To oppose the _Examiner_, the Whigs set up what, after
the second number, they called the _Whig Examiner_, the first number of
which appeared on September 14th, 1710. It was continued weekly till
October 12th, five numbers appearing, all of which were, with one
exception, perhaps, written by Addison, so that Gay's conjecture--if
Bickerstaff may be extended to include Addison--was correct. The
_Medley_, to which Gay next passes, was another Whig organ. The first
number appeared on August 5th, 1710, and it was continued weekly till
August 6th, 1711. It was conducted by Arthur Mainwaring, a man of family
and fortune, and an ardent Whig, with the assistance of Steele, Anthony
Henley, and Oldmixon.
With the reference to the _Tatler_, we pass from obscurity into daylight.
Since April 12th, 1709, that delightful periodical had regularly appeared
three times a week. With the two hundredth and seventy-first number on
January 2nd, 1711, it suddenly ceased. Of the great surprise and
disappointment caused by its cessation, of the causes assigned for it,
and of the high appreciation of all it had effected for moral and
intellectual improvement and pleasure, Gay gives a vivid picture. What he
says conjecturally about the reasons for its discontinuance is so near the
truth that we may suspect he had had some light on the subject from Steele
himself. It was, of course, from the preface to the edition of the first
three volumes of the collected _Tatlers_, published in 1710, that Gay
derived what he says about the contributions of Addison (though Steele
had not mentioned him by name, in accordance, no doubt, with Addison's
request) and about the verses of Swift. In all probability this was the
first public association of Addison's name with the _Tatler_. The Mr.
Henley referred to was Anthony Henley, a man of family and fortune, and
one of the most distinguished of the wits of that age, to whom Garth
dedicated _The Dispensary_. In politics he was a rabid Whig, and it was
he who described Swift as 'a beast for ever after the order of
Melchisedec.' Gay had not been misinformed, for Henley was the author of
the first letter in No. 26 and of the letter in No. 193, under the
character of Downes.
The cessation of the _Tatler_ had been the signal for the appearance of
several spurious papers purporting to be new numbers. One entitling
itself No. 272 was published by one John Baker; another, purporting to be
No. 273, was by 'Isaac Bickerstaff, Junior.' Then, on January 6th,
appeared what purported to be Nos. 272 and 273 of the original issue,
with a letter from Charles Lillie, one of the publishers of the original
_Tatler_. Later in January, William Harrison, a _protégé_ of Swift, a
young man whose name will be familiar to all who are acquainted with
Swift's _Journal to Stella_, was encouraged by Swift to start a new
_Tatler_, Swift liberally assisting him with notes, and not only
contributing himself but inducing Congreve also to contribute a paper.
And this new _Tatler_ actually ran to fifty-two numbers, appearing twice
a week between January 13th and May 19th, 1711, but, feeble from the
first, it then collapsed. Nor had the _Tatler_ been without rivals. In
the two hundred and twenty-ninth number of the _Tatler_, Addison,
enumerating his antagonists, says, 'I was threatened to be answered
weekly _Tit for Tat_, I was undermined by the _Whisperer_, scolded at by
a _Female Tatler_, and slandered by another of the same character under
the title of _Atalantis_.' To confine ourselves, however, to the
publications mentioned by Gay. The _Growler_ appeared on the 27th of
January 1711, on the discontinuance of the _Tatler_. The _Whisperer_ was
first published on October 11th, 1709, under the character of 'Mrs. Jenny
Distaff, half-sister to Isaac Bickerstaff.' The _Tell Tale_ appears to be
a facetious title for the _Female Tatler_, the first number of which
appeared on July 8th, 1709, and was continued for a hundred and eleven
numbers, under the editorship of Thomas Baker, till March 3rd, 1710. The
allusion in the postscript to the _British Apollo_ is to a paper entitled
_The British Apollo: or Curious Amusements for the Ingenious_, the first
number of which appeared on Friday, March 13th, 1708, the paper regularly
continuing on Wednesdays and Fridays till March 16th, 1711. Selections
from this curious miscellany were afterwards printed in three volumes,
and ran into three editions. Gay does not appear to be aware that this
periodical had ceased. The reference in 'the two statesmen of the last
reign whose characters are well expressed in their mottoes' are to Lord
Somers and the Earl of Halifax, as what follows refers respectively to
Addison and Steele. The tract closes with a reference to the _Spectator_,
the first number of which had appeared on the first of the preceding March.
Gay's brochure attracted the attention of Swift, who thus refers to it in
his _Journal to Stella_, May 14th, 1711: 'Dr. Freind was with me and
pulled out a two-penny pamphlet just published called _The State of Wit_.
The author seems to be a Whig, yet he speaks very highly of a paper called
the _Examiner_, and says the supposed author of it is Dr. Swift, but above
all he praises the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_.'
The two tracts which follow consist of the Life of Addison, which forms
the preface to Addison's collected works, published by Tickell in 1721,
and of the Dedicatory Epistle prefixed by Steele to an edition of
Addison's _Drummer_ in 1722. To the student of the literary history of
those times they are of great interest and importance. Of all Addison's
friends, Steele had long been the most intimate of the younger men whom
he had taken under his patronage. Tickell was the most loyal and the most
attached. While still at Oxford he had expressed his admiration of Addison
in extravagant terms: on arriving in London he made his acquaintance.
Tickell was an accomplished poet and man of letters, and though not a
profound a graceful scholar. Addison was pleased with a homage which was
worth accepting. As he rose, his _protégé_ rose with him. On his
appointment as Chief Secretary in Ireland he took Tickell with him. When
he was appointed Secretary of State he chose him as Under Secretary, and
shortly before his death made him his literary executor, instructing him
to collect his writings in a final and authentic edition. This, for
reasons which will be explained directly, was a task of no small
difficulty, but to this task Tickell loyally addressed himself. In the
spring of 1721 appeared, in four sumptuous quartos, the collected edition
of Addison's works. It was prefaced by the biography which is here
reprinted, and to the biography was appended that noble and pathetic
elegy which will make Tickell's name as immortal as Addison's.
There can be very little doubt that Steele had been greatly distressed
and hurt by the rupture of the friendship which had so long existed
between himself and Addison, but that Tickell should have taken his place
in Addison's affections must have been inexpressibly galling to him.
Naturally irritated, his irritation had no doubt been intensified by
Addison appointing Tickell Under Secretary of State, and still more by
his making him his literary executor--offices which Steel might naturally
have expected, had all gone well, to fill himself. It would not have been
in human nature that he could regard Tickell with any other feelings than
hostility and jealousy. Tickell's omission of the _Drummer_ from Addison's
works was, in all probability--such at least is the impression which the
letter makes on me--a mere pretext for the gratification of personal
spite. There is nothing to justify the interpretation which he puts on
Tickell's words. All that Steele here says about Addison he had said
publicly and quite as emphatically before, as Tickell had recorded. As
Steele had, in Tickell's own words, given to Addison 'the honour of the
most applauded pieces,' it is absurd to accuse Tickell of insinuating
that Addison wished his papers to be marked because he was afraid Steele
would assume the credit of these pieces. In one important particular he
flatly contradicts himself. At the beginning he asks 'whether it was a
decent and reasonable thing that works written, as a great part of Mr.
Addison's were, in correspondence with me, ought to have been published
without my review of the catalogue of them.' Three pages afterward, it
appears that, in compliance with the request of Addison delivered to him
by Tickell, he did mark with his own hand those _Tatlers_ which were
inserted in Addison's works--a statement of Tickell's, but a statement to
which Steele takes no exception. So far from attempting to disparage
Steele, Tickell does ample justice to him; and to accuse him of
insensibility to Addison's virtues, and of cold indifference to him
personally, is a charge refuted not only by all we know of Tickell, but
by every page in the tract itself. Many of the objections which he makes
to Tickell's remarks are too absurd to discuss. From nothing indeed which
Tickell says, but from one of Steele's own admissions, it is impossible
not to draw a conclusion very derogatory to Steele's honesty, and to make
us suspect that his sensitiveness was caused by his own uneasy conscience:
'What I never did declare was Mr. Addison's I had his direct injunctions
to hide.' This certainly seems to imply that Steele had allowed himself
to be credited with what really belonged to his friend. A month after
Addison's death he had written in great alarm to Tonson, on hearing that
it had been proposed to separate Addison's papers in the _Tatler_ from
his own. He bases his objection, it is true, on the pecuniary injury
which he and his family would suffer, but this is plainly mere
subterfuge. The truth probably is, that Steele wished to leave as
undefined as possible what belonged to Addison and what belonged to
himself; that he was greatly annoyed when he found that their respective
shares were by Addison's own, or at least his alleged, request to be
defined; that in his assignation of the papers he had not been quite
honest; and that, knowing this, he suspected that Tickell knew it too.
There is nothing to support Steele's assertion that it was at his
instigation that Addison distinguished his contributions to the
_Spectator_ and the _Guardian_. Addison, as his last injunctions showed,
must have contemplated a collective edition of his works, and must have
desired therefore that they should be identified. Steele's ambition, no
doubt, was that he and his friend should go down to posterity together,
but the appointment of Tickell instead of himself as Addison's literary
executor dashed this hope to the ground.
Few things in literary biography are more pathetic than the estrangement
between Addison and Steele. They had played as boys together; they had,
for nearly a quarter of a century, shared each other's burdens, and the
burdens had not been light; in misfortune and in prosperity, in business
and in pleasure, they had never been parted. The wisdom and prudence of
Addison had more than once been the salvation of Steele; what he knew of
books and learning had been almost entirely derived from Addison's
conversation; what moral virtue he had, from Addison's influence. And he
had repaid this with an admiration and affection which bordered on
idolatry. A more generous and genial, a more kindly, a more warm-hearted
man than Steele never lived, and it is easy to conceive what his feelings
must have been when he found his friend estranged from him and a rival in
his place. There is much to excuse what this letter to Congreve plainly
betrays; but excuse is not justification. Tickell had a delicate and
difficult task to perform: a duty to his dead friend, which was
paramount, a duty to Steele, and a duty to himself, and he succeeded in
performing each with admirable tact. Whether Tickell ever made any reply
to Steele's strictures, I have not been able to discover.
We pass now from the literary pamphlets to the extract and excerpts
illustrating the condition of the Church and the clergy at the end of the
seventeenth and about the first half of the eighteenth century. They are
of particular interest, not only in themselves, but in their relation to
Swift and Macaulay--to Swift as a Church reformer, to Macaulay as a
social historian. Few historical questions in our own time provoked more
controversy than the famous pages delineating the clergy who, according
to Macaulay, were typical of their order about the time of the
Restoration. The first excerpt is from Chamberlayne's _Angliae Notitia_.
The author of that work, Edward Chamberlayne, was born on the 13th of
December 1616. He was educated at Oxford, where he graduated as B.A. in
April 1638. For a short time he was Reader in Rhetoric to the University,
but on the breaking out of the Civil War he left for the Continent, where
he visited nearly every country in Europe. At the Restoration he
returned; and about 1675, after having been secretary to the Earl of
Carlisle, he became tutor to the King's natural son, Henry Fitzroy,
afterwards Duke of Grafton, and subsequently instructor in English to
Prince George of Denmark. He was also one of the earliest Fellows of the
Royal Society. He died at Chelsea in May 1703. In 1669 he published
anonymously _Angliae Notitia, or the Present State of England with Divers
Reflection upon the Ancient State therefor_, a work no doubt suggested by
and apparently modelled on the well-known _L'Estat Nouveau de la France_.
The work contains more statistics than reflections, and is exactly what
its title implies--a succinct account of England, beginning with its
name, its climate, its topography, and giving information, now
invaluable, about everything included in its constitution and in its
economy. The extract printed here is, as is indicated, from pp. 383-389
and p. 401. The work passed through two editions in the year of its
appearance, the second bearing the author's name, and at the time of
Chamberlayne's death it had, with successive amplifications, reached its
twentieth edition.
Of a very different order to Chamberlayne's work is the remarkable tract
which follows. The author, John Eachard, was born about 1636, at what
date is doubtful, but he was admitted into Catherine Hall, Cambridge, in
May 1653. Becoming Fellow of the Hall in 1658, he was chosen, on the
death of Dr. Lightfoot, Master. His perfectly uneventful life closed on
the 7th of July 1697. Personally he was a facetious and agreeable man,
and had the reputation of being rather a wit and humorist than a divine
and scholar. Baker complained of his inferiority as a preacher; and
Swift, observing 'that men who are happy enough at ridicule are
sometimes perfectly stupid upon grave subjects,' gives Eachard as an
instance. _The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and
Religion enquired into, In a letter written to R.L._, appeared
anonymously in 1670. This anonymity Eachard carefully preserved during
the controversies which it occasioned. It is difficult to understand how
any one after reading the preface could have misunderstood the purpose of
the book. But Eachard's fate was Swift's fate afterwards, though there was
more excuse for the High Church party missing the point of the _Tale of a
Tub_ than for the clergy generally missing that of Eachard's plea for
them. Ridicule is always a dangerous ally, especially when directed
against an institution or community, for men naturally identify
themselves with the body of which they are members, and resent as
individuals what reflects on them collectively. When one of the opponents
of Barnabus Oley in his preface to Herbert's _Country Parson_ observed:
'The pretence of your book was to _show_ the occasions, your book is
_become_ the occasion of the contempt of God's ministers,' he expressed
what the majority of the clergy felt. The storm burst at once, and the
storm raged for months. 'I have had,' wrote Eachard in one of his many
rejoinders, 'as many several names as the Grand Seignior has titles of
honour; for setting aside the vulgar and familiar ones of Rogue, Rascal,
Dog, and Thief (which may be taken by way of endearment as well as out of
prejudice and offence), as also those of more certain signification, as
Malicious Rogue, Ill-Natured Rascal, Lay Dog, and Spiteful Thief.' He had
also, he said, been called Rebel, Traitor, Scot, Sadducee, and Socinian.
Among the most elaborate replies to his work were: _An Answer to a Letter
of Enquiry into the Ground, _etc.. 1671; _A Vindication of the Clergy from
the Contempt imposed upon them, By the author of the Grounds_ etc., 1672;
_Hieragonisticon, or Corah's Doom, being an Answer to_, etc., 1672; _An
Answer to two Letters of T.B._, etc., 1673. The occasional references to
it in the theological literature of these times are indeed innumerable.
Many affected to treat him as a mere buffoon--the concoctor, as one
bitterly put it, of 'a pretty fardle of tales bundled together, and they
have had the hap to fall into such hands as had rather lose a friend, not
to say their country, than a jest.' Anthony Wood, writing at the time of
its appearance, classes it with 'the fooleries, playes, poems, and
drolling books,' with which, as he bitterly complains, people were 'taken
with' coupling with it Marvell's _Rehearsal Transposed_ and Butler's
_Hudibras_.[4]
To some of his opponents Eachard replied. Of his method of conducting
controversy, in which it is clear that he perfectly revelled, I
give a short specimen. It is from his letter to the author of
_Hieragonisticon_:--
'You may possibly think, sir, that I have read your book, but if you do
you are most mistaken. For as long as I can get Tolambu's _History of
Mustard_, Frederigo _Devastation of Pepper, The Dragon_, with cuts,
Mandringo's _Pismires rebuffeted_ and _retro-confounded, Is qui me
dubitat, or a flap against the Maggot of Heresie, Efflorescentina
Flosculorum_, or a choice collection of F. (_sic_) Withers _Poems_ or the
like, I do not intend to meddle with it. Alas, sir, I am as unlikely to
read your book that I can't get down the title no more than a duck can
swallow a yoked heifer'--and then follows an imitation of gulps straining
at the divided syllables of Hieragonisticon.
There is no reason to suspect the sincerity of Eachard, or to doubt that
he was, in his own words, an honest and hearty wisher that 'the best of
the clergy might for ever continue, as they are, rich and learned, and
that the rest might be very useful and well esteemed in their
profession.' To describe the work as 'a series of jocose caricatures--as
Churchill Babington in his animadversions on Macaulay's _History_
does--is absurd. Eachard was evidently a man of strong common sense, of
much shrewdness, a close observer, and one who had acquainted himself
exactly and extensively with the subject which he treats. But he was a
humorist, and, like Swift, sometimes gave the reins to his humour. It
must be remembered that his remarks apply only to the inferior clergy,
and there can be no doubt that since the Reformation they had, as a body,
sunk very low. Chamberlayne had no motive for exaggeration, but the
language he uses in describing them is stronger even than Eachard's.
Swift had no motive for exaggeration, and yet his pictures of Corusodes
and Eugenio in his _Essay on the Fates of Clergymen_, and what we gather
from his _Project for the Advancement of Religion_, his _Letter to a
Young Clergyman_, and what may be gathered generally from his writings,
very exactly corroborate Eachard's account. The lighter literature of the
later seventeenth and of the first half of the eighteenth century teems
with proofs of the contempt to which their ignorance and poverty exposed
them. To the testimonies of Oldham and Steele, and to the authorities
quoted by Macaulay and Mr. Lecky, may be added innumerable passages from
the _Observator_, from De Foe's _Review_, from Pepys,[5] from Baxter's
_Life_ of himself, from Archbishop Sharp's _Life_, from Burnet, and many
others.
It is remarkable that Eachard says nothing about two causes which
undoubtedly contributed to degrade the Church in the eyes of the laity:
its close association with party politics, and the spread of
latitudinarianism, a conspicuous epoch in which was marked some
twenty-six years later in the Bangorian controversy.
The appearance of the first volume of Macaulay's _History_ in 1848 again
brought Eachard's work into prominence. Macaulay's famous description of
the clergy of the seventeenth century in his third chapter was based
mainly on Eachard's account. The clergy and orthodox laity of our own day
were as angry with Eachard's interpreter as their predecessors, nearly two
centuries before, had been with Eachard himself. The controversy began
seriously, after some preliminary skirmishing in the newspapers and
lighter reviews, with Mr. Churchill Babington's _Mr. Macaulay's
Characters of the Clergy in the Latter Part of the Seventeenth Century
Considered_, published shortly after the appearance of the _History_.
What Mr. Babington and those whom he represented forgot was precisely
what Eachard's opponents had forgotten, that it was not the clergy
universally who had been described, for Macaulay, like Eachard, had
distinguished, but the clergy as represented by its proletariat.
If Eachard had occasionally given the reins to humour, Macaulay had
occasionally perhaps given them to rhetoric. But of the substantial
accuracy of both there can be no doubt at all.
On the intelligent, discriminating friends of the Church, Eachard's work
had something of the same effect, as Jeremy Collier's _Short View of the
Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage_ had in another sphere.
It directed serious attention to what all thoughtful and right-feeling
people must have felt to be a national scandal. It was an appeal to
sentiment and reason on matters with respect to which, in this country at
least, such appeals are seldom made in vain. It did not, indeed, lead
immediately to practical reform, but it advanced the cause of reform by
inspiring and bringing other initiators into the field. And pre-eminent
among these was Swift. Swift was evidently well acquainted with Eachard's
work. In the apology prefixed to the fourth edition of the _Tale of a Tub_
in 1710, he speaks of Eachard with great respect. Contemptuously
explaining that he has no intention of answering the attacks which had
been made on the _Tale_, he observes: 'When Dr. Eachard wrote his book
about the _Contempt of the Clergy_, numbers of these answerers
immediately started up, whose memory, if he had not kept alive by his
replies, it would now be utterly unknown that he were ever answered at
all.' No one who is familiar with Swift's tracts on Church reform can
doubt that he had read Eachard's work with minute attention, and was
greatly influenced by it. In his _Project for the Advancement of
Religion_, he largely attributed the scandalous immorality everywhere
prevalent to the insufficiency of religious instruction, and to the low
character of the clergy, the result mainly of their ignorance and
poverty. His _Letter to a Young Clergyman_ is little more than a didactic
adaptation of that portion of Eachard's work which deals with the
character and education of the clergy. The _Essay on the Fates of
Clergymen_ is another study from the _Contempt_, while the fragment of
the tract which he had begun, _Concerning that Universal Hatred which
prevails against the Clergy_, brings us still more closely to Eachard.
The likeness between them cannot be traced further; they were both, it is
true, humorists, but there is little in common between the austere and
bitter, yet, at the same time, delicious flavour of the one, and the
trenchant and graphic, but coarse and rollicking, humour of the other.
The essays reprinted from the _Tatler_ give humorous expression to a
grievance which not only wounded the pride of the clergy, but touched
them on an equally sensitive part--the stomach. It was not usual for the
chaplain in great houses to remain at table for the second course. When
the sweets were brought in, he was expected to retire. As Macaulay puts
it: 'He might fill himself with the corned beef and carrots; but as soon
as the tarts and cheese-cakes made their appearance, he quitted his seat
and stood aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast,
from a great part of which he had been excluded.' Gay refers to this
churlish custom in the second book of _Trivia_:--
'Cheese that the table's closing rites denies.
And bids me with th' unwilling chaplain rise.'
Possibly the custom originally arose, not from any wish to mark the
social inferiority of the chaplain, but because his presence was a check
on conversation. It must be owned, however, that this would have been
more intelligible had he retired, not with the corned beef and carrots,
but with the ladies. The passage quoted by Steele from Oldham is from his
_Satire, addressed to a Friend that is about to Leave the University and
come Abroad in the World_, not the only poem in which Oldham has thrown
light on the degraded profession of the clergy. See the end of his
_Satire, spoken in the person of Spenser_.
The last piece in this Miscellany has no connection with what precedes
it, but it has an interest of its own. Among the many services of one of
the purest and most indefatigable of philanthropists to his
fellow-citizens was the establishment of what is commonly known as _Poor
Richard's Almanack_. Of this periodical, and of the particular number of
it which is here reprinted, Franklin gives the following account in his
autobiography:--
'In 1732 I first published an Almanack, under the name of _Richard
Saunders_; it was continued by me about twenty-five years, and commonly
called _Poor Richard's Almanack_. I endeavoured to make it both
entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such demand
that I reaped considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten
thousand. And observing that it was generally read (scarce any
neighbourhood in the province being without it), I considered it as a
proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who
bought scarcely any other books. I therefore filled all the little spaces
that occurred between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial
sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality as the means
of procuring wealth and thereby securing virtue, it being more difficult
for a man in want to act always honestly, as, to use here one of these
proverbs, "it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright." These
proverbs, which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, I
assembled and formed into a connected discourse prefixed to the
_Almanack_ of 1757, as the harangue of a wise old man to the people
attending an auction. The bringing all these scattered counsels thus into
a focus enabled them to make a greater impression. The piece being
universally approved, was copied in all the newspapers of the American
Continent, reprinted in Britain on a large sheet of paper to be stuck up
in houses; two translations were made of it in France, and great numbers
bought by the clergy to distribute gratis among their poor parishioners
and tenants. In Pennsylvania, as it discouraged useless expense in
foreign superfluities, some thought it had its share of influence in
producing that growing plenty of money which was observable for several
years after its publication.'--_Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin_, Part II,
Works Edit. 1833, vol. ii. pp. 146-148.
Reprinted innumerable times while Franklin was alive, this paper has,
since his death, passed through seventy editions in English, fifty-six In
French, eleven in German, and nine in Italian. It has been translated into
nearly every language in Europe: into French, German, and Italian, as we
have seen; into Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Bohemian, Dutch, Welsh,
and modern Greek; it has also been translated into Chinese.[6] In the
edition of _Franklin's Works_, printed in London in 1806, it appears
under the title of _The Way to Wealth, as clearly shown in the Preface to
an old Pennsylvanian Almanack, entitled Poor Richard Improved_, and under
this title it was usually printed when detached from the Almanack.
As Franklin himself owns, the maxims have little pretension to
originality. It is evident that he had laid under contribution such
collections as Clerk's _Adagio Latino-Anglica_, Herbert's _Jacula
Prudentum_, James Howell's collection of proverbs, David Fergtison's
_Scotch Proverbs_ (with the successively increasing editions between 1641
and 1706), Ray's famous _Collection of English Proverbs_, William Penn's
_Maxims_, and the like. A few are probably original, and many have been
re-minted and owe their form to him.
The first number of the famous _Almanack_ from which they are extracted
was published at the end of 1732, just after Franklin had set up as a
printer and stationer for himself, its publication being announced in the
_Pennsylvania Gazette_ of December 9th, 1732; and for twenty-five years it
continued regularly to appear, the last number being that for the year
1758, and having for preface the discourse which became so
extraordinarily popular. The name assumed by Franklin was no doubt
borrowed from that of Richard Saunders, a well-known astrologer of the
seventeenth century, of whom there is a notice in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_. But Mr. Leicester Ford[7] says that it was the name
of 'a chyrurgeon' of the eighteenth century who for many years issued a
popular almanac entitled _The Apollo Anglicanus__. Of this publication I
know nothing, and can discover nothing. The probability is that its
compiler, whoever he was, anticipated Franklin in assuming the name of
John Saunders. He is most certainly not to be identified with Saunders
the astrologer, who died in, or not much later than, 1687.
It remains to add that no pains have been spared to make the texts of the
excerpts and tracts in this Miscellany as accurate as possible--indeed,
Mr. Arber's name is a sufficient guarantee of the efficiency with which
this important part of the work has been done. For the modernisation of
the spelling, which some readers may perhaps be inclined to regret, and
for the punctuation, as well as for the elucidatory notes within
brackets, Mr. Arber is solely responsible.