generosity. The unfailing testimony of all their friends is that
neither could restrain the impulse to give. The celebrated De Quincey
is led to characterize Lamb's munificence as _princely_, while
Procter, one of his younger friends, simply says, "he gave away
greatly." On the other hand, the testimony in regard to the generosity
of Johnson is equally strong. He was so open-hearted that he could not
trust himself to go upon the street with much money in his purse.
Neither Lamb nor Johnson believed in the modern methods of attending
to charitable giving through the mediation of boards and committees.
Each violated the commonest precepts of a coldblooded political
economy. If want and suffering were depicted upon the face of the
mendicant, that was enough to call for the open purse. What if the
beggar did look like a thief or drunkard? He might spend the money for
gin or tobacco, but what of that? "Why should they be denied such
sweeteners of their existence?" was Johnson's indulgent plea. This
stern moralist so much enjoyed giving that he doubtless would have
regretted the passing of laws prohibiting the beggar from plying his
vocation in public. So too would the genial Elia, who obeyed his own
precept of "give and ask no questions."
While returning to his lodgings after midnight Johnson would often
drop pennies into the hands of poor children sleeping on the
thresholds and stalls, to furnish them with the means for a breakfast.
This was done at a time when he was living on pennies himself.
"Reader," pleads Elia in his _Praise of Chimney Sweepers_, "if thou
meetest one of these small gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to
give him a penny--it is better to give him a twopence." And then Lamb
describes the choice and fragrant drink, _Saloop_, the delight of the
sweep, a basin of which together with a slice of delicate bread and
butter will cost but a twopence. As we read the description we have no
hesitancy in believing that the "unpennied sweep" frequently became a
pennied sweep after the gentle Elia had passed by.
Goldsmith once remarked that to be miserable was enough to insure the
protection of Johnson. This generous quality of mind filled the house
of Johnson with a queer assortment of pensioners. Had Lamb's home life
permitted, equally full of the needy and homeless would it have been.
In 1796 occurred the terrible tragedy that we may permit Lamb himself
to describe in his letter to Coleridge,--"White, or some of my
friends, or the public papers by this time may have informed you of
the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only
give you the outlines: My poor, dear, dearest sister, in a fit of
insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only
time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in
a madhouse, from which I fear she must be moved to an hospital.... My
poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him
and my aunt.... God Almighty have us well in his keeping!" Lamb
assumed the tender care of his sister, and his watchfulness and loving
care are more beautiful than the most charming essay he ever wrote.
But this condition at home prevented that generous open-hearted
hospitality so characteristic of Johnson. As it was he contributed to
the support of several. For a long period he gave thirty pounds a year
to his old schoolmistress. Telfourd relates that when Lamb saw the
nurse who had waited on Coleridge during his last illness, he forced
five guineas on her. Equally impulsive was his manner toward Procter,
whom he one time noticed to be in low spirits and imagined the cause
to be lack of money. "My dear boy," said he suddenly turning toward
his friend, "I have a quantity of useless things, I have now in my
desk a--a hundred pounds--that I don't _know_ what to do with. Take
it."
Some years ago when comparing these two men a Mr. Roose wrote in
concluding his paper: "We are all familiar with Johnson's huge,
ungainly form, arrayed in brown suit more or less dilapidated,
singed, bushy wig, black stockings, and mean old shoes. A quaint
little figure, Lamb comes before our vision, in costume uncontemporary
and as queer as himself, consisting of a suit of black cloth (they
both affected dark colors), rusty silk stockings shown from the knees,
thick shoes a mile too large, shirt with a wide, ill-plaited frill,
and tiny white neckcloth tied in a minute bow."
It is pleasant to fancy these two originals being brought into
personal contact. Nor is it hard, for all the tokens to the contrary,
to imagine Elia taking the grand, humane old doctor into his embrace
(a huger armful than his beloved folios), sitting up with him o'
nights, as he did with them, delighting in the humor of his
conversation, which was said by a contemporary to be unequaled except
by the old comedians, in whom Lamb's spirit found diversion; piercing
to heights and depths in his nature which Boswell never revealed to
him; while Johnson, it may safely be inferred, would have loved this
"poor Charles," in whom Carlyle could perceive but so slender a strain
of worth. But had they met at all, it would have been on equal terms.
Goldsmith maintained with difficulty, though he did maintain, his
attitude of independence towards the colossus of his age. Charles
Lamb, without any difficulty and without the show of assertiveness,
would have maintained it better. Lamb, who from earliest manhood
refused to knock under to the threatening intellectual arrogance of
Coleridge; who shook Wordsworth by the nose instead of by the hand
with the greeting, "How d'ye do, old Lake Poet!"--his stammering voice
might have broken with impunity on the doctor's weightiest utterances
with the absurdest quips and twists of speech of which even he was
capable. Yet both were of wayward nature, and had they met might not
have coalesced.
Lamb would have understood Johnson better than Johnson would have
understood the whimsicalities of the witty clerk. At one time while
discussing authors with friends Lamb said,--"There is Dr. Johnson: I
have no curiosity; no strange uncertainty about him."
Johnson's restraint in the use of alcoholic drinks is in contrast with
Lamb's indulgence. But Johnson's intemperate tea-drinking makes him
one with Lamb in his struggle with tobacco. In writing to Coleridge
for advice on smoking, Lamb asks: "What do you think of smoking? I
want your sober _average noon opinion_ of it.... May be the truth is,
that _one_ pipe is wholesome, _two_ pipes toothsome, _three_ pipes
noisome, _four_ pipes fulsome, _five_ pipes quarrelsome; and that's
the _sum_ on't. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason."
And Telfourd tells us that when Parr saw Lamb puffing like some
furious enchanter, he asked how he had acquired the power of smoking
at such a rate. Lamb replied, "I toiled after it, sir, as some men
toil after virtue."
VII
THE DEATH OF DR. JOHNSON
By common consent Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ takes first place as a
biography. Some critics go so far as to say that the excellence of the
biography is to be accounted for by the deficiency in the character of
Boswell; that Boswell was such a blind and whole-souled worshiper of
Johnson that he exposed the faults of his subject with the same zeal
with which he published the virtues. This may be true. Whether true or
not, it is not an altogether bad quality. Many of us think that the
biographies of our modern men of letters would have more vivacity and
lifelikeness were they to contain an occasional glimpse of the hero
when he is not on the parade ground. The biography of Tennyson by his
son, Lord Hallam, would be far more convincing had the son given us
occasional pictures of the poet when he was not at his best. But,
perhaps, it is too much to hope that a reverent and admiring son can
give the world a vital, impartial, and comprehensive life of his
father.
Boswell has given us a full account of Johnson's last days. The gruff
old lexicographer had lived a robust life; he had faced many
temptations, and had not always retired from the conflict victorious.
On the whole, however, he had lived an exemplary life, but like many
another good man he had a dread of dying; he feared he might not meet
the last foe as worthily as a man of his character and reputation
should. But this was a groundless fear. For when the last illness was
upon him, he asked his physician to tell him plainly whether there was
any hope of his recovery. The doctor first asked his patient whether
he could hear the whole truth, whatever it might be. Upon hearing an
affirmative reply, the physician declared that in his opinion nothing
short of a miracle would restore health.
"Then," said Johnson, "I will take no more physic, not even my
opiates; for I have prayed that I may render up my soul unclouded."
A brother of Boswell's wrote the following letter concerning the last
hours of Johnson:
"The Doctor, from the time that he was certain his death was near,
appeared to be perfectly resigned, was seldom or never fretful or out
of temper, and often said to his faithful servant, who gave me this
account, 'Attend, Francis, to the salvation of your soul, which is the
object of greatest importance:' he also explained to him passages in
the Scripture, and seemed to have pleasure in talking upon religious
subjects.
"On Monday, the 13th of December, the day on which he died, a Miss
Morris, daughter to a particular friend of his, called, and said to
Francis, that she begged to be permitted to see the doctor, that she
might earnestly request him to give her his blessing. Francis went
into the room, followed by the young lady, and delivered the message.
The doctor turned himself in the bed, and said, 'God bless you, my
dear!' These were the last words he spoke. His difficulty of breathing
increased till about seven o'clock in the evening, when Mr. Barber and
Mrs. Desmoulins, who were sitting in the room, observed that the noise
he made in breathing had ceased, went to the bed, and found he was
dead."
This account, together with several others given by various friends,
assures us that the death of Johnson was trustful and tranquil. It is
another illustration of that beautiful dispensation of nature which,
as a rule, makes death a mere slipping away, a falling asleep. The
Francis who is mentioned in the letter is the faithful negro servant
whom Johnson so generously provided for in his will. In making his
will the doctor had asked a friend how much of an annuity gentlemen
usually gave to a favorite servant, and was told that in the case of a
nobleman fifty pounds a year was considered an adequate reward for
many years of faithful service:
"Then," said Johnson, "shall I be _nobilissimus_, for I mean to leave
Frank seventy pounds a year, and I desire you to tell him so."
This generosity was too much for the equanimity of Sir John Hawkins,
one of the executors of the will, who, when he found that this negro
servant would receive about fifteen hundred pounds, including an
annuity of seventy pounds a year, grumbled and muttered "a caveat
against ostentatious bounty and favor to negroes." But however much
the Sir Johns may grumble, we cannot think the less of Johnson for his
kindness in remembering a faithful and deserving servant.
Johnson's refusal to take either wine or opiates recalls that in an
age in which the use of alcoholic drinks was very common he was an
uncompromising foe to wine, and that he was, in his latter years, loud
in his praise of water. "As we drove back to Ashbourne," says Boswell,
"Dr. Johnson recommended to me, as he had often done, to drink water
only. 'For,' said he, 'you are then sure not to get drunk; whereas if
you drink wine, you are never sure.'" And this was not the only matter
in which he was in advance of his contemporaries, and of most of ours
too. Johnson liked satisfying food, such as a leg of pork, or veal pie
well stuffed, with plum pie and sugar, and he devoured enormous
quantities of fruit, especially peaches. His inordinate love of tea
has almost passed into a proverb,--he has actually been credited with
twenty-five cups at a sitting, and he would keep Mrs. Thrale brewing
it for him till four o'clock in the morning. The following impromptu,
spoken to Miss Reynolds, points its own moral:
For hear, alas, the dreadful truth,
Nor hear it with a frown:
Thou can'st not make the tea so fast
As I can gulp it down.
VIII
GRAY WRITES THE ELEGY
Recently I was conversing with a practical man of affairs who had just
returned from his first visit to Europe. Art galleries had proved
tiresome and Westminster Abbey had bored him. But there was one place
that he had determined to see and see it he did.
"What place was that?" I asked.
"Stoke Pogis," was the reply.
Is not this answer indicative of the attitude of thousands who can
never forget the exquisite charm cast over their youth by the
melancholy beauty of the _Elegy in a Country Church-yard_? If fame was
the end of General Wolfe's ambition, he was wise in saying that he
would rather have written the _Elegy_ than be able to take Quebec on
the morrow; for of all English poems the _Elegy_ is the most popular
and widely known; it is the flower of the "literature of melancholy."
The _Elegy_ is the glorification of the obscure; therein lies its
popularity. The most of us are obscure. The _Elegy_ flatters us by
suggesting that we might have swayed the rod of empire or "waked to
ecstasy the living lyre," if we had had the chance,--or, what we think
is more likely the explanation, if we had not had a saner insight into
the values of life than the Miltons and Cromwells.
Stoke Pogis is always associated with the name of Gray. It is a
village, if such it may be called, between London and Windsor Castle.
The church is "on a little level space about four miles north of the
Thames at Eton. From the neighborhood of the church no vestige of
hamlet or village is visible, and the aspect of the place is slightly
artificial, like a rustic church in a park on a stage. The traveler
almost expects to see the grateful peasantry of an opera, cheerfully
habited, make their appearance, dancing on the greensward."
Gray and his mother, the father having died in 1741, went to Stoke
Pogis in 1742. At West End House, a simple farmhouse of two stories,
Gray lived for many years. In the autumn of 1742 was begun the _Elegy
in a Country Church-yard_. The common impression is that the whole
poem was written at Stoke Pogis, but this is not the truth. It is
better to say that it was begun in October or November at Stoke Pogis,
continued seven years later at the same place and at Cambridge, and
finished at Stoke Pogis on June 12th, 1750. It is interesting to note
that in each case an impetus was given to the composition of the poem
by the death of a friend. Several months before the poem was begun in
1742, West, a friend whose death made a very deep impression upon the
sensitive nature of Gray, had passed away; and on October 31 Jonathan
Rogers, an uncle of Gray's, died at Stoke Pogis; and when the poem was
next taken up Gray was mourning the death of his aunt. In commenting
on this subject Mr. Gosse writes,--"He was a man who had a very
slender hold on life himself, who walked habitually in the Valley of
the Shadow of Death, and whose periods of greatest vitality were
those in which bereavement proved to him that, melancholy as he was,
even he had something to lose and to regret."
On the 12th of June, 1750, Gray wrote to his friend, Horace
Walpole,--"Having put an end to a thing whose beginning you have seen
long ago, I immediately send it to you. You will, I hope, look upon it
in the light of a thing with an end to it: a merit that most of my
writings have wanted, and are like to want." Walpole was naturally
delighted with the poem--so delighted, in fact, that he handed it
about from friend to friend and even made manuscript copies of it.
This caused some embarrassment to the poet. In February, 1751, he was
annoyed to find that the publisher of the _Magazine of Magazines_ was
actually printing his _Elegy_ in his periodical. So Gray immediately
wrote to Walpole: "As I am not at all disposed to be either so
indulgent or so correspondent as they desire, I have but one bad way
to escape the honor they would inflict upon me: and therefore am
obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print it immediately (which
may be done in less than a week's time) from your copy, but without my
name, in what form is most convenient for him, but on his best paper
and character; he must correct the press himself, and print it without
any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places
continued without them." On the 16th of February, only five days after
this letter was received, _An Elegy wrote in a Country Church-yard_
appeared as a large quarto pamphlet, anonymous, price sixpence.
From the very first it achieved great popularity. Magazine after
magazine published it without giving the author any compensation.
Gray was soon hit upon as the author. Unfortunately, the success of
the poem gave no increased income to the poet. Dodsley, the publisher,
is said to have made about a thousand pounds from the various poems of
Gray, but Gray had the impractical idea that it was not dignified for
a poet to make money from poetry.
In view of this lack of compensation for his poetic writings, it is
very gratifying to know that during the latter days of his life Gray
enjoyed the emolument arising from his holding the chair of Modern
Literature and Modern Languages at Cambridge. This paid him 400 pounds
a year, and did not require much work, as the office was a sinecure.
One of the biographers points out that this promotion was brought
about inadvertently through the riotous living of Gray's great enemy,
Lord Sandwich. Professor Lawrence Brockett, the incumbent of the chair
of Literature at Cambridge, dined with Lord Sandwich at Hinchinbroke.
He became so drunk that in riding home to Cambridge he fell from his
horse and broke his neck. At once five obscure dons made brisk
application for the vacant place, and Gray, sensitive and lacking the
arts of the politician, did not expect the place. But the author of
the _Elegy_ was no longer to be neglected. He soon received a letter
highly complimenting his work and offering him the professorship. Gray
accepted and was summoned to court to kiss the hand of the monarch,
George III. The king made several complimentary remarks to Gray.
Afterwards when the poet's friends asked Gray to tell them what the
king had said he replied that the room was so hot and he so
embarrassed that he really did not know what the king had said.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to misery--all he had--a tear,
He gained from Heaven--'twas all he wished--a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,--
There they alike in trembling hope repose,--
The bosom of his father and his God.
IX
COWPER AS A LETTER WRITER
William Cowper is well known as a poet, having written one of the most
popular hymns in the English language, and he is also one of the best
of letter writers. It is commonly said that we have lost the gentle
art of writing a good letter. When a man can send a postal card from
Boston to San Francisco for one cent and one from New York to Paris
for two cents, he is not likely to be so choice in his use of language
as when he paid a shilling for the privilege of getting a letter. In
the first letter which is here quoted we find Cowper writing an urgent
invitation to his cousin, Lady Hesketh, to visit him at Olney.
"And now, my dear, let me tell you once more that your kindness in
promising us a visit has charmed us both. I shall see you again. I
shall hear your voice. We shall take walks together. I will show you
my prospects, the hovel, the alcove, the Ouse and its banks,
everything that I have described. Talk not of an inn! Mention it not
for your life! We have never had so many visitors but we could
accommodate them all, though we have received Unwin and his wife, and
his sister, and his son, all at once. My dear, I will not let you
come till the end of May, or beginning of June, because before that
time my greenhouse will not be ready to receive us, and it is the only
pleasant room belonging to us. When the plants go out, we go in. I
line it with mats, and spread the floor with mats; and there you shall
sit with a bed of mignonette at your side, and a hedge of
honeysuckles, roses, and jasmine; and I will make you a bouquet of
myrtle every day. Sooner than the time I mention the country will not
be in complete beauty; and I will tell you what you shall find at your
first entrance. Imprimis, as soon as you have entered the vestibule,
if you cast a look on either side of you, you shall see on the right
hand a box of my making. It is the box in which have been lodged all
my hares, and in which lodges Puss (Cowper's pet hare) at present. But
he, poor fellow, is worn out with age and promises to die before you
can see him. On the right hand stands a cupboard, the work of the same
author; it was once a dove-cage, but I transformed it. Opposite to you
stands a table, which I also made. But a merciless servant having
scrubbed it till it became paralytic, it serves no purpose now but of
ornament, and all my clean shoes stand under it. On the left hand, at
the farther end of this superb vestibule, you will find the door of
the parlor, into which I will conduct you, and where I will introduce
you to Mrs. Unwin, unless we should meet her before, and where we will
be as happy as the day is long. Order yourself, my cousin, to the
_Swan_ at Newport and there you shall find me ready to conduct you to
Olney. My dear, I have told Homer what you say about casks and urns,
and have asked him whether he is sure that it is a cask in which
Jupiter keeps his wine. He swears that it is a cask, and that it will
never be anything better than a cask to eternity. So if the god is
content with it, we must even wonder at his taste, and be so
too.--Adieu! my dearest, dearest cousin,--W.C."
Cowper's letters are not interesting because they treat of the great
men and important affairs of his day. They are interesting because he
lived a quiet life and was able in his own way to paint a picture
treating of the common doings of an apparently unimportant life. Here
is a picture of an election in the country, or rather of the
candidates' methods in the old days:
"We were sitting yesterday after dinner, the two ladies and myself,
very composedly, and without the least apprehension of any such
intrusion, in our snug parlor, one lady knitting, the other netting,
and the gentleman winding worsted, when, to our unspeakable surprise,
a mob appeared before the window, a smart rap was heard at the door,
the boys halloed, and the maid announced Mr. Grenville. Puss was
unfortunately let out of her box, so that the candidate, with all his
good friends at his heels, was refused entrance at the grand entry,
and referred to the back door, as the only possible way of approach.
Candidates are creatures not very susceptible to affronts, and would
rather, I suppose, climb in at a window than be absolutely excluded.
In a minute the yard, the kitchen, and the parlor were filled. Mr.
Grenville, advancing toward me, shook me by the hand with a degree of
cordiality that was extremely seducing. As soon as he and as many more
as could find chairs were seated, he began to open the intent of his
visit. I told him I had no vote, for which he readily gave me credit.
I assured him I had no influence, which he was not equally inclined to
believe, and the less, no doubt, because Mr. Ashburner, the drapier,
addressing himself to me at that moment, informed me that I had a
great deal. Supposing that I could not be possessed of such a treasure
without knowing it, I ventured to confirm my first assertion by saying
that if I had any I was utterly at a loss to imagine where it could
be, or wherein it consisted. Thus ended the conference. Mr. Grenville
squeezed me by the hand again, kissed the ladies, and withdrew. He
kissed likewise the maid in the kitchen, and seemed upon the whole a
most loving, kissing, kind-hearted gentleman."
X
GIBBON AND HIS VISIT TO ROME