place amongst the principal of our English Poets, having written
two Heroick Poems and a Tragedy, namely _Paradice Lost, Paradice
Regain'd_, and _Sampson Agonista_. But his Fame is gone out like a
Candle in a Snuff, and his Memory will always stink, which might have
ever lived in honourable Repute, had not he been a notorious Traytor,
and most impiously and villanously bely'd that blessed Martyr, King
_Charles_ the First."
Mr. Winstanley does not leave us in any doubt of his own political
bias, and his mode is simply infamous. It is the roughest and most
unpardonable expression now extant of the prejudice generally felt
against Milton in London, after the Restoration--a prejudice which
even Dryden, who in his heart knew better, could not wholly resist.
This one sentence is all that most readers of seventeenth-century
literature know about Winstanley, and it is not surprising that it has
created an objection to him. I forget who it was, among the critics of
the beginning of this century, who was accustomed to buy copies of the
_Lives of the English Poets_ wherever he could pick them up, and burn
them, in piety to the angry spirit of Milton. This was certainly more
sensible conduct than that of the Italian nobleman, who used to build
MSS. of Martial into little pyres, and consume them with spices, to
express his admiration of Catullus. But no one can wonder that the
world has not forgiven Winstanley for that atrocious phrase about
Milton's fame having "gone out like a candle in a snuff, so that his
memory will always stink." No, Mr. William Winstanley, it is your own
name that--smells so very unpleasantly.
Yet I am paradoxical enough to believe that poor Winstanley never
wrote these sentences which have destroyed his fame. To support my
theory, it is needful to recount the very scanty knowledge we possess
of his life. He is said to have been a barber, and to have risen by
his exertions with the razor; but, against that legend, is to be posed
the fact that on the titles of his earliest books, dedicated to public
men who must have known, he styles himself "Gent." The dates of his
birth and death are, I believe, a matter of conjecture. But the _Lives
of the English Poets_ is the latest of his books, and the earliest was
published in 1660. This is his _England's Worthies_, a group of what
we should call to-day "biographical studies." The longest and the most
interesting of these is one on Oliver Cromwell, the tone of which is
almost grossly laudatory, although published at the very moment
of Restoration. Now, it is a curious, and, at first sight, a very
disgraceful fact, that in 1684, when the book of _England's Worthies_
was re-issued, all the praise of republicans was cancelled, and abuse
substituted for it. And then, in 1687, came the _Lives of the
English Poets_, with its horrible attack on Milton. The character of
Winstanley seems to be as base as any on literary record. I have come
to the conclusion, however, that Winstanley was guilty, neither of
retracting what he said about Cromwell, nor of slandering Milton. The
black woman excused her husband for not answering the bell, "'Cause
he's dead," and the excuse was considered valid. I hope that when
these interpolations were made, poor Winstanley was dead.
Any one who reads the _Lives of the English Poets_ carefully, will be
impressed with two facts: first, that the author had an acquaintance
with the early versifiers of Great Britain, which was quite
extraordinary, and which can hardly be found at fault by our modern
knowledge; while, secondly, that he shows a sudden and unaccountable
ignorance of his immediate contemporaries of the younger school.
Except Campion, who is a discovery of our own day, not a single
Elizabethan or Jacobean rhymester of the second or third rank escapes
his notice. Among the writers of a still later generation, I miss no
names save those of Vaughan, who was very obscure in his own lifetime,
and Marvell, who would be excluded by the same prejudice which mocked
at Milton. But among Poets of the Restoration, men and women who were
in their full fame in 1687, the omissions are quite startling. Not a
word is here about Otway, Lee, or Crowne; Butler is not mentioned, nor
the Matchless Orinda, nor Roscommon, nor Sir Charles Sedley. A careful
examination of the dates of works which Winstanley refers to, produces
a curious result. There is not mentioned, so far as I can trace, a
single poem or play which was published later than 1675, although the
date on the title-page of the _Lives of the English Poets_ is 1687.
Rather an elaborate list of Dryden's publications is given, but it
stops at _Amboyna_ (1673). On this I think it is not too bold to
build a theory, which may last until Winstanley's entry of burial is
discovered in some country church, that he died soon after 1675. If
this were the case, the recantations in his _English Worthies_ of 1684
would be so many posthumous outrages committed on his blameless tomb,
and the infamous sentence about Milton may well have been foisted into
a posthumous volume by the same wicked hand. If we could think that
Samuel Manship, at the Sign of the Black Bull, was the obsequious
rogue who did it, that would be one more sin to be numbered against
the sad race of publishers.
In studying old books about the poets, it sometimes occurs to us to
wonder whether the readers of two hundred years ago appreciated the
same qualities in good verse which are now admired. Did the ringing
and romantic cadences of Shakespeare affect their senses as they do
ours? We know that they praised Carew and Suckling, but was it "Ask me
no more where June bestows," and "Hast thou seen the down in the air,"
which gave them pleasure? It would sometimes seem, from the phrases
they use and the passages they quote, that if poetry was the same
two centuries ago, its readers had very different ears from ours. Of
Herrick Winstanley says that he was "one of the Scholars of Apollo of
the middle Form, yet something above _George Withers_, in a pretty
Flowry and Pastoral Gale of Fancy, in a vernal Prospect of some Hill,
Cave, Rock, or Fountain; which but for the interruption of other
trivial Passages, might have made up none of the worst Poetick
Landskips," and then he quotes, as a sample of Herrick, a tiresome"
epigram," in the poet's worst style. This is not delicate or acute
criticism, as we judge nowadays; but I would give a good deal to meet
Winstanley at a coffee-house, and go through the _Hesperides_ with
him over a dish of chocolate. It would be wonderfully interesting to
discover which passages in Herrick really struck the contemporary
mind as "flowery," and which as "trivial." But this is just what all
seventeenth-century criticism, even Dryden's, omits to explain to us.
The personal note in poetical criticism, the appeal to definite taste,
to the experience of eye and ear, is not met with, even in suggestion,
until we reach the pamphlets of John Dennis.
The particular copy of Winstanley which lies before me is a valuable
one; I owe it to the generosity of a friend in Chicago, who hoards
rare books, and yet has the greatness of soul sometimes to part with
them. It is interleaved, and the blank pages are rather densely
inscribed with notes in the handwriting of Dr. Thomas Percy, the
poetical Bishop of Dromore. From his hands it passed into those of
John Bowyer Nichols, the antiquary. Percy's notes are little more than
references to other authorities, memoranda for one of his own useful
compilations, yet it is pleasant to have even a slight personal relic
of so admirable a man. Mr. Rivière has bound the volume for me, and
I suppose that poor rejected Winstanley exists nowhere else in so
elegant a shape.
THE ROMANCE OF A DICTIONARY
HISTOIRE DE L'ACADEMIE FRANÇOISE: _avec un Abregé des Vies du Cardinal
de Richelieu, Vaugelas, Corneille, Ablancourt, Mezerai, Voiture,
Patru, la Fontaine, Boileau, Racine Et autres Illustres Academiciens
qui la Composent_.
_A La Haye, MDCLXXXVIII_.
It is not often, in these days, when the pastime of bibliography is
reduced to a science, that one is rewarded, as one so often was a
quarter of a century ago, by picking up an unregarded treasure on the
bookstalls. But the other day I really had a pleasant little "find,"
and it was the reward of virtue. It came of having a tender heart.
My eye caught what Mr. Austin Dobson would call "a dear and dumpy
twelve," lying open upon other books, face downward, in the most
ignominious posture. I saw at a glance, from the tooling on its faded
and half-broken back, that it was French and of the seventeenth
century, and that somebody had prized it once. I could read the
lettering _Académ. Franc_., and I gave the pence which were wanted
for it. It proved a most rewarding little volume. It was published
at The Hague in 1688, and it was a new edition of the _Histoire de
l'Académie Française_. A preface says that "for the honour of our
nation" (the French, presumably, not the Dutch), the publisher has
thought it proper to issue an edition "more correct and more elegant"
than has hitherto been seen, brought down to date with many new and
curious pieces. Among other things, the said publisher thinks that
"the English will not be displeased to see the Panegyric" of King
Louis XIV. "admirably rendered in their language by a Person of their
Nation." But what immediately caught my attention, and filled me with
delight, was an absolutely contemporary account, written specially for
this 1688 edition, of the great quarrel between the French Academy and
the Abbé Furetière. Of this I propose to speak to-day.
We live in an age of Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, which we look
upon as universal panaceas for culture. There was a similar rage for
dictionaries in France two hundred and fifty years ago. We may very
rapidly remind ourselves that the French Academy was constituted in
1634 with thirty-five members, who became the stationary and immortal
Forty in 1639. One of its original functions was the preparation of a
great Dictionary of the French language, under the special care of
the eminent grammarian, Vaugelas, who had through his lifetime
made collections--"various beautiful and curious observations," as
Pellisson calls them--towards a reasoned philological study of French.
The poet Chapelain was appointed a sort of general editor of the
projected Dictionary, which was solemnly started early in 1638. For
the next four years the Academicians were very active, spurred on by
Richelieu, but when, in 1642, the Cardinal died, their zeal relented,
and when, in 1650, Vaugelas's presence ceased to urge them forward, it
flagged altogether. Vaugelas died bankrupt, and his creditors seized
his writing-desks, the drawers of which contained a great part of the
MS. collections for the Dictionary. It was only after a lawsuit that
the Academy recovered those papers, and Mézeray was then set to
continue the editing of the work. Still twice a week the Academy met
to consult about the Dictionary, but so languidly and with so little
fire, that Boisrobert said that not the youngest of the Forty could
hope to live to print the letter G. As a matter of fact, not one of
those who started the Dictionary lived to see it published.
In this slow fashion, with long Rip Van Winkle slumbers and occasional
faint awakenings, the French Academy faltered on with fitful
persistence towards the completion of its famous Dictionary. But, as
I have said, it was a period of great enthusiasm about all such
summaries of knowledge, and Paris was thirsting for grammars,
lexicons, inventories of language and the like. The Academy insisted
that the world must wait for the approach of their vast and lumbering
machine; but meanwhile public curiosity was impatient, and all sorts
of brief and imperfect dictionaries were issued to satisfy it. The
publication of these spurious guides to knowledge infuriated the
Academy, until in 1674 the dog permanently occupied the manger by
inducing the King to issue a decree "forbidding all printers and
publishers to print any new dictionary of the French language, under
any title whatsoever, until the publication of that of the French
Academy, or until twenty years have expired since the proclamation of
the present decree." This cut the ground from under the feet of all
rivals, and the Academy could meet twice a week as before and mumble
its definitions with serene assurance. From this false security it was
roused by the incident which my "dumpy twelve" recounts.
It was from the very heart of their own body that the great attack
upon their privileges unexpectedly fell upon the Academicians. In 1662
they had elected (in the place of De Boissat, a very obscure original
member) the Abbé of Chalivoy, Antoine Furetière. This man, born in
Paris of poor parents in 1619, had raised himself to eminence as an
Orientalist and grammarian, and was welcomed among the Forty as likely
to be particularly helpful to them in their Dictionary work. He was
probably one of those men whose true character does not come out until
they attain success. But no sooner was Furetière an Immortal than he
began to distinguish himself in unanticipated ways. He proved himself
an adept in parody and satire, and so long as he contented himself
with laughing at people like Charles Sorel, the author of _Francion_,
who had no friends, the Academicians were calm and amused, But
Furetière was not merely the author of that extremely amusing medley,
_Le Roman Bourgeois_ (1666), which still holds its place in French
literature as a minor classic, but he was also a real student of
philology, and one of those who most ardently desired to see the
settlement of the canon of French language. It incensed him beyond
words that his colleagues dawdled so endlessly over their committees
and their definitions. He began to make collections of his own, no
doubt at first with the perfectly loyal intention of adding them to
the common store. Meanwhile he lashed the rest of the Academy with
his tongue. Other Academicians did this also, such men as Patru and
Boisrobert, but they had not Furetière's nasty way of putting things.
One perceives that about the year 1680 the sarcasms of Furetière had
really become something more than the rest of the Immortals could put
up with.
He delivered himself into their hands, and here my little volume takes
up the tale. On the 3rd of January, 1685, the French Academy met to
mourn the death of its most illustrious member, the great Pierre
Corneille, and to elect his younger brother to take his place. While
the members were chatting together their Librarian handed about among
them copies of a "privilege" which had just been obtained by the Abbé
Furetière to publish "a universal Dictionary containing generally all
French words, old as well as modern, and the terms employed in all
arts and sciences." So declares my little book; but it would seem
that the officers of the Academy at least a week earlier had their
attention drawn to what Furetière was doing. Perhaps it was not until
the election of Thomas Corneille that an opportunity occurred of
making the members generally aware of it. One wonders whether
Furetière himself was present on the 3rd of January; if so, what
puttings of periwigs together there must have been in corners, and
what taps of gold-headed canes on lace-frilled cuffs! It was felt, as
my little volume puts it, that "Monsieur the Abbé Furetière, being one
of the Forty Academicians, ought not to have been privately busying
himself on a work which he knew to be the principal occupation of the
whole Academy." It is surprising, in the face of the monopoly which
that body had secured, that Furetière was able to obtain a Privilege
for his own Dictionary, but in all probability, as he was one of the
Forty, the censors supposed that he was acting in concert with his
colleagues.
Then began a hue and cry with which the learned world of Paris rang
for months. Never was such a scandal, never such a rain of pamphlets
and lampoons on one side and the other. One has only to glance at the
contemporary portraits of Furetière to see that he was not the man to
yield a point; his wrinkled face looks the very mirror of sarcastic
obstinacy and brilliant ill-nature. The Academy, in solemn session,
appointed Regnier Desmarais, their secretary, to wait on the
Chancellor to demand the cancelling of Furetière's privilege. But the
Abbé had powerful friends also, and by their help the Chancellor's
action was delayed, while Furetière hurried out a specimen of his
work. He says in the preface that no author ever had a more pressing
need for the protection of a prince than he has who sees the labour
of years about to be sacrificed to the envy of others. He goes on to
explain that he has never dreamed of interfering with the work of the
Academy, for which he has the greatest possible respect, but that
he only hopes to render service to the public by supplementing its
labours. The Academy, in fact, had expressly declined to include in
its Dictionary the technical terms of art and science, and it is
particularly with these that Furetière is occupied. His answer to
those who accuse him of stealing from the unpublished _cahiers_ of the
Academy is the uniformity of his work from A to Z; whereas, if he had
stolen from his colleagues, he must have stopped at O-P, which was the
point they had reached in 1684.
The Academy was not pacified, and began to take counsel how they could
turn Furetière out of their body. There was no precedent for such
a degradation, but a parallel was sought for in the fact that the
Sorbonne had successfully ejected one of its most famous doctors,
Arnauld. Meanwhile the suit went on, the Thirty-nine versus the One.
Furetière is said to have bowed for a moment beneath the storm,
offering to blend his work in the general Dictionary of the Academy,
or to remove from it all words not admitted to deal technically with
art and science. But passion had gone too far, and on the 22nd of
January, 1685, at a general meeting, twenty Academicians being
present, Furetière was expelled from the body by a majority of
nineteen to one. It is believed that the one who voted for mercy was
the most illustrious of all, Racine. Boileau and Bossuet also defended
the Abbé, and when the matter became at last so serious that the King
himself was obliged to take cognisance of it, it was understood that
his sympathies also were with Furetière.
My little volume (written, I think, in 1687) does not know anything
about the expulsion, which was therefore probably secret. It says:
"As to Monsieur Furetière, he no longer puts in an appearance at
the meetings of the Academy, but it is not known whether any other
Academician is to be elected in his place." As a matter of fact, the
society hesitated to go so far as this, and the seat was left vacant.
Not for long, however; the unanimous rancour of so many men of
influence and rank had successfully ruined the fortune and broken
the spirit of the old piratical lexicographer. Before retiring into
private life, however, he poured out in his _Couches de l'Académie_
a torrent of poison, which was distilled through the presses of
Amsterdam in 1687. One of his earlier colleagues at the Academy
supplied the bankrupt man with the necessaries of life, until, on the
14th of May, 1688, probably just as the "dumpy twelve" was passing
through the press, he died in Paris like a rat in a hole. His
Dictionary, being suppressed in France, was edited, after his death,
in 1690, at The Hague and Rotterdam, and enjoyed a great success. We
learn from a letter of Racine to Boileau that in 1694 the publisher
ventured to offer a copy of a new edition of it to the King of France,
and that it was graciously received. If the poor old man could have
struggled on a little longer he might have lived to see himself become
fashionable and successful again.
With all his misfortunes he managed to beat the Academy, for that
body, in spite of its superhuman efforts, did not contrive to publish
its Dictionary till four years after the appearance of Furetière's.
The latter is a great curiosity of lexicography, a vast storehouse of
peculiar and rare information. It is always consulted by scholars, but
never without a recollection of the extraordinary struggle which its
author sustained, singlehanded, against the world, and in which he
fell, overpowered by numbers, only to triumph after all in the ashes
of his fame.
LADY WINCHILSEA'S POEMS
MISCELLANY POEMS. _With Two Plays. By Ardelia.
I never list presume to Parnass hill,
But piping low, in shade of lowly grove,
I play to please myself, albeit ill.
Spencer Shep. Cal. June.
Manuscript in folio. Circa_ 1696.
There is no other book in my library to which I feel that I possess so
clear a presumptive right as to this manuscript. Other rare volumes
would more fitly adorn the collections of bibliophiles more learned,
more ingenious, more elegant, than I. But if there is any person in
the two hemispheres who has so fair a claim upon the ghost of Ardelia,
let that man stand forth. Ardelia was uncultivated and unsung when I
constituted myself, years ago, her champion. With the exception of a
noble fragment of laudation from Wordsworth, no discriminating praise
from any modern critic had stirred the ashes of her name. I made it
my business to insist in many places on the talent of Ardelia. I gave
her, for the first time, a chance of challenging public taste, by
presenting to readers of Mr. Ward's _English Poets_ many pages of
extracts from her writings; and I hope it is not indiscreet to say
that, when the third volume of that compilation appeared, Mr. Matthew
Arnold told me that its greatest revelation to himself had been the
singular merit of this lady. Such being my claim on the consideration
of Ardelia, no one will, I think, grudge me the possession of this
unknown volume of her works in manuscript. It came into my hands by
a strange coincidence. In his brief life of Anne Finch, Countess of
Winchilsea--for that was Ardelia's real name--Theophilus Gibber says,
"A great number of our authoress' poems still continue unpublished,
in the hands of the Rev. Mr. Creake." In 1884 I saw advertised, in an
obscure book-list, a folio volume of old manuscript poetry. Something
excited my curiosity, and I sent for it. It proved to be a vast
collection of the poems of my beloved Anne Finch. I immediately
communicated with the bookseller, and asked him whence it came. He
replied that it had been sold, with furniture, pictures and books, at
the dispersing of the effects of a family of the name of Creake. Thank
you, divine Ardelia! It was well done; it was worthy of you.
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, is not a commanding figure in
history, but she is an isolated and a well-defined one. She is what
one of the precursors of Shakespeare calls "a diminutive excelsitude."
She was entirely out of sympathy with her age, and her talent was
hampered and suppressed by her conditions. She was the solitary writer
of actively developed romantic tastes between Marvell and Gray, and
she was not strong enough to create an atmosphere for herself within
the vacuum in which she languished. The facts of her life are
extremely scanty, although they may now be considerably augmented
by the help of my folio. She was born about 1660, the daughter of a
Hampshire baronet. She was maid of honour to Mary of Modena, Duchess
of York, and at Court she met Heneage Finch, who was gentleman of
the bed-chamber to the Duke. They married in 1685, probably on the
occasion of the enthronement of their master and mistress, and when
the crash came in 1688, they fled together to the retirement of
Eastwell Park. They inhabited this mansion for the rest of their
lives, although it was not until the death of his nephew, in 1712,
that Heneage Finch became fourth Earl of Winchilsea. In 1713 Anne was
at last persuaded to publish a selection of her poems, and in 1720 she
died. The Earl survived her until 1726.
My manuscript was written, I think, in or about the year 1696--that
is to say, when Mrs. Finch was in retirement from the Court. She has
adopted the habit of writing,
_Betrayed by solitude to try
Amusements, which the prosperous fly_.