of Importance in their Day_ drew attention to a Cambridge poet of whom
little had hitherto been known, Christopher Smart, once fellow of
Pembroke College. It may be interesting, therefore, to supply some
sketch of the events of his life, and of the particular poem which
Browning has aptly compared to a gorgeous chapel lying perdue in
a dull old commonplace mansion. No one can afford to be entirely
indifferent to the author of verses which one of the greatest of
modern writers has declared to be unequalled of their kind between
Milton and Keats.
What has hitherto been known of the facts of Smart's life has been
founded on the anonymous biography prefixed to the two-volume Reading
edition of his works, published in 1791. The copy of this edition
in Trinity Library belonged to Dr. Farmer, and contains these words
in his handwriting: "From the Editor, Francis Newbery, Esq.; the
Life by Mr. Hunter." As this Newbery was the son of Smart's
half-brother-in-law and literary employer, it may be taken for granted
that the information given in these volumes is authoritative. We may
therefore believe it to be correct that Smart was born (as he himself
tells us, in _The Hop Garden)_ at Shipbourne, in Kent, on the 11th of
April 1722, that his father was steward to the nobleman who afterwards
became Earl of Darlington, and that he was "discerned and patronised"
by the Duchess of Cleveland. This great lady, we are left in doubt for
what reason, carried her complaisance so far as to allow the future
poet £40 a year until her death. In a painfully fulsome ode to another
member of the Raby Castle family, Smart records the generosity of the
dead in order to stimulate that of the living, and oddly remarks that
_dignity itself restrains
By condescension's silken reins,
While you the lowly Muse upraise_.
Smart passed, already "an infant bard," from what he calls "the
splendour in retreat" of Raby Castle, to Durham School, and in his
eighteenth year was admitted of Pembroke Hall, October 30, 1739. His
biographer expressly states that his allowance from home was scanty,
and that his chief dependence, until he derived an income from his
college, was on the bounty of the Duchess of Cleveland.
From this point I am able to supply a certain amount of information
with regard to the poet's college life which is entirely new, and
which is not, I think, without interest. My friend Mr. R.A. Neil has
been so kind as to admit me to the Treasury at Pembroke, and in his
company I have had the advantage of searching the contemporary records
of the college. What we were lucky enough to discover may here be
briefly summarised. The earliest mention of Smart is dated 1740, and
refers to the rooms assigned to him as an undergraduate. In January
1743, we find him taking his B.A., and in July of the same year he
is elected scholar. As is correctly stated in his Life, he became
a fellow of Pembroke on the 3rd of July 1745. That he showed no
indication as yet of that disturbance of brain and instability of
character which so painfully distinguished him a little later on, is
proved by the fact that on the 10th of October 1745, Smart was chosen
to be Praelector in Philosophy, and Keeper of the Common Chest. In
1746 he was re-elected to those offices, and also made Praelector
in Rhetoric. In 1747 he was not chosen to hold any such college
situations, no doubt from the growing extravagance of his conduct.
In November 1747, Smart was in parlous case. Gray complains of his
"lies, impertinence and ingratitude," and describes him as confined to
his room, lest his creditors should snap him up. He gives a melancholy
impression of Smart's moral and physical state, but hastens to add
"not that I, nor any other mortal, pity him." The records of the
Treasury at Pembroke supply evidence that the members of the college
now made a great effort to restore one of whose talents it is certain
they were proud. In 1748 we find Smart proposed for catechist, a proof
that he had, at all events for the moment, turned over a new leaf.
Probably, but for fresh relapses, he would now have taken orders. His
allusions to college life are singularly ungracious. He calls Pembroke
_this servile cell,
Where discipline and dulness dwell_,
and commiserates a captive eagle as being doomed in the college courts
to watch
_scholastic pride
Take his precise, pedantic stride_;
words which painfully remind us of Gray's reported manner of enjoying
a constitutional. It is certain that there was considerable friction
between these two men of genius, and Gray roundly prophesied that
Smart would find his way to gaol or to Bedlam. Both alternatives of
this prediction were fulfilled, and in October, 1751, Gray curtly
remarks: "Smart sets out for Bedlam." Of this event we find curious
evidence in the Treasury. "October 12, 1751--Ordered that Mr. Smart,
being obliged to be absent, there will be allowed him in lieu of
commons for the year ended Michaelmas, 1751, the sum of £10." There
can be little question that Smart's conduct and condition became more
and more unsatisfactory. This particular visit to a madhouse was
probably brief, but it was possibly not the first and was soon
repeated; for in 1749 and 1752 there are similar entries recording the
fact that "Mr. Smart, being obliged to be absent," certain allowances
were paid by the college "in consideration of his circumstances." The
most curious discovery, however, which we have been able to make is
recorded in the following entry:
"Nov. 27, 1753.--Ordered that the dividend assigned to Mr. Smart be
deposited in the Treasury till the Society be satisfied that he has a
right to the same; it being credibly reported that he has been married
for some time, and that notice be sent to Mr. Smart of his dividend
being detained."
As a matter of fact, Smart was by this time married to a relative of
Newbery, the publisher, for whom he was doing hack work in London. He
had, however, formed the habit of writing the Seatonian prize poem,
which he had already gained four times, in 1750, 1751, 1752, and 1753.
He seems to have clutched at the distinction which he brought on
his college by these poems as the last straw by which to keep his
fellowship, and, singular to say, he must have succeeded; for on the
16th of January 1754, this order was recorded:
"That Mr. Smart have leave to keep his name in the college books
without any expense, so long as he continues to write for the premium
left by Mr. Seaton."
How long this inexpensive indulgence lasted does not seem to be known.
Smart gained the Seatonian prize in 1755, having apparently failed in
1754, and then appears no more in Pembroke records.
The circumstance of his having made Cambridge too hot to hold him
seems to have pulled Smart's loose faculties together. The next five
years were probably the sanest and the busiest in his life. He had
collected his scattered odes and ballads, and published them, with his
ambitious georgic, _The Hop Garden_, in the handsome quarto before
us. Among the seven hundred subscribers to this venture we find "Mr.
Voltaire, historiographer of France," and M. Roubilliac, the great
statuary, besides such English celebrities as Gray, Collins,
Richardson, Savage, Charles Avison, Garrick, and Mason. The kind
reception of this work awakened in the poet an inordinate vanity,
which found expression, in 1753, in that extraordinary effusion, _The
Hilliad_, an attempt to preserve Dr. John Hill in such amber as Pope
held at the command of his satiric passion. But these efforts, and an
annual Seatonian, were ill adapted to support a poet who had recently
appended a wife and family to a phenomenal appetite for strong waters,
and who, moreover, had just been deprived of his stipend as a fellow.
Smart descended into Grub Street, and bound himself over, hand and
foot, to be the serf of such men as the publisher Newbery, who was
none the milder master for being his relative. It was not long after,
doubtless, that Smart fell lower still, and let himself out on a lease
for ninety-nine years, to toil for a set pittance in the garrets of
Gardner's shop; and it was about this time, 1754, that the Rev. T.
Tyers was introduced to Smart by a friend who had more sympathy with
his frailties than Gray had, namely, Dr. Samuel Johnson.
After a world of vicissitudes, which are very uncomfortable reading,
about 1761 Smart became violently insane once more and was shut up
again in Bedlam. Dr. Johnson, commenting on this period of the poet's
life, told Dr. Burney that Smart grew fat when he was in the madhouse,
where he dug in the garden, and Johnson added: "I did not think he
ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He
insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit
Smart as with any one else. Another charge was that he did not love
clean linen; and I have no passion for it." When Boswell paid Johnson
his memorable first visit in 1763, Smart had recently been released
from Bedlam, and Johnson naturally spoke of him. He said: "My poor
friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind by falling upon his
knees and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual
place." Gray about the same time reports that money is being collected
to help "poor Smart," not for the first time, since in January 1759,
Gray had written: "Poor Smart is not dead, as was said, and _Merope_
is acted for his benefit this week," with the _Guardian_, a farce
which Garrick had kindly composed for that occasion.
It was in 1763, immediately after Smart's release, that the now famous
_Song to David_ was published. A long and interesting letter in the
correspondence of Hawkesworth, dated October 1764, gives a pleasant
idea of Smart restored to cheerfulness and placed "with very decent
people in a house, most delightfully situated, with a terrace that
overlooks St. James's Park." But this relief was only temporary;
Smart fell back presently into drunkenness and debt, and was happily
relieved by death in 1770, in his forty-eighth year, at the close of a
career as melancholy as any recorded in the chronicles of literature.
Save for one single lyric, that glows with all the flush and bloom of
Eden, Smart would take but a poor place on the English Parnassus.
His odes and ballads, his psalms and satires, his masques and his
georgics, are not bad, but they are mediocre. Here and there the very
careful reader may come across lines and phrases that display the
concealed author of the _Song to David_, such as the following, from
an excessively tiresome ode to Dr. Webster:
_When Israel's host, with all their stores,
Passed through_ the ruby-tinctured crystal shores,
The wilderness of waters and of land.
But these are rare. His odes are founded upon those of Gray, and the
best that can be said of them is that if they do not quite rise to the
frozen elegance of Akenside, they seldom sink to the flaccidity of
Mason. Never, for one consecutive stanza or stroke, do they approach
Collins or Gray in delicacy or power. But the _Song to David_--the
lyric in 516 lines which Smart is so absurdly fabled to have scratched
with a key on the white-washed walls of his cell--this was a portent
of beauty and originality. Strange to say, it was utterly neglected
when it appeared, and the editor of the 1791 edition of Smart's works
expressly omitted to print it on the ground that it bore too many
"melancholy proofs of the estrangement of Smart's mind" to be fit for
republication. It became rare to the very verge of extinction, and is
now scarcely to be found in its entirety save in a pretty reprint of
1819, itself now rare, due to the piety of a Rev. R. Harvey.
It is obvious that Smart's contemporaries and immediate successors
looked upon the _Song to David_ as the work of a hopelessly deranged
person. In 1763 poetry had to be very sane indeed to be attended to.
The year preceding had welcomed the _Shipwreck_ of Falconer, the year
to follow would welcome Goldsmith's _Traveller_ and Grainger's _Sugar
Cane_, works of various merit, but all eminently sane. In 1763
Shenstone was dying and Rogers was being born. The tidy, spruce, and
discreet poetry of the eighteenth century was passing into its final
and most pronounced stage. The _Song to David_, with its bold mention
of unfamiliar things, its warm and highly-coloured phraseology, its
daring adjectives and unexampled adverbs, was an outrage upon taste,
and one which was best accounted for by the tap of the forefinger
on the forehead. No doubt the poem presented and still may present
legitimate difficulties. Here, for instance, is a stanza which it is
not for those who run to read:
_Increasing days their reign exalt,
Nor in the pink and mottled vault
The opposing spirits tilt;
And, by the coasting reader spy'd,
The silverlings and crusions glide
For Adoration gilt_.
This is charming; but if it were in one of the tongues of the heathen
we should get Dr. Verrall to explain it away. Poor Mr. Harvey, the
editor of 1819, being hopelessly puzzled by "silverlings," the only
dictionary meaning of which is "shekels," explained "crusions" to be
some other kind of money, from [Greek: krousis]. But "crusions" are
golden carp, and when I was a child the Devonshire fishermen used to
call the long white fish with argent stripes (whose proper name, I
think, is the launce) a silverling. The "coasting reader" is the
courteous reader when walking along the coast, and what he sees are
silver fish and gold fish, adoring the Lord by the beauty of their
scales. The _Song to David_ is cryptic to a very high degree, but
I think there are no lines in it which patient reflection will not
solve. On every page are stanzas the verbal splendour of which no
lover of poetry will question, and lines which will always, to me
at least, retain an echo of that gusto with which I have heard Mr.
Browning's strong voice recite them:
_The wealthy crops of whitening rice
'Mongst thyine woods and groves of spice,
For Adoration grow;
And, marshall'd in the fencèd land,
The peaches and pomegranates stand,
Where wild carnations blow.
The laurels with the winter strive;
The crocus burnishes alive
Upon the snow-clad earth;
* * * * *
For Adoration ripening canes
And cocoa's purest milk detains
The westering pilgrim's staff;
Where rain in, clasping boughs inclos'd,
And vines with oranges dispos'd,
Embower the social laugh.
For Adoration, beyond match,
The scholar bulfinch aims to catch
The soft flute's ivory touch;
And, careless on the hazle spray,
The daring redbreast keeps at bay
The damsel's greedy clutch_.
To quote at further length from so fascinating, so divine a poem,
would be "purpling too much my mere grey argument." Browning's praise
ought to send every one to the original. But here is one more stanza
that I cannot resist copying, because it seems so pathetically
applicable to Smart himself as a man, and to the one exquisite poem
which was "the more than Abishag of his age":
_His muse, bright angel of his verse,
Gives balm for all the thorns that pierce,
For all the pangs that rage;
Blest light, still gaining on the gloom,
The more than Michal of his bloom,
The Abishag of his age_.
POMPEY THE LITTLE
THE HISTORY OF POMPEY THE LITTLE; _or, the Life and Adventures of a
Lap-Dog. London: Printed for M. Cooper, at the Globe in Paternoster
Row, MDCCLI_.
In February 1751 the town, which had been suffering from rather a
dreary spell since the acceptable publication of _Tom Jones_, was
refreshed and enlivened by the simultaneous issue of two delightfully
scandalous productions, eminently well adapted to occupy the polite
conversation of ladies at drums and at the card-table. Of these one
was _The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality_, so oddly foisted by Smollett
into the third volume of his _Peregrine Pickle_. This was recognised
at once as being the work of the frail and adventurous Lady Vane,
about whom so many strange stories were already current in society.
The other puzzled the gossips much longer, and it seems to have been
the poet Gray who first discovered the authorship of _Pompey the
Little_. Gray wrote to tell Horace Walpole who had written the
anonymous book that everybody was talking about, adding that he had
discovered the secret through the author's own carelessness, three
of the characters being taken from a comedy shown him by a young
clergyman at Magdalen College, Cambridge. This was the Rev. Francis
Coventry, then some twenty-five years of age. The discovery of the
authorship made Coventry a nine-days' hero, while his book went into
a multitude of editions. It was one of the most successful _jeux
d'esprit_ of the eighteenth century.
The copy of the first edition of _Pompey the Little_, which lies
before me, contains an excellent impression of the frontispiece by
Louis Boitard, the fashionable engraver-designer, whose print of the
Ranelagh Rotunda is so much sought after by amateurs. It represents
a curtain drawn aside to reveal a velvet cushion, on which sits a
graceful little Italian lap-dog with pendant silky ears and sleek
sides spotted like the pard. This is Pompey the Little, whose life and
adventures the book proceeds to recount. "_Pompey_, the son of _Julio_
and _Phyllis_, was born A.D. 1735, at _Bologna_ in _Italy_, a place
famous for lap-dogs and sausages." At an early age he was carried
away from the boudoir of his Italian mistress by Hillario, an English
gentleman illustrious for his gallantries, who brought him to London.
The rest of the history is really a chain of social episodes, each
closed by the incident that Pompey becomes the property of some fresh
person. In this way we find ourselves in a dozen successive scenes,
each strongly contrasted with the others. It is the art of the author
that he knows exactly how much to tell us without wearying our
attention, and is able to make the transition to the next scene a
plausible one.
There is low life as well as high life in _Pompey the Little_,
sketches after Hogarth, no less than studies _à la_ Watteau. But the
high life is by far the better described. Francis Coventry was the
cousin of the Earl of that name, he who married the beautiful and
silly Maria Gunning. When he painted the ladies of quality at their
routs and drums, masquerades, and hurly-burlies, he knew what he was
talking about, for this was the life he himself led, when he was not
at college. Even at Cambridge, he was under the dazzling influence of
his famous and fashionable cousin, Henry Coventry, fellow of the
same college of Magdalen, author of the polite _Philémonto Hydaspes_
dialogues, and the latest person who dressed well in the University.
The embroidered coats of Henry Coventry, stiff with gold lace, his
"most prominent Roman nose" and air of being much a gentleman, were
not lost on the younger member of the family, who seems to paint him
slyly in his portrait of Mr. Williams.
The great charm of _Pompey the Little_ to contemporaries was, of
course, the fact that it was supposed to be a _roman à clef_. The
Countess of Bute hastened to send out a copy of it to her mother in
Italy, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu did not hesitate to discover the
likenesses of various dear friends of hers. She found it impossible
to go to bed till she had finished it. She was charmed, and she tells
Lady Bute, what the curious may now read with great satisfaction, that
it was "a real and exact representation of life, as it is now acted
in London." What is odd is that Lady Mary identified, with absolute
complacency, the portrait of herself, as Mrs. Qualmsick, that
hysterical lady with whom "it was not unusual for her to fancy herself
a Glass bottle, a Tea-pot, a Hay-rick, or a Field of Turnips." Instead
of being angry, Lady Mary screamed with laughter at the satire of her
own whimsies, of how "Red was too glaring for her eyes; Green put her
in Mind of Willows, and made her melancholic; Blue remembered her of
her dear Sister, who had died ten Years before in a blue Bed." In
fact, all this fun seems, for the moment at least, to have cured the
original Mrs. Qualmsick of her whimsies, and her remarks on _Pompey
the Little_ are so good-natured that we may well forgive her for the
pleasure with which she recognised Lady Townshend in Lady Tempest and
the Countess of Orford in the pedantic and deistical Lady Sophister,
who rates the physicians for their theology, and will not be bled by
any man who accepts the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
Coventry's romance does not deserve the entire neglect into which it
has fallen. It is sprightly and graceful from the first page to the
last. Not written, indeed, by a man of genius, it is yet the work of a
very refined observer, who had been modern enough to catch the tone of
the new school of novelists. The writer owes much to Fielding, who
yet does not escape without a flap from one of Pompey's silken ears.
Coventry's manner may be best exemplified by one of his own bright
passages of satire. This notion of a man of quality, that no place can
be full that is not crowded with people of fashion, is not new, but it
is deliciously expressed. Aurora has come back from Bath, and assures
the Count that she has had a pleasant season there:
"'You amaze me," cries the Count; 'Impossible, Madam! How can it be,
Ladies? I had Letters from Lord _Monkeyman_ and Lady _Betty Scornful_
assuring me that, except yourselves, there were not three human
Creatures in the Place. Let me see, I have Lady _Betty's_ Letter in my
Pocket, I believe, at this Moment. Oh no, upon Recollection, I put
it this morning into my Cabinet, where I preserve all my Letters of
Quality.' _Aurora_, smothering a Laugh as well as she could, said
she was extremely obliged to Lord _Monkeyman_ and Lady _Betty_, for
vouchsafing to rank her and her Sister in the Catalogue of human
Beings. 'But, surely,' added she, 'they must have been asleep, both
of them, when they wrote their Letters; for the _Bath_ was extremely
full,' 'Full!' cries the Count, interrupting her; "Oh, Madam, that is
very possible, and yet there might be no Company--that is, none of us;
Nobody that one knows. For as to all the Tramontanes that come by the
cross Post, we never reckon them as anything but Monsters in human
Shape, that serve to fill up the Stage of Life, like Cyphers in a
play. For Instance, you often see an awkward Girl, who has sewed a
Tail to a Gown, and pinned two Lappits to a Night-cap, come running
headlong into the Rooms with a wild, frosty Face, as if she was just
come from feeding Poultry in her Father's Chicken-Yard. Or you see a
Booby Squire, with a Head resembling a Stone ball over a Gate-post.
Now, it would be the most ridiculous Thing in Life to call such People
Company. 'Tis the Want of Titles, and not the Want of Faces, that
makes a Place empty.'"
There are indications, which I think have escaped the notice of
Goldsmith's editors, that the author of the _Citizen of the World_
condescended to take some of his ideas from _Pompey the Little_. In
Count Tag, the impoverished little fop who fancies himself a man
of quality, and who begs pardon of people who accost him in the
Park--"but really, Lady Betty or Lady Mary is just entering the
Mall,"--we have the direct prototype of Beau Tibbs; while Mr. Rhymer,
the starving poet, whose furniture consists of "the first Act of a
Comedy, a Pair of yellow Stays, two political Pamphlets, a plate of
Bread-and-butter, three dirty Night-caps, and a Volume of Miscellany
Poems," is a figure wonderfully like that of Goldsmith himself, as Dr.
Percy found him eight years later, in that "wretched, dirty room," at
the top of Breakneck Steps, Green Arbour Court. The whole conception
of that Dickens-like scene, in which it is described how Lady Frippery
had a drum in spite of all local difficulties, is much more in the
humour of Goldsmith than in that of any of Coventry's immediate
contemporaries.
Strangely enough, in spite of the great success of his one book, the
author of _Pompey the Little_ never tried to repeat it. He became
perpetual curate of Edgware, and died in the neighbouring village of
Stanmore Parva a few years after the publication of his solitary book;
I have, however, searched the registers of that parish in vain for
any record of the fact. Francis Coventry had gifts of wit and
picturesqueness which deserved a better fate than to amuse a few
dissipated women over their citron-waters, and then to be forgotten.
THE LIFE OF JOHN BUNCLE