ESSAYISTS AND LETTER WRITERS, LITERARY HISTORIANS.
The most important part of the posthumous papers of Samuel Butler, the
discovery of which in the eighteenth century has been mentioned, was his
_Characters_, composed upon the model of Theophrastus, and fairly
entitling him to the appellation of the English Theophrastus, which is
not the highest encomium imaginable. As the only work of the kind which
has come down to us from antiquity, the _Characters_ of Theophrastus,
which are in reality much later than the time of that successor of
Aristotle, have passed as models, a reputation in excess of their
desert. They offer an acute and entertaining enumeration of various
peculiarities of character, but do not succeed in presenting the
personage as a whole, and have much the air of being compiled from
traits delineated with a real truth of representation by the comic
poets. Butler's _Characters_ are of just the same kind, and his work is
rather a museum of particulars than a gallery of portraits. The age of
Charles II. by no means lives in him as the age of Anne lives in
Addison. La Bruyere, Butler's more celebrated French successor, who
certainly never read and probably never heard of him, fell into
precisely the same error from too timid an adherence to Theophrastus;
and the improvement upon him effected by Addison may be compared to the
service rendered to sculpture by Daedalus, the first, it is said, to
show the human form in motion. Isolated remarks in Butler's essays are
frequently very shrewd and pregnant; as when he says of the newsmonger,
'He would willingly bear his share in any public calamity to have the
pleasure of hearing and telling it;' or of the hunter, 'Let the hare
take which way she will, she seldom fails to lead him at long-running to
the alehouse;' or the description of a prince's unworthy favourite as 'a
fog raised by the sun to obscure his own brightness.' Many of Butler's
miscellaneous thoughts, appended to the _Characters_, are highly acute,
and exhibit a happy talent for illustrating abstract ideas by comparison
with sensible objects, as for instance: 'Oaths and obligations in the
affairs of the world are like ribands and knots in dressing, that seem
to tie something, but do not.' In politics Butler is, of course, a
loyalist, and one whose loyalty is intensified by his aesthetic dislike
to Puritanism, in which he was constitutionally incapable of seeing
anything but cant. At the same time, the contempt which as a man of
understanding he could not help entertaining for the conduct of affairs
under the Restoration, and disappointment at the neglect with which he
was himself treated, seem to have almost reduced him to a condition of
political scepticism. 'The worst governments are the best when they
light in good hands; and the best the worst, when they fall into bad
ones'--a remark condensed into a famous couplet by Pope, who appears to
have become acquainted with Butler's MS. through Atterbury. It is worth
observing that Butler not only prefers Ben Jonson to Shakespeare, but
seems to take his superiority for granted: 'Virgil, who wanted much of
that natural easiness of wit that Ovid had, did nevertheless with hard
labour and long study arrive at a higher perfection than the other with
all his dexterity of wit, but less industry, could attain to. The same
we may observe of Jonson and Shakespeare; for he that is able to think
long and judge well will be sure to find out better things than another
man can hit upon suddenly, though of more quick and ready parts, which
is commonly but chance, and the other art and judgment.' One special
distinction of Butler's is to have been perhaps the first English
satirist of mark who made parody a political weapon, or at least showed
its capabilities for this purpose, as it does not appear that any of his
political parodies were printed in his lifetime. Jack Cade's speeches in
Shakespeare are, indeed, a sufficient model, but Butler worked out the
hint elaborately in his fictitious speeches in the Rump Parliament; his
mock eulogium of this body or segment of a body in the oration supposed
to be delivered at Harrington's Rota; and the parody of Prynne's style
in the imaginary correspondence between him and John Audland, the
Quaker.
Butler's remains were only partially printed in 1759, but the MSS. from
which Thyer's publication was drawn were acquired in 1885 by the British
Museum. His selection seems to have been in general exceedingly
judicious, but the opportunity may be taken of giving some examples of
Butler's unpublished thoughts:
'There is no better argument to prove that the Scriptures were
written by divine inspiration than that excellent saying of our
Saviour, If any man will go to law with thee for thy cloak,
give him thy coat also.
'Birds are taken with pipes that imitate their own voices, and
men with those sayings that are most agreeable to their own
opinions.
'If the French nobility should follow our fashions, and send
their children over to learn our language, and receive their
education from us, we should have as glorious an opinion of
ourselves, and as mean a value of them, as they have of us;
and therefore we have no reason to blame them, but our own
folly for it.'
It is interesting to learn Butler's opinion of Dryden as a critic:
'Dryden weighs poets in his virtuoso's scales that will weigh
to the hundredth part of a grain, as curiously as Juvenal's
lady pedantess--
"Committit vates, et comparat inde Maronem,
Atque alia parte in trutina suspendit Homerum."
He complained of Ben Jonson for stealing scenes out of Plautus.
Set a thief to find out a thief.'
George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, who ranks with Shaftesbury and Temple
among the few politicians of that age entitled to the appellation of
statesman, enriched English literature with a small volume of essays,
the most important of which are his vindication of his own political
course and principles in _The Character of a Trimmer_ and _The Anatomy
of an Equivalent_. Of these Macaulay justly says: 'What particularly
strikes us is the writer's passion for generalization. He was treating
of the most exciting subjects in the most agitated times; he was himself
placed in the very thick of the civil conflict; yet there is no
acrimony, nothing inflammatory, nothing personal. He treats every
question as an abstract question, begins with the widest propositions,
argues these propositions on general grounds, and often, when he has
brought out his theorem, leaves the reader to make the application,
without adding an allusion to particular men or to passing events.' The
effect of this remarkable breadth of view was not with Halifax, as so
frequently the case, to paralyze energy, and render the comprehensive
mind unfit for practical action. He was not retained in equilibrium by
the difficulty of deciding between two courses, but was an enthusiast
for the _via media_, as great a zealot for compromise as zealots
commonly are for strong measures; and, though sometimes too yielding or
too speculative for the unquiet times in which his lot was cast, would
have made an almost ideal prime minister for the nineteenth century. His
praise of trimming, which to more fiery spirits must have seemed an
ignoble policy, rings with the eloquence and passion of the most genuine
conviction:
'Our Trimmer adores the Goddess Truth, though in all ages she
has been scurvily used, as well as those that worshipped her.
'Tis of late become such a ruining virtue that mankind seems to
be agreed to commend and avoid it; yet the want of practice,
which repeals the other laws, has no influence upon the law of
truth, because it has root in heaven, and an intrinsic value in
itself that can never be impaired. She shows her greatness in
this, that her enemies, even when they are successful, are
ashamed to own it. Nothing but power full of truth has the
prerogative of triumphing, not only after victories, but in
spite of them, and to put conquest herself out of countenance.
She may be kept under and suppressed, but her dignity still
remains with her, even when she is in chains. Falsehood with
all her impudence has not enough to speak ill of her before her
face. Such majesty she carries about her that her most
prosperous enemies are fain to whisper their treason, all the
power upon the earth can never extinguish her. She has lived in
all ages, and let the mistaken zeal of prevailing authority
christen any opposition to her with what name they please, she
makes it not only an ugly and an unmannerly, but a dangerous
thing to persist. She has lived very retired indeed, nay,
sometimes so buried that only some few of the discerning part
of mankind could have a glimpse of her; with all that, she has
eternity in her, she knows not how to die, and from the darkest
clouds that shade and cover her she breaks from time to time
with triumph for her friends, and terror to her enemies.
'Our Trimmer, therefore, inspired by this divine virtue,
thinks fit to conclude with these assertions, That our climate
is a trimmer between that part of the world where men are
roasted and that part where they are frozen: That our Church is
a trimmer between the phrenzy of phanatic[12] visions and the
lethargic ignorance of Popish dreams: That our laws are
trimmers between the excess of unbounded power and the
extravagance of liberty not enough restrained: That true virtue
has ever been thought a trimmer, and to have its dwelling in
the middle between the two extremes: That even God Almighty
himself is divided between his two great attributes, his mercy
and his justice.
'In such company our Trimmer is not ashamed of his name, and
willingly leaves to the bold champions of either extreme the
honour of contending with no less adversaries than nature,
religion, liberty, prudence, humanity, and common sense.'
Burnet might well be puzzled by a man who 'seemed to have his head full
of Commonwealth notions,' and yet concurred in the worst measures of
Charles II.
The most important of Halifax's other essays are his advice to his
daughter, excellent for sense and curious as an illustration of the
manners of the age, and his character of Charles II., nicely balanced
between half-sincere censure and half-sarcastic apology. There is
nothing in Charles's history to refute Halifax's view of him as a man
whose master passion was the selfish love of ease; but much to prove
that his abilities and discernment were far greater than Halifax chooses
to allow. Halifax's aphorisms, as usual, are too numerous to attain a
uniformly high standard, but some are exceedingly good.
'A fool hath no dialogue within himself.
'Malice may be sometimes out of breath, Envy never. A man may
make peace with hatred, but never with envy.
'An old man concludeth from his knowing mankind that they know
him too, and that maketh him very wary.
'He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but
he will do very few things.'
An allusion in these aphorisms to the Bank of England proves that
Halifax went on writing till nearly the hour of his death in 1695. Of
his other writings, the most remarkable is the _Advice to a Dissenter_
(1687), a masterly dissuasive against abetting the illegalities of
James.
Possibly, when Halifax penned the last-quoted aphorism, he was thinking
of Sir William Temple, well known to him at the council-board, of whom
Macaulay says, 'It was his constitution to dread failure more than he
desired success.' This elegant writer, whom we have already met as an
historian and as a speculator upon government, for once did a rash thing
when he entered into the controversy respecting the comparative merits
of the ancient and modern writers, knowing little of either. Macaulay
has done full justice to the ignorance and carelessness of this
well-worded composition; but Macaulay has said nothing of its
extraordinary want of insight. Temple need not be blamed for having been
unable to make up his mind whether the blood circulated, and whether the
earth went round the sun (the Grand Duke Cosmo found Cambridge disputing
against the latter proposition in 1669); what is really astonishing is
that he should have been utterly blind to the stupendous consequences
which Giordano Bruno had pointed out a century before. 'If they are
true,' he says, 'yet these two great discoveries have made no change in
the conclusions of astronomy, nor in the practice of physic, and so have
been of little use to the world, though perhaps of much honour to the
authors.' After this, Temple's essays are not likely to be referred to
in quest of intellectual wisdom, and their chief value, apart from the
purity and elegance of their style, consists in their illustrations of
contemporary opinions and practices. This is especially the case with
the essay on _Health and Long Life_. Temple enumerates with suppressed
amusement the various sanatory fads he has known, among which he seems
to reckon tea and coffee. Unconsciously confirming an anecdote of
Charles II. and his physicians, related by Evelyn, he tells us that
Peruvian bark was at first received with prejudice and suspicion, but
was becoming rehabilitated in his day, and fairly confounds us by his
faith in 'that little insect called millepedes; the powder whereof, made
up into little balls with fresh butter, I never knew fail of curing any
sore throat.'
The letter-writers of the age who have any claim to a place in
literature as such are but few, and none of their epistles were intended
for publication. Dryden, as elsewhere, takes the lead, and his letters,
though scanty and occasional, occupy a pleasant chamber in the edifice
of his prose writings. The first, dated 1655, and addressed to a female
cousin in language of complimentary gallantry, is of especial interest
as showing how early his prose style was formed. Notwithstanding the
strain of high-flown sentiment enforced by the occasion, it is far less
fanciful and involved than similar compositions of the early Caroline
period, and is in all essential respects an example of the sound, clear
prose of the Restoration. The letters to the two Rochesters, the man of
letters and the man of office, are models of ingenious flattery in
different styles; those to his publisher, Jacob Tonson, apart from their
personal interest, are important for the light they throw upon the
relations between publishers and authors at a period when publishers
were as yet mere tradesmen, and the most popular author could hardly
subsist by authorship. The latest of all, addressed to his
Northamptonshire kindred, are mellow as with the light of a setting
sun, and afford pleasant glimpses of the occasional ruralizings of the
most urban of poets.
[Sidenote: Lady Temple's letters (1652-1654).]
Sir William Temple is so thoroughly identified with the Restoration
period, that although the Lady Temple's charming letters of his
betrothed, Dorothy Osborne, were written in 1652-54, and not published
until 1888, they may be regarded as belonging to it. The young lady was
well known from Macaulay's account of her in his essay upon her husband,
and many of her letters had been published in Courtenay's life of her
husband, ere the whole, so far as preserved, recently became accessible
in the edition of Mr. Edward Abbott Parry. Intended for no other eyes
than her lover's, these letters have given Lady Temple high rank among
English epistolographers. Though they are exceedingly well written,
their charm is personal rather than literary. No biographer or novelist
has painted a truer picture of the English maiden, high-minded and high
spirited, heroically constant and at the same time full of engaging
frailties and arch teasing ways, than is depicted in these artless
self-revelations. Temple seems to have behaved perfectly well throughout
their protracted engagement; and his fulfilment of it after Dorothy's
beauty had been destroyed by the smallpox may be reasonably believed to
have been the effect of inclination, no less than of honour and duty.
The very slight glimpse we obtain of their married life reveals Lady
Temple's interest in his political career; had this been guided by her
his life would probably have been less comfortable, and his memory more
glorious.
[Sidenote: Dean Prideaux's letters (1674-1710).]
The letters of Humphrey Prideaux, Dean of Norwich, to John Ellis,
Secretary of the Treasury, edited for the Camden Society by Sir Edward
Maunde Thompson, though ordinary familiar correspondence, are too
curious a repertory of gossip to be passed over without notice. They are
mostly written from Oxford, and retail the scandal of the university in
a lively fashion, although the writer, a middling classical and oriental
scholar, known by his edition of the _Arundel Marbles_ and his _Life of
Mahomet_, seems rather a matter-of-fact personage. His relish for
scandal, however, occasionally makes him humorous, as when he describes
the deportment of his predecessor in the Norwich deanery: 'His whole
life is the pot and the pipe, and, go to him when you will, you will
find him walking about his room with a pipe in his mouth and a bottle of
claret and a bottle of old strong beer (which in this country they call
nog) upon the table, and every other turn he takes a glass of one or the
other of them.' The book is rich in such vignettes; its more serious
interest consists in its illustration of the practical refutation of the
theory of divine right previously held by the majority of the clergy by
James II.'s misgovernment. The beginning and the end of the
correspondence are in violent political contrast; and the metamorphosis
is entirely effected during the last two years of James's reign.
Literary history is necessarily among the latest developments of
literature. The nearest approach to it in the England of the seventeenth
century was the younger Gerard Langbaine's (1656-92) _Account of the
English Dramatic Poets_, Oxford, 1691. Langbaine laid himself out
particularly to discover the sources from which dramatists had borrowed
their plots, and is styled by Dr. Johnson 'the great detector of
plagiarism.' He has been accused of having read poetry for no other
purpose, but is vindicated by Mr. Sidney Lee. The value of his work is
much increased by the manuscript notes and additions of Oldys and
others, copies of which are in the British Museum and Bodleian. The
literary compilations of Edward Phillips are so poor that they would
have deserved no notice if he had not been Milton's nephew, and the
first English author to mention _Paradise Lost_.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] All the editions have _Platonic_, but this must be a misprint.