"_Tom Carew_ was next, but he had a fault,
That would not well stand with a Laureat;
His Muse was hard-bound, and th' issue of 's brain
Was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain."
Or this, by Lord Falkland himself (who surely may be supposed to have
known how the name was pronounced), in his "Eclogue on the Death of
Ben Jonson"--
"_Let Digby, Carew, Killigrew_ and _Maine,
Godolphin, Waller_, that inspired train--
Or whose rare pen beside deserves the grace
Or of an equal, or a neighbouring place--
Answer thy wish, for none so fit appears
To raise his Tomb, as who are left his heirs."
In each case "Carey" scans admirably, while "Carew" gives the line an
intolerable limp.
Mr. Ebsworth's championship.
This mistake of Mr. Ebsworth's is the less easy to understand inasmuch
as he has been very careful to clear up the popular confusion of our
poet Thomas Carew, "gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King Charles I.,
and cup-bearer to His Majesty," with another Thomas Gary (also a
poet), son of the Earl of Monmouth and groom of His Majesty's
bed-chamber. But it is one thing to prove that this second Thomas Gary
is the original of the "medallion portrait" commonly supposed to be
Carew's: it is quite another thing to saddle him, merely upon
guess-work, with Carew's reputed indiscretions. Indeed, Mr. Ebsworth
lets his enthusiasm for his author run clean away with his sense of
fairness. He heads his Introductory Memoir with the words of Pallas in
Tennyson's "Œnone"--
"Again she said--'I woo thee not with gifts:
Sequel of guerdon could not alter me
To fairer. Judge thou me by what I am,
So shalt thou find me fairest.'"--
from which I take it that Mr. Ebsworth claims his attitude towards
Carew to be much the same as Thackeray's towards Pendennis. But in
fact he proves himself a thorough-going partisan, and anyone less
enthusiastic may think himself lucky if dismissed by Mr. Ebsworth
with nothing worse than a smile of pity mingled with contempt. Now,
so long as an editor confines this belligerent enthusiasm to the
defence of his author's writings, it is at worst but an amiable
weakness; and every word he says in their praise tends indirectly to
justify his own labor in editing these meritorious compositions. But
when he extends this championship over the author's private life, he
not unfrequently becomes something of a nuisance. We may easily
forgive such talk as "There must assuredly have been a singular
frankness and affectionate simplicity in the disposition of Carew:"
talk which is harmless, though hardly more valuable than the
reflection beloved of local historians--"If these grey old walls could
speak, what a tale might they not unfold!" It is less easy to forgive
such a note as this:--
"Sir John Suckling was incapable of understanding Carew in his
final days of sickness and depression, as he had been (and this
is conceding much) in their earlier days of reckless gallantry.
His vile address 'to T---- C----,' etc., 'Troth, _Tom_, I must
confess I much admire ...' is nothing more than coarse badinage
without foundation; in any case not necessarily addressed to
Carew, although they were of close acquaintance; but many other
Toms were open to a similar expression, since 'T.C.' might apply
to Thomas Carey, to Thomas Crosse, and other T.C. poets."
It is not pleasant to rake up any man's faults; but when an editor
begins to suggest some new man against whom nothing is known (except
that he wrote indifferent verse)--who is not even known to have been
on speaking terms with Suckling--as the proper target of Suckling's
coarse raillery, we have a right not only to protest, but to point out
that even Clarendon, who liked Carew, wrote of him that, "after fifty
years of his life spent with less severity and exactness than it ought
to have been, he died with great remorse for that license, and with
the greatest manifestation of Christianity that his best friends could
desire." If Carew thought fit to feel remorse for that license, it
scarcely becomes Mr. Ebsworth to deny its existence, much less to hint
that the sinfulness was another's.
A correction.
As a minor criticism, I may point out that the song, "Come, my Celia,
let us prove ..." (included by Mr. Ebsworth, with the remark that
"there is no external evidence to confirm the attribution of this song
to Carew") was written by Ben Jonson, and is to be found in
_Volpone_, Act III., sc. 7, 1607.
But, with some imperfections, this is a sound edition--sadly
needed--of one of the most brilliant lyrical writers of his time. It
contains a charming portrait; and the editor's enthusiasm, when it
does not lead him too far, is also charming.
"ROBINSON CRUSOE"
April 13, 1895. Robinson Crusoe.
Many a book has produced a wide and beneficent effect and won a great
reputation, and yet this effect and this reputation have been
altogether wide of its author's aim. Swift's _Gulliver_ is one
example. As Mr. Birrell put it the other day, "Swift's gospel of
hatred, his testament of woe--his _Gulliver_, upon which he expended
the treasures of his wit, and into which he instilled the concentrated
essence of his rage--has become a child's book, and has been read with
wonder and delight by generations of innocents."
How far is the tale a parable?
Generations of innocents in like manner have accepted _Robinson
Crusoe_ as a delightful tale about a castaway mariner, a story of
adventure pure and simple, without sub-intention of any kind. But we
know very well that Defoe in writing it intended a parable--a parable
of his own life. In the first place, he distinctly affirms this in
his preface to the _Serious Reflections_ which form Part iii. of his
great story:--
"As the design of everything is said to be first in the
intention, and last in the execution, so I come now to
acknowledge to my reader that the present work is not merely a
product of the two first volumes, but the two first volumes may
rather be called the product of this. The fable is always made
for the moral, not the moral for the fable...."
He goes on to say that whereas "the envious and ill-disposed part of
the world" have accused the story of being feigned, and "all a
romance, formed and embellished by invention to impose upon the
world," he declares this objection to be an invention scandalous in
design, and false in fact, and affirms that the story, "though
allegorical, is also historical"; that it is
"the beautiful representation of a life of unexampled
misfortunes, and of a variety not to be met with in the world,
sincerely adapted to and intended for the common good of mankind,
and _designed at first_, as it is now further applied, to the
most serious use possible. Farther, that there is a man alive,
and well known too, the actions of whose life are the just
subject of these volumes, _and to whom all or most part of the
story most directly alludes_; this may be depended upon, for
truth, and to this I set my name."
He proceeds to assert this in detail of several important passages in
the book, and obviously intends us to infer that the adventures of
Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, were throughout and from the
beginning designed as a story in parable of the life and adventures of
Daniel Defoe, Gentleman. "But Defoe may have been lying?" This was
never quite flatly asserted. Even his enemy Gildon admitted an analogy
between the tale of Crusoe and the stormy life of Defoe with its
frequent shipwrecks "more by land than by sea." Gildon admitted this
implicitly in the title of his pamphlet, _The Life and Strange
Surprising Adventures of Mr. D---- De F----, of London, Hosier, who
has lived above Fifty Years by himself in the Kingdoms of North and
South Britain._ But the question has always been, To what extent are
we to accept Defoe's statement that the story is an allegory? Does it
agree step by step and in detail with the circumstances of Defoe's
life? Or has it but a general allegorical resemblance?
Hitherto, critics have been content with the general resemblance, and
have agreed that it would be a mistake to accept Defoe's statement
too literally, to hunt for minute allusions in _Robinson Crusoe_, and
search for exact resemblances between incidents in the tale and events
in the author's life. But this at any rate may be safely affirmed,
that recent discoveries have proved the resemblance to be a great deal
closer than anyone suspected a few years ago.
Mr. Wright's hypothesis.
Mr. Aitken supplied the key when he announced in the _Athenæum_ for
August 23rd, 1890, his discovery that Daniel Defoe was born, not in
1661 (as had hitherto been supposed), but earlier, and probably in the
latter part of the year 1659. The story dates Crusoe's birth September
30th, 1632, or just twenty-seven years earlier. Now Mr. Wright,
Defoe's latest biographer,[A] maintains that if we add these
twenty-seven years to the date of any event in Crusoe's life we shall
have the date of the corresponding event in Defoe's life. By this
simple calculation he finds that Crusoe's running away to sea
corresponds in time with Defoe's departure from the academy at
Newington Green; Crusoe's early period on the island (south side)
with the years Defoe lived at Tooting; Crusoe's visit to the other
side of the island with a journey of Defoe's into Scotland; the
footprint and the arrival of the savages with the threatening letters
received by Defoe, and the physical assaults made on him after the
Sacheverell trial; while Friday stands for a collaborator who helped
Defoe with his work.
Defoe expressly states in his _Serious Reflections_ that the story of
Friday is historical and true in fact--
"It is most real that I had ... such a servant, a savage, and
afterwards a Christian, and that his name was called Friday, and
that he was ravished from me by force, and died in the hands that
took him, which I represent by being killed; this is all
literally true, and should I enter into discoveries many alive
can testify them. His other conduct and assistance to me also
have just references in all their parts to the helps I had from
that faithful savage in my real solitudes and disasters."
It may be added that there are strong grounds for believing Defoe to
have had about this time assistance in his literary work.
All this is very neatly worked out; but of course the really important
event in Crusoe's life is his great shipwreck and his long solitude
on the island. Now of what events in Defoe's life are these
symbolical?